There was nothing I could do about this because it was my job to lean over into the back of the van and hang onto the baby baskets. This was before the era of ideologically sound car seats and anyway, the back of the van had no seats. Fleur was very adept at sitting there, rocketing from side to side whenever Holland went round a corner and laughing gaily to herself as she bounced around. She was a very cheerful little thing, really. But I had to hang onto the baskets because they tended to slide all over the place, too, and it could have been nasty for the twins if they had tipped over.
Things were fairly frosty when we arrived at my family’s home. (What had it been like when Jack and Jackie, Bobby and Ethel, Ted and Joan, Peter and Pat and all the rest rolled up? Kisses? Martinis all round? Time to freshen up? A small snack?)
‘Hurry up,’ said my mother. ‘We’ve got dinner waiting. I don’t want it ruined.’ Another might take this as meaning we were late for a meal. No. It meant that dinner was waiting after the photos. And we were holding up the diners.
‘Put the children on the back verandah.’
‘Pardon?’
‘The verandah. It’s perfectly warm.’
‘But … the photo?’
‘The photo is not for the children. Your father wants a family photo.’
‘Well, aren’t the children …?’
‘Don’t argue with me. You’ve already held us up.’
I took the children to the back of the house and told them firmly to be good girls for Mummy although I felt such a hypocrite saying it, feeling so gutless, wishing that they could, for my benefit, fart at their grandma and tell her she was a mean old bat and refuse to leave her presence. When I returned I became aware that there was another contretemps occurring, this time between my father and Holland.
‘Sorry, old chap. Can’t have you dressed like that for the family photo. Open-neck shirt. Why don’t you nip upstairs and borrow something suitable out of my cupboard?’ My father was being hearty and affable, but I knew he thought it typical of my husband’s lack of whatever, that would make him capable of such a gaffe as to turn up for a family photo without a coat and tie. All my brothers stood round, good lads in their suits and ties. One of them had a beer in a pewter.
‘Want a sip, Holland?’ he offered. I saw my husband’s face redden with anger, yet normally he is slow to anger, hardly ever did, in fact.
‘Don’t let me deprive you of it,’ he snapped. ‘I’ll bloody well go home and get my own clothes,’ and he disappeared out the door. I was mortified by this. I did so want him to be seen in a good light. I wished someone would get me a sherry and I considered my family thoughtless and unfair, but I was cross with Holland, too, that he had not had the foresight, the drive, the discipline, to pre-empt this unfortunateness. Oh, it was all so complicated.
‘All ready, then?’ said my father, pacing, rubbing his hands, shooting his cuffs. Come on now.’ There was some milling about. A small man who looked like an undertaker had finished setting up his camera and started to direct us to positions in the vestibule, a cold marble-floored place, but formal, suitably formal. It occurred to me that the Kennedys looked rather more comfortable around and upon their long couch, but I knew better than to suggest anything. It would be taken as either obstructionism or cynicism.
‘Have you got any other clothes?’ the photographer asked me, quite rudely, I thought. ‘Black does not photograph well.’ My mother glowered at me. I got the feeling she thought I had deliberately set out to undermine the session, what with three children who were all howling in exile on the back verandah and Holland in his coatless, tieless condition. Hadn’t she taught me anything? How could I have let him come dressed like that? Why were my children so badly behaved? Was I so slovenly as to feed my daughter tinned baked beans? Didn’t I know black was bad for family photos?
The photographer started positioning us, all the well-dressed brothers lined up behind the three front chairs on which my mother, father and I were to sit. I did not feel able to relax and my black, unsuitable jumper was sticky and—was I imagining it?—steaming with heat and milk. The babies were making a hell of a racket that stimulated the milk even further. And Holland wasn’t back yet.
‘Holland’s not back yet,’ I muttered anxiously, but no-one took any notice.
‘Well, all ready?’ asked the photographer. ‘All ready, are we?’
‘No. Holland’s not back yet,’ I said.
‘That doesn’t matter,’ said my mother. ‘This is a family photo.’
‘But …’ I stood up. I could take so much but then, well, some things were just too … ‘What do you mean, family photo? Isn’t Holland family?’ There was a sort of collective sigh from the suits in the back row. Here she goes again. There’s been no peace in this family since she married that fellow. I made what I hoped was a scowl of disgust in their direction and at that moment Holland rang the doorbell.
‘Whoever is that, coming at dinnertime?’ said my mother angrily.
‘Holland,’ I snapped and, just to press the point, ‘my husband,’ and went to let him in.
Unfortunately, although Holland now wore a coat and tie, he had put on a sports coat. (I realised why. He only had one suit and Fleur had put playdough in its pockets. It was away being cleaned.) I sensed a stillness among the suits. Hell. And I had to try and tell him, between the front door and the vestibule and his panting that there was now no rush as far as he was concerned, this was a family photo and he did not qualify.
‘For heaven’s sake, go and see what’s wrong with those children,’ said my mother in his direction. Dear God, what I wanted, what I really wanted, was the guts to stand by him then and there and say, look, count us out, this is a farce. To my eternal shame, I did not. Like a skulking collaborator I sat down again in the front row, burning with fury, seeing my husband striding, face flushed, into exile with his children on the back verandah.
Is it possible if you look hard enough and long enough at that Kennedy family photo, you might discern bruises on arms, the grimace of a hangover, a mouth stretched taut with tension, a telltale sign of homosexuality, the brute gaze of the rapist? How did they all know how to behave perfectly for the family photo? How come they were all so perfect? Scrutinise Rose. Does she tell us anything? Anything at all? No, not really. It’s just all happy families. That’s what family photos are for.
When it was all over, the photographer, perhaps puzzled by the dynamics of this particular family, asked respectfully if my parents would like a special shot, ‘of us all’.
‘No, thank you,’ said my mother. ‘That’s quite enough now. I have dinner waiting. Come on now, boys, before it’s ruined.’ The family moved swiftly, purposefully, away to the dining room, the gleaming oppressive dining room, and I went down the kitchen hall to the back. Holland was nursing the twins, singing them a little song that he had learned from a young Aboriginal girl who had rocked him to sleep every night when he was a child. Fleur was asleep on the floor, her face puffy and tear-stained. I stood and look at them a moment, embattled, overwhelmed by love.
‘Come on,’ I whispered, in pain. ‘Let’s go.’
I picked up my sleeping child, burying my nose in the crease of her neck, sniffing the scent of baby sleep and baked beans, feeling in her heavy lethargy the painful knowledge of the total trust she invested in me. The pain ached deep and chronic too for Holland, who would sit now for hours in front of the television, drinking beer. The pain ached reproachfully in my milk-heavy breasts reinforcing the feeling of helplessness against all the needs that crowded in.
Holland and I carried our children silently out to the van. I felt tears starting and the more I tried to stop them falling the harder, the more agonising the lump in my throat grew. That lump seemed to contain all the love, all the passion and need and hunger I felt for my little family, but what made it unbearable was that it contained, too, all the loss, the anger and passion and need and hunger I felt for that other family that I had left behind at their dinner.<
br />
Years later, when, inadvertently, I stumbled upon a sheet of proofs, I saw I had my eyes closed in every shot. To my knowledge no family photo was ever printed.
eric’s phantom date
Eric Twells worked as a pay clerk in the Tax Office. Although there were some about-to-be retirees there who wore cardigans, Eric was the only younger person in the Tax Office to do so. It was not his choice. Mrs Twells, Eric’s mother, was a knitter and cardigans were her speciality. As long as he could remember Eric had worn cardigans. From babyhood to adulthood Mrs Twells had defied fashion and dressed the upper part of her lad in cardigans. Not for him, babygrows, skivvies, sloppy joes, jumpers, leather jackets, burberries or blazers.
Eric was not a vibrant employee, really. His colleagues considered him as basically a dork, and in the three years he had been with the Tax Office he had not been invited to join the social club which had a happy hour every Friday evening. Word had it that happy hour usually went on well into the night and coitus took place in the Acting Senior Accountant’s office, in the government cars in the underground car park and in the stairwell. Eric had picked up snippets in the lunch room like ‘magic mystery tour’, ‘naked ring-a-rosy’ and ‘drop the hanky-panky’, but the references were too arcane for him. He suspected, though, that events took place to which Mrs Twells would have strong objections, so was rather relieved he had not been invited to partake.
Mrs Twells had always been the pivot of Eric’s life, the unquiet centre, the director. He tended to forget that his father, Eric Snr, lived out in the back annexe, ever greyer, quieter and meeker in his moss-green cardie. Eric Snr did not have an ounce of gumption in him. No get up and go. If it had not been for his wife’s nagging he would never have associated his dodgy left shoulder with war service and applied to become TPI. And working in Veterans’ Affairs to boot! Did the fool know nothing? In fact the only time she could recall he ever took a stand was over the naming of his son. He simply would not contemplate ‘Theodore’. Nineteen years on, Mrs Twells was still sullen about that, and expressed her disgust by never using Eric’s name. She referred to her husband (if she had to at all) in the third person, even when addressing him directly, if that is not a contradiction in terms, and called Eric ‘son’ or ‘you’.
As a child Eric had shown aptitude in nature study and his special line of interest was yabbies. He had asked his mother whether he could have a yabby tank from Santa but Mrs Twells had lectured him sharply on the nuisance of pets and, instead, gave him a year’s subscription to Nature World which was issued in weekly parts up at the newsagent and collected by Mrs Twells. Actually, she enjoyed these magazines more than Eric did. She read them first and cut out all the pictures of baby animals before Eric even had a chance to read them. Turning page after mutilated page took some of the pleasure out of the experience for Eric even though Mrs Twells pasted up the cutouts on the kitchen wall and the back lavvy. One would not have thought of Mrs Twells as the maternal type, but it just goes to show. Human nature is indeed a mystery.
One might ask endlessly (and uselessly) why Eric never asserted himself but, remember, his cowering father was no role model. Mrs Twells was simply too powerful to contend with. For long periods of Eric’s teenage years she had managed to keep him home from school with complaints like asthma, tinea, goitre, glandular fever, all diagnosed by Mrs Twells. As a consequence Eric never shone academically. His frequent days at home were not wasted, however: Mrs Twells taught him to type. His father had squeaked ineffectually that typing was not suitable for a boy, but Mrs Twells told him to go and clean his fingernails and keep out of matters that did not concern him.
When Eric was sixteen and had completed his School Certificate, Mrs Twells knew it was time to get him nicely settled in a position that would not be too taxing for one of his fragile constitution. She settled upon the Public Service, so Eric sat the entrance exam—basic spelling and addition—and was placed in the accounts department of the Tax Office. As a treat, before he began his working life, Mrs Twells took him on a holiday.
‘You’re a big boy now and you’ve never given your mother a minute’s trouble,’ she told him. ‘As a gesture of my appreciation I am going to take you on a cruise.’
Which was a ghastly thing. Sydney to Townsville and return, high seas, sitting on a deck chair beside his knitting mother with zinc cream on his nose and wearing a sou’wester. And mealtime! Up to now he had ruefully accepted that his mother knew best but in this even Eric was humiliated. Mrs Twells had brought his christening mug along on the cruise and filled it with milk for him at every meal. Eric would have preferred to starve the entire four-day cruise than suffer the indignity of the milk but that, of course, would have demonstrated lack of gratitude to Mrs Twells, so he slid silently behind her, eyes downcast, and weathered the experience in a listless, despairing way.
‘Well, that’s the end of fun and games, young man,’ said Mrs Twells with satisfaction when they were safely home. ‘You’ll have to settle down now and get on with earning your living.’
Thus, at nineteen Eric began his career. He was below average height, spindly, suffered late adolescent acne that made it torture to try and shave the fluffy beard he sprouted and had sensibly cut hair that Mrs Twells thought had such a nice wave in it. Three years on at the Tax Office he had never tasted alcohol, was still a virgin and wore those shameful cardigans. His father had died by this time (he had faded into greyness—living dust to dead dust), so Mrs Twells was free, as she construed it, to lavish all her energies on her son. Eric was desperately unhappy and lonely, although he would not have used these words. It was the condition of his life. He so lacked insight that he did not realise that was what he was.
Mrs Twells had organised things so that life was as simple as possible for her son and as convenient as possible for herself. In return for his weekly pay packet she bought his clothes and shoes, packed his lunch every day, gave him money for his weekly train pass, haircut money and five dollars to ‘play with’, as she gaily put it. She bought his razor blades herself, preferring that he did not go getting ideas in chemist shops.
So colourless, unobtrusive and diligent was Eric that no-one really took any notice of him. The girls in the Tax Office, though, were a particularly larky and good-natured bunch and initially had attempted to include Eric in their daily banter. ‘Here’s your Penthouse, pet,’ the mail girl, Kelly, giggled as she dragged a big manila envelope from the trolley and tossed it on Eric’s tidy desk. ‘More love letters, you devil you,’ she would say, handing over smaller envelopes. ‘A vibrator for you this morning,’ she said once, handing him a cylindrical parcel wrapped in brown paper and string. It turned out to be a home-made bomb hidden in a toilet roll cylinder, and it was a mercy that it was totally amateurish and didn’t explode Eric and the Tax Office to kingdom come. The mail girl stopped her pleasantries after this, which was just as well because the term ‘sexual harassment’ was creeping into the workplace and, it has to be said, her behaviour towards Eric was verging on the cusp.
Eric did not tell Mrs Twells about the attempt on his life, judging rightly that it could lead to quite unacceptable curtailments upon his already limited freedom. He had been a model son for nineteen years and, okay, he was a slow learner, but he was at last coming to see that his life lacked a great big something or other. If it had not been for his mother’s dicky heart, that rendered her ashen and gasping in pain whenever she was concerned that Eric was going to do ‘something silly’, as she termed any change in the routine she had set them, Eric would have broken free years ago. So he told himself. You couldn’t practically murder your mother, could you? And if he ignored the evidence of his own eyes and she died of a heart attack he would never be able to live with himself. To spare his mother, Eric started to become underhand, a vice much railed against by his mother in his formative years. ‘You must never be underhand. If you are underhand, how are you to know whether your mother approves or disapproves of what you are up to? You must a
lways trust me to know best.’ Well, he had tried. He had.
Eric’s first foray into underhandedness was in the matter of the pay packet. When he got his annual increment this year he did not tell Mrs Twells. He opened a private savings account! Now his pay was split into two: the usual amount straight into Mrs Twells’s account and the increment into his own. He felt both wretchedly guilty about being underhand and overwhelmingly exhilarated about being a man of independent means. The exhilaration won, on balance.
‘There’s something going on,’ said Mrs Twells after the first pay day of the new arrangement, spying a tepid gleam in her son’s eyes. ‘I hope you’re not being underhand.’ Eric quailed inside his grey cardigan with the maroon diamond pattern and attempted to look innocent. Thankfully she did not pursue the line. ‘Here. Sit down, I’ve done a nice corned beef for your dinner. Eat up, there’s a good boy. Shall we have a Schweppes lime cordial? You do the honours.’
As Eric’s account slowly grew there was a correspondingly slow growth in Eric’s confidence. He decided that when the time was ripe he was going to take a girl out on a date. The only girls he knew were in the Tax Office, so it would have to be one of them. Eric now caught himself daydreaming over his work as he went through the possibilities in his mind. Lauren, Jenny, Patrice and Donna were out as they held seniority over Eric and, besides, because they were in their twenties he thought of them as ‘women’, and women terrified him. Hannelore and Lotti were out as they were married, so that left the four younger ones, whom Eric classed as girls. There was Françoise, but he discounted her because of her French name. She was bound to be sexually rabid. There was Bev but he found her jewellery offputting: loud, his mother would have called it. There was Kelly but her banter over the mail trolley had left him terrified about her worldliness. So he settled on Sally who seemed a quiet little thing, quite colourless enough for even Eric to handle. If Mrs Twells had been making the choice, surely she would have settled on Sally. Just hypothesising gave Eric a glow of confidence and slightly diminished his guilt.
Disreputable People Page 5