I grated the gears, trying to find first.
“One good thing about one in the oven,” she said. “You can stop worrying about getting pregnant for the next nine months.”
She chuckled, a practised husky sound.
I drove home fast in silence.
As we stepped from the car she lit another cigarette, eyed me coolly, and sniffed.
“Lots of things get cold if you leave ’em too long, Gary,” she called cryptically, as I headed for the front door. “Know what I mean?”
Pat was embittered. Her voice had a constant flat tone. Harsh lines had formed around her mouth. Her eyes were parched. Her skin was taut and pallid. It was as if a searing resentment was ravaging her. She had endured most of Denny’s whims over the years because ‘he wasn’t a well man’. But his decision to uproot her from Portland had depleted her reserves of tolerance. She made no effort to befriend any of the neighbours. She rarely went outside. She busied herself with housework, approaching it with a punishing doggedness, like an aggrieved menial. I tried to chat with her as I helped with the dishes or dusting or sweeping, but her responses were uncharacteristically terse and discouraging.
The prospect of being a grandmother didn’t lift her spirits either, as I would have expected. With our finances in their usual parlous state, she saw a grandchild as just another mouth to feed. To me her indifference towards the approaching birth was an indication of the depth of her depression. I was concerned she might be heading for another breakdown.
I didn’t talk to her about it. I didn’t know how. Besides, I tried to remain focused on my studies. I was desperate not to give up on that part of my life.
I attended uni from Monday to Friday and often on weekends. Sometimes I drove the family car, an old blue Holden, which had replaced our Austin after I left Portland, but mostly I caught a bus on the same route I used to take from Fairfield, along Oriel Road and through the industrial estate that surrounded Doherty and Waterdale Roads. La Trobe University was like an oasis, a haven amidst factories, high schools, a cemetery, marshlands and insane asylums.
Most of my time was spent in the library, pawing over journals and books, taking copious notes for tutorials. I was a slow reader and a slow learner. The texts were difficult but they kept my mind off domestic matters.
It had been obvious from week one that tertiary education bore little relation to anything I had experienced at school. There was little support or guidance, no obvious boundaries. I had no idea how to skim over texts, scan for relevant details, answer theoretical questions, and there was no classroom teacher to offer me guidance. I read every word. Reread. I tried to make sense of these marks on the pages. Easy enough when they stood alone, but as soon as they were combined with others they became a conundrum, which I laboured to the point of exhaustion to comprehend. I endured terrible anxiety and bouts of self-deprecation. And when I wasn’t ridiculing my own intellectual shortcomings I was feeling sorry for myself.
I found a corral in the library where I could hide behind a pile of books and pretend to be a scholar. I spent long hours there, pawing over Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Parsons, Marcuse and a dozen or so sundry luminaries, awestruck by the scope of their ambition.
There had been minds—there still were—that thought society could be explained in one majestic seamless theory. It was a comforting notion and perhaps these formidable intellects were merely acting on a tendency that’s in all of us: to find order where there could just as easily be none. But what impressed me most was the lengths to which they had gone ensuring their monoliths were consistent with every aspect of society, which included everything done by all the humans who’d ever traipsed the earth. What incredible audacity. To think they believed they had the answer to that, and then to pursue it doggedly for the rest of their lives.
If I leaned towards any of these seers it was Marx. I wanted him to be right, an orderly progression (at least between revolutions which I hoped in future would be brief and bloodless) towards a more equitable, just society, where nobody was master and nobody servant, and everyone got along amicably and could do any job they turned their hand to.
Yet, despite my hopes, I harboured doubts. What I saw everywhere was chaos and caprice. Everything seemed pointless, unless its point was private gain, personal ambition, indulgence, greed.
In idle moments I found myself studying the photo of Karl Marx that accompanied his tomes, trying to discover in that stern biblical face what motivated him. There was something about his face, partly his hairline but mainly his eyes that reminded me of my father. Was the old scholar manic? Was he psychotic? Was he schizophrenic? Was he sociopathic?
Once again I find I have retained scant memory of my sisters. I can’t remember offering or seeking any moral support. Perhaps we had a fairly normal relationship, with nothing memorable happening… little or nothing that has traversed the next thirty-five years or so.
My little sister Carol began attending a high school adjacent to the university, so I would drop her off whenever I took the car. She soon made friends with several girls from Heidelberg Heights and Rosanna. I think she was happy enough, once she had settled, but her skin, ravaged by acne and nervous rashes, suggested a different story. As for Jean, who had arrived to live with us shortly after we shifted in, she was swelling by the day. She became rather reclusive, preferring her condition to be a private matter, spending as much time as possible alone and reading in the bedroom she shared with Carol, who only went there to sleep. I suspect she resented Denny’s move to Melbourne but like the rest of us she had no say in it; she too became dependent upon the pension money he (and Pat since she had stopped working) received. Whatever the case might have been, I don’t recall any tension between her and Denny while we were at Boyd Crescent. They seemed to have worked out some kind of truce. I think he was secretly pleased that she was back with us, as if it vindicated his stance on her waywardness.
In his own way Denny was endeavouring to get a handle on his chronic financial shortcomings and maybe he was attempting some rapprochement with his family too.
For a while he seemed to be trying to moderate his gambling. He limited how much he bet in an afternoon. There was money remaining for food and groceries, and less histrionics when his luck ran out. He even seemed aware of Pat’s misery, offering to help out around the house, doing the groceries with her, buying her a bunch of flowers on Mothers’ Day, endeavouring to chat with her, although she seldom responded.
One Saturday evening he offered to take her to the trots with him. When she declined he invited me. I accepted in the hope he was trying to improve our strained relations. He never went to pubs so he couldn’t ask me to join him for a drink. He never went to the football or the movies. I saw the trots as his offer to socialise. It was territory that was familiar to him. I was prepared to take it as an olive branch. And I was happy to meet him halfway. Perhaps he just hadn’t liked kids, had never wanted his own, and now I was growing up a new more agreeable phase was evolving for us. Perhaps we would end up friends after all.
He drove to the Showground on the other side of town and led me into the grandstand where I’d have a decent view.
I was surprised by the casual ambience. Even though I had seen TAB agencies full of punters, gambling had always struck me as an aberration, a neurosis, a rather sad and solitary pursuit. Punters often congregated in TABs or betting yards, but most were reluctant companions. I assumed that was why Denny preferred to use a TAB phone account to the agency, even when it was not much further than the phone box.
The scene at the trots was an altogether different affair. It felt like a festival. Whole families seemed to be there together. It was as if they had come to enjoy the spectacle, the silks and horseflesh glimmering in floodlights. Despite periodic overtures of regimentation through the loud-speaker system, it was casual and relaxed rather than sordid or pathological. Many parents brought their youngest in pyjamas and dressing gowns.
“Your mother’d like this,” Denny said ruef
ully. “I don’t know what’s got into her lately.”
“She hates Melbourne.”
He didn’t get angry, as I half-expected he would, when he felt like he was being blamed for something. “Well, what could I do, with you down here and your sister about to drop her bundle?”
I wanted to remind him that there was no shame in Jean’s condition. Even if she was separated she was still married. Besides, when had he ever taken any notice of community mores and opinion? As for me, I would have been happy boarding at Fleur’s for the rest of my university days if he had only forwarded my bursary money. But I held my tongue and shrugged. At no stage did he tell me that Barry Wood had been menacing my mother.
When a race was about to start, everyone’s attention gradually turned to the track. Horses pulling sulkies milled around, assembled behind a barrier attached to a ute, and began to pace along the track behind it until at a certain point the ute began to accelerate and the barrier folded away, a signal for the harlequin drivers to urge their chargers forward. I remember the sound more than anything—the exertion of the horses, the hard breathing and the slip of hide against tense straps. For a few minutes the atmosphere around the track changed to a singular intensity, which rose to a crescendo and then was over. Cheering and laughter ensued and people’s attention returned to more gregarious matters, as if the race had been a diversion.
In the midst of all this Denny came and went, ascended and descended the stadium, like Sisyphus on the mountain in the essay I had been reading by Albert Camus. Had I not been there he probably would have remained in the betting yard all evening. But I figured that by getting him away from the bookies my presence acted as a restraint on his betting and so served some useful purpose, of which he was aware. To bolster our new-found camaraderie, he offered to place bets for me, offers he found easy to make since it was my bursary money he was using. I declined with a tactful wave of the hand. What unsettled me, though, was the smile he gave me each time he returned. It was so full of hope, as if he wished to say see what fun we can have together, see what our life could be like, if you would only come my way.
It wouldn’t have occurred to him to come my way a little. He showed no interest in my studies, despite the attempts I had made to talk about them. He had never asked me if I had a girlfriend, or even given me a sly wink like a normal father would have done, whenever Suze waylaid me at the front gate. He never remarked on it later, man-to-man, or chuckled at my embarrassment. He had never bothered to watch me play football.
I had joined a university team and was performing well. Pat occasionally came to watch me play, the only diversion she allowed herself. But not Denny. I went to the trots with him a few more times in the hope he would discover what interested me and might decide to be a part of it.
My mother was worried. “You’re not starting to bet too, are you?” she asked one evening as we did the dishes together. “That’d be the death of me, darlin’.”
I looked around to make sure my father couldn’t hear. “I’m only going to keep an eye on him. He mightn’t bet so much with me there. Does he give you enough to makes ends meet?”
“I make sure he doesn’t get his hands on my cheque.”
She had her hands submerged in the sink. I put my arm across her shoulders, which drooped under the weight of my sympathy.
“Don’t worry, Mum,” I whispered. “Jean won’t stay with us forever. I’ll bet she’s gone within the year once the baby’s born. And I’ll be finished uni in a couple more years. Before you know it you’ll be back in Portland.”
“What about Carol? She’ll want to go to uni. There’s another three years.”
“She’ll be old enough to look after herself. When I finish I’ll get a good job and set you up in Portland.”
I gave her shoulder a squeeze and she looked at me gratefully.
“You’ll have a better life then, I promise.”
“Some people are just born unlucky,” she said, not believing me.
She placed another dish on the rack for me to dry.
One day when I came home from university Pat announced grimly that Denny was in the Repatriation Hospital, having urgent surgery to remove a stomach tumour. He was in his early forties. I remembered how he had complained for years about the pain in his stomach. His doctor had treated him for an ulcer but he’d insisted he had cancer. He used to tell me there was blood in his stools. Perhaps he had been frightened and had wanted someone to believe him. But I had taken little notice, had even thought on more than one occasion it served him right for the hard times he’d given us.
I didn’t visit him in the hospital, which was only in a neighbouring suburb, but Pat went each day, sometimes with Carol. When he came home a week or so later I hardly recognised him. He seemed decades older. His hair was almost white. He had already lost a third of his weight. For the first time in my life I was heavier than him. He moved around hunched like a person who had been badly winded. Half his stomach had been removed.
I felt sorry for him. There was a good chance he wouldn’t survive long. If anything the anger etched into his gaunt features looked more intense than ever. I think he knew that any remaining traces of his youthful physique had been erased by this latest assault on his body.
I wanted to show him my sympathy, but stupidly I asked, “Are you all right?”
He grimaced and glared. “What’s it bloodywell look like?”
And then, guessing my thoughts fairly accurately, he added, “The sooner I kick the bucket the better off you’ll be.”
Pat was moved enough to put her own misfortunes aside for the time being. She nursed him. He went upstairs to bed for a week. She administered his medications and took him meals, soups mainly because that was about all he could eat. She was aware of the significance of his latest setback. It was another cruel, perhaps deadly, twist of fate for the young man she had fallen for so many years ago, whom she hadn’t stopped loving despite all that had happened, all the ‘rotten luck’ he’d been dealt.
I helped out as much as I could, running errands, keeping him in smokes, but my sympathy for him ebbed and flowed. I thought, if he dies, she can go back to Portland, my bursary would be sent to her, she would forward it all to me, and I…well, I would be where I wanted to be. Then guilt crept up on me, like a sea fog.
To avoid thinking about him I spent more hours in the library hidden behind books. With my degree well under way, I tried to convince myself that there were more important things to worry about than a dying father. The nature of society, for one. More Marx, Weber, Parsons, Merton. The indomitable march of history…
I was so engrossed I hardly took any notice of my sister’s pregnancy. So much so that after she went off to the Queen Victoria Hospital in the centre of the city and came home with a swarthy baby that had a smudge of sooty hair, I was more surprised than anyone, including Denny, whose reaction I watched with a degree of cynicism. We had a coloured baby in the family.
Yet to my astonishment Denny adored it at first sight—his first grandchild. The colour of the baby’s skin mattered ‘not one iota’, as he put it. Seeing my father, still recovering, still emaciated, standing on the front doorstep in flannel shirt and boxer shorts, looking down with a beatific smile at the infant cradled in his arms, I was struck by ambivalent emotions. Had he held me as an infant in his arms like that? I had no recollection of it, no photographic evidence, no tactile experience as I was growing up that might have indicated a loving bond existed between us. I wondered if his recent brush with mortality had something to do with his new-found affection.
I took a photo for posterity.
Having a baby in the house was just the tonic both my parents needed. Young life took my father’s mind off the gravity of his condition and hastened his recovery. You’d see him heating bottles of milk, testing the temperature by squirting it onto his wrist; even see him changing nappies when Pat or Jean wasn’t doing it. You’d see him with the daily laundry, washing the soiled nappies and
hanging them out while whistling a quiet tune. If you woke in the night to a cry from the baby you’d soon hear Denny’s muffled voice offering to settle him down for Jean so she could get some proper sleep.
And Pat was just as solicitous. The baby took her out of herself. She carried it around swaddled in a pale blue blanket. She talked to it and blew bubbles until it smiled. She gently pressed her finger against its nose or the dimple in its chin. She kept telling Jean how lovely it was and offering maternal advice. She doted on it as if it were her own.
Perhaps that’s why within six months Jean was gone. As headstrong as ever, Jean would have resented all the children-rearing suggestions. She had her own ideas on good parenting and she could only see disputes as the child grew older. So she left to board in a distant suburb for a while and then to return to New Zealand.
A wistful quiet descended on our tenement.
Despite being forced back into the bosom of the family, I tried to maintain at least a semblance of independence. I wanted my parents to understand I was no longer a child. I spent as much time away from Boyd Crescent as possible.
My friend from university, Charles, had a car. So I went on trips with him or to parties. Someone was getting married in a country town; we went to the wedding and stayed the weekend. We had a few days camping on the coast. We went on a trip to the snow with a youth group from his church.
Towards the end of the year I accompanied him to Sydney to see the Pope, a pilgrimage that meant nothing to me beyond an excuse to get away for awhile, never having been a Catholic and abandoning Christianity after my philosophy tutorials on the existence of God convinced me that He was, by definition, impossible, an all good, all powerful being, who permitted the existence of evil. But to go I had to ask my father for funds. To my surprise he agreed and gave me what I considered a generous amount of money for the trip.
In Sydney we stayed with Cynthia, an ex-school friend of my elder sister, who had kept in touch with Jean and left an open invitation for any of our family to stay if we ever went north. She had married into a large family that had recently been featured in a popular national magazine. The patriarch was a renowned cook. One son was a ballet dancer. There was a violinist. The mother was a pianist. The youngest child was a prodigy who was already composing symphonies. The magazine had labelled them bohemian. How Cynthia had encountered a member of this family I had no idea. Perhaps it was because she was a talented artist and singer, and came from a middle-class family that was immersed in the Arts, someone with a creative streak who fitted effortlessly into the bohemian scene. The entire family was vegetarian. They made their own beer and yoghurt, and listened to classical music on the ABC. They painted and danced and sang. For me, at least, this was an astonishing experience. They lived in an ivy-clad terrace house in Annandale, which was full of clutter and pungent cooking odours, with musical instruments and easels in various rooms, and bookcases in passages and ceramic pots with exotic plants near windows, unlike the tidiness, the sterility, the smell of disinfectant in our place. It was so far removed from the insular world I had grown up in that I had to shake myself now and then to make sure I wasn’t dreaming. The way they lived opened my eyes to all kinds of possibilities.
You Never Met My Father Page 27