You Never Met My Father (11 page)

My heart skipped a beat as something stirred in my memory. Could Campbell have been speaking the truth this time? I'm wary of the notion of repressed memory, but this feeling has become so strong, so persistent (the genie is out of the bottle!) I have to concede it might have some basis. A shard of fear is still embedded in some dark recess of my consciousness. The vaguest memory has me running with my mother. And being terrified, pressed against a timber fence, a corral, as a car swept past. But were we spectators or target of a murderous assault? Were we or Campbell the intended victim? Campbell, despite his pomposity and histrionics, despite the desecration of his wine cellar, might have had some genuine grounds for concern about our safety, as well as his own. Yet, if his claim is true and we really were the intended victims, why did my mother and I go looking for him?

About half a mile further down the road my father had crashed. He was taken to a hospital in the nearby town of Heywood by Campbell's workers, which must have occurred before my mother and I arrived on the scene. He was admitted with concussion but recovered within twenty-four hours. To the medical staff he declared he couldn't recall anything that had happened and was transferred to the Repatriation Hospital in Heidelberg.

Campbell told the Repatriation officer that Pat and her children were living in constant fear of Denny, whose erratic behaviour was increasing in intensity and frequency, and that if the Repatriation Department discharged him there would be a tragedy.

But Campbell didn't get his way.

Much to his chagrin, Campbell was informed that Denny was not certifiable and would not be hospitalised against his will. He responded with a letter in which he threatened to terminate Pat's employment the day Denny was released. He demanded to be informed when it happened and expressed his contempt for a medical profession that released such maniacs into the community.

I cannot agree to the bland illusions of Olympian Detachment of the medical profession in their indifference to mortal dispositions of those involved in their superior sport and therefore will take it as a kindness if you will advise me of Sparkes' discharge from hospital.

On the 8th of February the Senior Specialist in Psychiatry at the hospital sent a memo to the Officer in Charge of the Treatment Section, stating that he had read the OiC's minutes and Mr Campbell's letter regarding my father. He felt that Campbell didn't understand hospital procedures in such cases. While my father's condition was (in the specialist's opinion) ‘inborn', it wasn't ‘certifiable at present'. So, Campbell, if he so desired, had the option of reporting the unfortunate affair to the police.

A diplomatic response was sent to Campbell warning that the hospital was unable to hold Denny against his will. Campbell promptly removed Pat from her position as his housekeeper. Denny was discharged but did not reappear in our lives for a year. Or so it seemed.

Upon reading the material in my father's medical files on
Th
e
Pines
episode, the confidence I had in the reliability of my memory was shaken. Was my ageing mind playing tricks on me? Either there was a terrifying incident that I have repressed, or my memory is quite malleable, easily altered by words on paper. If Campbell's account were true, how had I replaced it with such a satirical version? The riotous scene at the woolshed? The drunken shearers? The drowned sheep? The pompous yeoman-politician fleeing for his life? Had I invented it and, over the years, embellished it to suit my own prejudices? Had my mother intentionally planted this more palatable notion? She would have realised that a child who remembers his father trying to kill the family is likely to grow up disturbed. Or is there some truth in both accounts? Were we all, family and yeoman, the target of Denny's psychotic behaviour?

My memory of what happened over the next year similarly departs from those facts before my eyes in the Veterans' Affairs office.

I was eight years old. That is my excuse.

Once more I was enduring Aunt Gerty's cuddles and her attempts to mould any opinion I was forming of my erratic father.

“He's a bloody mongrel, isn't he?” Her tongue clicked disapproval as she gave me another protective squeeze. “Don't you ever turn out like him, d'you hear?”

“I won't, Aunt Gerty.”

“Promise?”

“Promise.”

I settled back into life in South Portland.

The Staggs and Stewarts maintained their routines, which revolved around the consumption of beer. There were still soirees where Aunt Gerty or an inebriated guest pounded out a ditty on the upright. There were still her loud morning farts as reliable as any alarm clock. If it happened to be a weekend you'd find Uncle Mick working his vegie patch or loading his fishing tackle into the car. To protect his bald head in summer he wore a battered fedora; in winter, a football beanie. In either season he'd keep his beer nearby in an icebox. I mucked around with my cousins. The paddocks opposite, still covered in thorn bush, were excellent for exploring. So too was the thicket in the gully that our street crossed. We could play all day and when we got home all the adults, except my mother, would still be drinking.

I can't remember how long we stayed with them. I went back to school. I had reached Grade 3. Jean was in Grade 5. Carol was just starting. In accordance with the custom of the day, I avoided consorting with my sisters at school, although Carol sometimes broke with protocol and approached to introduce her new-found friends.

My classroom was rather gloomy despite enormous timber-framed windows facing east. It had high ceilings from which light bulbs that were seldom used hung at the end of long cords. The teacher's desk was on a platform in front of an ashen blackboard. I kept a low profile. I tried to make friends with popular students but I wasn't too pushy, becoming more finely attuned to classroom dynamics. I avoided other students who through no fault of their own were on the outer, even ones I felt sorry for, like Stinky Finky who had a personal hygiene problem or Madeleine Foster, a girl from the Seventh Day Adventist community. She was shy but rather pretty and didn't smell bad like some. I had no idea why my classmates shunned her, except perhaps because of her weird religion. Once I carelessly smiled at her and she smiled back, agog at my bravery. But it was too risky to repeat in case others noticed and dispatched me to the same no-man's-land that she occupied. Often a tagging game began in class, accompanied by a chant, ‘Foster's germs and no returns'
,
I joined in but was shamefaced about it, sensitive to ridicule and the hurt it caused.

The playground dynamics were an altogether different affair. Here you could be assailed by a total stranger at any time. There was never any way of knowing when or where it would happen. Someone could take a dislike of you for the slightest reason, like the way you ate your sandwich, or even what was in it, or the way you wore socks or carried a schoolbag or combed your hair. I was fearful of running into the policeman's son who had revealed my father's imprisonment to me before we left for
Kirkwall
, an assertion I was yet to verify. But I couldn't remember what he looked like. I expected an ambush at any moment and more denunciations. I expected someone to know what happened at
Th
e Pines.
These never came. Instead I was assailed from an entirely unexpected quarter, the boy (whose name escapes me) that I sat next to in class. We got along well but out of the blue one day, during a lunch break, I heard a shout, “Hey, Bung Eye!”

I looked around and saw the perpetrator in the middle of a group of laughing boys I had never seen him with before. No doubt he was trying to make a favourable impression at my expense. And perhaps they had put him up to it. But the betrayal upset me enough to rush at him and demand he retract his slur. When he repeated it instead I lunged and managed to put a headlock on him. He struggled back. Soon there was a crowd around us. I had the advantage until the crowd began to chant, “Bung Eye! Bung Eyeeeee!” The force of their allegiance overwhelmed me. I released my foe and broke through the crowd in tears. I hid in my classroom for the rest of the lunch break, even though it was officially out of bounds.

It took me a long time to restore my credibility. My immediate need was an ally and so I offered my services to our teacher. I became ink monitor. In the morning before lessons I collected all the porcelain inkwells from our desks, took them on a custom-built tray to the adjoining storeroom and filled each with blackish ink from a large plastic container. I became milk monitor. Some time before morning recess a milk truck from the local butter factory delivered dozens of crates of quarter-pint bottles. It was my job to poke holes in the tinfoil tops with a length of dowel sharpened like a pencil through which students could push a chocolate or strawberry flavoured straw. I became board monitor, cleaning the board with a damp rag at the end of the day so it would look fresh in the morning. Having the teacher as my ally was a desperate move, but it certainly made my recent foes think twice about their campaign of ridicule. It was the circuit breaker I needed. It gave me the opportunity to establish my playground credentials.

Not that I articulated any such strategy during that difficult first year of my return to the school. It's more how I interpret events now through the prism of time and my exposure to sociological theories.

I became reasonably adept at marbles, accumulating a hoard, which I kept in a calico bag, won from less dexterous kids. I was shrewd enough to play only kids I knew I could beat. I became very good at Sticks (a game of stretch), British Bulldog (a game of evasion) and Brandy (a game of pursuit with a ball). I was brilliant at various sports, which won me the most kudos of all. Football was the most esteemed pursuit for any red-blooded boy. I secretly resolved to become the best footballer in the school. Eventually boys picked me as a priority for their side in any team contests. I hadn't yet risen to the rank of leader but I was seen as a major asset. I heard less of ‘Bung Eye'; more of ‘Sparkesy
'
. Curiously I felt fearless in school-ground games or on the sporting field despite how rough and dangerous it could be. On more recent reflection I put this down to a sense of belonging to a group. I was no longer alone and therefore no longer vulnerable. Any pain I endured was for a greater cause than my own.

My growing interest in sport pleased my mother. Ever since the days when her brothers had taken her to watch them play football she had loved sport. She had been a keen participant when she was younger and was an avid spectator. She went out of her way to watch me play.

“You're a good mark, love,” she said, one of the best compliments you could give a young footballer. “I've seen you take some spekkies.”

She bought me genuine leather boots and a football. She coached me in the back yard. I attribute my ability to boot drop kicks further than other kid my age to her. I could often hear her shouting encouragement from the boundary. She was my football mentor and number one fan, and would keep the trophies and medals I accrued throughout my junior playing career long after I outgrew my junior status, long after I had lost interest in playing the game.

Eventually we shifted into the back half of a bluestone house opposite the rambling showgrounds in Bentick Street. The reclusive old man who owned it lived in the front half. His gardens were overgrown and mysterious. The cypress hedge along one side of the property had reached a height too difficult to trim. There was a vacant block next door, full of weeds and brambles, and behind us was Fawthrop Lagoon, better known locally as the Swamp, a haven for black swans, water fowl, plovers and an assortment of venomous snakes.

I kept away from there but I loved to play spying games in the hedge, which had hidden passageways that tunnelled through its dense canopy. I was pursued by imaginary foes but always managed to escape by the skin of my teeth, thanks to some timely warning from my latest favourite superhero, the Phantom.

I spied on less fanciful but no less exotic characters, like the Hungarian hawker who camped on the vacant block once in a while, in a horse-drawn gypsy caravan, from whom the locals bought cheap kitchenware, clothes and bric-à-brac. The hawker smoked a pipe on the timber steps at the rear of his van while his draught horse grazed on weeds. Once, when I ventured closer, he invited me to sit on his horse, lifting me firmly until I was astride its massive flanks. While I sat there grasping some of its mane for dear life, it grazed nonchalantly, as taciturn as its master.

It was only remotely like The Phantom's horse, Hero.

The ‘kind-hearted old gypsy', as my mother called him, was not the only exotic character to enrich my life while I was living there. Our close proximity to the showgrounds exposed me to the people who worked in the carnival when it came to town. There were midgets, prize fighters, bearded ladies, a giant or two and all the roughnecks who supervised rides and sideshows. On top of that, a circus with acrobats, trapeze artists, lion tamers, bareback riders, clowns, fire-eaters and jugglers would arrive now and then and within half a day erect a massive tent next to the show arena.

Pat allowed us to go to carnivals and the matinee circuses and gave us a few pennies to spend. But what enthralled me were these strange people when I spied on them after their acts. They could perform like no other people I knew, yet they sat around in caravan doorways or on deckchairs, smoked and chatted. They washed, shaved, combed their hair, used mirrors like everyone else, except they were a little more public about it. They peeled potatoes and carrots and diced cabbage just as my mother did. They yawned and sniffed and hummed tunes. They laughed and shouted obscenities. They could be so banal, so normal, these unbelievable creatures who flew through the air, who subjugated lions, who climbed inside barrels too small for their bodies, which opened my mind to possibilities, revealed a world beyond my own that might just be within reach. It wasn't a revelation that I acted on as soon as I could, but its significance was never lost on me. My own leaps through the air, my own contortions, would come much later and in the realm of the imagination, when I tried to be a writer.