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Darlinghurst (a novel) & The Scarred City: Walking and writing in Razorhurst Amy Simpson-Deeks Master of Creative Arts (Research) 2013 CERTIFICATE OF ORIGINAL AUTHORSHIP I certify that the work in this thesis has not previously been submitted for a degree nor has it been submitted as part of requirements for a degree except as fully acknowledged within the text. I also certify that the thesis has been written by me. Any help that I have received in my research work and the preparation of the thesis itself has been acknowledged. In addition, I certify that all information sources and literature used are indicated in the thesis. Signature of Student: Date: ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to acknowledge the guidance and support, through all stages of this project, of my supervisor John Dale. I am also indebted to the staff at Western Sydney Records Centre, the State Library of NSW, and Surry Hills library for their assistance. Thanks to Marilyn Deeks, David Adlam, Sonya Voumard, Nick Simpson- Deeks and Emma Caddy for feedback and advice, and to Anne and Rob Simpson, Susan Varga and Anne Coombs for providing a space for me to write in. Clara Finlay provided paid proofreading services for this thesis. iii Table of Contents Abstracts ..................................................................................................................... v Darlinghurst (a novel) ................................................................................................ 1 The Scarred City: Walking and writing in Razorhurst .................................... 272 Introduction .......................................................................................................... 274 Razorhurst ............................................................................................................. 276 i) Traces ........................................................................................................ 276 ii) Walking East Sydney: two versions ........................................................ 277 iii) Troubled ghosts ...................................................................................... 281 iv) Bohemia .................................................................................................. 287 Walking and writing ............................................................................................. 293 i) Into the wild .............................................................................................. 293 ii) The city, nighttime ................................................................................... 296 iii) Trespass .................................................................................................. 300 iv) Visionaries .............................................................................................. 306 Conclusion ............................................................................................................ 315 References ............................................................................................................ 318 iv ABSTRACTS Darlinghurst (a novel) In 1927 Jim Stephens, young and new to Sydney, finds a job at a daily newspaper. His first assignment brings him into contact with a young, beautiful streetwalker called Nellie Cameron, the darling of the East Sydney underworld. Compelled by desire, he follows Nellie into the dark world of vice and violence that will set the course of his life for the next thirty years. In the present day, Sophie arrives in Darlinghurst following an unspeakable trauma. There she meets Michael, a darkly attractive figure whose will quickly dominates her own. This encounter triggers a chain of events that draw her deep into the nocturnal life of East Sydney, where she becomes entangled in a web of sex and danger that could tear her life apart. As their stories unravel, Jim and Sophie’s paths dovetail and entwine in subtle and strange ways; their two versions of East Sydney are distinct but, at the same time, eerily similar in their allure and treachery. As both characters traverse this urban landscape, they must learn to navigate it safely, or risk being consumed by it. The Scarred City: Walking and writing in Razorhurst This exegesis explores the relationship between walking and writing, with particular focus on the element of transgression – real or imagined, implicit or explicit – present in both of these things. Specifically, it examines the supposedly transgressive nature of walking in cities at night, of walking alone as a woman, and of doing either or both of these things as a person who writes. For the purposes of this discussion, I will consider the implications of writing and walking within the boundaries of East Sydney, the area comprising Kings Cross, Woolloomooloo, Darlinghurst, Surry Hills and Paddington. This part of Sydney, once known by the sobriquet Razorhurst, is a site with close conceptual links to writing and writers, walking, night, women – and to transgression of all kinds and degrees. v Darlinghurst I know you walk beyond me, every night, With a coy footfall, in a wretched dress And walk for money, looking miserable! Your shoes gather God knows what ugly mess, The wind plays in your hair with lewd delight – You walk, and walk, and find no home at all. – ‘I Know, You Walk’ Hermann Hesse, trans. James Wright 2 Sophie In this section of the Eastern Suburbs Memorial Park, most of the graves are neat and tidy. Blooms of silk and plastic are plugged into grates at their corners or jammed into jam jars, a few still bright, the rest defeated by the big sky over many years. The first grave isn’t hard to find. It’s strange – she has been very close, almost on top of it, the whole time she has been standing here studying her map. Among the thousands, the rows and rows of graves, it seems more than improbable that this should happen. But there you are. For a few seconds she is unsure. She still isn’t certain she has the right name. She knows, by now, how hard it is to find someone who made it their business to be untraceable – there were dozens of possible names, and this one doesn’t seem a more likely candidate than any of the others. But then she sees the small brass plaque at the foot of the grave, with its single word in capitals, and her uncertainty is gone. This is the place. 3 Jim There are many pictures of Nell in my old, grey head. In the first she’s just a lass, all dolled up, coming into the Sydney Central Police Court yellow-haired from out of a steaming morning. Inside, the room is soupy with hot bodies and she comes in and closes the door. She’s wearing a blue dress, bluebird-blue. Bare ankles and high-heeled shoes. Looks around and puts a hand to her hat and unpins it, takes it off, crosses the room, gathers the skirt of her dress, sits. The magistrate in black robes clears his throat and we all look away from her, me and the other blokes and the women, too. Here she is again. It’s a ratty dance hall, it’s very late, she is ten years older. Still young. Standing bent over her knees with her hands on her thighs. Her skin is white as the belly of a fish. She’s laughing so hard she could choke. There are three other people in the room, standing away, none of them moving. As she rounds up slowly, from the waist, her breasts rise up and you see that she is bleeding. A red line across her chest, across her breasts above the nipples. The blood blossoms there and travels down her front. She touches it with her hands and there is blood on her hands. She puts one hand on the back of a chair. Her whole body shaking with laughter. She’s laughing at something I said. One more time, now. We’re in a picture theatre and Nellie is treading on toes. Her apologies get lost in swelling music. She moves through the dark to sit beside me with a Coca-Cola bottle in her hand. The picture theatre smells of hair oil and scalps and beer and breath. Nellie smells of soap. She is beside me. Her hair is light and windblown, her dress made for summer. The credits roll. She doesn’t look at me. She looks into the big black and white screen at a bellowing steam engine and at 4 the crowd milling around in choreographed chaos. She looks and sits forward on the leather seat, nice and straight, her hands folded in her lap like a girl at church. I see her other ways. Sometimes, when I’m awake in the small hours, nights too hot or too cold, I see a newsreel of Nellie that has no end. She keeps coming back at me with a dozen different hair colours, with eyes that change from blue to grey to green. I tell her to go away, I tell her to fuck off, but she comes at me again, laughing through the gap between her front teeth. I know how it ends; it’s an old story. Those times I’ve got to get out of bed and drink something – these days only warm milk, and I stand over the kitchen sink drinking my milk like the foolish old man I seem to have become. But the pictures of her will keep coming, and if I don’t do something to shut down the machinery I’ll forget my own name. I’ll disappear. 5 Part 1 6 Sophie A little box has been sitting on her bedside table since the move, three weeks ago. It’s a ring box, green velvet worn away at the edges, and it’s closed – but Sophie doesn’t need to open it to know what it contains. Inside is a simple gold chain, unimportant, and on the chain is a pendant. The pendant is what matters. The pendant is made from a bullet. It was given to her on her twenty-first birthday, along with a digital camera, a set of bedsheets, six books, a framed hand-drawn picture and three bottles of champagne. It came via her mother – a gift, Elaine said, from Granddad, specified in the will along with a small inheritance. The money she had expected; the bullet she had not. It was a small, snub-nosed pellet, welded onto a gold loop by someone with rough skills. ‘That’s like him, to give you something queer.’ Elaine had smiled. ‘God knows where he picked it up.’ Like a stray cat. It was a precious thing, dull-shining and heavy in the well of her palm. She had seen a bullet only once before, a collector’s piece in a cabinet, a sleek, pointed thing of brushed silver. This was different but unmistakable. Against her skin it looked ornamental and harmless.

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