no intestinal fortitude, Jack. No intestinal fortitude. At that time I imagined I’d been born with some part of my anatomy missing and I had high hopes it would eventually grow back.
Apart from that my father hardly paid me any attention at all and I just went into my teens assuming he was skilled at particular things but parenting just wasn’t one of them. I created a simple logic for it and I remember explaining it to my little sister: you can be good at one thing - say ‘gardening’ - but unable to play tennis to save yourself. Our father could produce great tomatoes but when it came to being a Dad he couldn’t even manage the ball toss. But that’s all I ever thought about it and it would be another thirty-odd years before I would discover the awful truth and see the man for what he really was.
That day of my sixteenth was just like any other and being a Saturday we just stayed in our room, Kitty staring at the ceiling, me staring at my planets poster. I did not foresee how that simple poster would one day play an important part in my future.
Suddenly Kitty said, ‘Happy birthday’.
‘Yeah, thanks,’ I said and then we just lay there listening to the bell on the railway crossing. We used to count the dings on that boom gate bell. I’d say, I got seventy-four and Kit would say, I got seventy-eight. Then one night that bell just wouldn’t stop. It just went on and on and on. After that we never bothered counting the dings again. It was 1957, the year TV really kicked in.
Suddenly Kitty said, ‘Let’s go.’
‘Where?’ I said, thinking she meant to Porter’s or even down to the creek which wasn’t a creek but a big concrete culvert under the main road.
‘Somewhere else,’ she said. ‘Somewhere away from this doghouse; we could go and live somewhere else.’
‘We haven’t got any money or anything.’
‘So what?’ she said. ‘We could find an empty building. You know, abandoned.’
A strange feeling flooded my body - I remember it as if it was yesterday. It was as if I’d had that same idea all along but it was only when Kit said it that I knew I had it. On my own I would never have acted on it, but when Kit said let’s do something it was as infectious as the plague.
‘We could just hole up somewhere in the city,’ I said.
Kit sat up.
‘There’s heaps of empty factories. Maybe an old house.’
A minute later we were out the door. We took the tram to Errol Street and then spent the whole day just walking around looking for something empty. But we came up with nothing, only a few derelict sites with broken glass, damp brick and piss-wet corners where even an old wino wouldn’t stay. It was getting late so we headed back to the tram stop - and that’s when we spotted the brick building on the corner of McKillop and James. It was set back a few metres with a tall cyclone fence right around; an old two-storey factory with a few windows broken on the ground floor and the letters DACO on the side - the leftovers of a bigger name. A sign on the fence said Property of Chemcel Pty Ltd and Keep Out. The lock on the gate looked old and untouched. We went down the narrow alley between the fence and another building and that’s where we got in under the wire. Kit found a steel picket and we used it to lever up the mesh just enough to crawl under. But there seemed to be no way into that building. Then Kit found this kind of cellar trapdoor with old bricks and rubble over it. Ten minutes later we were down in that dark hole and then up again inside the building.
‘Gotta go down to go up,’ Kit whispered for no reason. I remember that because I thought it was true: we had to go through that big down-time at home so we could go up into our own future.
Straight away we quit school. Then over the next week we shifted our stuff into the Daco, a bit at a time on the tram while our mother was down at the pub. She never caught on once. We sold a lot of things to the second-hand dealers: ornaments, a tea set - even our grandmother’s old wind-up clock - and still our mother didn’t notice. We didn’t think of it as stealing. It wasn’t as if we sold anything useful - except perhaps our wireless. And then we just started our new life.
At that time I think we were among the first to ever come up with the idea of creating our own home in an empty building. They call them squatters now but we were one of the first. Of course the authorities would call us homeless. But who says home is cooped up in some suburban nightmare with a parent whose life is somewhere else? And what about all those nomadic people, are they homeless?
We had an upstairs room as good as any house and a real toilet block just two streets away. We started hanging around the Victoria Market and we had an Airways bag that we filled with all sorts of things that weren’t fit for selling. We met an old Asian lady and sometimes we’d help her pack up at night and she’d give us leftover mangos, bananas, loose grapes. And every day we’d go off on some adventure around the city and you wouldn’t believe the things you can do for free. At night we always curled up together on the floor. We were really close, like brothers and sisters should be, and night after night we’d just lie there in the dark with the faint noise of traffic and pigeons, and tell each other stories.
I don’t pretend we had it good all the time. I remember times when Kitty would get anxious, as if deep down inside her something else was trying to surface. On those nights she’d tell a different story, one about a magic snow sleigh. I never quite understood it but Kitty said she often closed her eyes tight and imagined riding that Christmas sleigh, the wind in her hair, gliding freely down white slopes, through snow-bound forests, across frozen lakes and then down again; on and on, riding as if nothing could stop her. What for, I often wondered. Now I am amazed that it never occurred to me how troubled that little sister of mine was.
To comfort her I’d make up fantastic stories that had nothing to do with reality. Other times I’d just talk - and so would she - about everything, though never the past or the future. We lived in the present which a lot of people seem to forget about. It is a subject I would one day create a theory about, though I never thought of it then.
Only here at so-called ‘Eden’ nursing home do people live in the present. That’s because their past is long lost to them - that’s why they’re here. Can’t remember their own names let alone what happened this morning. But I remember those times with Kitty as if they were yesterday. We’d lie there in the dark in the old Daco building and make up stories as good as any movie. Sometimes I wish we’d written them down.
I wake each morning hoping it’s all a dream. Then reality dawns. One minute I’m in St Vincent’s having an operation, standard procedure, and then I’m in here - poof ! Lisa’s idea of course. I open my eyes a few days after the op and there’s some bloke leaning over the bed.
‘You’ll be very comfortable here,’ he says.
‘Where?’
‘Here, at Eden.’ Eden? Had I ascended to heaven? Then, I look around the room and start to get the picture.
‘I’ll see you in a week or so,’ the doc says and suddenly I’m alone.
Since then I’ve noticed that the staff seem to hate this place as much as I do. Yesterday I overheard one of them complaining that they get 20 per cent less pay than the nurses in public hospitals. This morning I asked Dell Williams about it but she wouldn’t be drawn on the subject. I got better results asking her about the inmates. Eighty-eight in total, two divisions, the
