Hellbent: Ces Waters & Me

by Margaret Wentworth

  Dean and I kept in contact with Gloria and spent months scraping together our savings to fly her over. I tried to ensure my sons would not get too excited and expectant; however, there was an underlying hope we could all get together as a family again. To prepare the way for a harmonious reunion, I told the boys Gloria had been a good mother and it was my affair with Christine that had caused her to leave.

  Gloria arrived in Australia that March for a month-long visit. The emotional hugs that followed were documented on the Nine Network’s A Current Affair. At first, the reunion looked promising.

  Then it became obvious she disapproved of how the boys had been reared. She said: ‘They wouldn’t be boxing if I had my way!’ Dean was particularly upset by her judgmental attitude. The children hadn’t seen her for 20 years and were sure she’d approve of their healthy lifestyle and fine manners. Gloria thought it weird her children didn’t smoke, swear, drink or eat meat. She also felt I had far too much influence on their lives.

  Gloria moved out and went to stay on the Central Coast with Tracey and her husband. The two women instantly started bad-mouthing me. Both Gloria and Tracey would have shared common feelings about what a difficult disciplinarian I’d been. Tracey took Gloria round to visit Christine. You can imagine the destructive tone of conversation that would have sprung from that gathering!

  Despite the initial resentment Gloria had shown to the media towards boxing I still expected her to be pleased by her sons’ achievements in sport. I proudly showed her the boys’ trophy cabinet. I was amazed when she didn’t react at all. Dean, Guy and Troy were waiting to see delight on their mother’s face, but it remained deadpan.

  Dean would often drive Gloria around in his car. One day, in a Gosford shopping centre, Gloria saw a man running in shorts, `Cor, he’s got lovely legs!’ Dean was embarrassed by this open display of sexuality from his mother. He became aware of another side to her nature when he heard her swearing and found she liked to drink. The final straw came after he swerved to avoid an animal crossing the road. It annoyed Gloria, who said, ‘Why endanger your own life? It’s only an animal.’

  All the years of separation and unresolved anger at Gloria’s desertion soon proved too much for me—and my sons. While Gloria and I were reminiscing about our life together in London, I raised the subject of her desertion. I related to Gloria how the News of the World reporter had told me he’d interviewed her after she’d reappeared weeks later as Joy Murphy, how he’d been shocked at her response of not caring about Troy crying for his mother. Gloria angrily claimed she’d never said what the reporter alleged and he was ‘a b–––—liar’. She insisted she’d been concerned about leaving her small children. I responded that if this was so, why didn’t she ever get in touch, send a Christmas or birthday card? Gloria went red with guilt. I asked Gloria what she did with my mother’s ring, which she’d worn on the day she disappeared. Gloria denied having the ring. The boys themselves wanted answers to fill the wound of maternal rejection they carried within their psyche. By bringing to the forefront all these painful questions which had been burning in our minds for many years, we embarrassed Gloria and made her uncomfortable in our presence.

  Although Christine had criticised Gloria for years, they became very close. This demonstrated to me that these two women had no honour, loyalty or allegiance to anybody. After a couple of weeks the reunion turned sour and Gloria returned to England. We were all disappointed that things had turned out this way.

  Christine and I went to the Family Court to resolve any differences of opinion we might have regarding a fair and equitable settlement while our divorce was being processed. We soon became embroiled in a heated tussle. There seemed no limit to Christine’s imagination. In front of the judge she alleged all sorts of things, that I’d often beaten her, raped her, performed deviant sexual acts without her consent, and ordered her to have sex with younger men like Allen to cure her frigidity. I found them extraordinary claims, considering my prostate problem and how sexually free and active she’d always been. Dean was there, which I found particularly embarrassing. I denied the charges at the time for this very reason, because I felt he wasn’t ready to hear about certain types of adult behaviour. Christine and I had certainly had some adventurous sexual experiences but she’d been willing, enjoyed herself and came back for more.

  Marty Rhone and I made a good team. By this time I’d taught Marty a lot about the boxing world and how to negotiate the right deals with the right people. Marty soaked all this knowledge in. Marty also hoped to maintain a high media profile and continued to assume an up-front role as co-promoter, whereas I was happy to work more in the background. In May, two weeks later, Marty Rhone and I held our second promotion billed as `Superfight No. 1’ at the Melbourne Sports and Entertainment Centre. Unfortunately, the date conflicted with an Australian Rules Football match across the road and we had a poorer turnout than expected.

  Troy fought American Jack The Kid Callahan, rated No. 2 world middleweight. He had a lot riding on it. The IBF matchmaker Bill Brennan had told us that if Troy won convincingly within four rounds he’d get a shot at Mathew Hilton for the world title. Jack had only lost one fight in 28 and his last three fights were KOs. Troy opened up Callahan’s guard with right uppercuts and left-hook combinations immediately and dropped him in Round 2. But it was a TKO decision: Jack’s eye was gashed and prevented him from contesting Round 3. Jeff Wells described Troy as ‘the most classically poised and balanced fighter Australia has produced since Johnny Famechon’ and I couldn’t have agreed more.

  The black American, Wilbert The Vampire Johnson, had sent Guy an autographed photo of himself, the message, ‘Hope to see you real soon.’ When they met Wilbert tried stare-down tactics, but Guy realised the overweight Wilbert lacked punch power and beat him on points unanimously.

  Dean fought the tall Dan Mayhem Murphy. Dean had regained fitness and looked trimmer, and he was in a state of sexual frustration from our rule of withholding from sex for six weeks before a fight. But Dan was a clever in-fighter, staying close and hammering like hell. Dean got a terrible cut to the eye—I was going to pull him out—but Ian Batty stemmed the blood, and Dean won on points.

  It was one of the very rare occasions I didn’t finish the night with a sore throat and husky voice, caused by continually yelling instructions over the noise of the crowd and the slamming fists. I was very proud of all my sons.

  When we returned from Melbourne, I found a letter waiting. Margaret Barnett, who lived in the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, had seen a 60 Minutes program featuring me and my dogs, and had been impressed by my love of animals. She knew of a dingo-type dog which was being mistreated and urgently needed a home. I rang and told her I’d be happy to oblige. So Margaret brought her dog up and it joined about 150 others.

  Margaret was a Pommie in her mid forties with short-cropped grey hair and a rather diminutive yet lovely personality. She was so thin she looked like a walking skeleton, just skin on bones. Her withdrawn, anorexic appearance reflected a marriage without love; it lacked communication, warmth and fun. Whereas Margaret’s life revolved around caring for her two teenage sons, her husband had withdrawn into his own world of work and heavy drinking; they had little in common. This lovely woman was wilting like a flower without sunshine and water. Margaret and I got on together like a house on fire. She came up to the farm every weekend to bring food for her dog and it was an occasion I always looked forward to; we brought happiness and laughter back into each other’s lives.

  In early June I had one final occasion to go round to see Allen Hall because I wanted to have a private word with him. I stopped my car outside the gate and Allen came out. His pupils seemed dilated and he didn’t walk straight, as if he was on drugs. He told me it wasn’t a good idea for me to stay and then walked back inside his house. Moments later, I could hear a repeating rifle being discharged: bang-bang-bang. I knew this was a warning for me to stay away from his property. I took the hint.

  After
that incident I sent a letter to the Wyong Police describing Allen as being ‘drunk and drugged-up with grass’ at his Warnervale property. ‘He started showing off and shooting rapid fire with a .22 automatic rifle that he was not licensed to use. One day he will kill someone with his stupidity. Please look into this.’ I signed the letter, `Concerned’.

  The three of us were playing a dangerous game.

  29 Strained Union, Reunion

  Give your hearts, but not into each other’s keeping

  For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.

  And stand together yet not too near together:

  For the pillars of the temple stand apart,

  And the oak tree and the cypress grow not in each other’s shadow.

  Gibran, The Prophet

  John and I enjoyed attending Ces’s sons’ ring performances, an atmosphere of excitement, smoke, booze, sweat, crowds. Troy’s beautiful unceasing footwork, instant reflex and fast fists made him my favourite. Like others, I didn’t enjoy Guy’s backing-away style though his talent was undeniable. Most of the crowd looked forward to the heavyweights, 81 to 91kg men, fists like hams on the bone, and I was no exception. Dean danced slower than his brothers, but his punch was awesome.

  In 1987 John, the children and I went to Hobart for The Big Eliminator, to see Tasmania and visit relatives. Ces was tense and aloof on the day of the fight. On our last breakfast there, in Ces’s absence, the boys revealed in passing that Christine had left for places unknown. This surprised me; Ces had been unusually secretive.

  When Allen’s house burnt down in February 1988, Ces and Dean were prime suspects, but Ces’s alibi was impregnable and there wasn’t enough evidence to convict Dean. For me, Ces’s argument that he’d never have burned Allen’s dogs to death was hard to refute. But I knew he’d thrown petrol down the hall of the house of an African who owed him black money when he was 21. While Ces torched the front, Bill used a tyre lever on the heads of the residents as they fled out the back door.

  Ces told neither John nor I anything of his dangerous games; that came later. But we could tell he was going through a troublesome time, and put it down to the difficulties he was having maintaining the training program. When Dean left home and returned daytimes, Ces came round muttering about how Dean was his ‘most headstrong’, `laziest’ and ‘most difficult’ son, and the one who disliked boxing the most, something Christine had told John too. Yet Dean was Australia’s heavyweight champion. Was this Dean’s enormous self-discipline or a sign of fatherly domination?

  Ces was a proud man and did not like speaking to us about Christine leaving him. John and I were polite people, so we never intruded in this regard. He had nothing good to say about her, nor her lover Allen Hall, who got the worst mouthing. On some visits he seemed quiet and sad, on others he was angry and loud. John began to find Ces’s company tiresome. Specifically: ‘his incessant ego and grandstanding’. I was hopeful Ces would get through this difficult patch because he knew the answer. In Ces’s words: ‘Communications in all families break down at some time or another. When this happens, it’s up to you to make sure this situation is only temporary.’

  It was just taking Ces a long time to put it into practice.

  My master plan wasn’t going well either.

  The adage ‘physician heal thyself’ was also difficult for John and me to put into practice. Years earlier we realised that the ideals of marriage faltered on the rocks of human nature. So we decided to respect our individuality by becoming less possessive in our relationship. In order to survive the distractions and conflicts that occur when people co-habitate, we needed to create a more flexible union, one in which we held friendship as the highest priority.

  The sexual freedom John and I had was fine—so long as we kept our extra-marital encounters private and they didn’t intrude on our relationship. The core problem was to surrender one’s body without offering one’s heart. A hard call, especially after close friendships had been formed.

  I had a couple of ongoing affairs with men I met through work and once came close to falling in love with a married man with hair bleached blond by the sunlight, Roger. At first I was attracted to him intellectually but there was such a sizzle between us that eventually, during a company conference where we’d had a little too much to drink … This is how I learned the truth: don’t mix business with sex. Roger ended up resigning from work because he could not bear the emotional pain of working closely with someone he cared for but could not share his life with.

  After I stopped working with and seeing him, Roger went through a possessive phase and would routinely drive past our house each evening. One night he hid in the garden outside our bedroom window. He didn’t recognise our new car in the driveway and probably thought I was entertaining another man. John and I were lying in bed trying to get to sleep when we heard a strange scrunching sound outside. We raised our heads from pillows to look out the window directly behind us. To our shock we were confronted by a mass of white hair, then gold-rimmed spectacles surrounding two beady eyes, slowly rising from the other side of the glass. All three of us got a terrible fright at the same time. It was a bit awkward trying to explain to John that The Face belonged to my ex-boss and not some Peeping Tom. His excuse? He thought the strange vehicle outside belonged to a burglar who was doing our house over. The whole experience of emotional attachment had shaken me and made me very wary of giving my heart to anyone else for fear it would lead to a painful and difficult conclusion.

  John was about to learn this too. He formed a close friendship with Barbara, an English nurse, who was looking for a mate in life. She saw John as an interesting interim companion. Barbara was very slim and tidy in appearance, a neat short haircut framing her oval face. Her brown eyes were sharply alert and critical. She had a kind and generous nature, though there was an obsessive side to her which turned her relationship with John into a judgmental and passionate one.

  When John fell in love with her, he realised life was going to get complicated. It did. When I found out how much Barbara meant to him, I became jealous and suffered great insecurity. Barbara was insisting on an exclusive sexual relationship with him. I insisted he end the relationship. He refused! This was a tremendous blow to my ego. Our sexual relationship had been declining over the past few years and this was its deathknell. It’s upsetting for a woman when she loses that alluring quality. The marriage counsellor told us relationships without sex are doomed.

  John was fighting for his individuality. I sensed he was in the middle of a male midlife re-assessment, just like in the storyline of the movie Fantasy Man he made a few years before. I realised I was being possessive and backed off. We discussed divorce in a serious calm way because I wanted to give John the choice of freedom, though I hated the thought of splitting up our family and not enjoying a future together. John wanted his family to remain intact and told Barbara. It was very difficult for her too. But she eventually accepted that situation—provided she could remain John’s close friend and still take an active interest in the children. During this time we had many arguments, about money, sexuality or Barbara. I think back on it as an unhappy, disturbed time of my life. But who was I to complain? I was no angel. Who is?

  I eventually realised the only way to prevent feeling bad and getting headaches from stress was to change roles: victim to victor. At this point I took strong control of the situation and asked myself how I could positively resolve the dilemma. One of the best things about this situation was that we were both being frank and honest about our feelings. I knew exactly where I stood. I decided that the best thing to do was to keep the family intact and if John wanted to keep seeing Barbara he could do so provided she was kept at arm’s length from the house. This was difficult as she was living far from her family and friends, and, being childless in her late thirties and never having lived with anybody outside her family, she enjoyed our company. She loved going on outings with us, especially a weekend at Bumble. I wanted to like her, but ne
ver felt completely comfortable in her presence, probably due to all the emotional drama that had gone on earlier. This was an awkward situation I had to live with for six years but the alternative, leaving John and destroying our plans, was too distressing.

  Ces met Barbara. She was spending a weekend with us on the property. Barbara hadn’t met Ces before but she’d heard a lot about him and formed the strong opinion he was a ‘user’. In an abrupt outburst, she told Ces this quite bluntly, to his face, after they were introduced. Ces was taken aback. His eyes darkened. That same day, John, Barbara and Ces were walking near a cliff. Ces indicated to John, by pointing to Barbara up ahead and making shoving motions with the flats of his hands, that there’s only one way to deal with a woman like that: take her to the edge, show her the view, then…

  In April 1988 Ces got excited and positive again. He received a letter from Gloria, stating her intention to fly out to reunite with them all. Understandably, there was a lot of tension in the air when the plane touched down at Mascot Airport. 60 Minutes covered the event. It was very moving. We watched it on television. I first saw Tracey `the woman’ on 60 Minutes. That sad little girl in the photos was now an attractive young woman with character etched in her face, bright perceptive eyes and perfect white teeth. She was at Mascot with her brothers, caught up in the emotion-charged atmosphere as a long lost mother hugged her grown children. There were smiles and tears, but every face showed the strain. Away from the bright lights and media hype, Gloria still had a lot of explaining to do.

  Gloria stayed on the Central Coast for several weeks, visiting the homes of Ces and Tracey, trying to make up for lost time. We never met her; Ces kept Gloria very much within the family group. We were surprised when he told us she had gone home early because of unresolved conflict. He was very angry at Gloria, she had stirred up trouble rather than calmed the waters. He wanted her out of his life forever. The cerebral hemorrhage she suffered soon afterwards guaranteed this.