His Father's Son: To save the son he loves, a desparate father must confront the ghosts of his past

by Tony Black

  Marti wanted to see Dad and to have the laugh and a joke that he always had with him and to hear him tell the funny stories and show him the green flower thing on his arm that he could make dance in the wind. He wondered if he had never taken the blue ten dollar bill from Mam’s purse and never eaten all the choco bars and never been sick in class if Dad would have come. He kept wondering and wondering why Dad never came and if he might come yet, before they left for Ireland, but Mam never said another thing, just kept stroking and stroking his hair.

  7

  Joey Driscol did something he hadn’t done in a very long time. He knew entering into a church was what people did every day of the week but the fact didn’t make it any easier. He had promised himself he was through with churches, he was finished with them the day in Kilmora when the priest asked Shauna and himself to rise and depart from the Lord’s House for offending the congregation with their very presence.

  “And how would we manage that?” Joey had said to Father Eugene, who was stooped and nervous before them, his top lip twitching and sparkling with the sweat on it.

  “Now, Joey Driscol, we need have no trouble from the likes of ye in front of these good people,” he said.

  “Good people? Good people, is it? There’s not one I would call good among them, haven’t they had the knives out for us.”

  Shauna touched Joey’s arm but said nothing. She was usually the fiery one, the first to start wagging the finger and shouting, but wasn’t she done with the lot of them too. Wasn’t she more done than she deserved to be. She still looked beautiful to Joey, the black hair flowing out behind her, but her face had hardened. She was no longer a carefree young girl. She was a woman, searching for courage. “Come on, Joey,” she said. “Let’s just go.”

  “I will not. Haven’t I every right to be here?”

  Father Eugene straightened his back and raised his voice. “Ye cannot seek forgiveness here, not now, not ever. Go.”

  They rose to leave and there was a flutter of tongues about the place, then Joey glanced back and saw his mother and father sat at the front of the church. His mother flinched uncomfortably where she sat and turned towards him, but his father laid a hand on her shoulder, jerked her round, eyes front, away from the son who wasn’t fit to look at.

  “And ye can stay away,” shouted the priest at their backs, his voice emboldened. “The Holy Mother weeps at the sight of the likes of ye in the Lord’s House.”

  Joey wanted to turn round, but Shauna grabbed his arm again. He wanted to shout, to show the blackness of their hearts, the falseness of their piety, but Shauna led him outside. “What did they want, us ruined?” she said, her courage vanished now. “Me barefoot and you begging to feed us? I cannot take it anymore. I cannot, Joey.”

  The memory of that day in ’68 was a fierce one. He remembered how the priest had made him feel. The hate, even though he tried to bury it, was still there. In the days soon after, Australia was decided upon and Shauna had agreed. They could be happy yet, sure, hadn’t she said it herself.

  The church Joey entered now was quiet, wasn’t it deadly quiet, he thought. He was lost for words; he knew what to say, all the prayers were printed on his soul in childhood, learned first in the Irish and later the English, but none came to him. He looked up to the cross. The church was small, much smaller than any he remembered in Ireland, but the cross was huge, it dominated the wall.

  Joey kneeled and blessed himself. Coming into the Lord’s House and asking for help was fine work now but sure wasn’t he really up against it. It was lovely hurdling the job the Church had done on him in the past but, before Christ, wasn’t he prepared to beg. “Please,” he said, “please, God, give me back my boy.”

  He moved towards the stained-glass window where the rows of candles were perched beneath in their wiry little racks. He raised a taper, lit it and selected a candle for Saint Anthony, the finder of lost things. “And if ye see Saint Jude up there,” said Joey, “ye could tell him I might be onto him myself soon enough.”

  Outside the church Pando the Greek and his brother were waiting, leaning on the side of their dusty Kombi. When Joey appeared Pando stepped forward, raised up his arms and shrugged his shoulders, then he shook his head. They had been out since the night before searching for Marti and Shauna. They both looked tired and beat, but far from ready to give up.

  “Bluey, mate,” said Pando, “we’ve been out to the highway servo – that’s nearly two hundred ks. No one’s seen them.”

  “Did ye talk to the truckers? They could have got a lift from a trucker, sure,” said Joey.

  “No one’s seen them, mate. If they hitched a ride from a trucker they could be in Woop Woop for all we know.”

  “Did you ask them?”

  “Mate, we asked,” said Pando’s brother. His voice was weak, going on tetchy. The men were tired. Joey was tired. They had been driving all night, stopping strangers, asking questions and all they had got were headshakes and strange looks, sometimes hostility when they pressed too hard.

  “Bluey, let’s go home,” said Pando, “make some calls or something. We’re getting nowhere pounding the streets.”

  “I know. Look, sorry I snapped. It’s just …”

  “No worries, mate, we know, eh.” Pando patted Joey on the back and smiled, then got into the Kombi with his brother and started the engine.

  Joey watched them leave then got in his ute and started to drive slowly back home. It was early morning and there were a few signs that the world was starting to wake up. Orange-bellied parrots pecked and scratched about for breakfast on the nature strips by the side of the road and houses winked when a curtain was pulled back. It was warming up everywhere. It was like every other day, thought Joey, but different. Something was missing from the picture. The sky was still there, still blue; the gum trees were still shedding their bark; gravity was still keeping the wheels on the road; but nothing was as it should be.

  Joey saw Marti everywhere. He was running down the main drag. He was jumping the gate to the plaza pathway. He was walking to school, running to school, roller-skating, cycling. He was wading through the stream, picking up coins, getting his sleeves wet, getting shouted at. He was kicking a ball around the footy oval with Jono, on his own, with a group of boys. He was everywhere. But he was nowhere, really. He wasn’t with his father anymore.

  Joey’s chest felt empty. He wanted to fill the space quickly by smoking a cigarette, but he was all out. He had gone all night without a smoke. In all the driving and frantic searching he had forgotten he had the demon of all tobacco addictions. He pulled into a servo to buy some cigarettes and put some petrol in the car. The tank was just about empty and took a long time to fill up. When the cap clicked he took out the nozzle and went to pay the attendant.

  “Howya,” said Joey, and handed over a twenty dollar bill. He scanned the boxes of cigarettes behind the counter: no Majors. There never was. They were the Irish cigarettes and could only be got from the shipping blokes who sold them on to the men from the transport section. The Majors were Joey’s one concession to his past life, his one reminder of Ireland he couldn’t cut out. “Oh, and I’ll take a packet of smokes as well … the blue ones will do, I suppose.”

  “No worries,” said the attendant.

  Joey took his cigarettes from the counter and thanked the youngster, then a thought came to him. “Were you working here last night, son?”

  “Sure was. Don’t you remember?”

  “What?”

  “You were in … at about three, looking for a boy and a woman.”

  “Ah, sorry.”

  “Not a problem. You didn’t find them, then?”

  Joey shook his head. He felt his chances had slipped below even desperation level.

  The rest of the journey home passed in a haze. He tried to smoke hard and fill the void in him, but it didn’t work. Macca had said to be strong. Life goes on, he said. But did it really? Marti was his life. What did he have without the boy? Shauna had t
aken him, that said what she thought of their marriage, surely. But the boy was all that was left, the one good, true thing in his life. He knew when he looked at Marti nothing else in the world mattered. Marti was the world. He couldn’t imagine it without him.

  Joey turned into his street and immediately felt his pulse quicken. Jaysus, it was him. It was Marti. Holy Mother of God, he was back. Joey planted his foot and the car lurched forward. The boy was sitting right outside the house.

  The car screeched to a halt and Joey leapt into the street. “Marti,” he shouted.

  The boy looked up. “No,” he said. It was Marti’s friend, Jono. “I forgot he was gone.”

  “Jaysus lad, you near ended me there,” said Joey.

  “Sorry, Mr Driscol,” said Jono. “I came to get him for school. I thought it might have been a dream, but he’s really gone, isn’t he?”

  “Yes, Jono, he’s gone all right.” Joey put his foot on the little wall in front and leaned over, expelling the air from his lungs like he had been winded by a jolt to the chest. When he gathered his strength he watched Jono walking to school by himself, his little head down, looking sad like the night before, and then something hit him. “Hold on, Jono, hold on there.”

  The boy stopped in the street, stood still. “What is it?”

  “What do you mean a dream? How did you know he was gone? Who told you?”

  “Marti.”

  “What … when?”

  “Before he left, he told me.”

  “What?” Joey bowed down and looked into Jono’s young face. He was so like Marti, weren’t they all alike at that age, he thought. They all had the same bag of tricks and this one knew something for sure. “Jono, now you must concentrate and tell me everything.”

  The boy scrunched up his nose. “He said he was going on a train and a boat, or was it a plane?”

  “Oh God, where? Did he say where, son?”

  “No.”

  “He didn’t tell you?”

  “No.”

  “Shit,” said Joey. He stamped his foot in the red earth and cursed the heavens.

  “But I know where he’s going. His mam told my mam. I heard her say yesterday.”

  Joey grabbed Jono’s shoulders and looked deep into his eyes. “Where?”

  “I don’t think I’m supposed to say … she was mad at me for even knowing about the train already.”

  “Look, Jono, this is very, very important. You must tell me where they went. You won’t get into trouble for telling, I promise you that.”

  “She said they were going to Ireland.”

  Joey raised his hand to his mouth and spoke through his fingers, “Never … I’d never have believed it.”

  The boy looked confused. Joey patted him on the head and said, “Thank you, Jono. You’re a grand lad, a real grand lad.”

  “Can I go now?”

  “Jaysus, yes, sure ye can go, son. Off ye go to school, and thanks, thanks a million. You’re a real little lifesaver, so ye are.”

  Jono smiled for a second and then turned to go to school. Joey watched him walk for a while, saw his little head sink into his shoulders again, and he felt his hurt. Something awful had happened – people were hurting all over the place. He couldn’t bear to think how Marti must be feeling, on his way to Ireland.

  Joey went inside the house and sat in silence. What had happened here? Ireland, it was the last place she would take him surely. Wasn’t she through with the place ten years since? Wasn’t Ireland nothing but bad memories and broken hopes? Wasn’t Ireland where her family was, and his, Christ, his that he hadn’t heard hide nor hair of for the best part of ten years. Wasn’t it the last place he would go for that reason alone. Holy Mother of God – it was the voice again – maybe that was her plan. Sure, wasn’t Ireland the one place Shauna knew he would never go.

  There was a rap on the door, and then Macca shouted, “G’day … Bluey, mate, you home?”

  Joey was up, rummaging in the bottom of his wardrobe, tipping out boxes and shoes and clothes, throwing them behind him in frantic panic.

  “What’s the game, mate?” said Macca.

  “She’s taken him to Ireland, the one place she knows I cannot go. The bitch, the bad bitch.”

  “Joey, she’s ill, mate. She’s not thinking, you said that yourself.”

  “Exactly, Macca. How can she look after my boy? Like I say, she cannot mind herself. Ah balls, I cannot find it.”

  “What are you looking for?”

  “Bank book, she must’ve taken it. It was for Marti’s education, the college like.”

  “Fair Dinkum.”

  “If it wasn’t bad enough taking the boy and depriving him of a father now she’s depriving him of an education and a decent life too. Ah, it’s too screwed for words, Macca.”

  Joey slumped back on the floor and held his head in his hands. His thoughts wandered off again. One second they were on Marti, the next on his own desperate situation. This couldn’t happen, not twice. His own father had put a stop to any thoughts Joey might have had of college, sending him out to Gleesons Bakery at sixteen. It couldn’t happen to Marti.

  Joey remembered his early days at Gleesons, going home with the burns from the ovens all over his arms, the rows of men flooding into the place, then the lot of them, fluthered drunk every Friday when the wage packet came. He didn’t fit. He knew he hated the place, saw his life unfolding before him. Only the fella the men called Old Nelson because of his one eye sensed his anxiety.

  “Always with the books, Driscol,” he would say. “Have ye ever thought of the college?”

  Old Nelson opened up a new world to Joey. He would bring in books and tell him what he should be reading. Joey felt special because hardly anybody spoke to Old Nelson, who would always sit with the books himself, and here he was making a friend of him. It was Old Nelson told him to get the night classes started and it was Old Nelson who pointed him on the road to Trinity College.

  It was Shauna’s dream as much as his. The education was to be their way out. With the right education there could be a proper job with proper wages and a home for them some day filled up with books galore. There would be nothing but struggles ahead without the education, begging and borrowing from Joey’s family, sharing rooms with his brothers and sisters; forever and a day under Emmet Driscol’s roof. Hadn’t they even made the one sacrifice that they would never forget, and never be free of, for the education. It was Shauna herself who had said it. It was her notion.

  “What would ye be then if you gave it up?” she had said. “What would ye think of me then?”

  They did what had to be done and Joey prayed to God for forgiveness, begged absolution for the grand sin they had committed, but nothing would cleanse the guilt. All Kilmora knew what they had done and soon enough their dreams for Joey’s education were ended. The Bishop no less had called a halt to their grand plan. “It would only give ye notions,” he had told Joey. “Sure, the world has a place for the working man and ye must know yeer place.” That was the end of it, as with everything else. The Bishop’s word stood unchallenged.

  The same couldn’t happen to Marti. His life had to be different. Joey knew it, he was sure Shauna knew it too, and when he closed his eyes he could almost taste the rancour inside him.

  “Bluey, mate, keep calm. You’ve gotta be strong at times like this. At least you know where they are now.”

  “So?”

  “So … so you can go to Ireland, get the little tacker back.”

  “Macca, there’s no way I can do that.”

  “Why not?”

  “I just can’t. I’m finished with Ireland. She knows that. That’s why she’s gone there. Marti knows it too. Jaysus, he must be terrible worried, desperate he’ll be at the thought of going there. He’ll know I’d never go.”

  “Bluey, mate, you have to prove them wrong.”

  “I can’t. There’s things you know nothing about, Macca, things we came over here to get away from, to escape from. I could
never do it, I just couldn’t … sure, I’d be disgraced entirely if I even tried.”

  “Bluey, Bluey, mate.” Macca placed a hand on Joey’s arm. “If you want to see your son again, you’re going to have to go back there.” He leaned into Joey’s face, shook him at the shoulder. “There’s nothing else you can do. You have to go, for Marti’s sake.”

  8

  Ireland was not like anywhere Marti had ever seen. It had started off with the rain coming down in little specks and then there was the sun, but the sky was still a grey colour and looked very low and close to people’s heads. He remembered the sky in Australia always looked very blue and very far away and not at all like it did in Ireland. Everyone walked very fast around the streets and Marti had to stay close to Mam’s back or be knocked down. Sometimes there were buildings with colours painted on them and sometimes there were buildings that were only grey and he wondered why they didn’t have the colours. When there was rain coming down Marti wanted to go into one of the buildings with the colours, but Mam said if they stopped every time there was a bit of rain they’d be lucky to get a yard.

  He wondered was Mam happy to be in Ireland, but he didn’t think she looked very happy the way she kept lifting the big bag from her shoulder, staring at people and saying, “Ignorant bogtrotters, the lot of them.”

  It had been a long flight from Australia and not as much fun as Marti thought it would be at all. It had been difficult to sleep on the hard seats that were very straight and he was always being told off for fidgeting. Mam had dragged him straight from the airport into the rain and when they arrived at the train station Marti thought they were both very wet but Mam said it was only damp. There was steam coming off their clothes and going into the air and he wondered if this was what Mam said was only damp. Then a man with a pointy black umbrella came and shook all the rain off and said, “Is it a drowned rat ye have there, missus?”