Feeling that the arguments were not worth the hassle, Carole did not write her letters when Bob was around and she kept the ones that arrived hidden from him. She believed that if she could appease him, show him that she could make an effort for him and just be patient, he would realise how much she loved him and be happier with her.
She read an interview in the Women’s Weekly with Dyan Cannon, who had been married to Cary Grant: “I couldn’t please him, no matter what I would say. He criticised everything I did.” That described exactly how she felt with Bob. She had tried so many things to occupy the hours that stretched out her days — embroidery, knitting, painting furniture, crocheting, baking, macrame — but her husband would always make a comment about how she must have too much time on her hands. He belittled her crafts to his Navy friends saying, “That is the result of a small amount of talent and too much time.” In the mix of outrage and stinging betrayal, she wanted to remind him that of the two of them, she had held the higher position in the Navy.
Throughout the many frustrations and disappointments she met with in married life, Carole clung to the way Bob had looked at her when they first met. She could not let go of the way that he would watch adoringly as she brushed her hair or put cream on her face. And she could sustain herself during the daylight hours by the way he would, with tenderness, say to her in the dark, “I love you, Carole. You are the best thing that has ever happened to me.” She continued to believe that if she were patient, if she nursed him through his insecurities and showed him how much she loved him, he would be released from his dark side and become the man she thought she had married.
The troubles in her relationship with Bob drew her closer to her sister-in-law, Patricia. Although she would never tell Patricia the details of the conversations that had passed between herself and Bob, would never betray his bitter side or reveal the humiliation she suffered, she would say that she found him difficult and that his refusal to let her work was frustrating.
“He would never dream of misbehaving in front of you,” she’d say laughingly to Patricia as she watched her preparing the tea. “He would never repeat the things he says to me about women working for fear that he’d get a word or two from you.”
Patricia placed a cup and saucer in front of Carole, then sat down at the kitchen table, facing her. She picked up her cup, holding it between her two hands. She blew on the liquid to cool it. “I don’t understand it, really. I suppose that Mother always stayed at home. She took in washing but he was too young to know she did all that extra work. It would have just seemed like more of her usual chores to him.”
“Maybe it’s not so much that he compares me to you and his mother as that he cares what his friends think. You know — he’ll feel less of a man if his wife has to work. I don’t understand it. He has so much to be proud of but he seems trapped by what other people think of him.”
“He always seemed so able to fit into different situations,” Patricia said, watching as Carole took a delicate sip from her cup. “He seemed to cope better than Daisy and Danny in the home. He was quick to make friends and didn’t complain. I suppose because he seemed to be handling what was happening to him, I never gave him the same attention, forgot to make sure that he was adapting to life in the orphanage.” Patricia paused. “He was young too when he lost Mother, and I suppose that just because he seemed brave at the time, that didn’t mean he wasn’t affected by it.”
While Carole could confide in Patricia, taking her flowers from her garden and talking about the clothes she was designing, she found Daisy dismissive of her attempts to start conversation, making it clear that there was no place for Carole in her scheme of things. Daisy would take a cigarette from her silver cigarette case, snap it shut and tap her cigarette firmly on the lid. She’d tilt her head slightly as she lit the cigarette, flicking her hair back when it was lit. Often when Carole would call by to see Patricia, to help with the new babies, Daisy would make a quick exit. “Well, I’ll let you two housewives talk about baby poo and cleaning products. I’m off to see if Pasquale needs a hand in the restaurant.”
“She never seems to have the stomach for the children,” sighed Patricia as she watched her sister leave. “She’s much better at helping in the restaurant. She’s so outgoing that the customers all love her, and I don’t know what Pasquale would do without her. I get so caught up here with Thomas and Robert. We’re lucky that she can help out. But that new dress I made looks lovely on her. This new fashion for mini skirts and cropped jackets suits her figure. I could never get this pudge into an outfit like that.” Patricia patted her stomach where childbirth had left padding.
Carole thought that Daisy’s manner of taking leave when she arrived, and her snide comments about the trivial and unpleasant tasks associated with motherhood, revealed Daisy’s disdain for her sister. She did not say anything. Patricia was so protective of Daisy that nothing could be said against her. And Carole wondered if perhaps her own view of Daisy had been influenced by Bob’s dislike of her.
When Carole had Candice and Kingsley to occupy her days, she didn’t feel the sting of Bob’s frustrations with her as much as she did before. Caring for and nurturing a small child gave her back the feeling that she was doing something purposeful with her life. When she held the first small bundle in her arms and looked at Candice’s face, crinkled and red, eyes tightly shut, and touched her tiny hands, Carole felt the surging love that comes from being needed.
Bob had shown a mix of trepidation and enthusiasm about the arrival of Candice. He seemed to be fascinated and frightened of her at the same time. He would leave the chores of child-rearing to Carole — changing of nappies, toilet-training, the teething and the nursing through childhood ailments. When Candice or Kingsley cried during the night, Bob would shake Carole awake and say, “Honey, your baby is crying.”
But at other times, when he was stopped on the street and told that his children were beautiful and well dressed, or when Candice won a prize at school for her finger-painting or Kingsley said his first word — “Dad” — he seemed to lose his distance and flush with joy.
Bob seemed willing to participate in the responsibilities of parenthood when Candice and Kingsley were well dressed and well behaved, or when others praised or rewarded them, Carole preferred it this way. She liked to be the one who wiped noses, tied shoes, lulled them into eating their greens and taught them how to write letters and colour between the lines.
When she first became a mother, Carole’s bond with Patricia became stronger. She could talk with Patricia about childcare — healing rashes, teaching a child to walk, and later to read and then to write, how to stop a child from wetting the bed and sucking their thumb. Patricia doted on Candice, whose arrival coincided with the birth of Patricia’s third son. She made dresses and matching hats of pink gingham and white lace or orange and brown velvet for Carole’s daughter and little pants and matching shirts of navy cotton with white or tartan trim for her son.
Carole worried that Candice and Kingsley would feel ashamed of their tan-coloured skin, just as their father did. She would tell them that they were special and gifted, and could do anything they chose to. She would tell them their darkness was beautiful. “Look how pretty this red dress is with your dark hair and dark eyes, Candice.”
She tried to find Candice dolls with dark hair and dark eyes. When Candice came home from school crying because she had been teased, Carole sat her down with a choco-late-chip biscuit and a glass of milk and explained: “They’re just jealous because they know that you are pretty. Besides, brown skin is better because you won’t turn red in the sun, the way I do.”
The growing bond that Carole developed with Patricia only sent Daisy further away. She would turn silent when their chatter focused on the children and before too long would be making her excuses to leave and work at the restaurant.
When misfortune befell Patricia, Carole lost her best friend. She needed one more than ever then, because with the loss of his sister Bob
lost control of himself.
25
1970
WHEN GRIGOR BRECHT PASSED AWAY, making a widow of his second wife, only two of his children, those from that second marriage, attended his funeral.
Until his last days, he had been haunted by what his eldest daughter had prophetically said as she walked out of their Lithgow home — that it would be too late when he would finally realise — nothing was more important than family.
As Patricia spoke, Grigor could see in her face her resemblance to her mother. He realised that she was now the same age as Elizabeth had been when he first saw her on the railway platform at Parkes. It worried him that Elizabeth, somewhere above, would be watching him. Although he went to sleep every night hoping that, by some miracle, he would wake to find her beside him, he sensed her fury that he had let their children slip from his home; he knew she would have hated him for losing them, the same way Patricia seemed to despise him.
Without her children in his house, Grigor felt as though Elizabeth was further from him. When she had first left him, the presence of his children taunted him, but after they left the house was still and silent. Discarded clothes, old toys and school assignments lay around like skeletons.
When he visited the home, he found it difficult to make conversation, particularly with Danny who seemed to swing from elation to distress in the course of an hour. Yet even over the distance that he felt between the children and himself, he could recognise himself in them. And he was desperate to try and establish some sense that they were his as much as they were Elizabeth’s. When Bob asked why his skin was dark, Grigor wanted his son to know that his mother was every bit as good as a white person; as white as everyone else.
About a year after Patricia had departed, Grigor met Dawn Phillips. He had come to Sydney for a Communist Party meeting. It was late evening but he could not sleep. Once he would have stayed with his comrades in the bar of the pub in the Rocks where he had his room for the night, but on this night he was restless with his inner thoughts of Elizabeth, so he walked the windy, stone-stepped streets. He was crossing the Harbour Bridge when he saw a thin woman looking over the bars of the walkway to the water below as she hugged her cardigan tightly around her body. She seemed in a daze, lost. He approached her and asked, “Are you alright, young lady?”
At first, the petite caramel-haired woman was startled then accusation flashed in her eyes. She pulled her hands to her face and started to sob. Grigor handed her his handkerchief, when she ignored it and continued to cry he took off his jacket and placed it around her shoulders. She leant into him. With Dawn’s fragile frame heaving against his tall embrace, Grigor was overcome with the desire to rescue her. She poured out the tale of her pregnancy to her boyfriend, Freddy. He had promised to marry her but when his parents discovered their plans — and the fact that she was Catholic — they forbade it. Freddy succumbed to their pressure and had since become engaged to Charlotte Winter, a Protestant girl.
Grigor saw more than a passing resemblance in Dawn’s pale, translucent skin and green eyes to Esmeralda, the long-lost servant girl back in Germany who, in his later years, had begun to drift into his thoughts more and more.
“Come now, a cry will do you good. You’ll feel better in the morning.”
Dawn flashed back at him, “What do you know? I have nowhere to go. Nowhere to sleep. No money. No one to look after me. And if I do wake up tomorrow, I am sure I would not feel any better than I feel now.” She burst into tears again.
“I will find you a room. You can have a nice bath and something to eat and a sleep. If you still feel this way in the morning, I will walk you back here and toss you off this bridge myself.”
At this, Dawn’s sobs seemed to subside. Sensing a break in her mood, Grigor added seriously, “Think. If you jump over this bridge, you just make life easier for this — what was his name?”
“Freddy.”
“Yes, Freddy. You would just allow him and his family to ruin you and your child. Why should your child be the loser and this Freddy the winner? There is more of you in this little child than Freddy.”
“But who will want me now?” Dawn sobbed again. “Who will look after me?”
“There are always solutions, my dear,” Grigor said, guiding her by the arm as they walked towards his pub. “They may not be apparent when you’re standing on a big bridge like this, contemplating a swim after midnight but after a good sleep and breakfast, they will become clearer.”
He paid for her hotel room, met with her the next morning, and then, as a result of their discussion over sausages, steak and eggs, escorted her home to Lithgow with a promise to look after her and her child. They were married before he ever mentioned that he already had six children — seven, if he included the child he had fathered long ago with Esmeralda.
Dawn Phillips, now Dawn Brecht, followed Grigor’s reassuring words from the harbour to the mountains. A way out with dignity was what she was praying for and Grigor’s sanctuary was all she could have hoped for at that moment when she was prepared to take her own life. She liked his home with its four bedrooms and large parlour. None too pleased that she was a second wife, Dawn began her efforts to erase all signs of her predecessor from the house.
She had mistaken Grigor’s concern for her for love, and did not understand that when he stopped to talk to her on the bridge he was searching for stability and homely comfort. She did not realise he expected her to provide that for him. With his new marriage, he planned to retrieve his children from the orphanage.
He often thought about the night that Mrs Crawford knocked on the door. As he looked around his ill-kept house, his head throbbing from the alcohol that was still in his system, his throat sore from yelling, Mrs Crawford had asked questions he did not know how to answer; he believed that there must be better places for these children than with him. Grigor knew in his heart that he was not a bad man.
Mrs Crawford started talking about “care”, “responsibility”, “standards” and “education”. “They need special attention before they are able to adjust to life in our society,” she had told him. “There is much of the savagery still left in the half-breeds and they are better off with concentrated care.”
As Mrs Crawford made her case to Grigor for his handing his younger children into state care, he thought about the scene in the house the night before, the one that felt foggy in his already thick head. He had stumbled home when the pub closed. He could recall falling on the front steps, banging his knee hard. He cursed as he lay there and he could hear voices and movement in the house. If Elizabeth had been there, the children would have been asleep, not making noise and scurrying around like rats. She would have heard him fall, as the children had, and would have rushed to see if he was alright, would have tended to his injury and fussed over him as though the accident were the step’s fault instead of his. As he opened the door he yelled at the children to get to their beds. He stumbled down the hallway to the lounge room and sank into his chair. He felt something hard snap under his weight. He pulled himself out of the chair and looked down to see a doll, its face broken. He grabbed the pieces and threw them into the fire as he yelled, “Who in bloody hell left that damned thing there?”
Above the fireplace, his favourite photograph of Elizabeth looked back at him from the frame, her hair thick and black, her eyes sparkling as she held her newborn child, Thomas, up to the lens, blossoming with motherhood. Seeing it made him ache. He grabbed it and threw it in the fire.
In the morning, he felt remorseful. The children avoided eye contact, left the room when he entered. In each of them he could see his Elizabeth; could feel her disappointment.
When Mrs Crawford reasoned with him, Grigor decided that if they were gone he would not be constantly reminded of Elizabeth. So he let Mrs Crawford make the arrangements she had urged on him.
But without the children around him, he felt strangely empty and began to lose his passion for everything else in his life. Elizabeth’s death, the
loss of her affection and tenderness, seemed to harden him against the rest of the world.
Grigor’s failure to renew a family life with Dawn seemed a part of the disillusion he felt in life more generally. The bickering within the Australian Communist Party about the wording of resolutions and the tenacious battles that preceded the voting started to feel petty and tiring. He kept fighting for the cause, kept repeating the rhetoric and dogma that he believed offered the only way for a better life, but the dwindling attendance at meetings extinguished the enthusiasm. What had once seemed inevitable — a socialist world — was now losing its appeal to the general public. The ideals by which he had defined himself were almost forgotten and all he had fought for was unravelling.
A negative attitude towards communism had been building up ever since the Bolsheviks had shown that revolution was possible. In Australia, he had seen the increase of deportations of aliens and had avoided this danger by going bush. It was on such travels that he met Elizabeth. When he brought her to his mountain town, Grigor was heavily involved with his local branch of the Communist Party. The Lithgow branch attracted men from the coalmines and steelworks, the coke ovens and blast furnaces. He worked with Charlie Nelson, Jock Lindop, Jock Jamieson, and Harry den Hartog. It was a small group but, driven by Charlie’s passion, there was dedication to spreading the word to the workers. Together they organised May Day parades with bunting and platforms and rousing speeches. In the pub, amongst his comrades Grigor would condemn the continual surveillance of the party and its members.
But when Stalin made his pact with Hitler, Grigor had to find excuses for him. But by this time, Grigor’s ideals had been shattered. For the first time he began to feel that he was reciting Russian propaganda rather than building a universal Marxist dream. He watched the escalating violence directed against communists and socialists in Australia. They became the target of Catholic antagonism through the Catholic Social Studies Movement propelled by the likes of B.A. Santamaria.
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