Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  we were damaged goods

  All of the older kids started to sneak out at night. Whatever they did, I wanted to do the same. So out the window I went. I got really drunk for the first time at the age of nine or ten or some ridiculous age like that. We had a taste for it; my father was an alcoholic, so was his father and so on. It was in our genes. We had all tasted whisky many times. We tasted it at parties whenever the adults weren’t looking, and every New Year’s Eve Dad gave us all a nip at midnight, remember. So drinking was just what people did as far as we knew. But getting really drunk for the first time was a different thing.

  My sister Linda and her mates wanted to buy some booze but obviously they were too young so they came up with a devious plan, which was why they needed me. They decided that if someone really young, with an innocent-looking face, went to the bottle shop and said they wanted to buy a present for their dad, the guy in the bottle shop might just fall for it.

  ‘Now tell us what you have to say when you walk in,’ Linda said, going over it many times so I wouldn’t forget.

  ‘It’s my dad’s birthday and I have stolen money from Mum’s purse to get him a present because he’s the best dad in the world . . .’

  ‘No, that’s not right. Let’s go through it one more time.’

  ‘Only kidding, I know what to say,’ I said confidently. ‘It’s my dad’s birthday and I have saved up all my money from my paper round to get him a present because he’s the best dad in the world.’

  ‘That’s it. Now don’t get it wrong or we’ll kill you, okay?’

  ‘Okay Linda, I promise I’ll do my best.’

  Off I went to the bottle shop. I walked in with my eyes to the floor, looking as small and cute as I possibly could. I looked up at the guy working there. Blink, blink, blink went my eyelashes, to make me look even more innocent.

  ‘It’s my dad’s birthday and I have saved up all my money from my paper round to get him a present because he’s the best dad in the world.’

  ‘Yes?’ he said, looking at me closely to see if I was serious.

  Blink, blink, blink. ‘I know he likes a wee drink and I wondered if I could get him something to surprise him.’ Blink, blink, blink.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. I could tell by his face he was starting to soften.

  ‘I heard my mum say he likes whisky.’ Blink, blink, blink.

  He smiled at me and thought to himself for a minute. I thought I had blown it and I didn’t like my chances.

  ‘Oh what a lovely thought. Aren’t you a nice little boy.’ He fell for it. ‘Get this one, I’m sure he’ll love it and it’s not too expensive.’

  He was too helpful. I began to feel guilty. But not guilty enough to stop the scam.

  ‘Thanks, mister,’ I said and took the bottle and walked shyly out of the shop. I turned the corner and there were Linda and her mates, looking like a pack of hungry wolves, licking their chops.

  ‘Give that to us and take off, you little conman,’ said one of the boys.

  ‘That’s not fair, let him come and drink it with us,’ shouted Linda.

  Blink, blink, blink.

  ‘And cut out the cute act, okay? I’m wise to you, Jim,’ she said and walked towards the paddock across from our house.

  We all drank the whisky then ran around the paddock for ten minutes acting stupid then fell over and began throwing up. It was good to be growing up to be just like the adults in our lives.

  I’m not sure when or why this next thing happened but it was horrible. I remember the family had all the same problems as us. They were living below the poverty line and the parents drank and fought. They were family friends and we would go to their house all the time. I remember we were eating with them one night and things went really wrong. Lots and lots of alcohol had been consumed by everyone old enough to drink. And by some of the kids who weren’t old enough. Well, things got heated between two of the brothers, who were in their late teens, and a scuffle broke out. They were separated and one stormed out to the bedroom while the other sat at the table brooding. Everyone hoped it would blow over.

  But this sort of thing never did blow over until someone got hurt. We were all sitting at the table when the older son came out of the bedroom, walked up to the table then pulled out a knife and cut his brother’s throat. Right at the dinner table. They had been arguing over a packet of cigarettes. Like a lot of the Scots we knew, they were no strangers to violence and often carried knives around with them. They had no hope. Who knows what else had happened to these boys at home. Whatever it was, it had taken its toll – and one of them snapped.

  The brother with the knife, who was covered in blood and crying, walked out of the house and down to the local shops. He picked up a concrete block and threw it through the window of a shop. He walked inside, picked up a pack of cigarettes from behind the counter and sat down. Then he lit one up and waited for the police to arrive. His brother didn’t die but he never spoke properly again. The boy went to jail for a long time. I know that no one was shocked but it has bothered me forever. How do families end up doing something like this to each other?

  Many nights at our house ended in some sort of bloodbath, so we were used to it. Dad’s mates would get too drunk and there would be fights. There was always a good reason. One of them would disappear with another’s wife and turn up dishevelled, with lipstick all over them. They all seemed to be very promiscuous, and slept with anyone who would let them. This, mixed with copious amounts of booze, seemed to always end in violence. I think they liked the fighting as much as the fucking. If they didn’t fight, someone would get so drunk that they would fall over onto a bottle or a glass – there would be blood somehow.

  The child welfare people were watching what was going on and were beginning to take notice. Looking back I think it was many years too late for us; it would take a lifetime of fear to get things straight. We were scared to death of being taken away from our dad. Now I can see that it might have been a godsend. The truth is, by the time they noticed us, we were already so fucked up that nothing could have saved us from the shame and confusion that we would have to live with. The damage was already done and staying with him just added to it. We were damaged goods.

  Somehow Mum had heard what was going on from one of her friends and had started to make plans to get us away from Dad. But it would take time and in the meantime we hadn’t heard a thing from her. We were angry.

  Dad made a point of telling us, ‘Everything would’ve been fine if yer fuckin’ mother hadnae deserted us. She caused aw this.’

  We knew that wasn’t true. We were young but we weren’t stupid. Things had been fucked for as long as we could remember so we knew it wasn’t just her fault. But we were angry with her for leaving us.

  I can look back and see that it was a matter of life and death. The violence that went on around the house had been just one step away from escalating out of control. Anyone who has been around domestic violence knows that once it gets to that level there is only one path it takes: from bad to worse. Mum had to get away to save her life. I don’t blame her for that. But she left us in a place where we were not safe. She knew how toxic the environment she had to flee from was and she chose to leave us in the middle of it. Christ, we were neglected even when she was there, because of all the shit she was going through with Dad.

  Life might have improved for her when she got out but it only got worse for us. We only had each other and that was not good enough. We weren’t capable of dealing with Dad’s problems and our own on top of that. We had been brought up watching how Mum and Dad dealt with problems and so we could only deal with them the same way – running away from anything that scared us or, if we couldn’t run, we would attack. This was the way our parents dealt with things: if something was out of your hands, revert to violence.

  If things hadn’t changed when they did, I’m sure one of us would have died. We were malnourished and out of control. No one was there to defend us. />
  We knew Dad loved us, but he couldn’t do anything to stop the cycle of violence we were living in. He was going through a whole pile of his own madness.

  When Dad was gone we would sit and wait for him to come back. We would lock the doors and windows and sit huddled together in the lounge room covered with tattered blankets trying to keep warm, afraid and hungry. Dot would try to be brave but every noise we heard outside the house seemed like the sound of someone wanting to hurt us. We had no television by this point and probably no heating so the wind sounded like someone breaking in and we’d be sitting making noises like dogs, trying to sound ferocious to scare them away.

  ‘Woof! Woof! Woof!’

  ‘Lucky we’ve got this big dog in here,’ Dot would say as convincingly as she could. ‘I wouldn’t like to be the guy who tried to break into this house.’

  ‘Woof! Woof! Woof!’

  We must have sounded like idiots if there ever really was someone outside.

  I started stealing small amounts of money, coins mostly, from Dad’s pockets when he had passed out. Not much, just enough to get away for a little while.

  Get up and get as far away as the little money I had would take me. I never stole enough money to really go that far. Dad didn’t have that much money, not by the time he had passed out anyway. Everything he worked for was either drunk or gambled away, leaving coins for us to survive on. By the time I started taking money from his pants he was so drunk he never noticed. I would only take enough for the train trip and that was it. I had nothing to eat and no other money to spend on anything. I was already ridden with guilt from the little that I did take so I didn’t want any more. But I had to get away.

  I would get up when the sun came up and tiptoe over the strangers asleep on our living room floor, leave the house and walk to the railway station. It wasn’t far but early in the mornings I would see people staggering home drunk and confused, trying to avoid the other people on their way to work. Sometimes there would be arguments between them or even scuffles as the workers pushed past them in a hurry to get to wherever they were going. There would be men lying on the ground drunk and there would be others still drinking out of brown paper bags, all mingling at the train station with men in overalls who were doing their best to ignore them so they didn’t think about drinking themselves. On more than one occasion some drunk would try to talk to me or even expose himself to me as I waited for the train. But I was tough by then and just moved away and caught the first train that would take me towards the town and eventually the sea.

  My days running away to the beach blurred into each other. Nothing happened that changed anything. They were like gasping for air as someone was trying to push your head under the water. Each day gave me enough oxygen to survive until the next escape. Each time seemed to be the same as the time before.

  Adelaide Station was always busy and dirty and I would move as quickly as I could to change trains to get out of town and head to the beach. I was only about ten by this point but I knew how to get around by myself and getting to the beach was no big deal for me. From town I could take a tram to Glenelg, or a train to Semaphore. It would take me a couple of hours to get there in all. Then I would walk out to the end of the jetty and sit down and look out to sea and dream about a better life. Local fishermen would talk to me and show me what they had caught and sometimes even give me a lesson on how to fish. Luckily most of them were nice people and I would talk to them and listen as they told me about where they came from and what they did with their lives. I would spend whole days sitting on the jetty at Glenelg, watching the sea and dreaming.

  The smell of the ocean with the seaweed baking in the sun and the sound of the sea seemed to stop me worrying about anything. The constant crashing of the waves against the shore sounded like music to me; just like the clattering of the wheels of the train on the rails when I think about it, drowning out the thoughts and fears that always seemed to be present in my head these days. Home drifted off into the distance and left me alone but happy.

  Sitting in the sun, alone by the sea, I would also listen to the transistor radios that fishermen were playing on the jetty and I’d sing along in my head with the songs that were playing on Adelaide AM radio. I would daydream about being in exotic places. One day, I told myself, if I could make some money, I would go and visit all the places I had imagined.

  There was a show on television called Adventures in Paradise. That’s how I wanted my life to be. Sailing around Tahiti solving crimes and hanging out with beautiful people. Never going to the same place twice. Going wherever the wind took me. But I was only on a jetty in Adelaide, and that was good enough for me, as long as I was away from Elizabeth.

  If I thought too much about it I would be overwhelmed by fear, being away by myself so far from home. The news had been filled with stories about the Beaumont kids who went missing from the very beach I was sitting at. They were on the sand one minute and gone without a trace the next. The police searched for years and never found anything. They disappeared off the face of the earth. Clairvoyants and mystics came from all over the world to try to help the family but found nothing. It was as if the children had never existed. I felt like I could disappear and no one would have known that I ever existed too.

  I knew that they never caught anyone for taking those children but it didn’t stop me from running away by myself. I felt I was going to die if I stayed home so I had nothing to lose. I sometimes looked around the area, hoping to catch a glimpse of the kids so I could take them home to their family but they never appeared. It seemed so sad that their parents were at home waiting and praying for them and never getting them back and here I was running away and no one even noticed I was gone. It was like I was nobody. I still think about those poor children and their family to this day.

  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 M
um might be coming back to me.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  please let it be her

  One 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.