‘I have no guilt about deaths on my property,’ said Simon. ‘Am I to let my shepherds and my livestock be impaled and clubbed? By a race so sunk in cunning and aimlessness that one might think them the first creation of the Fall? I shall not be inhumane to them, but equally I shall not weep when they are gone. They are in this region impertinent and aggressive.’
‘It is a sign of advancing age,’ I said with a relenting smile, ‘to use the word “impertinent”.’
‘Then so be it. If I have the wisdom of age before my time, I shall not complain.’
And he had at least achieved this – in his desire to fit the norm of goodness, he had achieved the normal concept of the native people.
‘If Father gives you his crazy book to send to London or Edinburgh,’ Simon continued, ‘drop it in a deep passage of the Murrumbidgee, so that we can live free from shame.’
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘He is becoming more and more exorbitant. His book will not be published.’
HELENE SAID, DESPITE EVERYTHING, Prim had got off easy from her demonstration, and that it had even seemed to bear fruit. Her picture with the placard had appeared in the international press – the lean, fair-featured woman in long-sleeved shirt and floral skirt holding her plea aloft must have appealed to picture editors. She was the Page 3 girl of the oppressed, said Helene.
Dimp faxed. She said she was on her way, making airline bookings to stand by her sister in Khartoum. She would bring Benedetto, who knew his international law. Prim called and dissuaded her.
She was tortured by the thought that her trip to free slaves in Lokichokio might have contributed to whatever isolation and pain Sherif was now suffering. Nothing happened to ease that concern. Yet in the punishing weeks in which she waited for a call about Sherif, she took guilty comfort from the account of Jonathan Bettany, which had accumulated during her absence in Alingaz, and from tales of Dimp and her problems which seemed like the dilemmas of someone fantastical, of a character in a soap opera which, like all good soap operas, dealt only in lives of privilege. But Prim had a particular hope for how it would end. Surely scales would fall from Dimp’s eyes and she would return to Bren and they would adopt a child.
Dimp had told her how when Bren returned from America, he was justifiably offended to find his paintings gone, and had instituted civil proceedings to recover them. To disabuse him, Dimp had a set of divorce documents drawn up and delivered, in which she offered in return for the withdrawal of his writ concerning the paintings – which both he and she knew to be only of nuisance value – to relinquish all further claim on him.
Though she distantly disapproved, and in the darkest of all dark hours suspected a connection between Dimp’s Sydney chaos and the disorder of the republic which was toying with and devouring its child, Sherif, Prim thus felt subtly cheated when a definitive instalment, dated July 2 1990, arrived.
Dearest Prim
I’ve been talking to that miserable lean character Whitloaf, who says he’s watching Khartoum and has a replacement or an aide ready to send. I just hope you’re okay, and that Sherif’s okay too. I called the Department of Foreign Affairs, but we don’t have an embassy in Khartoum. They told me they’ve instructed the Brits and the Americans to represent you if anything bad happens. I really am very worried, and ready to leave the moment you tell me you need me.
Everything’s settled here anyway. The terms of the settlement are engraved in legal jargon. My lawyer, Pynsent, a family law whizz, went to see Bren by appointment at his office a few weeks back, and said, ‘Look, it doesn’t make sense. My client is willing to waive all claim on you if you drop all charges and give her indemnity from any possible prosecution.’ And the worst thing is, Bren stood up by his big picture window, with the whole reach of the harbour behind him, and began to weep, in front of Pynsent. Then he said what a bloody silly thing that was to do, in front of a lawyer, and started sobbing again. When Pynsent told me this I thought, What have you done, Dimp, you flippant bitch? Pynsent himself was embarrassed for these tears, and it must have been awful for Bren. You see, he is complex – he’s willing to sacrifice his dignity. I have to remember that that’s as far as it goes. He’s not willing to sacrifice his soul. But when Pynsent told me … I was weeping too, at the idea of Bren being so stricken. And he told me Bren said, like a man who couldn’t be bothered to hide anything anyhow, ‘If I drop the charges I’ll lose contact with her.’
It sounds so plaintive. I did consider turning back for his sake and growing old unhappily with him. I’d be the forgiven spouse. I think Bren would go for it. A small matter of course: I’d lose Benedetto, and the universe would be a cold place. But love’s more than a gesture. Though this was quite a gesture. He was suing me above all to keep contact. He was willing to be mocked in the press and whispered about amongst his peers just to keep a claim on me. And that’s a very cunning instinct in its own right: they talk about suing for someone’s hand – at least that’s an old-fashioned phrase. Well, he was suing for mine, if he can be believed. I feel guilty for the way I must have mystified the poor sod.
And he’s suing for heaven too, at the same time. I asked him once in an argument what redemption would be like, what pictures of it he carried in his head. It’s ineffable, he says. It can’t be talked about or defined. But I say, if it can’t be discussed, why be so driven by it? There are enough things on earth which can be discussed, I told him, which can be defined by us poor suffering bastards. Including the price of molybdenum and the death of love. So let’s stick with them. But then, you wouldn’t believe it, he broke down. It was all a huge stress to him. This venture conquistador! He rarely shed a tear, but as with Pynsent, he wept then, trying to imagine heaven or deal with my agnostic mockery. And at that stage I was still simple-minded enough to think that sobbing – particularly in men – is love. But I’ve never seen anyone crying at the prospect of hell, have you? Bawling for salvation?
All this added up – willingness to weep before a lawyer, willingness to be thought foolish – instead of causing me to feel regret, caused me to feel even more relief, even more conviction. I did the right thing. I had the right instincts. How can I regret my removal – theft it is not! – of pictures, when that was the finest way to get my earnestness across to Bren?
Anyhow, Bren told Pynsent that he needed time to think about the proposal, and he was going to San Francisco to speak to commodity dealers at some big seminar, and he hoped that would clear his head, and he would talk when he got back.
Well, he came back yesterday, and this morning he called Pynsent and told him that yes, he would drop the case, but he insisted on making a proper settlement with me, minus half the cost of the paintings. What a generous, miserable thing! Half the cost! Though he didn’t express the idea, he doesn’t want people saying he was too mean or vengeful to give me anything. So he comes up, no doubt on lawyers’ advice, with this 50 per cent forgiveness. For me, that was the finish! I told Pynsent, No. Not a chance! No maintenance, no cash. Remind him that the paintings were all in my name. And so to save Bren’s self-esteem a clause had to be put into the agreement saying that the arrangement was confidential and no one would reveal the details under threat of legal sanction. Bren’s lawyers made Pynsent and me turn up at their offices, and we all signed. To his credit, Bren signed without any reproach. I was sheathed in cloth covered in rainbow lorikeets, and he said to me with a lenient smile, ‘You’re still dressing in the old style,’ and I forgave him for sicking Cara Motley onto me once to try to teach me haute couture. He was dry-eyed when it was his turn to sign.
And, with a hush and a nod and the scrape of a ballpoint against paper, my sole marriage as good as reaches its end – not quite yet in the technical sense. There’s still the automatic and uncontested process to go through, but I think this agreement document is the real separator.
But then I found that there was a reason Bren might have been dry-eyed at the signing. Benedetto and I saw him at some Sydney Theatre Company bash a
t Walsh Bay and he had an American with him, a stylish woman who clearly understood how to dress and was enviably made-up. She looked an utter Venus, although slightly sharp-featured in a way which won’t become marked for decades yet. She looked credible beside him. I was almost proud of him! I laughed all the way home – not in mockery at all, but in utter delight. Benedetto tells me she was saying at the party that she was arranging a tour of duty in Bren’s office here and praising his chutzpah in running an international headquarters from Sydney. His tears have been wiped away by her admiration!
I don’t blame him at all for finding a companion in what is for him fairly fast time, or perhaps even of beating the gun a little – after all he was in her city and within her ambience while I stole his paintings. After an inappropriate bitch like me, why shouldn’t he comfort himself with a woman who knows the skills of womanhood as it is practised in his circles. Maybe he’ll be man enough to marry her, and if he does, I’ll be cheering from the sidelines. Laughing in the face of hell.
So, nothing to keep me from my sister’s side! Even the writer, Hugo, is steaming away. He shows me stuff. It’s beautiful. He has the tone and tempo of the speeches between Bettany and Phoebe, Bettany and Bernard. It’s so rare this happens in a screenwriter, that he reacts so well so early in the process, but it means I can come to support you at a second’s notice. You assure me there’s no chance you’ll be arrested. I hope that’s the case!
Ready to roll at any moment on your behalf, I am
Your sister Dimp
MY FATHER’S BOOK
Bernard and Tume, a Jewish woman and an Irish, ensured we celebrated a hearty Christmas, energetically bearing us through all the rituals of the bush Yule. My father, O’Dallow and I drank and talked enough to keep away all the ghosts and other absences at our tables.
One or two days later, my father asked me to go walking with him one hot morning around the stockyards. I was intrigued by the one tassel of smoke on the hill above. Some of the Moth people came back still, a scatter, though most of them had been drawn away into the Reverend Howie’s mission near Bombala, where he sustained and kept them in place with rations of flour, tea, sugar and tobacco. It was as if, when they first ate flour, or took tobacco into their mouths, they were doomed to lose connection with their earth.
‘I’ve been to see Mr Cantyman, the solicitor in town,’ my father told me. ‘I want you to listen calmly to what my intentions are as regards my estate, which is not insubstantial, as it happens. My law practice in Hobart still functions under the management of a somewhat better lawyer than Mr Cantyman, a young man named Fletcher.’ I remembered Fletcher as a fresh-faced junior clerk when I was a child. ‘The practice was somewhat devalued when my sins were made public. Had I misused clients’ funds, I might have been treated with slightly more lenity. The colonial Pharisees, who had come to me at Mr Batchelor’s kind urging, vacated the practice. But more recently, the population of Hobart has chosen not to punish Fletcher for my sins, and he is a man of such innate integrity that all goes well in that direction. The law office is not without its inherent value.’
I told him I was pleased to hear it.
‘Then there is the house at Sandy Point, which must go to your mother. Then there are cash and certain bonds, to be divided between you, your mother and Simon.’
I said the normal things about being confident we would not soon receive these benefits.
‘And then,’ he continued, ‘the 250-acre farm at Ross, and its livestock. Small enough by the standards of New South Wales, pitiable by the standards of Nugan Ganway. But a splendid little place not without value in Van Diemen’s Land terms. With this property I must seek your indulgence, Jonathan. I intend to leave it to be held in trust by my dear friend Aldread, to pass to yourself and Simon at her decease. In this regard, all your pious wishes about her survival will probably go unanswered. She will not last long, I fear. And I did it for the poor little thing without her asking or even suggesting. But on the way back from town in the cart, when I told her, she was as happy as a bird. She had never been thought of as a recipient of the usufruct of a property, and it seemed to me that her heart was elevated by the very idea that I had seen her in those terms, and signified as much in a legal document.’
‘But Mother will hear this will read,’ I protested, ‘should anything happen to you.’
‘You presume that Aldread will live longer than me,’ he said with a genuine dolour in his voice. ‘I wish it were so. You even presume that your mother will live longer than me, which is somewhat a better wager, since she does not have my vice of soaking oneself with rum. My God, you should see yourself, you are so priggish, Jonathan. Where is your obedience to the Biblical injunction, “… a bruised reed he shall not break …” Is not poor Alice a bruised reed? But of course, that verse is not a matter of the sensual temper of humanity and so it is not taken seriously by good Christians! By and large, good Christians bruise all they can!’
‘It’s not that,’ I said. ‘Your first duty is to your wife, to whom your vows were eternal.’
‘Oh Johnny, do you think you are in a position to enlighten me? The one difference between you and myself is that a fortuitous disease struck your spouse and delivered you of your so-called “eternal” vows.’
And he stood braced on his bowed legs, waiting and – I believed – hoping to be struck. I confess that I was angry enough to consider a patricidal blow, all the angrier of course for the truth of what he had said.
‘I shall write to Mother and tell her that I have no part in your decisions,’ I told him.
He brought his legs together, no longer seeking aggression, and took both my wrists in his hands. ‘Jonathan, I must be permitted – the law says so – to make my own testamentary arrangements. Your mother will not want. She may even be a literary widow, my son. Great days, great days! I believe I am no more than two weeks removed from the close of my manuscript! You must come to my fire and drink with me when it is all done.’
I said, ‘Of course.’ But I sounded like a churlish boy, and he laughed. And why not? He had ensured that both his life and his death were calamitous to my mother.
It was more than two weeks though before my father finished and copied his grand essay. It was late summer at Nugan Ganway when he finally came to the homestead with the manuscript under his arm and hammered deliriously on the opened door. The evening was dry, far removed from the arts and the muses. A furnace wind was gusting and swirling, south-west one second, north-west another, all from a blazing interior. Ruby lines of fire swayed along the ridges, their confused smoke blowing all ways. From the distant peaks was blown ash which lay extinguished and sullen over the homestead yard, and on the bark roofs like dirty snow.
Yet our door was nonetheless opened in expectation of kinder breezes – even though they may not reach us for days. And there, as I worked on my accounts and stock books, my father appeared, wearing a hat and a good shirt and polished boots, with Aldread, smiling beneath her mob cap. ‘I am here,’ he called, ‘with the last scintilla, the last full stop!’ Aldread’s breath could be heard, grating away, part excitement, part disease. Her cheeks had sunken, and the rounded cheekbones seemed close to the surface of her skin – there was a collapse occurring within the planes of her face. I had come to fear both their smiles, though in many ways one could not have found a more pleasant-looking couple, both frayed by life, appearing genially at a door in the remoter Maneroo. The manuscript, tied in a cord of jute, looked like a work of true industry.
‘So it is done, it is done, my boy,’ he told me, bustling in and pushing the leaf-light Aldread before him. They hastened to their customary spots by the empty hearth. Bernard was at that moment visiting Maggie Tume’s sick son, Michael, who had chicken pox and was, according to Tume, uncontrollable by anyone but Sarah. Had she been present, neither my father nor Aldread would have entered quite so glibly. For in sundry ways Bernard was becoming particular about the homestead. She had lined the walls of our room
with yards of blue cloth instead of the old device of pages from newspapers. She was a studious polisher, wiper and duster of most objects, expending particular care on the condition of the books in our growing library. She approached the volumes with her lovely long hands, tentative from reverence. Her manner was not quite that of a proprietor, yet she had become possessive enough to make her a little resistant to my loud, intrusive father.
In any case my father and his book and paramour having entered, I fetched rum and water. While I was doing it, Bernard returned. She greeted both visitors, but then went to make herself tea, returning with it in a cup and saucer to sit at the far end of the table, a little distant from the rum-bibbing, enthused pair by the hearth. How readily she had absorbed my unease, and her frown was a guarantee to me she would not let them go too far. But she also applied her frown to Aldread who, against the normal wisdom of consumptives, insisted on fuelling her illness with heavy draughts of spirits, clearly for the sake of maintaining pace and companionship with my father.
After savouring a mouthful of rum, Father rose, passed across to my desk and undid the string around his manuscript. He poked the paper with his finger. He whispered, ‘I expect without any vanity but simply on the basis that a man knows the value of what he has written, to be within a year of this date in some editorial offices splitting differences with Carlyle, and J.S. Mill, and perhaps especially with Benthamites.’
Though I did not know exactly what differences these gentlemen represented, it seemed an exorbitant ambition.
‘Carlyle,’ he continued, ‘is a good open fellow, and so is Mill, and neither of them likely to summon up the unquestioning prejudices of the British Philistine against me. As for all the Pharisees,’ – it seemed to have become his favourite term of denunciation – ‘of the Established Church, I shall bathe in their hatred!’