(If I had read my Swift aright, I should have known that it was impossible that my father should have been a Houynhnhnm, especially as I know myself for Gulliver’s sort of naked Yahoo. But in those days I was still nursing the prelapsarian fantasy that I had escaped the common human lot. I know now that my father’s whole life was a lie, yet we were quite correct in thinking that Daddy hated lying, told fewer lies than most people, in fact, said nothing rather than something insincere. The pity of it, to think that a man who hated lying was obliged to lie so hard in order to survive! His heroic lying made it possible for his children to tell the truth.)
I was surprised that I had got my grandmother’s name so nearly right, for I had virtually convinced myself that I had invented a Jewish grandmother called Rachel Weiss. Emma Rachel Wise was not quite the same thing; her name was as likely to be Irish or Cornish as Ashkenasy. One thing it was not likely to be was Northern Irish; a marriage between a green Wise and an orange Greer would have been virtually unthinkable in the old country. Although I saw no reason to doubt my grandmother’s name as my father gave it, ‘Robert Greer Journalist’ struck me as a phony. Nevertheless I spent the next month looking for him.
Perhaps the parish priest had asked to see documentary verification of these statements. After all he was not supposed to take the groom’s unsupported word for it that he was who and what he said he was. When I looked at the information given about my mother on the certificate I was not reassured about Dr Greenan’s thoroughness. My mother was still a minor but consent to her marriage had been given by her mother, as if her father was dead or unreachable, neither of which he was. She had been given away by my uncle, her elder brother. I asked him later why he hadn’t got more and better information about the man who was marrying his little sister and he said, ruefully, ‘I was only a kid myself’. There cannot have been many virtuous girls so unprotected in Melbourne in 1937.
Because of Daddy’s resistance to our attempts to recruit him into the church, we children decided that he must have been true-blue, dinky-di. Nothing would have been easier than to have acquiesced and given lip service. We thought that, though he mightn’t say much about anything that mattered, what he said would be true. He would not encourage false intimacy, would say less than he felt rather than more, but what he said would stand. Jack Tosh, an old business associate, who knew him better than I did and saw him often during twenty-seven years, told me over a bottle of rather good claret that Daddy wasn’t an obviously friendly type, hail-fellow-well-met; Daddy was aloof, even standoffish, but ‘You knew you could trust him.’
‘I never heard a really nasty word about Reg. He wasn’t one of the boys, but everybody liked him—or rather nobody disliked him.’
(Ah that I could say the same! I thought.) ‘Lots of people thought he was English. Did you think he was English?’
‘Can’t say I did. I thought Reg was, you know, posh. Public school, definitely. I left school when I was twelve, so I really felt the difference.
‘He’d stand on rank, mind you. If I called him because of some cock-up about an account, he’d always put me on to his secretary. “What’s that? Just an account query—my secretary’ll handle that.” If he rang up with a query he’d always ask for the principal. He’d never talk to me when I was a humble accounts clerk. Much too grand.
‘But I got to really like Reg. He was stiff, a bit pompous sometimes—you know he’d say things like, “As I was only saying to Sir Lloyd Dumas the other day…” We’d take the piss out of him for that kind of thing, but he was completely genuine. He’d never tell you what you wanted to hear, if he wasn’t convinced of it himself. Most of the reps used to go for lunchtime drinks at one particular pub, pandering to the media managers who regularly drank there. Choir practice, we used to call it. Reg never went. Never.
‘You have to imagine what these people were like. Your father was far too good for the job he was doing. Most reps are boozy lightweight boys. His opposite number, on the rival paper, was best mates with everybody. Bit of a spiv really. He’d worm his way into your confidence and then use it against you. Reg’d never do that. Your father wasn’t a drunk, for one thing. Never saw him drunk. We all thought he was a family man. He never hung around to get pissed with the boys; always off home.’
Actually, he was off to the St Kilda Cricket Club, but the main point was incontrovertible. Daddy was no maltworm. ‘Do you agree with those who say Reg Greer never worked an afternoon in his life?’
‘You mustn’t think of your father as selling anything. He didn’t have to. That job was automatic. All the agencies knew they had to take space in the ’Tiser and they all did. The most your father’d have to do’d be to tell them that they’d have to pay more for the space because of newsprint rationing or something, and that didn’t happen very often.
‘He must have had an expense account but he never bought expensive lunches. The other reps wined and dined each other all the time, but not Reg. The reps didn’t get much of a salary you know, but they made it all up on the exes.’
Somehow it seemed typical of Daddy that he would have left his expense account virtually unused. Neither of us thought for a moment that he would have swelled his meagre salary with phony expense claims, although such lying is so commonplace it is hardly seen as immoral. His job was dead-end, dreary. He considered himself superior to most of the hustlers doing it, but he had what he wanted. He had organised his life for maximum leisure, minimum strain; I remembered that one of the distinguishing characteristics of a gentleman is that he is never, ever, in a hurry. He may be poor but he must never bustle. Daddy was certainly poor, but he lived the leisured life of an English gentleman. Like many of the ilk he had no library, no cellar, no music, no pictures; his wife had no clothes and no car for a long time and he was mean with his daughters.
‘When your book came out, you know, they must have given him a hell of a time. Your father wouldn’t have liked that one bit.’
‘Did you all know that I was Reg Greer’s daughter?’
‘Oh, yes, we knew that all right. Only have to look at you. You’re the spitting image of Reg.’
In the drawer of my writing desk there are a dozen or more letters from Greers who say that the moment they first saw me on television they said, looking at my narrow forehead and long jaw, ‘She’s a Greer of the Greers.’ I am the spitting image of a dozen Greer aunts and grandmothers. Greers tease their rebellious daughters, asking what could be expected of tall girls called Greer with fly-away hair. When I begged for help in finding my kinfolk, they sent pictures of themselves. ‘You’re definitely one of us,’ they said, and added photographs of the family coat of arms, watercolours of houses in rolling Ulster landscapes and photocopies of the Greer pedigree.
Among all the indicators of kinship none is more misleading than physical resemblance. It can be so strong as to cause a physical shock and yet be nothing more than a coincidence. As I had no information about my father’s family whatsoever, I followed any lead as far as it would go. Among the leads I found was a photograph of a man who looked so like my father that I yelped, and disturbed two lilac-haired ladies peering at a microfiche just behind me. I was holding an illustrated book, put together at the height of the anti-imperialist agitation after the catastrophe of the First World War, when Australians felt very bitter, and the Irish led by Archbishop Mannix were protesting against possible commitment to serve in any other British war. As a red rag to an already enraged bull, the book was called Australia’s Fighting Sons of Empire; on page 177 there was a portrait in the uniform of a pilot of the first Australian Imperial Force of Henry Reginald Greer. It shook me, as Daddy would say.
He had Daddy’s long chin and narrow nose, with a slight furrow at the tip, and he had the same small mouth, with its tight upper lip, but it was the way his hands were loosely clasped around the swagger stick that gave me a turn.
I found out what I could about Henry Reginald. He was twelve years older than my father, and born in Bellin
gen, northern New South Wales. He was third-generation Australian, for his grandfather, Isaac Greer, came to New South Wales in 1842, when he was fifteen; in 1849 he married Ann Nicholson at Shoalhaven, and established a farming dynasty, but as far as I could tell Henry Reginald’s father, Colin Pollock, had no kinsman called Robert who married an Emma Rachel, and neither did Henry Reginald. He survived training on Salisbury Plain, and active service on the Somme, at Bullecourt Ridge, Polygon Wood and Passchendaele, and came home to take up farming again at Fernmount and then Wingham and Tweed Heads. He died in 1955.
He had to belong to me—he had my face—but he does not. He ought to have been something closer to my father than a cousin, but he is not even a second cousin. This Greer family has been trying to identify their Ulster ancestors without success. I, who could penetrate no further into the past than 1933, envied them so much their ancestor born in 1827 that I visited Shoalhaven churchyard and walked disconsolate among the stones, but no whisper came forth.
The only source of hard facts for the Reg Greer story had to be the Veterans’ Affairs building in leafy St Kilda Road, a few blocks south of the War Memorial, which looks like part of a set for The Magic Flute, Sarastro’s temple perhaps, being half classical with a sort of sawn-off ziggurat for a roof. I walked from the sun-dapple into a car park under the building which is raised on stilts. A utility truck was drawn up hard by the front entrance so that semi-naked men could toss bags of papers down the steps and into the back of it. More such bags choked the doorway. As I dodged among the bag-heavers I savoured the sharp tang of their body-odour.
Inside the glass doors there was no receptionist, no commissionaire, no porter, no directory, just a bank of elevators. The way to the heart of the Veterans’ Affairs administration lay wide open to any combat psychotic with an M-16. The people standing around carrying brown-paper bags full of food, smoking, chewing and recounting the excesses of the festive season, were mostly too scantily dressed to be hiding even a hand grenade. ‘Jeez Ize wrecked,’ one said. ‘Took me till t’is mornin’ t’find m’car.’ He smiled beatifically, as befits one who has reached the summit of human bliss, to be blind drunk in Australia.
I had been advised by a well-wisher to go to the third floor, which was as well, for without this hint I could have wandered around the building for hours. Facing me as I walked out of the lift was another pawnbroker’s counter. In all but one of the bays there was no functionary to be seen. In the one inhabited bay, a woman and two girls were pleading with a woman official. I stood at a respectful distance behind them, but the official looked over her clients’ heads and said loudly, ‘Are we in your way?’
I stared at her, too shocked to answer for an instant. I began to stammer, ‘So sorry… no idea… didn’t mean—’ in just the way that used to irritate me so when I heard the British do it. Surely I had committed some appalling offence against Australian etiquette.
The woman said, again loudly, ‘Can I help you?’ By this time I was smirking and bowing to the clients before me, and noticing with horror that the woman’s face was wet with tears. ‘I’ve an appointment with Rob Coxon,’ I answered, gesturing ineffectually to signify that there was no hurry and I had not meant to jump the queue. The official walked away from her clients, who settled down at the counter as if it was their second home.
Mr Coxon appeared with a stack of files. He was unusually amply dressed in that the legs of his shorts were quite long and his T-shirt had something like a collar. He took me to a tiny, stifling interview room and sat me in a rather soiled armchair.
‘Under the Freedom of Information Act,’ he intoned, ‘you are entitled to see your father’s files. A précis of his case was made when your mother’s pension was being considered, and you will find that easier to read because it has been typed out.’ He leafed through the file, describing the contents. He seemed to have read the whole thing. Then he handed the file to me, and sat on the low table by my chair, watching my face as I turned the yellow leaves.
My heart was bouncing round my chest like a frog trapped in a bucket. The narrow room, like a confessional, and the closeness of the man peering at me, made the heat come into my face. Dark patches kept appearing on the paper. I was terrified that I would faint. I tried to take deep breaths, but my ribs were crushed tight. I could only pant. The palms of my hands were running with sweat. I laid the typewritten précis by and lifted one by one the brittle originals, RAAF Forms P/M 8, First Medical Examination, Certificate of Service, RAF form 39 (2), RAAF form 45, Forms NZ 376 and 377, RAAF Forms P/M 54, 43, 41…
RAAF form 41 contained my father’s own précis of his preservice life: ‘School—Secondary Senior Public Aet 15 and a half years Tasmania. Average amount of sport. Free mixer. No especial worries or problems. Occupation—Newspaper work, Reader, Reporter, Interstate Representative, Manager. (7 years last job) Home—Married 7 years. W a & w. 1 child four and a half a & w. F[ather] died aet 58 years. 1 year ago—Heart trouble. M[other] died aet 53 years. 3 and a half years ago. Influenza. Collaterals 1 Brother aet 42 years a & w. 1 Sister aet 36 years a & w. Childhood days happy—well cared for—no home discord.’ This brief statement of his background was the most comprehensive Reg Greer had ever uttered; for a year I struggled to verify it. In my hurried first reading I didn’t notice one obvious untruth; Reg Greer was not a manager when he enlisted. He was not a manager until shortly before his retirement, nearly twenty years after the war was over.
Every document in the file seemed to me unbearably sad; I longed to lay it down and rest between each harrowing vision of Daddy being examined and re-examined by men half his age, judged and found wanting. He told them of his nightmares. I fancied they were laughing at him, when they quoted him saying of his recurrent nightmare of being run down by cattle, ‘Fierce-looking things, you know’. The worst came upon me without warning. One of his nightmares was of ‘danger impending for his daughter due to cars rushing at her at incredible speeds’. A howl leapt out of my mouth before I could stifle it.
I clapped my hand to my mouth and struggled to get back in the air that I had so thoughtlessly expelled. I was literally winded by the sudden intimacy. I wanted to grab the man in shorts and tell him, ‘You see! He did! He did! He loved me!’ Instead I heaved and spluttered, like one choking on her own spit.
Mr Coxon leaned forward. He was satisfied. ‘You can have a copy of that,’ he said and took the file out of the room.
All I knew was that I dared not cry, for once I started I would never stop. The thought of being led sobbing past the counter and the other people whose lives were in this bureaucratic mincer boiled my tears dry with embarrassment.
Mr Coxon came back with the file. ‘How much is that?’ I asked.
‘We make no charge,’ said Mr Coxon. He meant it as a kindness, I am sure. I would have paid him a thousand pounds to have been allowed to read that file in private. Perhaps he thought I might deface it, or steal it. Surely Daddy’s next of kin should have the right to do both, I thought. In the land where the information gathered for the census is ritually destroyed, why should this stuff stay on file?
For the rest of the day the vision of my father standing naked before the medical officers would not leave me. He would have made light of it himself, joked about the short-arm inspection and his own embarrassment. I have only once seen my father naked and then for so brief an instant that I cannot remember what I saw. Now I saw him like a prisoner stripped before his jailers, and my heart ached for him.
When he was old and frail and soon to leave this world, I nurtured a fantasy that I would have time and he would have time for me to nurse him, to bathe him and groom him and feed him and hold him close so that he did not find his way out of the world alone. I have done as much for total strangers but I was not to get the chance to do it for my father. He went so fast and so far away that I couldn’t catch up. If I had but once held him unprotesting in my arms, I could have survived that dreadful afternoon unscathed.
Still in Melbo
urne, January 1987
Always we have believed
We can change overnight,
Put a different look on the face,
Old passions out of sight:
And find new days relieved
Of all that we regretted
But something always stays
And will not be outwitted.
ELIZABETH JENNINGS, ‘DISGUISES’
When I was fourteen years old, imprisoned in a bookless house, bored at school and double-bored at home, the Public Library of Victoria was my Valhalla. I would travel ‘into town’ from the sea-side suburb where we lived, on the train, with something for my lunch hidden in my briefcase, most often a jar of mussels I had gathered and brewed into a mouth-crinkling vinegary mess and a wholemeal bun. I’d walk fast up Swanston Street, chastely averting my eyes from the shop-window displays. They were in fact about as elegant as the average Oxfam shop, but I knew as little about that as I did about preparing mussels. The walk was uphill; I processed towards it as reverently as any Greek to the Acropolis, although standing on its mound of green grass it looked rather more like a miniature version of Belfast Town Hall. As I walked past the statue of Joan of Arc, I always remembered my grandmother’s joke, the first time she took me to visit the Art Gallery, which used to be housed in the same building.
‘What’s Joan of Arc made of?’ she asked.
‘Bronze?’ I ventured.
‘Orleans!’ she yelled and hooted with laughter.
Through the revolving door I’d go, out of the blue-white blaze of the sun into mahogany, pietra dura and green baize. I strode confidently, hoping no one would challenge me for being no more than fourteen. My fears of discovery were probably unfounded; my face was so grey and drawn with adolescent misery that the average bar-tender in any of the lavatorial pubs that lined Swanston Street would probably have poured me a brandy without missing a beat, judging me nearer thirty than twenty. I’d take the staircase in a busy little tripping run, as if I did it twenty times a day, and stroll loftily into the reading room. Convinced, as all adolescents are, that everyone was looking at me, I dared not stop and peer. Too proud to hiss a question and scared that my question might give me away, I never quite got the hang of the system.