After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  ‘Sometimes that’s all you need if you’ve got vision,’ said Deirdre.

  They moved towards the Opera House, their gaze drawn to the lustrous, curved geometric shapes soaring against the bright sky. They wandered closer, breathing the salty harbour air and feeling the breeze caress their skin.

  ‘This surpasses every photo I’ve seen,’ said Deirdre. ‘How could anyone capture its serene splendour? It is – so lofty and luminous.’

  Noise faded as they advanced. Passersby conversing, children calling, buses grinding up Phillip Street – all blurred into an indistinct and unimportant backdrop. Closer they went, closer, falling silent as the building loomed in front of them with a calm radiance.

  ‘It’s a hymn to beauty,’ Maureen said.

  ‘It’s like that tango,’ said Keira, ‘compelling us to yearn for we don’t know what.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Deirdre, ‘a geometry of desire.’

  ‘It could be the planes of a seashell,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Who’d have thought that mosaics in only white could be so stunning?’ said Deirdre. ‘It’s like sunshine on snow.’

  ‘They’re glazed ceramic tiles,’ said Maureen. ‘I read about it last night – opalescent, someone calls the effect.’

  ‘Light and flight!’ said Deirdre. ‘Those powerful wings, as if she’s about to fly off to New Zealand – or Antarctica!’

  ‘A gigantic prehistoric bird,’ said Keira, ‘or a ship or a cathedral. You’d never tire of looking at it.’

  ‘When you gaze up at this,’ said Deirdre, spreading her arms wide to encompass the vision before them, ‘all the petty politics are gone. Politics is just housekeeping for the nation.’

  ‘Or it should be,’ said Keira. ‘Corruption casts a long shadow.’

  Deirdre linked her arm through one of Keira’s and said, ‘Art shines a light on what matters.’

  The three women drifted closer, moving in slow-motion to a song of timeless grace.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Thank you to the dedicated staff at the National Library of Australia for help with research and for making available all the fascinating books, newspapers and journals I read in the course of writing this novel. The following books were particularly useful: Australian Women Artists: first fleet to 1945 by Caroline Ambrus; Australian Women Artists 1840-1940 by Janine Burke; Robert Hughes’ The Art of Australia and The Shock of the New; and Patricia Anderson’s Art and Australia and Elwyn Lynn’s Art World. Judy Cassab’s diaries and various books on the painter Shay Docking helped to inform the ideas for my fictional surrealist landscape painter, as did the works of Dorothea Tanning and Joanna Moorhead’s The Surreal Life of Leonora Carrington.

  James Gleeson’s art criticism in The Sydney Morning Herald inspired some of the reviews of my fictional character’s work. The lines of poetry in Chapter 50 are from Kenneth Slessor’s Five Bells. Philip Drew’s beautifully written Sydney Opera House was my favourite source of inspiration for that part of the story.

  I read many books on Ireland and the Blaskets in the National Library of Australia reading room. Ireland: a novel by Frank Delaney was a pleasure to read; and Tomas O’Crohan’s The Islandman and George Thomson’s two books, The Blasket that Was and Island Home: the Blasket heritage, were particularly helpful.

  Cole Morton’s Hungry for Home was a stunning introduction to life on the Blasket Islands while I was travelling in that area several years ago.

  I’m grateful to Shirley Daborn, Collection Manager at the Penrith Regional Gallery and the Lewers Bequest, for her knowledge and enthusiasm and for enabling access to the modernist works of Margo Lewers both in the public gallery and behind the scenes. This collection inspired many of the ideas in the novel about Australian modernism.

  Thank you to Jane Curry and her wonderful team at Impact Press for being a delight to work with. Special thanks to Zoe Hale for being so efficient and flexible. Thanks to Sophie Hodge for her publicist skills. I’m grateful to proofreader Lorae Harbottle-Purs for her beyond-the-call-of-duty attention to detail. I’m indebted to editor, Catherine McCredie, whose ideas improved the novel enormously. It was great to have the opportunity to work with such a perspicacious and insightful editor.

  I am grateful to Peter Bishop for illuminating talks about an earlier version of the novel while I was at Varuna the Writers’ House for a short Fellowship in 2013.

  Thank you to John Clanchy for reading earlier drafts of the novel and for very helpful comments. Warm thanks to Sue Hardisty for the beautiful environment of her home in Melbourne, in which I wrote a ridiculous number of new chapters in a very short time. Fond thanks to Kerry Johns and John McIntyre for an inspiring stay in the serene space of their Broulee house while writing the final draft.

  A big thank you to my swimming colleagues, Sam, Robyn, Don, Ruth, Stephen, Debi, Hugh and Sharon, for their sustaining friendship and laughs, and to the Canberra Argentine tango community who inspired me during the writing of this novel.

  I’m grateful to Bernadette Hince for the interesting culinary fact about Mussolini. Thanks also to Bernadette for starting and maintaining The ex-Bangalay Street Nobel Prize in Literature Eating and Reading Group, which includes Stephanie Haygarth, Lenore Coltheart, Sally Stephens and many others. Thanks also to the Tilley’s crowd for drinks and laughs.

  Special long-standing thanks to my friends Alice Roughley, Colin Campbell, Christine Cannon, Nicki Mazur and Michael Martin for their warm friendship and support through good times and bad over the years.

  Deep thanks to John Trueman for his helpful comments on earlier drafts and for being a brilliant fact-checker, as well as for his support and enthusiasm. And thanks to my sister Juliet Hollingsworth for her eye for beauty, her brilliant cooking and for a lifetime of love and laughs.

  Photo credit: Janet Meany

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Penelope Hanley worked two decades as an editor and is now a freelance writer. Her other publications include a novel and twenty short stories, as well as commissioned books, including: Creative Lives: Personal Papers of Australian Artists and Writers (NLA, 2009) and Inspiring Australians: The First Fifty Years of the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust (ASP, 2015). She has a PhD in Communications from the University of Canberra and a BA (Hons) in English Literature from the Australian National University. She loves books, cinema, travel and dancing the Argentine tango.