Sunday, 29 June 1997
Early in morning to home and hospital. It’s going to be a long year. Dr Harris tells me that “the penny hasn’t dropped for your wife. She doesn’t have any idea what she’s in for. It’ll get a lot worse”… I want to sleep. Andrew stayed overnight at Mum’s … Until it’s sold the house will need watching …
The house failed to sell at auction.
Only a small number of people turned up and no one bid. Judy accompanied me. To my surprise, Tony Garnett, who was also a school friend from St Patrick’s College, arrived to lend his support.
The trips to and from the hospital because of Kate’s illness had become a regular part of our lives, had assumed a priority above all else. The children helped out and provided transport, as did friends, when I wasn’t able to because of work. Words and phrases like “stem cells”, “biopsy”, “chemotherapy”, “acute myloid leukaemia”, “bone marrow” and “transplant” were now part of our daily conversations.
After a meeting with Matt Nolan I decided to advertise the sale of 10 Mary Street in the local newspaper, the one serving the Lidcombe, Berala, Regents Park and Sefton areas. I said if he wouldn’t do it, then I’d do it myself. He agreed to.
The response was immediate. In one afternoon alone, four couples inspected the house and two made offers.
On 4 September I accepted the offer made by a Pakistani family. Contracts were exchanged on Friday, 19 September.
Five weeks later the removalists arrived to empty the contents of the house. The majority of the furniture was going into storage, some of it to Judy’s unit. A few weeks earlier, Andrew and I had borrowed a truck from West City Holden and spent the day transporting belongings from 10 Mary Street to my home — garden furniture, pot plants, most of the contents of the garage, whatever held sentimental value, like the “wooden horse” that my father built and used for carpentry, or the old yellow Pope hand-mower that my father preferred to use even after he’d bought a petrol mower.
In those weeks, on two or three occasions, I met the new owners of the house, husband, wife, daughter, three sons — warm, friendly people who came to have a close inspection of the house and even brought me a meal. One day, when I had a camera with me, I took their photographs in the front garden, in the same spot where Mum and Dad and I had ours taken nearly fifty years earlier. I promised them I’d get the photographs to them when the film was developed. As I was showing them the backyard, the second-eldest son asked me what was in the chookshed. I explained that there was nothing in there now but perches, empty nest boxes and, in the corner, a cage where we once bred chicks and ducklings. When he saw it he jumped up, calling out to his father, Can we have rabbits there, please? Can we have rabbits? His father laughed and said, yes, he’d let them have rabbits. The boy ran out into the yard, joining his brothers and sister, calling, Hooray, hooray, we’re going to have rabbits!
Something inexplicable drew me back to 10 Mary Street twenty-four hours before settlement. Kate had been allowed to come home for the night from RPA where she was now being treated in preparation for her bone-marrow transplant. Professor John Gibson was now in charge. At about nine o’clock at night I drove over. What did I expect to find? Another break-in? Revellers on the lawns? Ghosts on the roof?
I expected nothing and found nothing — nothing except a house in darkness, breathing, asleep. Was it dreaming?
Because of a technical delay between solicitors, settlement of the house was held over until Thursday, 30 October — the same day as Kate was having her transplant. It had been discovered that her brother, John, was a perfect bone-marrow match and that, we believed, augured well for a recovery.
Payment for the house, however, could not be made for another six days. When it was, I received it from my solicitor and next day drove over to Nolan’s First National and handed over the keys.
On Friday, 7 November, I returned to 10 Mary Street for the last time, intending to give copies of the photographs to the new family. It was after work and late, towards dusk, but the family was not alone, it seemed. The front veranda was full of furniture. There were several cars parked outside and the house was full of voices. Lights were on in all the rooms. I put the photographs into the letterbox. No żal. Only the sparrows in the garden, in the brushbox trees on the nature strip, settling down for the night. I remembered the dreams I’d had of both parents since they died; sometimes they were in the same spot where I stood now. They always looked younger than when they died and seemed to be moving on to somewhere else. Maybe that was their message to me? Let go of the past. Move on.
As I drove away I saw two old people side by side in the garden, a man and a woman, stooped among the roses that had come into bloom, in the shadows, looking up at the departing figure getting into his car and driving off. He didn’t look back, but if he had, a few moments later, he would have seen that they, too, were gone. In their place, children were running out of the house, into the garden, laughing and playing, calling out, Hooray, hooray! We’re going to have rabbits! Hooray!
Only Child
For as long as he can remember
he was always good with words —
the little boy who stared through the window
and listened to how the wind made the grass sing.
He would wait alone in a room
for his mother to come home from work —
from a place “out there”, whatever
that meant, while the clock’s hands moved
so very very slowly until the door opened
and she stood there, smiling, arms held out to him.
It was during those times of being alone
that he managed to put sounds together —
somehow welded a feeling in his blood
with the sounds it would create in his head.
Cold when he shivered and had no coat.
Warm when he snuggled under the eiderdown.
Go away when he was angry with someone.
Please stay when he was frightened
of being left alone in the room.
His childhood had become a series
of arrivals and departures, packed suitcases
left waiting at the front door
for a bus or truck to transport him
and his mother to the next Displaced Persons’ camp.
“One day it will change,” his mother told him.
“One day we will settle down in a house of our own —
Have a garden, grow vegetables and flowers.
You can have your own puppy. One day
You will understand what our lives were about.”
Now his mother is dead and his adopting father.
His own life has passed the fifty-year mark.
Often he prefers the company of music and books
to the presence of other human beings.
He trusts very few people apart from his own family
and could spend all day watching the flights of birds
if time and circumstances permitted the luxury.
Words come easily, almost indifferently,
but he says nothing and sinks into his own well of silence —
in whose depths he hears the same kind of music
he heard when left alone as a child
and the wind scattered its treasure of vowels and consonants
for him to discover in the long grass.
Acknowledgments
A first draft of “The Day that Lasted Forever” first appeared in Country Childhoods, ed. Geoffrey Dutton, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, 1992.
Trials to Triumph 1937-1987: A History of St Peter Chanel, Berala, The First 50 Years, Parish of Berala, 1987.
The Book of Sydney Suburbs, compiled by Frances Pollon, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1988.
Time’s Revenge, Brandl & Schlesinger, Sydney, 2000, for “Sayings” and “Billycart Days”.
Five Bells, Volume 7, No. 4, October 2000 (Poets Union Inc.) for “Only Child”.<
br />
No River Is Safe (Poets Union Inc. Anthology 2000), ed. Margaret Bradstock, 2001, for “Sunday Visits”.
Quadrant, May, 2003 for “Roses”.
All other poems are from Immigrant Chronicle, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia. First published 1975. Reprinted 1992, 1993, 1994, 2002, 2003.
Special thanks to my wife, Kate, and my children, Judy, Andrew and Anna, for their patience and support during the writing of this memoir. Also, those friends who shared their memories and provided information: the Tom brothers, of Parkes, and their wives; Maria Dziuba and her mother, Helena, also of Parkes; Irene Salinger, Al Zolynas, Andy Milcz, Kevin Coates and Rev. Brother Brian Berg; Catherine Panich; Marianna Lacek; Dr John Hehir; Tony Garnett and Charles Burford. For their encouragement, Ivor Indyk and Geoffrey Cains. Also, for their encouragement and editorial advice, Madonna Duffy and Craig Munro at University of Queensland Press. Last but by no means least, that indomitable source of laughter and commonsense, my literary agent, Barbara Mobbs, for all the above reasons and more.
First published 2004 by University of Queensland Press
PO Box 6042, St Lucia, Queensland 4067 Australia
Reprinted 2008, 2011
www.uqp.com.au
© Peter Skrzynecki
This book is copyright. Except for private study, research, criticism or reviews, as permitted under the Copyright Act, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any foram or by any means without prior written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
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Sponsored by the Queensland Office of Arts and Cultural Development
Cataloguing in Publication Data
National Library of Australia
Skrzynecki, Peter
The Sparrow Garden
1. Skrzynecki, Peter, 1945 – Childhood and youth. 2. Poets, Australian – 20th Century – Biography. 3. Immigrants – Australia – Biography. I. Title.
A821.3
ISBN 9780702234262 (pbk)
ISBN 9780702257483 (pdf)
ISBN 9780702257490 (epub)
ISBN 9780702257506 (kindle)
The Sparrow Garden Page 22
