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David Harcourt
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Posted: 2 Sep 2009 10:53 pm |
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Last night I dreamt about my father again.
What made this dream so remarkable is that it is more than 25 years since he died. Thinking about the dream this morning, it occurred to me that there are probably no more than half a dozen people still alive who have intense memories of him extending over decades. And of those half dozen I suspect that I have more, and more vivid, memories of him than all the rest of them put together.
Perhaps this is why I still dream about him. Soon virtually no trace of him will remain: his will be merely an unkown, handsome face in an old photograph. No-one will remember whose photograph it is, let alone the fact that it was taken when the worst adventure in his life, and in the life of his young wife, was about to begin.
His name was John Milne Harcourt. He was 70 years old when he died in 1984, very abruptly, having survived several major illnesses, including throat cancer.
Most of what follows is remembered family history. I can't vouch for some of the facts. All I can vouch for are statements which relate directly to me. They are the unadorned truth.
John was born in Fiji in 1914 and was a good student, becoming dux of the leading primary school. In about 1926 his father - my grandfather - decamped to South Africa with a secretary, abandoning his wife and two children. John was sent to board at Wanganui Collegiate in New Zealand.
I know nothing of his history from that point until the Second World War, when he enlisted and was posted to the Middle East with the Second NZEF. In 1942 he was captured and was missing in action for more than a year. My mother did not learn that he had survived until she received advice of this from the Papal Nuncio in Sydney. I have always regretted not asking her to describe this period and in particular the moment when she learned that John was alive, but one hesitates to ask about what must have been some of the most painful and the most exquisite moments in another person's life.
John was sent to Italy by submarine with other New Zealand officers, and spent the rest of the war in Italian and German prisoner of war camps. He related only two memories from his period as a POW. Both were about food:
* In Italy, he told us, for long periods he and other prisoners were surviving on a diet of five prunes a day.
* With other prisoners from Wellington, he used to reminisce for hours about the meals at the Green Parrot Cafe in Wellington. After the war, he would take us to the Green Parrot at least once a year, in memory of those dreadful days. I still do this with my family now, as a kind of remembrance, and expression of thanks for John's survival (and, hence, my and my family's existence).
John returned to New Zealand shortly after the end of the war, and I - the first of four sons - was born in June 1946. Three more sons were born before he and Hazel stopped trying to have a daughter.
It's hard not to conclude that my parents were not very keen on, or interested in, their children. My family had a live-in maid - this was common among the New Zealand middle classes immediately after the War - so the demands of motherhood cannot have been as great as they would be today, with a family of similar size. And yet I was sent to boarding school here in Wellington when I was four years old, and I think my next brother, Michael, was also sent to boarding school, although at a later age. The third brother was sent to the same school, but as a day boy, and was expelled for leading a protest against the wearing of caps. After that, the experiment with private education was abandoned.
John was a stockbroker in Wellington from the 1950s through to his retirement in the 1970s. There were some bad patches, but in the main we were very well off. We lived with our maid - May, was her name: I can remember only that she was forever cooking us sausages in an incandescently bright yellow curry sauce, served with boiled white rice - in a large Chapman Taylor house in Ngaio. Later, we moved to 31 Central Terrace in Kelburn, where the harbour views from the bank of windows all around the front of the house were unbelievably spectacular, particularly at night.
This was of course before the buildings of Victoria University sprang up everywhere and spoiled such views. I have missed that view all my adult life, and have always longed to buy a house with a view of the harbour so I can once again have that intense pleasure of constant connection with the sea and the busy life on it. But I have never been able to afford this.
Captain John Harcourt, Libya, 23 November 1941:
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 3 Sep 2009 12:16 am |
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So far, so anodyne. Here is everything I can remember about John and me; things he did or said to me, or said within my hearing (I'm a good listener):
* He despised Field Marshal Montgomery. He never said why.
* He hated Captain Charles Upham VC. He never said why.
* He once asked me to recommend a book to him to read - the only occasion on which he ever made such a request. I lent him Whisky Galore by Compton Mackenzie. He hated it.
* The tenor Mario Lanza was very popular during my childhood; the 1950s version of the three tenors. My father hated him, and expressed pleasure and approval when the news was announced in 1959 that Lanza had died of a heart attack at the early age of 39. I have always assumed John hated Lanza because he was Italian, but I could have been wrong.
* He hated Ron Jarden (the ex-All Black who established a stockbroking business in Wellington and was, therefore, I suppose, a business rival). He never said why.
* When I was about eight years old we went to see John’s uncle Stan at the latter’s farm at Upper Hutt. There were amazing stone walls throughout the farm, made from river stones. There were beehives, which were completely fascinating. I remember watching a bee sting Stan and him brushing the bee away unconcernedly. “Didn’t that hurt?” I asked. “No,” he said. “After you’ve been stung as often as I have you don’t feel it any more.” Stan gave his farm to the Upper Hutt City Council, and it is now known as Harcourt Park. We had a wonderful time there, as far as I can remember. Many years later John mentioned Stan. "How I hated that man," he said. He never said why.
* One of John’s friends married "an Indian princess". He thought this was appalling. (The problem appeared to be with the ethnicity of the lady.)
* A friend in Taupo had a Maori girlfriend. John thought this was disgraceful. (Same problem?)
* He hated taxi drivers. I asked why. “They sit on their backsides all day,” John said. I remember thinking that this was a very amusing response. After all, what did stockbrokers do all day except sit on their backsides? Did they tango about the office all day? Did they run to and from work? I never dared to make this impertinent observation, of course. It would have been more than my life was worth.
* In December 1963 two men - John Gillies and Ronald Jorgensen - were arrested for the "Bassett Road Murders": the machine-gun killing of two men who had been dealing in black market liquor. It emerged during their trial that immediately after the arrest of Gillies and Jorgensen a party of six policemen had taken the two prisoners to an isolated spot and beaten them up. John told us that he strongly approved of the police action, but gave no explanation for this view.
* We went duck shooting one year and John got very wet. I lent him a pair of my jeans, and laughed when I saw him in them. He looked so casual for a change; so different from his usual buttoned-up self. “Now you know how you look like,” he snarled.
* I didn't see John for a couple of years after my wife and I divorced. When I met him next he hissed "Divorcee!" at me and would say nothing else. I can still see his face as he said it. Of course, he was drunk at the time, but then he was drunk a lot of the time in those days.
* We were at the Karori shops once – I was ten or twelve years old - when I dropped a penny on the ground. It rolled away under a car. “Aren’t you going to pick that up?” John asked. “But it’s only a penny,” I said incautiously. John hit me, hard, on the head with his fist. Dazed and crying, I got down, crawled under the car, and retrieved the penny.
* My brothers and I frequently misbehaved, despite draconian punishments. The one I can remember most vividly – although I no longer remember the offence which led to the punishment – is being beaten with a heavy wooden coathanger until it broke on me, at which point John decided that I’d had punishment enough, or lost interest in the process, I can't remember which. [And see last entry, added on 20 May, 2010.]
* When I was about 14 John got very drunk one night – i.e. even more drunk than usual – and had a blazing row with Hazel, at the conclusion of which he struck her. (She was also very drunk.) She fell to the ground, screaming and weeping. I went up to John and told him that he was an utter failure both as a husband and as a father. I think I spoke for about two minutes: I had plenty to say on the subject. When I finished I stood there waiting for the blows to fall. Instead, and to my horror, John burst into tears. The incident was never referred to again but a month or so afterwards I was sent back to boarding school, and remained there for the rest of my school years. The day after school ended I went to Australia for three months, so apart from the school holidays (which were very grim affairs) I effectively left home in 1959, when I was thirteen.
* I can never remember my father showing any affection towards me; not even when I was a small child. Not one kiss. Not one hug. Not one kind word. Not one word of approval for anything I had ever done. Ever, in my whole life.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 3 Sep 2009 12:46 am |
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Yes, I do realise that there's nothing particularly remarkable about any of this.
Lots of people have grim childhoods, and I am fully aware that my father's generation suffered through two of the worst crises in the past century: the Depression and the Seond World War.
Naturally, when they found that, in spite of all the odds, they had survived these appalling trials, they set out to enjoy themselves. They went to parties, or hosted parties of their own, several nights a week. They drank heavily - and mainly gin (especially gin), whisky and brandy, not beer. In my parents' case, there were twenty years - from about 1950 to about 1970 - when, virtually every day of the year, they were drunk. Often they very drunk: falling down on the floor drunk. They smoked incessantly. They ate badly. They got no outdoor exercise of any kind. They had views on race, the rights of children and other issues which - thank goodness - now seem completely alien. Hitting children as a form of catharsis, let alone as a means of correcting what was perceived to be errant behaviour, was the norm. Sending a child of four to boarding school was perfectly acceptable parental behaviour.
This, in short, was the 1950s.
What is remarkable about all of this - at least to me - is that I loved my father, and that twenty-five years after his death I still have amazingly vivid dreams about him every few weeks. These dreams invariably involve strongly positive feelings about him. After them, I always feel once again and with very nearly the same intensity the terrible sense of loss which I felt on that day in 1984 when I heard of his death.
How incredibly strange is this? After all, John never liked me, let alone loved me. Did my brother Michael, I wonder, have the same kind of feelings about John that I did? Would Michael have committed suicide, leaving behind a wife and two young children, if he had been raised in a family in which the father was someone who could show affection to his children?
Truly, we humans are a very, very odd species.
However, I have digressed enough. Here is what I dreamt last night:
I am in a hotel or similar public establishment. My daughter is there, and someone else I can't identify. I hear a noise, and go to the window. My father is standing there, looking into the room. I come right up to the window, a few inches from his face, and tap on the glass. He tries for a few moments to focus on me, but fails. I go outside and find him lying on the ground. He seems to be very drunk. I take his hand and he gets slowly to his feet. "We have to go to the car," I say. Then we begin to walk up the hill, hand in hand, my father and me.
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David Harcourt
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Posted: 19 May 2010 10:26 pm |
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I have received several emails about this thread. One section which has attracted particular attention is this:
My brothers and I frequently misbehaved, despite draconian punishments. The one I can remember most vividly – although I no longer remember the offence which led to the punishment – is being beaten with a heavy wooden coathanger until it broke on me, at which point John decided that I’d had punishment enough, or lost interest in the process, I can't remember which.
The emails which I have received have suggested, more or less directly, that my memory must be playing false with me. This is because, in the view of those who have written to me, the behaviour described sounds more like an episode from Nicholas Nickleby or David Copperfield, rather than a truthful recollection of life in New Zealand in the 1950s.
Yesterday, I came across an email from one of my younger brothers, sent to me in September 2006 - three years before I wrote the above. Part of it reads as follows:
I do recall clearly having to watch you or Mike getting those coat-hangers broken on your outstretched hands in the kitchen. By the back door, between the Bendix top-loading dishwasher and that strange hot-rolling clothes press, it was in daylight.
I remember Mike came home for the weekend from Scots - he arrived for Saturday roast lunch, sometime with a friend I think. After lunch we would sometime sit around and listen to the cricket - it was sunny and summer. We did play some cricket games with a tennis ball in that little back yard. Dad used to fall into bed early and then on Sundays he would pull out some weeds and leave them on the curved concrete path and fall back into bed on Sunday afternoon. Saturday mornings - leading up to what I always felt was Mike the star coming home - were the only times I knew he [John] would be sober and available for any requests.
They sometimes spoke of "parking" Mike rather than have him home - I would have been about 8-10 when all this was going on.
The winters were always cold in there.
I also remember a time standing in the kitchen/hallway door shielding young Tony (I was probably 12 or 13) while Mum and Dad raged and finally Mum threw a pot of hot uneaten dinner right at Dad's head - he ducked.
Oh - one thing to add re Dad's war was that he hated Selwyn Toogood. Said he was a fat, selfish bastard during the prisoner of war camps. Actually I have a few of his war stories stored in memory...
The "Mike" in this recollection was Michael, my younger brother. He was very much the favourite of my parents until my younger brothers became interesting to them. Michael committed suicide many years ago now. I have often wondered about the connection, if any, between Michael's last misery and the nature of his upbringing.
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