The Blooming Of Alison Brennan

by Kath Engebretson

  ‘Every family’s got secrets, Alison. Anyway, give people credit. Sometimes they’re more accepting and understanding that you expect them to be.’

  Chapter 24

  Harry (Henryk Stanley)

  Saturday, 16 April

  They’ll come for me soon. I’m ready. I know what I’m going to do.

  I’d gone back to the house. Bernie and Alison had gone, and I didn’t know where they were. I could find out, but there was no point now. I wasn’t going to be around long enough.

  Sitting in the kitchen, I waited. I would know when they were there.

  In the end, Bernie and I didn’t make much of a go of it. The only good thing was Alison. When she was born, I thought I’d start again. I gave up the grog. I was wild and stupid before that, getting hauled into the cop shop for fighting, being drunk and disorderly — you name it.

  I was never much of a provider. We lived on Bernie’s money, and the old Judge owned the house. Sure, I could mend things, lift things, I was strong, but I never learnt to make furniture like the old man. I was a disappointment. A different kind of son might have saved him, given him something to hope for. Not me.

  I remembered being at school for a while, trying to learn to read, but I couldn’t get it. Got just enough now to get my licence and put my bets on. We moved around too much anyway. Always some camp in the bush with other ‘dagos’, as they called us, logging, building dams, always freezing and wet.

  Dad picked up a Polish woman in one of the camps. That’s where I was born. She left when I was a baby. I had a sort of dim memory of her bending over a cot, saying something in Polish. Touching my cheek. Then she was gone, the hut empty. From there it was just the old man and me.

  He used to belt me, especially when he was drunk. I was always scared when he went to the tavern. I use to pretend to be asleep when he got home, but he would drag me from bed, yelling about something I’d done or hadn’t done. He was crazy. He’d scream at me in Polish. ‘Is this what I lived through the war for? To be stuck with a retarded kid.’ Then he’d hit me across the skull, and my head would start with the ringing noise. The only thing I could do was run out into the cold and hide until he sobered up.

  It was better when we came to Melbourne and had the furniture business. He was making money, and customers respected him. We lived well then, and he didn’t get angry so often. Anyway, I wasn’t scared of him anymore. I was bigger and stronger than him. He got drunk less, but when he did, he just sat in a corner with his old book of poems and read it softly to himself. I knew he wrote the poems in Poland during the war, but that was all I knew.

  I left when the business went broke. I took labouring jobs, and when I got some money together I bought a truck and a lawnmower and went gardening. That was when the Judge took me on for that big garden of his, and I met Bernie and I felt sorry for her. I took her away. She didn’t need much persuading. Bernie needed someone to help her, but in the end I wasn’t up to it. She needed more than I could give her.

  Not Allie though. She was something special. She was beautiful and smart, and she deserved better than the mess Bernie and me made. I had decided to get out of her life now, to give her a chance.

  The stupid thing was that I didn’t go there to kill the old boy. Just like the other times — I just wanted to make sure he was okay. I’d known for a few months that he was living rough, and I wanted to help him. But he picked a fight, told me to piss off, that he didn’t need me. That night it was worse. He was raving, but the funny thing was he wasn’t drunk. But the abuse!

  It was my fault my mother had left, my fault I was a retard, my fault he was stuck here and hadn’t been able to go back to Poland. He started swinging that bloody mallet, and I didn’t know, all the years of beltings came back, and I was hot, hot, angry, saw red in front of my eyes. I wanted to kill him there and then. I grabbed the mallet and swung it once, twice, three or four times. His head smashed like a pumpkin.

  Then I realised what I’d done. I was pretty sure no one had seen me. It was early hours, well after midnight. I didn’t know what to do, so I ran. I dumped the mallet in the river. Never went home. I had been sleeping rough like the old boy.

  But now it was time. So there I was, and I was ready.

  I’d cleared a path to the front door and I was standing there waiting.

  First to appear was a big bloke in a suit, a small, blonde woman, and three police in uniforms.

  They didn’t need all those coppers, I thought. I was going to go with them. They would get a confession. I wasn’t scared of jail.

  But there was one thing I had to do first …

  I’d already soaked the piles of paper and rubbish in petrol, and before I went out to meet them, hands in the air, I threw a match. I heard and smelt it, just a crackling at first, then windows smashing, flames bursting through the roof, coppers yelling, somewhere there was a fire engine.

  My lovely Allie, this house will never be a problem for you again.

  Chapter 25

  Trent Grierson

  Saturday, 16 April

  When we realised that the suspect was Harry, I was obliged to remove myself from the investigation. Jossie and I briefed Senior Sergeant Frank McLeod, and I had to leave the arrest to him. But something made me follow them at a distance, and I sat in my car on the other side of the road a little away from the house.

  When Harry emerged, the house exploded behind him. One second he was walking towards Frank, hands in the air, and the next thing flames were shooting through the shattered windows, and leaping and crackling through the rubbish piled at the door.

  From where I stood, every part of the house was on fire. Inside it would have been an inferno. Frank and the uniformed officers ran to Harry and pulled him to safety, as Jossie and the other cops ran to evacuate the houses on either side.

  ‘Anyone else inside, Harry?’ Frank yelled.

  ‘Nah, only me.’

  From where I stood he looked quiet, relaxed, staring at the house, fascinated. Someone had rung for fire engines, and I could hear their high-pitched squeal a block away. Families from the houses alongside stood apart, holding children and animals. Spectators were gathering and the police were putting up barriers.

  Another two uniforms had arrived and were standing with Harry, who was now handcuffed. In the midst of it all, everyone accounted for, everyone safe, the fireys doing their job, the uniformed officers on guard, I had a moment of clarity.

  Burn down … keep on burning till nothing is left.

  You had to be steely in this job. Empathy was not your friend; facts were all that mattered. So I had to fight back the memory of Harry putting a heavy lock on Alison’s bedroom door to protect her precious desk, her only link to her grandmother; the memory of Harry helping me to throw junk into the skip the day after we cleared Alison’s room; and the impression he left with me of a man caught between two nightmares.

  Perhaps the flames could bring to ash some of the unhappiness that had lived in that house.

  When the house was just a smouldering shell, they took Harry in.

  Chapter 26

  Jossie Wallachia

  Saturday, 16 April

  I drove while Frank sat in the front passenger seat, and one of the uniformed coppers sat with Harry in the back. He was as quiet and calm as a sleepy cat.

  Back at the station we read him his rights but we weren’t recording anything yet. Just having a chat.

  Harry had been thinking though. ‘Look mate,’ he said to Frank. ‘I don’t want to make this hard for you, but shouldn’t I have a lawyer?’

  ‘Is there a particular one you want?’

  ‘Don’t know any.’

  ‘Okay, we’ll go through Legal Aid.’

  We took him to a cell to wait. Even though it was Saturday morning, the solicitor arrived an hour later. It was Tom McCauley, an affable man in his early seventies, a veteran of the criminal court and well known in police and legal circles.

  Frank and I met wit
h McCauley first and outlined our case against Harry. We weren’t charging him yet, just gathering information. We had his fingerprints on the murder weapon and eyewitness reports of someone fitting his description arguing with the deceased.

  It was quicker than any of us expected. Old McCauley spent half an hour in the cell with Harry then he was brought to the interview room. Frank reminded him of his rights and started the video recorder, first checking his name, address and birth date.

  ‘What do you know about the death of Borys Stasiewicz?’

  Harry obviously wanted to tell the story, so he got straight into it. ‘I don’t want to string this out. The old man was my father. I didn’t go there to kill him, but that’s what happened. Right?’

  ‘You don’t have the same surname?’

  ‘Stanley was the surname he gave me when I was born. He used it for himself mostly too. Said he didn’t want to remember that he was Polish.’

  The solicitor was silent as Harry spoke. They’d obviously agreed to this confession, hoping for a lesser charge and a shorter sentence.

  We Anglo-Australians, I thought, have been so protected. Few of us have known dispossession, murder in the streets, mass executions, colleagues and loved ones mowed down before our eyes, and the psychological desert that must follow.

  Harry’s limited vocabulary, his inability to make anything more than verbal line drawings of Borys’s experiences, made the story stark, unreal. But Borys’s past had become Harry’s own, drilled into him over years of his father’s drunken soliloquies.

  The story limped along — the lonely, rainy nights in forest camps, his mother’s desertion, the inevitability of mental and physical abuse, the knowledge that his father saw him as an embarrassment, the factory in Carlton, Harry now a tall, heavy man, no longer afraid of Borys’s violence.

  ‘Lost track for years, then went looking for him one day at that rooming house in St Kilda. One of the old boys there told me Hobie, as he called himself, was sleeping rough. He said to try that park on the river, down from Flinders Street.’

  He found him there a few times, wanted to help. He offered to find him somewhere to live, but the result was always the same, incoherent drunken abuse or worse, the familiar sarcasm and insults.

  Late on that Sunday night, he went there once more. It was to be the last time.

  ‘I was going to leave him to rot after that,’ Harry recalled.

  We knew the rest. The mallet was there. The killing was impulsive and brutal. Realising what he had done, Harry panicked, threw the mallet in the river and ran. He hid in parks around the city until he knew, from pieces of overheard news bulletins, that a murder weapon had been found.

  Then he had gone home to wait. No one was there. Bernadette’s impression was still in the empty bed, but his daughter’s room had been cleared of all her possessions. He seemed to accept their disappearance as inevitable. He didn’t believe anyone would value him enough to stay around.

  The lawyer negotiated the lesser charge of manslaughter in return for a guilty plea. Harry didn’t want bail.

  ‘Nowhere to go, mate,’ was his only comment.

  We arranged his transfer to the Melbourne Assessment Centre, where he would receive a psychiatric assessment and await a trial date. The next day, news of the charges would be in the Sunday papers and heading news bulletins. His family should be told before that.

  ‘Is there a family member you want to talk to at this stage, Harry?’ Frank asked.

  ‘Is Trent about? Don’t know his surname. He’s a homicide cop too.’

  We knew Trent was in the building, so we called him in. He was no longer on the investigation, but Frank gave him permission to stand in as a family member.

  ‘Where are Bernie and Allie, Trent?’ Harry asked.

  He explained briefly what had happened on the previous Sunday — Bernie’s hospitalisation and Alison’s move to her uncle’s home. ‘She’s safe, Harry,’ he assured him.

  ‘Tell her before it’s on the news.’

  ‘Of course.’

  There was something else he wanted to say. He hesitated for a moment, made to go, and then he turned back. ‘Tell her I’m sorry; tell her I love her.’ Then his voice strained. ‘Tell her I’m no good; she should forget me.’

  The big face was twisted in grief. It was the only emotion he’d shown. No regret for his father’s death, no concern for Bernie, only remorse, guilt, words of love for Alison.

  Chapter 27

  Leo Brennan

  Saturday, 16 April

  I was photographing a bridal party in the Botanic Gardens in that soft autumn sun you get in Melbourne, when Trent’s call came. I asked the bride and groom to take a break so I could return the call. Trent never rang unless it was urgent.

  ‘I can’t give you the details now, but I need to talk to you about something important before you see tonight’s news. After that you’ll need to talk to the Judge.’

  It took me a second to register what he was saying. ‘What’s this about, Trent?’

  He seemed breathless, tense. His voice was urgent. ‘Can’t answer questions now. It’s going to be all over the media. When will you be finished? Ring the Judge. You’re going to need to see him tonight.’

  ‘What’s the big secret?’

  ‘Please, Leo, just do what I’m asking. I’ll explain everything later. I have to go. ‘

  I hated mysteries, but Trent wasn’t going to tell me anymore, and besides, I had work to do. We agreed to meet at home at four o’clock. I phoned the Judge and invited myself to dinner at the Club, recalling that he was planning to return to Golden Beach tomorrow. I was a little ashamed of my attack on him last Monday, but we’d spoken since then and neither of us had mentioned it.

  Along with whatever Trent’s secret was, tonight might be the opportunity for me to apologise, and perhaps to break down some of the wall between us. Alison was at her friend’s house and I was expecting her back for dinner, but I hoped Trent could be there with her.

  I was home by four and Trent was waiting, his face full of something I couldn’t decipher.

  ‘We’d better sit down.’

  So I sat; I was scared now. ‘What is it, Trent?’

  ‘It’s Harry! There’s no easy way to tell you. He’s been charged with killing that homeless man in Enterprise Park.’

  ‘Harry?’

  ‘Yes, Harry, Alison’s dad.’

  My mind was woolly. Harry? Alison’s dad? Killing? Homeless man? None of it connected.

  ‘Leo. Just listen. Let me take you through it.’

  And so he did, from the first call early last Monday, the morning after Bernie had been taken to hospital, through all the steps of the investigation, stopping every now and then to ask, ‘Are you with me?’

  Finally, the chilling story was there in front of me — the old man’s past as a resistance fighter and poet in Poland; Harry’s abusive childhood; the impulsive killing; the discovery of the mallet; Harry’s torching of the Clifton Hill house; and his confession.

  I was stunned, but details began to fit together. Harry had never told us anything about his childhood. He looked a little foreign, but his surname, Stanley, was Anglo-Australian. When Alison was born he had agreed with Bernadette that she would take her mother’s surname.

  I didn’t know what to feel — grief for Alison; grief for Harry; sadness that our poor dysfunctional family had another tragedy to face. After all these years I found that I was longing for Mum. She would soothe us all with her practical kindness.

  ‘God, Trent, how am I going to explain this to the Judge? And Alison?’

  ‘I’ll tell Alison tonight. The Judge is your problem.’

  Chapter 28

  Alison Brennan

  Saturday 16 April

  This was how I felt. I was standing at the top of a high cliff, and I could hear the sea below, crashing on treacherous rocks.

  I wanted to fall off that cliff and never think about anything ever again. It was like I was
hanging from my life by a thin thread, and when it broke, I would spin into an abyss and get lost forever. I was a spectator on my own life, looking at it from the outside, while everything happened to someone else.

  Everything had gone upside down, sideways and in an out, and over itself so that I couldn’t sort anything out anymore. It was like I’d broken through into another world where the people looked the same but were entirely different. It was like I would never, never ever be normal. I would be scared and lonely forever.

  Dad, why didn’t you tell us?

  I had a Polish grandfather who wrote poems. He was my dad’s father. He was here in Melbourne and he was homeless. My dad killed him and now he’s going to jail.

  It was like trying to figure out a jigsaw. Trent told me everything last night and warned me that it would be in the newspapers and on the news. The story should have made sense. I knew about refugees coming to Australia after the Second World War, and I thought I knew Dad had a Polish background, but not once did he say anything about his parents or his childhood. And I didn’t ask. He was just Dad and he made me think that his life had begun with me and Mum — that he had no life before us. We were an isolated little unit locked away in that horrible house.

  The house had burned down. Trent said that Dad set it alight just before they arrested him. I wished I’d been there to see it. I hated that house. It made me feel dirty, secretive, terrified that people would find out how bad it was.

  I didn’t know where I was and where I was going to go to from here.