Working Class Boy

by Barnes, Jimmy

  She had left us here. This would weigh heavy on her heart for the rest of her life I think. We were angry but we never let her know it. Not directly anyway. I think that that anger came out in our behaviour later on. We weren’t just a bunch of delinquents. We were delinquents with big problems that would stay with us until the day we died.

  Then, after what seemed like a very short time, she said, ‘Well, I have to go now, but I’ll come again in a week. If you’re good, you can come and spend the night wi’ me.’

  She must have been talking to Dad by this point because he just sat in the house. If he didn’t know she was coming over he would have run out and screamed at her and probably swung at the guy driving. But he didn’t do anything so I’m sure he knew what was going on.

  I watched her drive away, wondering if she really would come back. When the car was out of sight, I turned and walked back into the house.

  I said to myself, ‘If she doesn’t come back again, I don’t care. I don’t want to go with her anyway. I don’t need her. I can look after myself. Dot can look after us all.’ But I knew, deep down inside, that I did care and Dot couldn’t look after us.

  Inside, Dad was sitting by the window and I couldn’t tell if he had been crying or not. All he seemed to do was cry and get drunk. When he was drunk enough to forget everything he would tell us things like, ‘We don’t need her. We can get by just fine. We have each other and we’re better off without her.’

  Then he would cry some more and it would all start again. Soon after Mum left, he went out and didn’t come back for a few days.

  During the whole time Mum was gone, Dad still got up and went to work. It got harder for him but he still went. He was in the depths of depression by then and it must have been very hard for him to get out of bed at all, but every day up he got and out the door he went. But just like when Mum was there, he never came home until he had drunk enough to drown the demons that were haunting him more and more. He had a lot of trouble sleeping and I don’t think he really slept much at all unless he passed out.

  The next week was very confusing for us. We hardly saw Dad, and when we did he was angry. None of us had much to eat at all. On top of that we were wondering if Mum would really be coming back. While Dad was out, we talked about going to stay with her. I remember the bigger kids saying they didn’t want to go. I think they were worried what Dad would think or do. But I knew that deep down I just wanted to be with her, no matter what she had done to us. So I prayed she would come back again like she promised.

  The following weekend she turned up. It seemed like it was all organised. Dad had said to us earlier, ‘Ye mother is coming again and you can go and spend the night wi’ her if ye like.’

  He didn’t sound that happy about it. I think he wanted us all to say, ‘No, Dad, we want to stay here with you. We don’t need her.’

  But we didn’t.

  When she got there I jumped in the car without a second thought. Mum was in the front seat of the car and a strange bloke we didn’t know was driving. When I say strange, I mean weird. I can’t remember his name or what he looked like; he wasn’t important to us at this point. He didn’t say a lot. So it was a very quiet drive. I got the feeling he didn’t really want us around. This seemed to bother my mum so the trip wasn’t the best.

  ‘Where are we going, Mum?’ I asked.

  ‘We’re goin’ tae oor hoose. We live near Glenelg beach.’

  I couldn’t believe it. When she said we were nearly at her house I worked out that I almost walked past it on my way to the beach when I ran away from Elizabeth. I felt like I must have known where she was, but I couldn’t have. If I had, I would have waited at her door until she came out.

  We got to the house and it was nice enough – clean and not falling apart so it had it all over where we lived. It wasn’t a family house. We were told not to touch anything. But we were kids so we started running around everywhere checking everything out and, of course, touching everything. I remember going outside. I couldn’t believe what I saw. There was a whole section of the backyard that was like a little battlefield. There were tanks and soldiers all placed strategically as though they were mid battle. I immediately started playing with them but whatever his name was came out and stopped me. I was not allowed to touch them unless he was there, and he looked pissed off that I had moved things around. He carefully put every piece back exactly where it had been. Then he showed me how it all worked. It looked like little explosions had gone off and all sorts of stuff. It was great. But I did think it was very weird that a grown man played with kids’ toys.

  He never really spoke to us that much and Mum was not very comfortable. I’m not sure what was going on between them. They didn’t seem to like each other a lot. Was that what happened to people when they lived together? Maybe. I remembered she didn’t like Dad much when they were together either. But it was great to see her anyway.

  The sleepover wasn’t a complete success. I got the feeling that we wouldn’t be going to stay again. He didn’t look happy about a bunch of wild kids running around his house. Mum didn’t look happy with him.

  Next weekend came and Mum didn’t come back; the same the next and the next. We were alone again.

  Now we were just trying to keep our heads above water, week to week, as Dad went even further downhill. But then, two or three months after the sleepover, Mum turned up again. This time the guy with the soldiers was gone and in his place was the strangest-looking man we had ever seen. Being Scottish and from Glasgow, most of the men we had met were reasonably short, at least under six feet. But this guy must have been nearly seven foot tall. To us kids he looked like a giant. But he had a kind face and he spoke to us and smiled.

  Dad made jokes about him when they left. ‘Did ye see him? He was a big streak o’ nothin’,’ he said. ‘What aboot the size of that nose, Jesus it was big. He looked stupit.’

  But something about the guy felt good. We had to agree with Dad just to make him feel better. But even Mum seemed calm around this guy, which was amazing. His name was Reginald Victor Barnes and he was to be an angel in my life.

  * * *

  Next time Mum came to see us she said, ‘You’re all comin’ tae spend the weekend wi’ me.’

  ‘I’m no goin’ anywhere. I’m stayin’ wi’ ma dad.’

  ‘Aw, come on, John, it’ll be nice for the weans tae spend a wee bit o’ time wi’ their mother.’

  ‘I’m no goin’ anywhere. I don’t need tae spend time wi’ you. You left us. We don’t need you. We’re doin’ just fine without ye.’

  ‘The wee ones need me, John.’

  ‘You should’ve thought o’ that before you walked oot on us.’

  ‘I had tae go, son. Don’t be angry wi’ me.’

  ‘Well, I don’t have tae go. And no one can make me. If they want tae go that’s their choice, but I’ll never go anywhere wi’ you again.’

  She got no argument from the rest of us. We needed to get away even if it was just for a little break.

  We got to their place, a little fibro three-bedroom house. It wasn’t big but it looked like a palace to us. Looking back, I think that they put the whole house together in a hurry so they could save us, grabbing pieces from wherever they could get them – borrowed and bought from second-hand places. The plates weren’t all matching or perfect. They had chips on the edges and a different pattern on every piece. The cutlery was the same, a mismatch of pieces thrown together to make up a set. But they were still placed on the table with love and care, which made me feel great. The rooms were small but clean and fresh smelling, like they had been scrubbed the day before we came. There were pieces of wallpaper peeling off the walls in the corners, as if they had been slapped up in a hurry to cover something up. Lino had been freshly laid in the kitchen and was cool on my feet as I walked across it. There were separate beds for each of us and they had clean sheets and nice pillows.

  From the moment I got there I didn’t want to have to go back to Eliz
abeth again. This was like being on a holiday. Everything worked, the toilet flushed and there was plenty of toilet paper. They had a television and the electricity had not been cut off. There was a refrigerator that worked and it was full of fresh food and cold milk. Soft fresh bread that we didn’t have to cut the mouldy bits off, and real butter, I loved butter. I could spread it as thick as I wanted without having to worry that it would run out.

  After dinner Reg cleaned up and set the table for breakfast. I couldn’t believe it – we had just finished eating and here we were, all ready to eat again whenever we wanted to.

  Before bed Reg took me into the kitchen and said, ‘I’ll show you a secret. This is my favourite meal.’

  And he picked up the cereal. Reg liked Wheaties. They seemed very Australian to me. They were dry and bland but I was happy to eat whatever he offered me. He proceeded to pour out some for us both and we sat in silence and ate. Neither of us saying a word. Then he got up and he washed the dishes.

  ‘Come on Jim,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to dry them, then it’s time for bed.’

  I dried the two bowls, said goodnight and went to bed. I wasn’t scared like I normally was, but I left the light on just in case, and climbed into bed. The pyjamas Mum had given me to wear smelled of soap powder and sunlight and felt soft against my skin. I climbed into bed to find sheets that were almost starched feeling. Crisp and cool, they sort of crackled as I pulled them up to my neck. I had been without sheets for so long that I couldn’t wipe the smile from my face as I lay wrapped in sundrenched white cotton. I played with the corners of the sheets, rubbing them against my hands just to check that they were still there as I slowly drifted off to sleep. It felt like the first time I could sleep without worrying about what would be waiting when I woke up for a long time.

  I woke up in the morning feeling happy and went out to the kitchen, and there was Reg, up and dressed and ready to give us breakfast. He was right – the cereal did taste better the night before when the house was quiet and still, but it still tasted fantastic. This was how the families in those houses I used to walk past and dream about lived, I was sure. Did we really have to go back and live like we lived before? I couldn’t think about it. Dad had told us he would die without us but if we went back we would die too.

  Before the weekend finished, Mum said to us, ‘You kids would be better off stayin’ wi’ us.’

  I know now we were never going back from the moment we left Dad.

  Mum and Reg lived in Wingfield. It was not one of the prettiest places in Adelaide but it was just far enough away from Elizabeth to make me feel safe. It was almost where we had lived when we first came to Australia. I could walk to where the old Finsbury Hostel had been. There were no housing trust houses in the street; there were none anywhere to be seen. Everywhere you looked in Elizabeth looked the same. The same colour bricks, the same houses all sitting in rows. But not around here. Every house looked different. We forgot about where we came from for a little while. Wingfield was different from Elizabeth. The gutters weren’t concreted and there were no footpaths outside the house. I felt like I was out in the country. There was a strange smell in the air but I didn’t really think about it. Later on I would find out what that smell was but not until the shine had come off our new lives.

  Mum cleaned us up and washed our clothes and we did things that seemed to be normal. We played games and laughed. We didn’t see any booze around the house at all, which was very strange to us, but it made me feel safer. Things were calm; I didn’t feel any tension in the house at all. This was something that we weren’t used to. It felt strange but at the same time it felt good.

  Mum was still working as a nurse’s aide at Hillcrest Mental Hospital. She’d been there since before she left us, which makes me realise that Dad wasn’t looking for her very hard or he would have found her.

  It seemed that the Child Welfare Agency had approached my mum and told her we were going to be taken as wards of the state unless she could provide a safe home for us. So she must have been checking up on us.

  Mum told us later that she had been sitting in a work friend’s house, crying about the situation, when Reg Barnes walked in and asked, ‘What’s the trouble, love?’ He called everybody ‘love’. His mum and dad did the same.

  She told him her story. ‘I need to find mysel’ a husband and then I need to find a home for me and ma six kids. And I need tae dae it quick or they’ll put the kids in a home.’

  ‘Why did you leave them?’

  ‘I had tae run away because ma husband was a bad drunk and now they’re being neglected by their father.’

  ‘No worries love,’ he said, just like that. ‘I’ll marry you.’

  ‘Why wid ye do that?’ she asked him.

  ‘Someone has to save those poor kids.’

  He hadn’t met us at this point but he didn’t give it another thought. Somehow he instinctively knew we needed him and came to our rescue. Until then, we were told, he was going to become a priest. Mum told us he had given up all sorts of things including some sort of religious calling just to look after us. But Mum was always trying to make us feel guilty about something.

  Reg worked hard all his life. He was a clerk at the Kelvinator factory in Keswick near Port Adelaide. His big brother was one of the bosses at Kelvinator and Reg seemed a little bit sad that he had not climbed the same ladder to success. He had been stuck as a clerk for a long time and he could see no signs of a promotion coming in the near future. But he never complained. He just got up every morning and went to his job, day after day. He started losing sleep when we came along. He wasn’t used to being a father and he suddenly had to spend all night nursing sick children with colds and fevers. Or waking up at three in the morning to comfort me when I had nightmares. I used to wake up screaming and crying. But he did it every night he was needed.

  ‘I’m here, Jim. Just shut your eyes and go back to sleep.’

  ‘But I’m scared.’

  ‘Nothing to be scared of anymore, lad. I’m right here with you. Now go back to sleep.’

  I’d drift off, knowing he was sitting in the room with me.

  I’d see him leaving for work on many a morning, bleary-eyed and yawning. He went to work every day whether he had slept or not. Then he would get home from work to find that Mum had found a million new things for him to fix around the house. He didn’t get a lot of rest after we arrived.

  One minute he was alone in life without a worry, the next he was married to a mad Scottish woman and had six juvenile delinquent kids. How and why he did this has always amazed me. He didn’t think about himself. This was truly an act of pure, selfless love. He was a saint. I quickly grew to love him and respect him. He was a good man.

  Reg, as he said we were to call him, was actually six foot six and a half inches tall. He was a very gentle man who seemed to care about my mum and even though he’d just met us, he seemed to care for us too. He didn’t drink and he wanted to spend time with us. I think he even enjoyed being with us, which was very strange for us. Even our parents didn’t seem to spend time with us unless they had to.

  It was a little strange having an adult in our lives we called by his first name. ‘Reg’ always sounded very Australian and odd to us too. People from Glasgow weren’t called Reginald. They were Jimmy or Bobby, not Reg. But after living with Reg for a short while we felt he was so much more than just Mum’s new partner. He cared about us, he looked after us, he loved us. Slowly, over a few months, we drifted from calling him Reg to calling him Dad. It happened by accident at first.

  ‘Here’s your breakfast, son. Now sit down and eat.’

  ‘Thanks Dad, er, Reg, er, thanks.’

  ‘You’re welcome. You can call me what you like. Jim will always be your dad. I’m not trying to replace him, son, but I’m here for you if you need me.’

  ‘Thanks Reg, er, Dad, er, thanks.’

  He became our dad. He acted like a dad should. He was a good role model. He cared, but he was tough
when he had to be. Not really tough but as tough as he could be.

  He rode a motor scooter and took me for rides down through Port Adelaide and showed me where he grew up. He shared his life with me from day one. Whatever he knew or had he wanted to share it with me.

  What was going on? No one had been like this in my life before. I could tell he hadn’t expected to be doing this in his life either but he did it anyway and eventually we both learned to relax and enjoy each other’s company. We had fun together. He probably did this with all the kids but I felt different; he made me feel special. And not like my dad did – taking me out with him because Mum made him. He took me out because he wanted to know about me. This was different.

  Reg and Mum tried to make us feel safe and warm and wanted, even though we could tell it wasn’t always easy for them. Dinner was always on the table at six o’clock and Reg would always go to work and would always come home with his wages. We felt like we were living in a television show.

  All us kids went from being nervous wrecks to being almost relaxed. Linda settled down and for a time she was as happy as I was. We all felt safe with Reg as far as I could see. Mum still had a bad temper but she’d always had a bad temper so nothing had changed there really.

  We were safe and I could finally sleep at night. But I was still scared of everything and hated being in the dark. One day, Reg went to his mum’s house and came back with a light in the shape of a lighthouse. I thought it was beautiful. He brought it into my room and said to me that when he was young he was afraid of the dark and his dad had bought this for him. He said the lighthouse made it safe for ships sailing in the dark in wild seas and this one he was giving me would make it safe for me in my dreams, no matter how wild they got. It worked, but I liked to sleep with it on most nights, sometimes because I was scared, and sometimes because it reminded me that Reg was there to look after me.