Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me

by Margaret Wentworth

  I had never felt so vulnerable in all my life: I had an infant completely dependent on me and, quite frankly, despite all the childbirth classes I’d attended, I didn’t really know what to do. In my family I’d been the youngest with two older brothers. I’d never held a baby before for longer than five seconds and never changed a nappy. I knew John’s mum would be there with lots of practical advice dating back to the 1940s when babies were regimented into strict feeding, weighing, burping and sleeping routines.

  I wanted my mother by my side, but she lived with dad in Coff’s Harbour on the northern coast of NSW, and had been inflicted with Parkinson’s Disease for 15 years, leaving her frail, shaky and falling over a lot. Sometimes she was lucid but mostly her eyes were glazed and it was difficult to communicate. I loved her, her state pained me, but nothing could bring back the vital, kind and lovely woman she’d been.

  The death of her eldest child, brother John, triggered a death wish that led to her steady deterioration. The handsome 18 year old developed stomach pains and vomiting, so mum kept him home on Friday. Over the weekend he got worse and several doctors called, diagnosing a gastric flu that hit Sydney at the time. On Monday when I came home from school, I was shocked to see him so thin, gaunt, green-hued and weak. A doctor was called from a party, gave him an injection and told mum and dad to stop worrying. John died the next morning. Mum’s grief knew no limits, and as a trained nurse, blamed herself for not recognising the symptoms of bowel obstruction.

  From that moment, the predictable pattern of my childhood was destroyed. As a 14 year old, I had to grow up fast and show strength. I also felt I had to bottle-up my own emotions because my mother’s grief was devastating enough for our quiet, normally reserved family to cope with. Dad coped in his usual controlled way. My brother Geoffrey shut himself up in his room and became moody; he didn’t seem to want to be part of our family any more.

  Dean’s birth was the catalyst that uprooted my parents from Coffs Harbour to return 540 kilometres south to the Sydney area. Dad didn’t like cities and wanted a more rural existence. We found a place for sale just five minutes away from Bumble Hill. The house itself, although rather simple in its design, was large enough to subdivide so that my dad’s sister, Betty, who had been living alone near them up at Coffs Harbour, could come down too and remain a close part of the family unit.

  It was not long before Ces was on their doorstep as a friendly and companionable neighbour. Dad’s first instinct was to be polite but not to encourage a situation that could lead to frequent social chit chats. Mum was grateful for a bit of company as she rarely ventured from the house. My aunt was very guarded, her instincts razor sharp. Over time, my parents came to be close friends of Ces. He would often visit them with offerings from his personal library. Ces had an impressive collection of books which mainly related to either famous boxers or infamous murderers. Such was Ces’s fascination with the macabre.

  The strongest link of Ces’s friendship with my family was undoubtedly their mutual love of animals. I grew up with parents who idolised their pets. The philosophy of our family was that all creatures deserved human kindness, whether they be wild or tame. Therefore, Ces’s professed love of all animals struck a deep chord in both me and my parents. Any man willing to make sacrifices for his animals had to be a good bloke.

  A demanding baby made working sessions with Ces more complicated but we fitted them in when Dean slept. Ces wasn’t tolerant of crying babies and less so of a clinging noisy toddler. A child and an older man competed for my undivided attention. Ces controlled his frustrations most of the time, even entertaining the boy with tricks and ditties, but when his patience wore thin, he’d lecture me on the perils of being a weak or indulgent parent. Rule 1: establish strict parental authority from Day One. I ignored this, preferring a more laid-back approach. Besides I was dog tired constantly and headaches lasted days. I assumed stress, lack of sleep and extra work were the causes. By then I was helping John care for his elderly overweight arthritic mum, who lived in a granny flat we built. John was the ever-attentive caring son. She was a proud fiery soul with strong opinions on everything, including Ces. After she first met him, she jabbed a cake fork in the air, and said, ‘That man is not to be trusted.’ I didn’t think black and white like that and was offended. I should have listened to the intuition of the much travelled, ever-critical, experienced woman in her eighties.

  Listened too, perhaps, to three people who claimed to be in tune with psychic forces. When I was 21 a card reader told me I would own a house surrounded by trees (like Bumble Hill?) and be betrayed by someone whose name started with C. My girlfriend Annie, whose life was beset with so much psychic phenomena, romance and drama, the line between reality and fantasy was constantly blurred, warned me for years to ‘be careful, don’t trust him, he’s dangerous’. I thought she’d enjoy Ces’s company but she was spooked by him. A tarot card reader, Joey, met Ces briefly at a barbecue. Ces turned on his charm for the ex-go-go dancer and was entranced by her breasts. Later, she offered a reading and I asked about the future of the book. She turned up Death and said Ces was evil, I should walk away and never see him again. A couple of John’s friends warned him about Ces too. I found all the negativity disappointing and I neither wanted to cease seeing Ces or writing the book. I enjoyed both activities far too much.

  4 Family Unity

  All happy families resemble one another,

  but each unhappy family is unhappy in its

  own way.

  Tolstoy, Anna Karenina

  My mother’s attempted suicide was seen by the bargee who ran up the canal and jumped in after us. He dragged mum and me back up to the bank.

  It must have been very unpleasant for mum when she came to her senses; waterlogged, bedraggled and heavy with guilt that she’d attempted to take the life of her son and the unborn child in her womb. For several days afterwards, I heard mum trying to talk about her crisis to relatives and friends. She said she couldn’t forgive herself and often mentioned the Gypsy word lodging, meaning embarrassment. In those days, such things were considered best left unsaid. Mum was told in firm, hushed whispers: stop mentioning it. Soon the episode became taboo.

  Within a couple of months, mum gave birth to my sister, Sylvia, and then a year later, to Barbie. When I was four, Sylvia was a toddler who I adored. We had both developed rickets, probably through malnutrition. My feet were flat and my legs so weak that I had to wear callipers for support and to correct my posture. When Sylvia began to walk her legs were so bowed and unstable that my mother became particularly concerned. She sought medical advice and was told that Sylvia not only had to wear leg braces but needed to be hospitalised for a very long time.

  On Sylvia’s day of departure, mum dressed her from head to toe in a white woollen outfit and stretched a matching woollen hat down over her dark ringlets. Sylvia’s big brown eyes were wide with expectancy. Her leg braces looked huge and ugly on her frail, bowed legs. Mum asked me to kiss her goodbye. I felt confused and uncomfortable. My mind couldn’t comprehend why my little friend and playmate had to go away. In her absence all I had was a little photograph of Sylvia which I kept looking at. I continually asked mum when she would be coming back; and at night-time I’d lie awake and worry about her being all alone in a grim institution, separated from those who loved her.

  Days without Sylvia became weeks, then months. In an attempt to stop me fretting, Dad ‘borrowed’ a car he was doing mechanical work on in order to drive mum and me to the hospital. Mum went inside and soon returned with Sylvia in her arms. I was ecstatic! Mum watched with pleasure as Sylvia and I played, talked and laughed together. It was just wonderful. I visited Sylvia on several other occasions after that, and the experience always ended in gut-wrenching pain.

  My younger sister Barbie was just a baby and no value as a playmate. Without Sylvia’s company, I wandered the neighbourhood streets looking for things to do. I’d often go down to the railway yards to watch the horses at work. It wa
s here that I committed my first criminal act. I found a large piece of ‘monkey stone’ which was an exciting discovery. People in Lancashire rubbed their doorsteps with it and then polished the area with a cloth, leaving a nice sheen.

  I was small and frail, so it was a struggle to carry the monkey stone home. About one or two minutes after I returned, there was a knock on the front door. Little did I realise there was a policeman following me all the time. I could hear voices as my mother spoke to him. ‘Well, I’d like to see him, I seen him steal a stone from out of the railway yard.’ My mother replied in a loud, expressive voice, `Did he now?’ I shot behind the curtain covering the gas meter, peeping out, terrified of the big man in uniform. ‘Oh, come in then, Officer,’ said my mum. While the policeman pretended to search for me, he warned, ‘Now if I find the lad I’ll take him off to the police station.’ His shadow loomed large as he walked towards the curtain. I squeezed my eyes closed and held my breath. I was a goner!

  To my relief, his steps faded and the door closed. I went limp at my first warning not to steal. A family joke had it the first words I uttered were ‘not gooty’—interpreted as ‘not guilty’.

  Tricia McLean was an Italian friend of mum’s. She’d bring sweets and share strong black tea. Her de facto, John Wiley, was a bad-tempered alcoholic and she left him to drink alone for a time. He came to our place to fetch her back, stale booze on his breath and roughness and aggression in his manner. I was sitting on the doorstep. Tricia wouldn’t come and he suddenly pulled out a razor and slashed her throat, her warm blood splashing on me. I ran to the back of the house, but the door was locked, so I just huddled, terrified. Lucky to survive, Tricia had an ugly scar and a soft husky voice afterwards. The bloodstains on our monkey stone proved indelible and people commented on it.

  It was therefore with some relief that mum decided we should leave Chapel Street. So we gathered our belongings and began walking the streets of Chorlton-on-Medlock looking for somewhere else to live. In Every Street, a lady asked if they needed a room. My parents were grateful to accept.

  One day mum went out, leaving me and Barbie in the care of a young neighbour. Several hours later the front door opened and in walked mum with Sylvia in her arms. I couldn’t believe it! It had been two years since Sylvia had been sent away. Now she was home for good. I ran up to mum and Sylvia, breathless with excitement, wanting so much to kiss and hug my little sister. For a few beats Sylvia and I just stared at each other, then mum bent down so that we could embrace. In sudden fear or perhaps shyness, Sylvia clutched mum tightly and turned away from me. Her rejection was devastating, I suddenly felt very alone. Then slowly she turned her little face towards me, her eyes shining with recognition. She gave an impish smile and reached forward. I lifted my face up to hers and we gently kissed. A delightful tingle ran down my spine. A very special bond of friendship was cemented between us, one which has endured a lifetime.

  5 From Out of the Midlands

  And did the Countenance Divine

  Shine forth upon our clouded hills?

  And was Jerusalem builded here

  Among these dark Satanic mills?

  William Blake, preface Milton

  I’m sure it was my mother’s Gypsy blood that gave her the restless desire to keep moving. She’d been born in a horse-drawn caravan in Yorkshire and spent her early years constantly on the move. We lived in one place for a few weeks or months, then moved to another.

  It was a real performance transferring our belongings from one place to the next. We’d hire a large hand cart from the wheelbarrow yard and stack it as high as we could. As dad pushed the heavy cart along the street, there’d be a glankety-glonk sound as the metal rims ran over the cobblestones. We’d make several trips. Moving our old piano was always the very stressful finale.

  The houses we rented were always shabby: broken furniture, smashed windows, missing floorboards or doors, leaking plumbing, maybe an oven door hanging off its hinges. But mum made sure essential things such as cutlery, plates and cooking utensils were clean. I was particularly proud of our front room which we called `the parlour’. I felt it was superior to other front rooms in our area because we had our old Cons & Cons piano. This was in spite of the old rather shabby couch without cushions, a single wooden chair and the pair of slightly tattered cotton fishnet curtains framing the windows.

  From sister Sylvia’s point of view, the most prized possession in the house was her Scots doll, dressed in a pretty tartan kilt, which she proudly displayed in a glass case on top of the kitchen sideboard. It was the only doll she had. She’d gently take it out of its case, hold it lovingly, kiss it and then put it back again. It was her greatest treasure.

  Wherever we moved, life resumed a similar pattern, dominated by the effects of alcoholism and poverty. I was surrounded by people who drank heavily, such as my father, my older stepbrother Tony and many of our neighbours. They felt big for doing so and would boast about the amount of alcohol they could consume. On a Saturday night they’d gather inside the Rutland Pub and drink thick black Chester’s beer, hell-bent on trying to outdrink each other for entertainment. The Irishmen in our area called it ‘fighting beer’ because it was quite common to get drunk on just a pint. Spurred on by challenges to their manhood, the locals would drink three or four pints and then stagger outside into the cold night air.

  My mates and I would wait for the street brawls to erupt, move in close, eyes to the ground. On occasion a coin would clink to the ground and we’d dash for it among the flaying fists and kicking boots.

  Sylvia and I wore our metal and leather callipers during the day, in the hope our legs would grow straighter. Mum took us to a clinic for disabled children once a week. The nurses gave us exercises and advice, cotton wool to pad our callipers and a spoonful of Scots Emulsion—codliver oil with vitamins A and C. We got extra if we brought our own container and one day mum brought a big one. The nurse dribbled in a small quantity. ‘Don’t strain yourself,’ said mum, who couldn’t stand meanness.

  We continued to go to the courthouse for government assistance payments. During a lengthy waiting period, I complained of hunger. On the way to the canteen for a sandwich I stopped at a window to see the view. I shivered when I saw the grey-green water of Minshell Canal and my hunger vanished. Tears came to mum’s eyes; it was her nightmare too.

  We once had neighbours called the Middletons. Mr Middleton always wore a brown cardigan. Mrs Middleton was a slightly stooped silver-haired lady. Quiet, tidy and kind they always said hello when we passed. How clean they looked—like they’d just jumped out of a bath. Sometimes they invited me in, perhaps because I had a sweet angelic face framed by black ringlets, for cake and milk, a real treat. The Middletons lived in a world of carpet, clean white curtains, starched tablecloths, cushions and polished brass pokers and tongs for the fire, biscuits in a tin, a sugar basin with a lid and everything stacked in containers—even the bread was stored in a bread bin. Speech was absorbed by soft furnishings.

  I could never understand it. Dad was a totally different person when he was drunk but he was also capable of extremes when sober—socially he could be charming and the life of the party, yet alone with us kids he ignored us or shouted, ‘Come in!’ Get out!’ or `Go to bed!’ Maybe this was because of the absence of a father figure in his own life. His behaviour hadn’t meant anything to me when I was a toddler; he was the only dad I knew and as far as I was concerned, that was how they were meant to behave. The older I got, the more I observed the kind way other dads behaved with their children and the more I detested his cruelty.

  During the day my dad was rarely at home. Sometimes I’d be playing with a mate in the street and would see him driving down the road with a couple of females as passengers; as I matured I realised they were his fancy women. Mum told me that when I was only a baby, she came home early and caught one of dad’s girlfriends, Amy Quick, trying to climb out of the house through the bedroom window. Mum proudly boasted how she belted Amy before she
fled.

  Dad was a very promiscuous man and, having known some of his female friends, I believe he was full of sexual prowess. The word went around and other women were attracted to him. His warmth to the fairer sex was only skin deep. One snippet of his advice to me which cemented in my impressionable young mind was: ‘If you ever get a good woman, shoot her before she turns bad so she’ll have died a good woman!’

  It was one of the seven wonders of the world that my mother stayed. She must have been so sickly fond of dad she’d have taken any amount of verbal or physical abuse short of murder. One day dad came in drunk and started arguing with her. Mum walked towards the kitchen and he lashed out, knocking her off balance. I watched, terrified, as she fell through a door which led down to the cellar. Fortunately, mum only tumbled halfway down the stairs but the impact smashed her cheekbone. She was very shaken and upset.

  My father was often violent towards mum, Sylvia and me, but thankfully rarely to my youngest sister, Barbie, who was very timid and shy. In contrast, Sylvia developed into a small yet very tough, fearless, outward-going girl, full of character and fire. Dad would frequently punch the daylights out of her. He’d whack me too for no particular reason at all, such as running my fingers playfully across the piano keys. After hitting me he’d often turn after my fleeing body and lash out with his boot. On one drunken occasion he even threw an axe at me; I fell on the floor, the blade whizzed past my head and stuck into the door.

  When dad was drunk Sylvia and I could only watch him in fear. We were grateful when mum stepped into the firing line to protect us. I wanted to protect her too, but didn’t know how. Once dad struck her and stormed out, but instead of hurling abuse after him, she shocked me by crumpling into a corner sobbing uncontrollably. It made me angry and inspired. I got down a bottle of acid dad used for testing jewellery. ‘When dad comes in, I’m going to throw this acid over him,’ I shouted. But dad was in the hallway and heard me: `I’m going to make you drink that.’ I didn’t doubt him. The bottle slipped from my hand and shattered on the floorboards. I fled and stayed away until he sobered up and forgot.