A Paper Inheritance

by Dymphna Stella Rees

  In my late teens, Hollywood films and the new medium of black-and-white television in Australia spread the symbols of twentieth-century Western romanticism. It had some dangerous tenets. Female stereotypes on screen ‘fell in love’ after a chaste kiss or two and, with fluttering hearts, pined to hear those elusive words: Will you marry me? Once elevated into the desired status, they swiftly metamorphosed into perfectly coiffed housewives dancing around their kitchens in frilly aprons, striving to achieve perfection in their homes in the cleanest and shiniest way possible. (If you didn’t achieve ‘the whitest wash’, you were doomed, your self-esteem in tatters.) Unwittingly, these prototypes slipped into domestic bondage and would need to be careful with the housekeeping money while they struggled to find some small outlet for their creativity and talents.

  As daughters, Megan and I were blessed in our role model. She gave us a different example to follow – one that reflected individual skills and talents without tying them to gender. Our mother would frequently remind us: ‘I’ve never seen it written on anyone’s tombstone: She was a perfect housewife!’

  5

  Love Must Wait

  I’ve searched all my father’s public and private writings for some small indication of his early feelings for my mother. He did not seem overly enchanted in his account of their first meeting when she was appointed his assistant editor. But then, patently, neither was she. However, that early teamwork in many ways laid the cornerstone of the literary partnership they would create. They were forced to work closely to bring out three editions of the university literary magazine each year and soon discovered they were both infatuated with words, if not with each other. My mother records that it was not only editorial work demanded of them. She was required to produce articles, short stories and book reviews.

  Then Leslie wanted a play for The Black Swan so I wrote a play called Shielded Eyes. It was the first West Australian play to be published and was also produced in a programme of one-act plays, again at the Assembly Hall, not by the University Dramatic Society but by the Perth Repertory Club. I played the leading lady, my leading man Paul Hasluck.

  As Coralie and Leslie were working side by side over a common interest, it was not surprising their relationship ripened into a collegiate friendship. Happenstance intervened when they discovered they were both spending their Christmas holiday at Rottnest, that idyllic island eighteen kilometres off the coast where Perthsiders flock to escape their blazing summers, savouring leisurely swims in natural rock pools, bike rides round the salt lakes and ambles through the bush with quokkas scuttling out of their path. The island worked its magic. In my mother’s words: ‘All that weekend we spent a lot of time talking in the sandhills and our future was sealed at that point.’ (Neither would have used as banal a phrase as falling in love, so often indicative of a sudden and perhaps indiscriminate obsession.)

  No, their passion was for literature. It underpinned their relationship and enriched every corner of their lives, as did their shared determination to make their own contribution. Now both journalists, they were bent on becoming writers. They understood that there was a distinction: a creative progression required, one that would extend their skills and demand the best they could give. On this, their first interlude of commitment, they read the poetry of WB Yeats to each other. After sharing John Galsworthy’s story ‘The Apple Tree’, they decided that if they had a daughter, they would call her after one of the characters, Megan – pronounced in the Welsh way with a short ‘e’, as in Meg.

  In 1929 Coralie had graduated with a row of distinctions and was working full-time on The Dawn. Though it took Leslie five years to finish his degree, he was hungry for more. Straight away he put his energies into postgraduate research. Drama was always his main preoccupation but in Perth he was limited. He could only read plays. He needed to see theatre, to experience it. He was greatly in awe of George Bernard Shaw, both his philosophy and his dramatic output, but he was also entranced by the plays of the Irish literary theatre, and planned his master’s thesis on Synge, Yeats and O’Casey. He decided he must widen his knowledge and experience by going abroad. But how? The only way to get to England from Australia was by sea, the steamer passage taking five weeks from Fremantle. Commercial air travel was still years away. The Orient Line offered a scholarship program for graduate students to extend research in their chosen field, with a free first-class passage. A return passage was included, though not for over fifteen months, at least twelve of which should be devoted to a course of study. No living expenses were provided. Two scholarships were awarded each year, one for a June departure, the other for December.

  Leslie applied for the one at the end of the year and was successful.

  He was thrilled and excited, at the same time wracked with concern. Looking back on this moment, he wrote:

  I considered. I dreamed. Not without further negative tremors, though. To walk out on my family would be in the natural order of things, however much they’d helped me; not so to part with someone who had become intimately identified with my life, in a daily association with a score of affinities.

  That does not sound like passion, but my father was extremely reticent about discussing intimate feelings. It was not until I read his letters from that voyage, seventy years after they were written, that I discovered this sensitive young man I had never known, how socially insecure he was and how besotted with my mother. Yet he was driven to the very real risk of leaving her behind while he explored the wider world.

  Leslie had never travelled alone. He had only once been away from Perth – a quick train trip across the country with a crowd of other youngsters in the Young Australia League, an organisation to which his mother donated her services. He still lived at home the way most people did in their twenties while they were single. It was also common for young people to be virgin until marriage, due not only to the unavailability and haphazard nature of birth control but to prevailing moral imperatives. Leslie admired women and had engaged in a few tenuous flirtations but never an ongoing relationship. Always cautious with money after tasting years of poverty as a boy, he had lived modestly on his salary from The West Australian and had saved every penny towards his trip to the other side of the world.

  Nearly twenty-four years old – he would have his birthday during the passage – Les (as he preferred to be called) would set sail on 2 December 1929 and expected to be away for at least eighteen months, maybe more. He had promised Coralie they would marry when he returned. However, they had not revealed this intention to their families or made any announcement about their plans for a future together.

  The RMS Orford, a two-masted steamer, had been built in England for the Orient Line only the year before and was reputed to be the last word in luxury. On the day of Les’s departure, a blazing summer day, Coralie borrowed her father’s car to drive him, with his mother and sister, Averil, down to the port of Fremantle to board the ship. As was the custom, each clung to their ends of coloured paper streamers across the widening gap of water as the ship pulled away from the wharf. When Les’s streamer finally broke, he went to his cabin and took up the pen provided and a sheet of ship’s stationery. Now he was on his own.

  6

  Letters from the Ship: 1929

  On this first night, as on every night of the voyage, after dinner Les secluded himself in his cabin and wrote to his beloved, his Coral, telling her what he was thinking and feeling, what the day had brought. This became part of his story of that voyage. The ship would make its first port in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka). He hoped there would be mail from home awaiting him there or at the northern end of the Suez Canal at Port Said. But he had already decided he would not post his swag of letters until he reached the safety of London. Then the package would take another four weeks on another ship, this one heading south, to reach Coralie in Perth by mid-February 1930.

  There is no way I would have recognised the writer of these letters, the ingenuous lo
ve-struck Les on his voyage to the Promised Land, as my father and the literary figure I grew to understand. However, I can now see that the restless traveller endlessly seeking new adventures – whatever the cost – was a central part of his nature. In fact it became an entrenched part of his self-constructed identity.

  Dec. 2nd, 1929

  Darling, I was glad the ship went when it did. I couldn’t keep my eyes off the little fluttering red figure in front of everybody else at the wharf and as I watched it I knew definitely that my poor mother, whom I had thought was equal in my heart with you, took but a very secondary place. Oh, the anguish of great love!

  I watched you getting smaller and smaller but still looking at the ship. More than once I looked overboard to see how far it would be to swim to land. At last the ship hove to outside the breakwater, the pilot boat came alongside, the pilot changed decks and the little ship was off – the last link with the darling of my heart broken.

  After a while I saw Rottnest – even that was passing and then I went to the cabin and fairly wept.

  Dec 3rd

  At breakfast this morning I was in a fix. Table is set like this: I’ve drawn a little sketch for you. Now what would the little knife and fork marked ‘A’ be for? There was nobody at my table; the assistant purser had finished and Miss Brady doesn’t come down to breakfast so I couldn’t find out and left them there.

  There’s just been a terrific noise – bells and gongs clanging; what does it all mean? I ask a fellow passenger and he replies ‘Boat Drill’. I go to my cabin, ring for the steward and he helps me into a rigmarole that would drown a man in the water. I get on deck then there’s a terrific buzzing of a siren and the whole crew rushes about the decks – the only time one sees them all – cooks, stewards and workaday-looking chaps that must live down in the holds. They line up, the boats are lowered and they get in. Suddenly it struck me that the boat was going down and I was getting left. Life on this ship’s very terrifying, mystifying. Everyone on board – except the passengers – has a face like an underdone scone. Why is that?

  Have tried to make a start on the play but I’m afraid I’ll do nothing but write to you on this voyage. Cheerio, darling. Will write again this afternoon.

  ~

  I must tell you how I got through my first night of ballroom society. I went down to dinner and found that the funny little knife and fork had been added to by a spoon. We later ate ices with the spoon but no-one touched the funny little knife and fork – perhaps no-one knows what they’re for. After eating consommé, fish, chicken, pudding, ices and nuts, I went up to the Lounge where everyone goes.

  The officers were in their white dinner coats looking very like stewards. It is a sumptuous place, quite the last word in luxury as indeed the whole boat is. But for me, very boring, not knowing anyone. I sat and pretended to be interested in the punch. Then a waiter brought some black coffee which I refused. I went up to the deck and then I went to bed where I am now.

  Well, goodnight, girl of my dreams, ‘dream-dimmed’ girl, wonder of the western world, pride of Australia, envy of the English-speaking, beautiful, lovely, warm-hearted, generous, wonderful Coral – who is keeping herself only for me.

  Dec. 4th

  I suppose you are just thinking of leaving your office, tired and hungry after a day’s work. May my thoughts reach you and brighten you up. I have just been talking to a girl who is going to England to be married. I told her how lucky she was and how I had left you behind at home. She doesn’t seem very thrilled. I wish you were in England instead of Australia, then this trip would be worthwhile.

  I have your photo before me – the full length one – and yesterday I covered it with some powder so that when I kiss it, it smells like you. For I do kiss it and even put my arm around the back of it so that I seem to be embracing you. But what a shadow compared to the sacred reality of three nights ago. Oh darling, what a treasure I have left behind! If only you were with me. May the days speed by and the nights. I love you, dearest, Love you, LOVE you. Be sure to wait for me till I return. I feel positive that I shall wait for you.

  That last night together. What a memory it is! I wouldn’t have missed it for fortunes. And to think that you have chosen me of all men, singled me out to shower with your wealth of gifts. Conventional thought? But true, darling, if it was ever true.

  If you were here, I should be revelling in the luxury of this ship. As it is, the ship is for the most part simply boring. By the way, I found out what the little knife and fork is for. It’s for fruit but we never get any, being in the middle of the ocean.

  To change the subject to something nearer to our hearts, I got on writing a fair bit of the play today. But I don’t think it will be any good. Perhaps you are to be the playwright and I the critic. At any rate, criticism just flows out of me whereas creation doesn’t.

  We are now over Capricorn in the tropics but it is not hot. On the contrary, almost chilly, very cool today. I have two swims, the most pleasant diversion of the day, apart from writing to my darling.

  Dec. 6th

  Darling,

  I deferred writing this letter to read the last of Vance Palmer’s plays. Jolly good plays they were, too. Very similar to Louis Esson’s; in fact, as far as I can see, the same man might have written the two volumes. Better than the plays, I like a short story of Palmer’s in my Australian Short Story book called ‘The Birthday’. Very subtle. I have been wondering whether a subtle theme requires carefuller handling than a common or obvious theme: in the one you have to be careful not to miss bringing out the point and in the other to be careful to disguise the point.

  Tonight I got down early for dinner – the officer eats so quickly that I’m often cut short – and had that khaki-coloured soup (basque something), fish, roast mutton and Pȇche Melba. Then came the hideous walk upstairs – I dread it every night – to café (which I still don’t have) and those awful vamps joined us. I always shut up like a trap when they’re there. Tonight, after one of the bored silences of the company, one (divorced) woman, Mrs Johnson – I bet it was her fault – said to me ‘D’you ever talk?’ in an insolent tone. ‘When there’s something to talk about and someone to talk to,’ I replied with equal insolence.

  But no! That’s a lie. Your poor Les had neither the wit nor the impudence to say such a thing (I thought it out afterwards) and all I said was ‘Very little.’ If she knew me!!

  Extremely hot today, like a midsummer day in Perth. I had two glorious swims. I don’t know what I’d do without the pool. Also I wrote ‘CURTAIN’ at the end of my play. I feel much more pleased about it than a day or so ago but I still have hours of work. And it’s jolly hard work too. Still it cheers me to think that with effort I can get to the end of writing a play. Strangely enough, it is like your play [Shielded Eyes] in that most of my characters are women whereas most of yours are men.

  The news that I am an Orient Scholar is gradually spreading over this ship.

  Thought for the day is ‘the first picnic at Armadale’. Ah, Darling, I can remember a better one – when you decided to have a swim and we looked up at the stars at night. Dearest! Memory is wonderful.

  The sea outside is a marvellous mystery and at times haunts me. Don’t be alarmed when I tell you that I often have funny impulses to jump overboard. I say don’t be alarmed because the opposite impulses of self-preservation are much stronger.

  I think of you working on your paper. So how is the old Dawn going? I suppose the next issue must be pretty well due. Don’t slave your insides out, but being both the editor and the main writer is good experience. I certainly think another 18 months – or at least 12 – on The Dawn won’t do you slightest harm. It will consolidate what you have learned, apart from teaching you much more and then some editor may lift you into a women’s section sub-editorial chain. I think you’re making a marvellous start. Between us, we should really make the world.

  Da
rling, I’m simply longing for the hour when we shall meet again, to part no more; meet again to perform our great work for Australia, ourselves and for literature. Life is going to be more marvellous than ever it’s been – and it can be marvellous. Never forget, it can only be marvellous with me.

  Dec. 9th

  I have been upstairs watching the dancing tonight (had one dance to be honest) and looked through an English magazine which gave me an idea for The Dawn. I think you had already agreed that the book review, although a good innovation, provided a rather sparse literary feast for a month. Well, ask your readers to recommend books and print the list of recommendations or make a digest from the hundreds of letters you receive.

  We crossed The Line sometime this evening. There were no celebrations. In these tropics, one wakes up in the morning feeling like a limp collar, almost suffocated, enervated. Then after breakfast the weather seems to cool off and at lunch time it is quite tolerable. Then in the evening hot again though this might be due to the evening dress one is forced to wear.