Leave Me in the Park

Published by Whitcombe & Tombs, NZ and Robert Hale & Company, London, 1974.

A youth called Bennie, being inarticulate, finds his quest for happiness continually leading him back to the sanctuary of a summerhouse in the park. Living in the boarding house owned by Link and Doreen Gatson, most of his encounters with people occur at these lodgings, the streets of the town and the park which becomes his spiritual home.

From the time he leaves the farm Bennie becomes increasingly aware of the way people attempt to unload their guilt upon him and turn him into a sacrifice just as Link Gatson brings home sacrifices from hunting forays in the bush.

Bennie has two friends, Woopa and Fatso, and with their help he learns to retaliate, with words which he discovers to have a special power and second only to the awful silences with which the three conspire to make their own special kind of communication.

Bennie has also the satisfaction of making somebody scream. But it is, finally, within a loaded silence that the truth of many lives becomes a frightening reality.