by Rosie Batty
Momentarily taken aback, Greg was silent for a moment, then began to seethe. He looked me straight in the eye, rage bubbling away inside him. ‘Woman follows man, man follows God. If man follows woman, it leads him to the devil,’ he said evenly.
I looked at him puzzled, my head still fuzzy from having just woken up. ‘What?’ I couldn’t get my head around it. ‘What do you mean?’ I continued, incredulous. ‘As a woman I cannot have a direct link to God?’
There was a flicker of hesitation from Greg, but then a lifting of his head, as if in defiance.
‘This is my house, Greg. I provide everything. But you’re saying I am not good enough to have a relationship with God?’ Why I felt the need to enter into a philosophical discussion, I’m not sure. Normally, he would spout nonsense like this and I would ignore it. But this time, I’d had enough.
‘No,’ Greg continued. ‘Because you are a woman.’
I stared at him in disbelief. ‘Just get out,’ I said. ‘Just leave now.’
And so here we were again, on that now familiar roundabout of Greg inveigling himself into my life, behaving perfectly normally for a period of time, helping me out with Luke and around the house – encouraging me to drop my guard – before hitting me with another doozy.
Here was a grown man who apparently thought it was perfectly okay to sleep under my roof, eat my food and drive my car, but still believed that I was the lesser person. It defied explanation. I was once again astounded by his sense of superiority, delusion and entitlement. Looking back, it’s obvious to me now that all of that was a manifestation of something much more sinister: born of his deep-seated (but never acknowledged) inferiority complex. In his heart of hearts, he knew he was a failure as a father, a partner and a provider – and so he resorted to intimidation.
Greg had a funny relationship with religion. It was the haven to which he retreated when confronted with a world he couldn’t navigate. He would cite entire passages of the Bible, reeling them off by rote, using them to make a point, but completely missing the bigger picture: that Christianity was a religion based in compassion, generosity and kindness to your fellow human being.
As the months progressed and winter turned to spring, I started to make the most of my surroundings. I loved being outdoors with Luke and my dogs. I would strap him into the Baby Bjorn and march all over Menzies Creek. The dogs tolerated Luke well. They had been my children before Luke was born, but they seemed to take their relegation to second division with good humour. The only trouble the dogs caused was between Greg and me. We would argue all the time about whether they ought to be indoors or outdoors. He wanted the dogs outside, where Luke wouldn’t be exposed to their germs. But I argued they were family: that I’d had them five years, and they had lived with me all that time inside the house. It would be unfair to suddenly banish them.
Greg had these funny ideas about animal energy. He believed that exposure to animals somehow lowered your spirit – and so he became contemptuous of the dogs. As the years progressed, he would make comments about smelling the dogs on Luke and how Luke was being brought down by them.
In many respects, Greg was very over-protective of Luke – to the point of obsessiveness. Which is why, I suppose, I always trusted him with Luke. He didn’t like strangers looking at Luke, and he certainly couldn’t abide people in the street coming up and touching him. He tolerated my friends touching him, but only those who had children. His possessiveness towards Luke was sometimes overbearing.
One weekend, I consented to take Luke to visit Greg’s parents. They lived in country Victoria, about two hours’ drive north of Melbourne. I’d met them once or twice before and they were lovely people. But as I had never wanted to give them – or Greg – the wrong impression about our relationship, I had always steadfastly refused to visit them. I didn’t see the point. But now with Luke in the picture – and with Greg so clearly proud to show off his son to them – I agreed to a day in the country. They were, after all, Luke’s grandparents. They were the only family Luke had here in Australia. I figured I owed it to him to at least create a path for there to be a relationship between them further down the track.
Greg’s parents were perfectly lovely – excited to meet Luke and very kind with me. Greg could not have been more proud – he just wanted their unconditional approval. But while he now had a son and they were inextricably linked to this baby, so fluid were the relations between Greg and his mother and father, they seemed unsure about exactly how much they would let themselves become attached. Of course, Greg was oblivious to all of this. To his mind, the visit was an important step in the recasting of our relationship. He took the visit to mean I was ready, finally, to be the family Greg always believed we ought to have been. The truth couldn’t have been more different.
*
When Luke was four months old, I sent him to crèche. It almost killed me – but what choice did I have? With a mortgage to pay and no income to pay it, I had to return to work. I remember the morning I dropped Luke off for his first day of crèche. He cried as I left, and I sobbed in the car all the way into town. I felt like the worst mother in the world. Not even the fact that I had spent months beforehand expressing milk in preparation could extinguish the thought that I was abandoning my little boy.
I returned to my old job at the telecommunications company – and after two hours back at my desk, it felt like I had never left. The only change was I was now answering to a new manager, a young bloke who was very career focused. He had been sent from head office to whip our sales team into shape, and he relished the chance to throw his weight around. Crucially for me, he had no children. I could feel my heart sink by the day.
And so, I was thrust straight back into the ruthless world of sales, trying to juggle the increasingly impossible demands of a new boss desperate to impress head office with the daily (and nightly) requirements of being a mum. Most mornings I would struggle into work exhausted from the night before. But I felt I couldn’t say to anyone at work that I’d had a sleepless night or that I was struggling. As a working mum, you have to be seen to be not compromising your role in any way. I was a wreck.
I would wake every morning around 6 am, express a day’s worth of milk for Luke, get myself dressed, feed the animals and get Luke ready for crèche, where I would drop him at 7 am. Then I would battle peak-hour traffic to see clients all over metropolitan Melbourne or to attend the weekly sales meeting, which I would sit through with my mind racing, full of all the things I had to squeeze into the working day ahead, so that I could leave in time to make the mad dash back to crèche to collect Luke. I was always the first to drop my child off at crèche and invariably the last to pick him up. The childcare workers could not have been more pleasant, and they loved Luke like one of their own. But I couldn’t help but feel judged as I swung wildly into the driveway each night and ran inside to collect my little boy.
Once home, the juggle began: feed Luke, bathe Luke, change Luke, whip up something vaguely nutritious for my own dinner and try to get Luke down, whereupon I would turn on the computer and do all the work I had missed because I was scrambling to collect and care for my son. I was asleep most nights at 9 pm, curled up next to Luke in my bed. I knew the books all counselled against co-sleeping, but I felt so bad as a mother, denying my baby the intimacy he craved by being at work all day, I wanted to make up for it as he slept.
And so the routine developed. On more than one occasion, I would be halfway into work, speeding along the motorway or stuck in traffic, and the phone would ring.
‘Rosie, it’s the childcare centre here,’ would come the voice down the phone. ‘Luke’s running a really high temperature. You’re going to have to come and collect him.’
When I was really stuck, I had no choice but to ring Greg. And he would make his way to Menzies Creek and collect Luke and take him home.
I was run ragged. That Christmas, intensely homesick for my family, I booked tickets for Luke and I go to England. I was desperate for my f
amily to meet Luke: and so we set off together on a six-week visit. From the moment I stepped off the plane, I felt like a weight had been lifted. Josephine came to collect us at the airport, and almost immediately, I relaxed.
I took Luke to meet his great-grandmother, Nanna Atkin. There was no other family member to whom I felt closer. And so introducing her to Luke was one of my proudest moments as a mother. I still remember that day: the look of glee on Nanna Atkin’s face. It meant the world to her. She had just turned one hundred – and while the body was failing, the mind was sharp. She told me she had been staying alive to meet Luke, and now that she had met him and seen how content I was, she could die a happy woman. To have been able to share time with Luke and her – it was so special.
The visit home was instrumental in reminding me the importance of family. For years now I had lived on the other side of the earth, building a surrogate family from friends, but this was the real deal. This hoary collection of misfits, in all their eccentric glory, were the people who would always be there for me. They were obliged to be by dint of being family.
We even brought Aunty Dorothy to visit Nanna Atkin. Aunty Dorothy had only recently had her leg amputated and was keen to show everyone her stump. And so, at various intervals during our visit, she would haul up her skirt and show it off.
‘Keep your pants on, Aunty Dot!’ came the cry from all assembled. She had no idea, of course. We were all in tears of laughter.
I came back to Australia with mixed emotions. Keen to get back and get on with my life, but sorry to have left the bosom of my family and painfully aware I might never see Nanna Atkin again.
Greg had been living at my property while I was away: feeding the goats and dogs, maintaining the yard. In return, he had a roof over his head and the use of my car. He had missed Luke terribly and wasn’t in a great hurry to leave when we got back. I was okay with him having a day or two with us – it was nice to have a bit of help with Luke as I adjusted to the time change.
One afternoon I asked him to go to Bunnings to change something I had bought or, if not change it, try to get a credit note. He left, making all the right noises about doing what I had asked him, but returned an hour or so later having completely ignored my request. Annoyed that he had clearly decided my wishes were to be dismissed, I made some comment, reprimanding him. It was no big deal, to my mind, but my sense of exasperation was enough to trigger his anger.
I was sitting on the lounge room floor, spoon-feeding Luke in his bouncy chair, when suddenly Greg picked up a large clay urn, lifted it over his head and made to throw it at me. The next thing I knew, he was standing in front of me, enraged. He aimed a kick at my head. I closed my eyes, anticipating contact, but he pulled the kick back just in time.
I was in shock. Shaken and scared, I dared not move from the lounge, but sat, terrified he’d return. That was his first really aggressive gesture towards me. There was no physical violence per se – inasmuch as he didn’t make physical contact – but the suggestion of violence was clear. He wanted to hurt me and had only just held himself back from doing so. I sat there shaking, doing my best not to lose it completely for fear it would upset Luke. And so began a cycle of threats and fear that would continue until the day Greg died.
10
Escalation
Luke was a contented baby. He slept and ate well, he loved the undivided attention I was able to heap on him when it was just the two of us and he’d grown to love crèche, where the staff lavished him with affection.
Luke was pretty easygoing as a toddler, too. I remember him having his first tantrum – if you could call it that – on his first birthday, just as he was learning to walk. My brother Terry took Luke’s balloon off him and he burst into tears. It seemed that, as he learned to walk, he also learned how to have a meltdown to get his own way. It was a lesson he took to heart and would employ regularly in the ensuing years. In other words, he was just a normal kid.
*
After Greg’s recent display of aggression, I started devising strategies for managing his exposure to Luke and me, believing that if I just managed to make clear the boundaries in terms of acceptable behaviour, he would adhere to them and I could manage to continue my daily juggle. All the while, without my really realising it, Greg’s attitude towards me was hardening and his violent tendencies towards me, both psychologically and physically, were escalating.
Vital to his continued intimidation of me was the fact that I felt isolated from family and friends. Because I had always prided myself on my self-sufficiency, and because I lived so very far from any of my friends who also had children, I was loath to ask them for help with Luke. My parents’ old friends Vi and Ray would help out wherever they could. They had moved to Australia from New Zealand and their children had all grown up and moved on. Vi was so good with Luke, and he loved her. But, for the most part, I had to lean on Greg, because he was unemployed, available and willing. After all, as Luke’s father, I felt he bore no small amount of responsibility to help raise his son.
And so I battled on, trying to be a super-mother to Luke and feeling like I was drowning in the process. Whether or not Greg consciously thought it, or innately sensed it, I was weak and vulnerable and easy prey for his psychological stalking.
Previous to Luke’s and my visit to England, Greg had made noises about having another child with me. And I had told him in no uncertain terms that I was repulsed at the idea of him coming anywhere near me. He still harboured these delusions that we were going to create a family together. What was really sad for me was that I would have loved another child. Until I had Luke I’d had no idea that being a mother could fulfil every need I had – that it completed me.
*
The phone rang in the middle of the night. It’s never good news for a phone to ring in the middle of the night. I reached over Luke, who was asleep next to me, and put the receiver to my ear.
‘Rosie,’ came a familiar voice down the line. ‘It’s your dad. Sorry to call you so late, but I thought you should know Nanna Atkin has died.’
Half-asleep and groggy, it took a moment for the news to sink in.
‘Are you there, Rosie?’ continued my father. ‘Can you hear me? Is everything all right?’
‘Yes, Dad,’ I finally managed to reply. ‘I’m here.’ And then the tears welled.
She had reached one hundred, she had packed four lifetimes into one, she had lived, laughed and loved with the best of them. But now she was gone, and I was devastated. The closest thing I’d had to a mum had passed away, and I had been 16,000 kilometres away when it happened. I felt sad, I felt guilty – I was bereft. I hung up the phone, rolled over and cried silently in the darkness.
Living away from home had been, for the most part, a grand adventure. Building a life on the other side of the world to all I had known as a girl was equal parts liberating and exhausting. For the most part, I didn’t pine for my family. I missed them, to be sure, and wished on many occasions they were only 16 kilometres away – not 16,000. But usually I was too busy getting on with my life to sit around moping for them. In moments like this, though, you really felt the distance. I wanted more than anything to be home, to be comforted by loved ones and to offer comfort to those who needed it.
Moments like these make you stop and take stock. Was this my lot, then? Far from family for the momentous events? Dad and Josephine weren’t getting any younger. Who was going to take care of them in their old age? As the only daughter, the task would traditionally have fallen to me. But stranded as I was in Australia – tied inexorably to this country by my son – any thought of repatriating was out of the question.
*
As 2003 progressed, I did my best to set parameters around my life, and Luke’s life, which I hoped Greg would come to respect. Greg would always ask me to lend him money, which I usually did out of a mixture of pity and obligation. I felt that he had helped me out a lot around the property before Luke was born and stepped in to look after Luke whenever I needed
him. So in an attempt to keep the ledger even, and not have Greg assuming the role of an intimate or equal partner in my life, I felt it was better to see the money I gave him as payment for services rendered.
Every now and then Greg would disappear to the Russian Orthodox monastery. He would usually go there for three months at a time, a period of relative peace in my life. From what they later told reporters, the monks seemed to see it as Greg taking refuge there whenever things got too complicated in his life.
He’d do the same things for them that he did for me: offer his services around the monastery and help out with physical labour in return for bed and board. And of course he would take part in their daily religious rituals – praying and attending services. I think he derived a sense of comfort from the monastic routine, plus he liked to associate with the sort of people he considered religiously pure and somehow morally superior.
One afternoon in the second half of the year, Greg called me when he arrived at Belgrave station out of the blue. He had no money and nowhere to live, but he knew full well that I would take him in – which I did. I didn’t know how else to handle it. When people were in need, I didn’t like turning them away. When I have an emotional link with someone and they are at a low point in their lives, I can’t turn my back. Perhaps I’m too soft-hearted, too forgiving.
I took Greg in with the caveat that he had to move out at the end of that month. And so a routine began to develop. I would go out to work each morning, dropping Luke at crèche on the way, and then returning home to find Greg on the couch, watching TV. It started to infuriate me. He was leading the life I wanted to live. I wanted to be the one pottering about the house with my son, staying at home and rearing my child as a full-time mum while my partner went out and made the money to pay the bills. And I began to understand that this was a perfectly acceptable – if not desirable – arrangement from Greg’s point of view. I started to resent his presence, and relations once again became tense.