You Never Met My Father

by Graeme Sparkes

  “Do you want me to come with you?”

  “No, darlin’, you’ve done plenty for him already. You saved his life. He’ll be upset anyway. And you don’t want to upset him more. He wouldn’t want you neglecting your schoolwork. He’d already be feeling bad about you doing that today on account of him.”

  “I thought you might need some company.”

  She hugged me to her, pressed me to her chest and held me tight for a moment. “I’ll be right,” she whispered unconvincingly.

  The details of this suicide attempt, found in his medical records, corroborate my recollection of the incident.

  After I had gone home the police had waded to Denny and held his head above the water. He had struggled and at some stage, perhaps when they were back on land, had assaulted the police with a piece of wood. There must have been a violent struggle. He was restrained with handcuffs and taken in the back of a police van to the Ballarat Mental Hospital. As the van was opened, hospital staff saw him lying down banging his hands on the van floor, trying to smash the handcuffs. His clothes were wet. He struggled and fought police removing him from the van, and with staff as they tried to take him inside.

  Once he was in the ward, he was still aggressive, telling staff he would not settle down until he was allowed to go home to his wife and family. But the following day he was subdued. He claimed he had no memory of the suicide attempt. He didn’t feel depressed and blamed the incident on his medication. He told the doctor who interviewed him that he had stayed up waiting for his eldest daughter to come home. At 9pm he had taken three sleeping tablets and one more at 10pm when she arrived home. After that he couldn’t remember a thing. In the provisional diagnosis notes the doctor states Denny is ‘charming and plausible’. Denny said that he had been getting mixed messages from doctors about whether or not he should be taking sleeping tablets.

  The doctor also commented, [He] makes out that this brief experience in Ward 25 has altered his perspective—he’s never seen severely mentally ill patients before. [He] feels that he has been wasting pity on himself.

  Pat was interviewed by a doctor at the hospital three days after his admission. She called her husband’s psychotic episodes ‘turns’ and believed they were brought on by worry. She said he became confused and usually ‘sleeps it off’. She refused to accept that he took overdoses on these occasions. It was her view that he was someone who couldn’t handle too much worry. On reflection she felt that she should take more of the family troubles on her own shoulders.

  There was no mention of what these troubles were, no mention of his gambling, which was at the root of them all. When all our money was wasted and there was none left to pay bills and rent, panic set in. He had no way of asking for help with his addiction. He was too proud for that. He would have denied it was a problem. Besides, there was none of the anti-gambling organisations or Help Lines that exist today. So his response was to act like a wild beast driven into a corner. My mother’s desire to shoulder more of the burden, under the circumstances, was a noble gesture but no solution at all.

  The doctor noted: She is obviously very fond of her husband.

  He was released a week after his admission.

  Did I ever wonder why my father was like this? His suicide attempts. His compulsive gambling. His sudden eruptions of violence. His black moods. Did I ever try to understand what effect bad luck had had on him? These questions never entered my head. Or if they did I have no memory of them. I think my mind would have shut down if I’d probed too deeply. I would never have understood his psychological state. In fact, because most of what he did left me saddened, chronically anxious, and at times terrified, the only question that plagued me was: what would he do next to make our lives more difficult?

  Denny continued his hostilities with the Repatriation Department over the next few years as he argued over his pension. And it was becoming political. He once revealed he had voted for Malcolm Fraser, against his political proclivities, because of the assistance the local federal Member of Parliament had offered him with some issue. On September 22nd, 1965, my mother wrote Mr Fraser a letter regarding a reduction in Denny’s pension. When I first read it, the complexity of its language made me doubt it came from her pen, or my father’s for that matter, but there was an accompanying letter from the local Anglican minister (in this story, Mr Walters). So perhaps he helped my mother with hers. Still, I have little doubt that she was prompted to do so by my father. It is reminiscent of the letter his mother wrote on his behalf in 1947.

  Several pages long, it details all the injustices my mother thought Denny endured at the hands of the Repatriation Department in its refusal to consider independent medical reports on his condition which supported his application for a TPI pension, alluding to a personal vendetta from within the Department, which had resulted in a considerable reduction to his TTI pension.

  What we both [Denny and Pat] would like to know is if one is examined by outside Specialists who give their opinions as to a person’s capabilities and condition, then a Repatriation Doctor who hasn’t seen the person involved for quite a considerable time can reduce his pension as he thinks fit. I know that Denny has clashed with Dr. Myles who has threatened to have him sent to Bundoora Repatriation Mental Hospital when he was hospitalised at Heidelberg Repatriation Hospital.

  The only conclusion that I can come to is that Denny is being victimised…

  I will admit he was annoying people, but under the circumstances I think he was justified to do so…

  I’ve been working as much as I can to help out but Dr. Beavis told me that I had to have a rest as I was completely run down and couldn’t carry on. When we were assured of a regular weekly income everything was much better. I know exactly what to budget for and we could manage, but as things are now if things don’t improve I don’t honestly know how things will work out…

  It’s curious that this letter to a local Member of Parliament (not yet Minister for the Army) should find its way into my father’s medical records at the Repatriation Department, but I am grateful that it did because it gives me an insight into my parents’ lives at the time. If my mother signed the letter, I am certain its contents would have been an honest account, despite receiving help with its composition. There is a note of desperation in her message. It had been difficult enough to get by, as it was, without Denny’s meagre pension being cut further. If it were true that the Department was ignoring the medical opinion of independent specialists about Denny’s ability to work, Pat and Denny had a reasonable case for suspecting discrimination. Over the years there had been plenty of mutterings within the Department that Denny was an unworthy recipient of a war pension of any shape or size.

  A month after my mother’s letter to Mr Fraser, the Assistant Chief Director (Medical Services) (Psychiatry) wrote in a minute paper that Denny was one of those cases in which it is difficult to determine “how bad he is or how mad he is.”…Since the termination of his [paltry] military service, the member has been quite unproductive (except for producing children), but has been a social problem. His motivation towards work and being self-supporting is negligible, and all efforts to alter this have been unavailing.

  I am disturbed that this member should be T.T.I., as this will inevitably lead to T. & P.I., which is the member’s desire…

  I fully agree with Dr. Stevenson’s report…but it would seem that the Repatriation Department is now “stuck” with the member.

  The haughty Assistant Chief Director recommended a TTI pension for Denny to be reviewed in six months.

  THE POST OFFICE

  My mother lost her job at Borthwicks. A contraction in its overseas markets had led to lay-offs. Forty years later she still felt bitter towards the foreman who had retained a flirtatious young woman instead of her, someone who could only pack half the amount of meat she did in a day.

  “And I let him know it,” she recalled. “He tried to say a single woman needed a wage, and I said what about the three kids I’ve got to
feed? Bloody men!”

  She was worried enough to contact her brother although it distressed her further to ask him for help again. But Uncle Mick was a kind man who loved his sister, and he was as indignant about her dismissal as she was. He told her he would see what he could do.

  The next day he got a message to her via a telegram boy. There was a job going at the post office where he worked and he could fix it with the postmaster, if she wanted it.

  Before the week was out she was sorting mail, for a higher wage and more civilized hours than she had ever been offered before. It was one of the few times in her life, while Denny was alive, that luck went her way.

  The post office was situated near the railway station with views across the port, a grand old bluestone building that had been painted white. It had an elevated entrance, up stone stairs worn down by a century of entering and exiting feet. It had lofty windows that bore cumbersome timber slat blinds that gathered dust from the port and grime from cigarette smoke. Surrounded by other historic bluestone buildings—the customs office, the police station and jail, the courthouse, the public library—it had an aura of importance and solemnity, until Uncle Mick started cursing in the rear office, loud enough for the public at the front counter and further afield to hear.

  He had worked for the Postmaster General all his life, first when telegrams were sent in Morse Code and later after the teleprinter machine was introduced. He was a two-finger typist of impressive speed but aired his frustrations whenever the machine broke down or failed to transmit. On other occasions he started fires in the waste paper basket when he carelessly tossed a match or cigarette butt aside, which also provoked his outbursts. He put these out with his and his colleagues’ cups of tea. He wasn’t afraid to express his feelings loudly, since he had grown to hate his job over the years and wouldn’t have minded the sack, which was unlikely, given how indispensable the rest of the staff found him.

  When he also arranged a job for me as a telegram boy in the busy summer-holiday period, and I was dazzled by my first pay packet ever, he took me aside and warned against any silly notions of pursuing a career in the postal service.

  “It’s okay for your holidays, for a bit of dough to tide you over, but that’s all, Butch. You don’t want to bloodywell turn out like me.”

  A poor argument when I compared him to my father.

  But he had at least one weakness: weekends of heavy drinking. Each Monday morning he asked Pat to check the death notices in the paper to see if he was listed.

  My mother appreciated the stability the post office job promised. With Denny away and a little extra in the pay packet each week she was able to buy a few things she badly needed for herself: new shoes, new dress, new glasses and a new handbag. She also bought some cut flowers for no obvious reason and put them in a glass vase in the living room.

  She enjoyed her job, enjoyed the camaraderie and appreciated the respect the postmaster showed her for the diligent way she worked, which soon earned her a promotion.

  We all dared to entertain a turning point in our lives.

  The atmosphere around the house was always more relaxed when Denny wasn’t there. Pat had an old pedal sewing machine, given to her by her sister after she upgraded to an electric version. While Pat used the machine, her forehead was knitted in concentration and her eyes were focused on the needle. She would swirl the material into a new direction with a confident flourish, and hum like she was without a care in the world. Her skills as a seamstress hadn’t faded.

  On weekends while she did the housework she listened to the cricket, since the radio wasn’t needed for the races. I maintained the vegetable garden that Denny had started and chopped wood for the stove and copper. Often in the evenings we played cards, usually cribbage.

  “We learnt it from our father,” Pat told me, referring to her siblings. “We were all keen crib players. Dad, Mick and Fred used to play for a penny a hole. They could cheat, those boys. Dad would give ’em a clip over the ears if he caught ’em.” She sighed as she remembered. “We used to have great fun in those days.”

  “Not any more,” I said foolishly.

  “We can’t afford a penny a hole, that’s for sure,” she chuckled.

  As a telegram boy I raced around Portland on an unwieldy post office bike, delivering missives with an air of importance, especially those inside red envelopes that declared their urgency. I convinced myself the job was essential for the smooth running of the world. I loved the riding too, even when fierce winds were blowing, which they did every second day in Portland, even when it was raining, for that allowed me a sense of sacrifice, adding more weight to my responsibility.

  Sometimes I had to ride to the wool auctions in a modern auditorium amongst the wool sheds, where I saw my first real Japanese men, the men we had fought in the war, the men my father had been sent to subjugate in the Occupation, who looked more civilised than I imagined in their immaculate, tailored suits and preened appearance—more civilised, in fact, than the locals.

  When my holiday job ended at the post office I started working at the Star Theatre, the local picture house. I was a lolly boy a couple of nights a week and at Saturday matinees.

  I worked for a grey-haired woman who was stout and swayed from side to side when she walked due to some problem with her hips. I have forgotten her name but she was a kind old soul, patient most of the time with her team of teenage boys, and trusting, but given to outbursts of exasperation when one or another of them seriously short-changed her.

  I donned a white jacket and carried a red tray filled with sweets, ice creams and nuts. I plied the aisles at interval.

  Although I had enjoyed delivering telegrams, working as a lolly boy was far easier and had better perks, such as being allowed to watch B-grade movies, gratis, before interval.

  Over the next few years I saw scores of films, Westerns and war movies, comedies and romances, and on rare occasions when the usher allowed me in after the interval, some that were blockbusters like Spartacus or The Sound of Music. Rarer still were the torrid movies forbidden to someone my age, like Irma La Duce, and even some that were steamier, featuring mythical starlets like Bridgette Bardot whose breasts I glimpsed through a glycerine fog.

  Besides the chance to see so many films, there was the opportunity to be on the streets at night, a sense of freedom never extended to my sisters, a privilege, which I began to associate with being a male. I became enamoured of the shadowy streets, the closed shops, the dark alleys, the unsighted laughter and giggles. I knew the excitement that seemed almost within reach was the privilege of adults.

  On top of everything else I began to save money.

  Often on weekends my mother would take us to our relatives in South Portland, where I played with Brenda and her retinue of followers, or Don, my other younger cousin.

  There always seemed to be someone at the Stagg’s piano, Aunt Gerty herself or an inebriated guest, like the ambulance driver whose favourite tune was The Drover’s Dream, which was about a parade of native fauna with human capabilities. I loved to watch his wet lips flap and his hands jerk up and down as if at the ends of invisible strings, amazed that such dislocation could produce fluent music without the trick of a pianola. There were other guests who sang rowdy numbers or sweet ballads.

  Once I remember my mother was asked to sing a Harry Belafonte song about leaving a pretty girl in Kingston Town, at the end of which she received some hearty applause.

  “Good on yer, Pat!” someone shouted. “You’ve got the voice of an angel.”

  She blushed. “I can’t really sing.”

  “Of course yer can, love. What do you think you were doing? Sayin’ yer prayers? Have a shandy,” he teased. “Then you wouldn’t be so bloody modest. You might even sing us another one.”

  When the adults had finished, Brenda put on her own records and taught me the latest dance sensations: the Limbo, a back-arching creep under a lowered broom handle, and the Twist, which generated so much friction with th
e floor that the balls of my feet felt on fire.

  Around this time my grandfather, Da, arrived from Gippsland to live with the Staggs. He was my mother’s father, but I had only met him once before, when Uncle Mick had taken us to see him in Sale, shortly after Pat had left Angus Campbell’s employment. I had been born on his birthday but that hadn’t granted me any privileges. He hadn’t paid me much attention at all, so I had played in his back yard, while he drank beer with Uncle Mick and talked with my mother.

  Now he was over eighty and no longer able to take proper care of himself. So Uncle Mick and Aunt Gerty housed and fed him. Pat cut his remnant hair and flinty yellow toenails. And as I recall Aunty Barb looked after him during his occasional bouts of illness. Uncle Mick supplied him with beer and tobacco.

  He seemed a stern old bugger to me. His smile was fierce. His face was sharply sculptured, a skull with diminishing layers of skin and eyes floating in gaunt sockets. His nose was a rugged outcrop, like a feature of the cliffs of Cape Nelson. His lips were cankered with burns from cigarettes. I marvelled at the way nicotine had stained much of his bony hands. He had a voice that was thin and breathless but it could still intimidate me. He seemed like someone from a different era.

  At the Stagg’s I can’t recall seeing him moving about much, although I assume he slept in a bed at night, used the brand new lavatory connected to mains sewerage and still drove his pale blue Hillman, brought from the other side of the state by a relative, which was kept in the back yard, sagging on one side due to a broken spring. He must have gardened too because I have a photo of him between some beds of vegetables leaning on a spade instead of his walking stick. He was usually hunched in an armchair when I saw him, with a translucent droplet of fluid gathering like dew on the tip of his nose. But whenever there was a sing-along he shifted onto a kitchen chair brought into the living room for the occasion, and took up his heavy accordion, wheezing bellows attached to great reddish compartments with rows of mother-of-pearl buttons. His gnarled fingers moved inexplicably to capture melodies like When Irish Eyes Are Smiling or Danny Boy, while his eyes glazed over and his lips puckered in concentration. And, if he stumbled a little now and then, people were polite or drunk enough not to notice. All the adults enjoyed his music. They showed their appreciation with applause and calls of Good on yer, Jimmy! More Jimmy! which he drank in like a desert wanderer at a soak.