I Came to Say Goodbye

by Caroline Overington

  At 16, he got an old wreck and took it up the highway and floored it, shooting through two sets of red rights and leaving an old lady ghost-white on the footpath, her clothes pinned to her skin. The cops gave chase but had to give it up lest somebody get killed, and that set up a new game for Haines, tricking up old cars to see if he could burn off the cops. He got banned from driving, and apparently that made him think, well, what can they do to me now? I don’t have a licence to lose.

  Now, had I known, back when I was hearing all these stories, that Haines would one day be sniffing around Fat, I might have taken the law into my own hands but, like I say, I didn’t see it coming. I just never would have imagined one of my girls would have been interested in a dickhead like Paul Haines – who, by the way, was 25 to her 15, which surely made the whole thing illegal. Looking back now, I ought to have done more about it, but what is a man supposed to do? The more you say, ‘You can’t do something’ to teenagers, the more determined they become to do it.

  There was something else, too. I didn’t want Fat mad at me. I didn’t want to yell at her, or to ground her too much. I didn’t want her telling me she hated me, not even when I knew she didn’t mean it. She might have been 15 years old, and womanly in all ways that matter, but she was still my little girl, the one who’d had to grow up without her mum, who hadn’t been able to make any friends, who got teased for being big and, who, like most teenage girls, probably wanted nothing so much as a bit of attention from a boy, and this one – this idiot, Haines – was the only one who was paying her any.

  People might say, well, your girl hanging around with a loser like that, it’s just more evidence that she’s long been off the rails, that she had no discipline, that she was bad news. That’s fine. People can say that, but it’s not the way I feel about Fat, not then, and not even now. I know what she’s done. I’m not in denial. I can see how people say, oh, she’s evil, or she’s insane. I hear them say that, and part of me can even see where they are coming from, but it’s not the way I see it.

  When I look at Fat, I see a little girl, going from nappies to big girl pants, and being so proud of that. I see her putting on her new school shoes and getting into bed with them, and sleeping through the night with those heavy things on her feet.

  I see her standing in the kitchen, pushing Vegemite and butter worms through the holes in her Vita-Weats. I see a little girl who used to pretend at being her own pony, who’d tie a rope around her waist and the other end to the Hills Hoist, and go galloping around.

  I see her out on the gravel drive, and I see me holding the seat of her pushbike, and I see her heading towards the front gate, with her training wheels off, and I hear her shouting, ‘You can let go now, Daddy!’

  You can let go now, Daddy.

  Well, I did let go. I’m not letting go again.

  Chapter 4

  I DON’T WANT TO LEAVE ANYONE with the impression that I did nothing at all about Haines, once that romance had started. I did drive around there, intending to tell that mongrel to keep his hands off my daughter. I parked out front and I walked up to the door. I knocked and I knocked again, and I was about to turn my back, thinking ‘He’s not home’ when the door opened, and there he was, standing there, chewing gum.

  It was the first time I’d seen him up close since he was a boy. He had one tooth in his head. His face was pockmarked, from boils. Every knuckle on his hands was scabbed and scarred over. He had tattoos on the wrists and neck, and he’d come to the door in bare feet. He had footy shorts on, and a mullet haircut. He was everything that would make you think, ‘Mate, you’re a clown. Get a haircut. Get a real job.’

  I said, ‘You Paul Haines?’

  He said, ‘Yeah.’

  I said, ‘Med Atley’s my name.’

  He said, ‘Yeah.’ He knew who I was.

  I said, ‘You know my daughter, Donna-Faye, she’s 15 years old?’

  He said, ‘Yeah.’

  I said, ‘You don’t think you’d be better off with a girl your own age?’

  He looked at me, still chewing gum. A dog had come out. It was one of those big black and tan bastards, a Rottweiler with a muscle chest and a studded collar. Haines was patting its meaty head. He shrugged and leered and said, ‘Yeah, well, I like your daughter.’

  Should I have taken a swing? Maybe I should have taken a swing. Instead, like an idiot, I said, ‘I want you to know, I’m watching you.’

  There was a bit of silence and then Haines said, ‘Alright. You’re watching me’ and then just stood there looking at me until I had no choice but to turn around and head back to the car.

  When the phone went that night – by this stage, it was going off every night – Fat took the call and then came into the kitchen and squared up to me in the lounge room and said, ‘Did you go to Paul’s house?’ and ‘Are you trying to ruin my life?’ and ‘You can’t stop me from seeing him.’

  I said, ‘Fat, you’re 15, he’s way too old for you.’ She said, ‘What do you know, Dad? WE ARE IN LOVE!’ and I thought, oh, heaven help me, in love? With Paul Haines?

  I said, ‘Come on, Fat.’

  She went into her room. A few days later I phoned up Edna and I said, ‘What do you reckon?’ and Edna said, ‘Well, at least put her on the pill’ and that got me riled. I said, ‘I’m supposed to approve of this?’ and Edna said, ‘Don’t go square on me, Med. She’s 15, she’s seeing somebody. What do you want to happen?’ and I said, ‘You want me to say to my own daughter let’s go and get you on the pill and then you go out and do as you please with a man who’s 25 years old?’ and Edna said, ‘Med, she can go and do all that on her own’ and I guess that was right. Fat was seeing the Haines boy, and there was nothing short of bolting her to the bed that I could say or do that would make a damn bit of difference, and it wasn’t long before he had got so cocky about it that he’d drive up to the front door, just drive up, all mag wheels and bits of plastic stuck to his bonnet, and lean on the horn, and Fat would fly out the front door and get in the front seat, and they’d go through the gate, and I’d sit like a lemon in the TV chair in front of Hey, Hey, trying not to think of what they might be doing, and this went on and on, until the second that Fat turned 16, which was when Haines knew for sure he wouldn’t be getting done for carnal knowledge. He came in his ute, and picked up the white dressing table with the wing mirrors I’d bought Fat for her thirteenth birthday, and put her collection of stuffed toys in garbage bags and slung those in the back while she took clothes that were still on hangers and tied them together and lay them on the tray, and then, with Haines sitting behind the steering wheel, smoking a cigarette, Fat gave me a hug and a kiss and got in the passenger seat, all excited, and waved and waved through the windscreen, while he revved up, spun the wheels and took off.

  Now, I know that some parents, when their kids take off with blokes they don’t like, they cut them off. They say, I won’t have that bloke in my house, and all hell breaks loose, and it takes forever for things to mend. I didn’t do that. I didn’t cut Fat off. I didn’t like the fact that she was 16 and living with Haines – in fact, it gave me a real bad taste in my mouth – but Fat and me, we still spoke to each other on the phone and from time to time I would still go out there, to Haines Road, to see how she was travelling. It was never much fun, not if he was there. They’d taken up residence in one of the old sheds. I wish I could tell you whether the other brothers, the J-boys, were still there, but I don’t remember if all of them were, or if some had gone, or if they were living in other sheds and caravans around the place, or what. Fat would answer the door and let me in and Haines would have his feet on the table and the TV would be on, and I’d say, ‘Paul’ and he’d say, ‘Med’ which annoyed me, because it was like I’d given him permission to call me Med, and I’d never done that, but I’d say, ‘Much going on?’ and he’d say, ‘Goddamn Roosters got beaten again’ and I’d say, ‘And how are things on the employment front?’ and he’d say, ‘Me back’s been out’ and Fat would s
ay, ‘Lay off him, Dad’ and Haines would get up, and put his feet into moccasins, and go into the kitchen for a beer, and bring back just the one, and he’d sit back down and sip away and wipe foam from his mouth and, never mind if it was 40 degrees in the shade, he’d never offer me one. More than once, I said to Edna, ‘I have never met such a rude bastard in my life’ or else I’d say, ‘He’s a sad and sorry excuse for a man’ and I know Edna thought I was just arking up because Fat had grown up and gone with a bloke, and she thought I’d have arked up whatever bloke she’d have gone with but I wasn’t riled because Fat had got a fella. I was riled because she’d picked such a loser. But Edna said, ‘You’re going to have to get used to it, Med. You either get used to it or you’ll lose her for good’ and so I forced myself to get used to it. I’d go around when Haines wasn’t home – hard to predict when he’d be out because he pretty much did nothing – and I’d pay her a visit and help her out a bit, by putting out garbage, or nailing a paling back on the fence, or whatever else that useless bastard never got around to doing. And when she turned 18 in the year 2000, I actually turned over some of Pat’s things to her, things Pat had left behind, like a jewellery box with a few bits and pieces in it, and Fat seemed pleased to have those things. She’d started working by then, selling Avon. She’d dropped out of school pretty much on moving in with Haines. He told her flatly he didn’t want her going to school. Too many boys there. She was his wife now, he told her. I was half-tempted to say, ‘If you’re his wife why hasn’t he done the right thing and put a ring on your finger?’ but to be honest, the fashion for living in with a bloke, it appealed to me, at least when it meant that my girl wasn’t getting hitched to Paul Haines.

  Anyway, Fat did talk sometimes about going back to school but the reality was, they needed what money she could bring in and she did get into this Avon thing. She showed me her kit, which was basically lipsticks, perfumes, soap-on-a-rope, that sort of thing, and I did hear from one of the ladies at the Shire that she was a good sales girl. She didn’t mind stopping in for a cup of tea with the older ladies, who maybe wouldn’t have a visitor that day. She was kind like that, and she was reliable. She didn’t keep the money they gave her. Didn’t steal it, I mean. She delivered the things they’d ordered, and made sure they got the right change, and, well, it was hard not to be proud of her, given that counting money and writing things down, it was never that easy for Fat.

  So anyway that went on for a while and then she finished with Avon and started with what she called Nutrimetics, which was like Avon, but all natural, and not tested on animals, which was what people wanted, because there had been a few stories about make-up being poured into a rabbit’s eyes, or something like that, and suddenly, animal-cruelty free, that was the way things had to be. But the trouble for Fat was, Nutrimetics wasn’t sold door-to-door, like Avon, it was sold at parties. Fat would have to go and show the ladies how the products worked, and with Haines, that was never going to last. He didn’t want Fat going to parties, not even to see old ladies, so it was never going to fly, not by his rule book, which riled me even more, because it wasn’t like he was working and bringing in money so who was he to set the rules? But when I complained to Fat about that, she just looked at me and said, ‘Oh, Dad, it’s not worth arguing with him about it’ which I took to mean he’d make her life a misery if she tried to defy him.

  So Nutrimetics was over and then Fat told me she’d decided on a pony show. A pony show! I said, ‘What do you even know about ponies, Fat?’ because as far as I knew, she’d had a pony picture on her wall for five minutes when she was about ten and that was the extent of her interest in ponies, but she said, ‘Oh, Paul is keen’ by which she meant he’d managed to find, or more likely to steal, a horse float of some kind, and with Fat’s money from Nutrimetics, he’d bought two ponies, neither of them more than nine hands high, and his idea was to have Fat take them around to school fetes and do pony rides up and down a track with little kids on the back. I said, ‘But who is going to load up the ponies? And who is going to drive the float?’ and I didn’t have to wait long for the answer because the answer was, most of the time, I was going to have to do it, because Haines couldn’t get off his sorry arse on a Saturday morning, not if he’d been on the sauce the night before, which inevitably he had been. Not that I minded. I mean, I loved spending time with Fat and liked seeing little kids getting a kick out of riding those ponies. We soon settled into something of a routine – me going round to Haines Road at 5 am to help Fat get everything ready, then driving down to wherever the fete happened to be, and spending the day together, Fat and me. If anybody had asked, I would have said that was quite a good time, maybe the best time in my life, but of course it went sour, and that was Haines’ fault, which everything always was. Basically, Fat called me up one afternoon, and said, ‘Dad, will you come to court?’

  I said, ‘To court?’ because never in the history of the Atley family, not as far as I knew, had any one of us ended up in court. We weren’t that kind of family.

  Fat said, ‘Paul got provoked and there’s an assault charge he’s got to face.’

  Paul got provoked? I could believe that, but I could also believe – and was more inclined to believe – that he’d just as likely be the one who did the provoking.

  I said, ‘What did he do, Fat? Tell the truth’ and that set off an argument with Fat saying, ‘You’ve always been against him’ and, ‘You’ve never liked him’ and, ‘Forget it then, Dad. We’ll go without you’ and then she hung up, so I had to phone back. She was a bit sulky but she obviously wanted me around because when I said, ‘Alright, Fat, you tell me when, and I’ll come along’ she said, ‘He’s pleaded guilty. He’s not going to contest it’ and she gave me the time and the date of the sentencing.

  The day came and I put on my suit – I’ve only ever had the one tan suit, which I realise doesn’t go with the beard, but I put it on – and I went to the courthouse in Forster and, well, I’m not even going to try to summarise what went on in court that day, Your Honour. I’m not even going to try to explain it. What I’m going to do instead is paperclip the whole judgement here for you to read, because my feeling is, unless you read the judgement for yourself, you can’t really understand what it was like for me to be there in that courtroom, and to have it dawn on me exactly what kind of bloke my daughter had got herself involved with.

  Jurisdiction, Forster Local Court

  Presiding, Senior Magistrate Barry Brain

  Date of hearing, December 10, 2003

  Matter of, Paul Jack Haines

  Judgement.

  Paul Jack Haines. Will you please stand?

  Mr Haines, you stand before me today having pleaded guilty to a breach of the Crimes Act (NSW).

  It is my task today to pass sentence upon you.

  For the benefit of this court, I note that you were born in the Forster Hospital in 1971 and you are now 32 years old.

  You have a long history of criminal offending. At 16 years of age, you pleaded guilty to theft. You were put on probation. You breached probation. You have criminal convictions in the juvenile courts for theft of a motor car, driving without a valid licence, speeding, dangerous driving and evading police.

  In 1999, when you were 28, you returned to this court to plead guilty to one count of assault occasioning actual bodily harm, and one count of damage to property.

  Those offences related to a fight in a pinball parlour. You knocked the victim to the ground. You used a cricket bat to smash the window of the pinball parlour.

  You pleaded guilty to those offences and you were released on a good behaviour bond. The probationary period was set at 18 months.

  In 2001, you pleaded guilty to a second set of offences. One of those offences was interference with a motor vehicle. The other was aggravated robbery.

  You were sentenced to three years imprisonment for these offences. That sentence was suspended. You gave an undertaking that you would attend courses at Alcoholics Anonymous. You w
ere again released into the community on a bond, requiring you to be of good behaviour.

  You stand before me now charged with a new set of offences.

  You have pleaded guilty to several offences relating to the control of a motor vehicle.

  You have been convicted of driving without a licence; driving an unregistered motor vehicle; driving under the influence of alcohol; failure to observe a stop sign; failure to report an accident; leaving the scene of an accident.

  They are serious offences, but they are not the most serious offence. The most serious offence is a charge of aggravated assault, occasioning actual bodily harm.

  On February 13, 2003, you attempted to break into a Holden Civic sedan owned by Mr Adam McCain of Forster.

  You have testified that you wanted to steal a CD player from the car. You intended to sell the CD player.

  Mr McCain disturbed you in the process of breaking into the vehicle with a screwdriver. You lashed out at Mr McCain with the screwdriver. You struck the victim in the throat.

  When Mr McCain reached for his throat, you pushed him to the ground and kicked him about the upper body and head. Mr McCain was left unconscious. You took Mr McCain’s wallet from his pocket. You were apprehended not 500 metres from the scene of the crime.