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I Came to Say Goodbye

Page 2

by Caroline Overington


  I should say I’ve protected Mum from what’s gone on with my lot. I didn’t take her to the funeral, for example.

  But anyway, let me get back to Forster. I left school at age 15, and Kelly did the same. We laboured, and in 1969 Kelly’s number came up for Vietnam.

  I was a bit surprised by that. What were the odds? For country kids, apparently the odds weren’t bad. Next thing we know Kelly got a letter saying, well, on this day in July, you’ve got to get on the Army truck, and it’s going to take you to Puckapunyal, State of Victoria, for your basic training.

  Well, Kelly wasn’t the type to join a protest movement. That was for hippy types, in the cities. He took the call-up in his stride, and did the six weeks basic training with no complaints. When he came home in uniform, he looked like a man.

  A month before he was due to ship out, we went to a dance at the Tuncurry Dance Hall, which I suppose was a bit old-fashioned, even then. I mean, this was post-Beatles. But anyway, he met a girl called Pat. I’m a fool, obviously, but if I close my eyes I can still see her as she looked that night. She had a crochet dress that stopped above the knee and white boots and at some point in the evening she went outside and climbed up on the bonnet of Kelly’s car to have a smoke and waved her arms above her head.

  Kelly said he wanted her number but she lived in a women’s boarding house and wasn’t allowed to take calls from men. He could drive up on a Sunday and stop in for tea though.

  Well, Kelly did that once. He stopped for tea.

  The next night, he told me, Pat came out the window. She did that two nights in a row.

  What happened between Pat and Kelly on those two nights, Your Honour, I do not know. I have not asked. My idea has always been, Pat was raised by the Sisters of Mercy, so probably it was nothing.

  In any case, Kelly went to Vietnam and Pat wrote to him and for a while there Kelly wrote back, but then the letters stopped coming.

  Edna told her not to worry. Maybe it was hard to get mail out of Saigon? Vietnam was a place that none of us knew much about. Then he did write but not to Pat. He wrote to me. It wasn’t a letter so much as a card, and it had only one line on it. It said, ‘They’re all the same.’

  Mum picked it up from the letterbox. She didn’t get what it meant, and probably Edna didn’t either.

  Mum puzzled over it for a while, and put it on the mantelpiece. That’s what you did with cards from boys who were overseas. I took it straight down again and took it to my room. I put it under a book on my desk.

  The next day, or the day after, Pat came to see Edna. Mum went straight to the mantle and said, ‘Where’s that card from Kelly?’ and Pat said, ‘Kelly sent a card?’ and Mum said, ‘It came yesterday. What have you done with the card, Med?’

  There haven’t been many times in my life when I’ve wanted to lie to my mother, but that was one of them. I wanted to say I’d lost it or I didn’t know what happened to it.

  Instead, I went to get it.

  I handed it to Mum, who handed it to Pat. She said, ‘I don’t know what it means.’

  Pat turned it over. I could see her reading it. ‘They’re all the same.’

  She said, ‘They’re all the same? What does that mean, Med?’

  At first I said, ‘Don’t worry about it’ but I think I always knew I was going to tell her.

  Pat said, ‘You know what it means, don’t you, Med? What does it mean? “They’re all the same?” What’s all the same?’

  Like a big goose, I said, ‘The girls are.’

  Pat still didn’t get what I meant. That was awkward. She said, ‘The girls are what?’ and ‘What girls?’

  I said, ‘The China girls. They are the same.’

  She still didn’t get it. I thought she’d get it straightaway. I felt embarrassed now, to be the only one who knew. I said, ‘When Kelly was at Puckapunyal, the other blokes had told him that China girls were different. They were built sideways down there, like their eyes.’ The way Pat was looking at me, I’ve never forgotten it. Her eyes were like saucers. I said, ‘Kelly told me he was going to find out.’

  The card – the card from Kelly to me – what it was saying was that it’s not true. China girls, they are built like other girls.

  ‘They’re all the same.’ Thinking back now, I still can’t believe I had the nerve to say that. What did I think Pat would do?

  She left before Edna came back with the tray. She said, ‘What did you say to her, Med?’

  I didn’t tell Edna. I was starting to think that maybe it had been a mistake to tell Pat. Then again, what I’ve learnt over my life is that people don’t do things by mistake. We know what we’re doing, whether we admit that or not.

  The next time I saw Pat, she did her best to ignore me. But after half an hour or so, she came over and said, ‘Let’s go and have a smoke.’

  ‘We went outside, not so much to smoke – you could smoke anywhere in those days – more to be alone. Pat said, ‘Let’s share a bottle of beer.’ Where she got the beer, I don’t know. She was only 17.

  Next thing, she was pregnant.

  You might think that happened fast, Your Honour. I suppose it did, but remember the era. You couldn’t get a condom unless you went into the chemist and asked for one. Forster was a small town. People knew each other, from the fishing boats, the club, the co-op. There was a fair chance the chemist would have known my dad. Dad was in Rotary. The chemist might have told him, ‘Your son came in for a French letter.’ I might have been able to handle that but what if Dad told Mum?

  Anyway, I didn’t think we needed a French letter. Kelly told me, with some girls, you just asked, when was your last period? If it was a week ago, or less than that, you were good to go. Or else you could ask them, do you have a cap? Some of them had their own caps.

  Also, Kelly said virgins wouldn’t fall pregnant the first time. Pat was obviously a virgin. That’s what I thought, anyway. So we did it, and Pat fell in.

  Straightaway I told her, ‘I’ll marry you.’ She looked at me like that might not have been what she was waiting to hear, but what else was I supposed to say? There were abortions in 1970, but not the kind you’d want to have. We sat on the news for a bit, and then Pat was four months along, and we told my folks.

  Pat had no folks to tell. I better explain why that was. Pat was raised in a baby home, and the strange thing is, she wasn’t an orphan. Pat had a mother. She had a father too. Her old man, like my old man, had been in the Army, and when he’d come out, he turned to drink, and that was the start of Pat’s troubles.

  Pat could remember her old man going out in the morning in a felt hat, and coming home late at night, with the same hat folded into his fist, and her Mum would get thrashed, and she’d have to run and hide.

  Now, Pat was born after me – 1953 – and the way she remembered it, she was five, maybe six, when her mother took a suitcase, and took Pat, and went to Central railway station in Sydney, planning to get the train to Melbourne but of course, they had no money. A woman in a Salvation Army hat came up and said, ‘Can I help you?’ and Pat’s mum, she said, ‘I’ve left my husband’ and the woman said, ‘Well, why don’t you go right back to him?’ and Pat’s mum, she said, ‘I’d just as soon throw myself under the train.’

  The lady from the Salvation Army, she said, ‘Do you have somewhere to go?’ and Pat’s mum, she said, ‘My sister’s in Melbourne but I haven’t got the fare’ and the lady from the Salvos said, ‘Come with me instead’ and Pat’s mum, and Pat, they went off with this lady, who got work for Pat’s mum in the vinegar factory, and took Pat to the baby’s home where nuns would take care of her.

  The arrangement wasn’t supposed to be permanent. Pat’s mum was supposed to come back for Pat but she never came back, and at age six, Pat moved from the baby home to Belmont, the School for Girls, across the road from the School for Boys. I knew those homes. Everyone did.

  They were where they put kids when their parents didn’t want them anymore. Everyone’s parents kep
t that story going. I clearly recall, Your Honour, every time my old man drove me past Belmont – that’s what we called it, Belmont – I’d say, ‘What’s that home for again?’ and my old man would say, ‘That’s where they send the bad kids’ and I’d say, ‘Who sends them?’ and he’d say, ‘The police come and take you away’ and I’d say, ‘I’d run away!’ and he’d say, ‘They run after you, and can catch you.’

  The way I understand it, Pat wasn’t the only kid in there that had parents. Some people did drop their kids there, and not come back. It wasn’t that uncommon. She told me she could have been adopted out and one time she nearly was. At age seven, or maybe eight, the nuns who ran the home, they told her, ‘We’ll be putting on a show this afternoon, and you’ll be Little Miss Muffet, and if you do it right, some parents who come for the show, they might take you home.’

  Pat went behind the curtain, and then she came out, and she put on her show, a tap dance and a song, and one set of parents, they said, ‘Alright, we’ll take the brown-haired one’ and that was Pat.

  One of the nuns, she gave Pat a cardboard suitcase and said, ‘Put your Bible in here, and your coat too, and remember your manners, and you now have a new mum and dad’, but instead of being grateful, Pat bit that nun on the hand and ended up getting hit with a spoon.

  At age 15, Pat got moved from Belmont to the Parramatta Training School, and there she got taught to sew and then to type, and at 16, they got her a place in the typing pool at Newcastle, at the coal works, and with that job came a room and board in a boarding house.

  The boarding house closed its doors at 8 pm, except on Fridays when the girls that had turned 17 could stay out until 10 pm, and that’s how, on that Friday night in July in 1969, Pat was at the dance hall, where she met Kelly, and then me, and not long after, she got pregnant.

  In any case, we got hurried into St Mary Star of the Sea at Forster, and tied the knot, Pat in a blue suit, and me in something I’d worn to Edna’s wedding. The reception, we had at the reccie at Smiths Lake. We got a keg. I reckon my brothers drank most of it.

  For the record, Kelly wasn’t there. Kelly was still away.

  Our first two kids – Karen and Paul – were born a year apart, and I mean that when I say it. Karen – we called her Kat, like after Pat – was born September 14, 1970, and Paul – who is Blue Paul, or else just Blue, on account of him being a carrot top – was born September 13, 1971.

  I used to get ribbed about it. My old man, he said, ‘What, are you only getting it once a year?’ I didn’t laugh. It wasn’t that far from the truth. Pat and me, we were pretty much exhausted. I mean, what did we know about babies before they came along? Me, not a thing. Pat, being raised in the baby home, she knew a bit more – how to put on a nappy without getting the pin stuck in the baby – but the fatigue, I can tell you, it wore me down.

  As for what Kelly made of it, well, he came back from Vietnam the year after Kat was born, already knowing, by letter from Mum, that Pat and me had got married and had a baby, with another on the way.

  He came by the place we were living, bringing a Zippo lighter he couldn’t stop flicking. There was a smell of gas about him. He looked bigger than I’d remembered. He wore army boots. His skin was freckled from the sun. I don’t remember whether he phoned to say, ‘I’m coming by.’ I do remember that Pat was there, on the lounge, nursing Kat, when Kelly came through the flyscreen.

  The first thing he said was, ‘Hey, you’ve got a blood nut!’ because Kat, like Blue, she’s a redhead. He said, ‘I’m happy for you, Pat.’

  ‘I watched them going at it. Watched it like a hawk. Pat got up from the lounge, struggled up, because she had Blue on board, and Kat on the breast, until she looked right at Kelly and said, ‘Don’t say that again’ and she walked out of the room.

  We heard a door close, and that was it. Pat had gone into a bedroom. She didn’t come out until Kelly was gone.

  After he was gone, I went into the bedroom. I said, ‘What was all that about, Pat?’ To myself, I was thinking she was mad at him for doing what he did with those girls in Vietnam. Pat said, ‘I don’t want him in the house, Med’ and I said, ‘Well, come on, Pat, we’re brothers’ but what did that mean to Pat? She had no brothers.

  I can’t say for certain whether Kelly came by the house again after that. Not while Pat was still there, I mean.

  I know we saw him, but maybe it was only at the family things, where we’d both just happen to be. I can tell you he did get married. His wife was a funny lady, a real riot. She had dyed hair and a shiny red belt she wore all the time. She told everybody, ‘My name is Dorothy, but friends call me Bunny so you call me Bunny.’ Pat never called her Bunny. She called her Dot. I remember once, the three of us – Kelly, Bunny and me – were having beers. He tapped me on the chest, his cigarette between his fingers. He blew smoke out the corner of his mouth. He said, ‘This man here stole my woman. I was off at war and he stole my woman.’

  Bunny didn’t freeze the way Pat would have frozen. She threw back her head and she laughed. We both knew I never could have stolen a woman off Kelly. Not one he wanted, anyway.

  Now, if Pat was writing the part that’s coming up – the part about our married life – it would come out differently. Pat would tell you that our marriage wasn’t a happy one. I don’t agree. I know that’s strange – how can a man be divorced and say he had a happy marriage? – but that’s the way it was for me.

  Pat would tell you the problems started in year dot. She didn’t like the place I bought us to live in. Most women, when you bought them a house, were pleased about it, plus Pat was the one who said we had to get a place of our own. That was a pretty extravagant idea in Forster in 1970.

  People in those days did not rent the way they do now. They stayed with their folks until they could get a little cash together. But my old man, who liked Pat, said, ‘I know of a place you two lovebirds might be able to afford, if I sling a little your way.’ He drove me out to that place. It was not too far from where I’d been raised. It had a weatherboard house on it. It’s the place I’m writing to you from right now.

  Dad drove me back into town. We went to the Commonwealth Bank and spoke to the manager. The old man explained that I was married and employed, and about to have a baby. He had been with that bank 30 years. The deal was done that afternoon. We could move in before the baby was born if we’d felt like it. I didn’t have to ask Pat about the mortgage. This was a time when you didn’t need a woman’s signature. I drove out to the boarding house to tell Pat what I’d done. I thought maybe she would jump into my arms. I’d seen a woman do that once before, maybe on TV.

  What she said instead was, ‘Did you think to ask me where I wanted to live, Med?’

  I said, ‘Where else is there?’ I wasn’t trying to be smart. Where else was there? I had never been of the mind to venture into Sydney. Newcastle was a bit too busy for me. I said, ‘It’s a good block, Pat. It’s bush, but it’s part-cleared.’

  But Pat, she said, ‘And why would you think I want to live in the bush? I don’t want to live in the bush, and I don’t even know what a part-cleared is.’

  I thought, What is she on about? and she told me. She wanted to live in town, if not in Newcastle, then at least in Forster, on a quarter-acre block up close to a neighbour.

  I said, ‘Why would you want that, Pat? Living one on top of the other? Out where we’ll be, we’ve got a bit of space.’

  Pat said, ‘I’m planning on going back to my old job once I have this baby, Med. I’m going to need to be in town.’

  I cannot tell you what a radical idea that was, Your Honour. I might even have laughed at Pat when she said it. Girls now, they have babies and go off back to work but this was before that idea had taken hold. Pat was married. There was no reason for her to work.

  I said, ‘Do they take married women at the typing pool?’

  Well, she had no idea. Big companies generally didn’t take married women. Even if they did, what did she plan to
do with the baby she was carrying?

  Pat said, ‘They have crèche in the church hall.’

  Well, I knew that. I knew there was a crèche in the church hall. It was for kids whose parents had no money, or women who had no husbands. I said to Pat, ‘I won’t have my child in the church hall with the kids from broken homes.’

  When I told Edna what Pat had said, Edna agreed with me. She called Pat to say, ‘Med might not be making a lot now, but he will make more in the future. In the meantime, there are ways to economise.’ She told Pat, ‘I can show you how to make a cut of meat go a bit further.’

  Pat was cross with me that night. She said, ‘You talked to Edna about this?’

  I was confused. I said, ‘Have you and Edna had a fight?’ but Pat wouldn’t say. She said, ‘I don’t want you running to Edna with what goes on in this marriage, Med.’ I told Edna that, and Edna thought Pat was being strange because she was raised at Belmont. She said, ‘Poor thing doesn’t know what a family is. It’ll be different when the children come.’

  Well, Edna was right about that. I thought Pat would be happy when Kat arrived. All ladies want a baby, don’t they? Edna would have killed for a little girl (by then, she had two boys). She would have made clothes and dressed them up and put patent shoes on them and showed them off.

  Pat was not that type of woman. I know she made a phone call to the company where she used to work. A friend from the Shire, he told me about it. She wanted to know if she could have the old job back. She mentioned the church hall crèche to them. They told her they did not take married women. It wasn’t true; they did, but only if they had no children, or if the children were older, and in school. This bloke thought what Pat was asking to do – take a job, and put little Kat in the church crèche – was strange. The bloke at the Shire asked me if everything was alright at home.

  Not that it mattered. Three months after Kat was born, Pat was pregnant again. The old man ribbed me about it. ‘You kids are like rabbits,’ he said. I let him rib me. There was no need to say I’d had just one go at Pat, and then it had shut down again, and that Pat must have been one of those ladies that got pregnant at the drop of a hat.

 

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