Nobody's Fault by Derek Haines (rm book recommendations txt) 📕

the can.
With dinner complete, albeit because their fingers, hands and arms were sore from bashing cans with rocks, and not from being replete, the cold of the night started to have an effect. One last discovery was that a pullover, jacket or blanket would have come in very handy. As they shivered, they agreed that this trip to Sydney had not started all that well. The laughing fit they had, helped them forget the cold for a few minutes. Through the trees they could see the highway. West, 20 miles to Perth, east, 2680 miles to Sydney. After what seemed like all night, but more likely a few hours of shivering, David suggested they try again another day. Both boys strode off defiantly. Happy in their consoling excuse that they had run out of smokes anyway. Towards the highway they strode to hitch a lift back to Perth.
The police car and two constables who had been despatched to have a quick look for a couple of teenage runaways in the National Park did not notice the two lads. They would have had to have been quick in locating them, as for just once today the boy’s luck was in. No sooner had David popped his thumb out to hitch a lift, a car pulled over. The second slice of luck was that the driver, an elderly gentleman, was heading to Perth from a close by country town to see his daughter. He liked to avoid the traffic of the city by arriving very early in the morning. The boys hid their surprise when he told them it was 4.30am. His destination of Cottesloe was the last slice of luck to make up for a bad day. The man’s route to Cottesloe passed both boys' houses. Both were dropped at their front doors.
The police were advised of their safe return. David avoided a long questioning by his relieved but angry parents by going to bed. His mate got a belting from his father.
The next morning, David’s father accompanied him to the local police station. The Sergeant on duty explained to David the dangers he had placed himself in. He also explained what a waste of bloody time he had created. His officers had better things to do than look for runaways. Smiling as only a police sergeant seems to be able to do, with clenched teeth and cold piercing eyes, he told David about how this sort of behaviour could lead to big trouble with the police in future. David looked at his shoes to avoid the Sergeant’s eyes, and waited for the lecture to finish. When it had, he left with his father. David fully clammed up. The rest of the day he put up with his parents questioning. ‘Why did you do it son?’ they asked over and over. David’s answer was ‘I dunno.’
Although this answer did not satisfy them, they would probably have been worried even more so if they knew this was the truth. David just did it because it seemed like a good idea. He honestly had no idea what he was reacting to in running away. He just wanted to run. And did.
He went back to school for a few weeks. Part time as usual. At the mid point of the year, David abandoned the little time he attended school. A few of his mates joined him. To their surprise, it took three months for anyone to notice their absence and for anything to happen. When it did, some sanity would start to return to David’s life. He wasn’t a bad kid. Just lost, lonely and directionless.
It was towards the end of the school year, David’s third year at high school, that it was noticed by the school that he was missing.
Accompanied by his mother and father one Tuesday morning late in October 1971, David sat with his parents in the high school office waiting to see the deputy headmaster. David did not like him. The deputy headmaster’s feeling for David was mutual. For some reason David felt no fear. He just wanted to get this over. ‘Here comes another fucking lecture.’ he thought to himself. Once in the office, he turned off to the conversation his worried parents were having with the deputy headmaster. The deputy head felt compassion and sympathy for these obviously worried parents. David looked out the window at the group of students having a smoke behind the tennis courts. He wondered if it was only he who could see the kids with their cigarettes, and the obvious plumes of smoke, through the green cyclone wire of the tennis courts. ‘Surely the deputy headmaster had noticed this.’ he thought. ‘If he hadn’t he must be stupid.’ he pondered. ‘But he must see it. It’s so bloody obvious. So he must know about it, and does nothing to stop it. He must just……’
David’s thoughts were broken as his attention was caught by the word cane, mentioned by the deputy headmaster. His parents had been informed of what was going to happen. The deputy headmaster now explained it to David. Now that he had his attention.
‘David young fellow,’ he started, ‘I have decided to administer six strokes of the cane to you. Following this, you will leave this school with your parents, and you will not be welcomed back should you decide to continue your fourth year. You can however, sit for your Junior Examination in November. Judging by the little amount of school you have attended, it may be a waste of time, but you have this option.’
With this, the deputy headmaster rose from his chair, took a cane from the water filled cane holder in the corner, and flexed it a few times to check its subtlety. ‘Over here lad.’ he ordered in a strangely gentle voice. ‘Hand out. Right hand first.’ While his parents watched on he administered three stinging cracks across David’s right hand. His palm immediately swelled and went a livid colour. ‘Left hand lad.’ he almost whispered. And delivered the final three cuts. He sat back in his chair, looked at David’s parents and said, ‘I wish you well, thank you for coming. Good morning to you.’
David left with his distressed parents.
There was little to be said. And little was said for a few days. David kept to himself. In his room most of the time. To him, being banished from the school meant losing his friends, again. Fifteen years old is a very early age to recognise a pattern of loss in one’s life. David felt it. His friends from high school were scattered over the city, and even though he still saw a few friends in his area from his primary school days, they were adrift from him with their longstanding friends. They were merely acquittances now. He felt very alone. His only friend, who would listen to his torment was his violin. And it would cry for him. It saved him from having to do this himself.
As David would remember later in life, his father was sparing with advice. He was about to receive his first of very few words of wisdom from his father, but later in life he would look back on a few rare occasions that he was offered them, and cherish and value each occasion. His father’s advice was simple, and delivered quietly over breakfast a few mornings after the caning. ‘Son,’ he said, ‘get a job. If you can’t, go back to school until you can find one. Once you have a job you are on you own. So, if that’s what you want, to be independent, start looking. An apprenticeship would be a good start in life.’
The lecture ended. Short and sweet. But for some reason, effective.
David attended the Junior Examination at his now banished High School. In January when the results came by mail, he had his certificate. He had passed all subjects. In doing so his parents must have wondered what he could have achieved if he had applied himself to his studies. Within a couple of weeks he had secured an apprenticeship with a large plumbing company, and had enrolled himself into night school for two subjects for his tertiary entrance subjects, english and mathematics.
During the next year, David passed his English tertiary exam, and was not altogether disappointed with forty-seven percent for his maths exam. His maths teacher had died suddenly after the sixth week of the course. He was a young man in his thirties, and had been a celebrated local footballer. Even though he was a teacher, and David had only known him a short time, his death was upsetting for David. The class had twelve relief teachers for the rest of the year. No one else in his class passed either. He considered doing the course again the following year, but didn’t.
His job was interesting and he learned quickly. Being indentured as an apprentice, he had basically signed his young life away for five years, and the owner of the company was a disciplinarian. The days had yet to arrive when it became incorrect to give a cheeky apprentice a clip around the ear. David only copped a couple, but he knuckled down to his job and his studies at technical college for the theory part of his apprenticeship. In the first two years he was top of his technical college class. By the time he reached his fourth year, he was nominated for apprentice of the year by the state industry body. He won. His prize was a seven day trip to Sydney, to visit factories and businesses within his industry. Travelling with a similar winner from Adelaide, the two young men laboured through their days of factory visits (although David was struck by how much bigger and busier industry was in Sydney), but relished the excitement at night of a city so alive with entertainment and life. To David, who had lived half his life in the isolation of country towns, and the other half in an isolated small city, Sydney was exhilarating, exciting, alive, and very, very big. It was an exciting week. He did tire of people he met being surprised to meet someone from Perth, and repetitively saying, ‘Oh I have heard that is a wonderful place. I have always wanted to go there. But it’s so far.’ On arriving home, he felt the isolation.
David had a girlfriend and a car. He was nineteen, earning good money, was living at home with his parents and sister. Outwardly he was settled and responsible and making a good start to life after a rebellious period in his mid teens. Only David was aware of a growing urge to run gathering in his gut. From an early age David had been possessed by an urge to run. To nowhere in particular, and from nothing in particular. It was just a feeling. A sensation of being bound and trapped on all sides. Not a physical entrapment. It was in his mind and gut. The feeling could manifest itself to run from a place, person, feeling, situation, or later in life relationships and responsibilities.
The first outward manifestation of this feeling came at a young age. Little more than seven years old, he rode his bicycle out the front gate. He knew he was not allowed to ride his bike out of the yard surrounding his house, because he had understood his parent’s warnings about the dangers of the road and motor cars. Heading these warnings, he rode on the footpath. Within 200 yards of home on his great escape he suffered the misfortune of a flat tyre. Noticing his absence from her vantage point at the kitchen window, his mother despatched his father to look for him. He found him within a minute, a forlorn little figure sitting by his prostrate bicycle. His