Matches
I was 26 when I left my work as a country parson to take up the prestigious position as the Minister of the Cheltenham Church of Christ Victoria. This Church had the reputation of being a very large and alive Church. But that was a mirage. The reality was quite different as this young country parson was soon to discover. The life of a suburban Minister has some real surprises.
I had just developed the habit of writing some brief notes at the end of each day in my journal. I thought that perhaps sometime in the future it might remind me of the events of my life as a suburban Minister and perhaps provide some guidance in the way I could better handle things. I would write down the way I had counselled people in the hope that at a later date I would go back over those notes and compare the outcomes of the people I had counselled to see if my guidance was right.
It was quite late as I shut the book, turned off the lights and walked back through the Manse lounge to the bedroom. Shortly after our Bible reading and prayers the lights were off and I hoped for a quiet night. The telephone rang. A call from a troubled parent wanting to know the whereabouts of a teenager who hadn’t yet arrived home – as if I was the repository of the personal itinerary of every teenager in Cheltenham! Wearily I told the person that the Youth Club had ended for the night an hour earlier and if his daughter wasn’t home then the parent would need to speak to her about what happened after the Club. But I would go and check the car park to make sure she had left.
She was due to leave with some of the other young people. The driver was reliable and I was quite sure the girl should have been home by then. Slipping on my slippers and dressing gown I went out from the Manse and circled the Church property. In the back car park was a group of young people, including the daughter, just standing around talking. They had a few bottles of Coca Cola which they had been drinking but nothing more. They were just average teenagers enjoying each others company. I talked to them warmly for a few minutes and then suggested they had better get off home asking the driver to drop the young lady off first. I walked back to the manse thinking what a fine group of young kids they were, when I noticed a dark shadow sitting on my study door step.
It was a man in a cloth cap and gabardine overcoat with a parcel wrapped in brown paper and string on his lap. I thought he was a drunk, come round from the Cheltenham Arms Hotel, wanting to rest for a while. I went over to him and the man stood up immediately to attention as if he were a solider on parade.
” ‘Scuse me, ‘scuse me padre,” tugging at the front of his cloth cap in a mark of respect, “I’m wondering if I can have a few words with you”. I looked at him closely. He certainly wasn’t drunk and he looked a decent sort of a fellow.
I asked him to wait on the step of the study while I went back into the Manse and around through the lounge room putting on the lights to the study and opening the door from the inside. I asked him in. As he took off his cloth cap he said “My name is John. Most of my mates call me “Matches”. I need your help padre. I’ve walked all the way from Melbourne to see you.”
I had been used to con men and liars from my eight years of working in the slums of Melbourne and from working as a Parole and Probation Officer. Yet this man looked different. He had none of the appearance of the old lags and con men who would tell you a story of coming to see you especially. But I decided to quiz him.
“Why have you walked all the way from Melbourne just to see me?” The man looked at me with very frank eyes “I was just released from Pentridge this morning. From 7am I walked into the city of Melbourne and went round trying to find a place where I could stay the night. But they all want bond money and I haven’t got that sort of money. I promised to pay but they wouldn’t take my word. I haven’t had any lunch and I spent most of the afternoon trying to find a place where I could stay.”
I said to him “But why have you come to me?” “Because Clarrie the Croaker told me to come. He’s been my mate for the last five years. We were in the cell together. He told me that you did a report for him and probably saved him five years. He told me that if I couldn’t make out I should get in contact with you. I had a dickens of a job finding where you were and I’ve only just arrived. I was wondering if I should ring your bell or not when I saw you walk around the side of the Church, so I decided to wait till you returned.”
Clarrie the Croaker. That name brought back memories. I guess it was six or seven years earlier I’d done a pre-court report on him. Sometimes when a man had pleaded guilty to a charge they would ask someone to do a pre-court report which would be then presented to the judge just prior to passing sentence to provide some background and understanding of the prisoner.
I had written many pre-court reports but Clarrie the Croaker stands out in my mind. He had pleaded guilty to a charge of manslaughter. The Crown had asked me to prepare a report on his background.
As I remember it, Clarrie was a middle aged, silent and moody man. He was single and lived with his father who was in his sixties. The two of them lived together with no one else in the house. The house was a mess. Clarrie did most of the work and cooked the meals for himself and his father. His father had worked on the wharves and was tough and rowdy and never quite sober. He yelled all the time at Clarrie and anybody else within hearing distance. Clarrie had spent his life being yelled at by an aggressive, violent and drunken father.
At work, it was not much different. Clarrie’s boss was a plumber. A hard drinking, fouled mouthed, abusive man and Clarrie was “the plumber’s mate”. The plumber’s mate was responsible for digging the trenches in which the plumber laid the pipes. The plumber’s mate was responsible for mixing the concrete which the plumber used to seal off the end of the sewer. The plumber’s mate was the one who did all the work. The plumber used to yell at Clarrie and Clarrie said nothing.
The plumber called Clarrie “The Croaker” as a twisted sort of joke. He meant that whenever Clarrie spoke he was like a frog opening it’s mouth and a croak would come out.
One day the plumber yelled at Clarrie to do something and for some reason or other the built up tension and aggression of years, both home and work, snapped Clarrie’s self restraint. He could take it no more. He grabbed the crowbar he was using in digging a trench, and ran at this boss with the crowbar in front of him like a lance. The startled boss backed against the fence just as Clarrie drove the crowbar through his rib cage and up into the fence.
The police said that when they arrived the plumber was still impaled to the fence by the crowbar and that the force of Clarrie’s drive had lifted the plumber off his feet and he was still hanging on the crowbar. The plumber had died within seconds and Clarrie had just slumped to the ground and stayed there.
I had given the background of Clarrie’s life to the judge who read it in court on the day of sentence as I stood on the floor of the court just in front of the bench. The judge read my type-written report. I noticed he marked several passages and looking over his glasses thanked me most sincerely for an illuminating and helpful insight into the prisoner. Later on, when he gave the sentence of 12 years imprisonment, he said he had taken into account information that had been given to him about the extraordinary background of the prisoner.
Yes, I remembered Clarrie the Croaker quite well and had visited him a few times in prison. In prison they use the phrase “the Croaker” in a form of prison slang which referred to one who brought death. Clarrie was still the silent type but I was glad that he had Matches as a cell mate.
Looking at Matches as he stood there in my study, I asked him again to sit down. He said he preferred to stand. “What were you in for Matches?” Matches looked at me with firm eyes and with quite transparent honesty said “I set fire to things. I burnt a school and a scout hall. I like to see fire. But I had an argument with my wife one day and I poured petrol throughout the entire house while she was still in it, and she burnt to death. Sir. I am sorry I did it, Sir. I’ve served 15 years, Sir.” Matches stood there looking at me. There was no need to say anymore. You could tell by the way he stood and the fact that he had reverted to calling me Sir, that he had been inside for quite a period of time. The only people who ever called me Sir were prisoners or former prisoners.
“What do you want from me Matches?” I asked. “Sir, I would like something to eat. I haven’t had anything to eat all day. And I would like somewhere to sleep. I’m not used to sleeping out in the open and I think I would go mad if I didn’t have some walls around me. But no one will take me. I hope that you will, Sir.”
I asked Matches to wait for a while, while I went into the bedroom and explained the situation to my wife. We’d put up people at all kinds of hours and had frequently taken sleeping children from their bed in order to let some unfortunate traveller have a bed for the night. But neither my wife nor myself were happy with the thought of Matches sleeping in one of the children’s bedrooms. On his first night out from prison he just might like to see a fire again. In fact my wife said to me “the trouble is, if you turn him away he is just as likely to set fire to one of the Church halls and if we allow him to sleep here he is just as likely to set fire to this place.”
While she busied herself going through the refrigerator and warming up some hot soup and making some chicken sandwiches for Matches to eat, I talked further with him to try to ascertain his attitude to fire.
“Padre, (I could see he was looking at me now more as a Minister than as a Prison Warder) Padre, I’ll swear to you on the Holy Bible, that I’ll never light another fire. Help me go straight and I will be your man for the rest of my life. I promise you that.” There was something about his transparent straight forwardness. Matches was not trying to con me. I felt he was fair dinkum. Beverley gave him some hot soup and a great mound of chicken sandwiches that soon disappeared. Matches was extremely polite and again and again expressed appreciation for the soup and for the sandwiches and for us taking him into our home.
I then hit upon a solution. Our manse was joined to the Church by my study. You could enter my study either from the house or from the Church. I took Matches up the steps and entered into the foyer of the Church. At the other end of the foyer was our cry room, a warm carpeted area where mothers with young children could watch and hear the Church service without the noise of their children upsetting the other worshippers.
“Matches how about I fix a bed for you here? There is a heater here and you’ll be quite warm.” Matches walked over and felt the brick work. “This is a nice room Sir,” he said “I’d be happy to bunk down here for the night.” I got a camp stretcher from our garage, a spare mattress, sheets, blankets and pillows and very soon had set Matches up in the cry room. We shook hands and I left him alone.
If you think that either my wife or I slept much that night you don’t understand what it was like having Matches sleeping in the Church. I guess every half hour I went to the bedroom window and looked over towards the cry room or walked out to the family room and surveyed the back halls and on several occasions went through the study and quietly opened the door into the foyer of the Church. But Matches was on his bed fast asleep. He slept, we didn’t, and there were no fires.
Somehow in the early hours of the morning I must have fallen asleep because I can remember wakening suddenly thinking “The Church is on Fire!” I jumped out of bed and in my pyjamas went straight through the lounge room, the study, up the stairs and into the Church foyer. John’s stretcher was empty. The pillows neatly stacked on one end and the blankets folded and stacked on the other. John was not in the cry room. I went through the double doors into the Church and down across the platform and into the Church vestries at the back. John wasn’t there. The Church vestries opened up into a series of rooms, a library, a boardroom, a kitchen and then into another large Church hall. I went down the passage and there was John in the kitchen with some hot water in a cup having a shave with a blade razor.
“Good morning Padre” he said, “I had a beautiful sleep thank you, and I’ll soon be on my way. I’m sorry to have troubled you last night but I always remember that Clarrie the Croaker told me to look you up if ever I was in need. I won’t trouble you anymore Padre, as soon as I’ve had a shave and a clean I’ll be on my way.” I stood there with my feet feeling cold on the lino of the Church kitchen. “Matches, I’m wondering if I can help you get some accommodation. If you can guarantee me that you’ll behave yourself, I know a widow who’s got a bungalow out the back of her house.
Maybe she’ll let you use that, but you’ll have to promise me that you’ll behave yourself. She is a very special lady to me and I wouldn’t want you to do anything to let her down. I will cover the bond money for you.”
Matches turned round to me, one side of his face still covered in shaving soap “Padre, I promise you on the Bible that for the rest of my life I will behave myself and never lift a finger to harm anybody. As long as I live I’ll be your man.”
Matches had breakfast with our family that morning and my first call of the day was down to the widow who was an active Church member. I explained to her that Matches had been in prison. I told her what his crime had been but said I believed he would be straight and honest and if at any time she felt in the least bit troubled by any thing he would say or do I would quickly remove him from the scene. She accepted my word and allowed Matches to live in the bungalow.
He paid his rent regularly from his pension and she never wanted for anything around the house. He took over mowing the lawns, doing the edges, chopping the wood, and there was always an adequate supply for her heater. He would never enter her house but kept to himself in the bungalow at the back. He started to come to Church and was there regularly every Sunday morning and night. One Sunday night he came forward when I gave an invitation for people to commit themselves to Jesus Christ. He did so and we saw a remarkable change in the life of Matches.
He never said a great deal nor joined in much of the laughter and fun of other people but was always present at every function in a long gabardine overcoat and cloth cap and every time I saw him he would tug the front of his cap and say “Good morning Padre, it’s another wonderful day for which I thank God”.
I was Minister of the Cheltenham Church of Christ for thirteen years and throughout that time Matches became one of my good, quiet, reliable and dependable friends. When I came to Sydney he wrote a long and detailed letter to me wishing me well for the future and reminding me of that night when I found him on my door step. Matches has never forgotten.
Recently I received a letter from him. He is now living at Diamond Valley and with his letter there is a photograph of him visiting the Sutherland Homes for Children and the article indicated “the kindness a 76 year old man received during his childhood days as a resident of the Sutherland Homes for Children has made a profound impact on his life.” It went on to tell how he, his brother and sister were brought up in these Childrens Homes and he had returned to the area in order to be of help to them. “Now he’s giving something back to the organisation which gave him a start in life. He is a financial member of the Sutherland Homes and hopes to take a wider role in the future”. And in his letter an interesting comment. I’ll read it to you:
“Dear Gordon,
Remember the bloke calling at the white Church on the corner of Cheltenham and you gave me a bed in the crying room? Yes, it’s Matches, and I will never forget in all of my life what a friend in need you were to me that night. Last Easter I saw your television program and I thought “Gosh, that’s Gordon!” It was wonderful and I really appreciated the service. Your message on hope was well received loud and clear in my new home above.”
He went on to tell me about what has happening in his life and finished up simply by saying “I want you to know that your TV message is what I have been doing all my life. Your message that hope means Hold On Praying Earnestly” was God’s message for me. I’ve been doing it all my life now and I thank God that I can hold on. Good bye for now dear friend and counsellor. Matches.”
I hold in my hand his letter and the newspaper cutting and thank God that Matches has been able to hang on these last thirty years since that night when I found him sitting on the door of my study at Cheltenham and all that next day when I had been concerned about whether Matches could really hold on in the new home that I had found him. We have kept in touch, with him sending me a Christmas card just signed “Matches” and I drop him a line in reply. About three years ago, his usual card did not arrive. Matches had died.
But I do not forget him nor that night I spent some time in my study writing up my journal and looking out of the window at the never ending stream of cars stopping at the traffic lights at the corner of Nepean Highway and Chesterville Road, that wide intersection that was dominated by the lovely white Church with the high white tower, noting down in my journal the events of another day as a suburban minister.
GORDON MOYES