the garden gate

THE GARDEN GATE
Other books by
Hail & Farewell! An evocation of Gippsland
Who could love the nightingale?
Four faces, wobbly mirror
At the window
(1976)
(1984)
The garden gate
(1984)
Mapping the paddocks
(1985)
Play together, dark blue twenty
(1986)
House of trees (reissue of Hail & Farewell!
Victoria Challis
(1991)
House of music
(1996)
Wainwrights’ mountain
Waking into dream
didgeridoo
Janus
1987)
(1997)
(1998)
(1999)
(2001)
The Centre & other essays
(2002)
Love in the Age of Wings & other operas
Melba: an Australian city
The Wainwright Operas
Oztralia
(2004)
(2005)
(2005)
Cloud of Knowing
Benedictus
(2006)
(2006)
Mini mags
Escape
(1971)
(1974)
(2004)
Hallucination before departure
(2006)
(2003)
THE GARDEN GATE
Chester Eagle
First published 1984 by Trojan Press. Typeset by Abb-Typesetting, Collingwood. Printed by Globe Press, Brunswick. Designed by
Vane Lindesay. This electronic edition published 2006 by Chester Eagle, operating as Trojan Press, 23 Langs Road Ivanhoe 3079,
phone (within Australia) (03) 9497 1018, email address cae@netspace.net.au
Je fais mon travail avec une passion concentrée qui semble s’accroître en se satisfaisant. Quelle sera la
valeur du résultat? Dieu le sait. En tout cas, j’éprouve un veritable bonheur à creuser, à équiper, à mâter
ce grand canot de Robinson que je ne pourrai pas lançer, si la mer ne vient elle-même le prendre; et
je n’oublierai jamais, Princesse, que c’est à vous, à vous seule, que je dois de m’être livré à ce luxe de
composition.
Hector Berlioz à la Princesse Sayn-Wittgenstein 30/11/1857
1
Serene, Anglo-Australian, the gardens lay in sun, summating European science and British connoisseurship. Strollers regarded flora from six continents. In the lake, ducklings paddled; on the
island, a host of seabirds crowded heavily in the trees, mysteriously distanced from each other,
unmoving, like survivors of a cyclone, and foreboding, like vultures waiting for a death. Their
presence contradicted the simple optimism of azaleas, hydrangeas, and children feeding swans.
Through the gates of the garden came, variously, the members of a picnic party, carrying baskets
and cane hampers, and in a flat overlooking the gardens, a fashionable South Yarra address, lay the
one member of the party destined never to arrive.
Through the kiosk gate came Murdy Miller, instigator of the gathering, and his wife Christie
with their son and daughter.
‘Coming in here always makes me feel as if we’re acting out some corny rendition of a family,’
said the man. His use of the word family having connotations which downgraded her, the wife did
not deign to answer.
Still trying to be interesting, Murdy said, ‘The Baron waited here one time for two hours, but
Euphemia never came. A year or so later he waited somewhere else because, I suspect, he thought
this was where she might come in.’ Christie, having heard it before, remained silent. It was a matter
of no importance to the children.
Murdy Miller was the author of a biography of Baron Sir Ferdinand Jakob Heinrich von
Mueller, government botanist of the colony of Victoria, and sixteen years director of the Royal
Botanical Gardens. The gathering beginning to assemble was to celebrate the acceptance of the
book by ______, publishers.
A dozen people had been invited. Three of them — Bruce Beck, his lover Barbara and his wife
Janis — were at that moment beside the herbarium in the high corner of the gardens diagonally
opposed to the plebeian kiosk entrance. Trees, bushes, and the white herbarium enclosed a vestibule of lawn before a gateway formed by bamboo thickets and a pair of Norfolk pines. Janis, trying
to efface herself, lagged behind, but the interest she affected in the herbarium was more obtrusive
than if she had stayed close.
Bruce called, ‘Oh Jesus, Janis, don’t clear off on us,’ but she merely shifted her attention from
the gumleaf motifs above the ventilators to a bright azalea.
‘She’s niggly with us,’ said Barbara. ‘Oh well, where’s the picnic?’ She slung the carryall’s strap
on her shoulder and bent with the weight.
Bruce told her: ‘He said it was the one spot in the gardens you’d think for sure was planted by
von Mueller.’
‘Shit eh. Let’s just walk through here and see what we find.’
Passively mutinous, scared, Janis followed them past the sentinels of Norfolk pine. These trees,
for Janis, had the persona of fairytale trees, something from a Rackham drawing; for Barbara, trees
embodied a concept of earth and wholesomeness now under attack in capitalist society; for Bruce,
they had the masculine strength of timber.
A little way beyond the narrow point of entry was a huge oak, classified Quercus Alba. Barefoot
Barbara put her toe to the sign. ‘That’s what I’m trying to get away from. It’s got terrific potential,
though. I’d like to see one out on some moorland somewhere, with a mist rolling in, you could
really do something …’ Bruce said, ‘They had some good rituals, those people, they really had
themselves centred.’
‘If I know you,’ she said, ‘you’re thinking of phallic maypoles. Typical chauvinist!’ An even sexuality flowing towards him turned her doctrine into banter. ‘Anyway, what about you and Janis?’
This was a reference to a story Bruce had told her about he and Janis making love in their
children’s treehouse one night when they had had an argument, and she had disappeared, and he
found her, crying, in the treehouse, and they had tried to repair the damage.
‘That’s a pretty interrupted business,’ he said, in the way of males being non-committal.
Janis approached them, brushing fondly against Barbara, took the carryall, and led them onto
the Oak Lawn, as the sign declared it.
They entered it like travellers discovering a continent. Arboreal princes shaded wide domains.
Sunlight and grass favoured the unclaimed land between the principalities. Janis, obeying the fall
of the land, and attracted by a showy bougainvillea, hurried through the oaks and elms. Bruce
called, ‘That wouldn’t be the way,’ but she ignored them. Something superstitious in her flight left
husband and lover exchanging summatory glances.
‘From what Murdy tells me,’ said Bruce, ‘this’d be the other fellow’s work. Guilfoyle. He was
into the Olde Englyshe stuff. I gather. I don’t know. Anyway, let’s try this path.’
They tried it.
It was, in ways, inimical to them, too big; it curved authoritatively around the hill, giving
glimpses of Government House, with its white tower, and its flag indicating that the Governor
was at home. The Director’s residence snuggled close to this seat of central power, and outside its
gate, closed to the public, stood a huge Algerian Oak, which, the sign declared, had been planted
by William R. Guilfoyle on the 17th of August 1873. Bruce admired the tree, but Barbara checked
him with, ‘Not bad for a hundred years, I suppose.’ Chasing her mood, Bruce found something
denigratory to say.
‘This must be the tree Murdy was talking about! It really gets under his skin, apparently. This
fellow Guilfoyle had been five weeks in the job when he planted it. Murdy says it was his declaration that he was boss and he was here to stay.’
‘Looks like he was right, doesn’t it?’ Barbara was realistic enough.
Fast moving clouds gave the day a dapple of sunlight and withdrawal of sun. The garden was
shown, alternately, as a brilliant showpiece and as a closed system unlike the world about it. Trees
from the Himalayas, Mexico, Chile, Spain and a region loosely termed the Orient had an air of
special selection for a World XI to match the Australian eucalypts, tristanias, fern trees and cabbage
palms. The pampered trees, well watered, drained, the soil at their feet turned over, or smoothed
with lawn, appeared to be above all struggle. Such competition as occurred between them was
carefully planned to bring each to its representative best. The garden was a gathering of olympians,
ennobled from the forests of the earth. Ancient cacti and ancient grass-trees took their appointed
places in the parade of knowledge and mastery. ‘This place has an incredible assumption,’ said
Bruce.
‘So have most of the biggest shits on earth,’ said Barbara. ‘Is there any hurry? Let’s lie down
a while.’ Punctuality was a vice for Barbara. She led him onto a wide stretch of lawn and took off
her shirt.
‘You take off yours,’ she said, and then: ‘Put your arm under me. The grass’ll scratch my tit.’
‘At last you’ve found a reason for the bra.’
She nudged him in the balls: ‘Careful Charlie,’ Bruce laughed. He said, ‘You know what my
dad used to tell my sister? If some bloke’s after you, you can do an awful lot of damage with a
spiked heel.’
She said,’ Bit out of date, that advice. Sally’s learning TaeKwonDo, did I tell you?’
Bruce wanted to be remade, there was nothing immediately threatening in this marshalling of
feminine preparedness. He said, ‘I’m worried about Janis.’ She said, ‘She’s got Harry. She’s got to
learn to take the plunge sometime. Women have to.’ He looked lovingly at her.
‘Don’t look moonstruck,’ she said. ‘It’s a fact of life.’ Some weakness in him, or readiness for
contrition, set her off: ‘Did I tell you about the book I was reading? These commandos captured
this ship. They got the whole crew tied up, then they had to untie some of them because they
didn’t know how to run it.’ He started to laugh. ‘Yes, I know it’s corny, but it’s a fact. Women are
unprepared. The old authority structures don’t suit us, they’re male inventions.’ Bruce was grinning. She said, ‘I’m really preaching today, aren’t I. Let’s lie down for a minute, Murdy’s picnic
can wait a while.’
For a few minutes they lay in each other’s arms, but eventually it was Barb who thought they
should get up. While they were untangling themselves, a group of youths moved past, transistor talking quietly from the cricket: ‘Marsh and Walters still there, and what looked like a pretty
grim situation for Australia at 5 for 128 is looking distinctly more hopeful.’ Bruce, who played for
Wandiligong when they could get a team together, was almost as interested in the cricket as the
youths in the topless Barbara. One murmured ‘He’s doin’ all right’ as the group moved on towards
a Monterey cypress where other youths sat around an Eski.
‘Why don’t they go to the bloody game if they’re so interested?’
‘It’s in Sydney.’ He loved finding gaps in her knowledge, she was so certain of her description
of the world.
‘Actually,’ she said, ‘I wouldn’t mind going one day. Going to take me?’
‘How come you never went with Harry?’
She studied him. ‘Are you having a shot at me?’
‘No. A perfectly innocent question. Harry and Lawrence used to go to the cricket, I thought
...’
‘Well you thought wrong. I’ll go with you because I think it’ll be different. But those two chauvinists ... no way!’
Bruce felt flattered. ‘It’ll be new for both of us,’ he said.
The Hearn brothers, Harry and Lawrence, were at that moment approaching the Nareeb gate;
Lawrence checked his brother by the ornate black and gilt Victorian construction while he flicked
on his transistor. Harry considered his brother indulgently. Cricket was a meeting point for their
contrasted lives, but his chessboard analysis was a far cry from Lawrence’s Aussie partisanship.
Lawrence nodded solemnly at the commentator’s words:
‘Marsh gets everything behind that one. They’re tempting him to use his sweep shot, but he
wasn’t having any that time.’
‘Do you know the story of this gate?’ said Harry, teasing. Lawrence looked idly at it. ‘Doesn’t
even belong here,’ he said. ‘Some poonce in Toorak didn’t want it. Offered it to the unwashed
public. Who seem to be using it.’
This was a reference to a drunken dero, with filthy gaberdine coat and empty sherry bottle,
who lay, head on a rock, inside the gate. The dero, deciding that the Hearns were affluent, asked
the score. Lawrence told him. Then the dero wondered if they could lend him a dollar. Lawrence
said, ‘Sorry mate, the pubs are shut. Ask me tomorrow.’ He would have moved on, but Harry, after
examining the dero’s shoes and filthy feet, said to his brother, ‘Remind me to show you a photo
of Einstein ...’
‘Now why would I want to look at a photo of Einstein?’ said Lawrence, hoping Harry wouldn’t
outrage the poor old bastard.
‘There’s this marvellous picture of him,’ said Harry, ‘on some mid-western lecture tour. He’s
sitting out the front of a hall full of old ladies with blue rinses, and all you can see behind this huge
American flag on the table is his face and a pair of feet poking out the bottom. He’s wearing suit
trousers, shoes — and no socks! That’s the level of eccentricity I admire.’
‘If you give us a coupla dollars I’ll buy some,’ said the dero. ‘Honest!’
‘Don’t talk in front of people, Harry,’ said Lawrence. ‘You really are a bastard.’ But Harry,
looking in his wallet, found a two dollar note for the dero. ‘You’re mad, Harry,’ said Lawrence.
‘He’ll only fuckin’ drink it. Come on, we’d better keep moving.’
At the next entrance on the southern side, Anne Owen was confused by a division of the path.
A high, narrow wall of eugenias marked the divide. To the right, in the distance, an Illawarra flame
tree blazed like an insurrection halfway up the heights of beech and poplar. Anne balked. A group
of Indian nuns tripped through her moment of indecision, silver crosses jiggling on their tummies.
Sheltered by the eugenias, they yet seemed to have the wind in their habits and in their tiny pointed
shoes. White socklets and flashing scarlet cords made them a living answer to the flame tree. Anne
took the other path.
It led her to a dead end — a glass house with a notice saying Staff Only; mounds of straw,
compost, a wheelbarrow and some bins in need of paint.
She doubled back.
Lolling near the break in the path was a man she recognised.
‘Jerry! What are you doing here?’
Burdened with nothing but cigarettes and matches, he looked as if he stepped off international
jets with little more.
‘I saw you come in. I was sitting over there.’
‘Laying about as usual. Why don’t you do something?’
Meeting her exasperation, he said, ‘You free this afternoon?’
‘I’ve got to meet some people in here. I don’t know how long I’ll be. It’ll be boring, I expect.
Probably quite mindless.’
‘Come over to the Botanical when you’ve finished. I’ll be in the back lounge watching the
cricket.’ She said, ‘My God, you lead a useless life!’ He pretended to wince. It was plain that she’d
accepted.
Self-conscious, striding hard, she moved directly until, with one glance, she decided that she
had reached the spot. Trees with names attached stood discreetly, as if awaiting a weary camel
crew and a couple of bushy-bearded explorers. Flindersia Oxleyana, read one sign: Gmelina
Leichhardtii: Livistona Australis: Casuarina Littoralis. A tall xanthorrhoea stood by them, like a
native chieftain accepted in the camp. On a wide tristania, capable of sheltering a dozen camp fires
or buried messages, some lovers, or vandals, had scratched their initials. Sitting against the grass
tree, feeling foolish, she flung off her Italian leather boots. Not a soul in sight.
She heard footsteps, but refused to look. A voice said to her, ‘Shoes pinching dear?’
Flushed with intended sarcasm, she swung around to find the sort of woman she regarded
as her ideological butt inquiring with complete aplomb: ‘You look as if you’d be one of Murdy’s
friends?’
There were three of them, two women and a man, all past the biblical three score and ten, and
forty years past the fruitful time when anyone, in Anne’s reckoning, could make a useful contribution to society or hope, at least, to be saved from their ill-chosen path.
Anne could only nod, though she sensed that the second woman was the one she would have
to deal with, while the others watched, and judged.
‘I’m Murdy’s aunt,’ said the first woman. ‘He’s done well, hasn’t he?’
‘I suppose, by Melbourne standards,’ countered Anne.
The aunt was casual, but alert: ‘Is there such a difference, really?’
It was the sort of point that Anne felt deserved clarification. ‘I suppose,’ she said, ‘it’s all a
matter of who you’re trying to satisfy. The city of Melbourne has one of the smuggest and most
philistine establishments in the world. Murdy’s sort of history doesn’t do much but legitimise that
establishment. Oh yes, on one level it’s quite informative, and at least he does publish, but the history department he’s part of doesn’t reinterpret anything. Essentially it’s quite stagnant.’
The old lady stood still, as if allowing the words to rush past. Anne continued: ‘That’s what
Melbourne University’s all about.’
With a dignity that ignored the disputational challenge, the old aunt said, ‘I don’t think Murdy
stagnates. He keeps himself pretty busy. And I don’t think you’d stagnate for long, would you?’ It
was a rhetorical question because she went on: ‘I’m Una Moulton, by the way, and this is Mr and
Mrs Miller.’
‘Wynn,’ said the other woman. ‘My husband’s name is Bernie.’
‘Meaning he’s not one of the establishment,’ said Una, joining her brother and excluding his
wife with a strand of humour which did not come naturally to Mrs Miller. Old, comfortable, and
settled, the brother and sister, Murdy Miller’s aunt and father, seemed connected, down their long
lives, to some larrikin, careless, knockabout aspect of their upbringing, which must surely have
been in a country town; they were not products of an urban class system.
‘No,’ said the man, ‘I’ve never considered myself part of any establishments.’
‘You lived pretty royally when you stayed in Capetown,’ carped his wife.
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Miller, putting down a large cane case under the eye of his wife, who was
concerned that it should remain flat, ‘they were very friendly people, the Du Toits, everything very
nice, but I couldn’t stand having their black servants fawning over me. They’d open doors for you,
and fetch the paper, and fill your glass every time you took a sip.’ He shook his head. ‘It was too
much. Oh, the Du Toits really lapped it up, they insisted on it, but, no, I’d rather get up and do it
myself!’
The affirmation was to his wife and sister more than to Anne, the only one who had not heard
it a dozen times before. Sharply she put in, ‘Did you object to having blacks in the house with you,
or the state of service they were forced into?’
‘Pardon?’ said Bernie Miller, touching his ear.
As if talking to people who might not understand, Anne raised her voice. ‘Were you conscious
of their exploited situation, or were they just too near for your own comfort?’
Mr Miller stepped over the trap as if it didn’t exist. ‘You don’t want people fawning over you.
They were trying to guess your every little want. I’m not that fussy. I say, it’s better to do something
yourself when you really need it.’
‘Well Bernard,’ put in his wife, and there was some humour in the statement, ‘you could take
that attitude a little more often at home, you know.’ Una and her brother laughed; the conversation
was on well worn rails. He said, ‘I hate to break off that subject, of course, but are we sure we’re
in the right place?’
Anne began to explain how she recognised Murdy’s intended rendezvous, but as she spoke
Murdy, Christie and the children came into view at the bottom of a long ascent of lawn, waving to
two other people who had emerged from the deeply shaded fern gully which lies between the gardens’ upper and lower lakes. Mrs Miller whispered to Anne, in an elderly female baritone, ‘Bernard
loves an argument. He’ll pretend not to hear you, just to string you on.’
‘Really?’ said Anne, and there was some menace in her tone, since she was unsure whose side
Mrs Miller was taking: ‘I feel that an argument needs to reach some resolution. Perhaps he just
likes to talk?’
‘Oh, I think we all like to do that,’ said Mrs Miller, as if quelling a talkative committee by
excusing their failings, ‘but in the end we have to take some sort of action, don’t we, to make sure
someone’s better off for all our talk? Otherwise, nothing’s achieved.’
It was as close as someone forty years older than Anne could come to expressing the puritanism that underlay her social attitudes. Was Mrs Miller disappointed in her son, Anne wondered:
had she wanted him to become some bastion of righteousness, a clergyman-activist, a director of
social welfare, some life-expender in a virtuous cause? Up the lawn came the middle generation of
Millers, and the grandchildren.
Anne, finding herself impatient with the familial caravan of Millers, turned her attention,
quickly disappointed, to the people coming out of the fern gully — a man treading painfully, as
if suffering from blisters, and a woman of fifty with a mask-like face which presented itself, as if
drawn by a cartoonist, via nose, spectacles and smile. Socially enthusiastic yet inept, she received
Murdy’s introduction of Anne as if filing her, clumsily reminded Mr Miller of the last time they’d
met, but got it wrong, apologised for her husband’s absurd gait with a quick rundown on ankle
swelling, attempted to ingratiate herself with Una by claiming to be a country person too, and
congratulated Murdy on the acceptance of his book. The gathering paused. Then the newcomer,
elated by her arrival in company she found congenial, remarked, ‘My goodness, people really do
use this place for a variety of purposes, don’t they! Julius and I got ourselves lost in that gully over
there, which won’t surprise anyone who’s ever been camping with us, and we were trying to retrace
our steps when we saw this woman lying on the leaf mould, sobbing her heart out. They talk about
someone being racked with sobs, well, she was, literally. I asked her if she needed help and she told
us to go away. So we left her to it. There wasn’t anyone around, but what can you do? You can’t
take over people’s lives if they don’t want you to.’
‘Not unless they come to you,’ said Mrs Miller, smoothly building a conversation. ‘I don’t think
I’ve seen you, Rhonda, since that meeting at the Malvern Town Hall, have I?’
‘And what meeting was that?’ asked Anne, curious to know what milieu could possibly hold
garrulous Rhonda and Mrs Miller, the controlled, all-seeing creator of safe ground.
Rhonda began: ‘It was ... no, you’ll tell it better than me,’ so Mrs Miller took over. ‘Well, you
see, the city of Malvern has the reputation of being wealthy, but there are quite large pockets of
poor people whom the council is simply ignoring. It was a meeting of interested organisations to
discuss ways and means of getting the council to help, and seeing what help was needed.’ There was
a clarity in Mrs Miller’s utterance which Anne realised had gone down to her son, a wish to extract
the simplicity of things rather than the areas of conflict or dispute. She said, ‘Would you have any
hope of that? The council probably don’t want to know about poverty in their city, it’s probably the
last thing they want to be told about.’ Mrs Miller liked the force of the young woman, but it was
not lost on her that of the gathering, only Murdy, her son, wanted Anne to continue. She muted
the issue with a quiet ‘I think they’ll listen to us,’ and then Murdy, continuing his mother’s role,
explained, ‘Rhonda and my mother are both involved with the Brotherhood of Saint Laurence.
Rhonda’s a social worker, and my mother works in a, er, a charitable capacity!’
‘How much is your book going to cost, boy?’ put in Mr Miller.
‘I don’t know father. I leave economics to the experts.’
‘As much as they can screw out of the public,’ said Anne.
There was some element of jealousy in Anne’s remark that caused Christie Miller’s expression
to cool perceptibly. Anne responded to this with doctrinaire force. ‘No, simply, knowing Murdy,
his book will be a bit of popular social history, with just enough scholarship to get it on Australian
History reading lists. There’s a lot of it around at the moment, it’s selling well ... ‘
Whether she found this offensive, or merely too assertive, Rhonda Mumford spoke above the
last few words, ‘What made you hit on von Mueller, Murdy? Why him out of all the people you
could have chosen? You don’t read German, do you?’
‘That’s been a problem,’ said Murdy, ‘though I’ve had a lot of help from the German department and in the end I became fairly good at scanning the German for things I needed to have
properly translated. Ah well, why von Mueller, that’s a good question ... ‘
He reached into himself for the sensible certainties that would put a foundation under his
project. His mother waited. Anne waited. Rhonda waited, though not without suggesting that her
husband should sit down on the grass to relieve his ankles, it didn’t seem to be very damp. Mr
Miller showed some interest. Murdy’s theatrical pause gave him his audience, except Christie,
whose attentive eyes caught sight of Bruce Beck and Barbara Saunders coming past the southern
rim of the fern gully which, according to Rhonda and Julius, sheltered a sobbing woman. Two figures, not three, she observed, wondering about Janis: and another two figures, the brothers Hearn,
also entered her consciousness, well before they came into view, by means of a transistor radio
tuned to the cricket:
‘Down to fine leg. Iqbal’s down there, fifteen metres from the fence. Only a single. Takes Marsh
to forty-nine, Walker is two, Australia ... ‘
The score filtered through the bushes, the tiny loudspeaker making the commentator’s polished tones metallic. Murdy was saying, ‘You see, he was a figure both in touch and not in touch
with his times, like all of us I suppose ... ‘
‘Six down now for 237. Chasing 324. Needing another ... what is it John? ... 87 for victory.
The game very evenly poised, with the dismissal of Walters. A little bit unlucky to go, Walters.
Some doubt about the catch. He stood his ground until the umpire raised his finger. I think he was
entitled to wait for the decision, though one or two of the fieldsmen obviously thought he should
have walked.’
Murdy said, ‘Here he was in one of the colonies of the British Empire, doing absolutely outstanding work, one of the major scientific figures of his age, in anyone’s terms, and yet a lot of
influential people in Victorian society thought he was a bit of a joke, and not only that, a hell of a
nuisance, because he wasn’t giving them what they wanted ...’
By now Mr Miller had caught the transistor’s tone in the air, though not the words, and was
looking around to see which leafy avenue would bring him the score. Christie said to her children,
‘I think I can hear some people we know coming along that path. Run up and see.’
Murdy said, ‘The vanity of some of these people was incredible. They weren’t interested in
anything unless it provided them with the backdrop which they thought appropriate to their selfesteem. The scientific aspect of the gardens didn’t interest them in the slightest. They wanted a
place where they could parade, they didn’t want the gardens closed to carriages. There was even a
move to have them open only to ticket holders, you’d become a member by paying a fat subscription. Fortunately that idea didn’t come to anything ...’
Christie felt relief that Bruce and Barbara were not close enough to hear; she had no wish to
listen to Barbara on the subject of elitism. Murdy continued: ‘I sometimes think of him as a sort
of Voss, and then I think you couldn’t have anything more unlike. There was a tragedy about von
Mueller, but it wasn’t overwhelming; he was tragic because he was thought to be comic; it was
tragic that he was so pathetic, or single minded, that he accepted the way he was treated. It was a
sad life, and yet he was almost jolly at the end.’
‘That’s a good way to be,’ said his mother, death-haunted. Then she said, ‘Bernard, give me
that rug, there’s some more people coming. I’ll spread it out.’ But by now Mr Miller could catch
the words of the broadcast. ‘Six out!’ he said, slightly agitated. To his wife he said, ‘Who’s that
young chap with the radio? That’s young Lawrence Hearn, isn’t it?’ His sister Una peered through
the top of her bi-focals: ‘I think it is. I’m sure it is. My goodness, there’s a likeness, isn’t there?’
Mrs Miller began explaining to the group that there were Hearns in Nilgiri, where Una lived,
and how it was thought there was a distant relationship between the Hearns and the Millers, except
that some­where in the Hearn family tree there was a marriage unaccounted for. Una and Mr Miller
would obviously have dropped into a replay of many former discussions of this topic had not the
transistor arrived, and the gathering been reinforced, or perhaps undermined, by the arrival of two
Hearns, Bruce Beck and Barbara Saunders — but no Janis.
Bruce was somewhat crestfallen on discovering that Janis was making a problem of herself, as
he put it, but his explanations of what might have happened to her were interrupted by the radio:
‘Dropped! Dropped in slips! A clear chance, Mushtaq got his hand to it but couldn’t hold it. And
now he’s slapping himself on the knee with his white sunhat, quite disgusted with himself, and,
as if to add to his shame, he’s dropped that too! Well, he bends down and picks up his hat, but he
can’t retrieve that chance, and Australia are still in the fight. Walker’s got a big grin on his face.
He knows he’s lucky to be still there. That should have been the end of him, but he lives to fight
another day, and here’s Imran running up to have another go at him.’
Twelve adults and two children stood within the ambience of the broadcast until Lawrence
flicked it off, saying, ‘Better give ‘em a rest I suppose. Gooday Mrs Miller. Gooday Bernie.
Howareya Una? Good news about your book, Murdy.’ Aggressively normal, he was a twin to Mrs
Miller in creating facades of propriety.
Lawrence, a watchman for Wormald Security, was that rare person whose job perfectly describes
his position in life: prowling down city lanes, checking vast office buildings with masterkeys, always
alone, usually armed, he felt himself equal to those who employed him because the dependency
was mutual. The daylight workers, dictating memos, taking their secretaries with them on interstate
trips, protected from human nature’s obverse by people like himself, knew the other side better
than it knew itself, and preferred to fight it. Social systems pivot on such people, and Lawrence was
a forelock toucher, who felt inferior to no one except his brother and his brother’s women.
Some envy and much confusion coloured his relationship with his brother. Harry had an air,
rare in a non-feudal society, of a person who had never been checked. His talents, his brilliance,
which would have flourished in any period, burgeoned with the computer age. The directorial
suites which Lawrence checked out at night were open to Harry in the day. The international conferences which Lawrence read about in company reports piled on desks were the stuff of Harry’s
life. Sitting easily at the forefront of technological change, holding reserves of understanding
beyond the demands made of him, might have developed the attitudes of an ubermensch. Instead,
he cultivated his detachment, treating his personal position, as he treated his work, with a mixture of perfectionism and whimsy. He attracted turbulent women, drawing them as if to dispense
himself as a panacea for troubled states of mind. They moved in and out of his life, hurting him
often, never breaking his mould. He was like a cool, selfish, friendly cat, completely agreeable while
you didn’t push him. If you made demands on him, he withdrew. This invulnerability, this closed
detachment, had once drawn Barbara to him, and sent her away in anger. She had picked up Bruce.
Janis, in a panic, turned to Harry. Harry, accommodating, cool, accepted her, though he couldn’t
fail to notice that she had not arrived with Bruce and Barbara. That would mean, when he was
alone with her that there would be an agonised session in which Janis tried to find what value she
had in his estimation ...
‘Are we all here now Murdoch?’ asked Mrs Miller. ‘Shall I spread out the things?’ It was an
announcement more than a question, it meant that the odd currents in the gathering caused by
the arrival of the last four people would have to be suppressed in the interests of the gathering’s
purpose, which was to celebrate. But Bruce said no. His wife hadn’t arrived, and had their things.
Mrs Miller’s way of smoothing over this situation showed how she saw it as an irregularity that
might have been avoided. Christie wished Murdy had not invited the Becks and Hearns. She felt
herself exposed to both Rhonda and Mrs Miller as a wife who had failed, or did not operate in
the way wives should. If Murdy invited them, he was presumably like them in some way. If he was
like them, his domestic situation had an ad hoc air about it, instead of the permanence which Mrs
Miller and Rhonda Mumford expected as their due. Marriage, in their view, was a female responsibility. It cosseted a man, it enabled him to do all he wanted to do, and it metamorphosed him
from male to father. There was no female inferiority in this function. The modern feminists had
many points to make, no doubt, but the basic politics of the marital situation were not such that
the two older women felt they needed to be upset. Christie gave her husband a challenging look;
something had to be done.
Murdy drew Harry aside. Speaking with his back to the rest of the group, he said, ‘Ah, Harry,
I have an idea that you’ll find Janis in the fern gully.’ He pointed. ‘Off the track a bit, probably. She
could be a bit upset, er ... ‘
Harry said, ‘She mightn’t want to see anyone for a while. We’ve got piles of stuff here, haven’t
we?’ It was a rebuke to Miller family hustling, but Murdy turned to Bruce. His voice, affecting concern but in fact magnifying the absence of Janis, was an irritation to Christie. She said, ‘You know
the gardens better than anyone else, you go and find her.’ On the surface it was an adroit direction
worthy of Rhonda or Mrs Miller, but Christie felt defeated. She had authorised her husband on
a mission involving another woman; his enthusiasm for the task when he should be managing the
picnic was a measure of much that was wrong between them.
So Murdy ducked under the weeping eugenia and slapped the trunk of a palm bearing the
daunting title Archontophoenix Cunninghamiana. Unchecked by any objective observation of his
own emotions, or motives, Murdy stooped for the cave-like entry to the fern gully.
Mr Miller, slightly irritable, wanted to know where Murdy was going; the day was not proceeding as it ought to. Nothing had been opened yet, and he had some folding chairs in the boot of
his car, but his son, instead of fetching them, had gone off after some unhappy female; he wasn’t
sure that he cared for the barefoot, bra-less girl; and her boyfriend, husband or whatever he was,
hadn’t been introduced to him. He said, by way of compensating himself, ‘Let’s see what the score
is now, Lawrence’: it was a cheeky invitation to the younger man to side with him in subverting an
occasion which seemed to be doing its best not to happen. But Bruce came to the rescue: ‘Walters
is out,’ he said, as if bringing news from Rome. ‘Caught. Apparently it wasn’t a catch.’
‘If the umpire said it was a catch, it was a catch,’ said Mr Miller. ‘Which reminds me ... ‘
‘Now Bernard,’ put in his wife, ‘I don’t think there’s anyone here who hasn’t heard that story
before.’
‘This young lady hasn’t heard it,’ said the old man.
‘And I’m sure she doesn’t want to,’ said his wife.’
‘Actually I am getting a bit interested in cricket,’ said Barbara. ‘When the Pakis come to
Melbourne I think I’ll go.’ Suddenly the day lifted for Mr Miller, and further improved when he
was told that Bruce was secretary to a country shire. Council rates and land use were meat and
drink to Mr Miller. ‘Oh yes,’ he told Bruce, ‘I know that district well. My Uncle Roderick opened
up land over there, just before the first world war ...’
Immensities of time and space spanned from Uncle Roderick, lying under marble in
Wandiligong cemetery, to the gathering in the garden. A burst of sunlight on lawn and palm frond
made the garden picturesque for a bout of reminiscence. Uncle Roderick’s steam engines, his
horses and his useless remedies, his celluloid collars, his vests and his fobwatch were exhumed by
Mr Miller. His grandson, keenest of his audience, said, ‘You don’t often tell us things like that,
granpa!’ His granddaughter said, ‘But daddy does! He tells us about when you were his daddy and
he was little like us.’ Mr Miller liked his grandchildren but felt that talking to them only was a sign
of senility. But he was flattered to be asked by Barbara, ‘Did he grow tobacco?’ though to anyone
else the question might have been seen as loaded.
‘Yes, he had quite a few acres of tobacco ... people didn’t worry about lung cancer in those
days.’ Mr Miller was beaming.
‘Bernard’s given up smoking,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘Three months now, isn’t it Bernard?’
Mr Miller was soon inviting Bruce and Barbara to watch a day of the coming test match with
him, and apologising that he wouldn’t be able to take them to the members’ dining room while the
test was in progress. ‘Leave that to some other day!’ said Bruce, enormously flattered. Mrs Miller
felt that the occasion was proceeding so well that she invited Lawrence to turn on the radio for a
moment so Bernard could hear the score, after which he might settle down a bit.
‘I’m all right,’ said the old man. ‘Why don’t you open that champagne you’ve got in there?’
‘Now Bernard,’ said his wife, ‘I was keeping that till Murdoch came back.’
The fern gully was a lengthy oval, wettest in the middle where a trickling stream flowed
through stones and sculptural roots. Bamboo sprouted like hairs on a giant’s head. Moreton Bay
figs and massive magnolias luxuriated in their setting yet gripped the earth as if fearing to be torn
away. It was not majestic, as other parts of the gardens were, it was intense, deep, and separate.
Overhead, palm fronds clashed like Saracen shields, yet the path, the leafmould, and the butts of
trees were shrouded in a quarter light where toads and Nibelungen might have mingled. Water
splashed. An old lady with, improbably, an umbrella, met Murdy at a crosspath. It was then he
heard the sobbing.
The evidence of passion was disconcerting to the scholar. Part of his trouble with Christie was
a fear that she might trap him in an inner world, and master him. He was awkward, perhaps dishonest, with his own emotions, yet deeply curious about the experience Janis was going through.
Janis, enclosed in a darkened world of saurian roots and trunks, cast upon a humus bed of
browned leaves and yellowed figs, was a figure spirited from her proper place. Murdy, peering at
her like an ineffectual mole, asked her what was wrong.
She said she was fragmented. She was utterly in pieces, she couldn’t face anyone.
She said she simply couldn’t act up to the expectations people would have of her. To picnic,
making civil conversation, would be a bigger lie than she could sustain.
When she cried, Murdy put his arms around her, and felt in her a passion stronger than he
had known, a pain of dissolution and dismemberment which had some other object than himself.
She sensed him as a person who had spread his warmth wide as a cover for self-interest, but
she was too dependent to question motives when she needed to cling. She clung to him as if she
expected a whirlwind to sweep her away. She was a psychic force out of control. She needed to
reassemble, but the spirit was neither in the fragments nor in any state of immanence which could
re-solidify. She clutched, and her body shook as he held her. Masculine as he was, she sensed him
as a lesser threat than Bruce or the object of her passion. Grateful, she held him, saying, ‘Talk to
me. Just talk to me.’
‘What about?’
‘Anything.’
He spoke of the Baron and his broken engagement; of the Baron treading the wild shores of
Philip Island, and the quiet paths of his artificial lake, and sharing his discoveries with the Someone
— the only Someone he ever discovered — who comprehended them both scientifically and as a
function of himself. He quoted letters the Baron had written to Euphemia ... she burst out laughing.
‘What is it?’
‘That name. It’s like Maud or the Lady of Shalott. It’s such a Victorian fairy tale ... oh, keep
going, just keep talking. Give me something to listen to!’
He told her some of the Baron’s many absurdities: how, late in life, he wore a dressing gown
around the house all day and kept a woollen scarf at his throat in the hottest weather; how, as a
young man, he wore a tea-caddy with a coloured tassel as a balaclava to keep his head warm; how,
paranoid German in a British colony, he used to buy six or a dozen tickets for functions or concerts, foisted upon him by socialites who might, he feared, use their influence to have his pension
reduced.
‘And yet,’ said Murdy, ‘he left most of his critics for dead. On New Year’s Day 1855, when most
of Australia was looking for gold, or otherwise thinking of a quick quid, the Baron was walking on
the top of Mount Kosciusko.’
She said: ‘I wonder if he had his tea-caddy on that morning? I’ll bet he had cropped hair and
little rimless spectacles, did he?’
‘Some of the time he did. Actually, you mightn’t have realised it, but that’s the picture on the
stamp they put out. Do you remember it? Came out in 1948. Twopence halfpenny. Not my idea of
honouring a man of that stature, but there you are.’
‘Nineteen forty-eight. I was eight.’
‘Same as Tania is now.’
‘I wish I’d known you when you were a little boy, Murdy.’ Broken as she was, she saw the little
boy fragments in him to be matured by wise and careful handling.
‘It would have been nice if we’d grown up together.’
‘In a way we did.’
They had met while Murdy was roaming the country retracing Mueller’s mountain trips.
Mountain child and plainsman, they had discovered enough similarities in their lives to make
them question the nature of coincidence. Bruce had been pleased at the opening up by an outsider
of sections of his wife’s mind which were mysterious to him, and gave Murdy open invitation to
their house. There had been costly phone calls from Bruce, giving new fragments of the Baron’s
journeys, some recollection from a passing generation, some detail of a place name conferred by
the Baron on the virgin land of his travels.
Bruce was new to country life then, still discovering his area, and Janis, descended from pioneer settlers, had the advantage of him. Bruce made Murdy’s discoveries a means to rebalance
himself against his wife’s inner superiority, and always in their minds, in those days of getting to
know each other, was Murdy’s favourite quote from the botanist: ‘Discovery has its own rewards,
and they are of the sublimest kind.’
10
Tenderly she took his hands. ‘Just talk to me a bit longer. I’ll be all right soon. I’ve been afraid
of all the ways Harry might react to me. I think I’m a creature of fear.’
Giver of support, his mother’s child, he rubbed his cheek on hers. ‘We’ll sit quietly for a minute,
then we must go back.’
Her voice faint, she corrected him: ‘Forward.’
‘Hmm?’
‘We have to go forward, and that’s what I resist. I just follow anything that interests me and I
lose myself. When I wake up, I try to get back where I was. It’s never any good.’
He said, ‘Okay, forward then.’ Holding hands, they stood, and walked from the fern gully by a
footpath which brought them out near the palm he had slapped.
Christie and Mrs Miller had everything spread out when they arrived, but Christie was anxious. The last of their guests, her only invitee, was not present.
‘No Greg,’ said Harry Hearn. ‘Hi Janis.’
Janis wavered between giving Mrs Miller the carryall and going to Harry Hearn. She was
unaware of Rhonda, discreetly busy with a hamper. Janis remained still, as if frozen. Murdy passed
the carryall to his mother, who said brightly, ‘It’s such a huge place, it’s very easy to lose your way,
isn’t it?’
But Barbara scoffed. ‘You didn’t get lost, Janis, you got in a tizz.’ Janis breathed heavily. There
was too much of the veteran about Barbara, who said, ‘Don’t take it so seriously Janis, just let
things happen. Eh?’ She smiled, rubbing heavily on the other woman’s arm. Harry said, ‘Where’s
your bag? Got your bag?’
She nodded. ‘In Bruce’s car.’
She had gone passive, she was letting them manage her. Brother Lawrence said to Anne,
‘God, he’s at it again. Looks like they’re doing a swap. This one won’t last long. Harry likes a run
for his money.’ Anne studied the Becks and the other two. The Becks were being liberated and in
some way used by the broken couple. The Becks were naive, they had misgivings about what they
were doing, while the term hang-up, to the urban pair, was a manipulative term. Barbara, Anne
decided, was used to moving on, and Harry ... Harry’s eyes seemed to offer an infinite access; he
offered to women a confident weakness and an infinite capacity to play a game one move at a time.
Something about him suggested that women, or enough to keep him happy, would fall inwards.
He offered openness, frankness, and honesty, like paths leading to some central secret; Anne suspected that there would be nothing there when you finally arrived, but she was not interested in
the labyrinthine games of someone cool, shallow and brilliant, as she judged Harold Hearn to be.
As for Janis ...
Christie asked Murdy to open the champagne and Mr Miller to get glasses from the box;
they would wait no longer for Greg, the youngest of those invited and the only one who’d failed
to appear. Mrs Miller was excusing him on the grounds of the gardens’ layout, but Christie felt
slighted. She did not have her eye out for affairs as she knew her husband did. Her relationships
with people were accurate. When she invited him to the gathering he was, in a way, her test case.
She felt that the Hearns, Barbara and the Becks were too careless of themselves, that they were like
children playing with dangerous weapons. Their egotisms were unsubdued. They were prepared
to act crassly towards others to achieve their ends. Murdy was attracted to this sort of thing, she
felt he would like to join them in whatever it was they were doing; anything to be where the action
was. She felt that Greg, almost perfect as a youth, might become another such self-centred man.
He was obsessed with his music — a study of natural sound as it occurred in the world about him,
and how, conceptually, it might be transferred or transformed into music. Music without musicians, he used to say, only half joking, and ‘We once had the music of the spheres, now let’s have
the music of the world.’
He could so easily become another brash young man, cleverly manipulating grants and highly
paid performances. He was poised, and had soon to take decisive steps in his life. He had a calf
love for Christie, and a hovering girlfriend called Estelle, whom he used to tease for her faithful dog
11
attendance on him, and for her name: ‘Berlioz loved Estelle at sixteen and again at sixty,’ he used to
say. ‘Get someone else for forty years. Come back to me when I’m old. Knit me little sockies with
toes on them.’ Yet she visited him almost every day, and now, with Murdy thumbing the cork from
a champagne bottle, and his father and Lawrence Hearn sneaking another listen to the cricket,
and Lawrence grumbling that the Aussies were gutless, and wouldn’t have a go, so it was gonna be
a draw: now, across the lawns, running clumsily, she, Estelle, clutching a hanky in one hand and
piece of paper in the other, bore down on them like the messenger of ancient tragedy.
Christie saw her first, and knew at once. She stepped to the edge of the group. ‘Why? Why?
Why?’ she called, her thin voice cracking like a choirboy’s. ‘Why, Estelle, why?’ Tears began to
appear in her eyes. ‘I don’t know,’ said a wretched Estelle, ‘this is all he left, I can’t understand it,
you read it Christie, what do you think it means?’
Murdy, of course, had to look over her shoulder, acting the figure of strength. And he was
needed; it only took one glance to break up Christie.
In loose flowing writing, across the top of the page, the young man had written:
IL PARAIT QUE C’ETAIT UN MUSICIEN
‘What’s he getting at?’ said Murdy. ‘Why the French?’ Then he saw the next line:
THIS WILL BE MY FIRST AND ONLY DEATH
Sickened, he gave the sheet to Bruce, who was beside him. Bruce read:
PRAYERS OF THE LIVING GIVE EASY PASSAGE
‘Prayers,’ murmured Bruce, thinking of dreary little churches, creaking organs and sermons
preaching cleanliness of soul as the only thing a human could offer a glowering but allegedly forgiving God. ‘He must’ve been into the Egyptians,’ said Barbara, but the next line stopped her:
PEOPLE TAKE A WHOLE LIFE TO FIND OUT WHAT’S GOING TO HAPPEN TO
THEM
‘What is it?’ said Anne: but there was a line for her:
WHEN YOU KNOW, YOU HAVE TO ACT KNOWLEDGE IS NO TOY
And it went on:
KNOWLEDGE IS DEADLY TOO
Mrs Miller was rigidly calm, more ready than any of them. She merely watched: Anne said to
her, ‘Greg Paton did himself in.’
‘With sleeping tablets,’ said the pathetic Estelle. ‘Even then he couldn’t stop joking. He had all
the little bottles sitting on lines he’d drawn on the table, like that funny notation he made up.’
Mrs Miller wanted no part of the sheet, but Anne pushed it at her, as if making the older generation recognise a failing.
Mrs Miller read:
DEATH IS PURITY A CHOICE, THOUGH PAINFUL, MAY BE EASY
She looked at the rest of the sheet, and said, striving for composure, ‘I think he was a brave
boy, Una.’
The old aunt spoke strongly. ‘I don’t want to look at it. I’ve had enough of death.’
So the sheet went back to Murdy. He read:
MESSAGE
but there was no message, only a blank. Then came a note:
GIVE CHRISTIE VIOLIN
Murdy read:
BURN ALL WORK ON RAILROAD RATTLE
‘One for you, I suppose, Julius,’ he said. Julius took a hobbling step. He pointed to some notes,
neatly drawn, on delicately lined stave ‘That’s the opening of the G Minor symphony.’
‘Oh God, oh God!’ burst out Christie, as if some chance in her life had been removed for ever,
and insultingly at that.
There were two more pronouncements from the young man’s pen. The first was:
12
DEBUSSY SAID FORGET YOU’RE SINGERS PATON SAYS FORGET JUST FORGET
SPEECH CORRUPTS LIKE IRON
‘Like iron?’ said Murdy, and looked to Anne. Janis was clinging hard to Harry Hearn. Harry
said, ‘Is there supposed to be something in that for me?’ Murdy gave him the sheet. He, and a
scared curious Janis, read:
WATERFALL - STARTS, ENDS, IN SAME MOMENT LIVE LIKE THAT, DIE LIKE
THAT
Estelle, said, ‘That was all. And there was a splotch of ink on the wall, and the nib was all bent.
He did try to write something else, but it only made scratches, see?’
Murdy thought of Luther throwing ink at the devil, but asked his wife, ‘What’s the thing about
a musician supposed to mean?’
Christie said, ‘When Debussy died, the Germans were shelling Paris. He was carried through
the streets. He didn’t get much of a funeral. Someone in the street said that. “It appears he was a
musician.” Oh Greg!’
It was as if they stood about a pit. Mrs Miller was starting to put plastic plates back into her
picnic case. Rhonda Mumford said, ‘There must be a next of kin. Do we have an address?’
Estelle explained that Greg’s parents were in Sydney. There was an address, but in the flat, and
she had slammed the door.
‘And the key’s inside. I don’t know anyone who’s got another. I know I was the only one.’
Rhonda was a little cursory with her claim. They could soon, she said, get the door forced open. No
one liked the idea. ‘Well,’ said Rhonda, exasperated, struggling to hold them, ‘there’ll be someone
with a masterkey ... ’
‘God, I’ll soon get it open,’ boasted Lawrence. ‘Got thousands of keys in the car!’
Something made them realise that their practicalities were irrelevant. ‘Why’d he do it, anyway?’
grumbled Lawrence.
‘Haven’t you ever felt like it?’ Christie whispered.
‘No!’ shouted Lawrence. ‘I bloody well have not! I’ve been close to it plenty of times, but only
because of other bastards, not me. I never thought of doing myself in.’ There was a pause. People
looked at him. ‘You got no right to,’ he said, like an amateur pontiff.
‘No right!’ sneered Barbara. ‘Jesus! Who do you think owns your fucking life, anyhow? That’s
what’s wrong with this stinking society. People think Shell Oil or someone owns them. You’re a
born slave, Lawrence, it’s the trouble with you. They don’t put much in your pay packet, do they?
Is that all you’re worth?’
Una regarded the young people steadily, but took her brother’s arm. ‘It’s no good carrying on,’
she said, ‘but I suppose it’ll take them a while to realise.’ Mr Miller was struggling to grasp. He
said, ‘This fellow was a musician, was he?’ The only thing he was sure of was that Barbara couldn’t
be taken into the members reserve. His daughter in law answered him, but with her eyes level and
unfocussed: ‘Yes, he was a musician. It doesn’t pay to have ...’
Her husband interrupted: ‘It wasn’t his vision that killed him.’ But she overruled him. ‘You
can’t be too aware! You have to have your eyes veiled, or else you can’t live.’ Hissed, piercing, it was
the most forceful thing said since the gathering had begun to assemble, and now it had to break
up. Mrs Miller was chivvying people to gather things into bags and cases, as if the spot itself was
unlucky, or doomed, and she noticed that a few bruised clouds had crept under the remote layer
of strato-cirrus which had rippled above them all afternoon. The bruised clouds, and the industrial
orange of the afternoon light on those city buildings which could be seen from the garden, urged
them to go in haste. Under the canopy of the wide tristania, Estelle poured out her observations
of the death-room, every word she could recall Greg saying in the days since the others had seen
him last. They questioned her, but the gathering had no meaning; they had to disperse before its
members could take action. Little Tania wanted to know if she could see the fountain pen because
she thought she might be able to fix the nib, and maybe have it ...
13
‘Tania!’ shouted her brother, shrilly aware of her gaffe. His mother shushed him, handing him
a basket and, as he began to complain, a chocolate royal. Then they crept, confused like refugees,
under the noble trees — the enormous eucalypts, the Chinese Tree of Heaven, the dark soaring
araucarias planted by Mueller and moved by Guilfoyle — towards the gates where they had come
in, and their cars, and the phone calls and lock-picking which were all they could do. Lawrence and
Barbara were to handle the police, and Estelle was to go with the Millers, and the Becks decided
to abandon their plans and drive home that night. Janis, left holding the death note, felt its presence in her hand like an unlucky talisman: she looked around the group as if deciding who should
take it from her, but shunned the action. She crumpled the sheet, and, as they moved — she with
Bruce — towards the cars that brought them, she threw it in a bush, where, crumpled, it lingered
as a piece of litter to be removed, hopefully, by a gardener in the morning.
14
2
‘Well, that was a shock,’ said Rhonda: Julius, hobbling more slowly than necessary, refused to
answer. ‘Poor Christie,’ she said, ‘she was closer to Greg than any of us.’ Julius glared at some
fatuously named hydrangeas. ‘It’s downhill,’ Rhonda said. ‘You shouldn’t be having so much difficulty.’
‘There’s no hurry that I know of,’ her husband snapped.
‘Well, the whole thing’s very nasty,’ said Rhonda, starting to get impatient. ‘I want to get
away.’
‘Don’t you know what you’ll do when you get home?’ said Julius. ‘Ring up until you find out
all about it!’
Rhonda stopped. ‘Perhaps you could go home on one of your precious trains,’ she said. ‘Or I
can get a taxi. I don’t have to put up with you being grumpy. You were very attached to Greg. It’s
wrong to bottle things up.’
Julius pointed to the bag she was carrying. ‘My cigarettes are in there,’ he said. Furious with
him, she dug them out. ‘Thanks girl,’ he said. ‘I need a minute to myself.’
‘I’ll meet you at the gate,’ she said. ‘You can have all the time you want ... I’ve got the car keys,
after all!’ She smiled thinly, secure in her marital triumph. Lighting his cigarette, and sliding the
dead match, wrong way round, in its box, he waited for her to go.
‘The gate we came in,’ she said. ‘Don’t get confused, will you?’
‘If you can find it,’ he said sarcastically.
She strode noisily down the path; he diverted over the grass. It annoyed her that he wouldn’t
discuss things straight away, but had to digest them for himself: it made his decisions craggy,
when he reached them, and less malleable. His method of resolving things frustrated her curiosity.
She needed to know everything, no matter how rude he might be about her ringing up. In seeing
everything, you knew it properly; only that way could you feel its sadness. She felt startled by the
suicide; from what Estelle said, it had been practically planned, yet it was like some metaphysical
experiment, an exploration of pure sensation regardless of cost. And that puzzling note. Perhaps
the boy had had his amplified vision for a few minutes, but how did he know it was waiting for
him? What if he’d taken all those pills for nothing but a headache!
Had he chosen this day because of the weather, as a rebuttal of the people gathering for the
picnic, or because some sense of direction in his moods told him that the hour had come? Why
hadn’t he been depressed, as it was agreed he hadn’t? What else had he written, these last few days,
that would shed some light?
What a pity Estelle was so young, so poor an observer!
Ultimately, Rhonda recognised, she felt a certain meanness towards Greg; on occasions when
he’d called to get Julius’s help with some project, she’d seen her husband perceptibly more rejuvenated than he managed to be with his own children. This was hard to swallow, but, slowing down
as the path took her by the edge of the lake, she decided that a life was larger than anyone’s plans
or intentions for it, and if that was the way her husband was, she could accept it.
Finding a bench, she waited.
Julius, wretched, lit a second and a third cigarette before he moved. There had to be a chain of
logic, because he regarded Greg as rational, but he couldn’t find it. You didn’t have to live long to
experience everything, Mozart proved that, but the whole act seemed to depend on the note being
understood. It was the action’s only fruit.
15
Then Julius changed his mind. Greg had decided that things didn’t have to have fruit. They
didn’t have to succeed each other. You could break out of the long biological chain. It cost a life
to do it, but he’d decided to pay the price. Carefully transporting his butts to a bin Julius hobbled
down to the lake.
‘Well?’ said his wife.
‘Did you pick this place?’ said Julius. ‘It’s not a bad comment.’
Rhonda’s bench was beside the rockface where the directors’ names and the dates of their
reigns were inscribed. The Baron’s expulsion was recorded, a hundred years before, and the name
of his usurper, a man not without genius, could be read on the line below. The usurper’s biographer
was there, and the director whose bonfire destroyed unknown quantities of the Baron’s papers. For
the present incumbent there was a name, one date, and a dash.
‘It is, isn’t it,’ said Rhonda.
‘Drive me home girl,’ said Julius, ‘I’m ready to talk now.’
Passing a brilliant beak of Strelitzia, Rhonda complained: ‘You really are the grumpiest man I
know.’ Julius softened. ‘Then I’m pretty lucky, aren’t I?’ he said, putting an arm around her.
‘When am I going to ring Christie?’ Rhonda asked. ‘Tonight or tomorrow?’
‘Whichever you think best, girl. Leave it to you.’
In the hotel, Anne was attacking the group. She told the young land developer she was attracted
to how they alternated between fatuous questions about Greg’s love life or lack of it, and pointless
breast-beating about not having seen what was coming. ‘Not one skerrick of an idea between the
lot of them,’ she complained. ‘No conceptual understanding at all.’
Jerry, though side on to the TV, was taking in the last overs of the Test. Anne got herself a drink
and put another beer beside his empty glass. He nodded.
‘There’s quite a bit been written on suicide,’ she said. ‘Admittedly most of it’s junk.’ The commentator became suddenly excited: Anne turned to see a dark skinned fieldsman throwing from
the boundary. When she turned back to Jerry, his gaze remained firmly fixed on her face. ‘My God
you’re slippery, Jerry,’ she said. ‘Don’t pretend you don’t know the score. You haven’t been listening to me at all.’
‘I do know what the score is,’ he said, ‘and I’ve listened to every word you’ve said. Want me to
say it back to you?’
‘No thanks. I obviously don’t understand why Greg did it and I’m angry because I’m not going
to get any help in finding out.’
‘Go to the inquest,’ he said. ‘People often let things out. Sometimes you’ll find a dumb copper
has got more out of people in a couple of minutes than a shrink could do in a year. The transcripts
can be very interesting reading. You can get hold of them, you know.’
‘What’ve you been up to, Jerry?’ she demanded. ‘What’s your latest little swindle?’
‘Coastal sub divisions,’ he said. ‘Seen my card?’ He handed her a business card which read:
Paradise Coast - holiday allotments (Jerry Leishman 389 0704). ‘It’s really going ahead,’ he said.
‘We’re surveying a bit of bush down at Seaspray. I have to go down shortly. Want to come?’
She wanted to smash his glossy, attractive confidence before it affected her. ‘You and who else?’
she said. ‘What are you trying to put me in for?’ He raised a finger. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. They
watched three balls, from which Australia scored five runs. Anne chafed, but Jerry became cooler.
She didn’t understand the game but was aware that his fine measure of the players’ performance
was also being turned on her. As the players walked off, he said:
‘We have to supply roads, kerbing, and all the other things people don’t want in a seaside
house. I have to check it out before the contractors start work.’
‘Why are you asking me?’
She read insolent humor in his eyes. He didn’t speak.
‘I’d have to be against everything you’re doing,’ she said. ‘You’re buggering up the bush for
people who’ll probably use their precious houses about three or four weeks a year.’
16
‘If that.’
‘You shouldn’t be alienating those coastal dunes,’ she said. ‘You should be made to put your
lousy bloody allotments back from the beach.’
‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘but people won’t walk.’
‘It’s because they’re used to getting their most selfish demands met,’ she said. ‘You’re pandering to them.’
‘There’s money in it.’
‘You’re a rip-off merchant, Jerry, and you know it.’
‘Come down when we’re selling,’ he said. ‘Watch the way people behave. I don’t push them.
I walk around agreeing with what they say. I show’em the bits I like myself. I sit on the sand
with’em.’
‘Oh yeah, Jerry? The women I suppose?’
‘They’re too old.’
His contempt, and his realism, were a match for her own. There was no chance of getting hurt
by someone who calculated as cynically as he did. Their quarrel, when it came, would be short and
sharp. ‘When are you going down?’ she said.
‘Weekend after next.’
‘Get me another drink,’ she said. ‘I’ll think about it.’
‘You’ve thought,’ he said. ‘Just a sec.’ He listened to the commentator’s summary:
‘So — a disappointing end to the second test in Sydney. A drawn game, with Australia failing
by eight runs, and Pakistan by two wickets, to win the game. Lillee and Walker gave us an exciting
chase in the last couple of overs, but …’
She saw he was studying something. ‘What is it?’ she said.
‘That pencil mike,’ said Jerry. ‘There’s quite a strong breeze up there, if you look at the flags,
but his mike isn’t blasting at all. I could use one of those.’
‘You don’t push them to buy, Jerry?’
‘No need to at the moment.’
‘Get me that drink.’
He stood up. ‘On one condition,’ she said. ‘If I’m going down there I don’t want any of your
slimey mates around. Where do you stay?’
‘You can have the pub or a tent,’ he said. ‘We’ll leave about four on the Friday.’ He went to the
bar. Anne stared at an empty cricket ground.
In the closed cabin of their Saab, Bruce directed their flight from Melbourne, Janis lying on the
seat beside him like someone ravished. Streetlights played on the sleek, speeding car. Bruce passed
everything in sight. Janis longed for the play of moonlight on sprawling gums. Harry was further
away, amid factories and growling semitrailers, than when she was at home. There, where she
didn’t feel under attack from her surroundings, she could concentrate on his mysterious difference from other men. He was, for Janis, like a vast palace of which she had only seen the reception
rooms; somewhere, she believed, there were intimate chambers where, if she could only be admitted, she would be treated as an equal. Torn away, after a month-long build up, she felt she was
living a nightmare. Bruce, in his haste to be home, was aggravating her pain. ‘Why are you driving
so fast?’ she demanded. ‘You’ll kill us.’
‘It mightn’t be a bad idea,’ he said, seething with frustration. Torn from Barbara, burdened, as
he felt it, by Janis’s incapacity to deal with her passion, and guilt-ridden because it was he, with
Barbara, who had first broken the marital convention, he wanted to be anywhere but on the highway. Nerves rubbed raw, he turned on the quadraphonic sound; a blast of rock sprang from the
speakers. Janis hit the button for silence.
He turned it on again, she turned it off.
In hostile silence they rushed into the moonlit grassland on the edge of the city. She stared out,
wishing there was somewhere they could stop: if she could only be walking, with someone whose
17
love was secure, among the ragged, formless gums clustering in low places where the wind couldn’t
tear at them, she might be happy, but she was a prisoner of the Saab. ‘I hate this car,’ she said. ‘I
wish we still had the old one.’
Bruce laughed. ‘You don’t hate it,’ he said, ‘you hate me. But it’s not my fault. We couldn’t stay
down after that bombshell.’ He wondered if Harry had given her another date to come back; he
could go to Barbara’s whenever it fitted with her casual comings and goings, but it seemed indecent
to leave Janis unprovided for. Reading his thoughts, she said, ‘When are you going back?’
‘When are you?’
The question made her helpless with anger. ‘Why does it have to depend like that?’ she said.
‘If you want to go off with Barbara, go off! If you want to leave me, leave me! If you want Barb to
live at our place, ask her up! Don’t trade with me. You’re making arrangements all the time that
involve me, but you don’t consult me!’
‘I just bloody well did consult you!’ he shouted. ‘What else can I do? I know what you’d be like
if I did do things without consulting you, you’d go right off your head!’
‘You’re not consulting me at all,’ she said. ‘You’re manipulating me. You’re putting me in a
position where I have to go somewhere if you want to go somewhere. If you have someone, I have
to have someone. That throws me onto Harry, and he doesn’t want it! So all you’ve done is humiliate me. Can’t you see it?’
He saw it, but couldn’t solve it. He pressed his foot on the accelerator. ‘Careful Bruce!’ she
called. ‘You can’t control a car at this speed! Slow down!’
The car lent him confidence. At speed, he gathered in four sedans and was swooping on a
laboring caravan when a semi came over a hill. With Janis screaming, brakes squealing and the car
slowing until gravel rattled the mudguards and the caravan loomed above the Saab’s shapely bonnet, they avoided death. The blast of the semi bucketed their car, which, with breeding better than
its driver’s, selected a lower gear and purred on. Bruce pulled over. She spat at him: ‘It’s not worth
it! It just isn’t worth it. Let’s just drive home quietly and stay there.’
He said, ‘I’m sorry Janis, I’m really sorry, I don’t know what got into me. I want you to drive,
I’m shaking, I’m really shaking, feel my hands.’
In the tight cabin, with the serene moonlight flooding down, they sobbed in each other’s arms,
each despairing, calculating, striving to bring each other back on course.
He knew she hated night driving. She knew he was deeply ashamed of himself. She said, ‘All
right. I’ll drive. You hop out.’ For a moment, as the headlights reflected from his white polo neck,
she loved him and then he was a stifling, repressive influence climbing in beside her when she had
been, for a few seconds, alone. She was soon driving as fast as Bruce, hoping to feel a sense of
aloneness with the road, the night and the task. The land streamed past like a film at unnatural
speed. He hoped to Christ she knew what she was doing, but didn’t dare question her. He’d had
his chance and failed.
Nearing Wangaratta and the turn-off, she slowed down; driving into the valley that held their
town, the Becks became closer to one another, as if the familiar landscape imposed a habit. Their
separate agonies became a mutual problem, in which they supported one another. The powerful
headlights were like feeble torches in the enormous dark of mountains. ‘I suppose we’ve got too
much to lose,’ he said, looking out: ‘I sometimes feel that, and sometimes I hate the lot of it,’ she
said, and she knew he felt the same. Their calm, as Janis swung the car into the drive, was more
exhaustion than resolution of their situation. She stepped out of the car leaving Bruce to switch
off the engine and bring in the bags. Standing on the darkened verandah, and feeling with tensiontired fingers for the keyhole, she murmured to herself: ‘A long journey for buggerall satisfaction.’
Alone in his flat, Harry opened a drawer, taking out a postcard — a lurid sunset behind Sydney
Harbour Bridge. The message was brief: ‘Wonderful rumbles. Superb winds. Every day a fantasy
of painters. Love, Greg.’
Harry propped it by the digital clock.
18
He turned on the hot tap at the sink, adjusting the pressure until swirling water lapped a
tealeaf without dislodging it. It reminded him of an anecdote in a book Janis had lent him: some
Moroccan chieftains had been taken to France, and shown a mountain stream. When invited to
continue their journey, they asked to remain. They wanted to be there when the water stopped.
Men of a dry land, they could not believe it would run for ever.
Harry did the dishes.
He moved Maxine’s clothes back to the wardrobe he’d cleared for Janis.
Checking his watch, he estimated the progress of the Saab.
From Maxine in Sydney came a phone call; she gave him the day and time of her flight.
He said he’d meet her.
The detachment she heard in his voice annoyed her to the extent that she said she might, of
course, change her flight at the last minute.
He said he’d check before he went to the airport.
As she spoke, he turned off the table lamp to follow the progress of a light on the bay.
She asked if he had someone with him. He said he hadn’t.
She said she’d heard a sound; he said it was the switch. As she spoke, he moved to explore the
drawer again, and brought out a tape. Moving lightly in the dark, the cord following him obediently, he put the tape in the player, volume low.
Maxine accused him of not being interested. He told her the address of the commune where
Greg had briefly stayed in Sydney, and asked her to go and see if he’d left any of his stuff lying
around. When she asked why she had to do this, he changed the subject. She grew angry. The call,
she said, was costing her two dollars a minute and she wasn’t getting anything from him. But he
had no intention of discussing suicide with the unstable Maxine in another city. He told her he’d
explain when she got back. It was as much reassurance as he wanted to give.
After she’d hung up, he listened more carefully to the tape. It was an early effort which Greg
might have erased if it had found its way back to him. The humor of the thing was rather childish at the beginning, where a babble of languages referred to the diverse nationalities of painters
working on the bridge, and at the end, where an agonised wail, representing someone falling, led
to the tape ending with a splash. Greg had been apologetic when he’d heard that Harry had a copy
of the tape, but Harry hadn’t offered to give it back, because there were parts he admired; there
was a clanking section, almost tonal, which had a structural logic, suggesting to Harry the network
of girders spanning water. And Greg had been ambitious, if somewhat melodramatic, in his use of
wind effects; they hovered, in a suggestion of great space, about the babbling voices and the stately
rumble of trains.
Harry remembered how Greg had always resented suggestions that he was still finding his
artistic voice. Increase in knowledge, he said, usually went with decrease in perception; a child’s
vision could, in its way, be as vast as the wisest man’s. He knew, of course, that his own capacity to
represent his vision in sound would have to develop, but he didn’t want to disown the concept of
his earliest and weakest works. Harry wondered how far he could have gone; there was something
penetrating about a section near the end, where the blast of wind noise cut three times across the
wail of the falling person, and each time the voice reappeared, it was further away. At the moment
when infinity suggested itself to the listener, Greg had become nervous and had closed his work
with a splash and bubble sound, a disastrous attempt at humor.
As the wailing voice receded into its void, Harry pressed the button, eliminating the artistic
mistake, but substituting the click of the cassette player as a brutal act of termination. Greg, he
knew, would have heard it that way. Natural sound, he said, was expressive in itself, but people had
either ceased to hear it properly, or overlaid it with meanings and associations: his aim, he’d told
Harry a year ago, was to use and arrange natural sound so that it became, not a cerebral discourse,
but an articulation of everything that moved and lived.
A tall order, thought Harry, but worth attempting. Greg had affected the way he heard. Muzak
in the company toilets, when added to the sounds of flushing water and hot air dryers, amounted
19
to some statement of what people felt about their bodies. Police and ambulance sirens expressed
the hysteria of a city. Even the timbre of people’s voices — something that affected Janis deeply
— was like an unintentional giveaway of their character. He realised that he had no clear recall of
Greg’s voice.
Disturbed, he stood, and crossed the darkened room. On the bay, a lone light wandered erratically, as if unsure where to go. Through the bedroom window the central city was visible, the tallest
buildings like cages of stars above a chaos of lights. The light on the bay was presumably a police
boat, since it was going round in circles, searching. Its signals could be picked up on his radio
tuner, but he couldn’t bring himself to listen. Greg would have done it without hesitation, but Janis,
who had been going to stay with him that night, would have felt it as a spiritual presence, and for
once he inclined to her way of apprehension. There was something uncanny about its appearance
on the water, as if its activity demanded his participation, and he was unable to know what was
demanded.
The boat, at least, seemed to have found what it wanted. The circling stopped, there was much
flickering of lights, and a searchlight was being directed into the water. A phrase from a Chinese
poem floated into Harry’s mind — ‘this world’s affairs’: it seemed to presuppose another world, but
perhaps it was only an exercise of bland detachment to speak of ‘this world’ when one was still in
it. Why had Greg taken his life? He had not been a depressive, and he appeared not to have been
unhappy in the last weeks of his life; rather the reverse, from Estelle’s account, though she was a
poor assessor. Harry felt a close identity with the policemen on the boat, searching in the dark,
even though the central towers, geometrically lit, were his normal habitat: he could see the building, the very window where he earned his pay. There was a flurry of activity on the boat, which
seemed to be rocking, then he noticed that the beacons were going out, one by one; a rainstorm
must be moving up the bay. The police must be throwing some sort of marker overboard so they
could send down a diver in the morning.
He turned on the news.
Arabs and Jews were fighting. The price of oil was going up. Trade talks were proceeding with
the Common Market but no statement had been issued. A minor item of local news — minor
because no film was available — was that a light aircraft carrying three passengers had crashed in
the bay shortly after sundown. A search had as yet dis­covered no survivors. Bad weather was likely
to interrupt the search, which would resume, weather permitting, at first light in the morning.
Harry watched the police boat heading inshore, as if fulfilling a prophecy of the media, then
switched off the news. Feeling peculiarly vulnerable, he turned on the light and headed for the
phone. As moved to pick it up, it rang; it was Barbara.
Grave as Norns, the old people sat at poker. Normally they raised each other in one and two cent
bids, but Mrs Miller couldn’t locate her jar of small change, so they were using buttons. Mr Miller’s
pile included some black satin champignons from an evening jacket discarded by Mrs Miller’s
sister, whom he disliked. His wife’s pile included a number of pressed metal discs which had come
down from Mr Miller’s days of wearing overalls for irrigating. Una Moulton’s bank mostly derived
from clothes rejected by the Brotherhood opportunity shops. Mrs Miller kept every unusual button. You never know, she said, when you’ll be given some really good garment, and all it needs is a
couple of stitches and a button — and you may have that button!
Triumph in adversity was Mrs Miller’s motto. She did not bend willingly with the years. She
admired courage, and staying power. There was something intrepid about her bidding two cents
— or two buttons as they would be this evening — instead of one.
With measured formality, they cut the cards. Mr Miller drew seven. Una drew a four. ‘Looks
like you’ll be dealing, Wynn,’ said Una, but Mrs Miller drew a two. ‘It just goes to show,’ said Mrs
Miller. ‘Your deal, Bernard.’
20
Bernard shuffled without finesse, as he had shuffled for sixty years, then dealt. Mrs Miller
arranged her hand, treating the cards firmly; Una took them up one by one, as separate allocations
of chance. Miller picked up his hand and threw down three.
‘Mmmm,’ said his sister. ‘A pair, eh.’
‘That’s what he wants us to think,’ said his wife.
‘I’m building on two,’ said Bernard, suggesting initiative, and a touch of mystery.
After twenty minutes’ play, Una was down, Wynn was square and Mr Miller up, but there had
been a steady interchange of buttons, a former bedjacket of Una’s was in her brother’s camp, pink
among the blacks. Male pyjamas were represented in all piles. Mrs Miller had evening wear of the
thirties, jet and broadly gashed, to remind her of nights in Bendigo. Work shirts, from the days of
wheat harvest, provided some heavy browns. There was a bright red button from the trousers of
Mrs Miller’s son, aged two or three. Various neighbours were represented, and the coat of a farm
laborer who had burnt a hole in the bedspread with late night cigarettes. The jar next to the leg
of the card table on Mrs Miller’s side was a trove of other associations. The buttons were heaped
thickly upon each other, dark as fruit mince, with a few brightly coloured or oddly shaped eccentrics among them, like memorable days in a life.
Una raised the subject of Greg Paton: ‘Christie was interested in this musician boy, was she?’
Mrs Miller based her answer on the ambiguous word ‘interested’: ‘I gather she thought he was
very talented. She gave him a lot of help.’
Mr Miller could not resist: ‘Pretty way out stuff, I suppose.’
Mrs Miller always refuted his condemnations. ‘I don’t know that you’d know very much about
it. Christie works with musicians, and she thought it worth while to help him, and advise him.’
As the cards were dealt, Una said: ‘She might have liked being with him.’
Mrs Miller defended: ‘If you can help someone, then of course you do. There’s always a pleasure in that.’
Una speculated on the negative of Wynn’s words — something not stated but felt. Mr Miller
said, ‘Are you making a bid, Winifred?’
Asserting something beyond the value of her cards, she pushed forward her son’s overcoat from
the forties and a pseudo-medieval helmet and visor from a yacht club reefer jacket.
‘You are bidding up,’ said her sister-in-law. ‘I suppose I’ll have to look at you.’ She pushed
forward a couple of work shirts.
‘Well!’ said Berny Miller, ‘I’m going to raise the pair of you!’ but his coat sleeve swept half a
dozen buttons on the floor. As he picked them up, Una probed again.
‘Do you think she was only interested in his music?’
Mrs Miller’s answer was no answer: ‘I never met the boy. Whenever Christie mentioned him
to me, it was only in relation to his music. And Murdoch seemed to be very fond of him, as far as
I could tell.’
But Una had an answer: ‘Sometimes it suits one partner to let the other have a loose rein for
a while. Lets them look around a bit themselves.’
This was a direct, and double, imputation, but Mr Miller confused the dialogue by jolting the
table as he straightened up, holding an army button: ‘I think I know where this comes from. Was
this my uncle Roderick’s?’
‘No,’ said his wife, fingering her tokens. ‘That came from an old jacket that belonged to your
neighbour Percy Clements. He was helping you with the sheep and it was filthy, so he left it outside
on the tankstand, and he never picked it up, and I looked at it, and it was pretty torn, so I snipped
off the buttons and I burnt it.’ Her statement was challenging, and final.
‘I thought it was Roderick’s,’ said Mr Miller. ‘I can still remember the Hearn kids used to have
these things ...’
He had unwittingly diverted the suppositions. With his sister, he traced through Roderick’s
move to Bright and his return to Nilgiri. If there was an illegitimate connection with the Hearns, it
had to be through Roderick’s eldest son, or his third child, a footloose boy who had died in South
21
America. The mother of Lawrence and Harry had only been in Nilgiri two years, but neither Una
nor Bernard could remember the exact dates of her stay. They were always examining questions
like ‘When did Lionel take up Boonarook?’ and alway finding themselves up against some point of
ignorance, like a blind alley in a maze.
‘Are you bidding, Bernard?’ said Mrs Miller, insisting that only matters that could be clearly
resolved should be discussed.
‘Yes, I’ll raise you one,’ said her husband, and pushed out three buttons including the Percy
Clements coat.
‘Then I’ll raise you one,’ said his wife, excited and assertive, pushed out a trouser fly and a
lurid gold octagon.
Una matched them but Mr Miller raised again, provoking his wife. Their games often resolved
into testing her defences, perhaps because they knew she perceived more than they did. In a closely
guarded family, her more vulnerable nerves were a point of reference. When she had won the hand,
with three jacks and a six to Bernard’s three tens and an ace, there was a measure of relief. Mrs
Miller said she was a little dry, and would make a cup of tea which they could have as they played.
The others agreed. The events of the day had shaken them. There had been too many deaths in
recent years in the various branches of the Miller family, and the births, which were just as numerous, were too far down the family tree to be recuperative for the older people.
When Mrs Miller brought in the tray, her husband said, ‘You say this button’s from Percy
Clements’ coat? I’d have sworn it was Roderick’s. I remember when mother died, and we were
sorting out her stuff, there were some of Roderick’s things in that old chest in the bedroom. I don’t
know how they got there ...’
His sister said, ‘I remember that chest. I used to get in Mum’s bedroom with Lionel, when
we were kids and we always wanted to open it, but she used to hide the key. It must have been up
high somewhere, because we could never find it. You know, I never saw the inside of that chest till
mother died ...’
‘Well don’t let’s talk about that,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘We’ve had enough of that sort of thing for
one day. Whose deal is it?’ So the card game continued, with the forbidden and the contentious
suppressed for a few more minutes, or until the following night, when, with tea steaming, buttons
piled darkly as fruit mince, the shortbread a little too buttery, or just right, the trio would resume,
allocating fortune via the cards, each to each.
The police kept asking about Greg’s note. Where was it? Why had it been thrown away?
Barbara, trying to control her annoyance, told them what it had said and why, presumably,
Janis had dropped it, but they became suspicious when they discovered that she was not around to
be questioned. What was this, they demanded: some sort of suicide pact?
Lawrence who understood cops, was soothing, but the third time they asked for what they
insisted on calling The Death Note, Barbara told them to find the fucking thing themselves. What
puzzled the police — and the more Barbara raged, the more they insisted — was how the dead
boy’s remarks were somehow understood by the people to whom they were addressed; they felt
that there must have been some foreknowledge of what was to happen. Lawrence described Greg
as a bit of a mind reader, a simplification which, though it disgusted Barbara, was enough to
appease the police. In the car on the way to the Millers’, he said, ‘Yes, cops are simple, but you’ve
got to remember they mostly deal in dirty things.’ Barbara said he’d excuse anyone so long as they
accepted him.
At the Millers’ house, Christie was in a state of lucid shock. Anxious to protect her, Murdy organised food and baths for the children, answered their questions defensively, and took the phone calls,
while waiting for the reckoning of his wife. Her likely terror was a force in the house he believed he
would have to cope with, rather than respond to truthfully. It was as if an experience was judged
to be his or hers, and treated accordingly.
22
The death of Greg was hers.
She lay on her bed, staring at the ceiling. In her state of pain, she sensed she had been dislodged. She got up, and studied her husband, standing at the kitchen sink.
He sensed her disappointment.
She lay down again. He took in coffee. If her eyes moved at all, it was away from him. He pulled
the bedcover over her; if he expected speech, he was disappointed.
Heavy with shame at having failed her, he talked to the children. It occurred to him to wonder,
since children do not commit suicide, when the worm enters the apple.
She knew the very moment when she had become responsible for her own life. She had been
at the river with her family until, bored, she wandered through the paddocks to a hut frequented
by lovers, aborigines, vandals and itinerant laborers. She was fond of lying in a depression near a
willow tree until she was sun-soaked, and then withdrawing into the hut, where she would stand in
the middle of the floor, slowly turning, comparing the partial views obtainable through its broken
windows and many-gapped walls with the integrated awareness of summer fields she had brought
with her. At sixteen, the sensation of heat and landscape was integral with her body, and the game
centred on analyzing the sensations she brought in. Finely she divided her feeling of wholeness
between the willow’s shade, the broken plough, the distant road, the deep blue sky and the blinding
sunlit grass. All these things, she found, contributed to a feeling of wholeness within her, but the
feeling persisted when she closed her eyes. Was the outer world within her, or was she extending
herself to take in everything she saw? She could never find the gap. There appeared to be no gap
to find. Playing this game gave her an assurance of flawlessness.
But on the day in question, there was a man in the hut, part aboriginal. ‘Come in miss,’ he
said. ‘You can share with me.’ She studied him with interest. He had a nice smile, but he lacked
something. When he said to her, ‘I don’t own it, you know,’ she decided to enter.
He did most of the talking. He asked about her picnic party. When she wasn’t answering him,
she stayed silent, looking out the door. After a while, he said, ‘You like to share with me, miss?’ She
gave him her lunchbox, said, ‘You can have that,’ and walked out. Half way back to the river, knee
deep in grass, it occurred to her that the man had wanted what her classmates called a fuck, and
in the same moment came two more thoughts; it wouldn’t have hurt her in the least to have given
him what he wanted, but that it would be impossible, now, to go back. The act would not be coexistent with the realisation. Consciousness was an observer as well as a participant. Returning to
the family picnic, she appeared unhappy, and parents asked if something had upset her. Eventually
they got it from her that there was ‘a man’ in the shack; her father, paternally affronted at what he
imagined might have taken place, vowed he’d confront the fellow.
The young Christie said she’d run away if he hit the man, burned the shack, or did any of the
things he was saying in his anger. Her parents’ questions doubled her distress when she felt she
had more than enough to cope with. She’d failed the man in not giving him an answer he could
properly understand, and in telling others about him. She hadn’t even given any recognition of his
need, and above all, she’d failed in not even recognising that she was in a moment when she might
have conferred herself, her qualities, on some other person. Her parents’ failure to realise that it
was on this level only that the experience had affronted her set her further apart at the moment
when separateness was paining her.
Staring at the ceiling, with an awkward husband trying to gauge what to do to support her, she
asked herself if she was doomed to repeat this failure; surely some act, some intuition, could have
helped Greg through his version of the fated moment? Talented, immature, he seemed to have kept
that co-terminous unity despite much analysis of the world about him, as evidenced by his tapes.
When Estelle had come running through the gardens, Christie had called an anguished ‘Why?’,
but, lying on the bed, she felt she knew the answer: he had somehow realised that the change was
upon him, and chose not to let it happen. The immensity of the choice, its combination of foolhardiness and courage, stunned her, and drove her to look for some decision that could restore
her wholeness. Otherwise life was going to be a long gathering of scars, accretions, wounds, and
23
responsibility for acts imperfectly desired. She lay in gloom. Estelle stayed out of the bedroom.
Barbara, perennial voyager, walked in.
She said, ‘Are you feeling sorry for yourself, or Greg?’
‘Both. And you?’
Barbara said, ‘When it hits me, I suppose I’ll fall in a heap. Right now, I don’t even feel sorry
for him. And I do feel sorry for you.’
Christie’s pride rankled.
Barbara said, ‘It was childish!’
Christie turned her head.
‘It was like a stupid prank! Just showing us how clever he was. He had this picture of Mozart
on the table, and he’d drawn a tear under each eye. How good did he think he bloody was?’
‘He did that months ago.’
‘Perhaps that’s when he started.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘That’d be when he realised he was gutless. He wasn’t going to face up to life.’
Christie, though prone and marked by strain, resisted: ‘Life is not a duty. Compulsions like you
believe in are a foolish type of conscience. What he did was a response.’
Barbara shook her head.
Christie came back at her. ‘You fight against your realisations. Greg acted on them.’
‘He opted out.’
‘There you are again. You think there’s a duty.’
Barbara began to be exasperated. ‘I don’t think there’s a bloody duty. He was a fool, that’s all.
He threw his life away, and he made sure he left us thinking about him.’
‘No. We would have anyway.’
Barbara felt Greg had to fit a pattern. ‘He was always trying to attract attention. Even in this.’
The two women wanted to hurt each other.
Christie said, ‘You don’t know how to mourn, do you Barbara?’
The question attacked her base. In her quarrel with what she called the shit society, Barbara
used much of the Marxist critique defined so strictly by Anne Owen; but she also belabored capitalism with every well-conducted aspect of so-called primitive societies: modern man lacked initiation ceremonies; got hung up on childbirth and suffered needless agonies; wouldn’t let people die
with dignity; took too much medicine; got cancer from pollutants, but continued to spew them
about; didn’t fuck enough, or put too much on fucking; forced children into straitjackets instead
of letting them grow through experience and so on. To say that she couldn’t mourn was to say that
she was ruled by the faults she saw in the world about her. Barbara shouted, ‘You can talk! You’re
so bloody passive, what did you ever do for anybody?’ and walked out.
Lawrence was horrified. As if in self-protection, he picked up the coffee pot. Murdy, trying to
soothe, rebuke, and satisfy himself at the same time, left the kitchen to put on a record. Estelle felt
afraid of the others’ flamboyance. Christie swept out of her room, a blanket wrapped round her as
a cape, and went walking in the night, single minded, intense. Estelle, feeling helpless, said, ‘It’s
like Wuthering Heights. I wish you’d all stop!’
Barbara poured coffee, having snatched the pot from Lawrence. Tania wanted to know where
her mother had gone. Murdy stood in the doorway, trying to absorb Debussy’s Et la lune descend
sur le temple qui fut. Michael, his son, said scornfully, ‘Always opera,’ though it wasn’t. Angrily reacting, Murdy changed the record to Pelleas, trying to pick up the passage where Genevieve reads
Golaud’s letter to the old blind king. Tania warbled in derision, angering her father, and said she
wanted to find her mother, but he told her to play in her room. Preparing herself for a tantrum,
the child yelled, ‘What with? There’s nothing to do! You made me go to the silly gardens and now
you’re making me go to my room. It’s not fair!’
‘Nothing’s fair!’ shouted her father. ‘If that’s what you expect, you’re going to be disappointed.’
‘Oh don’t heavy the child,’ said Barbara. ‘Is there any milk?’ Lawrence got it out of the fridge, a
24
square cardboard carton. ‘Plastic lined,’ said Barbara. ‘Oh well. I suppose you’ll burn it in your
incinerator Murdy?’
In the next room, Princess Genevieve said to Arkel, ‘Qu’en dites-vous?’, and the old king
replied, ‘Je n’en dis rien.’ Estelle whispered, ‘Can’t we do better than this?’
Lawrence, with his natural tact, asked how long she’d known Greg; Estelle said she’d known
him a year. Lawrence, to her surprise, wanted her to tell him how they met.
‘It was strange,’ she said. ‘My girlfriend Georgina wanted to have a party. But her parents
wanted her to go down to Portsea with them, so she decided to have it down there. It’s only a little
weekender, so Georgina decided to have a beach party. I think I would, too, if I had her parents
breathing down my neck.’
She smiled at Tania and Michael. ‘Make sure you don’t let your parents hang over you.’
‘We won’t,’ said Michael.
‘Go on,’ said Tania.
‘Well, there was another party just down the beach from us. They had a fire and a record player
and they were singing a lot. And then out of the tea tree came these shrill cries. Greg! Gre-eg!
Gre-eg! It was unearthly. They were like teenyboppers but there was something funny about them
as if they were drugged. Gre-eg! Gre-eg! They were in the bushes somewhere. And then we heard
all these seagulls. Well, seagulls don’t fly around at night, we didn’t know what was going on. Then
we saw this boy walking up the beach in his bathers, carrying a basket, with these seagull noises
around him. It was one of his tapes but I didn’t know that then. He walked up the beach in the
moonlight and sat next to me.’
‘Who was calling out?’ said Tania.
‘Shut up Tania,’ said her brother. ‘Go on?’
‘He told me they were some silly kids from the camp that had been following him while he’d
been making tapes of birds and waves. He said they were only curious at first but in the end he
hated them, they were like sirens out to get him ...’
‘Yes,’ said Michael.
‘What are sirens?’ said Tania.
Lawrence smiled at Estelle. He wanted her to continue, but she was lost in her thoughts, unravelling something. In the next room, Debussy’s sailors disappeared down the bay in a series of sad,
hissing cries, and wistful Melisande asked her brother in law: ‘Oh, pourquoi partez-vous?’
‘What’s that?’ said Estelle.
‘Go on,’ said Lawrence.
‘Pelleas and Melisande,’ said Murdy. ‘Go on.’
‘There’s not much more to tell. When he came back to Melbourne he took me to a few concerts, and then he got that flat. After that, I visited him, while he kept on rushing around ...’
‘Out of the night,’ said Murdy. ‘Whew. And went back there.’
Debussy finished side 1 with swishing and a click.
‘I don’t blame him for doing it,’ said Estelle. ‘I’m not even sad for myself, now. I just can’t
reconcile that beginning with today.’
Lawrence shook his head.
Tania asked, ‘What’s she mean, daddy?’ Michael, too, waited for his father’s answer. Murdy
said, ‘When you meet someone in a strange way like that, it’s such a big experience that you think
you know the person completely. And then they do something that doesn’t fit ...’
The children looked puzzled. Murdy said, ‘I’m afraid I’m putting it badly.’
Estelle said, ‘I ...’ but couldn’t finish.
Lawrence said, ‘He came like a ghost, but when he knocked himself off, it seemed really calculated. Is that it?’
Estelle seemed to think so, or at least she nodded. Then Christie returned, her separateness left
outside in the night. Barbara said ‘Sorry Christie.’ Christie said, ‘No, I’m afraid it’s me that should
apologise. I’m often very difficult. Tell me what happened. And what do we have to do?’
25
They were being practical again, but on a level of mourning that included them all, even the
children. Tania asked, ‘Can we get some flowers, mum, for Greg?’ Murdy would have had them
wait till morning, but Christie gave them scissors, turned on the outside lights and told them to
pick flowers they thought Greg would have liked. ‘I’m getting the white camellia, mum,’ said Tania,
‘because he liked to sit on the seat just next to it.’
‘Flowers,’ said Barbara, as if the whole idea was bourgeois, and then, ‘I’ll come with you
kids.’
Murdy stirred, thinking of his grevilleas; Christie, sensing him, said, ‘Let’s all go!’ Spontaneous,
childish Estelle stood at once, as if the act were healing in itself. Lawrence fell in with the idea,
they all took to the night as if it were their element; but it was about to rain, and they scampered
about the garden in the first rushing of wind and spattering of drops, clutching at whatever they
could see, except for little Tania, who made for the white camellia, and Christie for a damp spot
behind the garage where she had ferns: a selection of them, in her small hand, seemed the essence
of cool earth.
Lawrence had jonquils and everlastings, but, seeing Christie’s spray of fern leaves, he dashed
outside again, despite the increasing rain — the same rain Harry had seen obliterating the beacons
in the bay — and returned with a hastily snatched handful of dodonaea: the green, winged seedpods
and the pinnate foliage related them, in the vase Christie chose, to the ferns she’d brought in. They
put the other flowers in Christie’s tiny earthenware pots. Greg seemed present in the room. Murdy
offered them wine. Lawrence went to his car for beer. ‘My precaution’, he called it. Rain rushed at
the house. In the cool relief of the summer storm, Lawrence announced: ‘I rang the parents. They
said we had to cremate him and send the ashes up. They aren’t going to come down for the funeral.
I mean, they’re going to have the funeral up there.’
Christie said: ‘Strange. He’ll have two funerals. One with us and one with them.’
Lawrence said, ‘Seems funny, doesn’t it, carting ashes around in an aeroplane. You sort of
expect it for kings, or presidents or something, but Greg ...’
Murdy thought of Greg coming down the beach on a summer night, haloed by his birdsounds;
he felt that Estelle, staring at the floor, had the same picture in her mind, but suddenly she cried
out, ‘Even when I feel sorry, I’m cheating him! I am sorry, I’m very upset, but I know I’m going to
get over it. Crying helps me get over it. Crying is for me, it can’t help Greg at all!’
She knew Christie was examining her, she went on: ‘I’ll remember this all my life, but it’s
not destroying me. It’s outside of me, and it only makes me cry. Is that a terrible thing to say,
Christie?’
Christie considered. Finally she said, ‘You’re all right. You still know where you are.’
‘Don’t you?’
Christie said, ‘Since I began taking my bearings from the people around me, I’ve been aware of
the gaps between me and those people. It’s very frightening. I don’t always know where I am.’
It was too personal, too separate. Tania moved beside her mother. Michael stood apart, as if
trying to work out adults.
Estelle, sweetly virginal, said, ‘At least you’ve got children.’
Rain rushed down. Wind blew gustily about the house, Barbara remembered that she should
ring Harry; their child was at her uncle’s, and had to be picked up.
Murdy asked Lawrence about the cremation.
‘Fixed,’ said Lawrence. ‘Dymmock’s, in Canterbury. Half past ten Tuesday. They’ll send the
ashes to Sydney. Do it all the time, apparently. They bill the parents.’
Estelle looked up. ‘What are we going to do?’
It was the mourning question again. A life cannot lightly be allowed to disappear, but what to
do?
Estelle continued: ‘Life’s not worth much, is it? If we don’t know what to do?’
It made the adults shamefaced. Sexual questions could be aired in their circle, there were no
political or social questions to which they were unwilling to address themselves, but death left them
26
inarticulate. It had no place in their reckoning, or not to the extent that they could turn to prayers,
rites or practices that held a meaning.
‘Suppose we could have a wake,’ said Lawrence.
‘About the best we can do,’ said Murdy. Christie and Estelle didn’t seem impressed. Barbara
came back and squashed it. ‘Just a piss-up,’ she said. ‘What’s the good of that?’
They felt mutinous. There was no time when they felt so sold short as now. A grey motorhearse and coffins at a range of prices had become the accepted transactions for dealing with death,
but resolved nothing. All formalities are in a way cynical, but insofar as they neither contain, release
nor dignify emotion, they debase participants — even the corpse.
Drunkenness was a debasement too. They had to do something.
Impasse.
27
3
The Mumfords tended their garden. Daily, when they rose, they saw honeyeaters in the banksia at
their window. Bellbirds bipped in the gully. Kookaburras came to their feeding. Rhonda and Julius,
their sleep broken by the alarm, spent more time looking out the window than at each other in
that first half hour of the morning. Usually, communicating by grunt and glance, they took tea and
toast separately, to come together at the garage. Rhonda drove. Julius got off at the station. Placing
himself on the platform so he would be opposite a smoking compartment, he drew from his bag
a packet of whatever cigarette currently held bottom place on the nicotine/tar table. He read The
Age so he wouldn’t have to look at anyone.
The train, when it came in, offered him a broken door. He found himself jostled into a nonsmoker. Glaring at the non-smokers who glared at him, he allowed himself a few puffs before
throwing the cigarette on the tracks. In huge black letters on the tulip-patterned lining of the compartment, someone had written RELIEVE MAFEKING! Julius winced, unable to prevent himself
from being amused.
He rather wished the graffitist was sitting opposite so he could tell him why the railways were
antiquated. Julius had a list of villains, beginning with the nineteenth century land developers, and
passing through the rural politicians who dominated Victoria between the wars to the major figures
of the motor age. The whole bloody lot of them needed shooting, but since most of them were in
their graves and their damage lived on, there was nothing to do but observe with grim humor the
results of demoralisation, like the louts with caps on the backs of their untrimmed heads who took,
or didn’t bother to take, tickets at the gates. Like the voluble Greek station hands who shouted
words no one could understand through loudspeakers that had been cunningly placed to ensure
confusing echos. Like the single track bottlenecks on busy lines, or the commission’s methods of
finding out where its trains had got to, last updated for the Spirit of Progress in 1937.
The Spirit of Progress! If there was a greater fallacy, Julius had yet to hear it. When people
introduced changes, they rarely knew where they were heading. Here he was, going to see Harry
Hearn about computerisation of the underground rail loop, and the changes it would force were
still directed to the outdated aim of bringing commuters to a commercial, unlived-in city. Some of
Vicrail’s hoarier methods of ‘control’ would at last be wiped out, but the aim was to maintain that
division in the suburban soul.
Well fuck’em, thought Julius, if that’s how it is, I’ll shut the door to my fortress and stick to
my half acre; if they drive me in on myself, I’ll defend. He expected he could match most people
for cunning, but he did rather wish the train could be on time when he was heading to see Harry
Hearn. It was bad enough having a visitor’s ticket pinned on your lapel and being sent aloft to see
the wizard without the humiliation of arriving fifteen minutes late.
Harry, when Julius arrived, discreetly didn’t look at his watch; buoyant as an off-duty Doge,
he cried ‘Julius!’, as if the figure hobbling to him through photogenic secretaries and expensively
dressed executives brought news from a friendly, neighboring kingdom.
‘Greetings!’ answered Julius, awkward when familiarity was called for.
‘And greetings to you,’ said Harry. ‘Coffee?’
Julius nodded.
‘Come this way.’
It was a ritual that suited them. Julius needed his black coffee with five sugars to start him,
while Harry liked sitting at a table not his own with nothing in front of him. He is the most unencumbered man, thought Julius, admiring yet puzzled; he didn’t have shelves full of manuals and he
28
rarely let anyone see him referring to anything. You dealt with him on his terms, which were neither
more nor less than the words he offered you.
‘There’s some problems with last minute cancellations and/or alterations to timetables,’ said
Julius. ‘We’d better concentrate on those this morning.’
‘Right,’ said Harry. ‘When you’ve got steam up.’
The remark alluded to the archaism of Vicrail and to Harry’s own habit of going for a run
or swim on most mornings. To someone other than Julius it might have seemed insulting and
narcissistic, but to the crusty old railways engineer it merely spelt out the terms on which they
dealt. Harry was not only the consultant; there was a psychological appropriateness in the way the
computer man’s office overlooked the grimy, cluttered rail yards that blocked two of the city’s four
edges. Harry had corporation confidence behind him. ‘Before we get onto it,’ said Julius, ‘I want
you to tell me something.’
‘Let’s have it!’
‘If you wanted to initiate some devastating change without people knowing what you’d done
... if you wanted to really put a bomb under people without them knowing it had been planted,
what would you do?’
‘It depends who you want to upset,’ said Harry. ‘I suppose I’d be looking at increasing the range
of listening devices ... no, that’ll happen anyhow. I guess I’d be looking for a cheap means to allow
anyone at all to do a long range fix on any target they liked, right down to the very room.’
‘You’d be out to destroy secrecy,’ Julius said. ‘That’d stir things up, I admit.’
‘What would you do?’
‘There’s all sorts of laws I’d like to pass,’ said Julius. ‘I’d love to have a sort of statute of opposites, whereby people were presented with evidence to the contrary every time they uttered an
opinion. It might keep people’s mouths closed for a while ... ‘
‘You couldn’t sneak that in,’ said Harry.
‘No,’ said Julius, reaching for a cigarette. ‘You could not.’ He banged the cigarette on the packet
as if it were an obstinate voter. ‘Another one I’d like to bring in is a sort of sunset rule on consumer
goods; they have to fall apart within five years, so that people have nothing but what they currently
feel they need. No, the thing I’d most like to see ... ‘
Harry, shoving his hands in his pockets while he watched Julius staring at the ceiling, encountered a letter; it was from Janis, and he’d put it in his pocket when he got home, meaning to read
it when he got up to the flat, but he’d changed his clothes because they were going out for dinner,
and he’d forgotten. It seemed an unnecessary cruelty. While he listened, he inserted a finger in the
flap of the envelope and silently prised it open. The thing seemed passionately alive in his pocket,
it spoke another language from the technological speculations of Julius, edged as they were with
bitterness, and the calculations of the rail loop. When Julius had gone, Harry thought of the grim
Victorian building where the engineer had his office, full of solemn rooms and the endless corridors of nineteenth century officialdom; he felt sorry for the other man.
Moving to the window, he recalled one of Murdy’s favorite maxims — ‘The past is perfected
in the present’. Presumably the historian meant that a period was only completed when its features
could be rearranged into an interpretation, but that hardly made allowance for the decline of an
idea so that what had once been exciting became a museum piece. They might as well put railways
behind glass and be done with it, thought Harry, staring from his tower at gravel trucks and trams
— blustering monsters, noisy as dragons, and equally doomed to extinction. ‘You day-dreaming
Hamlet?’ said a voice behind him. It was Toady Collins, from the company’s print room, with a
pile of spiral-bound project analyses which he tossed on the table. Harry regarded him: another
who took liberties because of his role as company gossip. ‘I’m today dreaming,’ said Harry, ‘and
tomorrow I’ll do the same.’
He remembered the letter from Janis, and spread it out. ‘Harry,’ it began with unutterable
directness; even the writing reminded him of her imploring eyes.
29
‘I’m in total disarray. My brain’s in fragments, like a mirror smashed into a million pieces, each one
glittering with a blinding light so I can’t see anything clearly. I don’t know where Bruce is. We were shouting at each other last night and he stormed out. I suppose he went to Melbourne. To Barbara’s. I don’t
want to ring, I don’t want to know, I just want some peace. I wish you were here, I’d have something to
hold onto. Bert Marshall was here a few minutes ago. He’s a big noise on council so Bruce has to keep
in with him. He wanted to know where Bruce was. I hate lying. He had the hide to ask if I’d like to go to
Wangaratta with him, to the opening of the new library, to ‘represent Bruce’, as he put it ...
The phone rang. It was Murdy. He said, ‘I’ve had a letter from the Patons in Sydney. And a
phone call. They’re round the bend. They want names and addresses of everyone who knew Greg.
Half the time they’re tearing strips off us because we didn’t stop him doing it, and then they get
all tearful. They want to find everything he owned, and all his tapes, and take them back to their
place. They say they can’t bear to think of his things scattered, they’re going to bury his ashes in
their garden, and keep his room as it was ... and then they start again about how Christie should
have known, and Estelle should have known. Poor buggers’re demented!’
The letter looked up from the table:
I’m really desperate. If only I could come down to see you for a few days. Anything to get out of
here. Just spend some time with you. Coming back would be a nightmare but at least I’d have a few hours
of peace. Or the anxiety would be a different sort. When I think of you I’m like a wave against a wall.
Smashing myself at the same old questions — what is it about you, how did I get into this state? I know
you don’t love me but please help me through this time. It’s awful to be so far out of myself, I feel I’m
toppling into some great chasm, it makes me dizzy even to write about it.
Just a few words, anything, even if you could ring me up. I know if I write any more it’ll be gibberish
but I don’t know what I’ll do when I stop writing, just lie on the bed and howl, probably. Please write to
me, or ring me. Anything Harry. Harry Hearn. Oh Harry I’m sorry about this letter.
Harry said into the phone, ‘What will you do? I suppose we could have the stuff in his flat sent
to Sydney in a van.’
Murdy said, ‘Oh Christ, they’ve got that organised already. Through Lawrence, didn’t he tell
you? No, they want everything other people might have. We’ve got a few of his things, actually, but
bugger them. Not much. Violin. Couple of records, a few of his tapes he gave Christie. But they’re
our link with Greg, we valued him too. What do you think? Have you got any of his stuff?’
‘Not for them.’
‘No. Okay. I think I’ll tell them I’ll ask around and see what I can dig up for them. Should hold
them off for a couple of weeks. They might have calmed down by then.’
Toady Collins came into the room with another report. Seeing the letter on the table, he
grinned, backed out, and said something to a passing secretary. Harry said to Murdy, ‘I think you
should indicate your exact feelings to the Patons, and make them adjust to you. Why hide your
feelings and let them push their way through you?’
‘I’ll have to think about that one,’ said Murdy. ‘You’re probably right.’
As Harry hung up, Toady Collins came back, looking curiously at the table. ‘No, Toady,’ said
Harry. ‘I haven’t put it away yet. Now clear off.’
Murdy felt rebuked. Putting down the phone, he stared at his papers. Student essays, and
piles of von Mueller stuff. Even though the manuscript had been accepted, he wanted to develop
it further. The past, he was fond of telling people, has a life of its own; people glancing back from
their own times feel this life and have a wish to perfect it. In striving to do so, they make something
which neither is nor was, but might have been. The past is a set of postulates, he was fond of telling his students, and yet it is the one area of life which is graspable. The present is impossible and
the future a guess. The confidence with which he uttered these substitutes for ideas to his students
paled beside the corporate certainty of a Harry Hearn. Harry maddened Murdy in his way of being
both part of his times, and serenely scornful of them. Secure in his grip on technological advance,
he appeared to toy with the ideas clutched at by his contemporaries. Harry used ideas as people
did clothes — contemporaneously, fond of old favorites, quick to discard. Murdy banged his fist on
30
the manuscript of the biography. He had spent years researching it, months writing it and checking
botanical details with experts, and he had the feeling that Harry would mull through it in a couple
of hours, as much out of courtesy as anything else, and then pick up the latest book on love massage or bioenergetics or interpersonal growth and put them down, too, with the same whimsical
detachment. Murdy couldn’t accept that his work might be devoured in a day and flung aside like
a newspaper filling in a journey. Biographies were more than that; more even than the story of a
man. There was the strange business of the trustees of Saint Kilda cemetery deciding to give the
Baron a plot of earth: feeling honored, he had visited the cemetery to inspect the place they’d given
him. Three weeks later, he was buried there. It was like the darkly clad stranger who visited Mozart
to commission the Requiem; did events, and destinies, hover about a person, perceptible if one
listened to non-rational voices in the psyche? How could you describe a person if you didn’t take
account of such things? Computers irked Murdy: incredibly complex, they were also too bloody
easy. You programmed things to run along the lines you knew, and they duly did so. This made life
easy no doubt, but it didn’t help anyone deal with premonitions, precognition, and the subtle interaction between a man and his period, or the period that was to come after his death. ‘He still lives,’
thought Murdy, ‘because I have recreated him!’ He sometimes thought the Baron was more real
than his own wife and children but what would he do if he were, one thoughtless morning, to come
upon the old boy pottering around the native flora so fashionable around the university? Would he
urge the spectre to go back to Saint Kilda cemetery, accepting his replacement by a book?
Murdy rarely discussed such things with academics; their responses, such as ‘I see you’re into
spiritualism,’ implied unsound scholarship. Anne Owen and her circle also had too many answers;
with Freudian and Marxian ideas they quickly tacked him into place. But it wasn’t the explicability of things he wanted, it was the mystery; he wanted an awareness of it surrounding him all the
time so that he could both be aware of life and aware of the awareness, that worshipful thing which
distinguished him from the bones of great-uncle Roderick, and the bones of Baron von Mueller,
and the bones of alll the others who had graced the earth for a period long or short; neither did
he discuss it much with Christie, who thought it an indulgence in the crude polarisation whereby
men occupied themselves with death and doom, women with life and growth. So he wrote to Janis,
who got two letters the following day.
Magpies were carolling when she opened the letterbox, and a nation of currawongs linked her
street to the bush behind. She closed the door, took the phone off its cradle, drew the blind, and
sat on the bed where Harry had slept when he last stayed there. Then she tore open the letter.
He said she could come down the weekend after next.
She stretched along the bed, and kissed the pillow.
Then she put the letters in a basket, with some knitting and an apple, and went for a walk.
She was breathing hard, too overcome to be happy.
The voices of the currawongs, when she entered the bush, made her wonder why Bruce bothered with quadraphonic sound. Pa tee, pa taa, pa tdidit toom. Pa tee, pa taa, pa tdidit toom. As a
child, carried on her uncles’ saddles, she had heard the same birds singing. Pa tee, pa taa, pa tdidit
toom. The magpies had carolled all her life. The sun had burst in gullies where gold of wattle and
black of fired trunks formed her sense of strength and evanescence. Entering the bush, basket in
hand, she saw the seedpods of the wattle, the gumnuts, and the mushrooms oozing out of logs.
Moss dared the coals of burned out trunks. Ants scribbled down a highway made by wombats. In
ten minutes she was out of sight and sound of the town — except that the mill screamed, almost
soothingly, like the acceptance of a death for every birth.
Looking into the basket, she saw a magical vitality in the objects — apple, knitting, two letters.
Friendship and a lover’s contact. Their presence gave suspension from endless pressure. Harry
might not love her, but he was there in the basket, granting access, and Murdy, with his mysterious affinity for a man long dead, was offering his strength and judgment; she had only to open
the letter. But to open it was to use the power, and she preferred to walk, savouring what she had.
She thought of her childhood, and the first letter she had received from her mother, writing from
31
a Melbourne hospital. As a child, she had attempted what she could now do with ease — to travel
in geographical leaps that were mental, and mental leaps that were geographical, from where she
stood to where the other stood. It was so effortless, one had only to send one’s self along a medium
she knew well.
From the gully where she walked, one could leap to Broken Range; from an outcrop hidden
by the baby-leaves of bluegum, to Mount Bogong; thence to Hotham, Wellington and Nugong,
familiar of Ram’s Head, Cobboras and the Pilot; from Nugong, cloud permitting, one could see
Kosciusko, highest in a land of worn down mountains. Over plateaux and spiny ridges, snowgum
grew like a spiritual condition enforced by mountain air. Winter brought terror to mingle with the
beauty of white on blue. At night, unsheltered, one might not survive. Another terror lay in the
serenity of mountain haze — a fear of sanity. Those who lived alone were usually mad, or cast-offs;
in the solemnity of mountains dwelt the fringes of a frontier people. Loggers, prospectors, maladjusted males, they did the heavy work of an exploitative society, or sheltered from it. The stable
ones drove cattle, or approached the hills with science; Baron von Mueller, ninety years before the
birth of Janis, wrote a letter from his first camp in the Australian alps, and posted it in Omeo, where
Janis’s mother retreated for the birth. Writing to Sir William Hooker, ensconced in his gardens at
Kew, he told him of his appointment as government botanist, and of his intention to describe the
Australian flora, an estimated ten thousand species: exulting in his frontier position, over-riding
his hardships of passage, he had, in a series of journeys, traversed the alpine regions belonging to
Janis by her birthright. Encompassing this birthright like a thinly spread cloud cover, Janis recalled
Mueller’s description of himself, as told to her by Murdy — a solitary wanderer in the most perilous and lonely regions.
Looking at the unopened letter, she imagined the Baron and his two horses struggling through
dense tangles to attain the open grasslands; she saw him, comforter about his throat and spectacles
disappearing in his balaclava, or tea-caddy, at the edge of fearsome drops, rushed about by cloud,
far from his native Schleswig-Holstein, admitting the true marriage of his life as he knelt to concern
himself with mosses and water plants in a terrain speckled with bluebells and silver daisies. At the
peak of his physical maturity he had turned aside from mankind as she was tempted to do, except
that Harry’s letter lay in her basket, granting access. But on what humiliating terms! Maxine would
be in Sydney for another conference. His person would be free. The other half of his bed unoccupied. Sitting on a log, she studied Harry’s writing. It was a shapely cursive script, stating itself
with comfortable authority, like a conductor’s baton, but there was a disparity with the capitals.
He formed the letters D, H, K and S as if he had learned them badly from a copybook. It showed
a rift in the smooth exterior, a layer not welded to the one beneath it. It gave her hope; were other
openings to be exploited?
Barbara had told her he hated a man in the office who called him Hamlet. Why? Did he feel
accused of being a pseudo-thinker, unable to commit himself? Or was it because the nickname
misread the character of someone incurably detached?
There was an afternoon in Tiamo’s, when the couples were new to each other, having met at a
personal growth weekend. Barbara already excited Bruce. The place was full of hippies in animal
skins and Jewish intellectuals in dark glasses. A divided Janis registered the ideas of these people,
but kept her eyes on the window. It was pouring rain. Bruce and Barbara were playing a game from
the encounter group — describe a situation which you feel would fit the other person. Bruce’s setting for Barbara was a pure stream, with naked people bathing; on rocks in the river, people talked
in the unimpeded intercourse of congenial minds. It was a fantasy, a courting, and it irritated Janis.
Having nowhere to go if she walked out, she turned her attention to the walls, thickly layered with
posters. She was losing herself when she realised Harry was observing her. She said — and the
way she put it was an aftermath of the weekend — ‘I think I’m rather like these walls.’ He offered
his cool smile. She felt reduced to explaining: ‘Pieces piled on top of each other. No sense to them
except that’s the way they happened.’ She felt it was idiotic, but it had taken courage to say it. As if
32
diagnosing a common complaint. Harry had quoted to her — and this time she did feel the gates
of his personality open a little — ‘I ended by finding sacred the disorder of my own mind.’
He terrified her. He had words for her secrets. It was like playing chess against a master to
whom one’s best moves were obvious. Her pride collapsed in front of him to resurrect itself, more
demanding than ever, with her husband. She blamed Bruce for her inferiority. She had tried to
be a good wife, where had it got her? The thought of Bruce coming home for soup and toast at
lunchtime made her sick. She’d stay where she was. Let him come looking if he could be bothered.
If he wasn’t ringing Barbara, or finding reasons to go to Melbourne ...
She reread Harry’s letter. It was true. Weekend after next. The pressure eased. She saw a wren
with royal waistcoat skipping from twig to twig. She opened Murdy’s letter, hoping for a flow to
start. He began:
I find myself haunted by the words of Gounod: ‘I pity Berlioz and I envy him.’ I know the agony
that you’re going through and I wonder what’s wrong with me that I don’t venture as much of myself as
you do. There are so many things that I sense, but avoid. You, as far as I can see, can’t escape your own
soliloquies. And yet I think there’s a healing power in catastrophes, if one survives them!
She started back to the house, still reading:
I can’t tell whether you are tearing yourself to pieces, or recreating yourself. Do you think that’s what
life’s all about?
She pressed herself against a tree, vibrating. Nine days till she was with Harry. Her husband
could go somewhere with Barbara, and what did it matter? She would have abandoned him for a
touch of Harry’s finger. Murdy’s letter went on:
I wish I could do something to ease what you’re going through. One-sided love is life’s greatest prank
on humans. It’s not very often we’re ready to open ourselves utterly to another human being — and then
to be only half accepted ...
And yet I do envy something about your position. You’re more likely than I am, in the next few
months, to force yourself, or throw yourself, into something that is right for you. Now that I’ve finished
with the Baron I hardly know what to do with myself.
It’d be nice to go back and start again. Ever think that way?
She had. Bruce had been a callow youth when they married; theiri courtship had gone on too
long, they had locked each other into immaturity, instead of leaping into adulthood. Each was the
other’s first lover; they had had to teach themselves, solemnly reading manuals. This way their
deepest weaknesses were exposed to each other, providing a means to manipulation. Desperately
dependent, they knew too much about each other to be secure. They needled each other’s insecurities, trying to cauterise them but making them worse. It was a no-win situation with no way
out until Bruce made the jump to Barbara. Janis still wondered how Bruce was attractive to the
knowledgeable, experienced Barbara.
He was home when she got there, sprawled on a kitchen chair, feet on the table, tie loose, coat
off, shoes against the stove.
‘Home?’ she asked.
‘Got out to Bert Marshall’s and discovered that he wanted to call off the inspection. I was clear
in the office so I decided to spend some time with you.’
For what return, she wondered.
‘Anything from Barbara?’
‘Apparently young Nicholas has got a cold. And Harry’s not talking to her, she says.’
‘They have trouble being open with each other. Despite all their therapy.’
‘Sounds like us.’
There it was — the acheing nerve, the agony that couldn’t be banished.
She slumped into a mood of Trying To Be Reasonable However Exasperated. ‘Don’t say that
Bruce.’
33
‘Well, doesn’t it?’
Bruce was being Open, Honest, Frank. She wanted to cry.
‘Why do we have to act to each other?’
There were many variations to this gambit.
He chose.
‘I wasn’t thinking in terms of acting. I was wondering if there was any of that delicious soup
we had last night.’ Mischievously she said, ‘I fed it to the cats.’
‘Why did you do that?’
‘I thought you were sick of it. We’ve had it twice.’
Wheels within wheels. He said:
‘What made you think I was sick of it?’
‘You didn’t seem very interested in it last night.’
He said, ‘You didn’t seem very interested in me last night. You were miles away, weren’t you?’
He would have sparred interminably, but she burst out:
‘I hate what we’re doing to each other, Bruce. Why can’t we just ignore everyone and concentrate on each other?’
‘It’s not as simple as that. We’re involved with people.’ Then he added:
‘Any mail?’
‘Murdy wrote.’
‘That all?’
She was on the verge of screaming. ‘Do I have to answer questions all the time? Isn’t there a
single thing you’d like to tell me, to actually share with me!’
‘I told you, I went out to Bert Marshall’s and he had some bloke costing a new spray system.
Put me off. Terribly sorry. Usual story.’
‘Usual story,’ she said bitterly. ‘That’s us!’
She was edging him towards feeling justified: her release would follow shortly after.
He said, ‘Harry’s written?’ He was certain.
She shouted, ‘I don’t want to be questioned! Does marriage have to mean there’s no such thing
as privacy? We don’t have any place of our own at all?’
‘If it’s getting you like that, why don’t you have a break? Or have someone up?’
So that was what he wanted. Harry to come up, while he went down to Melbourne.
‘I can’t just organise people like that Bruce. They possibly have other plans. Minds of their
own, you know?’
‘Why don’t you ask?’
The fear of rejection hit her. She was on the verge of breaking. He put his arms around her.
She could feel his toes through her sandals. Hard against his neck, she said, ‘Why do we do it to
each other Bruce?’
‘We’ll pull through.’ She felt they would. Easing softly against him, she said, ‘I’ll ask Harry if
he’d like to come up, and you go down?’
‘Take him out to Hotham. He says he’s interested in getting a group to build a ski lodge.’
This she rejected. Licensed restaurants and ski lodges didn’t fit her conception of a mountain.
‘I feel bad about that Bruce. You know why.’
‘He mightn’t want to do it at all. It’s just something I know he’s interested in.’
So he had helped her do it. She loved her husband, who could trade so skilfully.
‘You’ll stay at Rathdowne Street?’
‘I guess so.’
‘Ring me some time?’
‘Uh huh. What time would you like?’
She thought.
‘About tea time Saturday. Just before you go out, if you do.’
34
He nodded.
‘Then I’ll know what you’re doing.’
‘Will you think of me?’
She nodded.
‘That’s nice.’
She said: ‘I love Barbara, Bruce.’
She felt him accept this on the other’s behalf; it seemed an advance towards the liberation of
love between all souls.
She said:
‘Make sure you don’t leave late on Sunday. There’s too many trucks on the highway. Couldn’t
you stick to side roads?’
He said:
‘I’ll be okay.’
He meant they would be okay; or he hoped so. He was prepared to risk it, in his generosity,
and his expectation that he could match Janis, step by step in liberation.
She said:
‘What’ll you do?’
He said:
‘Probably go to the test match on Saturday. The Pakis. Barbara’s keen to see a bit of the cricket,
oddly enough.’
This legitimised the deal: a friend was being shown how to appreciate something beyond her
present range, and it was at a social festival, which validated anything.
‘Funny to think of Barb at the cricket.’
He soothed her a little more. ‘Like to go some day?’
‘I don’t know. Perhaps. I don’t know much about it.’
He teased her:
‘After all the games you’ve watched!’
The past seemed secure enough, for all its crises; it stretched a long eight years. She said:
‘I didn’t throw the soup out, actually.’
He said:
‘I didn’t think you did.’
She was on the verge of laughing. He snuck into the pantry, grumbling:
‘That Lebanese bread all gone?’
As she put it, it seemed perfectly reasonable:
‘You’ll have to get some more when you’re down, won’t you.’
He said:
‘Depends on Harry, I suppose.’
‘No. You go anyway.’
‘Ring him up. You can usually catch him at work.’
Harry had a room of his own. She knew it would be what she called all right.
When the soup was despatched, the tie tightened, the coat donned and the shoes only a series
of footmarks vanishing a few steps beyond the puddle in the path, she rang. Harry’s secretary
answered:
‘Mr. Hearn’s in conference. Is it urgent?’
Janis’s existence through the next few hours would be like the path of a wobbling planet, and
what could be more urgent than that? She said:
‘It’s extremely urgent. Please get him at once!’
The secretary, an impeccable go-between, left Janis on an empty line.
Considering her position as another woman tried to bring a man to the phone, Janis imagined
Barbara’s voice: ‘Women are made to do this. It’s the position we’re put in.’ But she strained for
the sound of approaching steps. She could hear a typewriter and some voices; she felt like a spy
35
whose life depended on information he had no hope of getting. One of the voices was American,
with corporation briskness; there was someone chuckling, and a third person who could be sensed
through silences in the conversation. The men addressed this silence as something attractive but
inferior. Janis thought of Harry passing an attractive woman every few minutes, perhaps waiting for
her to reach out to him. Then she heard footsteps and a voice saying ‘Hi, Hamlet!’
She slammed down the phone.
She stared in anguish at a bride photo on the bookshelf, then stumbled to her bedroom.
The phone rang. She lay where she was, dry and cold. She let it ring till it stopped.
Harry’s secretary kept the connection open.
The phone rang again. Janis stood in the passage, undecided.
The American wanted to go into Harry’s room, but the secretary’s eyes told him not to.
The third time, she let it ring for a moment, then picked it up like a loaded revolver.
On the thirteenth floor, Harry saw a cloud-dappled view of the bay with whitecaps breaking
everywhere, and the smoke of factories streaming horizontally, as if the earth was moving at speed.
‘Hello,’ he said: ‘Janis?’
She listened to his voice.
He said, ‘I got your message. I was bored stiff at the meeting Couple of Yanks out to do us over.
Religious fanatics and super salesmen, a fairly poisonous combination.’
She smiled, listening eagerly now.
‘Railways deals got them all excited. We haven’t done much with governments out here. They
think it’s the turn of the tide. They’re going to see the Minister tomorrow.’
Janis ventured:
‘Will that help?’
‘No, he’s in Perth. Apparently no one told these guys. It’ll get them out of our hair for a
while.’
Some of his confidence, she felt, was meant for her. She said:
‘I don’t know how you stand it.’
‘I feel like a break sometimes. A bit of unpolluted air.’
He seemed to be offering the thing she wanted. Testing him, she said, ‘That’s about all I can
offer.’ He said he wanted to see mountains again, he’d been thinking about a ski lodge, and really
he’d just like to get to know her better. This was one statement she didn’t question; everyone was
saying it at the time — like to get to know you better.
After he’d put the phone down, he studied a jet flying across the wind, its nose pointing north
of its actual path as it countered the sideways push. ‘Rhetoric,’ he said, ‘We talk one way and act
another.’
‘Mr. Hearn?’ said his secretary, looking around.
‘Talking to myself,’ said Harry. ‘It was this plane that started me off.’
With Mr. Hearn, the secretary felt secure enough to step out of role ‘What about it?’ she said,
coming in to look at the plane. It was banking now, nose tipped, as if trying to find the top stair. It
was no longer a silver cigar but a cumbersome object with projecting engines and wheels. ‘On a day
like today,’ he said, ‘It has to point a little off line if it wants to stay on line. Does that say anything
to you?’ She lowered her eyes. ‘I think Mr McKersie’s waiting to see you,’ she said.
McKersie was an Australian who’d spent a year in America. His Boston twang was on the level
of stage-Irish. He stood in awe of Harry, and hated him. When forced to talk to him, Harry liked
to mention books and shows, telling him they were exciting top management at the time. McKersie
hated those who had power to compel him but he claimed he saw the shows and he let the books
be seen in his case: ‘Been reading it on the train,’ he would say. ‘Compelling reading.’
He bustled in — tetlon suit, viscose tie, samsonite case — conversation full of buzz words.
Sensing his aggression, Harry remained standing. McKersie leaned on Harry’s table. Harry moved
about the room, making McKersie twist to face him. When he was pressing his knuckles on the
table, Harry sat down, looking up at the salesman whimsically. McKersie backed off to a chair.
36
‘Go Mac,’ said Harry. ‘What is it?’
‘I hear you’ve been pouring shit on some of the prospects I’ve got.’
‘You must mean the R.E.S.I.’
‘I do. What’s gone wrong with this company, don’t we want to do business any more?’
Harry said, ‘I don’t know what those fellows have been telling you, but there’s no way they’ll
buy anything significant from us.’
‘Oh come on Hamlet, I’ve been talking to them about information banks on tenants ...’
‘Probably not legal,’ said Harry.
‘... and multi-terminal links to central storage of every property for sale in the Commonwealth.
They’re interested, Hamlet, very interested!’
‘They are so shonky,’ said Harry, ‘that they don’t want to know what they’re doing themselves,
let alone give anyone else the chance to find out. I don’t know why you waste your time.’
McKersie became abusive, but Harry cut him short, noticing that Mrs Coad was listening
intently. She’d been in sales before coming to his floor, presumably she knew McKersie’s ways.
‘Well Mike,’ said Harry, bringing himself to use the given name, ‘you go and prove me wrong. If
you can get those people to two meetings in a row with anyone from systems design, I shall be very
surprised. Now what else is there?’
McKersie’s chair had rollers. He suddenly lurched it forward until it hit a telephone block in
the floor. Harry, startled, raised an eyebrow. He could sense Mrs Coad’s attention as something
palpable in the room. ‘Who blocked the stock exchange deal on project review?’ McKersie burst
out.
‘The committee. On my advice.’
‘That was the biggest deal I’ve brought this company and you, you bastard, blocked it!’
‘It wasn’t big enough.’
McKersie erupted. ‘You think you’re god, Hamlet! But you’re not! There’s dozens of blokes in
Silicon Valley smarter than you. You’r only a middleman like the rest of us, don’t get the idea you’re
out there on cloud nine looking down. You’re in the human race Hamlet!’
Harry’s office had a floor to ceiling wall of glass. Not bothering to answer, he looked out. ‘What
do you mean it wasn’t big enough?’ McKersie demanded. ‘A million dollars doesn’t matter?’
‘You are very boring,’ said Harry. ‘You met a bunch of blokes who are pissed on whisky by
eleven in the morning and you let them tell you what they wanted. They did the selling, not you.’
McKersie spread his hands expressively, as if he had been dubbed a master salesman.
‘That proposal they put through you — notice the way I expressed it — wouldn’t have handled
a minor boom, let alone a once in a decade spectacular. They were too bloody lousy to spend the
amount they needed to spend. If we’d let the sale go through, they’d be blaming us when the thing
blew up, and some smart character from another company would be there selling them the replacement. Net result, one lost customer. Think about it, would you?’ He pushed his chair back to the
glass. McKersie refused to take the hint. Standing again, then sitting down, he said, ‘Do you know
how much the loss of that sale is costing me?’
‘I can calculate.’
‘I know how much the company paid to get you,’ McKersie said. ‘I know how much they pay
you.’ He named two figures. ‘You didn’t know that was common knowledge, did you?’
‘I don’t like secrecy,’ said Harry. ‘There’s nothing in my life that I care about people knowing,’
‘You don’t have to care,’ said McKersie, ‘because you’re on the top of the tree and you can shit
on everyone below you. You need to know that a lot of people don’t like it!’
Harry looked out the door. ‘You’re not a very good propagandist,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The
result of our conversation is that the whole floor now knows how much I’m supposed to be worth!’
He grinned. ‘Now go away, would you.’
‘Supposed to be worth,’ said McKersie. ‘That’s the nub of the question. We don’t suppose it!
You suppose it! Your superiority is only an idea you’re carrying around in a very swollen head!’
37
‘I’m not superior to you. You’re in sales. I don’t know why you’re here.’
McKersie intended people outside to hear his exit. ‘I’m here to tell you how you look to the
rest of us. The ones who really shoulder the load in this company.’ He marched to the door. ‘I think
you might understand us better now!’
Harry had an impulse to destroy him. Just ring Roy Lightwood and tell him he had an idiot
on his staff ...
Mrs Coad half turned in her chair. She intended others to hear too.
‘His wife’s in a wheelchair, Mr. Hearn, I think it gets to him.’ He studied her. ‘It wasn’t the
commission,’ he said. ‘That was the excuse. He’s been wanting that row for ages.’ His secretary
turned back to her typewriter.
‘Mrs Coad,’ he called, meaning her to come in.
‘Mr Hearn,’ she said, turning in her chair.
He knew if he called again, she would come, but he would have lost his plea. His eyes implored
her, but she wanted to stay outside. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said. ‘He’s very tense. He just wanted to
blow up.’
‘People are more careful than they know,’ he said. ‘If they have a fight with someone, or get
involved with someone, it’s because they’ve found the object they want. The person they fight with,
the person they love, in some way contains the reason.’ He was inviting her to describe him, but
her answer was impeccably neutral.
‘I think the reason’s in a wheelchair, Mr. Hearn.’
She looked at her phone. He looked at the street beneath him.
‘He’s due for leave, Mr Hearn, but apparently he doesn’t want to take it.’
‘Oh shit,’ said Harry. His secretary turned away.
Christie said to Mr Miller, ‘I’d love to go but it’ll have to be another time.’ Seeing his disappointment, she added, ‘I would have been free, but Egon Schuyler wants the parts checked. In fact
there’s only a few things that still need changing and the orchestra know most of them already, but
... that’s my Saturday, I’m afraid.’
As the bus appeared at the top of the hill, Mr Miller said, ‘Yes, it is a pity. It should be very
interesting today. Of course, it’s the West Indies you really want to see, they’re the boys!’
He had spent his life in the richness of male cult; cricketers, clean, white and limber, were the
best of men, and a century at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, or a few quick wickets to rescue
Australia, were peaks. Since she said nothing, and the bus was still coming, he asked: ‘What have
you got to do? What’s it involve?’
She said, ‘The Delius Mass has only been done a couple of times in Australia, and each time
we’ve followed Sir Thomas Beecham’s markings of the score. But Egon Schuyler doesn’t like
them.’
Mr Miller was astounded. ‘He wants the music altered to suit him?’
‘Sort of, yes.’
He said, ‘But you don’t do that, do you? Each time some new chap comes along and wants it
a bit different to suit his idea?’
Christie was amused, but the objection was serious to Mr Miller, who felt that established
authority should rule in the arts as elsewhere. Individuality was vital, of course, but it had to be
subservient to something. A rather mischievous Christie asked, ‘Do they play the national anthem
at the cricket?’
‘The national anthem?’ said Mr Miller, treating it as a request for information. ‘No, they don’t
do that. They fly the flag, of course. Lots of flags. Australia, the M.C.C. The visitors’ flag always
flies above the scoreboard.’
‘I like that,’ said Christie. ‘Flags are dainty.’
Mr Miller felt uncomfortable with an aesthetic judgment of unassailable custom. He diverted:
38
‘Flags can be misleading, of course. They only show the way the wind’s blowing on top of the
stand. Out in the centre, with all the wind currents at that ground, it can be quite different!’
The central turf was where his imagination loved to linger. Christie looked at her father in
law, seeing her husband grown old. ‘You take this,’ said Mr Miller, referring to the breeze ruffling Christie’s headscarf: ‘It’s sou-west here, but by the time it gets past the scoreboard and into
the middle, it could be blowing that way!’ He pointed south-east in a gesture of broad simplicity.
Christie imagined the cricket as a lithographed occasion, with fieldsmen standing on the turf like
toy soldiers, running decorously from time to time to take catches; the formal aspect of the game
attracted her.
But she would not be going today, she would be poring over the barrage of O Du mein Wille!
and the rest of the Dellan panegyric. Eyeing the approaching bus, Mr Miller said, ‘Which way do
you go from here?’ He knew, but liked everything confirmed.
She said, ‘I walk down here to the tram.’
He nodded. ‘That takes you to Burke Road. Where are you going? Corner of Burke and
Waverley, isn’t it?’
She considered the implications of the remark. With the bus almost on them, it meant that he
could, in the next moment, say ‘Well, here’s where I get on,’ and board the bus, having blocked out
the possibility of disturbing converse with a consciousness unlike his own. In a way, it was what
cricket was for — to reassert, and reassure, that some things never changed.
A grumpy bus swung into the kerb, brakes hissing. The folding door, after opening a handspan,
stuck. The driver pumped his lever and it banged open, but in the instant’s delay Mr Miller realised
that Christie wasn’t going to answer him. ‘Oh well,’ he said, bumping a Jewish schoolgirl whom he
hadn’t noticed, ‘here’s where I get on.’ Christie said goodbye without waving, and turned, in the
endless grid of streets, towards the tram route.
39
4
By the time Bruce and Barbara reached the cricket ground, the aura of their night together had
been dispelled. Bruce had hurried her across the park because they were late for the start, and as
applause rippled from the stands, he began instructing her. ‘Runs there,’ he said. ‘Just a single, I’d
say.’
‘Oh, you’re putting it on a bit,’ said Barbara, walking against the clapping. Bruce, however
much she had loved him, was beginning to look suspiciously akin to the males with binoculars and
beer who were hurrying to the turnstiles. ‘Are you sure you want to go?’ she said. ‘Let’s go to the
beach instead.’
‘And spend the day wishing we were here?’
‘Speak for yourself.’
‘But hell,’ he said, ‘you wanted to come. You’ve been saying it for weeks.’
‘I’m starting to have doubts. You really want to see this?’
‘I need you to pay for me,’ he said. ‘I left my wallet at your place.’
Fronting up to the grille, she felt she was buying her way into a trap. She hated the concrete
steps and the smell of urinals. When they reached the sunlit upper deck, she remarked that the
players looked small. ‘You’re a victim of TV,’ said Bruce, taking her hand. She withdrew it. He
rubbed her leg. ‘Brown, aren’t you,’ he said.
‘Tell me what’s going on.’
‘We’re two hundred and fifty ahead. Should see some fireworks this morning, they’ll be out to
build a lead.’
A two and a single confirmed him.
‘Was that a bit of action?’ said Barbara. ‘What do you expect?’ said Bruce.
Australia’s Davis hit a four. ‘Shit eh,’ said Barbara. He rubbed her leg again.
She looked about her. ‘What’s that flag?’ she said. ‘I like it.’ It was the green and white of
Pakistan, with the sliver of moon, an ancient symbol, feeling newer than Australia’s southern cross
and union jack. ‘When did the Pakis get independence?’ she said. ‘Forty nine or forty seven?’ Bruce
had no idea. ‘Fat lot of use you are,’ she said.
Australia’s McCosker hit a four, dancing down the wicket and sweeping wildly at a ball
dropped short to trap him. ‘Pretty careless,’ said Bruce, ‘but he got away with it.’ She looked coldly
at him; he’d spoken without looking at her.
McCosker drove the next ball with power; the scoreboard flashed a light against Qasim.
‘What’s all that about?’
‘They flash the light to tell you which bloke fielded the ball.’
She examined the scoreboard. ‘It’s like a stock-exchange.’
‘Now you’d know more about that than I would,’ he said. It called into question the basis of
their relationship — the indolence of her lifestyle, based on money, the upwardly-mobile cliche
of his life, which had begun in a tension-ridden, Baptist-church-attending industrial suburb.
Opposites conflicted in their sexual congress: his determination against her hyper-aware dispensation of herself; her sensuality against his ambivalence about sex; his hard-earned flexibility against
her throw-away disposition when something didn’t suit her. ‘You shit, Bruce,’ she said, ‘you aren’t
telling me anything. It’s all a big wank. You only brought me here to admire these guys who can
hit a ball with a bat. Big shit!’
‘Tune in to it,’ he said, affecting the parlance of the times. ‘It’s got a lot to offer.’ She watched
it. Certainly it was dramatic, in a subdued way, but it was so obviously designed to produce hero-
40
worship that it made her vomit. Worst of all was the intensity with which people watched, and not
only watched, but listened to transistors to hear expert opinions on the events they were watching.
What an enslavement! It was made all the worse by the fact that while the crowd responded to cues
that were obvious to them, she understood nothing.
‘What’s that fella doing?’ said Barbara.
It was Qasim coming on to bowl, measuring his run-up and shifting the marker, giving his
jumper to the umpire and conferring with his captain.
Mr Miller studied the field placings. ‘He’s looking for the lofted drive,’ he murmured to his
neighbor, a silver-haired businessman with a Rotary badge.
Davis lofted the third ball, and Sadiq, losing sight of it against the stands, was too late for the
catch. The ground hummed, then fell quiet for the bowler.
Dead bat. Straight back along the wicket.
The batsman was all pads, gloves, green Australia cap, and white nose covered with sunburn cream. He danced down the wicket, trying to thrash the bowling, but could only manage a
single.
‘Let’s see how this chap treats him,’ said Mr Miller, as McCosker took guard at the southern
end.
The Australians went for runs. ‘How many in front before they declare?’ Mr Miller asked his
neighbor.
Lawrence Hearn’s girlfriend had no head for figures. When McCosker, on 98, turned for the
second, Lawrence rose from his seat: ‘Go on Rick, that’s it! Beauty boy!’ Tessa, his invited, was
more interested in an oafish male in swimming trunks sitting in front of her with his sex-symbol
— blonde hair, bikinis — and in a Jewish man, dressed in expensive casuals, studying the undressed
pair from under the rim of his towelling cap. But the crowd rose with Lawrence for the batsman;
the play stopped, a trumpet blared in the outer, the scoreboard brought up 100, and the flags
responded to a breeze by billowing full length. Fieldsmen clapped. McCosker lifted his bat on
high, then bent down again, staring up the pitch. Four runs later, he was stumped, and his name
disappeared, leaving a black hole in the scoreboard against his 104. He left the ground, amid much
back-patting, and then the name Walters was hoisted into the gap, to the delight of Lawrence: ‘Now
we’ll see something,’ he told his Tessa. ‘Douggy’s going to slaughter these blokes this morning.’
This was obviously what the crowd expected, because Walters, ignoring the first ball, was urged
to have a go. Strangely enough, the scoreboard still credited him with the 104 of his predecessor. It
was perhaps too great an expectation to carry, because he was clean bowled at once, and departed
the arena while the scoreboard replaced him with the majestic name of CHAPPELL.
The day was spoilt for Lawrence. ‘Christ!’ he said savagely. ‘Bloody Doug Walters! A fuckin’
duck!’
The scoreboard put a painted duck beside the vanquished batsman’s name.
‘That’s a bit corny,’ said Barbara. ‘Oh, really, that’s bloody pathetic. Bruce?’
Bruce agreed, but he was more involved with Chappell, who clipped the ball about him as if
practising in the nets. A man next to Bruce said, ‘He’s got to be the world’s best batsman,’ and
Bruce nodded vigorously.
Barbara’s alienation was instant. She said, ‘I knew we shouldn’t have come here. It’s told me
what I didn’t want to know.’
Bruce eyed her like a publican facing trouble in the bar. ‘You bloody deceitful hypocrite!’ she
flung at him. ‘You brought me here deliberately. You were trying to sneak under my guard. Trying
to con me. Bloody revolting, Bruce! Jeezus you make me sick. Sick! Do you hear, sick!’
His confusion was absolute: in the great oval with its stands, its matchless turf, its P.A. system
recalling doctors to their surgeries and the public to the particular tragedies which made up their
lives; in the records which linked the match with a hundred years of cricketers and spectators who
had gone before, he found a harmony and constancy deeper than anything else he knew. Bruce,
ambitious yet unsure, knew no more perfect function than this handling of the mass. While he
41
watched, and before he could reply to an outraged Barbara, Chappell corrected a mistake: down
the pitch to drive, he found the ball tossed short. With a crudity that could only be described as
elegant, he swapped hands on the handle of the bat, and flicked the ball through the non-existent
slips for a single to help the total. His impertinence drew a laugh from the stands. The thing was
too easy to be applauded; it was only a matter of when he cut short the bowlers’ embarrassment,
and made the Pakis face the speed men.
‘Go on!’ said Barbara. ‘Never mind these ...’ She was going to say chauvinist pigs, but the
words were too weak for her fury. The strongest word in the male vocabulary was cunt, but she
could hardly fall back on that. She snatched Bruce’s A.B.C. cricket book out of his basket, tore it,
and flung it into the breeze, which blew it back about her and her disconcerted neighbors in the
stand.
While Bruce tried to grasp the extent of her rebellion, Australia’s Davis went for a big hit,
the ball flying in a high parabola to the cupped hands of Salim. With the scoreboard light flashing against Salim’s name, and Davis running, as a man conscious of having ended with bravado,
Barbara pushed the knees aside, blocking people’s views of the catch, and stamped, full of energy
and fury, to the nearest exit.
Mr Miller said to his Rotarian neighbor, ‘Will he declare now? Or bat on a bit longer?’
Chappell decided to bat on. Bruce took a last glance at the middle, then pushed along the row
of knees, excusing himself.
On Broken Range, Janis and Harry had stopped for sandwiches and coffee. Janis was sure Harry
would rather be at the Test, but he said he wasn’t interested. Lawrence had gone with a new girl
called Tessa, the last thing he wanted was his brother cramping his style. Janis wondered if that was
what brothers did to each other, and she felt she should do something for Harry, so she turned on
the car radio. A torrent of rock broke the silence of the bush, but she had started it, and felt it was
not for her to extinguish any message from his world: she simply stared at him with wide black
eyes, hoping he would prefer silence. He switched it off, and looked at her, trying to fathom what
she wanted, and why she felt it was centred in himself.
He told her about McKersie’s attack on him. Perceiving how it rankled, she doubted her own
position:
‘Are you sure you’re not annoyed with me?’
He stared at her, still wondering.
She darted between the saplings; he felt she carried some knowledge, some key, within her
fears: he followed her.
He had to stoop in places, but could not avoid the overpowering scent of the bluegum population: it was like a baptism into some new order as he straightened up and saw her, clambering like
a beast in search of safety, on a pile of boulders. He sensed that she had known of it for years. He
paused, then gave way to her greater passion, and followed. When he came up with her, she was
perched on a broken rock, with a jagged drop beside her, and only a few sticks of teatree to grip
for balance.
She sat like a statue, untouchable.
He knew why men felt trapped.
He looked about him, as if the surroundings were her ploy. A hot wind blew up the range.
Smoke haze paled the blue of Bogong. The pungent scrub tickled his nostrils. Beneath her white
blouse were two bumps of bra-clips; he undid the clips, and removed the bra, avoiding contact with
her skin. ‘You may as well have no defence as this,’ he said, dangling it from his hand.
She looked at the thing. ‘You couldn’t stop much with that, could you?’ she said, attempting
to smile.
‘You can stop conception with that little Dutch cap you use. Did you have it in last night?’
She nodded.
‘Powerful, aren’t we,’ he said.
42
‘What do you mean, Harry?’
‘We can stop a baby before it starts. Or we can let it start if that’s how we feel. It makes us
powerful, doesn’t it.’
‘Why do you say us, Harry? I’m not powerful.’
He said airily, ‘Barbara would be furious if she heard you say that. Men only provide the possibility. Women do the real making. What’s more powerful than that?’
Janis gazed with Isoldean intensity at this man with feet of clay. He didn’t understand at all. Or
was he teasing her, using his detachment to hurt instead of soothe, as he normally did?
She said, ‘It’s the terms we do it on. If I started a child now, it’d be because I wanted to have
your child. It’d be the state I was in. It’d be horrible to have a child if I wasn’t in that state. And
that’s the position you put me in. You don’t have to feel that way at all.’
‘The man might,’ he said, choosing his words.
‘But can’t you see the difference between might and have to?’
He looked at her, remembering McKersie.
‘When you took off my bra, I wanted you to do it. If you put it back on, I’d want you to do
that. I want you handling me. Doing things to me. But if you don’t feel as involved as I do, if you
don’t need me to do things to you ... not for you, to you ... then it’s demeaning for me. Can’t you
see that?’
With the next range rearing up like a breaker frozen before it could breach them, he said, ‘I can
see all of that. But I’m sorry, I don’t set much store on ideals. People say things ought to be. They
say things are not right unless they happen in a certain way. But they happen in other ways all the
time, and we manage. When people say a thing’s not right unless it happens in a certain way, they
mean not right for them. It’s a claim they’re making ...’
‘Perhaps it’s a claim they’ve been taught to make. Or even forced to make!’
‘They have to settle for as much of the claim as they can get ...’
‘That’s where men have got us beaten. I agree with Barbara, it’s set up so we can’t win.’
‘Who wants to win? And what does it mean to win?’
‘I don’t want to win!’ She was getting close to tears. ‘But I don’t want to be beaten, either.
Actually, I just don’t want to be humiliated!’
Kneeling on the rock, he caressed her. She felt herself go loose. She twisted round to kiss him.
He kissed her. She gave more of herself to the kiss. He realised that it was only his balance that
held them on the rock. He dug a toe into a crack. She moved to be against him, but he said, ‘We’ll
fall off if we go any further.’ She gasped, realising, then looked sheepish. She waited closely on his
mood. He was still attentive, and yes, tender. Relief flooded through her. Despite her foolishness
she had not offended him. He said, ‘There’s still some coffee left, isn’t there?’ She would have gone:
‘No,’ he said, ‘I can get it. We’ll have it here. I think you taught me something.’
While he went back to the car, she looked at the drop, breathing hard. The urge that had
taken possession of her was stronger than the instinct to survive. She had forgotten balance in her
response to Harry’s presence. She was surprised to find that she had no wish to pull back from the
edge. When he came back he said, ‘It’s safer here.’
She said, ‘No, pass it to me, would you Harry?’ and he did: she turned her back on him, sure,
for the moment, of the threads between them, and stared across the mountains. From Bogong
she could have seen Hotham, from Hotham, Howitt; from Howitt she could go via Baw Baw and
Donna Buang to Melbourne, or in another chain of leaps to Nugong, Cobboras and The Pilot.
Or she did not have to leap at all, she could simply let her mind drift into those spaces, big as
Belgium, where her great grandmother, with a special panier on the saddle for her baby, and a
lumbering wagon carrying as much domestic comfort as she was likely to get for years, followed
the man she loved, as her diary made clear, into a wilderness where one could survive only with
43
the determination which comes from choosing a path with no alternative. It had given her a narrow, unconquerable strength, which Janis wished she had. In these mountains there might still be
trees blazed by her great grandfather as he found a path for his wife and child, and the hired man
who deserted before they reached that spiritual line where foothill trees give way to snowgum. It
was the year Australia sent a team of aboriginal cricketers to England: Janis’s grandfather always
used to say, ‘They sent the blackfellers back home and mum carted me into blackfeller country.
Funny sort of swap!’
Bruce loved cricket, but though she loved him, she knew he didn’t have that tough fibre of her
great grandparents; she felt sure that she too was weaker stock. Perhaps it needs a different sort of
courage to live today, she thought, and looked at Harry.
He too was brooding; noticing her turn, he reached for the thermos, then saw that she was
appraising him with a judgment that probed him through and through. Something had toughened
her, he saw; he knew that she would never entirely lose her pride, whatever anguish she felt.
‘What were you thinking about?’ she said.
He said, ‘I was wondering if Lawrence would make his usual mistake.’ It was the tender spot
he allowed to be seen.
‘The quick grab?’ she said, ready to laugh.
He nodded in half-genuine dismay.
‘Do you know her, Harry?’
‘I’ve met her once. She’s rather obvious. Lawrence usually picks women who hit you in the
eye.’
‘What’s he do wrong, Harry?’
Harry shook his head. ‘Lawrence can see through everyone else. He can smell a crooked deal a
mile off. But he fools himself. He’s got some idea that great lovers turn on the charm and women
can’t stay out of bed with them. It’s pathetic, he’s had some lovely girls, and he always mucks it
up.’
‘What sort of girls, Harry?’
‘Office girls. Ones he meets in his job. Pubs.’
‘Did you like any of them, Harry?’
‘I liked a lot of them.’
‘How much did you like them, Harry?’
‘I wanted them to stick around till Lawrence got over it.’
‘Do you think this one will?’
‘How can I say?’
Jerry Leishman watched the scene with interest. The oaf in bathing togs had decided to display
himself in the break while the players took drinks. Having stood and faced in all directions, he
settled down to caressing the Sex Symbol. He had charisma, Jerry saw; he wanted to incite the
spectators to push him further. Jerry was curious to see how far the oaf could manipulate those
about him. Lawrence was disgusted. The oaf’s actions breached the double standard. Lawrence
felt acutely uncomfortable with Tessa. He would have suggested that they go and find something
to eat, but Tessa had brought a basket full of fruit and sandwiches, sunburn cream, a thermos full
of tea and two of her mother’s china cups ...
As she delved into the basket, he said:
‘Come on Tessa, he’s giving me the shits!’
The oaf turned on him: ‘Who did you say was givin’ you the shits?’
‘You.’
44
It was all happening sooner than the oaf expected. He’d only drunk two small cans, and wasn’t
ready.
‘What are you gettin’ hot under the collar for?’
Lawrence saw he wouldn’t have to fight. He said, ‘The way you’re carryin’ on, it’s disgusting.’
The Sex Symbol gave Lawrence the look of contempt she reserved for ministers of religion. He
fired up, feeling cornered: ‘There’s a time and place for everything!’
‘Those that can,’ said the woman, and turned away. The oaf sneered with triumph as he
caressed her tummy.
Lawrence could have punched him in the back of the neck, and settled him, but Tessa was putting things back in the basket. ‘You’re right, Tessa,’ said Lawrence, as if only a woman’s will stood
between the oaf and punishment. ‘We’ll catch up with this bastard some other time.’
The oaf unzipped a can, letting it spray behind him.
‘If that’s how you feel,’ said Lawrence, ‘step this way. I’ll oblige you. Right now mate. Up the
back, come on!’
But Tessa restrained him, people urged the men to go easy, and when the oaf challenged
Lawrence to fight where they stood Lawrence, outgeneralled, could only jerk his thumb to the back
of the stand. The oaf laughed. Lawrence, moving up the aisle with Tessa saw two young policemen,
microphones clipped to their lapels, keeping an eye on events. ‘Keep your eye on that bastard down
there,’ said Lawrence. ‘He’ll be keeping you busy before the day’s out!’ One of the cops said, ‘On
your way, mate, you’ll be all right.’
‘Junior wallopers,’ said Lawrence. ‘I know their boss. Ah, come on let’s go up top.’
The Rotarian next to Mr Miller said, ‘There seem to be less police on duty than usual, am I
right in thinking that?’
Mr Miller surveyed the outer. ‘I don’t think they’ll be needed, if Lillee gets among the wickets.
But if it gets a bit slow, and our chaps can’t get them out, yes, tempers could get a bit heated.’
Bruce saw Barbara standing under a tree. When she saw him coming, she walked away. He
stared, disbelieving. She’d either gone crazy or she’d found him out in some way he couldn’t
understand. As he watched her denim shorts and faded top receding, he felt she was taking away
his chance of becoming a mature, contemporary man. The arena behind him felt oppressive, and
meaningless. In his anguish, he ran a few steps, then stopped, afraid of her. Not knowing whether
he wanted to catch her or not, he trudged after her. A huge voice, like the voice of God, boomed
out of the stands:
‘Announcement. Announcement. Mr Joe Delitz of Albury to ring Dick. Mr Joe Delitz of
Albury to ring Dick. The matter is urgent.’ For a second or two the ground was quiet, then the
hum of the crowd resumed. Barbara was threading her way through the cars. It was the latest in a
long series of breaks. She knew the stages.
First there was the self-deception about a man, then the finding out. An angry flash of hatred.
Self-disgust, followed by a general bitterness with the world. She wanted to smash the cars drawn
up in lines — empty shells driven onto parkland so the owners could go to the mindless, mass,
male entertainment at the stadium. An eruption of applause made her shudder and, for a moment,
look back.
Bruce had stopped.
Mr Miller and the Rotarian, connoisseurs, clapped vigorously. The ball was bouncing from the
pickets before Chappell had straightened from the cover-drive position.
The next ball seemed to find him undecided, but he was foxing, and at the last moment he
tickled it down to fine leg for a quickly run two.
Another single brought Marsh to face the bowling. ‘He hasn’t had a good season with the bat,’
said Mr Miller. ‘A couple of years ago, he’d have been in the side for his batting alone.’ ‘That’s
right,’ said the Rotarian, ‘but he’s still a great keeper. Imagine taking Lillee all day long.’
Two young people in printed tee-shirts walked past Barbara: the boy’s read JAWS and showed
a shark’s mouth; the girl had a picture of Dennis Lillee on her breasts.
45
Bruce saw scorn on Barbara’s face; she must, he thought, feel the same for him. He was always
trying to sell people a glossy version of himself. She had the courage to act on her feelings, and
he, without his little bit of local power, felt hollow. He remembered many times when Barbara
had ridiculed his gutlessness, his fear of Harry being seen with Janis while he was away. His habit
of looking around a restaurant or foyer before he could relax with Barbara and her friends. He
remembered with shame the time the lights came on at interval in the Carlton theatre and he found
that he and Barbara were two rows behind Bert Marshall, the widower councillor from Bright,
who had a dubious looking woman next to him. He’d made Barbara go back to Shawn’s instead
of seeing the second film, and they’d had a quarrel over leading double lives: she said he’d had the
perfect opportunity to smash the lie that people lived by, and he said he couldn’t afford to do it.
The JAWS boy and the Lillee girl were like a message of contempt as they came near. His face was
full of bitterness as he examined them.
‘What’s up mate!’ said the boy. ‘Feeling sick?’
‘Yes,’ said Bruce, and turned away.
She saw him turn, it made her feel hard and horrible. She’d almost reached the city before she
realised that he had no money and would have to walk. Do him good, she thought, him and his
bloody Saab. He’d go to Shawn’s; it was the last place she’d be going tonight.
Mr Miller nodded. Chappell’s on drive seemed to have a sensory apparatus of its own. Passing
between two diving fieldsmen, the ball slowed as it neared the fence, tantalising the fieldsmen
and bringing the crowd to its feet before it dropped safely in the gutter. And Chappell, this time,
decided it was the moment to close the innings. There would be twenty minutes before lunch for
the visitors to face the speed attack. ‘Right where he wants them,’ said the Rotarian. ‘That’s the
way to do it!’
‘Everything went right for him this morning,’ said Mr Miller. ‘Have you made any arrangement
for lunch?’
With Australia in a perfect position, Mr Miller and his newfound acquaintance agreed to try
the smorgasbord.
Lawrence was happy again. Tessa was squeezing close to him, and he felt that china cups,
instead of plastic, meant something hopeful.
Walking up Swanston Street with a scowl on his face, Bruce ran into, of all people, Bert
Marshall, who wanted to know why he wasn’t at the M.C.G. ‘A day like this!’ said the councillor;
‘I’d have been there hours ago but I had a bit of car trouble.’ What’s her name, Bruce wondered,
but went along with it: ‘Nothing serious, I hope?’
‘No,’ said Bert, ‘but what’s wrong with you? You got the worries of the world on your shoulders? You want to go to the cricket!’
‘I’ve been there,’ said Bruce. ‘I had to dash away for a while. Bloke I know’s going overseas
this afternoon.’
‘Give ‘im a good send-off,’ said the hearty Bert. ‘Janis down?’
‘Not this time. She’s not interested in the cricket.’
‘You shoulda brought her, all the same. It can get lonely, on your own up there.’ Bruce studied
these words as a fish considers bait. ‘Hooroo,’ said Bert, ‘I’ll seeya Monday night.’
‘Monday night,’ said Bruce, like a prisoner reminded of his cell: ‘Seeya!’
Slimy old bastard, Bruce thought: he’s playing me and not letting me play him.
When Barbara got to her place, Paul and Judy were going out.
‘What’s on?’ said Barbara.
‘We’re going to this pub in Hawthorn. Bloke we want to see.’
Barbara was disgusted. ‘Bit early to get stuck into the piss!’
‘He works in the C.R.B. Part time barman. Copies freeway plans, apparently. We’re going to
check him out.’
‘I’ll come with you.’
46
The hippies wanted to know where Bruce was. They obviously thought the Saab ridiculous.
Paul coughed as he went past it.
‘I just had a row with him. We’ve split up.’
‘It’s the way it happens,’ said Paul, apparently indifferent, but pleased.
The radio in the pub was mixing cricket and races. ‘Can’t I get away from that game?’ said
Barbara. ‘Where’s this guy we’re checking out?’
‘Doesn’t come on for another half an hour. Hang on a bit. Want a drink?’
‘No. Yes.’
‘Not every day you split with someone.’
‘Something weak,’ said Barbara. ‘I’m in no shape for drinking.’
‘Smoke?’
‘None of that either.’
‘Jesus, you’re pure.’
‘Bruce just about had me talked into getting a job.’
They shook their heads at a fate worse than death.
‘He’ll want his car,’ said Paul.
‘What’s it to do with you?’
‘Nothing. It’s just that he’ll want it. Car like that... I bet he values it, eh?’
‘Are you trying to put it on me, Paul?’
‘No. No. No.’
‘You fucking well are and I don’t like it.’
Barbara was further irritated by a fake-American twang from the next table — two people
who’d had a long counter lunch. The man wanted to go back to the woman’s place for a cup of tea
and a clean-up, as he put it. Paul was amused:
‘Trying to get it in a bit early.’
Barbara said: ‘You shit me Paul!’
The fake-Yank’s woman stopped to listen. ‘Stop pestering me Mike,’ she told the man.
‘What’s eating you?’ Paul said to Barbara.
‘You’re like most of the men in Carlton. You take in just enough of what women are saying so
you can agree with them, and pretend you’re different, and you’re out for the main chance just as
much as that stupid prick over there!’
McKersie heard her. ‘Just a minute, lady,’ he began. The three of them laughed insultingly.
‘Steady Mike, steady,’ said the woman. ‘Don’t get mixed up with the riff-raff!’
‘Oh fuck!’ said Barbara. ‘Look what’s talking!’
The barman took a sideways glance at the trouble.
‘Don’t you talk to my wife like that,’ said McKersie.
‘Your wife?’ said Barbara; then the penny dropped. ‘I’ve seen you before. Yeah. I.B.M. Hard
sell boy. Yeah, I remember you!’
McKersie was thinking hard. ‘Hang on now. Cherry lips. Leather skirt.’ Barbara winced.
‘Used to have your hair long. Wait on now, you were at Colonial Mutual, you were on with Norm
Saunders, weren’t you. Poor old Norm, they gave him a hard time in there.’
Paul and Judy were scarcely able to hide their contempt for her past.
Badly damaged, Barbara was looking for the strike-back. McKersie went on: ‘You were in
statistics. You had a good career, those days.’ His eyes roamed over Paul, with his Indian thongs
and filthy feet, and Judy, her denims covered in gaudy patches. ‘You wanta take stock of yourself
... Barbara!’ He produced her name in triumph. It seemed to give him power. ‘Yeah!’ he roared,
with the false exuberance of television comperes, ‘You really wanta take a hold of yourself, you’re
really dropping down in the world! Norm Saunders’ girl Friday. Yeah, you were really going well,
those days.’
Paul and Judy watched, ready to throw her out of the tribe.
She struck.
47
‘How is your wife, anyway? I remember you now. Your wife was in a wheelchair. How is she?
Getting around?’
McKersie’s woman was devastated. ‘You never told me that, Mike! Mike! You said she was
in Bali with a boyfriend. I hate liars, Mike. You’re a dirty fucking liar, Mike! Just a dirty fucking
liar!’
The barman moved their way, wiping tables.
‘Now steady Mim,’ said the anxious salesman.
‘Don’t you steady me,’ screamed the angry Mim. Tears were trickling through the rouge.
‘You’re a heap of shit, Mike McKersie, you’ve got no integrity!’ Paul and Judy burst out laughing.
Mim turned on them; ‘You think because you’re young you’re the only ones with principles. You
use four letter words and you think you own the world. Well I can use them too!’ She put back her
head and screamed ‘Faaarrkkk!’ as if a knife were being drawn across her throat. ‘Pissed out of her
mind,’ said Judy, looking for the door. ‘You’re the one that’s pissed,’ said the drunken Mim. ‘So
stoned you’re helpless.’ She flung an ashtray, catching Paul on the shoulder. ‘Oh come on, now,’
said the barman. ‘Time to be on your way, I think. Better give it a rest for a couple of hours ...’
Christie found herself puzzled by a string passage in At Noon In The Meadows. Egon Schuyler
claimed to have based his markings on the manuscript, but there were discrepancies. She determined that she would check the manuscript, and the Beecham markings too, if she could get
herself to London.
She felt ambivalent about Delius anyway. She loved the opening section, saturated with the
experience of summer heat and set down in rapt, static phrases that seemed to take their life from an
inner understanding of completeness, but Delius broke into this rapture with a noisy Zarathustra,
conceived of by Delius/ Nietzsche as a satyr god who had to groan and ask significant questions.
And the finale of the work began with rolling chords big enough to end anything, but Delius had to
have his Zarathustra groan/sigh/laugh/exult/be drunk. It was made all the worse when she thought
of Norman Barchett, the baritone who would be singing it, a bear of a man whom Christie disliked
for his condescension to underlings and his romping heartiness with conductors. One could almost
see the horns and cloven feet. She suspected Delius would have approved.
Feeling restless, she marked it up as Egon Schuyler wanted, then packed the parts in their
folders, making a note to herself for Monday that the first flute had borrowed his part, and that
someone had got off with a second violin part, even though it was forbidden. Stephen Gabelich,
she thought; poor Stephen wasn’t playing well and he had no one to fall back on, living in a poky
flat in Saint Kilda. She thought of ringing him, but knew he would lie to her ...
Passing through the deserted rest area, she caught a glimpse of the afternoon. Drowsy suburbia, like a gigantic dolls’ village, lay obediently in every direction. She thought of the summer dress
she might make for Tania — something with sleeves full at the shoulder, and gathered well before
the elbow, something sweeping, long and dainty, for her daughter touching seven.
Outside the studio, she found a tram halted, while the conductor advised and the driver fished
with a pole. Christie gazed into the air. Blue of ocean maps, two puffs of cloud — she was happy
to be out. The Greek tram driver, in his suit the colour of cowdung and his shirt of mustard, signalled furiously that she should board, but the conductor, who was Turkish, said, with a flourish
that offered her the pick of the tram’s empty seats, ‘You have a book?’ He shrugged, as if all the
foolishness in the world was concentrated in the Greek. There was no one in the tram except one
old lady in gloves, acetate scarf, overcoat of cream and hat of amazing magenta. Christie sat where
she would get the breeze if the tram got going. Up swept a van, containing two men in overalls
and an inspector in green suit with gold buttons. In solemn quintet — three baritones, bass and
tenor — and with much jabbing at the sky, they agreed that something high on the tram must be
replaced. The overalls dived in the back of the van. Green Suit offered the two ladies, as he called
them, a ride to their destination: it would save them much time, he said. ‘Is better, is better,’ said
the Turkish conductor, to Christie’s delight, but Magenta Hat thought it cheeky of him, and stayed
48
where she was until Green Suit pleaded. ‘Please regard it as a tramways service, madam,’ he said,
and the Turkish conductor nodded vigorously. ‘You must go with this man,’ he told the old lady.
‘He is completely responsible.’ He added, with a knowing look at Christie, ‘And completely safe.’
Delivering Magenta Hat to her door meant going through streets Christie did not know.
Outside a massively porched 1920s home, imposing as the bridge of a ship, Magenta Hat called a
halt. ‘Stop here, please,’ she called, as if born to the use of chauffeurs. Green Suit let her out, but
waited. She fumbled in her bag, as if looking for a key. Green Suit put the van in gear. She affected
an interest in the mail box, a piece of wooden gothic swinging on heavy chains. Christie noticed
that she did not touch it. ‘You right now, madam?’ cried Green Suit; she waved him away, ridding
herself of embarrassment ‘They always do that,’ said Green Suit to Christie. ‘I don’t know what’s
wrong with them. Why not be content with what you got?’
But he was startled when Christie, in her Liberty’s fabric and antique Japanese belt buckles,
stopped him at a cottage with daphne at the gate, a line of lavender at the porch, and primulas
peeping between the pickets. ‘You don’t live there!’ said Green Suit, but Christie got out. He stared
at her. She pretended to fumble in her bag for a key. Putting the van in gear, he continued to stare.
She stooped down and picked a handful of primulas, waving them at him, and turned down the
street.
Racing back to the held up tram, he thought about the two women; the one affecting quality,
the other with the dignity of a child and an indefinable delicacy. Wonder where she really lives, he
thought.
‘You’re back very quick,’ said the Turk. ‘Who wants to hurry on a day like this?’
Bloody wogs, thought Green Suit. Trust a Turk to get his arse on a fire hydrant when there’s
a job being done. ‘Give us a look at your tickets,’ said Green Suit. ‘You better have everything in
order!’
The Turk, sure of himself, handed over his ticket book. ‘She was a lovely woman,’ he said,
needling the Anglo Saxon. ‘Don’t get smart,’ said Green Suit. ‘I was just driving her home ...’ His
voice faded.
‘It’s a service to the public,’ said the Turk.
Green Suit was pensive. Turk said, ‘She would live in a beautifulf house, a woman like that.’
‘Matter of fact,’ said Green Suit,’ she pulled me up at a rundown little dump. Where you’d
expect about three families of wogs all crammed in.’
‘We start that way,’ said the Turk, blandly insulting, ‘but we go on to better things. It is the
land of opportunity!’
In the vast bowl, thirty thousand people watched Dennis Lillee, drank beer or sunbaked. Sun
poured on the shadowless field. The fast bowler disappointed with a lacklustre over, then retreated to the fine leg fence to banter with the crowd. At the southern end, Gilmore, a New South
Welshman, replaced Walker, a Victorian. ‘Maxie! Give us Maxie!’ cried voices near Walker, and the
raucous trumpet blared. But Gilmore’s second ball was mis-hit, and flew to the hands of Walters.
Sadiq — out! The crowd came alive.
Murdy said, ‘Get it all done?’
She never answered trivial questions.
She slumped on a cushion, sighed deeply, and said, ‘Oh bother them. What do I care.’ Suddenly
she brightened. ‘I saw this lovely little garden on the way home!’
He expected her to suggest things they should plant in their garden, but she scrambled up, to
return with a tiny green vase. She set the primulas in it, cocking her head to study them. ‘Darling,
we must have lavender beside the path,’ she said. ‘And lots of other things by the back verandah
that smell nice as you brush against them, or if you tread on some leaves ... don’t you think?
Wouldn’t that be nice?’
49
He maintained a heavy silence. The garden was his. He tried to create visions in his garden,
use native plants to recreate some of the mystical remoteness of unexploited bush. ‘It’s strange,’
she said, ‘this conflict. We both have ideal gardens in our minds. You won’t permit mine to mix
with yours. Oh well.’
‘Well, if ideas are incompatible,’ he said, ‘it’s better to do one or the other properly. Compromise
is not necessarily any solution. I’d be far happier with my garden, or your garden, than with a mixture. Don’t you think?’
But she was turning over a biography of Berg. He had already shown how far he would permit
her to go. It was pointless discussing gardens when the point at issue was now their relationship.
He felt irritable. He went to considerable lengths to avoid letting this impasse come to the surface,
and here they were now, hostile, opposed, and silent.
He sat sulkily, wondering if going out to make coffee would improve things, or make them
worse.
She felt him as a limiting force, sullenly cramping her by the act of sitting there.
‘I thought you’d be watching the cricket.’
‘It doesn’t come on for another ten minutes.’
Impasse.
Concentrating on whatever was in front of her, she could, much of the time, forget her disappointment in the marriage. At other times, when he was using her as a stable base from which to
explore relationships with other women, she wished he would simply run away with someone and
let her make a fresh start.
He taxed her with remoteness, cold silences and unsociability.
She thought there was something immature about people who, having undertaken a marriage,
did not build on it.
They sat in silence, separately deciding that nothing would be resolved by anything they might
say.
He left the room returning ten minutes later with coffee, and a sandwich because she had had
no lunch. Having set them down, he turned on TV in time to hear a former champion:
‘Much depends on this partnership. After the dismissal of Sadiq, Majid Khan and Mustaq dug
in hard, and the speed attack was not as ferocious, nor as penetrating, as we had expected. I think
Chappell would have anticipated breaking further into the Pakistan line-up. So when play resumes
in a moment, I suspect we may see an all out assault on the batsmen’s nerves and perhaps courage,
in an attempt to push them into some foolish strokes. The crowd would certainly be hoping for a
bit of excitement. They grew a little bit restive in the previous session which was, one must say, one
of patient rather than exciting cricket.’
Murdy’s son Michael wanted him to pull apart an old gearbox he’d found in a lane, ‘You can
do it,’ said Murdy. ‘Tools are in the boot of the car. I’ll come out later.’
Then Tania wanted to sit on her father’s knee, and was annoyed when she realised his attention was on the screen. ‘I’ll cuddle you later, darling,’ Murdy said. ‘Let me watch the game now.
They’re just going to start.’
‘I thought they played all day.’
‘They do. They have breaks for tea, and lunch.’
‘Tea ... yuk. Do they have milkshakes?’
Lillee was taking up the ball.
He said shortly, ‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘Too heavy in the stomach for all the running around they have to do.’
Lillee ran in. ‘Hunnhh,’ said his daughter.
‘Hop off love. I can’t see properly with you in front of me.’
‘Yukky cricket,’ she said, mooching away. The camera followed the ball to a figure in the outfield with white sunhat hiding his face except for a nose laden with sunburn cream.
50
‘Davis,’ said the TV, with Cambridge accent.
The next ball was also played into the offside field.
‘Walters,’ said the educated English voice.
Mushtaq let the next one go.
‘Through to Marsh. Not having anything to do with that one.’
Gods of the Australian summer, the names sounded on TV and the lips of spectators — Lillee,
Marsh, Walters, Davis ... The Rotarian inquired of Mr Miller: ‘Did you ever see Bradman bat?’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mr Miller, with due solemnity. ‘Many times. He was the king of them all!’
Afternoon faded into night. Bruce watched the highlights replay on Channel 2. Lawrence took
Tessa to dinner at a pizza hut. Mr Miller complained to an incredulous wife that he thought he
might have caught a cold.
‘How could you have done that?’
‘I was sitting in a bit of a draught at the game. It can get breezy up in those stands.’
‘Better have a hot lemon drink before you go to bed.’
Barbara picked up her son from her uncle’s hilltop apartment in Saint Kilda. Janis produced
a casserole, that being the safest thing in her shaky repertoire. The Mumfords warned their eldest
to get a taxi if he thought he was over .05. He told them he wouldn’t be drinking. They had their
own opinion of this reassurance, having heard it before.
When Barbara got home, Paul was idly picking chords on his guitar. Judy had gone round to
Shawn’s because she wanted to hear Shawn’s band that night.
Colour TV stood high in a corner at the pizza hut. When the Channel 2 news showed flashes of the
cricket, Lawrence got up to watch. The newsreader said suavely:
‘There was excitement both on and off the field at the Melbourne Cricket Ground today. In
the morning session, the Australians enjoyed a feast of runs.’
Lawrence nodded at Chappell, McCosker and Davis, and winced at Doug Walters’ duck.
‘Only one wicket fell in the second session of play, and some fans in the outer grew a little
restless.’
Lawrence shouted: ‘It’s him! Tessa, c’m’ere! That big boof in the swimming togs, remember
him? Look at him, he got his brawl all right!’
The screen showed a circle of spectators watching police break up a fight. A big man in bathers was led away with his arm twisted behind his back. There was a flurry of glinting objects in
the air.
‘Cans,’ said Lawrence, not without approval.
The camera could not resist the Sex Symbol, hair tossing and white shorts waggling as she
disappeared under the stand.
The newsreader viewed his audience soberly: ‘In the final session, Australia’s pacemen struck.
Lillee had the Pakistan captain in all sorts of trouble ...’
Mushtaq fell on his bottom, bat flailing weakly, as he ducked a bumper. A drunken crowd
chanted Lillee’s name.
‘Mushtaq actually scored a single with that stroke, if you could call it one. But the very next
ball ...’
Lawrence clenched his fists in delight. Tessa said to the woman at the next table, ‘His pizza’s
getting cold.’
‘Clean bowled!’ shouted the commentator, as Majid Khan’s wicket shattered. The drunken
crowd roared. ‘LlLL-eeee LILL-eeee!’ Other dismissals followed in quick succession. Lawrence sat
down, slapping his hands in glee. ‘What are we doing tonight, Tessa?’
Bruce drank glumly at the Albion. Two bars removed from Shawn’s highly amplified band, he
got talking to a girl called Prue.
51
The Mumfords listened to the second half of a concert: Brahms No. 1. ‘He’s pretty good,’ said
Julius, ‘but he can’t hold a candle to Klemperer.’ Rhonda said, ‘Yes, very nice. I think I prefer his
chamber music, it’s more intimate. Did you check the tyres before he went out? And the brake
cylinder, was that it?’
Julius nodded. ‘Checked’em both. Everything okay. Don’t you worry girl.’
When the violin solo sang out of the orchestra in the second movement, Murdy pursed his lips.
Christie stared warningly at him. He said, ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t going to whistle.’ He closed his
eyes to rise and fall with the music. As it faded into silence on a held G sharp, he opened his eyes.
She was crying. He thought of her homecoming that afternoon, when he had been unable to meet
her mood. But she said, ‘When he wrote those things on that piece of paper, he must have been
holding us all in his mind. It’s almost godlike.’
She meant Greg, he realised. The woodwind started the third movement. He waited for her
to go on.
She remained silent, staring at the gas fire. He prompted:
‘You mean, knowing us as well as that?’
She said nothing. He said:
‘In a way I’m glad the note’s lost. If we still had it, it’d be like ... almost a scriptural document,
wouldn’t it. I mean, if the things he applied to us then were true, they’re still true. So it’d be like
having something prescriptive laid down for you to act out, or reject.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘They were flashes of illumination lasting only a second, and then one went out.
He’d already taken the pills by then. They were last flashes while he was going to sleep.’
The sadness of it had no end. He wondered where her mood would take her. She said:
‘How did Barbara say he was?’
‘On the bed. Rug up to his chin. Just stretched out on his back.’
‘Calm,’ she said. ‘It’s amazing.’ He looked at her. She said, ‘I think I’ll go to bed now and
read.’
‘There’s your Berg.’
‘No.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll take this.’ It was Doctor Dolittle Flies to the Moon. Her switch in mood
amazed him. He poured himself a port and followed the allegretto.
Harry watched Janis light a candle on the dressing table, and another on the chest of drawers. Like
a laying out, he thought, but the intensity of her fingers tracing his lips, his nose, his forehead and
the curvature of his eyes made him conscious of his own alive-ness, and of the force in Janis trying
to locate the spirit in the flesh.
Bruce told Prue he came from Bright. She didn’t know where it was. Smiling across the map he
drew for her, he said, ‘How did you come into my life, anyway?’ She said, ‘I’m not in it yet, am
I?’
‘Could be if you like.’
She gave a conventional lift of the eyebrows to this approach; he said, ‘Tell me about
Sydney?’
Harry took Janis to her high pitch of ecstasy; when she had subsided, she asked him, ‘Do you think
there’s a centre to everything, Harry? Do you think the world is poised about some point, or maybe
lots of points that are related to each other?’
He asked her what she meant.
She said, ‘I think it can change. Like, if I put my arms in a flying position ...’
She spread them, like wings.
‘ ... I feel the centre of me’s about here ...’
She touched her neck and chin.
‘... or here.’
52
She touched the back of her head, and tossed her hair.
‘But when I put my arms like this ...’ She put them forward, as if about to dive into a pool, or
bestow a blessing.
‘ ... I feel the centre of me’s here.’
She rubbed around her navel.
‘And when I’m making love with you, it seems to be everywhere. It starts here ...’
She moved her hand down a little.
‘... and it runs up inside me, and up my neck, and it seems to come in the back of my brain
and take it over, except for one little bit of consciousness that’s left holding out. It scares me
Harry. Sometimes I think it’ll take me over completely, and then, if it became too powerful, I’d be
destroyed. Do you know what I mean, Harry?’
Prue told Bruce that her father tried to keep her and her sister locked up all the time, and her
mother wouldn’t interfere because he was violent. Her boyfriend had got hooked on heroin and he
wanted her to sell it for him. It was all dead-end stuff— so she’d headed south to Melbourne.
Mr Miller took his hot lemon juice to bed with him, read The Herald, then turned out the light.
Brahms ended in a blaze of glory. Murdy turned up the reprise of’ the trombone chorale, then
looked into the bedroom. ‘Pretty good?’ he asked. Christie, snug in blankets, nodded, but her happiness was from Doctor Dolittle, not Egon Schuyler’s Brahms.
The Mumfords stirred, hearing a sound in the kitchen, but it was only their second son raiding
the fridge.
Bruce said, ‘Let’s go back to Shawn’s place, it’s too noisy here. We can get the fire going and stretch
out a bit.’
Harry said, ‘I don’t really think of a still centre. I think of a balance between all that’s coming into
being, and all that’s dying out, or being destroyed. The two are always in conflict, or if you like, the
process is an inevitable one, but if you align yourself with all that’s growing, you can achieve a lot.
It means you have to keep cutting away dead wood, dead ideas, dead feelings. It may seem ruthless,
but in the end it’s the healthiest thing to do.’
Janis, sitting upright, still in a love position, considered the words and the man. It sounded
wonderful, to align yourself with the living principle. She wished she knew more about eastern religions, she felt there was something wrong with what Harry was saying, but she couldn’t be sure.
Murdy rubbed against Christie’s back, read for a few minutes, then threw the book beside the bed
and turned his face to the pillow. Christie read on — warm, separate, engrossed in her reading,
happy to let him go, tonight, without any more difficult contact.
Lying on cushions by Shawn’s fireplace, Bruce and Prue kissed. Later he said to her, ‘I must get
your phone number, and I’ll give you mine.’ She said, ‘Aren’t you going to have it out with this
Barbara you were with?’ He said, ‘Yeah. I’ve got to get my stuff from around there. I’m not looking
forward to it. It’ll probably be a bloody big row.’
Tessa, with the lambswool covers rumpled, pulled away from Lawrence. She felt the door handle
cold on her elbow. ‘I’m sorry, Lawrence,’ she said, ‘I can’t, I’ve got a period. Besides I think it’s
too early. No, I’ve had a wonderful day, it’s been beaut. It’s just that I don’t like to go too far too
quickly. You understand what I mean?’
Lawrence had heard it before. He said, ‘I’ll take you home. But I’m coming round to pick you
up tomorrow, that okay?’
53
Rhonda heard their Mazda in the drive between one and two. She thought Julius was asleep, but
he murmured, ‘I knew he’d be all right,’ his voice full of relief. Warm in their shared concern, she
gave up resisting sleep, and followed the sounds of her son through the house — toilet, fridge,
kettle banged on the gas stove, Nescafe lid on the floor. Julius, face in his pillow, mumbled, ‘Not
too bad, considering.’
When Bruce got to Barbara’s, it was almost three. He hated going in. He stood in the hall, deciding
to make no noise, and leave the argument till morning.
He crept into Barbara’s room. There was a smelly shirt on the chair where he’d left his wallet
and keys. Even in the dark, he sensed there were two people. Confused, he rushed into the hall.
A light clicked on behind him. He went back. Barbara was sitting up. A filthy foot poked out
the bottom of the bed. Indian thongs lay on the floor, Barbara said, staring sternly at him, ‘I don’t
even like him very much. He’s going to Adelaide next week anyway.’
Bruce stood with his mouth open. Was this how the best things ended? And filthy Paul, of all
people! She said, ‘You know why I’m doing this?’ He didn’t even shake his head. ‘To block my
need for you. To get you out of my system. That’s all there is to it. You’re not making it any easier
by looking like that. Don’t hang around now. Go back to Shawn’s and get some sleep. When I’m
in the clear, I’ll ring you. And don’t drive like a madman.’
He took a step back, stunned. The dismissal was so total that it was, in some way, helpful. Her
reasons, which must, he believed, lie in him, hung over him like a fate to be faced another day.
He picked up his stuff obediently, dragged it out to the Saab and cruised back to Shawn’s, where,
digging out an old sleeping bag, he flopped on the cushions by the dying fire.
54
5
Through spotless Venetians, Una Moulton surveyed her lawn, reminding herself to turn on the
sprinkler and take a broom to the path when she had had her shower.
She had no rule against tending her row of tubs in a dressing gown. Filling the watering can at
the side tap, she found the morning nippy, and resolved to turn on the strip heater in the bathroom
while the first watering soaked in.
She did so, and felt the electric heat adding to the cosiness of pink tiles and fluffy bathmat, and
the homeliness of her shower curtain on which elephants, using their trunks as nozzles, sprayed
themselves.
When she returned to the patio, with only a vineless pergola between her and the heavens, the
first watering had disappeared. She gave the plants the rest of their drink.
Ten minutes before the time when she was to be picked up, the phone rang. It was May
Richards to say that the Mercedes wouldn’t go, and her husband thought it was the fuel pump
packing up. Una said she hadn’t driven much since her hip operation, but if May took the wheel,
the party could go in her Holden. Putting the phone down, Una thought to herself that it would
be just like the blessed thing not to start. She went to the garage.
Her grandson, last to use the vehicle, had parked it so far to the right that there wasn’t room to
fully open the driver’s door. Una had to open it as far as it would go, push her bottom in the gap,
plomp backwards on the seat, then lift her legs around.
It started well enough, given a little choke, and seemed ready, despite some early spluttering, to
run for the rest of the day. She turned it off. She had never liked an engine running in a confined
space.
She extricated herself in time to hear May Richards ring the chimes. Ding dong, they said,
attached to the wall in the hallway, above the phone and bowl of roses.
In Bright shire office, Bruce called for his hospital file. The list of visitors was so imposing he
read it aloud: ‘Mrs Una Moulton: Mrs May Richards: Miss Queena Temby: and Mrs ...’ he raised
his voice ‘... Rosa Della Grazia! Wow!’
His secretary, plain Nell, said, ‘Who are they, Mr Beck?’
‘Hospital Auxiliary at Nilgiri. They’re thinking of getting a heart unit like ours.’
‘Will it cost much, Mr Beck?’
‘Stuff they’re looking at’ll cost three thousand. If they’ve got somewhere to put it. Hospitals
Commission’ll give them dollar for dollar of course.’
‘What time are they due, Mr Beck?’
‘Half an hour. Better spruce myself up, eh? Rosa Della Grazia!’ He studied the effect on Nell,
who admired him in his gleaming white polo neck. ‘Aren’t you taking a coat, Mr Beck?’ said Nell,
as if his attraction needed damping down a little.
He nodded. ‘I left it in the car.’ Her eyes gave him back his sense of importance. He smiled at
her, then rummaged for the pamphlets on heart machines.
The Holden broke a fan belt between Tallygaroopna and Congupna. May stopped as soon as the
red light came on. The anglo-saxon ladies raised the bonnet while Rosa remained in the cabin. The
next car stopped. It was another Holden, driven by a garrulous farmer who fitted his spare belt.
The ladies said they would pay for it. He said not to bother. They insisted. He told them that they
could stop at Ray Doyle’s in Congupna and pay for a new belt which Ray could give him next time
55
he was in. There was plainly something behind this. May Richards, by way of sounding him out,
asked what sort of petrol Ray Doyle sold.
‘BP,’ said the man, ‘and you’re mighty lucky you’re driving a Holden. Get parts anywhere. Saw
a bloke in a Peugeot last week, stuck just down the road. Fuel pump. I couldn’t help him. He had
to get parts up from Melbourne. Ray got’em for him.’
Una divined that Ray must be a struggling relative. She said, ‘We’ll fill up in Congupna, May.’
It was a directive. And to the man, she said, ‘What time does he close at night?’ intimating that they
might fill up again on the way back.
‘Nine o’clock, lady,’ he said. ‘Nine o’clock. And if you really need him, any time at all, just
knock him up!’
The Holden, thus restored, continued its journey across northern Victoria.
Prue rang. Janis answered. Janis hadn’t heard of Prue. Prue said, ‘He told me to ring if ever I
needed him.’ Janis offered nothing. ‘Things’re getting hard to handle,’ said Prue, without explaining ‘Well, he’s at work at the moment,’ said Janis, imagining her voice to be cutting. ‘Thanks, I’ll
ring him there,’ said Prue, and hung up.
Enraged and fearful, Janis rang Bruce.
‘Someone called Prue just rang. Who is she?’
Nell was in the room, bringing tea and biscuits. Bruce said, so that Janis would take the hint:
‘Thanks Nell, just what I needed.’
But Janis’s voice, metallic and piercing, penetrated the office: ‘Who is she?’
Nell closed the door. Bruce, furious, said, ‘We’ll talk about it later. For Christ’s sake, what do
you think you’re doing, shouting like that? Nell heard every word!’
Starting to break, Janis said, ‘Come home for a while, we’ve got to talk about this!’
Bruce treated her as if she was stupid. ‘Look Janis, I can’t come home now. I’m going up to
the hospital in five minutes to meet some people.’
‘So they’re more important than your marriage?’
Bruce swore. ‘Fucking hell, Janis, they’ve come two hundred kilometres. I can’t stand them up.
They’re due any minute!’
‘That’ll be bad luck for Prue, then.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She’s going to ring you. You gave her both numbers, you must be keen!’
‘It so happens, Janis, that some people have a hell of a lot of problems. You can’t just walk away
from them.’
She threatened. ‘I think I might.’
He knew that ploy. ‘I’ll see you at half past five, Janis. I’ve got a meeting at seven, too. Only a
short one.’ He meant that he expected some tea.
‘There’s nothing in the fridge,’ she said. ‘You’d better have tea at the Central.’ And hung up.
The phone rang on Nell’s desk, then the buzzer in Bruce’s room, ‘STD call, Mr Beck,’ said
Nell. ‘Can you take it?’
If he said no, he could put a brake on what was happening to them. But he felt elated that Prue
had contacted him so quickly.
‘Yes, I’ll take it.’
It was a relief to reach Bright. The avenue of trees brought an end to Queena’s monologues and
May’s assertions of wealth. May’s family owned a chain of timbermills and felt they could buy anything worth having, whereas the thrust of Rosa’s conversation was to assert, against all Australian
understanding of Calabria, that her people, working in the earth, were not one whit inferior to the
anglo-saxons she saw disporting themselves in powerboats, tennis tournaments and fundraising
canoe races on the Murray’s muddy waters.
56
Queena’s anecdotes of a spinster life had the insistence of someone who feels she has sacrificed
herself for community ideals, and must be heard. And Una, with her observant silences, came from
one of the four or five families who could claim unbroken occupancy of her region since first settlement: it gave her a mantle of authority which she wore as her birthright.
At the sight of these ladies, Bruce began to show off. Linking arms wiih Dr. Styles, he led him
down the steps to meet the delegation. Styles, a nervous young graduate, began talking at once
about heart monitors and defibrillators, and inquired whether Nilgiri had a resuscitation unit.
Rosa affirmed that Nilgiri had such a unit.
Dr Styles explained that the defibrillator applied an electric stimulus to a heart that wouldn’t
go, as he self-consciously put it. He began to explain the electrical axis in the heart and how the
shock had to travel in the right direction, but Bruce perceived Una’s desire for a cup of tea, and led
the group to the board room, where two kitchen staff stood by thick white cups and a ward-sized
teapot. Package biscuits and bought fruitcake, Una observed; Nilgiri did better than this.
The young doctor answered a few questions, bolted his tea, and excused himself: he said he
had patients to see. But Rosa touched his hand: ‘First you must show me your babies.’
The doctor blushed.
Rosa looked at him with steady appraisal; he looked nervous, as if caught out. She said, ‘What
is the good of keeping old people alive if we don’t take trouble with our babies?’ and smiled at him,
offering herself. Dr Styles, immature in his sexuality, was not equal to taking her arm, but he did
glance to see she was with him as he rushed for the door.
‘Doesn’t take Rosa long,’ said May.
‘He’s only a boy,’ said Queena.
‘I think there was more to it than that,’ said Una.
Bruce leaned forward till his chin almost touched his cup. ‘His wife’s just had a baby,’ he said,
‘and it had red hair. People said all the usual things, of course. His wife says she’s got redheads in
her family, but, well, maybe.’ He smiled, sure of his success. May’s eyes showed deep satisfaction;
gossip was the truest level of human understanding.
Una remained bleak but steady, convinced that breakdown in propriety would never quite
destroy the social order. Queena looked anxious, since the level on which her life had been a failure
was now open for discussion. She took refuge in an anecdote: ‘I knew a doctor in Bendigo ...’
It was only for Bruce, because May and Una had heard it half a dozen times before, but a distant phone rang, and a girl appeared in the door: ‘Phone, Mr Beck, STD. Didn’t give a name.’
Bruce’s exit stifled Queena. May complained, ‘They’re all in a rush around here. Who’s going
to show us around?’
It was Prue again. She’d rung Shawn, as he suggested, but the bungalow was occupied, and
her landlord wanted her out by Friday because the house had been sold, so where could she go,
she didn’t know anyone in Melbourne ...
By the time Bruce was back with the ladies, Janis was walking along the track that led to Broken
Range. Rosellas rushed through the forest and she heard the thump of an animal in the undergrowth. Trees writhed in the grip of a restless wind, she felt it tearing the roots of her hair.
Hair! She wondered what her body would look like, shaven. It reminded her of death masks,
and of a photo she’d seen of a pile of the spectacles of Belsen victims; the pathetic little frames still
had a life about them though their owners were dead. How was it that something of one’s essence
invested the things one wore, owned, or whispered as one’s secret self? She thought of natives
destroying images of their enemies, making their little maquettes potent by adding nail-parings,
skin, a few strands of hair ...
She spoke her name to the blustering wind: ‘Janis!’ And it was gone before she heard it. ‘Janis!’
And the bush was no whit changed for her having uttered the word.
In the distance she saw a farmhouse; the usual cluster of trees, sheds, machinery and a semitrailer, the only thing in sight possessing freedom to move. No driver was in sight, and there was
57
no clamor of dogs. It was Bert Marshall’s house: somewhere within it was Bert’s son Norman,
probably puzzling over chess problems while his father strode the property in gumboots, exuding
masculinity. Janis ducked into the bush.
The moment she did it she felt she was joining the company of hermits who lurked in dank
humpies of bark and corrugated iron.
She entered madness with a courageous willingness, believing that the storm of energy which
had made her strange would bring her out eventually, whole and clear.
Bruce said to the ladies: ‘We reasoned that we were in a high coronary danger area. There are
a lot of ambitious, highly stressed people about, with overdrafts, many of them, and on past experience it seemed likely that we would have, er, quite an incidence of heart attacks. We had a rural
slump ... we’ve got statistics on this ... and so, after a lot of consideration, and not without a few
heartburnings, if I can use that term, we made the decision!’
He gazed at them awaiting their approval.
Una studied him, sensing that he espoused anything if it would make him feel as he wanted to.
‘And did it work out as you expected?’
‘Well,’ said Bruce, caught between showing regret and his sense of being justified, ‘unfortunately it has had enough use to justify our decision, yes!’
‘It was a good investment then,’ said May.
‘We had a heart specialist in Bendigo once,’ said Queena, ‘or that’s what he called himself. Well!
He couldn’t read the figures on his blood pressure machine, and he hated to have his patients see
him put on his glasses! Did we have trouble with him!’
Janis found herself sitting on a log, toying with stones. She had unwittingly put the four or five
that lay to hand in the beginnings of a curve; she realised she had wanted to make a circle. Awed,
she searched about for more stones, wandering away from her log-seat and bringing them back,
one or two at a time.
Una, May and Queena decided that they would wait no longer for Rosa and the doctor;
they had, after all, come to see the heart machines. Bruce said, ‘Our Auxiliary bought these for
us, you could do the same.’ He led them through the corridors, Vice-President of the Board of
Management: cleaning ladies stood back for his party, turning off their polishers, and sisters nodded deferentially. Queena noted with professional approval that a nurse removing flowers stooped
to pick up a petal. ‘You’ve got a well disciplined staff,’ she said. Bruce said with pride, ‘They’re an
asset to the town!’
Janis realised that the circle, if completed as she had begun it, would include a fire-blackened
stringybark; she dropped the stones she held. A circle should include nothing that was not part of
itself, and though stones and trees were both part of the bush, she could not link them, somehow.
The circle must be broken up and moved, or left unfinished.
Sorrowfully she moved on. Harry had not written or rung for days. Her passionate craving
for the man disgusted her when she was able to examine it. Love was supposed to be meaningful
— meaningful was one of the most used words in Barbara’s vocabulary — but it seemed to Janis,
trudging through the bush, that the intensity of her yearning was a brutally clear measure of her
own emptiness. Noone should need anyone as much as she needed Harry. Her husband didn’t
need anyone as much as she needed Harry. Her husband didn’t need this Prue in the same way,
though he needed to get away fron her often enough. Why was she such a drain on him? A terrible
emptiness was all she could see in herself; why couldn’t she lie down in a patch of sunlight, sheltered from the wind, and sleep till the nerve storm passed?
In the distant city, these same winds would be sweeping through canyons of skyscrapers, and
Harry, collected, poised, would be fiddling with some calculation by his 13th storey window (from
his flat, she could find the building, the floor, then the very pane) or sprawling easily in a managerial suite, five floors higher. He would be non-smoking in some stuffy conference room, or standing
coolly by a huge acrylic abstract, waiting for the lift to come.
58
From a corner in the track where the trees had been cut down, she could see the gap in Broken
Range where she had taken him …
She felt a welling up of energy. Even to recall their lovemaking made her tremble, just as it
made her desperate to know when, or if, she could be with him again. Maxine had been banished,
or had walked out, and there was a Julie in his flat ... It was all so casual! Every time Bruce came
back from Shawn’s he was talking about some Max and Helen as if they’d been on the scene for
years ... and next time he went down, Max was living with Sally and Helen was in India, or Helen
was into lesbianism and Max had gone to Perth with Shawn’s sister Jenny. The ideas, the rationalisations of their lifestyles, that these people produced had a fascination for Janis; here, at last,
in their projections and self-justifications, were the freedoms never given in her upbringing or by
her maritally-adopted community. But their lives were such a mess! They bore children freely and
dragged them around with them, or left them with someone else for days at a time. They selfishly
pursued the development of early adulthood while arguing furiously about the rearing of children
to whom they gave only intermittent attention. She didn’t want to be part of this turmoil, but it
was altering everything, and to get near Harry she had to enter it.
He was like an absolute to be conquered. If she could get from him what she wanted, it would
move her onto a cosmic, transcendental plane. The plane was there, she was sure of it. There were
quantities of spiritual and emotional energy not explicable by physics and not programmable by
computers. What maddened her about Harry was that he seemed to possess great quantities of this
power, yet operated, day by day, in a supremely mechanistic field. All other ideas he toyed with, yet
in that field he was a committed expert. She wanted to make him admit that there was more. She
wanted to tear his clothes from him and engage that personal, psychic force with the force raging
out of control in her and in that addition of vortices they would ...
She did not know what they would do. She thought of the broken circle of rocks and started
back, intending, for a moment, to complete it, but at the very thought of going back her energy dissipated, and she slumped, gasping, on the bank at the side of the road, her quivering hand grasping
a sapling, and her eyes gazing over the wind-tossed bush, dry and tearless.
The trees were moving on Broken Range. The gap seemed to open and contract at the dictate
of the wind. She thought of the way Bruce disguised the deep divisions in himself. He would be
showing his visitors the hospital and then the town, and if he liked them enough he’d drive them
all around the district, talking in terms of progress and problems, and when he came home he
would bring the aura of this falsehood with him so that she could not stand him, and then he would
break open to reveal the childishness of a boy needing approval. She hated that moment because
it exposed her inability to give security. She wanted someone to give her the security she couldn’t
create in herself, and he wanted her to do it for him, and they finished up clawing at each other in
their desperation to destroy, in the other, the thing they hated in themselves.
She would not go back. Bruce could drive these women up and down the valley, and through
the hop kilns, and out to the abandoned gold mines, and he could show them the new motel and
the snow-plough at the CRB depot, and when he’d finally farewelled them, letting them carry
home the image of a hospitable, progressive civic servant, he could come home to an empty house,
and know, if he could be honest with himself for one minute, that his existence was built on a lie.
It was something he couldn’t overcome unless he accepted her fully, and she knew he saw
her as a problem. Every new interesting woman represented promise of deliverance. Tonight this
Prue would be on the phone, she had no doubt, and Bruce would be telling himself it was almost
providential that he should pick her up when he’d quarrelled with Barbara, but it was in no way
accidental, it showed that what he really wanted was to abandon her.
She would not go back. He could search till his shoes fell off, he could call out the district;
she would hide. She would only accept him again if he agreed to destroy that lie at the centre of
their lives ...
The trees on Broken Range were thrashing wildly at the behest of some local fury; in the heart
of that storm one would be able to see Bogong; from Bogong, Hotham: from Hotham, Feathertop,
59
and above Feathertop, poised between down-like clouds and a glittering snowgum forest, assailed
by winds noisy as the raging ocean, would be circling eagles, soaring over ridges where royal bluebells quiver delicately at the base of groaning trees. The same wind, driving whitecaps up the bay,
would be visible in its effects through the pane of glass — 9th floor, seven from the right hand
corner (Harry’s flat), 13th floor, last on the left (office) — inside one of which would be the man
who had the power to turn her psychic storm into a creative force. But try as she might, she could
not force her mind into Harry’s. He was not thinking of her. There was no spiritual connection,
only a profound, one-sided engagement between forces that did not understand each other.
She looked about. A timbertruck had blown a tyre. There were strips of rubber along the track
and the tyre itself, what was left of it, lay in the gutter, muddy and shredded. She stared at it obsessively: the thing was her!
She tore herself away and walked into the bush, but the wind tearing at her seemed to be inside
her scalp; she felt the last defences of her sanity going down. She flung down her tightly crumpled
hanky in a rage at having no other gesture to make. A timber truck passed; she hid behind a tree,
fearful of being reported to Bruce, and recaptured. The drone of its engine sinking into the distance
left her without human connection. In a last desperate grab, she fixed her eyes on a seedpod.
It hung, brown as dirty lino, from a twig of wattle, and it was starting to open.
Something as deep in her as the rage that was cracking her apart told her that the black specks
discernible between the lips of the pod were more powerful, in the long run, than the wind, or the
storm inside her head; yet the black specks, promising life, were connected with her state of mind,
and if she could only understand them, she might save herself.
She thought of Murdy’s Baron, quaint old bachelor, wandering through the forests, with two
horses as his only companions, alert to every change in the vegetation. He had saved himself, maintaining to the end his quaint, stiff joviality. There was a funny little thing in Murdy’s last letter:
He used to live in Arnold Street South Yarra, after they kicked him out of the director’s house. From
all accounts it was a bit of a shambles, though he did keep a manservant who brought him piles of bread
and butter and lots of cups of coffee as he sat in bed at night, keeping up that incredible stream of correspondence. There’s an account by one visitor who was announced by the servant, after which he heard
the Baron stumping along the passage to grip his hand, and calling out ‘Mr Williamson, you are welcome!
The discoverer of a new grevillea!’
Actually the old boy was being typically generous because he himself camped for two days in the
area where Williamson discovered the grevillea, and he hadn’t seen it. I don’t think he quite knew how
on earth he could have missed it.’
Janis felt her facial muscles relaxing for the sheepish smile she might have given someone
coming upon her. She felt she was within Murdy’s care. His habits of inquiry sometimes annoyed
her, but if he were to join her now, she realised, and talk about this stretch of bush in terms of
botanical discovery, he could change its aspect. So thin was the line between order and chaos.
‘Botanical systems,’ he had told her solemnly when he was first trying to understand them himself,
‘are descriptions imposed on a flux which is both lush and chaotic. In the nineteenth century they
were very concerned with classificatory descriptions. There are people,’ he said, ‘who distrust an
imposed meaning, but all meaning was always imposed by man. When men believed that order was
divine, that too was a projection of their thinking. The gods were our own creation. We have never
had anything but man to deal with, and never will. Our problem is both simple and incredibly difficult — to get our self-understanding into decent shape.’
Janis went very close, this time, to smiling. She often felt like smiling when Murdy theorised,
but he was easily hurt, and he wanted to convey his ideas as if they were something apart from
himself, which was exactly the opposite of the way Janis heard them.
She mostly listened to the voice as an independent organ with giveaway characteristics of its
user. The emphasis, dramatic pauses and little spurts of energy in Murdy’s voice gave away the
effects he wished to have upon his listeners, which he imagined were calculated and well-hidden.
Harry’s voice, whatever he was saying, had an interrogatory lift, as if all statements were hypotheti-
60
cal ones, and he was taunting you to commit yourself. Conversations with Harry were like a drawn
out chess game, and usually led, in Janis’s case, to confusion or contradiction; this was when she
felt most dependent on his moods and helpless in her love. Bruce’s voice was breathy, with a rich
burr to it; he directed his listener as much as Murdy did but in his case it was towards desirable
goals and fields rich with potential. The sexual burr underlay the verbal gesturing as something
meant to disturb and entice.
Una was listening to Bruce with considerable scepticism. He was developing his ideas for linking local residents with visitors. ‘On most nights of the year,’ he was saying, ‘we would have more
non-residents within our boundaries than any other shire in the state. We should able to harness
the interests and energies of those people for benefit and theirs. They want to know us, we need
their ideas.’
To Una it all sounded like the wooing, by an ambitious young man in search of exciting company, of people who would never invest anything of themselves in local responsibility, even the
search and rescue teams Bruce Beck envisaged. When he mentioned the possibility of ski-lodge
members having some representation on council she felt it was time to interrupt:
‘Do you have any children, Mr Beck?’
Surprised, he confessed to one.
‘What is it?’
The word ‘it’ made him aware of a fierce, objective judgment.
‘Girl.’
It sounded like a name for all immaturity.
‘How old?’
It was as if she was asking about himself.
‘Nine.’
‘Are you happy with her?’
Bruce nodded. ‘She’s happy at school, we’re pretty lucky, she’s had good teachers.’
‘No. Are you happy with her in herself?’
This was more complex. ‘I can see an awful lot of my wife in her. Janis says she’s like me.
Fortunately for her, she’s pretty independent, she’s always coming up with things that surprise us
...’
Una’s bleak, piercing eyes were fixed on Bruce. ‘Will you send her away to school?’
‘I’d prefer not to. I think we’ve got enough offering here.’
Una’s eyes relented a little, suggesting that there was hope for him.
‘What about you, Mrs Moulton, yours’d be grown up by now, I suppose?’
It was a counter-offensive, though Bruce made it sound good-natured.
‘My eldest died. He was running my farm, so I sold it. My daughter’s in America.’
It was obvious that the exoticism of a foreign land had no status with Una, but Bruce responded with enthusiasm:
‘America! Gee, what’s she doing over there?’
‘She’s mucked up one marriage, she’s into another.’
Bruce should have known better than to say, ‘I guess that could happen to any of us.’ It had a
weary man of the world tone which jarred on his listeners. May told him, ‘If you’ve got something
good, you stick to it.’ Under their examination he began to chafe inside his coat and white polo
neck. He went back to safer ground: ‘Your son was running the farm, Mrs Moulton?’
‘Building it up,’ she said, implying that he had left it as a showpiece: ‘my late husband had the
attitudes of a farmer, but not the touch.’ From the middle of his sexual-emotional maze, Bruce
sensed that she had reached an escape, and that with the release had come clarity of vision.
‘Funny you should say that,’ said Bruce. ‘I’ve been thinking of getting a bit of land myself.’
Una’s silence indicated that the adjustment to fundamentals which land required was probably
beyond his reach. But May was interested, and Queena got started again:
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‘I knew a fellow in Castlemaine. Used to manage a big clothing store, but all his life he wanted
to be a farmer. Just a plain ordinary farmer. Well, he decided to retire and buy a bit of land ...’
There was no end to her reminiscences. Seen backwards, life resolved itself into easily comprehended anecdotes: a part of Bruce’s mind nagged him; tonight he would have to face Janis, and
Prue would be ringing back and expecting him to talk. He was in for hell unless Harry rang Janis
in the meantime ...
Even Queena sensed that he was abstracted and directed her story to May and Una, who
saw no reason why they should be bored as well as made to wait. May said with forced joviality,
‘I think we’d better go looking for those two! I’d like to see what you’ve got to show us,’ and Una
confirmed: ‘Time to make a move!’ The four of them rose, Queena still getting her Castlemaine
farmer through his first drought, when Dr Styles and Rosa Della Grazia re-entered, arm in arm.
‘This man,’ said Rosa, proudly jigging his elbow, ‘cares for things that matter!’ Her Calabrian
eyes were filled with defiance. She felt she’d plucked the heart out of their society in attracting the
high-salaried, high-status doctor.
The women knew it was an attack. Grave as Norns, they studied the pair, hoping to shame
them out of their intimacy. Rosa said, ‘Andrew has a problem, but we have shared it. It is not good
to bottle up things that worry you!’
Deliberately continental, she was provoking them. May said, ‘You don’t seem to be suffering
from that problem Rosa.’
‘No I don’t,’ said Rosa, set to condemn them: ‘but there are too many inhibitions. It is not
healthy to suffer from inhibitions.’ She smiled at the doctor, whose strength began to waver.
Queena, whose world view pivoted on doctors behaving themselves, said, ‘I think Dr Styles is
forgetting himself. We haven’t seen the heart unit yet.’ Levelling the balance with another male, she
added: ‘Mr Beck’s been kept waiting too.’
On the 13th floor, Harry had McKersie at him; the matter, this time, was customer relations. ‘Has
it ever occurred to you,’ said McKersie in a loose drawl meant to evoke a New Orleans night club,
‘that sometimes our customers do not have total conviction in company representatives on what
they perceive to be a second, or perhaps third, level of understanding?’
Harry didn’t like people using inferiority as a weapon. ‘If you mean that those people at the
stock exchange don’t believe you any more, send someone else.’
‘The problem could have been overcome,’ said McKersie, ‘by a little more help from top technical staff before it arose. What do you say to that?’
‘Mac,’ said Harry, meaning it to sound like a put down, ‘you have access to any of us at any
time. Like right now. If you go into something without enough knowledge, don’t bring the mess
back to me. I don’t like messes.’
Trying to keep his cool, McKersie said, ‘What you people should be doing is to show the flag
a bit more. Get out among the customers, show them how you work in with us.’
‘What have you been doing down there in sales? Having some more rah-rah sessions?’
It was enough to provoke the fake-yank. ‘Has it occurred to you,’ he said, ‘that some of us cannot afford to sneer? Do you think we like to know, when we go out, that people back in here are
laughing at us?’
Resenting having to take the man seriously, Harry said, ‘That is your reading of the situation.
You don’t know what I think at all. Everything you’ve said is a projection, and I don’t like what
you’re showing me. I also don’t like being used. Could you talk to someone else?’
A phone rang at the secretary’s desk. Mrs Coad said, ‘Mr Hearn’s office.’ Harry’s expression
indicated a wish to be free of nuisance, but McKersie said, in the moment before the call was transferred, ‘It protects you in a way, doesn’t it. You’re never quite entirely in one place, are you?’
Harry eyed him coolly, picked up his phone as it began to buzz, and announced:
‘Hearn.’
62
A change in his manner alerted McKersie. An American voice more genuine than his own
sounded faintly: ‘New York calling, Mr Hearn. I’ll give you a connection.’
McKersie watched him, expecting a dismissive glance, but Harry stayed motionless, concentrating. He is all in one place now, McKersie thought, and studied him.
The superiority was in the head. The body was well built and as fit as a sedentary worker could
be on squash, swimming and a health food diet. Behind the tight curls (no chance of them getting
out of control) was weathershield glass and an aureole of fast-moving cloud.
It was an empty room; Harry prided himself on doing without equipment. He had a phone,
notepad, silver biro and bare walls. The company carpet was beige, the walls clinically white. He
gave you nothing to grasp but what he offered. McKersie hated him for his billiard ball smoothness, and the sense he gave that his perfection was a role adopted to provoke people into revealing
weakness.
The American voice, an experienced secretary by the sound of her, said: ‘I’m sorry Mr Hearn,
I’m still trying to get that connection.’
‘Right,’ murmured Harry Hearn, utterly together.
McKersie sensed it before Harry. He swung around to look at the secretary’s switch, as if that
could tell him something. Harry flicked an eye at him, but remained still, waiting.
The American voice, said, ‘Go ahead please,’ and there was a succession of clicks, but no voice
came.
Someone’s having him on, thought McKersie, but who? The company staff kept Harry on a
pedestal because he seemed to represent an ideal. There were rumors of a prodigious lovelife; was
someone trying to get back on him? McKersie thought bitterly of a drunken Mim in the Riversdale
pub on Saturday afternoon; of tears, lies, and threadbare pacifications, of fucks about as enjoyable
as the clutch of drowning swimmers. Harry Hearn sat there cool as a surgeon while the phone voice
said, ‘Are you there? I’ll try again.’ There were more clicks and a buzz or two. I’d love to see him
with egg on his face, thought McKersie. Or make some ghastly booboo that’d cost the company
millions. Then we’d get a look at him. He wished he could pick up, in Saint Kilda or Carlton, from
some ex-lover, the personal detail, the little scandal that would give him power over Hearn, so he
could grasp that elusive quality and destroy it. There he was, still focussing that superb attention
on the silence ... someone had him by the balls and he hadn’t woken up. McKersie leant forward,
recording what he saw ...
Click, click, said the phone and then: ‘Sorry Mr Hearn, here’s your connection now!’ Harry
held the phone with steady indifference, as if expecting it to commit an indiscretion. The tension
in the sky-walled room was broken by an Australian accent of purest meat pie and sauce saying
‘Guh-dye Harry!’ It was brother Lawrence.
‘Bastard,’ said Harry. ‘How long have you had an American Girl Friday?’ Something boiled in
McKersie. He had been all set up to watch Hearn cringe before an American director, and he’d
got off the hook. And his disappointment went deeper. Out of his puritanism he could accord
superiority to a man whose sensitivity made him pay dearly for that little extra, but this sloppy
cameraderie piqued him. If Hearn and the Guh-dye voice could link so easily to his exclusion,
his raw sensitivities were irrelevant. People who had it easy were excluding him; he thought of his
wife in her wheelchair, and his incessant efforts to find things of interest to read to her, and the
petty subterfuges by means of which he never quite let her suspicions of other women (Mims all!)
become a certainty, and he stood, beside himself with rage, and left the room.
‘You got someone withya?’ said Harry’s brother.
‘Not any more,’ said Harry. ‘What do you want, you bugger?’
‘That’s no way to speak to your brother,’ said Lawrence, ‘when I’ve rung specially to ask you
to a party we’re giving.’
The ‘we’ was not lost on Harry.
‘The folks away?’ asked the eldest brother, testing.
63
‘Nah, they’re still home. Couldn’t shift’em with dynamite. No, it’s gonna be at Camberwell, 52
Byron Street, just beside the park, you know?’
‘That’s one park I don’t know,’ said Harry, ribbing his brother’s sexual mores. ‘What are you
doing in Camberwell?’
‘What do you mean, what am I doing in Camberwell? What’s so good about Camberwell? You
reckon their shit doesn’t stink over there?’
Harry wanted to convulse. Noone in the office spoke that way, but if he told his brother that
he was like ... a breath of fresh air ... Lawrence would think he was being patronised. So Harry
took the only way:
‘Are you onto something over there?’
‘Garn, get out,’ said his brother. ‘You wait and see. 52 Byron Street. Seeya.’
Harry was suddenly without his brother, without McKersie, without his company guard up.
He wanted to burst out laughing, to tell somebody ...
He rang the Film Co-op, but his new Julie was out. He rang Bright, thinking it was time he
gave Janis something, but ...
... the phone rang for a long, insistent minute, in an empty house. Even Mrs Lethlean, close
next door, heard it, and wondered where Janis could be.
Bruce said to the ladies, ‘Do you know this district at all? I’d like to show you around.’ Una thought
of her uncle Roderick, and agreed.
Harry dug out a notebook, flicked the biro point, and wrote:
THE GHOST AND THE FOUNTAIN
Which came first? The geist
called up the spring, or water came
bubbling for an answer? In earth’s
first timeless dawns, creatures saw
themselves in water, and water saw
in them itself.
Rusty old poet, he thought: bad prose chopped up in lengths. He felt a sly amusement at the
thought of McKersie coming back to find him chewing his biro.
He tried again. This time, he attempted rhyme:
A knot is an act of junction. The knot
is solid, as is the string: which,
therefore, is more substantial? The clot
of hemp that comes undone, or the line,
jute-grey, reliable, extending like a plot
in Shakespeare, waiting for convolutions ...
He couldn’t think what to write next. Toying with his biro, he considered his secretary’s back:
she was typing like a machine gun. His laughing mood dissolved; he thought of the shredding
machine on the other side of the level. Ashamed of his efforts, he crumpled the pages, and tried
Janis again.
Mrs Lethlean, in the house next door, wondered who was so persistent, and whether Janis
would be home from school to receive her daughter, or whether she was expecting Mrs Lethlean to
give her biscuits and milo, or what? It was all very well to head off if she felt upset, but what about
those who had to pick up after her? Mrs Lethlean liked Bruce, she felt he did all a man could do
for a difficult wife ...
Bruce slowed down when he felt Una’s attention drawn to the cemetery. He looked inquiringly
at her. ‘I have an uncle buried there,’ she said.
‘Would you like to see his grave?’ Bruce asked.
64
Janis examined a leaf. It had been distorted by a gall. Its intended shape could be guessed at,
but had not been achieved. She thought of the ways humans were damaged, not by external predators but by internal forces ripping them apart. Am I destroying myself, she wondered, through
some falsity of passion, or because I am inferior and destined to be destroyed? Would she be different if she’d married someone else? If someone else but Harry had become the object of her love? It
was all too abstract, there were no answers and no relief. Even Harry, she thought, is an abstraction
to me now. If he (miracle!) walked up that track right now, it would take ages before he became a
reality in his own right, not a dream creation of my own.
The last time she’d been with him she’d cried out in lovemaking, ‘Oh you’re so real!’ Her eyes were
full of her transfigured vision of himself. It was not a perception he could believe in but her instability, he had to admit, had its grandeurs. Heading a new sheet HEART AND PULSE, he tried
to explore the way an energy source and the systems energised were one and the same thing, but
after a few disastrous starts he pushed the notebook aside and reached for the rail loop calculations.
‘Christ,’ he said aloud, ‘I’m not a poet-manqué, I’m a poet never begun.’ There was a certain brief
humility about him. But the calculations wouldn’t work either; his mind kept presenting him with
an image from his boyhood — a model human, with detachable plastic organs, propped up on the
bench of a biology lab. His science teacher claimed that intellect was paramount, but Harry had
had his doubts, and had them still. If the kidney, he reasoned, would only work at crawling speed
while the heart could run; if the genitals walked while the erotic imagination galloped; if the lungs
were fresh while the liver staled, then consciousness was nothing but a wary, devious ruler in a
kingdom full of inconsistencies. He stretched back from the table and flung his biro down. ‘Shit!’
he cried, this time loud enough to make his secretary turn.
‘Mr Hearn?’ she inquired.
‘For a moment,’ said Harry: ‘for a moment ...’
The secretary’s eyes maintained the question.
‘Have you ever considered,’ Harry asked, ‘how long a moment lasts?’
‘I suppose,’ said Harry’s secretary, ‘your second hand gives you that.’ She flapped her wrist.
Harry didn’t bother to answer. ‘A moment lasts,’ he said, ‘as long as there is something happening in it.’ To have it uttered gave him a sense of triumph.
‘I’m sorry, I don’t understand,’ said the secretary. ‘Would you like me to get Mr Willard?’
‘And what would he tell me that I don’t know already?’ said Harry, adding: ‘What we don’t
know yet is how much can be crammed into one moment.’ He knew it was cryptic, but his mind
was full of Greg Paton; if the whole of life was present in any moment, and there was a limit to
what a moment could contain, then the bursting point was death! Life was like an orange that split
when it was too ripe instead of rotting! The simultaneous immanence of everything in the universe
in a world fast-wired by communication systems seemed an idea of blinding promise. ‘Don’t worry
about me, Mrs Coad,’ he said, ‘I haven’t gone crazy. It’s just that I can see the endpoint of everything I’m driving at, and I like it!’
Mrs Coad was circumspect. ‘I’m glad your thoughts are encouraging,’ she said. ‘Would you
like a cup of tea?’
He didn’t want one, but faced with such admirable triviality, what could he say? Besides, he’d
passed that important test of sanity, the comprehension of the typing pool. ‘Mrs Coad,’ he said,
and he almost called her Marie, ‘I’d love one. Then I’ll be able to drink to this moment. You’d better have one with me.’
Mrs Coad knew how to deal with the unorthodox. Bringing him a cup, with flag of teabag
dangling, a saucer of sugar cubes, his sachet of whitener and wooden paddle substituting for a
spoon, she told her master: ‘Here, drink this and say Eureka! Isn’t that what that fellow said when
he found gold wouldn’t float in a bath?’
Harry’s guts began to convulse again. What a morning! But he remembered himself to say:
‘That was Archimedes. He got into the bath and he saw ... actually he didn’t see, he guessed that
65
the water going over the edge was equal to the volume of his body, the part under water anyway.
It’s always said that in that moment he discovered a principle, but he didn’t Mrs Coad ...’ he made
her name sound like an admonition ‘... he had a blinding flash, which was neither principle nor
faith, but an apprehension. Reality is only apprehended, never discovered, and never proved nor
disproved either.’ She plainly wasn’t with him. He said, ‘It’s going to take several years to work out
in practice what I’ve perceived this morning, but I feel it’s far reaching.’
‘Eureka?’ she said, hoping he would get himself off to lunch, or something.
‘Yes, I think Eureka,’ he said, and then — and it made her feel much happier — ‘Would you
mind throwing a few sheets in Bob Willard’s shredder?’
66
6
Uncle Roderick’s tombstone was a thirties slab, rounded at the corners and prone as the corpse.
Staring at the marble, Una saw the verticality of life — one grew into a resemblance of one’s ancestors. White ants had attacked the floorboards in Uncle Roderick’s hall, and the lino had sagged
above the soft spots, then cracked beneath the feet of children running races. At the end of the
passage was the locked door that hid the deaf and dumb, last, child of Roderick’s wife. Did this
child sit up, or was it, as the kids whispered, strapped down day and night? Auntie used to feed it
when we weren’t around, Una remembered, and a chill ran through her as it had, sixty-five years
before, on the day she tripped in one of the ant holes in the floor and fell against the door. What if
there was a key on the inside and it came out? ‘It can be very upsetting,’ said Bruce, noticing Mrs
Moulton flinch. She stared at him. ‘I wasn’t ...’ Una began, but for once left a statement unfinished. Uncle Roderick had been a slim man when he went to war, but was corpulent by the time
he died. Knowledge of that creature in the end room (my cousin, thought Una) was in the grave
with Roderick’s paunch.
‘He had an old trunk full of letters and business documents,’ Una told the ladies, ‘and we used
to go through them looking for stamps. Black swans and Queen Victoria. And all this spidery writing, I suppose it was done with a nib but we used to say it was a quill. The ink had gone a rusty
colour. Do you know, I can see that trunk now, and I can remember us kids arguing about those
stamps, but if it wasn’t for his photos, I wouldn’t remember what his face looked like. I can hear his
voice to this day, but I can’t see his face. He used to like to sing. I can hear his voice ringing out of
my grandmother’s lounge while we were playing hidey in the garden, but I can not see his face.’
May said, ‘My uncle sent home pressed flowers from France. And ferns. My grandmother used
to have them in a frame on the wall. We ...’
Queena Temby said, ‘In the hospital in Bendigo they had this honour board in the foyer ...’
Rosa Della Grazia said, ‘There was a priest in Palermo said he could raise the dead ...’
These anecdotes failed to budge Una. ‘I can smell the lino in his hallway,’ she said. ‘I can hear
him coughing in his office. I can smell those letters in the trunk. I can feel those dry, dusty letters.
I can hear my brother Bernie saying, ‘That’s the oldest stamp in the world!’ Didn’t know what he
was talking about, of course. You know, that house is more real to me than where I’m standing!’
Bruce said, ‘My wife says, the older we get, the more places we’re in at once.’
‘If we took that seriously,’ said Queena, protective of her hard-won integration, ‘we’d be scattered everywhere. There’d be nothing left to bury!’
‘Perhaps there isn’t, once the soul’s gone to heaven,’ said Rosa, masquerading as a Catholic:
‘only a bit of smell to be covered with dirt!”
‘But we did happen,’ said Aunt Una. ‘Funny that it takes a lump of stone to prove it.’ She
viewed the graveyard bleakly. ‘I think you’d better take us somewhere else, Mr Beck.’
‘I’ll take you through our hop district,’ said Bruce, ‘then you must have a cup of tea before
you go back.’
There was no-one home. Bruce put the kettle on, but something in the silence warned them of a
crisis. When Mr Beck’s nine year old looked in the bedroom, Una’s judgement was alert; what sort
of mother went walking when her child came home from school? Three thirty was the time to think
of hot milk and toast (winter) and orange juice with biscuits (summer); to every season there was a
duty, which, carried through, was like a compass needle guiding. Mincing the fruit for Xmas pudding, or ordering firewood as autumn days grew shorter, Una prepared for seasons as they came.
67
Readiness averted those unnecessary crises that dogged the unwise, and left one stronger for the
unavoidable — war that robbed her of two brothers, her son’s fatal illness, incompetence in her
husband which she endured for twenty-four years. She had emerged into widowhood unshakeably
convinced that one could get through comfortably enough if one did without pride, pretensions
and the damaging emotions — anger, jealousy, greed and the rest. She suspected Bruce Beck, for
all his hearty normality. He was still striving, and restless: the phone calls, the missing wife ... While
May fiddled with a silver chafing dish and Rosa stared in horror at a dried flower arrangement,
Una gathered herself:
‘Your job would take you out a lot at nights, Mr Beck.’
‘It does ...’
The young Bruce had imagined himself as someone with a special skill — a silversmith, perhaps, or a jeweller — which allowed him to work quietly in a back room, admired and cosseted.
The skill, however, had never revealed itself, and he had turned to public life for admiration and
reassurance. His fear of being thought hollow was a weakness which Janis hated and exploited.
‘... but my wife’s a good backstop. It puts a bit of strain on her, though, which I’m afraid shows
at times.’
This gloss was hardly out of his mouth when his daughter, returned from the bedroom,
announced: ‘Mum’s coat’s gone, and her purse, isn’t she coming back?’
Bruce’s front crumpled. The phone chose that moment to ring. Striving for normality, Bruce
said, ‘Answer it Jenny, please. If it’s the office, I’ll be back shortly,’ but his daughter said, ‘What if
it’s mum?’
She made it sound like the visitation of a ghost. Bruce said shortly, ‘It won’t be, now go on,
answer it.’ The tension in no way diminished when the ringing stopped and the child’s voice could
be heard, affecting an adult response: ‘Mr Beck’s house ...’
Bruce felt his castle crumbling. He had hoped, by bringing his visitors home, to make Janis
switch into her role of wife and hostess, validating the public Bruce, who could then slide out of the
entanglement with Prue, at least for the time being, and restore balance to the marriage — for the
time being. But now his life was being laid open by a girl’s voice floating down the passage: ‘Okay,
I’ll tell him what you said.’ May Richards, feeling that they were seeing too much, said, ‘I think
we’d better drink our tea and go,’ but Rosa was not to be hurried and Una preferred her tea cool.
For Bruce, the women sitting at his table were like the community gathered in judgment. Jennifer
burst back with her message: ‘It’s someone called Prue, dad. She’s definitely getting chucked out
of that flat she was telling you about. She wants you.’
He felt that it was more than he could tolerate to leave his daughter exposed to their collective estimation of her father; he said, ‘Say I’ll ring back, I can’t speak to her just now,’ and to his
guests he said, ‘Friend of mine ... migrant family,’ as if that validated anything. ‘Had a row with
her family in Sydney, came to Melbourne, got a rather scungy flat which it looks like she’s going
to lose ...’ His voice appealed for sympathy. Rosa asked what country the girl came from, and Una:
‘Has she got a job?’
To which Bruce could only answer ‘Holland’ to Rosa, and to Una: ‘Not as yet. She’s looking
though.’
Rosa said, ‘You are good to help her, but don’t pay too high a price,’ and May said, ‘I think
he’s paying it, aren’t you Mr Beck?’
Bruce felt that he and his generation were on the line. While he was searching for an answer,
Jenny came back: ‘She didn’t like it, dad, she’s expecting you to ring her pretty soon. Are you going
to, dad?’ Even the child now, was implying a responsibility for mum, wherever she might be.
Una said, ‘You’ve got worries, Mr Beck.’ She tried the tea and found it cool enough to sip.
‘I’ve got lots,’ said Bruce. ‘You take a public job, and you try to be supportive in your private
life, and everything gets unloaded onto you.’
68
Bruce knew that behind her unchanging mask, Una had rejected this. He wanted to stop the
women judging him. They must have been through crises of their own, why didn’t they say something instead of watching him while they drank their bloody tea?
May said, ‘It’s got an unusual taste, don’t you think, Una? What brand is it, Mr Beck?’
At least Nero played a fiddle, Bruce thought: these old ducks would talk tea until the word
ended; he imagined them, under the final mushroom cloud, running down Mrs Soandso who
made her tea in a cold pot. ‘Earl Grey,’ he said. ‘Twinings. Janis bought it in Carlton last time she
was down.’ It sounded like an infection picked up from the counter-culture.
‘It’s nice,’ said May, ‘but I think I’ll stick to my Bushells.’
Bruce was at screaming point. ‘You must have some idea where she is?’ said Rosa Della
Grazia.
‘Somewhere out Broken Range Road,’ Bruce said. ‘It’s the way she releases herself.’ He didn’t
say what from.
Una said reflectively, ‘Marriage ... my husband was never happy in his marriage and I don’t
believe it was my fault.’ She considered Bruce gravely. ‘You’d better go and get her, Mr Beck. Put
that other one off. And we’d better be on our way, girls.’ She smiled faintly at the term.
Feeling that some measure of sympathy underlay her words, Bruce said, ‘I’m glad you said that.
It seems to help, somehow.’ Una added: ‘Get some of your council men out. Don’t try to do it all
yourself. The sooner you get her back, the better. And take your girl.’
It humbled Bruce: he had been thinking of leaving Jenny. Why? To answer the phone if Prue
rang — yes, that was a guilty thought. And because he had, he admitted to himself, been thinking
of it as a young man’s drama, not a family turmoil. ‘I’m sorry about this,’ said Bruce. ‘I don’t think
I know what age I am. I play in too many different leagues.’
The women were putting the milk in the fridge, and washing the cups. Rosa wiped the table
with a wettex; it expressed a charitable intention.
‘You’ll come through,’ said May, and Rosa took him by the hand. Una said, ‘It a beautiful
district, you’re really very lucky. Now if you’ll just drive us back to our car ...’ Bruce nodded.
Queena, grey and wrinkled, told Jenny, ‘You lock up the house darling, and we’ll all go down in
your daddy’s car ...’
But Rosa told her, ‘There is no need in a town like this. You don’t lock your door, do you
Mr Beck?’ He shook his head. Janis locked the door when she was afraid, but the point of Rosa’s
question was to overcome his fears, and his fears of Janis’s fears, and the uncanny sensation she
transmitted when she was afraid: an influence which weakened him, and which he hated …
Sitting against a tree, Janis was concentrating on sending messages. To Harry, she expressed a
limitless yearning. To Murdy Miller, a call for support. Normalise me, she was trying to tell him,
you can do it.
To Bruce she sent a message: stay away, and another: come.
Murdy had his manuscript open at the account of von Mueller’s love for Euphemia. It was a distressing episode, not least because it was at this point that he felt insufficiently distanced from his
subject. Too much of himself had crept into the account. Like von Mueller, he idealised love yet
rejected its consequences. Euphemia Ethel Elizabeth Spencer Middleton Henderson ... he remembered Janis laughing when she saw the name in full, and realised how much he wanted Janis; his
pretence of being friend and comforter was wearing thin. He wanted to be the object of a love such
as she was pouring on Harry Hearn, who had more than he needed anyway.
Rather than examine this jealousy, he read page 168:
Renunciation was already a theme in Mueller’s life. A man more concerned to make his reputation in the
botanical establishment ...
Limply left wing, thought Murdy; change that.
69
... would long since have accepted the Hookers’ invitation to work at Kew, but the same quirkiness and
preference for working in isolation which led to him surrendering, with ill-concealed misgivings, the Flora
Australiensis to Bentham ...
He knew when he was beaten, thought Murdy, which says a lot about the British ascendancy
in Europe, or maybe it was simply his luck in choosing a British colony for his consumption cure.
He even had Earl Russell refusing to let him wear the honours granted by foreign courts which
Mueller so dearly longed to display.
... made him a bad candidate for marriage. He was already thirty-eight, and had created for himself a
crowded existence, all of it relating to his official position, which accounted for every minute of his waking hours.
The documents only suggest how his love for Euphemia crept upon him, but it is clear that his
unclouded bliss lasted less than a fortnight. Journeying back to Melbourne after confirming the engagement, he made light of setbacks ...
We did not find, as we intended, fresh horses at Frankston.We had thus to rest the tired creatures for some time and
reached, although we walked all the way, Mordialloc only at 9 p.m. then were obliged to abandon our intention of
reaching our destination this night.
and, tired, as he must have been, the botanist was able to render, albeit by post, to the woman
he continued to call, in later letters, his bride:
Walking along in the cool, bracing, starlit night, I could calmly muse over the incidents of the eventful recent days.
Its lovely pictures passing before my mind almost as a beautiful dream ...
Paradise abandoned, thought Murdy, or was it? Mueller had a glancing fear of dying without
an heir, as could be seen by his reference to old Sir William Hooker:
He looks like the oldest most venerable clergyman; his internal peace, being conscious of having an heir to his
labours and force, has no doubt upheld him mentally and bodily as well ...
Yet nine days after his rapturous tramp through the coastal tea tree he was complaining about
ill-health, that recurring excuse for cowardice of spirit. There was no avoiding the fact that the
Baron had incredible energy when he wanted it, yet when he needed an excuse, he could write:
You attribute most justly the melancholy which I could not suppress for many a wearied week to my failing
health.
He went on to talk about his ‘increasing illness and ceding strength.’ Murdy smiled; he had a
list of the Baron’s privately coined words — ephemerous, richdom, drippage, gayness, helpingly, unpretensive, and the rest of them. They were both irritating and endearing. He suspected that his man
did the same thing in German but didn’t know the language well enough to be sure. People in the
German Department said not, but he suspected them of wanting to protect von Mueller’s reputation. No different from me, thought Murdy, I love the old fellow when I ought to despise him:
Several medical friends whom I have consulted on this question have confirmed the conclusion which I have drawn,
and as your future, believe me, is dear to me I have, after long and painful internal combat, deemed it more honourable to afford you an opportunity of withdrawing from an engagement which opens only a gloomy future ...
Poor, poor Euphemia! He waved his illness like a truce flag ...
My health will not admit of my living for a lengthened period in this restless, trying state of suspension ...
... and, as if to shut out her pain, he groaned as loudly as could:
For nothing in this world would I pass again through the agonies and sufferings of the past few months. I only
wonder that I sink not further from them.
The trouble, for anyone who admired Mueller, was that he had gone into the thing with a way
out prepared. While the friendship was still ripening into love, he was writing to her:
70
Since some time I cherished the hope of visiting Europe for about a year with a view to adding to my scientific
knowledge, but the visit may be deferred or altogether abolished.
A fortnight later he was saying:
Perhaps I have to bid you goodbye for some time, as I have been earnestly contemplating to claim one year’s leave
of absence to which the Civil Services Bill entitles me ... I should be sorry to leave without bidding you farewell.
And then, shortly before the visit when he asked for Miss Euphemia’s hand and was accepted,
he applied for leave, half hoping he would be refused:
My chiefs may not be able to comply, and if so I must abandon for ever my plan of visiting Europe; and then there
will be no necessity of bidding you goodbye ...
Over a cup of coffee when he got home, Murdy asked Christie, ‘Why do you think he did it?’
Christie, perceiving that he had a theory he wished to try on her, remained silent.
‘You know what I think?’ he said, rhetorical questions being a characteristic. ‘He reminds me
of Pelleas, always telling Melisande he’s going away the next day. Going further and further into
the thing, without admitting to himself what he’s actually doing.’
‘There’s a superficial resemblance,’ she said, ‘but if people act that way, it’s usually a mask.
Pelleas was telling himself his involvement was only light, when it wasn’t. Your old Baron ...’
Murdy felt heavy and unsubtle.
‘... was really setting up the alternatives so he could reject them. He didn’t want to go to
Europe, and he didn’t want to be married. But he didn’t know how to make decisions of that sort
without making a public commitment and then pulling out of it. I doubt if he ever knew what his
feelings were about anything. Poor woman.’
‘He sent her a davenport,’ said Murdy. ‘It was the pay off, I suppose. Made of Australian timbers, with a kangaroo and an emu carved on the desk supports and an Australian coat of arms on
the underneath part.’
She said, ‘Why haven’t you told me that before?’
‘I have told you, don’t you take any notice of things I tell you?’
She looked at her book, as if he was being uncouth. He said, ‘He sent it for her birthday, after
the engagement was broken off. It had a secret repository, and she used to keep his letters there.
For six years she did that; after that she destroyed them.’
Her glance indicated that not only were these carryings on extremely foolish, but that his fascination with them made him suspect.
‘It’s pitiful, really,’ said the biographer. ‘He used to write to her for the rest of his life, as far as
we can gather. Once a year, and timed to arrive on her birthday ...’
Christie put her book down with the coolness which was her expression of deep hostility. Yet
she was, at least, interested.
‘She never married after that, did she?’
‘No,’ said Murdy. ‘Miss Henderson till the end. Lived to be eighty four. We get most of this
from a man called Hardy who actually had the davenport in his possession for a time, but no one
knows where it is now, or they’re not saying, anyhow the thing’s been lost, one way or another. I’d
love to see it ...’
‘Like a withered flower,’ said Christie, damning the participants with a withering pity. ‘Under
one of those glass jars. Like a specimen to show he had been in love. And she let him do it to her.
Oh God, they were morbid!’ And she took up the book with cold deliberation and buried herself
in it, leaving Murdy feeling condemned. Sulkily he mooched off to the kitchen, got himself coffee
and hid in his study. She listened to him go. His thudding steps reverberated in her mind. She had
let him into her life and wished she could get him out — but they were linked in their need for the
children. Otherwise, they had made separate camps within the marriage; Christie had wanted to
have a section of the house to herself, but he had refused; if they were going to be joint parents,
they had to live as such. So they did: and he learned as much as he could about her music, and
71
she about his Australian History, and they defended each other vigorously to people who did not
understand their sometimes idiosyncratic opinions. They were, in a way, better companions for
each other than anyone else because they knew exactly the weaknesses in each other’s make-up
and could, if they wished, go out of their way to shelter and even comfort those weaknesses. But
the weaknesses were sore spots they did not let each other handle; they were always in some way
gloved, or masked, in their dealings.
He thudded through the house again: more coffee. He treated the house with cheerful unselfconsciousness, unaware of the reverberations he was setting up inside it, whereas she lived within,
and, often by, these reverberations. When all was silent, it was light that affected her most, being
most intensely aware of the world when experiencing it at one remove. Filtered light, reflections,
or a storm expressing its approach in a rattle of windows or flurry of leaves were direct statements
of reality to Christie. She loved days of changing mood; she would take a rug and cushion into the
garden — his garden — and lie there well past the time when she ought to be getting ready to go
out, and then she would walk inside, leaving the rug and cushion behind for Murdy to pick up,
if he noticed. Dealing with social reality, as he did, he always checked his responses against those
of everyone else, whereas she could stay for hours within her own apprehensions, and fears; this
was another dimension of her need for him. Then there was the social fact of marriage, however
flawed; it gave her strength when dealing with musicians who wanted to cry on her shoulder, or
get off with orchestral parts. Conductors and administrators who tried to bully her found that their
tricks didn’t work, and this was when she appreciated Murdy most, because she had helped him
see through male tricks, and give up using them on her, at least.
The kitchen door opened; Murdy was in the doorway, taps swooshing in the sink behind him.
‘I think I’ll take the kids to Luna Park tomorrow,’ he announced. She looked at him in surprise.
‘What put that in your head? Are we all going to go on things?’
It was not like her to ask two questions at once, and he only answered the first. ‘Oh they’ve
been cooped up a bit lately. Time we took ‘em out. Hang on,’ he said, ‘I’ve got the taps running.’
Typical of him, she thought, to make an announcement when he’s got something which will drag
him away. He doesn’t want a discussion, he’s just telling me what he’s going to do. Did he treat
others like that, did others treat her the same way? Was it some indecision or latent hostility in her
that caused Murdy, or anyone, to approach her thus? There was a Dutch violinist in the orchestra
called Jan de Kruyper who was sullenly servile at work and threw tantrums at home. Christie had
met his wife Elsa at a party. Her cool attractiveness had an edge of apprehension about it as if she
measured her life by the intervals between storms. One morning, after a concert in which Jan had
played particularly sweetly in a Mozart trio, Elsa had rung Christie, wanting to talk to a stranger
because, she said, their friends — they only had mutual friends — wouldn’t believe her. Jan had
come home and told her that he was going to have a device attached to their phone which registered incoming calls. ‘I feel guilty now when I pick up the phone,’ she said. ‘When he’s out, I keep
hoping it won’t ring.’ She said she had known of this possessive jealousy when she had married
Jan, but was flattered by it, thinking it was an expression of his attachment. ‘Now I know,’ she said,
‘it’s his way of trapping people, and I’m trapped, but I have to put up with it because I allowed it.
When we were first married, if he went on like that, I thought I had his love and felt rather smug
about it. Now it’s a killer, but I don’t know what to do.’
Christie fiddled with a paperknife. Her son’s stamps were lying around the floor. A French
one said in tiny letters ‘Liberté, égalité, fraternité.’ Ideals, she thought, are the negative reflections
of reality; the ideal in any one period is probably the thing in shortest supply. Liberty, equality,
fraternity, when they were chopping off heads. Poor Elsa de Kruyper had an ideal of herself as a
woman steady, faithful and adoring, and the very means by which her husband tried to make her
so meant that she could be none of these much-desired things. The moral is, thought Christie, that
our circumstances force on us ideals which those same circumstances prevent us living by. Elsa
de Kruyper had told Christie that she felt that Jan was most jealous when he was tempted to be
unfaithful. She had left a long silence after this pronouncement, into which Christie found herself
72
forced to say, ‘I don’t think it could be anyone here. I’m not aware of anything going on here,’ and
then she had hated herself for giving this information. Even remembering it, she felt smutty ...
Coming in with coffee, Murdy sensed her mood, and almost backed out. He feared her wish
to have things out in the open, it made him shifty and uneasy. Deciding to brave it out, he sat in
his favourite chair and ventured: ‘Anything on the radio tonight? Or are you planning to go to
something?’
She almost laughed at his timidity.
‘Why, where do you want to go?’
‘I probably ought to go over to Anne’s, there’s a few things need sorting out before we can get
out the brochures for this conference …’
‘Why don’t you ring her?’
‘I think it needs more than that. Might be a few other people there too. Whole program needs
looking at, it’s pretty scrappy ...’
She dismissed his apologies. ‘Off you go then.’
The trouble with such a mundane parting was that each knew, and knew the other knew, the
exact degree to which his going out was necessary and how much it was an excuse to relieve the
strain. Murdy was at Anne’s before he felt his tension ease.
She lived in a derelict street overlooking the docks and railway yards. Uninhabited brick cottages hunched against the weather, slate roofs in disarray. Besser brick factories stood locked and
wire-shuttered. Anne’s was one of three misplaced Victorian residences. Above a spattering of balustrades and a brace of urns rose an interrupted lunette featuring the remains of an eagle perched
upon a ball; the facade bore the name ‘Wystan’. Some merchant had expected this part of town to
boom but it was abandoned now by all except radical intellectuals. A broken couch and a rolled up
carpet had been tossed beside the door. A potted geranium, still flowering on its side, had rolled
to the edge of the balcony and caught itself in iron lace. Murdy never came to the house without
expecting it to fall on him. He used to joke about it with Anne: ‘Bombed by a geranium! The
ultimate suburban fate!’ but what he didn’t say was that he felt a link between the pathetic little
reminder of Damocles’ sword and the occupants of the house. He pushed the door open. Anne’s
room was first on the left. He looked in. Her double bed was disarrayed on one side only. A nighty,
white with pale green flowers, lay tumbled on the pillow, a desk lamp burned, and a blue-eyed
black-faced Siamese stood sentinel on a chair. Its blazing eyes needed the whole gloomy space,
from marble fireplace to ruby glass, from worn out carpet to broken ceiling rose, to set them off.
Murdy could never remember which of Anne’s two cats was which. ‘Are you Eloise or Verity?’ he
said, but the cat only elongated its back and scratched languidly at the fabric.
‘You don’t like me puss?’ said Murdy. ‘All right, I’ll go and find your master.’
‘Mistress,’ he mumbled, making his way towards the stairwell.
Reaching the pool of light where the passage met the stairs, he paused to listen for voices,
and to surreptitiously study the message pad on the lower half of a pinewood dresser, many times
painted, which did service as a household desk. A figure, loose-haired, and plumply bosomed,
caught him:
‘Finding out what we’re up to Murdy?’ came the voice, floating down the stairs.
‘Trying to see who took my message,’ said Murdy, half truthfully. ‘Anne wasn’t home when I
rang.’
‘She’s in the kitchen,’ said the silhouette at the top of the stairs. ‘She’s expecting you. We do
give each other messages, you know.’
‘Sorry,’ said Murdy, and moved on, not without glancing into another bedroom which contained a Klee print, a guitar propped against a jungle green wall, and a disheveled double bed.
Pushing into the back part of the house, which smelled of stale mortar, Murdy found Anne in the
kitchen, scratching a stain out of a Che Guevara poster while her second cat — Eloise or Verity?
— gazed possessively at a piece of raw-pink topside liberally sprinkled with pepper and finely sliced
garlic.
73
‘Greetings comrade!’ said Murdy, moving towards her.
‘Hi!’ she said, as he kissed her on the cheek. He produced a bottle of expensive wine as his
carte d’entrée.
‘Looks good,’ she said. ‘Opener’s in that drawer.’
Pulling out the cork, he asked her, ‘What’s Jerry doing these days?’ He liked to be privy to
people’s lives.
‘I don’t know. Something crooked.’
Murdy temporised: ‘I suppose in his game you can’t help being a bit shady most of the time.’
At once she took him up. ‘It’s more than that. He’s crazy. He’s got to be crooked. He couldn’t
be honest if he tried. His whole personality’s based on deceit.’
‘Actually,’ said Murdy, ‘I always find Jerry rather charming.’
‘Oh he’s got loads of charm,’ she said, her attack abating slightly. ‘He’s got to have, it’s part of
the deal. If you’re going to take people, you need charm. Jerry was very generous ...’
He noted the tense with interest.
‘... because he had a great need to be accepted. He had to make people think he wasn’t using
them, he used his charm as an anaesthetic ...’
Murdy raised his eyebrows. ‘Once you get rid of these fellows ... I take it you’ve broken with
Jerry ...’
‘I pissed him off.’
‘Well, once you break off with these blokes, you do this analysis of them and they get torn to
pieces.’
‘I don’t tear them to pieces,’ she said, smiling now that she had him scared. ‘It’s just what they
are. I’m in love with them for a while, and then the disadvantages outweigh the advantages.’
She used sometimes to tell him that she would like a child; he could not see how she would
move from this constant skirmishing with the opposite sex to a position of such commitment. She
added:
‘Most people are shits, Murdy. They can’t help it. It’s the way the system makes them. I can
only stand them for so long. You maintain a marriage which is probably fairly awful. You can only
be doing it at great cost. To Christie more than you, probably.’
‘Why’s it worse for her?’
‘Because women have to internalise more of the lies. A lot of men would like to escape the roles
they’ve been given, I know, but they do get the benefits that go with it.’ Sensing his agreement, she
capped: ‘It’s all pretty terrible, really,’ and sipped his wine.
‘This is nice Murdy, what is it?’
‘Orlando special bottling. They never seem to fail.’
She was usually happiest when she had shown the world to be terrible; Murdy risked an
approach:
‘When I’ve been most in love the world hasn’t seemed too terrible.’
Fiddling with her glass, she said, ‘It’s not a bad trip while it lasts.’
Disappointed, he said, ‘You don’t put much on love, do you.’
Didactic Anne announced: ‘Most people’s view of the world has been so sentimentalised by
popular culture that when they hear the word love they think good times are going to start. It’s utter
bullshit! Love’s usually very painful, and just as often destructive. The fact is that most people can’t
be trusted with another person’s life. Love’s a big cover-up for the sex war, the class war, and just
about every form of interpersonal fighting you can think of. You look at Olga!’
Murdy was in fact looking at Olga, because the door had opened and the loose-haired, plumply
bosomed silhouette from the top of the stairs was standing in the opening, holding car keys and
dressed to go out.
‘Talking about me again?’
‘I was telling Murdy how you screw things out of Barny.’
‘Screw?’ said the figure in the doorway, smiling. ‘I suppose that is what I do.’
74
‘You’re dead right it is,’ Anne told her.
‘Trouble is, he’s starting to wake up,’ said Olga. She held up the car keys. ‘Can I take the car
for a while? Is there any petrol in it, it read empty all the way from South Yarra.’
‘You’d better put some in then, hadn’t you? Or are you going to let Barny drive so he thinks
he has to fill it when it runs out?’
‘Unfortunately, he’s not that silly,’ said the girl called Olga. ‘Okay, seeya.’ From down the passage she called, ‘If Martin rings, tell him I’ll be home later.’
‘Oh yeah?’ said Anne. ‘Yeah, I’ll tell him.’
‘Not too much,’ said the departing voice.
‘I’m glad I’m not on with Olga,’ said Murdy, wishing he was on with Anne. He looked at her
with an intensity she could not miss.
‘She’s crazy,’ said Anne. ‘She’s really in a mess. Probably have a breakdown pretty soon.’
Watching Murdy, she saw his ardour dissipate. You had only to mention madness to make him
close up. There was a rift in him between sobriety and excitement. She knew he longed to base his
life upon excitement, but feared her for where she might lead him.
‘You ought to meet Olga’s family,’ said Anne. ‘They are appalling. They take each other down
all the time in every possible way. Her brother got his best friend to go out with her because he
knew he had drug charges coming up against him, but they didn’t tell Olga. Oh no. The bloke
shot through on his bail, no one knows where the fuck he is now. She really freaked over that one.’
Murdy shook his head, pushed by Anne into a role of avuncular concern which set him firmly in
his generation. Looking glumly at Eloise — or was it Verity? — he said, ‘Oh well, we’d better go
somewhere where we can spread out our stuff without getting it covered in beef blood, and see
what we can make of this program.’
‘I’ll put this in the oven,’ said Anne. ‘It should be ready when the mob gets back.’
Leaving the kitchen, Murdy said, ‘Your turn to cook tonight?’; a nuclear family man, he liked
to indicate that he understood communal households. Anne said tartly, ‘No. It’s bloody Malcolm’s
turn, but they all wanted to see the latest Herzog film so I said I’d swap him. He already owes me
two nights. Lazy shit.’ She turned to face him in that same half-light at the foot of the stairs that had
trapped him before: ‘That young man is going to change very shortly!’ Her eyes glittered. Murdy
wondered what they were like in the morning before she’d put on the mascara and eyeliner which
made them so ferocious, and if he’d ever know. In the dark of the passage, ashamed of himself, he
said, ‘Anne? Anne?’
She stopped, hating him for his association of sexuality with darkness, and said, ‘Yes, Murdy,
what is it?’ She pretended to suppress the guile in her voice.
He said, his sexual hopes collapsing, ‘Don’t always fight people, will you?’
She said, as if reading from a catechism, ‘Why not?’ He felt the house heavy about him, like a
cavernous heritage; he wanted to see her soften, if not for him, then someone else, but somehow
to shed that implacable mask, he knew it meant abandoning her strongly held positions. ‘It’s not
good for you,’ he said weakly. ‘Perhaps we’d better get down to the program,’ she said.
They were soon arguing again, over a historian called Bob Lewis. Murdy wanted to leave him
off the program because he hadn’t committed himself to coming, nor given the subject of his paper.
Anne accused Murdy of looking for an excuse to leave him off. She said he had an anti-Marxist
bias. Murdy said he had spoken to the fellow, and he’d written and had no reply, and the stuff
had to go to the printer the day after tomorrow and if Bob Lewis couldn’t meet the deadline, he
missed out!
Anne said he was only looking for an excuse to keep Bob Lewis out and if he’d been one of
Murdy’s mates, or was putting over a line Murdy agreed with, then he would have sent a telegram
to the Sydney history department to make sure he got him. Murdy said that if Bob Lewis couldn’t
look after his own interests well enough to see a golden opportunity to increase his reputation, who
else was supposed to look after him?
‘Pure individualism,’ said Anne. ‘Corrupt.’
75
‘Fact of life,’ said Murdy. ‘I’m not going to pack his case and buy his plane ticket. The man
has a will of his own.’
‘And you’re hoping he won’t exercise it.’
Murdy steeled himself. ‘I have no reason to want him not to come. You seem to suggest that
I’m afraid of what he might say. From what little I heard last time he was down here, he seems to
think he’s going to unpick all previous interpretations of the depression. He seems to think a gigantic fraud was perpetrated on the Australian people. I think it was too, but his approach is basically
unhistorical. He’s the most doctrinaire person I’ve ever met ... well, almost ...’
He thought he was using humour to let his love show through, but she jumped on him: ‘The
alleged objectivity of history is a fraud. The position you start from determines the questions you’ll
ask and the interpretations you’ll come up with.’ He poured himself more wine, and added a little
to her glass. She went on. ‘The power structure controls the interpretational structure. Even the
insistence by conservative historians — like you — that we need to enter into the minds of the
people at the time means, ultimately, that future historical interpretation of a period can be controlled by the contemporary propaganda machine. If you ensure that contemporary documentation
contains only the right ideas, you not only brainwash people at the time, you make later reinterpretation impossible.’
‘So what’s new?’ he said, wondering if Christie had the kids in bed.
‘It’s not very new at all,’ she said. ‘I’ve been hammering it into you for ages. It means that you
are not detached. You are not interpreting, as you like to think, you are being used, both by today’s
power structure and by their antecedents going back as far as there’s been any, which is a mighty
long time!’
‘Well,’ he said blandly, ‘there’s a lot of truth in that. Obviously I’ve never disputed ...’
It was the settled tone in his voice that gave her the shits. ‘You do dispute it,’ she snapped
at him. ‘Deep down you refuse to accept it. Your sort of left-liberal interpretation accepts all the
restrictions of the conservative view without getting any of the benefits — apart, of course, from
twenty thousand bucks a year and a pretty comfortable life when you throw in your wife’s earnings!’
‘Well, Jesus,’ he said. ‘What about you? I’ll bet you don’t forget to collect your cheque every
fortnight at the institute ...’
‘Fifteen thousand,’ she answered. ‘Not twenty. And no security. I’m on a two year contract and
they’re going to keep it that way. Those shits want to be able to get rid of people who say things
they don’t like.’
He felt his position eroding. ‘You’re right,’ he said, ‘your director wants his staff on a string so
he can move in any direction he hopes will bring the numbers.’
‘It’s more than that,’ she said. ‘Don’t trivialise the situation Murdy, just because it suits you not
to face what’s happening. The process I’m describing is active and conscious. People who challenge
the establishment are confronted, and if they’re submissive, they’re given a well paid place in the
permanent opposition, which is all your mates like Ian Targett and Allan Abbott-Smith amount to,
or else they’re destroyed. Look Murdy, I can’t stand Bob Lewis, he’s a shit, but he’s had a horrible
time at Sydney. They are utter bastards to him because of what he is and they’d like to destroy
him. Can’t you see you’re helping them do it when you get on your high horse because he hasn’t
written back on gift pack linen paper!’
She trembled with revulsion, but watched him. He said: ‘That last bit was pretty close to the
bone. I’ve never been as rude to Bob Lewis as that!’
She had no intention of conceding anything. ‘But it’s true. You and your wife use expensive
things. You can afford to ...’
Uncertain whether he was trying to shut her up, or wanted to do it, he said sternly: ‘I’ll ring
him in the morning ...’
‘No!’ she said. ‘Just put him on the program. If he doesn’t turn up you can say he’s sick. It’s
done all the time.’
76
‘All right,’ he said, and the voice was grudging. ‘We’ll leave him on the program.’ He ticked
Bob Lewis’s name and put down his pen solemnly, as if it were her duty to complete the treaty.
But she kept at him: ‘Don’t make it sound like that! You’re putting him on the program because
you bloody well know he ought to be on.’ He flashed at her: ‘Shit, you’ve won your point! He’s on
the program. Topic — blank. He can announce it himself if he gets here. What more do you want?
Can’t you see a stone without trying to get blood out of it? Is there something else I’m supposed
to concede?’
‘That’s it,’ she said. ‘It’s a concession. You’re only giving way under pressure. You should be
putting the pressure on, not holding it back.’
They looked at each other. Outside, a motorbike revved violently down the street, discovered
the dead end, and roared back, even more loudly. Murdy winced at the noise. ‘Oh well,’ he said,
‘he found his way out.’
It was the quintessential Murdy, Anne thought, and hated it — the idea that a problem ceased
the moment it stopped giving pain. Oddly forbearing, she said, ‘They think they can make a shortcut to Footscray.’
Murdy looked deep in her glittering eyes, said ‘Footscray!’ and they both laughed. ‘City of
smells!’ called Anne. ‘Hub of the industrial west,’ said Murdy, Rotary-solemn. ‘Home of Deeble’s
pies,’ Anne spat, to which he rejoined: ‘Filled with fresh country beef for your delectation in our
hygienically sanitised factory nestling beside …’
‘... the Bulldogs’ lair!’ they shouted together. ‘The fucking Bulldogs’ lair,’ said Anne, ‘they can’t
even get the word right.’
‘Can’t have a factory next to a kennel,’ said Murdy. ‘It wouldn’t impress the working class at
all ...’
‘Footscray’ was richly summatory for them; it meant working class satisfaction with the blatantly inferior, it meant his privileged position against her contract, and it touched on Anne’s
ambivalence in espousing the cause of the working class when her education and her tastes separated her from them. Murdy asked, ‘Your mother know you’re living here?’ With an upward gesture
of his hand he showed that he meant a house on high land overlooking the western suburbs. She
said, ‘She only knows my phone number and they’ve been changed since she left, so she can’t
recognise the area code.’
Murdy said, in a litany they understood:
‘Six eight nine.’
She said, ‘Disaster!’
Their laugh was almost sheepish; there was a gap in their relationship between intellectual
exposure and physical intimacy.
‘Western Tyre Service,’ she trumpeted in the voice of a commercial, ‘makes the road sing
sweeter under your wheels!’
‘Pantyhose are down to 79 cents at Westland!’ yelled Murdy: ‘Why pay more?’
‘A disaster in the kitchen?’ said Anne, her voice showing a manic edge: ‘Araldyte will ease it.’
‘Mmmmm,’ crooned Murdy. ‘Look at those creampuffs. Altona Bakeries. All the richness of
your mother’s cooking. Yuuummm!’
‘Yuk!’ shouted Anne, ready to vomit. ‘All the machos in Footscray go to Deeble’s Kitchen. Buy
the most calorific rubbish they can get. And guts it down.’ Murdy, who was still slim, wanted to
link his being with hers. ‘Gross!’ he shouted. ‘What a combine! Carlton beer and thirty-five per
cent dairy fat cream. Oh shit, it turns me over.’
But she brought him to heel. ‘Advanced consumerism,’ she said, ‘rests on having a public who
are sold the present as a replacement for any dialectical interpretation of past or future. It all comes
back to the lack of historical or social understanding. They don’t know how their lives are ruled.’
‘Neither do we,’ he said, furious that her ideology had taken over, and feeling he had to reassert
something. ‘Do you know what an event is?’
She watched him silently, as if he had picked a card from the bottom of the pack.
77
‘What do you think an event is, Murdy?’ she said, armed with the definitions of Adorno,
Bettelheim and Margutta: ‘A localisation of emotion? A transformation of experiential definition?
A transition between interpretative logics? What do you think an event is, Murdy?’
‘An event,’ he said shakily, aware of the danger of departing from any sort of intellectual base
when dealing with an academic peer, ‘is a gathering of forces. Like a storm. Meteorologists claim to
understand storms but their explanations are not very satisfactory. To look too deeply into explanation is to miss the point.’
‘Debased phenomenology,’ she said. ‘I thought you understood Barrés.’
‘No, hear me out,’ he said. ‘An event is a process, with a wide funnel leading to something, and
a narrow funnel leading away from that something, and the something itself very hard to define
...’
She rolled her eyes at his gobbledygook; Murdy had obviously lost all sense of theoretical structure under his research. She wondered how bad his book on the Baron was going to be.
‘... except that we know that in that process that we call an event, things are more deeply bound
together and pile more quickly on top of each other. An event is like a stretto in music ...’
‘Metaphors and mysticism,’ she said wearily. ‘Look Murdy, you know more facts than most
people but you are the most ridiculous person I know when it comes to interpreting. Why are you
afraid …’
He interrupted her: ‘I’m not afraid, I’m sick of the mechanistic hidebound structures in your
thinking ...’
‘Structures!’ she cried in anguish at his incomprehension. ‘When will you understand that the
notion of structures, when applied to any sort of predictive analysis ...’
‘I’m not interested in predictive analysis!’ he shouted, gripping his glass till he thought it might
crack. ‘I suppose that what I’m saying that an event is something with a will of its own. It can
almost call itself into being!’
As if spooning out compassion to a spastic, she said, ‘You’ve been listening to that mad friend
of yours who’s in love with that shit who flogs computers for IBM. Events with a will of their own!
Nothing has a will of its own, Murdy! If something happens, it’s because someone has caused it to
happen. Nothing shits me more than people who set up a situation so it’s got to produce a certain
result and then pretend surprise when it does. Adult people admit what they’re doing! Don’t be
childish, Murdy!’ Her voice grew shrill. ‘Events,’ he said doggedly, ‘take a hold on us. They are
external to us. We perceive them and we react to them ...’
‘Exactly!’ she crowed. ‘The dynamic’s in the understanding. If we understand them in a certain
way, we act upon events in a certain way. There’s no way out. The contemporary understanding of
self rules everything we do. We can’t escape it. You’ve got to fight your way through contemporary
problems, Murdy, not run around them bleating whatever it was you learned in your South Yarra
schooling.’
‘All right,’ he said wearily, ‘tell me how you explain Greg Paton’s suicide?’
‘Tell me how you explain it,’ she said: ‘you’re the one who’s trying to put over an unheard of
point of view.’ With an affectation of simplicity she said, ‘Why’d he do it Murdy? Why’d he knock
himself off?’
78
7
He said, ‘I know it sounds very academic, but first we need to know what we understand by the
line between life and death.’ She felt she had him beaten when he started on such a level: ‘It sounds
awfully academic, Murdy.’ She smiled patiently.
‘For many so called primitive societies, the barrier was slight to non-existent. The ghosts were
as omnipresent as the gods.’
Pure James Frazer, she thought, wondering when he would tiptoe into the twentieth century.
She reminded him:
‘But we don’t think that way.’
‘Certain areas of knowledge,’ he said, and he felt he was chastising her, ‘like to deal in certainties. Others, and nuclear physics is the one that comes to mind, don’t mind admitting that mystery
is as much a part of things as knowledge. Einstein, for instance ...’
Exasperated with his obscurantism, she cried: ‘Oh God, Murdy, come on! Einstein spent his
whole life trying to reduce the universe to one simple formula. It was his replacement for God. He
wanted to nail the mystery. Forget about Einstein, you’ll have to do better than that!’
She tugged her bra strap, and flexed her shoulders. He said, ‘Can’t you accept that there could
be an apprehension of things in which life and death could be seen as two sides of the same thing,
so intertwined that it really doesn’t matter whether you are alive or dead?’
‘An apprehension that lasts just long enough to write a suicide note? Not much use to anyone,
is it! But hang on, you were trying to prove something.’
‘I’m not trying to prove anything,’ he said, ‘because I can’t. But I don’t want you trying to push
onto me some Freudian stuff about self-hatred, or self-destruction or self-rejection or whatever it
is you’re going to say ...’
Her smile was almost sweet: ‘I haven’t said anything yet, Murdy.’
‘... because concentrating on the self as a discrete and rather problematical thing inside which
one lives is really only compounding the problem, and I believe Greg broke through the problem
of self. I think ...’ he began to grow excited ‘... his death was a kind of adventure, no, don’t laugh,
a kind of searching forward. He wasn’t giving in, he was still voyaging outwards, and I think he
thought we were all rather stuffy and he was leaving us behind.’
Murdy was relieved to get it out, though he knew she thought him ridiculous. Something of his
pragmatism had affected her, because, instead of tackling him on theoretical grounds, she moved
to a chest of drawers and rummaged for a tape.
‘Original Greg’, she said. ‘Listen to this.’
She patted the cassette into a player and waited for the evidence of Greg’s life. From the tiny
speaker came the squeaking of a wire mattress. A voice superimposed ‘Diamond Jim productions,
coupled with the Magic of Merlin, brings you ... Nights in the hostel!’ There followed a motley of
overwrought voices squabbling incoherently, thickly clotted with sexual anxiety. The voices were
transformed into a squeaky gabble which took on a rhythmic pattern. This spikey see-sawing,
accompanied by jerky gasping, faded into a parody of something familiar. It was not what Anne
was waiting for, but Murdy pressed home his advantage: ‘The D minor concerto for two violins.’
He beamed. ‘It’s very clever.’
She assumed he’d been told this by Christie; married people gave her the shits with their way
of representing themselves as a double area of knowledge and experience when in fact they’d opted
for that narrowest base of understanding, a house in the suburbs. ‘Pure cultism,’ she said. ‘He never
outgrew it.’
79
It was Murdy’s turn to be exasperated. Taking a sip before planting his glass on the floor, he
told her, ‘One does grow out of things, it’s true. But there is no compulsion about it. One simply
grows. Growth and decay are the basic facts of life. One grows inevitably. Therefore we cannot do
today what we did yesterday ... but there is no compulsion to rush towards some tomorrow which
is presumed to be a better than today. We merely are, and one must express the situation one is at,
not strive for somewhere or something else.’
‘Oh don’t be stupid!’ she shouted at him. ‘There is such a thing as false belief. Most people
have it most of the time. We are encouraged to hold false beliefs. It’s more comfortable, yes, and it
keeps people where their rulers want them. But people need to outgrow false belief …’
‘Well, your whole position strikes me as anti-art ...’ he started to say, but she bit back: ‘And
what’s so bloody precious about art? How long has it been the supreme good that can’t be questioned?’ She wanted to strike him and he wanted to throttle her, she kept pushing moral imperatives: ‘Well why did you put the bloody tape on?’ he shouted, too exasperated to drink. ‘To make
you face up to things,’ she said. ‘Listen to this!’
Greg had played with the accompaniment until it turned into a sewing machine, then the
treadling turned into a rhythmic energy which might have been a production line. The voices,
hysterically distorted, like a Kyrie of Penderecki, wound themselves around the rhythmic stamp of
manufacturing. Murdy nodded at the effect, but cautiously prepared for Anne’s attack. The ululation turned into a desperate quest for sexual release, and the parody of the two violin concerto
became a hopeless mismatch of people sawing across each other in disharmonious confusion.
‘Adolescence. Hatred of sexuality!’ she said.
‘Modern man. Continuation of Chaplin’s Modern Times,’ he said, swapping slogan for slogan.
The tape ended with a series of clicks, reproducing the sound of the player stopping. It forced
the listener’s attention onto the machine. Jumping up to silence it, Anne said, ‘That joke wears
thin.’
‘A sort of action art, I suppose,’ said Murdy. ‘It forces your attention from the sound to the
process by which you’ve heard it.’
‘Murdy,’ she said, ‘he loved your wife. Didn’t you ever take any notice?’
‘Greg,’ he said,’ was beautiful. Anyone would love that beauty. I loved it myself.’
‘But you were more than an onlooker,’ she said. ‘You were the obstacle. Why didn’t you get out
of the way? Greg and Christie might have been good.’
He rubbed the wineglass, hoping it looked like the world. She watched him dip his finger and
rub the rim till the glass gave out a whine. She said:
‘Well?’
He said, ‘I made an opportunity for them once.’
Anne was not above gossip. She leaned forward, eyes bright.
‘Really?’
‘Greg came to our place for dinner one night. It was about the time I was keen on ...’
He named someone she knew. Surprised, she took a reappraising look.
‘I knew Christie was furious with me. She never said it, but I knew she was thinking that if I
could break out, she should too.’
‘Marital politics,’ said Anne. ‘I guess it’s impossible to avoid.’ He grimaced, and went on:
‘He was sitting in my chair. She was sitting under the lamp, where she likes to be. I filled their
glasses, and I went next door. That was to tell them I’d be out of the way for a while.’
Anne was still listening, but an image was forming in her mind of the night she’d told her
parents she was going to get married. Her father, a fuel merchant, was holding a book in darkly
stained hands. Her mother, roast in the oven like the ideal of suburban marriage, had parked herself in the doorway.
Murdy said, ‘Nothing came of it. When I called them in for dinner, they sat up as if nothing
had happened. And nothing had happened, really.’
Anne responded, ‘Haven’t you any idea of what went on? You set it up, after all.’
80
Murdy, who loved an audience, began to scratch his head. Anne remembered the precise
degree of tension with which she had asked her mother why she was hovering, and her mother,
knowing Anne wanted her to stay, had endured her hints that she should retreat to the roast, and
the preparation of gravy.
Murdy said, ‘One of the terrible things about people is that when big things are happening,
they occupy themselves with trivia. I can remember being annoyed with Christie that she’d put
in one potato that was twice as big as the rest, so that there was no way it could be cooked at the
same time as the smaller ones.’
‘So you were angry with her?’ said Anne, remembering her father putting a thick finger on his
place when she insisted he attend to her, and her mother dashing over to snatch the book from his
hand so her daughter could have her moment ...
‘I suppose I do like to have my fate in my own hands,’ said Murdy. ‘And that time it wasn’t.’
‘So what happened?’ she said.
‘I’ll never know,’ said Murdy. ‘When I went back, they were talking about Ravel. They were
talking about him when I went out. They were onto his string quartet, I couldn’t follow them. But
it sounded a bit stagey. You know that feeling you get in music when a theme returns, but there’s
been something in the meantime ...’
A year later when Anne told her mother she wouldn’t live with her husband any more, mother
called in father, sister and brother and ordered her, as in a court, to restate her situation.
‘They were talking about how you know what speed to play the slow movement. Greg said
something about how it doesn’t play itself. And their talk was like that, it was somehow stilted ...’
‘But what did Christie feel?’ said Anne. She remembered her feeling that the only part of her
they wanted to survive was the defiant part; all the rest they wanted to kill off in their interrogation,
so she’d remain the jeering adolescent they said she’d never outgrow. Her father had howled But
You Said You Were Ready, and her mother was crying This’ll Mark You For Life ...
‘Christie,’ said Murdy, ‘takes hurts so far inside I don’t know what she feels. I can only ask to
go as far into her feelings as I let her into mine, and that isn’t as deep as it should be in a good
relationship.’
Anne’s husband thought her a prize, and a captive to his maleness; she had let it come unstuck,
watching him cynically.
‘So you’re only held together by social reasons and family expectations,’ said Anne, free, this
time, from dogmatism.
‘That’s our sort of politics,’ said Murdy, and looked at her.
‘I suppose ...’ said Anne, feeling his expectation. She fell silent. Murdy’s defencelessness under
questioning made her realise her unwillingness to expose key moments in her life. She could probe
more deeply than she could give. They sat in silence; two silences, not one. He realised that she’d
made an effort to cross some line, but failed. ‘We’d better tidy this up,’ he said, meaning the program for the conference. ‘We’ll never get it to the printer at this rate.’
Christie called the children, putting Koechlin’s book on Fauré to one side. They dashed in to sit
on the carpet beside her.
‘Why weren’t you asleep, you naughty children!’
Tania said, ‘I were counting all my friends, and then I were thinking of all the kids in my grade
and remembering what they wore to school today.’ She knew this would please her mother.
Christie said, ‘Do any of the girls wear pinneys with little red apples on them, or blouses that
are gathered at the shoulder and have little tucks around here?’
Her daughter said, ‘May sort of does. She tore her skirt today.’
‘How?’
‘Well, you see, there’s this tap, and it’s just round the corner from where we get out, so if you’re
running and you forget about it ...’
‘Yeah, I hurt my knee on it,’ said the boy.
81
‘Is there a bruise?’ said his mother.
The boy flicked his pajama leg up and back again.
‘Nuh.’
She said, ‘Let me have a good look.’
‘Oh mum. Come off it. You saw all you wanted.’ Mothers were the limit.
‘Well, Michael, it’s just that sometimes you hide things from me that you’re really worried
about.’
‘Oh mum, why would I hide a bruise on the knee?’
‘I don’t know, it’s the sort of thing you’d do. Let me have a look at your ears!’
Under protest, the boy was examined. Tania chortled, thinking the inspection could be turned
to advantage.
‘Can I get my ears pierced, mum?’
‘Why do you want your ears pierced? It’s scarey. I’ve never had my ears pierced.’
‘Oh mum, Margaret says she’ll do it for me. And May’s had her ears pierced, and Vanessa’s
getting hers pierced. And Robyn and Leanne might! And lots of your friends have got their ears
pierced, mum!’
‘But darling, you’re so little to have your ears pierced. Why don’t you wait till you’re older?’
She meant Tania should not become a teenager prematurely, but Tania announced with righteous self pity: ‘Lots of kids in my grade are getting their ears pierced, I don’t see why I can’t!’
Her ‘why’ came out as ‘whoy’; Christie imitated her and Michael laughed. The girl flew at her
brother: ‘Oh shuddup, Michael, how come you think you’re so perfect?’
Christie didn’t want to order them to bed. She made them sit close while she read them a story.
The quarrel changed its form; what book would they read? Tania wanted Mr Pigwhistle; Michael
wanted her to read his latest Tintin. ‘Lazy,’ she said, and snatched up Emil and the Detectives,
Michael sat upright, following carefully; Tania rolled against her mother, grumbling that the book
was boring. Christie read quickly; Michael’s attention was unwavering, Tania’s more grudging.
From time to time she would butt in:
‘Whoy’s ‘e do that? What’s that mean?’ And when her mother explained, she would grumble:
‘Hunh, big words!’
But it was better than going to bed, and she snuggled against her mother, and when the phone
rang, it was Michael who dashed to the bedroom, and back with the announcement:
‘It’s granma? Where’s dad?’
Mrs Miller was at such pains to sound informal, even casual, when she rang, that Christie felt
the calls were in some sense an inspection. Taking up the phone, she greeted her mother in law,
who hastened to say, ‘Murdoch’s still at the uni, I suppose.’
Christie was unable to lie. ‘He’s at Anne Owen’s,’ she said. ‘They’re organising a conference.’
‘Oh well,’ said Mrs Miller, as if there would be many absences to explain: ‘there’d be a lot of
work in that!’
Christie, trying to cope with what she suspected Mrs Miller was not expressing, said, ‘They’ve
always got on well despite considerable differences of opinion, because they work in the same
way. Usually flat out.’ This was an invocation of the mother’s approval for the son. ‘It pays to keep
yourself busy,’ said Mrs Miller, Christie felt the difficulty was over, but Mrs Miller went on: ‘Anne
would be a pretty intense person, I would imagine.’ She was indicating that emotions needed to
be kept in check.
Christie declined to be drawn. ‘Murdy says she’s a very healthy influence in her field. There are
a lot of very stuffy historians about.’
‘A scholar needs to be careful,’ said Mrs Miller, who could put a gloss on anything. ‘Other
people depend on them.’
Christie felt that that too was a statement with a double edge. Flushing, she said, ‘Shall I get
him to ring you?’ God only knew what time he’d be home.
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‘No,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘It’s something I think we can arrange.’ Christie guessed it involved some
mobilisation of her son, a female role which made her distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Oh, what is it?’
she said.
Mrs Miller wanted the family to come to a luncheon for the wider family in Malvern the
Sunday after next. She repeated the date, meaning her son’s wife to note it down. She did so. The
receiver felt sticky in her hand. Mrs Miller expressed her opinion that it was good for the cousins
to see each other once in a while, even if they lived a long way apart. ‘Blood’s thicker than water,’
she said, ‘they need to know who their relatives are.’ Christie knew that she was in for difficulties;
Murdy did his best to avoid these occasions. She felt trapped; she had no more wish to have her
life examined than he did, but the expectation that she would deliver a well groomed family for the
inspection of relatives could not be thrown off without consciously declared rebellion.
Determined to exact her price, she said, ‘Could you bring some of that hedgehog you make?’
‘Oh certainly. I’ve been thinking about making some. I’ll bring it along and pop it in your
car.’
‘No, to put on the table. I want Michael and Tania to hand it round.’
Mrs Miller conceded. She knew she was putting the family on display and if Christie, in turn,
wanted to put on display the link between grandma and children, there was nothing that could be
done about it, though she would have preferred to sit in the background while the children were
shepherded through the test of elderly observation by her daughter in law, who would grow into
approval herself in the process. Christie’s demand made her self-conscious, a state she took pains
to avoid. Her ceaseless industry, her cliches and her inbuilt moralism were all designed to shut out
tragic perceptions of the ageing process. Hence her nomination of her peers as ‘the girls’, and her
negations of the self-evident such as describing a fifty-five year old victim of a heart attack as ‘still
quite young, really’.
Putting down the phone, she returned to her lounge. Mr Miller, hard of hearing, had TV
turned up loud. To a burst of studio applause, David Nixon was making a girl in spangled tights
reappear behind padlocked shutters. Mrs Miller went to turn the volume down, but her husband
waved her away. Nixon repeated the act, and this time his model reappeared in evening dress,
complete with top hat and stick. The studio orchestra fanfared, applause swelled, and Mr Miller
nodded. Under Mrs Miller’s hand, the picture went blank. ‘How does he do it?’ said the old man.
‘I don’t know,’ said his wife, ‘although I will say that in that last one I think he must have twins. It
wouldn’t be possible otherwise.’
Mr Miller shook his head, not to refute her suggestion which in fact he failed to acknowledge,
but to reassure himself that he was well and truly puzzled. ‘He’s a bit of a wizard!’ he announced.
Mr Miller liked men that dazzled but gave confidence. Bradman the batsman was the greatest.
Lindrum the billiards player who performed incredible feats before royalty was another, making
the white ball skip off the table to hit a red ball placed on the floor. King Edward’s response — ‘I
did not think such things were possible’ — might have been designed to please Mr Miller. He was
a true colonial in wishing to surprise the old world; his brothers and uncles, with no more dress-up
than emu plumes, had outridden Boers and the cavalry of Europe. David Nixon, of course, was a
Pom, but that didn’t mean you could hold back the ultimate accolade — he was a wizard.
‘Tea?’ said Mrs Miller.
‘What was that?’
‘Tea?’ she said, too loudly, and although he heard this time, ‘Tea? Would you like a cup of tea?
It’s almost ten o’clock!’
‘Yes Wynn,’ cried Mr Miller, ‘I would like a cup of tea!’ And then, teasing her, ‘Have you got
it ready? I didn’t see you go out.’
‘I have not been out of the room for the last hour,’ she stated. It sounded like an apology for
her life. The frontline of their bickering was always active, and it justified their turning to friends
for the interests and satisfactions that mattered most.
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When he’d had his supper, he went to bed. Mrs Miller washed the cups, as her spiritual hygiene
demanded, and folded the uneaten cake in Gladwrap before putting it in a tin. Then she turned
to her exercise books.
The first was an index, by name and address, of those friends who’d offered to help the
Brotherhood. The second book, replaced from time to time, was her list of current problems — a
need for furniture, someone to read, someone to watch over pets while the owner was hospitalised.
Rhonda Mumford and her co-workers supplied most of the names. When Mrs Miller visited the
Brotherhood office, she took her books; if the salaried officers of the Brotherhood saw her without
them, they told her brightly that they had nothing they couldn’t handle themselves. They understood each other’s gradations of cheeriness exactly. Profound pessimists at bottom, they made their
work a bright denial of alcoholism, senility, poverty and loneliness.
Mrs Miller felt despondent. Even the photos of Brotherhood Xmas parties pasted in her books
failed to inspire her. The faces of the lonely people smiling through the gloss expressed only too
clearly the dreary rooms they would go back to, the far worse clothes they were not wearing, and
the long hours before they would feel obliged to smile again.
Putting down her books, Mrs Miller tried another ritual —- the folding and putting away of
clothes. There were serviettes to be ironed, but they were under Mr Miller’s long-legged underwear, which she could not bring herself to move. She thought of updating her Christmas list, but
she knew that too would fail.
She turned to Shakespeare. As a girl at teachers college, she had been given a leatherbound
Complete Works for topping her year in Elocution. She had it still, beside a family Bible and a
padlocked album. She turned up one of the speeches she had had to memorise:
‘If music be the food of love, play on ...’
She felt a quickening and turned the pages:
‘O mistress mine, where are you roaming?’
Putting Shakespeare down, she unclasped the album, echoes of an old production singing in
her mind:
‘O stay and hear, your true love’s coming ...’
Hair bobbed, and still six years from marriage, she had played Maria; it had been the last
impertinence of her life. The Teachers’ College still stood, overshadowed now by cream brick and
Brutalism, but it no longer excited her as it had when she first walked among its roses and showy
camellias. The provincial capital had been a metropolitan heart for her because, with so much to
express, she made it so.
‘What is love? Tis not hereafter; Present mirth hath present laughter; What’s to come is still unsure ...’
Initiating the foolery with the forged lovenote, she realised she loved the boy who played
Malvolio. He was there in the college photo, looking away from the camera because he had
decided against a teacher’s life. He was going home to grow wheat. He said it was a healthy life
and it would do him. She wondered about the leather-faced farmer who had once pursed his lips
to pronounce:
‘Seven of my people, with an obedient start, make out for him; I frown the while, and perchance wind up
my watch, or play with some rich jewel …
Back in the wheatlands, he had met her sister and became engaged to her, but she had broken
it off. Wynn had loved him when he took a step downstage to say:
‘I extend my hand to him thus, quenching my familiar smile with an austere regard of control.’
It was what she expected a man to be, but her sister had rejected it. At his insistence she had
kept the ring, storing it in a box for thirty-seven years. Mrs Miller had always disapproved. When
he died a bachelor, leaving Mrs Miller’s sister a legacy, she had worn the ring again, mysteriously
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released, but Mrs Miller could not bear to look at her sister’s hand. Something of the man that
should have been released had been kept captive.
‘In delay there lies no plenty,’ said Shakespeare; the lad who sang it had disappeared in an
American train disaster, but the purity of his voice still lived inside her:
‘Then come and kiss me, sweet and twenty,
Youth’s a stuff ’ll not endure.’
Mrs Miller closed the Collected Works, but not the album. Cover poised against one finger, she
considered: gain or loss? Was youth a better condition than age? Still toying with the heavy cover,
she remembered the party on the last night of their production. She had danced with Malvolio
but he only wanted the mistress denied him by Shakespeare; returning to her room at dawn she
had looked over a provincial city, hot as wheatland. A dry north wind was stirring, and she knew
that her quest for purity had been transformed from a purity of emotion to a purity of morality.
The missionary in Mrs Miller had been born. So she had not brought to marriage the same fresh
quickening that she had wanted in her husband, and doubtless his life had been full of acceptance
and reconstruction, as had hers. Reconciled, she let drop the cover of the album, and put the books
away. She folded the ungainly underpants and made her way to bed. Turning out the passage light,
she heard her husband tossing noisily, and wondered what connected the dreams that troubled him
with his dreams of youth. She thought of moving to the spare room, but she’d stuck to Bernard
long enough, and she’d had her period of reflection this evening; she pulled a pillow over her head
as she had when she was a girl and wished him rest.
On her way home from the Pram Factory, Barbara called on Lawrence. As she approached his
bungalow at the back of his parents’ place, he called out, ‘Who’s that coming to seduce me?’
Stepping in, she eyed him warily, but he kept it up: ‘Couldn’t think of anyone better for the
job!’
She got straight to the point. ‘If I bring you a key, can you copy it?’
‘I could do that for you Barb.’
Ignoring his sleazy suggestiveness, she said, ‘Actually it’s more difficult than that. I haven’t got
the key, only an impression.’ She looked uncomfortable, he decided to bargain:
‘Bringing me a challenge, Barb. Going to make it worth my while?’
She looked at him in disgust. He was a street corner boy, hoping some moll would jump in his
Monaro, screw him in the park, and rush him back to the boys. She pulled a piece of chewing gum
from her bag. ‘Does this tell you anything?’ she said.
‘An unusual sort of lock,’ he said, playing for time.
She laughed. ‘Is it really!’
‘You went a long way to get that one ...’
‘Not very far at all.’ Her smile invited him to a betrayal, if he could only see it.
He read the smile better than the impression. ‘Not very far away. Unusual lock. And perhaps
a little bit of a motive somewhere ... needing a bit of help, eh Barb?’ He wished one of Harry’s
women could be bargained into bed with him.
‘You’ve guessed!’
‘Not yet I haven’t,’ he said, ‘But wait on, I think I’ve got a clue. I’ve got an idea this might be
a French lock. Would that be right?’
‘I wouldn’t know,’ she said, but he knew from the way she looked into the corner that he’d
twigged it. ‘This might get me into a lot of trouble,’ he said. ‘I’d need to think about this one.’
‘The person who owns the lock gave me a key once, but I happen to have lost it. If I found it
again, there’d be no question of you or anyone else making me a copy, would there?’
It was quite certain who she meant. Each knew the other knew. ‘No,’ he said, ‘I suppose not.’
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She smiled. He smiled. They watched each other. She edged him, on: ‘He wouldn’t wake up
to that.’ Somewhere in the smiles the link had passed from sexual to conspiratorial. Triumphant,
she rushed the next step:
‘There’s a lot of my things in that flat, and Harry won’t let me have them!’
‘Oh Jesus,’ he said, too baldly confronted. ‘I can’t do that. Me own brother. Christ, fair suck
of the sauce bottle.’
But Barb knew him like the back of her hand. ‘What’s this party you’re having in a fortnight?’
Touch for touch and point for point, Barb conceded to Lawrence that she would not hold a party
on the same night, but would bring her people round to the do he was organising. Her frank biographies of some of her friends made Lawrence feel that among them there would be someone who
would make him feel a winner on the night. ‘Right you are Barb,’ he said, considering the piece of
chewing gum; ‘we’ll see what we can do.’
She refused a creme de menthe, but let him take her arm as he led her to her car. Stars hung
brightly, even for an urban sky. Lawrence pointed out the Southern Cross, but had trouble with
the fifth star, and got tangled in the stars on the Australian flag; she had to squeeze his hand and
brush her lips on his cheek to bring him to an end.
Returning to his room, he studied the impression as if it were more than the key to Harry’s flat:
the sexual mystery, the class mystery, and the problems of a little boy who had grown up too fast,
might all, he felt, be unlockable if he could solve the problem Barb had brought him.
She, picking up her son from her uncle’s apartment, was smouldering against her ex-husband.
Harry did nothing for their child except have him alternate weekends. Harry’s hi-fi gave out the
world’s finest musicians yet when they were in Paris it was she who gave money to the people who
sang in the metro. The one time he followed her lead, she found it offensive; his cool appraisal,
even his disregard, were better than his charity. He ate, drank and wore the best, and studied the
paper, when he had parcels on the water, for industrial trouble on the wharves, yet he was not
anti working class; it was this lack of aggression that maddened Barb. It made him unfightable, he
just smiled from his cloud and coolly withdrew. When she wanted certain things from the flat he
managed to prove with indisputable logic that they had been bought with his money, and not hers
as she claimed.
She even knew why he didn’t give her what she asked for, since he was not ungenerous; if he
gave her one thing she’d demand another and another until she’d stripped him of everything, or
forced him to a rage where she could get hold of him and open him, as she felt the social system
worked to open women to the desires, purposes and ambitions of men.
Hence the key. It was the start of her fightback, and she was going to straighten out a few
more ex-lovers before much longer. Thrumming the Kombi back to Carlton, she shouted ‘Pigs!’
at a group of youths who made invitations from a purple Cortina. Attracted, they made to cut her
off, but a passing police car U-turned to investigate. Protected from pigs by pigs! Barbara laughed,
things were going her way. The first move on Harry would be to remove their major bone of contention, the washing machine, a huge Swedish thing they’d sent back by ship. It had been briefly
installed at their flat in Marseilles so they could get it through customs without duty. Customs
wouldn’t believe it wasn’t brand new, but Harry had overcome them with an affidavit drawn up in
France and the plumber’s account quoting the serial number of the machine. That, she reflected,
had cost them another thirty francs of her money. She thought the best time to get the machine
would be on the night of Lawrence’s party, because she could have someone to keep an eye on
Harry while she got a couple of blokes to move the Wascator. She’d probably just dump it, but
it’d be worth the price of the thing just to find an irate Harry, banging on her door, vulnerable at
last.
When she got back to the house in Rathdowne Street, the mob were there already — flamboyant people dressed in a mixture of Op Shop, Handicrafts of Asia and Just Jeans. Long haired,
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smoking pot, drinking apple juice or white wine identical in colour, they were sprawled across the
beanbags and church pews in Barb’s two storey extension. ‘Hi Barb,’ they called, ‘how was it?’
meaning the production, and ‘How’s the kid?’ Her nod to these questions meant it was okay for
them to have taken over the house. She carried the boy upstairs. Reaching the turn, she saw that
he was awake and staring back. Little bastard’s going to remember these people, Barb thought, and
associate them with me. How the hell did I get tangled up with this lot? They were all into something — Zen, windmill power, I Ching, Macrame, theatre of the poor, Reich, Gestalt, herbal cures,
UFOs, children’s literature, goat’s milk and organically grown vegetables ... and they never stopped
talking when they were together, despite jealousies and suspicions running through the group ...
Barbara carried her son to bed, and lay beside him while he went to sleep. She might move him
later, or she mightn’t. The streetlight struck through some coloured glass glued on her window;
Dane, the next semi-permanent after filthy Paul moved on, had been laying out ideas for a stained
glass window which had come to nothing — or perhaps he was making it for the bedroom of some
other Carlton terrace. Cross-fertilisation was one name for it, she thought, but in reality they all
wanted to swallow each other to increase themselves. It sounded mercenary, yet every now and
again it wasn’t, and the real thing came along, strengthening and rich.
As her child’s breathing steadied, the stereo was overwhelmed by a flourish on drums; there was
a howl of feedback, and then an electric guitar clanged through the house with gargantuan power.
God, she thought, a big night, and held herself ready for tiredness or energy to possess her.
It was energy and she scuffed downstairs on thongs she kicked off at the third last step; a tall
blonde man like Jesus stood calmly at the bottom, accepting her in the mood which he embodied.
A primitive beat thudded around her and the talk was full of liberation — of women, children,
sexual expression, the rights of the culturally oppressed — and she sailed into it like a liner entering
a new ocean. So much possibility! The people in her room crackled with dynamic egotism, and she
contained the same ideas; the times were pointing to a world rebuilding on every front. ‘Lord! God!
Man!’ sang an ersatz negro with penisoid guitar: ‘There ain’t no tellin’ the way things are!’ The
children of affluence began to stir from their stripped wooden seats to shake their limbs in concord;
no bastard who ruled the roost could be sure his perch would be there tomorrow! Barbara, a source
of power, glided through the mob, looking for the first man she would dance with.
Turned out to be an idiot known as South Melbourne Dave who grabbed her round the belly
and twirled her twice or thrice, shaking his neckless head; as she moved away he shouted Ol, standing puzzled under the fierce heat of a strobe light. Next was a shrewd little Italian called Coco,
who imported food and leathergoods; only touting for business, but he danced divinely ... Ciao! he
roared, taking someone else, and she spun into big Bob Bosford, teacher of drama and movement,
born with a denim skin. Bob had leather patches on his elbows and his fingers shone with knobbly
silver rings; there was nothing pinched about Bob and if you screwed him he’d give you all he had
and leave you alone afterwards, which was more than one could say for ...
... Tony Ridgway, a boy who’d crossed the Yarra to find the action, a derelict little bisexual who
wormed his way into bed with a need for sympathy then tried to strut all over you, and was currently in love with Loreto Parma, his identical twin from the northern suburbs. Loreto (Call me
Lorry) made himself up with a sinister mixture of black and azure and brought the morals of the
Mafia to the Gay Liberation workout. Tony Ridgway ran his hand down the inside of her arm, but
the absence of frisson sent him on to ...
... Maritsa James, an automobile wreck with patches of skin stitched together by some surgeon
in a hurry one Saturday night; hefty Maritsa was an object of contempt to Tony Ridgway who
shook her by the hips to feel a desire he despised. But Maritsa claimed to be a dietician, and had
the final say on food at the children’s co-op; an ex-vegetarian, she had been into microbiology and
a spattering of Hindu texts to find the line between vegetable, animal and human and decided
she couldn’t believe in it any more, so she’d become, as she put it, an omnivore like the rest. She
was dancing with one arm around Terry Larter, a dental student who’d dropped out of his Scotch
College circle, been to North Vietnam as part of a health mission organised by UNESCO, and
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was back in town, pushing a dental technicians’ movement against the claims of the fully qualified
professionals. He was slender as a pony, and Maritsa loved him with a lust, as yet unsatisfied, which
she insisted on shouting from the rooftops. She pretended they were an old established couple,
secure as rocks, a claim which the group allowed because it was boring; they talked endlessly about
relationships; the big upheaval at the moment was whether Kerri, who was leaning, black-shirted,
against the banister with her back to the Jesus man, should have applied for the job at Fitzroy
Library which she got over Lesley, who hadn’t the qualifications. Lesley had two kids and needed
the job but Kerri was into the open library concept; she had friends in the trade unions and said
libraries should be community resource centres; the old concept of libraries, she claimed, was elitist through and through, but only those who understood them could hope to change them, which
rather wiped out well-meaning mums like Lesley who wanted to fill in the odd hours between their
breasts dribbling out a bit of tucker for nuisance children they were too well indoctrinated in their
sexrole to abort.
Jesus knew Kerri was there all right but he was playing the game called You’re Not On My
Wavelength: when she spoke, it was to let the emanations of her voice float round him like the
perfume the circle affected to abhor. Perfume was bourgeois, haute-couture, and unnatural but
it was pro that part of their movement locating itself two generations back when grandma, with
her powders and lavender water, lived unsullied by the decadent, media-dominated West. No-one
knew what to do about perfume, so Kerri had a touch of it tonight to flaunt herself in contradistinction to the group; Jesus couldn’t fall in for that. He stretched his long limbs and yawned, as if
the music was a bath, and his energy just returning: night, his languid vigor proclaimed, was when
he exercised his saintliness.
Holy sex was a principle in the group, it was the thing they were most puzzlingly into. They
were bursting out of the link-ups between sexuality and the family-property nexus, and their rebellion was leading them straight back in. Barbara was brushing past Maritsa-Terry, the unfucking
duo who were looking soulfully at each other over a glass of apple juice/wine, when there was
a shriek upstairs; it was a girl who called herself Strelley, a name she’d got from a wine bottle.
Strelley, who was retiring when the co-op’s cooking had to be done, let rip when she climaxed.
It was a combination of self-advertisement and a sexual-political act to convince the male of his
fantastic prowess. Barb looked around the room for the three or four men who’d already heard
that shriek in their ears and wondered if there would be trouble when Strelley led her latest man
downstairs ... she had to have an audience, it was somehow a betrayal of the inner-ism the group
subscribed to. One knew, one felt ...
... the way Barbara felt now: that a moment was like a seed that could explode inside oneself
and blow one’s mind, or get a hold on the womb and generate the future.
And the moment hung poised between the smells and sounds of the room — some tired basil
on the table, a petulant quarrel involving Lorry Parma, the old mortar smell that had lingered
since the extension. The moment was a welling up in Barbara which wanted to wrap itself around
some vital force to the benefit of both: no conflict with the trend of history, no indignity heaped
by one sex on another. She was still able to throw off the deposit of cynicism left by Harry Hearn,
filthy Paul and the rest. ‘I just wanna crawl away and die,’ sang the ersatz negro, and his drummer
had his head back, gargling air as he put a rhythm to the flow of misery. ‘But when I see you ...’
the fake-Jamaican exulted, ‘I come alive!’ When he flashed his teeth, a man pretending to be at
home anywhere, Barb grabbed Jesus by the wrist. Shaking, gyrating, she could see blackshirt Kerri
join Lorry and the bitter ones but she couldn’t give a shit about them because he had his psyche
quivering around him like a halo of sexual willingness and his long legs ululating as if they had no
bones, and his blonde mane, though he moved his shoulders wildly, seemed to keep its cool and
his connection with her was in their shared movement, and he wasn’t looking at her, just making
all those links she wanted ...
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Negated in every fibre, Janis felt the wind attacking her. She crept near Bert Marshall’s farmhouse,
attracted by the light. The dogs were out with the men. Without selfconsciousness, she crept to the
window and peered in, and this first human contact for hours produced a strange reaction; she
divided into two separately conscious wholes: one studied young Norman Marshall, Bert’s son,
sitting quietly over a chess puzzle; the other drifted back to a tankstand, and watched her looking
in.
Mr Miller’s dream was a vivid one; it was clear in his mind as he slouched off to the toilet. There
was Baron von Mueller with a cricket bat, but the bowler wouldn’t hand over the emu egg the
Baron wanted to appease the men in the Members’ stand, who were hooting because there wasn’t
any action. The players were trying to make the Baron accept a split cricket ball, but he insisted on
the egg. At this point a streaker, completely naked, ran onto the ground and would have vaulted
the stumps but they turned into spears and the umpire diverted him from emasculation by giving
him an easier egg. The Baron pursued the naked streaker, waving the bat and demanding the egg
which the streaker finished gobbling as he reached the pickets. Amid booing from the Members’
stand, the naked runner cleared the fence, leaving the dishevelled Baron, his grubby old comforter
stretched from pitch to boundary, with nothing to do but ask forgiveness of the gesticulating
Members. The fury of the ageing men left Mr Miller a little sweaty when he settled back in bed.
Nagging Bruce while he conducted his search with a dozen men, dogs, lanterns, torches, spotlights
and a two way radio someone had fitted up in a utility, was the thought that Prue’s phone calls
had left him a more vital interest than the discovery of Janis. That was a duty willingly undertaken,
but the seeds of a new affair were planted in him. If he could have woken out of this nightmare
of prowling the bush for his demented wife, into a new day with Prue beside him, he would have
been a happy man. But the reality was dogs, spotlights, and a sickening apprehension, as they came
back to Bert Marshall’s dam, that Janis was near: ‘She’s somewhere around here!’ he said, certain
of it. Without asking questions the men patrolled the edge of the dam with torches, looking for
footprints, clothes, something floating ... The lights played out on the muddy surface, while Bert
Marshall, not insensitive despite his bluffness, stayed close by Bruce in case something was found
...
Upstairs, facing each other with shirts off, Barb and Jesus were playing a little game; she had him
by his belt, he had the top of her jeans. It was an advertising agency picture of people about to fuck,
but that was what they were trying out. Screwing his belt down, she pulled him close. His fingers
signalled nothing but pleasure in her exercise of power. There was a weakness in him she couldn’t
fathom but he didn’t have the strength that repulsed her. As the game hotted up, her breasts shook;
she saw him smile and smiled at him to say he could touch them.
The two Janises were more collected than they had been all day. Bert Marshall’s boy was going
to have his father’s build but at twenty, under lamplight, he had mysterious beauty. His fingers,
toying with the pieces while he considered how black could mate in two moves, were like delicate
extensions of mind. Putting fingers on squares he might want to move to, moving his head as if it
would help him see more clearly, his body language so directly expressed his ihoughts that Janis
felt she was inside him. He was reputed to be a weak useless boy because he didn’t help his father.
He was, the local farmers said, a helluva disappointment to Bert, who deserved better. Sensing his
loneliness and his inquiring spirit, Janis wondered how Bert, or anyone, could wish for more.
The other Janis was only a step from the watcher at the window. If the burning love attraction
inside the Janises had transferred itself to the Marshall boy, the two would have reunited; but this
did not occur. The boy did not know he needed anyone. He was thus an imperfect mirror. Janis,
watching herself, realised that to love completely she must have someone inexplicable who knew
he had this quality. She could thus achieve the great passion in which her life might change; over-
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burdened with conscience and a Christian upbringing, it was the only way she could break free,
and freedom was what she wanted. At the very moment of seeing the lights and hearing the dogs.
Bert Marshall’s voice and Bruce’s misery-laden, self-pitying reply, she was supremely free. The
outer Janis could have flown like a spirit leaving the husk, but whimsically, and because it meant
deserting the appre­hension of human beauty she had experienced in studying the Marshall boy,
she decided not to go. With a rush she rejoined her halves and felt the coldness of a body at its
lowest metabolic ebb. With an awkward cry she rushed towards the dogs, the men, Bert Marshall
and her husband, Bruce.
Una read the last of the paper, then opened the road map. The red gum belt at Tocumwal, yellow
box trees uprooted in the last big storm, funny names like Wunghnu and Congupna ... those things
came back clearly. What troubled her was the feeling with the doctor and the young shire secretary
that she’d seen a new form of young adulthood. Presumably the men knew their jobs but their
reasons for doing them were foreign to her, and only Rosa, of the women who had travelled with
her, seemed to know what it was about. Una decided she would see Rosa a little more frequently;
she would be curious to know, even belatedly, whatever it was Rosa grasped instinctively. Rosa
Della Grazia! The name was exotic, yet a more troubling strangeness was abroad, so Rosa, who
was friendly, and well known to her, must be enlisted as a source of understanding. Una wondered
what May and Queena were thinking, if they were still awake, but it wasn’t their ideas she really
wanted to hear. It was something in the Calabrian’s blend of pride and superstition that held the
key. ‘I suppose I’ll work it out,’ Una said aloud. It hit her forcefully that she had said the same
words eighteen years ago, when her husband had been buried in the Nilgiri cemetery. Work it out?
She shook her head and clicked her tongue. There was no point in trying to work it out but the
understanding she wanted might, with luck, come sidling up one day. The click of her bedlamp, as
she turned it off, seemed neither more nor less final then everything else in life.
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8
Una watered her potplants as if they stood against a wilderness. Cobwebs stretched between tubs
and wall. Her will, Una remembered, was outdated by the transfer of her property to her daughter
in law. There was a bitterness about the transaction that would not dissolve in the celestial blue of
mandarin composure now energising the sky.
Rhonda Mumford smiled at her husband’s system of sprays. A complex system of gravity feeds,
loops, holes of greater and lesser diameter and carefully measured grades produced a system which
watered every vegetable individually. The world might defeat Rhonda’s man, but at home his mastery was discernible.
Janis arranged her stay in Melbourne as if signing away her life. She feared that exposure to Harry
for seven days and nights might shrivel her like a Semele.
Christie sang to herself the songs of children — skipping songs, the things they chirped before
commercial radio poisoned them. She loved best Lavender’s blue, dilly dilly; dependent as it was
on the worldview of another epoch, the gap of centuries gave it innocence.
Bruce felt adventurous when Prue fucked him; blonde doll of the old world, she made him feel as if
he were on film. Buoyed up by her glamour, he found courage to face hidden selves. Going back to
council after the weekend, he indulged in sneaky realignments of old foes and friends: Bert Marshall
was trying to get the council graders onto a side road near his bush track, but Bruce, sensing that
Councillor Redesdale had much to lose if anyone breached the estimates, inquired whether or not
Councillor Marshall had consulted his riding colleague about priorities, because any increase in
road spending would dash hopes of flood control in the sensitive area along Broken Creek which
State Rivers and Waters had disowned after earlier council mismanagement. Councillor Redesdale
blundered forward, like a dinosaur on cue, to say that flood control must have first priority. He
instanced floods in northern New South Wales, and difficulties at the mouth of the Ganges to prove
that flooding was an extremity which justified putting anything else aside. Even the abortion of a
pregnant daughter, Bruce wondered, pondering the reputation of the Redesdales ...
Barbara loved Jesus for a week and fucked him for two, then he showed up one night with a Maoist
from the Metal Workers Union who attacked Barbara for her house; said she was too deeply into
privatisation to be part of any movement. When she got it out of him that he had a catholic wife
and three kids, he told her that Jesus had a girl in Saint Kilda and that his affair with her was just
a holiday. The cat being out of the bag, Barb sent Jesus packing, but she knew the real reason she
got rid of him was the way he made her feel the third night they were together. He kept prising the
window where Dane had done his stained glass design, said he needed air. She said he’d dislodge
Dane’s glass. Sure enough he did. Had it glued back in a minute but she said it wasn’t the same. He
said Dane used bad glue, it’d dried out with the sun hitting the window. She told him that was why
she left it closed; he said, after a while, ‘Okay, I guess I should have left it alone, I didn’t mean to
upset you like that’, and that was when she felt sick. His regret was not for the thing but the effect
on his current fuck. She walked out in a rage, came back in half an hour ... he was sitting on the
balcony cleaning her shoes. She sat with him, asked for his boots, but a couple of weeks later ...
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Anne Owen changed her plans. She wouldn’t give a paper on the 1929 election, she’d work up her
article on the retrivialisation of women’s thought: False consciousness in the forties; from fashion
to munitions. On telly in the next room, a soothing male voice told viewers: ‘Today, more than
ever, Vegemite helps.’
The Paton parents were outraged that their son’s friends hadn’t delivered everything of Greg’s to
their care. Murdy fingered their letter in the off-handed way of academics with paper. They would
go to any lengths, they protested, to get what was rightly theirs. They wanted to create a memorial
room in a library, they’d already held discussions with Sydney Conservatorium ...
Didn’t get anywhere, Murdy perceived ...
... and would soon be in Melbourne for the same purpose.
Heaven keep them out of here, he thought; what strings could he pull to have their ambition
satisfied in Sydney? He thought of the violin, hidden as a machine-gun, in Christie’s wardrobe. He
felt sure she played it sometimes, though she was not a good instrumentalist; he imagined a stressfilled yet strangely happy Christie frowning as her dainty fingers attempted to make music from
the airy instrument of Purcell’s Ode; he was not sure if she really believed that it was in the power
of music to ‘tune this world below’, but some such idea of one’s elements working in consort did
seem applicable to her personality. It gave her the strength to accept great pain, because pain, when
understood, could be used. That was why she hated him not telling her who he was interested in
and what he wanted for himself; his secrecy meant there was an element missing in herself; the
consort of her personality could never tune ...
He felt depressed, but what was the point: he didn’t know how to change, and wasn’t letting
her change him, that battle was too well-set. He thought of the Baron’s morbidity, and his pleasure
in naming a species Sepulcralis:
‘... because this eucalypt will be destined to add another emblem of sadness to the tree vegetation of cemeteries in
climes similar to ours ...’
That everything is done in the shadow of death was a favorite theme of Mueller’s; the year after
he broke their engagement, he wrote to Euphemia:
In one of the books I have opposed the transmutation theme so dangerous to our Christian faith. We may all be
suddenly away from the world and I have thought it well to deposit, however briefly, my views on this serious
doctrine which is calculated to shake the pillars on which the consolation of so many rest.
That so splendid a scientist could, in contemporary opinion, be so wrong, made Murdy sceptical of any belief, but he had Anne Owen’s word for it that all battles were ultimately battles of
belief. In a little room in the corridors of the Arts Faculty, he propped his chin on his hand and
brooded on an unquiet world.
His father, putting down the Herald for his cup of tea, was troubled to see a man called Packer
wanted to buy cricketers for a series to be shown on TV. Mr Miller smelt a split in the serenity of
his world; what did the fellow want? Did he really mean to own the successors to the champions
of the past?
His wife had a difficult case. Rhonda had rung to say that Beth Simpson — Mrs Beth Simpson,
though her husband had dropped out of the picture years ago — was in trouble. Beth, as everyone
in the Brotherhood knew, was the right hand and the left hand of the organisation and in sentimental moments people said she was the heart as well. When the pensioners had no one to talk
to, they talked to Beth. Her door was never shut. She cut their fingernails, she trimmed their hair.
She made puddings for the Xmas dinner and she wrote the old folks’ nicknames on their placecards. Five days a week she denied her charges nothing, and then she disappeared to her weekend
retreat at Kyneton to get away from it all. It now seemed that she was leading two lives; an angel
of mercy in Fitzroy but elsewhere a shoplifter, a user of false names on cheques, and even, Rhonda
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feared, a writer of poison pen letters. ‘How much more there is to come out,’ she told Mrs Miller,
‘I couldn’t begin to guess!’
Julius thought God must be some sort of Charlie Chaplin; why else, with his fifty-fifth birthday
advancing, was he mucking around with schemes to get people and their briefcases to what passed
under the name of work? The trouble was, the public held the secret of your pride. If you failed
them, you paid the cost in humiliation. They wanted you to deliver your pound of flesh and they
wanted to ridicule you as well. If, by some miracle, the world’s systems could be made to operate
impeccably, people would revolt. The man or God who finished everything would have to be overthrown because he/He would have taken from people the notion of striving in an imperfect world
towards a destiny they could never reach. When Julius listened to commuters whingeing about
a seven minute delay on the Glen Waverley line, he saw them as examples of imperfection. How
much better were they than the system they affected to despise? How much better did they do their
job than Vicrail did its? Why didn’t they put their money where their mouth was? A million dollars would cut delays from seven minutes to four; twenty million would eliminate them on two or
three lines at least. Fuck them, thought Julius, they’re all standing on two legs, waiting for wheels.
I do for their bodies what Harry does for their minds. They’ve made the most spread-out city in
the world and they expect a zip-zap metro, then they vote for people who pour public money into
roads; if they can’t think, let them wait! But Julius had his mellow moments when, straphanging
with a carriageful of Herald-holders and looking over their shoulders at violent headlines announcing bank robberies or the drugging of a racehorse, he had what Lampedusa calls the incomparable
artistic satisfaction of seeing a type realised in all its details. Homo suburbiensis! And he was one
of them! It made him long for a perfected train system so the buggers could see the emptiness of
their lives. How he loved his bees, his honey and his vegetables! He put out glucose and water for
the kookaburras and the honeyeaters; how he wooed the native birds! Their weight bowed the long
stems of grevillea at his floor-to-ceiling windows, making his suburban retreat an arcady of bird
and flower.
Rhonda and Mrs Miller agreed that their stated reason for visiting any of Beth Simpson’s connections would be the need to organise a fitting farewell when the time came; they knew they musn’t
be too direct. Their first call was to an estranged sister in Niddrie who complained, standing at the
gate in a dressing gown of quilted pink, that ‘Beth passed my front door, as you might say, every
Friday night and Monday morning for fourteen years without calling in. There’s something very
strange about a person who’ll do that,’ was the sister’s opinion. On the freeway, Rhonda said, ‘I’d
hate to live there. A real no-man’s land, isn’t it?’ She meant the acres of thistle, the lines of sugar
gum planted by farmers who’d sold out to developers, the factories, the awful basalt soil ... ‘Oh
well, I suppose if it’s close to your work,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘and there are some nice homes, starting
to go up now ...’
Working through company papers one afternoon, Harry heard a knock; it was a fellow in a dustcoat
who claimed to be checking the security system. The man flicked the switch in the lounge and said
to the grille ‘Flat 14 to gate, okay?’ then pressed the button — ‘Lock release okay?’ A laconic voice
came back, ‘Okay. Next.’ Dustcoat was what he pretended to be. There was no one there when
Harry picked up the phone, but he thought he heard a key in the lock. As he reached the door,
he heard the lift going down. When he recalled it, it didn’t come. Down eight flights, running, he
discovered a log jamming the lift door open. Outside, of course, nothing.
Lawrence rang Barb to say there’d be no problem with the lock. ‘He’ll be changin’ it before next
Saturday, if he hasn’t done it already.’ Barb said, ‘How’d you do that?’ but Lawrence gave his stock
reply. ‘Best not to know.’
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When Janis found that the key Harry had given her didn’t fit, she fell against the door. In a break
between movements, Harry heard her. By the time he got there, she was crying. It took him half
an hour to soothe her. She seemed not to notice the new key he gave her; it was on the bench in an
envelope marked ‘Janis’, there was no doubting his intention, now she knew it, but her worst fears
had been presented to her, as in a nightmare. She said, ‘It was worse than when I ran away. Then
I had somewhere I could go back to. But this time, I felt shut out for good.’ He had been going to
take her to a film, but she huddled on a bean bag and asked if she could be alone.
Staring at the bay, she wondered if her sense of unity could be restored. She had had it in childhood, when earth, parents, birds and cattle were quickened by the same spirit that stirred the wind
and shimmered in the grass. Sex spoilt it; to marry she had not only to move away, but to shift the
centre of her being. How could you have unity when you were linked at your most vital point with
another troubled being? Harry, distant and mysteriously layered, might restore it, but the closer
she came to what she desired, the more she feared it. What if nothing happened? Deserting pride,
forgetting reputation, she was gambling everything on him.
Aware that she would be watching, he jogged along the beach. Ships in the bay were overtopped by black clouds. He had an hour, he judged, before the downpour.
Pacing it along the sand with two Dalmatians which seemed to find him fun, he noticed a soreness in the heel of his accelerator-foot, and a stiffness in the back from too much sitting at desks.
Worse was the alienation he felt from the Dalmatian owner. Amid the flurry of canine excitement
as the two of them got the dogs back on their leashes, Harry failed to perceive anything of the
man’s personality, only a Nolde-like face in the hood of a dufflecoat. Jogging through the ruins of a
pier, he noticed a teenage couple skulking with some Coke, German sausage and a blanket. They’d
run away from home. He felt he should offer them a room, but that would be impossible. He knew
that Janis would by now have crept from her corner to look down the bay, and that, despite glass,
she would be more actively in the scene than he was. No, he couldn’t shelter the teenagers, it would
ruin it for her ...
She saw his tiny figure disappear near the glittering lights and streaming pennons of an ocean
liner, and her terror disappeared. He would be back! She found a biscuit and put hot water in the
tea. Returning to the corner, she felt snug, like birds nesting in a barn. Contradictions of tide and
wind were chopping water into spittle, seagulls were rushing in alarm, and a last patch of sunset
was extinguished by the advancing front. She wanted to join Harry, but that way she would lose
him; she had only to stay, quivering, where she was, and he would come back! Dark settled more
deeply; through the glass behind her the city blazed in its defence; down the bay the twinkling
lights of ships and buoys flashed in excitement. Would Harry be streaming like an ocean god when
he got back, or dry, like travellers driven to a cave? When the phone rang, she pulled out the plug;
no one must come in! Half an hour before she would have sat suffering while it rang, but now she
tore open her bag and spread her things, stuffing a couple of dresses in Harry’s wardrobe. She
had a long black velvet with dark green lining in the sleeves and collar; she pushed it between his
oldest cardigan and a rather flippant coat of pale blue and white he liked to wear when heavies
from America were in the office. Then she got back to the glass, pressing her cheek to feel the cold.
Her fingers, tried against the same cheek, were warm and tingling, though she’d not eaten since
breakfast. Harry, she sensed, was turning now; the wind was rushing him towards her; the unity of
it gave her a base for ecstasy. She did not care what happened, since it would be because she had
willed it; to act, and to be acted upon, would be the same, merging, thing!
Running back, Harry knew he’d miscalculated. The teenagers were gone. The Dalmatians were
gone. The seagulls had gone. He ran between the last tide’s deposit of shells and the water. His
short curls were full of wind, he had spray on his face. The electric lights were alien, he felt he
belonged to a darker continuum which could swallow him beyond recall. There was an SF story
beside his bed in which a computer programmed itself to steal the brains of those who came near
it. The plot included a scientist, attendant glamor girl, and all the friends of the zombies, who
94
wanted someone to make the machine give back their loved ones’ identities. Harry laughed in the
face of the wind. He picked up a can and flung it. Heavy with sand, it sank. He had a job with
Alcoa at the moment which was proving hard because the company didn’t want to tell him what it
was up to, and another with BHP, trying to convince the directors that rumors about people cracking their security codes were unfounded. They all watch Dr Who, he thought; they buy the most
sophisticated equipment in the world, then surround it with superstition. He flung another can at
the storm. The wind brought it back, floating in the swirl at his feet. The lights down the bay were
going out; he had about a minute!
He got home sodden. Janis heard his squelchy shoes in the corridor. She dragged him in and
stripped him on the vinyl near the door, then grabbed a towel and rubbed him to the lounge. There
was sheet lightning flickering everywhere, and wind on the glass. She almost suffocated him with
the towel. He grabbed her, as much to stop her assault as anything else. She cried, ‘Oh you’re so
beautifully cold!’ and squeezed against him calling ‘Hold me hard, I want to be closer!’ Her tension was pouring outwards, inside herself was liquid willingness, she felt she was contracting and
expanding, he said something about getting a rug under him, he didn’t like the carpet but she
couldn’t stop for the fussy side of Harry. With every wave inside her she felt her liberation. Wave
after wave went through her, she let go his shoulders to twist herself more freely. He knew her
body, he pushed her harder, she bent low above his body, letting him propel her, then, when the
ecstasy of imagination was more delirious than her body could bear, she flung herself beside him
on the floor. In the flickering light she could see his face: pale, amazed by her sudden withdrawal,
heroic displeasure on his brow. God might have looked that way if interrupted in creation. She
flung herself on him and hugged till he thought his ribs would break.
Overtaken, he watched her bring a tray of cake and coffee. Offerings to the exhausted ram? Or
contrition for her theft? The roar of sea and wind was strong. Her drama had been brought to his
ground. Naked on the floor, he watched her joy, she was so much stronger than in her town with
the ridiculous name!
He felt his brightness fading; it was a tradeable commodity. Women wanted it, he showed it
off, company people marvelled at it, but it was an aura they created. In the morning, level as a
millpond, he would see her as disturbance but tonight Janis and her storm had the advantage. He
lapped up the coffee with too much milk; Janis had a heavy hand.
In the morning she was fearful, but he sprang brightly from their bed, and ran a bath; she
waited till he called her. He gave her a block of bath salts to crumble and crumbled one himself,
she didn’t ask who gave them to him, one had to live on the advances a lover gave. ‘Smells nice,’
he said, and his intent was sharing. His layers of impermeability were his attraction. ‘Do you like
perfumed soap?’ she asked, wondering what she’d send him: his nod approved her intention, she
was no nearer knowing what he lacked. She couldn’t give him a big contract, or a breakthrough
in technology, only closer attention than he got from the career women who filled his flat. When
he wasn’t watching she studied Julie’s clothes; she riffled them till they filled — again — their half
of the wardrobe. How she hated him making space for her! Julie, like Barbara when they married,
like the last one — Maxine — was as trendy as kaftans and bare feet could make her. She had
two wardrobes — one full of wool, silk and denim, the other viscose, polyester and the rest of it.
Cursing Harry for not seeing through it, she imputed virtue to the male, wiliness to the female,
and hated herself for being trapped in that line of thinking.
Some real token of love, she felt, might yet be extracted.
Rhonda and Mrs Miller looked at the letter, shaking their heads. There was no doubt about it. They
knew the writing and the old-fashioned use of capitals: ‘Your Husband is a Whoremonger. I know
your secrets. His Desires are great as a Boar’s, He is unrestrained except when you are With him.
Do your Dreams bring you Shame? Signed, The Voice of Understanding.’
‘Where do we go now?’ Rhonda asked her older, wiser, companion.
95
‘We’d better see the bank manager,’ Mrs Miller said.
Mr Gard, Kyneton Manager for The Wales, was cautious; ‘If we had any bad cheques,’ he
explained, ‘it’d be between ourselves and the client, and probably the police. But I can tell you this,
there’ve been no problems with Mrs Simpson’s account. In fact, we rarely see her. And I’d be surprised if we did come across anything. If it’s a case of double identity, as you seem to believe ...’
He put down his biro, pronouncing across his desk: ‘... I’d expect her to keep this end pretty
clean. This is her rural retreat. If she gets up to tricks, I think it’d be down there.’
He waved his arm towards the city.
‘But she’s so good,’ Mrs Miller told him. ‘Day and night. You’ve no idea ...’
Mr Gard butted in:
‘Bottles it all up. Needs an outlet somewhere, I suppose. I can’t do much for you except promise to keep an eye out. You’d better leave me your addresses so I can contact you if anything turns
up ...’
In the street, Mrs Miller said to Rhonda, ‘I’m convinced he’s wrong, I’m convinced that if she’s
been doing anything she’s been doing it here!’ ‘Here?’ said Rhonda; it was just a highway town,
with verandahs, bikes and Coke signs. ‘Here?’
‘Yes, here,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘It’s the only place she’d have time to hatch out any schemes.’
A bread delivery van pulled up. The driver rushed some trays inside, not failing to greet them
as he staggered past.
‘It seems such an unlikely place,’ said Rhonda, though she, as well as anyone, knew better.
‘It’s in the mind,’ said Mrs Miller, tapping her forehead. ‘This is where it happens.’
Bruce had his visions, all involving the approval of outside people. He hoped for a convention centre, an adventure school for kids, alpine tours. He wanted to pull ski-lodges out of the mountains
and centre them in the town. ‘We want to get people here in summer,’ he used to say, ‘so we need to
develop other attractions beside the snow. What about a wildflower club, with links to Melbourne
organisations?’
But when Prue came, he kept her out of sight. They used her car. They camped in a remote
valley. Bruce’s daughter stayed with Nanna. Walking in a creek with rolled up trousers, he waved at
the trees: ‘Manna gums. The ones koalas eat. We’re going to get koalas back in these forests.’
Prue, who imagined they lived in zoos, was too wise to show it.
‘How will you get them back?’
‘Fisheries and Wildlife are working on it. We put in a submission last year.’
She didn’t know who they were.
‘Will they be quick?’
His laugh was resonant with experience. His line with Prue was sympathy for those who got
the raw deals, opportunity for those who knew the ropes. She watched to see what he would offer.
Tying the tent flaps before they went off for the day, he said ‘Janis is down with Harry. I don’t
know where that’s going to leave me.’ Driving on a ridge with a view to the plain, he told her, ‘You
could drive along here. There’s nothing hard about this road.’ But she wanted to remain watchful,
she told him to stay at the wheel.
She asked about a group of huts, he explained: ‘They belong to a mill. But if you’re interested,
there are farm houses for sale. I’ve been thinking about it, actually.’ She said she’d loved to see one.
He threaded the car through a maze of creek crossings and a lane signposted NO ROAD/BRIDGE
CLOSED to an abandoned farm. It was the land of cigarette ads for Prue; she ran, hands turned
out as if patting the grass, to a gate tied with wire. Turning back for Bruce, she took him by the
hand and said, ‘Take me in.’
The house was dry, and locked. She said, ‘Could we stay here tonight?’ It was a Redesdale
property, he wondered if they came out at weekends, but told her simply, ‘Got to get in first!’
She led him around the windows. They pressed their faces to the glass, Bruce entering into
Prue’s excitement. ‘How much would this cost?’ she said, staring at him with the eyes of a shop-
96
keeper. ‘He’s asking twenty thousand,’ Bruce told her, ‘but it’s too high. If it was near the road to
the snow, yes. He’d get that and more ...’
‘I’m going to have it,’ she snapped. ‘It’s going to be mine one day!’ With her job in a shop and
a car on hire purchase he knew it was a dream, but that made her more open to him. He said, ‘I’ll
get you in.’
A bit of wire and a screwdriver opened the latch. He flung the window high, exposing them
to the musty, but cosy, air inside. He gave her a leg up; she sat astride the window sill in her white
pants, and stared intensely at him: ‘You love me Bruce?’ He could not have said no to save his life.
He was saying ‘I’m learning to love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone’ when she flicked her leg
over the sill and was gone in the dark. He heard her rolling up a blind. Light increased in the passage. More footsteps, another blind, more light. She called to him, ‘We’ll light a fire!’ He unlocked
the back door, and brought in wood ...
They stayed there that night. When it looked like rain, they drove back to the tent and packed
up. Driving over the country for the third time, Prue began to feel it was hers. They hung their
coats in a wardrobe which Prue was sure was antique, but Bruce said, ‘We don’t want to cash it,
we want to keep it. It’s ours!’ They put two single beds together and spread their double sleeping
bag across. They cooked chops on the fire and drank wine. Bruce brushed Prue’s hair. Then they
played what Prue called the Walk-In game; you had to think of someone you knew walking in on
them at that moment, and then guess the first thing they’d say! And for each person there was an
explanation. Bruce explained the Redesdales, and Prue explained her Dutch Calvinist aunt. Prue
said the policeman who walked through her shop each day would say ‘Is there room for three?’ and
they roared with laughter. Prue wanted to know what Janis would say and Bruce told her she’d say
‘I’m glad you’re fixed up’ and then she’d dash back to Harry. ‘The passion she has for that man is
incredible,’ said Bruce, and his eyes gleamed strangely. ‘Why doesn’t she leave you?’ Prue wanted to
know. ‘Two things,’ said Bruce. ‘He doesn’t love her the way she loves him, and the other is security.
All the security she’s got is tied up in her marriage.’ Prue dismissed this: ‘If you want something,
you make it happen. If you want security, you make it in yourself. And what about you, Bruce?’
‘If I walked in now and saw myself ...’ said Bruce, taking it that way, but Prue said, ‘If you want
something, do you make it happen? Or do you run away from it?’
He felt the challenge. ‘Put it like this,’ he said; ‘I wouldn’t want to hurt anybody. But if I thought
a short sharp blow was better than a long drawn out struggle, I’d go for the short sharp blow.’
‘Is living with your wife a long drawn out struggle?’ Prue wanted to know.
‘I don’t know what it is,’ said Bruce, leaving her to do the interpreting. ‘Everything I say gets
tangled in the politics of our last row — or our next one!’
‘Do you think you could win a row with me?’ Prue asked.
With the sweet simplicity of a weak man showing his weakness, Bruce said ‘No’, pushed his
head on her lap and murmured, after stretching for the warmth and feeling her back to see she
wasn’t cold, ‘Mmmm, this is better than home any day.’ Prue wanted more commitment than this
hedonism of fireside and solitude, but he was so relaxed she knew it would disconcert him if she
pushed him any further.
At the conference, Anne went down less well than Murdy. He, safe in the nineteenth century, full
of interesting detail, was the historian who could be loved; the warts he found were ones people
wanted. Analysing the fall of Mueller and the rise of Guilfoyle, he recreated those living forces of
Melbourne that academics loved to satirise — a greedy, uncultured bourgeoisie, hungry for talent
to create a backdrop to their lives; and the vicious infighting by which government and civil service
could be distorted to advance Club interests. But Anne tore at the roots of the generation before
her own. Working through labour documents, and cabinet discussions, she found the reasons for
Australia’s readiness for war to be a revival, among the ruling classes, of a belief in empire and
the ‘healthy’ economic system that implied; and, among union leaders, shop stewards and depression-afflicted males, an adventurist, basically anti-feminine excitement that meant they could tread
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down, again, the women who had become abnormally important in the preceding decade. ‘War!’
she cried, ‘was the convenient excuse by which the ruling classes — capitalists, males — reasserted
the system which the preceding decade had upset. They were glad of it! Their enthusiasm can be
found in a host of sources ...’
... which she documented, to the discomfort of conservative and radical alike. A paunchy professor, former squash champion of Melbourne University, said to Murdy ‘She’s teaching at one of
the institutes, isn’t she?’: the word was deeply contemptuous. Another academic, overhearing them,
remarked: ‘We need some right wing historians to get to work on the depression. We don’t have a
balanced view at all ...’
Murdy wanted to go to her, but she was talking to a Jewish sociologist called Arnie Bride. She’s
attracted to Jewish men, he observed; are they more sensitive, outside the cramping tradition, or
keyed to a higher pitch of argument? Whichever it was, if he approached her he’d be apologising
for the success of his presentation. He loaded a cardboard platter, found a glass of wine and wandered to a window; his position might be cleverly placed, but placed it was, and the very presence
of Anne, and her style of argument, made his life look like a betrayal of youth.
To be young was like sitting on an egg before it hatched, and the egg was one’s future. To be
young involved sensing the direction of one’s life, and accepting it embryonically, or, like Greg
Paton, refusing. Why had Greg killed himself? All Greg’s friends had to answer that, and Anne,
fulminating against a bunch of historians, was hiding from the truth. She would rage against capitalism, corruption, the power of the media — everything that might cripple one’s self — but for all
the cleverly reasoned arguments, and the force of her commitment, she lacked, finally, the courage
that led the simplest people to step across the threshold and embrace whatever life held. Yet she
was talking to Arnie Bride as if her life depended on what he was saying. She would be in love with
him in a week — Murdy knew her pattern — and disgusted before the month was out. Her words,
sloshing about like the coffee Arnie poured clumsily in her cup, were frenetic, but Arnie — Murdy
was watching closely — measured his replies, made his voice sound more Australian than she did,
and was busy in the process of winning her.
Youth. Anne was spending hers before his eyes, and Arnie would finish up with a dollar’s worth
... one was hurried into one’s youth with no chance to make up one’s mind beforehand. Influences
were impossible to keep out, it was life’s bravest and most vulnerable time, when one retained some
of the openness of childhood while seeing the terrifying extent of consciousness. Murdy thought
of the nights when he lay on the lawn between his parents, staring at the stars, and the sensations
of being carried, heavy with sleep, to his childish bed. A parent now, responsible for children, he
realised how much he’d lost. Playing the biographer allowed him, though, to look at another man’s
life with the freedom, impossible for his subject, to roam back and forth along the seventy one
years between Rostock and Saint Kilda cemetery, from the thesis on Capsella Bursa-pastoris to
the inscription from Schiller:
Zage nicht! Es giebt noch edle Herzen Die fur das Hohe Herrliche ergluhn.*
How the Baron wanted to be thought well of! How he loved his orders and medallions, even
though he wrote to his ex-fiancee:
Through the grace of the Wurtembergian King, I have certainly been raised to a rank which adds to my name, but
while I gratefully acknowledge the condescending kindness of His Majesty, I feel that the mortal elevations render
me not to that degree happy at my advancing age as in former years.
This, thought Murdy, from a man of forty-four. Yet the scientific papers kept pouring out
of him; in his distorted, puzzled way, his life was as fruitful as a man’s could be. To his fellow
scientists, he was a noble soul; yet one had only to change the angle to Barbara’s, and he was
a freak. Murdy felt he had all this in his biography, yet it worried him because he was unsure
about his own life; it too was a front, a creation with the most seemly and polished aspects
pushed to the fore, like a greengrocer’s fruit. Leaving the conference room, he walked on the
lawns outside, to find himself behind the most attractive girl in his Tuesday class. He shortened
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step to avoid her, but she heard him and glanced around. ‘Hullo, Mr Miller,’ she smiled; ‘having a break?’ It came with that mixture of respect and politely affected interest which so plainly
put him in his place. Yet when he mentioned the conference, she was mortified; she had meant
to come, she’d mistaken the date, she wondered if she could pay the registration now. Murdy
promised her a copy of his paper, rushed her in to fix the registration, and assured her that
anyone could have mixed up the dates which had, after all, been changed. Her Greek eyes were
full of gratitude and she tossed her long black hair when the ex-squash champion professor
stared coldly at her ... then Murdy was aware of Anne staring at the girl, and he knew he would
* Despair not! There are still noble hearts that glow for the august and sublime!
tell Anne how upset she’d been, and how he’d had to calm her down and assure her that no one
would think any the worse of her for missing the morning session, and that somewhere in the
middle of this cover-up Anne would say to him ‘Oh yeah, Murdy? Oh yeah?’
After Jesus, Barbara needed a break. She piled son and sleeping bags in the Kombi, and headed
north. She expected release from her troubles but felt locked in by tankers and the rolling hills
sodden with rain. The unlined van was noisy. Nick wanted to play without his belt, she had to stop
to wire the door. What sort of freedom’s this, she wondered; kid’s got a few cubic feet of metal,
I’m a slave to the wheel. She had ideas of camping, but in the end she headed for Bruce’s; might
as well get it over with.
Got to Bright by early afternoon, found the key. No Janis. Stuck the kid on the toilet and nosed
about. Supplies a bit low; Janis away? Kid emerged, pants around his ankles, pissing a stream.
Stuck him back, got the mop, what a life.
Played in the lounge till the kid needed a sleep; put him in a single bed but he wanted the big
one. Had to lie with him, decided to stay where she was; why get up? Bruce’s bed, Harry’s child;
she supposed Janis was with Harry, dying to have his kid, for all the wrong reasons — you couldn’t
force a man onto your terms by getting pregnant.
She must have dozed, didn’t hear the Saab, it was a case of open your eyes and there he was.
Looking pretty tired, he’d had Prue for the weekend, not much sleep. ‘Good?’ she asked; he nodded: ‘Still at the good stage, I don’t know where it goes from here.’ ‘Janis in Melbourne?’ she asked;
he nodded, said he’d make a pot of tea. ‘She’ll be back,’ she said. ‘Harry doesn’t want her,’ he said.
‘It’ll be me that picks up the bits.’
And he would, she’d give him that. Janis knew it too, was probably trying him to the limit,
hoping something’d snap. If you reached the end of someone, you might be justified in letting go
— as Janis saw it, anyway.
Barb was biding her time, they were used to each other in the house. Dinner was easy but when
Bruce piled the dishes in the sink and handed Barb the towel, he felt the attack was near. A dirty
spoon that she threw back in the wash triggered the argument:
‘Do you know why I walked out on you?’
‘You never told me and I couldn’t understand your letter.’
‘Didn’t fucken try!’
He felt she was going to maul him. She felt him soften, she wanted to keep him hard:
‘Tell me what it said.’
‘Jesus Barb, what is this, an examination?’
He was hoping he’d be hurt so he could sob. She said:
‘Inquisition.’ He saw her grinning, and knew he was for it.
‘Come up to the lounge,’ he said. It was further from the bedrooms. ‘Does it matter if the kids
hear?’ she said. ‘Why don’t we let them know what we are?’
‘We wouldn’t inspire much confidence if they knew all about us,’ he said. She made a rude
noise, flung the teatowel on the sink, and walked angrily to the lounge. She scuffed the aqua carpet.
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Grabbed one of his cricket trophies and threw it on the couch. The fake ebony stand came away
from the golden wicket-and-ball. She wiped a Herald off the coffee table and uncovered a Playboy.
‘I didn’t buy it!’ he said. ‘I wouldn’t have it in the house. Our engineer left it in my car!’ Then she
attacked the bookshelf. Organisation Man. The Greening of America. Personal growth and the art of
chairmanship. ‘Shit!’ she said, frustrated because there was no fire to throw them in. She kicked the
space heater. ‘You’re a walking cliche, Bruce!’ she said. ‘I finally woke up to it!’
‘If I had your money and a nice little dividend every quarter, I wouldn’t do so much talking,’
he said.
They stared hostilely at each other. She tried another tack. ‘The morning of the cricket. Tell
me what you think happened.’
‘We were fine the night before. You were a bit funny coming up to the ground. Then it was okay
until all of a sudden ...’
‘Aach!’ she nearly spat.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘what’s your version?’
‘Do you remember the night before?’
‘I remember the night before?’ he shouted. ‘Yes? What about it?’
She looked at him, weighing him up. ‘Just forget it,’ she said. ‘How far is it to Hotham?’
‘What’s that got to do with it?’
‘I’m going there. Do a bit of skiing.’ She called down the passage: ‘Come on Squirrel, we’re
moving on.’ The child, playing with Bruce’s daughter, ignored her. Bruce cried ‘What the hell’s
got into you?’
She said, ‘Being here with you is really getting at me. Come on kid!’ But the laughing in the
bedroom went on,
‘Do you know what that road’s like?’ Bruce was determined to reduce her.
‘There you go again. You think women can’t do anything.’
‘Bullshit Barbara! Jesus you twist things!’
‘Well, what is the road like? Surely there’s not going to be an avalanche on one of your precious roads!’
Bruce was beside himself at the unfairness. ‘They’re CRB roads. They’re nothing to do with
...’ His fury gagged him; wanting to calm himself, he picked up the cricket trophy but, trying to
straighten the bent wicket-and-ball, he broke it off. Barbara laughed exultantly. Rather than give
her the satisfaction of having him throw it at her, he flung it on the floor. ‘It’s nothing to do with
avalanches! Avalanches! How fucking stupid can you get?’ but she cut in: ‘Well, what’s up there that
I can’t handle? Wild elephants or something? If there was a search party, Big Bruce’d be out playing
the hero. Eh? Stomping around in boots and waving searchlights, the big man act ...’
‘Yes!’ he yelled, ‘I’d go! And I’d take a four wheel drive vehicle and chains and it’d have
foglamps and I’d make sure there was a two way radio in it and I wouldn’t go alone, and I wouldn’t
bloody take a kid who’s going to fucking freeze if I get stuck. There hasn’t been a snowplough over
that road since this morning, and it’ll be cloudy ... you’ll be driving through a cloud on a road
about that wide, on top, with a drop on either side that’ll bloody mangle you if you run off, which
is a fucking good bet. In fact, if I really wanted to back a sure thing I’d put my money on you not
getting through. The pity of it is that the kid’s going to die because you’re off your rocker. In fact
I’m bloody well not letting you go, in fact, I’ll have a roadblock set up, the cops don’t want to be
out on a night like this dragging you and your wreck back on the road, they’ll just pull you up and
send you back, Barb, you can’t take a a kid up that mountain on a night like this.’
‘Corn! Pure Corn!’ she shouted, and the children were listening now. ‘It’s a bloody main highway, what’s the law that says I can’t drive on a highway whenever I like? You and your copper mates,
it’s the right sort of company isn’t it, what else do they do for you? Let you know who’s growing
pot so you can sneak out and pinch a bit?’ Her attack could be dangerous, he saw; he decided not
to defend that one. ‘What you’re really on about Bruce, isn’t what you’re saying at all. Deep down,
you hate women. If it was a man going up that road, you’d be saying Bloody fool, but secretly you’d
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admire him. If he got stuck it’d give you an excuse to get out there having big adventures. There’d
be whole teams of fellers rushing around talking to each other on two way radios, which is what
they want to do anyhow. You don’t want to talk to women on equal terms. You’ll show off to them,
you’ll patronise them, you’ll screw them till you can’t stand up but you will not allow them to butt
into the nice little set up you’ve got. Men! And you talk to me about cricket!’ Bruce, dazed, and
cooling down a little, thought of the vast auditorium where he’d taken Barb one summer day, not,
it seemed, so long ago, and of the mountain road with a drop either side, and he stared at the still
seething figure in front of him who had dragged him from his innocence and prudery, and he felt
himself go soft. ‘What do I do, Barb?’ he said.
‘Come here,’ she said.
Like a child he obeyed.
She put her arms over his shoulders and squeezed as hard as she could. ‘I’ll get it into your
head eventually,’ she said. His cheeks were wet with tears. She kissed them, kissed his eyelids, kissed
his brow. Then she took his hands and kissed them, then she pulled his ear and grinned at him.
‘Want to hit me?’ she said.
‘Too weak,’ he said. ‘Get the beanbag,’ she ordered; he got it, and they sat before the heater,
‘Put your arm around me.’
It was like a lesson in love, but he did it.
‘Shitting yourself about Janis?’
He nodded.
‘You haven’t lost her. She’s having her breakout.’
He said:
‘She’s careless about contraceptives.’
She said:
‘What’s it matter? What’s anything matter? We’re too used to putting up fronts. Don’t you feel
better without them?’
Everything she’d given him made him agree.
‘So what do we value most?’ she wanted to know.
‘Don’t know, Barb,’ he said, moving into depression.
‘Come on,’ she said, fondling him warmly. ‘You’re a real person. Don’t let anyone hammer
you, even me.’
He smiled a little. They’d shared a lot. He put his hand under her jumper. ‘Harry used to do
that,’ she said. ‘He was always probing, one way or another.’
‘You miss him Barb?’ he wanted to know.
‘Leaving him was the best thing I ever did.’
‘Now Janis is dying to have him.’
‘We’re all mad.’
The space heater burned evenly; a woodfire would have been a third character, but they were
on their own.
‘You’re not going up that road, are you?’
She grinned; it meant she would.
Even inside her arms, he felt alarm: ‘You can stay with me tonight. No, I don’t mean that. You
and the little feller have my bed, I’ll sleep out the back. Go up in the morning.’ She didn’t move,
but he said, ‘It’d be ever so much safer, truly.’
She felt his love, and loved him for it.
‘I won’t run off the edge. If it gets that bad, I’ll come back. Okay?’
He tried again: ‘If you go, I’m going to be horribly lonely.’
She said: ‘But you are, anyhow. Eh?’
Having her pierce him was a sort of pleasure.
‘Yes.’
She put her legs around him. ‘I’m going on Bruce.’ There was nothing cruel in the brevity.
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‘You need to?’
‘Mmm.’
‘What do you expect to find?’
‘It’s not letting anything stop me.’
He couldn’t deny that. He’d given it to Janis, as often as he could. You couldn’t have more
freedom than you were prepared to give someone else.
‘I’ll make a fool of myself some way or other,’ she said. ‘I haven’t learned all my lessons yet you
know.’ Women were always wiser to Bruce, he thought she had.
‘What are you after Barb?’
‘I’m not finished,’ she said. ‘Wherever I’m going to, I’m not there yet.’
‘There’s no endpoints,’ he said. ‘Only moments. I wish you’d stay.’
The smile she gave him meant he was as good as any, but she had to go on.
‘Rain’s stopped,’ he said. ‘Might be clear on top. Mind the winds, they blow pretty hard up
there. Kombis are no good in a wind ...’
‘How do I recognise the pub when I get there?’ she asked, ‘There’s some lodges, aren’t
there?’
He told her.
She called the boy, and this time the tone was definite:
‘Come on Squirrel, we’re hitting the road.’ ‘Oh dad,’ said Bruce’s daughter, ‘I want to play with
Nicholas. Why’ve they got to go?’
Her anguish, he felt, was as far-reaching as his own. ‘Barb,’ he said, ‘is going to Mount
Hotham. Where the ...’ He thought he was going to come out with some ballad-worthy image, but
his tongue had no words. ‘Come on Squirrel, into the van,’ said Barb, and she meant it; she had
her energy up, her call on Bruce was just an interlude and he knew she would be getting through;
not coming back, anyway.
‘Come out and say goodbye,’ he told his daughter, and it was not lost on her that her father
was both accepting and distraught.
A minute later and the Kombi was a lumpy silhouette against its own headlights, with two red
tail lights, rather weak, disappearing down the road. As it turned the corner, he saw the shape of
Barbara’s head; then there was nothing but the quiet of a country street. ‘Cold, dad,’ his daughter
said. ‘Oooh I’m freezing!’ and she squeezed against him. ‘Why’s she going dad?’ the girl asked.
‘You’ll do that one day,’ her father said. Looking up, his daughter echoed, ‘Will I do that, dad, one
day?’ There was excitement in her voice.
‘Like to be with her, would you darling?’
‘No dad, you’d be lonely. When’s mum coming home? Where is she anyhow?’
Bruce ran through the story, but his daughter said, ‘Can I have a bath with you dad? I’m pretty
cold.’ It sounded so intimate Bruce laughed, and they got under the shower together, dad and girl,
she lathering his bum, he soaping her tummy, till they got out, and dried themselves by the heater,
and then he tucked her into bed. Lying on his back, staring at the dark, he realised he didn’t really
want anyone with him, and thought that was a legacy of Barbara, not only her visit, but the way
she’d changed his life.
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9
Rushing to catch the 8.09, Julius steadied; how indifferent to people was he? Was it possible to
accept ‘humanity’ in the abstract — people with whom you had no connection?
He set himself a test. Pick a number at random — say 19 — and count to the 19th person.
What did he feel about the old biddy grumbling at the ticket gate, locked out from the train?
Scorn.
Or the fat girl in a wheelchair, eating a Mars Bar?
Psychosomatic, quite happy, probably where she wanted to be.
What did he feel, after counting nineteen, on seeing a spindly, fiftyish civil servant like himself?
Washed out looking creep.
On settling on a denim clad, raunchy apprentice hand-passing a Marlboro pack to his mate?
Conned, and doesn’t even know it.
Julius formed links with few people. It was beyond him to care about the rest. He didn’t see
why he should deny his laughter. Wynn Miller and his wife were chasing up the misdemeanors of
some old crow at the Brotherhood, it was like hunting ratshit because you noticed a smell. He felt
like writing a few letters himself, or graffiti-ising the high brick walls of Toorak with a few facts on
corporate crime — but why risk your neck? The judge would be closer to them than to you. No,
one had to go on serving the masses and reserving one’s contempt. Three, four, five ... seventeen,
eighteen …
A Jewish fellow in dark glasses; reminded him of Anne Owen’s boyfriends, and he didn’t think
much of her.
... seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, a burly looking farmer down for a breakout, and his nervous
son. The boy looked like he needed sex, the dad as if he paid for it. Ho hum, the world goes round.
Next was a Turk in a trammy’s suit, blowing smoke as if it were a lie-repellent; Julius wondered
what they’d told him to make him migrate. The Turk saw Julius watching him, and blew a smoke
ring in his direction. Chuckling despite himself, Julius listened to a Pakistani singing the departure of a train. When they bury me, thought Julius, I’d like someone playing Bach. Something like
Sleepers Wake, that seems to go on for ever but finishes its course exactly. That was how to time
one’s death. Young Greg Paton knew what he was about. Finished life full, not empty. That way he
had everything to the last. It was cheating, but he’d won; nature had no purpose but to squeeze
kids out of you and send you senile ...
She zipped up two little bags, ‘Is that all?’ Murdy asked in amazement. ‘Too much,’ she said, ‘I’ll
be throwing things away.’
‘And making some little purchases,’ Murdy accused, trying to bring everything onto the plane
of joke. ‘Oh come on,’ she said. ‘You buy far more than I do.’
They stared at each other across the corner of their bed. They were not short of money, it was
only bickering. He said, ‘Sorry. What about getting us something in New York, or will you wait till
you get to Europe?’ He made it sound like endless opportunity. ‘I’ve told you,’ she said. ‘It’s only
buses and hotels till the concerts are finished.’
‘It’s all a change,’ he said pretentiously. ‘Other windows on other streets ...’
He was annoying her because it was his own freedom he was looking forward to and he was
dressing up the separation as a gift for her. ‘A hundred people around me all the time,’ she said. ‘I
wish it was just us.’ This excited the children. They still hoped for some last minute craziness like
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dad buying three more tickets so they could all go to America, even if it did mean boring concerts;
there’d be Disneyland, McDonald’s and the Empire State. ‘Can we go too dad?’ they cried. ‘Dad,
dad, daddy?’ But he told them: ‘Into the car. Off to the airport. You take this bag Michael. Tania,
you carry mum’s coat!’
Entering the freeway, Christie said, ‘I wonder what it’ll look like.’ He thought she meant
America, but she went on: ‘I’ll see things differently when I get back. I’ll experience it for what it
is, not as a habit.’ His comment was: ‘Greg’s wish.’
For once he touched her. She said ‘Yes. You knew that, didn’t you.’ In fact he hadn’t understood her as well as she thought, but he took the opportunity:
‘Do you think perhaps he had finished? I mean, that he had done what he set out to do? I mean,
perhaps he sensed that he had nowhere further to go?’
‘I don’t want to think about it now,’ she said. ‘Could we all be quiet for a minute?’
After a moment, she said, ‘It’s quite sedate really. I suppose it’ll snarl at me in America.’ She
turned to the back seat. ‘You’ll write to me darlings, won’t you. Do you think you could take turns,
so I get one every day?’ Michael, fiddling with a magnifying glass, said ‘Sometimes. Dad’ll write.’
‘You little beast,’ she said, and grabbed him teasingly. ‘Oh mum!’ he snapped, ‘I was trying to see
something and you’ve mucked it up. Gee you’re a nuisance!’ Daughter Tania rushed in to say she’d
write every day and even if Michael wrote she’d still write too. Murdy smirked. ‘Why?’ she said.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘I guess we’re all being ourselves ....’
As they lifted onto an overpass, Christie made an appreciative sound. Murdy, gazing at a white
jumbo settling in the ground haze like a waterbird in a lake, observed, ‘You’d think it was going to
fold its wings and give itself a shake!’ The children, too, were looking towards the airport, thinking
mum might buy them chocolate, but when she turned to them, smiling, it was to say that there had
been a dog in the back of a truck beneath them, and he’d been wagging his tail: ‘Ever so pleased
with himself,’ she said. ‘And all on his own.’
Precisely, thought Murdy, why do we need each other, and hoped the next few weeks might
tell.
Barbara was afraid, driving with a drop on either side. The wind buffeted her Kombi and she might
have turned back except for tracks in the snow. If he can do it, she thought, so can I.
He turned out to be the rep for a liquor firm, and he was staying at Hotham Heights where
she turned in. He watched her in the lounge, but he was more interested in the child, and when
she put her glass down to take the boy to bed, he spoke:
‘Can I come?’
When the child was tucked in, he told her, ‘My room’s three down on the right. If you need
me.’ She studied him closely; how much had he drunk? ‘Why would I need you?’ she said, and saw
him blush with confusion. He looked as if he would break down; she told him to hop off and buy
her a drink, she’d be down in a minute.
She slept with him; after their first orgasm she heard him crying, rolled him off and whispered
‘Tell me.’
In the morning she dressed, got the boy up, paid the cook who was the only person about,
and rushed for the Kombi. ‘Why’re we going now mum?’ the child asked; Barb said she’d tell him
later. The Kombi wouldn’t start, she rolled it down the hill: the engine fired but she slipped into a
ditch and it took a CRB patrol to drag her out. They thought she was slipping away without paying,
but they so obviously made no comment that she almost revalued their sex; they even kept their
solemnity when, standing next to a road sign, she asked the way to Omeo.
It was a crisis in her womanhood, and she had blundered into it when she might have stayed
with Bruce. Driving through the dripping forest she talked to him in her head. Told him what Rep
had told her. That his wife and child had been killed in a crash a month before, that if he didn’t
find something soon to live for, he’d kill himself. That his work had always been lonely but now
the hollowness of drinking with publicans and barflies was killing him. That things he used to do,
like football, turned him off. That he’d come to Hotham to try skiing but he knew it wasn’t going
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to work. That he couldn’t bear to be alone. That unless there was someone near him he felt his
head was bursting. She heard Bruce abusing her, why didn’t she stay with the bloke, what would
he be like when he woke? She drove as fast as she dared, thinking of Rep waking to find himself
abandoned. She tried to tell Bruce that Rep was asking too much and it was none of her business
and she’d eased his pain for a few hours, which was more than most people would ever do. But
Bruce-in-her-head would have none of it; he told her it was all right to censure men for being
domineering, but when a man was abject like Rep, you must have something for him or else you
were as barren as the things you hated. Men are usually grown up children, Barb had always told
Bruce, and now Bruce-in-her-head was telling her that she’d found just such a man, and what, the
spectre of a former love wanted to know, did she have for him?
Nothing, Barbara knew, and drove wildly through the churned up slop left by the snowplough
on its first run of the day. She slithered through white the colour of purity and mud the consistency
of shit to escape the accusations in her head. To have uttered her polemics for so long and then
to have deserted poor soon-to-kill-himself Rep was too much. There had to be something beyond
sex and the constructions of male and female, or she was lost. But there was nothing but clammy
forest, and cattle glancing dolefully at the German van growling through the mist. She wondered
how long her journey was going to be, and where she would discover a place for herself. Her son,
looking up from the floor of the van, wondered why they were rushing into the everlastingly windscreen-wiped fog that pressed against the registration sticker and his mother’s desperately bent
forward head.
Harry made a mistake. Talking to two knighted directors of an English mining company, he’d used
the wrong table of figures; he’d seen his mistake in the eyes of two McKersie-level functionaries of
the multinational and in the sudden stiffness of the secretary beside him taking minutes. He recovered smoothly enough, described the calculation as a mere example and went on to say ‘Now let’s
make an actual projection on the basis of the most up to date figures we’ve got,’ and it was good
enough for the directors, but the lower ranks were neither fooled nor likely to be silent. It would
be up and down the building by the end of the day. How had he done it?
It was a shift, perhaps a breakdown, in his pride. Back in his office he was grateful for Mrs
Coad between him and the rest who must — he knew he was being paranoid — be laughing at his
downfall. At five o’clock he went down with her in the lift, feeling that he was using her as protection: her acetate scarf sat on her shoulders as certainly as his reputation had sat on him.
He’d sat above the human race too long to make fresh approaches to people. There was a
chink between the man he was and the man he’d been, the gap was going to widen, and he had
the adoring Janis to go home to. She’d hear the lift and before he had time to put the key in that
worrying new lock, she’d pull the door open and stand back, afraid of him, and he’d have to take
hold of her quickly or she’d know that he now — for some reason she wouldn’t be able to guess at
— saw her as a challenge.
But the flat was empty. A cup of cold milky tea sat on the table. He poured himself a gin and
brooded by the view. He kept thinking of the Moor: ‘Othello’s occupation’s gone’. His, unfortunately, wasn’t; he’d have to go back tomorrow and the next day, doubting himself like Julius, whom
he’d pitied for years. From now on he’d have to do his homework before meetings, preparing the
stuff he’d tossed off so lightly — and the worst of it was he wouldn’t know when the next shift was
coming: it was like living with a heart condition when you’d been a topline athlete; the contradiction was almost too much to bear.
When Janis came in he crossed the room to embrace her; she felt anxiety fall away like some
rag she wanted to be rid of. Then she looked into his eyes, searching him, and thought she saw a
softness instead of the cool compassionate affection that normally received her. A rush of joy ran
through her: Harry would start to love her? She put it to the test.
‘Harry, ‘ she said, ‘would you take me to a play?’
He said he would. Which?
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She said Pericles, she’d been reading a review and it sounded as if it was just what she wanted
to see.
He said they’d have a quick tea and go.
She said, ‘Don’t you want to know what it’s about?’
He said the Bard knew his business, he’d prefer to let the story unfold ...
So she didn’t tell him she’d been in a library reading the play, and when they took their seats
in the theatre she felt she had, for the first time since she’d known him, an advantage!
Janis felt it increase as the story unfolded. No character shaped the play, events piled higgledy
piggledy on top of each other, yet in the end the child born in a storm at sea, the mother thrown
into the ocean, and Pericles, who lay about groaning his fate, were reunited by coincidence, and
by divine intervention through a dream. Watching the play, she also watched Harry who was finding his emotions painful. Lovemaking that night was exultant for Janis; she had always felt that
events, if left to themselves, would bring her through more safely than rational analysis. The play
confirmed it, and some mysterious change in Harry seemed to promise that her fortunes were
changing. Settling her head on his shoulder, she felt he wanted her to see that he too could despair.
‘When do things go bad for you, Harry?’ she said, resting. ‘In the past,’ he said, ‘it was anyone I felt
was wasting my time.’ ‘Is time so precious?’ she said. ‘Isn’t that an idea you get from your work?’
He hated to be reminded. ‘If a person doesn’t know who they are,’ he said, ‘you can’t have
any satisfactory dealing with them.’ It sounded absolute, but aimed beyond her; at former lovers,
perhaps?
‘Isn’t that rather individualistic?’ she said. ‘Love should be more than that, surely?’
‘Two people,’ he said, ‘don’t experience the same affair in the same way. Everyone knows that.
Bodies merge, purposes overlap for a while, but consciousness is always solitary.’
‘Even solidarity ...’ she giggled, correcting herself. ‘I mean solitariness can be shared. Perhaps
it’s because we’re so isolated that we have to give ourselves ...’
She felt dissent, though he said nothing.
‘... I mean, we have to break through that barrier of loneliness. It’s like modesty. I can’t bear
being seen undressed, but half the time I think clothes are just a false facade and I want to strip
them off everybody.’
‘You like doing that, don’t you.’ It was said with such acceptance that she wanted to strip layers from him. She pinched his skin and rubbed her chin hard in his shoulder. He squeezed her
above the hips, locating centres of pleasure. She started to move on him again, using him as a fixed
point.
Her energy energised him, he felt a surpassing pleasure in endless, effortless movement; sometimes he folded her into the space between his tightly clasped arms, and then she would rear back,
statue-like; when he traced the curves and flats of her stomach with his fingertips, she lost her
sense of the particular functions; his fingers alone suggested potency; Harry’s rhythmic response to
her movement urged her to give a deeper and deeper affirmation of herself: she couldn’t conceive
unless she willed it, and she could only live with it if she had willed it, and that meant wanting him
to will it too. Rocking on him, she waited for his will to reveal itself, she felt they were hovering
about an incarnation.
Harry, needing resolve, and too used to letting people use him, kept his detachment. She was
too passionate and not clever enough to fathom him. When, finally, she lay drowsing, he considered
her. She seemed to think he was cosmic, she had a whole gamut of reactive and dependent emotions which left him in the classic exploiter’s position of being spiritually inferior to the people he
plundered. Crazed as she is, he thought, she’s nearer the truth because she’s participating more
deeply than I am. She’s chasing an illusion and while she thinks I embody it, she’s got the benefits
of faith. When her breathing grew deeper, he eased himself out and went to the lounge. Naked,
he switched on his 4R22 terminal; the little screen lit up. First he checked his projections for the
mineral company. They were okay; this morning’s disgrace wouldn’t be repeated. Then he played
with some of the calculations he’d been doing for Julius, though there really wasn’t much point:
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Vicrail was so antiquated it ought to be preserved as a working museum piece. He was speculating
on the implication of a fully computerised public transport system when he became aware of Janis
at the door.
For Janis, he looked like something out of science fiction — sitting beside his console like some
Master of the Planets, and the city blazing behind him like a galaxy. ‘You frighten me Harry,’ she
said. He stood. ‘Don’t move for a minute,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if I can cope with you.’
The console light silhouetted him in the classic figure of a man — chest, shoulders, thighs,
knees hard together. She plucked a tissue from between her legs. ‘You contracepting?’ he said. ‘Yes,’
she answered. ‘Don’t talk about it. It’s not the point.’
She began to shake; there was this void between them, she hated voids. He sensed her fear.
‘Stay still,’ he said. ‘Talk to me.’
‘Tell me what you were doing, Harry.’
‘I’d just made about a million people redundant.’
‘Don’t say that Harry!’
He moved so that the dim light fell on her. Naked, she felt that even her mind was open to the
calculation of forces beyond control. She said, ‘Do you think there’s a future Harry?’
‘People must have wondered about that a million years ago.’
‘Is this their future, then?’
‘Good question. Only if you think we’re connected to them. If we aren’t, it’s an isolated
moment.’
‘That’s how it feels.’
‘How do you mean?’ he wanted to know.
‘Has anyone ever written,’ she said, ‘about how a cell feels? Or a seed? They’re limited, aren’t
they. They can only grow within their own genetic limits. I suppose this moment is already predetermined to go in a certain direction, but just now it feels to me as if anything whatsoever could
happen, anything at all! Can you understand that Harry?’
‘Yes. But it won’t. Things are really pretty well set.’ He looked at the lights outside.
‘But they don’t have to be. Have you ever felt you’re on the verge of stepping onto some new
plane of existence?’
‘Oddly enough,’ he said, ‘I feel like that right now.’
‘Why are you sad, Harry?’
‘I’ve got this feeling that there’s going to be some big changes in me. I think they’ve started,
but I don’t know enough about them yet.’
It accorded with her deepest view of the world. ‘Harry,’ she said softly, and stepped to him with
confidence. ‘Are you afraid?’
‘Quite a bit, actually.’
‘You’ve never admitted that before.’
‘I’ve never felt it.’
She felt down the length of him: adam’s apple, dry male tits, belly button, balls, and up again:
penis, tummy hairs, ribcage, the sensation of his heart; chin, dry lips, brow, tight coronet of hair.
‘I don’t know how you work those things,’ she said, meaning the machine behind him. ‘I’ve had it
easy so far,’ he said. ‘What happens when things start to go against me?’
This time when she squeezed him she knew it was important to his need. ‘Would you sleep
now,’ she said, ‘if we turned off that machine?’
‘Turning off the future, are we?’
‘Yes,’ she said sententiously, but he was glad, this time, to have her hold him in the dark. He
put his arm around her, and they guided each other to bed.
Lawrence went round to Barbara’s, found her painting on butchers paper with poster colours; she
glared at Lawrence and snapped: ‘It’s not working!’
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Why a grown woman with pots of money should carry on like a kindergarten kid, he couldn’t
bloody see. With insulting good cheer, he said, ‘You want to copy some of them Old Masters. If
you got the right outlets it’s a way to make big money.’
Hatred makes strange allies, she thought; she felt like giving Lawrence a thick ear. Instead, she
said, ‘You still screwing Tessa?’ ‘Nuh,’ he said. ‘That didn’t last long. She give me the shove.’ ‘Like
all the rest,’ said Barb: ‘Like all the rest,’ he agreed.
‘So where do you go from there?’
‘Bloody square one, I think.’
‘There isn’t a square one,’ she said. ‘I just tried that.’
He chuckled. ‘Next thing you’ll be into, what do they call it where they all lie around screaming?’
‘Primal therapy.’
‘Fuckin’ crazy,’ said Lawrence. ‘You going to try that?’
‘No I’m not and yes it’s crazy …’ Her anger welled up. ‘But no more crazy than nuclear missiles
and ripping beaches to bits so we can have bright white paint ...’
‘Steady on,’ he said. ‘I heard it all before.’
‘And what difference does it make? How many times have people got to be told before they
wake up to what’s going on ...’
‘Give’s a break,’ he said. ‘Harry changed that lock, I just checked up.’
She regarded him with contempt. ‘Bloody marvellous brother, aren’t you?’
‘Your idea.’
‘How’d I ever get mixed up with a crook like you.’
‘What’s this crook business? I’m no crook. And if you do feel like getting mixed up with me ...’
He leered encouragingly.
‘You never stop trying, do you? God it’s pathetic Lawrence. Can’t you work out what’s wrong
with you?’
‘Only feel funny when I’m with you and your sort. I’m okay with me mates.’
‘All crooks.’
‘What’s this crook business? There’s only one of ‘em been in.’
‘You’re too smart, but you’re on about the same things?’
‘Few little deals, but Christ! What about these guys in big houses in Toorak? They’re not
crooks?’
‘Yeah, they’re crooks, but seeing through their rackets doesn’t make me feel clean.’
‘How come you’re so pure? Who made your money for you? Grandpa. Poppa. Noone else
except the poor bastards they fleeced. Eh?’
She nodded. ‘I know that. And if I chucked it all away, I wouldn’t feel any better.’
‘All money’s dirty,’ he said. ‘Anyhow, getting back to business, Saturday night. I got a little van.
Couple of guys I know’ll help. We wait till everyone’s under the weather a bit. I hired a couple of
entertainers. While they’re doing their stuff, we rush off. Only take half an hour. I got wrenches
and things all ready.’
‘Wrenches?’
‘Got to undo the pipes. Only take a minute.’ He was pleased with himself. ‘And listen. Saturday
night. Don’t drink, and don’t get all dressed up. When we go into that building, we’re new tenants.
Nothing to do with the other two. You’re my missus. How do you like that?’
‘Revolting.’
‘Thought you’d say that.’
‘Bloody revolting, Lawrence.’
‘Just do what I say and it’ll be all right.’
Tania heard the postie’s whistle and rushed out. She came back with a card, saying ‘Mum’s writing’s so tiny you’ll have to read it dad.’
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‘Give’s a look at the stamp,’ said Michael. ‘Oh. Got it.’
‘Read it dad,’ said Tania, and Murdy read:
It was raining in Hawaii when we landed. Everyone was very shamefaced. Rain is supposed to wait until
tourists are asleep, which leaves no time at all because night and day overlap in bleary all-nighters. They
whisked us into a bus while people did things to the aeroplane. Beside a monument that looked like a
giant banana, they ushered us into a sort of super milk bar where a negro with tired eyes was polishing acres of chrome. In ten minutes of berserk activity he produced piles of food which no one wanted
(crammed full of airline food). You won’t believe this but when the driver said we were the Melbourne
Symphony Orchestra he said ‘You guys play the Star Spangled Banner?’ Since we couldn’t, and didn’t, we
had to eat some of his food. I got honey on my cuffs before I sneaked outside. A man in the seat behind
me is snoring most of the time, which makes reading hard. I’ll post this in Los Angeles. I wish I had you
all with me. Love, Christie xxxxx
‘Where’s Los Angeles dad?’
‘West coast of America. It means, city of the angels.’
Tania was pleased. ‘Mum might grow wings! ‘magine mum with wings on her back!’ They all
laughed, Murdy thought it might yet be the happiest moment of the seven weeks. ‘Where would the
wings grow?’ said Tania, ‘because it’s all bone around there.’ ‘It’s only a story,’ said Michael. ‘There
aren’t any angels really.’ But Tania thought it would be good if there were, and she and Michael
ran around the garden, Tania flapping her arms and Michael hugging a cat. When they disturbed
a feeding pigeon, Tania pointed: ‘There’s Mum!’ ‘You’re the angel!’ cried Murdy and swung his
daughter round him. ‘You’re my gorgeous low-flying angel who never gets in bad tempers and
doesn’t splash water all over the bathroom floor and is always willing to go up the street to get the
bread while her dad’s busy reading. Just as Michael,’ continued Murdy, grabbing the boy, ‘always
takes off his muddy shoes at the door instead of making a mess in the kitchen and he never never
lies on his bed reading with his boots on and he vacuums his room and empties his bin instead of
letting rubbish spill on the floor ...’
‘Tell you what dad,’ said the boy. ‘For five dollars a month, if I promise to keep my room clean
...’
‘No bargain,’ said his father. ‘I will!’ shouted the boy. ‘Five dollars a month, and ...’
‘Pigs don’t fly,’ said Murdy. ‘Leopard Michael isn’t likely to change his spots. There’d be an
argument every week at payout time. No, blow you. I’ve got work to do. Let go you kids!’ As he
swooshed his way inside he heard Tania say, ‘Michael, imagine if pigs could fly. There’d be piggy
angels then.’ ‘Oh Tania,’ said her brother, ‘don’t talk baby talk. Piggy angels ...’
The angel concept stayed with Murdy as he settled at his desk. He thought it would be interesting to trace the steps by which sexless purity had been embodied in winged visitors; they must
owe their existence to some process of denial which had begun ... when? It was in full flight in his
period, he knew; it had something to do with Mueller’s morbidity and the thing in himself which
found sympathy with the botanist. Purity, of course, had been ascribed in the nineteenth century
to females and to children, which made it sound like the apology of men for sexuality; it was all
very hypocritical, when he thought of the people he knew. Were any of them ‘pure’?
Christie retained something from her childhood. Barbara wasn’t pure, probably never had
been. Anne wasn’t, Janis was as troubled as any Pre-Raphaelite’s women. Was there anyone else?
The only one he could think of was Estelle, Greg Paton’s friend, and since he had the Paton
parents pressing him for action in getting records of their son assembled, he rang Estelle’s mother
and got the girl’s address and phone number.
Julius decided to put it to the test. In a day, in a week, how many people could you find who had
control of their lives? Who weren’t sheep? The Croydon platform yielded none, but the Turkish
trammy who got on at Laburnum puzzled him; why didn’t he live on a tramline and get free
travel? Probably a spinster that he kept on a string. It’d make a Human Interest story one day
— PROMISE OF MARRIAGE, SAYS WOMAN, 56. No, the Turk didn’t redeem the day, nor
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did the business girls with their eye-shadow and paperbacks or the fruity-voiced men with furled
umbrellas. All capital-fodder, Julius thought: they’d save money if they bought annual tickets but
Market Research said that girls having marital fantasies refused to project that far into the future
and the men were considering another job or expected to be sent overseas — mobility was their
dreamcard. They were all as pinned in their places as the paperseller with his erotic magazines and
they neither knew nor cared. God the human race was loathsome!
It hurt most when you liked the bastards: sharing his high-ceilinged office at Spencer Street
were Roley and Don, two gravel-voiced ex-servicemen with hearts of gold, peanut butter sandwiches and not enough brains to feel frustrated. As for his wife ...
... she’d become more necessary than his own hands, but he was disappointed in one central
thing: she couldn’t make him find, through his love for her, a reason to consider all humans common. He hadn’t broken down the last measure of her detachment and she hadn’t forced him out
of his damnable ambiguity about people. He wasn’t going to mellow, he knew it now. He’d finish
up all knobs and crags. So life defeated you. So Greg Paton had sense. But if you were going to
stick it out to the end, you had to find a few glimmers of hope, or interest ...
He was surprised at his happiness when Estelle rang, and he hastened to invite her round that
night. His wife was going off with Wynn Miller on some crazy thing ... it meant he could talk to
someone thirty years his junior over a glass of wine, and recreate the Greg they’d shared.
When Estelle arrived, slender, fair and inviolable, Julius settled her in his deepest chair and
put cashews, cheese and olives on the low table by her knee. He put on Brahms first symphony,
because he was waiting for the moment in the second movement when the violin takes its upward
flight of logic and heart combined, and gazed upon the daughter he didn’t have, the lover he’d
never gone in search of.
Used to the quickfire chatter of her peers she was puzzled by his self-absorption. Certainly
Greg never thought Brahms was conversation. Sitting beside her on the beach that first night, Greg
had grabbed her on the leg, in what Julius’s generation called a horsebite, and said, ‘No fat. That’s
the way to be.’ Unused to being grabbed on the inner thigh by total strangers, she asked him what
he meant, and he had simply tossed his head back to the heavens, as if they were answer enough.
She had loved him straight away but he had never asked to sleep with her. Calling at his flat as she
often did, she would see him change his clothes or come out of the shower without self-consciousness, but he seemed to find her interest amusing. She remembered telling her mother ‘I don’t know
why he doesn’t want me,’ the word ‘want’ being ambiguous enough to use with mother. Walking
through the gardens on the way to and from his flat, she was accosted by the men her mother
warned about, yet Greg, whose purity she adored, didn’t do more than hold her lightly by the hand.
She felt miserable; ‘He just didn’t belong,’ she whispered, then realised Julius was smiling owlishly
at her. ‘Did Greg ever say anything to you about me?’ she said. ‘I mean, about his friends?’
‘He didn’t talk to me about people,’ said Julius, while Brahms brought his first movement to
a halt. ‘I don’t seem to inspire that sort of conversation. He never used to say much to me at all.
We’d talk about technical details, but not his ideas so much. I guess he tried those out on people
his own age.’ Julius smiled at her, saying no more until the oboe proposed the melody which the
violin would take up. ‘Closest I got to what he was on about was at that flat in Malvern before he
shifted next to the gardens. He was playing me the clarinet quintet. Mozart’s, not this bloke’s.’ He
fell silent, got himself a cigarette. ‘What happened?’ she said but her prompting had no effect until
he had been through it in his mind.
‘There was a football match in the park,’ he said. ‘Voices. The umpy’s whistle.’ To the corner
of the room he directed a beam of approval. ‘Noises from the Dandenong line. Crossing bells. I
think I learned to listen that afternoon. Would you believe there was a magpie on a pole outside ...
Greg was on cloud nine.’
‘Did he make tapes?’ she said.
‘No,’ said Julius, ‘the signals would have been too uneven. But he made notes, and that was one
time when I really felt I knew what he was up to. Did he ever make anything of that stuff?’
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‘Everything he did,’ she said, suddenly didactic. ‘He used to say all sound was expressive, but
it only expressed itself. He said instruments were imperfect because they were made so people
could express something through them. He said they were beautiful but impure. He said, once you
stopped imposing, sounds had a character of their own, but you had to do a bit of imposing so
people could hear that character.’ She felt awkward, having said so much to Julius, who was older,
but he was beaming: ‘A bit of a genius, wasn’t he! I wonder if I’ve got any of his stuff.’ He dragged
himself out of his chair and disappeared down the passage. After a minute, Estelle decided to follow. The record was going swish-click, so she took it off, wondering that Julius could walk past such
a demanding sound. ‘Put on the Mozart,’ he called. ‘We’ll cut Johannes off in his prime!’
Since the records were in alphabetical order by composer, it wasn’t hard to find the clarinet
quintet. Walking down the passage to its genial opening, she suddenly wanted to cry. She stood
in the passage fighting the feeling while Julius rummaged in his boxes. ‘Hang on,’ she heard him
say, ‘this could be interesting!’ She knew she should look but she felt she couldn’t move. ‘Ta tum,’
sang Julius, echoing a cadence. She knew he would be beaming into a box of papers and that in
a minute he’d come out with tapes, impeccably labelled, which he’d slap in a rubbishy Japanese
player while Mozart, in highest fi, sang unregarded two rooms away. She wanted to move but
couldn’t. She had a feeling of being trapped. ‘Mr Mumford,’ she said, ‘do you mind? I don’t feel
well. Perhaps I should go home.’ But he hadn’t heard. ‘Ah!’ he called gleefully. ‘I thought this was
somewhere around.’ When he came out he was so intensely happy that she couldn’t repeat what
she’d said about leaving.
Julius was brisk as Mozart as he carted the box to the lounge. Enfolded by the larghetto, they
looked through Greg’s tapes, postcards, and piles of notes. ‘This was his first attempt at a new
notation’ said Julius. ‘He changed it a lot, later.’ Estelle was a little surprised to see that most of the
sheets were covered in tables of figures; they seemed to be regular measurements of something. ‘I’ll
give the young feller this,’ said Julius, ‘he wasn’t all theory. He really did go to trouble to discover
what a sound was. Exactly. He had me running round half of Croydon and Lilydale. I didn’t know
what I was letting myself in for!’
Shy Estelle had not heard an old man confide like this. She found Julius rather sweet, but
hardly knew how to act. ‘Fill your glass, Estelle,’ said Julius loudly. ‘We’ll see what else we’ve got.’
After a little more rummaging, and some heavenly phrases from the clarinet, Julius started to
laugh. ‘The things you do!’ he spluttered. ‘He said a sound was different according to whether you
heard it near a reverberant surface or not. Been a lot of research on that of course, but almost all
indoors. Concert hall stuff. He was on his traffic noise stage. He got himself up a tree about five
hundred metres from the freeway, and he had me down on the pavement. On my knees, if you
please, when this poodle walked up, all freshly clipped. I had my hair all over the place. The look
of contempt on that dog’s face!’ Julius’s wrinkles were full of pleasure. ‘The things you do!’ he said.
‘God I loved him.’
This time Estelle did cry. ‘No good crying girl,’ said Julius sternly, still on his knees by the box.
‘He knew what he was doing. He made up his mind and did it. Just respect it. You saw that note.
He was clear, right to the end.’
But Estelle was ashamed of something she thought was grasping in her nature. She had wanted
so much from Greg that he hadn’t given. She felt her growth to womanhood had been snapped off
by the suicide, and didn’t know where to go. ‘I think I’ll go home now, Mr Mumford,’ she said. ‘Or
I might take what you don’t want round to Murdy’s ...’
Murdy was surprised when she called at half past ten. He saw the red eyes and felt a sexual tenderness. ‘Mr Mumford says the parents can have these things, so long as we do copies for him,’
she said, trying to be businesslike. ‘We’ll do that,’ said Murdy, keeping it on the business level for
a while. But when she went to go home, her car refused to start. Murdy caught a tap at the back
door, even meeker than when she came, and heard Estelle, hands clasped as if in prayer, say, ‘Oh
Murdy I feel about as big as a mouse. My car won’t go, I’m so useless ...’
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He offered to run her home; she said she’d get a taxi because he couldn’t leave the children;
he said they were sound asleep and wouldn’t wake in the twenty minutes it would take; she agreed
because she wanted to be with him; he had his bit of car trouble on the way home, which he diagnosed as a loose distributor cap and fixed in a second. He didn’t start straight away, but kissed her;
she said she knew what she wanted to do was wrong but she hadn’t done a thing with her life, she
was going overseas to study in a month and she didn’t want to go a virgin; Murdy said cars were
no good for these things, would she come back to his place? She said she was going away with her
mother for a week, she’d see him when she got back; she dared not get pregnant, she’d have to see
about an IUD, ‘And that’s going to be incredibly embarrassing,’ she said, ‘but I’m going to do it,’
so Murdy drove back to his sleeping children feeling intensely happy at a ‘wrong’ situation giving
promise of an experience of such purity.
Julius sat with his hand wrapped round a wine glass. Not all was loathsome. Greg had been enough
to redeem a generation, and Estelle, though far from finding herself, had a little of the same beauty.
Trouble was, there wasn’t much of it about: his own boys, though he regarded them with genial
affection, were too wily, or capable, to qualify. They would replace him, demographically, but they
had separate identities. Julius was attracted to the notion of a spiritual descendant but Greg was
dead and the world, as far as Julius could see, was left without an heir. Poor world! And yet he felt
pleased with the evening. Estelle had sweetened him. He settled down with a history of African
exploration: then his wife came home.
Hanging up her coat, she said ‘The things you uncover. Really. Poor Wynn was quite upset.’
Julius winced.
His wife went went on: ‘Beth, our paragon of virtue, has been terrifying quite a number of
people. Blackmail threats. Horrible letters. Threats to have people evicted, really spiteful stuff. The
worsr thing was, a niece of Wynn’s has apparently been having an affair with someone — local
tradesman, fairly seedy — and she’s been getting letters. One look at the handwriting and we
knew.’
‘How did you get onto that?’ said Julius, bearing it.
‘Apparently the man does jobs for the Brotherhood and he twigged where the letters came
from. Beth was the only one who could have known. So he came to me.’
Rhonda complained about handling complaints but had never tried to unload the job.
‘Did you let on you already knew?’
‘I told him we’d be investigating and we’d let him know as soon as there was something definite.’
‘Don’t ring us, we’ll ring you.’
Rhonda grew tetchy. ‘Well what would you have done? If we’d given him what we knew he
could have started a civil action against her.’
‘Why not let him?’
‘There is the name of the organisation to consider.’
Julius was disgusted. ‘Name! Look, girl, half the troubles of the world could be avoided if
people stopped acting up to names. Protecting names. Projecting images and all that crap. What’s
so sick about us that we can’t accept things as they are?’
‘Don’t give me a lecture Julius! Beth needs protecting too. She’s in a very vulnerable position.
She could be in all sorts of hot water if we don’t get her out of this.’
Julius made a vulgar sound.
‘Look Julius, she’s been a cornerstone of that place for donkey’s years, she’s done an incredible
amount of good for people. She’s worth protecting. And there’s the people she’s going to help in
the future ...’
Julius crowed: ‘You’re not going to keep her on?’
‘No,’ admitted Rhonda, ‘she’ll have to retire, but there’s other charity work ...’
112
‘Utter bullshit,’ said her husband. ‘This pretence of virtue. She’s done a lot of what you call
good ...’
‘Well, don’t you?’ demanded his wife.
‘... and an equivalent amount of harm ...’
‘No!’ defended Rhonda.
‘Yes, bugger it, yes,’ snapped her husband. ‘And don’t get so uptight. This is the point I’m
trying to make to you. She’s no different from anyone else. People just act. And silly bastards, all
fired up with pious morality, label some actions good and others bad. Which encourages people to
pretend. To put on acts. To keep up a respectable face. They feel virtuous if they do some things,
and if they do others they feel guilty or ashamed. Guilt and shame! By God Christian morality’s
got a lot to answer for. It’s divided people instead of making them whole beings ...’
‘This is rather hard to stomach,’ said his wife, growing angry. ‘What are you going to put in
its place?’
‘Nothing,’ said Julius. ‘We’ll have what we’ve got now, except we won’t put false labels on it.’
He drank deeply from his glass, his wife hoping he would choke.
‘There’s a lot of harm in people,’ she said unctuously. ‘How are you going to control it?’
‘Oh forget it,’ grumbled Julius. ‘What are you going to do about the old biddy now you’ve got
the evidence?’
‘We’re not sure,’ said Rhonda primly. ‘Wynn and I will be talking about it tomorrow.’ She
picked up her coat and went to the bedroom. Her rebuke took the form of noisily straightening
things in his wardrobe and stacking the technical magazines strewn on his side of the bed. If Greg
were here, thought Julius, grinning slyly, he could tape this for a little piece called Domestic Venom.
Having savoured his private victory, he tackled the dishes.
Mrs Miller wanted an appointment with the hairdressers. Under a certain amount of duress, Myer
salon fitted her in the following morning, a Saturday, warning her of a likely wait. She spent the
time getting to know people; it was her lifelong habit. As chance would have it, she ran into a Mrs
Bond, whose daughter Estelle had been working with Mrs Miller’s son Murdy in recovering material belonging to a brilliant young man Estelle had been attached to. And then, in one of those
coincidences which forced them to conclude that it was a small world, the ladies discovered that
the lady nearest them was a Mrs Paton from Sydney, mother of Greg. The ladies played politics
via their children. Murdy would certainly be doing everything possible to recover the things Mrs
Paton wanted, and Mrs Miller agreed that she would give him Mrs Paton’s Melbourne address
and number, which she noted in her diary. And he was, she pointed out, very busy at the moment
because his wife was away with the orchestra and he had the children to look after, which was, as
they knew, a fulltime job in itself. This led Mrs Bond to have a momentary tremor about Estelle’s
late arrival on a recent evening, but she decided there could be no harm when the girl, as she
proudly announced, would be off to the Sorbonne in a month. After due consideration of Estelle’s
linguistic talents, the conversation moved to Murdy’s Mueller book, now in an advanced stage of
editorial revision; Mrs Miller had an eye on a possible senior lecturer vacancy.
But Mrs Paton’s affirmation was grim. There had been neglect, she said, in the circle around
her son. People who should have read the signs had chosen to ignore them. A brilliant composer
had been lost to the country, and only his family, it seemed, were bothering to grieve. She hinted
that if Greg’s so-called former friends were tardy in handing over things in their possession then
law suits might be necessary.
Mrs Miller found these ideas insulting, but was prepared to treat. ‘They loved Greg,’ she
assured Mrs Paton, ‘but the moment’ — her tone of voice gave the word italics — ‘may have come
suddenly. It can, with young people, they’re so up one minute, down the next. And his friends
are busy people, perhaps if there were signs they just didn’t happen to have called at the right
times ...’
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‘The young!’ said Mrs Paton, ready to launch into a diatribe. ‘Don’t talk to me about the
young.’ But Mrs Miller had a trump card. ‘Unfortunately,’ she said, ‘it’s often the oldies who make
all the trouble.’
She told them, without mentioning names, the case of Beth.
This time it was Estelle’s mother who took a punitive line, and Mrs Paton who was understanding. ‘I know why she turned sour,’ she said: ‘It was getting no thanks for all those years of
work!’ Mrs Miller felt that virtue should be its own reward but Mrs Paton said her ideas were
unreal, people needed ‘real emotional returns’. She would have made an issue of this, but Mrs
Miller moved swiftly; noticing an empty chair she beckoned Antoine’s assistant and had Mrs Paton
installed. She confided to Estelle’s mother: ‘Young people get a great many more opportunities
thrust in front of them than we ever had. It’s a wonder more of them don’t fall by the wayside.’
Mrs Bond hadn’t time to reply before they were distracted by the entry of a man garbed in
studded leather — black jacket, pants and boots. Widely flaring gloves hid his hands; his head, in
a time of long hair, was covered in short, well-greased spikes. His face, if examined, was bitter, but
attention was distracted by his emblem: an elaborate, blood-red poppy which stood erect from a
satanic epaulette. His target was an apprentice hairdresser wearing a badge that said beverley on
her white coat. In a voice of brutal command, the bikie said, ‘Y’right?’ Beverley, hands soapy from
a client’s hair, looked as if the earth had opened. She lifted her eyes to the clock. ‘Not yet,’ she
gasped. Antoine, standing beside her, snapped, ‘Get on with it Beverley, what are you doing?’ but
was plainly terrified. The bikie ignored the mauve rinse and perm people, concentrating his gaze
on Beverley, who looked around the salon and found no support. Antoine snapped at her again,
but kept his back to the poppy-man, who clapped a glove on the girl’s wrist. ‘Now,’ he said. ‘Right
now.’ Mrs Miller studied the girl, whose haunted eyes betrayed her double life. Her girl-next-door
identity was supported by a beige coloured rollneck beneath her white coat, but a weakness of
character was being cruelly exposed. Mrs Miller addressed herself to the tempter: ‘I’m afraid you’ll
have to wait, young man. It’s nowhere near twelve o’clock when the salon closes. It’s very busy this
morning, as you see.’ The man kept his grip.
Mrs Miller stepped up the pressure. ‘I think you’d be wise to go,’ she said. ‘You’re disturbing
the peace, coming in here like this. I think Antoine’ — her voice grew firm, directing the hairdresser
— ‘will have to ring the store detective if you don’t leave!’
She had her win, but it proved hollow. The poppy-man dropped Beverley’s wrist and strode
heavily to the door. Turning, he challenged the salon: ‘It’s Charley’s funeral,’ he said, as if that
explained everything, and disappeared. Beverley’s indecision lasted barely a second. She wiped
her hands on a towel and took off the coat. ‘Thanks,’ she said to Mrs Miller, ‘but it’s no good.’
Forgetting her client, she said humbly ‘Sorry Antoine,’ and left the salon.
‘Well that beats everything,’ said Mrs Bond, but Mrs Miller felt she had to know more. She
rushed from the salon, the heart of her world plucked out. By the time she lost Beverley near
the escalators she heard the roar outside. When she reached the street, she found herself among
a crowd of spectators at a bikie gathering. Hundreds of bikes were filling a whole block with an
assemblance of black and polished steel, chrome, leather, and the symbolism of their cult — skulls,
daggers, spiders, snakes, phallic knives. Some had women and babies in sidecars, others rode, lean
and contemptuous, alone. Some circled violently, others talked easily, as if letting their mounts
graze. Traffic signals were turned off and white-gloved policemen diverted traffic. Mrs Miller found
the tension worse than the noise: why was this insurrection supported by the police? The sweaty
smell of the garments, the rankness of leather and the violence of the studded belts repelled her.
She caught one glimpse of the poppy-man threading his Triumph through the throng at speed,
a blonde, hair-down Beverley, wearing a jacket, clinging hard to her rider, and then the press of
onlookers blocked her view. ‘Weird sort of outfit,’ she heard someone say, ‘Cops’re actually encouraging them.’ ‘Best way to get’em out of the city,’ another voice replied. The crowd was more awed
than sullen, and seemed to accept that preferential treatment might appease such people. There
was a tremendous roar of engines starting as two gangleaders, each with a woman clinging to his
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insignia-covered back, swung in behind a truck with a riderless bike mounted on the tray. ‘The late
Charley’s, apparently,’ said a bitter voice behind Mrs Miller. Mrs Miller caught the next remark
more by empathy than by the transference of sound, because the movement of the truck was the
signal for the whole concourse to jockey for position. ‘Mindless fascism!’ said the bitter voice, and
it so echoed Mrs Miller’s thoughts, though she would never have expressed them, that she turned
to look at the speaker.
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10
It was Anne. She had her hair cut short and her jeans tucked in dark orange boots. Beneath her
navy suitcoat, her unpadded shoulders looked frail. Her hair, whether from bleach or sunlight, was
the color of a marmalade cat. Her tee-shirt, many times washed, was shiny and had comfortable
little bumps for her nipples. Her face showed a bitter certainty that was habitual. In the compression of time in which she formed her reactions, she looked about the crowd, ready to see them as
sheep.
She saw Mrs Miller, and Mrs Miller saw in Anne revulsion, and the admission of a likeness. ‘I
must say,’ said Mrs Miller, taking the initiative with this most intransigent of Murdy’s friends, ‘it’s
not a very comforting spectacle, is it?’
‘The cops,’ said Anne, emphasising her disbelief, ‘are actually encouraging them!’ She was
implying that unionists doing the same thing would be bashed, but restrained herself, both because
of uncertainty about Mrs Miller, and because she felt there was an incipient fascism in the man
holding her arm, whose plumpness and air of professional certitude had not escaped Mrs Miller’s
notice. ‘George Leveson,’ said Anne, introducing. ‘Mrs Miller.’ Mrs Miller, greeting the corpulent
young man, wondered if his surname might not once have been Levenstein, he was so plainly
Jewish. A barrister, she decided, he had the thick lips and well fed look.
‘And what have you been doing with yourself lately?’ said Mrs Miller, who would have made
conversation at the last judgment. ‘Anything interesting?’
‘A bit of canoeing last weekend,’ said Anne, looking at the barrister. ‘And I gave a paper at the
_____ conference. Fairly disastrous.’ Mrs Miller assured her that her son had been impressed by
her paper. ‘I followed Murdy,’ said Anne, slyly undercutting.
‘He did say that some of them were too conservative to appreciate your point of view,’ said
the older woman. ‘What was it on again, now? Murdoch did tell me.’ Anne told her. ‘Now that’s
something that I’d find interesting,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘because I’d have been your age at that time.’
‘Raising funds for the war effort?’ said Anne, ‘and knitting?’
‘More darning than knitting,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘That never stopped. Though if you knitted your
woollens it did save coupons. We had rationing then, as you know.’
‘It’s been proved to have been unnecessary,’ said Anne: ‘it was really a form of indoctrination
to create a war mentality.’ This rebuke to the period of Mrs Miller’s young motherhood was almost
swallowed by the bikies kicking their machines into life. ‘Volume of sound produced should surely
count in any definition of unlawful assembly,’ shouted George Leveson; Mrs Miller felt he was
currying favor with Anne’s position and wondered how secure the man was. ‘People have been
arrested,’ Anne snarled, ‘for using loud hailers in the city square. Great, isn’t it!’
‘Getting back to the war effort,’ said Mrs Miller, as the bikes moved into the convoy, ‘people
at the time were genuinely afraid of invasion. I think a lot of women realised that their hopes of a
quiet life were being interrupted again, but there wasn’t much they could do about it. The men had
to go off to fight, and whether you liked it or not you couldn’t avoid the effects of that.’
‘I realise that that was how women felt,’ said Anne, ‘but you can’t examine the position women
took then, or take now, without examining the means by which they are put in that position.
Conscious manipulation is going on all the time. Wars or depressions increase the pressure because
they reduce alternatives but it’s the manipulation that, finally, women have to destroy.’ George
Leveson glanced casually about him, both Mrs Miller and Anne recognising his discomfort;
‘People are always afraid of something,’ said Mrs Miller, pausing for the remark to take effect, ‘and
it was terrifying to be threatened by invasion. The things we heard about the Japanese …’
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‘Propaganda,’ said Anne, ‘Mostly untrue.’
‘But unfortunately some of it was true,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘as we’ve found out since. Anyhow, we
couldn’t be certain if it was exaggerated or not. We had to take it seriously.’
‘That’s the position we’re always put in!’ said Anne, and both women were conscious of her
use of ‘we’: Anne felt herself surrounded by trivialisation — men who wouldn’t take her seriously,
people who couldn’t take ideas seriously enough to act on them, women who couldn’t believe in
themselves. ‘Well, of course,’ said the old lady, looking steadily at Anne’s blazing eyes, and her
freckles, ‘you may not like the position you’re put in, but that doesn’t make it change. Someone
may be manipulating it, but it is still your real position.’ Years of careful adaptation to circumstances lay behind her challenge. ‘Every time you see false consciousness it should be confronted,’
said Anne, slipping into doctrine, which Mrs Miller regretted. ‘Anyhow,’ she said, and Anne saw
that it was her cut-off word, ‘I must go back inside. I’m having my hair set. I just slipped out for
a moment.’
This was so irregular that Anne knew something was wrong.
‘Why did you do that? You must’ve had an appointment?’
Mrs Miller related her experience with Beverley and the poppy-man; she even pointed them
out, joining the rear of the column. Anne stared down the road at the last of the bikies, and the
police switching traffic lights to normal operation. Something had been plucked from the heart of
Mrs Miller’s world, and Anne felt sorry for her. Sensing her pity, Mrs Miller said, ‘It’s just one of
those things you have to accept,’ and retreated into Myers.
‘Not a bad old lady,’ said Anne, ‘but fucked!’ George Leveson, whose mother hadn’t met Anne
yet, was cautious. The footpath seemed dank to Anne, and the shoppers appeared to have no idea
of what sort of life they were being forced to buy. Her hatred of mindless consumerism screwed
itself up a few notches. ‘Let’s get out of here,’ she said to the aggressively complacent legal man
she had temporarily caught hold of. ‘Let’s go up to The Whirlwind.’
Mrs Miller knew she was retreating from the vitality of Saturday morning, seething around her
like the dances and productions of her early maturity. She knew because she followed the news
avidly, eager to know the new forms. Anne disturbed her in the same way the poppy-man disturbed
her; neither was content to leave alone those spheres of life that did not belong to them, but felt
they must have entry. Tracking back via the escalators, Mrs Miller wondered how she’d become
the custodian of the Beth Simpsons who couldn’t order their lives decently. Following the curves
obediently, Mrs Miller found herself wanting to buy something for her grandchildren. Denying this
urge, she felt she would only be buying their love. The fact that she loved them should be enough,
but she did want to see more of them, and they were firmly in the control of her son who was as
determined and as organised as she. She wanted to do something big! London? Absurd. A family
visit to the provincial city of her upbringing? No, Murdy was too busy, and Christie was overseas with the orchestra ... Mrs Miller, dabbling in her bag, brought out a card. Stationing herself
between flannelette nighties from Hong Kong and mysteriously unlabelled black petticoats ‘for the
girl who is twelve and knows it’, Mrs Miller read:
Dear Mrs Miller, and Mr Miller,
The orchestra played badly tonight. Beethoven, Barber, and Margaret Sutherland, a program which was
supposed to be transnational ...
These were not the distinctions by which Mrs Miller ruled her life. Virtue was her main concern, and young Anne troubled her deeply, because Mrs Miller knew that people these days led
lives that were so unconventional and even promiscuous, yet the qualities and rules that had shaped
her girlhood were mysteriously still extant. Anne hated those bikies as much as she did. She found
herself wishing Murdy had met and married Anne before he encountered the mysterious Christie.
What did she add up to, with all her self-effacing certainty? She seemed to hear the world as if it
had just broken its silence, she had such peculiarly personal standards, she was such a paragon of
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virtue and yet one couldn’t tell how it was maintained. She was responsive to pressures, however
subtle, yet maintained a reserve that almost frightened you out of asking.
... but can’t have satisfied anyone. It didn’t sound American, German or Australian, just a mid-Pacific
mix ...
Mrs Miller loved the hymns of her childhood but music as an art was formidably abstract.
Whistling on one tone above the dinner dishes, she could recapture the sounds and smells of her
parents’ house, and her father’s work — her father polishing the brass of the first engine driven
firecart ever seen in the rural city which she didn’t visit, today, unless some trusted friend invited
her back, in which case she was being recalled for an occasion. Mrs Miller, who was forever creating occasions, distrusted them; they made feeling public. One needed to be alone to know the
truth: lucky son, whose wife was overseas. Lucky Anne, single, and in command (it seemed) of her
own life.
Anne, still angry at the bikies, was hustling George Leveson towards her car and the drive to
Carlton; George, wondering why he let himself be swept towards the Italian coffee bar with its
soccer machines and cigarette packets tossed on the floor, felt he was pursuing an uncomfortable
truth to its source.
La Buffera was quiet when they entered, but Anne settled snugly in its atmosphere. With the
Trades Hall down the road, University behind her, and a few Italians talking across the fakemarbled space between tables, bar and soccer machine, Anne was at home. She studied George
for signs of discomfort, but decided to leave him alone. Last night she had temporarily crossed the
line between using him as an instrument and absorbing herself into him. They had discussed living
together but she had said no. She asked Ricco for two cappucinos, put a coin in the juke box and
selected Macho Man: a mass of contradictions, thought George, as she punched her palm to the
rhythm. ‘Macho, macho man,’ the Village People shouted, Anne humming with them lightly: ‘To
have that kind of body, is always in demand ...’
‘Have you got anything you have to do?’ Anne asked her lover; George said he ought to spend
the afternoon in his chambers, and she said she ought to work but didn’t feel like it. George studied
her; she had the same sharp clarity as the light streaming through the plate glass. It was uncompromising, cast sharp shadows, and separated everything. Signs dominated the street: Borsari’s
Cycle Emporium, Souvlaki, Dim Sims, Fish and Chips. Cars, driven with the indifferent attention
of Australian drivers, surged away from the lights. An old man, running before them, reached the
haven of the cafe. Capped and coated, he settled at the next table and started talking to Anne.
‘They go for me,’ he said, ‘but they don’t finish me yet.’ Dealing with him via his grievance, she said
traffic should be banned in Lygon Street, but he only grumbled about the council and opened the
paper. She doesn’t handle him as well as I would, thought her lover, and yet she claims to espouse
his cause. What did she have in common with the Italian-Australian for whom Ricco had started
another cup without having to be asked?
Anne, turning back, saw she was under observation: ‘Yes George?’ she challenged. ‘Just a little
conundrum I was thinking of,’ he said. ‘If a radical intellectual, a leatherworker and a lawyer were
in one of those classic situations, like shipwrecked on an island or adrift on a raft, which one would
survive?’
She narrowed her eyes. ‘Why should it only be one that’d survive? What do you mean, George?’
He knew he was within a whisker of losing her. He said, ‘There are concealed qualities in people
that only come out in strange situations. I feel a little strange right here. It lets me see something.
I think you’ve got more affinity with ...’ he nodded ‘ ... than you have with me.’
‘So what, George?’
‘Last night we talked about living together.’
‘I thought of it.’
‘You obviously wouldn’t live with him ...’
She lowered her eyelids: raised them.
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‘So what are you after?’
‘Don’t try to turn the question back to me George. You’ve hinted at something you haven’t got
the guts to say. What is it?’
With surprising honesty, he said, ‘I don’t know why I’m here.’
Being moved into an explanatory role soothed her a little. She said, ‘You live on your wits.
You’re a con-man as much as anything else. The whole legal profession’s the same. You’re different
in that you do acknowledge it to some extent. You’d like to legitimise yourself in some way. You
think the answer’s in the working class. It isn’t, it needs a change in your consciousness of what
you’re doing. Why don’t you join the Legal Aid Service George?’
‘They’re only sticking on bandaids. It’s useful social service but I’d like to do better than
that.’
‘What fucking cheek!’ she snapped, and this time the Italian looked above his paper. ‘You
cannot prevent yourself thinking about your career. You’re prepared to take union cases and civil
liberties cases, which I admit probably harm your image in legal circles, but the reason you’ll take
them is because they keep you in the news. They’re actually good career builders. What you won’t
do is the hack work of handling what you have the hide to call little problems. They’re not little,
George, they’re real and they’re big! When people think they’re going to get evicted or they can’t
get an abortion or the cops have pinned a charge on them, believe it or not, George, they actually
think those things are big!’
‘How come we mix with trendies,’ he said. ‘Who’s going to be at this party tonight?’
She saw a chance to get back: ‘Should be a few crooks, George,’ she taunted.
He was too sure of her to be anything but cool.
‘Where do they fit in?’
‘Lawrence Hearn’s mob. There’ll be some of those halfwits that hang around with Barbara
whatever she calls herself these days.’
‘Not very promising.’
‘Word gets around. There’ll be more than that.’
‘You going to perform?’
‘Might.’
They smiled at each other. Performing meant passing into her all-out mood when she was
most vulnerable. She had taken on George in one of these moods, six weeks before. Now she came
to him at night when her mind wouldn’t stop racing, or she rang him if she was feeling defenceless, and he came over. Their relationship was made of bright, daylit antagonisms, and driving in
the dark to find each other. Suddenly he blurted out, ‘You can both live with chaos!’ His glance
included the Italian. ‘It’s what you expect to have around you. He couldn’t be as calm ... he’s left
Italy to come out here, it’s got to be that. Yes! And you too, you need chaos, don’t you? It’s out of
chaos you get your power!’
Taunting again, she said, ‘Anything else, George?’
He said, ‘How do you master your terror?’
‘What terror, George?’
‘What do you see?’
‘I see a fucking rotten system ...’ she began, but he interrupted: ‘You don’t see that, you tell
yourself that after you’ve looked, but what do you see?’
She glared angrily at him but he stabbed a finger at the glass front wall. ‘What do you see?’ he
insisted.
‘Just what do you mean, George?’ she said, her voice harsh with tension. ‘Which part of me
are you trying to get at?’ ‘Don’t turn it into a fight,’ he said. ‘Stop being aggressive. Turn around
and tell me what you see!’
‘What sort of trick is this?’ she demanded, and her shoulders were stiff and her face was flushed
as if she had come from the shower.
‘No trick at all,’ he said. ‘Simple test. Turn around.’
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She knew he had hit her inability to refuse a challenge. She turned in her chair.
‘Well?’
The Italian, though pretending to read, was listening.
Trying to maintain a cockiness, she said, ‘Plate glass. Red phone. Guy reading a paper. So
what?’
‘Where do you fit? Where do we fit?’
She swung back angrily. ‘Oh don’t try to be cosmic George. It’s all quite trivial.’ She jerked
her hand at the view she had abandoned. ‘One doesn’t form one’s understanding from the piffling
little things that happen to be over one’s shoulder. God! If you believe in that crap then babies see
everything best because they don’t know anything.’
‘Don’t you think they might?’
‘Don’t be so bloody hypocritical George. I don’t notice that you’re in any hurry to have kids.
And don’t knock knowledge like that. It’s totally irresponsible. And hypocritical. You make a bloody
good living out of specialised knowledge which your profession makes sure the ordinary man can’t
understand. So what’s all this shit about looking out a window?’
‘I wouldn’t mind kids,’ he said. ‘What about you?’ ‘I might,’ she said, ‘if I don’t get too old
before I feel like it.’ ‘How old’s too old?’
‘When I was nineteen,’ she said, ‘I thought thirty was the limit.’ ‘Have you shifted the limit?’
he said. He was twenty nine, thought she was about the same. ‘I don’t think the limit matters any
more,’ she said. ‘It’s the terms on which women have them.’
‘I’ll pay that one,’ he said, finishing his coffee. ‘I’d better do a bit of work.’
‘Come for tea,’ she said. ‘Everyone’s in tonight, we’ll be having a roast. Half past seven?’
When they separated she walked a little way and stopped. Motel. Park. Drinking fountain.
Carlton, home of the counter-culture, already betraying its origins. Shops called Pots’n’patios. Just
Jeans. The movement was selling out. There was nothing to do but buy and sell. Money to stay
the night. Money to buy ferns. Everything controlled by marketing experts, everything negotiable.
Those who controlled the ideas controlled the behaviour, it was as simple as that. Control the
behaviour, control the spending: control the spending, control the power. Shaking her shoulders
as she remembered her lover’s cool way of defusing her attacks, she looked for the weakness.
Weakness, in her analysis, was where power was absent; women, aborigines, children, everyone
but the raunchy, commercial males. They were all frauds. How she hated manipulation. Blindly,
desperately, her mind explored the scene about her, conscious of psychic forces pushing and conquering as far as they were able. Motel, park, fountain. A marble bust of the councillor who told the
most adhesive lies to the generation two before her own. The vast sham of Victoriana. I see slimy
legal structures everywhere, she wanted to shout at complacent, tax-dodging George. What do you
see, you cunning shit, she gasped in anger, wanting to cry, and feeling a hand on her shoulder.
Startled, she jumped back, all senses alert.
It was the Italian.
‘Signora,’ he bumbled, ‘you are unhappy.’
What next?
‘You have a lover,’ he continued. ‘You quarrel with him.’
‘What is this?’ she said. ‘Something out of Rossini?’
‘I have time to listen,’ he said. ‘I know what troubles come to young women.’
He was on the verge of stroking her chin. ‘Fuck off!’ she said. A spunky young Renato or Carlo
passing by called ‘Eh poppa’, and led the old man off, talking volubly. Anne sat down. Bench.
Cool air, bright light. Skyscrapers without cloud to rub against, only the bland immensity of blue.
Eighteen empty storeys, she thought, picking one; State Government racket. The dark tower of
BHP, closed as the directors’ board room. Cops, with their radio tower of the thirties: what a sham
that progress had turned out to be. City of frauds, she cursed: full of landmarks and impending
trade centres, of ideas foisted on the people that turned out to be not worth a pinch of shit.
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Royal tours, American Presidents, what a con! Profits ripped off overseas. People forced to fit
a system in an endless distortion of humanity. If there was one spark of revolution, she thought,
I’d give my life to kill their lies. But the traffic surged past — unstylish Holdens; better cars sold
as status symbols; comfortable people ripping off uncomfortable; crazy people creating madness
in people who could have been sane, and overall an indifference, a sense of powerlessness as bland
and seamless as the canopy of sky. The piercing light of Australia, the rubbish on which people
spent their money! The light was like a truth drug; nothing could be clearer than what was happening around her; the consumer goods attacked the brain like lollies affected teeth. Rage, she knew,
was useless without direction, and there was no direction to travel, one could only enter the vast
vortex of banality.
George lived happily in it, she thought, and Murdy with his cushy job and his wife in America
on an unnecessary trip: who in the name of Christ wanted to hear the Melbourne orchestra?
She was still smouldering when Renato or was it Carlo came back to apologise for the old man;
his uncle, he said, who was very proud of his eyes. ‘He thinks he has only to look at someone and
she goes whoooowwh!’ said the young man. ‘I am sorry.’ Yes and you’ve got the same trick and you
also know when someone’s vulnerable, Anne thought: cheap Mediterranean spunk!
Glass separated Janis from Harry. She’d wanted air from the bay but the windows didn’t open: a
matter of the air conditioning, Harry had told her. One could go onto the balcony or stay inside,
but once you were outside, the door closed unless you jammed it open, which Harry didn’t want.
So she had the bay, and separation, and when she tried to study him, her reflection got in the
way.
Barbara wondered what she’d do with the washing machine; take it to her place, or chuck it on the
beach as a surrealist greeting for Harry in the morning?
Murdy, judging to a nicety when Estelle’s mother would arrive back from their holiday, picked
up the phone to ask Estelle if she could come round that night. To the increase of his pleasurable
anticipation, she said she would. He had scarcely put down the phone when his mother rang to say
that his aunt Una was coming down, and would he like to bring the children to lunch on Sunday.
He agreed. She asked if he would like to bring the children over straight away, leaving himself free
to go to a concert or a film. He said, no, his motive being that it would make him too dangerously
free for Estelle; she might be frightened.
Janis moved to watch Harry through the glass. He was hanging up her coat. She felt a pang of fear,
like a waking nightmare: what if the door got jammed and she couldn’t get back in?
When Mrs Miller got home, her husband’s coat and hat were missing from the hall. He had gone to
the football. There would be four hours till Una, who would take a taxi because of her hip, arrived.
She let the house enfold her. She could sweep, to begin with, then make a pie, as if normality was
beyond dissolving. Later she could recall her son who died, his friends, and the blazing summer
morning when Bernard, an amorous 28, had taken her to meet his parents, who pretended to be
more interested in their garden than in their scrutiny of her. She watched them plant two trees
outside their new house, they said their children had grown up, they were making a second start.
Bernard’s father died the year Murdoch was born; death and conception must have been only a
few days apart. Bernard’s mother lived nine more years, enough to see her flame tree shed its leaves
for flowering. Mrs Miller had found Murdoch against the tree one afternoon when he was scarcely
more than a baby, and a bird hopping by his toes. She had rushed him inside, examining him for
sunburn, but not without feeling a distillation of overwhelming richness in the inflorescence above
her head. The day that poor Greg Paton had killed himself, she had had the same sensation in the
gardens; it was surely more than coincidence. All flowers were beautiful, but the flame tree let its
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leaves fall on the ground like clothing discarded for a lover. Mrs Miller was a nominal Christian,
but neither Lazarus nor Christ resurrected had the same unbound power, no human could have
such wholeness this side of fantasy.
Trees were released from shame and virtue.
She was glad it was winter, centre of the year and a time of respite.
She set one place at the table, grilled a chop, and opened a jar of preserved apricots. They were
from a tree on the farm Una sold to her daughter in law. Delicious! She would serve them with
dinner tonight.
Janis calculated that in 44 hours she would be in Bruce’s car, heading north. 44 times 60 minutes
left. It meant there was a limit to the number of times Harry would touch her, the words they
would exchange, the moments of meaningful contact. Despite the bay breeze ruffling her hair, time
had settled like a net composed of tiny squares, in every one of which something might happen,
or nothing. A limit had imposed itself on the emotional potential that had been boundless. The
only way to escape was to float spiritually, regardless of consequences. There would be an awful
comedown at the end but that was the price of freedom from clockwatching, from seeing it all
dribble out to its end.
Barbara saw Jesus in a coffee shop, said gooday. Jesus joined her, got heavy after a while, Barbara
wasn’t having any of that.
Bruce came down to Melbourne, rang Janis, called on Prue. Prue was out but her sister was in
the flat. Said she was seventeen, looked a lot older, was probably lying. Said she’d got sick of her
parents too, had cleared out of Sydney to follow Prue. They talked, Bruce thought it an afternoon
well-spent.
Julius was stretched on the sofa, reading the Age; there was a piece on some students who pretended to be crippled to see what difficulties were encountered by the handicapped. One of them,
it appeared, had rung Vicrail to arrange for a ramp to be ready when he wanted to board a train.
He’d arrived late, got flustered, folded his wheelchair and ran. The guards had not been amused.
Julius smiled; it opened up so many possibilities for studying people when they thought they had
you at a disadvantage.
The Beth Simpson case obsessed his wife. The best solution she and Wynn Miller could think of
was to wait till Christmas time, give an extra big party, and announce that Beth was retiring. The
trouble was, Beth hadn’t been fronted with it yet. What if she refused to go? What if she ruined the
Xmas party by telling the pensioners she’d been forced out? It was potentially very damaging. Beth
might be with them quite a while …
The kids had a card from their mum on the mantlepiece when Estelle arrived. Murdy saw her take
it as a hint they didn’t want her, so he gave it to her to look at. It was an aerial view of Chicago,
with the Sears Tower rising dramatically in the middle. She put it on the coffee table and while he
was out of the room she read it, feeling compromised.
Dear darlings,
Americans are buoyant people. They look past what they see to what they intend to do. They drag their
faults into the open, not to change them, but so they can live with them. We had a big reception here
this morning. People from the Australian Embassy were consciously representing something. They were
unpleasantly professional. Even the suavest Americans felt they had to be characters, and some of them
were. A white-suited self-styled patron of the arts asked me if the orchestra couldn’t do without me for
a couple of days ...
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Putting the card down, Estelle went to the kitchen and asked Murdy what sort of trip he
thought his wife was having. ‘She doesn’t like big groups of people,’ he said, ‘but she’s incredibly
observant, she’s sure to get a hell of a lot out of it.’
Estelle was nervous. ‘I’ve got to ask this,’ she said. ‘You don’t mind her ... having her freedom?’
He had his stock answer. ‘People don’t own each other,’ he said. ‘We’re free agents. Everyone
should be.’ Estelle seemed impressed but suspicious. ‘How,’ she said, ‘can something happen without having an effect on the two of you?’
Murdy, not sure how honest he could be, said, ‘When people are pretty well deadlocked, it’s
perhaps best if something outside changes one or the other.’
‘But surely,’ said the young Estelle, ‘that’s when you have to analyse what’s happened ...’ She
stopped, feeling too inexperienced to be listened to any further.
‘You can analyse,’ said Murdy, ‘but can you make things happen? Sometimes someone or
something coming from outside can break the stalemate. When does that happen? Well, you can
scheme to make things happen, or you can put yourself in the hands of fortune and let yourself be
acted on.’ She felt he was hiding some deeper distress, but took the cups and went in.
Fifty-two Byron Street surprised Janis and Harry. A light burned in a Japanese garden lamp.
Terracotta dragons topped the gate pillars. In the room under a corner spire a soft light glowed
on a grand piano. Janis drew Harry under an oak to attune herself. In a palm, the fronds of which
touched an ivy-covered gable, there was a scuffle of birds. A black cat came to the edge of the
verandah, lifting its eyes. Holding Harry’s hand, Janis shut out thought in favour of impression, but
her adjustment was interrupted by a blasting stereo — the opening bars of ‘Help!’ A moment later
this was wrenched off and replaced by Nana Mousskouri. Harry, commenting that the evening was
going to be a mixed bag musically, sensed that Janis didn’t want to go in. He drew her to a garden
seat facing away from the house. She rubbed her cheek on his shoulder.
Harry sensed danger. Lawrence had no place in a house like this, and he had been strangely
keen to get his brother along. Janis too, withdrawn among strangers and easily frightened, could
be an encumbrance. It would only need Barbara in one of her truculent moods to make the night
a disaster. Janis was disconcerted to hear her impervious beloved say, ‘Well, shall we brave it?’
When they entered they encountered three or four glassy-eyed strangers, and there was a burst
of laughter beyond the turn in the hall. The artificially jovial voice of Lawrence Hearn could be
heard pretending to reassure someone ‘That’s me brother Hamlet, tell ‘im I’ll be out in a minute.’
That stupid nickname! Harry felt he was being stalked by his brother on a ground of the other’s
choosing. Who owned this house? Where were they? Janis felt his wariness and attached herself to
him; he had to come through!
In the madness of her love was a nucleus of wisdom: her access to him was temporary. If she
supported him, or perfected him, in some crisis, he might let her grasp the essence of his life: this
second, if experienced clearly enough, might be a light lasting for years. She willed the hostility she
felt in this house, this party, to show itself.
But the rumbustious Lawrence was busy in the kitchen preparing punch. Evidence of this was
a glassy-eyed female in bright red dancing shoes who carried in a bloated bowl with glass cups
dangling perilously from its glass hooks. Next came Lawrence, lugging a ewer of white enamel. ‘Hi
Harry,’ he said. ‘Remember the old Mountain Haven at Warburton?’
Harry couldn’t escape the common boyhood. He nodded. ‘I got this,’ said Lawrence, jerking
the thing by its handle as if it were a recalcitrant goat, ‘when they burned it down. About eight
years ago, you remember?’
Harry remembered the fire. A moment later he found himself at the stern of the ewer, lifting, while the orange liquid frothed into the bowl. ‘Should prove a very interesting brew,’ said
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Lawrence, while his older brother’s eyes indicated to Janis that she should not think it less dangerous than liquids in more overtly dangerous bottles.
Wilfully, she took a glass of the punch and asked him about the Mountain Haven and Harry,
after accepting a gin and tonic from the red-shoe woman, began, for the first time since Janis had
known him, to talk of his childhood. His father had been an engineer at the health food factory,
and had built a cottage at the end of town, close to both river and forest. Harry said he had never
felt stressed because he could always find a place to think, though, he said, you could hardly talk
about solitude when the bush was as full of currawongs as the bush of his childhood.
Currawongs?
Thousands of them, Harry said. In the town, on the edge of farmland, in clearings where the
mills had been busy, on steep hillsides, at the top of a distant range, they’d be singing — and he
put his head back — Pa tee, pa taa, pa tdidit toom!
She was molten with excitement. Again he mimicked: Pa tee, pa taa, pa tdidit toom!
Red shoes looked startled and Lawrence returned to the room, ewer still in hand. ‘You’re off
to a good start,’ he said. ‘Punch agrees with you, does it?’ But Janis didn’t want him led from the
point where their lives intersected. ‘I hear them too!’ she said. ‘Whenever I go for walks. You’re a
terrific mimic, Harry, can you do anything else?’ He shook his head.
‘How did you teach yourself to do that?’
With a civilised smile, he told her that he had found the birds irritating and had thought as a
child that if he imitated them well enough they would feel so embarrassed that they would either
fly away or shut up. The deep amusement he felt at this disclosure was left open to her: she found
it miraculous that the birds which linked her to her own childhood linked her also to his, not
solely through the coincidence but in the way he was willing to allow a little of his singularity to
be graspable.
She knew that with Lawrence present he would be unlikely to reveal more, yet wanted revelations. She wanted to chart the underground rivers in Harry’s personality because then, even if she
could not make him love her, she could at least locate the passion that was swirling her about.
She was still trying to think of something to say when Red Shoes butted in: ‘Why do they call
you Hamlet?’ Harry countered: ‘Who does?’ Red Shoes said, ‘Your brother. Everyone.’ Harry said,
‘You should ask him.’
Janis felt it a weakness in Harry to dodge the question. Half an hour later — two cups of
punch, Harry noted — she asked him who was responsible for the nickname. Lawrence, he said
briefly. Half an hour after that, with the house filling rapidly, he noticed her gone from beside him.
Lawrence, Harry knew, would want some trade-off for answering her question, and Janis would
be unused to his way of operating; Harry waited for one or the other to re-enter the room. But
Barbara arrived with a coterie clad in denim, animal skin, raw wool, kaftans and hair. Studying the
gang, Harry gave his ex-wife a year before she swung away in an arc of revulsion leading to a fisherman, a lighthouse keeper, or possibly a solitary existence on an island. She seemed still to believe
that her personal quest was the quest of the period; that could not last much longer. Greeting her,
Harry took her hand, remembering the first time he had done so — at a cocktail party given by a
company director’s wife, when Barbara, mini-skirted and blooming, had stood awkwardly, drink in
hand, while introductions were made around a circle of embarrassment and assessment. That was
long ago! ‘And how did you team up with Lawrence in this setting?’ he asked, in a hurly burly that
included screams in the back yard, a TV replaying football in the next room, and driving rock on
the stereo. Barbara shrugged, dismissing his question; had she then, only been invited for the number of people she could bring? ‘Lawrence,’ he said, ‘does nothing for nothing. If he invited people,
he wants something of them.’ The first smell of marihuana bit the air. A voice beside them said, ‘It
won’t stain,’ but they could hear someone beside them wiping the piano lid, vaguely abashed at his
crime. ‘Don’t worry,’ said another voice. ‘Fuckin’ bourgeois status symbol.’
‘What was his price?’ said Harry, ‘was it worth paying?’
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‘Harry darling,’ said Barbara, hoping it would make him squirm, ‘you’ll find out tomorrow.
Seeya!’ And, squeezing between dancers, she left the room. A lingering trace of her bath oil — not
the American concoctions of their early marriage but something else, perhaps terebinth — set
him pondering Janis’s idea that once you had been involved with someone you could never lose
the intimacy; even if you didn’t see each other for years, you were still connected on some spiritual plane. I don’t like it, he thought. One should shed as one gets older, not acquire. There was
room, no doubt, for that hoary wisdom which gathers a vast reference of case histories, but it was
a wisdom which ultimately deadened because it linked too strongly with the past; it was a wisdom
of ageing, not perfecting. It was better to refine the process of understanding so that it probed,
needle-sharp, the coming moment. He felt, after these reflections, ready for Janis and Lawrence,
but the next group to enter the already well-filled house was a band associated with Murdy’s friend,
Anne Owen.
Harry compared them with Barbara’s friends — the men unshaven rather than bearded, the
women less attractive, more formidable, and the whole set of them cooler, more cynical politically,
and more observant. While Barbara’s friends wanted to be on stage, in some historical sense, Anne’s
groups would be less easily satisfied. They watched each other more fiercely, listened harder, and
took to each other in more exacting quarrels. Harry sat still, waiting for the oil and water to mix.
About the time a vanload of nondescript hoods were being hustled away from the front door,
Janis came back. Pushing her way through the crowd at the door, she could see the lid of the grand
piano and the corner of the sofa on which Harry had been sitting. The two woods, one gleaming,
one dull, beckoned to her, and Janis, a poor drinker, felt she was about to make an exciting journey,
bringing Hamlet to Harry and herself to the conjoined unity which would be her creation!
Pushing through the crowd, she felt their music drive her. She felt disembodied, yet connected
to all the bodies shaking and swinging against her. ‘Wanta feel my body baby, wanta touch my body
baby?’ the singers yelled coarsely. ‘Wanta touch my body baby? Not too much! Hoy, Hoy! Hoy, hoy,
hoy!’ The room was rocking with the driving energy. ‘You can best believe me, he’s a macho man,
ready to get down, with anyone he can! Hoy! Hoy! Hoy, hoy, hoy!’ Janis felt an animal exultation,
these people were so released! Now she had only to develop this release into the spiritual freedom
she craved, and she would be more intensely happy than she had ever been. ‘He’s a special person,
in anybody’s land!’ the singers yelled. ‘Hoy! Hoy! Hoy, hoy, hoy!’ This time the words directed her
to Harry, the rarity who told his teacher that the ‘To be or not to to be’ speech had never been
properly understood — and that at sixteen and a half!
The funny thing was that Lawrence, two years younger, had understood, or at least remembered. ‘I can see him standing in the old man’s workshop,’ Lawrence had just told her, ‘sharpening an axe. He had sparks flyin’ all around him, he had short hair even then. And he reckons that
it wasn’t a speech about suicide, or he said it was, but the reason for not suiciding was the part
that mattered. He said it was a fear of greater awareness, people didn’t want their consciousness
expanded. Well, I hadn’t read the bloody thing, of course, but I got hold of it, and I couldn’t make
head nor tail of it.’ Pushing back to Harry, Janis also realised that Lawrence wanted revenge on his
brother for knowing more, for somehow excluding him from what mattered most. And how strange
that this excited crowd, making the floor shake, should make her feel she understood Hamlet! It
was a matter of release, a whole generation felt released, and she’d slipped back five years to join
them, and she was terrified but incredibly excited. They were all crossing boundaries into new
psychic territory, dropping off old shame and moralities, it was a marvellous time to be alive! Janis
stood still, letting the crowd lift her, someone grabbed her into the action; for a moment she swung
with the mob of them, her whole body affirming itself to the shouts of Hoy! Hoy! Hoy, hoy, hoy!
and then she regained her sense of personal direction. Letting go the man who had never really
looked at her, she pushed for that mysterious, desirable figure beside the piano. He too was smiling.
‘What is it, Harry?’ Janis asked.
‘Funny thing,’ he said. ‘I just thought of a poem.’ He seemed pleased with himself. For a
moment her brain seethed with
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... the whips and scorns of time,
The oppressor’s wrong, the proud man’s contumely,
The pangs of despis’d love ...
then she called, ‘Let me see it Harry!’ because she felt it would be hers. She had traced him
down through the birdcalls of his childhood and his brother’s memories and at the end of this
search he was opening a little notebook with his fine, neat writing ... ‘In all this noise!’ she cried,
exultant for him. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Nothing very marvellous,’ he said, but she squeezed against him on the sofa. There was a false
start, and a completed poem, she assumed they were for her. The false start read:
CRY OF AN IMPERFECT EGG
I have yet to be!
Harry had bracketed these words and started again:
WHERE THE WAVE WAS
is a dip; foam
slithers, loosely marking points,
air moves and flotsam accommodates the shift.
The poet says ‘A wave!’ but the wave has no identity,
only a relation to other water
which has no identity except in waves,
or depths so fearful that sympathy cannot penetrate.
The grasping poet sees it slip between his fingers.
In his anger he dives at the wave’s replacement;
Lifting him, it disappears, dumping him in a trough,
sibilant with foam that whispers in his ear,
‘I thought I was, but now I know
I never once began to be.’
‘Harry!’ said Janis. ‘You are! You are! You are!’ and she dragged him into the swirl of dancers. With deep satisfaction she saw a couple sprawl on the sofa, burying the notebook. Swinging
proudly before him, she willed him to put his fingers, as he sometimes did, fanwise above her
hips, touching that spot above the ovaries where she felt most squeamish; moving Harry to touch
her there was her sign of certainty and surrender: this time she used it aggressively, and retaliated
by trailing her fingertips through his hair and down his chin, as if to try his unwillingness to be
handled roughly. The psychological battle, not yet at its height, began to show its contours — on
his side, a ridicule of passion; on hers, the probing of that smooth meaningless exterior for the
weakness that needed her.
For once she was not humiliated that she was a woman; personal pride and pride of her ancestors made her strong; she felt she would penetrate the mystery if she could keep her hold, but
they were distracted by a fat man slipping over beside them. The fat man, struggling for balance,
grabbed her leg. ‘George!’ shouted his partner, aggressive and contemptuous, and Janis looked
up to see the flaming hair and searching features of Murdy’s friend ... she couldn’t remember the
name. ‘Oh hello,’ cried Janis, ‘I know you, you’re, ah, Anita, aren’t you?’
‘Anne,’ said the other, conveying the feeling that to be corrected was a failing, and Janis would
have swung away from her, but Harry was picking up the fallen man and calling him George, and
laughing at the chance that had brought them together. ‘George!’ said Harry, ‘George! It’s seventeen years, you know that? Seventeen years!’
And then two other dancers spun out of the crowd to join them — Lawrence and a bright eyed
girl wearing a corsage of daphne; she had to be the hostess and the connection with the house.
‘Oh memories,’ sang a mocking Lawrence amid the din, while Daphne studied the fat man rising
among them like a whale finding right-side-up. Accepting a hand from Anne, George studied the
man who’d recognised him. ‘Hamlet,’ he said, as if he were a cousin of Polonius, ‘How are you?’
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‘Fantastic,’ said an excited Harry, ‘but what are you doing here?’
‘I’m with Anne,’ said the barrister, waving expansively, ‘though I’m finding it hard to keep up.’
Lawrence murmured something to Daphne, who shrieked; sensing a sexual innuendo, Anne said
‘What was that?’, smile open for anything destructive of her lover. ‘I could lend him Raj,’ said the
Daphne girl, who might have been twenty-six and had the carelessly displayed bitchiness of the
affluent middle class; both she and Lawrence laughed uproariously at the reference. Janis wanted
to know what Raj might be, imagining something like an Afghan hound, but Daphne said he was
her Indian lover, and laughed again as Lawrence slipped his arm around her waist. ‘Come and
meet him,’ said the Daphne girl, ‘he’s my skeleton in the cupboard. I’ve had him for years.’ This
seemed to imply some other innuendo for Lawrence who chuckled bawdily and moved close to
Anne to pump her for information about George, whom he thought he recognised. ‘You might
have seen him in court,’ was the last thing Janis heard her say as she was led through the throng to
a large cupboard in the hall. Daphne pulled it open to reveal a box and a pad of velvet on which,
loosely threaded together, was the skeleton of a small, fine boned man; the skull lay on its side, as
if he was sleeping. ‘Bought him when I started my physio course,’ said Daphne, ‘but I dropped out
after a year. By the time I decided I wasn’t going to finish the course, he was someone in the house.
I couldn’t sell him and I couldn’t get rid of him. I didn’t know what to do with him, so I stuck him
in here.’ Janis remarked that the bones were small and was told that he was an Indian; European
skeletons were harder to come by and dearer because the muscles and sinews, being stronger, made
more obvious markings on the bone. ‘So he’s not even a sought after skeleton,’ said Daphne, ‘but
he’s Raj to me.’ She stared at Janis.
‘He’s actually rather beautiful,’ said Janis, as people bustled past them in the hall. ‘I got a
shock at first, but it only lasted a second. I don’t know why skeletons are supposed to scare people.
Animal bones aren’t frightening. In fact a bird or a rabbit ...’ But Daphne was hurrying back to the
front room, which was falling strangely quiet: a man whom Janis found more frightening than the
skeleton was moving among the crowd, studying them intently. He wore white tights, was naked
above the waist, and had his hands and face heavily made up in white, like a mask and gloves.
Clicking his fingers behind unsuspecting ears, he produced from nowhere the ten, jack, queen, king
and ace of spades. Someone clapped. Someone turned the record off. Whiteface had everyone’s
attention. Lawrence turned off a lamp near the door, then disappeared.
When he found Barbara, she was in a strange mood. Gloating, Lawrence would have said;
despite his urging, she didn’t want to leave the house, she wanted to stare at Harry, wringing the
pleasure out of her intended revenge. She pushed into the front room in time to see Whiteface settling a top hat on Harry’s head; he spent a few moments knotting coloured silks before studying
Harry, on whose face a doubtful look had appeared. Whiteface tilted the hat to let an egg fall into
his cupped hand; to a round of applause he cracked the egg into a bowl, showing it was real. ‘I’d
like to see the bastard get egg all over his face,’ whispered Barbara, but Lawrence dragged her out,
saying, ‘Come on, how long do you think we’ve got?’
Taking Harry with him, Whiteface moved behind the piano, and spread out his things. In dumb
show he instructed Harry to put the egg bowl into a birdcage, and then to cover the cage with a
heavy black cloth. He even made Harry wring the cloth tightly to show there was nothing in it;
watching him, Janis saw that he didn’t want to do this. Was it because he feared to uncover another’s trick, or did he find it hard to obey? Janis felt she had to know; did Harry, ultimately, respect
anyone enough to let their will pass through him? His consideration and his coolness were more
to protect himself than to make others feel at ease, though in part they had that effect. He never
stops me doing anything, thought Janis: he’s honest and has no deceits. He gives the appearance of
letting you search him utterly, yet you come away feeling there’s more: what’s his trick?
Whiteface passed Harry a bag and made him empty it. Harry, groping with sensitive fingers,
produced a handful of white feathers. Whiteface made him squeeze the bag before he replaced the
feathers and put them under the cloth and into the cage.
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Then he did a succession of tricks with billiard balls and coloured silks. Harry tried to move
away, but Whiteface raised a restraining finger. He had to pass his arms through two open-ended
boxes, which the magician then completed with black lids handed to him by his audience. The
first box, dangled above the watchers on a rod, jingled sweetly; Whiteface had it opened by the
audience to reveal a bell. Feigning disbelief, he pulled the second box apart, put it together again,
made Harry pass his hand through it once more, and repeated the trick. Janis saw that Harry had
accepted by now the role of assistant, because it identified him with the magician’s mastery over his
audience. So he only had to know that something was more powerful than himself to use it, and in
his suave, unblemished way, become part of it! She felt immensely hopeful; then she heard a voice
she knew to be Anne’s murmuring to the man who remembered Harry: ‘It’s an outdated mode of
thought. It’s essentially based on dazzling the ignorant, who have to be kept ignorant. Magic as a
mode of social control is not hard if you can keep knowledge within a certain class or group
‘What do you think of him?’ said the barrister.
‘He’s good,’ said Anne. ‘He really knows his stuff. But it’s essentially trivial today.’
The analysis annoyed Janis, and yet she felt a kinship with Anne; she too was fighting to sustain
herself against a cunning exponent of male principles. Janis swung to look at the flaming hair and
pale face of the history lecturer who seemed to know so much and yet be incapable of wresting
her life onto the terms she wanted. Where did she make the crossing from assertion to acceptance;
what lies did she have to tell herself and did she hate herself for swallowing them? Listening to the
whispered conversation while Whiteface went through another sequence of tricks, Janis ignored
the words and tried to understand the tone. Anne’s voice came to her as a series of denials and
assertions. Words poured from her, she tried to win by reason; her conviction was utter, but based
on rationality, not truth to experience. It sounded like the voice of someone trapped. She wants
to escape him, Janis realised; she cannot stand a man having power over her. Janis thought of the
moment she and Bruce had left their wedding reception to drive to their hotel: Bruce had said to
her, ‘It’s going to get hard now, isn’t it’: and she had realised with sickening force the deep animosity between them that had been half hidden while she was fighting to make her family accept
her intention to marry. Husbands were the release from girlhood but the start of something worse.
She remembered Murdy telling her that Anne had been married and was filled with curiosity. She
wanted to talk about her wedding night with Anne, whom she guessed would have been sexually
experienced, as she was not, and she actually made up her mind that she would speak when a
round of applause distracted her. Whiteface was smiling as he held up the cards which had apparently been nominated; he flicked them into his bag and was packing up to leave when someone
said, ‘What about the cage?’
Whiteface waved to Harry.
Harry lifted the cloth.
In the cage was a white pigeon, fluttering anxiously. The feathers and the broken egg had
disappeared. Whiteface clapped Harry on the shoulder as he accepted his applause, then whipped
everything into his bag and made his way through the audience, smiling sardonically. ‘You look as
if you’ve seen a ghost,’ said Anne’s George: Harry said, ‘He’s a wizard all right, I don’t know how
he did that last one.’
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11
The most pleasurable moment for Murdy was when he started Estelle’s orgasm. She’s not had this
before, he thought, feeling total male. She’s focussed her fears on this moment, and it’s proving
good. These thoughts encouraged him to keep stimulating the trembling, inwardly directed excitement of her body. She had been so nervous of his children and Christie’s bed that he was surprised
when she settled back in a pillow, asking ‘How soon can we do it again?’
Bruce found Prue a pain in the arse. It was a relief when Anita, her sister, dropped in with a pallid
homosexual who wanted to see the supper show in Drummond Street. Shawn liked the loose jointing of Anita’s hips, but when he produced his Mamiya she found reasons not to model until Bruce
had hold of the camera, which suddenly she found interesting. Shawn, who saw how it was, told
Prue he knew a party in Abbotsford, and they offered to drop off the fifth member of the gathering at the Pram Factory. That left Bruce and Anita free for some modelling. Anita stepping out of
her clothes had Prue’s attrac­tion and none of her petulance; Bruce talked about the human body
having more beauty than people were prepared to grant, even at the slack and wrinkled stage: then
he found Anita pressing her hip against his coat, and he recognised that she was breaking down his
pretences. Succumbing willingly, he realised that she had never had any other intention and that
what else she was planning was for the future to reveal. Waking in the night he remembered that
he was supposed to ring Janis in the morning and take her home the following night.
Harry felt the magician had drained him. Even the flat, the computer console and the electric
coffee grinder failed to strengthen him. He was preoccupied to the point of failing to notice the
scratch-marks on the door jamb, and the shiny lines of trolley wheels in the lift. Janis sensed them
more than noticed them; since Harry failed to interpret them, she put them out of mind, not so
much as mysteries but as pointers to an incapacity in Harry to see what he would normally have
noticed in a moment. The marks led inwards for Janis, into Harry: how far had the magician
wrought the long desired change?
Barbara went back when the party was dead. Feet in the sand, waves roaring in her ears, she spat
at the machine, lying within reach of the tide. Barbara gave her strength to the wind. An hour’s
tumult would bury the thing ... but she didn’t want it to go that far. She wanted Harry to look out
the window in the morning and see it as irrecoverable. Not worth fixing. Beyond recall! She spat
the phrases at the machine till she hated her own fixation, and then, hoping she was cured, she
headed back to Carlton, wishing she could drive out of her head the desire to ring Harry in the
morning on some matter of post-marital business, like the sale of their bush block, so she could
hear him spitting chips.
They were still fondling each other when Murdy led Estelle to her car. ‘Do you think it’s a false
start?’ she said. ‘It can’t go on from here?’
He pushed the door shut silently, then kissed her through the window. ‘I don’t think it’s a
false start,’ he said. ‘I think it’s learning. It’s been a beautiful experience for me.’ He said that to
give her pleasure, then remembered: ‘Will you come over tomorrow night?’ She said she only had
Wednesday and Thursday left: ‘I’m going away you know.’ He saw that she was already wise and
wanted the experience locked in her past to draw on. ‘How often will you write to me?’ he asked.
‘I’ll write to you,’ she said, ‘but I won’t talk about this. Is that all right?’
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He accepted, but the car coming to life, and its headlights washing the drab bitumen, made
him melancholy. A gust of southerly wind caused him to shiver and Estelle to wind her window
nose high. The gesture hurt him and he was desperate for her answer when he asked: ‘You’ll come
Wednesday, then?’
Sitting by the fire in his pajamas, he weighed the evening against her coming departure, and the
prospect of Wednesday against the years to follow, and he realised that he was always projecting,
and that as long as he had hopes, he would be shallower and less vulnerable than most. He found
himself fingering Christie’s last card:
... frightening but exciting. They use their morality as a goad. There’s a marvellous expectation in the air.
New Yorkers walk around as if cameras were watching. Yesterday I saw a man wearing the backside half
of a cow suit. He was naked above the waist and it was freezing, but he studied the shop windows as if he
was swaddled in mink. At first I thought he’d stepped out of a theatre, then that he’d stepped into one. In
the end I decided that he was making theatre as he went. I watched to see who he’d accost, but he spoke
to no one and no one spoke to him. He knew I was watching but he kept his back to me. I must get my
ticket for Paris soon. Love and kisses, Christie.
Murdy rolled his eyes. Who else could study some lunatic pretending to be a satyr without
provoking him? Her innocence was an amazing protection. The trouble with that innocence and
that beautiful understanding was that it didn’t demand a mutuality with anything he had to offer.
Estelle would make someone a marvellous partner... Murdy, lowering his sights to Wednesday,
went back to the rumpled bed.
An hour before dawn, Janis woke. When they had fallen into bed she had hardly dared touch him,
he seemed afraid. Now, as she moved against him, she felt him welcome her.
Pondering male need, she pressed cheek to shoulderblade, wanting to test him. ‘Harry,’ she
said: ‘What’s your moment of maximum pleasure?’ It snapped him awake. He turned in the bed
to face her; she could see those darling eyes gazing with full seriousness at her. He took so long to
answer that she wondered that he could sustain the intensity; then he said, ‘Showering and putting on my clothes in the morning, and getting undressed at night. It’s not a habit for me, it’s very
important.’
The continuation of his gaze made her realise that he would return the question to her, and
she would have liked the blankets to roll her out of the way, but, when he asked, she said simply,
‘Having my child was more important than getting married.’
It was the hour when black is becoming blue in the east, and furniture intrudes on the reality
of dreams. Janis felt she was outside herself, listening to the two voices propounding their importances. This was the intimacy of all referral, and the truthfulness on which life should be led. ‘Are
you then two men?’ she said.
‘Two faces of one, I hope,’ he said, ‘and I never want them out of touch with each other.’
It seemed ambivalent. ‘Harry,’ she said, ‘can you believe that I’m out there in the corner of the
room, watching the two of us?’
‘I don’t find it hard to believe that the mind can detach itself,’ he said, and he began, deliberately and with great tenderness, to stroke her where she was most sensitive.
Her sigh as she moved to make it easier for him might have been a reproach to anyone less
sure of himself; he was less involved, it was quite easy to hand her, as it were, through the stages of
an experience he was not feeling with her intensity. One might assist the dying with equal detachment, if less pleasure. Janis felt herself gathering, as if for some great departure; the unification of
purpose, of mind and flesh, gave miraculous simplicity. There was still a voice in the back of her
head, though, asking: ‘Why dressing and undressing, Harry?’
‘Those are the moments you might lose yourself,’ he said: ‘when you might get it wrong.’
His silk navy dressing gown, his silk navy pajamas; his Italian shoes, his ties tied to perfection
— what more could they mean than they seemed on the surface? Was clothing a body, then, so
important? Could it be central to a life, twice a day? ‘Are you unalterable except at those times?’
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her inner voice continued, while, taking his hand in hers, she drew it the full length of her body
to her lips.
Feeling his fingertips blessed in a succession of kisses, he gave an answer of limited truth: ‘I feel
more vulnerable then. Barbara used to irritate the Christ out of me by interfering with me then.’
Even the name of a third person was disconcerting. Letting go his hand, she recalled that he
dressed and undressed in front of her; did this mean he trusted her, or that she was unimportant?
In the very moment when sadness would have enveloped her, he sensed the change in mood and
squeezed her hard, kissed her, brought her beneath him and pushed her knees to give himself entry.
She was grateful, but both knew the point was unresolved. After a fleeting but painful feeling of
splitting self, she felt herself unified in the psychic upheaval she had long desired. It was as if she
swallowed him: he had told a lie and she would have to pay for it, and she would make him pay for
it too; thus balancing the accounts, she could silence that nagging inner voice and let the upheaval
change her if it wanted to, or if it could, and the settling up would be done later, by a different
person, hopefully a unified person, a total person, who carried the old name of the imperfect,
divided Janis. He was a means to her attainment as she was a means to his conception of himself;
she had burst through love to the bargaining point, like an aeroplane breaking through cloud to
clearer, upper air. She accepted. She willed. She drove herself into the unison. Harry knew it was
different from the other times but participated, believing, wrongly, that this new energy was still
a function of her half of the binary system they were forming. Then he saw his mistake. She was
attacking more profoundly than the magician or McKersie had done, or Barbara for that matter,
or Julie or the rest of them, though the process, he also saw, was a continuation of that breaking
down that the rest of them had attempted. He had created this storm in her; if he went further into
it, it would change him, and he didn’t want to be changed by anyone else, he alone would change
himself, no one else. Lucidly he recorded her excitement, her convulsive rendering of herself to a
process of inner transformation. She, in turn, knew the miracle was happening and that he was at
least in touching distance, even if not going through the same alteration as she was. She wondered,
at the height of her excitement, if Barbara had felt the same with Harry at some time and if the
realisation she had just had, of Harry’s proximity but not mutuality, was the cause of his ex-wife’s
bitterness. Would she too be bitter when she came down again? She abandoned her concern for
answers, and summoned all her energy to add it to the storm which was in her and around her;
for a brief, frightening period, the storm was a fearful vortex which threatened to suck her into
an abyss, and then, shuddering back to stillness, she found herself looking at a window where the
blue of night was becoming the blue of day, and beside her, warm with the smiles of love, were the
lucid, darling eyes of the man she’d chosen. She sat up, incredibly energised, then flung back the
blankets and took two strides to the window.
In her heightened state, surreal seemed normal. There seemed nothing strange about two
Dalmatians sniffing at a white machine, with porthole door swinging drunkenly, partly covered in
sand and lapped by an outgoing tide. She didn’t even mention it to Harry. She went to the toilet
and noticed, still surreally, that there was a mark on the door jamb, and two indentations in the
carpet where it met the tiles, as if something heavy had been dragged across. The washing machine
was behind a plastic curtain but she didn’t bother to look. Standing, she noticed her contraceptive apparatus on the shelf under the mirror, and caught a look of amazement in her own face, the
amazement, not of horror but delight. She put the things in her toilet bag, poured herself a glass
of water, and then scampered back to the warm place beside her darling, squeezing him till he
gasped. Then she kissed him down the neck, across the nipple, along the hairs beneath his navel,
all over and everywhere, and smiling so that he knew she was imagining that she was clothing him.
‘I could go naked today,’ he said, and the fact that he had read her mind sent her wild with happiness. ‘Oh, Harry!’ she said, lifting him up, and still kissing him, ‘Look at the morning!’ She dragged
him to the window in ecstasy at the waves and sand, water and departing night, then wished she
had never done it.
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At the height of the ensuing anger, when she felt totally rejected by Harry, Janis went down to the
beach, to be greeted by Murdy’s children. They accepted her matter of factly. ‘Dad’s in the car,’
Tania said, ‘eatin’ a Eskimo pie.’ They pointed to the bluestone wall which separated road from
sand; in a grubby Renault with battered mudguards sat Murdy, reading the National Times; she
could just make out the set of his shoulders and the aggressive studiousness with which he held
his paper. ‘But what are you doing here?’ demanded Janis, convinced that reality had refused to
act properly in this crisis. ‘Oh dad couldn’t sleep,’ the kids said. ‘He got us up early and said where
would we like to go, so we said the beach. If we didn’t say something he’d’a taken us to the mountains!’ There was no limit to adult foolishness. ‘I’m glad he didn’t,’ said Janis, and moved towards
the familiar, humorous figure. ‘Hey!’ the kids called. ‘There’s a washing machine in the sea, did
you see it?’
‘Yes I did!’ called Janis, though it was now left behind by the tide, and though the effect it had
had on Harry was the cause of her misery. ‘Yes, I saw it!’
Murdy, miserable about Estelle’s beauty lost to him as soon as revealed, was amazed to have Janis
wrench open his passenger door and jump in beside him. ‘Good lord!’ he said. ‘Where did you
come from?’
Without saying a word, she looked deeply into his eyes. He, at least, was real. Reaching for him
like a lover, she twined herself around him and squeezed until he thought he would yell. ‘My God!’
he said, ‘it’s good to see you, but what the hell’s happening?’
‘I’ve had a quarrel with Harry,’ she said. ‘Don’t ask me about it. Hold me as hard as you can.’
And she buried her face in his shoulder. A moment later the kids pressed their faces to the windows, probing the situation of their father cuddling someone they knew, and their minds full of
the news that there was a washing machine at the water’s edge, stuffed with sand and shells. They
thought perhaps he could put it on the pack rack and take it home, and they could not understand
why he was more concerned with Janis than with something valuable. ‘Dad!’ Michael kept shouting, ‘look!’ and he pointed to the object as if it had been stolen from Fort Knox. ‘Can we take it
home, dad? Can we take it home?’
Murdy hated his children at that moment, and the predatory nature of humankind. Why
couldn’t they leave him with Janis to hear what had happened? Kissing her, he said, ‘I’ll come back.
I’ll have a look so that it shuts them up. Only a minute, I know you’re upset ...’ and he disentangled
himself in time to see a denim trousered, denim coated figure in dark glasses and crew-cut cross the
road. In a second he knew whose the machine was, and why Janis was unhappy. The kids, dragging
on his hands, felt him slacken. ‘Come on dad,’ they said. ‘Before anyone else gets it!’
Barbara was disappointed. Marching down the sand, she called, ‘Wrong man! What are you
doing here?’ Murdy, quailing before the challenge, thought of Janis, and recovered. ‘Not a very
good night’s work,’ he said, shaking his head. ‘Not very good at all!’ Barbara spun around. In the
Renault she saw a strained and tearful Janis. Hating herself, hating Harry, she walked to the car,
sand spewing from her thongs. ‘Didn’t think about the after effects, did I?’ she said, opening the
door to embrace Janis. ‘What did the bastard do? Did he take it out on you?’
Rubbing her wet cheek against Barb’s dry skin, Janis said, ‘He was seething. The only time he
looked at me it was so horrible I got out of the room. When I came back for my clothes he said ...’
she sobbed, Barb kissed her eyes ... ‘You went to the toilet, didn’t you see it was gone? ... and the
way he said it, with his teeth gritted, I knew he hated me, I threw my clothes on and came down
here ...’
‘You thought,’ Barb said, trying to be forceful, ‘that if you hung around the wreck he’d come
down eventually. Why didn’t you walk out? You could’ve rung me, I’d’ve come and got you.’ She
said it loudly, not admitting any blame. Janis turned her eyes down, hiding her reproach. ‘Don’t
you see,’ said Barb, ‘what hanging around here means? You’re admitting he’s not interested in you,
you’re putting yourself on a lower level than that bloody thing, which by the way is mine! I bought
it and I paid for it and fucking Harry made up some lies so he could keep it. He’s not all the mar-
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vellous things you think, Janis, you shouldn’t have let him bully you. I know those cold rages, that’s
when he shows what a self-centred shit he really is!’
Barb took Janis’s hand, but her tears were still the tears of love. ‘I haven’t even got a bloody
hanky,’ said Barb. Janis opened the glove box for the Kleenex packet; ‘Christie always keeps them
here,’ she said, trying to make her voice sound normal.
But the packet was empty.
‘Looks like someone else’s been onto them,’ said Barb, and turned to study Murdy, walking up
the beach while his kids shovelled handfuls of sand into the machine. ‘His wife’s away,’ said Janis,
opening up another area of instability. ‘Where’s Bruce?’ Barb wanted to know. ‘Here, shove over
so I can talk to you.’ But Janis refused to move. Shuddering, she mumbled, ‘He thinks he’s taking
me home tonight, but I’m not going. He’ll have someone else by now if he hasn’t still got Prue. I
only find out when they ring up. New one every six weeks, that’s Bruce.’ She sniffled. ‘Stay at my
place then,’ said Barb, ‘we can talk about it. Let’s get out of this.’ But Janis, reasserting her pride,
got out of the car, rubbed her eyes with her sleeve, and vaulted the bluestone wall. Murdy, who had
not dared approach, watched her, wondering what she meant to do; Barb, who had not carried her
into her own mood of hatred, called in pretended triumph, ‘It’s no good waiting there. He won’t
come down while we’re all here. He’s up there watching, the big conceited arsehole!’ Janis shook
her dishevelled head. ‘He is!’ shouted Barb. ‘Loving him’s one big surrender!’ The words, piled on
her misery, felled Janis. She fell to her knees and slumped her head on the sand. Barb and Murdy
rushed to her. The children eyed them curiously. Barb said, ‘You’ll have to take her to your place
Murdy. She thinks it’s my fault and I suppose I don’t blame her. Make sure she eats. I’ll get her
stuff from Harry’s and bring it round tonight. Do you know Bruce’s number? He’s at Shawn’s.
Tell him you’ll stick her on the train in a day or two.’ Janis was shivering. Murdy raced for a rug,
shouting to his children, who didn’t want to leave. ‘I’ll look after them,’ said Barb. ‘I’ll bring them
round in a couple of hours. Why should they be mucked up because we’re all crazy? You get Janis
into bed!’ Then she put her arms around the stricken Janis and kissed her eyes, her cheeks, her
forehead. With a trace of amusement she fingered the sandy hair. Murdy was amazed at her lack
of guilt. ‘Don’t you think you were a, er, at least a contributing factor?’ he said.
‘I’ve done something unforgiveable,’ said Barb, ‘but you’ll find I’m right. Can we talk about it
later?’ It was an order. Murdy and Barb assisted a rug-enwrapped Janis to the Renault. When she
was in the passenger seat, and the door closed, Murdy pulled out a dollar. ‘Give the kids something
at the milk bar,’ he said to Barb, who considered him with contempt. ‘Don’t you think I could
initiate something like that if I thought they needed it?’ she said.
‘I don’t doubt you’d initiate anything you bloody liked,’ said Murdy. ‘But could you carry it to
a successful conclusion?’
Barbara studied him with the wry set of her mouth that always made him feel immature. ‘Don’t
get uptight,’ she said. ‘It’s not the end of anyone’s life, you know.’
Janis refused to go to bed. ‘I’m not a convalescent,’ she said. ‘Then what can I do for you?’ Murdy
wanted to know. ‘Ring Harry!’ she cried. ‘Ring him up and ... and ... ask him why he doesn’t ring
me!’
He tried to make her rest in Michael’s room. ‘It seems all wrong in my room,’ he said. ‘Last
night ...’ She barely listened. ‘I don’t want to hear about last night,’ she said. ‘Last night doesn’t
exist for me! Last night was one horrible, awful lie! Last night didn’t happen! What if I’m pregnant,
Murdy, I could be, what’ll I do?’
He took it as raving, he didn’t ask questions. ‘Cross that bridge if you come to it,’ he said.
‘Would you like to walk in the garden?’
When she said ‘What garden?’ he felt certain she was losing her grip. Holding her, still wrapped
in his rug, he led her around his trees.
A brilliant midwinter sky capped the garden. ‘How did I get in this mess?’ she said. He decided
to talk about anything but. He put his arm around her and did what she always wanted. He talked.
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This tree came from seeds he’d collected in the Mallee. This was a fern that grew in the mountains.
‘Where?’ she wanted to know, and he told her. He felt her lighten as he led her to a desert hakea,
heavy with unseasonable flower. ‘Where did you get it?’ she wanted to know, and he described his
favourite nursery, ‘Where did you get these, Murdy?’ she asked, pointing to some grass tussocks.
He felt her relax a little as she bent to touch them. ‘I know you’re not supposed to,’ he said, ‘but
I dug them up. At Trapyard Hill.’
Crazed as she was for a man who only knew the mountains from the vantage point of ski lodges, she recognised a voice speaking levelly through the inheritance of her family’s past. ‘Trapyard
Hill,’ she said faintly, ‘Where’s that?’
His ex-wife and his brother! Conspiracy. Even to make him change the lock. Janis sobbing at the
door, thinking she was shut out when in reality she was being shut in. For them to attack. How
they must want to destroy him. Had they succeeded? What had they got away with?
Only the Wascator, there was nothing else, he’d searched the flat. It was a symbolic theft, but
what did it mean? He could get the machine back, strip it down, oil it ... but it wouldn’t be the
same. He’d felt he’d been opened up, misused; wasn’t that what they intended?
He could get the police. They wouldn’t take it seriously, since the ‘stolen’ goods were in full
view of his flat. A court case wouldn’t heal his wounds, it’d put him more in the wrong.
That was it! They’d put him in the wrong. Something in the crime made it justified. They’d stolen the moral imperative. The fact that he couldn’t understand it proved a blindness on his side. If
the way people use you is a picture of oneself, then what, Harry wondered, does that make me?
If only Barbara weren’t there he could go down and look at the thing, to see if it gave him any
meaning.
He went to the bathroom. On a shelf above the missing Wascator, there was a box of plastic
cards, and the jeweller’s pliers he used for nipping off the tiny plastic spikes to set the program for
the wash. At the front were the ones in use; at the back, a couple of dozen spares. They’d never be
used now. He’d buy something different, he couldn’t have the wreck back in the flat.
Then he studied the cards. Each was a set of orders, with built-in obedience. The machine did
what it was told. It was a one-way process, and perfectly satisfying when functioning well. There
was a green W written on the corner of one; it was the program that gave Julie’s woollens a slow,
rolling wash, with no spin, and mostly soak: he’d made it before she went away. Harry felt Janis
was linked to the trouble: she was superficially innocent yet in some way a hidden catalyst. Without
being able to pin her effect, he felt angry with her.
He riffled through the drawer where he kept his poems. Terrible poems, but what did they say?
They must betray the thing the others wanted to destroy, but he couldn’t get outside them to see
what it was. Making coffee, he realised that he hadn’t closed the drawer. The poems, such as they
were, still littered the cabinet.
Calm ruled the world outside his window. A tanker was pulling out of its berth, and two lesser
ships were disappearing over the horizon. Everything going somewhere. He remembered the aeroplane that crashed the day Greg Paton died; how much of it was still at the bottom of the bay? His
beliefs were running out. He’d made himself a system. Everything he worked was systems. Control
systems. Security systems. Information systems. Now Janis was loose in his life, and messy, and
Barbara had picked her moment, and Lawrence ... they were running wild with him, they’d found
a weakness he didn’t know about and they were pulling him to pieces.
He felt he had to know what he’d lost, and how it had been done.
But he couldn’t go down. Barbara was there. He couldn’t even look out the window, in case
she might be looking up, and gloating.
They’d trapped him. Next thing, Lawrence would be along with beer to last the day, they’d
probably bring the magician to while away the hours till he faced them. He tried to steady himself
by thinking of a cargo control system for the tanker’s shipping line, but it was moving steadily down
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the bay, carrying God only knew how much contraband material: it seemed to grow smaller as he
watched it, another minute and it’d be gone ...
The sight of the city disgusted him: concrete, glass and steel, glittering madly in the morning
light, without a skerrick of meaning. It was a mindless machine that needed people to animate it,
and he’d been a sucker for years: he was the master no different from the slave.
Freedom! Harry was desperate for the winged confidence of a few hours before that his knowledge was unassailable. Pacing the room, he found himself hating two things — the gap where the
machine had stood, and the program cards that used to operate it. How could the gap be filled?
He’d had the bathroom altered to take the thing, anything he put there now would be the wrong
size unless he had it all altered again.
Get a new flat, unsullied by what they’d done?
But the sickness was inside him, he’d be taking it wherever he went.
Forcing himself to be cool, he packed Janis’s clothes. He packed more neatly than she did. He
put the program for Pericles on top; it would be the first thing she’d see when she opened it: that
was the best measure of forgiveness he could give her at the moment. Perhaps they’d be friends
eventually ...
Then he realised he couldn’t do anything with the case. He could hardly leave it in the passage
and if he rang Shawn’s to tell Bruce to pick it up he’d have to explain what had happened and he
was damned if he was going to do that. Even if he left it with the caretaker, he’d still have to let
someone know where it was.
Looking at the case, he realised how much he hated green Samsonite, and how revolting labels
and airline tags made the thing look. People’s belongings had an aura and he hated the case. Then
he thought, since they’ve got the bloody key, let them get the case when they want it. I’ll go up to
Hotham for a week till I get it out of my system.
In the act of fumbling for his car keys, he decided against it. Why should they drive him out?
They were already inside his mind, tormenting him; his calm had to be restored. He didn’t think
there was much of Barbara left in the flat, but what there was, had to go!
First of all, the program cards. In a fury, he wrenched open the door to the balcony, stepped
into the glistening morning and flung the cards towards the bay. Tania and Michael, licking drumsticks beside the pile of shells they’d made with Barbara, looked up. Tania said ‘There’s a man up
there just threw a lot of things out of his window.’ As they fluttered to earth, sententious Michael
said ‘Litter bug! Don’t rubbish Australia!’ but Tania demanded of the adult: ‘Why’d he do that
Barbara?’ Barbara, smiling broadly, and juggling shells from hand to hand, answered, ‘I think he’s
surrendering. It’s an act of surrender! Take a good look, kids, and remember!’
Linking arms with his friend, Murdy said, ‘I like tea-tree. I know it’s only the lowest common
denominator of bush, but it fills in the spaces and, in January when everything else has given up the
ghost, it bursts out in festoons of white. It’s positively bridal! And it’s buzzing with bees, it’s richer
than you’d ever expect!’ Janis said, ‘Wouldn’t it be funny if you had a garden all of the one plant,
and it flowered once a year.’ Murdy thought the idea worth inspection; ‘Do you think flowers are
more important than the plants that produce them?’ he asked.
Smarting at every scratch, every trolley-mark that he had missed the night before, Harry pressed
the button on the lift. G for ground. That’s where I’m heading, he told himself. Common earth.
Barbara juggled shells. The kids found her a puzzle, though she knew lots of games. They wondered
when she’d take them home. Why had dad gone off with Janis?
‘That’s an Illawarra flame,’ said Murdy. ‘You ought to see it in summer. When the tea-tree grows
up, it’s going to be a vision! They flower about the same time, you see.’ Janis liked the thing that
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radiated from him. If you enjoyed his enthusiasm, you got all his warmth. It made him easier than
Harry or her husband.
When Bruce rang, the flat was empty. The phone rang in the deserted space. Anita, padding down
the passage in her sister’s dressing gown, put her arms around him. ‘Try again later,’ she said.
When the lift hit the ground floor, it took courage to step out. There was no one about. Harry
felt he was over-defended. Staring through the plate glass, he took stock. Whatever was gone was
unregainable, but had to be defined. Barbara, and Lawrence if he was there, must be manipulated
to show their intention. They must not be allowed to damage him any more.
Janis said, ‘I could rest now Murdy.’ He said, ‘On my bed, the kids’ll be home soon, you don’t want
them jumping on you.’ She smiled ruefully: ‘I don’t think I’d mind.’ But he ushered her into his
room and straightened the bed. She lay on it as if it had nothing to do with her. The rug, however,
had acquired her persona; she drew it about her. Her deep, anxious breathing frightened Murdy.
He got a quilt and spread it over her. She neither moved nor looked at him. He went to the phone
and dialled Shawn’s number.
Lawrence was there, sure enough. When Harry fronted the wall, he was playing catchy with a
plastic soccer ball the kids found. And he had the familiar trappings — esky, anodised drink mugs
spread on the sand in all their vile colours, an open bottle, even a packet of potato chips.
Ignoring Barbara, Harry challenged his brother: ‘Breakfast?’
Lawrence said, ‘Hair of the dog. What about you?’ Barb smiled: ‘No cure for this one, is there
Harry?’
Aiming at their smugness, he said, ‘You can’t injure someone without injuring yourself. You
know that.’ Barbara juggled shells, Lawrence let his eyes fall on the Sunday Press; a 60-point headline about football.
Harry said, ‘It’s a sad pattern, Barbara. Self-deception, followed by the nastiest revenge you
can think of. You’ve done it a lot of times, haven’t you?’ Barbara and Lawrence said nothing. They
could wait.
Trying to be stern, he said, ‘Would you mind telling me ...’ but stopped; they were grinning
inanely. He should have stayed upstairs, he was making it worse every second.
The kids said, ‘Can we go home now Barbara?’ She said, ‘Very soon,’ but her immobility suggested it might be hours. Michael called Tania, and they played a game of catching the ball when
he bounced it off the Wascator; every throw produced a dull thump.
‘Very elaborate, and very costly,’ said Harry. ‘Did you really need to go so far?’ They knew he
wanted to reassert superiority. Lawrence pretended to study the football scores. Barb called, ‘Give’s
a catch, Tania!’ but the kids wanted to keep it, so Barbara wriggled in between them, caught the
next bounce, and hurled the ball with a resounding boom against the machine. ‘I suppose you’ll say
it’s yours,’ said Harry; Barb smiled. ‘What about Janis?’ said Harry, his voice lacking cutting power
against the sound of the lightly moving sea: ‘Did you plan that part of it too?’
The accusation did at least stop her. Holding the ball high above her head, Barbara said,
‘Trying to find the raw spot, Harry?’ and flung at the washing machine again. Boom! Something
fell with a clunk. ‘Stop it, bugger you,’ shouted Harry, and rushed at his ex-wife. The ball, as he
tried to hustle her, hit him on the face. He lashed with his shoe and kicked it into the water. The
children backed away from his anger. Barbara, smirking, called them, saying to Lawrence ‘I’m
heading back to Murdy’s. You coming?’ Lawrence thought he would. Downing the dregs in his
anodised cup, he closed the esky, folded the Sunday Press and lugged his morning-after gear in a
crooked line to the Falcon, parked, gleaming, by the sea wall. Trucks roared past. Harry, humiliated, was left with the sand-despoiled Wascator, the beer bottle poking out of the sand, the orange
chip packet, and the ball, tossing pointlessly in the shallows. Barbara, savouring the moment, took
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one look back. Between puffs, Lawrence advised her not to say anything. She had never intended
to. Harry’s isolation, in the context, was eloquent enough. They’ve won the second round, thought
Harry; where do I go from here?
When the phone rang, Murdy rushed to stop it waking Janis. He expected Bruce, but it was his
mother. Would he like to bring the children over for their Sunday dinner? He explained that he had
a friend staying with him who was, as he put it, in a bit of a bad way. His mother was duly sympathetic, and bothered to ask, ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Without delineating the sex of the friend,
and with a surreptitious glance over his shoulder, Murdy concluded his apology by saying that the
friend was suffering from something like a broken heart. ‘I understand,’ said the voice pouring
confidently down the line. ‘There was just going to be Una, and father, and myself. But you will
come over later in the week, won’t you?’ Murdy promised that he would.
Sitting in the chair when the phone was down — and Janis still asleep — he realised how much
more emotional traffic passed through the house when he had it to himself, and how sheltered it
seemed when Christie’s moods held sway.
Bruce thundered up the drive, revving the engine before switching off. Tania, having had enough of
adults for one day, farted loudly. Michael, catching the tension, warned his father that he’d better
hand Janis over. But Bruce, entering the bedroom, wavered between cocky rejection of a woman
who didn’t want him, and a self pity which claimed prior attention.
Janis was sound asleep.
Murdy led Bruce to the kitchen for coffee. Bruce, seeing beer bottles, knew Lawrence had
been there.
Murdy said he had. And Barb.
Anything between them, Bruce wanted to know.
Feeling, for once, superior, Murdy said no. Then he said, ‘Conspiracy, for some, is a profounder connection than sex.’ He was impressed by his own words.
Bruce toyed with a spoon.
Murdy offered to tide her over. He said that while Janis had suffered terribly, she couldn’t bear
to be wrenched from her proximity to Harry. ‘She dreads being out of touch. ‘ Bruce agreed.
Murdy offered to put her on the train the day after next. It would have to be then, he explained,
hinting at a delicate involvement. Bruce understood; Murdy asked if he’d like a drink. As they
sipped their wine, Bruce stared gloomily at an empty beer bottle. ‘Lawrence,’ he said contemptuously: Murdy, academically balanced said, ‘Barb too, I’m afraid.’
They untangled the story, as much as they knew. Sunlight poured through the kitchen. Bruce
asked after the Mueller book. Murdy asked after council business. Murdy said the book was held
up by a change of policy by the English parent company. Bruce said that his decentralisation efforts
ran up against the same snag. ‘We had British Tobacco nibbling,’ he said, ‘until London ...’ He
turned down a thumb.
Both listened carefully for Janis. Bruce felt torn in three directions. He had to get home and
pick up his daughter (inventing a story to cover Janis), he had Anita waiting at Shawn’s, where his
things were, and there was Janis, who could never be abandoned. He looked at his watch. ‘Better
wake her,’ said Murdy.
In the dialogue that followed, Janis declared she wouldn’t go home with him. Bruce, relieved,
demanded to know what he’d tell her mother. Janis laughed. Bruce laughed too. Janis swore that
she’d leave him if he took Anita back. Bruce, who had no idea what Anita wanted, said he wouldn’t.
Janis said her case was at Saint Kilda. Bruce said Murdy would have to get it; he was the only one
who wasn’t compromised one way or another. Janis cried. Bruce left when he felt she wanted him
to go. God only knew what he’d say to Barb and Lawrence when he saw them, he hoped it’d be
good. Backing the Saab down the drive, he lifted a hand to his host and the kids, a man who would
be reduced when there was no crisis to act in. Speeding back to Carlton, hoping he could get an
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hour with Anita before Shawn and the rest came home, he felt that desperation was the natural
state of men; people strove to create security, and when they’d created the comfortable closed
circle, everything that had made life exciting was left outside it.
Monday’s mail brought another card from Christie:
... and they dress like no one else! Paris is a city of white, blue and grey. Even when it’s dirty it manages
to be smart, Parisians like to have things ready for inspection. At the turn of the stairs in my hotel there
is a mirror so that Madame can see who you are. I’m sure if I brought someone home my bill would be
neatly accounted for two on the night of such and such. They bargain so aggressively and of course I can’t
understand them, let alone argue. They’re all students and Africans where I’m staying and they flaunt
themselves. Even the quiet ones use their clothes to make a point. I feel awfully shabby. Today I caught a
train to an outer suburb to see how the French are when they weren’t on display. I had a beautiful soup
and when I had to order the next course I couldn’t read the menu, so I pointed to the duck that had
just been served to the patron. He brought it over to me with heaps of flourishes. I blushed but if any of
them spoke English they weren’t letting on. Monsieur Le Patron retired to his glass of wine and his cigar.
Tomorrow night I’m seeing Pelleas. I wish I had you with me. Love xxxxx Christie.
Janis read it. They talked about going overseas, Christie’s work, music they liked. Janis drew
security from the suburban house. Estelle rang during the morning; when Murdy came out, Janis
was trembling, she thought it might have been for her. He asked her to come to the library when
he went in, it wouldn’t be good to wait for the phone, but she refused.
Anne bumped into him at the university, told him about the party. He brought her up to date. She
said they were all crazy, but was starting to have her doubts about going on with George, which
implied that she wasn’t any better herself. Murdy said, ‘Is it the old love-hate again?’ and she nodded. ‘People I can get on with,’ she said, ‘don’t turn me on. And men who turn me on are usually
shits.’ They looked at each other with a fair measure of understanding: impossibility was a big factor in both their lives. She asked him what he was working on and he said he was in the doldrums;
she said she’d like to do something biographical, she was sick of charts and tables. She said the
house she was living in was going to be wrecked for a warehouse: ‘The area’s zoned commercial,
there isn’t any stopping it.’ When she’d gone, he felt sorry for her, always setting up new men, new
houses; but what was the use of stability if it didn’t get deeper and better as it was supposed to?
Lawrence, out of uniform, checked the BHP building. Taking the lift to the basement, he went
through the security guards. ‘There’s two fire escapes unlocked up there,’ he roared. ‘Top management, and the level below. What’s going on? Bit of a set-up is there?’ He rang the office to get
the next shift on immediately. The guards were full of remorse and aggression, but Lawrence was
adamant: ‘We’ll be splittin’ you guys up, that’s for bloody sure — if you keep your jobs, that is.’
Feeling liberated at last, Barb went to a travel agent and picked up some brochures. Turkey, Nepal,
Afghanistan she rejected straight away; she wasn’t treading that trail any more. Canada and the
U.S. of A. bored her stiff. They were like here but worse. Europe? Not this time. Norway, Iceland,
somewhere like that? Yes, they stirred a flicker. Pacific Islands — possibly. She spread the map of
Australia. Funny how little it offered. She put the maps down, grabbed a blank sheet and wrote;
CONNECTIONS - INNER SPACE, OUTER SPACE
She wanted to write more but realised she didn’t know what to put. Like Harry, she was going
to have to start all over again.
‘A complete and total stuff-up!’ said Harry. ‘Who sold them this stuff?’ Mrs Coad spoke over her
shoulder with the low voice of an experienced secretary: ‘I believe it may have been Mr McKersie.’
She heard Harry’s chair scrape, then, for a minute, nothing. She looked around and saw, on the
normally bare table, a file, and behind it Mr Hearn. He was fingering the curtains nervously. It was
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the first time she’d seen him act as if he didn’t belong. Suddenly he fell into his seat and grabbed
the phone; anxious, and protective, she withdrew the connection; he dialled a number, then, hearing nothing, he dialled again. Nothing, She could feel his eyes glaring at her neck. After a moment’s
tension she felt the pressure off, and turned to look at him. He was tidying a file. ‘Thank you Mrs
Coad,’ he said. ‘You’re a saviour, aren’t you.’ She smiled. ‘I’ll plug you in now, Mr Hearn,’ she
said.
Anne met Nathan in the library, a Jewish Marxist who was trying to trace an Australian source for
the computers used by the South African police. ‘We thought they were coming in from France,’ he
said, ‘but they’re not. I’ve been asked to check this end. Know anyone in the computer industry?’
Her face showed it. ‘I’ll ask,’ she said. His hostility was palpable. She found herself hating careerists
on the left as much as propagandists of the right. ‘I’ll ask around, right?’ she said aggressively. He
studied her cynically. ‘Where are you living now?’ She walked away.
Christie’s next card was full of exquisite excitement: ‘Oh darlings,’ it read, ‘it was better than I’d
dreamed.’ Tania snatched it away from her father to see the picture. ‘Only an old building,’ she
said. ‘Huh!’ It was the Paris opera, Murdy protested, but to no avail; Tania said the only cards she
liked were ones that showed shops, zoos or aeroplanes. Murdy got her a lamington and resumed
reading:
They stylised the forest so the tree trunks looked like pillars. For the second scene, they simply lowered
another canopy. Leaves gave way to heraldic carving so mouldy you couldn’t make it out, I knew why
Golaud couldn’t get out of the forest; it was in his head. I always knew the cavern scene took place inside
the mind, but I’d never noticed the part where Golaud describes the castle — all those who live in it are
already old! It makes me feel that everything has been done before Even Melisande, who is supposed to
be fresh, seems a thousand years old. I bought a beautiful cover for Tania’s bed, in the same stone colours
as the production, and a bow and arrow for Michael.
Beside her signature Christie had noted three bars of unharmonised notes, presumably a vocal
line; they might have been Mayan glyphs to Murdy, but he placed the card with its predecessors,
hoping that Christie, when she came home, would hum them to him, and tell him who sang them,
and in what mood; mood, he felt, was the anti-logic of his life, an idea he tried to express to Anne,
when he rang her, but she merely laughed: Estelle was, by now, on her way to France,
Home in Bright, Janis mostly sat outside. Her misery had bottomed out in numbness. Bruce left
in the mornings, and came home at half past five. He was kind. If people rang him, she took no
notice. No call came for her. She felt suspended; if her life had been taken over, there was no point
in exercising will.
The old people played poker every night. When the children came over, Mr Miller taught them
Patience. They picked it up quickly, they watched each other for cheating. Murdy tried to get Una
and his father to talk about their childhood, but they could only recapture the half dozen stories
he’d heard a hundred times. Mrs Miller, bringing out the buttons, claimed she’d mislaid the poker
chips, but by then the children were crotchety, and Murdy took them home.
When Harry’s Julie came back, she sensed the change. Reading from her reaction, he knew he
was under suspicion. Was he or was he not still part of the group? Telling her about the theft, he
tried to mask his bitterness, but for him, he knew, experiment was over; he found himself growing
contemptuous of all the talk about relationships and lifestyles. At a party the following Saturday,
he was confronted by a loose limbed acolyte of pot with hair tied back like a sailor’s, who asked if
he were Harry Hearn. He said his name was ______ and he was a friend of ...
Harry guessed. ‘She didn’t tell you I was selling a washing machine cheaply did she?’
‘Aaaah, yeah,’ said Jesus, ‘I was getting around to that.’
‘You know where it is, of course?’ said Harry, but Jesus had no idea.
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‘It’s in the Saint Kilda council depot,’ said Harry. ‘If you can get it out of them, you’re welcome. What are you going to do with it?’
Jesus said a few of them were going to set up a commune at Kyneton; they were going to grow
grapes, raise flowers, hold personal development seminars. Sort of introduce an element of tribalism into Australia’s individualistic culture. ‘With a washing machine?’ said Harry. ‘Yeah,’ said Jesus,
‘from what Barb says, it’d do the lot of us really well.’
Do the lot of us: that, thought Harry, was nicely ambiguous. It was probably the underlying
wish of the whole movement. His desire for detachment grew stronger than ever. The lift in his
block of flats, which he had hated since last Sunday, began to seem desirable again. Against the
idea of personal freedom that his circle were propounding, he was developing a sense of destiny.
Do the lot of them! They’d done him over pretty successfully. He felt a great urge to be gone:
one could only grow so far in these circles. He seized Jesus by the hand, to that surprise of that
counter-culture gentleman, and said, ‘Good luck with your commune. Ring the council depot on
Monday morning. Bloke called Crooke. They ripped enough off me to cart it there, they ought to
give it to you.’
‘Will it work?’ said Jesus. ‘I mean, what’s it doing at the depot?’ but Harry was already alongside his Julie, suggesting they should go home. Threading through the Saturday night traffic, he
told her he had a problem; it wasn’t financial, it wasn’t work, it wasn’t even emotional although it
would probably destroy their relationship — he almost gagged on the word. She was used to this
sort of talk from the group, though it came less often from Harry. It was, he said, a matter of altering his participation in the things he did. ‘You want to be a new person?’ she said glibly; she was a
social worker and spent a lot of time listening to people turning over new leaves. ‘No,’ said Harry;
‘to use the jargon of my trade, I want to use the old machine with different hook up systems.’
Anita rang Bruce to ask him down the following weekend. It was when Janis expected her period,
if it was going to come. She would have done anything to be alone. She said she wanted him to
go, on two conditions — take their daughter, so she could be alone: and come back before dark
on Sunday; she could take two nights alone, but not three. Bruce acquiesced. He said he’d ring
both nights. She nodded. He had expected resistance, and tried to probe her willingness, but she
wouldn’t speak. She promised not to walk off into the hills; she wanted to catch up on her reading, she said, so she’d stay in the house. Blinds drawn, probably. He felt this was going too far,
she told him fiercely not to make a quarrel over blinds. He shopped on Friday lunchtime, put the
stuff away, then looked into the lounge. ‘Look after yourself,’ he said. She nodded. ‘Get yourself a
new toothbrush,’ she said. The glance they shared was full of hostility, recognition of their absurdity, and admission of dependence. The moment he was gone she flung her book on the floor and
picked up a writing pad.
I went again,’ said Christie’s next card. ‘I must read about Maeterlinck’s quarrel with Debussy because in
the music they agree most beautifully. What M. gave D. which he couldn’t have made for himself was the
relationship between the scenes. The symbols deepen each other. Golaud in bed, Melisande dying. The
grotto, the dungeons. The hair, the ring. The forest, the castle. The characters have inflexible wills and
no will at all. They are puppets and they resist being puppets. It’s so perplexing. Madame who watches
the corner of the stairs has given me a better room. I can watch three cafes and various street vendors.
Yesterday I bought Tania a blouse. It’s got little green patterns which look like fleurs de lys but aren’t.
At the Shakespeare bookshop they pretended to misunderstand and overcharged me but I got the Fenby
book on Delius for 16 francs. Home in a fortnight, I wish it was a week. Hugs and kisses to you all. xxxxx
Christie.
Harry didn’t want to answer Janis but knew he had to:
‘I’m writing this on the beach,’ he began. ‘They ran the cleaner along yesterday. The sand is even and the
shells have been mashed into grit. The man with the Dalmatians still goes up and down every day ...
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That, he hoped, would make her think there was no resentment. After a few lines about work,
he said:
‘Love’s not an absolute, you know, it’s part of a process. In the end, it’s probably a sort of psychological
lubricant. It goes with an all or nothing state of mind and it’s very tempting, because it simplifies. Believe
it or not, I went through it several times, including Barbara, not that she’d admit it now. I don’t want to
go through it again and I don’t want to submit — is that the right word? — to those who are. Julie, thank
Christ, doesn’t love me. She’ll try and marry me but I’ll head that off when it comes. Barbara, I hear, is
talking about living by herself. Except that she must have the custody of Nicholas. Court case if I want to
stop that, and I might. God knows what desert island has been chosen for her grand readjustment ...
Rereading it, he saw there was no softness; the reason was that he did, in some measure, still
blame her.
‘We should remain friends,’ he added, ‘but I’d like to know exactly what you think of the thing Barbara
and my brother did to me. Did you sense what they were up to? Did you know they were away from the
party while that guy was doing his act? Did you, in some way ...
His tone was getting harder all the time and now he had to move onto the terms Janis
favoured:
‘... will him to pick me as his stooge? I am having trouble sorting it out. Please tell me how you experienced the whole destructive thing.’
To his shame he found he’d used his business signature ‘H. Hearn’ and had to rewrite the
second page.
Carrying her basket with an apple, an orange and his letter, Janis was pleased at how little she had
to decide these days. There was only one walk for reading Harry’s letters. In a clearing full of currawongs she sat on a log. She ate the apple and tucked the core under some bark before she opened
the envelope. She unfolded the letter, keeping it face down. Then she put a stone on the letter and
made herself walk to the edge of the clearing and back before she allowed herself to read.
She like the opening, hated the end, and stuffed it in the basket. If only she could be with him
to answer those questions. She looked towards the gap in Broken Range, but a mist was rolling
down. Inside it was the rock where she liked to look to Bogong. From Bogong, Hotham. From
Hotham, her mind’s eye liked to see valleys of inky blue, whale-backed mountains, snow gums,
crags, clouds shrouding table-top mountains ... but today there would be nothing but mist. There
was no way she could break out. Even her favourite game, the mountain hopping, was not an open
road, it demanded the participation of the other party. She had to be called, and there was nothing
but mist.
The day Christie came home, there was a card, but the kids weren’t interested. Murdy read it with
his usual ambivalence. She tuned him better than anybody else, they’d made a mutual dependence
... but single parenthood had been nice. ‘How many hours till mum gets in?’ the kids demanded
over lunch. ‘Six,’ their father told them. ‘We’ll have an early tea ...’
There was a strong wind blowing when they reached the airport, but they braved the observation platform. The last light revealed black clouds in the west. ‘Storm coming,’ said Murdy, and
Tania wanted to know if mum’s plane would fly somewhere else so mum had to walk home or catch
a bus. Murdy assured her that planes could land in storms, but the kids weren’t listening. They
were watching the to and fro of lesser planes — light planes like mosquitoes beside the big jumbos
at the terminal, and interstate planes every few minutes. ‘When’s she coming?’ Tania demanded,
just as Michael spotted a heavy thing, like the mother of lesser planes. It sounded stronger, yet
a little tired, and the lights were wide apart. It settled for the run in as if floating in syrup, then
Michael spotted the kangaroo of Qantas on the tail. ‘Mum’s home!’ they yelled. ‘Mum’s home!
Mum’s home!’ They dashed through turnstiles and down escalators towards the gate lounges. ‘This
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way!’ called Murdy. ‘She has to go through customs!’ Sliding on the polished floor, the kids rushed
in any direction they thought their father might take. ‘She’s got me a bow and arrow, I know that
much,’ said Michael, ‘and probably lots of other things.’ ‘Yes, and I’m getting a blouse and probably lots of jewellery from Paris,’ said Tania, ‘so there!’
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12
As she came into the customs checkpoint, Christie realised she faced a decision. Going through
customs would be a process, but passing into the waiting crowd would be an act of will.
She had her eye on the brown doors when the customs man opened her case. On top lay the
Delius figurations and few pages of hieroglyph from her study of Scarlatti manuscripts. Customs
Man studied them for what the notation showed of Christie — neat little quavers with flaggy tails,
either grouped by phrase marks, singled out by a staccato point, or separated by rests. ‘Bringin’
a few things home for the kids I suppose,’ he said, as if insisting that she declare more of herself.
Thinking it none of his business, she said nothing. Rubbing the underside of her case with one
hand, he sent the fingertips of the other through her things to the bottom of the bag, which he
explored for hidden cavities. She felt an obscenity in the action: he responded to her mood with
‘We get all sorts you know. Have to be thorough.’ Her hostility was palpable. ‘Could be your kids
we’re protecting. Drugs’re getting in all the time!’ She loathed him for using his position to perform
indelicacies on people. She snatched up Scarlatti, underwear and presents and turned her back.
In a stride she had dismissed him but the encounter lingered as she approached the sliding doors.
Anxious to determine what needed to be determined, she put her case down.
When the doors opened for a group of passengers, Murdy saw her. The children, tired of
being disappointed, were grumbling. ‘I bet she’s right at the end of the queue,’ said Tania. ‘Trust
mum!’ Murdy told them to be patient, unable to share with them the anxiety produced by one
of those meditations so impenetrable to him. When she came through the doors she would have
the Olympian air of a traveller descending to earth, would hug them, calling ‘Darlings!,’ but in the
pause Murdy felt a judgment. Another person’s will.
Marriage as a binary system. Freedom surrendered for unassessable benefit. The difficulties
they had with each other forced him into thoughts he preferred to hide; was she preparing herself
for that interplay of half-truth and marital diplomacy which was their relationship?
A man noticing Christie standing to one side said ‘You’ve got someone to meet you?’ He was
grey haired and looked as if he had big cars and sons to drive them. ‘Yes thank you,’ she said. ‘My
family!’ The man went through the doors leaving Christie in her quiescence. She was longing for
a bath, and the pleasure of seeing the children open their presents, but she was caught in a lull
when there was no reason to take the next step. Then a Greek grandmother, powerless without
her family, hesitated beside her, waving her stick in the ambit of the doors without causing them
to open. Her second gesture was a feebler version of the first. Scorning pity, she turned a look
of stone on Christie, but the mythic eyes lacked power. Christie, whistling a snatch of Ravel’s
Chansons Madégasques, stepped on the relevant bit of floor, the doors opened and Christie, enjoying
momentarily the gathering’s attention, bowed formally to the Greek, exposed as she was to the view
of those who waited for international travellers. ‘Darlings!’ she cried, hugging Tania and Michael,
who had slipped beneath the barrier on sighting her. ‘Mummy!’ cried the daughter, and ‘Hi mum’
the son, elbows clashing as they caught hold of their mother. ‘Hello darling,’ said Christie to her
husband, rubbing cheeks ambiguously: ‘How have you been?’
‘Nice to see you,’ said Murdy. ‘We’ve been wonderful, actually. We’ve been close and well.’ The
firmness of his greeting was only momentarily daunting to the Olympian Christie, still with air
travel brightness about her: ‘Michael! Get a trolley for my luggage,’ she announced, and then: ‘A
funny thing just happened. Turn around!’
‘Looks like a witch!’ said Tania. Murdy wanted to know if Christie had been seated near the
figure groping forward like Oedipus. ‘They put her on in Athens,’ said Christie. ‘It took four people
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to get her to her seat. They gave her a row to herself, but still she managed to occupy two stewards
the whole flight.’ Yet Christie had managed to upstage her, Murdy observed. ‘Is she blind!’ asked
Michael; ‘No, son,’ said Murdy, noting the glint in the old lady’s eyes as a phalanx of relatives surrounded her, ‘just powerful.’
‘Trust you to think of that,’ said his wife, and Murdy began to bristle, but she exclaimed ‘Oh,
smell the grass! Quick, take me home, I want a bath and I must see Australia!’
They reached the car in the last flurry of warm air from the grasslands. A minute later sugar
gum leaves were thrashing, windswept and slithery, in the headlights of the car. An excited Christie
called, ‘Oh darlings, I saw the most wonderful thing in Rome ...’
‘Rome?’ said Murdy. ‘I didn’t think you ...’
‘Oh yes, Rome, I must take you to Rome,’ she said, as if spreading the world before them. ‘It
rained in Rome, big fat blobby drops like hail. And I ran into this church, well, you’ve no idea!’
‘Good?’ said Murdy, driving sturdily.
‘Borromini,’ she said. ‘Hardly bigger than our house. But the use of space! And the light coming in! Christ on the altar and the holy spirit in the lanthorn!’ She stared at them wide-eyed, as if
considering her own amazement. ‘My goodness you are excited,’ said Murdy; ‘you’ll be speaking
in tongues!’
‘I suppose that’s what Greg was doing,’ she said, demonstrating her way of bringing the
remotest thoughts into a conversation. ‘Greg?’ said her husband, slowing the car; other motorists
swooshed past them in the rain.
‘If you have a moment when you see everything, perhaps there’s no point in going on,’ she said.
‘If you’ve been a god you can’t go back to being an ant.’
‘So you go back to the earth,’ said Murdy; in his mind he saw the spot where they’d heard
about the suicide: in the darkness of the storm, trees would be lashing, lawns squelchy, and the
paths running with water. The bush where Janis threw Greg’s note would be bowed down by the
weight of water on its fronds; the note must have been incinerated long ago. He tapped his fingers
on the steering wheel to the rhythm opening of the G minor symphony.
‘Don’t,’ she said. The most intense pain could be considered within the confines of one’s personality, but a reference by someone else shifted the thing onto other terms, falsifying it. ‘We’ve
never talked about it,’ he said.
‘There’s nothing to say,’ she said. ‘No one’s going to do anything about Greg. It’s best not
talked about.’ He started to speak about the Paton parents, but she shooshed him. They drove in
silence past the inner airport, where a tram was lumbering across the road. ‘Mel­bourne does have
a character,’ she said, delight in her voice: ‘I knew I’d love it when I got home.’ The children were
sceptical and Murdy observed that she was not seeing the same tram as he was; then with a blue
flash the tram came to a halt, and at the same moment its lights went out. Inert, it blocked the
road. ‘Pooey old tram,’ said Tania, dying to get into mum’s bag. ‘Shit!’ said Murdy. ‘That’s not a
bad picture of our transport situation. He’s stuck, we’re stuck, there you have it!’
By now the driver was prodding the power rod and looking anxiously over his shoulder for cars
rushing up in the lane next to Murdy, while his conductor, a moustachioed Turk with a Chaplinesque sense of situation, made imperious stop signals at the traffic and waved an umbrella in the
air above his driver’s head. Michael started sniggering; ‘A bit of a humorist,’ Murdy said, then
realised that Christie had been differently affected. ‘I’ve seen that man before,’ she said. ‘This has
all happened before. I don’t know where. It feels creepy, I wish they’d get going.’
A heavy gust of rain rocked their car, the driver’s efforts produced a series of blue flashes, then
the tram lit up. Driver darted instantly for his cabin but the Turk couldn’t leave without making a
signal of triumph at Christie, whom he seemed to recognise; despite the rain darkening his mustard
coloured suit, he stood in the headlights, looking intently and finger pointing straight at her, as
if she had been singled out for attention by some power operating through him. A moment later
the tram was gone, traffic was moving, and Tania was asking her mum if she had any more parcels
coming in the mail. Murdy felt pleased because the shared experience had linked him to his wife,
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but she, more troubled, said, ‘It happened after we were talking about Greg. Do you think that’s
got something to do with it?’
He said, ‘I feel it does, actually. There is something in synchronicity. I mean, I feel that events
do arrange themselves in relationships which we can’t explain. Janis,’ he said, ‘is very strong on this
sort of thing. She’s always looking for links which show that events have more power in themselves
than people have to shape them.’ Mentioning Janis, however, proved to be a false step, Christie
having never sympathised with Janis’s involvement with the irrational, yet they had barely entered
the back door of their house when the phone rang. It was Janis. She was pregnant.
She’d waited three weeks, then had a test. It was positive. When she’d told Bruce he’d simply
nodded, said it was inevitable, and gone for a walk.
‘Broken Range track?’ said Murdy. ‘Or down to his office?’ She said she didn’t know, she
thought it was the bush. ‘I sometimes think that track is my life,’ she said. Murdy wanted to know
what she meant.
She didn’t answer him directly, she talked about her great grandmother. Grandma Brydie’s
diary, kept as she followed her husband into the mountains, described a rocky place, surrounded by
‘the sappiest blue leaves’, where she had sat wondering. ‘Fold after fold of desolate forest,’ said the
diary, ‘rising to peaks as yet unnamed, and in all this wilderness, not a single Christian soul except
my husband, two hours ride ahead, with whom Heffernan and I have no other connection, for the
greater part of the day, than the blaze marks showing the route he determines for us.’
Something in her voice told him she was quivering. ‘Are you reading from the diary now?’ he
said.
She said she’d got it out when Bruce left, it was something to cling to.
‘You mean he’s out walking now?’
She said yes.
‘How long’s he been gone?’
She said two hours.
‘He’ll be lonely soon, he’ll come back.’
She thought he might.
He thought of Bruce, and the child forming in her body. Whose was it? She said, ‘Talk to me.’
He told her about the Baron coming on two prospectors at the foot of the Baw Baws, and offering
them each a pound a day if they would come with him into the mountains; but they refused. Even
he could be lonely sometimes, Murdy said.
‘It sounds as if he was pretty desperate,’ Janis said. ‘A pound was a lot of money in those
days.’
‘He must often have been miserable,’ said Murdy. ‘You can’t have ecstasies without the trough
that follows.’ Silence told him she was applying the words to herself. ‘He got caught in a flood one
time and had to sleep in a tree. All his stuff got washed away. He must have felt pretty lousy that
morning.’ They were both thinking of Bruce; she was to all intents and purposes abandoned by
Harry: what would her husband do?
In the darkened bush, Bruce had resolved that the child was his, regardless of immediate parentage. An excitement had caught the lives of a whole generation; Barbara, Harry, he and Janis,
had been swept up in it, along with thousands they’d never know. Flinging aside hypocrisy and an
outdated, repressive morality, they’d pinned their faith on liberation. It could have been his child
and Barb’s, it could be anyone’s child by anyone, it was a fruit of the period he’d thrown himself
into. He’d liked what he was seeing in Carlton — the communal households, alternative medicines,
the sexual liberation — he’d wanted it, he’d urged Janis on when she’d have hung back because
each step forward by her meant another step out by him. He was in every sense as reponsible as
she. Technically another man’s child, it was theirs by the mutual experience of the last two years;
when she’d told him, he was as much relieved as stunned.
She’d been tense for days, with the stiffness of holding back from weeping. He’d known there
was something that needed to be said. He had never felt more tender towards his wife than in the
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simple things of making meals, folding clothes and ensuring that there were flowers on her side
of the bed. Each dish wiped and put away was like a fragment of soul taken care of. All the time
she’d been watching him, pleading silently. Now it was in the open, he could no more reject her
plea than he could kill himself.
He felt a passing jealousy for Harry, but from what he’d heard Harry had his problems; Barb
seemed to think she’d scuppered him once and for all, and he had noticed that whenever Barb rang
up, Janis left the house: there was some refusal there he couldn’t grasp, but he wasn’t going to try.
Harry had been brought to earth in some way, even in Janis’s mind; he wasn’t a lovegod any more,
just a cool, controlling person with an air of mystery that had toppled his wife.
Still his wife; in a sense, everything they’d done with other people was an infliction on each
other: the qualities of other lovers registered his disappointments in Janis, and she, losing control
of herself in a passion for Harry, was saying that a warm, comfortable, thoughtful man was not,
finally, the opposite polarity she sought.
Another reason for not being jealous of Harry was that he wasn’t what she thought; for all the
violence of her upheaval, she was like the cat that sees itself in a mirror, or the bird that pecks at
the window, trying to find some missing part of the self. Cool, inward people would always bring
Janis down; lecherous old councillors, like Bert Marshall, or confident young graduates gave her no
trouble at all: she could be attracted to them but she never forgot how to handle them.
What troubled him was the need to keep it quiet. It meant a split in their personalities that
they could do nothing about. Each hearty pat on the back, every cousin’s ‘What are you hoping
for, a boy or a girl?’ would bind them more deeply in their lie. They were not what they seemed
to their community. The double life was made visible in the child, except that they would not be
able to admit it. They would be community-appreciated parents who had chosen to have another.
They would be asked what they were going to call it, and if they intended to have any more. The
turmoil surrounding its conception, which was the truth they had to deal with, could not be stated
publicly. So there was a gap between their lives and the presentation of those lives to the employees
and neighbors who saw them every day: it ruled out complete integration of the self, the very thing
Janis longed for. Since she could not have it, they were involved, now, in permanent instability.
The child itself, he saw, was the only stability. Perhaps they should name it soon, something
like Robin that could be used for a boy or a girl, and then concentrate on its developing life. Bruce
felt that he would be an active part of the pregnancy, and sit with Janis through every minute of the
birth; when Robin/he/she/it entered the world, it would be a declaration of loyalty, the best part of
an imperfect relationship. All relationships were imperfect, but if they were made to work, they bore
good fruit. Walking along the track, he lifted his head, saw the night sky full of stars, and smiled.
He found he could accept his helplessness, and his imperfections as a partner. Janis and
Barbara were always trying to send each other messages by thought transference; they claimed
it worked sometimes, but he was sceptical. Now, reconciled to their situation, but an hour’s walk
from home, he would like to have sent her a message that he was on his way. But it couldn’t be
done, so he picked up a stone and hurled it into the trees; he heard it crash through the leaves,
disturbing a wallaby: half a dozen thumps and a breaking of twigs told of its panic. ‘Poor old feller,’
Bruce called down the gully. ‘Stirred you up a bit, didn’t I?’
He would like to have felt a general compassion for all living things, but his position was too
embattled for that. Trudging back, tired now, he thought of the things that could bring him down.
A change of heart by Harry, however unlikely. Word getting round the office that the child wasn’t
his. Janis unable to face her relatives, or veering into a new unstable passion. A crack in himself
such as he had felt at Monday’s council when, momentarily drowsing, he heard Bill Mathers, most
vociferous of the rural rump, move a preposterous motion to do with subsidies to farmers developing roads into their properties. Public money for private roads! Bruce, snapping out of his doze,
had gone so far as tapping the Shire President on the shoulder, with no clear idea of the objection
he was going to raise, except that it would be a strong one, when Bert Marshall, worst of the rural
rump, rose to the president’s nod with a funny, personal objection: the shire secretary, he said,
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shouldn’t express an opinion on the matter because it was well known he was in the market for a
bush block himself; he had a vested interest in the matter and couldn’t speak.
It should have been easily countered, but it wasn’t; the place he was interested in was the old
Redesdale property where he had spent two nights with Prue. Bert Marshall, he felt sure, had
become aware of this, and was blackmailing him to shut up. Bruce shut up, and was further humiliated over lunch when Bert Marshall made a distinction between landowners who were contributing to the development of the country and those who only wanted a hideaway to develop their
lifestyle. ‘Lifestyle!’ he pontificated: ‘it’s just the modern name for good old-fashioned promiscuity.
People were made to suffer for it once!’ Bruce, remembering the night he’d dragged Barb out of
the Carlton moviehouse because he’d seen Bert with some doubtful floozy, had to admit that he’d
never be able to challenge the hypocrisy of those who employed him: he was at the mercy of their
faults, their prejudices and their petty crimes.
Ultimately he had no basis for self respect. He might, dashing about in his Saab, stir up clouds
of dust on their roads, but they could pull him down if they wanted to. His manhood was in their
hands, not his wife’s, whatever he pretended. With Barbara he had almost broken out of the trap;
since then, with Prue, Anita and the rest, he’d been acting out the autonomous, unflawed man he
wasn’t. Romantic dreams ... and yet they sometimes seemed attainable. Driving down this very
road with Prue, he’d had a moment of fulness when he felt all his potential was as available as it
had been at twenty-two and rather more than it had been on the day, marked as much by tension
as by love, when he married Janis. Prue believed her own dreams, he hadn’t seen through her then,
they’d been telling each other all they’d do with the farm when they lived there ... two people could
hardly have been happier. Where had it gone?
Rounding a corner, feet starting to blister, he saw the lights of Marshall’s farm, and behind it
the glow of the town. What if he had Prue with him now? They’d shared an alluring dream, but he’d
become scornful of her and suspected Anita wasn’t any better. Why was potential unachievable, or
if achieved, had lost the quality of dream? Why weren’t humans happy unless they lied?
Trudging on dismally, Bruce became aware that there was another walker in the night, a slight
figure walking the same way as he, but more slowly. Unless he stopped, he would be meeting
someone.
The figure, hearing Bruce, speeded up a little; he must have decided to prevent a meeting
unless Bruce, wishing to join him, also walked faster.
Bruce did so wish it. There was something pliant, but cautious, in the way the figure, after
listening for a moment, moved to one side of the track so that Bruce, if he held his present course,
would draw abreast but two or three metres apart. What was he doing in the night, this alter ego?
Forging some mystical connection? Bruce quickened his stride until, like a lover he was destined
to meet, he made out the features of Norm, Bert Marshall’s son.
‘Good night Norm,’ said Bruce.
‘Good night Bruce,’ said young Norman with an inflection in his voice that told Bruce that the
boy had known, for perhaps half an hour, who was walking behind him on the track. ‘A nice night
for a stroll,’ said Bruce, feeling his way.
‘If you’ve got nothing on your mind,’ said the boy.
‘Have you got something on your mind?’
‘I know you have,’ said the boy. ‘As for me, I was just wondering how the aborigines manage
to be in two places at once.’
‘Where did you hear that one?’ said Bruce, every inch the sceptical municipal boss.
‘Their kadaitchas,’ said the boy, ‘are experts at it. They have to be. It’s their way of hiding
their identity. When they go off on a killing mission, they leave one self behind. That way, the killing is done but no one knows who did it because the person who did it was never away from the
group.’
‘Sounds a bit far fetched,’ said Bruce: but he knew that the boy had known who he was long
before he came up with him.
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‘Not so very,’ said the boy. ‘We do things as strange in other ways. Computers, going to the
moon. We use technology, but they use forces of the mind we don’t want to know about. They’re
there though. I’m surprised you don’t admit it.’
Taken aback, Bruce said, ‘Perhaps they believe their kadaitchas can be in two places at once,
but maybe there’s some trick involved. Like a good magician. He makes you think something has
happened, but he knows how it was done and he could tell you if he wanted to.’
‘No,’ said the boy. ‘They can be in two places at once. It’s probably not even hard.’
‘You’ve tried it?’
‘I can project myself,’ the boy said calmly, ‘but I can’t materialise in the other place, and I don’t
know what’s going on back where I’m standing.’
I should think bloody not, thought Bruce, staggered at this strange meeting; how long had the
boy been going on like this? What else did he get up to? What did rough, greedy Bert know of his
son’s mind?
‘I’d be interested to know if you could prove that,’ said Bruce, wondering if he was humoring
the fellow or making a fool of himself.
‘Tell me something you’d like to know. In the area, I can’t go very far, yet,’ said the boy.
Putting himself in the hands of someone who was making him profoundly uneasy, Bruce said,
‘Look into my lounge. Tell me how my wife is, Janis.’
He wasn’t sure that he wanted to know, and was relieved when Norman said, ‘I can’t do that,
it wouldn’t be private.’
‘That’s important?’ said Bruce, trying to find a weakness.
‘You know it’s very important,’ said Norman, humbling him again. ‘If I used my power unethically, people would hate me.’
The opposite of hate was love; did reclusive Norman see his guiding principle as linked to the
force driving Janis? If he did, why didn’t he go out with girls? Why was he tramping about the bush
making preposterous claims? Love was softness, weakness, and a preparedness to be acted upon,
was feminine, in fact, and here was the son of a cocky who still killed his own meat rather than
buy from a butcher, claiming that the almost-black-magic powers he laid claim to were somehow
subject to the rules of love! Bruce scratched his head.
‘They probably don’t think much of you anyhow,’ he said. It was as kind as he could be.
‘How come they’re so interested in me?’ said the boy, suddenly hopeful.
‘They haven’t got your measure yet,’ said Bruce. ‘When they know all about you, you’re a
washout.’ When he said it, he felt he’d hit rock bottom.
‘They’ll never do that,’ said Norman Marshall, and his defiance made even troubled Bruce feel
sorry for the boy. ‘It’s probably better if they do,’ he said.
They walked for a minute in silence. ‘I turn in here,’ said the boy. ‘Funny place,’ said Bruce.
‘There’s no gate.’
For answer, Norman stood straight and stiff. For a moment he shuddered, then went limp, as if
absent from himself, then, as Bruce saw him, he strode mechanically towards the fence and parted
the wires as if directed from outside himself. A creepy feeling came over Bruce, and he would have
run, except that a voice slightly displaced to one side of Norman said ‘Good night Bruce. Sleep
tight.’
‘Good night Norman,’ said Bruce. ‘Sleep tight yourself!’
It might have been a chuckle that came from the boy as he strode awkwardly down the paddock: Bruce almost ran in his anxiety to be home:
Telling Janis about it, he couldn’t hide his fear, but she was less surprised than he’d been. ‘I
thought he was into something strange,’ she said. ‘He’s got that look about him.’
‘Do you think his dad would know?’ said Bruce.
‘Bert would know,’ she said. ‘He’s not a fool and he’s pretty observant.’
‘Is there anything we can do for the boy?’ said her husband, but Janis was thinking along
another line. ‘I suppose he should go ahead with it,’ she said, ‘but I know I’d be terribly afraid.’
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‘So would I by Jesus,’ said Bruce. ‘If he ever got to be able to do what he claims he can, and
people got wind of it, they’d be after him. He wouldn’t last a week! Someone’d arrange a mysterious little accident!’ But Janis was putting herself in the boy’s position. ‘If I thought I could do
something like that,’ she said, ‘I’d be terrified of slipping away from myself when I didn’t want to,
and twice as terrified of not being able to get back again. Imagine it: cut away from yourself, flitting
round like a ghost, and unable to become real. Ooooah!’
‘It’s not going to happen,’ said her husband. ‘Going to give me a cuddle? In bed?’
‘That solves everything for you, doesn’t it?’ said his wife, but she followed him obediently to
their front room, and when she had her shirt and trousers off she came and stood meekly beside
him. He put his hand on her tummy, then bent down and kissed her by the navel. ‘It’s O.K.’ he
said. ‘It’s O.K. in every possible way. You know that, don’t you.’
Easing into bed so that she was against him for the full length of their bodies, she felt the difference in quality between trust, which was the thing you leaned on, and that other emotion loosely
termed love, which pulled you, disturbed and excited, towards the thing you wanted to reach. Trust
was as large as love, and much more certain; it was like a recovery from the other emotion’s illness;
it was a healing force, a foundation, and positive. ‘I’m incredibly tired,’ said Janis. ‘I wish I could
sleep for a month.’
‘That means you won’t sleep at all,’ said her husband. ‘Would you like a big glass of whisky?’
Janis laughed nervously. ‘Are you trying to knock me out?’
‘Yes,’ he said.
‘I’ll have one if you have one,’ she said. ‘I don’t want anyone watching me or listening to me.’
‘Right,’ he said, refraining from mentioning Norman Marshall. When he came back with the
glasses, she was startled: ‘Half that,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly drink that much. It’d take my
head off.’ Bruce insisted she should drink it, but laughing, she sat up and put her feet on the floor.
‘Where are you going now?’ he said.
She padded off to the lounge and came back with a pink spiral candle in cellophane wrapping.
‘Ghastly bloody thing,’ he said. ‘Going to light it?’ ‘You just want to see it burned at last,’ she said.
‘Yes I am.’
‘Good,’ he said, seeing how far he could go. ‘Mind the bedclothes.’ She jammed it in a pipe he’d
been affecting lately, and propped it up with books. ‘Pretty shaky,’ was all he dared say.
She said, ‘Drink your whisky.’
They looked in each other’s eyes and clinked their glasses. ‘Cheers,’ he said. ‘Lots of them,’ said
Janis. Then she put the glass on her side table and snuggled under the blankets, looking surprisingly
happy and contented. ‘Is that all you’re going to have?’ said Bruce.
‘It’s all I wanted.’
‘You didn’t want much,’ he grumbled, but he knew she’d stabilised, and if he drank more she’d
say he was drinking too much, and he’d say he wasn’t and they’d start fighting. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I
suppose that’s all I want too.’ She was almost purring.
Norm Marshall came to the Shire Offices in the morning, looking very young. He wanted to know
if Bruce had been talking to his father. The boy said his father had driven off in the car just before
he got home the previous night, and had been away several hours: Norman said, ‘I’m sure he was
checking up on me.’
Bruce said, ‘How could he do that?’
The boy said, ‘I’ve got places, I think he’s trying to find them,’ but he refused to say what these
places might be. ‘I don’t want to be got at,’ was all the boy would say.
When he’d gone, Bruce went out to his secretary. Nell, very curious, had been in and out with
files during the brief interview. ‘Lodge plans,’ said Bruce. ‘Could you get the one for Bert Marshall’s
place? Oh, and also — we once gave Bert leave for three months. Could you check when that was?
And give me the minutes of those meetings? Thanks Nell.’ Strange business, thought Bruce, he was
out after me, not the boy, and if I hadn’t met Norman last night, I wouldn’t have known.
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Nell brought in the things. His nod curtailed her stay. In a minute he had what he wanted.
Bert’s leave from meetings had been in Bruce’s first year when a lot of time had been spent on metrification; in a mass of minor alterations to by-laws and regulations, Bruce had slipped in a change
to the minimum size for subdivisions from fifty acres to fifty hectares. It had passed unnoticed at
the time. The lodge plans showed that Bert’s farm had been split into fifty acre titles, obviously
with a view to subdivision; yet he’d never protested about what was done while he was away. Hadn’t
he known, thought Bruce; he must know now. Why hadn’t he said anything? Bruce thought of the
poster Barb used to have on her wall — ‘Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not
out to get you!’ He smiled faintly as a deep suspicion entered him: Janis pregnant and Marshall up
to something, he was in for a sticky time. He took the papers out to Nell: ‘Get what you wanted?’
she asked, pretending to be casual: he knew that she’d be telling people what he’d been looking for,
and it would get back to Marshall eventually, short of a miracle preventing it. Feeling troubled, he
went out in the street.
Carmel Flannery was the first person who passed him; Irish as Paddy’s pig and pregnant. Then
one of the Redesdale boys who’d been in court for assaulting a policeman; Bruce managed to look
in the menswear as he passed. John Dockerty the postman had to be greeted. Rocky Varney tooted
him as he went to bulldoze the tip. Mrs Ahearn who wanted to start Meals-on-wheels, but they
couldn’t get funding. These are my people, said Bruce to himself, thinking that perhaps he hated
them.
They hated him too, he realised, for his freedom of action, his authority, and his Saab. And for
stories they’d heard about his lifestyle; he was in the same position as Norman Marshall, only better able to defend himself, unless you believed that Norman could float about the way he said.
It was a pretty enviable skill, Bruce thought, if you wanted to avoid things, and then he hated
himself; how the hell had he dropped off so quickly from all he’d shared with Barb?
What he’d loved and perhaps feared in her was her claim for absolute autonomy, and here he
was pushed and pulled every way. Good morning. Nod. How’re you feeling? Wave ... he didn’t even
own himself. As wretched as when he stepped outside, he went back to his office, watched by no
less than three main street shopkeepers.
From the menswear, Rodney Dixon emerged with a broom. Harry Graham came out of the
shoeshop with a couple of letters to post. They agreed that the hippies who were camped in the
old tobacco kiln ought to be sent on their way. They agreed that the shire secretary was looking
drawn, more than just the pressures of the job. By now Bill Roxburgh from the sub-news deli was
substituting BOMB THREAT SHOCKS ALI for yesterday’s QUAKE DEATH TOLL RISES He
said the shire secretary was having too many weekends in Melbourne, he’d apparently been seen
in a Carlton moviehouse with some woman not his wife. This was on the very good authority of
Bert Marshall; the three men chuckled as they wondered what Bert had been doing there himself.
But he was easily forgiven, since he had all the right attitudes and was, after all, a widower. His
son, however, was a different kettle of fish; he made the three of them distinctly creepy, it might
be a good idea if Bert sent him away for a while to sow a few wild oats, et cetera. One thing Harry
Graham couldn’t understand was why the shire secretary’s wife wouldn’t serve on the hospital auxiliary; her husband was pulling down one of the best salaries in the area, the community had a right
to expect a contribution from his wife, it wasn’t as if she didn’t have a lot of spare time. Too much
for her own good, they thought, Gwen Anderson who lived next door to the Becks sometimes got
letters in her box by mistake, and there were definitely other men writing to her. It needed looking
into, the men agreed.
Gwen Anderson called on Janis that afternoon with scones and a jar of last year’s apricot jam.
She said her fourteen year old wasn’t getting on very well at school and she wondered if Janis could
coach him in some of his subjects.
It was like having a spy planted in the house, Janis thought, but decided to accept; if she
handled the thing carefully, Gwen might find herself challenged by the ideas taken home.
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The first night the boy came he showed her an essay on Ways to Reduce the Road Toll. Road
deaths, the boy’s essay said, were caused by people who couldn’t handle their cars — old people,
women drivers. And also by people who bought high-powered foreign cars and thought they were
racing drivers when really they weren’t up to it.
There was nothing he could mean but the Saab.
Janis, her guts tightening, said he ought to write to the police or maybe an insurance company
and get some statistics, but he said, ‘Why would I want to do that? I’ve seen it all with my own
eyes!’
She tried to explain that there was a great deal he had not seen with his own eyes, and that
people who had recorded the accidents he hadn’t seen might be able to tell him the trends, but he
brushed this aside with a confident ‘What a man knows, he knows.’
Teasing him, she said, ‘What about the things a man doesn’t know?’
‘What are those?’ he wanted to know.
She brought Bruce into it then, dragging him from the lounge where he’d had his feet up, a
beer and the Age. ‘What would be something a man doesn’t know, Bruce?’ she asked him.
‘What it’s like to be not a man,’ he said.
She looked at the boy.
‘I know plenty of other things,’ he said. Bruce snickered and went off.
‘Masturbation mainly,’ was Bruce’s comment when they were in bed that night. ‘He’d know
plenty about that. He and his mates get it off in those huts behind the brickworks.’
To her surprise, Janis felt a kinship with the boys; no doubt they thought their activities were
secret, yet the knowledge that Bruce had about them meant that their actions weren’t enclosed by
the charcoal-graffitied walls of their huts. Something of what they did, and the, feeling they gave
off as they came away from their rendezvous, went into the lives of others in the town. Where then
did a personality stop? Where were we divisible from each other and the natural world? What other
connections were there if one only had the key?
In the morning she wrote to Murdy, asking him for some books; she could have ordered them
from Readings, but routing the request through his personality brought in other possibilities; if
Readings didn’t have what she wanted Murdy might choose something else; it brought another will
into play, which was important when she was feeling constricted.
He went to Readings, but they couldn’t fill the order so he went to Webbers, where he felt
much more at home. They addressed him as Mr Miller and they liked to lead him to ‘little things
which he might have overlooked on his last visit’. This was very flattering to Murdy, historian of
Melbourne town.
Webbers couldn’t fill the order either. They suggested he might try Third World, Space Age
or Whole Earth Bookshops, but Murdy didn’t consider such places his. Space Age, Third World,
Whole Earth; what was the city coming to?
Standing in Little Collins Street, wondering if he might after all try the Third World, he saw
the Greek girl from his history group whose beauty troubled him. For the first time he inquired of
her where she came from, expecting her to name some white-bleached tumble of houses set like a
jewel in the Aegean Sea, but she told him she lived in Coburg, near the jail. As if to prove this, she
rushed to catch the No. 19 tram, leaving him with a hollow in his heart.
Walking into Collins Street, he found the site of the vanished Argus Hotel, where the Baron
had a private mailbox, stuffed daily with the Australian mail and a loaf of bread. Murdy smiled
at the thought of the two postmen, laden with parcels, who were needed to deal with the English
mail when a ship came in. The Baron was a living presence, thought Murdy, pouring last minute
instructions into the ears of travellers and botanists as they stood in Saint Kilda Road, watching for
the last tram. Trees he planted still stood in Melbourne; pumpkin seeds he sent to Central Australia
with Giles had been dead a century. Yet something more than the trees was alive, and something
about the Baron was more irrevocably dead than the pumpkin seeds. A historical moment, if
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brought sufficiently to life, could glow for centuries; what was gone was the instantaneous moment
of decision and creation.
Why had he let his Greek girl go? That was a moment, now gone, of shared affection. Her tram
was heading for the jail, and he was mooning around, not knowing what to get for Janis ...
Staring at the street where the Baron’s messengers had struggled under their loads, he saw his
wife. She was in a black government car, with a dynamic bald headed man leaning forward to talk
to her with the evident approval of two public relations types, delighted to see their V.I.P. entranced.
From her posture, she could have been alone in the car; only the brilliance of her eyes and a slight
parting of her lips showed her engagement with what she heard. There’s that untouchable beauty,
thought Murdy: I ruined my relationship with it years ago, but it’s still getting others in.
The chauffeur took the quartet towards the Town Hall. Murdy didn’t remember his wife talking about a concert, it must be a reception; he felt a pang of envy, and turned disconsolately to look
in the window nearest to hand, when he heard a voice in his ear: ‘You’re looking dismal! What’s
eating you today?’
It was Lawrence Hearn in his Wormald uniform with a bulge under his coat; Murdy was so
startled that no words came from his mouth. Lawrence chattered: ‘Away in the clouds, eh! And
I brought you down to earth. Sorry about that!’ But nothing in his bearing suggested regret; he
obviously enjoyed reinforcing his view of academics. ‘No,’ he teased, ‘you weren’t in the clouds.
You were eyeing off those chicks!’
The chicks were two photo cut-outs standing tanned and sun-glassed before a panorama of
Central Australia. ‘I used to work for Centralian,’ said Lawrence. ‘Before I took up this game. I did
all right.’ Murdy stared at him. ‘Lot of ‘em like to come along unescorted. See what they pick up.
Even those that come with a bloke don’t always stick to him.’ He grinned. ‘You want to try it some
time.’ Murdy felt uncomfortable. ‘I don’t think that’s the sort of fantasy I go for,’ he said.
‘What’s your sort?’ said Lawrence. ‘Little Asian girls with cunts like petals?’ This time Murdy
laughed. ‘I think I’m an explorer at heart,’ he said. He pointed to the purple landscape in the window. ‘I rather envy Giles. He had an obsession with the Olgas. They really lured him. He named
them Mount Ferdinand, after Mueller, and a lake as well. But the old boy made him change the
names, he wanted to give the honour to someone else.’
‘Ex girlfriends,’ suggested Lawrence.
‘King Amadeus and Queen Olga of Spain,’ said Murdy. ‘The names had barely been changed
when they had to abdicate.’ He smiled. Lawrence appeared to be impressed. ‘You really know a lot
about it,’ he said. ‘What was the king’s name again?’
‘Amadeus,’ said Murdy. ‘Lover of God.’
‘That,’ said Lawrence, ‘would be the height of folly. I better be on my way mate. I’ve got a
few things to check out.’ He was still feeling pleased with himself when he slouched into Young
& Jackson’s. He was on his second beer when a jockey-sized man called Spider Crowley accosted
him with a pocket full of watches which he claimed were Omegas. ‘They’re fuckin’ Hong Kong
copies,’ said Lawrence, ‘as well you fuckin’ know, Spider. Just piss off wouldya.’ Spider tried two
more drinkers then disappeared into the men’s toilet. A moment later two detectives appeared in
the bar; catching the eye of one, Lawrence flicked his glance towards the toilet, and left. Passing
a policeman coming off point duty, Lawrence murmured, ‘Keep your eye on that lane, mate, you
might see someone in a hurry.’
In the toilet, the detectives went through Spider’s pockets. In the bar, the barman wanted to
know who’d tipped off the cops. ‘Feller over there left as soon as they came in,’ someone said.
‘Might’ve been him.’ That night, in the Empress of India, a man called Swinton tackled Lawrence:
Spider Crowley had been charged, but he’d be out on bail in a day or two and would be arranging
something for the man who’d helped the police.
Lawrence had his counter. ‘Tell Spider Crowley,’ he said, ‘that I know who did the break-in
at Radic’s, and I know who organised it too. That little effort cost one of my mates his job. I got
a couple of scores to settle if anyone stirs me up.’ That message, conveyed by Swinton to Spider
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Crowley, was enough to stop the bash-up party, but two Sundays later, with 34 Celsius forecast, a
truckload of bones and offal was dumped in the drive of Lawrence’s parents’ home. He had been
able to pass off previous outrages as mistakes intended for neighbours or the previous owners,
but this time it was clear to the Hearns that their son was the target of gangland retaliation. Since
Lawrence was surly and uncommunicative, his mother rang Harry, and arranged to meet him for
lunch the following day.
Lawrence had some difficulty in organising a truck, but eventually he was able to get the stinking rubbish loaded, hose down the drive and throw his overalls in the washing machine. Then he
crawled into his bungalow with a can of beer to reckon up the price he paid for these encounters.
Most crims, as he saw it, knocked themselves out; living from crisis to crisis, they burned up energy
too fast. Lawrence had always thought he could outsmart them by predicting their moves, committing nothing of himself to the situation they created. Now he realised that even to hold back was
somehow to expend yourself. What you didn’t put into a battle mysteriously disappeared any­way.
He was becoming a shell. His room, his garage, and his various little hideaways around the city,
full of stuff he meant to sell when the price was right, held nothing that he really gave a shit about.
This was where Harry had him beaten. He seemed to know what was really valuable, as opposed
to objects with high price tags. Feeling abject, Lawrence rang his brother and asked if he could
come around.
A dry cough was his brother’s response.
‘I know I did the dirty on you,’ said Lawrence. ‘It was pretty rotten really. I guess I want to
make it up. I’d like to talk to you for a while.’
His brother invited him round for tea.
The trucky who took the butchers’ refuse away, being a cousin by marriage of Swinton, simply parked his vehicle in a dead-end street in Kensington, walked down a lane overlooking the
Ordnance Depot, and got into Spider Crowley’s brother’s car. At ten that night, about the time
Lawrence was feeling free enough to broach Harry’s whisky bottle, the Crowley mob were redepositing a smellier load in the Hearn parents’ drive.
Lawrence decided that his brother was going to forgive him, not by his manner, which was
more impervious than ever, but from the fact that Harry had friends present and had asked Julie to
do the curried prawns Lawrence fancied. The friends were not the IBM types he’d expected; they
seemed to be leftovers from Barbara or new acquisitions via Julie. Bastard doesn’t even get his own
friends, thought Lawrence; I’ll bet he lies under his women and lets them fuck him.
Later that night when Julie put her arm around him and asked him what he thought of the
prints on the wall, he wanted to cry. He asked her if she’d done them herself, but, feeling her tighten, and recognising a frustrated creativity, he burst out, ‘Well, I wouldn’t know! I thought it might
be in your line!’ Julie’s line was that she was responsible for those people systematically brutalised
by society; he suspected she meant the people he managed, and maybe even those he protected,
but wasn’t sure: Harry had led the others onto the balcony, and he was in the kitchen with his
woman, and didn’t know what to talk about. ‘Funny thing is,’ he said, ‘I didn’t think Harry’d have
me again. Ever. After what I did.’
Julie recognised the child in him. She asked him if he could get her a load of soil and some
teatree fencing, there was a garden at the bottom of the flats which she wanted to take over. Then
she got him to talk about the party and found out more about Janis than she would have got from
Harry in a year. She asked about the ex-wife and if Lawrence had ever been attracted to Barbara.
He offered to get the soil, and found himself telling her things he hardly realised he knew.
It was harder with his brother. Calling him to the balcony, Harry said, ‘You’d remember that
spot down there?’ Lawrence was prickly but someone asked what was special about the spot and
Harry told them, ‘Barb and Lawrence played sand castles with my washing machine.’ This cryptic remark had to be explained, so Harry told the story as an elaborate party joke. ‘My brother
Lawrence,’ said Harry, moving next to him but not putting his arm around him, ‘knows more lurks
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than anyone in Melbourne. If you want anything fixed, Lawrence is your man. But he’s not mine:
he won’t do anything for me.’
‘What would you like me to do?’ mumbled Lawrence.
Harry kept up the party game. ‘What would be something really difficult?’ he asked his guests.
They thought he could be set some Herculean Labours of Lawrence: ‘But D.H., T.E. or Hearn?’
demanded Harry. Someone thought he could be set a Labour for every Lawrence they could think
of; there was Marjorie Lawrence the singer and Laurence Durrell the naturalist and Lawrence
Rowe the cricketer, and Lawrence Hargrave the aviator (‘He could jump out the window for that
one,’ someone said); there was Lorenzo the Magnificent with his library and then Julie wanted
to know why they were all being so chauvinist, why couldn’t they have a few Lauras, and that
produced Laura Norder and Little House on the Prairie and Laura Tweedle Ramsbottom: ‘But
what’ve I got to do?’ shouted Lawrence; the thing was real to him, however they played with it. But
Harry wasn’t taking the pressure off: ‘Wasn’t there a Lorenzo,’ he sang, ‘who had his head cut off
and buried in a pot of basil?’ Julie shrieked with laughter and fondled Lawrence’s neck with her
fingernails: ‘Oh fair go!’ shouted Lawrence, ‘can’t we talk about something else for a change?’
But several people remembered the story: it came from Boccaccio they said, and Keats had
versified it, and it was about two vile brothers who murdered the beautiful Lorenzo because he
was screwing their sister and they wanted her to marry a nobleman to validate their foully gotten wealth; then Harry went round the gathering with more wine and they began to remember
snatches of the poem: how Lorenzo appeared to Isabella in a vision and appealed to her to find his
body. ‘I am a shadow now,’ someone remembered: ‘Alas! Alas! Upon the skirts of human nature
dwelling alone ...’
‘That’s my brother Lawrence,’ said Harry sourly.
‘Give it a break,’ said his brother, ‘I’m not too strong on this poetry.’ But the thing had got a
life of its own and was more than revenge. Harry’s and Julie’s friends pieced together their recollections of the poem: Isabella, they recalled, found the body and cut off its head, then buried it in
a pot of basil which she watered with her tears. ‘It smelt more balmy than its peers of basil-tufts
in Florence,’ Julie remembered: ‘the jewel, safely casketed, came forth, and in perfumed leaflets
spread.’ There was a moment’s confusion, and then they got it right: the brothers dug up the basil
pot: ‘the thing was vile with green and livid spot/And yet they knew it was Lorenzo’s face’: feeling guilty, they fled from Florence into endless banishment, and Isabella pined away and died.
‘Forlorn. She died forlorn,’ said one of the academics in the gathering. ‘What’ve I got to do?’
shouted Lawrence. ‘Give me a way out, fuckya!’ but the educated voices chanted mockingly:
No heart was there in Florence but did mourn
In pity of her love, so overcast.
And a sad ditty of this story borne
From mouth to mouth through all the country pass’d:
Still is the burthen sung — ‘Oh cruelty,
To steal my Basil-pot away from me!’
‘Is that the end?’ said Lawrence. They said it was. ‘Thank fuckin’ Christ,’ he said. His hostility
confronted them. Joyce King, who ran a gear shop in Prahran, wanted to know what labour they
should set him, and Wendy Rosewall, a journalist, thought he should be made to find the basilpot.
‘Would you like Barbara’s head in it? Or mine?’ said Lawrence, since Harry was grinning at
the suggestion. ‘It wouldn’t make any difference,’ said his brother. ‘Humpty-dumpty’s been broken
now.’ Lawrence doubted it, and certainly the egos of Harry’s friends were alive and flourishing, but
he grasped at the way out. ‘A pot of basil,’ he said. ‘I’ll get you one!’ Harry remembered that it was
Julie’s birthday the following Sunday and said he could come to dinner and bring the basil as a
present, but it’d need to have a stand because it’d be kept inside the flat, the salt air had killed the
herbs he used to have on the balcony. ‘It serves me right,’ he said, ‘I put them out there and forgot
them,’ Lawrence decided that his brother was changing; neither the humility nor the negligence
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had been part of the former Harry; perhaps he and Barb should plan the next stage of Harry’s
improvement. Someone wanted to know where Barbara was living now, and Harry said he didn’t
know, but he’d heard that she was planning to set up camp on an island in Bass Strait: ‘for the
benefit of her soul, no doubt,’ he said,
Thinking about this remark, and accepting coffee from a Julie who didn’t fondle his neck this
time, Lawrence decided that the thing he admired about Harry’s friends was also the thing that
gave him the shits in heavy doses; they believed that the way your personality developed was something you could do something about, and they had a way of making money out of it. ‘And there,’
he thought, ‘is the rub with me.’
He was still brooding about this inbuilt inferiority when he drove home. As he swung into the
drive, his headlights caught the piles of shanks, and bloodied ribcages, and fat, and puce-coloured
guts that the Swinton/Crowley mob had dumped in his parents’ garden. A desperate rage swept
Lawrence. He wanted to kill them, and he wanted to cry. He felt like chucking the guts in the
gardens of the bastards who’d been tormenting him with Keats, and he felt like braining fucking
Spider Crowley with the biggest hambone. In the glare of headlights, the sight was too much. He
bashed the headlight switch with his fist, but even in the moonlight the sight was ghastly, Then he
became aware of a figure in the doorway, looking ghostly in the chiffon nighty. His mother said,
‘What’s it all about Lawrence? Darling, whatever’s wrong?’
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13
‘Everything and everybody!’ he cried, but, running up the steps he realised she didn’t want him
to nuzzle against her. He was as repulsive to his mother as to anybody else. He promised her the
refuse would be gone by morning, but when he dived for his bungalow with a can of beer she followed anxiously. She wanted to know what he proposed to do with the muck, but he could only
talk about herbs; he had to have a pot of basil. Surprised, his mother said they had basil growing
in their garden; if he had to have some, he could pot it first thing in the morning.
Relieved, he assured his mother that all he needed was to be alone, and that he would set his
alarm for half past three; when she got up, the rubbish would be gone, the basil potted, and her
son over his crisis. Mrs Hearn eventually responded to her son’s anxiety rather than to her own,
and went to bed; the moment he heard the back door shut, Lawrence grabbed paper and pencil
to write:
DESPERATION NO VALUE EVERYONE RIPPED OFF
He tore up the paper and flung it in a corner. Snatching another piece, he scribbled:
BEASTS THE LOT OF THEM AND THEY WON’T ACCEPT MY BEASTLINESS
He looked glumly at it, threw it after the other, took a pie bag this time, and wrote:
A LEVEL TERRAIN IS FLATTEST HIGH, LOW, LET’S ABANDON
He didn’t know what it meant, but it had the right feeling, so he went on:
IF THERE WAS A WORM IN THE WORLD COULD SPEAK, HE’D BE SILENT
I like it, he thought: I’m getting there: those cunts and their Keats! Next he wrote:
IF A WHIRLPOOL COULD BREAK INTO PARTS, THEY’D ALL WISH THEY WERE
OUT OF IT!
Feeling deeply satisfied, he went on:
IF YOU TAKE YOUR MONEY TO A BANK, THEY’LL CHANGE IT INTO
ANYTHING
That, he decided, was the problem, not the solution. Chucking his can in the corner, he
thought of quitting, but went on:
BONES WOULD TELL YOU WHO YOU ARE, BUT WHO’D BELIEVE THEM?
Pretty pathetic, he realised. He would have to do better than that. He scratched around the
few books in the bungalow, but they didn’t tell him anything and he knew it was his lonely battle.
Grabbing a box of matches, he lit the lot of them, then used their charcoaled heads to scratch the
wall:
HELPLESS PEOPLE CAN ONLY LISTEN FOR SOMEONE ELSE’S WORD
In deep disgust with himself, he fell asleep in his clothes.
After the clean-up, he bought a motorboat with twin Johnson outboards. Complete with trailer,
built in double bunk bed, three burner Porta gas range, fish freezer, Grind-All waste disposer and
Teflon cushions on the sundeck; then he went to Torpey’s Caravan-land in Ringwood where they
had carports on special, and bought himself a shed. Next he put himself in a queue for a vacant
berth at Saint Kilda Marina, then he went home with an outdated map of Port Phillip Bay he got
from a cop he knew, and studied this environment he was venturing into: there wasn’t much you
could do with it beyond catch fish, acquire a suntan or bone up on a few facts to tell the girl you
were taking out that day; then he thought about the effect the bay had on him when he was high
on Harry’s balcony. If it looks good from there, he thought, it’s got to be good from down there
where it is.
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In the next few weeks, working mostly at night, he spent a lot of time on the bay and came to
the conclusion that the powerboat was a mistake: he should have been learning how to sail. If he
could get himself out on the ocean, he could visit some of those islands Barb was always talking
about. He didn’t fancy solitude, but moving around, finding new people and relating cleanly to
them with no trade-offs and no manipulation ... it sounded good.
He was surprised to find himself soaking up some of the idealism of the period; he lived with a
girl in Rosebud for a few weeks, churning up the bay in his powerboat to get to work. This method
of transport, and the strangeness of his hours, gave him detachment; passing beneath the tall flats
on the Esplanade, he felt he had a semblance of equality at last. When his lover broke it off, he
went back to his bungalow, washed the walls and cleaned up with only a faintly nagging regret.
Plenty more where that one came from! What he couldn’t understand was his sense of time going
wrong: his inner clocks used to function whether he was tired or fresh, but now he kept looking at
his watch, checking the dates on newspapers and desk calendars; sometimes in the night, prowling round the city in his supervisor’s van, he felt as if he was in a time slip, and could as easily be
going back as forward. He tried to explain it to Harry: you could be crossing an ocean at ten knots
an hour, but if there was a current flowing the other way at twelve, you’d be going back when you
thought you were making progress. In fact, he said, why think about moving into the future at all;
perhaps we were like rocks in a stream, affected by the passing flood but not moving in relation to
it. Harry, who for once seemed interested in him, said that his mistake was in thinking that time
was some sort of constant medium in which the events of the universe took place; since Einstein,
one had to think of it as being another variable ... Lawrence was, however, more interested in something else that Harry let out — that Barbara was camped in the teatree at some inlet on the coast;
she had their boy with her and was, Harry thought, paired off with a fisherman. ‘I’ve got holidays
in a couple of weeks,’ said Lawrence. ‘I might look ‘em up.’ Harry thought she was at Wingan
or Tamboon, but wasn’t sure; if he found anything amusing in his ex-wife, he kept it to himself,
merely asking Lawrence to take a few games he had for the boy: ‘Barb may think meditation will
save the world,’ he said, ‘but Chinese Checkers are more use to a six year old.’
With the game as his blessing, Lawrence headed east. He came on Barb and her fisherman in
the Cann River pub. She greeted him warmly, but when they came out and saw the powerboat, she
said, ‘What the fuck are you doing with that?’ Crestfallen, Lawrence noticed that the fisherman was
looking in another direction. ‘You have got so much to learn,’ said Barb. ‘We’ll organise it so you
can leave it at the service station. Leave your car and come with us.’
Stripped of his machinery, Lawrence found himself in the back of an A40 ute with Barb, a dog,
Barb’s boy Nicholas and one of the fisherman’s two kids. The whole thing smelt of fishbait. The ute
flung up a cloud of dust, and there was a thunderstorm hovering. ‘Fuckin’ hell,’ shouted Lawrence,
and by way of explanation: ‘It’s not enough.’ Barb grinned in her most lizardlike way, and shoved
her thumb in the direction they were going.
When they reached the lake, it was already dusk: the breeze had settled and a silver sheen had
descended on the water. Squelching down the steps with the bag they’d allowed him, Lawrence
found that the fisherman’s boat was a tiny thing with an unreliable put-put on the back, which,
when loaded down with three adults, dog, three kids and the weekly provisions, had about two
fingers clearance. ‘What about the storm?’ he said. ‘Jeezus, you wanta sink me?’
Barbara looked at him calmly. ‘You think no one ever crossed this before?’
‘Plenty of people got drowned before today,’ he said. ‘They probably thought they were safe.
Maybe they had the shits up and they weren’t game to say!’
‘Sit in the stern and shut your arse,’ she said. ‘Nicholas! Give your Uncle Lawrence a few of
those peanuts.’
Fish popped up from the sky-reflecting water. Fisherman sat patiently by his engine, taking in
the scene.
‘This feller ever talk to you?’ Lawrence whispered.
‘When I ask him to,’ she said.
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‘Sounds like you got it made,’ he said.
‘Don’t talk,’ she said, ‘look and listen.’
Halfway down the lake, they felt the cold air of the storm. By now Lawrence had changed his
mind. ‘Not a bad place to die,’ he said, ‘if you gotta go. But I bloody hate drowning!’ Fisherman
looked stonily over his shoulder and Barb’s lips curled in contempt. Even the dog, he noticed,
didn’t bark or jig around. The kids had their backs to each other and watched the water. At a
moment when Lawrence observed nothing, one of them nudged the fisherman, who mumbled
something about the fish feeding early. The fisherman’s boy reached for his line; his father glanced
at the sky, thought for a moment, then turned off the engine. Lightning flickered and a shiver of
breeze stirred the water. Lawrence judged that it would be six or seven hundred metres to the
nearest shore. The last lights were out of sight at the mouth of the river. He could hear the boom
of the ocean ahead. He studied the contents of the boat, wondering who or what would survive if
they sank. If he did get to shore, he’d be lost in the bush, there was scrub in every direction. The
boy pulled in a shining silver fish, but to Lawrence’s amazement, he threw it back, and baited up
again. Lawrence stared at the sky: more lightning, and the clouds getting closer. He knew Barb was
grinning, he could feel it on his back. ‘Wouldn’t that fish do for someone’s breakfast?’ he ventured:
‘We’ll do better than that,’ the kid said calmly.
When the boy had two more, his father tried to start the engine with a length of greasy cord.
Put-put, however, refused to start. Lawrence remembered that his bag was canvas; his things were
going to get wet. He tried to nudge his bag under a slimy waterproof in the bottom of the boat:
Barb was still grinning.
Fisherman unscrewed a spark plug, tried a crack in the porcelain with his fingernail, then
flicked the plug in the lake. Barb tickled Lawrence’s ribs: ‘You hoped a hand’d reach up and save it,
didn’t you?’ This wasn’t very funny for Lawrence because Fisherman’s box of tools didn’t contain
a replacement. Then he remembered the pocket of his waterproof, pulled out a spark plug that
looked worse than the last, and stuffed the waterproof under his seat.
Amid flickers of lightning, Fisherman got the boat moving and they chugged on till they came
in sight of an enormous dune. The kids and the dog shifted about in readiness. Waves coming in
the entrance seemed ready to swamp them, but Fisherman held his course doggedly until he drew
level with a stretch of swampland which had once been cleared. ‘That’s the old cricket ground,’
Fisherman volunteered to Lawrence, who could imagine no reason why anyone would ever have
gathered there to play cricket: he was overcome with the phosphorescent brightness of the foam
and the lurid brightness of the dune. He wanted to be sick yet he was on the edge of ecstasy. The
sky above the ocean was an all-threatening, overwhelming, fearful, swallowing black: the coastal
scrub was black or sickly green; the dune, high as a city building, unmarred by a single footprint,
was being stripped by a stinging wind. Sand particles filled the air like driving spray. ‘Barb!’
Lawrence yelled. ‘Barb! Hang on to me!’
‘Silly bastard,’ she said, putting her arms around him and squeezing: ‘You’ll get used to it,
don’t be scared!’
‘Barb!’ he yelled, regardless of the fisherman: ‘Barb! Live with me wouldya?’
‘You’re going to live with me,’ she said. ‘There’s a hut in here, you can stay as long as you like.
You don’t wanta go back to the ratrace!’
‘No,’ he said, ‘what I meant was you and me ...’ but she cut him short: ‘When he beaches the
boat, grab your stuff and run. There’s a sort of tunnel through the teatree. Lift your feet or you’ll
trip. Ready?’
The hut, with its earthen floor and cupboard-sized rooms was dominated by a fireplace.
Fisherman lit his lamp, then opened two cans of beer while the children put things away and Barb
lit a fire. By the time she had a blaze, torrents of rain were hammering the bark and iron roof.
Fisherman sat grandly, foot on a kettle, while his son gutted fish and Barb wrapped potatoes in
foil. When Lawrence offered to help, Fisherman opened a third can of beer, adding Barb to the
conclave via their guest. Lawrence thought he was a chauvinist bastard but respected him for
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knowing who he was; he’d seen plenty of his weaker brethren hit the big smoke to become cops,
bar-loafers or crims. ‘Good set-up you’ve got here,’ he said, prepared to fall into a place assigned
to him. Fisherman said simply, ‘Yeah. Four or five days a fortnight.’ Barb explained that he worked
on a trawler out of Lakes Entrance, and that when they wanted him he had to be on hand. ‘It’s
only when the weather’s rough, or threatening,’ she said ‘that he gets to be home.’
Home was a concept of limited value to Lawrence, who had recently hosed down the front
garden and planted jasmine beneath his parents’ window by way of atonement; but, close to the
roaring sea and dwarfed by a dune like the palm of a celestial hand, the crude hut that sheltered
them had a fundamental quality lacking in the billiard-parlor-frequenting watchmen whom
he supervised by night. When the kids lay down to sleep, they put one rug on the hessian that
stretched between wall and crooked pole, another rug above them, and fell to sleep as children slept
in paradise: Barb and the fisherman, he noticed, had a rug of possum skins. ‘I love it Barb,’ he told
her, ‘I bloody love it!’ Barb responded by throwing the possum rug on his bed, because, she said,
he’d need it; as far as he could tell, she proposed to cover herself and the fisherman with a plastic
sheet as greasy as the put-put, a sleeping bag that wouldn’t zip up, and a couple of raincoats that
had dried by the fire. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you can’t do that! You have the rug!’ but she said he, being new
to the place, needed the cover, and the two of them would keep each other company. He would
have argued, but she dropped her clothes where she stood, Fisherman smiled possessively, and he
thought it best not to argue.
Later in the night they woke him, screwing violently, Barb groaning noisily and the fisherman
hissing in excitement: Lawrence, who was hot, flung the possum rug on the floor, but they ignored
it; it was embarrassing to witness someone else’s screwing, and he felt like pulling himself off, but
there was something distant in what they did, some lack of intimacy, that made him feel less envious. Instead, he got up, stepped discreetly around their bed and covered the children by the light
of the fire: the sea, he noticed, had settled back to an elemental presence like the roar of traffic.
It felt like the middle of the night when he heard the put-put starting. While the sound was
still dwindling in the distance he went back to sleep. When he woke, Barb had the kids at the table
doing correspondence lessons. Later in the morning, she took him up the dune. Under a radiant
sky, the ocean stretched to infinity. Coastal forest stretched from dunes to mountains. Lawrence
found himself squinting into the haze for the spot where river emptied into lake. ‘Don’t you miss
him?’ he said. ‘Yeah, I miss him,’ she said, ‘but that’s how it is.’ She undid her shirt, kicked off tattered denim shorts, and stretched on the warm sand. ‘Take off your clothes,’ she said. ‘Relax.’
‘It’d feel a bit funny when I’m not screwing you,’ he said. ‘He only went off this morning.’
Barb sat up angrily. ‘You really are a shit,’ she said. ‘All mixed up. You can’t stand being naked with
someone unless you’ve got power over them, which is what you think screwing’s all about. Ah Jesus,
why do I bother.’ She rolled away from him, gazing out to sea. Lawrence stood up in the breeze,
then sat down again, feeling he had no right to be where he was.
‘I’m gonna sell that boat,’ he said. She burst out laughing. ‘You’re a child,’ she said; ‘you don’t
know what to do with yourself. Come beside me and stop carrying on like an idiot.’ When he
was next to her she said, ‘Now take your clothes off and stop having big ego-dreams. You’re not
Casanova or Don Juan, you’re poor Lawrence Hearn and you’ve got a prick and I’ve got a place
where it goes and if I wanted to screw you I would, he’s not too bad on jealousy, but I’m not going
to because I don’t feel like it. Now will you tell me why you’re down here?’
‘I feel driven out,’ he said, and he did take his shirt off.
‘Who drove you out?’
‘Harry and his friends made a fool of me. And some bastards dumped a load of guts on my
lawn,’
‘You must’ve done something to them,’ she said. ‘Go on.’
‘That’s all. I just don’t feel I’m worth a cracker.’
‘None of us are,’ she said. ‘It’s a problem, isn’t it.’
‘I didn’t know you felt like that,’ he said. ‘You always seem pretty sure of yourself.’
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‘Yes, I’m sure of myself,’ she said. ‘When I look at the competition I don’t see any reason not
to be. But that’s not the point.’
‘I don’t follow you,’ he said,
‘I’m going to leave here pretty soon,’ she said. ‘It’s not working out.’
‘My God!’ he said, staring at the view. ‘How do you work that out?’
She rolled over to face him. ‘Old boobs are hanging down a bit, Barb,’ he said. Her eyes flashed
angrily. ‘Listen to me,’ she said. ‘Can you tell me why I don’t feel healthy?’
‘You’re not on drugs, are you?’
She shook her head.
‘So what’s the problem?’
‘Tell me what you reckon it would mean to be perfectly healthy.’
Lawrence said, ‘I suppose it would mean that every part of you was functioning properly. The
way it is, is the way it ought to be.’
‘Right!’ she said. ‘That’s what I think. But I can’t get it.’
‘You’re mad, Barb,’ he said. ‘You’ve got it and you don’t know it.’
She grimaced. ‘You might even be right. You probably are. When I look back, I’m going to think
this place was heaven.’
‘Better hang on to it.’
‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s driving me mad.’
‘You’re driving yourself mad.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s the point.’
‘Buggered if I can see it,’ he said. ‘What’re you getting at?’
‘If you’re perfectly healthy,’ she said, ‘then you’re perfectly integrated. But if you’re perfectly
integrated, you don’t know it. It’s too natural. It’s like breathing, which feels funny when you have
to think about it. What I want is to have it, and to know it at the same time.’
‘Can’t be done.’
‘You might be right,’ she said. ‘But I’m shit scared of what I’d be like if I didn’t keep trying.’
‘What do you think you might be like?’
‘An empty bloody dreary slut.’
He felt shocked. He looked at her reproachfully. ‘I always thought you had the answers.’
‘That’s what Harry put on me,’ she said. ‘He wanted a woman big enough to mother him, and
a gorgeous fuck, and he didn’t want me to know as much as he did ... all the usual stuff.’
‘I’m afraid I’m like that,’ he admitted.
‘Men are,’ she said. ‘And not just men because women fall for it too. They try to be all the left
over things. I’m tired of being an opposite. I want to be a positive something in myself!’
He said, ‘I don’t know why you say that. You’re the strongest person I know. I came three hundred miles to see you when I was feeling lousy.’
‘And you wanted to screw Harry’s wife,’ she said.
‘Yeah I did,’ he admitted. ‘But I admired you too.’
‘Well, I’m not worth admiring,’ she said. She sat up and banged her hand on the sand.
‘If you’re not I don’t know who is,’ he said, taking her hand and kissing it. She looked at him
in surprise. ‘You’re a sweety,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think you believe it.’
‘No I don’t.’
‘You can screw me if you like,’ she said. ‘It’s important to you.’
Lawrence felt embarrassed. ‘I don’t think I could do it up here,’ he said. She laughed: ‘And I’m
not doing it in the hut with all those kids.’
‘You weren’t doing a bad job last night, the two of you.’
‘It’s all right when they’re asleep,’ she said. ‘I’m not all that natural about it.’
‘I’m feeling pretty fucked up,’ he said.
‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Let’s see what the kids are doing.’ She put on her clothes and he put on his
shirt. ‘Hang on to me,’ she said, ‘and we’ll roll down together.’
160
‘Christ!’ he said, ‘it’s miles. You’ll kill us!’
‘Crap,’ she said. ‘Fred and I do it all the time.’
‘Is that his name?’
‘He does have one.’
‘For some reason it makes a difference.”
‘I don’t want to hear about it,’ she said. ‘Get hold of me.’
He stood nervously. She put her arms around him and dragged him over, gave the sand a
couple of kicks, then locked her legs about him. Hair flying, sand everywhere, they rolled higgledypiggledy down the dune, coming to rest in a hollow at the bottom. ‘Okay?’ she said, breathless.
‘Okay,’ he gasped; they seemed to understand each other.
On the way to the hut, he looked back. The dune was defaced by their ascending footsteps and
the uncouth marks of their tumble. ‘Jesus,’ said Lawrence, ‘did we come down that?’
‘Who else?’
‘That was your moment,’ he said. ‘Having it and knowing it. Is that why you roll down the
hill?’
‘Could be,’ she said. ‘You might’ve taught me something.’
Lawrence spent a week with Fred on the trawler but made a bad impression. Knew the wrong
cops, was too watchful. Got onto their lurks too quickly. Wouldn’t let Flasher McCabe in his bunk.
Wouldn’t talk about the set-up at Tamboon, apparently knew more about Fred’s woman than he
was prepared to say. He didn’t get very excited about a catch and above all he liked skiting about a
brother who was a big noise at IBM. Saying goodbye in the Central, Lawrence tried to square off.
‘I’ve disappointed you blokes,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that. I’ve got a lot of things to work out.’
They accepted that, because everyone had, but they’d had him picked out to organise a few things
for them, and now he represented a danger.
They wanted someone who’d send them a few prostitutes when no one local felt inclined, who
could use his contacts at Russell Street to have indulgent cops posted to their area, and someone
who was prepared to come down hard on blokes who got their drug scene mentioned in the city
papers. And what did they find?
Asking a few questions, they discovered that he was an ex-mate of Spider Crowley but had put
him in to the cops, and that a guy called Swinton had dropped a load of bones on his parents’ lawn.
A bloody good evener-up, they thought: it served the bastard right. Swinton sent them a message
via a truckdriver called Williamson that he’d pass the word to his contacts, and if anything about
them got out because Lawrence Hearn had done his dobbing act, he’d let them know. For a few
pros, he’d put them on to Nick Mitropoulos, who ran a chain of massage parlors, and as to getting
the right cops and shutting up reporters, Nick could put them in touch with the guy he used to
work for, a Swede called Aavi Kilvo.
And so the name of Lawrence came to the attention of Kilvo, a middle-rank respectable crime
organiser who ran a vineyard which attracted the top drawer from the city for wine and banquet
functions, and to which no taint of criminal activity had been allowed to attach itself. Kilvo was a
skilled manipulator of front organisations, and he was in the process of forming a Middle Australia
Club which would provide speakers, low-cost lunches, and outback tours, with a monthly magazine emphasizing ‘the values of the Australia you grew up in’. The usefulness of this essentially
low profit organisation to Kilvo was that he wanted it to give him access to clubs and organisations which would be receptive to various pornographic publications over which he had control.
In particular, he’d been alerted to the fact that the elderly were a largely untapped market for
pornography. He’d come to understand the old people’s charities circuit through a lady of twisted
mind called Beth Simpson.
Beth was a cousin of the people who used to own Aavi’s vineyard — grazing land in those days
— and she liked to call in of a weekend and pour her heart out. Aavi had concluded that if the
thing could be dressed up respectably, then private hospitals and charitable institutions provided
a tremendous market. Hence the Middle Australia Club; he’d employed a public relations consul-
161
tant by the name of Brigida; after she’d slept with him, he let her use his Saab. She it was whom
Rhonda Mumford, looking impatiently out her window, saw stepping from the stylish car she’d
parked expertly in the shadow of the Housing Commission’s towers.
Rhonda watched the henna-haired Brigida sweeping across the street, rings glinting and wooden sandals clipping hard. Rhonda studied the letter setting up the meeting; letterhead discreetly
unstylish, paper of average quality, it looked like some sort of downplaying. Rhonda assumed a seat
by the door so that Brigida, coming in, would be unsure where to sit.
Middle Australia burst in, saying ‘Hi!’ with a rotational movement of the wrist. Rhonda, correctly spoken, said ‘Good morning Ms Erhardt.’
Standing by the window, and glancing casually at the towering shadows, Brigida checked out
the room; evidence of depressedly-weird people in plenty — photos in which lenses glinted, thick
as ice blocks; party caps on horribly unfestive occasions; badly embroidered cushion covers; sickly
Christmas cards, and the smell of age.
Rhonda, aggressively defensive, said ‘What can we do for you, Ms Erhardt?’ She clicked the
final T.
Brigida laid before her the thought that her organisation had much to offer her organisation,
with mutual benefit to all.
Rhonda, expert in smelling rip-off, said that the Brotherhood was what its name implied — a
coming together of all those who upheld the ideals of its founder, the most salient of these, in a
modern society, being the succour of the disadvantaged.
The poor, Brigida observed, were no longer known as such. She, she said, had benefits to offer:
Middle Australia was an organisation dedicated to the proposition that those who felt disadvantaged by society needed not so much an input of government money ...
‘Though it helps,’ said a crafty Rhonda.
... as a benefit of spirit: they needed, she said, to be shown things which restored their values
and gave them the spiritual health to play their part in restoring society to what it had been in times
when they felt more confident.
‘Do you have a machine that puts the clock back?’ Rhonda wanted to know.
Brigida, a totally contemporary person, said she belonged to a very sophisticated organisation
with a social conscience: she cited, as a bad example, the toy manufacturer whose products had
been sighted as a bulldozer ground them into the Hawthorn city tip; they, she said, were a classic
example of a firm that was solely profit-oriented; they should have given their ...
She wanted to say waste products ...
... unsaleable goods to the many available charities that could have put them to good use, but,
she said, they lacked the imagination to do so, and imagination was a virtue that Middle Australia
did not lack.
Rhonda, studying her Florentine bag and notebook from Selfridge’s, could only agree.
‘What do you suggest?’ she said.
Brigida, approaching the difficult part of her mission, explained that bulk purchasing usually
meant economies, and that Middle Aus­tralia was related to a complex of consumer organisations
that was able to achieve economies for its clients by means of year-long bookings which its higherfee-paying membership could not fully subscribe: ‘So,’ she said, ‘in off-peak times for the various
trades — tourist, restaurant, or whatever — we are able to do something for you at throwaway
prices, while you, in helping the people you look after, enable us to look after the client body we’ve
put together.’
‘These are the people we look after,’ said Rhonda, pointing at the walls: and at that moment
a limp-jawed, spittle-dewed simpleton with a smelly mop pushed into the room. Rhonda, cooing
encourage­ments, handed him something that might have been a work ticket: Brigida, she saw, had
put the cap back on her biro.
Brigida, hating Rhonda, studied her notes, which read;
HATRED, EXPRESSING ITSELF IN COY
162
and
CLIENT-BODY - WHAT DOES SHE CALL IT?
Rhonda, hating Brigida, asked her to table her proposals. What was the Brotherhood to do for
Middle Australia, and vice-versa?
Brigida, professional to the fingertips, outlined the deal. The magazine would be provided
free for everyone on lists provided by the Brotherhood and similar organisations, and would carry
their names on its masthead: benefits would be available to anyone on the mailing list, with further
discounts for outings or purchases organised through a supporting body. She gave examples. The
magazine would carry articles appropriate to the interests of its readers and could, if the various
bodies wished it, be a useful lobby for pressuring governments. Rhonda looked suspicious.
The Brotherhood, said Brigida, could have a representative on the magazine committee, with
power of veto.
‘Veto?’ Rhonda asked. ‘You mean veto?’ Almost mollified, she could see it was too much. There
was a catch.
‘It could be you,’ said Brigida. ‘Whoever the Brotherhood nominates.’
‘I don’t fancy myself as censor,’ said Rhonda.
Brigida started out to say, ‘It wouldn’t really be a censor ...’ but Rhonda’s eyes told her she’d
failed. ‘It’s our contacts you’re after,’ Rhonda accused. ‘You want to get to those people.’
‘We’re offering them a lot,’ said Brigida, flushing. ‘You offer our benefits to anyone who supports you, makes donations, anything.’
‘You could approach our board,’ said Rhonda, ‘but I’d be recommending we take no action.’
Brigida could see the Saab and a few other benefits down the drain. ‘You really are playing
God!’ she snapped.
‘We are dealing,’ Rhonda began, ‘with people systematically disadvantaged. We handle ...’
Brigida burst in. ‘You handle their lives in the most amateurish fashion. Take those nightmares,’
she said, pointing to the towers. ‘The Housing Commission was set up after representations by
your organisation to a Labor Government. And where did it get the poor? Jumping out twelfth storey windows! Don’t you think someone else might have something to offer, with fewer disastrous
preconceptions?’ Rhonda moved as if to sit behind her desk. ‘Bureaucrats,’ Brigida snapped, ‘can’t
see a good thing when it’s shoved under their nose.’
‘Other people may see it your way,’ said Rhonda, icy cold. ‘Try them.’ Whatever Brigida
might have said in reply was cut short by the phone. Middle Australia was followed downstairs by
Rhonda’s voice: ‘Not Social Security again! How many cheques this time?’ Talkback radio came on
with the Saab’s ignition. Brigida swivelled the Saab in front of a tram as the compere introduced
IBM’s computer wizard for comment:
‘Government welfare is all very well but we have to build accountability into our programs.
They’re usually wasteful and no one cares. Take Mayne Nickless,’ said the benign voice. ‘They pay
three million people a week with an organisation of a hundred and fifty. If they’re two hours late,
there’s hell to pay. Social Security, on the other hand, thinks it’s okay to get eighty per cent of the
cheques right within two weeks and I’m sorry to say they use computers to stuff it up!’
‘Right on, boy!’ said Brigida, thundering back to Aavi’s while the top technocrat himself, grinning at his scribble sheet, evaded the question as to whether charitable organisations, by giving
people money to tide them over, might actually be compounding the inefficiency. ‘You’d have to
aim that question at the target,’ said Harry. ‘Try the charities and see what they say.’
Putting the phone down, he found himself irritated. It was company policy not to comment
on public issues and he’d get a rocket for his little effort but his boredom with the mythmaking
of left and right erupted when the debate was aimed, essentially, at maintaining an unsatisfactory
status quo. Looking out the window, he stared at the trains. Poor bloody Julius! They were too slow,
the men who ran them were victims of class suppression, they had a quarter of a million people
captive for up to two hours a day and they couldn’t stir themselves to offer a grog or a coffee or
a few buskers singing, and if you needed a piss you had to hop off and wait for the next train ...
163
Hopeless, thought Harry, and a fair representation of the human race, which couldn’t organise its
comfort, let alone anything else.
He decided he’d be happier working at home so he stuffed a few things in his bag and headed
for the lift. Stepping in, he found himself facing McKersie.
‘Hi, Mac, how’s it going?’ he said, trying to register the exact degree of animosity the salesman
felt.
McKersie, to his surprise, put an arm on his shoulder and said, ‘Hamlet, since my wife died,
I’ve been lousy.’
‘I thought she was a bit of a millstone round your neck,’ said Harry, ‘and I didn’t know she
died. I’m sorry.’
‘I’m sorry, too,’ said McKersie in his maddening fake-Yank: ‘I discover I’m the sort of person
who can’t live without some problem dragging me down. If I’m not escaping from something I’m
not happy.’
‘What will you escape from now?’ Harry asked.
‘Myself, that’s all there is,’ said the salesman. Harry shook his head. ‘Take it easy,’ he said. ‘If
you turn on the gas, don’t forget to light it.’
‘Ever thought about it?’ said the salesman.
The lift opened at ground level. As they crossed the foyer, Harry considered. By the revolving
door, McKersie said, ‘Going to answer me?’
‘I’ve had friends commit suicide,’ said Harry. ‘A woman who lived with me committed suicide
once, and it upset me very much. For myself, no. I live by thinking I’ve got the answers. I’m paid
to be Mister Knowall and I suppose it suits me. If I could see it as a positive act, I could do it.’
‘How could it be positive?’ said McKersie. ‘It’s the ultimate escape.’ For once he sounded
Scottish.
‘If you thought there was something better on the other side, I suppose that would make it a
positive step.’
‘There’s nothing on the other side,’ said McKersie. ‘We know better than that.’
‘Nothing but customers,’ said Harry, stirring McKersie’s hatred: ‘After you Mac.’ But McKersie
crowded Harry into the same quadrant of the door as himself; shuffling around, Harry felt caged
with a desperate soul wanting to make someone experience its vulnerability. ‘If it gets really precarious,’ said Harry, bursting free on the other side, ‘ring up. Talk to someone. Don’t stay on your
own.’ McKersie, stepping out, became the salesman again. ‘No problems, Hamlet,’ he said, using
the twang. A moment later he was a pale blue suit in Market Street, with brown shoes and viscose
tie. Considering htm, Harry supposed he wouldn’t have anyone to ring, when the depression hit
him; he’d get drunk, and spill his guts in a bar.
Would that be a pathetic act, or the reverse? To talk to the nearest person was an affirmation of
common humanity that Harry had never felt inclined to make; was that a fault in him? Democratic
ideals were well enough, if you didn’t let them cloud your judgment: that had to stay in charge, or
you were lost.
When he got home there was an outpouring from Janis in the letter box: she wanted to know
how he felt about her pregnancy and when she would be allowed — the word hurt him — to see
him again. He put it in the book he was reading and took his coffee onto the balcony. He ought
to write back but the two year battle to get Myer’s New South Wales business was hotting up, and
he had a lot of thinking to do. He stared moodily at the sea. Janis was an incredible nuisance. She
needed to realise that throwing the responsibility for your life onto another person didn’t solve
anyone’s problems.
Staring at the water, he realised he was being watched.
Two balconies along, a plain, plumpish woman of perhaps thirty-five had put down her paper
to study him. He nodded, feeling a twinge of discomfort. Without taking her eyes off him, she
picked up a drink. Harry left the balcony in haste, and spread his stuff on the table, fearing and
wanting a knock at the door.
164
Two mucked up diagrams later, he realised he had to knock at her door. The change had possession of him.
Realising that he was taking leave of himself, he put a clean sheet on the table, laid out all his
things to start again, and left the room. A scratch on the door jamb caught his attention as he left
the flat.
She said he could join her, she was having a gin and tonic.
He made himself a drink, hoping it would link them.
The fact that their balconies were identical gave him a control of his mood. The sea was not
the same, the bricks were not the same.
An hallucination had descended.
He hardly resisted: two points that occurred to him were that Julie had to be gotten rid of and
that his work wouldn’t suffer because he’d be energised as Janis had been. It occurred to him that
Janis, who would get no answer to her letter, would be ringing.
It wouldn’t matter, he wouldn’t be in his flat.
Losing his self control, Harry thought of himself as like a surgical patient, opened up so that
organs could be examined, or removed, at the judgment of another person. He realised how little
trust he had in other people. Trying to overcome his fears, he said to the woman from two flats
down, ‘It’s a marvellous morning!’
It wasn’t: only celsius 24, a breeze, and two boats on the bay.
‘You see potential?’ she asked.
‘Potential is what my job’s about,’ said Harry. ‘I have to work in the present but my whole
orientation is towards the future!’ He expected to impress her, but she said, neutrally, ‘Tell me
about the future.’
He felt he had centuries stored in him. ‘Technological change,’ he said, ‘which no one really
controls, is the force of the moment.’
‘The moment,’ she said. ‘What do you mean by the moment?’
It was the cue he wanted. ‘I’m in computers,’ he began.
‘I know that,’ she said.
‘On one level,’ he said, ‘we deal with the compression of time. Instantaneous presentation of
all that’s known. That’s a data-based system.’
‘What other systems are there?’ she said, teasing him out.
‘There are as many systems as you have a wish for,’ he said. ‘I am a designer of systems.’
‘You make things happen in other people’s lives?’ she said.
Thinking momentarily of Janis’s pregnancy, of Barb, and of a suicide, he said ‘I have done
so.’
‘At what cost to yourself?’
‘Not enough. It’s been too easy for me.’
‘If you fell in love,’ she said, ‘the boot would be on the other foot. Would you want that to
happen?’
‘I probably need it,’ he said, trying to be honest. He was longing for the familiar signs of imbalance in her, but she made him talk for an hour, then sent him away. She had to meet, she said, a
friend from Rome, a clothing designer who came to check the Australian end: the suggestion that
she was attracted to homosexual men stirred him deeply.
A fortnight later he wrote to Janis, saying that he was sorry to hear about her pregnancy, but it
was entirely a matter for her and Bruce to work out; he’d fallen in love, he was in a turmoil, there
couldn’t be much between them now except phone calls and letters if she thought they were worthwhile. He’d asked Julie to move out of his flat, they’d had a big row but she’d gone, and he’d put his
flat up for sale. ‘It’s something I have to abandon,’ he told her, ‘if I’m to retain any balance at all.’
Desperate Janis clung more closely to Bruce, and Bruce, still hoping for independence, bought
the Redesdale property where he’d had a couple of nights with Prue.
And later with Anita when Janis was at her mother’s.
165
Harry could only feel compassion for Janis, pouring out her soul in letters, yet he did the same
thing, night after night, on the next balcony but one. Balcony woman raised her eyebrows when he
told her his flat was for sale; she said it was a crude kind of pressure. Harry told her he couldn’t
live in his present position; he had to be with her, or move right away.
She made him wait; he worked longer hours than ever, taking nothing home; in the flat, he tried
to read, he wrote a few poems, or he stared at the sky above the bay.
When the agent had a buyer, he told him to find him a place in Carlton. Agent rang him up
one day with a place which, he said, would suit him. Harry listened to the description, then told
the agent the address: ‘It belongs to my ex-wife,’ he said. ‘I don’t want it.’
He spent a week in Sydney on the Myer job; rang Melbourne twice, even rang Janis once, but
that was too painful: even worse than the stress in her voice were the silences in which she waited
for something which might give her hope, and he, hearing her unspoken wish, could find nothing
to say. Unable to ring Melbourne after his experience with Janis, because it too closely mirrored
his own position, he sat down and wrote:
AGENT PROVOCATEUR
speaks all tongues,
arms rebels, sets their towns alight
with lies
provided by the rulers, their soldiers
poised to shoot: searches by night
for willing ears — the peasant dispossessed,
the prisoner’s grievance, ideals of youth:
lovingly deceives them.
Hates the rulers,
hates himself, master of disguise and the art
of vanishing; has no name, but many:
the prisoners, waiting for the firing squad,
compare betrayers — his face, his moods,
the nights he stole into their rooms with stories —
Amour, amore, liebe; lyubov, eros, love.
He put it in his pocket for a while, nearly tore it up, finally posted it. When he got back, she had
it mounted in an art nouveau frame, a plywood thing with tendrils, and dobs of lilac on the tulips.
He asked if he could have it back; she smiled. In the anguish of being in someone else’s power, he
wrote another, which he called LIPS OF WIRE OR WHY I NEED YOU, and sent it to Janis, as if
to display his inability to be held responsible for anything.
She, longing for the touch of his hand, felt bitter; his power to enrich and integrate her life was
being wasted on a woman who didn’t want it. The absurdity of her position devastated her. She had
always believed that events had a will, or logic, of their own. Now everything in her life conspired
to make her vulnerable, ridiculous and above all else, cut off from the things that gave her life. She
would have given anything to be — at his invitation — near him.
She asked Bruce to take her to Melbourne next time he was going; she couldn’t bear the
Carlton scene, she’d stay with the Millers if they’d have her.
Christie was the difficulty, with her cool, probing intelligence, but when Bruce said his next
trip would be mid-week, and Murdy promised to be home most of Tuesday and Wednesday, she
accepted. Murdy, more than half in love with her, could be managed; Christie she would handle
with whatever weapons desperation gave her.
It was the childlike thing in Christie she found threatening, when they were actually on the
doorstep. The handover from Bruce to Murdy was easy, a simple chauvinist exchange, but Christie
stared at her as she’d stared at her aunties when a child. It was Christie who watched to see how
eagerly Murdy would leap up to take her things, whose eyes registered the time Bruce came and
left for Carlton, whose subtle ears listened for the first things she offered in conversation.
166
Christie irritated Janis for having somehow contrived to show less suffering than she should
have. Her husband’s wish for abandonment, such an awkward thing in social intercourse, must
have caused her much pain, she was able to swallow the hurts he inflicted on her and perfect her
remaining dignity. How regally, and simply, she spoke of studying manuscripts in London and
Rome. Janis, unable to wrest control of her life from external circumstance, and prone to wild leaps
of emotion and logic, felt that Christie, perhaps by an accident of temperament, was carrying less
than her share of life’s untidiness: she must maintain this, Janis felt, by ungenerous refusals. ‘Your
trip must have been interesting,’ Janis said, ‘I’d like to hear more about it.’
Christie said, ‘I haven’t got much but postcards to show you, Murdy will show them to you
tomorrow when you’re home together. And I am really glad to be home!’
It was a hard answer, Murdy thought, and he knew that she’d spoken that way because she
sensed him exploring an attraction to Janis. And yes, before the pregnancy, and since, there had
been an attraction; it had to do with the way Janis seemed always to be at the mercy of the times:
victim, innocent, desperate, helpless, neurotic and terrified she might be, but her desperation had
allowed her to honor an emotional commitment, even if she was alone in feeling it. He looked at
her, and compared her life with the clear certainties of a century with its parts already locked in
place. She shamed him. Her troubles seemed to set her above his household. Grasping at domestic
verities, he said, ‘Tania’s at a friend’s. You can have her room. I’ll change the bed.’
‘Move it under the window,’ Christie called. ‘And get some flowers.’ They were what he
intended to do; he felt stifled.
‘You’ve got a lovely garden,’ said Janis, restoring the balance; it was Murdy’s creation.
‘You’ve got marvellous bush near you,’ said Christie, ‘I suppose a garden’s less important.’
‘I like to work in a garden,’ said Janis. ‘I walk in the bush to lose myself.’
‘Does it work? ‘Christie wanted to know.
‘Sometimes.’
‘What do you do when it doesn’t?’
‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Janis; Christie noted the weariness in her voice. ‘Just wish for things,
I guess.’
‘Do they happen?’
Janis began to grow irritable. ‘I think you can influence events,’ she said. ‘Not absolutely, but
your psyche pushes. It’s a force that’s operating anyway. And if you pick your time ...’
‘Do you know much about astrology?’ Christie wanted to know.
‘Not much,’ said Janis warily: ‘I’d like to know more. It’s something I’d like to get into when
I’ve got time.’
‘While you’re waiting for your baby,’ Christie suggested.
So it was out in the open: Janis felt relief, not untinged with suspicion; she knew she was being
studied.
‘What are you telling people?’ Christie asked.
Janis said she wasn’t saying them anything, people would notice eventually ...
‘You’re trying to make it look natural?’
Janis nodded.
Christie said, ‘I think what you’re doing is very brave. It turns the tables on ... what’s his
name?’
Does she really forget people’s names, Janis wondered, or is it a way of downgrading them? She
said, ‘I’m not so sure about that. I can’t seem to steady myself.’
Christie said, ‘I hear he’s very excited about someone at the moment ...’
‘Who told you?’
Christie said coolly, ‘People at work know the person he’s keen on.’
‘What do you know about her?’ said desperate Janis.
‘Not much. She sings. She’s just back from Singapore.’
‘What was she doing there?’
167
‘No one knows. She went with someone and came back without him, whatever that means.’
‘It means she’s on her own now,’ said Janis, ‘and that’s bad news for me.’
‘What about when Jillian was there?’ Christie asked.
‘Julie,’ Janis corrected. ‘Well, she was away a lot, and he ...’ She wanted to say he fitted her in,
but it was too humiliating.
‘Have you seen him since ...’ Christie asked. She shook her head. ‘Do you know what he’s like,
at the moment?’
‘He sent me a poem,’ Janis said. ‘Or rather, he wrote her a poem, and decided to sent it to
me,’
‘That sounds bitter,’ said Christie: ‘is it about her?’
‘I’m not sure what it’s about,’ said Janis: ‘Would you like to read it?’
‘It sounds too private,’ Christie said.
‘I don’t care,’ said Janis, ‘and he can’t stop me.’
Murdy went through with dirty sheets; when he came out of the laundry, Christie was studying
a card. Curious, he came close enough to recognise the tiny writing. ‘I want you to read this too,’
Janis said. ‘I have to know what it means.’
‘I’ll come back in a moment,’ said Murdy. ‘I’m getting some flowers for beside your bed.’
They heard him banging down the verandah with a ladder. ‘He’ll get you something special,’
Christie said, with a sweetness that included Janis this time. ‘What do you think it means?’ Janis
insisted,
Christie said, ‘I think he’s learning the falsity of his position. I think he’s learning at last.”
‘That’s what I think,’ said Janis. ‘And it makes it worse. He’ll get over this singer, it sound like
she’s only stringing him on. But I loved him for things I saw in him ... worlds I saw in him ... and
now he seems to think they don’t exist. It’s like he’s saying that I can’t even say I was ever in love
with him!’ She gasped heavily and might have begun to sob, but Christie’s coolness arrested her;
then Murdy tripped clumsily in the doorway. ‘Darling!’ said Christie. ‘You didn’t have to bring a
whole branch!’ Gumnuts bobbled heavily on the tiles, leaves fell everywhere, and Murdy, steadying himself, clutched the ficifolia clump across his shoulder like a baby. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’ he
shouted.
Janis looked doubtful. ‘I know it’s too much,’ he said. ‘I couldn’t snip off the bits I wanted in
the dark. We’ll get you something really beautiful,’ he said proudly, patting Janis on the shoulder as
he looked for a suitable vase. ‘Ah!’ he said. ‘That’s the one!’
The three of them tugged at the flowering gum until it had yielded them an arrangment.
Angular leaves thrust with the force of cut metal through forests of bright orange stamens; these,
ringed on dewy cups of lustrous yellow-green, centred themselves on a taller, sticky stamen which
rose through a five-pointed star faintly lined on the bottom of the flower’s bowl. ‘That’s where the
seed pods form,’ said Murdy. ‘Look at the ants, they’re so busy!’
‘That’s interesting,’ said Janis. ‘You mean the seeds form at the base of the male part?’ ‘I’m not
sure which is which,’ said Murdy, ‘male or female, I mean.’ His wife smiled at Janis. ‘Perhaps,’ she
said, ‘all these tiny things standing around in circles are the male parts, and the one in the centre’s
the queen!’ Murdy, tidying up, joggled a handful of gumnuts. ‘We don’t want these, do we?’ he
said: Janis picked one up, ‘They’re really heavy Christie,’ she said. ‘Feel the weight. They’re like
golf balls.’
Christie felt one. ‘Balls, anyway,” she said, and they laughed. Murdy swept the leftovers into a
bin, embarrassed. ‘Look at the buds!’ said Christie. ‘Aren’t they absolutely darlings!’
Some of the pale red, pale green buds lay heavily to one side, as if asleep, while at the topmost
rim of others, a tearing had begun. The filaments lay tightly packed inside; where the process had
gone further, the filaments were drowsily erecting themselves while the tip of the bud tilted back,
like a jam tin crudely opened. ‘They’re just like gumnut babies!’ said Janis, and Christie said, ‘Did
you read that when you were in State School? I loved those stories! What was the name of the
woman who wrote them darling, you remember?’
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‘May Gibbs,’ said her husband, picking up the flowers. ‘No, I’ll put them in there,’ said
Christie. ‘You read the poem.’
‘I’ll help you, let’s do some more,’ said Janis, excited, and Murdy was left with the card on
which Harry had written:
LIPS OF WIRE OR WHY I NEED YOU
Your lips are like wine (they’re not)
Your lips are like wire (untrue)
Your lips are made for kissing;
Your lips are my image of you.
Jonah in the whale felt strain;
Whale’s tummy had awful pain.
Whale burped, Jonah yelled,
Whale retched, Jonah fell.
Whale’s mouth opened like a giant clam,
Whale swallowed, Jonah swam,
Joined the plankton in the mighty maw,
Felt afraid of the world he saw.
Close your lips (they shelter);
Open your lips (my love).
Kiss my lips (I’m frightened),
Dark is better than the world above.
Plankton strangely turned to people;
crowded, had to push and shove:
familiar faces full of hatred,
all too like the world above.
Asked himself the way to change it,
stirred the whale with a mighty kick;
whale retched, Jonah fetched,
found himself in an oil slick.
Take me back (I’m filthy),
Wash me down (my love).
Lick me, cleanse me, rinse me,
Keep me from the world above.
Janis, coming back to the room, said, ‘What do you think?’
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14
Murdy said, ‘Does he often write you poems?’ She said, ‘Sending it was just a sop. He wrote it for
someone else.’ Christie, returning, said, ‘That’s obvious. Can’t you see that?’ Murdy wanted to
defend himself, he wanted to be the one who gave Janis everything she wanted, he wanted to work
out what it was in Harry that toppled her reason.
‘I must say,’ he attempted, ‘it does seem rather mother-centred.’
‘I know what I am,’ said Janis. ‘I’m just one of the plankton.’
She’d been looking in the poem for something that represented herself. ‘There’s no way you’ll
understand it, talking like that,’ Murdy said.
‘How do you understand it?’ Christie wanted to know.
Murdy, envious of Harry, said, ‘He wouldn’t have sent it to you if he thought it downgraded
you. It’s about his relationship to all women. He wants you to know it’s changed.’
‘Where’s the change?’ said Christie sharply.
‘The change, I think,’ said Murdy, ‘is that basically, he’s abandoned the position of male superiority.’
‘The way he does it puts women into another conventional position,’ Christie pointed out.
‘Mother cat licks the kitten ...’
‘And motherfuck solves all his problems,’ said Janis. ‘Nice if you can get it.’
‘I agree,’ said Murdy, ‘that his new position is an upside down version of his previous one, but
it is a change.’ He could feel them pulling against him. ‘What we should be striving for,’ he said,
‘is the situation where relations beteen the sexes are fully reciprocal, instead of male- or femalecentred.’
They stared at him with some amazement. ‘It might take some time to achieve,’ he added.
‘But how can you have a fully reciprocal relationship,’ said Janis, ‘unless you’re fully integrated?
Being in love is a very unbalanced state. Every time I get the mail, or Bruce comes to Melbourne
and I don’t, I can feel myself getting giddy. I know what I want. I want full absorption in Harry,
and I don’t really care on what terms I get it. I just want it and I can’t have it.’
‘When do you feel most integrated?’ Christie wanted to know.
Janis considered. ‘When I’m by myself planning something. Weeding the garden. And sometimes in the mountains, walking by myself. That’s more dangerous because my imagination goes
further.’
‘They’re all when you’re by yourself.’
Janis studied Christie. ‘Yes. Doesn’t leave much room for love, does it?’
Christie said, ‘I think what love means, what marriage means, is that you abandon one integration for a larger, mutual integration.’
Janis said, ‘But what if the marriage contains elements that make a new integration impossible?’
Murdy winced.
Christie said, ‘You split up, I suppose. But you shouldn’t rush into that because you may only
be discovering what everyone knows already — that no relationship ever begins without in-built
flaws.’
‘So marriage is an oyster and pearl sort of thing,’ said Janis. ‘It’d be nice if I could believe
that.’
‘What do you think it is?’ Christie asked.
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Janis remembered the dread she’d felt, driven towards a honeymoon with Bruce. ‘Marriage for
me,’ she said, ‘was simply the best thing to do. I left home because I found my father oppressive.
I didn’t find anything in the city. I was on the verge of going back when I met Bruce. We were
incredibly lonely. I suppose we were two weak reeds leaning on each other. It was as much a need
as love. He wanted to get married. I felt I was being hurried but when my father opposed it and
asked me to come home, I decided to do it. To avoid one trap you walk into another, is that a
common pattern?’
Christie conceded that it might be.
‘When we drove away from the wedding reception,’ Janis said, ‘I realised what I’d done. Bruce
had all these expectations of me and I felt I couldn’t meet them. I felt I’d been stripped of my past,
and that I wouldn’t have anything to give Bruce. If you’ve only got your body to offer ... it’s just so
meaningless. I don’t think Bruce understood, he was putting so much onto me.’
‘Like Harry’s poem,’ Murdy suggested.
‘It was a very painful period,’ Janis said. ‘We’re still trying to outgrow it. What I believe in ...
what I want ... is an uninterrupted flow. For life to proceed without these ghastly wrenches!’
‘What about your baby?’
‘It’s continuity,’ Janis said to Christie. ‘And it’ll be a link with Harry. But it’ll also represent
the break ... I don’t know. I just don’t know!’ She said it with extraordinary vehemence. Murdy
asked what was wrong.
‘I can never get back!’ she said. ‘He’s sold his flat. Someone else’ll live there, they’ll fill the place
with their vibes. I won’t be able to go there and if I did it wouldn’t be the same. It’s like having a
limb torn off!’ She wanted to cry. Christie told Murdy to take her for a walk and Janis accepted
the way out. ‘Talk to me. Just talk to me,’ she said to Murdy. ‘Keep my mind off it till I get myself
centred!’
Christie listened to their receding footsteps, then picked up her address book. What to do with
Janis?
Jeremy Gibson, gynaecologist. No, a joke in poor taste!
Anne Owen. Might smarten her up. Too sharp?
Sasha Lacey. Paranoid.
Norm Maddocks. Slow enough to make her comfortable.
An interesting brush might be with someone believing in the occult. Zandra Smith — but she’d
changed her name again. And address.
She had to get her out of the house, as well as having people in. She rang Anne.
‘We’ve got Janis Beck staying with us,’ she said bluntly.
‘Oh yes?’ said Anne, listening for every nuance.
‘She’s pregnant.’
‘Wow? Harry Hearn?’
‘She hopes so. She’s pretty down. Could you drop in tonight?’
‘I’m having dinner with George and some people at Abdul’s. We could come out after.’
‘If there’s anyone there you know, bring them too. You’re just dropping in, I didn’t invite
you.’
‘Right. Kathy might be there. Murdy gets on well with her.’
‘That could be a help.’
Anne laughed. That night she told Kathy, who tutored in political philosophy, about the call,
saying that Murdy had misfired again. ‘He tries to rescue people, hoping that they’ll fall in love
with him,’ she said. Kathy thought Murdy needed rescuing himself: ‘Christie?’ said Anne: ‘or his
whole position?’
Both, said Kathy, but she mainly meant his socio-political position. ‘Then,’ said Anne, ‘to alter
him you’ve got to alter about ninety-nine per cent of the Australian population!’
This figure was disputed. In the clish-clash of plates and cutlery, and the scurrying of moustachioed waiters, Anne’s group thrashed out the position of the intellectual in Australia. Murdy, it
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was agreed, was only paid as an intellectual; in no sense could he be said to actively be one. Like
most tertiary staff he was given the comforts and privileges of an intellectual in return for diverting his intellect towards trivial goals. Like his bloody Baron, Kathy said, but Anne wouldn’t agree:
‘There is a history of thought in Australia,’ she said, ‘and von Mueller’s an important figure. He
was a strong anti-Darwinian, and he was a supporter of benevolent monarchy; after all, he left
Europe before the 1848 rebellions and there was no evidence that he had any understanding of
them. I don’t know whether Murdy’s done anything coherent with his position in nineteenth century thought, but he’s read a lot of the stuff you’d need to do it with.’
That, the dinner group agreed, was the problem. Murdy, from his articles, had no clearly
thought out position at all.
‘That’s nonsense,’ said Anne; ‘he does in fact have a peculiarly Melbourne brand of Whiggery
via Toynbee and Collingwood, with a dash of Spengler and Nietzsche, which he couches in a
Marxist jargon he picks up from his students. There’s no mystery about his position at all. And he
knows it, which is more than can be said for some fucking fraud like David McArdle!’
The name was greeted with contempt. In despising him, they were briefly united. To A, the
crime of McArdle ...
To B, McArdle showed how dishonest he was when ...
C said McArdle’s ulterior motives were at their most obvious ...
D said the bastard should be made to resubmit his doctoral thesis to a group consisting of ...
E, an organiser for the National Union of Students, said McArdle was on their sexual blackmail
list!
F said he wasn’t doing very well at it because he only had two high distinctions in his course
last year!
G knew one of the two people and said there was no way she’d have slept with the cunt.
Surely, darling, you mean prick or dickhead, said an anarchist called H.
‘McArdle,’ said Jack the waiter, who heard them as he dished out soup, ‘taught me last year in
Third World Politics!’
‘What did you think of him, Jack?’ Anne wanted to know.
‘It’d take a long time,’ said their waiter, ‘and besides I wasn’t all that conscientious with my
reading ...’
‘You never were!’ said Anne.
‘I’ll tell you what I thought of him,’ said waiter Jack. The group fell quiet to listen. ‘I thought
he was a bastard!’ Flattened by the inanity, the circle was uncharacteristically quiet.
‘He is,’ said Anne. ‘How’s the next course going, Jack? Have you put in the order yet?’
‘He hadn’t,’ said Anne, as Jack of the quarter-education fled. ‘That wasn’t very fair, Anne,’ said
Kathy: ‘you set him up for that.’
‘Of course,’ said Anne. ‘Who does he think he is! Because he happens to have failed a subject
or two, he thinks he can break into a conversation with his molecule of intelligence!’
G said Jack probably got the job because he was the only person willing to sleep with Abdul’s
ugly sister.
H said that was an honorable position to be in!
F wanted to know what the sister was like and why they hadn’t seen her.
G started on about Islamic chauvinism but E butted in to say that McArdle wasn’t half as big
a bastard as Rosenbloom at Cooktown. D said he’d heard how Rosenbloom got his job ...
C knew someone in the union that put up some of the funds for Rosenbloom’s chair, and the
fact was the union had been diddled on the committee that picked him — the preselection had
been hidden, and the people the university wanted to apply had been told beforehand who’d be
interviewing them.
Corrupt! said B. In fact, he said, the only ideologically correct way to conduct an interview for
a publicly funded position ...
This wasn’t a publicly funded position, said A: that was the point!
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... was, shouted B, as Jack returned with bread, to have a panel chosen by random selection,
like jury service! Triumphantly he gobbled his last spoonful.
Well, said A, we all know how that’s open to abuse! Some friends of mine were actually empanelled last week ...
‘At least,’ said Anne, ‘the procedures in a court are reasonably well understood by the public,
and have been elaborated to the extent that the man in the street knows what sort of appeal he has
to make to persuade the bastards on the bench that they actually have to try to produce some semblance of justice; whereas,’ she said, ‘in wage submissions to the Arbitration Court, for instance,
the whole procedure is on a much more primitive level ...’
‘There, my dear, I think I could enlighten you,’ said George, her lover, who had been silent
through the consumption of soup. The group waited for his mistake.
‘The Arbitration Court,’ he said, spreading his arms expansively for the plate being put before
him by a Turkish girl who might have been twelve, ‘has repeatedly, down the years, taken up positions contrary to government submissions.’
‘They have to, if they’re to remain credible,’ said Anne: ‘but they still serve their legitimising
function. The more governments protest about its decisions, the more it seems as if the court
actually has some autonomy, whereas it’s abundantly clear that it has to operate inside notions of
value set by purely capitalist functionaries like the international merchant banks, let alone more
malevolent influences like …’
She was for once lost for a word: ‘Like Lang Hancock?’ her lover supplied.
‘Right!’ said Anne. ‘A massive magnification of the backwoods exploiter transferred to the late
twentieth century energy crisis scene!’
‘Pure jargon!’ said Jack, setting down the other plates. ‘Youse don’t know what you’re talkin’
about!’
Anne was furious, but H said that if someone else’d volunteer to sleep with Abdul’s sister,
they’d be rid of the bastard.
H wasn’t taken very seriously.
When they arrived at the Millers’, Janis knew why Christie had been tidying the house when
she and Murdy got back from their walk. Suspicious, she kept very quiet, and when asked what
she did, offered the provocative: ‘Just home duties, that’s all.’
The group would have disowned her in that moment, but Anne, calling across the room,
demanded to know how, exactly, she filled her days; Christie chose that moment to open the piano
and undertake Satie’s Gymnopedies. Anne, angry at this manipulation, crossed to the sofa where
Janis sat. The group split, some staying with the piano, others going to the kitchen, or the back
porch, drinking. ‘Christie’s very good at stage managing things like that,’ Anne said sourly.
‘She is,’ Janis agreed.
‘It’s part of her refusal to take feminism seriously,’ said Anne, but Janis wasn’t interested.
‘Christie says you’re pregnant,’ said Anne, hoping she wasn’t supposed to know.
‘I think I am,’ Janis said.
‘What do you mean you think? Have you had a test?’
Janis nodded.
‘Well you’re bloody pregnant! Avoidance is the worst thing you can go in for. What are you
going to do about it?’
Janis stared at her: ‘Feeling sick,” she said.
‘You know that’s not what I mean. Are you going on with it?’
Janis flashed back: ‘Wouldn’t you?’
‘Not if I didn’t want to. If your set up with Bruce is bad, as it seems to be, a termination might
be better.’ Janis said, ‘Too easy.’
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‘My God!’ said Anne. ‘Passive acceptance, which is supposed to be the only path for women,
is in fact the hardest of all paths. When you suffer, Janis, it’s not necessarily because someone else
means you to; it may be the result of a conscious decision taken by yourself. Like this one.’
‘I realise that,’ said Janis, ‘but the loss for me if I let the child go, would be far greater.’
‘How can you know that?’ Anne demanded. ‘You’re bringing in a future which you can’t know
about to justify a decision which may well be a false one.’
‘We’ll see, then, won’t we?’ was the only answer Janis could muster, and Anne went in search
of a drink. The Beck woman was as bad as she’d thought.
But later that night, when the Miller children were told to go to bed, Tania called to Anne, and
Michael, picking it up through the voices in the kitchen, came in and sat beside her. Anne said, ‘I’ll
bet your grandma bought you those pajamas,’ though she doubted if Murdy wore anything very
different. Tania said, ‘Do you like my nighty?’ and when Anne said she did, Tania began to show
her all her nighties.
Anne was always surprised that the kids liked her, Tania wanting to sit on her knee and Michael
to snuggle up close. They did it when Murdy brought them to her place, or if they were at a restaurant. Tania showed her the peg dolls mum bought her in London, and Michael dashed off for his
coin collection. Anne’s friends, seeing this activity, looked in; getting maternal, they jeered. She’ll
be buying a house soon, they said, walking away, a little nest ...
Tania said, ‘Why are you so red? Don’t take any notice, they’re horrible,’ and Michael tugged at
her to see his Russian banknotes. Anne felt exposed: an ugly part of her life, which she could cope
with when alone with her intellectual peers, had been displayed to the children. They had their
wholeness and she was divided. Tania said she wasn’t going to marry a man at all but when she
was old enough she’d adopt a little girl and she’d take her all round the world to the places mum
went. ‘Babies! Yuk!’ said Michael, showing Anne a Chairman Mao banknote, but she told him he
shouldn’t talk like that, babies were okay.
‘Anne,’ said Tania solemnly, ‘how come ...’
Anne saw it coming. ‘I always said,’ she said, ‘I’d have kids by the time I was thirty, or not at
all.’ The seriousness of the statement made the children grave. ‘How old are you?’ Michael wanted
to know.
‘Twenty-eight,’ she said, feeling more exposed than ever. ‘You could adopt some,’ said Tania:
‘It’d be a lot of work,’ said Michael, trying to let her off.
Tania squeezed her Raggedy Anne. ‘Do you think you’ll have some?’ she asked. ‘You’ve still got
two years,’ Michael said. Anne studied the room — dolls, bears, rock stars taped to the walls — and
searched herself for the differences between warmth for someone else’s kids and needing some of
your own. She wanted to tell herself how kids were part of the ideological enslavement of women,
men could force them on you without experiencing the same involvement as the mother ...
On a deeper level of honesty, she admitted to herself that what she feared was the way children
fragmented an adult life; some women unified themselves around their children and a few seemed
to be large enough to take them in their stride, but for Anne, the price looked as if it might be
extreme. She couldn’t see how she could make it work. Tania pushed a doll into her hands. ‘That’s
Andy,’ she said, ‘Some of his hair’s falling out, mum says she’ll fix it but she never does.’
Anne told Christie later that they were the nicest kids she knew; Christie told her that if she
ever wanted to take them on a holiday, it would be okay. As usual with Christie, Anne wondered
— compliment or insult? ‘I don’t need to borrow,’ she said, ‘but yes, it might be nice some time.’
In George’s flat that night she took up the point of children; she thought he wanted children
and saw her as a means. ‘Don’t you see,’ she said, ‘how that reduces me to a channel for your
will?’
‘But ... if you agree,’ said George, who had never taken in her position, ‘I mean ... if you agree
... surely that’s just between you and I. Surely?’
She took back the leg she had straddled across his plump body. She withdrew her hands from
his acerbic skin. ‘There is no way,’ she said, and he recognised that what she was delivering was
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not an opinion but an ultimatum, ‘by which you can separate personal response from one’s total
socio-political position.’
She was fucking me a minute ago, thought George: now this.
‘You’d give a lecture on the day of judgment,’ he said, shrinking.
‘Don’t get smart George,’ she said, hating him. Recognising a shift in her mood, he put his
hands around her while his eyes took in the front-room-upstairs light of a Carlton terrace. She
began to quiver, terrified and lonely, perhaps lost. ‘Darling,’ said George; the word disgusted her.
She sat up, wiping herself. ‘Oh Jesus,’ she said. ‘It’s pretty unreliable.’
He knew she meant contraceptives, and saw them as an obstacle between their positions.
‘Anne!’ he said, trying hard. ‘Just let go for once. Can’t we get some truth into our relationship?’
To his surprise she flung herself onto the floor by the bed. He could hear her crying, ‘Say what
you like about me,’ he said, ‘I’m not that bad. What are you crying about: speak!’
She struggled to say, ‘Shut up you bloody shit.’ She spoke so hoarsely he scarcely caught the
words. Fat George lay back, rubbing his tummy and wondering how he’d offended; it had all been
smooth enough, tonight, until they’d gone to the Millers’. ‘When did you start to feel badly?’ he
demanded.
Anne wanted to grasp the void of night that surrounded her; what could a few words illuminate? Hatred was all she felt for this slimy barrister, and yet he truly wanted to be kind and loving,
he just didn’t realise what a prick he was when you looked at his whole position. ‘You wouldn’t
even know, George,’ she gasped, ‘You wouldn’t even know!’
George, who didn’t know what it was he didn’t know, could only stare into the darkness, with
the warmth of her deeply desired body beside him, wondering about the latest of her psychic problems which he would have to fit into the system of his life if they were to go on ...
She stayed away from his flat for a week; when she came back, it was for legal advice. The
Institute Council was trying to unload a lecturer called Simmonds who’d taken a unit on the preconditions for revolution and had forced a fresh audit of council spending which had resulted in
the director getting rapped over the knuckles: it was true that students dropped out of his classes
and he was a lousy lecturer, but, said Anne, that was true of lots of people around the place and
no one gave a shit about their inefficiency: Simmonds was being victimised.
The excuses for sacking him were going to be, she’d heard, that he’d varied his course from
the one approved by the Board of Studies, he refused to meet the director to discuss this, and he
refused to submit his course for examination by a group of independent experts: ‘Far too dangerous,’ Anne said, ‘when you know what sort of people they’d appoint.’
Who, George wanted to know, might they be?
Anne listed half a dozen right wing academics, including two South Africans: ‘Poisonous
people,’ she said. George told her to get him a copy of the Institute’s articles of employment, and
to start getting a bit of dirt on those who were pressing for dismissal; he studied her list of councillors, looking for a way in.
The one that caught his eye was a restaurateur called Kilvo, who also owned a vineyard; he
seemed such an oddity that he told her to get him a file of the minutes of council meetings.
When she brought them, two nights later, they found that Kilvo had been on six months, that
the only meeting he’d attended was the one where the Simmonds case was mentioned, and that
he’d been proposed for council by the director: ‘Obviously a cover up,’ said Anne. ‘The director’s
a wowser and wouldn’t know him from a bar of soap.’
‘Find out who wanted him,’ said George, ‘and you’re halfway towards saving your man.’
Anne went through the councillors with Simmonds, to see if he could recognise an enemy, but
they were all enemies to Simmonds, who judged them by their occupations: importers and exporters, manufacturers, hospital administrators, a transport knight, and a couple of operators in the
field of teenage consumerism. ‘The euphemism for giving these bastards control of us,’ said Anne,
‘is “maintaining a direct link with industry”. And the most suspect of the lot of them are the shits
with actual qualifications. McReady — a fascist. Blythe — probably worse. My God!’
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It was another month till she got a clue. Flipping through a rack of blouses in a South Yarra
boutique, she saw a Saab pull up outside; three expensively casual people including a woman with
bright henna hair got out and moved into the bistro next door. Anne remembered the woman from
her days as a blonde; she’d been going around with a fighter who ran a string of billiard rooms,
which made money, and a couple of horses, which lost it. The boxer’s brother, who had once
slipped out of the country a few days ahead of a scandal over faked driving licences, was supposed
to be behind a chain of massage parlors. The third man from the Saab looked so like the boxer that
Henna Hair used to go around with that Anne felt sure it was him. Who was up who for what?
Anne went to Jack, the waiter at Abdul’s, and asked him who he knew at Leonardo’s: Jack said
his brother was the chef. Jack said he’d get his brother to find out who they were.
Two weeks later, Jack rang Anne: the woman was Brigida, the guy with the Saab was Aavi
Kilvo, and the third man was Ronny Nelder, brother of Tom the ex-welterweight champion of
Queensland.
Jack asked Anne to go out with him.
Anne said he must be mad, she wasn’t into trade-offs of that sort. But that night, about half
past one, she let herself into George’s. Hearing her feet on the stairs and feeling her weight as she
sat tensely on the corner of the bed, he realised how much he depended on her. At his request she
lay beside him, but stiffly, and dressed. ‘I’m scared,’ she said. He reached into her clothes but she
said, ‘Turn on the light, I want to talk.’
Listening to her, he saw that she was not only scared of what might happen to her, but scared
of discovering that she wasn’t game to go on. ‘There’s some pretty shady people in this,’ she said,
‘and I’m not even sure that Simmonds is worth it. He’s as bad a lecturer as they say, and his stuff’s
shot full of holes. But if I let that sway me, I’m just looking for the let-out. Women always take the
let-outs. It’s the easy way to get broken.’
‘Whereas you’re looking for the honorable way?’ her lover suggested.
‘I couldn’t stand being broken,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t live if I knew it’d been done to me. I’d
want to kill the person who did it to me, that’s why I get furious with you sometimes.’ He wanted
to take her hand, he felt he was understanding. She went on: ‘It happens to a lot of men, though
they’re encouraged to avoid it, but for women it’s part of the whole systematic oppression ...’ She
began to quiver. ‘Jack told me a lot about these people, they’re bloody dangerous. I don’t even
know what I’ll find out if I go ahead.’
George suggested that she was being melodramatic, she should simply keep the thing stirring
through the staff association ...
‘I wouldn’t get anywhere,’ she said, ‘unless I found out what was behind it. Who’d want to get
rid of Simmonds? He’s not worth it. He might be a nuisance but he’s not dangerous. So is it mindless swiping at the gad-fly, or is there something else?’ When George took her hand she kicked off
her sandals. Undressing, she told him to turn off the light.
Next day she found her IUD slipping. When she got a new one put in, the doctor told her to
take notice of when her period was due, the thing probably hadn’t been very effective for the last
few days. Three weeks later she had a positive test.
She locked herself in her room and took out the poems she’d written as a girl. The diary she’d
kept in Europe. Photos. 10, 12, 13, 16, and a few from Paris. In New York, Brisbane, humping
a pack through the south-west wilderness of Tasmania. Darwin and the Nullarbor. Graduation.
Wedding ...
Her husband, she decided, had been a nicer man than George, and certainly understood her
better. Stretching slowly on her bed, she mumbled ‘That was my first abortion.’
She realised she’d made a decision.
She felt like a doomed Cassandra, knowing too much too early.
She hated her parents for hiding the realities of their personal lives from their children. There
needed to be some wisdom for a moment like this ...
176
She rang Kathy, who told her that the Fertility Clinic was tightening up, but if she produced
something from her psychiatrist … she’d probably be okay.
Kathy had been tense; probably had one recently herself.
Anne lay on her bed, trying to put some spectrum across her future.
She rubbed her belly, afraid of being large.
She lay across her bed, with a heap of paper on the floor, and took up a biro to write, but the
white sheet lay empty, refusing to be filled.
She found her only photo of George, ripped it in shreds, and flung it somewhere behind.
She felt a violent convulsion when they inserted the suction pump; they told her many girls
reacted the same way. ‘They don’t hate as hard as I do!’ she screamed, but hatred or not, she
accepted the hands that held her, and the anonymous people who wheeled her, and finally the
menopausal fifty who had the bed beside her: ‘I am nor sterile! I am not finished!’ Anne shrieked
to herself, and when George arrived to drive her home, she momentarily felt sorry for him. Another
victim, poor bastard, who’d be breathing down her neck for a screw which she had no intention of
giving him. When he dropped her back at her place, she made no resistance when he opened her
door and led her to the kitchen, too scared to enter the room she slept in. He suggested tea, but
she stared emptily at him: thrusting forward her hand, her eyes demanded something he could not
interpret, but she would not be put off, and stared at him in deepest pain until his guilt reached
the point when he fumbled in his pockets for the key.
He put the key to the house in her hand. As soon as she felt the metal, she tipped it on the table.
‘You’re dismissing me?’ he said. She pointed to her bag, which he put, fearfully, at her bedroom
door. Taking his courage in hand, he returned to her.
She was standing, now, beside a calendar on which yesterday’s date had been circled in red;
without a word, she indicated a date three days in the future, and turned her back.
He left. She fell in bed and slept.
When the phone rang, she knocked it, dislodging the mouthpiece, and went back to sleep
despite the beep when the dial tone had run out.
Kathy, who had rung, mentioned it to Sonia at the Institute, who mentioned it to Len Dolmer,
director of Recreational Studies, who passed it to Anne’s boss, Ken Mackieson, who’d had a hectic
afternoon with the director demanding to know why Ken’s department always stirred up trouble
when the future of the institute’s funding depended on the utmost unanimity of council.
Ken rang Murdy, got Christie: her husband, coming home tired from a seminar, heard from
his wife that Anne had had an abortion. ‘Oh Christie, go in and see her,’ he said. ‘Hold her hand.
Jesus, poor Anne, she’s always interrupting her life one way or another!’
Christie said he must go himself. She knew he loved Anne, he was the one who would provide
the warmth she’d need. ‘But what if she wants to talk about the details of what’s happened to her?’
he said.
With a look compounded of compassion and disgust, his wife picked up The French Lieutenant’s
Woman, and lay on their mutual bed.
Murdy had only been gone ten minutes when Janis rang.
Christie, noting her buoyancy, noted also that it rested on the flimsy foundation of a change
in the weather, an increase in council funding, and a momentary suspension of morning sickness;
Janis, Christie saw, had by no means resolved the Harry thing. She wanted to advise her, but felt
that one was likely to bore people whose emotional circuit was different from one’s own: why try?
So she promised Janis that Murdy would ring her back.
And she lay down again to read.
Between moments of analysing popular fiction, she shredded her husband, and sometimes
herself: his propensity to spread himself, her wish to build on a narrow base.
But sure! She took issue with the times in this experimentation, not from narrowness but
because it had all been done before, at high, and measurable, cost.
177
Civilisation knew the gain in anything, and the price: the tribal thing affecting Barb and her
circle, and the anti-movement that Anne had felt necessary to adopt, would all pass like the advertising trivia of the decade, or the day, and certain things would endure: how anyone could fail to
see that, it was beyond Christie to know.
Her popular, and foolish, so very very foolish husband!
Sneaking into Anne’s house — where were all her friends? — Murdy heard the cats meowing and
the beep of a phone whispering off the hook. Avoiding the tragic sight of Anne, inert and breathing
heavily, he put the phone back on its mount, then unplugged it at the wall, wondering about the
symbolism of his act.
He went down the street and bought half a kilo of topside mince. Pressing back to Anne’s, he
saw the greengrocer rolling down his shutters; his last two buckets held carnations and a spray of
Banksia menziesi. Murdy carried them home to Anne’s, fed the cats and put flowers on either side
of her bed. Like laying out the dead, he thought, and hoped that when she woke she wouldn’t have
the same idea. She was breathing so heavily he felt fearful; wouldn’t the dying be like this?
Mrs Miller, having packed to go north, reread Una’s letter; there seemed to be some mute appeal
hidden between the commonplace topics. When Bernard came in to announce that the car had
been backed out and the boot opened for luggage, she asked him if he thought his sister might be
sick. Never speculative about illness, he said that she’d got over her hip operation pretty well, and
he supposed they’d see when they arrived.
Mr Miller still drove. It maddened his wife, watching him sail through intersections on amber
lights, that he could boast of never having had an accident; she didn’t want to be hurt, but the fates
might provide a minor knock to abridge his confidence. He would persist in passing people on the
freeway, where they were going quite fast enough; the open country, with its narrower roads, was
a relief.
For Mr Miller, the road north, so many times travelled, was a return to his origins: for Mrs
Miller, it went against the outward voyage of her youth. Mrs Miller, drawn early to the city, went
upcountry with reluctance, while her husband was always finding reasons to make a trip. The dividing range was also the spiritual divide, the watershed; for the one, a long decline into aridity; for
the other, purification.
The city of Bendigo was the last urban centre, and its turning point was the fountain. For Mr
Miller, verity lay beyond. For Mrs Miller, the fountain, with its failed piazza, was the last serious
attempt at civilisation. The Fairmont, rounding the intersection, chose its moment to splutter: Mr
Miller, leaning over the wheel, talked volubly; flicking his indicator, he plunged through the circling
traffic to find a point of rest: the engine died at once.
‘Petrol pump, I think,’ he said, ‘or a fuel blockage. Where’s the nearest service station?’
Mrs Miller, saying what had to be said, even if it caused him to hate her, inquired, ‘You don’t
suppose we’re out of petrol?’
Her husband explained the impossibility of an empty tank. ‘Let me see the gauge!’ she said. He
turned the ignition on. ‘Yes, it’s more than half full,’ she said. ‘You’ll have to get a man.’
Mr Miller, annoyed, agreed.
‘I,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘will just walk up this street a little way to the art gallery. When you’re
ready, come and get me.’
Mr Miller angrily informed her that he couldn’t leave the car unattended while he searched for
a mechanic; she’d have to sit where she was until he came back!
I should have left him years ago, she thought: but I’ll make sure he has to wait!
The moment he reappeared with a man labelled AMOCO, she squeezed her bag under her
arm, and walked.
The gallery was carefully pitched at her unadventurous level of inquiry; it specialised in coffee
cups and a shared level of Australian experience: Mrs Miller, standing in the doorway and search-
178
ing for her favorites, was greeted by a man who came out of a cupboard beneath the stairs; he was,
he said, the acting director, and hadn’t he seen her before?
Mrs Miller, skilled in such encounters, said she had been born in the city some considerable
length of time ago but she hadn’t had the pleasure of knowing the gentleman as well as she felt
she knew the collection.
‘Though there are always discoveries,’ she said, ‘even in the best known things.’
After some searching out of genealogies and an exchange of commonplaces about the city’s
mining history, the acting director left Mrs Miller to refresh, as he put it, her knowledge of the gallery. There were a great many landscapes with women dotted in them, she noticed, or else people
laboring as if they were peasants under the observation of a higher class: Mrs Miller searched in
vain, amid the runaway horses and the Roman rapes, for something to enrich her. Drifting through
the spaces, she felt a lack of answer to her needs, until she came upon a pallid man examining a
grossly handled, hugely lidded pot. It was painted with English hunting scenes and stood on a purple plinth. ‘That’s an interesting piece,’ she called with determined gaiety: ‘do you know it well?’
The man, a farmer of her own age, and the spitting image of her orchard-tending uncles,
looked myopically at her. ‘I love it,’ said the man, I really don’t think there’s a single thing in the
gallery I’d rather own!’
A lost soul was recognisable to Mrs Miller. ‘You know the collection well?’
Turning to her, and speaking just above a whisper, he explained that he had only got to know
it since his wife had been in hospital: she had a growth on the retina of her left eye, he explained,
and the sight had already gone from her right eye. Mrs Miller, recognising his feeling of guilt, said,
as gaily as she could, ‘It’s wonderful what they can do with surgery these days.’
‘She’s in the dark just now,’ said the man, in awful pun. ‘I mean the bandages. They won’t be
taking them off for another week.’ Mrs Miller asked him to tell her what had happened: he began,
years ago, with her giving up reading: the progression to sitting under a lamp to do her darning;
her demand that he buy 150 watt globes, and her final admission that she needed help.
‘Tell me about the house you live in,’ said Mrs Miller, trying to accommodate. When she had
listened to him, she said, ‘That’s exactly the sort of place I was brought up in. I come from around
here, you know!’
Catching the note of triumph, the anxious husband shifted onto his loneliness — his fortnight
in the motel next door, his twice-daily visits to the hospital, his wife’s anxiety, the declining revenue
from their farm — until Mrs Miller broke into his recital with ‘And what else do you like, apart
from this urn?’
‘There’s another one over here,’ said the husband. ‘I think it’s just the same. Maybe if your eyes
are good enough you could tell,’ Mrs Miller allowed him to lead her to the urn’s twin. She peered
above her glasses before saying, ‘If there’s a difference, I’m afraid I can’t pick it.’ Her weariness
came through. ‘Why don’t you show me your favourite piece?’ said the man.
Mrs Miller hardly knew what to do. A favourite piece? That was laying oneself on the line. She
searched wildly. A vast urn, such as she imagined the anxious husband himself might like, caught
her eye; prevaricating, she said, ‘Let’s walk this way a little.’
It was like saying you might say no at the altar. When they got to the glass case, Mrs Miller had
reservations about the decoration on the pot, but it was so literal, so ingenious, that she felt safe
in saying to the man, as he peered at the hand-shaped flowers, the ceramic bees and insects, that
this was the piece, above all others, she would choose to have in her house — if, she said, afraid of
being thought unduly covetous, someone were to offer her the contents of the museum.
‘A lovely piece,’ the husband said. ‘Is there anything there about it?’
‘A little card,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘Let’s see what it says.’ She tipped her glasses down her nose:
PRESENTED TO BARON VON MUELLER BY THE CZAR OF RUSSIA ACQUIRED
1926
‘My goodness!’ said an excited Mrs Miller. ‘How amazing!’
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The anxious husband waited for enlightenment. Touching her on the arm, and looking almost
as blind as his hospitalised wife, he made her know she must share her excitement. Stunned by the
coincidence, she explained:
‘My son, you see, has just written a book about Baron von Mueller. He’ll be so excited to know
what you’ve shown me.’
‘But I didn’t show it to you,’ said the anxious husband, ‘you found it yourself!’
‘My husband ...’ Mrs Miller began, realising how she was forgetting herself, ‘probably wouldn’t
understand why I’m so excited about this ...’
‘We never understand each other until it’s too late,’ said the anxious man, lugubriously.
‘... but it really does throw a light on a lot of things,’ she said. ‘I mean ... circumstances brought
us to see this thing ... my son must see this vase!’ They circled the thing, pretending to be engrossed
in its grotesque detail, but wondering how, and when, they would be able to throw each other off
and return, enriched, to their already admitted tasks — a wife on the verge of blindness, a husband
who preferred not to listen. Mrs Miller said, ‘Where do you stay?’ The husband, in his badly ironed
suit and black walking shoes, said, ‘In the motel next door. It gets pretty lonely.’
‘I’m sure it does,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘Ah well, my husband should have his car ready by now!’
Human need, however tempting, had to give way to her sense of rectitude: ‘If she does go blind,
what’ll I do?’ demanded the man, not wanting to be alone. ‘Read her all her old favorites,’ was all
Mrs Miller could say as she rushed, unseeing, through the first and second halls. ‘Did you enjoy
your visit?’ said the acting director, popping out of his broom cupboard. ‘Oh yes I did,’ said Mrs
Miller, ‘it was a most moving and exciting experience!’
He would have put her on his mailing list, but she said they could attend to it next time she
called; he retreated, while she braved the brilliant light. If the Fairmont was fixed, there was no
turning back.
Her husband, when she came on him, was pacing about the oil-stained concrete of a service
station. ‘He’s got it under control,’ Mr Miller said. ‘Punctured fuel line. Would have been fixed by
now, but it took him a while to get a part!’
Her husband’s faith in machinery never ceased to amaze her. While the Fairmont was working,
everything was okay. ‘But Bernard!’ she said, ‘are you sure we won’t be late?’ It was her generation’s
way of putting pressure on the male, and Mrs Miller felt ashamed of pretending to be in a hurry,
when what she really wanted was to visit Mrs _____ in Bendigo Base Hospital, massage her eyes
and ask how much, since the operation, she was able to see.
‘Late!’ said her husband. ‘From what Una tells us, a few minutes won’t matter either way.’
They found, when they reached Nilgiri, that Una was in an apologetic mood. Almost as if she
was ashamed of herself, she handed them a shopping list to execute; she hadn’t been able to go
down the street that morning, she said, because she’d felt a bit off colour. Mrs Miller grasped the
scrap of writing pad, alarmed: Una had never put out signals of this sort before!
‘Have you been to see Robby?’ said Mr Miller, in the respectful tone reserved for doctors. Una
confirmed that Robby was keeping an eye on her; in fact he’d ordered her to report once a week.
‘Mind you do it then,’ said her brother. ‘He’s a good man, Robby, he knows what he’s about!’
Robby didn’t qualify as a wizard, he was too aware of human frailty; he’d operated on Mr
Miller’s hernia, years before, and managed it well enough: Robby was the roughly-spoken, man to
man doctor of the Miller family ideal, and if he’d told Una to come back every week, it sounded
pretty definitive.
Mr Miller looked around the living room at Una’s collection of nick-nacks. ‘He hasn’t passed
sentence on you, has he?’ he said.
‘No,’ said Una, ‘but he wasn’t very promising either: “Eat in small quantities,” he said, “only
things you know you like, and don’t try to eat when you’re excited.” Though what’s supposed to
excite an old biddy of seventy-four I’m buggered if I know!’
‘Too late she cried,’ said Mr Miller, remembering a joke of their youth, ‘and waved her wooden
leg!’
180
‘Plastic, in my case,’ said Una, whose hips had new joints. Mr Miller was about to turn on the
news, but his sister said, ‘You get to the stage where you think you’re pretty useless, you know.’
‘I don’t,’ said Mr Miller. ‘It’s many years since I thought I was indispensable, but I don’t feel
I’m useless yet.’
‘It makes no difference,’ said Una. ‘Live or die. The hospital committee say they need me ...
but there were people before me, there’ll be someone after.’
‘True enough,’ said her brother, ‘but we hang on, don’t we? There’s an awful lot of sticking
power in the human frame. They’ve brought people back from the dead with heart massage.’
‘Do you reckon it’d be worthwhile,’ said his sister, ‘when you’d gone that far?’
‘Not much,’ said her brother, ‘but it’d be nice to get the reprieve.’
‘What’s the use of coming back?’ said Una. ‘There’s nothing to tell.’
‘We can’t be sure of that Una!’ said Mrs Miller, bursting into the kitchen. ‘What a funny thing
to be discussing over the dishes!’
Una wheeled slowly. Husband in the grave, she studied her brother and his wife. ‘We’ve had a
good innings,’ she said. ‘We’re getting pretty close.’ The family dealt in generalities, but knew how
to sting each other. ‘We haven’t made much of a job of it,’ Una added.
Mr Miller, recovering from the blow, flung a few half-wiped forks in the drawer. Wynn, moving
into the lounge, called out to her husband that the news had already started: ‘unless,’ she challenged Una, ‘your clock’s a wee bit fast!’
‘If it were, it’d be the only fast thing in the house,’ said Una, rummaging among the bowls.
‘Actually ...’ she studied her brother’s back ‘... I haven’t had that clock adjusted since I got it from
mum!’
Sensing the closeness implied by this remark, Mrs Miller came back in: ‘That was the year
Murdoch started in grade three,’ she said. ‘His first day back at school, he seemed to think grandma might be there, serving out the lunches ...’
The trio fell silent. That moment would never be repeated. ‘How’s his book going?’ Una wanted to know. ‘Still held up in production, I believe,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘The last he told me ...’
Christie listened to Murdy’s description. ‘Poor Anne,’ she said, ‘In the end, it all turns against
herself.’
‘Principles are useful in guiding a life,’ said her husband, ‘but you don’t want to let them rule
you ... I mean …’
She felt his analysis as more than usually awkward. ‘It’s not her principles,’ she said, ‘It’s the
anger. She could have had her child. She should do things in spite of circumstances, not against
them.’
‘It does seem pretty negative,’ said her husband, anxious to agree on a matter where he felt he
had no terms. ‘As you say, she could have had it and brought it up ...’
‘All her analysis actually prevents her seeing where she is,’ said Christie. ‘That’s the sad thing.
It actually prevents her knowing what she’s doing.’
‘And yet on most things,’ said Murdy, ‘she’s got the clearest mind I know.’ He felt he was
restoring some necessary balance between the two women; Christie, however, was looking out the
window. ‘The difference between what you call most things and the way people make the really
important decisions, is an area you rarely venture in.’ Without turning, she added: ‘It’s a pity.’ Hurt
by what he felt was an inaccessible judgment, he said, ‘I got some flowers up the street and put
them by her bed.’ He was implying that she would not have thought of it. ‘That was nice of you
darling,’ she said. ‘She’ll appreciate you for that.’ He left the room, defeated; she continued to stare
at the fine foliage of a sheoak, annoyed that she couldn’t pin the reason for her dissatisfaction.
The next day, marking up Daphnis & Chloe for an all-French concert, it hit her that she found
Ravel’s particular brand of exactitude more satisfying than almost anything else she knew. Bach
had a cosmic certainty, Monteverdi used his instruments like haloes, but Ravel was in the position
she felt to be precisely hers — all effects, all impulses of the heart, were achieved through the sat-
181
isfaction of a fastidious sensibility. Her husband’s flowers were well intentioned, but if he couldn’t
reach into Anne and touch some mechanism of change, what had he done but make a gesture? She
looked at the tiny Frenchman’s instrumentation; such exquisite choices, succeeding each other, bar
after bar: setting himself perfection, he had to calculate with every resource of a refined intellect
when to draw on more than intellect. Instruments were added, made to stand alone, blended like
the most piquant sauce — it could be done! Life, however, was clumsier; staring at the back of
her assistant, Emily, who had once played the piano with an orchestra led by Mantovani, and now
had her hair in a tight grey bun, Christie concluded that the indelicate people, like her husband,
probably had the best of it most of the time.
When Mr Miller came back from his walk, Una asked him what changes he saw in the town; ‘Oh,
lots of little things,’ said Mr Miller, not wishing to specify. His main concern was for the liquidambar in the front lawn; its roots, he said, were ruining the lawn, and she’d have to get it taken out.
Did she know a good man? Una said she’d come to the same conclusion and the tree would be
coming down in a week or two; she’d regret it, but what it was doing to the garden was impossible.
Mr Miller nodded sagely.
Mrs Miller appeared momentarily in the door, then disappeared; her purpose was for an
examination of Una at least as searching as the x-rays ordered by Robby: she’d gone into the spare
room to sort through some clothes Una was giving the Brotherhood, and was shocked to find that
not only was the bed half made but that there was a cobweb between bed and wall, and a suspicion
of fluff on the sheet. She’d finished the bed, sorted the clothes, and fled the room. What on earth
was happening to Una? Mrs Miller felt alarm: Una represented the third point of her triangle of
stability: Una was the voice by which her craggy husband could be easily and humorously reached.
Going onto the back verandah, Mrs Miller noticed a crow pecking among the shrubs in the back
yard. ‘Isn’t this an unusual bird, Una?’ she called. ‘Do you feed this crow, they don’t usually hang
around a house.’
Mr Miller, startled by a tame crow, came to the door to look, and then Una bulged up behind.
‘He seems to have befriended me,’ she said. ‘A tame crow’s pretty rare, isn’t it? But he scratches
around my garden. Not having any cats is probably a help.’
Sister-in-law and brother looked at her. She hadn’t had a cat in years. Her voice was trembling.
She believed the crow was a visitation, and didn’t want them to know. ‘He’s probably been cast out
by the other birds, or something perfectly simple like that!’ said Mrs Miller shrilly, but in Una’s
fear of the bird she saw the answer to her question. Robby’s x-rays had told him; Una knew; the
Millers knew; it was only a process of adjustment now. ‘Help,’ said Mrs Miller, and her husband
was glad for once that his nervous, articulate wife, had the courage to speak, ‘is what we’re going
to give you. Always.’
182
15
The cats woke Anne, nuzzling at her lips. Pulling away, she clutched the sheet; they knew too much.
Reborn into a world as faulty as the one she left, she was different for having destroyed a possibility.
The compassion of feline aristocrats was hard to take.
Gathering strength to examine herself, she found spots of blood on her nighty. In a feeble
spasm that passed, in her dispirited condition, for rage, she dragged off the garment and dropped
it beside the bed. She meant to get herself a fresh nighty, but, planting her feet on the floor and
staring at the chest of drawers, she became aware of something unsuitable in the room.
A smell.
She looked about. Carnations. Disbelieving, she put a hand beside her on the bed, a prop
against her awareness of spiritual disfigurement.
She sat, as steadily as she could manage, while Eloise and Verity considered her. Unable to
organise her thoughts as she felt she must, she was momentarily grateful to them; stonily intelligent, they served as a mirror for her experience.
After a minute, and feeling weak again, there seemed no point in going on with it. She lay back,
clutching at the sheets again. Rolling around in the impossibility of finding comfort, she noticed
that there were flowers on the Chinese chest on the lover’s side of the bed.
A Western Australian banksia, she remembered it well enough, but not the name.
She knew now who’d brought the flowers; his compassion was no more acceptable than the
cats’. Fighting back her sobbing, she stared at the ceiling, waiting for consciousness to disappear.
She awoke to find the cats nuzzling at her nipples, it took a moment to localise the sensation.
The ironies, the bitterness, of her situation, sent her thrashing to the edge of the bed, as she had
done one night with George; clutching her belly, she lowered her knees onto the floor, not altogether averse to the notion that it was a suitable position for prayer: God only knew she felt like
she needed forgiveness from some quarter, if only her murdered child’s ...
Something was making her knee hurt like hell; the physical pain pushed its way into the psychic
distress as something more basic to be attended to. ‘Well, what are you?’ she said, fumbling, and
discovering that the source of her immediate pain was a spoon.
A trophy spoon.
At the end of the handle, two lumpen bowlers, one skirted, one trousered, stooped above a sea
of green enamel. Charters Towers Bowling Club. She’d stolen it from her mother’s, last time she’d
been home. She’d been telling her mother how, travelling with the man before Jerry Leishman,
she’d literally bumped into her ex-husband on a railway platform in Paris; mother, with clearly
implied comment on her lifestyle, said that this ‘reunion’ was more than fortuitous, it had been
meant to happen. To subvert her mother, Anne had stolen the spoon, but, once returned to the
communal house in Melbourne, had hidden it. How had it got on the floor? When she went to the
toilet, she decided to throw it in the kitchen drawer. If anyone asked about it, she’d tell them it
was pinched, but why: had she gained an increase in honesty? A loss in shame? Or was she falling
into the trap of relieving herself by making others embarrassed? Halfway down the long hall she
stopped; someone had graffitied the wall above the phone: NO MESSAGE, NO PAIN NO PAIN,
NO GOAL
Mrs Miller felt the need to prepare. Back in Melbourne, she went through her photos and letters,
theatre programmes and overseas diaries and culled out everything about the birth of her children.
183
This pile she put in a cardboard box, after salving from it those photos Murdy would remember
from the house when he was a child. These she wrapped in gladwrap; the rest she burned.
Murdy was distressed when he heard, and even Christie departed from her usual role of supporting Mrs Miller against her menfolk. Of the wedding photos, and the shingled girl of twentyfour, Mrs Miller said that she wanted to destroy those too; she’d seen lots of such pictures in
opportunity shops, and young people came in to buy them for their frames, or their period feeling:
Mrs Miller was adamant that her life was not going to pass into demeaning commerce. ‘It’s pitiful,’
she said, ‘all these pictures of dead people, and no one knows who they were.’ Christie said they
must be given to her, and she would put them in her bedroom where they would only be seen by
the family: appeased and satisfied, Mrs Miller gave them to her descendants.
Mr Miller, becoming aware of the transaction only when he saw the younger Millers out to
their car, said, ‘What are you going to do with those old things?’ Christie observed with some
amazement that the photos had no power for him, whereas they had become too much for his wife;
had he never valued the relationship?
Christie, arriving home, insisted that the bedroom needed painting; Murdy said it didn’t, and
he was far too busy with the academic year beginning and the proofs of the Mueller book to be
corrected at last. So the pictures lay on a filing cabinet for a month, then Christie put them up one
weekend when he was at a conference. Six months later, when he announced that he was feeling
ready to paint, Christie told him he could shift the furniture himself; he realised that he had spoilt
a process of transferral and renewal by his insensitivity. He mentioned this to his wife, who took his
apologies coolly, being by now far more annoyed with him for the quickening she observed whenever Janis rang or wrote; there was going to be a gap in Janis’s life once the child was established
and it was plain who wanted to fill it.
Julius, travelling in to see Harry, lamented the conservatism he saw in his fellow travellers and
above all, he hated the smugness of the emotion labelled love. Love was the last refuge, for Julius,
of the immature. Studying his fellow travellers, he attempted to categorise the forms of false consciousness available to those who flew the flag of love. There were the graffiti-ists, who defaced
trains and stations with ill-scrawled messages like: JULIE LOVED JIM UNTIL ONE DAY ...
What? Julius asked: until she woke up! To the fact that love was the big transaction word by
means of which people mauled each other! The couple opposite, twining fingers and murmuring, would be at each other’s throats in six months and working out their next screw. But because
when they turned up late for work there’d be a dreamy look in their eyes, they’d be indulged; older
people, carrying the burden of the workplace, would exchange glances and say forgivingly s/he’s
in love!
If you really loved people, Julius thought, if there was any sort of altruism in your actions, you
helped their lives to function. The more clear-headed you were, the more chance you had of doing
it. Illusion and belief might be necessary when you were young and setting up your place in the
world, but the sooner you let them erode, the better. Take Harry Hearn, thought Julius; he laughs
at left, and right, at big company bullshit and the taxi driver who thinks he’s a political roundsman.
A man without illusion, a prince of commonsense!
But when Julius reached the ibm office, level thirteen, he found Harry confused; he thought
they were going to talk about switching systems whereas Julius had brought his stuff on passenger
information services: Harry, hunting for his notes on that field, appeared not to know what he was
doing, and Julius caught in Mrs Coad’s eye an amused indulgence as she found him the file. ‘Don’t
tell me you’re in love?’ said Julius: ‘Who is it?’
‘No one you know,’ said a rueful Harry, He might have added Thank God; he couldn’t have
borne it if his situation had been entirely exposed to the engineer.
‘And I thought you were above all that!’ said Julius. ‘How are the mighty fallen!’
‘Get yourself a cup of coffee,’ said Harry. ‘I’m not ready for you yet.’ Five CSR blocks, wooden
paddle; Julius stirred, trying to work out how Harry had lost his intactness, he’d had plenty of
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women. Harry, watching him pile sugar blocks in the coffee, felt bitter; his life was heading for its
crisis, and he’d lost control to the extent that crusty, impercipient Julius had the drop on him. ‘It
doesn’t take much to throw you off balance,’ Harry said to Julius as he returned to the table.
‘With you,’ said the once-admiring Julius, ‘I thought it would take one hell of a lot. Love’s a
pretty serious illness, you know!’
‘Sickness or cure,’ said Harry, ‘that’s the question.’ Julius grinned. ‘Look at you,’ he said, resolving it.
‘But how much of me do you see?’ Harry said. He reached in his drawer and pulled out a piece
of paper.’
‘Good God!’ Julius said, ‘You’re sending her poems! The bug’s really bitten you!’
‘I don’t send them,’ said Harry, ‘I sit on them and stew.’
The poem read:
OPPOSITES
Marx and Freud
Fill the void
The bee finds in the flower:
Ying and Yang,
With R.D.Laing,
Create the psyche’s power.
But
it’s
two steps on to Christmas,
with a hoy and a hi and a hey!
I get no love from my miss/ms
She tells me there’s No Way!
Marx and Freud
fill the void
that should excite the flower:
with so much Laing,
she needs no Yang,
to give her psychic power.
And
Now
Its Christmas morning;
She’s finally come around:
My miss/ms is my Mistress,
I’m happy to be bound.
Bee and flower
Have great power
To pollinate the mind:
Within the void
Of Marx and Freud
Grows an image of mankind.
And
now
it’s two steps back to Christmas,
and I’m sleeping on my own:
no Mistress is my miss/ms;
she wears a heart of stone.
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Freud and flower,
Marx and power,
Have hit me from behind:
And Ying and Yang
With R.D.Laing
Refuse to be combined.
‘Harry,’ said Julius, ‘you have one hell of a problem and I don’t want to know what it is. Can we
talk about passenger information services before I stop believing in you? If you and I don’t deliver
the goods, no one at Spencer Street will believe it wasn’t my fault!’
Harry felt his sense of privilege dying. Maturity meant encompassing everything, and he
wasn’t ready. He stumbled back to what he knew. ‘O.K.’ he said, ‘How many outlets? How many
inputs? Are you prepared to let the public know as soon as the controllers when something’s gone
wrong?’
‘I am,’ said Julius: ‘my boss isn’t, but, bugger it, yes!’
Mrs Miller watched the mail: Una wrote. She was having further X-rays, though she sensed from
Robby that they were a formality; everyone was being good, and she was managing to eat, most of
the time: she was going with the Auxiliary to Bright, the hospitals were in a regional rationalisation
group organised by clever young Bruce Beck, who said duplication had to be avoided if country
areas were to provide a full range of services. ‘He was good to us last time,’ Una wrote, ‘though
pretty troubled. I’d like to see him again.’ She was downright curious, and Mrs Miller knew it!
Faced with a terminal disease, she still wanted to look into the lives of people who seemed to have
broken, interestingly, through the pattern. ‘Dear Una,’ Mrs Miller wrote back. ‘We’re both well,
Bernard’s cough is better and he takes long walks twice a day ...’
Anne didn’t want Murdy to know, but word got back. ‘With Harry Hearn?’ he charged her.
‘A one night stand,’ she said. ‘I hate him, he’s a prick.’ ‘But when?’ he wanted to know. ‘I mean,
God ...’ ‘I ran into him in Canberra. I was there for the national thing of the staff associations.
He was very persuasive.’ ‘You’ve never liked him! I’ve heard you say it. Many times!’ ‘Will you
never learn?’ she said. ‘I often don’t like them, it’s one way of being attracted. Didn’t you know,
Murdy?’
He said he’d always known, but it wasn’t true. Like attracted like, he’d always thought, and
wondered why Janis exercised his mind so powerfully ...
Marking up the orchestral suite from Lulu, Christie found herself trying to count bars in the
silences between noisy thrusts of Iberia from the hall below. Telling Mavis that she felt sure there’d
been some other instructions from Karl Scheidt, she went downstairs and let herself into the galley to hear the transition: for a few exquisite bars, the music hovered between Les Parfums de la
Nuit and Le Matin d’un Jour de Fête. That was it! The passage from one state to another, when,
briefly, night was ended and day not begun, alluded to her enjoyment of many delicious moments
of suspension. How she loved to sit at her window, air from the garden and her own Chanel 19
swaying about her! Yet nothing had more than a brief moment of being, not even a transition; the
flick in the cellos which committed the orchestra to the allegro only took a fraction of a second: it
horrified her that her marriage and the lives of her children were rushing through a myriad decisive
moments every day, and that the marital politics of her relationship with her husband were such
that he could not acknowledge them in her presence. What’s he frightened of, she wanted to know:
being caught naked in a moment when someone might change him?
She remembered her mother’s way of saying ‘Don’t make a face like that, the wind might
change and you’d be stuck with that expression on your face!’ She was smiling when she re-entered
the foyer: ‘Ah, Christie,’ said a voice. ‘Have a cup of coffee with me, you’re not in a hurry.’
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It was Jan de Kruyper, the Dutch violinist. ‘I’m not rostered on today,’ he said, ‘I just came
in to get my pay.’ Christie waited. ‘Elsa was asking after you yesterday,’ said the violinist. Christie
scented trouble. ‘She always wants to know about you,’ he added. Christie smiled faintly. ‘I wish
you’d give her a ring,’ he added.
Christie remembered that de Kruyper had threatened to put a bugging device on their phone.
‘Do you think he’s doing a good job with this?’ she said; de Kruyper studied her suspiciously, ‘I
can’t tell from here,’ he said. ‘It sounds all right. But I judge a conductor by how much better he
makes me play. And I’m not playing, am I?’ ‘I rather thought you were,’ she said. ‘What do you
mean by that?’ he demanded. ‘When I last spoke to your wife,’ she said, with an emphasis he was
quick to notice, ‘she felt able to ring me whenever she wanted.’
‘Did something happen between you then?’ the Dutchman wanted to know.
‘Some sort of barrier seems to have arisen,’ she said, looking at him.
‘I hope you don’t mean me,’ he said blatantly, ‘I can’t leave Mavis to do all the work,’ she said,
standing up. ‘Christie!’ called the Dutchman, ‘sit down, we can’t leave it unfinished like this ... ‘
This was exactly the sort of deceitful mess-making she hated. Heading for the stairs, she found
herself confronting a short Jewish musician with hairy arms who shoved his way out of a door
marked Gentlemen. ‘Hello Benny,’ she said with minimal courtesy. Benny raised his eyebrows,
studied the foyer, and followed her up. ‘You can’t take parts home,’ she said to the musician half a
flight behind. ‘And I know who got away with the Honneger and I want it back tomorrow.’ Benny’s
eyes flashed under massive eyebrows. ‘You’re always at me for something,’ he said. ‘Did you know
de Kruyper’s wife left him?’
Christie stared at the little man, four steps down. Before she had time to speak, grey haired
Mavis, the copying assistant, came clattering down, an envelope in her hand; surprised, she made
to squeeze past Christie. ‘You still getting those notes?’ said Benny. ‘Don’t keep him waiting!’ Mavis
made to swat his ear; he ducked, as Debussy’s trombones ended the fête. ‘So why was he lying to
me?’ Christie said.
‘Why do men lie to women?’ Benny said. ‘You know the answer to that.’ Christie flushed. ‘Just
thought I’d let you know,’ said Benny. ‘Let me come up with you for a while, I don’t want to go
back while that bastard’s there.’
They had just reached Christie’s room when they heard heavy feet coming upstairs. Her eyes
searched for Benny’s, as if to call attention to her daring; then she shut the door and locked it.
‘L’heure espagnole,’ said Benny, and they giggled gleefully. de Kruyper, thudding heavily on the
door, demanded to be let in. ‘Fuck otf, de Kruyper,’ said Benny. ‘We don’t want you in here.’
de Kruyper, despite his annoyance, was on the verge of going when he heard other feet coming up the stairs. ‘It’s Mavis,’ said Christie, ‘we’ll have to let her in.’ Benny shook his head. When
he heard Mavis arrive, he called out. ‘No admittance without the password! Write it on a piece of
paper and slip it under the door so de Kruyper doesn’t see it.’ Mavis told him not to be silly, Roger
Smith would be upstairs in a minute, she didn’t want to lose her job ... ‘It is a loveletter!’ exclaimed
Benny, ‘that’s why she won’t pass in that envelope. Okay!’ he announced, unlocking the door.
‘Amorists in here. Christie and I are going out for a drink!’ de Kruyper became aggressive and
Mavis, clutching her letter, tried to shush him: Christie studied Benny’s way with the Dutchman;
looking Mavis in the eye, he told her ‘Jan knows who’s behind these messages you’ve been getting. You ask him!’ Then he led Christie downstairs to the studio where Paul Girard was trying to
straighten out mismatching rubatos of wind and brass; sitting with her in the gallery, Benny said,
‘It’s easy to get him rattled, you just tell a few lies about him, he gets really uptight. He’s probably
combing the neighborhood right now!’
‘How do you know that about him?’ Christie said. ‘I don’t have any tricks for dealing with
people.’
‘I’ll bet you do,’ said Benny. ‘Being innocent’s a trick, and a bloody good one.’ He took her
hand, smiling lightly. Christie felt undermined by a superior cunning; she might have spoken, but
Roger Smith the orchestra manager stomped into the gallery, looked suspiciously at them, and
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walked out. ‘Now the rumors’ll be flying,’ said Benny. ‘I better get my cheque and piss off. You go
and sort out Mavis, tell her I was only kidding. And she has been getting letters, by the way, I’m
stuffed if I know where they come from.’
‘Why do you write letters?’ Christie asked her husband that night. ‘I mostly do it when I’m feeling
lonely, or locked in here at home,’ he said.
She told him about Mavis. ‘I don’t write that sort,’ Murdy laughed.
‘We don’t even know what they are,’ she said. ‘She wouldn’t tell me. But someone’s studied her
and worked out how to reach her feelings. Do you do that to people? I think you do.’
‘Is that, then, so very bad?’ he asked, tutorial style.
‘People shouldn’t be manipulated,’ she said: ‘it’s one of the worst things you can do.’
‘But even your moods manipulate me, and vice versa,’ he said ‘People can’t avoid doing that
to each other.’
Studying him curiously, she said, ‘Why didn’t you say we just then? Instead of people?’
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that we were talking in a general sense.’
‘You always try to,’ she said. ‘There’s something wrong, isn’t there, in that?’
‘Well, what do you think?’ he said. ‘You always ask me these things as if it’s up to me to solve
them.’
Christie was perplexed by the difference between her own ‘I’ and that of other people. Barbara,
Janis and Anne, as she saw them, had deeper personality flaws than she, yet they managed to make
their lives disputatious; in dramatising what they thought was happening to them, they were able
to shed responsibility.
People who worried about the autonomy of their lives were notorious, in Christie’s thinking,
for running away from full responsibility. Her husband’s attractions, as far as he let her see them,
were also a flight from the totality of adult understanding. She was always, she felt, being judged
by the women of their circle as immature, and yet she felt more mature than any of them; who else
let her life be affected by the multifarious influences of every extant generation? Her husband’s
career, focussed as it was on a century that had vanished, was another form of running away; in
clinging to his responsibility to her and to his children he was, she felt, using her as a conscience,
that deadening iron men plunged in the soul of women. How men hated their women to be mature,
equal partners! Everything about them tended to hold one in one’s childhood, except that the
understanding could reach beyond passive inactivity; the very willingness of men to use her as a
child woman, or as a maturing agent, showed how badly placed they were. She rang Benny, and
told him she’d laughed her head off, when she got home, but that he was to create no more pranks
at work: they would damage morale in the orchestra. Jan de Kruyper deserved all he got, but, in
handing it out to him, they affected everyone else. Benny, a little ruefully, accepted.
Then she rang Elsa de Kruyper’s number, trying to remember how, and by what extraneous
noises, one knew when a line was bugged. No one answered. Elsa was not at home, or had left, and
Jan the amorous Dutchman was out.
Putting down the phone, and undressing in the darkness where her husband snored gently
on his back, Christie realised that she’d done with her brief burst of giving instructions (to sweet,
shrewd, understanding Benny) and was about to enter a period of watchful, accomodating passivity.
Her husband was waiting to fall in love.
They got a letter from Estelle; her course was going well, she’d stay at least another year in
Paris, then she might get a teaching job, it would give her a better grip on the vernacular. Christie
noticed how tenderly Murdy read the letter, and something wistful in his response; from her memory of the dates, the affair must have started as soon as she went away with the orchestra. Estelle
would have been a virgin; now she would have some Jean Jacques in her life. When she came back,
she’d have been matured by Europe, but not by children. Christie asked Murdy what sort of course
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Anne was teaching this year. He said he wasn’t sure, he supposed it was much the same as last year
... So there’d been a cooling there.
She took the children to some concerts, they found them fairly boring, though Tania was
momentarily excited by the whipcrack opening of the Ravel concerto: Michael explored for a few
days the idea of feeding scraps of sound into his tape recorder, but he was no Greg, and soon went
back to Asterix: a couple more years and he’d be at high school, and she’d be out of the youngmarried stage for ever.
Murdy corrected the final proofs, and they agreed they were happy with the design. Christie
suggested another picnic in the gardens vhen the book came out, but Murdy said that it would
be an aftermath to the aborted gathering, instead of giving the book a launching of its own.
‘Everything deserves a decent start,’ he said, to which she answered, taking coffee to the bedroom:
‘Do we deserve anything at all? It’s a funny thought, that someone or something owes us something!’
In the weeks that followed, while reading union handouts and watching conductors’ antics, she
came to the conclusion that to make a claim for oneself meant that you were imperfectly understood: anyone who knew properly what you were would give you what you wanted without your
having to ask. This mightn’t work in politics but if it didn’t work in personal relationships they were
either meaningless or a squalid struggle. Ravel again! Those clear sounds, those limpid phrases, the
detachment with which he handled vulgar instruments and rhythms: if your position was right, if
your ear heard properly, anything was admissible. That was Greg’s lesson, too, but be had chosen
not to live it; what she had still to decide was whether, in abandoning life, he had merely been
negative or had accepted something wider. A moment’s perception of the whole universe might be
as much as could be incorporated in one life. Mrs Miller told her that Una had something which
they suspected was cancer: she too would have to be watched in the coming months, to see what
the human personality could gain, as well as lose, in making its approach to death.
Una was bright as a button when May, Queena Temby and Rosa Della Grazia arrived in May’s
husband’s Mercedes. ‘Just as well the Mercedes is starting this morning,’ Una said to the ladies.
‘My old bus is in the wars. Dennis says the fuel’s not getting through, he’s waiting for a part.’ It
was a fair description of her body, she realised, but, so long as Robby’s nurses weren’t gossiping,
no one in Nilgiri knew yet. The ladies may have known more than they were letting on, however,
because they chorused that she was to sit in the front seat, where there was more legroom. Their
stated reason was that May might get tired and feel like a bit of relief at the wheel, in which case
Una was the only other licensed driver, but Una felt they had somehow tapped her awareness that
this was her last big trip, and were preparing themselves to make it an event for her — even if it
was a bit dangerous for them.
‘It’s pretty flat near Tallygaroopna,” said Una to May; ‘I might take the wheel for a few minutes
around about there — if you’re sure your husband wouldn’t mind.’ May made it clear that when
she took the car out for the day, there wouldn’t want to be any questions asked, or her husband
might find it hard to know what had struck him! The back seat passengers laughed shrilly; only
Una took it a serious contribution to the backward looking which was all her thoughts amounted
to, these days.
‘That’s the way to have it,’ said Una. ‘I was twenty-eight years without reaching that point.’
A murmur of sympathy ran through the car. Una, putting a hand under her voluminous thigh to
move it into position, realised that the others were waiting for her to steer the conversation. Aware
of their awareness, she preferred to be silent as they drove through a little border town called
Wyuna, but, heading south, she felt moved by yellow light striking sideways on grey leaves and
grey-blue trunks. ‘When Roderick first came through here,’ she said, ‘and he wasn’t the first of my
family by any means ...’
A note of deferral could be heard in the murmur that sounded between the seats ...
‘... the Ilmingtons, they were a little coaching firm that linked up with the train at Bendigo,
had a marquee in there by the river, and a wooden trough nailed between the trees for the horses
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when they changed them. Roderick had the trough under his house for a long while, then he pulled
it out when he started keeping pigs. Bless me if I know what happened to it, just got worn out, I
suppose ...’
There was too much sympathy in the ladies’ murmur; Una decided to shock them:
‘... like me,’ she said, expecting a response, which came predictably enough. Queena wanted
to know what Una was going on about because her birthday was only seven weeks behind, and
May said that if she did half as much work around the town as Una, she’d have been dead of
exhaustion years ago, and it was only Rosa who wanted to know whether the Ilmingtons Una had
mentioned were Americans because for the life of her she couldn’t see why Australians were so
interested in other colonial people when they had so many interesting Europeans who had reached
the Antipodes and gone home again ...
‘Home,’ Una butted in, ‘it was always my mother’s ambition to go home — she meant England
— but she never made it. She’s in Leehane’s horse paddock now, that’s as far as she ever got.’
Leehane’s horse paddock was a local euphemism for Nilgiri cemetery; descendants of the first
Leehanes still owned the land around the plots, and their horses, excited by the arrival of a funeral
convoy, were apt to circle the cemetery at full gallop. There had been a move to ask the Leehanes
to shift the horses when there was to be a funeral but they had refused to cooperate, knowing,
perhaps, that most of Nilgiri found the horses an attractive diversion. The clergy had been known
to mention them in funeral orations, and they didn’t interfere with cars …
Queena and May tried to get Una to reminisce further, thinking that she might have need
to review her life, but Una was rather short with them. She’d already decided that her malignant
growth was in the same position as the one that killed her father; his had finished him in two
months, but Robby seemed to think she could expect a couple more years ... why were Queena,
May and Rosa so sure of themselves? They mightn’t last half as long, an accident on this journey might wipe out the four of them in one go! Passing out of a belt of redgum, she suddenly
announced: ‘These damned conservationists, they get on my goat!’ May, wife of a timbermiller,
leaped in to agree, but Queena was not so sure. A lot of the land between Wyuna and Boomelang
had been damaged by irrigation, she said, and as if to prove her point, the Mercedes swept them
into a sullen, salt-encrusted terrain, populated only by skeletons of trees and sour tussocks. Queena
tapped her window with a scarlet fingernail, irritating Una, who observed tartly, ‘The progress that
wasn’t!’
‘Well,’ said Queena, ‘perhaps if we’d taken a bit more notice of the conservationists ...’
‘It’s always been flood country,’ Una told her. ‘You take the bad with the good ... people who
come in when it’s too late, and tell you what you can see for yourself, what use are they?’
Placatory Rosa touched Una’s shoulder. Swamp land, she said, near her parents’ village in Italy,
had been drained, and then there were no waterbirds and no fish, and people almost starved; the
swamp gave them diseases, she said, but they were worse off without it!
Just the sort of problem peasants would encounter, Una thought, but stared silently at the wide
land before them. Her life, she felt, had had an amplitude, unsatisfactory as much of it had been.
There was no richness in the world she would exchange for the certainty of her village where every
front gate was a name and address. Waterbirds in their thousands came with every flood, and the
Moultons, Millers and Hearns came home from their fishing parties with stuff they had to give
away. You only had to drive through the belts of trees that marked any watercourse, and whole
flocks of jays would scurry about, and on the open plains, galahs, and magpies, and hawks brought
the air alive. When it rained, and tourists were complaining, you could feel the earth soaking, and
if the water was too much, and it flooded, the muddy, blackened hulks of gum logs would entangle
each other, and some ricketty bridge would take a battering, but next summer the roads board men
would be out with their no road and detour signs, directing cars through the dry creekbed while a
white-shirted engineer told them how to prop things up for a few more years. Everything renewed,
that was the thing: committees re-formed, old recipes still worked ... the organ in St John’s was
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always being repaired, the piano in the hall was never in tune ... Marge Linley’s kids were over every
fence for fruit, her husband’s honey kept winning prizes at all the shows ...
‘I could take a turn,’ Una said to May, ‘if you’d like a rest from driving. I think I could manage
out here.’ The party smiled: no trees, and even the fences well back. ‘Nothing much to hit,’ said
May.
Una, sliding across the seat while May walked around, confessed to Rosa and Queena, ‘I’ve
always wanted to drive one of these, but I’m blessed if I’m going to do this in a town; it’d hurt me
dignity!’ she said, self-mocking.
On the principle that any new venture by the elderly is to be encouraged, the others indicated their confidence by directing her attention to features as they passed. But as they drew near
Tallygaroopna, she slewed to the side of the road. ‘We’ll make the change here, May,’ she said.
‘I’m not having some boy at a service station thinking what a helpless old dame I am!’ The others
assured her that she had driven very well, and a smiling May was so pleased with her success that
she was startled when a Holden, driven by a leathery looking farmer, stopped, then reversed back
to join them. The driver leaned across, wound down a window and shouted, ‘By gee, I’ve seen you
people before! You broke a fanbelt just about here, I had to stop and fix it for you! Are y’in trouble
again?’
May, assuring him they were not, felt angry when he said, ‘Well, I’ll just see ya get started,’ and
mortified when the Mercedes refused to start.
‘Automatic chokes,’ said the farmer contemptuously. ‘Should put ‘em all in a boat and sink
‘em!’ Within a minute he had the bonnet up, the Mercedes’ air cleaner on the road, and was ordering them not to pump the accelerator while he squelched his palm on the carburettor’s throat. ‘It’s
the way they breathe,’ he shouted, ‘that’s the be-all and end-all of getting ‘em started!’
Una’s illness reared up in an urge to vomit; she even opened the passenger door to be sick, but
the engine roared to life, amid Farmer’s belligerent encouragement of May: ‘Keep your foot down,
lady! Never mind the sparks in your exhaust, keep ‘er roaring!’
Una felt the whole display was unseemly, and a bitter cynicism replaced her illness when she
heard him advising his captives: ‘If I was you, I’d let Ray Doyle take a look at it when you get to
Congupna. Ray’s a wizard, you take it from me! BP station on your right!’
Bruce snatched the phone off Nell. ‘Beck!’ he said curtly. ‘No, I won’t be here. You’ll have to make
an appointment with my secretary!’ Putting the phone on the desk, he looked proudly at admiring
Nell. ‘Nothing before Wednesday,’ he whispered, ‘I want to see Janis and the baby settled.’ Nell,
moving towards him, asked how long Janis had been in labour. ‘About half an hour, if that,’ said
Bruce: ‘she caught me by surprise this morning. I told her I’d put off all engagements, and I’d get
right back!’
‘You’re going to watch the birth?’ said Nell.
‘Watch it!’ he said, ‘I’m going to participate.’ Nell looked sufficiently admiring. ‘Hold the fort,
Nell,’ he said, pressing her hand, ‘I know I can rely on you!’
And he dashed out.
Doctor Styles told the matron he couldn’t meet the delegation from Nilgiri; the shire secretary’s
wife was having a baby and there was no way he could talk to anyone. Matron relayed this message
in diluted form to Sister, who passed it to the hospital secretary, who relayed it to the ladies.
‘But what about your president?’ said May. ‘Bruce Beck. That charming young man who met
us last time?’
‘It’s his wife that’s having the baby!’ said the secretary. ‘He’s sitting with her right through the
whole thing!’
Triumphant Janis felt the gathering of attention. She was aware of messages, whispered in the
next rooms, or behind averted hands, which had to do with her, but were not for her ears. So, she
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thought, might a Dauphin be surrounded by protocol at his christening. I, she thought, am the
centre of it all! ‘Bruce!’ she cried: ‘He’s coming,’ said the nurse, ‘we had a call a minute ago, he
said to hang on if you can, he’s on his way.’
Janis had a moment, between pangs, when she saw the future of their relationship — supporting each other’s weaknesses for fear that the collapse of one would bring the other down; determination to create two separate existences; hating the moments when they fell inward on each other,
yet welcoming them too. Unsatisfactory it might be, and fraught with traps, but it was the cycle.
Each helped the other to escape, knowing that they must come back again. Oddly enough, she’d
barely read Harry’s last letter, though it was waiting in her drawer; it was Bruce she was waiting
for, and when he came, she rubbed his arm approvingly.
He, becoming aware of whisperings in the next room, went out to find Doctor Styles in the
process of changing his mind; it seemed that he had remembered the attractiveness of one of the
quartet from Nilgiri, and was prepared to give them a minute or two. Chortling Bruce relayed this
to Janis, whose impatience with the doctor lasted only a moment: ‘You go too, Bruce,’ she said.
‘He’ll hate you cramping his style, but you should be there. I won’t need you for ages yet.’
Minutes later, she began to hallucinate. She saw Marina, Pericles’ child, adrift in a sea which
was also Harry’s bath; the stupidity of it helped her get control, and she was talking calmly to a
nurse when Bruce returned to say that Styles and the hospital manager were talking to the visitors
and that he’d arranged to slip out very briefly at lunch time, if she wasn’t too far advanced by then.
Listening to him talk, she became aware that she was unusually conscious of his moods.
There was his need to be public; each time someone came into the room, she felt him take on
a dimension of display: he changed none of his actions, but projected differently. There was his
remorse, when he looked more tenderly at her body, as if it contained a punishment: there was a
type of exploratory detachment, when he ran his fingers over her as if she had more to reveal — this
she found attractive, because it gave promise of renewal, even though she knew that this was part
of the romanticism which allowed him to believe, briefly, in the infinite possibility of some other
woman.
How strange was their relationship! They were like two people in a lifeboat, one with the water
and one with the food, and they hated to bargain but they could only survive by bargaining, and
each feared the other had a weapon ...
Gasping, she roused the practical Bruce, who said ‘Do you want me to read to you?’
‘Not yet,’ she said. ‘I’m not ready. I was sort of slipping inside myself.’ This made Bruce anxious, but she explained that she was starting to lose her concern for things outside herself; a turbulence was starting in her and she had to get her concentration fully onto it, or lose control too
early. So he sat quietly, and she felt his presence as a nimbus as she sank into her task.
Bruce was more comfortable than saintly, and she tried to establish in her body a flow that ran
counter to his, but could rejoin it. Against his steadiness, with its spasmodic downs, she developed
her irregularities, with wilfully chosen peaks and flights. Deeply, inescapably inside herself, she yet
managed to find parallels with the outer life her body shared with Bruce: the tension before his
council meetings, when she tried to space calmly her preparations for a meal: her own tension,
when she was going down to Harry’s, as against her husband’s patient release of his hold on her
psyche. She could feel her guts aligning themselves for a delivery which they would manage in their
own good time; this helplessness before a natural process was a mental function well rehearsed
in Janis’s mind. She remembered something she’d read about the foetus recapitulating the long
process of human evolution; this seemed an awkward metaphor for the way life moved from an
abstract possibility to a definite shape. What did Saint-Exupery say about the spirit breathing on
the clay? She’d lent the book to Harry and never got it back, and now he was making up his mind
whether he’d buy a central city apartment or commute from Macedon, so there was a disjunction
there, but it didn’t seem to matter: the uneasiness she was feeling was more like a recapitulation
of the worst moments of morning sickness, but without the emotional stress of that time when
she’d hoped he might respond. Now, having abandoned that wish except for unguarded moments
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of searing pain, she felt central to her own consciousness, and Bruce, caressing her gently, was her
chosen partner; it was good Harry was so far away; at a time like this she could only deal with the
things pressing most immediately on her consciousness.
In a moment of steadiness, she was aware that the murmurs in the passage meant that a message had been brought to Bruce, who came in to ask her if she could spare him for ten minutes;
she nodded calmly, there was no way the connection could be broken by a few walls and a flight of
stairs. Going down, Bruce had an uneasy feeling of being watched, it made him think of Norman
Marshall, who claimed he could get outside himself. Resentful that his concentration on his wife
had been broken in this way, he hurried back to the labour ward; his wife smiled indulgently and
said she didn’t need him yet.
If she had been otherwise occupied, she might have said ‘Shortest meeting on record!’ but
she was pleased by the anxiety on his face; as he walked away again, she listened carefully to the
footfalls in the corridor, imagining the exact weight and timing of his steps, the sideways glances
into wards, the waves to patients who knew him, his observation of flowers, the cleaning woman
moving the cleaner aside while he picked his way through coils of flex ... his fear of closed doors
and drawn curtains, which was probably the root cause of his involvement in the hospital when he
was more than busy with the shire. Sinking back, she smiled: the nurse interpreted it as drowsiness,
and fiddled with the pillow, but Janis was trying to place her consciousness at some vantage point
above the maelstrom of her body’s affairs. Suddenly she retched, and the nurse came back from the
next room, but Janis, eyes closed, held her hand out to stop any approach. It was only a relief.
She wondered why she could find no pattern in what was happening. She’d been through it
before, and talked about it with Styles, yet her involvement was so great that she found herself
saying aloud ‘Every birth is a first birth’: the nurse put her head in but Janis murmured ‘I don’t
need him yet.’
Bruce was already public, as she had sensed: sitting between Una and Queena Temby, he was
suggesting that if all hospitals in the region linked to the same memory bank, there was no reason
why a rationalisation scheme need interfere with medical efficiency; essential knowledge could be
as available at one point as at another. But Una was doubtful: ‘I still like to deal with someone I
know,’ she said. ‘Robby’s a cranky old cuss, but I trust him, and I think he knows as much about
me as anybody will ever need to.’
‘Exactly!’ said Bruce with enthusiasm. ‘But if he ever has to refer you to someone else, they’ll
know as much as he does, without putting you through the embarrassment of telling them.’
Queena coughed, May looked at her hands, and Rosa invited the doctor’s opinion. Bruce,
realising that he’d blundered, asked the ladies what they would be doing the rest of the day; May
told him she rather wanted to drive to the snow, they’d seen it in the distance on the way over and
it was such a long time ...
‘It might be my last time,’ said Una. ‘Yes, I think that’s a good idea, May. We’ll get a few sandwiches and go before lunch!’
She made it sound like a youthful excursion: Bruce caught the strangeness of tone and realised
where his mistake had been. Standing, he felt awkward as he released himself to go back to his
wife, and pleaded with them to drop in again before they went back; he’d like them to meet his
wife and the new baby she’d have by then! A beaming Styles tapped Rosa on the arm and said it
was wonderful to see a man so confident; Rosa, tilting her head, said his wife must be very happy:
something about Una’s placid but firmly set features stopped the doctor from gossiping.
Going upstairs, Bruce paused on the landing, fighting for a way to accommmodate the predicament of Mrs Moulton with his own exuberance; he mustn’t be in conflict when he got back to his
wife. She’d know he was troubled, she could read him too well, and he didn’t want to disturb her
with the bad vibes he’d picked up from the group.
He tried to focus on the road they’d take; he remembered Barbara going up the mountain
when she wouldn’t stay with him, and the fiasco at the end of her trip. She’d told him about Rep,
and how she’d fled at the crack of dawn; it had given Bruce a chance to take the initiative in their
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dying relationship. Where was Barb? Last time he’d been at Shawn’s, people were saying she was
on a Bass Strait island, alone. That would be the down part of her cycle; she’d be back one day,
reforming everyone in sight ...
... or she wouldn’t: she’d have learned, from the events of the last two years, to handle herself
more strategically, to conserve her energy for something worthwhile doing. Bruce wished she
would write: he still had her letters from the early days stuffed in the back of his cricket album.
That, he remembered, was where he’d lost her, and that was where everything to do with her
would stay until he understood what had gone wrong: mellowing as he reflected on the way she’d
ostensibly abandoned him, only to retain her place in his memories, he was interrupted by Mrs
Carswell, the cleaner, trundling her polisher with its miles of flex downstairs. ‘Don’t hold back, Mr
Beck,’ she said, ‘your wife’ll be needing you. There’s so many screams from that place you don’t
know who is who!’
Bruce wanted to laugh and cry. Screams from Janis! That pride was too great, but the inner
equivalent of screams must be starting pretty soon, and here he was, daydreaming on the stairs,
‘They’re not getting through to me,’ he said to Mrs Carswell’s descending back: ‘how come you
notice more than I do?’
Styles caught up with Bruce; someone had phoned downstairs to get him. Catching him in the
corridor, the doctor said, with disgraceful lack of tact, ‘There’s times I’d give anything to be off
duty!’ Bruce stared at him, but the connection between the doctor’s lust fora personable Italian
visitor and his own recollections of Barbara was a healing recall for Bruce: there was a unity after
all, stronger than the presumed illness of a doughty old lady from another town. Bruce took the
doctor’s elbow and said, ‘There’ll be plenty of meetings if this rationalisation goes through, just
store that in the back of your head!’ The doctor was excited, but more used to the professional
rigors of the labour ward than Bruce: sweeping in, he said ‘Hi Janis!’ and snapped at the nurse
‘Urine test?’ Her nod was meant to placate him but he told her to do another; then he said, business-like, to Janis: ‘Has the membrane ruptured? Or begun to leak?’ He checked her answer by
putting two fingers at the bottom of the vagina, while casting his eyes around for the card which the
nurse passed him: maternal blood pressure, foetal pulse ... Bruce found himself strangely useless
beside this abrupt tradesman of the human body, but softened as he watched Styles put his hand
on the belly of his wife, then gently lower his ear as if he wished to hear the baby as well as locate
it. ‘Starting to move,’ said Styles. ‘It’ll be in the birth canal shortly. How do you feel Janis?’ he asked
in a mixture of professional-brusque and caring: Janis said nothing, but reached beyond him to the
centre of her husband’s vibes; she could tell Bruce’s persona anywhere. It’s ours! Bruce wanted to
yell, and it’s on the way! Grabbing his wife’s hand, he felt he had bypassed the technical skill of
Styles, who was watching the nurse repeat the urine test. Studying the tube she brought him, he
said ‘Albumen okay. No toxaemia. Okay, Janis on you go, it should be plain sailing from here!’
The Mercedes wound stolidly up the mountain. May turned the heater on, but Una opened the
quarter window so that a jet of icy air played round her knees. Queena offered a rug from the
back seat, but Una refused; it was too comfortable in the car, she needed another reality to cut in.
‘When we get a little higher,’ she said to May, ‘we must stop and walk about. It’s ages since I was
in the snow.’
Queena and Rosa recalled their last visits to the snow: twenty-eight years for Queena; for Rosa,
six weeks since she’d brought husband and family over, and her husband wouldn’t go skiing, and
wouldn’t let the children on the chairlifts: it had been a thoroughly frustrating day. She was thinking of the young doctor at Bright, he’d take her skiing if he got half a chance, she felt sure he’d
have a lodge ...
May, under the pretext of taking care with her husband’s car, stopped to take in ... not the
view, as she stated, but a change she sensed was taking place in Una. ‘Do you like the mountains
Una?’ she tasked.
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‘I like country I can do something with,’ said Una, stating the point from which she departed,
‘but today I’m liking them very much! In fact, I don’t mind how far we go!’
The drops on Una’s side became steeper, and Queena felt that the sight of a wrecked bus might
make Una frightened, but the old lady stated phlegmatically: ‘It must have been awful being in that
thing but there’s nothing we can do for them now.’ May made a point of keeping well away from
the edge, but it appeared to make no difference to Una, who stared down long valleys and over
whale-backed ridges at the deep blue ranges with their icing of white. She felt herself responding as
never before to their remoteness and indifference. How amusing to think of God being interested
in the affairs of people; if the old boy existed he’d be craggy, separate, chill and indescribably pure.
Sky, ranges, cloud, snow — two blues and half a dozen whites — surrounded them as they reached
a signpost. ‘What do you think?’ said May, stopping for consultation. ‘Go on,’ said Una, and Rosa
agreed; she understood there was a hotel ahead, they could have lunch and a glass of wine. ‘We’ve
got the sandwiches to fall back on,’ said Una, but she had no wish to dampen Rosa’s enthusiasm;
the Italian warmth sat pleasantly against her own austerity. The part of the road that was most
disturbing for May was the part most satisfying for Una; when they came onto the knife-edge of
a narrow ridge, a drift of cloud caused May to brake in alarm. It passed in a moment, but May
was hesitant about going on. Queena too, was anxious, with a drop on either side and nothing but
cloud to hang onto, but Rosa urged May to keep going: ‘We must reach that hotel, there’ll be all
the room in the world!’
Una kept her smile hidden. We already have all the room there is, she thought; at every
moment, we are surrounded by everything, but it’s only in rare moments that we see it. Wrinkling
her eyes like an explorer blinded by glare, she blurred the view while she examined her feelings
about it: north, an inland she knew and loved; south, the coastal ranges, fertile lowland and a sea
she feared. Crawling forward, they seemed incredibly close to the sky, as if it were a decision that
might fall on them. ‘The men who discovered these places must have been very brave,’ Rosa stated
sententiously, her imagination peopling the track with moustachioed carabinieri, hats plumed and
rifles slung, who rode mule-sized horses and sang to keep their courage up. Una again smiled
secretly, before dismissing the foreign vision. The explorers had been people like her own family,
alive to what they saw, but wanting to make a place for themselves; and the voids on either side
of the car hovered above her land, and the high place gave her the position to see its unity, and
her own unity, in the last phase of her life, with everything she’d ever done. I am co-existent, she
thought, with everything that ever was — cruelty, prosperity, famine, human love. Now I am coexistent, too, with everything non-human — the cloud shadows drifting down the ranges, the void
that cradles the clouds, the air above them: there is no fear, she found, in absolute acceptance.
Turning, she beamed on the back seat passengers: ‘What do you think they’ll be serving for lunch,
Rosa? What do you fancy?’
It was almost teatime when they got back to Bright, but they felt they should call at the hospital.
Bruce met them in the foyer, tired but excited. ‘I didn’t watch Jennifer being born,’ he explained,
introducing his daughter, who remembered the ladies coming to the house on an earlier occasion.
‘That’s right,’ he said, ‘I clean forgot about that,’ as if all previous troubles had been erased. ‘Janis
was out walking.’ Then he asked them if they’d enjoyed the mountains, which he seemed to be
invoking as witnesses to the birth; the ladies smiled at his enthusiasm, and asked for details of the
baby. ‘Girl!’ cried Bruce. ‘She’s named already. Marina! It’s from Shakespeare, Janis had to have it.
I like it. I’m getting used to it already. You like it don’t you Jennifer?’
The daughter claimed she did, and the ladies would have gone, but Bruce insisted they meet
Janis. ‘She’s sitting there wide awake, she doesn’t know what to do with herself and she’s looking
so beautiful ...’ The lump in his throat moved the ladies to follow him upstairs. Janis heard the six
of them — husband, daughter, visitors — clattering along like a troop of cavalry, and picked up
her baby from the cot beside her bed. When they came in, she felt she was being wondered at by
all humanity; shyly she put the baby before her and sat up. The baby wrinkled her face, moving
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Bruce to tickle her tiny palm; if it brought no smile, it did cause the frown to disappear. He cooed
at the child till Jennifer said, ‘You’re like a kid yourself, dad,’ but Janis smiled serenely on him, the
visitors, and on Marina. ‘It’s an unusual name,’ said Una. ‘Does it run in your family? And what’s
it mean?’
‘No,’ said Janis, ‘it’s not a family name. It means, from the sea. It’s from an old story about a
child that was cast adrift on the sea, and later found again, it’s a wonderful story.’
‘I like a name that has a story to it,’ said Rosa, ‘I think it gives a baby a good start.’ Janis put the
child in the cot, and they admired it again, then took their leave. Listening to the footsteps retreating noisily down the passage — Bruce could never be quiet on a polished floor — Janis considered
that her baby, conceived in flight from Bruce and awe of Harry Hearn, had made her central; the
footsteps, now sounding in the stairwell, were the sounds of people moving from her fixed position:
the duality which was her unity with Marina was a vast, radiant field of force others were grateful
to approach. ‘Marina,’ she whispered. ‘From the sea.’ Sea meant flux, change, and instability, and
it had brought Marina.
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16
The book came out, got an underhand review in Meanjin; the following quarter, not without misgivings, Anne replied:
Anyone who thinks nationalism still has anything going for it has only to read Clem Bryant’s review, in
the most recent issue of this journal, of Science and the Australian expansion, Murdoch Miller’s biography
of Baron Ferdinand von Mueller. Bryant’s false praise belittles Miller’s contribution to our understanding
of the climate of European intellectual opinion into which discoveries in the colonies were fed. The Royal
Geographical Society, the gardens at Kew, and the whole description of European science from Newton
to Lavoisier, can be seen as astute pieces of early imperialist propaganda which had a demoralising effect
on Mueller, a scientist much honoured by reactionary regimes on the continent, but despised or feared
by Anglo-Saxon establishments in London and Melbourne.
For this, at least, despite glaring faults, Miller’s work deserves attention ...
The Mumfords had the Millers to dinner when they’d read the book. Rhonda was curious
about Murdy’s relationship with the publishers. ‘They’re running true to form in my case,’ said
Murdy. ‘It’s nearly sold out, but they won’t reprint. Sales are down to a trickle so they say they’ve
covered the market.’
Rhonda observed tartly, ‘You’d think they’d recognise a responsibility to keep a work like that
in print. It’ll be the book in that area for the next twenty years.’
‘Forty,’ said Julius. ‘You surprised me, you old bugger, I think you’ve surpassed yourself!’ He
topped up glasses.
‘Well, that’s praise,’ said Murdy. ‘I think my book opens up the possibility for many more
detailed studies, but I don’t think what I’ve done, in mapping Mueller’s links with the development
going on in his period, needs to be done again.’ He felt pleased with himself, confident that what
had needed doing had fitted his capacities. He waved airily when Rhonda asked him what new
fields the book opened for others to explore.
‘Explore is probably the word,’ said Murdy, ‘and I don’t know that I did justice to the Baron’s
links with explorers. The facts are there but the inner drives that lead some people to the fringes
of civilisation aren’t easy to grasp. And I’m also interested in the technology; the superiority of the
white man at, say, the time of Cook or Phillip was by no means as absolute as we, looking back,
might think.’ ‘It was enough,’ said his wife.
‘Yes Christie!’ said Julius, becoming suddenly excited, ‘but what Murdy’s on about is that sailors don’t wait till they’ve got latitude and longitude all worked out, they set off with a sextant and a
knotted rope for soundings and a bit of so called dead reckoning to make the biggest voyages man
could make. A lot of the most famous expeditions have been grossly under-equipped. Those that
weren’t, like Burke and Wills, had to shed most of their stuff before they start to get anywhere.’
‘I think that’s what I’m driving at,’ said Murdy. ‘Explorers seem to have to find the psychological danger point before they can really achieve anything ... I mean, they’re not only discovering
islands or rivers or grazing land, they have to find the psychic edge of their society ...’
‘And that’s why,’ said an excited Julius, ‘their exact state of mind is important. They are the
society of the day, but in the same way that madmen or criminals give you a picture of what a
society’s on about!’
‘Have you got any interesting concerts coming up?’ Rhonda said to Christie; she, used to the
older woman’s conversational habits, named some conductors and works — Daphnis and Chloe,
some Sculthorpe, Mozart K503, Brahms 3rd ...
197
‘I don’t care what they say about Brahms!’ said Julius hotly. ‘Our music critics are always
knocking him. I think they must have a test for those bastards, if they don’t heave up at the sound
of a bit of Brahms, they don’t get the job!’ He wanted Christie to comment, but his wife instructed
him to clear a space, and Christie offered to help Rhonda with the gravy; used to these abrupt
breaks, Julius reached for his cigarettes: he had a habit of banging the box with his intended smoke
as an aid to thought; it could last a minute. Thumping the packet in this way and staring at a faded
Drysdale print, he finally announced: ‘Things are going downhill, Murdy! Your fellow might have
been the last of the greats!’ Murdy was used to this mood, but was surprised when Julius continued: ‘I saw Harry last week, Hamlet: he’s going downhill. Down, down, down. He’s living on his
reputation, Murdy, and that’s the best I can say for him!’
‘Who are you talking about?’ said Christie, emerging from the kitchen with the gravy jug:
‘Who’s going down so fast as to stir your interest, Julius?’
‘Harry Hearn,’ said Julius. ‘Just writes poems. Doesn’t believe in himself any more.’
‘Oh don’t exaggerate!’ cried his wife, bringing in a steaming leg of pork, and a set of knives. ‘A
person like Harry Hearn doesn’t go down in a hurry!’
Christie didn’t want them to argue over dinner. ‘What happened to those funny people you
were telling me about, who wanted to get all your names and addresses?’ she said.
Rhonda leapt at the diversion: Julius and Murdy accepted it as some sort of delaying bargaining point. Rhonda said, ‘You mean the Middle Australia people …’
‘Middle Australia!’ cried Murdy, and Julius chuckled till he could barely light his cigarette.
‘That what they call themselves,’ Rhonda said. ‘Don’t blame the name on me!’
After a lengthy pause, in which his eyes searched the rosewood table for a place to drop
his match, Julius announced ‘We’re Middle Australia! Who are these pretenders to the dunny
throne?’
Christie and Murdy tittered at the word, but Rhonda preferred to be stern with her husband:
‘Who are you calling Middle Australia?’ she demanded. ‘They’re a bunch of crooks. They came to
see me, or rather, they sent a sophisticated, over-made-up young centrefold, and all they wanted
to do was rip off the people we look after, I sent them packing, and I’m glad to say the Board of
Management backed me!
Christie wanted to cheer. Julius, the match still wedged between two fingers like an unexploded
bombshell, laughed at her. ‘They’ll pop up somewhere else, girl,’ he said: ‘Would you really expect
those crooks to go away and lie down? Eh!’ He grinned triumphantly.
‘I know what they’re after!’ cried Rhonda. ‘I talked it over with Beth Simpson!’
Christie and Murdy, who’d lunched with the Millers, senior, the previous Sunday, exchanged
glances.
Julius held the blackened match aloft, as if poised to sign a declaration. Sensing he had Rhonda
caught, he gurgled: ‘And what did Beth have to say for herself?’
‘For herself, nothing,’ said Rhonda, as if testifying before a Royal Commission. ‘But she told
me about Middle Australia!’
Murdy wanted to convulse. ‘That name,’ he said, sloshing down claret, ‘whoever thought it up,
it’s brilliant!’
‘Brilliantly deceitful,’ Rhonda admonished, and Christie, too, glared at him, demanding
silence.
‘Well?’ said Julius, flicking the match on the cupboard where he kept his port: ‘don’t keep me
in suspenders, girl. What do you know?’
Rhonda huffed into her glass before she sipped. ‘It’s our contacts they’re after,’ she stated. ‘Just
plain simple names and addresses,’ Julius beamed.
‘The irony of that,’ he said, ‘is that if you weren’t more efficient than the average private enterprise institution, they wouldn’t be after you. But as it is, they’re asking you to sell out. What’s the
price?’
198
Rhonda swept him aside imperiously. ‘Would you carve, please,’ she said to her husband,
‘before it gets cold?’ Twenty years of family pressures backed up the demand. Julius, laying his cigarette at a precarious angle across the rim of a bowl of nuts, took up the carving tools. ‘Mmmmm,
yum, girl,’ he said, slicing into the pork, ‘you haven’t lost your touch, have you?’
That they could reach each other beneath the endless bickering, was an object lesson for their
visitors. Christie searched for the strengths that had come through to Rhonda: ‘You basted it,’ she
said: ‘How did you get them to cut it?’
While she was answering, Murdy asked Julius to go on with what he knew about Harry Hearn:
‘It must be four or five months since I saw him,’ he explained.
Julius retrieved his match and stared at it. ‘I don’t think he’s got any friends left,’ he said. ‘He’s
too welcoming. He used to treat me as if I came from a hick organisation—which was perfectly
accurate — and gave me the feeling I was bloody lucky to be allowed in his door. Now he seems
to think I’m something special ...’
His wife, handing him the carving knife impatiently, snapped: ‘I wonder where he got that
idea!’
‘Exactly!’ said Julius, holding the knife erect. ‘I don’t deserve it. He’s four jumps ahead of me
all the time ...’
‘I wish we had him here to serve that dinner,’ Rhonda observed, softening slightly as she saw
Murdy laughing. ‘You said he was going downhill,’ Christie said, holding him to the question.
‘It’s the way they treat him,’ said Julius, prising off the crackle: ‘he used to be God in that office.
Now they’ve got one of those open plan arrangements and he’s out in the middle of a sea of desks.
They’ve reduced him somehow, and he doesn’t seem to care.’
‘That’s to his credit, surely?’ said Rhonda. ‘I never did like his air of superiority.’
‘When you take a natural aristocrat,’ said Julius, ‘and you kick him, and he seems to want you
to do it again, something’s wrong! Am I right?’
‘I don’t think there are any natural aristocrats,’ said Christie, and they looked at each other.
Murdy spoke of von Mueller, created hereditary baron by the King of Wurttemberg, but dying
childless; and Rhonda, of the Dames and occasional Sirs who took an interest in the Brotherhood,
but Christie went on: ‘It doesn’t matter how refined, or haughty, you might be, if other people don’t
give you back your own sense of persona, you lose it. Aristocracy’s more social than innate.’
‘Both, surely,’ said Rhonda, as Julius pushed the bowl of peas before her. ‘Tuck into that, girl,’
he said. ‘If the King of Wurttemberg got peas at this time of year, he must have been somewhere
else!’ Grinning at his own joke, he burst out: ‘Bloody power elites! They plonk themselves on the
highest hill and they get a monopoly of medicine or religion, and they declare themselves superior.
No. Christie, the aristocracy I’m talking about is in the quality of the person and by God, Harry
Hearn had it, and it must still be there but he’s struggling, and I’m sorry for him!’
‘How did he get that nickname?’ Rhonda wanted to know, and Murdy told her Lawrence
Hearn’s version of the story. ‘I can’t say I think it suits him,’ said Rhonda, and they started to talk
about productions of Hamlet that they’d seen. Just another dinner party, thought Murdy, wishing
they could get back to his book, but Rhonda insisted, to his surprise, that people make a mistake
when they considered characters separately: Hamlet involved Ophelia too while Gertrude and
Claudius were a duality which Hamlet junior had to deal with: ‘They knew as much as we do
about marital politics,’ Rhonda announced. ‘We’re just patronising the Elizabethans if we say they
didn’t!’
The couples considered. Julius, glowing with pride, grabbed the neck of an early Coonawarra.
‘I never know,’ he said, ‘whether to have red or white with pork, but, by God, I think this ought
to do!’
Into the mixture of emotions which the gathering contained at this point, Rhonda flung a question which Murdy could not answer: ‘What sort of wines do they grow in Wurttemberg, Murdy?’
Keeping an eye on him in case he had an answer, she loaded a fork with peas. ‘I have not the faintest,’ Murdy admitted; ‘Do you know, Christie?’
199
Pink flush touched her cheeks and dewy excitement lit her eyes as she told them, ‘We travelled
down the Rhine. That was magical!’ ‘The Rhine!’ cried Rhonda, while Murdy noted the ‘we’, a
plural he hadn’t heard about. He wondered where Estelle was; discussing Sartre with Africans from
an ex-colony more corrupt than it had been under the French?
‘Tell us about the Rhine!’ Rhonda cried, excited by Christie’s boldness: ‘What was it like?’
‘Oh, there were castles,’ she said airily. ‘They were everything they’re supposed to be.’ She
studied her husband. ‘There were musicians on the boat,’ she said. ‘We just cruised down the river!’
Proud, defiant, yet obedient, she flung at her husband, ‘Murdy had just as good a time as I did!’
Rhonda snickered, while recording the exchange: Julius, lifting the Coonawarra until it almost
touched the globe, studied it through the light. ‘No purple,’ he announced. ‘No shading into
brown! It’s the colour of the ruby glass around my grandma’s front door. You couldn’t get a better
colour than that.’
Murdy ventured to doubt, but Julius on the chemistry of glass-making, was amazing: in a series
of explanations no one could follow, he showed them why the red of a wine was like the red of glass
— when both were at their best!
‘I never knew that,’ said Murdy: ‘I never had the faintest idea!’ Rhonda, worrying about her
peach pie as she neared the end of the pork, said to Christie, ‘What sort of pastry do you use?’
Christie, after answering her, said, ‘Where are your kids tonight?’ Rhonda, waving airily at the
night, said, ‘Who knows? That’s the stage they’re at!’ Rounding up a few stray peas, she said, ‘What
about yours?’
Christie explained, ‘They said they wanted to be home on their own. It’s their idea of freedom,
I suppose. The people next door have promised to look in a couple of times, and they’ve got our
phone number. I suppose I ought to ring them ...’
‘Yes, I think we should,’ said her husband. ‘Just to keep in touch.’ Rhonda pushed him out
of the conversation by assuring him that his kids had enough sense to ring if they needed to, but,
departing for the kitchen and the peach pie, she mentioned to Christie: ‘You know where the phone
is if you want it!’
At that moment the phone rang. Rhonda called from the kitchen ‘I’ll bet it’s Tania! Tell her
you’re just about to have a big slice of peach pie!’ Christie flushed with pleasure, but Julius beckoned Murdy to the phone: ‘Michael,’ he said. ‘He insists on you.’
The boy’s voice came thinly down the phone. Anxious, and bar­gaining for sympathy, he told
his father he’d been trying to read quietly in bed as he’d been told, but the phone hadn’t stopped
ringing. Murdy said he could have given the callers the Mumford’s number, which was on the
kitchen table, but Michael said he didn’t like the sound of the people, so he hadn’t! Instead, he’d
got numbers from each of the people, and he’d told them his dad would ring them as soon as he
got home!
Christie was delighted: ‘He’s got such an independent way of doing things,’ she said. ‘Tell him
we’re coming home as soon as we’ve had sweets, and he’s been very very good …’
Rhonda noted the suffusion of love in her voice; also that none of it flowed through the calm,
pedantic instructions Murdy gave his son; she caught also, a different voice piping though the
phone as Murdy went to hang up: it was Tania, wanting to speak to Mum!
As the Mumfords waved goodnight to the Millers, Rhonda said to her husband: ‘Did the
kids let us know where they were going?’ Julius nodded. ‘Concert at the Blackwood, party at
Nunawading. In that order. Both.’ She told him not to be so snappy, and he put his arm across her
shoulders. They saw Christie’s window wind down, heard her piping ‘Good night!’ and then there
were only tail lights. ‘It’s a bastard of a time,’ Julius announced.
‘You can’t blame them,’ Rhonda said. ‘If the children rang it was because they felt they needed
to. If the phone was ringing all the time it would put pressure on kids of that age.’
‘Not talking about that,’ said Julius.
‘Well, what are you talking about?’ she said. He took out a cigarette packet and began tapping
the box with the cigarette. Lifting his head to the stars, he appeared to be about to speak, but low-
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ered his gaze to a helichrysum beside the drive. He smiled. ‘That’s done fabulously,’ he said. ‘I have
been standing in the cold,’ said his wife, ‘waiting for you to tell me what’s wrong with the world,
and you point to the bush which I watered this afternoon because you didn’t.’
‘Growing up,’ he said, after finally striking a match. ‘Cars, drugs, grog. Buggerall support. It
all happens in ignorance. They don’t want to know what happened to us, let alone their grandparents.’
‘You’ll burn your fingers,’ she said. He lit the cigarette, and extinguished the match by squeezing the flame. ‘Don’t do that,’ she snapped. He put the hand that held the match around her. In
pulling away from it, she snuggled close. ‘I’ll ring the Millers in the morning,’ she said. ‘Just to
make sure.’
Only the cats were stirring when the Millers got home. Tania’s door was shut. Christie and
Murdy were bending over the note on the kitchen table when they heard a giggle, then a shrilly
excited boo! as Tania and Michael leapt from their doorways. ‘Ooh you monsters,’ said Christie,
hugging them, ‘get into bed at once, you’ll catch cold.’ ‘Mum mum mum mum daddy daddy daddy
mum mum mum daddy mum mum,’ chanted the children: ‘What’s all this about a lot of phone
calls?’ Murdy called, trying to bring back order. Michael, helping himself to a biscuit and a glass
of milk, indicated what he’d written: beneath the Mumfords’ number, was a series of numbers
written in a child’s hand:
818 5319
489 6471
347 2890
663 7126
and lastly, in Tania’s loopy scrawl, 242 2468. ‘That one mightn’t be right,’ she said. ‘I think that’s
what she said. Michael said he wouldn’t answer the phone any more,’ she said, ‘he made me answer
that one.’
‘Why, you little imp,’ said her brother, ‘Just because I beat you to the phone each time, and the
last time I let you win ...’
Twenty minutes later, Murdy took the results of his ring around to Christie, lying in the dark.
Harry Hearn had invited them to dinner, two Saturdays hence: ‘That’s the 663 number,’ he said.
‘He’s got himself a city high rise apartment.’ Bruce Beck was at Shawn’s, there was a party there
the following night. The Hawthorn number was an old lady who had some letters of von Mueller,
originally written to her grandfather who had been one of Mueller’s private army of seed planters
and specimen collectors; and Anne had rung to say that one paragraph of her piece in Meanjin had
been altered and what she’d really meant to say ...
‘That was nice of her,’ said Christie: ‘what was the other number?’
‘I’m sure Tania’s got it wrong,’ he said. ‘There are no 242 numbers in the phone book.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘I looked through all the primary schools and State Bank branch numbers.’
‘Clever man,’ she said, but it checked him too. He hung up his trousers carefully and took dirty
things to the laundry before he got into bed.
‘So it’s really the same old situation, isn’t it,’ she said, not bothering to turn.
‘What do you mean?’ he said tensely.
‘You know what I mean,’ she said. ‘Let’s go to sleep.’
He felt nettled and self righteous. She was amazed that he was unable to see that, unchecked,
he would try to make the next five years the same as the last, and that he was irritated at any suggestion, however slight, that their lives needed to change direction. He shuffled himself into his
sleeping position. ‘Might have been 240,’ he muttered. ‘That’d be a Toorak number, or Prahran,
somewhere around there. Wonder who it was?’
‘Go ring them up,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’ll leave it to the morning,’ he said, falsely magnanimous.
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Tense with antagonism, they listened to the night in their characteristic ways. Murdy caught his
own breathing, his wife’s, and the snuffles of the children settling into sleep. Having blundered to
the toilet and back again, he felt pursued by the cistern refilling. He heard moths at the back door,
and next door’s dog snuffling for the cats’ leftovers. These sounds were the flotsam and jetsam on
Christie’s consciousness. She heard, principally, the silence in the lounge, in which the piano stood,
dark as a catafalque. She heard the garden moving, the grevillea and the guelder rose brushing
against each other; she caught the eddies in the light southern air, a window slammed down and
a garage door banged in advance of a gently pattering rain. Her husband made a move to go and
shut some windows, but she restrained him: she loved these moments. Sensing her happiness, he
relaxed, and fell asleep: she pulled the blanket up to her chin and stretched out as if these were
the last sounds she’d hear; sleep crept over her about the time the rain stopped and the dripping
garden married the silent house.
The last number turned out to be Barbara’s; she’d bought a hotel, and was asking everyone to the
opening night. ‘A hotel!’ Murdy told his wife when she got home from work. ‘A hotel! Can you
imagine anything less likely? It’s the antithesis of everything she’s ever done. In South Melbourne,
home of tax consultants, advertising agents, and the like! A pub, if you please!’
‘Parties,’ said Christie. ‘Oh god, the old gang re-forms.’
They went to the parties, putting in a token appearance at Shawn’s; Bruce invited them to Bright,
and they said they’d come as soon as Janis named the weekend. Barbara presided watchfully over her
pub, with Lawrence Hearn as head barman and a team of dour old drinkers who seemed to accept
the influx of slightly weathered trendies. Harry Hearn was particularly affectionate with Barbara
on the opening night: helped in the kitchen, carried trays, introduced the South Melbourne-ites to
the influx, took orders from his brother, seemed to want his son to be proud of his mother — who
even wore a dress of gentian blue, stockings, and a bra. Austere calm controlled her conversation
with the drinkers. She drank nothing but a cup of herbal tea, and allowed the musicians an hour
but paid them for three: ‘The arrangement will be,’ she said, ‘that if people start dancing, you can
go for as long as you like. But if they don’t, just play two brackets. I’ll still pay you.’ When people
asked her about the adjustment, she said, ‘I went away to centre myself. Now I’m trying myself
out.’ When Christie asked her how long she expected to stay in the hotel, she said, ‘I hate beer. I
hate these glasses. I hate these bloody silly cardboard coasters. I hate these vinyl chairs. I hate the
stinking shithouse out the back, I hate the stuffy rooms upstairs. And I’m going to change them.
But if I catch myself rushing anything, I’ll go away again.’
‘Where to?’ Christie wanted to know.
‘I’ll get a hut in the mountains, or I’ll get myself dumped on an island, and I’ll really work it
through!’
‘Do you still want to convert us?’ Christie asked.
‘I’m going to change this place,’ said Barb, ‘until I like it, and I’m going to do it without losing
customers. That’s the test I’ve given myself, see?’
‘You’ve got Lawrence,’ said Christie. ‘He’ll know what people are thinking.’
Barb nodded. ‘I trust him,’ she said, ‘more than I’ve ever trusted anyone. Poor helpless bastard.’
Christie laughed and Barb managed a sly grin.
‘You’ve become a cause, for Lawrence,’ said Christie.
‘He’s become a means for me.’
When the Millers arrived at Bright, Bruce and Janis had to hear all about Barbara’s hotel. After
opening night at The Star, they wanted to know about Harry.
Christie and her husband exchanged glances. ‘Come on,’ said Janis, ‘don’t hold back, tell us
all about it.’
‘He’s up high again ...’ said Christie.
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‘ ... but only his apartment,’ said her husband.
‘We’ve almost lost touch,’ said Bruce.
‘There’s a lot of people saying that,’ Murdy said. He felt Janis’s eyes each time he spoke.
‘He’s started collecting gongs and native instruments,’ said Christie.
‘ ... and he’s into E.S.P. and thought transference,’ Murdy added. ‘And anthropology of native
tribes.’
‘Harry’s into voodoo?’ said Bruce Beck.
‘Yes he is,’ said Murdy, ‘he actually wanted to talk about that. As usual, he knows an awful lot
about it. He always could master anything quickly.’
‘Is it a scientific interest?’ Janis wanted to know. ‘Or do you think he believes in it in some way?’
The answer mattered to her sense of self.
‘It’s his response to Emily,’ said Christie, venturing to bring out the name.
‘Emily?’ said Bruce. ‘That’s a new one, what’s she like?’
This time when the Millers looked to each other, the Becks sensed that they were in agreement.
Murdy said ‘Aaaah ...’ and picked up a spoon.
‘Pedantic,’ said Christie. ‘Tight.’
‘The tension’s terrific,’ Murdy explained. Janis’s eyes demanded more.
‘The place is crammed,’ said Murdy. ‘He’s had beautiful new bookshelves made. He’s sold off
a lot of his old books. And the place is stuffed with gongs, and samisens and God knows what else.
Mostly percussion things, or sort of vibrant, resonant things. All very odd. He must have bought a
collection from somewhere, I don’t see how he could have got it all together so quickly.’
‘Are they really good things?’ Bruce asked of Christie, while Janis said to Murdy: ‘What about
the computer terminal he had in the other flat, does he still have that?’
The Millers reassured them on both points; Harry’s fastidious concern for quality and, as far
as could be seen, his grasp on work were unimpaired. ‘So where does Emily fit in?’ Bruce asked;
Janis waited silently for an answer.
‘She doesn’t ...’ Christie began.
‘... but by God she does,’ Murdy finished. The Becks laughed. A cry from the baby momentarily stopped the conversation. When no further sound came, Christie said ‘Do you want to pick
her up?’ and Bruce: ‘What’s Emily’s field?’Janis preferred to leave the child in her cot, and Murdy
explained that Emily was a lens maker, not for common or garden spectacles but for scientific
research, physics departments and all that stuff. ‘That’d be incredibly exacting work,’ Bruce said.
‘Is that what she’s like at home?’ When Christie nodded vigorously, they laughed, briefly unified
by Harry’s representational status. Harry not master of his house was something new and richly
comic, but disappointing. When Bruce, eyes alight, pressed Christie for more information, Janis
flashed: ‘Bloody gossip! You’re always complaining about the gossips in this town, Bruce, and now
all you want to do is gossip about our friends in Melbourne!’
The tension reappeared at breakfast next morning when they were planning the day. Bruce
wanted to picnic at his new property, bought from the Redesdales and already changing shape:
Janis, believing that the purchase was an escape mechanism and therefore anti-her, said she’d stay
home with Marina.
Bruce said she was silly, they had guests ...
Murdy, wanting to walk in the mountains with Janis, said, hypocritically, that they didn’t have
to go anywhere special.
Christie asked if there weren’t any good walks from the new property Bruce had bought, and
he, sustained by her interest, said there were plenty.
The kids wanted a bonfire; the season of no burning was over, they could get logs and build a
huge coffla-gration, as Tania called it.
The release of so much energy frightened Janis. She said she didn’t want it. Bruce, wanting his
wife to be a gracious hostess when he required it, asked her what she had in mind for an outing.
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Janis, catching the menace in his tone, said she’d stay home. With Marina. It would be good to
establish her sleeping pattern before they started rushing about the countryside.
Murdy said he could stay with her, and perhaps they would come out in the afternoon, when
Bruce and Christie had some fires in this house full of fireplaces; the kids would love to go to sleep
with a living blaze in their own very room.
Christie agreed, despite all the risks involved with an amorous, rancorous Bruce, and Murdy’s
inclinations plainly revealed.
Packing began amid more bickering. Tania and Michael, exploring the house, came on Bruce
and Janis whispering hotly in the lounge: Tania caught a snarl from Bruce ‘… so bloody perverse,
you always have to do the opposite ...’ and when she got to the garage she found her parents having
words across the Renault. ‘Huh! Marvellous holiday!’ said the Millers’ daughter, to be told coldly
to pack carefully because they’d be going to Melbourne from the other house and she wasn’t to
leave anything behind.
Bruce was impressive, driving through the district; knew where the roads had run, and where
they’d run in future. Gave the names of miners’ taverns to tumbledown chimneys, or shanties in
riotous gardens. Identified the rich people living in humble houses, and the big homes steeped in
debt. Pointed out the changes in the soil, and hence the crops; stopped so the kids could see blue
wrens in a clump of boxthorn. Christie, feeling for the source of aggravation between him and
his wife, steered the conversation to his neighbors at the Redesdale place. ‘There aren’t any,’ said
Bruce, ‘that’s the beauty of it. It’s the last property in that valley. There’s a track over the range,
You don’t have to go past anybody at all if you don’t want to!’
On this occasion, however, he chose the winding road up the valley, and waved to various
houses, and men working in the fields; Christie felt he wanted to be seen with a stranger and a
carload of kids; he was similar to Murdy in his obsession with presenting himself. But was this the
cause of Janis’s imbalance, or an aggravation?
When the Saab disappeared, Murdy went to the lounge and read the paper, wanting to be out
of the way until Janis felt calm enough to approach. At one stage she came to the door and said,
‘Put on a record if you want to, I’ve got a few things to do.’
Standing back from the window, he observed her take Marina to a place of dappled light. She
spread a waterproof rug and gave the child a rusk, which she threw away. Janis changed her nappy,
flinging the wet one by the hedge, then led the child, who stood easily, to take a few steps, holding
her mother’s finger. Murdy smiled; then, feeling guilty about observing while unobserved, went to
the record stack and chose the Vier Letzte Lieder of Richard Strauss. ‘Der garten trauert ...’ sang
Gundula Janowitz; quickened in some inexplicable way, he went back to the window.
... Kuhl sinkt in die Blumen der Regen.*
Der Sommer schauert
Still seinem Ende entgegen.
Golden tropft Blatt um Blatt
Nieder von hohen Akazienbaum ...’
The child took a couple of steps unsupported, then tumbled. Murdy felt pierced by the music;
its embodiment of growth and ageing quickened his desire to rush out and embrace Janis, and
Marina, who had had enough of her mother’s efforts and was scampering back on all fours to the
rug and the rusk she’d thrown away. Introduced by strings and horns, the soprano sang:
Sommer lachelt erstaunt und matt
In den sterbenden Gartentraum.
Lange noch bei den Rosen bleibt er stehn,
Sehnt sich nach Ruh.
Langsam ...
He put his head back, stretching his throat in ecstasy as the golden flood sank into silence ...
... tut er die mudgewordenen Augen zu.
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As she looked up, Murdy flung open the window. ‘That’s lovely,’ said Janis, ‘what is it?’ But
Murdy came out to sit beside her as he rattled off the lines. ‘What’s it mean?’ she said; he gave a
rough translation. ‘Did you learn that,’ she asked, ‘when you were researching your book?’
‘No,’ he said, ‘it’s a song I’ve always liked and Christie doesn’t.’
‘I’ll make a cup of tea,’ she said. ‘Would you mind Marina?’
Murdy was as taken aback as the child by her sudden disappearance. Janis, staring apprehensively at the front yard, felt he’d rushed too quickly into her space. She had always been attracted
to him but there had been something overwhelming in his sudden sally. She refrained from doing
anything for a few minutes; when Murdy eventually came in, carrying Marina, he was surprised to
find her filling the jug. ‘It boils quickly,’ she said, teasing him.
‘Will they have reached the property?’ he said, keeping back.
She nodded. ‘If Bruce doesn’t stop half a dozen times.’
He said, ‘I’d be like that. Calling on everybody.’
She said, ‘You are alike in many ways.’ He wondered if that was an advantage, or the reverse.
Marina cried. ‘Just put her down,’ said Janis. ‘She gets cranky if she can’t move about.’ The
child, put on the floor, gripped the cat, which accepted her clutches patiently. Murdy chuckled.
‘It’d scratch me if I did that,’ he said.
She put her arms around him. ‘Thanks for coming up,’ she said. ‘It’s been pretty tense. Bruce
and I are really bad at the moment.’ He asked about it. She said, avoiding the question, ‘It’ll do
him the world of good to take Christie and the kids out without me. He has to have approval. He
needs it as much as food. All the time. If you took his job away from him I think he’d kill himself.
That property isn’t anything to do with me. It’s a big ego trip!’ A tremor ran through her. ‘You
don’t have to say anything,’ she said. ‘Just let me rave. It’s really nice to have someone I can be a
bit rough with instead of worrying about their precious bloody ego all the time!’
Murdy grinned. ‘You always did like to push me around.’ Squeezing him from behind, she
shook him as hard as she could. ‘Christ!’ he said, ‘I wouldn’t like to meet you in a wrestling ring!’
‘I might bite your ear off!’ she said, ‘You’ve got nice fat lobes.’ She nipped him playfully before
he managed to break free. ‘Careful,’ he said, ‘the neighbors’ll wonder what all the thumping’s
about!’
She glanced quickly at the window. ‘Bugger them,’ she said. ‘Bugger their petty small town
minds.’ She pulled the curtains across, then dragged the blind down. ‘Let them see what they can
make of that,’ she said. ‘It’ll give them something to go on with.’ Murdy said pedantically, ‘Even
the act of shutting them out admits they’re there.’ But she swept this aside, and asked him to tell
her more of Harry, and Emily, and the new flat.
‘He’s truly let a woman inside his life for the first time since I’ve known him,’ said Christie, ‘and
he’s scared.’ Bruce was fascinated.
‘He’s had them, he’s ruled them, he’s used them,’ said Christie, ‘but he hasn’t admitted one
to any sort of intimacy. Or partnership. And now he’s doing it. All this stuff he’s got, and all these
new interests … he’s giving himself as many outs as he can ...’ ‘What’s she actually like,’ said Bruce.
‘Physically?’ ‘She’s dumpy,’ said Christie. ‘Small and solid. She sits in a big chair with her feet
tucked under like an unexploded bomb.’ Bruce guffawed. Christie, embarrassed by her bitchiness,
flushed: ‘Keep talking,’ said Bruce, ‘we’ll get some wood for a fire. It makes the house feel lived
in.’
The kids saw a koala. Following the slope of the land, they dashed towards the river where Jenny
Beck said she’d show Michael and Tania lots of secret places. They had just picked themselves some
winter-flowering wattle when they spotted the dumpy, furry little animal approaching a manna
gum with its awkward crawl. Tania rushed up, inviting the koala to eat her flowers, but it scrambled
hastily to a fork and stared sideways, clinging hard. Michael wanted to poke it with a stick, but the
girls said it was cruel. He laughed gleefully, but was as surprised as his sister when it uttered its ugly
205
grunt. ‘That’s its call,’ said country-bred Jenny. ‘Funny sort of call,’ said Tania, ‘imagine if humans
talked like that.’ ‘What do you think you sound like,’ said her brother. ‘Let’s find some more!’
They ran through the river scrub, staring skywards, and peering into wombat burrows wherever Jenny showed them the huge shallow holes. They threw stones down the wombat holes, and
into the river, hoping to flush out more life; when they heard the barking of a dog, Jenny told them
it was a dingo, and Michael and Tania, having no idea of its powers, asked if they should hide.
Jenny led them to a pile of rocks, telling them that her mother was mad, and always wanted to
stand on piles of rocks to send mental messages out to whoever she wanted to talk to. ‘We’ve got
a telephone,’ said Tania.
Her brother had scarcely time to ridicule this remark before he found scratch marks in the soil.
‘A snake!’ he cried, and armed himself with stones, but Jenny was sure, and Tania, a little fearful
at the mention of snakes, agreed with her, that he’d made the mark himself with the stick he was
trailing.
To get out of it, he said they’d build a cubby, but the girls wanted to make a town. ‘This tree’s
the town hall,’ said Tania, picking a thick one, but Jenny said, ‘This is the telephone,’ grabbed a
vine, and commanded ‘Follow me!’
At the junction of a gully with the river, they climbed through some roots. ‘It’s dark,’ said Tania,
injecting fear into the game. ‘Who cares?’ said her brother, ‘we just light a fire.’
‘How?’ the two girls jeered in chorus: ‘How, Michael, how?’
‘Easy,’ he said. ‘I’ve read about it. You rub two sticks together, I’ll show you if you like.’
The three of them knelt above a heap of twigs while he failed to produce the magic. ‘I’ll show
you the wettest place I know,’ Jenny told them, when it was plain that Michael’s firelighting had
failed.
‘Take us,’ said Tania. ‘Get on the other side, Michael,’ said Tania: ‘the one who knows goes in
the middle!’
‘I love the outside of this house,’ said Bruce, ‘but the rooms are too much. Four little boxes along a
hall. Who wants a hall? I’m going to pull out most of the internal walls; if people want privacy, I’ll
get screens and curtains, they’re the original types of walls.’ He gestured grandly. ‘Two fires back
to back over here, two in there. One big space!’ He made the word equate with possibility. Christie,
guarded, and cynical, but attracted by his naive confidence, said, ‘But when the people you bring
here sort themselves out, or split up into pairs, or groups, or whatever, don’t you think they’ll want
some rooms again? Some separation? Isn’t pulling down walls symbolic, anyway?’
Bruce agreed, as usual. ‘It’s necessary,’ he said. ‘It’s a stage we have to go through. They can
be rebuilt if necessary ...’
Christie was amazed at his indifference to the effects of change: ‘But wouldn’t you be doing
some sort of violence to the house?’ she asked.
Bruce, leaning his back on a doorway, said, ‘But in return, we’d be bringing it to life.’
Christie had to concede that point; the timber dwelling, paint faded to a pale shade of rust, was
guarded by darkly ferrous ploughs deep in weeds and capped by chimneys more notable for moss
than smoke; ‘What sort of life?’ she wanted to know.
‘Musicians,’ said Bruce, improvising grandly. ‘There’s a lot of talent around here. But the locals
do lack finesse,’ he said. ‘What would you do? I mean, if you had a group of people educated to be
interested in music, and a few warm fires, and the house opened up ...’ Choosing his words, and
his approach, with equal care, he said: ‘What sort of program would you put on?’
‘You want to go out now?’ said Murdy interrupted by the first cries of Marina awakening. ‘I think
so,’ said Janis. ‘Just put that bottle with the things in the car, and I’ll get her up.’
Christie said that if he was serious — and Bruce assured her he was — then he should be looking
to the works of the Russians, or Debussy’s circle, or, in a later time, Les Six: ‘you must have some-
206
thing essentially domestic,’ she said, playing him along. ‘Something that belongs in a restricted
chambre.’
An affectation in her tone made him realise: ‘Let’s check out the kids,’ he said.
Standing on the verandah, they looked around. It was a moment Bruce cherished, with his
visitors. ‘Like it?’ he said. Like a cigarette ad, Christie thought, but humored him: ‘Which way do
you think they’d go?’ she put to him.
‘Down by the river,’ he said, like a voice from Marlboro Country. ‘What games do you think
they’d be playing?’ she asked him, testing. ‘They’d be chasing rabbits,’ he said. ‘Or koalas, if there’s
any down there. Or making cubby holes in the river bank ... It’s a great spot for kids.’ Beckoning
with his voice, while tossing his head for the delivery, he stated: ‘Let’s join’em!’
But Christie was too shrewd. ‘You go,’ she said. ‘I’ll keep the fires going till you bring them.
No, off you go. I’ll be here when you all get back.’
Disconsolate, Bruce, shoes soaked in the grass, stumbled towards the river, wondering about the
music she’d mentioned, and who, among his acquaintances, would like to hear it. The demands
Christie made were fascinating, but very difficult ...
The kids were beyond bickering. Crossing the river on a log, three metres above the frothing surface, they were intent on survival:
‘Don’t get on this bit till I’m off!’
‘Just grab that knobbly bit, it won’t break.’
‘I do this every day.’
‘Oh yeah!’
‘Yeah.’
‘Bet you’re scared!’
‘My oath I’m scared!’
‘So am I.’
‘Squeeze the log with your legs. You have to squeeze till it hurts. Else you’ll fall in.’
Janis, securely based in Murdy’s calm, was quick and practical when she saw the kids trooping up
from the river. She told Bruce to fill the copper with buckets, connived with Christie in making a
bathplug out of the mustard cork, and encouraged Murdy to start another fire beneath the copper.
‘Bruce,’ she called, imperious as a pioneering wife, ‘rig up something to dry their clothes!’
They were sitting around the lesser of Bruce’s two fires — the clothes drying before the other
— when they heard a Toyota pull up against the verandah. Bruce strode, barefooted, to greet the
visitor. ‘Bert Marshall!’ he said. ‘Surprise, surprise! Come and have a glass of wine, Bert, and tell
us all your troubles!’
Jennifer explained to the visitors: ‘He’s got a mad son that goes wandering in the night. Sometimes
he doesn’t come home at all!’ She rolled her eyes significantly. ‘My mum’d go crazy,’ said Tania.
Michael said he’d take a compass if he went wandering at night …
‘No, he’s mad,’ said Jennifer, ‘he thinks he can be in two places at once!’ The Miller children
shrieked. ‘Two places at once!’ said Michael. ‘Why not four or five? He could be a herd!’
The Becks and Millers responded sluggishly to Bert’s request, but he was, as he put it, a ‘neighbor over the range’. He said he’d only take a small glass, he was too upset to cope with more.
Bruce, who remembered fleeing from the Carlton moviehouse at the height of his involvement
with Barbara, could hardly believe in Bert’s total defeat. ‘The boy’s got away from me,’ was all he
wanted to say, over and over, to the evident embarrassment of Bruce and Janis: ‘Don’t you think
you’re putting a pressure on him, by going out looking for him?’ Janis wanted to know. ‘When
people want to work something out, the last thing they want is to be hunted!’ She said it with such
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vehemence that Bert took it more seriously than masculine advice. Trying to keep it rational, he
told the company, ‘What I’m hoping is that I’ll cut his tracks. I’m working along every ridge and
gully, I’ll cut his tracks eventually for sure!’
But Bruce plunged the knife in. ‘He’s too smart for you Bert,’ he said. ‘He knows when you’re
coming. He’ll keep out of your way. There’s no way he’ll let you cut his tracks if he doesn’t want
you to.’
Bert groaned. ‘Now you’re starting to believe in all this hocus pocus he goes on with,’ he said.
‘Shit, I thought if I come here I might find someone sane to help me!’
Janis began to cackle. ‘What makes you think we’re sane, Bert? You’re always telling people
how mad we are!’
The arrangement was that two adults would stay with the children, and two would search. The children refused to go to sleep, wanting to know why they couldn’t be out searching. Janis explained
to them that not only was there every chance that they would get lost, but there was also Bert
Marshall’s embarrassment. He was asking them to keep his psychological warfare with his son a
secret. The children understood secrets, and sat up on their beds, peering into the night, seeing, or
imagining, lights in the bush, and creating innumerable secrets.
Christie and Bruce were probing some rocks known as Gilligan’s Pile when the moon came out.
Bruce, powerful torch in hand, clambered to the top and flashed the torch hither and yon in the
darkness. Silhouetted on the rocks he looked both primeval, as he intended, and annoyingly irrelevant to Christie’s feelings about the search. Studying Bruce’s antics with a mixture of pity and
amusement, she became aware of a numinous disturbance in the night beside her. Drawing behind
a tree, she waited for the boy to appear. ‘Good evening,’ said a voice behind her: ‘Is someone lost?
You’re all very busy.’
Trying to hide her fear, Christie said, ‘Are you the child we’re looking for? Your father’s out of
his mind with anxiety.’
‘He’s been out of his mind for years,’ said the voice. ‘And,’ he said querulously, ‘don’t call me
a child.’
‘We’d know that by the way you behaved, wouldn’t we?’ said Christie. ‘Come closer, I don’t
know where you are.’
‘Can you see me now?’ said Norman Marshall, and suddenly, it seemed, he was right beside
her. Christie squeaked: Bruce swung the torch down. ‘Oh God, now he’ll claim he found me,’ said
the voice, and then he began to cry.
‘One very disturbed young man,’ was Bruce’s summation, as they sat drinking their coffee, with
the children listening eagerly.
‘Not every night we urbanites experience something like this,’ Murdy said. ‘What an incredible
claim he makes.’
‘Do you believe it?’ Janis wanted to know.
‘I don’t know,’ said Murdy. ‘I wasn’t there when you found him. I suppose ...’
‘He came from a long way away,’ said Christie. ‘I’m sure of that. We didn’t find him, he found
us. He seemed quite amused.’
‘I think he did find us,’ said Bruce. ‘He was never lost. He’s a superb bushman, you know.’
‘I’ll take your word for it,’ said Murdy, ‘but I can’t say I know it. It’s funny to think of the night
being as penetrable as the day.’
‘It terrifies me,’ said Janis, ‘but I know it’s true.’ Bruce put a drop of brandy in their coffees,
and they urged the children to bed.
Bruce began to doze as soon as he fell into bed. Janis wanted to voice her fears, but it was
only when she came in with more wood that he stirred. He told her they’d be too hot, but she said
they could sleep with a sheet on, she didn’t want to be in the dark. He grumbled about taking a
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sleeping bag into the lounge, but she insisted she had to keep that fire going too. Not wanting to
comprehend, he turned his face down and slept.
Janis lay awake, analysing her fears. The Marshall boy challenged the district. He challenged
his father’s reputation as a solid farming citizen. And he disturbed corners of her mind she feared.
How strange that Harry was interested in voodoo and primitive music, which he would study with
his usual clear detachment, while she, still yearning for the response he’d never given her, was
alarmed by a boy with psychic powers. She didn’t know whether she wanted Bruce awake or asleep.
Awake, he would annoy her with his inability to regard the Marshall boy as anything but strange,
whereas she felt exposed to the boy. She believed his powers existed. She was lying in a room lit
only by firelight, half expecting him to materialise. How real were his powers? Was he aware of
her awareness? How timid was he? If pushed by people, and made to feel unwanted, mightn’t he
terrify those who were vulnerable? She decided her best defence was to shut off her own psychic
awareness: that way there was no point of entry. She turned over and tried to sleep. Fitfully, she
did sleep, snuggling against Bruce’s inert warmth. But somewhere in the night she heard male
footsteps, and sat up afraid.
Murdy, coming from a darkened room, expected to grope his way to the toilet, but was surprised to find the hall faintly lit by the glow of two fires. Staring short-sightedly into the second
room, he saw Janis staring anxiously in front of her. Wondering why she couldn’t sleep, he found
his way out the back, and lit the candle. He thought he heard the back door open, and then noises
in the shed. Janis must be getting wood.
She was gone when he came out. Walking slowly, he realised that the valley held a flood of
moonlight. The night seemed strangely mild.
There was a beaten path to a further shed. Letting the night allure him, he went to it. Unable
to see anything when looking from light to dark, he stepped inside, and looked back. Janis had
come out again.
Feeling he would frighten her if he stepped out, he stood in the dark. She, knowing he was
beyond her, felt less afraid. Slowly she walked in the direction of the shed, trance-like but determined. She knew he would appear. He felt she needed him to block her path. When he stepped
out, she moved with no change of pace and put her arms around him.
It was different from their friendly embraces. It accepted him totally, with gratitude and relief.
He felt he had something behind him while she had him between her and the moonlit valley.
Groping for his cheeks and chin, she kissed him; he felt her heavy breathing, she felt his body as
chill and quiet. ‘Goosepimples,’ he said, feeling her arm. ‘Did you build up the fire again?’ She
nodded.
‘Afraid?’ She nodded.
‘No need,’ he said. She put her arms around him and held him harder than he would have
believed possible. ‘Let’s go inside,’ he said. ‘Too cold.’
Shutting doors soundlessly, they went to the front room fire. The kindling she’d thrown on
gave a glaring light. He felt he was a substitute, desperately needed. She felt his protection was a
controllable threat. They kissed. She unbuttoned his top, pushed his pajamas to have him naked.
Excited, he waited for her. She felt him up and down: eyelids, cold male nipples ... They knelt
before the fire. She studied his eyes, as he studied hers. The flickering room became enormous.
Their shadows, moving hugely on the walls, sank to the floor. Their lovemaking invested them
with dimensions of solidity and spirituality, ‘It’s not a loss of energy, is it,’ said Murdy. ‘It’s a gain.’
She breathed quietly, deeply in accord with herself. ‘Two infinities have become smaller,’ she said.
‘You’re so incredibly real.’
‘Two infinities?’ he said. ‘I think you mean three. Or four or five,’ Thinking of Bruce, Christie,
and the boy in the night, she nodded. ‘You take a leap,’ she whispered, ‘and you have to accept its
consequences.’
‘I’m glad we took this one,’ he said, and she kissed him. ‘We can manage it,’ she said. ‘That’s
important.’
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The next time they made love, she almost cried. ‘We don’t belong here,’ she said. ‘True
enough,’ he said, ‘but I’m more worried about the others waking.’
‘We’ll have to face that eventually,’ she said. ‘They have to know. But there’s something lacking
if the place isn’t ours. I feel foreign, even to myself.’ The firelight had settled to a glow: the walls
were closer, darker. He felt puzzled, because she had seemed, before, to be in perfect ease with
herself: she sensed he had nothing else to give until he’d absorbed what she was saying. Only so
much could be shown to a lover at one time.
‘Bed,’ she said. ‘We’ll see each other in the morning.’
‘We’ll have breakfast together,’ said Murdy, joking about their situation. She nipped him on
the ear again, he shuddered. ‘You’re getting cold,’ she said: she watched him dress, then silently
opened the door.
The kids were up first, playing ‘Norman’. It was a jump-out-and-scare game, two going out while
one stayed inside to hide. Marina grew excited at the noise, gurgling and screaming each time the
Norman jumped. ‘You’d love to be in it, wouldn’t you!’ cried Bruce, picking her up: ‘If you’d just
hold her a minute, Janis, I’ll get her some breakfast.’
‘She is in it,’ said Janis. ‘As much as she’ll ever be.’ ‘Now what do you mean by that?’ said her
husband, feeling vaguely got at, but Janis, taking the child, pulled him by the ear, and smiled.
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17
‘People claim,’ said Harry Hearn, ‘that technology has brought us where we are.’ Emily, sitting on
the lounge with her feet tucked under, watched him. ‘It’s usual,’ said Harry, ‘to define where we
are by the technology, not by the mental states we experience. This is the pathetic side of people’s
inability to cope with change.’
She stroked the strings of a Japanese samisen. ‘Don’t,’ he said, ‘it’s not properly tuned.’
He strode to the window, commanding a view of the city. ‘A vast fuck-up,’ he said. ‘People who
want more freedom in their lives really only want to overcome a few taboos they’ve been carting
around for years. None of them want the future.’
‘There aren’t many thorough-going revolutionaries,’ said Emily,
‘Right,’ he said, ‘And revolutions are messy, and usually finish up more reactionary than good
old bourgeois reformism. No, I’m not interested in left-right politics.’
‘Are you interested in more than this?’ she said, indicating the flat.
‘Who said this is the good life?’ he wanted to know.
Emily smiled; there was so much work to do on him.
‘You don’t believe in a good life,’ he said. ‘I admit it’s a cliche. But I’m not basically interested
in privilege, though obviously I have it, I’m as concerned with the dirt in the street as the dirt in
the air up here.’
She assumed an expressionless expression.
‘Don’t get the idea,’ he said, ‘that I’m a William Wilberforce character trying to stir highly
placed consciences. I wouldn’t waste my time. Top management isn’t. They’re as moribund as the
people they brainwash ...’
The phone rang. Emily handed it to Harry, saying curtly: ‘Lawrence.’
While the brothers were speaking, the sun dipped behind a building, leaving the upper air
gleaming, and the canyons dark. Emily fingered the samisen, careful not to sound it. Harry put the
phone down. ‘They’re going to marry,’ he said.
‘Marry?’ said Emily. ‘How long has he worked for her?’
‘Six weeks,’ said the older brother. ‘Fast work.’
‘Ridiculous,’ said Emily.
‘He’s been after her for years.’
‘That means,’ said Emily, ‘she’s been knocking him back for years.’
Harry grinned.
‘You’re proud of your brother, aren’t you?’ she said.
He smiled. ‘Everything I could never be!’
‘Do you think it gives you some power over Barbara?’
‘I have a friend,’ said Harry, and it was all he could do to stop himself doing his characteristic
stride to the glass, ‘who says that no profound connection is ever lost. Barb finished up hating me,
but it was a strong hate. Yes, I’ll still have power over her. The same amount I always had, which
was very bloody little.’
‘Power games,’ she said, rebuking him by the flatness of her voice.
‘Two weeks hence,’ said Harry. ‘At a place in Camberwell. An ex girl friend’s, I think. Lawrence
is really improving!’
‘What do you know about the house?’ said Emily, fiercely neutral.
He smiled again. ‘It was my undoing,’ he said, ‘in more ways than one.’
‘And they’re holding the wedding there?’ she said, testing him.
211
‘I suppose I’m glad of it,’ he said. ‘I have to recognise their independence.’
‘They might ask you to give her away,’ she said tartly.
‘Barbara was always her own woman!’ said Harry, rebuking her by moving to the glass.
‘Did it take long to find out?’
‘She nearly didn’t turn up for our wedding,’ said Harry. ‘Now she wants me at her next one.’
He put his head back and laughed. ‘I love to see the wheels turning,’ he said. ‘I’m still important.
I’m still the enemy. That stage will pass, and they’ll be on their own with each other.’
‘Like us.’
‘Like us.’
‘What will that stage pass into?’ she said.
‘Whatever they make of it,’ he said, smiling at her.
‘What would you like them to make of it?’ she said, testing him again.
With a sharply filed fingernail, Harry tested the tension of a drum. ‘They can work themselves
out,’ he said, ‘I have no plans for them.’
‘A man who has no plans for other people has no plans for himself.’
‘The future,’ he said, ‘is a seed germinating against a thousand obstacles, blocked by everything
that surrounds its birth, but coming, after many battles, into some sort of maturity.’
‘To be replaced, in its turn?’ Emily asked.
‘To be replaced,’ he said.
‘What provision have you against the future?’ she asked.
‘I need no provision,’ he said, ‘I will it into being.’
‘Do you wish your own end?’ she said. The sky had lost its lustre, and the bottom of the canyon
was filling with lights.
‘Impossible,’ he said.
‘Do you want a continuity from yourself?’
‘Impossible.’ he said. ‘I am not at risk.’
She unfolded her legs. Standing, she considered him. ‘When your brother and your wife are
married,’ she said, ‘you may ring me. Not before. I will not mind if you do not ring.’ Stockings
tight, high heels fiercely assaulting the carpet, she moved to the door. He half expected to hear the
key drop on the hallway floor, but there was no sound until the lift, opening and closing, and the
hum as it went down.
Opening a cabinet, he took out Greg’s harbour bridge tape and put it in the player. The babble
of languages whispered quietly from his battery of speakers. His window allowed him to overlook
the city’s gardens, stretching away to the south, and a little of the bay, sullenly frothing without the
light. The tape moved on to the clangorous section that reminded him of girders bolted together.
‘I do not want anyone,’ Harry told himself. ‘The boy was right to die alone.’
How strange was the need to give oneself, thought Harry as the wind whistled on Greg’s tape.
People who made dramas created an obscurity about themselves. They didn’t want to know what
was happening. He opened a Sheraton cabinet and pulled out letters. Barbara when he first met
her, Janis ...
Putting them away, he was thankful for the calm; this, he realised, opposed him to Greg, who
had theorised that since the architectural order of music was something created and imposed by
the mind, then for someone of spiritual eminence … ‘if you were properly tuned in’, Greg had put
it ... natural sound would be its own music. Harry smiled wistfully; naive Greg had replaced the
music of the spheres with an earthbound mysticism which had never achieved full expression. His
death had been like someone coming onto a platform and saying ‘I will not sing, you must hear the
music yourself.’ Impossible, thought Harry: those who can must provide for those who can’t.
Rejecting Greg, Harry pushed the button, adding silence to his calm. Checking his pocket for
the key, he closed the door and went down.
212
Studying the traffic, he saw a taxi whip past with Emily in the back; she appeared not to see him.
He was still considering the relief he felt, and the treacherous tugs of anxiety, when he noticed two
people in testy conversation before the Lufthansa window. The woman leaned on her umbrella
while the man jabbed the glass in explanation of a cutaway 747 hovering above tourist photos of
Bavarian bierfests, King Ludwig’s castle, and a vast concourse of Mercedes cars. ‘Julius!’ cried
Harry. ‘And Rhonda! What brings you into the city?’
‘Concert,’ said Julius. ‘I was just explaining to the member of the family who hates aeroplanes
that the 747 cannot lose air pressure like the DC 10 ...’
‘What you were not explaining ...’ began an angry Rhonda, but Harry put his arms around
them and asked if he might join them. ‘If you like Wagner,’ said Julius. ‘Look at those bloody cars,
lined up like stormtroopers. I can’t hear Wagner without thinking of Hitler. Perhaps we ought to
go home girl, I’m not so keen as I was.’
Rhonda banged the footpath with her umbrella. ‘You really are incredible! I had to rush away
from work so we could be in time for dinner, and now you want to go home!’
‘I don’t want to go home!’ he said. ‘We’ll take our time over dinner instead of rushing, and we’ll
drink a bit more. What do you think, Harry, are you good for a few glasses of red?’
‘As I recall,’ said his wife, ‘this was the first time since the year dot that they’d done the Elgar
and you had to hear it. Wasn’t that the case?’
‘Ah, now you’re softening me,’ said Julius. Grinning, he took Harry by the arm. ‘Looks like we
bolt our dinner,’ he said, ‘so we can hear Otto von Whatsisname. Come on Harry, they’ll have to
squeeze another chair at the table.’
Otto von ______ began Wotan’s Farewell at ‘In festen Schlaf’, with instruments standing in for
Brunnhilde’s voice; the program, which Rhonda was following religiously, gave her words, but
when no one appeared to sing them, Rhonda shut the booklet. ‘I know what your feminists would
say about that,’ she whispered to Harry, while her husband hissed her to silence.
‘Leb wohl, du kuhnes, herrliches Kind!’* sang the rich-voiced German: ‘Du meines Herzens
heiligster Stolz, leb wohl! leb wohl! leb wohl!’ Harry felt his eyes fill with tears. Leaning till his lips
pressed Rhonda’s ear, he murmured, ‘Barb’s getting married again. Brother Lawrence.’ Quickened,
she turned to him, eyes wide, mouth forming a silent ‘No!’ Harry nodded, while Julius wondered
what the devil had got into them, whispering like a pair of lovebirds through the finest thing in The
Ring. Someone coughed in the row behind, forcing them into the music.
They had first to pass through the barrier of Julius’s concentration, which surrounded them
like a field of force. The crusty old engineer’s gaze, a matter of thick lenses and frames that might
have come from an op shop, was fixed on the orchestra while his horny, heavily freckled hands
turned over a miniature score. Occasionally, like a duck looking for food, he dipped into the score,
to straighten up, scowling or beaming. Rhonda felt an intense pride in her husband; his smile at
‘dieser Augen strahlendes Paar’ held her deepest satisfaction, the smile of a man totally content:
Harry, pushed by the eccentric solidity of the man beside him, found himself identifying with the
lonely Wotan. Try as he might, he couldn’t set himself goals such as Barbara was doing in her pub,
and as Lawrence had always done whenever he thought of Barb. People who set themselves minor
goals would always be satisfied eventually, and what then?
Rhonda, keeping one eye on her wristwatch (the casserole would dry if the boys didn’t take it
out by half past nine) sensed that Harry had been through a crisis. She felt sorry for him, with his
silly nickname, his women, his job that made him answerable to nobody, yet answerable to all. He
knew things, but he was locked inside his knowledge; a plushly furnished trap! Rhonda’s neighbors,
her old people, her derelicts, might be open to every influence, might be the most deeply penetrable
group in the suburbs, but ultimately, bundles of nerves as most of them were, they made up their
own minds. Rhonda trusted the suburbs, and suspected Harry Hearn for a heartless sham ...
... until he cried.
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‘Dem glucklicher’n Manne glanze sein Stern ...’* sang Otto von ______, his voice as rich as
Europe, while Harry wondered what the hell Barb and Lawrence would do with each other: two
quantities known to exhaustion for him could hardly regenerate each other?
Harry rang Emily. She didn’t want to see him. ‘You’ve resolved nothing,’ she said.
‘On the contrary, I’ve resolved a great deal.’ ‘I have no proof,’ she said, and hung up.
Part of Bruce welcomed his wife’s involvement with Murdy; he was interested in Gina, a medical
student who was into massage and herbal therapy. She was an ex girlfriend of Shawn’s who had
a converted stable in Parkville where she held parties that brought the police. Bruce nearly didn’t
get in because someone thought he was from the drug squad, but Gina liked the look of him, and
Bruce told her she could grow medicinal plants at his place, he had everything from river flat to
gravelly hillsides on his property. And there was the house to stay in ...
Dancing with her to a few violently amplified tracks of Bob Marley when most of the party
were spaced out on the floor, Bruce told her, ‘You don’t know what it means to me to come to a
place like this. At home, I’m on show every minute, if I start to let my hair down, boy, do I get it!
Councillors, ratepayers, they think they own me!’ Gina said he could drop in whenever he liked,
and she’d be up to see his property, she’d be bringing seeds and cuttings ...
Vomiting in her basin, Una knew she’d have to let Robby tee up a surgeon for that op. She’d have
preferred to postpone it, but if you couldn’t eat ...
Rhonda planted hollyhocks, to the disgust of Julius, who said they should have a Native Australia
policy in their garden, but he watered them every night ...
Mrs Miller prepared the room for Una to use in the nights before she went to hospital. Mr Miller,
having picked her up at the bus terminal, questioned her at length about her financial affairs, and
her will ...
Murdy, visiting his aunt in hospital, found her composed. Opening her eyes occasionally, she told
him, ‘I don’t care what happens. Doctor says he’s optimistic, but in one breath he tells me it’s an
exploratory operation, next he tells me what he’s going to do.’
‘You’ll get better Una,’ said Murdy, wishing it.
She didn’t open her eyes for that. ‘There’s a couple of things in the drawer there, Murdy, you
could give your mother to wash.’ Murdy took them out. ‘Tell her not to hurry,’ said Una. ‘I’m not
going to be interested in anything much, the next few days.’
‘You came down on the bus!’ said Murdy, trying to bolster his aunt, ‘You’re pretty tough in
your old age!’
‘They wanted to put me in an ambulance,’ Una said, smiling faintly. ‘Ridiculous. They can send
me back in one if they think it’s any use.’
‘That’s up to you,’ said Murdy, aware of nurses hovering.
A confident man in suit, cuff links and tie came into the room. Ignoring the visitor, he addressed
his patient: ‘And how are you today, Mrs Moulton?’ Murdy studied the surgeon’s hands; they were
powerful, like a footballer’s, and there was hair on the back of the fingers. Murdy began to excuse
himself, but Una told him not to go. ‘Anything I say now is for everybody,’ she said, ‘Doctor Marks
is determined to save me, but it makes no difference to me,’ Her face was pale, and the top of her
nighty paler than the hospital’s green walls. Murdy felt a twisting inside himself at her remote calm,
but the surgeon, he noticed, was studying Una with detachment. ‘A couple of weeks time,’ said
Murdy, ‘and you’ll be racing around the flower shows the way you always do.’
The surgeon continued to observe his patient, who said, eyes trained on her nephew: ‘When
you’re seventy eight, and you’ve lost your children, and there’s no one depending on you, you
realise it is not necessary to go on. I’ve had a good life. I don’t mind if I don’t wake up.’
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Doctor Marks took her wrist, counting silently, Murdy touched her shoulder, feeling that a kiss
would be final: ‘I’ll be back as soon as you’re allowed visitors,’ he said.
At The Star, the ten o’clock alkies asked Lawrence if he was getting cold feet. His answers were
so unconvincing that they decided he was shitting himself. It was known he wasn’t sleeping at the
pub, except for two weeks when Madame Publican, as they called her, had been away. When she
came back, they teased her about her tan, but she was normally so brown they weren’t sure about
the Gold Coast.
She’d gone to the mountains, pitched a tent and lived by a river. Packing the Kombi, she told
Lawrence she had no idea when she’d be back but if, after a month, she was still staying out, she’d
made arrangements to give him power of attorney over her affairs. ‘Areya going into smoke?’ he’d
asked her, and she’d nodded. ‘Thin air’, was all she’d tell him, with her driest smile.
Mornings and evenings she wrote in her journal. For the first few days, her pattern was to write
questions in the mornings and in the evenings the best answers she could formulate. She began
with:
REASONS TO EXIST?
and on the second day:
WHY BE IN THE ONE PLACE, NOT ANOTHER?
On the fourth day she wrote:
PEOPLE?
And on the fifth:
WHEN DOES LIVING OFF OTHERS BECOME EXPLOITATION?
On the sixth:
LAWRENCE?
Two timbercutters out looking for rabbits found her camp on the seventh. They had guns. They
asked if she had any grog. They didn’t believe her when she said she owned a pub. Amusing herself
at their expense, she told them to get themselves to The Star in South Melbourne and the barman
would give them all the grog they wanted if they told him where they’d met her. ‘He’s my mate,’
she said, enjoying the ambiguities of the word which was so much a part of their tradition. They
said they had one bottle of beer left and if she came to their camp she could share it with them. She
told them she was too busy, and while they talked, she let the fire go out. They asked if she’d had
anything to eat, and she said she was fasting; they took the hint and left. That night she wrote:
AWARENESS OF OTHER PEOPLE - WHICH IS THE GREATEST DANGER, HAVING
IT OR NOT?
Later, she heard a vehicle prowling along the track; in a moment of fear she wanted to hide in
the bush but she made herself stay where she was. The next morning she wrote:
CONSEQUENCES ARE NOT AS BAD AS THE FEAR OF THEM IMAGINATION HAS
TO BE EXPELLED.
On the eighth day she reread her notes. She was disappointed at how little of nature she’d
observed. She ruled off and for two days wrote nothing about herself. The next day, she caught
herself heading the page ‘Day 11’; it was too mechanical, it made her a victim of her own process:
she set herself a new question:
AM I STAYING AWAY JUST TO PROVE I CAN?
She tried crawling to the water after sundown, and had the satisfaction of seeing trout rise. The
flies went away with the dark, but sometimes moths came out. She was aware of wild cats, and tried
to trace the patterns of the red-blue parrots, but they seemed to crop up as unexpectedly as vision.
She felt that without training as a naturalist, she would never begin to know. She wrote:
NOT COMING TO TERMS WITH MYSELF, HOW CAN I KNOW ANYTHING ELSE?
The next morning she wrote:
LIST ALL FAILED PATTERNS MAKE PLANS NOT TO REPEAT
215
That night she packed, but decided to stay another day. The following night, she wrote in her
journal:
‘Today I learned something. The moment a searcher admits defeat is the moment s/he has a
chance of finding something. Relaxed all day. Clouds came and went and I knew what they were
doing. Parrots accepted me, picked around the tent for hours. Meditated three times; each time,
when I came out of it, I tried to imagine the mood around me. It was easy, I wasn’t separate at all.
I came up here with the purpose of finding a purpose. All I can say about that is: purposes are a
form of rejection. And that’s that!’
The next day she drove back to Lawrence, who found her mysteriously agreeable; she suggested, to his amazement, that it would be a good idea to get married: ‘Since you’re so bloody
puzzled,’ she said, ‘you’d better read this.’ She gave him her journal. He found it hard to admit his
reaction, but finally got it out:
‘It reads like Greg Paton’s death note’,’ he told her.
‘Good,’ she said: ‘I might be getting somewhere.’
‘Well, shit, Barb!’ he said — and he was more worried about the smoking fire and the floor
not cleaned — ‘why’re you lettin’ me marry you? Aren’t you gonna be round much longer?’ She
took delight in his confusion. She crept stealthily towards him, watching the fear in his eyes: ‘When
we’re in bed and you’re deep deep asleep,’ she said, pressing against him, ‘I’m gonna put you out
of your misery!’ She grabbed his throat with both hands. Lawrence screamed, and dropped the
cleaning cloth. Letting him go, she laughed silently; her heaving shoulders were like ridicule to
Lawrence, who found his hands shaking as he bent to pick up the rag. ‘You’re off your fuckin’
rocker,’ he said. ‘I don’t want anything to do with you!’
She put a hand down and squeezed his balls. Then she put an arm around him and kissed him.
When he cringed, she pulled the wet rag away from him; he felt her wipe her hands on the back
of his pants.
‘Oh Jesus Barb,’ he complained, ‘you’re making fun of me!’
‘Silly, silly, silly,’ she said. ‘Come on, kiss me. Does the little boy want a box to stand on?’
Lawrence backed off and poured himself a beer. ‘I don’t know what you’re going to do to me,’ he
said. ‘I think you’re trying to get your revenge for Harry. Why should I suffer because you reckon
he hurt you?’
Barb smiled tolerantly at him. ‘Any more little worries you’d like to express?’
Trying to conceal his feelings, he said sullenly, ‘I might drink the profits.’
‘You won’t be drinking at all,’ she said.
‘Are you gonna rule everything?’ he said. ‘No little vices?’
She nodded at the first question, shook her head at the second.
‘Fishin’ trips?’
She indicated, by jabbing her breastbone, that he’d be taking her along.
‘I’m gonna be lousy company, Barb,’ he said. ‘I really don’t know anything.’
Her gaze didn’t waver. ‘Better start learning, eh?’
‘Might be too late Barb.’ She lowered her lids against this excuse.
‘I’m not up toya Barb,’ he said. ‘You’re gonna reckon I’m no good in bed, all that sort of thing.’
He was going to get another beer, but she lifted a finger.
‘Any more worries?’ she said. Dumbly he shook his head.
‘You’ll think of plenty more,’ she said. ‘Go home and sleep on it. I’ll clean up.’
He came ten minutes late the next day. Barb’s look froze him. That night he rang Harry. Two
days later, after they got a card from Harry that said ‘Marvellous. Very happy for you both’ and a
bit in German, Lawrence started to worry. What was he letting himself in for?
Rhonda and Mrs Miller checked through the records. Beth Simpson had been with the
Brotherhood twenty years come Christmas. They decided to tackle her. ‘None of us know how long
we’ll be here,’ they explained, ‘so this year the party’s going to be a special one, in honour of you.
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We don’t want you to have to worry about the organisation. We’re going to get some extra guests
along, people you’ve helped over the years.’ Beth protested; she felt she had many years of service
to give, but the senior ladies were adamant; her service was to receive due recognition. It was the
kiss of death, Beth knew; they’d learned about her double life. Resentment built up; she wanted to
damage someone close to the women who’d felled her. Mrs Mumford’s sons were doing HSC and
second year university: Mrs Miller’s son had written a book, and his wife worked for the orchestra;
it should be possible to strike at one of those points.
Murdy met the Becks at Broadford. They were two hours late, he’d begun to think the clock had
stopped when the Saab pulled in. ‘Sorry about that,’ said Bruce. ‘A meeting. Then Janis was not ...
quite ready when I got home.’ Pecking her on the cheek, he said, ‘Have a good time,’ and hopped
behind the wheel. ‘Hang on a minute,’ she said, ‘my bag!’
Bruce got out, laughing at his haste. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Things have been pretty hectic this week.’
This was to Murdy, who would understand. ‘Where’ll I meet you?’ he suddenly flung at Janis.
‘Murdy’ll take me home,’ she said. ‘I’ll be there when you get there.’ The arrangement looked
solid. Bruce swung to Murdy. ‘I’ve got a nice drop of port in the cupboard under the record player.
Help yourself!’ The freedom of it affected Murdy. ‘Have you got a number in Melbourne, if we
need to contact you?’
‘Janis knows,’ said Bruce, starting the engine. ‘I’ll seeya!’ In a second, the sleek car was probing
the highway entrance, brake lights bright.
Janis, holding Marina, stood pathetically among her baggage. Murdy loaded everything carefully, adjusted the seat belt, then headed north. Driving against her silence, he was glad he’d picked
a distant destination.
‘How’s she sleeping?’ he asked, touching the child fondly.
‘She’s easily broken out of her routines,’ Janis said, defending.
The car’s headlights probed the night. Janis, dreading the ersatz, temporary home where they
would stay, wished the whole undertaking was more real. Bruce had a whole rhetoric of temporary
relationships — ‘getting to know you’; ‘spending time with you’; ‘meaningful relationship’, etc
— which didn’t deceive her. Changing partners regularly was one big indulgence, like a diet of ice
cream. It prevented real integration and guaranteed stress. She felt trapped in the Renault’s cabin,
even though she’d written a week before ‘It will be beautiful to wake beside you with no one we
know for miles.’
She became aware that he drove more slowly than Bruce; it was good to be in an older, weaker
car. His occasional gear changes came to an end as they reached the flatter country; it brought
an equilibrium. Marina fell asleep; Janis squirmed around to secure the child on the back seat.
Murdy slowed down to watch but at a word from Janis he maintained the engine note. Then they
were together, and it seemed that their love had already built up a history of trials — tense scenes
with their partners; the half truths told to friends, anxiety at matching spare weekends. Studying
Murdy’s face, lit by the panel lights, Janis sensed that he was looking forward to the lovemaking and
the warmth that lay ahead, whereas, for her, they were already deeply into their joint experience.
Darkness, by isolating them, helped them share. Their fears bonded them; her irrationality,
his coyness, his awareness of her greater passion for Harry, her acceptance of the put-down — no
profession, no value. He told her how he hoped they would form a bond that linked spiritual and
sexual. The two qualities, she noted, corresponded to the positions allowed for women by men
— above and below. Men paraded their sexuality, or feared where it might lead them; there was an
element of contempt, either for this most important part of themselves, or for their sexual partners,
that had deeply infected Murdy. He kept doing an inferior/superior switch; he was either asking/listening, or telling; even Bruce, she realised, was more mutual in his exchanges. When, after passing
through half a dozen gloomily lit towns, they reached Nathalia, she watched him chatting volubly
to the woman in the motel office, she determined to measure the stages by which he adapted back
to her. Picking up the breakfast form, he became business-like; listening to some last instruction
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he was brisk; closing the office door, he gave an Italianate wave; striding to the car, he was domineering; opening it, he scaled down his movements; settling in beside her, he became respectful;
he made restarting the engine seem a domestic action, and announced the room number — ‘Five’
— as if it was their joint purpose.
‘Let’s go for a drive around the town,’ she said. ‘We hardly know where we are, yet.’ Surprised,
he turned the car around, which involved some awkward backing: he felt it necessary, she saw, to
give the office another wave as they drove out.
He woke when a drunken party banged into No. 6. Their conversation centred on golf and next
day’s picnic races. Murdy turned on his back, finding their talk ridiculous; he became aware that
Janis had woken before him, and was apprehensive. ‘They could be people from home,’ she said.
‘Bright people,’ he said sarcastically. The next door group poked fun at a man called Skeeter,
whom they accused of spending half the night pissing. Laughter surrounded some remark he made,
and then came the sound of splashing in the toilet bowl. ‘Oh my Gawd!’ said Murdy, and Janis
giggled; the party decided that Sweet Noineteen was a better place to kick on, and stumbled down
the gravel, leaving Murdy and Janis holding each other in the dark, intensely aware.
‘Pull that curtain back,’ said Janis. ‘I want to see you.’ Naked, he opened the curtain to reveal
a stretch of lawn and a road bordered by untidy box trees; a serene moonlight fell over the scene.
‘Open the window,’ suggested Janis; he slid the aluminium frame aside, shivering at the cold air. ‘Is
it cold?’ said Janis, getting out; they put arms around each other and stared forward at the night.
‘It makes you feel your skin’s tightening,’ said Murdy. ‘As if you’re being squeezed into yourself.’
She ran her fingers over his chest. ‘Come into me,’ she said.
They sat on the edge of the bed, clutching each other, he rubbing her back to counteract the
air. Looking over her shoulder, he noticed a light moving a long way away; it might have been
spotlight shooters, or a search for something lost. He felt it would seem eerie to Janis; ‘Let’s get
under the blankets,’ he said.
She closed the window, without, he thought, noticing the light, but as their lovemaking deepened, she took a glance into the night. ‘It doesn’t matter who they are,’ she said, ‘they can’t affect
us. I’m very secure with you, Murdy. Murdy Miller.’ His name on her lips seemed both to invoke
him and to release him from himself; his fingers on her neck, hers on his shoulders, seemed not
to belong to one or to the other but to be a mutual function of both. Energy given was energy
returned. Physical action activated itself from a mutual source, made by them but seemingly large
enough to enclose them. When they tired, and lay against each other, drowsy, she pressed his ear
with her lips, uniting the night with the first time they’d made love. This action, like her naming
of him, laid him open; his eyes, she saw, were full of invitation, and hers, he saw, of courage and
acceptance.
In Melbourne, Murdy rang his mother. She was frightened and would have talked endlessly about
the weather, but he asked for news of Una. She told him that the surgeon had sewn a bypass tube
at the entry to the stomach; if it worked, Una could reasonably expect two years. ‘But she’s still
very weak,’ said Mrs Miller. ‘She’s not allowed any visitors yet. One of us will go in each day to
hear how she’s getting on and we’ll stay in touch with you.’ Murdy went back to his garden. The
flame trees he’d planted, though too young to flower, were above his topmost reach. Una’s children, dead now, of cancer and a haemorrhage, had also, perhaps, played beneath the flame trees
at his grandmother’s. The bright, pointed leaves, tiny when they first formed, were bursting from
the trunk in a score of places. He hated urban life for the way people bashed down each other’s
gardens; at his grandmother’s, the pencil palms still thrust like minarets, and the Moreton Bay figs
dropped fruit on sandy paths raked occasionally by the pensioner who had it now. Continuity, that
was the thing, and strangely enough, it was Una, in hospital and with a fair chance of not recovering, who held the thread.
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Una stirred dumbly, sick with anaesthetic. A nurse, stepping away from the flower arrangements,
said brightly ‘Good morning Mrs Moulton. Could get hot later, but we’ll close the windows if it
does!’
How stupid to pretend I’m interested in anything outside myself, thought Una. She chose not
to speak. The nurse, attempting to be cheerful, moved a bowl of carnations to her bedside cabinet,
wheeling it forward so the patient could not fail to observe the flowers. Una’s depression deepened.
What was nursing but the healthy cheering themselves at the expense of the sick?
Una steeled herself, and by dint of great courage, attained that plateau where she was prepared
to hear about her condition. The nurse fussed about filling vases and throwing dead flowers in a
bin printed with scenes of Venice, Queen of the Adriatic. As the morning wore on, Una became
aware that there were others talking beyond the screens. She had no horizon, only a loosely pleated
curtain that receded and advanced with the voices, nagging about their treatment. How ineffably
foolish of them, thought Una. Drowsing, she passed into a dream in which the whole hospital
collapsed except a tower of brickwork on top of which she sat, poised, with a bevy of medical personnel — nurses, cleaners with miles of flex, Doctor Marks, and of course Robby - clinging to her
bed in the hope of being saved. ‘Silly creatures,’ Una mumbled, ‘you might as well jump for all the
good it’s going to do you!’
She woke enough to realise she’d spoken in her dream. It would be better to stay awake than
to dream again. Dreams were a treacherous river, rushing towards the sea; exciting, tremulously
truthful as they were, in their distorted way, there was no guarantee of reaching some shore of
solid consciousness. ‘Doctor Marks!’ she called; her whisper failed to penetrate the curtain. ‘Doctor
Marks!’ she called again, and when he didn’t answer, ‘Nurse!’
When they didn’t come, she turned her attention to the screen; it was billowing slightly from
a breeze intruding from the north. Double doors onto the balcony had been left apart. The ward
was perceptibly hotter. ‘Nurse!’ she whispered. ‘Doctor Marks!’ No one came. She knew at once
that she was not an object of their concern. Nor was she, then, any concern of herself. The wind
was eloquent enough. Her life hung on a bypass tube that wasn’t going to work. It was somewhere
inside her, a useless spare part tricked out by a clever-jack plumber of human flesh. Taking sides
against herself, Una wondered if the surgeon’s ego would be damaged by a failure, or whether he’d
write her down as the statistic she, in part, felt herself to be.
The Miller graves, a hundred years of them, lined the southern fence of the cemetery in
Leehane’s horse paddock. Who cared? It was enough to be afloat in the broad stream, no longer
frightening, which opened its mighty mouth to the sea. Child, woman, wreck; she’d had a good life
and it was amazing to find how much of it was available, in clearest memory of the finest sensation,
at a moment when, supposedly, everything was being lost. Una felt joyful, hoping no one would
come: the north wind billowed the curtain till it touched her bed. In an exciting flurry, the curtain,
a grape juice coloured thing, swung high above her, letting her look out the double door to the
balcony, giving views of Richmond and a hot sky in the north.
Una loved what was happening, there was such relief. The wind had broken her isolation in a
Melbourne hospital; she was linked, now, to the summer days when she’d jammed down windows
against the dust, and set sprinklers by her flowerbeds and rows of veggies. Hot winds had eddied
above her husband’s grave, her son’s, and her daughter’s: her difficult husband, it had been a relief
to see him weaken. The deaths of her children had taken years to accept, but the land had taught
her patience, and now she was joined to it by a warm air flowing southward. Turning to face this
eloquent wind, she saw no reason of any importance at all why she should fill another day with
activity. She could even see her neighbors dividing her things and watering her pot plants for a few
weeks until the house was sold and someone ripped out what she’d done.
She felt a wrench in the heart at the thought of the liquidambar, the lupins, and the cinerareas
being hacked out and burned, or flung onto the compost heap, but there was no energy to save
them now. Certain that the arrogant doctor with the anglicized Jewish name had failed, she relaxed.
Wynn and Bernard were still all right, Murdy was going well despite a few strange friends ... no,
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there was nothing else to do ... she closed her eyes, and wriggled her chin until the sheet no longer
tickled, but provided a steady sensation, like a line ruled under her chin. The grape juice curtains
tossed on their rings, Una listening to their cry as if to a flight of birds making ready to migrate.
There was great peace in sleep, and, though it came quietly as evening, it was broad as the coming
day.
In her pain, Christie took the children to a film. Buster Keaton, heir to a fortune, needed a bride:
droves of bridally-clad women pursued him into church, through streets, and over rocky landscapes, Christie, laughing tidily, recognised the ideology of the pursuit: Keaton, pursued by furies
of available lust, ran to his true love. The children, putting their Eskimo Pie wrappers in a bin at
their mother’s behest, were surprised to find her amusement more qualified than their own. ‘I felt
really sorry for him,’ said Tania, ‘when he had all those women chasing him, and all those rocks
falling on him in that valley!’ She laughed stridently, trying out her mother.
‘It was very funny,’ said Christie, looking around for trams; the Melway was in Murdy’s car.
‘Did you notice he always seemed to know where he was going?’
‘He was running like crazy,’ said Tania, ‘with all those women after him! Jeez, they were
mad!’
Christie debated whether she should impose an adult’s ideology on a child’s understanding.
‘Haven’t you run after boys sometimes?’ she said.
‘What are you talking about mum?’ said her daughter, ten and starting to be defiant.
‘Haven’t you noticed that boys make you chase them?’ said Christie, laughing under a degree
of tension her daughter couldn’t fathom.
‘Chase them!’ said Tania. ‘I can catch any of the boys in my class. They’re real jumbos, I can
catch them any time!’ She lent pride to her mother, who, she felt, was in some way lacking.
‘Mum,’ she said, ‘where’s dad?’
‘He’s gone off with Janis,’ said Christie. ‘He’ll be back on Monday morning.’
‘How do you know,’ Tania asked.
‘He said so,’ Christie told her daughter. ‘Papa always does what he says.’
‘How borin’,’ commented her daughter. ‘Where’ve they gone?’
‘He didn’t tell me,’ said Christie. ‘Somewhere in the bush, probably. Perhaps in the mountains,
papa loves the mountains, and Janis loves them too.’
‘Do you like the mountains, mum?’ said Tania, trying to find out what was wrong. ‘Do you?
Answer me, mum, yes or no?’
‘Of course I do,’ Christie said.
‘Why didn’t dad take you?’ Tania asked. Michael butted in. ‘I wish I could drive a car,’ he said.
‘Why do we have to stand here and wait for a tram. They never come!’ Christie looked; there was
no tram in fight. ‘You’ll just have to be patient,’ she said, ‘because ...’
‘... it’s Saturday afternoon and people are not coming home from work so there aren’t so many
trams ... I’ve heard it before,’ said her impatient son.
‘Why didn’t dad take you? Why didn’t he take all of us?’ Tania insisted. ‘Oh stop talking about
it,’ said Michael, prepared to let the blame rest with his mother; when she allowed a cruising taxi
to pass unhailed his temper worsened. Christie told him he could walk up to the next tram stop,
she and Tania were sick of his grumbling. Tania laughed at him, and he set off, but had just crossed
the road when a tram appeared at the corner; confused, he didn’t know which way to run, and
barely managed to get back. Boarding the tram, he stamped his feet, and ostentatiously sat at the
other end. Tania giggled, ‘He’ll come here when he has to buy his ticket,’ she said, but Michael
produced a few coins for the conductor and looked proudly down the tram before producing a
comic. Amused, half proud of him, and still angry, Christie said ‘Oh I don’t know,’ and pulled her
daughter to her.
‘Mum,’ said Tania. ‘Why didn’t dad take all of us?’
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‘He likes to escape,’ said Christie, looking at her son, ‘He has to believe that someone else or
somewhere else is better.’
‘And is it?’ Tania wanted to know.
‘It works for a while,’ Christie said, ‘and then you know the other person’s faults and you’re
back where you started.’
‘Will dad keep doing it over and over?’
‘Probably,’ said Christie sourly.
‘You don’t like it mum, do you?’
‘It hurts me very much,’ said Christie.
‘Why don’t you say he can’t go, mum?’
‘That would hurt him. He feels he needs to.’
‘Do you think he’s happy mum? Him and Janis?’
‘I hope so,’ she said.
The child paused, thinking, and Christie stared at the passing suburb. Tania studied her mother: ‘How do you work out which one’s going to get hurt?’ she said.
‘It’s not something that takes place openly,’ Christie said. ‘One person withdraws, and the other
person senses they can do what they like.’ At this stage Michael joined them. ‘Well, fancy finding
you here,’ he announced confidently. ‘Only a couple of stops to the station, mum.’
Surprised, Christie realised that he was right. As they walked up the ramp, Tania asked if she
could buy the tickets; Michael said that on Saturdays a lot of stations weren’t manned, and you
could get away without a ticket. This spelt trouble, for Tania, and Christie felt that they ought to
buy a ticket even if there was no one to collect it. ‘Gee you two are scaredy-cats,’ Michael said, but
she noticed that when the train rushed through a tunnel he felt for her hand, letting it go at once,
but reassured.
In the moment before the train burst into light, Christie felt intensely happy. The grotty walls,
tinged with daylight, released her; the noise of the train, hemmed in, relented; the children, presences in the dark, were suddenly there! ‘Darlings!’ she said. ‘What’ll we have for tea? I know, we’ll
each make something for each other. I’ll cook Tania’s, and Tania cooks Michael’s, and Michael
cooks mine!’ The children laughed, though Michael wanted it to go the other way so he got mum’s
cooking, not ‘hers’ as he scornfully put it. After a brief squabble, it was decided that Michael would
make the soup, on condition that he added ingredients to the stock from the tin, and Tania would
make a cake, and Christie would make the omelettes for the main course so long as the children
helped her. ‘How many stations before we get off?’ Christie wanted to know, and Michael, who
had them memorised, told her.
On the walk home from the station, Christie asked them to tell her vhich houses they liked
best. They were soon scampering from one to the next, awarding points; a craggy Yugoslav with
a hose popped from behind a bush when they’d awarded his garden seven out of ten: watching,
he smiled, and waved an expansive hand at his neighbor, who had a riot of flowers the length of
his front verandah. ‘Maybe ten?’ called the Yugoslav, and Christie nodded, and Michael said they
ought to take a photo of the house and send it to a firm that made jigsaw puzzles because it would
be one of those really hard pictures with millions of bits. Tania said they ought to run home and
get their camera, but Christie said it was getting too dark; she shivered, and told Michael to run
ahead and light the gas fire; when she and Tania arrived, he had the curtains drawn and a steaming
cup on her table.
‘Thanks darlings,’ she said, ‘we’re pretty good together, aren’t we!’
On a rain-sodden morning, Bruce cruised down Lygon Street, Gina beside him, looking for a parking spot. Someone edged out, Bruce stopped. The car behind hit the Saab. While Bruce was winding down the window to abuse the driver, someone else whipped into the spot. Discomfited, Bruce
grabbed an umbrella, furled it against the rain, and strode to the offender’s window: ‘Sorry about
that mate,’ said the driver through a slit, and, while Bruce was inspecting the damage, drove off.
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It was only a tail light assembly and a scratch on the mudguard, but Bruce tossed the umbrella
carelessly on the back seat, sprinkling Gina; he’d started to apologise when, announcing itself with
a beep, a Mini-Moke full of parking officers waved him on. ‘Not my day!’ said Bruce. ‘What’re we
going to do?’
She thought they could go to Tiamo’s and see who was there: ‘Great idea!’ said Bruce. ‘It might
calm me down a bit.’ He let her off outside the cafe and went round the block to park.
He finished up two blocks away and trudged back, feeling miserable. Gina had decided that
they were too far apart for a continuing relationship. Their bubble had burst. Ten weeks, he thought
ruefully, staring at a fire-blackened building that had been derelict for years. Ten weeks, this time,
from the certainty that he’d found an ideal partner to the bleak realisation that they’d been using
each other. ‘Bloody trade-offs,’ said Bruce, squeezing between cars parked in the middle of the
street. He half wished Gina wouldn’t be there, and he also wished he could persuade her to buy
the property down the valley, which was for sale, and farm there, growing medicinal plants, some
pot in the bush if she had to, maybe start a vegetarian restaurant ...
When he got to Tiamo’s, she was lingering at the counter, last of a big group moving out. ‘We’re
all going round to Andy’s,’ she said, ‘his group’s got a recording contract, he’s going to let us hear
a few numbers ... would you like to come?’
She left it open, he noticed, and besides he needed to be alone. ‘Ten minutes,’ he said with
the professional confidence he used on rate­payers. ‘When I’ve had my coffee and a few minutes
to myself.’
‘You know where it is, don’t you?’ she said, halfway through the beads. Bruce nodded; he didn’t
care.
It was too early to go home. The only place he could think of was Christie’s. His wife and her
husband were getting on well, she might like a reciprocal arrangement ... anyway, it’d be someone
who knew how he felt.
Looking out her window, Christie saw the Saab; it had a feeling of inevitability. She brushed
her hair, and pulled the bedroom door closed on her way out.
The children thought he might be returning Janis and their father, but he had thought to bring
some scented soap for Tania and a book voucher for Michael, who wanted to go back to Carlton
straight away. ‘I might take you in later,’ said Bruce, in the way of an avuncular promise. ‘When I’ve
had a talk to your mother and a cup of coffee, if there’s one going.’ Christie picked up the electric
jug. ‘I started to have one in Tiamo’s and I couldn’t drink it,’ Bruce told her.
‘Have they gone off?’ she said, keeping track of her city.
‘No, it’s me, I’m afraid,’ he said, opening for sympathy.
She waited.
Stretching his legs under the table, he said ‘I think I’ve come another gutser.’ Wanting his
wounds licked, he saw that she was managing to look dewy, sympathetic, and restraining.
‘Tell me about it,’ she said, patiently neutral.
‘My main trouble,’ he began, ‘is that I don’t think I’m learning.’ She said nothing while he, in
his mind, retraced the path from Barbara, through Prue, Anita and the rest of them, to the latest.
Staring at the sugar bowl, he shook his head. ‘Not a thing. I’m just repeating myself.’
‘It’s hard to avoid,’ she offered.
‘I have an ideal,’ he said, ‘and I know it’s corny.’
She knew what it was going to be.
‘I am so embedded in my relationship with my partner that hassles at work don’t get me
uptight. They’re something I deal with each day, but they don’t overwhelm my home life. I drive
up that valley — Janis doesn’t want to live there, that’s another thing — and I stop every now and
then to look in the bush, perhaps have a walk, and I’m restored before I even get home ...’
She was smiling.
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‘I know, I know,’ he said, ‘it’s impossible. It can only work if the other person is completely
stable and doesn’t change except in relation to me. Don’t worry, Janis and I have had this one out
many times.’ He watched her make the coffee.
‘It tastes beautiful,’ he said. ‘Why do I pay money in Carlton for stuff that’s not half as good?’
‘The people you know all go to Tiamo’s,’ she teased. He dropped his head.
She waited.
‘I’m getting bored with Carlton,’ he said. ‘It’s a pretty dead scene for me, now.’
‘You could create a scene of your own at home. With Janis.’
He caught the hint. ‘What do you feel about that?’ he said. ‘Does it hurt you?’
She didn’t like head-on tactics. ‘Very much,’ she said coolly.
‘How long do you think it’ll last?’
‘Till your wife ...’
He winced.
‘... grows out of it. Murdy will hang on hard whatever happens. I suppose he has his ideals
too.’
Bruce strained to take in all the implications. ‘You’re pretty calm about it,’ he said.
‘You made your situation,’ she said. ‘I was not very active in forming mine.’ He found her eyes
disturbing. ‘You’re too honest for your own comfort,’ he said. She looked beyond his shoulder. He
felt anything he said would be a cliche. He also knew she had shut him out, and that it was what he
deserved. ‘Okay,’ he said, and she felt the pressure go off: ‘Let’s take the kids to a film tonight!’
Tania had been listening. From the bedroom she called out ‘Oooh yes!’ and, running in, she
flung her arms round Christie’s neck. ‘Can we mummy, can we?’
Rubbing her cheeks with her daughter, Christie said they couldn’t, because of the previous day,
but, feeling Bruce’s disappointment, she said they’d all go out to dinner — and she, she insisted,
would pay. ‘Somewhere expensive,’ she said. ‘It’s ages since I went out without caring what it
cost!’
Bruce got a cancellation at The Latin, Christie warning the children that they would have to
be very good; she shared a tournedos with Bruce while the children had pasta: to her disgust they
clamored for chips, she told Michael to ask for pommes frites so the waiter’d think he was French,
but the boy was embarrassed. Bruce wanted to know all about Christie’s trip with the orchestra,
and she’d got as far as New York when she noticed Elsa de Kruyper, the violinist’s wife, sitting with
a mild, pale man wearing rimless spectacles. Christie diverted to tell Bruce about the de Kruypers
— Bruce recognising a little of himself in the Dutchman’s pursuit of Christie — and told him
which table to look at ... after waiting a minute or Elsa might know they were talking about her.
Elsa, though, came over, and beckoned her lover; she wanted to show Christie how much better off she was. Introducing Bruce, Christie explained that his wife and her husband were away
together, and she asked them home for coffee. Leonard The Lover — this was Bruce’s joke as he
hurtled the Saab down Saint Kilda Road — so obviously felt he was being legitimised by the invitation that he took Christie’s hand and inclined his head. ‘You are so delightfully old fashioned!’ she
said; and, smiling at Elsa, ‘I’ll bet it’s a change!’
Christie remembered on the way home that they hadn’t any nice cake for supper; she made
Bruce divert to the Jewish area where the children were all eyes and she and Bruce searched for
something not impossibly rich. Coming out of the Acland with some Stollen, she caught a familiar
voice in a throng of people. ‘Anne!’ she cried in high excitement: ‘Anne! Anne!’ She so rarely raised
her voice that Bruce was reminded of the day Greg Paton died. She sounded strangely liberated
and equally inviolable. You could touch half of her and the rest would escape. He’d fallen back from
that point, though, and felt a little embarrassed when Anne detached herself from her friends and
studied them: smiling wickedly, Anne said, ‘Well! What are you two doing out together?’
‘Not what you might expect,’ Christie said. ‘Bring your friends home to our place, we could
have a party.’ Again Bruce felt that untouchable purity; she was like a glass that was transparent till
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you tried to look through it. Anne said, ‘I’ll ask them, they’re pretty dog-tired though, we’ve been
running this workshop on attitudinal change ...’
Bruce showed interest.
‘... and the forces working against it, which are pretty considerable!’ Her voice became gutsy,
savage. Then, the organiser, she lifted her voice to the group: ‘Hey, listen everybody, we’ve been
invited back to Christie’s, who’s coming? Come on Robert, you’re not that fagged ... Donna, don’t
tell me you’re exhausted ...’
Drivers got the address, someone was sent to get grog from a pub that wasn’t fussy; driving
even faster, because Christie didn’t want Elsa and Leonard The Lover to arrive at an empty house,
Bruce said, ‘You made that happen pretty swiftly! We could use you up home!’
‘We’re all a little away from ourselves,’ said Christie; ‘that’s why it’s happening.’
The children were allowed up till midnight, when Anne’s friends were flagging anyway; Christie
apologised for not having any dance music later than Bach, but they were mainly interested in
rehashing the day’s arguments in less cogent form as wine took hold; Christie began to feel a little
bored. She rummaged until she found Danseuses de Delphes, then seated herself at the piano. ‘It’s
quite beyond me but I love it,’ she said, trying to muster some weight of tone for the opening lent
e grave; Bruce, sitting in the deepest chair, imagined the marble columns of a temple by the sea;
the ten chords that followed, stepping daintily down the keyboard, put him in mind of diaphanous
maidens enjoying the privileged life of an heroic age. Strength and exquisite delicacy balanced each
other in the music. Bruce longed for the dainty chords to come again, but Debussy, having stated
them twice, referred to them only by lingering suggestion; it was as if they had embodied themselves in the timeless columns, the sea-worn steps, the wildflowers rooted in the cracks. Bruce felt
a rush of inexplicable excitement as the last growling note — Christie’s tone was not very steady
— died away; it was an ideal, and so much better than the one he’d expressed to her earlier that day.
Rather to the surprise of Anne’s political friends, he tried to express the vision he’d seen: Christie,
closing the music, commented: ‘He does want to evoke things in us, I’m sure, but you see he seems
to have made up the names for his pieces after he’d written them and it’s doubtful whether he
ever had any pictorial associations in mind at all.’ The mood was so final that everyone but Anne
responded when Christie announced: ‘I think it’s time we all went home. To bed.’
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18
Anne unloaded her passenger on someone else, and waited while Christie said goodnight to Bruce.
They got to each other’s weakness straight away, Christie asking Anne to check the children and
Anne telling her that Janis was crazy.
Anne argued that their positions were inevitable and Christie that everyone was ultimately
responsible for their own development. ‘Bullshit, Christie!’ Anne shouted, confronted by the opposite she cherished. ‘We aren’t responsible for the structures within which we have to operate.’
‘The Nazis said that,’ said Christie, fiddling with her coffee cup.
‘Don’t drag in such an almighty irrelevancy,’ Anne argued, reaching for her cup, and then putting her hands back on her hips.
‘Where do you buy your clothes?’ Christie asked, putting her down.
‘Does it matter?’ Anne cried.
‘Yes, it matters,’ said Christie. ‘I wish I wasn’t so fat.’
‘You’re not fat,’ Anne thrust at her. ‘God, look at me.’ She pulled at a roll around her belly.
‘Do men think you’re fat?’ Christie asked, teasing and testing.
‘Do you have to take all your readings off men?’ Anne demanded of Christie, whose piano playing had delighted her. ‘Do you really want to be fat or thin because men like you that way? Haven’t
you grown out of that by now?’
Christie, fiddling with a cup, said nothing.
‘It hasn’t got you anywhere, has it?’ Anne said, probing.
‘He can do what he likes,’ said Christie, matron of the household. ‘He’ll come back.’
‘Pathetic, Christie!’ Anne shouted. ‘You’re letting Murdy put you in the position that suits him.
Faithful Penelope to come home to. Shit!’
Having pushed themselves into their ideological positions, they drew breath, pouring coffee
and playing with spoons.
‘My kids love you,’ said Christie, innocent as a knife.
‘Your kids are beautiful,’ said Anne. ‘So what?’
‘You should have some,’ Christie stated, with Biblical breadth.
‘Can’t you see ...’ Anne leaned forward ... ‘that no woman today can separate her children from
the circumstances in which she conceived them? Having a child is a political act, Christie, or don’t
you want to know about it?’
‘No, I don’t want to know about it,’ said Christie. ‘Political acts are manifested outwards,
towards people you and I wouldn’t want to have near us when we were bearing our children ... if
we are bearing any,’ Christie said cruelly. ‘If we bear children, we have to have them for our own
reasons. Bearing children for causes is like the Nazis.’
‘You are so naive, Christie,’ Anne challenged. ‘Don’t you know what’s happening?’
‘I know what’s happening to me,’ Christie said. ‘I can’t find out what’s happening to people
like you because you’re always making speeches about it!’
Stirring their coffee, they opposed each other like north/south, Ying/Yang, or protestant/catholic.
‘When he comes home, Christie,’ said Anne, ‘will you be relieved? Will you be watching the
clock? Waiting for some remark that implies a comparison? Or hating the silly bloody woman he
shouldn’t be chasing anyhow?’
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‘When he comes home,’ said Christie, ‘he will try to edge back in as if he hasn’t been away.
He’ll do the dishes and sweep the verandah. He’ll play with the children. He’ll tell me just a little
of where they’ve been and what they’ve done ... and pretend that nothing’s changed.’
‘And what will you be doing while this goes on?’
‘Working out how much is left, and wondering if he has any idea of what he’s done.’
‘Passive suffering,’ said Anne. ‘Another role imposed on women.’
‘I don’t see that your active suffering puts you in any better position than mine,’ said Christie.
‘On the whole, I’d say worse.’
‘I’m not suffering, Christie,’ said Anne, defying her to say it was a lie.
‘Everyone suffers,’ Christie told her. ‘But some people want to fix blame. I get very angry with
my husband, but I don’t really blame him. He seems to need Janis. The experience is maturing
him.’
They talked till half past three, bolstering their positions, fighting ko keep out each other’s
attack, knowing, even as they gave no ground, that the arguments presented were changing them
irrevocably. When Christie was exhausted, she told Anne she could stay if she wanted to, but Anne
said she’d go home and collapse, and when she woke she’d be tearing Christie’s ideas to shreds.
They laughed at each other, and when they stood by each other at the door, Christie said, ‘Thanks
for bringing your friends, it was a good night.’ Anne asked if she would play the Debussy piece
some other time, she wanted to hear it again; when she’d gone, Christie lay for a long time, not trying to sleep, examining herself. As the first birds busied themselves in the garden, she felt drowsy.
Dawn was a time she loved, she tried to stay awake by playing through Danseuses de Delphes in her
mind, but got lost, and knew she couldn’t hold off sleep any longer. Anne found that the people at
her place had brought the remnants of their parties home with them; the kitchen was full of beer
bottles, smoke, cigarettes grubbed on the stew plates, and people trying to keep themselves awake
with coffee. Having no taste for moronic conversation, and knowing that there would be a row
about the cleaning up, she fell into bed for the rattle of the first train.
Murdy and Janis were woken by a breakfast tray pushed into their room. Pulling teabags out of
tiny aluminium pots, spreading toast unwrapped from paper serviettes, they were surrounded by
the noises of a rural day — trucks on the highway, boots opening and slamming, gravel crunching
as cars drew away. ‘I wish we could stay inside all day,’ Janis said, ‘rather than that!’ She meant the
brilliant light smearing service stations, the smell of sheep, the trite exchanges that would accompany the purchase of a map at the newsagents. ‘They sell us time, when you come to think of it,’
Murdy said. ‘I don’t know if they’ve got much more to sell.’
Under the shower, she asked him what he meant. He tried to express a feeling of people
discreetly not observing their guests while determined not to let them get away without paying.
‘They try to be neutral,’ he said, ‘and you know they’re watching you closely.’ He said it because he
knew she felt it more strongly than he did. Stepping out of the shower, she left soap floating in the
plughole, dried herself briskly, and dressed in the parlance of the times — denim trousers, jacket,
shoes. ‘What’ll we do today?’ she said, studying him more closely than the map.
The highway was still near, the sound of cars getting themselves going after a night’s cooling
down; the cash register, inaudible, could be sensed.
‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that we’d travel through here ...’ He traced, a line with his finger ‘... and
we’d have lunch near ______ , and we’d drive up a track I know that isn’t on this map, and brings
you onto this road, and about sundown, we’d be at the top of the ranges ...’
‘That sounds good,’ Janis said.
‘... and, coming down after dark, we’d stay tonight at your place. Is there somewhere I can put
my car?’
She said the garage had a roller door, no one would see his car. ‘Let’s go then,’ he said, ‘and
see what we can see!’
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Walking out, she sensed from the way he checked the room for things that might have been
left behind, that he saw each stage of their togetherness as a step towards some hoped for climax;
it seemed to devalue the moments, occurring incidentally and at random, which mattered most
to her. When he came out, she was on the other side of the road; her handbag, dark glasses and a
flower she’d picked from the motel garden lay on her seat like reminders that it was only temporarily occupied. Murdy touched the flower, understood it, and drove across to let her in. Trucks
rushed past as she climbed in his warm, familiar car, and put her stuff on the back seat. ‘Let’s get
somewhere where we can be alone,’ she said.
Christie had the children, long before she was ready to wake up; she asked them to make her a pot
of tea, which they did with the maximum of noise and water this side of boiling. Anne came out to
find the makers of last night’s shambles snoring in ones and twos, and hardly a window lifted in the
whole enormous house. She determined to give up communal living, and get a house of her own.
Looking for the real estate pages, she discovered that they’d been used to wrap a spew of tea leaves,
coffee grounds and the peels and fat of things that had gone into the stew. ‘About the measure of
this fuckin’ house,’ she announced, dying to have a few of them confront her among the chipped
plates, the bulging, lidless plastic garbage bin, and the fat-stained Che Guevara poster. ‘Don’t any
of you bastards know what a broom is?’ she shouted into the empty, echoing hall where the phone
sat, ‘or do you think it’s fuckin’ beneath ya!’
Shaking, she drank coffee before going to the bedroom, where Eloise and Verity stood sentinel
on the chair. ‘Don’t play conscience with me!’ she snapped. ‘It’s a cheap, undeserving act.’ The
Siamese, sensing that the indignity of a kick was at hand, slunk through her curtains of Belgian
lace.
Anne knew she had only to go to a milk bar to get yesterday’s Age; the humiliation lay in the
feeling that she could neither escape from, nor get control of, the people who had shaped her
homecoming. Their filth, their carelessness, their heedless comings and goings, were all over her
like a rash; they were so busy fighting through the simplest stages of the development of a social
consciousness, let alone their own puny personalities, that they had no idea what a weight they
were around her neck. ‘They couldn’t fuckin’ get themselves together to make the agent have the
hot water service fixed,’ she told herself, angry to the verge of tears. ‘They didn’t know what fuckin’
briquettes were until I told them,’ she said.
Christie fought the children, making Michael go up the street for bread, and Tania picked up the
discarded socks and underpants that lay smelling in corners of her room. Janis told Murdy she felt
very secure with him, but that this was also a worry, because Bruce almost encouraged their relationship: ‘When I’m working through something difficult,’ she said, voice rising, ‘he’s got someone
to share the load. He feels safe when I’m with you.’
‘Make the best of it while we can,’ was Murdy’s attitude, but Janis resented it. She said they
mustn’t exploit Bruce, because that was exactly what was wrong with his attitude to their relationship; he was using it to give himself more leverage to let himself out of the marriage whenever he
wanted to. ‘He’s got this woman he wants to buy a farm in the same valley as his place,’ she said
angrily: ‘it’s absurd, it’s dangerously close to home.’ ‘Is that where he is this weekend?’ said Murdy.
‘With her?’
She nodded. ‘I only hope we don’t find them back home when we get there.’ Murdy raised
his eyebrows. They drove a long time in silence. Murdy pointed to a tree. ‘There’s a grey gum,’ he
said. ‘First foothill timber.’
‘Would you stop when we can get a clear view,’ she said, ‘I want to look back.’
‘We’ll get much better views further on,’ he said, thinking of the ridge where you could pick
out each bony feature of the divide.
‘I don’t want anything grand,’ she said, ‘I just want to look back.’
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Bruce rolled his sleeping bag at Shawn’s. The place was silent. The doors in the long corridor
were closed. He helped himself to the Irish Breakfast, and stared glumly about. Drums, guitars,
graffiti wall. Kids’ paintings pinned to oregon beams. A red light beaming, stereo on all night.
Wearily he went over and switched it off. The cushions in the slumber pit were grubby. He thought
of lighting a fire, but pulled on a sweater Janis had knitted him; the cuffs had to be turned because
she’d got his arms wrong. He couldn’t go home because he had council jobs on Monday. Another
day in Melbourne; he shook his head, trying not to believe his lousy luck. There were people he
could look up but it was too early, and he didn’t want to go to Barb’s pub till he felt less miserable.
There was only one decent place to fill in time. He drove to the gardens, reassured by the sweet
tuning of his Saab, which he wouldn’t entrust to bush mechanics: it might cost a fortune in Prahran
but it was worth it. The breeze was cool but it shifted the clouds and by the time he crossed the
Yarra, cold winter light lay on the city. Leaves glistened and deciduous trees made their filigree
against the sky. He parked by a Moreton Bay fig that had always bemused him, its roots grown into
buttresses with something fleshy about them. The whole thing had a prehistoric air. ‘I feel distinctly
older,’ Bruce said to himself, locking the car.
Joggers were everywhere, pounding the fitness track, and, uninviting as the morning had been,
small groups of people were making their way through the several gates of the garden. Bruce wandered in the first he came to; a high hedge of eugenias forced the path to divide. Left, he decided,
always left, and came to a locked shed. About my luck, he thought, and peered in: ‘That all you can
find to look at, mate?’ came a pommy voice. Bruce looked up to see a man in overalls wheeling a
barrow, ‘Ah don’t worry about it,’ said Bruce sullenly, walking back the way he’d come.
Barb smiled at Lawrence. ‘Wasn’t so terrifying, was it?’ she said.
‘I loveya Barb,’ he said, anxious as a child. ‘You’re gonna make something of me.’
‘Steady on,’ she said. ‘You’re going to be my anchor. I’ll make you a partner in the pub. But
don’t think I’m going to stick around if I feel I’ve got to go. I’ll clear off any time I like. I’ll probably come back but I don’t guarantee it.’
‘Fair enough,’ said Lawrence. ‘I never gave anyone as much guarantee as that. I can’t ask for
more, can I?’
‘That depends how you’re feeling,’ she said, pulling him closer. ‘We don’t have to get up yet.’
Mr Miller spent the time between morning tea and lunch splitting firewood and stacking it on the
verandah. His sister, coming out, was startled. ‘You’re a bit of an optimist, boy,’ she said. ‘That
should outlast me by about six months!’
‘Well I’ll be up for your funeral, I’ll take it home in the boot.’
From the kitchen came the reproving voice of Mrs Miller. ‘I don’t know why you two are talking like that!’ Brother and sister grinned at each other; she would never understand. Mr Miller
resumed his cardigan, hanging from a nail. ‘Don’t catch a chill,’ Una warned. ‘You might kick it
before I do!’ Mrs Miller heard them chuckling. She glanced in the oven. ‘Smells nice,’ called Una,
composing herself. ‘If you give me a hand with the peas,’ said Mrs Miller, ‘while Bernard entertains
himself with the paper, we can have dinner on the table in half an hour!’
Harry went to America, came back laughing at ‘new directions’; the company’s PR echelon felt the
time to sell the 21st century was four, at most five, years away. Futurologists had charted economic
growth, energy needs, the balance of the super powers and the unsatisfied demands of the Little
Citizen as far as the first quartile of the coming epoch; American theatricality had set Harry smiling as much as American ruthlessness had discomfited him in closed door sessions when American
management had demanded his opinion of his local superiors. ‘Gentlemen,’ he told them, ‘there
is no fact or statistic of our operation that is not ascertainable by you; are you beginning to doubt
your own leadership in the information sciences?’ They said they weren’t, but mentioned certain
names for whom, Harry knew, a refusal to comment would be the end. ‘Look at the information,
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gentlemen,’ he told them. ‘We do not run a spy network. In our trade, intuition and hunch are
negative terms. The important indices, from the company’s point of view, are there on paper.’ He
knew he’d cooked his goose, in terms of power-play. He would remain on the technocratic level of
those who could deliver what their masters ordered. ‘There’s something I would say, though, about
our handling of South Korea ...’
Watching his masters lean forward solemnly, Harry thanked every least and last of those who’d
taught him humor; brother Lawrence, Barb, well-intentioned Bruce, dull, serious Murdy ... all
the rest of them. His loyalty to them made him powerless, in the terms of these men, yet removed
him from the power and money brokers till he could amuse himself by inflecting his knowledge
towards, or away from, the latest thrust of their capital. He knew that they too were smart. His
crisis was that he no longer believed in the forces that had made him valuable; belief systems
engendered by the powerful were too obviously corrupt, but there was no adequate replacement:
all human endeavour, at the moment history had allotted him, was a farce.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, standing up: ‘in the little hotel which I moved to when I discovered the
abomination Personnel had booked me into, they have window boxes. My room has zinnias, and
a southern creeper which I am unable to identify, but which must be familiar to you. Those plants
were wilting when I left this morning, and I must go home to water them.’
He was telling them to get fucked, and they knew it. Used to top technocrats, they smiled. His
dreams, his talents, could not be released outside the policies of the company, or its rivals, whose
poaching was under close surveillance.
Harry, flying into Australia, wondered if the Germans had yet invented a word for the quadruple or quintuple-ganger, who watched, not only himself, but his selves watching his selves. His
tower apartment, he knew, would not unify him. The divisions of the contemporary world ran too
deep for that.
He wasn’t committing suicide, and there were no simple solutions. He didn’t find the world as
funny as he had, and it wasn’t in him to hate as one should to release the primal energy everyone
was talking about, as if it had been buried at some un-historic moment. No, the problem had been
around for a long time, and would not be flowing away before next week’s magazines hit the news
stands with the latest crisis.
Endless crisis. Growth. Brinkmanship. There was a new buzz-word every time media sales
slumped. Harry, flying into a servile city, gazed down. There they were, the towers, in one of which
he lived. The suburbs full of fiercely independent slaves. There it was, the big pale land always talking about its destiny as if it had one. There they were, the pallid hordes who peopled it, running
around like ants, imagining that top people knew what the hell was happening.
Remembering the cocktail parties in Silicon Valley, the earnest meetings, the working breakfasts, Harry laughed. Madness ruled, Anne Owen was right, except she had to have a new belief.
How mad she was; dogma was a bigger pain than an empty gut, or an empty mind.
After all, thought Harry, reaching for his notebook — the belly light would be flashing, and
he wanted to express his thoughts in the purity of this suspended moment — a principle of amorphousness could be as fruitful as a principle of uncertainty or the rabid dogmas of the left. The
existential fear of a void was a gutless reaction to withdrawal of faith. The violent, the powerful, the
abject, were equally pathetic. A void in human affairs was as fruitful as a tradition lasting centuries.
Regretting the bluntness of his pencil, Harry wrote:
DON’T BE BLUFFED THE EMPEROR HAD ALL THE CLOTHES HE NEEDED.
Grinning, Harry shut his book. The plane banked for landing.
High on a ridge, they watched a jet go over. ‘We had a lovely letter from Christie when she was in
Geneva,’ Murdy said. ‘About this big cold sky with puffy jet trails drawing themselves across the
blue. Apparently an awful lot of flight paths go over Switzerland.’
Janis studied the furry Australian mountains. “When my great grandmother came through
here,’ she said, ‘she thought it was the end of the earth.’
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‘It still is,’ said Murdy, ‘but we’re connected to the rest.’
It hardly satisfied Janis, for whom psychic connections were important. ‘I wonder if any of the
trees my great grandfather blazed are still standing?’ she said. ‘He used to find the way. Grandma
and her baby had to follow behind. They could have come through here, I must get the diary and
trace their route.’
‘That reminds me of something,’ Murdy said. ‘About Euphemia, the one the Baron got
engaged to. When she was a baby, she was carried through the Andes in a pannier on a mule. From
Santiago to Buenos Aires. Then by ship to England. Quite a trip in those days.’
‘I don’t suppose she’d ever have gone into the mountains with him,’ Janis said, holding him.
‘That wouldn’t have been done in those days, either.’
He squeezed her. ‘She appears to have been an island person. She lived on the island of
Guernsey, the Isle of Man, and then on Phillip Island. She used to collect seaweed for the Baron
...’ He chuckled. ‘Not very romantic.’
She said, ‘Interesting perhaps.’ Murdy loved her even spread of interest, so different from his
own specialised observation. ‘Seaweed took on a strange importance, actually,’ he said, ‘after the
engagement was broken off. He used to keep on writing, I suppose it must have been pretty hard
for both of them. In one letter he says ...’
Murdy closed his eyes, remembering the quote:
... I do not expect you to collect seaweeds for me in any large quantity but you might occasionally lay a few aside and for any discovery you shall surely have the credit.
‘And did she?’
‘She mightn’t have been very keen because three years later he says ...’ He put his head back,
trying to catch the spirit of it. ‘ ... a few elegant seaweeds would be always prized.’
‘Elegant seaweeds!’ he chuckled. ‘Next year there was a bit in one of his letters which I find
really sad. She must have sent him something, because he says ...’
She listened for the quality of voice; a man long dead possessed him.
‘The green seaweed is Apjohnia laetevirens. It is rare hereabout but not so in Western Australia.
He might have loved her,’ said Murdy, ‘but he was always the scientist.’
‘Don’t say that,’ she said, jerked back to earth. ‘It puts a limit on things.’
The Millers, farewelling Una, promised to come back in six weeks. ‘If I’m still here,’ the old lady
said, and this time Mr Miller, settling himself behind the wheel, was not facetious. He was thinking of the time he and his sister had been sent to town for the fortnight’s supplies; halfway down
the drive of the old Nilgiri Station, Una had blurted out ‘Jeezus, we forgot the oats!’ The old man
had loved his rolled oats, there could hardly have been a greater crime. The next day, with their
mother’s connivance, Una had ridden a lame old pony into Nilgiri while Bernard, keeping their
father from the house till she got back, insisted on another five panels of fencing. The secret had
been kept till Una’s wedding reception, after which ‘Jeezus we forgot the oats’ passed into family lore. Mrs Miller, made uncomfortable by Una’s insistence on frailty, was saying that they’d be
in touch, by which she meant she’d make regular phone calls to selected relatives to monitor her
condition, when Una, knowing exactly what she meant, interrupted:
‘You travel safely now Bernard. There’s a lot of traffic on that road.’
‘Oh, he’s a pretty good driver,’ said Mrs Miller, buoying herself up, and Una was insisting
that her brother was no spring chicken when he leaned across and shouted ‘Jeezus, we forgot the
oats!’
His wife, anxious that the departure should be punctual, and without embarrassment, said
shrilly: ‘Bernard, I have checked every room of the house, and I know for certain ...’
Una was almost hysterical, and Bernard was wheezing with all his might. ‘Really, you’re a silly
pair,’ said Mrs Miller, waking up. ‘I don’t think you ever grew up!’
But Una was moving, step by uncertain step, around the car. Keeping one hand on the bonnet all the way, she got herself to her brother’s window. ‘Do you remember what he said when he
230
found out?’ she said. ‘I was out of tobacco that week. If I’d known, you could have got me some!’
Mrs Miller felt a chill. Excluded, she sensed only the grimness behind the joke and wanted to be
part of the highway traffic. She pressed her shoes on the floor of the Fairmont, willing her husband
to start. ‘Look after yourself,’ said Una, putting her head through the window to kiss her brother.
‘Thanks for coming Wynn, Don’t worry about me, I’ve got plenty of people keeping an eye on me.’
She moved back, clinging to the fence. Mr Miller engaged the car in drive, and moved forward,
tooting loudly as he crossed the animal grid. Una let go with one hand to wave.
Barb and Lawrence went down to the kitchen about lunchtime. He was feeling sick in the guts.
‘Nice to have the place to ourselves,’ he said, sounding perky. She caught the warning note. ‘What’s
wrong with you?’ she wanted to know.
‘Nothing at all,’ he said. Piling food on his plate from the lavish stock in the refrigerator, he
said, ‘Beats that little hut on the Tamboon, hands down. Eh?’
‘Okay, what is it?’ she said. ‘Something’s eating you.’
‘Nothing at all,’ he said. ‘It was a bit harder to fill our plates, those days, that’s all.’
She felt him slipping away. ‘Don’t give me that shit,’ she said. ‘Put down that plate and come
here.’
‘I’m not arguin’ on an empty stomach,’ he told her. ‘Christ, you had me goin’ most of the
night!’
The irony cut her deeply. In her anger, in any other circumstances, she would have walked
out, but in her own hotel, and in a relationship she’d forced, she could hardly do that. Watching
him stuff himself, and wander off for a bottle of beer, she felt powerless. ‘You got plenty of options
Barb,’ he said, strolling back with a bottle. ‘You don’t have to make me a partner in this pub. It
just pleases you to do so. Right?’
‘Don’t give me a rehearsed speech, you shit,’ she said, ‘and if you open that bottle before I tell
you ...’
‘ ... you’ll cut me off without a penny,’ he said. ‘See if I care.’
Fuming, and amazed, she took him in.
‘I am,’ he said, ‘a pretty crooked sort of bastard. I have to be. It was my job before I took up
running a hotel. Thanks to you.’ He ripped off the crown seal with the prong of a fork. ‘We shoulda
got married, Barb,’ he went on, ‘when we said we would!’
‘If you remember,’ she said, ‘your brother pissed off to America, and you wanted to wait for
him.’
‘Right,’ he said. ‘I did say that.’ He sipped, gathering froth on his upper lip. ‘Me idealism was
in full flood at the time.’
She could hardly believe that he’d turned into such a preposterous, self-righteous prick. It was
all a bluff, he was scared of her dominance, and now he was blathering like an actor too drunk to
go on. His idealism! ‘You swine!’ she said. ‘After all I’ve done for you!’ Insensate with rage, she
thought of killing him.
‘But as you see,’ he said, ‘I’ve woken up. We’re not made for each other Barb. It would have
been a marriage of convenience!’ Putting aside a tomato that needed washing, he lowered a piece
of asparagus into his gob.
Calling him a bag of piss and wind, she flung her plate at him. Then she threw the meat tenderiser, denting the door of the fridge. Leaping from her seat, she kicked him, then hit him with
an aluminium tub that resounded unsatisfactorily. She looked for something else but preferred
to scoop up the contents of his plate and rub it in his hated face. ‘Pig!’ she screamed, ‘how dare
you!’
Lawrence, crumpled on the floor, lay crying. ‘You never wanted me,’ he said, ‘except to rub it
in. When I gave you a bit of your own medicine, you showed that pretty clearly, didn’t you!’
‘Pig!’ she said. ‘Make one move and I’ll kick your guts in.’
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Covering his eyes with his arm, and squeezing his legs to protect his balls, he said, ‘Don’t call
me that! I’m in as much trouble as you.’
‘Get up,’ she said, ‘and convince me of that.’
Sitting on a stool, he faced her, slop all over his face. ‘Wipe me down Barb,’ he said. ‘Go on,
you put it on.’
‘Dickhead,’ she said. ‘Sit where you are.’ Roughly, cruelly, she wiped his face with a towel.
‘You don’t even like these people,’ he began. ‘They know it. They make fun of me.’
‘You Hearns,’ she said. ‘It’s the one thing you fear, isn’t it!’
He liked being linked with his brother. The sexual connection was less satisfying, in the end.
She grabbed his shoulders and shook him. ‘Isn’t it!’
‘You want to take my dignity away,’ he protested. ‘I know you don’t think I’ve got much, but
it matters to me!’
Studying him as if he were a worm that had developed ideas of turning, she said, ‘And what do
you think your dignity consists of? The women you’ve screwed without getting hooked?’
He felt his defences crumple; he would be hating her if he couldn’t get control of himself. ‘My
dignity,’ he said, ‘which is a word I don’t use very often ...’
‘You have never used it in my hearing before,’ she said. ‘Every day brings some new amazement.’
‘My dignity,’ he said, ‘consists of ...’
Laughing at his inability, she almost loved him again.
‘My dignity,’ he insisted, ‘consists ...’
‘Suspense is killing!’
‘ ... of ... ’
Vindictive, she hit him with the cleaning cloth. ‘Your dignity,’ she said, ‘consists of being
allowed to wipe the plates other people eat off.’ She wanted to march upstairs and throw every last
thing he owned into the street, but felt the need to wait: he might have some point to make which
would help her in the years to come. ‘Your dignity?’ she said, as calmly as she could manage.
‘If you don’t know,’ he said, knowing how stupid it would sound, ‘I couldn’t fuckin’ make you
understand!’ He stared at her in defiance.
‘Sit down, idiot,’ she said. ‘Don’t you see that that is the problem?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he said, still pretending to be in a huff.
‘We’ve spent a bloody good night together,’ she said, ‘and now you’re regressing. You haven’t
learned a fucking thing!’
‘I’ve learned a lot of fucking things,’ he said, limply accepting.
‘You don’t want to grow up, do you?’ she said. ‘Get out of here. I’ll sell this pub. It stinks of
you. I might buy another, I don’t know yet, or I might go off alone. Whatever, I’ll let you know.
Now get!’
‘Me wallet’s upstairs,’ said Lawrence. ‘And me coat. I’ll be a minute.’ Stalking out with as much
of his dignity as he could command, he tried to make his footsteps heavy on the stairs, in case she
should feel sorry. When he came down, she was crying. He stared at her as long as he could before
he put his arms around her. She flung herself free of him. ‘Poor benighted bastard,’ she cried. ‘It’s
not even your fault, you dirty bloody shit!’
No stranger to abuse, Lawrence brought another stool beside her. ‘I’ll always be the best mate
you’ve got Barb,’ he said. Barb, in a rage tantamount to mania, clawed the bench before her. ‘I
know that,’ she said. ‘I don’t really hate you because you can’t help it. But look where, for fuckin’
Jesus Christ’s sake, it’s brought us!’ Lawrence looked, and saw; he had picked a fight with the only
person he’d ever really loved, and would be walking away from her before the tears were dry on
her cheeks, or his. ‘Last time I had a row like this,’ he said, ‘It was with someone you don’t know.
Call her Joan. I finished up hitting her, and she knew I didn’t want to, it was just to give myself a
reason for walking out in a rage.’
‘There is no reason for walking out in a rage,’ Barb said, ‘except …’
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‘There is every reason for walking out in a rage,’ said Lawrence.
‘Your dignity?’ Barb said, collapsing in a flood of tears.
‘My dignity’s not worth a tinker’s arsehole beside you, Barb,’ said Lawrence. ‘Do you want me
to go?’
‘No. Yes. I don’t know,’ said Barb. ‘I think I do.’
‘Oh shit I wish you didn’t,’ said Lawrence. ‘Whatever you say’s final. You want me to stay,
Barb?’
‘No,’ Barb said. ‘Fuckya. I think I want to be alone. I’ll be selling up soon, I’ll needya then,
Lawrence, you’ll help me won’t you?’
‘When you want me,’ he said, wiping his face because the ten o’clock alkies might be about.
‘Just let me know. I know the price of everything.’
‘And the value of nothing,’ she said, but put her arms around him before he could be further
upset. ‘Before you go, kiss me. I love you.’
‘I always thought love meant attraction,’ he said. ‘For people like us, it’s the opposite. Oh Jeezus
I feel sick, Barb!’
‘I can’t help you,’ she said. ‘Get out! Quick! I’m not angry with you but for Christ’s sake let
me have the place to myself.’
Lonely, and with no means to lift his spirits, Bruce found his way to the picnic spot. The big tristania was there, spreading over lawn and path. Looking closely, he came to the conclusion that it was
in fact a dozen trees planted close so that the roots grew together and the trunks forced each other
outwards. The gardener’s trick appealed to him but Murdy had told him von Mueller had planted
it, and it didn’t seem like a device the botanist would have used. Something of his faith in Murdy
died, and he wished he could recapture Janis. Looking at his watch, he decided it wouldn’t be too
early to drop in at The Star.
Leaving by an elaborate iron gate which the plaque attributed to a demolished mansion, he
saw a man in a filthy overcoat settling himself against the fence with a bottle of sherry. The dero
invited Bruce to join him, but he said ‘Bit early in the day, mate,’ wondering if depression was that
obviously written on his face. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, my friend,’ said the dero. ‘It is never
too early.’
Bruce was grateful for the Saab, clean and lithe in its movement. In the docile Sunday traffic
it gave him victorious potential. At the pub he found two uncommunicative women serving lunch,
a broken plate, dented fridge, and an ominous absence of Barb. Or Lawrence. Heart sinking, he
guessed. ‘Upstairs?’ he asked the women, who shook their heads. Going into the yard, he found
the Kombi gone.
He found her at the beach where Harry used to live. She was sitting in the sand, waving away
two Dalmatians whose owner had become engrossed in teaching her son to fly his kite. Watching
Bruce cross the beach, she wished she could be alone; the coastal dune was suddenly attractive.
‘What do you want?’ she said, wishing she had some other way to speak.
‘Has it blown up?’ he said. ‘What happened, Barb?’
In dumbest misery she reached out to him. He sat beside her on the sand. ‘You’ve got sand
on your lips,’ he said.
‘I’ve got rocks in my fuckin’ head.’
‘Do you know anyone that’s happy?’ he said.
Years back, she would have soothed him, but she beat her palm on the sand. ‘I don’t want to
be happy,’ she said. ‘I want this stage, each time I pass through it, to be easier instead of harder.’
‘Where’s Lawrence?’
‘Inside his skin.’
‘No, but where is he?’
‘He’s a useless bastard,’ she said, flinging her face in the sand.
Compassion and anxiety filled him. ‘You liberated me,’ he said.
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‘I did the same for Lawrence. Where’s it got me?’
Bruce thought about it. ‘You’re still a mystery to me Barb.’
She snorted; he hardly heard it, staring at the sea, and thinking. Finally, he asked her: ‘How is
it that someone as tough as you, and as big ...’
He was choosing his words.
‘ ... gets wasted on bastards like Harry, Lawrence and me? We’re not good enough, Barb, and
I know you know it!’
She could only writhe; but he felt she was moving away from him, towards the water. He
grabbed her leg. Into the breeze he cried with all his heart:
‘I’ve never ... I’ve never ...’
He knew he couldn’t finish. He clung to her like life.
Sitting up, and wiping her lips with a hand speckled with sand, she said, ‘Exactly. You’ve never.
Now you’ve got to fuckin’ start!’
Bruce wanted a lead. She had none to give. ‘Where’s Janis?’ she said.
‘Off with Murdy.’
‘Good luck to ‘em,’ she said. ‘But don’t pin your hopes on it. She’ll be back.’
‘I could tell you the name of the next man,’ Bruce said. ‘I’m really worried. He’s twenty, and
he’s heavily into the supernatural. Murdy’s the safety hatch. But Janis can’t resist a challenge, and
one of these days she’ll drop Murdy and go for the boy.’
‘I suppose it’s inevitable. After that?’
He didn’t know. ‘How long do you think this stage lasts, Barb?’
‘Can’t you get out?’
‘There isn’t any way.’
Bruce looked into the eyes he loved. ‘Do you realise,’ he said, ‘that we’re outcasts. You’ve got
more money than you know what to do with, and I’ve got the top job in my area, and we’re spilling
our guts on this beach like a couple of old hoboes.’
‘They’re victims too.’
‘We’re not victims, Barb, we’re it. Don’t you understand the difference? We can’t feel sorry for
ourselves!’
‘Coming from you, Bruce that is very very funny.’ Her voice was hard.
Everything they’d ever striven for lay in a mess between them. Even the wish to express emotion felt like a scramble for advantage. In the chaos of relationships, was there anything for either
to build on?
Bruce said, ‘Sell that pub and get another. Go bush. We can’t escape through anyone else, we
have to fight our battles for ourselves.’
By the wharves a tanker hooted. Barb stood up. The Dalmatians and their owner were only
specks. Barb’s son had his kite aloft, and some smaller kids admiring him. ‘Congratulations,’ Barb
said, ‘You’ve got to first base. I’ve been stuck on second for years.’ While Bruce puzzled over
her meaning, she ordered her son to the Kombi. Where now, Bruce thought. Venice? Darwin/
Derby/Broome? Watching how obediently her boy got the line rolled and said goodbye to the kids
who’d watched him, Bruce felt another, treacherous sympathy take over: poor kid, dragged on his
mother’s journey. Walking to the bluestone seawall, watching Barb pile things in the Kombi, Bruce
wanted to shout at her. But it was too pathetic. ‘Barb,’ he said, vaulting the seawall. ‘You’re going
away. I can tell. I’m not asking anything for myself, or Lawrence, but couldn’t you stop somewhere
and give the kid a go?’
‘He’s safe,’ she said, pointing to the Kombi with its sleeping bags and car fridge stuffed with
food.
‘He’s as safe,’ Bruce said, wanting to be heard above the engine, ‘as the link between a man
and a woman, and how safe do you think that is?’
The only word he caught as she revved the engine was ‘disaster’.
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The house in Bright coccooned the securest ecstasy Murdy and Janis had known. Janis had picked
up her daughters. Murdy put his car behind the roller doors. They had eaten, bathed and talked
in a strange approximation of normality, as if the night would never end. Negation, lustrous fruit,
tasted rich as kisses on their tongues. He had no end for her, nor she for him. Achieving nakedness,
they left vulnerability for a more original state. ‘Do you believe we’ve had previous existences?’ she
said, settling beside him. ‘Individually, no,’ he said. ‘I suppose I think life, and the consciousness of
life, exists permanently, and as individuals we have it briefly. You and I have it now. My aunt, that I
love very dearly, is losing it. Marina’s entering into it. Jennifer’s got it. It’s always there, but people
are born into it and die out of it. Accepting that seems to take a lot of fear away.’
Shifting against him, trailing her fingers lightly down his chest, she said, ‘It’s a big concept ...
but there’s one thing ... you said Marina’s entering it and Jennifer’s got it. I think it could be the
other way; when we use our brain to know things we pull our consciousness apart in some way.
There are levels of apprehension I don’t want to lose ... I know I do silly things sometimes ...’
He turned on his side. The darkness was a medium for their mingling. Taller by a span, he put
his feet under hers and lifted; she pushed against him: they relaxed, but left their feet, as if she
was standing on him. They found each other’s hands. Kissing, they pushed against each other the
length of their bodies, and squeezed each other’s fingers. Tilting her head, she whispered, ‘It’s like
a vortex. I like to linger at the edge before I’m drawn in.’
He said, ‘It’s a beautiful stage.’ They knew there were more. Stages without end, until sleep,
and waking. Their arms went round each other, pressing in. Joining lips, they felt an energy run
through them, like the need of someone waking to stretch to the utmost tension. ‘Oh,’ she said,
‘that was lovely. And it just happened.’ Pushing himself softly against her, he said ‘Just happened,’
overflowing with acceptance. Overflowing with acceptance, she put herself astride; he gasped with
joy. Breathing hard with pleasure, she worked herself to have him, from the crown of his head to the
tip of his toes, centred inside her. With tender fingers he put his touch to her throat, her lips, her
eyes. Completing the circle, she rested her weight on his shoulders. They rocked with joy. Minute
succeeding minute, their reciprocal life flowed on. Once, an engine stopped in the street, there were
voices, then the car moved on. They stopped to listen. ‘You forget there’s a world outside,’ he said,
pressing her with his hands to start again. But she was listening to the world. He listened. To each
other they named what they heard. Dog. A distant pump. Refrigerator starting up. (‘Noisy,’ said
Janis. ‘Needs to be fixed.’) The hanging chair on the verandah squeaking in a drift of air. Minds
in the night, they held each other, casting about for more. There was nothing, except their bodies
breathing. ‘Come on top,’ she said, and rolled beside, and he shifted in the dark to remake their
circle ‘It was good to stop,’ he said, ‘it seemed to clear us.’ Their union became more intense with
less gap between them. She clung hard as if to prevent him moving. He clung hard as if to give her
no escape. For a moment, pushing a blanket out of the way, they thought of their bedding as of a
cloud enveloping them; they might have been anywhere in the universe; climaxing, they touched
some point together; physically released by their bodies’ brief exhaustion, they knew each other
exquisitely in a moment of separation; falling in on each other, limp, they felt the tingle of limbs,
fingers, starting to search again. ‘Let’s listen,’ she said. Neither dog, pump, fridge, nor chair had
anything to say; their void was endless, empty, full, complete and self-renewing. ‘Rub my back,’
she said. ‘We might sleep for a while.’ He put a hand under her and rubbed with the other till they
lost each other in sleep.
Bruce woke to the Irish Breakfast, graffiti wall, drums, slumber pit, the grubby cushions ... and a
sense of strength. Anne dragged herself around a few estate agents. Househunting. Christie got the
kids off to school, promising them dad would be back when they got home ...
Julius categorised, for the fiftieth time, those who boarded the train with him. Those who
did it because they didn’t have anything else. Those who did it because they felt it was virtuous.
Prostitutes and mums, he called them. Those who were spoiled by it, and those who had to be
nice about it. Momentarily he envied Harry Hearn, who carried all the problems of superiority.
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If he could only get himself a decent woman, thought Julius, I’d invite the bastard out for dinner,
but ...
Una lay on the floor, having slipped sideways in the night. Weak, but conscious, she pulled a quilt
down. Later, struggling for leverage, a pillow. She was there when the neighbors came in the morning, aware that she hadn’t reprimed the stove. Incontinent; mouth shaping things she couldn’t say;
cold but, inside some inner chamber, resolute, she let her eyes plead for the hospital, and a call to
Robby.
Robby came.
Una travelled the five blocks in an ambulance. A distant cousin of the Hearns took the leg end
of the stretcher, a stranger the head. She wanted to say ‘Thanks, boys,’ but her lips weren’t working.
The neighbor rang Mrs Miller and her husband.
They rang the hospital every night. When Una weakened, they packed their cases, backed the
Fairmont out of the garage, and headed north.
When the time came, they rang their son.
Murdy decided, after discussing it with Christie, that it wasn’t worthwhile driving the children
four hundred kilometres for the funeral of someone they’d barely known. He drove alone to join the
Millers at St. Andrews, Nilgiri. At the request of the last surviving brother, there was no oration,
but the clergyman, not to be denied, included the most majestic lines of Saint Paul, ending at: Oh
grave, where is thy victory? Oh death, where is thy sting?
Murdy saw his relatives grown older. Mrs Miller, electing not to go with the cortege, joined
the women at Una’s house, setting out food and flowers for the gathering. Mr Miller, lost without
his truest companion, talked cricket and irrigation with a distant cousin by marriage. Leehane’s
horses, fleet as the steeds of mythology, ran madly round their paddock when the hearse entered.
An undertaker, by agreement with the Leehanes, stayed at the sagging gate to shut it behind the
cars. Murdy, standing outside himself, watched his family marching through their history. Mr
Miller threw a spoon of dust in the grave. The undertakers, Murdy noticed, coiled the belts of
material for lowering the coffin while the clergy’s final prayers occupied the general attention. The
grave digger stood smoking behind a shed, waiting to fill the hole.
The horses couldn’t keep still. Most of the cars had gone before they crowded to the fence. Mr
Miller said to his son ‘As long as I can remember, they’ve been the same. Not the same horses, I
know, but they carry on the same way. They must teach each other in some way.’ He made it sound
definitive, considered his son’s reaction, and set off round the graves.
Murdy followed. A whole corner of Millers flourished in their marble. Uncle Michael. Grandpa
Michael. Great grandfather Murdoch Michael. Hosts of other Millers, all loyal, true and generous:
loved, beloved, or dearly beloved when they entered the earthy kingdom. Mr Miller, surprisingly
strong, strode about, looking for Una’s son and daughter, treading, even, the foothills of her funeral
mound on his way to the tombstone of her son. ‘Terrible business,’ he said over his shoulder,
assuming his son was listening. They accepted each other in the realm of injustice. ‘The Leehanes,
you know,’ said Mr Miller, staring towards the belt of black box trees that edged the paddock,
‘never bred a decent horse in their lives.’
‘The way they run,’ his son said. ‘They’re real dashers ...’
‘They get excited,’ his father said, ‘at times like this, but the Leehanes never feed them properly.
Three generations of them I’ve known, and they’ve never had a decent pasture to bless themselves
with!’
‘You’re really condemning them,’ Murdy said.
‘They condemn themselves,’ said his father. ‘Look at their animals. Have you ever seen anything so scrawny?’
His father was right. The horses, closely examined, were half-starving.
‘Am I right?’ said his father. ‘They’d be scratching for a feed in that paddock, wouldn’t they?’
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Murdy agreed. Mr Miller looked further into the paddock. ‘They never bought a bale of hay
in their lives, the Leehanes.’
‘Were they always poor?’ his son wanted to know.
‘Not poor, just perverse,’ Mr Miller said. ‘Whatever everybody was doing, they wouldn’t do.
No idea of farming. It’s a wonder they’ve been able to hang on, when you come to think of it!’
The clergyman had left. The gathering would be at Una’s, with the huge enamel teapots, hired
from Saint Andrew’s, doing service. ‘What about Uncle _____?’ said Murdy, referring to Una’s
husband. ‘Didn’t he know how to farm?’
‘Never a clue,’ said his father. ‘Dithered and dreamed for the best part of thirty years.’
‘That’s pretty fierce,’ said his son. ‘You don’t make him out to be much.’
‘He never was much,’ said Mr Miller. ‘All piss and wind. Give him the best paddock in the
world and he wouldn’t have known what to grow.’
‘Let’s go back to Una’s dad,’ said Murdy, proud to hear him state himself. ‘We’re probably
expected.’
‘There’s no hurry,’ said his father. ‘The women’ll take care of things.’ With all these Millers
surrounding him, there was time to talk.
Murdy felt he had to make a gesture from his professional position. ‘We were second family in
the area, weren’t we?’ he said. ‘By what was it, six or eight weeks?’
‘Depends who you listen to,’ said his father. ‘Millers were actually first to look in this area, but
not first to take up a selection. What’s the odds, anyhow, first, second, third ...?’
He looked through the belt of trees to infinity. Trying to restrain his father, Murdy said, ‘Who
were the others in those early days?’ The Hearns, he remembered, were twenty years behind. His
father pointed to the centre of the cemetery and the north-west corner. ‘Over there,’ he said, ‘and
over there, what’s it matter in the end?’
‘Doesn’t matter much,’ his son said, ‘but we like to get things right.’
‘Oh hoh,’ his father laughed. ‘You’re a historian, you like to get facts right. Facts are never what
they seem to be. Did I ever tell you about your great grandfather and Dave Hearn? Dave Hearn
didn’t have two bob to bless himself with, and he came to dad’s one day …’
‘Dad,’ said his son, lovingly, ‘I have heard that story a hundred times.
‘Well, you know how it ends,’ said his father. ‘Grandpa, that’s my grandfather, said to Dave
Hearn ... As long as you’re across that river from me, Dave Hearn, and that rotten canoe of yours
can float, I’ll be suspecting trouble!’
‘Grandpa had a daughter,’ Murdy said, completing his response to the story.
‘Well, that’s a branchline on the family tree,’ said his father, mixing metaphors. ‘Come on,
time we joined the gathering.’ Murdy, with a little Victorian pomposity still about him, followed
his father to the Renault. ‘God, boy,’ said Mr Miller, ‘this is a bugger of a thing to get into! Why
don’t you get yourself a decent car?’
Anne saw a house she liked in an agent’s window. Went in, found herself looking at Jerry Leishman.
On guard at once, she told him what she was after. He offered to show her the place. ‘You’re going
to like it,’ he said; she knew it would be terrible. They had to park around the corner because it
faced the afternoon traffic banking up for the F19. ‘It’s quiet out the back,’ he said, ‘and you could
have the windows double glazed.’ Spray can writers had used one wall for an anti-car message. ‘Ha
fuckin’ ha,’ she said. ‘Why, in the name of Christ, did you do this to me?’
‘It’s my hatred of intellectual women,’ he said glibly. ‘It’s so strong it even prevents me doing
my job properly.’
‘Smart bastard. Got anything else?’
He showed her three more. Said there was something better coming on the market soon.
Promised to ring.
He did ring, and she bought the house. He wheedled the vendor down one and a half thousand. ‘I’m losing commission over you,’ he said. ‘You’re not generous Jerry,’ she told him. ‘You
237
just love to cheat someone.’ He said she knew him pretty well. She wondered when the white ants
would pop out, or the roof cave in.
The first heavy rain sent her hunting for buckets. Watching old stains re-emerge in the ceiling,
she woke up; the house had had a paint job to be sold in summer. She rang Jerry. ‘Thanks mate.
You really did me in, didn’t you.’
‘What did the roof job cost you?’
‘Seventeen hundred dollars Jerry.’
‘I thought it’d be around that.’
‘How come I know so many crooks?’
‘If you remember, I saved you that much.’
‘Not quite, you scheming bastard, and you didn’t tell me.’
‘You wouldn’t have bought it if I’d told you.’
‘Don’t you think people have a right to all the information available?’ she said, more or less
resigned.
‘Not important,’ he said. ‘You bought it, and you’re happy.’
She was happy; even grateful for the trick. It gave her a letout when people talked about
homeowners being capitalists, she could name Jerry Leishman to absolve herself of responsibility.
She had a succession of young men staying with her; some of them were homosexuals needing a
back-up, others were lovers who lasted a fortnight. The homosexuals moved on and the lovers were
told to fuck off. She was treading water in her personal life when she ran into Lawrence Hearn at
a barbecue. ‘Something very interesting,’ he told her. ‘See that bird over there?’ He pointed to a
henna-bright head with three men around her. ‘She and that guy ...’ he pointed to a heavily built
Nordic man of fifty, ‘... are gonna start some hash farms, up in the north east.’
‘How do you know that, Lawrence? Are you fantasizing perhaps?’
Lawrence smiled.
‘You can’t just say things like that. How do you know?’
‘Heard’em.’
She looked. ‘They’re not drunk. They wouldn’t talk about that with you around.’
‘I wasn’t around. I was doing the fire till a coupla minutes ago.’
‘Are you getting at me Lawrence?’ She was watching for the trick.
‘Come inside,’ he said. He led her to a plushly furnished lounge, with elaborate fire dogs, a
ship model and some small, working sculptures. She expected him to make a pass; knowing this,
he said to her ‘Come here. Beside me. Tell me if you can see something?’
Warily she approached. ‘I can’t see anything Lawrence.’
‘Blind as a bat. Most people are.’ Putting his hand into a flower arrangement, he pulled out a
tiny black device. ‘I thought if there was going to be any intimate conversations, they’d be on this
couch.’
‘Becoming a voyeur, Lawrence?’
‘Sort of. Different sort of security, you might say.’
‘Your hotel romance blew up.’
‘Sure did,’ said Lawrence. ‘Come out to the car.’
She expected a curtained van, but it was a plain white Mazda. ‘Mustn’t stand out,’ he explained.
‘Oh yeah?’ she said. He pulled a Kleenex packet from the glove box. ‘Have a look in there.’
She looked. ‘Did you record what those people said?’
He nodded.
‘Let me listen.’
He shook his head. ‘Do you believe me now?’
‘I’d want to hear it first.’
‘You’ll hear it in court one day,’ he said. ‘Or in the papers.’
‘Who are you working for, Lawrence?’
‘Never mind that,’ he said, ‘but you’re working for me.’
238
She began to argue volubly.
‘You must be crazy to think ...’ He butted in. ‘Guy’s name is Kilvo. He’s too smart to do it
himself. He’s going to start a tourist business. Buses and all that. Ski lodges. That’ll be the front.
And they’ll be recruiting people to do the growing. Farmers, wogs, hippies. They’ll contact people
you know. Keep your ears open, wouldya?’
She fired up. ‘Lawrence Crazy Hearn! If I knew someone was getting into a racket like that, I’d
warn them off it. There’s no way in the world I’d put them in to a creep like you!’ Touching her for
the first time, he said melodramatically, ‘Trust me!’
239
19
With all the scorn she could muster she said ‘No way, Lawrence! Absolutely no way!’ Tenderly, as if
hiding his soul, he put the Kleenex in the glove box and locked the car. ‘A lot of people are getting
involved without realising,’ he said. ‘Two of this mob have bought into Harry’s ski lodge. I haven’t
told him yet.’ He looked sidelong at her. She knew his confidences were invitations.
‘Your brother’s not my problem,’ she said.
‘He was, one night in Canberra,’ Lawrence said. She flashed. ‘How do you know that? Did
Murdy tell you?’
‘Huh,’ Lawrence scoffed. ‘Murdy wouldn’t know anything till twenty years after. I can do better than that.’
Some of the barbecue people went on to a party in Carlton; Anne was wondering why the
fact of knowing about something made one feel responsible, when the party was invaded by musicians. They’d signed a recording contract and thought everyone wanted to listen. With them came
a bird-eyed woman who told someone, in Anne’s hearing, how she’d broken off with a guy who
had a farm in the north east. He’d invited her to grow anything she liked on his property, and she
was still thinking about getting a group to buy the next farm down the valley. ‘You should see the
place,’ said Bird-Eye. ‘Most beautiful valley you could imagine. The guy was Shire President or
something, Nice, but a bit heavy.’
Anne felt surrounded. She rang Murdy the next day. ‘I don’t know how things are with you
and Bruce,’ Anne said, ‘but you’d better warn him.’
Murdy said, ‘I will. But is there some threat to you in this? You sound pretty tense.’
‘I’m not tense Murdy,’ she snapped. ‘How dare you suggest that this is anything to do with
me!’
‘It’s to do with all of us,’ he said. ‘Something’s closing in. A couple of years ago, everyone was
smoking pot and calling it freedom. Now the crooks are in, and people are running around with
bugging devices ... Jesus!’
‘There’s a world-wide swing to the right,’ she said. ‘I told you it was coming.’
‘What worries me,’ said Murdy, ‘is that I feel there’s going to be some big shakeout. People
we used to like are going to finish up doing things they wouldn’t have looked at four or five years
back.’
‘Like what?’
‘I suppose I’m thinking of Lawrence Hearn. When we first got to know him ...’
She cut in. ‘He hasn’t changed Murdy. What do you think security’s all about? People who’ve
got property pay to have it protected. The people he worked with were hired toughs, he was just a
bit smarter, that was all. What he’s into now sounds fairly frightening, I admit, but there’s no basic
change in his position. You’re just seeing it clearly for the first time. It’s been pretty comfortable in
there at Melbourne, hasn’t it?’
‘Don’t roar the tripes out of me,’ he said. ‘A whole period’s dying, and I’ve felt part of it. So
have you.’
‘What are you going to do Murdy?’ she challenged.
‘Christie’s got to go to Adelaide next week, and I’m having Janis down.’
‘Should solve all your problems,’ she said tartly.
‘I’ll warn Bruce,’ he said.
‘What about the period, Murdy? You said something’s dying and we’re part of it.’
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‘I think,’ he said, trying to get on top, ‘we’re all going to shut our doors and not look too hard
at what happens.’
‘Pathetic’
‘If you get any good ideas, let me know.’
She passed the word around Carlton, and to her students — don’t grow it for anyone else and
don’t trust anyone, Murdy warned the S.R.C. and rang Bruce, who said he didn’t want a woman
called Gina mentioned to Lawrence Hearn or anybody else. ‘She’s into medicinal plants,’ he
explained. ‘People could get the wrong idea.’
‘It’s a funny thing,’ said Murdy. ‘I didn’t even see that bugging device, I only heard about it
— but it’s really got to me. Someone we know into that sort of stuff.’
‘Right,’ said Bruce, thinking him self-indulgent. ‘What I’ve got to do is find a few convenient
by-laws to make it hard for these people when they show up.’
He checked through the building permits; Skyline Tours were building an extension for luggage security. The plan showed lockers for rental, a safe for valuables, and a high security chamber.
That’s the blind, thought Bruce, and took a stroll past Skyline’s yard. In a shed at the back two
buses sat on blocks. A man Bruce hadn’t seen before asked him what he wanted; they looked at
each other through wire mesh. ‘You want to get an Alsatian,’ Bruce said. The man said they had
nothing to hide. Bruce introduced himself. ‘You might have noticed,’ he said, ‘that there aren’t
many wrecks in the bush around here. We’ve got a scheme whereby we subsidise people to have
old vehicle bodies crushed and removed.’
The stranger said the buses were useful, they cannibalised them for seats, and parts. ‘You’ve no
idea how often seats get damaged,’ he put forward.
In the week Janis and Marina were in Melbourne, Bruce drove around with his daughter.
Jennifer wanted to know why he was so restless. ‘In my job,’ he said, ‘we have to deal with people
who want to set up new businesses in the area. I’m trying to imagine it from their point of view.’
‘Just tell them the rules, dad,’ she said. ‘Why do we have to drive round all the time?’
‘I want to have the right rules ready to tell them.’
Janis said Bruce had been demanding lately. ‘His Melbourne scene’s collapsed, one day he
wants me to have my freedom, the next he’s asking me when I’m going away and I know he doesn’t
want me to go.’
‘Enjoy it while we can,’ said Murdy.
‘That doesn’t sound very principled.’
‘There are lots of principles,’ said Murdy, ‘some of them conflicting. There are principles we
try to follow. There are other people’s principles, which restrict us, like the Catholics on abortion.
There are ...’
‘ ... forgotten principles,’ said Janis, ‘waiting to be rediscovered. Like Stonehenge and the
Easter Island statues.’
‘And things controlling your life which you don’t even understand,’ said Murdy. ‘Like heredity
...’
‘Or the seasons turning,’ she said. ‘Have you noticed that a lot of people die then?’
‘I hadn’t,’ he said. ‘What do you think it is?’
‘They can’t face up to another winter. Or they hang on till spring arrives, and when they’ve
seen it arrive, they give in.’
‘Our relationship to other life around us,’ he said, ‘is very basic, isn’t it.’ She squeezed his fingers: ‘Are all the windows open?’
‘Yes, are you still hot?’
‘A bit. Are the kids asleep?’
He said, ‘I’ll check.’ Moving quietly down the passage, he heard her voice call after him:
‘What’s the date?’ He looked in one bedroom, trying to think. ‘The twelfth,’ he whispered loudly.
Straightening Marina’s sheet, he heard her pass. The back door opened and shut. Grasping the
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point of her question, he went to the verandah. ‘It’s not midsummer yet,’ he said. She didn’t answer
but he felt her take his words.
The house hung onto her. ‘Turn out the light,’ she called. He stayed on the verandah. The trees
sprang to life, darkly motionless. Receiving her silent call, he joined her. They melted. Two hands,
one his, one hers, reached for a helichrysum. City light allowed a fraction of its gold. The flower
bristled in their fingers. ‘It’s such an emblematic thing,’ Murdy said. ‘Like a sun god,’ Janis said,
it’d make a wonderful flag. With a white background.’ Murdy pointed to the stars. ‘Oh you silly old
nationalist!’ she said, shaking him till he laughed. ‘Let’s bring out some rugs.’
They came down the passage naked. At the back door, she stopped. He checked. She thought
of prisoners, afraid to leave their gaol. The house was hot, the leaves rustled. Passing the pillows
to the already laden Murdy, she stepped to the middle of the verandah. The house had an ambience and a limit, like a parent wanting to release its children. He went to the edge, encouraging,
but waiting for her step. Taking his arm, she pulled him off the edge, trailing blankets on the grass.
She was swimming in the shaded air. He spread the blankets. She wondered when, in the history
of man, routine began. He felt her greater freedom. Dry air scraped their skin. On the level of the
grass, there was moisture; he mentioned it. ‘Water,’ she said. ‘Earth, air.’ He looked at the stars
allowed by city night. ‘Fire,’ she said triumphantly, producing the flower he’d forgotten. ‘We’ll need
a blanket over us,’ he said. ‘Mozzies.’
‘Don’t you ever stop planning?’
‘There was a mozzy in paradise,’ he said. ‘Two, I imagine, else how did we get so many?’ They
laughed. ‘Hold me hard,’ she said. Tucking in the edges of their dual personality with kisses that
softened his raw assertion, she saw how anxious he was to allay fear; in the smoked void that lay
on her eyes when she opened them in their lovemaking she could read the name he’d printed on
the stars: it said idealism, and she knew it for a shining veneer that the most precious, most vulnerable part of him needed. The smog and his embrace shielded her from the brilliant emptiness
of the star-void she saw at home, and, most terrifyingly, at Bruce’s property. There, the madness
of a Norman Marshall made the only sense; here, she thought, closing her eyes, the methods of
a scholar were enough to last for ever. At one remove from the severest challenge, richness and
comfort abounded. ‘Oh I feel like making love all night,’ she said. The man she loved, responding,
glowed with pride. ‘Why do people compare love to a flower?’ Janis said, ‘It’s the most visible part
of a mystical process,’ he said.
‘Is there any part of that process you reject?’ she said.
‘You know how many hang-ups I’ve got,’ he said. ‘But I try not to.’ Where was she heading?
She enfolded him with stretching fingers, charting the geology of his body through the skins and
pads of flesh. In an undiscovered swale beneath his arm, she tickled, ‘Ah!’ he cried, breath bursting
sharply, surrender absolute. ‘Murdy,’ she said anxiously: ‘Murdy Miller!’
Squeezing, he cried that he had hold of her, what was she frightened of? She relaxed. ‘It was
only a moment,’ she said. ‘You almost disappeared.’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘I forgot about myself. We’re a duality, we’re one person. You give to me, I give
to you, we become a cycle.’ She smiled at his comfort. ‘There’s no separation,’ he said, ‘It’s the
most enormous, most simple thing I know.’
‘What would you call it?’ she said, looking at the emblematic stars.
‘Anything you like,’ he said. ‘Blending, re-creation. Stimulation, Merging. My grandfather ...’
he laughed.
‘What did your grandfather do?’
‘He spent years ... don’t laugh!’
She laughed. ‘You’re laughing, not me!’
‘He spent years trying to make a perpetual motion machine.’
She wanted to yell, she didn’t know if the noise came out but she felt convulsed. Momentarily
amazed, he caught her mood:
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‘His biggest one had iron balls rolling around on this wooden floor, all propped up on springs
...’
They laughed till their eyes were wet; he thought briefly of the children, and the neighbors.
‘ ... it was supposed to go on for ever but it stopped after seven hours and forty minutes!’
They fell apart in a tangle of mucked up blankets. Shaking with amusement, trying to get their
blankets together, they fumbled towards embracing. A mosquito whined like a distant siren: Janis,
in hysterics of laughter, smacked the pillow within a whisker of his ear. ‘Steady!’ he said. ‘Let’s get
under the blanket. Don’t blaze away in the dark like that.’
‘Let’s go inside darling,’ she said. ‘I love you I love you I love you.’
Christie found a man who wanted to love her. At a party, in the hills above the city. He was a
Danish singer who spoke little English. When she arrived, he was singing Mahler’s Drinking Song
of the Earth’s Misery, accompanied by a huge grey-haired woman wearing a man’s dinnersuit. The
applause was real, though after a few more items, most of the people became more interested in
drinking. People pressed wine on him, and on Christie; they even quoted the song. The Dane felt
that Christie alone realised that the drunkenness of the poem meant a transported state. She said
to him, half by signs, that three glasses of wine made her tipsy, and she didn’t like it. He smiled.
She felt awkward that she had nothing to say, she turned her glass. He hummed the first two lines
of the song. ‘Sing,’ Christie invited. He shook his head, and beckoned Dinnersuit. He said several
sentences in rapid German. Christie inquired. Dinnersuit said, ‘He wants to know who you are?’
He’d said so much more. Christie asked how long he was to be in Australia. Grasping, the
Dane said he would be gone in three weeks. It seemed pointless. He hummed another line. She
felt exasperated. Dinnersuit said they should go on the balcony, the others were becoming noisy.
The lights of the city spread wide beneath them. He pronounced Adelaide in the German way. He
asked her if she had seen Berlin. Copenhagen? Paris? Vienna? He made her tell him what she’d
seen. Dinnersuit translated. Christie felt she was like an old procuress, and slipped away.
She’d adored Vienna, as compressed and outlined under snow as she felt opened and distorted
by the heat. Someone asked her if they could take her to the cricket! She felt she was in a big village where people went to things because they were the only things to do. Someone who managed
to get her to hold a glass of red offered to take her to the Barossa Valley. She decided it was time
to go back to her hotel. She was looking for the phone to ring a taxi when Dinnersuit approached
her. The Dane, she said, was upset that she’d left him. Christie waved her away. She had her finger
on the number when the singer came to her, humming. Annoyed to be part of such a silly game,
Christie went ahead with phoning. They told her thirty minutes when they heard she was in the
hills. ‘Can’t you make it faster?’ she demanded.
When she got up from the phone, he was pulling things out of his pockets. It seemed that he
collected keys! ‘My son would be interested in these,’ she said, trying to reduce him. He named
cities as he put them before her, For the plainest of them all, he said Helsingor. ‘You live there?’
she asked. He nodded.
‘Geburt,’ he said.
‘Have you lived there all your life?’
He shook his head. Puzzled, she looked at him. He reeled off a list of cities. ‘Suitcase,’ he tried
to explain; she saw how desperately lonely he was. ‘Why do you collect keys?’ she asked. Saying
nothing, he put them, one after the other, in her hand. ‘This one’s exquisite,’ she said; it had two
golden figures that spun inside the circle of the grip. He nodded. ‘Koblenz,’ he said. She found
him less ridiculous. ‘I loved the Rhine,’ she said. ‘I thought it was heaven.’ He put a heavy one in
her hand. ‘Koln,’ he said.
Cologne had struck her as an ugly city, but he showed her that the handle was engraved with
three monkeys, hands clasped over their eyes, lips, ears. ‘I expect ...’ he said: ‘... one thinks ...’ A
severe grin took over his search for the subjunctive; he gave a stage version of discrete coughing.
She studied him; ‘Does it come from a brothel?’ she said. He waved his hand vigorously in front of
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his chest, denying the association for himself, but said of the key, which he pushed quickly in his
pocket: ‘One thinks ... perhaps ...’ She began to think him pathetic. ‘Ein Affe ist’s!’* she said. The
tenor was delighted with her. Looking towards the window, he whispered Mahler’s characterisation
of the ape. It was, she felt, his deepest identification with the song, as if he could sing but not live.
The negation she felt in the man touched her deeply. ‘Get me a glass of wine,’ she said, looking at
her watch. He came back with two tiny flutes of Cointreau, which he held to himself like a waiter
expecting his guest to move. He’s more desperate than I am, thought Christie, letting him take her
to the balcony. He paused before the lights, as if offering them.
‘Adelaide,’ she said drily. ‘Hot as hell.’ He balanced the glasses on the rail, she felt a movement would send them tumbling. ‘I love cointreau,’ she said. ‘My husband bought me some for
Christmas but we never seem to drink it.’ He appeared not to understand. She wondered why he’d
never learned English; perhaps he thought there was nothing worth singing in the language. They
were like two cripples, side by side; he was obviously yearning to get something from her. She was
relieved when he began. ‘Ein sehr englische Grad ... a city very British?’ She sniggered. He was
asking her to condemn much more than Adelaide; her whole position in life, and his. Having put it
to her, he became more confident. ‘Drink now,’ he said, lifting his glass. ‘No,’ she said, leaving the
other there. ‘I’d better wait at the front for my taxi.’
Mrs Miller woke before her husband, who’d been noisy in his dream. He was so slow, tossing and
turning, to come out of it, that she snapped on her light. He sat up, unable to see what the room
contained. ‘Beside you, Bernard,’ she directed. ‘Don’t knock over your glass.’
Resuming his spectacles and sipping his water, Mr Miller localised himself in a room heavy
with age. He started to talk about his dream. His wife, displeased, offered to bring the Herald; she
wouldn’t mind, she said, if he composed himself by reading. ‘Una fell on the floor,’ he tried to tell
her, ‘but it was piled high with oats, and she was sinking into them. I yelled out to her …’
‘That’s what woke me,’ his wife said shortly,
‘... I said it wasn’t quicksand, and if she just put up an arm I’d grab her.’
‘I’m sure you would have.’ Mrs Miller disliked the topic.
‘But she wouldn’t! I kept calling, but she crossed her arms and refused to budge.’ Her husband
was more alarmed than she’d seen him in forty-five years of marriage.
‘What did you do?’
‘Dreams are funny things,’ said Mr Miller. ‘When she wouldn’t answer, I got in a boat and went
fishing. I kept hooking these boxes of John Bull rolled oats. I had such a stack they were sinking
the boat.’
‘Poor Una,’ said Mrs Miller, hoping it was appropriate.
‘She started to call for me,’ said her husband, ‘but I’d lost interest. I was determined to get so
many boxes of oats on my boat that it would sink ...’
‘And did it?’
‘It did,’ he said, ‘but the funny thing was, it wouldn’t go down. It was resting on Una’s head,
and it just wouldn’t sink. I could hear her laughing. She was stopping my boat from going down.’
‘There are people who might explain it to you,’ his wife said, ‘but I’m not one. I’ll get your
paper!’
When they had re-established themselves, the clock showing 2.04, she decided to use the
time by checking the seating of guests for the Brotherhood Christmas party. Mr Miller, still upset
by the dream, made light of instability in the Middle East. ‘What are you doing?’ he suddenly
demanded.
In euphemistic phrases, she told him.
‘Going to unload the old girl?’ he asked, brutal as the hour.
‘She has given us many years of wonderful service ...’ Mrs Miller began: ‘I think I’ll be able to
sleep now,’ said her husband, having scored by stinging her.
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‘I don’t know that I will,’ said Mrs Miller, observing that a photo of her grandchildren had
become dusty. ‘Are you starting your usual attacks on charitable work? If so, you needn’t bother,
I’m sure you won’t be saying anything I haven’t heard a hundred times before!’
‘No doubt you have,’ said her husband. ‘Is it any wonder I keep saying the same things? You
don’t change whatever I say!’
‘Some people,’ said his wife, ‘would see that as a reason to give up. People can’t suddenly
change their ways. Many years ago I developed a commitment to this work. I’m not going to give
up while there are poor people, homeless people, and needy people of all sorts in this city tonight!’
As he turned to the soft corner of his pillow, the Herald slithered to the floor. ‘Good night Bernard,’
said Mrs Miller tetchily. ‘If you have trouble getting back to sleep, you could have a whisky and
try the bed in ...’
Una had been last to use the spare room; for years it had been ‘Una’s room’.
‘No thanks,’ said Mr Miller. ‘I’ll stay right where I am!’
Bruce hardly slept, the night before Janis was due. He was the council’s main bastion against madness, and he lacked support. His wife got plenty from Murdy, and he ...
... was shit-scared of being compromised in a fight with the drug people. Bert Marshall, commanding three to five votes, would be dangerously ambivalent. He’d destroy any number of people
to destroy Bruce, who knew too much about him and his son. Country fucking towns, thought
Bruce, wondering how long after Janis came back she’d allow him to touch her. When the phone
rang, he leapt out of bed.
It was a mis-connection, he’d told Telecom twice already.
Nerves jangling, he felt inadequate to bring up children; he wanted Janis home. Groping up
the passage, he checked Jennifer’s breathing. Steady as a river.
Some consolation, he thought, squirming alone in bed. He half expected a knock from Norman
Marshall: that would be the end!
He was scoffing muesli, the following morning, when he heard the door rapped; Norman
Marshall caught him unshaven, jumpy, and needing another hour of sleep.
‘Norman!’ said Bruce loudly, as if the statement would send the boy away.
‘Can I come in?’ said the councillor’s mysterious son. ‘You might as well come in as stand
where everyone can see you,’ Bruce said.
He offered Norman breakfast. To his surprise, Norman said he’d have anything that was
going.
Bruce made an omelette. ‘Just parsley and tomato,’ he apologised. Norman scoffed it.
‘Another?’ said Bruce, pouring tea.
Norman accepted it like mother’s milk.
‘Been out?’ Bruce asked, looking for the reason.
Norman nodded.
‘All night?’
Norman nodded.
‘Dad worrying you?’
Norman nodded.
Something occurred to Bruce. ‘Your dad got shares in Skyline?’
Norman nodded.
‘Interesting,’ Bruce hinted.
‘Very,’ Norman said.
‘The old bastard,’ Bruce said. Norman smiled.
‘How will I know when something’s ready to move?’ Bruce asked.
‘Remember that old subdivision plan?’ Norman put to him.
‘Of course I do.’
‘It should start there,’ said Bert Marshall’s son.
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‘You don’t like drugs, do you?’
The boy shook his head.
‘I don’t either,’ said Bruce. ‘Of any kind.’ He studied the abnormal boy. ‘Have you noticed
those old buses at Skyline?’
Norman nodded.
‘Tell me what you saw.’
‘They’re on blocks,’ said Norman, ‘but they’re still registered.’
Bruce nodded. ‘I noticed that. What do you think it means?’
Norman smiled.
‘I agree,’ said Bruce. ‘I’ll tell you something ...’
Norman felt involved.
‘I’m making a call today to the National Herbarium. I need to find out more about marijuana.
I know lots of people who smoke it, and I don’t even know when it’s harvested.’
The boy stood up. ‘Have another cup of tea,’ Bruce urged. Norman shook his head. ‘It’s a
bastard being on your own,’ Bruce said. Norman’s brow revealed lines of frustration. Seeing him
out the door, Bruce felt strangely confident. ‘I think we’ve got this one covered,’ he told his visitor. Norman was barely beyond the hedge when Bruce heard his daughter: ‘What have you got
covered, dad?’
Tucking his dressing gown around him, Bruce went to Jennifer’s door. ‘You know how worried
I was, when we were driving around?’
‘Will I ever forget?’
Projecting himself triumphantly, he said, ‘I think I’ve got that one beaten!’
‘Big deal, dad,’ said his daughter. Laughing, he said, ‘I need a bit more sleep. When you get
up, wake me, would you?’
He was still confident, though tense, when he met his wife at Wangaratta. She felt he was only
interested in Marina. He asked after Murdy, and what they’d done; she said his interest wasn’t
genuine. ‘I know you too well,’ said Janis. ‘There’s something you aren’t saying. Did some woman
knock you back?’
The old tensions joined the new ones. ‘Jesus I don’t know how I manage,’ he said. She said
he was trying to provoke an argument so he could walk out. He said he had no trouble accepting
her back, he was pleased to see her, but maybe she hated to be home; was that why she wanted to
pick a fight?
Marina cried when they got in the Saab. Bruce said Janis had been rough in doing up the straps
of the car seat. Janis said the child could feel the tension. ‘It’s more than just you and I,’ Bruce
said, ‘I’d better fill you in.’
Janis said Bruce was trying to be a big crimebuster, and he was a fool. He should tell everything
he knew to the police and keep out of it. ‘Our area, and our community,’ said Bruce, heading for
home, ‘are very important to me. I feel I’m responsible. I’m not the only person responsible, but I
can’t unload my share. And I won’t.’
Though she disputed this, she noticed a growth in him; when she asked if he’d heard of Gina,
he seemed concerned only to protect her. ‘I dropped her a note,’ he said. ‘Told her she’d always be
welcome if she wanted to stay with us ...’
Janis said she wasn’t sure she could handle that, but was secretly pleased ...
‘... but that things might get tricky for a while in this area.’ Janis felt a wrenching; she only
wanted a quiet life, she told her husband. ‘Hopefully we’ll get it,’ Bruce said. ‘If we handle this
properly it’ll never get off the ground.’
Janis wrote Murdy a letter full of yearning; he asked her to come down in three weeks, when
Christie would be in Sydney. She longed to go, but it needed careful handling. Bruce, she noticed,
was extremely watchful; he talked about minor abnormalities at work, and glanced at his watch if
they passed vehicles he didn’t know. One day, on the way to his property, he stopped to inspect an
old wooden bridge; he seemed delighted to discover some rotting poles. ‘The allocation’s spent for
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this year,’ he said with satisfaction, ‘and I don’t see it getting on the estimates for two more years at
least!’ Janis wanted to know why that was good, but he appeared to put her off: ‘It means no heavy
traffic can come out our way for a long long time.’ In her next letter to Murdy she wrote:
I wish I could pull up the drawbridge, let down a huge iron door, and live behind it with the people
I love — you, Bruce, Harry, it’s quite impossible, we’d end up hating each other, but I can’t bear the way
evil things are insinuating themselves into my life. It’s completely out of control. Bruce is at a meeting
tonight, the children are asleep, and I feel utterly alone. I remember you creeping down the passage to
check the kids and I wish I was with you. I do get the security I don’t get here; it seems there’s now less
chance than ever ...
He wanted to enfold her, her way of coming to him was so complete, whereas Christie arrived
back from Adelaide more self-contained than ever. Her spontaneity had gone; she seemed to be
maintaining judgment at some distance behind her senses. Murdy thought of a kernel drying out
within its shell. He told her he was better at giving love since he’d had Janis, he wanted to share
this capacity with her; her eyes told him he was unregenerate and impossible.
So he went ahead with arrangements, and Janis came down while Christie was away. The children were excited by their mum’s sleeper on the overnight train; while they were opening and shutting everything, Christie told her husband: ‘Enjoy yourself. Give my love to Janis.’ It was generous,
but the distance between them was frightening. He hated to think of her sleeping and waking in a
compartment no bigger than a cage.
Harry, deciding that gardens were among those things that should not be studied from above, took
the lift. He told Mrs Coad he wanted a cool green shade to work in. ‘I wear one of those when I
play tennis,’ I she told him; Harry smiled.
On the tram, he felt assailed by light; he imagined waves of it invading the city. Everything that
moved had dialogue with wind and light. He felt it was worth a poem, but pushed the thought
aside, he had to check his plan for a chain of supermarkets against the client’s brief. Another test,
only half-admitted, was to find how much of his composure had been regained since he’d been an
object of attack. Isolated, and wanting it that way, he felt he’d rebuilt himself.
Walking by the river, he went through the brief by memory. Entering the garden at the gate
nearest to the city, he found a seat and checked his papers. His recall was correct at every point.
From the brief, he set up his principles of design, with alternatives at every point. Deciding that
he’d made no fundamental errors, he looked for a shelter: the wind had become troublesome to
his papers, and the light harder.
Guilfoyle’s Temple of the Winds was too exposed, he walked to the lake, thinking of Janis;
until about three months after the birth of Marina, she used to ring him; there would be dreadful silences in which she tried to catch some inkling that he’d changed his mind. She never rang
now; he wished he had her courage. The child, he thought, was the only good thing to come out of
that mixed up time. He studied the rockface with the directors’ names: there they were — Arthur,
Dallachy, Mueller, right up to the last one: 1971 — He’ll have his blank filled in one day, Harry
thought, and so will all of us; an irritation swept him, perhaps his job was less than perfect?
He found a shelter, and tackled his plan. What could go wrong? How did it look if you were
the girl on the check-out? The carrier, delivering goods? The order clerks? The accountants, trying
to read their cash flow?
Customers? Directors? The guys that did the tax return?
Satisfied, he closed his bag. If I were a different person, he thought, would I produce a different
solution? He ran people through his mind. Brother Lawrence. Could anyone find out what they
weren’t supposed to know? McKersie. Could some idiot misrepresent it to a user? Barb ...?
She challenged the whole thing. She’d rip down big stores and plant their carparks with
orchards — or that was how she used to be. Nowadays, when she dropped off Nicholas, she never
came in; hardly spoke, in fact.
247
Barb was a casualty of the times. There were plenty, but she was closest to him. She was the
best statistician he’d ever encountered, and she bummed around with fishermen. What a fall! She
was so determined not to let anybody use her that she couldn’t make anything of herself ...
He put her out of his mind; the gardens were too enjoyable for rehashing his marital flop. He
strolled along the high walk; the Governor’s flag was flying in the breeze, so the old boy was home.
The oak outside the director’s gate, planted when Guilfoyle got the job, had been reclassified from
mirbeckii to canariensis. He assumed Murdy knew. He strolled through the Oak Lawn, noting the
bougainvillea in flower. Guilfoyle had triumphed. Melbourne had got its beauty spot. The only
biography of Guilfoyle was by a later director of the gardens. How inevitable that an academic
should take up the cudgels for the man who’d lost; there was such a woebegone romanticism about
the Australian scholar ...
Musing thus, as he passed through the Nareeb gate, intent upon a tram, he noticed a dero
sprawled across the path. A bottle had rolled out of reach. Dero only groaned, but Harry felt bound
to approach him. He began by picking up the bottle. ‘Don’t chuck it away,’ said the dero. ‘Give it
here!’
‘It’s empty,’ said Harry. ‘Give us a look at you!’
‘Get fucked,’ said the dero. ‘It’s not empty. It was half full, and ... it rolled out of my reach.’
‘My friend,’ said Harry, ‘there’s not a drop in it. You must have sucked it dry?’
‘That’s my mother’s tit you’re talkin’ about,’ said the dero. ‘Didya ever meet me mother?’
‘I never had the pleasure,’ said Harry looking around. ‘My mum had big tits,’ said the dero.
Harry spotted the Botanical Hotel. ‘Ooooaaaoowww, big tits,’ said Dero. ‘Youda loved her!’
‘Probably,’ said Harry. ‘Hang on a minute.’ ‘You’re not leavin’ me ya cunt!’ said Dero. ‘Dontcha
wanta have a conversation?’
‘Back in a minute,’ said Harry tightly. He crossed the road. The Botanical was noisy at lunchtime; he chose to enter the bottle shop. He was prepared to make a scene if they didn’t give him
a room. He rang the bell twice. Nothing happened. He studied the bottles — Coonawarra: St.
Emilion: Liebfraumilch: some concoction called Sweet Rose. He rang again and nothing happened. Angry at having to beg, he put his bag on the counter and walked out. Crossing the road,
it occurred to him that he had copies of only some of the documents in the bag; the job would be
worth twenty million dollars, if his plan set the pattern.
He would have gone back, but a tram stopped behind him. He dragged the dero off his path,
kicked the bottle, and lugged him, as gently as he could, across the road. This time, when he
pressed the bell, he got service. It was Barbara.
Slyly, licking her dry lips as if they’d been painted with success, she inquired, ‘Who’s your
mate?’
‘I want a room,’ he said. ‘Hello Barb.’
‘An unexpected difficulty,’ she said. ‘I don’t think we have any.’ ‘Your room will do,’ he said. ‘I
suppose you live here?’ ‘I don’t,’ she said. ‘I’m getting to know the place before I take over. You’ll
have to take him back to your place. He’ll foul things up a bit, won’t he?’ She was positively exultant.
‘Christ, Barb,’ he said. ‘Look at him!’ The dero, whose age was uncertain, had sores erupting
at the base of his facial hairs; his smelly gabardine had stains around the pockets, and a smell of
piss emanated from the wet material in his crutch. ‘I’m looking at him,’ Barb said. ‘I see him every
day. What are you going to do, Harry?’
‘Give him a bath, shave him. Get him some decent clothes. Put something on his skin. Christ
knows what we’ll see when we rip these things off!’
She taunted him. ‘I could tell you Harry.’
‘Is there a room?’
‘There’s a bath,’ she said. ‘He’s been in it before.’
‘He’s been here before?’
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‘People become very anguished,’ she said. ‘Every couple of weeks, according to the people
who’re selling this place.’
‘Are you some Madam Defarge?’ he said. ‘Sitting here and judging everyone, watching how
they behave?’ ‘That’s right, Harry,’ she said. ‘Sorry if it makes you uncomfortable.’
‘Poor bastard’s dying for a drink,’ he said. ‘Get him something!’ She put a bottle of Mildara
sherry on the counter. ‘Two dollars ninety-five,’ she said.
‘Make him a cup of tea,’ he shouted. ‘Let him sleep in a decent bed. Get some food inside
him!’
‘Harry encounters his conscience,’ said Barb. ‘The sherry is two ninety-five. Hurry up, I’m
needed in the bar.’
‘You fucking bitch!’ Suddenly she was gone. Dero had slumped to the floor. Harry picked him
up; it needed two hands and there was still the bag. He banged the bell. Barb came back.
‘I’m taking him upstairs,’ he said. ‘Mind that bag. It’s worth twenty million.’
Barb’s contempt was so deep that she didn’t even react. Dropping it under the counter, she
turned her back.
The piss, the grease and the dirt on the man’s whiskers were getting on his clothes, but he
lugged him up the stairs. He found a bathroom, put in the plug, and tested the water while it filled.
It took minutes, but in the end, there was no avoiding it; he had to rip off the poor bastard’s clothes.
‘Barb!’ he called, when he’d lowered him in the water, and strangely enough, he felt certain she was
near. ‘We’re going to need clothes. And antiseptic ointment. And some sort of shoes. Toothbrush.
Shaving cream. A razor. What have you got?’
‘My dear Harry,’ said Barb, ‘I’ve got none of those things. You’d better go and get them. And
if he passes out while you’re away, and drowns in this tub you’ve filled, will you expect me to give
evidence at the inquest?’
Harry let out some water. ‘Bitch,’ he said, running down two stairs at a time.
Barb came in while he was away. ‘Hi Jack,’ she said to the dero in the bath.
‘Hi Barb,’ he said. ‘He’s trying’ hard, this feller.’
‘He’s the biggest bastard unhung,’ she said, ‘but he’s going to do something for you, yes.’
‘He’ll set me up with a cask, I reckon.’
‘He might. He won’t come back a second time.’
‘They never come back, Barb.’
‘You’re a lesson they have to forget.’
As he lay moaning in the bath, she went downstairs to the ad-men, estate agents, actors,
Melbourne Grammar teachers, and alkies from the gardens. The boys without a job. ‘Hi Barb,’ they
greeted her. Lizard-like, she filled their glasses, waiting for them to change. When she heard Harry
on the stairs, she followed him. She watched him shave the man; his fingers were deft, she had to
admit. He washed Jack’s hair without having to be prompted. ‘What did you get for his skin?’ said
Barb, looking at the stuff he’d bought. ‘Hibitane?’ she said. ‘Is that all?’
‘It’s an antiseptic. What else?’
‘What about the scabies, Harry? Around the wrist. Behind the knees. Didn’t you notice?’
He looked crestfallen. ‘Mind you don’t get’em off me,’ Jack said. Barb got a bottle from a
cabinet. ‘Benzyl benzoate,’ she said. ‘In case you ever do this again. Hop out and dry yourself Jack,
if you can.’
Harry felt reduced, deferential. ‘I’ll put it on if you like.’ She gave him the bottle, and a roll of
cottonwool. ‘Does this happen often?’ he asked.
She put the question back to him. ‘It’d be the first time ever, wouldn’t it?’ She knew she was
right.
When they’d treated his skin, Barb said, ‘You’d better put your clothes on Jack. It’s time you
were on your way.’ Harry felt aggrieved. ‘He’s not putting those back on. He needs a meal and
sleep.’
‘And after that?’
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‘There’s no answer to that, is there.’
‘You could pay for his board, Harry. Get him a job. Or you could buy him a bottle of sherry
and I’ll kick him out.’
‘I can hardly adopt the man,’ he said.
‘No, you’ll pull out pretty soon. I’m interested to see just when and how you do it.’ She put
the scabies lotion away, letting Harry sweat. ‘I’m not feeding him in the dining room, he can eat in
the bar. But he’ll need some clothes.’
Jack did a little dance in his towel.
‘Where’s a shop?’
‘Anywhere in Toorak Road,’ she said. ‘Dozens of shops, just walk along ...’
Acutely discomfited, he refused hate.
‘Oh, you mean an Op Shop, Harry?’
He said nothing.
‘There’s one at______, though I don’t know if they take Bankcard. I doubt if their customers
have them.’
Despite the impossibility of his position, he hung on. ‘I’ve only got a tram fare and a Bankcard
in my pocket. Not even a cheque book, I’m afraid.’
‘Then your capacity for helping people is rather limited.’
‘Are you trying to force me to borrow from you, is that it?’
‘I wouldn’t lend you a cent Harry if you were stretched out with an empty sherry bottle.’ She
smiled.
‘So, in the end, you’ve only got hatred to offer?’
‘I don’t hate Jack,’ she said. ‘He’s hungry and he needs a decent sleep.’
‘Let’s have a look at you Jack,’ he said, giving in. ‘You’d be about my size ...’
‘Nothing too trendy,’ said Barb sarcastically. ‘Something for all seasons, I’d suggest.’
When he came back from L’homme and Mr Winston’s, he was met at the door by Barb. ‘Here’s
his clothes,’ she said, exchanging parcels. ‘When you’ve had them washed, bring them back. He’d
probably prefer them to this stuff.’ She jiggled the glossy bags.
‘What about his lunch?’ he asked.
‘Do you want to join him?’
‘It’s time I got back to the office.’ He knew he’d touched rock bottom.
‘I’m not paying for it Harry.’
‘I’ll owe it to you.’
‘And the room?’
He nodded. ‘Of course. And a bottle of Rio Vista sherry.’
He felt her hatred swelling. ‘Will you be along to pick him up?’ she said.
‘I’ll see how I feel.’
‘I’ve double-wrapped his things,’ she said. ‘You shouldn’t stink too much.’
He met Anne in Collins Street, coming out of a bookshop. ‘Hello Harry,’ she said, with snaky
ambivalence. ‘What have you got wrapped in newspaper?’
‘The burden of my sins,’ said Harry. ‘I’ll show you.’ He tore open Barb’s parcel. ‘One gabardine
coat, circa 1950. Two shoes, if you’d call them that. Trousers, sodden with piss ...’
‘Quite a find, Harry. Where did you get them?’
‘According to my former wife, they belong to an alter ego. She’s determined I should pay a
price for being what I am.’
‘Wrong,’ said Anne. ‘It’s someone else who has to pay the price. That’s how our system works,
didn’t you know that Harry?’
‘I’ve known it for years,’ said Harry. ‘It’s interesting that people who are themselves very comfortable want to rub my nose in the shit.’
‘A displacement mechanism does work,’ said Anne, ‘that’s true. What are you going to do with
the clothes?’
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He spotted a rubbish bin, with a cop standing next to it. ‘Get rid of them,’ he said. Noisily he
crammed paper, boots, trousers and the rest of it in the bin; the policeman eyed him curiously. ‘I’ll
change my own clothes shortly,’ said an embarrassed Harry, and then: ‘Fuck!’
‘What’s wrong now,’ said Anne.
‘I’ve left my case at a pub in South Yarra. Quick, where’s a taxi?’
‘Aren’t there any rubbish bins in South Yarra?’ said Anne, with demonic sweetness. ‘You carried
those things a long way.’
‘Could you lend me a few dollars?’ he said. ‘I don’t have any cash.’
She opened her bag and gave him ten.
‘How’ll I give it back to you? Are you still at the same address?’
She told him about her house.
‘A good idea,’ he said. ‘Excuse me, I’d better dash.’
The policeman, watching him clamber into a taxi, said to Anne, ‘He often do that?’ He nodded
at the clothes.
‘No,’ she said, ‘and I don’t think he’ll be doing it again.’
‘He looked a pretty trendy character,’ said the cop, still curious.
‘Computer wizard,’ said Anne. ‘Top man at IBM.’
The cop eyed the bin doubtfully. ‘What sort of trouble’s he in?’
‘The same trouble as all of us,’ said Anne, studying his reaction.
‘What’s that?’
‘Major personality splits. Psychological deformities.’ He couldn’t fathom the glee with which
she spoke. ‘Speak for yourself!’ said the cop, feeling uneasy.
‘When you did your training, did any of the cadets crack up?’
‘Four of em,’ he said. ‘Funny you mention it. Went back home. Three of them was from
Warracknabeal, all they wanted to do was get away from home, then they went back.’
‘Puzzling, isn’t it?’ she said, trying to enchant him.
‘Weird, actually.’
‘How’s your boss? Your superintendent?’
She saw him caught between smouldering hatred and a refusal to gossip outside the force.
‘What are you tryin’ to get at?’
‘Have you worked out,’ she said, ‘the moment when someone feeling threatened becomes
aggressive?’
Clenching his fist, he said, ‘I can see it in their eyes!’
‘Do you needle them?’
‘Sometimes,’ he admitted.
‘Then you know what I’m talking about,’ she said.
‘Hang on,’ he said, ‘Come ‘ere, what’re you tryin’ to tell me?’
But she was gone, and the cop, searching carefully through the rags stuffed in the bin by the
guy with curls, couldn’t find anything wrong. He tore the shoes to bits, thinking there might be
drugs, but there was only the memory of a conversation that had troubled him. What did she mean
by psychological deformities, and splits in the personality? She was an ugly bitch, anyway, probably
didn’t have a boyfriend!
She was reading essays that night when Harry rang the bell. She thought it was the ten dollars but he said he had to talk to her; Lawrence had been bashed up and was in hospital. ‘He kept
saying your name and saying you’d know,’ Harry said. ‘He’d been kicked in the throat, he could
hardly talk.’
Sickness and anger took Anne. ‘I want to visit him,’ she said. ‘I’ll tell you on the way.’
Barb was at the bedside when they got to Prince Henry’s. He had a trusting grip on her hand.
‘What do you know about this,’ she demanded. Anne told her about the bugging device, and the
people at the barbecue. Lawrence nodded. ‘Where’s this tape?’ Barb said. Lawrence used his hand
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to say that it was gone. He pointed weakly to a box of tissues by his bed, and looked at Anne with
a trace of humor in his eyes.
‘Gone too?’
He nodded.
Harry said, ‘What are we going to do?’
They conferred around his bed. Barb said he had to be kept out of trouble. She’d set him up in
the hotel she was buying, he could manage it and pay her off. Lawrence squeezed her hand doubtfully. Anne said that intimidation couldn’t be allowed to work, the bastards had to be exposed.
Harry said it was no good getting a minor thug arrested, they’d have to hurt the top people in the
organisation. Lawrence nodded. ‘How?’ he whispered.
They didn’t know. When Harry drove Anne home, they noticed a window open. ‘Would you
come in with me,’ she said. ‘I think we’re meant to see that.’
At the front door they hesitated, ‘Can you get round the side of this house?’ Harry asked. ‘Let’s
go in the back.’
It meant going down a lane and shoving the log that held the back gate upright. ‘Was that light
on?’ said Harry.
‘I don’t think so. I’m not sure.’
They caught a scratching sound. ‘There’s something in the bin,’ said Harry. She took his arm,
then pulled her hand away. ‘There’s a brick on top,’ she said. ‘I didn’t put it there!’
Harry said he’d lift the lid, but she grabbed a mop from the gully trap, shoved the brick, and
flicked the lid off, expecting an explosion, or a snake. It was Eloise and Verity. Alarmed, they flew
into the house, scattering scraps of rubbish on the windowsill. ‘Very fucking lovely,’ Anne snarled.
‘That’s my warning, I suppose. It’s a wonder they weren’t killed.’
They searched the house. Nothing was damaged, but Harry suggested that Anne should sleep
in his spare room. She studied him as if he was setting a trap.
‘Why do you want me at your place, Harry? So you can make me admit I’m weak?’
He felt coldly exasperated. ‘You have to find a point of antagonism, don’t you.’
‘There usually is one.’
‘In this case, antagonism or no, I think you’d be safer somewhere else.’
‘What makes you think your place is safe, Harry?’
‘It’s thirteen floors up. Got all the usual security stuff.’ He knew it sounded hollow. ‘And I don’t
think they’ve heard of me.’
‘Lawrence says two of these people have bought into your ski lodge. Did you know that,
Harry?’
He eyed her suspiciously.
‘It makes sense. They’ve got quite a sophisticated organisation. They’ll get a lot of people in the
area on legitimate pretexts, and a few scattered around in organisations to monitor what people are
saying. They’ll know about you, Harry.’
He sat down. The cats took the arms of his chair. ‘They like you Harry,’ she said.
‘Lawrence will have to tell me who these people are, and then I’ll have to organise a little fright
for them.’
‘What’s the Becks’ number?’ she said. ‘I’ll have to let them know what’s happened.’
Janis felt terrified. When Murdy asked her to go away for a weekend in January, she wrote:
There’s nothing I’d rather do than be with you. I’d like to get out of this place for good. But Bruce
needs support. I feel there’s something horrible brewing. I love you, but it may take a long time till I feel
free of this. I hate this business but it’s got a grip on my life. It may change us. It is changing us. I don’t
feel free. It’s almost as if it would be frivolous to be away with you. Don’t feel hurt, you know how much
I love you ...
Murdy felt cut to the quick. He showed the letter to Christie, who said, ‘It’s up to you. I don’t
want to be brought into it.’ He talked with Anne, who wasn’t very interested in his feeling that
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the best of his love with Janis was behind him. ‘She’s quite right,’ Anne told him, ‘There’s more
important things to think about.’
Rhonda and Mrs Miller spent days on the Christmas party. Two hundred guests. Seven members
of staff to wait on tables. Four chefs and a team of old people who felt too awkward to sit down with
everyone else. The timing of the speeches. The ordering involved in two hundred half chickens, six
hundred slices of ham, a portion of stuffing to all, peas, potatos and tomatos with their different
intervals of cooking. Cutlery? Jugs of lemon cordial! Twenty plum puddings, each providing ten
serves, to flame simultaneously at the head of each table. The official guests to be served first so
they could start the speeches. Instant coffee. Tea. After dinner mints by courtesy of the manufacturers. Printed menus, with biros on hand for autographs. Rhonda and Mrs Miller were experts at
making people feel wanted. They had journalists and photographers lined up for Beth’s presentation; she’d have to take dismissal with good grace!
The husbands, Julius and Bernard, had to ferry their wives about. Pick up candles. Party hats
(Mr Miller winced). Paper serviettes from the donors. Mrs Miller wanted Bernard to sort out the
crockery so each table had more or less matching pieces, but he took himself off to the cricket, and
Julius, delegating the job to one of the old people, made it his business to talk with Beth Simpson
about retirement. She told him — and though there were a number of strangers about, she must
have known who he was — that she was going to refuse to retire. She was going to make a scene.
When the Director tried to make his presentation she was going to tell all the people who loved
her, and looked to her, and knew her for what she really was, that she was being forced out against
her will. She was going to expose what was being done to her and the people who were doing it.
Some of them, she said, were in very high places in the Brotherhood, and they were going to come
down with a crash! In front of photographers, reporters, the lot!
Rhonda refused to believe she’d do it. Julius said, ‘You’ll have to show her the instruments
of torture.’ Rhonda didn’t understand. Julius said they’d better photocopy some of the juiciest of
Beth’s poison pen letters and leave them on her desk. Rhonda didn’t want to do it; Beth would
know someone in the organisation had put them there. ‘On her desk,’ Julius insisted. ‘It’s too late
to post’em, she won’t get’em in time.’ Rhonda said it was all a fantasy of Beth’s, she wouldn’t dare
do it. She rang Mrs Miller who said the same. Since both of them had to speak at Beth’s farewell,
they couldn’t be a party to such a trick. ‘Okay,’ said Julius, ‘have it your own way. We won’t do it.
I’ll have another talk to her tomorrow and see if I can change her mind.’
The next day, about the time Mr Miller was settling in the Members’ Stand, Julius was memorising phrases from Beth’s letters. At morning tea, when the inmates decorating the hall had tottered frailly from their ladders, he asked her how she had managed to serve such people so loyally
and so long.
Pious Beth spoke of their needs, their troubles, and the rewards of gratitude that charity workers received. ‘Are you sure?’ said Julius.
She said she had proof positive in their smiles, the way they came to her room with their
troubles, their gifts, their Christmas cards ...
‘Could I see’em?’ Julius asked.
‘Of course,’ said Beth, ‘they’re all around my room.’
He disappeared. At afternoon teatime he sat next to Beth again. ‘Have you actually read every
one of those cards?’ he inquired. She said she just liked to put them around her room so her people,
when they came in, would see their card, and know that it was valued. ‘Giving people a sense of
their own worth is the essence of our work,’ she stated.
Wondering if his wife would forgive him if she ever found out, Julius leaned close to Beth and
whispered, ‘I had to burn a couple.’
Beth looked startled.
‘Just a couple,’ Julius said. ‘They looked okay but they had crazy messages written on the
inside.’
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‘What sort of crazy messages?’ she asked, lips twitching.
‘Dirty stuff. I wouldn’t want to tell you.’
She tried to tough it out. ‘There’s none of my people would ever write dirty things in my
Christmas card! They love me, they wouldn’t do anything like that! They couldn’t do it!’
‘Nice messages on the part you were meant to see,’ said Julius, ‘but if you unfolded the card
right out ... oh, they had some very sick things to say.’
‘Which cards? Who were they from?’ She was still fighting for her innocence.
‘I wouldn’t want you to know,’ he said. ‘That’s why I burned them. But there’ll be a couple of
people sitting here the day after tomorrow who’ve got two opinions of you. Remember that.’
‘Mr Mumford,’ she said savagely, ‘I know it already.’
‘Terrible things,’ he said, pretending to reflect. ‘I couldn’t make myself say them to a lady.’
‘I wouldn’t want you to say them,’ said a stricken Beth, ‘if they were as bad as you suggest.’
‘Really sick,’ he said. ‘Shakes your faith in people, doesn’t it? It’s a good time to get out, I’d
say.’
Rhonda and Mrs Miller were delighted with the way the Christmas party passed off. Beth spoke
simply and graciously of her years with the Brotherhood. The Director spoke glowingly of her
work. Twenty tables of old people in party hats applauded. Rhonda spoke of the gap between the
professional social worker and the people she served which could only be filled by someone with a
simple, giving heart. Mrs Miller recalled the many minor but profoundly appreciated acts of kindness Beth had performed down the years. She called on the gathering to sing ‘For she’s a jolly good
fellow’. Beth cried. The tables applauded. Mr Miller watched Chappell. Julius adjusted the sprinkler system in the glass house where he propagated cuttings for his sons to label and transplant into
pots. Christie and Murdy took the kids camping in the mountains. Harry and Barb, coolly hostile,
alternated visiting times at the hospital. Anne scrapped the first chapter of her thesis and started
again. Bruce and Janis quarrelled and made up. Serene, Anglo-Australian, the gardens lay in sun.
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20
From paths winding over Guilfoyle’s altered landscape, strollers regarded the flora of six continents.
Children fed ducks paddling by the forecourt of the kiosk. At the diagonally opposite corner of the
gardens, in the white herbarium, police brought marijuana for identification. Joggers pounded the
outside track. Lovers lay on the grass. The Governor’s flag flew from his tower. Transistors whispered the cricket score. Waves of distant applause linked Chappell’s cover drives with the rolling
lawns. A flame tree, bright as the faith of nuns, blazed at the entrance to the fern gully.
Under the huge Monterey cypress which Guilfoyle chose not to move from Mueller’s position,
a group of young people were picnicking. It was a group conscious of peer status; one affected trio
were trying to converse in French:
‘You speak French, don’t you Cheryl?’
‘Après moi, le déluge, plus de vin, s’il vous plaît!’
‘Si vous deviens ivre, mon amie, tu seras jetée dans le lac!’
‘Pas le lac! Pas le lac, au nom de Dieu!’
They had run out of phrases when three sailors from a French ship were observed on the high
walk at the Governor’s side of the garden. ‘Hey, matelots!’ cried the trio. ‘Eh, matelots, comment
vas-tu?’
The sailors, impeccable in white suits, with red tassels on their berets, waved, hoping for an
invitation, but the group was too self-centred to offer. A competitive man of perhaps twenty-four,
who sported an American twang, was hurling a watermelon in gridiron fashion; two or three young
men got up to join him. Bored women flung grapes at them. The watermelon, dropped clumsily by
one of the men who had given up French, splatted on the grass.
‘Ah, c’est pitoyable,’ said one of the two remaining French speakers. ‘C’est dommage,’ said the
other. Gridiron Twang was looking for a bin when the children of a Turkish man, who, with his
family, was crossing the lawn, cried out in English that they wanted to have the melon. Three or
four big pieces were given to them, and the rest was scooped into the rubbish. The Turk watched
the transaction suspiciously. His wife, four metres behind, watched his reaction. Nodding brusquely to the donors, the Turk led his family on.
‘Call him Mr Humus,’ said a young man dangling grapes in his mouth, ‘but don’t let him catch
you looking at his wife.’
‘Ross never looks at anyone but himself,’ said a young woman struggling with the cork of a
champagne magnum: ‘Will someone help me with this thing?’
When the cork was prised loose, it flew high in the air; a young man catching it rolled loosely
down the grass, like a cricketer. The group cheered ironically. The boy who made the catch bowed
to the others. A wave of clapping, biggest of the afternoon, rippled from cricket ground to the
gardens; Mr Miller, admiring the Australian captain, said to his neighbor, ‘A magnificent innings.
A real exhibition of strokeplay!’ Chappell doffed his cap. The scoreboard showed one hundred.
‘Waited for the right ball,’ whispered the thousands of transistors penetrating the air above the
ground, ‘and when it came, he cracked it through the covers, giving the fieldsmen no chance. He’s
given us a wonderful exhibition of driving this afternoon, I’d have to go back many years for something comparable, perhaps to the days of Bradman and Wally Hammond ...’
Mr Miller and his neighbor were displeased by the sight of a naked young man streaking to the
wicket where the century maker let him grasp his batting glove before the intruder, drawing shrieks
and hostile advice to get off the field, ran into the arms of the police. ‘That sort of thing’s got to be
stopped,’ said Mr Miller. ‘A few nights in the clink wouldn’t do him any harm.’
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‘Notice the way he jumped the wicket,’ said Mr Miller’s neighbor, ‘Legs apart! Wouldn’t want
to make a mistake, would you!’
Mr Miller agreed that the young man could have caused himself an injury, but he was more
interested in the continuation of Chappell’s innings; was a hundred enough, or would he pursue
a second century?
Chappell turned the next ball to fine leg; ambling through for the single, it seemed that he
could bat for years. ‘What part of the country are you from?’ said Mr Miller to his neighbor.
The man told him.
‘Know it well,’ said Mr Miller. ‘Years ago my father and I started a small irrigation scheme up
there. Place has gone ahead since then, of course.’
They discussed the area, Melbourne, weather. ‘I like a dry heat,’ said Mr Miller. ‘I’ve been to
plenty of tropical places, and you adjust of course, but I couldn’t live in them. No, this is the sort
of day that does me.’ The man sitting next to him agreed there couldn’t be a more perfect day for
cricket.
The dome of blue above the stadium contained only the sun and a helicopter. The grass had
been mown in circles. Names of players were draped like banners along the fence. The red palms
of the wicketkeeper’s gloves flashed when he moved. A popular batsman, coming to the wicket, was
greeted by a blast from a trumpet. Orange lights flashed on the scoreboard as fieldsmen gathered
the ball. The cricketers wore white hats; spectators in the outer wore caps of brightly coloured
towelling, or shaded themselves with newspapers. ‘Announcement, announcement,’ said an amplified voice. ‘Would Mr Dave Mulholland of Ulverstone please ring his home. The matter is urgent.
Would Mr Dave Mulholland of Ulverstone ...’
Mr Miller’s neighbor thought it would be frightening to be called away by such a message. Mr
Miller agreed. ‘Must be something wrong at home,’ he said solemnly. Chappell, beaten by a ball
that turned, swooshed at a fly. Radios carried this incident across the land. In hotels, hospitals,
parks, people listened. In shops selling TV, whole rows of Chappells adjusted their caps. In Prince
Henry’s hospital, a former employee of Wormald International Security half-listened while he
waited for his brother. A nurse had put her head in to say he might be going home in five or six
days. His throat being too sore to answer, he’d propped his pad on the cabinet for next time she
came in:
GOING HOME TO WHAT?
Should he take it down, or let Harry see it? If he hid his anguish, he could hardly blame his
brother for ignoring it. But if he put Harry to the test, and he failed, they’d both be worse than
ever. It was a no win situation, familiar territory for Lawrence. Finally he ripped it off and wrote
a word on the following sheet:
WELL?
When Harry came in at half past two, he took one look and said, ‘I could get you a job with
the company. Australia, America, anywhere in the world.’
Lawrence shook his head.
‘You’re too proud to let Barb give you that pub?’
Lawrence, wanting to cry, nodded.
‘Are you going to stay in that dirty trade you’re in?’
Lawrence gave a thumbs down sign.
‘We’ll have to go into business then.’ Lawrence cocked an eye. ‘You and I.’
Lawrence waggled his finger at the pad. Harry passed it to him. He wrote:
YOU LOSE ALL WAYS
Harry said, ‘You could run a pub for me.’ A grim Lawrence took his pad and pencil:
I DON’T MIND BEING BEATEN BUT I WON’T SEE YOU DRAGGED DOWN
AGAIN
His brother said, ‘That’s one hell of a problem. Do you mind if I think about it?’
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Lawrence dismissed him with good grace. Next, at seven o’clock, was the woman who’d have
spent a fortune on him. When she came in, Lawrence put a sheet in her hand:
JEWELS ARE FOR POLISHING DIRT’S FOR TREADING UNDERFOOT
Grieving for him, she kissed his discolored cheeks, his swollen lips, his limply fallen hands.
When he didn’t respond she pressed his hand between her breasts. Nothing worked. Quivering as
she felt her position fall apart, she said to him with all the intensity she could muster. ‘You feel low.
How low does this leave me?’ He lifted his hand like an acolyte of the Pope, and made a dollar sign
in the air. ‘No, Lawrence,’ she said to him, ‘No, no, no! Don’t let anybody in the world set your
value for you. It’s in you, believe in it!’
He waved a hand in front of himself. The dollar sign, he indicated, was for her. She had money,
she had no problem. He knew it wasn’t true, it was the next stage in his collapse. Cursing herself
for ever fighting him, she saw him falling into self-disgust. ‘Oh God,’ she said, ‘we were better as we
were!’ Lawrence nodded, wishing they could get back. ‘Can’t I give anyone anything?’ she cried. He
beckoned her, she pressed against him: against her tanned skin, he felt pale and chill. ‘It’s always
you that gets kicked,’ she said. ‘That’s what we’ve got to stop happening.’ He regarded her wanly,
thought of pencilling a message, but decided against: his eyes inquired what her next move would
be. ‘If I went off on my own now,’ she said, ‘I’d go like stone inside. I’ll buy the Botanical, and I’ll
become a tough old biddy with a heart of caramel ... ah, shit!’
He shook his head.
‘Well, what?’
He wrote:
FIND NEW PEOPLE FORGET US
He saw she wanted to agree. He added:
NO PUB PURIFY YOURSELF
‘How?’
He spread his hands as if he held the world. She laughed. ‘You think you’re bloody Jesus Christ,
don’t you?’ He wanted to laugh, he had to hold his throat. She touched the sorest part with her lips.
He knew she was going for ever. As she stepped back from his bed, he felt he was dying; she could
feel his silence holding her. Accepting that there was no return, she walked out without looking
back. The last he saw of her was the back of her crewcut against the sickly wall.
The next afternoon, when Harry was due, he prepared a sheet:
DON’T VISIT ME I’LL COME TO YOU WHEN I CAN
Harry looked at his brother. ‘Even if it’s years?’ Lawrence nodded. Harry said, ‘I’ll go then.
Thank you Lawrence.’ He walked from the spiritual presence of his brother feeling distinctly
inferior. That night he rang Anne Owen’s bell; Anne, catching a certain humility in her visitor,
questioned him suspiciously.
‘What brings you around, Harry?’
‘I’m begging.’
‘Oh yeah, Harry?’
‘There’s a working bee at the ski lodge next weekend. Would you come up with me?’
‘Haven’t got anyone to screw, Harry?’
‘I’m not asking for that. I want a bit of your courage.’
‘That’s a new one.’
‘My son Nicholas is coming.’
‘Then you won’t be lonely, will you.’
‘I want to convey a message to the people that bashed my brother.’
She considered him. ‘How are you going to do it?’
‘I’m going to take them for a walk, and make a foolish mistake.’
‘Are you going to lose them Harry?’
‘I’ll bring them home in my own good time.’
‘Where do I fit in?’
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He produced a map. ‘When we don’t get back and everyone starts looking for us, you’re going
to tell them where I said I was going to take them.’
‘I’m not doing it Harry. It’s crazy. Those guys’ll knock you off.’
‘I’ll do it myself then. I’ll leave Nicholas with someone here in Melbourne.’
‘Fuck it Harry, I’m not looking after your kid while you get these bastards lost! And I’m not
staggering round the bush all night in a search party that’s in the wrong place anyway.’
‘What do I do, then?’
‘Give up all idea of personal revenge. It’s very immature of you.’
‘You want me to swallow what they did to Lawrence?’
‘Worse things than that have been done to him.’
‘Such as?’
‘Living thirty something years in your shadow.’
‘He’s out of it now.’
‘Well, do your self-proving some other way.’
‘Will you come up anyway?’
‘Why?’
‘To restrain me.’
She was contemptuous. ‘Women’s role!. Soothe and support. Calm the man when he’s angry.
Fuck it, Harry, how dare you be so insulting.’
‘So I’m powerless?’
Angrily, pedantically, she said: ‘You are not powerless, Harry. You are very powerful in that
company. Your power comes from your position. Your position dictates what you will do with your
power. None of us can do what we like in our jobs. Systems are powerful. Individuals can do very
little outside the systems they operate. You need to learn your political alphabet, Harry.’
‘None of this is new,’ he said sourly.
‘Nothing in the world is new Harry, but people keep making discoveries. They haven’t noticed
what’s been under their nose, and usually because they didn’t want to notice! Most ignorance is
deliberate on someone’s part. People are kept ignorant of how their lives are manipulated and it
suits powerful interests to have it that way. And you think you’re going to be the heroic avenger by
getting two unfit crooks lost in the bush. Pathetic, Harry. Your position’s despicable!’
Harry rolled up the map. ‘Are you really against me as much as that?’
‘I’m against every crook in the world, and my god there’s enough of them. I’m against ignorance, and false consciousness and the bastards that promote it. I’m against swindles, lies, tradeoffs and weak shits that sell out a cause. Anything else?’
‘Are you against yourself?’
She wanted to break, but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. ‘Quite often. People who say they
want to be integrated usually mean they want to feel okay with the world around them. I don’t
want to feel okay with the world around me. It’s a lousy bloody world and as long as it stinks, I’m
not having any.’
‘Your integrity is costing you too much,’ he said. ‘You’ve got to find a way out of your position.’
‘You’re a woman-hater, Harry,’ she said. ‘Find your way out of that!’
‘According to your analysis, I have to wait till there’s a new system.’
‘You poor ossified bastard,’ she said. ‘Your idea of the future is a con-trick whereby you and
your masters exert their wills on the current political situation.’
‘The past’s all wrong too?’
‘Apart from a few little patches, it stinks!’
‘Human life stinks?’
‘It’s nasty, brutish, and short!’
‘Bravo, Hobbes!’
‘Sneer, Harry, it won’t change anything!’
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‘And it won’t change you?’
‘No.’
‘You won’t believe me, but I respect that.’
‘Very likely.’ She awaited his challenge.
‘One facet of my position’ he said, ‘is that we grow by taking in our opposites.’
‘Harry Hearn,’ she said, stepping back, ‘you are a liar. You’ve never done that.’
‘If you look at the women in my life, you’ll find it’s exactly true.’
‘Your life’s been lived in contempt of women.’
‘There are many ways to respect people,’ he said. ‘You can only see power relationships.’
‘Exactly,’ she said, ‘and that’s what everything’s about! But it shouldn’t be, and that’s what my
life’s about!’
‘Dedication,’ he said, ‘is a ramrod for one’s back. Can’t you exist without it?’
‘You slippery bastard,’ she said. ‘You got around me once.’
‘Never again,’ he mocked.
‘No, Harry,’ she said slowly. ‘Neither you nor anyone like you. How do you feel about that?’
‘Rejected,’ he said, mocking still.
‘Why don’t you get out?’ she suggested.
‘I was going,’ he said, smiling slyly.
He went to the working bee and watched the newcomers carefully. They were lean, ex counter
culture males with stylish women. He noted a few weaknesses for future use; it might be possible
to lose them on a cross country transit, but what would be the use? Anne’s analysis had broken
him down. If he couldn’t attack root causes he couldn’t do anything significant, and he had none
of her commitment. So he found himself at table with people he wanted to destroy, and explaining
plans for the alteration to men not fit to kiss his brother’s feet. The absurdity of his position pierced
him. On the Sunday morning, he made his excuses, packed Nicholas and his gear in the car, and
headed down to Bright.
Janis, expecting the Millers back from camping, was startled by the apparition of Harry outside her window. When he knocked, she didn’t want to go to the door, but Jennifer went out,
and Nicholas came in, and the visitors were linked with the house without her having to do anything. When Harry put his arms around her, she felt her tension doubling. She’d been expecting
reproachful, pressing Murdy with his demands, and here was the man to whom she’d fled when
she couldn’t bear Bruce’s link with Barbara. She looked for the Twinings tea, then grabbed the
Bushells; she was going to be defiant, Harry saw; he spoke calmly of what he’d been doing and the
people they knew. Janis, leaning against the sink, listened to the voice, not the information; it had
the texture of aluminium. It was his eyes, and the distance he kept from other people, that gave
him his mystery: and his absolute economy of movement. Jennifer showed him the book of maze
puzzles she’d got for Christmas. Harry leaned it on the sugar bowl and studied it without moving
his head. Something compelling in his silence brought Janis over. He reached in his pocket for a
finely sharpened 2H pencil and put a few faint lines on the page. ‘Join those up and you’ll have it,’
he told Jennifer, who said ‘Gosh, mum, look!’
The maze was a dark whirl, like a giant fingerprint, but there were caverns of white where
one path entered and five or six left. While Jennifer was proving Harry’s solution, Janis thought
of the dream that had troubled her lately: she was running through dark passages which opened
into gloomily lit rooms, full of doors. She would snatch one open and run in panic till she entered
another gloomily lit room full of doors. Night after night Bruce was waking her, asking if it was the
dream again, and trying to make her impose a meaning so she could control it. She would cling
to him, but refused to analyse; she said dreams were things the psyche had to work through in its
own way, and if they were terrifying, that couldn’t be helped, they were like an operation the brain
performed on itself. She was at her most open in such moments, and Bruce always wanted to make
love, and she would resist, not wanting her sexuality linked with terror. The sight of Harry calmly
explaining to Jennifer and Nicholas the principle on which the maze was built, and how they could
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work out the other mazes in the same way, unnerved her. He had no right to such power. She
feared the quiet touch he gave her when she brought his cup, feeling rebuked by the order of his
personality. When Bruce came home, she slipped out. She was walking down the side street that
led to her escape when she saw the Millers’ Renault, packrack piled, heading down the main road.
She could never cope with that combination of people in the house.
It was Jennifer who told them that mum had gone for a walk, and Bruce, growing restless when
she didn’t return after an hour, who suggested to Murdy that he should try to bring her back.
‘You know where she walks,’ he said. ‘She’ll be in that clearing, thinking we’re going to bite her.’
The two men joined in the shared opinion which Janis hated. Murdy followed her path from the
side street to the bush, and Bruce went back to the conversation about Kierkegaard that Christie
was having with Harry. Trying to catch up with the conversation, he found himself toying with the
maze book; it suddenly hit him that the one open before him was like Janis’s recurring dream. He
stood up. This was why she’d run away, events were no longer linear, they’d clustered. When Janis
was afraid, she helped the things she feared to happen. Putting his trust in Murdy, he sat down
and tried to listen.
Janis refused to sit in the clearing. The log where she’d read Harry’s letters, and Murdy’s letters, had the wrong feeling. She walked up a dry slope peopled by box trees to a rocky spine. Murdy
was no tracker, she knew he wouldn’t find her. His cooeeees rang melodiously through the bush;
distant from him, she felt affectionate, and ashamed of hurting. From whatever was wrong in his
relationship with Christie he could produce the security she wanted. His cooeeees rang melodiously through the bush; she smiled at him, city academic. She ate the apple she’d brought with her
and was tucking the core under a log when she realised someone was near her.
In blind terror she also knew who it was.
The Marshall boy seemed as fearful as she was. He had his head over a rock and was so still it
was hard to believe there was a body beneath his neck. ‘Come here, Norman,’ said Janis. The boy
came around. ‘You looked like a billygoat up there. You frightened me.’
‘Are you in trouble?’
‘I didn’t come here to meet you,’ she said.
‘I think you did,’ he said. ‘You know it’s my place.’
The tunnel dream came to her. She had run — but had she known where she was running?
Deeper instincts had a way of making themselves obeyed. ‘Sit beside me,’ she said. ‘I’m not going
to bite you.’
He sat close beside her. She felt he had no sexual experience. Unbuttoning his shirt, she played
with the down on his chest. She felt him quivering under her touch. ‘I don’t want to be seen,’ she
said. He looked towards the rocks; she led him to a space where they were hidden. She took off
his clothes, then her own; when she began to fondle him, his white semen splashed in her hand:
ashamed, he turned away. She said he wasn’t to worry, but he said his power had gone. ‘You’ll be
ready again in a minute,’ she told him, but he said: ‘No, my other power.’
She wiped her hand on his body, as if anointing him; he shuddered, but she held him against
her, caressing him, till he was ready again, and then she rode him in an excitement that flung aside
her terrors, her reason, her family and lovers, and placed her in a vortex of purest power. Sensing
a deeper terror if she evolved to a point where she depended on the boy, she climbed off, and
dressed, while he watched. ‘Get dressed now,’ she said: ‘Will you come back?’ he asked. ‘I may and
I may not,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I should.’
When she got back, there was a note on the kitchen table: ‘Gone out to the property for a
barbecue’ and the keys of the Saab lay beside it. For a moment she thought she’d been abandoned,
and then it seemed that the others had simply been realistic. She showered, and brushed her hair,
exulting in a sense of youth. She felt Christie’s gaze probing, when she reached the property, but
the men were unable to penetrate her mood. Bruce and Murdy were sullen, and Harry preferred
her detachment.
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The next time she saw Norman Marshall in the street, he was an uncouth mixture. He had a
sexual cockiness about him. He looked lustfully at her. And he looked ashamed. She’d pulled apart
the strange construction of his homegrown personality. She wanted, through him, to reach back
to the beauty and confusion of youth, but it would be dangerous, perhaps disgraceful, to continue
the thing. She ignored the boy, knowing he wouldn’t take it as an answer.
Bruce felt her restlessness, night after night. He invited people to dinner, was especially loving
with Marina, took the family for drives, trying not to mention council. He noticed that she got letters from Murdy, but rarely wrote back. She was reading very little. Sometimes when her tension
became too much for him, he suggested she go for a walk, but this idea was always greeted with a
shake of the head.
He called on the Millers, next time he was in Melbourne. Murdy was quite shocked to hear
that Janis hadn’t wanted to come down, and excused himself, saying he had to spend a few hours
in the library. As he backed the Renault down the drive, Bruce and Christie felt it was they who
were responsible for the two marriages and perhaps more. ‘There’s something brewing,’ Bruce told
Murdy’s wife. ‘She was like this before she latched onto Harry. All this tension builds up, and then
she makes a flying leap. I’m usually left quite staggered, with Janis sitting there smiling at me as if
to say, you can’t touch me now!’
‘I think she’s made the leap already,’ Christie said, remembering the altered Janis who joined
them at their barbecue. Bruce thought for a moment, then decided she was right:
‘So it’s happened. Fuck.’
Christie wanted to know. Bruce told her about Bert Marshall’s frustrated plans for subdivision,
and his links with a drug-farming organisation. ‘Janis couldn’t have picked a worse person to get
involved with,’ he said blackly. ‘Poor Janis,’ said Christie, surprised that people could make such
messes of their lives. ‘You’ll have to trick her out of it, by making her feel above it in some way. If
you show anger she’ll become defiant.’
‘I see you’ve got Janis worked out,’ Bruce said. ‘You know, there is no move I can make that will
have any effect. She knows them all and will deliberately do the opposite. If I say something, I’m
trying to boss her around. If I don’t talk, I’m punishing her with silence ... oh, Christ. Would you
...’ His face momentarily showed some hope. ‘Would you play that piece for me again? You played
it last time I was here. The one where the title was written after the music. Please?’
The first chords were like an ointment. The ten tripping steps down the keyboard opened up
a beauty Bruce had thought he’d never see again. As the chords — the temple columns, for Bruce
— came back, he felt he had enough strength to see it through. The ten graceful steps, repeated,
affected him so deeply he was glad they did not come again. ‘She wants her youth back,’ he said;
Christie paused for a second before going on. ‘I don’t want mine. I couldn’t live through the same
mistakes again. The tension, the times you make a fool of yourself.’ Christie, trying to maintain
delicacy with fullness of tone, was aware of his mood rather than his words. ‘Youth’s only good
if it hardens you into something useful. I’m sick of people thinking they can have it for ever. The
mob at Shawn’s sleeping around. Dragging themselves out of bed at midday to see if they can find
something happening … it’s just not good enough! She smiled at these words, knowing they were not
intended for her playing.
‘Something else?’ she said, when she’d finished.
‘I’d love it,’ said Bruce. ‘Thanks Christie.’
‘Is there anything you’d like me to play?’
‘Anything you want to. Anything at all.’
She played Bach. Once the opening bars had been announced, she felt that it was her own life
she was ordering with the eighteenth century phrases. Bruce’s movements in the chair suggested
that he was planning council tactics. Who to see at the ministry. Which ears he had to whisper in
to ensure that Marshall’s friends didn’t establish themselves in his area. She didn’t mind him using
the Bach as background music, he would soon be leaving their lives to re-establish himself, stronger
and starting to mature, in Bright. Even her husband, she felt, was being matured by his pain ...
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She fumbled. Bruce sat up. ‘Go on,’ he said, ‘I was listening, truly, it’s beautiful. What is it,
Christie?’
‘Bach,’ she said. ‘I don’t think I want to go on. I’m sorry.’
Bruce was still sententious enough to put his hand on the piano and say, ‘This thing’s sorted
me out twice, you know that?’ The surprise, perhaps dismay, he encountered on her face, led him
on to say ‘I suppose I should say the music and the pianist ... I’m sorry, I didn’t put that very
well.’
‘It’s not important,’ she said. ‘Goodbye Bruce. I think I need to be alone, now, if you don’t
mind.’
He had almost reached his hotel before he thought that his control of the Saab was at least a
pale shadow of what she did with music.
When he’d gone she sat on the stool again, wondering why she couldn’t play: not even the
Debussy, which had been well received. The light in her room was affected by the first color
changes of autumn. Something more subtle had been added to the brilliance. She was desperate to
be busy. She vacuumed the room, wiped down the shelves. She polished the piano till it gleamed.
She tuned it carefully; usually it was easy but today she found herself doubting her sense of pitch.
When she went outside, the door squeaked. Her cup rattled. The man next door was rasping the
mudguard of his car with a sanding device. A truck pulled up to deliver soft drink bottles to the
family across the road, who didn’t order milk. A whistle blew in the park; football training had
started. She recalled Janis’s theory, as passed on by Murdy, that people died at the turn of the seasons. Better to re-create yourself, she thought, and felt powerless. When her husband came home,
he found her deeply withdrawn. The children, wanting to play with her, couldn’t budge her from
the bed where she lay reading.
She had just finished a Margery Allingham and opened an Agatha Christie when the power
went off.
Harry, looking over the city, could see patches of black and belts of glitter. His mail, unopened
except for the letter in his hand, lay before him. The typewritten letter, referenced and signed,
informed him that his motor registration had been underpaid by ten cents.
The fat envelope beneath his hand was, he imagined, the report of a sales convention held in
Bali. Why it was posted instead of being dropped on his desk, and why the convention ever needed
to be held at all, were matters of amazement. He moved to a games table near the window, where
two chess games were set up. The left hand board was a correspondence game with an old lady in
the Sydney office: spice was added by trying to catch the other unawares by the presentation of
the move. Sometimes it came as an urgent memo via company telex. Harry had had a trumpeter
deliver a pawn move on the old girl’s birthday. She’d made him hunt through the columns of
Saturday’s Age for her next instruction. He’d capped this by having a friend in the taxation office
summon her to receive a sealed envelope. The game had been running a year. He suspected that
one of the envelopes before him would start a goose chase for her next move.
The board on the right was a game he was playing blindfold with a researcher in America. He
had a cloth over the pieces. It was black enough, he felt, to make his next move without the blindfold. He turned off the light switch, in case the power came on, and lifted the cloth. He found it
deeply satisfying to position the pieces in his mind, hands clasped in his lap.
This evening, to his annoyance, he couldn’t position a knight. Was it at Queen’s bishop 5 or
Queen’s knight 4? It made all the difference ...
Christie was furious with the power people, but Murdy and the children got out candles, set
up Monopoly, and insisted she join them. She played badly. While they amassed properties, passed
Go, and built houses in Oxford Street and Park Lane, she went to jail, paid rent for their hotels,
and owned nothing more than Old Kent Road when she landed on the electric light company.
The children shrieked and Murdy asked if she was going to buy it. She said angrily, ‘It’s just what
I would land on,’ and passed it up. Murdy bought it. Next time around, Christie landed on the
same square and had to pay rent. ‘Bad luck mum,’ said Michael, Murdy laughed, and Tania was
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in high glee. Then they noticed that she was crying. ‘It’s just what would happen to me,’ she said,
and left the table.
‘Sooky mum,’ said Tania and Michael called, ‘Come on mum, we weren’t laughing at you, it
was just funny, that’s all.’ Murdy said they’d better play on without her, she obviously wanted to
be alone.
Harry was still trying to reconstruct the game, move by move from the beginning, when the
power came on. A shaft of light from the hall fell across the game. He couldn’t imagine how he’d
forgotten to shut the hall door, but there it was — he’d have to forfeit, and start again.
Christie listened to the sounds of her family — altercations laced with enjoyment, the rattle of
dice, Murdy getting coffee. There’d be a ring in the morning because he wouldn’t wipe the bottom
of his saucer. ‘Oh I don’t know,’ she said, wanting to sob, but finding that the worst was already
past. When Murdy came to bed, she was asleep with the light on, book spilled from her hand.
Feeling that he’d invaded her privacy, he clicked off the light. She asked him something, in her half
wakeful state, which he didn’t answer as he slipped into bed. But later that night, when he woke
after his first deep sleep, she was listening to the wind tossing the leaves at their window. ‘Autumn’s
here,’ she said, ‘it makes you think of things.’ He asked her what she was thinking of, hardly expecting an answer; her position, divided between the warmth beneath their quilt, and the cool air outside, didn’t centre on him any more. Remembering how she loved the poems of Emily Dickinson,
he tried to send his consciousness into the garden which he had always imagined as his, but which,
by some alchemy of night, had become mysteriously hers. He couldn’t do it. His observations went
no further than the panes of glass that separated them from the outer air. Yet she was so warm, so
vulnerable, lying there beside him; he rubbed close against her, but she took his hand and put it
down. ‘Let’s lie still and listen,’ she said. ‘It’s like my grandmother’s house. I used to sleep in the
verandah overlooking the river. The river talked all night, unless the wind drowned it.’
‘Wind drowning a river?’ murmured her husband, finally giving up hope of understanding her
way of knowing things; there could be no more merging than had already happened: the outward
growth of their lives was beginning to draw back. She wanted to preserve what she had without
his interference, he wanted the same. And Janis, who had been so brave and so adventurous, was
slipping away from him in something not fully explained ...
In her last letter she’d described a young man she’d seen bathing in a river where, as far as she
was prepared to state it to him, he was not aware of her presence. This almost mythological scene
had prompted her to write: ‘My soul lives in separate houses ...’
It was only what Anne Owen was always saying, though she called it the contradictions of capitalism, and he knew how she suffered, yet despised Janis for her astrology/I Ching/Tarot outlook.
There was a contradiction! And yet he lay, warm beneath his quilt, wondering why his wife was
inaccessible. What filament of empathy took her into his garden when it was closed to him?
Giving up the struggle he fell asleep.
In the morning, Christie said they must go to the gardens for a picnic. He didn’t greatly want
to, but recognised it as a corollary of the night before. ‘I think I’m free of what you’ve done to me,’
she said. ‘I’ve got to see!’ Her excitement drove him to the French Bakehouse for bread, and a glistening cake with peaches; after a breakfast of croissants and coffee, they packed things in the car.
They were slamming doors and getting things out of the boot when Nicholas Hearn ran over. ‘I
saw you from my window,’ he told the kids. ‘Mum’s still in bed.’ Christie said he could join them if
he told his mother where he was; Tania and Michael wanted to explore the hotel. ‘It’s three storeys,’
said the boy, ‘and it’s got a cellar. I know where mum keeps the key!’
Arrangements for the children to meet the adults caused a difference of opinion: Murdy told
them the usual spot, and Christie wanted somewhere else. He said it was the one place where the
children would have no trouble finding them; she said ‘Oh please yourself,’ having no intention of
sitting under his blasted tristania until the children decided to turn up.
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So he was left with a card table, some baskets, and a cloth tossed over the lot, while Christie
roamed. There was no one in sight. He dragged Janis’s last letter out of his pocket; it sounded
final:
There are many levels in the personality and many ways to link them. Sexual bonds are not necessarily the best, though they are very powerful and can be wonderful. Just as often they disturb me. I felt very
close to you, but it was too close. You’re like a second husband and I have enough trouble ... oh, I don’t
know ... meeting my obligations, I suppose, to Bruce. I can’t bear to be tied down. I hate intercourse of
any sort unless I’m free.
He looked around him. Livistona Australis; Gmelina Leichhardtii; Casuarina Littoralis; a black
shank of grass tree, with fronds falling like a rug about its shoulders. He felt encumbered by his
past, the past, and a sense of duty that made him sit where he was. He’d had all the freedom he
wanted, the last few months, Christie had stayed at home, and somehow she’d come out better.
This way (Janis’s letter continued) we can stand back from each other a little, without doing any damage
to each other, and we can remain connected in a spiritual sense for as long as we know each other, which
I hope will be all our lives. You are very precious to me, but it had become somehow restrictive …
What wasn’t! In a fit of anger he crumpled the letter. There was no bin in sight, and an aluminium can on the path made him ashamed of his impulse; carefully he smoothed the sheets and
folded them neatly. He remembered that it was Janis who’d thrown Greg Paton’s letter in the
bushes, three years before. Now she was entranced by a young man, and not telling him much
about it; he, who’d rescued her, weeping, from the fern gully ...
Feeling sorry for himself, he decided to take a walk.
Christie was absorbed by the variety of forms. A fig, like a banyan, dangled aerial roots towards
the ground. The trunks of a Monterey cypress thrust out like reverse buttresses, as if responsible for
some weight of sky. The salix babylonica limned a space with its trailing habit; brushing through its
leaves, Christie felt linked to children yet unborn who would look at waterbirds through its billowing curtain. As she crossed the bridge to a little island, she heard a man reading from a brochure
to his wife. He was saying that the water beside them had been the original course of the river; the
woman was bored. Christie laughed: there was so little you could do with information, except dish
it out to someone else!
Janis studied her scene. Bridge. Antagonistic Saabs, one on either side. Bert Marshall’s Holden
pulled off the road. Bruce with a briefcase full of specifications, estimates, and the like. A big fiftyish man with a henna-haired girlfriend. The local boss of Skyline Tours. The engineer who liked
girly magazines. The engineer’s dog, a pampered Labrador. She didn’t want to listen to the argument but she wanted to hear the voices. Bruce had rehearsed everything he was going to say, but
she needed to know how it was going. Marina wanted to play in the dirt; it annoyed her that she
felt a duty to keep her off the road while the men, and Ms Henna, occupied the bridge. She took
the child to a grassy knoll where she could watch. There had been rain; a thin trickle was linking
the pools that had been dry for so long. Bruce was listening, head thrown back; he was conveying
to the visitors that he had a countryman’s slow way of deciding, and a countryman’s sense of certainty. Bert Marshall, on the other hand, was impatient; he kept looking over the side and trying
to get the engineer under the structure to see how little needed to be done.
The engineer was more interested in his dog until Ms Henna sidled up, asking questions; Janis
saw him change his attitude. Bruce did what she knew he was ready to do. Tapping his briefcase,
he quoted from the engineer’s report on the bridge, prepared before the annual estimates; Bruce
had read her the paragraph in which he said the bridge wasn’t worth the cost of repairing it.
Studying the group on the bridge, Janis wondered what the Greeks looked like when they made
their plans for Troy — a bunch of voluble, argumentative males, waving their arms? Pointing here
and there? Stamping whatever lay underfoot? The Labrador was restless; when its master let it off
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the leash, it scurried about the bridge, pissing on posts: Janis laughed silently, and clutched Marina,
who had a handful of grass. ‘Watch them!’ said Janis to her child. ‘Watch how it happens!’
Marina was more interested in getting down to the water; Janis slid down with her, taking off
the child’s shoes and socks; she wanted to kick off her boots and dangle her feet in the water, like
the child, but she was wearing stockings under her trousers; she could hardly strip herself naked,
with that bunch booming on the bridge. She caught Bruce’s voice, trapping the engineer: ‘No John,
it wasn’t done by young Wilson, it’s got your signature on it.’ An angry Ms Henna appeared at
the rail; Janis trailed water on her child’s hand, rebuking the more glamorous woman, who moved
away. Then a stronger voice took over; apparently the argument had reached its height. Henna’s
boyfriend, maddened by Bruce’s stonewalling, appeared to be offering to finance the work for the
council, so long as his company’s vehicles would be able to use the route. Janis caught Bruce’s
voice, patiently explaining why it couldn’t be done; he had statutes and ministerial precepts and
was plainly prepared to talk all day, when there was an interruption.
A second dog burst on the scene.
It was a vicious blue heeler and it went straight for the Labrador. The dogfight raged back and
forth on the bridge. The parties to the dispute jumped out of the way, or tried to restrain them.
Ms Henna retreated to that Saab and slammed the door. Her heavy companion, jostled by the
Labrador, dropped a folder; in the next flurry of dogs, papers fluttered into the water. Marina
clapped her hands as they floated, sunlit, down the stream, and started to wade towards them. ‘No,
Marina,’ said Janis, clutching her. ‘Deep. Too deep!’ It was only a few inches, but she didn’t want
to get her boots wet if the child fell over.
Then the owner of the second dog appeared.
Norman Marshall sauntered out of the bush on the other side of the stream. His father had, by
this time, kicked the dogs apart, the engineer was bundling his quarrelsome Labrador into Bruce’s
Saab, and Henna’s companion, Bruce, and the local Skyline manager were lined up on the rail,
watching the papers as they floated. The stranger seemed aghast. Bruce looked at his wife expectantly. Janis, who normally hated to obey a situation, felt gleeful as the papers, wet but floating,
came her way. Bert Marshall came to the rail; grasping the situation in a moment, he shouted at
his son ‘Get that stuff, Norman, quick, see you do as I say!’
Janis was fishing them in with a stick when Norman burst down the bank, splashed through the
water and snatched at them. Staring angrily into his eyes, Janis held them behind her back. ‘They’re
nothing to do with this business, lady,’ said a powerful voice from the bridge. ‘I’d be obliged if you’d
hand them over.’
‘Come down and get them, then,’ called Janis.
‘Give them to the lad.’
Janis studied Bert Marshall’s son. ‘He’s not a lad,’ she said. ‘He’s a man, and he makes up
his own mind.’ Norman snatched at the papers again. ‘Give them to me,’ he said. Janis’s eyes, lit
with pride, indicated that he could do nothing more contemptible than to take them. ‘Here you
are,’ she said. In the moment of handing over, they hated each other. Bruce was jubilant. ‘Getting
back to this bridge ...’ he said. ‘Where are you John?’ The engineer had retreated to soothe his dog.
The Marshalls, reunited, were loading the papers down with pebbles to dry them, face down, on
the other Saab’s bonnet. Heavy Man, voice thick with anger, asked Bruce to move his Saab, he
couldn’t turn around where he was. ‘No,’ said Bruce, making them watch his triumph, ‘you’ll have
to back up a bit. I’m not moving, I’m having a picnic with my wife!’
Then the seriousness of it all finally hit her, and by the time Bruce had come down with
sandwiches, cups and thermos, she was sobbing. John the engineer, embarrassed by what he saw,
offered to walk back to his car at Bruce’s place, but Bruce wouldn’t hear of it. ‘You’re on my side,
mate,’ he said, taking control. ‘I put in a cup for you.
‘What were those people on about?’ said the engineer dumbly. ‘There were some funny things
going on there!’
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‘A lot of funny things,’ said Bruce. ‘I’ll tell you some of them later. The main thing is, they’ve
blown their cover, they know we’re onto them, and I don’t think we’ll see much more of them
around here.’
‘They’ll go somewhere else,’ said tearful Janis, ‘and Bert Marshall’s still on council.’
‘I can handle him any day,’ said confident Bruce, passing her a cup. ‘Here, drink this.’ Janis
wished she had Murdy there to soothe her, he wasn’t abrasive like her husband and he talked so
reassuringly ... but she’d abandoned him for a few fierce encounters with the young man whose
eyes she’d seen filled with fear and hatred. She took the cup.
‘A pity Jenny missed all this,’ said Bruce, gazing at the scene, ‘but she would go horseriding!’
His voice told them there was no position more satisfying than his. The engineer looked at Janis
with interest; she wanted to turn her back on him, but Bruce needed his voice and she supposed
he’d marry if he outgrew his dog and his magazines. She wiped her eyes and drank her tea. ‘More?’
said Bruce.
She accepted.
When the kids came back, they were hanging onto Harry. ‘This is Nick’s dad,’ said Tania, as if her
father didn’t know. ‘Gooday Murdy,’ said the technocrat: ‘a few things have changed since we were
here last?’ Murdy wondered how many of the ironies he was expected to cope with. ‘Everything
and nothing,’ he said. Tania grabbed her father’s hand: ‘Nick’s mum might be going to Fiji,’ she
said. ‘If she does, she’s going to take him!’
‘First I’ve heard,’ Harry remarked.
‘Do they have schools there, dad?’ Tania asked, thinking it might be paradise.
Murdy assured her that they did, and Harry told his son he’d be going to school where he was,
under his father’s nose. ‘Will that involve a fight?’ Murdy asked.
‘Very likely,’ said Harry at his blandest. The three children, finding their fathers boring, began
to search about; it was Michael who dis­covered a twenty cent coin pressed into the earth. ‘Buried
treasure!’ cried Nick, and the children combed the earth for more. ‘It’s strange,’ said Murdy, ‘our
kids have never really hit it off before.’
‘When we’re all breaking up,’ said Harry. ‘There never was much holding us all together.’ Some
resignation in his tone let Murdy broach the one mutual topic that mattered:
‘Janis and I have had a relationship recently,’ he said, ‘but she’s got involved with a strange
young fellow up there where they live.’
‘Leverage on Bruce,’ said Harry Hearn. ‘The closer to home, the more the affair hurts him. It’s
a way of pulling him into line. Keeping him faithful.’
‘That’s rather cynical,’ Murdy said, unwilling to think that mere marital politics could end a
love that had broken him out of his puritanism.
‘No doubt there’s more to it than that,’ Harry said. ‘But events move in a certain way and when
you look back on them you realise that all the apparently free choices you made lay, in fact, on a
path you’d been on for ages.’
‘Can we ever get off our paths, Harry?’ said a disconsolate Murdy.
‘If you know the path you’re on — and most of us don’t — and you recognise the moments of
real choice when they come, I would say yes,’ said Harry, blander still.
‘Tell me, Harry, what path would you say you’re on?’
‘A long slow rehabilitation,’ said Harry, ‘from excess of pride. Deep down, I cannot admit
equality. At the distance of proper courtesy, in normal daily transactions, I have no trouble. But in
personal relationships, I will do anything to protect my singularity.’
‘You mean superiority, I take it.’
‘I’m not responsible for words I don’t use myself.’
‘Then we can only judge by the way you act. You do see everyone as inferior, it seems to me.’
Murdy was embarrassed to have taken the matter thus far, but the children, who might have
broken in, were several trees away.
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‘I’m sure,’ said Harry, ‘that people manage their affairs in the only ways they can. But their
ways can never be satisfactory for me.’
‘That’s a pretty severe attitude to pass down to your son.’
‘Touché,’ said Harry, ‘But look at the choice!’ He pointed in the direction of Barb’s hotel.
‘But doesn’t anyone ...’ Murdy fumbled for a word ... ‘turn you on? As an equal, I mean?’
‘Probably your wife,’ said Harry, ‘and we’re not attracted to each other. But I recognise her
quality. It’s very rare.’
‘I know it is,’ said Murdy, ‘and that’s our trouble. I can do everything else for her, but I cannot
bring that quality alive. The jewel won’t sparkle for me. She makes me feel like a load of earth.’
‘Strange,’ said Harry, ‘that it’s only now that we’re really talking.’ He meant the break up of
the group. ‘People clatter on at each other, in whispers and shouts, using the buzz-words of the
times, and when they look back they must see, if they’re honest, that they never were doing what
they said they were doing.’
‘Problem of historical method number 7B,’ said Murdy, hoping to lighten Harry, yet curious
to have him reveal himself. ‘How would you sum up the last few years?’
‘I wouldn’t try,’ said Harry. ‘I’m more interested in managing the next stage of my life, and
of society’s. Once you reach the point we’re at, things become very tricky. You know those riddles
where a certain number of lies are being told, and a certain number of truths? And the man
escapes, or he’s put to death, according to whether he can work out which is which? I suppose
that’s the nearest I could come to showing you how I see things.’
‘You do want to show me, then?’
‘Not much,’ said Harry, ‘but you’re there. Where’s Christie?’
She was sitting by the lake, shoes beside her; peeling off her stockings had seemed immodest.
The man with the brochure and his forebearing wife were visible across the lake, the man pointing
excitedly at some English elms. This time, Christie felt curious to know what the brochure told
him. He was so stiffly animated that she thought of a scarecrow guarding turnips. The ducks on the
lake were having a geriatric argument. ‘Errp, errp, errp,’ they were saying to each other, as they had
for years. When they swam in her direction, expecting to be fed, she moved on. Their expectations
were no more welcome than any other.
Moving past a densely planted copse, she noticed a wheeelbarrow hidden. There was a spade
propped against it it and a can of drink on top, but no one in evidence. A little further on she saw
that a thick Japanese bush, with branches low to the ground, had been used to hide a rake; again
there was no gardener in sight. She plunged into the fern gully, hoping to be free of this extra
presence.
But the trees had such persona that the feeling became stronger. Initials carved on the bamboo
looked like runic inscriptions. The aerial roots of a fig had grown thickly around the trunk, as if
the tree were hugging itself. An old lady palm had clusters of lilac beads at the neck. The water,
trickling under tiny bridges, wanted to talk. A motionless pipe suddenly sprayed: there was someone attending her.
Tensely aware, she looked about. Shafts of light found their way between the twisting trunks,
but there was no way to see out. She half expected Toad of Toad hall to rush along the track.
There were birds high above her, shopping busily, and, from points of the garden outside, indistinct voices. Everything in creation was talking. She felt that if she kept on, she should come to a
mysterious house in the woods. The track did lead to a small wooden shelter, with a conical roof
and rustic benches. She sat.
Paths led past the shelter, while leaves, taking the air with the help of their stems, pressed in at
the windows. Looking down one breach in the foliage, she saw a man tapping his pipe against his
shoe before resuming his sketching. She thought of Miss Euphemia, whose pastime it had been to
paint watercolours in these gardens, and who had been noticed by a courteous, bowing Director.
She had come to know him … and so the story had unrolled.
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A busy scratching sound in the leaves disturbed her. She peeped out. Birds … but they too were
invisible. They were chattering over a find, and scratching with redoubled vigour – but they were
not to be seen. I have to leave this hut, she thought, because no one stays anywhere forever, but
I love it here. A globule of water dangled from the sharp tip of a leaf. It’s like a moment, Christie
thought: if I touch it, it’ll be broken. Even if I were tiny I couldn’t get inside it, because it’s formed
apart. Sadly she left.
She came to a row of hydrangeas with vulgar names like Intermezzo and Emotion. Another
bore the name of Harry’s Pink Topper! A fourth, cousin to a Valkyrie, had been dubbed Krimhilde.
She wondered what sorts of carpets and curtains the flower breeders would have in their homes.
Miss Belgium! Drap’s Wonder! Apothèse! Her rising amusement was checked by one called Neige
Orléanaise; she had loved the snow in France. And there was a stick naming a plot of earth for a
bush that had been taken out:
SOEUR THÉRÈSE
Who was she, and where had she gone? Christie felt sadness in the earth at her feet. The skin
on her neck prickled. Everything lived, and everything died; she had a moment of anguish for her
children, briefly being children in the cellar of Barb’s hotel. She wanted to go back to the shelter,
but, although it was so close she could see its shingled roof and wooden finial, it was apart from
her.
She walked uphill a little wearily. The ducks were still saying ‘Errp, errp, errp,’ in the lake.
Presumably someone was feeding them. What did they do when the gates were closed? Count the
day’s takings and paddle to an island? She was glad it wasn’t dark; how frightening to be locked
in! Things might show some other side of themselves. Trees might move, the earth speak, unheard
voices call enchanting, frightening things that took away your identity. She wondered what sort of
tree, or bush, she’d be if she were changed. There were many lovely things in the garden, but if it
actually happened, your fate might be something less attractive than a rose, a radiant white azalea,
or a lily, floating like dead Ophelia on the lake. Gross forms ran riot in nature; strangling vines and
poisoned fruit. Spiders lurked in leaves, inimical to everything. From the wide lawn where she felt
secure, if exposed, she made her way to the kingdom of Ulmus, Fagus, and the oak.
Entering it, she looked up and caught for a moment the corner of a building she hadn’t
entered for three and a half years. There was no point in entering it any more. The boy had been
cremated, he wasn’t in his flat; she could, if she wished, imagine him on one of the empty seats
scattered on the lawn. A pair of such iron-scrolled benches sat facing each other beneath a scarlet
oak; she sat on one. Not willing, yet, to look closely at the other, she cast her eyes about. The forest monarchs, tamed for this botanical zoo, had been granted servants. At the foot of each, and
uncomfortably close because the trees had grown huge, was a tap, its spout turned vertical like a
begging dog. Ruthless gardeners had taken away their handles so they could utter nothing except
at higher command. Power and powerlessness attended each other, and which was which? The
giants needed water; the water seemed almost to need to become the sap by a law as eternal as
the one that turned the green leaves into the brilliant orange carpet under her feet. She looked at
the empty bench.
In one moment was everything, yet the moments stretched out like beads, and Greg had
broken the thread. In the seed was the tree; the gardeners would bring their chainsaws to her oak
when it grew rotten, and plant another. All continuity moved to remain in the same place. Anything
could be changed, but it would start out from its new base to restore itself. She picked up a leaf;
it was a rusty orange, but if she let a beam of light play on it, the leaf became more than itself; a
point of refraction, an intense gathering of light and colour. And it was alive, or it had been; yellow
veins reached its extremities like roads, and an ever finer net of tracks and paths made sure that
no part of the leaf was out of call. How wonderful to have one’s intelligence hear the universe as
thoroughly! The sun went behind a cloud, withdrawing her illumination. Wishing there was more
that she could do, she put the leaf on the empty seat, and stood.
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Walking swiftly, she made her way to the children, her husband and Harry Hearn at Murdy’s
usual spot. The children were carolling about having found three coins, and Murdy was telling
Harry about von Mueller’s fixation on the vanished explorer Leichhardt. Harry, she felt, was listening out of courtesy, and yet he was listening. Coming up to them, she took Harry’s arm, and said,
‘I’m sure Harry now knows as much as if he’d read your book. It’s time we all went home!’
‘But I have read Murdy’s book,’ Harry said. ‘I learned a lot.’ He was greatly amused at her way
of bursting in.
‘And hell,’ said Murdy, ‘we haven’t had our picnic yet. We’ve been waiting for you! The kids
would’ve scoffed everything long ago if we’d let them!’
‘Oh,’ said Christie, ‘did you wait for me? Why did you do that?’
‘It seemed to be necessary,’ said Murdy. ‘In some way. You really want to go home?’
‘No,’ said Christie, ‘of course not. Let’s open the things. Children!’ she called. ‘We’re having
our picnic now. Sorry I kept you waiting.’ The kids scrambled around her. ‘And open that bottle of
wine,’ she ordered Murdy. ‘It would be nice to have it now.’
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