Marj told me she knew something was not right in the early sixties when we lived in Rochester, a flat featureless town set among lush irrigated dairy allotments only eighteen miles from the Murray River. It was Chassa-boy's second posting as high school principal and it felt like we were catapulted from a quiet old fashioned way of life into the modernity of the swinging sixties.
We had to adjust to living in a small house again and Chassa-boy set to with the kikuyu once more, greening the barren front and back yards, even the driveway.
We made friends quickly as we had learned to do; the Sharp girls lived over the back fence and the Wellmans lived in a wonderful old wide verandahed homestead down by the Campaspe river. They had a daughter my brother's age and another a bit younger than me, so family get togethers at their place were always memorable. I don't remember them ever coming to ours, in fact I don't remember our family ever entertaining, just grandparents at xmas and evening meetings of Rotary or Lions when we got out the good tea cups and I offered the old men sweet biscuits on a floral plate.
Marj and Chassa-boy, in their mid forties by now, often had friends younger them, often staff members. so our other good family friends were Ingo and Sylvia Kleinert, art teachers at the high school, not long out of teachers college. They lived in a small Dept of Ed house not far from the school. Outside it looked just like any other house, but inside was another world; I sat in my first Bauhaus chair at a coffee table arranged with collected river stones, twigs and feathers, with art on the walls, the likes of which I had never seen before. In my intermediate year they arranged a school excursion to the American Pop Art Exhibition in Melbourne. It blew my mind.
Things were a bit rocky between Marj and Chassa-boy in those years. He was drinking heavily and once after us kids were in bed, I heard them arguing in the bathroom. I don't know why Marj was taking a bath so late but he'd come home from the pub sozzled and accused her of spending too much time out with her women friends. One friend in particular, Betty, may have been a little too threatening. She was intelligent, lively, witty and with her Marj shared her love of poetry; Yevteshenko and Sylvia Plath, and swapped notes on the writings of Simone De Beauvoir.
I heard the raised voices, a bang, a crash, heard Marj cry out. I don't know if he hit her, but I froze in my bed, completely incapable of any response. I knew I should intervene, but I also knew this part of their life was off limits to me. Parent's bathrooms and bedrooms were not places you barged into uninvited, as I had found out one Saturday afternoon when I innocently went looking for a hair brush on Marj's dressing table. Finding the curtains strangely drawn and a lumpy, two body shape under the blankets of one of their twin beds, I knew I had crossed an invisible line. A stern father's voice growled out at me from the lump telling me that I was never to enter their bedroom without knocking ever again.
Another time they had an argument in the kitchen during dinner. I can't remember what it was about. Chassa-boy hurled a plate at the wall and stormed out, off to the pub I guess. I do remember wishing he wouldn't come back, but he did, and the next morning at breakfast they sheepishly laughed and made jokes for our benefit about the dent in the wall. There was also the fist-through-the-back-door incident, which was scary at the time, but on reflection seems highly theatrical as the thin ply door splintered spectacularly beneath the blow. The most dramatic event by far was a classic father-son confrontation when my brother, studying for his final Matriculation year, with the promise of freedom in sight, said the one thing we all thought, but dared not say.
Chas had just arrived home from his regular after school, pre-dinner wind down session at the pub.'You are nothing but a drunk,' Pip remarked casually as he sipped his malted milk at the kitchen table.
It was on — man to man; a coming of age moment for my brother and a severe ego bruising for Chassa-boy; from the kitchen to the living room to the back porch to the sleep out, they grappled and wrestled, throwing punches hither and thither, with Marj and I trying to drag them off each other. How it ended I'm not quite sure. Perhaps this was the moment Chassa-boy screeched off in the two tone green chevvie and we all hoped he wouldn't come back. But he did and life went on as before.
On the day Marj later described to me, she was getting ready to go to a Mothers Club meeting up at the school, putting put on her hat and gloves (the expected dress code of the time), when she suddenly felt strange and found herself on the floor, not able to get up, almost like a kind of vertigo. I don't know what she did then, if she called for help or just crawled into her bed.
It was in this town that she finally did start getting some treatment from a local GP who seemed to know about matters of the mind. But she never wore hat and gloves to the Mother's Club meeting again.
We had to adjust to living in a small house again and Chassa-boy set to with the kikuyu once more, greening the barren front and back yards, even the driveway.
We made friends quickly as we had learned to do; the Sharp girls lived over the back fence and the Wellmans lived in a wonderful old wide verandahed homestead down by the Campaspe river. They had a daughter my brother's age and another a bit younger than me, so family get togethers at their place were always memorable. I don't remember them ever coming to ours, in fact I don't remember our family ever entertaining, just grandparents at xmas and evening meetings of Rotary or Lions when we got out the good tea cups and I offered the old men sweet biscuits on a floral plate.
Marj and Chassa-boy, in their mid forties by now, often had friends younger them, often staff members. so our other good family friends were Ingo and Sylvia Kleinert, art teachers at the high school, not long out of teachers college. They lived in a small Dept of Ed house not far from the school. Outside it looked just like any other house, but inside was another world; I sat in my first Bauhaus chair at a coffee table arranged with collected river stones, twigs and feathers, with art on the walls, the likes of which I had never seen before. In my intermediate year they arranged a school excursion to the American Pop Art Exhibition in Melbourne. It blew my mind.
Things were a bit rocky between Marj and Chassa-boy in those years. He was drinking heavily and once after us kids were in bed, I heard them arguing in the bathroom. I don't know why Marj was taking a bath so late but he'd come home from the pub sozzled and accused her of spending too much time out with her women friends. One friend in particular, Betty, may have been a little too threatening. She was intelligent, lively, witty and with her Marj shared her love of poetry; Yevteshenko and Sylvia Plath, and swapped notes on the writings of Simone De Beauvoir.
I heard the raised voices, a bang, a crash, heard Marj cry out. I don't know if he hit her, but I froze in my bed, completely incapable of any response. I knew I should intervene, but I also knew this part of their life was off limits to me. Parent's bathrooms and bedrooms were not places you barged into uninvited, as I had found out one Saturday afternoon when I innocently went looking for a hair brush on Marj's dressing table. Finding the curtains strangely drawn and a lumpy, two body shape under the blankets of one of their twin beds, I knew I had crossed an invisible line. A stern father's voice growled out at me from the lump telling me that I was never to enter their bedroom without knocking ever again.
Another time they had an argument in the kitchen during dinner. I can't remember what it was about. Chassa-boy hurled a plate at the wall and stormed out, off to the pub I guess. I do remember wishing he wouldn't come back, but he did, and the next morning at breakfast they sheepishly laughed and made jokes for our benefit about the dent in the wall. There was also the fist-through-the-back-door incident, which was scary at the time, but on reflection seems highly theatrical as the thin ply door splintered spectacularly beneath the blow. The most dramatic event by far was a classic father-son confrontation when my brother, studying for his final Matriculation year, with the promise of freedom in sight, said the one thing we all thought, but dared not say.
Chas had just arrived home from his regular after school, pre-dinner wind down session at the pub.'You are nothing but a drunk,' Pip remarked casually as he sipped his malted milk at the kitchen table.
It was on — man to man; a coming of age moment for my brother and a severe ego bruising for Chassa-boy; from the kitchen to the living room to the back porch to the sleep out, they grappled and wrestled, throwing punches hither and thither, with Marj and I trying to drag them off each other. How it ended I'm not quite sure. Perhaps this was the moment Chassa-boy screeched off in the two tone green chevvie and we all hoped he wouldn't come back. But he did and life went on as before.
On the day Marj later described to me, she was getting ready to go to a Mothers Club meeting up at the school, putting put on her hat and gloves (the expected dress code of the time), when she suddenly felt strange and found herself on the floor, not able to get up, almost like a kind of vertigo. I don't know what she did then, if she called for help or just crawled into her bed.
It was in this town that she finally did start getting some treatment from a local GP who seemed to know about matters of the mind. But she never wore hat and gloves to the Mother's Club meeting again.
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