21. An early memory: My Father

I am six, a quiet and lonely little Coburg boy, kept from the streets by my anxious mother. My bedroom window overlooks the gulley trap. It's here my father tips out the now cold contents of the pot; my parents keep a pot behind their door, and we - all three of us, use it at night. The kitchen slops are tipped there too, and dad washes the mud off his boots there.

I'm half awake perhaps, but the strains of the early morning Hillbilly music program, all guitars and nasal voices and a whining violin are calling me out of the silence of slumber.

"Oh when I was a lad and Old Shep was a pup
Over hills and meadows we'd roam
Just a boy and his dog, we both full of fun
We grew up together that way …"

The music is broken by the harsh, gutteral hawking, a deep gurgling noise, as my father coughs up the phlegm from his lungs and stomach. It is thick, I know, and slimy, from the cigarettes. Dad rolls his own: Havelock ready rub tobacco, rolled in his fingers into the Tally-Ho papers. And he smokes them, dozens of them very day. Sometimes he'll have a coughing fit in the middle of the day. He'll cough and splutter and hawk up a thick glob of disgustingly greenish-brown muck.

There's always the smell of tobacco about him, and the smell of cigarette smoke.

One day he gives me a lolly from his pocket, a hard butterscotch ball. I push it into my mouth, and immediately spit it out. It tastes of tobacco, a sharp and bitter taste. There is much about my father that I don't like. My mother rarely has a kind word for him. It's always "Garrie, do this and Garrie do that", and "You smell disgusting" and "Don't go bringing your disgusting habits indoors". My mother and I are in league against my father. I learn to see his faults: his smoking, his lowly paid job, the fact that he has no skills as a handiman. I learn that he is not the man my mother deserves, that he always falls short.
Yet he takes her tea and toast every morning, washes the dishes, cooks the meals, helps with the washing. The rest of the family regard him as a man "under the thumb".