Sawdust (5 page)

As Dad put it: it was one of the sad facts of life that other people would never “get it”.
With his stiff bird-eyes dug deep into my skin, he would tell me often enough: ‘You can’t tell anyone, Deb, this is our special secret. They just won’t get it. You know how much I love you...’

Yes, our “special secret”. ‘You know how much I love you...’ Dad and me. Cropped from among all of us kids, maybe all the people in the world, Dad loved me in this particular way, which was more than anyone else. Maybe as much as Mum?

I was happy enough with that, to be as important to Dad as Mum and all his mates. If anyone couldn’t understand, or wouldn’t comprehend it, though, it was Mum. Mum who was so cold and did not really value me.

In the days after that “premonition”, after that dark and ghostly shadow above me, strangely, Mum began to ask me if Dad was touching me.

I made immediate connections with what she was saying, but the reality was I still wasn’t absolutely sure why she wanted to know or what she really meant by it. What was she really trying to ask?
Why
was she asking? Did she want to know if Dad was being a “king” to me?

I wasn’t sure I could trust her either. Dad had warned me. So I simply stood there, and said no, and shook my head. But she didn’t let up.

As the days went by she grew more forthright, asking me more and more explicitly: ‘Does your father – or anyone else – touch you in your private parts?’

I would peer up at her, this non-understanding woman who wouldn’t have a clue, and if anything I began to wonder if Dad had maybe told her something. Let her in on “our secret”.

Nevertheless, seeing Dad’s hard, square jaw in front of me, his hard bird-eyes telling me not to tell anyone, I continued to dig in, looking down, denying everything with an obstinate silence and a scowl.

I guess, actually I’m sure now, Mum must have been able to see the truth in my face, in my faintly blushing cheeks, in my thicket of dark brown hair that spiralled out and at the same time clung to my head like a ballooning veil of shame, because eventually she wore me down.

Sitting in the sunshine on our back steps one day, she continued to cajole me: ‘Come on, Debbie, you can tell me. I won’t mind. I promise, I won’t get mad at you. Come on, Deb, tell Mum. What does Dad do to you?’

Thinking about it in my little girl head, I was actually beginning to wonder if she was starting to like me because she wanted to know about Dad’s and my secret. She wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to be “connected”.

Listening to her voice, almost cooing now in that way she spoke to little Sam, finally, finally, which was not really that long after she first began to ask, I broke down.

Looking up into eyes that I saw as moist, compassionate and appealing like a beggar who only wanted friendship, not even money, I went ahead and told her. Not only that, I was sure, seeing the integrity in her eyes, it would only make her love me more.

I began in a timid voice: ‘Dad... Dad… he pulls my knickers down and touches me here.’ I pointed down to my privates. ‘Sometimes he touches me with his fingers... and sometimes with his “thing”.’

I looked up and saw Mum’s eyes enlarge. They turned dead dry. She stared at me like there was something in me that was... indecipherable? And then she slapped my face. Slapped it so hard my ears rang and my jaw swung and jangled. The tears rolled from my eyes in disbelief.

I remember being so bewildered I could not think or talk. I had thought she liked me again and wanted to know about Dad’s and my special love – about kings and princesses, “our secret” – because she would be proud of me, because she wanted to be a part of it, but now all I could see was how unhappy I had made her.

She grabbed me with eyes like ice-cold hands and yelled at me: ‘Stop being such a liar! Your father would never do that! Don’t you ever, ever repeat what you have just told me – to anyone!’

Needless to say, I learned a valuable lesson that day...
Never ever
tell anyone what Dad does with you.

Dad was right, he was absolutely right. If Mum wasn’t going to believe me, who would? Worse, if Mum didn’t really understand, why would anyone else? The world just did not get these things, as Dad had said all along.

There wasn’t even a choice any longer; it was our secret and that’s how it should remain, between us. Between me and Dad. I also learned another thing: Mum was never going to like me again.

Among the good times there were the weekends,
perhaps months in between, of great jollity and merriment. Those weekends when Dad and his mates came together of a night and either in the moist heat of summer or around the old wood stove burning away in the winter, they would sing and chat and play their instruments – and of course drink their beer and rum. Dad always played the harmonica or the spoons, two spoons clicking together in old Australian bush style.

“Click Go the Shears”, “Tie Me Kangaroo Down Sport”, “The Wild Colonial Boy”, “Waltzing Matilda”
,
they would croon and blare. I remember them all, and then there were others too, more modern songs like Elvis Presley’s “Wooden Heart”
.
Dad loved that song, his hair was styled a bit like Elvis, and he was always playing it on his harmonica, not just when his mates were around.

Everyone chortling and singing and banging their musical instruments, we loved those evenings, the heat and friendship in the house, the sense of communion they generated. Dad looked so alive, so tall and at the centre of it all, and all his friends appeared like people on a stage around him that we wanted to be with.

They spoke about old times, always the old times, which was like a mysterious ancient time of things hidden under big craggy rocks to a little girl, and the stories grew taller and taller, richer and richer, just as did the fish they caught and the enormous numbers of them they trapped in their nets and on the ends of their pointy hooks.

One of the men there was Davey Dadds. A little older than Dad, he had close-cropped, stand-up hair or a “buzz cut” as it was known. He played the violin. But the amazing thing about Davey Dadds was that he was blind. Yes, completely and utterly blind in both eyes and never wore dark glasses or anything to cover it. His eyes stared forward, a sort of smudgy, grey-pink, opaque like a dead fish, and like a dead fish he would sit there looking at you but not looking at you.

Somehow I was never frightened of Davey Dadds. He was kind and brought us presents and always had a good word for us kids. Of course we loved him for it. Actually, we thought he was great. Once, I remember, he brought my sister and me a pink and blue brush and comb set.

Initially, Davey handed the pink set to me and the blue one to Marge, but Mum came along a few minutes later and changed things around. She gave Marge the pink one and me the blue. I was disappointed, but it wasn’t any kind of resentment against my younger sister for getting the colour I wanted. It wasn’t her fault. Even at that young age I was aware of that, it was Mum.

On those musical nights, there was also Cec Parsons. He was roughly Dad’s age – about thirty – and rather handsome with his deeply tanned skin, dark oily brown hair and thick brows that hung over deep eyes and a thin smile. A fisherman by trade, he also played the harmonica and this stick instrument that had a thick layer of bottle tops nailed to it and made a shimmery, clashing sound when it crashed against a hand or leg. Cec Parsons had a voice, in my opinion, which could be put on a stage. It was a dream being around him.

Truth be told, I loved being around all of them, to be part of the warmth generated by those fun-filled times. The only exception was old Tommy Lubbock, Aunt Sal’s father. Much older than all of the others, he played the fiddle and the accordion, and had a face like a big startled fish.

Actually, he looked a lot like Alfred Hitchcock. His big pouting flesh with the hanging jowls was pocked like thick melting wax and his fat, blubbery lips were always wet with spit. He always smelled of alcohol. I guess they all did, but it was worse on him. He smelled like a pub after closing time, three months ago. Like stale hops a hundred times over. In my head, I used to call him “Old Luber Lips”.

‘Come on up here, lass,’ he would call to me, and timid and shy as I was in those days, I would go and sit up on his lap. It is hard to believe how I would even go near him. But I did.

At one time or another on those jolly weekends I would sit on any one of their laps. The men would smile and cuddle me as I hopped up, and with the strength of horses they would bounce me on their thighs or knees. It felt grand. Like at a show park.

It was more than just euphoria rocking that way, it was being right at the very centre of it all. And then… and then, of course... after a while, a hand would slip across my little bony thigh and, with each one of them, at some point or other in the midst of the ruckus, fingers would slip into my undies.

Merrily, while they played their instruments and sang their songs and rocked away, they would let their fingers roam and stroke.

Scary? Abusive? Horrifying? No, no. Believe it or not, at that age, with my sense of the world, to be absolutely honest, it felt nice. I was never scared of any of the men. I loved being around them, and except for Old Luber Lips, didn’t really mind the intimate roaming of their hands.

What was scarier than any of them was Mum. Yes, Mum. She was suddenly putting on an enormous amount of weight and could be seen outside in the yard hanging up the washing dressed in a big pink all-in-one plastic weight-loss suit that made her look like an astronaut. Now that was scary.

In those early days, I also rarely remember being given or playing with dolls. My best games were playing with my older brother Jim in the dirt. I remember having a big blue toy truck with a big red shovel on it, and I’d spend the day moving earth with it.

I also remember Jim having this amazing spinning top that was red with a clear plastic cover. It was so cool, the coolest thing ever. It had racing horses jumping over barricades like in a steeplechase. I had to pump the handle like mad at the top to make it spin, and at full tilt it played music like a carousel.

It was great to be allowed to play with my big brother’s spinning top like that, and the best part was that Jim didn’t mind – well, most of the time.

In honesty, really, really, my best, most fun times were those times when Dad’s friends or our rellies came over and there was lots of singing and music, jokes and stories. Dad’s friends cared for me – in a way that I never got from Mum or in many ways even from Dad.

Mum was always too busy and Dad, during the week especially, but even on weekends a lot of the time, was out at work in the paddock and never wanted to be disturbed.

So I enjoyed it when Dad’s friends were around. I enjoyed the immediacy of it, the release of it. I enjoyed bouncing on whomever’s lap was there for me on that particular occasion. I loved being noticed in amongst all the revelry.

Sometimes it was Davey Dadds’ lap I sat on of a night and at other times it was Cec Parsons’. Or, yuk-yuk-yuk, sometimes it was even fat Old Luber Lips’. His lap could be terrifying. He was so fat and smelly and old. What was I doing there? Why was I even climbing onto his lap? Why did I let him have his hands down there while his lips drooled moisture and breathed a stale and dry fermented sweetness on me? What made me derive a certain enjoyment from it?

The good thing about blind old Davey Dadds, on the other hand, was that he liked to hug me. Sometimes he would just hold me on his lap with his arms wrapped around me and didn’t even put his hands inside.

I guess, whichever way I looked at it, it didn’t really matter, being a “big girl” in the middle of all those fun-loving men was somewhere I felt at home and comfortable. This is the truth: I did like it, and being part of the fun was something I craved. I considered myself lucky to have some attention from the grown-ups. It was more than my siblings had, and in my mind it was a privilege and a badge of honour. Almost as good as being grown-up.

How were these men able to do this? It is only in retrospect that I see now, none of them, not one of these men saw anything wrong with it. It was like Dad, who was the man at the centre of my life, gave them permission; and they went ahead.

Dad told me one day, along with his theories about kings and queens and how they “kept their blood good”, that it was okay, it was all right, there was nothing wrong in what they were doing.

‘That’s what men do,’ he said by way of confiding, meaningful father-daughter talk.

And somehow it made sense to me. It made everything okay.

He would consider me with knowledgeable eyes, a bird teaching its hatchling how to react to others, and I trusted him in the way a hatchling trusts a mother bird feeding it. Sometimes, of course, it was Dad, even Dad whose lap I was sitting on. In front of all the men, his mates, I would be bouncing there on his thighs while his hand kept me warm under there.

Like an exotic implement they needed to fulfil their carousing, I went from lap to lap at one time or another, and on each of the laps they played me like an instrument. Yes, and yes again, I took pleasure in the sound it made. It gave me camaraderie. It was cosy, it was loving, it showed people cared.

Where was Mum at these times? My brothers and sister? Somehow they were around and not around. I remember my brothers and sister singing and dancing and joining in the fun, and yet in the end it was like I was the only one left in the room in the middle of those men.

Mum? I don’t remember other women being there very often, but occasionally when they were, I guess she would be with them and the other kids in the kitchen or downstairs or even somewhere else. In the “girls den”, as they called it – and I would be left to happily fend for myself in the great big fun-loving “men’s den”.

These men, Dad’s friends, were my culture, my daily bread, my warm winter blanket. They were my sense of contentment. They were my joy in life. My mates.