Settling Day: A Memoir

Kate Howarth was born in Sydney in 1950 and grew up in the suburbs of Darlington and Parramatta, and far western New South Wales. She was forced to leave school at fourteen and an eclectic career followed; she has been a factory worker, an Avon lady, corporate executive and restaurateur, to name a few. At the age of fifty-two she began writing her memoir, Ten Hail Marys, which in 2008 was shortlisted for the David Unaipon Award for Indigenous Writers. In 2010, it was shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Indigenous Writing and won the Age Book of the Year for Non-fiction. Kate is proud of her connection to the Wiradjuri and Wonnarua people of New South Wales.

For my children and grandchildren

My son, Adam, aged eighteen months.

1

He’ll get over it

‘Where to, love?’

My mind was blank as I stared through the wire mesh screen. The ticket seller at Lidcombe Station repeated his question, drumming his fingers impatiently on the counter.

‘Central Station, please,’ I mumbled, slipping a two dollar note into the brass metal tray.

‘Single or return?’

‘Single, thank you.’

Sydney’s Central Station isn’t so much a destination as a hub for interstate and suburban trains and buses to converge. I’d think about where I was going when I got there. As I waited on the platform I noticed a man standing nearby reading a newspaper. The front page spread featured a beachscape with the headline: ‘Prime Minister Harold Holt, disappeared presumed drowned.’

It had only been four weeks since I’d left my husband, John McNorton, but being separated from my infant son, Adam, whom I couldn’t take with me, made it seem like an eternity. I hadn’t gone far in that time, just two suburbs in fact, but without my son it may as well have been to the ends of the earth. Not an hour had gone by when I didn’t think about the last time we had been together, his angelic face turned up to mine. I had stood next to his cot and promised that I’d be back as soon as I found a job and was settled. I’d found a job within the month, but without Adam I was never going to be settled.

A few days earlier I’d called John at work and told him that I wanted to meet. If necessary, I was prepared to go down on my knees and beg him to take me back. If that wasn’t possible I was hoping to arrange to see Adam every weekend.

We met under the Lidcombe railway bridge, a short walk from where I was staying. John drove a distinctive Volkswagen and was waiting for me. ‘Hello, John,’ I said, getting into the passenger seat. He looked straight ahead as he lit up a cigarette. As trains roared overhead and monster trucks rocked us from side to side in the slipstream, my fate and that of my one-and-a-half-year-old son was decided.

‘It’s that Peter guy isn’t it?’

‘No,’ I said, unable to look at him.

‘Yes it is,’ he grinned.

‘Please John, let me come home,’ I begged. ‘Or at least let me see Adam. I’m going insane.’

‘No way,’ he replied, smugly.

A freight train rumbled overhead. My mind raced in all directions. How did he know about Peter? Then it struck me. John’s father had very good connections with the Parramatta police. On the night I had left John I caught a taxi to Peter’s flat in Lidcombe. A couple of weeks later two uniformed coppers had knocked on the door wanting to speak with a Kay Howarth, in connection to stolen goods. Surprised and intimidated, I stood back and let them into the flat, eager to cooperate and establish my innocence. They made a thorough search of the bedrooms and enquired after the males occupying the premises. It wasn’t until after they’d gone that I wondered how they knew my name.

Sitting in the car next to John I felt my anger rise. I’d been a sixteen-year-old unmarried mother when my son was born. For five months, during my confinement at St Margaret’s Home for Unwed Mothers, I’d fought the nuns to prevent my son being taken for adoption. ‘You can’t afford to keep this child,’ I was told time and time again, ‘we have a wealthy family waiting to take him.’

It was true my family had abandoned me and I had no means of support. But I was sixteen and coming from a very primal place with regard to my baby. It was the first time in my life that I had any power and I was going to use it to stop them taking him. How would we live? I had no idea. All I knew for sure was that no one would love my son as much as I did and I didn’t care how wealthy they were. Every night I got down on my knees and prayed to the Virgin Mary to send us some help.

John and his family had known I was at St Margaret’s. They too had expected me to give up my baby for adoption, and never hear from me again. At the eleventh hour and, it seemed, by divine intervention, my Aunty Daphne had heard of my plight and intervened. It was quite ironic that the one person in my family with the least capacity to help was the only one who reached out. But Daphne’s situation was very complicated and there was a limit to how much assistance she could provide in the long term.

In order to keep my son I was railroaded into marrying John. I soon discovered the haste to get us to the altar had been motivated by a threat of carnal knowledge, being brought against John by my grandmother, a crime which carried a three-year prison term. After the police interviewed me and learned of our plans to marry we heard no more of it.

During the twenty months we were together, John and I had lived in a rough industrial suburb, with no phone, no transport and I didn’t have enough money to dress myself or my son. I had felt isolated and was struggling to cope, while my husband, seemingly oblivious to my circumstances, squandered his money on various hobbies. At one time he purchased a second car, an FJ Holden, and while he tinkered in the garage with his mate Graham, I made clothes for our baby with material cut from his old clothes.

John sat with the cigarette clamped between his teeth, blowing smoke in my face. ‘I need to get back to work,’ he said, bringing me back to the present.

‘What about Adam?’ I pleaded. ‘He needs his mother.’

‘He’ll get over it,’ he said, starting up the engine. As I turned and opened the passenger door, he added, ‘And don’t think of going to Aunty Daphne or Uncle Stan, they want nothing to do with you.’

‘Please, John,’ I sobbed, ‘if you let me explain what really happened, you will understand why I had to go.’

He shook his head and revved the motor. As he drove away I felt as if the lifeblood was being drained from me. A truck roared past and the male passenger in the car behind whistled as the wind caught my skirt sending it flying up over my knees. I felt as putrid as the filth being kicked up from the road, with my grandmother’s prophecies ringing in my ears. You’ll go onto the street and hawk your fork, just like your mother.

Enraged that he could threaten to take my son, I made an appointment in my lunch hour to see a solicitor in Rydalmere who left me in no doubt about where I stood. As I took a seat, I glanced at the statue of the Virgin Mary on his desk, lined up next to the photographs of his children.

‘Your husband can turn you out with just your clothes and, if you have one, your sewing machine,’ he told me, dismissing the notion that I had a leg to stand on when I revealed that after leaving my husband I had been living in a flat with two men – Peter Ashton, a former boyfriend who had helped me to get away, and his good mate Deanie.

In 1967 this was precisely what the law allowed when women found themselves in my position.

When Peter got home that night I told him about the meeting with the solicitor. His reaction wasn’t unpredictable, although I still wasn’t prepared for it. ‘You’ve lost your son. Get over it. You can have more children.’

I flew at him, unleashing a torrent of rage. ‘None of you know what I went through to keep my son. I’ll never get over losing him!’

Peter took his clothes out of our wardrobe, packed his bags and left the next morning.

Living so close to Adam, and not being able to see him, was going to tear me apart and perhaps drive me to desperation. I thought about just going and taking him. John’s mother wouldn’t have been able to physically stop me. But take him where? With no family support or child care agencies operating at the time, at least none that I knew of, who’d look after him while I had to work? Prostitution, it seemed, would have been my only option and my son deserved a better life than that. By leaving him with his father, I reasoned, he would at least be safe. He’d be taken care of. I felt that my circumstances had come about because of mistakes I’d made and my son shouldn’t have to suffer because of them. Perhaps John was right. Adam was so young; he might get over losing me.

‘You can stay here,’ Deanie offered, putting his arm around me as I packed my suitcase for the ninth time in less than three years. The warmth and compassion from someone showing me sympathy caused me to collapse into a blubbering mess. He held me until I was cried out and able to catch my breath. ‘It’s alright, I’ve got another jumper,’ he chuckled tenderly, wiping himself down and handing me a towel.

‘Thank you Deanie, but it’s killing me not being able to see Adam. It’s best if I go away.’

‘I’ll walk you to the station,’ he said, picking up my sewing machine. We didn’t talk on the way. There was no need to explain anything. Deanie was now my only friend in the world and leaving him with no idea of when, or if, we’d meet again would have been painful in ordinary circumstances. On that day, however, circumstances were anything but ordinary.

‘Please don’t wait with me,’ I told Deanie, numbly, when we reached the station. ‘I’ll be stronger on my own.’

As I watched him walk away he turned and waved one last time. Even at a distance I could see he was crying. Standing on Lidcombe Station, surrounded by nameless strangers, my whole life flashed before me. At seventeen I couldn’t self-analyse or make any sense of the rollercoaster ride that had seen me lose my family, all hope of an education, and now my son, with the passing of only four years.

What would they tell him? I wondered. How would they explain my absence?

It took all my strength to pick up the Singer, which weighed more than my suitcase, and jostle for space on the train with standing room only. I placed the machine between my legs and with no handrail to steady myself I lurched from side to side, banging into other passengers. After a while it seemed pointless apologising. I felt numb, like someone picking over the blackened ashes of a house that had burned to the ground, searching for something to salvage. After all I’d been through, my son was the only real family that was truly mine and now he was gone. John and his family had no clue what we’d been through at the hospital. Would they let him know what a good mother I was, and how much I loved him?

Little did I know it would be another fourteen years before I had an answer to this question.

‘This bus terminates here, love,’ the driver said, pulling hard on the handbrake and reaching behind his seat for a newspaper.

‘Where am I?’ I asked, checking to see if I still had my suitcase and the Singer. I’d been so entranced in my own thoughts I’d not paid any attention when I got to Central and had jumped on the first bus passing by.

‘This is Bondi Beach,’ he said, shaking his head, clearly bemused that I didn’t recognise one of Australia’s most famous landmarks.

As I stumbled from the bus I felt condemned, sentenced to a life without Adam. I wandered aimlessly with no idea where I was, or how I had gotten there. Perhaps I’d been subconsciously drawn to the sea where, like Prime Minister Harold Holt, I could disappear without trace.

As my head cleared I became aware of two young men walking towards me on the pedestrian crossing. One smiled shyly and whispered something to the other. His mate looked me up and down. ‘Yeah, but it’s a pity about the dress,’ I overheard him say, with a chuckle.

His friend looked embarrassed but said nothing.

This seemed an odd comment to make. I was wearing what I thought was a nice dress. I’d made it myself and it fitted perfectly.

A short time later two girls, about my age, walked past. They too looked me up and down, before giggling behind their hands. They were wearing mini-skirts and suddenly I saw the joke. Having lived in the western suburbs most of my life, and in almost total isolation for the past two years, I was way out of touch with the fashion trends of the cosmopolitan eastern suburbs beaches.

The aroma from the cafés along Campbell Parade reminded me that I hadn’t eaten since lunchtime the day before. A blackboard menu at the front of Enid’s Café caught my eye: ‘Tea and raisin toast $1.00’. As I waited for my order to arrive I picked up a copy of the newspaper.

Looking at the Sydney Morning Herald jobs vacant advertisements, I wasn’t sure what I was even qualified to do. I didn’t type forty-five words per minute, and I couldn’t present the Intermediate Certificate, both of which seemed to be minimum requirements for most of the clerical work going. I circled an ad for a job as a trainee at a film-processing laboratory in the city. I knew nothing about processing film, but I did have some experience working as a laboratory assistant. After I finished my meal I left the café, found a public telephone and got an appointment for an interview.

That night I slept in a cheap hotel a block back from the beach. The single bed, which sagged in the middle, was as comfortable as a collapsed banana chair, and between that and the noisy drunks stumbling up and down the stairs I hardly got a wink of sleep. The next morning I got up early enough to adjust the hem of my skirt. Even if I felt like Tess of the D’Urbervilles I didn’t have to look like an outcast.

2

A little respect

The pungent stench of cat pee and piles of rotting waste assaulted my senses as I picked my way down a lane off Pitt Street. Once inside, the photo lab was surprisingly trendy, with black shag-pile carpet, red vinyl chairs, chrome and laminated office furniture. Framed photographs of half-starved fashion models with gaunt expressions lined the felt-covered walls. A pretty young woman seated at reception, painting her fingernails, looked up at me and smiled.

‘Hello, I’m Jenny,’ she shouted, trying to be heard above Aretha Franklin’s big voice blaring from hidden speakers, that all she wanted was a little ‘R–E–S–P–E–C–T!’

‘Hello, I’m Kathy McNamara. I have an interview for the position vacant.’ The name had just popped into my head. This was the beginning of my new life, a clean slate, a chance to start again; I thought I may as well have a new name.

Jenny pressed the button on the intercom.

‘Robbo, the applicant for the job is here.’

‘I’ll be right there, honey.’

A short, pudgy man wearing a purple paisley shirt, opened almost to the waist, gyrated to the beat of the music as he approached. He grinned, exposing a mouth full of nicotine-stained teeth. A shiver of revulsion swept over me.

‘Sock it to me! Sock it to me!’ he sang along with the tune as he danced around, looking me over as if I was a piece of livestock.

‘I’m Robbo,’ he said, ‘when can you start?’

My urge was to leave, but I needed the job.

‘Today?’ I replied, forcing a smile.

Jenny, whom I soon learned was from New Zealand, was on a working holiday with two girlfriends, Shirley and Cheryl.

‘We’re looking for someone to share our house in Bondi,’ Jenny told me later that afternoon when she saw me looking for rooms to let. I moved in that night.

Jenny, Cheryl and Shirley were from Gisborne, which sounded like an idyllic seaside village on New Zealand’s north island. They’d known each other since they were kids. Shirley and Cheryl were hairdressers, but were working as barmaids in Kings Cross. I tried not to show surprise. Barmaids were not highly regarded in those days and both Shirley and Cheryl seemed so prim and proper.

‘So, where are you from Kathy?’ Shirley asked.

I hesitated. I didn’t want anyone making a connection between me and the ghosts of my past, so I made the story up as I went along. ‘My family’s from the bush. I ran away when I was fourteen and haven’t been back,’ I said. Their eyes bulging at this reply, I couldn’t imagine how they’d react to the truth about me. I felt a deep shame, as if it was my fault in some way, that I’d lost my family and that I didn’t have an education.

After paying for my share of the rent and food and putting aside money to get to work, I had just enough left over to buy some material to make a new dress. Cut to a modest two inches above the knee it was just long enough to conceal my stocking tops and suspenders. Pantyhose hadn’t hit the market yet and the more liberated young women were taking the lead from English fashion model, Jean Shrimpton, who’d shocked the country by appearing at the Melbourne Cup, with bare legs and no hat or gloves.

Not surprisingly, my new boss turned out to be a total sleaze. The first time he brushed up against my breasts in the darkroom I accepted that it was accidental. When it became routine it was impossible to dismiss. He’d been giving Jenny the same manhandling, grabbing her on the bum thinking it was a great joke. Jenny and I quit on the same day and went for interviews at the Chevron Hotel in Kings Cross. Barmaids needed to be at least twenty-one and I knew if they asked for proof-of-age I was sunk. I needn’t have worried; as it turned out, a pretty young woman with no experience could get a job as a barmaid with very few questions asked.

The first day in the Quarterdeck bar thirsty men, ten deep, tapped the counter with silver coins anxious to get as many schooners into themselves as they could during their lunch break. The experienced barmaids, who could pull schooners and top them up without turning off the fixed tap, attracted most of the customers and consequently most of the tips. Even after months of practice all I could manage was four at a time, yet my tip jar was always full. I suspect my youth and long black hair, which I could almost sit on, gave me an edge.

Working in a public bar was a real eye opener and the irony of my situation wasn’t lost on me. In an office job, a female could be groped and was expected to tolerate obscene language and sexual innuendo, but it was still considered a more respectable way to earn a living than a job as a barmaid, where the customers showed us the utmost respect.

By 1969 the number of Australian soldiers who had been killed in Vietnam hit triple digits and the government was still refusing to call it a war. Baby-faced American soldiers, with spiky crew-cuts and pockets bulging with cash, poured into Kings Cross on rest and recreation leave. They were extremely polite and left enough tips in one night to equate to a week’s pay. The downside of all this overpaid testosterone in uniform was the number of unmarried, pregnant girls that were left in their wake, many of whom suffered a dreadful fate in a society that promoted free love while denying unmarried women access to abortion or the contraceptive Pill. This period in Australian history stands out as producing what has become known as a ‘bumper crop’ of adoptions.

One night the banquet manager asked me if I’d do a shift in the ballroom. The Chevron was the first international-style hotel to open in Sydney. It was overtaking the old Trocadero as the preferred venue for shindigs organised by Sydney’s high-society ladies, who got dressed to the nines and drank champagne, all in the name of raising money for children’s charities.

When I arrived that evening there were more bums on seats in the ballroom than there were plates to serve them. Floor staff had to hover, ready to pounce on an empty plate, then race back to the kitchen to get it washed and ready for another meal to go out.

‘I don’t want that!’ a woman snapped, bumping my hand as I passed behind her. The sloppy concoction of canned peaches and pink junket that I had been holding quivered and splashed over the side of the bowl, slipping silently into the vortex of her massive beehive hairdo. I froze, expecting a reaction. When she didn’t flinch I realised she was wearing a wig, and discreetly kept moving.

A young man about my age, who’d been complaining all night, was getting up to leave. His table looked like a pigsty.

‘Waitress,’ he said, clicking his fingers in the air.

‘Yes, sir,’ I smiled, walking over to the table.

‘Here’s your tip,’ he chortled, slapping a twenty cent coin into my hand.

Several of his companions laughed.

‘Buy a book on table etiquette,’ I said, placing the coin on the table. The laughing stopped as I abruptly turned and walked away. It would be over three decades, and in vastly different circumstances, until our paths would cross again.

3

Come where?

We were both clutching Joni Mitchell’s debut album Song to a Seagull as we waited to be served at the record shop in Bondi Junction. ‘Isn’t she wonderful?’ he said, smiling and tapping the cover of the LP. We struck up a conversation and he told me his name was Danny Frawley.

‘What are you reading?’ he asked, motioning to my basket, which contained a stack of books I’d just picked up from the library.

‘It’s a bit of an eclectic mix, Charles Dickens and some textbooks on business strategy,’ I said, thumping through the pile that was weighing down one arm.

‘Advanced Accounting and Business Management?’ Danny asked quizzically, running his finger along the spine of one of the books.

‘I think it would be a good skill to have if I hope to succeed in business, don’t you?’ I smiled.

He nodded. ‘Would you like a coffee?’

‘Thank you,’ I said, pleased that our conversation wouldn’t end in the store.

‘Here, let me take that for you,’ he said, reaching down to help me with my basket. Over coffee we discovered that we had many interests in common. He invited me to listen to a live band at the Royal Hotel in Bondi. I told him that although I worked in a bar, it was a means to an end. I tended to steer clear of pubs after work. I didn’t drink alcohol and I had no tolerance for drunken behaviour.

‘Come on Kathy, Jeannie Lewis is singing, you’ll like her,’ he pleaded. I really liked live music and Danny was a big strapping lad whom I felt sure would stand between me and any troublemakers.

The pub was packed when we arrived. The stares from the blokes leaning against the bar seemed to strip me naked as we pushed and shoved our way through the crowd to where Danny’s friends were sitting.

‘Kathy, this is Jack Gazzard,’ Danny said, introducing me to a mate of his, who was sitting with a woman brandishing a diamond engagement ring.

‘Hello Jack,’ I smiled, offering my hand.

Jack took a firm grip and his eyes bore into me as if he wanted to see right into my soul.

Once our eyes met, neither of us wanted to break the connection. Danny broke the spell. ‘You can’t keep her mate,’ he said, nodding to Jack’s hand that was still holding mine.

The next time I saw Jack was at the City versus Country rugby league match. The City team was thrashing the boys from the Country and Danny was screaming himself hoarse with excitement. ‘Go the City!’ Danny yelled, across the pavilion.

Jack was sitting a few rows in front of us and kept turning around trying to catch my attention whenever there was a break in the game. Even before the referee blew the whistle at half-time, Jack was on his feet and making his way over to where I was sitting.

‘Miss World,’ he said, reaching out to touch my hair. This comment appeared flippant and annoyed me. I didn’t see myself as being particularly beautiful.

‘Thank you, but you’re engaged,’ I said, rather curtly, stepping back and flicking my hair over my shoulder.

The following week the Bondi Royal football team won their final match and were celebrating at the pub. Jack was the captain of the team so I knew he’d be there. Danny didn’t have to plead this time. Jack smiled when he saw me. His fiancée was nowhere to be seen.

‘I broke off the engagement. I haven’t been able to get you out of my head,’ he said, smiling. That night he drove me home and we kissed goodnight. He asked me out to dinner the following week.

‘I’m sorry Jack, I’m going to Queensland with my girlfriends on Sunday morning,’ I said, feeling as disappointed as he looked. ‘But, we’re having a farewell party on Saturday night, if you’d like to come?’

A house party at Bondi was always a risky business. The word would go round the local pub that it was ‘on’ at a certain address and anyone carrying a guitar or grog