The Worst Of Times
Without Prejudice
He was a Narcissist, this husband of mine. It was always about him and even if it didn't affect him or was none of his business, but he would make it his business, usually with really ugly results.
He had massive forearms, a fact of which he was inordinately proud. If you ever felt the blows that man could rain down on your head, you knew what misery was.
Two of my girls were molested by the caretaker at her school, Bob's answer, nothing.
I crashed the car into the back of another with the two girls and Alena as a baby, Bob's answer, Hang up on me and leave me stranded on a dark rainy night in Cranbouren. One of his workers had to come and get me and the girls. Bob didn't speak to me for a week.
When Debbie fell out of the back of Dave's panel van and split her chin open and I was pregnant, it was a Sunday and Bob was at work, his answer , hang up on me, not talk for a week.
All those things were "my fault", I was a bad Mother or these things would not happen.
He worked 7 days a week for 12 years, leaving me to raise the kids.
He would never ever give me housekeeping money, I had to earn it, so I went to work at KFC when deb was 6 weeks and continued working there till I told them I was 7 months pregnant with Yvette. When I told work what I was hidng under my pinny, they said that carrying the trays of chicken and skating around on the slippery, greasy floor might not be such a good idea.
I also worked at Target in Chadstone with Bob's sisters and Bob's sister Merrilyn took care of the girls, aged 2 and a half and one a half.
The day I went to get my licence at Dandenong, he said I wouldn't get it and refused to sign a cheque for me. Ivan Muncin, my brothers old friend loaned me the money. He gave me the keys to his car and said when I had my licence, which he was sure I would get I was to drive his car and just drive and drive.
A girlfriend wanted to go back to school to get her HSC and tried to persuade me to go with her. Bob came down to visit me and the girls where we holidaying at Rosebud in a caravan park. We had been there two weeks enjoying meeting new people and the kids were having a ball.
We shared a communal kitchen with other families and at nights we would play cards or the new game Trivial Pursuit. I told them how my girlfriend wanted me to go back to school. They really encouraged me to do it as I kept winning Trivial Pursuit.
Bob arrived drunk one Sunday night and proceeded to berate me in the Cabin, so loudly that I was humiliated and ran, grabbing Alena 5, and hiding in the Kmart car park. Bob came after us in the car and proceeded to try to run Alena and I down. We hid from car to car and stayed there for hours, until we were sure he was gone.
I could hardly face all the families the next day. But one man a father of four, also, said to me,
"Go back to school", just 4 words, but they meant a lot. So I did.
Once he didn't speak to me for a week and I had to beg him to tell me what was wrong. Turns out I hadn't put fresh soap in the en suite and I was selfish as he had to work and needed to be clean.
The worst time apart from Lauren was when he told me on Yvette's first birthday, that I had to abort the child I was carrying, due the following June.
"Get rid of it", he said,
"Or I will leave you"
I flew to QLD with Debbie and Yvette, 2 and 1, and terminations were illegal in QLD. But my Mum found me a doctor in The Valley that would help me. I had to fly to Sydney, leave the girls with my Sister and Brother in Law and get a train to the other side of Sydney, have the termination and return to melbourne.
I sat in the day hospital with a whole lot of teenage girls, younger than me and decided the baby was a girl and I would have called her Claire. But the operation had to go ahead. And when I returned I found another woman's underwear hidden in the laundry.
I confronted him and was beaten for daring to even think he would be unfaithful and I would have believed him but his old girlfriends husband had already rung me to say that his wife and my husband were having an affair. So, the husband was a liar, idiot, nut job and so was I.
To placate me and maybe feeling guilty he said he was going to buy us a house, not far from his old girlfriends place. Keysborough. He duly did and from that December till the following April all we dis was work so we could get the house and we took possession in April 1973. I worked at target and he worked at the small factory we rented at Cranbourne. Hiline Fencing.
One day he came home on a Saturday with his fencing mates, Bricky, Michael and Steve. They all stood out the front and in those days they all smoked weed and drank a lot. I went out the front handed Yvette's baby bottle to Bob and said I was off.
I took a train to the city, ate, watched a movie and arrived home late at night. He didn't speak to me for a week. I had "humiliated" him in front of his mates. His mates were all english, single and funny as all time.
Bob hung out with them a fair bit and one day gave him a wad of hash that almost killed him. he had smoked some of it and went to have a bath. All of a sudden I heard a weak voice coming from the bathroom/ I raced in and Bob was just about unconcious , his beard and face almost immersed under the water. I pulled the plug out, the water was freezing and his lips were blue and his jaw clenched tight. he couldn't talk.
You have no idea how hard it is to get a 12 stone body out of a slippery bath, but I manged it by sort of rolling him toward the edge and dragging him out. I grabbed a blanket and placed him on it and dragged him up the interminably long wooden hall by his ankles. Then I had to maneuver him into our high double bed, his teeth were chattering and he murmured he couldn't move his arms or legs. I finally got him into the bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin.
He was panicking, as he couldn't feel his legs and begged me to ring the doctor or take him to hospital.
"you're not dying Bob, you're just stoned", I said,
I didn't know what stoned was but I knew the terminology from his friends. We had been to parties at their places where marijuana was smoked like cigarettes but I didn't smoke at all and Bob did, very heavily.
The parties were always in South Yarra and the hotel Maisies was the place to be. After we would leave Maisies we would go back to Johnny Mythens (Brick) flat and listen to Frank Zappa records and watch other people shagging, that was it really. But it was fun and the "boys" were witty and intelligent and generous and we would end up having a great time.
I absolutely adored Brickie, he was a Virgo like me and we were always talking. he always gave me the opinion that he was not that keen on Bob and especially the way he acted towards me and was always stepping in and telling Bob off. Brick had a brother Jimmy, and the two of them were cockneys but had originally come out from Ireland.
These men with Steve and Mike were 4 of the nicest men I would hope to meet. They were caring, intelligent and family minded. Mike looked like Fran Zappa, Steve was roly poly kind of a man with a dog, called Rancour, and English wife, Anne. Bob said at their flat was massive photo of s breast. Turned out it was Anne's and Bob was pretty offended by it. I worked for Steve for a while at a Pizza Parlour and loved it. They had another friend called TOK H. I never really liked him, he was huge man and seemed a lot rougher than the others.
Bob proceeded to spend a lot of time with them and did fencing jobs with them. We worked as Subbies for ARC Engineering in those days and I was Bob's first Subby, managing on the first day to overturn an entire whellbarrow of concrete. When I arrived home to the babies I couldn't pick them up as my hands burnt from the dry concrete. Rawleighs ointment was the only cure or baby oil.
After my disastrous first time as a Subby was soon forgotten and I became quite adept it. The jobs were usually small and Bob might just need a hand "eying" in posts or tying off. It meant we were together and he was an incredible worker and taught me a lot about good hard work. I recently had to put up a temporary fence for new grass and to keep out 2 dogs, one an 80 kg Husky, who we call "the village idiot" and a 2 year old boy, hell bent on destruction. Took me half an hour and is still standing against all odds.
When asked how I could do it so rapidly and well, I answered,
"I was once a fencers wife, you pick these things up"
the same week I would completely reorganise a house down to the finest detail. Bob taught me about hard work being it's own reward and for that I am grateful.
The days spent at South Yarra were incredibly funny and weird. Maisy's was a gay Pub and this never seemed to bother the "Boys", Bob either, although one of the "Gilrs", fell in love with him, a fact he proceeded to tell Mike. He replied
"Bob's married, sweety"
The answer came back rapidly and heart felt.
"He can always be converted, dear boy"
Bob would play Steve Harley and The Cockney rebels song, "Come up and see me sometime, make me smile" endlessly and it remained his favourite song for years. I could never understand what he saw it. I was a T Rex fan,
Music was always important to both of us. Ian my brother had returned from Vitenam and brought with him Jesus Christ Superstar and we fired up the reel to reel and blasted it all over the neighbourhood. We lived in Oakleigh then, a half house with a backyard. It was old and gloomy and not that nice and had no wardrobes, so I used to hang the clothes all around the picture rail. We had an old club lounge suite that had come from the farm and we eventually had to burn in the backyard as it was infested with mice.
I was always trying to build a home and was frustrated that we never had enough money for decorating. Pauline, Bob's sister had loaned us one of her couches and we had old chairs, the laminate table, also from the farm, a double bed Bob's Mum had bought us as a wedding present and that was about it. A cheap wooden cot for Deb and then Yvette. We were as poor as dirt and basically happy but there was always the violence. I'm sure in those days I thought I could "fix" him, that with enough love and support he would never hit me again and he promised he wouldn't. Each time. Sometimes he would cry and beg my forgiveness. But after "Claire's" termination I was not the same girl
To be continued
"
He was a Narcissist, this husband of mine. It was always about him and even if it didn't affect him or was none of his business, but he would make it his business, usually with really ugly results.
He had massive forearms, a fact of which he was inordinately proud. If you ever felt the blows that man could rain down on your head, you knew what misery was.
Two of my girls were molested by the caretaker at her school, Bob's answer, nothing.
I crashed the car into the back of another with the two girls and Alena as a baby, Bob's answer, Hang up on me and leave me stranded on a dark rainy night in Cranbouren. One of his workers had to come and get me and the girls. Bob didn't speak to me for a week.
When Debbie fell out of the back of Dave's panel van and split her chin open and I was pregnant, it was a Sunday and Bob was at work, his answer , hang up on me, not talk for a week.
All those things were "my fault", I was a bad Mother or these things would not happen.
He worked 7 days a week for 12 years, leaving me to raise the kids.
He would never ever give me housekeeping money, I had to earn it, so I went to work at KFC when deb was 6 weeks and continued working there till I told them I was 7 months pregnant with Yvette. When I told work what I was hidng under my pinny, they said that carrying the trays of chicken and skating around on the slippery, greasy floor might not be such a good idea.
I also worked at Target in Chadstone with Bob's sisters and Bob's sister Merrilyn took care of the girls, aged 2 and a half and one a half.
The day I went to get my licence at Dandenong, he said I wouldn't get it and refused to sign a cheque for me. Ivan Muncin, my brothers old friend loaned me the money. He gave me the keys to his car and said when I had my licence, which he was sure I would get I was to drive his car and just drive and drive.
A girlfriend wanted to go back to school to get her HSC and tried to persuade me to go with her. Bob came down to visit me and the girls where we holidaying at Rosebud in a caravan park. We had been there two weeks enjoying meeting new people and the kids were having a ball.
We shared a communal kitchen with other families and at nights we would play cards or the new game Trivial Pursuit. I told them how my girlfriend wanted me to go back to school. They really encouraged me to do it as I kept winning Trivial Pursuit.
Bob arrived drunk one Sunday night and proceeded to berate me in the Cabin, so loudly that I was humiliated and ran, grabbing Alena 5, and hiding in the Kmart car park. Bob came after us in the car and proceeded to try to run Alena and I down. We hid from car to car and stayed there for hours, until we were sure he was gone.
I could hardly face all the families the next day. But one man a father of four, also, said to me,
"Go back to school", just 4 words, but they meant a lot. So I did.
Once he didn't speak to me for a week and I had to beg him to tell me what was wrong. Turns out I hadn't put fresh soap in the en suite and I was selfish as he had to work and needed to be clean.
The worst time apart from Lauren was when he told me on Yvette's first birthday, that I had to abort the child I was carrying, due the following June.
"Get rid of it", he said,
"Or I will leave you"
I flew to QLD with Debbie and Yvette, 2 and 1, and terminations were illegal in QLD. But my Mum found me a doctor in The Valley that would help me. I had to fly to Sydney, leave the girls with my Sister and Brother in Law and get a train to the other side of Sydney, have the termination and return to melbourne.
I sat in the day hospital with a whole lot of teenage girls, younger than me and decided the baby was a girl and I would have called her Claire. But the operation had to go ahead. And when I returned I found another woman's underwear hidden in the laundry.
I confronted him and was beaten for daring to even think he would be unfaithful and I would have believed him but his old girlfriends husband had already rung me to say that his wife and my husband were having an affair. So, the husband was a liar, idiot, nut job and so was I.
To placate me and maybe feeling guilty he said he was going to buy us a house, not far from his old girlfriends place. Keysborough. He duly did and from that December till the following April all we dis was work so we could get the house and we took possession in April 1973. I worked at target and he worked at the small factory we rented at Cranbourne. Hiline Fencing.
One day he came home on a Saturday with his fencing mates, Bricky, Michael and Steve. They all stood out the front and in those days they all smoked weed and drank a lot. I went out the front handed Yvette's baby bottle to Bob and said I was off.
I took a train to the city, ate, watched a movie and arrived home late at night. He didn't speak to me for a week. I had "humiliated" him in front of his mates. His mates were all english, single and funny as all time.
Bob hung out with them a fair bit and one day gave him a wad of hash that almost killed him. he had smoked some of it and went to have a bath. All of a sudden I heard a weak voice coming from the bathroom/ I raced in and Bob was just about unconcious , his beard and face almost immersed under the water. I pulled the plug out, the water was freezing and his lips were blue and his jaw clenched tight. he couldn't talk.
You have no idea how hard it is to get a 12 stone body out of a slippery bath, but I manged it by sort of rolling him toward the edge and dragging him out. I grabbed a blanket and placed him on it and dragged him up the interminably long wooden hall by his ankles. Then I had to maneuver him into our high double bed, his teeth were chattering and he murmured he couldn't move his arms or legs. I finally got him into the bed and pulled the blankets up to his chin.
He was panicking, as he couldn't feel his legs and begged me to ring the doctor or take him to hospital.
"you're not dying Bob, you're just stoned", I said,
I didn't know what stoned was but I knew the terminology from his friends. We had been to parties at their places where marijuana was smoked like cigarettes but I didn't smoke at all and Bob did, very heavily.
The parties were always in South Yarra and the hotel Maisies was the place to be. After we would leave Maisies we would go back to Johnny Mythens (Brick) flat and listen to Frank Zappa records and watch other people shagging, that was it really. But it was fun and the "boys" were witty and intelligent and generous and we would end up having a great time.
I absolutely adored Brickie, he was a Virgo like me and we were always talking. he always gave me the opinion that he was not that keen on Bob and especially the way he acted towards me and was always stepping in and telling Bob off. Brick had a brother Jimmy, and the two of them were cockneys but had originally come out from Ireland.
These men with Steve and Mike were 4 of the nicest men I would hope to meet. They were caring, intelligent and family minded. Mike looked like Fran Zappa, Steve was roly poly kind of a man with a dog, called Rancour, and English wife, Anne. Bob said at their flat was massive photo of s breast. Turned out it was Anne's and Bob was pretty offended by it. I worked for Steve for a while at a Pizza Parlour and loved it. They had another friend called TOK H. I never really liked him, he was huge man and seemed a lot rougher than the others.
Bob proceeded to spend a lot of time with them and did fencing jobs with them. We worked as Subbies for ARC Engineering in those days and I was Bob's first Subby, managing on the first day to overturn an entire whellbarrow of concrete. When I arrived home to the babies I couldn't pick them up as my hands burnt from the dry concrete. Rawleighs ointment was the only cure or baby oil.
After my disastrous first time as a Subby was soon forgotten and I became quite adept it. The jobs were usually small and Bob might just need a hand "eying" in posts or tying off. It meant we were together and he was an incredible worker and taught me a lot about good hard work. I recently had to put up a temporary fence for new grass and to keep out 2 dogs, one an 80 kg Husky, who we call "the village idiot" and a 2 year old boy, hell bent on destruction. Took me half an hour and is still standing against all odds.
When asked how I could do it so rapidly and well, I answered,
"I was once a fencers wife, you pick these things up"
the same week I would completely reorganise a house down to the finest detail. Bob taught me about hard work being it's own reward and for that I am grateful.
The days spent at South Yarra were incredibly funny and weird. Maisy's was a gay Pub and this never seemed to bother the "Boys", Bob either, although one of the "Gilrs", fell in love with him, a fact he proceeded to tell Mike. He replied
"Bob's married, sweety"
The answer came back rapidly and heart felt.
"He can always be converted, dear boy"
Bob would play Steve Harley and The Cockney rebels song, "Come up and see me sometime, make me smile" endlessly and it remained his favourite song for years. I could never understand what he saw it. I was a T Rex fan,
Music was always important to both of us. Ian my brother had returned from Vitenam and brought with him Jesus Christ Superstar and we fired up the reel to reel and blasted it all over the neighbourhood. We lived in Oakleigh then, a half house with a backyard. It was old and gloomy and not that nice and had no wardrobes, so I used to hang the clothes all around the picture rail. We had an old club lounge suite that had come from the farm and we eventually had to burn in the backyard as it was infested with mice.
I was always trying to build a home and was frustrated that we never had enough money for decorating. Pauline, Bob's sister had loaned us one of her couches and we had old chairs, the laminate table, also from the farm, a double bed Bob's Mum had bought us as a wedding present and that was about it. A cheap wooden cot for Deb and then Yvette. We were as poor as dirt and basically happy but there was always the violence. I'm sure in those days I thought I could "fix" him, that with enough love and support he would never hit me again and he promised he wouldn't. Each time. Sometimes he would cry and beg my forgiveness. But after "Claire's" termination I was not the same girl
To be continued
"
