For me the new cutlery was another watershed. Pat might have decided to follow Denny but not me. I was desperate for a way out before I went down the same track. Claire, not the most stable of people herself, seemed my best hope.
I eventually invited her home to meet my parents, after procrastinating for many weeks, worried about her judgment of our humble abode, worried about the impression my father might make, worried too about what she would think of the pile of tiles in the kitchen and the tables being assembled in the living room.
My parents were very polite and welcoming. Denny tried his best to be urbane. He probably guessed I had warned her about him. And for a while she considered him quite charming, wondering what my concern was.
But one day, soon after, when she arrived at the bottom of the flats she could hear him bellowing at Pat. She came upstairs rather gingerly, the outcry resounding down the stairwell, and hesitated before our door, wondering whether it was wise to interrupt. When she finally knocked, the shouting ended abruptly and he opened the door, wearing his friendliest smile.
The transformation unnerved her. He attempted to talk to her about his tables, to get her opinion on his designs, to offer her any one of her choosing. Speechless, she headed for my room.
“You’re right. He’s nuts,” she decided.
She begged me to get the phone connected so she could contact me to find out the lie of the land before she came around. Often she insisted we go somewhere else to talk. And the only place I could think of where we could be alone without costing money was the Melbourne Cemetery across the road. Usually we could get some peace and quiet there.
She pointed out something that I hadn’t noticed about my father. He loved his tables. She had watched him on occasion applying the tiles, with as much concentration and aesthetic judgment as an artist, balancing colours and patterns. There was not a skerrick of aggression in his body as he worked on his designs. It reminded her of young children when they were handed bright paints, a brush, and some butcher paper.
“Maybe he’s a frustrated artist,” she ventured.
Denny eventually tired of making the tables. But the pile of tiles in the kitchen remained and he had boxes of screw-on table legs stacked on top of each other in the lounge room with nowhere outside the flat secure enough to store them. Then one day he hit upon a novel idea: hawking table legs, minus the tops, around the housing estate.
He bundled them into sets of four, attached to each a small plastic bag containing mounting plates and screws, and went from door to door.
To my amazement people bought them. I couldn’t for the life of me think why, unless it was to get rid of him. Once he even managed to exchange a set for a more edible leg at the local butcher’s.
Increasingly Denny’s behaviour and my mother’s acquiescence were alienating me. There was a vast no-man’s-land between my home life and the circles I moved in at university and even at Claire’s place, where her friends and acquaintances weren’t exactly conventional, law-abiding citizens. But at least we occupied some common ground (I liked their music and was beginning to understand more about art), while there was nothing, now that I’d abandoned football, which I felt I could talk to my family about. It was an effort to be in their company. We no longer seemed to share the same language.
I didn’t blame them. I was the one drifting away. And I was helpless to prevent it.
I was almost grateful when Denny had another heart attack, which landed him in the Royal Melbourne Hospital for a while towards the end of 1971. I just needed a respite from him.
It wasn’t long enough.
There is a note in his files on his time there.
Normally a patient of this age group would be anti-coagulated, but because of his manner of leaving the hospital this has not been possible.
DRAFTED
It was only a few months after Denny resumed control of our financial affairs that we began to experience difficulties again.
The first sign of it came one afternoon as I arrived home from university. Denny was waiting downstairs under the flats. As I pulled up in the automatic he jogged over and instructed me to get in the other car, while he took my place in the automatic. I was to follow him. There was a note of concern in his voice and he surveyed the carpark furtively.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Just follow me.” His manner was rather sheepish. “I’ll explain later.”
He headed along St Georges Road, switched to Plenty Road, driving erratically, cautious at intersections, reckless between, speeding past the psychiatric hospital where he had spent two months, and on through the suburbs until he reached Settlement Road (which in those days was the northern limit of the city). He stopped a short distance from some kind of storage depot. There were decommissioned trams and heavy machinery stowed in its yard, and a shed near the gate with a sign indicating it was the office. The land around was degraded: rocks, rubbish, thistles. There were views across the neglected landscape to the hills around King Lake.
When I pulled up behind him he came over and told me to wait. He returned to the automatic and drove it into the depot.
After twenty minutes he emerged from the office, jogged out of the depot and slid into the passenger seat.
“Let’s go,” he said, looking pleased with himself.
“Are we leaving the car behind?”
“It’s collateral,” he said in an undertone, as if someone else might hear him. If he had received money for the car, he had already secreted it. “We’ll get it back in a month or so. Not a word to anyone, you hear?”
I figured it was the last I’d ever see of it. Yet I didn’t grasp the entire purpose of his actions until the next day, when a representative of the hire-purchase company that Denny had used knocked on our door. He demanded to know the location of the automatic, which was to be repossessed due to a series of repayment defaults.
Denny kept him at the threshold. “You’ll never see it again,” he warned, his eyes bulging. “Not unless you renegotiate. It’s as simple as that.”
“There’s the payment of arrears to be dealt with first.”
“Out of the fucking question. I already told you that, but you won’t listen. It’s a completely new deal or zilch.”
It was a triumph for Denny. He had managed to turn a debt into a financial windfall from a finance company. To rub salt into the wound, he arrived home a few weeks later with a huge van, a down-payment for it made with some of the money borrowed on the automatic, under the gaze of the company’s representative, who became a regular fixture beneath the flats lest the automatic miraculously reappear. I used to pass him on my way upstairs and we’d exchange a fatalistic look that acknowledged he’d been out-manoeuvred.
Once I said, “You’re wasting your time.”
Once he said, “Come on, where is it? Please.”
For a couple of weeks he was there every other day. Then his visits became less frequent until they stopped altogether. But it crossed my mind that he had found a more concealed observation post.
With the arrival of the van Denny went into business, despite the fragile condition of his heart. And I was dragooned into it. Without my assistance it would never have gotten off the ground. He was the brains behind the enterprise while I was the brawn. I went with him to an aerated-waters factory on Geelong Road in Footscray called Boon Spa, where he negotiated a deal to buy wholesale several dozen crates of soft drink in sundry flavours. I loaded the van while he put the final touches to the deal. And when we got back to the housing estate, he headed off to solicit orders. Afterwards I became the delivery boy, riding the lifts of the high-rise or climbing the stairwells of the walk-up flats, lugging a crate at a time, containing a dozen bottles, banging on the doors of identical flats, exchanging crates for cash.
Then to my amazement the yellow automatic turned up again.
Denny arrived in it, euphoric. Apparently the finance company had yielded to his conditions. He tapped his temple gleefull
y to indicate his ingenuity. There were ways of getting what you want. The only requirements were a bit of gumption and some unconventional strategies.
Suddenly we were a three-vehicle family, which created its own problems since each flat had rights to only one parking space. And parking in the street had time limits. With two cars Denny had managed to arrange access to the parking space of a family that had no car, but a third was more problematic. It looked seriously acquisitive, which aroused suspicion and resentment amongst those who kept the neighbourhood under close scrutiny.
But as it transpired the issue never festered for long.
Within a short while Denny defaulted again, only this time the company was ready for his chicanery, responding with what these days would be called a pre-emptive strike. The company representative who arrived to repossess the automatic was the same one who had shown up beneath our flats for weeks, over and above the call of duty, on a futile vigil. I watched him through our kitchen window. His perseverance led me to believe he was probably the agent who had done the original deal with Denny, and his reputation, if not his job, with the company had been in jeopardy all those months. Perhaps he looked up and caught sight of me as he drove out of the parking bay, for he wound down the window and gave me the bird.
For a few weeks the soft-drink business flourished, even extending to a neighbouring high-rise estate on Nicholson Street, until it came to an abrupt end one night with the disappearance of the van. Denny’s refusal to report it to the police brought on a bad case of déjà vu. Under sufferance he confessed the van had been repossessed after a cheque he had written to pay an instalment had bounced.
Secretly I was relieved. My feelings towards him were becoming so stark I could barely bring myself to accompany him on the daily merry-go-round he had created, despite recognising how much we needed the extra money. As far as I was concerned the less I had to do with him the better. I stayed with Claire as often as I could, although, wary as I was of her volatile moods, I wasn’t prepared to move in with her entirely. My financial dependence on Denny limited my options anyway. I avoided thinking of my mother and what she was going through. My heart was hardening into an ugly ball of resentment. Sometimes when I walked past the TAB near the corner of Lygon and Elgin Streets, I saw Denny inside. He noticed me on one occasion and grinned guiltily, like a naughty boy caught out by his father in a lolly shop. I shook my head in disgust to reinforce his shame.
One thing I had to admit, though: he hadn’t been violent for a long time. Bad tempered, yes. Abusive on occasion. But no violence. No knives brandished. No fists. No strangler’s hands. Not even a ferocious grimace. Perhaps the heart attacks and the cancer had emasculated him. Perhaps he no longer had the will to assert himself so demonstratively.
I continued to bury myself in study, spent long hours at university and, when I was at home, shut myself in the bedroom to write essays or read. All this reading and writing was not exactly helping me, but at least it kept more vindictive thoughts in check, pushed them into some dingy recess of the brain, which no doubt they still inhabit, waiting for the moment when I drop my guard to emerge and horrify everybody; myself more than anyone.
More than halfway through my degree I had less of an idea than the day I started about what career I wanted to pursue. I’d come no further with my thinking on the matter than the public service or teaching, both of which were barely more appealing than factory work. I was distracted too by the government, which was still sending young men to fight in Vietnam, and the day was rapidly approaching when a marble bearing my date of birth might be plucked from the national service barrel.
I had tried to avoid thinking about being conscripted. Besides my opposition to a war that I considered was nothing more than international thuggery, the thought of being routinely barked at by some megalomaniac drill sergeant was almost too much to bear. If the issue was ever raised by those around me, I was adamant I’d never accept conscription: I’d be a conscientious objector or a draft dodger. And since I considered my objections political more than ethical, it would most likely be the latter, the illegal option.
Denny called me a fool. What was the point of ruining your life by going to jail just on a principle? Who’d care? As far as jail was concerned, he probably knew what he was talking about. But he didn’t want me going to war, either, not for the sake of ‘them bloody Yanks’ or anybody else, not with the risk I might end up in a psych hospital, like he had.
“When they make you do the medical just tell them you had rheumatic fever on Flinders Island,” he suggested. “They never kept medical records there, so there’s no way they can check. They’ll never take you then. Not worth the risk.”
“Why not?
“They’ll reckon you’ve got a dodgy ticker.”
I thought his suggestion was fanciful, but it started me considering other ways to cheat at a medical examination, if it came to that.
One day as I arrived home my mother met me at the door and urged me to listen to the radio. The conscription lottery was on again. I sat at the kitchen table as a marble bearing my birth date was drawn.
My head began to spin. Why couldn’t something go my way, just once?
“What are you going to do?” my mother murmured.
Without answering I went to my room and propped on the edge of the bunk. My mind was torpid. A stagnant pond. I had no group of supporters like some student activists who had become draft dodgers. Nor had I made any attempt to contact the underground movement. I had nowhere to hide. If I refused to take the medical examination, the Federal Police would come knocking on my door. The thought of going to prison filled me with horror. Gradually I came round to Denny’s plan.
But I wasn’t happy about it. Over the next few months and years I indulged in a good deal of self-recrimination.
The medical examination was conducted in a dismal office in the city. No money had been wasted on décor. All the walls were painted in a prison hue. Why worry about the sensitivities of those already condemned? As I queued I saw a lad from Portland I knew. We talked briefly about our rotten luck. He was counting on the Labor Party winning the next election and ending the draft. At my interview, when I was asked to list any diseases I had ever contracted, I made a big deal about how I was yet to recover completely from hepatitis. When the time came to test my hearing I was instructed to put on headphones in a booth and asked to indicate when I first heard a sound in each ear. A bell chimed. The volume increased. It chimed again. Once I detected it I waited until it chimed a few times before I signalled that I thought I heard something. Throughout the examination I tried to downplay my health. I felt sneaky and cowardly but it worked. Within a month I received a letter announcing I had failed the medical.
The only honourable moment in the whole affair for me came from my determination not to mention rheumatic fever.
Everyone was pleased except me. I moped about, at home where my family ignored me, at Claire’s where her housemates didn’t notice, at university where anti-war activities were a daily occurrence. I was convinced I’d let the peace movement down, a betrayal that I’d have to live with the rest of my days.
Then something happened that jolted me out of my navel gazing.
Claire announced she was pregnant.
A BOY
"How did that happen?” I murmured, shocked.
She glared at me. “How do you think?”
It came as a complete surprise to me; to the best of my knowledge she was using the contraceptive pill. But that was no excuse. If I’d been less naïve, if I’d had my wits about me, I’d have taken my own precautions. I knew how unreliable she had been with the medication she had taken for epilepsy. Why then did I imagine she’d keep to the pill’s unforgiving schedule?
She was four months pregnant before she learnt of her condition. On earlier visits to her family GP her suspicions hadn’t been taken seriously. The doctor considered the missing periods a consequence of her depression, and never bothered with a pregnanc
y test. Despite her instincts she accepted his diagnosis and never sought a second opinion, wanting to believe the improbable. By the time the pregnancy was confirmed, an abortion, which was still difficult to arrange even under more favourable circumstances, was out of the question.
“But you needn’t worry,” she said with a bitter laugh. “It’s probably not yours.”
It took a moment for this to sink in. “What?”
“Before you get all indignant on me, I want you to know this is worse for me than you.”
“Who was it?’ I couldn’t conceal my hurt. “Who else did you have sex with?”
“Dan,” she said, without looking at me.
Dan was one of her co-tenants, an aspiring musician who rarely spoke to me.
“Do you think I wanted it?” she went on, anticipating my questions. “I was depressed. He came into my room with a flagon of wine to try and cheer me up. I had a drink with him, quite a few actually. Then he was all over me. I told him to stop but he took no notice. He forced himself into me.”
“That’s rape!”
“Yeah, but who’d believe it?”
“Fuck,” I said, shocked. “What do you want me to do?”
“Nothing. No stupid heroics, all right? I just want to forget it.”
“What about the child?”
“It’ll be adopted.”
I groaned, bewildered, unable to think clearly. “I wouldn’t want you to do that on my account.”
“Not because of you,” she murmured, despairing.
“You shouldn’t be living in the same house as him.”
“He shifted out weeks ago.”
She made a futile gesture and buried her head in her hands to weep alone. I wanted to suggest she go to the police but I knew what her answer would be.
Within a week she shifted back into her family home.
Her father was a decent man but conventional, and once he learnt of her condition he refused to let her stay for the duration of her pregnancy. When it became obvious he insisted she move into Berry Street Babies Home, which offered shelter to unmarried pregnant women on condition they adopt their babies, which the agency arranged.
You Never Met My Father Page 33