The Everlasting Secret Family

by Frank Moorhouse

  “Are we friends?”

  “Always—you know that.”

  “We must see more of each other this year.”

  “Yes, we will.”

  I didn’t feel we would.

  We kissed lightly through the cab window.

  As the cab moved off, she called out and the cab stopped, she ran to the window. “That was really Don’s joke,” she said.

  “Joke?”

  “About the yellow cake.”

  “Oh,” I laughed, “all right—I’ll attribute it.”

  I took the cab to my place. To my discredit the thought came to my mind about whether Cindy had had sex with the aboriginals after the rape. Her joke about “dating”. Whether this had been part of the therapeutic confrontation or part of the twisting of events. And then my thoughts turned to life in the city.

  The only mail which had accumulated was the Open Road, which for the first time I opened and read from cover to cover, slumped in a chair with a heavy scotch. I felt, as I read, a not unpleasant itch on my toe and identified it—with infuriating certainty—as tinea. I took off my shoe and sock—the only tinea I’d had since National Service—tinea from that bloody college bathroom. Bugger it.

  NOTES

  Fourth World. Sir John Guise has suggested that the Pacific area be called the Fourth World, to avoid it losing its special history and character by being wrongly included in the Third World.

  “Thank God, While Man”. This is from the poem A Black Man Speaks by Fr Leslie Fungui and is quoted with his kind permission. At the conference it was pointed out to me as a perfect example of a “poem illustrating the end of the literature of tutelage and the beginning of a literature of emancipation”.

  Syphilis and the New World. They were referring to work done on the link between America and Europe and the origin of syphilis. Expert opinion is divided on the question of whether Columbus and his sailors brought syphilis to Europe after catching it from the American Indians.

  Dreams of Idyllic, Exotic Cultures. It is interesting to compare Farman’s and other contemporary Australian romanticising of Bali with the whole stream of European writing which idealises exotic cultures. The Australians who idealise Bali usually at the same time disown Western culture, but a lot of Australians go to Bali when weary of life back home. European writing has idealised the South Seas, Africa and the West Indies in similar fashion. Norman Etherington in a piece in Meanjin 2/77 on Rider Haggard describes the African example: “Big game and diamonds conjure up images of unlimited African wealth . . . daily life in Kukuanaland is idyllic, healthy, and tidy,” and white civilisation is seen as corrupting with its “guns and gin”. Now Western tourism is seen as the corrupting agent.

  Okot p’Bitek. See his work The Song of Iawino, Nairobi, 1966, which contrasts a traditional African woman with a modern African woman, and regrets the loss of traditional communality and unity, which he sees coming from the decline in village life.

  Aversive Racism. Cindy was using a term of Dr Joel Kovel, who described three categories of racial relationship in his book White Racism: A Psychohistory, Pantheon Books, New York, 1970. He sees the dominative racist, the violent, intimidating Klansmen type; the aversive racist, willing to undertake social reform impersonally, but reluctant to establish intimacy with black people, sometimes a transitional stage towards his third category, which is being free of racism. It is not a book which travels any great distance.

  There seem to be other possible categories in Australia. Those who are, by impulse, dominative racists but whose behaviour is held in check and appear to be aversive racists. I think official attitudes restrain dominative racism of the overt type. There are those who are aversive racists but who are driven by guilt or ideology to act as if they are free of racism and to claim themselves free of racism. There are, too, those of goodwill who are unconsciously racist, usually in a patronising way.

  Some humour appears to be racist but is in fact a form of heresy humour, a way of shifting racist feelings from the serious to the absurd.

  Some “racist” humour is also a reaction against insufferable people who virtuously parade themselves as free of racism and who establish artificially solicitous relationships with black people, like Terence Farman.

  The Stockholm Syndrome. In 1974, the Seeriges Kreditbank in Stockholm was held up by Jan-Erik Olsson, who took hostages and subsequently held them in the bank for six days. He requested, and was permitted, to be joined by a friend, Clark Olofsson. Police and psychiatrists observed that after a time the hostages showed hostility to their would-be rescuers and loyalty to their captors. One of the women hostages allowed Olsson to caress her and to masturbate near her. After the hold-up one of the hostages visited Olsson in prison. Anna Freud, in her book Ego and The Mechanism of Defence, discusses the same syndrome, especially the identification by a person with that which threatens him or her.

  For a good account of the Stockholm incident see New Yorker, November 25, 1974.

  Cindy’s Age. Cindy once said that she “started life pretty early”. She did. She was at university when she was sixteen and lived with an American lecturer for a time when she was seventeen. She told him she was twenty in an attempt to equalise their ages. She was seventeen or eighteen when she lived with me. She consistently put her age up when with older people. She is now about thirty-four. I suppose Cindy was never really sixteen, seventeen, eighteen or nineteen but she was “twenty” for at least three years.

  Legendary Lovers. Cindy was something of a legend when I met her, at seventeen or so. She’d been around the Libertarian pub scene and had been a classic beatnik. But she had her own special group within the Libertarians.

  A twenty-five minute film was made about Cindy and her special friends in the mid-sixties, the frivolous, pre-Vietnam sixties. The film was cinema verite and called “Huma Society” (this is a pun on the Huma bird—the bird which is supposed never to come to rest). She and her friends are shown playing a curious card game they’d invented, which used those miniature card packs designed for children and jumbo cards designed for stage conjuring. They are also shown at a fancy-dress party all identically dressed. They did set pieces to camera, recitations and impersonations, and so on.

  I remember being impressed that they were without a trace of camera shyness. Someone should get together a revival of some of those films.

  They all read and quoted and, in a way, lived by the spirit of the Alexandria Quartet by Lawrence Durrell.

  “Only the Interaction of Complex Things.” This is a quote from an essay, Realism and Some of its Critics, by Professor John Anderson, written in 1930.

  Professor Anderson was appointed to the Challis Chair of Philosophy in the University of Sydney in 1927. For thirty years he played a leading part in the intellectual life of Sydney. His influence first spawned some clubs at Sydney University and then loose groupings in Sydney known as Libertarians or Andersonians or The Push. Andersonianism gave Sydney bohemian life a distinctive style and theory for some time. His followers and students have gone in many directions—some are politicians, some judges, some still bohemian. A collection of his work was published, titled “Studies in Empirical Philosophy”, Angus & Robertson, Sydney, 1963.

  Curiously, despite the testimony to his humour and the powerfulness of his personality, none of this seems to come through in the anecdotes about, or in memorable quotes of, Anderson.

  Old Vadim’s. Vadim, a Russian, ran a cafe in Challis Avenue, Sydney, frequented in the sixties by show business people, journalists, people from the arts and bohemians.

  The story of the cafe is that in 1958 Vadim was about to accept a job as assistant concert manager with the ABC. Unexpectedly he met an old friend, who offered him the opportunity to reopen a burned-down coffee shop in Challis Avenue. Vadim took the gamble.

  One night an old Russian friend brought some French dancers and Robert Helpmann into the coffee shop and they were joined by some ABC friends. Helpmann returned the following Saturday ni
ght with Vivien Leigh and the show business connection was established. Then the crowd from the intellectual fortnightly, Nation, began to use the cafe.

  A Russian chef, Vera, was hired and she became well known for her beef stroganoff and cheese pancakes. It was in the days of very restrictive liquor licensing and the patrons had to keep their liquor under the table in paper bags. It was drunk from tea cups.

  There was a status arrangement in the tables and seating. First there was the lower level near the door for the outer circle, the public. The higher level was for those known to the management and then, in the arm of the L-shaped room, out of sight of the public, was the inner circle. Draughts, dominoes, chess and poker were played.

  But in 1968 Vadim closed the doors. He said that he could see a new generation of intellectuals, actors and show business people emerging and they were different to those he had known.

  When asked recently in what way, Vadim replied, “They are loud and dishonest.”

  Vadim now runs a haute cuisine restaurant in an elegant building directly opposite his old bohemian cafe.

  John Henry Challis (1806—1880). Professor John Anderson was the Challis Professor of Philosophy at Sydney University. Old Vadim’s was, and Vadim’s new restaurant is, in Challis Avenue.

  John Henry Challis was a merchant and philanthropist. He arrived in Sydney as a clerk with Marsden and Flower early in the nineteenth century. By 1842, he was a partner in the firm, dealing in wool and other merchandise. He was one of those who campaigned for the introduction of coolie labour from India to replace the convicts. He acquired real estate including Potts Point (around Challis Avenue). After retiring, he became a permanent traveller around Europe.

  The Chancellor of the University said in 1886 that “Mr Challis, who had been a bachelor and of somewhat peculiar habits, was married quite late in life to some person in England, but he never mentioned his marriage to . . . friends . . . Mr Challis never had a private residence in England but moved from place to place; he never gave an address, except that of ‘Reform Club’.”

  Apart from annuities to friends and relations, Challis left his fortune to the University of Sydney. It was used to establish chairs in anatomy, zoology, engineering, history, law, logic, mental philosophy and modern literature. John Anderson held the Challis Chair of Philosophy from 1927 to 1950.

  Horne’s Rule on Doing Conferences. “Take one of each paper and go to everything. Stay to the bitter end of all sessions, be there for the foyer chat in the morning, read all the notices, go to the parties in the motel rooms. Stay where the others are staying. Never miss a breakfast in the dining room. The talk in the shared car from the airport is part of it all. Sometimes something good is said while waiting for the luggage at the airport.”

  Home’s rule is unclear as to whether lust, and the satisfaction of lust, have a part in the conference.

  Horne was a student under Anderson and a leading Andersonian.

  Eric Bottral at the Conference. For an account of Eric’s behaviour at the conference see “Boozing with Hawke” in the National Times, January 20, 1979.

  Hard Cases. “Hard cases, it has been frequently observed, are apt to introduce bad law” (Wolf, 1842). That is, hard cases lead to legislation for exceptions.

  Oliver Wendell Holmes in 1904 said, “Great cases, like hard cases, make bad law.”

  The Match Game. “. . . Two or more players put any number of ordinary matches, from zero to three, in their individual clenched fists. Each had a chance to guess the total number of matches clenched, and the one who guessed correctly first would drop out, assured of a free drink. The last remaining clencher had to buy the round. ‘There was a lot of form and tradition to the game,’ said Richard Watts, who was then drama critic on the Herald Tribune. ‘You had to wait a while for your turn sometimes. Walker and a Trib man named Tex O’Reilly were the best. They rarely paid for their drinks. Walker once played a hundred straight games as a sort of test to see if there was an advantage in going first or last; he found a slight advantage in going first. Thurber was just a good player, not championship calibre . . . Thurber also drew ten mural panels for Bleeck’s showing the intricacies and subtleties of the match game. The murals became as much a part of the place as the match game itself “Thurber”, Burton Bernstein, Dodd, Mead and Company, New York, 1975.

  Professor Derek Marsh is acknowledged as the Australian Champion match game player at conferences.

  Across the Plains, Over the Moon tains, and Down to the Sea.“It was the road on which Cindy and I had driven. We drove from a long way inland on a hot day to the coast.

  We drove the car on to the beach and swam naked. It was that road in the dream.”

  “Was this trip of special importance to the affair? What was its significance?”

  “Oh yes. Yes, it was a climax. It symbolised everything. It symbolised the leaving of a hot, dusty and choking marriage for the clean, free sea.”

  “I want you to describe the trip and I want you to free-associate on the dream.”

  How do you describe to a psychiatrist when you are blocked by overlapping grief and jubilation. Grief from having lost perfection, and the jubilation from having had it. God, we loved then. It may have been neurotically doomed but god it felt right. I feel tears about it now. But I do not want to cry. Cindy released me. I don’t mean from marriage—I had left that myself—but from a living numbness. She was coming alive out of childhood and I was coming alive out of this numbness from an anaesthetised marriage.

  The marriage wasn’t bad in the hostile yelling way. I’ve told you about the marriage. We could never admit to each other that there was anything wrong with the marriage because we were supposed to be perfectly suited and had to live out all our private proclamations about how superior our marriage was to those around us. We had to live out our marriage propaganda. And I left my wife then, not understanding why, and Cindy left me later not understanding why.

  At the time of the trip Cindy and I had been together a month. We had to go inland, where a friend’s book was being launched.

  “You use the word ‘inland’.”

  “Yes.”

  In-land. Within-land.

  “Oh yes—I see.”

  Well, at the launching we drank champagne, toasted, danced and cheered and sang. It was the first book by the first of our friends to publish a book. I remember holding Cindy and feeling the fire coming from her hot body. Everything was hot and delirious. It was a raging “inland” heat during the day and like the heat of the hot coals at night.

  “Tomorrow we go home. We’ll drive that 360 miles straight to the sea,” I said.

  “Yes. Please. Let’s do that,” she said. She could be as bright eyed as a child.

  “We will rise early at daylight and drive to the sea, across the plains, over the mountains, and down to the sea.

  I know a road over the mountains off the highway which is shorter.”

  “Yes, we’ll do that. We’ll swim naked.”

  Drunk, we made love in the motel. I tasted the salty sea juices which came from her. I sucked them from her to my parched river bed. Those juices left a taste that I can never swallow away. They were of the whole world.

  We rose to a squinting hot sun. We had fruit juices, grilled lambs fry and bacon, and very cold milk. We ate in bed. I saw Cindy’s teeth against the milk. Very white, perfect. Then we showered together and we made love in the shower under water, standing up.

  The day was very hot and we sweated as we packed the car. With bad love the packing of the car is the greatest irritation of all. For us it was the best of all games.

  We drove then along the blue highway. There was a shimmer by ten. The bush had that screech of hot insects, as though burning to death. And there was a smell of scorched foliage and drying mould. Cindy looked at the shimmer of the highway and said, “The road is dancing with us.” She said the sticking bitumen was a-kissing at our tyres.

  We talked about how love was not our word. Not th
e word we would use. We would escape its fouled-up connotations. We wanted a new word for what we had. We celebrated our feelings by eating peanut cutter sandwiches from a country store. They tasted as no other sandwiches have ever tasted to me. And we had a can of cold beer.

  We reached the mountains by two. They were cooler but still the sun was hot. They had more moisture. I supposed they were protected by the thicker growth. It was cooler because of the moisture. I drove on the winding road over the mountains. Further on I knew the shorter road which went to the coast. It was a stony and unsealed road with trees which touched overhead. The road jumped the car about because of the speed we drove over the stones—we were impatient for the sea. It is not a well-known road, no other cars passed us. It was our road. We saw the sea from the top of a rise in the stony road. Cindy squealed and pointed and hugged me. For all the driving she smelled as clean as the shower.

  We drove down the last of the stony road with the dust choking up through the car. Bouncing, we came to the sealed road and the coast.

  The car sang along after the stones. We drove fast to the sea, across the grass and on to the deserted beach. It was about four. We pulled the clothes off each other. Damp with sweat. Her body was just out of adolescence. Breasts only slightly larger than my own. We ran naked into the sea. Holding hands, into the cold sea. I remember the sea, cold and swirling around my penis. I felt enlivened.

  It was as if the journey had been a passing through—360 miles across the hot plains, over the moist mountains, through the tunnel of trees, and down the sea. We had been together a month then. It was the leaving of my stultifying marriage for the clean free sea.

  But do you know something—and it is this which upset me so much since I saw you last. Cindy and I have only been separated two years. The other night I was talking to her at a party and I told her that I had dreamed of the trip. She smoked in her new careless way and said, “What trip?” I said the trip from inland, over the mountains, and down to the sea. We made it. Remember?