Rose Boys, page 19
This avoidance, this silent negation, deepened my chronic despondency. Notwithstanding our moments of tenderness and communion, my involvement with B. cauterised me in a way, reviving my nihilism and confirming my pessimism about relationships. Would I always be attracted to cool and inexpressive men, ambiguous types who missed their women? I felt ossified, unworthy, invisible. At the age of thirty, despite the fact that things were starting to happen in my professional life, I was as prone to depression as I had been in my youth. Outwardly gregarious, I knew periods of intense dejection. It paralysed me. I would stare at the bedroom wall and ponder abysses. I should have done something about it—I had those dream journals, after all—but I never did. I was a boy, I was a Rose, I could cope. And of course there was Robert.
Other people were more empathetic and often asked about Robert. Even before I joined OUP in 1986, my circle had begun to change. At the age of thirty I published my first poem, a fervid, Eliotian piece about B. of course (‘You are the infection and the squalor / The charnel-house of desire / The vicious simultaneous waltz’—quite a happy tune, really). Until then I had never mixed with writers. Soon I was meeting poets, editors, publishers and academics. One night Imre Saluszinsky came to dinner with some other people associated with the stylish Scripsi, which had published my first poem. Imre remembered my brother, as I noted in my journal: ‘He wanted to know about Robert and said, without a trace of guile, that his tragedy had altered his own outlook, his faith’. Like Imre, other people spoke about the effect it had on them and their friends.
In 1990, B. went to live in Italy. It was the end of something, but also an opportunity. New friends in the literary world taught me a new kind of trust. Astutely, persistently, they wore down my reserve and introduced me to what Henry James called ‘the religion of friendship’. Withdrawal wasn’t tolerated in that circle. They recognised a lapsed hedonist and reminded him of the pleasures of openness, intimacy and excess. A decade of conviviality was launched. Old scourges began to recede. Before long, when I considered the captive of melancholia I had allowed myself to become, I no longer recognised him. He seemed like a miscreation. I had eclipsed him, with a little help from my friends.
A few months after B.’s departure I was to my considerable surprise offered the job of publisher at OUP. Nervously, I accepted and began calling on key authors. I was bemused by people’s reactions when they found out, indirectly, about my sporting pedigree. I didn’t expect, when introducing myself to influential professors, to be greeted with the question, ‘Are you really Bobby Rose’s son?’ This hadn’t happened in decades. Previously I had mixed with people to whom my family ties meant little or nothing, or who felt they couldn’t betray any interest in football. The prurience of the professors took me back to the 1960s when people cocked their heads and asked me if I was going to play for Collingwood. I sensed a kind of incredulity behind their questions. Could this lean homosexual bookman really be a bona fide son of Victoria Park? Carlton, clearly, was agog.
One night I had a drink with one of our leading social commentators, whom I wanted to lure to OUP. He seemed rather more interested in extracting secrets of the locker room, and was piqued when I steered the conversation back to the book that we might produce together.
A striking example of this prurience occurred at Ormond College when I launched the first issue of Scripsi to be published by OUP. After the State governor was piped in by a single bagpiper (bizarre in itself), I was formally introduced by the Master, Alan Gregory, who would soon be embroiled in the so-called Ormond College affair, which prompted Helen Garner’s book The First Stone. Gregory, an ebullient man, told the large and exclusively literary gathering that if they couldn’t have Bobby Rose they would have to make do with his son, and that a Rose by any other name would smell as sweet. On and on it went. Stunned by his effusions, I spoke cautiously—a stern, unpresuming speech, Paul Carter remarked. Over the next ten years I would be required to speak at innumerable OUP launches, few colleagues being willing to brave the microphone, but my debut at Ormond College was certainly the weirdest of these occasions.
By this stage Dad was no longer coaching. Early in the 1986 season, after a succession of losses, he had resigned, happily making way for his deputy, Leigh Matthews. In the ensuing coup Ranald Macdonald had also resigned and Dad was pressured to assume the presidency. ‘That’s a job I don’t fancy,’ he is quoted as saying in the Age’s Quotes of the Day column, next to Ronald Reagan, Colonel Gaddafi, Margaret Thatcher and that other great leader, Frank Sinatra. Dad accepted the vice-presidency and held the post for another fourteen years.
One never sees one’s parents through rose-coloured glasses, but even I was conscious of Dad’s new, legendary status. By the 1990s his reputation, already strong as a result of his playing and coaching achievements, had grown because of his dignified attitude towards adversity and his unwavering devotion to Robert. He seemed to generate more newsprint than ever, though his scrapbooks lay idle now. One journalist gushed that he was ‘a specimen who is half saint and half knight’. Still regarded as one of football’s finest exponents, he was a unanimous choice as Collingwood’s premier player when it came to select its ‘team of the century’. There were many panegyrics, not all of them relating to sport.
Dad’s popularity with young people was still potent. In the busy 1950s he had found time to coach the Collingwood boys’ team to premierships. In Wangaratta, boys of my age and older bodgies had flocked to Dad’s sports store for spirited teasing and banter. Dad called them all Tiger. Back in Melbourne, young neighbours were always knocking on the door wanting to shake his hand or to ask him to sign things. Children adored him because he was funny, uncondescending and genuinely interested. He signed their autograph books, asked about their families, then sent them back to their parents with a pat on the head. In this second, venerable stage of his life it wasn’t unusual for Dad to be surrounded by shy admirers sixty years younger than himself. Somehow they always knew about his reputation. Earlier this year two old blokes watched one such besiegement and finally exclaimed, ‘They still know who you are!’ It can happen anywhere. Restaurants, beaches, theatre foyers, foreign cities bring out the little loyalists. One evening the three of us went to the opera. It happened to be The Magic Flute. At the Opera Australia party afterwards, the First Boy with the excellent treble, now in his Melbourne Grammar blazer, walked up to Dad and told him that his father always said it was a travesty that he had never won a Brownlow Medal. ‘Cosmic,’ said my mother.
In 1990 I published my first collection of poems, The House of Vitriol. My parents, while protesting that life at home hadn’t been that bad (the title in fact alludes to parliament), were there when Gwen Harwood launched my book. The fact that Dad chose to leave midway through a final in which Collingwood was playing in order to attend the launch proved much more newsworthy than the book’s release. Robert, it goes without saying, stayed at the football. Dad was incredulous when I told him about a couple of eminent poets who lurched up to me and tried to unsettle me by saying they had reviewed my book in ways that would give me no joy. All of us would become inured to the pusillanimity of the poets. My response to this pair of pissed scolds was to ignore their reviews.
Much though we all enjoyed the launch, nothing rivalled our elation two weeks later when Collingwood finally claimed the premiership that had thrice eluded Dad. There is a superb photograph of him wheeling Robert into the celebratory dinner. This dual portrait captures their excitement, dignity and rarest of rapports. We placed it beside Robert’s coffin at his funeral.
Nothing dimmed Robert’s new equanimity. Gone were the old introversion and taciturnity. Some weekends I marvelled at this garrulous, high-spirited brother of mine who had transcended his troubles, even as I sat there brooding over a hangover or publishing dilemma. After lunch he would accompany Dad and me to our tennis club and umpire our games, blithely tolerating our howls and overrulings. Elsie rarely went with us. She found our creaky competitiveness far too intense.
No one expected Robert to reach forty, but he did, in 1992. There was a surprise party with many guests and an arresting cake in the shape of a cricket bat. Several of us spoke, none so feelingly as Robert, who congratulated Darryl and Terry on the way they had brought up Salli, a tribute that must have required great humility and insight in a father. He described Dad as ‘top of the tree’. I read from one of Peter Porter’s poems: ‘Nobody feels well after his fortieth birthday. But the convalescence is touched by glory’.
Salli, for once, was persuaded to speak. She expressed the hope that Robert would be there to toast her when she turned forty. Later I asked Robert if he was looking forward to another forty years. ‘No way,’ he laughed. Twenty? ‘Maybe ten.’
In February 1995 I did a poetry reading at the St Kilda Town Hall with John Forbes and Dorothy Porter. This felt otiose, as if we didn’t have a quorum. That morning I had read about the sudden death of the revered American poet James Merrill. I had come to Merrill ridiculously late, introduced to him by my friend Philip Hodgins, himself terminally ill and a wonderful poet. ‘How death populates its text,’ I wrote in a memorial poem about Merrill.
No sooner had I read about Merrill’s death than Mum rang up to say that Robert’s situation had worsened overnight. He had suddenly lost power in his wrists. This deprived him of the ability to feed himself, smoke a cigarette or steer his electric wheelchair—simple gifts, but liberating for someone as disabled as Robert. Degeneration of this kind often happens to long-time quadriplegics. Apparently surgeons had predicted it three years earlier, without informing Robert or my parents. Corrective surgery on the neck was possible, though Robert was sceptical. Other quadriplegics had undergone similar surgery with unfortunate results.
It was clear that Robert’s health was failing. Whenever I saw him he seemed to have aged. His face was deeply lined and he had gone quite grey. He had been in a wheelchair for almost as long as he had been on his feet. He spent more and more time in bed with various ailments. He even came down with a heavy cold, his first in two decades, incredibly. This was dangerous because of his weak lungs. Each illness, each long stint in bed, demoralised my parents. They lived for Robert now. In a frank feature story written by Mike Sheahan, Mum was quoted as saying, ‘You adjust. You don’t think you will, but it doesn’t come with an alternative.’ The relationship between the three of them was now ineffably close, like a religion. Mum’s role was pivotal, more and more rock-like. Subtly, she held it all together. No sacrifice was too great. Nothing was allowed to interfere with Robert’s pleasure and relaxation when they had him to themselves. But it took its toll physically. At times of stress Mum developed a maddening rash over much of her body. It plagued her for years, resisting all treatment. The nerve deafness had worsened, and she was now very deaf. She had other chronic health problems. In 1996 she underwent major bowel surgery. The surgeon told her that her intestine, always prone to kink, was fifty per cent longer than most people’s. Robert and I listened to this diagnosis without thinking much about it.
Parents of disabled children always look for reasons, answers, even when solutions are unavailable, panaceas hollow and exhausted. The temptation to blame themselves is strong, and terrible to watch. One evening Mum and I talked about Robert. He had just heard about a smaller hostel near Crosby Drive and had put his name on the waiting list. It was very convenient and would mean much less driving for Dad, who was now in his late sixties. Dad had driven tens of thousands of kilometres over the years, picking up Robert and taking him home, ferrying him to functions, taking him on holidays.
Mum and I discussed Robert’s refusal to speculate about his condition or his increasingly bleak future. Mum blamed herself, not for the first time, for allowing Robert to become too attached to them, for not making him develop other relationships. Yet she went on to say, unaware of the contradiction, that she was looking forward to seeing more of him when he moved into the new hostel. They would be able to visit him and take him home for dinner during the week. I worried about this—the endless sacrifices and mutual reliance. When would it end? When would they have some peace?
Robert’s strength continued to wane. When I saw him at the MCG in August 1996 he had lost what little movement he had in his arms. He was on antibiotics because of the cold and stayed inside behind the glass during the match. Finally, ominously, he had joined the toffs.
Football functions were elaborate by then. It was a long way from the chook pen. Like me, Mum enjoyed the football and the opportunity to catch up with old friends, but she detested the publicity. One day she told me about her mounting aversion to cameras, the hoopla, the dazzlement. She had gone to a lunch at the MCG knowing that their table would be surrounded by television cameras. John Howard and James Packer, falsely rumoured to be about to join the board, were among their guests. As they approached the MCG Mum had a strong urge to flee. She got through the lunch, of course, with her usual decorum. The next day she was photographed in the Australian sitting beside John Howard, who was gnashing his teeth rather ferally.
There was more exposure when Dad was named Father of the Year. If this seemed slightly belated (‘Grandfather of the Year more likely,’ I joked), it was highly deserved and enabled Dad to do more proselytising on behalf of the disabled, with an efficacy we only learned about later. Before the official dinner Dad and I worked on his speech. Dad talked about Robert’s accident and how it had changed the family in every conceivable way. He dedicated the award to ‘all the parents of disabled children who require our love and care and all the wonderful consolations that families have to offer’.
Dad and Robert were interviewed for one of those father-and-son articles. By now most of the sentiments were as familiar as ‘Good Old Collingwood Forever’, but Robert said a few things that made it special. He reminisced about playing cricket with Dad for the Waverley Fourths. (I wasn’t alone!) ‘Those days were terrific, being with each other. It was like later on when I kicked on to Shield cricket. I’d always look around at the crowd to see him and, sure enough, he’d be there.’ He talked about Dad’s abiding stamina. ‘I think I am the reason my father wants to keep in good shape for as long as he can. He’s never said that, but I am pretty sure that is why he keeps so fit.’ He spoke about his dependence on others. ‘When you rely on other people, you have to be careful not to tread too heavily. They can soon get sick of you.’ But Dad was in a category all of his own. ‘I try not to ask too much of Bob. I try to wait until he gets off his stool or takes a break from gardening or something before I ask for a drink or a cigarette. I watch and wait. And I know he is watching, too.’
In late 1996, twenty years after his despondent arrival, Robert left Yarra Me. There was no future there. The staff and services were always being depleted. One year they dispensed with the supper service. The residents, fed at five o’clock, were not even given a cup of tea in the evening—this during a period of general economic prosperity. This coincided with one of Mum’s terrible dreams, in which the only place allotted to Robert was underneath a house while everyone else was warm inside. It reminded me of a subterranean dream of my own. I was living at Crosby Drive and Robert was downstairs in the bunker. One night Dad emerged from the bedroom to tell me that rain had flooded the flat and that Robert’s electrocution was certain. I wanted to turn off the electricity to avert this, but Dad was reluctant, regarding his fate as inevitable.
Other accommodation was now favoured for quadriplegics. The ParaQuad Association, which funded Yarra Me, had informed the residents, of whom only twenty remained, that they would be moved into small houses in the community. Robert, more averse to change than ever, hated this prospect. No one could convince him that living in a non-institutional environment, with greater control over his life and resources, would be an improvement. He just wanted things to stay as they were.
The transfer to the hostel close to my parents’ house was a debacle. When I saw Robert two days after he moved there he was very upset. He described the new place in nightmarish terms. The nursing aide who put him to bed did so unassisted and was inexpert with a hoist. Robert was sharing a room with a young man who had just become a quadriplegic. Foul-mouthed and abusive, he maintained his rage throughout the night. Robert, without earplugs and apprehensive, hadn’t slept at all. In the morning there were three people to shower and dress thirty patients. Robert didn’t get up until midday. I had never seen him so agitated. He was desperate to go back to Yarra Me. Dad, knowing how intolerant and unadventurous Robert could be, spoke to him sternly. Robert agreed to go back and try to be more positive. My parents, both exhausted, left for Queensland on a holiday.
When I spoke to Robert a few days later the situation was even worse. He said the place was full of fruitcakes. His voice was different—weak and despondent. He had never sounded frightened before. I went in and told my boss that there was an emergency and that I needed to see someone about it. As I did so I broke down, something I had never done before. I wondered if we were all cracking up. Not long before that, Dad had spoken at a football function at Waverley. Neil Sachse had paid a rare visit to Melbourne. Dad got up to welcome Neil and his wife Janyne, but broke down completely.
