Struck Down

Non-grata. Vacant. Missing person. Expendable. Expended. Hanging. Suspended. Removed.

Now I know why I go to work every week day. To exist. To pay taxes. To live. To contribute a tiny, tiny grain of sand into the dune of society.

It’s been almost three weeks since the operation. The buggered part of the anatomy is the one that is the least practical for someone who likes to read.

I have been able to watch, to an extent. Yes, I admit the occasional suggestive or indecorous clip on you tube. My passion for music unaffected. Rediscovering Pink Floyd- ‘The general sat/ And the lines on his map/ Moved from side to side…’; musically, enjoying a ‘live’ studio clip of John Lennon singing ‘Jealous Guy’; watching Paul McCartney’s face for clues as he watches people perform Beatles songs at one of those Kennedy Center Tribute shows they have every year; spirits lifted by old clips of Rik Mayall and Adrian Edmondson post –Young Ones; feeding my new Charlie Chaplin craze- marvelling at Chaplin as the old, washed-up comic putting on a final, triumphant last show with echoes of The Tramp in ‘Limelight’; seeing Charlie as a younger man during WW2, in his ambitious portrayal of Hitler in ‘The Great Dictator’, his final speech about world peace sentimental but beautiful, a message unfortunately not taken up by Hitler; and Charlie as an even younger man in 1928 in ‘The Circus’, his public life in tatters, but totally triumphant in the film as a tramp/clown who is funny even though he doesn’t mean to be, ignorant of the fact that he is the troupe’s greatest asset.

Daily walks to the Coburg shops close by. Disoriented and conscious of this slowly dissolving gas bubble in my left eye. Feeling sad about all the construction of units and destruction of houses. Concrete rubble around the corner. Thick wire fencing. Workmen’s cars parked carelessly on footpaths.

Attempting the crossword in The Age- something about an urbane counter culture… Lying in bed. Listening to right wing talkback. Discovering that there are people in France, and even in Australia, who think it is ok to ban the ‘burkini’…  ‘French Police Make Woman Remove Clothing on Nice Beach Following Burkini Ban’ (Guardian Australia 26/8). The wind comes through the shutters. Days filled with blank sunshine. Eye drops. Chlorsig. Prednisolone. Words that sound medical and somehow comforting. Drip, drip, drip. Eye patches and squinting. Slowly, slowly the blank morning light dissolves into grey afternoon.

I have an enormous Taschen book called ‘The Charlie Chaplin Archives’ which I am unable to read. I have Lawrence Durrell’s ‘The Alexandria Quartet’ in single volume in my bookcase. It’s a layoff that is nothing like a holiday.

A grey bird alights on one of the hedges in the backyard. There is a soft ticking from the heating unit before a new sudden blast of warm air. There are images of the Italian earthquake in my mind. As well as memories of times long ago- childhood and adolescence. I look at blurred images of markings in the natural woodgrain on the lounge room floor. If I pull my jumper out I can just make out grey hair sprouting from my chest. The air feels thick and still. Non grata. Vacant. Missing person.

Sometimes people visit. Trickles rather than flows. Kind enquiries over cups of tea. On rare occasions the phone rings. I think of Charlie Chaplin in the early 20’s sitting at his desk in his studio in America writing film scripts, and reflecting on his poverty stricken upbringing in the East End of London, barrow boys and flower girls and tramps and prostitutes and music halls. I wonder what Sylvia Plath was thinking in the coldest of cold London winters at the beginning of 1963 as she prepared her life exit and said goodbye to her little children.

I have more of those strange little elusive black dots in my left eye, that float in the air and seem impossible to trap in your vision. I need to make sure I don’t become obsessed with the amount of sight I have lost. When I remove the patch and my glasses I see a world that is a bit like one of those early Keystone Charlie Chaplin films- all grainy and vague and somehow stripy- ‘Mabel’s Strange Predicament’ or ‘Tillie’s Punctured Romance’. Then there is that ubiquitous round gas bubble that wobbles when I shake my head.

Now that I have written something down I feel somehow better, as if I have contributed something to the world. Feelings of non grata, vacant, missing person suspended for a little while at least. 

ON THE FUTURE

                                    

VAN Morrison, in his cover with THEM of the John Lee Hooker song ‘Don’t Look Back’, sings:

“If I could call back
All those days of yesteryear
I would never grow old
And I'd never be poor
But darling, those days are gone.

Stop dreaming
And live on in the future
But darling, don't look back...’

Of course, he fails to take his own advice, always, it seems, singing about the glories of THE PAST when he lived near Cypress Avenue, on Hyndford Street. For some of us, there will be glories of the past. For me, it was visiting the cousins in Bundoora, waiting for the parents and brother of your first love to go to bed, my football team’s first successes, Enid Blyton, family holidays to Cooma and the like, the first big trip overseas to places like Cornwall and Paris.

But for now, I am in the mood to think about the glories of THE FUTURE. In my mind I have mapped out a plan. The future will be dotted with lots of little highlights that bring memories of nightclubs and working life and raising little kids to shame.

In the future my children will obviously no longer be children. They will be fantastically useful adults who will have children of their own who will provide me with boundless pleasures. M will ring out of the blue and ask if J and I can feed her two little girls, give them a bath, and read to them. During the week I will have caught a tram to Carlton, visited Readings bookstore, and bought them the new shiny picture story book about a red dragon or a purple unicorn that everyone is talking about. It will be really something to be 80 or 90 and have two sweet little kids holding their breath, fascinated, by my aged, husky voice and my long practised ability to adopt character voices.

Then a couple of days later S will drop in- my kids who are now adults will never ring first-and I will be just getting out of bed because of a new habit of sleeping in, and she will make us both a strong coffee with the sparkly machine she bought us for Christmas. She will seek some advice and hang onto my words of wisdom and kiss my whiskered face in gratitude. We will hold hands like we have always done and take a book outside, sitting beneath the oak tree as red and golden leaves of autumn fall around at our feet. She will tell me about how her boys are getting on and where her philanthropic work is heading.

Some mornings I will wake early and read by the natural light coming through the bay windows. I will marvel at the blue light splashed on the walls from the reflection of the stained glass. J’s hair will look soft and wavy, all grey cascading across her pillow. There will inevitably be either our Afghan puppy or Persian kitten at the foot of the bed making my toes warm and numb. Sometimes, on the street, I will hear early morning conversations amongst neighbours, kids getting ready for school, bells tingling, the comforting crunch of gravel. We will know and treasure all our neighbours. They will visit, like our kids, willy-nilly, and if I am busy tinkering with something, J will attend to their needs.

After breakfast I will sigh deeply and read the paper (still shunning the electronic version), and the morning will melt into the afternoon. Eggs, milkshakes, crosswords, maybe a bit of gardening, but not too much. J will go outside and wrap wire around her tomatoes, and splash a bit of paint below the orchard wall. Watching her labour, I will sit in my great armchair and think wistfully of England, planning another visit in my head, thinking about our last visit, wondering if the lanes of Much Wenlock look the same, the tidy brown cottages of Bibury in the Cotswolds, the black, black graves in the grounds of the Bronte parsonage, the charming low ceilings of pubs like The Feathers in Ludlow, the stone jetty at Mevagissey in Cornwall…

Whoops, it is 3:30 already. J has come in to have a shower. Some books have arrived from ABE books in the mail. I am reminded of my goal- to read one Henry James novel a fortnight until I have finished. I go back to bed with toast and an orange juice and knuckle down with my Afghan and a first edition of The Ambassadors, from James’ third period. I have nearly finished. I drift and fall asleep, and awaken, and drift, and fall asleep and awaken. It is suddenly 10 o’clock and I have finished. My body feels strangely alive and tingly. J is still up, watching television, as I ponder what I will read next.

It is late but I am not tired. I put my dressing gown on and pour a generous whisky and escape the television and wander into the billiard room. I practise slotting balls, preparing for the billiard night that is coming up here in this very room with four or five fellas from the neighbourhood. We all enjoy our whisky and chat about politics and our sports. Tonight, though, I am gloriously alone, pocketing balls, and listening to Mahler’s 5^th symphony, the Adagietto, from the Boston Symphony Orchestra. I am transcended. It effortlessly propels my limbs around the table. I’m not sure if it is the whisky, my age, or the music, but I am sighing deeply, then suppressing a sob, in gratitude, for everything good that old age brings. 

Looking For, and Finding, The Lost Girl

I STARTED reading short stories and novels by D H Lawrence in 1989. At the time I was living in Wangaratta. I was browsing books at a newsagent on the main street. I didn’t know many people in the town. I had a lot of time on my hands. I’d read the odd short story during my university days. Probably about six or seven. The Rocking Horse Winner and You Touched Me, among others. Two of his best stories. So there I was in Wangaratta, with plenty of time on my hands and wanting to get back into reading, looking for a good cause to devote my energies to. Perhaps I had even read Sons & Lovers by then. And here it was, a paperback version of the Keith Sagar illustrated biography. I was hooked. His story was powerful, and led me in the following months to devour The Trespasser, Lady Chatterley, The Rainbow, Women In Love, etc, etc. but this wasn’t enough. Soon I found myself buying the hardback CUP editions of his letters, all eight volumes of them. Well, as they say, the rest is history- many first editions of books by him and about him, mostly courtesy of Michael Logie in Adelaide, and eventually visiting houses he once inhabited, in countries like England and Italy.

This past two years I have been wandering around, doing my job, carrying a tacky Penguin embossed aluminium water bottle of The Lost Girl (1920). It has occurred to me, on and off, that this is one of the few novels that has slipped my grasp. I had never read it. If people asked me about, I, the so-called ‘Lawrence expert’ would go totally blank. So I thought I had better do something about.

This past week I have had a couple of days where I found some rare space, some real solitude. I found a copy besides my first edition in the Niddrie library. One of those green ‘Phoenix’ copies. I found myself at the zoo the other day. The kids went off with some other kids and some adults, and I had a 3-4 hour stint alone next door to the carousel. I saw kid, after kid, after kid line up and go off on their $3.95 ride. But most of the time I was engrossed on this bench seat next to the carousel, reading The Lost Girl. By the time I was re-united with everybody, I was just over half way through. And, as everyone knows, the second half of any book is easier and quicker to devour than the first half.

I finished The Lost Girl that night, or the next day, I’m not sure. Reading, to me, and especially reading D H Lawrence, is a great adventure. The next port of call was the CUP volume of letters- Vol III, I think, marking the period leading up to and around 1920. Here, Lawrence was living in Taormina, Sicily, and quickly writing his novel (the novel was initially started, then abandoned, back in 1913 when Lawrence was still in England). So here were all the interesting references to his friends in his letters about the novel he was currently working on in Taormina. Initially it was called The Insurrection of Miss Houghton (!), then I think Mixed Marriage, and finally The Lost Girl (his publisher was apparently concerned that libraries would be scared away from this title- this was not long after the controversy of The Rainbow, you see).

So evidently Lawrence had great fun writing The Lost Girl, and thought it would be a success. The next thing to read was Vol II of the III part CUP biographies. Vol II covers the period around the 1920’s, and here was a great discussion about Lawrence’s intentions and his life at this time.  As is typical with Lawrence, the so-called ‘scandalous’ sections raised the most questions. Alvina Houghton is the daughter of a middle class businessman, owner of Manchester House drapery firm, and later joins a travelling theatre group as they play to audiences around England. Here she meets the working class Italian man with green eyes called Ciccio. Twice Alvina and Ciccio make love in the story- Alvina is a virgin until she meets Ciccio, well into her thirties. It is fairly dominant love-making, weighted on the male side, and according to the Lawrence scholar, Mark Kinkead-Weekes, there might be some anal sex in it as well (although I could not really pick that up in reading the sections he alludes to). So as it turns out, there are three variants in the Secker (English) first edition. The second variant, which is the one I have, has tipped in pages based on Lawrence’s apparently controversial intent. The first variant contained the altered text that was used to satisfy the prudishness of the libraries. The third variant (I think) contains Lawrence’s original intentions, not tipped in. all this is in the Lawrence bibliography I own, so I could pore over this with the second variant in my other hand.

Then there was the internet. The Australian scholar, Sandra Jobson-Darroch, has written an article claiming that Lawrence based his heroine, Alvina Houghton, on Katherine Mansfield. Another researcher, someone who completed her doctorate on this link, colludes with Jobson-Darroch, and says, yes, there are strong links suggesting that although Lawrence may have begun to use Notts woman Flossie Cullen as his model for Alvina Houghton, she became Katherine Mansfield when he took the novel up again just before 1920. It is interesting reading all this, yet I don’t get the sense at all, from reading The Lost girl, that there is more than just a passing reference to Katherine Mansfield in his novel (I certainly agree, however, she was the model for Gudrun in Women In Love).

All this is very interesting to me. I weigh up what these writers have written and I dismiss their ideas, but I can see how exciting it must be for them, to think they are on to something new, something the CUP biographers never seemed to think about. But I find their conclusions very non-conclusive, and I think it’s good to have an independent, critical mind as well ( I remember being at university, and the lecturer, Tony French, told me not to heed the ideas by the Cambridge scholar in his introduction to Hardy’s poems. The thought of rejecting the ideas of a Cambridge scholar in my Penguin copy of Hardy’s poems back then seemed to be almost sacrilegious).

What is more interesting than all of this, anyway, is the fact that Lawrence created another interesting and modern heroine in his Alvina Houghton, who paved a path for herself that is courageously completely at odds with her upbringing and those genteel influential folk around her (in this regard Lawrence’s own wife, Frieda, is a much more likely model for Alvina, although Katherine Mansfield forged a completely independent path for herself as well!).  Bravo to another of Lawrence’s heroines. Look closely, though, and you will see he is criticized by some well-meaning modern critics who detest Lawrence’s sexual politics and find fault with all of his heroines, and feel somehow that they are too male reliant and are victims of Lawrence’s so-called misogynistic world view.

Having read The Lost Girl I can, now, with greater confidence, saunter around the corridors and fields of my workplace, dangling my Lost Girl water bottle in my right hand, competently answering questions about the identity of this mysterious ‘lost girl’, and discuss the irony of the title- Alvina Houghton, a woman who discovers what she truly desires, and forges a courageous path to achieve it.

'Brooklyn': A Satisfying Adaptation

I SAW Brooklyn, the new Irish film, at the Westgarth Theatre in Northcote the other day. I already had an emotional investment in the film. The author of the novel, Colm Toibin, is someone I greatly admire. You could say that my emotional investment in the film stems purely from him. I discovered him early. I have collected his books, including small editions published by his Tuskar Rock Press. And I have met him on a few occasions, including one memorable occasion in his own house. So I really wanted to enjoy this film, just like I really want to like Mike Leigh’s new films. And I also knew that Colm Toibin played a strongly supportive role in the film, even though he wasn’t responsible for the screenplay.

And enjoy it I did. I will admit to being an emotional wreck throughout, actually suppressing my sobs, because my sister was sitting right beside me. She thought I had a cold.

The first time I found myself breaking up was in the first ten minutes. Eilis was leaving Enniscorthy in Co. Wexford for America, and, filled with uncertainty and insecurity, she was saying goodbye. The actress- Saoirse Ronan- made it all palpably real. Through her, I directly felt and related to her pain.

There are various times in Brooklyn, in the early stages in particular, where Eilis cries because of extreme homesickness. She struggles to begin conversations and is unable to greet customers warmly at her work. She cries in her stifling boarding house room at night. At a Christmas gig for old Irish men, a man stands up and sings an Irish hymn beautifully, with significant feeling. Eilis’ eyes welled up, and so did my own. This is an extract from Toibin’s novel. The film captures this sense of pain and longing beautifully:

‘"She was nobody here. It was not just that she had no friends and family; it was rather that she was a ghost in this room, in the streets on the way to work, on the shop floor. Nothing meant anything . . . . Nothing here was part of her. It was false, empty, she thought. She closed her eyes and tried to think, as she had so many times in her life, of something she was looking forward to, but there was nothing. Not the slightest thing. Not even Sunday."

Eilish meets Tony, an Italian-American, at an Irish dance. His name in real life is Emory Cohen. I thought he was equally as good. He was mawkish and uncertain himself throughout, and had this beautiful sense of not quite believing his luck when Eilis returns his affections. He is innocently uncertain around her, and in one memorable scene, on a tramcar, he awkwardly invites her to dinner to his parents’ house, prefacing his question with ‘I’m gonna  ask you something and you’re gonna say “oh it’s too soon, I don’t really know him well enough…”, then realising the implications of his question and hurriedly contextualising it with “oh it’s nothing so bad!” (it’s really just a simple request for his new girlfriend to come to dinner to his parents’ house).

At some stage in the film, Eilis’s sister, Rose, unexpectedly dies. Eilis misses the funeral, but gets back home as soon as she can. Her mother, alone and without both her daughters, places pressure on her to stay in Ireland, and not return to America. Eilis thinks about it. Not because of her mother, but because she has found someone else, an equally nice Irish man called Jim, who has much to offer, including greater financial security. Eilis is tempted. Saoirse Ronan really makes you feel her anguish over what to do. The airmail letters from Tony pile up, unread, in her drawer. She doesn’t dare open them. She wants a clear head.

In the end, an encounter with Mrs Kelly, a kind of gossipy counterpoint to Lady Catherine De Bourgh in ‘Pride and Prejudice’, solves the dilemma for her. Mrs Kelly has heard on the grapevine something about Tony, and now, hearing something about Eilis’ burgeoning romance with the Irishman, hints in none too subtle fashion that Eilis just might be embarking on a dangerously non-Christian path and possibly double dealing. Eilis is silently outraged by the woman’s impertinence, but the encounter is the trigger for a swift return to the USA. There, on a busy street, and across the road is Tony. They lock eyes and Eilis crosses the road towards him. Even at this late stage, he can still scarcely believe it. Further welling of tears.

One of my favourite things about this film is the growth in Eilis that Ronan manages to bring to the scene, which matches the growth felt in Toibin’s words. Not just her clothes, but her walk, and facial expressions, and the movement of her shoulders, all these things subtly change during the film as she gains confidence and feels like she belongs. Here is Eilis, on her return to Ireland, wearing a bright yellow dress and fashionable sunglasses, looking every bit the sophisticate and outsider, receiving a lot of attention when once she was demure, slight, and almost invisible.

I also enjoyed the contrast in settings. The blue, blue sky, and colour, and hedonism of Coney Island. Fairy floss, amusement rides, crowds and colour and bright bathing costumes, but in particular the crowds of people and the blue, blue skies. In Ireland again near the end of the film, (specifically a stretch of water in Wexford called Curracloe, I suspect), Eilis and Jim, and the two friends escorting them, walk along the clifftop of this Irish beach. Absent is the colour and the crowds and the excitement. Eilis comments on the difference, and her new potential paramour, Jim, tells her ‘there’ll probably be quite a few walkers along here later…’

 Ronan does wonderfully well- as does Cohen, as Tony, however, how do you build in the complexity of psychological minds in the medium of film, as you can with books? This is a good example of what I mean, from the novel.

“She discovered a vantage point from where, unless he looked directly upwards and to the left, he would not see her. He was, she thought, unlikely to look in her direction as he seemed absorbed by the students coming and going in the lobby. When she directed her gaze down she saw that he was not smiling; he seemed nonetheless fully at ease and curious. There was something helpless about him as he stood there; his willingness to be happy, his eagerness, she saw, made him oddly vulnerable. The word that came to her as she looked down was the word “delighted.” He was delighted by things, as he was delighted by her, and he had done nothing else ever but made that clear. Yet somehow that delight seemed to come with a shadow, and she wondered as she watched him if she herself, in all her uncertainty and distance from him, was the shadow of nothing else. It occurred to her that he was as he appeared to her; there was no other side to him. Suddenly, she shivered in fear, and turned, making her way down the stairs and towards him in the lobby as quickly as she could.”

As I said Tony does wonderfully well in the film. He does seem vulnerable and helpless at times, as well as ‘delighted’ by things. It is this ‘shadow’ that Eilis imagines, which is crucial to the story, and very difficult or impossible to replicate in film.

The film reinforces the idea that Eilis follows the only course of action that is really open to her at the end by travelling back to Brooklyn. If she chose not to do this and chose the safer option in Ireland, we would not have seen the light lit up in Tony’s face, a man who is, consistent to the end, unable to fully grasp his good fortune at having someone as exotic as Eilis fully interested in a simple Italian-American.

Night In The City

WE all suddenly decided to go into town. The papers were full of this ‘White Night’ event that had attracted vast numbers into the city in the past. We all thought we would see what all the fuss was about. Buildings lit up, apparently, with colourful imagery projected onto their walls, and family friendly events in different pockets of the city. Part of the appeal of the event was the long hours: 7PM-7AM. The downside would be the crowds.

You were excited about leaving home in the car with your older sister at a time in which you would normally go to bed. You assured us you would make it through to early morning. On the way you were filled with childlike curiosity and wonder at people in other cars, and shopfronts, as dusk descended upon the city.

We parked opposite the museum and briefly watched a trapeze act. Then we caught a tram into town. By now it was past 8 o’clock and fairly dark. All four of us walking the city streets like we owned them. Tram-less, and car-less, walking in carefree fashion in the middle of normally busy wide streets was a pleasant novelty. Russell Street, Swanston Street. All the way up to the State Library, and then around the bend to the Old Melbourne Gaol. It was here I told you about Ned Kelly, except I didn’t say how he died. Your sister tried jumping in sync to the illuminated skipping ropes. You were more or less happy to watch.

Then we visited your uncle’s studio on Hosier Lane and looked at his fabulous paintings. It was here, under the studio lights, that we all saw S’s swollen eye. Earlier in the day she scratched her cornea on something, and we realised her complaints were founded. The nurse at the Eye and Ear Hospital said it would take some time to see her, so you and I left, with mother to look after S, as well as use of the car.

We walked solemnly to Parliament Station, the city still very crowded. It was midnight by now, on a Saturday night when any self-respecting parent would ensure their seven year old daughter was at home, asleep. But this was ‘White Night’. And besides, we hadn’t factored in that we would be going home by train.

Yes, the train. This was when the adventure started. I had my arm around you at the station, both of us worn out after a long day and a lot of walking. You still seemed dreamy and cheerful, although quieter and more placid in the early hours. We saw that the train would only be six minutes. We played a game, you might recall, where both of us guessed in which direction the train might be coming from.

I’m pretty sure I summed up the mood of the carriage quicker than you did. But hey, I am older. A group of young men at our end, fairly placid and calm, and an outspoken group at the other end, more on edge and irritated and restless, their ‘leader’ pacing the floor of the carriage like a panther enclosed in a cage at the zoo. Abuse began to be hurled. The young agitated guy, about 20, wearing a black hoodie and dark tracksuit pants, was challenging the main guy at our end for a fight. For the next twenty minutes or so the atmosphere in the carriage was electric with uncertainty. Would a fist fight break out? Would someone get their face mangled in front of both of us?

You seemed to be at least partly aware of the danger at this point. You wanted to sleep but you were unable. Your head was nestled into my chest but your eyes were wide with expectation, if not fear. I sat there, cringing at the language: ‘I wanna smash your fuckin’ face in. Do you want me to fuckin’ hit you now?’ I wanted to protect you from the words. Everybody seemed to be aware of us, or you, in particular. There were a number of young people, mostly males, looking at the floor, or sitting there awkwardly with the plugs of their iPod’s jammed in their ear.

This main guy, the aggressor, would go back to the other end of the carriage shouting out with bravado to his friends, and then come back to our end with further vitriol. It didn’t occur to me to stand up and protest about the sheer injustice of having an innocent and beautiful girl witness such ugliness. But it did occur to me to change carriages. Mostly, though, I just wanted to will it all away.

I counted the stations for you. You kept asking ‘how much longer to go?’ One of the participants, on the more passive side, sat right next to us. I doubt you even noticed this. And this is where the ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ factor came into play. Read it, when you are older, and think back to this scene. In the Harper Lee novel Scout’s mere presence has an influence over the lynch mob who are after the black man, Tom Robinson, who Scout’s father is protecting. The sight of this little girl, about your age, meant that the awful men, with their sinister aims, recoil at their objective, and wander away feeling foolish and regretful.

All the players on the train the other night were looking at you. You, clutched to my stomach, having your back rubbed and patted the whole time, up and down, up and down. You, as Scout, showing them how wrong they were, the old story. It takes a little kid for them to realise they were about to do something wrong.

Well, honey, that’s not quite true. You made them abandon it for a while, that’s all. But that’s something. Your presence spared all the people on the train some spilled blood and heavy atmosphere. The people hiding in their mobile phones and staring at the floor. Those others like the two of us looking bewildered and uncertain. The aggressor walked over to the people on our side again and said he would wait until Coburg Station. That’s where the big statement would be made. Did you hear him say this? That he was going to ‘smash (his) fuckin’ face in’ when they got off the train at ‘Coburg’? Well, if you did, you might have had the same thought as me. ‘That’s our stop.’

I nudged you when the train left Moreland, the preceding station. We were not going to hang around. The doors opened and we were out of there. I was the first to see the police ten or eleven carriages away. They moved fast when I spoke to them. We crawled through the quiet but now eerie streets. We were so glad to be home. Turning the key in the front door, the phone rang. It was mother to say they would be hours yet. At least they would have the car.

Life is full of sobering experiences. There will be other times that you will find bewildering, or cruel, or confusing. You cannot be protected forever. But just the other time, on this awful, confronting night, I am happy to say you were spared the worst, and I’m so glad you still do not know the sight or sound of fist smacking flesh.

ON LONELINESS

SHE buries her face in her books in class. Students around her giggle about boys in their old primary school. They take photos of themselves when the teacher is distracted. She continues with her work. She feels a strange sort of bond with her teacher. She can sense that her teacher cares about her, even if it is in some fairly insignificant way. In class, the students are seated at round tables. It must be a new kind of learning. There are six girls at most of the tables. One table has eight students. Her table has two. She has something in common with this other student. This one, also, comes to the school without a familiar peer from her primary school. The rub, though, is that they are both shy. Too shy to talk. Suddenly there are two more students coming over to balance things up. They are from the noisy table of eight. See, the teacher is thinking of her. She knows it is an opportunity to shed some loneliness, to discover an unlikely kindred spirit. To have somebody to communicate with, even to conspire with or giggle about boys from the old primary school with, and secretly take photos. However, all her flimsy dreams are dashed when she sees the downcast look of the girls approaching. They hate this. They are scornful of having to move. The look on their face says it. Anger and utter contempt for having to move, and embarrassment and disdain for having to sit with her, the girl who buries her face in her books.

HE waits for the bell so he can trudge off to class. The office he has been allocated is dull and suffocating. Almost everyone is female. He has nothing in common with the other men. The women gossip and talk about their night out and their dinners. Sometimes there is nauseating, artificial laughter. The classroom is his sanctuary. The students smile at him. It is the first smile he has received since leaving his children at home at the beginning of the day. He feels there may be some genuine interest. They ask him about mobile phones. His ignorance of this subject amuses them. He seems of another world entirely. They tease him about Instagram and they queue up to show him the new applications they have discovered, ones that are buzzing around the schoolyard.

SHE waits for the bell so she can trudge off to lunch. All the girls from the entire school sit around in small groups, talk, laugh insanely, cross their legs and play with their mobile phones. At primary school she was attached, like an afterthought, to a large group that tolerated her weirdness. It was somewhere safe to go each day, and it mattered to her less and less that it was manufactured by a kind teacher. At this school, the high school, there are new rules and new cliques, and she hasn’t worked them out yet. A pale, undernourished girl has smiled at her a couple of times on the first few days, and each morning she thought she might seek her out more and more. But then, a week and a half into her new environment, the pale girl has found a place, and now their eyes never met. What to do each day. There is the beautiful library. Keeping busy by filling her water bottle. Speaking to the teacher on yard duty. She soon becomes worried that her solitariness will be noticed, and an uncomfortable primary school pattern will emerge. She thinks she might have Asperger’s.

HE sits in the staffroom alone at lunch, eating simple sandwiches, and trying not to feel odd and look odd, amidst the swarming buzz of teachers interacting with each all around him. He picks up threads of conversations, and sometimes the earnest discussions sound important and meaningful. ‘Don’t forget we need to arrange a time for the guest speaker’, or ‘Have you had time to go over the curriculum that we discussed at the meeting?’ Then there are other snippets of a more personal nature that make him feel downcast and solitary, and alien, like he might have Asperger’s. ‘How is your daughter getting on in her new job?’ ‘When does Marcie get out of hospital?’ ‘Are the kittens you bought at Christmas showing any signs of improvement?’ He feels floored by all of this. It makes him feel sick to the stomach. He cannot find any appetite for his food. He wants to let out a scream. He knows nothing about any of these people, and yet, they know so much about each other. He waits for the bell so he can trudge off to class.

EVERYBODY files in. The high pitched chatter of people who have just met. She finds her seat at the round table nearest the window. Everyone sits at the same seat each day. She likes this. It is one of the only things she likes about school. She knows this teacher better than all the others. She loves his bearded, serene face. She loves the vulnerability. She knows she is the only one who can sense it. Yes, his voice booms out sometimes, especially when he is reading. And yes, he strides around the room purposefully, checking hand writing and checking books. But she catches his face at other times, and she sees it is sometimes pained. The mouth pursed, the eyes glazed, the brow furrowed. She yearns to touch his hand.

THE bell goes. He dismisses them quickly, with a strong sense of relief. His mind’s not right, like the insane man in that Robert Lowell poem about skunks. He feels the class didn’t go particularly well. He felt more vulnerable than usual. And now he has to face the challenge of going back to his office. Suddenly he is filled with dread. He had a panic attack at the dentist recently, and now he feels something similar coming on. It’s these walls. He feels like they are closing in. He longs to rush outside and breathe in the air through to his lungs. He is glad the students have left. But then he sees her. The quiet girl who has had trouble making friends. She has, for some reason, decided to linger behind. He glances up at her, looking at her behind a valley of tears. It is excruciating but he cannot help it. Then her face puckers up, and she is crying too. Her hand is on his shoulder, and together their cries reverberate around the otherwise empty classroom.

England, My England

I HAVE decided to put together my written and photographic memories of living overseas into an on-line book. It stems from the period 2000-2003. This will be the preface. it will be time-consuming but fun. the next best thing, perhaps, to actually going back there to live.

ENGLAND TRIP VOL 1 

PREFACE

I WILL never forget the first days of the beginning of our pilgrimage after arriving in England towards the end of the year 2000. We had got married in Sunbury, spend a few weeks in Sri Lanka, then caught a train to London from Heathrow, then a bus to Bearstead near Maidstone, Kent. Simon Read collected us in the pouring rain at night. The next day, still no doubt jetlagged, we sat in Pauline’s conservatory. She placed a thick hardback in my hand. It was a book about English towns and villages. In my heightened and excited state, I had not fathomed our relative proximity to places like Italy, France and Austria. It was enough that it was England on our doorstep. England, my England. The names and maps ran off the page, like the Melbourne ‘Melway’, but a thousand times more exciting. Lower Slaughter, Gloucestershire. Kelmscott, Oxfordshire. Mevagissey, Cornwall. Haworth, Lancashire. Bambridge, Northumberland. Much Wenlock, Shropshire. The names rolled on and on, all inspiring. I used the index and found many names that were familiar because of my research and reading. Morris, Lawrence, Plath, Hardy, Burne-Jones. Towns associated with glorious people. Even little Edenbridge, quite close by, where Lawrence stayed with Edward Garnett. My imagination ran wild and I felt like I had entered a new, golden sphere, a little like the character in the Woody Allen film called ‘Midnight In Paris’, who finds himself in 1920’s Fitzgerald-era Paris. Except I hadn’t travelled into the past. The present, alone, was entirely sufficient and satisfying. Pauline’s little conservatory was crackling with life and electricity.