by Ray Whitrod
11
But presently …
THE South Australian government appointed me to the Prisons Advisory Committee for a three-year term. Once a month, the committee visited a prison and reported on conditions and made recommendations for improvement. On one occasion, we were visiting the medium security prison near Murray Bridge. I was already experiencing difficulties with my hips and was not looking forward to the brisk walking that our visit would involve. I suggested to the other five members that they undertake the full inspection while I just pottered around on my own. I went out into the grounds and discovered a prisoner digging with difficulty a garden out of very hard-packed earth. He was using four heavy sleepers to establish a border to his patch. I fell into conversation with him and he told me his name was Big Jim Smith. He was indeed big, a fit bloke, pleasant to talk to. He didn’t appear to be an experienced gardener, but he said he was determined to grow something in the dirt. I suggested that he try to get hold of some manure or fertiliser. Later I sent him a copy of Yates’ Garden Guide. I asked a few questions and discovered that Big Jim Smith was in the last two years of a life sentence imposed because he had drowned his wife and two children in a bath.
The next time the committee visited the prison, the plot was looking quite respectable. Jim told me he was doing well, he’d read Yates’ Garden Guide and had high hopes for his little patch. He reckoned that by the time his two years were up he’d be able to leave behind a well-established garden. But on the next visit, the garden was gone. It might never have existed. There had been a break-out from the prison and the escapees had used the timber sleepers from Big Jim’s plot to get themselves over the wall. The prison guards were of the opinion that Jim had only pretended to be interested in gardening to get his sleepers into position. Jim protested and managed to get himself transferred to Cadel, an open farm prison near Renmark.
In Cadel he was put in charge of the chooks. There were two types: egg-layers and meat chooks. When the committee later visited Cadel, I asked Jim how he was doing. He was full of enthusiasm, saying “Come and look at this, Ray” and showing me his chook sheds. “Of course,” he said, “these screws are numbers mad.”
I said: “What do you mean?”
He said: “We have a roll call in the morning and a roll call at night, and if the numbers are right, things are fine. But if we’re a bloke short, there’s all hell to pay. The guy might be on the toilet or at the doctor’s or something, but the screws go bananas. The screws are just mad about numbers. They’re even making things difficult with the chooks.”
“How come?” I said.
“Last week,” he said, “I had a batch of eating hens to go to Eudunda.”
I said, “Why do they have to go to Eudunda?”
Jim said: “That’s the central dressing place. It’s fully-automated. You put your chooks in live one end and they come out packaged in plastic at the other. I had to take down a hundred and the screw came to me and said: ‘You got a hundred ready to go, Jim?’ and I said: ‘Yeah,’ but the bloke went and counted them all and said, ‘There’s only ninety-nine.’ The guy was carrying on, reckoned I’d eaten the last chook. So he did another count and there was still only ninety-nine. So then the screw said the truck couldn’t leave, not until there’s a hundred on board. So when the screw wasn’t looking I grabbed one of the little laying hens and stuck it in with the meat chooks. Then I said, ‘Let’s do one last count’, and whad-dayou know, there’s a hundred in there.”
Jim and the warder had left for Eudunda in the truck. At the chicken processing plant it was necessary for the growers to place their chooks on the conveyor line, hanging them upside down by their feet. The first stage in the line was automatic beheading by a machine set at the right height for meat hens. After that the bodies were plucked, disemboweled, dismembered and packaged. The trouble was, the single laying hen was shorter than the others. The blade missed its neck.
“You can guess what happened,” Jim said. He thought it was a huge joke.
In the meantime, Big Jim had fallen in love. He had been exchanging letters with a social worker in the United States, one thing had led to another and they had agreed to get married. The young woman left the United States, much to the dismay of her parents, arrived in Adelaide, married Jim in gaol and found work in the Government Insurance Office. She rented a house and set up a home in anticipation of Big Jim’s release. One day Jim rang me up and said that he was in Renmark hospital after a hernia operation. “It’s a pity I can’t get my wife up here,” he said, “just for the day. Because I can scrounge an extra day in hospital by saying I’m not fully recovered. We haven’t been together since we were married. The doctors are very sympathetic.”
I told Jim I’d see what I could do. I rang his wife and suggested that Mavis and I drive her up to Renmark hospital. This we did. We met Jim wandering around the wards and I told him that Mavis and I would go and have lunch down by the river. We had to leave at about three o’clock in the afternoon, but this would give the newlyweds a few hours together. Jim said that this was excellent; the hospital had given him a private room. We left them to it.
Jim was very grateful. He wrote me a letter saying how much he appreciated what we’d done for him and his wife, and what great friends Mavis and I were to them. Eventually his time was up and he was released. He moved in with his wife and not long after he rang and invited Mavis and me to be the first guests they entertained in their home. We went out to their house; it was a warm and friendly place. Jim’s wife had gone to great lengths to make it a real home, putting photographs of family and friends on the walls. We had a very nice meal. Jim and his wife were both beaming. Jim thought he would be able to get a job in a few days’ time. Mavis and I left, full of hope for them.
About three days later I read in the Advertiser that Jim Smith had been arrested and charged with rape. He had picked up a hitch-hiker on the road and raped her in the back of his wife’s car. When he let her go, she went straight to the police with his description and that of the car. From a police point of view, it was a very easy case to solve — they arrested Jim almost immediately. He was sentenced to five years in gaol. His wife went back to America and sued for divorce.
One can only speculate, but my feeling is that Jim wanted to go back inside. I think he had already spent so long in prison that he had become institutionalised. He wanted to go back to where he knew the ropes and the meaning of things. The tasks of living permanently with a woman and functioning in the world of gainful employment or unemployment were just too much. He still sends me the odd Christmas card. Shortly afterwards, the Advertiser published a photograph of Mavis and I celebrating our diamond wedding anniversary and I received an attractive little postcard from Big Jim Smith. The message read:
Dear Ray and Mavis,
What a wonderful photo of you both that appeared in the Advertiser one day last week. Reading the story of you both and to see the love that sparkled out of your eyes for each other really made my day. It is so very rare in this day and age to read warm stories in our papers as the story on you both was depicted. I hope that you both have many more happy years together and I wish you both all the best.
Regards
Jim B-Smith
Interesting comments from a man who was convicted of murdering his wife and two children and of a recent rape.
In 1993, I began research for a PhD in psychology. I initially planned to investigate the plight of very elderly victims of crime who were required to give evidence in court. Did they need special consideration of the sort that is routinely given to very young witnesses and victims? But a short spell in hospital with bladder problems changed my mind. There was a two-day wait between the operation and the results of the biopsy being known. It was a tense, uncomfortable time. There was blood in my urine and the possibility of cancer was never far from my mind. I was sharing a ward with three other men and the bloke in the next bed was in the same boat as I was — and he just knew that the results
of his biopsy were going to be malignant. On the morning of the third day in hospital, my urologist arrived in the ward and said to me rather brusquely: “Oh, Ray, yours is negative” and walked on quickly to the next man. My initial reaction was one of total dismay: negative means failure, I’ve got cancer. My spirits sunk. I knew little about cancer, but I was well aware that people died from it. Then I became dimly aware that the urologist was speaking very gravely to the man in the next bed: “I’m awfully sorry,” he was saying, “but your biopsy is positive. I really am very sorry.” I realised with a feeling of total relief that negative meant I was clear — I didn’t have cancer, I was not dead yet. It was an entirely selfish feeling, but no less heart-felt for that. But then I realised the bloke next to me just had all his worst fears confirmed. I listened as the urologist said again before leaving the ward how very sorry he was. My companion looked devastated. I did my best to talk to him. I’d studied psychology, I knew about counselling and how to help people. But I did not know what to do in this circumstance. I got out of bed, went over to him and put my hand on his shoulder and said how sorry I was. I said we’d talk about it some more later. But I felt incapable. I’d been in distressing situations hundreds of times in my police work, but for some reason this was a very personal thing — partly, I suppose, because I felt guilty for feeling so relieved that it wasn’t me who had cancer.
I was released from hospital that afternoon and went straight to the Adelaide University library and checked the holdings on prostate cancer, which were next to those on breast cancer. I found a whole shelf full of books on breast cancer, but I found next to nothing on prostate cancer. I eventually hunted out some figures that showed there were as many men dying from prostate cancer as there were women dying from breast cancer. I went to my PhD supervisor and suggested I change my research topic from elderly witnesses to the ways men deal with prostate cancer.
The outcome of this was the formation of a number of successive small groups of men with prostate cancer who met at our home for several years. Mavis always made these men feel welcome and always offered refreshments, never reproaching me for the time I spent with them rather than with her or on household chores. Some of my subjects are now dead. One, Peter Schade, died recently in the Wagga Wagga hospital after surviving just over four years with stage 4 cancer. Peter had been the first to telephone me when I spoke about my proposed research on the ABC. One Sunday I had happened to ask a fellow church goer if he knew anyone with prostate cancer because I wanted some subjects for research. He said that he did not know anyone, but asked why I didn’t appeal over the radio. He offered to mention it to Philip Satchell. On the next day, Monday, I received a call from Satchell saying he had a vacancy on that day’s program which I could use. I would have to go into the studio immediately. I hurriedly shaved, made my way to the studio and, without any preparation and gave my little talk appealing for volunteers. Peter was a goldbuyer in his car on the way from the east coast to Coober Pedy opal fields when he tuned into the Philip Satchell program. He told me later that he always listened to the commercial stations but he happened just then to be in a remote region where only the ABC could be picked up.
As well as Peter, another dozen men called in to volunteer to form a small support group meeting at my home fortnightly with me as an observer-participant. Peter was a great help. He came to Adelaide and stayed for two weeks to get the project off the ground. He had benefited from being a member of Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) and so we initially used that as a model, calling ourselves Prostates Anonymous. Peter was also suffering some added stress. His partner of some years had just died from breast cancer and he was himself already at stage 4 with his prostate cancer. He had become accustomed to sharing his woes and victories with fellow sufferers in AA and looked for something similar for prostate cancer victims.
Our group found that meeting together and sharing difficulties and knowledge did benefit them. Peter left to return to the east coast where he spent the next three years forming similar small support teams in Queensland, Victoria and New South Wales. When he occasionally visited me in Adelaide, he would encourage the local teams. He did this at our own expense until he was able to gain a worthwhile sponsorship which enabled him to begin producing and circulating a very professional journal at regular intervals. With his continual appeals on all media channels and at public meetings, and my occasional academic input, we managed to raise the level of public interest in prostate cancer, and there is now a well-organised effort by the established cancer foundations to provide better support and knowledge.
I doubt if there will be any obituary or other public notice describing Peter’s courageous lifestyle for the four years he coped with an advanced form of cancer, or the great contribution he made in Australia by helping fellow sufferers face the trauma of a cancer diagnosis. As far as I know, he battled on without a great deal of personal support. He and I shared our problems and hopes but we met all too infrequently.
I pursued my research for four years. The life span for most men with stage 4 cancer — when the disease has spread beyond the prostate and is attacking other organs — is two years and three months, give or take a few weeks. This remains true regardless of the form of treatment they undergo, be it surgery, chemotherapy or nothing at all. But between ten and twelve per cent of men in stage 4 last for ten or twenty years. I became intrigued by the question of why this group was so spectacularly different from the vast majority of sufferers. My research seemed to indicate that the vital factor was not diet, genes, lifestyle or drugs, but long-term marital support. There was something about the relationship that the long term survivours had with their wives that was arresting the progression of the disease. But this was a very tentative finding, which I’m afraid I must leave it to others to follow up. For, alas, my time and resources are strictly limited — I am down to about one hour each day and this is insufficient to maintain a research program and I never know when I will be needed by Mavis.
Ayton Avenue is an even quieter street than Murrays Lane and our house is different in every other respect. It faces a wide road surface that is well-maintained and kept clean, not by patient council horses and drays, but by mechanical sweepers that come by in the early hours of the morning. Ours is a long street of individually architectured houses — those near us are imposing and double-storeyed. They are not owned by recent migrants but by earlier ones, for our suburb was once market-gardens. On one side we have a retired Greek couple, caring and kindly, but not intrusive, and opposite there lives their married daughter who has two school-age daughters and who frequently brings across a hot dish on weekends when Meals on Wheels does not operate. We have ample food, but I miss the hot roast lamb at midday on Saturday and the apple sponge that accompanied it. We don’t share confidences over the side fence, and I don’t sit out on the door step to watch the passing parade.
Unlike 1 Murrays Lane, we do have occasional visits from politicians such as Chris Sumner and his wife, from priests such as our Baptist minister, Graham Pitt and his wife, and from my old detective office team-mate, former Assistant Commissioner Ted Calder. A young mate of mine, David Air, a recent graduate of Adelaide, sometimes cooks us a splendid meal and we drink some wonderful wines — but not of course Mavis, who stays with fruit juice. We assess the world situation and consider the remedies for its shortcomings. Another difference is that the local council is our most frequent caller and provider of assistance. Each morning and evening a helper arrives to aid my wife to shower, get dressed, get breakfast and wash up. The same happens in the evening. As well, a shopper comes weekly, and a housecleaner twice weekly. A chiropodist calls every twelve weeks — all for the sum of twenty-six dollars per week for each of us. A district nurse is on tap for emergencies and our GP visits on call. The oil fire burns in the lounge all the winter, and we have ample lighting.
On Sundays, instead of hearing the Salvos play outside the Angel Inn in Gouger Street, I watch Songs of Praise on the ABC with Mavis and th
en in the afternoon I send by e-mail my Situation Report to the children in Brisbane, Canberra, the Cook Islands and Kiev, and check for their replies. This is a great time and cost saver, yet I miss the physical touch of a loving hand. Mavis reads and rereads the news from the children, and we once again share a common bond. But, despite all of this support, I have to confess that on rare occasions I find myself in tears — although not for long. The Bluedog, who is now middle-aged, senses my mood, looks up at me and comes slowly across wagging his tail. I pat his head and both of us return to normal. I only hope I can last out here until Blue has moved on to the place where all dogs and humans go.
Unfortunately Mavis, at ninety-one years of age, has two progressive illnesses and I am myself handicapped in a couple of ways. Mavis spends much of her time in our sunroom looking out over the lovely back garden she has largely created. Although she is exceedingly frail, she cannot resist the temptation, on a fine day, to do what she has spent a long lifetime doing — some garden maintenance. She still maintains her family birthdays procedure. As I went to bed last night, I said to her: “I am sorry that I growled at you today. I was worried that you might fall over and if one of us got sick people might use the opportunity to move us into a nursing home, and I want us to stay here.” She replied firmly: “We will stay” But she doesn’t realise that we are no longer in complete control of our destiny — if ever we were. With my horizons closing in fast and hers probably faster, it becomes hard at times to practise that scout law which says “A Scout smiles and whistles under all difficulties”. So I think it possible that by the time you are reading this final paragraph I may have moved on from obsolescence to decadence. If you feel like writing to me, our new address may be The Bleak House Nursing Home. I suggest that you affix a return of undelivered mail address, just in case we have completed the cycle.