Just Relations

by Rodney Hall

  Allen & Unwin’s House of Books aims to bring Australia’s cultural and literary heritage to a broad audience by creating affordable print and ebook editions of the nation’s most significant and enduring writers and their work. The fiction, non-fiction, plays and poetry of generations of Australian writers that were published before the advent of ebooks will now be available to new readers, alongside a selection of more recently published books that had fallen out of circulation.

  The House of Books is an eloquent collection of Australia’s finest literary achievements.

  Rodney Hall is a celebrated author of poetry and prose, who twice won the Miles Franklin Award for Just Relations (1982) and The Grisly Wife (1994) and was shortlisted a further four times.

  From 1967–78 he was Poetry Editor of The Australian and from 1991–94, he served as the Chair of the Australia Council.

  He has been a freelance actor and scriptwriter, published over a dozen novels and has written and edited numerous collections of poetry as well as works of criticism and biography. He is also an activist involved in the Aboriginal rights and environmental movements.

  Hall was awarded a Membership of the Order of Australia in 1994.

  HOUSE of BOOKS

  RODNEY HALL

  Just Relations

  This edition published by Allen & Unwin House of Books in 2012

  First published by Simon & Schuster in 1982

  Copyright © Rodney Hall 1982

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

  Allen & Unwin

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  Australia

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  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 978 1 74331 278 0 (pbk)

  ISBN 978 1 74269 985 1 (ebook)

  To the future: my darling daughters, Imogen, Delia and Cressida.

  Acknowledgments

  During the six years I worked on this novel I was most generously supported by the Literature Board of the Australia Council. I am grateful to the Board and glad to acknowledge their help.

  The first person to read the complete manuscript was Iain McCalman. His enthusiasm and his advice on historical matters were of the greatest importance to me.

  I was educated into the ways of the extremely aged by the late Mr Freddie Bowker, my grandmother Mrs Edith Buckland, and my godmother Mrs Vera Bridgstock-Choat; I am in debt to them all.

  My wife and family – and friends too numerous to list here – helped influence the book and my views to be found in it.

  Above all, I must thank Humphrey McQueen. His detailed editorial suggestions and challenging criticisms were an incalculable benefit. Without him, the novel would not have been provoked into being as it is.

  Contents

  Book One The Mountain Road

  * * *

  Book Two The Golden Fleece

  * * *

  Book Three Seven Figures Without Landscape

  One The Maker of Circles

  Two The Violinist

  Three The Narcissist

  Four The Doubter

  Five The Victim of Ambition

  Six The Shape-Thinker

  Seven The Webster

  * * *

  Book Four Tree-felling

  * * *

  Book Five The Watch that Ends the Night

  * * *

  Book Six Exodus

  * * *

  BOOK ONE

  The Mountain Road

  One

  If it’s the day of the letters we’re talking about, Miss Felicia Brinsmead was in top form.

  And to think they once had a Chinese joss-house right on this plot my child, she said, standing in her shop expecting customers.

  Only for a year or two, the shop objected.

  My goodness you are a grumpy wreck of a thing, she laughed. Considering you’re younger than I am.

  Miserable, miserable, whispered the shop.

  I’ve no patience with property anyway, she sniffed and gave her attention to the first of the letters which she held open in her hand, not yet sent. So she read it back to its author, her brother, that venerable man forever standing idle, his days spent observing the exchange of money and goods. His copperplate handwriting invested this letter with the authority of a legal document.

  Dear Sir,

  Thank you for your correspondence. We would wish you to convey back to the Australian Aesthetic and Historical Resources Commission the following information.

  We residents of Whitey’s Fall are aware that, as you point out, our ‘historic township is falling into disrepair and ruin’. The fact is that we ourselves grow old. We do not wish you to spend a single dollar of your money on restoration here. The buildings have been used. They have done well enough for us. But we shall soon be dead; so let the place also fall into ruin.

  We prefer not to enter into debate on the subject of our own lives; rather, we would ask you to extend us the courtesy of considering the matter closed.

  Faithfully Yours, &c., on behalf of the residents of Whitey’s Fall, I am,

  S. Brinsmead, Esq.

  Miss Brinsmead folded it along the creases, tweaked it with fingers already pink from handling things, and popped it in the envelope.

  – You surpass yourself Sebastian, she declared. Wait till they get this. I entirely approve. Put so succinctly, there can be no excuse for misunderstanding us now.

  He smiled but did not step forward to retrieve the letter. Smiled at it from a dream of Corfu, across sacks of potatoes and an insurrection of groceries, through waves of earthy scents he smiled, too pleased with her response to look her in the eye. The shop muttered, disgruntled, the cracks in its timber walls opening wider so that more convolvulus vines burst in from outside and cast garlands of vulgar flowers among the bins of sugar where they trembled, listening, purple with concentration.

  – I shall post your letter when I take my outing, Miss Brinsmead promised.

  Miserable, miserable, whispered the shop.

  Next moment, the second letter arrived. It happened this way: The door opened and an unknown young woman stepped in. She hesitated, lost, while her eyes grew accustomed to the dim interior. Objects of glass and tin glinted messages, biscuit packets blinked exhausted cellophane eyes, spirit kettles sat with their spouts raised and trouser-presses lounged against the wall as if who cared? The young woman stood where she was at the entrance. For a moment, only the three human beings were inanimate. Who are you? grunted the hanging flitch of bacon so that its flies were disturbed and buzzed around irritably. A chorus of sou’wester-clad seamen sang from sardine tins their surprised North Sea chanties, powdered bananas from the Abdul Gonzalez Company of Manila leaked colonies of pollen, frozen chickens held their breath (lampooned by a shelf of corsets), rubber gloves gently and hopelessly cradled one another’s sorrows. Glass cases showed the stranger herself as a ghost. All the tons of goods long since sold and eaten mourned from the shelves requiem ae
ternam.

  While ladies’ frocks clustered on their rack to gossip about her, the visitor stared amazed at the comprehensive range of items on sale. This was the only shop in a remote settlement; something foreign to her. Stacked round the counter stood twelve towers of newspapers, the bottom ones mouldy and kicked ragged, the top ones for sale but never sold; the dispensable murders of the past beneath the dispensable rapes of the day before yesterday, the fall of Singapore under the rise of valium; and all standardized in broadsheet and tabloid; millions of dollars’ worth of truth-gathering squandered in the effort to persuade the citizens of Whitey’s Fall that things are so. On one shelf new mousetraps were heaped among used traps with the mice still in them. A cat warming the sugared eucalyptus drops lay waiting to hypnotize a customer. And the whole place reeking of termite industry.

  If I had brought you here, I would have taken you into this shop expecting to surprise you.

  Miss Brinsmead behind the counter was made up of pillows, so large, so soft and white. But the instant you spoke to her she reacted with energy, her body colliding noiselessly with the fridge and the till; her eyes twinkling, blue irises outlined as crisply as a child’s; her aged hands immediately on what she wanted; the oof of satisfaction as she reached up for your request, and her silk dress stretching in diagonal quivers across her back. The thing everybody noticed first was her hair. Like a hideous grey scab, she kept it as a matted lump crammed into a net, hanging down stiff and crackly against her back, an enormous bag which reached almost to her waist.

  So, when that unknown woman came into the shop, this was the place as she found it and this was the person who stood ready to serve her.

  The customer clasped her hands preparing for the indiscretion of delight. Were the Brinsmeads once again to be discovered, taken up, admired and found quaint? They knew the type. Miss Brinsmead adopted her most uncompromising manner and made ready to deny she stocked any of the young woman’s desires.

  – Excuse me, the stranger whispered.

  Miss Brinsmead said nothing.

  – I meant excuse me because I didn’t mean to stare. It’s all so solid. So … well… sensible.

  At that one word, Miss Brinsmead fell in love with her.

  – You see, the young woman explained. I’d hoped it would be like this. Though it’s better, richer. Oh do please excuse me. I’m making myself ridiculous. I have a letter here. I’m looking for a Mr Sebastian Brinsmead. Could you tell me …

  – I’ll take it, Miss Brinsmead offered tenderly. I’ll take it for him. So she took it, opening it right there and then without explaining who she was or what right she had. She read the letter out loud, embellishing it with comments as she went. Dear Seb, my goodness who’s it from? Sebastian, the letter’s from Anne McTaggart: Annie Lang! a letter from the dead. How delightful. How interesting. If you have not forgotten an old acquaintance, she says, you will surely do me a favour, one wonders what possessed her to use a word like acquaintance, though.

  Emerging from the loom of his musings, concealing reluctance with mildness, the old man detached himself from the wall to witness the letter in person. A full white beard clothed his massive chest with wisdom and softened the buttoned-up Boer War tunic he had inherited from his father.

  – This is my brother Mr Sebastian Brinsmead, Miss Brinsmead explained politely. A favour, mark you, she goes on, I dare say you are well in command of Whitey’s Fall by now, you have had sixty years to make it since I saw you last, all said and done! there’s a touch of bitter truth in that, my dear. Annie always was a sharp one wasn’t she? this letter is being brought by a dear young woman who is buying the house off me. Well now that is surprising. That is the first genuinely surprising thing to have happened here for goodness knows how long. Buying the house! Let me take a look at you, Miss Brinsmead suggested, and proceeded to do so. Where were we? … is buying the house off me. It’s no use to me now, after all Why not, one wonders? But then we know nothing whatsoever about her life since she left. Please be sure she manages alright, I am certain that I may depend upon you of all people, there’s a little bouquet for you Sebastian. Give my love to all my friends and most of my blood relations. Ha ha ya har. Good old Annie, she still hasn’t forgotten or forgiven apparently. Ever yours, she signs herself. What a very peculiar thing to put. Ever yours, may the good Lord bless and keep you, oh dear that’s a bit provoking. Signed Anne McTaggart. So! what are we to think? This is an event. And why do you have an English accent?

  – Because I’m English, the woman answered rather primly, beginning to feel some distaste for this lady’s bluntness. And my name, she added with intentional testiness, is Vivien.

  – You think I’m taking liberties with you, the quick Miss Brinsmead observed. But why should we behave like strangers if you’re to live here Vivien? You may call me Miss Brinsmead. We’re very casual in Whitey’s Fall.

  Sebastian Brinsmead took the letter and read it through for himself.

  – This is singularly precious, he explained. I am grateful to you for bringing it. You see, Annie Lang, or Mrs McTaggart as she became, was a missing thread. It’s very satisfying to feel we have connections, continuity, in the face of death, in the face of a heathen dependence on the self.

  – Sebastian you’re shocking her, Miss Brinsmead warned. You are making her wonder what sort of town she’s come to. We don’t want to frighten anybody away. That’s the last thing.

  – Thank you, Vivien said smiling especially for him. I understand exactly what you mean. I really do hope there’s a place for me here. The first thing to do is to find the house and then lay in some supplies.

  Miss Brinsmead offered to arrange everything. She went round plumping against the shelves, filling a box with essentials and calling from the door to a Young Tony who, she assured the new arrival, would happily drive her up to the house with her provisions and her luggage (was that her luggage outside, those two suitcases and nothing more?), her bright eyes returning again and again to this new object of love, her scab of hair swinging so it creaked. And a giant youth called into being at the door, grinning, cracking his knuckles and going to pieces entirely on being introduced to an unknown female. Miss Brinsmead supervising, Tony tucked one heavy case under his arm, picked up the other with that same hand and then cradled the box of groceries on his free arm.

  – Why must you walk up to the house, the old lady demanded dismayed, when you could easily get a vehicle and drive her up?

  But that’s how they went, the wind chasing them with fragments of advice and instructions to call down any time. So Felicia Brinsmead returned to her place behind the counter with a new grip on life. The day’s newspaper felt her palm on it, the sweet dark of time suppressed, the Prime Minister on page one kissed her hand. Fat lot Miss Brinsmead cared for him! She thought only of Vivien with her English voice and her delicious coldness.

  – I shall introduce her to Remembering, she promised the shop.

  Who had the right if she hadn’t, being leader and discoverer? People ought to be grateful. It was evident from the day of her birth that she would found a religion, considering she could remember being born. Even details. Conception occurred on 22 January 1901 at the exact moment Queen Victoria died. This was, in the purest sense, coincidence. Nine months later promptly she was born. She remembered it this way: as a sensation of intolerable speed, falling, she was travelling above moon craters upside down and weightless, feet first, head first, outerspace flying past her, black with a high wind noise. She hurtled headlong, recklessly towards the creation of light, rocked red by an earthquake. Some calamity impending. In the grasp of forces beyond her will. And then the earthquake settled into a repetitious thudding. Pulsations kneaded her flesh, hugging, pushing, rejecting. She suffered anguished reminders of that familiar life of pure feeling when it was she whose body pulsed like this, she herself who created the shape of pain. The rush of her coming lessened, she existed only as a pit of nausea. Her tremendous fear blazed scarlet. The rush
ing wind stopped. She was the sole ark to be spewed up by the flood. The panic which seized her was the clamouring of last survivors: her skin full of beasts with fangs and spines, wings unfolding, scaly coils flexing, the desperate working of gills, a menagerie of coupling forms. There came a particular moment (as the sun rises) when her round shell began to edge out of its horizon. The pan of her skull the sun, a flaring circle on the crown gradually lipping down. The terrifying brightness in that head already illuminating her world. By the sensation of streaming hair and crawling scalp, of watery joints and shivering, she knew she had been through this before. The fiery eyes, hot behind their lids, slid up beyond the rim of earth. Air itself exploded into her, shimmering. Her nose fluttered. Her mouth was free: she spoke her first word.

  What happened after this was the sound of her mother’s screaming. The laying on of violent hands …

  Now look at me! Felicia Brinsmead thought, as she arranged herself to receive customers, giving her lump of hair a good shake, and drumming with her soft fat fingers on the dead newspapers.

  – I shall introduce Vivien to Remembering, she said.

  Her brother heard but chose not to comment. He, too, was perhaps a little in love with this young woman who had encouraged him to believe she understood about continuity. Might she be another Christian at last? Was it so very unlikely? Why should he argue with Felicia? He had told her his views on this heresy of hers, she knew perfectly well and in detail. Often enough he had reiterated his opinion that Remembering was a satanic game to be lumped with The Night Watch, Parsifal and Anna Karenina. She’d fly into a temper and cosset him as if dealing with an imbecile, she’d spoil lunch taking the trouble to din in that her religion was religious whereas art was a heap of agreeable baubles of an altogether lower order. Felicia enjoyed condescending to art, having inspected a good deal. There’s altogether too much art in the world, was one of her sayings. And what would be the point of his counter-attacking or citing her weakness for the art of conversation as evidence? Small comfort, the truth. In conversation her taste ran to the rococo.