Memoirs of Many in One

by Patrick White

  ‘You’ve come down unusually early, Mother.’

  ‘Well, I was awake, and it seemed the natural move on such a lovely day …’

  I am a little secretive girl to my daughter in her role as stern mother preparing to accuse her child of some unspecified behaviour which could only prove undesirable. I can feel the mingy little pigtails dangling trembling alongside my apprehensive cheeks.

  Hilda strides around in her judicial robe. She too, probably, has to salvage confidence from out of the blurred world of sleep.

  She begins suddenly, ‘What’s all this – liquid – on the floor?’

  I stare stupidly round-mouthed down.

  ‘It must be one of the cats –’ I prevent myself coming out with ‘Mummy’, I manage to turn it into – ‘darling.’

  I can’t believe she is convinced. She isn’t. The whole kitchen is reeking of brandy.

  But I persist, in desperation. ‘I was so tired when I got home from the theatre, I just fell on my bed. And the poor incarcerated pets must have pissed on the floor. It’s as simple as that.’

  Hilda makes herself a cup of coffee – not real – Nescafé. She stirs it furiously with her spoon to show what she thinks of her little girl-mother, and possibly the world at large.

  We sit at opposite sides of the table, pretending we are not paddling in brandy and broken glass.

  ‘Surely by now you must have got rid of your theatre obsession?’ she begins.

  I gulp down a mouthful of brandied cornflakes. The brandy makes me feel more like myself.

  ‘Actually, the Sand Pit has offered me parts in their next production. Not as important as those who admire my work feel that I deserve … But who knows? A foot in the door is better than a jammed toe. It may lead to anything.’

  I look at the watch I realise I am not wearing.

  ‘We start rehearsing tomorrow. Or is it today? I must check with my engagement book.’

  Hilda gets up grudgingly, to face dealing with glass splinters, brandy and blood.

  I try to distract her attention from any such unpleasantness.

  ‘I expect you’ll be going out, won’t you? To buy the lettuces – and rolled oats,’ knowing she is still under the influence of Mrs Elspeth/Brenda McDermott.

  She mumps a reply.

  I help her in her work by standing the plate with its remains of soggy cornflakes beside the sink.

  When I hear her ask, ‘What is the theme of your play?’

  I’m surprised that she should show such interest.

  ‘Well … Difficult to put it in a nutshell – like life itself. I’d say it unites all the great themes – classic and contemporary dilemmas. War. Corruption. Violence. Revolution. Anarchy. Love and sex, in their many variations. The BOMB! Ashes …’

  I can feel them on my lips along with the detritus of cornflakes – bitter, bitter …

  Hilda appears unmoved.

  However, she condescends to utter, ‘What is its title?’

  ‘Nothing or Something. On the other hand, it could be Something or Nothing. It will have to be worked out – by all of us – democratically – because we’re a democratic group.’

  ‘Oh.’

  I slip away upstairs. The question is – should rehearsals begin today? Or tomorrow? There is no sign of a date in my little onion-skin diary. If tomorrow, it will give Hilda a chance to alert Patrick and perhaps call in Falkenberg if they decide things have gone far enough. So I decide to make the break this morning.

  I wait till I hear her leave by the back gate on the lettuce and porridge run. I check my make-up box, and go through my shoulder bag to make sure that all my necessities are there (fewer and fewer of them as time goes on; I’m almost prepared to walk down the street naked, with a box of tissues under one arm, and a revolver snuggling into an armpit).

  At the last moment I can’t resist a gesture. I open the wardrobe and shake my dear old chinchilla from out of the moth-bag. Rather a gamble – it could condemn me to the pits with the company or, depending on luck and climate, elevate me to leading roles.

  I call a taxi. Though the day will be a steamy one, I decide to wear the chinchilla. Safer than carrying it. And it will provide armour of a kind if the taxi-driver is a nark.

  The cab slides alongside the fence. The man is neither young nor old, firmly fleshed of thigh and arm, wearing dark glasses, a cynical expression and Digger’s hat.

  ‘I adore the hat. Where did you buy it?’ I couldn’t resist making a play for his vanity.

  ‘At an emporium,’ he answered lazily; the side of his mouth closest to me a couple of teeth are gone from the pink plastic gum.

  ‘What about yer coat? Must ’uv worked pretty ’ard for that.’

  ‘I am not a prostitute. Though at the time my husband gave it to me I was admittedly a wife.’

  ‘Don’t think much of we men. And I never went much on you libbers.’

  ‘I was never in need of liberation. I knew what I wanted and went out and got it.’ (Dishonest statement coming from one who doesn’t yet know why she is where. But the man provoked me.)

  He began again at the next lights. ‘Reckon you take it easy nowadays.’

  ‘I’m kept busy.’

  ‘Reckon they bring their kids for nanna to keep an eye on.’

  ‘There are no grandchildren – thank God!’

  ‘I’m with yer there. But the women seem to go along with it. A string of snotty little kids lets the neighbours see you’ve made a contribution.’

  ‘I like to think I’ve made a contribution without benefit of snot. Oh, I know all about squalor – I’ve been up to my ears in it at times, but squalor of a grander range.’

  We were sliding past houses and gardens, and railings, railings.

  The railings reminded me to ask, ‘Were you ever in gaol?’

  He winced, and the gooseflesh stood out amongst the hairs on the muscular arms. ‘What a thing to ask an honest man!’ He aimed a short sharp burst of spit at the road.

  The passenger carries on. ‘I never was. All my crimes went undetected. Even a murder or two …’

  ‘Cripes! I took yer for a lady of wealth and status – in that snazzy coat.’

  ‘It’s the snazzy ones who commit some of the worst crimes – the murders that are overlooked.’

  ‘You’ve got something there. But you must ’uv done somethun between committing the murders that was overlooked. You say you keep busy. What ’uv yer been busy at?’

  ‘I’m an artist.’

  ‘You don’t say! Go in for a bit of art work meself at weekends. Course I don’t let on to the blokes. Dunno why – don’t do no ’arm to anybody.’

  ‘Art can be almost a worse crime than living.’

  ‘Eh?’

  ‘That’s what I’m trying to decide. I’ve got to discover – by writing out – acting out my life – the reason for my presence on earth. Doesn’t that sound reasonable?’

  ‘No way! It’s the nuttiest proposition I ever heard. Mind you, I’m not suggestin’ …’

  ‘Actually you are, but I’m not holding it against you.’

  ‘What are you writing, any’ow?’

  ‘That won’t be known till after I’m dead.’

  ‘Well, which programme do you act on?’

  ‘I act live.’

  ‘Never been to a live play. Wouldn’t ’ave the nerve.’

  ‘I’ll see they give you tickets. When I asked you to take me to the Westpac Bank, Martin and George, it was one of those subterfuges people adopt. I was afraid to tell you I wanted to go to the Sand Pit theatre. Know it?’

  ‘Heard about it. Yairs. Full of Commies and poofs.’

  As I rummage through my bag for money, ‘I was never a Commie. Could be a poof. Might ask you up if you ever bring me home.’

  I hand him the fare. Slightly lower my eyelids. I smile at him. I know the tips of my teeth will be looking transparent. He takes the money, but ignores the implications.

  ‘What name do you wri
te – act under? Might have seen it in the Telegraph.’

  ‘Princess Alexandra Xenophon.’

  ‘Jesus! What’s all this?’

  ‘You’re not surely above a tip?’

  ‘In a democratic country – and from a bloody phoney princess! If it was Di, say – or Alexandria …’

  ‘You needn’t have qualms. I swiped the tip – the fare too – from my daughter’s housekeeping money. It may be some consolation to know I’m as dishonest as yourself – and many others.’

  I watch him as he drives off. Have I recruited a witness for the prosecution in the trial I must face sooner or later?

  Inwardly athletic, outwardly exhausted, I mount the theatre steps.

  *

  Today and the days which follow we spend putting the play together (democratically) from our shorthand notes and X-ray plates of the fatal diseases most of us are suffering from. A girl in specs insists on playing a foetus ‘… an only too obvious starting point …’ A lady with a ginger moustache sees herself as an urban guerrilla. ‘This is a play of action, surely – of revolution – and no action is possible today without urban guerrillas. Whoever presses the button – and whenever – the urban guerrilla is the catalyst.’

  I am surprised to find I can keep so quiet. They don’t yet know what they have on their hands – all these foetuses and gingery guerrillas. If it hadn’t been for my chinchilla, I might not have existed. The coat draws a few snide glances. I hear myself referred to as Old Possum and the Cat Lady. In the beginning I thought of dumping the coat at my downmarket end of the dressing room, but it is so cold in the dark, badly ventilated theatre, I decide to keep it hugged round my body.

  Even during the coffee-cum-bladder break when we go outside and sit on the steps in the unnatural sunlight, I hug my coat and it hugs me. The young things around me lap up the filthy stuff from the urn. One group in particular huddles together sharing a joint while discussing motivation and structure. My friend Dara brings me a cup of urn coffee which I refuse with my most charismatic smile. Dara is one of those Russian toys weighted at the bottom which you can’t knock over, fortunate Dara. There is Lin too. She shares with us slivers of chewy Chinese duck. We are our own little enclave, ethnic outcasts in a colonial democratic society. When it is time to go back inside, Dara and Lin shore me up, unnecessarily I should add, one of them under each of my armpits, like a pair of human crutches.

  Trevor, one of our many authors, and perhaps director in default of one, is discussing what he sees as an effective scene. His eyes flicker in our direction. ‘There are these three peasant women – Sino-Something – Russian who knows what – and a Greco-Turkish whatever. Y’know? But above all, peasants.’ Lin and Dara accept the shadowy definitions of what they are expected to be. ‘You, Alex, must know all about the Turkish thing.’

  I don’t reply. I only smile. The others, that is the foetuses and urban guerrillas, are looking at me, not because they understand, but because they foresee the humiliation of some kind of old phoney amateur the management has roped in to lend authenticity to an unimportant scene.

  ‘Now,’ says Trevor, ‘you three peasants are doing your laundry on the banks of a stream. Sloshing your linen against the stones, rubbing it against the washing boards.’

  Obediently, Lin and Dara are doing just this (they have both been to NIDA).

  ‘Get me, Alex?’

  I must have been hesitating, lost in the mists of memory, gathering together strands from the past focusing in my mind’s eye, scenting cleanliness in my nostrils.

  ‘Oh, yes!’

  It all floods back. Our old Smaragda. Our darling who held me in her arms aboard the destroyer after we escaped the flames, and who vanished mysteriously soon after we reached the mouth of the Nile, the Pharos, and comparative safety promised by banker relatives.

  Oh yes …

  Soon I am sloshing the sheets around, over the stones, rubbing them against the corrugated board with all the strength of my aged peasant body. The stream courses down the slope from a spring higher in the hills. Hands cracked and reddened by lye in the crude soap we are using in rubbing and scrubbing. My neatly braided plaits tremble. My thin lips are parted in a smile over toothless gums. A virgin smile. I am the virgin who has given birth to my own and suckled other people’s children. Ingrained virtue in every wrinkle of my wizened face. Wrongdoing is beyond my scope. I am pure as this sheet I have laundered.

  In a sudden burst of vanity I hold this glistening banner against the light.

  ‘You wouldn’t see a whiter sheet anywhere in Australia.’

  Trevor laughs, vindicated. ‘That’s right, old dear! A dazzler!’

  He comes forward, grasps by the shoulder, not Xenophon’s Smaragda, not myself Alex Gray, but a person he’s taken a gamble on, and fitted successfully into their jigsaw of a play.

  Everyone is relieved now that we have run through this excisable (sub-subtext) scene and can get on with the contentious issues. Should the Urban Guerrillas enter through the auditorium or parachute down from the roof? Should the play end with the Bomb or an aftermath of ash?

  The Foetus is coping badly with a fit of the sulks or pre-menstrual pains.

  According to the rules we shall soon be leaving the theatre for the night. Going home. The idea appals me. The theatre has become my home. How can I face the ghosts from the past which intrude nightly from the Park and lurk in every cupboard in the house? For that matter, the living ghost my daughter.

  I rub diffidently against Trevor. Couldn’t I spend the night here? I’m not on best terms with my family.

  Trevor is all bonhomie this evening, somebody has promised to sleep with him. ‘If it’s martyrdom you’re after!’ He even fetches a camp-bed and sets it up outside the lavatories.

  Martyrdom? Haven’t I got my chinchilla? And soon there will be silence. There is nothing as silent as a theatre when the play is done and the actors have gone their various ways.

  I lie on my camp-bed, its bones at war with mine, outside the pizzling lavatories, in the almost dark. The almost silence. It is the dark of moon-washed oilskins, the dark of skittering cockroaches.

  ‘Glabrous’ is a word which possesses me. I mean to explore, taste it thoroughly when I get back to my writing. ‘My glabrous love …’ my lovers, with the exception of Onouphrios the monk at Ayia Ekaterini, have been more or less smooth. ‘The glabrous dark’ … in this deserted theatre it is far from hairless. Where the chinchilla has fallen back from my legs, I can feel the little hairy haunches which accompany the slither of a tail. A little red eye is trying to outstare me. It won’t. Or possibly it will. I claw through the bag for my fountain-pen torch, which I carry for following the lines of a script or names in a programme – or to examine my neighbour’s wrists. So important, wrists. One day I might try tying love-knots on a neighbour’s wrist.

  Not now. Oh, cold, shivery, cockroach-skittering, rat-infested dark. I make for the bar by instinct. The rat has preceded me. I see his little red eye. I hear him chomping on carrot cake and quiche. We have become familiars. When by accident my hand touches his naked tail dangling from the edge of the bar-top, he does not withdraw.

  Oh God, I am not afraid of a mere rat when I have stood up to some of the dinosaurs of disaster. I go round focusing the eye of my torch. The salt flowers of a Margarita are blooming in my mind. Bugger the salt, the lemon, the tequila is what my shrivelled tongue is letching after. I would lick the tail of any rat prepared to illuminate the bottle.

  Ahhhh!

  I put away what I wouldn’t like to reckon in barmaid’s business tots. What the hell! I am crashing through, into a world of diamond splinters. Another gluggle. What about the bottle, the management? Fill it with water against the day of reckoning. The jug bounces, crashes, adding its lesser splinters to the incorporeal jabs which have broken out in my mind.

  I crawl back on all fours in the direction of the camp-bed, the chinchilla, the never-silent lavatories. I lie awaiting dawn and judgment.r />
  Somewhere through the dawn light I can hear – no smell Hilda brewing up in the kitchen. Sometimes when in a good temper she offers me a cup from her brew. It is this Roma special caramel blend she buys at the Junction when she abandons McDermott principles. The cups are those transparent white ones she gets for free according to the extent of her purchases. She tells me the cups are art deco. The addict’s lip-print stays for ever on the transparent white of the free art-deco cup.

  I offer up a prayer to the perfume my daughter has distilled. If you were to melt the pigeon’s blood ruby Harry Gray snitched from behind a lattice in Lahore and brought back to Sydney Australia, it would rise plumed and languorous as the aroma from Hilda’s coffee.

  Is there any point in my going down and appealing to the charity in her?

  I don’t. The grey strands of morning have begun to drift through the foyer and my splintered head. They mingle with the pizzling of the lavatories. Later on the actress/servant will arrive to slop around the lavatories, ignore the incurable graffiti, and animate the sludge in the coffee urn.

  I turn away from the abyss of light opening amongst the crumpled programmes and trampled quiche. My flickering eyelids are frail blinds against such a glaze.

  Hang on to something. Must. Think glabrously. The glabrous shaman. No such thing. But the word could be accommodated. Some. Where.

  They tell you to keep a notebook. That’s where all such splinters and masturbatory devices are stored. Indispensable after death, for the parasite students and academics who eat out your liver and lights – your heart.

  No point. It’s all in the Memoirs. Too much of it.

  I must resign myself. Patrick will be the spirit guide at the great seance. I respect him as far as anybody, including oneself, can be respected.

  *

  The days are piling up. Costumes. At the Sand Pit they prefer the trademarks of authenticity. A piss-stained fly. Armpitted T-shirts. A ball dress on which food has added to the pattern. The Foetus is in despair over an enormous Winterhalter hat designed for the Empress Eugénie she can’t very well adapt to the characters she will play. (Shall I offer to wear it for her as myself? They can’t expect me to stay put as a peasant throughout.)