Working Class Boy (13 page)

She never really did. She had no money just like the rest of us.

On one occasion Mum locked Dad out of the house because he came home too drunk. I remember Dad calling out to be let in. ‘Come on Dot, I meant to come hame but it was Shuggy's birthday. I had to have a wee drink wi' him.' He wasn't angry sounding, just unhappy.

But Mum just screamed from the safety she thought she had behind the locked door, ‘I've had enough of you. You're no comin' in here.'

Dad suddenly went quiet . . . and then
bang!
He punched a hole in the front door. This was a heavy fire door so I don't know how he did it. Then he put his hand through the hole he had just made, opened the door, came in and sat down, and began to calmly watch television as if nothing had happened. He never said a word.

The silence was frightening. Mum ran to the bedroom and came out with a stiletto-heeled shoe and started screaming, ‘I'm sick of you!', hitting him on the back of the head with the heel.
Blood spurted out everywhere. I know one of them ended up on the floor. You can guess who. Dad passed out in the chair.

Dad didn't hit us, as far as I remember. Mum was the enforcer of the family. I don't remember seeing Dad hit Mum either, but I know he did. It was probably so fast and deadly that we looked away and missed it, thank God. But some mornings I would get up and there would be Mum with a black eye or a fat lip, sitting alone in the kitchen crying while Dad was unconscious, snoring on the bed in their room, sleeping it off.

It seemed that in those days it was normal for husbands to hit their wives. All Mum and Dad's friends seemed to do it at some time. Their wives would turn up on our doorstep with black eyes, crying to Mum, saying, ‘That's it. This is the last time. I'm never goin' back. He'll never lay a hand on me again, I swear to God.' They always went back and the violence never stopped.

It wasn't right. We always knew it was wrong and sometimes we wanted to hurt Dad for hitting her. We were learning that lashing out was the way to solve problems and we were hitting each other and kids at school. This was all wrong.

Someone was messing with the kids. There was a family who were friends of Mum and Dad's who were around all the time. If they weren't at our house we were at theirs. Mum worked nights with the wife, wherever they worked, and they spent a lot of time together.

We used to go over to their house and swim in their aboveground pool. In the summer it was really hot so we loved this. We would swim in the pool with these kids and I remember the girls, who were my age, not much older, would swim underwater and touch me and when no one was around they
would take off their swimmers and want me to look at them. I thought this was just normal. Maybe it wasn't normal, but it was where we came from.

Something weird was going on with our parents too. I'm not sure what it was; we didn't know anything about anything. Was Dad having an affair with the wife? That was more than likely. Maybe Mum was the one playing up, who knows?

They had a son who was a few years older than John and he was a fucking deviant. It seems he was messing around with all the kids. We have never talked about this with anyone; in fact, we have never spoken about it with each other, so this is hard to write about. I am writing from what I feel; I don't really know any facts. But what I feel has driven me to the brink of insanity for many years.

I have spent most of my life ashamed of something that I didn't understand. I have been subconsciously trying to kill myself. I've tried to drink myself to death for a start, but I tried anything that would keep me from facing things in my life that were too hard to look at. And there were lots of things that I didn't want to face. This period in my life seems to be the key to the whole mess.

I always used to say to Jane, my wife, that I thought my childhood was just normal. And sadly, in some ways it was. By that, I mean that there are a lot of kids who have gone through the same horrors that I have. But that doesn't make it right. I have been afraid all my life and for good reason, not only because of this one person but because of many. The things I went through then and since have scarred me almost beyond help.

I don't remember him touching me but I'm sure he did touch some of the other kids so why should I be any different? I wonder if my mind has blocked this time out of my memory. But it will come back to me sooner or later. Then, if I have to, I'll find him.

* * *

I can still feel the touch of drunken strangers grabbing me as I walked through the living room. The smell of booze and cigarettes on their breath as they tried to touch or kiss me. I wanted to be as far away as I could get from our home.

I used to go and stay at a friend's house because I felt safer. Until one night my friend's brother came home. He had been away for a long time in jail. In the middle of the night he came into the room where we were sleeping and told us that he was going to show us how men practised sex.

We knew nothing, we were too young to know what was going on, but by that time I could recognise danger when it was near me and I knew it was near me at that moment. I remember this man trying to fuck me. I was terrified. I screamed and kicked until I got away and I left the house as quickly as I could. As I jumped out the window I looked back and I remember not liking what was happening to my friend. His own big brother was trying to fuck him. But I couldn't help him. It reinforced to me that nowhere in the world was safe and I was on my own.

Sitting on the smokestack on top of the train, I started to shiver as I watched the sun setting again. I seemed to sit there a lot. I should really have gone home but I had nothing to go home for. So here I was, staring at people who didn't even have the time to look up, never mind to see me as they hurried past. Grabbing last-minute things to feed their families on a cold winter's night. Another day was gone and another long night was on the way. I wondered what it was like to feel warm and safe and happy. I hadn't felt that for a long time. I wasn't sure I had ever really felt it. If I had, I had forgotten when. Rain clouds were rolling in and the wind cut right through my clothes and chilled me to the bone. I kept my feet constantly moving on the cold dark metal of the train, trying to keep blood circulating as another gust howled
through the shops and down the street. Mums were calling their kids in for dinner. Warm lights were starting to glow inside the houses all along the streets of Elizabeth West.

From up here everything looked nice. Just like it did when we first moved here. The streets were all neat and the houses were all in perfect rows with concrete paths and small iron fences in between each house. You wouldn't know what went on in those houses unless you were inside. I'd been inside, I knew what went on. But from the top of the train it looked perfect. So I shut my eyes and tried to imagine for a minute what it should really be like for kids like me. Then the smell of piss wafted up from inside the train and I suddenly remembered where I was and why I was sitting there.

My house was not safe. It wasn't warm. There was no one there to look out for me. I was safer outside in the rain than I was in my own bed. Out here I could see the predators as they staggered drunk and menacing towards me, and I could run away. But at home, they were invited in, even allowed to get so close they could do whatever they wanted. No one seemed to care.

Sitting on the smokestack on the top of the train, the wind bit as it touched my face but I felt safe up there. At least for the time being.

I
t was around the summer of 1965–66 that things really changed for us. One morning, I woke up and Mum wasn't there. I didn't wake up expecting to find her gone. I didn't hear any fighting in the middle of the night. There was no breaking glass. No swearing or cries for help. There wasn't even any shouting. She was just gone. The last bit of light in our lives was put out that day.

I went to school and when I got home she still wasn't there. We had to feed ourselves and then we waited for her to come back. She always came back. She'd told us wouldn't leave us. She loved us too much.

It took a few days to realise that she was not coming back. I think it really hit home when we kids were all alone and my sister Dot was crying, looking through the kitchen cupboards, trying to find something for us to eat.

We never heard from Mum, and Dad didn't want to talk about it, except to say, ‘Yer ma left ye. She deserted ye. I'm the only one who cares for you lot.'

If he cared so much, he showed it in a funny way. We hardly saw him at all except for when he'd run out of money or needed to get clothes or a bed to sleep it off. Otherwise he was gone too. He was lying too. He didn't care, no one did. From then on it was a matter of just trying to survive. It was us kids against the world and we had to stick together if we were going to have a chance.

Dot would get ten dollars or so from Dad when he was drunk and hide it so she could buy a sack of potatoes, and that was pretty well all we had to eat.

We would go to the shops and buy this big bag of potatoes that we would drag home because it was too heavy for us to carry. Then we'd keep them in the laundry. At least now we would have something to eat for the week.

The house fell apart without Mum to maintain some sort of order. Dot tried to do it but she was dealing with too much for any young girl her age. She was taking over all Mum's duties – cooking, cleaning, trying to keep us all from falling apart. Even trying to make sure Dad was all right. But Mum couldn't do that so Dot didn't stand a chance. Dad wouldn't eat and hardly slept unless he passed out.

On top of this, Dot was still at school and struggling with normal things girls had to deal with. But she was not a normal girl. She was all we had. And these were not normal days. Even her best wasn't enough to help the four younger ones she was trying to raise. I'm sure I heard her cry at night in her bed. She didn't cry in front of us, though; she put on a brave front. But I knew inside she was just like me – afraid. We all were.

At that time Linda brought some stray cats to the house. She must have learned this from Mum because Mum always brought strays to the house. Dogs, cats, people, you name it. I remember coming home from school starving and there was nothing to eat in the house. The sack of potatoes that Dot had bought was just about empty and I had to dig around the bottom of the hessian
sack to get the last of them. Unfortunately for us, the cats had shit in the sack. I was too hungry to not eat the spuds but I was gagging at the sink as I washed the shit off the potatoes before we could cook them. I had to try not to think about it when I ate or I would have been sick.

The cats, by the way, were as neglected as we were. They had been running loose on the street, trying to survive, and eating anything they could find. They were skinny, mangy and had not been taught how to live in a house. I think the cats reminded Linda of how badly life had treated her. I felt sorry for them too, we all did, but when they insisted on shitting on the only thing we had to eat – the potatoes – I wanted them out of the house.

The cats decided that this was where they would go to the toilet from then on. I was beginning to dislike them even more. I learned from it though; I learned that sometimes in life you had to do whatever it took to survive. This was a big help to me later in life. The music industry was full of shit and we would have to wade our way through that. So it came in handy.

In a matter of months there were holes punched in the walls and all the furniture had been smashed; the house was dirty and the yard overgrown. Springs were poking out of the couch and out of the dirty mattresses we had to sleep on. We had no sheets or blankets except for what we got from the Salvation Army – hard woollen blankets, covered in stains. At night I couldn't sleep from the constant itching. I was breaking out in rashes and was covered in bites. I would lie in bed thinking this was as bad as it could be and then the next day would come and I would realise I'd been wrong.

I had by this time come to the conclusion that there was no God. I knew it wasn't anything like they told me in Sunday school.
There was no one looking down on us from above and there was no heaven and no hell. Or if there really was a hell I was surely living in it. The church never helped us except with the odd pair of trousers or other pieces of clothing. I still have issues with the concept of an all-seeing, omnipresent God looking out for everyone. I grew out of that at about four years old. Maybe I'm bitter and jaded but I don't think so. I liked the Salvation Army because they had looked out for us a few times but that was about it.

Some days I would wake up and not have shoes or clean clothes to wear to school. I was once again ashamed of who we were and how little we had.

Even friends of Mum and Dad's who had been part of the problem before, drinking and fighting with them, were worried about us. They would bring over food for us to eat or something clean to wear. But Dad never noticed how bad things were and if he did he was so fucked up he couldn't do anything about it. Life was beyond him.

I tried to keep away from our house as much as I could, staying at friends' houses and even friends of Mum's. I stayed with an older couple who seemed to take a liking to me. Aunty Mary and Uncle Eddie were a sweet old Scottish couple who lived in Broadmeadows, across the paddock from us in Elizabeth Field. I would go over to their house when I was hungry or alone. It was as if they knew what we were going through and wanted to give me a break. I was happy to have a little bit of normality in my life.

My brother John was my hero in those days. He could play football, he was a boxer and he was a musician. Anything he put his mind to he could do. He was responsible for me hearing most of the good music that was around at that time. He was in bands with lots of other young immigrant kids so new music was always being played around the house.

But he was always in trouble. In his first year of high school, he didn't like the way a teacher tried to reprimand him so he knocked him out. Obviously he was expelled from school and he never went back. He didn't care. His friends all thought it was a great thing to do. I thought that no one, except maybe Dad, was tougher than John.

John was a wild boy and hard as nails, but home was too wild and frightening even for him. So at the age of thirteen, John ran away from home and joined a band in Melbourne. Not much was said about it, I don't even remember Dad being worried about him. Now I had no one to look up to.

In Melbourne John played with some of the top musicians in the country. For a while he forgot about Elizabeth and what he'd escaped from. I don't think anyone else would have been capable of that after all he'd been through and at such a young age. But something went wrong in Melbourne too. Bad people seemed to follow us wherever we went and he ended up back with us in Elizabeth. We always seemed to end up back there no matter where we ran to.

My dad tried to make things work out for himself and for John by doing what he did best. He started training him to box. John was ready to fight anyone at any time. He was fast and he was angry. Within a few months John was state boxing champion. At the same time his football team, Elizabeth West Football Club, won the state championships. He was asked to go and try out for an American football scout to play gridiron. He played top-level district football as a goalkeeper. He could sing, he could play guitar, he could play piano, he could fight and everyone who knew him liked him. He was an amazing guy.

* * *

I have a problem remembering how old I was or how long this nightmare went on for. It seemed like forever and it still hurts me now like it was yesterday. Mum must have left us when I was maybe nine and didn't come back until I was eleven – and then only for a short time before she disappeared again. How could both our parents desert us? We needed them, they were supposed to be there for us and they weren't. Mum had run away from Dad but she left us in the hell she ran from. If it was that bad, why didn't she take us with her? Why didn't she even get a message to us or check on us? She couldn't have really cared that much. And Dad, well, even when he was at the house, he was gone from our lives. He was probably never there, when I think about it. We were alone.

I used to walk home from school and look into other houses and wish our house looked like theirs did. Some of my friends from school had normal houses and normal families. I wanted to be like them so badly. I thought they were really lucky. Now, looking back, I can see that their parents worked in the same factories as ours, they made the same money as ours; the only difference was their parents were responsible and cared for them.

I then started to get defensive of my dad and would get into fights at school if anybody said anything about my clothes or shoes or even lack of food. I pretended I didn't care but I was hurting inside. I became very good at fighting and that carried on for quite a few years. There were some other families in the street that were as badly off as us, in fact, there were some who I thought had it worse. But they were just crazy families, full of neglected kids with stupid parents who abused them. I woke up one day and realised that we were one of those families.

* * *

At school I was the class milk monitor, which meant that I got to go to the lunch shed and collect the milk for my class to drink every morning. The government used to supply fresh milk in nice glass bottles for all the kids at primary schools. I think it was to help strengthen our teeth and bones. The best thing about this was that on those days when I was really hungry I could drink a few bottles of milk while I was at the shed. That would be enough to help me concentrate in class and not have to sit with my stomach rumbling while the other kids ate their lunches. During summer the milk would quite often be going off in the sun. But I would drink it anyway.

I always pretended I didn't need lunch and didn't care that everyone else was eating and I wasn't. But sometimes my friends would have a little more than they needed and I would wolf it down in a second. As a rule, though, I acted tough and didn't need food. I didn't need anything or anyone.

I know that my home life was beginning to show in my schoolwork. I started to get into trouble for things I would never have done before. I had always been the most conscientious student in class and the teachers loved me. But I was getting angry. I got in fights and one afternoon I was sent to the headmaster's room.

‘I'm here to see the headmaster, miss.'

‘Is it to do with schoolwork or sport?'

‘No, miss, teacher sent me.'

‘Oh. Take a seat. The headmaster will see you soon.'

I sat in the front office, shuffling my feet nervously on the floor. The secretary looked up.

‘Can you please sit still?'

The sound of the telephone constantly ringing only made me more nervous. I'd never been sent up to this office before. I'd been at the school for years and the only time the headmaster had even noticed me was when I sang at assembly.

The door swung open. ‘Right. Come in then.' He didn't look as happy to see me this time.

‘Yes, sir.'

‘What's the trouble here?' I got the feeling he already knew but he wanted me to say it out loud.

‘Teacher told me to get out of the class and come to your office, sir.'

‘Why? What did you do?'

‘I punched a boy during recess, sir.'

‘Yes, I heard. You're the young Swan boy aren't you?'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘I saw your brother a lot in here but I wasn't expecting to see you. I'm very disappointed in you. This boy was bleeding a lot. I saw him in the nurse's office.'

‘Yes, sir, but he was pushing my friend around. That's why I hit him, sir.'

‘Yes but you hit him more than once, didn't you? You kept hitting him.'

‘I don't know, sir. I just hit him.'

By this time, I was getting ready for what I knew was coming. I'd seen the kids come back from the office with welts on their hands and legs. Crying and blowing bubbles out of their noses. I wasn't going to be like that. I wasn't going to cry. They couldn't hurt me.

‘Well, we can't have kids punching each other around the school whenever they like.'

‘But he started it, sir.'

‘Don't interrupt me, son. This is a very serious situation. You can't go around taking things into your own hands. Resorting to violence doesn't solve anything, son,' he said, rolling up his sleeves. ‘You're going to have to learn that lesson the hard way it seems.'

‘Yes, sir.'

‘You are a good student but no one is allowed to get away with this sort of behaviour. Do you understand?'

I grunted to myself and stared at the floor.

‘Do you understand, young man?'

‘Yes, sir.'

I never lifted my eyes from the floor. I could feel him shuffling around behind me, getting something out of the cupboard in the corner.

‘All right, son, come here and put out your hand.'

In his hand was a long piece of cane that he flexed back and forth as if he was testing how hard he could swing it. He had a look in his eye like he didn't care at all. In fact, I thought he was quite enjoying the whole process. He even seemed to be dragging it out for maximum effect.

‘Put your hand out, son, and don't you dare move it.'