Chester Eagle Wainwrights’ Wainwrights’ Mountain Mountain In 1957 Chester Eagle began to explore the mountains of eastern Victoria, and discovered a fascinating place, and the Mountain Wainwrights’ events that had happened there: the long development of Wainwrights' Mountain had begun. In 1991, after decades of brooding, the book unveiled its two stories - one simple in outline, pioneering, somehow fundamental, yet needing explication. The other, the fugal response, takes up the challenge of the Wainwright tale; it begins modestly enough, but picks up the wildness of war and some of the madness of the apparently peaceful world that ensues. This second tale, of the Bowdens and Morrises of Melbourne, winds through generations and the interplay of families and strangers, until, in a splendidly ridiculous climax - the book's self- created peak - the two apparently unrelated stories, which have been edging closer for some time, make their merger on the mountain Wainwright claimed, is snow-grassed peak becomes a metaphor inclusive of everything human beings get up to, and a mood of joyful, if submissive, acceptance is the last gift the book offers its readers. ISBN 0 9592077 2 4 TROJAN a novel by Wainwrights’ Mountain Other books by Hail & Farewell! An evocation of Gippsland (1971) Who could love the nightingale? (1974) Four faces, wobbly mirror (1976) At the window (1984) The garden gate (1984) Mapping the paddocks (1985) Play together, dark blue twenty (1986) House of trees (reissue of Hail & Farewell! 1987) Victoria Challis (1991) House of music (1996) Wainwrights’ mountain (1997) Waking into dream (1998) didgeridoo (1999) Janus (2001) The Centre & other essays (2002) Love in the Age of Wings & other operas (2003) Melba: an Australian city (2004) The Wainwright Operas (2005) Oztralia (2005) Cloud of Knowing (2006) Benedictus (2006) Mini mags Escape (2004) Hallucination before departure (2006) Wainwrights’ Mountain Chester Eagle Wainwrights’ Mountain (1997) was printed by Print Synergy, Notting Hill 3149, and published by Trojan Press. Cover photo, Rock, cloud, valley, was taken by Chester Eagle on Howitt Plain, Victoria, in 1977. Cover design by Vane Lindesay. Electronic preparation of the text for publication by Chris Giacomi. This electronic edition published 2006 by Chester Eagle, 23 Langs Road Ivanhoe 3079 Australia, operating as Trojan Press. Phone is (03) 9497 1018 (within Australia) and email address is cae@ netspace.net.au ISBN 0 9592077 2 4 Copyright is held by Chester Eagle. Giles — Annie The The Wainwrights Hope Nicholas Prudence Faith Mercy Charity George Robert Ned Gordon Dorothy (Doll) Sam Lucy — Bill Waterman 1 The Bowden & Morris families (Family members not mentioned in the book have been omitted.) Ron & Penny George Bowden Bill Bowden Cyril Bowden Max Morris Norman Rowe Varney Bowden Orbiston (1894–1975) (1878–1945) (1888–1959) (1897–1960) (1900–1966) (1900–1966) & & & & & Yvonne (Yatty) Morris Dawn Williams Muriel Atkinson Edna Morris Jean Carter (1895–1971) (1892–1959) (1898–1960) (1902–1964) (1905–1980) Michael Bowden Virginia Rowe Honoria Bowden (1917–1975) Rose Morris Diana Morris (1927– ) (1927– ) (1930– ) (1930– ) Helen Orbiston (1916–1982) Moshe Gleitzman Gus Jespersen John & Gillian Stanley Rowe Howard Bowden Tom & Margaret Urquhart (1929– ) (1929– ) Courtney Tom Bowden Tricia Courtney Steve Morris Mark Morris Jessica Rowe (1919–1981) (legacy) (1932– ) (1932–1958) (1932–1956) (1931– ) Adrian Bowden (1920–1943) Luke Bowden Lily Morris Jane Urquhart American Steve (1914–1960) (1935–1960) (1932– ) (1932– ) Karen Bowden US Colonel (1921– ) Nell Bowden (1928–1983) Jesse Bowden Juliet John Grey Elizabeth Grey (1943–1978) Courtney-Morris (1933– ) (1935– ) (1958– ) Eddie Grey (1959– ) Don Bowden (1977–1982) Jeanette Grey (1961– ) 2 Ron & Penny George Bowden Bill Bowden Cyril Bowden Max Morris Norman Rowe Varney Bowden Orbiston (1894–1975) (1878–1945) (1888–1959) (1897–1960) (1900–1966) (1900–1966) & & & & & Yvonne (Yatty) Morris Dawn Williams Muriel Atkinson Edna Morris Jean Carter (1895–1971) (1892–1959) (1898–1960) (1902–1964) (1905–1980) Michael Bowden Virginia Rowe Honoria Bowden (1917–1975) Rose Morris Diana Morris (1927– ) (1927– ) (1930– ) (1930– ) Helen Orbiston (1916–1982) Moshe Gleitzman Gus Jespersen John & Gillian Stanley Rowe Howard Bowden Tom & Margaret Urquhart (1929– ) (1929– ) Courtney Tom Bowden Tricia Courtney Steve Morris Mark Morris Jessica Rowe (1919–1981) (legacy) (1932– ) (1932–1958) (1932–1956) (1931– ) Adrian Bowden (1920–1943) Luke Bowden Lily Morris Jane Urquhart American Steve (1914–1960) (1935–1960) (1932– ) (1932– ) Karen Bowden US Colonel (1921– ) Nell Bowden (1928–1983) Jesse Bowden Juliet John Grey Elizabeth Grey (1943–1978) Courtney-Morris (1933– ) (1935– ) (1958– ) Eddie Grey (1959– ) Don Bowden (1977–1982) Jeanette Grey (1961– ) 3 4 In the beginning was the need to say there had been a beginning. Beginnings take place in the present. The beginning is always now. 5 6 1 In which we meet a family and a couple They met in a lane, hiding from policemen on the beat. Before going their separate ways, pasting up anti-conscription posters, they gave each other their names. A week later, in a poorly furnished loft that had once held feed for a wealthy household’s horses, they spent the first night of their fifty-five years together, lying in each other’s arms, and somewhere in those early nights of happiness, unaware that their condoms - French letters - were faulty, they conceived a child whom they called Michael, because, pacifists both, they liked the story of the archangel persuading Abraham not to sacrifice Isaac, his son. I will make you a world, in the wilderness. You are mine now. Do not look at other men. In the wild swirl of the 1930s, with Europe the world’s cockpit, fascism frightened Michael’s parents. Was everything they had fought against going to re-present itself, filthier and more destructive? They reasoned that their first-born should enter a profession which would keep him away from bayonets and guns. Michael joined his father’s business as apprentice lens grinder, and learned the violin. Look back. There are not many points where you can look back. This is one. There are the lakes, and there the sea. Your town is behind you. Your life with me is ahead. I am the terms. You will never regret. You will be cold, hot, unhappy and hungry, but you will never regret. 7 Michael’s parents bought the big house; Michael took over the stable where he’d been conceived. Twenty years had brought it electricity and hot water, but, such were the times, police at the nearby station still collected bribes from abortionists with medical degrees, while hospitals took in the bleeding victims of knitting needles and twisted coathangers - cunt-hooks, as they were called. Michael fell in love. In winter, there will be a huge fire to cook on, to keep us warm. That fire will never die, from one year’s end to another, but sometimes greater fires will surround us. I will exult in them. You will cower at the end of my house, I know this, waiting for the danger to pass. The danger will never pass. I am the danger. I will exult in the way I frighten you. You will outlast me - I sense this - but you will never break out of my circle of terror. This is how Michael saw Helen, and fell in love. There are gentle springs where I am taking you, spilling the purest water. The main railway station in the city of Melbourne is famous for its clocks. ‘See you under the clocks,’ people say, arranging meetings. Michael was waiting for a tram in front of the station when he saw, in the flood of commuters, a young woman whose step declared she had a greater purpose than going home. When he saw her the next night, she had a viola case in her hand. He wanted to know her, and if fortune so prescribed, they might enter the unknown together. But how to make it happen? He went to a concert. Sitting in the organ gallery, because he liked to watch the conductor face-on, he became aware, early in the over- ture, that she was at the back desk of the violas. A pang of jealousy ran through him. She was at the heart of this fiery music. It was the Fantastic Symphony, and he hated Berlioz for tearing him in two. Did love have to be like this? Even the adagio was full of tension, with dis- tant thunder rumbling. The March to the Scaffold was horrific, with 8 her red hair tossing to the rhythm as she played. The brass blazed, the orchestra swaggered to its final crunch! The artist’s head lay in the basket. The following week he went again. The Sinfonia Concertante, Köchel 364. Viola and violin. As he left home, his father, George, noticed him helping himself to the opera glasses. Slipping a smile to Yatty (Yvonne), his wife, he said to their young man, ‘Something you want to get close to?’ Michael’s seat was above the orchestra, on the bass side, and he listened enviously to the impassioned dialogue. She was at her desk, contributing. When the soloists took their bow, he saw himself on the platform, in fantasy, with her; when the orchestra left the stage, he rushed downstairs, past the artists’ room where she’d be pull- ing on her coat, smiling and talking, and entered the lane at the back of the hall. ‘This is my fate’, he said to himself, in a dull street in a dull city, with, his parents seemed to think, and everything in the papers confirmed it, a war about to sweep like a cyclone across the world, pick- ing up lives like particles of dust, or droplets of water, and flinging them down wherever it pleased the enormous forces to release them.