You Never Met My Father (20 page)

On the 23rd a Repatriation Treatment Report states:
Th is patient (despite all efforts made in the past) has continued to frustrate all attempts to place him in employment. He has worn out his welcome with local employment services in the Portland district. Because of his attitude I consider that he is unemployable.
It was his attitude and not any genuine back injury, according to the report which made him unemployable. In the records over the subsequent years many statements appear with varying degrees of subtlety that imply Denny was a malingerer.

It was going to be a bad year for him.

I started high school in 1964, made friends with a few boys from my class, and together on weekends we went fishing and exploring around the port, flew kites, rode a hand trolley half a mile over the sea on the Ocean Pier, pumping its handle like frenzied navies, and we threw old 75rpm records like flying saucers from the cliff tops into the sea. None of us talked much about our families, which suited me fine. If any of them knew about my father they mercifully kept it to themselves.

Halfway through the year, Denny went to St. John of God Hospital in Ballarat, this time, I think, to get some outcome for his back injury. Mindful of his patient's psychiatric history, the doctor requested a Collins Street specialist, Mr N.R. Langford, provide an opinion on the psychological repercussions of surgery.

I found evidence of his schizoid personality. I could only get very spasmodic assistance from him when I asked him to carry out certain tests, but there is evidence of some central nervous system damage. He has a very marked rapid tremor of his right arm when it is outstretched with his eyes shut. There is a slight tremor of the left arm. He was quite unable, I believe, to put his finger to his nose when his eyes were closed although I instructed him to do this many times, which only resulted with an increased trembling on his part. Th is may be a purely hysterical reaction, but I felt that it was certainly a genuine one.

I think it was the sort of finding one has where there is organic damage to the frontal areas of the brain and someone who has had a schizoid personality and has had E.C.T. would be quite a likely person to develop such a mental block…

I felt that the man had such a bad psychiatric record that to interfere surgically would be something to be avoided at all costs. He seemed quite agreeable to deferring any question of surgery for the time being at least and I have sensed this from the patient himself and from Dr Beavis. He is seeking a full pension from the Army because of his trouble and I think that he is likely to get this. Maybe the back problem will settle down once this is sorted out.

Again, despite acknowledgement of some evidence of brain damage, possibly caused by electric shock therapy, this report ends on a cynical note with the implication that Denny's injury wasn't genuine. There is no mention of his fall down eighty or ninety steps in Kure as a possible cause.

On the 23rd of June the law firm Nicol, Silvester & Culhane wrote to the Repatriation Department:
Mr Sparkes instructs us that, as a result of War injuries he suffers forms of blackouts, and that, on 3rd October, 1962, or thereabouts, as a result of a blackout, he fell from a scaffolding in the course of his employment as a result of which he suffered injury to his back.

The Department however refused to take responsibility. This was despite a note to Denny more than a year earlier that the Repatriation Board had decided the deterioration in his spine was due to his military service.

Were these professionals, unsure of a diagnosis, just hedging their bets, unwilling to put their reputations on the line with any categorical diagnosis? Is this why so many of the reports I've read about my father repeat the exact words in the original diagnosis, made in Japan in 1946 of ‘psychopathic personality & emotional instability', so that at least if a different diagnosis eventuated, their authors were in the company of peers, a dent in one reputation a dent in all? Much safer. Reading these reports I began to doubt the quality of my father's treatment.

As I worked my way through his records, I came to the conclusion that the people who were employed to deal with his illnesses allowed his aggression to impair their judgment. And I found I was not alone. In August 1964, Dr Stevenson, whose opinion was solicited regarding a review of my father's pension, stated:

He has obviously the ability to cause an almost immediate aggressive reaction in others—notably the police and his medical attendants, and it would seem that some of his problems in the past may have resulted from a non-medical decision by his M.O.s [Medical Officers].

There appears little doubt that he is an immature, unstable personality who is psychopathic; although he could not be classed as a true psychopath.

There is ample evidence that this had nothing to do with his very meagre and unsatisfactory war service. His service record alone gives an indication of constitutional difficulty.

I do not think it is reasonable that his “psychopathic personality and emotional instability” should have been accepted, but as it has we must now assess to what extent he is incapacitated.

Here his record of causing personal antagonism among his doctors, including psychiatrists, (who should have known better), must be disregarded and the fact which is seen to exist is that he is unemployable and likely to remain so by nature of his psychic disability.

If his spinal injury or injuries is added to this, the need for unemployment support is greater.

Further to this his attitude to his physical injury and disability is too warped by his personality instability and the chances of clinical recovery is [sic] slim.

While I hesitate to advise TPI [Totally and Permanently Incapacitated] I point out that while it is undoubted that this man is not ‘deserving', the original questionable judgement lies in the acceptance of a constitutional condition with no relation to war service having been accepted. But having been accepted is [sic] must now be admitted he is unemployable and a Repat. responsibility.

On the grounds that his personality
may
mature at a later age it could be said that
permanence
is
not
yet established, but TTI [Totally and Temporarily Incapacitated] is.

Dr Stevenson's comment that psychiatrists ‘should have known better' caught my eye, along with the fact that the doctor couldn't help indulging in a little hostility himself.

His recommendation was accepted. Denny again failed in his bid to get his pension upgraded. Towards the end of September he approached a Department social worker for help with £100 in rental arrears, a substantial amount in the early sixties, and £80 in hospital bills.

In early 1965 my father was still visiting the Repatriation Hospital in Heidelberg, with or without appointments, in his dogged pursuit of a TPI pension.

A medical assessment report from the Appeal Tribunal on the 20th of January stated:
This man appears to aggravate all his symptoms and it is considered that most of them are nonexistent.

I remember his return after a couple of week's absence. He was in the same Fletcher Jones suit as he'd come home in once before. It looked a little shabbier. His eyes appeared to have had the blue drained from them. He seemed calmer. He claimed he'd been selling real estate in Melbourne. When he sensed none of us believed him he added that he'd put a deposit on a block of land in the outer suburb of Greensborough.

“As soon as it's paid for I'll build a place for us,” he said looking around the kitchen at the gaps in the wall, the damp stains on the ceiling, the soot below the stove, “so we can get out of this shit hole”.

The possibility of that ever happening seemed fanciful.

“What's wrong with Portland?” I complained, reluctant to move again to a place I knew nothing about.

Momentarily the life returned to his eyes, the old anger, but it quickly subsided. “When you're older, my friend, you won't want to be stuck in this joint.”

If he was interested in a career in real estate, he made no attempt to pursue it in Portland. He went on a long gambling binge, using any money he could get his hands on, hocking household items, robbing our piggy banks. He was probably up to his old hire-purchase scam. There was an argument with Pat over her wages, which almost ended with her throat being cut. I saw the knife pressed against the yielding skin at the bottom of her throat, my mother passive with fear, her eyes moist with sorrow, his eyes bulging, his temples throbbing. One foolish remark and it would have been all over. Sitting at the kitchen table with my sisters, I could feel my heart pounding. I heard Jean murmur, “Oh don't, Dad, please,” a soft, rational voice. I repeated something similar and so did Carol. I realised if our mother's throat was cut, ours would surely follow. But the weight of our pleas brought him to his senses. He hurled the knife at the sink.

Despite my fear, I felt sad too. I didn't condemn him outright. I didn't believe he wanted to be a horrible man. The thought of demons possessing him crossed my mind.

He shut himself in the lounge room again, pushing furniture against the door, emerging only at night when we had all gone to bed to scrape together something to eat, usually a dinner gone cold that Pat had prepared and put in the oven for him.

One morning the lounge-room door was open and empty. Pat had found him lying on the verandah when she got up for work. She suspected he had tried to overdose again. His breathing was sporadic and heavy. She had managed to remove both sets of his dentures to prevent him choking. I helped her to drag him back into the house, across the threshold and kitchen lino, over the slight step out of the kitchen, along the short passageway to the lounge, no easy feat, since he weighed fourteen stone. There was no way we could have lifted him onto a bed. He lay on his back like a corpse. I moved away. Even unconscious he intimidated me.

I found a couple of empty sleeping-pill bottles on the floor.

My mother was in a daze. She didn't know what to do. Most people would have called an ambulance but it didn't occur to either of us. She probably feared it would enrage him and cause more trouble with police and medical personnel.

“A normal dose doesn't have much effect on him,” she said, trying to excuse his behaviour. “His body's so used to them.”

After we stood over him for a while, watching his chest rise and fall sporadically, she murmured, “What should we do? He wouldn't want us calling anyone.”

“He'll survive.” I was struggling with ambivalent emotions. “He always does.”

“He's as strong as a bull,” she added hopefully and perhaps with a touch of nostalgia.

She stayed at home to keep an eye on him.

I was in my second year of high school, my first year as a teenager. I took my studies seriously and didn't want to miss a day of school because of him. But I was too distracted to concentrate on study. The morning dragged. When lunchtime finally arrived I raced home, just in time to see my father getting up. He started staggering around and muttering incoherently, partly due to his missing dentures. I moved out of his way. No doubt my alarm was evident. He gave me a wild contemptuous look and headed out the door. He fell off the verandah, picked himself up and made for the gate. His cardigan, which had caught on timber as he fell, was soiled and torn. Pat clutched my arm as we watched him disappear down the lane.

“Go after him, darling,” she pleaded. “See no harm comes to him. I'll try and get his doctor.”

I wanted to refuse. I could see nothing but humiliation in the pursuit. But she was getting maudlin and almost in need of help herself.

Reluctantly I set off after him. I tracked along the street some fifty yards behind. He was weaving and staggering worse than any drunk I'd ever seen, even in films where actors depicting intoxicated behaviour often exaggerated for comic effect. But his route seemed purposeful. He went past Daisy's bluestone mansion, a few old weatherboard houses and a fishmonger's shop. He headed in the direction of the school and then at the end of the block turned south into a street that led to the swamp.

There were students everywhere, on their way back to school from lunch, from milk bars and fish-and-chip shops in the main shopping strip and outside a popular corner store that we called the Tuck Shop. When they saw Denny many of them laughed and shouted at him.

What a distraction from the humdrum of school!

“Look at that drunk dickhead!”

“Have you ever seen anyone so fucking pissed?”

One or two approached to taunt him but only for a moment, until they noticed his wild eyes. Mercifully none identified him as my father or realised I was following him.

I kept my distance from them because I was afraid they would see my tears.
Oh, Dad, this is so shameful…
He was making it hard for me not to hate him.

After a few blocks the street dropped away towards the swamp before turning sharply to the left. He managed to descend the steep gradient without incident. At the bottom he stepped off the bitumen, slid down an embankment, picked himself up and headed into the reeds. Alarmed I yelled at him to let him know I'd been following. He kept moving. In a panic now I yelled again from the embankment. He was up to his knees in stagnant water. He turned and, slurring, made an attempt to order me away. He gesticulated wildly as he waded further into the swamp. Black swans and water hens skimmed out of his way. I was in my school uniform: pressed grey trousers, school blazer, loosened maroon tie, leather shoes. When the water reached his waist, I pulled off my blazer, my shoes and socks, hitched my trousers above the knee and followed, down the clay bank and into the slimy water.