Not Your Ordinary Housewife: How the man I loved led me into a world I had never imagined (43 page)

Paul soon began a relationship with Deirdre, a woman he met through a dating service. Within months, they began living together and he moved still further away. He was, it seemed, determined to avoid all paternal responsibilities. My solicitor advised that, since he showed little interest in seeing the children, custody orders were unnecessary; any visits would be best made on an ad hoc basis.

We had done a rough property settlement, but needed to formalise our agreement. Thanks to Dory’s foresight the trust assets were excluded from the matrimonial pool, so we divvied up our meagre investments. Despite me being the sole carer of the children, Paul received half our assets in compensation for the fact that I would own outright all copyright in the material we’d created.

On the day Paul was to sign the consent orders, it occurred to me that he may try to take possession of the title ‘The Horny Housewife’. Hastily, my lawyer drafted a deed of release, in which he forfeited any rights to the name. His reaction in her chambers was verbally violent; it was the intended title of a book he was planning to write. Eventually, he agreed to sign. Furious at his treachery, I was hurt that he would want to write
my
story, but thankful that I now had the option to use the title someday.

Retrenched from his IT job and unable to find work, Paul began selling pet products at market stalls. Shoshanna refused to see him, but the younger two occasionally stayed over. With Deirdre ensuring that all porn was locked away, I relaxed and let them visit.

Soon afterwards, Deirdre was offered a transfer to Brisbane and Paul, struggling to make money in Melbourne, decided that the Queensland markets might offer a more profitable opportunity.

I rang him repeatedly, arguing as I tried to dissuade him from making this move. I reminded him that I didn’t have any other family. ‘What if I get sick? Who’ll look after the kids then?’ I wanted him to maintain contact with the younger children in particular. ‘You’ll break their little hearts,’ I said. ‘Don’t desert them, the way Saskia did you.’

But he simply changed the subject, telling me how he was working on a new range of canine shampoo to be called ‘Doggie Style’. He’d hired an industrial chemist to research a hypo-allergenic formula and also develop a range of flea powder and pet aromatherapy products.

Ben and Ya’el begged him not to leave Melbourne, but their pleas fell on deaf ears and Paul and Deirdre made the move. The two children subsequently made holiday visits to Brisbane, but they returned each time with worrisome tales of Paul’s inappropriate behaviour. Not infrequently, they reported finding adult material and sex aids lying around. On one occasion, Paul showed Ya’el our X-mas card, telling her of my involvement in porn. While I had always intended to tell the children, they were far too young to understand—and, besides, he was equally culpable. I was appalled that the consideration he should have felt for his children was eclipsed by the spite he felt for me.

Predictably, the Brisbane markets were not as profitable as Paul had hoped and he faced financial ruin almost immediately. He had little money to take the children out when they visited him, and they spent much of their holiday indoors. According to them, he was financially dependent on Deirdre, who was a paralegal.

I ruefully realised he was merely replicating our former arrangement, and I wondered whether he was cross-dressing and enemising while living with her.

26

When we had been winding down the Canberra office, I had begun to research my father, Allan Proctor. At that time staff at the Australian War Memorial provided me with his full service record and I received my first photo of him. I did indeed bear a strong resemblance to him; because of his youthful appearance, I could see why his call sign was ‘Babe’. He had done three tours of duty, but it was in 459 Squadron that he had obtained his Distinguished Flying Cross (DFC) in 1942. The citation told how, under intense anti-aircraft fire, he sank several large escorted enemy vessels, displaying ‘outstanding courage and devotion to duty’.

I also learnt from the RAAF records that in 1986 his cousin, Maude, had claimed his war medals. Staff forwarded to her a letter from me asking about his medals and offering to buy them. The tone of her reply was lukewarm; she’d sold his medals years ago, saying she hardly knew Allan. She did, however, give me some information about another of Allan’s cousins, who lived on the New South Wales Central Coast.

Ian Proctor proved remarkably easy to find. I phoned him and explained that I was Allan’s daughter. In contrast to Maude, he could not have been warmer. A retired BHP engineer, he and his sisters had idolised their older cousin. Ian had been overseas at the time of Allan’s suicide; when he returned, the family was reluctant to discuss the painful tragedy. My unheralded appearance now shed new light on all that.

Ian told me how everything Allan and his parents owned had been left to Maude. He felt sure that the reason for her tepid response to me had been fear that I would claim her inheritance— something that hadn’t even occurred to me. He was angry that she’d disposed of the medals without contacting him; he’d been close to Allan and would have bought them in a trice.

Meanwhile, I had placed ‘information wanted’ ads in various air force and squadron newsletters. Numerous calls and letters produced an array of photos and memories. Without exception, all were flabbergasted to learn of my existence. I listened to the stories of Allan’s old air-force mates as they talked about him in glowing terms. He had been extremely popular for his bonhomie and well respected as an exceptional pilot—the youngest in 459 Squadron. It seemed he was a happy-go-lucky person with a larrikin streak that saw him pull such stunts as flying under powerlines in a Mosquito.

Allan’s former navigator in Wales filled in details for me of the two similar raids for which he’d received his DFC. Both were against convoys of German merchant vessels off the coast of Tobruk, which were, under escort, supplying Rommel’s desert forces. Apparently, Allan flew just above the ocean to avoid enemy radar detection. To maximise the element of surprise, he approached from the direction of a nearby German airfield. In broad daylight, he repeatedly bombed one of the merchant vessels, which was flanked by destroyers, from only masthead height while being fired at. Three Messerschmitts gave chase, but miraculously he managed to escape. Little wonder, I thought, that he later displayed post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms.

I was contacted by a retired pilot who had co-written a DC-4 operations manual with Allan for Qantas. He believed the stress from Allan’s involvement in the pilots’ union and from the pressure of flying the new super constellation airliners was to blame for his suicide. My informant and several of the other senior pilots had also known Egon, and it occurred to me that my two fathers may even have known each other: Egon often flew to Papua New Guinea with Qantas on Department of Civil Aviation business. This potential interconnectedness was mind-boggling, but it was something I’d never know for sure.

However much we argued, Paul was always supportive of my quest to trace Allan’s old friends. It was as if his relationship with Brian was being lived out vicariously through me. Any letters or phone calls were greeted with great excitement, and at such times our daily irritations would melt away. Paul even designed a brochure for the Mosquito Aircraft Association of Australia, which was raising sponsorship for the restoration of a plane at the RAAF base at Point Cook that Allan had flown.

Over the years there continued to be a steady stream of ex-air-force personnel contacting me. Several were convinced that Allan had been involved in clandestine operations after the war. Some of his Qantas friends had hired a boat to search for his body when he died, and they had written letters about his disappearance to various government departments and politicians—to no avail. I was dubious, but nonetheless I wrote to ASIO seeking any file they had on him. They confirmed that none existed.

Only one of Allan’s friends had known about Trudie. He related how, one drunken evening, Allan had revealed his love for a beautiful woman ‘up north’.

I was also learning details of his disappearance. Apparently a fisherman coming into Sydney Harbour saw a body floating face up and tried in vain to recover it. Later he confirmed Allan’s identity from a photo.

Eventually I obtained a copy of the
Daily Mirror
article from which Trudie had learned of Allan’s death. It described his disappearance as a great shock in aviation circles and reported how the police were doing a ‘top secret’ investigation. The interview with Allan’s mother told how ‘she knew of no reason for him to disappear’. I reflected sadly on how Trudie denied his parents the missing jigsaw piece in his suicide puzzle that might have allowed them to make sense of the tragedy.

In 1993 Allan’s old mates from 459 Squadron invited me to visit Sydney for Anzac Day. Paul accompanied me and it was a deeply touching experience as they regaled me with anecdotes of Allan’s antics and achievements. Later Paul and I drove to North Head, where we stood with the ocean four hundred feet below, pondering how he had taken his life there.

Unexpectedly, I received a call from the secretary of the Association of Retired Australian Airline Pilots (ARAAP). He’d been contacted by one of Allan’s mates who had been in Sydney for the Anzac Day march. Passing a militaria shop at Wynyard station, he recognised Allan’s photo and medals taking pride of place in the window. Later he’d seen my ad in the air-force magazine
Wings
.

Armed with the shop’s name, I excitedly phoned and purchased them immediately. Apparently the collection—consisting of Allan’s photo, plus his Department of Defence citation and service record—made them worth thousands of dollars. When the medals arrived, I held the silver cross, with its purple-and-white-striped ribbon, tenderly in my hand. It was an unbelievable stroke of luck to have found them—the only tangible things I had of my father’s.

I rang Trudie, who was overjoyed to hear I’d secured Allan’s DFC and campaign medals. We talked about their relationship, although I had difficulty picturing them as a couple. I wondered what had connected wild, war-weary Allan to this insular religious zealot.

Since my first contact with her, I had spoken to a raft of my cousins—some of whom were themselves adopted—and to my other two aunts, all living in Brisbane. I connected with both aunts: one painted prolifically and penned haiku poetry; the other was an amateur photographer and short-story writer. They were thrilled to embrace me as a member of their family.

Most of all, I was speaking regularly with Auntie Bess, who confided that Trudie was a habitual liar—something I’d already gleaned from my dealings with her. Trudie was also a pathological hoarder: no-one had been inside her house for years—not even Bess, who lived opposite. My aunt said I should thank my lucky stars I had been adopted; she insisted that my relinquishment would have had minimal impact on her sister. Nevertheless, I couldn’t help wondering if the hoarding hadn’t been an emotional reaction to all the loss she’d suffered in her life.

Auntie Bess also explained about Trudie’s teeth—apparently there were still some stumps lodged in her gums which would need to be extracted before dentures could be fitted, but she refused to seek dental treatment. Trudie also neglected her house: the front door was rendered inaccessible by piles of yellowing newspapers and the old weatherboard was riddled with termites. Once, when Trudie was away, my aged aunts had crawled around under the house to assess the termite damage: its floors had rotted and there were gaping holes throughout, over which Trudie had strategically laid planks as walkways.

Bess was sufficiently worried that her sister would fall through the floor of the old Queenslander that she called a health inspector. The house was subsequently condemned and then bulldozed in mid 1993. Trudie immediately moved into a flat with the assistance of some local nuns.