Why did Dad never tell me about his father? Why did he kill him? We’re not that triangle anymore — Mum, Dad and me. I’m the only point of the triangle left.
Chapter 29
Colin Brennan
Saturday, 16 April
So now we knew where Harry was, hiding out after he killed his father. Didn’t even know he had a father. He never said a word about his family, never said a word about anything. He was very slow and completely dumbstruck when I was around. Then he ran off with Bernadette. How much did he tell her?
I remembered those years after the war. The ‘reffos’, as we called them, streamed into the country from Europe. Pictures were all over the papers and newsreels in the cinemas —pale, starved, desperate people. We knew nothing of what they’d been through, the horror of it.
It wasn’t until much later, studying History at university, that I learnt something of what a bloodbath it had been. The Australian Government sent the poor blighters off to the big hydroelectricity schemes. They lived in bush camps, cutting down virgin forest, building massive dams. Lived lonely, rough, outdoor lives.
So that was Harry’s story. Raised in the bush by his father, who was one of the very few survivors of the Polish Home Army, and he was so damaged by what he’d seen that he was probably almost insane. But a fine poet, Leo told me, historically important.
What a disaster! Bernadette’s in hospital with another breakdown, Harry’s confessed to manslaughter and will go to jail for years. And what about Alison?
Leo apologised a little sheepishly for what he said to me last Monday, about my deficient parenting in regard to Bernadette. I accepted his apology but didn’t say much. While we were on the subject of history, perhaps there was some of my own I needed to examine.
We’d have to bury the poor old fellow, of course. So I decided to stay in the city for a while until that was done, and we could sort out some arrangements for Alison.
Chapter 30
Alison Brennan
Monday, 18 April
I was swimming laps early, my mind full of Dad. My stroke was fast and automatic, my shoulder muscles were burning and my heart rate was high, but I didn’t stop until I’d gone into that space where there was no more thought, just me, the water, and the air I pulled into my lungs.
The memories were like images in a television advertisement, each imposed quickly on the other. I had to watch them to the end, and then maybe I could understand. Dad first brought me to this pool when I was a baby. He loved to tell me how I took to the water immediately, how excited I was when we walked through the door and I knew I was going for my swimming lesson.
My first conscious memory was of when I was four, and we’d come to the pool after kinder. I was kicking on a paddleboard with the other kids, and Dad was standing at the side of the pool, smiling, eyes only for me. When the lesson was over, he lifted me out gently and dried and dressed me, all the time keeping up what I came to think of as ‘Daddy talk’.
‘Good girl, you swim fast, smart girl. Gonna be an Olympian. Gonna swim for Australia.’
Then I graduated to the squads. No more exercises in the learning pool, but swimming laps with my age group, always stretching to be the fastest and the strongest, to swim further than all the others. Dad was there every time, never missed a session. ‘Good girl, Allie, doing well, love, keep it up.’ Every win, every award was for him, my dad.
When I joined the swimming team in Year Seven, I started early morning lap sessions and soon began mixing them up with gym workouts. Dad drove me every morning and waited while I swam or worked out, then showered and dressed. We’d have coffee and something to eat together then he’d drop me at school.
Then by Year Nine I didn’t want him coming anymore. I could get to the pool and then to school without him, I told him. ‘There’s no need, Dad, have a sleep-in.’ I knew it hurt him, but I was fourteen and embarrassed by his big, dark presence shadowing me every morning, so obviously proud of me, his spotlight shining just on me. I hated the attention. I wanted to be anonymous.
Dad couldn’t read very well. He told me that he grew up without a mother, and his father didn’t make him go to school. That was all he’d ever told me about his family. So from the time I learnt to read, in my Prep year, I’d read to him.
He’d be waiting when I came home from school, and he’d go to my bag to pull out my next reader or storybook, to hunt in my library bag for the books I’d borrowed. ‘What have we got today, Allie?’ Then he’d make me a sandwich and we’d find a place to sit close together. I’d read to him, slowly at first, pointing and sounding out each word. Later the stories were longer and more complicated, and my reading more fluent, but that time was always ours, Dad’s and mine.
I never thought, ever, that he didn’t love me. He loved me almost too much. He gloried in me. I knew that sounded over the top, but everything he had ever done for me and said to me had told me that I was a miracle in his life. When I was small and fussy with my breakfast, he’d put the sweet, diced, dried fruits that I liked at the bottom of my porridge bowl so that I had to eat it all to find them. He’d brush my hair and plait it for school, and then he’d strap me into his big old car and drop me at the gate. ‘See you soon, beautiful girl,’ he’d say every morning as he kissed me.
Mum began to get worse when I was in Grade Four. Until then she was messy and very shy, but she’d still leave the house when she had to. But that year it was always Dad and me. He took me everywhere — swimming, school, shopping, and to play in the park. Mum never came. I could see how it happened that they didn’t enrol me in a secondary school.
Dad wouldn’t have understood. He would have thought it was automatic. Hardly ever having been at school himself, he wouldn’t have known how it worked. Mum would have had it vaguely in her mind, that it had to be done, but she was forgetful by then, and housebound. She would have put it off over and over until it was too late and Grandpa had to step in.
When I was older, Dad and I would go to the movies together on Saturday afternoons. ‘What’s it going to be today, Allie?’ he’d ask, and I’d choose a movie that he’d like. We’d buy popcorn and munch happily in the dark, then dissect the movie over milkshakes afterwards. Dad seemed slow because he didn’t talk much, but he always talked with me. He loved those movie afternoons, and so did I. They were markers in our week, an excuse to get out of that horrible house.
The last movie we saw together was on the Saturday before I went to Golden Beach for the holidays. It was Hell or Highwater, just the kind of movie Dad liked — little guys robbing banks to save the family farm. We had Chinese afterwards, and we ordered extra in a takeaway container for Mum. I felt close to him, so that was why I told him that I was going to Grandpa’s house for the holidays, before telling Mum.
‘Good on you, love,’ he had said, covering my hand with his. ‘It’ll do you good to get away. Don’t tell Mum until the day you’re going. She’ll get into a state.’
Dad knew it wasn’t right, the way we were living, but I didn’t think he knew what to do about it.
He had never hurt me, not once, but I had seen him get uncontrollably angry. The anger seemed to come from nowhere and it raged for a minute or two then it died away. When he was angry like that, I didn’t think he was aware of what he was doing.
One time there was a TV show on late that Mum wanted to watch. He said he’d record it for her. When she turned on the TV to watch it the next day, the show hadn’t recorded and she was disappointed.
‘You told me you’d tape it, Harry,’ she wailed. She was like a spoiled child sometimes.
Then something happened to Dad. He picked up the TV and dropped it, pushed it over, stomped on it and kicked and kicked it until it was in pieces. Mum and I just stood there, our mouths open, staring.
‘Dad, stop,’ I called, but he didn’t seem to hear me.
Then the rage was over. He picked up the pieces of the TV and threw them into the front yard. When I started to say something
about it to Mum, she put her finger to her lips. Leave it alone.
The next day when I came home from school there was a big new TV in the place where the old one had been.
There were other times too, but never directed at me, and I never saw him hurt Mum. Sometimes I’d hear him out in his shed shouting and throwing things around, upturning old boxes, kicking at the walls, swearing. One time I heard him crying like a broken-hearted child. ‘Let him be,’ Mum had said. She told me to stay away from him when he was like that.
Dad, I know you love me. I can tell you things and you listen. Mum told me that there was a lot of bad stuff in your childhood, but you never talk about it. I understand why. You wanted me to be a new beginning. You didn’t want me touched by it. But I am now because you’re in jail. I can’t escape your past any more than you can.
There were so many thoughts I wanted to share with Dad, so I wrote him a letter.
Dear Dad,
Whatever you did and why ever you did it, you’re still my dad and I love you. I’m staying at Uncle Leo’s. Mum’s in hospital and I haven’t seen her yet. I don’t know what’s going on, and I can’t think straight about anything, but I know you’re a good and kind person. Nothing will make me stop believing that.
Trent said he’d make sure you get this note. He said that maybe I can see you soon.
Your loving daughter, Alison.
Chapter 31
Colin Brennan
Wednesday, 20 April
As funerals went, it wasn’t exactly the event of the year. It was a short, simple service at St Francis Church in the city, and then on to the cemetery. There weren’t many of us — Trent and his colleague Jossie, with an old gentleman she introduced as her grandfather; Alison in her school uniform keeping very close to Leo; a Polish woman Trent said was Professor Nadia Godlewski from Melbourne University; and two friends of the deceased, Bett and Stu. And of course me, wondering how I got to be there, on such a dreary Melbourne day, watching as a stranger’s coffin was lowered into the ground.
Then suddenly, as the sun broke through and outlined the scene in gold, a clear, strong contralto voice broke into song behind me. I could tell it was a prayer. It began softly, reverently, and then it climbed to a crescendo, culminating in the word ‘Jezus’, and then in rich, deep tones it descended again to ‘Amen’.
I looked at Trent who was standing near me with Jossie and her grandfather. The old man was trembling, holding tightly to his walking stick.
‘It’s the Hail Mary in Polish,’ Jossie whispered.
Nadia Godlewski sang the prayer of Borys Stasiewicz’s boyhood three times, as each of us threw handfuls of Australian dirt onto the coffin. The song was deeply, sweetly melodic, full of emotion — a song of pride and grief, but also of hope and endurance.
What an extraordinary woman, I thought, to do such a perfect thing.
Then it was over and Borys was laid to rest, with a dignity that life had not always afforded him.
Chapter 32
Alison Brennan
Wednesday, 20 April
I still had the strange sensation of being outside of my life. It was as if the girl standing there with Leo in that cold cemetery was someone who, although she looked exactly like me, was a ghost. The real me looked on unfeeling, from somewhere high above.
Then the sun came out and that Professor began to sing in a deep strong voice, a prayer I didn’t understand. She began softly and then her voice grew and soared, and it was beautiful. She sang as we threw earth onto my grandfather’s coffin, and somehow that prayer and her deep, unusual voice gave the sad scene a feeling of something big and deep.
When the funeral was over and we were about to leave, she came to me and took both my hands in hers. She seemed to want to hold them forever. ‘Borys Stasiewicz’s granddaughter!’ she said, looking hard into my eyes.
I looked right back. I’m going to be proud of him, I thought, no matter how his life ended.
‘He was a great patriot,’ she said, ‘a grandfather to boast about … to learn from. Never forget that.’
Grandpa came up then to thank her for coming and they moved away together across the cold grass.
Chapter 33
Jossie Wallachia
Wednesday, 20 April
I asked my grandfather to come with me to Hobie’s funeral. After all, he was the one who’d sent us to Nadia with Hobie’s poems. He was very frail, but he agreed to come when I promised him lunch at the Polish restaurant in Chapel Street. He almost never got out.
‘They were martyrs for Poland,’ he said when I told him Hobie’s story. ‘Hardly any of the soldiers of the Home Army survived. There were no second chances, no trials, just a bullet through the head or a knife through the guts. The fact that he survived Warsaw and made it to Australia is almost miraculous.’
‘He was a clever man, Dziadek,’ I said. ‘He survived as a guerrilla fighter, writing his subversive poetry for at least four years before the uprising. He must have learnt ways to hide his identity.’
Dziadek just nodded.
‘What about you, Grandfather?’ I asked. ‘You never talk about Poland.’
‘When you see your country and your beautiful city, its art and culture reduced to rubble, your friends and family murdered, you don’t want to talk about it, little one.’ He used the Polish endearment, ‘Malenka’ for ‘little one’, which he always used for me.
‘How did you get out?’
‘Your grandmother and I escaped before the worst of it. You see, we had German citizenship. When we knew the Nazis were coming, we fled to Germany, made our way from there to France and finally across the Channel to England. We knew we’d be safe there. After the war, we decided to leave the mess of Europe behind and migrate to Australia. We were the lucky ones …’ He looked wistful. ‘Or the less brave,’ he then added softly.
I took his old, blue-veined hand in mine. ‘I’m certainly glad you got out, Dziadek.’
So in that cold cemetery, I put my arm through his as he leaned on his stick, and I thanked whatever kind Spirit had brought him and my grandmother here safely.
When Nadia began to sing, Grandfather became very still. I glanced at him. He was pale, and his face was blank and impassive. Then tears began to roll down his cheeks, staining the warm scarf he wore around his neck.
‘What is it, Dziadek?’ I whispered.
‘We used to sing it after Mass when I was a boy. Three Hail Marys for the prosperity and peace of Poland.’
Chapter 34
Bett
Wednesday, 20 April
I almost didn’t go; poor Hobie was lost to me now. After I’d identified his body as the person I knew as Herbert Stanley, I wanted it all to end. But the little blonde detective insisted on picking Stu and me up. Her grandfather was with her, a very old man. God knows what he made of us, the derelicts from the park.
I’d washed as well as I could in the public toilets, shampooed my hair and cleaned my best jacket and skirt. I’d bought stockings from the 7/11, and I thought I looked presentable enough. It was a short church ceremony, and then out to the graveyard. I was just waiting for it to be over, hoping I wouldn’t embarrass myself with tears.
Then I saw the girl, Hobie’s granddaughter, and I had to tell myself not to stare. I kept sneaking little glances at her as if to paint her picture in my mind. She was a beautiful creature, slim and straight, an athletic build, long, glossy brown hair and the bluest eyes I’d ever seen. She wore the uniform of that expensive private school on St Kilda Road.
The detective, Jossie, she said to call her, took me over to the girl. I hung back. Living rough did that to you. You lost your confidence.
‘Your grandfather’s close friend,’ Jossie said.
The girl, Alison, looked at me as if she wanted to get inside my head.
‘What was he like?’ she asked as she shook my hand.
I couldn’t answer. How do you put a lifetime into a few sentences in a cemetery, while staring into
a hole in the ground?
‘Come and talk to me one day, dear.’ I didn’t know why I said that.
‘Yes, I will, I will.’
Then the coffin was being lowered and that Polish woman began to sing just as the sun came out. Her deep voice, and the complex consonants of Hobie’s mother tongue, with the reverence of a prayer rising and falling in the air, moved me in a way I hadn’t felt since listening to the Torah being sung in synagogue.
Suddenly, I was glad for Hobie’s life, glad we’d found each other, glad for the beautiful girl, his granddaughter, and glad that she wanted to talk to me.
I threw my little handful of dirt onto Hobie’s coffin. It was an ending, but somehow there was also the feeling of a beginning.
Chapter 35
Colin Brennan
Thursday, 21 April
‘Asylums’, we used to call them. But this wasn’t one of those foreboding fortress-like prisons, with a stone façade and high-arched windows. It was streamlined and modern, brightly lit and decorated with stiff-looking designer pitchers of flowers. But it was still unnerving.
The cleanliness and gloss, and the bright voices of the nurses couldn’t disguise the blank faces of the few patients who shuffled past the door, or the resigned sobs further down the corridor. A thick carpet minimised noise in the little parlour to which I’d been assigned, but somewhere not far away was the clatter of lunch trays. I waited in silence to meet with Bernadette’s psychiatrist, Dr Sarah Soliman.
The Blooming Of Alison Brennan Page 12
