My father’s elder brother was one of twins: one called Edward Donald and the other Donald Edward. One died, no-one is sure which one, as they were monozygotic; however they decided it must have Donald and the remaining one was called Edward.
From the very beginning my father found his brother to be difficult. Eddy teased my father and in general appeared to make his life difficult when he was at home. Eddy was very intelligent, but like some people who are very intelligent he could not stay at anything and went “bad”, spending some time in a children’s’ home for the wicked.
My father tells the story of Eddy teasing him by waking him every hour or so when he was trying to sleep when he was a late teenager with the question “would he like some pineapple?” This was teasing of a particularly brutal kind, akin to water torture. My father finally snapped and beat him up. The family was aghast, and my father was painted as a nasty brute. From then on he tolerated his brother, but barely at times.
Eddy married fairly young, but it appears he could not always support this family, as my parents were called on at times to look after one or more of his children for extended periods when we were living at Bexley North.
And then, Eddy did something horrifying. In a fit of boredom, he agreed to take part in a bank robbery. My father says he didn’t desperately need money; it was done just for the fun of it. However the bank robbery went wrong, and a bank manager was shot and permanently disabled, confined to a life in a wheelchair, late dying of his injuries. Eddy was convicted and sent to jail for several years. His wife divorced him.
After he came out of prison he took up a peripatetic lifestyle again but finally settled down, marrying the daughter of one of my father’s friends, an Italian woman in her forties named Francis. She desperately wanted a child, and Eddy obliged by getting an English girl pregnant who then obligingly had the child in his wife’s name and then disappeared. The child had white blond hair (see photo: the child with the very blond hair is Edward, the stout women on the right in the grey suit is Francis, his adopted mother). The fact of his origins came up when Francis and Eddy divorced and the court was told of his real origins as a way for Eddy to gain sole custody of him. However he did not count on the court’s view that the woman who is the primary caregiver has some rights and the court viewed Francis to be the child’s real mother, despite the charade with the original birth certificate.
At the time this was going on Eddy was living in Picton and doing quite well with a building contracting business. At one time my father worked for him, but my father did not get on well with his brother and they eventually parted. Eddy went it alone in the Outer West, and built a house at Picton, a monstrosity of a house with a sunken living room and bedrooms everywhere.
He had a vindictive sense of humour and if someone crossed him, he acted. The local police sergeant got into an argument with him one night at the pub and the next morning woke to find two truckloads of animal manure had been dumped in his driveway. Eddy, of course, had a contract to transport manure for the council, so everyone knew who had done it.
As he got older, he became more and more unreasonable, and eventually gained the nickname: “the psychotic”. After he divorced Francis and the Picton house was sold, he moved around, and eventually landed on the south coast with a young woman, whom he later married. At this time my parents ceased to have any contact with him, and eventually lost touch with Francis as well. The last time I saw Francis was at my brother Barney’s wedding, depicted in the above photo. Later he moved to Taree, where his sister Joyce was living.
My own contact with him as an adult was minimal. He shared my birthday, 14 March. Once, when he was visiting my mother when I was about 18, he made a pass at me. A most peculiar thing to do to one’s own niece, especially when we didn’t know each other very well. I had barely seen him for years, so I hardly knew him. I was repulsed and have never quite recovered any regard for him. I stayed at his house with my children when I was between marriages, but more for my aunt Francis than for Eddy’s sake. I did not enjoy the visit. I felt uncomfortable around Eddy, and Francis was a little funny as well: I always felt I was on some form of probation, not quite what they expected.
My cousin Edward (as he is, given his father acknowledged paternity despite the surrogacy story and indeed he is if you look at him) finally broke free from his mother in his early twenties. She was the type of mother who smothered her child and it was painful to watch.
From the very beginning my father found his brother to be difficult. Eddy teased my father and in general appeared to make his life difficult when he was at home. Eddy was very intelligent, but like some people who are very intelligent he could not stay at anything and went “bad”, spending some time in a children’s’ home for the wicked.
My father tells the story of Eddy teasing him by waking him every hour or so when he was trying to sleep when he was a late teenager with the question “would he like some pineapple?” This was teasing of a particularly brutal kind, akin to water torture. My father finally snapped and beat him up. The family was aghast, and my father was painted as a nasty brute. From then on he tolerated his brother, but barely at times.
Eddy married fairly young, but it appears he could not always support this family, as my parents were called on at times to look after one or more of his children for extended periods when we were living at Bexley North.
And then, Eddy did something horrifying. In a fit of boredom, he agreed to take part in a bank robbery. My father says he didn’t desperately need money; it was done just for the fun of it. However the bank robbery went wrong, and a bank manager was shot and permanently disabled, confined to a life in a wheelchair, late dying of his injuries. Eddy was convicted and sent to jail for several years. His wife divorced him.
After he came out of prison he took up a peripatetic lifestyle again but finally settled down, marrying the daughter of one of my father’s friends, an Italian woman in her forties named Francis. She desperately wanted a child, and Eddy obliged by getting an English girl pregnant who then obligingly had the child in his wife’s name and then disappeared. The child had white blond hair (see photo: the child with the very blond hair is Edward, the stout women on the right in the grey suit is Francis, his adopted mother). The fact of his origins came up when Francis and Eddy divorced and the court was told of his real origins as a way for Eddy to gain sole custody of him. However he did not count on the court’s view that the woman who is the primary caregiver has some rights and the court viewed Francis to be the child’s real mother, despite the charade with the original birth certificate.
At the time this was going on Eddy was living in Picton and doing quite well with a building contracting business. At one time my father worked for him, but my father did not get on well with his brother and they eventually parted. Eddy went it alone in the Outer West, and built a house at Picton, a monstrosity of a house with a sunken living room and bedrooms everywhere.
He had a vindictive sense of humour and if someone crossed him, he acted. The local police sergeant got into an argument with him one night at the pub and the next morning woke to find two truckloads of animal manure had been dumped in his driveway. Eddy, of course, had a contract to transport manure for the council, so everyone knew who had done it.
As he got older, he became more and more unreasonable, and eventually gained the nickname: “the psychotic”. After he divorced Francis and the Picton house was sold, he moved around, and eventually landed on the south coast with a young woman, whom he later married. At this time my parents ceased to have any contact with him, and eventually lost touch with Francis as well. The last time I saw Francis was at my brother Barney’s wedding, depicted in the above photo. Later he moved to Taree, where his sister Joyce was living.
My own contact with him as an adult was minimal. He shared my birthday, 14 March. Once, when he was visiting my mother when I was about 18, he made a pass at me. A most peculiar thing to do to one’s own niece, especially when we didn’t know each other very well. I had barely seen him for years, so I hardly knew him. I was repulsed and have never quite recovered any regard for him. I stayed at his house with my children when I was between marriages, but more for my aunt Francis than for Eddy’s sake. I did not enjoy the visit. I felt uncomfortable around Eddy, and Francis was a little funny as well: I always felt I was on some form of probation, not quite what they expected.
My cousin Edward (as he is, given his father acknowledged paternity despite the surrogacy story and indeed he is if you look at him) finally broke free from his mother in his early twenties. She was the type of mother who smothered her child and it was painful to watch.
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