by Mark O'Flynn
That was all she was prepared to tell him of the past, for which I was grateful. I was in a young man’s denial about the status of his parents’ relationships. Only to find there was a whole history of dysfunction. I did not wish to know about her past. The here and now was where I thrived. Emily’s kisses were still fresh on me from that morning.
Why had he never known he had a sister?
Because, she presumed in a rather wooden way, they hated her. When she had run away for the last time, perhaps a year after they had come home with the new baby, she had tried to burn their house down. She had set petrol-soaked rags alight in the laundry. The father had caught her and beaten her. He had threatened to burn all her things if she ran away again. She felt that life had not been kind to her, so why should she be kind? To stay would have been to surrender to the cruelty of the world. So she had struggled through adolescence without help from anybody. She was not proud of her actions in the past. She was in rebellion against fate and the utter desolation she saw around her.
This was the worst conversation I can remember overhearing.
‘You saw me when I were a nipper?’
‘Yes.’
‘Maybe you left because I scared you away?’
‘No, Edgar. I used to sing to you until they told me to shut up and let you sleep.’
‘Sing?’
There was a moment when she might have broken—an unbearable moment borne by all, before my mother changed the subject. I raised my hand to my own shaved and perfect lip; the one Emily loves to behold and kiss.
Emily, whose belly is already achieving a three-month tautness, like a drumskin over the burgeoning progeny we are adding to the world. The child who may well look like my uncle. I made a mental note to suggest a prompt amniocentesis.
Lynne was surprised that Edgar had not been turned against her. She had come prepared to defend herself. Edgar turned his palms up. He didn’t know. He was not clever enough to understand these things. Despair and poverty were not what he remembered. The old folks liked their grog, he knew that. Why had she come now? She began to explain about her cancer, her guilt, but faltered.
This is where I stepped in:
‘Because, Edgar, there’s going to be an appeal. I’ve been looking into your case and there are many legal technicalities yet to be sorted through, but apparently the judge erred in not allowing a second inquiry to determine whether you were fit to stand trial.’
‘It means,’ said Lynne, ‘that if it’s successful, you might be granted clemency.’
‘Let’s not jump the gun.’
‘But I got seven years to go. More for Otto. I’m a bad boy.’
‘Well, Edgar, the fact is that if you weren’t fit to stand trial you shouldn’t be here.’
Edgar stared at us for a moment. It was impossible to read his feelings.
‘Are yer come ter laugh at me?’ he demanded.
‘No, no, Edgar,’ I said. ‘It’s not like that. If what you said to Maureen Henry is true, then I’m here to say I want to help you.’
‘What I said?’
‘That you found Meacham’s body.’
‘That true.’
‘That you knew him.’
‘Sort of. Meacham said they’ll try and whittle you down. We’s all missing something. His fingers, the tripod’s leg, me teeth, Lynne’s hair. I wonder what you’s missin’, Tony?’
I tried to divert attention away from this specific query.
‘It’s a complicated area of law. We need the guidance of my boss, Mr Pennington. That is, Edgar, if you want to be helped.’
‘If yer reckon I do, Tony, then yeah, I need yer help.’
‘Then I’ll help.’
My mother gripped her brother’s hands. An announcement came over the loudspeakers. Lynne looked around the visiting section. The bars on the windows, the cameras behind their dark domes in the ceiling. So too did Edgar. So did I. It was new to us all.
They continued to talk for another half an hour. Edgar made her a brew in a styrofoam cup. She had brought him lollies. He stuffed a handful into his mouth, then, so as not to appear greedy, offered us some. We declined. She pulled out some photographs of me as a child. There was nothing under the age of two. And was that her little Jack Russell terrier in the background? Yes, yes, it was. She slipped the photos back into her handbag. How he wished he could have rummaged amongst all the little things she kept in that bag. She took out some lip salve and applied it. She saw him watching her, then gave it to him.
‘It must be terrible for you here.’
‘It ain’t too bad. Yer get used to it.’
‘I had to sell the house at Uranquinty. There wasn’t much standing. Dungay bought it.’
Edgar shrugged.
‘What’s a house?’
He wondered about the wallaby hide he had left over the window in the lounge room, which must have gone straight to the tip in the first load.
I went through the correct procedure to book a legal visit in a month’s time. I would need to interview him again. When we left we shook hands again formally. He thanked us for coming, as if it had been a pleasant afternoon.
‘See you in court, Edgar,’ she said.
‘I hope I won’t have to go to court again. I feeled real bad there.’
‘I know,’ she said, ‘it’s no picnic.’
His grimace was a smile. Had he understood anything I’d said? He clutched the lip salve in his hand.
On the way back inside, the screws confiscated his lollies. Food had to be consumed within the visiting section. No consumables could be brought back into the gaol. If he wanted lollies he could purchase them on the buy-up like everybody else. They made him strip, then dress again in his prison greens.
Back in their cell Fletcher wanted to know all about Edgar’s visitor, but Edgar would not tell him. He feigned forgetfulness, which infuriated Fletcher beyond temperance. Edgar felt that if he spoke he would blubber, his heart was raw and breaking and blossoming all at once. There were too many emotions at work in him. Fletcher changed tactics. He tried to draw Edgar into his conspiracy.
‘Look what I found, Ed, out in the sterile zone, I found them when I was mowing. I’m getting darned sick of them swooping me. How about we boil them up in your jug and add them to our dinner?’
In his hand Fletcher held out three speckled plover’s eggs, the colour of stones. Edgar stared at them, then he snatched them out of Fletcher’s hand and flung them against the wall.
Legal papers soon arrived. They burned with menace on the desk. Fletcher refused to read them for him. He was still cranky about the eggs.
More than anything Edgar was terrified of the prospect of freedom. Where would he live? What would he do? Edgar knew of men who had mutilated themselves so as to avoid being released. Fletcher, relenting, told him he was mad to even think about such things.
‘A thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is Past.’
‘You said this was Hell.’
‘Did I? Well, yes, there’s that, but once it’s over, liberty, that sweetest fruit…’
They had grown used to each other. They were necessary torment. Edgar looked at Fletcher and knew that the priest had no idea what was going on in his mind. He was thinking more and more that he should kill Fletcher while he slept. He could tip a jug of boiling water over him, and stab him to death with a Biro. It might not kill him outright, but it would sure be fun. Would a man who was not fit to stand trial think such thoughts? Was this what they meant by rehabilitation? Being unfit to plead and knowing he was unfit to plead were two different things. If he was unfit to plead at the time of his trial, all those years ago, what was he now? And if he now knew that he was unfit, was that knowledge he should rightly keep to himself?
So he did. He kept Meacham’s silence. Before the cold and sleet began again to dance about the compound, and frost began to ice the weeds, the legal papers had burst into flower and the appeal hearing was announced. Fletcher soured
at the prospect that Edgar might even be released before him. It was fine for him to preach about freedom, but he resented that Edgar might be favoured sooner than he—an educated man, especially considering Edgar’s intellect.
‘You’re not ready for society, Ed. You wouldn’t cope.’
Edgar knew he had read the legal papers. He stopped reading aloud from his ten books. He stopped embellishing his nightly confessions. He held his words back as if withholding some reward of companionship.
‘And society’s not ready for you.’
‘Do yer think I fuckin’ care about that sick shit yer get orf on?’ Edgar yelled suddenly.
There was a pause. The shower dripped.
‘Ed,’ said Fletcher, shocked, ‘after all I’ve done for you.’
‘Fuckyer, Father priest.’
‘You threw my eggs at the wall.’
Edgar was suddenly racked with anger. Fury quickly filled their too-small confines. The lowest common denominator. He seized Fletcher by the hair and tossed him out of the bottom bunk onto the floor. The older man screamed.
‘Time fer a change, priest, I reckon,’ he snarled, claiming the bed for himself. He tossed Fletcher’s bedclothes onto the floor, then remade his own bed there. Fletcher stood cowering in the shower cubicle.
‘But that’s my bed, Ed. I can’t sleep up there.’
‘So don’t sleep.’
Edgar was so sickened by Fletcher’s wheedling fear that he turned the shower on and soaked him to the skin.
‘Don’t hurt me.’
Edgar switched the television on and picked the set up and held it above his head. This is easy, he thought. Killing is easy. They stared at each other. The water cascading over Fletcher’s face to the pool at his feet. Edgar with the TV blaring above his head. Neither of them was certain how long the lead was. There was a word they used in the Main to describe people like Fletcher, and Edgar used it now. He said:
‘Putrid.’
Then he spun around and tossed the television back on the bench, where it fizzed and popped and shit itself and went out. Fletcher quickly jumped out of the water. Turned off the taps.
‘You’re mad,’ said Fletcher, ‘you’re an imbecile, you’re not fit to be free, you don’t know anything.’
‘I know how the hanging bit fell off Hanging Rock.’
‘What?’
‘I know where you dump Sophie.’ Edgar stared at him.
Whatever else Fletcher thought remained unspoken.
Edgar asked the unit barber to give him a haircut. He was soothed by the coolness of the man’s fingers against his neck, folding his ears aside. The hum of shears. His caveman curls fell to the floor. He felt the coolness of the air on his neck. His life taking on new proportions.
‘I look real good,’ Edgar said, examining his reflection in the burnished metal.
‘No worries, Ed, it’s not fuckin’ brain surgery.’
‘Thanks. I don’t need brain surgery.’
‘All stand.’
Edgar stood. I had made several visits to coach him on court protocol and etiquette, and also to try and make some sense of his story.
Now the judge had returned after the lunch adjournment, and legal argument resumed. The gallery had been closed to the public. Edgar sat up straight. The perfunctory nature of the Crown case was noted. The police had not investigated the possibility that a knife other than Edgar’s may have been the murder weapon. Or indeed that Edgar’s story might have been true.
(‘Remember, Tony,’ said Pennington, ‘innocence is beside the point.’)
Edgar shuffled in the dock. Submissions were made that the original trial judge, who had passed away in the intervening years, had expressly ignored the good faith in which persistent requests for a second fitness hearing had been made. That had been, your Honour, because the matter of fitness or unfitness clearly fell beyond the adversarial parameters of a criminal trial. (Pennington cited legal precedents for this statement.) A position with which we disagree.
Yes, yes, thank you, Mr Pennington.
The judge then tried to define what the Law meant by good faith.
Pennington went on. Psychological testing, dredged from the court records, had placed Mr Hamilton’s communication skills at the approximate age of six and a half. Yet the trial judge had viewed him as deliberately mendacious. Further testing described Edgar as moderately intellectually disabled, hence his ability to live independently. His living skills were assessed as being commensurate with an age of about nine years and five months.
Back and forth the debate rallied. These various assessments discounted the defence of insanity according to the McNaughton Rules of 1843: Mr Hamilton clearly did not have a disease of the mind.
However the court would be reminded by Mr Pennington that at the time of his arrest Mr Hamilton had been living like a dog—he had even been found on all fours—is that the behaviour of someone who understands the nature and quality of their behaviour?
To each their own, Mr Pennington.
The Crown intervened: What were his living skills like now after all this time in gaol?
That is a hypothetical slur on the reputation of the Department, whose charter is to return people to society no worse than when they were incarcerated.
And how, pray tell, is that determined? Pennington wondered.
This is neither the time nor forum to discuss such issues, my learned friend.
‘I can write me name,’ Edgar piped up, but was silenced by a look from our bench.
‘Are you currently taking medication, Mr Hamilton?’
‘No fear. I don’t touch drugs.’
‘Have you been attending educational programs whilst in gaol?’
‘Yep.’
I produced as evidence certificates for reading and writing: The quick brown fox liked Ebgr Ham. His work record impressed the judge.
‘I see you are able to write a coherent sentence.’
‘Yep. I can write a letter. I got a CV.’
‘That’s good, Mr Hamilton. Very commendable.’
Mr Callow, representing the Crown, was perplexed as to why, after all this time, we had engaged a person of the stature of Mr Pennington to pursue the matter with such vigour? Mr Pennington’s reply, as the rest of his performance, was impeccable: injustice anywhere was intolerable in a humane society. And I saw my balls sink to the bottom of his pocket.
The discussion continued: His living skills were all very well, but the level at which he functioned in the community had no bearing on how he functioned in court. Unfitness was clearly the only reasonable conclusion that could now, in retrospect, be made. And if he had been unfit at the time of the crime, then where, pray tell, was the mens rea? In that event, if the court sees fit to find it so, Mr Hamilton should have been, and should now be regarded as a forensic patient. In which case most forensic patients might expect to be placed on a limiting term, so as to ascertain whether a reduced sentence is warranted. Indeed, given the time already served, a forensic patient charged with offences of a similar gravity as Mr Hamilton’s would have been discharged before now, pending fresh psychological assessment to determine his social adaptability, and indeed, any potential danger he may pose to the community. He would, at the least, have received psychological counselling; appropriate medication. Presumably there is no evidence of these activities because they did not happen. In any event his security classification would have been reduced by now—what was he still doing in maximum security?
The court ordered that such an assessment be made. The court also noted the support Mr Hamilton had received from his sister, is that correct? Yes, your Honour. She was thanked for bringing to the court’s attention the ongoing injustice of the situation. At the back of the room Lynne nodded.
‘Pursuant to the outcome of that assessment process, Mr Hamilton,’ said the judge, turning to Edgar, ‘it is possible that you should prepare yourself for release into the community. Do you understand?’
‘Yep. Yep,
I do.’
SIX
Edgar was released a few weeks later from Silverwater remand centre where he had been held for the time leading up to the hearing. He was discharged into his sister’s care. His presence was not required at court for the order to be made, and at midnight the screws said he could leave now or wait till morning.
‘Wait till morning,’ he replied, gripping his doona tightly.
He was still asleep when his door was opened and a voice said:
‘See you later, Ed.’
‘But I ain’t ready. I gotta—I gotta—’
‘You gotta get out of here. This cell’s needed.’
In reception, he was given his old clothes which had come down with him on the truck. He saw that they were rags. The father’s boots were stiff and white with age. So he finally left them there and walked out of gaol in his runners and his prison greens. The doona he left behind too—someone would make good use of it. In his pocket he had the standard one week’s dole money, plus the savings from his work in textiles when he had been in the Main (minus contributions made to victims’ compensation).
Outside in the sunshine Lynne and I stood under a gum tree, leaves all about us on the footpath. Mum’s blouse was green, but somehow it was a colour Edgar had not seen for a long time, unless it was the cut of the cloth. Inside her clothes she was as frail as a stick. She kissed him on the cheek. He could not remember anyone doing that before. When he glanced at her out of the corner of his eye, he saw again the resemblance to his mother, the same stoop to her shoulders, the way she held her hands. It wasn’t really the mother, just her lingering shadow. He gave my suit a considered glance.
‘I left the doona.’
‘It must be pretty thin by now.’
Lynne had some new civilian clothes for him as they had arranged, jeans and a smart shirt, a pair of new boots. She hoped they weren’t too small. The Sydney weather was muggy, so he tied the jumper about his waist. He could not believe the noise and speed of the traffic along Silverwater Road. How fancy all the cars looked.
He waited for me to open the door for him. It wasn’t locked. He had lost the habit of opening doors. We hadn’t driven far. We needed petrol. I took him into a restroom at the service station to change. He jumped at the clarity of his reflection in the mirror. I was startled to see the great cicatrices on his chest. He changed quickly.