At the State Library, it was much the same story. Simone was directed to the electoral rolls and nearly went blind scanning the columns of various electorates where Alice might have lived. Again, zip. Alice – and the children – vanish from Perth, just as Baxter had indicated. In the telephone directories, she found sixteen Moncurs spread throughout Australia and made a number of long-distance calls. Again, no luck and no leads.
What happened to the house, she wondered? The old Subiaco property, owned by the Baileys, was Baxter’s marital home. He’d not said much about it. Did it pass on to relatives or had someone from outside the family bought it? Simone sweet-talked Jeff into using his legal resources to carry out searches at the Land Titles Office. The results were interesting. Alice’s father died in 1920. He left his wife a life interest in the house. Joan Bailey died in 1934 and the house was transferred to Eveline Bailey, who, Simone presumed, was related to John. Neither Alice nor her siblings received a share. Eveline died after the war and Hexbury Road fell into the hands of the present owners, Robert and Helen Grafton. She located their phone number and arranged a visit.
There was a For Sale sign on the verge when she pulled up. The house looked as impressive as Baxter described it. She wondered what it was worth, and made a mental note of the agent’s name.
Bob Grafton was in the front garden, clipping dead buds from the roses. ‘Sorry, can’t help,’ he said, when she explained her mission. ‘But old Mrs Griffiths across the road has lived there all her life.’
Why hadn’t it occurred to her? There was bound to be a neighbour who kept an eye on the street. The tip-off proved a godsend. Gwen Griffiths ushered her into the lounge room and insisted on making tea. Simone nibbled on a Milk Arrowroot biscuit as Gwen cast her mind back to the decade after the First World War. At number 32 – the Baileys’ residence – there were considerable ‘goings-on’.
Simone’s ears flapped, as Gwen described Baxter’s indiscretions and his subsequent disgrace.
‘He was taken away and that’s the last we ever saw of him.’
‘What about Alice and the children?’
‘They went to Melbourne to join Grace. She moved there with her husband – that artist fellow. I don’t remember his name.’
Jim Townsend. Grace had defied her father and married ‘that artist fellow’. Where had they lived in Melbourne? Townsend was quite a common name. She would have her work cut out but the search had narrowed. Her quandary, however, was what to say to Baxter.
They met, as usual, on a Thursday. Simone could see he was nervous. Perhaps he suspected she’d been up to no good. But before she could figure out whether to use her new knowledge, Baxter took the initiative.
‘Miss Passeri, there’s something I want to talk about.’
Between sessions, Baxter’s ruminations ranged back and forth over old territory. Since Jennie’s death he felt disinclined to share his past. Jennie knew the full story and never turned her back on him in spite of what had happened. With her passing, he lacked someone he could trust. Until now. Simone breached his armour. She listened attentively and he did not feel judged, at least not yet. More than that, she stirred in him the desire to cleanse himself. To purge the infestation that corrupted his heart and stifled his breathing. I always see the clouds not the sky, he thought. I’m old and I’m tired and I don’t want to depart like this.
She was looking at him gravely, as if she already knew the importance of what he was about to tell her.
‘They put me in Graylands.’ As he spoke, Baxter choked, and wiped his face with the back of his hand.
‘Are you sure you want to talk about this?’
‘Yes, I have to.’
He told her the background. After his big win on the Cup, he used most of his money to invest in some kind of get-rich scheme. He did not tell Alice. ‘I wanted to surprise her. Show her how clever I was, setting us up for the future.’
For a couple of years it went well. On paper his investment looked good. Then, more contributions were needed. When he queried the demand he was shown some sort of agreement he’d signed. His fellow investors grew testy after he prevaricated. A man turned up on the doorstep while he was at work. Alice was frightened. He lied to her. ‘A misunderstanding,’ he said. A few days later, the man accosted him at the racetrack. In no uncertain terms he was told there would be trouble if the contributions were further delayed. Panic set in. He didn’t have the cash but could gain access to funds through his firm.
‘I thought it wouldn’t be noticed and I could replace it.’
He was lucky. Audit procedures at Wentworths were flimsy. Though he spent much of his time in fear of a summons to the manager’s office, none came. But when the call arrived for another sizable contribution to the scheme, he was too scared to dip into the firm accounts. Once was enough. A second shot would be foolhardy. He agonised for weeks, expecting at any moment a visit from the standover merchant.
‘I was going crazy. Alice was pregnant again. Her father had died and everyone was all over the place.’
‘You were over a barrel and you couldn’t tell anyone?’
‘That’s about it.’ He looked at Simone. ‘And then I dug myself a deeper hole.’
He helped with the paper work over John Bailey’s estate. When he ascertained that Alice would not get a future share in Hexbury Road, it deeply disturbed him. His father-in-law, who adored his daughters in life, was punitive towards them in death. It made no sense, and he speculated Bailey never recovered from Tom’s death in the war. Baxter rationalised that an opportunity to right a wrong had landed in his lap. An opportunity that would never have been contemplated if his financial difficulties were less acute.
‘I borrowed money against the property.’
‘How did you manage to do that?’
‘By forging some signatures. Young John and I were executors to the will. He was struggling down on the farm and left the paperwork to me. The bank never questioned anything. The money came through and I diverted it.’
‘So Hexbury Road was mortgaged?’
‘Exactly. And no one was the wiser - until Alice found out.’
‘When was that?’
‘Around the time Kenny was born. Around 1924.’
He described the furore that followed. Alice was mortified. She’d intercepted a letter from the bank. A payment was overdue. When she confronted Baxter, he confessed. His investment was worthless. He’d kept up the mortgage instalments from his salary but his flutters on the horses continued. After one bad Saturday he was broke. Hence, the overdue payment.
‘I could have put it right without any fuss but Alice went off her trolley. She told Aunty Eve and the next thing John came up from the farm. They ran about like chooks without heads.’
He cracked under the pressure. ‘Copped my first blackout.’ A doctor examined him and thought it might be overwork. ‘He wanted me to take a holiday.’ Baxter laughed bitterly. ‘A holiday, at that time.’
Instead of a holiday, he drank heavily. Alice moved into another room. She barely spoke to him, ashamed and angry that behind her back he’d committed such follies. ‘I’m married to a criminal,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to see you.’
For a few months they skirted around one another in the house. He came home when she and the children were in bed. Eve also avoided him. At work, things deteriorated. His drinking left him with severe headaches. Eventually, his manager spoke with him. He was given an ultimatum. Get off the bottle or get out. When his old adversary, the head bookkeeper, made some wisecrack about his gambling, Baxter lost the plot. He slugged Palmer and broke his nose.
‘You did a Jack Dempsey?’ Simone arched an eyebrow.
‘Something like that. Except I blacked out afterwards. We were both on the floor, Joey and me.’
‘What happened then?’
‘I was told later they called an ambulance and took me to Royal Perth. But when I came around I lashed out at everyone and tried to get away. Then I blacked out a
gain and woke up in Graylands.’
‘At the Mental Hospital?’
‘You’re not wrong. And I was kept there for eight years.’
Simone felt her stomach churn as she digested these details. As a social worker, she knew something about mental health but had no idea incarceration could happen in the way just described. Alice, who in normal circumstances, would have leapt to her husband’s support, was in shock. Already estranged from Baxter within the house, her worst fears were confirmed. He was not only an embezzler and a liar but a streak of violence lay below his suave veneer. And, from the way he behaved - losing his temper, punching everyone and shouting obscenities - he might have a trace of madness. Hadn’t his own father caused a lot of grief? Perhaps some aberration was inherited? Under pressure from her family, she signed papers and had Baxter committed as an involuntary patient.
Given the era, Simone could almost believe how the dice were loaded against him. But surely, surely, once he came to his senses, once they gave him some breathing space and carried out their assessments, there would be no grounds to detain him? Alas, it did not pan out that way.
Baxter maintained he never really knew why he was kept in for so long. ‘They said I was a risk,’ he told her, when she asked about his treatment. ‘There was always some doctor in a white coat doing tests and all that but I never knew what they thought was wrong with me.’ He did not describe the ‘all that’ but she immediately assumed it referred to ECT, the dreaded electric-convulsive treatment. She wondered whether any documents existed.
He told her the blackouts recurred. Without warning, he would faint. Epilepsy was mentioned but the doctors disagreed among themselves. He tried to talk to them but they brushed him off or their explanations went over his head, leaving him even more muddled and miserable. On occasions, he was allowed visitors but Jennie and Ann were the only ones who came. He heard Alice and the kids were in Melbourne and that Jennie had written but never received an answer. After his release, he thought about going over but did not have the strength.
‘I was a mess. Ann passed away and Jennie was in the country. She took me down there and I stayed, before and after the war.’
Years later, Jennie received a brief letter from Jim Townsend. Grace was dead. There was no mention of Alice.
‘So you let sleeping dogs lie?’
He nodded. ‘It seemed best.’
‘And what about your kids? Do you think about them?’
Stupid question. Simone rebuked herself, as the words came out. Of course he thinks about them. Any father would. His little girl – young Peggy – was around four or five and the boy just a toddler. And Alice had recently given birth to Kenny when all hell broke loose.
‘Would you help me find them? Before I kick the bucket.’
10
June decided to stay with Claire. ‘I’m finished with men,’ was all she would say. For the time being, Ross could remain in the house despite pressure from her father to ‘claim her rights’. Martin Preston put money into Mangler Avenue. It was a gift to both of them at the time but, now they were separated, the storyline changed. It was meant only for June.
‘He knows a lawyer,’ June told him, ‘and thinks I should force you to sell up.’
They were now talking. It was a fragile peace, with eggshells beneath their feet but Ross was happy for the progress. Of the men she despised or distrusted, he was well down the list, a peg or two below her supervisor, her father and her younger brother. Her wrath with the professor had not abated but, in dropping out, she removed herself from the daily conflagrations on campus. On the other hand, the issues that lay dormant with her family resurfaced. Ross suspected psychodrama was the catalyst. She would not talk to him in detail but said she was ‘working on it’ with someone. In the meantime, she’d secured a job in a bookstore. There was no mention of the future.
The future? Though there were moments he yearned for June, he found perverse pleasure in his solitary confinement, as he described the mosquito net hideout under the grapevine. There were worse things than being alone. He turned to his books, supplementing his old favourites – the likes of Hemingway, Steinbeck and Dos Passos - with Camus, Malraux, Sartre and Wilson, especially Colin Wilson. The Europeans rather than the Americans suited his prevailing mood. No longer did he hanker for the snows of Kilimanjaro or to fish the Caribbean. In his mind, he retreated from the bright sunlight of outdoor adventure to the shadowed world of the disenchanted, aligning himself with the chain-smoking intellectuals who met in the cafes of Madrid and Paris and London, and dissected the human condition in all its futility. He seized on Wilson’s The Outsider, identifying with a species of man not at home in the world, and dismissive of contemporary values. That could be me, he thought. Everywhere I look I see delusion. A sleeping society, its citizens going through the motions, bogged down in the heavy soil of their conditioning, stuck in the twin grooves of respectability and materialism, and immune to the fate of the dispossessed and the starving. He vowed he would never embrace that kind of society and took solace in Wilson’s conclusion the outsider was not a freak but simply a more sensitive version of the human animal. This resonated, offering Ross a bittersweet gratification, and he began to look forward to his next session with Simone.
She stood in front of the bedroom mirror. What would she wear? Her appointment was at eleven. They had arranged to meet in a Cottesloe beer garden. Ross suggested the venue. There was space to talk in private. They could enjoy a beer as they talked. She wasn’t sure about the beer. After lunch she had a meeting at the Institute to discuss her project.
She decided on the green skirt and the plain top. The plain showed off her body better than stripes. It seemed apt. Maybe it’s my eyes, she thought. Some optical trick. She removed the top and scrunched up her face. Why on earth did she want to show off her body? Bloody hell, she was meeting a client – well, a quasi-client. You don’t want to appear alluring. She twisted and looked down at her backside. Oh yeah? Be honest, at least with yourself. You love being alluring. She listened to the familiar voice and put the top back on. No make-up, though. No need to go that far.
As she came through the arch leading into the beer garden, she had second thoughts. What if he thinks I’m on the make? It’s not a good look, especially in his situation. Poor Ross, poor vulnerable Ross, forced into celibacy by an absent wife and undoubtedly ready to be enticed from under his security blanket. Perhaps he’ll see me and think his day is made. Despite being dressed to thrill, I’ll have to be clear. Set some boundaries. After all, I have Jeff to think about, not that he’s such a big deal in my life but he is Ross’s brother. Otherwise, it could get complicated. Very complicated.
He was nursing a beer when she walked up. Shirt open at the front, two buttons anyway.
‘Hi Simone, like something to drink?’
He seemed breezy. What were they in for?
‘Hello Ross.’
There was cause for celebration. Australia had a new national anthem.
‘Do you know the words?’
‘Australians all let us rejoice…’ she trilled, loud and off-key.
‘For we are young and free.’ Ross put on a bad falsetto.
They concurred Waltzing Matilda would have been their choice.
‘Let’s drink to Gough anyway. No more God saving our precious Queen.’
They clinked glasses and skolled their schooners. Within a couple of years, they concluded, Australia will have a proper flag and become a Republic.
The cold beer struck the pit of her stomach, and she put down her glass.
‘Tell me about you and June.’
Ross launched into an update of events. Once again, his way of putting things made her grin.
As she listened to his story, her mind turned over, dissecting what she heard and recalling her own tribulations. Ross and June. Another ‘normal’ couple. Together five years, married less than two and now the shit’s hit the fan. Low-level tensions escalating into arguments. Argume
nts dissipating into stand-offs. Stand-offs growing into major frustrations that can’t be communicated or heard. Insufferable confusion about what to do, who to blame - him or her or could it possibly be me? Turmoil on the outside and within. Separation, with the dreaded divorce staring you in the face. Flooded by unanswerable questions, especially questions about the kids. What happens to the kids? Thankfully, there are none in this case. That’s a relief. One less hassle. Just the property. Ah, the property! How will they handle that, the sugary nest at Mangler Avenue? The nest they created together and paid a deposit towards, and secured a mortgage and got their First Home Owner’s Savings Grant, a nice drop of government largesse which began in the Age of Menzies not under the reign of the Emperor, if her memory served her well. Yes, that sizable FHOSG, processed and delivered by the very department that employs Ross. He passed over the file on this one, she assumed. Conflict of interest and all that.
Yes, she thought, I don’t know what they’ll do about the property. It will be June who will start thinking about it first. She’s bunked up at Claire’s while hubby enjoys the run of the house. He won’t be disturbed easily from under his grapevine. If he could be roused, he might want to chat with his lawyer friend. Not his brother – Jeff’s commercial – but his mate, Ben. Ross mentioned that good old Ben is doing his articles, soon to become a family lawyer. Ben would know – even if Ross doesn’t - you can’t just rock up to the court and piously declare your marriage has irretrievably broken down and, hey presto, you’ll come away with a parchment signifying you are single again. This was Perth, 1974, not Las Vegas. Not a casino in sight. God love us, we don’t even have pokies. Perth people are pristine and remote from those temptations. Ben can counsel his mate on what it takes to get divorced, the not-so-subtle criteria like desertion and adultery and cruelty. But Ben will also have his eye on the federal scene. The corridors of Parliament House in Canberra, where Lionel Murphy is about to take the fault out of divorce. A long overdue reform, the government says. Soon everyone can uncouple at the drop of a safety pin. Sin and be damned - the gates are open. Wedding veils will be burnt and vows abandoned. The bishops are up in arms. Viva Oz Vegas!
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