Prologue
It wouldnt be pleasant, but it had to be doneand, surely, people did it all the time. He knew someone. There need be no fuss. Mum mustnt know; it would break her heart. And Dad, he was so sad lately; he wouldnt understand. But, if they were careful, nobody ever had to find out.
Carolyn Jamieson was an attractive woman, attractive enough to turn heads in a room, with blonde hair and a curvy figure that lent her a faint resemblance to Marilyn Monroe. She was twenty-one, but seemed younger, warm and ingenuous. One day, a man had walked into the city pharmacy where she worked as a cosmetician and had asked for French letters. She had smiled: French what? Into her favourite romance novels, such details seldom intruded. Oh, Carolyn wanted children: lots, even. But she fancied working a while yet. She liked her job, enjoyed her independence.
In March 1967, she met a boy at the Bendigo Trots. Johnny Glide was a farmhand working on a property at Doreen, 32 kilometres north of Melbourne. He was soon sweet on her. They visited the pix together, the theatre, parties. She was keenest, though, for him to teach her to drive in his pink and white 1960 Holden sedan. She wanted to simplify commuting between her parents, who had parted some years earlier, and to whom she paid courteously even-handed attention: mother Molly, now in a flat in Preston, and father Norman, who lived in a house in Northcote.
And that was how it happened. One night Johnny visited Carolyn while Norman was working the nightshift as a typesetter at The Age and, after the first furtive grapplings, it was easy. Too easy. Because before too long, Carolyn was complaining of feeling unwell. Her health had never been robust. She was anaemic and had inherited bronchial asthma from her father. But this was different. She was dizzy, nauseous then her period, vigilantly monitored, did not come.
There were, her sister counselled, tablets for this sort of thing. Carolyn went to a pharmacy with instructions to ask for Green Label Pills, the aloes and iron in which were reputed to bring on menstruation. The bottle bore the legend Must Not Be Taken During Pregnancya warning or an enticement, depending on ones position. Feeling a little more confident, she joined her friend Loretta at the trots on the night of 16 December 1967, even showing off a new dress. You look a million dollars tonight, smiled Johnny. Carolyn, he recalled, beamed back: She was proud of herself for looking a million dollars.
She wasnt so proud of what else she had to do. At her first attempt to tell Johnny she might be pregnant, Carolyn tried to make light of the situation. Johnny grimaced. Youre kidding, he said. Carolyn laughed, still hoping the pills would work their magicno more was said. But the pills merely made Carolyn feel worse. As each day passed, she struggled with her conscience. Molly was Catholic; not a censorious or proselytising one, but Carolyn couldnt bear the thought of disappointing her. And her fatherNorman had once said he would shoot any young man who so much as laid hands on her. He spoke that way: a taciturn man, coarsened by three and a half years of war service, who lived alone with his dog, Honey. How could she explain this to him? She was anxious; constipated too. From her pharmacy she obtained a sedative, amylobarbitone, and a laxative, coloxyl, although she was too embarrassed to buy a pregnancy test.
On Christmas Eve, Carolyn and Johnny were at the Preston drivein, neither of them quite able to concentrate on missionary couple Max von Sydow and Julie Andrews converting the heathen in Hawaii. Carolyn could wait no longer. Johnny, she said finally, I think Im pregnant. Johnny had been brooding on the possibility. Through his estate agent brother, he had recently bought a house on Eight Mile Lane near Donnybrook. It was small58 hectaresbut it was a start. Johnny wanted to do the right thing; they would get married.
Carolyn squirmed: Not this way. She wanted marriage and children, but not now: she was young; she wasnt ready. They would have to do something. But first, she had to know for sure if she was pregnant. When they met again on Boxing Day at her mothers flat, Carolyn had written on a piece of paper the name of a drug that would act as a pregnancy test; Johnny would have to get it. He made an appointment with Dr Hoban, whose surgery was just up the road from his farm, and who lent a sympathetic ear. He made out the script, and advised that if it came to that to get the best. In fact, Johnny had an idea he knew where to go. When the test confirmed Carolyns apprehensions, Johnny renewed an old acquaintance.
Dr Billy Flynn was seventy, an old-fashioned but well-established consulting physician who had graduated from Melbourne University in 1922. He still practised from rooms in respectable Alcaston House at Collins Streets so-called Paris End, still with a fresh carnation in his buttonhole every day. He was an old friend of the Glides; in fact, he had delivered Johnny. Word was also that he knew what to do in such situations. And when Johnny called unannounced at his surgery at 6.30 p.m. on Thursday 4 January 1968, Flynn was at once reassuring. Long time no see, he said. How are you my boy? Then, sensing the young mans apprehension: You can speak freely to me. Is it a girl in trouble? Johnny confirmed it was. Do you love her? asked Flynn. Johnny confirmed he did. Flynn cut straight to the invoice: It will cost $300 and be no trouble and no risk.
Johnny wasnt expecting it to be so matter-of-fact. His mind was suddenly blank of the questions hed stewed over, save one. Will she be able to have babies after the operation? he asked. Oh, yes, Flynn nodded: people were so superstitious. He wanted to close the deal. What about the money? he asked. Johnnys mind was racing. It will be all right, he said presently. I havent got it on me at the moment but Ill send Carol in with $200. Flynn was comfortable with instalments. Bring the other $100 in after the operation, he said. Then you can tell me if shes all right.
Flynns practicality impressed Johnny. And, indeed, Flynn was a veteran of Melbournes illegal abortion rackets: a Catholic who put patients, and money, ahead of his coreligionists objections to the practice. What Johnny wasnt to know was that Flynn was slipping an old man losing his touch. For one thing, he had grown enormously fat, and somewhat clumsy. Pete Steedman, editor of Melbourne Universitys Farrago, knew Flynn as a family friend, but would never have sought his professional services: These were delicate things, and I never thought of Billy as particularly delicate. For one thing, he was so large I couldnt see how hed get close enough to the table to do the operation. Johnny Glides question about the physical impact of abortion was unconsciously apposite. A few years earlier, Flynn had, at great expense, aborted the 15-year-old daughter of a wealthy Melbourne family, and botched the procedure so badly as to necessitate a total hysterectomy. But news of the mishap circulated only among colleagues; neither Johnny nor Carolyn had any means of knowing.
