“Have you been told today?” I asked her, “You’re beautiful.”
“Compliments will get you everywhere,” she laughed, “except forgiveness for betting on horses. By the way, someone phoned for you earlier. I wrote the name and number on the pad by the phone.”
I recognised the name and hastened to dial the number. I hadn’t told Fran of my audition two days earlier for a role as one of the lead trumpets in a Bavarian band. It was enough for one of us to suffer another disappointment.
“Paul! I’ve been waiting for your call.” Wilf said. He sounded upbeat. Could I dare to be hopeful? “Can you come in tomorrow? I’d like to organise a vest and hat for you and give you some music to rehearse. Your first gig is next Saturday night.”
I was dancing with Fran, singing “The Chicken Dance” and floating on air, when Rob rang.
“Dad was flown to Dubbo Hospital this afternoon. It’s bad, Paul. Real bad.”
I was on the highway inside an hour and I drove all night without a stop except for petrol. I stayed with him three days, barely sleeping --- catnaps in the chair beside him. On the third day, Fred rallied. He sat up and ate and talked with us.
“Don’t you boys have something better to do than just sit there? Like fetch your old man a smoke and a beer, maybe?”
“I said I would come visit you again soon,” I replied. “You didn’t have to resort to scaring us all half to death to get attention, you old bastard.”
“Hey, you! A little respect for your father please,” he boomed, responding exactly as I had hoped. There were audible sighs of relief at the quickness of it and the strength in his voice.
“Sorry, Dad,” I said with pretended contrition, failing to suppress a chuckle. Fred caught the silent conversation between my brothers and I, and said, “Cheeky buggers, the lot of youse,” and then he laughed and it was deep and hearty.
“Go home, son,” he said, addressing me. “Doc says I’ll be back home by Sunday. Bring the family out to visit, eh? And bring that trumpet. You know Mum loves to hear you play.”
I'm not sure how I managed to drive home, but Fran was beside herself waiting for me. Rob had phoned to ask her to call him as soon as I arrived. He told her I was in no condition to drive and he had begged me to stay and rest. I would never tell Rob --- because he would insist on paying --- but I really couldn’t afford a motel bed. The car was way too cramped for sleeping. Besides, I was desperate to get my music and practise. I had to make a good show of my first performance.
Too tired even to eat, I collapsed into bed and was asleep almost before my head touched the pillow. I had been asleep only about an hour when Fran ran to answer the phone. She caught it at the start of the second ring, but I heard it and leapt out of bed. I entered the kitchen to hear her whispering. She put the phone down and looked up to see me standing there, and her eyes told me. She hugged me close, and for --- I think --- only the third time since they took me away, I cried. This time I felt no shame.
We were on the road within hours. I drove for 13 hours, so consumed with grief and the need to be with my mother and family that I wasn’t aware of being tired.
We passed through the government housing estate on the way to Ian’s house. Living in that estate, Mum and Dad finally had electricity, running water and a proper bathroom. Mum was in heaven. I felt a little ashamed recalling how I’d complained when Fran suggested we apply for government housing.
We gathered at Ian’s house to discuss funeral arrangements, and I felt strangely lost and disconnected from my family’s grief. I was suddenly painfully aware that the man whose funeral we were planning was virtually a stranger. The stories my brothers told of growing up in his company left me feeling distant and empty, and asking myself if a man, once cut from his roots, can ever really reconnect.
I went with my mother and held her while she viewed my dad’s still corpse, all dressed up in his worn ill–fitting suit with his thin hair slicked over his forehead just the way he used to wear it. I took her home to dress for the funeral and found a coat and tie in my father’s wardrobe for one of my younger brothers to wear. Then I joined my five younger brothers at the little local church to carry my father to his grave.
Jen came to the funeral. She didn’t want to. She insisted she had no parents. “A mother and father are supposed to take care of you,” she said, with tears in her eyes, “those two strangers didn’t do that for me.”
I had seen far too little of Jen since Fran and I married. Living so far away and on a tight budget, with both of us busy with our own lives and families, there were few opportunities to get together. We talked on the phone regularly. Jen told me over and over that I was her rock. She didn’t need to be close to me; she just needed to know I was there if she needed me. I always would be. I had never forgotten my promise to take care of her.
Her husband had insisted she should come. I was delighted to see her, but she stood aloof, near the cemetery gate, not wanting to join the others to throw flowers in the grave. I went to her when they started to cover Dad over.
“Go back to the others, Paul,” she said. “You belong with them.”
She paused to look into my eyes for a moment, then added angrily, “Have you forgotten what we suffered, and who caused it? He betrayed us, Paul”.
It took me a long time to answer. My stomach churned and my head spun as I mentally phrased my reply, experimenting with a dozen ways to say it. At last, I took her hand and started to lead her to the graveside. She resisted, but I pulled her firmly along behind me and wouldn’t let her go. The others had propped a single floral wreath against a small white wooden cross and stepped away by the time we reached the little mound of freshly turned red– brown mud.
“Stand here with me, Jen,” I said, “and say goodbye to our father.”
“I told you, Paul, he’s not --- ”
“Jen, listen. Dad did the best he could with what he had. He loved us, but he let us down. He wasn’t able to protect us. Would I have done better in his shoes? Would you, as a mother, if you faced the challenges our parents confronted? I don’t know and neither do you, but I know this, Jen.” I drew a deep breath.
“We were dealt a bad hand. We had a shit of a life as children and we didn’t deserve it. No child should suffer as we did, and the pain continued long after we became adults. Maybe it will never really end. But we have to choose now. We can put it behind us and get on with making the best of the rest of our lives, or we can let the past ruin all our tomorrows. Me? I’m taking the first option. I’m going with my brothers and sisters now to toast my father’s life, and then I’m going to take my wife out to dinner and celebrate the first day of the rest of our lives --- lives that are going to be very full and very happy.”
#
I acted the part well at Dad’s funeral, and after, but if it passed comment it didn’t escape my attention that not a single sympathy card was addressed to me. Few of those to whom my parents had bragged about their eldest son knew me, beyond a cursory ‘hello’ on the infrequent occasions of my visits. The sympathisers’ children had grown up with my brothers and sisters. Dad had worked with them and for them. For most of the years they knew our family, I did not exist outside the privacy of the home in which my removal was so deeply mourned.
Those who did know me seemed to assume I had come to terms with my loss a very long time ago, or maybe that the death of a man they believed betrayed and deserted me was no great tragedy. No doubt my stoicism supported that view.
In reality, the void left by the loss of my dad was all the more painful because I had missed out on so much of him. I had been given just a few short years to get to know him again, to make up for all the time we missed and the special occasions we ought to have shared. Now the opportunity was gone. I was left with an irritating, irrational voice asking me over and over, “After all you endured, how could he leave you again?”.
I fought the nagging feeling of betrayal, but it took months to recover from the dreadful emptines
s overwhelming me. The hatred for Simms returned and the demons urged me again to find him and kill him. An awful hunger for revenge was accompanied by a burning desire to destroy the establishment and everyone who supported and endorsed it.
I finally told Fran, after the funeral, how for so long I had nurtured an ambition to find Simms and kill him. She dismissed my claim with the comment, “If he walked into a pub and stole your beer, you would do no more than threaten him”.
“I was trained to kill,” I protested, popping the cap off another stubby. “If I wanted to, I could kill a man without a sound and without a shred of evidence left behind.”
“Bullshit, Paul. You couldn’t and you wouldn’t. You were trained as a musician, not a killer. Maybe, if you’d gone to Vietnam. Now you wouldn’t even volunteer, even if someone tortured you to try to make you.”
“That’s one thing you got right! Fight for this fucking country? No fucking way. Look what this grand nation did to Dad. He goes off to war at age 20 to defend the cause of freedom and protect his fellow Australians. Comes back broken, beaten, half–starved and disease–ridden after suffering torture most Australians couldn’t even begin to imagine.”
I sat at our dining table, sipping beer and gazing through the kitchen window at the kids romping in the yard, remembering the sneer on Simms’ face when he saw the humble shack my father called home.
“Then that Simms prick and an arsehole fucking judge take the most precious goddamn things in his world in preference to helping him get the pension benefit he’s legally entitled to. Took his kids away, for Christ’s sake! Killed any shred of self–respect the poor broken bastard had left. Broke his wife’s heart and sentenced them both to a life of misery.” I took a deep swig of beer, but the ale didn’t drown the rancour. “You think Simms didn’t deserve to die? And I’ll bet the mongrel never saw a uniform let alone action. Probably faked disability! Or if he did join, he was in B–company, or he sat in a plush office with pips on his bloody shoulder and made dumb decisions that cost the lives of good men.”
“I think he probably deserved a lot worse than death, Paul,” Fran whispered. “Death would have been far too easy, but you were right when you lectured Jenny at the funeral. Take your own counsel. You don’t fix the past by destroying yourself exacting revenge.”
“You think I don’t know that? That’s what makes it so fucking hard to go on living in this shit society. There are no fucking answers, are there? The rich and powerful shit on the helpless and there is absolutely nothing anyone can do about it apart from resort to violence that gets you condemned and crucified. No wonder there’s terrorism and massacres. Some of those blokes the world condemns should be recognised as heroes.”
Fran was drying the lunch dishes. A cup clattered to the floor and she spun to face me. “Surely you don’t condone killing innocent people?”
“I feel sorry for innocent victims, but I suspect sometimes people who get shafted by the stinking corrupt system and the bastards who serve it just have to find a way to make their message heard. I’m here to testify that there aren’t too many options available that don’t hurt innocents. The real murderers are the mongrels who drive people to such desperation that they lose control.”
She stood there, open mouthed and bug–eyed, quivering, but she ought to know me well enough not to be shocked. To the outside world, I presented the image of a man who had it all together and was in total control. There were a few who knew I’d lost it occasionally under the influence of grog and taken my frustrations out on my wife. No–one would regard me as a violent man, nor one who condoned violence, but I found it impossible to imagine that Fran was unaware of the burning desires I fought constantly to suppress.
One of the benefits of the family reunion was that it was much easier to pretend I’d had a normal upbringing. Those who knew my story simply dismissed it as one of those sad and unfortunate things that happen and you have to get over. Everyone suffers hardships. You get past it. Most would have said confidently that I had gotten over it very well. No criminal record;10 years of army service with a clean conduct record; a respectable citizen earning an honest living, paying off a home and raising good kids.
Those who knew of him would declare it a pity that my father wasn’t strong enough to recover from his trials as successfully and blame him for the tragedy of my childhood. Few would ever condemn the system or those who served it.
“Jen and I, we’ve often talked about what we suffered as kids,” I said, rising to discard yet another empty and help my wife sweep up the broken china. “I guess it never occurred to us to think very much about what Dad must have endured, but he suffered so much more than I did.”
“He was the adult, Paul. You were the child. Kids think their parents should be in control of the world. Mums and Dads are fixers. We don’t see them as helpless or suffering, so we blame them for not preventing our hurt. It’s natural.”
“I never blamed Dad. Jen did, but not me. I don’t know why. I just always assumed everything was somehow Mum’s fault, although I never let the thought be known to either of them and I know now that neither of them was to blame. Their kids were their whole life, Fran. The only good thing to come out of a miserable existence,” I said sadly. “That’s all it was after that Simms bastard destroyed their world. They just existed.”
The back of her hand touched my cheek ever so lightly, silken fingers sliding gently towards my chin.
“So are you going to resign yourself to doing the same, or take your own counsel? Remember what you said to Jen?”
“The SIDS alarm, Fran,” I said, a current of hope suddenly surging through me. “It will save babies’ lives, and making it will save mine. This time, Paul Wilson is going to achieve his dream.”
~~~~
42: BETRAYED AGAIN!
JULY, 1993
Four–thirty a.m. The stars were retiring, and just a sliver of low moon peeped from behind clouds that wrapped around the distant hills. A bare hint of soft pink tinged the horizon with promise. Save for the careless thunder of the surf, all was silent. The morning bird chorus hadn’t yet begun.
The fax machine beeped and hummed, spewing curled pages on to a slowly growing stack on the floor beneath it.
“Damn nuisance idiots sending bloody advertising crap in the middle of the night again,” I muttered, “Can we turn that thing off at night or move it somewhere else, Fran?”
“Turn it off? No! U.S. companies send their faxes during their daytime and our night. Move it? Where do you suggest, Paul? If I can make this business work, I might be able to afford to move out of that pokey little office and into decent–sized rental premises, but it will take patience.”
“Something I’m very short on,” I mumbled, rolling over to put my back to Fran. I hated being woken early in the morning.
Fran had started a computer software business about a year earlier. Compelled to take a crash course in computing to secure any kind of work in a low–employment area, she’d found those strange new-intelligence machines intriguing. Rich with promise, they were enthusiastically embraced as the harried business owner’s salvation --- an end, at last, to burning midnight oil labouring over accounts records.
Ill–advised software selection and user illiteracy too often meant a wasted investment on a pile of hi–tech metal and plastic assigned to reside under a desk or in the back corner of a storeroom. Fran saw her opportunity and grasped it thirstily. She partnered with U.S. companies to source software and knowledge. While not yet returning a profit, she was compiling a growing client list eager to convert written–off spending to productive capital investment by mastering database tools to tailor their own software.
The little office next to our master bedroom had been transformed into a busy hub, cluttered with books, software boxes, files, cartons, and the beloved green–screen monster that so captivated her that I often found her tapping at its keyboard long before rooster call.
While Fran obsessed over disks and dance
d with excitement at new software releases, I poured over volumes of legal–speak documenting the proposed terms for commercialising my latest brainchild, the SIDS alarm.
I had answered an advertisement offering free legal services and sourcing of commercialisation partners or capital in return for a percentage share of profits. Warwick Griswold, the young, glossy–haired attorney, was well presented, and his references seemed sound. His offer was compelling. When I related the story of finding our younger daughter, then aged 11 months, in her cot ashen-grey and barely breathing, Warwick needed no convincing of the market potential of an alarm device.
Seven a.m. The morning sun bathed the house in light and warmth and silvered the dew on the lawn outside Fran’s office window. I was awake, but resisting the conscience–voice reminding me the night was done.
“The fax is for you, Paul,” Fran called from her office, “and it’s not advertising. It was sent from Switzerland.”
I leapt out of bed and headed for the shower. Fran often worked in her pyjamas until mid–morning. I had never shed deeply ingrained habits. Routine was king. However late I rose, and no matter what excitement awaited, I began the day religiously with a shower and breakfast, deferring all work and leisure until after the morning meal and wash–up was done.
At half past the hour, I sat at the kitchen table pouring over an offer from a Swiss company of a $2 million loan at half a per cent interest --- principal and interest to be repaid from profits.
“But they want to add 15 additional technical functions, Fran,” I said, frowning. “That will make the alarm device hideously complicated and it will most likely price it out of reach of the average family. The whole idea was to make it so affordable that no mother would want to be without one.”
“So tell Warwick that part of the deal isn’t acceptable.”
The Pencil Case Page 31