Rose Boys, page 15
This cult of sport seemed to preclude other interests. Robert wasn’t acquiring new skills or hobbies. Interviewed soon after the accident, he had mused, doubtless tongue-in-cheek, about learning to paint with his mouth, but he showed no interest in pursuing any of the activities suggested by occupational therapists. I often marvelled at how fundamentally unaltered he was by his new situation. It baffled me. How could anyone endure such torment and not be changed?
I mentioned this to Dr Burke at Ivanhoe Manor. Was he, too, surprised by Robert’s abiding preoccupation with sport and his indifference to new pursuits?
Dr Burke became defensive and responded a little inconsequently, as if I had underestimated Robert’s difficulties. He spoke about the courage it took to revisit the scene of his sporting successes. He said it demanded great character, especially in the early days. I agreed wholeheartedly. Dr Burke often saw his former patient at the MCG, pushed by Dad or myself. (The rest of us weren’t members, so sometimes three or four of us would attach ourselves to Robert’s wheelchair like benevolent barnacles. We were never stopped.)
I remembered those early forays: the gawking recognition of onlookers, the unmistakable suspicions about Robert’s mental condition, the artless wonderment of children at the sight of his wheelchair, the silent helpfulness of others as we negotiated crowded spaces or lifted him up stairs. One day at the MCG, Senator John Button, then a federal minister, crouched down and took up some of the considerable weight, then moved on without a word. Most annoying to Robert were the clumsier expressions of compassion, such as when strangers, presuming that he was too imbecilic to speak, would peer at him and then ask Dad how he was—in himself. Robert always told them, emphatically. He had never suffered fools and he wasn’t about to change. Now that Dad was no longer coaching, they started following Collingwood again. At Victoria Park every second fan wanted to commiserate with Robert or to ask about his health. He knew they meant well, but he saw no reason why he should tolerate inane or mawkish monologues, let alone people obscuring his view of the game. Crisply, curtly, he cut them off or told them to get out of the way. He became adept at ignoring people, and his withering looks were legendary. ‘Let’s get away from these peanuts,’ he would mutter out of the corner of his mouth. Accustomed to Dad’s unfailing courteousness, I was embarrassed by Robert’s brusqueness. Dr Burke laughed when I mentioned Robert’s temper. ‘Oh yes, I know,’ he said. ‘I copped that a few times myself.’
Eventually Dr Burke addressed my earlier question. ‘I don’t think people who suffer a major disability with spinal cord injury really change as persons. Their interests remain much the same. There’s no reason for them to change. Temporarily, yes. People do become depressed. People do change in the short-term. But that’s a short-term issue. We usually say that it takes about two years for people to come to terms with their disability. You can be fooled by somebody who seems to be coping well after three months. They’re not. They’re hiding it. They’re putting on a front.’
He was right of course. It was foolish of me to expect Robert to transform himself. Why should he? What did I expect him to become—a seer, a sociologist, a poet? Was I waiting for him to peer into the abyss and divine a cure for my own sense of futility and discontent?
Changing the subject, I told Dr Burke I had always assumed that Robert’s adaptation to life in a wheelchair was aided by his robust physical condition before the accident. Dr Burke agreed, with one qualification: ‘That sporting background, that ability to overcome pain and to get through something that’s difficult physically, does help people who become disabled. There’s no question about that. There’s some sort of drive that other people perhaps don’t have. But it can also be detrimental, because they realise how much they’ve lost.’
Dr Burke had a chance to assess Robert’s recovery first-hand. In April 1976 Robert was readmitted to the Austin because of urinary complications. Again he declined to have a sphincterotomy.
I still saw much of my family after leaving home. Often I was glad to get away from my new and increasingly turbulent household. It was clear that relations between Robert and Terry were hopelessly strained. In retrospect, I’m amazed they didn’t receive professional counselling. During those eighteen months no one suggested they should see a psychologist, a psychiatrist, a marriage counsellor or a sexual therapist. The weekly visit to the chiropractor was about it. It was up to them to smooth the myriad other kinks in their lives.
Years later I remarked on this deficiency to my mother. Why hadn’t the authorities recognised Robert’s plight and encouraged him to talk about his fears, his frustrations, his longings, even his dreams? Something, anyway. I now understand that a few years after Robert’s accident, during a sojourn at the Austin, a psychiatrist did see him, only to conclude that he couldn’t help him. I don’t doubt that my brother would have been a stubborn patient, but surely something could have been done to break down that masochistic reserve. How could a young person in his condition be expected to go away and get on with his life without professional guidance? Normally wary of such analogies, I likened Robert’s condition to that of a survivor of psychological torture or prolonged incarceration in a concentration camp. I wasn’t trying to be melodramatic. It is impossible to exaggerate my brother’s—any quadriplegic’s—misery during the first few years after the accident. The grief was indescribable. We weren’t psychologists. We couldn’t play that role. We were far too close. Besides which, none of us was in very good shape either.
Mum agreed. She said we should all have been counselled. She remembered a pathetic session at the Austin shortly before Robert’s discharge. A couple of young nurses tried to explain to her and Terry the rudiments of the daily care that would be required. One of them started giggling and nudged the other saying, ‘Oh, we can’t tell them that!’
One evening in late May 1976, Robert and Terry joined me and A. and some friends of ours for an evening of overconsumption and merriment. The Rose boys shared a joint and then led the dance. But the tension back in the bunker was insufferable. Four days later I was told that Robert and Terry were planning to separate. Dr Burke had written to Robert about a new hostel (the first of its kind in Australia) for paraplegics and quadriplegics, to be opened later in the year. Robert was invited to move in if he wished.
Few of us are good at the endgame. One week later, two days before my twenty-first birthday party, there was another row. Terry, in a desperate state, picked up Salli and left the bunker. When Mum got home from work hours later she found Robert sitting in his wheelchair on his own. Very alarmed, she asked where Terry was. He wouldn’t say. He kept on reassuring her. He said everything was all right and told her not to worry.
That’s when my mother realised how phenomenally brave he was.
In July 2000 I drove to Kangaroo Ground to visit my former sister-in-law. I had forgotten how long it takes. I must have driven for an hour. The roads were narrow and winding, the weather vile. Finally I reached the unmade road that Terry had told me about. As I approached the property, electronic gates opened silently. Terry greeted me at the front door, quite unchanged, warm, affable, and pretty as ever. I hadn’t seen her since her most recent misadventure, a car accident. I was relieved to see her looking so well, and unscarred. She told me that apart from residual double vision and a crook ankle she was on the mend. Arthritis was a possibility, but the specialists were sanguine. She hoped to start driving again soon.
We enthused about her grandson, now a fortnight old. I had met my great-nephew the day before, so was able to contribute to the traditional guessing game about his dominant looks and the eventual colour of his eyes. I thought he looked uncannily like Salli and Robert as children.
After a cursory tour of the renovated house, we moved outside. I admired the pool on the hilltop with its massive, electronic umbrella. The view from the terrace was equally impressive. The property is hilly and heavily wooded. This is serious equestrian country. I noticed several horses, including Salli’s thoroughbred, which she stables at Kangaroo Ground. Four fat geese mooched around the dam. Terry told me that a rogue fox was slowly picking them off. She pointed out a troop of kangaroos in a distant gully, including the albino that appeared each afternoon. We agreed that it would be most unfortunate if anything was allowed to spoil this idyll.
My contact with Terry had been reasonably frequent during the previous two decades. Soon after she left Robert, I began seeing her and Salli. Terry, understandably, didn’t attend my twenty-first birthday party—a small and overwrought affair—but she often visited my house in East Hawthorn and subsequent communal abodes. In those early days Terry, still in her early twenties, was looking for distractions. She went to parties with me. Finally, in her late twenties, she met Darryl Butler, and they married soon after. Three more daughters followed. Salli is eighteen years older than her youngest half-sister.
I liked Darryl. So did the rest of my family. He was good to Terry after a very unhappy time, and he proved to be an exemplary stepfather to Salli—every bit as generous to her as he was to his own children, and never seeking to muddy the roles of father and stepfather. He and Terry both ensured that Salli went on seeing Robert during those early, difficult years, and there was never any doubt that Robert was ‘Dad’. Soon after marrying Terry, Darryl started his own printing company. The hectares, the gates, the thoroughbreds, the luxurious pool attested to his success. Darryl used to print catalogues for me at OUP before I switched from marketing to publishing. During winter he would sit in my office and bemoan Collingwood’s fortunes. He struck me as being as rabid as Robert. When his company began to prosper he became a Collingwood sponsor. Dad was still vice-president (Kevin Rose became president in the 1990s), so I often attended lunches and ran into Darryl. Terry sometimes went along, but never watched the football. We would stay inside, drinking the sponsor’s wine, reminiscing. ‘Is it over yet?’ she would wail at quarter-time, just as I had done as a child.
Although Robert had a standing invitation, he never attended these functions, which are much sought after by corporations, former players and ambitious politicians. You often find yourself sitting next to cabinet ministers or media barons. When the social club was officially named after my father in 1989, Prime Minister Hawke flew down for the afternoon and Premier Cain did the honours, welcoming ‘Comrade Prime Minister’. During his typically emotional speech Dad mentioned some impenetrable poems of mine that had just appeared in a newspaper. Later, Hawke asked me about my poetry. He wanted to know about my background, but broke off at one point to listen to a horse-race in which he had a vested interest. It was a bizarre experience watching the prime minister and Mum with their ears pressed up against his pink tranny, urging on the favoured nag, to no avail. Putting away his tranny and his disappointment, Hawke turned to me and said, ‘Now where were we, Rosey?’
Robert may have approved of betting, but he disliked the atmosphere upstairs. That was for ‘the toffs’. For him the general frivolity was almost sacrilegious, as was the audacity of people who went on chatting long after the game had commenced. Missing a single kick was anathema to Robert. He preferred to sit among the true believers. He took a small box in the rickety Ryder Stand, near the old chook pen, and sat there agonising over the outcome with his mate ‘Butch’ Canobie. Butch, like his brother Rod, was superb to my brother and equally avid. They were indistinguishable studies in anxiety—fretful, chainsmoking, always fearing the worst, even when Collingwood was five goals up with fewer minutes to go. The fates could always rob you; 1970 might happen again. One day, years after their divorce, Terry crossed to the Ryder Stand to sit with Robert, only to return a few minutes later chuckling bemusedly at his engrossment in the game. He had completely ignored her, as if his life depended on the game. Terry should have known better than to expect civilities during a game. Did Robert even recognise us in that state?
After admiring the Kangaroo Ground fauna, Terry and I moved inside and she made herself comfortable on a sofa. I hadn’t seen her since Robert’s funeral in May 1999. Much had happened in my life too. At the end of that year I became ill for the first time in my life. Abdominal problems, not unrelated to Mum’s, required emergency surgery. I went out to my parents’ house to convalesce. For several days I lay in Robert’s bed, unable to do anything but reflect. One morning, staring at his old trophies and thinking about my frenetic life, I suddenly decided to leave OUP, to spend more time writing, and to be with my partner who lived in Adelaide. I moved there in the new year. Illness, in a sense, had freed me.
Terry and I discussed the accident—her own, not Robert’s. This had happened in May 2000, just a few days before the first anniversary of Robert’s death. The coincidences were almost as stark as the consequences. Terry was driving along a busy road near their property. As she approached a roundabout a car travelling at great speed in the opposite direction veered out of control and hurtled across the roundabout straight into her path. It happened so quickly Terry didn’t have time to brake. The cars collided head-on. Even the Butlers’ tank-like Range Rover was crushed and had to be written off. The young man in the other car died instantly. He was twenty-two, just like Robert. He also came from Wangaratta. A few days earlier he and a mate had been reported to the police for tailgating other motorists in the area. This particular day they were playing possum at the roundabout.
Terry cannot remember the accident, so great was the impact. She was lucky to survive. It left her with broken ribs and a fractured ankle and cheekbone. She was profoundly concussed for several days. Her vision was shot, and one side of her face collapsed. Ironically, Terry was admitted to the Austin. I groaned when Mum told me this. I thought about poor Salli, heavily pregnant and preparing for the anniversary, having to go back to that place. Terry remembered a remark of mine during our long vigil by Robert’s deathbed: ‘It would have to be a very close friend to bring me back to the Austin’.
Terry’s recovery was slow and uncertain. After several weeks in Intensive Care she was finally moved to Ivanhoe Manor for rehabilitation, where Dr Burke attended her. Terry hated the atmosphere in the rehabilitation hospital. She was surrounded by paraplegics and quadriplegics, mostly young men, with major head injuries and tragic futures. She watched the sleepless parents and bewildered girlfriends who sat with the victims all day, watching, listening, sponging them, murmuring encouragement. The old associations must have been powerful. Terry saw no point in this suffering, these life sentences. She loathed every minute of it and discharged herself as soon as possible.
By the time I saw Terry in July 2000 she had made a good recovery. She showed me photographs of the battered Range Rover and of herself in Intensive Care. Darryl, a keen family documenter, had taken them. Looking at the wrecked car, Terry said she was increasingly troubled by the fact that a young man, however foolish or self-destructive, had died in the accident. But for the sturdiness of her Range Rover he might be alive today. (But for it, we knew, she would almost certainly be dead.) She had survived, but somewhere his uncomprehending parents were sonless, grieving.
When I told Terry about my book she was interested and agreed to help. Clumsily, I set up my little tape recorder and we both laughed at the absurdity of it all. Terry’s jovial cackle filled the spacious house. Even during the gloomiest days after Robert’s accident we had always made each other laugh.
Terry warned me that her memory wasn’t good. During the first few weeks after her accident it was positively useless. Like Robert, she couldn’t recall the collision or the hour leading up to it. Her memory was slowly improving as the massive concussion receded, but she still had difficulty with names and dates.
We talked briefly about the period leading up to Robert’s accident. Terry was unsentimental about the vagaries of her early life with Robert. ‘It was terrible. I mean, Robert was a pain really. He was a real chauvinist, an ocker—I don’t know how you describe it. I had no idea what a sportsman’s life was like.’ She remembers ringing my mother one evening soon after Salli’s birth. Robert was missing, and Terry had no money. Desperate, she insisted that something be done. She laughed as she recalled Mum’s response: ‘“Well, you wanted him, love! You’ve got him now.” Poor Elsie, she must have hated me.’ Both of us knew this was never the case. Mum and Terry remain very fond of each other.
‘Robert wasn’t ready for marriage or commitment,’ Terry admitted. ‘He just wanted to play sport and to be with the boys. It was all immaturity and lack of experience, a lot of it on my part.’
We talked about the night of Robert’s accident and about Terry’s general unpreparedness, before discussing her eighteen months at Crosby Drive. Interestingly, Terry focussed on Mum’s feelings about the domestic disruption. She felt guilty about invading Mum’s new house. ‘I often think how terrible it must have been for your Mum to have Robert and me move in there. Being a mature woman now, I just know how awful it must have been to have another woman there all of a sudden.’ Elsie was famously meticulous, whereas Terry had a laissez-faire attitude towards housekeeping. ‘I do appreciate that more than ever now—how hard it must have been for Elsie. I didn’t at that stage.’ Things are different now, she told me. With her own daughters she insists upon things being done in a certain way or not at all. She said her long convalescence on the sofa after her own accident, when she was completely dependent on others, had been trying for Darryl and the girls.
This emphasis surprised me. It’s curious what people choose to regret. Given everything else that was going on, I don’t think Mum was particularly concerned about lint in the washing machine or dirt rings in the bath.
Amusedly, Terry recalled her culinary deficiencies. ‘Elsie must have wondered what I was feeding her poor sick son every night.’ Mum used to invite them upstairs for a meal, ‘to make sure Robert was getting some nutrition’. We laughed about Dad’s huffing and puffing as he lifted Robert, and about the prevailing moodiness. ‘I wouldn’t have been easy to get along with, because of my inexperience,’ Terry admitted.
