I Was Only Nineteen: A Memoir

by Raewyn Harlum

Overview

It was a different world in 1966. Considered a social and moral outrage to have a baby out of wedlock, babies were taken from single mothers because they didn’t have husbands.

In I Was Only Nineteen, author Raewyn Harlum tells how she relinquished a baby to whom she had just given birth. At the time, nineteen-year-old Raewyn was homeless and sleeping on the floor of people she’d known four days. Destitute, her possessions filled one suitcase. She had no family or friends in Australia and her partner already had a wife. When she went into labor, her partner left her at the hospital telling her she couldn’t keep the baby. If she did, he’d disappear with their two-year-old son.

In this heartbreaking memoir, she shares her story that includes the reunion of the birth parents with the baby after she’d grown into a beautiful young woman. It was not a love-conquers-all meeting; the young woman doesn’t understand why her birth parents gave her up and then had more children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781452527642
Publisher:	Balboa Press AU
Publication date:	02/20/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	190
File size:	248 KB

Read an Excerpt

I Was Only Nineteen

A Memoir

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By Raewyn Harlum

Balboa Press

Copyright © 2015 Raewyn Harlum
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4525-2763-5

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CHAPTER 1

ANGELS LOVE BAD MEN

At dusk, I am standing at the bedroom window of our rented, furnished house on Gould Street, Canterbury, Sydney. As I am drawing the curtains against the night, I notice a car driving very slowly past our house. I recognize the driver as a barman from the local hotel. He is staring at our letter box. I think, how strange. Was he checking the number of our house?

The next morning, 18 June 1966, I wake with a feeling of impending doom. I have this depressed feeling I always get when something bad is going to happen. Waking from a deep sleep, I hear a female voice telling me to tell my boyfriend to get out of the house. I hear a voice telling me he has to go now. I jump out of bed and take a few steps to the window. Glancing behind the heavy curtains and through the lace net curtains, I see a car parked outside the house next door. There are two men in the car. I instantly know they are coming for my boyfriend.

I yell to my boyfriend, Glen, "Get out of the house! Go now." He is instantly awake. He always sleeps naked, and now he quickly dresses in trousers and shirt. Grabbing his shoes from beside the bed, he runs through the house and out the back door.

"I'll get in touch with you through my uncle," he tells me. "I love you, baby."

"I don't know his phone number," I quickly tell him.

"He is in the phone book. His surname is S——" he replies. Then he is off across the back yard, sprinting for the back fence.

From the kitchen window I watch him jump over our back fence onto the neighbour's property. I glance at my watch. It is five thirty a.m. I hear hurried footsteps coming around the side path, and simultaneously there is a thunderous knocking on the front and back doors. He only escaped by seconds.

"Open up! It's the police," a loud voice shouts.

Although I am closer to the back door, I choose to walk to the front door, which is near our bedroom. I take my time walking to the door. As I open the door, I am rudely shoved against the wall as the two detectives I had seen sitting in the unmarked car come into the hallway. The redheaded one walks straight through the house and opens the back door to two other men. They search the house, pulling out drawers, looking in cupboards, and tipping stuff out.

"Where is Mervyn Harlum?" the tallest detective shouts at me.

For a minute I feel hopeful. He must have the wrong person. I thought they were looking for Glen Newell.

"You have the wrong house," I say. "There is no Mervyn Harlum here."

"We have the right house," he sneers at me. "Mervyn Harlum lives here."

I still think he is wrong; my boyfriend of nearly three years is called Glen Newell.

"Come in here and sit down. We need you to answer some questions," he barks at me.

I follow him into the kitchen, and we sit at the wooden kitchen table. He pulls out some papers from a folder and places them on the table. There is a sheet of paper with Glen's photo on it and the name Mervyn Lee Harlum written beneath. I am stunned. The detective tells me my boyfriend is a criminal and makes me look at the paper he puts in front of me. I read that Mervyn Lee Harlum was born 31 December 1934. It says he stole five hundred chickens and two sheep. I read that he spent eight months in Maitland Gaol for sheep stealing. He did time in Long Bay Gaol.

I cannot read any more. My head is spinning. I have been with Glen for nearly three years, and I thought he was Glen Lee Newell, born in 1936. I met him when I was sixteen, and now I am nineteen. For two years and ten months I have been living with someone I don't really know, someone who has lied to me about his name and his age. It was hard enough when I found out he was married with children. I discover with shock that there are now more lies. When our son Mark was born, I had written to his parents to tell them about him. I had called them Mr and Mrs Newell. I had given the letter to my boyfriend to enclose with a letter he had written to them. He did not tell me their name was Harlum. Now in hindsight I wonder if he even sent my letter. The few times I have met his parents they have always called Glen by the name of Sonnie, which is his childhood nickname.

While Detective Marvin is interrogating me in the kitchen, the other detective who came in the front door is searching in the sitting room. He is a redhead like me, but his hair is a darker red than mine. My red hair inherited from my mother is lighter, bleached by the sun. Detective Red Hair appears in the kitchen doorway with a long gun case.

"What do you know about this?" he asks me.

"Glen borrowed it from an old man he worked for," I reply.

That is what Glen told me when he put the gun case behind our sofa in the sitting room. Glen told me not to touch it. I don't even know what the gun looks like. I have never looked inside the case.

"Is this what this is all about?" I ask. "He didn't steal it; he told me he borrowed it. Can we not just return the gun to the man?"

At this stage I am thinking that maybe it is all about the gun. Suddenly I think did he steal it? I feel scared. This is too big for me. There is too much I don't understand. Detective Red Hair looks at me strangely, and I feel scared. Something big is happening. Something bad is happening. It feels surreal, like I am in a dream. I feel like I am in a bad dream. In the bedroom, my two year old son, Mark, is crying. He has been woken by the men who came in the back door and are now searching the bedroom. Everything has happened so fast that I had forgotten him. I jump up from my hard wooden chair and hurry to him.

Detective Marvin follows me into the bedroom. The two men leave the room and say to him as they pass that there was nothing in there. What does that mean? What do they expect to find? The bedside drawers have been emptied onto the floor beside the bed.

I am changing Mark's nappy when the detective points to the open wardrobe where all of Glen's shirts are hanging. Glen has twenty shirts. Most of them are long-sleeved white shirts. He has more shirts than I have total clothes. When I first started living with him I was surprised that one person owned so many shirts, especially as most are white. To me it seems strange that someone would own lots of shirts of the same colour when the shirt can just be washed and worn again. My father probably only owns half a dozen shirts. Glen was wearing a suit the night I first met him, and he often dresses in his dark grey suit. He likes to dress in his suit with a white shirt and likes to wear a hat. My father only wears a suit for weddings and funerals.

"Who does the ironing?" Detective Marvin asks.

I think this is a ridiculous question but answer, "I do."

How strange it is for him to say that, I think. Who does he think does the ironing? Why does he even want to know who does the ironing?

I take Mark to the kitchen to feed him his breakfast. My poor little boy is bewildered with all these strange men in the house. His dark brown eyes are enormous, and his bottom lip trembles. He is ready to burst back into tears any moment. My normally spotless house is now in a mess. The police have just left things on the floor where they have tipped them. I realize they are not going to put things back where they found them. Suddenly the detective starts firing questions at me.

"Where is he?"

"Where did he go?"

"What is the make of the car he is driving?"

"What is the registration number?"

"I will answer your questions after I feed my son," I reply. This is a bad mistake. A quick learner, I take only seconds to realize I have made a mistake. Detective Marvin stands up and grabs Mark. He just picks my little boy up from his chair and starts walking out the kitchen door. Mark immediately lets out a howl. A dizzy feeling runs right through my body. I am enraged that this bully feels he can intimidate me and now he is scaring my baby.

"We know you are a prostitute called Diane from the Cross," he says to me. "You are going to lose your son, and you will never see him again. We are going to take him away from you."

"You are a dirty prostitute," he yells at me. "You are not a fit mother."

Mark is scared and crying, but the man is oblivious to my little boy's fear. I feel such rage at this man. I would like to smash him in the face. He is scaring my baby and does not give a damn. I would like to tell him what I think of him, but I realize he is very dangerous and I need to keep very calm. This man is dangerous and has the power to hurt me and my son. My father always told us to keep calm in dangerous situations. Dad reiterated his belief that we should not panic in an emergency. It could save our lives, he told us. Dad had told my brother Neville and me the story of how when he was sixteen, he was diving under a yacht in the Parnell Basin. The tide ebbed, and he got stuck. But he kept calm and held his breath. Then the waves swept in again, the yacht rose, and he was free — lungs bursting but free. I think of my father, the wise man and teacher, and I remember his words. Now I needed to keep calm. Losing my temper was going to inflame the situation. This man had the power; he could take my son away. I was alone. There was no one to turn to, no one to ring. I did not have a phone anyway. My parents lived in New Zealand and had never had a phone. They had no money for my plane fare home. I had not made any friends since coming to Australia. Glen and Mark were my life. We often just packed our few things and moved on. Glen would come home and say we were leaving. We always rented furnished flats or houses.

I smile at Detective Marvin, although inwardly I am quaking. I don't know if I am quaking inside from the adrenalin rush of rage I have just had or from fear. I speak softly and calmly. I tell the detective he is being silly. I walk over to him and hold out my arms for my child. I tell him that I have never been a prostitute and I am a full-time mother and housewife.

"You saw the shirts and the polished floors," I say. "I spend all my time looking after this house, keeping it spotless and looking after my little boy."

"I also do the gardening," I tell him. "I do not drink, I do not smoke, I do not take drugs, and I am only nineteen."

"I am only nineteen," I repeat, as if that absolves me from the accusation of being a hardened prostitute.

It seems to defuse the situation. Poor Mark is still crying. I take him from the detective, and we sit down again. This time I keep Mark on my lap. I hug him to me and rock back and forth until he stops sobbing. I am so angry with the detective for picking Mark up; I feel rage still building inside me. The bastard, the utter bastard, I say to myself. Now I know I have to keep calm and not let him intimidate me. Keep calm and smile, I say to myself. All the while my heart is racing, and my thoughts are with Glen. Where is he? Where will he go? Smile, I say to myself, and don't let the bastard see you are worried.

Bastard. When I was a little girl, aged three, living at Onetangi Beach, my father sent me to the beach in front of our house to tell my brother to come home. He had been ignoring the whistle that Dad had blown to let him know it was time to come home. He ignored me also. I went home and said to Dad, "The bastard won't come home." My parents did not swear, and they were perplexed as to where I had heard the word. For some unknown reason this thought now comes into my head.

I think of my parents. They were so upset when I fell pregnant at sixteen years old. Then when they thought that I would be married, they had to be told Glen already had a wife. What a disappointment I am to them. I haven't even told them I am pregnant again. My father said, "You have made your bed, and now you can lie in it."

I have had a hard time telling them I am pregnant again, especially as there has been no wedding yet. That little piece of paper to make society see me as an honest woman is not forthcoming. I can never ask my parents for help.

"Do you have any recent photos of Mervyn?" the detective asks.

"Yes, I will go and get them for you," I reply.

Mervyn, I think to myself. It is so hard to get used to that name. His name is Mervyn.

I put Mark down on the chair and give him the spoon to feed himself. I don't like leaving him, but I know what I have to do. An idea has come into my head about the photos. I need to move fast in case the detective follows me. This time the detective doesn't follow me to the bedroom. He has my son for ransom sitting by his side. I quickly find all the photos I have of Glen. I only have about ten small black-and-white photos. I do not have many because they cost money to develop, and I never have any money of my own. I have a little box brownie camera my Uncle Sid gave me when I was fourteen, and the developed pictures are small. I shove them into my bra, and then I take two photos that I have of one of Glen's acquaintances. I had only met him and his wife once. Glen and I went on a picnic to Lane Cove, and the man and his wife were there. Glen knew him but did not say how. We all sat together and had a swim together. They had two little boys, and Mark played with them. We had not seen them since. I had taken a few photos that day. One of the photos shows Mark eating his first ever ice block. The man is sitting beside him. He had given Mark and his two boys an ice block each. The man is very similar to Glen in looks. He has the same black hair and brown eyes. They could be brothers. I walk back to the kitchen and hand them to the detective with a smile. He studies the photos and looks at the paper with Mervyn Harlum's photo on. He puts the photos on the table with the other documents. For a moment he doesn't say anything, and I think he has realized it isn't Glen.

Then the questions come again. The detective asks me all the same questions. My back is killing me as I sit on the hard wooden chair with my swollen belly. My unborn baby kicks, and I try not to despair. This Detective Marvin tells me that Mervyn, who I thought was Glen, has been involved in a murder. It is all so surreal, and I feel faint. They have no mercy for my pregnant state. No compassion. I am seven months pregnant. There is no female officer present. I try to think of what I should do. I have no phone to ring anyone, and there is no one I can ring. I am alone in this. I suddenly realize how alone I am.

I shake my head as if to clear it. This is a nightmare, and I don't know how it is going to end. How can they tell the gun was used in a murder? They have only just found it. They have not yet done any tests on it. I tell myself that they are trying to scare me. They want to know where Glen is, but I am telling the truth: I don't know where he has gone. I do not tell them that he escaped just before they knocked on the door. I say I have not seen him for a few days.

At nine a.m., Bernie, who is Glen's father, arrives in our Holden station wagon, which he had borrowed the night before. Glen had been drinking and let his father drive his car home, telling him to bring it back in the morning. I knew Bernie was due to arrive but hoped that he would have enough brains to just drive past when he saw the police cars outside. I cannot believe it when he comes into the house. I have given the police a different make and colour of the car, and now here is Bernie telling the police it is our car that he drove. It seems unbelievable that he is so stupid. I cannot understand why he tells them it is his son's car.

Here I am only nineteen years old, seven months pregnant and still trying in every way to help Glen. Bernie is telling them everything. Or as Glen would say, Bernie is spilling his guts.

Later a tow truck arrives, and our car is taken away. We still owe money on it. Glen has been paying it off. I do not even know if they can legally take the car, but I have no one to ask. They will be searching for evidence to incriminate Glen. I know in my heart he didn't commit a murder, but then, I don't know him anymore. He has lied to me about his name and age, his wife, and his children. Right from the beginning of our relationship there have been lies. I didn't know he was married. When I found out I was pregnant with Mark, he said we would get married. I do not know how he was going to manage that. Maybe he was going to leave me before the wedding.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from I Was Only Nineteen by Raewyn Harlum. Copyright © 2015 Raewyn Harlum. Excerpted by permission of Balboa Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

Chapter 1 Angels Love Bad Men, 1,
Chapter 2 I Have Made My Bed, 19,
Chapter 3 Moving Day, 27,
Chapter 4 Who Are You?, 31,
Chapter 5 Together Again, 39,
Chapter 6 Make the World Go Away, 47,
Chapter 7 Heading North, 57,
Chapter 8 A Roof over Our Heads, 67,
Chapter 9 On the Road Again, 77,
Chapter 10 Going Home, 81,
Chapter 11 Time is a Healer, 89,
Chapter 12 Shattered, 95,
Chapter 13 Another New Start, 101,
Chapter 14 The Accident, 109,
Chapter 15 Turning Forty, 117,
Chapter 16 The Meeting, 125,
Chapter 17 Grieving, 127,
Chapter 18 Travelling Northwest, 129,
Chapter 19 Mumma, 135,
Chapter 20 A New Beginning, 143,
Chapter 21 Time to say Good-bye, 147,
Epilogue, 177,