Midnight Escape Being a Bastard 6
Without Prejudice
I packed at midnight, planning my own Midnight Express, after sitting there crying for what seemed like hours. He had gone out to another gambling night. Always on his own. I didn't wake the girls till the last minute. I packed the boot of the white Ford with clothes and only the necessities and the whole time my heart was in my mouth, I could feel it thumping in my chest, legs like jelly, but I had to do it, had to. My thought was he can only kill me once. I was convinced that he could be home anytime, anytime and I kept glancing down the driveway fearing headlights. I hummed to myself with anxiety but kept on packing, just clothes, a few stuffed toys, not much really. I was at last catching the "Midnight Express" out, just as I had when George and I escaped unemploment and ennui in Wagga. This was my chance, my one shot and I was going to make it or die trying. I was headed for Queensland, stopping off in Sydney. I had never driven that far before and was terrified of the trip but more terrified of what lay behind. He was getting worse, the violence was getting worse and I had been shrinking more and more each day. I had to do it, had to. there was no choice. I had taken him to see the movie Hostage-The Christine Maresch story but he didn't see the fact that life imitates art and had no idea that I was personally referencing him in it. The violence was a an "Elephant in the Lounge room" to us and was not to be spoken of. I told no one of how bad he was getting. He showed to the world the charming, the charismatic, the devoted Father, the loving husband, the hard worker but to me he showed ugly violence and I hid it even from the girls. Onec a neighbour noticed I had balckened eyes and I said it was from sinus. I was ashamed to admit he was hitting me. My best girlfriend had betrayed me and told him I had met a man in England. When I had returned home he knew something had changed in me. A seismic shift that meant I was no longer compliant, no longer soft, no longer willing to put up with him. He had screamed obscenities at me, slut, whore, cunt. I was all of those to him and I was none of those to me. Only he was allowed to seek the affection of others and come back home. I was sick of the fights, the tears, the inertia that betrayed me and the girls. I had to do something, anything to get away, to live in peace and without fear. And so I began the journey of a thousand miles, taking it one tiny step at a time. The one thing I didn't think of was the lady whose kids I gave a lift to school every day. Ultimately she told my ex I had rung her, so in end he knew where I was headed. If I had my time over again I would have told no one. But at that time I had to trust others. My family I could trust, they knew, but others I wouldn't. A girl friend inisted I go see a movie, years later. Sleeping With The Enemy, I said at the time, "I don't need to see it, I've already lived it" I did watch it and when Julia Roberts smiles whn she thinks she is safe I felt her happiness. But the rest made me shrink down in my seat with remembered fear and I noticed my hands had once again curled themselves into fists. My ex was not only very violent but very controlling. He once didn't speak to me for a week as I had neglected to put soap in the ensuite shower for him. I hated the withdrawn silences as ultimately knew what they would mean. We, the girls and I tried so hard to make things "perfect" for him. Ourselves, the house and after many years I just gave up. Nothing was good enough, nothing was perfect enough. Us, the house, the wokers we became, nothing was ever good enough. I put the sleepy girls in the car and took off at 1am in the morning, convinced somehow he was already following me. I navigated the streets through a sleeping Melbourne city and headed up the highway towards freedom. The girls were awake and asking where we were going. "To see a man about a dog", I replied. I woke up a man at a Motel in the wee hours, my nervous exhaustion demanding sleep. he charged me full price for a few hours sleep and we were on the road again by 9 O'clock the next day. I stopped off before nine and rang the lady whose kids I was meant to take to school. Then I ran back to the car and the girls and was more agitated than before. I felt all the way to Sydney that he was coming after me. I chain smoked and Deb in the end offered to light them for me as I was shaking so much. She was 12, Yvette was 11, Alena 8 and Lauren 6. We had a destination in Sydeny, Campbelltown, ironically where we were married 13 years before. I traversed the highway one mile at a time. I figured I would take it one mile at a time, thats all I would concentrate on. We arrived in Sydney that afternoon, finding the unit of my brother In Laws kindly Mum, Mrs B. She greeted us and made us dinner, which was a simple meal but so delicious after gresy food on the trip. She had to sleep upright as she had a bad hiatus hernia and gastric relux and I looked at her lying propped up in bed and felt so bad for her. But she was OK and was quite thrilled to be part of the secrecy and escape. I packed the girls up in the wee hours as I had to navigate Sydney streets and wanted there to be as little traffic as possible. I kissed Mrs B goodbye and thanked her for her kindness and wasn't to know it was the last time I would ever see her. She sadly died later in that year, suddenly, not recovering from her operation. Trying to get through Syney streets was worse than I had imagined as it was raining heavily but with only a few wrong turns and doubling back I was out the other side and heading up the Cahill Expressway. I remembered the movie that showed the bikers coming down it ferrying a coffin of one of their members. Stone, the movie, the imagery of the bikers funeral was brilliant It was maginificent in the movie and as scary as shit to me. Sheared through cliffs that seeemed mountainous and threatening. it was dark and I longed for sleep, peaceful sleep and Debbie lit my smokes and I drank black coffee. the girls were also tired and grizzled in the back seat. but I just kept on going, one mile after another. Exhausted I pulled into a truck bay and slept a few hours and started again. The journey seemed unending, the roads twisting and turning through hills, getting stuck behind trucks and taking it slow. There were no passing lanes like there are now and the hills and turns seemed never to stop. My eyes were tired and gritty from lack of sleep. But I pushed on, pushed through the tiredness, the fear, the trip to the unknown. I had to keep going. I reached Lismore and stopped to fill up and once again the girls questioned me as to where we were going and I said then Queensland for a holiday. They didn't question after that and hours and hours later we hit the Gold Coast. The sun was shining at last after hours of lashing rain. It seemed a good omen and the girls gazed around them in wonder and delight. I knew we weren't finished and pressed on regardless. We had to reach Marsden before nightfall and at last we did, the last few miles going agonisingly slow. We climbed out of the car, tired and dishevelled at my sisters house. We bathed the kids and tucked them up in beds made hastily for them. We spoke at the dining table my sister, brother in law and I. They wanted to know how the trip had gone and how my brother in laws Mother was, Mrs B. My sister said she had been quite thrilled to help my Midnight Express journey and my brother in law was disbelieving of why I had left. He could not comprehend my husbands violence and that hurt me, but I knew my truth and it was not to be spoken of much. He sided with my husband, not believing that there were men out there like him. My husband was very charasmatic to others, no one but us ever saw the ugly side of him. The face that would turn from the door after hours of conversing with visitors. the face that changed in an instant and would berate me or hit me for saying one wrong thing that he didn't agree with. It was to come out years later, but for the time being it was not to be spoken of, even with my girls. I had no where else to turn, so I kept my mouth shut. We were able to rent a house and someone gave him my phone number and he began ringing. He also hired a Private Detective to find me and was soon ringing all my relatives both in England and Australia. He at first rang and was threateninng and then changed to wheedling and crying. He would change, he said. He would be better. he misssed me he said and the girls. he offered me the world and I didn't listen. I had heard it all before, so many times. he would seek help. But the word violence he would never utter. Years later he had Deb swear to a lawyer that he had never hit me with a " closed fist", so as far as he was concerned there was no violence. I knew different but was carrying the secret for so long I no longer thought people would help me or understand me. I had a good life, my husband was a hard working man and I was an "ungrateful bitch". I had everything but I had nothing. No self respect, no self worth, nothing. I could no longer live that way and I didn't want to. I managed to get a job at KFC at Beenleigh and left 12 year old Deb to mind the girls. I lost weight and was almost skeletal, the rent on the house had to be found, the bills and getting the kids to school. The river rose up near where we lived and Alena nearly drowned crossing it as she went back into the fast flowing current as she had lost a shoe. We tried to live as normally as possible and then my ex husband arrived. He now knew where we lived. he arrived and was all sunshine and light. he took us to the theme parks and he never got angry even when I said I wasn't going back with him. He lined up the girls and asked them, demanded of them who wanted to go home. Y was struggling with the new school they were all at. He promised her a horse and she said yes, she would go back. I pleaded with him and cried and with her but she was adamant. So she went back to Mlebourne with him at 11 and he would not allow me to speak to her from the on. He
I packed at midnight, planning my own Midnight Express, after sitting there crying for what seemed like hours. He had gone out to another gambling night. Always on his own. I didn't wake the girls till the last minute. I packed the boot of the white Ford with clothes and only the necessities and the whole time my heart was in my mouth, I could feel it thumping in my chest, legs like jelly, but I had to do it, had to. My thought was he can only kill me once. I was convinced that he could be home anytime, anytime and I kept glancing down the driveway fearing headlights. I hummed to myself with anxiety but kept on packing, just clothes, a few stuffed toys, not much really. I was at last catching the "Midnight Express" out, just as I had when George and I escaped unemploment and ennui in Wagga. This was my chance, my one shot and I was going to make it or die trying. I was headed for Queensland, stopping off in Sydney. I had never driven that far before and was terrified of the trip but more terrified of what lay behind. He was getting worse, the violence was getting worse and I had been shrinking more and more each day. I had to do it, had to. there was no choice. I had taken him to see the movie Hostage-The Christine Maresch story but he didn't see the fact that life imitates art and had no idea that I was personally referencing him in it. The violence was a an "Elephant in the Lounge room" to us and was not to be spoken of. I told no one of how bad he was getting. He showed to the world the charming, the charismatic, the devoted Father, the loving husband, the hard worker but to me he showed ugly violence and I hid it even from the girls. Onec a neighbour noticed I had balckened eyes and I said it was from sinus. I was ashamed to admit he was hitting me. My best girlfriend had betrayed me and told him I had met a man in England. When I had returned home he knew something had changed in me. A seismic shift that meant I was no longer compliant, no longer soft, no longer willing to put up with him. He had screamed obscenities at me, slut, whore, cunt. I was all of those to him and I was none of those to me. Only he was allowed to seek the affection of others and come back home. I was sick of the fights, the tears, the inertia that betrayed me and the girls. I had to do something, anything to get away, to live in peace and without fear. And so I began the journey of a thousand miles, taking it one tiny step at a time. The one thing I didn't think of was the lady whose kids I gave a lift to school every day. Ultimately she told my ex I had rung her, so in end he knew where I was headed. If I had my time over again I would have told no one. But at that time I had to trust others. My family I could trust, they knew, but others I wouldn't. A girl friend inisted I go see a movie, years later. Sleeping With The Enemy, I said at the time, "I don't need to see it, I've already lived it" I did watch it and when Julia Roberts smiles whn she thinks she is safe I felt her happiness. But the rest made me shrink down in my seat with remembered fear and I noticed my hands had once again curled themselves into fists. My ex was not only very violent but very controlling. He once didn't speak to me for a week as I had neglected to put soap in the ensuite shower for him. I hated the withdrawn silences as ultimately knew what they would mean. We, the girls and I tried so hard to make things "perfect" for him. Ourselves, the house and after many years I just gave up. Nothing was good enough, nothing was perfect enough. Us, the house, the wokers we became, nothing was ever good enough. I put the sleepy girls in the car and took off at 1am in the morning, convinced somehow he was already following me. I navigated the streets through a sleeping Melbourne city and headed up the highway towards freedom. The girls were awake and asking where we were going. "To see a man about a dog", I replied. I woke up a man at a Motel in the wee hours, my nervous exhaustion demanding sleep. he charged me full price for a few hours sleep and we were on the road again by 9 O'clock the next day. I stopped off before nine and rang the lady whose kids I was meant to take to school. Then I ran back to the car and the girls and was more agitated than before. I felt all the way to Sydney that he was coming after me. I chain smoked and Deb in the end offered to light them for me as I was shaking so much. She was 12, Yvette was 11, Alena 8 and Lauren 6. We had a destination in Sydeny, Campbelltown, ironically where we were married 13 years before. I traversed the highway one mile at a time. I figured I would take it one mile at a time, thats all I would concentrate on. We arrived in Sydney that afternoon, finding the unit of my brother In Laws kindly Mum, Mrs B. She greeted us and made us dinner, which was a simple meal but so delicious after gresy food on the trip. She had to sleep upright as she had a bad hiatus hernia and gastric relux and I looked at her lying propped up in bed and felt so bad for her. But she was OK and was quite thrilled to be part of the secrecy and escape. I packed the girls up in the wee hours as I had to navigate Sydney streets and wanted there to be as little traffic as possible. I kissed Mrs B goodbye and thanked her for her kindness and wasn't to know it was the last time I would ever see her. She sadly died later in that year, suddenly, not recovering from her operation. Trying to get through Syney streets was worse than I had imagined as it was raining heavily but with only a few wrong turns and doubling back I was out the other side and heading up the Cahill Expressway. I remembered the movie that showed the bikers coming down it ferrying a coffin of one of their members. Stone, the movie, the imagery of the bikers funeral was brilliant It was maginificent in the movie and as scary as shit to me. Sheared through cliffs that seeemed mountainous and threatening. it was dark and I longed for sleep, peaceful sleep and Debbie lit my smokes and I drank black coffee. the girls were also tired and grizzled in the back seat. but I just kept on going, one mile after another. Exhausted I pulled into a truck bay and slept a few hours and started again. The journey seemed unending, the roads twisting and turning through hills, getting stuck behind trucks and taking it slow. There were no passing lanes like there are now and the hills and turns seemed never to stop. My eyes were tired and gritty from lack of sleep. But I pushed on, pushed through the tiredness, the fear, the trip to the unknown. I had to keep going. I reached Lismore and stopped to fill up and once again the girls questioned me as to where we were going and I said then Queensland for a holiday. They didn't question after that and hours and hours later we hit the Gold Coast. The sun was shining at last after hours of lashing rain. It seemed a good omen and the girls gazed around them in wonder and delight. I knew we weren't finished and pressed on regardless. We had to reach Marsden before nightfall and at last we did, the last few miles going agonisingly slow. We climbed out of the car, tired and dishevelled at my sisters house. We bathed the kids and tucked them up in beds made hastily for them. We spoke at the dining table my sister, brother in law and I. They wanted to know how the trip had gone and how my brother in laws Mother was, Mrs B. My sister said she had been quite thrilled to help my Midnight Express journey and my brother in law was disbelieving of why I had left. He could not comprehend my husbands violence and that hurt me, but I knew my truth and it was not to be spoken of much. He sided with my husband, not believing that there were men out there like him. My husband was very charasmatic to others, no one but us ever saw the ugly side of him. The face that would turn from the door after hours of conversing with visitors. the face that changed in an instant and would berate me or hit me for saying one wrong thing that he didn't agree with. It was to come out years later, but for the time being it was not to be spoken of, even with my girls. I had no where else to turn, so I kept my mouth shut. We were able to rent a house and someone gave him my phone number and he began ringing. He also hired a Private Detective to find me and was soon ringing all my relatives both in England and Australia. He at first rang and was threateninng and then changed to wheedling and crying. He would change, he said. He would be better. he misssed me he said and the girls. he offered me the world and I didn't listen. I had heard it all before, so many times. he would seek help. But the word violence he would never utter. Years later he had Deb swear to a lawyer that he had never hit me with a " closed fist", so as far as he was concerned there was no violence. I knew different but was carrying the secret for so long I no longer thought people would help me or understand me. I had a good life, my husband was a hard working man and I was an "ungrateful bitch". I had everything but I had nothing. No self respect, no self worth, nothing. I could no longer live that way and I didn't want to. I managed to get a job at KFC at Beenleigh and left 12 year old Deb to mind the girls. I lost weight and was almost skeletal, the rent on the house had to be found, the bills and getting the kids to school. The river rose up near where we lived and Alena nearly drowned crossing it as she went back into the fast flowing current as she had lost a shoe. We tried to live as normally as possible and then my ex husband arrived. He now knew where we lived. he arrived and was all sunshine and light. he took us to the theme parks and he never got angry even when I said I wasn't going back with him. He lined up the girls and asked them, demanded of them who wanted to go home. Y was struggling with the new school they were all at. He promised her a horse and she said yes, she would go back. I pleaded with him and cried and with her but she was adamant. So she went back to Mlebourne with him at 11 and he would not allow me to speak to her from the on. He
