Rose Boys, page 18
Jenny’s arrival eased the pressure on my parents, especially Dad. No longer did he have to keep Robert entertained or think up new ways to lift his spirits. It gave Dad a breather. I don’t think he expected the relationship to last forever, but while it did it was hugely therapeutic. My parents were fond of Jenny, and she became part of the family. When she turned twenty-two, Dad jokingly presented her with his old Collingwood guernsey, which bore the same number. Jenny teased him by keeping it for years. The five of us spent most Sundays together, watching the football and attacking the newspaper quiz during half-time, with Robert as quizmaster. Jenny still remembers his amazing head for numbers: dates, telephone numbers, cricket records.
The transformation in Robert was profound. Early on, Jenny became aware that she was doing all the talking and that Robert had little to contribute when she asked about his days. All he seemed to do was sit in the sun listening to the races. She urged him to use the gymnasium. Within days he was lifting quite impressive weights with the aid of hoists. Robert hadn’t begun to waste as many quadriplegics do. He was still upright and broad-shouldered. Although his stomach was expanding, he looked quite fit. People often remarked that if he had got up from his wheelchair and walked across the room they wouldn’t have been surprised. In photographs he looks youthful, tanned and very happy.
Robert’s exertions were good for him, as Jenny observed. ‘He probably saw that he still had something to offer. For me he was fabulous. I tend to get upset about situations, and he could calm me down and sympathise. He was totally for me. To have someone totally for you is such an honour. The years Robert and I had together were really wonderful and a time we both benefited from.’
This explains Jenny’s frustration with those who opposed the relationship. Although she appreciated that her mother wasn’t unusual in wanting a different life for her daughter (‘I think she thought I was wasting my life, as I suppose you would, knowing that it would be a hard life if I went that way’), she was annoyed by the disregard of Robert’s loyalty and support. ‘He was just the most wonderful person,’ she told me, ‘and so good for me with my volatile temperament.’
We talked about Robert’s astuteness as a psychologist. ‘He was actually a philosopher without knowing it,’ Jenny proffered. ‘He would have been shocked if you’d even suggested that. But he understood human nature better than most people, because he had lived through so many different reactions and learned the hard way.’
Robert never complained to Jenny about what had befallen him. The closest he came was when Moving Pictures released a song called ‘What About Me?’ ‘He used to play it a lot when it came out,’ Jenny recalled. ‘And he really meant it. It wasn’t fair.’ But Robert accepted his fate. He never thought there would be a cure in his lifetime. ‘He nursed no anger towards anyone or any thing. He just thought, well this is what happened—and what a bastard!’
Music solaced Robert. ‘He loved those old bands like Genesis, the Supremes, the Animals. We spent many Sundays listening to their records in the lounge room—after the obligatory footy replay, debate and stats. We even went to a few concerts at Festival Hall to see the Kinks and Genesis. I think Robert fancied himself as a would-be drummer. He loved Phil Collins or anyone else who let rip on the skins.’
Jenny’s arrival, combined with her warm personality and affinity with children, helped to normalise Robert’s relationship with Salli. At first Robert didn’t know what to say to his daughter, now about seven. Jenny, again, did most of the talking. The three of them would set off in the Yellow Peril for day-long outings. Salli, used to the protean nature of families and relationships, was quite relaxed with Jenny. The best time, as far as Jenny was concerned, was when the three of them went up to Nyah West. This enabled Salli to see Robert’s large family responding to him warmly and unaffectedly. There was no tension between Terry and Jenny. Terry, now divorced from Robert and about to marry Darryl Butler, was pleased for him, if somewhat mystified.
At the beginning of 1982 we all went to Warrnambool to give Robert some respite from Yarra Me. Holidays were like military operations (pillows, medication, hoists, suitable bathrooms and facilities), but Elsie was the ablest of marshals. Madly looking forward to a week of tennis, I slashed my thumb while shaving on the first morning. ‘Anything to get out of a lift,’ the mockers chanted as I was led off wanly to Casualty. Warrnambool proved to be the windiest place on earth, but Dad persuaded Robert to go in the sea, knowing it would be good for his ankle. We drove the Yellow Peril down to the water’s edge and carried Robert into the whipping surf on a tyre rubber, I holding my bandaged thumb out of the water like an aching buoy. Happy as a dolphin, Robert floated on his back, his plump stomach poking out of the water. Holidayers on the beach watched this ceremony in shaded astonishment.
Soon after we got back Robert turned thirty. Old friends and team-mates gathered on the deck. For Jenny, that was one of the best times. ‘It was a great night for Robert. For a moment it seemed like it was back to old times. He was surrounded by all his old sporting mates, reliving past matches and joking as if nothing had changed. It was one of the happiest times I can remember.’
Trevor Laughlin, Robert’s closest friend, made a speech and we all laughed about their youthful pranks. Trevor had played a few Tests for Australia during the Packer wars in the 1970s. As a journalist Robert had always promoted him. I wasn’t there when Trevor’s State selection was announced. Dad told me about it afterwards in a letter. Robert became upset and wept, something he rarely did. We all knew why. Robert wasn’t jealous. He was probably the least envious person I have ever known. He just wanted to be out there with Trevor. But he promptly sent Trevor a congratulatory telegram. ‘I know Robert very well,’ Dad wrote to me, ‘but it’s impossible to know what he is hiding inside.’
Trevor had also played county cricket in Lancashire, where he became friendly with Ian Botham. When the hero of Headingley came to Australia for an Ashes tour, Trevor and Robert spent a long boozy night with him. Botham taught them how to play indoor soccer. No Anglophiles, they both said he should have been an Aussie.
A few nights after the birthday party Dad reminisced about Robert’s playing career. He talked about how good he might have been as a footballer (something Robert always denied), and even tried to inveigle me into his dynastic dream. Then Mum piped up with stories about the pair of us as little boys. It was of course St Valentine’s Day.
In March 1982 Yarra Me began having financial problems. The hostel owed half a million dollars, of which Rupert Hamer’s Liberal government, facing re-election, offered to pay less than one tenth. Yarra Me’s survival was tenuous. The residents were warned that they might have to find other accommodation. Robert and my parents were naturally alarmed. It was one of those periodic crises that left them sleepless and apprehensive. We began to consider our options. A geriatric home was clearly untenable. I told my parents that I would move back to Crosby Drive if Robert went home.
Dad, a political novice, decided to use his media clout, Robert being reluctant to do so. A natural conservative, on the morning of the election he gave an interview to the Sun in which he deprecated the health minister’s ‘stupid’ offer. Hamer lost the election, and the new Labor government, under John Cain, increased spending on health services, including Yarra Me. The residents’ first emergency had passed, but not without casualties. Management dismissed fifteen nurses to reduce overheads. It was the first of many purges. The worst happened ten years later, when the entire nursing staff was sacked and replaced by agency nurses and aides, much cheaper but unable to build the same rapport. The residents were devastated by these departures. The nurses, as my mother said, were like family.
By early 1983 Robert and Jenny’s relationship was in trouble, but we still saw her every weekend. Neither of them had much money (though Robert always insisted on paying when they went out), so they tended to spend most of their time at Crosby Drive. Jenny must have been frustrated by her sedentary life. We laughed blackly as we recalled those marathons in front of the television. ‘That killed me a bit in the end,’ she admitted. ‘I’d go to the football and, while I liked it, it took up your whole Saturday. I stopped playing netball. I used to sit there and think, I used to be so active and now I’m just sitting, sitting.’ Mostly, though, Jenny enjoyed her years with my family. She still speaks with awe about Mum and Dad. ‘If ever anyone could wish for parents they would be the two. I mean, you hit the jackpot! I have never seen such a close relationship between a father and son—and between you and Elsie. It’s just the most wonderful family unit.’
I was reminded of a comment I made once, several years later, when Dad and I gave one of those silly father-and-son interviews. Asked what I thought of my parents, I said, ‘I chose well’.
Until their difficulties began, Jenny had seriously contemplated a permanent relationship with Robert. When she bought a house she chose one that would accommodate someone in a wheelchair. I asked her if Robert wanted to marry her. ‘Oh yeah,’ she said, remembering. ‘Look, I would have loved to marry Robert.’ Happy though they had been, she hesitated because of the risk of another divorce. ‘I couldn’t have put him through a second marriage break-up. Obviously I know the break-up we had was really hard. It was for me. Sometimes I think I made that break completely because it wasn’t like a divorce, it wasn’t a nasty break-up. It was just—I couldn’t do it any more.’
Jenny had fallen in love with someone else. She describes their meeting as a fluke. ‘I wasn’t looking for anyone else. It just happened—out of the blue. I had met someone else, who I did love.’
When I asked her how Robert took the news she told me, ‘He had always said, “When it’s time to go, you just tell me”.’ Now he sensed that something was amiss. ‘Rob kept saying “What’s wrong?” He knew something was up. In the end I just blubbered it out. And he just said, “Don’t worry, it’s okay”.’
(I thought about his words to Mum when she found him alone in the bunker after Terry’s departure—about everything being all right.)
Jenny remembers leaving Crosby Drive hurriedly, without speaking to my parents. When I arrived later they told me what had happened. That night I wrote in my journal: ‘Saddened tonight to learn that Robert & Jenny have parted, at least temporarily. She is still genuinely devoted to Robert, but wants to expand socially too. Robert was so wise & jolly & brave; I drove him to Yarra Me & just wanted to cry—but whom was I crying for?’
Robert and Jenny tried to remain friends, but whenever she contacted him it was as if the relationship hadn’t changed. She knew that Robert was likely to go on misconstruing her calls. The situation felt helpless, even deceitful. ‘I just thought that I had to stop it because it was killing me and he didn’t know where he stood. He needed to try and have another relationship.’ Ten years passed before they met again, accidentally, at a Christmas function. She found Robert unchanged. They talked as freely as ever.
When Robert died Jenny’s husband offered to take her to the funeral, but she preferred to go alone. ‘I felt that was cleansing, I suppose.’ She ended up sitting with her mother—a turning point in their relationship. ‘I have never sobbed as I sobbed at that funeral,’ she volunteered. ‘I lost control.’ (Someone had told me that Jenny became distraught in the church.) She spoke about the feelings of guilt that arose during my eulogy. She thought I was referring to her when I alluded to friends who had gone missing after Robert’s accident. (‘Robert had a tremendous gift for friendship,’ I said. ‘But not all the associations of his youth survived the accident. Not everyone can cope with disability as profound as Robert’s. Infirmity doesn’t just afflict the victim: it also tests onlookers and reveals any limitations of compassion or imagination.’) I assured her that this wasn’t the case. The two moral truants I had in mind were in a different category altogether.
I didn’t add that I was thinking of myself too.
Outside the church Jenny was upset, even affronted, by a couple of asides from other mourners. An old friend, with whom Jenny and Robert had spent many rollicking weekends, vaguely recalled that Jenny had ‘liked’ Robert. Then she went up to Terry. There was an awkward moment when Terry struggled to place Jenny.
‘He was my life—for so long,’ Jenny told me vehemently. ‘I knew him inside out.’
She was reminded of something a friend said during her relationship with Robert. He told her that she was a saint. ‘No I’m not,’ she wanted to say to him. ‘I’m just a woman who’s fallen in love with a man who’s had a terrible accident. A lot of people think that because you can’t have a sexual—well, you can have a sexual relationship, to a degree, but they obviously thought I was just a carer or a nurse. I didn’t mind. I knew what it was. And he knew what it was.’
The bell rang to signal morning recess. Jenny realised she was late for a meeting to discuss government funding. I wished her luck. Jenny escorted me along the decorative corridor, greeting midget students by their first names.
‘He was so likeable,’ she had told me towards the end of our interview. ‘God, he was funny. Such a good person.’
She too had had her part, and it was a worthy one, in the doleful comedy, and she too had been changed—changed forever, it occurred to me.
*
Robert’s relationship with Jenny altered him incalculably. It proved that, despite losing his mobility, his independence, his coltish pride, he could still help and protect and amuse someone. Loving, and being loved, had saved him. Without Jenny’s intervention, I think it would have been a much edgier recovery.
Apart from one or two brief friendships, Robert never had another relationship (or none that we knew about). But nor did he succumb to the sort of depression that had afflicted him in the 1970s. Even when his health failed, as it often did, he remained stoic and good-humoured, and rarely talked about his condition. If you asked him how he was, he was evasive. There are fewer references to him in my later journals, but this one, from 1984, is typical: ‘Robert too unwell to attend Dad’s birthday but came home today, his (now) usual cheerful self’. He had accepted what had happened. He would never allow it, or any complication, to torment him in the old way. He would enjoy life as much as he could. He relished friendships, outings and family gatherings. He became an indispensable and hugely popular guest at parties. He had the best sense of humour, a quip for every occasion. He who had always been incurious about non-sporting matters suddenly became chirpily inquisitive. He always wanted to know my news. I was conscious of never having enough news, or of not being able to share my real news with him. I wish I had now. And all this time the bond between Robert and my parents was deepening. Always systemic, even in troubled times, it was now prodigious, unqualified and profoundly tender. I found it awesome to watch.
At the end of 1984 Collingwood was once again in a state of flux. Dad was vice-president, with the former newspaper owner Ranald Macdonald as president. At the end of the season John Cahill, the coach, interrupted a board meeting, dumped his resignation letter on the table and walked out without a word. (I do hope Dad eventually writes that book about his experiences in the Collingwood boardroom.) Overnight, Dad became coach of Collingwood for the second time, precisely forty years after arriving at Victoria Park. Although he wasn’t the oldest coach in the League, we had qualms about his new burden. Didn’t he have enough to worry about already? Mum, though aghast, put on a brave face. That night we all gathered at Crosby Drive and toasted him with champagne. The media coverage was huge, but this time there were no morning romps at the oval, no photo calls on the verandah, no exposed flies. ‘It begins again,’ I wrote in my journal.
Dad was partly motivated by a desire to reinvigorate Robert after Jenny’s departure. Robert, with his tactical flair and matchless knowledge of players, proved to be an asset. He often sat with Dad in the coach’s box—when he could reach it in his wheelchair. On Saturdays he stayed at the social club long after my parents left. Often he didn’t get home until the middle of the night. Mum and Dad would stagger out of bed like sleepwalkers and begin the long process of putting him to bed. Annoyed that they were forced to do this, I often went out to Crosby Drive to help. Sometimes I rocked the boat by suggesting that they should have a weekend without nocturnal duties. Other times I wanted to go further, wanted to say to Robert that the demands on them were unfair—but could not. I began to feel like a scold, a policeman, on the outer.
Since the early 1980s I had worked in a medical bookshop for a few days each week while trying to write a play. I was also dabbling in poetry again, without any success. The Monash University Medical Undergraduate Society was a cooperative bookshop associated with my old university’s clinical school. Eventually, I got sick of explaining what the acronym MUMUS stood for and began telling new members that it was Aboriginal for medicine. They went away strangely moved. In 1984, on a whim and needing some money, I applied for the managership and was interviewed by the board, whose members included a young intern called Michael Wooldridge, the sullenest of my interrogators. Unexpectedly, I got the job. Even more bizarre was the enjoyment I derived from my new role. I may have been the most squeamish medical bookseller in history, but I learned a great deal about running a small business and serving a large membership. Within a year the run-down business recorded its first substantial profit. Soon after that Oxford University Press asked me to market its medical and science list. I felt privileged to be joining the publisher of the OED, in which I had esoterically lived for several years. On my arrival I was given the title of Medical Executive. I wondered if I would be expected to perform elective surgery after hours.
Around this time I became involved with a young man whom I shall call B. Since my mini-demise in Venice several years earlier, I had remained totally isolated. Then B. called one afternoon while I was writing. Like most of my acquaintances, he was an artist, not a writer. Henry James, himself attracted to the breed, once said it takes courage to be a sculptor. I sometimes felt that it was even foolhardier trying to love one, which I went on doing long after worldlier types would have desisted. There is gloom in deep love as in deep waters, as Landor said. B., not unlike his forerunner in this respect, had his own demons. They made him alluring, impassive and unready for intimacy. He showed scant interest in my family or my upbringing. Being curious about his past, I probed him for clues, but he stayed mute about mine. One year we went to Canberra to visit his father. As we drove through Wangaratta I told B. about the night ten years earlier when my brother became a quadriplegic. ‘Was that a difficult time for you?’ he asked nonchalantly. This was typical of his attitude. Our relationship lasted for several years, but B. never once asked about Robert. Even now I am astonished by my acceptance of such indifference. Why didn’t I get out of the car and hitchhike back to Melbourne? It is amazing what you bury when you crave gods. With some people I learned not to mention Robert, so as not to bore them or test their powers of sympathy or find out too much about them.
