Innocence Revisited

by Cathy Kezelman

  At the end of a beach day Daddy and I would sit on the rocks gazing out to sea, the sea spray whipping against our faces. As the tide came in we’d rush back to protect our sandcastles. More sand, reinforcing higher walls, but the tide would march on and our moats would overflow, leaching the walls until our castles crumbled. Simon would pitch in, but even as a united front, our family was no match for the forces of nature. Minuscule sand crabs, masters of the sea by design, would burrow to safety while we, a thousand times their size battled against the wash and lost.

  Simon and I had several conversations about the good old days, reminiscing as siblings should; school holidays, long drives with number plate games, I-spy, camping, tents, stretchers and eskies. But some of my fonder memories were born when Daddy and I spent time together after school.

  When Daddy wasn’t on playground duty or in rehearsals for the school musical, he’d get back soon after I did. Sometimes we’d take Cherry for a walk, or play catch in the backyard. Daddy wasn’t very good at catch but it didn’t matter - he was still playing with me. I liked it when everyone else was busy because I’d have Daddy all to myself. He’d lift me onto his lap, ‘Well, lassie. What did you do at school today?’ And Daddy wasn’t like other daddies; he really was interested. I think that he enjoyed listening to me rattle on about school as much as I enjoyed telling him.

  ‘What happened next?’

  ‘Did you and Susie make up?’

  ‘I’m sure you’ll learn the rest tomorrow.’

  And I glowed.

  Daddy didn’t spend all of his spare time with me, although I wished he had. First there was music; Daddy adored music. He’d sit in his chair composing, writing, sketching or painting with a symphony thundering in the background. He also loved to read. Daddy’s books and manuscripts filled the house. Along with his tools - 2B,HB, pens and coloured pencils, charcoal and paints and a thick rectangular orange eraser. Most afternoons Daddy would write or sketch right up until dinnertime. After dinner Daddy would wash up. Sometimes I would help dry to give me a chance to talk to him. As soon as Daddy finished washing up, he’d head back to his chair. I didn’t mind too much because the best treat was still to come.

  Every night when Daddy put me to bed he’d read me a story. He’d lie down with his head on my pillow.

  ‘Well, lassie? Which book will we read tonight?’

  ‘This one Daddy! Or should we read this one? How about two, Daddy? Oh Daddy, two please?’

  I’d rest my head on Daddy’s chest and listened intently as the pictures flashed by. I would have happily listened to the same book over and over again. That’s how much I loved story time. Even when I could read perfectly well myself, Daddy would still read to me. Having my Daddy close, his breath warm against my cheek meant the world to me. I wouldn’t let anything ever take it away.

  ‘Tell me, Simon. What do you remember from later on, after you were about, umm, eleven or?’

  I saw the colour drain from Simon’s face as he turned away and stared off into the distance.

  ‘Hey Simon, what’s up?’ Some time passed before he spoke.

  ‘Well Catherine, it’s weird. After that everything changes. It changes and I get sad, really sad and all I can see is Dad sitting in that chair of his. You remember his chair, don’t you? He sits in his chair and, I can’t get him to move.’

  Although Simon had helped me to recall some of our childhood adventures, he had not been able to cast any light on anything else. He too was at a loss to remember the details of times I was so desperate to recollect and comprehend. I remained in the dark regarding what troubled me.

  chapter 9

  For most of my primary years my father taught at my primary school; Humpybong. Humpybong (meaning ‘dead huts’ to the traditional owners of the land) was the main public school on the Redcliffe Peninsula. Its name; however, belied its ambience. Gaze from any window in the main building and you could see the waves breaking on the sandbanks off shore. Humpybong was a great school for young kids. The laidback education was infused with a sense of freedom, matched by a connection with the prevailing elements - primarily the regular gusts of sea spray and sand that the southerlies brought in.

  Having my Daddy at school with me was a godsend for a child who was as painfully shy as I was. Most kids loved him and his popularity helped boost my fragile ego. Besides, he always made me feel special and protected me from the ‘rough and ready’ side of the playground.

  The year I turned eight, Simon left Humpybong to start high school in the city. That year marked a turning point and the beginning of a downhill spiral for the whole family. My mother started teaching at the Girls’ Grammar, necessitating two extra hours on the road every day. The additional travel exhausted her and she became even more short-tempered than usual. After a few months my parents decided that it was all too hard and decided to sell up and move closer to Brisbane. And at the end of that year, my father resigned from Humpybong.

  I was devastated. An insecure child, I hated change of any sort and these changes were massive. Yet I was grateful that our Christmas holiday break together would not be affected. Holidaying as a family provided some of the best times we ever shared.

  Most years at Christmas we would head off up the coast. With six weeks to play with we’d travel far afield. Simon and I would stave off boredom by playing all sorts of games. ‘I-spy’ and number plate games were old faithfuls, but collecting stamps for our Golden Fleece books was the best. Detouring in search of obscure entries undoubtedly drove our parents spare.

  Our holidays were not luxurious. Camping was the order of the day. My father was in charge of pitching the tent and Simey and I were his offsiders. We’d squabble over whose turn it was to be in charge of the mallet and whacking the pegs in. Or who was doing the final adjustments to the guy ropes. Our old lean-to leaked like a sieve when it rained. Getting the angle on the roof right was crucial, as downpours and strong winds were a certainty at Christmas time up north, courtesy of cyclones from the tropics. Many a night was spent battening down the hatches to resist gales and squalls.

  Our mother was in charge of the interior. With army-issue stretchers to erect, an esky to restock as well as cooking gear, lanterns, lilos and other paraphernalia there were always plenty of jobs to go around. Camping meant tinned food; Tom Piper Braised Steak and Vegetables, Tom Piper Sausages and Mash - I hated them all.

  Our camping days were relaxed with lots of swimming and strolling in the sun. However the rain brought its pleasures too. At the first drops Simon and I would be out digging trenches to stop the inside of the tent getting wet. We’d get drenched ourselves, but that was all fun. Our mother would scream, but it was worth it. Her holiday screaming didn’t seem as angry as her outbursts at home.

  The summer holiday after my father resigned from Humpybong should have been great, but it wasn’t. Daddy kept to himself and didn’t join in the fun. I asked him what was wrong but he wouldn’t tell me. Maybe he was sad about leaving Humpybong; I sure was. And I noticed something funny too. It was his right leg; it jiggled a lot. It jiggled when he sat on his stretcher eating his tea and when he sat on the rocks looking out to sea. It even jiggled when he lay curled up in front of the fire at night.

  In February my father started teaching at a high school in Sandgate, halfway between Redcliffe and Brisbane. Later that year we moved to a suburb of Brisbane called Indooroopilly. I hated leaving my friends behind. Indooroopilly primary was much bigger than Humpybong and not nearly as friendly. And for the first time ever, Daddy wasn’t at school with me. I couldn’t go to him when I felt scared anymore.

  The best thing about Indooroopilly was discovering tennis. The sports teacher stuck a racquet in my hand soon after I arrived and to everyone’s surprise, I was a natural. The timing couldn’t have been better. Given the recent change in my father, I was in the market for an activity to keep me and my thoughts, busy. Tennis became an obsession and I clung to my racquet for years to come and rarely released my gr
ip.

  The local tennis courts soon became my second home. When I wasn’t on one court, I was on another, and when I wasn’t on any court, I was in the telephone exchange next door to our house. It had a brick wall designed for beating tennis balls senseless with an asphalt run-off which gave a good enough bounce for my purposes. At night, or when it rained, I couldn’t play, but I soon found a substitute. Word Games kept my head just as busy. I would toy with word substitutions and rhyming games for hours and sometimes be so engrossed that even when I tried to take a break, my mind would not clear the words away. On occasions I would drop off to sleep with a word chase in mid-flight only to awaken the next day with the same words stuck in my head.

  I didn’t see as much of my father after we changed schools, even though he still came home early. We should have been able to spend almost as much time together, but we didn’t. He was different. He didn’t want to play with me anymore. I tried to entice him by putting on shows, something he’d previously enjoyed. I made up plays and dance routines. I even did some poetry readings. Not that I liked poetry, but Daddy did. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get his attention, so I tried a new approach. If I could just get him talking…

  I chose topics that should have interested him; what he liked about his new school; who his new friends were. I asked if he was okay and whether I’d done something to upset him.

  ‘Daddy, what can I do to make you feel better?’

  ‘Daddy, oh Daddy, can you hear me?’

  ‘Daddy, is there anything I can do to help?’

  I might as well have been talking to a wall for all the response I got. I started to wonder whether we’d ever been close because part of me couldn’t remember anymore. If my father had packed his bags it would have felt better. Having him there but not being able to get a reaction was devastating. I prayed that the spell the wicked witch must have cast on him would be broken. That he would wake up and be my Daddy again. That he would come and kiss me goodnight and tuck me into bed and lie down beside me and read me stories like he used to.

  I didn’t know what was happening and I didn’t have anyone to ask. No-one explained anything. And so a little girl of eleven watched as her Daddy slipped away. I became convinced that he was dying. I knew he must be. Why else wouldn’t he want to play with me? There couldn’t be any other explanation. But there was hope! His leg was still jiggling and as long as it jiggled I knew he couldn’t be dead. I watched that leg like a hawk.

  Every afternoon he’d come back home and collapse into his chair. Before long, sitting in his chair was all he seemed to do. How I hated that chair! He seemed to prefer it to me. It was such an ugly chair too; ugly with its moulded wooden armrests and beige vinyl cushions that parted ways when he sat down. He’d sit there in his uniform. I called it his uniform because he always wore the same clothes. Baggy trousers with stains where his food had gone AWOL, a crumpled shirt with the shirt tails hanging out, and a moth-eaten cardigan buttoned off centre.

  I can still see his slippers. His toes poked out the front while the backs were trampled flat from the trudging he did between chair sits. And his hair was tussled, his greying curls flecked with dandruff, and his once smooth face rough with the stubble of indifference. It was his eyes which haunted me most. They had lost their sparkle. And they didn’t glisten or gleam; they didn’t even seem to focus either. He would stare off into the distance, seemingly searching for something without finding it. And when I tried to make him look straight at me by standing in front of him, his eyes would look straight through me to the back of beyond and further.

  He didn’t write anymore, or sketch or compose although he still played his music. Sometimes he didn’t really seem to listen to it; he wouldn’t even notice when the record finished. He would sit in his chair staring, with the record screeching away, until someone passing became alerted to the absence of sound. Occasionally he’d pick up a musical score, but instead of working away, he’d leave it on his lap until gravity got the better of it, and it toppled to the floor.

  He didn’t flinch when we walked into the room or switched on the television in front of him, nor did he notice us sitting on the couch next to his chair. And when, on Sundays, the family ate dinner together on the couch with beige vinyl cushions, my Daddy would sit blankly in his chair with the three of us sitting beside him.

  I kept trying to bring him back to life.

  ‘Daddy, Helen brought in a tree frog for show and tell today. Daddy, a croaky tree frog. Daddy, can you hear me?’

  ‘Daddy, Daddy, Please. Please, Daddy. I’ve got something really special to show you. It’s magic. You’ll see… Daddyyyyyy!’

  But there was no magic anywhere. No matter what I did or said or did not do and did not say, there was no response. Maybe he didn’t want to be my Daddy anymore. I’d never heard of a Daddy quitting, but he’d resigned from Humpybong. Maybe he’d resigned from me too.

  ‘Daddy, I’m here. It’s me, your princess!’

  I’m gesticulating furiously trying to get the Daddy statue to acknowledge me but it doesn’t. I stop jumping to check whether the

  statue is still alive. I poke the fleshy parts of the statue’s arms and give the statue bruises but it doesn’t move. I tug the end of the statue’s shirt and hear the material rip but the statue still doesn’t react.

  I couldn’t explain it. It seemed as if all of the life had been sucked out of my Daddy. He used to be the best Daddy in the world and I loved him and he loved me and that’s how it was meant to be forever. My Daddy was never meant to be a statue.

  chapter 10

  My father had a sibling, a younger brother named Paul. Paul was married and living in Queensland with his wife and three children. I hadn’t seen or heard from Paul since the year after my father died. My mother was in contact with him, once a year at Xmas they exchanged Seasons Greetings; but that was all.

  I wrote to Paul to see what secrets he might know and spent a few anxious weeks waiting for a reply.

  Paul was in his late seventies and in the early stages of Alzheimer’s. Needless to say he was surprised by my letter. His response was somewhat guarded but included a few vignettes from his childhood years. I responded enthusiastically and asked Paul to fill in a few blanks about my father. Paul’s second letter was warmer than the first and provided me with some invaluable insights into my father’s early life. In my next letter I thanked Paul and inquired about the period after my parents’ marriage, but he replied with a rather curt, ‘ask your mother’ and any further communication stopped soon after.

  My father grew up in Hawthorne, on the shores of the muddy Brisbane River. In Hawthorne streets intersected at right angles, nature strips were neatly trimmed with houses being replicas of one another. Hydrangeas and coleuses ruled supreme as did surgically pruned rose bushes, ornamental grapes and citrus trees struck from cuttings after a natter over the back fence. My father’s childhood home typified Brisbane suburbia having been hammered from parallel wooden slats and painted anonymous off-white. The house was raised up on stilts, had an enclosed veranda on one side and featured a flat but spacious backyard complete with chicken coop. It had a large area underneath with several different sections, all dark due to an absence of any natural light.

  With the help of Paul’s letters I was able to picture my father’s childhood bedroom. Simon and I shared it on the rare occasions we spent the night at our grandmother’s house. And so I imagined my father sitting alone, reading or writing: a bespectacled lad in a no-nonsense bedroom with four drab grey walls lined by heavy wooden skirting boards, darkly stained picture rails and naked hooks - little colour to be found. Two impeccably made beds; sheets starched crisp and unyielding. His bed was raised high off the ground, with a matching wardrobe and dressing table, equally darkly stained. Paul’s bed stood opposite, with his dressing table and wardrobe; carbon copies of the first.

  My father’s father, Jo, was a policeman who worked long hours of different shifts. He died when Simon was one
year old so I never got to meet him. He was said to be a sweet and gentle man while his wife, my grandmother, reportedly ruled the roost. My grandmother, according to Paul, was strict and judgmental. Apparently she was disappointed by my father and his choices. He was neither strong nor macho. Nor did he become a policeman or a bank teller as expected. What’s more, he married my mother - a foreigner - and that was an unforgivable sin!

  My father was a dreamer who, despite all his talents, didn’t excel in any one field. Teaching suited him because he was more comfortable with children than adults. He could relate on a child’s level and genuinely share a child’s sense of wonder with the world. Yet teaching didn’t satisfy his aspirations. It was his search for more that saw him head overseas in his mid-twenties. According to Paul, my father left home against his mother’s wishes. No-one in my father’s family ventured abroad without good reason, and the only good reason was to defend God and country.

  My parents met on the ship my father took to England. My mother was returning to Europe, having spent two lonely years in Australia after the war. My father was fifth generation Australian and my mother, a Polish Jew. My parents’ backgrounds were disparate, but they had a lot in common; a love of classical music, a passion for literature, and most of all, a desire to shake off their past and start a new life.

  My mother, orphaned during the Holocaust had been sponsored on her trip to the Antipodes by an uncle, who was already resident in Australia. He felt that he was ‘rescuing’ his niece. As truth would have it, my mother had suffered horrifically during the war, but after liberation she was finding her feet in post war France. When my uncle tracked her down through the Red Cross, she was studying at the Sorbonne. She’d developed a circle of friends and was feeling freer than she had in years. My mother only agreed to go to Australia out of a sense of duty; arriving to her uncle’s welcome and his wife’s resentment. She felt more isolated than ever in Australia and couldn’t wait to leave.