Goddess

It was a long and lonely week. It took me three long apologetic phone calls to Pat on Wednesday morning, each having to endure her diatribes against me before she put me through to my daughter who was enjoying her school holidays. 'Hi Dad.' Her voice sounded non-committal. She was probably still resentful because I didn't turn up to pick her up on the weekend. 'Marianne, firstly I want to really apologise to you, not only because of not picking you up on Sunday, but for not being much of a father to you or your brother for all those years. Would you and Peter like to come with me for a picnic on Sunday?' There was a short silence, as if she was considering the pros of the outing with the cons of another disappointment. 'I would love to dad, but I heard Peter and Charles talking about going to see a rugby match that day, so you better ask him, I'll call him to the phone.'

Pat's new companion is doing for my son what I had never done for him since he was born, learning to grow together, to know each other, to see how my son is seeing his own world as well as the world he wants to live in. It hurts, it bloody well hurts to realise how much I'm missing.

'Sorry dad but I have already made other arrangements for Sunday. Perhaps another time.' Peter's tone of voice was polite but didn't invite any further conversation. 'OK son, I understand and, by the way, I would like to give you the same apology that I gave Marianne for last Sunday as well as for not being a real father to you for the past eight years.'

'Actually, you could make those eighteen rather than eight years. Would you like to talk to Marianne again?' There was no point in arguing because he was right and we both knew it. 'Yes please.'

'Hi dad again!' She sounded as if she had decided that she was going to risk the disappointment. 'At what time do you get up on Sundays?'

'Well, mum insists that we have breakfast not later than 8:30, so most of the time I get up at eight.'

'OK, I'll be there ringing the bell at 8:15. We will have breakfast together on the way. Could I now have a word with your mother?'

'Sure, hang on for a second!' It took almost two minutes for Pat to come to the phone. 'Are you deciding to become a decent human being at last? Marianne told me that you apologised to her and on top of that you are going to pick her up

before

breakfast! What's going to happen with your church going?' Pat's voice sounded genuinely surprised, the irony was there but without the usual hard bite. 'I have begun to see many things in my life that I never noticed before, so I'm making an effort to change. I just wanted to ask you if it was convenient for me to come that early.' There was no irony this time. 'No problems at all and, if you are a bit earlier Charles and I may even invite you for a cup of coffee.' I hung up with a sense of deep relief.

I must say that other good things did happen during that week. Tired and in turmoil as I was I had a great deal of satisfaction seeing Pompous John's face when I distributed my article at the editorial meeting. He didn't expect it and when he praised it he sounded as if he was about to choke on his own words. Maureen and I looked at each other with laughing eyes and a sense of conspiracy.

The meeting was over by lunchtime and as I was heading out Maureen caught up with me and said, 'Well done! It is not often that I get to see John put into his place so nicely. Let me buy you a coffee.' We were both feeling happy with the way things had worked out. I said to Maureen, 'In my old age I must be getting to be irresistible to women. You are the second one to invite me for a coffee in the last twenty-four hours.'

'Who is my rival?' I looked directly at her so that I would not miss her reaction, 'Pat.' I was pleased with the result. Maureen stopped dead in her tracks and looked at me in utter disbelief. 'I think that it is about time that I tell you some of the things that are playing havoc with my life at this moment, turning virtually everything upside down, but we cannot do that standing in the foyer, so we better get our coffees first.'

We walked in silence to Barry's Cafe, the place where the selected few run to when they have to go to ground. He was busy behind the counter and all the tables were full. 'Anyone in the back room?' I asked. 'No mate. Is your boss chasing you?' He knew John and he didn't like him either. 'I'm not sure, but if he shows up you didn't see us.' He nodded showing us his crooked smile. He had served time in jail and he would never turn a friend in. 'What will you have?' We ordered our modest lunches and two coffees. Barry said 'No worries, you know the way. I'll bring everything to you in five.'

We worked our way past the toilets and around the crates of drinks, squeezing through a narrow passage to reach the door marked 'Private.' Maureen said 'I don't know how Barry manages to get away with this fire trap but, on the other hand, I don't think that I would come here if it was not like this. Nowadays we live an existence devoid of risk and life is getting to be too boring.' To me Maureen was a never ending source of surprises. 'I didn't know that you had such a philosophical streak.' She laughed.

Barry's Café was in an old building that by some miracle had, for all those years escaped the clutches of the development boom. The 'back room' was nothing more than an oversized cupboard with no windows and two small exhaust fans, one pumping in the fumes from the inner city that the locals called air and another pumping out the smell of tobacco mixed with the smell of a sweaty humanity. It was just big enough to fit a table for four and the chairs. Whenever the full complement of four people was present, getting in and out required a lot of planning and the co-operation of everyone in the room, as there was not enough space to move between the back of the chairs and the walls. A naked light bulb hanging from the dirty ceiling highlighted the peeling paint on the walls. You could easily imagine Lenin and Trotsky sitting at this table planning the October Revolution, or the Magnetic Drill Gang working the final details of their next robbery.

We sat and looked at each other. I wanted to tell Maureen my story but I didn't know how or where to start. Feeling embarrassed I said 'Once upon a time there was a man with a life very well ordered into neat pigeon holes and reassuring routines. Everything was pre-digested and pre-determined for him. He didn't really have to think. He was raised as a very religious person and whenever there was a crisis that required him to make a decision he would always do what the church said was to be done. He found it virtually unnecessary to commit himself to even considering any other alternative: He just had to follow God's word and everything would be solved. That is until ten days ago.'

It seems that years have passed, not just a few days. I feel that I'm perhaps trying to dump an enormous amount of values but I still have nothing to replace them with. I realise that I can no longer avoid making decisions and that I have to take risks, but I don't know how!

'Calling Franco … Calling Franco. Over.' Maureen was looking at me, holding her chin in her hands, a question mark on each eye. 'You were light years away. Do you want to still tell me what's happening to you or not?' It took me a couple of seconds to realise that I had stopped talking. 'I do want to tell you. In fact, I need to tell somebody before I go completely mad, but I'm not so sure that I really know what is happening to me. I had a complete shift from the total certitude of the well rehearsed routines of everyday life to the complete incertitude of the unknown.' Maureen covered my hand with hers and said 'Welcome to the real world of humanity Frank!' If she was trying to comfort me it didn't work.

Three groups of two knocks on the door marked the arrival of our lunches delivered by Barry in person. Never leaving behind the conspiratorial undertones that he developed while in Long Bay jail, he liked always adding his dramatic touches like the special knocking on the door or the glance back at the corridor just as he opened the door. He made it a point to show to everyone that he was making sure that the fuzz were not following him. He looked at Maureen and myself and said 'Whose funeral is it?' In Barry's universe, it didn't matter how hard life was treating you, you could still maintain your sense of humour. They say that when he was sentenced he actually made a joke of it. Apparently the jury liked it, but the judge threatened him with adding a contempt of court charge to the list. I made an effort to smile and said 'Sorry Barry, I think that I'm mourning the death of my innocence.' He looked in amazement and said 'Shit mate! Did it really take you so bloody long?' Maureen laughed and I even managed a chuckle. He left us, shaking his head in disbelief.

We ate in silence. I welcomed the opportunity to collect my thoughts and think how I was going to continue with my story. I wished that eating two toasted sandwiches could take longer but we got to our coffees and Maureen was there, patiently waiting.

'Just ten days ago I was covering one of those boring socialite's parties. I met a woman there and within less than ten minutes of meeting her we were having, well, you know … s-e-x.' Maureen started laughing with a silent laugh that was shaking her entire body and I stopped talking. 'Sorry Franco, I thought that that could be the case. So, what's the big deal, did she rape you?' I didn't know if I should feel offended, hurt or both so I remained silent. 'Franco, really, please, come into this century once and for all. People no longer fuck for God and Country; they do it because they enjoy it! Out there a sexual revolution has come and virtually gone, while feminism and equal opportunity are the buzz words of the day. The Pope may still hold on to his refusal to accept contraceptives, but even the Catholic hierarchy will soon have to come to grips with a reality that can no longer be denied. Today it is no longer "Populate or Perish" but "Populate

and

Perish". I'm sure that in ten or fifteen years people will begin to say that we are already too many. Having said all this, I'll get down from my soap box and let you continue.'

She is right, I know that, but I still cannot feel that it is right for me. Although I always made the ideas of the church my own I was never so militant to join the demonstrators when Hail Mary was screened. What's more, I was never prepared to stand in the way of people who wanted to do even the most outrageous thing. My problem is that when it comes to myself all I can think of is that I am not allowed to do it.

Reluctantly I re-started my story. 'I know that a lot of people think that I'm the last surviving dinosaur. I'm sure that I can count you and even my children among those who think that I'm out of touch with today's reality. But you have to understand one thing: I was raised to accept without question what was being given to me, and without even thinking of not complying. Remember Big Brother in 1984? Change it to God and you will be able to understand me better.' Maureen looked contrite and said 'I'm sorry, I have been very unfair, don't' let me stop you again!' I thought what else I could tell her. 'There isn't much more really, except that for the first time I have begun to think for myself. For the first time I can see what I have done to other people. I love my children dearly, but I have never been a real father to them.

This morning I apologised to my daughter and my son for it. In a nutshell, I'm just trying to see both, who and where I am before I can begin to think about where I am going.' Maureen made a soft whistling sound. 'I can see that you have a lot on your plate at this moment. Is your new lady friend helping you cope with all this upheaval?' How could I explain Camille? 'After that encounter I looked for her during the entire week. Every trail I followed took me nowhere. She had totally vanished. That is, until Monday night. Coming back to my desk from the toilet after finishing my article, close to eleven o'clock, she was there, waiting for me and we had sex again, on my desk! She is a total mystery for me. I just know nothing about her, but she seems to know everything about me. In the two instances that I met her it really looked as if she always knows what I'm even thinking!'

Maureen was lost for words for the second time running which was in itself an achievement of Olympic proportions, even though at the time I couldn't possibly see it, lost as I was in trying to find answers for so many questions that I had never asked before. We walked back to work, together but again in silence. We were alone in the lift and Maureen said 'Thank you Franco for sharing all that with me. I don't know what the future will bring you, but I can see that your present is giving you a golden opportunity to change and build a happier life for yourself. Don't waste it.'

'I won't', was my heart felt answer.

Solitude has never bothered me, before then or now, but during that period of my life I was very much conscious of how alone I felt. The proximity of Sunday and the picnic with my daughter was making me feel an excitement that I had not experienced since I was a kid anxiously awaiting the day when I had been promised a visit to the zoo. On Saturday night I spent one hour preparing enough sandwiches to feed a large group of hungry bush walkers. Gleaming red and white prosciutto, carefully laid on top of pale, hand sliced fontina cheese with giardiniera pieces on top. Slices of a loaf of large Italian bread with the crust shaved off developed a life of their own, decorating the bench of my small kitchen with happy memories from my childhood. I was re-enacting a ritual of a time gone by that had remained hidden in the darkest corners of my memories for all those years.

My father is making his favourite sandwiches for the two of us to go fishing off the rocks in Manly. He got up very early to be at the delicatessen in Leichhardt that morning, waiting for them to open so he could get his bread and his prosciutto. 'Franco, Australia is a good country, a land of plenty, but I have to agree with your mother, we have yet to learn to make bread.' I look with fascination. His huge hands with skin like leather are out of place in the kitchen. I cannot understand how his rough fingers can separate the paper thin slices of meat and so neatly lay them down following the curve of the bread. He wraps the sandwiches in a dampened tea towel and then in a bigger towel, tying the four ends together to make it a carrying bag. I walk to the bus with our lunch proudly hanging from my hand while he carries the fishing gear.

Today, most people would have classified my father as a larrikin but back after the war he was considered a pariah. He was a philosophy student when war broke up. He left university to go to fight in Africa and Europe and when the war was over he didn't come back to Australia with the rest. He went to live for some time in Italy and when he did come back in the late forties he did so with a very pregnant Italian wife who could not speak a single word of English. There could not be two more dissimilar people than my father and my mother. He was a free spirit, who loved reading and worked as a bricklayer just because he loved building things. I remember him telling me 'I spent the years of the war destroying houses, bridges, people and fields. Now I only want to build as many houses as I have destroyed or, even better, more than that. I have seen too much death, that's why I love life' My mother lived her life by the teachings of the church, never departing one inch from them. I had just turned eight years old when one hot late summer day, coming back from fishing I told my mother that I had gone swimming with my father. 'But you didn't take your swimming suits with you' she said in her heavily accented English. When I proudly said 'We swam naked' I thought that the roof would cave in on our heads. She turned to my father screaming 'God will punish you! You are a degenerate, what are you teaching your son, eh?' My father shrugged his shoulders and walked away to the kitchen to put the fish in the icebox for dinner.

I'm coming back home on the first week of the school year. My mother is crying. She holds me in her arms repeating time and time again 'Cosa voi fare bambino, cosa voi fare?'

'What happen Mama? Don't cry! Please, don't cry!'

'Il tou padre e morto! I said to him that God would punish him and allora he is dead. He fell from the scaffold in the block of units he was working and he is morto, dead!' She takes me by my hand and still crying loudly half runs, half walks to the church to pray for the salvation of his soul. It is two days later, I see my father in the coffin and I have to kiss him. To my eight years old lips full of life he feels cold as ice. The women sitting around, mostly Italian, all dressed in black, are crying together, in communion with my mother.

Since my father's death, every night, until the day before my mother passed away we kneeled together and prayed asking God to forgive the sins of my father and keep him in purgatory rather than condemning him to the flames of hell. Although she loved my father, she always complained when he would go fishing on Sundays rather than to church. His lack of piety and his refusal to follow rules in general were perpetual sources of arguments. My mother would say that God rewarded those who obeyed and punished those who didn't. Unperturbed, my father would reply that even if she was right and God did exist he didn't want to have anything to do with a god that would punish good blokes just because they were disobedient.

The alarm clock woke me up with a jolt at five o'clock in the morning. I had decided to take Marianne bush walking, but I didn't know if she would like it or not, so I packed for all possibilities, including a beach umbrella and towels as the weather forecast was for a warm day. I left my unit at six thirty and, without thinking I found myself driving past my church. A pang of guilt struck me, thinking of Father Patrick going through the elaborate rituals for the early mass and looking for me among the people in the pews and, not seeing me there worrying by my absence. I drove on. I was so determined that I would not be late this time that by seven o'clock in the morning I was sitting in my parked car, a few doors away from Pat's home, waiting.

By eight my car had become a claustrophobic box in which I could no longer sit. I walked through the garden enveloped in the smell of blooming freesias, still showing traces of the morning mist. I was feeling very nervous, as if I was going into some sort of blind date. After all, I didn't really know my daughter, nor I ever gave her the chance to know me. It was too early for the chorus of suburban lawnmowers to have started, so when I rang the bell I could clearly hear Marianne yelling, 'I'll get it!' The door flung open and there she was, with a smile emanating from every cell of her body. 'Hi dad, come in!' As I stepped inside she gave me the biggest hug ever. She was happy. 'I'm sorry, but I'm not really ready, but almost really ready. Mum!' She was talking so fast that her words were almost tripping on each other. 'I'll be ready in no time!' She then ran inside at full speed, leaving me standing there, just inside the house. 'Slow down before you walk through a wall! Sorry Franco, your daughter has been very excited all Saturday and from what I can see, she hasn't yet calmed down. Come in and join us for a coffee.' Pat had not changed, she was a very attractive woman. She was dressed in very short shorts and a T-shirt. She led the way, barefooted and sensuous. I couldn't tell if she was always as sexy as now or if it was that I was just noticing it for the first time.