Working Class Boy (15 page)

My little escapes always seemed to be to the sea. The ocean calmed me down. Sometimes I would go to Semaphore beach jetty. It didn't matter which beach I was at; I would just sit and watch the fishermen and swim.

I used to jump off the end of the jetty into the water, it was great and I thought I was really brave doing it. But there were always reports of big sharks patrolling the beaches in Adelaide. I heard there had been an attack at Glenelg jetty, the same jetty that I regularly sat on. The story was that some guy was teaching kids how to jump off the jetty one day, and as he hit the water a great white came from nowhere and took him. Only half of him was found. I'm not sure if it was true or an urban myth. But when I heard about this I stopped jumping off the jetty and confined my water activities to the shallows. It seemed I didn't really want to die after all.

The temperature would regularly reach the one hundred mark during the Adelaide summer so getting out of Elizabeth to the sea was something I did as often as I could.

I didn't know it then, but my mum was living a few streets from the jetty and she used to go and sit there just like me and look out to sea. But I wouldn't find that out until much later. Maybe we were thinking about the same things. She might have
been wondering where I was and what I was doing, just like I always thought about her.

When the sun started to go down I would retrace my steps. The evening would always come too soon and I would sit on the train and stare out of the window as the clickety-clack of the train wheels replaced the crashing of the waves and the ocean disappeared from view, replaced by the red dirt of the northern suburbs of Adelaide. I would be planning my next escape. And thinking that next time I wouldn't go home. But I always did, and no one ever seemed to miss me or ask where I'd been. Which suited me just fine because it was my escape and I didn't want them to know how to find me in case I did decide to go and not come back.

In Elizabeth it was flat and hot and nothing ever seemed to change. We were still struggling to find food and Dad was still drinking way too much. I would sit on the front porch and look out across the paddock, to the horizon that was distorted by waves of heat rising off the dry ground. I watched and waited for any sign that Mum might be coming back to me.

O
ne day a car turned up outside the house. It looked like my mum in the front seat. My heart started to beat faster. ‘Please let it be her.'

Was she finally coming back to us? I didn't know the man driving. But that didn't matter.

They didn't come in. They just sat there in the car.

I couldn't wait any longer so I ran out the door to see if it was her but the car drove away before I could get to it.

‘Stop, come back. It's me, it's Jim,' I yelled at the car as it drove away.

I walked back to the house, feeling like I'd been deserted all over again.

A few weeks passed before I saw the car again. This time the door opened and Mum got out. I ran out and hugged her for ages. I didn't want to let go in case she left again.

Mum didn't come into the house. We spoke out in the street next to the car.

She didn't explain where she'd been, and she didn't explain why she had left. We were just happy to see her again. She had come home to save us from the hell we were living in.

‘How are ye?' she asked, as if she had only left us for the afternoon while she went shopping.

I lied and said, ‘We're great, we're all great.'

I didn't want her to feel bad. Surely she must have seen the state we were in? We were all skinny, anxious and on the verge of breaking down. The house was nothing like what Mum had left behind. The lawn was dead. The windows were dirty, which was a good thing, because you couldn't see through the ripped curtains to the misery inside. The flyscreens that once hung on the window frames now lay on the ground, ripped and broken up. I think that Mum didn't want to go inside because she didn't want to see the state we were living in. The place was a mess – not a fit place to raise kids. She knew and couldn't bring herself to face it.

She had left us here. This would weigh heavy on her heart for the rest of her life I think. We were angry but we never let her know it. Not directly anyway. I think that that anger came out in our behaviour later on. We weren't just a bunch of delinquents. We were delinquents with big problems that would stay with us until the day we died.

Then, after what seemed like a very short time, she said, ‘Well, I have to go now, but I'll come again in a week. If you're good, you can come and spend the night wi' me.'

She must have been talking to Dad by this point because he just sat in the house. If he didn't know she was coming over he would have run out and screamed at her and probably swung at the guy driving. But he didn't do anything so I'm sure he knew what was going on.

I watched her drive away, wondering if she really would come back. When the car was out of sight, I turned and walked back into the house.

I said to myself, ‘If she doesn't come back again, I don't care. I don't want to go with her anyway. I don't need her. I can look after myself. Dot can look after us all.' But I knew, deep down inside, that I did care and Dot couldn't look after us.

Inside, Dad was sitting by the window and I couldn't tell if he had been crying or not. All he seemed to do was cry and get drunk. When he was drunk enough to forget everything he would tell us things like, ‘We don't need her. We can get by just fine. We have each other and we're better off without her.'

Then he would cry some more and it would all start again. Soon after Mum left, he went out and didn't come back for a few days.

During the whole time Mum was gone, Dad still got up and went to work. It got harder for him but he still went. He was in the depths of depression by then and it must have been very hard for him to get out of bed at all, but every day up he got and out the door he went. But just like when Mum was there, he never came home until he had drunk enough to drown the demons that were haunting him more and more. He had a lot of trouble sleeping and I don't think he really slept much at all unless he passed out.

The next week was very confusing for us. We hardly saw Dad, and when we did he was angry. None of us had much to eat at all. On top of that we were wondering if Mum would really be coming back. While Dad was out, we talked about going to stay with her. I remember the bigger kids saying they didn't want to go. I think they were worried what Dad would think or do. But I knew that deep down I just wanted to be with her, no matter what she had done to us. So I prayed she would come back again like she promised.

The following weekend she turned up. It seemed like it was all organised. Dad had said to us earlier, ‘Ye mother is coming again and you can go and spend the night wi' her if ye like.'

He didn't sound that happy about it. I think he wanted us all to say, ‘No, Dad, we want to stay here with you. We don't need her.'

But we didn't.

When she got there I jumped in the car without a second thought. Mum was in the front seat of the car and a strange bloke we didn't know was driving. When I say strange, I mean weird. I can't remember his name or what he looked like; he wasn't important to us at this point. He didn't say a lot. So it was a very quiet drive. I got the feeling he didn't really want us around. This seemed to bother my mum so the trip wasn't the best.

‘Where are we going, Mum?' I asked.

‘We're goin' tae oor hoose. We live near Glenelg beach.'

I couldn't believe it. When she said we were nearly at her house I worked out that I almost walked past it on my way to the beach when I ran away from Elizabeth. I felt like I must have known where she was, but I couldn't have. If I had, I would have waited at her door until she came out.

We got to the house and it was nice enough – clean and not falling apart so it had it all over where we lived. It wasn't a family house. We were told not to touch anything. But we were kids so we started running around everywhere checking everything out and, of course, touching everything. I remember going outside. I couldn't believe what I saw. There was a whole section of the backyard that was like a little battlefield. There were tanks and soldiers all placed strategically as though they were mid battle. I immediately started playing with them but whatever his name was came out and stopped me. I was not allowed to touch them unless he was there, and he looked pissed off that I had moved things around. He carefully put every piece back exactly where it had been. Then he showed me how it all worked. It looked like little explosions had gone off and all sorts of stuff. It was great. But I did think it was very weird that a grown man played with kids' toys.

He never really spoke to us that much and Mum was not very comfortable. I'm not sure what was going on between them. They didn't seem to like each other a lot. Was that what happened to people when they lived together? Maybe. I remembered she didn't like Dad much when they were together either. But it was great to see her anyway.

The sleepover wasn't a complete success. I got the feeling that we wouldn't be going to stay again. He didn't look happy about a bunch of wild kids running around his house. Mum didn't look happy with him.

Next weekend came and Mum didn't come back; the same the next and the next. We were alone again.

Now we were just trying to keep our heads above water, week to week, as Dad went even further downhill. But then, two or three months after the sleepover, Mum turned up again. This time the guy with the soldiers was gone and in his place was the strangest-looking man we had ever seen. Being Scottish and from Glasgow, most of the men we had met were reasonably short, at least under six feet. But this guy must have been nearly seven foot tall. To us kids he looked like a giant. But he had a kind face and he spoke to us and smiled.

Dad made jokes about him when they left. ‘Did ye see him? He was a big streak o' nothin',' he said. ‘What aboot the size of that nose, Jesus it was big. He looked stupit.'

But something about the guy felt good. We had to agree with Dad just to make him feel better. But even Mum seemed calm around this guy, which was amazing. His name was Reginald Victor Barnes and he was to be an angel in my life.

* * *

Next time Mum came to see us she said, ‘You're all comin' tae spend the weekend wi' me.'

‘I'm no goin' anywhere. I'm stayin' wi' ma dad.'

‘Aw, come on, John, it'll be nice for the weans tae spend a wee bit o' time wi' their mother.'

‘I'm no goin' anywhere. I don't need tae spend time wi' you. You left us. We don't need you. We're doin' just fine without ye.'

‘The wee ones need me, John.'

‘You should've thought o' that before you walked oot on us.'

‘I had tae go, son. Don't be angry wi' me.'

‘Well, I don't have tae go. And no one can make me. If they want tae go that's their choice, but I'll never go anywhere wi' you again.'

She got no argument from the rest of us. We needed to get away even if it was just for a little break.

We got to their place, a little fibro three-bedroom house. It wasn't big but it looked like a palace to us. Looking back, I think that they put the whole house together in a hurry so they could save us, grabbing pieces from wherever they could get them – borrowed and bought from second-hand places. The plates weren't all matching or perfect. They had chips on the edges and a different pattern on every piece. The cutlery was the same, a mismatch of pieces thrown together to make up a set. But they were still placed on the table with love and care, which made me feel great. The rooms were small but clean and fresh smelling, like they had been scrubbed the day before we came. There were pieces of wallpaper peeling off the walls in the corners, as if they had been slapped up in a hurry to cover something up. Lino had been freshly laid in the kitchen and was cool on my feet as I walked across it. There were separate beds for each of us and they had clean sheets and nice pillows.

From the moment I got there I didn't want to have to go back to Elizabeth again. This was like being on a holiday. Everything
worked, the toilet flushed and there was plenty of toilet paper. They had a television and the electricity had not been cut off. There was a refrigerator that worked and it was full of fresh food and cold milk. Soft fresh bread that we didn't have to cut the mouldy bits off, and real butter, I loved butter. I could spread it as thick as I wanted without having to worry that it would run out.

After dinner Reg cleaned up and set the table for breakfast. I couldn't believe it – we had just finished eating and here we were, all ready to eat again whenever we wanted to.

Before bed Reg took me into the kitchen and said, ‘I'll show you a secret. This is my favourite meal.'

And he picked up the cereal. Reg liked Wheaties. They seemed very Australian to me. They were dry and bland but I was happy to eat whatever he offered me. He proceeded to pour out some for us both and we sat in silence and ate. Neither of us saying a word. Then he got up and he washed the dishes.

‘Come on Jim,' he said. ‘You've got to dry them, then it's time for bed.'

I dried the two bowls, said goodnight and went to bed. I wasn't scared like I normally was, but I left the light on just in case, and climbed into bed. The pyjamas Mum had given me to wear smelled of soap powder and sunlight and felt soft against my skin. I climbed into bed to find sheets that were almost starched feeling. Crisp and cool, they sort of crackled as I pulled them up to my neck. I had been without sheets for so long that I couldn't wipe the smile from my face as I lay wrapped in sundrenched white cotton. I played with the corners of the sheets, rubbing them against my hands just to check that they were still there as I slowly drifted off to sleep. It felt like the first time I could sleep without worrying about what would be waiting when I woke up for a long time.

I woke up in the morning feeling happy and went out to the kitchen, and there was Reg, up and dressed and ready to
give us breakfast. He was right – the cereal did taste better the night before when the house was quiet and still, but it still tasted fantastic. This was how the families in those houses I used to walk past and dream about lived, I was sure. Did we really have to go back and live like we lived before? I couldn't think about it. Dad had told us he would die without us but if we went back we would die too.

Before the weekend finished, Mum said to us, ‘You kids would be better off stayin' wi' us.'

I know now we were never going back from the moment we left Dad.

Mum and Reg lived in Wingfield. It was not one of the prettiest places in Adelaide but it was just far enough away from Elizabeth to make me feel safe. It was almost where we had lived when we first came to Australia. I could walk to where the old Finsbury Hostel had been. There were no housing trust houses in the street; there were none anywhere to be seen. Everywhere you looked in Elizabeth looked the same. The same colour bricks, the same houses all sitting in rows. But not around here. Every house looked different. We forgot about where we came from for a little while. Wingfield was different from Elizabeth. The gutters weren't concreted and there were no footpaths outside the house. I felt like I was out in the country. There was a strange smell in the air but I didn't really think about it. Later on I would find out what that smell was but not until the shine had come off our new lives.

Mum cleaned us up and washed our clothes and we did things that seemed to be normal. We played games and laughed. We didn't see any booze around the house at all, which was very
strange to us, but it made me feel safer. Things were calm; I didn't feel any tension in the house at all. This was something that we weren't used to. It felt strange but at the same time it felt good.

Mum was still working as a nurse's aide at Hillcrest Mental Hospital. She'd been there since before she left us, which makes me realise that Dad wasn't looking for her very hard or he would have found her.