Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname/Family Name : BAILEY Given Name/s : JACQUELIENE SHARON Abbreviation for degree as give in the University calendar : PhD (Creative Writing) Faculty : FACULTY OF ARTS AND SOCIAL SCIENCES School : SCHOOL OF THE ARTS AND MEDIA FROM THE HEART: THE GIFT EXPERIENCE OF CREATIVE WRITING AND Thesis Title : READING

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE)

The first part of the current thesis is a novel entitled The Eulogy, which examines the nature of love and choice in situations of intergenerational trauma, bereavement and disability. The narrator, Kathy, is at a crossroads in life and examines her family’s history through the last three generations against the backdrop of World War Two, the Malayan Conflict and the Vietnam War. The novel explores whether and under what circumstances people are able to make different choices from their forebears. In writing The Eulogy, I drew on lived experience, family stories, publicly available accounts of disability, war, and intergenerational trauma, and my own imagination. The Eulogy is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in the novel are either products of the author’s mind or are used fictitiously.

The research dissertation entitled From the heart: The gift experience of creative writing and reading forms the second part of the thesis. Whilst creative writing and reading arise as objects of inquiry in a number of fields of scholarship, there has been limited examination of the experience of reading or the experience of creative writing. In this dissertation, I ask the questions: How do readers and writers describe the experience of reading and writing in their own terms? And what can this add to our understanding of modes of human interaction and being?

The dissertation harnesses the conceptual power of phenomenology and interdisciplinary gift theories to deepen our understanding of creative writing and reading. I employ an empirical interpretive phenomenological methodology in this study, conducting and analysing twenty in-depth interviews with creative writers and readers who had experienced “loving” a book at some point in their lives. I look at the ways in which writers and readers describe how it feels to read a loved book, and how it feels to engage in writing fiction. The dissertation contributes to the development of a theory of creative writing and reading as gift-relations and, in a broader sense, to the development of a relational ontology of human being.

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‘I hereby grant the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or part in the University libraries in all forms of media, now or here after known, subject to the provisions of the Copyright Act 1968. I retain all proprietary rights, such as patent rights. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis or dissertation. I also authorise University Microfilms to use the 350 word abstract of my thesis in Dissertation Abstract International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only). I have either used no substantial portions of copyright material in my thesis or I have obtained permission to use copyright material; where permission has not been granted I have applied/will apply for a partial restriction of the digital copy of my thesis or dissertation.'

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The Eulogy

A novel

and

From the heart: The gift experience of creative writing and reading

Jacqueliene Bailey

A thesis in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

School of the Arts and Media

Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences

UNSW Sydney

1 November 2019

Abstract

Malayan Conflict and the Vietnam War. The novel explores whether and under what circumstances people are able to make different choices from their forebears. In writing The Eulogy, I drew on lived experience, family stories, publicly available accounts of disability, war, and intergenerational trauma, and my own imagination.

The Eulogy is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in the novel are either products of the author’s mind or are used fictitiously.

In this dissertation, I ask the questions: How do readers and writers describe the experience of reading and writing in their own terms? And what can this add to our understanding of modes of human interaction and being?

2 study, conducting and analysing twenty in-depth interviews with creative writers and readers who had experienced “loving” a book at some point in their lives. I look at the ways in which writers and readers describe how it feels to read a loved book, and how it feels to engage in writing fiction. The dissertation contributes to the development of a theory of creative writing and reading as gift-relations and, in a broader sense, to the development of a relational ontology of human being.

3 Acknowledgements

I could not have written this thesis without the gifts of many. I would like to thank my supervisors, Anne Brewster and Janet Chan, for their encouragement, faith and wisdom at key moments of the process. Their calm yet keen insights helped me stay on the path to completion; without them I would still be gazing intently at the bottom of yet another rabbit hole.

Thanks to my research participants for their generous sharing and the gift of their stories. I won’t list names to protect confidentiality but I am deeply grateful. I also want to thank my dear friends and readers, especially Roanna Gonsalves without whom I would never have thought I could do this thing. Marie Segrave and Julie

Lovell gave me their love, patient attention and laughter; Holly Ringland who heard me; and David Colville, who gave me hope at a moment when I needed it.

Thanks also to the UNSW team who have nurtured me throughout the process, including Sean Pryor, Dorottya Fabian, Chris Danta and Meg Mumford for their tireless postgraduate support efforts, my excellent readers Andrew Metcalfe, Andy

Kissane and Metta Jacobsen, and to Anne Enright for her masterclass.

I thank my manuscript assessor Susan Paterson, who told me to do all the things I had been hoping to avoid, and Tricia Dearborn, for polishing the work until it shone. I also thank the Eleanor Dark Foundation, the Australia Council for the Arts and Create

NSW for the gift of Varuna, without which my book would be a flea-infested, sorry- looking version of itself, and the staff at Varuna who make it such an oasis for

4 writers, including Veechi, Amy, Vera, Sheila, Rod and Joan. And thanks to my

Tuesday writers group, and the writers I met, commiserated and celebrated with at

Varuna whilst writing this dissertation – I cannot wait to read your stories.

To my family who provided the impetus for this book, thank you. To my darling poppet Ellie, whose cuddles, giggles and delight keeps my bucket full to overflowing and helps me stay anchored in the real world: I love you with my whole heart. To my husband Yen, without whom none of this would have been possible. Thank you, my darling man.

5 Table of Contents

Abstract ...... 2

Acknowledgements ...... 4

Table of Contents ...... 6

CREATIVE WORK: THE EULOGY

Contents ...... 9

Prologue ...... 12

Part 1: Childhood ...... 14

Part 2: Ancestry ...... 55

Part 3: Family Life ...... 97

Part 4: Career ...... 141

Part 5: Legacy ...... 180

Part 6: Closing ...... 228

Relevant Research Articles ...... 237

DISSERTATION: FROM THE HEART: THE GIFT EXPERIENCE OF

CREATIVE WRITING AND READING

Chapter One: Introduction ...... 240

Chapter Two: Theoretical Context ...... 253

Chapter Three: Methodology ...... 286

6 Chapter Four: Reading-a-loved-book ...... 306

Chapter Five: The experience of writing-fiction ...... 336

Chapter Six: Conclusion ...... 354

Appendix 1: Interview Questions ...... 360

Appendix 2: List of Research participants ...... 363

References ...... 365

The Eulogy

A novel

Jacqueliene Bailey

Contents

Contents ...... 9

Prologue ...... 12

Part 1: Childhood ...... 14

Part 2: Ancestry ...... 55

Part 3: Family Life ...... 97

Part 4: Career ...... 141

Part 5: Legacy ...... 180

Part 6: Closing ...... 228

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters and events portrayed in this novel are

either products of the author’s mind or are used fictitiously.

For Yen, Ellie and

Ally

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and

you will call it fate.” – Carl Jung

Prologue

It’s my job to write your eulogy, but every time I try to think of an amusing anecdote which sums up your life, I find myself asking, How did we get here? Not in a general sense, but specifically here, with me sitting in a car I have been living in for the last twenty-four hours, a husband on my blocked caller list, an airtight

Tupperware container filled with the finely blended powder of 300 sleeping pills in the glovebox; and you, or what is left of you, currently in transit from the Logan

Hospital morgue to Angel Companions Funeral Home.

It’s not as if your death was unexpected. That is not what confounds me.

My mind keeps returning to a study I read years ago when I was a psychology undergraduate. A team of doctors in San Diego surveyed almost 20,000 adults and found a statistically significant, graded relationship between adverse childhood experiences and cancer. At the time I dismissed it as so much humbug. Without triangulated evidence, the researchers only had people’s self-assessment as to whether they had experienced psychological, physical or sexual abuse.

I left the hospital three hours ago and have spent the time since sitting in my car, staring at a blank laptop screen.

It turned out that I was right to be dubious about the San Diego research: magnetic resonance imaging has since shown that negative events stimulate activity in the emotion-processing regions of the brain which lead to the creation of memory.

This may be an evolutionary survival technique – we remember bad things in order to avoid them in the future; but whatever the rationale for the tendency, the fact is that people’s memories cannot be trusted.

Yet here I am, trying to work out if the general conflict of 1983 – because there was certainly enough mayhem to go around, I do not claim sole licence to suffering in the

Bradley household – was enough to trigger one cell, then another in your child’s brain to turn radioactive? I suppose I am asking – for twenty-five years I have been asking

– did you get sick to protect me?

Part 1: Childhood

As much as possible, include personal memories to illustrate the deceased’s story. It is the little details that really bring the past to life. How to Write a Eulogy

14 1

1983 starts like any other year: hot and wet.

Our street is flooded as it always is in January, the height of the cyclone season. I stand on the upstairs balcony and watch two entire gum trees float past the house, rushing towards the creek. Our family is like the flood below, each one of us kids a fallen branch that could be smashed to bits any time. Trish, twenty-two, the medical student; Barb, nineteen, the prettiest one; Val, eighteen, who is wild; and Bev, fifteen and so far, so good. Then comes Brian, twelve, the only boy; and then you, seven, and me, four: the accidents.

I can hear Barb screaming downstairs as if she is the one being hurt. I sidle into the living room. My feet are damp from the veranda and make no sound on the carpet but leave marks which I will pay for later. I stay near the wall, trying to remain invisible. Barb must be thinking the same thing because she is pushing herself into the green and white curtains. She should know by now that she can’t hide.

‘Why are you so mean to meeeeee-eee-eee-eee-eee,’ Barb croons, over and over and over. It is kind of annoying; but then again, Barb is kind of annoying.

Val, on the other hand, has tears running down her face but refuses to say a single word. She stands as still as a statue.

This makes Mum go completely mental. Thunder judders the house down to its concrete slab; a tree crashes to the ground, its fall vibrating in my jaw. I want to go back on to the veranda to see if the lightning has started a fire: last year we got a bushfire and a storm at the same time. But I have a job to do. I screw up my forehead, staring at Val as if I could bore holes through her stone-still skin.

Just say sorry, I think at Val with all my might.

15 As if she can hear my thoughts, Barb, not Val, starts bawling, ‘I’m sorry, I’m sorr-eee-eee-eee. I’ll kill myself, is that what you want? Is that what you want?’

And so on. I shake my head at Val but she is not looking at me. She has her eyes carefully fixed on a point above Mum’s head and refuses to flinch, even when

Mum stands centimetres from her, then whack! The slap sounds like Barb’s Holden

Gemini backfiring.

With Barb it is, ‘Do you want me to kill myself? I will! I’ll do it!’ Bev goes for straight-up begging: ‘Leave me alone! Please leave me alone!’ Trish tries to stay calm but sometimes she does yell: ‘What do you want? What do you want?’ And Val? Val is the one who brings the government down on our heads.

The man and woman who come to our house have special badges but no uniforms. They sit at our kitchen table and don’t drink the tea Mum makes for them.

While they talk to our parents, we wait with the big kids in their bedroom downstairs.

‘Did Dad really do anything to you?’ Trish asks Val. I am curled up under

Val’s blankets and you are planted on the floor, hugging your knees, watching the big kids talk.

‘I couldn’t exactly say it was Mum, could I?’ Val replies. ‘Maybe one day I’ll write it all down. That’ll show her.’

‘That might be cathartic.’

‘Or I might just forget all about it. That might be better.’

‘You’ll never forget,’ Trish answers. Val laughs.

The government people finally leave after Val swears black and blue that she made it all up. I wait for the screams to begin; the sound of my sisters’ faces being pushed into walls. But there is nothing: only a silence that could be either the end or the beginning of something. I can’t tell which.

This is probably not quite the right personal memory for a eulogy.

I try again.

When I was five, I type, Annie kicked me in the stomach. I asked her why. She said, ‘Sorry. I was aiming for your nose.’

I read over what I have written, sigh, and hit the backspace button. The entire concept of a eulogy, attempting to encapsulate the story of someone’s life, is pointless. My recollections would be different to Barb’s, whose memories would be different to Trish’s, and so on and so on, ad infinitum. What scientists would call my

‘gist’ memory – my memory of the overall tenor, the vibe of our childhood – is inevitably coloured by my recent life events which will make me even more liable to focus on the negative aspects of our shared history.

I take a few deep breaths, trying to calm my amygdala so I can conjure a neutral state more conducive to writing. This eulogy is the last thing I can do for you,

Annie, and then I can rest. And then, finally, I can sleep.

I am parked down the road from the Loganholme MacDonald’s. I avoid parking in actual carparks because bored security guards might take too keen an interest in my container full of white powder, and the last thing I need is another brush with the police.

According to my car radio it is 1.37 am. The night air smells like cooking oil and the deceptively mild humidity of a Queensland night-time. Suddenly I am four years old, and you are not sick yet, or at least we don’t know that you are sick yet. I am sitting at the top of the staircase at 19 Railway Road, waiting for something,

17 although I have forgotten what. Then the front door opens and Dad walks in, bringing with him the smell of Old Spice and hot chips. I grab hold of his leg and he swings me along as if I am a koala and he the branch of a gum tree, as if I weigh nothing at all. He puts the grease-paper bag on the kitchen table and I run down the hallway to wake you because you and I are still the same person. We sit around the kitchen table,

Dad in his nurse’s uniform, you and I in our hand-me-down nighties. We don’t need to line up the chips in order of size and count them out because the big kids are all asleep. Mum is there too, making Dad a cup of coffee and hovering in the kitchen, hair in rollers. The potato burns my tongue but I say nothing, because I do not want this night to end.

I would, on the other hand, quite like it if this night would end. Even at the best of times, we Bradleys are terrible sleepers. Our brother Brian still gets up at five every morning to run on the treadmill, and he takes valerian tablets to help him sleep. Val does what I do: lies in bed and thinks. Trish works fifteen hours a day, then swims two kilometres before falling catatonic into her own version of one-eye-open. Annie, you were the only one of us who could sleep anywhere, any time. I guess all those nights spent in hospital beds made you able to sleep through anything.

When I finally nod off, all I see are dead people. You are with Dad, coming back to life on the funeral parlour tables. You two are not dead after all! Only crumbling a little, but we can take care of that. So stupid of us, really.

I jerk awake. It is 4 am, the time of the morning a person can only sleep through if she is happy in her bones. It’s a good time as any to go for a drive. I ease the Subaru past the fancy brick houses built into Loganholme’s forested hillsides, automated sprinklers daubing my car with their genteel dew. The overpass delivers

18 me to the other side of the freeway, to the lowlands where we grew up. The houses on this side of the freeway are either kit homes, with castor oil shrubs and rye grass growing in patches in place of a lawn, or weatherboards surrounded by rusting car bodies and lantana-filled bathtubs. Dad had been dishonourably discharged from the army, but his active service in Vietnam entitled him to a Defence Force discount on loan interest rates. The Bradleys buy a house in Logan, the poorest area of south-east

Queensland. I release a breath I did not realise I had been holding. Home.

As I draw closer to 19 Railway Road, the houses begin to acquire a tended look. I look for the one-cent lolly-shop, where we once found a cockroach in a bag of jelly-babies and got a whole extra bag for free. In its place rears a salmon-pink

McMansion with a water feature on the front lawn. When we lived here, Logan was still a shire and the suburb of Loganlea was just a series of grassy lots lining the flood plains of the Logan River, forty-five minutes south of Brisbane in the dry, more than an hour in the wet or even longer if the bridges were under water. Since then, the swamps have been drained; Logan City boasts a university campus and a hospital, where you died less than eight hours ago.

I park in front of a two-storey house which has been rendered in an eggshell white. The lawn full of bindies that we used to wince across with rubbish for the incinerator, our eyes streaming from the smoke, has been replaced with an oval of grass and a tiled courtyard. The concrete veranda where Dad used to stand, hosing us down in the heat, is still there, albeit under a sheath of hardwood cladding. The new owners can tack on as many porticos and vestibules as they like; our house will always be the fat kid in its soul.

I was the actual fat kid, when we were growing up. I wasn’t horrendously obese, but my arms and legs were chubby and squeezable compared to your long, lean

19 limbs. After you got sick, your thyroid stopped working and you expanded like a stress ball in the hands of a Zen monk, whilst I went the opposite way. Years later, when I met Evan, I was the skinniest I had ever been. I had just spent months attempting, and failing, to meet the expectations of Lachie, the penultimate boyfriend, the one before Evan; as a result, I was at the bottom of my recommended BMI range for the first time in my adult life. I sometimes think that is the only reason Evan fell in love with me. Recently I have started to look like myself again, the weight padding my body into its destined proportions. I undo the top button on my trousers and close my eyes.

I startle awake, drool sliding down the side of my chin. It’s just after 7 am and the residents of 19 Railway Road are stirring: I can hear the squeal of a shower and the smell of coffee wafts through the car window. I fumble on the seat next to me for my keep cup. The tepid bitterness of the burnt beans kicks me awake, which is good because I need to get moving, but when I try to sit up, I can’t. I cannot move until the tombstone on my chest lets me go.

This is interesting, the calm part of my brain says, taking mental notes. I have read studies about the physiological impacts of bereavement. They include neuroendocrine activation (cortisol response), altered sleep (electroencephalography changes), immune imbalance (reduced T-lymphocyte proliferation), inflammatory cell mobilisation (platelet activation and increased vWF-ag), and haemodynamic changes

(heart rate and blood pressure).

This explains why I feel exhausted but can’t sleep. Why my fuse is short and my heart shivers; why my stomach clenches as if something terrible or wonderful is about to happen, or I am about to throw up. My heart genuinely aches; my body is

20 labouring with less air, under more strain. Waking feels like acclimatising to high- altitude mountain climbing, because I am doing exactly that. These physiological responses are greatest in the early months after bereavement. In some cases of extreme sorrow, survivors have been found to experience increased mortality. In other words, dying of a broken heart is real.

After a few minutes of deep breathing, and before anyone comes to tap on my window and ask why a strange, unkempt woman is parked outside their house, I am at last able to start the car. I head for a playground I passed on my way here. The toilet block is already blessedly unlocked, which means I can get inside, splash my face, brush my teeth and give myself an all-over spray of deodorant. Thankfully there is no one else around; I don’t think I could stomach exchanging smiles with a harassed mother and her snotty two-year old this morning. The parks near the seaside are better, because they have showers, but Logan is the poor, landlocked cousin of the

Gold Coast, and I need to be at the funeral home by 9 am.

Angel Companions Funeral Home is situated in a light industrial area of

Logan ‘City,’ just off the southbound freeway. I take the service road exit and park.

Families and young couples stream past below on the A1 freeway, headed for the

Gold Coast with surfboards and dreams of sunnier, happier version of themselves strapped to their roof racks. Whilst I wait for the rest of the Bradleys to arrive, I contemplate the prefab building with ‘Angel Companions Funeral Home’ written in cursive font on the side. ‘Funeral home’ is such a ridiculous term. I suppose it would sound a bit too commercial to call it a funeral shop; but ‘home’? I prefer the old- fashioned term ‘parlour,’ conjuring images of creaky furniture upholstered in faded

21 velvet where countless bottoms have farted through countless cups of stewed tea and triangular sandwiches. That’s my idea of a send-off.

My siblings begin to arrive in their separate vehicles, a horde of Bradleys descending upon the unwitting funeral directors. Here comes Doctor Trish in her ten- year-old Mercedes, the one she refuses to upgrade even though she probably makes more money than the rest of us combined, because it still works, doesn’t it? Barb is in her zippy Honda hatchback with the personalised license plates: ‘BARB01’ they say, with a little picture of a pink bunny rabbit on the right-hand side. I wonder where she got the money for that; she always cries poor when we pass the hat for Mum’s bills.

Brian is in yet another of the endless parade of brand-new Japanese four-wheel-drives that have passed through his garage since he married into Anglo-Aussie suburbia; and

Val is in her sleek white company car. Last but not least, Bev arrives, with mum in the front passenger seat. I have already heard from Barb all about Bev’s car: a metallic golden Ford purchased with Bev’s late ex-husband’s life insurance.

‘Let her enjoy it,’ Mum scolds me when she sees me looking from the car to

Bev’s glum adolescent children and back again.

I have not seen Bev for eight years; not since Dad’s funeral. I watch her alight from the gleaming vehicle and imagine my dad’s ghostly self circling it, kicking the tyres and nodding his approval. He had been a Ford man through and through and would have been the first to advise me against the nearly new Subaru that Evan and I bought last year. But I would not have listened: I had done my research. I always do my research.

Seeing Bev’s permed head emerge from the car, I can’t help but feel a tiny bit disappointed. What had I imagined? That miraculously, through a change of location and a failure to share her phone number with the rest of us, she had escaped the

22 mediocrity of her projected life? The babies who went from smelling of purity to air freshener within minutes of emerging from her distracted womb; the ex-husband who finally died of an overdose, by accident or on purpose no one will ever know, although based on my recollections of Keith, I think I can hazard a guess?

Val was the one who tracked Bev down. It wasn’t nearly as difficult as when we had to track Val herself down, back in 1983 when you had just been diagnosed with cancer and everyone thought you only had a year to live. All Val had to do was log on and search for Bev’s children on Facebook, and there they all were. ‘How r u?

Nice to hear from u again ;-)’ It turns out that Bev and her family left the caravan park they had been living in and drove north up the A1. The A1 is the highway that circumnavigates the entire continent of Australia. An estimated 14,500 kilometres of road, winding ever onwards. You can go anywhere on that road, become anyone you want to be. Our sister stopped in Bundaberg, a small town just five hours north of

Brisbane. She and her family stayed there for the next eight years. What is that, if not a drastic failure of imagination?

Now here she is, the prodigal sister, seated next to Mum with just as much right to be present as any of us, I suppose. I walk over, give her a kiss. She is soft, a black polyester cardigan warming layers of beautiful fat. I am transported to you,

Annie. It’s her cuddliness, the obliging give of her body in my arms. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood.

The funeral director has to fetch more chairs.

‘So lovely to see you all so involved,’ she says.

We blink at her, the Bradleys, glazed and dazed with sleep deprivation and grief, yet still more collectively brilliant than she will ever be. It’s because we bring out the best in each other. Or the worst, depending on what is at stake.

23 Packets of tissues have been artfully arranged in a basket in the centre of the meeting table. While the director is out of the room, Barb leans forward. Hand halfway to her handbag, she suddenly remembers that we are all there with nothing else to do but watch her, stealing the free stuff.

‘Look,’ she says. ‘Tissues.’

‘I think they’re for people who are crying, Barb,’ Val says. Barb takes one out and dabs at her eyes.

When the funeral director comes back, Val talks about buying a new outfit for you to wear. We all agree on a cardboard coffin which costs $2,000 (the nerve of these people), so that we can decorate it ourselves. Val and her kids will paint the coffin in a floral pattern.

‘Annie would have loved that.’

‘Yes, Annie would have loved that.’

‘Whatever happened to Annie’s gold crucifix?’ I ask Barb. Annie, you know the one I mean. It was a pretty thing, only nine-carat gold but with a detailed figure of

Christ on the cross. Trish gave it to you for our trip to Lourdes in 1991 and you wore it right up until you were moved into the aged-care home. The last time I saw it, it was dangling from Barb’s neck as she kissed you good-bye. By then, you were unable to make a sound.

‘I’m looking after it for her,’ Barb told me when I confronted her. ‘In case it gets stolen.’ Which is ironic, when you think about the tissues.

‘What crucifix?’ Barb asks now. I stare at her carefully, searching for her tell- tale tic: when Barb lies, she can’t stop the tiniest of smiles from flitting across her face. But she looks genuinely puzzled, and I wonder, is it more galling that she took

24 this most sacred memento of yours, for God knows, you had little enough to call your own; or that she cannot even remember doing so?

I take a deep breath. The crucifix is not the priority, I tell myself. The priority is the funeral. There was so little I could do for you when you were alive, but what I can do is this: I can give you the funeral you would have loved.

I make myself turn away from Barb and focus on my brother Brian. We agree to meet with the priest to talk through the service, Brian because he knows the priest from his work as a teacher, and I because I know you, Annie.

Although how well can I say I really knew you by the end? When was the last time I spoke to you and you spoke back? Even before the stroke, the one which landed you in the aged-care home, your speech had been getting more and more slurred. It might have been because of the meds that kept your seizures in check, or it might have been the dementia. Whatever it was, I can’t actually remember the last time we spoke in dialogue; you know – me, then you. You, then me. I miss that. I miss the sound of your voice.

The Logan Hyperdome has metastasized since I was last here. The largest, single- level shopping mall in the Southern Hemisphere, the billboards read. I attempt to interpret the directions of a touchscreen map, then wander around trying to look like I know where I am going for what feels like hours, before I stumble upon a jewellery shop not far from the cinema.

A lady with dyed auburn hair unlocks the cabinet of crosses for me. Her fingers are strewn with cubic zirconias. I sit down, weary at the mere thought of the hours that went into her make-up. She only has two necklaces which have body of

Christ figurines fused to the golden arms of the cross.

25 ‘This one is $329,’ the woman says, indicating the rose gold one. ‘The yellow gold one is $249. I can probably do a 10 per cent discount if you want to get a good chain to go with it.’

‘No, I don’t need a good chain,’ I say.

I prefer the rose gold crucifix because it has a more detailed corpse. I ask if I can take pictures with my phone and the lady nods.

I send Val the images. She calls me. There are outdoor sounds where she is: I picture sunshine and the quiet satisfaction of getting things done.

‘We’re just picking up the coffin and taking it back to our place so we can get started. We only have three days and they weren’t going to be able to deliver it until

Friday so we just got the van and picked it up ourselves.’

Val sounds pleased with her own initiative.

‘Oh, good one, thanks for that,’ I say. ‘Have you dropped off clothes to the funeral parlour?’

‘Yes, I did that on the way. I bought a lovely pink frilly top and a nice pale green skirt.’

‘Nice. Hey, listen, which crucifix do you reckon I should get? I think the rose gold one is more like the one she used to wear.’

‘I agree, I think the rose gold one’s more like hers.’

‘All right, I’ll get that one then.’

‘But you said it’s more expensive?’ I know what she is really asking: Are you sure you want to spend that much on something that is just going to go into the flames?

‘I want to do it for her. It wouldn’t be the same, Annie with no cross on.’ My voice wobbles.

26 Val’s voice drops. ‘I know what you mean.’

When I hang up, the woman with the auburn hair is looking at me.

‘It’s for a funeral,’ I explain.

‘Yes, I gathered that.’

‘That’s why I don’t really need a new chain,’ I add, probably unnecessarily, because the woman merely nods. As she does so, not a hair on her head moves. I have never, not even on my wedding day, looked as well-groomed as she does.

‘I’ll take the rose gold one, please,’ I say.

I hand over my credit card. The woman places the crucifix in a padded gift box and ties it with white ribbon. She taps numbers into a calculator and mutters to herself. She applies a 30 per cent discount to the purchase and, without meeting my eye, drops a fine gold chain into the bag. She then goes out back and brings back a handful of tissues for the tears that have been sliding down my cheeks since I got off the phone.

It’s too hot to go and sit in my car, so I head to Starbucks and pull out my laptop. I type the heading Childhood and wait for inspiration. The coffee table is made from the smoky glass that I used to covet when we were kids, thinking it the height of sophistication. If you wait long enough, everything comes back.

27 2

It’s too hot to be in the Kingswood, which has no air-conditioning, but here we are, you and me in the back seat, Mum and Dad up front. For the past two weeks since the government officials’ visit things have been quiet at home, but that’s about to change.

When we get to Matteo’s place, Mum slams the door of the Kingswood and huffs off, Dad following more slowly. You and I struggle with the jammy handle until finally you manage to wrench the door open.

We creep to the house. There are bits of junk all over the front yard. I can see parts of cars, and a garden gnome with a red hat and blue clothes, its nose cracked off.

I wish we could get garden gnomes. They remind me of Papa Smurf, who is always smiling and being wise and making everyone feel better.

The screen door swings shut behind us. Matteo’s living room has shag pile carpet (I wish we could get shag pile carpet – so soft) and a low, black leather couch.

His TV is way bigger than ours. A low, smoky glass coffee table is cluttered with empty cans and full ashtrays. The room smells like air freshener, which makes me wonder, What is he trying to hide?

Matteo is in his jeans even though it is already a stinker. These wogs, Dad always says. They don’t know the first thing about how to manage the heat. Matteo’s hair is receding from his forehead like Dad’s, but unlike Dad he keeps it long in the back and even more hair sticks out of his T-shirt. Yuck, I think. How much is under there?

‘She go, if she like,’ he waves his hand. ‘No one stop her.’

28 Bev emerges from the kitchen. Mum stomps across the living room but I can’t hear her footsteps because the carpet pile is so deep. She yanks Bev by the hair and pinches her hard, raising red marks on Bev’s bare arms.

‘No shame!’ Mum shouts. ‘Make me sick!’

I cower, even though I am not the target. Mum’s voice could squeeze my heart until it stops. You shove past me.

‘Stop it, Mum! Stop it!’

You place yourself between Mum and Bev, both hands raised. Mum reaches around you like you aren’t even there and slaps Bev. Dad pulls you out of the way. He hustles us back to the car and puts us in the back seat, this time locking the door.

‘This is all Bev’s fault,’ you say from your side of the car.

‘Then why did you try to stop Mum?’

You pause.

‘Mum gets high blood pressure. Bev shouldn’t get her worked up like this.’

‘Was Bev really bad?’

‘Yes,’ you say. ‘She was living in sin.’

‘What’s that?’

‘You’re too little to understand.’

‘I am not!’

But you refuse to say anything further. It doesn’t matter. I know what living in sin means. I saw it on TV, in one of Mum’s shows, The Young and the Restless. It’s where a man and a lady live together in the same house and they are not married. It’s also something to do with boobs and being itchy. At least, that’s what Mum yells at the big kids. So there, Annie Bradley, I think. You’re not the only one who knows things.

29 Back at home the shouting goes on all day, with short breaks for meals during which Bev has to kneel and eat what she is given.

It’s almost bedtime and Bev is still kneeling at the top of the stairs. Mum is watching TV in the lounge room.

I creep up to Bev and whisper, ‘Are you OK?’

Bev tries to smile but her face is too puffy from crying. I circle one more time, then lean under her curtain of hair and give her a hug. I hurry back to the living room so I don’t get her into any more trouble.

A week goes by, and Mum hasn’t hit anyone. I start to think that things have settled down, and proving me right, Mum only protests for a minute or two when Dad comes home from a day shift, talking about how circus tickets have been discounted because of the rain. I am so excited that I have to go to the toilet three times, afraid I will wee my pants, but we know to stay quiet, so Mum doesn’t change her mind about letting us go.

The circus is set up in an empty lot next to the Woodridge railway station. The circus people have laid hay all over the ground so we can walk around despite the mud. The air smells like a pleasant mixture of fresh straw and horse poo. It smells like what I think the outdoors would smell like if we were in a book like your favourite,

Black Beauty.

Dad lets us have a turn on the clown heads. I take a ping pong ball and put it in the clown’s mouth. I win a green fairy doll stuck to the end of a bamboo stick. When I hold it, the stick makes the fairy seem like it is flying high in the sky, sprinkling good cheer and luck everywhere.

30 You don’t win anything, so Dad has a go and gets you a fairy doll too. Yours is pink because pink is your favourite colour. Then Dad buys us Dagwood Dogs and fairy floss, the giant cloud of pink sugar spun out and out until it looks like an oversized cotton wool ball on the end of a stick. It melts the minute I put my tongue on it. It is the best thing I have ever eaten in my life.

I fall asleep on the bench seat of the Kingswood on the way home, leaning against Dad. Mum takes my doll off the stick because she says she doesn’t want me poking my eyes out with it. Then I sit on a high stool in the kitchen watching Val make a cake for Bev’s birthday. Mum is in a good mood. She and Val laugh about something. I hang around hoping I might get to lick the spoon when they are done.

Mum takes the bamboo stick from where she has placed it in the corner of the kitchen and whacks me across both legs.

‘Why did you do that?’ I ask, tears springing to my eyes.

Mum shrugs. ‘Just in case.’ She laughs again. So does Val.

Mum tucks the stick into the couch, in between the cushions. She says she is keeping it handy, just in case.

I think she must not have liked me waiting around for the spoon. I was being greedy. I shouldn’t be greedy. When I tell you, you agree that was the reason. Then you let me take the teddy even though tonight is not my night.

In the middle of the night the light of the moon disturbs my sleep. I slip down off the end of the bed and tiptoe out of the bedroom so I don’t wake up Mum, who is gently snoring on one side of me, or Dad, who is loudly snoring on the other. As I sit on the loo I glance out the window and almost scream. But it’s not a ghost out in the backyard. I can hear the faint crack, crack, as you snap the bamboo stick and throw

31 the fragments into the incinerator. When I am finished, I quietly fetch the teddy and place him on your pillow. You deserve him more than me.

Was it that night, I wonder? Someone murmuring, “Ssh, ssh;” a choking sound; hands kneading my four-year old skin? It happened once. Twice. Maybe three times. Maybe not at all. Except that it did; the knowledge came before memory, when my cells were the only available depositories for threat. My body is aware of exactly how much I owe you Annie, even if my mind is not; you and your cancer. I’m giving you three days and a eulogy. It’s not much, but it’s all I can offer you now.

My phone pings with a text from Val. “Everyone to wear something pink for the funeral for Annie xx.” Sighing, I shoulder my laptop bag and re-enter the anesthetised flow of shoppers like a turtle surrendering to the East Australian Current. Looks like I will have to buy more clothes after all.

It’s funny, isn’t it, how Val turned out to be so stable? She has a house, a husband, three kids, a job in health administration after working for years as a nurse. I wonder if that first trip to the hospital put her in mind of a career in the health system.

I’m not talking about your first trip: by then, she was long gone. I’m talking about that other trip that the Bradleys took to the hospital in 1983. To the psych ward.

32 1983: a year of firsts. First trip to the circus, first blow with a bamboo stick, first time

I ever met our older brother, and now our first visit to a hospital.

The room is decked out in green and white. Even the sheet covering Val is dark green, the kind of green I have only ever seen before in the paint swatches Dad brought home when he was getting ready to do the downstairs bathroom. Mum is huffing and puffing like a dragon preparing to burn down the village. Val is only barely conscious, but even so she has her glasses on. They must have let her keep those so she could see who was coming.

Val – there’s no easy way to say this – is the worst of the big kids. She has tried to run away four times, and there was the time she brought child services down on our heads.

But this is way worse. Barb says she took too many Panadols and the doctors had to pump it all out of her stomach. I look around the room, but there is no giant tube anywhere. I guess they had to take it away and clean off all the other gunk that would have come out of her along with the tablets.

Barb says it was just a stunt to get attention. From my spot at the foot of the bed, I can just make out her face, which looks slightly green, like the decor. I think she is smart to keep her eyes closed. The minute she opens them, Mum will be off like a horse from the box on Melbourne Cup Day.

Two days later Val is allowed to come home. For some reason Mum is keeping her anger in check, but I wish she would just let it all out. Then it would be over with.

The pressure is building up like the clouds of a summer storm threatening to break over our heads.

Val still looks sick and weak. Usually she walks around with an energy that sparks, like Rice Bubbles – snap, crackle and pop! That’s Val. Even when I know she

33 is up to no good I just can’t help but follow her lead. But at the moment, it’s like all the energy is sunk somewhere deep inside her, if it is still there at all. Maybe the doctors scraped it out along with the Panadol.

Just when I start to think things might just go back to normal, it all comes pouring out, the way I imagine the contents of Val’s stomach did when the doctors pushed a tube down her throat and made her vomit her way back to life.

Dad protests, ‘Stop it, Madge! Stop it!’ but Mum is in another world and doesn’t hear him. You and I sit and watch until Bev notices us and makes us go upstairs. It gets late and the shouting is still going on. You and I go to bed without being asked. We lie next to each other, you on your side of the invisible line and me on mine. I know you are awake and listening. When you think I am asleep, you quietly get up and go back to the living room.

I can be quiet too. I follow you and am just in time to see you inserting yourself between Mum and Val. I know that you don’t approve of Val’s sins, but I guess you don’t approve of Mum’s, either. You are the bravest person I know, but sometimes your courage makes us do stupid things.

I join you, raising my hands over my skull to avoid the whirlpool of limbs and bodies. The air in here is stale and hard to breathe, as if we are stranded in space with just one oxygen tank between us.

‘Stop it, Val, stop annoying Mum!’ you sob.

‘Stop it!’ I repeat.

Mum breathes heavily, ignoring us. Val has already half pulled down the curtains in her attempt to hide.

In the morning Val is not in the big kids’ room. Her school bag and more than half of her clothes are gone. My parents leave and don’t return until the sun is already

34 well on its way to the other side of the world. They do the same the next day, and the next.

A few days after Val’s disappearance, I wake up with a start. I go straight to the bathroom and get rid of the rest. I debate with myself for a moment or two but the sheets are too dirty. I rouse Mum.

‘Mum,’ I say. ‘Mum!’

‘Hmm? What, what is it?’ she asks, voice furry with sleep.

‘I pooed my pants,’ I say.

‘What?’

‘I pooed my pants!’

Mum gets up. Dad is at work, which is good and bad: bad because he is not here to defend me, but good because it means I got his sheets dirty, not hers.

This next bit is hard to tell.

Mum shakes you awake, telling you to go and sleep with the big kids in the room that they share downstairs. You look like you are about to argue but I plead with you with my eyes to go. Anything else will just make things worse for me and you know it, so you reluctantly head downstairs.

Mum strips the bed of the soiled sheets. Then Mum gets me to rinse out my underpants and fill the laundry sink so that they can soak overnight. She puts clean sheets on the bed, refusing to let me help. She tells me to wash myself, which I do, crying in the shower, not wanting to take too long but not wanting to get out, either.

As I get dressed, she whips me with the sheets she has just removed. It’s hard to stay out of reach because I am naked and crying and trying to get dry and pull clean pyjamas and underpants on, so although I know she is nearby I can’t see the next strike coming.

35 After I am dressed, she tells me to get back into bed. I curl myself up into a ball and face the wall. Our mother shoves her way down the narrow gap between the wall and the bed so that she can place the sheets which I soiled next to my face. So, she says, I can sleep in my own shit.

I blink back tears and hold my clean sheet tight to my chin. My eyes are filled with the bunched-up sheets, the yellowy-brown smudges. I close my eyes but I keep having to open them when the tears need somewhere to go, and so I keep seeing the sheet. There is a rustling sound and a warm breath on my face. It’s you, leaning over me, gently placing the sheet on the floor in a tangle that looks as if it dropped there of its own accord. You put a finger to your mouth, Ssh, then creep back downstairs.

The next morning Dad scrubs the sheets while I scrub the stains from my purple undies which are a hand-me-down from you. He says nothing but having him standing next to me allows me to swallow the tears which would have got me into more trouble.

After Dad has helped me hang the sheets on the line, I come back into house looking for you.

‘Annie!’ I call. ‘Annie!’

I find you in the big kids’ room. You are lying down on our sister’s empty bed.

You place your hands over your ears as if trying to stop your brains from spilling out and when I ask you what’s wrong, you say that you have a headache.

After that first headache, I have no further memories of swinging orange lights, or hands pressing against my four-year old skin.

I realise this is at best a statistically insignificant correlation, not remotely a causal relationship. I know that a child cannot give cancer to herself to protect her sister. Of course she can’t.

How about some cheerful anecdotes, like the time you got a bicycle for Christmas, or the time I made you laugh and laugh when I dressed up as a pink ghost, or my first ever birthday party? Every time I seize upon one of these memories, I can’t help but remember what came after: you never rode that bicycle, because of your hemiplegia; I draped a pink blanket over my head because you were weeping in your hospital bed and it was the only thing I could think to do. My birthday party, with the big frosted cake, only happened because Mum and Dad thought you were dying and wanted to make you happy, and you said that what would make you happy was to make me happy. This may be selective memory, but when I look back, it seems that all the good things in our lives were a result of your gradual dying.

In the weeks after Val’s disappearance the shouting and punishments spread like an ink stain. One night it is Bev, kneeling at the top of the stairs and trying not to cry; the next it is Barb, screaming that she will do something crazy if Mum keeps at her. Even

Brian is not immune, copping an earful for being bad-tempered, which is, truth be told, fair, although the way Mum yells, I find myself siding with Brian.

We drive to Matteo’s place again, Mum and Dad in front, you and me in the back. Val is not there and Matteo threatens to call the police on us for trespassing. She is not at her friends’ houses; she is not anywhere.

37 I know Val is bad through and through, but I miss her. Whenever I flop face- down on our bed after a scolding from Mum, I think of Val. The image of my sister, safe and free, balloons in my chest and I can’t help but think fierce thoughts. Next time our mother hits me, maybe I won’t just stand there and take it.

You start complaining every day of headaches, which just makes Mum mad.

She hates it when we say we don’t feel well. At night in bed, I whisper for you to stop. But maybe you really are sick, because you keep it up until Mum finally takes you to Doctor Lin’s surgery, where Barb works on reception. Barb plays the grown- up, smiling and ushering us into Doctor Lin’s room. You lie back on the bed as told, covered with a blue paper sheet. Doctor Lin presses your tummy. He tells you to get down and then sits across from Mum.

‘There is nothing wrong with her. She’s a hypochondriac,’ he says, smirking at you.

‘Ah, hypochondriac,’ Mum repeats, nodding.

After that, whenever you complain of any sort of pain, Mum laughs and whips out the new word. Sometimes you cry with frustration right in front of Mum, but she doesn’t hit you because she has the word and I think, Annie, don’t push your luck.

After walking for at least 15 minutes past endless rows of boutiques, I find Kmart where I can purchase an entire pink ensemble for less than $25: top, trousers, even underpants and bra. I don’t want to spend money; I want Evan to have as much as possible for his future life. I want to be the kind of stain that comes out with a good laundry powder and extra soaking. I want to leave him clean.

38 3

Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) has been used to show that the orbitofrontal cortex and the amygdala, the parts of the brain associated with processing emotions, are more active when processing negative events. In other words, people tend to recall the details of a negative event much more clearly than the details of positive events. This is why I still remember your diagnosis like it was yesterday; why, despite my best attempts, the memory of the orange light remained buried in my sub-conscious for twenty-five years.

I hope the woman from the park does not cling to the memory of what I did, the day before yesterday, although it feels to me like a century ago. I hope she does not recur to it every night, re-living the terror she must have felt when she could not locate her baby. Where’s the baby then, Kathy? Where?

By Christmas there is still no word of Val, but Trish comes home for a few days. She even brings her medical bag so we can play doctors and patients.

Weirdly, you don’t want to play even though it is your favourite game and

Trish is your favourite of the big kids.

I seize my chance. ‘Do me!’ I shout.

Trish obliges, putting the stethoscope on my chest and hitting my knees with the hammer that makes my legs jerk. This is called a reflex, Trish tells me. She says it’s automatic, which means I can’t stop it: if someone hits me in exactly the right

39 spot, my body will kick back. Then Trish makes you lie down and pretends to check your eyes with the penlight and taps your knees too. After a few minutes, Trish leaves the room.

You sit up, arms folded, still cross. You ignore me even though I still have the stethoscope and twiddle the ear buds temptingly.

Trish announces that she is going to visit her friend Amy, who lives and works at the hospital as an intern, like she does. We are going to go with her!

‘We like Amy,’ I remind you. It’s true, we do. Amy is the exact opposite of a

Bradley. She is as pale as a ghost, with pale skin and pale eyebrows and pale curly hair. She grew up in Brisbane, in a big old house on the river with just one brother, which does not seem enough to be a family. Her house was so old that it had a real ghost: the rope still dangled from the tree where a convict had hung himself. Once, when Trish was babysitting us, she took us with her to Amy’s, and I saw him, hanging from the Moreton Bay fig in the front yard. We were allowed to use the swing in the tree but I didn’t want to. My brother Brian made a choking face and laughed. It wasn’t funny.

Now, you just scowl and shake your head at me. You always know if something is up, and I assume this is the case now, but I don’t dwell on it because we are out, at night, past bedtime. I kick my feet, which are not long enough to reach the floor of Trish’s Datsun. The street lights flash by the window like fireworks. Mum is in the front seat next to Trish. I am four years old but soon I will be five.

Trish has forgotten that we are not playing anymore, so she still has a smile stuck on her face. We are near the hospital now, but we don’t take the turn to the residence. After the first five minutes of the drive, you stopped asking where we are going, but now you say, ‘I thought you said we were going to see Amy.’

40 ‘We just need to make a quick detour first,’ Trish says.

The emergency room is blindingly bright. Long, fluorescent light tubes line the ceiling and the hall reflects them, so I have to squint no matter which way I look.

Doctors in white coats and blue scrubs smile at me in a friendly way, but they are all walking really fast to places I am not allowed to go.

We are directed to a bed behind a curtain and a young male doctor, also friendly, also smiling, tells you to lie down. Trish talks to him and then he does the tests that Trish did at home. Trish smiles a grown-up smile now. She is a few centimetres taller than she was an hour ago.

‘I’m just going to test your muscles,’ the doctor says. Like my sister Trish, he wears glasses. I wonder, Do all doctors wear glasses? Even though you still look annoyed, you do what the doctor asks because he is, after all, a doctor.

‘What are they doing?’ I ask you after the smiling doctor walks away, smiling.

‘I don’t know,’ you reply. ‘Mum?’ You frown. I can see that you are angry, but it feels like your anger is smaller here than when we were at home. If the wind changes, I remind you, you will have a deep furrow between your two eyes forever.

You just ignore me and keep scrunching your face into a prune.

You seem a long way away up there on the bed. I don’t have a doll or a toy with me, and I wish I had something to hold right now.

‘We’re going to admit her,’ I hear the doctor say in a lowered voice through the curtain. Don’t they realise these things aren’t really walls?

‘Mum!’ you suddenly shout. You are crying. The doctor walks back in and suddenly the curtained area is full of people. Someone fills out a clipboard and two men in blue pyjamas start wheeling you away. Trish walks alongside the bed, talking

41 to you in her doctor voice, which is meant to be soothing and which you and I usually giggle about, but you are not laughing now.

Mum holds me by the shoulders so I can’t follow. It is not until the bed disappears through a pair of double doors that I realise I should have waved goodbye.

I am sitting in the hospital corridor with Brian and Barb. Bev leans against the wall.

Mum, Dad and Trish are inside the Intensive Care Unit talking to the doctor. Only two visitors are allowed in to see Annie at a time, plus Trish who is allowed in whenever she wants because she is an intern, so I have spent a lot of time out here over the last week.

In two weeks, I’ll be five, which means I will finally go to school with Annie.

I hate having a birthday so soon after Christmas. Everyone gets you things like pencil cases and erasers, which they would have had to buy you anyway.

It’s a wide corridor that we are waiting in – it has to be so the nurses can roll beds up and down. Across the corridor from where we sit are two plastic sheets which are like the swing doors in a saloon in a western, but instead of Clint Eastwood, nurses push through, rolling trolleys of meals on trays. The nurses give Brian and me leftover cups of jelly. I don’t think it would be polite to tell them I don’t like jelly, so I swallow the shards of wobbly stuff as if it is medicine, which it sort of is, seeing as this is a hospital.

Brian and I are just finishing our jelly (green today, yuck), when Mum and

Dad come out. Because there are only three seats in the corridor, I get up for Mum and try to perch on her lap. She is wearing one of her good nylon skirts, and it is hard for me not to slip right off. Dad remains standing, hands behind his back, as if he is about to deliver a speech. He starts to explain what the doctor told them.

42 Brian is frowning in an attempt to keep tears from running down his face.

Barb doesn’t care who hears her: she starts wailing loudly. She says to me, ‘Kathy, you know what this means? It means that you won’t have a playmate anymore.’

I reach over and smack Barb in the face.

No, I don’t: that’s just what I want to do more than anything else. I might only be four, but I know one thing as if God had parted the clouds and told me himself:

Annie is much, much more than a playmate to me.

I swivel around and try to climb back up Mum. She does not respond. I could be any of her children, any child at all, and she the statue of any mother. I wonder if

Annie did this to stop everyone from fighting. To bring Val back. To stop Bev from running away any more.

Well, if she did, it worked. On the way home from the hospital we visit the police station. Val turns up two days later. She gives me a pair of orange flip-flops, an orange singlet and a matching orange pair of shorts, then sits next to Bev in the corridor and waits. So here we all are, Annie. You are the only one missing now.

That was the first time I ever visited a police station. The next, and only other time was two days ago. I did not resist. I heard the sirens and then I saw what I had done.

My next errand is to pick up a bottle of holy water and a statue of Saint Bernadette to adorn your coffin. I consult a touchscreen, but it appears that Catholic merch is

43 probably the only thing you cannot buy at the Hyperdome. Luckily, I know where there is a church with a gift store.

Every Tuesday of 1984, Dad, my sisters, brother and I gather with our fellow parishioners at the chapel in Kingston and pray a rosary for your salvation while you lie in your hospital bed at the Mater. Even Mum comes with us from time to time, fidgeting through the decades and smiling and thanking the priest afterwards.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe is the patron saint of our little church, which was built in the same year I was born. The church is a long, low, weatherboard on stilts to keep out the floods and the snakes, surrounded by scrub and sandy ground which makes it hard for the parish ladies to grow the roses they used to have in Ireland. They have begun to resort to native flowers, planting banksias that we call wah-wahs, because they look like a choir of open-mouthed baby birds, crying silently to be fed.

Saint Maximilian Kolbe is a relatively young saint, like our church. He died in a concentration camp because he offered his life in the place of a Jewish man whom he knew had children. You can only be a saint if you choose to die. You are not a saint if you just die anyway.

I like all the Mysteries, but the Joyful is my favourite. Most people like the climax – the bit about Jesus being born; but my favourite is the bit that comes before that. As we say the Hail Mary, I like to imagine Elizabeth bumping into Mary and telling her the news that she is going to have a baby, despite being beyond child- bearing age. She is so thrilled! Her baby grows up to have his head cut off by Herod,

44 but in the Joyful Mysteries that is all unknown. Elizabeth and Mary are just two expectant mothers, hearts full of hope and pre-baby pride.

Our prayers work! Well, sort of.

The nuns at the Mater Hospital come and sit with you, holding your holy little hands in their wrinkled ones. Mum sends Doctor Blackman, your neurosurgeon, a

Christmas card and a bottle of expensive port every year that you survive beyond your initial one-year prognosis, and after mass every Sunday, you and I stand by while Dad talks in hushed tones of what a miracle worker Doctor Blackman is, even though he is not religious. ‘God has no hands but our own,’ the priest says, quoting from something holy.

You will never have the use of your left side again after the surgeries, and you have lost the ability to concentrate so you will not go on to high school, and your short-term memory is a blur of terrifying blanks. But you are alive, Annie; that should be miracle enough for me. But as the years pass, I can’t help thinking that if God can keep you from dying, surely He can go one step further and help you to live?

I get the idea at your Confirmation mass. It hits me like a ray of sunlight, like a semi- trailer on the A1, like the voice of God, speaking directly to me.

You are taking Saint Bernadette as your Confirmation saint, which means that she is the saint you hope to aspire to be most like. She was the martyr of Lourdes, dying of consumption when she was nineteen, but not before she had shaken Christendom to

45 its core with her claims of seeing Our Lady; not before she had been tortured and refused to recant; not before miracles began to occur at the grotto where Our Lady first appeared to her. I shiver in my pew. Just the word ‘grotto’ sounds like miracles could happen.

You are radiant in your white lace dress with the red sash across your body.

You walk up to the bishop who places his hands on your head and that is when I hear it, a voice crying in the wilderness, except that the wilderness is the Kingston scrub and I am not John the Baptist preparing the way of the Lord, but a nine-year old scratching at the elastic of my good dress.

That night, I write a letter in my best handwriting and steal the money for a stamp from Mum’s purse. A month passes; two months. I pray every night, insisting that we kneel, ignoring your complaints about the pain it causes in your bad leg. I won’t have this not work because we didn’t follow procedure.

My strategy pays off: after three months, we receive a call from a woman working at the Make-A-Wish Foundation. Other terminally ill kids wish to meet their football heroes, or wish to go to Disneyland, but your wish is to make a pilgrimage to

Lourdes, France, on the other side of the world, to pray for world peace.

Make-A-Wish buy tickets for you, me, Mum and Dad. At Brisbane airport,

Trish clasps a fine gold chain with a crucifix pendant around your neck and kisses me on the forehead.

By the time we get to Lourdes, we have been travelling for 36 hours non-stop.

We collapse into the beds of our hotel room and the next day you laugh at me and tell me I sleep walked, scrabbling at the door to get out. I don’t believe you, but Dad confirms it. Mum has ventured into the outside world and comes back with rock hard

46 bread rolls which is apparently what they eat here in France. I gnaw at mine, imagining a race of people with teeth as sharp as dinosaur incisors.

After ‘breakfast,’ we leave the hotel and, unsure which direction to go, we follow the little groups of people who appear to know the way. No one looks at us.

After all the media hullabaloo in Australia, where the Catholic Leader ran three specials, and you were invited on to breakfast shows practically every day before our departure, I wonder if you will mind not being the centre of attention, but you seem completely happy and I remind myself that for you, the wish is already fulfilled: you are here, in this place to pray for world peace.

I have a more specific goal. My mind is an abacus, and I count off the reasons that you should now be well. Based on my reading of the lives of saints, I have deduced that answered prayers are about being the right person, at the right place, at the right time.

Right place: that’s easy. Here we are at Lourdes, a site of pilgrimage and miracles.

Right person: unfortunately we only have me, and I am pretty far from being the right person for the job. The history of the saints suggests that skinny sick children are at the top of the pyramid, closest to God; then skinny sick grown-ups; then fat sick children; then fat sick grown-ups; and then the rest of us. I can’t tell you why skinny and fat matters, but if you read the stories of the saints, which I have done, assiduously making notes, it is obvious that it does. Bernadette: skinny child; Angela and Francisco of Fatima: skinny children; Thérèse ‘The Little Flower’, Teresa of

Seville: skinny girls; Maximilian Kolbe (by the time he died): skinny adult. Et cetera.

Anyway, despite being fat, you are much closer to the top of the pyramid than me.

The fact you won’t pray for yourself is infuriating.

47 But I am hoping that being in the right place will give my prayers the boost that they need to be heard. I am also hoping that God will ignore my recent dabbling with the idea that He might not actually exist. I don’t want Him to think I am asking for this miracle as proof. That always backfires.

Right time: this is the hardest part because I cannot know when the ‘right’ time is. Jesus said that he will come like a thief in the night so all I can do is be ready. I have set my alarm and wake every hour to say a prayer for you throughout the hours of slumber so He won’t catch me unprepared, and during the day I always have a prayer for you on repeat in the back of my mind. Please God, may your will be done.

It’s important to put it in the hands of God. See, for example, Teresa of Ávila. Please

God, may your will be to heal my sister now.

Of course, what God wants is a mystery which we can never know until it happens. I have prepared as well as I can. Now I am here, all I can do is pray.

There are thousands of people in the cathedral and piazza, but the grotto itself is far less busy than I thought it would be. After a wait of only ten minutes, we proceed through a cave which is big enough for an altar, some flowers and about five people at a time. In one nook there is a statue of the Virgin and a trickle of water cascades from a crevice in the dark rock, which is slick with moisture.

Mum takes some photos of us in the grotto. Afterwards, Annie, you rest in your hired wheelchair, but I can’t sit down anywhere – too young, too healthy – so I shift my weight from left to right, easing one sore footpad and then the other. Mum normally hates seeing you in a wheelchair, but in Lourdes she quickly recognised its utility: in this place, if a person isn’t in a wheelchair – or better still, a hospital bed – she goes to the back of the line.

48 The days pass. We meander at the pace of pilgrims, resting in the shade of trees, going to Mass, watching for the coming of Christ and praying. Mum buys dozens of plastic bottles with an image of the Virgin printed on the side and gets me to queue at the wall of taps where people can fill up with holy water. The lines are dense and people shove and heave their way forwards. I want to yell, You’re all supposed to be holy! but I am too terrified to open my mouth. At one point the mob lifts me off my feet and I stumble, grasping for a handhold because I know with heavy certainty that if I fall, I will die. The woman next to me is old and fat, her hair short and dyed a watery red, and she does not look at me as I pull myself up by her black skirts.

Then it is our last day, the day that we are scheduled to bathe in the water. The day I have been waiting for.

We head to the women’s rooms, which are housed in cold, grey concrete bunkers. You and Mum are directed to the section reserved for the sick and dying. I had not expected to go in alone and I want to run after you, but a small nun in a grey veil holds my elbow and gestures for me to follow. Inside the bunker stand a row of large, grey concrete baths filled with holy water pumped direct from the source.

The nun doesn’t speak English but it is clear what she wants me to do as she points to my dress and then makes a sweeping motion with both her hands. I strip off and shiver, trying to cover my small bush of pubes and breasts, but the nun is completely indifferent, intent only on grasping my arm and leading me to the tub.

This is an industrial-scale operation, pushing thousands of pilgrims through the icy water every day. I had imagined lying back, letting the water cleanse me. Instead I walk through it as fast as I can, the water so cold that it knocks the breath out of me

49 and I cannot for love, money, or even you, actually submerge my body in it. The nun holding my elbow titters, but not unkindly.

I meet you and Mum outside. You are still limping. I try to believe that miracles are not always instantaneous but, in that moment, I feel my faith crumble into motes of dust, because God should be capable of magic in the service of reason.

By the time we get back to Australia I am an atheist. You smile at everyone like nothing is wrong, but how can you not know that this was our last chance? I want to scream at you for not praying for the right things. Then I remember it is not your fault: it is God’s. Then I remember that God doesn’t exist. I start to look for someone else to blame, and there I am, waiting for myself.

Soon enough we are back to our old routine: there is no more media attention for a sick girl who went to Lourdes and came back still sick. I start high school and try to teach you the maths from my textbook but after only ten minutes you push back your chair, saying, ‘I know all of this already.’ You revert to your pre-Lourdes habit of crying yourself to sleep at night and it is hard for me to drop off, what with the noise.

I no longer try to convince you to be happy. Instead I lie in bed, thinking.

Reason leads me repeatedly to the same conclusion: that your tumour has served its purpose. It reunited the Bradleys, it inspired thousands of readers of the

Catholic Leader. In former times, someone like you would have died by now and been remembered fondly. Thanks to medical progress we can keep you alive indefinitely – but for what?

50 I won’t include this bit in the eulogy, Annie. I don’t think anyone at your funeral wants to hear about how, when I was fourteen and you were seventeen, I contemplated the pros and cons of a pillow held gently but firmly over your darling face.

The old church has been replaced with a modern, high ceilinged structure designed to maximise air flow via sliding glass doors. The old chapel where we used to kneel every Sunday, me counting people’s shoes and you piously whispering to God as if he were clenched inside your clasped hands, now functions solely as a gift store. Shelf after shelf groans under the weight of the paraphernalia of a Catholic life. An entire wall is devoted to Confirmation gifts – plaques, holy cards, books of saints. The holy water and a statuette of Saint Bernadette are easy to find – she remains a popular choice. Martyrs never go out of style.

I chose Lucia for my Confirmation name. Technically, she was not yet a saint because she was still alive when I picked her, but the priest deemed her to be holy enough for the purpose. Lucia’s two cousins saw Our Lady in Fatima, Portugal. The cousins died young, like Bernadette. But not Lucia: she was destined to grow old and short-sighted and heavy, the toad-like survivor doomed to outlive the cherub-faced martyrs. She was not even given a glimpse of Our Lady, even though the cousins had long, involved, ecstatic conversations with her whilst Lucia stood by, open-mouthed. Just one time, Our Lady allowed Lucia to glimpse, not her beatific face, but her holiest of

51 silhouettes, to ensure that Lucia would keep the faith, or keep her mouth shut, which I suppose amounted to the same thing.

In the gift store there are plenty of dioramas of the Fatima three, but I cannot find a picture of Lucia on her own; she is only ever presented as part of the triumvirate, playing the support role to the other two children’s saintly demise.

Back in the car with my Catholic loot, I place the Bernadette statuette on the dashboard for inspiration. I open my laptop to a new Word document and start a list of the people who need to be included in your funeral ceremony. There are so many of us that it is hard to keep track. When I was a child and people asked me how many brothers and sisters I had, I always paused, and not for effect. I just couldn’t be sure I had done the sums right.

Val and her family are already doing the decorating and her boys can be pall- bearers. Barb can do a prayer of the faithful. So can Bev. Her boys can also be pall- bearers and her daughter can do the offertory procession with Brian’s kids.

Brian, Trish and I are doing the eulogy. Trish will open with something about you as a little sister. Brian wants to tell the story of your life in chronological order and I think that is a good idea: it gives us a narrative structure, a spine to which I will add the flesh. I will take the bones and make them giving and forgiving, like you,

Annie.

What am I on about? I have no idea what I am going to say. You were my sister. I loved you. You should never have been sick in the first place, but once you were, you should never have got worse.

I am to blame. I want more than anything else to say it out loud, surrender myself to the mercy of the masses, and be forgiven.

52 At the same time, I want to point my finger at the gathered. Where were they when you needed to be socialised and engaged? Where were they when my sister needed to be washed and changed? From my position at the pulpit, I imagine considering Mum’s thinning grey hair, her small brown eyes sunk into wrinkles and liver spots. Where was she when she needed to be loved?

But that is unfair. Mum loved you with the best part of herself. Is it her fault that the best part of herself was not enough?

Mum always had a bad habit of walking away from us. As kids, whenever we went to the shops, she would march ahead with a speed I have never been able to match, despite your lame leg and my conscience preventing me from leaving you behind. As if Mum felt that in the brightly lit aisles of the supermarket she was free at last, a lioness roaming her savannah. Survival of the fittest, darlings. Catch me if you can. I suppose this commonplace desertion would be on some level understandable if it had started after you got sick. I mean, wouldn’t any mother want a break, a few paces of peace from her eternal charge: the sick one, the one out of her eight children who never grew up?

But I have a memory of being four years old, maybe five. I am standing in the middle of Kmart, rows and rows of clothes racks radiating from me like crop circles from an alien life form. I suppose every child has this memory. After the announcement over the loudspeakers our mother comes to the front desk, where I am being petted by three young female shop assistants (I was cute in those days, long honey-blonde hair inherited from our father, my sisters all jealous that I was the only

Bradley who received any of the good Anglo genes). Mum laughs, and even though I am only four I know it is not in a nice way. Does every child have this memory?

But back to you, Annie. This is your moment to shine. If there ever was any doubt.

You know, I have never forgiven our mother for you. For any of us, really, because who has eight children in the twentieth century? - but especially for you. I have not forgiven our mother for keeping you alive after the diagnosis and then proceeding to spend the next twenty-five years sabotaging every chance you had at happiness. I have not forgiven her for ruining my attempts to get you out of that house before you ended up on the floor, being kicked for your failure to get back up. I have not forgiven her for changing your medication dosages from one day to the next, claiming that the neurologist had told her that she could. Whenever I challenged Mum she would reply,

‘I am the mother.’ Not ‘her’ mother, or ‘your’ mother: ‘the’ mother. El Presidente comes to mind.

I know that if Mum had been a different sort of mother, then probably you and

I would never have been born. But this line of reasoning reminds me of carnivores’ explanation for eating meat: the cows would not have been bred at all if they weren’t destined for the slaughterhouse. I exaggerate of course, but you see the similarities.

And yet. I have a memory from when I was eight. We are in the new single floor house which we moved into after you got sick and could no longer manage the stairs at 19 Railway Road. You and I share a room. In the middle of the night the door opens and a splinter of light falls across my body. Someone steps inside, and from the speed and bustle I know it’s Mum. She pulls your blankets up, then mine.

Part 2: Ancestry

You might decide to weave into your narrative some tales of the deceased’s ancestors. This can give mourners a sense of the continuum of time, love and life, of which we are all a part. How to Write a Eulogy

55 1

I know that our mother didn’t invent violence in 1983. It predates us, this rage; its source is long buried in the unwritten annals of history. At some point in the past I can only hope it was justified: a murder committed, a sucker punch thrown, a fire left to burn the house down.

Let’s go back, back; try to figure this whole thing out. The seeds of your death were planted long ago among the abundant mosquitoes of a tropical island and the rancid smells of blanchan cooking. I try to picture the Singapore of 1942, right before the island is invaded by the Japanese. The eggs that will one day become her many – too many – children are already safe and snug inside our mother Jia En’s belly. She is four years old.

Jia En wishes every day that she was a village kid. Then she wouldn’t have to go to the school which her father makes her attend. Why does she have to sit in a hot little room next to smelly Jun Kai and Hui Min the nose-picker, when she could be outside catching fighting spiders and winning money?

Everyone calls Jia En ‘Sister Baby’, even though she is not the baby of the family. But she is the only girl. That is enough of a reason. Jia En’s mother is known of in the village as the kind lady who will buy all the remaining buns from the peddling baker at the end of his rounds. Jia En’s mother, Yi Ling, is slender with high cheekbones and thin eyebrows she does not even need to pluck. Her mah-jong ga-gee

56 look from Jia En to Yi Ling, shaking their heads and commiserating with Yi Ling on her bad luck.

Everyone calls Jia En’s father ‘Shanghai’ because that is where Yuan Li Jie is from. Li Jie’s father and brothers made it through the Purge, only to be executed less than a week later, for failure to pay sufficient protection money to the local warlord’s son. Li Jie escaped because he had overslept that morning, startling awake to the sound of gunshots. He escaped to Singapore, met Tan Yi Ling and married as quickly as her parents would allow, wanting to start a new life far from the stench of blood he swore he could smell during the northeast monsoon. On such days, Li Jie takes to his room like a woman, according to the cook.

Hui Jie, Jia En’s older brother, has inherited their parents’ physique, but Jia En and Sze Jie must have inherited their stocky frames from a long-dead ancestor.

Perhaps, Sze Jie sometimes tells Jia En hopefully, she and Sze Jie resemble the legendary Kublai Khan, founder of the Great Yuan Dynasty that ruled Han China in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with the perfect blend of ruthlessness and intolerance. I do not take us that far back except to say, pointedly, See?

Some days Jia En’s father takes the boys on site visits while Jia En’s mother takes advantage of his absence to invite over her mah-jong friends. Jia En spends such days fetching dried, salted plums and tiny glasses for sherry. On one such occasion the sun is setting when the ladies finally begin to murmur of leave-taking – bags are located, thank you’s echo in the reception room. Her mother’s friends are going home with purses heavier than when they came. Jia En slides quickly down from her place at the window and heads outside. She does not want to be within reach when her mother starts looking for someone to blame for her bad luck.

57 She could go to the village but the prospect of the muddy walk does not appeal today. She kicks at the earth and jumps back, startled. The dirt is no dirt but the hard shell of a dark, craggy old turtle which begins to amble up the hill behind the bungalow. Turtle must be going to give thanks to the ancestors, Jia En thinks, giggling. She follows.

The turtle hobbles slowly: one foot, then the other; then the other, then the other. Jia En, normally so twitchy, has to slow herself right down to be able to do the same. She gets down on all fours, trying to replicate the turtle’s footsteps. Time passes. When they reach the temple, Jia En is quiet. She bows her head; first to the turtle, and then to the ancestors.

Jia En’s mother sends her on regular errands to the village after school, which Jia En is happy to do if it means getting her away from Sze Jie’s whines or Hui Jie’s pompous attempts at sternness. Jia En dashes to the Indian men’s stall at the other end of the village to give them her mother’s numbers in exchange for ticket stubs. The men always smile at her in a lazy sort of way and the smoke which comes out of their back room makes Jia En feel swoony, not just from the heat. She likes to weave her way back into the village afterwards, pretending to the other kids that she has had a pipe.

If there is time after her errands, Jia En visits the old lady at the end of the row. Jia En can earn a few cents to thumb her aching back.

58 ‘Ahh, not so hard, eh!’ The old lady smacks Jia En’s hand away, then nods for her to continue. ‘You go to school?’

‘Yes.’ Jia En glances guiltily over her shoulder but there are just the Malays and their scrawny dogs playing with a chewed-up ball from the new high-rises.

‘Good, you good girl. You be like my daughter.’ The old lady spits out a chunk of dark red betel onto the floor and reaches for something on the table. It is a picture of a woman, stout and wearing black-rimmed glasses, her hair up in a bun.

‘She live in Kuala Lumpur.’

Jia En’s mother has told her stories of Kuala Lumpur and Penang, the cities across the Straits. Men in white T-shirts and fast cars, scars on their cheeks and knives in their back pockets, roam the streets over there. They catch stupid, bad girls who have run away from their parents, and sell them at the harbour.

‘My daughter doctor,’ the old woman announces proudly. Jia En nods, thinking the daughter must have been too ugly to be sold. After a few minutes the old woman starts to snore. Jia En quietly rummages in the old lady’s purse, extracts three coins, then runs to the other end of the dirt road to visit Alice.

Alice is Jia En’s best friend. She is one of the village girls who doesn’t have to go to school; her job is to keep house and wait to be married. After school (or during), the two friends do each other’s hair and laugh at the boys, the men, the women – pretty much anyone whose business takes them past Alice’s front door.

Jia En likes the noise and bustle of her friend’s little house. There is always something happening, someone yelling or singing or laughing. Not like her own home, where you have to be quiet all the time so as not to disturb father’s “work” or mother’s “headaches”.

59 Alice’s dad is one of the first to return to the village after the Japanese round- up of all the Chinese men on the island. A handful of the men straggle after him, just a fraction of those who had left. They are grey-faced and close-lipped about what they have seen, but the whole village is awash with rumours of the killings at Punggol

Point and the bodies washed up along the beaches of Sentosa.

Jia En is sitting with Alice on Alice’s front step when her father comes back.

The girls leap up and fuss over him, calling the cook to fetch water, boil soup. Alice’s dad has a black smudge which reads “examined” on his arm which he refuses to wash off, even after his wife brings him a cloth and a basin. He pushes aside the soup and motions for Jia En to follow him. Wordless, he starts up the hill to her house. Jia En and Alice follow.

Li Jie seems to have a knack for escaping purges: Alice’s dad reports to Yi

Ling (the girls crouching outside, eavesdropping) that, upon finding out he was a construction engineer for the British, the Japanese overlooked Li Jie’s Shanghai accent and put him to work building bomb shelters for the empire’s officers.

Jia En finally has her wish fulfilled: the family has to give up its bungalow to the Japanese, and is moved into the kampong, into a village house with three other families. Every week Jia En and her brothers save scraps of dog meat, sometimes fighting the other kids for it, and wrap them in a gunny which their mother carries down the road as if she is merely taking a tray of tow kway to her mah-jong ga-gee.

Hours, sometimes a whole day passes, before Yi Ling returns without the parcel. The children know not to ask if she saw him.

After the war, Li Jie comes home and the family is permitted to return to its bungalow. Li Jie still has the tall frame of the young man who escaped the bloodshed

60 of Shanghai to Singapore almost twenty years ago, but since his time in Changi he walks with a stoop and spends more days sitting alone in his room than working.

Jia En can still remember what it was like to be rich, or at least richer than they are now. Before the war her family had Malay servants to do all the cooking and the laundry, to burn the rubbish and sweep the floors. Now Jia En has to help at home when she is not ‘studying’, look after her stupid little brother Sze Jie or run errands for her bossy big brother Hui Jie. The family’s hopes are pinned to that boy and just as well he is tall enough for the job, taking after their father in the looks department.

At least they have a Malay woman to come and help with the laundry and cooking.

It is a rare sunny afternoon during the wet season, just months since the liberation of Singapore. Jia En is crossing the canal that separates the village from the

Chinese homes when she glimpses a flash of silver. A flying fish! She has seen the

Malay boys catch them with their bare hands. It’s all about the timing. She leans over the railing when there it is, sudden and magnificent, twisting its sleek body in the sky.

Jia En lunges and falls straight into the water. She hears a whooshing sound in her ears and for the first time in her life she feels thoroughly cold.

Someone grabs her by the back of her dress and hauls her back on to the bridge. The Malay woman tsks and pats Jia En’s back. When they reach Jia En’s house, the woman gestures for her to stay out of sight while she fetches clean clothes.

When she returns, Jia En looks the woman properly in the face.

‘If you go near canal, you learn to swim.’ The woman smiles at Jia En, then goes back to her chores. Jia En pulls on the dry shift then slips inside. Yi Ling is napping and Shanghai is out on a rare work excursion. No one noticed she was gone.

It’s 1950, five years since the end of the war. Jia En is fourteen years old and her hair has finally grown out from the crew cut which her mother used to administer indiscriminately to her and her brothers throughout the war. It is 8 pm, Jia En’s curfew, but it is so pleasantly cool, sitting in the generous darkness. Jia En and Alice squat in their customary place on the doorstep. The coolness of the dirt road creates a dream-like mist around their feet. They relax in companionable silence, knees apart, waving at the flies.

Jia En makes a run for it, but Yi Ling is too fast. She grabs a hank of Jia En’s bobbed hair.

‘You bad girl,’ Jia En’s mother murmurs in a low, mean voice. ‘You meeting boys out here?’

‘No,’ Jia En says in a pleading voice.

‘You lie to me! Dirty girl, itchy, itchy!’ Jia En tries to wrench herself out of her mother’s grasp, but her mother has her pinned against the wall. She had brought her bamboo stick and begins to beat Jia En with the sharpened edge.

Alice does nothing. You never come between a mother and her daughter.

Jia En is only fourteen when her father dies of a heart attack. It took her mother half a day to realise: she didn’t like to disturb him except for meals. After her father’s death,

Jia En does not return to school. She gets a job in an English bookstore at the newly posh end of Orchard Road. Jia En is not much of a reader, but the owners of the store had known her father and want to help Yi Ling and her three children. Every week, Jia

62 En gives her pay packet to her mother, who uses it for Jia En’s brothers’ university fees. Every week, before handing the little yellow envelope over, she slips a few coins out and puts them in her pocket.

Jia En emerges into the heavy, humid Singapore night air. Her bones still vibrate with the swelling violins of the credits. She has a funny feeling in her stomach, picturing Vittorio Gassman leaning in to kiss her face instead of Elizabeth

Taylor’s. It is a pleasant kind of nausea, as if she might throw up butterflies.

The talkies. Even as a teenager, escape was our mother’s vice.

Once a week Jia En goes alone to the Odeon. She tells her mother she is visiting Alice. Truth is, she has not seen Alice since the evening when her mother came looking for her. They still nod when they see each other in the street, but Jia En is busy with work, and Alice is engaged to a Christian, so she is Alice-all-the-time now and has no time to see movies with her childhood friend.

Jia En loves the cinema more than anything else. Everyday en route to work she passes the larger-than-life movie posters, inserting herself into the romantic scenes. Once a week she takes her coins and buys a cheap seat for the double feature.

‘Hello, hi hi.’

Jia En snaps back to reality. It is a large-eyed woman smoking a cigarette, leaning against a poster of the movie Jia En has just been to see. Jia En has seen her before and thought her impossibly chic. Up close Jia En sees that she is probably not much older than herself; maybe eighteen, nineteen at most? It is the languorous cast of the girl’s body, the world-weary draw on the cigarette, which Jia En had mistaken, at a distance, for maturity.

63 Jia En replies, ‘Hello, hello,’ and giggles involuntarily, a habit of hers whenever anyone says anything to her. Her post-movie mood floats about her, a cloud of anticipation ready to be netted.

‘You want to come in, little sister? No one here yet, too early la. So hot la.

Come in, come in,’ the lady says to Jia En, as if she is inviting Jia En into her own home.

Jia En hesitates. She is supposed to be home already. The girl straightens up and holds out her hand. ‘I’m Molly. What’s your name ah?’

‘Yuan Jia En,’ Jia En responds automatically, the full name, last name first, how it goes.

‘Ah, no, no, your other name ah,’ Molly clucks. ‘Yuan Jia En,’ she parrots in the accent of a Straits Chinese, making Jia En giggle again. ‘The boys won’t know how to say that la.’

‘Ah, Madge,’ she says. The strange monosyllable hangs like a talisman between them. Madge and her brothers all have Christian names for talking to the

English, but it is rare for her to hear it outside of work.

‘Ah, Madge good name, beautiful name. Come on, Madge, we go inside. You stay for one drink, free, you no pay me ah!’ Molly drops her voice conspiratorially so

Madge has to step closer to hear what she is saying. ‘Men coming later – you know, air force men. They rich, they handsome, ooh! You good girl, they know that ah, you no worry, just friend!’

Molly bats Madge on the shoulder. Madge casts about for an excuse. She doesn’t want to seem rude, but her mother will start to wonder what is keeping her.

‘My girlfriend, she even got beautiful gold necklace! Just friend!’ Molly adds,

‘24-carat,’ before Madge can even think to ask.

64 ‘You like dancing?’ Molly’s high heels click against the faux marble of the stairs which lead down below street level into the concrete-induced coolness of the club.

‘I don’t know how,’ Madge replies.

‘Aiyah!’ Molly shakes her head. ‘Don’t worry la. I teach you.’

Was it like this, I wonder? Did my grandmother chase our mother into the arms of the servicemen gathered at the Starlight Club for a drink and some easy companionship?

Or did the ancestors, angry at the turtle’s ascent, push our mother into the way of her future? I see the hungry ghosts opening their toothless maws wide as she follows

Molly down, down into the darkness. Oh, Mum. You should have been paying closer attention.

Try as she might, Madge cannot attract the attention of the Englishmen. They prefer the skinny girls, and like me, Madge has never been thin.

The Aussies at the club are more familiar. They bump into her, saying sorry, sorry love; then they pull her on to their laps as if they had known her for years. These

Aussies make her feel small enough to be cherished, an unfamiliar sensation which she enjoys. How many women’s histories can be thus summed up: he made me feel like I wasn’t as fat as I thought I was?

65 The married ones are the first to come up to the girls; they laugh and buy drinks with the greatest display of easy largesse. For Madge they buy gin, the only drink she knows the name of, apart from sherry, which makes her gag; gin makes her cry, but that is not a problem: these men all have pressed handkerchiefs in their pockets. Like the Aussies, she laughs easily despite her tears and, although she is not the prettiest, not by a long shot, she always has a circle of men at the table reserved for her after work, every Friday night.

There is one man in particular who makes sure he is the one standing next to her among the group of smiling, sweaty red faces. Colin. A cook in the army, he tells her. As men drift away over the course of the evening with girls on their arms, the cook remains by Madge’s side, rescuing her bolero jacket if it slips from her shoulders, brushing bhaji mix crumbs from her skirt.

‘Can I get you another?’ he asks, gesturing towards her empty glass. She smiles with her watery eyes and accepts another drink.

On the same day that Britain grants Singapore self-rule, to begin at a date yet to be determined (much like when I turned eighteen), Madge stands at the markets, fingering the fabric of the dress she is trying. It is cut from a heavy brocade which sits nicely on her hips.

Molly clucks. ‘Ooh ah, that one suit you,’ she coos. ‘You putting on weight though ah?’

Molly pinches Madge’s waist. Madge smiles but draws her tummy out of her best friend’s reach.

Molly is swathed in red, her skinny body transformed into curves via strategic pin tucks. ‘I look just like Elizabeth Taylor, uh?’ Molly juts out her newly discovered

66 hip. Madge holds her tongue. Molly is paying for her frock, an early twenty-first birthday present.

After a brief haggle, Molly arranges to pick up the dresses later that day,

‘Western style uh, no cloth buttons,’ she warns the seamstress, who ducks her head and goes straight back to her machine.

The two young women return to the street. Madge buys them each a tall cup of ice kacang. They sip, watching the hawkers, the boys on their bikes, the girls and their ceaselessly waving newspapers swatting away the heat, the flies, unwanted attention.

Apart from the dress, Colin is paying for everything at the party: the drinks, the food, the decorations. He is magnanimous in his wealth – the wealth of the airman’s salary in South-East Asia.

The club is full of Colin’s mates and Madge’s friends from the club. Musicians play Elvis Presley’s Love Me Tender. Madge runs up to Colin and giggles.

‘Are you having a good time?’ Colin asks. He likes to look down on her little round head with its curled hair, the sweet upturned face that nods and smiles at everything he says.

She nods now. ‘Yes yes, it’s good.’ He grabs her around the waist. She squeals and swats his hand away, at the same time letting him pull her closer with the hairy breadth of his arm. He holds his glass aloft and pushes Madge around in what he would call a dance, moving his hips to the whoops of his mates. He sloshes foam on to Madge’s dress, but she just smiles. Colin bends down for a kiss. His sweet, beery breath warms her cheek.

‘You look beautiful tonight, love,’ he whispers in her ear.

Later, in his rooms, they lie together and he tells her more about his family.

67 ‘See, here she is. Kerry. My little girl,’ he murmurs, one arm around Madge’s neck, the other thumbing through photos in his wallet. ‘Very pretty,’ Madge says, agreeably. ‘My wife, here. Leanne. She’s OK. Not as pretty as you.’ He tickles

Madge, who snuggles closer. He has never lied to her about being married. He prides himself on this fact. He is not like the other men, making promises they know that they cannot keep.

Madge curls in his arms, content. She feels warm, taken care of. Her eyes slide over the purple cheongsam which Colin had given her as a birthday present. It is clearly too small, and it is not really the style these days, but that doesn’t matter – in fact, it was a compliment that he thought it would fit her. He must really think she is beautiful.

68 2

I pieced together our mother’s story from years of Good Friday conversations. Good

Friday is the only day of the year that races are not held in Australia, and so it is the only day of the year I can get Mum to talk to me. She always starts with tales of the turtle or playing with spiders. One Good Friday, she describes making a pet of a goose and then roaming the village streets in silent protest whilst her family ate it for dinner. Mum enjoys presenting herself as a plucky kid, a fearless tomboy. As soon as

I turn the conversation to other things, like Matthew, she clams up.

I use up at least three precious Good Fridays, reminiscing about the kampong, until I finally assemble enough pieces of the puzzle to guess at the truth.

Seven months and three days later, Madge lies in a different bed, this one in the

Singapore Hospital. The air smothers her like an invisible blanket, the ceiling fans stirring snail trails of humidity against Madge’s already damp face. She cries out in pain but Molly refuses to hold her hand. Indeed, Molly draws back from the bed, unable to keep the look of horror from her face.

‘She pooed ah,’ Molly whispers loudly to the nurse. ‘Won’t it get on the baby?’

The nurse doesn’t answer; pushes her out of the way as she checks between

Madge’s legs. ‘It’s crowning,’ she confirms. She tells Madge, ‘Push now, there’s a good girl. Push!’

69 Madge squeezes hard. She can think of nothing at all. She is fiery red pain, she is blood and shit and guts. She wants them all to get away from her. She hears a mewling sound and wants it to go away too. Who let a cat into a hospital? She wants to complain, but she is in no position to.

‘Here he is, a boy.’

Well, at least that is good news. They put the baby on her breast and show her what to do. She cranes her neck down and sees his big black eyes, his red face. She is reminded of his father. He used to suck at her nen-nen in just the same, clumsy way, as if its fleshy mass held his salvation.

She feels a rush of something warm, filling the ventricles of her heart and flowing out between her legs. ‘Aww,’ she murmurs, and even Molly clucks with delight once the baby is wiped clean and swaddled. ‘What a cutie.’

‘What is his name?’ the nurse asks.

‘You decide,’ Madge sighs. The nurse shakes her head, but then says,

‘Matthew is a good name.’

The nurse writes his name on a little tag and attaches it to his ankle. Matthew, son of Madge.

Mum could not stay hidden from her own mother forever. Singapore is an island.

There are only so many places she could go.

‘No shame! Itchy! Make me sick!’ The slap lands on the top of her curlers as

Madge ducks to get away. The baby cries from the bottom of his well-practised lungs and I imagine our mother thinking, good idea. She lets loose a scream in bloodcurdling discordance with her child. The men, Madge’s brothers and uncles, shuffle their feet and look anywhere but at this embarrassment to the family name.

70 They wish she would take her punishment more like a man – but not being a man was always Madge’s principle deficiency.

It had taken them six months to find her at Molly’s apartment.

‘Quiet! Shh! No shame? Sptha,’ her mother’s spittle lands on the front of

Madge’s nylon dress.

Madge covers her head with her arms. ‘It’s not my fault! I didn’t know! You never tell me!’ She cries.

‘Aiyah, you didn’t know?’ Her mother’s voice rises even further, along with the stick. ‘You dirty girl! Make me sick!’ Whack, whack.

Her mother pauses, panting. Madge waits a moment, then starts to cry harder and louder.

Her mother’s voice drops and she yanks Madge’s head up by the hair. Madge’s nose spews snot.

‘I know why you stay here,’ her mother hisses, her voice low and mean. ‘You seeing another man ah? You think he look after you, and some other man’s baby? You ugly now, Madge, fat! Only bad ones look at you now.’ Her voice rises again. ‘What was he, this Englishman? Nothing! Like you! You are nothing!’

Little Matthew wails from his crib. Madge blurts, ‘He not nothing! He in air force! A cook!’ she adds for authenticity. If she were lying, surely she would have said he was a lieutenant.

‘Not even officer? I bet he not even English. He Aussie!’

‘He English!’ She has given them enough truth; now it is time to preserve all possible advantage.

‘What his name?’

71 Madge’s eyes slide sideways. ‘Roger! But he already gone back,’ she adds, before they can ask any more questions. ‘He didn’t know’ – she gestures to the crib –

‘before he left!’

‘Why can’t you get hold of him ah? Through his company sergeant?’ This from Uncle No. 2, who pretends to know all about the English air force because he imports wheaten biscuits from Indonesian factories for them, along with other dry, disgusting things the English seem to like (not quite the real thing, but at only a tenth of the price, who was complaining?).

‘Don’t know his regiment,’ Madge shakes her head. This, again, is true: such information has a habit of slipping into her head and out again, just like the gin he used to buy her, coursing down her cheeks moments afterwards. It had made him touch her face, bend towards her heat-curled head and say, ‘I hope I’m not that ugly.’

At which she had giggled. And dried her tears.

Madge feels a wave of sudden rage at her uncles – what gives them the right to tower over her, these self-righteous old men, with nothing to show for their own virtue but swollen pot bellies and paltry penises? They would fuck her if they could, just to show that they are men and they are right, right, right.

She ducks her head and tries not to think these thoughts too loudly. Her mother has a way of hearing such things.

‘Come on, we go. I want this no-good daughter out of my sight. She make me sick!’

‘Don’t you want to hold the baby? Your own grandson!’ Now that they are going, Madge doesn’t want them to leave. She hauls the baby from the crib. He coughs, his face wet with mucus and tears.

72 ‘Put him down, Madge!’ Madge’s older brother, Hui Jie, finally speaks. He points at Matthew’s dangerously bouncing head.

‘Look, look at him! Your only grandson and you come here yelling like this!’

Madge has a moment of wild inspiration. She rushes to the small window, which lets in the odours of fried noodles and cat piss from below. ‘You make me crazy!’ she stomps her foot. ‘You want me to throw him out the window ah? You want me to? I will! I will!’

She holds Matthew over the sill. If she does it, it will be her mother’s fault.

But her mother says nothing, just watches.

‘Acha, stop being so stupid, Jia En,’ Sze Jie says. Madge’s arms are getting tired. She glares at Hui Jie but pulls Matthew back inside. He is howling again, limbs windmilling frantically for something to hold on to.

‘Don’t call me stupid!’

‘Quiet, you,’ Yi Ling says suddenly to Sze Jie. The put-down of her little brother makes Madge breathe a bit more calmly.

Yi Ling addresses her daughter. ‘You crazy. Make me sick.’ But she says it in resignation more than anger, and then she leaves the apartment. Madge’s uncles follow after they first make some old-man, desultory threats of further punishment at an unspecified date. Madge grabs Hui Jie’s sleeve.

‘Big Brother, wait, Big Brother. I need money. For the baby. You give me two hundred dollars.’ She draws Matthew in to her chest, and he instantly stops crying

(good baby, clever baby).

Hui Jie puts his hand in his pocket and hands her some notes. He has come prepared for this.

‘You bring shame on this family, Sister Baby,’ he mutters.

73 ‘Thank you, Big Brother. Thank you, you good brother,’ she smiles and nods.

Sze Jie now clears his throat. ‘You should have thought what you were doing,

Sister Baby.’

Madge has heard through Molly, who has friends in the village, that Sze Jie has secretly become a Christian; his friends now call him Henry all of the time. She smiles at him and says nothing; she is not yet in a position to bargain. But Matthew whimpers as her nails bite into his soft, untested flesh.

Once the brothers have left, Madge replaces Matthew in the crib, and he immediately starts to cry again. ‘Ay, quiet, you naughty boy!’ Madge smacks Matthew on his dimpled thigh.

‘You cry and cry, you bad boy! They leave because of you!’ She smacks him again, this time on the head where the skin is less padded.

‘Ay, what a racket, I hear him from downstairs ah!’ Molly bustles in and

Madge quickly reaches down so it looks like she is picking up the baby. ‘Oh,’ she straightens, baby still lying in the crib. ‘Big sister, he cry and cry today, and my mother come and beat me, and she not even look at her own grandson!’

‘Oh, poor little fatty ah? Your grandma come get mad at you ah?’ Molly picks up the squalling child, who immediately cries harder, seeing his mother standing nearby, arms loose at her sides.

‘Don’t you worry, Aunty Molly bring you a present ah?’ She draws a green banana leaf packet out of her bag with one hand, bouncing Matthew with the other.

‘Why you not change him ah! He wet!’ Molly indicates the nappy, which is sodden and stuck to Matthew’s bottom.

74 ‘I was about to,’ she protests, but Molly has already bustled into the tiny bedroom, singing and prattling the whole time. Madge flops back on the couch and peels away the banana leaf to reveal the sticky rice cakes inside. She begins to eat.

‘Are you sure?’ Alice asks.

Madge, my future mother, cranes her neck to see how far away the ferry is.

Across Jahore Bahru she can see the twinkling lights of Malacca. She has asked Alice to meet her here because she knows that Alice, good old Alice from the village, can be relied upon to collect Matthew from the babysitter, take him to Big Brother’s apartment, and still not tell anyone where Madge has gone. Alice is good like that.

Very loyal.

‘You doing well, Alice. You always luckier than me.’ Madge shakes her head sorrowfully. Alice is now married to a butcher. She and her husband are saving up for their own small house in the village.

‘What else I can do la?’ Before Alice can answer, Madge continues, ‘My mother beat me! You see her!’ Madge knows Alice will remember.

Alice looks down momentarily, but she has to say it. Someone has to. ‘Baby need the mother.’

‘No,’ Madge responds immediately, ready for this. ‘You not have baby yet, you see. He fine! He not even know who I am. He not even notice.’

Alice looks dubious.

‘Don’t worry. Hui Jie look after him, he not have a boy yet.’

‘You think no one marry you if they know about baby, but you wrong! What about Lee Eng Mo?’ Alice pleads.

75 ‘The one who run the noodle stall? No way! He smell!’

‘You too picky. You like the air force men too much. See what happen?’

‘You worry too much!’

Madge lets Alice prattle on, nodding agreeably whilst letting her eyes drift across the water. When she was a kid, before little brother had come along and Madge was still the primary playmate, her older brother Hui Jie used to point to the end of the coastline and tell her, ‘That is where the sultan lives, in a palace, with maids and wives and oh, so rich!’ Madge remembers the tales her mother told her, about the

Malay cities where bad men steal bad girls, girls who had run away from their parents, and sold them to the highest bidder. She prefers the stories of the sultan.

Molly moved to Malaya two months ago and wrote to Madge about how rich the men are at Butterworth, how tall and handsome. Madge wants to feel a man’s arm around her again. She wants to wear nice dresses and laugh and be admired. Is that so wrong? Matthew will be fine. Better even, with her brother and his stern bitch of a wife who can’t seem to produce a girl, let alone a boy. They would be lucky to get

Matthew. They would be glad she had left him to them.

At last the ferry draws in to the jetty, sounding a low, plaintive honk which travels across the night water like the call of a homesick goose. Alice squeezes Madge hard, pressing Madge’s arms painfully into her sides. Madge extricates herself from the embrace and looks at Alice’s face curiously. Alice is crying. Madge can’t help it; whenever she sees someone get upset, she laughs. It just seems so— don’t they know how they look la? Even when Matthew screws up his face and screams she can’t help but laugh, just a little, before picking him up.

76 ‘Aw, you OK, you OK.’ She pats Alice on the back, stifling her giggles. Over

Alice’s shoulder Madge watches people board the ferry, their identities indistinct, each one just another white moon of a face glowing faintly in the starlight.

‘I go now, OK?’ She smiles and gives Alice one last pat of encouragement.

‘OK. Bye bye. Bye.’

It was 1983, that year of firsts. Before Val took the pills, before you started complaining of headaches, Matthew came knocking at the door of 19 Railway Road.

Matthew comes as a total surprise to me. When I ask the big kids, they tell garbled stories of a boy who came for a visit when they lived at Holsworthy. I ask Dad where

Matthew went after he visited them, and he says that he went to stay with a nice Thai lady who did not have any children. Then and there I resolve to be as good as possible so Mum doesn’t have any reason to send us to live with a Thai lady, no matter how nice she may be.

Our new brother is a grown-up. He is twenty-six, which is three years older than Trish, our oldest sister.

Everyone is on guest-best behaviour. Annie, you are the only one who doesn’t look happy. You keep a full room’s width between yourself and Matthew, whereas I demand horsey rides from him as often as Mum will let me.

77 Trish comes home from medical school for the weekend to see Matthew, which means I have to move out of the bed I share with you and back in with Mum and Dad so Trish has somewhere to sleep.

I play chase with our big sister, following her into the downstairs bedroom that

Val, Barb and Bev share. Matthew pushes past me on his way out, bumping me to the floor. Val is getting up off the bed, red in the face and sweating.

Trish asks something that I can’t hear and Val replies, ‘I said, “I’m your sister.” He said, “No, you’re not.”’

‘Do you want me to tell Mum?’ Trish asks.

Val shakes her head. ‘She’d just get mad.’

Then she notices me and puts a smile on her face.

‘Hey, you, what are you doing there?’

I run off to find you. You are upstairs on the veranda, carefully tending to the plastic dolls with the toy medical kit Trish gave you for your birthday.

‘What’s the matter? Are you feeling sick?’ you ask me. I nod and lie down next to the dolls, for once not fidgeting as you pretend to take care of me.

Matthew and Mum have a big fight about a girl Matthew has been seeing. She is a Fijian Indian girl named Sonnet, which I think is the most beautiful name in the world.

Mum shouts, ‘Why you go with that black bitch?’

Matthew slams the door in Mum’s face. You grab my arm and rush me to your room so we aren’t in the line of fire when Mum turns back from the closed door.

I want to tell you about what I think happened to Val, but something in me curls in on itself and I can’t bring myself to name it. Instead, I take my pillow and hit you with it.

78 ‘What did you do that for?’

‘You were on my side,’ I reply, then roll to the edge of the bed and pull the blanket tightly under me so you can’t get your share.

I never saw Matthew again. I think some attempt was made to track him down when

Dad died but he was not at the funeral. To be honest I have never had any inclination to look for him. I wonder, did you? You never mentioned him but I doubt that you forgot him. Anything that happened pre-tumour, you could remember clearer than if it were yesterday.

This is going to sound selfish, or ungrateful, or at least not very nice. If I had been an only child, or perhaps one of two, or maybe three, then I might have tried to find

Matthew. But I have a brother and six sisters – or five, now that you have gone and left me. I know what a disappointment a prodigal sibling can be. Look at Bev; look at what a let-down that was. Naturally I am glad she seems healthy and has made a life for herself and her four children. But after the initial excitement of finding her again, the fact is that she is still Bev. She is still a bogan from Logan, the exact type of

Bradley I have spent my life trying not to become. I have no interest in finding

Matthew. I have enough Bradleys in my life without looking for more.

79 3

I head to Officeworks to drop off your book of poems for printing, then drive back to the hospital car park. It is a good place to sleep; there are always vehicles coming and going and it is not unusual for people to leave their cars there overnight. But just to be on the safe side, I set my alarm so that I will wake to move the car every two hours.

The woman from the park did not press charges, but finding me alone, lurking outside of a hospital with a maternity ward, might be enough to make the police change their minds.

My phone pings: Val has sent me a link to a collection of photos for the funeral slideshow, which I will have to go to an Internet café to review tomorrow. I delete the dozen or so messages on my phone from Evan without opening them.

You don’t have to try and make me feel guilty about Evan. I can assure you that he will be better off without me. It’s a statistical fact that we Bradleys are not cut out for love. Look at the evidence. It’s a small sample, but the intervals are significant enough to be persuasively descriptive:

1. Bev, with her recently deceased ex-husband, dead before the age of fifty

from a drug overdose which was either intentional or unintentional, nobody

knows which.

2. Barb and her divorce, which was both messy and predictable. I know blood

should be thicker than water, but it is absolutely not thicker than Barb.

3. Val, who is happily married to a lovely, but fat, man.

80 4. Brian, mortgaged to the eyeballs to live the suburban dream.

5. Trish, whose husband is so painfully kind that she has to rein in her

contempt every time she sees his sympathetic smile.

6. Me and, until a week ago, Evan.

7. The catastrophe that was our parents’ marriage.

Our parents married on Valentine’s Day, 1961. As we were growing up, I always deferred to that fact as the ultimate proof that they must have loved each other; that perhaps on some level they still did. But when I asked, Mum explained that they married on Valentine’s Day because it coincided with Dad’s weekend leave. Dad had met Mum when he was on a posting with the Australian army in Penang, Malaya. It had been his first time overseas. He was twenty-two years old.

Nowadays I imagine she must have been pregnant, although the dates do not match up: Barb was born in 1963. A false alarm, perhaps? Whatever it was (could it have been love?), it got them down the aisle in a fancy white dress and a suit, with a studio photo afterwards, incontrovertible proof that they entered into the state of matrimony with consent on both sides.

I know that our mother is not the only one responsible for what happened in

1983. But Dad was a good man. It sounds trite, but I don’t know of any better way to describe him. Our father sat me on the bed and plaited my hair for me after my bath when I was four, and when I was five Mum cut it all off. So what on Earth led our father down the aisle with our mother?

81 To understand that, we’ll have to go back to Crookwell, the heart of sheep country,

New South Wales. Back, back, through the dust kicked up by the horses on the trail to the potato farm owned by Gordon Bradley, my grandfather.

My future father Donald is the youngest of the Bradleys. He and his brothers and sisters (six, or seven, or sometimes eight, depending – as with our family – on who is counting) live on a rocky, unyielding smallholding about three miles outside of town

(it’s 1958, so we are using imperial measures). Gordon Bradley was a five-pound

Pom: a journeyman printer from South London who saw the ad for the great Aussie land release as the ink dried on the newspaper he had just typeset and got himself on a boat.

Once landed, Gordon travelled from property to property, offering his services as a farmhand despite his absolute ignorance of what to do with a pair of shears. But he was a lucky man – which is to say, he was smart enough to know when to say yes to the thing fate was dangling before him like a carrot in front of a rabbit. On the third property he worked on, the squatter’s daughter had a child but no ring on her finger.

Gordon offered just such a ring and in exchange got himself a willing, albeit subdued, wife named Rose, who already had a wee daughter named Esme and four acres in the granite belt outside of Crookwell.

Let’s just call a spade a spade: unlike his enterprising father, Donald at nineteen years of age is not that great around girls. He is a bit awkward, and a bit clumsy. He laughs too much. He smiles too much. He stands too close, or not close enough, and never at the right time.

His oldest brother Warren tries to help him.

82 ‘Stand up straight,’ Warren tells Donald, who obliges by pushing his chest out, but that just emphasises his weak chin. His black-framed glasses fog with the effort.

The girls who know him from schooldays take pity and dance with him at the local church dos, but they never linger afterwards, giggling with their friends once his too- clammy hands release them.

Donald’s older sisters, Esme and Martha, take care of him and the others, tsking over their torn shirts and making sure there is a hot meal every day, even if it is just boiled potatoes and corned beef. At Christmas, Donald likes to help the girls make the sauce for the silverside. He cuts up onions and adds cornflour paste to the heating milk, stirring continuously to avoid lumps. Once he is finished: ta-dah!

Delicious white sauce to pour over everything on your plate, making the whole meal special.

Donald is their mother’s favourite – or at least he is between her ‘rests’ in the women’s asylum in Goulburn, which she has been taking for as long as Donald can remember. When Rose is at home she likes nothing better than to place her feet against the grate after a day’s work and talk dreamily about her son Donald becoming a priest.

Donald quite likes the idea of wearing vestments on Sundays and taking pieces of cake with the ladies’ societies on weekdays. He would live in the Crookwell presbytery, a solid brick house with nothing of his boyhood home’s wattle and daub about it. The butcher, a dyed-in-the-wool Irishman, would reserve the best cuts of meat for him, and a parish woman would serve it up, piping hot and swimming in rich, brown sauce every day.

But then the cancer takes Rose before the madness can, and that was the end of that. Soon after, Warren gets a job at the Goulburn Hospital as a wardsman and

83 starts contributing good money to the family coffers. Donald’s brother Carl begins his training as a guard at the Goulburn jail, and the third eldest, Pat, secures an apprenticeship at the auto mechanic shop which had opened on High Street in

Goulburn. Martha is already working as a trainee nurse and Esme marries a man she met at the Grand Hotel, where she works behind the bar.

Esme gets Donald a job at the pub with her, washing glasses. He likes it there

– he always gets a free drink from Esme, and the other girls save him leftovers from the counter meals.

But then there is an incident. Donald just had a few too many; what man has never done that? He would have paid if the publican insisted, but come on – he works his guts out for the man, surely he is entitled to a few drinks at the end of a shift? He should have taken it to the union. Now he isn’t even allowed into the front bar as a paying customer.

Luckily, his dad has a quiet word, and Donald finds himself working as a male nurse at his mum’s old asylum. At first he was not keen, but pretty soon he discovers that he likes the work here even better than the pub. Changing bedpans is not much fun, but Donald enjoys chatting to the saner inmates, and he is good at cajoling patients back to their wards. The other male nurses throw their weight around, resorting to the straps to get the residents to settle. Donald privately thinks that they could learn a thing or two from him, even though he is the youngest man there.

But then there is a stupid thing – not even a thing, just a friendship – with one of the female patients. (She is a bit unstable, but when she takes her meds she is as normal as anything. It isn’t as if the other male nurses don’t have their favourites.)

84 Anyway, so here he is, in the kitchen of Esme’s marital home in Goulburn, where he is staying while he looks for a new job. Esme sits him down one night over a plate of his favourite bread and butter pudding and tells him that she has an idea.

‘You’re already a reserve, aren’t you, Don?’ Donald nods, mouth full. He and his brothers joined the reserves almost two years ago. It means a uniform, which goes down well at the church socials, and a bit of extra cash for what amounts to going bush with his brothers and mates.

‘If you join up properly,’ says Esme, ‘they’ll teach you a trade.’ She stares at him with that look she gets when she has already decided what you are going to do but is giving you the opportunity to decide for yourself and save her the effort.

Donald has toyed with the idea before, of course: some of the boys he went to school with have enlisted and send home a decent army pay check every month. But until now, he has preferred the idea of staying at home, thinking that he might even go to night school and really become a priest. He spoons more of the pudding into his mouth. ‘I dunno, Esme.’

‘Good conditions in the army,’ Esme adds. ‘Think about it, all right?’

He nods. He has always had a soft spot for Esme, who was practically his mother while he was growing up.

‘All right, Esme. Got any more pudding?’

Esme starts mentioning it every time she sees him, and it isn’t a big house.

Finally, on the Friday after she first brought it up, Donald heads to the Crookwell enlistment office. They say he should lose some weight. They mark him SG4 on the general aptitude test, which is bulldust; but despite his bad score, at the end of the day, the NCO prods his gut and tells him to report for training next Monday.

85 Just six months later, at the tail end of 1958, Donald is deployed to Malaya. He is recommended as a rifleman medic, Medical Assistant Class III – Donald can thank the asylum and, in a roundabout way, his mum, for that. He is to join 1RAR patrols of the Thai–Malay border as platoon medic. The platoon’s job is to look for Chinese insurgents, but they don’t expect to find many. By the beginning of 1959, the Malayan conflict is all but over and the soldiers’ real reason for being there is to remind any failed rebels not to come looking for a bullet in the head.

The jungle itself is the men’s real enemy. At night, the men set up camp on top of a hill or mountain in a circle, then dig a trench around the camp to keep as much of the rain out of their sorry sleeping arses as possible. Each man combines his half-tent with another to form the night’s shelter. Donald and the Sig, Kez, which is short for

Private Ron Kerry, are like an old married couple, knowing each other’s snores and farts better than they know their own. More than once it rains so hard that the trenches overflow, and Donald wakes in water up to his stomach and with Kez’s hat rising and falling on a puddle, tickling the Sig’s ears. On days like that, there are so many reports of foot rot that Donald practically dusts the jungle in snow in his hurry to hand out baby talc. The men laugh when he gives it to them and nickname him ‘Softie’ after someone jokes that the powder made them ‘soft as a baby’s bum’.

Sometimes, they are woken from deep sleep to stand to because the man on watch duty has seen the two bright eyes of his own nightmare. After thirty days of this, without a single sighting of an insurgent, the platoon returns to Penang Island, reeking of the cheesy sweat of men who have eaten rations for a month. They take their shoes off and dance around shirtless and barefoot, joking and prodding each other as if they have just grown tall enough for the rides at Luna Park. The mere open

86 sky of the Penang barracks gives rise to laughter, after their endless hours of rainforest ceilings.

Penang has an actual town with actual people, even if they are all small and brown and only speak enough English to ask for money. When he is off duty, Donald can get the ferry and walk into the town or get a ride in a rickshaw with his mates. He enjoys the sense of his own clean skin under the drill cotton of his uniform, a striking contrast to the threadbare shirts of the locals.

You can get anything tailor-made for you in Penang for less than the cost of a counter meal back home. He and Kez get safari suits made for weekend leave, with short sleeves suited to the local weather. This is the first item of clothing, apart from his uniforms, that Donald’s mother has not made by hand, or that he had not inherited from his brothers. Donald gets his made in khaki; like his mates, nowadays he is only really comfortable in camouflage.

Donald stands before the small shaving mirror above his stretcher, carefully combing a neat quiff over his already receding hairline. He dabs himself with one last dose of Old Spice and heads out to catch up with Kez and the others.

He and his mates head to a few bars first, oiling the wheels, as one of the Brits says. The English airmen are definitely the smoothest of the lot, and Donald momentarily feels that old, familiar sullenness. He pictures himself punching the toffiest of the toffs in the face; his shocked nose crumpling underneath Donald’s clenched fist. Someone orders another round, and Donald finds himself clinking bottles with the toffs as if they are old mates in the front bar of the Crookwell Grand

Hotel. And tonight, they are allied in a common mission: girls.

Imagine his brothers’ faces if they could see the China-girls in their clinging cheongsams and their glossy black up-dos! It’s as if they aren’t real girls – not the

87 way the girls back in Crookwell are real girls, with their broad white faces and steady hips; the girls who’d known you when you were in short pants and were not impressed with what had developed since. They are exotic fantasies, the girls in the dance halls in Penang, created as part of the whole fantastic set-up, existing purely in the dream-state of R&R. In Penang, Donald has no problem whatsoever looking a girl in the eye, ready to be loved.

‘Which is the best bar around here for ladies of a certain persuasion?’ asks one of the toffs, winking broadly and pursing his lips before doubling up at his own joke.

‘We could go to the Moon,’ Kez suggests.

‘Fly me to the moon,’ the toff warbles, his friends whacking him good- naturedly on the back.

Donald prods Kez in the ribs. ‘You’ve got a girl there, haven’t you? Ooooh,

Kez’s gone and got himself a nice little handful of—’ Donald makes a gesture and the others guffaw.

The hostess of the Moon Club greets them and shows them to a high round table near the bar. She perches on a stool and chats as if they are the only men worth knowing in the room. They order drinks and she moves on, but so graciously that they feel like invited guests rather than paying customers.

Kez spots someone across the room and heads off, soon returning with a whippet of a thing – curled hair, knowing eyes, a body as slender as a reed. Donald is not so much attracted to women like this as in awe of them, as if they are a local danger he has yet to learn to defend himself against. But she comes holding the hand of one of the plumper girls, if you can call any of these China-girls ‘plump’; this one has curves where curves should be, and a softness to her cheeks and hips.

88 ‘Softie, this is Molly,’ Kez says as he drapes his arm around the slim looker’s waist.

‘Who’s your friend, Molly?’ asks Donald, smiling at the girl with the rounded edges.

Molly glances from Kez to Donald. ‘This Madge. She good friend of mine, good girl ah? Madge, you say hello to Softie.’

‘Hello, Softie!’ Madge titters.

‘The name’s Donald,’ Donald corrects, making Kez snigger. Ignoring him,

Donald continues, ‘You like a drink?’

To which Madge nods. ‘Yes.’

I want to shout down the decades to young Donald, wave my arms, stop him in his tracks. “Stay in Goulburn!” I would say. “Get a job cleaning toilets at the jail.

Marry a country girl, a white girl, one who is happy with a good provider. Whatever you do, don’t join up.”

He almost didn’t get into the army at all. “SG4”, the rating on his enlistment form, meant that Dad had demonstrated “no outstanding qualities either as a soldier or a leader” in the intake assessment tasks. He was always a follower, our Dad. He was friendly, up for a bit of fun, but essentially harmless. In a period of history which needed fewer bodies in uniforms, he would not have been permitted to join the army at all.

But Dad was in luck. There was a war on.

It’s 1960 and Donald rolls over in the bed in a hotel room in downtown Penang, letting the Madge’s voice ripple over him like the tiny pricks of the feet of sugar ants: slightly ticklish but with a bite to them. She is a talker. She could talk under wet cement. But Donald likes the sound of her chatter, filling the background with a nice patter of inconsequentialities as he lies in bed playing with her titties. Her nipples are big and brown against her sallow skin. His friends make fun of him, saying she has him wrapped around her little finger, making him stand to if she so much as raises her voice.

‘That’s not the only thing that stands to attention,’ he tells his mates, and they snigger.

‘Donald!’ Madge shakes his shoulder.

‘Mm hmm, yeah, right,’ he murmurs.

‘Are you listening?’

He opens one eye, then closes it again. ‘Yeah, yeah, of course,’ he protests, nuzzling the bare space between her neck and shoulder.

She clears her throat. Perhaps she has a bit of inflammation of the lungs.

Donald is forever doling out Irish Moss to the men, his cure-all for coughs, the air too soaked with humidity to allow people’s gurgling chests to really clear. Perhaps he could get some for her. He imagines giving her the bottle of cough mixture; her upturned face, her grateful smile.

90 ‘I saw a girl, other day, she come into work.’ Bugger, Donald thinks, the image fading from his mind. He had forgotten. Madge works at a chemist. She probably unpacks boxes full of Irish Moss every day.

‘Her boyfriend, he rich, English. He give her a necklace, gold, 24 carat.’

‘The air force men make a lot more than the grunts, and they don’t do anything more for it,’ Donald responds, pushing himself up on to an elbow and opening both eyes. This is a topic which he and Kez often discuss during the long hours of picquet duty.

‘He not even married to her, he give her the necklace.’ Madge clears her throat again and turns on to her side. Now he is too close to her face to see her properly; he sees just a single eye and a mop of black around the periphery.

‘Do you want a necklace?’ he asks, stroking her skin.

‘No, no,’ she protests. Then, after a moment, ‘Well … He spend his whole pay cheque on it, you know.’

‘Where do you get gold like that?’

‘You get good price, with the Chinese.’ Madge sits up, suddenly animated. Her boobs dangle above the sheet, their big brown areoles brushing lightly against his face, making him blink. ‘Don’t go to the Sikhs, they rip you off. You go to Chinese over on Railway Parade. You go there, they sell you real thing, 24-carat.’

Donald pictures himself, arm around a girl (this girl), walking through the market stalls. Stopping to haggle at a gold stand, the items shining in the sun; the other men passing by, nodding; Donald nodding back.

‘We’ll go later,’ Donald agrees.

‘Oh. All right,’ she replies, as if the whole thing had been his idea. Women, he thinks fondly, rolling on top of her.

91 She is so soft! The others make fun of him about this too – she is one of the plumper girlfriends – but he doesn’t mind.

‘I like to have something to hold on to,’ he tells them, rounding his hands, and they snort. He loves the way her flesh gives way to him and then springs back, ever pliable under her slippery nylon dresses.

She has picked up all sorts of slang from the Aussies, and it makes Donald chuckle when they reach the stalls later that day to hear her shout at the vendor, ‘You slow as a wet wig!’ He pats her on the bum, looking around for someone to share the joke with. His little Aussie haggler.

She turns abruptly to leave the shop and he follows, recognising the universal language of bargaining. Madge reminds him, ‘Walk, walk. Don’t look back.’

When they are almost out of earshot, they hear the vendor call, ‘Wait!’

Madge turns and Donald again follows her, smiling at her bottom as it jiggles up and down in triumph.

‘You want this one?’ the vendor asks, indicating a thinner chain than the one they had been negotiating over.

‘No. That one,’ Madge says firmly, and the vendor sighs, as if they are taking the meat from his only son’s plate.

After they leave the store Donald stops Madge and turns her around. She holds her hair up and he places the chain against the sweaty skin of her neck. She practically skips down the street.

‘What do you say?’ he calls after her playfully. ‘Thank you, thank you,’ floats back to him, as Donald laughs and tries to keep up.

92 Donald and Madge see each other every leave pass Donald gets. Often they meet at the hawkers for a meal then go on to a bar or one of the back room ‘casinos’, which are really just fluorescent-lit rooms with a craps table and a card game. Madge sits behind him and giggles every time the dice is rolled. Other times they go straight to the hotel where Donald now rents a room for Madge on a week-to-week arrangement with the owner.

It is a Saturday three months since Donald and Madge first met at the Moon

Club. Donald is shopping for souvenirs. What might Esme like? he wonders, pausing at a table laden with jade pendants and trying to picture one nestling below his older sister’s freckled white neck. This is the problem with souvenirs – they seem perfectly fine when you buy them but once you get them back home they are completely out of place.

It is muggy as always and he is already sporting sweat stains under his arms and on his back. He heads to buy an ice kacang.

At the drinks stall he spots Molly, the woman who first introduced him to

Madge, having a drink with another woman who is cradling a baby on her lap. The baby is the biggest Donald has ever seen. She (it must be a she – the short, wispy hair has been tied at the top of her head in an attempt at female charm) has at least three chins and rolls of lard for thighs.

Donald has experience with babies because he helped out with Ronnie after

Mum was sent back to the asylum. Ah hah, he thinks, seeing the tube of sweetened, condensed Carnation milk on the table. That explains the girth.

Donald is standing right at their table before he realises that the woman holding the child is Madge, his Madge. She looks up and half stands, simultaneously handing the baby to Molly.

93 ‘How are you, Donald? Not see you for long time.’ Molly exclaims. This is because Molly had dumped Kez for a warrant officer, but Donald smiles genially enough.

‘Can’t complain, Molly. And who is the little one?’ He smiles at the baby, who blows a raspberry in his general direction and frowns.

Molly replies, ‘Her name Trish.’

‘That’s a lovely name,’ Donald says affably. He pulls up a chair. ‘How old is she?’ he asks Molly.

‘Madge? How old she now?’ Molly looks at Madge.

‘Oh,’ Madge giggles nervously. ‘Nine month?’

‘Is she—’ Donald is confused. He gestures from the baby to Molly.

‘Ah, she Madge’s, not mine!’ Molly waggles her head. ‘She good girl, though ah? Aren’t you little Dee-Dee?’ Molly vigorously tickles Trish’s third chin and Trish wails. Donald instinctively reaches out to soothe the baby with a few pats. She stops crying and turns two big black eyes on him.

‘You not meet her before?’ Molly asks Donald. ‘Madge, you should have bring her before ah? She beautiful girl!’

Donald looks at Madge, waiting for an explanation, but Madge avoids his eye.

‘Baby father, he bad man.’ Molly leans over the table and drops her voice. ‘He tell Madge, I marry you, I take you home with me. But what he do? He leave her here.

He already got wife in Sydney! Aiyah.’ Molly shakes her head.

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Donald turns to Madge.

‘You all the same.’ Madge stands up abruptly, startling Donald. She grabs

Trish from Molly’s lap. The people at the surrounding tables turn from their conversations to see what the fuss is about.

94 Donald glances at the onlookers. ‘Shh, shh, Madge. We’ll talk about it later.’

‘Why I care what they think? Chee! You Aussie,’ she spits. ‘You think you’re so good, but you all just want one thing. Disgusting, Donald. You disgusting.’ She pronounces it, ‘diss-kuss-ding’, making the very word sound soaked in filth. Trish begins to cry. ‘Shh!’ Madge hoists Trish onto her hip, accidentally making the baby’s head wobble dangerously from side to side.

‘Here, give me the baby,’ Donald says before he can stop himself. For a second Trish is not Trish but Donald’s little brother Ronnie, and Madge is not Madge but Donald’s mother, shaking Ronnie so hard that nine-year-old Donald can practically hear the soft, pliable neck cracking as he watches, frozen in terror.

He holds out his hands but Madge lets go of Trish quicker than he expects, making him stumble forward to catch her. For the briefest second he wonders, What am I doing?

Madge takes a breath.

‘Bring us an ice-cream for the little one! And three more ice kacangs. Such a hot day!’ he says quickly, before Madge can take up her diatribe again. He jiggles this foreign baby in his arms, sweat pooling where her hot little body presses against his skin.

Donald bounces Trish up and down, gradually reducing her cries to a whiny hiccupping. ‘There, there,’ he soothes. ‘It’s all right, it’s all right. Mummy not mad at you, she mad at me, see?’

Molly laughs at his joke and looks meaningfully at Madge. Madge clears her throat but says nothing. Donald avoids Madge’s eyes, reaching one hand into his pocket for a clean hanky to wipe away the white baby spew which now decorates the shoulder of his shirt.

95 Molly shakes her head. ‘Chee, Madge, you crazy!’ she laughs.

‘Chee, Donald,’ Madge says, trying to regain her anger. But before Madge can say anything else Donald jerks Trish’s hands up and down in a comical baby dance, making Madge and Molly giggle.

The ice-cream and the ice kacangs arrive. After a few minutes of silent drinking, Madge looks Donald in the eye. ‘You not come this afternoon now ah,’

Madge states rather than asks.

‘Of course I still come!’ Donald feels indignant. He has just been thinking the same thing, but hearing Madge say it out loud changes his mind. He will go out with her tonight as planned; show her he isn’t the type of bloke to run at the sight of a bit of baby spew.

Then he can break it off at his next weekend leave. He will even get her a parting-of-the-ways present, just to show no hard feelings. He pictures himself, quietly pressing a gift into Madge’s hand, plus a little something in a red packet to help out with the baby. She will bow her head in gratitude, and Molly will look on impressed, and offer him food and drinks, but he will hold up his hands, palms outward, and say, Now ladies, no need to make a fuss. Then he will kiss Madge on the cheek (or perhaps the forehead? The forehead) and say goodbye. If he bumps into

Madge he will always make sure to ask after the baby’s health. One of the good ones, the women will murmur to each other as they watch him walk by.

Donald picks up the spoon and guides a mouthful of half-melted ice-cream towards Trish. ‘I see you at eight, all right, Madge? Now, baby, here comes the choo- choo train! Toot, toot!’

Part 3: Family Life

Include stories of the deceased’s immediate family – parents, children and siblings.

This helps to makes family members feel as though they are part of the story of the

deceased.

How to Write a Eulogy

97 1

‘Remind me. Who was Trish’s father?’ This is one of my Good Friday tactics with

Mum: ask a direct question as if I already know the answer, to trick her into accidentally sharing some fragment of the truth. I try not to get my hopes up, readying myself for her to deflect the question with a variation on her usual opening gambits:

‘Why you not send me more money?’ ‘When you coming to visit?’ ‘Other daughters give their mother $500 a week. A week!’

But perhaps since Dad died she is tired of being the only one who knows the truth. Whatever the reason, she answers, ‘I couldn’t get my passport in time.’

This is unexpected. I try to keep my voice casual as I scrabble for a pen. ‘Did you try?’

‘Of course I try. My papers, they all locked in a cupboard at my brother house.’

She sounds offended. I try a different angle. ‘Where was he from?’

Pause. ‘England.’

‘Did he leave without you?’

‘I tried. I not know about these things,’ she says by way of answer. I picture a young woman shaking the doors of a walnut wardrobe with tears of frustration coursing down her cheeks as the man she truly loves boards a plane and returns to

England without her.

‘Did he know?’ I ask. ‘About Trish?’

Another pause. ‘No.’

‘What was his name?’

98 ‘John,’ she says softly. ‘But that all long time ago, An— Kathy. When I a kid I used to run wild! I tell you my mother, everyone call her the kindest lady in the village because she buy all the buns from the man, you know, at the end of the day ...’

Mum prattles on with a story I have heard before. Meanwhile, I imagine our mother on her wedding day with my father, thinking of a different man, ‘John’, and an unlived life of love. I had prepared to judge her for having not one, but two babies out of wedlock. One is an accident, but two – that’s just irresponsible. But it turned out that Trish was a love baby! How could I blame Mum for marrying Dad – after all, what woman in the 1950s did not make pragmatic choices when it came to marriage?

Before we end the conversation, I tell her I will deposit something extra into her account without her even asking.

When I got hold of Dad’s army files I found out that I had forgiven my mother for the wrong sin. There had been no John pining for my mother whenever it rained in

London. Trish’s father had been yet another married Aussie NCO working at

Butterworth in Malaya. I came across letters in Dad’s convent school copperplate, demanding money from a bloke named ‘Warren Boyle’ for Trish’s upkeep.

There is no record of Warren (Wazza? Warro?) ever being found. It seems that he left the force after Malaya and disappeared into the Australian suburbs like so many other fathers.

I first began to wonder about Trish when Val made a joke about how fit and trim our eldest sister always was and how lucky Trish was not to have inherited the ‘Bradley butt’. The rest of us tended towards softness, like Dad; when I was with Lachie, the boyfriend before Evan, I lost weight but could never truly defeat the roundness of my

99 Bradley genes. Trish laughed with her mouth but not her eyes and then told us all to exercise more.

So I can understand why Mum married Dad. But why did Dad married our mother?

What compelled him to do it, this 23-year-old Aussie lad with nothing to hold him to a woman who already had a baby by someone else? Was he actually in love? I try out different scenarios in my head.

Here is the one I always return to.

By the time Donald gets his next weekend leave, the wet season is in full swing and it is too rainy to be outdoors for long. He and Madge spend the weekend cooped up in the hotel room, and by Sunday evening he has not had a chance to buy her that gift.

Another two leave passes; another two rained-in weekends. Still, Donald feels all right about it. He isn’t the kind of bloke to just stop showing up. He is going to do the thing properly.

At last, the sun breaks through the heavy clouds. Madge is wearing a green nylon dress; he feels her nipples press against his chest when they kiss hello. They can go out a bit later to the night markets, he thinks, leading her upstairs.

The windows are beginning to darken with the coming afternoon thunderstorm when Madge rolls out from under him. Donald throws an arm over her soft body and closes his eyes, but Madge starts talking as she always does after they have finished.

He dozes, murmuring the occasional, ‘Mm-hmm.’

100 ‘You take me back to Australia,’ she states. ‘Donald? You got to take me there.’

He struggles against the waves of sleep. ‘What?’

‘I due in March.’

‘What? You’re pregnant?’

‘Donald, I say that!’

‘No, you didn’t!’ he protests but doubt slithers into his mind. Did she just tell him that? He can’t remember. She talks so much, especially straight afterwards when he is only half awake.

‘How do you know?’ he asks.

‘I tell you! I miss my, you know,’ she says. ‘When you get leave for Registee?

When we go back to Australia?’ She stares straight at him.

‘Wait on, wait on,’ Donald replies, combing his fingers through his thinning hair – he is only twenty-six but has already lost more than a third of the hair he is entitled to. ‘We— are you sure?’

At this, Madge explodes. ‘What you mean, am I sure? Of course I sure. Chee wiz! What you think?’

‘All right, don’t get your knickers in a knot. We just have to think this through.’ Donald’s mind races. Can he give her some money, let her ‘deal’ with it?

But … he contemplates 1,000 years of purgatory accompanied by an unbaptised foetus.

‘You got the form? Donald, I told you, chee wiz! You got to fill out forms from the Registee.’ Registry, Donald translates mentally. He pictures Madge in her green nylon dress, hobbling across the Bradleys’ sorry excuse for a farm, where they

101 harvest more stones than potatoes; meeting Donald’s father, wrinkled as a prune from years of thankless labour; and Donald saying, ‘Dad, this is your new daughter-in-law.’

He could keep giving her money once he went home. He isn’t a shirker.

‘You no good! Donald, I know you! I know what you like!’ She sneers at his wilted penis as if she can read his mind and starts slapping him all over his bare, unprotected skin. He covers himself, grabbing at the sheets as he stumbles out of bed.

She screams, ‘You make me sick!’

‘Stop it, Madge, stop it!’ Madge has also got up, stark naked, and continues to rain her open palms down on him. ‘Madge, settle down! We have to get dressed and go!’

‘Why? Where you go?’

‘I have to get you a ring!’ he shouts. In the silence that follows his words he straightens and assumes a look which he hopes conveys injured nobility.

‘I come and choose with you?’ She watches him closely.

‘No, you can’t do that, silly woman,’ he shakes his head. ‘Bad luck.’ There is nothing these chinks hate more than bad luck.

Her eyes are black abacus beads clicking from side to side.

‘You meet me after?’

‘Yes,’ Donald laughs. ‘Of course!’

‘Mate, there are no medic transfers within the theatre,’ Kez repeats. ‘Not for the next six months.’

Donald flops onto his pillow. After extricating himself from Madge he came straight back to base to find Kez.

102 ‘Come on, Softie! You’ll never get one as good-looking back home, no offence mate. And these China-girls, they do everything for you.’ Kez has a new girl to whom he is already engaged and she isn’t even in a family way. ‘I don’t just mean cooking and cleaning, though that too, yeah, and the food, it’s so much better than the rubbish back home.’

Donald agrees with that: Malayan food had been like a spiritual awakening for his stomach, and despite frequent bouts of the runs, he would definitely miss it. But

Madge could not cook. She had grown up with servants, she had told him in the early days of their courting, and he had boasted, ‘Everyone is rich in Australia.’ He squeezes his eyes shut at his own idiocy.

‘But aren’t you worried about your mum and dad?’ Donald asks Kez, eyes still shut as if he could block out the sight of his own looming life.

‘Mate, they’ll be all right! You’ll be the only bloke at Holsworthy without a

Chinese wife if you don’t look out! Better off getting yourself one now, before the good ones are all gone.’

‘She already has a baby,’ Donald admits.

Kez whistles. They both lie back on their stretchers. ‘Well. Is this one yours?’

‘Yeah, of course,’ Donald replies. Something like this was bound to happen to him.

‘Kez, what if—’ Donald tries to make his next question seem a joke. ‘What if I can’t, you know, love the baby?’

It is possibly the first time Donald has ever said the word ‘love’ out loud.

When he left Crookwell, his father had muttered, ‘You know, son, I, your, your mother always loved you’, and Donald had ducked his head and replied, ‘Yeah.’

103 ‘It won’t look like a real baby. I mean, you know, a normal baby, like you or me,’ he says. Even his little brother Ron had the blue eyes and ruddy cheeks of their father.

‘Ohh, come off it, Softie!’ Kez pushes him off his stretcher. Donald clambers back up.

‘Look, what do you expect?’ Kez speaks reasonably. ‘She’s Chinese, and when you have babies, they’re going to look Chinese. It’s going to be fine. You’re going to be a good dad, and a bloody better husband than I ever would be.’ He grabs Donald by the hair and wrestles him into a pretend chokehold. ‘All I can say is you better pray to bloody Christ he doesn’t look like you!’ He laughs.

‘Yeah, you too, you ugly bastard,’ Donald replies, shoving his heavy gut against Kez’s head until Kez finally breaks his hold, shouting, ‘I can’t breathe, you cunt! Gerroff!’

‘So? You’re going to do it?’ Kez asks once he gets his breath back.

‘Yeah.’

Kez yanks Donald off the bunk and drags him into the common room.

‘Softie’s getting married! Someone get the beers!’

Kez holds a bottle aloft. ‘There’s a girl who has found the hard man we never believed you had in you, Softie, although clearly you have had it in her,’ Kez crows.

The other men cheer.

‘Careful, Kez, you’re talking about my future wife,’ Donald admonishes. Kez ruffles Donald’s quiff and Donald grins. Someone takes his empty and hands him a fresh one, which he gulps down in two.

The next day, Donald asks Madge to sit at the hotel room’s small round coffee table.

104 ‘I’ll take care of you and the little one,’ he says. ‘There’ll be plenty of other

Chinese wives on base, so you won’t be lonely.’

Madge remains silent.

The ring! Donald had almost forgotten. He reaches into his top pocket and withdraws a small velvet box.

‘Here you are. I hope you like it.’ It is a beautiful ring, shaped like a flower with diamonds in the petals. Kez helped him choose it at the night markets, after an afternoon of celebratory boozing it up. The ring is small enough to be inexpensive but set so cunningly that the whole thing sparkles in the light.

Madge’s face opens. ‘OK,’ she replies.

‘OK?’ Donald laughs. ‘Does that mean yes, you’ll marry me?’

‘Yes, yes, Donald,’ she giggles. ‘We get it resize? It too big for me.’

Donald feels like he might burst; his grin stretches from ear to ear. He has made the right decision. He swings her hand in his, making the ring jiggle loosely on her finger on their way to the jeweller, but he doesn’t care – he wants to hold her hand as high as it will go so everyone will know that he asked and she said yes.

Madge interrupts his thoughts. ‘The ring, it bit too big for my finger ah?

Maybe something else fit better? I see a girlfriend, she have diamond this big,’ she makes a circle with her fingers. ‘Her boyfriend spend six month wages on it. He in army too.’

Donald’s smile narrows. ‘Madge, you can’t swap your engagement ring. It’s a gift. It’s not like’ – he searches for something she might understand – ‘a dress, or a pair of shoes. I gave it you. It’s from me.’ He places a palm against his heart.

‘Oh, OK, OK,’ she giggles. ‘Donald softie,’ she adds, taking her hand out of his to adjust her dress.

105 Donald shakes his head. ‘It’s not that.’

Madge has moved ahead and now stands at the jewellery store, looking at the glass cabinet like a child in a lolly shop. His heart softens. She probably doesn’t know the first thing about engagement rings and what they mean. To her, it is just another gold ornament.

‘I know a girl, she got gold bracelet, so nice,’ she begins and he laughs out loud, shaking his head.

‘All right, all right, Madge,’ he says indulgently. ‘We get you a bracelet.’

‘No, no, I not say that.’

‘Oh, all right then, so just get the ring adjusted?’ he teases.

‘Well,’ she says, then clears her throat.

‘It’s all right, let’s get you one.’ He starts to feel impatient and then annoyed that he feels impatient. He is not meant to feel irritated on this day.

‘This ring, it platinum? My girlfriends tell me, Madge, Aussies give their girls gold. They say, you have Aussie boyfriend, why he so stingy?’

‘I’ll take the ring back too?’ Donald flushes. He is not smiling any more.

‘No, no, I just saying,’ she giggles and swats at him. ‘It all right, Donald, I only saying. Show me the bracelets,’ she says to the shop assistant.

‘And we need this ring resized,’ Donald interrupts.

‘Yeah, yeah, Donald, you think I forget? You go look at watches.’

Madge turns back to the assistant, leaving Donald to browse. Each of the watches ticks softly to its own beat, but not a single one of them displays the correct time.

106

Poor old Dad. He never stood a chance against Mum. He should have taken away his eyes for just one second from her plump behind, up past her round boobs, all the way to her wheedling eyes, and kept right on walking.

I really ought to practice gratitude: for my father’s weakness, for my mother’s survival instinct. If they were not the people they are, you and I, the two little accidents at the end of the Bradley line, would never have come into existence.

It could not have been Dad who had been the man in the shadows, on the night of the orange light, the hands on my body where they should not be. Dad would never have done something like that. Dad loved us in a very uncomplicated way: we were his children, so he took care of us. Whatever his sins, Dad was a good man.

I always thought that Mum’s engagement ring was very pretty, and she wore it for more than thirty years, until she sold it, along with all her other jewellery, to a loan shark at the TAB. Mum without her bracelets and rings was one of the saddest things I have ever seen, like watching a child stretching its arms out for a mother who is not there.

Not that she needed the money. Trish, Val, Brian and I paid her bills after Dad died, and we covered any expenses to do with your health care. Dad’s army records for Malaya included a letter of claim from a Penang hotelier, sent to my father’s commanding officer a year after his return to Australia. It seems that taking care of

Mum was always an expensive business.

107 Donald has been married for four years when he seeks, and secures, a tour to

Vietnam. The war is chewing through soldiers, and the powers that be are inclined to ignore his growing list of charges, along with the ridiculous report from the army psych, calling him mentally unfit for field service.

Which is just as well. Donald needs the Vietnam allowances. Since their marriage, he and Madge have had two children, plus they have Trish and another on the way, so Donald needs all the extra allowances that active duty can offer. He pats the bandage, which now sports a bloodstain as big as his hand. It had taken ten wakeys in the fetid air of the Vietnamese rainforests, midges and mosquitoes and infected sand-fly bites, to finally make him long, if not for home, then at least for the idea of it.

He fantasises about leaving Vietnam right here, right now, and going back to his army-owned house in Holsworthy. Things were always good after he returned from some place, even if just from a week-long training camp. The kids were so happy to see him that they behaved well, clamouring to sit on his lap. Madge would stand in the kitchen doorway, smiling and asking him if he felt hungry. His shoulders would dip; he would rest his head back against his chair and begin to think, ‘It will always be like this’; until, of course, it was not.

Sometimes he got a week, although more often just two or three days, before she would start getting on his case again; nagging about the bills or complaining about his going out for a drink (‘Just a drink! With a mate!’), until it would all come to a head in a shouting match, her screaming, him protesting and falling over the furniture to get away from her slapping hands and that bloody rolling pin.

He wonders for the hundredth time why Madge is not like the other wives.

They seem in awe of their husbands, and he is sure they do not expect their men to

108 hand over their pay checks, no questions asked. The other men certainly don’t have four screaming children under the age of four; although that, he knows, is not really

Madge’s fault. He is not very good at timing it, that’s all; and then before he knows it, she is throwing up into the toilet bowl and he is looking for another posting, the next training camp – anything to earn a few extra allowances and support the baby that is on the way. And get some days of quiet into the bargain.

He likes having lots of children; he has always liked babies, and he enjoys coming home to the noise and activity of a full house. If he could just sit back with his pipe in his armchair, and let the family swirl around him like leaves from a beautiful great tree he himself had planted … but no, there will be an argument, and Madge will shout, and a child will start crying, and he will be out the door before she can drag him into the latest fracas. If he is lucky, she and the kids will all be asleep by the time he comes home; but he could swear that she moves the living room table so that he stumbles into it on his way to the bedroom, waking her up as effectively as a bell in a boxing ring signalling the next round.

Donald is not a violent man and would never raise a hand against his wife or children. But Madge – she just needs more help, he thinks. I’ll write to Reggie, see if his Em can check up on her. Reggie and Em are a godsend, literally; they had come to

Donald’s house on a St Vincent de Ron visit, checking to see if the army wives needed any help. Em only has one daughter (and, for women’s reasons, could not have any more) and she is always happy to help Madge with the shopping, babysitting, anything she can. She even gives Madge clothes for the children and vouchers for groceries.

Donald likes Reggie too. He’s a good man, active in the church, always ready with a joke and a kind word. Around Reggie, Donald can feel himself filling out his

109 own boots, feeling happier, more grateful for what he has, more loving towards his wife. Madge is also a nicer version of herself when they visit Reggie and Em; she laughs more and doesn’t hit the children as hard. After a visit to Reggie and Em’s, the

Bradleys would come home and bask in the afterglow of their kindness. The kids would run around the house, but would not fight, just play; even the rooms would seem sunnier, the air devoid of fear.

Then it would begin. Val, thinking it still safe, would say something along the lines of how nice Aunty Em’s house is, what with all its knick-knacks. Madge would remind Val, ‘She only have one daughter.’ Then Barb would say something innocent, like, ‘I wish you could make biscuits like that.’

Madge would tell her, ‘Eat what you’re given.’ There would be a pause, and the more hopeful (or ignorant) members of the family (Bev, Barb) would think that it was over. For Donald, when it came it was almost a relief, like the start of the wet season here in Vietnam. Madge would slap one of the girls and the girl would cry.

Madge would shout, ‘Stop crying! Chee!’ and the child would gulp, but be unable to check the tears, making Madge scream louder. She would turn to another child, striking her if the girl were stupid enough to still be within arm’s length. Madge would scream, ‘You just as bad! You no good, make me sick!’

Donald might say something like ‘Stop it, Madge, just stop it.’ Then she would round on him and it would really get going. ‘You worse than the lot of them. You no good, always drinking, thinking you Christian, you so good, better than other people, but you not, you make me sick!’

Donald would shout over his shoulder, ‘You crazy, woman,’ and then stomp down to the rec club, not thinking of what she might to do the children in his absence;

110 not thinking at all until the third cold beer in his hand relaxed him enough to turn around from the bar and see who might be up for a flutter.

The sergeant calls a halt and Donald squats on his pack under a rubber tree, pouring water from his canteen over his sweating face. He groans out loud, remembering. That too gets Madge on his case – she hates waiting outside the TAB with the kids while

Donald places his bets on a Saturday. That’s a positive about being in Vietnam: there is always a little Vietnamese man, only a little lame, who will run your bets into town for you, limping across miles of mud and jungle for a few cents. And they have such big smiles.

Finally, after a five-hour march that felt like ten, Donald sees the Nui Dat camp rise out of the fields ahead of them, with camouflage mesh strung around the perimeter like a ragged welcome home banner. Donald thinks he can hear something deep and bass-y, more like a vibration in the ground than an actual sound.

‘That’ll be Little Pattie, getting ready for the concert tomorrow,’ Ron says, ear tilted upwards. Donald’s own ears ring to the note of C these days – a gift from the relentless mating call of the helicopters.

The next afternoon, Donald joins the others at the dustbowl – the natural, dirt amphitheatre at one end of the camp where the troops have set up a makeshift stage for the entertainment. Donald doesn’t even know who these entertainers are, but he has heard that they play a bit of country music, which sounds good to him. He has his field glasses with him, and some of the other men look at him enviously. Little Pattie is a blonde in a short skirt and looks no older than a teenager.

For a moment Donald has to do a double-take: a girl like this against the backdrop of the jungle, the sound of mortars in the distance – it just isn’t the way

111 nature had ordered things. But the moment passes, and he turns his attention briefly to

Col Joye, who plays the guitar and croons with a rockabilly lilt to his voice. The music is good, even over the tinny loudspeakers.

Just as the musicians finish their set, choppers fly overhead and the siren sounds. Donald, who has been lingering to see if he can get an autograph, turns and races to the field ambulance dust-off pad. Casualties are arriving from a plantation called Long Tan, where Company D patrolled today, looking for the VC that the radios had been picking up over the last few days but so far no one had sighted.

Donald is put to work, carrying men from the helicopters, inserting drips, bandaging, suturing, cleaning wounds, checking temperatures and pulses, closing eyelids. He is relieved at 10 pm, but only because he is detailed to accompany D Company the next day on what his superior officer ominously calls ‘the clean-up.’ That night, they have a stand-to, so by the time 5 am roll call comes around, Donald is asleep on his feet.

He and the company set off to Long Tan.

It’s a battlefield, if you can call a swamp covered with dead bodies that. The smell is unbearable. Donald ties a handkerchief over his face, his glasses fogging up with the sweat and damp. He puts on a pair of surgical gloves and offers some to the others nearby, but pretty soon they are slippery with blood and mud and he strips them off, favouring his bare hands for the job. Donald is to search and identify dead bodies, as well as treat any living he finds, including VC (who might, after all, have useful information). So far he has found seven VC bodies which he has searched gingerly, in case they died holding grenades at the ready, or are not actually dead.

In some parts of the sodden field, the slide marks of bodies being dragged through the mud are unmistakable. The VC have been busy during the night,

112 reclaiming their own, but even to Donald it is obvious that there are a lot more enemy corpses here than Aussies. The sheer volume of the dead is staggering: before today,

Donald had only ever seen VCs in small groups; two, maybe three, in sight. He has treated VCs at the base, bandaging their wounds while guards pointed guns at their heads, and this is what he pictures when he thinks of the VC: handfuls of men, roaming the jungles in an almost accidental semblance of order. Now, looking across the field, he is reminded of what the VC really are: an enemy army. The thought is almost more sobering than the job at hand.

It is five minutes to smoko when he finds his first Aussie. Donald identifies him as a Company D man and calls for a stretcher. Leaning down, he covers the eyes with a muddy handkerchief (they are too stiff to close) and fingers a packet out of the dead man’s pocket. The tobacco is mostly sodden from the rain, but one or two that the man must have pre-rolled are dry enough to attempt. Donald nods at the corpse, beginning to wonder if he should put the packet back; if perhaps his mother or best friend should receive the soggy leaves along with the other effects.

He casts his eyes down and mumbles, ‘Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name …’ When he is finished his prayer, he keeps his eyes closed for a moment before lighting up, shielding the flame with his hand. Faint messages of smoke curl towards the sky from other men scattered across the field who, like him, are resting for a moment among the dead.

113 2

In one of our phone conversations after Dad died, after I moved to Sydney, Mum cleared her throat and said, apropos of nothing, ‘Your Dad, he was a good man.’

‘I know,’ I replied. Our father, the good man. The man who always did his best.

It is Christmas Eve, 2001, and I have high hopes for a conflict free Christmas. Barb and Val each have toddlers and husbands, which encourages both sisters to reduce their usual animosity to a gentle simmer for the sake of the children. Brian just finished his second year as a maths teacher in a Gold Coast Catholic school and is bringing his new girlfriend to lunch, which means it’s serious. Even Bev and her family are sorting themselves out, living in a caravan park north of Brisbane on the

Sunshine Coast whilst they pay off the debts from Keith’s failed bobcat business.

Trish has loaned them enough to get the more insistent creditors off their backs.

Dad is the only one to worry about. He has had heart troubles off and on throughout the year and was diagnosed with prostate cancer at the start of 2001. He is receiving excellent medical treatment: his application for Total and Permanently

Impaired veteran status was approved, and I can tell that he secretly enjoys being chauffeured to his appointments in government cars. But since he retired at the end of

2000, he says his ‘nerves’ have been playing up. I have encouraged him to seek treatment, citing studies about the high incidence of post-traumatic stress disorder amongst Vietnam veterans, and he now counts a psychiatrist amongst his specialists.

114 But he complains of all the meds he is required to take for his various conditions and has started drinking. I found a cask of moselle in the laundry basket last week – it had leaked all over the whites. I threw it straight into the wheelie bin before Mum saw it.

I have just completed an Honours year in psychology and am working through the summer at Coles. I have been offered a doctoral scholarship starting next year, on a study of the variable of temperament in the life outcomes of siblings. Unlike many of my peers, I really enjoy the statistical side of research. I like the idea that woolly concepts like love, hate, sorrow, and joy can be broken down into measurable affects.

I like the puzzle of designing the methodology for a research project. How do you control for all the variables when you are trying to measure the impact of one particular life event on a person’s future outcomes? Say for example, a woman ends her own life. Of her two children, one becomes a drug addict and ends up in jail, whilst the other trains as a mental health worker, marries and has a family. How do two people who have experienced the same event experience such different life trajectories?

My feet are aching from standing all day, scanning people’s Christmas puddings and fruit mince pies. I am looking forward to a shower to get the smell of plastic packaging off me before we go to Christmas Eve mass. But when I get home,

Dad is slumped in his armchair, a half empty glass of rosé in his hand.

Anger unexpectedly roils inside me like a power surge in the circuit. He had promised me that he would stop.

‘Dad,’ I say, trying to keep my voice even, ‘You shouldn’t be mixing alcohol with your meds.’

115 ‘Argh, those meds.’ Dad sets his mouth like an obstinate boy and fills his cup from the boxed wine which he has left openly next to the fridge, at least while Mum is out with Barb. He pours a plastic cup of rosé for me.

‘Come on, ’ave a drink with me.’

‘Go on, Kathy. Have a drink with Dad,’ you beg.

I twist my entire body away from the cup. Dad doesn’t seem to notice or care about my silent protest. He plops back heavily into his armchair and starts talking. It’s a long, meandering diatribe about his various illnesses. Soon enough he returns to his favourite anthem of late: how the big kids don’t treat him right.

‘After all I did for them,’ he shakes his head and takes a swig. ‘I painted

Trish’s house for her, you know. And does she ever call? Does she ever visit? No.’

‘She’s a doctor,’ I remind him. ‘She’s busy.’

‘Bah, doctor. She just doesn’t appreciate me. Doesn’t care. None of them care.’

He gets up to refill his glass before sliding unceremoniously to the dining room floor. You reach down and pluck ineffectually at his clothes and I strain in vain against the solid mass of our father.

‘All I want is a little affection,’ he continues. He waves the glass, making the drink slop from side to side.

‘I can’t even get it up any more,’ he slurs irrelevantly.

‘Come on, Kathy!’ You have given up pulling at him but you are still bending over, trying to give him a hug. I absolutely will not touch him. Everything inside me curdles at the thought of my body being anywhere near that sweet-smelling skin.

I stand up and grab my car keys. ‘I’m taking Annie to Christmas mass.’

116 ‘Lemme get dressed,’ he says, trying to stand. He stumbles, then puts his head back down on the ground, giggling and weeping. Dad is not a violent drunk, but a soppy one, leaking sentiment all over the carpet.

‘I’m disappointed in you, Dad,’ I say, unable to prevent my voice shaking. I am afraid of him when he is like this. I am not scared that he will hurt me, but that through his obstinacy he will hurt himself.

‘If you aren’t in bed by the time we get back, I will be very … cross,’ I finish rather lamely.

‘Bah,’ he says, and waves me away.

At Mass, the Christmas carols and the festive candles cheer me up. I don’t believe in God any more, but I do believe in Christmas: families coming together, drivers waving each other ahead at roundabouts. On the way home from Mass, we pick up Mum from the TAB and return home to find Dad already snoring in bed. You,

Mum and I watch the Christmas carols on Channel Nine as we do every year, eating scorched almonds and singing along to the old favourites. I wonder, as I do every year, how Rhonda Burchmore makes a living on the other 364 days of the year: the only time I ever see her is gussied up, singing Joy to the World, hands bouncing the sky. If Dad were awake, we would all be forced into a rendition of the Little Drummer

Boy. Come, they told me, pa-rum-pa-pum-pum, me and my drum.

After the last carol, I help you into your pyjamas and put toothpaste on your toothbrush for you. I have been yawning since the traditional visit from Santa Claus to the stage of the Myer Music Bowl. I should sleep well tonight.

Only a few hours later, I jolt awake. I decide I must need to go to the toilet, so

I tiptoe quietly down the hallway so as not to wake anyone. I hear snoring from Mum and Dad’s room. It is louder than normal, and has a crackle and rattle to it, like

117 someone is half-choking, trying to breathe phlegm out through their ribcage. Mum’s snore is typically high-pitched, like an air siren before the bombs hit during the Blitz.

So it must be Dad.

I keep walking down the hallway; part of me will always be walking down that dark hallway.

I don’t stop.

For a second, perhaps, I hesitate. Perhaps I stop, momentarily, and consider going in to check? As unprecedented as that might be, the strangeness of the snoring makes me stop, and for a second, I think, I should go in there and check on Dad, make sure everything is OK. After all, he has had heart scares this year. He told me the doctors wanted him to be in hospital that very day, but he had refused, saying, ‘It’s

Christmas. Not over Christmas.’ But he had told me this over a plastic cup filled with rosé from a box. And I was trying hard not to listen to a word he said.

I walk down the hallway and I do not stop. Well, for a second I stop, jink to one side, taking two small steps instead of an ordinary one. But then I keep going. I might as well have had not stopped at all. I hear his snoring rattle and I remember what I said to him before going to Mass, and I think, If he dies, it will be his own fault.

In the morning, Mum says not to wake Dad as he has been having such trouble sleeping in the last few months, but something impels me down the hallway. I open the door. He is not breathing. Something black oozes out the corner of his mouth and nose.

118 In what seems like mere seconds, the house is full of Bradleys. I hear a keening noise and turn around, and the sound is coming from Mum. It is the first time in my life that

I have seen her cry. Barb puts an arm around her. You are prostrate on the couch, and

Trish is checking your blood pressure.

I pull Val aside. I have to tell someone; I need to confess to this crime.

‘I had a fight with him before he went to bed,’ I say. ‘I heard him snoring so loudly, and I thought, If he dies it will be his own fault, but I didn’t mean it. I never really thought death was a possibility.’

I burst into tears. Trish and Val exchange glances, and Val heads down the hallway to take her turn with Dad’s body while Trish pats me on the back.

‘Listen to me, Kathy,’ she says in her authoritative doctor’s voice. ‘What you heard was the death rattle.’

Trish looks at Mum, who stutters, ‘I was next to him all night, I shook him he was snoring so loud.’

‘Once a person makes that noise, it’s the end. Neither of you,’ she nods towards Mum and me, ‘could have done anything for him. I am a doctor. I have heard that rattle hundreds of times. Do you understand? By the time you heard that sound, he was already gone.’

I have been given the task of looking through his paperwork to see if he left any wishes for his funeral. I know it’s busy work – my sisters just want to keep me occupied – but I will do it properly. It is the last thing I can do for Dad. I sit on the carpet in our parents’ bedroom and rummage under the bed. There are two shoeboxes, one labelled ‘Bills,’ the other ‘Receipts.’ I methodically sort through dozens of papers about pharmaceuticals, paid bills, income tax assessments. I come across a credit card

119 bill, then another, and another. It takes me a few minutes to understand what I am seeing. Here are bills for, I shuffle some papers – five maxed-out credit cards, each from different banks.

There may be a logical explanation, I tell myself. Just be systematic. Under the bills, I find it: a letter on yellow stationery. Then another. And another.

When I show Val the credit card bills, the yellow letters, she just says, ‘Oh,

Dad’, as if she has been waiting for something like this. When I ask her why she is not more surprised, she just sighs and says, ‘Dad was into that sort of thing before you two were born.’ What was he into exactly? I want to shout. Debt? Extramarital affairs with girls who draw love hearts over their i’s?

Months later I will obtain the army records and piece that potted history together for myself. But for now, all I can do is picture him slurring the night before he died, ‘All I want is a little affection.’ Now I know what he was talking about. Now it all makes a drunken kind of sense. There is a knock on the front door. I get there before Val can, and standing with her fist raised to knock again is a young woman who cannot be older than me. She has long, straggly brown hair, a skinny frame, desperate eyes.

‘I’m looking for Donny?’ She says, eyes darting.

‘He’s dead,’ I reply, and slam the door in her face.

For Dad’s funeral, my sister Barb gives the undertakers the most ridiculous clothes I have ever seen. A completely mismatched summer shirt and shorts from Lowes which she claims she had been about to give Dad for Christmas. At the church his body rests

120 in a polished wooden coffin, his head dignified despite the lurid red hibiscus flowers of the jolly holiday fabric covering his chest. I look at him and wonder if the body has released the soul entire. Or has the soul been frozen too, suspended in the ice which preserves him so that I have a chance to say goodbye? I lean down to Dad. To an observer it would appear as though I am kissing his cheek. I whisper, I don’t feel anything. I don’t feel anything at all.

A week after Dad’s funeral, my sisters, brother and I have a family meeting about you. Mum has always taken care of your physical needs – bathing, eating – but Dad and I have been your conduits to a social life: Dad used to take you to Mass, I would take you with my university friends to see bands, and both of us would schedule one night a week for board games and card games to keep you mentally alert. But along with my research scholarship comes a small flat at one of the university colleges, where I will receive a stipend and full board. I will have a 24-hour lab access pass, so

I can duck in and out as often as I need to, filling me with unadulterated excitement.

But now that Dad has died, you will be home alone with Mum, and it’s implicitly understood by everyone at the table, that is not a good idea.

The waiter has just delivered our cups of coffee when Trish and Barb look at

Val, who nods and turns to me. ‘It’s just an idea, but – do you think you could stay at home? Just for a while? We think, well,’ she laughs, trying to lighten her words,

‘Annie might need a chaperone.’

Barb nods thoughtfully, as if this is the first time she has heard this proposal.

Trish shifts in her chair, and Brian stares into his latte. Bev is not here – we find out later that she was halfway to Bundaberg by the time I got my peppermint tea.

121 I see the years stretch ahead of me: Mum demanding lifts to the TAB, you relying on me more and more.

‘I can’t,’ I say without thinking. ‘I’m moving.’

‘Yes, I know you are, but this way you could save on rent, and –’

‘No, I’m moving moving. To Sydney,’ I name the first place that comes into my head.

‘Oh. I didn’t know.’ Barb tries to stare me down. I maintain eye contact.

You’re not the only one in this family who can lie and get away with it, I think.

‘It’s your turn to take care of her,’ I shrug at the Bradleys, five sets of brown eyes all now turned towards me, the first time in my life I have ever had their undivided attention. It’s my turn, I think, almost hysterical, the blood pumping so loudly in my ears that I can barely hear the scratch of aluminium on concrete as I push my chair back.

‘I have to go. I have a lot to organise. I leave next week.’

Bev’s mouth is still open as I walk out. Let them figure out how they are going to balance their selfishness with their obligations, now that their maid has just run off with the gardener, I think, my heart beating a tattoo in my chest. When I am well out of view, I double back to an Internet café, the same one I will use eight years later to review photos for your funeral. I type ‘psychology graduate positions, Sydney’ into the search bar, and settle in for a long night.

It turns out that a first-class Honours degree in psychology qualifies me to work in human resources. I am lucky to secure a graduate job in the HR section of the New

South Wales Department of Education, after an earlier candidate declined at the last minute. I load up my second-hand Subaru Leone with books and clothes and drive

122 down the New England Highway, stopping only for fuel and pee breaks. I can’t stop crying. Your face as I drove away, Annie. Dad’s death, and your face: these are the two things I will never forgive myself for. My heart has been breaking for so many years, and to this day I don’t know if I did the right thing by leaving you.

123 3

It doesn’t take me long to decide that I do not like Sydney. I do not like the way

Sydney people look at me as if they are sizing up my square footage and finding it wanting. I do not like the smug excess of the place, the way its residents take credit for its golden beaches, its sea salt air, its crystal harbour. My boss, Miranda, is not much older than me, but is far more put together, adorned by a husband and asymmetrical, local designer jewellery. She invites me to Friday afternoon drinks. I don’t want to go – I have the enzymes of our mother’s side of the family and go bright red whenever I so much as smell a glass of house red. The only alcoholic beverage I can drink without flaring up in hives is very expensive French champagne, which I doubt is on the wine list at ‘Blood on the Tracks,’ the encouragingly named bar where work drinks invariably are held thanks to proximity rather than atmosphere. You moved to Sydney! I tell myself. You can reinvent yourself as someone who goes to drinks!

At university I had not socialised much, spending most of my spare time caring for you. I don’t really know how to make friends. I break into hives at the mere thought of having to try.

But here I am, being brave. I sit at the table, nervously swivelling a champagne glass in my hand and smiling in case any one looks my way, my neck turning red with every tiny sip. Next to me is someone’s friend, or the friend of a friend. He is tall, thin, and for the first hour of sitting next to each other at Friday night drinks, he completely ignores me whilst drinking his way steadily towards stridency. Six beers later, he turns to me with a grin.

124 I go home with him that night. He does not call me the next day, or the day after that. When I call him, he does not recognise my voice.

‘Lachie, hi.’

‘Who is this?

‘Kathy? From the other night?’

Pause. Sound of a liquid sliding down his throat.

‘Oh Kathy, right. What are you doing later? Want to swing by?’

I think of my half unpacked studio flat in the dodgy part of Surry Hills, and the cockroaches that I surprised in my bathroom the previous night at 2 am. I tell him

I will be there in an hour.

Lachie lets me sleep on the carpet next to the bed, which suits me, because I have never been able to sleep in a bed with another person since I was four years old – I just lie awake, hyper alert to any move the other person might make. In the mornings, he makes me leave before his housemates wake up, and that’s fine because I need to get to work anyhow. A small part of me knows that this is not how a boyfriend is supposed to treat a girlfriend, but the larger me shouts that part down. When I go home to my empty flat – Lachie doesn’t like to have sex when I have my period, so I have to go home every few weeks – the sound of silence is deafening. When I wake up alone, I realise all over again that Dad is dead, and the knowledge pins me to the bed with the full weight of grief. When I am with Lachie I don’t feel at peace but at least I can breathe.

Things are going well for me. I have a relationship which has lasted longer than the Peter debacle. I have been losing weight since I met Lachie, and managed to rid myself of my virginity without letting Lachie know – he likes things a little rough

125 anyway. I have a job and the people I work with seem to like me, enough to invite me to work drinks and sometimes even their own, personal events – one of the girls in my team has asked me to join her book group, and Miranda has organised to take me to see an opera at the Sydney Opera House, which she says everyone new to Sydney must do at least once, bugger the expense.

It’s the three-month anniversary of my relationship with Lachie, so I buy a nice bottle of wine. I consider cheese and crackers but decide against them – last time I saw

Lachie, he said something about love handles being a euphemism for fat, and pinched my hips, leaving a red mark.

When I arrive at his house he opens the door and smiles broadly.

‘I’ve managed to get the housemates away so we have the place all to ourselves,’ he says.

My heart leaps. He has remembered. I knew I just had to be patient. I hand him the bottle, which he cracks open and necks, and I head towards the kitchen, thinking we might order some dinner if his housemates are out, but he grabs my hand and leads me upstairs, two at a time, like a kid on Christmas Day, making me laugh.

When we get to his room, I do not see rose petals or candles. There is a black cloth and a pair of handcuffs in the middle of his unwashed doona.

‘Lie on your stomach,’ he murmurs in my ear, making me shiver.

He grabs my hands and clinks the metal over them. I bite my lip, trying to keep an unreasonable panic from welling up and over, but when he puts the blindfold on my eyes, I start screaming and screaming.

‘Quiet!’ He shouts, pulling the black cloth from my eyes and roughly turning me over to face him. ‘Do you want the neighbours to think I am fucking raping you?’

126 ‘I’m sorry, Lachie, I’m sorry.’ I am sobbing. I don’t know what is wrong with me. Everything has gone red, and I am four years old and I am on the bed, and someone is saying, ‘Quiet,’ and it is not Lachie. A memory has been ripped out of my viscera. The light of this memory has an orange cast to it, like the inside of a stomach, or a womb. There is someone touching me in a way an adult should never, ever touch a child. Although I am only four, I think, clear as a bell, This is my fault. Although I am only four, I think, I must want this, because I want to be loved and this is what you do for love.

I murmur broken words. ‘Ssh, ssh,’ Lachie says, more gently now, holding me as I weep. He fetches me a tissue, and after I have run out of tears, he pulls the covers over both of us, letting me sleep next to him. For the first time in my life, I feel safe lying next to a man in bed. My heart might break open with the love I feel for him in that moment. I actually even doze off towards dawn, making Lachie the only person I have ever fallen asleep next to who is not you, Annie.

In my half sleep, I am hazily aware of a sensation of tugging. I try to move but someone has tied my arms to the bed frame. I blink and see Lachie, who is shoving his stiff white penis in and out of me, grinning and looking straight into my eyes. I want to shout No! but nothing comes out. I try to focus on the positives, rather than the scream that is sweating inside my lungs, aching to break out. The calm voice in my brain says, This may seem bad, but look at it this way: it is the first time he has kept his eyes open during sex.

Afterwards, he whispers into the back of my head that he loves me, and that he hoped he was helping with my healing. The calm voice continues in my head. See? I told you it’s all OK. It is the first time a man has ever told me that he loves me.

127 While Lachie takes a shower I get out of bed, my whole body aching, and see bloodstains on his bedlinen. I panic and tear the sheets from the mattress. I open my legs gingerly, the muscles spasming in my thighs. The source of the blood is not early menstruation, but a series of abrasions on the inside of my legs. I sigh with relief.

Over the next two weeks Lachie becomes more and more creative. Sometimes he uses the blindfold, sometimes rope, handcuffs, sometimes belts. Each time he pushes in and out of me, he moans that he loves me. When I get my period he tells me to come back when it is done. I am surprised and even a little hurt. But on the bright side, I need this time of enforced separation. I need time to reflect on the memory that

Lachie helped me to unlock.

I want to believe that it is a false memory; I would rather blame myself than have knowledge I cannot control. But I am familiar with the research: false memories of sexual abuse are much rarer than people might think, and when they do occur, it is through repeated prompting from someone external to the survivor. A false memory rarely, if ever, simply springs from a person’s mind, fully formed, unless that person has other, serious mental health conditions. I check my copy of the DSM-IV, but despite scoring highly on the depression and anxiety scales, unfortunately I do not qualify for any of the delusional disorders.

Be systematic, I tell myself. I start a new spreadsheet on my laptop and comb through my memories. Every night after work I come home and click on the file.

Could it have been ‘Uncle’ Charlie, Mum’s gambling friend from the Woodridge

TAB? Remember him? His roving eye gave us the creeps, but I don’t think we were ever left alone with him. What about one of our sisters’ boyfriends, who came to pick

128 them up and then hurried out before Mum could have a go at them? Or even our half- brother Matthew, considering how he treated Val?

Doctor Lin and his brother Richard Lin were both extremely creepy. Richard

Lin used to watch the big kids like a hungry wolf, as the only semi-Asian females within the Logan Shire boundaries, while Doctor Lin gazed imperiously down his nose at them, mentally calculating which had the greatest likelihood of supporting his success in life. But they only had eyes for Barb, Val, Trish and Bev; never us.

What about Bev’s boyfriend Mike? There was one time when he carried me to the house from the car and I half-woke, but the sensation of being held was so lovely that I kept my eyes closed. As we passed our mother she murmured accusingly, ‘Fox.’

Perhaps I am merely confusing one moment of guilty affection with another.

I would be a poor researcher if I did not also consider Dad: he had the proximity, the access. And don’t forget, the files describe a man who was a stranger to me: drunkenness, gambling and a dishonourable discharge.

I call our sister Trish. She is the eldest of the girls. If anything had happened, she would know.

‘Yes?’ This is how Trish always answers the phone.

‘I - I won’t keep you long,’ I stutter. Trish is a busy doctor with no time or patience for small talk. I take a deep breath, and dive in.

‘I just need to ask you a question. As far as you can recall, did you experience any form of ‘sexual misconduct’ at the hands of our father?’

129 Trish pauses and I am thinking that I should have tried for at least some opening banter, when she clears her throat and says, ‘Why do you ask?’

Donald is in a celebratory mood. It’s 1983 and the Labor Party, his party, the party of the workers, has just won the federal election in a landslide victory.

He comes home after having had a few at the pub, just to mark the occasion.

Bob Hawke wouldn’t begrudge a man a schooner or two, but of course Madge would: she starts laying into him the second he gets in the door. She doesn’t appreciate how hard he works for her, for all of them. He doesn’t want their thanks, but the occasional scrap of acknowledgement wouldn’t go astray. She storms off to bed. He cracks open a tinnie and sits on the veranda. Bloody hell, but this is a night to be remembered.

Trish comes out on to the veranda to check on him. ‘C’mere,’ he says, proffering her the can. ‘’Ave a drink, go on, cheers.’

Trish shakes her head but takes a sip. She’s a good girl, that one. Not a girl; a young woman now, twenty years old, with curves just where they should be.

‘Dad, stop it! What are you doing?’ Why does Trish look ready to yell blue murder? Just like her mother, getting upset for no reason.

‘Just a little affection, eh? Just a little cuddle,’ he murmurs, half standing and grabbing for her lovely little bum.

‘Dad, it’s me! Your daughter, Trish!’ She’s speaking loudly and clearly, as if his ears don’t work.

130 ‘You’re not mine though, are you?’ He retorts. ‘Some other army bloke got there before I did, didn’t they?’ He giggles and falls over. ‘Oh sorry, no offence, no offence.’

On the ground he doesn’t feel so good. The floor is moving, that’s the problem! He tries to sit up and belches out the egg sandwich he had for lunch earlier that day. ‘You’re a good girl, good girl, Trish,’ he mutters before closing his eyes.

Later, I tap out a text message to Trish; reconsider; delete; tap out another. ‘Thanks

Trish. I am sorry you had to find out that way. About your father.’ I add ‘xx’. Two x’s indicate real consideration; one x is just what people use as a friendly full stop. I hit send. Moments later, Trish texts me back. ‘x.’ An ‘x’ with no accompanying text generally means, ‘That’s OK, thanks for your concern, I am all right.’ I stare into the darkness of Albion Street, watching the heroin addicts make their way to the halfway houses on South Dowling Street. At Dad’s funeral, Trish had been slated to deliver a prayer of the faithful. Her cool, calm demeanour suddenly gave way to grief and she stumbled. Her husband Lawrence was standing right behind her, so it was his arms that she stepped back into. Trish really did get out.

I add her information to my spreadsheet. Then I try to process what I have just heard.

Dad made a pass at Trish; but Trish was 16, not exactly a child, and she was also not his child. I do a database search about childhood abuse perpetrators. I discover that only a small proportion of abusers are motivated by genuine paedophilia. Most crimes against children of a sexual nature are statistically significantly correlated with access,

131 impulsivity and criminality. Substance abuse also lowers inhibitions. Perpetrators tend to be motivated, not by sex, but the desire to exert power.

Well, let’s be methodical about this. Dad had access. He was a drinker. There was all that business with the yellow letters I found after he died. But even including that, admittedly very poor, behaviour in the reckoning, I simply cannot believe it was him. In the interests of due diligence, I try to insert him into the memory, but it is impossible to imagine him doing such a thing. An affair with a consenting adult is not a predictor of paedophilia; it is, perhaps, consistent with his behaviour towards the teenage Trish but not with anything untoward with four-year old me. With you and I,

Annie, he was such a prudish man. All our lives, Dad gave goodnight kisses so dry they felt like withered leaves. And what about the practicalities? In 1983, Dad was working night shifts at the hospital and driving the school bus during the day. When would he have had the time?

My period finally over, I get the bus over to Lachie’s place. When I knock, he calls out that he is in the kitchen. Tears well up in my eyes: it is the first time he has prepared a meal for us: well, he has ordered in pizza, and although pizza gives me heartburn, I munch through two pieces, not wanting him to think I don’t appreciate the effort.

After dinner, we go upstairs and he tells me to bend over. I can feel the acid of tomato paste inflaming my chest. Bile rises up my throat, my body trying to restore balance. This will only take a few minutes, I tell myself. When it’s over, everything will be fine.

‘Is this what your Daddy told you when he fucked your little cunt?’ He cries as he shoves his bony hips against me. ‘I love you, I love you?’ He sing-songed.

132 ‘What are you saying?’ I ask, but my voice is muffled by the doona.

‘Did he take a handful and rub it in his cum?’ He pinches the fat on my hips and wipes himself on me. I try to speak, but he shoves my head harder into the bed.

My nostrils fill with the stench of stale semen and alcohol. Lachie climaxes and rolls off, panting hard.

I get up, wincing slightly from the lacerations his love-making always causes.

The bile refuses to settle; I think I am going to throw up right there, all over Lachie’s skinny white arse.

‘I never said it was my Dad,’ I say slowly.

He sniggers with his eyes shut. ‘It’s always the dad.’

I wait until Lachie is snoring on his side before I pull my clothes on. I am shaking, so it takes longer than normal. I stand over my boyfriend, watching his face slack and at rest. I can almost picture what he might have looked like to his adoring mother, watching him sleep in his cot as a baby. Like a dog pissing on its territory, I spit on my finger and smear saliva across his forehead. Forever mine. He won’t know it’s there, but future girls will smell my mark on him and turn away, and he will rub his unsatisfied cock and wonder where he went wrong.

Lachie and I end things – well, I never call him again and he never called me at all. I brace myself and go to book club, where Jess, the girl from work who invited me, seems genuinely pleased to see me.

‘How’s you, um, friend? Lachie?’ She asks as she pours me a glass of wine.

‘No longer my friend,’ I reply.

133 ‘Oh good!’ She giggles at her own reaction. ‘Sorry, but – he is such an arsehole. You deserve way better than that.’

Do I? I wonder, as I take the seat she has saved for me.

I diligently go to book club and Jess and I become what I am pretty sure qualifies as friends. At one point during winter, she gets sick with a bad cold, so I get the train to

Chatswood and drop off some hot lemon and honey juice in a thermos for her.

‘People from Sydney never do things like this!’ she says, and I am about to apologise for overstepping, when she draws me into a bear hug. I can smell eucalyptus lollies and Vicks Vaporub, and am transported back in time to Railway

Road, lying in Mum and Dad’s room whilst Dad applies the strong smelling lotion to my chest. Jess pulls back abruptly, and I feel the cold loss of arms around me.

‘Shit, sorry, I don’t want to give you my germs!’ She laughs. But I don’t mind.

It is the first time someone has touched me since I left Lachie. I offer to go and get some DVDs, and then we sit on her couch, making our way through the BBC set of

Pride and Prejudice, and when Mr Darcy emerges from the lake we hoot and laugh together.

I didn’t tell Jess. I didn’t tell you. I didn’t tell anyone.

It had been such a small thing; it was nothing compared to the abuse which thousands of children experience. This is what I used to tell myself.

134 But I have come to realise that the size and duration of the crime is not always relevant. Touching a child the wrong way, even for just one night, can affect her ability as an adult to date, have sex, even love. Taking a child from its mother, even for a moment, can scar that woman, destroying her trust in the kindness of strangers.

It only takes a few seconds to save a life.

The opposite is also true.

I have enough leave accrued to take a few days to visit you for the first time since

Dad’s funeral. Part of me is dreading seeing you, in case you are in a demented frame of mind when I get there, but once I am driving down the south-east freeway from

Brisbane airport, the scrub on either side of the road waves hello and I feel like I will never be truly free of this place as my home.

You have been spending every other week at Trish’s house since Dad died, undertaking activities which Trish has organised with a paid carer. Our siblings’ solution to my departure has been to outsource your socialisation. Well, I remind myself, at least they are trying. At least they didn’t run away, like I did.

Before I left for Sydney, I drew up a budget for Mum and stuck it to the fridge. I look for it and find it in the bills drawer, which is now crammed with paperclips, cutlery, soiled napkins and used TAB tickets. It reminds me of when we were kids, when we used to fold our clothes into neat piles on their shelves. Mum would come along and purposely mess them up: undo a folded T-shirt here, throw a pair of shorts there, enraged at the idea that we might try to exert even the smallest bit of control over our own lives.

135 Pick your battles, I tell myself. I quietly pin the budget back to the fridge, then ask Mum if you are enjoying the social club for young people with brain damage which I enrolled you in for your weeks spent at Mum’s place.

‘Too far away.’

I ask her about the free council transport I had arranged for you.

‘Too expensive.’

Then she asks me for money and I give it to her.

Thus were my visits structured over the last eight years. Now that you have died,

Annie, I wonder: how will our mother and I fare, with nothing left in common but each other?

On that first visit back after Dad’s death, I try to act like everything is just the same as it ever was. I help you in the shower, and now you stand naked in our mother’s living room brushing your hair.

‘You know you could get a bit fitter by taking out the garbage bin. Walk around the streets a little. There’s even a park at the end of the street. It would do you good,’ I say.

You stop brushing your hair and burst into tears.

‘You and Trish, you’re the same. You all want me to change into someone I’m not. Mum is the only one who doesn’t try to change me. She loves me for who I am.’

136 Mum giggles: conflicts started by anyone but herself have always made her laugh uncomfortably. But when I look at you it’s like I am seeing you for the first time. You are fat, disabled and naked. You are a person complete, not a problem to be solved.

‘You’re right.’ I say. ‘I shouldn’t try to change you. Annie, I’m sorry.’

Annie. I’m sorry. I know I have said it before; I know I am starting to sound like a broken record. What else can I say? I’m so sorry for not being the one who got cancer, and I am so sorry for not staying, and I am so sorry for not protecting you from Mum the way you protected me. Sorrow, I think, is my version of love. I am sorry it is such a humble offering.

Another year, another visit. It’s your birthday. As a present, I am taking you to the movies at the Hyperdome’s eight-cinema multiplex. This is to be a proper treat: I am not going to employ the usual Bradley method of smuggling in Homebrand chips concealed in a handbag. I buy drinks and popcorn from the cinema snack bar with a wave of my keycard, as if to say, Only the best for my Annie.

The movie is called Beloved, and I have picked it specifically because it is pitched at tweens, so I think it should be simple enough for you to follow.

It doesn’t start for another forty-five minutes. We walk to the bookstore and kill time, browsing. I go down one aisle, you another. I hear you calling for me, and I call out loudly, ‘Here I am’, ignoring the frowns of the people around me, because I

137 don’t want you to start getting anxious. I turn the corner of the aisle, expecting to see you there. I check each aisle. There is no sign of you.

I hurry down to the seats outside Mermaids, the salon where Mum gets her hair done. I walk to Coles, where you sometimes wait for Mum to do the groceries.

Nothing but screaming children and tired parents.

Now my heart is racing. How could I be so stupid? Why did I disappear down a different aisle anyway? Was it some kind of perverse test? If so, I am the one who has failed it. I race down to the information desk and ask them to do an announcement. I sit, picking at the cuticles of my nails until they bleed. I wait for twenty minutes. I have not seen you for forty-five minutes. The movie will have started.

I go to a payphone and call the TAB. Brenda answers. We are on first name terms with all the TAB staff between Slacks Creek and Loganlea.

‘Brenda, is my Mum still there?’ I ask.

‘Yes, darl. Is everything OK?’

‘Oh, can I just talk to her for a minute?’

‘Ma-adge!’ I hear Brenda call out. A rustle as Mum wipes the phone receiver on her clothes. ‘Yes? Kathy? What?’

‘Mum, I’ve lost Annie.’

I tell her where I have already looked. She tells me that I should return the movie tickets and then look again. ‘Oh, poor Kathy. Don’t worry,’ she says when she hears me hiccup with tears. ‘I do it all the time.’

I do as she says. When I get to the cinema, I see you. You are sitting on a bench, kicking your legs, talking to yourself. An empty box of popcorn sits next to you. You must be really thirsty, I think, irrelevantly.

138 You remembered that we were going to see a movie and you came straight here after we got split up in the bookstore.

I can’t stop hugging you. ‘Sorry! I’m so sorry.’

‘It’s OK, Kathy. It’s fine.’ You look at me like I am maybe a little crazy. I laugh through my tears. It’s too late now to see the next session; my flight leaves in three hours. I cry as I drive all the way back to the airport, away from you.

Every year, for the last eight years, I flew to Brisbane, to you. Each time, travelling from the airport to the house I would brace myself for the state I might find you in. If you were stable, which was less and less frequent as the years went by, we would talk about what you had for lunch; what you thought of the Broncos’ prospects; what I had been doing at work. If you were unstable, I would talk and talk and talk until you finally recognised my voice.

That is what hurt the most, you know. The moments when you made me believe I could save you if only I spent enough time calling your name.

By degrees you would always leave me again for your internal world. So there you have it. You left me first. The grief I felt; the permanent state of grieving for someone who does not die but whom I was nevertheless losing, bit by beloved bit.

And, of course, the guilt. If I had only. If I would only. Because it’s true, I could bring you back; for hours at a time I could make you happy.

Then the end of my visit would draw nigh and you would cry because I had managed to make you realise that I was there, only to discover that I was leaving.

139

140

Part 4: Career

Try to use workplace anecdotes to illustrate the deceased’s career. If the deceased did not work in the traditional sense, be sure to still include stories illustrating their contribution to the family. How to Write a Eulogy

141 1

I sleep in the back of the Subaru in the hospital car park. My family assumes I am staying in a hotel and I let them assume. I don’t want to be a guest in any of their houses, having to explain Evan’s whereabouts at this time of marital solidarity.

I move the car every two hours but just before dawn a tapping sound wakes me. A man in uniform with a twelve-hour shift’s worth of bristles makes a circular motion with his hand. I wind the window down. I have to shield my eyes: he is shining a flashlight in my face.

‘Sorry miss,’ he apologises, swinging the torch downwards. What at first sight looks like a gun now crackles and burrs. It’s a walkie talkie. He’s carpark security; not police.

‘Couldn’t see through the glass that it was a – ’ he gestures to me.

‘I’m just taking a nap out here,’ I say, hoping that the tremor in my voice is mistaken for sadness. ‘My husband’s in the cardiology unit. They told me to go home but I want to be nearby. In case – ’

‘All good,’ the guard nods vigorously, not wanting to hear any more. ‘Hope he gets better soon.’ He raps on the roof of my car as if for good luck and strides away, trying to look purposeful. When the beam of the torch is just a dancing dot of white in the distance I ease open the glovebox. Of course it’s still there. I pat the container then slide it back inside.

Now I am awake I may as well keep trying to write this eulogy. I’m really stuck on the career section. When Brian and I did Dad’s eulogy we talked about Dad’s nursing

142 years and said virtually nothing about his time in the army because I had not yet even thought to get hold of Dad’s army files.

In retrospect that was probably for the best.

When I get home from my first visit to you from Sydney, I have a notice in the mail from the National Archives in my letter box. My application to access Donald

Bradley’s military file has been approved. They will hold the file for me in the

Canberra Reading Room for one month.

I’m not angry about the yellow letters any more. With the benefit of hindsight

I can see how it happened. Mum was a tyrant and it must have been years since Dad had had any physical warmth from that quarter. When he got his prostate cancer diagnosis it pushed him over the edge. He was an obvious target for a young woman who needed cash. So he racked up debt and drank more and more to avoid thinking about how he would ever be able to pay back the banks out of his meagre veteran’s pension.

All of us Bradleys are terrible with money. We just don’t understand how it works. Val readily admits that she learned about fiscal management from her fat, but prudent, husband. Barb married someone as materialistic as herself, and since her divorce she has rotated her calls to each of us for loans. Bev – well, I’ve already told you about the golden car and how I feel about that. And Mum – Mum is the worst of us all.

143 Don’t misunderstand me. I am fully aware that when we were kids there was always food on the table, even though dinner was sometimes a hamburger from

Hungry Jack’s bought with a coupon and split four ways using a loaf of bread. There was always enough money to buy schoolbooks and uniforms, and if they were second-hand, so what? Everyone I knew bought second-hand. Dad used to stress over the bills, but Mum thought it completely acceptable to wait for the third reminder before paying the electricity bill and enjoyed taunting Dad about it, like a girl dangling her little brother’s pet dog over the side of the balcony while the boy watches, afraid to make a wrong move.

It was only when Mum had a win on the horses that we could afford anything new. That was how she got the money to replace the wedding ring Dad lost when tiling at the old house on Railway Road, the same year you got sick, remember? Mum bought him a silver signet ring with an onyx stone and a tiny diamond in the centre.

Val has since told me that it is unlikely Dad ‘lost’ his wedding ring. But the Dad I knew was not the man he was in the army records, or in the big kids’ memory. Our

Dad was the one who smelled of Old Spice and hot chips, coming home after a late shift. He was the man who did his best. That might not have been great by some people’s standards, but for me, it was enough.

Standing at the kitchen bench, I scarf down toast with one hand and brush my hair with the other, my eyes resting on the letter from the Archives. The final date for viewing the file is 25 June. I check my phone calendar. Today. I run down the stairs

144 and turn left into the car park instead of right towards the bus stop. Forty minutes later, at the Picton petrol station, I text my boss, Miranda.

“I might need today off. Family stuff. Is that OK?”

I drive the Remembrance Highway from Sydney to Canberra. Rows of hay bales lining the tops of hills appear deceptively bucolic; the languid, undernourished cattle and the skinny sheep waiting for rain to green the sides of these stony hills tell the real story. One match, I think, is all it would take to burn the whole country to the ground.

On the way to the national capital I take a pee break in a rest area named for a

Victorian Cross holder. According to the didactic, the Australian government dubbed this stretch of the A1 as ‘Remembrance Highway,’ a ‘living memorial’ to those who served in World War II, the Korean War, the Malayan Emergency and the Vietnam

War. It is about 300 kilometres of smooth, four-lane road connecting Sydney and

Canberra, making its way through the New South Wales granite belt where Dad grew up.

The National Archives Reading Room is open once a week on a Wednesday afternoon, so I time my arrival to alight into the blistering midday sun of the nation’s capital. At the top of the street a manmade hill raises Parliament House aloft, the national flag hanging limp in the dry stillness. To the left of the Archives, national institutions line up like old men at a pub urinal, their fountains pissing into Lake

Burley Griffin.

The lobby is small and stuffy, and I feel sorry for the receptionist until she tells me unsmilingly to place all my belongings in a locker and carefully examines my notebook, pencil and camera as if they might have Tardis-like qualities for smuggling out state secrets. The Reading Room itself is high-ceilinged and airy, and people are

145 sitting at long desks, poring over folios like medieval limners illuminating the lives of the saints.

After about 20 minutes, an archivist bustles over to me, apologising for the delay – the file had been placed in someone’s out-tray, ready to be returned to the off- site warehouse. She places a file as thick as the Bradley family Bible in front of me, and I am about to tell her she must have made a mistake – why would Dad, a mere lance corporal, have a file as long as my Honours dissertation? But there is our father’s name, Donald Bradley, on the cover, and even more conclusively, there is his dog tag number. The Reading Room is only open for another two hours, but still I hesitate. It feels wrong, almost sacrilegious, to simply open up the file and peer inside. I wonder if your neurosurgeon felt like this before he drilled a hole through your skull to reveal the sacred human within. I glance at the other readers, trying to work out what the etiquette is for shoving my hands into the guts of a man’s life, but they offer no clue apart from the tradition of silence whilst reading. I whisper a wordless prayer, similar to grace before a meal, and open the file.

It’s 1971 and Donald is thirty-five years old. He lives at Ingleburn, near the

Holsworthy base in western Sydney, with his wife and five children. He is a private in the Australian Army, and he is broke.

The thing is, he was going to put it back. He had planned to get a part-time job over the break and replace the money before anyone knew anything about it. It was just his luck that the army auditors would do a check two days before Christmas, only two weeks after he had borrowed the $500 from the regimental kitty.

146 Donald told the MPs that he had arrived at work to find the back door to the

RAP open and his desk drawer unlocked. He told them that he had planned to replace the money himself, because he realised he would be the main suspect. They court martialled his arse, found him guilty of the lesser charge of negligence, and reduced him to the ranks. His army lawyer told him to be grateful.

Private Donald Bradley. Thirteen years of service, two wars, five children (of his own begetting). And here he is, back where he started, but far, far worse for wear.

He thinks of the day his big sister Esme talked to him in her kitchen, her elbows resting on the freshly wiped laminex of the table. It was her bread and butter pudding, the flavour of real sultanas bursting on his taste buds, that had shaped the rest of his adult life.

Donald still writes in the copperplate cursive that the nuns taught him all those years ago back in Crookwell. He carefully copies out his draft version onto a sheet of blue aerogramme paper. He licks it shut, addresses it to his wife, and places it in his desk drawer in the RAP. Donald then fetches the key to the medical supplies cabinet and pockets three small white canisters.

Donald does what he has always done at moments like these: he gets in his car and drives. At the junction with New Illawarra Road, Donald turns left and heads north. After thirteen hours of driving, he crosses the state border and arrives at Surfers

Paradise. Donald finds a car park fronting on to sand dunes at Broadbeach. The daytime sunbathers and surfers are gone.

For the first few minutes, Donald feels absolutely nothing. He is numb from driving, except for his arse, which aches from sitting for all those hours. He gets out, creaks forwards and backwards, trying to get some feeling into his arms and legs. His stomach churns disagreeably with the meat pies he ate at his last petrol stop in

147 Murwillumbah. The taste of fatty mince is still in his mouth. He wishes he had brought his toothbrush.

Donald gets back into the car and lowers the seat back. It stinks like stale farts and sandwiches in here, but the sea breeze is getting chilly so he doesn’t crack a window. He tries to make himself comfortable, but the seat back is unforgiving.

Eventually he rolls on to his back and puts his slouch hat over his eyes.

The last time the army had reduced him to the ranks was for something so trivial

Donald still couldn’t believe they had gone through with the whole court martial song and dance. Over a drink! It had been 1965, and Donald had still been young, only twenty-seven, but already he had Trish, Barb and Val at home – what man wouldn’t need a drink? All he had done was fake a doctor’s signature on a medical certificate so his mate, Private John Kerry, could go with him to the pub. It should have been a fine and a clip over the ear, except that earlier in 1965, Donald had already been charged with neglect to the prejudice and conduct to the prejudice.

That had all been over a drink, too. Madge had been on at him for days about the money he owed to a local payday loan shark named Kon, not in the habit of extending credit beyond the agreed term. Already the man had sent his goons to their house in Gaythorne to take the television as ‘down payment’. Madge had been scared,

Donald could accept that; but instead of letting him take care of it, she screamed and shouted and kicked and grabbed the rolling pin.

The flask he usually kept in the Holsworthy RAP had been empty. Donald had watched the clock until at last, 1600 hours rolled around. First he had driven to the rec club but then thought better of it – Kon’s men hung around there. Donald had headed for the Cricketers Arms in Enoggera instead.

148 The next day or two were hazy in his memory, but Donald remembered seeing

Kon himself grin, and then his own head smashing against the ground. When he came to, Donald’s left hand dangled uselessly, the wrist swollen and bruised. Had Donald tried to punch Kon? Or had one of Kon’s goons pulled his arm behind his back until something snapped? Donald couldn’t remember. He drove with one hand on the steering wheel to his RAP and asked the duty medic to put his wrist in a cast, telling him the bonnet of the car had fallen on it. Just his luck, Corporal Sean McKinley had been on duty. Proddy dog. Donald had had to practically mix the plaster of Paris for him.

The redcaps had arrested Donald on his way home. Apparently he had walked off shift without cleaning the needles and been AWL for three days. McKinley had dobbed him in about the cast, too. Conduct to the prejudice. Neglect to the prejudice.

Conduct to the prejudice. Neglect to the prejudice.

It was just before the hearing for those charges that Donald had decided to have the quick drink with his mate Kerry. He woke up in Gympie Hospital, his stomach aching and burning, and they discharged him in time for the trial the next day.

Instinctively Donald reaches for a weapon. For a moment the face peering through the window has slanted eyes and the angry mouth of the dispossessed. His hand grazes the dials on the radio instead of the metal of a trigger.

‘You can’t sleep here, mate.’ The man’s features gradually settle into their actual lines: blue eyes squinting through the fogged glass of the Holden’s window; perspiration starting under the copper’s hat although it can’t be later than 0600 hours.

‘Sorry, officer,’ he says. ‘Just taking a nap.’

149 ‘Well, you can’t nap here, mate. Move it along.’ Donald puts his seat back up and starts the engine before the copper can think twice about giving him a ticket. He heads back out on the Gold Coast Highway and stops at the nearest greasy spoon.

After a breakfast of toast and eggs, Donald starts to feel in need of a wash. He heads back to the beach and rinses off under the showers with a couple of early morning swimmers, jumping from foot to foot from the shock of the cold water prickling his skin. He dries himself off with his shirt and gets back into the singlet and trousers from yesterday. He buys a pair of flip-flops for too much money at a souvenir shop and leaves his boots and socks in the car.

The pubs open at noon up here in Queensland. It is now 0915 hours. It’s not true that he has a drinking problem. It was just that sometimes, in the beatific buzz between the third beer and the fourth, he can practically see his other self walk past, smiling and holding his hand up in a benign blessing of all the drunks in 1RAR, leaving him to sit at the bar and wonder who let in the draught.

Donald buys a newspaper. After reading through the headlines, he pulls out the form guide. Just out of curiosity, he tells himself. He can place imaginary bets in his head and check the results later, see if he would have won anything.

Donald has a good feeling about Mercy’s Love, a roughie in Race 2 at

Rosehill. It’s not just the name, it’s also the horse’s record. It has done poorly this year, but last year it was winning enough to qualify for the Caulfield Cup, one of the selector races for the Melbourne Cup. The horse had done incredibly badly in that race and had not fully recovered form since then. But Donald keeps track of the roughies from week to week. Mercy’s Love has gradually moved up from last place to eight then sixth at the last three meetings. It was time for it to peak.

Donald returns to his car and switches the radio to AM 1008.

150 ‘Aaaaand theeeeey’re racing,’ the caller announces. Donald grips the sides of the steering wheel. ‘And Beauty’s Loss coming up on the outside and Mercy’s Love, it’s Mercy’s Love that has the lead, it’s Mercy’s Love a leg in front and Beauty’s Loss coming up but Mercy’s Love is across the line. It’s Mercy’s Love first place, then

Beauty’s Loss and Remember Martha in third place. Now to Doomben Race 3.’

‘Yes!’ Donald punches the ceiling of the car, making a light dust shower down on his freshly combed head. He knew it! He should have put $1 on a win/place. At those odds, he would have won $20.

What is he thinking? TABs are what landed him in this situation in the first place. It was just a win/place here, a quinella there, the occasional trifecta when he was feeling lucky. And he had had some wins too. It was the footy bets that were the main problem. A bloke Donald had met at the rec club ran a book each week and you had to stump up at least $100 to be in it. Don had put his money on a St George win against the Rabbitohs. They had been showing better form over the last three games, and although they hadn’t won a premiership in five years, Donald figured it must be time. But it was not.

There was a roughie he had been keeping an eye on racing at Randwick Race

5. Saturn’s Return. Fifty-to-one odds. If Donald put just $10 on it and it placed, he would be up $250, just like that. If he put $10 on it to win, he would have $500 in his hand. If he picked the second place too, he would be up something in the thousands.

That might be pushing it, he thought. But a win/place, $10 – very low risk.

At the end of the week, Donald has used up all of his money. He drives his car to a used car lot and trades it in for a cheaper model and a slim enough wad of cash. This time he takes the inland route along the New England Highway. He has an idea of

151 visiting home, seeing Esme. The farm isn’t in the family any more. His dad had eventually sold it and moved to Gunning to marry the widow who ran the corner store. A grumpy old tart, but sweet on Donald’s father. Some men had all the luck.

Still, Donald could take a look at the farm – see if the dairy was there, if the fireplace he and John had put in was still standing despite the warp in the floor. He could walk past the old school room in Laggan, look through the window of the presbytery and see the priest getting ready for Mass. What if he just showed up at church on Sunday? Donald imagines the faces of the congregation, turning during the entrance hymn to see who the handsome soldier is.

Gee, but it’s been years since he has seen Esme. She divorced that bastard husband of hers – he had been a bruiser – and now raised her five kids by him alone, working as a cleaner at the Goulburn Hospital. At Singleton he runs out of ready money and trades the car in but there is nothing he can get that looks like it will make the distance – still another 300 miles – while leaving him with some ready cash. He takes this as a sign and accepts the cash. With the money he buys a train ticket and two sandwiches for the journey.

He gets as far as Hornsby when two coppers board the train and place him under closed arrest. They have the photo of Donald from 1958, the one that the army took to use in news reports in case you were killed. In the picture, Don is in full dress uniform and stands in front of an Australian flag.

‘Let me see that?’ he asks the copper, who shrugs at his partner and then hands it to him. Donald holds it in his cuffed hands. Those old horn-rimmed glasses! His new metal frames are much lighter than the old specs. Donald remembers posing for the photo, trying to keep his face serious while his mate Kerry, standing behind the

152 cameraman, did everything in his power to make him laugh. As a result, Donald looks like he is biting down on a sour lolly, whereas in reality he was trying not to piss himself laughing.

The policeman doesn’t ask for the picture back so after Donald is finished looking at it, it dangles between his cuffed hands, growing damp from the sweat on his fingers. The canisters are still in his back trouser pocket and make Donald shift around from butt cheek to butt cheek, trying to get some surreptitious relief from their constant pressure against his arse.

When they arrive at Central Station the coppers hand Donald over to two military policemen from Eastern Command. The MPs drive him home and place him under open arrest, telling him to report to HQ tomorrow at 0800 hours. ‘Take me to the cells,’ Donald almost says, but then Madge opens the door.

In the transcript of Dad’s court martial interview the archivists have expunged Dad’s explanation for why he wrote the letter to Mum. I don’t know why they did this. What could our father have told the interviewer but that he had had a gutful of his life, his wife, his constant debt, his screaming children, his hopeless future? Or perhaps the interviewer wasn’t asking why he had wanted to kill himself, but why he hadn’t followed through?

After this incident the opinion the men had of our father plummeted to a new low. The report from the CO practically seethes with anger that Donald had cost the unit an interstate phone call, an aerial search and a ground search. I get the feeling that the

153 men would have had more respect for our father if he had actually done himself in properly. Poor old Dad. No one likes a man who stops at 90 yards in a 100-yard race.

Upon my return from Canberra I get into the habit of going for long walks. I stay away from the densely forested national parks that surround the city, mindful of the bushfire risk; the dry spell continues unabated. I stick to the coastal paths, listening to the crash of the waves and mulling over the information in Dad’s files, trying to match the man in the army documents with the man we knew. My favourite trail is the cliff walk from Bondi to Coogee, where the path hugs a jagged coastline that is alternately caressed and rammed by the ocean, like someone trapped in a violent marriage. I just cannot reconcile the Donald before 1983, and the Donald after. The

Dad we knew was a man who gave up smoking and drinking as soon as you got sick, a man who worked night shifts so he could drive you to all your appointments. The

Dad we knew was a man who did not run.

‘Character: Weak’ says one report in Dad’s files. ‘Friendly but lazy and needs to develop a sense of responsibility’ says another. There is also ‘Cannot be trusted to do his tasks without supervision’, ‘This member has reached his zenith as a NCO and in light of the charges, should be reduced to private’, and my personal favourite, ‘This

NCO is apparently dominated by his wife. If a posting is not to her liking then the

NCO becomes an administrative liability.’

154 From 1969 onwards the charges accumulate. I sort through page after page of charges, demotions, more absences, more conduct to the prejudice. The records tell the story: before 1969, when he was still in his twenties and early thirties, the commanding officers saw our father as a harmless buffoon and treated his misconduct

(drinking, clocking up bills) with a paternalistic blind eye. Boys, after all, will be boys. But as he gets older, the reports sound increasingly exasperated, ever curter, until the words streak the page with genuine dislike of Donald Bradley. The COs have no more patience for his complaints about not being made sergeant, or not getting a reposting to Malaya. They don’t want to hear about how sorely done by he is by his wife. Be a man, Private Bradley, seems to be the implied message in their disciplinary reports. Take your hardening-up pills.

Donald gulps down a handful of tablets. That’ll show her I mean it, he thinks furiously, shaking his head. Droplets of sweat land on the basin. Next to him is a mixed bag of tablets which he has pilfered from various lockers on his ward, a couple of wallets and a cheque book.

It is this last item that has him in here, holding a razor against the skin of his left wrist. Donald had found the cheque book in one of the patient’s bedside tables. He had looked at the blank pages and his heart had risen, unbidden, with wild hope. In that instant Donald could see his entire life rise and fall, like shaking a snowdome and watching his victory and ultimate demise play out in an Alpine village showered in plastic snowflakes. He could see a car free and clear, straight off the lot; an arm around Madge; them sweeping across the vista of New South Wales. All this really is

155 mine, he would say, just like I told you, only you wouldn’t listen. Madge would have to nod and agree that he was right. ‘I’m sorry, Donald,’ she would say. Yet as Donald saw this, he also saw the bleak holding cell; the contempt in the prosecutor’s eyes.

‘Guilty’, ‘guilty’, ‘guilty’. That was Donald all right. Guilty of hope.

That was when he had turned and walked into the staff toilet on level two of 1

Military Hospital.

Do it, he tells himself. He takes another slug of wine from the flagon. He turns his head and shuts his eyes, then lets himself fall against the razor while bracing himself against the sink’s S-bend.

‘Bloody hell!’ he says out loud. His eyes swim. He takes another gulp of wine and repositions the razor against his right wrist. He stares at his outstretched arm and butts his body forward once, twice, trying and failing to push himself against the blade. As if he is being held back by invisible ropes, each one a child calling for him.

Someone knocks on the door.

‘Hurry up, Bradley! Are you trying to get yourself into the Guinness Book of

Records for the world’s longest shit break?’

The voice of Private Sims wafts under the door, exasperated but still friendly.

Of the men in his unit, Sims is the only one with a nod and a smile for Donald since they all had to search for him in the bush around Holsworthy last year. Major

Thompson, the commanding officer of the unit, ignores Donald as much as he can, barking the occasional reprimand or order but otherwise pretending Donald does not exist. He is pissed off about the aerial search he had to commission when the men couldn’t find Donald in the land sweep. But Sims is a good bloke. Too bad Sims is a teetotaller, so Donald has no one to ask to come for a drink.

156 Donald slides to the floor. He reaches up with his good hand and unlocks the door. Come to the water, you who are thirsty. He sees Sims’s face change from a ready smile to a look of horror. Sims is calling something. Those who are weary, I bid you rest. Donald closes his eyes, finally satisfied.

After Val called to tell me that you were finally, really dying, I drove the same route from Sydney to Queensland as Dad did, all those years ago. Like Dad, I was running away; but unlike Dad, I have had the good sense not to park my car in places that draw the attention of the law. The woman from the park said she was not going to press charges against me, but it still makes sense to keep a low profile. I just need to stay under the radar for long enough to deliver your eulogy. Then the woman from the park, her children and Evan will be safe from me.

But that’s another story I haven’t told you.

157 2

I drive back to the Hyperdome and find an Internet café where I can take a look at the photos Val has uploaded. I am hoping for inspiration. What am I supposed to say about the “career” of someone who never had a paid job in her life?

Val has scanned snapshots of Bradley Christmas dinners, bespectacled faces smiling at the camera. There are pictures from Trish’s graduation, and Val in her cap and gown – she came home and finished nursing school after you got sick. Here is one of

Brian’s graduation, back when Brian still had a full head of hair; and one of me in cap and gown, with you smiling at my elbow. At my graduation, you presented me with a beautiful little crucifix on a gold chain, which I still wear even though I am no longer a believer in God, because I have always been a believer in you.

I gave you a gift, at my own graduation. I had saved up from my checkout chick casual pay-check and bought a leather bound journal, for your poetry. I wanted you to feel honoured, Annie. I wanted you to feel that someone was proud of you.

I found the journal when we moved you to the aged care home. During the years when you could still write and talk and walk, you had carefully copied your poems into the journal and decorated the pages with coloured illustrations. You had even created a cover page, with ‘My Book,’ by Annie Bradley, and your motto,

‘Smile! God loves you!’ written below your name in your best cursive script. I have the journal with me now, in my plastic folder along with all my other important documents.

Val has also uploaded what I call the ‘hospital series’: pictures that Mum took when you were in and out of the Mater Hospital from 1983 to 1990. I hated it when

158 she did that, whipping out the camera and making us all stand and smile around your bed. Annie in her dressing gown. Annie with half her hair shaved off. Here is one of you with your head bandaged. You are asleep and I am leaning against your bed rail.

Not doing anything. Just watching.

If you had a career, it was as a professional patient. Not everyone knows how hard a job that is – how much hope is in your hands.

There is a special geography to hospitals. People who consider themselves good with directions get lost within seconds; there are no landmarks, and every corridor looks the same to the untrained eye. Instead of trying to use your sense of direction, you have to use your sense of observation.

Like me. I am eleven years old and already I have the makings of a great detective. I notice scuffs, the shapes of reception desks; which floor has the brighter overhead lights; which corridor smells like it has not been used in ten years; which ward has the white curtains and which the slightly greying ones. The hospital is a warren and I am a rabbit.

Since 1983, we have been to this hospital twenty-three times. In 1984, after the biopsy, you had to have a shunt put in to drain the extra fluid in your skull to your bladder. The second operation, a second shunt. In 1985 Doctor Blackman, who Mum says is the best neurosurgeon in Queensland, inserted a reservoir. Dad explains that it is like a pond inside your head. The excess fluid gathers there and once it gets full, you come back in for a drainage. Every three or four months, as soon as you start

159 complaining of headaches again, you are admitted to hospital. Doctor Blackman sticks a needle into your head and sucks the fluid right out.

It is 1990 and Doctor Blackman has an idea. He thinks he might be able to squeeze one more shunt inside your head. Then you won’t have to keep coming back to hospital. Your hair will finally grow back (well, after the radiation therapy). You won’t even have to take the steroids any more, the ones that Mum says are the reason you have those cute chipmunk cheeks. Moon Face, Mum calls you, if she is in a bad mood.

It’s school summer holidays so Mum and I spend our days with you at the hospital. Dad comes before or after his shift. The big kids come to visit after work when they can. You always have the busiest bedside in the ward. All these beautiful sisters, Doctor Blackman says, smiling from one Bradley to the next. Doctor

Blackman is married to his secretary, a lovely blonde woman named Renee. Trish says it is because he is such a grouch that no one else would have him. She is in training to become a surgeon and because you are in the same hospital where she works, we see her whenever she has a spare minute, which is not often, but it’s better than nothing. She got married last year to Lawrence, and we had to wear disgusting apricot silk dresses with puff sleeves and a drop waist. And flowers in our hair. Yuck.

Barb is getting married later this year to Frank, a businessman who gives her lots of presents. I don’t know how he can stand her. I know that is mean, but you know what she is like when she gets going, like a car alarm with no off button at five o’clock in the morning. We are going to have to wear blue satin to her wedding. More puff sleeves. This time, there will also be rosettes on the waistline. Double yuck.

Bev is already married, but we didn’t have to wear anything special to her wedding. There wasn’t really a wedding, just a barbecue in the backyard. She isn’t

160 even married anymore, so it’s good she didn’t spend a lot of money on the reception.

There was a phone call late one night. You were asleep, but I snuck out to the living room and overheard Mum telling Dad, ‘She lost it.’ Dad went to see Father Patrick, and now she is living back at home, working as a typist at a local solicitor’s office and giving Mum half her pay. All the big kids do that. Even Val.

Val is not yet married, but she is living in sin with her boyfriend in the city.

The last time Mum made Barb drive her there, Barb carried on like she was going to crash the car. You pressed your feet against Barb’s seat and I pressed against Mum’s as hard as I could. Barb swerved halfway across the road in front of an oncoming car and then back again. When we skidded to a stop, Mum cleared her throat, got out, and walked into Val’s apartment building.

Val comes to visit you when she can, between her shifts at the Wesley Hospital where she works as a nurse. The bruises have cleared up and she is so good with make-up anyway.

I have my routine down pat. First I go downstairs to level four to get water from the bubbler. I make four trips, one for each cup.

Then I make a tour of your floor, checking that Dad’s reclining chair is still seventh from the left, where I place it every morning. Dad sleeps next to you as often as he can before a night shift or after an evening shift. It’s the most comfortable chair on the floor – I know, because I tested all eighteen of them.

Then I do the scratchings for Mum at 9.50 am. This means she doesn’t waste time and tickets choosing horses that will not be running today. During the day, Mum

161 goes to the TAB and I read out loud to you because you get headaches if you concentrate on the print for too long. This will be the fifth time I have read you The

Lord of the Rings. I don’t think you mind. You have a bad memory, and there’s a lot to keep up with in these books.

When you sleep, or are busy working on one of your poems, I go to the playroom next door to your ward. Now that I am almost twelve, I am really too big for the toys. But it is somewhere to go.

Once a week, on Thursdays, a warden wheels you down to radiation. While you are getting radiated, Mum and I walk to the hospital cafe because they have a nice plate of savoury mince and peas on the menu and it is good value. Occasionally, for a change, we go across the street to the take-away and buy Aussie burgers which are so big that Mum brings a loaf of bread and divides one of them between the three of us

(Mum, Dad and me – not you, because either the hospital feeds you or you are nil by mouth, which means we eat in the hallway).

Back in 1984, our parish gathered every Wednesday to say a rosary calling for

Our Lady’s intercession on your behalf. We don’t do that anymore, but every Sunday

Father Patrick says to Dad, ‘Your daughter is a miracle, as I live and breathe,’ his Irish blue eyes casting a benevolent glow upon us Bradleys.

Mum is at the TAB. It’s just me and you. We are waiting for the results of the scan to find out if you have the all-clear for surgery.

‘Want me to read to you?’

‘OK.’

162 I open the book. Then I put my finger in as a bookmark. ‘Hey, Annie. What if your being sick doesn’t affect how happy you can be?’

‘Hmm?’

‘Like this. Every single one of us can be happy. You can be happy, I can be happy, that kid in the infectious room can be happy.’ I indicate the glassed-in room at the end of the ward with a flick of my head. Even if a person can’t walk, or do the things that other people can do, it doesn’t mean they can’t be just as happy as anyone else. It’s up to them! Up to them to make the most of it! Because’ – and here is the clincher – ‘“God has no hands but our own”,’ I quote. I think it is a psalm; anyway, it is relevant.

‘Annie? Annie?’

But you have dozed off.

I sit next to you and jot down my notes in the journal you gave me for Christmas. It had come to me when I was on the toilet last night. I was staring at the blue tiles of the bathroom floor.

The Kingdom of Heaven is here. I can be in eternity right now.

While I am alive I can only be there fleetingly, because my body drags me back into the physical world. But after I die, heaven is being in the presence of God forever.

God would not consign his beloved to flames: Jesus said that God is love.

Therefore Hell must be the result of our actions, not God’s.

I picture Hell like this. Visible, but infinitely distant, is an orb of light. That is

God’s love. And then there is me, a dark little soul, eternally aching because I have eternally isolated myself from God. If I refuse to believe in God during life, when I

163 die I might suddenly realise what I have done. But after death there is no time, so there is no way to change my actions. I am in the eternal torment of knowing that I, myself, walked away from love.

You open your eyes. I am about to tell you everything I have figured out, but your face lights up as you look past me to someone behind me. ‘Hi Annie,’ a soft voice says. I have to look down because the voice is coming from the level of my elbow. Jeremy reverses his wheelchair so he can manoeuvre politely past me.

I swipe through more photos, looking for pictures of Carpe Diem, the support group for teenagers with cancer and their teenage siblings. Here is a snapshot of you and the other tumour girls in Carpe Diem, all moon-faced and round from the steroidal treatments and the thyroid problems. Here’s one of me scowling with my eyes and smiling with my teeth, as we do yet another interminable aerial rope course designed to make us face our fears. And here is one of you and Jeremy at the last Carpe Diem camp. I remember flicking through these photos when they were first developed, but now I see something I had not noticed before. You and Jeremy are holding hands.

Not everyone knows this, but there is a hierarchy to cancer. At the top are the boys who have lost limbs to the cancer but are still good-looking in a private school kind of way and get around with extremely cool prosthetics. Hodgkin’s lymphoma.

164 Then there are the boys and girls who have had leukaemia but have reached that nirvana of cancer patients: remission. Before Carpe Diem, I didn’t even know there was such a thing as remission. I thought everyone with cancer just went on and on and on, like Annie, stumbling towards death in a long, slow decline. The remission kids seem normal, except that they might be uber mature, already thinking about their career options at the ripe old age of fourteen because they know in their bone

(marrow) that life is short.

And then at the bottom of the pyramid are the brain tumour kids. These kids can be distinguished by their moon faces (steroid treatment), their thinning hair

(radiation therapy), their languid eyes (papilloedema) and their stunted growth

(steroids plus radiation at a young age). Some are in wheelchairs or walk with a hemiplegic leg and arm, like you. All wear glasses.

Within the brain tumour kids there is a mini-hierarchy. The location and operability of the tumour determine how abnormal you are. For example: Becky, at eighteen, in a wheelchair but still cognitively sharp. Tumour was malignant but operable and left her physically disabled but intellectually sound. Other kids have tumours which change their personality; bring on epilepsy; destroy attention spans, concentration and memory.

And then there is you. My Annie. The jackpot girl. Your tumour is inoperable.

Your tumour is right in the middle of your head. Your tumour sits in the hypothalamus, right on the thyroid gland. You have never had a period. Your behaviour is ‘socially inappropriate’.

Luckily no vagina flashing or rude gestures. Your inappropriate behaviour is restricted to delight. You make completely unrelated comments during conversations, laugh at things which are not jokes, and cannot pick up on social cues. Your tumour

165 makes you think that everyone loves you as much as you love everyone, which is boundless and grating in its generosity.

It is 1995 and you just turned nineteen which means you will be out on your ear next year, no more Carpe Diem for you when you are no longer a teenager.

Technically I could remain a member for another three years but there is zero chance of that happening. Once you can no longer attend, I am out.

This year’s camp is on Stradbroke Island, an expanse of sand just off the coast of

Queensland. Part of me is kind of looking forward to seeing it. Apparently there are dolphins and beautiful beaches. If I can get some time away from you, perhaps during one of the interminable workshops on how to deal with cancer (using, you know, crayons), I might be able to take a walk. Breathe deep. Smell the salt air and all the other things I have heard people do while enjoying their holidays.

You are happy. You are surrounded by people your own age who are kind to you. I watch you go from one group of kids to the other, distributing hugs indiscriminately. Most of the kids smile back, some glancing at one another before silently deciding that this is the correct response. One thing I have to say for these cancer kids: they are preternaturally understanding of difference, far more forgiving than kids, say, at my high school. I once overheard a girl in art class say she didn’t like me because of my voice. That’s scraping the bottom of the barrel, surely?

One thing I know for sure: none of these kids would ever say that about you.

Of course they have their cliques, but the cancer injects them with a sense of propriety beyond their years. They know how to be kind. And if one of them were not, I would be there at once, coaxing you away before you could realise what was going on.

That’s part of my job, part of the reason I am here. Mum thinks I take care of your

166 physical needs and yes, I brush your hair and shower you and make sure you have toileted, but more importantly I protect your soft, sweet heart.

Jeremy is here for his final camp too. When we first met him in 1989 he could walk, but now he is confined to a wheelchair. The hump on his back has worsened and tilts his head down towards his chest so he can only view the outside world with his right eye. Despite this Jeremy has impeccable manners. He always asks how I am, even though obviously I am completely fine with my two legs and two arms and a head that works. When I see you sit next to him and engage in conversation I feel my heart swell with pride. I have taken on all of the inhibitions your tumour has stripped away from you and am unable to make eye contact with any of these people, preferring my own company. I once read that introversion is natural but shyness is just bad manners. So there you have it: I am a bad-mannered sixteen year old. Will wonders never cease.

In the hierarchy of cancer I’d place Jeremy on about equal footing with you,

Annie. His physical disabilities are greater than yours but his attention and memory are better, which makes him more adept at following conversations. You two chatter away happily: that is, you do most of the talking and Jeremy laughs politely at your jokes.

‘Annie,’ I say, but you are so engrossed in your conversation that I have to repeat myself. ‘Annie. I’m going for a walk. Do you need anything?’

‘No, no, I’m fine, you go.’ You wave me away.

After dinner you and Jeremy are working on a picture together so I head down to the dock. A pod of dolphins flashes and surfaces through the sparkling, rippling water. The sun sets in a haze of red and gold over a clear expanse of ocean. Even I have to admit that this isn’t too bad.

167 Day two dawns and I am feeling uncharacteristically optimistic. I always look forward to the breakfasts at camp. They really know how to put on a spread. I fetch you a plate of food and cut up the bacon, then I pile my plate high with eggs and mushrooms and find a place to eat. Jeremy mustn’t be up yet but you have saved him a spot at your table.

One of the camp facilitators asks for our attention for the morning announcements.

I am on my feet instantly and almost at your side when I find myself veering out of the hall. All I can think about is how the last time I saw him I had not talked to him – but I had smiled over my baked potatoes. Thank goodness, I think over and over again. Thank goodness, thank goodness.

The funeral will be on Thursday. Mum won’t let you go. Since the announcement you have been hysterical. It is churlish, but your behaviour grates on me. Settle down, I want to tell you. It’s not like you’re the only one affected by this.

But when you are upset you demand all the available air. I take shallow breaths and wait for you to forget Jeremy, wait for the tumour to do its goddamn job.

168 3

I did not have a first kiss until I was at university. I was terrified of boys during high school, and more so of our mother’s ire if I ever showed any interest in them.

Memories of Mum pulling at our sisters’ hair and shoving them into the walls, were never too far from the surface. By the time I was 18 and in my first year of a psychology degree, I had no romantic training: in my mind, boys were bad, and me wanting to go out with them was the filthy desire of an even filthier mind. Rationally I knew that was not true; but the thought of a man’s mouth on mine made me feel both exhilarated and absolutely terrified.

And then I meet Peter. He is tall, and white, and lives not far from the university, which means his parents are comfortably middle-class: in other words, he is everything I am not. We are part of the same friendship group, and after a failed attempt at romancing a friend of mine, he asks me if I want to go for a drink. We have our first kiss at Mount Cootha Lookout, the lights of Brisbane twinkling below us.

Peter puts his hand inside my bra, and I feel a rush of electricity from my nipples to my groin. This must be what falling in love feels like.

Later that evening I drive home and creep into the bedroom which you and I still share. You sit up suddenly in your bed, a shock of black hair above a ghostly white nightie. I blink; there is nothing there. You are fast asleep. For weeks I dream of an eyeless apparition, pointing an accusing finger at me.

The first time I stay over at Peter’s I get up in the middle of the night and sit on a stool in the deserted living room of his share house. It is freezing in that way that

169 only Brisbane houses are freezing, built as they are for eternal summer in adamant denial of its annual reversal. I sit shivering, not really knowing why I’m out here or what I want. Sympathy, perhaps, for something I do not have words for. I am not sure

I even have words for it now.

I rock back and forth on my stool. Peter emerges from his room to fetch a glass of water.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asks on his way back from the bathroom. That should have told me right then and there that ours was not an equal affection. On his way back from the bathroom; not on his way to it.

‘I can’t stop thinking about Annie,’ I murmur. That is not true. I am not thinking about you so much as feeling your absence from my body, but not just from my body – from this, this experience, this night, this man, however unsatisfying our sexual encounter, however tepid his feelings for me. Flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. I am ripping you away with my bare hands.

I attempted to lose my virginity to Peter, but he would not take it. It was not a question of hydraulics – Peter could get an erection at the sight of me walking through the door, which was a gratifying experience, but not one to give me much actual pleasure. He told me that he wanted to wait for marriage. I could respect religious principles, but I never quite understood how he reconciled these beliefs with asking me to ‘kiss him down there,’ or grinding against my crotch until he came all over my underwear. How to explain my blind belief? I thought I was in love. For me, that meant doing anything he asked me to.

170 I drive home and park the car in the driveway and walk towards 7 Elliot Street, Slacks

Creek, the house we moved into after you got sick. The suburb is a step up from the flood plains of Loganlea, or perhaps only half a step, being right next to the A1. But at night-time when I am drifting off to sleep, the traffic sounds like the ocean, lapping at my shores.

I just want to go to bed and mull the whole Peter thing over, but you are standing in the doorway, silhouetted by the living room light. I wave hello. You do not wave back. Instead you run, bad leg dragging behind you, away from me, back into the house.

‘Annie, what are you doing?’ I try to open the door but you have locked it.

‘Have to lock all the doors, all the doors,’ you shout from the laundry.

‘They are locked.’ I take my keys from my pocket and let myself in. Now you are at the front door, rattling its handle.

‘Annie, come on, sit down. Sit down!’ I take your good arm, but for the first time since we were kids you are too strong for me. You wrench yourself out of my grip and shake your head, once, twice, thrice, four times, five times until I worry that you are going to dislodge one of your shunts.

‘Kathy is an impostor! They’ve got Kathy too!’ you yell.

‘I’m not an impostor!’ I protest. ‘Annie, it’s me, Kathy, your sister! Your little sister!’

This makes you stop and look me in the eye. ‘That’s what they all say,’ you tell me, eyes darting away from my face and then back again. ‘They want you to believe they’re real.’

Mum, who has been doing something in the kitchen with Dad this whole time, now shouts, ‘Annie, Annie! Come here! Annie!’

171 You push Mum’s chair over, stumbling in your haste to check the locks on the windows. Mum’s reading glasses, TAB tickets, biros scatter every which way. Dad grabs you by the hand. ‘Come on, Annie,’ he murmurs in the voice he must use with the patients at the psych hospital. It works; you allow him to lead you to the kitchen table, where Mum has placed a glass of water.

‘You have to take your medicine,’ Dad says.

You shake your head vigorously. ‘You’re an impostor too. Dad’s an impostor too!’

You attempt to stand but Dad has planted a hand on your shoulder, keeping you in check. He reaches over and for a wild second I think he is going to play

‘Who’s got your nose?’ He pinches your nose and one, two, your mouth drops open.

He puts the pill on your tongue and pushes your chin up. You splutter and cough, but there is no more sign of the little white tablet.

You scream, and scream, and scream.

‘A mild sedative and anti-psychotic,’ Dad mutters before I even ask. He checks his watch. ‘Should take effect in about ten minutes. Keep her away from the stove.’

‘Annie, come get in your pyjamas. Annie,’ Mum takes your elbow, modulating her voice for the first time in living memory to try to sound enticing rather than commanding. Poor Mum, I think, irrelevantly. This whole scene is unnerving on so many levels. Mum cajoling. You ignoring her. Dad taking control.

As Dad predicted, you fall into a deep sleep. Dad sits down heavily in his armchair, a stained old recliner in front of the TV which smells of a mixture of sweat and mould.

172 ‘We kept her out of the psych ward, anyway,’ he says, staring at the blank TV screen.

Mum silently hands him a mug of Nescafé.

The next day we pile into the car. The whole way to Brisbane, you laugh to yourself, making complicated gestures with your hands.

Your neurosurgeon, Doctor Blackman, is all smiles upon seeing us. There are not enough chairs so I remain standing at the back of the office, leaning against the wall. At my eye level are Doctor Blackman’s certificates, arrayed behind him like medals for good behaviour.

It takes me a minute to understand what he is saying. ‘I didn’t know this was a possibility,’ I blurt.

‘Kathy, shh, it all right,’ Mum titters. She always treats doctors as if they are a notch above the rest of us. No wonder Trish became one.

‘Early onset dementia was always one of the potential outcomes of the first biopsy.’ Doctor Blackman is not smiling when he glances at his watch and then at me.

When I was small I loved this man. He has a full head of thick silver hair and wears the metal-framed glasses which I always thought looked like the kind God would wear if God were short-sighted. Now I stare at him with all the contempt I can muster.

It’s not that I expected a cure; well, all right, maybe I did. But I thought at the very least that we had climbed the mountain and finally reached the plateau, a terrain we could at least navigate without crampons. I have plans. I want to apply for independent living for you, get you involved in voluntary work. I might not believe in angels but I still believe in something like divine fairness.

173 There is nothing left for Doctor Blackman to cut out and throw away, apart from, of course, our trust, and this he does with a flick of his practised wrist. He holds open the door and tells his secretary that no further appointment is necessary. We stand waiting for the lift: me, you, Mum, Dad. No one says anything, not even you to the voices in your head, telling you that we are playing you for a fool.

During the week after seeing Doctor Blackman, I make phone calls. I ring the cancer council, I dial neurologists I find in the phone book. I page Trish and she in turn contacts neurologists she knows personally, a rather more effective method. I buzz

Val, who works in aged care, and she promises to bring home pamphlets about early onset dementia. I am doing the research. You know I always do my research.

I leave a number of messages for Peter, and finally get hold of him after a week. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch,’ I say. ‘I’ve got a lot of family stuff going on.’

‘No worries,’ he replies. ‘Hey, have you got Sonja’s number?’

I know it is superstition, but I can’t help thinking that this is my fault. If I hadn’t betrayed you by going out with Peter, you would not have got dementia. I am in my first year of psychology, so I can see that this is an attempt to exert control over an uncertain situation, but knowing what I am doing doesn’t stop me from doing it.

Over the next few weeks, which become months, which become years, I devote myself to your care. I still attend university but I give up on extracurricular activities, coming straight home after lectures to help you bathe, to read to you, to encourage you to do the puzzles I have read somewhere help to slow dementia. If I see Peter coming out of a lecture hall, I nod and walk on.

174 You settle down on the new meds. You return to your old self, a little confused but not in another dimension, forgetful but not of who I am, socially awkward but not dangerous. I used to wish that God would heal. Now I wish for a more humble miracle – that you won’t get any worse.

I am studying for my final year exams. I follow a colour-coded revision schedule I have taped to the wall in my brother’s old room, which Mum lets me study in as long as I still sleep in the room I share with you. The concept of personal space is antithetical to our mother, but I don’t complain lest I lose this small but vital privilege.

I emerge from Brian’s old room for a snack. It is about 4 pm. I didn’t hear

Mum and Dad go out, but they are not here as I rummage in the pantry for the vanilla biscuits I know Mum keeps in here somewhere.

I am munching, my mouth covered in crumbs, when I see you.

You are in your underpants, sitting on the couch, smiling at a private joke and muttering. Your clothes are in shreds around you.

I slowly put down my plate. ‘Annie,’ I say in a singsong, as if you are an endangered animal and I a would-be conservationist. ‘Annie, aren’t you cold?’

You stop talking and look carefully at me. ‘Nothing, it’s all right,’ you say.

‘Annie, it’s me, Kathy.’ I come closer, slowly, not wanting you to take fright. I have not seen you this bad for months. Where did you find the scissors? And where are they now? I cast an eye around while trying to seem like I am just here for a friendly chat with my half-naked, obese sister and her crazy eyes.

175 ‘You’re not Kathy. He said you would do that. He said you would do that.’

You are not smiling any more. I have just spotted the scissors. They are sharp, and long, and jut out from under your rolls of thigh fat. You must have tucked them under yourself to keep them hidden. From me.

‘Who said? What is it Annie? Remember me? I’m your sister.’

I can’t tell you how many times we have had this conversation over the last twelve months. I insist, repeat, insist that I am your sister. You don’t believe me. I cite facts from our childhood. I tell you the year, the date, where you live. I ask you what you think is happening. Finally you tell me, as if for the first time, although we must have got to this point a dozen times over the last year, that there is a secret war on.

You have to stop the baddies from taking over the world.

Meanwhile, I am measuring my progress. I have convinced you that I am really your sister. I have you back in my grasp. But you waver. You start to weep. If none of this is real, then what is real?

‘I am real,’ I say.

‘But Jeremy,’ you say. ‘And the babies.’ You rub your belly.

I don’t even want to write down what I said next. I want to shake my younger self.

Have a little pity, I would say. For God’s sake let her have him.

176 ‘Jeremy is dead,’ I say. ‘He died two years ago.’ I point to your stomach. ‘You aren’t pregnant,’ I say. ‘That’s just fat.’

I deftly swipe the scissors from under you as I help you into clean trousers, talking the entire time about the volunteer work I have arranged for you at the local childcare centre.

I didn’t know it then, but the arrangement will fall through in a matter of weeks. Insurance, they will shrug.

But today, I am full of hope. I talk and talk and talk, painting a picture with my words of a world in which you are engaged in purposeful activity. You will be happy and fulfilled. You love kids; you’ll love it. You stroke your belly again at the word

‘kids’, and I take your hand and push it into a fresh T-shirt sleeve. I feel happier just imagining you there, surrounded by finger paintings and small children who are too little to judge. And where am I in this picture? Holding the brush.

Why, I ask myself now? Why couldn’t I just nod when you talked about Jeremy, and say nothing? God knows you had a more meaningful existence inside your own mind than you did in reality, where I came and went – mostly went – and Mum and Dad’s idea of socialising was taking you with them to the TAB.

I try to picture you and Jeremy, leaning your heads together over your drawing project at the last Carpe Diem camp. One soft moon-shaped face lifted to another. The stars above. The flash of recognition and the quickening of blood. In your demented fog, you and dead Jeremy had each other; you had children and a purpose. Just because I couldn’t have that, did I have to destroy it for you, too?

177 *

Times have changed since Dad’s funeral. Instead of accepting a donation in an envelope, the priest tells us matter-of-factly that the fee for his services is $340 and the church hire can be arranged directly with the venue manager. My brother Brian and I nod, both keen to be agreeable. The man is, after all, still a priest.

Despite our Catholic upbringing, Mum never liked the Church, and only got baptised as an adult to make you happy. According to family legend, Mum’s mother converted to Catholicism just before her death, in hopes that she would be reunited with her daughter in the afterlife, not realising that Mum had not instantly become

Catholic by virtue of marrying one. I wonder if our mother was baptised with the same possibility in the back of her mind?

But back to the death at hand. The priest is going through the hymns, which are pretty easy to choose.

‘Annie would have liked “Star of the Sea”, “Here I Am, Lord” and “Suffer

Little Children Who Come Unto Me”,’ I say confidently.

‘And maybe “Amazing Grace”? Or “Ave Maria”?’ the priest suggests.

The first time I heard ‘Ave Maria’ sung – really sung, like the angels would have sung it – was at Lourdes. My Dad was standing while Mum, Annie and I sat on the banks of a river, I forget its name. The church bells tolled, and the sounds of a choir singing

‘Ave, ave, ave, Maria’ dispersed the clouds above our heads, blowing our petty selves away like so much unnecessary debris. ‘This is my favourite hymn,’ Dad said. And

178 we all listened, even our mother. Music does make you believe, if not in God, then at least a little in the divine potential of humans.

I remember the way it washed all the fears and dislikes out of me and left me sitting peacefully by my sister. Mum sitting quietly, no TAB to go to, no races to catch, just relaxing, doling out pieces of ham and baguette for lunch. And Dad, soaking it all in, standing before us. It was so rare to hear him say anything that was not in argument with our mother that perhaps that is the real reason why I remember it so well, after all these years. The scene fills me with serenity even now; my breathing slows, my shoulders drop and everything seems possible.

179

Part 5: Legacy

Use this section of the eulogy to reflect on what the deceased leaves behind them, not just in material goods, but in life lessons. How has the deceased left the world better than when they came into it? How to Write a Eulogy

180 1

I know you wanted me to be happy, Annie. But every time I took a step closer to happiness, I dragged you away from it. All our lives, it felt like only one of us could make it. Darling girl, I am so sorry it wasn’t you. You would have been so much better at it.

Evan starts working at the Department of Education on 3 October 2002. I know the exact date because I had to conduct his OH&S induction in his first week.

People don’t take OH&S seriously, but it’s second nature for me. I always see danger. My colleagues call me their big sister, and don’t believe me when I tell them I am the youngest of my family. I urge them to be careful around live wiring and ladders. I know that as much as I try, I can’t hold everyone’s lives in my hands.

A tall Chinese-Australian man is already inside the lift when the doors glide open for me. He must have come straight up from the private carparking basement.

Trust fund baby, Jess would say. You have to be wealthy or an executive to have a car spot in the centre of Sydney, and there are no Asians in the top management of the

Department.

We both walk towards the same office. I was wrong: this is Evan, the new

Head of Video Production whom I have come to induct.

In my experience, Chinese men normally hold themselves ready for a blow to the back of the head, but Evan walks with an easy, open stride, taking up his rightful

181 space in the world. Women and men alike look up from their desks and greet him as he passes. I see more than one white woman’s eyes following his lean figure.

I run him through the training modules he has to complete online, then hand him the kit I give all new staff, which includes a roll of duct tape and a card with CPR instructions. He laughs when I hand it to him. ‘You would have made an excellent night watchman, in our evolutionary past,’ he says, eyes twinkling at me. ‘Hey, you’re a lunchtime walker, aren’t you?’

‘Yes,’ I say, not sure where this is going.

‘I saw you yesterday with your sneakers on. I want to stay fit now that I am a desk jockey. I’ll swing by your office later.’

From that day onwards, Evan comes down to my desk every day and waits until I pull on my sandshoes. He is so handsome and confident, so obviously out of my league, that I don’t even bother trying to look good as we huff and puff up and down Bent

Street. We make good walking buddies. Our paces are well matched – he is fit from working on production sets, and I am a fast walker from all the extraneous nervous energy I carry around with me.

Evan is nothing like other Chinese Australian men I have met. They tend to look at me with a kind of dog yearning; unable to imagine themselves with a white woman, they see me, with my hybrid skin, as within their grasp. The middle-aged white men who leer at me in pubs are not entirely dissimilar, except their looks are of acquisition rather than hope. With Evan, I do not feel like an object of migrant ambition, nor a yellow fever trophy.

It takes me a while to figure out what it is about Evan that makes it so easy to be around him. I covertly watch how he moves, how he talks, how he breathes so

182 easily inside his own skin. As I dodge and scurry, apologising for the umpteenth time for being in an oncoming walker’s way, Evan draws me to the side of the footpath. He leans toward me, as if about to tell me a secret.

“I don’t say sorry. I say thank you.” He smiles into my eyes. I turn away and keep walking.

Evan takes up his allotted space on the footpath, in this city, in this country: no more, but no less, and without apology. I have never done that. I have spent my life apologising for the discomfort I cause to others for being neither one thing nor the other; for being in their way; for being what I am.

But Evan? Evan is just himself.

We start to meet for weekend walks, and Evan meets me for my early morning tramp along the cliff path from Bondi to Coogee. One morning, we see a whale in the cove just before the path climbs around to Tamarama. Too busy marvelling at it over my shoulder, I trip and cut my leg. I laugh at my own clumsiness and get back up, but then blood starts to drip out of the bottom of my trouser. I sit down, suddenly faint.

Seemingly out of nowhere, two surf lifeguards appear. They have been filming

Bondi Rescue recently; I feel as though I have seen more red and yellow t-shirts than string bikinis in these last few weeks.

‘Can you speak English?’ One of the sandy haired men with skin the colour of dried leather shouts at me, whilst the other drapes a silver foil blanket over my shoulders.

‘Mate, she can speak English better than you,’ Evan laughs.

183 The lifeguards think I am a tourist. They call an ambulance and at the hospital I receive 12 stitches from a pretty Icelandic intern whose name means “Little Island.” A week later, I receive a $400 bill for her services. Despite our explanations to the lifeguards, the paramedics, the hospital admission staff, I have been processed as a foreigner. I have to present myself, my Medicare card and 100 points of identification to demonstrate that I was born in Logan, much closer to Sydney than any little

Icelandic island.

Of course I had experienced racism before I met Evan: there had been the usual name- calling and one time an egging from a moving car which had been perversely gratifying because the thrower had missed. But this constant undermining of my identity is new to me; this experience of being regarded as foreign by people who were not even born here. In cafes, British waitresses in breach of their holiday visas focus on my lips, frowning as I talk to them until they eventually realise that I am speaking English with no trace of an accent, apart perhaps from the Queensland drawl that still clings to my tongue. Evan lets it all wash over him, amused at how I am constantly enraged in a way that is new to me. But I know on a visceral level that if I was in physical danger, Evan would fight, and he would win. This knowledge makes me feel safe in a way that is also new to me.

We chat as we walk, and it turns out that Evan also studied psychology at university.

He is no trust fund baby; like me, he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, working his way through university. I tell him about my research interests, and he starts sending me useful links to articles about recent sibling studies on PubMed. One

Thursday as we head out, he has a mild limp.

184 ‘What have you done to yourself?’ I ask.

‘Old war wound,’ he groans. “Always flares up when rain is coming.’

‘Were you in the army?’

‘Ha! No. Just got into one fight after another during my misspent youth. Turns out white boys thought the asthmatic, skinny little Asian kid was an easy target. Go figure!’ He tries to laugh, but his ankle is clearly troubling him.

‘Let’s sit down. You’re not well enough today.’ I guide him to a sushi shop and fetch him a cup of miso.

“Oh, that’s what I needed. You’re an angel,’ he says. I blush. I am not used to looking at him front-on. When we walk together I don’t have to be reminded of what a mismatched pair we are: his height and athletic grace, my squat and unwieldy figure. I lost weight because of Lachie, but I will never be slim, or blue-eyed, or any of the things that men in this city find beautiful.

‘So what happened?’ I ask, looking at the menu so I don’t have to keep looking at that intelligent, handsome face.

‘I won. I knew kung fu,’ he says.

‘Really?’

‘No, not really,’ he laughs. ‘But when I was five my Dad showed me the basics. How to fall,’ he uses his hands to demonstrate the motion, ‘and how to trip.’ I am suddenly looking at a tiger, graceful and dangerous in the swiftness of its shift from cat to predator. When we part ways at the office, he leans down and kisses me on the cheek. It is just a friendly thing to do, but for some reason I can’t stop feeling the burn where his lips touched my face.

185 Evan explains that one of the reasons he moved from working in the media to the

Department of Education is because he wants to make a series of videos for children and teachers to learn about how to manage bullies.

‘I want people to understand that there are bullies in this world,’ he says. It is the weekend, but we have arranged to go for a much longer walk than we usually have time for during the work week, to make up for Thursday. His ankle is much better; the sun is shining, and we are leaning against a railing, having just climbed the stairs which rise up the sheer cliff face from Woolloomooloo to Potts Point. Below us sits HMAS Anzac at anchor. It’s easy to forget that Sydney’s harbour is still a working naval base, fortified for defence.

‘And you have to decide,’ Evan says, looking me in the eye. ‘Are you going to run, or are you going to fight?’

Now here I am four years later, sitting in my car, Evan more than 1,000 kilometres away. When it came to my marriage, I didn’t make a choice between running and fighting. I did both.

Evan and I cover at least a hundred kilometres of Sydney footpaths before Evan leans in to kiss me on the mouth. That night, we go back to his apartment and awkwardly undress each other, Evan laughing each time I struggle with a zip or a button. Every foible and fumble is all just part of the hilarious sweetness of the human condition to him. He manages to get the second condom he rips opens to stay on, chuckling all the while, until he is not laughing but panting, pushing and moaning my name. I try to

186 pant along, but all I can feel is tightness and something pressing against it. It gives me too much time to watch him. From this vantage point he looks how they all look: completely contained, using my hole as a place to chafe his need. Once he is done he will roll off and that will be the end of that.

It only takes about two minutes.

‘Sorry!’ He laughs. ‘It’s been a while.’

Instead of conveniently falling asleep while I slip my clothes on and get a taxi home, he looks at me. He kisses me slowly, eyes open. Then he takes my hand and puts it on my clitoris, and he puts his fingers inside my vagina and begins to rub.

‘You’re beautiful,’ he murmurs in my ear and I can’t stop myself, my back bucks and my legs twitch and I moan and then I do it all over again.

I tell Evan about you. ‘One day I plan to move back to Queensland,’ I say. ‘To look after her.’ I watch him closely.

‘I like Queensland,’ he says, mouth full of pasta. ‘Or we could have a room for her in our house.’ He pauses. ‘We could get a lowset, no steps,’ he says, reaching for his wine glass.

Then he starts telling me how one day he would like to move up north, away from Sydney. As he talks I see a beach uncluttered by Sydneysiders, a house with a view of the sea. I see a dog and a swing and kids’ bikes out front. I see handsome young newlyweds, laughing over whose job it is to trim the rosebushes. She is working on a PhD and he is founding an anti-bullying initiative. The woman is blonde and the man has blue eyes so I paint over their faces to make them look more like

Evan and me, and I add a ramp and a granny flat to the backyard. Then I laugh at

187 myself, because whose dream of a dream home has wheelchair access? Even so, I cannot shake the image of a vast blue sky with not a single cloud in it.

When he asks me if I will marry him, I cannot believe my ears. He has to repeat himself, which makes him laugh and laugh as he holds out the diamond ring that belonged to his grandmother.

‘Yes, of course I will marry you,’ I respond. This is all a magnificent dream, I think as I watch him fall asleep. I will just enjoy it for as long as it lasts, because I know, deep in my bones, that it won’t.

It’s not only strangers who assume I am Chinese because I am with Evan. The weekend after our engagement, we fly to Queensland so Evan can meet my family.

Val hosts a barbecue at and we all perch on the edge of the plastic cushioned outdoor seats, balancing paper plates on our laps and politely pretending that the mozzie coils are working. Val moved to the north side of Brisbane when she married to be closer to her husband’s family, but the house itself reminds me of 19 Railway Road, with its two-storeys of brick veneer and a rumpus area downstairs like the room Dad had built for the big kids.

From where we are sitting, we have a view of the aboveground pool and the

Hills hoist, but instead of an incinerator there is a smoking oven down the back, which Val and her husband Mick brought back with them from a holiday to southern

USA. As a result, we are eating smoked chicken with our iceberg lettuce instead of the usual burnt chops from Mick’s Weber.

188 Then it begins.

Over lunch, Val asks conversationally if I now know Chinese.

‘No,’ I laugh, slightly mystified. She knows that Mum never taught us any

Chinese. Evan has a smattering of Mandarin from his grandmother, but how would I have learned it? Via osmosis?

‘Do you?’ I ask, but she looks at me blankly.

Val and Barb’s daughters, both in their late teens (Val and Barb always ran a close race), pull me upstairs for dessert, which is inevitably one of Barb’s inedible trifles. Dad used to make trifle each Christmas, and after he died Barb took over, but now she also makes one for every family gathering. Is it a not-so-subtle reminder that she is carrying the flame? That she is the good daughter, simply because she combines

Woollies sponge cakes with ready-made custard, a few packets of Aeroplane jelly and cheap grog which Dad would have happily swigged standing behind the pantry door?

I push the spoon around my bowl until the trifle looks like a lumpy bruise.

‘Are you guys going to have a baby?’ Melinda, Barb’s daughter, twitters at me in her Valley girl accent. When did Australians start talking like they grew up in southern California? I wonder.

‘Omigod you have to, I love Asian babies, they are so cuuuuute!’ Val’s daughter, Bianca, squeals.

‘Yes, you were quite cute when you were little,’ I say pointedly, but they look at me without comprehension. Melinda starts Googling pictures of “cute Asian babies” on her phone and shows them to Bianca. I am reminded of my my work friend, Miranda, coming to my desk to show me cat memes on hers.

Val’s boys, Rick and Tim, bored with the adult conversation of real estate prices, saunter into the living room and plonk themselves on the couch next to us.

189 Rick has always reminded me of Dad – he has a tendency towards fat, but he is easy- going and friendly, and was born blonde with blue eyes, the only one of his generation. I was blonde until I was four, but my hair gradually darkened until I was as undeniably Eurasian as the rest of the Bradley children. When I was little, Dad had told me that Mum had blackened it with shoe polish one Sunday when the rest of the family were at church, angry that I didn’t look like all the others. I believed that story longer than I believed in Santa Claus.

Rick was always a bit of a follower at high school, but apart from a pot habit and a tendency to share memes about Muslim terrorists on Facebook, he seems to be turning out all right. Now he announces that he has acquired a gun licence.

‘What? Why?’ I sit upright.

‘Oh, just a hobby. I take it out to the range, do a bit of target practice. It’s fun.

I can show it to you if you like?’ He leans forward, suddenly eager.

I have a flashback of Rick when he was 13, wearing a pair of trousers with a lurid yellow fluoro stripe down the side. When I asked him about them, he eagerly explained that Val had sewn them for him. ‘They would have cost $120 in the stores!’ he had crowed. ‘I’ll show you my dance moves if you like.’

Five years later, I find myself again saying to Rick, ‘No it’s OK. Thanks anyway.’

Rick shrugs as if he doesn’t mind. He heads back downstairs; perhaps he will find an aunt or an uncle who wants to see his new moves.

I turn to Tim, trying to think of something to ask him. Tim is the most introverted of Val’s kids, and our conversations have always been confined to school and movies. Now I happily take refuge in these tired old aunt-isms, asking him which university he thinks he will go to.

190 ‘I was thinking about University of Queensland – ’

I interject, ‘My alma mater!’ Maybe we do have something in common, I am thinking, when he continues,

‘ – but when I went there for their open day there were so many Asians.’

‘You know that you are Eurasian, right? That woman out there, the old one with the false teeth? She’s your grandmother, remember?’ I try to sound light-hearted, but really. This is too much. Of our nephews, Rick looks the most “Asian” of all with his dark skin and brown eyes.

What happened to the adorable little children we used to babysit and play endless games of Guess Who? with? Or is it me – have I actually become more

Chinese because of Evan, more attuned to the casual racism of my own mixed- heritage family?

Rick shrugs noncommittally. I try to picture the Great Court as he might see it, its grassy lawns and the shade of the jacaranda trees overrun by international students, speaking their strange languages, forming their alliances, eating their noodles, their straight black hair glinting in the Queensland sunlight. I stand abruptly and head downstairs, making a beeline for Evan.

‘We need to get going,’ I say although the plane does not leave for another four hours. Evan stands without a moment’s hesitation.

‘It’s been great to finally meet you all,’ he says, smiling at the Bradleys. You have been napping in your picnic chair but now stir to give me a kiss good-bye. I kiss

Mum on the cheek, not the hand – she doesn’t do that any more. Mellowing in her old age, Val reckons. Losing her power, I think, but only to myself.

191 ‘He drive a Lamborghini?’ Mum says suddenly, looking at Evan who does not even own a car. Is she thinking of the Chinese gangsters she heard stories about when she was a child in the kampong, cruising for girls across the waters of Jahore Bahru?

‘No Mum, Evan is a good man,’ I say gently. Maybe Val is right; maybe Mum is growing old and senile, deserving of more sympathy.

‘You need to lose some weight before the wedding,’ Mum adds, pinching my hip. And then again, I think as I straighten up, smile plastered on, maybe not.

The first time I heard the word “Eurasian” was in a conversation between Val and Barb. It must have been a few years after you had got sick, because by then Val was working as a nurse.

Dad and Mum were at the TAB, so there was a relaxed atmosphere in the house. Val and Barb were at the kitchen table flicking through magazines and you and

I were sitting nearby, me reading a book, you resting.

Val and Barb were talking about a competition Val was planning to enter. It was called something like “Nurse of the Year,” and was a kind of beauty pageant for nurses. Val had been restricting calories for weeks already – she and Barb were always on some diet or other, although Barb was the only one who resorted to laxatives and the occasional vomit. It always stank up the toilet so I always tried to get in there before she did.

‘You should go with Revlon. They have some more Asian skin tones, like yours,’ Barb recommended, holding up a tester from a magazine against Val’s cheek.

Val’s skin was probably more Mediterranean than Asian, tanning like leather in the sun whilst Barb had inherited Dad’s tendency to burn lobster red as soon as

192 someone even suggested it looked like it was going to be a warm one. But this didn’t stop Barb from lying in the backyard next to Val, both in their bikinis, the bindies pricking them through the thin synthetic of their towels, turning over at the sound of the half-hour bell which the radio station played just for this purpose throughout the summer months. One time Barb actually fainted from sunstroke. She headed back out the next day.

Even Val’s skin, as brown as a burnt chop, would start to flake if the day had been especially hot. You and I used to gross each other out picking the dead cells from her back and seeing who could peel the longest strip of skin before it broke and we had to start again.

Val paused to review the swatch Barb held up. ‘Eurasian,’ she replied.

‘You’re Asian,’ Barb retorted.

‘No, I said Eurasian. As in “Europe” plus “Asia” equals “Eurasian”.’

“Eurasian”. I had a sudden sensation of homecoming to a word rather than a place. Do you remember, there was one other family at church like us – an Aussie dad, a

Japanese mum, a boy and a girl with pale skin, almond-shaped eyes and dark brown hair? We didn’t really know them socially, and when we got to the part of mass where we offered those around us the sign of peace the boy would consistently ignore us despite hissed reproaches and apologetic glances from his parents.

I didn’t mind. I understood. He didn’t want to be seen anywhere near us for fear that others might put two and two together and realise that he was Eurasian. It was a laughable self-deception but one I could empathise with, knowing how it felt to be asked to buddy with the new girl at school because she had just arrived from Hong

193 Kong, despite the fact that I had never been to China and spoke not a word of

Cantonese.

‘I’m going to dye my hair with some auburn highlights,’ Val added.

‘Good idea,’ Barb replied.

Ten months after we meet Evan and I buy a two-bedroom semi in Wollstonecraft, one of the inner north suburbs close to the harbour and work. It’s not the dream home yet he tells me, but it’s a peg in the market. We can manage the mortgage with our two incomes. I have enrolled to do my PhD part-time starting next year. We are entering stage one of the dream.

Except that I have not slept deeply or long enough since we moved to dream anything at all. I tell Evan that it is the stress of the move and planning a wedding.

And it is these things and something more. I feel like I am living someone else’s life and am just waiting for the cameras to swarm and for everyone to shout, Gotcha! The rare nights my eyes do twitch in REM sleep I wake up minutes later, shaking and sweating. My night-time mind is a cave of sheer inchoate redness and blackness, the silhouettes of horned beasts emerging from the shadows to leer and sneer and taunt me by almost, but not quite, showing their faces.

Angry red hives start to appear on my thighs. I used to get this rash when I was four years old. I pull out any rye grass near our new house, but still the welts bubble up on my skin like the last fetid breaths of a drowning man clawing his way back to the pond’s scum-ridden surface.

194 There is another name for REM sleep: ‘paradoxical sleep’. When dreaming, the brain acts in a way similar to when a person is awake. The anterior paralimbic

REM activation zone includes areas linked with emotion, memory, fear and sex. The key difference between waking and paradoxical sleeping is that the body is paralysed; you cannot run away from your dreams.

The night before the wedding I jerk awake, my pyjamas damp with perspiration although it is a lovely cool night in August.

Evan snuffles and half-wakes. He puts a hand on mine and I think he is going to say, ‘Go back to sleep,’ but instead he murmurs, ‘I’ll still love you if you’re having second thoughts.’

I say into the darkness, ‘There’s a difference between doubt and fear. Right now I’m experiencing a lot of fear.’

‘Hmm?’ He has opened his eyes now and is looking at me.

‘Doubt is where you aren’t sure. You know, “Is Evan the guy for me? Am I just marrying him because he asked me?”’ I stare at the ceiling and giggle in a poor attempt to take the edge off my words.

‘And fear?’

‘Fear is where you are just. Afraid.’

‘Of?’

‘Everything.’

I think he’s fallen back to sleep and am about to creep out of bed to my insomniac activities (surfing science websites, pacing, stress eating, making lists) when he lays an arm across my abdomen.

‘I guess when I feel like that,’ he draws me to him and whispers in my ear, ‘I think, why not be brave?’

195 Within minutes he is gently snoring. It takes me almost fifteen minutes of infinitesimally small manoeuvres, but I finally manage to slip out of his grasp.

The thing is, I have agreed to marry this man whose mind works in a way almost entirely foreign to me. His capacity for seeing things clearly and still delighting in them infuriates me. I see things clearly too, and what I see makes me wish I never opened my eyes.

The wedding is a blur of friendly faces and sunshine. When the celebrant asks me if I take Evan to be my husband, I watch her lips move and hear the anticipated words but my brain cannot seem to connect the two. The celebrant is tall and broad-shouldered and looks at me through her glasses, frowning slightly as if I am an errant student. I snap to attention and, looking at the celebrant, I say, ‘I do.’

When someone kisses me on the cheek, I smile. When someone tells me I am living the dream, I smile. When someone’s toddler drops chocolate cake on my

$4,000 wedding dress, I smile. Not because I have reached a state of Buddha-like serenity, but because I feel nothing. I am in a state beyond feeling. I am in a state of emotional shock.

The one thing I clearly remember from the ceremony is you.

On cue, you limp to the front of the group of guests without once looking at me. Mum has dressed you in a beautiful golden jacket and trouser suit and Trish has done your hair. You have a few grey strands emerging, but your skin is as soft and downy as when we were children playing “In the Future” with Brian.

When we were kids playing “In the Future,” you were always going to be a teacher or

196 a doctor; Brian a tennis star; and I an ice-cream van driver. Brian would pose above us with his killer serve ready to ignite Wimbledon as I tootled around your invisible classroom, humming the Mr Whippy melody and offering free sprinkles to your imaginary students.

You clear your throat. ‘If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels,’ you begin. I am standing directly behind you but I have to lean forward to hear the words.

You blink, look up. Stand up a little straighter.

‘If I speak in the tongues of men or of angels, but do not have love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and fathom— can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge,’ you declaim.

A beat passes. Two. Trish walks calmly up the aisle to your side and points to the page.

‘—and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but do not have love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and give over my body to hardship that I may boast, but have love, I gain nothing.’

You pause. ‘Sorry. But do not have love, I gain nothing.’ The guests release a collectively held breath.

‘Love is patient. Love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It does not dishonour others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.’

You look up. The guests all applaud. You nod graciously and walk back to your seat.

197 After a week of married life I decide I need a separate bedroom so I don’t keep waking my ‘husband’ with my insomnia. I remove myself to the spare room where I still have nightmares, but instead of dreaming of faceless monsters I wake up in the morning having witnessed Evan’s accidental crushing by a tractor; Evan’s accidental death by drowning; Evan’s accidental death from a train derailment. I wonder if this means I really do love him.

I just don’t know what love is supposed to feel like. Here is what I mostly feel: morbidly terrified that something is going to happen to him.

When we have sex I ask him to tell me that he loves me.

‘I love you,’ he mutters into my ear and I feel my vagina opening, letting him in. I respond to words; I try to believe in words; I cling to words because otherwise I am just a piece of meat and he is one of the monsters in my head, leering and jeering and taking advantage of my putrid flesh. I don’t think of this the whole time we make love. But I do think of it, every time.

Mum was always warning us against Chinese men, telling us that they drove flashy cars and took advantage of helpless girls. But that is not why I am leaving Evan. If anything, I am the one who took advantage of him, making him think he could have a normal, happy life with me when the whole time I knew, I knew that it was only a matter of time until I ruined everything.

198

I call you less often now that I am married, about once a week. Mum reports that your incontinence is getting worse, and she wakes you at 2 am to get to the loo in time but even with adult pads on it is frequently too late: your bladder retains the fluid from your brain until you relax in bed and then it all eases out and straight through the multiple bed protectors, the layered mattresses that make you sleep like the princess and the pea, no pun intended.

You no longer attend any of the activities which I and my sisters arranged for you in the days after Dad’s death. Mum takes you to the tavern with her instead.

While she bets on the races or plays the pokies, she sits you in front of a one-cent machine. This is Mum’s idea of social interaction for her disabled daughter. Do I sound bitter? I am. Do I sound judgmental? I am. Do I sound arrogantly superior, as if

I would have done a better job in her shoes? I am fairly sure I would have. Except that, of course, I didn’t, and that’s what really matters.

I call you and Mum for our weekly obligatory phone call. Mum answers. She sounds out of breath.

‘Annie just fell over. I got to go.’ She hangs up on me before I have a chance to say a word.

I call Val and ask her to call Mum and check if everything is all right. Ten minutes later Val calls me back.

I feel sick recounting this.

‘She forgot to hang up on me,’ Val says. ‘I could hear her yelling. Kicking her on the ground. “Move, you fat thing, move! Make me sick! Wish you were dead!” Val can do a fair impersonation of our mother; we all can. Besides, we had both heard

199 Mum say these words before. We just never thought we would hear them directed at you.

You are not even forty years old when the Disability Department moves you into an aged care facility. There are not enough group homes for young people with high care needs in the whole of the country.

I still wonder, if the government had given you a place in such a home years ago, when you could still walk and think relatively clearly, if things would have turned out differently for you? If Mum had not sabotaged all our attempts at giving you social outlets, respite care – in short, a life? Or if I had stayed?

I fly up to Brisbane to help with your move. You are sleepy during the car ride – the doctors prescribed something for the stress, I think. Val meets us at your room, wielding an Allen key. She has transformed the room with fairy lights, colourful blankets and IKEA furniture. We sit around and talk loudly about how bright and cheery it is, trying to leave no gaps in the conversation for hearing the screams of the residents of the closed ward down the corridor. At last it is time to go. Val leaves, taking Mum with her. I lean over you to kiss you good-bye.

“Don’t leave me here, Kathy,” you say. It is the first time I have heard you speak so clearly since I can’t remember when. You look me straight in the eye.

200 “I’ll be back soon to see you,” I lie. You close your eyes. Perhaps you are worn out.

When you finally wake up two days later you can no longer swallow or speak.

Evan contacts his former colleagues in the media, and we manage to get Val on to

Today Tonight. Barb kicks up a stink, saying she is older than Val so should take precedence, but by that logic Trish should have been the one to do it, I say, and that shuts her up. We ask Val instead of Trish, because Val is the friendliest, most likeable of the Bradleys, and yes, the whitest as well. For you Annie, we will play the game.

Val does an excellent job. She describes, in her broad Queensland drawl, the studio lighting picking up the red and chestnut accents in her hair, how you developed dysphagia after you were incorrectly prescribed a contra-indicated medication; how you are now languishing, along with an estimated 6,000 other young people with high care needs, in aged care.

The next day, you are bumped to the top of the waiting list for a coveted spot in a group home, but even so, a full year passes before you are moved to Mountainview

House. By then, the nursing home has nursed right out of you the little remaining strength you had. You can no longer move your hands, arms or head, which now tilts permanently to the right. A Pyrrhic victory, but a victory nonetheless. Unlike our mother, the government is vulnerable to what other people might think.

I acknowledge that I am being hard on Mum. But Annie, come on. There are so many things we tried to do for you over the years, and every single one of them our mother

201 sabotaged. Why? I don’t really know. Some were inconvenient for her, I guess; some would have meant depriving her of your pension; some were just about power.

Our mother expressed her love for you in these ways: making sure you were warm, dry, fed, clothed, clean; making sure you had what our mother considered entertainment: TV, radio, a puzzle book always in front of you, even though you were no longer capable of doing puzzles. She sometimes abused you. She sometimes thwarted efforts to make you happy. But here is the clincher: Mum was what you always wanted.

Did you give up the fight in 1983, deciding then and there that remaining with

Mum was going to be easier than trying to leave her, internalising the lessons of our sisters’ desperate attempts at flight? Or did you do the opposite: did you make the noblest sacrifice of all, enabling us to leave because you stayed behind? Here I go again with my magical thinking, pretending to myself that you had a say in your own cancer. Bad luck can look like poetry from a distance of almost thirty years.

202 2

It is 2008 and you have been living in Mountainview House for four months when

Evan asks me if I think it is time to start trying. I knew this would come. It’s not that I don’t want children but I am shit-scared – I believe that is the technical term – of making them out of my body. Flesh of my flesh. Wound of my wound. But I am almost thirty and, rationally speaking, the chances of something going wrong will only get worse the longer we wait. You know me, always deferring to the data. Three months after I stop taking the pill, I pee on a stick and conjure two blue lines. Like the day that we married, all I feel is shock and terror. Are they also two of the faces of love?

I start making lists. I convince Evan that we need to exchange his car for a

Subaru wagon, because it has the highest star rating on the National Child Safety

Register. I import an Infant First Choice capsule from Italy because it is the safest one to be had for love or money – quite a bit of money. I order a sensor monitor for the crib so I will know if the baby stops breathing. I buy a double breast pump in case I have trouble getting my milk to come down. I order a 100 per cent merino wool blanket, six 100 per cent organic cotton muslin wraps, five 100 per cent soft cotton onesies in 0000 as well as five in 00000, in case the baby is premmie. I buy a Baby

Björn carrier so I can hold my baby against my heartbeat, which the research says will send it to sleep, dreaming of the womb.

At the twelve-week ultrasound, we hear our little baby’s heart pitter-pattering like a soul that has strapped on tap shoes to dance towards life. The radiologist smiles at us and we grin at each other in awe of our powers of creation.

203 Two weeks later I am in a hire car, on my way to visit you at Mountainview.

Mountainview House is a forty-minute drive along the Logan Motorway, a nice bit of road, as Dad would have said. Brisbane is interlaced with freeways and toll roads, encircled by arterial roads. When I first moved to Sydney I could not understand directions. People used street names rather than motorway exit numbers.

Mountainview is a group home for high-care young people. It has airy rooms, plenty of space for wheelchairs, and is decked out with all the mod cons, like hoists and accessible showers. I like visiting you here: it is a paradise compared to the aged- care facility you were in before you got a place here. I say hello to Marcia, a tall

Sudanese woman, one of your carers.

‘She’s having a rest,’ Marcia says. ‘You sit with her. She would like that.’

I pull up a stool next to you. You are dozing in the fancy wheelchair Val sourced for you.

I sit next to you, one hand in my lap holding my book, one hand in yours. I read out loud to you like I used to do when you were sick in hospital and I still believed the next operation would fix everything. Occasionally I try to see if I can wake you up, but when that doesn’t work I return to my reading. I assume that you will know I have been with you because I feel so very much there. I hesitate, then lean over and whisper into your ear, ‘Annie. I want you to be the first to know. I’m going to have a baby.’

You’re the only Bradley I told. I didn’t want my baby to become the public property of the Bradleys, the thing our siblings talked to me about at family gatherings because

204 we had nothing else in common but our ability to procreate. In the end I made the right decision, because I failed at even that most basic Bradley skill. A month after I visited you at Mountainview for the last time, I wasn’t pregnant any more. I can just picture you looking around as if you had misplaced your glasses. Where’s the baby then, Kathy? Where?

I am standing at the kitchen sink in the staff room, making a cup of tea. I am thinking about a report I have to finish by the end of the day. I am parsing grammar when my waters break and the fluid keeping my baby alive leaks out of me.

She was a girl, Annie; she was a little girl.

They explain my options. They offer to take photos in case I don’t want to see it afterwards. They artificially induce labour six hours after I first felt the gush of water between my legs. It turns out that humans are mere fish living on land. We carry the primeval ocean with us, just to survive.

I feel the contractions crash through my body like waves smashing the hull of a leaky boat. The doctors have hooked me up on one side to a morphine drip, on the other to Syntocinon. Syntocinon bypasses all the pleasantries of mild contractions and

205 takes a woman straight to labour. It is an artificial version of oxytocin, the molecule which humans produce when they love; the molecule with which mothers perfume the air of a birthing suite.

The induced contractions splice me in two, but I refuse to press down on the morphine drip. The pain is a form of justice. It is all I have as proof.

‘One last, big push!’ the midwife urges. My mind is numb, my body has taken over in a dance I did not even know I knew the steps to. I push with all my remaining strength. I want everything inside of me to fall out with her: my guts, my blood and all my history. I want to be completely empty.

Evan stands next to the midwife. The midwife hands him a wee bundle wrapped in a pink flannelette blanket. Tears stream down his face. The only other time I have seen him cry, I think irrelevantly, was on the day we married.

‘She’s beautiful,’ he says to me. ‘She’s got your little nose.’ I reach out and he places her in my arms. ‘Joy,’ I whisper to her. ‘It’s all right. Mama’s got you now.’

They put me in a private room. It is the first time I’ve been a patient in a hospital, not a visitor. At last, Annie, my time to shine.

They let me have her next to me in the cold crib for three days. No one rushes me. I am allowed to hold her, then put her back, then hold her again. My little baby, my tiny little girl. She does not cry. She does not make a sound.

After the procedure, the hospital gives Evan and me a letter which states, ‘This is to certify that Joy Sang-lian Bradley-Lee was born without signs of life before 24 weeks.’ This letter is more valuable than gold. I keep it close to my chest, which aches from the milk no baby will ever drink. This letter is what will allow us to bury

206 her, rather than have her treated as waste from a medical procedure and destroyed by the hospital along with the cancerous tumours and infected appendices of Sydney’s inner north.

It’s a shining spring day when Evan and I arrive at the Garden of

Remembrance. Evan comes around to my side of the car and opens my door for me.

He takes my hand and we walk towards the small chapel.

A funeral director is there to greet us. She shakes our hands and leads us inside. On a table at the front of the chapel is a little white coffin. Inside lies our girl.

She is the colour of marble. Her eyes are closed although she is not sleeping. I reach in and lift her out of the box. She is cold but still soft. I kiss her little cheek and it feels like skin rather than the stretched-out icicle that the morticians turned our father into for his funeral. This is what I wanted. This is how I wanted it to be.

Evan and I say the things we came to say. I don’t want to put her back in the box. Evan doesn’t make me. He takes a turn holding her, murmuring words to her that are between a father and his daughter.

It’s time. I hold out my arms and Evan hands her back to me. I place her back on the satin cushions of her little resting place and then I close the lid.

I want her buried, not like Dad, who wanted to be cremated, and not like you, either, whom the family has agreed should also be burnt, your ashes interred next to him. I wanted my little girl to return to the earth, to become soil and plant and some other form of the life that I could not give her.

The smell of freshly turned dirt fills my nostrils, redolent of spring and flowers and new life. Joy’s plot is in the middle, with room for us to go either side of her when the time comes. The undertakers lower her into the ground. Evan and I place

207 flowers on top of the wee box. The men wait with heads bowed for us to finish. Then they refill the hole with the waiting earth.

That night as I lie in bed, the doctor’s words play over and over again in my mind. A chromosomal abnormality. Not my fault. When she said this to me I had nodded, because that is what we Bradleys have always done when doctors lie to our faces.

I drift off to sleep.

I am standing in a dark place, walls pounding with blood. Something lies on the ground. I go to pick it up. It is a small bundle covered in long, bedraggled black hair. I can’t see its face. It snarls at me, scratches me until blood slides from gashes in my arms.

I wake with a start. I am sweating and my lower abdomen feels like needles are sticking into it. I try not to fall back to sleep, but the sedatives take me under. Each time I close my eyes I see her, a little version of me. Each time she tries to gouge out a piece of me, leering at me with such utter disgust that I feel like I am a bin for contaminated sharps, a receptacle for the waste of bodies more important than mine, more worthy of life.

Although I wake before dawn, I remain in bed until I can be sure that Evan has gone to work, then I get up, open the fridge. There is nothing to eat but dust and ashes. I turn on the TV. Nothing but grey, grey, grey. I think about tomorrow. I think about the day after that.

I get in the car and drive. I do not come home until I have the prescriptions.

208 Don’t worry Annie, I won’t do it here. I know how terrible it is to be the finder of the body, and I would never want to put the big kids through that, not even Barb. Besides which, the bureaucratic procedures for transferring a body interstate would be a nightmare and I wouldn’t inflict the paperwork on anyone I loved.

Much easier to drive back to Sydney after your funeral, where I will head straight out to the Garden of Remembrance. I have my ID, my briefcase with all my papers and instructions in a sealed bag so the moist ground will only affect me and not my documents. It might be hard on Evan for a little while, but he will move on. It will all make a certain kind of sense.

I’ve made a number of very detailed calculations, some of them using weighted variables, and I really believe that he will be better off without me. People say this, but I can categorically say that he deserves better than what I can give.

I realise you wouldn’t approve, but Annie, I’m tired. I am so tired. Before I got the call from Trish, I had it all planned. You and your dying, endlessly getting in the way of my business. But it’s all right; I’ve still got the pills. I have researched the dosage I need for my body weight. I have tested my sensitivity to a range of sleeping pills and chosen the one that knocked me out the longest and hardest. Before I left

Sydney, I used a smoothie blender, one of our wedding presents from Evan’s side of the family, to crush the pills into to a fine white powder, which will increase absorption and efficacy by up to 14%.

I also have a back-up plan in case the pills don’t work. My work in OH&S risk management has taught me one thing: even the best plans can go awry. Remember when I was four, and I kept getting that awful rash? Dad said it was an allergy to bee stings. I have stayed away from clover my whole life, in case I got a sting which would send me into anaphylactic shock, making the back of my throat swell to the

209 point where it would block my trachea, slowly asphyxiating me. In Sydney we have had a relatively cool, moist summer, which means that the white clover I planted on

Joy’s grave has come along nicely.

You know, I understand your urge to have babies. There used to be a part of me that wanted children too. I was terrified of the idea, and it turned out that I was right to be scared. I should have embraced my fears, my completely rational fears. I won’t make the same mistake again.

It’s a week since we buried our baby and a day since I planted the clover. As I wait for the flowers to bud I start a new routine. I am not supposed to do strenuous exercise, so I take the state-of-the-art stroller and put its sun shield down. I walk to the Garden of Remembrance. Sometimes I sing a lullaby, sometimes I talk, but most of the time I just lie next to my budding patch of clover. I wonder about how much her little bones had decayed, and which worms have been lucky enough to nibble at her little toes. This may sound morbid, but to me it does not feel especially melancholy. It’s the closest I come to feeling at peace. Other mothers watch for first tooth, first step. I just have a different set of milestones.

On Mondays, after my visit to the Garden, I push the stroller to the local playground, where I see other 30-something year old mums sitting on the bench, pushing their prams to and fro with one hand whilst sipping from takeaway decaf

210 lattés in the other. I find a group on Facebook for mothers with social anxiety, and I go to their weekly meet-ups on Fridays. It’s perfect, because no one forces you into inane conversation like, how much does she weigh, or how much weight has she put on this week? Honestly Annie, infancy is the only time in a girl’s life when their success is determined by actually getting fatter. Thursdays I go to a local café where mums ‘n’ bubs converge at 11.05 am after clinic. I nurse a pot of peppermint tea because lactating mothers avoid caffeine. I sit in the courtyard so I can see them but they can’t see me, and I keep my laptop with me so they will assume I am one of those irritating executive mums. This serves the double purpose of preventing small talk and gives them something to bond over if they run out of amusing anecdotes about the colour of the babies’ poo.

Tuesdays there is story-time at the library, during which I browse the nonfiction large-print books, pushing the pram to and fro in that universal sign that the resident baby is sleeping, and surreptitiously observe the babies like fat little emperors planted on their mothers’ laps. Wednesdays I have to hustle to get from the Garden back to Waverton Park for yoga, where I can walk the circumference of the park sixteen times in my post-pregnancy activewear, while the mums do cats’ stretches with babies in their arms.

On the Monday before you die it is raining lightly, which is good for my clover. I have just checked on it and it is doing beautifully, the green heads on the verge of budding. I consider heading straight home from the Garden because of the weather, but when I pass the playground I can see a blonde woman carrying a baby, huddled under the Port Jackson fig tree. A toddler in a bright green raincoat gleefully splashes in puddles. The sight of this makes me stop for a moment. This is my undoing.

211 ‘We’re the only brave ones today!’ the woman calls and raises her keep cup to me in a gesture of solidarity. ‘Come stand with us, there’s loads of room.’

I make the universal hand gesture for no, I don’t want to trouble you, but the toddler has spotted me and she runs over in her over-sized purple gum boots.

‘Come see my, my, my mermaid castle!’ she says, tugging at my hand.

‘Mermaid castle,’ the woman says, shaking her head and laughing.

I try to smile politely at the same time as extracting myself from the little girl’s moist grasp, but I pull too hard and, like a Christmas cracker popping, the toddler lands on her bottom in the wet sand. She immediately starts to cry.

‘Oh my God, I’m so sorry!’ I exclaim.

The woman reassures me. ‘Don’t worry, it’s fine. She’s probably just hungry.’

I lean down to restore the toddler to her feet but as soon as I lay a hand on her, she bawls even louder.

‘Mu-u-u-u-ummmy! I want Mu-u-u-u-u-ummmy!’

‘Oh, it’s not you,’ the woman apologises. ‘She’s been like this since,’ the woman indicates the baby in her arms, ‘this one came along. Can you just take her for a minute? I better pick her up.’

Before I can protest, the woman has placed the baby in my arms. I drop my keep cup on the ground so as to have two hands for jiggling the baby up and down, up and down. The other mother squats and picks up the toddler in a smooth, strong sweep. The toddler’s tears start to subside.

‘Are you hungry darling?’

The toddler nods, her sandy thumb making its way into her mouth. The woman peers inside the bag on the back of her stroller.

212 ‘Oh, bugger,’ she swears. ‘I forgot to pack the crackers.’ At this, the toddler re- commences wailing.

‘God, can you just – hold – Vera while I run to the café and grab some banana bread?’

Before I can offer to run over and get it for her myself, she is shouting thanks over her shoulder and hitching the toddler further up on her hip. Do mothers really do this? I wonder, stunned. How can they be so trusting?

Just at that moment, Vera wakes up and starts to grizzle. I sway from side to side, but she opens her little mouth to let out a proper bawl. The woman will wonder why I can’t handle a baby. I panic. I raise the rain shield over the pram and place the baby inside, then start to push the pram to and fro. Vera immediately stops crying. She is contemplating the dangling toys I attached to the pram more than a month ago. She swipes at the Lamaze rattle, and coos at Sophie the giraffe. When I peer in to see that she is all right, her face breaks open into a smile.

There is still no sign of the woman. The rain starts coming down even harder. I draw the shield over Vera and start walking. I am 50 metres from our apartment when a blue and white police car pulls up in front of me, another behind me, and another alongside of me, red and blue lights flashing. The woman shrieks from the back seat.

‘That’s her! The Chinese one! She stole my baby!’

I look around, curious to see the Chinese woman who has kidnapped a child.

Then I look up and see where I am and what I have done. I lift my hands from the pram and get in the back of the police vehicle without so much as a murmur.

‘I was never planning to steal her,’ I say to the policewoman who has climbed in next to me. She shakes her head and begins to reads me my rights. I just need to be

213 near them, I want to explain. I just need to catch a whiff of them from time to time. I need to know that they exist. If they stop existing, so will I.

Evan spends more than an hour speaking in a low voice to the mother and the police officers who apprehended me while the baby snuggles against her mother and the toddler plays in the corner with the station’s Fisher and Price play kitchen set. After half a Styrofoam cup of tea, the woman agrees not to press charges. The policewoman waits a decent interval after the mother has left with her children before signing me out.

When I emerge from the cell Evan envelopes me in a hug. I start to sweat but he doesn’t seem to notice, keeping his arms firmly around me as if I am a balloon and he is afraid I will float away and kill some poor unsuspecting marine animal.

The same policewoman who arrested me now offers to give me a lift home so

Evan can duck back to work and pick up a laptop. He has told the office that he will be working from home for the next week, possibly two. By the time we leave the station, it is early afternoon and the sun has emerged from behind the clouds, the drenched stroller the only proof that it had ever rained.

‘We’re going to get through this together,’ Evan says, finally taking his arm from around my shoulders, but only in order to squeeze my hands.

‘Where’s the pram?’ I ask.

Evan’s eyes flick towards the policewoman. ‘The police are going to drop it off a Vinnies for us,’ he says. ‘We can always get another one, further down the track.’

Before I can climb into the police car, this time into the front passenger seat,

Evan cradles my face, gently but inexorably forcing me to look at him.

‘I love you,’ he says. ‘You’re not alone in this. We’ll make a plan.’

214 I nod because I already have a plan.

The policewoman sees me to my door where she hands me a pamphlet for a counselling service. After she leaves, I head into the kitchen and fetch the smoothie blender from the pots and pans cupboard where it jostles with the other wedding presents we have never used. When I have finished blending up the pills, I wash and dry the blender and put it back in the cupboard. Next to the smoothie blender stands a bread maker still in its box; a cake mixer; even a churn for making ice cream. How did I ever think I was qualified to create a family, a home? I know where I belong, and it was never here.

I pull into the Garden carpark. There is the distinct sound of buzzing and I count five furry little honey bees, hovering above the grave. I lie back on the grass.

There is a stinging sensation on the side of my neck, then another. I almost cry, not from pain, but relief.

I sit up to open the container when I detect a different buzzing, a more insistent, mechanical tone. I ignore it. It rings again. I ignore it again. It keeps ringing.

The next time it rings, I can’t resist the old familiar anxiety and I answer.

It’s the call I have been waiting for since 1983.

‘’This is it,’ Val says. ‘Come quickly.’

I drive up the A1 for eleven hours, stopping only for petrol and pee breaks. When I get to the hospital I walk to the medical wing before realising my mistake and retracing my steps until I find the palliative care unit. Trish and Barb are sitting on either side of you. I knew what to expect but I am still shocked to see your face is already purple.

215 ‘Can you please leave the room? I want a minute alone with Annie.’

Barb clearly wants to protest but Trish shushes her and leads her out into the hallway.

Now it is me and you, just like it always used to be.

I sit next to your violet face. ‘Annie,’ I say. I touch you and hug your soft, still warm self to myself.

I hold your hand. I make my voice sound stronger than I feel. I have tried to never lie to you Annie, so I cross my fingers like we did when we were kids, pretending we had not eaten the last of the hot chips, as I whisper in your ear, ‘You can go now, if you want to, Annie. I’m going to be all right.’

I let Trish and Barb come back in. Three minutes later, you open your eyes.

You look vaguely confused.

‘A seizure?’ I ask Trish.

‘This is not a seizure,’ she replies.

‘It’s OK, honey, it’s all right,’ I say. I stand on one side of you and Trish stands on the other, your biggest sister and your littlest holding your hands, forming a protective tent over you with our bodies and words.

‘We’re here Annie. We love you.’

You close your eyes. Trish looks at me. ‘Is she?’ I nod.

Barb is standing although I don’t remember her getting up. Trish fetches a nurse to confirm what we know. He puts a stethoscope to your chest, waits a moment, then stares out the door as if something more important has caught his attention.

‘Yeah, she’s gone,’ he says and walks out.

All this time Barb has been saying, ‘Oh my God, is she, Kathy? Is she really?

Is she gone? Oh my God,’ and all I can hear is a woman fifteen years older than me

216 trying to feel something real. I keep saying to her, ‘Shh, Barb, her spirit is still in the room. Be quiet, shh,’ and then Trish has the much better idea of getting Barb to go outside and call our mother.

‘She waited for me,’ I say to Trish, who replies, ‘Yes, she did’, and then I cry on her shoulder, and I hold your hand for the next hour, keeping it soft and warm for as long as I can.

Val whimpers when she sees you, kisses you and puts some make-up on you so Mum isn’t too startled when she arrives. Val may have done too good a job; when

Mum arrives, she pushes her way to the bedside and shouts, ‘Annie? Annie! It’s

Mum.’

When Annie doesn’t respond, Mum looks accusingly at the six of us aligned on the opposite side of the hospital bed: Trish, Barb, Val, Bev, Brian and me. Six pairs of identical brown eyes staring at her with varying levels of sympathy. Six pairs of glasses glinting at her, reflecting her own stubborn face. Six mouths shut without even being told.

‘Mum, she’s gone,’ Trish, the eldest, speaks first.

‘Were you here?’ Mum demands.

‘Yes Mum. Trish, Barb and I were here when she died,’ I say. Barb startles, then nods. Mum flicks her beady eyes from one daughter to the other. She is so small, this

80-year old lady. In her chair next to your head, she looks like a confused old woman.

Then she leans forward suddenly and taps your cheek. If we weren’t here, she would probably pinch it. The flesh of your face yields, then returns to its former place.

Mum sits back, stunned that you have really gone and done it this time. A priest arrives and we say a decade of the rosary, and then, after all these years of waiting and hoping and pacing hospital hallways, there is nothing left to do but leave.

217 The Bradleys file out one by one. Barb leaves, making excuses about needing to turn off the oven. Brian has a long drive to the Gold Coast so Bev offers to take Mum home and sit with her. This leaves Trish, Val and me to sit with you.

We talk about Barb. It is lucky at times like these to have a Barb in the family.

As we talk, I keep my wishes small and relevant to the task at hand. I do not wish you had never got sick. I do not wish you had never died, although of course I wish that. I wish for you to leave us as if you are drifting off to sleep on yet another night in yet another hospital, to the rise and fall of sisterly conversation.

‘By the way,’ Trish says, looking at me with her doctor’s critical gaze, ‘What did you do there?’

I raise my hand to my neck where she is pointing and wince. Driving through the night, I had felt a throbbing ache in my neck but had not stopped to wonder why I was still breathing.

‘I got stung,’ I reply, fingering the welts.

‘You should take an anti-histamine,’ Trish says.

Val rummages in her purse and hands me a blister pack of Telfast. ‘Mothers,’ she smiles through her tears. ‘We’ve got the solutions to all the world’s problems somewhere at the bottom of our handbags.’

Soon enough, we must leave you behind because they need your bed for someone else to die in. I remind myself that you spent much of your life in hospitals, so perhaps being left alone tonight is not as awful as it would have been otherwise. Perhaps it is a familiar sensation for you; the comedown after the last visitor has left, alone at last among the beeping devices and the shuffle of rubber-soled nurses’ shoes. This may

218 not seem like something to draw much comfort from. But as with my wishes, at times like these I try to keep my comforts small and relevant to the task at hand.

Even though your death is not about me, the thing that happens next is. But it’s also about you, because it might be the final piece in the puzzle of how we got here, you in your white cardboard box and me in my car with a box full of powder and a family of bees tracing my name in the twilit Sydney sky.

I am the last of my sisters to leave Logan Hospital. I’m walking down the corridor, itching my neck, when an elderly patient hobbles past me, pushing a Zimmer frame.

‘There’s a fire, a fire is coming! Look out!’ he says to me, steaming past in a cloud of

Old Spice and urine. A nurse is soon holding him by the elbow. She is cajoling and whispering to him when instead of the hunched old man, I see our father.

I have this memory in my viscera. The light has an orange cast to it, like the inside of a stomach or a womb or a vagina, or my parents’ room with the red lampshade covering the overhead light.

There is Dad, touching me in a way a father should never, ever touch his child.

I do not see him so much smell him. Old Spice. The smell of safe harbour.

I think, This is my fault.

I think, I want this. Because I want to be loved and this is what you do for love.

The knowledge that it was Dad sinks seamlessly into my soul like a key fitting an oiled lock. I thought I would feel triumphant or destroyed, but when the knowledge

219 finally comes all I feel is a tired sort of disappointment. Oh Dad, I think, shaking my head.

Back in the car, I regard the Tupperware container. Even though I have been awake for more than twenty-four hours straight, I know I will not be able to get sleep.

But I will not take any of the powder. If I cannot trust the bees, I definitely cannot afford to dilute the powder’s efficacy by a single milligram when the time comes.

220 3

I have to take the statuette, the holy water and the crucifix to Val’s tomorrow because she is in charge of the decorations. I park not far from Val’s place and try to get some sleep. She and her family own a house on the Brisbane River, which is just as brown as the Logan River of our childhood, but real estate is about ten times more expensive. My legs are covered in hives which I scratch until I draw blood, even though no bees could have got into my car overnight. These are the same hives I had in 1983, the same ones I got after that night at Lachie’s. Based on the evidence, I have to conclude that I was never allergic to bees. Back in 1983, it appears that I would have been safe from harm, playing in the clover with you.

When I get to Val’s I find her seated amidst a sea of photos. She is holding one of you and Dad, circa 1985, two years after the diagnosis, so one year after you were already supposed to be dead. You are dancing together, you in your white lace confirmation dress, Dad in his good safari suit. He is holding your bad arm gently.

You are both smiling at the camera.

I take a sip of my tea. I think of Bev and her flight from Brisbane. I think of

Val and her 1983 disappearance. I need to tell at least one Bradley about what happened, in case – well, in case anyone else in the family needs the reassurance of knowledge.

‘Oh Dad,’ she says after I have finished. I can’t help but smile at how exactly she has echoed my own sentiment. She places her mug carefully on the coaster and after a minute, she looks at me as if she has decided something.

‘You know how you told me that you argued with him the night before he died?’ Val asks. I nod slowly, unsure where this is going.

221 ‘Well, when I got there, there was a mess of pills by his bed. I just gathered them up and threw them out.’ She looks at her hands. I blow on my hot cup and the vapour fogs up my glasses.

‘I didn’t want you thinking it was your fault.’

I stand although I have not finished my tea.

‘It’s been a long day,’ I say. ‘I’d better go.’

‘Hotels can be so impersonal. I can make up the spare bed in the music room for you and Evan,’ she offers. I shake my head.

‘By the way,’ she says, watching my face closely, ‘Evan called me. He didn’t seem to know that Annie had died.’

‘I wanted to process it myself first,’ I reply. ‘I wanted it to be just me and

Annie for a little longer.’ Val’s eyes fill with tears and she waves me away as I walk to the car. I would not be much of a Bradley if I could not lie at a time like this.

On my last visit to you at Mountainview I pressed your hand. I checked your eyes to see if you might open them and see me. I smiled at the professional carers and made myself cups of tea. When they weren’t looking, I took photos of you on my phone.

‘Annie enjoying my scintillating company.’ ‘Annie laughing at my hilarious jokes.’

‘Annie exchanging droll observations with me about the other residents.’ I was going to send them to Val and Brian, but then I thought they might not get the joke.

Two weeks later you look just as you did in those photos, except that you are dead. I don’t feel guilty about taking the pictures, because I think you would have

222 laughed. If you could have, you would have opened your eyes, shaken your head at me and laughed.

Of course I’ll never know if that’s true. But now when I look at the photos, I draw comfort from them. That’s my Annie, I think fondly. That’s my Annie, sleeping through what turned out to be my last visit to you in the world of the living. That’s my

Annie, my sleeping beauty, my sister enjoying her rest even as I sit, supplicant at your side, wanting and not wanting to disturb you. Good for you, Annie. That’s what I think, along with something without words, the closest approximation of which is that

I am proud of you. Forget the world’s expectations of confessions and profound realisations, of solutions, as if people were problems to be solved. You sleep, Annie, if you want to. You just enjoy your sleep.

Your funeral is tomorrow and I still have nothing but a flashing cursor and a passel of fragmented memories. I will keep my Mum company tonight and chauffeur her to the funeral. Then, after the wake at Brian’s place, I will drive back to that other Garden of

Remembrance where Joy is waiting for me.

I pick up Mum and take her to the Hyperdome, to Mermaids, her usual hairdresser where they accept walk-ins. Our mother does not like appointments. She has never had the patience to wait. All the girls who work there look young enough to be our mother’s grandchildren. I have a word with the brunette at the counter. ‘My

Mum is getting her hair done for my sister’s funeral. She’s a bit fragile, so please take good care of her.’

223 I make sure I speak loudly enough for Mum to hear, so she knows that she does not have to explain, and that she knows that I am looking after her. Mum sits down, smiling at the blonde girl who puts a towel around her neck and tips Mum’s head back over the basin. How often has our mother been touched by other humans, I wonder, since you went into aged care? I pat her on the shoulder and tell her I will be back when she is done.

In a third-year university subject entitled Mental Health and Ageing, the lecturer told us that there are three reasons an elderly person ends up in aged care: mad, bad or sad. Mad explains itself. Bad – they have a fall and can no longer take care of themselves, their bones too brittle to heal. Sad – they are too depressed to bother eating any more. Since you were moved out of her house, Mum has not eaten a meal that couldn’t be heated up in the microwave. I head to the grocery store and buy frozen dinners, family-size boxes of breakfast cereal, ring-pull cans of tuna and UHT milk. I make sure to pack it all into two bags, so it does not look like I have gone overboard. The last time I bought Mum groceries, she said thank you in the same breath as asking me for cash. I stop at the printers and pick up the box I ordered, dropping my purchases back to the car before returning to the salon.

When I get there Mum is ready. Her hair looks neat and slightly reddish from a rinse, because at eighty, hair is too brittle for dyes. I hand over the cash and Mum tells the girl, whom she is now fast friends with, ‘This my daughter. She here from

Sydney.’ My mum has made a habit of introducing me thus to people in taverns and

TABs throughout south-east Queensland. You used to tell me it was because Mum was proud of me. You always saw the best in everyone.

We return to her house, where Mum unlocks the door and ushers me inside.

She fetches a bowl and clears a space among the newspapers on the dining room table

224 for me to eat my noodles. Afterwards I find a spot on the couch. I know where to sit without making our mother fidgety: at the eastern end of the Queen Anne replica sofa, where Mum’s piles of newspapers and cushions thin to a penetrable depth.

The other couch has been permanently extended into a sofa bed where my

Mum reclines during the day, before limping upstairs to her bedroom at around 8 pm every night. She has two televisions downstairs: one set to free-to-air and the other on

Foxtel. For a while she experimented with three TVs simultaneously, but that was too much even for her. Of course she has the radio on, set to the races station.

I focus on the free-to-air TV, which is screening a competition called The

Voice, a show about ordinary people singing and professionals judging them on their voice only. I never watch these shows unless I am at Mum’s. As I relax into the cushions, I feel as though I am sinking into a familiar and not unpleasant somnolence.

Mum and I chat about who we think should win, who is doing well. Mum even puts the show on the big TV for me between ads and fetches me a cup of tea. She peers in the cupboard, trying to find something to offer me to eat although the shelves bear only the things I had bought. My Mum has always been a feeder, a giver of gifts. She resented shelling out money for school excursions, but if she had a win on the horses she was magnanimous in her temporary wealth, buying me new clothes and jewellery which I never wore.

Here is the acquittal, then, the reckoning of sums: our mother fed, bathed and clothed me. Our mother would literally give me the shirt off her back if she thought I needed it. What is that if not love?

Our mother called me a lying bitch and told me she wished I was dead. She made me sleep in my own shit and made me kneel for my sins. What is that, if not hate?

225 When I met Evan I did not feel love at first sight. I don’t even know what that means. What does love feel like, exactly? When I contemplated you, I felt distress and despair because I could not fix things for you. When I agreed to marry Evan, what I felt was not fairy lights or angels singing but a deep-seated sense of certainty, as if a hundred doors were slamming closed in my face, leaving just one way out.

Mum starts to nod off and I give her a kiss goodnight. ‘OK, An— Kathy, OK,’

Mum says, pretending she has not been asleep. She lumbers up the stairs, careful to avoid the piles of clothes stacked there. The entire house is one giant fall hazard, but there is also a kind of sense to it: if Mum were to stumble, her accumulated mess would break the fall.

She shows me into your old room. Your bed has three mattresses piled on top of each other and I have to find just the right spot on top so I don’t slide off. After

Mum goes to her room I switch on my computer. It’s now or never.

I thought I would feel upset being in your room, but mostly I feel at home. I make a tour of your small library, which comprises just two shelves next to the bed.

People stopped giving you books after you got sick, so the small collection includes only the old familiars: Black Beauty, Trixie Belden, Enid Blyton, the Bible. I open this last for inspiration and come across your handwriting on the pages where a person can write in their family’s names. There we all are, the Bradleys, memorialised in your childish hand: Matthew, Trish, Barb, Val, Bev, Brian, Annie and Kathy.

Then there are other names which I don’t recognise until with a sinking feeling

I do: they are the names you used to recite in your dementia: Annie Bradley, married to Jeremy Wood, children Michael, Azrael and Gabriel, angels one and all. I laugh a little at myself for being surprised, and then I take a pen and add my own sweet

226 baby’s name to your list. I close my laptop with its accusatory blank screen and reach for the phone.

227

Part 6: Closing

This is the end of the eulogy. Try to leave mourners with a sense of hope. You may like to select a suitable quote which sums up your message. How to Write a Eulogy

228

The day of your funeral is a beautiful, sunny Queensland winter day. I don’t need the cardigan I brought with me but I make Mum wear one because she feels the cold in her old age. My rash is gone: I took more of Val’s anti-histamines and it cleared right up.

Mum and I are decked out in pink: your favourite colour. You were the pink one, I was the blue. That’s how it was. But for you, Annie, on your special day, I’ll do what you want.

I drive my Mum to the church. The family gathers before the ceremony so we can say our last goodbyes. Val has brought textas so we can scribble our farewells on your coffin, which looks amazing. Magenta and fuchsia flowers adorn the cardboard box. Val has glued a crucifix to the top and attached some of your own drawings along the sides of the casket. I write a message on one side and I can’t stop kissing the box and kissing my hand to the box.

Inside the casket, you look 100 per cent dead. Your skin is frozen from the inside, just like Dad’s was. The morticians have applied light make-up to give a hint of pink to your cheeks. The clothes that Val chose for you have been somehow glued to your body. I place the crucifix around your neck. Val asks me if I am going to want it back but I shake my head.

You are not wearing glasses because your eyes are shut so I put them in the casket beside you. How will you know where you are going without them? Someone else, probably Val, has placed rosary beads in your hands. I gather up your scapulars and slip them in beside you. It feels like an intimate holiness, a secret between you and me.

229 The church fills up with people who knew you when you were a kid at primary school. People I have not seen in twenty years come up to me, in shock and wonder, weeping for you: wonder that we all still exist and are all grown so old together, and shock that you, the terminally ill child who grew up, has actually died this time. I never really believed it would happen either.

We take our seats and the priest commences the service. Your friends and your sisters Barb and Bev read out the prayers of the faithful. Barb simpers and looks as holy as she can. Bev mumbles through her prayers, trying not to open her mouth too wide, forgetting she has good teeth now. She got dentures fitted with the insurance money, along with the golden car and the bling. Good for her. I hope she enjoys them.

Trish, Brian and I approach the lectern. Trish is first, her mellifluous doctor voice projecting across the church with an anecdote about you as a bossy little sister who had the nerve to tell Doctor D what to do. She gets a few sympathetic laughs.

Brian is next and he tells the chronological tale of your life and death. I have been through his speech with him and I am glad he decided to do it. It is right to hear the story from beginning to end. If not now, then when?

It is my turn. I have stood at this pulpit before, when I read out the eulogy at

Dad’s funeral. I look down at your mourners and have a memory of returning from the pulpit to the pew. When I sat down I heard an animal howl as if the moon had disappeared forever. Mum handed me a tissue, her own eyes red-rimmed, and you,

Annie, you put your arm around me. ‘Shh, Kathy,’ you said. ‘Shh, now.’

I view the crowd and mentally calculate that we didn’t print enough brochures.

Look at all of these people, I think. Annie, you were loved. You loved and you were loved.

230 ‘A few housekeeping matters,’ I pull back from the microphone, which has just turned my s’s into the hisses of a bingo caller.

‘It says on your brochures that after this we will be heading to the Loganholme

Garden of Remembrance. There has been a last minute change of plans. Annie’s body will be taken to Yeronga Memorial Garden and interred with Jeremy Wood. You might not have known this, but Annie and Jeremy were in love.’

There is a murmur from the crowd, and Brian half stands as if he is about to pull me away from the microphone. I grip the lectern more firmly.

‘I loved Annie. She was a part of me, and she always will be.’ My brother relaxes. This is more like it, he must be thinking.

‘It’s not what you want me to say, but Annie was sometimes really annoying.’

A gasp from the faithful.

‘Before she developed dementia, she would talk to herself all the time, not remember what you had told her five minutes ago, and she started wetting herself after Dad died as a sign of independence,’ I laugh admiringly, but no one else does.

Val has a restraining hand on Brian’s arm, and I hear Barb ask sotto voce, ‘Has she been drinking?’

‘This is not alcohol speaking, that was our Dad’s cross to bear,’ I reply. ‘This is just the truth, or my version of it, because who knows what Annie would have really thought about her life, or her death, or anything? She couldn’t speak for the last two years of her life, and for more than ten years before that she lived in a fantasy land in which she and Jeremy were saving the world from the likes of us,’ I sweep my hand around the church.

‘I used to say, “No Annie, I’m real,” but was I? Or was I just playing the game like all of you, pretending to care when actually I just wanted to get out of there as

231 fast as I could, away from her, this girl who made herself so sick to protect me from –

’ I pause. From up here, I can see white roots through the red rinse in our mother’s hair.

I clear my throat and modulate my voice. ‘Annie’s role models were the brave yet humble women of history, the ones who helped out behind the scenes. My role model was Annie, who served as a kind of summary of all the virtues for me, a shortcut to God.

‘Annie was my big sister. To you, she was a disabled girl, a tragic story, but to me, she was real. On a deep level, I knew she was always there, a blanket of goodwill, shielding me from the sufferings of the world.

I have been pondering, even attempting to answer with research, What does love feel like? Annie was the one who taught me how to love. It feels like this.’ My voice breaks, but I keep going.

‘I read somewhere that there are five things you should say to someone before they die. So, on behalf of all you who were unable to enjoy the privilege of being with

Annie in her final days,’ I take a deep breath, ‘Please, say this with me: Thank you

Annie. We love you. We forgive you. We’re sorry. Good-bye.’

I repeat the words, and the congregation raises their voices in shared farewell.

It sounds just like a prayer.

After the service a woman approaches me. For a second I startle, thinking it is the woman from the park come to avenge herself on me. As she draws closer, she looks more and more familiar.

‘Jess!’ I exclaim. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Of course I’m here,’ she replies, wiping her eyes. ‘You’re my best friend.’

Behind her, I notice a group of well-wishers who, as they come towards me,

232 separate into their known and beloved selves. My work team has travelled to

Brisbane, just to be with me. My boss, Miranda, has brought her toddler with her. She enfolds me in a hug, her little girl squished protesting between us. I feel the heat radiate from her body into mine, a vector of impatient life suspended between two messengers of hope. That is what mothers are, you know. People who stand up amidst the ashes and say, Come on. Let’s be brave.

I direct the funeral cortège to Yeronga, and no one can stop me because I am sitting next to the driver of the hearse. Waiting there for us is Mrs Wood, who bursts into tears when she sees me and wraps me in her arms. ‘Thank you for calling me,’ she says, and cannot stop wringing my hands. I lead her to our mother. I don’t think Mum really knows what is going on, but she is gracious and pats the other mother’s hand as they limp together to Jeremy’s grave.

The Memorial Garden has prepared a temporary placard with the words I gave them.

‘Ann Margaret Bernadette Bradley, beloved sister, aunty, daughter, friend, lover and mother. May she rest in peace with her beloved lover Jeremy and their three little ones, Michael, Gabriel and Azrael, angels one and all.’

Brian mutters when he reads it, but Trish rubs my back and Val nods through her tears. Mum pats Mrs Wood’s hand and says, ‘Oh, yeh, Jeremy,’ and Mrs Wood nods vigorously. The two mothers smile at each other and take a seat on a nearby bench, their hips aching from the osteoporosis of bearing so many lives into the world.

The Bradleys gather at Brian’s house for the wake. Our siblings pick over your few

233 belongings, selecting mementoes. There are no surprises in the box; no secret letters or credit card bills, no records or discoveries of a different side to your nature. Your death is a wound that will heal with fresh air and the acknowledgement that such things need tending.

Brian refuses to speak to me, but I go up and hug him because I don’t want him to have regrets. I walk around my circle of siblings, distributing kisses and the small pink books I picked up from Officeworks while Mum was having her hair done.

Before today you were the only one who had heard me reading from it to you. I like to believe you heard me, in your deep untroubled sleep at Mountainview. I had planned to present it to them all for Christmas, along with my beautiful baby. But this is another type of sacrament.

In the little book, I have included your illustrations alongside your poems, so the pages are adorned with the childlike grace of your texta-drawn flowers, crucifixes and smiling suns. On the inside front cover of each book I have written, ‘Dear

Trish/Barb/Val/Bev/Brian/Mum. Smile, God Loves You! Love Annie.’

Brian looks surprised and tears spring to his tired eyes. Val says, ‘Oh’, and gives me a kiss. Trish walks away and returns with a pile of books. ‘Here,’ she says.

‘Maybe you could do this with her other poems. For Christmas.’ Barb flicks through her copy as if looking for her own name – that is unkind but you know it’s probably true. Bev’s lower lip trembles. She is a good egg, really. Like the rest of us, she just had to find her own way out. So here we all are, Annie. All together again, united once more by you.

I give a handful of books to Mum because I know she will want to give copies to the sundry strangers she meets at the tavern. She holds it away from her face so she can see it – she is forever forgetting her reading glasses. ‘Oh, oh, this Annie book, is

234 it? Oh, thank you, love! This Annie book!’ she says to the gathered masses, her offspring, all the people she has made and who now shape and stretch the world beyond what she could ever have imagined when she tripped down the steps to the

Starlight Club for the simple pleasure of feeling arms around her waist.

‘Oh,’ she repeats. ‘You got more?’ I point to the pile next to her and laugh.

‘Yes, Mum, I got more.’

She flicks through the book and says, ‘You good person, Kathy.’

You know, Mum phoned me minutes before my baby came, even though I had told no one about what was happening. I like to think it was mother’s intuition. I never asked her why she called that day in case it was for money. Maybe it was both.

Probably it was.

‘Yes, I am.’ I give our mother a hug and kiss her goodbye.

And now, Annie, it is almost time for me to leave this house which is not mine, this family which always will be, no matter how I try to scrape them from my skin. There is just one last thing I need to do before I go. I head out to the car and reach for the

Tupperware container. I raise it like a toast to Dad, who swilled his pills on his last night on Earth, recklessly indifferent or hopeful of an outcome, I will never know. But

I do know this: the first time I had sex with Evan after we married, I wept. Not from pain, but from a new memory being created within these walls of shame: the terrible responsibility for my own recovery.

I empty the white powder into the breeze, and it floats away like the ashes of someone much beloved. I walk back into the house and stand on my tiptoes to kiss the tall, handsome, Chinese-Australian man who has been sipping a soft drink in the corner, watching us Bradleys at our best. Even in mourning we are a loud mob. We

235 are the apes who lit the first flame, becoming human in the flickering glow of sheer excess, the joy of watching things be consumed.

So come on.

Let’s be brave.

236 Relevant Research Articles

The following articles informed the research mentioned in this manuscript.

American Psychiatric Association (2000) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of

Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition: DSM-IV-TR, American Psychiatric Publishing:

Washington DC.

Felitti, V. et al. (1998) “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults,” American Journal of Preventive

Medicine 14(4): 245-258

Herman, J. (2015) Trauma and Recovery: The Aftermath of Violence – From

Domestic Abuse to Political Terror, Basic Books: New York

Kensinger, E. (2007) “Negative Emotion Enhances Memory Accuracy: Behavioural and Neuroimaging Evidence,” Current Directions in Psychological Science 16(4):

213-218

Van der Kolk, B. (2003) Psychological Trauma, American Psychiatric Publishing:

Washington DC

237

From the heart:

The gift experience of creative writing and

reading

238

The artist appeals to that part of our being which is not dependent on wisdom; to that in us which is a gift and not an acquisition - and therefore, more permanently enduring.

Joseph Conrad, 1923

Commodities like mass-produced literary texts are selected, purchased, constructed, and used by real people with previously existing needs, desires, intentions, and interpretive strategies. By reinstating those active individuals and their creative, constructive activities at the heart of our interpretive enterprise, we avoid blinding ourselves to the fact that the essentially human practice of making meaning goes on even in a world increasingly dominated by things and by consumption. In thus recalling the interactive character of operations like reading, we restore time, process, and action to our account of human endeavour and therefore increase the possibility of doing justice to its essential complexity and ambiguity as practice.

Janice Radway, 1987

239 Chapter One: Introduction

The current dissertation harnesses the power of interdisciplinary theories of the gift, the relational ontology of existential phenomenology and the methodology of empirical interpretive phenomenology to deepen our understanding of the experiences of “writing-fiction” and “reading-a-loved-book”. Creative writing and reading arise as objects of inquiry in a number of fields of scholarship. For example, literary theorists have examined the phenomenology of reading and the role of reader in co-creating aesthetic literary works (Heap 1977; Ingarden 1973a, 1973b; Iser 1972; Rosenblatt

1978). Psychologists and creativity researchers have sought to identify the causes of, and conducive environmental factors for, creativity in various domains (Amabile

1993, 1996; Chan 2011; Csikzentmihalyi 1991). Philosophers and anthropologists have examined the role of art and stories in human meaning-making and social cohesion (Levi-Strauss 1969; Malinowski 1922; Mauss 1967; Osteen 2002; Radin

1996; Strathern 1988); and sociologists, feminist and Marxist economists have theorised aesthetic experiences, such as writing and reading fiction, as “acts of resistance” (Bourdieu 1998) to the social and cultural ramifications of economic neoliberalism and capitalism (Aslaksen 2002; Radway 1987).

In this dissertation, I conduct a phenomenological examination of two phenomena: the experience of “reading-a-loved-book”; and the experience of “writing-fiction”. In this study I ask the phenomenological research questions: What are the essential elements of the experience of “reading-a-loved-book”? What are the essential elements of the experience of “writing-fiction”? I also seek to draw from the rich interdisciplinary discourse of the gift to deepen our theoretical understanding of these

240 experiences. I propose that the concept of the “gift-relation” is a useful addition to the conceptual lexicon available to phenomenologists for describing these experiences.

The scholars I draw on have both a theoretical and normative objective for their work.

Phenomenologist Martin Buber (2010) provides an explanatory model for human behaviour and existence which a number of scholars have interpreted as the basis of an ethical call to action: if we live in relation, we need a corresponding ethics of being in and of the world. Sociologists Ann Game and Andrew Metcalfe (2010a, 2010b,

2014), in their theorisation of the gift-relation as it pertains to various domains of human experience, including artistic practice, implicitly and explicitly urge a turn towards a relational, ecological mode of being-in-the-world. In literary theorist Louise

Rosenblatt’s (1978) “trans-actional” model of reading, there is an implied ethical obligation on the part of the reader to attend to the text, and more generally upon humans as beings-in-relation to attend to the presence of others. In cultural critic

Lewis Hyde’s (2007) application of the metaphor of the gift to aesthetic experiences, there is a call to value art, and human life, in non-economistic terms.

In this dissertation, I draw on the work of gift theorists to expand upon existing phenomenological understandings and descriptions of the aesthetic experience of reading and writing fiction. Working from a critical theoretical perspective, I characterise these gift experiences as Bourdieusian “acts of resistance” (1998) to the pervasive neoliberal emphasis on consumption and commodification of experiences.

In this Chapter I offer a brief introduction to my theoretical framework, method and the objects under study, namely the experience of “reading-a-loved-book” and

“writing-fiction”.

241

Theoretical framework

I adopt a phenomenological and critical theoretical framework for my study.

Phenomenology is a relational ontology which sees people and their world as existing in relation to each other at all times. According to phenomenologists, the world we live in is not constructed from pre-existing objects and subjects. Instead, a person’s

“lifeworld” is the extant now.1 They2 are always in “trans-action” with their environment and are, in fact, an aspect of the “trans-action” (Bentley and Dewey

1949; Rosenblatt 1978). They do not pre-exist the “trans-action”, and neither does their environment. In their textbook on existential-phenomenological alternatives to psychology, Ronald Valle and Mark King explain, “Each individual and his or her world are said to co-constitute one another” (1978: 7, emphasis in original). This means that “existence always implies that being is actually ‘being-in-the-world’”

(Valle and King 1978: 8, emphasis in original). Therefore, phenomenologists do not ask “Why?” as this infers a cause-effect understanding of the world; they ask

“What?”, attempting to describe an experience rather than predict or control it (Valle and King 1978: 15).

From a critical theoretical perspective, it is important to acknowledge that theorising can itself constitute a political act. For example, Janice Radway describes how she became aware of her own ideological influences (feminist and Marxist theory) over the course of several years:

1 Lifeworld is a term coined by Husserl. Similar concepts include Heidegger’s “Dasein” (2002) and Merleau-Ponty’s “body-subject” (1968). 2 Throughout this dissertation I use the gender neutral pronouns “they, their, them, themselves and themself” unless quoting directly.

242 …I hoped to bring together my feminist “personal” life with my

supposedly non-gendered academic work which, until that point, had

not focused on women. This decision set in motion a slow, imperfect,

often painful process of transformation which only really gathered

impetus in the actual writing of Reading the Romance some six to

seven years later, when the difficulties of accounting for the

complexities of actual romance reading produced a more intense and

personal engagement with feminist theory and its analysis of women’s

situation. (Radway 1987: 4)

In this dissertation, even my selection of the experiences of reading and writing as a topic for investigation can be understood as a decision partially motivated by a personal desire to encourage the exploration of relational states of being as challenges to pervasive positivist and neoliberal economic constructions of human interaction as driven by self-interest. Using the metaphor of the gift to develop our understanding of reading-a-loved-book and writing-fiction is also, in a sense, a political and normative act, by which I seek to elevate relational ontological approaches in the scholarly debate about modes of human being and meaning-making.

Method

I utilise an empirical interpretive phenomenological methodology to gather and analyse descriptions of the lived experience of reading-a-loved-book and writing- fiction. A number of researchers from various disciplines have argued that empirical phenomenology is suitable for exploring creativity, and reading, as subjective experiences (Bindeman 1998; Nelson and Rawlings 2007; Julmi and Scherm 2015).

In 2017 I conducted in-depth interviews with twenty people, ranging in age from

243 twenty to seventy years, who reported having experienced “loving” a book at some point in their lives.

As a phenomenological study, my research is vulnerable to the methodological pitfalls of its field, as well as the limitations of my own experience as a phenomenological researcher. Frequent criticisms of phenomenological methodology include: the lack of randomness in a sample; the limited number of participants; the lack of generalisability of findings; retrospectivity and the difficulty of verbalising non-verbal experiences; and the subjectivity of the researcher (Hycner 1985). I will briefly address these concerns here, with more detail in the later Methodology

Chapter.

As explained later in this dissertation, purposive sampling and a limited number of participants can be appropriate in phenomenological studies, which aim to describe a particular experience. For example, in his explanation of a phenomenology of reading, James Heap observes that

we cannot claim, warrantably, to have found the necessary conditions

for reading-in-general. Instead, our claims can only be about the type

of reading which we have considered in an analysis (1977: 104).

Similarly, Ellen Rose, in her phenomenological study of on-screen reading, explains that, “[N]o researcher who undertakes a phenomenological inquiry expects or wishes to produce generalisable findings” (2011: 517). The aim of phenomenological research is to describe a “possible” human experience, acknowledging that no experience is generalisable or immutable (van Manen 2010: 453). Nevertheless, further studies of the phenomenology of reading or writing may use my work as a

244 starting point for more detailed examination of variations in the experience based on demographic differences.

As feminist and critical theorists assert, “representations are interpretations” which can never be true reflections of reality but are always the result of “a whole set of selective devices, such as highlighting, editing, cutting, transcribing and inflecting”

(McRobbie as cited in Radway 1987: 5). Phenomenologists acknowledge that a verbal description of an experience is not the same as the experience itself (Hycner 1985).

Language both limits and enables descriptions of experiences (Ricoeur 1977, 1984;

Wierzbicka 1999). Nevertheless, phenomenologists believe there is value in attempting to verbally describe experiences: even though such descriptions may not be universally applicable, they are still informative for our understanding of human being-in-the-world.

Phenomenologists also attempt to harness their own subjectivity, articulating their

“fore-structures” which they bring to a study, and acknowledging that their perspective of a phenomenon can contribute to its ultimate description. However, they argue that the researcher’s presuppositions must be “bracketed” out as much as possible when interviewing participants and analysing participants’ descriptions of the experience (Polkinghorne 2005; Husserl 1931; Hycner 1985). Later in this dissertation I explore my own fore-structures, and I have adopted Hycner’s (1985) careful reading strategies of participants’ interviews, in an attempt to ensure that I read my own participants’ accounts in the ethical manner urged by Rosenblatt (1978) to a reader of any text (Flynn 2007). With the benefit of hindsight, I would do things

245 somewhat differently.3 For example, I would have asked participants about the experience of reading fiction before asking about the specific experience of “reading- a-loved-book”, and asked participants to write reflections on their experience of reading to provide an alternative source of data.

The appropriate use of language, and its interpretation, is an ongoing question for phenomenologists, who sometimes use what scholars in other social disciplines might consider to be emotive or “leading” terms. For example, psychology researcher

William Fischer, in his empirical phenomenological study of “being-anxious”, gave research participants the instruction to “describe in detail a situation in which you were anxious” (1989: 172). In a study of “forgiving another,” phenomenological researchers asked participants, “Can you tell us about the time during an important relationship when something happened such that forgiving the other became an issue for you?” (Rowe et al. 1989: 237). In a phenomenological study designed to inform practice in counselling psychology, Adrian van Kaam (1969) asked participants to describe an experience of “being understood”; de Konig (1979) asked participants about the experience of “being suspicious” (1979) and Mruk (1983) examined participant descriptions of “being pleased and displeased with self”.

In the abovementioned phenomenological studies, researchers did not define their core terms such as “anxious” or “being understood”, because they were interested in the participants’ own, lived understandings of these experiences (Polkinghorne 2005).

3 Janice Radway and David Morley also observe that they would have done some differently if they had the chance to start over (Radway 1987; Morley 1981).

246 For example, in Fischer’s (1989) study, participants already had their own understanding of what “being-anxious” meant, which allowed them to describe the experience. This, in turn, enabled Fischer to “interrogate each description as a perspectivally lived and reflectively realised, variant exemplification of that meaning”

(1989: 176). However, my use of terms such as “love”, “anxious” or “forgiving” could conceivably, albeit unintentionally, orient a participant towards an emotive description.

In Reading the Romance, Radway reflects on the pitfalls and limitations of interviews as a source of data.

…even ethnographic description of the ‘native’s’ point of view must

be an interpretation or…my own construction of my informants’

construction of what they were up to in reading romances […] even

what I took to be simple descriptions of my interviewees’ self-

understandings were produced through an internal organisation of data

and thus mediated by my own conceptual constructs and ways of

seeing the world (1987: 5).

Nevertheless, Radway feels that the work is still worthwhile, observing that,

‘Whatever the sociological weaknesses of Reading the Romance, I continue to feel that the particular method (or aggregate of methods) employed there…can serve as a starting point for further discussion and perhaps for future analysis’ (1987: 9). I similarly hope that despite its limitations, my study encourages further research in the area of the phenomenology of reading and writing and contributes to our understanding of the human experience of being-in-the-world.

247 Objects under study

In this dissertation I look at two “experiences”: the “experience” of “reading-a-loved- book” and the “experience” of “writing-fiction”. In the tradition of the phenomenological study of reading, I am not examining the separate objects of the

“reader” and the “book”; instead, I aim to describe the essential elements of the experience of “reading-a-loved-book.” In the relational model of phenomenology, the reader is not a separate object of study. The reader as an individual “self” continues to exist but is not considered to be a static subject. The reader’s self is a “continuing self-ordering, self-creating process, shaped and shaping a network of interrelationships with its environing social and natural matrix” (Rosenblatt 1978:

172). To a lesser extent, I am also attempting to describe the experience of “writing- fiction” and its essential elements. I am not seeking to identify the criteria of what constitutes “writing-fiction”; I concern myself with what constitutes, for the research participants in this study, the experience of “writing-fiction”.

“An experience”

I adopt philosopher John Dewey’s transactional model for what is meant by an

“experience.” Dewey developed his concept of what constitutes an experience in his

1934 book, Art as Experience, contrasting “aesthetic” and “non-aesthetic” experiences. These ideas informed the “transactional” model of human life later set out in the 1949 book which Dewey co-authored with fellow philosopher Arthur

Bentley, Knowing and the Known. The following is a brief overview of “experience” and “transaction” as they pertain to this study.

248 In Art as Experience, Dewey posits that there are two types of experience: “aesthetic” and “non-aesthetic” experience. The norm of life is non-aesthetic experience: “there are beginnings and cessations, but no genuine initiations and concludings […] There is experience, but so slack and discursive that it is not an experience” (1980: 40, emphasis in original). By contrast, an “aesthetic” experience has an artistic structure which is felt: we demarcate such an experience from the flow of life because we consider it to have had an essential quality which “pervades the entire experience”

(1980: 37). Dewey observes that this essential quality is a balanced relationship between “doing” and “undergoing”: a person acts upon and is acted upon by their environment (1980: 44). Dewey explains

A piece of work is finished in a way that is satisfactory; a problem

receives its solution; a game is played through; a situation, whether

that of eating a meal, playing a game of chess, carrying on a

conversation, writing a book, or taking part in a political campaign, is

so rounded out that its close is a consummation and not a cessation.

Such an experience is a whole and carries with it its own

individualising quality and self-sufficiency. It is an experience (1980:

35, emphasis in original).

In Knowing and the Known (1949), Bentley and Dewey named this experienced relationship between a person and their environment a “trans-action,” and this concept forms the basis of the “trans-actional” explanatory model of human life which I will explain in more detail in the next chapter.

“Reading-a-loved-book”

249 In the context of the current study, I posit that both “writing-fiction” and “reading-a- loved-book” are instances of Dewey’s “aesthetic experiences,” which can be distinguished from the flow of ordinary life as objects of inquiry. When I talk about the experience of reading a loved book, I am not examining the “reader”, or the

“book”: by following Rosenblatt’s lead and applying Bentley and Dewey’s trans-actional epistemology, I am examining the experience of “reading-a-loved- book”, which is itself “an event”. In this context, the genre of the book is not the focus; it is the experience of reading a book – which a participant later describes as a

“love” experience – that is of interest.

As will be seen later in this dissertation, many research participants mentioned fiction when asked about books which they “loved”, but some also chose memoir and published letters, and genres ranged across science fiction, poetry, young adult and middle grade fiction, graphic novels, commercial fiction and literary fiction. By focusing my attention on the experience, I am employing a phenomenological worldview and methodology. The reader is constituted in trans-action with the text, whatever that text may be categorised as, and vice versa. My study benefits from the work of literary theorists who have examined the phenomenology of reading, in particular Rosenblatt’s application of Bentley and Dewey’s trans-actional model to describe the experience of reading.

“Writing-fiction”

According to philosopher John Searle, the author’s intentions towards a work, which

Searle describes as their “illocutionary stance” towards the work, defines a text as fictional or non-fictional. In fictional works, the author “pretends to perform

250 illocutionary acts” (Searle 325 as cited in Keen 2003:133). Narrative theorist Suzanne

Keen explains that “The distinction of fiction then lies not in the formal traits of language, but in the suspension of the usual rules concerning illocutionary acts”

(2003: 134). However, Keen goes on to explain that there is no “immutable boundary” between nonfiction and fiction (2003: 136), and the reader’s role is active in determining where a work falls on the spectrum between the two.

In the context of this dissertation, “writing-fiction” refers to the experience of writing fiction in a variety of forms: play scripts, graphic novels, young adult novels, adult novels and short stories. An intention to create works of fiction is the common element across the research participants who identified as writers. Exploring the experience of “writing-fiction” and the experience of “reading-a-loved-book” in relation to what they can tell us about the nature of fiction and contribute to the field of narrative theory is unfortunately beyond the scope of the current study. In this dissertation I focus on describing the “experience” of “reading-a-loved-book” and the

“experience” of “writing-fiction” and analysing these experiences through the lens of gift theory.

In ‘Chapter Two: Theoretical Context’ I outline the theoretical framework for this study, looking at the interdisciplinary field of the gift and the phenomenological study of writing and reading. I bring these fields together and examine their implications for our understanding of the experiences of “writing-fiction” and “reading-a-loved-book.”

I then develop and define the concept of the “gift-relation” as a means for analysing my findings later in the dissertation. In ‘Chapter Three: Methodology’ I describe phenomenology as a method, identify my fore-structures and discuss the implications

251 for the design and implementation of this study. In ‘Chapter Four: Reading-a-loved- book’ I describe the experience of “reading-a-loved-book” based on interviews with research participants, identify essential themes of the experience and analyse the experience through the metaphor of the “gift-relation”. In ‘Chapter Five: Writing- fiction, I do the same for the experience of “writing-fiction”. In the final ‘Chapter:

Conclusion’ I summarise my findings, briefly examine the The Eulogy (the novel which comprises the first part of this thesis) and the gift-relation and make suggestions for further areas of study.

252 Chapter Two: Theoretical Context

The notion of a gift has been discussed in economics, sociology, anthropology and philosophy. The gift is turned to by scholars across disciplines keen to test their ideas of human meaning and being. Countless scholars have asked the questions: Why do people give gifts? Is there such a thing as a “free gift”, or does it always come with an obligation to reciprocate? Is a gift a form of economic exchange, or an expression of excess and vitality? Why do people offer gifts to nature and the gods?

In this dissertation, I too turn to the trope of the gift to understand the experiences of

“writing-fiction” and “reading-a-loved-book.” In this chapter, I introduce the interdisciplinary field of the gift and some key areas of gift theory discourse. I also discuss the current state of phenomenological investigations of writing and reading. I examine the key concept of “selfhood” within phenomenological and gift discourses, as contrasted with the Cartesian and neoliberal economic version of “selfhood”, and the implications for understanding the experiences of “writing-fiction” and “reading- a-loved-book.” I establish a phenomenological theoretical framework which harnesses the conceptual power of the gift when interpreting the empirical findings in Chapters

Four and Five, employing the term “gift-relation” to describe the aesthetic experiences of “reading-a-loved-book” and “writing-fiction”.

The interdisciplinary field of the gift

Whilst the field of the gift is rich, in the interests of remaining concise, we can describe two main perspectives: those who regard the gift primarily as an exchange

253 relationship, and those who focus on the gift as reinforcing a relational mode of being. Both aspects of the gift are drawn out in Marcel Mauss’ essay on the gift, first published in 1923. Mauss (1967) describes two aspects, or possibilities, of the gift and two aspects, or possibilities, of human potential. He highlights the role of the gift as a vehicle of exchange of material and symbolic capital. According to Mauss, a gift comes with an obligation to both receive the gift and reciprocate it (1967: 7). In this way, a gift was a means by which archaic societies cemented social bonds, alliances and power structures. Mauss also observes the sense of deep, personal connection which attended giving and receiving in archaic societies, arguing that giving involved giving “a part of oneself” and receiving was to “receive a part of someone’s spiritual essence” (1967:10).

Scholars who focus on the gift’s role as a form of exchange which cements social relations have criticised Mauss’ as an unnecessarily spiritualistic reading of the gift.

Anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss (1969) argues that the gift was simply the way people had internalised a social structure of reciprocity. In Levi-Strauss’ version of society, a gift always requires a return, making a so-called “true gift” an impossibility.

The notion of a “true gift” and its impossibility is debated by scholars. Friedrich

Nietzsche describes the “terrible” obligation to receive which a gift imposes (Colli and Monitari 1980: 516) and Jacques Derrida (1992) also writes about the impossibility of a truly free, altruistic gift. Social theorist Pierre Bourdieu describes the gift as a method of exchange which allows people to “misrecognise” their self- interest in giving, which in turn enables gift-giving to fulfil both a social and economic role (Bourdieu 1983: 252).

254 Whilst these scholars have contributed to the discussion of the gift and its role in human life, I argue that their discussions have largely been based on a narrow interpretation of the gift through a language of exchange. Their focus overlooks the gift’s rich conceptual contribution to an understanding of human interactions beyond an economistic framework. For example, when Derrida argues that a truly altruistic gift is impossible, he is stuck in the materialist dilemma of treating objects as alienable. According to literary scholar Mark Osteen, in Derrida’s framework the perfect altruist is merely the opposite of the self-interested economic actor; both exist inside a theoretical framework which assumes that selves are separate one from another (2002: 240). If we take a step back from the narrow debate about whether a

“true gift” is possible, we can examine the version of selfhood that this debate is based on. We can expand our understanding of selfhood and the gift as both a vehicle of exchange and relation, which in turn allows us to develop a phenomenological theory of relational being.

Phenomenology, the gift and selfhood

The argument that a “true gift” is impossible because of the fundamental nature of humans as rational, self-interested actors assumes that selves are inherently separate and that their interests exist in a state of tension. This version of selfhood has its roots in the Cartesian model of humans as set apart from other forms of life by our rationality: our way of coming to know things through reason. Phenomenology challenges this conception of selfhood.

Whilst phenomenology can be traced back to Kant and Hegel, German philosopher

255 Edmund Husserl is considered the primary initiator of phenomenological scholarship

(Falke 2016; Farber 1943; Groenewald 2004). Husserl opposes the positivist worldview that objects exist independently of each other. He argues that Descartes’ emphasis on humans as individual and rational beings was a liberating ontology for his times, allowing people to challenge entrenched power hierarchies and superstitions. However, over the years the “Cartesian” worldview has become synonymous with an interpretation of human being which prioritises individualism over other potential modes of subjectivity (Husserl 1931).

Phenomenologists argue that the self exists only as an aspect of a relation with the world (Buber 2010; Farber 1943; Groenewald 2004; Heidegger 1993; Merleau-Ponty

1968; Moran 2000). One’s thoughts are not independent realities but are always thoughts of the object of thought; one’s self is not an independent reality, but a

“psycho-physiological unit” (Schutz 1972: 105) which perceives itself as a “self”.

Cognitive scientist and philosopher Daniel Dennett explains that

we do not consciously and deliberately figure out what narratives to

tell and how to tell them. Our tales are spun, but for the most part we

don’t spin them: they spin us. Our human consciousness, our narrative

selfhood, is their product, not their source (1991: 418).

For example, imagine for a moment that I am sipping from a cup of tea. The cup is the “cup-as-it-appears-to-me,” and the “me” in this perception is an aspect of a relation with the perceived object, rather than a definite and isolated reality (Buber

2010; Conrad 1990). Descartes equates the human ego with the human capacity to detach and reflect upon the world; Husserl argues that the ego always exists in relation to what it reflects upon (Farber 1943; Merleau-Ponty 1968; Schutz 1972).

256

This phenomenological understanding of selfhood forms the basis for Bentley and

Dewey’s “trans-actional” model of human life on. Bentley and Dewey’s use of the term “trans-action” is distinct from the more common, everyday use of the word

“transaction” to describe an economic exchange between a vendor and a consumer. In fact, it could be argued that an economic transaction is the opposite of Bentley and

Dewey’s notion of a trans-action. An economic transaction implies two alienable selves: the vendor and the consumer; and there is an assumption that an object can pass from one to the other. In Bentley and Dewey’s trans-actional model of human life, the vendor and consumer are two distinct, but not alienable, selves; they exist only as aspects of their relation to each other and the world, which includes the object which notionally passes between them.

In Transactionalism: An Historical and Interpretive Study, philosopher Trevor

Phillips explains that in the trans-actional model, “I” am only ever an aspect of a transaction; “I” do not exist as a separate entity engaging with other separate entities, because in the process of the trans-action, “I” am continuously affected and affecting the others within the transaction (Phillips 2013: 75).

We do not…take the organism and environment as if we could know

about them separately in advance of our special inquiry, but we take

their interaction itself as subject matter of study. We name this

transaction to differentiate it from interaction. We inspect the thing-

seen not as the operation of an organism upon an environment nor as

the operation of an environment upon organism, but itself as an event

(Bentley 1954: 285).

257 In this dissertation, I do not use the term “trans-action” to describe this relational ontology because of the contemporary use of the word “transaction” to refer to economic exchanges. However, I encourage other scholars to consider reclaiming the term “transaction” from its current, common economic usage, for the benefit of phenomenological discourse.

Scholars have looked to the gift to develop a broader understanding of selfhood, beyond an emphasis on individuated self-interest (Berking 1999; Godbout and Caille

1998; Osteen 2002). Philosophical pragmatist Margaret Radin argues that such an emphasis is based on a narrow view of selfhood which encourages an “inferior conception of human flourishing” (1996: 62). Anthropologist Marilyn Strathern explains that the self which can alienate a possession exists in a paradigm of proprietism, in which things can be owned and sold or given away (1988). In this paradigm, everything but the self is alienable. Strathern offers an expanded concept of selfhood, pointing to gift societies in Melanesia in which persons are without power to alienate and obtain possessions. Instead, items are “kept-whilst-given” (1988: 161;

Weiner 1992). The giver and receiver become more and more enmeshed as they give and receive parts of each other. Mark Osteen applies Strathern’s thinking to contemporary Western societies, identifying two categories of possessions which cannot be alienated: objects which retain the “aura” of the original owner; and objects which form part of a family, community or tribe’s identity such as sacred items, stories and myths (2000: 241).

The metaphor of the gift to describe certain human relations offers a means of expanding our definition of selfhood to one in which individual selves are open; the

258 self grows murky with links to other people. Poet Ralph Waldo Emerson describes the experience of selfhood arising from the passage of a gift which is not alienated, but which instead blurs the usual boundaries of the Western idea of a unitary self:

The gift, to be true, must be the flowing of the giver unto me,

correspondent to my flowing unto him. When the waters are at level,

then my goods pass to him, and his to me. All his are mine, all mine

his. (1997: 26)

Emerson is describing a gift which does not create a sense of indebtedness – that is, a gift which does not operate as a form of economic exchange but instead enmeshes two “selves”, creating an obligation which is discharged within the relation of giving- and-receiving. Such a relational ontology can be traced to phenomenologists, who argue that relation precedes self and subjectivity: in other words, that self and subjectivity arise only because we exist in relation to each other (Rosenblatt 1978;

Game and Metcalfe 2014). The implication is that humans are in and of the world. We exist in relation, embodied and present in a space which cannot be objectively measured. Buber illustrates the relation through the example of a person looking at a tree. They can admire the tree, think about the tree’s sustainability, study the tree, count the tree. By doing so, they are considering the tree in an “I-It” relation from a worldview in which they are separate from the tree. But at the same time, they can exist in an “I-Thou” relation with the tree. In this relation the tree is no longer their object. They and the tree exist in relation to each other; “it [the tree] is bodied over against me and has to do with me, as I with it...” (Buber 2010: 14). The I and Thou are parts of a relation rather than separate entities.

259 A phenomenology of reading

A number of literary theorists have examined reading through the lens of phenomenology, exploring the “experience” of reading and how a “literary work of art” (Rosenblatt 1978) is generated in the process of reading. For example, in The

Phenomenology of Love and Reading (2016), Cassandra Falke notes:

Because the practice of looking phenomenologically at anything

resembles in some ways the artistic practices of both reading and

writing, it is not surprising that phenomenology and literature have a

long, sometimes secret historical relationship. (2016: 19)

Literary theorists who have influenced the development of a phenomenological framework for understanding how the reading experience unfolds include Georges

Poulet (1969), James Heap (1977), Roman Ingarden (1973a; 1973b), Wolfgang Iser

(1972), Paul Ricoeur (1977, 1984), Louise Rosenblatt (1978), Mikail Bakhtin (1981),

Gaston Bachelard (1994), Jean-Luc Marion (2002a; 2002b; 2007) and Rita Felski

(2008). These scholars’ contributions to a phenomenology of reading have been recently harnessed to describe the different types of reading experience occasioned by online reading, digital reading and hypertextual reading (see for example: Carusi

2006; Mangen 2010; Rose 2011; Rowsell 2014).

Phenomenologists of reading share the position that a text is not a static entity, and that readers are active co-creators of the “literary work of art”. For example, Iser notes that “the literary work cannot be completely identical with the text, or with the realisation of the text, but in fact must lie halfway between the two” (1972: 279).

According to Rosenblatt, “[t]he relation between reader and text is not linear. It is a

260 situation, an event at a particular time and place in which each element conditions the other” (1978: 16).

Literary scholars (Heap 1977; Ingarden 1973; Iser 1972; Poulet 1969; Rosenblatt

1978) argue that the way in which a “reader” “reads” is integral to permitting the

“literary work of art” to arise. The literary work of art does not necessarily arise from all types of reading. For example, Ingarden (1973) distinguishes between

“appropriate” and “inappropriate” “concretisations” by a reader, whereby appropriate concretisations are closer to the guidance presented in and by the text. Poulet (1969) observes that there is a type of reading which is too close to the text to constitute a balanced relationship with the text, and a type of reading which is too distant from it to form a relationship at all. For Poulet, the ideal “total critical act” is when the reader is in “interrelationship” with the text (1969: 63).

Rosenblatt describes the relationship between the reader and the text which gives rise to the resultant “aesthetic” experience of the work in the “trans-action” between a text and reader. In The Reader, the Text, the Poem (1978), Rosenblatt explains the conceptual power of Bentley and Dewey’s “trans-actional” model as applied to reading.

[T]he transactional view, freeing us from the old separation between

the human creature and the world, reveals the individual

consciousness shaped by and shaping a network of interrelationships

with its environing social and natural matrix. Out of such transactions

flowers the author’s text, an utterance awaiting the readers whose

participation will consummate the speech act (1978: 172).

261 Rosenblatt distinguishes between two main modes of reading: efferent/non-aesthetic reading; and aesthetic reading. In efferent reading, the reader is focused on what the reader will “carry away” (Latin: efferre”) from the reading (1978: 24). This is a type of reading focused on what the reader takes from the experience, such as facts, or perhaps information for a course of university study. In efferent reading, the trans- action is skewed towards “doing” rather than “undergoing”, and the experience is not

“consummated” but simply comes to an end (Dewey 1980). This means that the literary work of art does not arise, or at least does not fulfil its aesthetic potential

(Ingarden 1973), because the reading has not been in the aesthetic mode.

The experience of efferent reading is part of what Dewey (1980) describes as the non- aesthetic mode of everyday life. By contrast, Rosenblatt describes aesthetic reading as focused on ‘what happens during the actual reading event […] In aesthetic reading, the reader’s attention is centred directly on what he is living through during his relationship with that particular text’ (1978: 24, emphasis in original). The reader engages in both “doing” and “undergoing” (Dewey 1980); they actively contribute their own cultural knowledge, prior reading experience, memories and life experiences to the work, whilst at the same time approaching the work with a willingness to be guided by the work as to how and what they contribute. Reading in this mode is an aesthetic experience which constitutes the creation of the “literary work of art”. In Rosenblatt’s model and more broadly in phenomenological studies of reading, the “literary work of art” is not a static object which fulfils certain evaluative criteria. The aesthetic reader evokes the “literary work of art”, in a “lived-through process of building up the work under the guidance of the text” (Rosenblatt 1978: 69).

262 Efferent and aesthetic reading occur along a spectrum (Rosenblatt 1978: 35). The same text can be read either efferently or aesthetically, and the same reader may read a text efferently or aesthetically almost from one moment to the next (Rosenblatt

1978: 37). Different aesthetic trans-actions with the same text are possible,

“depending on the nature, state of mind, or past experience of the reader” (Rosenblatt

1978: 27). Rosenblatt explains that a reader takes an aesthetic or efferent “stance” to a text: a “readiness to respond in a particular (efferent or aesthetic) way” (1978: 43).

The reader’s choice of stance towards a work is not entirely volitional – stance is influenced by the text, and the context in which the reader is reading it. For example, if they are reading a text for a school subject, they may be more likely to take the efferent stance. If they are reading the text for a book club, they may switch between efferent and aesthetic stances as they shift between the construct of themself as solitary reader and themself as commentator on the book. Cues in the text can stimulate a particular stance, such as the use of conventions which evoke an experience of absorption (Radway 1987) and/or the “core affects of narrativity”: curiosity, surprise and suspense (Keen 2003: 154).

The phenomenological examination of reading gives rise to what has been termed the

“ethical turn” in reading (Flynn 2007) – an implied obligation on the part of the reader to attempt to realise the aesthetic potential of a text, thereby bringing to life a literary work of art. As mentioned above, Ingarden (1973a) argues that a reader ought to attempt to read a text “appropriately”, thus realising the text’s aesthetic potential as a literary work of art. Iser (1978) critiques Ingarden’s approach as reifying a static, pre- existing meaning of a text. But like Ingarden, Iser acknowledges that the reader’s willingness to “get involved in the story and its meaning” determines the extent to the

263 which the reader constitutes the “overall meaning” of the text (1978: 135; Brinker

1980: 210). The ethical obligation implicit in these phenomenologists’ work is not to discover some sort of constant, timeless, static “true” work of art, or to abide by authorial intent; but to take a stance of respect and openness – to pay attention – to the text and what it seems to be guiding the reader to pay attention to.

The ethical turn is made particularly explicit in Rosenblatt’s “trans-actional” view of reading. Rosenblatt observes that a reader who fails to pay attention to the guidance of the text, effectively fails to co-create a literary work of art. If the reader lets themself drift away on a stream of their own fantasies, the reader evokes something which is not the result of an equitable give-and-take with the text and this result is, according to Rosenblatt and her fellow phenomenologists of reading, implicitly a lesser realisation of the literary aesthetic potential of a text, which can be more fully realised in a more balanced trans-action (Flynn 2007; Ingarden 1973a).

Phenomenologists of reading generally agree that the “self” of the reader continues to exist when reading a text, but as an aspect of the relation with the text and the world in which the reader lives, rather than a fundamental unit of reality. Georges Poulet is the only scholar on the subject who argues that a text goes so far as to suspend the reader’s life and substitute the reader’s self temporarily with a different consciousness

(1969: 59). Wolfgang Iser explicitly rejects this position, noting that Poulet’s

“conception of the consciousness that constitutes itself in the literary work” is difficult to accept (1972: 299).

264 Rosenblatt offers a more moderate version of selfhood than Poulet in the context of reading. Applying the trans-actional model of human life, Rosenblatt explains that the reader’s “self” continuously exists in a flow of interplay or “interinanimation” with their environment, including the books they read, which allows the reader to change as a result of what they read (Rosenblatt 1978: 172; Flynn 2007: 64). Rosenblatt argues that the act of reading can deliver a reader from their own egocentricity (1969:

63), but this does not mean that the self is destroyed or replaced: the “self” is simply placed in its proper conceptual place – in relation.

Heap describes the ethical obligation to be guided by a text as a “shift of attention” which is required implicitly by the text. According to Heap,

Reading is a journey in and for which the text is the guide […] While

the author and the text can furnish instructions that are

interpretationally relevant to the themes of the text, as a reader you are

expected and required to bring along a fair amount of

interpretationally relevant baggage (1977: 106).

Heap goes on to note that the reader’s willingness to perform the shift in attention, which is implicitly requested by the written word, is based on the unspoken assumption on the part of the reader that what they are committing to read will offer a

“possible unity of sense, in and for the reading” (1977: 107, emphasis in original).

Thus Heap also explains that there is an obligation upon the creator of the text to offer the possibility of sense-making, and sociologist Harold Garfinkel goes so far as to argue that this is an assumption which the reader is entitled to (1967: vii). Heap agrees, stating that the reader has the right to complain to the author or their representative if this assumption is not fulfilled (1977: 107).

265

The ethics of attention and the possibility of love

The ethical obligation on the reader is to pay attention to the text echoes the ethical obligation more broadly implied by a phenomenological philosophy of human life

(Carlson 2007; Falke 2016). In order to enter into an I-Thou relation with the world, I must leave the I-It relation in which I am subject and others are objects. I must acknowledge that what I really see, when I see a person, is the-person-as-seen-by-me.

Only then can I attempt to see them as the-person-who-also-sees-me. If I make this transition, then I enter into what Game and Metcalfe have variously named the state of “giving-and-receiving” (2010a, 2010b) and “ecological being” (2014); what Buber

(2010) names the I-Thou relation; what Bentley and Dewey (1949) and Rosenblatt

(1978) dub the “trans-actional” model of being; and which I term a “gift-relation”.

To enter a gift-relation, a person must pay attention. Phenomenological psychologist

James Hillman explains that paying attention involves drawing one’s breath and stopping still. This allows one to connect with what Hillman calls the anima mundi, the “world ensouled” (1983: 55). Attention does not pass from me to the thing I am paying attention to; attention opens a space in which “I and It” become “I and Thou”.

I achieve the state by quietening, but not destroying, my ego: free from my own subjectivity, I can “see” and interact with the world as though we are parts of a larger whole (Hillman 1983).

Rosenblatt, like Dewey, argues that an experience only becomes “an” experience (that is, an aesthetic experience) if we pay aesthetic attention to it. Rosenblatt notes:

266 [I]f there is the aesthetic element in day-to-day life, it depends on a

certain shift of interest, attention or awareness from the purely

practical or referential to the immediately experienced qualitative

aspects. This play of attention back and forth between the efferent and

the aesthetic is undoubtedly much more characteristic of our daily

lives than is usually acknowledged. Similarly, in much of our reading,

there is a to-and-fro movement of the attention from one aspect to

another of the responses activated by the text (1978: 37).

Rosenblatt explains that the aesthetic stance is not merely allowing oneself to flow along a stream of one’s own free associations conjured by a text. “Perusal of a text merely leading to free fantasy would not be a reading at all in the transactional sense.

The concept of transaction emphasises the relationship with, and continuing awareness of, the text” (1978: 29). Aesthetic reading involves a fulfilment of the ethical obligation which arises from being-in-relation.

Literary critic Wayne Booth (1982) contrasts the deeper kind of attention demanded by the novel versus, for example, the short attention span encouraged by American television produced by the large studios for prime time in the 1980s. He wonders if this type of attention required by a novel is somehow related to the nature of the gift offered by an author as a more genuine and meaningful gift than that proffered by television executives:

If you offer me a gift of something that you would yourself like to

receive, if it is something that you respect as a gift, I accept it with

love. If you offer me something that expresses your contempt for my

taste, if you would yourself feel contempt or loathing for what you

267 offer me, I have a right to feel – indeed I cannot help feeling – that the

gift is no gift at all (Booth 1982: 47).

According to Booth, 1980s American television executives tended offered the latter type of gift which is effectively “no gift at all,” whilst authors or artists are more likely to offer the former type of “gift,” which allows one to feel both as one-who-is- seen and as one-who-sees.

Love

In The Erotic Phenomenon, Marion (2007) explains that, once we have the phenomenological realisation that we exist in-relation, we can begin to understand that our existence is made meaningful through our connection to other beings. Marion seeks to draw the phenomenological conversation away from the Heideggerian emphasis on the “being” aspect of “being-in-relation”, towards the “relation” aspect of the equation, by paying serious attention to the concept of “love” (Falke 2016). In doing so, he draws on the work of Merleau-Ponty (1968) who describes the porosity of selves and their relationality and Emmanuel Lévinas, who argues for a “self without concept” and shifts scholarly attention to the relationality of being (1981:

115).

Marion (2007) argues that “love” and “hate” create us: my ego, the “I”, does not exist outside of the act of love (Falke 2016). This does not mean that “I” need love in order for myself to be fulfilled. It means that “I” simply do not exist as a transcendent ego

“prior to the erotic phenomenon” (Falke 2016: 47). “I” opens up to love by committing to loving, but “love” is never complete; it is a constant enactment, and each instance of love varies from one relation to another (Marion 2007). For Marion,

268 “love” is the “force through which we are made and remade” (Falke 2016: 1). In

Conditions (2008) and In Praise of Love (2012), Alain Badiou elaborates upon the way in which “love” explicates the way in which humans can be-in-and-of-the-world.

He observes that “love is not even an experience of the other, but an experience of the world” (2008: 182). By submitting, or opening, oneself to “love,” one can experience the world from “the point of view of difference” (Badiou 2012: 56).

Cassandra Falke (2016) applies this phenomenological concept of “love” in her examination of the potential of reading literature as a relation which can give rise to

“love”. Rosenblatt’s aesthetic reading can be represented as an opening of oneself to the “potential that a text offers” (Falke 2016: 54); or the awareness of a gift (Marion

2007). This awareness is not of a static text; it is a “generative awareness”; by

“welcoming in” a novel or a poem, we “receive” rather than “contain”, and our receptiveness moves “us forward in love” (Falke 2016: 55). By contrast, Rosenblatt’s efferent reading may be understood as a refusal of literature’s demand to “wait for the thwarting of [the reader’s] own significations” (2016: 52). Falke acknowledges that there are a number of variables – willingness, the text itself, time, circumstances – which will affect whether the act of reading gives rise to an experience of love.

[T]here are a lot of variables that affect the extent to which a reading

can offer us practice as lovers. The vision of a poem might differ so

radically from ours that we cannot adjust enough to let it change us.

Or we may not make the effort. A reader’s acts of love will be as

unique as his acts of love in person (2016: 67).

269 Other literary critics have also compared reading to an act of love. For example, in A

Reader on Reading, Alberto Manguel (2010) describes the experience of reading as akin to making love; in How to Do Things with Fictions, Joshua Landy (2012) calls fictions that he has loved “formative fictions” because they changed him in some way. Their descriptions share with Falke the essential elements of reading as love as a

“self-forgetting form of attention” (Falke 2016: 98) which opens up a space for oneself to be transformed (Landy 2012; Manguel 2010).

The experience of love as an openness to alterity is also central to Simone de

Beauvoir’s (1984) concept of “authentic love” as a “being-in-relation-with-others” rather than a “being-for-others” (Boulous Walker 2010: 338). “Authentic love” allows for identification with the other at the same time as differentiation from the other

(Boulous Walker 2010: 338). It is an intimate domain in which objectivity and subjectivity are interrelated (Boulous Walker 2010: 340). In phenomenological terms,

“authentic love” is the imaginative space of the I-Thou relation. Intersubjectivity still exists because selves exist: they are aspects of their relation with each other, but are not lost inside one another. In this state, attention is not a scarce resource to be vied for, but a shared, respectful attitude towards reality and within that, towards each other (Gaita 2012). “Authentic love” is characterised by generosity but at the same time allows parties to retain their individuality.

[T]he lovers would then experience themselves both as self and as

other: neither would give up transcendence, neither would be

mutilated; together they would manifest values and aims in the world.

For the one and the other, love would be revelation of self by the gift

of self and enrichment of the world. (de Beauvoir 1984: 679)

270 By contrast, de Beauvoir defines “romantic love” as a type of uncritical devotion which can lead to almost infantile dependence (1984: 675). In Marion and Falke’s phenomenology, such “romantic love” does not constitute “love” at all: selves are not permitted to be porous (Merleau-Ponty 1968); each person objectifies the other.

“Authentic love” as a relational phenomenon is echoed by Hillman, who argues that love is an aesthetic experience, “a phenomenon of the spirit and it stirs the soul and generates imagination” (1983: 186). Hillman, like Falke and Marion, argues that love always needs generativity (1983: 187). Love is a space of creativity, generativity, flourishing: a “space” in which persons can be fully themselves at the same time as transcending their selves. This is what I describe as a gift-relation; an I-Thou mode of being. According to Game and Metcalfe (2010a; 2010b), we know that we have entered this relational mode of being in the world when we experience a sense of infinitude rather than scarcity; when we are not worried about wasting time but feel as though we are outside of time; and when we feel it is safe to be fully present.

Paying attention

Although he does not use the word “love,” Bruner identifies “passion” as a key condition of creativity, where a writer is “moved to it” [the work] (1979: 24). He cites eighteenth-century French philosopher, Helvetius: “A man without passions is incapable of that degree of attention to which a superior judgment is annexed: a superiority that is perhaps less the effect of an extraordinary effort than an habitual attention” (1979: 24, emphasis in original). Paying attention gives rise to the experience of presence, the sense that the writer is in “it”. Mystic philosopher Simone

Weil describes this as becoming present to the “void in ourselves” (1987: 10-11); the

271 “void” is a metaphor for the absence, not of self, but of individuated selfhood. Only once we have faced the emptiness of our separate selves can we enter the I-Thou relation. Weil describes the fleeting moments of existing in this relational space.

Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes.

Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of

pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is

through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural (1987: 11).

Weil’s concept of being “capable of the supernatural” is an act of entering a gift- relation. Paying attention can bring about one’s presence. Like Marion, Weil asserts that love is both the precondition of attention and its result: “Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love” (1987: 105).

According to Marion, this is a type of “saturated phenomena,” which are “absolutely unique, irreproducible, and largely unpredictable event[s]” (2002b: 89). Marion sees everyday life as potentially full of such rich experiences. Artistic experiences, as instances of “saturated phenomena”, have the potential to “reawaken us to the brilliance of life’s everyday offerings” (Falke 2016: 120). “Saturated phenomena” involve the surprise of recognition – of one’s own life experience, of one’s connection to other humans and their experiences. Marion’s notion of such saturated phenomena echoes literary theorist and philosopher Georges Bataille’s (1988) characterisation of humanity as distinguished by “excess”: a surplus of spirits, emotions and experiential saturation, expressing itself in gifts, rituals, wars and sacrifices.

Falke argues that reading can constitute a saturated phenomenon. The degree of saturation depends on variables such as the reader’s disposition towards the work, as

272 well as the degree of “effective surprise” which the text occasions. According to

Bruner, “effective surprise” is “the unexpected that strikes one with wonder or astonishment,” and has “the quality of obviousness about them when they occur, producing a shock of recognition following which there is no longer astonishment”

(1979: 18). This is the moment when a writer or reader feels that the story is “it,” they have the “At last!” moment akin to when a person finally finds someone with whom they can have an “authentic” conversation (Gaita 2012: 766).

Marion, Falke and other philosophers of “love” add greater nuance to our understanding of the ethics of attention within the phenomenological discourse about reading. The ethical obligation to attend to a text is inherent in our nature as beings- in-relation. Paying attention to a text is about ceding a degree of control to the text, as one does to a beloved person (Falke 2016). As Rosenblatt (1978) explains, we always bring ourselves and our prior understandings to the task of reading; but if we allow ourselves to exist as beings-in-relation with the text we are reading, then we allow the possibility that we may be changed by what we read; and allowing this to happen is what Marion and Falke describe as “love”.

A phenomenology of writing-fiction

There are a relatively small number of phenomenological studies of artistic creativity

(Conrad 1990; Nelson and Rawlings 2007), and even fewer empirical phenomenological studies of writing-fiction. In “Toward a Phenomenological

Analysis of Artistic Creativity,” Sheree Dukes Conrad (1990) argues that the field of creativity research should expand to include a phenomenological analysis of artistic activity as a human experience. She calls for empirical phenomenological studies

273 utilising interviews and field observations to understand what is going on when the writer engages in writing fiction (1990: 117). Conrad explores the phenomenon of writers and readers somehow “knowing” when a story is “it” or “not it”. Conrad explains that the sense that the writer has of whether she is getting the story “right” as

[T]he first departure from a common-sense understanding of art: the

artwork already exists before I have written a word […] Odd though it

seems, the writer creates neither story nor characters. The story exists,

in the sense that it makes demands upon the writer to write it; it exists

as something particular, in that the writer sees that certain events or

actions are not “it”; but it does not exist in the writer’s mind as some

idea or invention, a completely conceived product needing only to be

written down. The writer feels toward it, knowing quite clearly what it

isn’t, yet still unable to see what it is. (1990: 111-112)

Bruner theorises that writers permit the work “to develop its own being, its own autonomy,” and come to “serve it. It is as if it were easier to cope with there, as if this arrangement permitted the emergence of more unconscious impulse…” (1979: 26, emphasis in original). Conrad observes that both the writer and the reader have similar reactions about whether the story is “it” or “not it”:

The writer’s twofold reaction of surprised certainty, on the one hand,

and rejection, on the other, parallels the double reaction of the reader,

who responds to a story with either shocked recognition – “Yes.

That’s it, exactly” – or with scorn – “That’s a lie, that’s not it at all”.

(1990: 113)

As observed earlier, Bruner calls this an experience of “effective surprise” (1979: 18).

274 Crites describes this as a moment of “luminosity” when a “sacred story”, a work of literature and a person’s life intersect: “The shock of its appearance is like the recurrence in daylight of an episode recalled from dreams” (1971: 306). This sensation is echoed by writers and readers in my study, as described later in this dissertation.

What is “it”, and how do writers and readers know when the story is “not it”? Conrad explains that a writer or reader knows a story is “it” when “it” provides an essentially aesthetic experience (Dewey 1980). In “The Narrative Quality of Experience,” phenomenological philosopher Stephen Crites (1971) argues that a text plays its part in the aesthetic event if it allows the reader to enter into one of humanity’s “sacred stories,” the narratives of human experience, and which we already know on a “pre- theoretical” level (Conrad 1990: 117). This is what enables us as readers, and writers, to know when a story is “it” or “not it”:

The writer shows us nothing new, nothing we haven’t known all

along, somewhere in the marrow of our bones, or more precisely, in

our pre-theoretical experience. He simply makes the truth available to

us once more by seeing and transmitting…that particular instantiation

that powerfully reveals the meaning of some human experience to us

in direct perception. (Conrad 1990: 117)

To get “it”, Simone Weil argues that the writer must pay attention and be present:

[L]ike giving birth: we cannot help making the supreme effort.

But…I need have no fear of not making the supreme effort - provided

275 only that I am honest with myself and that I pay attention. (1987: 108,

emphasis added)

As previously discussed, there are a number of variables which affect the stance a reader maintains toward a text: some of these variables are in the text, and in the hands of the author of that text (Falke 2016; Heap 1977). Weil explains that paying attention must be a “looking and not an attachment” if the writer is to see (and write) what is “real” (1987: 109). The writer must enter into the gift-relation in which they and the text are aspects of each other, rather than the writer subverting the text to their ego. If the writer engages in didactic statements – if they “tell, not show” – then the

“truth” of the story “loses its richness, its ambiguity and resonance; we become habituated to it and it loses power to reach or move us” (Conrad 1990: 116).

In an empirical phenomenological study of artistic creativity, Barnaby Nelson and

David Rawlings interviewed eleven artists, including two writers, one writer/visual artist and one playwright/theatre director. The researchers describe the creative experience based on these interviews, elements of which include: commitment to the activity; routine; focus; a unity in sense of self; an attitude of exploration and discovery; a shift in the sense of one’s control over the work; and movement in and out of a “flow” state and in and out of self-awareness (2007: 226). As the writer explores, they discover elements that they feels “belong” in the piece (2007: 240).

When they are in the “flow” state, their sense of time is distorted, and they experience a sense of immersion, effortlessness and a unity in their sense of self at the same time as a loss of self-awareness (2007: 242, 244).

276 Nelson and Rawlings also observe a connection between the experience of creativity and the experience of spirituality (2007: 243). At various points of the experience, the artist feels like a “receiver” of ideas, and sometimes experiences a sense of “awe and mystery” (2007: 235). The self is experienced as united, rather than as a self “self- consciously” experiencing something (2007: 244). The distinction between the artist and the “object” they are making is dissolved: the artist “loses themself” in the work

(2007: 244), and feels a sense of “connection with something beyond the self”, an experience which is common to investigations of art, religion and love (Coleman

1998).

In her 1998 study, Doyle conducted interviews with five fiction writers to explore the writer’s experience of creating a work of fiction over time. She found that writers tended to identify a “seed incident”: an event which leads to a question the writer wants to explore, already possessing the seeds of its answer. Doyle describes this as a

“felt sense of story direction,” (1998: 31) which Conrad and Bruner call feeling “it”

(1990; 1979).

Through her interviews, Doyle found that writers switch in and out of the

“writingrealm” and the “fictionworld” in the process of writing fiction (1998). The

“writingrealm” is the physical and metaphorical space which a writer creates in which to conduct their work. Doyle explains that “The designated writing places were not just places. They were occasions for a particular way of being…”; in the

“writingrealm” writers were highly intentional, purposeful and reflective (1998: 31).

Phenomenologist Alfred Schutz describes humans’ different ways of being as “finite provinces of meaning” (1962: 341), allowing for a “specific kind of experience of self

277 and a specific form of sociality” (Doyle 1998: 31; Young 1987). Writers then shift in and out of the “fictionworld”, which Doyle defines as “the unfolding world of characters and events as they appear in the imaginative experience and words of the author” (1998: 31). When in the “writingrealm,” Doyle observed that writers still felt themselves present, in a self-conscious, I-It relation with the work. However, when the writing was going well, “the self-conscious ‘writing self’ disappeared” (Doyle

1998: 34; Csikszentmihalyi 1991). In relational terms, this is the shift into the I-Thou relation, which I call the gift-relation in this dissertation.

The gift-relation

In this dissertation I propose the concept of the “gift-relation” to describe the experience of “reading-a-loved-book,” as well as some aspects of the experience of

“writing-fiction”. I define the “gift-relation” as: an I-Thou mode of being in which people and things exist dynamically, as aspects of a relation; and a relation in which all parties to the relation give-and-receive.

In the preceding sections we have seen how the term gift has been used to describe an exchange between two people who are rational, self-interested actors operating within the Cartesian paradigm of individuated selfhood. We have also seen a broader conceptualisation of the gift as an expression and consolidation of selves already existing in an I-Thou relation. I use the term “gift-relation” in this dissertation to describe the gift experience which straddles both these gifts. There are rarely “pure” exchanges or relational states of being, but for theoretical purposes, a gift-relation can be understood as roughly in the middle of the spectrum between a “purely”

278 economistic gift exchange between two parties, and a “purely” I-Thou relation in which parties are aspects of the relation.

I identify three key distinguishing factors of a gift-relation: an obligation to reciprocate arises in a gift-relation, even if financial obligations have already been fulfilled; the obligation to reciprocate may be discharged indirectly and is not required to be discharged immediately; and the experience of giving is generative rather than depletive.

The obligation to reciprocate arises even if financial obligations have been fulfilled

In a gift-relation, an additional obligation to reciprocate is felt once the receiver returns to the experience of ordinary time despite any financial obligations already having been fulfilled. For example when I finish reading the loved-book I come back to the linearity of clock time and being. Now I want to share the experience with others. I recommend the book; I give it to friends. The desire to share the experience is partly a desire to narrate myself to others: my reading of the book has become part of my identity. But I am also spontaneously responding to a felt obligation to reciprocate the gifts I received from the reading experience which were qualitatively different to the money I had already paid. This obligation is generally felt as a positive sensation rather than a sense of unwelcome indebtedness. The act of sharing the experience does not feel as though it is taking something away from me. Instead I might feel energised by the experience: by sharing my love of the book, I am gratified egotistically and I continue to unfold the story of my self.

279 The obligation to reciprocate does not have to be discharged immediately or directly

Sociologist Pierre Bourdieu explains that every gift demands and receives a return, including objects which are “kept-whilst-given.” Examples of gifts which are “kept- whilst-given” include stories, emotional offerings, myths and sacred items (Mauss

1967; Godelier 1999), and are part of the economy of symbolic goods between people

(Bourdieu 1997). However, for gifts which are “kept-whilst-given,” the obligation is not for a direct or immediate response. The counter gift may be given many years later, and it may be given indirectly, for example to the wider social group rather than directly to the original giver (Bourdieu 1997). These types of gifts cement an ethical orientation towards the group; the receivers of such gifts feel an obligation to the group and its gods (Bourdieu 1997; Godelier 1999; Osteen 2000; Simmel 1950;

Strathern 1988). Godelier explains that these types of gifts connect people to “a certain type of relationship that humans entertain with the origin of things” (1999:

171). They generate an “immaterial aura of connection to other humans and to something greater than any individual human” (Osteen 2000: 244). In phenomenological terms, these gifts express humans’ I-Thou relation, and the experience of receiving such a gift is what I term the “gift-relation”.

The experience of giving is generative rather than depletive

In a gift exchange, I give something. This means something is taken from me. As a result, I have less than I had prior to the exchange until the receiver has reciprocated my gift. In a gift-relation, I still give – for example, when reading a book I give my time, attention, memories and life experiences. But it does not feel as though something has been taken from me. I do not feel like I have less than when I started, or that I must wait for the receiver to reciprocate before I am returned to homeostatis.

280 In a gift-relation, my gifts are “kept-whilst-given” – I do not lose them by giving them. In a gift-relation, I am actually in a state of giving-and-receiving, in which it no longer makes sense to talk about the giver and the receiver. Instead, the giver and receiver are aspects of a non-linear, and non-time bound relation. A does not give to

B and then B give to A. Instead, A and B are aspects of relation C, and C is the metaphorical space in which both A and B give-and-receive without linearity.

Entering the gift-relation through art experiences and artistic practice

A number of scholars explore how art, including works of fiction, can give rise to a gift-relation. Game and Metcalfe, in their phenomenological study of artists, observe that repetitive practices can provide a “different temporal experience: by suspending… future orientations, it allows them [the artists] to be in the non-linear present, the time where life unfolds” (2010a: 168). The scholars explain that this allows the work to unfold “in new and surprising ways because the practitioner is not rushing to a predetermined end” (2010a: 168). Game and Metcalfe argue that

“Creativity only comes through the emptiness of the artist, the suspension of desire and subjectivity” (2010a: 173). In other words, the artist’s routine practices can take them into a state of I-Thou relation with themself, the work, and the world. The transformation allows ther to temporarily forget, or at least demote, the pressures of everyday life while they are working. Doyle explains this process in terms of a writer creating a “writingrealm” of practice from whence the writer is able to enter the

“fictionworld” – a gift-relational mode of being in which the writer’s self is an aspect of the relation with the fictional world they are creating (1998).

281

French phenomenologist Roland Barthes argues that a photograph can plummet us into the gift-relation, which he would call an experience of punctum, making the

Spectator no longer a Spectator but instead a self, existing co-present with the photograph (1993). Merleau-Ponty similarly observes that experiences of art, such as looking at a painting, can transport a person from Euclidean space to the here and now (1964). Hillman explains that “breathing in” is the etymological root of the word

“aesthetics.” He argues that experiencing beauty is an act of being present and attending to the world; standing still, drawing in air and breathing air out; allowing oneself to be breathed by the “world ensouled” (1983).

Doyle describes how writers switch in and out of the everyday social and professional world, and the writingrealm (1998: 34). By entering a gift-relation for the work through ritual, routine practice and physical separation from daily life, a writer attempts to focus on process rather than product. Lewis Hyde describes how an artist can manage the two “finite provinces of meaning” (Schutz 1962: 341) in which they operate:

The artist who sells her own creations must develop a more subjective

feel for the two economies and her own rituals for both keeping them

apart and bringing them together […] She must create for herself that

gift-sphere in which the work is made, and only when she knows the

work to be the faithful realisation of her gift should she turn to see if it

has currency in that other economy (2007: 279).

282 Creativity researchers agree that engaging in the routine practices which develop a writer’s skills and knowledge also creates the conditions for creativity to occur (Chan

2011: 141). Teresa Amabile’s research suggests that creativity is supported best by intrinsic motivations, and extrinsic motivations which support them. Intrinsic motivations are those arising from the writer’s “positive reaction to qualities of the task itself” (1996: 115) – in phenomenological terms, we could describe this as the writer’s openness to discovery and loss of self-awareness (Nelson and Rawlings

2007).

Extrinsic motivators which detract from creativity include “expected reward, expected evaluation, surveillance, competition and restricted choice” (Hennessey and Amabile

2010: 581), all of which, in phenomenological terms, place the writer squarely in the

I-It relation with their text, rather than a gift-relation which enables generativity and creation. In some circumstances, rewards can build extrinsic motivation without negatively affecting intrinsic motivation. According to researchers Deci and Ryan, it is only when the reward leads the person to feel “controlled” by the situation that it starts to have a detrimental effect, by undermining the person’s sense of self- determination (Deci and Ryan 2002). Perhaps this is not surprising, given phenomenologists’ theorisation that one needs to lose some degree of control in order to enter into relational being (Marion 2002a; Falke 2016). Rewards can support intrinsic motivation if the level of intrinsic motivation is already strong, and the rewards “confirm competence, provide useful information in a supportive way, or enable people to do something they were already intrinsically motivated to do”

(Amabile 1993).

283 Creative writers interviewed for this study described occasions when they were unable to balance their extrinsic and intrinsic motivations. This sometimes led to writer’s block and a sense of creative exhaustion. They identified ways in which they enter a gift-relation to create work through rituals, routines and physical separation from the outside world, which I explore further in the chapter on the lifeworld of writing-fiction. In this dissertation, I argue that “reading-a-loved-book”, and the experience of “writing-fiction”, may be, but are not always, experiences of the gift- relation. I offer the concept of the gift-relation as a small but, I hope, useful theoretical contribution to identify, describe and understand these experiences, which may also have application in the description and analysis of art experiences more generally.

Summary

In this chapter I have outlined the key strands of gift theory and developed a framework for using the metaphor of the gift to describe the experience of writing- fiction and reading-a-loved-book. I have explained that a gift can be an expression of the I-It relation when it is an object of trade, but sometimes it can be an expression of the I-Thou relation, enmeshing selves rather than cementing their alienation. I propose that phenomenology offers a version of selfhood that allows for fluidity in the I-Thou of a “gift-relation.” One enters the “gift-relation” by paying attention and experiencing one’s self as an aspect of a relation rather than a static thing, in which one gives-and-receives, in a non-linear way. A gift-relation can be distinguished by a sense of generativity rather than depletion; an experience of an obligation to be fulfilled, even though no money or material goods are owed; and an ability to discharge this obligation indirectly and at a later point in time. In Chapters Four and

284 Five I describe how the experiences of writing-fiction and reading-a-loved-book can sometimes be experiences of a gift-relation, drawing on the 20 interviews I conducted in 2017 with readers and writers of fiction.

285 Chapter Three: Methodology

My dissertation is an examination of the ways in which readers describe the experience of reading-a-loved-book, and writers describe the experience of writing- fiction, using an interpretive, empirical phenomenological methodology. I have adopted this methodology to gather the lived experience of readers and writers, thereby contributing to the phenomenological study of creative writing and reading.

In this chapter I provide an overview of interpretive, empirical phenomenology as a research methodology, phenomenological research design, and implementation as applied to this dissertation.

Phenomenology as a research methodology

Phenomenology as a methodology was first developed by Edmund Husserl in the early 1900s as a way of “doing philosophy” (Moran 2000). In methodological terms, phenomenology is a way of focusing the philosopher’s project on the experience of living, and is commonly referred to as a study of “lived experience” (Moran 2000;

McConnell-Henry et al 2009). Phenomenology can be applied as an empirical qualitative methodology, and the material gathered generally comprises interviews with research participants about an experience, and/or oral or written reflections on an experience (Polkinghorne 2005: 137). Interpretive phenomenologists acknowledge that a person’s description of an experience is not the experience itself; a description is a languaged reflection upon an experience, co-constructed with the researcher

(Dennett 1991; Valle and King 1989).

286 The role of the researcher in an interpretive phenomenological study is not that of the

“objective” scientist (Groenewald 2004; Hammersley 2000). The phenomenological researcher acknowledges that they bring their own presuppositions to conducting interviews and analysing interview data. A researcher cannot be free of their “Dasein”

– humans exist in a web of meaning (Flood 2010; van Manen and Adams 2010).

However, they can approach a study with a “phenomenological attitude,” engaging in

“a certain sense of wonder and openness to the world while at the same time reflectively restraining pre-understandings” (Finlay 2008). The researcher attempts, as much as possible, to “bracket” their own meanings and interpretations (Crotty 1996;

Moran 2000) and enter “as much as possible into the world of the unique individual who was interviewed” (Hycner 1985: 281).

Pre-understandings are known as a researcher’s “fore-structure” and contribute to the phenomenologist’s “co-construction” of meaning as a blend of the participants’ and researcher’s meaning (Flood 2010). The researcher can also adopt what is known as a

“hermeneutic circle” as a means of continuously re-examining their understanding of research participants’ experiences. The circle involves back-and-forth questioning, in which the researcher and participant meet “through dialogue and openness” (Tuohey et al. 2013).

The researcher acknowledges and reflects on her pre-understandings and considers how these factors may influence her approach to the study. Hycner recommends that the researcher make a list of presuppositions that they are consciously aware of and talk these through with her research committee (or, in my case, with my supervisors), which may allow further presuppositions to be identified (1985: 281). I have

287 attempted to do this in the “Fore-structures” section of the dissertation. The researcher also listens to the interview with the aim of getting a sense of the “whole”, entering as much as possible into the world of the research participant (Giorgi 1975: 87), which involves listening to the audio and reading the transcript of an interview a number of times (Hycner 1985: 281).

The researcher’s experiences of the phenomenon, as well as the participants’ experiences, are considered to be potentially informative (Fischer 1989: 168). The researcher acknowledges that their own experience and those of the participants are

“perspectival”: no one person’s experience is more correct than another person’s, but they all contribute to an eventual description of the phenomenon being explored.

Fischer explains the key steps of the phenomenological researcher as gathering descriptions of a phenomenon from multiple perspectives, which necessarily includes the researcher; describing the phenomenon using language which best brings to life the experiences conveyed by the participants; and referencing these different perspectives (1989: 168).

In the context of this study, I have adopted empirical interpretive phenomenology as a qualitative research method to investigate the experiences of readers and writers of fiction. The method is empirical in that I have carried out interviews and drawn conclusions from them about the experiences under investigation (Julmi and Scherm

2015: 152). The method is interpretive phenomenology as I acknowledge that my description of participants’ experiences are, at best, always an interpretation of their interpretation of their lifeworld (Dennett 1991: 98); in the tradition of Heidegger

288 (1996) my study acknowledges that “description is always already interpretation”

(van Manen 2010: 451).

Common phenomenological methods include the collection and thematic analysis of lived experiences in order to identify the essence of the experience which make it a distinctive phenomenon (Rose 2011: 517). The validity of a phenomenological description of an experience can be ascertained from how well it represents the experience: “If the insight is communicated well, then others will also recognise the description as a statement of the essence of the phenomenon for themselves”

(Polkinghorne 1983: 45).

Phenomenological research into reading and writing fiction

As noted earlier in this dissertation, during the twentieth century, Georges Poulet

(1969), James Heap (1977), Louise Rosenblatt (1978), Wolfgang Iser (1972) and

Roman Ingarden (1973a, 1973b) theorised a phenomenology of reading. In more recent years, researchers have conducted phenomenological investigations of specific types of reading (Rose 2011; Rowsell 2014). However, from my review of the literature, it appears that the majority of empirical studies of reading over the last fifty years since Rosenblatt’s trans-actional model was published, in 1978, have favoured a scientific, quasi-positivist research design approach, assuming a unitary self which is affected or acted upon by the reading of certain texts. For example, there have been a number of psychological empirical studies on the ways in which reading literature may lead to the development of empathy, educational outcomes and prosocial behaviours. Much of this research involves an attempt to identify the specific elements, styles and types of text which lead to certain changes in a person’s

289 behaviours (Cui 2017; Kuzmicová et al. 2017; Panero et al 2016; Hoggan and

Cranton 2015; Koopman 2015; Oatley 2012; Djikic et al. 2009; Golden and Guthrie

1986).

As noted earlier in this dissertation, a number of scholars argue for more phenomenological research into reading and writing (Conrad 1990; Doyle 1998). In a critical review of the research into the psychological effects of reading fiction, Marco

Caracciolo and Thom van Duuren (2015) submit that the phenomenological route should be taken to gain important insights into how literary reading impacts readers

(2015: 517). Caracciolo and van Duuren encourage phenomenological research on the ways readers themselves talk about reading (2015: 530), noting that using the qualitative methodology of phenomenology allows readers to tell their own life stories, including changes in how they construct their “selves”. Caracciolo and van

Duuren (2015) point to the problematic use of an unchallenged notion of “self” in many of the psychological/reader-response empirical studies of reading.

Phenomenological research design

Phenomenology as a methodology uses interviews as a data collection tool, as do other social methodologies such as ethnography and ethnomethodology (Bloor and

Wood 2006; Magge-Rapport 2000). A study of the differences between social methodologies is beyond the scope of this dissertation but I would like to briefly observe that the ways in which interviews are designed and conducted differ across methodologies, based on a methodology’s primary focus of enquiry and epistemological orientation. For example ethnomethodology can, at a very basic level, be understood as a study of the practices of everyday life (van Manen 2010: 451), and

290 an ethnomethodologist might use interviews to understand how people make sense of their world and their actions (Bloor and Wood 2006). Ethnographers might deploy interviews as a way to understand how research subjects construct meaning (van

Manen 2010) alongside other methods such as observation over a period of time

(Bloor and Wood 2006: 71).

Phenomenologists use interviews to attempt to describe a lived experience (Magge-

Rapport 2000; Sorrell and Redmond 1995; van Manen 2010). In this way phenomenology differs from other social methodologies primarily because its key aim is to describe and invoke the lived experience of a particular phenomenon. This informs the logic of phenomenological research design, implementation and analysis.

Phenomenologists acknowledge that they can never perfectly regenerate an experience retrospectively through words or descriptions and so the phenomenological project is “ultimately always indeterminate, always tentative, always incomplete” (van Manen 2010: 453). Nevertheless phenomenologists attempt, through their research texts, to produce a level of “existential, emotive, enactive, embodied” insight which can evoke, at least in part, a sense of “wonder” about the lived experience the research text is describing (van Manen 2010: 449).

Participant criteria

Phenomenological researcher Donald Polkinghorne explains that the core criterion for research participants selection in phenomenological studies is how well they can describe the experience under investigation (1983). Research participants should fulfil the following criteria: they have had the experience which is being investigated; they are able to provide “full and sensitive descriptions” of the experience (Polkinghorne

291 1983: 47). This means that they can express themselves verbally; they are able to sense and express their inner emotions; and they are interested in the experience (van

Kaam 1969: 328). Ideally they have also had an experience of the situation being researched relatively recently (van Kaam 1969: 328).

Sample size

The logic of phenomenological research recruitment is different to the logic of statistical sampling. The aim of phenomenological research is to describe the experience under investigation. Rather than selecting a random sample, “The point of subject selection is to obtain richly varied descriptions, not to achieve statistical generalisation” (Polkinghorne 1983: 47). The number of research participants can therefore vary markedly in a phenomenological study. For example, at the “lower” end of the range, Doyle (1998) interviewed five writers in her phenomenological study of the experience of “creating fiction”, Rose (2011) conducted open-ended interviews with 10 students in her phenomenological study of the experience of “on- screen reading”, and de Konig (1979) worked with three research participants in a study of the experience of “being suspicious”. Examples of phenomenological studies in the “middle” of the range include: Rowsell’s (2014) study involving 20 case study students in her examination of “iPad reading”; and Mruk’s (1983) work with 25 research participant descriptions of “being pleased and displeased with self”. As an example of a larger sample range, van Kaam (1969) collected 325 descriptions from high school students about the experience of “really feeling understood”. In her study of on-screen reading, Rose (2011) conducted open-ended interviews with ten students, asking them to recall and describe an instance of reading something online such as an essay, e-book or chapter.

292

Interview design and implementation

In phenomenological studies, interviews tend to be open-ended and unstructured, and duration is normally half an hour to an hour but can last longer and participants may be interviewed more than once, depending on how long it takes a research participant to describe their experience (Polkinghorne 1983: 48). The interviewer adopts a position of “sympathetic neutrality” towards the research participant, perhaps nodding when the research participant is talking to demonstrate an appreciative stance towards the research participant’s version of “reality” (Dennett 1991: 83; Bruner 1979: 124).

The logic of interview design in phenomenological studies is different to the logic of interview design in questionnaires. The phenomenological interview is designed as a conversation (Mishler 1991), involving an “interpersonal engagement in which subjects are encouraged to share with a researcher the details of their experience”

(Polkinghorne 1983: 49). Interviews are conducted face-to-face where possible, but a study can include a mix of telephone interviews (Fischer 1989). The phenomenological interviewer seeks descriptions of the experience itself, so that the essential themes or structure of the experience will emerge (Kvale 1983). The phenomenological researcher is ultimately concerned, not with establishing an objective “reality”, but with describing the experience from the perspective of participants. Researchers can frame questions which direct the participant into their experience such as “What was it like for you?” instead of “What happened?”

(Polkinghorne 1983: 50).

293 Phenomenological analysis and description

Phenomenological researcher Max van Manen explains that the method of phenomenology is to collect descriptions of lived experience, and then to analyse these thematically, with a view to capturing the essence of the experience – the characteristics of the experience which “make a phenomenon what it is and without which the phenomenon could not be what it is” (van Manen 1990: 106, emphasis in original). van Manen also urges researchers to present the experience in language that

“reawakens or shows us the lived quality and significance of the experience in a fuller, deeper manner” (1990: 10). Polkinghorne reminds the phenomenological researcher that the “validity of the phenomenological account owes much to how vividly and elegantly it represents an experience” (Rose 2011: 517; Polkinghorne

1983: 50). For example, in her empirical phenomenological study of online reading,

Ellen Rose uses a first-person narrative to represent the themes she identified from her research participants’ descriptions, “in a way that is both clear and evocative of the lived experience” (2011: 518).

Rose stimulated students’ recall with prompt questions about where they read, their mood and so on (2011: 517). Rose then read and re-read the interview transcripts, allowing “units of meaning” (Groenewald 2004: 50) to emerge. Like Rose (2011), I adopt an emergent strategy of analysing the interview transcripts, focusing on the meaning of the descriptions by abstracting out themes which emerged as common characteristics of the experience. I identified collective themes as the aspects of the meaning of the experience which appeared to be common amongst participants regardless of differences in physical surroundings, time frames or other facets of an experience. I also asked participants about similar but different experiences, such as

294 reading a well-regarded book, or reading a book which the participant thought they might love but about which they changed their mind (and heart). The descriptions were the raw material for identifying the essential themes of reading-a-loved-book. I asked writers of fiction additional questions about their practice: if they have routines they follow; and how they manage pressures such as financial or reputational pressures to succeed in a market sense. The writers’ descriptions provided a mechanism for me to identify a number of aspects of the writing-fiction experience.

I have not employed Rose’s (2011) first-person narrative method for describing the experiences of read-a-loved-book or writing-fiction, largely because I do not want to detract from the interpretive aspect of my phenomenology, which means that I acknowledge that I cannot enter and identify with the participants’ experience in a pure sense. I have also taken the interpretive phenomenologist’s steps of identifying my own fore-structures, and interviewing participants in a back-and-forth conversation to gradually co-construct a hermeneutic circle of meaning. I have structured my descriptions of the participants’ experience in a manner similar to

Fischer’s (1989) empirical phenomenological psychological description of “being- anxious”, in which Fischer describes the essential themes and aspects of the experience. Like Fischer (1989), Rose (2011), Doyle (1998) and other phenomenological researchers, I illustrate the elements of the experience with quotations from research participants.

Limitations of the phenomenological method

Phenomenological methodology has been criticised for a variety of limitations as outlined in Chapter One (Hycner 1985). As explained in the preceding sections,

295 purposive sampling and the limited number of participants are appropriate to the aim of the phenomenological project, which is to describe a particular experience.

Phenomenological findings are not meant to be generalisable, but are intended to be convincing descriptions of a specific phenomenon. As Heap explains, a phenomenological study of reading is not intended to describe the concept of reading as it exists in the community at large: “our claims can only be about the type of reading which we have considered in analysis” (1977: 104). Similarly, Rose, in her phenomenological study of on-screen reading, explains that, “no researcher who undertakes a phenomenological inquiry expects or wishes to produce generalisable findings” (2011: 517).

Phenomenologists acknowledge that a description of an experience is not equivalent with a person’s actual experience (van Manen and Adams 2010: 451). Nevertheless, phenomenologists believe there is value in asking people to verbally describe their experiences: such descriptions are still informative for our understanding of human being-in-the-world. Phenomenologists attempt to harness their own subjectivity, articulating their own fore-structures and perspective of a phenomenon which can contribute to its ultimate description (Hycner 1985: 297). In the next section I attempt to list my own pre-suppositions and describe my experience of “reading-a-loved- book” and “writing-fiction”.

Fore-structures

I come to this study as someone who values books and the experience of reading and writing. I come from a family that did not have books around the house – our family belonged to the lower-working class with a Chinese-Singaporean mother and an

296 Anglo-Australian father, neither of whom had the opportunity to complete high school. Nevertheless my parents valued academic achievement and there was an expectation that my siblings and I would go to university. As a result I grew up valuing books and the people who read them.

Nevertheless I continued to be an avid reader and I had my first experience of

“reading-a-loved-book” at a young age, when I was in primary school, and I spent a lot of my childhood leisure time in reading books and writing poetry and stories.

When I ask myself if I have ever read a loved book, the following books come to mind: Anne of Green Gables by L.M. Montgomery (1987); The Hobbit (Tolkien

1998) and The Lord of the Rings by J.R.R Tolkien (1981); Persuasion by Jane Austen

(2003-2008) and Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (2009). Each of these books means something different to me, but what they have in common is that they occasioned an experience which I call “love”, well beyond an experience of entertainment or education.

My presuppositions about the experience of “reading-a-loved-book” can be summed up as follows: I believe that “reading-a-loved-book” is a highly valuable experience.

For me, “reading-a-loved-book” feels like stepping outside of time; it brings a sense of comfort and surprise. The experience is different from reading a book that I enjoy but then forget about later or reading a book I respect but don’t “love”. I am interested in the experiences which people choose to talk about when they are asked about

“reading-a-loved-book”. The experiences they select to tell me about are informative about what “reading-a-loved-book” means to them.

297 As a person from a minority background I am attracted to the phenomenological ontology of relational being because in the I-Thou mode I do not feel “othered”. “I” am an equal, and equally powerful, aspect of a dynamic relation. I also came to this research as the daughter of a migrant woman and an impoverished army veteran, both of whom viewed artistic and literary pursuits as the domain of the affluent. In this context the concept of the “gift-relation” has helped me to theorise allocating time to write during which I am permitted to temporarily ignore financial pressures.

Over the years I have developed a routine that works for me when it comes to making the time and mental space to write. My presuppositions about the experience of

“writing-fiction” can be summed up as follows: I believe a writer needs to enter the gift-relation at some point in the process – the relational space in which self is an aspect of a relation with the text rather than in a discrete position of control over the text. In my experience, entering this relation, even briefly, even once, is a necessary prerequisite for the experience that the writer has got “it” – that they have pinned/penned down the elusive “true” nature of the story, described by Conrad

(1990) and Bruner (1979).

Interviews

Recruitment

My study involving twenty participants describing the experience of “reading-a- loved-book” can be said to be in the middle sample range of an empirical phenomenological study. Eleven of these participants also identified as writers of fiction from across a range of forms including playwriting, young adult fiction, poetry, literary fiction, humour. One participant identified as a writer of both fiction

298 and memoir, whilst almost all writers observed that they drew from time to time on their own life experiences when writing “fiction”. My work with eleven of these participants to describe the experience of “writing-fiction” is at the “lower” end of the sample range (Polkinghorne 1983). An exhaustive analysis of variations based on gender, cultural or socioeconomic background and other variables was beyond the scope of this dissertation.

I recruited participants through reader and writer networks and book groups. This was a practical way of working within the resource parameters of the dissertation, as well as a way to focus on participants who fulfilled van Kaam’s (1969) criteria.

Participants volunteered for the study by responding to my invitation to their network/group, which indicated that they had an interest in describing their experience. As members of reading and writing networks and groups, I increased the likelihood that participants had a recent experience of the situation I wanted to explore, that of “reading-a-loved-book”. And the very nature of the topic – that of reading and writing – also increased the likelihood of the participants being relatively verbally fluent in describing their experience (van Kaam 1969: 328). Following the advice of Polkinghorne to seek varied views of the experience under investigation, I sought different perspectives of the experience of “reading-a-loved-book” and

“writing-fiction” by recruiting participants across different ages and, for the writers, different forms of fiction. I used purposive sampling to ensure I had a mix of genders and age groups, and so that at least half of the research participants identified as both readers and creative writers. Participants for the research were recruited using the snowball referral technique, in which participants were asked to recommend others who meet the contrast sampling category with respect to age or gender. The age of

299 research participants ranged from 20 to 70 years, with the majority in the 40 to 50 year old bracket (12 research participants), one research participant in the 20 to 30 year old bracket, four in the 30 to 40 year old bracket, two in the 50 to 60 year old bracket and one in the 60 to 70 year old bracket. Seven of the research participants were male and thirteen were female.

As explained earlier in this dissertation, I have two objects of study: the experience of

“reading-a-loved-book,” and the experience of “writing-fiction”. My definition of

“reading-a-loved-book” is based Rosenblatt’s trans-actional model of reading, which posits that the literary work of art arises in the trans-action between reader and text.

Whilst readers could have (and did) described reading nonfiction or fiction, I implied through the interview context (a PhD student of creative writing) that I was interested in fiction. Two of the participants spoke of nonfiction and poetry, whilst the rest of the participants offered examples of loved fiction books. Linguistic diversity was also beyond the practical scope of this dissertation, and thus my study is more accurately read as a description of the experience of English-speaking readers and fiction writers.

Interview design and implementation

I conducted interviews in person wherever possible or over the phone if the research participant was unavailable for interview in person. I conducted nine interviews in person and eleven via phone. I classified each of the eleven writer research participants as follows: (1) Emerging writer who has no books of fiction published but working on a manuscript at the time of the interview, (2) Early career writer with one book of fiction published at the time of the interview, (3) Mid-career writer with two to four books of fiction published at the time of the interview, and (4) Established

300 writer with more than four books of fiction published at the time of the interview.

Creative writer participants included one emerging, four early career, four mid-career and two established writers. Four of the creative writers were male and seven were female.

The study received ethics approval from the UNSW Human Research Ethics

Advisory Panel (HC15350). In the dissertation, I have de-identified participants and have replaced names with pseudonyms indicative of gender and ethnic background. I gave each participant a Participant Information Statement and participants signed a

Consent Form prior to the interview. They were advised that they could withdraw their consent at any time. Participants were assured of the anonymity of their responses. With their permission, I recorded interviews and transcribed them verbatim for the purposes of analysis. Participants appeared to feel comfortable being recorded and I made it clear in my introductory remarks that I would only be using their comments for research purposes and that they would be de-identified. Face-to-face interviews took place in people’s homes or cafes, whatever was most convenient for the participant. Participants were typically at home for phone interviews. Participation was voluntary, and participants self-selected as people eager to discuss the experience of reading books that they loved.

When I planned the interviews, I attempted to take into account my own fore- structures as well as possible, particularly in the way I structured my questions and monitored my body language. I wanted to present both neutrality and appreciative inquiry as described by Bruner (1979) and Dennett (1991) – nodding or making acknowledging sounds to encourage the participant to keep going with their

301 description, even if their experience did not match my expectations. I explained to participants that I wanted to hear about the experience of reading a loved book.

Beforehand, I did not describe my own experience of reading-a-loved-book, writing- fiction, or the concept of the gift to participants. I explained these ideas after the end of the formal interview, if an research participant expressed interest in knowing more about the dissertation. I have not included any quotes or analysis from comments made after the end of the interview.

I went into interviews with a handful of core questions. My main objective was to create a safe environment for the interview so that the participant would feel as comfortable as possible when sharing their experiences. I “loosely structured” the interviews (Minichiello 2008: 53), following a simple interview guide which looked at a number of key topics whilst allowing for flexibility in wording and question order so that the research participant had some freedom to follow thoughts. Nonetheless, the interviews were still “controlled conversations” (Minichiello 2008: 53), geared towards the research questions of the study (Kvale 1983).

I first asked participants to identify a book that they had loved. The question served to ease the participant into a reflective mode of conversation. I left unstated what I meant by “loving” a book, as I wanted that concept to be defined by the participant.

The following is an excerpt from one of the interview transcripts which exemplifies the typical introductory stage of the interview.

Interviewer (me): Let's talk a bit about books that you love. Do you

have any particular books that you love that come to mind?

302 Participant: Yes, I always forget my favourites but the ones that have

been important to me and stayed in my mind over time - do you mean

recent books or...?

Interviewer (me): Just any, any times, yeah.

Participant: Any? Virginia Woolf's The Waves, and Dylan Thomas’

Under Milk Wood. Carol Shields, The Republic of Love and Louis -

how do you say it? - Louis Sachar - quite a few of his book I love.

Diana Wynne-Jones - which one is my favourite of hers? - a lot of

hers. I could keep going for a long time but is that enough?

Interviewer: It's okay. I'm just wondering about, about the experience

of reading a book that you love. If you can think about possibly the

first time that you read one of those books. If you can remember the

first time you read - any of them, you can take your pick - and if you

can tell me - if you can think of how it felt, how you were feeling

when you read that book for the first time.

As in the example above, after the participant appeared to have exhausted the books that had come to mind, I asked the participant to pick one of those books, or more than one if they preferred, and tell me a bit more about what it had felt like to read the book. If required, I also asked questions to encourage the participants to delve further into the experience, such as:

• Do you remember where you were or how old you were when you read the

book?

• Is there a particular place you like to read?

• How did it feel to read the book?

303 • Do you remember whether there a point at which the book went from you

liking it to loving it?

• Now tell me about the experience of reading a book that you like, or highly

regard, but don’t love. What was the difference?

• What about a book that you thought you might love as you were reading it, but

at some point that changed? How did that feel? (lived relation/lived

experience)

I asked readers who were also writers additional questions about their practice. These included:

• Tell me a bit about your writing practice.

• Do you have a routine or things you do to get yourself into it?

• Do you ever feel a sense of external pressure? Such as pressure to succeed,

make money, get good reviews…

• If you do, does it affect your writing?

• If it does, how do you manage that?

Analysis of interviews

When it came time to analyse the transcripts of the interviews, I engaged in a phenomenological reading approach which involved first reading the interview as a whole (van Manen 1990). I identified words and phrases which spoke to the meaning of the participant’s experience. I identified common themes, and explored differences as a means of testing and building a nuanced theory of writing-fiction and reading-a- loved-book through the lens of the gift. The interview data informed my theoretical framework, which I described in the previous chapter and which is based on a

304 phenomenological relational ontology of being. I also reviewed the data with the criticalist’s agenda of theorising the potential for social action and change. Critical forms of research are engaged in “interrogating commonly held values and assumptions, challenging conventional social structures, and engaging in social action” (Crotty 1998: n.p.).

305 Chapter Four: Reading-a-loved-book

In this chapter, I develop a description of the experience of reading-a-loved-book. I illustrate this experience through direct quotations from research participants, and by contrasting the experience of reading-a-loved-book with reading-a-book-which-is- not-loved. I apply the theoretical framework of phenomenology and the metaphor of the gift-relation described in Chapter Two to the experience, with the aim of contributing to the phenomenological scholarship about reading and being.

Limitations of the description

As discussed in Chapter Three, I conducted interviews with twenty research participants about the experience of reading-a-loved-book. The participants ranged in age, cultural and socioeconomic background, but the sample was selected along the phenomenological logic of identifying participants who could describe the experience of reading-a-loved-book from a variety of perspectives, rather than the logic of representative sampling. I then listened to the recorded interviews and reviewed typed transcripts in order to identify the key themes of the experience. When I conducted my analysis, I bore in mind that I had asked readers to describe their experience retrospectively, which means that readers could and did select experiences to tell me about which they value more than other experiences. Therefore my description of the experience of reading-a-loved-book is in reality a description of the experiences which readers choose to describe when asked about reading-a-loved-book.

306 I tried to make research participants feel comfortable to describe the experience of reading any type of fictional book – literary fiction, genre fiction, science fiction, romance and so on – as long as it was an experience which they identified as an experience of reading-a-loved-book. In some instances, research participants did not tell me the book they had in mind as they described the experience: they focused on describing the experience itself. Nevertheless, research participants tended, at least at the start of our conversations, to select experiences of reading books which had been valorised by literary critics. If they decided to describe the experience of loving a book which they did not consider to be “literary”, they sometimes sought to explain to me their choice of book.

For example, at the start of his interview, reader and playwright, Matthew, told me about his love of Donna Tartt’s book, The Secret History, and then about Peter

Carey’s Oscar and Lucinda, both of which have achieved literary critical acclaim.

Later in the interview, Matthew added Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods. Matthew said, “You’ll find lots of people who turn up their nose a bit at Bill Bryson books because he’s been so incredibly successful. I think he has such a brilliant writing style.” Matthew went on to describe a visceral negative reaction to Richard

Flanagan’s Narrow Road to the Deep North, which had received literary acclaim. For

Matthew, the book had “a little too much cliché in places for me to completely love

[…] Talking about how it makes you feel, I was a bit repulsed by that book and I had to put it down.”

Bec also spoke of books which she felt she ought to love. After describing her love of the childhood book Anne of Green Gables, she thought about books she had loved as

307 an adult. She laughed and said, “I was just going to say I loved My Brilliant Career, which actually isn’t true. It actually makes me a bit angry.” After this, Bec seemed more comfortable to describe the experience of liking books including those which did not fit the mold of literary masterpiece:

I read a lot of trash because it doesn’t require any commitment from

me or any sort of, you know. But I still have been surprised in those

scenarios as well. I’ll start a book that I think, “Well, there’s nothing

to this. This is just going to be a piece of trash.” But I end up really,

really liking it. It’s much rarer with those kinds of books but it’s not

impossible. (Bec)

Bec went on to identify a number of authors whose books are marketed as “chick-lit” including Marian Keyes, about whom she said, “I really like her [Marian Keyes’] books. They are kind of put in the same category as a lot of lesser books, but they are actually really good.”

It is beyond the scope of my dissertation to measure how much of the selection process was affected by the readers’ views of what books they “should” describe when talking about books they loved, or how they wanted to present themselves to me. I have focused my analysis on the experience they described: what it felt like to read a book which they identified as a book they loved. It is also important to note that, when selecting experiences to describe, research participants chose experiences which in retrospect they considered to be experiences of love. Therefore when I refer to “reading-a-loved-book”, I am actually describing research participants’ descriptions of the experience of reading-a-loved-book, which they have retrospectively identified as experiences of love.

308

The experience of reading-a-loved-book

Through my analysis of the interviews and the theoretical discussions in Chapter Two

I came to understand the experience of reading-a-loved-book as follows.

At the time of reading the book which will later be regarded as loved, the reader does not yet know that they will one day describe it as a book that they love. They may have come to the book by accident, or perhaps because a librarian, a relative or a friend gave it to them. They might begin to read it out of a sense of obligation because it was a gift or a recommendation, or because they must read it for school. They might choose to read the book because they are looking for entertainment, pleasure or perhaps a challenge; they may have heard good things about the book in the media, or the book may have won awards.

The book might not grab the reader immediately. The reader might feel a little bored, a bit distracted; then from one paragraph to the next, something shifts: the reader feels that the book has got “it”. Thet are surprised and hooked. They want to know what happens next and cares about what happens. The reader loses track of time whilst reading, and is brought back to the regular world only by physical necessities such as needing to use the toilet, hunger pangs, or being interrupted by the demands of their timetable.

If this is the first time the reader has experienced these sorts of feelings when reading a book, they may feel like they have discovered an imaginative state of being in which the regular demands of daily life seem to have been suspended. They want to

309 enter this state again; they want to repeat the experience of these feelings of surprise, delight and attachment. Seeking this experience will be part of what leads the reader to read other books. Over time and with practice, they develop a sense of what kinds of books and recommendations can generally be relied upon to deliver this experience. They know that the experience is not something they can force, but this does not stop them from coming to a recommended book with expectations and hopes, which are sometimes disappointed.

Years later, when asked to think of a book they love, the reader talks about the books which they have an abiding affection for, which they have lent or gifted to others, and which they may re-read from time to time. They talk about the first book or books that introduced them to the love-experience of reading. They might choose to talk about books which they associate with transformative periods in her life. They may mention books which they have read recently and are still fresh in their mind as an experience of love, even though they are not sure if they will still consider these books as loved- books in years to come.

When asked about what it feels like to read a loved book, the reader might choose one of the books they have loved, or they might draw on a number of them. In either case, the reader talks about a feeling of discovery; surprise coupled with recognition; the sensation of entering other worlds without leaving their regular life; the feeling of being deeply understood and profoundly connected to other humans; and a sense that the reader is in a safe, imaginative space to explore and experiment with ideas. If they are asked how this experience compares to the experience of reading a book which they consider to be a “good” book, but which is one they do not classify as a loved-

310 book, the reader begins to talk about wasting time, being distant from the book, and the failures on the part of the author. If the reader talks about a book which they began to love and then ceased to love, they talk about the author with the resentment and bitterness reminiscent of a disappointed lover.

Essential themes of the experience of reading-a-loved-book

Numerous topics arise from this description of reading-a-loved-book, but for the purposes of this dissertation I limit my analysis to the essential aspects of the experience which arose across the interviews. These are: feeling surprised and hooked, along with a sense that the story is “it”; the moment when something shifts, and the reader loses track of time and enters a different state of being; the feeling of being deeply understood and profoundly connected to other humans; a feeling that it is safe to explore ideas; and the occasional association of a loved book with a moment of life transformation. As a counterpoint to further illuminate the key aspects of this experience, I also examine the experience of reading a book which the reader begins to love and then ceases to love, and the experience of reading a book which is respected but not loved.

Surprise and “it-ness”

As discussed in Chapter Two, “effective surprise” is identified by Jerome Bruner as an essential characteristic of a creative enterprise (1979: 18) and by Jean-Luc Marion

(2002b) as an element of a “saturated phenomenon” which constitutes an experience of love. An “effective surprise” produces a “shock of recognition following which there is no longer astonishment” (Bruner 1979: 18). This “shock of recognition” is the

311 moment when the reader recognises the story as “it” (Conrad 1990). Readers do not necessarily come into the book thinking that it will have this effect on them:

I don't think it is consciously something that I think of, like, “Oooh, I

wonder if this [book] is going to be one of the ones.” It's more that it

kind of takes you by surprise while you are in it and it’s like a pleasant

surprise, like, “Oooh.” I'm always taken by surprise by how much I

love something, like, “Wow, I wasn't expecting this to be so good but

actually it’s really awesome”. (Bec)

A reader feels that a book has got “it” when the book gives rise to an aesthetic experience of consummation, rather than cessation – when the experience has an artistic logic to it which allows the experience to be understood as “an” experience

(Dewey 1980). The story is met with the shock of recognition, because readers already “know” the story’s “truth” on a “pre-theoretical level” in the “marrow of our bones” (Conrad 1990: 117).

Readers in this study described the feeling of “it” in two ways: a sense that the writer has put something of their “true” self into the book; and a feeling that the book was

“true” to “itself”. Will describes the sensation that a writer has put something of their

“true self” in the book:

You have to feel like the author is really giving you something of

themselves. Something real […] It doesn’t have to be an

autobiography or anything, but you have to feel like the author is

really putting himself in the book, you know. Blood on the page, sort

of thing.

312 Research participants felt that they could tell when a book had something “real” of the writer in it. This is a deciding factor as to whether they loved a book or simply respected and admired it. For example, John said that loving a book requires something of the author to be present:

I can sort of look at it, or read, a book by David Malouf, and admire it

tremendously but not be changed or moved by it in any way

whatsoever. There’s nothing of David Malouf really in there.

The second way in which research participants talked about “it-ness” was the sense that a book was “true” to “itself”. For example, they compared loved-book- experiences with experiences of reading books which research participants felt had played a false note. This was a sense that the story was not unfolding in a consistent way with the story’s internal “truth” – with the logic of the world and the lives of the characters within it, as well as with the deeper story “it-ness” which gives rise to the

“shock of recognition” (Bruner 1979; Conrad 1990). For example:

It wasn’t that [Atonement (McEwan 2001)] was a bad book […] It was

that it sort of felt like it went off track. I was there, loving it, and then

suddenly it just kind of, went in a direction that felt like a bit of a cop

out, to me. (Renee)

When research participants talked about a book being “true” to itself, or failing to be

“true” to itself, they frequently introduced the author into the conversation. As described above, readers had to feel that the author had written from a “true, authentic” part of themself for the love-experience to arise.

313 This is a delicate balance. Research participants also had to feel that the author’s ego was largely absent; that it was the story compelling their attention, and not the author overtly demanding it. If a reader feels that the author has failed to be “true” to the story, and/or has failed to write from some place of authentic “self”, then the reader finds it difficult to enter the gift-relation of reading-a-loved-book. The reader remains in the I-It space, in which their relationship is one of exchange with the author.

Instead of feeling as though the reader is in a space of giving-and-receiving, the reader talks as if they are in an implied contractual relationship, in which the reader has paid their dues: attention, openness, commitment of time; but the author has failed to deliver their side of the bargain – the story “truth”.

A relational state of being

Once the reader experiences the moment of “effective surprise”, they transition from the I-It relation of subject (reader)-object (book), into a relational, I-Thou mode of being. The reader may have started reading the book with Rosenblatt’s “aesthetic stance” to be as open to the book as possible, but it is only now that the book has

“surprised” them into “shocked recognition” that the reader is transitioned into feeling

“hooked”. They no longer “pays” attention; their attention is now compelled by the story. The reader cedes a degree of control, allowing themself to exist as a being-in- relation with the text.

This can be understood as a relationship of “love”, in which one allows oneself to be

“altered by an intentionality and signification that arises from elsewhere” (Falke

2016: 57). Participants described this as an experience of falling in love. For some

314 readers, it is an embodied experience; for others, it is an experience of passion and intensity:

I think with In the Skin of a Lion, I was pushed to read it at speed - it

was one of those books that I absolutely devoured. It was a very

passionate relationship…your heart is racing. (Henry)

[T]here is a sense of pure - there is a real joy in the act of reading it

[…] There is like a feeling of joy in the discovery while you are

discovering it. You are sort of, “Ohhhh”. You are not just enjoying the

book, but you are enjoying the feeling of falling in love with it, you

know? (Bec)

According to Bec, this is the feeling which turns a reader into a book-lover: she is trying to emulate that experience of love.

You are kind of chasing the dragon. It’s why you turn into a reader,

because you are chasing that feeling. That feeling is so good that you

read lots more books because you want to find it. It’s kind of like

when people talk about drugs – the first hit you have is always the best

one – and so, for the rest of time, you are just chasing that feeling

again and again…(Bec)

Genevieve described “loving the smell” of the book, and other embodied dimensions of the experience of falling in love:

[Reading the book was] my first real understanding of romance in the

broader sense. The book was romantic to me, not just because there is

a romance in it, but the idea of this feeling that you have that you are

315 so enjoying it, like you fall in love with something, you fall in love

with the process of picking that book up.

Other research participants also recalled sensuous dimensions of the experience of reading-the-loved-book. Naomi described keeping the loved-book in bed with her while she slept, whilst Martin vividly recalled the “corduroy couch” where he used to spend his time reading in the family home. Bec described in detail the “really beaten- up, yellow, paperback version” of Anne of Green Gables which she had read as a child, the spine of which was “held together with brown parcel tape that you use for moving boxes.” The embodied experience of love in the context of reading is beyond the scope of this dissertation, but we can see that these reminiscences play a role, at least for some readers, in the way they describe the experience of reading-a-loved- book.

Losing track of time and entering non-Euclidean space

Once the reader has transitioned into the gift-relation, the reader loses track of clock time and Euclidean space. They do not want to leave the imaginative space which they now occupy. They do not want the experience to end:

You don’t want it to stop. You’re in that flow space where you are not

really noticing anything else and you are participating in that book

really actively […] I think you form a relationship with the book and

it’s one that you don’t want it to end but you know it’s going to. You

want to slow down and savour the book. You don’t want to finish it

too soon. (Henry)

316 [W]hen I started getting to the end of the first volume, I had this

mounting anxiety. I was like, “Oh my God, I’m going to finish it, I’m

going to finish it, no, no.” It was like I had to have the next one. I

remember driving to Glebe Books at five to nine – it used to close at

nine pm – to get the second volume. It was kind of like that through

the five [volumes]. (Naomi)

I feel like life annoys me during those times because I have to live in

the world and I’m not allowed just to sit and read all the time. I get

really irritated when I have to leave the book. (Bec)

Some readers describe this transition into the I-Thou relational mode of being as a shift to non-Euclidean space:

The imaginative space, that’s what you sort of fall in love with. That

sort of going into that world and it’s yours, no one can interfere with it

- other than stopping you reading, but once you are in there, reading,

it’s like, “This is your space”. (Genevieve)

This identification of oneself with the space-of-the-book characterises the relational mode of being which is the experience of reading-a-loved-book. The book is no longer experienced in the I-It relation of subject-object; the moment of “effective surprise” has led to a recognition of, and identification with, the space-of-the-book.

The reader now experiences the book as an aspect of a relation with their self, rather than as an external object.

317 In a similar vein, research participants felt “seen” and “understood” because of the relational mode of being the experience offers. For example, Sofia, Kate and Martin described a sense of being “seen” when they read-a-loved-book. Bec described how reading-a-loved-book made her feel “understood”:

With some [books], I feel understood, you know? There is some

insight. The character is written in such a way that I identify with

them or there are some points that the author is making in the way that

they write that makes me feel understood so there is camaraderie with

the book as well.

Sofia describes reading Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children:

I felt empowered. I felt almost relief in some ways, like somehow my

experience was being articulated in a fun, not-very-navel-gazing way.

This experience had the extra dimension for Sofia, as a person of South Asian descent, of reading a book by a South Asian author and set in South Asia. The role of cultural identification in an experience of reading-a-loved-book is beyond the scope of this dissertation but is an area ripe for further scholarly investigation.

A profound sense of connection

The relational state which the reader enters is a generative, rather than a static space.

As Rosenblatt (1978) explains, the reader’s aesthetic stance towards a text opens them to being changed by what they read. In this state, the reader is open to new ideas, exploration, and change. This generativity is a characteristic of a “love” relationship as described by Marion (2007), in which the reader becomes open to being transformed and feels connected to “humanity” at a profound level:

318 I feel…just, alive to the possibilities in my own life and somehow – I

don’t really know how – this sense of being really switched on to

some kind of greater truth about the world and how it works, which is

a really emotional and exciting feeling. (Kate)

A sense of imaginative safety is a key characteristic of this experience. Gretel provided a particularly evocative description of how reading The Lord of the Rings provided her with a safe mental and emotional space during an extremely difficult physical experience:

We were doing one of the hardest hikes [in the mountains] and it

started snowing. In summer! We had to set up our tent on the snow. I

had taken Lord of the Rings – this massively heavy book. Everybody

is cutting their toothbrushes in half just to get the weight down in their

backpacks and I’m like, “No, I am taking this [book].” I got there [to

the campsite] and I was so upset because I was freezing cold and I had

a ridiculously heavy pack […] I just got into my sleeping bag and I

just read the book and ignored everybody else. They had to cook

dinner for me because I was so traumatised.

For Gretel, reading the loved book provided a mental and emotional escape from her physical reality. Immersed in the world of The Lord of the Rings, for a while she could forget her cold feet and sore muscles.

The safe space of the loved book can provide physical solace, as with Gretel and her escape into the world of The Lord of the Rings. It can also provide a space in which a

319 reader feels safe enough to be “themselves.” Martin described how reading gave him a safe space in which he could be himself growing up:

I remember this feeling of comfort because literature allows you to be

interested in something that’s weird or something that your friends

might think is weird to think about for an hour. That feeling of, “Oh,

no, this is my place and I’m alone.” […] I’m feeling extremely safe

but also able to go places that I wouldn’t [otherwise] be able to go.

Conceptual places, that was the fantastic thing.

For Martin, reading loved books offered a safe place in which to explore different versions of himself. Reading provided a space of imagination and possibility which

Martin did not feel he could access in day-to-day life.

The safety of the space of the loved book can also allow readers to be open to challenging ideas which they might not normally be open to. Carla described getting into the “zone,” when she is able to let the book take her “wherever it needs to go, because you have that sense of trust and comfort, you can engage with it fully and concentrate purposefully.” Simon also described how a loved-book provides the balance of “comfort” and “challenge”:

I think comforting would have to be one of the main ones [words to

describe the experience]. I would say challenging is a good word

because we do learn… it does challenge what you believe […] I guess

it makes me wonder. It makes me reflective.

Like Carla, Simon felt safe enough to be challenged when reading-a-loved-book. He was able to remain in the vulnerable, relational mode of being, even when confronted with difficult ideas, because he felt safe to do so.

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The reader may even take some aspects of this relational mode when they return to their everyday world on breaks from the book, or after reading the book:

[T]here is often just a heightened awareness of things that generally

happen around me when you are in that state […] Whether it is feeling

like you can make sense of your thoughts a bit better or have more

patience for people when they annoy you or just the world feels a little

bit okay. I think when you just hit that sweet spot. I think it’s probably

not too dissimilar to the concept of, “Hello!” that artists talk about or

that sort of thing because you are concentrating so completely […]

There is a kind of lag effect that happens for me. I can jump out of the

book and still feel grounded, focused and probably a little bit more at

peace. (Carla)

Some research participants felt that reading-a-loved-book had changed their attitude towards the wider world or changed them at a personal level:

[The book] made me feel kind of hopeful…I think it’s some sort of

antidote to that feeling that a lot of people have which is that,

somehow, they don’t fit in or they don’t get how life works, or

everyone knows how to be in the world except for them. So books like

this make me feel, not like that! (Kate)

It [Grapes of Wrath (Steinbeck 1992)] was one of those books where

you sort of feel a bit different as a person when you finish it and they

are pretty rare, you know. (John)

321 The capacity of a book to “change” people is beyond the scope of this dissertation.

However, research participants’ descriptions appear to support Rosenblatt’s argument that change can occur when a book is read at a particular moment in a reader’s life - the “result of the coming-together of the reader and the text at an especially propitious moment,” in which the reader is a “kind of amplifier, for what he derives from the text” (1978: 157).

Counterpoint: reading-a-book-which-is-not-loved

Looking at experiences of reading a book which the reader does not identify as loved can help us to understand what is unique to the experience of reading-a-loved-book. I asked participants about the experience of reading a book which they “respected” or

“held in high regard” but did not love. I also asked participants if they had ever experienced reading a book which they were coming to love, or had started to love, and then that feeling changed either during or after having read the book.

Self-consciousness

Research participants described reading books which they respected-but-do-not-love as a more self-conscious exercise than reading-a-loved-book:

[T]here’s always that distance I think when you are not loving

it…That’s often why I don’t love it because it’s not letting me get lost

in it […] It is a completely different experience and maybe more of an

intellectual experience […] there’s a separation so that I can admire it

rather than getting inside that world. (Samantha)

Kate described a similar sense of “observing” a book which she admires-without- loving:

322 I am kind of observing the book a bit more. I’m noticing how

amazingly structured it is and how the characters are drawn and

noticing all these really clever things about it that I really admire.

Whereas, with this other book that I’ve just totally fallen in love with,

I just feel all my emotions take away that analytical part of my brain

and I’m just swept along in the story and I feel somehow connected

with the characters.

The research participants are taking a more efferent reading stance than an aesthetic one. In such a relation to the text, the reader remains self-contained, which gives rise to an experience of separation or distance from the text, rather than the relational state of being when having a love-experience with a book.

Clock time

Participants frequently talked about remaining in “clock time” when they read books which they did not love. When describing these experiences, participants talked about

“wasting” time, rather than losing track of time. They felt conscious of clock time, how much of it they had available to “spend,” and whether they had received an appropriate return on their “investment” of time. For example, Henry observed that he does not continue with books which he is not enjoying, explaining his decision in terms of time as a finite commodity:

I have been giving up on books lately and unfinished books and not

felt bad about it. I think because I’m going, “Oh, life’s short, I can’t

read bad books”.

Martin explained that he didn’t mind if a short essay did not engage him, whereas if a book disappointed him, he felt angry about his loss of time:

323 I never feel disappointed by The New Yorker even when I’m not

interested. I just skip to the next one [essay]. Whereas a novel, if it’s

annoying me – I just get so angry […] because [as you get older] you

don’t have enough time to read.

Martin’s anger is possibly not just about “wasting” time, but is also about a breach of the implied promise that an author makes to the reader. As I outlined in Chapter Two, if the reader comes to the book with the aesthetic stance, Heap (1977) and Garfinkel

(1967) argue the reader can expect the author to fulfil their side of the bargain and deliver an aesthetically rewarding experience. If this does not occur, the reader may be justifiably annoyed or disappointed, and express such to the author’s representative.

Distance

Research participants described a sensation of there being a metaphorical distance between themselves and a book which did not give rise to the relational state of the loved-book. Bec talks about a book “rubbing it in your face,” making the reader admire its physical perfection rather than opening an authentic awareness of humanity to the reader:

I can tell when a book is – it’s very well written and I can respect the

craft – like, “This person is an excellent writer.” Sometimes that bugs

me about a book, if it’s sort of showing off how well written it is. I

kind of prefer the writing to be invisible if that makes sense. The thing

with Anne Tyler is her style is really plain, she’s not rubbing it in your

face, “I am a very good book, respect me”.

324 Such experiences appear to have pushed readers towards an efferent reading stance.

The types of book which prompt this will differ from reader to reader, but the experience shares a sense of separation, and intellectual rather than emotional engagement:

I engaged with it [the book] so it didn’t bore me. I was propelled

along by it and enjoyed reading it but, at the end of it - it wasn’t until

the end that I go, “This was all really good and I was in the hands of

someone quite masterful,” but the end I kind of feel...I didn’t know

where the heart was, I suppose. Quite a lot of that contemporary male

fiction I find a bit like that. (Genevieve)

[I]f it makes me think, then it’s kind of a useful book but if it has heart

and it makes me think - you know…I guess when I read the

interesting ones [which don’t have heart], I don’t know if I really

cared about them that much. (Simon)

I know I’m a feel reader rather than a think reader. I like books with

ideas…but books that make me feel have much more appeal to me

versus a book which is just like – I like the ideas. Pretty much books

that are science fiction on me are lost and I will read it and I go,

“Yeah, it’s a clever point you’re making there,” but the coldness of the

characters, their robot characteristics, just turns me off a little bit.

(Henry)

These research participants refer to an experience of extracting value from a book, or admiring the craft evident in the book, but in the mode of the economic exchange

325 rather than the gift-relation. They can appreciate the ideas, and gain knowledge and information from a book, but are not “moved” in the way of an aesthetic reading event which gives rise to a love-experience.

Lack of safety

Some books were too confronting to allow research participants to completely enter a relational state of being. Such books were well regarded and respected by readers but were not chosen to be described as reading-a-loved-book. This may be because some books’ ideas are too confronting to allow some readers to “let themselves go”. For example, Bec described reading We Need To Talk About Kevin (Shriver 2006), which deals with themes of sociopathy and mothers’ responsibility for a child’s deeds:

I really enjoyed that book [We Need To Talk About Kevin] but I will

never call it a book that I love because the whole time it made me

uncomfortable. I could tell that it was a really good book because it

had all of the other elements. I had the desperation to finish it, the

irritation that life interferes…but it was also profoundly disturbing. I

actually felt uncomfortable. I couldn’t stop reading but I had to. The

themes in it struck a chord in me, I think – in the same way that it does

when it’s joyful – when it’s disturbing it is tapping into something

deep inside that made me very uncomfortable.

If a book is too confronting for the reader, then the reader might maintain a distance from the book, remaining in the I-It relation.

Falling out of love with a book

326 A reader can stop loving a book, both during the reading of the book, or after having finished the book. When a reader falls “out” of love with a book whilst reading it, the reader may experience a sense of betrayal. They no longer describe being in a relationship with the book, but begins to describe the experience as a relationship with the author, in which the author has betrayed the story, and consequently the reader. A reader can also fall out of love with a book after having read it, sometimes as a result of reading other work by the same author, which colours the reader’s view of the book retrospectively.

The pain of falling “out” of love with a book was palpable in the research participants’ interviews. The reader has begun to open themself up to the book; they have begun to relinquish the safe distance of an I-It relation to enter the vulnerability of the gift-relation. But then the book takes what feels, to the reader, to be an inauthentic turn. This jolts the reader back into an I-It relational state. Research participants who have experienced falling out of love with a book do not talk about being betrayed by the book, but by the author. The author, who was largely absent from descriptions of the loved book experience, is firmly back in focus as a subject in an I-It relation of exchange, who has failed to fulfil their side of the contract. The feeling is particularly evident in Bec’s description. I asked Bec if she had ever experienced reading a book which she began to love but then, for whatever reason, stopped loving. Bec spoke in contractual, market terms of the author failing to

“deliver”:

As the series [Game of Thrones] goes on, the last book that has been

published after all of these thousands and thousands of pages of blah

to get to that point – he [the author] is resolving nothing and he is

327 introducing new characters and new storylines. I’m like, “No, dude,

you don’t get to do that. You haven’t earned the right to do that. At no

point do I feel like I have faith in you.” I don’t have faith in him, that

he knows what he is doing or that he has got a plan. It feels like he just

assumes that he’s got my attention forever and no he doesn’t. I

withdraw it. Stick that up your jumper, George R.R. Martin […]

Bec elaborated on what she means by having her “faith” in the author betrayed:

I’m relying on them [the writer] to finish it off and to know how they

are going to, like that they know how it ends. I want to have faith that

this person knows what is happening because I’m investing this time

and I’m getting emotionally involved in the story and all that kind of

thing. If it’s not going to end, or if he doesn’t know how it’s going to

end, I feel uneasy. That’s how I feel about fricking George R.R.

Martin. And then you feel let down if they can’t maintain - this is

probably the most annoying thing about Ian McEwan [and his book

Atonement] is that the first bit of it is great. So you keep reading on

the expectation that it will continue to be great but, no, it just gets

more and more annoying as it goes along.

Bec no longer felt safe, or connected, or any of the other emotions and sensations which a loved book conjures. Instead she felt betrayed. She had fulfilled her ethical obligation to pay attention, and become present to the potential gift-relation of the book. She felt that she had been betrayed, and her attention had been taken for granted.

328 Research participants also described a sense that the author has betrayed the book itself. Carla described

At some point very close to the end [of the book] - there was some

plot development and I just thought, “That just doesn’t sit with where

I thought this book was going.” I just lost interest. I’m happy to just –

like, I loved the rest of the book – and now it just feels like it’s

wrapped up too neatly […] it didn’t feel – I don’t know – authentic

somehow, the ending.

Similarly, Henry explains why he no longer persists with books that he is not enjoying. He uses contractual terms to sum up his position:

You [the author] owe me as much as I [the reader] owe you

something. Maybe that’s about changing my value as well as their

value.

Lizzie described an experience of falling out of love with a book after some time had elapsed since reading it from what she calls “overdosing” on the author. As with other participants, she first talked about loving the book. But then she described the experience of falling out of love in relation to the author:

It [The Corrections (Franzen 2007)] was a life changing book when I

read it and I read it a couple of times when it came out. I think it was a

really big influence on me on writing my first book […] I loved it [the

book] and I thought it was the best book ever written. Now I just

couldn’t go near it. I don’t think I could go near anything by Jonathan

Franzen because I just almost kind of overdosed on him and I find him

so cynical and so cruel that I just don’t want to spend time with him in

329 his world anymore […] I just feel like he wouldn’t be a very good

friend, wouldn’t align to me.

It appears that readers begin to talk about the author if the relationship with the book has soured, or if the experience of reading the book began to follow a love-trajectory before changing. This is an interesting but tentative finding, and may offer scope for further research into the reader’s perceived relationship with author versus text.

Writer research participants

Writer research participants described very similar experiences of reading-a-loved- book to reader participants, with one notable exception: they were more likely to think about themselves, not just in a relationship with the loved-book, but also with the writer of the loved-book. Writer research participants appeared to be far more conscious of the role of the writer in creating the loved book than the research participants who were readers only. These latter participants rarely mentioned the writer in their descriptions of how the book made them feel unless they were unhappy about the book. This is not to say that readers are oblivious to the role of the author.

But when a reader loves a book, they tend to describe a relation with the book, rather than a relationship with a creator. This is consistent with Rosenblatt’s theory of the reader and the text in relation: the reader considers themself in relation to the text, rather than the author (1978).

Creative writers appear to be more aware of the role of the author and feel a sense of gratitude, not just in a general sense but directly to the author. For example, when I

330 asked Samantha, who writes fiction as her main source of income, what words described how she felt when reading a loved book, she replied:

Thank you…Gratitude – a sense of generosity to the author. A sense

that the author has an insight and they are being generous and kind

with that, and the wisdom, and sharing it directly with you (emphasis

added).

Lizzie was the only writer research participant to describe, or perhaps admit to, feelings of envy when she finds herself loving a book by a contemporary author. She explains:

If it’s someone who’s alive now, I feel bitter rage and envy that they

are so good, particularly if they are Australian. If they are dead I feel

no bitterness and envy, just a kind of astonishment and an awe and a

desire to imbibe it and try and – that’s why I read Virginia Woolf,

because I just immerse myself in her and she inspires me. It’s really

predicated by whether this person is a rival or not. Unfortunately.

Lizzie transmuted these emotions into learning. She described a process of “stepping back”: a purposeful, conscious decision to keep herself from the I-Thou relationship to analyse how the relationship is being created:

If I’m reading something and it’s the writing that’s really affecting me

then it’s a more scientific, almost stepping back, “Why, why is this

good?” Trying to pick it apart, trying to learn from it.

Yet even for Lizzie, some books occasion the gift-relation without feelings of envy, bitterness or cool observation: “If it’s a book that is having an emotional reaction then

I’m feeling whatever emotion the author is wanting me to feel.”

331

Writer research participants also emphasised the importance of being surprised to the experience of reading-a-loved-book. This may be because they find it harder to be surprised by a book: as initiates in the craft of writing, they want to read something they could not have done themselves. Henry described a book he recently read:

There was surprise – I like being surprised, I like it when it’s

completely not predictable but not in a mean way, not in a, “Ha ha,

you thought this would happen, fuck you,” kind of way.

Henry similarly described how he likes a book to “open doors” for him:

The thing that attracted it [the book] to me is, it drops me in the

middle of things in different places in different times. That was really

effective […] It was dropping me in the middle of things and

exploring a new world.

Writer research participants may also attempt to extract some craft value from an experience of reading a book which they fall out of love with. Henry explained:

I kind of get a little bit inspired and go, “Yeah, well, that’s not how I

would do it.” That kind of betrayed relationship, that’s not the way I

would have taken that storyline. I’m not saying that every time I read

a book I go, “No, I shall rewrite you,” but it does make me think about

my own practice and maybe even examine myself. “Why am I

responding to that? What is it in me?”

Writer research participants still enter the gift-relation with books that they love, but they are more conscious of the role of the writer and are more likely than readers to include the writer in the gift-relation. Henry explains: “There’s a weird threesome

332 between writer, character and reader. I think [in the process of reading] you are always exploring that.”

Reading-a-loved-book and the metaphor of the gift

In this chapter I have offered a phenomenological description of the experience of reading-a-loved-book based on my interviews with readers. The experience is characterised by a sense of: surprise coupled with recognition; entering an imaginative state of being; and feeling deeply understood and profoundly connected to other humans. In the gift-relation of reading-a-loved-book, the reader experiences their self as an aspect of a relation. They enter the gift-relation by paying attention and giving-and-receiving, in a non-linear way, with the text (Rosenblatt 1978). It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to identify exactly who the parties to the relation are, beyond the reader – the parties appear to sometimes be the text itself, the characters in the text, and/or the author. For our purposes, it is sufficient to find that the experience is one of relation.

The experience of reading-a-loved-book has the characteristics of a gift-relation as described in Chapter Two. The experience of reading-a-loved-book is exciting and inspiring, opening up generative and imaginative metaphorical spaces for the reader.

By contrast, reading-a-book-which-is-not-loved can be experienced as loss: loss of time, opportunity, and sometimes a loss of trust in the author. As Hyde observes in the context of Walt Whitman’s poetry, not all texts are conducive of the gift-relation:

“There are some clammy poems in Leaves of Grass. We feel a hand on our shoulder, a pushy lover […] But in the best poems, Whitman manages that poise, requisite to both art and love, which offers the gift without insisting” (Hyde 2007: 195-6).

333

We can understand this experience of the “pushy lover” as an instance in which the text does not give rise to the gift-relation. As Emerson writes in his 1844 essay,

“Gifts”, “We do not quite forgive a giver. The hand that feeds us is in some danger of being bitten. We can receive anything from love, for that is a way of receiving it from ourselves; but not from any one who assumes to bestow” (1997: 26). The felt

“insistence” of some texts to be “received” is akin to the sense of indebtedness

Nietzsche is referring to when he writes of the “terrible” obligation to receive which a gift imposes (Colli and Monitari 1980: 516). The research participants in the current study described sensations of being betrayed or annoyed with authors who, the participants felt, had failed to generate the conditions of the gift-relation, leaving the reader in the position of indebted receiver rather than allowing the reader to enter into the equitable state of giving-and-receiving which characterises the gift-relation.

By comparison after reading-a-loved-book readers are frequently eager to share the experience and talk about the loved book, recommend the book and sometimes give it to others. The reader does not experience this as a burdensome obligation, but as a spontaneous desire to share something. The reader does not have to make any additional, direct or immediate return to the author of the book, although some readers, particularly those who are also writers themselves, will do so, for example by buying other books by the author. Instead, the desire to reciprocate is discharged to the wider social group, for example by recommending the book to others. In some instances, a reader may even behave differently because on what they have absorbed from the experience of reading-the-loved-book which has now become part of their own unfolding self.

334

335 Chapter Five: The experience of writing-fiction

In this chapter I look at the lived experience of writing-fiction. The findings set out in this chapter are subject to the same limitations I outlined in the introduction to

Chapter Four: when I refer to “writing-fiction”, I am describing research participants’ descriptions of the experience of writing-fiction. The findings are limited in the size and composition of the research sample: eleven research participants, who identified as writers of fiction in various forms. Whilst the participants ranged in age, cultural and socioeconomic background, the sample was selected along the phenomenological logic of identifying participants who could describe the experience of writing-fiction from a variety of perspectives, rather than the logic of representative sampling, as explained in Chapter Three.

Through my analysis of the interviews and the theoretical discussions in Chapter Two

I came to understand the experience of writing-fiction as follows.

When a writer is writing fiction, they work inside and outside of the “flow” state of the gift-relation. If the writer has an experience of the gift-relation whilst writing, they take it as a sign that they have got “it” – that they have accessed and expressed at least some part of the story’s “truth”. If they do not have this experience, they may find it more difficult, even impossible, to complete the work in a way which satisfies them.

External pressures, such as a desire for public acknowledgment or income from writing-fiction, can affect the writer’s felt ability to access the gift-relation, and writers adopt different techniques to temporarily enter the gift-relation.

336 Essential themes of the experience of writing-fiction

A range of potential areas of enquiry arise from the preceding description of the experience of writing-fiction, but for the purposes of this dissertation I limit my analysis to the essential aspects of the experience. These are: working inside and outside the gift-relation; the connection between entering the gift-relation and a sense of discovering the story’s “truth”; the role of readers; and common ways in which writers enter the gift-relation.

Working inside and outside of the gift-relation

Writers work both inside and outside of the gift-relation. Inside the gift-relation, writers experience a sense of Csikszentmihalyi’s “flow” (1991), or Doyle’s

“fictionworld,” in which the self-conscious “writing self” disappears (1998). I characterise this as a gift-relation because it is the state of giving-and-receiving

(Game and Metcalfe 2010a) in which the self and the text are neither subject nor object. Neither is giving to or taking from the other; they are aspects of a generative relationship. The writer loses track of time and space. They are in their “own little world” – a physical and metaphorical space – and can tune out distractions from the regular world.

I have to do it [writing] in a bit of a trance - I have to be separate from

people and things. I’ve found going for a walk, for example, gets you

into that headspace…I like to get the first paragraph out of the way

and I like to get fluidity or velocity or whatever you call it going. I

really like that noise that your hand sometimes makes across the page

when you are writing really fast. You know that noise? When I hear

that I’m like, “Oh, this is great.” (Henry)

337 For Henry, the sound of his hand across the page signals to him that he is hitting his stride, getting into the creative “flow” space. Lizzie also describes getting into the

“zone”:

Getting to a point where I am in the work…I think getting to that stage

is most productive for me, when time stands still. I lose myself in it, I

forget about what’s happening, I lose track of time, I lose track of

place and external stimulation as well. I lose track of hunger, thirst.

For me it only lasts about a couple of hours, that sense of flow.

Not all writing can occur inside the gift-relation. Writer research participants described that a large part of their work happens outside of this state, inside of

Doyle’s “writingrealm,” in which much reflection and revisioning is done. Samantha explains that she often needs to write even if she is not in a state of “flow”:

There are days when I force myself to do it [writing]. Sometimes you

have to because you have got a deadline and you need to finish it and,

when I look back, I think, “That‘s still pretty good writing, that‘s just

as good as the bit that I wrote in a kind of daze,” when people talk

about getting into the zone…You can often not distinguish the writing

that’s in the zone and the writing that you have been almost forced

into doing.

Such writing can still be acceptable to the writer, as long as she has felt a sense of having entered the gift-relation at some point, enough to have realised at least some part of the story’s “truth”. I return to this theme later.

Entering the gift-relation

338 Routine practices allow writers to enter a gift-relation with the work. Some writers need solitude. For example, when I am writing-fiction, I work best when in my own room, with the door closed and the Internet off. I write in my journal, meditate, and then start to write. The circumstance creates a cocoon from the outer world in which I can relax into whatever the words dare me to do next. Matthew similarly prefers seclusion:

I think solitude helps. The last draft of my play, I did at Kangaroo

Valley in an old hall. That really helped. There’s something about

separation…I don’t know what it is but there is something that makes

you focus on it a little bit more. The exclusion of everything else and

the distractions.

Novelist Isabel Allende describes her routine for writing:

[…] I walk seventeen steps from the kitchen to the little pool house

that is my office. It’s like a journey to another world…From those

seventeen steps on, I am in another world and I am another person (as

cited in Maran 2013 n.p.).

Not all writers need to be physically alone, but they do need mental shut-off from the distractions in their lives. Sofia, a working mother, finds that she can get into the

“zone” in cafés:

I can get into that zone where even though it’s noisy – of course,

blaring disco music, you can’t write – but if it’s a busy atmosphere I

can still write there.

Martin has a long commute to work, so he works on the train:

I get on the train. I always get a seat. You can just sit there and be in

your own little world. On the train is perfect because there is no

339 Internet and a burst of energy and it’s all sound…I can write for two

hours before I am broken.

Research participants write at different times of the day to enter the gift-relation. For example, I write for the first two hours of the morning, straight after breakfast before I have opened emails. Similarly, Martin feels that writing first thing in the morning is beneficial because he is giving his best energy to the creative work:

Your day’s energy is like the old-fashioned bottle of milk with the

cream on top. No one else gets that cream, that’s your cream for you

and your [writing] practice. So you always have to do some writing

before you do some dumb admin or correspondence or anything like

that.

Research participants describe burning out their creative juices after two or three hours. The exception is when they are on a special writing retreat, or they have allocated stretches of time for writing without distractions. In these situations, writers can produce for much longer periods, possibly because the entire atmosphere of the space-time is an enabling environment for creativity (Chan 2011).

Writers also talk about needing non-writing time, in which the writer gestates an idea.

The need for time to process an idea is crucial to the maturation of the story.

Genevieve describes “sitting with” a big idea which shifts the direction of the story for up to a week, going for walks, checking in with herself to see if the new idea

“feels” right before moving on. Matthew explains:

It just takes time to write well. That’s the annoying thing. But

sometimes when you’ve got a really good idea, you are too impatient

340 to leave it. When you are really proud of it, you are too impatient to

leave it for two weeks and come back to it, which you really, really

should. You have to let your mind catch up with that idea.

To take this time, writer research participants reported that they must find ways to ignore pressure from themselves or others to produce more quickly.

The importance of entering a gift-relation

Writer research participants felt that the work they do when in the gift-relation is their best work, not so much in terms of craft as the “honesty” of the work. Experiencing the gift-relation helps writers affirm to themselves that they are writing a story in line with its internal “truth”. When talking about the “honesty” or “truth” of the work, writer research participants are referring to the “it-ness” of the story which I discussed in Chapters Two and Four (Conrad 1990; Bruner 1979; Crites 1971). For example, according to Samantha, the writing done outside of the gift-relation may be just as good as the writing done inside the gift-relation. However, it fails to feel as honest:

[The writing] doesn’t feel as honest, but I think that sometimes it is as

good because sometimes that writing does end up in a book and it’s

fine. But it is usually when I stop and do nothing for a while that I

realise a completely different direction…I feel relieved that I’ve

stopped. I find when I do that professional thing [of forcing myself to

write], it’s still a perfectly adequate book, I just think it’s a better and

more adventurous book if I stop and let myself be free…There’s this

sort of level that you can reach – a depth – like poetry where you feel

like you are stepping down a rung or two from your regular conscious

341 thoughts. [When you are forcing the writing] you are just skating –

that sort of drudgery is on the surface.

The “depth” which Samantha describes is the gift-relation aspect of creative writing, in which the “work unfolds in new and surprising ways” (Game and Metcalfe: 2012:

168). Whether this leads to a better book, or a more loved book, is beyond the scope of this dissertation. However, the experience leads to a book which feels more

“honest” to the writer.

The writer’s perception of whether or not they have attained the “truth” of a story sometimes determines whether they will consent to be published. Lizzie describes an experience in which she refused to publish a book:

I wrote a novel which I had never really liked, never really was happy

with, but my agent convinced me to give it to [my publisher] and [the

publisher] said, “Yes, we’ll publish it.” I don’t even know why I

agreed to show it to her. I said, “No, it’s just really not ready,” and I

never went back to that novel. I knew it was not my best work by any

means. My integrity as a writer is [such that] I would never give my

publisher something I don’t think is the best I could possibly get this

manuscript to be at this time. You just have to. You’ve got to believe

in your own work.

Lizzie refused to publish a book she didn’t “believe in”, even though a publisher thought otherwise. It’s worth taking a moment to consider the magnitude of such a decision. Achieving publication is notoriously difficult; there are thousands of blog posts, books and services geared towards helping writers attract publisher interest.

342 What was so important that it stopped Lizzie from accepting a publisher’s offer?

Lizzie had her integrity as a craftsperson to consider, and in the interview she described a strong work ethic, writing all weekend whenever she could and spending most of her paid leave on writing. But even more crucially, Lizzie used the word

“believe”: “You’ve got to believe in your own work.” A writer needs to have faith in their work. Lizzie felt that she had a responsibility to the work – to attaining the “it- ness” which is a sign that the work is somehow complete as “an” aesthetic experience

– it has been consummated, and not just completed (Dewey 1980). As Hyde observes, the writer turns to see if the work has value in the market economy only once they are satisfied that they have got “it”, where “it” is the “faithful realisation” of the gift

(2007: 279).

Writers do not operate solely inside of the gift-relation – as Doyle explains, writers operate in, and switch between, the gift-relation (fictionworld) and the I-It relation with the book (writingrealm). But even an occasional “passage into mystery” can keep the writer returning over days, months, even years. As Hyde observes, “If. . .we can look once a day upon the face of mystery, then our labour satisfies […] when the gift passes out of sight and then returns, we are enlivened” (2007: 20-21).

The role of readers

Writer research participants generally did not have an ideal reader in mind, or at least not one that they were conscious of. The exception was Martin, a writer of graphic novels and an academic scholar in this space:

It [writing] is a lot less like a transaction model and it’s more like a,

“Let’s draw a magic circle around us and see what happens.” You are

343 constantly jumping the bridge between you and the audience and

trying to imagine where they are in order to fuck with them. That’s

what I’m interested in at the moment. (Martin)

Martin created a “magic circle” for his readers, akin to the corduroy couch where, as a child, Martin himself first felt safe enough to experiment with different versions of the world. Martin can then “fuck with” – or in Bruner’s (1979) words, “effectively surprise” his readers, as those readers are inside the “magic circle”. Martin explained that he did not feel the pressure to publish for financial reasons, because he did not derive the majority of his income from his creative work. However he worried that his relationship with the readers is “degrading over time” the longer it was taking him to release a second book:

A lot of people I know seem to be really pressured by publishers and

agents and stuff and I have publishers and agents. I just don’t really

care about them. I know I should – professionally I should – but I’m

also just like, “They are going to sell the sausage when the sausage is

ready to sell.” This year I just told my publisher, “Oh, I know it’s

supposed to be March but it’s going to be another year.” I have a

pressure that I get from this feeling of a relationship with the audience

being degrading over time. I feel like, the last time I released

something of note was 2013. I feel like I am just going to be starting

from scratch. (Martin)

For Martin, the sense of pressure to produce a work comes from a sense that he is not holding up his side of the relationship with the reader and that he may have to find new readers, or regain the trust of previous readers, “from scratch”. Other research participants did not articulate the same level of conscious consideration of their

344 readers, although they did talk about the importance of delivering on the unspoken obligation on a writer to write a “good book”. Writer research participants were much more articulate, and perhaps also more conscious, of an obligation to the story itself.

It was implied that if they delivered on this obligation, they had done their duty by the reader. However, this is a topic for further research.

Finding the story’s “truth”

Writer research participants described having a sense of the deep, “true” rhythm, shape or “song” of their work. Only when they felt the work has achieved this, did they feel the work was complete. Samantha describes a book which finds its own

“song”:

Sometimes I think it’s the difference between the craft and the art of

writing. That there’s a craft way you can construct something, and that

is transactional…that is like, a craft of writing. Then there is the art

which is, to me, in a different dimension and breaks rules and is its

own song rather than a construction.

Similarly, when she is in the creative zone, Lizzie has a sensation of “harmony”: “I’m writing and it feels good. It feels like there is harmony between what’s in my head and what’s coming out on the page.”

In her letters, Virginia Woolf also describes the sensation of rhythm when writing.

For Woolf, the physical sense goes deeper even than the words themselves:

Now this is very profound, what rhythm is, and goes far deeper than

words. A sight, an emotion, creates this wave in the mind, long before

it makes words to fit it; and in writing (such is my present belief) one

345 has to recapture this, and set this working (which has nothing

apparently to do with words) and then, as it breaks and tumbles in the

mind, it makes words to fit it (as cited in Nicholson and Trautmann:

1977).

Writers in this research study sometimes described stories as if they are tangible things, material objects which they can feel, touch and mould into shape until the writer has found the right form. Sofia described working on her stories until they felt

“smooth”:

I just worked on each story until I felt it was – like it read well to me,

then put it down and did another story and then came back. I just gave

it as much time as I thought it needed to read smoothly, to feel

smooth.

For Sofia, the “smoothness” of the story is an inner sensation she has when she reads the story and tests it against her internal metronome. Sofia described the sensation that the words are coming together:

I like the way it’s turning out and there are all these words that are

coming out of my head with different strands, like the roots are in

different histories and different conversations but they are all coming

through and I’m channelling them and they are all being almost

branded on the page.

For Sofia, the words being “branded on the page” feels like the “truth” coming

“through” Sofia and finding its embodiment on the page before her. She described feeling like the channel, as if the narrative exists in a gift-relation with herself and she is not the story’s master, or owner, but its teller.

346

Naomi described working on poems until a “sense of proportion” comes:

I work on them...until basically I can read that poem through and it

feels right, it feels complete, it feels like it’s all working, it’s all

working within itself, there‘s a sense of proportion which comes into

my perception of poems, a sense of – it’s really hard to describe, but I

know when they are – sometimes I try and fool myself that they are

finished. That doesn’t work. You go back and you go, “Urrrgh, who

are you trying to fool here?”

Naomi cannot “fool” herself that a poem is finished before she has found its “right” shape, given it its “right” cadence, rhythm and completion. She even attempts to treat the poem as an object in an I-It relation so she can “fool herself” that is it finished.

But the poem pulls her back into the gift-relation, as an interrelated subject rather than an object of her invention. Stories are generated by writers, but the shape a story takes, its rhythm, its “song”, are already extant at the “pre-theoretical level” (Conrad

1990) as “sacred stories” (Crites 1971)

Writers exist in an I-It relation with their work; they regard the work, worry about the work and think about the work. But they also, from time to time, exist in a gift- relation with the work. The story is sometimes not experienced as a writer’s object, but part of them and they of it. In this way, the writer’s own “belief” in their work is tied to their felt ability or success in ensuring that the story is singing its own true

“song” (Crites 1971).

Securing the gift-relation against external pressures

347 Writer research participants used specific practices to temporarily forget about pressures such as earning an income from writing or reputational goals. For example,

Roberta deliberately “pull[s] back” from the pressure to earn money because “it poisons the work.” She described the practices she employed:

I’ve had to write with the screen of my laptop folded down with my

hands in between so I can’t see the screen. You just have to release

yourself to the process…you can’t put the pressure of earning a living

on your writing because it’s too much for that to bear and then it

becomes not a pleasure.

Samantha, whose main source of income is her writing, cannot avoid the “pressure of earning a living” on her writing. Becoming a professional writer, one who earned her core income from writing, made Samantha feel she had to systematise her writing life to resemble a job. She explained that she consciously uses practices which allow her to enter the gift-relation:

I usually walk across the bridge and back again and then I go to a café.

I take out big notepads and coloured pens and textas and have a cup of

peppermint tea and a glass of water. That's all part of the routine of

getting into the mood to write. When I'm at home I usually put the

phone in another room as part of the routine. Often, I like running

around the block and having a bowl of fruit and chocolate and a glass

of water and a peppermint tea, that's all part of the ritual. Wearing

comfortable clothes is part of it, too – I can't write in just jeans. I

remember reading somewhere that Roald Dahl used to write in his

pyjama pants so I decided I would always write in tracksuit pants or

348 pyjama pants – just really my oldest, most comfortable clothes so I

could feel free.

Samantha also described a conscious decision to try to give herself the freedom she had felt before she became a professional writer:

I find I have to make a conscious decision to do that because

otherwise the writing would suffer, I think. Sometimes I get panicked

and think, “This is my job, I need to be sitting down and writing for a

certain number of hours each day,” and just make it happen. Often that

doesn’t work. Being ruthless like that and seeing it as a regular job, I

find makes me write badly so I have to make a conscious decision to

say, “Yes, part of being a writer is having days where you wander

around and do nothing and wait for it.”

Samantha felt that losing track of clock-time and giving herself permission to “not write” may even be connected to better income:

I find that I have to recreate the writing experience that I had before [I

became a professional writer] to make the best writing income. So, it

means sometimes not doing any writing for a couple of days and

walking along the beach, things that I used to do, where I’d just look

at the water for a couple of hours and maybe not write at all that day.

So, allowing yourself to do that, I find it is important.

Samantha described going so far as to give herself permission to write a book “on the side” of the book she was contracted to write. She felt that this was good for her imagination and her writing:

349 I’ve tried to make a conscious decision to try to write the way I used

to write. The more time I spend as a writer, the more seriously I’ve

taken writing as a profession and that has meant that I have planned

and structured and researched the books, every book more than the

one before. I enjoy that, but it also makes me feel I have a structure to

my professional life. With this book, I decided to stop that and write

exactly the way I used to, before I was professional. So, I wrote a

book just on the side while I was writing one that I had under contract.

I wrote it without a plan and without any schedule and I feel like that

was a really good thing to do for my imagination and my writing

generally.

Writer research participants also described experiences when they had reacted to external pressures. They delivered these stories as cautionary tales, which the writers had attempted to internalise and learn from, so that they did not repeat the mistake of letting pressures hinder “good work”. “Good work” for these writers was work which had arisen, at least in part, from the gift-relation; work which was “true” to itself. For example, Genevieve recounted an experience in her early twenties, when she and two colleagues created a hit theatrical show. In response to the pressure to capitalise on the momentum from the show, Genevieve produced another show quickly. It was a failure at the box office and, she felt, artistically. Genevieve observed:

We sold out [the first show]. People loved it, we got rave reviews […]

we felt the pressure to do something because there was all this hype

around the “exciting new talents” and blah, blah, blah. It [the next

show we did] wasn’t very good, it was terrible in fact in places,

350 terrible. Literally the reviews said that, “There was so much promise.”

The decision to do the second show was [based] on strategy, and we

didn’t have the same kind of passion for it, that wonderful kind of,

“Let’s just throw everything, our creative souls, at it.”

Genevieve explained that nowadays she “talks herself down from that place” of wanting to respond to external pressures. She reminds herself of the intrinsic reasons for why she is doing the work: her artistic passion and belief in the fundamental importance of art to human life.

Lizzie attributed a tortuous, two-and-a-half-year period of “writer’s block” to the pressure she felt from winning a publishing contract:

I think I wrote my first two books quite instinctively without really

planning it and just winged it and didn’t have a publishing deal so

wasn’t too concerned about it. With my next two books, because I did

have a publishing deal, I was much more structured about it and

thoughtful about it and planned everything. All the chapters were

planned, the character bios were written, timelines, all the research

was going on so it was much more structured and nothing was left to

chance. It killed me…I didn’t trust myself…Suddenly I was writing

with a contract and it nearly killed me, really. For two and a half years

I stopped completely and had horrible writer’s block and just didn’t

trust myself.

Lizzie said that she recovered by removing the pressure to write:

Anyway, the only way I got through it, got out the other side, was by

saying, “Well, I only had two books in me.” I’d got two books

351 published, I’d just have to say to myself, “That’s it, I’m not a writer

anymore because I’m not writing,” and just try to move on from it and

start living my life. So, I did and, after a year of that, suddenly for

what reason I can’t quite remember – having had such a big break, an

emotional break, rather than a torturous, “Why can’t I do it?” break – I

just went straight back to it and all the joy and the love of it was

instantly back there again.

Lizzie felt that the pressure was largely imposed by herself and her own sense of what she needed to be doing as a published writer. She had been trying to live up to an idea of the “perfect” writer and became stuck in the I-It relation of the “author” and the

“text”, in order to meet an imagined version of what “proper” authors do. The I-It relation is a space in which a writer loses what they have given, rather than being replenished by their gift. In the gift-relation, the writer gives freely and can receive freely of the generativity which is occasioned by the relation itself. Lizzie broke out of the stalemate by letting go of her identity as an “author”. Only then was she able to re-enter a gift-relation with story.

Naomi told a similar story about a time when she had won a six-month grant. The pressure to produce initially overwhelmed her:

For the first about month…I really was flopping around helplessly. It

was like I had no idea how to tackle what I - you know, I’d written all

this stuff about what I was going to do but it was like, when it came

to, it was like I didn’t have an approach or a way in. Possibly part of it

was, “Well, you’ve got a grant now. Write, bitch.”

352 Naomi described pushing through the impasse by breaking the task of her manuscript into bite-sized chunks so that she avoided feeling as if she were writing a complete manuscript. She said that she “tricked” herself into a calmer frame of mind in which she could be present to the work without getting caught up in the “terror” of needing to produce a complete manuscript.

Writing-fiction and the metaphor of the gift

In this chapter I have offered a phenomenological description of the experience of writing-fiction based on my interviews with writers. The experience is characterised by working both inside and outside the gift-relation and adopting practices which help the writer to enter the gift-relation. A sense of having entered the gift-relation also appears to be related to the sense a writer may have of finding the story’s “it-ness”.

As mentioned in Chapter Four, the reader’s experience that the story has got “it” is crucial to the transition of the reader into the gift-relation. It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to ascertain if it is the same part of a text for both reader and writer which occasions a sense of “it-ness”.

The experience of writing-fiction has, at times, the characteristics of a gift-relation as described in Chapter Two. When a writer enters the gift-relation, they are in a state of

“flow” which is a space of giving-and-receiving, in which the writer loses track of clock time. The writer fulfils the obligation which arises within the gift-relation by working to find the “it-ness” of the story. The importance of this obligation is perhaps most clearly exemplified by the descriptions offered by writer research participants in this study about the need to feel that they had found the “it-ness” of the story before they sought publication.

353

Chapter Six: Conclusion

In this dissertation I have examined the ways in which research participants describe the experience of writing-fiction and reading-a-loved-book. Using the tools of interdisciplinary gift theory and phenomenology, I have developed a framework for understanding these experiences as instances of a gift-relation.

Reading-a-loved-book is characterised by an experience of “effective surprise” and a sense that the story has got “it”, plunging the reader into a relational state of being, in which they feel seen, understood and profoundly connected to other humans. The gift- relation of reading-a-loved-book is a generative and imaginative space, in which the reader gives-and-receives. After they have finished reading the book, the reader almost always shares their experience with others, sometimes immediately, sometimes many years later, thus unconsciously fulfilling the unique obligation aroused by the gift-relation. Sometimes the reader feels transformed by the experience

– the experience has become part of their unnfolding self-identity and self-narrative.

In this research, I did not aim to uncover a concrete set of criteria for what constitutes a loved-book, or specific conditions under which love for a book will consistently arise. For example the same book may not cause the same change for more than one person and some books are loved by some readers and not by others.4 There are

4 Interestingly, several research participants mentioned the same authors when they talked about books that they had felt betrayed by, or books they had fallen out of love with (Jonathan Franzen and David Malouf were each used as examples by three or more participants). It is beyond the scope of this dissertation to unpack why certain books have this effect on readers more than other books, and indeed

354 individual differences between readers and the stage of life at which they read a book which may also be determinants of whether a book inspires a love experience, but which were beyond the scope of this research to positively identify. The sample of participants was also small and not intended to be representative of the population.

It is also beyond the scope of this research to identify whether the authors of the books which readers loved also felt that they had put something of their “true selves” in the book. But based on the findings, we can theorise that the reader must at least feel that this is the case. In Barthes’ (1989) terms, the book allows the reader to inhabit the gift-relation of the book, rather than simply visit. Books which are loved may occasion an experience of transformation for the reader. Change is possible because the experience of reading-a-loved-book is an experience of relational being, in which self and surrounds “interinanimate”, creating the conditions for change

(Rosenblatt 1978: Flynn 2007).

The experience of writing-fiction involves working both inside and outside the gift- relation and adopting techniques and practices to enter the gift-relation. Writers do not constantly operate within the gift-relation, and much writing happens outside of this state, in Doyle’s “writingrealm”, which I identify as an I-It relation. However, writers prefer to have at least one experience of the gift-relation when writing a book.

Without this, the writer will tend to feel that the book is not complete. With at least one experience of flow whilst writing a book, the writer may feel the book has been informed by the story’s “it-ness” which the writer felt when in the flow state.

the results were not consistent: one participant loved a book which another participant had felt betrayed by. I mention this here in the hope that some other researcher will take up the question.

355

The gift-relation is characterised by losing track of clock time and a sense of being in the “zone”. Writers in this study engage in a range of practices to enter into this state, and they enter and re-enter the flow state more than once when writing. They create routines in order to get themselves into this state, akin to the rituals which Game and

Metcalfe (2010a, 2010b, 2014) studied amongst artists, musicians and sportspeople.

The obligation which arises from the gift-relation is to faithfully seek the “it-ness” of the story. If the writer has done their best to do so, in good faith, then they feel they can pursue publication. If the writer does not feel that they have adequately attempted to find, or found, “it”, they will be reluctant to share the work, unless they need to do so for reasons such as income.

The Eulogy and the gift-relation

This dissertation is not an exegesis and but bears a dialogic relationship to the creative work entitled The Eulogy. This dissertation has focused on the gift-relation which a reader may enter when reading-a-loved-book and which a writer may enter when writing-fiction. Like the writers in Charlotte Doyle’s (1998) phenomenological study of writing fiction, when writing The Eulogy I moved in and out of the “writingrealm”

(the I-It of the writing process) and the “storyworld” (the I-Thou space of the gift- relation). Like the writer research participants I interviewed, the sense that I had found the story’s “it-ness” was a felt sense: I kept re-writing until I felt that the story was “right”, not only in craft terms but in terms of finding the story’s “truth”. This

“feeling” is one of the key ways in which the lived experience creative writing can

356 sometimes be distinguished as a gift-relation. In gift terms, seeking and at least partly finding the story’s “truth” is how a writer fulfils the obligation which arises from having entered, even briefly, the gift-relation.

The gift of gift theory to our understanding of creative writing and reading

This dissertation contributes a small but, I hope, useful element to our understanding of creative writing and reading as activities which can and do occur in the gift- relation. Phenomenology and interdisciplinary theories of the gift’s role in human relations provide a framework for understanding people as aspects of relations which precedes subjectivity. Gifts can operate as symbols of exchange which consolidate relationships between people and groups. But gifts such as stories and artworks

“retain the immaterial aura of connection to other humans and something greater than any individual human” (Osteen 2000: 244). When readers read these stories, they can feel enlivened and connected. When writers write these stories, they try to hear the

“inherent musicality” of human life (Crites 1971). This is a gift-relation which is characterised by generativity, giving-and-receiving, and a desire to give to the wider group, the fulfilment of which energises rather than depletes. Each such story we tell, and each such story we read, circles amongst us in an eternal return.

The call to action

As I noted earlier in this dissertation, I have a critical theoretical and normative objective for this work. Literary phenomenologists argue that readers have an ethical obligation to “attend” to a text in order realise the aesthetic potential of the text. They

357 assert that works of fiction are capable of plummeting readers into a gift-relation with the text (and the world). But according to Bourdieu, the opportunities to enter a gift- relation for writing, or into the gift-relation of reading, are becoming increasingly rare, as human relations are marketised under the influence of economic neoliberalism. Bourdieu calls for “acts of resistance” (1998) to the pervasive neoliberal emphasis on consumption and commodification of cultural, social and human experiences. In this context, creative writing and reading can become radical acts. The love which a loved-book inspires in a reader is directed outwards and inwards; the loved-book does not demand a direct or immediate return, but nevertheless demands a return to the wider group. It may inspire in the reader a sense of greater connection with others. In sociologist Georg Simmel’s view of society, such gratitude creates subtle, “microscopic” (1950: 48) connections which nevertheless contrive to bind societies together despite the power of economic neoliberalism. He explains

[…] we also thank the artist or poet who does not even know us. This

fact creates innumerable connections, ideal and concrete, loose and

firm, among those who are filled with gratitude towards the same

giver.

According to Crites, novels, plays and poetry can constitute what Bourdieu calls “acts of resistance” as they call people to attend to a “sacred story” of human life. The call which these artworks make on us is revolutionary and is itself a “new sacred story”

(1971: 311). For Crites, these artworks are a call to behave as if life is meaningful:

Among those for whom the story is alive, there is a revival of ethical

authority otherwise almost effaced in our society […] It [the sacred

358 story] makes it possible to recover a living past, to believe again in the

future, to perform acts that have significance for the person who acts.

By doing so, it restores a human form of experience (1971: 311).

Creative writing and reading in this context are revolutionary. They are acts which can subvert the dominant I-It relation of the market, and promote that other space in which humans meet: the gift-relation which arises not from purchase but presence; not from attendance but attention.

This dissertation has merely scratched the surface of re-framing an expanded version of personhood, made possible by a theory of relational being, through the example of writing and reading fiction. But there are other pockets of Bourdieusian “resistance”, other domains in which humans live as beings-in-relation rather than as consumers and producers. Art exhibitions, musical concerts, dance performances: these may each be possible iterations of art as a gift-relation, allowing humans to temporarily step outside of clock time, and the I-It relations of capitalism, and become aspects of a dynamic relation which allows them to transform, create and imagine different versions of themselves and the world. Further interdisciplinary discourse about the phenomenology of art-experiences as gift-experiences may continue to deepen our understanding of the possible relational modes of human being.

359 Appendix 1: Interview Questions

Questions were used as a guide.

Questions for Readers

Introduction

• Please tell me a bit about yourself: for example, what you like to read.

Reading

• Tell me a bit about what you read.

• What are you reading now?

• What was the last book you read that you remember loving?

• What was it like, reading that book?

• Can you remember how it felt to read the book?

• Do you remember where you were or how old you were when you read the

book?

• Do you remember what time of year it was?

• Did you find yourself reading it slowly, or quickly?

• Did you go back and read it again?

• Did you tell people about it afterwards?

• Do you remember was there a point at which the book went from you liking

the book to you loving it?

• Now tell me about the experience of reading a book that you like, or highly

regard, but that you don’t love. What was the difference?

• What about a book that you thought you might love as you were reading it, but

at some point that changes? (If yes) How did that feel?

Reading process

360 • Are there certain routines or things you do? Places you read, certain drink you

might have?

• Is there a particular place you like to read?

• Are there different types of books you like to read at different parts of the

year? Times of your life?

• How do you find books to read? Do you read books all the way through, or do

you stop if it doesn’t grab you?

• Are there things which you might do as part of reading, which you prefer not

to share with other people? (If yes) can you tell me why you prefer to not talk

about those things?

Additional questions for writers

Writing process

• Tell me a bit about your writing practice.

• Do you have a particular routine or things you do to get yourself into it?

• Are there things which you might do as part of your practice, which you prefer

not to share with other people? (If yes) can you tell me why you prefer to not

talk about those things?

• Do you ever feel a sense of external pressure? Like the pressure to succeed,

make money, get good reviews…

• If you do, does it affect your writing?

• If it does, how do you manage that?

Writing and publishing

361 • [For published writers] I’m interested to hear about the first book you ever had

published. Can you tell me a bit about the process of writing that book?

• What was it like, sitting down to write the next book? Did your practice

change in any way? Was there a sense of pressure or anything like that?

• Does it feel different, being a published writer? Does it affect your day-to-day

life in any way? Does it affect the way you write?

• A lot has been written about the creative process. Do you find that there is a

need to balance writing and thinking about the finished product? Or do you

find that it helps to think about the finished product and who might read it,

how it might sell, and that sort of thing?

Other activities

• Do you do other things to earn income apart from writing books?

• Can you tell me a bit about these activities?

• Is there any need to keep your activities separate in some way?

362 Appendix 2: List of Research participants

Pseudonym Stage Age range Gender Method

Henry Early career literary 40-50 Male Phone

fiction writer

Martin Mid-career graphic 30-40 Male Face-to-face

novelist

Mick Emerging writer 40-50 Male Face-to-face

Samantha Established young 40-50 Female Phone

adult fiction writer

Georgy Early career memoir 40-50 Female Phone

writer

Roberta Early career young 40-50 Female Phone

adult fiction writer

Lizzie Mid-career 50-60 Female Face-to-face

commercial adult

fiction writer

Naomi Mid-career poet 50-60 Female Face-to-face

Sofia Early career literary 40-50 Female Face-to-face

fiction writer

Matthew Mid-career 40-50 Male Face-to-face

playwright

Genevieve Established 40-50 Female Face-to-face

playwright

363 Carla Reader 30-40 Female Phone

Kate Reader 40-50 Female Face-to-face

Gretel Reader 40-50 Female Face-to-face

Bec Reader 30-40 Female Phone

John Reader 60-70 Male Phone

Simon Reader 30-40 Male Phone

Marie Reader 20-30 Female Phone

Renee Reader 40-50 Female Phone

Will Reader 40-50 Male Phone

364 References

Amabile, T. (1993) “Motivational synergy: toward new conceptualizations of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation in the workplace”, Human Resource Management Review 3:

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