Last Words

by Dickins, Barry

  Father sits just where governor has just sat and the two men discuss such things as philosophy, art, literature and outstanding racehorses, because Father John’s brother is a bookie and Ronald loves the art of racing, with all its mysteries and glamour. He asks Father to put a bet on for him at Cranbourne racetrack tomorrow where the favourite, Son of Man, is running at 200 to 1. Ronald gives Father 50 cents and Father accepts the wager and puts it in his holy pants.

  When people of today talk of bringing back the noble art of hanging to protect the innocent who are affected by violence in our community, they assume that the process is both perfect and dignified. Hanging symbolises the government’s right to decide on outcomes over abstractions and uncertainties. There is something instinctual about it that excites bloodlust and weird ideas about righteous revenge.

  They believe in the justice and the rightness of a head coming off. Centuries ago, it’s worth remembering, many believed that if a man’s head didn’t come clean off, he was possibly innocent or at least there could be a few doubts about his guilt. And if the noose snapped or broke three times in a row, the condemned man was very often released.

  When the hanging of Ronald took place, there were twelve very hardened, very tough, very experienced journalists who got to hand over some great big, stark white, embossed invitations to reception at D Division and then watch someone almost unrecognisable hobble to the middle of a scaffold that was 60 feet up in the air. They saw someone put a hood over him and then they saw a man in welder’s goggles and a funny hat race in and hang him in a fraction of a second. Kevin Sanders from GTV Channel 9 violently vomited, as he had every right to do. After Ronald’s big, powerful, thick young neck was broken, he fell down most quickly through thin air. With his handcuffed wrists dangling and his shackled ankles swaying, he slid beneath the big dark-green screen to where Father was waiting for him. He put a mystical herb called chrism up both of Ronald’s nostrils. It is supposed to keep a hanged man’s soul and spirit well away from hell.

  That is yet to come, although he dreams of it.

  He tries hard to lie very still in the suddenly dark cell, for by some miracle of divinity itself the guard has switched the overhead light off. There is a swift and suddenly inspiring beam of coolness because that overhead light made the cell so baking hot. But it’s still a hard place to dream about, being back in the Footscray boarding house again, back when he had no criminal record and could just surrender to dear old boredom. Dear old wonderful boredom.

  What is the time and what is the date and why have they ceased to construct my gallows the sudden and inexplicable way they are; sometimes they are hard at it putting on the finishing oblique touches and then the hanging chap will come in to rehearse my hanging, he’s from somewhere in Western Australia that’s all I know and he is pretty well famous for his strange calling, his odd job of hanging guilty prisoners, dispatching men like me to anonymity or Paradise which is where I shall see my three daughters again and my wife will leave the Greek and come back to me and life will be normal again which is how I need it to be.

  It is great, it is fantastic, the guard, the guy out there who switched off the cell light did just that then and I shall have two whole hours now before the whole entire prison awakens and it will be more blinding lights and screamed-out commands and the Governor once again telling me it’s inevitable and going on and on about all the potential I had and what a terrible waste I am and how much he and his wife liked me at the old Bendigo Training Prison but I mean that’s over a lifetime back when all I did was knock off a fresh cigarette truck and sell the truck to a guy and then sell the cigarettes to some other stupid moron in an endless cycle of stupidity and look where crime like that gets you.

  It gets you here blatantly accused of firing a carbine at an officer I liked, so would I, how could I do a thing like that on the so-hot-day we got out and into fiery liberty again when there would be ever so much for me to lose if I should murder deliberately, murder with cynical delight possibly someone of the old order, the old badge of righteousness and order like George whatever his name is or was, the poor creature he is, but anyway I didn’t fix him up, someone else fixed him up, shots I heard from the big tower thing up the top, those shots rang out from rifles that went as opposed to my one which didn’t, mine didn’t go, it couldn’t fire and I just clung onto it and mimed it would fire and tried to instigate as if it would fire but all the time and there appeared bags of time it did not possibly fire and I felt like chucking it on the road but you need weaponry if you’re going to escape so for a few mad minutes I aimed at him, aimed it at the officer but the guards on the big tower they did it I saw that happen in the heat of flight.

  In the lovely, luxuriant, regretful dark of the softened cell, he remembers being a cheap forger, a forger of cheques whose signatures were not really like the owners’ ones. But he luckily got away with it and by the tender age of 24 he could shout himself a 200 quid worsted English high end overcoat in which to appear even more charming than he already was, and dupe those around him who frankly deserved duping.

  He also recalls the sheerest hopelessness of the idiot boarding house not that far from the tyre foundry and all the tiring tyres that he had to make. The tedium of it used to nauseate him, even more than all the industrial waste.

  Governor Grindlay and his noble wife Audrey – both diligent, arthritic and old – kneel down at the safe foot of their bed in the manse. It adjoins the condemned cell where Ronald is heading later on tonight, the second of February of the year 1967, and they both say their gentle prayers. Prayers which they trust – sincerely, wholeheartedly trust – will be eventually be broadcast to Christ in Paradise, a place where Ryan truly belongs after a lifetime of floggings.

  They both say prayers they learnt long ago, as children – holy sentences that really do have meaning, whether one believes in God or not. At the very least, they hold greater relevance than anything all those grotesqueries the journalists say about someone they really like and do care about: the Ronald they met and liked at the Bendigo Training Prison, 20-odd years ago.

  Back then, they beheld all of that sweetness that was fair dinkum in him and how he told them most avidly he wanted to reform. They remember that he realised he was a sinner and a thief but prayed most fervently for the Grindlays to have firmest faith in him – and they both did have it when he spoke so sweetly, in that sincere way of his.

  Chapter 11

  OLD MELBOURNE TOWN has always been violent, ever since it was settled by the Europeans. Back in La Trobe Street in the mid 1800s, a dozen or so young and pretty rooted-looking Aboriginals were hanged by their necks on a nice weekend as a small show of strength. Nice families made an effort to catch the performance before it toured, because it was the height of fashion to murder the natives in those days to teach them the might of civil obedience. Those poor wretches didn’t have a run through either, in their confusion and their chains, and vendors sold lovely cold drinks and other refreshments the better to see them while they swung there – a swaying celebration of leadership and judgement.

  Judgement is a thing you must be careful with, of course. Too much of it taken straight down the gullet could make you drowsy enough to scream softly for the correction of bad people who just muck up an otherwise nice metropolis. There is always someone who will muck things up and wreck the peace for the rest of us. ‘The rest of us’ being people who would not hurt a fly.

  By early January 1967, there are hordes of peaceful people who aren’t used to being thought of as protestors nonetheless protesting away. Camped in their thousands outside the great walls of Pentridge, they sing songs of love, forgiveness and peace. Christians who would never dream of ‘going crook’, as protesting is called, find themselves camped on the grass and mud for long weeks, with fires blazing away amid snug tartan blankets. They chant in unison as the police bring in the dogs to rear up, snap and intimidate all who raise up their voices against the law of the land.

  People
who are very timid and meek find themselves hopping up on fruit boxes and turning into orators, speaking out against the use of dreadful things such as gallows. Good and meek people sometimes surprise themselves when they find it in them to sing out and there is no shortage of lyrics when the stakes are so high.

  But the police are instructed to break them up if they get too strident and break them up they accordingly do. Police horses charge right into crowds; one poor bugger gets hit in the head with a truncheon twice.

  The protesters themselves, however, are all about democracy and due process – perhaps even to a fault. The fuss to show democratic process, as it is called today, is chaotic, with peace-loving and law-loving citizens from the inner city commingling with the politicians and priests to speak up against that which is coming like a veritable comet to Coburg. Added to the mix are journalists and outside broadcast community vans and sound engineers and TV lighting crews – all there to fill in the final hours of a prisoner who is unknown to anyone; who has never even given an interview. All that is known of him is that he’s a family man with three daughters and three sisters and he’s recently experienced a divorce he really couldn’t see coming.

  Ronald’s only comfort is the truth – the truth that he didn’t murder George. That truth is his only saving grace and when he is taken, handcuffed, to confession at the church chapel, all he can say is that he never did it.

  In the dark of the old confessional, is he believed or disbelieved? That is the question and as he struggles to tell all to Father, who, he automatically trusted and liked, he feels the burden come right off him. When he is led out of the confession in chains and cast unceremoniously back into his hole, he feels clean and well somewhere inside.

  In the meantime, Hodson’s daughter is leading her own demonstration outside the gaol to show pity for the condemned convict. She has faith in Jesus, believes that even condemned men can come good, and dislikes reprisals and political show trials. She tells anyone who will listen that her father in heaven would be the last man to want Ronald hanged. They were on good terms, even friendly, in fact, and she knows Ronald was only bluffing with the carbine.

  ‘What use is it to hang Ronald now after my own loving father is shot and murdered by forces and faces unknown to us? What good does it possibly do to enact revenge by executing this fellow being who has no known personal history of violence? Not once in his life has he ever hurt or wounded anyone! Did you know that this was the case?

  ‘My father liked him, he could see his potential. Why shall we rob him of that?’

  But with the television portrait of Ronald beamed to good God-fearing, every night, most ordinary folks see him as evil incarnate. Just the sight of his face upon their screen is enough to completely nauseate them. The kind people and the correct people say, ‘He is evil, just look at him. I can’t wait till they do him!’ A caustic remark which the rest of the family cheers, before passing a slice of fruit cake or pouring some tea.

  Ronald has travelled a long way from honest teenage moulder of rubber tyres to the most hated man on Australian television. He tries to consider his options but there aren’t many left to him other than to accept the decision of the jury and try to die like a man.

  As his sick old mum sits in her unfurnished, unfinished kitchen, she is slightly cheered up by the sight of two giant Salvation Army gentlemen ramming meat into her wonky, whirring fridge and trying hard to stuff peas in the freezer. They also place instant coffee in a big jar for her to enjoy.

  She eats burnt, black-as-sin black pudding done to death in a Salvos frying pan and nibbles at slices of burnt white toast and plenty of tomato sauce. But mainly she drinks brandy to stop thinking of the inevitable death.

  She doesn’t know what to do about him so she doesn’t do anything for quite a long time, although time isn’t just running out – it has spikes on and is in Olympic condition. She only lives up the street from her son in gaol so it’s nothing to pop in.

  So today, she finally does it.

  He is fairly amazed when his mother visits him – though this is mostly just because he is amazed that they let the old girl in. It turns out that one officer feels a trifle sorry for Ronald and doubts his part in the killing of George. It is this officer who turns the cell key and ushers the prisoner’s old mum in for a minute or three. The guard offers her a chair with only three legs to it and sweeps dust off its really stiff, hard square cushion and introduces her politely to her son.

  It has to be positively unreal and mystic for mother and son to see one another for the first time in ages in so repulsive a setting. Ronald bows his craggy head in shame and his old mum slowly and sadly picks the fleas and the lice out of the crannies of his much-abused head. He is only permitted one shower a week and that only lasts for one minute.

  ‘You got lice,’ she says in an undertone. ‘They’re not looking after you!’

  And the guard watching all of this gulps, as he has personally never in his heart believed Ronald was a murderer. And that guard was right, he was not.

  The dust motes lie in her curly old white hair and it is so grimy and barren in the cell of her son, it is practically no different to an animal’s hutch. Ronald is like a frightened bunny or a scared cat who’s been hurt physically and mentally and, on top of that, there is nowhere to sit. Just a half-inch-thick bunk, a knobby skinny striped mattress, and an old, crooked, three-legged chair that the officer discovered somewhere out the back. But Ronald sits up nice and straight anyway to pay perfect respects to his ghost-looking apparition of a mother.

  That said, Ronald is ever so skinny himself – it’s also as if the gaol food isn’t doing his body much good. He tries hard to smile at his mum but this is not so simple, not so easy to pull off, and he is finding such faith and peace in just focusing hard and soft into her big blue eyes – those gem-like objects that can see right through him. He just cannot think of a single thing to say.

  The guard makes mother and son a really strong and most beneficial piping-hot cup of tea, bringing it in on a tray with sugar on it, as well as a flea or two. As the fleas argue over the sugar, she mimes her thanks with a country shrug and Ronald takes a sip through his chains. He smiles thanks to the officer, whose name is Ken Leonard. I met him in 1992 at his home in Fawkner, right opposite the crematorium.

  Mother says things of comfort to her chronically down in the dumps son, who asks in a half-hearted way how Dorothy is going. But his old mum wouldn’t have a clue and couldn’t care less, now that she’s left Ronald for dead. That is how bush people think. You are with me and mine or you are beneath my contempt. The old mum and the son just simply stare hard at one another for a time, with the guard never eavesdropping, not once, but just sitting there all polite, nice and respectful.

  ‘How long have we got?’ asks his sick old mum politely, and the guard mutters something like ‘Not that long Mrs Ryan, I’m afraid’.

  His old mum sips her prison-issue tea, which is still pretty hot actually, and says this to her son, to make him laugh: ‘The atmosphere of Coburg Gaol is not any different from the Collins Street tram, the way the passengers look at you!’

  And Ronald throws back his aching face and the remnant of a ghostly chuckle tumbles out – quite surprising that it can do so.

  When she sort of relaxes a bit, he asks her in the most polite of tones, only a foot from her face and shrivelled-up body: ‘Why didn’t you come in to see me sooner, Mum?’ and she takes her precious time to form her reply.

  ‘I know where you are. You’re in here. Everyone knows you’re in here.’

  Then eventually sensing time is running out, going by the wary expression of the guard, she adds, ‘It’s the best thing could happen to you, darling. Then you’ll be no more trouble to Mr Grindlay!’

  Well, of course, Ronald can scarcely credit he has heard her say this and is suitably shocked. But he is also impressed by her bush rhetoric and tells her he is glad she turned up and to give his love to his three sisters as soon as
possible.

  ‘Well I’ll try to remember when I see them.’

  After being permitted to bestow one pretty kiss upon Ronald’s young head, his old transparent mum is politely shown out. As she is led away by the guard, she stares behind at her son until she cannot possibly view him anymore. She is assisted out into the reception area which leads into vastly rowdy Champ Street, which is full of chanting law students and noisy, suddenly-not-shy suburban orators. The old lady notices they are burning likenesses of Premier Bolte and hundreds of tremendously upset normally passive people are yelling and jumping up and down.

  Ronald is alone again: the guard vanished too, just like the tea they both drank. It’s just him and the crooked chair with three badly repaired wooden legs and the horrid bunk with its inch-thick foul mattress and hard pillow, only half an inch thick, to lie back and dream of the bush on.

  It is a week to go and the kids are back at Auburn Central School, where sometimes, if it suits him, their new daddy drops them off at the gate. The girls play such games as basketball, which is terribly popular these days, but most of the other kids don’t include them in any fun and they’re shunned by some of the teachers as well. The girls do badly at school and get into arguments a fair bit with the other kids, who – just like their easily influenced teachers and parents – see Ronald as the complete end of everything worthwhile.

  They are normal young girls who are obedient towards teachers and the law, and who do exactly what they are told. They just want to throw a ball and use the library in order to improve their command of language, and not turn up to school looking downcast or grubby.

  They begin to pray in their bedroom for their doomed father, pleading silently, almost whimperingly, for the god of hope to start lifting his game. Spare Daddy, they ask, in His name’s sake, amen, please oh Lord Jesus Christ Almighty.