This was a strange and furtive period, filled with secret elations and fearful guilts, and an agonizing sense of the pressure of time. In the studio I had the feeling that Joe Denton and Young Joe and all the others were talking about me when I was not there; I thought they were watching me out of the corners of their eyes, quizzically, aware of my defections and simply biding their time. Yet on the surface of it they were just as patient with me as before, and they kept on trying to teach me the craft.
The day had to come when I was entrusted with the job of lithographing a client’s order all by myself. It was a fairly simple single-sheet poster in four colours for Kiwi Boot Polish. Joe Denton obviously should have given it to his own son to do, but it was passed over to me, I think to try to build up my self-confidence. I did the drawing-up all right and the tracing down, but I made rather a mess of the key-plate by carelessly spilling some gum arabic, and then running over here and there with the torsch, so that part of the plate had to be pumiced out and cleaned and re-sensitized. This always means a ragged finish to a job, and I expected a reprimand at least, but Joe Denton passed the plate without any comment.
Next morning I was out at the ink slab with George Rosevear, the litho printer, checking rubbings for the yellow underprint, when one of the stone hands came up with the prepared key-plate and began to bolt it on to the rotary drum.
He called me across to examine it, and to my pleased surprise I saw that all the edges were clean and sharp. I ruled in the register marks with great confidence.
‘Well, it came up pretty good, didn’t it?’ I said to George Rosevear, and my relief must have made me sound a little cocky.
He looked at me out of his red, craggy, printer’s face through steel-rimmed spectacles below a square hat made of newspaper.
‘An’ so it effing ought to!’ he snorted. ‘Joe Denton an’ that boy of his stayed back three hours last night an’ did the whole effing plate again! An’ they didn’t sign the overtime sheets neither!’ He worked his mouth at me as if he was going to spit and then picked up his roller and bent over the ink slab.
I felt as if I wanted to be sick. It was the first time I recognized the feeling of being shut out. Quite shut out.
Neither Joe Denton nor his son ever mentioned what they had done, and I could never let on that I knew, because that would have made the position impossible for all of us. When the poster was finished Joe Denton pinned it up on the wall and sent for old Mr Klebendorf to come up, and said, ‘The Kiwi order, Mr Klebendorf. Incidentally, young David there did this one, right from scratch. It’s the first he’s tackled on his own. Pretty good, don’t you think?’
Klebendorf only nodded and grunted, the way he always did, but he patted my shoulder as he was going out, and I felt as if a door had closed behind me, closed very quietly, with the clicking of a lock.
In childhood and adolescence there can be hardly anything more destructive, anything quite as defeating, as a knowledge of an inferiority, of an incapacity to reach standards imposed not by oneself but from outside. The feeling of being shut out, which I had felt in front of George Rosevear, moved with me now into the studio. I realized with a sickening finality that I did not belong to these kindly, simple, considerate people, with their fixed integrities and the honesty of their beliefs and the truths of the things they prized. I wasn’t good enough. I never could be good enough …
The situation had suddenly been reversed. Now it was only at home that I could escape. Nothing was as real or as important as the privacy of my room, the mounting pile of journals and note-books, my swelling library, the heart-thumping secrecy with which I had to work. I was hardly conscious any longer of Jack’s comings and goings or his scornful observations, or of Mother’s sadness, or even of Dad’s surly moods and intermittent brutalities.
The deception here, of course, was just as profound as at work. My family took it for granted that I was an excellent apprentice, that I was succeeding with Klebendorf and Hardt where Jack had failed with Foley the plumber. So far as they knew, I was at night school most of the week, I spent my week-ends sketching, and I enjoyed my job so much that I would get up in the mornings hours earlier than was necessary just to get to work. I did not disillusion them; indeed I lied barefacedly about the progress I was making, in lettering, in lithography, in figure drawing. I took home the Kiwi poster, of course, but I would also bring printed samples of work that Tom Middleton or Barney Druce or Young Joe had done, and say that I had lithographed them; I discovered some old rejects of Steiner’s tempera pictures, and I stole two of them and took them home and pretended they were my paintings. Mother admired them so much that she had them framed and they were hung with her own paintings in the front room. They were still there on the wall, to my shame and horror, thirty years later.
Oddly enough, I think there was one moment during this curious period of double-deception, when a fairly normal adolescence might have been possible. It was Dad who prevented it, although this was not really deliberate. His antagonism towards Mother still continued, although it was less directly violent than before, and had spread into a kind of sullen general misogynism, and on top of this he had begun by now to hear disturbing reports of Jack’s nocturnal escapades from several frightened suburban parents. He knew that Jack had slipped beyond his control. He was positive that he would get some girl into trouble and bring shame to the Meredith name, to say nothing of the possibilities of a court order or a shotgun marriage. Like many a weak man before him, he saw the temptation as the source of the evil, and women became his anathema.
It was about this time that a boy I had known at school, Jerry Farley, had his sixteenth birthday, and I was invited to attend his party. I was allowed to go, since it was a Saturday night, but Dad had lost at the races and was in one of his bad moods, and he made a point of warning me that I was to be home no later than ten o’clock.
Apart from Dad’s ‘Welcome Home’ and the Sunday night sing-songs, which didn’t really count, I had never gone to a proper party, so I walked up to Royal Parade in a kind of excited trepidation which turned into intense nervousness when I saw the crowd that was there, and there seemed to be as many girls as there were boys, and some of them were dancing together, doing the Charleston and the Black Bottom and the Varsity Drag. Farley had four sisters. Moira, the prettiest, was about a year older than Jerry, and she came across the room to where I was sitting, with her friend Helen Midgeley, who was older still, and they began to talk to me because both of them were at an art school in Prahran, studying fashion design, and they were interested in me because I was actually working in commercial art. I was embarrassed at first, but they wanted to know about lithography and the studio and after a time I found that I was explaining things without any self-consciousness.
Helen Midgeley was a tall, fair-haired girl with very pretty legs and she was wearing a straight, plain-coloured dress where most of the other girls were frilly in party frocks, and she had an air of cool, sort of sexless friendliness which had the effect of making me feel, for the first time in my life, at ease and warm and eager in the company of the other sex. Moira was more volatile and more challenging, with a sort of wild impetuosity in her talk – flinging at me her passion for Rembrandt, her adoration of Whistler, her admiration of Russell Flint, almost as if they were accusations – but it was the cooler balance of the older girl, her genuine curiosity, her obviously more mature intellect, which really captivated me. I had never in my life known anyone so beautiful and so poised and so clever. When Moira eventually was dragged away to dance, Helen stayed with me, talking.
‘I don’t know that I’d ever want to make a career of fashion drawing,’ she said. ‘Unless it would take me to Paris or London or somewhere, where one could be somebody. You’re going to the Gallery school, is that because of commercial art, or do you want to be a real artist?’
‘I want to be a real something,’ I said. ‘I don’t know about an artist.’
‘A real what then?’
&n
bsp; ‘A writer, I think. In fact, I think that’s exactly what I will be. A writer. I’ll be a very famous writer.’ I had a desperate wish to tell her that I already was a writer, that the best newspaper in the city published everything I sent in, but I was terrified that she would disbelieve me, or laugh at the pseudonym I used. But she just gave me a slow, cool, interested smile and said, ‘When you are famous I promise I’ll buy all your books. David Meredith. I’ll remember the name.’
After that we talked for a long time about books and about writers, and she didn’t seem interested in the dancing or the games, and I enjoyed her company so much, and the sweet strange smell of her, that I forgot about the time and it was already past ten when I took my leave, and out in Royal Parade beneath the stars and the wind-swing of the pepper-trees I had a feeling of immense happiness and I ran almost all the way home, slapping at the tree trunks and the picket fences and talking to myself.
When I came to the corner of our street a great black figure sprang out at me from behind Gillon’s cypress hedge brandishing a thick wooden stick. It was Dad. He chased me the rest of the way home, beating me across the back.
‘There were girls there, weren’t there?’ he kept shouting at me. ‘You were chasing the girls, weren’t you? That’s why you disobeyed me, eh? Ten o’clock was what I said! Ten o’clock! Take that for your girls! And that! And that!’
Everything finally came to a head on the evening after my own sixteenth birthday, which occurred not so very long after I had graduated to the Life Class.
I only just scraped through; in fact, if I had been honest about it they would have failed me. In spite of my repeated absences it was easy enough to qualify on attendances as these were checked off from the students’ book at the main inquiry desk of the museum, and I would always sign the book whether I was going to classes or to the Newspaper Room. The real snag was the three submission drawings that had to be shown to Barnaby Stanton. I had made one pretty good study of an acanthus frieze, but I knew my figure work was weak, so I stole two good studies from Young Joe’s folio of the previous year, which he always kept at the factory studio, and submitted all three drawings as my own. I felt guilty and ashamed about it, but I just could not afford to be failed, because this would have meant a report to Klebendorf and Hardt, questions by old Joe Denton, and complete exposure of my defections. Nobody ever found out. Old Stanton looked at me in some curiosity – understandably enough, since I was almost totally unfamiliar to him – but anyway he wrote me for a pass.
Then came the incident of my birthday. Birthdays were never particularly celebrated in our house, and presents were seldom given – and then only new shoes or socks or shirts or handkerchiefs, useful things which would have had to be bought anyway – but this year it was different. It happened that Granny and I had birthdays in the same zodiacal sign, so that it was only a week or so since I had given her the forged picture of the Grafton. Mother was pleased that I had graduated to the Life Class, because this to her meant painting instead of drawing. She had no idea what Life Class really was – because of Dad I never told them anything about naked models – and I think she had it confused some way with Still Life, but she knew that it was a senior class and that I would need oil paints. So she and Granny clubbed together and gave me a present of a five-pound note. With this I was to buy my box of artist’s oil colours.
I got permission next day to leave work half an hour earlier, so that the art dealer’s store in Little Collins Street would still be open, and I knew exactly the box of paints and the shape of the palette I wanted, and I had decided in my mind on how many sable brushes would be needed and how many hogshair, but fate again took a hand in my affairs, because there was a narrow little shop right next to Dean’s art store that was having a sale of reconditioned secondhand typewriters, and right in the very front of the window display was a huge, old-fashioned Remington standard typewriter with a carriage about two feet long, and a card resting on the keyboard which said, Good Working Order Guaranteed – £5 Cash or Considerate Terms.
It was then only ten minutes off closing time, so I hardly hesitated at all; I handed over the £5 note and they gave me a receipt and a printed guarantee and the big typewriter. They offered me a waterproof cover too, but that would have cost an extra half-crown and I didn’t have the money, so I just took the Remington as it was.
It was an uneasy, muggy evening with a storm brewing, and the Remington seemed to weigh a ton, and the width of the carriage, which kept sliding and ringing the bell, made it very awkward to carry, and by the time I had staggered as far as Swanston Street the shops and offices were closing and it was the rush hour, with everybody pushing and jostling for the trams. The sultriness had made people irritable and nobody had much patience with me and my cumbersome burden, and it was quite some time before I was able to struggle aboard a Darling Road tram, and even then I had to stand with the typewriter still in my arms. We were crossing Prince’s Bridge when the conductor elbowed his way through the strap-hangers. The weather and the crowds had given him a fine temper too, and he began to make a tremendous fuss when he saw me and wanted to kick me off at the next stop.
‘All the damn’ room yer takin’ up!’ he snapped. ‘Why doncher ’ire a van fer that there thing?’ In the end he made me get out and stow the typewriter on the greasy, slatted floor in the rear motorman’s compartment. This gave my arms a rest but every time the tram lurched or clattered over points or junctions I thought the old Remington would fall to pieces.
Anyway I got it undamaged to our stop at the corner of Kooyong Road. By this time I was flustered and aching, and the weight of the typewriter seemed to increase with every step, so I put it down on the wooden bench outside Cleland’s shop while I rested. Then a funny thing happened.
A depot tram coming home from the city pulled up and a middle-aged man got off. He was well-dressed and looked like a solicitor or a chartered accountant, and he carried an attaché-case and an umbrella. He began to step off briskly down Kooyong Road, but when he caught sight of me he looked over curiously and stopped and came across to the bench. Then, without saying a word to me, he opened his attaché-case and took out a sheet of note-paper that looked like a business letter and turned it over and rolled it into the carriage of the typewriter, and then with two fingers he picked out: ‘Now is the time for all good men to come to the aid of the party.’
‘Hmm, yes, it has quite a nice touch,’ he said, and smiled at me, and then, ‘It’s beginning to rain, you know,’ he said. ‘Which way do you go?’
I told him where I lived, and he said, ‘Well, come on, let’s get along. That’s my way too. You don’t want to get that thing wet. You should have a cover for it by rights. Come along, I’ll hold this umbrella for you.’
The rain fell first in soft warm dots, as big as shillings, then turned into a steady drizzle as we walked down, so he took me all the way to our gate and left me with a cheerful good night. The curious encounter with this kindly stranger had made me forget all my discomfort and embarrassment, and I had such a joyous excitement tingling through me that I decided to surprise Mother by presenting myself at the front door.
Unluckily, Dad, who normally never answered the door, happened to be in the hall; as soon as I saw him I could see that he was in one of his bad moods.
‘You,’ he said curtly. ‘Why didn’t you go round the back way?’ Then he saw what I was carrying and frowned. ‘What in the name of God is that?’ he said suspiciously.
‘Oh, it’s only a typewriter,’ I said, as I eased it out of my aching arms and set it down very carefully on the rug. I tried to make it sound nonchalant; I still felt proud and happy, but it had twisted somehow, being confronted by Dad instead of my mother.
‘Min!’ he shouted. ‘Min, just come and see what this damned dolt of a son of yours has brought home now!’
I see now how impossible it was for me, at sixteen, to have had even the faintest glimmerings of the corrosive forces which lay behind the scene th
at was to follow. I was familiar enough with the patterns of violent physical tyranny in my father’s character, but it would be years before I could expect to understand the darker currents that obsessed him – the virulence of the acid thing inside him that was always biting blindly … to accuse, to blame, to find other scapegoats for his own failures and failings. (Even ten years or more later, when strong acids were eating at my own character, and when I behaved with as much violence and cruelty and injustice to my own wife, I still had not learned to understand it.)
Yet the clue, I think, was in that shout to my mother, this deliberate use of the phrase, ‘this son of yours’, for I remember now, repeatedly in their quarrels, how blame was fixed by him always on some presumably malevolent influence for which Mother was responsible. ‘I hope you’re proud of that worthless damned son of yours!’ he would say to her, or ‘They get it from your side of the family’, or ‘I’d watch that daughter of yours if I were you’. Mother was the source of contamination. From her side of the family came all the rank seeds of rottenness and failure.
Perhaps the warp in his mind went all the way back to that crowded hovel on the edge of Chinatown where he had grown up with his resenting, furious, victimized Orangeman father. But there at least, rowing on the lake, playing his fiddle at the Saturday socials after the regattas, he would have thought himself to have been somebody, and I am sure he had come genuinely to believe that his defiance of his own father had been the point where he had gone wrong. His father had warned him against involvement with a family he was convinced was parasitical and rotten and corrupted, and he had flouted his advice and eloped and run away, and nothing but bad luck had followed.
There had been years of unemployment, of casual labour, of hardship, his first child had died, he had escaped into the adventure of war and got nothing out of it but chronic ill-health and had come back to the same poor job as before with four whole years of his life wasted. As his bitterness and resentment increased, it focused more and more sharply upon his wife and her family, and there were many things upon which his rancour might feed. He had not asked her to go galloping off to France after him, abandoning and neglecting her children, allowing them to grow up like savages … then coming back and wasting years of her life, and his, on her pet soldier-boys. Her skinflint father had died, leaving her not so much as a shilling. Her bedridden mother had been a burden on them for years. And her two brothers – one a drunken waster and the other a sponger and a crook.
My Brother Jack Page 11
