by Anne Connor
Bess missed her mother and sisters even more now. She needed extra hands to help with looking after the children, shopping, cleaning and cooking. She often thought Geelong might as well be on the other side of the moon, instead of fifty miles away. She similarly missed her dear friend Dorothy.
I can’t remember staying at the Grey Sisters, an order of Catholic nuns who offered live-in respite for mothers with young children. Mum stayed there with my three-year-old brother Joseph and me when I was under twelve months old. The home offered women a tranquil environment where they could rest while the nuns looked after their children. I don’t know how long we stayed, but Mum spoke of our time at the Grey Sisters with great fondness. What a relief it must have been for her to have a place to rest and time to focus on herself while her two youngest were cared for by supportive, nurturing women.
It was around this time my brother Cleary joined the Marist Brothers in Mount Macedon. This wasn’t to be his calling, and he returned home after the first bitter winter on the mountain.
My sister too spent time away from home. As a young girl, she stayed with my widowed aunt who lived a few streets away.
As the youngest, life whirled around me. I have no memory of any of these events, but the stories became part of our family folklore and indicated to me my mother needed help in the home.
Honor had been exchanging letters with Ralph while he was overseas on active duty. They were able to write what they found difficult to say face to face. He wrote from his hospital bed in Malaya telling her he had been wounded, leaving him unable to father children. On his return, they married, in secret, at the Geelong Registry Office, caught a train to Warrnambool and honeymooned by the beach. Ralph found it difficult to be around people on his return. When he wasn’t working at his old job at the mill, he kept indoors too, just as Jock did.
Letter writing drew Bess and Honor even closer. Both their husbands were different after the war, and each sister was sympathetic to the other’s experience. Tilly stayed in Clarence Street and looked after Mary’s failing health. Dorothy remained single, never recovering from losing Bert. She continued working at the Ford factory and joined the tennis club. The children thrived and as they came of age found work in Geelong.
Bess was ironing when the telegram boy arrived. She took the envelope remembering the last time she held a telegram. It had been when Frank was killed. This time, it was news of Mary.
Mum in hospital. Severe stroke. Come quickly. Doctors don’t know how long she has. Love Tilly and Honor.
The three sisters took turns sitting by their mother’s bed. Bess found a bible in the drawer of the bedside table. She opened the dog-eared book at Ecclesiastes 12:6:
Remember Him before the silver cord is broken and the golden bowl is crushed, the pitcher by the well is shattered and the wheel at the cistern is crushed; then the dust will return to the earth as it was, and the spirit will return to God who gave it.
Mary died later that night with Bess sitting by her bedside. She was buried with Tom in the Geelong Eastern Cemetery.
1962
Smokey, the cat, darted between my father’s legs as he brought in a wooden crate from the shed. It was filled with briquettes and covered with a hessian bag to stop the black dust flying throughout the house. He wore his check work trousers, a grey shirt and burgundy cardigan. Green corduroy slippers – a Father’s Day present from the year before – replaced his work shoes. Briquette dust smudged his cheek.
I was helping him light the fire by breaking up kindling and rolling newspaper into small balls. I placed them on the bottom of the grate with the twigs on top in a pyramid.
‘That’s an excellent job there, love,’ he said, as he pulled a box of Redheads from his trouser pocket. He struck a match and lit edges of the crunched up Herald under the kindling. The flames were slow at first, but the twigs caught alight within a couple of minutes. Dad placed a pile of briquettes and wood over the fire, making sure they didn’t extinguish it, and rested one hand on the mantelpiece, watching to see if the flames were large enough to catch. The room was slow to heat, so I sat on the padded seat of the wood box next to the fireplace, tearing up strips of broadsheet. When they landed in the blaze, they ignited into tall dancing flames for just a minute or two then subsided. I threw another shred and watched it dance then wane, and another and another. I pulled out an old Footy Record from the box and tore it into strips. One section was too large and the page curled black on the sides, floated on top of the flames, then moved forward and nearly out of the fireplace. I picked up the poker and pushed the lit paper. I looked over at my father, not sure whether I’d be in trouble.
‘That was scary,’ I said.
After a while, he said, ‘Keep the bits quite small, love.’ He stood up and walked over to where I sat. He knelt next to me and showed me the size by tearing up a piece of newspaper. ‘No larger than that. If they’re any bigger, they can float out and catch fire. You saw how that can happen.’
I tore up what was left, and threw sections into the blaze while, side by side, we stared into the fire. Eventually, Dad moved back onto the couch and Smokey curled up on his lap. The aroma of burning wood filled the room. My father looked peaceful. I wonder whether it was at these times he felt blessed, with a loving wife and five healthy children.
The fire began to wane, and I sensed my father’s mellow mood. That’s when I asked him the question. Was there something going on around me that took my young mind there? Possibly, I overheard a conversation earlier in the evening. It’s hard to know.
‘Dad, did you shoot anyone in the war?’ I asked.
When he didn’t answer, I looked across at him, unsure of the terrain again. He could explode for no reason. Not tonight, though. He was in a good mood and looked relaxed watching the flames. He said, ‘Don’t ever ask anyone who’s been to war that question. They may have and don’t want to talk of it.’
No angry outbursts on that day.
I felt he was trying to move close to me again after embarrassing me in front of my cousins the week before. We had visited their house and I was showing off by performing my new Irish dancing steps on the hardwood floor of their front veranda. My dance teacher, Mrs Connolly, had told me I must thump my feet hard – the harder, the better. ‘I’ve seen competitions won or lost on the noise made from hard-soled shoes.’
I practised my steps whenever and wherever I could – in my bedroom, out on the concrete path behind the laundry and on the polished floorboards at school. Proud of the thunderous sound my feet made. I could tell the muscles in my calves and thighs were strengthening.
On that day, I had an audience with three of my cousins watching. I began by shuffling my feet quietly before building up to the loudest thuds on the hardwood floor. I focused all my strength on my legs and slammed my feet hard in a series of bangs.
At first, his shoulders twitched, then before I knew it he had whizzed around, grabbed me hard on the top of my arms, leaned over me and bellowed, ‘Don’t you ever do that again, do you hear?’
Jock picked up the worn, furry pillow from the cat’s basket. He placed it under his arm and opened the back door so it wouldn’t creak, just enough for him to slip through. He walked up the brick path, past the rotary clothesline and geranium bush, taking in the sweet blossom of the lone lemon tree in the garden. Not long up, the sun cast a mauve hue over the suburban backyard. Maggie, the magpie the children had named, perched on the high timber fence separating the family’s house from the neighbours. The bird cocked her head then dive-bombed a worm. It struggled in her beak as she banged it against a rock. She flicked and flicked until it was lifeless, smashed, then she slid it down her throat and strutted on the dewy buffalo grass.
In the shed, Jock held the cushion between his knees; picked up newspapers from a bundle piled in the corner and spread them across the workbench. He placed the pillow on the broadsheets, pulled a ball of string and a pair of scissors out of his pocket and set them next to the cushion.
A bottle of antiseptic sat on the shelf above.
Smokey had been ill for days, ever since Jock heard car tyres screech and the plaintive cry. Now the moggy’s eyes wept, a viscous substance oozed from her nose and she hissed and whimpered when the children tried to pick her up. She was curled up on a stack of hessian bags at the back of the shed. ‘You’ve made it easy for us, dear ol’ girl,’ Jock said as he picked her up gently, so as not to cause her more pain. ‘It will be over soon. I should have done this days ago, shouldn’t I, lovie?’
He placed her on the newspapers, stroking the parts of her body the speeding car hadn’t damaged. ‘Thanks for being a good friend,’ Jock said. She looked up at him, her trusting yellow eyes dull and watery. She didn’t struggle, as if resigned to her fate. Jock placed the pillow over her face and pressed hard. Her back legs jerked, but not for long. He wrapped her up in the newspapers then tied the parcel with string. Cat faeces and urine leaked through the newspaper onto the bench. Jock gagged and reached for the antiseptic. He tipped a big dash onto a flannelette rag. As he wiped the dark stain, the whiff of disinfectant brought back another time when death hung in the air.
He sat on a box and held his head in his hands. Two decades earlier when Jock was stationed in Lae, the aroma of disinfectant had filled his nostrils that day too. As they lifted Joe onto the stretcher, a medic tipped disinfectant onto the towel before placing it at the back of Joe’s head.
‘Jock, love,’ Bess said shaking his shoulder. ‘The children are up, they’re looking for Smokey.’ Jock was trembling and sweating. Still in her nightie, Bess took his face in her hands. ‘It’s not just the cat, is it, dear?’ She placed her arms around his neck and held him. Her softness and scent broke the last of his defences. He sobbed into her shoulder. Husband and wife held hands, sitting on upturned tea chests in the dingy shed. The sun tried to poke through the filmy window in the far wall. The stink of Smokey’s excrement mingled with the stale air. They heard the back flywire door open and twelve-year-old Joseph called, ‘Ma-arm, Da-ad.’
Bess jumped to her feet. ‘Come on, love. I’ll make pancakes for breakfast. That will distract the little buggers. You finish what you’re doing here.’
Jock placed the newspaper parcel on top of a pile of garden refuse in the incinerator, covered it with dry leaves then lit a fire. He put his hands into his pockets and rocked back and forth, watching the flames lick Smokey in the newspaper parcel, his mind hijacked by another time and another place.
As president of the local St Vincent de Paul Society, Jock took parcels of food and clothing to people and spent time talking with families, many the victims of drunk and violent men. His St Vincent’s patch included Pentridge Prison, a bluestone jail built in 1850 to house the State’s hardest and longest-serving prisoners. One Christmas Day, after the family attended Mass, opened presents and tucked into the celebratory lunch, a couple of men from the Society called around to collect Jock on their way to visit inmates at Pentridge.
Father Finbar Herrick’s room was a five-minute walk from the main section of the prison and within earshot of the guard’s voice over the loudspeaker.
The priest rocked back in his chair, cleaning his spectacles with a handkerchief. Dust motes hovered around his head, as the sun shone through an opened louvre window. The room was sparsely furnished, with two wooden chairs, a small table, a blue speckled ceramic electric jug, a few cups – a number with handles, more without – and a metal teapot covered with a yellow and red knitted tea-cosy.
Jock dropped onto the chair opposite Father Herrick. His shoulders slouched forward and his head hung low. He rubbed his ring finger across the middle of his forehead. His face was pale.
‘How was Christmas morning at your house?’ asked the priest.
‘It’s been the best of mornings and the worst of mornings. The children’s squeals of delight woke me.’ He looked up and half smiled. ‘Such a joyful sound, Father – the best in the world. The boys got a cricket set and tin machine guns with batteries; when the trigger’s pulled lights flash with a pretend machine-gun sound. They love them.’
Father Herrick inspected his glasses, put them on the end of his nose and said, ‘I trust Santa brought your daughters something too.’
Jock took a deep breath and looked up. ‘Umbrellas and toy pianos – which sound simple enough, until Joseph and Galvin took the umbrellas, climbed up onto the roof of the shed and jumped off expecting the opened umbrellas to break their fall similar to parachutes in war movies. They didn’t. They turned inside out, snapping the frames, which got the girls upset and bawling. Galvin twisted his ankle when he landed. He was screaming in pain, and the girls stood around him laughing.’
Finbar chuckled. ‘Was that the best or the worst?’
‘Father, their joy was the best. The worst was this. A little while after the parachute incident, Joseph crept up behind Anne while she was teaching herself ‘Three Blind Mice’ on her new piano. I came in to see him putting the machine gun to her head and pulling the trigger. She wasn’t having that; she spun around and punched him.’
‘Good for her. What did you do? More to the point, how was it for you, Jock?’
‘I grabbed the gun off Joseph and pushed him away. I don’t know how hard I did it, but the look on his face said hard enough. I sensed danger as if it were life-threatening. As if Joseph was doing something terrible. But he was just being a pest of a brother, nothing more.’ Jock rested his head in his hands then looked up at the priest. ‘Father, I was terrified, speechless, sick, angry, guilty … I was seeing myself and Joe Forrester. My heart raced … The way he looked at me reminded me of when I grabbed Anne while she was showing her cousins her new Irish dancing steps, some weeks back. The fear and embarrassment on my little girl’s face speared my chest.’ He looked up at Finbar. ‘You know she stopped her dance lessons after that. I frightened her so much.’
The priest looked over his glasses, watching his friend suffer. ‘The past is the past; you can’t change it, Jock. Jesus forgave sinners. It’s time you forgave yourself.’ He reached his hand across the table and rested it on Jock’s forearm. ‘It was an accident – a tragic accident. This is what happens in war. It wasn’t your fault.’
Jock leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter how many times you tell me that, it was my gun, I was holding it, Joe’s dead and I’m not.’ The priest walked over to the table and turned on the jug. ‘Last time we spoke, we talked of what you might say to a mate who had experienced what you had. You said you were going to think of what you’d say. How’s that gone?’
‘I’ve tried to Father, but I’ve got no imagination. I try to conjure up a mate, but the only voice I hear is my mother’s. It’s not her voice; it’s a sense of dread that comes over me that is connected with her. I can’t even grab hold of what she is saying. But I’m left with a … with … hopelessness and I go into a fog. I can’t think.’
Jock stopped talking and looked at the priest. ‘Father, I can’t even pretend I’m someone else.’
‘Well, maybe that’s not the way for you.’ The priest poured hot water into the teapot. ‘Cup of tea, Jock?’
‘Yes, thanks, Father.’
As the priest placed the cup in front of Jock, he said, ‘For Christ’s sake call me Finbar or Fin, every once in a while, will you?’
‘Righto Fin,’ Jock said, looking up at his friend and making an attempt to smile.
The priest sat and stirred his tea. ‘Was there any forgiveness or understanding of weakness when you were a lad in England?’
‘Not that I can remember. My father was a hard man and he died when I was twelve. This made it difficult for Mother. She tried her best, but there wasn’t any room for gentleness or forgiveness. We just knew life was tough and we had to be tough to survive. Everyone did. It wasn’t just us.’
‘Yet Jock, you sit and listen with great compassion to brutal men and murderers. Many have killed a number of times. I’ve seen you listen and talk to th
em without judgement. They open up to you. You make them smile and laugh. You treat them as equals. Don’t you deserve not to be judged, too?’
‘But Father, they don’t know who I am – what I’ve done. And besides, now that you mention it, I am equal to them. I took a life. Doesn’t that make me a criminal too?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ Finbar stopped stirring his tea and placed the spoon on the saucer. ‘You are a good man who joined the war effort for his country and was involved in a tragic accident.’ He stopped talking, lost in thought. After a time, he looked at Jock and said, ‘Or did you intend to kill your friend?’
‘Hell no, Father, I mean Fin.’ Jock got up and walked across the room. ‘What sort of mongrel do you think I am? Of course I didn’t shoot him on purpose. It was an accident. That blasted Owen misfired. It was supposed to be empty. Broom checked my gun and gave me the okay.’ Jock flopped back onto the chair and rested his chin on both hands. ‘I’ve replayed it so many times. If only I could take it back. I hate myself.’
‘But you can’t take it back. Let that idea go. What you can do is forgive yourself now. Just try forgiving yourself a small bit. It doesn’t have to be for the whole accident. Forgive yourself for as much or as little as you can right now. Jesus forgives you. Do you think you know better than Him?’
