by Karen Lamb
She was aware of being among a new generation of writers. The years had given Astley’s contrariness new licence but many in the group were pleased that she wanted to mix with younger people, to talk seriously to practising writers who were working, engaged in life.42 She argued over definitions, labels, that cliché male–female divide of the literary critical world. ‘Why should there be such a thing as chick-lit?’ Astley asked. ‘What about men writing utter crap, would you call it cock-schlock?’
Astley greatly enjoyed living near Byron Bay. The weather was balmy, the conversation casual and unafraid, and she was finding intelligent kindness. Byron Bay saw a woman in her late seventies getting about in men’s checked flannel shirts, trying to avoid the young footpath-hoggers who rudely refused to give way. Astley would arrive at the local Woolworths very early in the morning, using Jack’s disabled parking sticker to park nearby. She was still acting out and, even if she didn’t admit it, she had arrived in the right town to do that.
Still, she was facing the extreme challenges of isolation, and her health was deteriorating. She had suffered several minor strokes. And her eyesight was failing: she needed the large print books in the library. She was forced to give up driving altogether. Dislike it as she did, the independence that driving offered was an important thread connecting her to her previous life and to Jack. Like most people of her age, Astley worried about being a burden. ‘A person who dies young shows great foresight’ is the kind of rueful whimsy Astley would have enjoyed in expressing this anxiety.
Donna McLaughlin, a broadcaster from the ABC who had grown up in Mackay, north Queensland, and whom Astley knew, was in touch about an interview. It was a choice moment for Astley to open up. She was finding life very difficult, not being able to do all the things she once could. Two of the strokes she had suffered had been ‘sharp pointed pains in the side of her head. A headache really,’ she joked.43 In fact, she had had a number of x-rays that she tried to keep quiet. The scans had been inconclusive, a word whose vague import Astley would have understood as a death sentence. She knew that smokers – and she had been one for forty years – could expect aneurysms, or bulges in the walls of weakened blood vessels: something was wrong.
Irritability sometimes broke through her sociability. Astley oscillated between wanting to be left alone – ‘I’ve had enough’ – and secretly enjoying being recognised and valued. Privately, post-Jack, Astley was emotionally raw, but still able to form closer friendships than at other times in her life. A near neighbour, Ingrid Loewy had a mixed European heritage and a life in broadcasting that intrigued Astley. They listened to lieder together. To have music in common was to Astley the only cure worth having. If she listened to Richard Strauss’s song cycle ‘Vier letzte Lieder’, then for the moment she, too, could be weightless, floating.
By this time, according to Loewy, ‘Thea was well on the way to idolising Jack’ but her new friend saw, beyond the wisecracks, a distraught wife who had lost her life partner and who was also physically frail – a frustrated and angry person.44
Some of this volatility was also on public display. On a writers’ festival panel in 2003 with Richard Flanagan, Astley misfired badly when she described his latest novel Gould’s Book of Fish as ‘a nice book but a bit of a wank’. Her comment inspired the kind of for-or-against press argument that many authors dread, reducing discussion to a school debate. At the time Flanagan did his chivalrous best to laugh off Astley’s comment, but he looked a bit nonplussed, as did many in the audience.
Did Astley really mean what she had said? Her comment was bafflingly rude unless people realised how flippancy had dogged her all her life. Now there was no Jack to call up offended parties on her behalf to explain she hadn’t meant her words. Astley had been embarrassed at the time, had tried to insist she hadn’t known what the word ‘wank’ meant, but people were looking less than convinced. That didn’t prevent her from feeling misunderstood.
Astley was not ‘losing her nouns’, to quote the ageing Kathleen in Coda, but she had lost her bearings in life. Her anchors were the same as they had always been: books and writing. She felt most comfortable, unsurprisingly, in the home of words.
In Byron Bay Astley would prop herself on the rotting council bench outside the library. She had everything she needed: books and cigarettes and people. From here she could invent narratives. She grumbled out loud about the pathetic neglect of public property; she complained to the council, demanding a better, newly painted seat to restore dignity to the library. It hadn’t occurred to her that they would remove the entire seat. When they did she was enraged.
Life went on. Astley had agreed to a public reading of her work at the 2004 Byron Bay Writers Festival. She was feeling surprisingly well despite planned surgery to remove the aneurysm. It was better to have that, everyone agreed – no point letting your body play Russian roulette with you.
She stuck with her professional decision about the reading. Always it seemed the shorter pieces worked – she could read several. It was almost twenty-five years to the day since she had read ‘Diesel Epiphany’ to an Adelaide Writers’ Festival crowd. It had been one of the first of such readings for her, before the writer-as-entertainer became commonplace. She knew the story extremely well; she could still read it with comic timing. It was a crowd-pleaser. Reading it now, after such an interval, had its own pleasing symmetry.
Astley was accepting with greater alacrity than she could ever have imagined being the ‘older revered writer’. She might have wished for recognition sooner in life but now she was greeting it with equanimity. Early in her writing life she had almost hated writers’ festivals, the fanfare aspect of them, but now she was enjoying the social aspect of such events. She was looking forward to seeing Mark Macleod, too, and to him seeing her in her new life; their previous phone conversation had been all tears and recriminations over Jack.
The day arrived. The crowd at the reading recognised the elderly woman who slowly made her way towards the stage. Some were fellow writers who had come to know Astley now that she was a Byron local; some were old neighbours, including Betty Judd from Epping days. There were new neighbours and new friends, but Astley was most recognisable because of a lifetime of writing. She faced the audience with a direct gaze and the room slipped quickly into a deep hush. It was an atmosphere electric with the promise of something unique.
Astley began reading in much the same crackling, acrid style of her time in Barjai in the 1940s, but the years had added a composure made altogether exotic when expressed in her broad Queensland drawl. The reading was a story about a journey. Halting now and then at the side-cuttings of narrative, Astley waited just long enough for the audience to catch up with her. When they did, the room exploded with recognition and laughter. Without looking up, except to spot where Mark Macleod was sitting, Astley read on, pacing herself until the end. The crowd erupted: there was applause, cheering, stamping feet. It was hard at first for her to take it all in and Astley looked startled. On her way out, passing Mark, she couldn’t resist one last deflection. ‘It was you leading that cheering, wasn’t it?’ she said. He hadn’t been, but he could see she was touched.45 It was a new feeling – no resistance required.
It was ‘primary magic’.
Epilogue
The phone rang, and Ed picked up. A nurse from the Gold Coast hospital asked whether he could come straightaway, as ‘things hadn’t quite gone to plan’. His heart started to beat fast. Car keys were grabbed, doors bolted at speed, decisions revisited. What had gone wrong? Should he have encouraged Thea to risk the operation? Had they understood the odds? He and Michelle had spent many days and nights discussing at length how they would care for an elderly invalid mother; now they were leaving for the Gold Coast hospital dazed by the urgency of the call.
When Ed arrived in Thea’s room it was obvious that she was heavily sedated. He stepped into the corridor to speak to the doctor and find out what had happene
d. The explanation was as abrupt as it was simple: an aneurysm in the aorta behind her heart, not previously detected by the angiogram, had ruptured. The end was now a matter of time.
Ed walked back to Thea and sat motionless. After what seemed a long time she began to move, then faced him. One look at his face must have told her that all was not well. Her mind, with customary acuity, turned quickly on the issue.
A moment.
‘They stuffed it up, didn’t they?’ she said in her smoker’s rasp.
Typical Thea, thought Ed, but he knew she would want plain truths told plainly. He had to think of something quickly, some way of intimating what might be next.
‘You’ll be joining Jack soon,’ he blurted, immediately terrified he had said the wrong thing.
Thea’s eyes widened with all that she knew. It was the last look from a mother to a son. ‘That moment’, as she called it in her novels, was now coming to her. Within a few minutes, she found the strength to turn over, carefully, to face the blank wall. She never turned back.
Ed and Michelle left the hospital exhausted. They decided to head for nearby Kirra Beach, the scene of so many happy childhood memories for Thea, moments frozen in albums under the caption: ‘Family Holiday’. Here they saw the rocks Thea had perched on, where Eileen, overdressed in her 1920s clothes, complete with parasol, sat proud and upright next to her. Here were the rock pools, where Thea had been innocently happy while she and Phil quietly poked at shells and small sea creatures; over there was a dilapidated timber beach shack high up on stilts, its paint flaking in the tropical heat that Astley described with such nostalgia. Here Thea’s father, Cecil, finally relaxed enough away from the newsroom, had sung sea shanties.
Where was Thea now?
The formal announcement would come soon enough: Thea Astley had died at the John Flynn Hospital on the Gold Coast on 17 August 2004. Later, much later, Ed would scatter some of Thea’s ashes at Nudgee in Brisbane, near her parents Cec and Eileen, and some near Phil’s grave in Melbourne Catholic Cemetery, North Carlton.
Now, there was silence.
Illness has momentum: there’s something to worry about, things to do, places that must be visited. Death brings stillness, a presence not an absence. After he left the hospital Ed got into the car to drive back to Byron Bay. The sound of the sea roared in his ears.
He entered the roundabout near Byron’s public library. There in fresh, glorious green paint was Thea’s smoking bench, as Ed called it, the one she’d ‘roughed up’ the council about, the object of her last concerted agitation against slack officialdom. She wasn’t holding her breath, she said loudly to anyone who asked about progress with the council. Comic in her moroseness, she liked to think the worst, rather enjoyed being able to say that she never expected it to materialise – as in fact it hadn’t when she had last been well enough to visit the library.
But now it was there. Newly painted, it shone brilliantly in the noonday sunshine, perfectly placed in front of the library itself. This house of books had been the ideal backdrop for Thea, sitting, smoking and enjoying the passing parade, ever the ‘people freak’. And now this empty seat seemed a tribute to Thea Astley: to her life in literature, to the courage of all writers.
Acknowledgements
This biography has been many years in the making but it has brought unique pleasures to me. The first has been the opportunity to live for so many years alongside the challenging ideas and writings of a novelist as talented as Thea Astley. Over years of research and writing, I have been very grateful for the candour with which people spoke about Thea Astley. By any standards, this has been a rich and privileged writing experience.
I did meet Thea Astley on several occasions, at writers’ festivals and public readings and also at her home in Cambewarra, New South Wales, with her husband, Jack. I have my own memories, but impressions of others who knew Astley have also helped shape this portrait of her. Their recollections of Thea Astley are as varied as the many roles she played in her life: part of the couple ‘Jack and Thea’, a mother, a neighbour, a friend, a teacher, a colleague, above all a writer.
This book has involved the support of many. My daughter has spent years of her life living with this project without questioning its importance: thank you, Laura. I also wish to thank Jill Hickson, Astley’s literary agent in the 1990s. When I first envisaged a biography she was very encouraging. To my agent, Fiona Inglis, at Curtis Brown, and my publisher, Alexandra Payne, thank you. Thanks also to UQP staff, especially Cathy Vallance, who managed the book with such meticulous care. I am also particularly grateful to publisher Bob Sessions, a longtime admirer of Astley’s work as well as her publisher over many years. In 2006 it was he who put me in touch with Astley’s son, Ed.
In a Sydney suburban café Ed and I met and drank coffee for three hours in appalling heat and humidity. I could never have imagined his magnanimity in the face of so many personal intrusions, nor the patience of his partner, Michelle. Ed and Michelle: I cannot thank you enough. My time spent with you both has been a total pleasure.
In the long years of research, libraries provide vital support for researchers and writers. I particularly thank the staff at the Fryer Library, University of Queensland, where Astley’s papers are held. Astley had been depositing her manuscripts, some early poetry and other aspects of her writing life in the library for many years. This material was the basis for my research on Astley in the mid-1990s, which was supported by funding from Monash University, which I acknowledge with thanks. In 2005, a year after Astley’s death, her son was able to pass over her remaining papers, completing the full collection as it is today. It was this second archive that I have most drawn from for the writing of this biography.
It has also been rewarding to work on papers in the Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales, and at the University of Melbourne Archives; also on the Bohemia Society papers at the State Library of Victoria. I thank all those librarians who assisted me. I’d also like to thank the staff at Ballina Library, and school archivists at All Hallows’ and Gregory Terrace in Brisbane. Help from the staff at the Australian Broadcasting Commission Radio and Television Archives in Sydney was also expert and invaluable. A small research grant towards the latter stages of this work from the Australian Catholic University also assisted me.
To the people who made time to talk to me, in face-to-face interviews and telephone conversations, or in emails and letters, I owe you a great deal. If I have overlooked anyone, I do apologise.
Barbara Abouchar, Louise Adler, the late Father Phil Astley, the late Thea Astley, June Barbour, Michelle Barbour, John Bernard, Carmel Bird, Barbara Blackman, Wendy Blaxland, Veronica Brady, the late Sir Theodore Bray, Jennifer and Bryan Bruty, Tony Buckley, Jennifer Byrne, Geoff and Sarah Cains, Matthew Condon, Glenn Cook, Peter Corris, Michael Costigan, Helen Dash, Marele Day, John Docker, Robert Drewe, Jill Eddington, Gerald Fitzgerald, the late Thelma Forshaw, Helen Garner, Arnold and Elise Simon Goodman, Ed Gregson, Jacquie Griffiths, Rodney Hall, Michael Head, Jill Hickson, Janet Hutchinson, Caroline Jones, Betty Judd, Alla Kammaralli, Tom Keneally, Joan Kirkby, Moira and Sheila Knudson, Sue LeGanza, Elaine Lindsay, Ingrid Loewy, the late Sister Lourda, Hugh Lunn, Margaret McEniery, Michael McGirr, Kevin and Pat McHugh, Mark McKenna, Mark Macleod, Jeff McMullen, David Malouf, David Marr, Susan Marshall, the late Sister Mary Martin, Marin Martinelli, Ruth Mawson, Lisa Morrison, Laurie Muller, Marcia Price, D’Arcy Randall, the late Barrett Reid, Jill Roe, Meredith Rose, the late Hazel Rowley, John Ryan, Mary Sainty, Robert Sessions, Patricia Sheehan, Jim Shute, Margaret and Allen Smith, Irene Stevens, Sister Patricia Sullivan, Chris Wallace-Crabbe, Richard Walsh, Margery Watsford, Elizabeth Webby, Richard Whitington, Yvonne Wyndham, Fay Zwicky.
Notes
Prologue
1Thea Astley in Lenore Nicklin, ‘Thea Astley: Writing in the Rainforest’, The Good Weekend, The Sydney Morning Herald, 13 October 1979, p. 14.
3F. Scott Fitzgerald and Henry James in Dennis W. Petrie, Ultimately Fiction: Design in Modern American Biography, Purdue University Press, Indiana, 1981, p. 2.
4Christina Stead in Hazel Rowley, Christina Stead: A Biography, William Heinemann, Melbourne, 1993, p. xi.
1 The hinterland of childhood
1Thea Astley, Drylands: A Book for the World’s Last Reader, Penguin, Melbourne, 1999, p. 106.
2Thea Astley, A Kindness Cup, Penguin, Melbourne, 1989, p. 112.
3Thea Astley, Wordfest sound recording, Canberra, 9 March 1985, ABC Radio Archives.
4Thea Astley, ‘Diesel Epiphany’, Antipodes, 1(1), 1987, pp. 10–11.
5Thea Astley, ‘Why I Wrote a Short Story Called “Diesel Epiphany”’, Meanjin, 45(2), 1986, p. 193.
6David Malouf, ‘A First Place: The Mapping of a World’, in James Tulip (ed.), Johnno, Short Stories, Poems, Essays and Interview, UQP, St Lucia, 1990, p. 262.
7Sister Mary Martin to author, Melbourne, 17 July 1995.
8ibid.
9Thea Astley, reading in Jimmy Watson’s Wine Bar, Melbourne, February 1993.
10Father Phil Astley to author, Melbourne, 1 July 1995.
11Immortalised as the character Cornelius in Thea Astley, It’s Raining in Mango, Penguin, Melbourne, 1987.
12Lance Loughrey, ‘Last of the Bush Balladists’, Southerly, 42(1), 1982, p. 91.