On the Outside

Some 700 kilometres north of the Tropic of Capricorn, the Townsville jail, now Townsville Correctional Centre, has been around in one form or another for over 120 years. It is twelve kilometres west of Townsville, on the way to Julia Creek. The Queensland government first called it Her Majesty’s Penal Establishment at Stewart’s Creek, way back in 1893. In 2004, Darren walked out from behind the barbed-wire-topped fence and waited.

After about fifteen minutes, The Lebo turned up in an old black Ford, a shit-eating grin on his face when he saw Darren. Darren circled the car and pulled open the passenger door laughing out loud, stuck his head in and said, “Good to see you, Lebo!” And they clasped hands together and Darren whooped out loud. The Lebo spun the wheels and they headed for Townsville.

Darren said, “Mate, I’m going to eat take-away food for the rest of my life. Fish and chips, hamburgers, Chiko rolls, McDonald’s, you name it, even bloody Kentucky Fried.” And they laughed together again.

The Lebo owned a house in Stuart Street, North Ward, a suburb of Townsville. It was a two-bedroom Queenslander with a small tropical garden. When he heard Darren was getting out he kicked out the other bloke who had been living there for four months.

They were good mates, The Lebo and Darren; they knew each other from Melbourne. Both of them were twenty-seven years old. They had been to the same private school in Melbourne and had bought an old station-wagon together when they were nineteen, to travel around Australia. Only when they got to Townsville they never went any further. They both found girls and fell in love and they became mates with friends of the girls. Their parents would have called them “the wrong type of people”. Darren got sucked in by them, their stories of violence and stealing and making big money. The Lebo tired of them and convinced his girlfriend to leave them behind. They were trash, he told her. He bought an old three-tonne tip truck and started a rubbish removal business, then learned how to drive a bobcat and a grader, got all his licences and the business went gangbusters and he and Michelle got married. Darren got done for armed robbery and went to jail for ten years but got out with good behaviour in seven. A lot of things changed between 1997 and 2004. Everyone had a mobile phone; almost everyone had a connection to the internet. Townsville was the second-biggest city in Queensland. Darren’s girlfriend had been pregnant when he went inside, only Darren didn’t know it. She got smart like her friend Michelle and The Lebo gave her some money to get away from Townsville so she could start again. She lived in Melbourne now with her seven-year-old daughter.

The Lebo’s parents had scraped and saved their money to put him through private school and they were happy with the way their son had turned out. Even if he wasn’t a professional, he was a good man. And Michelle had loved him but wished he could do some other job, start some new business, something where he didn’t come home covered in dirt every day. He was smart enough to do anything he wanted, she told him, but The Lebo liked getting his hands dirty.

So many things happened in seven years, and people by the time they were twenty-seven or twenty-eight, they had a job if not a career, they might be married or living with their partner, they had cars and maybe even a mortgage. Darren sat at the small round table in The Lebo’s kitchen writing a long letter to his parents telling them he might come down for a holiday. He had been out for three months now, felt like he was becoming used to the world he had left behind and some of the new things he had discovered although he didn’t have an email address yet. He couldn’t understand the urgency of email, why it was so important that you had to contact people so quickly, everything had to be done in a rush. If you were in a hurry, he thought, why not just pick up the phone and not necessarily a bloody mobile one. News went twenty-four hours a day.

His father had come up to see him the day after he got out. His mother had come a week later and hugged him so hard he said to her, “Easy Mum, you’re crushing me.” And they had both laughed and his mum had cried and she didn’t want to know about life on the inside. Darren’s parents had not struggled to send him to a “good school”. They were successful professional people with high-paid careers. Seven years ago they had hoped his wild streak would come to an end, and then came the jail sentence. He had forbidden his mother to come and see him but his father had come many times and helped to keep Darren strong.

He had his outside routine now. He walked the five-minute stroll to the beach and had a swim, pushing himself, trying to trim some of the bulky muscle he had put on in jail. He had pumped iron and worked out so that he could protect himself, so that he might appear intimidating even if he wasn’t. He’d gone in telling himself not to back down but early on he had been beaten viciously by one man. Darren had thought he could handle himself but it was a different world. They would take your eye out with a sharpened toothbrush over a game of cards. He learned by watching others to stay out of trouble, to keep his head down, not to react, to nod and say nothing. He got bigger and tougher from the weights and kept to himself and didn’t take offers of protection because he had been told that you paid for that after you left jail. The $2000 for protection suddenly became twice that when you were released and if you didn’t have the cash then you had to do a robbery. An old pro had told him all this and he took note and shut up.

Darren walked into the mall every day too. Up the big steep hill and down again, getting sweaty as the temperature hit over thirty most days. He took out $20 a day and, once a fortnight, an extra $200 for rent to Ivan. He had given up on the take-away food after about a week and now he bought fresh fruit and vegetables. He told Ivan he was going down south in a few days to visit his mum and dad. They were paying for the return flight.

The day before he was due to leave, Darren was sitting at the kitchen table again, smoking and daydreaming, thinking about having a decent job and a girlfriend, maybe kids one day, but he didn’t really believe it, it was like he had a sign on his forehead that read, prison.

Ivan could see his friend was struggling, his outside routine was a new kind of prison. He told him, “Mate, if I was you. I wouldn’t come back here. I’d leave it all behind. There’s nothing here for you.”

“You might be right.”

“One thing I’ve been meaning to tell you,” Ivan said, and he felt nervous telling his friend, it made his guts twist, “Sandra has a daughter, seven years old, they both live in Melbourne. I reckon you can work out what I’m saying.”

“She’s mine?”

“Yeah, she is. So you know you have to go, mate.” And he handed him Sandra’s address and phone number and said, “Don’t bust in on them, tread carefully and slowly.”

“I will, I will. Thanks Lebo, you’re a real mate.”

“Promise me one thing.”

“Anything, mate.”

“Don’t call me Lebo any more; I reckon we’ve both outgrown that.”

“Of course, sure. Ivan it is, thanks mate, come down and see me when I get settled.”

“No worries, mate. Don’t rush in now, remember, take it slow.”

After Darren had been in Melbourne for three months he stood outside the block of units in Westbury Street, East St Kilda. They looked alright, she must be doing OK. He saw a light go on, and a little girl wearing a pink dressing-gown. Then her mum closed the curtains and Darren turned and went home on the tram. When he called her she denied she had a kid at all, but he followed them both to school one day from a distance. The kid held her mum’s hand and looked up at her every few steps, talking and occasionally smiling, laughing out loud once.

Darren was living in a bungalow in the back garden of his parents’ house in Hawthorn. It was a leafy garden and very spacious. He often sat out on the bottom step of the bungalow and smoked a joint when his parents were at work. He wasn’t released on parole, he was clean, so he had the days and nights to himself, not reporting to anyone, but bored. A couple of times he had borrowed money from his parents with some lame excuse about buying clothes or some such thing. He’d gone and scored speed on Russell Street, and gone out to a club and got drunk and bitter because he couldn’t seem to get close to women, they smelled trouble on him.

His mother was a doctor and his father was a real estate agent and they said they couldn’t really help him get work because of his record, his lack of skills. But then, out of the blue, one day his father came home and went to the back bungalow and called out, “Darren! Darren!”

Darren opened the door and his father was smiling, anxious to share his good news. “What is it, Dad?”

“A friend of mine, well, a work colleague, he says you can work as a handyman. There’s a property manager who looks after all the leased units and houses and he’d tell you what needs to be done.”

“Like what?”

“Tenants ring him up with problems and if you could fix the problems, leaking toilets or small electrical problems, things like that, it would save them money by not getting a tradesman.”

“When did he say I could start?”

“Monday. The man who was doing the job just walked out. You’d be mowing lawns and weeding too, general maintenance.”

Darren came down off the steps and hugged his dad and said, “I needed it, dad. I needed something. He knows about me, though?”

“It’s OK, son. Everyone knows, but it’s a second chance. A new beginning.”

It was Thursday evening and Darren went inside and called Sandra.

“Hello.”

“Hi Sandra, it’s Darren.”

“Hello Darren. I’m not sure why you’re calling. I …”

“I know you have a daughter, my daughter. I saw you take her to school.”

A beat. Two beats.

“Oh! Darren, alright. What are you going to do about it?”

“I want to meet her. Ivan told me she’s my kid.”

“Did he now, well, what do you want to do? Say, ‘Hello Monica, I’m your dad. I’ve been in jail for seven years because I did an armed robbery and got caught and now I’m back’?”

“Can I just meet her? Tell her I’m an old friend of yours from up north when you lived in Townsville. You must have told her you grew up there.”

“Are you working, Darren?”

“I start Monday. I’m a handyman for a friend of my dad’s real estate agency. It’s a chance at a new start.”

“OK, Darren, but not straight away, not now. Give me a week or so to work it out.”

“Great Sandra, that’s great. Where do you work?”

“I’m a nurse now, at Cabrini Hospital. I work in palliative care. I owe a lot to Ivan. My parents are glad I’m here too, away from that mob, they come down twice a year.”

He gave her the phone number for the bungalow. “Call me when you think it’ll be OK. She’s beautiful, Sandra, like you, I saw her smiling at you on your way to school.”

“OK, OK, take it easy, Darren. You’re not her dad, remember that, you’re just a friend. I’ll call you in a week. Don’t follow me to school, it gives me the creeps.”

“No, no, I won’t.”

And Sandra laughed and said, “You always were a strange one.”

A week and a bit went by. Darren was enjoying the job. He went to the office first thing in the morning and then he was out all day, mowing lawns and whipper-snipping and changing batteries in smoke detectors and cleaning up units after tenants have left. The property manager was only about twenty-two but a nice guy. They talked about the football or good films and he gave Darren the daily “fix-it” list and then he’d be off. He had the use of a car and trailer but he had to return them at the end of the day. He wasn’t able to thank his dad enough and his mother was pleased he was finally off to work and back to some kind of normal life.

Sometimes he woke up sweating in the middle of the night, turned on the light and took a look around and he could see he wasn’t in jail any more. No more heavy keys and violent, dangerous men. He still had nightmares about the bashing he got when he first went in to Townsville Correctional Centre.

Sandra called him two weeks after she said she would. He thought she wasn’t going to, had almost given in to the notion that she wouldn’t ring and then she did and he said, “Work’s good. I’m out in the ute all day, only go in the office first thing, so, um …”

“You can come over Friday night. I finish work at three. I’ll pick up Monica and you should drop in around four, but don’t stay for dinner. Leave before five-thirty.”

“Great, that’s great, four o’clock. What did you say to her?”

“Just what we said, that you’re Darren, a friend of mine from Townsville.”

Darren wasn’t all that nervous when he knocked on the door, and the nerves totally left him when Monica opened the door and said, “Hello.”

“Hi, I’m Darren, a friend of your mum’s.”

“She said you were coming,” Monica said, and opened the door wider.

He smiled at her and she grinned back and he walked in and Sandra hugged him and kissed him on the cheek and said, “This is my daughter, Monica. Monica, this is Darren, a friend from Townsville.”

“Hi,” she said and put out her hand and Darren shook her hand and a tear ran down his cheek but he quickly brushed it aside.

“I play cricket,” she said. “I have a cricket bat. Do you want me to get it?”

“Yeah, sure, that would be great.”

Sandra smiled at him and said, “Girls never played cricket when I was at school in Townsville. It was netball or handball at lunchtime, maybe some skipping,” and she laughed at herself and Darren laughed nervously and she asked him, “How’s your job? You’re like a maintenance man.”

“Yeah, it’s good. It keeps me busy, the days go quickly, probably get a bit tougher in a month or so when summer starts.”

“You’re probably right. What do you do outside of work?”

Monica walked back in with her cricket bat and Darren was surprised to see it was a real one, not plastic or something. He said, “Can I have a look?” and picked it up and played a few straight drives and then a leg glance and Monica laughed and he played a cut shot and she laughed again and he said, “Hey, this is a beauty, how about we go over to the park in Alma Road one day and have a hit?”

“Yes, can I Mum, would it be OK?”

Darren watched Sandra’s face. This clearly wasn’t part of the plan and Sandra brushed imaginary crumbs off her lap and her face was red but she looked at Monica and said, “Sure, sweetie, one day next week.” Then she looked at Darren and said, “You have to keep your promises though, Darren, no getting out of this one.”

Sandra made tea for them and Monica talked about cricketers she liked and then Darren and Sandra talked about music and he asked her, “Do you like the White Stripes?”

“Not really, but the guy is good looking. I like the Black Eyed Peas and Monica likes ‘Hey Ya’ by Outkast.”

Everything went well and he left before dinner but said he’d come and get Monica on Wednesday afternoon for cricket in the park.

Darren went back to work happy. He thought it was the first time since he went in all those years ago that he had actually been happy. No, he was kind of happy for those first few days he got out in Townsville, just laughing and talking with Ivan, but not like this, with the promise of good times to come.

He bought Monica some pads and cricket gloves and they played in the park with a rubber ball. She was really quite good and she ran between wickets and put a stick in the ground where the boundary was and he made sure he bowled a few balls that she could hit for four. After small talk back at Sandra’s flat he asked her about her work and she described caring for people who were soon to die. How most people face it bravely but some wither away quickly, tired of life, tired of fighting to stay alive but beautiful and noble in death. She said it was sad to see people so helpless, but very rewarding, that the families were so appreciative of the work she did. Darren couldn’t believe how different she was. She still had the dark hair and blue eyes but there was some steel in those eyes now. Sandra asked him to stay to dinner and he asked her if she had a boyfriend and she said no. He read to Monica in bed before she fell asleep.

One afternoon he took Monica around to meet his parents and his mother spoiled her rotten and his parents could see the girl was their son’s daughter, the hair and eyes and the smile on her face, but they didn’t say anything.

At school one day, Monica was talking to her friend Christie, telling her about her mum’s friend Darren from Townsville, and Christie said, “My mum told my dad that Darren is your dad and that he was in jail. That he’s a criminal!”

“No, he’s not, he’s not,” Monica said.

“He is, he was in jail. He hurt someone and went to jail.” Monica ran out of the school yard and out to Alma Road down the footpath at a hundred miles an hour crying as she went and she turned into Westbury Street and fell over and cut her left knee but got up still crying and ran up the stairs to the flat banging on the front door and crying and her mum answered, wondering what happened. She hugged her little girl and patted her hair and Monica blurted it all out through tears and Sandra told her how cruel people can be sometimes.

“Don’t worry about Christie, she didn’t mean to hurt you, she’ll say sorry tomorrow. I’ll call her mum and smooth things over.”

“But what about Darren! What about all those things she said? Is he my dad?”

Sandra took a deep breath and ran her hand over Monica’s back and said, “Yes, he’s your dad. You like him, don’t you?”

“Yeah, but Christie said he hurt someone, that’s why he went to jail.”

Darren walked slowly up the stairs and knocked on the door and this time he was nervous. Sandra opened the door and he nodded his head and said, “Hi.”

“Come in,” she said and ran her hand down his right arm. “She’s in her room. She’s waiting for you.”

He walked down the hallway and into her room. She was lying on her bed and reading a book. She had her dad’s black hair and brown eyes. She looked up and said, “Hi Darren.”

“Hi to you too.”

“I don’t care what Christie said about you. Mum explained to me that everyone makes mistakes and that everyone deserves a second chance.”

He knelt down and hugged her and said, “That’s a very grown-up thing for you to say, you’re a very smart girl.”

“Can I call you Dad?”

“Sure, sure you can.”

“Did you really hurt someone? Is that why you went to jail?”

“No, I didn’t hurt anyone. The people I was with did and they got punished for it too.”

The rain fell heavily against the window. Monica said, “I’m going to read my book. I like reading when it’s raining outside.” She climbed back up on the bed and started reading again and Darren walked back into the kitchen and sat at the kitchen table.

Sandra said, “You’re not going to like this but I want you to back off. I mean that you can’t come around here every week any more. I might have to take her out of school, send her somewhere else. I was going to try and send her to private school when she turned ten but I might have to do it now. You’re going to have to back right off, Darren.”

“But she said …”

“She’s a kid, Darren. A fucking seven-year-old kid,” she hissed at him through her teeth. “You did an armed robbery, a violent crime, she’s going to find out.”

“I was the driver. That’s all I was. I drove the car. Milo and Trevor stormed into the TAB. They pistol-whipped people. I was sitting out in the car but the fucking judge treated me the same as them. Like I was a violent criminal. All I did was drive the bloody car.”

“I want you to leave, Darren. I want you to leave right now. Don’t call me any more.”