by Max Howell
ETERNAL LOVE
PROFESSOR MAXWELL L. HOWELL
&
DR LINGYU XIE
Copyright © 2012 Prof Max Howell & Dr Lingyu Xie
All rights reserved.
ISBN:
ISBN-13: 978-1-925027-00-6 (ePub)
Library of Congress Control Number:
CreateSpace, North Charleston, SC
The rights of the authors Professor Maxwell L Howell and Dr Lingyu Xie are asserted in accordance with the Copyrights, Designs and Patents Act 1988 and other acts worldwide.
No part of this book may be printed or reproduced or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publishers.
Typesetting and origination by the publishers Howell-Xie.
DEDICATION
This work is dedicated to Dr Don and Donna Bailey, of Canada, and Bruce and Avelina Hely, of Australia, as well as some of the many who have passed on, like my brother Bill, Frank Fielding, Max Wiechman, Fay Engall, Mick Cremin and Wally Meagher
Contents
CHAPTER 1. EARLY DAYS
CHAPTER 2. 1956: THE OLYMPIC YEAR
CHAPTER 3. THE SEPARATION
CHAPTER 4. FAITH LIVES IN THE COUNTRY
CHAPTER 5. FAITH CUTS HER TIES
CHAPTER 6. FAITH IS MARRIED … TO TOCH
CHAPTER 7. A LIFE WITHOUT FAITH
CHAPTER 8. MARK’S FATHER IS DEAD
CHAPTER 9. FAITH HAS A BABY, MURRAY
CHAPTER 10. MARK AND DR HENRY
CHAPTER 11. MURRAY THE SWIMMER
CHAPTER 12. MURRAY TO THE UNITED STATES?
CHAPTER 13. MARK IS MARRIED AND DIVORCED
CHAPTER 14. MURRAY AT BERKELEY
CHAPTER 15. FAITH’S ILLNESS
CHAPTER 16. TOGETHER AT LAST!
CHAPTER 17. THE FATHER, THE MOTHER AND THE SON
PREFACE
This is a work of fiction, and the central characters in the story, Mark and Faith, are not intended to represent any person, living or dead. As any sport enthusiast knows, the winner of the 100 metres at the 1956 Olympic Games was Jon Henricks, who also won a gold medal in the 4 x 200m freestyle relay. Apart from these facts, there is no parallel in the lives of Mark and Jon.
Jon Henricks was born in North Sydney, and came to swimming fame originally at the Drummoyne Baths, and his coach was Harry Gallagher, who also trained Dawn Fraser. After the 1956 Games, he went to the University of Southern California, and while there met Bonnie Wilkie, the sister of one of his team-mates, who he married at the 1960 Rome Olympics. Jon still lives in the USA and worked as a company director in the Chicago area.
The names of the other athletes, Kevin O’Halloran, Murray Rose, John Devitt and so on, and the times in the events have been retained to add authenticity to the story. In no way is this novel meant to detract from the brilliant performances in 1956 of the then world’s greatest sprinter, Jon Henricks.
As for Mark’s coach, Terry Somerville, there was such a coach, who produced at Clovelly, Sydney, some of Australia’s best sprinters, such as Jack Campbell. Because he is largely a forgotten man in Australian swimming and yet contributed a great deal to the sport, his name was utilized in this novel as Mark’s coach. Many other names of actual persons have been used in the book, such as George Schroth, Dr Franklin Henry, Florence Stumpf, Frederick Cozens, Bob Losey, etc. The conversations and occurrences involving them are all fictional, though there are elements of truth in the characterisations, based on one of the author’s experiences as a student at the University of California at Berkeley. The actual names were used not only out of a desire for authenticity, but out a deep respect for each of these individuals who were mentors to Professor Max Howell. Incidentally, one of the authors wrote a book called Aussie Gold, and every living Australian gold medallist was interviewed, such as Jon Henricks, Murray Rose, John Devitt, Dawn Fraser and so on.
Though many of the experiences are similar to those of one of the authors, the work is essentially one of fiction. Most of the research related to the book was done by Dr Lingyu Xie.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The assistance of Anne Jamieson and Kathy Shelton is acknowledged. Anne found the novel on her computer and rescued it after the Brisbane floods, and Kathy Shelton put the finishing touches to it. Dr Bill Deacon is thanked for his editing of the manuscript.
CHAPTER 1.
EARLY DAYS
Randwick, a suburb of Sydney, Australia, has changed little over the years. There has ever been a fierce partisanship that enveloped those who lived there, fanned by a brilliant Rugby Union team familiarly known as the ‘Wicks’, or ‘the Flying Greens’. The supporters of the State’s winningest rugby team particularly delighted in overwhelming its neighbour Eastern Suburbs, who played with a dourness and drabness which was in sharp contrast to Randwick’s imaginative approach to the game. Many residents regarded any of its team’s victories as emblematic of the superior living standards and its quality of life that could not be matched elsewhwere in the sprawling, then three million population of the city of Sydney.
Only the seaside suburb of Manly seemed to match Randwick in this belief in its ultimate superiority. Insularity was the basis of much of Manly’s assertiveness, as it was nestled away from the Sydney Harbour Bridge, and yet they did seem to produce an over-abundance of sporting talent unequalled in Australia. Olympic Gold metallists ‘Boy’ Charlton, Richmond Cavill and Nick Winter, for example, were from this seaside resort, and athletes from there seemed ultra- competitive in everything they undertook.
There was also the Royal Randwick Race Course, which engaged the attention of Randwick’s sporting enthusiasts, particularly the gambling mob. It was an historic course which had held races since early settlement, and by royal charter could call itself the Royal Randwick Race Course.
The destinies of Randwick and the adjoining suburb of Coogee seemed to be interwoven. The youth of Randwick flocked to Coogee Beach, and would be inflamed if criticism were proferred by any outsider as to the paucity of its waves. Bondi and Maroubra were clearly superior from the surfing viewpoint, but local opinion adamantly argued otherwise. Like the Rugby club and the racecourse, the beach also had no equal in the eyes of the Randwickian.
Mark Jamieson was born in Randwick, and lived in Oswald Street in a run-down tenement building until he was seventeen years of age. His whole life revolved around Randwick and Coogee, and rarely would he visit the city of Sydney or travel to Bondi or Maroubra. When he did go elsewhere it was for competitive swimming, and he always felt like an outsider on those occasions. At Coogee on the beach everyone seemed to know each other and he could be in the sun at peace, talking to his friends or just watching the continual parade of swimmers. He felt at home there, and knew every nook and cranny of the terrain. There was a haunting beauty about the cliffs on either side of Coogee Beach, and there was nothing he enjoyed more than coming down to the beach to watch the setting sun. He could not imagine that there could be a more glorious place on earth.
His family was poor, his mother, a spare, small woman, who with her family lived in the top floor of a tenement flat, endeavouring to stretch a limited income as far as possible by judicious purchases and the careful husbanding of resources. She hand-washed the family’s clothing in a large copper vat, boiling the water and turning the clothes over continuously with a wooden rod. Rabbit stew was the most common meal the family had, and one rabbit would last a number of days. There was no meal Mark liked more as a child than his mother’s rabbit concoctions, particularly when the vegetables and potatoes were placed in the stew with a few herbs, leaving a taste that would be forever seared
in his memory.
There was very little happiness in the home, however, as Mark’s father was addicted, like most Australian males of the time period, to drinking and gambling. A barber by trade, he worked intermittently, being a product of an Australian environment in which the mateship ethos was dominant. Drinking beer in the local pub and gambling to excess were male societal expectations, particularly among the working class in those long-off days. Mark’s mother was expected to make do with an irregular income, keep the family together somehow and at the same time occupy a generally servile position in the home. Many Australian families at the time operated in this male-dominant manner.
Almost every day Mark would sicken as he would watch his father lurching drunkenly home from his regular drinking station, the Coach and Horses. His father would drink until closing time, tossing down the amber fluid until his money was exhausted, and then borrowing from his mates, frantically trying to drown away the memories and reality of his own personal failures. Like so many, he had neither the occupational skills nor mental acuity to turn his life around in such adverse circumstances. He was on a merry-go-round from which there was no escape, and it was amply demonstrated when he lost his temper and railed about the uselessness and hopelessness of life.
Above all Mark hated the continual family arguments, and he felt a deep shame and personal embarrassment as the neighbourhood would reverberate from the quarrels. At times he would go to bed and cry, wishing that someone would intervene with a magic wand and restore peace and love in his home. He promised himself that he would never quarrel if he ever got married, that he would always respect his wife; and he resolved that he would never drink or gamble.
Yet he loved his father and mother deeply. He felt more drawn to his father somehow. There was something in his father’s personality that drew people to him, and in his sober periods Mark admired how people listened to him, and how he had the gift of telling stories in a humorous manner. His father never told jokes but spoke engagingly of true-life events, and made them hilarious in the recounting. His father’s faults were all too obvious, they were oppressive and frightening, and were in sharp contrast to his good qualities, when he was clearly viewed as being kind and personal and loving and fun.
His father was always in and out of work because of his bouts with alcoholism, and Mark and his mother would watch in horror as this fundamentally nice person would be transformed into a swearing, drunken brawler. There were then days, sometimes weeks, of despair, and later repentance and recovery. Each time the family would pray that these excesses would never occur again, but it was a vicious cycle, and with each passing year the promises ceased to have meaning. His father’s inability to control his ultimate destiny became increasingly apparent, though Mark never gave up hope, as he loved his father deeply.
The family left Oswald Street because they were in arrears with the rent, and found a place about a mile further from the beach at 47 Church Street, just down from Peter’s Corner. The rent was much less, and yet the apartment was much bigger. His parent’s room was in the front of the flat, and Mark was at the back, and he found that the disagreements late at night were mercifully muffled by the walls. Mark was immediately happy there, and he hoped deep down that a change in the environment might bring his father around.
Mark had joined the Coogee Amateur Swim Club while he was at Oswald Street. He had gravitated towards it as everyone remarked how fast he was in the water, and he approached the coach, Terry Somerville, and asked if he could train with the Club. From the very moment he joined he revelled in it. He particularly enjoyed the competition, and he found the swimming got his mind completely off all the troubles at home. The only problem was the price of the daily admission to the Baths, though it was only threepence, as well as sixpence a week for lessons. His mother knew however what swimming had come to mean to Mark, and somehow managed to get enough money to keep him going. Mark knew the sacrifice that was being made so that he could swim, and doubled his efforts at training.
Mark was seventeen when he moved to Church Street in 1955, and less than a hundred yards away there lived a sixteen-year old girl named Faith Rogers. Faith loved Mark from the first moment she saw him. She found that she could see him coming from and going to his house from the window of the flat she shared with her mother and father in Alison Road, just up from Randwick Race Course, and every day she would station herself at the window so that she could catch a glimpse of him.
Every time she saw Mark she experienced a feeling deep inside her that she had never felt before. There was something about his walk that set him apart; it was determined and spirited, and there was a spring in his step that others did not seem to have. All she could think about each day was the next time she would catch a glimpse of him. When she did she could feel her face getting flushed, and her heart would race. It was a beautiful feeling. She knew she was in love, and for the first time.
Faith would hide daily behind the curtains of her second floor apartment and wait for his appearance. Mark was blonde-haired and sun-tanned, and always wore, on school days, the uniform of Sydney Technical High School, which consisted of a drab grey suit with the school badge clearly visible on the pocket.
Mark always came home from school the same way. He would get off the tram at Peter’s Corner carrying his school bag, and hurry past the shops along Alison Road, and then turn at an old horse trough at the corner of Church Street to get to his home.
In about ten minutes he would come running out of his home, with a pair of football shorts covering his swim-suit, an old rugby sweater covering his upper body, and a towel around his neck. He would run all the way to Coogee Aquarium Swimming Baths, about 1 1/2 miles away, pay his threepence admission and start swim training. Mark always responded well to the demands of the coach, Terry Somerville, and his spartan regime. He would train daily with about fifty other children of various ages. Normally they would all swim a leisurely half-mile, then do arms only with legs tied with rubber tubing, then legs only with wooden kick-boards. Then there was the part Mark liked, the repeat swims with twenty seconds rest. Sometimes the swims would be at maximum effort, at other times at 60 or 75 percent effort, so that all the swimmers could learn pacing. All the time he and the others were goaded by Terry. “There is no substitute for quality … concentrate … feel the water … feel it! Learn how to use it … concentrate on your rhythm …” On and on it went, Mark responding to every challenge the coach set him. Mark always put in an extra effort, for deep inside him there was a burning desire to excel.
One day, quite unexpectedly, Terry told Mark that he wanted to see him in his office after practice. What have I done wrong, he thought? Perhaps he is going to tell me not to come again.
Mark was very concerned as the grizzled old coach waved him into his office and told him gruffly to sit down.
“Mark,” he said, “what do you want most in life?”
The youngster gulped and his deepest hopes tumbled out.
“I want to be the best, Mr Somerville, I want to do something in this world better than anybody else. I will sacrifice anything to make it!”
“I knew that, son, I knew that … there is something about you that none of the others has. You have that drive and determination that champions are made of. It is rare. Are you willing, Mark, to make any sacrifices to get to the top?”
“Yes, sir, yes, I am!”
“Then listen to me! And I will not repeat it. From to-day, if you agree, you have only one goal in life: to be the best swimmer in the world. In the world! Not just Randwick, or Sydney, or NSW, or even Australia! The world, Mark, the world! Do you understand? If you do, and you want what I want, you will have to set new goals for yourself. You will have to be here at the Baths every morning from 6 am to 8 am, and every afternoon from 4 pm to 6 pm on school-days, and six hours on Saturday whenever there is no competition. Sunday is your day off. Now, Mark, this means doubling your present work output, if you want to be the best. Can you really handle it?�
�
“Yes, Mr Somerville, I can. I know I can!”
“There is more to it than that however. I do not want you to finish up like most of the other mug swimmers, or like me. You have to get an education, Mark. The secret to success in life is education. I know, because I have not got one. I do not want you to be just any old swimmer. From 7 to 9.30 pm, every day, you study, and most of Sunday. That is a requirement. Unless you get high marks at school you are not allowed in this pool. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I do!”
“There is one thing more, Mark. For the next few years you are to have virtually no social life. There are to be no girl-friends. None! Do you understand that?”
“Yes, sir, I do. No fears there, I have never had a girl-friend!”
“So can you handle all this?”
“Yes, Mr Somerville, I can.”
“If you do, you have a chance to be the very best in the world. The best in the world, Mark. Can you understand what that means, Mark, the best in the world? Our aim is to win the big one, an Olympic gold medal in 1956 at Melbourne.”
“A gold medal?”
“Yes, a gold medal, Mark – we are aiming for the top, lad. Now is that what you also really want?”
“I have never dreamed of anything like that, but when I think about it my heart races. I want it more than anything in life.”
“Well, Mark, I will tell you a secret. It has always been my aim to coach an Olympic champion. But you are the first swimmer I have had with the physical potential and the desire to do it. Many have the talent, son, few have the motivation. You have both, and that is the remedy for success. So, Mark, we are in this thing together. There is no turning back. We begin tomorrow at 6 am. Now be off with you! You will need all the rest you can get.”
Dazed, Mark tumbled out of the Coogee Baths with the old-fashioned circular glass dome, and instead of running home immediately, as was his custom, he ran across the street and then up to the highest point of the Coogee cliffs, overlooking Giles’ Baths, where health-conscious males would sun-bathe in the nude and play hand-ball and swim at their leisure.
