A Stolen Life

by Antonio Buti

  The Burnside and Bruce performance in this trial goes on.

  ‘When you went to Victor Harbor on the bus by yourself, did you initially think you were going down there for the May holidays?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Was it the case that you ended up staying on?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you know why you were staying on; did anyone tell you why you were staying on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Had you had a chance to talk to Mrs Davies about the fact that you were going to be there and staying on?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she say goodbye to you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you have a chance to say goodbye to her?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Can you remember how you felt about that, discovering that you were staying down there and you hadn’t said goodbye?’

  ‘Pretty sad.’

  Burnside is giving a masterclass in developing his narrative of the case, restricting Bruce to short answers that transform questions into statements of fact. The high-handed actions of the Aborigines Department and its officers are on show by the deftness of his questioning.

  Justice Gray makes notes. He has seen a list of those who will testify and is particularly aware of the expert witnesses. He hopes they will answer the ‘why’ questions he has, most of which revolve around Bruce’s state of mind at the varying stages of his development from infant to child to grown man. If His Honour wants more, he has the authority to ask the experts for it.

  ‘Did you have all the toys—the toys you had at the Davies’ place—did you have all your toys at Victor Harbor?’ Burnside asks.

  ‘No.’

  ‘What toys did you miss in particular?’

  ‘My bike and watches.’

  No need to dwell on it. A pause is all it needs. Just long enough for His Honour to appreciate the import of this answer. Burnside has already shown that Bruce had an ambivalent attitude to his foster mother. Build on the ambivalence. What did he miss: was it the warmth of family love? No. Toys!

  His Honour jots down another note and relates this passage of questions and answers to an earlier exchange.

  ‘Do you have any recollection of Mrs Davies telling you that you might be sent away if you didn’t behave better?’

  ‘I had been threatened on a few occasions.’

  ‘Can you remember any of those occasions now?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Could you tell His Honour, as best you can remember it, what you had done and the circumstances in which Mrs Davies made some kind of threat?’

  ‘Well, I was getting behind in my school work. I was getting disrupted at school, coming home late from school, so Mrs Davies threatened to send me away.’

  ‘Was that before or after you met your real mother?’

  ‘Before.’

  ‘Did it happen before you met your real mother—and you have nothing other than to believe that Mrs Davies is anything than your real mother—what did you understand that to mean?’

  ‘I had no idea.’

  ‘Are you able to remember how the threat of being sent away made you feel?’

  ‘Frightened.’

  ‘Did Mrs Davies say anything like that between the time you met your mother and the time you went down to Victor Harbor on the bus by yourself?’

  ‘Do not recall, no. Excuse, can I have a break?’ His Honour declared a ten-minute adjournment.

  Yes, Burnside has made his point well. He has established that Bruce was never truly family at the Davies house. Now he wants to show the court that the government’s actions had also made Bruce a fringe dweller to his biological family.

  Burnside asks, ‘How did you get along with Cyril?’

  ‘Not so good.’ Terse.

  ‘Was there a time when George came home and Cyril was swearing at you or shouting at you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Can you tell His Honour what you remember about that occasion please?’

  ‘George heard Cyril swearing at me, so George came up and hit Cyril and put him through the kitchen window.’

  ‘Do you remember your feelings when you saw George come in and defend you?’

  ‘I felt happy.’

  ‘Why was that?’

  ‘Because someone stood up for me.’

  George was family; he was Bruce’s biological brother. But Bruce never had the chance to develop that fraternal bond, which ought to be an intrinsic part of family life. When George intervened to stop Cyril harassing him, Bruce felt happy not because his big brother was there to protect him, but because ‘someone’ was there.

  Was he pathologically unable to feel affection for another? Unlikely, Justice Gray thought. Or did he feel unworthy of claiming fraternity with this family from whom he had been sundered without ever having the chance to develop kinship? Let’s wait to hear what the expert witnesses have to say, the judge elects. There is much more he wants to hear about from them. Why, for instance, does Bruce not recollect chewing his clothes, damaging his books or undergoing speech therapy? ‘Do you remember having a speech problem?’ Burnside had asked. ‘I didn’t think I had one.’

  Then this, immediately after Bruce told Burnside he got the strap for hiding in the park all night: ‘Some of the records we have obtained about your past show that on a number of occasions you had a limp, you were limping; there was no physical problem. Do you have any recollection of limping when you were a child?’

  ‘No, because I was good at sport.’ Terse.

  Justice Gray can speculate as to why Bruce has involuntarily shut some incidents out of his mind. However, he needs to hear it from the experts.

  Bruce is not enjoying his day in court, having to go back over a painful history. Not getting on with Cyril, feeling out of place with all his relatives, finding school more difficult at Victor Harbor than back at Prospect in Adelaide.

  ‘Which school did you go to?’

  ‘Victor Harbor.’

  ‘That’s the primary school?’

  ‘Primary school.’

  ‘How did you do at school at Victor Harbor? How were your results?’

  ‘Pretty poor.’

  ‘Did you find the work difficult or were you not trying?’

  ‘I found the work very hard.’

  ‘Did you find it harder than at Prospect?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did you get into any trouble at school?’

  ‘Not doing homework.’

  Justice Gray jots another note. School work too hard? Or not motivated? The young Tom Gray probably would have empathised with Bruce about the problematic relationship of school and enjoyment. But Justice Gray can see how their realities differed. Could a white, middle-class, privileged but bored student empathise with an underprivileged and similarly bored Aboriginal student? One had a future in which opportunities beckoned. The other? His Honour sees the answer on the witness stand. A government department had determined his future. As he looks at broken, emotionally battered Bruce, Thomas Gray, the man, can indulge the compassion he feels. As Justice Thomas Gray, presiding, he cannot. His duty is to discover the facts as they are adduced in testimony, apply the law to those facts and rule on them dispassionately. He keeps clear in his mind that it is Bruce, the plaintiff, who must show beyond reasonable doubt that the State of South Australia acted other than in good faith and according to the law as it was at that time. All it takes to be a good judge is wisdom, compassion and justness, he muses. That’s all!

  For Bruce, all this retelling of his life is tiring. He is relieved when Justice Gray calls a halt to proceedings. The court is adjourned to the next day, Friday 11 November. Counsel and solicitors chat among themselves after His Honour has left the courtroom. Richardson heads over to speak to Bruce but he is anxious to leave the witness stand and go out for a cigarette. She decides to let him be. After his calming smoke, Bruce joins the team for a debriefing. Burnside and O’Connor briefly explain to Bruce that it is necess
ary to retell his story and there will be much more of this. Bruce seems to understand though, as usual, he says little. His first day in court has drained him emotionally. It will not help to push him.

  On Friday morning, at ten o’clock, Burnside comes straight to the point.

  ‘What was it like living at your mother’s house the first time after you left the Davies’ house?’

  ‘Very different.’

  ‘What were the good bits?’

  ‘More relaxed.’

  Clearly, day two will not present the court with a more loquacious Bruce. This is fine with Burnside. He has chosen the questions that suit his narrative. Bruce, with his brief answers, the essence of which Burnside already knows, turns the questions into testimony. The mostly monosyllabic rejoinders do not add much more than affirmation of the points Burnside wants to make. They do have the virtue of brevity, which means that the court quickly learns that Bruce and Cyril did not get on, that Thora and Cyril often drank too much, that she got angry when she drank and that Cyril became violent. Not much of a home for a boy trying to find his place in the scheme of things. It may have been more relaxed, as Bruce describes it, but the inference is that there were few rules and even less order than at his foster home.

  ‘Did you try and hitchhike back to the Davies’ house?’ That question goes directly to the conflicting emotions of a deeply troubled boy trying to find his home.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘How far did you get?’

  Justice Gray watches the routine, knowing that the performance is more for the transcript than for his elucidation. He already knows from Burnside’s opening how this act of the drama unfolds: that a well-meaning police officer found Bruce and returned him to Thora. Therefore, he concentrates on Bruce on the witness stand. Watches how the questions affect his demeanour, tries to gauge the state of Bruce’s mind from his body language. That won’t give him the complete answer, only add another dimension. All these elements will help later when he has to assess not only whether Bruce has proved his case, but also whether, and to what extent, the State should compensate him.

  All the while, Burnside is getting closer to the denouement of his narrative. Just one more scene to present. Cue Bruce: he is answering questions about his wife, Veronica, and their children.

  ‘Do you feel close to her or not?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you feel close to your children?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do you feel close to anyone?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Are you able to tell His Honour what you’re like as a father to your children?’

  ‘I feel that I can’t be a father to my children because I haven’t got the skills.’

  Justice Gray wonders how well rehearsed this answer was before the performance. He does not doubt its sincerity but it is out of character for Bruce, relatively prolix compared to his earlier answers. Nevertheless, again Burnside has adduced a telling piece of testimony.

  ‘What sort of things do you do with them or have you done with them in the past as a father? Have you taken them on holidays or picnics?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did you ever play with them when they were little kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Have you ever hugged them or cuddled them when they were little kids?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Just haven’t felt close.’

  That’s it. Bruce’s story, which began on that Christmas Day back in 1957, is almost up to date. All that remains is to let the central character tell his audience what effect that narrative journey has had on his physical and emotional health.

  ‘Coming right up to date now, are you on medication?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What medication are you on?’

  ‘Heart tablets, Panadeine Forte, Valium and some antidepressant tablets.’

  ‘Do you see a doctor or counsellor or therapist on a regular basis?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Who is that?’

  ‘It depends on who is the doctor that is on.’

  ‘Is it the clinic down at Bairnsdale?’

  ‘The clinic, yes.’

  ‘Do you go regularly or just when things get bad?’

  ‘Regularly.’

  ‘How often is that?’

  ‘It could be a couple of times a month.’

  ‘You said that you are on Valium at the moment. How regularly do you take Valium?’

  ‘Quite a few a day.’

  ‘So every day?’

  ‘Every day, yes.’

  Burnside sits down. Bruce’s life story is up to date. And, as he intended, he has left an unstated question for Justice Gray to answer. Is this to be the last chapter of the narrative? If it is, then Bruce’s every day will be nothing more than survival made bearable by a few Valium. Gray cannot reverse the ravages that others have visited upon Bruce’s mental and physical health. All he can do is to declare culpable those who made the instrumental decisions. And he can assuage Bruce’s emotional pain by compensating him for the devastated life those decisions have forced him to endure. But only if Burnside has made his case. He has other witnesses standing by who he will call to add substance to the narrative. First, though, Bruce must face his major adversary. Stephen Walsh, for the State of South Australia, is ready to cross-examine.

  As Walsh readies his files and folders, Justice Gray has a moment for reflection. Today is Remembrance Day in Australia, a day on which the nation pauses for a moment at the symbolic eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month on which, in 1918, the ‘war to end all wars’ ended. It did not end them, of course. So on this day, at this time, people pause to pay silent respect to those men and women who sacrificed their lives in that war and the world conflicts that followed. Gray’s remembrance has drifted—not irrelevantly, he thinks—from that national commemoration to something personal. He is picturing the differences between his life as a boy and the life of Bruce. He recalls Bruce’s comment from the stand, ‘I was good at sport.’ As a boy he, too, liked sport, especially cricket. Nostalgically, he notes that Christmas is just around the corner and he is recalling how special were those Christmas Days of his boyhood when all his family would come together. Isn’t that, after all, what Remembrance Day reminds us of? Where, he wonders, will Bruce spend his Christmas Day?

  A noise, as Walsh taps his gathered files into a neat bundle and lets them fall with a slight slap onto the bar table, nudges Justice Gray from his reverie. But not fully. He lets a cricket metaphor, lurking from his childhood backyard matches, have its moment. Walsh has paced out his run-up. He turns, faces his apprehensive opponent, and runs in. The delivery is short-pitched and fast, and rears up at Bruce. A bouncer.

  ‘I want to take you to your bizarre report in 1990 of witnessing a stabbing at Pentridge Prison—that never happened!’

  Burnside had tried in advance to take the sting out of the attack he knew Walsh would launch. He asked Bruce during examination in chief why he had stuck with this lie until, only a couple of weeks before the trial, he admitted it to his legal team. All Bruce could answer was, ‘I don’t know.’

  Now, in cross-examination, Bruce cannot duck. This is going to be a torrid session, Justice Gray thinks.

  ‘You are aware that the question whether that incident occurred or did not occur, namely, whether you were there, might be important to this case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’re aware that if the incident occurred and you were present and it caused a psychological problem, that would have an impact on this case?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘On the other hand, if the incident did not occur, it would have a better effect for your case, are you aware of that?

  ‘Yes.’

  Bruce plays each delivery with a dead bat, ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ as required. Others, he lets go through to the keeper: ‘I don’t know.’

  Walsh continues his attack but Bruce has played himself in and
a breakthrough on this issue is not going to happen. Possibly, His Honour ponders, because he truly does not know why he lied. Therefore, Walsh decides to go round the wicket. A new angle of attack.

  ‘When you were talking to other Aboriginal peoples, when you were wandering around Australia after you had left the Meningie area, they would ask you which group you were with?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You would tell them that you were Ngarrindjeri?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You knew that your brothers and sisters were Ngarrindjeri?’ ‘No.’

  ‘You had spent time with your mother and your family, living with them at Victor Harbor, hadn’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You knew that they considered themselves Ngarrindjeri?’

  ‘I hadn’t heard that name.’

  ‘When did you say you first heard the name Ngarrindjeri?’

  ‘Probably my later years, in travelling around Australia.’

  ‘Approximately how old were you at that time?’

  ‘About eighteen or nineteen, twenty.’

  Walsh wants Bruce to admit that he knew he was a Ngarrindjeri man much earlier in his life and that he identifies with them. Bruce is sticking with the straight bat.

  ‘I want to be clear about this. You told His Honour that you went to live with Mother in Victor Harbor at the age of about ten or eleven; remember that?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You remained with Mother and Tom and George and some of the other children for about a year before you went off to Windana; you recall that?’