Vicious Acts of Bastardry

The vicious bashings he had received at the hands of his father as a child, more particularly as a young adolescent, had mirrored down his entire life. 

They lifted the spirit from the flesh.

For you could not escape from the lash, or in this case the belt, in this form. 

Not without flying free. 

He had been born, if you like, with the ability to hover over the suburb in his dreams, to see everything in those sleeping caves beneath. Almost at will. 

It had been bashed out of him. Everything had been bashed out of him.

"You have all the characteristics of an abused child," a counsellor come author come temporary mentor had said to him in Bangkok one day. "Terrible things happen to you and you laugh, as if it was happening to someone else."

He shrugged. 

Apart from the bashings it had been a fairly ordinary childhood, he liked to think. 

In truth, there was nothing ordinary about it, out there amidst the rustling trees and that dreadful, interminable silence. 

He never saw his parents laugh. He never saw them cry. The dome of silence contained a terrible threat. 

"I didn't sign up for this," one of the Watchers on the Watch grizzled. 

They knew their own role in the abuse which had speared through into his later years. Funded, some of it, by the same bastard who had tormented his youth. Some of it volunteers. Some of them so-called experts, always on someone else's payroll. Some of them protectors. 

They winnow them out, this separation of soul from body. 

Just as the jihadis had done. Just as the torturers had done. 

In a sense these psychotic bashings had been about something else, something even more primal.

"His father hated John," the woman at the garage said to her husband, and he looked even more wide eyed. They had become family friends. He had told them about the washup of the will. Ninety percent to the second family. Nothing, not even an acknowledgement, of his first wife, the mother of his first three sons. 

"I couldn't do that. I would love all my children equally. I would treat them equally, no matter what," her husband said.

He shrugged. Too many things had already happened. He had destroyed himself as others had destroyed him. It was time to move on. Grasp control of destiny. To spear through another heartland. 

But at the same time he looked in surprise at the garage woman.

"Your mother told me," she explained.

"She's never told anyone," he said.

"She told me. She wasn't happy, what he did to you. You should know that."

Be loyal to your husband. Obey his commands.

Christians. People of the Book. 

"Your father was an asshole."

He shrugged again. It wasn't for him to say. 

He had been one of the pallbearers at the funeral. 

Several of his adult children, the ones he hadn't bashed, were wreathed in tears. 

He walked down the narrow aisle. He held his part. Everything about his father created waves of distress. Next day he was in hospital with out of control blood pressure, heart attack territory. 

Hours later he was finally released. 

And time returned them to a semblance of normality.   

"I am a crowd, I am a lonely man, I am nothing." W.B. Yeats. 


THE BIGGER STORY: 

The Legacy of Turnbull

A storm is brewing in Sydney's fanciest suburbs, where some lifelong Liberal voters have told the ABC they are preparing to break ranks for the first time at the looming Wentworth by-election.

If Dr Phelps wins, the Coalition loses its majority in the House. That would be a massive morale blow to the Government. It is also where things get tricky when it comes to passing legislation, because the Coalition would need to lean on the crossbench for support.This is likely a contest between the Liberals' Dave Sharma and independent candidate Kerryn Phelps.

But even losing Wentworth, the Coalition could still hold control of the House and stay in government.

If the Opposition, the Greens, or a crossbench MP tried to suspend standing orders and throw out the daily agenda to debate something else, they would need an absolute majority of Members voting in favour of the debate — 76 votes.

Even if Labor and the now six crossbenchers, with the addition of new Independent MP for Wentworth Kerryn Phelps, back that push, they are one vote short.

It would require someone like Kevin Hogan, the Nationals MP who decided to sit on the crossbench in protest of the leadership turmoil, to vote against the Government.

It is a long shot that would happen. In effect, such a move would be a vote to topple the Government.