Chapter 19 – The Lost Years
Robbie lay in hospital, his lower body swathed in bandages. The last month was little more than a blur, he had no memory of being brought to Port Augusta Hospital, and then of his transfer, by airlift, to Royal Adelaide Hospital. He had vague memories of whole body hurting, of people in white uniforms doing things to him, of him being wheeled on a trolley from place to place and of a period when his whole right leg felt like it was on fire.
And there was another image that kept flashing into his mind. It was of Lizzie, wheeling her baby away from the house in St Kilda and, straight after she vanished, realising, too late, he needed to go with her; him running desperately after her, glimpsing her turning the corner of the street, rushing to that corner only to see her retreating figure turning the next corner, always chasing but never catching. He knew it was a dream. It was so many years since he had seen the real person, but that ache of loss remained, always there as a sharp part of the jumble in his mind.
Then slowly the blurs coalesced into clear images, particularly an image of his mother sitting by his beside, holding his hand and saying, “You have been babbling about Lizzie when you were unconscious but there is no Lizzie here and I do not know her. Tell me how to find her so I can ask her to come here. You would not talk about her so much if she was not important.”
Then his Mum continued, with tears in her eyes. “Oh Robbie, I am so glad to see you awake, looking at me like you know me and that parts of your body are starting to heal. But you need to be strong and brave, there is much yet to be mended.
“They told me your pelvis was broken, you had a ruptured spleen and liver. They thought they would lose you in the ambulance. And your leg is such a mess, broken in so many places. They have tried to put the bits back together, but they said it was like joining bits of confetti. They asked me for permission to amputate it but I said no, not unless you woke up and agreed, or it was putting your life at risk. So they have left it and tried to fix it, but almost no one thinks it will heal properly or that you will ever walk again.
Robbie took a deep breath and smiled. His mind was finally clear; he could feel the weeks of repressed anxiety flowing out of his mother. He knew, through vague memory fragments, that she had sat by his bed, day after day; coaxing him to eat, talking to him, encouraging him to heal his body and his mind.
Now he had his mind back. He surveyed his body and surroundings. He was no longer hooked up to lots of tubes the way he thought he had been, and most bandages were gone. His left leg was covered in a plaster cast that extended from his foot to his hip, with just toe tips visible. It hurt a small bit but really was not too bad when he lay still. His left arm was also in a bandage, and there were still some dressings on parts of his lower body. But it seemed that the main parts of him were still there and slowly he was getting better.
He looked at his mother and took her hand. He felt great gratitude for her presence and her support. “You can stop worrying now Mum, I am on the mend and I will get better from here. Most of the thanks for that lies with you. I don’t remember much but I do remember you being here and helping me, day after day.”
His Mum said to him, “I am so glad to have you back, the Robbie of so long ago. The last five years have been lost years for us both. You from whatever happened with that girl, Lizzie, the one you seem to be unable to forget, and doing more and more crazy things. Me, watching my only son fall apart, the drink, the anger, the reckless disregard for your own safety, and me by being powerless to do anything to help or protect you, but always waiting for that phone call to come where they would say they had found your dead body.
“Then the phone call did come. They said your motorbike had come around a corner on a dirt road in the Flinders Ranges. It was on the wrong side of the road, and you had gone under the back wheels of a truck. They said it would be probably too late, they doubted you would survive the first night in Port Augusta, while they tried to stabilise you, but if I came I should fly to Adelaide, where they would bring you if they could get your blood pressure high enough for you to survive the flight.
“So I came. Then they thought you would die on the evacuation plane to Adelaide, but they knew it was your only chance, getting you to big hospital where they could try and stop all the bleeding from your smashed liver and broken pelvis. Then, for a week, your life hung in the balance but gradually you started to mend.
“Then them telling me about the mess that used to be your leg, how it had gone under the truck wheels and now had gravel embedded, lots of skin missing and the two main bones smashed in so many places they could not see how to put it back together. The only good news was the blood was still circulating, and your foot was still pink and not really damaged.
“So I was determined not to let them cut it off. They took you to surgery again and again, three more times, and fixed it as best they could. Now they tell me it is full of wires and screws and if it heals it will be at a funny angle and an inch too short. But I am rambling. The doctor can tell you all this in his own good time”
She now sat straight and looked at him directly. “Robbie, I almost lost you and I will not let that happen again. You must tell me about Lizzie, the whole truth. While you were unconscious you must have said her name more than a hundred times. You need to find her, or at least to try, if you are to lay her ghost to rest. Perhaps I can help you. So now you must tell me what you know about her. I know you have mentioned her name once or twice before, a lady with a small baby in Melbourne, when you worked in St Kilda, but that is all.”
So he told her the story he knew of Lizzie, the brave young girl who had come to Melbourne in order to have and keep her child, and how she had come to work with him, how he had held her body and loved her mind. Then that awful final day when they came to try and take her baby away, and that look of desperation and terror on her face as she had fled. How he had made her to promise to write but she never had, even now after more than five years.
How he had known within minutes that, in letting her go by herself, he had made a terrible mistake. How he had realised that all he wanted to do was to go with her and support her. He had asked Rebecca, her room-mate where she had gone, only to be told she left five minutes earlier, leaving by the back gate and pushing her baby in the pram.
How he searched the surrounding suburbs looking for her that afternoon and had gone to the train station that night, lest she try and catch a train to another city, Adelaide or Sydney, how he had seen the officials also checking the trains looking for her, and him knowing he needed to warn her lest she came, but then finding no sign, his only pleasure was that they could not find her either.
Then the first year when he had tried all the ideas he could think of to find her, asking anyone who she might know, going to Perth, Adelaide, Brisbane and Sydney, looking but finding no sign. Then slowly losing hope, the endless waiting, hoping for a letter which never came, his anger at himself for not taking the chance when he had it, he knew her feelings for him, she had told him she wanted his baby.
But in a strange way through the accident and his dreams of her he had found a kind of peace. He now had this sense that a time would come when she had need of him and then he would go to her. So now he would repair his body and wait until that time came.
His mother said she would do the little she could do; make inquiries with authorities to see if anyone had any contact details, perhaps someone had an address for her mother.
A month later, when she returned to Melbourne, she began her inquiries. She finally found someone who found the file which dealt with this girl. It recorded a complaint by a member of the public, one Jack Mackenzie. It recorded that an underage girl was working in a St Kilda brothel in October 1964, it recorded an order issued and the attempt to apprehend the girl and her baby, it had a copy of the letter that the authorities had written to her mother in Balmain, Sydney, seeking to find her and the short reply that came back.
“I do not know whe
re Lizzie is. If I did know I would not tell you.”
So now she had a Sydney address. She thought of writing to Lizzie’s mother, a polite ‘mother to mother’ kind of letter, saying her son knew Lizzie in Melbourne some years ago and was keen locate to her again. She contemplated saying more, she knew the mother may be suspicious, after her past dealings with the authorities and the role another man in Melbourne had played in these.
In the end she decided she must meet the mother face to face. She would talk her as one woman to another, she trying to rescue her son. Perhaps Lizzie had met and married another man and contact with Robbie would be unwelcome, but far better to know.
She caught the train to Sydney and a bus to Balmain. Now she was standing in front of an old, shabby weatherboard house. She knocked and waited. Then she knocked again. This time heard movement inside. A woman of middle age, standing tall and straight, opened the door and said, “Hello, how can I help you?”
She answered, “I have come up from Melbourne in the hope I could talk to you. I was wondering if I could come inside and tell you about my son who knew your daughter in Melbourne five years ago, just after she had a baby. I am not from the authorities but at my son really needs to find out what happened to your daughter, Lizzie. I am hoping you will listen to my story then you can decide if you are able to help.”
So the lady, Patsy, invited her in to sit down. She told the story as best she knew it, of Robbie meeting Lizzie with her little baby, how they had become close friends, both women understood what that meant. Then she told of her understanding that the authorities had sought to apprehend her and take her child, and how Lizzie had fled. She told of how her son had been searching for Lizzie for years, without success. Then she told of the accident and how Robbie had endlessly repeated Lizzie’s name when unconscious. Now her son, Robert, was slowly getting better but still needed to know what had happened to Lizzie in order to move on following his accident.
By the end she knew Patsy trusted her and would help if she could; she nodded and she smiled encouragingly sometimes. Then Patsy went to a drawer and brought out a letter and a picture, a photo of Lizzie standing in front of a building which looked like a restaurant holding a small girl in her arms, perhaps two years old. “That is my last photo of Lizzie, taken almost three years ago holding her daughter Catherine, she shares my middle name, my granddaughter. It was taken in a town called Broome, somewhere in the north of Western Australia.
“Lizzie writes to me once or twice a year, she says that she works there in a restaurant and is slowly making some money. She hopes to visit me soon, and bring Catherine. I am sad to say that Lizzie and I are not very close, as shown by the fact that she went to Melbourne to have her baby. She blamed me, probably rightly, for the death of her father when she was a small girl.
“But I truly want her to be happy. If your son can help with that I would be so glad. My only address for her is Broome Post Office. I think she does not want me to know about when she worked as a prostitute in Melbourne, but of course the Victorian authorities could not wait to tell me that when they were looking for her. I, of course, did not help them.
“I am proud of my daughter for keeping her child and not ashamed for the choices she made. I just wish I could have been there to help her some more. I also want to see my grand-daughter. But Lizzie has always been fiercely independent, since a little girl, and I do not have the money to go looking for her myself. Perhaps I have also been too proud to just ask her to come home.
“So Lizzie and I also need to make our reconciliation and if Robbie can help bring my girl back I would be so happy. I do not know for sure that there is no other man in her life but think she would have told me if there was. However I think the best thing your son could do, once able, is go to Broome and seek her out. If he does I only ask that he tells her that her mother wants her and her daughter, Catherine, to come home to see me and David, my son.”
As she was leaving the woman gave her the photo. “This is precious to me, but it is more important for your son to have, perhaps it may help him find her and bring her home.”
Lizzie's Tale Page 23
