-ABOUT US part 4-

I spent several years in New Zealand, went on a cruise from Sydney to Acapulco then Fort Lauderdale Florida over to Southampton England then from London to Paris, where I found there was no language problem, down to Spain, Madrid, then from Algeciras to Tangier in Morocco.

 Then from London to Thailand via India. I cannot remember all my trips . I have been in every country of Central America as far as Panama, Japan, Hong Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia.  I suppose there were a few others.

  How did I get the money for this? That is a good question and I think I had better take the fifth, for the moment.

    I recall a beautiful trip to Bali from Darwin, then Timor and Lombok. I recall Denpassar and Kuta Beach and then flying home to Sydney. I think I went over to New Zealand after that for several years. Then I flew to Sydney and on to Hong Kong and across to England then to New York and up to Montreal which was my base. Another time I flew to New York from London and went Greyhound to the  border then took a Mexican bus to Mexico City. I got all my visas and took the Tica bus through all the countries down to Costa Rica where my brother Pat was waiting time out with his second family.

   It was embarrassing to have my little blond nephews laughing at my  laboured Spanish, while they rattled away in the language of school and friends, though their English had become accented in the Latin way.  Far cry from their mother’s  Wollongong  Aussie accent, which I guess used to be mine also very many years ago.

Pat’s affairs were certainly not in order and the gang he headed were becoming unwelcme in Colombia and  were becoming so also  in Costa Rica.

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   ALL THE NEXT STORY ABOUT COSTA RICA IS PURE FICTION

 (I suppose)

            I had gone to Costa Rica to see if I could help, after conferring with my sister Sue in Sydney, when on my way from New Zealand to London, with a stop in Hong Kong and Tokyo.

  One of my nephews there had developed encephalitis, but luckily he recovered by the time I arrived. I naively thought I could arrive in Costa Rica and put my brother’s affairs in order. No chance.

  I traveled from London to New York with Lakers Airline for about $100 and then went by bus to Mexico City and country by country till I reached Costa Rica. I think I went cheaply as most of my money was left in New Zealand and I was waiting for the sale of several blocks of land. I got this some months later, but until then I had to economize.

 I picked up some kind of infection in Nicaragua from drinking agua non potable when the water ran our in the bus because of the effects of a recent earthquake. I remember it was during the time of Somoza and the country was in ferment.

 I n one of these countries I had an encounter with a thief during the night. when he got into my hotel room and tried to steal my money. I left him incapacitated but did not wait for the police and left the country as soon as possible.

     Very sick when I reached San Jose with some abdominal and viral infection. I stayed for awhile in a cheap hotel, Canada Hotel near the market, which was only a couple of dollars a day and then Pat took me to his house in the suburbs and I was reintroduced to Allyson and the kids and the newest baby.

    He offended me by warning me not to sleep with the maid, who was kind of pretty.   That had been far from my mind but it showed me how out of touch we were with each other.

   I reflected though the last time I had talked to him was relating to a confrontation when he burst in my studio door with a sledge hammer, which prompted m to meet at a lonely gravel pit at Waterfall, where I was going to shoot( if he did first).

Well, he did not turn up so, the situation cooled.

 I had been in fear of my life for awhile, as there had been a falling out over money and a couple of his associates in Sydney were real toughies.

  One of them, Bill something was a nasty piece of goods. One time we went out hunting and since he had not bagged anything else except a couple of crows with his shotgun, he intended to shoot a cow in a paddock and I warned him  “Bill if you shoot that cow, I’ll shoot you.” REPEAT:THIS IS ALL FICTION.

“You’re joking Williams. Isn’t he, Shane” (my brother’s working name.) He asked my brother.

“He might do it,” said Patrick, who knew how crazy I was.” ( I don’t agree with shooting helpless cows. It would have been a pleasure shooting Bill.)

I don’t agree with shooting ducks in Centennial Park Sydney either. They went there one dusk, my brother and Bill and shot a couple and brought them back to Allyson to cook. I was not there at the time, but I heard about it.

   Their other activities regarding banking business, I did not know much about and did not want to know. That is my story and I’ll stick to it.

 In Costa Rica they were doing monkey business with Japanese fishing trawlers and appeared to be making money, but it was too risky in my eyes.

 My advice to Pat was “This is a haven to you here in Costa Rica.  The eagle doesn’t foul its own nest. What happened to the money? There was a half million involved when you left the Oz.”

  He said he wanted action. He could not live without it. I started to feel cold with anticipation, especially when he visited the jail in San Jose to give funds to one gang member. I would not participate in any scheme. I could see holes in each one.

“Go on, Siddie, you’re getting old.”

 When the Tican did not come back from Columbia and it was considered he never would,(as he was probably buried in the jungle) I thought it time for me to leave.

Pat did not seem to need my help, in any sensible way, that is. My flu or whatever it was, got better but unfortunately I had passed it on to the baby somehow, though I had not picked up the little guy.

  Recently and many years later when I was  emailed by Mike O’Keefe a cousin, who owns a hotel and goes yachting in the south seas every winter, that my brother had died on the Gold Coast Queensland at age  66, I wanted to know how?

 Was he murdered?  No-one seems to want to tell me anything. Both he and I have lived wild lives.  Have I just been luckier or more careful?

 The situation in Costa Rica was too dangerous and I advised Pat to come up to Canada with his family and start afresh.   I flew from San Jose to New Orleans and then the bus north  to Oroville Wash and then across the border to B.C, “tago in tago”. THIS STORY IS STILL FICTION ( I suppose)

   Pat had a wild adventure getting out of Costa Rica. First he sent his wife and kids to Australia (where he should not go) and then he and a couple of his gang traveled from Limon on the Caribbean coast through the mangrove swamps in a motorized canoe to Panama, where he used a Costa Rican passport of his youngest son (born in Costa Rica and doctored up) to fly to Miami where he sold a diamond or two and finally flew up to Winnipeg Canada with a U.S. driver’s license. He entered Canada as an American tourist. He met me at the zoo in Stanley Park, Vancouver one Sunday in the early seventies.

  I participated to some extent in his schemes with misgivings, but after we had set up in Montreal, Quebec, I got cold feet and said that we could make a good living honestly in Canada.

 THIS IS TRUE FROM NOW ON: I thought I could sell jewellery or paintings and make a good living.  I was right about that and for a number of years I sold my paintings at the corner of St Catherine and McGill College Ave, Montreal licensed as a Quebec artist. I made pretty good money and usually traveled four months a year on vacation with my new family.

   When Pat and I parted, not too friendly, he flew to London “on business.”

 The last I heard from him was years later, when after a motorbike accident I had he came to visit me in a Brisbane hospital.

 He flew in (he said from England) but I think it was from New Zealand.  He tried to use British slang to confuse me.

 I was nearly dead anyway and  mum and dad came up from Murwillumbah to say goodbye to me as did Jim,  who flew up from Sydney… The doctor had advised them I did not have too long. Not too many people live after hitting a car with a motor-bike.

      I said to my family crowded around the bed looking dolefully at me as if I were already in my coffin, as they tried to think of something good to say about me. “I am sorry to disappoint you all. I am going to recover.” The words were hard to get out as my lungs were collapsed and filling with fluid. And some ribs were broken and the doctors couldn’t find the spleen.

 At that moment I saw a doctor shake his head slightly in disagreement. He did not think I saw him do it.

When the family had gone, I lay gasping in pain trying to breathe, but every breath was a rasping painful effort. I was tiring rapidly. I noticed the drip with the tube and needle going into my vein. When a doctor paused near my bed, I choked the question  “Where…where is  the blood going to?”

 “Into your chest cavity. We have been waiting for your spleen to heal to stop the flow naturally, but frankly Cedric, (how I hate that name) I think it is too damaged.

Do you want me to get you a priest or minister or the social worker can make out a will for you if you don’t already have one?”

“No, get the blood out. Suck it out. I am drown..ing!”

“We will have to make an incision in your chest cavity. It is a dangerous procedure.”

“Just do it! I managed to blurt out as a surge of blood erupted through my mouth. I had always a horror of drowning at sea and here I was drowning in transfusion blood.

“RIGHT!” He suddenly flew into action. “Nurse, this patient to Ops 4 straight away.”

I think I must have been in triage and I my chances of recovery were being evaluated.   By telling them to do something, they must have thought I had some hope..

I recall the instrument he plunged into my chest like a dagger with a tube leading from it and the blood being sucked out.    Then I lost consciousness.

 Some aeons later I was in a dim room and I could hear my own rasping breath and the coughs and gasps of others in beds along the aisle.  Several forms with sheets covering them were wheeled away and I thought, it is only a matter of time when I will be sheeted and wheeled away. Let it come soon so this terrible pain will go away.

  Soon I will be dead and I will have no more feeling. Good.

 A doctor passed on his rounds, then returned and said. “You’re still here then. How are you?”

“In terrible pain doctor. Give me morphine. I can’t bear it.” I rasped weakly.

 We have given you so much already. Any more could put you over the edge and you might slip away.”

 “Give it to me anyway.”

A nurse came and injected me. At first I noticed no difference, but gradually the pain eased and I started to breathe a little easier on the one lung left.

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   I bought a cottage in the Laurentian mountains Quebec in 1979 on a large lake and at the time, thought I would retire there. It was not to be. After some time in Japan and after building another house in the Philippines, I thought maybe I would retire there instead.

   I ended up in Vancouver and have lived quietly for the last eleven years, raising the last of my sons, who seems pretty independent now.

    None of my former wives or girlfriends want anything to do with me. The same goes for my other children.  So I guess I get what I deserve.

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