by Anne Manne
Neighbours gave advice. We were surrounded by success stories of glorious, risen pavlovas. I dreamed of golden brown, fluffy things so light they floated upwards. One neighbour asserted that the trick to Great Auntie Gertie’s pavlova was in the light beating of the eggwhites, but another firmly maintained that too little beating would make a chewy crust. That sent a shiver down our spines. We beat eggs furiously, in shifts, with the old, hand-held egg-beater—for electric mix masters had somehow passed us by. We knew all about chewy pavlova crusts. The last five, in fact, had not risen at all, but had spread—a mixture of raw eggwhite and treacle toffee—all over the baking pan. The last pavlova had seen most of us flee; one sister had stormed off in high dudgeon and I had vanished to where my pony was tethered nearby—a good gallop might clear my head. Only the family soother and smoother loyally remained, peering at the flat crust, opining that it was a little better than last time … this bit here was not quite as flat as the other side. My mother retired to her bedroom to lie prone under a copy of The Dead Are Many. A pall of failure hung over the house for days.
One sister chopped wood and got the old slow combustion stove burning. It would only consent to yield combustion to her tender ministrations; for everyone else it merely belched smoke, filled the kitchen with soot, ash and heat, and then went out. She stoked the fire, her shirt wet with sweat, and then damped it down, for the temperature (Nan said) must not be too hot. This old stove was my mother’s bete noir. It stood in the corner of the kitchen, white with a black fire door, like an ugly, one-eyed Cyclops. It was an ominous presence, burning or not burning capriciously. When old country women were consulted as to its mysteries, it invariably sprang to life, hummed and burbled, bringing tea to the boil, scones to rise. But most of the time it merely sulked. It was as if that old stove was passing judgement upon us, whispering, ‘You do not belong here’.
There were frantic phone calls to my grandmother whose pavlovas always rose, but alas, she—wretch!—suddenly went vague on the details of the recipe. I was dispatched to get eggs (‘The freshest, Nan said so’) from Hazelmere’s Hygienic Hatchery, a spectacularly ugly building which had sprouted like a gigantic and obscene cream mushroom, seemingly overnight, in our neighbourhood. (My mother had groaned on its appearance and muttered softly under her breath to no one in particular: ‘What am I doing here?’) More phone calls to my grandmother: ‘But the teaspoon of cornflour, when does that go in?’; ‘Nan says on no account get egg yolk into the whites’. My sisters on receipt of this news separated egg yolks from their whites with a delicacy and care that might lead an observer to think that their lives depended on it. And in a funny way it did.
The need for this pavlova to rise went much deeper than the transcendence of great cooking disasters or the discomfort of having the old stove belch smoke and heat over us while everything quivered and melted. The baking and its rising had become imbued with a potent symbolism. If the pavlova rose, somehow, it was a sign that we would make it. Exile in Possum Gully could be endured, transcended. If it didn’t … well, that was too awful to contemplate. Everything hinged upon that pavlova rising.
When the timer gave out its feeble bleep, a hush fell over the house. There was a gathering of the clan around the old stove and we held our breath as the pavlova emerged. We stared at it. You could have heard a pin drop.
The pavlova was flat.
Completely and utterly flat.
The oven had delivered its verdict.
It was a bright, sunlit day. I was mounted on a small, white pony we were trying out to see if we would buy him. My mother said that we would take him to a long hill nearby and see if he could really gallop. That would be the deciding factor. I said nothing, but I knew we could do even better than that. For weeks in the bush I had been practising a trick with him to show my unsuspecting mother, to persuade her that he was right for me.
My mother walked slowly on ahead, up the steep hill, with the dark pine trees of the reservoir on one side, and a huge stand of eucalypts on the other. The pony danced and jigged and jogged as we stood below, snatching impatiently at his bit, wanting to be away. But he waited, eager, ears pricked, cupped nostrils flared and pink, breathing in the wind.
‘Okay’, she shouted, as she reached the top.
I let him have his head. He bounded forward in a joyous leap and then launched himself into short, sharp, accelerating bounds giving way to an urgent compelling rhythm as he lowered himself into a full gallop. The sound of his hard hooves hitting the flinty stones on the road rang out over the hillside, the sharp blue light of the sky flashed and splintered over our heads, and we were spinning beneath the leaves, clouds flying by in ragged patches, the pony’s white mane frothing and foaming in my face, the smell of leather and the sound of the metal stirrup jangling, my eyes stinging and streaming from the wind. I could see my mother ahead, mouth hanging open. I knew she would love my recklessness, his speed, and its absolute quality, that nothing between us was held back. I leant down very low and light over his neck as he stretched out, faster and faster. I could just see the curve of his eye, and hear his breath going in and out, in and out, one silver ear flicking back and forth.
Just before we reached her we did our trick. While he was still at full stretch I swung off, holding onto his neck with both hands, tucking my legs up and swinging them back and forth under his neck, in front of his hooves. But the moment he felt my body leave the saddle he skidded to a halt, so as not to trample me. We stopped just near her, and I dropped lightly the short distance onto the ground.
My mother looked elated. ‘I’ll buy him’, she said.
We had progressed slowly down the sibling order, my mother foregoing a great deal for herself, as well as things most families would have considered priorities, instead stretching her meagre resources to buy a horse for both my sisters. Now it was my turn. Wanderer, as he was called, was going cheap because he jumped out of every paddock and yard. Despite his small size, he had to be tethered because no fence could hold him. He was not beautiful, but lithe and very athletic. I remember standing at the back door, looking out on the backyard where Wanderer was tied up. After sitting down for a cup of tea, when we looked out again, he was on the other side of the fence. Everyone was dumbfounded for a moment as to how he got there. Then we realised that he had jumped. Even tethered, with no run up, he had effortlessly leapt over the fence.
‘That pony could jump anything’, one of my sisters said. My pulse was racing; I was filled with desire. I had to have this pony.
The blacksmith confirmed it. While Wanderer was still on trial, my mother’s decision pending, I came home from school one day to find him hopelessly tangled in his tethering chain on the steep side of the creek bed where we had put him to eat the soft new grass of spring. The blacksmith, who had come to shoe the horses, followed me down to the creek, where the little pony was waiting patiently, legs trussed up like a rotisserie chicken. He did not struggle, but made a soft, hopeful whinnying noise, his ears pricking towards us. The old smithy disentangled him. Then he stood up, leant back, wiping his hands against his leather apron, and said with the air of a final judgement: ‘You want to keep this one. He’s a very smart pony; didn’t panic, just waited for me to get him out of trouble.’ He paused: ‘There’s not many like that’. Convincing my mother, however, to buy this little white horse that leapt out of every paddock, had been quite another matter.
But at last it was done. Never before in childhood had I found a soul so perfectly dovetailed to mine. We galloped, we skidded round corners, we leapt into dams and swam, we jumped into paddocks and tore round the sheep and flew out again when angry farmers came out of their houses and shook their fists. Many years later I would sometimes be stopped in the street by an old farmer, who said shaking his head, but kind, ‘I remember you, jumping into our sheep paddock. You were a wild one.’ We galloped around the local reservoir which had signs everywhere saying Trespassers Prosecuted, but I was sure we were far too fast ever to be
caught.
The relationship I had with this little pony, however, was much more than all this suggests. I had made a decision that I would never dominate an animal in the way I had dominated Chicken, out of fear. Now I felt no fear on the back of a horse, and there had to be, my nine-year-old self decided, a way of riding that made space for them, let them be. It was not about bossing them around, but finding a way of truly being with them. So although we were united in our love of speed, it seemed only fair that Wanderer should make decisions too, when he needed to walk and cool down if he felt tired. So he listened to me intently, ears flicking back and forth, answering the merest gesture, a shift in my seat bones or my weight leaning forward. Horses find reading us easy; they are herd animals and watch each other intensely all the time. They live on a language of gesture; it is we humans who must learn to speak and listen with our bodies, without speaking. So I also learned the kind of attentiveness needed, following all his tiny, close-to-imperceptible movements and changes in his expression. We often just walked through the bush with easy, free-flowing steps, Wanderer’s white, furry neck now soaked with sweat, but tuned into each other’s bodies, each responding to the other with a prickling, tingling intensity. I felt we were not divided and separated by being a different species, but united in creatureliness—we were not horse and rider, but Centaur.
It was through Wanderer that another love affair was born. I can remember precisely when I truly fell in love with the landscape I lived in. It was a couple of years after our time in the miner’s cottage. We had now moved to a modest bungalow on the very outskirts of town. Every time we moved, it was further away from civilisation. And every time, life seemed to get better.
It was my habit to get up very early, before my sisters and mother were awake, and go out riding. One morning, at dawn, I could hear the sound of water rushing. It had rained hard all night and the creek was up. Very quietly so as not to rouse my sleeping sisters and mother, I dressed and crept out, grabbed Wanderer with just a bridle and rode towards the sound. We walked to the creek which was now swollen and turgid with foaming, brown water. I slipped off his back and looped the reins around a branch. On the other side of the creek, now divided by two streams of water, was a small island. A fallen tree presented a means of crossing, slippery but wide enough for a child to walk on. Somehow I got to the other side, and stood on this small segment of land, surrounded by the roaring torrent either side. Two trees in front of me formed a glistening arch and, as I stepped between them, the green grass was tussocky and sprang back under my foot. I tested it again and found it exerting its life force, pushing back at me, firm and full under the sole of my foot. The leaves were shining and dripping, the water rushing all around me. I was utterly exhilarated at having reached this island of wet, brown earth.
In the entire time we had lived in the country, I had not been indifferent to the landscape, but I had not felt love. I certainly did not feel the kind of revulsion I had for the dull, modern suburb in Adelaide with tarmac streets and concrete driveways where we had lived, or the cold winter beaches. There, it had been not merely a blank unresponsiveness to its charms, but that every streetscape and grain of sand was imbued with emotions coloured by loss. Now, in the Victorian countryside where my mother had taken refuge, very different emotions were in play. I was enchanted.
It was no accident, however, that these two epiphanies, both the experience of being a centaur and the new-found openness to the natural world, falling under its spell, came when it did. My new-found responsiveness, I think, came because my mother, once at the foreground of my attention and fears, had, by getting her life together, receded into the background. I was no longer preoccupied by her, and whether she—we—would survive. Instead, I was released from that inward gaze, and turned it outward, towards the world.
I stood there listening and looking, breathing in the scent of wet gum leaves, the sun rising in front of me, trembling as if I had discovered the natural world for the very first time. The beauty of it, which had been opaque to me before this moment, suddenly struck me with an extraordinary intensity, with the shocking force of a revelation. Just like a person who is close to someone but is suddenly surprised by the recognition that they have fallen in love, I had just moved from one kind of mode of being in the landscape to another. I saw the bush now with entirely new eyes, was alive to it in a way that I had not been before.
I felt shaken, capsized by its beauty. And just as one feels so grateful for the world to have suddenly revealed a person with whom one is in love, as I stood there beneath the arc of glistening leaves, listening to the tumbling, wild water of the creek behind me, I felt a sensation of absolute gratitude. While it likely took months or even years for my responsiveness to be fully awakened, in my memory there is just one moment in time when the world cracked open.
As I got older, my family said I had outgrown Wanderer, and needed to move on to a bigger horse, one more suitable for competing. I had been a tearaway long enough, and so the decision was made—though it was never mine—that Wanderer had to be sold.
A devout Catholic family, so devout they never competed or attended riding events on a Sunday, came down from Rochester to look at him. They were looking for their first pony. They had seven children, so Wanderer was to begin with the eldest and work his way down. They were farming folk, unusually kind and gentle in spirit, and with so many little riders lining up, it seemed likely, as indeed it turned out, that Wanderer would happily spend the rest of his days with them. I put him through his paces, and then took him up the road to do our trick. As we galloped back towards them my mood was very different from the first time I had performed it for my mother. I half-hoped that just once he would falter. As we bore down on the terrified family, full pelt, the mother flung her arms out and began gathering her brood closer, but Wanderer skidded to his dramatic halt with my body swinging just inches in front of his chest. The mother gasped as if beholding a miracle, while the father just smiled broadly and said, ‘I’ll buy him!’
And so a love affair came to an end. A new era began. I became more skilled and absorbed in the competitive aspects of riding, but deep down I always felt it a kind of betrayal, a corruption of that much purer space, a way of being, the sharing of a life with an animal that I had discovered with Wanderer, and an ease and oneness with the natural world. Never again did I feel quite that open boundary of soul between animal and human. No mere trophy ever made up for that.
My grandmother could puncture my mother’s spirits for several weeks by the simple observation that she was not wearing a white collar with a particular sweater. My mother’s shoulders would subside, and her head would bow down. The gesture was one of deflation, like a punctured balloon. A slight, light remark you may think, but it was laden with meanings so heavy that it pierced my mother’s soul in the way a stone tossed into the sea penetrates the surface of the water and sinks down, down, to settle deep upon the ocean bed. And stays there.
This light remark was not really about the wearing of white collars, though it is true that ‘The Importance of Wearing a White Collar’ was one of my grandmother’s central and immutable principles of life. It went to something absolutely fundamental between them. Their mother—daughter knot had more snarls than most to unravel. It seemed to me, as a child, that my Aunt Marjorie, who was easygoing, cheerful, petite, popular, partying, and conventionally feminine, the belle of country balls, was Nan’s favourite daughter. Marjorie’s was the only photo on the mantelpiece. My mother was an unusual and interesting person, all the more so in the country. She was darker and taller than Marjorie, striking, very intelligent and intellectually gifted, unexpected and unconventional, and, from Nan’s point of view, altogether more difficult.
My grandmother often stared at my mother, squinting slightly as if mystified, her brow showing just the faintest wrinkle of strain. My mother stared not back, but down, away, full of sadness. As a child, watching them, I always felt that my mother, like the changeling, had suffe
red a terrible misfortune. She had been born to the wrong mother.
My grandmother’s failure went far deeper than a failure to love, for in her own way she loved my mother. It was not a failure of physical care. Nan was very good at that. It was her failure to see my mother, as she was, to confirm and value her deepest self and not to require a different one. The deepest need in a love affair is to be understood, to be seen as one needs to be seen. Our qualities need to be known truly and valued, not disconfirmed. Wrongness of fit, psychologists politely call it; mother and child spending a life staring at each other in bewildered incomprehension.
When I read Jane Austen’s remark in Pride and Prejudice that Elizabeth Bennet’s mother was a woman of little understanding, I thought immediately of Nan and her politics. A firm Liberal voter, Nan’s faith in their politics came not from Mr Menzies’ authority, but from his appearance, in particular, his height. ‘He’s such a tall, good figure of a man’, Nan once told me, waving an arm in the direction of the ceiling. ‘So well spoken!’, referring to his acquired, fluty English tones, as if in politics height and elocution were everything. Her other main political authority was the novels she borrowed from the Rochester Regional Library.
My mother, in her period of youthful rebellion, had briefly joined the Communist Party. Although disillusion set in quickly and she soon left, she remained a Labor and Left egalitarian stalwart all her life. In my mother’s teenage years, she argued ferociously with Nan as they dried the dishes. When the Spanish Civil War broke out she tried to persuade Nan that there was another side—a just side—that the communists were fighting for. Nan countered my mother’s youthful Leftism with the unlikely authority of the anti-communist novels she borrowed from the library, where she had read all about those commies and the sorts of things they got up to. The sorts of things you’d expect. According to my mother, these political thrillers depicted tall, dark, handsome right-thinking heroes, who swept up frail, blonde women from the clutches of the evil communists. Nan was very hard to argue with, ending my mother’s arguments with a dismissive, ‘Oh, you’d argue white was black!’