One day ill remember thi.., p.24
One Day I'll Remember This, page 24
At dinner V fed Dad questions and played the eager listener; Dad blossomed. In fact he talked without stopping for the entire evening. Not one question did he ask, not one hint of interest in anyone else’s views of life or experience. To hear that slow voice grind on and on, hour after hour—I had to keep getting up and ‘going to the toilet’, for relief from the voice. I could have torn out my hair.
Easter morning. He is risen. A steady quiet, outside. A dove calling. All those bodies down there, in the House of Death and Justice and Science, the House of Patience, are only remains. Their spark has fled. The wind gets up. A mild shifting of the plane leaves. Sun comes through in patches. Dry bitumen.
At Wilcannia my nun and her friend (girlfriend? I don’t ask) live for free in a tumbledown, abandoned old house with walls a foot thick and an immense yard that backs on to the Darling River. From the kitchen door you can hear its soft flow. Last night when I staggered out to the dunny, fighting my way past the three dogs that live in the yard, the Milky Way crackled overhead in a huge arc.
I called home. V has a bad cold. Why does he get sick whenever I go away?
When I sit on the outside dunny the brown kelpie pup, Tex, shoves his front legs under the door and madly rummages with them, like a burglar going through a drawer. He likes me. I dream of turning up at home with a dog. For V. To put life back into him. The guy who’s minding him said I couldn’t take him because I live in a city: ‘I wouldn’t do that to a dog.’ Crestfallen, I hide in the bottom of my suitcase the blue leather collar and webbing lead I’d secretly bought at the store. But the nurse says, ‘Of course you can have the pup. We need to get rid of him. No, I won’t take any money. I’d love you to have him.’ I practise teaching him to sit and stay. He learns fast. He is beautiful and clever. My wrists are covered with bite marks from our wrestling bouts.
The women are busy all day with the overwhelming bureaucratics of their work here with the Aboriginal people. They don’t look after themselves, so I do the washing, I iron things, I cook, I do the dishes, I fix broken gadgets, sweep the yard, scoop up puppy shit. I cut an apple and make the nun eat the peeled and cored quarters. She looks up surprised when I place them on the arm of her chair. She eats them obediently.
Out here they pray for rain. The drought is shocking. The land is degraded. It’s blowing away. ‘When Kidman built his mansion on the Darling,’ a farmer tells me, ‘he had forty-seven Chinese gardeners.’
I’ve got a cage booked at Broken Hill airport, the space booked at Ansett Adelaide, and three Dramamine pills from the priest to keep him calm en route.
Rain at night brings the Merri Creek up a foot or so. V and I happily walk Tex along the creek path and watch him frolic and gambol. He likes to race up a rocky outcrop and pose on its peak, gazing nobly into the distance. We call it ‘Tex’s Look-Out’. He sleeps calmly on his blanket on the back veranda. He has a merry, patient nature. He never complains. But he needs two enormous walks each day.
J’s won his second Miles Franklin. That’s a prize I know I’ll never win.
The great reader’s old school friend paid tribute to the great reader’s mother: she said that during the war, when they were young women, they used to ask each other, ‘Who would you tell if you had a black baby?’ The great reader’s mother was the only name that came up. This made V laugh terribly. So, the following evening, did F’s imitation of Pompidou. V laughed so much he couldn’t get his breath.
Dreamt that every time I turned over in bed, $400 was added to our electricity bill.
‘Dear Mr and Mrs Watson, here is the card from the Lost Dogs’ Home vet, where we took Tex for his shots; also the worm pill packet, so you’ll know what he’s had. I’m very sad to give him up, but I know it’s the best thing for him, and I’m sure you’ll be good to him and he’ll be happier in the country. Thanks for taking him. I felt very down in the dumps about him last night but today I cheered up. We ate the carrots and the silverbeet last night, they were delicious. It was really nice to meet you. I hope your CAT scan results are good, Mr Watson. Thanks again for everything. Yours sincerely, Helen.’
We read about a kelpie cross called Trixie who, when her master had a stroke and lay paralysed in his bed for nine days, kept him alive by soaking a towel in her water bowl and the toilet and draping it over his face so he could suck the moisture.
V pointed out again, as we walked along the creek, that I had an obsessive interest in ‘death, rape, murder and so on’. I wonder if it’s true. And if it is true, what it means. Is it wrong?
We hear that Tex is happy. He runs about the farm collecting items for a museum of objects that he likes to toss and catch—old bones, cow horns etc. One day they saw something brown among his treasures. ‘That’s not a piece of horn.’ It was a dead tiger snake. I felt a pang. But life without him and his mad working-dog energy contains less guilt.
Sometimes we talk about getting married.
Two letters from people who hated my articles about the morgue. ‘I sincerely hope, Ms Garner, that when I die, my body will be free from your perverted gaze.’
I like the prayer that says, ‘Forgive us all that is past.’
I planted a little daphne bush, dug out the old herb patch, composted, mulched, moved the sage plant. V came out with two coffees. Proudly I showed him my handiwork. He glanced in its direction, blank-faced. I tugged at his sleeve. ‘Doesn’t it look terrific?’ He put on a voice: ‘Yeah! It looks groovy! Cool!’ I soldiered on: ‘And we’ll still go to the tip this Sunday, will we?’ ‘Oh, I don’t care.’ He trudged inside with the cups. I stood in the shed among the kindling, looking down at my muddy boots and controlling my ‘melodramatic’, ‘hypersensitive’ ‘overreactions’. Then I went to have another look at the broad-bean patch. Every morning for weeks I’ve been rushing out to check and there’s never anything there. I stared at the line where I’d parted the mulch for them. I was about to walk away when I saw a pale green dot slightly off-centre in the lumpy dirt. I crouched down. It was a bean shoot. Curved over on itself like a bent wrist. Struggling up to the light, shoving aside the clods.
Brett Whiteley has been found dead in a motel room at Thirroul. Whisky, needles and drugs nearby. The owner had heard nothing from the room for twenty-four hours, except the TV.
My nun’s therapist told her that her right hand was stiff because she ‘wanted to punch someone’. My nun believes her daily migraines and even her leukaemia are due to this frustrated desire, to a lifetime of suppressed fear and rage.
The people at Coronial Services invited me to the opening of the Donor Tissue Bank. They said they’d liked my articles so much that they wanted to frame them and hang them on the wall in the building. I blushed bright red. ‘Oh! I’d be proud! I’d be honoured!’ The Coroner approached me with his hand out. ‘Hello Mr Hallenstein!’ ‘Hal’s the name,’ he said genially. When I told this to V later he cracked up. It was my happiest day in journalism. On my way home, standing on the cold tram stop dreaming of my hour of glory, I had a wonderful fantasy of being allowed to follow the Coroner around the bloody, violent scenes of his daily work, and when anyone asked him who I was, he’d say, ‘She’s the Coroner’s Poet.’
Y asked me what my nun ‘gave’ me, i.e. what was the point of being friends with her. Her idea of nuns as pinched-lipped straiteners surprised me. She got crisp with me because I didn’t understand the difference between the mass market and literary arms of a publisher.
My sister and her band had played with some Colombians, who to their joy told them they had ‘soul’. ‘Playing with Latin Americans,’ said her partner, the trumpeter, ‘is so different. They don’t have any cynicism, the way Australians do. They’re not ironic. They just want to laugh and dance.’
V marched into my room and without a word banged down on the desk a bundle of typed A4 sheets. He was already gone by the time I’d turned them over and realised it was the opening of his new novel. An impressive density and complexity of texture. And a kick of curiosity at the introduction of the man, Holland, arriving in the town and standing like a tree in the middle of his paddock.
I met G up in the Cross. His father has died. Everything in his own life before this death, G said, now seems frivolous, unserious, a waste of time; and he realises there’s not much time left. We wondered if the death of V’s father when V was twenty-four might have had the same effect on him—turned him into a serious, severe person at an early age.
At the Sydney International Piano Competition I sat in the second row where one can see the sweat splashing off their noses and chins and soaking the hair on the backs of their necks. I’d been in a mood for never hearing Mozart again, but a Frenchman played a rondo with such airy clarity and creamy smoothness that I nearly passed out. People in the audience become intimate friends with strangers. By the next session they have completely forgotten each other.
Dreamt of a climbing rose that was flourishing gaily, its leaves glossy green with reddened edges, and tiny white buds everywhere, ready to open.
Alone in the great reader’s small, sunny flat in Double Bay. V will be here tonight. I’ll be glad to see him. But one day I’ll live on my own. It holds no fears. I even long for it. Maybe I can only have this fantasy because of the emotional stability, the safety, of being loved.
In the queue for the last piano concert V reports a conversation with R. ‘I told her that everybody from Tolstoy down wrote about real people. She said, “Yes, but he finds it hard, out there in the open.” I asked her about you. She said you went through her life like a breath of fresh air. But you’re very strong. She said it was part of her growing up—she felt she had to move on.’ I was grateful to him for asking. I imagined they must have said much worse things about me as well. Let it be what it is.
Alone at home all evening, polishing my rave review of Wayne’s World. A brilliant, high, cold full moon in an inky sky. Watched a wonderful TV doco about the history of Australian vaudeville. Some of the acts threw me into fits. One of the old stars regretted the passing of entertainment that could make whole families laugh: ‘I remember a man who had to be taken to the doctor. He laughed so much he hurt his neck.’ Wiping away the tears I thought of O—it was the kind of foolery he loves. Now I’ve slashed him out of my life I’ve lost thirty years of shared laughter.
The story about going to Wilcannia. It has no motor to drive it, no reason to exist. The dog brought a rush of energy, but it faded. I’m giving up.
My editor called to say Cosmo hadn’t been shortlisted for the Victorian Premier’s Award. I was surprised that she’d even thought of telling me. I said cheerfully, ‘Oh, I don’t care! I’ve decided never to give a prize another thought.’ A short pause, then she said, hotly, ‘Well, I care!’
V and I went out to Mum and Dad’s to tell them we were getting married. I didn’t raise the subject until I’d cooked up a series of excellent spinach and ricotta crepes (unremarked upon: Dad, after guzzling his share, went out into the kitchen and started to make himself some toast). I said, ‘Actually we came out to tell you some news—we’re getting married. On August 14. And we’re inviting you to come.’ Mum said, ‘Oh! That’s nice!’ Pause. V said, in a light, jesting tone, ‘It’s usually the role of the bride’s father to provide a tremendous banquet.’ ‘Huh,’ said Dad. ‘Not for the third time, thank you very much.’ Pause. I said, ‘It’s at the Registry Office. So far, apart from you, we’ve only invited M.’ ‘When did you say?’ said Mum. I repeated the date and time. Pause. Still possessed by the idiotic hope that one of them might say something, the sort of thing that normal people say on such an occasion, I sat stiffly on my chair at the end of the table. Pause. Dad said, ‘We had a lot of really good food, on our trip. Specially at Brissago, and in Nice.’ Mum showed us her photos of Hong Kong. And so the topic was dropped. At the door Dad said, ‘See you on the 14th.’ I wanted to scream and smash things and shout, ‘Why don’t you ever MAKE A FUSS OF ME?’ I seem to have no resources at all to deal with the parents I’ve got. All the way home I yelled and cursed. This morning I woke up ashamed, as if after a tantrum.
V cheered me by reading from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s lost notebooks: ‘The Abyssinians, after dressing their hair, sleep with their heads in a forked stick, in order not to discompose it.’
We walked along the creek this morning. Wind very sweet and balmy, a drying wind. High, creamy clouds, burst through by sheets of sparkling sun. The first spring-like morning. The green shoots clearer on every tree, and everything seems in motion, standing up to the wind in good humour.
V wakes from ‘a terrible dream. I was on a huge ladder, against a twenty-storey building. The whole things swayed, it all began to go. I grabbed hold of a gutter. Someone I knew who was above me wasn’t helping. Could be a dream about getting married, do you think?’ ‘Are you sure you want to go ahead with it?’ ‘Yes. ‘Why?’ ‘Because,’ he said, ‘it’d be conservative not to.’ He’s off his own turf, down here. We’ll end up back in Sydney, I know.
The Master of Ormond College is up on a charge in the Magistrate’s Court. He’s accused of having ‘squeezed a student’s breast at a dance after a vice-regal dinner’. It went to court? Crikey. Isn’t that overkill? Aren’t courts for rape and violence and murder? I wrote the guy a letter. Hope I won’t regret it.
Lancelin, even in winter, the presence always of light. Life is organised with the power of light in mind. Trees are full of it, they flash and flicker. A yard without a tree is ugly and shelterless. High fields of cloud in the morning. Each dab of cloud has its own pearliness as well as its top of fierce brightness.
Flu. V waits on me kindly. He brings me some Cyril Connolly to read, then goes into his room and bashes away on the portable typewriter he got in a swap with Shiva Naipaul.
Gardening, a slow, plodding, dogged state. You don’t stop, or think of anything more than the task at hand. I used my hands rather than a tool to loosen up the soil round the beans and lettuces. I dug in the compost with my fingers. I stopped caring about keeping my wedding ring scratch-free.
The Polish philosopher reports her conversation with Dad at the wedding.
PP: ‘And so, you are happy that Helen is married?’
D: (pulls a face)
PP: ‘What? You are not happy?’
D: ‘It’s the third time.’
PP: ‘In Powland we say, “The third time is lucky.”’
D: (shrugs)
PP: ‘But she is happy, they are happy together—don’t you think?’
D: ‘They’re both writers, though.’
PP: ‘They will understand each other.’
D: ‘But one day one of them will write something that the other one doesn’t like—and there’ll be trouble.’
PP: ‘They are together already several years. Don’t you think they have already read each other’s work?’
D: (shrugs)
PP: ‘Anyway, you like V, don’t you? Don’t you think it would be nice to show Helen that you are happy for her?’
D: ‘She doesn’t care.’
‘At that moment,’ said the Polish philosopher to me, ‘the official speech started, so I could not continue.’
He thinks I don’t care. Once I would have got upset. Now I put it down and walk away.
The Jungian psychoanalyst James Hillman says on Late Night Live that Eros strikes always so that one falls in love with ‘the wrong person’.
V no longer tries to dissuade me from going to Primrose Gully. We make each other laugh a lot, lately. He chucks a hunk of plastic into the creek for Tess, the blue heeler we’re minding for M’s boyfriend, and she bombs in after it with a splash as colossal as if someone had dropped a washing machine off a bridge.
Dreamt I was a teacher. My class was unruly. In vain I shouted abuse. A boy stood up from his desk and walked forward to where I stood. He was wearing a headdress of great delicacy and beauty: a shimmery concoction of silver wire and pearl drops that seemed barely attached to his head and hovered around it, quivering.
Three writers came to dinner. V was talking admiringly about something European. Absorbed in what he was saying, I asked, ‘Do you wish you were European?’ He swung round at me: ‘No. No, I don’t.’ My question was sincere but he was offended and I didn’t know why. I started to stammer out an explanation, but the American poet spoke across me in a dreamy tone, ‘What do I wish I were?’ The sting went out of the moment. I looked at the poet’s droll, pugnacious face and thought, ‘You’ve got manners.’
The writers’ festival. It’s like being barbecued. The New Zealand novelist and I drank glasses of water in her forty-fourth-floor room. Outside, dark, rain, thousands and thousands of lights in street patterns. We agreed that at such a height we entertained thoughts of jumping. On my way home, buskers were playing jazz outside Flinders Street. A little boy threw himself into the space and galloped to the music in joyful turns and rolls. His father spread out the kid’s parka and coins rained on to it. Everyone was laughing and shouting.
