Sing at the Moon: the contextual narrative of isolation

and grief in Australian women’s writing

Barbara Hill

A Thesis submitted in total fulfilment of the requirements of the Award of

Doctor of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, Sydney in

October 2007. Acknowledgements

I wish to thank my supervisors Dr Paul Dawson and Dr Hazel Smith for their support of my work.

I would also like to acknowledge the care and support given by my dear friends. Thanks go to Dr Len Palmer and Helen Quinn for looking after our children so I could get ahead with this work over the years, for their valuable friendship, wonderful conversations and illuminating perspectives on the world, to Geoffrey Wainwright for his many years of friendship, love and support, to Joan Phillip for her creative camaraderie and love, to Dr Joy Wallace for her wonderful sense of humour, her fine scholarship, care and insight, to Kate Llewellyn for her nurturing both emotional and literary, her letters and laughter, to Laurel Mallard and Betty Robinson for their interest in matters literary and for their nurturing, to Geraldine Shoemark for sharing her interest in the otherworldly and the deeply psychological, to Cath Hudson and Jen Barry for their love, interest and support, to those other significant people over the years who have helped to inform the person I have become: Jude Marsland, Shauna Collingwood, Beth Keck, Sylvanna Bonacci, Belle Hayes and Chris Galloway.

I am grateful to my father Barry and mother Pam for providing the education as a basis to this level of research and to my brother Steven and my niece Aylia, to Margaret and Jack Bacchus for being such wonderful friends and such unfailing support to our family.

It is to my mother Pam, in whose memory this work acts as a final gift, a gift that celebrates her life, her commitment to education and her intellectual encouragement in a time when it was not particularly fashionable for women to think and also to the memory of our dear friend Ann Plummer whose love, friendship and dedication is profoundly missed. The world is a poorer place without them.

Finally to Dr Ruth Bacchus without whose love and support none of this would be possible. It is to her, to our goddaughter Renata and to our children Narayan and Esther that this work is dedicated with all my love.

2 Originality Statement ‘I hereby declare that this submission is my own work and to the best of my knowledge it contains no materials previously published or written by another person, or substantial proportions of material which have been accepted for the award of any other degree or diploma at UNSW or any other educational institution, except where due acknowledgement is made in the thesis. Any contribution made to the research by others, with whom I have worked at UNSW or elsewhere, is explicitly acknowledged in the thesis. I also declare that the intellectual content of this thesis is the product of my own work, except to the extent that assistance from others in the project's design and conception or in style, presentation and linguistic expression is acknowledged.’

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Copyright Statement ‘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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3 THE UNIVERSITY OF NEW SOUTH WALES

Thesis/Dissertation Sheet

Surname or Family name: Hill

First name: Barbara Other name/s: Ann

Abbreviation for degree as given in the University calendar: PhD

School: School of English Faculty: ARTS

Title: Sing at the Moon: the contextual narrative of isolation and grief in Australian women’s writing.

Abstract 350 words maximum: (PLEASE TYPE) ‘Sing at the Moon: the contextual narrative of isolation and grief in Australian women’s writing’ comprises two complementary elements of a single thesis: a novel and a critical essay. My novel takes as its starting point the impact of unsolved murders on small regional communities and uses this to explore the effects of isolation and grief on subjectivities, particularly women’s. The novel represents an original contribution to that strand of contemporary Australian fiction, especially as written by women, which deals with the Australian bush myth and the effects on women of the masculinism of Australian national identity. The critical component of my thesis examines Thea Astley’s Drylands and Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide in terms of how each novel engages with Australian literary traditions and offers an explicit critique of Australian masculinist culture. I focus on the ways the novels represent violence against women and show how this violence works to underpin the masculinist myth of mateship  to reveal a more sinister underbelly of Australian culture. Their critique of Australian masculinist culture also works at the level of form where both writers subvert a traditional ‘realist’ form for political as well as aesthetic purposes. I see myself primarily as a writer and feminist who uses theory and criticism as a way of reflecting on my own creative practice in the light of writing as social responsibility. My approach both to my own novel and to Drylands and Neap Tide is shaped by Susan Lever’s proposal that ‘writing and reading lie at the heart of feminism; they are the means by which women can explore and communicate the deepest aspects of their condition’ (2000,132). In my essay I am interested in providing a critical context for the novel by exploring feminist theories of subjectivity and the ways these can be represented in fiction. As a result I will analyse some of the narrative conventions employed in Hewett’s and Astley’s novels. I will show that the work of both writers operates in the context of an Australian literary tradition – both past and present – and informs and negotiates new ways that accommodate feminist concerns with fictional practice.

Declaration relating to disposition of project thesis/dissertation I hereby grant to the University of New South Wales or its agents the right to archive and to make available my thesis or dissertation in whole or in 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 property 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 Abstracts International (this is applicable to doctoral theses only).

……………………………………… ……………………………………..……… ……….………… Signature Date Witness The University recognises that there may be exceptional circumstances requiring restrictions on copying or conditions on use. Requests for restriction for a period of up to 2 years must be made in writing. Requests for a longer period of restriction may be considered in exceptional circumstances and require the approval of the Dean of Graduate Research.

FOR OFFICE USE ONLY Date of completion of requirements for Award: Abstract

‘Sing at the Moon: the contextual narrative of isolation and grief in Australia women’s writing’ comprises two complementary elements of a single thesis: a novel and a critical essay. My novel takes as its starting point the impact of unsolved murders on small regional communities and uses this to explore the effects of isolation and grief on subjectivities, particularly women’s. The novel represents an original contribution to that strand of contemporary Australian fiction, especially as written by women, which deals with the Australian bush myth and the effects on women of the masculinism of Australian national identity.

The critical component of my thesis examines Thea Astley’s Drylands and Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide in terms of how each novel engages with Australian literary traditions and offers an explicit critique of Australian masculinist culture. I focus on the ways the novels represent violence against women and show how this violence works to underpin the masculinist myth of mateship  to reveal a more sinister underbelly of Australian culture. Their critique of Australian masculinist culture also works at the level of form where both writers subvert a traditional ‘realist’ form for political as well as aesthetic purposes.

I see myself primarily as a writer and feminist who uses theory and criticism as a way of reflecting on my own creative practice in the light of writing as social responsibility. My approach both to my own novel and to Drylands and Neap Tide is shaped by Susan Lever’s proposal that ‘writing and reading lie at the heart of feminism; they are the means by which women can explore and communicate the deepest aspects of their condition’ (2000,132). In my essay I am interested in providing a critical context for the novel by exploring feminist theories of subjectivity and the ways these can be represented in fiction. As a result I will analyse some of the narrative conventions employed in Hewett’s and Astley’s novels. I will show that the work of both writers operates in the context of an Australian literary tradition – both past and present – and informs and negotiates new ways that accommodate feminist concerns with fictional practice. CONTENTS

Sing at the Moon 7

Representation of violence against women in 241 Thea Astley’s Drylands and Dorothy Hewett’s strategy of not knowing in Neap Tide.

1. Introduction 242

2. Thea Astley’s Drylands (1999) 255

2.1 ‘Something to write about’: Representation as Violence. 257

2.2 Rivers of Words: Astley’s use of characterisation 264 and focalisation in Drylands. 2.3 ‘Wotcha do in the evening, love?’: Surveillance 269 and power in Drylands. 2.4 Abuse as a terrible balm: Menace in the bush. 275

2.5 ‘They wouldn’t do anything to upset a mate’: Power 283 and agency in Drylands.

2.6 ‘Flyspecks on white that can change ideologies’: Writerly 287 concerns in Drylands.

3. Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide (1999) 295

3.1 The uncertainty of Knowing: Hewett’s Strategy 296 of Not Knowing. 3.2 Structure and Genre in Neap Tide. 307 3.3 Representations of sexuality and of feminism in Neap Tide. 316 3.4 Resistance to the Heroine: The Use of Myth and the 327 Rebel Stereotype in Neap Tide. 3.5 Violence as Representation: The killing of Characters. 335 3.6 Bakhtin’s Carnival in Neap Tide. 339

4. Conclusion. 345

5. References 348

6 Sing at the Moon

By Barbara Hill

7 PART ONE

1976

8 1

You couldn’t really call Tremley a town. You’d be hard pressed to even call it a village, and some, like the Tooleys who had been there for three generations, even referred to it as the community. In its day Tremley boasted seven pubs, four mills, two schools and three churches as well as three mines bringing to the earth’s surface copper, iron ore and gold. The village was a mid-way point between the big gold fields in Somalie some twenty miles north west and the city of Bailey that lay in a basin twenty miles to the south east. A town that once boasted a population of 2 531 in 1851 now held 352 if you counted the Phillips’

Siamese twins as two.

There were few buildings left to mark its former glory although the Old Tremley

School Hall still stood with an Honour Roll from the Great War, headed in gold with the words He who dies for England lives forever. You could never tell whether it was a statement or a warning. Curious things always seemed to happen in Tremley. Some said it was because of the disturbed Wiradjuri Bora

Bora rings near the river whose sacred power, left untended, emanated sending concentric circles of energy like a stone thrown into a still pond; others said it was because of the genocide of the tribe in the area. Some said it was the ghost of a man who still tried to strangle people, mainly men, after being hanged in

September 1848 on Hangman’s Hill for the murder of William Mancrief, a tutor to one of the landed gentry. Old Man Higgins was fond of saying that at least he died with a good view. Whatever it was, when late spring winds made waves of

9 the grasses on the hills, residents and visitors alike felt a calling and a mixture of a calm and expectancy laced their behaviour for weeks.

Spring, of course, was also a time for relationship break-ups, and youth from

Tremley were often seen driving backwards in their cars in romantic displays down the streets of the town late at night after the three remaining pubs had shut, the origin and reason of which were known only to them. It was like a season of behaviour that perhaps replaced the village’s sport and boxing days that had begun in 1851 but were discontinued when the temperance movement hit the district some thirty years later.

Even then, when the Golden Pippin Inn was burnt down and the Temperance

Hall was built, Tremley’s history had been peppered with odd events, some of which remain unexplained. It was not so surprising then that things turned out the way they did. If you look at the continuum of history as if it were a line, it was just one more event that showed the fickle and sometimes ludicrous nature of human affairs.

*

2

Eve had never surfed before (her body too round on such a flat surface) but in the dream she was on top of that wave, looking over the chasm, howling into the spray in terror and exhilaration. She recalled staring at her toes, white on the

10 board, oddly secure in the movement of lifting. Those toes were not the toes of a nervous woman. You’ll be dumped, the resonant voice came from the spray wet sky. Awake in the morning she couldn’t feel any sand in her pants and reckoned, in that case, she hadn’t been dumped at all, that instead she’d caught the second wave, whooping and laughing until she reached the shore, the huge force that propelled her somehow spent and tamed, behind her in sleep.

It was cold. Winter had hit Tremley suddenly and hard. The mist began in swirls about the paddocks as the sunlight hit. The house smelt of old wood smoke and last night’s dinner. Eve staggered a little as she walked to the kitchen.

Sometimes, especially since Kelsie died, she felt someone had bound her feet in the night. The doctor said it was wear and tear. As if she’d know. Sitting in her surgery all painted pink and green; she was only forty and had the eyes of a babe, no sadness in them at all, as if her life were turning out just as she expected. The kettle whistled. Eve circled her face with her warm hands, sighed and began to make tea to take back to bed.

It is not unusual for dreams to feel more life-like than life itself. Eve hadn’t been in the ocean for years now, not since she’d moved to Tremley when she first married. She did have memories of the ocean though, family holidays by the coast. The small seaside shacks that took days to expel the shut-up air, gritty sand tangled in sheets, the smell of zinc cream and the feel of sunburn. The clearest memory was of her aunts and her mother all watching their toes, floating like corks in the sea, in bathing caps, some adorned with white bubbles, some with flowers of all colours. Auntie Rem’s, she remembered, had small daisies,

11 quaint and slightly tasteful like Auntie Rem herself. She’s a clotheshorse, Rem, said her mother once, you could put a sack on her and she’d carry it. All those caps squashed on perms and thinning hair with their toes lined up on the horizon and Eve herself floating about them, between them, as the stories were told back and forth, the smell of salt on ageing skin. Mostly the talk was about husbands but eventually it would turn to childhood and the camaraderie of growing up a girl in a man’s world while women ran the domestic life. They’d laugh a lot, all of them, their faces red with sunburn, crinkled with laughter, surrounded by coloured flowers and white bubbles. Happy faces bobbing like balloons on the ocean surface, lives floating on the surface as shiny, slick and slippery as the clumps of weed Eve would later wear as hair.

It may as well not have happened at all. There was only one Aunt left now and she hardly remembered her own name let alone a day by the sea forty years ago and a small girl floating in the importance of her mother’s eyes. There was no one to remember now. Not the way she remembered.

Never mind she heard herself say, never mind. It was an expression she had heard all her life, her mother had said it and her mother before her. Never mind.

As if you could disengage your mind when it mattered most. Eve put the teacup on the bedside table and pulled up the warm yellow sheet, smoothing it over to form a border against the blankets.

12 “Are you there, love?” Lorna had probably been up before dawn, bloody hormones she’d swear, just when you need sleep most you’re there awake, feeling like you’re going mad and your life’s worth nothing. Even though their properties were next to each other, on these chilly mornings Lorna drove to

Eve’s with the windows open to cool her burning face and neck.

“Come in, Lorn, I’m still in bed.”

Lorna walked up the hallway and into the bedroom, her cheeks red, with stiffness in her left leg from a sheep that had battered her against a fence post when she was a child.

“It’s cold outside,” she said, “I swear I saw a chook almost break its beak on the ice in the water bucket.” They both laughed. They’d been laughing about chooks nearly breaking their beaks on ice for twenty years now.

“Do you want a cup of tea? Kettle’s still warm. Just add some to this,” Eve said handing Lorna the teapot covered in the same daisies as Auntie Rem’s bathing cap.

“Want some more milk and honey in yours?” called Lorna from the kitchen.

“Thanks, love, that’d be lovely.” A magpie balanced warbling on the frosty railing outside Eve’s window, its clawed feet sending frost dust to the sunshine.

13 “ I had a funny dream,” she called out, “it made me think how everyone’s memory is so different.”

“Vern’s bee boxes got blown over in yesterday’s squall,” replied Lorna, walking down the hall with the teapot and cups. She was not one for Eve’s deepness, she said, you look under things so carefully. I pick them up have a good look and toss the thing away. Eve simply replied, it takes all types, Lorn, we don’t all have to be the same. Lorna would nod to this but Eve could tell by the way one of Lorna’s eyes drooped that she’d felt she’d missed out on something.

“Does Vern need help with the bees?” Eve threw the covers back and pulled socks on to her feet. She plucked the pilly bits off the toes.

“Said we’d come before lunch,” said Lorna. Sighing, Eve lifted her frame from the bed.

*

3

They drove over the rise then hurtled down the hill, gathering speed as they passed the cemetery where Kelsie was buried. Eve felt that hot summer day again - the sting of it: the sting and smell of it. Hot eucalypts, hot sun, hot emotion, hot tears and plenty of them she thought.

14 “Oh dear,” she said aloud without realising it.

“What’s wrong?” asked Lorna as if she didn’t know. Although Lorna passed the place where they found Kelsie every day to get to Eve’s place she recognised that on some days it was harder.

“Just comes back,” Eve said, “that day and then I realise again she’s not here and

I think of that red mounded earth over her and I want it flat, flattened and forgotten.”

Lorna changed gears and slowed around McCafferty’s corner.

“What would I do without you, Lorn?” sighed Eve as she closed her eyes and tilted her head back. The car’s engine hummed beneath them. It was a type of silence.

“You’d be alright,” Lorna finally replied.

People had talked, of course. Still there were all sorts of murmurings around the village. She’s a strange one, Eve once heard Marge Toblin say when she rounded the corner near the grocers, and some say they’re, you know, well it is something that my Ted says they do with bananas. Eve had stood still in the cool morning glaring while Mrs Toblin and her daughter shuffled off swinging their full string bags with the sureness of their normal lives.

15 It had hit Eve then what they had meant. It wasn’t the shock of what they’d said or even how it was said that pulled her up, but the realisation that part of her recognised the intent. Lorna had always been like a sister with whom she didn’t feel the need to fight. But there was something more to it, a part she knew deep down she could never acknowledge, never talk about, never fully realise. Never, never, never. She said it over in her head like a mantra. It stopped all sense of it, all possibility and all fear. There was Kelsie and now there was no one. There was her beautiful, young, vibrant daughter and now there was no one. There was someone and now there was no one. It was just her.

“Vern said that the bees were angry,” said Lorna to the quietness between them.

“Real angry, he said. Are you sure you feel up to it?”

For a long while after Kelsie died Eve couldn’t work with the bees. Every time she went near them they attacked her in small swarms. This had never happened to her before, unless, of course, she had her period. It was as if the bees sensed her sadness and anger and wanted to bring it out. To make her wear all that was inside her on the outside. Kids were the same. Spared no feeling. Went in for the bite. They could say things so simply. Like little Bess Munroe who’d asked her after the funeral: “Do you think it was Kelsie’s time?” Eve, staring at the blotchy little face, so serious and all the words not hers, had answered, “Yes. Somehow it must have been because Kelsie was dead.” Little Bess had stood straighter then, folding her hands together as if she’d practised this in front of the mirror

16 and said, “Well that’s not what my mum reckons, she said she’d died before her time was up”. As Eve watched the child turn on her little best shoe heels and walk away she felt the senseless aching truth of what she’d said. It struck her then. Everything that summer struck her though.

She stopped working with the bees, even developed a fear of them, assigning them some omnipotence or prescience she herself didn’t possess. When they had flown at her that day in late summer they sounded like the Furies howling their warnings and the noise of their angered buzzing kept her awake at night while the toxin of their stings flowed through her veins in larger quantities than her own blood.

“I’ll be right, love,” she answered finally. “You know me and angry bees were made to match. At least it is cool and they will be a bit more docile.” By the time

Lorna drove the car up to the house, they were laughing.

They’d been rescuing swarms together for most of their shared lives and had gotten into some scrapes too. Like the time a swarm had landed on Higgins’ old fig tree. When Lorna had climbed up the tree and dangled her skinny legs over the bough near the swarm, ready to shake it down into the box Eve held in place, the whole branch had come down in a tumbling mess of angry bees, skinny legs, overripe figs and everywhere the smell of honey and wax. Lorna had hit the ground so hard the corner of the box was imprinted on her arse for two weeks.

They’d been stung to the shit house, said old man Higgins in the pub that night,

17 never seen two girls blow up so much. They looked like two loggers built like brick shit houses. He’d almost wet himself laughing then, Tony Wiseman joining him, the two of them wheezing into their beers like leaky bellows. Lucky the honey is sweet, he’d said finally, hardly able to contain himself.

Vern approached the car and leaned into the window, his hand resting on the ledge missing two fingers at the tips, his smile showing gaps of missing teeth.

“Good of yer to come,” he said, “Would’ve gotten Merv but he’s laid up with the gout presently.”

“Don’t you trust two women at it, Vern?” teased Lorna.

“Oh no, it’s not that, Lorn,” said Vern taking off his hat, suddenly concerned.

“You two could charm bees from any amount of honey any day. It’s just he owes me a few.” He searched their faces. Lorna threw back her head and laughed.

“Then again,” he said smiling, “I’d rather give youse two the old brew for thanks than him. Seeing how that’s what flares up his gout anyways. Do youse want a cuppa? Dora’s got the kettle going. ”

“When we’ve finished,” answered Eve. “It’s always better after you’ve finished the job.”

18 She said this slowly and with conviction as if it were given that life was always that neat.

*

4

I swing through the winds now as I did when alive. I tickle backs of necks, and howl when it storms. I could deafen the world with my howls. Howl down buildings, smash things, twirl my dress as a weapon and while dancing on tables knock over glasses, swear in people’s ears. Make them swear too. Get them into trouble, big trouble. I go to people now. I can’t talk though. Oh… I can talk, I just can’t be heard. No one hears me. I’m not allowed to speak in case I say something wrong. Tell someone a truth they can’t bear. I know a lot of truths now after what I’ve been through. I can see the truth like I used to see out of windows; cut straight to the core of a truth like a tunnel now. When I used to worry about time I was more careful. Now I don’t worry about time. I treat truth like time. I can shore up truth like the seconds in a minute like the minutes in an hour, like the hours in a day and the days in a week. It’s been weeks since I’ve been here, weeks. It could be months. I’ve got no way of telling. I am still the same. I haven’t changed. I can’t smell or taste or touch but I can see truth. I know who killed me. Oh…. I know. I know the truth. I am going to howl. It’s going to storm. Welcome to the real world.

19 *

5

Dora warmed her hands on the teapot, staring absently at the floral clock, wondering why her hands were always cold when her feet weren’t. It was winter but cold hands were the least of her worries at that moment. She cast her mind back to earlier that morning when Vern came in to perch on the bed. He always got up so early. She never could and would pull him down too some mornings, get him undressed again and have her wicked way as he’d say. Not this morning though. He’d sat there twisting his stumpy fingers, knotting them like her Aunt

Bertha did the old flour bags full of stale bread to make crumbs. Whack. Whack against the brick wall near the old oven. Aunt Bertha and this amazing display of ungenteel strength that made Dora wonder why she’d say to Uncle Pit, “Could you undo this jar, love? It seems stuck…” and he’d undo it then and pat her on the bottom. They’d hold each other eyes too long. Dora would look away suddenly sensing this adult world whose border she rested on, embarrassed that this would signal more than she’d realised.

“I’m passing blood,” Vern had said and looked away from her. Dora wanted to pull him down then but not for the deep thigh pleasure of it but because she felt so suddenly overcome with the need to protect him. She felt as if she was used to staring from the harsh cliff storm of death and endings.

20 “Love! Love! Love!” she’d called almost as if casting a spell, “How long has this been going on?”

“Weeks,” he said suddenly unable to breathe normally. Tears flowed then, not easily like hers, but in small bursts.

“Love. Love. Love,” she said again, this time quietly. “We need to get it checked.” He sat, head down, suddenly crushed and spent. She could’ve howled to the sky because it would happen anyway, maybe not soon, or then, but eventually, and she would be separated from him. So sad, as sad as the day they buried poor Kelsie.

Dora filled the basin with warm water and lots of suds. It was her way. As long as that sink was filled with dirty dishes she lived. As long as there were dishes to clean she lived. That fork that was in his mouth that morning meant she lived with him. She remembered that the day before Kelsie went missing there was lipstick on a teacup. Kelsie’s teacup. Somehow that cup had escaped from the morning dishes and once it had escaped from the morning dishes it had evaded the lunchtime and dinner ones as well. Dora found it the next day after they’d got the news and she hadn’t the heart to wash it. Really she’d wanted to keep it for Eve. She imagined Eve would want to take it away in private and look at it, smudge it on her own lips even and kiss it. It is what she thought she would want to do if it were her daughter. That lipstick smudge was all that was left of the living of Kelsie by then. She was on the rim of a cup once, with her lips so full

21 of promise, so full of words and laughter and in the end those lips were probably kissed, bruising lips that had resisted that kiss, and then she’d been killed.

Dora took Vern’s hands in her own. They were warm morning hands, having been under the covers, stroking him in the night, reaching for him, resting on his hip, his lovely hips, she teased him, were like a young woman’s. “You like young women’s hips then?” he’d said and she said “Of course! Who wouldn’t?”

She took those hands and cradled them in her own.

“Don’t worry love, “ she said, “we’ll have to see.”

“It will be alright,” he breathed out. “It’s the not knowing you see.”

And it was the not knowing. Not knowing when you were going to die and not knowing how long you’d live with all this death around. She knew. She knew all about it.

“I suppose I’ll make an appointment to see the Doctor,” he offered finally. “At least I’ll know then.” With the sound of their breathing he cried some more, squeezed the tears out like excess water from a sponge so that he’d be dry and purposeful again, and could wipe things clean and get on. The room was quiet in the early morning with the heaviness of what was unknown before them as they sat together, awkwardly on the edge of the bed.

22 “Eve and Lorn are coming to help me with the bees later,” he’d said.

“Good,” she answered, thankful that someone else would come into this void about them, drain the moat and put down the drawbridge. We need our friends she thought. Immediately she imagined the cake she’d make, how she’d put cardamom pods in the tea like Eve loved and pull out the scotch for Lorna who loved to tipple any time but more since they had been so at sea with Kelsie and all.

“Don’t worry, love.” She’d hugged his back.

“I feel better now,” he told her.

“It’ll be alright love,” she said and she wished she could pull him down to her then, so puffy and vulnerable and swollen. She could pull him down and have those young women’s hips. Then he was gone. His feet careful on the floorboards as if there were still someone in another room, like a sleeping child whom he could wake in the early morning with his too loud boots. She loved him so achingly then that part of her stretched down that hall like gum stuck on the sole of his boot, stretched to breaking point until she came back to herself.

With a thud she fell against the pillows on their bed deafened to the sound of life swirling in her head.

*

23 6

If you could read my mind what a time that tale would tell,

Just like a paperback novel

and the song of a wishing well.

I don’t know where we went wrong but the feeling’s gone and

I just can’t get it back.

I don’t know where we went wrong but the feelings gone and I just can’t get it back.

At least there is singing. There are songs that are sung all around the world that no one hears. I sing most of them. Even though no one can hear me they can feel a song. Like I am underwater, singing and they feel it in the pits of their stomachs. It can make some feel sick. Deep water is especially effective for this. I am twirled in all directions here. I am called this way and that and there are some places I don’t want to go. Nowhere near him, that’s one place I don’t want to go. If I went near him I’d be sucked into that vortex so quickly I’d never get out. I’d be trapped. Best to let others go near him. I just whisper in their ears.

24 Tell them what I want them to say. I did it once but they couldn’t hear properly and they said ‘you busted?’ instead. Sometimes I want nothing more than for him to know that I know what he did. He will though. I want revenge. I’ll drag him to that deep water and sing, sing, sing.

*

7

The music could be heard high in the clouds where the swifts caught the winds that moved around the planet in swirls. The notes carried on those winds across the blue winter sky, resting in small eddies of quietness, before moving again, thrust onward by resonance and pulse. The source of this music came from a small but isolated farmhouse where a cross-eyed ginger cat sat next to a small dog on the couch. Eyes like saucers they watched their owner do the tango, cheek to cheek with an imaginary partner, the music so loud it could shake down the old wattle and daub outhouse that had not been used since the episode with the brown snake two summers before.

“Feel the music Toby,” Dulce yelled above the rippling guitar to the dog, squinting her eyes in a way she imagined was alluring. It was wasted on Toby of course. He would often yap at her feet and trip her up and she’d have to begin all over again. For the time being it was just Dulce flowing in that music. Dulce and her gold lamé trimmed red velvet skirt that met the floor at odd points.

Handkerchief cut. Dulce so free in her mind and body that nothing mattered as she danced away the time and the feeling of dread she’d woken with.

25 “Feel the music!” she called again. The ardour in her voice matched the climax of the rippling music and she resisted the urge to throw herself on the floor as she had when she’d come home by herself after a dinner with Terrence at a local restaurant last June. That was a hot dinner, she thought even if it were the dead of winter. She’d left after he fed her dark homemade chocolate and amaretto with his pink, soft fingers. It was all too much. Not that anyone knew about that, mind. Not even Terrence.

The music finished. Dulce stood in the quiet, the sound of her breathing echoing in the house. That damned song finished quickly she thought, even though her body had anticipated it. Those moments, the end of songs, had almost scared her before she’d gotten used to them. Especially all the way out here. It was as if she were walking in circles in her head, the sound of high heels so full and clipped that it could drive a girl mad as her good, but dead mother was fond of saying.

Dulce had become an old hand at the roaring silences. That was why she was so fond of filling them, to hear them afresh. It was like coming inside from a stiff breeze, things so suddenly still in her mind, burning even.

“That’s it for today Toby,” she said to the dog who leapt from the couch and ran barking out the back door.

“Extraordinary,” commented Dulce as if to an audience. She walked down the hallway to the bathroom, stepping out of her skirt, twirling as she did, using her hands against the walls to balance.

26 Dulce turned the taps on hard. You are a full tap girl her father used to say to her. It was his way of indulging her. He was right of course. There was nothing half throttle about Dulce at all. It was the thing people most admired and despised about her. Her mother had likened her to the character of Maria in The

Sound Of Music. One summer night, after a few stiff gins, her mother had danced around her singing how do you solve a problem like our Dulce, how do you keep a wave upon the sand? Dulce had stalked off. “What’s wrong darling?” her mother had called after her. “Mother,” Dulce had called from the front door she was about to slam, “I’m no fucking nun and you can’t sing.” Her mother swore years later that things steadily got worse from that moment. She just changed her mother had moaned to her husband, one minute we had a good girl the next, we had a bad one. Of course it was neither so sudden nor so dramatic but it marked the point where Dulce began to take charge of her life. She also began to take charge of her mind. She started reading. She began with Simone

De Beauvoir, moved to Marilyn French’s The Woman’s Room and Kate Millet and then branched to Herman Hesse and Siddartha, and the Haiku poetry of

Basho and Issa in The Net of Fireflies. It went on, this love of reading, and never stopped.

The bath was almost full. Steamy air came off the water’s surface in billows. She stepped out of her clothes and sank into the warmth, sliding her hands over her body and taking a deep breath, blowing bubbles out of her nose, before plunging

27 her head under the warm water. It was always a baptism for Dulce. After every bath she was reborn. She made sure of it.

*

8

“We’ll ring Dulce and make a time,” said Dora to Lorna and Eve once they had each had a cup of tea and a piece of cake. Lorna also had a stiff drink in a small tumbler and when she had poured it Dora had taken a big swig herself, considering the events of the morning and how they’d jangled her nerves.

After Kelsie died they had many mornings that began like this one. There was weeping, drinking tea to begin with, then scotch or brandy later until they laughed at their prune-like faces and Dora insisted they drink water and lots of it.

Vern used to say they might as well all move in with one another. “It is like a flippin’ pyjama party every day anyway,” he’d add.

“Hello Dulce? Dora.” Dora rolled her eyes at Lorna and Eve.

“Well it doesn’t matter that you’re in the bath. You are always in the bath.”

“No that was Eve. Yes we are all here. What? No just tea and cake. Oh, and

Lorna’s on the scotch. What? No I don’t think so. Hang on I’ll ask.”

28 Dora covered the phone receiver with both hands and said, “She wants to know whether we want to come for dinner tonight.”

“Oh yes please!” said Eve.

“Lovely,” replied Lorna.

“Yes love, that would be lovely. We’ll all be there. What time? Seven? I’ll just let them know.” She covered the phone piece again and mouthed seven to the amused Eve and Lorna. Dora always conducted her conversation in this manner as if she were in a Noel Coward play. Eve laughed and Lorna nodded.

“Yep we’ll be there. We were ringing to see when we’d get together. We’ve all got something done and want to read, so it all makes for good timing. What? Yes

I’ll make sure I tell her. Now enjoy that bath love and we’ll see you tonight.”

Dora put down the phone. “She’s in the bath,” she said, picking up her teacup.

“And she said to tell you, Lorna, not to drink any more and save yourself for tonight instead. She’s making Sangria.”

Lorna grimaced and groaned out loud. “Oh shit not one of those dancing on the table kind of nights!”

29 “You don’t have to,” said Eve in a shrill voice, “and anyway you might not be the only one getting your lips around the Sangria.”

“Well, neither of you will get to it before you have read what you’ve written.

After that you can do what you like, ”said Dora.

“Yes mother,” Eve replied sarcastically.

Lorna threw a cushion at Dora and knocked her cup out of her hand. It fell to the floor without breaking and rolled in a small arc across the carpet. The sound of their laughter echoed across to the hills where a magpie chick cocked its head on one side and began to warble.

*

9

I fly to my mother’s side. I nestle under her arm and stretch against the length of her body until she groans with the remembered agony of my birth. I stay for a long time lying inside her. It is a place where the wind doesn’t get into your ears. It is quiet except for the sound of her breathing and the little needles of dreams that float in and out like sharp bits of shell on a tropical tide. I lie thinking about what I am going to do. I want to talk now but I still can’t be heard.

I go back to him too. Find him asleep near a campfire, bottles all around. His dreams are like rough brawls and he flails about like I did when his hands were

30 around my neck. No one is strangling him though. I whisper the wind and an ember lands on the leg of his pants. It wakes him before it can burn him properly though. He calls out “Who is there?” and I laugh the wind. He is too drunk to realise the sound of kookaburras are not heard in the dead of night. He will realise this later when he remembers though and he will not be able to talk to anyone about it lest they think him mad. I wait until another time. I pull all the parts of his scattered life and draw them like the strings of balloons until he cannot help but recognise himself in that handful of strings. Then he will have to look up. There will be no escape. He will look up and see all the coloured balloons of his life. All the past will come together. He will have to witness himself.

I wait, lying here next to my mother, breathing her dreams, hardly aware that it will soon be dawn and I must go. I am hardly aware that I could float in my mother’s blood and am alive to her. Hardly aware. Hardly.

*

10

“OK,” said Eve, “listen to this.” It was late afternoon and the cool air had forced them inside off the veranda into Dulce’s big armchairs in front of the fire.

Everything about Dulce’s house, the deep magenta Persian rug, the Art Deco lamp, the plush soft orange covers over the armchairs, made people want to

31 move in with her, to speak in expansive tones and to uncharacteristically use their hands when talking. The latter two they did, but Dulce restricted her visitors. She realised early that you could spend a lot of time pleasing other people. She’d also done a lot of reading on colonial and postcolonial literature.

She could quite deftly spot a take-over or invasion, however skilfully manipulated or disguised, like you could detect the smell of bush fire smoke in the air. That’s why everyone wants to move in, Lorna had said once, they can’t, and the desirable but unattainable is always more alluring and, in your case

Dulce, probably the more exotic. It was a rare moment of perfect insight for

Lorna that lifted her irrevocably in the gaze of the others. She never knew how this insight had come to her but convinced herself later that she knew what she’d said and why.

“Dying is an integral part of life,” began Eve, “as natural and predictable as being born. But whereas birth is a cause for celebration, death has become a dreaded and unspeakable issue to be avoided by every means possible in our modern society.”

“When was she writing this?” asked Dora.

“Last year,” replied Eve, “now let me finish.” She twisted slightly in her chair and sat up straighter.

“Who?” asked Lorna.

32 “Kubler-Ross,” answered Eve shortly, “Elisabeth Kubler-Ross.”

“Perhaps it is that death reminds us of our human vulnerability in spite of all our technological advances. We may be able to delay it, but we cannot escape it. We, no less than other, non-rational animals, are destined to die at the end of our lives. And death strikes us indiscriminately – it cares not at all for the status or the position of the ones it chooses; everyone must die, whether rich or poor, famous or unknown. Even good deeds will not excuse their doers from the sentence of death; the good die as often as the bad. It is perhaps this inevitable and unpredictable quality that makes death so frightening to many people.

Especially those who put a high value on being in control of their own existence are often offended by the thought that they, too, are subject to the forces of death.”

The room hushed and hummed in the orange glow. Lorna took a deep swig of her scotch and let out a sigh.

“Do you think I’m a control freak?” Eve asked, peeling her reading glasses from one ear and then the other. No one answered straight away.

“Do you mean in relation to your death or Kelsie’s or just in general?” Dora asked finally.

33 “It is just that sometimes I just can’t accept it. Death I mean. I know we all have to go. Shuffle off the mortal coil but it’s the finality of it. We’ve lost touch with it being part of a process.” Dora held Eve’s gaze firmly as Eve continued to speak.

“I was listening to the radio the other day. A young women dying of cancer was being interviewed. She only had weeks to live. She said she was excited about dying and when she was in hospital she met a woman who was due to give birth about the same time she was expected to die. It was two weeks after the time of the interview. She said she felt just as excited contemplating what was about to happen to her, as that pregnant woman.”

“That’s amazing,” said Lorna.

“I think it’s beautiful,” added Dulce.

“Whatever it is, it makes you think, doesn’t it?” Dora leaned over to fill her glass. “Anyone else like another tipple?”

“What is ‘being in control’ really when you think about it?” Dulce, her face half hidden by the fall of the lamplight sat quietly, stroking her old ginger cat, which sat paws neatly tucked in on her lap. “When I think of control I think of machinery and suppressed tears. Not that they are the same, although I’ve spent a lot of times crying over broken machinery.”

34 “Me too,” added Lorna, “just this week I howled over the mower. I’d mowed the whole lawn except the part near the garden beds when it conked out. I really only started to mow because I wanted to see the edge of the garden bed from the kitchen window. When it conked out I asked myself: why in the fuck didn’t you start with that instead of doing it last? It’s a weird experience to examine your own motives. It’s like unravelling wool. There always more to it and one bit leads to another.”

“Being a control freak is like making lists of everything.” Dulce sat back.

“Planning things to the nth degree and not coping when they go pear-shaped. It’s not being able to handle change at all. Do you really think you’re like that Eve? I don’t think you are.”

“I suppose not. I don’t know. Things have changed so much since Kelsie’s death. In some ways the whole experience has made me want to control things more. Like if I do this or that then I can shore up that eventuality from occurring.

Like if you drive slow on a patch of road you know the roos are on you reduce the chances of hitting one.”

“Ha! If that were the case we could run workshops on that and make our fortune,” chortled Lorna.

35 “Do you think there is a plan somewhere for our lives? Some esoteric library that keeps all the records of all the things we are to learn, how we are to learn them and in what sequence?” Dora sat twirling her glass. The light caught the cut crystal and threw a reflection on the wall next to Dulce’s Tibetan mandala. The pattern mesmerised.

“You’ve been reading too much Annie Bessant. If you are not a theosophist then you could be a Catholic. Every hair on your head is known and counted by the

Almighty. I wonder what the Almighty does with the bald? Must be a dream run, or a day off. Yippee no more hairs to count!” As if startled, the cat jumped from

Dora’s lap.

“You’re so irreverent!” Dora spat.

“Well that’s the point!” said Dulce earnestly. “Who’s listening except us? Who cares except us? What is the presence that feels except us?”

“You’ve been reading too much quantum physics,” replied Dora, ignoring

Dulce’s raised voice.

“No, even the scientists are going back to religion now,” piped Lorna.

“Ha! What would fucking science tell us about anything?”

36 “Who murdered Kelsie for one!”

“Did it though?” The air was suddenly thick, the playfulness abandoned for gravity.

“Sorry love’, said Dulce to Eve quickly. “That was a bit below the belt.”

“You’re bloody right though,” screamed Eve. “It told us fuck all about the bastard who killed Kelsie. Fuck all! Fuck science!” She began to cry. Dora moved nearer and placed her arm over Eve’s heaving shoulders.

They all sat quietly to dispel the bad feeling. In the first month after Kelsie’s death, one of them would get up, storm out, while the others sat meekly, hopeless. They’d talked about it then and decided to just sit in it, squirm in it if necessary, and let it pass. Together. It didn’t always work.

“How about some dinner then?” asked Dulce finally.

“Yes,” said Eve wiping her nose on her sleeve, “that would be good.” She stood up and took Dulce in her open arms. They clung together like that for some time.

“How about some music?” said Lorna, “and champagne?” She turned to the stereo and the music that had filled the house that morning for Dulce’s tango, flowed in the closed room.

37 “Oh! Fabulous!” yelled Eve. With one last hug she pulled from Dulce’s embrace and took Lorna by the shoulders and, lifting her to her feet, began to two-step around the living room, nudging and bumping armchairs and tables with their hips and legs.

“We will have mussels in white wine to begin, followed by pasta, and then cassata. Dora,” said Dulce motioning to the dancers, “you had better see to the champagne.”

“And after dinner, “ added Dora, “we will have reading and poetry.” Smiling at

Dulce she added, “If anyone can still talk.”

*

11

“In the beginning, in the small and great darkness, life is not something; it just ardently is. Beginnings are not precision. Beginnings are not confusion. They are darkness drawn to a minute point of non-darkness, and silence gathered into a small sound. What is gathered and drawn together, and who gathers and focuses, lies behind knowledge. We can only know, as we peer into the mystery, that it is so.”

38 I am reading while I wait. They are words on magic or quantum physics. I cannot decide which. I pluck the books from the air. No sooner do I think of things than they appear. Usually a lot of books appear and I have to pick one.

Sometimes one just floats down and all the words fall out and I see them. Well, I eat them really and when they go inside I see them. No one hears me eat them. I am waiting for the music to stop so I can hear. I am hoping to talk. I am hoping to be heard. I am spending days wandering now and feel I am becoming weaker.

More transparent. Unable to focus on one thing. I am everywhere. I could be a cloud. I could be… I am waiting for the music to stop.

*

12

“Ok,” said Dulce, “Who wants to begin?”

Lorna had cleared the plates away. Dulce had turned the music down and they were back in the chairs by the fire.

“I will,” volunteered Dora. She twisted her long dark hair around her hands and looped it in through itself in a loose chignon. “This is a poem I wrote this morning.”

You come to me in the blue cool morning and tell me you are going to die.

I am shocked at first but as the sun comes higher,

39 we too rise in a line of panic.

I remember now, how you once dreaded the thought of leaving.

We were younger and it didn’t seem too permanent now older, time wipes the smiles, makes them thin lines, like the line of panic, that brought the sun this morning.

There was silence.

“Goodness Dora! That’s grim,” said Dulce finally. “What have you been reading?” Dora twisted her fingers around a handkerchief. The writing pad on her lap lay like an abandoned pastry sheet all floppy at the edges. She took a deep breath and let out a sob that shook her body. “It’s Vern,” she said after a while, “we think he has bowel cancer.”

“Ah Shit!” bellowed Lorna. At the same time Eve called out “No”, throwing back her head to the ceiling.

“Yes,” said Dora, the words spilling from her. “He goes to the specialist at the end of the week. It will probably be OK but with all our bad luck I just can’t help thinking this is just another thing that will make things worse. I don’t mind for myself. I just wish it were me but it isn’t and it’s him and I love him so much I

40 don’t know what I am going to do if he goes. I don’t know…” Dora melted into the armchair, her face wet with tears. Lorna held her shoulders from behind while Eve and Dulce each sat on an arm of the chair, clucking and cooing to soothe her. They huddled like this for some time.

“Your poem is beautiful,” said Lorna when Dora had quietened. “It is very neat.

Like a full circle.”

“Thy firmness draws thy circle just, and makes me end, where I begunne.”

“What?”

“John Donne.”

“Oh.”

“Anyway. Your poem is beautiful. Even though it is shocking.”

“We need to shock,” said Dulce, “sometimes; life is not so neat.” She picked up her glass and took a long swig then added, “or calm.”

Outside the wind had picked up. It howled through the valley as if searching for something lost. It flapped the loose tin on the chook shed with such regularity it sounded like the clapping of a giant. The sound of roaring came from a distance, almost like the sound of the sea, but it seemed never to get nearer and remained a reminder of something happening outside, or over there. It was a warning outside this existence.

41 “Let’s keep reading,” said Dora, “Come on Eve. I know you have something.

You haven’t read anything for such a long time.”

“I know. I have come to understand that we grieve and write from the same place.” Eve opened her journal and put on her reading glasses. “You right now

Dora, love?” she asked.

“Yes thanks. I don’t know what I’d do without you all.”

“Probably go slightly mad, like we all would. That is supposing we are not already. Ode to the murderer,” Eve began.

When your hands went to her neck and squeezed, did you feel the pulse of her blood beneath your fingers?

Did you wonder then what it was, this life, with the same blood that had pulsed in my womb long before your hands grew to the size they were?

You too were once a child.

42 As you battered her body with your own, did you think of someone else?

Or was it her, with those blonde curls, the small dimple on the right side, her teeth that you knocked out when she cried out?

When you left her did the moon howl at you?

Did it call you or did you see it reflected in her wide unseeing eyes?

Did you notice at all?

Or was everything covered like the branches of the gum tree you lay over her body as a sign to the heavens you had finished with her?

When she finished reading Eve removed her glasses, rested them on her notes and looked around the room. There was silence - even Lorna’s gaze was downcast. Eve had taken them back to the place they all knew well. It was like slipping into an old nightmare.

43 “Well?” she said, frustration creeping into her voice, “what do you think?”

Finally Lorna spoke.

“It’s powerful, Eve,” she said, “very powerful.”

“You know,” said Dora, “that’s just the type of thing we should hang up around the town. Just a reminder to the bastard that we are watching.”

“Waiting maybe? What would we be waiting for? Would we do the same to him? Rape him, murder him and leave his body under a pile of fresh eucalypt branches?” Dulce had her eye on a distant point beyond the room.

“Well Eve could. She is the one who could,” said Dora indignantly.

“Would you want to Eve?” asked Dulce.

“I don’t know. If it would bring her back I would. I don’t know.”

“I’d like to strangle him,” spat Lorna. “I still could.”

“To what end though, Lorna? His death? What would it serve?”

“Why do you so suddenly feel benevolent?” Dora glared at Dulce, anger a sudden red in her cheeks.

44 “I don’t know. I think we all go in and out of so many emotions. I am trying to hold onto the positive ones, I suppose. Let’s face it, the dark ones are black enough and seem to go on forever. But I wonder sometimes. What is it we can learn from this horrid thing? How can we go on together with the knowledge of it? How can we go on at all? We do though, don’t we. We do go on. We all wake up and breathe and laugh and cry and worry still, even when parts of us are deadened. Why do we go on?” Dulce had worked herself into a state. She paced the floor, stubbed her toe and almost tripped over the long purple skirt she had danced in that morning.

She was on to something though. They could all feel it. They could feel it deeply like a truth about to reveal itself, the kind that sees you in a sweat, where all points of the compass come at once and there is a metaphysical swooning that divides one moment, forever, from the next.

“I think at night about that man killing my daughter,” Eve looked at each of them in turn. “And by the time the rage in me has worn itself out I come to one point. Always the one point. It is the point when I realise he could’ve gone either of two ways. He could kill her and he could not have killed her. Either way I think of her alive then. I feel Kelsie alive then. I sometimes do not even want to say her name. Then it is not my daughter you see.” Tears streamed down her face. “I see that point in time before he kills her and I see him standing as if he were at an intersection, deciding which way to go. Left or right? He is just a man

45 then. A man that used to be a boy. A little boy that held out his hand to someone once. I see him then as someone who just made the wrong decision. I think there is such a fine line between right and wrong. Some part of ourselves, the goodness, the part that aspires, gets lost, and overwhelmed by the darkness and for a moment we are lost to it. And then we live in that moment forever. He lives in that terrible knowledge forever and all I feel is his self-loathing. When the dawn comes, I am softer. Kelsie’s life is over and somehow resolved. But that man lives like a question mark that needs to be pinned down. It is then I want to find him. To tell him we all stand at the t-intersection sometimes. To tell him we can see that other road and know that he could just as easily have taken it. I think then I could believe it was not all such a waste.”

*

13

I am wide-awake now. I am burning with a fever. There are times that I cannot breathe. I am being suffocated again. I go back to that time. I am hitting out. It is then I hear the poetry. I hear it before it is written. I hear the sounds being made even before they are thought. When I am here I understand everything. I can see the plan. I can see how it is mapped out. It is my life. “Ah well,” I say to the coloured winds, “it is short and sweet but what does it achieve?” I met the

Buddha once. Buddha was a smile in the sky like the sliver of a new moon. I asked the Buddha then. What was it all for? The smile grew until it ripped apart the sky and I slipped into the gaping mouth. Fancy being chewed by the Buddha

46 I thought. But there I was in the smile of Buddha and from there I shone out. It was like lightning. Everything was strangely defined. I have no answer and when

I found myself outside the smile again, I was part of a wind that whistles over sand and the sound in my ears did not stop for a long time.

It was then I thought Buddha had spat me out and what I was doing was traversing the Earth a few hundred times until the force fell off me. I was never the same. But I am thinking that the Buddhists are right. It is all illusion.

I am deciding whether I am still angry. There is equal force of forgiveness and rage. Each pulls me in a way and somehow are the part of one whole. I am not good at thinking in dichotomies now. Buddha called them ‘binary opposites’ as if Buddha would know. ‘Get rid of all the binary opposites and just live’ is what was said. If I knew what was being talked about I would. I would just live. It is just that I am still pissed off about being murdered. When they let go there, I can let go here.

*

14

“Now we have Dusty Springfield and Don’t Sleep in the Subway.” There was clapping and wolf whistling and Dulce stumbled over the coffee table to turn the lights down and the music up.

47 “There have to be some benefits about living in the middle of bloody nowhere,” she mumbled under her breath. She swung around and fell back into the armchair.

“Oh shit I’m pissed,” said Dora. She and Eve had been singing songs for the past hour, mouthing all the instruments as well as the vocals. Lorna had gotten bored and gone to sleep in Dulce’s bed. Now she came running and jumping down the hallway (later Dora decided the only word to describe the action was gambolling) sunglasses just balancing on the tip of her nose, two enormous false bosoms, bright red lips, tight fitting mini and high heeled boots. A length of electrical extension cord was draped over one shoulder as her microphone, while her usually tame bob of grey hair was covered in a wig that resembled a healthy piece of mistletoe.

The laughter rippled round. Eve was shrieking at the top of her lings, “Oh My

God look at you. Look at you!!!” Anything and everything seemed to egg Lorna on. She jumped onto the coffee table and swung her hips around to the music, deep throated the extension cord and swung it around her head like a lasso. She knocked a rose petal from the stained glass light fitting and a laughing Buddha from the bookshelf and narrowly missed the standard lamp that wobbled and rocked like a dropped coin. The cat ran up and down the hallway ripping up all the rugs. Lorna sang on, balanced over her audience like a professional cabaret performer, legs at odd angles and toes pointed over the edges of the table, singing and shouting at full volume with everyone joining in. “Don’t sleep in the

48 subway darrrling don’t stand in tha poooooouring rain. Don’t sleeeep in the subway daaarling the night is young forget your troubles now nothins wrong now your beside ma again.DA Te DA TE. OhOhOhOh.”

When the music stopped, Lorna sat down. “Sky’s moving,” she said and rested her eyes behind the glasses tilting her head back on the chair.

“Who gives a toss,” said Dora, “we can do what we bloody well please. If we are old enough to be Dusty’s mother we are old enough to write bad poetry.”

“That was a powerful fucking poem,” said Lorna. “You know, Eve, you should publish some of those poems.”

“No way,” replied Eve and then took a long swig of her drink. “Problem is I can’t write.”

“None of us can,” slurred Dulce. “We are all fucking hopefuls without much talent.”

“It helps, is all I know,” added Eve. “If I didn’t have you all and writing I wouldn’t make it through. I know my life a little clearer by doing it. You know what I mean?”

49 “Not quite,” Dora sat up, “ but as Socrates said - for all it helped him - an unexamined life is not worth living. It doesn’t mean to say that we have to understand the reflections.”

“You probably will tomorrow, “ said Dulce, “although this too could be a moot point.”

The poetry readings didn’t usually end up like this. “Really! It was so undignified,” Dulce said the next day.

“Ha!” replied Lorna almost snorting out of her nose. “You didn’t think that when you took the brandy bottle to sleep under your dressing table!”

“Oh as if you’d recall, Ms Dusty Springfield.”

“I can’t recall a thing,” said Lorna, “and I’m in good company.”

Good company, as we all know, is all that we really need.

*

50 PART TWO

1975

51 1

“Well if we didn’t have a bloody national hero as the town’s icon we’d be up shit creek without a bloomin’ paddle, wouldn’t we?” Pierce Dockman was on his fourth beer. He and Lance had come in from the fencing early. It was too hot.

“Nup. 46 degree is enough for me,” Pierce had said in the Burrow’s outer paddock picking up the fencing gear, “Let’s go have a beer, Lance. You’d have to be a mug to work in heat like this.”

It had been a hot summer. Along the ridge, where it was rumoured most of the gold lay in an untouchable reef, the heat shimmered until the line of hills appeared liquid. As they drove into town, bouncing over the deep ruts that sent clouds of milky dust behind them, Pierce had a distinctly flat feeling. It happened some summers but mostly when there had been a heat wave like this one. His wife Mabe said it was because your brain can’t cool down and you don’t rest proper at night.

She is right thought Pierce. Mabe was right about most things. Today he felt as though he could just lie down and never get up. Bloody Lance, arriving late with the hangover from hell, didn’t put him in any better mood but he’d come to be unsurprised about his son’s shortcomings, not that he’d had that kind of generosity shown to him when he was his age. No sirree, he thought. Work until you dropped and work some more and that’s why all the men in his family died in their chairs after Christmas lunch. He reckoned it was the only time they sat

52 down and the shock of it sent them to an early death. Paddocks were cleared by hand, fencing logs cut with crosscut saws, roads and bridges made without one piece of machinery. Mabe said well if were hard work that killed yer it’s a wonder the women weren’t all dead by twenty. And some were, mostly in childbirth. Those were the days, after all, when you could die of a broken heart and no one thought anything of it.

“Get us another one, Lance.” Lance was tall and brooding with a helmet of dark hair. He glowered beneath eyebrows that resembled black caterpillars.

“It’s your shout, dad,” he said quietly but without the menace he felt inside.

Pierce ignored him. When the barman picked up their empty glasses and said

“Two of the same?” it was Lance who nodded and Lance who paid. He knew the story. “I’ve kept you for the first twenty years of your life, now it’s your turn to look after me for the next twenty.”

Mabe hated him saying that. “ You put too much pressure on that boy,” she’d say, “You’ll lose him.”

Pierce had already lost him. He just didn’t know it. Lance had been secretly plotting his escape and had saved enough money to buy Colin’s HJ Holden and

Barney’s surfboard. He was going to the coast. He was going to the coast, to surf, to smoke pot, to drink piss and get the chicks, at least that’s the order he put it in to his best mate Colin. “Fuck working like a navvy all yer life Col,” he said,

“I’m going to have some fun. Serious fun. Maybe I’ll even go to Malibu after

53 that.” Colin was in no doubt that Lance meant it. That’s why he’d offered to sell him the HJ. Colin reasoned if he wasn’t going to get to the coast himself at least his car would.

“As I was saying, if we didn’t have the old scribbler himself, we’d be a sore and sorry town.” Pierce concentrated on the clock.

“You ever read any of his work?” challenged Lance.

“Nah. You know I’m not a reader.”

“So. What does it matter to you then?”

Pierce turned to face Lance with a sneer on his face. Just then Colin walked in.

“Afternoon, Mr Dockman,” he said cordially, taking his sweat stained hat off and nodding, “Gidday Lance. Bloody hot!” He pulled a stool next to Lance and smoothed the bar mat down with his big fingers. “A beer thanks Sam. You two right there?” He motioned at the full glasses in front of Pierce and Lance. “Just one then. Thanks Sam and make it a schooner.”

“Where you been working, Col?” Pierce smiled at Colin.

54 “Down at Eve and Mike’s place. Rouseabout. Bloody hot in the shed. Old Man

Higgins passed out at ten to three. Mike called it a day then. It got up to forty nine degrees in the shed at two.”

“Geez! That’s friggin’ hot, ain’t it?”

“Higgins reckoned the sheep were getting burns from the clippers. But that was just about before he passed out. So he was probably hallucinating.”

“Where is the rest of them?” asked Pierce.

“Over at The Crown except for Dave and Phip. They’re over at The Royal.”

There were three pubs in the town. The Imperial, The Crown and The Royal.

You could get thrown out of and barred from one and still be able to drink in another. Sometimes, and especially on long weekends, things got ugly and there was usually a big dustup; afterwards the pubs would shut. The next day people would go back one by one to their chosen place and sit contritely at the bar. If you wanted to change pubs and drinking companions this is when you did it. It was like a spring clean of patrons.

There were some others, of course, like Pierce, who never even set foot in another pub except his and Pierce was loyal to The Imperial to the point of the absurdity. His father and his father before him didn’t go to any other pub and no family member of his was going to either.

55 It all resulted from the time his great grandfather, a keen birdman, after drinking at The Imperial had walked in to The Royal with two parrots, one on each shoulder. “No animals allowed in here,” the publican had said. Great

Grandfather Dockman, well-inebriated, thought he’d try The Crown then and, unbuttoning his fly, thinking it was great joke, walked in and said “Two parrots and one cock here.” Although there was some riotous laughter, Lofty Sallenger had taken him out the back. Lofty had gone kind of ballistic they thought. Terry said it was because Lofty had been to sea and had had a bad experience and seeing Dockman with his prick out like that had brought it all back. At The

Imperial they heard the commotion but by the time they reached the gutter,

Great Grandfather Dockman was unconscious, bruises already turning black and purple, and the two parrots lay, glassy eyed, alongside him with their necks wrung. Although the details were never recounted, Pierce inherited a fierce hatred of any pub other than his own and patrons of the other pub if not the enemy were at the very least considered as highly suspicious.

“Well,” said Pierce draining his glass and pushing back his stool, “I’m off home.” He stood and offered Colin a handshake. “I’ll see you later Colin and you soon Lance. Now don’t you go getting plastered tonight like you did last night. We have a lot of work to do tomorrow. Heat or no heat.”

Lance didn’t acknowledge the comment. Instead he remained seated, twirling his glass, jaw clenched. Pierce scoffed in his son’s direction, nodded at Colin

56 and walked out of the pub muttering, “Little upstart. I’ll bloody give you your fucking silent treatment.” The threat was lost on a wave of hot wind, and goodwill in the voice of Colin as he called out, “Afternoon then Pierce.”

*

2

“Is that you Colin?” The hallway was almost dark and it took some time for his eyes to become accustomed. The curtains were all drawn and all the windows, he knew, would be closed. That’s what his mother always did on hot days. When he was a child it was such a relief to him at the end of the day when the heat passed and his mother threw open the windows to catch the late evening breeze that usually floated across the valley. His mother’s determination, as she balanced on chairs and the tops of bookshelves, precarious, heaving, opening the large windows that used to stick in their frames, was one of the things he still remembered and admired most about her.

“Ah this one is stuck my little Colin,” she’d say as she pushed. The dress she had just changed into was usually pastel and floral, and pulled tightly at the waist, so unlike the shapeless shift she’d worn during the hot day. “Ah! There it goes!” and the window would be free in an alarming burst of noise as the melted paint released the frame. Her dress would catch in the wind and the curtains and his mother seemed thrown into the room as if a spirit of grace and goodness, all things light and airy, billowed in through the window. The room would be

57 suddenly full then with the perfume of cool air on slightly damp but parched grass.

“Yes Ma,” he answered, “it’s me.” Colin removed his boots, and lined them carefully next to the stand in the hallway as he always did. On soft feet he walked to the living room and saw his mother’s smiling face peer from the armchair where she always sat. He had not always been allowed in this room.

When he was young it was a place only for grownups and the smell of plush leather, polish and starch was as intoxicating as it was mysterious.

“Oh Colin, “ she said as he bent to kiss her cheek, “it’s so hot today. Isn’t it son?”

“Yes Ma. It is really hot.” He stood there not wanting to soil the furniture with his working clothes. “How has your day been?”

“Oh good dear. Good. I had a good conversation with your father.” Colin remained quiet. “He said to pass on his regards to you.” As she spoke she plucked imaginary pieces of offending fluff from her dress.

“Well, pass my regards back next time you’re talking to him,” replied Colin, adding quickly, “I’m just going to clean up before I start the tea.”

“Right you are love. Right you are.”

58 Climbing the stairs, Colin discarded his shirt and undid his belt and the top of his jeans. He sighed, wishing suddenly for someone to be taking his clothes off for him. Taking his clothes off so that they could have him. Want him. “No such luck,” he said out loud and standing under the full force of water, planned instead what to cook for dinner.

*

3

Kelsie let go of the rope. The deep green water accepted her and for a minute she disappeared in a confusion of bubbles. It was a pool they had discovered after the last flood. There was an old gum tree with an overhanging bough perfect to tie a rope to swing from.

“Come on Lance,” she called swinging from the rope, “Why don’t you come in?”

“Nah,” he answered, “you go. You’re having fun.” Sometimes he would surprise her though, run down the river bank his strong thighs pumping the sand, dive underneath the cool water and catch her around the legs and waist, hold her to him and not want to let her go. He was scared really but would never admit it to her. Also he liked to watch her. And she, charmed by her increasing sexual

59 power over him, liked to be watched. He’d roll a cigarette, sit on the bonnet of his car and marvel at her strength with those long shapely legs. He felt both like a playmate and a lover; a silent confusion that tugged at them both.

They lay on the cool sand under the gum and next to a line of she-oaks that fringed the river for miles.

“What are you going to do when you finish school?” It was only weeks away.

“I’m not sure,” she replied, “ a holiday would be good.”

“Want to go to the coast with me?”

“I’m not sure.”

“I mean do you want to come to the coast with me for good?”

“What?”

“I’m going away.”

“What?” She sat up rigid, unsure of how she was to respond. “You never said.

You never said anything.”

60 He lay looking up at the branches and the shifting light through the trees, the hum of cicadas further down stream thickening the summer air. Somehow he knew it would come to this. He could see himself at the coast without her and wondered suddenly if he had ever really wanted her.

“I’ve been thinking about it for ages.” It was the truth.

“Why didn’t you say?” She reached for her T-shirt, suddenly feeling too exposed. The spell was broken. Welcome to the real world, the voice inside her head said, the adult world of disappointment. She packed her few things into the bag next to her towel and stood to shake the sand out.

“What’re you doing?” he said, the sand flying around him.

“What do you think, you moron? I’m going home.” He didn’t say anything for some time as if weighing the situation, reading her response, seeing how far he could go.

“It is a long walk,” he said slowly lacing each word with cold menace. He felt a part of himself flip to shadow. The wind in the sheoakes whistled suddenly. It almost unnerved her, the change between them palpable.

“Lucky I’ve got good strong legs then!” she replied trying to banish the rising uncertainty. As he blinked, her shadow passed over the length of his body. He

61 shivered as that shadow, larger than her small frame, loomed for the briefest moment. Throwing her bag over her shoulder she strode up the embankment and was gone even before he had time to sit up.

“Fuck her,” he said lying back down on the sand, “Just fuck her.”

*

4

They were at the kitchen table. Eve, Mike and Dora. Eve’s face was red. Mike had pushed back his chair and crossed one leg over a knee. Dora hunched forward. If you were to hear their conversation, stumble upon it when you were delivering the milk or the bread, it would have sounded like an argument.

“So what you are saying is that it’s alright for Paul to be out with his girlfriend but it is not alright for Kelsie to be out with her boyfriend?” Dora was being patient. “Well Mike,” she said quietly, “that’s profoundly sexist.”

“Nahhh!” Mike sat forward quickly, “I didn’t say she could not go out with her boyfriend. I said I just wanted Paul to go with them.”

“Why is that?” asked Dora.“ Does that mean you want Kelsie to go with Paul and his girlfriend?”

62 “No Dora. Now don’t be ridiculous. Paul is old enough to do what he wants.”

“Well, that is what Eve is saying about Kelsie, aren’t you Eve?”

Eve nodded, trying not to cry. Mike scowled at her, sideways, like an old collie baring teeth and about to bite.

Eve retreated further into herself. It was useless she thought he defeats us. She had thought on more than one occasion to leave him. Simply pack a few things, ask the kids what they wanted to do, and just drive away. She had done it once; the night he was so drunk he came home with Sheryl Pickford. She’d heard them at the door, him trying to get his key in the lock and her trying to get his clothes off in the doorway whining over and over Come on, honey. Come on. Him saying shhushshhush drunkenly, loudly, although he swore the next day, when

Eve rang from a filthy café in the desert, the children still asleep in the car and the café owner eyeing her off, I can’t really remember a thing love, come home,

I’m sorry. She had driven home then. All those miles back to him. She wondered why, later when he did it again, this time denying it all, I did not, you lying bitch.

It was because of the kids she told herself. Late at night staring at the ceiling in the dark, him snoring next to her, she had to admit that it had nothing to do with the kids. It was her own sense of failure that she was avoiding. Are you sure you want to marry him? her mother had asked her a week before the wedding; yes mum I’m sure. She wasn’t sure though. He had a hard side. She’d seen it. He kind of closed down to steel, like the time parked outside the house she’d said

63 “No” because she wasn’t feeling well and he’d said don’t know why I bother with you. Maybe Dora would fix me up instead. I bet she never says no to Vern.

When she got out of the car, silently, he’d said Just fuck off you crying bitch. Her mother didn’t like him, never had and blamed him when the family moved to

Tremley and she didn’t see her daughter or grandchildren as much. Are you going to have a little tipple this Christmas he’d say to her mother, or are we going to stick to the tea? He said her mother misrepresented him. But he said that about most people. He thought no one understood him and because of that he felt wrong in the world, somehow loose-fitting, not valued. He never realised others saw him when he turned into stone, when he fixed those steel blue eyes that, always slightly malevolent, were even more dangerous because they were full of suppressed self loathing.

Dora pulled back her chair. She recognised the state Eve was in and pulled back.

It was pointless to talk to Mike when it was like this. He just enjoyed the banter, whereas Eve was like an old flag in a strong wind being torn to shreds.

“Anyway,” said Dora fishing her keys from her handbag, “Whether you like it or not, Mike, your daughter is a grown woman and one day she will do absolutely what she pleases and you will have absolutely no say in it.”

“Over my dead body,” he replied without moving a muscle.

64 Dora got up. She was shocked by what he’d said but remained silent. It’s not my place, she thought. She’d learnt that when he’d cornered her at the ball all those years ago before he married Eve. Want to come out the back? He’d said. But you’re with Eve! She’d stammered, trying to ignore his groin, hot and hard leaning into her. I know. But you know you want me. No she said I don’t and she didn’t; she found him repulsive, luckily. Later when she told Vern he said Just keep your distance from him. He’s just a sexual animal that’s all. As if that excused everything he did.

Dora kissed Eve on her cheek and went to go. At the back screen door she turned and said: “ You’ve got to sort this out you two.” She made a mental note not to get caught like this again.

“Oh we will,” Mike said surely. A steady smile, like a wind pain, crossed his face.

Dora shuddered as she looked back at Eve through the wire screen gauze. Eve’s face was gaunt and pinched with fear in steady lines about her eyes. Dora had not noticed that before.

*

5

Kelsie walked. Time danced around her like a twirled hooped skirt. It swooshed and skipped up the fine reddish brown dust on the road that looped about her like

65 a shawl of memory. Had I the wings of a turtledove, I’d soar on my pinions on high, back home to the arms of my Polly love, and in her sweet presence I’d die, she sang as she walked. She had finished twirling and skipping. She had tried everything really. Finally she felt the freedom that was hers. No more school, no more being told what to do. “That’ll be enough of that my girl,” she mimicked out loud, “you are not too old for me to put you across my knee and give you a good spanking”. I bet.

“Well you can all just piss off,” she yelled. It was hot. The road shimmered. The line of hills appeared almost white in the intense heat and she felt as if she were the last person alive. Walking out of mayhem into the unknown. It frightened and thrilled her.

What would I do? she thought. She walked carefully as if wading through the earth, sensing the sacredness of it. Should anyone have seen her from a distance on that road she would’ve seemed very small but well defined. A breeze caught her attention. Then she heard it. The sound came on top of the breeze that now eddied around her like a Willy Willy. The sound called to her and she heard it and as if some veil was lifted she felt a new connectedness to the ground on which she walked and everything was suddenly alive to her eyes in new ways.

The wind called to her like tendrils, like fingers, soft and curving and they laced about her, pulling her, urging her, wrapping her and making her tingle. She walked now as if in a daze, as if asleep and yet she was awake to her feet in the shoes that carefully kissed the dirt.

66 She began to talk to herself, remembering how, as a child, words and sounds would come and she’d play with them in her mouth, full of their roundness, pushing them through her teeth, hearing them on the outside differently from what was inside. Playing and walking. Playing and walking. Voices talked to her and she answered. They came from the trees, the hills, the sands, and the wind and filled her with an eagerness to be known. She had known them all her life and was remembering. Being pulled to the sky in that knowing, being eclipsed with one powerful eddy of energy after another, being recognised and becoming enormous and expansive.

She felt the alien quality of the car well before she saw it. She felt it through her feet.

When a voice said get in it seemed natural to say no. She hadn’t finished. She was a being of light gathering a mantle of dust about her; she was throwing her arms to the sky in defiance. She was growing. She hadn’t finished.

*

6

When Pierce Dockman was not happy he took it out on his wife. Mabe was long suffering but occasionally got her own back, like the time she put a little bit of chook pooh in his sandwich and he ate it and never knew. It was a small triumph but the pleasure of it lasted a long time and sustained her through at least a

67 couple more floggings. She had become so used to violence, she hardly remembered the kindness of her parents. On those mornings when she woke bruised and unable to move, she groaned, recalling how her mother used to stroke her cheek until she opened her eyes calling softly darling darling time to wake up. Her father would have made hot tea and it would be waiting on the old kitchen table, the cups steaming while he was out getting the milkers in. The steam off those cups was like a magical message from him; a vapour that curled in the pre-dawn light like the mystery of his presence.

This time, she knew Pierce had gone for Lance instead. Nothing got on Pierce’s goat more than their son did. Sometimes she was glad for the miscarriages; one late enough to tell it was a little girl. She couldn’t even bring herself to imagine what he would do to a girl. It is funny she thought everyone knows he hits me and no one does anything. Even the women were silent unless it was really bad.

Dora had been the kindest but even she said you’ll have to do something you know Mabe; otherwise he’s going to really hurt you one day. Mabe had smiled wanly. He had already really hurt her.

Mabe could remember feeling that it wasn’t her who should do something, but the men. She thought the men should pull him into line, say it isn’t OK to bash your wife, say something at least, anything instead of the silence. Some of them, she knew, didn’t approve of what he did, like Vern, who left her tins of honey for weeks after.

68 There were no divorces then and by the time it became possible she decided she’d rather stay and dance on his grave and have a roof over her head than be in the poor house. She knew she didn’t want another man to replace him and these, she thought, were her only choices. All the bloody same they are she thought.

Well that’s how she felt until the year Dulce hit town. God she was a breath of fresh air. Mabe remembered meeting her. It was at Brown’s corner shop and

Mabe had been standing in a short queue waiting to be served. Ted Brown was a complete bastard, everyone thought so, but he had the only shop for twenty miles that sold both toilet paper and bacon. He took his time serving customers, had his favourites (the wealthier among Tremley’s few well heeled) and could turn on a pinhead as Dora once said.

The bell over the door clanged loudly when Dulce walked in for the first time.

She looked extraordinary  like a movie star Mabe said later to Dora  in purple chiffon over a slip of a softer shade, a black raffia hat and big sunglasses, with sandals that did up Jesus-style with leather thongs. When she removed her glasses Mabe saw that her eyelids were a lurid blue and her eyelashes were so long and black they couldn’t possibly be her own. It was the warmth in those eyes struck Mabe. But Mabe saw they were also the eyes of a woman who had been disappointed. Mabe recognised that, at least, even though the warmth in her own eyes had long disappeared.

69 “Good morning,” Dulce said, as everyone turned and went completely quiet.

Then faced with this suddenly dumbstruck audience she collected herself, twirled her chiffon around her in an almost girlish fashion and sauntered down an aisle out of sight. Mr. Brown looked as though he’d seen a ghost. He later said to Pierce Dockman, mate, she must be on the game what with the way she looks. No decent woman would dress like that.

Later, before Dulce had really gotten in with Dora, Lorna and Eve, she told

Mabe that she knew she was a soul mate as soon as she saw her. Mabe felt as if she were in love, that this bold new woman now considered herself a friend. But that was before Pierce got wind of their emerging friendship and Dulce and he had that huge fight. Mabe knew after that she couldn’t continue to be friends with Dulce. It would just make things worse and when he referred to Dulce as that silly whore and that man hating women’s libber Mabe knew better than to disagree.

“That bloody no hoper,” Pierce said as he sat heavily at the kitchen table to take off his boots. “You know what your son did today?” He looked at Mabe contemptuously. Under his gaze she seem to physically shrink. An answer, she knew, was not necessary. “He bloody well embarrassed me in front of everyone at the pub with his insolence.”

Pierce could not get his boot off. “Pull this will you, woman.” Mabe stood wearily. She cupped her two hands under his boot heel and began to pull. Pierce

70 rocked back on his chair, “Wait until that little prick gets home,” he said calmly.

The boot loosened as Mabe pulled, straining. Suddenly it was free. The chair

Pierce was balancing on slid from under him; his bootless foot swinging in the air as fell on the lino. Mabe realised later her laughter probably made it worse but it would’ve happened anyway she thought so at least I had a good laugh.

*

7

Colin got up to clear the plates.

“Thank you son,” his mother said, “that was delicious.” There were four dishes

Colin cooked for his mother - the only things she would eat. Once, when she’d gone to stay at her sister’s, he’d drunk a whole bottle of red wine and made a pasta dish that had everything he ached to put into the cooking other nights.

Things like anchovies, olives and capers with lots of good oil and loads of garlic.

He woke the next morning feeling slightly guilty, like the morning after he had sex with the shearer the year before. He glowed inside and out.

“I’m glad you enjoyed it,” he said as he walked out to the kitchen.

“I’ll tell your dad about it, son,” his mother said.

From the kitchen filling the sink, he could hear her talking in the soft lilting tones he had always heard her use with his father when he was alive. Once he had gotten used to this added dimension to their lives it didn’t seem as

71 frightening; it even had comfort in it. Not that he told anyone about it either.

There was something of the forbidden in it, he knew, even if he couldn’t say exactly why, but he was good at forbidden things and added it to the many compartments that made up his life.

He hummed to himself as he washed up and ordered the things in the kitchen, putting away plates and jars and making mental notes of what they might need for the shopping on Thursday. As he washed he thought about all sorts of things: how he and Dulce had spoken about poetry and Dylan Thomas, about song lyrics and protest songs and how she had said come and have a drink one evening and he’d said yes I will knowing he might not because of his mother. He’d wanted that other life though. Sometimes he wanted that other life very badly.

He heard the sound of a car engine just as he finished wiping down the bench.

Placing the sponge carefully under the scourer he walked to the front door and opened it. It was pitch dark and silent, the air filled with the thickness of high summer, and not a car to be seen. He then heard a car door squeaking open. He walked from the front porch onto the gravel of the round driveway, squinting. He could hear his mother calling softly from the lounge room. Colin? Colin? Is that you? He didn’t answer her.

He stopped suddenly, the gravel shifting like a million insects underfoot.

“What are you doing here?” he said into the blackness.

72 *

8

It was a bad time for travelling circuses. It seemed as if everything was against the idea of one let alone the reality of struggling around the countryside in the middle of a drought. They had sold all the animals a year before. The last one to go was the three-legged camel called Bruce. What they relied on now was their own oddness and deformities as well as their show business; Tin Boy’s tin legs,

Pam’s beard, Tiny’s dwarfism, Cheryl’s contortionism and Bev’s fortune telling.

Bev steered the truck with the precision of an astronaut docking at a lunar out- station. In her rear-vision mirror Bev saw Tin Boy and Tiny do the same thing and behind them, trailing the purple caravan, Cheryl, who was also talking animatedly to a john she’d picked up in a town four nights before. Bev scowled.

She didn’t like this fellow of Cheryl’s but conceded that wasn’t anything new.

She didn’t like most of the men Cheryl found attractive. The caravans all swung in an arch near the river flats, dust rising, the still air suddenly thick with noise.

Startled plovers nesting in the dry grasses and clay soil called in alarm, one parent taking off and circling the convoy, trying to attack the trucks while the other plover parent guarded as best they could their small pale blue eggs. By the time the trucks came to a standstill it was all dust and plover distress.

It had been a few years since Bev had been to Tremley. In the heat and dust by the river that was once so green she wondered why she’d brought them back

73 there. As she waited for the dust to settle and everyone walked the stiffness from their legs she thought how much creatures of habit humans were and how hard it was to decide to not to return to a place. It felt to her sometimes that once you had a place in your memory it was also under your skin and something of it called you to it even when the desire to return was not at all conscious. There were significant things that had happened to her in Tremley and as she paced the river flat thinking about which way the sun would rise in the morning and where to park her caravan, she recalled their quality. There was a time when she hadn’t been so connected to what she now realised was her spirituality and it was in

Tremley some years prior that she’d experienced a vision so profound it had changed the way she interpreted the world ever after.

“A penny for you thoughts,” said Pam as she came around from behind the second truck and trailer. “You look pensive.”

Bev pushed her hands into the pockets of her jeans and rocked from one leg to the other. “Just thinking,” she said. She took a few steps; left then right. “I had a pretty big time of it last time I was here.” Pam eyed her carefully as she turned to find Tin Boy, Tiny, Cheryl and her lad. “We’ll settle here for the night at least,” she called to them. “Let’s set up and then head into town for a drink.”

“When was that?” Pam asked, bending down to pick up a twig and draw in the clay soil.

74 “Before mum and dad died,” she answered. At first Bev’s response seemed to close the subject for them both. “There is a place near here,” continued Bev,

“Where water is held as if in a huge stone cup. One day I was walking off a hangover. My parents and I had had a huge row over some boy I ‘d picked up for the night and they’d closed up their van and headed over to Somalie for the day.

They left me with some supplies, a tent just in case they stayed away over night and a rickety campstool. It was autumn I remember because the poplars over there where just beginning to turn and the bark was beginning to strip off the gums.”

“It must have been a bit daunting to be here on your own,’ said Pam, trying to imagine a how she would feel herself in the same circumstances.

“Well, by that stage it was okay,” began Bev, “I’d spent some time alone in the bush and I’d grown used to being alone. Getting used to being alone is like a using a muscle you aren’t aware you have. You have to exercise it and it takes some time to get into the habit of it. Once you have, of course, it becomes addictive and it can create problems. I remember at some stage trying to plot how I could get to be more alone at times. I think being reclusive is like that.

Anyway it was not being alone that time that changed me so much. It was what happened.”

“Well. What happened? You do want to tell don’t you?”

75 “I was walking past this place and something happened like an explosion inside me. At first I thought I was going to faint or die even and I felt this incredible weight about my head as if a ton of steel were suddenly trying to push down on me. Then I just let go. I must have just dropped there on the ground because that’s where I was when I came to. But the time was like no other I’d experienced. I was hurtling through a tunnel that swung and moved at the same time whizzing like a fast wind and through all that there was this presence of something so utterly beautiful that it made me cry for days every time I thought about it. It was some benign force or feeling. In that time I saw the death of a young girl. I saw the last breath expelled from her body and the beauty of that release was so profound that I’ve never since been afraid of dying. I saw the movie of her life and then of another spirit boy who had died in the same way. It was as if they were connected along that tunnel in a way I could only visualise.”

“What was it, do you think?”

“I was witness to a murder,” said Bev swallowing hard. “No,” she corrected herself. “I was witness to two murders.”

*

9

76 It was a hot late afternoon. Low cloud hung between the sky and the parched earth. It hadn’t rained properly for weeks. There was a slight breeze that would later whip the wind making eddies of the dust. The small valley of Tremley shifted through various shades of blue, green and yellow, dull and muted but not without beauty. The changing light altered the hills and river flats as if a large hand waved just above the tree line in a gesture of benevolence.

Eve, Dora and Dulce sat under the willow tree behind Dulce’s house. Eve sat in one chair, her legs resting on another with her dress tucked into her pants. Dora and Dulce lay on the grass. Nowhere seemed cool enough.

“I don’t know what to do about him,” said Eve, “I think I’m going to have to leave.”

“You can’t,” said Dora suddenly, thinking about Vern and how she could never leave him.

“Why in the hell can’t she?” Dulce said, “The man is a complete dead-shit.”

“But the children!”

“The children are OK. What about Eve? What about those bruises? What about her survival?” Dulce was up on one arm now, leaning over Dora who glared at

77 her from where she lay on the grass. Dora sat up. It is hard to argue when you are lying down.

“Look, Dulce, it’s just that some of us are not feminist like you. Some of us happen to have husbands and like them, some us think about others before ourselves. “Dulce sat up too.

“What do you mean you are not a feminist? You don’t like the idea of equal pay for equal work do you? You don’t like being treated as if you are an individual with your own brain and ideas rather than someone who cooks cleans and picks up for men? Don’t you like to think that when you do all the childcare and housework you can challenge your husband because he isn’t ‘helping you’ as if the task weren’t both your responsibilities? What is it exactly that you don’t like about being equal?”

“It’s just unfeminine!” blurted Dora in complete exasperation. “It’s just unladylike and it is just offensive.”

Dulce lay back on the grass and groaned. She tried to quiet her rising anger. It was useless. Under her sunglasses she closed her eyes. The sun broke through onto her face and she opened her eyes.

78 “Look Dulce. I don’t want to argue with you. I know I’ve got a lot to learn about things. I am going at my own pace and what we have to do now is try to help

Eve without her getting any more hurt than she is.”

“I know,” said Dulce adamantly, “She has to leave that bastard and that’s the only way.”

“I can’t,” said Eve finally, “I still love him.”

There was silence.

“No Eve. I don’t think you do love him, even though I can imagine a time when you did. I think you are scared and you confuse fear with need.”

“Maybe,” said Eve, “Maybe. But whatever I do, I just have to get Kelsie through these final exams and then we’ll see.” There was no conviction in her voice. Her words felt as flat as the heat that drummed them down.

*

10

“Colin,” his mother called, “Colin. Where are you, son?” He didn’t answer for a while, trying to think of what to do.

79 “Look Col, I just need to talk.” Kelsie seemed cold even though it had been a hot day and was still very warm, and she looked tired.

“Look! Just sneak up to my room,” he whispered, “I’ll be there in a minute, just as soon as I settle Mum.”

“Sorry Col. I didn’t mean to bust in on you like this but I need to talk.”

“It’s ok. Don’t worry. It’s just that you gave me the fright of my life. I thought something really bad had happened to you.”

“No. I’m ok.” She wasn’t. He could tell by her voice.

He opened the door and Kelsie quietly walked past the living room doorway.

She made out the head of Colin’s mother, a few silvery white strands over the top of the small chair. Colin stepped into the room with a confidence Kelsie had not noticed before.

“It’s alright mum,” he said, “It was just a lost driver.”

“Oh. A lost driver. Did you hear that dear? No one’s ever got lost around this part before, although I remember one of the bee men looking for a place at night.

He had a whole truckload of hives. You could here them buzzing as he spoke. It

80 was like he was carrying a choir of bees. You said just go right ahead, you said plenty of flowers and nectar for us all around here. She giggled a little, and then smiled to herself as if recalling a secret. Colin stood watching her tenderly.

“I’m just going up to do some work mum,” he said, gently tucking the small blanket around her knees. “I’ll come back down at nine and help you get to bed.”

“Ah that will be nice dear,” she answered, smiling sweetly at him. “Dreams are a blessed relief.” The frown was only momentary but he noted it; some touchstone of reality had penetrated her vision and she was not pleased with what she saw.

He took the stairs two at a time and closed his bedroom door behind him. Kelsie was lying on his bed reading a magazine he had hidden under it. She always found his secrets. He took the magazine from her and placed it carefully under a pile of books.

“Ah Col,” she said. “Don’t be like that. I know anyway.” She sat up on his bed and leant against the wall. He took off his boots and came to sit next to her.

“Kelsie, what is going on?” It was not that they didn’t visit each other. It was just that it was unusual not to call first or to arrange it beforehand. It was a kind of politeness they’d come to quite early because each understood the other’s need for space. There was usually something going on in their families too.

Something they preferred the other not to know about.

81 “Lance and I have split up.”

“What?” he said.

“Yeah we’ve spilt up. He just about dumped me really. He said he’s going to the coast.”

“Oh,” said Colin and fiddled with his hands.

“You knew!” She exploded. “You fucking bastard, you knew all along and you didn’t tell me.” She punched him hard on the top of his arm.

“Heh! Don’t Kelsie, just cool down.”

She pulled herself in tight. He could feel her anger like a ball next to him.

“I was going to sell him my ute. Honestly. I didn’t think about you.”

“That’d be right. You guys are all the same.”

“No. I really thought he’d go later. Much later, and that probably you’d go too.”

82 “Like hell,” she scowled, “why would I go with that fucking drop kick? He is a complete bastard. He’s just like my fucking father.”

They sat in silence.

“What happened?” Colin asked finally.

“He told me. I walked off and left him. I left him at the river,” she stretched out her legs, “his old man drove past and offered me a lift but I said no. I don’t like

Pierce. He’s a creep. I think he was a bit miffed I didn’t get in. I wasn’t feeling all there.”

Colin took her hand and held it. Finally she relaxed against him, and put her head on his shoulder.

“I’m sorry, Kelsie,” he said quietly, “I’m really sorry.”

“Oh. It all feels so fucked at times,” she said as the tears began to fall down her cheeks, “like nothing good is ever going to happen to me.” He wasn’t feeling sure enough to reassure her. Maybe it is just like this he thought. Maybe she’s right.

“Colin. Colin.” They listened to his mother calling while outside a southerly sent cool tendril winds to curl about the valley.

*

83 11

After the wind had died Lorna worked under the late morning sun sweating in her bee suit. The bees were angry and pelted her hood like rain coming at all angles, their dogged attacks creating such a sound in her head it was hard to think of anything except finishing and getting away. She had put escape boards in the evening before but even so there were bees nestled everywhere between the combs. She took out the frames one by one, brushing the bees to the base of the hive, and placed them in an empty box on the back of the ute. She remembered one time with her mother when she had accidentally killed a queen in one of the hives. She had slipped with one of the hive tools and jabbed it into the frame just where the queen nestled. Her mother had not said a word at first, then, after they were forced away by the bees angry stings she had explained what they would do.

“After we have finished with the other hives,” she said, “I’ll have to ring Toblins for another queen.” They went back to the hives then and her mother extracted the dead queen and put her in the bottom brood chamber. As they watched, the bees did an elaborate dance in little eddies; circles of rotating bees spun around the dead queen.

“What are they doing?” asked Lorna finally.

84 “Mourning,” her mother had answered after a while. After her mother’s death,

Lorna remembered something in this pronouncement that suggested her mother knew she too would die by accident. But maybe she read too much into things, at least that was what Eve always said to her.

“What will happen?” asked Lorna, a swelling building from a sting near her eye.

Her mother had looked at her with tenderness and a slight smile crossed her face.

She took a deep breath.

“After a day and a night, in the early morning they will take her body and fly her up into the upper stratosphere. They will fly with her then and after a time they will release her up there. It is like a sky burial, I suppose.” She carefully replaced the lid on the hive and stood up. “We’ll have to introduce the new queen tomorrow and make sure they don’t reject her.”

Pulling the frames out of the boxes, Lorna recalled everything of that day, her sense of shame and carelessness. She’d never done anything as stupid as that since but when she remembered her own mother’s death she recalled her talking about the queen bee’s sky burial. She had wanted somehow to do that with her mother’s body, to release it from the deep blue sky and watch it drift away like a dandelion blossom. Later she would feel the same about Kelsie.

Once she had all the boxes full of frames she brushed as many bees as she could from her suit and sat gingerly in the car, then drove with a flurry of black bees

85 toward the shed where she would extract the honey. There had been more full frames than she expected; the day would be hard and long, she thought with sudden weariness. She thought of the pull of honey flowing like sunlight from the tank, the amber sweetness of it, the silence of its fall into the containers she would later sell. “Lucky the honey’s sweet,” her mother used to say as they rubbed it on their many stings. Smiling to herself, Lorna picked up the capping knife and set to work. She sliced a broad river of wax into the bin, swung the frame and watched the honey, miraculous on the comb.

*

12

“But she walked on, at the god’s hand, her steps hobbled by the long shrouds, uncertain, gentle, and without impatience.

Within herself

Like a woman hopeful, heavy with child,

And thought not of the man who walked ahead,

Nor of the path ascending into life.

Within herself. And having died

Fulfilled her like an abundance.

Like a fruit of sweetness and of darkness,

She was so full of her great death,

86 Which was so new, that she understood nothing.”

Dulce lay back in the chair and closed her eyes, trying not to cry. Kelsie and

Colin sat a little awkwardly on the floor, leaning against the big armchairs. It was the artistic posture they had been searching for; a little piece of the puzzle that allows difference or at least some oddity. Dulce certainly was eccentric.

Everyone said so. In this setting thought Colin she appears as a person who feels a lot and he wondered then if eccentric people were simply very emotional.

“It’s really beautiful,” said Kelsie wistfully, “only I don’t quite understand.”

Dulce opened her eyes.

“It is something you must think about. It harks back to the myth. It is always implied that Eurydice wants to return, so centred is the myth on men and their desires. What Rilke implies is that the experience is so full for her that the gaze of men does not even touch her. On one level they no longer matter to her. She has been irrevocably changed.”

“Death always seems to be women’s work,” Colin said staring at a point in space. “It was like that when my father died. The men brought him in and laid him on the kitchen table. Mum and her sisters handled it all. I had just turned twelve, I think. I was not allowed in at first. I had nightmares over the sounds that came from behind that closed door.”

87 “What like?” Kelsie lay down stretching out along the carpet.

“Wailings. Beseeching. Even the voice of my mother was strong as if it came from somewhere deep that was not even her. It was a voice full of anger I’ve not heard since. It was pent up anger and stored rage and it filled the house like a stench. I was sure I heard my father’s voice above it. When they opened the door again I was allowed to go in and see him. It was as if nothing had happened. My father lay dead, his face white-grey on the table, a piece of white material tied around his chin. It gave him an oddly feminine look like he was wearing a bonnet. There was hardly a mark on him. My mother sat smiling meekly, her manner loving and caring. So removed from what I had heard. I was changed then, just as irrevocably as Eurydice. It made me realise there is a power we cannot understand.”

“Yes I think you are right,” Dulce sat up, “ there are times I think when we can feel a life unfurling like a map that no one can read.”

*

13

88 Before the squall, high clouds moved in banks and made it appear as if the trees were running swiftly down the hillsides. In the odd bursts of bright light the box blossom stood out like fallen snow. It was on these puffs that the bees’ increasingly frenetic gatherings could be heard; the high wind punctuated by the low hum of activity. There were others sounds too: howling and whispering. The spirit of an old miner locked in a tree trunk, a murderer, and the pounding of footsteps on clay dirt pushing down the angry earth, a balm of pink feet on the damage that is done without respect or thought. The sound of the winds would come in waves, as if by some trick in time the oceans that once covered the land were still lapping at the valley sides, caressing on the sea bottom the small mounds that would later become hills and mountains. A white cockatoo screeched to the winds a warning and the hills watched over the road that snaked through the valley floor, a pathway in, through, and out that was like a key, the use of which was forgotten. Tremley was a place like many others where the veils between worlds were thin and on days like this or other times even, the shadows of unknown beings were seen out of the corner of the eye. It didn’t bode well to look at them straight on.

Lorna had been uneasy all day. It began with a dream that saw her wake startled before dawn and it continued as she drank tea in bed. Something was brewing.

She recalled the last time she’d felt like this. She sat very still trying to understand her dream and after a time the feeling came back. It overwhelmed her. She lay in the dark shaking and crying, the tea spilt beside the bed. After a while the feeling passed. She had her own way of dealing with it. It was like

89 flying and hanging on, the shock of vertigo, the feeling you are going to be hurt when you fall. And fall you will my girl. The room spun back to the pre-dawn light and Lorna was only a small ball of sadness within it.

The remembering was always this way.

She saw it out of the corner of her eye for the first time just after breakfast, as she walked toward the hives. It was a flicker of a shadow, a thing hardly seen and she knew then it had come to warn her. The last time that happened the shed had burnt down. Earlier that day on a whim, she’d asked Vern when he was doing some odd jobs for her, to take out an old drum of fuel.

“If that had gone up,” Vern had said later, “it would’ve sent you inter-galactic, dear.”

It did send her intergalactic in a way. She couldn’t concentrate and finally she’d turned around and yelled, “What do you want? Why are you following me?”

Lorna felt as if she had been burned by the curse of the silence when nothing answered. It was a kind of haunting she realised; as if you didn’t haunt me enough when you were alive. Images of her father came in the dead of night, in slimy dreams and unsuspecting shadows. She couldn’t shout him further than the line of her voice. He was inside her head.

*

14

90 “I think I’ll have to move out.” Kelsie sat at the kitchen table drinking tea as

Dulce painted the chair backs a deep glossy magenta.

“It’s gotten that bad has it?” It seemed a trite thing to say, Dulce reflected later.

Of course it had, she thought later, she wouldn’t have said it if it weren’t bad.

“I feel as if I’m going mad.” Kelsie offered this like you might an opinion on the weather, boldly but unsure whether it would come true, half expecting it to and half expecting it not to.

“It’s the fighting. Colin said I could move in with him and his mum for a while.

But I suppose that’s not the best because his mum is so senile it might confuse her too much. She never remembers me twice.”

“You can come here if you like,” said Dulce, her words punching the quiet, “but

I’d have to see if your mum was OK with that.”

“I can’t talk to her anymore. She’s like a stranger. She should leave him. He’s such a bastard to her. He’s so brutal. A part of me thinks he doesn’t like women at all.”

“You could be right. Your mum, though…well… she’s not coping Kelsie. She thinks she is still in love with him.”

91 “I suppose she was once but maybe all children have to believe that of their parents. Maybe it is another false thing.”

“Love sometimes has nothing to do with marriage and children and those other things society dictates. Most relationships are struggle and love is the thing that blinds us to the struggle.”

“Have you ever been in love Dulce?”

Dulce shifts uncomfortably around the back of the chair.

“Yes. Twice. It was painful and beautiful. Something about my makeup doesn’t allow extended intimacy. It seems I am only allowed flashes.” The paint went on in thick beautiful strokes, “How about you?”

“I thought I was but I was wrong. Maybe I’m too young. Maybe love scares me.”

“Probably you haven’t met the right person yet.”

“Maybe.”

92 “Come on,” said Dulce putting the brush into a tin of turpentine, “there’s something I want to show you. Put on your boots. We have to walk some of the way.”

It was so hot the air pulsed as if it were cooking. They tore along the road to the west in Dulce’s old ute, and followed the ridge as it snaked along and turned left near the twin boulders that lay on either side of the road. Dulce pulled up in the shade of a huge gum tree and got out.

“We have to walk up here a bit.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see.”

By the time they were halfway up, their shirts were soaked with sweat and Dulce felt dizzy. “It’s only a little further,” said Dulce breathlessly, and as they cleared a small group of boulders they came across it.

It was like a font. A boulder the size of a small house stood before them, its centre carved out as if by rain or one constant drip from above until it formed a giant bowl filled with water. They scampered up to look. Ants and bees drank at the water’s edge. They stood on its lip, each facing the other. The black surface reflecting blue carried the eye to every detail.

93 “It’s like standing on the sky,” said Kelsie smiling.

“Yes. You could almost wonder which way was up and which was down. I come here for that reason. When things go awry I come here. It affirms to me that things are never as they appear. It shakes up my perspective.”

“I can see how that would work.”

Before she could think about it Kelsie had taken her clothes off and, as Dulce mouthed the word No, she plunged into the black water and felt herself sucked down, with the rim of the bowl’s surface as her only guide to where she came from. It was cold. So cold she felt her head would burst. She sank down, letting the air out of her lungs as she did, looking up; up at the sky and the light. It was a tunnel of water and she was floating. One side was dark, the other light, and she was the way through. Suddenly she struggled. As quick as she had jumped in she found herself at the surface, clawing the water for air and when it came, it was a blessed relief and she whooped at it, this emergence into the hot light. For the first time she felt no fear about what was beneath. No feeling of things lurking beneath her or any sense of being pulled against her will. She floated on the surface looking at the sky with her arms and legs spread. With her fingers and feet she could push off against the gravelly ellipse. They were little gestures to remain centred.

94 Dulce looked on, wondering exactly when it was she had become an observer.

She had wanted to do what Kelsie had just done since she first found this place.

She had thought about it so much that she could no longer bring herself to jump, even if she did, she had imagined it so often it would be impossible to do it and not be disappointed.

Kelsie had forgotten about Dulce as she floated around. Dulce’s face was suddenly above her own.

“Oh sorry,” she said, “I forgot you were there.”

“I’ll take that as a good sign.” Dulce offered her hand to Kelsie and pulled her from the water.

“You couldn’t get out of here without someone helping you,” said Kelsie, suddenly shaky.

“Then it is like life, this water,” said Dulce.

The two of them stood on the rim of the huge boulder. You could see for miles, the swathes of dry grass-lined hills, the olive green trees with their black nerve- like trunks, the play of light that made things appear as if they were falling down, lonely stumps and dead trees that slowly swirled shadow and light.

95 “It could be anywhere, anytime. We could not be here at all.”

From a distance and because of their stillness, you could mistake them also for trees.

*

15

“Look love. Let’s try one more time. Let’s have a go. We’ve got the kids to think about.”

Mike moved over on to kitchen bench and put his arm around Eve’s shoulders, as if consoling her.

She looked at him sideways.

“Mike,” she said, “it’s not an issue for me. We can work on anything. I love you.”

Mike did not answer. The words did not come easily to him and time passed.

Eve pretended not to notice. She was too scared of what he might say.

“Come on love,” he said again, after a while, “Let’s go to bed and see what happens.”

96 He lead her down the hallway past the two framed pictures: one of a bay with pelicans, and the other all frame and thick oil paint that, close up, looked like a mistake but from a distance resembled the blur of desert you see from a bus window. The sound of their shoes on the tiled floor seemed loud.

In the living room the clock ticked, muffled a little by the thick carpet. The carpet was a small concession he made to her when they first bought the house.

Ooh its lovely Mike. Feel it between your toes, she said after it had been laid. He watched her taking off her shoes to press her pink toes into the pile, her springing and twirling then lying down on it, her fingers going through the pile, feeling it, remembering it with her eyes shut. The babies asleep and him on top of her. Not now Mike.

Yes now, he’d said, something in his voice she knew not to argue with. The carpet not so soft on her bottom as he ground her into it, her moment of delight suddenly something else. He knew it was wrong, but who was there to witness?

Eve wouldn’t say. Couldn’t possibly know otherwise and even when she’d cried afterwards, he’d said it was normal and that’s what husbands did sometimes. The bitterness had entered then. Not into her - she was too naive in her generosity - but into him. A kind of self-loathing that lodged somewhere between the pit of his stomach and his heart and came out in his eyes after too much drink. He saw it in other men too.

97 Tick Tock.

He came back down the hall, angrily retying his belt, the pads of his feet hitting the floor like thrown wet sponges, pelicans, the blur of oil paint and the bus going back the other way.

“Blast you,” he said under his voice, the sound of whimpering from their bedroom obviously muffled by a pillow or sheets rammed into a mouth.

“Blast you,” he said again, “this ain’t gonna work.” And really, if he were honest he would have to admit he’d known that all along, ever since they’d married really.

It was Kelsie too, his daughter, the trophy he used to carry to remind other men of his goodness. See what I’ve made. A good girl. She’d always be dutiful, always be there to care for him and cook for him, to listen to him, a true companion in his dotage. Now she’d changed into a tramp as his sister had. All women were the same he thought they are not to be trusted the lot of them.

The cries from the bedroom were no longer muffled but the sound did not touch him. He felt nothing. He had cut off. He was going forward. It was his point of no return.

98 “It’s useless,” he yelled to the blackened hallway. “It’s useless Eve. So let’s forget it”. He pulled on his socks and boots roughly, not caring that they would later rub. The fly screen door screeched as he walked away from the house, away from the house and the howling that intensified, the sound penetrating the deep fibres of that green carpet.

*

16

By the time the circus crew got to The Imperial it was rocking. It must have been something in the ether, or maybe it was the hang of the full moon that seemed to create a hum around the surrounding hills as if the granite hidden in their depths pulled one continuous note like a tuning fork from the skies. On some nights it feels like a cooeee goes around and it seems, all of a sudden, small country town pubs are packed with all kinds of people; regulars, locals and blow-ins, that are not usually part of the scene. It was a night like that at The Imperial when Bev,

Pam, Tiny, Tin Boy Cheryl and her man walked in. Later people would remark what a strange night it was.

When Pam opened the oak-paneled door on The Imperial the first eyes that met her gaze were Bede’s. His unfailing scrutiny pulled a blush from her chest. It was an instant recognition. Bede dropped the schooner he was pouring, the cold beer oddly soothing on his hot hands. His legs felt wobbly and his heart pounded

99 and he thought everyone could see what was happening to him. He managed to sneak another glance at Pam and she was looking right at him and he thought

“God, I love her. I love her”. Then the muffled voices around the bar formed into sound he could understand.

“Is that a beard?”

“Has that women got a beard?”

“What’s that on her face?”

“Is it a beard?”

“Beard?”

“Beard?”

It was all he heard in the moments that followed, then the strains of Tie a Yellow

Ribbon Around the Old Oak Tree, which could hardly be heard before, bellowed around the room and everyone was staring at Pam. She was used to the attention of course; wondered why it hadn’t been immediate really and sauntered to the bar in a way that spoke of practice and bravado. “Six schooners of your coldest,” she said to Bede. He just stared like a rabbit in a spotlight waiting for the bullet.

His hearing was all fuzzy and he saw those beautiful eyes and couldn’t see the

100 beard he knew must be there. He said, “What? I mean… beg yer pardon ma’am?”

Old Man Higgins laughed when he heard that. He’d never heard Bede be so polite and he guffawed then went quiet. He realised he was seeing something so intimate it made him nervous, maybe even jealous. He swallowed his laugh and it sat with a lump behind the last mouthful of beer, sour and ready to become sourer.

____

At the other end of the bar Lance sat nursing his beer. His feet hurt, but he forgot all that when he saw Kelsie come in with Colin. “Shit. Shit. Shit.” He said under his breath, his head down. As he looked at all the beer and dead cigarette butts in the tray he tried to think about what he could say to her. The bar was packed. It wasn’t like this normally he thought. Then he remembered that the circus was in town and he swung around, his back to where Kelsie and Colin were sitting in a corner and saw a dwarf, a boy with two tin legs and a bearded woman. Old Man

Higgins was sitting on his own under the pig’s head. Lance could hear him laughing to himself. He sounded like a set of wheezing bellows and Lance thought he could hear what he was saying; words that sounded like ‘fucking weirdoes’ and then he saw Higgins laugh into his beer again.

“Hello arsehole,” he heard Kelsie from behind. “What brings you here?”

____

101 Bede was feeling a bit tired. He’s been on his feet for most of the day and night.

As the bar filled with blue smoke and the drinkers’ talk became louder and louder he poured himself a large double malt, and under the pretence of filling it with a mixer for a customer, took it to the cool room and sculled the lot. The whisky reached his toes in moments and suddenly the edge of the night no longer bothered him. It would be over soon enough. He wiped the bar with a cloth that smelled of yeast and sour beer.

“I’ll have another one Captain.” He glanced up quickly. He’d seen her earlier and had panicked. Now as she looked into his eyes – he felt as light as a cloud, from the whisky or from her – it didn’t seem to matter. She watched him pour the beer.

“You with the circus ma’am?” he asked as he poured looking up at her now and then.

“Yes, honey,” she said, “I’m the crowd-puller as you can see.” He smiled at her then because her eyes were so beautiful, her voice had the huskiness he loved to hear and he liked the twinkle in her eye. He felt invited and known.

“Would you like to meet after the pub closes,” he asked suddenly, then added.

“We can have a drink at my place.”

102 Bede’s place was not much of a place as it was above the pub. There were possums in the roof and he often heard the drunks carousing about Main Street for hours until they wore themselves out with their bickering and went home. On hot evenings like this one though, a breeze always came through the windows straight from the mountain range and if he lay naked on his bed it wasn’t long before he was cool enough to sleep. But sleep was not on his mind tonight.

“Yeah,” she said. “That would be lovely.”

“It’s Bede,” he said, “that’s my name.”

“I know your name man,” she said. “I feel as though I know you too.” She picked up her glass and turned. He followed that saunter until Old Man Higgins said in his pissed off tone, “What does a man have to do to get a drink around here? Grow a beard or something?”

____

Kelsie was really angry. Colin sat drinking his beer thinking he’d get away from her for while. He didn’t cope with such overt expression of anger very well, having not been exposed to much of it his life. His experience was more about suppressed rage and careful strategy that resulted in lasting psychological injury.

“That fucking arsehole,” she began, “I can’t believe he’d show his face around town even.”

103 The dwarf from the next table approached theirs and handed Kelsie a drink. It looked dark, sweet and potent.

“What’s that for?” she asked crankily.

“To soften your mood and cheer you up.”

“Oh,” she replied. “Thanks.” Then she added, “What’s your name?”

“Tiny,” he said.

She laughed uproariously. “I should’ve known,” she said, “it’s so fucking obvious.”

“That always cheers people up. Even ones that are as pissed off as you.” Even

Colin could not contain himself. He laughed as if he’d never stop. He realised after a time that he was the only one left laughing. By the time he stopped everyone at the two tables was looking at him. Tiny regarded him closely.

“You’ve got a lot of unspent giggle in you my friend,” he said.

____

104 Pierce watched the crowd with amused interest. It wasn’t his kind of night but, given his mood, it wasn’t going to be anyway. He saw Lance sitting on his own and figured something was up with him. Seeing Kelsie laughing loudly with all those side show freaks, well it didn’t take a rocket scientist to work it out.

Pierce’s own disquiet grew with the number of schooners he drank. Higgins was giving him the shits with all his talking and laughing so he moved into a corner to get away from him but then he had to listen to the sound of Dulce’s voice. She was having a drink with Lorna and Dora, so he moved again, this time, to the other end of the bar. From there he could see Bede nipping into the cool room and each time he came out the waft of whisky was good and strong. No wonder

Bede was making eyes at a bearded woman he thought, he probably thinks the beard’s on some other bloke and he’s seeing double. He finally stood up a little unsteady on his feet and sculled the rest of his beer. He slammed the empty glass onto the bar and said to anyone or no one, “I’m going home.” He strode off like someone on a mission. No one noticed he had gone.

____

While Dulce waited for Lorna and Dora to arrive she bought herself a drink and found a table in a corner away from the noisy part of the bar where they would be able to talk. They didn’t go to the pub in the evening very often but it was a night for spontaneity. She’d called everyone but only Dora and Lorna had jumped at the idea, so they’d agreed on a time. Dulce had gotten there earlier for no reason other than she just wanted to leave the house when she did. Sitting in front of her drink she watched the other patrons and reflected on the life of the

105 little pub in a way she hadn’t had the opportunity to do before. It was full of colour this evening. Maybe it was the circus entertainers who had just rolled into town that afternoon, or the small group of local identities that make a small country town unique to a passerby, or the interaction between those identities and those who did drop in. She watched the small group with interest. Kelsie was laughing with a dwarf and a bearded woman while Colin looked on; he was smiling in a benign but distant way. Maybe he’d had too much to drink, she thought. She could tell by the sound of her voice that Kelsie certainly had. Dulce saw Lance over at the bar, head down and looking dejected, nursing his beer on his own, and gathered that they’d had a fight, and that some of Kelsie’s ribaldries were for his benefit. The effects were being felt and every now and then Lance would look over in Kelsie’s direction in a way that was meant to signal something to her. Dulce noticed that Colin saw what Lance was trying to do and gave him a nod and, after a few more drinks, a wink. Dulce took out all the contents of her handbag and lined them up on the table. It was out of habit that she did this or perhaps it was nervousness she had to admit, but what it allowed her was the luxury of observing while being unobserved herself. She’d concluded however odd the thing you did, like the cleaning out of your bag in public, once people established you weren’t looking at them but instead concentrating on your own task, you became for them largely invisible. She’d realised early that a woman alone was either a target or a threat that needed to be neutralised. Lately she had began to realise that age was another thing that made you invisible. It was a disguise and behind that disguise she could see everything. Like the way Bede was looking at the bearded lady; no surprises

106 there, she thought, that woman is beautiful beard or no, and Bede was still an attractive man however psychologically dysfunctional. She noticed the boy with tin legs, the dwarf and the other man with that crowd all vying for Kelsie’s attention. She noticed that Pierce was very angry by the way he was hammering down those beers and sneering through squinted eyes. She saw how Old Man

Higgins looked at Bede and realised in a flash that he was in love with him  and had been for ages. The room was soft in pinks from the reflected red of the walls and it suddenly felt to her like the inside of living skin. All this movement, flow and activity make up the functioning organ of community.

“What’s that?” She heard Dora say from behind as her hand appeared and plucked a small container from the pile of Dulce’s belongings spread on the table.

“KY gel,” Dulce said quickly as she looked up. “A girl is never too old for lubrication. Now, what are you drinking?”

____

After a few more drinks Colin managed to find his way over to the bar where

Lance sat. Lance looked up at him as he approached and then looked down intent on extracting some splinter in his finger that he couldn’t really see.

107 “How are ya going?” he said to Colin, then motioning to the barstool beside him,

“Pull up a pew fellow.” He was grateful that Colin had come over to talk to him but he was trying not to show it. “I suppose I really stuffed things up,” Lance said then added, “with Kelsie I mean.”

“Yeah. I suppose you have,” replied Colin after a while. He ordered another beer for them both. “But maybe it is for the best, Lance. I don’t think Kelsie’s the kind of girl who would’ve wanted to settle down straight away anyway. She’s got things to do. So have you.” Lance stared into his beer trying not to let his tears show. Colin looked away.

“I thought it was what I wanted when I did it you know,” said Lance, his voice low and soft, without force. “Now I’m not so sure. All I can think of is wanting her back.”

“It will pass,” said Colin. He felt strangely omniscient. He thought that maybe it was the alcohol, but he felt as if he could imagine a future for them all, when this break up would become a thing of the past and that they would all be able to be friends again.

“What if I went over to her and asked her to marry me?” Something in the tone of his voice made Colin realise Lance was not asking him this question. Still he didn’t really know how to respond. He looked up. Above their heads was the head of the old boar. It sat on the red high-gloss wall as if some giant had flung it

108 there to prove a point. Someone had shoved an unlit fag into the mouth. As it looked down at them, Colin thought it looked as if it was laughing. He imagined a mixture of this mirth; old pig saliva and cigarette ash pouring on their heads.

“How about another drink mate?” Colin could think of nothing else to offer.

“Yeah,” said Lance, “That’d be good. Thanks mate.” He turned and faced Colin squarely then as if seeing him for the first time. Colin smiled when he saw the tears in Lance’s eyes but knew he could not hug him. “I feel like I’m dying of pain, here,” said Lance thumping his chest and holding Colin’s gaze. “I could really just die.”

“I know mate,” replied Colin. He didn’t really know but he revelled in the intensity of this exchange, and he felt suddenly sober. They sat there side by side, drinking their schooners. They hardly spoke.

____

“So what do you do with the circus? I mean really do?” Kelsie was thinking she might be able to run away with the circus by this stage of the evening and she was trying to find something she could do that would make her indispensable.

“Well,” replied Tiny with a drunken smile, “I manage all the equipment and make sure all the costumes are clean and carefully packed away or hung up after each performance. After that I rake and do odd jobs, source sawdust and hay

109 bales and put up tents and pull down tents.” He looked at her watching him intently, then added, “And when I am not doing that I am trying to fuck pretty girls and as many of them as I can.”

“Ah fuck off Tiny,” said Kelsie quickly, “don’t be so fucking crude.” She knew he was making fun of her and she resented it.

“Now, now, now little girl,” said Tiny his face suddenly stony, “don’t you use such bad language.” He took her wrist in his strong hand and squeezed slowly and deliberately, still smiling at her. Kelsie didn’t really know how to respond at first but after a while her confusion turned to anger and she pushed her chair back and stood up. Tiny was still holding her wrist and she tried to lift her arm up in the air in an attempt to free it. Tiny held on firmly. His smile became a grimace.

“Let me go,” she said without shouting. She lowered her wrist back to the table and glowered at him, leaning over him. She was very angry now. Tiny held on to her for a second longer, then slowly released his grip. “Little girls should not play a woman’s game if they can’t take the heat,” he said to her menacingly.

“Men should also not treat women with such disrespect,” said Bev as she stood over the table glaring at Tiny in a way that suggested there would be more said about this later. She had been watching all night and knew trouble was brewing; the laughing was too loud, the drinks too many. “Get back to camp Tiny,” she

110 said her voice firm and direct, “and don’t think about coming back. You’ve had too much to drink. I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” Tiny stood up, he was resigned suddenly and hardly resembled the force of hostility he’d been. “But Bev,” he began, “I was trying...” He didn’t get to finish his sentence.

“Shut up Tiny and get,” said Bev. “I’m far too pissed off to talk to you now.”

Tiny walked quickly out of the pub without looking back. After he had left, Bev turned to Kelsie who had sat back down. She suddenly looked very tired.

“I am sorry about Tiny, Kelsie,” she said, “He had no right to treat you in that way.”

“Yeah right,” said Kelsie feeling suddenly aggrieved. She began to shout and, even though she felt it was an overreaction, she couldn’t stop herself. Her voice got louder and louder. “We are all just open game to any man no matter who we are.”

She turned to Bev. “And you,” she said, “you shouldn’t be apologising to me for what he did. He should be apologising himself. Why are the women always doing the apologising.” Colin came over toward her. Lance followed behind him.

“It’s alright Kelsie. Calm down,” said Colin. He was slurring, the beer suddenly making him unsure on his feet. Kelsie turned to him.

111 “Don’t you patronise me,” she said and then she saw Lance behind him, all doe- eyed and she shouted again, “and don’t you come anywhere near me. I am sick to death of you and how you treat people.” Kelsie walked over to the door and out into the night. For a moment no one moved. A cool wind came from the mountains and rattled a window frame, just once.

*

17

Lance sat scowling at the table. His mother put a dish of eggs and sausages in front on him, then the same in front of his father. It was the order in which she did this that alerted him. The cooking smells made him want to be sick but he sat there, unable to move. There was complete silence. He was grateful for this. He felt shocking. The memory of the night before still shocked him. He tried not to look at his mother’s bruised face. His father did not lift his gaze from the local paper although he usually never read it at all. Lance couldn’t remember a time when they had all been happy eating together, although they had done so every day of his life. No matter what was going on in the household, no matter the severity of the beatings, they all sat down to eat together, mostly in silence. It was a credit to his mother, a kind of stoicism, perhaps not the noble kind, but something he could relate to. This is not to say that bad feeling sometimes did not percolate over and that objects were not thrown. He often recounted the time his father had stormed off and he’d asked his mother for more of something. He couldn’t recall what. With her back to him, her silence was deadly and before he

112 knew it he was running, running faster than he could toward the gate, the flap of the flyscreen door like a gunshot. The iron frypan whizzed past his head missing him by inches. He never forgot the sound of its hovering lethal air, its probably still hot proximity. Later he would liken it to the sound of a bird’s upthrust wing but that was later when he had time to reflect in this way, and by then the memory was far enough away to make light of it and give it poetry. By then he was the hero in all of his stories.

His mother did not sit down to breakfast this morning. Instead she wiped the sink and walked out of the room. They could hear the sound of running water in the small bathroom. Lance imagined her crying, the running of water covering this sound, and the cool dampness of that place soothing to her eyes. He blamed her too of course. She was just as weak in his view. His father and he ate together in silence.

“Pass the sauce.”

“Thanks.”

“Pass the teapot.”

“Do you want some?”

“No. Thankyou.”

113 Cutlery can make some noise. They battered and bashed their plates, stabbed and swung the food and chewed loudly, unconsciously. They breathed deeply, nearly snorting with this abandoned eating. It was almost a moment of intimacy.

“Well son,” said Pierce picking up his plates and putting it near the sink, “what you got planned for today?”

“Nothin’ much.” He knew he was safe to admit this on a morning such as this because his father took care to hold his tongue.

“Well, have a good one.” Picking up the paper his father swung his arms, began to whistle and stepped out into the early morning heat. Lance sat sipping the cooling tea. He smiled. At not one point had his father looked at him or held his gaze. It was a kind of triumph.

*

18

Colin woke to his mother calling. He opened his eyes and sat up, listening carefully. He could tell by the sound of her voice that she was not distressed.

“Coming,” he called. Still half asleep he walked down the stairs to her room. It had only just become light and although the night had been hot, and the day

114 ahead would be too, there was a coolness that reminded him of another season. It made him feel the promise of the future. It really made him long for love. He wanted to be held in someone’s gaze in a way he never had. He wanted to be known. No one except Kelsie noticed his loneliness. His mother would have had she been present, but her mind wandered in ways he could barely track and largely he managed by intuition. He padded on bare feet past the kitchen, familiar with the smell of his childhood, which was warm-handed and gentle, to the door behind which his mother largely lived.

He walked into the darkened room and felt the strangeness immediately. Under covers dense with damask and wool lay his mother, her breath rising and falling alarmingly. He watched for a minute before he pulled her bed covers off and saw her frail frame labouring for breath. Her eyes still twinkled in an alertness he felt sure indicated awareness but she seemed unable to speak, so difficult was breathing for her.

“Mother,” he said, “Mother?”

She tried to smile but it appeared as a grimace and he fled the room to call for help.

By the time the doctor arrived and then the ambulance – heart attack in her sleep, common in women of her age, said the doctor – Colin was still not dressed and it was midday.

115 The sense of loneliness that had haunted him out of sleep now grew and took full hold. He sat down heavily on the stairs and tried to reason with himself. It was bound to happen one day, he tried to control a growing panic, and you knew that.

What are you going to do now? What good are you? It’s your fault and you know it.

“It’s not,” he shouted rising to his feet, and he lashed at the air until all was still and a silence returned. It was thick, comforting and familiar. He recalled as a child how he had watched dust motes from his cot. He couldn’t really remember but he must have been two and he was sleeping in the afternoon. He had no one to ask about this, no one now to remember for him. He lay contented in his cot watching the ray of sunlight. He imagined he heard music and voices and was not alone, and he watched this full dance spotting the bigger particles, comparing them to the littler ones, giving them names, assigning them families, and talking to them.

“Look Harold! He’s singing!” His mother’s head loomed over him and a flurry of motes cascaded around her until she glowed with brilliance that almost frightened him. Later it was the image of the haloed Mary that recalled this scene and so touched was he by the fresco he’d seen as a photo in a National

Geographic he swore then to travel and find it.

116 He walked up the stairs back to his room, wishing it were the ray of light pulling him, like those motes years ago, and hoping for some release from his sense of doom.

*

19

The book on beekeeping had said take one stout youth. Dulce liked the sound of that and had in mind what stout youth she’d like to take, would the scandal of it not make life in Tremley hell for her for ever more. None of this she’d admit to though. Not to Lorna, Eve or Dora even though when she thought about it, the one she would be most likely to admit it to was Eve; sex and Lorna didn’t seem to go together, and Dora, she felt, could be so conservative given the opportunity. She did not like to risk others’ judgement where she could manage it.

“Well,” she said to them as they gathered in the shed with all the supers off the hives, the smell of honey and wax heady in the warming air, “let’s see how much increase this year.” They looked a motley crew, their dress and attire not dissimilar to pirates; ripped shirts of fine linen, collars turned up for sun or stings, pieces of material round foreheads or to tie back hair, lots of colour, old shorts or mended slacks. And boots. Always boots. Once Eve had worn some lace-ups that came up to her thighs. “You look like a hooker beekeeper Eve,”

117 Lorna had laughed, uncharacteristically exuberant, a little risqué even. Even when Eve took the boots off and a pile of cappings fell to the cleaned floor, she’d made their day.

Extracting honey was a kind of competition for them. Every year they measured the harvest and tried to attribute it to their skill when really, and secretly, there was a feeling that it was a sign of their goodwill toward the bees and a kind of prayer conducted between them all, the women, the blossom, the bees and the honey, that was the reason behind the abundance. From year to year the harvest altered only slightly. They were too tired to harvest more than once and thought that this too guaranteed their success.

“Better leave plenty for them for winter,” Lorna was fond of saying, even though she was the worst honey robber of all.

“Bugger it,” Lorna would say, dangling precariously from some limb high up a tree, “if they don’t like it they can bugger off.” The years had given her a gentle respect for nature not uncommon in those who move from wanting to tame the environment to allowing its embrace later in their life. When she thought about it, Lorna felt complete in some kind of arc of development in this respect.

They used to extract the honey by hand. Now they had bolted to the shed floor an electric extractor that Vern had maintained, even putting in a new motor when the old one blew up and smoked the shed out the year foul brood almost wiped

118 out the hives. Dora thought the sound that came from that shed when they extracted was like God himself forging humankind. It was a workshop of almighty noise that would ring in their ears and take their senses beyond the hard stings that glowed under the sheets at night. In some ways that extractor was like a huge bee itself. It was accorded respect and had idiosyncrasies like a living thing. It billowed and blustered and out of it spun the finest traces of honey flung like silk from the silkworm to collect in huge quantities at its base. It was a thing to be admired and was just as central to the process as the extractors’ goodwill.

The first pull of honey from the extractor was something to be celebrated. That first glow of golden liquid pouring out faded all memory of winter and the cold.

“Ahh!” they’d all cry out. The smiles for each other were warm and happy. Eve would say I wish we had a smile bank at those times, so we could put some smiles and happiness in store for when we needed them. It was an oddly prophetic sentiment that Dora would later comment on and Dulce would say,

“Maybe somewhere deep in her core, she knew, even then”.

*

20

There is no good time to be murdered. The earth accepts a body and the blood that flows from it any time. In Tremley, years before, some squatters cornered a

Wiradjuri youth and bludgeoned his head on a large she-oak. It was a sunny day,

119 late summer, and later before darkness descended, a fierce storm raged as if the

Heavens themselves were offended by the act. The blood from that nameless youth soaked into the base of the tree forming small puddles and the meat ants came almost immediately to drink, until the sound of their tiny legs on dried leaves and sticks was the only thing that could be heard. There was no witness to this; the newspapers reported the squatters had absconded. They were never caught, the body never found, the small rivulet flash flooded, carrying the youth’s body down-stream, to a place it was forbidden to go. There the youth’s body gave up its identity and strong smell to a relentless sky that bleached and scoured the bones nestled in an old she-oak trunk. The youth was mourned keenly for months. In spirit he visited his mother and she knew him to be dead.

Her song followed the line of the rivulet and found his body and sang to it. The sun made sand of those bones that inhabited the song, resonant, warm and full of a mother’s love.

Kelsie must have walked beside the same rivulet that night or day. She must have stayed too close to that sand, and somehow the song came in her too.

They didn’t find the body until four days after she went missing. By then the dogs and ants had got to her. They found her less than a kilometre from her front gate. That same relentless sky heard her scream and later witnessed that silence.

There was no storm this time, the time for storms having passed by a month or two. Autumn was in the air and although the days were hot the nights were cooler.

120 A passing truckie found her. He’d gotten out to urinate and noticed the dogs. He walked over slowly expecting a dead kangaroo. When he saw the girl’s thigh, swollen and white in the glaring sun, he fell to his knees.

“Jesus, Jesus,” he muttered, beginning to shake violently, “Jesus, Jesus.”

He sprang up and ran in a tight circle until he finally vomited and was still. The dogs ran off in terror; the sound of the wailing the truck driver couldn’t remember making but Vern swore he heard, scattered them like water thrown on water. After the police and all the questions, the driver climbed into his lorry and headed off. No one knew that years later he still held the face of Kelsie in his mind’s eye and created a whole life and persona for her, and sometimes even prayed to her. By that time she appeared to him as angelic and not the battered bloody mess she was.

*

121 PART THREE

1980

122 1

Even though time erodes all things, makes eddies of emotions and experience, it can take one flood to wash the residue of our lives into the past. They are bold moments; when people die or when a realisation hits and it seems as if in an instant every similar experience lines itself up for you to see until it merges into a simple thing and then vanishes as quickly as it appeared. Colin made sense of what had happened to him in the light of this philosophy. Life had become a thing that happened to him, and when he recalled the happy moments of his childhood with the gang of kids who felt as if they owned that small country town, he knew he had never felt as though he inhabited his life in quite the same way since.

He recalled how he, Cheryl, Lance and Kelsie had roamed the old mill grounds, making the tin flapping in the breeze the sound of workers being called after smoko and the whining of the feral cats mating under the pipes, a call from an underworld. And even when they shared sun hot sandwiches, usually his, perched up high on a railing, they felt like kings and queens. They saw the soft golden wheat all around them, bowing thick seeded heads to a summer breeze that tickled the hairs on all their legs and made them feel as though they were living life on their nerve endings. There were the echoes too. The silence they filled with their childish imaginings; the calling of one to the other could be the cry from a comrade to a whole army, a nurse to her charges, a boss to his workers. There was always the sound of footsteps, theirs or imagined. Perhaps it was the expanse of concrete, mazed with cracks, through which green lines of

123 couch grass emerged, that filled them with an eeriness which made them want to shout even louder.

“Who said that?” they’d yell.

Who said that echoed back.

“It was me.”

It was me.

“Was not.”

Was not

“It was me.”

It was me

Those things were gone. Sometimes Colin wondered whether they had happened at all. Perhaps it was something in a book he’d read and forgotten then reclaimed later as his own. It happened.

Colin returned to Tremley after years away. After his mother had died and

Kelsie had been murdered there didn’t seem any point in staying. The sense of community he had felt all his life had evolved into distrust and artifice and he found he couldn’t really be sure what lay behind people’s simple questions and comments.

Colin had gone to the city where he always imagined he’d live ever since he was a small boy and where he’d gone with his family one year, on a holiday, when

124 his father was still alive. The lights, the ocean, the nightlife were all the things he had longed to explore and even though Kelsie’s murder and the subsequent investigation had dulled the edge of his excitement, he managed to get a good job and an apartment that overlooked the city. Over time he took a series of lovers, which he kept at a distance from his heart and each other. City life had its benefits. It was easy to remain unknown and to be anonymous and he would go for days not talking to anyone who cared about him. The openness he had taken for granted as essentially a part of his makeup became a mistrust of emotions and even though he still noticed how he felt afterward, he was not connected to his emotional life in the same direct way, as he was when he was younger. There was not an immediate response to things that happened to him, but a kind of a lag and it felt as though this lag was in his life too. It was as if something hadn’t caught up with him. He wondered if this was the same for all people or whether it was just all men or more specifically, men like him. It was as though he was waiting for something to happen to him, his real life would then emerge and he would embrace it fully, consciously and be alive to it with his senses engaged.

While he waited, he felt aspects of him grow slack with atrophy. He sensed that emotional response, like all intelligence, needs to be practiced and fed and he felt his sense of himself as an emotional intelligent being disappearing and something more stock taking its place. It did not sit well with him but he felt hopeless in the face of it. Although he came to terms with his mother’s passing, the thought of Kelsie and her death was not so easy for him to reconcile.

125 “No wonder,” Dulce had said to him when he got back, “after those hobnailed city coppers came in and locked you in the clink.”

It had happened so suddenly. Morris Toblin, the local police constable who had come to tell his mother about his father all those years ago, arrived the morning after his mother’s body was taken away by the undertaker.

“Son, you’ll have to come down with me to the station.” Morris always looked out of place in his uniform. It looked as though it was too small in places, too big in others but the truth was that Morris simply didn’t feel like a copper. He felt more like a poet.

Colin turned, assuming it was something to do with his mother, and grabbed a coat even though it was the middle of summer, he felt he just had to have something to protect him. He looked for his keys.

“Do I have to fill a out forms about my mother or something?” he asked casually as he walked to the front door.

“No,” replied Morris, “it is not about your mother Colin. It is about Kelsie

Carpenter.”

Colin spun around to face him and when he saw the expression in Morris eyes he said, “She’s dead isn’t she.”

126 “Yes son,” he said, “she is. We need to ask you some questions.” He shuffled a little on the gravel, his shiny boots looking stark on the white stone. Reluctantly

Morris took Colin by the arm and led him to the waiting car.

It wasn’t until they arrived at the Police Station in Main Street, and he was facing the bastard detective from Sydney that Colin realised he was a suspect in

Kelsie’s murder. At first he felt indignant. He felt he wanted to protest or complain. Eventually it appeared he was not in the position to be complaining about anything. By then he had worked it out. He was the main suspect. Later he would say to Dulce, the only one who would talk to him just after it all happened, that it felt like his life was being played out in front of him, except it wasn’t his life. It was someone else’s. It was a horrid dream and someone had drawn a line in it with something sharp.

*

2

Things had not been so good for Lance either. He was dragged in after Colin, interviewed and almost charged with murder. Then things in the township really hotted up. It was as though some rug had been pulled from the under the sleepy town and what ensued was a lot of clattering and bumping and things knocking aimlessly into other things. It was chaos. Lance was not displeased really. It was kind of right that everything was like that because that’s how he felt inside.

127 When Mike ran away with Laurel Dunham the situation gained intrigue. Pierce

Dockman went missing as well and there was talk that every male within twenty miles old enough to get an erection was considered suspect and that they would all have to undergo blood tests to eliminate them from the inquiry. The police took a while to find out where the circus had gone. Finally they were located in a town further out west. They were hauled in to the local police station and kept for questioning until Bev organised legal representation.

The city coppers arrived in Tremley in a convoy of flash cars the day after

Kelsie’s body was found, the glint of metal, shiny black duco and tinted windows making them appear as a phalanx on the warpath. They had a charter to get the culprit; and the town thought this meant any culprit would do. They took over The Central and were heard late into the night drinking and carousing, dividing all the locals they came across into ‘useful’ or ‘not useful’. The town was full of questions. They floated on the breeze, hung from every mouth and invaded every dream. The nights were no longer quiet and calm and it was as if some old deep wound began to seep and everywhere was the hint of something sinister. Murder is not the same in small country towns as it is in the city. It is not anonymous.

“Unless it was a blow in,” said Lance in the pub one night, “it has to be someone we all know.”

There was a lot of fighting that summer.

128 “Who knows, it might have been you Lance.”

“Say that again, you bastard, and I’ll knock yer block off.”

“It could’ve been you just as easily as anyone else.”

The punches had flown. Stools were broken over heads and shoulders; bottles smashed, gashes made in faces and arms and snot and spit and blood on everything.

Old Ted was the first to give blood at the local hospital. He said he didn’t want any bugger thinking he was a scum like that. His father had raped his mother he’d added and he’d never do a thing like that even though he thought on more than one occasion that he could murder his father. This raised the eyebrow of

D.I. Clemmings, which was probably what motivated Ted to say it in front of everyone. Ted was a man who had to be held by the gaze of other men and seen as anything but what he was: misspent potential and, although kind hearted, consumed by his own preservation at all cost. This first volunteer role was like a cameo performance for Ted and he played it well.

Lance wondered why he didn’t go to the coast for good, after that. He tried but found himself back in Tremley. With his father gone, his mother was much happier and in need of his help. Just little things at first, like chopping the wood

129 and a few small things but then she had said you may as well move back in, you can use it as a base and they had begun a new relationship without the father to cower them, they even laughed over cards. The gap of Pierce’s absence slowly closed and they no longer wondered if he would return and just slot back in, making life hell for them both again. No one had heard from him. No one knew why he left. It was viewed with suspicion, of course, and even more so when

Pierce was spotted in Cunnamulla by one of the locals. He just acted as if he didn’t know me. It was Pierce all right though. I could tell that ugly mug from a mile off. He had a little one with him too.

Lance had always suspected his mother knew more about his father’s departure than she let on. He knew better than to push her though. After all that abuse he thought a woman is entitled to some peace and quiet. Part of him couldn’t care less really but another part made up a story, just as silences over time have always worried out a plot from someone. He had a plan to go all along and now he had a new family. He had it all along in fact. He had two families going at the same time. It was not unheard of; well, it was unheard of in Tremley but it was not unheard of elsewhere. There was one chap his father knew, an old business associate, who had a complete other family. It wasn’t until the first wife died that his children found out about his second family. They were shocked of course, and felt sullied by the lie that had been lived, how their mother may have felt.

His second family had the benefit of all this knowledge. Lance thought it was such a needless complexity just because one man wasn’t courageous enough to face a decision. In the end he thought that man had made the choices for

130 everyone. He wondered what it must feel like to be that sure of yourself, to take that responsibility as if it were yours, and yours alone.

He wondered a lot about things now. He liked to curl matters over in his mind and examine them from all angles. It gave him a ponderous nature and he became the kind of man other men went to for advice. Lance felt as though he was settling back into himself. It had happened gradually but he was glad it did and when he started going out with Cheryl Parker and then later proposed to her, he felt he’d come home. Now their baby was two and another was on the way, he worked hard as rouseabout or doing fencing and enjoyed it. It was the physical nature of the work that made him alive and when his head hit the pillow at night his aching muscles drew him to a dreamless sleep.

Occasionally he’d see Colin. Sometimes they would have a beer together but the distance between them was so marked now, it just made them both sad and nervous. It was as if there was always a silent stranger with them or a fight just waiting to happen. Their friendship had to be contained and there were boundaries that neither of them had agreed but both knew existed. It was a kind of subdued volatility, maybe the kind that exists in all friendships but which in the case of Colin and Lance had become laboured. That kind of friendship dies a slow death, and, had they been awake to it they may have just called it quits, one of them saying, “We don’t have to be friends you know. We can just be acquaintances.” The other would nod and that would free them both. Except that

131 could not happen. It was Kelsie and her death that kept them bonded, however awkward their attachment.

*

3

It was the third anniversary of Vern’s death when Dora, Dulce, Lorna and Eve finally got together. They had not seen each other for over a month. First Eve had sprained her ankle and Lorna had to move in to help her around the house, then Dulce had developed a mad crush on a retired art dealer and gone to Sydney to have her heart broken and, as she said with a lascivious wink, to be reminded of my romantic nature. It had turned out badly. She found the art dealer in a tryst with another man and when all hell broke loose it transpired there was another mistress and a wife as well as the lover. Complicated stuff. “So undignified really,” she’d said when she got home. Dora, of course, thought Dulce was going to catch a deadly disease and harangued her regularly about safe sex practices.

Everyone took this as a good sign because after Vern died things had been hard for Dora. Vern had lingered, so ill he couldn’t walk, for over a year. It was a painful drawn-out death that left both of them with little dignity in the end.

132 “I want to die, Dora,” he’d said nearly every evening, “Help me to die.” She nearly had. One time the vet came to see a horse that had foundered and Dora had gone through the vet’s kit and taken a phial of liquid she’d read about and smuggled it out of the shed. The vet had noticed when she got home, and rung to say she was coming back. Dora could do nothing. Vern had slept all day because of the morphine anyway. She felt she couldn’t wake him to kill him.

“There are other ways of coping with this you know,” the vet had said over a cup of weak tea she had made them, Dora crying miserably into handkerchiefs she no longer ironed. “There is always talking.”

“What would you know?” Dora had shouted at her, and seeing the young woman’s hurt expression, burst into louder tears, clutching at the woman’s arm, a gesture and plea in one.

“Well I do know Dora,” the vet said with strength. “My husband was on a ventilator for a year before he died and my little girl was in a coma for six months. She was seven. It was a car accident. I was driving. They died within the same year. That was five years ago now.”

Dora had stopped crying, overwhelmed with this information.

“I can’t imagine that,” she said, “that must have been… must still be…. terrible for you.”

133 “Yes,” the woman said, “it was. But I’ve coped. There is another life beyond all the pain. There is always talking. It is not easy. But in the last moments there is still a lot to say even if you think they can’t hear you.”

*

4

The day was terrifically hot with the kind of winds that blow and speak volumes about deserts and things that do not often touch human experience. It was the weather of promised but withheld rain. The once green hills now resembled the underbelly of an animal, the rarely seen bumps and contours making everything seem so fragile. Despite the harshness of the weather there was tenderness in people’s appraisal of the country. People were beginning to be talk of erosion and to use phrases like long term damage, and not in living memory: sayings that were hauled out at extreme times. There was talk of another drought. There was also talk of fires. By the time Dora, Dulce and Lorna gathered at Eve’s in the evening it was no cooler.

“Thank god those winds have dropped,” said Dora as she eased into the big armchair on Eve’s veranda, “I was just about to toss it in and go to the club”.

The club was a standing joke among them. If you find me gambling at the club

134 talking about hydrangeas and playing bingo on Tuesday Dulce had said, please shoot me.

It was a bigger fear for Dulce because her mother had indeed gone mad like that in the end. Once her mother’s club had called her to say that she’d tried to cash a large cheque and had then gotten quite aggressive with the staff and finally started taking her clothes off, shouting at everyone, Fuck off you perverts fuck off. The barman had said later to Dulce how strange that language had sounded coming from an old lady with a blue rinse. It was the beginning of the end really and by the time Dulce had driven down to the city to sort it out, her mother had been sedated and restrained and she didn’t recognise her again. She died in that hospice three years later, having spent her days crying and dribbling. Bingo would do that to me too, Dulce had admitted to Eve in a fit of rage after her mother’s funeral.

“Well don’t worry you’ve been saved from being shot.” Eve tucked her dress into her underpants and headed to the fridge. “Gin and tonics?” she called from the kitchen. She didn’t wait for an answer. She measured the drinks carefully, thinking about taste and adding a bit more. The clink of ice on glass punctuated the hot silence like a call to prayer. They all admitted to feeling apprehensive on the days they read their poetry to each other. Perhaps it was something in the strength of the experience of writing and the anticipation of it. The actual task became a conversation between their many different selves, made them a congregation of sorts. It was a magic and dangerous time. Despite the alchemy,

135 it entailed great risks, this telling of thought and feeling a strain, no matter how well they all knew each other. As Dulce was fond of saying, better friendships than ours have gone out backwards as the result of these kinds of truths.

Eve had first hand experience of the consequences of these risks. One time at teachers’ college she and a girlfriend had written poetry together.

A poem they had written had fallen into the hands of some of her peers, one boy in particular who had been most malicious, and had accused her and her friend of subversive politics; ‘sedition’ was mentioned, as was the term ‘the fifth column.’

She hadn’t really understood it then and even now she marvelled at the naivety of the college administration. They were all such babies really; babies in a sandpit, some throwing sand without knowing what effect it would have. She did remember how her friend didn’t talk to her after that; later she married and left the college without graduating. There was talk of pregnancy. Eve never found out. She couldn’t recall the poems. She couldn’t even recall her friend’s name.

Maybe it was some kind of psychological scar that she had blotted out. Maybe there had been more to it. Memory was a slippery thing and as she had gotten older she realised just how selective it could be; how two people could remember the same event so differently.

It had been the same after Kelsie’s death. She and Mike recalled things differently. She’d say “remember when Kelsie did…” He’d butt in and, with a voice of steel, correct her, saying “you’ve got it wrong” or “that’s not right,” as

136 if he were the sole possessor and arbiter of the truth. It was his way of rewriting history. And after all there was no Kelsie to correct him or offer the support Eve was sure she’d give her. In the end it was simply his word against hers. She had realised then how much he had wished for a time when Eve was so vulnerable she would submit to his version of things.

The realisation of this stung her in the night. She wasn’t quite sure after he left that it hadn’t been this fuming, this pall of anger like a force field about her that had pushed him out of her orbit for good. There was, she realised, a tremendous force exerted before ignition in all matters explosive. It hadn’t surprised her in the end really. What was difficult in the end was not being understood. It lacked grace. What she wanted was a life full of grace. She wanted grace to rain down upon her like a shower, something she could twirl and spin in and offer her open face to.

“God it’s hot,” said Dora for the third time.

“I know,” replied Eve, throwing her legs over the chair arm, her face flushed and glowing. Everyone wanted to talk about the weather. The broad skies, even when cloudless, had an atmosphere which held its own mystery and it was only when winds and eddies picked up the red and brown dust that you saw it. …Never seen the ocean never seen the sea but I’ve seen the wind on the heather and I know what a wave must be.

137 “Why are we writing poetry do you think?” asked Lorna her voice toneless and even. She realised after she spoke that it was the same voice she used when she was alone and talking to herself.

“Everyone’s voice is important, especially the voices of women which have been silenced,” replied Dulce without even thinking.

“God, I remember when I turned forty,” began Dora, “I went into a bit of a crisis. Everyone said I would. I don’t know if I would have anyway or I did because others expected it and made me expect it. Anyway I really did wonder then what it was all for. …life…everything. Vern thought I was going mad. Kept saying woman you worry too much. The sun came up again this morning. Sure enough, he was right, even if I did think then he was being a bit simplistic. I couldn’t even get out of bed.”

“The thing is,” began Eve, “when Kelsie died I had to get something from the inside out. What happened for me then was that I felt like I was surfing. I felt it was a time when I connected with a part of myself that I knew to be inside a continuum. It is the most liberating feeling really. It is effortless and gives you the feeling of what true harmony might be. I mean a harmony with yourself.”

Eve had been talking into space not focusing on anyone, and suddenly realised.

Self-consciously she asked, “What do you think Lorna. Why do we write poetry?

Why do we write at all?”

138 A wave of hot air swept in along the deep verandah. The dryness of it was shocking. The atmosphere was suddenly otherworldly as if there were a force witnessing them.

Lorna began to speak then stopped. She felt a sudden need to sleep. Instead she twirled the liquid in her glass and thought about Eve’s question. The evening before she had walked home in the dark, in the cool, to her house, the stars and planets whirling above her.The road could be a tightrope and she the tightrope walker balancing, walking with confidence in an effort not to look down and then baulk and fall. No one knew she was there. No one knew and she felt that this was the same feeling she would have when she died. It would be full of this sense of wonder and behind her eyelids the vast space of universes that cared little for individuals hummed on making the sound not unlike the sound of blood in your ears. After some time she spoke.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Maybe poetry is a way of remembering things that happen to you. It is a kind of shorthand. Sometimes it doesn’t make sense. For me, it pulls the wideness of the cosmos to a point I can touch; it can make sense of stars and things like that. I suppose it is that continuum you spoke about.”

“It takes one poem,” interjected Dulce, “to touch you and maybe it is only ever that one. That one poem is like a candle in the darkness.” Dulce thought quickly after this that her life seemed full of clichés that she repeated even against her better judgment. I’m such a fucking product of my culture she had once screamed, that I can’t stand it!

139 The wind became hotter. It blew up dust in the corners of the verandah that had rested there since the last spring “I’ve got to go inside,” said Eve, “let’s stop talking about poetry and writing and do some.”

*

5

Dear Kelsie,

It has been five years now since you were murdered. The counsellor said this letter might help me get over your death. “I don’t bloody think so,” I said, “ how do you get over a thing like that?” She’s recently graduated and wears the kind of clothes you probably would’ve. I don’t know if she’s had someone die on her yet. All her suggestions come from a textbook I think. But I had to do something.

Sometimes I don’t want to get up. Sometimes I feel as if the earth is pulling me to its core I am so heavy with my longing and missing of you. I wish it were me and not you that had been murdered. But I would never wish this kind of sadness on someone I love. Maybe then this is the right way, me missing you. I would have hated you to be in this much pain.

Life goes on without you dearest. It shouldn’t, but it does. It has never been the same. Your father left. He ran off with that floozy, Laurel Dunham. He said later he never loved me. Just married me because of my being pregnant. I could still kill the bastard even though I know he’s your father. Not that you’ll know about

140 it now, as you are dead. I know that sometimes you hated him too. I never blamed you for that. He treated you badly at times. I should have stuck up for you more. Sometimes I did but somehow it always made things worse. Your father is a bully. I think I had to believe he was at least a good father. The fact is he wasn’t. Some men should not become fathers. I suppose I thought I loved him.

I realise now there are better things than that kind of love. Even being alone is better than that. I believe now this bully love is a way of dishonouring yourself. I wished you’d had time to discover love for yourself. Maybe you had. Sometimes

Dulce hints that you might have had someone. I was as jealous as hell that you could talk to her and not me about things like that. Even Dora looks as though she knew more about that than me. She gets this fishy look around her eyes as if she’s suddenly astonished. I wish you had talked to me more. Maybe you couldn’t, what with things going so badly between your father and me. I wonder if life is full of these kinds of regrets. Some people can just accept things and others have to chew them over.

I have things to do now. Dulce, Lorna, Dora and I are writing and reading poetry. It’s a kind of a club I suppose. I write a lot about you and how I feel about you being murdered. I wish you could hear some of the poems. You’d laugh. I can almost hear you groaning with embarrassment. The other day Tony

Wiseman called us ‘The Witches Coven’. We loved it. Dulce particularly loved it, as you could imagine. If I were a real witch I’d cast a spell on your murderer. I love you Kelsie. Not a day goes by that I don’t think of you. You are still alive in

141 my heart. I still feel the pangs just before you were born. Sometimes I imagine you still inside my womb.

Kisses on your sweet, sweet head.

Love,

Mum.

*

6

Colin baulked at the pub door as he usually did, unsure whether he really wanted to go in at all. It was a kind of stage fright that disappeared when he was with someone, a friend or work acquaintance – not that there were many of either. It made him realise he was shy and probably more introverted than others thought him. It also made him realise that the world of men made him nervous and somehow he felt safer on the margins than in the throng, where some men love to be. He envied these men their ease with each other. Still, loneliness and desire for company, especially in the winters, drove him to The Imperial. The heat of this day though, banished all memory of what it felt to be cold. He was parched. The old ceiling fan in his office above the old bank had finally stopped.

The smell of Bakelite burning and then the intense silence drove him out.

“Gidday Colin, what’ll it be?”

142 The bar was more or less empty unless you counted Old Man Higgins who was always there and considered a part of the furniture.

“A schooner of the usual thanks, Bede.” He swung one thigh over the low stool and rested his elbows on the damp bar runner. Later he would smell the yeast on himself and wish he couldn’t.

“How’s business going Colin?” It was a polite question. Everyone knew business was bad. It was bad for everyone in the small town and everyone struggled. Except for the long weekend when the town was full of outsiders for the festival, and everyone made a small fortune.

In Colin’s case money was not such an issue as he’d inherited his parents’ considerable fortune when his mother died. Money had never mattered to him anyway. What he thought was important was what he did and how he did it.

“Energy and how you use it is vital,” Dora had once said, and although he didn’t quite understand it at the time something about this notion stuck with him. It had become his credo and he measured his deeds and actions by it. He did most of the town’s accounts now, interpreting the changes in tax laws, trying to get the most for people and studying changes in the system with a diligence that reassured his clients.

“I don’t know what we’d do without yer Colin,” said Freibis Hunt, whose piggery hung by a thread of what was viable. “The missus sings yer praises and

143 we even tell the pigs about yer too.” Colin’s ears had reddened. He was delighted. That was the kind of vitality he was striving for.

“Oh, it could always be better Bede.” Colin took a long swig of the ale, his hand cooled by the beaded glass. “Ah that’s good,” he said as he put the glass down and regarded Bede afresh.

He didn’t see the man who used to play golf on Fridays with his father. It was an older man he saw. One with a neck like a tortoise and the eyes of a baby, large and regarding, seeing more than you could imagine. Although you couldn’t say the eyes were kind, the folds of skin around them gave the overall appearance of empathy. But Colin had seen some other darker side of Bede, like the time he saw him throwing Old Man Higgins out of the pub.

“You freaky bastard,” Higgins had called back to the hazy light. The huge shape of Bede rose before him and he was down on the ground. Then the boot had come in. First one in the upper chest and the next in the groin. Old Higgins was so bruised the next day he couldn’t get out of bed and he told the community nurse that he’d pissed some blood first up. Colin had watched the attack from the bar steps, colluding in his witness because of this, and even in the end when he’d taken Bede’s elbow and said, “That’s enough Bede, that’s enough”, it was something too little and too late. It wasn’t enough to suit the magnitude of the deed. He should’ve shouted, stormed around, stood between Higgins and Bede,

144 or even hit Bede himself. Instead it was this almost-whisper that’s enough, that’s enough.

“Why’d you do that?” Colin had asked later, almost too scared to know the answer.

“He just shits me, shits me,” Bede had shouted at him, his eyes suddenly red and blazing,.“He does nothing of worth in this world. He just breathes every useless breath one after the other.” It was more than that of course, but it wasn’t until some years later that Colin was to learn about the depth of Bede’s loathing of

Higgins. It was a darker secret of the past, a time when Higgins wasn’t a drunk and Bede wasn’t a bar owner but a time when they were small boys playing together.

“Oh come on Hig,” Bede had cajoled behind the bike shed in the small school grounds, “Give me another kiss.” Hig had resisted at first. He also distrusted these new emotions stirring in him, but something was overtaking him. Some pure urge as deep and as natural as the cool clean water that flowed below the town in an underwater current, and he leant down over Bede taking his face in his hands and kissed him again. The energy between them twisted their small bodies together in passion and lust until Bede called out loudly, “Oh, oh, oh” and then collapsed against Hig in a torrent of tears and sloppy kisses in an embrace that was as warm as it was grateful, “Oh I love you, Hig,” he whispered with great conviction trying to look Hig in the eye, “I love you.” He didn’t know

145 what love was of course. They were both only just turned seven, but he guessed from what he’d been exposed to that it was love of some kind although not the kind he’d seen between his mother and father.

It had ended badly as these things have a habit of doing. It went a long way toward explaining Bede’s hatred. It was Higgins, in his cups, who told Colin some of this in a conversation that began, “ I was a poof once.” A sure show stopper that line, thought Colin at the time.

“So how’s things with you Bede?” enquired Colin trying to be nonchalant. Bede squared his eyes and looked around in a gesture that would almost be comical were it not coming from someone so forceful.

“I’ve been thinking more about who murdered Kelsie,” said Bede in a whisper,

“I had a dream about her you see.”

Colin flinched. It wasn’t what he was expecting.

“What did you dream?” he asked.

“It was two nights ago,” Bede began, “You recall that night it stormed?”

Colin nodded. It was a wild night, he remembered, one where the old tin had flapped on the guttering like a Morse code message.

146 “Well, I’d been asleep for some time, because when I looked at the clock it was near four in the morning.” He straightened up, looked around to see if anyone was listening and then leaned in close to Colin. Colin resisted the urge to pull away. He had not noticed the white hairs in Bede’s eyebrows before. They were like the old fencing wire around the district and tangled in a mess closer at the middle of his forehead. “Kelsie came to me. She was wearing a flimsy white gown, no shoes, and she was calling me. I didn’t hear her, mind, but I saw her.

She beckoned me with her eyes.” He demonstrated for Colin what she did and the gesture gave him an effeminate air that reminded Colin of departures and hankies.

“I followed her somehow, as you can in dreams. We were kind of floating I suppose and we whooshed over fields and around the base of tree trunks as if she were showing me things, marking them maybe and then we came over the rise.”

Colin could smell the garlic of last night’s dinner on Bede’s breath.

“She disappeared then. But what I saw was a house. A farmhouse. It was

Dockman’s place. As clear as day. I reckon Lance Dockman murdered her.”

Colin looked at him with some scepticism and a measure of rising anger.

“Could’ve been Pierce you know,” he said in a deadpan voice, “it could’ve been anyone really. It couldn’t been one of your friends from the circus.” Colin picked up his beer glass, almost knocking Bede’s elbow as he did so. Bede’s expression

147 changed from awe to embarrassment. He stood up quickly and began wiping the bar and then thought better of it. Throwing the wet smelly cloth into the sink, he leant forward until he was right in Colin’s face.

“It could’ve been you, you little Nancy boy,” he whispered malevolently, “It could’ve been you.”

Colin held his glare, then placed his glass squarely in front of him and walked out. He didn’t look back. There had been many days like this one.

*

7

“It’s called West,” said Eve and began to read in the cooling afternoon heat.

Eagles flew

While the heat made haze from earth to sky, the shifting colour grey, silver to blue.

We travel in a bus, fifteen of us, through, in and out of small towns with names we would hear on the lips of dying explorers, or the wind whispers of the Wiradjuri,

148 the Kamilaroi, the Ngyampa and the

Barkindji.

We are travelling through time – the straight road an umbilical cord that shimmers either side and sometimes disappears altogether.

Thoughts too simmer in that heat.

They shake in and out, exploding to droplets of experience, regret and hope, things of another time.

A giant hand holds the cord that draws us on that road, reels us in like a yabby on a piece of string, thrown to the sky in delight.

‘Ah! Gotcha,’ you’d call signaling to the rest,

‘Here,’ you’d say,

‘They’re biting over here!’

149 By the time we reached the blue grey waters that stretch to the horizon, dead trees shocked out of the chalky water like nerve endings that fire across the sides, a conversation between Heaven and Earth, some alchemy had happened.

I’d heard it explained by someone once.

A nun in India.

It is as if you wade through land and sky where once your feet simply padded the surface.

I am long now and I am huge

(really quite my former self) and my hair rests on white wisps of mare’s tail clouds while my legs run through black tar and red earth.

In my wake there is a flowing

150 train of singing.

Were it yesterday, the Min-Min lights would be my eyes and every time you saw them, you’d say

‘I know about other things –

The things that aren’t’.

We would nod to each other,

Carefully, as in Heaven and Earth some things are dense and inspire gravity.

Salt bushes flash by and I imagine them caught in our slip stream, gathering behind the small bus like grey-green pom poms, clattering, stretching for miles making the sound of leaves in fierce winds.

Still we are tipped down that blue- black sticky ribbon road, a thing played with, buffeted by

151 hot wind, snug in our cooling cocoon, under ceilings of cloud and blue nothingness.

‘Look!’ someone calls from the back

And miraculously to the side is the sky reflected in a huge body of water.

It seems incongruous in this desert-dry land to see so much water.

Thoughts full of hot sun, suddenly become water minded.

If you could move that water how many people could we feed?

If you splashed that bowl of water over the sides of the lake the rim would be green – an afterthought.

In a land of reds, greys and dust the only green is the sheen on the backs of emu, their long legs strong as

152 tree roots and, as they scatter, their huge legs bite the clay pans, crunching the dry mud between toes that defines this country’s creation and dreaming.

In sleep I am still smiling, still travelling over the vast space.

I am tall and wide, riding on the back of an emu that strides through the stars and calls to the sleeping figure on the small bed.

There was silence after she had finished reading.

“Wonderful!” said Dulce bouncing over to hug Eve. “I think we are going to have to have that literary festival. I’ve been thinking about it for some time. That poem Eve has just made me finally decide.”

153 Eve beamed. It was the first poem in a year that wasn’t about Kelsie’s death. The shift showed on her face and gave her body a languidness that had begun to attract the attention of others. Lorna had noticed of course. It had set her to thinking about her and Eve again and even when she walked late at night she thought of other ways they could live their lives, together. There was a sadness associated with these reminiscences because she realised she couldn’t talk about it, not even to Eve. She found it difficult to admit it to her self. It was a desire she rehearsed to herself.

“How would we run a literary festival?” reasoned Dora. “Who would we invite and how would we do it?”

“Leave it up to me,” said Dulce with a faraway look that made her appear slightly mad. At University she was once described as mad, bad and dangerous to know an epithet she later found had been used to describe Byron, which had pleased her immensely. “I’ll have a word to Matilda. I think we can attach the literary part to the existing festival on the long weekend and have it funded.”

“Well let’s have some champagne,” cried Eve. “This should be celebrated!”

“Fancy that! A Tremley Literary Festival. God! We have hit the map!” Dora had warmed to the idea now and enthusiasm for the project grew with each glass of champagne.

154 “We could have a big name author, a really big name and people would come for miles around even from the city!” Eve was slightly pissed.

“I wonder who would come?” quizzed Dulce. “It would have to be someone who could pull a crowd.”

“I know just the person,” said Lorna resolutely and calmly. Her voice carried an air of unaccustomed authority. They all turned and looked at her. The matter had taken on an ominous tone.

*

8

The last time Ned Jenkins had seen Lorna was when he’d caught her kissing his wife in their pantry. Finding them both there, wrapped in a passionate embrace, had surprised him at first, but it had been an evening of surprises. Things hadn’t been going too well for him out in the lounge room, and once Suzanne was out of earshot, his lover, Rufus, had confronted him about screwing his boyfriend.

There were tears and anger and he thought the occasion warranted another bottle of something a bit stronger; something he knew Rufus would like.

He pulled the light cord on in the pantry and jumped.

155 “Goodness,” he said, “what’s going on here?” His wife Suzanne blinked up at him from hooded eyes. “Oh Ned darling,” she said tucking the loose hair behind her ear, “Lorna and I were just talking.”

“In the dark with your tongues down each others’ throats?” Ned allowed himself some delicious self-righteousness he didn’t deserve but nonetheless enjoyed.

Lorna sniggered. Suzanne didn’t miss a beat. “Oh fuck off will you Ned,” she said, “It’s none of your business. Go back to your precious Rufus.” And with that, she pulled the light cord off, and shut the pantry door in his startled face.

“Well how are you Lorna?” he said on the phone, “It’s been a while.” It had been a while, about twenty years actually.

“Good Ned. I’m good,” she said, “and how about you? How’s Suzanne?”

Things had gotten messy after the incident in the pantry. Ned had gone off with

Rufus’ lover and after that had faded he married again, trying to escape the mess of his life. Suzanne had married Ned’s childhood friend.

“We don’t talk any more. I have no reason to,” said Ned. “That’s the past now.

So what can I do for you?”

After Lorna had explained that they needed a well-known author, he almost said no and hung up. But there was this new light in his life, and a small weekend in

156 the country just might be the ticket to sealing the deal he thought. He really wanted to kiss this young man. He wanted to do more than just kiss him.

“Ok Lorna,” he conceded a little too quickly, “I’ll do it. You can send the details to my agent.”

Lorna had been surprised. She had saved her trump card expecting him to refuse and now felt a little cheated she didn’t have to call it in.

“Oh, Ok Ned,” she said, “That’s great. We’ll be in contact.”

*

9

It was Matilda Fortune who began the Tremley festival in the late 1950s.

“I see it as my contribution to society,” she’d told Mrs. Toblin. “After all,” she added, plucking nonexistent pills from her fawn cardigan, “our family has connections to the Royal family.”

This was blatantly untrue and everyone knew it, but it was such a part of

Matilda’s makeup even Mrs. Toblin, the town gossip, was wont to collude in the lie. In reality Matilda was one of thirteen children born into poverty to a drinking

157 miner, and a mother who spent her life either pregnant or battered. Matilda had fallen into an early marriage with a child following too soon, and then managed to marry four times in twenty years, with each spouse dying within four or five years. Some said Matilda’s husbands died under mysterious circumstances. It was only Tony Wiseman, who, one evening in The Royal, before he was barred for the fourth time, said, “They all die on the nest mate,” belting his glass on the bar for emphasis, “on the frigging nest mate.”

Matilda’s family connection became a collective myth and at her funeral held three days after her 85th birthday, her esteemed but fictional royal connection even got a mention, although Father Tubby spent some time choosing his words lest he be accused of giving over to the sin of deception. Despite a predilection for what she thought was ‘community spirit’, Matilda Fortune was bossy, opinionated and given to spontaneous acts of meanness, all of which were forgotten on the long weekend festival where she starred as a kind of reigning monarch and was treated with a measure of awe and respect. Matilda, of course, made the most of this. She chose her outfits to resemble the Queen’s and carried a small handbag like the one the Queen’s mother carried: neat and square. When certificates for artwork were handed out to the children, she wore white gloves and shook each hand with a limpness that young Henry Sallenger commented on one year as feeling like “a flipping wet eel”; not that he’d ever touched an eel or even seen one in Tremley, but he liked to imagine them, after being impressed by a television documentary on the Sargasso Sea. Maybe Henry Sallenger was not far off the mark. Just as the Sargasso Sea was said to hide Atlantis, Matilda’s

158 façade of respectability was said to mask mysterious practices. Take, for instance, the year she introduced the Tremley branch of the Theosophical

Society to the practice of séance and the drawing of spirit forms, in a class she taught from her home. Lofty Sallenger admitted, in a moment of rare and beer- fuelled candour, “It was just ink blob things we painted really. Things you see out of the corner of your eye.” The Society’s chapter in Tremley was as short- lived as it was memorable. There was talk of odd occurrences. Rumours of naked dancing under the full moon and other pagan rituals were all strenuously denied, as were charges of wife swapping and lesbian sex. It gave the town a flavour, however, that it could not have gotten without the presence of Matilda and her aspiration to something greater.

“There must be something greater,” she was often heard to say, “and we must seek it.” This manner combined the religious with the patronising and was intended to uplift the dull masses from which she, herself, emerged victorious.

Lofty Sallenger, even though he had no longer spoken to Matilda due to a huge argument they had over the spirit world, also carried this aspiration as a vague yearning to his grave.

When Dulce approached Matilda about adding the literary part to the festival,

Matilda was highly affronted, although she was, by her own admission, “very fond of change, unlike some others in Tremley.”

159 “Well you’ll need a patron, you know,” she said, hardly disguising a look of horror, “you don’t usually just add something to a complete program because it’s all of a sudden trendy.” Matilda had not liked Dulce when she first blew into town. It was not so much the strong smell of patchouli or the outlandish clothes.

It was more that Dulce reminded her of her earlier self: a self that was bosomy and flushed and still in contact with suppleness, a self that made moist cakes.

There was also a measure of jealousy and the fact that Dulce saw right through

Matilda’s posturing.

“We just thought that we have all these budding writers and poets and we should add a literary flavour to the festival.” Dulce stood squarely eyeing Matilda like a matador might a motionless bull. They were standing outside The Creamy

Spoon, Tremley’s one and only café. Matilda hated talking business in the street, and would rather Dulce had made an appointment to see her. She felt out of sorts and ambushed, like she had the time the photographer from Pix had taken those sordid pictures at the big house. She could see Marge Toblin who was having coffee with her daughter looking at them. She wished she’d brought her pills.

She suddenly felt desperate and wanted to get away. Dulce stood firmly blocking her way.

“Alright,” she muttered, “we can take it to the committee on Monday. Call me.”

*

160 10

Dora groaned in her sleep. Kelsie was calling her and she sounded frantic. Dora could see Kelsie covered in sweat and saliva coming out in long, blown glass drops from the side of her mouth which was open wide in a scream. Dora could see the girl’s agony but she couldn’t hear what she was saying. She tried to get up and go to her, comfort her but her body was like lead and wouldn’t do what she commanded of it. She wanted to scream as well but the sound wouldn’t come out. She tried and tried to make a sound but, like Kelsie, she couldn’t be heard. There was something dangerous lurking. Kelsie knew it was coming. That was what all the screaming was about. They were both about to be hurt, to be killed. At last Dora sat up and summoned all the energy from deep in her womb and let out a sound that hurt her throat. It was the sound made with shards of glass or blades.

Her book fell from the bed and slapped the floor. The sharp noise woke her. The room was dark. She was sitting upright. There was a deep guttural growling. It took a moment to realise the sound was coming from her. It frightened her at first. She’d never made a sound like that before, but later she knew it was the cry of deep grief. She was not a stranger to that feeling. She leaned back, a wave of relief calming her taut back and shoulders. She sighed and pulled the covers about her. She felt cold and began to shake and soon her sobbing disturbed the cat that lay at the end of her bed.

161 “Why am I crying?” she called aloud. No one answered her and this made her cry all the more. Someone had once told her that crying in your sleep was a sign that your soul was in deep distress. She had pooh-poohed the idea at the time but now she felt that nameless distress keenly. She felt something was deeply wrong.

“Oh pull yourself together,” she muttered, “you are going mad.” Her mother had always said, “Tears and the drinking of alcohol were two things to be avoided when living alone.” For her mother, these two things were responsible for the downfall of her maiden aunts as well as any other woman she considered loose.

But there was no alcohol, only tears and in the soft morning light she let them fall until they dried up.

Once calm, she thought about the dream and then about Kelsie. She started to cry again, thinking about the indignity of Kelsie’s death and the waste of her young life. She remembered the day Vern had driven around to tell her that

Kelsie had been murdered. His car looked like a tornado hurtling along the road with a single plume of circular dust curling behind.

Jeez! she thought as she hung out her washing, they’re in a hurry; how good it was that she no longer felt the need to go so fast. It wasn’t long before she recognised the white ute as theirs. She realised something must be wrong, someone hurt or injured; the last time she had seen Vern drive like that was when young Nick Fortune almost lost his hand pulling a piece of wire out of the

162 tractor blades. She put the washing basket down. The sound of flapping sheets in the stiffening wind was the only sound she could recall after.

“Vern?” she said heading toward the truck. Seeing his stricken face she said again, “Vern?” By this time she was running toward him, “Vern? What is it?”

All the time her voice hardly disguised her terror. Vern hardly had time to get out of the truck before she was on him, clinging to him, saying carefully through gritted teeth, “Vern? What is it?” Her voice cracked.

“It’s Kelsie, love,” he said, “she’s dead.” Flapping sheets, clapping sheets.

“She’s been murdered, love. She’s dead.”

Now in her bed she can’t recall what happened next. She remembers the tears, the scream she heard before she realised it came from her own throat, the drive back into town, Eve looking as if even the air had been sucked from her. She can’t recall how she felt.

The dream had been a doorway into these memories and she resented it. She deeply resented it. After Vern died she dreamt for weeks that he walked with her every night through a landscape that was all red: red trees, red sky, red roads, red fruits hanging from red branches. Vern had plucked fruit for her, taken her hand and walked along the road talking to her in a voice she couldn’t hear. Waking from these dreams was a cruelty. She had cried every morning from the sharp loneliness so stark against the night’s companionship.

163 She felt this most recent dream about her and Kelsie to be an omen. It was too soon to read it properly, but she resolved to talk to Dulce about it. She felt confident that Dulce would know what it meant and what she was to take from it.

*

11

That same morning Bede McCarthy had a dream as well. It was not like the one he’d told Colin about. It was a disturbing dream and when he woke the usual taste of stale beer in his mouth seemed flavoured with something else. He tried to recall if there was something he might wish not to remember. They’d been plenty of times like these. Forgive me father for I have sinned. He said it over and over many times in his life and still could not expunge the guilt that lurked biting at his smile. This dream was uncharacteristically lucid. It was about a young girl and him watching her being attacked. From a distance he tried to call out. Stop! Stop! The words wouldn’t sound. He felt himself gasping and then he was running, running faster than he ever had. The movement felt oddly familiar and wonderful as if he was realising a dormant talent. In no time he’d reached the girl. Her attacker was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t recall him running away. He looked down on her limp frame and realised she was dead. The girl’s lifeless eyes regarded him in way that reminded him of his mother when she knew he was lying. He suddenly realised he could be accused of this murder and

164 looked frantically around for any sign of the perpetrator. From the corner of the dreamscape, he caught a glimpse of shadow, maybe the raised heel of a running figure. The dream was in a flat paddock and suddenly he found himself running.He was surprisingly agile and he ran and ran without effort. It was as if he was being tossed along this flat surface like a skimming stone. He was still running when he woke. His bed sheets were twisted in a way that made him realise he hadn’t taken his boots off when he came home drunk the night before.

“Ah shit,” he said as he extracted himself from the sheets. His undies were jammed uncomfortably between the cheeks of his bum. That alone could make him cross. The hangover added further liverishness.

“Fuck me dead,” he said as he stood up. His head swam uncomfortably. It was the familiar feeling of nausea and he knew then that he would be bent over the toilet most of the day vomiting until the headache subsided. The dream came back in flashes. It brought on the first bout of vomiting that sprayed on the back of the door as he tried to get to the bathroom. It wasn’t until the next day he could piece the dream together but by then it felt too late.

Bede was a man who had consistently missed his chances in life. This failed potential was etched into the lines of his face and told by his boastfulness and inability to listen to others. When he was a younger man his temper had been renowned. Fortunately he’d never come seriously foul of the law but it was a matter of luck rather than management. He didn’t know how close he’d come on

165 several occasions. Respectability, the only thing he craved, had been as elusive as his father’s approval.

“You’ll amount to nothin’ boy if you don’t sort yourself awt.” His father couldn’t understand why his son thought life owed him. Bede was rude to him around his mates, a quirky grin plastered on his face that invited scowls and aggression from others. “Unfortunate personality,” he’d overheard his mother talking to his father, “still the kid can’t help that can he?” His parents were long dead now but their criticisms of him were not. He heard both their voices as if they were standing in the same room. Watch yourself. One day your mouth will get you in big trouble. I wish yer were like yer brother. Some days he would spin on the spot in his small room humming to stop the sound of their voices.

In the dirty bathroom, as he hugged the toilet bowl, the sound of his father’s voice echoed loudly from the dream. For God’s sake, it said, for once in your life do something worthwhile. Save her.

By the time Bede had retched again the words had also been expelled.

*

12

In the dream, Wally the Shearer is going down on him. Colin is tossing and turning in the way that, only in dreams, you can and still manage to have an

166 orgasm. Just as he is about to come, a light enters his head and he hears Kelsie calling him; and suddenly he is running and flying in a dangerous way like a stretched rubber band about to flick back. It is as if he’s gone up a few floors in an elevator and his body has not caught up its corporeal weight. He feels as light as a feather and in the dream he wonders if this is what it is like to be disembodied. “Kelsie,” he calls in a voice that sounds like rushing wind in a high place, “Kelsie”. She has disappeared but a wisp of her appears from the corner of his eye. She is like a perfume rather than something substantial; a faint memory of what was. He is spiraling downwards suddenly past Wally and down deeper still, past his bed and his prone figure lying there as if dropped, and into the earth.

“Colin,” the voice screams, “Colin!”

He wonders lamely if it is his mother calling as he seems now to be only a thought- form without any body. He can do nothing. He doesn’t know how to direct his speech or desire. He is dense like a rock and just as dark and he sits waiting in the earth. He can smell its dampness. It is at once familiar and frightening. He imagines that he cannot breathe but he does, and his breath is like a heartbeat, calming and whole.

I have brought you here so you will know how it is, the voice says. He tries to speak but can’t. He doesn’t seem to have a mouth.

167 I am murdered here and buried. See, the voice says, my blood soaks the earth.

Colin feels warmth in the dankness, a feeling like wetting your bed while you are still asleep. He can do nothing except lie and listen. He is a receptacle for this information even though he feels unwilling. It floods in like the warmth around him. Suddenly he knows what it is to be dead. It comes in the same flash that saw him at the start of this experience. He knows that the voice is Kelsie. It has disparate parts. It is not the Kelsie that he knew but one that wants to communicate to him. He knows now that her murderer is coming back to town soon. This is what the voice wants him to know. It is not a warning or something to fear. He is being told what he must do. Suddenly he feels the pulse of blood in his veins and all around him are benign smiling faces; faces of old monks and

Buddhas, many of them. He is weeping uncontrollably when he wakes. His bed is wet with his own semen, and a feeling of having glimpsed something unworldly. It fills him with gratitude as if he has finally grasped something difficult. He can’t recall exactly what he understands but he realises that if he bumps into Wally today he won’t be able to look him in the eye.

*

13

Mike was about an hour from Tremley when he realised he was nervous about going back. It struck him as a weird feeling. He had never felt uncertain of his place in Tremley before. He had moments, of course, of feeling misplaced but

168 they were so rare and fleeting he could hardly recall them. He was also thinking about Kelsie. In the five years since her death he had allowed himself only a few indulgences in grief. Luckily, with Laurel, he wasn’t reminded often. She had as much vested interest as he did in forgetting life in Tremley before they were together. And then there was Eve. If they mentioned her at all, it was in a way that suggested she was a bothersome aunt or distant cousin who was not known to either of them in any personal or intimate way.

“Don’t you go and see her now,” was all Laurel had said when he told her he was going back.

“I just want to see the old place one more time,” he assured her. He didn’t want to see Eve. She believed him and he believed himself.

It wasn’t until he was a few miles out of town that he realised he did want to see

Eve, and that he really needed to. After all that had happened, and possibly even before, Mike was a man who kept his emotions at arm’s length.

“What are you feeling?” Laurel had asked him a couple of weeks after they’d left Tremley. He didn’t know how to answer her. It was not as if he knew how he was feeling and didn’t want to admit it, it was that he honestly couldn’t tell.

Something in him had switched off. As he drove along the familiar road he thought about all the years he’d spent in Tremley. He was born and bred in

169 Tremley as his father was fond of saying. He was born and bred with seven siblings into poverty that he could still smell and fear.

He no longer had any contact with his brothers and sisters. His younger sister, to whom he was closest, had died ten years before from liver failure. They were all damaged, just damaged in different ways. Somehow the memory of each other supported the memory of those times. He didn’t even really understand how he’d come to stay in Tremley all that time. He was the only one who did. The rest of them scattered to the winds like dandelion seeds in spring.

You are all a bunch of leaching losers his father would say, home drunk again after the pub. It was cotton chipping time and he was always drunk then. So was his mother if she wasn’t in hospital. There was always a blue and usually one of the older ones copped it for something. That’s how his brother Timothy, who was five years older than Mike became deaf. Their father hit him so hard about the head it had burst his eardrums. Some years later Timothy fell asleep near one of the railway sidings. He never heard the train that killed him. Probably, Mike imagined, at the last minute he would’ve felt it though. He imagined no further than that but always told anyone who’d listen that his old man had murdered

Timothy. It was true enough.

Driving back was like driving through time, he thought as he approached the town. He didn’t know where he’d go when he got to Tremley. He had a sudden impulse to keep driving. He felt comfortable in the car, his mood reflective and

170 maybe he would just drive on through until he arrived somewhere he’d never been before. Maybe he’d just start again; send Laurel a letter later explaining, or not. He was thinking all this when he saw the permanent sign outside the showground that advertised the Tremley Show.

“June 5th to 8th” it announced, “Community fun. The Tremley Festival.” And in smaller lettering underneath, “Rides, fun, stalls, poetry and Kelp” on one line and “ie contest” on the next. What it probably meant was Dog Trials, thought

Mike, he knew it was probably Lionel who had done the sign. Lionel always volunteered to do the signs and even though someone had to re-do it every year, no one had the heart to tell him he couldn’t. One year Lionel had written, “Jill’s

Bum,” on one line and, “ble bees” on the next. That evening Jill Hatton had flattened him in the pub. She never lived it down. Lionel was wont to forget things overnight so it never bothered him. Jill ended up selling her hives, even the one with the glass side, to Lorna and left town; Bede said she had a bloke at the Ridge and wanted to go anyway. “Lionel’s little faux pas,” he insisted, “was just the last reason to go.” It didn’t stop her leaving a curse on the town that some recalled after things had happened. Old Man Higgins had gone to the

Ridge once and seen Jill in the pub.

“Did ya curse us or what?” he asked.

“Wouldn’t tell you even if I did,” she said. “Now piss off.”

171 So the Festival’s on, thought Mike recalling how when Kelsie was little she had bugged them for weeks so she had enough money to buy one of those big stuffed animals. One year it had been a giraffe. It had doe-like eyes just like hers and the lashes of a Les Girls performer. It stood taller than she did at the time. He remembered how Kelsie’s lashes fell like small dark bee brushes on her pink cheeks when she slept as a baby. The memory of her eyelashes almost made him cry out as if he’d been stabbed. As he drove in within the town limits he knew where he had to go.

*

14

Organising the literary part of the festival had been a nightmare. Lorna had thrown a tantrum. Dora had thrown several. The event was being held in the

Tremley Opera House; a place that still had its original wattle and daub walls and pressed tin ceiling. It always smelt of dust and the thing that struck you most when you walked in was the magenta curtains trimmed with gold that were made of the highest-grade velvet. The guest of honour, Ned Jenkins plus one, was expected that afternoon ready for the events of the evening: The Inaugural

Tremley Literary Festival Dinner. No one had spotted him. Lorna was getting testy Eve told anyone who asked. And Lorna felt testy.

172 I should’ve called in that trump card just to make sure, she thought as she arranged the prizes for the Open Poetry, Spoken Verse and Under 10 Short Story.

Ned Jenkins was a slippery fish.

“He’s a chameleon,” his best friend once told her after too much vodka one night over twenty years ago, “and he hardly resembles the person I went to school with. He has shed so many skins.” Lorna understood the last sentiment. She knew the other part of the perception was erroneous. She’d easily smelt a fraud; not fraud as a direct misrepresentation, but the kind of fraudulence that comes from a lack of fidelity to self.

“Where are the ribbons Lorna?” Dora flounced in on a breeze of old school hall dust and high but never to be realised expectation.

“In the books, dear,” said Lorna absently, still thinking about Ned Jenkins. She wondered where all the people who knew him earlier in his life had gone.

“Where is your head?” asked Dora suddenly.

“I’m just thinking about Ned Jenkins.” Lorna stacked some books and neatened them into piles. Dora turned to face her and leant against the bench, arms folded.

“Where do you know him from?”

173 Lorna looked at Dora. She saw Dora’s eyes narrow as they scrutinized her and then look away.

“Earlier days,” she said, trying to sound flippant, “when we first left school.”

The books were stacked again. “He was in a crowd that used to hang around together. We were all wannabe artists, writers, revolutionaries.” Lorna tried to look Dora in the eyes.

“He’s pretty famous isn’t he?” Dora stepped a little closer. “Well, now, I mean.”

Lorna stepped away and swung around as if to leave.

“Yeah, “she said, “he was always good at selling himself, making himself a tight niche from which to prosper.”

Dora followed her. They were at the kitchen sink now, looking out on the deserted playground.

“Like a weed in concrete or a daisy in horse shit?” Dora snorted.

“Definitely the weed variety,” Lorna said and stared at Dora squarely until she blushed.

“What makes people like that so famous?” asked Dora as she looked away.

174 “I don’t know,” replied Lorna, “Luck? Maybe bullshit?”

“It’s not talent usually, is it?”

“No.” They looked at each other for what seemed a long time. If ten-year-old

Bess Munro were there she’d say it was like the movies. Forbidden desire made them both weak at the knees. At that moment Dora wanted to kiss Lorna so fervently the strength of it took her by surprise. She struggled to regain her composure.

“Maybe they have something to learn about what fame brings, ” said Dora releasing her gaze and feeling light-headed and oddly faint.

“Maybe,” Lorna ran some water in the sink and held her hands under for a moment.

“If you looked at it through Ned Jenkins’s eyes,” said Dora attempting to be flippant, “he would say he had something to teach us.”

“Maybe he does,” replied Lorna feeling uncertain, “Maybe he does.”

*

15

175 Pierce Dockman had been away from Tremley since the murder. He hadn’t thought about going back but he was a curious fellow and often this curiosity drove him against his better judgement. His father had been the same. That’s why his life as a rouseabout and then shearer, which started in the Depression, had become a lifestyle for the whole family. For Pierce it had been a gentle childhood up until he reached the age of ten and then things had turned violent.

He never really recovered from the effects of his father’s violence but somehow incorporated it into his own personality. It was as if he’d missed a vital piece of character that could make him happy. The missing was like an ache and it made him mad.

“The boy’s got to go his own way now,” he had overheard his father whisper to his mother. “We can’t feed ’em all as it is”. There was no reply. They were all under a bit of wet blanket, suspended between trees, that hardly held off the dew.

Seven of them huddled together, the little one groaning with cold and grinding his teeth in his sleep. The stars were soft behind a gauze of moisture. It was early morning, still dark, and his parents didn’t know Pierce was awake.

“Well, I can’t tell ’im,” he heard his mother say, “he’s still my baby you know.”

There was some shuffling. Someone coughed.

“What if we just shift off and leave him.” Pierce was straining to hear and now wished he hadn’t. The stars that he could hardly see for tears now hummed back at him and something in his world tipped on an angle that he knew he’d never be

176 able to recover from. He didn’t hear anymore. Maybe some crying but he couldn’t really tell. Every day after that he waited. He began to stay awake at night, just in case they tried to leave. He wanted to make them feel as ashamed as he felt.

He wanted to yell as if he had some authority.

“Where do you think you’re going then?” like he’d heard an old cocky say to his father when he’d caught him leaving his orchard with six apples, one for each of them. Where do you think you’re going then? “Nowhere,” his father had said limply. Pierce hated the way his father had looked so downtrodden. How he wished his father had just shouted “Fuck off!” and ran, the spirit of rebellion and righteousness powering his heels. His father had handed the apples back one by one and although they’d only been there a day they had to move on because the cocky said he didn’t want scum like that around nor the issue of scum for that matter either.

Pierce could feel the bile rising as he drove. His father and mother were long dead. His father had died of tetanus near Bourke and his mother had gone back to her family then, but they only let her take the younger two. The rest of them were turned out, like waifs. Pierce tried to keep them together but couldn’t. It was too much for a twelve-year-old and the welfare got the others. He’d found a job chipping cotton and after that season he followed the shearers from shed to shed. They became a family to him and although the work was never certain and

177 always affected by changes in weather, it had some semblance of order that made him feel part of humanity. It was a family of sorts.

He hadn’t contacted his wife or son since he left Tremley. He didn’t like them much. He would try to avoid seeing them. But he was curious. He was coming back for another reason. He was coming back to see how it felt.

“I’m just like me father,” he muttered as he drove, and he thought about Peggy and their children.

Peggy had always been good for a laugh. He’d been seeing her on and off since he was a young man. She never asked anything of him. It was a bit different now with the kids. They certainly made life harder. Greed was a thing that ran in the family and those kids wanted things; lots of things. But since they’d been opal mining at least he could get good money. They all worked hard and the eldest boy helped at the end of the day when he finished school. “Well you’re no bludger,” he’d say to him as they sat over the small pile of stones on the camp table and the end of the day. This kind of admiration was the closest thing he got to love from him. He glowed just like the stones under his gaze. There was big money to make with the South East Asian traders coming into town.

Tremley 450 kilometres the sign said as he flashed past. It was a good drive and he needed the time to think. I need a plan, he thought and then laughed out loud,

“Why have a plan now when you’ve managed this far without one?” He laughed

178 again and then began to whistle. He was moving and he was as happy as he could be and he was going back to sort things out for good.

*

16

The festival dinner began as it would continue. Ned Jenkins arrived late and very drunk, with an even drunker consort in tow. He and Scott Rarty had stopped at the several vineyards on the way to Tremley and after a few at the cellar door had continued over lunch. It was nervous energy really. The kind that comes with flirtation: palpable, extreme and as heady as the wine that, in the end, they’d skulled.

“Oh, hello, Lorna,” Ned had drawled when he finally arrived. He kissed the air near Lorna’s cheeks making loud smacking noises. Scott giggled.

“Good to see you Lorn,” he said, “I’ve so been looking forward to this.” He cast a lascivious sideways glance at Scott who giggled again. Lorna had flushed to a deep red. It wasn’t embarrassment but anger: old anger. She wished she could just kick the bastard in the shins but it was too late for that. Now they just had to carry him through the night and hope it didn’t descend into anything too farcical.

She decided what had to be done. Ned had to be contained and Scott had to be distracted. Luckily, with Scott’s dark good looks, that wouldn’t be difficult. Ned would be a little more of a challenge.

179 “Lorna, there’s a pet, how about you go get us a bottle of champagne?”

“Of course, Ned, “she said sweetly, “I’ll send for one.” Instead she shuffled him off to a side room that doubled as a storeroom for school concerts props, while

Dulce escorted Scott to a group of hopeful young Tremley maidens.

“Funny idea for a dressing room Lorna,” Ned said, his flushed face taking on an alarming glow. “God, maybe I need to lie down for a bit.”

“Of course, Ned,” said Lorna amiably, “just in here, we’ll lay you down here.”

She opened the door and he fell heavily on a rolled up swathe of dusty white tulle and promptly began to snore. There was an hour until he was supposed to address the assembling crowd. Lorna snickered nervously. Ned’s agent had faxed through the title of Ned’s talk. It was The dream gone wrong: creativity and small communities.

“Well,” she said as she closed the door on the airless room and Ned Jenkins, locking it behind her. “The dream’s gone wrong alright.” When she caught up with Dulce moments later all she could say was: “Asleep. We’ve got an hour.

Let’s see what happens.” When Lorna finally remembered to ask about Scott,

Dulce motioned toward a slumped figure. Scott lay across three chairs snoring drunkenly, his head on Flora Toblin’s ample lap. Flora looked as though all her prayers had been answered. She gently stroked Scott’s temples and forehead

180 smiling at her astonished peers like a conquering heroine relishing her newly acquired booty.

*

17

The day was hot. Cicadas droned. In places the sound was deafening. Only a pair of eagles, floating high on the thermals, had established a direction that morning.

They circled invisible but enormous pillars in the broad sky. As Pierce Dockman drove his ute along the road to the showground the clay dust spewed around him making him cough. The dust got into his eyes and before he knew it he was crying with irritation. At some stages he couldn’t even see the road. Then he started sneezing. Archooo! “God,” he thought, “I think I’ve just blown my eardrums.” His family were famous for their sneezes. It was about their only claim to fame apart from the drinking, the lying and the brawling. Maybe it was because things got up their noses a lot. His father had famously sneezed for three days while shearing at the Old Big Shed. Pierce sneezed again. For a moment he lost sight of the road. Lucky I’m on the straight he thought. It had been an emotional couple of days, driving and then being in Tremley again. Not that he was the kind of man to admit that. “Can’t let that get the better of me,” he said out loud, “a man’s got to keep going.” But it had been hard. It had been hard facing that place again and reliving those moments and he was badly shaken by it.

181 He’d bumped into Lance coming out of Higgin’s driveway as it turned out and what the hell, he’d arranged to meet him at the show and see his kids. It was a concession of sorts. Although he didn’t fool himself that it meant things would be all right from then. He wasn’t in for that. If he really thought it through he probably wouldn’t do it at all – just say – let bygones be bygones – but it was the curiosity in the end. He wanted to see who looked like him – he wanted to know how the generations that came after him would carry his manner. He was frightened they wouldn’t. Lance had looked sceptical about their meeting but he always been sceptical, even as a kid. Those big brown eyes regarding Pierce like an enemy. Still Lance couldn’t help the way he looked, so Pierce said; “I’ll meet you near the wood chopping at the show at ten. We might even have a go at the cross saw together again”. It was a way to butter Lance up, because one year when Lance was about ten they’d gone into the mixed doubles and won the blue ribbon. Lance had blisters on his hands that bled and eventually got infected but he slept for days with a smile on his face.

“You should see that boy Pierce,” Mabe had said coming in after tucking Lance into bed, “he’s one happy lad.” Although it was not his habit eventually Pierce had looked in on his son asleep and felt proud of that smiling, beatific face. For

Lance it was like a family honeymoon, which didn’t, of course, last long.

“Maybe,” he said to his father when the cross sawing was suggested, “ but I did promise Dillon that. He’s five this year you know.”

182 “Whatever,” his father replied and looked away. Lance could tell his father’s indifference was genuine. It made Lance smart under his broad brimmed hat.

“See you at ten,” he said and strode off in a fury. He didn’t want Pierce to see his anger. Pierce didn’t see it. His mind was on the other matter by then and that was more important by a long shot than anything Lance could evoke in him.

That’s how he found his way to the spot just out of town where he’d last seen

Kelsie.

He didn’t know at first why it was important for him to go there after all this time. As he drove along he wondered at how life had changed for everyone since that time. It was a rare moment of conscious introspection. Suddenly he sneezed again and dizziness in his head made his eyes go back into their sockets. In a flash he felt as if he were seeing the world as if from faraway, a feeling of sharpness and the ever present smell of dust and earth. That smell was like a blanket. The impact of the crash was tremendous.

The large sheoak into which was jammed the front end of the ute and pieces of

Pierce’s brain swayed only slightly in the breeze. There was the sound of whispering and the patter of feet on clay dust and there were the murmurings in a language that was as ancient as the river sand itself. Then on a high and sudden breeze all that could be heard was a mournful singing not unlike a cry of pain.

*

183 18

Tin Boy, Crazy Cheryl, Bearded Pam and Tiny the dwarf had been to Tremley before. The only ones who hadn’t were Brian the wolf trainer and Big Ted.

Psycho Mervyn hadn’t either but he was convinced he had. Madam Toomey-

Tomb, the leader of the pack, who they all called Bev, told him she’d seen him in Tremley in a former life. “See!” he said over a midday cuppa, “I fuckin’ told you I’d been here before.” He scowled at them all until Bearded Pam patted his arm. He smiled showing a set of yellow teeth, the anger somehow extinguished by her kindness.

The tents had been set up for hours and their caravans were in a line along the river by a small forest of twisted willows. The effect, as intended, was enchanting. The last time they’d been in Tremley there had been some trouble.

Bev and Pam had spoken about it again on the way over from Somalie. The trucks followed each other in convoy along the road that, in the heat, appeared as if it melted into water.

“Now you keep away from the bloody Imperial. You know it’s full of rednecks.”

“It wasn’t my fault Bev, that last time.” Bev snorted. Pam brooded and looked out the window at rushing trees and sliding grasses. Well, it had been my fault to a certain extent, she admitted to herself. She hadn’t meant to fall in love with the

184 barman. God, she’d never forgotten his name and the feel of his arms around her.

He didn’t like her beard when there were others around but at night when they were alone her beard turned and twisted him into delight. “He won’t be there anyhow, Bev,” she said after a time, “That was years ago now, anyways.”

“It doesn’t matter how long ago it was. You just stay away, you hear?” Bev lit another cigarette and wound her window down. The rush of hot air greeted them like a slap. Pam went tingly all over. She crossed her legs and tried to think of other things.

____

Lance waited for over an hour before he finally accepted his father was not going to show up. Squatting with his head down next to the big gum near the wood chopping blocks he tried to look as if he was not waiting for someone. It had been a long hour. He rehearsed a lot of words and yet, even by the time he had to admit to himself that Pierce was not going to show up, he had no idea what it was he wanted to say to his father. All he knew was that those words would have some finality and that it probably would be the last time he’d see him. He’d reached his decision in the dead of the hot night. Cheryl lay, warm and sweet smelling, gently snoring next to him. In the rooms close to theirs he heard the children shift and move in their sleep. Lance often marveled at houses and how they kept within their walls all the sounds of family life. Dillon called out in his sleep, in anger or fear he couldn’t tell. Lance went and checked on

185 him; marveling as he often did how dear his little face was in sleep. Whatever had disturbed the small boy had passed.

In bed Lance lay with his hands behind his head, eyes straining into the black night, thinking about his own childhood and his parents. He felt he had come a long way and most of the ways he parented his own children were in opposition to how he was brought up. He had realised that his father would never be the father he wanted and thinking about this again he felt overcome by a sense of relief.

“Well, I don’t need him to be a father anymore, even a failed father,” he whispered to himself in the night. Cheryl turned over slowly and for a second he thought he had woken her. The sound of her breathing became regular again. It’s alright he thought I don’t need to put that pressure on him and I don’t need to put that pressure on me. In the dark he thought that his parents had done the best that they could with what they knew: what they knew of life and themselves.

None of it had been perfect. He reflected on his own imperfections and something of a state of forgiveness overcame him and washed away the anger that was only skin deep for most of his life. It was a kind of baptism, a redemption and a place and a time to say from this moment on…

“What’s up love?” Cheryl was awake and holding his hand. The blue grey morning was cool and soft.

186 “Nothing love,” he said quietly, “just go to sleep now.” She rolled near to him and rested her head on his shoulder. As if a switch was turned, he closed his eyes and slept a sleep more restful than any he could recall.

*

19

“I am Madam Toomey- Tomb and I speak to you from the spirit of ages, from the mouth of the ancients and the wisdom from afar.”

The hush in the tent was palpable. People sat silently in metal chairs. Feet that usually shuffled were still, and even the usual crowd noises  coughs and the shifting of material  were absent. The wafts of over-dry canvas, the hint of moisture from the camel pissing outside and the smell of dust, made Lorna think of Egypt and the Middle East. Not that she had ever been there. That was just how she imagined it. She couldn’t recall how she had managed to find herself sitting before this woman who smelt of cheap perfume and sandalwood. She looked past the kohl-blackened eyes, beyond the lines that the black had run into, past the red corners of those eyes and into a place where she recognised herself.

In that place was warmth, being known and feeling safe within that.

187 “There are many things that you are,” said Madam Toomey-Tomb, “and all of them are seeking to unite.” Lorna had a feeling of the ground swelling beneath her and she suddenly felt as if she were sitting on a large breathing mass of flesh.

“There is someone here who wants you to know it will be alright.” The woman brushed a shiny black drift of hair from her face. It fell back into her eyes and she blinked wildly, but held Lorna’s gaze. The heat in the tent intensified. It radiated through a slit in the canvas door and snaked around the feet of the small crowd. Madam Toomey-Tomb took a loud inward breath, a breath full of dense bones, whispering sands and failed potential and then she spoke quietly as if to

Lorna alone.

“It is a place where the water of the earth is held in a stone cup the size of a large elephant.” Lorna, without understanding what was said, nodded. She felt she knew what was being asked of her. Without notice Old Ma Toblin who was sitting up the back, to the left, crashed to the floor in a dead faint. The sound of her ample frame hitting the dust sounded like a muffled kiss. It was the kind of kiss that is deliberate and has behind it reliability. Lorna sat back in her chair trying to avoid the Madam’s gaze but behind her closed lids she saw her eye, like the moon, and was filled with a feeling of being witness to something wild.

Tin Boy came into the tent in a rush of air that made an arrow of coolness in the stifling heat.

188 “Time’s up ladies and gentlemen. Madam Toomey-Tomb is worn out.”

Psycho Mervyn rattled in his wake, staring at the crowd with a mixture of fear and malevolence and added, “Yeah, time’s up Madam’s tired.” He walked with a lovely rhythm, “times up,” he repeated and then suddenly felt unsure. Marge

Toblin and her daughter shuffled Ma out and others began to follow. Outside a camel bellowed.

“You must do something very important.”

Lorna opened her eyes to see Madam Toomey-Tomb standing over her. For a moment Lorna wanted to pull her down and kiss her. Instead she nodded. The

Madam flashed past her in wave of scent.

Tin Boy leant over her and said quietly, “She liked you, you know. So that will cost you $25.”

*

20

Mike spotted Eve as she stood next to the Best Flower Arrangement. The winner, he could see on a small card even from a distance, was Mrs Matilda

Fortune. She had won Best Flower Arrangement for the past twenty-five years

189 and no one was going to pip her at the post now. No one had the guts really, if you didn’t include 1968, when the new schoolteacher blew into town and chose

Lucy Higgin’s lovely mix of nasturtiums. That teacher didn’t see out her three- year contract and was moved on before the next show. People said it was because of Matilda’s influence with the Area Director. No one knew for sure but

Matilda didn’t lose the competition ever again.

After all this time it was odd to meet Eve again, near the smell of dying flowers.

Their aroma made him recall the day of Kelsie’s funeral and the rank smell of dying flowers that lingered in the house for days because neither of them had the strength to change the water in the vases or to throw them out.

“Hello Eve,” he said and she turned quickly, startled. She didn’t smile back at him.

“Hello Mike,” she said nervously, quickly. “What brings you back here after all this time?” She knew it sounded lame.

“I don’t know,” he said rolling the toe of his boot in the dust, “just curious I suppose.” He thought I don’t want a fight. I just want to say something meaningful, make some peace. Instead he said, “Matilda won again, I see.”

“Yes,” said Eve, softening, taking a deeper breath. “Some things never change.”

190 “Kelsie would have been twenty-three next week,” he said and then added,

“seems funny she’s not here. She loved the show.” We used to come here together. A father and his daughter.

“Yes,” said Eve. “She did love the show.”

Suddenly Mike felt tired, as if the weight of all the years came down on him like a force from above, leaden and extreme. “It’s a damn shame Eve,” he said quietly, not even to her really, “a damn shame.” Where is she? I want her back.

Where’s my daughter? Where is she?

“Why’d you come back Mike?” Eve said quietly. “It’s too hard.”

“Don’t know really,” he said. “Sorry. The last thing I want to do is cause you more grief.” I don’t know what to say. I don’t know.

“I grieve every day, Mike,” Eve said. “You can’t add much. I don’t want to see you again though. It’s too hard.”

“I know,” he said scuffing his boot toe again. “I’m sorry. I’ll go. You won’t see me again. Ok.” I loved her you know, I loved her. I loved you too.

He didn’t move. Instead they stood. Both parents. Heads bowed, grieving for their murdered daughter and themselves in front of Matilda Fortune’s drooping

191 flower arrangement, in a dusty tent in a brown grass field in the middle of nowhere.

*

21

The first person Colin bumped into at the show was Wally, the shearer. He couldn’t believe his luck. Of all people. Wally was all smiles and charm.

“Gidday mate,” he said. “How’s it hanging?” Colin could swear Wally knows what he dreamt about even when he knows he can’t possibly. He avoids Wally’s penetrating gaze. It’s a habit of a lifetime.

“Good, Wally,” he said to Wally’s boots which he notices have a bit of chook manure stuck to the toe. “Good.”

“Have a good day, Col,” Wally said. “Don’t do nothin’ I wouldn’t, and if you do, don’t get busted.” Wally gave Colin a lewd wink and jabbed him in the ribs.

Colin blushed and began to sweat. Wally didn’t notice. He had already spotted the beer tent and had other things than Colin’s red neck to notice.

192 “Yeah. See you,” said Colin when Wally is out of earshot, “have a good one too.” That wasn’t too bad he assured himself. He made a mental note not to go straight out, after one of those dreams. Give it a couple of days for the dream to die, he thought.

The feeling of his dream won’t leave him. As he walks he sees Mike with Eve through the flap of the tent doorway where all the flowers are. He can’t believe it. The sound of Kelsie’s voice rages suddenly about him. It is a high squeal like the sound of skidding tyres and he can’t stand it. Can’t stand it. Can’t stand it.

Colin has no idea what is happening to him. He does know that some fissure in the earth has opened up and is attempting to suck him in. It is a cloudless day but things hover above him, around him.

*

22

Bede kept away from the caravans until he was well and truly drunk. Eventually the sight of those colourful lights and the imagined community, ample bosoms and pinkness turning red became irresistible and he thought nothing of consequences. When he knocked on the door, Bev had passed out after too much

193 hash and red wine and Tin Boy and Bearded Pam were onto their second bottle of vodka and their twentieth game of strip poker. Tin Boy was down to his socks, so when he swung the door open Bede came face to face with a half erect penis.

“Ooh,” said Bede, uncharacteristically flippant, “what we got here then?”

Inside the caravan Bearded Pam heard that voice and went rigid. She felt suddenly sober. When she came to the door she looked at Bede who was swaying with a ridiculous smile on his face. He was staring directly at Tin Boy’s groin area. Before their eyes met she saw the beginnings of a bald patch on top of his head. It made her feel tender toward him at first, then it dawned on her slowly how many years had passed since she had his full head of hair in her hands and was screaming “Take me! Take me!” into those younger ears.

“Well Bede McCarthy. What have you got to say for yourself then?” she said as he finally looked up.

Bede dropped the stubbie of beer he was carrying and stared, open mouthed, into the shot of light that sprayed from the caravan. Bearded Pam stood silhouetted, spangles of light fringing her hair and body. Everything shimmered. Then Bede did something even more uncharacteristic; he knelt on the ground before her and began to weep.

194 Still in his socks Tin Boy knew to move back into the caravan and to leave the strange crying man to Bearded Pam. Pam stepped from the caravan like a pop star, slowly, deliberately.

This is perfect she thought nothing could be more perfect than this.

She doesn’t know that Bede has not recognised her. She thinks he is crying because he has.

“Bede,” she says, “It’s alright sweetheart, it’s alright.” He looks up then and stares at her face shrouded in bright light. He knows her now and a flood of relief comes over him in waves.

“I missed you…. missed you,” he sobs into her beard, saliva and snot running from his mouth and nose. She kisses his beery mouth, tastes its sourness, and feels overwhelmed with tenderness. For a minute she knows what it is to be a mother. She feels grateful and saddened. They huddle together in the lines of light that spread in a small arc in front of the row of caravans in the terrible darkness of a moonless night.

*

195 23

“Snap out of it Colin!” Dulce finally screams at Colin. He has been crying for over an hour. They are near the beer tent and everyone who passes looks disparagingly as if Colin or Dulce or both of them have had too much to drink.

One old timer ambles past, a little wobbly on his pins, and says “Its will awl be right in tha’ morning donyouworrybout that.” Colin can’t talk, he is crying so much. Dulce is beginning to become frightened. Maybe he is having a breakdown she thinks. She remembers when she had a breakdown herself. It snuck up on her really. They say that is common. You never know you are having one until either you’ve had it or you are right in it. In her case it was the former; she had felt as though she were quite normal. Of course she wasn’t. That is what Lorna said when she found her crying uncontrollably on the kitchen floor months after Kelsie and that terrible relationship bust up, then her mother dying.

“This is not normal Dulce,” she had said, “something is just not right for you. It will probably pass. But this is not okay for you.” And she wasn’t okay. She was a mess. It had snuck up though and afterwards she thought it had been brewing for years.

It took a few years to recover too. Dulce thought this as she tried to rock Colin in a tight embrace. A part of her wanted to slap his face to make him stop. But she let him cry instead and waited patiently for him to be able to talk, half wondering whether he would ever be able to string two words together again.

196 “You alright now?” Dulce said after the sobbing stopped and Colin was able to get up from the floor.

“Sorry Dulce,” he said, “I don’t know what happened then.” He blew his nose.

“It all came down on top of me. Must have been seeing Eve and Mike together again and those dreams I’ve been having of Kelsie and who murdered her.”

“What?” said Dulce, “Mike’s here?”

“Yes, I just saw him with Eve in the flower tent.” Just then Lorna came rushing toward them.

“Dulce,” she said, “I’ve got to talk to you.” Lorna’s voice was uncharacteristically strident and urgent. “I’ve got to talk to you now.” Dulce patted Colin on the leg.

“You okay now mate?” she asked smiling. “I’ll be back in a minute”. What is wrong with this world she thought suddenly everything is falling apart.

“Oh. Hi Colin,” says Lorna quickly as an afterthought. “Sorry,” she adds when she sees his red eyes. Even though she notices he has been crying she can’t concentrate on him. Her mind is in a whirl.

Dulce moves away and takes Lorna’s arm through hers. “Now,” she says, “what is so bloody urgent you have to pull me away from an emotional emergency?”

197 “It’s the murderer, Dulce,” says Lorna gravely, “Kelsie’s murderer is here.”

“What?” says Dulce. She thinks she hasn’t heard Lorna properly. “What do you mean?”

“I don’t know how,” Lorna began twisting her fingers together. “Maybe it was the Madam in the tent but I just know that the murderer is around. He has come back to see.”

“Lorna,” said Dulce, “have you been drinking again?”

Lorna looks as though she might cry. A deep black cloud hovers like an omen above the small stadium.

“What the hell is that?” she says. Every hair on her body stands on its end. She looks at Lorna and wonders that all the blood has drained from her face. Later, expounding the theory she called the metaphysics of weather, Dulce would say, it was as if the devil himself were about to descend from that cloud.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Colin sitting on a small drum where she left him only moments before. He has begun to cry again. Something strange is happening and all she can do is wait.

198 “Oh dear,” she says.

*

199 PART FOUR.

1986

200 1

I am quieter now. Time has passed. Here it passes differently. Time can be measured by the slant of sunshine through a window. There are many windows. I can think about death now. I am no longer so angry that I have gone from the life that allowed me to touch the ones I love. I am touching them in different ways now. They can hardly discern it, maybe my touch is becoming softer or weaker. I don’t know how long I will remain in this place. I may be here for a long time or soon I may be gone. I am thinking about my life. I am looking after a group of children here – children from two months to ten years old. That’s how old they were when they died. They are happy people. They are watching, like me, to see how things turn out and they are helping those who loved them.

Sometimes they hang around other kids who are in danger. They are all children who have been murdered. Some are still called ‘missing’. It is hardest for those.

I sit with them and watch. I collect their tears in a small bowl and wash their feet with them and brush some of the tear water on their arms to calm them. It works.

There are not many of us to look after the children. Not all of them have a name so you must know them with your senses. It is a specialised job I’ve been told.

They say I’m a natural. Better that than hanging onto the dark clouds that control world affairs. You can be squeezed senseless doing that and end up like a ribbon with all your molecules talking to one another in a row. When a body is found it opens the doors of possibility that may mean resolution. I was fixing a door hinge last night. Someone had done a very dodgy job on that door hinge. I screwed it in and then noticed that the doorway was weakened and that’s why

201 the door wouldn’t open or shut properly. All the moveable bits are brass or gold. They look good but they are not very strong metals. Some people think that doorways are only a figment of our imaginations. What are they meant to do?

Block someone out? What is it to go through? What is it to stand under a portal?

If we were to take all doorways from the earth would there be no welcomes or farewells? No protection? No hoarding? No going through? We would be here already.

Still the children need the doorways. They are like lollies to them. “Where are the doorways?” they squeal with joy. “I’ve found one. I’ve found one. It could be for you.” They are very sweet these children; very sweet and fun loving.

Hang on! There is a doorway for the lovely Gaby. Yes! She is found. Gaby come here love. They have found you. Gaby sits on my knee crying. She is relieved and sad as well. The one who killed her is crying too. He has hidden her for so long now he has almost forgotten he killed her. Her mother doesn’t know he’s the murderer yet. They have had another baby. Gaby has been watching the baby like a hawk. She blows in its ears softly so it cries only when its mother is around. She sings to it to keep it quiet when there is danger. Sometimes she makes the baby disappear altogether. This is Gaby’s special gift. She is a fierce protector.

Don’t cry Gaby it will mean you will go onward now. To see what you will do next. Your mummy is okay. She will be okay and soon she will be safer. He’s

202 going to die soon, you can see that, can’t you? The man who killed you? The bubble of danger will be dispersed. His choice was the wrong one. You know that Gaby. Go off and play now Gaby. It is alright. She is a good girl Gaby. A lovely girl. A very smart girl.

I am following my own line of enquiry about my murderer as well. I watch him every now and then. I have come to understand him more deeply. I am watching the unfolding. It is bigger than just me here even when I am dispersed as a large cloud.

It is bigger than me because it opens a door for all young women murdered like me. It is part of a phenomenon. He isn’t finished yet either. There is much to resolve. There are lots of doorways for him. Luckily it doesn’t touch me much now. I watch my loved ones though. He can still touch them. I guard them like

Gaby does, like a hawk. Unlike her I have sharp talons. I am watching; always watching.

*

2

Colin lies under the full night sky near the rock basin. It is a warm night and he hasn’t bothered to light a fire. The moon begins to rise. It must be near midnight.

The moon is like a swollen and misshapen egg. It is enormous and feels close

203 enough to dwarf him; close enough to do some damage. He imagines that it resonates for him alone; transmits a message to him, scatters cosmic dust and rays on him, bathes him in a way not even he can see. At this moment he is the only person on earth looking at that moon. His eyes and imagination have caught it and held it; kept it still. A boobook calls solemnly in the night air and Colin loses his grip on the moon and it twirls off at an angle, as if the strain of being held has made it go faster, recklessly off course. He thinks then that he could die here this night and it wouldn’t matter. The earth would accept his body. All that he had done would matter little. He thought he would have polluted the earth more than he’d given to it. He felt his insignificance keenly and watched the twirl of stars. He felt distinctly the spherical nature of the planet and himself in place on it, tenaciously hanging to a point that could easily loosen him. He dug his fingers into the baked clay soil and hoped that would be enough to anchor him.

After his breakdown Colin had given up work and concentrated on making himself better. There was a lot to heal. He felt pleased that as a result of his progress, being on his own in nature was an easier thing to bear now. He almost enjoyed his own company. This was a shift from the self-loathing that permeated his life before.

“What makes you so angry?” his therapist had asked. It was a dusty office but the therapist was gentle and had kind eyes.

204 “I am mostly angry at myself,” he had admitted. He’d never said it before although he suspected he had thought it. It was a feeling he couldn’t examine with clarity or even honesty.

“What are you angry about?”

“How I don’t do anything to help myself. How I didn’t help Kelsie.”

“How could have you helped yourself, to begin with?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I could have been bolder in my life.”

“Your life isn’t over yet Colin. What would stop you from being bold now?

What might being bold entail?”

“Taking more risks, swimming late at night, trusting someone with my feelings, being prepared to be misunderstood, accepting things.”

“You could do that, couldn’t you?”

“Yes.”

“And Kelsie? What could you have done for her?”

205 “I could’ve saved her from being murdered. Or found out who murdered her.”

“How would you have done that?”

“I don’t know. I think I know who murdered her. I think I could’ve confronted that person.”

“What has stopped you, do you think?”

“Fear I could be wrong or right.”

“Do you need to do this really? Couldn’t you just tell the police?”

“I have.”

“Nothing happened?”

“Not enough evidence, they said. On any of the suspects.”

“Oh.”

“What do you think you could do then to give yourself some peace? If peace is what you want.”

206 “Yes. Peace. I think I know what I could do. For the peace.”

“Yes?”

“It was just before I cracked up really. It was Lorna who said it. She said some clairvoyant from the show had told her to go to a place where the water of the earth is held in a stone cup. So a few of us went to this place then where Kelsie went once with Dulce. It is an ancient place where the Wiradjuri would go and do secret business. I have asked permission from them to go and camp there. I think that will help.”

“How do you think you’d go with that by yourself then?”

“I must be by myself. I must.”

“Ok. That is good Colin. That is very good.”

“It feels right. I don’t know what will come of it, but it feels right.”

He feels he is speaking with the stars, with himself, with Kelsie and with the spirit of the place. He feels he measures time in a new way. In the morning when he woke, he can’t recall when he’d gone to sleep.

207 *

3

The travelling circus had stopped travelling when they reached Tremley back at the end of 1980. It was not one thing that did it but a series of circumstances that in the end decided them. After the night in the caravan Bearded Pam had moved in with Bede at the pub and the rest of the crew felt like they’d lost a leg. Tin

Boy summed it up by saying, “It’s not that I begrudge Pam any love chance, I just wished she’d found it in a bigger town.” Still the spirit began to reveal itself to Bev again after a long silence and she felt less inclined to leave once she had suffered the mild stroke that made her left eye and the corner of her mouth droop. She reasoned it was hard to do a convincing session when you dribbled so much. They rented a big house – Crazy Cheryl, Tin Boy, Tiny, Brian, Big Ted and Psycho Mervyn – and set about fitting into community life in Tremley.

Given the suspicion they had been under after Kelsie’s death it was surprisingly uncomplicated.

Crazy Cheryl was pulling beers at the pub where Bede worked. Somehow her craziness didn’t stick out so much, especially after happy hour. Tiny and Psycho

Mervyn had volunteered for Meal on Wheels. The clients loved them both and they were fierce advocates for the powerless.

208 “So I says to ‘im, I says listen here you trumped up little shifter, if you so much as even think about charging Betty, I mean Mrs Parker, for mowing the lawn I’ll turn that fuckin’ mower on and run over your fingers and when I’ve finished I’ll do the other fuckin’ hand.”

It was not admirable but sometimes the defenceless need staunch advocates to scare off those who would take advantage. The mere presence of Mervyn and

Tiny meant that complaints about abuse of the elderly and infirm lessened considerably whilst allegations of intimidation and aggression, particularly made by tradesmen, doubled.

Tin Boy, Brian and Big Ted had all been taken on by Lance and were fast gaining a reputation as the gun fencers of the district. They were in high demand.

That left Bev at home with her ever loving spirits and a pack of workers to support her every whim, which were limited but exotic.

“Here Bev, I got you those white feathers from an emu chick that died, “ said

Tin Boy, “What you want ‘em for?”

“Never you mind,” she’d chuckle, “Never you mind.” She’d disappear into her sitting room and shut the door and there would be wild ululating and such a racket it seemed a dozen people were in there having a party.

209 True love had descended upon Bede and Bearded Pam in a way that took

Tremley by force. The intensity of their adoration for each other was infectious.

Several fights had broken out in The Crown and The Royal but The Imperial was uncharacteristically trouble free. Even Old Man Higgins said there was a kind of family feel now that made him feel warm. Pam had smiled while Bede had scowled. But when Bede looked at Pam’s smiling face, he had softened too and things of the past didn’t seem as solid or as important.

“Well the town is having a renewal,” Matilda Fortune was heard to say to Big

Ted, “and it is largely down to what I’ve done for the community over the years.” Matilda had taken to dropping in for a small tipple in the afternoon. The small tipple usually entailed several large scotches and soda. As the afternoon wore on the colour of her drink went from a light pee yellow to deep amber. On one occasion she’d even encouraged a sing-a-long at the old piano that had several keys missing and hadn’t been played since the famous pianist had come to town over a decade ago. They managed a tune of Tie a Yellow Ribbon with

Matilda’s little sausage fingers thumping out a sound that dislodged all the mice nests between the felts and nearly all the dust. That night Matilda had to be driven home by Big Ted and she wasn’t seen in the pub for a while.

“Probably feels a bit ashamed or embarrassed,” conjectured Bede.

“She wasn’t so bad,” said Pam, “I’ve seen you more stinkin’ than that.”

“Maybe it takes a bit more time to get over it once yer hit eighty.”

210 The truth was that Matilda and Big Ted had ended up in an embrace that had reminded her of those heady theosophy days and she’d been too busy for tipples, preferring instead to spend her afternoons languishing in Big Ted’s sweaty armpits after he’d finished the fencing. It was a secret that she would take to her grave. But on more than one occasion that summer she took Big Ted’s face in her hands and said, “I never thought I’d be blessed like this after all this time.”

He would laugh and pull her closer enjoying the feel of her skin, which felt like moss to him. Matilda felt grateful and full of surprise about how much pleasure her body still gave.

The pub becomes the social centre for the old circus crew. Most nights there is laughter spilling from the frosted pink windows. The Imperial had lost its desperate quality and even the dark corners now seemed welcoming. More women came now and even Tony Wiseman had begun to comb his hair and put on a clean shirt.

*

4

Bede did not feel as if he were the same man since the night of the Tremley

Show. Some mysterious force seemed to have rested him in a place he didn’t

211 care to dissect or think about. He was enjoying the moment, he kept saying to himself. He was enjoying the whole thing if he were totally honest. Suddenly he had a partner who was so hot for him he even he blushed when he thought about it, alone, during the day, pouring a beer or wiping the bar top. He ceased to see her beard now and instead saw her lovely eyes and beautiful curves. He had inherited a whole family. Admittedly they were all misfits but he decided that he probably was too. Something of this admission made him feel more relaxed as if he didn’t have to try to keep up anymore. The strain of trying, always trying, he realised, had made him an unsatisfied and angry person. Once that had lifted he felt transformed. But it was a deeper transformation too. He felt this change had a spiritual dimension to it. He felt unalterably moved by the experience.

He didn’t know what kind of man he had been before. He didn’t dare face the thought but there were many things he couldn’t face. He hadn’t been able to save anyone, not even himself until Pam. Some people are so good he thought they could make you feel like a saint too. But it was that night; that night in front of the caravans in the arc of light, the dazzling light, behind the woman who he knew but couldn’t see clearly. It was the aching familiarity of it that encouraged the longing. He felt as though he were falling into some darkness and something, this woman with the spangling hair, had caught him just before he hit the bottom. She caught him by the heel, scratched him and drew blood, but saved him from a worse fate. He could only love her then. She was the only way out or up and he re-emerged from that darkness with the force of a projectile, with the force of all his badness; he was propelled by all his regrets, all his pain, all that

212 he had missed and he was opened up into the light of that arc in the deep shadow of night where no one but this woman was witness.

In the cellar Bede pulled and rolled the kegs into place, the sound of metal on concrete familiar and heartening. He enjoyed the feel of the muscles tightening in his arms and his strong legs bracing with the exertion. He felt keenly alive and as he worked he remembered that morning under the covers with Pam and how he had heard himself cry out once or twice. He had wiped her tears and fetched her tea, all in the blue smoky dusty light of dawn. His life was like a dream and he was rested in it. The curl of sound under the keg echoed.

“Morning tea love,” called Pam from the top of the cellar stairs. “Come on up now.”

He looked up at her and wondered that he always seemed to be looking up at her from a place below. Something caught his chest. He didn’t know how it happened but before he realised it he was on his knees once again weeping like a child. She was forced to descend the stairs, steep ones she didn’t like, and nestled his head in her lap as he howled. Finally he quietened and all that could be heard was the sound of the keg in a little roll, to and fro, over the concrete like the ticking of a different kind of clock.

*

213 5

I have been speaking to a Wiradjuri boy who is here again. He lights me fires and explains the land and the winds. We have a lot in common but he has been on other business for a long while. His mother sometimes comes and sits with us too. She has eyes as deep as pools and can see through anything. She can sing through anything too. The sound of her voice, singing, is like rain on gum leaves.

She can build glass castles with her voice. She knows about death and the consequences of life. For these things the Kooris have powerful assemblies of spirits. Their word is the force behind a sea wave, or the course of a star through the cosmos. Most of us would not even dream of their connectedness.

Still I sit with my friend and his mother and rock a little on my heels as they do, thinking and sometimes dreaming, but mostly being together. They have come to find me, he says, to take me somewhere. It is a preparation. I am waiting for the word. They say nothing at first. It is part of my test. My worthiness. My readiness.

My hair is waving in the wind and through to it’s ends my scalp tingles with stardust. I am at once broad and leaden and I find it hard to lift a finger, even my head. It is a delicious feeling when you let go of the fear. It reminds me of earthly sleep on days when your eyes are too tired even to open when you know they must.

214 There is singing all around now. It is intense and circular. The boy talks to me.

“Some people can’t help but scar the earth with their deeds. It doesn’t matter though as our mother, the Earth, is all-accepting and she takes into her what others can’t carry. The problem is that there must be reciprocation, sometime.

There has to be good talking and there has to be good not talking.”

I nod. I understand what he is saying as if it is being written on my skin, as if the gusts of wind carry the swirling notion of writing. When I look there are no words on my arms. No language to decipher on any surface I can see but I feel the words everywhere, written, written down. They hang in the air. They lay in the leaves of trees; they circle eddies in small rock pools; they trail in the dust behind moving cars.

They are sung on to everything, and me, quietly, intently and I wonder that I have never noticed this before.

“Sistagirl!” He calls as if from afar even when he crouches next to me, “You have come to our place now.”

I know this in every part of me. I am part of the Wiradjuri world now. I am home. I am now camping at one of the many campfires that light the night sky. I am smiling at the stars as if waving. I am seeing the unfolding. I can see what is going to happen. It is written, but it is not written so that it cannot be erased. No one has outlined the words yet. The deed is not done. Not yet.

215 *

6

The writing of a life is not easy. Eve sits at her desk for long stretches and scribbles away. She is trying to write Mike out of that tent, out of that day and out of the town. The memory of his face has unsettled her. It has done something else also. It has reminded her how she has changed and how his menace no longer matters to her as it once had. She can’t believe she was once a person cowed by another’s bad humour and malice. She wonders what she taught her daughter, by example, when she was still alive. She wonders if that might have contributed to her death. She no longer feels guilt having such feelings and thoughts. She is merely curious, exploring. She writes and writes like one possessed. She writes like one who will never show anyone the words she has written.

I dream of escape just like I did when I was young and a new mother, when things got too much, the days too full and time both wide in the middle and endless in drudgery. Mike would come home and yell at me, kick the kids’ toys, complain about the stinking nappies, of being tired and hot and I would say nothing. I would kick him now. I would yell at him and say, “Piss off if you don’t like it.” I wonder why I was so silent. I wonder what I thought I was doing? Who

I was saving? If I had my time over I would be bolder, take less shit. Still I was

216 no different from any other I woman in Tremley at the time. In fact, I was treated better than most. I remember poor Mabe. Pierce used to beat her black and blue.

He shook the baby as well once. That’s when the neighbours rallied and the men confronted him. I can’t believe he had more kids. Good thing he died before he could do the same to those new ones.

Sometimes I feel so angry and at others I just feel tired and sad.

What are you doing? Mother abandoned. Mother lost. Mother mutilated.

Daughter raped and murdered. Wife abandoned and abused. Lover gone and used up. No prospects, no life, just this writing. These words on paper in a room that is silent and dense with the energy of whispered language.

Mum? Are you there?

Yes. I am here.

I am writing now. Writing, writing and when I stop I am dead. So don’t stop.

Don’t stop. I will keep going, keep going, and keep going.

The night before last Eve walked in the moonlight under stars that were bright with the promise of other universes. She walked under the moon in a soft wind that in the end wanted to make her take her clothes off. She left them in a pile on the side of the road like the cattle did their pats, casually let go and walked along for hours, naked, feeling the gentle breeze across her body and the small hairs on her legs and arms like a cool fur cover. She felt herself grow taller in that moonlight, under those stars and the insignificance of what had happened to her in her life was so pronounced then that she could almost feel herself lift off the

217 Earth. She floated back to the road and back to where she left the pile of clothes, went home and slept as if that walking and the sleeping were of the same substance. In the morning she couldn’t tell if she had dreamt the moonlit walk or really done it. Either way she felt dreamy all day as if thinking of a lover.

I have murdered my daughter. I have killed her off in my head just as she was killed by the side of that road all that time ago. The grass has grown wildly in that spot now. Maybe her blood was good fertiliser. Everywhere up and down that road are small crosses. Crosses on pieces of wood, crosses nailed to trees sometimes one sometimes a couple. Some have flowers. Some are fresh little posies others are plastic. Kelsie has tall grass as her cross. Once we who cared about her have gone, that spot will be forgotten. Someone will walk there, right over it and maybe feel the stirring of something but not know what. They would miss the eddy of Kelsie’s leaving this world.

Eve tried not to be angry, but she knew someone knew more about Kelsie’s death than they were letting on. Even though she had recovered in some ways she still could not reconcile to having a murdered daughter and of not knowing what had happened to her. All she remembers is Kelsie’s smaller self and the burnt toast and cold tea being brought to her on Mother’s Day and now all she does is cry. The birthdays and the anniversary of her death (she had to decide whether to mark it on the day she went missing or the day she was found and in the end marked it twice and then with every day inbetween as well) are hardest but so too is Christmas. The remembering and the trying not to remember took

218 up a lot of her time. Then some nights she lies awake and really tried to solve

Kelsie’s murder. She has whittled her list of suspects over the years down to seven; she knows all except one, the wild card of the complete stranger. On the nights she obsesses, she goes through each suspect and tries to imagine whether they fit the role better than another. She imagines them in all kind of ways; in the act of murdering and extreme violence, in the act of raping and depravity and finally she imagines them full of remorse and contrition. She finds it odd, but it seems to be this latter activity that tells her most about the men and their potential capabilities. She used to seek these men out in the community. To see if she could trip them up in anyway make them nervous and, she imagined, guilty. In the end, the cost on her nerves meant that she couldn’t actively continue this practice even though she still from time to time came across them; in the supermarket or at the petrol station, in the pub and sometimes at community events. It was an odd feeling to think you could be sharing your community life with the same person who had murdered your daughter, but she knew, with the evidence of crime statistics, that Kelsie’s murderer was more likely to have known her than not.

At the cemetery where she goes on those anniversaries of Kelsie’s, she takes a small stool so she can stay as long as she wants without getting too stiff from kneeling or sitting. In the earlier days someone came with her but over the years people forgot and in the end she preferred to go alone. She doesn’t blame people for forgetting even though it makes her feel lonely.

219 She sits near Kelsie’s headstone and talks to her. Kelsie’s grave is in the new section but Eve knows every newly-turned-over sod in that place and who lies beneath as well as their stories. She walks around the large square like an historian and knows all the sections of the cemetery; where the children all died in the influenza epidemic and before that whole families, of mothers and babies as the result of accident, fire, drought, disease and malnutrition. There is an unmarked section for the Aboriginal and the Chinese, but she knows where they are and she talks to them as she believes they are the holders of a more arcane knowledge about death and life, about passing spirits and restless souls. Eve feels that life has given her no such comfort and Kelsie’s death has given her less. She conjectures it is because she has not been able to release her need of

Kelsie. The priest spoke about that at the end of the funeral service. She said,

“The things we need of her must now find another expression, another way of being met. Help us Lord, to find that way.” Eve knew she had not found it.

She kneels at the grave and says, “I’ll keep fighting Kelsie. I’ll keep fighting until someone is caught and charged.” It is a hollow promise she knows but she feels she has to say something like this rather than just letting her go and maybe saying instead, “Oh well. No one knows who murdered you and now time has passed, no one ever will so, how about we call it a day.” It just isn’t feasible for her to even think this. Her visits give Eve strength and she feels she owes it to

Kelsie to come.

220 Occasionally someone will ask how many years it has been since Kelsie’s death and might even suggest that its time for Eve to move on. “Time heals all wounds,” they say. But Eve knows this is a lie, a myth of the most damaging kind. The pain is still as real as it was the day she discovered what had happened to Kelsie. To these people she says things like, “I still have a daughter murdered,

I still have a shattered heart, there are still unanswered questions,” but when she does say something like this they fall silent and retreat and the loneliness she feels intensifies. She notices that they don’t talk to her after that, ever again.

Sometimes that is a blessing but mostly she feels it is another act of violence against her.

She remembers the day they took her and Mike out to the spot where they found her body. She couldn’t recall how they got there or who let them go there, although she remembers Mike arguing and grabbing his keys. When they arrived there were police tapes all around, strung from tree trunks and bushes. In the bright light it looked festive. The sun caught the plastic tape in places and made it sparkle. There were cars, many of them by then and people, many of them too, mostly strangers. The days of waiting to hear were terribly hard and she and

Mike were exhausted; no long clinging together by then but drifting apart in their own intense emotions, loss and blame. Eve remembered opening the car door and running, running to where she thought Kelsie’s body lay. All she remember later was the stench and then the smell of the after shave of the big burly policemen who caught her and held her saying over and over, “You don’t need to see her like this. You don’t need to see her like this.” Behind his protective

221 arms were other voices, less soothing ones. “Get them out of here,” and “Who brought them here?” and “Get them away. Now.” They were a chorus of rough shouting and wild assertion that came back into her head on those nights when she couldn’t sleep. She had forgotten that everyone, even her and Mike at that stage, were still suspect. No one, only the spent, mangled mess of Kelsie’s body, was without motive. Those rough voices still haunt her. Sometimes she tangles the memory of them with the noise she imagines Kelsie’s murderer must have made before he killed her. It is a similar kind of violence to her then and the act of her murder and the discovery of her body meld into one experience, imagined and real.

*

7

Dulce had undergone a transition. She stood a little taller when her friends assured her they were shrinking, her clothes flowed about her in the same way but she felt more comely if that was the right word. She felt her hips move in a more sensuous way. She felt different in the world but couldn’t really attribute this difference to any one thing in particular. A one night stand in the city had certainly helped, but she had also taken up skinny dipping in the big dam of an evening and she thought some association with the starlight reflected on the water surface, and how the moon shone on the closed waterlily bulbs, was responsible for her rejuvenation. It was an elixir of sorts. She had ceased to care

222 about all the little things that seemed to have burdened her. Dulce was now unfettered, unleashed, adrift in the most delicious way. It was this stuff, the woman untamed, that had, in the past, led to new conservatism: covered clothing and talk of the importance of morals and marriage. Dulce recognised that there was nothing more dangerous than a wise, older woman, single, outspoken, wild and still in her sexual prime. She knew she was considered a deadly threat to society and she was unashamedly unrepentant about it, showing no inclination to rein herself in as her mother was always fond of saying. Rein yourself in girl, she would say, people will notice. Now she didn’t mind being noticed or rather she didn’t mind being noticed a little and by some.

After the debacle of the festival evening Dulce had decided to set up an association of authors and poets. The idea had generated some interest in

Tremley especially now that the old circus crew was well established in the town. The group still pulled in, either by past association or by some other magic, a mixture of the brilliant, down-trodden and famous; just the right combination to keep a thriving creative community well fed.

The Imperial now became the nexus of community life. Dulce found herself dropping in there often and staying longer. The stories of others had always held a fascination but somehow this environment induced disclosures of the most astounding nature. Pam, Bev and Dulce had taken to sitting on the verandah discussing their lives. Sometimes the others would join them: Dora, Lorna and

223 Eve. Bede called it ‘the chook club’ until they howled him down and Pam told him off.

“I knew when I came here,” said Bev one day on the verandah of the pub, “that the spirit would come and that there was someone here; strong, pulling those spirits in.” She lifted her glass and eyed Dulce squarely, “and when I saw you I knew who it was.”

“Oh, I don’t know about pulling in anything Bev,” said Dulce with a wry smile as she took a sip of her beer. “I think just managing one foot in front of the other is about as much as I can handle these days.”

“No,” said Pam quietly, “Bev’s right. You bring and hold things together

Dulce.”

“Well it’s been much easier here since you mob arrived that’s for sure,” replied

Dulce, “at least I don’t stick out as much as I used to.” They all laughed. It was true. Dulce’s dress and appearance faded in comparison to Pam’s beard and

Bev’s mauve hair and a face that sagged on one side. “And,” Dulce added, “there are more of us to carry the load. A place like this needs strong women.”

“Maybe it is around the other way,” offered Bev. “Maybe strong women need a place like this.”

224 “Over time,” said Pam as she stared into the horizon and frowned, “I have watched a lot of very intelligent women make slaves and martyrs of themselves to gain approval from society.”

Dulce took a swig of her drink. “Yes,” she said, “I’ve seen that too. I have even done it myself. Moving here woke me up a bit. After a while some of us come through and resolve things. We decide I’m not going to be that doormat anymore. I am not going to do someone else’s emotional work for them anymore. Something snaps then. I think that kind of defiance is what sees women murdered. There is nothing more confronting than a woman who no longer operates by the rules.”

“Having a beard has always meant I have been outside those rules,” said Pam as she drained her glass, “although some women used to ask why don’t you just shave it off. They were quite aggressive. I did, when I was younger, just like I used to shave my underarms and legs. Now I don’t bother with any of it. It seems a small thing but the consequences are huge.”

“I think in some way decisions like that have resonance,” said Dulce. “It’s like living as a single woman. There is always suspicion and danger, perhaps even pity, when your name is mentioned. There are some worlds you are not part of; aren’t even allowed to enter. Couples see you as a threat. Then men flirt, the women worry or vice versa. What you see then is another world. It is the world of the dispossessed and those on the margins of society. You see the centre for

225 what it is because you can’t see things clearly when you are in it can you?”

Dulce’s question hung in the air.

“You see things in a very different light, don’t you Dulce?” Bev had been observing her closely. Dulce turned to face Bev and held her gaze with some intensity. Bev and Pam were used to this intensity. In some company it would make people squirm.

“But do I see clearly enough? That is the real question.”

The three of them took in the horizon again and this time all of them were somewhere else.

*

8

Far up in the powder blue sky the little swifts, like leaves in a sudden squall, showed the bees around the hives how impossible it was to get home. Dora and

Lorna worked in hot bee suits to right the wrong. The hives had dislodged in yesterday’s storm and now the bees from a few hives couldn’t get in or out. The bees that were out were preparing to swarm and they clung to the side of the hive like a slow moving blanket threatening to slip off.

226 “Shit, another one just got me,” said Dora standing up quickly. She was still unused to this bee business, having taken it on under Lorna’s urging because Eve just wasn’t interested anymore.

After a while Lorna stood up and asked “You okay?”

Dora breathed in and out, slowly and deeply. The pain of the sting surged through her and she wanted to scream. She held the scream in, concentrating instead on the spreading warmth as the blood flowed to the sting site and began its build up. She realised she’d be up again all night with the buzzing sound in her ears and the smell of blossom and nectar around her like a gossamer cloak.

“Yes,” she said finally, “I am okay.”

Dora watched her carefully, “We can have a break anytime you know.”

“I know,” she said trying the wipe the sweat from her eyebrow, “really I am okay. I’ll tell you when I’m not.”

“Look here,” motioned Lorna, clumsy in her gloves. “Look, here’s the brood.”

227 Dora peered at the frame that was covered in dancing bees. She saw the small brown mounds, like those you’d imagine on another planet, each containing a bee parcel ready, when the time was right, to post itself into the world.

“In the bee world,” said Lorna, “everything relies on messages.” She brushed her glove gently over the mounds to have a clearer look. A small eddy of bees spun into the air then resettled, dancing in every direction over the mounds.

“You can hear them sometimes; piping or quacking. From this the other bees can tell what kind of plant or what type of flower has been found, how far away it is and in what direction. All this just by their dance and how they talk to one another.”

Dora peered at the bees on the comb more closely and tried to listen to the individual sound that made the cacophony around them. Suddenly all the noise became a chorus to her. “It’s just marvellous isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Lorna straightened up slowly rubbing the small of her back gingerly,

“and even as I get old I never tire from the wonder of it. Every year it is different and every year there is more to learn. There is more to learn about how to listen.

I suspect that, as it is with the bees, so it is in life also. We all need to develop an ability to listen to each other.” Lorna paused and looked to the broad blue sky, “I think we need to listen to nature more too. Sometimes I wonder if they aren’t the same thing.”

228 They worked steadily under the hot sun; slowly, rhythmically and in harmony with the industrious bees. The intensified heat signaled weather change and the sun was obscured behind a dense layer of cloud.

“Time to finish up I think, Dora,” said Lorna, straining and looking toward the sky, “This weather is going to make them cross and the ones that are away will come home soon. Then we’ll have more than we need to deal with.”

“Well, we have more than enough to extract anyway. Best to leave some for them.”

Slowly they restacked the supers and the brood chambers and headed with their wheelbarrows full of honey back to the shed.

“What do you think your life has been like so far?” Lorna asked as she looked up from capping the honeycomb. The knife slipped over the comb peeling back a skin that revealed liquid amber.

“Well,” said Dora, “I suppose after Vern died it took me some time to realise I had a life of my own.” She opened the tap on the honey tank and watched it drop onto the muslin that covered the strainer. “I’d have to admit there is some skill in leading a good life. By ‘good’, I mean worthwhile and something that makes you happy.”

229 She turned the tap off. “I’m not sure I have mastered it yet, but what I do know is that being on your own there are things you need to watch for, pitfalls that have to be avoided.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, I think you have to watch three things. The first is that you don’t waste your time thinking you shouldn’t be single and on your own. I’ve discovered there are lots of ways to love things and people and to not be lonely. The second is never drink more than a three glasses of liquor a day and definitely stop after you’ve had your dinner. And the last one is don’t be afraid of taking risks because we have a natural tendency, I think, as we age, to go inward. I favour more of a regular dance with my dark side not the long embrace.” Lorna laughed.

“What about you, since you asked? What kind of life do you think you’ve had so far?”

Lorna’s face crumpled and she looked down. “I don’t know that I’ve had any kind of life that I expected to have.”

“What did you expect?”

230 “I don’t know what I expected, but not this life. That’s not to say I don’t like my life. Mostly I do. It is just that I expected life to take me in different directions and different places.”

“What about love then?”

Lorna blushed deeply.

“I have loved,” she said, “There was one person I loved so deeply and so completely I could never love anyone else like that again.”

“Lorna,” said Dora, tears springing to her eyes, “You’ve never told me this before.”

“No.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Lorna put the capping knife down and swung the frame into the extractor. “No,” she said finally, “I don’t think I do.” Her admission spun like those highflying swifts in dizzy circles about the shed.

Dora pulled the honey tap on again. She glanced at Lorna whose head was downcast and whose face was red, red, red.

231 “No worries then,” she said into that stiff air. Lorna looked up shyly. Then they both started to laugh.

*

9

Things have taken a turn for the worse. The wind is up and it is so loud we can’t hear the singing anymore. I have been waiting and waiting but there is nothing known and now watching him I see he moves along the road toward the town.

He is coming back again after being away for some time. He has mischief and dark deeds on his mind. I can see his brain with a small storm cloud at the front.

There is no light in that brain. It is so bruised it is almost black. There is darkness in him. I am full of foreboding. I tingle with what is about to happen and I am helpless to change it. I am calling the weather in, calling a big storm, calling all the winds and rain. I am hoping with all these factors something may alter the course of things. I am hoping. I see the old Wiradjuri woman singing, singing but her voice is unheard above the cacophony. It is as if she is merely mouthing the words, yet I know she is singing from her heart; singing from the depth of a profound wisdom. We are working together, in different paradigms but we have the same result in mind; we want the same thing; harmony.

232 I am shaking all over. I am calling, calling, calling. I am trying to warn the girl about what is about to happen to her. She swipes her ear, as if I am an annoying bee. She cannot recognise danger and yet every hackle on her neck is raised.

Danger is still an excitement for her. It is like that when you are younger; before you know. Before you know just how tenuously we are linked to the earth. Before you know just how many times you have walked close to death and not known it.

Before you know bad things happen to good people as well. If everyone could see that probably we would never move anywhere. It surprised me when they gave me an account of my life in that way. It was lucky I lasted as long as I did really.

I am whispering now to see if that might not work on her deeper consciousness.

It takes more energy though and I tire easily now. I am also noticing I am beginning to disappear; not all at once but in some trick of light I look down and see right through my hands and arms. I feel I am no longer my defined self. I am dispersing into something else. It can be quite frightening. When it gets too frightening, a calm that I have not felt before descends and I am no longer that frightened self. I become, instead, one with an intensely still centre. It is a centre that is not only flowing and warm it is a centre of steel as well. If it is true that the spider’s web is the strongest known substance on earth, then this centre is the strongest known in the entire universe. That is a big call from where I sit.

I am back to my whispering. She has finally sensed something. Maybe this outcome will alter. Maybe she is wise to what it not yet written only pencilled in.

233 Maybe she will be alright. In the end she will be alright. All of the girls and women will be alright.

*

10

“This night is thick with happening,” said Bev languidly, as she spoke a space about two feet above everyone heads. “Yes,” she said, “something is on the boil; something is about to happen, and they’re not happy about it.”

“Who isn’t happy?” asked Bede. Publicly he didn’t try to hide his scepticism of what he referred to as Bev’s “oddity,” but Pam knew that his display of scepticism signalled a deeper fear that what Bev saw and knew had substance. It had implications after all.

“Why the spirits, of course, Bede,” she stared at him, “Who else?”

“Oooooooh,” Bede said poking fun, looking to the others to join in.

“Cut it out Bede,” said Tiny with gravity. “There’s things you can’t know about; we can’t know about. It is women’s business and you should show more

234 respect.” Tiny was not one for many words so when he did speak it had great impact. Bede scowled and drank his beer.

“There’s men that have the sight but I’ve never met one,” said Big Ted. “Me mum used to tell me about ‘em. Used to run in our family too.” He looked up defiantly, and then away, concentrating on the point in space where Bev was now peering, her head cocked on an angle.

Lorna walked in the bar door along a streak of late sunshine that froze the dust motes in mid air. “Afternoon everyone,” she said, “How are we all?”

“Bev thinks something’s up,” said Dulce, “Bede thinks she full of it, Tiny’s a proper gentleman and Big Ted is about to have a vision. So, all in all, we’re all good. How about you?”

“Ah, I don’t think it’s complete crap,” said Bede as he got up and headed behind the bar to pour them more drinks, “It’s just that I’m a born thinker.”

“Shit! I didn’t know we had an intellectual among us!” said Tin Boy, his face flushed and his cheeks ruddy.

“There’s big trouble about to hit I tell you,” said Bev as she began to shake. Pam held her hands quickly in her own.

235 “This blessed sight,” Pam said furiously, “I hate what it does to you sometimes

Bev.”

Bev smiled weakly.

“Don’t worry love,” she said, “It’s never given to anyone who can’t handle it.

It’s just that sometimes when they all talk at once they jangle my nerves and then that starts me feeling anxious. There’s one that’s been calling for days. Thank

God she started whispering at last. She’s about to pass over they say.”

Dulce glanced at Lorna.

“Does that one have a name?” asked Dulce as nonchalantly as she could.

“Yes Dulce,” said Bev without looking at her. “It is Eve’s girl.”

Lorna laughed. It was as she suspected all along.

“Has she been there long talking to you Bev?” asked Dulce, trying to hide her delight.

“No,” said Bev, “only since yesterday. She knows what’s up and she’s trying to let someone know; except they aren’t listening. And no wonder! There’s such a noisy mess up there directly.”

236 “It’s not any of us she’s trying to talk to is it?” asked Lorna suddenly.

“Now, don’t you think I would’ve told you that if it was. I wasn’t born yesterday you know.”

“Don’t get upset,” Pam said to Bev, “they are only trying to find out.”

“Sorry Lorna,” said Bev contritely, “I didn’t mean to be angry. It’s just that they are giving me such a pain in the head. I reckon I’ve got to go and lie down.” She got up, a little unsteady on her feet and shuffled off. She turned to face them as she stood at the base of the stairs.

“Lorna and Dulce,” she said gravely, “tell Eve not to worry about that girl. She’s fine. She’s learnt a lot and now she’s going on. It is the best thing. Nothing worse than when they get locked into here.”

*

11

He picked her out after only a day. She was like the other one; pretty with a sparkle in her eye and a skip in her step. Just what he liked. Then he watched and waited.

237 It didn’t take long, in the end, to get her on her own, out of the town and out of the vision of those who knew and cared for her. Perhaps one or two had seen him but if they had they would’ve seen a well-dressed man, obviously middle class, no distinguishable features, with the affable air of one who was just passing through, and thought nothing more of it. They might have identified his car even though that was nothing of note, just one of those city driven four wheel drives, with too clean tyres.

He’d waited outside the party she had been to with her schoolmates and saw her walking along, at first with a friend and then, with a wave goodbye, on her own.

He knew where she lived. It was a long walk. He was lucky. She was a bit drunk.

She was happy to have just finished school and her future stretched ahead of her as long and as promising as that road, and the walk was a lovely one in the warm moonlit night. She carried her shoes in her left hand. They were new, high heeled sling backs in a ritzy patent green, shoes she had bugged her mother about for weeks, tried on with her friends, agonised over, wondering whether they would go with the dress and whether they were what her mum would consider a sensible buy. In the end she had bought them even though she wasn’t sure. On the night, they had given her blisters even though everyone commented on them when they were on her feet, and she wondered as she walked whether she’d ever wear them again. “Probably not,” she said to herself out loud as she walked. Realising how loud she sounded in the darkness, she giggled.

238 The car lights were not a concern at first. Lots of cars travelled that road at night.

She tried to walk far off the side of the road. She did feel a little nervous and something told her to remain unseen. After a while that feeling went too and by then she realised the lights were moving slowly behind her to the side.

“Do you need a lift?” The voice was cultured, careful, the face kind, fatherly.

“Really I have a daughter your age and I wouldn’t like to see her walking alone on this road at this time of night. Hop in and I’ll give you a lift home.” It was as if he knew she didn’t live far away, or something about his familiarity or her tiredness, or the alcohol wearing off, that intensified her fatigue and made her think of sleep in her own bed.

She walked toward the open car door and got in smiling. “Thankyou, it is just up the road.”

The car disappeared into the blackness. After a while the crickets began to chirp in the spot she’d left, the high moon pulsed slowly and the sound of a slight breeze in the new green shoots of the gum trees was all that could be heard.

It was as if nothing had happened.

*

239 12

I am speaking this as I disappear and by the time I finish I will have vanished altogether. It has been happening for some time. All this. I wonder why, but then to wonder why is to not accept that some men hate women. Or maybe some kinds of men hate some kinds of women. The girl sits with me now even though I am as thin as vapour. They haven’t found her yet, even though she threw her green shoes out when he wasn’t looking. She realised that things were wrong almost straight away. It was the smell of him that warned her first. It was too late by then though. The car was hurtling through space and the devil was driving and she knew it had been coming, this moment, without understanding what it was or why.

Don’t cry Olivia. It will be all right. They’ll find you soon.

Poor dear. She is inconsolable.

I am waiting to hand her care to another one who has just been found. She will know how to help. She was found after some time and knows what the waiting is like.

What? She’s here now? Good.

I am thinning again. It almost hurts. I am going now. I am going to huger landscapes. I am there.

Oh.

*

240 Representation of violence against women in Thea Astley’s

Drylands and Dorothy Hewett’s strategy of not knowing in

Neap Tide.

241 1. Introduction

In an age of brutal indifference artists are the creators and guardians of freedom through

their idiosyncratic dissent. 1 Mario Vargas Llosa.

This essay examines the work of Thea Astley and Dorothy Hewett not simply as writers contributing to a tradition of Australian literature, or even as authors who use their fictional voices as a way of examining issues they wish to draw attention to in Australian cultural life, but as public intellectuals who offer explicit critiques of masculinist culture in Australian national identity. I will as a consequence focus on the way they both engage with representations of violence against women, and how this violence works to underpin the masculinist myth of mateship. Both Astley and Hewett focus on rural communities and the lives lived within these communities and in this sense their preoccupation allowed them to work against the operations of the mateship mythology to reveal a more sinister under-belly of Australian culture. Their critique of Australian masculinist culture also works at the level of form where both writers subvert the idea of the novel for political as well as aesthetic purposes.

I will argue that writers who see themselves and who operate as public intellectuals have a great capacity to resist a form of realism that maintains a

1 Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa is cited by Hewett in a transcript of the Colin Simpson lecture that she gave for the Australian Society of Authors at the Mitchell Library in Sydney. (1998,45)

242 masculinist power structure and that this then positions them within an artistic framework in the context of political experimentation. Of course the use of such a term is problematic. Just how writers can be considered or formed as public intellectuals is a point of interpretation that cannot be neutral or objective and consideration of this is beyond the scope of this essay. By public intellectual I mean that through their work these writers embrace an oppositional critique of those established norms in literature specifically and society in general in a way that engages and promotes debate with those both within and outside the academy.2 Writers who act as public intellectuals engage with public discourse at the level of form in their own literary works. They engage with the public in two major ways. Firstly their works of fiction are typically addressed to a general public rather than a specialised audience (even though this ‘general public’ may be a fairly restricted body of middle class readers of literary fiction).

Secondly the intellectual labour which the craft of fiction involves is the area of expertise specific to writers and those who operate as public intellectuals demonstrate at the level of literary form a critique of the relationship between aesthetics and politics, rather than an unreflective deployment of this relationship in the service of the status quo. More specifically when I talk about Hewett and

Astley as feminist public intellectuals (acknowledging their position as oppositional) they also have an understanding of the violence which representational language can perform. The last novels that Astley and Hewett wrote make strong and lasting statements about the state of Australian culture. In

2 Paul Dawson (2005) provides a comprehensive account of the current debate about public intellectuals in the Australian context in his chapter “What is a literary intellectual?” (pp.180- 204).

243 effect these novels are their final words on issues that preoccupied them for their entire careers.

In the Colin Simpson lecture that she gave for the Australian Society of Authors at the Mitchell Library in Sydney, March 1998, Dorothy Hewett explained that she liked Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa’s idea that “artists are the creators and guardians of freedom through their idiosyncratic dissent.” His term

‘idiosyncratic dissent’ particularly spoke to her.

It means I suppose that we are mavericks. We don’t easily join political

parties, or toe any political line, but we have always been, by

temperament and trade idiosyncratic dissenters, and in this age of brutal

indifference we must not only be the chroniclers but the conscience of

our country. We must never turn our backs, we must never allow

ourselves to be silenced. (Hewett, 1998,45).

Similarly in an interview with Jennifer Ellison entitled In a Decade of Minorities

(1989), Thea Astley was asked whether she thought writers had a role in helping society to evaluate itself. Astley replied in the following way:

Yes I do. They’re always talking about big themes. I’m not sure what

they are, because, you see, in those stories Olga Masters has touched on

one of the big themes of this decade, of women’s issues, without for one

moment sounding off and sounding like a strident feminist at all. She’s

merely telling the stories, and their brutality is absolutely entrancing….I

can’t imagine a man on a plane being seen dead reading The Home Girls,

unless he happened to be an academic who’s giving a paper on it. And

that’s not a criticism of Olga Masters; that’s a criticism of some constant

244 in our society which no one is ever going to change (Astley quoted in

Ellison, 1989, pp.191-192).

It is obvious that both Hewett and Astley saw what they did as novelists as integral to effecting change and promoting debate and that they consequently operated on a conscious level as public intellectuals.

The methodology I use in this essay is framed by the work of Susan Lever from her book, Real Relations: The Feminist Politics of Form in Australian

Literature, in which she proposes that ‘writing and reading lie at the heart of feminism; they are the means by which women can explore and communicate the deepest aspects of their condition’ (2000,132). Lever positions her argument within both a historical and a theoretical framework of Australian literature from the time of white settlement, considering various contemporary Australian women writers who have experimented with fiction under the influence of feminist theory, and discussing some ways that conscious feminism has emerged in Australian women’s writing since the 1970s. She contends that Australian women writers born after the Second World War display a particular self- consciousness in their willingness to engage with feminist theory and politics; most are middle class, highly educated and have made intellectual commitments to feminism. She cites writers such as Janine Burke, Marion Campbell, Mary

Fallon, Beverly Farmer, Kate Grenville, Amanda Lohrey, Drusilla Modjeska and

Finola Moorhead (134).

245 Hewett and Astley are absent from the list of writers which Lever insists must be included as contributing to this emergent engagement with feminism. Apart from the fact that her study cannot presume to examine every Australian woman writer, the lack of focus on writers such as Astley and Hewett indicates that the generation of Australian women writers that followed these two was more overt about their association with feminism and perhaps has a less ambivalent relationship to it than they did.

Nonetheless both Astley and Hewett have contributed an enormous amount to the Australian literary landscape and have done so largely by examining unconventional and sometimes contentious aspects of Australian society. Astley carved a forty year career in writing from a pre-feminist Australia when women’s voices were under-appreciated to publish sixteen books and become the only novelist in Australia to have won the Miles Franklin Award four times.

Kerryn Goldsworthy has suggested that Astley’s body of work adds up to a

“protracted study in the way violence and tragedy can flower extravagantly from the withered seed of malice and resentment and that the perps [when referring to her last novel Drylands] are all her usual suspects; racists, developers, hypocritical gung-ho civic do-gooders, and assorted unreconstructed male- supremacist swine”. (2004,79)

Hewett’s career spanned sixty years with some arguing that she belonged to more than one generation of Australian writers (Moore, 2002,15) and she was a published poet playwright, novelist, memoirist, short story writer and public

246 commentator. Nicole Moore suggests that Hewett’s “enormous body of work transits some of the great cultural and political shifts of the twentieth century.

Inspirational in her ability to shrug off some of the most burdensome claustrophobia of Australian cultural life…she carved out a place for a woman writer to be at once intensely confessional and publicly political” which Moore suggest was “a new mode” at the time. (Moore, 2002,17)

I believe that both Astley and Hewett could be included in Lever’s framework because of the great risks they take in both the form and content of their work.

The time during which they were both writing (1940 –1998) has been a time of enormous change, transformation and debate. An aspect of Lever’s argument is that since the 1970s post-structuralist theory and postmodernist literary styles have challenged realism in the novel, and that as a result Australian women writers have experimented with form in a variety of ways, and attempted to find new ways to express a feminist sensibility (132). Lever suggests that a feminist writer not only challenges the world represented in fiction, but also the means of the expression in the world. She adds that this theoretical idea allies artistic experiment with radical politics and that it is this political aesthetic that encourages writers to take risks, to seek to express the unspoken and interior aspects of women’s experience and to find new literary forms. (8) While it is generally accepted that many women have been excluded from the nationalist canon, Lever also suggest that this exclusion led critics to find new ways to read women’s writing. (8-9) Lever suggests that the contemporary writer who engages with feminism faces considerable challenges because if she disrupts

247 fictional conventions she must deal with the risk that her text might not be recognisable as other women’s life experience and that her readership will in turn be reduced to those who share similar concerns (134). Although Astley and

Hewett may not have viewed themselves specifically as feminist writers they did take risks that can only be considered political when revealing the interior lives of their female characters and it is important then, I believe, to find new ways of reading their work. My argument is that the representation of violence against women and women’s reactions and responses to this violence in Astley’s

Drylands and Hewett’s Neap Tide, is a means of empowering women to explore and communicate the deepest aspects of their condition. My essay examines how

Thea Astley and Dorothy Hewett employ women’s voices in their novels

Drylands and Neap Tide to elucidate women’s experience of isolation, grief and violence within the context of the celebrated but dysfunctional bush myth which underpins Australian national identity and Australian literature. I examine how they critique, challenge and in some cases undermine or subvert this myth.

Important to their work is not simply the representation of violence, where violence is portrayed and represented as real, but the narrative strategies employed to interrogate how this violence has traditionally been represented in

Australian bush narratives. As a result of this I will also observe various narrative devices employed by the authors such as narrative time, characterization, dialogue, shifting points of view or focalization as well as a thematic analysis of the books to understand the writers conscious use of form to uncover how they use literary techniques that engage with their concerns. I suggest that Thea Astley and Dorothy Hewett disrupt the notion of the traditional

248 novel and that this in itself is an act of exploration and engagement with the nexus of literary theory. Their work negotiates some very difficult questions of what it means to have a female voice and how to write about the lives of women.

Thea Astley once commented that after a dozen or so novels she sometimes thought she had written the same book over and over 3. Sue Kossew, in her article 'The Voice of the Times': Fin-de- Siecle and the Voice of Doom in Thea

Astley's Drylands (2000), has commented Astley’s preoccupations “with exposing the subterranean violence in country towns that underpins the notions of mateship, rural values and collective enterprise encapsulated in myths of the bush” (182) are very evident throughout her work, but they are particularly evident in her last novel Drylands (1999).

The landscapes and social attitudes that predominate in Astley’s work also appear in Dorothy Hewett’s last novel Neap Tide (1999). If writers are the people who reflect a culture back to itself then I would suggest the work of

Astley and Hewett reflects some disturbing societal trends. Yet Hewett and

Astley have attracted mixed critical attention and comment on each writers work has often thought to be overshadowed by commentary on respectively her flamboyant life or frame 4 or irascible personalities 5.

3 Cited in a review of Peter Carey’s Ned Kelly by Robert Ross (2001) Heroic Underdog Down Under, World and I, 16.6, June 2001: p251. 4 Lawrence Bourke (cited in Bennett, 1995) states that ‘many commentators who argue that earlier Hewett criticism is marred by what Helen van der Poorten calls ‘trial by biography’ accuse their predecessors en masse of linking Hewett’s physical appearance with the concerns of her writing’ (246). He says he can find only one ‘serious critic’ who does so. (247) Brian Kiernan whom when talking about The Chapel Perilous and the connection between the writer and the play, writes about ‘the glamorous blonde with the wistful eyes and wilful mouth who looks the perfect model for Sally Banner of the play.’ (cited in Bennett, 1995, p.247) This was

249 If Sue Kossew’s study of the violence of representation in her book Writing woman, writing place: contemporary Australian and South African fiction

(2004) is situated on the ‘fault line’ of Susan Sheridan’s concerns (1), where tensions and collusion between ‘sex’, ‘race’, and ‘nation’ become visible – then my work intends to examine the fissure created by this fault line. Both Astley and Hewett explore the writer’s relationships to place, the environment, and how a violent response to Indigenous peoples’ subjectivity is constructed. Where

Kossew’s work describes and analyses some contemporary responses to women’s writing – my work focuses on gender relations and the kinds of violence and grief experienced by women in these relatively contemporary novels from a feminist perspective. Whilst acknowledging Kossew’s argument that these women writers texts examine current desires and anxieties, I also want to look more closely at the themes of violence, grief and the violence of representational practice in the context of revising history and interrogating the

‘grand male narrative’. Both Astley and Hewett write against what Kossew refers to as the ‘grand male narrative’ (6) and Irigaray calls the ‘master discourse’ (Irigaray in Moi, 1985, p.135) that privileges the world of men, institutional and positional power and maintains a status quo where masculinist voices and experiences dominate. Astley and Hewett’s work not only challenges

published in an essay in Overland but was omitted from the version published in Peter Holloway’s (1981) Contemporary Australian Drama: Perspectives Since 1955. 5 Susan Wyndham has written in Astley’s obituary in The Sydney Morning Herald Weekend Edition (August 21-22, 2004) that “Astley was generous with praise for fellow writers but she could dish out slights, perhaps more sharply than she intended. On a panel with Richard Flanagan…she commented that his …novel Gould’s Book of Fish, was “a bit of a wank” and that her “acerbic wit and dislike of the modern marketing machine might have contributed to sales that were never as high as she hoped”. (79)

250 this master narrative, but also exposes it as a significant factor in the current

Australian cultural and political landscape.

The theme of violence and grief is also central to my work as a way of further examining how relationships between power and gender, both explicit and implicit, are represented.

Astley and Hewett, as Kossew suggests of other authors (including Astley), interrogate the very discourses and processes by which history has been constructed, thereby revising it (5). I will examine the traditional ways that women and those ‘othered’ by the colonial process have been represented in nationalist discourses. I will examine in the following chapters the literary trope of the Australian Drover’s wife and how it came to represent for Australia the tough but vulnerable woman in the bush who was both mother to the nation and to her own family. I will also examine how Astley and Hewett re-work the trope of the Australian Drover’s wife in their work. This examination adds to the body of work already established on this topic (Kossew 2000, 2004, Gillian Whitlock,

1999, Kay Shaffer, 1987, 1993) and suggests that these symbols are still deeply imbedded in the Australian psyche.

In both novels there is the exposure or representation of violence against women and certain kinds of men, by men. Both novels have a structure that includes a range of perspectives or voices. In Drylands the perspectives are mostly women or feminised men or men at risk of violence. Even the dominant voice of the main narrator, Janet – as I will subsequently demonstrate – is problematised by

251 an underscore of unreliability. There is also a narrative uncertainty – a commitment to the absence of complete closure.

The focus of my reading of Drylands revolves around how Astley critiques violence and in particular male violence and explores the way women resist it, while in my reading of Neap Tide I explore Hewett’s more general critique of masculinist control which is tied to certainty and the power to represent things in a particular way; a way that is linear, involves one controlling voice or perspective and employs binaries such that women are seen as lacking in all that is valued in patriarchal society. In effect this exegetical project is the reading, interpretation and analysis of the two texts, Drylands (1999) and Neap Tide

(1999), and the production of a third text which responds to these two literary works from a theoretical or critical perspective as well as from the perspective of a writer of fiction.

When Thea Astley spoke about how she came to write, her reply to Jennifer

Ellison (1986), who asked if she thought that men and women each wanted different things from novels, was stark:

I grew up believing that women weren’t really people and didn’t matter

in the scheme of things. You’ve got to remember my age. Men didn’t

listen to women when they expressed an opinion. I always felt that they

wouldn’t read books written by women because it would be like listening

to a woman for hours which would be intolerable. And when I started to

write I knew I had thoughts going on in my brain, you know, and I’d

252 have little opinions about things, but I knew they didn’t rate, and I didn’t

know what voice to write in……..I used to read books by feminist

writers and I was filled with envy, and admiration for the way in which

they make women’s problems and the woman’s voice seem not only

intelligent and interesting, but totally credible. (50-69)

In a later interview with Candida Baker (1986) Astley was asked about her experience of writing from male and female perspectives.

The thing was that I grew up in an era where I was completely neutered

by my upbringing. I’m a normal heterosexual, I think, I hope – but I grew

up in an era when women weren’t supposed to have any thoughts at all,

and if they did express thoughts then either no attention was paid to them

or they were considered brash and aggressive. (42-43)

For Astley, writing women and writing for women have been an evolving aspect of her work that cannot be separated from the time she wrote in and the political concerns that preoccupied her. From a feeling of having her voice denied she emerged as an author whose literary preoccupations have developed into major feminist concerns: how women are treated and represented and how their identity is created. I believe these concerns also preoccupy Dorothy Hewett and my reading of her novel Neap Tide examines this.

253 In the first chapter I will focus on Drylands and the representation of violence and Astley’s use of characterisation and focalisation. I will also examine the notion of surveillance, power and agency in the novel. Lastly I will discuss some writerly concerns in Drylands. In the second chapter my reading of Neap Tide will centre on the narrative of uncertainty and Hewett’s deliberate adoption of this strategy. I will demonstrate how she employs the use of myth and the rebel stereotype in the novel. I will examine and discuss the structure and genre of the novel as well as discuss the representations of sexuality and of feminism. I will develop my argument about violence as representation in relation to the killing of characters in Neap Tide and finally I will examine the metaphysics of place and use Bakhtin’s idea of the Carnival to examine aspects of the novel.

The representation of violence and how both Astley and Hewett engage with the issue of representation, indicate that they made conscious decisions on both an aesthetic and political level to engage with the struggle to explore and express women’s experience. These consciously applied craft-based decisions in turn show that their role as writers is intimately linked with their role of public intellectuals engaging with and contributing to public discourse on national identity. As Susan Lever reminds us feminist writing and reading are political activities and can be defined by the way in which they examine and question the material conditions under which women live. (7)

254 2. Thea Astley’s Drylands (1999)

In this chapter I consider how Drylands explores different forms of, and different responses to, violence – physical, visual or emotional violence, or the threat of it

– and different ways of representing violence, as well as the ways it grapples with the problem of representation itself as a possible form of violence.

Drylands is a set of interlocking narratives focused by the narrative voice of writer Janet Deakin who is a recent resident and newsagent owner of the drought stricken town Drylands. Astley employs the character of Janet and focalized narration of other characters in a satirical critique of Australian culture that is struggling for a sense of community. In Drylands, Astley chillingly evokes the cruelty, savagery, predacity and violence of men and masculinist discourses in a way that interrogates and disrupts them. As Roslynn Haynes (1988) and Sue

Kossew (2000) suggest, Astley does not simply ascribe violent behaviour to men per se but traces links and connections between their aggressive behaviors and their frustrations, insecurities and fears.6 How Astley then writes her women characters as they react in the face of this kaleidoscope of behaviour underscores a tremendous sensitivity to the plight of women from many varying walks of life.

6 Haynes does so in reference to Astley’s 1988 novel An Item from the Late News and Kossew does so in reference to Drylands.

255 Drylands is predominantly narrated by the character of Janet Deakin – a women who has recently come to the town of Drylands – and who observes the town and its inhabitants in her role as the Newsagent owner who has a flat above her shop which overlooks the town. The novel also has interspersed first person narrative voices of various Dryland’s inhabitants and visitors, such as Franzi Massig who has an assumed identity but is an accountant on the run from Sydney after whistle blowing on corporate corruption while working in a law firm. There is the narrative of creative writing teacher Evie who teaches bored housewives how to write but is without direction or integrity and there is the narrative of mother and housewife, Lannie Cunneen who runs away from the monotony of her life and her duties, and the publican’s wife, Joss whose life becomes determined by two local drinkers who want to terrorise her. In the narratives of boat builder Jim

Randler and Indigenous Benny Shoforth, Astley explores how men also fall foul of masculinist discourses and all these narrative voices combine and interrelate to tell the stories of an Australian town with all it dysfunction and questionable sense of community. Through these narratives Astley explores Australian nationalist identity and how it has been constructed: by the myth of Australian mateship, gender relations and the prescribed roles for men and women. There is a real sense that Astley has given more than one voice to these explorations in an attempt to grapple with the complexities of the representing life in a typical

Australian town. But these multiple voices also reveal a mediated reflection on the state of Australian literature and its emerging engagement with political change, as the following sections will demonstrate.

256 2.1 ‘Something to write about’: Representation as Violence.

‘Okay’, he shouted back over his shoulder. ‘Okay. But you know what will be waiting for

you later. God, I can’t wait!’… Nothing could muffle the little gasps and whimpers of Ro

who had been so demeaned … Evie couldn’t repress the words … ‘Well, I hate to say it but

that was something – something to write about.’ (Astley 1999, 92)

How we theorise violence or even think about it is a vexed issue. The violence I want to concentrate on for the purposes of this chapter is primarily the literary representation of violence in Drylands, which entails the threat of rape and the threat of murder of female characters by male characters. But I also want to look at how the threat of violence in general impacts on the lives of Astley’s female characters and how they respond to this threat and are then treated as a result of their responses. I also want to explore the idea of discursive violence – the idea that representation may also be a perpetration of violence.

Violence and how writers write about it has to be placed within the context of cultural reproduction. Armstrong and Tennenhouse in their book The Violence of

Representation; Literature and the History of Violence (1989) contend that we have ‘violence that is “out there” in the world, as opposed to that which is exercised through words upon things in the world, often by attributing violence to them.’(9) What a writer reproduces and labels as violent sometimes obviates the act they are describing and as readers we never see these acts as they are and are instead forced to take up an ethical position for or against the represented act.

257 It becomes problematic and perhaps too simplistic to name something as violent because when we do so it means that we do not investigate the cultural production that resulted in the action whether it be ‘real’, or in the literary sense,

‘imagined’.

How violence is represented in Australian literature has evolved from historical discourses where women and indigenous people often shared the same history of violence and in this sense this violence and how it is represented has been culturally produced. Like indigenous people women have been written out of the history, they suffer from domestic violence and they are affected by entrenched attitudes of discrimination. Sue Kossew (2004) suggests that the interplay between the construction of cultural identities and the control of historical discourse can in itself also be seen as a kind of violence. (5) Kossew addresses the issue of violence in relation to J.M Coetzee’s notion of the ‘unsettled settlers’ and examines the complex nature of resistance, complicity and representation within the framework of post-colonial discourses, which she says by their very nature contain an element of violence. As Kossew points out, a lot of the violence present in settler literature consists of interracial conflict and is often gender based. (4) The ‘unsettled settler’ discourses are male, which means that, as Kossew further suggests, it is more difficult to examine the position of ‘the white post-colonising woman’ who is caught between ‘masculinist discourses of nationalism’ and ‘a maternal role’, which involves ‘compassion and reconciliation’. (1)

258 Drawing upon The Violence of Representation Kossew develops her discussion to look at violence committed through representation as a form of violence in its own right – where the staging of violence by writers or their depiction of violent events can involve the danger of spectacle and spectatorship – as well as the violence represented in the text she chooses for consideration. In concentrating on the complexity of how authors (Astley among them) inscribe through literary practice, the ambivalent nature of identity and subjectivity, Kossew cleverly uncovers submerged issues and undercurrents such as gender and race relations and the violence of writing and re-writing history; a task she reminds us is perhaps made all the more necessary by the fact it is not very popular (4-7).

Armstrong and Tennenhouse (1989) – elaborating on the work of Teresa de

Lauretis – argue that the idea of violence as representation is a difficult one for academics to accept, since it “implies that whenever we speak for someone we are inscribing her with our own (implicitly masculine) idea of order.” (25)

De Lauretis, whom Sue Kossew also refers to, contends that however one reads or treats violence, that violence is engendered in representation. De Lauretis’ essay ‘The Violence of Rhetoric: Considerations on the Representation and

Gender’ (1989) examines the issue of rape against women. It also makes an important point about how discourses of theory can also institute a form of violence.

The historical fact of gender is the fact that it exists in social reality, that

it has concrete existence in cultural forms and actual weight in social

259 relations, makes gender a political issue that cannot be evaded or wished

away, much as one would want it to be … The interest of men and

women or, in the case in question, of rapists and their victims, are exactly

opposed in the practices of social reality, and cannot be reconciled

rhetorically. (245)

To exemplify her point about ‘gender blindness’ in the representation of violence, De Lauretis discusses the scholarship of Wini Breines and Linda

Gordon (1983). The main thesis she takes from Breines and Gordon’s work is their argument that representation of violence is as a sign of ‘power struggle for the maintenance of a specific kind of social order’ rather than the counter- argument that the representation of violence is a breakdown of social order

(Breines and Gordon, p.511, cited in de Lauretis, p. 241). Generally the representation of violence works to maintain social order rather than disrupt it.

Breines’ and Gordon’s research found that despite the clinical literature that implied, for example, that mother-son incest was as prevalent as father-daughter incest, 92% of victims of incest and child abuse are female and 97% of assailants are male.

De Lauretis explains that the failure to acknowledge gender as a significant factor in these earlier clinical studies is because of a desire to explain away (or in this case not to mention it all) something that is too uncomfortable or threatening.

260 Such studies not only obscured the actual history of violence against

women but, by disregarding the feminist critique of the patriarchy, they

effectively discourage analysis of family violence from a context of both

societal and male supremacy. (242)

While ‘feminist critique of the patriarchy’ often serves to reveal actual or discursive violence, such critique is not automatically free of the possibility of violence that marks other discourses. The problem of speaking for women, or about women, is a particularly vexed one for feminist discourses. A criticism of feminism has been that while it presumes to speak for ‘woman’ it can deny and suppress difference such as of class, age and ethnicity (see for example Elaine

Showalter, ‘A criticism of our own: Autonomy and Assimilation in Afro-

American and Feminist Literary Theory’, 1989, 168-88). Feminism may thus become, as both Armstrong and Tennenhouse suggest, and Kossew has also pointed out, the very thing it detests (Armstrong and Tennenhouse 1989, 25 &

Kossew 2004, 4). At the same time, the alternative of renouncing feminist critique altogether seems to be a rather naïve way of dealing with a complex issue and threatens to stall any progress in our understanding of violence and its representation. As Sue Kossew warns us it is important to be aware of the potential violence in all texts, and any awareness in this respect can only throw light upon unspoken bias. (2001, 4). De Lauretis’ account, drawing on the work of Breines and Gordon, of the historical place of the term ‘family violence’ illustrates the value of feminist representation that, by ‘naming’ a form of violence as violence, works to subvert rather than maintain ‘a specific kind of

261 social order’: patriarchy (240). Breines and Gordon contend that a few decades ago the term ‘family violence’ would not have made much sense and although wife beating, child abuse and incest would be recognised they would not have been seen as serious social problems. De Lauretis writes: -

…while child abuse had been “discovered” as far back as the 1870’s, but

later lost visibility, social science research on wife beating (more often

called “spouse abuse” or “marital violence”) is altogether recent; and

incest, although long labeled a crime, was thought to be rare and, in any

event, not related to (family) violence. In other words, the concepts of a

form of violence institutionally inherent – if not quite institutionalised –

in the family, did not exist as long as the expression “ family violence”

did not. (241)

If we are to understand how violence against women is represented it is crucial that we do so within an understanding of women’s subjectivity. In her ethnographic study on the results of Partition in India in 1947, Veena Das (2000) suggests that historically Partition and ethnic wars in the former Yugoslavia are notable because of the magnitude of violence against women. She could be talking about Australia and its earlier colonial history and, in some cases, recent past, when she writes: -

262 The violations inscribed on the female body (both literally and

figuratively) and the discursive formation around these violations made

visible the imagination of a nation as a masculine nation. (205)

Using the work of Judith Butler (1997) Veena Das argues that the experience of becoming a female subject is linked to the experience of subjugation. In this respect she says that we need not only to know how women were made victims in India and Yugoslavia through acts of gendered violence such as rape, but to also know how these women have taken these signs of violation and then reoccupied their lives, re-entered domesticity, and told and ritualised the stories of what happened to them. Das argues that women spoke of their experiences by anchoring their discourses to the existing genres of mourning and lamentation.

Although she says they experienced ‘violence and pain within these genres as well as outside them’ they were also ‘able to voice and to show the hurt done to them’ making them a kind of witness to ‘the harm done to the whole social fabric.’ (206) I believe this way of thinking could be useful when exploring the representation of violence against women in Australian women’s literature.

These representations are crucial it seems to me in understanding; in speaking out and naming and witnessing those gendered violences – rape and the threat of rape – and how such violence has informed not only female subjectivity but male subjectivity and masculinist discourses within Australian society. Arthur

Kleinman and Veena Das in their introduction to Violence and Subjectivity

(2000) acknowledge that the comparative ethnographies included in their book show how people engage in the task of daily living, rehabiting their world in the

263 full recognition that perpetrators, victims and witnesses come from the same social space. (2) This concept of speaking out, naming and witnessing seems applicable to the work of Thea Astley, and to that of Dorothy Hewett, since both attempt to transform existing stereotypes about women and their lives. The history of violence against women in Australia from colonisation to the current day must rate as one of Astley’s pivotal concerns and literary anxieties. In the next section I will examine how Astley uses various literary devices such as characterisation and focalisation in her critique of various masculinist discourses.

2.2 Rivers of Words: Astley’s use of Characterisation and focalisation in

Drylands.

She wanted to make each word sufficient in itself – rivers of words or mountains of them or

whatever you could call the geography they created. (Astley 1999, 16-17)

In ‘ ‘The Voice of the Times’: Fin-de-Siecle and the Voice of Doom in Thea

Astley’s Drylands’, Sue Kossew (2000) suggests that Astley focalises her critique of Australian culture through the character of the writer Janet Deakin.

Janet, as a character becomes Astley’s mouthpiece and it is her first person narration embedded in the main narrative that interweaves the novel and connects the various characters in the town of Drylands. Janet becomes a focal point and in turn focalises the various stories of the other characters. From the beginning we have a sense of Janet Deakin as a character to be reckoned with.

264 She is regarded as eccentric by her former work mates and one who can’t “fit into the mould” (14). She acknowledges she is an author with “angry ideas” (3) who uses writing to stem her isolation, to fill her “alone- time” (3) at night.

She has an awareness of other authors and a literary canon and locates her own struggle to write within it.

All she had to do was insert a page in the typer, adjust her kitchen

chair, flex her fingers as if she were about to crash into the Rach II and

begin.

Thinks: I could begin onceupona or manyyearsago or

inadistantcounrty. It’s been done. I don’t like it.

Or a spot of Calvino clutter – no matter how meticulously

brilliant – as if some gabmouth has found a defenceless alienist and

vacant couch and is determined, the nerd, to fill the poor bastard in on

every nuance of landscape, movement, his reactions thereto, oh God,

those endless reactions and possibilities of reactions, and of possibilities

of possibilities like some never-ending sorites. (4)

She has a strong awareness of the impact of a writer on a reader, playfully using various narrative devices, such as that of directly addressing the reader.

Madam Blavastsky’s face was deeply pitted with smallpox? (You looked

harder didn’t you? You like that? I got your interest?) (4)

265 The narration of Janet Deakin dominate in the text in chapter headings that begin as ‘Meanwhile…’ 7 and through her eyes we see the working and machinations of the town of Drylands and its inhabitants. As Sue Kossew suggests, not only isJanet Deakin presented as a detached observer spatially positioned above the town in her ‘upstairs flat’, this sense of visual and moral (and I would add here intellectual) superiority suffuses the text. But as Kossew points out, even this position is ‘shaky’ as Janet is caught spying, has intruders into her writing world, and has her position challenged by other writers, like the creative writing tutor Evie, who it could be argued, are mimetically posing as her. (Kossew, 177-178)

Janet Deakin is a woman who bemoans the fact that “no one reads anymore”

(5,10) and everyone instead watches:

…farragos of smut and violence, sexual thumpings, thumpings of hate

and domination, the sanctified brutality of war, the turn-a-blind-eye

indifference

towards the weak; the fat-bellied, narrowed-arsed arrogance of political

freaks who made rules for everyone except themselves. (10)

266 Janet Deakin’s world is diametrically divided into those who read (who we presume are worthwhile) and those who do not read or those who watch (who we presume are not worthwhile). Ironically it is revealed that her husband, whom she marries in a flurry and moves with to Drylands, can’t read at all and the task of teaching him falls to her (17).

Kossew suggests that Astley deliberately undermines Janet’s sense of place or position, which even applies to her narration, and the controlling narrative voice of the text 8 (Kossew 178). Although Janet’s narration dominates, the narratives of the other characters also give us glimpses of her as seen by others that further disrupt her position of powerful outside observer. We see her drink in the Ladies

Lounge of the Legless Lizard with Paddy Locke and see her having farewell tea and cakes with Lily Barnes and Win Briceland. Although she positions herself as the observer we also observe her in the context of her social environment indicating, as Kossew points out, than she is “more complicit and implicated in the community she critiques that she cares to admit.” (178)

Even though Janet Deakin is isolated and alone in Drylands, grieving for her dead husband (with whom she still has a dialogue), it is her view of herself as a survivor, a record keeper of the town and interpreter of its inhabitants, that somehow subverts this position of powerlessness. Her idea that she is writing a

7 Sue Kossew suggests that the ellipsis is significant as it both suggests and invites the reader to complete the cliché gleaned from American culture, ‘back at the ranch” at the same time as refusing to engage with it. (Kossew, 177)

267 novel for the world’s last reader gives both an apocalyptic and over-romanticized view of what it means to be a writer. The very act of writing is isolating. The act of writing what one thinks is the last novel to be read by the last reader in the world is even more isolating.

In an essay called ‘Being a Queenslander’ (1989) Astley wrote about a lecture tour she took around Queensland in 1970 and 1971. She talks about meeting a women whose property she stayed on near Richmond who said after a lecture

Astley gave one night: “I know you’re tired. I don’t want to keep you up. But I can’t tell you what it’s like just to be able to say the word ‘book’ to someone”

(175). 9 The resonance of this experience seems to deeply penetrate Astley’s prose and in particular her characterization of Janet Deakin who feels as if she is in a similar cultural desert living as she does in Drylands.

Paul Genoni (2000) has suggested that there is an Australian sense of space that seeks the centre in a continent that is known as an island-continent. He contends that Astley uses the idea of an ‘island’ as an experience that is non-continental and therefore essentially unAustralian. Genoni quotes Nicholas Jose who concludes that ‘centre-seeking is a leitmotiv in Australian culture …the singleness of the island-continent makes the longing for a centre look so feasible.

Yet it is an aspiration of the most difficult metaphysical kind’ (Jose, 1985 cited in Genoni p.121). Genoni suggests that in her novels, including Drylands, Astley

8 This become evident at the end of the chapter called ‘Stranger in Town’ where Evie, the creative writing tutor decides that she will “write a story…about a woman in an upstairs room above a main street in a country town, writing a story about a woman writing story” (99) 9 ‘At that point,’ Astley says in response to this, ‘I felt the taxpayers were well repaid.’(175)

268 highlights the struggle of the settler society to establish a firm spiritual centre in continental landscapes which are seemingly featureless and limitless. He suggest that Astley’s fiction is ‘riddled with failed Edens’ and when her characters fail to find comfort in these islands they pursue instead the island-centre of the self but these island-centres prove illusionary and those who reach them suffer exposure of their own troubled core (121-122).

Genoni’s idea is useful, I think, in understanding how the idea of the island seen as paradise and centre and centre-seeking – similar to Kay Shaffer’s ‘interior that calls’

(1989, 1) – emerges and alters as a trope that is still being grappled with today as a part of the colonial Australian cultural identity. In Astley’s Drylands it is the thing that could explain the ill-fitted sense of belonging of Astley’s characters such as Janet Deakin and Paddy Locke. These characters are under no illusion about the island-centre as paradise, and in different ways seek to discover the

‘island-centre of the self’ only to find their own ‘troubled core’.

2.3 ‘Wotcha do in the evening, love?’: Surveillance and power in Drylands.

A hand waved. She waved back. Then she saw the waving hand give her the finger.

Quickly she drew back, slopping tea and confusion, sprung as some sort of nosey-

bob spy. Indignant. Angry. Embarrassed.

She remembered the disturbance on her desk, the merest flutter-probe that alerted

her to the fact that she was being discussed, talked about. Lately there had been the stray

question cloaked in sympathetic interest: “Janet, wotcha do in the evening, love? Must get

lonely, eh? (Astley 1999, 200)

269 As Kossew has pointed out, the idea of surveillance is central to Drylands (178).

And central to this idea of surveillance is the idea of power; just who does the surveilling and who is under surveillance is very telling, so too is who is under suspicion and who is suspicious and for what reason. Surveillance and its associations then become an extension of an act of violence because of the potential threat. Surveillance is the most persuasive, if sometimes subtle form of violence in Drylands.

Useful to thinking about this idea of surveillance is Michel Foucault’s (1977) metaphor of the panopticon as a way of understanding contemporary surveillance and locating this within a distinctive theory of power. The panopticon was a proposed prison design by eighteenth-century reformer Jeremy

Bentham. 10 The design was meant to maximise the visibility of inmates who were isolated in individual cells so that they became unaware as to whether guards in a central tower could see them. But the panopticon was more than just a device for observation as it worked in conjunction with articulated behavioral norms as established by the emerging social sciences in attempts to have the prisoners reflect on their lives in ways that were meant to be transformative. In this way the inmates took on self-regulating behaviors that could possibly have meant that the guards’ surveillance then became almost superfluous. Foucault

10 Haggerty and Ericson (1977) use both George Orwell’s ‘Big Brother’ and Michel Foucault’s idea of the ‘panopticon’ in their discussion of contemporary developments in surveillance. They also use the work of Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari to talk about the idea of ‘surveillant assemblages’ in relation to modern technologies to suggest transformations in the purpose of surveillance and hierarchies of surveillance. Certainly the technologies that Thea Astley refers to in her novel (satellite dishes that bring all kind of technology to Drylands) impact in ways that

270 used this idea of the panopticon as a metaphor for the way we all become self- surveilling and self-regulating subjects (Kevin Haggerty and Richard Ericson

(2000) ).

In Drylands there is a layering of observation, surveillance and suspicion and it occurs in different forms and ways. The character of Janet Deakin is the most obvious observer and because she has the predominant narrative voice in the novel she could be likened to the prison guard in her tower were it not for the fact that she herself is also being watched. She is suspicious of intruders in the night (153) and later even more suspicious of intruders because she thinks they know she is slandering the town in her book (243). The character of the false

Franzi Massig feels like he is being watched after turning whistle blower. The creative writing tutor, Evie, is watched by the travelling salesman (75) and then later as she leaves Drylands by the drinkers in the Legless Lizard (98). The whereabouts of her students is monitored by their husbands (89, 250). Lannie

Cuneen is watched by the police when she runs away and as she later waits for her husband to pick her up (208). Joss is watched by Ray Friske and Clutch

Dallow both in Drylands (259-260) and later in the coastal town where she’s escaped to (276).

There is also surveillance through a regnant and indescribable menace that seems all pervasive in the town and its environs. Evie, the creative writing tutor, observes that there is a “darkness about the town, an ingrown self-sufficiency of

could only be seen as self- surveillance. In this respect the notion of hierarchies of surveillance could also be extended to this aspect of her work and may be a subject of future enquiry.

271 secrets” (80). The abuse and fear that Joss feels when she is pursued by Ray

Friske and Clutch Dallow from the place she was painting to the town’s outskirts, is similar to Evie’s remembered feeling of “undefinable terror” as she walked back to the safety of outlying houses, when she was working in a town not unlike Drylands. Extending Foucault’s metaphor of the panopticon, with the town and specifically the Legless Lizard as the central prison, women take on self regulating behaviors and know the areas outside the town limits are not safe for them. The women usually do not venture there unless accompanied by a man and if they do venture there unaccompanied there are often dire consequences.

The wide-open spaces of the Australian countryside do not promise the same freedom for women as they do for men. While women are the main subjects of surveillance in the novel, the behaviour of Drylands male inhabitants is also closely observed.

Largely it is the group of men who drink at the Legless Lizard that acts as the collective guard of the prison and monitors the movements and behaviors of the women, those in the minority and anyone else who does not fit in. But even for these men the Legless Lizard is not a safe place. Rather, it is one of tenuous associations and shifting loyalties, described with acerbic economy by Astley:

…the bar racketing with the desperate grogships formed after the third

glass, sustained by matiness of tired old catchwords but waiting for the

peril of the imagined insult, the disagreements after the sixth or seventh.

(83)

272 There are also other kinds of surveillance though. The drinkers of the Legless

Lizard ensure that unwritten codes are adhered to. The codes involve homophobia, racial prejudice and a strict enforcement of gender stereotypes and class divisions. It’s as if men can also be feminised by this surveillance of class and race and the surveillance is a way of policing the boundaries of masculinity.

Radler is watched by Briceland’s gang when his raft is smashed to bits when he is a boy and later by Toff Briceland who sets fire to his finished boat (145).

Benny Shoforth has been under suspicion all his life because of his undisclosed racial heritage and is watched by Howie Briceland until his hideout is revealed

(189). Franzi Massig learns self-correcting behaviors in not asking for any more

‘pansy drinks’ as he did when he first arrives in Drylands.

It seems the Legless Lizard becomes the panopticon and Janet Deakin, who is the only character who watches over the pub, cannot watch for too long before she is herself observed.

Quickly she drew back, slopping tea and confusion, sprung as some sort

of nosey-bob spy. Indignant. Angry. Embarrassed. (2000).

Astley employs Janet as a reminder of the unreliable nature of observation. Just as it is within the panopticon, Janet is not only observer but is also a participant in the Drylands community in which she is obviously complicit. Astley is showing us the way a writer is always both the revealer and the perpetrator. In

273 other words, a writer cannot disrupt a discourse without re-presenting it. Janet is both powerful because of her role of observer (outside) and powerless because of her role within the community (inside). In a way it seems Astley is consciously trying to undermine the ‘panoptic power’ of the realist novel. Mark Seltzer in his book Henry James and the Art of Power (1984) argues that the decisions about narration that an author engages with in a novel can be the most powerful tactic that an author can employ.

Perhaps the most powerful tactic of supervision achieved by the

traditionalist novel inheres in its dominant techniques of narration – the

style of ‘omniscient narration’ that grants the narrative voice an

unlimited authority over the novel’s ‘world’, a world thoroughly known

and thoroughly mastered by the panoptic ‘eye’ of narration” (54)

Like Franzi Massig who turns out not to be who he claims, Janet Deakin as the reliable recorder of the towns events and inhabitants is also called into question and her all powerful position as observer is undermined by Astley.

The mutual surveillance of the men in the Legless Lizard and the power/ powerlessness of Janet as observer being undermined also seem to point to

Foucault’s idea that power is not only top down, but everywhere – operating at micro levels and exerted in various directions.

274 2.4 Abuse as a Terrible Balm: Menace in the bush.

He was hurling words at his shrinking wife like clods or bricks and she was not dodging

but receiving like a willing saint, enduring abuse as a terrible balm. (Astley 1999, 89)

In Australian literature the trope of the menace in the bush and particularly of menace toward women in the bush has a long history that can be traced back to

Barbara Baynton’s Bush Studies (1995), in particular stories like ‘The Chosen

Vessel’. The trope of menace in the bush is a part of a discourse that still has currency. As Kay Shaffer (1989) has identified, the landscape itself provides a feminine ‘other’ against which the bushman-as-hero is constructed and it is the tension between them that informs the discourse of the Australian tradition. It is where men are seen as the norm, the land is seen as other, the bush is central to self definition while the city is peripheral to self definition, where the bush is personified as the heart and where the interior calls men to its heart but where they sometimes die or are absorbed while they explore. (1) In essence the land takes on the characteristics of feminine ‘otherness’ in opposition to the masculine sameness of national self-identity and these dichotomies evolve into other forms. How women are then positioned within this tradition becomes a point of contention. Some suggest they are merely ‘othered ’ whilst others suggest they become complicit with the masculine tradition, thereby inhabiting a more compromised role.

When trying to understand this notion of violence and menace for women in the bush, it is obvious that it comes not so much from the land as it does from men.

275 Veronica Brady (1994) discusses the idea that Australia was not the paradise of imperial myth but rather a place under curse in which people were condemned to an incessant and unsuccessful battle against the elements. It is a place where women in particular were subject to oppression and continual child-bearing, often with little help, and who suffered as a result from a deeper imprisonment of a psychic and social kind than their male counterparts. (293). Brady argues that

Barbara Baynton encapsulated this sense of oppression in her work giving ‘a powerful impression of the state of near hallucination, a sense of vulnerability and terror, which this struggle induced’ (293). In the case of Barbara Baynton’s

‘The Chosen Vessel’ it is the swagmen who becomes the predatory force, not the land itself. John Kinsella (2002) has pointed out in reference to Barbara

Baynton’s ‘The Chosen Vessel’ that the story has true ‘malice’. 11

Kinsella adds that this malice is an amplification of human cruelty and that the terror of it is manifest through human behavior. (29)

In the nationalist discourse the land is the thing that can consume, ‘disappear’ men and swallow them up if they can’t conquer it. The land is undeniably feminine. This fantasy of an absorbing primeval Mother Nature appears in novels such as Marcus Clark’s For the Term of His Natural Life (1874) and Joan

Lindsay’s Picnic at Hanging Rock (1967). This menace then becomes part of the masculine discourse that wants to master the land despite the ultimate threat that the land might actually absorb its inhabitants, and part of that discourse is to

11 John Kinsella suggests to see Krimmer and Lawson on Barbara Baynton UQP, 1980 cited in Kinsella (2002) ‘The shifting City and the Shifting Bush; from paranoia to celebration’,

276 master those who are ‘othered’ (women, Aborigines, the disenfranchised and the homeless for example). In other words, those who fear the menace of the land absorbing them then become the menace as a way of maintaining self- identity and mastery.

As Kay Shaffer suggests, powerful associations are embedded in a psychic consciousness of what it means to be Australian (11). So when an Australian author writes about ‘the bush’ or ‘the outback’ these associations are played out archetypally in the work they create. Astley actively draws on this level of discourse and archetype in Drylands. In doing so she becomes part of the ongoing discourse that engages with the messiness of national identity and subjectivity. However, she does so in a way that chooses not to replicate but instead to disrupt it; in other words, as a women writer, she writes herself and the lives of other women into this discourse.

Astley had shown a deep interest in the work of Baynton and in particular her

Bush Studies. In 1979 she published an essay entitled “The Teeth Father Naked at Last”. 12 In the essay she suggests that the stories be read as biographical sketches rather than as ‘exercises in Australian Gothic’. 13

‘No man would have written these stories, for other men would have

found him traitor and called him liar. But from Baynton’s stance the

Overland 169, p29. 12 The title of her essay is taken as paradox from the poem by Robert Bly, Astley writes about how Barbara Baynton’s stories equates maleness with savagery and brutality as opposed to Bly’s idea of the protective and creative mother of poetry and living that inspired his poem.

277 stories ring horribly true, send out peal after peal of rage against

belittlement and against the especial male fury that demands a victim’

(185)

Astley concludes that Baynton’s attitudes as displayed in her stories could not be

‘engendered by the bitterness, failure to get a husband or barrenness’ because she was well off, happy and busy for most of her life. She concludes then that her stories were the result of cool observation of a time when she was living in the bush. (186) As Astley finds this a horrifying conclusion, the impact of

Baynton’s work must have coloured the way she constructed her female characters. Of Baynton’s ‘The Chosen Vessel’ she acknowledges that the

‘primitive elements’ are loose in nature and ‘females are placed within this environment as the natural prey of the male hunter, placed as the elected and eternal victim.’ (185) We see something like this replicated in varying forms in

Astley’s work and in particular in Drylands, indicating that as she saw it, not much had changed for women over the decades she was writing.

Astley uses the character of Joss in “Almost there, Almost Home” as a way of exploring how little real freedom women have in the bush despite an assumption that the wide open spaces offer this. The outback is a hostile place for women and their place within it seems full of danger. Joss moves to Drylands with her husband Clem after she meets him in New Orleans. Clem is “drunk with newness” (256) of Australia and wants to see the outback. They buy the Legless

13 H.B. Gullet who had written a portrait of Barbara Baynton, which was published by Angus and Robertson, suggested this.

278 Lizard and begin their business. Clem is a character who seems to echo the masculinist Australian discourse described earlier where the interior calls him, as the man, to explore. Joss, however, has little agency in the marriage, following

Clem because of his misplaced enthusiasm and despite her reservations. Even their marriage seems to happen to her rather than as the result of her choice and it is not long before she feels she lives “in the basement of his [Clem’s] interest”

(259). Despite her education and dreams she finds herself living at the Legless

Lizard with each day as predictable as the next. Eventually she stops working the bar at night because of sexual harassment by two drinkers, Ray Friske and

Clutch Dallow. As even her freedom to work is taken away she seeks solace in painting landscapes outside the town limits. The menace of Ray and Clutch who come to taunt and (possibly) rape her while she tries to paint, means she isn’t even safe outside the Legless Lizard. In a way the pub becomes her prison, with its hostile inmates even more of a hazard outside than they are inside. After a frightening car chase where she is almost run off the road, Joss decides that she won’t prosecute. Intuitively she knows that the harassment she experiences will not end.

“Those bastards won’t let it rest. They’re bullies and bullying’s their

kick. I don’t want to stay in a town where I have to keep looking over my

shoulder” (267).

In this respect the metaphor of the panopticon can extend to an unlimited surveillance and regulation of women. It seems women are not free or safe

279 anywhere once they have been identified as ‘prey’. It is at this level of identification that I believe Joss’ story invites a more explicit comparison to

Baynton’s ‘The Chosen Vessel’. In that story the woman is trapped inside her hut, yet she is also unsafe outside it (where she is eventually raped and murdered). Unlike Joss who does escape, the woman in ‘The Chosen Vessel’ cannot because her motherhood and her need to protect her baby prevent her from saving herself and, in the end small town religious politics prevent the passing horseman, Hennesy, from saving her. Astley constructs the character of

Joss as a strong educated woman who can’t be saved by either her strength or education alone – or a passing horseman or Clem for that matter – but can be saved by her intuitive responses. This intuition saves her when she is stalked again by Ray Friske and Clutch Dallow, this time after she has moved to the coast to escape them and is working almost anonymously in a nursery (276).

After they burn down her house and are arrested, she and Clem decide to move back to the States as Clem’s father is dying. Joss’ exercise of agency lies only in escape – there is little possibility of change in her situation in the town, only of leaving.

The chapter entitled ‘Stranger in Town’, with Evie teaching creative writing to those few “eager for culture” rather than line dancing (81), is most chilling. The four women “playing truant from husbands who regarded their activity as folly” are “fighting the darkness” (81).

280 They don’t like it,” Lannie said. “Our coming to classes. My old man

didn’t want me to come. Thought it might give me ideas. He seems to

think we’re trying to be something we haven’t any right to be. (86)

When two husbands come to get their wives and threaten the group, the power of social control is glaringly apparent. The women adopt the position of self- regulating subjects then because anything that challenges the status quo is imagined (with good reason) to involve a “violent reckoning” (85). When Evie urges Ro to leave with her children and go to the coast away from “that bastard”, it seems her advice falls on deaf ears. The women seem to act as a collective

(and Evie is othered, as the city girl who wouldn’t understand), saying it is no use as the police drink with the husbands and won’t do “anything to upset a mate” (93). Yet after Evie leaves Drylands, resigned not to come to “these places” anymore, she sees Ro, with “swollen cheek and bruised eye” on the train with her children (98).

Despite the negative consequences there is something about the way the women, as aspiring writers, respond to the behavior of their husbands. In the face of the men’s violence and threat of violence these women still find the courage to struggle against this status quo and to somehow acknowledge the powerlessness of their situations because of their gender. In a sense their witnessing to this violence and their naming of it - the voicing of and showing of real hurt – that

Veena Das, whom I mentioned earlier, writes about in her work – in effect signals a real change by representing the violence as it is. In some cases, as it is

281 with Ro, this strategy is enough to imagine an alternative and possibly safer life elsewhere.

Astley writes in a redemptive alternative that disrupts the established power play. Women’s solidarity is described as “muscle growing – expanding to attach to other muscle without tissue rejection” (87). Evie’s escape both from the drudgery of teaching in these isolated towns and from the perversity of the traveller who has developed a violent and sexual obsession with her, and even

Ro’s escape with her children from domestic violence, all signal a writing against the inevitability of a doomed ending.

Even though these women have suffered at the hands of men, it is implied that there has been both a psychological and physical turning point that means they are somehow taking a position of control. Largely this position of control comes in the act of leaving and nearly all the major female characters in Drylands are on the brink of leaving.

282 2.5 ‘They Wouldn’t Do Anything to Upset a Mate’: Power and Agency in

Drylands.

The police always took the husbands side in these matters. The police drank with them.

They wouldn’t do anything to upset a mate. (Astley 1999, 93)

Astley’s story of Lannie Cuneen who, after fixing her 9,328th school lunch, just drives off in her dressing gown and slippers (207), is a triumph of imagination meeting reality. In this chapter Astley plays with a host of masculinist discourses that she skillfully disrupts in a dialogue about power. Lannie is positioned as either demented for leaving the marital home (by her husband) or as one of

“those feminist whingers” (by her psychiatrist) (212). Her story exposes the effects of sexism, domestic divisions of labour and power play in relationships.

Lannie is experiencing grief as a result of a psychological break down. Her way of dealing with this is to leave the family home and move to the coast in an attempt to reclaim some of her sense of self. She is tired of bringing up six boys with a father who tells them that all domestic labour is “women’s work” (212).

In one of Astley’s great narrative moments Lannie is trying to explain her situation to her husband:

You make the simple fallacy all men make – you’re physically more

powerful, therefore you have total power and because you have total

power you assume you are more intelligent. That’s your mistake,

283 jumping from muscles to brains. A mistake or cunning. So you proceed

to shove and bully and treat wives like peasants. (221)

Astley skillfully explores societal assumptions about motherhood by creating two characters, Lannie and the unfortunate Norma, or “Cuddles”, who both leave their children in the full-time care of their father. This reversal of roles artfully exposes the inequities and feelings of isolation associated with the full time care of children and domestic chores. After Lannie leaves the marital home her husband Ted struggles with the care of the house, his job and bringing up the boys and feels he is “going crazy” (227). The tasks that were once expected of

Lannie, incorporated under “women’s work”, become for him impossible and he suffers with all the conflicting demands on his time.

Astley also explores this domestic tension in the character of Janet earlier in the novel when Janet’s mother asks at her birth, “Is it a boy or a drudge?” (103).

Janet’s mother’s history partly parallels the life of Lannie Cunnen in what must be a comment by Astley about how little the situation has changed for women over generations in relation to power and agency in heterosexual relationships.

Lannie, however, triumphs in her leaving (just as Janet and her mother did) and moves into a life that she feels is more fulfilling and self-defining.

Norma “Cuddles”, after being rejected by Ted and then her parents – “You really should have had more sense” (231) – eventually drives away, leaving her baby

284 with Ted, to lose herself in Brisbane “sustained by the aggrievement of the misused and the rancour of revenge” (236).

It is through Astley’s character of Paddy Locke, whom we learn most about through the narrative of the Indigenous Benny Shoforth that we learn about the racial tensions in the town. In the chapter called “Trumped” and via Janet who thinks people like Paddy Locke are “oddballs’ in “the great forsaken holes” like

Drylands and that they “help to furbish the day” (152), we learn that there had been a Mr. Locke and that Paddy Locke’s age hovers between fifty and sixty.

She was a slight woman with glasses and wispy tawny hair worn in an

untidy bun. Apart from a horticultural frenzy in her front garden which

she had turned by some inner magic into a denseness of shrub and flower

that caused surprised neighbourly comment, she had been a shadowy

figure in the township, one of those characters who enter stage left and

almost immediately exit stage right after some trifling announcement

about dinner or a possible World War III. But in the last four years she

had suddenly come forward as a force for agitating for a branch of the

Red Plains library to be established in town. No one was interested. (152)

Joss refers to Paddy Locke as “a failed intellectual” who adds “another dimension in the town.” (251) We learn that she has tried to interest “the ladies

…in culture. (Forget the blokes)” such as music groups, drama groups and reading groups until “every venture died its natural death” (251). We know she

285 is the only woman who drinks on her own in the Ladies Lounge of the Legless

Lizard. Joss sees Paddy as “fallout” from the sport-mad orientation of the front bar (and slightly resents her for making her walk extra metres to serve her); others see this as an act of defiance. Benny Shoforth sees Paddy ignoring the scowls of male customers at the Legless Lizard as a statement – part of her indifference to what others might think of her or invent about her. In Benny’s narrative Astley reveals Paddy to be quite a force. After being driven mad by screeching rock singers in the supermarket Paddy Locke locks herself in the managers office and switches the tape until it plays the “first movement of the

Sibelius second, of which she is particularly fond” (179).

There,’ she had said. ‘Now wasn’t that lovely? Such a change for you all.

(179)

While Astley paints Paddy with more agency and courage than her other female characters, Paddy is still unable to effect much change in the dominant culture in

Drylands. She is still at the mercy of those bullying male elements that intimidate the other women who dare to be different. Yet she is the only person who stands against the council, its administrators and its councillors when Benny is evicted from his land and begins to squat at the local Isla Gorge – the only person who befriends and helps him at all. The character of Paddy Locke is victorious because of her mere presence; a voice in the wilderness for

Indigenous rights and intelligent responses (if not wild emotional ones) in support of minorities and the downtrodden. Astley paints the relationship

286 between Benny and Paddy as an example of working reconciliation. Paddy is a character who exhibits a myriad of emotional responses to an oppressive society and Astley does little to explain her or make her less ambiguous. When Janet examines her own motives for staying in Drylands she also wonders what makes a person like Paddy stay. She uses words like “driven” and “entrapped” and concludes that the main reason for staying for both of them is “ultimately a peculiar sense of belonging” (153).

2.6 ‘Flyspecks On White That Can Change Ideologies’: Writerly Concerns

In Drylands.

The miracle of it! Flyspecks on white that can change ideologies or governments,

induce wars, starvation, or rare blessings. The very notion brought a rush of

excitement… (Astley 1999, 6)

In Drylands Astley uses her characters and narrative to examine the difficulties of writing. As she had decided Drylands would be her last novel one can’t help thinking that Astley was battling with her last words and thoughts on such subjects. She uses various narrative levels in Drylands. Janet is what is called an intradiegetic or second-degree narrator (Rimmon-Kenan, 1983, 95) as she is not only a narrator but also a character in other people’s narratives like those of

Franzi, Joss and Paddy. Janet as a narrator is not above the story nor does she have a superior narrative voice. Janet is concerned not only with the represented world but with the problems of representing it and this is evident in her

287 preoccupations with her writing of the last book for the last reader and of literature in general. There are several characters who demonstrate a keen awareness of literature and the canon and who have a canny sense of playfulness with language and a working knowledge of English grammar, but much of the representation of such concerns comes through the character of Janet who is

“bothered” by the “mechanics of story telling”.

It didn’t rush from her fingers. Should it? She reserved a certain

contempt for the lavishing of detail. It was better for readers to frolic

with their own assumptions from the words spoken, the deeds done.

Exercise those minds, she thought, citing Mother who had managed to

align mathematical conclusions with character assessment. ‘Darling,’ she

had advised her teenage daughter, ‘always watch mouths. The angles.

They’re the giveaway.’

Should she try for a little Nabokov rococo? Sentences as long and

meandering with tributary clauses as Faulkner’s Mississippi? A touch of

Hemingway minimalism? (153-4).

From the novel’s outset Janet is a woman struggling with the sense of what it means to write. She has a self-consciousness and awareness about writing that doesn’t match the romanticism of writing the last novel for the world’s last reader (which we assume is the first novel she’s ever written). She has a frustrating year of writing, struggling with the “abstraction of words.” (13)

288 Thinks: I could begin onceupona or manyyearsago or inadistantcountry.

It’s been done. I don’t like it. (4)

This will be a book for the world’s last reader, she decided, chewing her

pen-end over an open exercise book. An easy accessible script with

notion formed from those twenty-six black symbols that induce tears or

laughter. The miracle of it! Flyspecks on white that can change

ideologies or governments, induce wars, starvation, or rare blessings. The

very notion brought a rush of excitement and she found herself writing

slowly and beautifully. ‘This will be a book for….’ and stopped because

her own emotion was too pretentious for words.(6).

Janet Deakin knows of the canon and in the first few pages of the book we are exposed to names like Calvino and Tennyson; later, through Evie, we hear of

Hemingway, Chekhov, Carver and Updike; writers she assures her class will

“…show you, tell you lots of things” (88).

Janet has the doubts of a writer; doubts about whether she can pull off the writing of this novel and whether it will make sense to a contemporary reader:

“Could she achieve the voice of the times when all her emotional experience was rooted in a convention-riddled past?” (10)

The creative writing tutor Evie is also an obvious vehicle for Astley to explore reading, writing and criticism. On the train journey to Drylands (with the

289 salesman watching) she reads a collection of D. H. Lawrence’s essays. What follows in a hilarious dialogue with herself about the worth of some of

Lawrence’ arguments.

She had been thumbing through a collection of Lawrence’s essays and

she thought angrily, unfairly, she had never read greater crap. As on

Hardy and the dual Will. His capitals! She thought sourly. Those pansy

capitals! Their shallow typographical self-importance. ‘The dual Will we

call the Will-to-Motion and the Will-to-Inertia…And the Will-to-Motion

we call male will or spirit and the Will-to-Inertia the female.’

‘Crap!’ she said aloud, almost rousing the elderly Scot across the aisle

from his dozing. She wouldn’t concede Lawrence’s next philosophic

assertion: ‘The will to inertia is not negative and the other positive.’(72)

Yet later, Evie concedes something to Lawrence:

…in any case she knew, in the fair area of her heart, that she wasn’t

altogether right about D.H.L., who had his moments of gender generosity

– uterus envy almost, to parody the old penis king, Sigmund F. (73)

The ironic twist in this section of the novel is that it is because she is reading

Lawrence that the conversation between Evie and the Scottish salesman begins in the first place – he knows about Lawrence and other literature and refers to himself as Willy Loman from Death of a Salesman. This entrée leads to a spiral

290 of harassment and predatory reprisal – “finding those bright eyes on her again as she read ‘men only know one another in menace’” (75)

In her description of the creative writing class, Astley constructs Evie as one who parodies the teaching of creative writing (the tutor who can teach but can’t write) and also demonstrates her knowledge base in reference to it, as well as her underlying fatigue.

And so all I can suggest or all we can suggest together,’ (bugger

prolixity, she thought, and packed a radiance like any pistol-packin tutor)

‘are ideas about structure, character development, variations in sentence

form, ways to sharpen dialogue without a plethora of he saids, she saids.

That sort of thing. Little tricks. Are you with me?’(83)

Franzi Massig is also a character Astley uses to investigate and talk about literary conventions and techniques. From him we have a sense of Astley’s playfulness with language and what it can do. “Here’s an aphorism – or is it a paradox?” (25), “I pluck a metaphor, a late-blooming sprig of figurative wankery from the ancestral shrub.”(22)

Franzi Massig admires the writing style of Carl whose letters to Gerda he finds in his new abode and with the same investigation and imagination that he applies to recreating his new identity, he puts together their lives. It could be said that as a reader he works hard.

291 It’s pretty smart these days, so my reading tells me, to avoid the narrative

line like the plague. Narrative merely packs you in with the cloggers…

(32)

Even though Franzi’s seemingly benign action of stealing someone’s identity is a form of violence and makes his character even more unreliable, it is also implied by Astley that this discursive violence develops into real violence – in the possible killing off of the real Franzi Massig – a fact that is never fully revealed or resolved.

By the end of the novel Astley has Janet really struggling with the difficulties of writing. It is difficult not to think about Astley herself in this passage; desiring from writing neatness and the precision of science against the much more ambiguous and undefinable which is the act of creating literature.

If she could open up one word only and watch it expand from bud

to fully formed calyx, sepals, corolla, biologically perfect, would she be

satisfied with that?

A word could have a whole fiction buried within. One word,

monosyllabic or polysyllabic – take your pick – opened up a worldscape

of ideas that could laze in bliss under summer soothings or become a

maelstrom of conflict.

Tap and tap.

292 She thought this, she thought about the shadows of the shadows

of words – hopeless! – and slammed the cover back on the typewriter,

overcome by the illusion of what she was doing. Was illusion the wrong

word? The difficulty, perhaps. (199)

When Janet’s flat is trashed at the end of the novel she notices the term

‘deconstruction’ on one of her papers that have been disturbed by the intruder.

The ultimate roman trouve! A killer deal for the academic. (294)

Astley seems to see writing as uncertainty – to acknowledge the difficulty in pinning down, fixing meaning, or what the writer intends being always understood that way. At the end of the novel Astley leaves the reader with more questions than answers. There is a lack of resolution in Franzi’s story and we do not know what happens to either him or the real Franzi who shows up at his place. Janet’s struggle is also not fully resolved, as is her differing perspective of various characters. It is as if the role of Janet as a kind of characterologically embodied implied author can never fully remove herself from what she is writing about. This could possibly be Astley’s way of making a point about how she saw herself and her role in within the literary establishment and within the

Australian literary tradition.

293 The undermining of any of the characters’ claims to knowledge or truth or even a neutral observation point seems complete. This kind of writing may be an act of non-violence. In the sense that representation is a form of violence, this suggests Astley has found a way of speaking not ‘for’ but ‘about’ that as a strategy isn’t so violent – so that while representation can be violence it can also be a form of witnessing against violence. It is at this level that I believe Astley is really exploring her role as public intellectual. In essence she critiques those established norms in this case on violence towards women and the feminised others and how it can be replicated in literature specifically and in society in general in a way that engages and promotes debate. It is almost impossible to read Drylands and not engage with these issues in some way. I believe that the same can be said of Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide and in the following chapter I concentrate on the idea of non-closure as a deliberate writing strategy and discuss her role as a public intellectual along similar lines to Astley.

294 3: Dorothy Hewett’s Neap Tide (1999)

In this chapter I explore the way in which Dorothy Hewett, in her last novel

Neap Tide, engages with narrative uncertainty as a strategy. My argument is that

Hewett deliberately avoids narrative closure and neatness to instead leave the reader with significant moments that repeatedly refer to not knowing rather than knowing and where the explanation given – if at all – may not be the true one. In some ways Hewett deals with the impossibility of knowing – the impossibility of certainty. Neap Tide not only demonstrates Hewett’s willingness to accommodate irreconcilable impulses but also suggests that she as a committed artist emerged from the certainties of political activism into uncertainty. In Neap

Tide Hewett embraces the inexplicable, the irrational, the ambivalent, the mysterious and the ambiguous. Hewett also challenges the prevalence of the bush myth, which is a part of Australian nationalist discourse and, at the same time, she embraces the politics of reconciliation and the colonial history of the nation. In her role as public intellectual and in her role as a writer she pulls these issues into the context of public debate and draws attention in her literary reproduction to alternative views to those of the dominant masculinist discourses of national identity. The purpose of adopting uncertainty as a strategy is closely linked to Hewett’s role as a public intellectual and her role as a feminist. This strategy is enacted by narrative conventions such as Hewett’s use of different narrative voices and text types, the way things are revealed – or not – the reliability of her narrators and the whole narrative perspective as one devoid of a controlling, omniscient, reliable voice. This means that she not only shows us

295 aesthetic and political uncertainty; the writing itself embodies aesthetic and political uncertainty.

3.1 The Uncertainty of Knowing: Hewett’s strategy of not knowing.

The plot thickens and it’s all too close for comfort. Why am I the only one who sees it or

do they all see it and have decided to keep mum? (From ‘The Zane Journal 10th July’,

Hewett, 1999, 89)

In a 1984 interview with Patricia L’Huede called Rapunzel in Suburbia, Dorothy

Hewett, resplendent on a chaise lounge, white hair streaming, spoke of her position on doubt and certainty:

I’m very suspicious of people with beliefs, but particularly strongly held

beliefs because I know that it breeds fanaticism, narrow mindedness and

bigoted attitude. And therefore I think I’d prefer someone who’d believe

in nothing than someone who believes very strongly. (51)

It is my argument that this commitment to uncertainty is clearly evident in Neap

Tide and that Hewett uses it as a deliberate strategy as a way of highlighting the impossibility of certainty in the novel. My position is based on the framework of Carmel MacDonald Grahame (2001) in her article entitled “Dorothy Hewett’s

Faith in Doubt”. MacDonald Grahame contends that Hewett in much of her other writing often ‘explicitly exposed the desirability of uncertainty as a position’.

(51) She suggests that Hewett takes a position of uncertainty as a political

296 choice over a traditional closure, which in turn creates a ‘radical uncertainty’ that leads to new possibilities in reading her work. As a result, MacDonald Grahame suggests that ambivalence in Hewett’s work can be read positively rather than as a failing in craft where ‘inexplicit and imprecise meaning’ is read as ‘hesitancy or failure’. (50) The extent of Hewett’s commitment to uncertainty then becomes a force for social change. By writing in the uncertainties of everyday life; presenting a myriad of viewpoints in shifting focalised narration and in particular writing in the uncertainties of women’s lives, Hewett leaves enough space for readers to reflect on issues such as race, gender and class, as well as incorporating various philosophical and political positions on questions such as how one faces death, or deals with the supernatural or changing sexuality.

Incorporated in this embracing of uncertainty are other facets of Hewett’s preoccupations that, sometimes neatly and in other cases not so neatly, present themselves in Neap Tide. I believe Hewett’s aesthetic choices, which interrogate the nature of art, placed her squarely in the role of public intellectual and that she was a writer who saw herself and who operated as a public intellectual. As a public intellectual she had a great capacity to resist a form of realism that maintains a masculinist power structure. This capacity positions her work within an artistic framework in the context of political experimentation. As I have argued previously, by public intellectual I mean that through her work Hewett embraces an oppositional critique of those established norms in literature specifically and society in general in a way that engages and promotes debate with those both within and outside the academe.

297 In Wild Card Hewett, when wondering about aesthetic value, wrote, ‘How do we ever know if what we are writing is any good or not? And the task becomes even more difficult when the critical faculty is atrophied by political blindness’

(Hewett, 1990, 208). It has been suggested that in Hewett’s case the commitment to uncertainty can be tied to her rejection of communism and in the wake of her apostasy, a form of doubt emerged that suggests a disappointment at being part of a failed dream of social transformation (see Hewett in interview with John

Tranter, 1987,17 and John McLaren, 1995 p.38) Similarly Mac Donald Graham contends that in Hewett’s case

…the personal, political shifts coincides with a developing commitment

to creativity and the imagination, in which a radical uncertainty operates

sometimes in aesthetic and thematic choices, and sometimes in

construction of political and artistic consciousness. (51)

Hewett’s own subjectivity, her sense of herself and her understanding of the world as a writer – and as a female writer who imbues her female characters with certain traits and experience – can embellish our understand of her writing.

Additionally I believe it is useful in the examination of Hewett’s rejection of certainty, to explore the concept of non-unitary subjectivity. Leslie Rebecca

Bloom (1998) suggests subjectivity is active and is in a continual process of production within historical, social and cultural boundaries. Subjectivity is used in this context to refer to ‘the conscious and unconscious thoughts and emotions of the individual, her sense of herself and her ways of understanding her relation

298 to the world’ (Weedon cited in Bloom, 1998, 4). As Weedon also explains the redefining of subjectivity as non-unitary refutes the assumption that humans have ‘an essence at the heart of the individual which is unique, fixed and coherent and which makes her what she is’. (Weedon cited in Bloom, 3) Instead, critical to feminist research, is the idea that the possibilities of change in subjectivity over time is crucial and that language, social interaction and experience are pivotal in the production of subjectivity. (Bloom, 3) Analysing and understanding nonunitary subjectivity – which includes a more positive acceptance of the complexities of female identity – then provides an alternative to fixed ideas of the self that are located in language and produced in everyday gendered, racialised, cultural and social experiences and more specifically at the level of production in literary texts. Similarly, Sally Robinson (1991) has suggested that nonunitary subjectivity is an ongoing process of engagement in social and discursive practice and that it is a continuous process of production and transformation. (11)

In the sense that engagement with concepts such as viewing women lives, their sense of self and their sense of relationship to the world are shifting and transformative, then using the lens of non-unitary subjectivity becomes a deeply political strategy and that engagement with feminism at this level is a political choice and a force for change. It is my argument that Hewett in the body of work she produced, made it quite clear that her process was always a shifting and transformative one and that her engagement with the literary representation of women’s lives was a deeply political choice. MacDonald Grahame suggests that

299 in Hewett’s career as a writer there was a movement away from communism towards poetic force and a rejection of unity (58) while the more popular version of Hewett considered this movement as one of an artist committed to achieving a socialist community to one of a passionate individualist. (McLaren, 1990, 9 cited in MacDonald Grahame, 56) Whichever argument one adopts what is apparent in Hewett’s work, is her willingness to explore these shifts and changes both in her own life and in her work.

In her last novel Neap Tide Dorothy Hewett writes the character of Jessica

Sorenson, the novel’s main protagonist, as an outsider who forms allegiances with some of the local characters, discovers concealed histories, murderous plots and the darker side of community life. In this Hewett disrupts the ideal of the bush myth and exposes the inherent violence of rural life.

Hewett uses the conventions of mystery, romance and melodrama in a gothic depiction of Jessica Sorenson’s plight which is all played out against a narrative of a landscape in deep crisis. There are social and political struggles in the contemporary community with the death of rural industry, environmental destruction, problems of Aboriginal reconciliation and the lack of acknowledgement of Indigenous history, the marginalisation of women, the poor and disaffected, and the AIDS epidemic. Hewett uses this to foreground her tale of the supernatural as it is revealed that the drowning death of a menage a trois – the famous albino poet, Oliver Shine, his dark-haired seal-woman wife Netta, and Mercy Hannah, the aging daughter of a local whaler – haunts Jessica

300 Sorenson. A well-bonded cast of male poets’ hide this secret of the lover’s shared death and the trio’s haunting of Jessica seem linked to her obsession with romantic poetry. Jessica’s ultimate resistance to this death knell is to abandon her literary project, a book on romantic Australian poetry – Brennan to

Dransfield, and begin instead to write about popular fiction as a way of discussing everyday reading patterns.

Dorothy Hewett, through the character of Isaac Mumbula, grapples with the evocation of place and belonging, and the denied history of Indigenous

Australians. Isaac Mumbula is an overtly political character. An orator for his people and a land rights campaigner, he enters relationships with displaced white women who shelter with him in his beachside shack. Jessica Sorenson falls in love with Isaac. She is living in his shack when – while he is away at a lands rights rally – it burns down. Jessica is then informed that Issac has died of emphysema in a dramatic twist that symbolizes the vanishing hope for white

Australia.

Issac Mumbula in Neap Tide is obviously written as a foil for white middle class women who are sympathetic to the Aboriginal cause and who somehow try to negotiate the notion of reconciliation. Written at the margins is the treatment of

Aboriginal women. In Neap Tide we know Issac Mumbula has a wife and family living at the settlement but that is all we know of them.

301 Even though Dorothy Hewett indicates tremendous sympathy for Indigenous people and to redress the colonial situation, in this instance she may be contributing to what Susan Sheridan (1995) suggests, in her book Along the

Fault Lines, is a construction of cultural meaning that aligns her novel with dominant patriarchal and colonial discourses. In characters such as Issac

Mumbula, Hewett shows the reader that she is sympathetic to the Indigenous cause and struggle. She shows the reader that Issac is a man deeply connected to his land and his people and their political struggle, but her narrative also displays what I would consider an unconscious production of colonisation. To understand what this production is and how it is maintained and replicated, it is important to examine the nature of colonisation in Australia specifically using in this case the work of Veronica Brady (1994), Susan Sheridan (1995) and Gillian Cowlishaw

(1988) and drawing on the idea of this representation of colonisation in literature in the work of Abdul R. JanMohamed (1986).

Veronica Brady (1994) in her chapter ‘Towards a new geography: Body of

Women, Body of the World’ suggests that gender is not only a matter of politics but a matter of geography. Colonisation, she suggests, is generally a masculine activity as an extension of warfare for permanent conquest. But in the secondary stages of settlement women are involved as auxiliaries of the invasion while those women who are colonised as servants and often body servants become objects of possession like the land itself, to be used for the invaders’ own ends

(288). Both Indigenous women and land are seen as objects to be conquered, penetrated and made fertile; Brady contends that in this sense settlement is

302 analogous to rape and what results is that the land becomes an interior place associated with death. (298) This very notion opposes – and is in contrast to –

Indigenous perspectives of the land as the source of life; sustaining and sacred.

Drawing on the work of Abdul R. JanMohamed (1986), Brady recalls the

Manichean allegory of colonisation, which turns against the coloniser (293). The

Manichean allegory is, as JanMohamed defines it, a ‘field of diverse yet interchangeable oppositions between black and white, good and evil, superiority and inferiority, civilization and savagery, intelligence and emotion, rationality and sensuality, self and Other, subject and object’. (82) In relation to literature,

JanMohamed suggests the power relations underlying this model set in motion such strong currents that even writers who may be highly critical of this kind of exploitation can find themselves replicating colonial privilege. To challenge this discourse Brady suggests that writers can subvert the myths of history, quoting

Milan Kundera’s proposition that ‘the struggle of [people] against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting’ (297) 14 Assuming that colonisation is patriarchal Brady also argues that as the power of the patriarchy is essentially ideological, it is best challenged on those ideological terms.

Patriarchal power is a constant…It weighs differently perhaps today but

it still weighs not only on bodies but on minds which are still, many of

them wrapped metaphysically in the incapacitating garments of ideology,

14 Veronica Brady mentions Milan Kundera in the context of a discussion of Joan Dugdale’s novel Struggle of Memory (1991).

303 what Helen Cixous calls the ‘masculine realm of property’. By and large

women remain powerless in Australian society. (295)

Brady also argues that the patriarchal ideology of conquest is the reason

Australia was seen as empty ‘terra nullius’ and its ‘history’ as a result began with the settler arrivals in 1788. (299) Gillian Cowlishaw (1988) has argued that the biological construction of race has meant that settler discourse allowed no room for the possibility of Indigenous resistance and survival. The ideological work of racism around the turn of the century ensured that the near genocidal effects of massacre and disease were silently written out of the pioneer history.

Cowlishaw also points out that the discourse on racial purity of blood was never displaced in Australian social anthropology but remains submerged in the concept of ‘traditional Aboriginal culture’ as a defining characteristic of

Aboriginality.

Australian history has also written out the experience and achievement of women – and in particular Aboriginal women. This is not to say that white women were treated the same as Indigenous women. Susan Sheridan (1995) suggests that late nineteenth century discourse on race difference is one of the axes on which Australian cultural nationalism has been constructed. The other axis, she says, is gender difference so when women authors represented

Aboriginal people this was significant because there was some acknowledged similarity of women’s shared position with these ‘other Others’. (122) What this sharing denies however, as Sheridan further elaborates, is their racism (which

304 was different from that of white men) as a part of the patriarchal culture that constructed them along gender lines.

They construct race difference and relate it to gender difference in

specific ways, which on examination reveal the ambiguity of their

position as members of the dominant power – but not quite; similarly, the

ambiguity of their position as women, shared with Aboriginal women –

but not quite.(122)

In Neap Tide, despite his obvious political leadership and stature, Issac

Mumbula becomes for Jessica Sorenson an object of desire and a means of connecting with her deeper psyche in some form of psychological and metaphysical healing. The representation of Indigenous characters in stories such as this is an ambivalent exercise considering unwritten accounts of racism and violence toward Aboriginal people as a part of the colonial conquest of the land and its original inhabitants. In exploring this fraught relationship Hewett struggles with the issues of reconciliation and race and gender in a heady mix of unresolved outcomes. At the end of Neap Tide the reader is offered little hope that Indigenous people in Australia specifically have a promised future as equal inhabitants and their fate as a first people nation is left unexamined. Once again

Hewett in the textual reproduction of Neap Tide gives us uncertainty.

Susan Sheridan (1995) writes that ‘heated debates about who speaks for whom are endlessly rehearsed’ and that feminist critics have been grappling with this

305 problem for over a decade (now it is two), questioning the implications of their own production. She suggests that for this to continue would be like stepping backward and that an alternative and much more constructive way forward would be to explore the implication of postcolonialism as a theoretical position from which to read – “one that may or may not coincide with the critics’ positioning as a social subject.’(168) Sheridan quotes Anne Curthoys who suggests that new Aboriginal histories that call ‘us’ as Australians into question might challenge us to a new ‘imagined community’ that is truly post colonial.

(169) Some of these written and rewritten histories appear in literature as an emergence of Indigenous women authors such as Tara June Winch and Alexis

Wright. They also appear in re-written historical perspectives that attempt to include Indigenous perspectives such as Kate Grenville’s The Secret River

(2006) which attracted great acclaim winning the Commonwealth Prize for literature in 2006 and being short listed for the Man Booker in the same year. 15

15 In a Quarterly essay entitled ‘The History Question. Who owns the Past? (Quarterly Essay; QE 23 2006) Inga Clendinnen argues that, historians cannot be the midwives of national identity and also be true to their profession. In discussing what good history looks like, she pays tribute to the human need for storytelling but notes the distinctive critical role of the historian. In the essay Australian historians (Mark McKenna and Inga Clendinnen) published essays where they suggested “Grenville sees her novel as a work of history”. Kate Grenville refuted their claims in issue 25 of Quarterly Essay by saying that Inga Clendinnen isn’t the only historian to think that Grenville made a claim that The Secret River is a history. She says that Mark McKenna (mentioned by Clendinnen in her essay) ‘led the charge’ earlier and suggests that Clendinnen paraphrases McKenna's argument when she says, “Grenville discovered she could write history after all. The novel is a serious attempt to do history… Grenville sees her novel as a work of history…” Grenville suggest that Clendinnen gives no source for this claim and that both McKenna's essay and Clendinnen's quote her as claiming to have written history and to have written better history than historians. She insists that the quotes that they use have been narrowly selected, taken out of context, and truncated and do not represent what she actually thinks. Instead Grenville insists that she does not think The Secret River is history but rather it is a work of fiction. “Like much fiction, it had its beginnings in the world, but those beginnings have been adapted and altered to various degrees for the sake of the fiction. Nor did I ever say that I thought my novel was history. In fact, on countless occasions I was at pains to make it clear that I knew it wasn't.” Kate Grenville, January 2007. http://www.users.bigpond.com/kgrenville/TSR/history_and_fiction.html

306 3.2 Structure and Genre in Neap Tide

He came walking up the beach shivering, dragging his left leg with the shadow of the

mountain stretching across the grass. (Hewett, 1999, 47)

Structurally the novel begins ends and is interspersed with, the Zane Journal, which is the first person narrative of the local beekeeper and ex-con, Lenny.

Lenny, although depicted as an uneducated outsider, is a keen observer of

Jessica Sorenson and the other Zane inhabitants. He is initially inspired (cajoled) to write the journal by writer Max Greenlees whom we later discover taught

Lenny and Oliver Shine when they were in prison. Lenny subverts Max’s idea of the Zane journal as a sort of “Greenie’s journal with wise thoughts about the environment” (46) and explores his own narrative, ruminating and divulging information and, in places, gossiping. The character of Lenny is an obvious vehicle created by Hewett to give the reader more insight into the workings of the town and its inhabitants, as well as to comment about class and culture, and about who becomes a custodian of knowledge and how it is passed on. Lenny’s narrative does contain wise thoughts about the environment but they comment more on the social and political environment than the physical one (although he does touch on this, it tends to be in a metaphysical and mythical way). From his narrative we learn all sorts of histories and mythologies, and it becomes apparent that Lenny holds the collective history of the area around Zane in his narrative like a cartographer would a map. Through Lenny Hewett explores the mythology of the Australian bush, establishing and subverting some of the qualities usually

307 associated with its hostility, making obvious reference to earlier convict beginnings.

It’s a sad life, white or black, living alone in the bush with only the trees

for company. Perhaps the blackfellas do it better than us. There’s always

that little touch of exile, just at dusk when the shadows grow eerie and

we want to get inside, light the lights an shut it out. And I was city boy

meself, brought up amongst the bright lights. Not that you can’t be lonely

there. Christ, but you can. The bush was another thing, the bush was

running, raggedy arsed and hungry, chilblains bursting on fingers and

toes, the dogs baying behind you. But it was also refuge. When I rubbed

the eucalyptus leaves together in my palms, the scent always stayed.

Crawling into a hollow log or burrowed up to my neck in a cave of

leaves, there was a healing warmth like an animal gone to earth. That’s

why I’m still here in my hide, still keeping a protective cover over me so

that the law, the screws and the hoons can never find me again. (47)

Through Lenny’s narrative the whole mystery of Miss Hannah, Oliver and Netta

Shine and all the workings of the boy poets club are revealed. Lenny is very solicitous of the welfare of women and takes the role of a paternal protector or a voice of doom or warning. In some ways Lenny operates like one of the mythical and supernatural fates, albeit in male form.

308 She stood there looking a bit bewildered with her white hair in wisps and

those short-sighted china blue eyes peering first at Jack, then at Ollie, as

if she couldn’t believe what was happening. They were both giving her

the rush and it was pretty powerful stuff. Two young men, both poets, and

a sixty-year-old woman who was into books. Of course she was flattered.

I saw it again this afternoon and it disturbed me. Ollie was missing, but

there was too much old history about. The air was thick with it. (90)

Even though Lenny comes across as benign he discloses in The Zane Journal that he spent time in jail and that his wife murdered a security guard in a raid in which he was driving. Because of this he (and presumably his wife also) couldn’t bring up their child. Jessica feels there is something threatening about

Lenny, after Max Greenlees reveals to her in front of Lenny that Lenny has spent his childhood in boys-homes and his youth in the worst maximum security jails in the state. Even the apparently benign Lenny is not as he appears:

Seeing the thick-set body and the big hands hanging over his knees,

Jessica wasn’t surprised. He’s tough, she thought, and there’s something

else, some hidden violence kept under control. (30)

Lenny’s preoccupation with “looking out” for Miss Hannah and then Jessie (as he calls Jessica Sorenson in his journal), protecting them from the ghosts of

Oliver and Netta Shine and their schemes, bridges paternalism and obsession.

Hewett has written his character with some complexity, as Lenny not only has an

309 affinity with bees and nature but also with the mystical workings of the country although not in the same way, he says, as Isaac Mumbula (161). As an obvious trope from bush stories reminiscent of Baynton, Lenny’s bee keeping agistment takes him to the “border country” where the Patterson’s curse grows and where he seasonally meets a cocky and his wife. After she “eyes him speculatively’ with her “skirts hooked up” from the “other side of the fire” he decides not to do anything “about it” because “her husband’s a good bloke and lets his bees into his paddocks for free” (160). It is here that we learn that Lenny is a good talker and that the nameless cocky’s wife is “starved of talk like most Australian wives.” (160) Although later in his journal Lenny writes about the cocky’s wife cooking for him and sitting in amongst the hives and flowers with intoxicated bees, the menace of his history and his obsession with women (which we are lead to believe is unspoken), is reminiscent of the predatory swagmen from

Baynton’s ‘The Chosen Vessel’. I believe Hewett deliberately uses these tropes to invoke the Australian bush study tradition. In doing so she also plays with the genre of mystery writing and makes the character of Lenny deliberately obscure and ambiguous, so, in the end, we still are none the wiser as to whether he is a powerful force for good or ill, or something in between.

Hewett also draws techniques from mystery writing in her complex representation of Jessica Sorenson. As soon as she goes to Zane the male gaze is upon her. Hewett employs an almost gothic style in building suspense as well as metafictional techniques that set the stage for a menacing narrative.

310 There were a few cars angle-parked outside the pub, but the caravan park

on the headland was empty. When she stopped for petrol the boy who

filled the tank was cross-eyed and seemed to be looking everywhere at

once. A fisherman scraping the bottom of his boat by the fish café looked

up, his black eyes following her car down the street as if she was

expected; a small grey-blonde woman in khaki pants and a red anorak

driving a late model Volvo with Victorian number plates. But it wasn’t

like that. It was as if Zane had been waiting for somebody who’d come

back after a long interval driving into a story. (5)

From the shopkeeper we learn that where Jessica is headed is lonely and, he says, “not much of a place for a woman on her own” (6). As she leaves the store, the shopkeeper and his wife are “still standing braced against the wind, like two

Easter Island figures staring after her.” (6) The gaze that was at first menacing takes on a metaphysical quality with the use of this metaphor and Hewett plays with the idea of time passing and/or staying still, the elements and age-old mystery.

When she arrives at the bungalow where she will live Jessica Sorenson identifies with the desolation of place. “There was something almost comforting about such desolation. It was like a metaphor for the self.” (4)

Hewett uses this initial narrative partly as a way of introducing the mystery and menace of Zane, and partly as an introduction to Jessica’s history, which is

311 indeed chequered with tragedy and disappointment. We learn that she has recently undergone surgery and had a hysterectomy, that the grief of this loss of fertility is still keenly felt and that it is inscribed on her body as the “puckered scar that ran down into her groin.” (7) Hewett exposes the masculinist medical discourses in this section. Although the gynaecologist is a woman, her response to Jessica’s desire to keep one ovary is at best insensitive and at worst a way of objectifying the female body. “The gynaecologist laughed. ‘Your uterus was set like concrete,’ she said.” (8)

This section has further gravitas when we learn that Jessica’s mother died of cancer of the uterus when Jessica was thirteen. What this early death means for

Jessica is that she and her brother Tom were parted and they both tried to avoid the family home, their emotionally incompetent psychiatrist father and his new wife whom they despised. When Tom is expelled from Melbourne Grammar for homosexual practices and castigated by his father, he finally disappears. Later

Jessica’s father commits suicide, leaving a string of failed marriages and unresolved relationships, and she comes to the conclusion that men are secretive:

They lived out their lives unknown to women, plotting, planning, going

about their business, yet underneath that white, unblemished flesh a

turbulence was raging. (12)

When it is revealed that her husband Eric has left her for an “androgynous research assistant” she feels that she had “married her father” as he and Eric

312 share “the same humanitarian ideals in the abstract and the same mortal coldness.” (13) The humiliation she feels when she discovers her husband in a new affair that the whole university department knows about is the catalyst for her moving to Zane, but her leaving the university on sabbatical signals more than a movement away from her doomed marriage. It seems Hewett writes the journey of Jessica as a rite of passage from psychological pain and grief to emergent life-embracing individualism; she goes from someone who lacks agency to someone who embraces it. Like Eurydice, Jessica Sorenson has to go to a deep and dark underworld, and bring something to the surface in the mysterious Zane to reclaim her new sense of self. Not long after her arrival she has a disturbing experience; she hears haunting shrieks that lead her to the beach near her new house where she finds what she thinks is the body of a dead woman, later revealed to be a seal. With an obvious reference to seal woman mythology 16 Hewett signals Jessica’s descent into a kind of nether world where she cannot distinguish between reality and dream states and where she also feels

16 The Legend of the Seal-Woman of Mikladalu .is an old Faroese folklore. It was believed that on Twelfth Night the seals came out of the sea, stripped off their seal-skins and became human beings, dancing on the shore. But before sunrise they had to put on their skins again to be able to return to the sea. One night, however, a farmer of Mikladalur stole the skin of a beautiful young seal-woman, so she was not able to return to her husband and children in the sea. She lived with her new husband for years and had children with him. He had locked her seal-skin in his big chest containing all his valued possessions so that she could not leave him, and he always kept the key on a chain around his neck. But one day when out at sea fishing, he discovered that he had forgotten his chain and key. When he returned, his seal-woman had left the house, having put out the fire and hidden all knives to protect her earthly children. Later, the night before the traditional seal- killing, the seal-woman stood before her former husband in a dream asking him not to kill the Defender of the Seal-Cliff, who was her seal-husband, and the small, young seals who were her children. The farmer did not take her advice and her revenge was terrible. While enjoying the feast of the hunt in the same evening, a monster entered the farmer's house, telling him that so many men should fall down from the bird cliffs that they could join hands together around the whole island of Kalsoy. This revenge has always been taken seriously, not only in Kalsoy but in the Faroe Islands generally. The descendants of the "Seal-woman" are still known in the country by certain characteristics, especially their short fingers. Kalsoy. (2007, June 19). In Wikipedia, The Free

313 she is going mad (21). Some of this otherworld experience also involves the watchful Isaac Mumbula and his connection to the otherworld that Hewett indicates is a culturally imbued understanding of the land and spirit. 17 When

Jessica first meets him it is menace that she feels, although we later realise that the menace does not necessarily come from him.

Only the black man paused for a moment to light another cigarette

shielding

the flame against the wind. His deep-set eyes under their bony ridges met

hers like a warning, then he turned, following the others into the

darkness. (20)

Hewett uses the trope of the neap tide in the novel as a way of imparting several layers of meaning and also of building on her sense of drama, her commitment to uncertainty and things that cannot be known. As Nicole Moore (1999) has suggested, the neap tide is a contradiction in itself. A neap tide finds its high water level at its lowest point and its rhythm is one of opposites. As opposed to a

Spring tide when the high water level is fullest, a neap tide is lower and smaller and is still at its most withdrawn reach: a spring tide at its maximum. So it is a tide of extremes happening soon after the first and then third quarter moon

Encyclopedia. Retrieved 04:05, October 4, 2007, from http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Kalsoy&oldid=139289993

314 phases. The tidal trope imparts a rhythm to the novel, and the book follows a series of crescendos and lulls. Hewett draws on the techniques of melodrama – layering narratives that all build in suspense and leaving the reader dangling in some parts – while in other sections involving the reader in third person narrative that is intense in concentrated psychological portraiture. It is not difficult to see how Bronwyn Cran found ‘in the scope of its sprawl’, a ‘generic and political blockbuster’ (2001, 39). In other ways the trope of the neap tide is used as a warning. Certainly the sea and its various weathers and atmospheres are invoked by Hewett to set scenes in which her characters and particularly her female characters, explore various transformation or experience extremely disturbing situations. It is as if the rhythm of the tide, similar to the sirens in Greek mythology, underscores the narrative and becomes a character in itself. 18

17 In Chapter 2 we discover that Isaac was raised by traditional man Percy Mumbula after whom the mountain behind Zane is named. Percy teaches Isaac his culture, language and his understanding of the land and its spirits. 18 Nicole Moore has written on the trope of the tide in her review of the novel. She states that ‘a striking feature of the novel is its fluidity. In a kind of lyricism, the tidal movements of its chapters surge in waves, inundatory. The action of the narrative occurs within an ebb and flow of images, building and dying.’ (96)

315 3.3 Representations of sexuality and of feminism in Neap Tide.

We have fellowship’, she thought, ‘we belong to the company of the broken hearted.

(Hewett, 1999,123)

Before Jessica embarks on her relationship with the mysterious Zac, she first has an affair with the hapless Jack Shriver who is a poet, married and part of the mysterious plot involving Oliver and Netta Shine and Hannah Mercy. Even though Jessica has become tired of men with “their obvious subterfuges and their dishonesty” (66) she embraces Jack Shriver in an obvious attempt to hold onto some sense of her sexual self. Hewett writes a difficult-to-read scene about their strange coupling, where Jessica is roughly manipulated into having anal sex with

Jack and is told by him that “this is love Jessica” (118). Afterwards she is surprised that she had acquiesced (‘anal sex for the first time at fifty-five’ (118) and squarely faces the experience as one of sexual assault (120). Passages such as these recall Hewett’s image as maverick; in the sense that even the ground of taboo no longer holds the fear and repression for her. Lyn McCredden (1995) has explored in her work ‘Imagining Dorothy Hewett’ how and why Dorothy

Hewett has received such a mixed reception in the critical attention her work has attracted. ‘She has been accused’ she says, discussing Jane Gallop’s work on

Irigaray and the ‘poetics of the body’ and how this might relate to Hewett’s work, ‘by a number of critics of a range of immoral or “unaesthetic” behaviour; or, more accurately, she has been ignored for this reason. From another direction

316 she has been accused of feminine, heterosexual over-dependence on males, in reading of the life, as it’s constructed back into texts.’ (131-132) Hewett has explored female sexual freedom in many aspects of her work. McCredden suggests that Hewett goes some way toward the notion of multiple sexualities and a refusal to allow simple boundaries to pleasure, but this exploration has come at the cost of her either being ignored or being considered too subversive.

She also suggests that Hewett writes as a heterosexual and suggests that it could be argued that her ‘bodily and sexual “excess” registered both literally and textually’ was a way in the 1990’s of containing her career ‘a way of writing it but also of writing it off.’ (135-136) In Neap Tide after Jack’s wife arrives to find him and he leaves with her, Jessica resolutely accepts that life with Jack is probably over. Her friend Gabby advises her that ‘It’s the kind of thing that happens to all us old ladies’ (123).

Scenes like these remind the reader about Hewett’s long history of writing the sexualised female. In her later work such as the poems in her collection

Peninsula (1994) this culminates in a realisation of the irrepressible corporal destiny we all face in the light of our lived lives. Hewett writes female characters with strength but that strength seems to fail them when it comes to how they view themselves as self-directing sexual beings who are autonomous in relation to men. Something of this position is very confronting and Hewett has explored this idea elsewhere in her works but particularly in her poetry. It is as if, as Lynn

McCredden suggests, Hewett struggles to make something of her sexed self from the suburban 1950’s Australian representations that see her reject the ‘sweet little

317 girl’ and ‘the kindly granny’ personae of so many Australian women writers of her generation. In doing so she is read as an aging femme fatale, the female body trying to write itself out.

Within so much of Hewett’s work, the ‘she’ of the poems is contained in

the enormous battle of her sexualised writing. There is rarely a moment

when the heat of represented sex is not always already qualified by the

agony of other desires, by the knowledge that this ‘go’ at, this writing of

sexual and personal freedom is still impossible, romantic desiring, a

detested yearning. (136)

Hewett has written in a way that explores the difficulties of writing the sexed self and the sexed woman in a way that does not neatly fit into either a patriarchal or feminist reading. Maybe it is because, as Lyn McCredden suggests, Hewett has refused, exaggerated, mimicked and desired the role of sexualised female and her refusal to work within the formula – white, young, bland and passive – has been both conscious strategy and a painful necessity.

(137-138)

In Neap Tide Jessica Sorenson reaches a turning point when she is seduced by the ghost of a man on a beach. She finds herself in a small dinghy that she later clings to in a squall. How she has gotten there she doesn’t know but just as she is about to drown she is rescued by Zac Mumbula, who literally fishes her from the

318 sea with a grappling hook.19 She then experiences a physical illness that takes her to a state she has been psychologically on the verge of for some time.

Jessica’s complete physical and psychological collapse also signals a descent into and emergence from a state that sees her with an increased understanding of herself and also her spiritual and metaphysical environment. Closely tied to this is her emerging relationship with Zac Mumbula, their simple existence at his beach shack and the unravelling of the Oliver Shine mystery. Through her association with Zac Mumbula, Jessica Sorenson emerges from her experience with more agency, a better understanding of herself and an increased empathy for others; in short her life has become less myopic. Hewett writes Zac

Mumbula, the holder of the spiritual and metaphysical knowledge, as one who sees Jessica Sorenson as she really is.

‘I knew you was in for a lot of trouble.”

‘How did you know?’

‘Because you was a seer, not like most gubbas, who can’t see past their

long pointy noses. That’s what got you ill, not bronchial pneumonia,’ he

laughed scornfully, ‘but because you’ve always denied that part of y’self,

shut it out so that it’s left y’ maimed.’ (189).

This view is in opposition to Zac’s perception of most white Australians who are

‘the white ghosts, homeless, belonging nowhere’ (168). What is left unexamined

19 It is revealed that the dinghy was also a ghost one and Zac Mumbula says ‘I’ve sometimes seen it [the dinghy] comin’ up out of the fog, with him [Oliver Shine] at the tiller.’ (165) NB. Information in brackets my addition.

319 in this depiction is the tension between sexuality and race. Although Hewett gives a sense of agency to Zac and cleverly has him making the most comments about racial appearance, mentioning Jessica’s whiteness and white people’s facial features – ‘their long pointy noses’ (189) – she does not include in her representation the privileged position that Jessica has a white women and her possible eroticism of the colonial ‘other’. After Zac’s death and the burning down of his shack, Jessica Sorenson takes her newly acquired sense of self through her grief and emerges stronger and more connected because of it. Even though she feels ‘raw with a kind of unspoken grief ’(212) she acknowledges that the burning of the hut and Zac’s death were ‘part of her survival, as if being left with only waste ground was the end of the lesson.’ (213). From this blank canvas Jessica Sorenson writes a new chapter of her life, one that eschews her old preoccupations – both personal and academic – and walks into her new life, slightly less encumbered than when she first arrived in Zane.

At the end of Neap Tide the reader is left with more evidence of uncertainty and in a sense Hewett uses this uncertainty to have her various characters and particularly her female characters, exit to new possibilities. This sense of drama in her depiction of the female experience and the contradictions inherent in the lives lived by a women are central to Neap Tide. Hewett uses other techniques and conflates the autobiographical and confessional and uses poetry and mythology, song lyrics with long sections of soliloquy from her main protagonists. To understand Hewett’s commitment to uncertainty as a strategy, it is vital to locate her developing engagement with various genres and techniques

320 evident in the substantial body of her work. In this way my reading of Neap Tide can be located within an understanding of Hewett’s artistic and political preoccupations. Critics such as Jasna Novakovic (2002), Susan Lever (1995),

Margaret Williams (1992), John McLaren (1995) and Lawrence Bourke (1995) examine the various influences and impacts of Hewett’s work and within these readings it becomes apparent that it is impossible to separate Hewett as a female writer from those texts she produced and how then her work was received.

Jasna Novakovic (2002) suggests that Dorothy Hewett used the techniques of theatre in her novels and used avenues of expression, which tended to subvert rather than reinforce realism. She suggests that Dorothy Hewett was often criticised for being too overtly autobiographical.

If psychoanalysis and expressionist devices, along with melodrama and

pastiche in her later career, proved to be her favorite techniques, then the

patient of the couch was not just Dorothy Hewett; it was the society she

was a product of. (21)

Whether it is unconscious or a deliberate feminist strategy, Dorothy Hewett has moved toward a more positive acceptance of the complexities of human identity, and especially female identity. The narrative voices she utilizes in Neap Tide indicate empathy and understanding of the considerable and sometimes contradictory influences that impact on an individual. What she replicates in her writing then destabilises conventional concepts of women’s’ experience; she acts

321 out in her writing what she acted out in her own life; a continual process of transformation and a deliberate refusal to be defined and contained. As she said in 1998 “writers do tend from time to time to tell unpalatable truths.” (45) Susan

Lever (1995) suggests that Dorothy Hewett’s writing confronts feminist theories with a number of paradoxes. Hewett does so, Lever suggests, by her willingness not only to present her own life in all its contradictions as a life lived by a women but also by often blurring in her writing the distinction between female sexual experience and submission to the sexual fantasies of men.

Even her most sympathetic feminist readers may recoil from some of her

constructions of women as willing participants in her own oppression,

but elsewhere the same readers may rejoice in Hewett’s celebration of

female sensuality or her disregard of conventions of female good

behaviour. (147)

Lever suggests that while all of Hewett’s writings – from her earlier novels, her poetry, her plays and her autobiographical writings – examine the female experience none of them sit easily with the paradigm of feminism. This, she suggests, is the result of Hewett’s ‘unsettled nature’ in her commitment to one genre and her willingness to explore the limitations of each genre. (148) Lever charts the course of changes within feminist literary studies through the 1980’s when there was a shift from studying representations of women in literature to a study in form. Similarly Margaret Williams (1992) has written some thought provoking criticism mainly of Hewett’s plays which she suggests can be seen in

322 the light of French feminist thought as resistant to normal theatrical convention and could thus be considered ecriture feminine. William’s examination of

Hewett’s theatrical work draws on the work of Helene Cixoux and in particular her essay ‘The Laugh of the Medusa’ which urges women to ‘write the body’ as an act of subversion against the phallocentric sign system which our culture and language are based on. Williams argues that Hewett’s tendency to write the female body and sexuality in her plays seemed to evoke very strong reactions from people that tended to divide into two camps of criticism, both of which were hostile to Hewett’s work and in some cases to Hewett as an individual.

Firstly there was criticism that evaluated Hewett’s work in the light of established dramatic criteria, and secondly she attracted criticism from feminists specifically concerned with her depiction of the female experience. Williams argues that:

…the recurrent criticism of her work are that her plays are too

autobiographical and emotionally self indulgent, poorly constructed, and

enjoyable enough to read but too ‘difficult’ for the theatre. Although

these are usually made within the gender-neutral framework of traditional

criticism any assessment of her work must consider Hewett as a women

writer, not to make a ‘special case’ for her but because both her content

and form are aspects of her theatrical expression of distinctly female

experiences. (122)

323 Hewett’s work as a novelist and poet have attracted similar criticisms. As Susan

Lever points out, Hewett was the only well-known Australian woman writer of her generation to work in all three major genres and one of the few writers anywhere to continue to move from one genre to another. (147) As Hewett uses a range of techniques in each genre it seems impossible to look at one work without looking at another and it seems just as impossible to look at her work without looking at her work as a woman writer. Her intertwining of the autobiographical, the confessional, the use of poetry and mythology, and the use of song lyrics with long sections of soliloquy from her main protagonists and characters are some of the techniques that make her work characteristic but there are other aspects as well.

As John McLaren (1995) argues, the use of the socialist realist story promoted by members of the Sydney Realist Writers Group under the instigation of Frank

Hardy hailed a vision of working-class national literature in Australia. Hewett encountered a great deal of censorship from this group particularly after the publication of Bobbin’ Up (1959) where she accurately portrayed the characters other than in ways idealised by the party. John McLaren suggests that in practice this rigid adherence to social realism led members of the Group to become censors rather than supporters of some writers, particularly Hewett. (38)

Probably for reasons that still hide a deep suspicion of anything potentially subversive, much of the influence of the left, particularly in Hewett’s work while involved with the Communist Party in her earlier career, attracts little attention or note even though the way she saw herself and the way she then portrayed her

324 women characters must have been deeply influenced by this time. McLaren writes:

If the wholeness of childhood provides the goal of Hewett’s politics, her

knowledge of division generates its program, in which there is no

division between the private and the public. As a lover, she gives herself

to the unity of the self and the world; as a writer, to the unity of the

senses and reason, of observer, recorder and actor; as political activist to

the unity of the land and people, of labour and reward. Nor are these

three aspects of her life separate. From the first, she made the private

political and the political private in every part of her living. (32-33)

Certainly we see the influence of this time in Neap Tide, with its wide sweep from environmental politics, Indigenous history and reconciliation, community protests, lives being lived on the margins of society, characters with social consciousness, and a preoccupation with representing the down trodden, the powerless, the less monied and those lacking all forms of social capital. It is certainly a view from the left.

Lawrence Bourke (1995) recounts some interesting observations and discoveries about Hewett as he investigates how Hewett has been received by Australian critics generally in a chapter entitled “Dorothy’s Reception in the Land of Oz:

Hewett among the critics.”

325 The propriety of linking the writing with the writer and her appearance

has been hotly debated in Hewett criticism. In the late 1960’s critics

explored connections between the writing and the personality; in the

1980’s this was scorned; more recently it has again been considered an

appropriate matter of interest, but whereas the biological connections

were earlier explored in ‘universalist’ terms (of confessional writing and

phenomenology), now they are often located specifically and insistently

within a feminist perspective. What has changed is not Dorothy Hewett

(or rather not only her) but literary criticism. As might be expected,

however, the changes can also be traced in Hewett’s writing, both on her

literary texts and in her comments in programme notes and newspaper

interviews. (247)

In general he finds little written criticism of her work that links her with the supposed continued hostility (or critical ambivalence) of the reception of her work even though he does recount some sensational anecdotes and occurrences where Hewett was hounded and vilified. Even the supposed hostility of some feminist critics seems unwarranted although Lawrence says of this that much of the reception of Hewett’s works lies off the page. He quotes Margaret William

(1992) in this when she writes that ‘criticism has been voiced in feminist discussion of her work rather than in published articles.’(144 cited in Lawrence

248).

326 As a challenge Lawrence leaves the reader of his chapter with an interesting statement.

A conclusion typically ends with looking forward. If the reception of

Dorothy Hewett’s work to date suggests anything about where Hewett

criticism may go, it can only be that if it leads to a place that no one has

foreseen, it will also be to a place where old arguments will be taxing

new critics while they recount familiar anecdotes. (254-255)

3.4 Resistance To The Heroine: The Use Of Myth and The Rebel Stereotype in Neap Tide.

‘Hi,’ Lorelei called, ‘got a couple of beers and a smoke for two thirsty chicks?

(Hewett, 1999, 232)

Nicole Moore suggests in her appraisal of the impact of Dorothy Hewett in

‘Asking for More’ (1998), that the focus on the resistant subject position in

Hewett’s work such as the ‘feminine as subversion’ model suggested by

Margaret Williams doesn’t help when looking at all her central figures. While

Moore recognizes that this reading, as a narrative of 1980’s feminism, was useful she goes on to look at Hewett’s central figure in the light of Luisa

Passerini’s (1989) work on the rebel stereotype.

327 The work done by the rebel stereotype is multiple in Hewett’s work,

fractured by class and nevertheless performing certain of those identities

as authoritative and resistant even if just nostalgically, even if without

accompanying structure of critique. It is interesting fission between

performative stereotypes and historically grounded, speaking,

remembering women which produces these figures as horizons of

possibility, desiring change yet always curtailed in enforced complicity.

(28)

Moore suggests that Luisa Passerini work on the stereotype in memory and its usefulness for reading the narratives by and about working class women in

Australia might also be useful in re-reading the work of the stereotype, role- playing and performance in Hewett’s work. Luisa Passerini in ‘Women’s

Personal Narratives; Myths, Experiences and Emotions’ (1989) focuses on three main things. Firstly she looks at the symbolic importance of narrative function of rebellious self-images in women’s life stories. Secondly she examines the place of work in women’s life narratives and thirdly she makes general observations about the role of gender in narrative choices. (189) Passerini found that despite the irreverence of the narrative of the rebellious stereotype, it did not necessarily point to real behaviors but the story telling was a way of projecting an affirmation of identity onto the symbolic plane. Stories of transgression then were re-told by the women she interviewed to illustrate metaphor and to convey an impression of public image. So that these stories or ‘individual mythologies’ as Passerini calls them, are a way of drawing power not from the fact that the

328 stories or representations are not ‘true’ but rather from acting as a source of inspiration, encouragement and excitement in the face of a different social reality. (191) The idea of the rebel stereotype then, as it takes on an allegorical role, could be the means of expressing problems of identity within a social order that is oppressive of women. It could also be a way of transmitting awareness of oppression and lack of integration and consequently lead to a way of directing current and future change.

The historical translation of the myth can change from time to time and

through contact with different life experiences, but its force as utopia of

freedom and innovation continues through the epochs. (191)

To suggest that Hewett uses her female characters as a way to explore aspects of female oppression in Australian society has powerful collective resonance.

Passerini found in her analysis of seventy or so autobiographies of both men and women, that there is a primary assumption that the symbolic and the factual levels do not coincide. She discovered that the ‘narrating subjects’ were perfectly aware of this difference and argues that the distance and sometimes contradiction between ones own self-image and one’s own life in terms of events were ‘a powerful utopian force’. (196-197)

The self-image of the rebel-born can be of great help in transforming

reality, particularly in the processes of cultural transformation linked to

the new experiences many women went through in the first decade of this

329 century. Myths and stereotypes could be employed to mediate between

traditional and new, between reality and imagination, between individual

and collective. (191)

In Neap Tide we see this rebel woman as stereotype played out in nearly all of

Hewett’s female characters but most specifically in the main protagonist Jessica and the minor character, Lorelei who is a young woman living on the fringe of the Zane society. Both women are highly aware of the limitations of their position within their relationship with men, and of their position within the societies that they inhabit in general. They seem to mediate between the traditional and the new – Jessica with her sense of transformation and escape from institutionalised education and way of life it represents to a new idea of herself and Lorelei carving out a role of freedom within the bounds of motherhood and relationship to sexuality that in the end leads to her demise.

There is a sense that the stories they tell about themselves inhabit the area between reality and imagination. This is exemplified in Jessica’s apparent willingness to engage with the mythology surrounding the Shines and how this then impacts on her transformation into a woman who has more agency; and in

Lorelei’s complete rejection of romance but her belief that there is a place somewhere else that holds the answer to her happiness and well-being. These positions not only act as mediation between reality and imagination they also acts as a powerful force for examining women in their multitudinous forms or their varied subjectivities.

330 Hewett’s use of myth has been an identifying and important factor in her work and in Neap Tide, as I have mentioned, Hewett uses several references to various myths to explore the dimension of her female characters. Jenny Digby (1995), writing on Hewett’s poetry in her chapter ‘Representations of Female Identity in the Poetry of Dorothy Hewett’, examines Hewett’s use of mythology in a way that I think is also pertinent to an examination of her novels and in particular

Neap Tide. Digby suggests that Hewett uses myth and fairytales as a fabric into which she can weave her own story and in myth in particular she suggests that

Hewett finds a narrative for self-examination and a structure in which she can explore aspects of female identity. (163) 20 For Digby, it is imperative for women who have seen an identity constructed for them by patriarchal culture and defined as other or object to masculine subjectivity to seek an alternative female identity through self-representation. She suggests that for some time feminist literary critics have been on a search for identity and self-definition.

(167) One of the most prominent recurring themes of Hewett’s poetry, Digby argues, is the notion that love and art are incongruous terms for female identity as it is defined culturally. Poems like Hewett’s Rapunzel in Suburbia (1975) replicate this dilemma for the woman artist. Digby elaborates that in Hewett’s poetry there is a duality and a pull between integration with the witch (her sexual self) (lover), and her desire for autonomous self-definition (artist) (177). I believe this dilemma is present in Neap Tide where the character of Jessica

20 Digby says that it is for this interest that Hewett has received so much criticism as her use of myth and fairy tale have often been linked to the ‘confessional’ and the ‘autobiographical’ which Digby suggests are considered an inferior genre; an inference that Hewett identified herself in 1985, see pp.163-164.

331 Sorenson is written as being in a constant state of dilemma between her desire and autonomy.

Jessica undergoes enormous transformative experiences that in the end Hewett does not neatly resolve. Even though Jessica flies off into an unknown encounter with her estranged daughter, as readers we are not filled with a sense that it will be a-happy-ever-after ending. What we are left with, however, is a sense that her experience, both in a literal and a figurative way, has been a fighting back and escaping from oppressive men (her father Roger Conrad, her husband Eric

Sorenson, and poets Jack Shriver and Oliver Shine) and oppressive male discourses (patriarchal academic and medical institutions), that threatened to enslave and perhaps even did enslave her at some stages, and that her sense of self will alter and grow. In this way the many negative and conflicting ideas of what it means to be a woman and how these ideas are internalised, are thrown into the spotlight. Hewett does not opt for a simple resolution however but instead seems content with a kind of tidy chaos; the ‘ambiguous: messy and multiple, unstable but persevering’ notions of subjectivity that Ferguson speaks of in relation to defining subjectivities (Ferguson, 1993,154 cited in Bloom,

1998, 5).

Carmel MacDonald Grahame further suggests that Dorothy Hewett has a willingness to accommodate what she see as ‘apparently irreconcilable impulses’ and also has a receptiveness to ‘the inexplicable and the irrational’ (56). While

MacDonald Grahame uses Hewett’s poetry as an example, Hewett’s other work

332 and in particular Neap Tide demonstrate what MacDonald Grahame calls the

‘feminine sublime as it resists and turns away from the potential for annihilation’. (57)

Once again through the characterisation of Jessica Sorenson this concept comes alive. In so many instances in the novel Jessica Sorenson comes close to being annihilated by her own actions and those of others but in the end and despite it all, she comes through alive and standing, even resurrected. But it is not only the examination of the character of Jessica Sorenson to which this could apply.

When Hewett explores violence against women especially in the rape of Lorelei

Carpenter she plays with the idea of what happens when the turning away from complete annihilation is realised too late. Lorelei Carpenter in her final hour realises she is in grave danger. It is scenes like these which I examine later that really bring home Dorothy Hewett’s willingness to play with the consequences of uncertainty.

In Neap Tide Dorothy Hewett also examines notions of power. Her novel grapples with a woman coming to terms with her own personal power and examining the many ways this power has been used to subjugate her. In this respect, as Bronwyn Cran (2001) has pointed out, Neap Tide is a deeply political novel as well. Like those women in Drylands, Jessica Sorenson’s final victory comes from her leaving. She leaves Zane, her academic job and her past to reconstruct her relationship with her daughter Beth and establish one with

333 granddaughter Lulu in Rome. Once again the leaving is the redemption and an act of agency.

Nicole Moore (1998) has suggested that so much of Hewett’s work ‘calls up for an Australian cultural history: the possibility of a situated, desiring, self- defining, revolutionary woman.’ (26-27) Moore suggests that Hewett’s ‘desiring women’ are essential; where ‘they insist on power, on change, on self determination that makes for liberation which for Hewett manifests in the metaphor of beauty, the heroine, the femme fatale, the heterosexual desiring women, the whore.’ (28) Hewett’s ‘beautiful women’, Moore suggests, seem to suffer for their power in ways that both limit their position but also emphasise the responsibility of their privilege. The character of Jessica in Neap Tide becomes a classic example of the beautiful, desired and desiring woman that are often Hewett’s female protagonists.

Moore suggests that the idea of a ‘resistant subject position’ in Hewett’s work may have been useful as a narrative of eighties feminism but goes further to say that it may not do justice to the importance of communist writing and left intellectual work that underscore how Hewett has been received by those dominant modes of institutionalised criticism. 21

21 Moore talks about Allan Gardiner’s review of Bruce Bennett’s edited collection of essays about Hewett and how certain critical approaches in Australian literature have become established as dominant. These in turn, she suggests, might not reflect the importance of context, citing as an example various causes taken on by the Sydney Realist Writers. See page 29.

334 3.5 Violence as Representation: The killing of Characters.

They weren’t long in coming. With a shuffle of bare feet they tiptoed across the

concrete floor. She tried to estimate how many of them there were, but gave it up as a

pointless exercise. She could fight like a wild cat, but once they got her there was no

escape. (Hewett, 1999, 237)

Hewett also explores ideas about class, power and agency through other female characters in Neap Tide. Women are represented in the novel as in peril or danger, either from men they know in the community or from more sinister predatory forces outside the community. Not only does this invoke the

Australian bush myth in the nationalist discourse, Hewett’s exploration also offers a reading of violence that resists certainty and narrative closure. One of the most brilliant and chilling narratives in Neap Tide is the story of Lorelei

Carpenter and the story is reminiscent of the main protagonist in Barbara

Baynton’s Drovers Wife. The reader sees Lorelei through many characters’ eyes but most sensitively through those of Jessica and Isaac. Lorelei lives with Isaac for a while, and leaves a note when she goes that includes the lines ‘it didn’t work out but no hard feelings. You don’t talk much and when you do I don’t understand what you’re saying.’ (62) Isaac has only concern about her, wondering what will happen to her, but his prescience is skillfully underwritten by Hewett, and marries with his role in the novel as holder of metaphysical knowledge.

335 She was such an optimistic girl. He saw her with her baby on her back,

hitching lifts on the highways, moving inexorably northwards. There had

been two girls, New Zealand hitchhikers, murdered and their bodies

buried in the bush near Nowra. (61)

Paradoxically the role of ‘die Lorelei’, as the Nordic version of the Greek sirens whose dual role it was to both warn off and invite hapless ships and seamen from perilous rocks, is the role both Isaac and Jessica take on in relation to Lorelei

Carpenter. They worry about her in turn until later in the novel she is brutally raped and murdered. It is the death of Lorelei that the reader is left with, as if

Hewett intended to have her demise as the unanswered question and the most unresolved aspect of Neap Tide. In the case of Lorelei, Hewett does not opt for the soft option but leaves her brutal rape and murder unresolved, its meaning ambiguous; a warning that is difficult to interpret (is it a sign of things to come? or the state of affairs as they stand?) Certainly Hewett makes a very grave statement about men and how they perceive women in this section of the novel.

The violence against women is skillfully drawn and is difficult to read. But

Hewett also makes a point about class as well as gender in relation to her characterisation of Lorelei Carpenter. Lorelei is homeless, disenfranchised, nomadic, a single mother and has a spirit that defies dominance. Despite a lack of education, Lorelei has a honed instinct that has comes from living her life in the manner that she has. It is from her that we first hear that ‘lots of weirdness goes on around’ Zane (23), but despite her innate sense of survival and

336 instinctual knowledge, she cannot save herself from the predatory masculine forces that see her ‘disappear’ in the end.

Lorelei’s assailants are abalone divers’ and dairy farmers’ sons; other members of the group drinking at the beach that includes Aborigines from the settlement and hippies – ‘a cross section of the shifting population of Zane’ (232) – had scattered at the sign of more serious trouble. Lorelei sacrifices herself for the innocent (but not very faithful or brave) Daisy Greenlees who successfully escapes before Lorelei is raped and murdered. Lorelei takes responsibility for what is about to happen because she thinks she’s misjudged the situation.

She knew she had made a bad mistake. Over-confident, head fuzzy with

drugs and booze, her sharp wits had betrayed her this time. Streetwise

Lorelei Carpenter had allowed herself to be cornered. She measured in

her mind the distance between the window and the road, but she knew

the two of them would never make it, so now she had to play the decoy,

brazen it out, and maybe, just maybe, snatch some sort of victory from

defeat. (237)

When Daisy reports the attack to the sergeant of police and he finds no one at the beach he tells her to ‘Go home, girlie’ and that she should ‘sleep it off’ as she is imagining ‘things’. (239) In the end no one reports Lorelei’s disappearance (not even Willy who is left with Lorelei’s baby, or the people who find part of her clothing in a rock pool) and no one takes her disappearance seriously. After

337 some time people report to Willy that they have seen Lorelei in several places

(and in one case she even sends her love back to the baby) and she becomes ‘a kind of patron saint of wanderers.’ (240) Hewett deliberately leaves Lorelei’s murder unresolved (presumably she sends Lorelei’s body back to the sea) and she continues the trope of haunting and the neap tide, as the last we see of

Lorelei before she is murdered is when ‘the three quarter moon rose up over the sea’ (238). The neap tide is a time, as Max Greenlees tells Jessica, when ‘people and animals seem at their most vulnerable… as if everything was waiting for something to happen’ and occurs at the first and third quarter moons (220). In the end, Hewett ensures that the reader is the only witness to these events, but even the reader does not ‘see’ what happens to Lorelei in her last moments.

There are other less brutal treatments written by Hewett in the portraits of Annie

Shoemaker and Norah Greenlees. These minor characters are used by Hewett to embellish the plot revolving around Jessica and her long lost brother, Tom.

Hewett uses the character of Annie Shoemaker in particular to explore societal responses to the AIDS epidemic. When Annie Shoemaker casually reveals to

Jessica Sorenson she has to go to the doctor to get her ‘clearance from the doc’

(81), she is horrified when she realises Jessica thinks she might be pregnant and sees that as a worse outcome than having HIV. Despite the potential of her being infected, Annie sees her relationship with Bruce Hanniman, who was ‘fooling around’ (81) with Tom, as being the light of her life. She prepares to leave her husband Vic for him, taking their twins who are ‘hers’ and ‘part of the package’

(that she is presumably giving to Bruce), to provide a ‘ready-made family’. (80).

338 Norah Greenlees, the district social worker, is even more of a minor character, and seems to be having a life elsewhere. She is married to the poet Max who is the receptacle for the more sordid history of Zane and some of its inhabitants; and it is Max who seems to know much more by way of reputation about Jessica than the other characters. Norah looks after Jessica when she is sick (164), and scolds her daughter Daisy for running around with Lorelei Carpenter – who is

‘nothing but trouble’ – on the night that she is raped and murdered (239).

3.6 Bakhtin’s Carnival in Neap Tide.

She sat for a few moments taking it all in, the magical, almost unreal night, the sound of

music floating across from the island, the flaring of torches reflected in the lake. It was

like something out of a medieval tale. (Hewett, 1999, 251-252)

Unafraid, she closed her eyes and gave herself over to a hypnotic rocking. Then the rip

took the little boat and whirled it way. (Hewett, 1999, 158)

The strategy of uncertainty employed by Hewett and enacted by narrative conventions such as the use of different narrative voices and text types, the way things are revealed – or not – the reliability of her narrators and the whole narrative perspective as one devoid of a controlling, omniscient, reliable voice, lends it self well to a reading of her novel Neap Tide through Mikhail Bakhtin’s idea of the dialogic. According to Bakhtin the canonic genres – genres such as tragedy, epic, lyric – suppress an inherently dialogic quality of language in the interest of expressing a unified world-view. (Lodge, 1990, 21) By dialogic

Bakhtin suggests that words are in essence two-sided and that they come already

339 imprinted with meanings, intentions and accents of previous users and any utterance we make is oriented toward a future word, or some real of hypothetical

Other (21-22). Essentially Bakhtin offers us a way beyond language as a totalizing regime and he theorizes a way to make the dominant authoritative languages into internally resisting ones. For Bakhtin language offers many social voices that construct both selves and characters as selves and these in turn reveal a specific historical and cultural context and in a way fashions the self (Bauer,

1). Bakhtin sees the novel as the ideal place to do justice to this inherent dialogism of language for the variety of discourses in the novel prevents the novelist from imposing a single world-view upon her readers even if she wanted to. The relationship between the characters’ discourses and the authors discourse and between other discourses outside the text can be evoked or alluded to by the double-sided speech Bakhtin refers to. (Lodge, 22) However Bauer contends that the of lack of attention to gender and sexual difference in the dominant mode of Bakhtin scholarship means that few have explored ways in which female voices in particular are silenced under the disciplinary gaze and that if one reads and writes as a feminist, the dialogic community Bakhtin theorizes becomes a much more ambivalent territory. (xiii – xiv) It is my view that essentially Hewett struggles with this idea of ambivalent territory in the characters she gives voice to in Neap Tide. The female characters in the novel as representative of social voices refuse to be silent and challenge their traditional function as the recipients of the male gaze. They in turn force the polemic they embody to be a communal one rather than an internal one and it is in this way

340 that Hewett shows us aesthetic and political uncertainty and the writing itself embodies aesthetic and political uncertainty.

When Bakhtin evoked the carnivalesque as a way of transporting the carnival into the language of literature he did so, as I understand it, as a way of giving speech to every voice in a communal performance that is unrestricted by official or authoritative speech. (Bakhtin, 1968, 4 cited in Swingewood, 1998, Chapter

7). The carnival potentially involves everyone and sets the scene for dialogue or communal heteroglossia:

The laws, prohibitions, and restrictions that determine the structure of

ordinary life, that is noncarnival, life are suspended during carnival: what

is suspended first of all is hierarchical structure and all the forms of

terror, reverence, piety, and etiquette connected with it – that is,

everything resulting from socio-hierarchical inequity or any other form of

inequality among people (including age). All distance between people is

suspended, and a special carnival category goes into effect: free and

familiar contact among people. (Bakhtin Problems of Dostoevsky’s

Poetics cited in Bauer, 1988, 14)

It is something of the carnival that Hewett evokes in the description of the Zane

Moon Festival of Poetry and Music. Where the carnival suspends discipline or those things that maintain social order, Hewett suspends a believable plot and presents Oliver and Netta Shine, resurrected from their mysterious sea death, to have them turn up as guests of honour at the festival.

341 Hewett draws a long bow in taking such a risk – defying a convention of

‘realism’ in an otherwise ‘realistic’ text – but by the use of gothic conventions and the appeal of the supernatural which disrupts the ontological certainty of the realist narrative, Hewett nonetheless remains thematically consistent. It is at this juncture that Jessica breaks the hold that the Shines have on the inhabitants of

Zane – including Jessica herself. By refusing Oliver – the poet so like

Scaramouche who is also likened to Poe with his preoccupation with death and choosing a life elsewhere – Jessica also is resurrected in a way. It is also at this part of the novel where all the voices and techniques Hewett has employed come together in a kind of dramatic finale. We have Willy Carpenter singing old folk songs; Oliver Shine resurrected reading the poetry of Charles Simic and Daisy

Greenlees in black satin, playing Debussy’s classical flute solo Syrinx. There is a dialogue between the disparate voices in the novel; the ghost Shines argue and talk with those alive, all their skullduggery is revealed and in some ways there is partial resolution in Jessica’s final rejection of Oliver that symbolically lifts her from the place she was in when she first arrived in Zane.

Nicole Moore (1999) has suggested that Jessica is betrayed by poetry, by its seductive masculine illusions of transcendence which for women are death and dependency, silence. (96) Similarly Carmel Macdonald Grahame (2001) suggests that the experiences of self-transcendence evident in Hewett’s work be recuperated through feminist thinking and particularly through the work of

Elizabeth Grosz who addresses psychic experience by means of the corporeal.

342 Elizabeth Grosz describes moments of ‘psychotic depersonalisation’ in which

‘the subject’s ego is no longer centred in its own body, and the body feels as if it has been taken over by others or is controlled by outside forces.’ (1995,43).

Hewett imbues her characters, and particularly her main female characters, with these moments of epiphany which then relate to the acceptance or rejection of the irrational, the sacred, the paranormal or the divine and which all question representability and indicate a capacity for wonder and awe. We see this when

Jessica has her experiences near and in the ocean firstly when she discovers the body of the apparent seal woman and then when she is called to the boat in the sea. In both instances she is called from a sleep state, when “the storm was over, the tide was full and still with a kind of murmurous calm…” (157) or when she woke to “a cry that was so harsh and repellent coming from the sea that she staggered up.” (13) There is an element of the unreal or the otherworldly in these states; “…sometimes she wondered if she was dreaming and if this was still only part of the dream… (15) or when she is drowning after she has wondered if she was “completely mad” to find herself in the sea at night (158) we read “at last she ceased to try anymore and drifted. Amber lights spun in front of her eyes.

I’m drowning she thought and it’s just as they say, after the struggle it’s peaceful.” (159) We also see these moments of realisation and breakthrough when Lorelei realises she is about to be raped and murdered, and she decides to fight and at least stall her attackers and so that Daisy Greenlees can escape thereby giving Lorelei some sense of victory in her ultimate defeat (237). As

Carmel MacDonald Grahame suggests Hewett’s breakthrough moments do not

343 reveal any lasting insight into truth. The moments of significance are instead

‘those moments that refer to not-knowing rather than knowing.’ (53)

In the carnival atmosphere of the Moon festival, we hear voices other than those of reason. We hear the voice of reckless sexual desire and longing, the voice of ghosts, the voice from the past, the voice of fury, anger and danger, all voices that have been dutifully submerged in an appearance of the rational and conventional behaviors of everyday existence. Hewett deliberately accepts and rejects the irrational. However irrational, as Bakhtin was aware, the carnival cannot last and its function is to resist and revise conventions without destroying them completely (Bauer,1988,14). In relation to Hewett’s work it is as if the characters in the novel resist non-carnival life within community by reinventing relations in the carnival. The open-ended dialogue then becomes a means of resisting convention and establishes new modes of relation. In this respect the haunted voices of the Shines, the deep mystery of Zane, even the silences of

Hannah Mercy and in the end Lorelei Carpenter are all read in the text.

To this effect Hewett also realises that there has to be some closure for Oliver and Netta Shine even if the escape of Jessica Sorenson to Rome and of Jack

Shriver to Perth seems a little too neat. She does this by almost evoking the tidal trope. The cast of characters has departed for the second time and at the end we see Oliver and Netta Shine once more on the beach near the fated dinghy, Oliver deciding whether to walk them into the sea again.

344 4. Conclusion

This essay has examined the representation of violence against women and women’s reactions and responses to this violence. Both Thea Astley and

Dorothy Hewett employ women’s voices in their novels Drylands and Neap Tide to expose women’s experiences of isolation, grief and violence. I have chosen to examine these texts predominantly as a literary critic and have tried to be attentive to the agency of the authors and their deliberate craft based decisions.

As a writer if I cannot consciously position myself in this way, I risk replicating, in my own work, the very things I seek as artist to challenge and question.

As I have demonstrated it is the idea of representation as a kind of violence which links my reading of these two novels. Both novels have a structure that includes a range of perspectives and voices. In Drylands the perspectives are mostly women or feminised men or men at risk of violence. In both novels there is the exposure or representation of violence against women and certain kinds of men, by men. There is also a narrative uncertainty – a commitment to the absence of complete closure. In the first chapter I have focused on the representation of violence in Drylands and in the second chapter my reading of

Neap Tide has revolved around the narrative of uncertainty.

Astley and Hewett work consciously to disrupt the notion of the traditional novel and in doing so they eschew a notion of certainty and instead embrace a position

345 that suggests uncertainty is a way to examine and produce multiplicity.

Representation in this case seems double-sided; it can perpetrate violence, as in a racist or sexist discourse, or it can work to maintain an inherently violent patriarchal social order. Conversely it can also expose or reveal a form of violence previously hidden or unnamed as violence; but it can in this exposure reproduce violence; as in a feminist critique of patriarchy that elides differences of race and class for women.

The idea that representation is a form of violence to the extent that it maps a set of ideas or a system of order into the bodies or subjectivities of those it represents, especially through the inscribing presence of a single, controlling narrative voice where events and characters are seen from a single perspective or focalisation, is subverted when there are multiple focalisations as in the interlocking narratives of Astley’s Drylands and the shifting narratives of

Hewett’s Neap Tide. Even though these narratives may contradict or ‘check’ each other to become a heteroglossic text, they do so in a way that tends not to reproduce the violence they wish to examine.

Both Astley and Hewett’s work disrupt fictional convention by contesting and re-writing elements of the Australian bush myth and reinserting the lives of women in the ‘grand male narrative’. They do so in different and in some case interlocking ways. Astley’s focus on the violence of men toward women in particular and her preoccupation with the ideas of surveillance also cross hatch to Hewett’s novel even though her work seems to have a more ambivalent

346 association with feminist concerns. Both novels do not lend themselves easily to a feminist reading without raising serious questions of the problems and issues associated with representation. As public intellectuals I have argued that they both had a great capacity to resist a form of realism in their novels that maintained a masculinist power structure and that this then positioned them and their work within an artistic framework in the context of political experimentation. As public intellectuals they engaged with the public discourse on violence towards women at the level of form in their literary works and provided strong and lasting statements about the nature of Australian cultural life that challenged and still challenges the established status quo. That these novels were the last novels produced by these writers must signal something significant.

If their work can be seen as representative of their last words on the lives of women and those ‘feminised others’ in Australia, the picture they leave us with is uncertain and provocative for that reason.

347 5. Reference List

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