Harry’s Secret

Inspired by Mark Tedeschi Eugenia

The truth of what happened to his mother, Annie, should have come out in the court case, later, but it all got distracted by one rather flashy detail so that, years later, some people still wondered. But not the boy.  He never had any doubts about her fate, and exactly who was to blame.

Right from the start he’d never really like Harry Crawford.  No, that’s not strictly true.  You see, his own father had been dead a good few years by the time his mother started work as housekeeper up at the country property of Dr Clarke in Wahroonga.  There was a coachman there, Harry Crawford, short, stocky, quiet.   He had a reputation as a bit of a drinker, bit of a ladies’ man, but all that seemed to ebb away as he spent more time with Annie.  Annie might be servant, but anyone could see she was a lady.

But the boy – he was about ten at the time – he wasn’t fooled. He knew his mother was being bullied.  This man just kept hanging round, ruining her reputation, till she had no choice but to marry him - when she must have much rather kept things the way they were, with just him, just her own boy. 

Not that Crawford didn’t hide his plans in a show of friendliness, often driving them all out in the doctor’s sulky to picnic spots like Lane Cove.  And those outings were pleasant, no denying it. Of course they stopped once Harry and Annie were married.

Was the marriage a success? people asked him afterwards.  But how does a boy know, especially a boy in the years of the First World War?  What he knows is that that grownups have their reasons and it isn’t for him to go around questioning.  Certainly there were fights, fights that got worse when their little shop failed, and better when Harry got a new job, pretty much as you would expect.  Neighbours would see Harry and Annie strolling arm-in-arm together around Balmain, with their pet names and their calm smiles.  Later – much later – he remembered his mother seemed satisfied in the mornings, if not exactly radiant.  No stress there.  Or none that a boy could have, or would have, noticed. 

But then Josephine came to live with them.  One day she just appeared, a 16 year old girl at their door.  Wild.  Beautiful.  Trouble.  Harry told Annie this girl was his daughter.

“Daughter?  We’ve been married three years and you’ve never mentioned any daughter before!”

His wife wanted answers but Harry just retreated into himself – and from there it’s a short step to retreating into a bottle.  It was left to Annie to deal with Josephine going out and coming in at all hours.  And of course you know the script of stepmother and step daughter whenever Annie tried to discipline the girl.  And Harry just keeping all his efforts at discipline for the boy – and you know that script too, about the need for a man’s firm hand, etc.

Not a happy home.

Harry and the boy working in the backyard, few words between them.  But more than enough floating out the back door from the women folk.

“Where are you going now?  Not to the docks again? You mark my words, girl, you’ll meet with nothing but trouble with the sailors and the like if you hang about there.”

“You do know my father was at sea, don’t you?  Anyway, all I’m doing is looking at the ships…somebody told me once that my father was a captain on a ship with four masts.”

“Dreams and nonsense, girl.  Your father was never anything more than a sailor.  He told me so himself.”

Harry’s voice was heard outside but none of them could see him properly.  He spoke directly to his daughter.

“A captain on a ship…that’s a man with power.  They don’t always treat people right though.  Maybe they beat them or lock them up, do bad things to them.  A captain…could be a violent man.  A person could end up sorry they ever met him.”

But Josephine paid little attention to what he said, then or ever. 

The last fight was when Josephine announced she was pregnant.  She didn’t know who the father was. Harry left to get drunk but the two women  - well, you can imagine the row that followed:  a back-to-front fight starting loud but ending quiet – hissed words and a slammed door.  That was the last the boy saw of his step sister till he was 17.

After she left, the fights stopped. It was years later before he saw that things were not so much better as -  different.  Something was missing besides the anger.  His mother holding herself in, closed as the case Harry kept stashed in the bathroom.  No fights.  No smiles.  No strolling arm-in-arm.  Indeed, no touching at all.  Much better as far as Annie’s son could see.  After all, if they had to live with Harry, this was the best it could be.

On the Labour Day weekend in October 1917, the boy, fourteen years old now, was allowed to spend the holiday with a friend, a rare treat.   His mother and step father both seemed less on edge than they’d been for the last, what was it – six month? since Josephine left.  The boy was keen to be on his way, shying away from the hand his mother rested on his shoulder.  But what would they do with him not there?  Usually, he thought that people stopped existing when he was not in the room with them but today he wondered…ah, but they’re going on a picnic to Lane Cove River Park, just like in the old days of their courtship, but alone this time, uninterrupted.   Harry had even taken Friday off work before the crowds thronged into the Park.  They both smiled at the boy, reassuring, real enough – but their teeth did not show.

On Saturday night the boy returned home.  The little house was mostly in darkness and he followed the light into the kitchen.  There sat his stepfather at the table, bottle and glass close at hand.  He did not look at the boy.

“Your mother?  She’s gone to stay with her sister.  It’s late now.  Go to bed.”

In the morning Harry Crawford was clearly still feeling the effects of drink.  He barely spoke to the boy, though he could hear him moving furniture around.  Clouds had gathered by the afternoon when they had their first conversation.

“The thing is, your mother’s left me. Run off with a plumber, gone to Queensland.  Best we go to a boarding house, get a woman to cook for us.”

The rain had definitely set in by the time they’d reached the house in Waverley, on the eastern side of the harbour, where the ocean waits at the Heads.  Harry told the boy they would go for a walk.  He held a large bag in his hands.  The landlady objected – fancy dragging the poor boy out in this weather, the very idea, he’ll catch his death of cold – but Harry snarled at her for interfering and set off in the dark, the boy trailing behind through the wet bush, dimly moonlit, gusty, grim, rain meshing with the sound of the ocean waves smashing against South Head.   The two of them trudged on wordlessly until Harry came to an abrupt stop.  He opened the bag and took out a spade.  The boy was to dig a hole.

Well, he dug and he dug but it was sandy, rocky, hardly the place for a hole, whatever you needed it for.  He said he was tired and sick of digging.  So Harry dug for a while but the hole stayed shallow, not worth all their efforts.

Harry put the spade back inside the bag and led them on, on, on until he reached the clear land at the top of South Head.  The wind was stronger there as it swooped toward the sea.  They walked down the path alongside The Gap, where the cliffs – last sight of so many souls blighted with the sin of despair – sheered down to the ocean.  A fence – not really enough to stop anyone – marked the path off from the rocks.  Harry grinned broadly.

“Here’s a fine thing!  Let’s have a look at this, son.”

He climbed through the fence and urged the boy to join him, there on the edge of The Gap.  The boy stayed on the path.  Eventually Harry stopped, his grin slid into the sea, and he came back.  They both returned, dripping, to the house, with not another word spoken.

When the boy came home from school the next day, his stepfather thrust a newspaper at him, open at a photo of a woman’s shoes. Harry wanted the boy to read the article to him, something he had often had to do for his illiterate stepfather before.

“Woman’s body found in Lane Cove bush, partially burned.  Not yet identified.  Patched shoes and necklace only clues for police.”

Harry stood and walked round the table while the boy was reading.  Walked to the back door, back, took up the paper, stared at the photo, thrust it back at the boy.  Left the house.

The furniture from the house in Balmain had been sold. Harry told the men who collected it that he needed the money to give his wife.  He’d seen her at a dance hall with some strange man, and she was coming to get the money from him by the end of the week.  But he used the furniture money to pay rent at the boarding house.

This odd new life continued for a few weeks.  The boy’s mother did not return.  She did not even write to him.    Then all of a sudden Harry announced he had managed to find the boy an apprenticeship where he could live in.  Within a matter of weeks both his parents were gone from his life.

But such is life, right?  You endure, you keep going.  That particular room of memories was locked.  Until the day in 1920 when his step sister Josephine returned with the key to it all, so pleased to see him all grown up, ready to clear away the old misunderstandings and start afresh.

“You’re 17, old enough to hear what I told your mother – though that was an accident . All the time I was living there he kept at me to say nothing, to keep his secret.  And I always meant to, right up until that last day with your mother, when it just spilt out. You have to admit, ours was an odd sort of family .  How could it be otherwise when the man of the house, your fine stepfather Harry Crawford, husband to your mother, is not a real man.  Her name is Eugenia Falleni.  She’s my mother.”