Kenneth Cook on Violence -Interview Short Fiction Experiments Poems by Young and Established Poets Essays on H
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ESTERLY stories poems reviews articles Kenneth Cook on Violence -Interview Short Fiction Experiments Poems by Young and Established Poets Essays on H. H. Richardson, David Ireland, R. G. Menzies' Suez Speeches a quarterl y review pri ce two doll ars registered at gpo perth for transmi ssion by post as a peri odi ca l Category ' 8 ' WESTERLY No.3, September, 1977 CONTENTS PROSE Eat a Peach 5 JEAN KENT At least seven stories about a photograph 9 DAM lEN WHITE Peepshow 11 MARION CAMPBELL A Gentleman 15 TERRY TREDREA POEMS 8 JOHN KENNEDY ANDREW MCDONALD 24 58 SHANE MCCAULEY 26 ANNE LLOYD 13 JAMIE GRANT 28 FAY ZWICKY 14 R. J. DEEBLE 38 ROD MORAN 18 TOM THOMPSON 46 GRAHAM ROWLANDS 19 MARGARET SCOTT 57 STEPHEN GILFEDDER 20 BARBARA GILES 60 GEOFF PAGE 21 SWEENEY REED 60 ANNE PARRATT 22 GRAEME WILSON 70 PHILIP MEAD 23 ARTICLES Australian Literature and the Autonomous Critic 29 NOEL MACAINSH Observer and Accomplice: The Narrator in Ireland's "The Flesheaters" 39 HELEN DANIEL 'A Thick Crumbly Slice of Life': "The Fortunes of Richard Mahoney" as a Cultural Monument 47 VERONICA BRADY Audience and Argument in the Speeches of R. G. Menzies and Krishna Menon on the Suez Canal Crisis in 1956 61 MARIAN B. MCLEOD INTER VIEW John Ryan with Kenneth Cook 75 BOOKS E. J. Stormon-The Salvado Memoirs 84 JOHN A. HAY Alan Alexander-In The Sun's Eye 86 VERONICA BRADY Lyndon Walker: John Jenkins: Peter Annand-Three Gargoyle Poets 89 LES HARROP WESTERLY a quarterly review EDITORS: Bruce Bennett and Peter Cowan EDITORIAL ADVISORS: Patrick Hutchings, Leonard Jolley, Margot Luke, Fay Zwicky Westerly is published quarterly by the English Department, University of Western Australia, with assistance from the Literature Board of the Australia Council and the Western Australian Literary Fund. The opinions expressed in Westerly are those of individual contributors and not of the Editors or Editorial Advisors. Correspondence should be addressed to the Editors, Westerly, Department of English, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009 (telephone 803838). Unsolicited manuscripts not accompanied by a stamped self-addressed envelope will not be returned. All manuscripts must show the name and address of the sender and should be typed (double-spaced) on one side of the paper only. Whilst every care is taken of manuscripts, the editors can take no final responsibility for their return; contributors are consequently urged to retain copies of all work submitted. Minimum rates for contributions-poems $7.00; prose pieces $7.00; reviews, articles, $15.00; short stories $30.00. It is stressed that these are minimum rates, based on the fact that very brief contributions in any field are acceptable. In practice the editors aim to pay more, and will discuss payment where required. Recommended sale price: $2.00 per copy. Subscriptions: $8.00 per annum (posted); $15.00 for 2 years (posted). Special student subscription rate: $7.00 per annum (posted). Single copies mailed: $2.40. Subscriptions should be made payable to Westerly, and sent to The Bursar, University of Western Australia, Nedlands, Western Australia 6009. Synopses of literary articles published in Westerly appear regularly in Abstracts of English Studies (published by the American National Council of Teachers of English). JEAN KENT Eat a Peach The marmalade cat had slunk in with the morning, and was sitting, razor-eyed and silent, besi<Je the stove, waiting for breakfast. In the corners where patches of light reached, little pockets of dust were turning themselves inside out. Stretching up to the sun and yawning, subsiding in dizzy showers of gold. The cat dabbled his two front paws in the watery shallows of a thin insipid pool, but all the rest of him was grey. He sat there, two buttoned light bulbs, glowing in the dawn. Outside the light was everywhere. Moving quickly, slipping through the trees and unravelling their hair, sliding over the slippery face of the river and ruming the grass stalks. Only the curtained windows of the house remained frosted and resistant. Slinky fingers creep, settle on those glassy eyes. Slowly-barely a flicker of a lash-quick-world-exhaustive yawn-and then the quiver of morning, the rumpled tumult of covers, sheets, a crack in the curtain through which the thin light sluices. The sun and the waker swam, flailing groggily. Grayness dissolved. Buttery, the sudden bustle a shock to the gently strengthening light. It seemed to hang about the shadows, stunned. Until chunky sounds of water broke, somewhere within the house. The room erupted to rival the shower-floods of red yellow blue all the colours hidden by the night-so morning had finally begun. (il) Helen was greeted by the cat, a pliant arch of scrambled lemons-and-oranges. Across the room the progression of marbled arcs, preceded by a rusty purr. She bent down and stroked his back, ruffled his ears a little. She pulled back the curtains that were thinly sifting the sunlight into the room. From the refrigerator, milk. The rapid pink tongue dipping in, out, in. She went out into the garden to pick peaches for breakfast. (iii) Waking faces at windows. Looking out to determine the nature of the day, saw: (Graham)-Helen walking out over grass still damp, her heavy plait of hair tangled in sun. He knew, even before she reached it, that she was heading for the peach tree. Health and vitality herself, she would bring peaches for breakfast. WESTERLY, No.3, SEPTEMBER,1977 5 Briefly, he looked out. But he knew exactly how she would walk across the grass to the tree, and did not need to stand and watch what he had already learned by heart. He decided to go down and join her. (Damien)-The sun on brown arms upreached to a dazzling circle of bright orange-pink peaches in a nest of green. Just at that moment, as he parted the blind and looked out, Helen was standing beneath the peach tree, poised on tiptoe and stretching towards those coloured eggs. His eye flicked open on the scene, and automatically his hands went searching for his camera. If he could only frame it -while all the garden was still huge and soft, to place within it that one luminous jewel. He had the camera in his hands. With held breath, tense face, not daring to pause, he had caught her and framed her, a perfect celluloid miniature; pressed the shutter ... (Craig)-Walking across the garden as if she had appeared there for the first time. Her feet still held by the soil. In her skirt, she was carrying peaches, the brown material hooked up to make a cradle for the pinky fruit. Through the thick trees, the day drifted fitfully. Helen emerged, receded, over zebra crossings of light and shade. In the dark stripes, lost, dependent upon sun for life. It is only Helen, he said, bringing peaches for breakfast. Focusing hard. Then out of the shadows, Graham. So that her face broke, he could see her talking. The shift of reality winded. Suddenly his fingers in the furrows of fore head. Weakly watching two simple humans, a very ordinary pocket of life. (Gabrielle)-Helen, in the early morning riverdrifts of light. She had woken to find the sun climbing in barley sugar trickles the wall behind her bed; she shook the curtain to make the light dance in the night-wilted room. The window glass bounced and the whole wall was swamped. And there was Helen, part of some dream waking in the dappled garden. Walking through the dew, leaving a narrow trail of crushed dark grass. She went to the peach tree. Reached up to its orange crown to gather fruit, light dripping on her arms and the twist of yellow hair that hung down her back. Dripping and clinging brilliantly to the massed orange fruit in its shelter of green ... A Renoir, 'was' it of young girls in straw hats in an orchard, she had seen once ... Helen, now, under the green and pinky-orange tree, in the trickling morning. Night not quite dispelled, the garden a dark cave. Twinkle of sun at the tips of the trees, paler green tents that quivered with the first breaking plinks and pebbly whorls of birdsounds. Somewhere, through the trees, the river would be shedding its snaky skin of grey, and tossing coloured plates in glittering chains from bank to bank. Helen, walking back now with the hem of her dress tucked up around the fruit, was a slow wave that came in crested with sun. Rising up between the islands of shade, subsiding. Graham came out to meet her. Her face spilt light. The interruption an estrangement, a dilution. Gabriel sighed. The sight was still a yellow stone finely cut inside her, rays fanning out. It hurt. (iv) Helen was bringing in the peaches she had picked for breakfast. Running water over them in the sink, water that clung in tiny drops to the pink yellow orange fur. "There are a few grubs, Graham," she said. "But perfectly ripe." Perfectly. (v) In a blue bowl on the kitchen table, a melting feast of perfect peaches, just picked with a twig and a leaf or two still hanging, little watery pearls clinging to the skin. 6 WESTERLY, No.3, SEPTEMBER, 1977 (vi) Biting in through fuzz (Gabrielle), not waiting to peel, but sinking in teeth, eager for juice. Perfect, thinking aah. Can hardly breathe, hardly bear it, but having begun, cannot stop. So heady. Suede skin, against the roof of her mouth, soft clasp, runny flesh, surrender. Ringing, sunlush, so clear.