The Attachment

by Ailsa Piper

  Silly talk.

  I was thinking about what gift to make to the multitude tonight when we break bread. The others at table will be two women writers, two actors (one of them Pete, of course), a theatre designer, an art historian, and three folk with connections into the visual art world. I’m in awe of all of them. Perhaps a poem at each place would be good.

  I’m readying to go and walk with Louise (the other actor who will be at table!) before breakfast. The north wind is already fierce. Swim like an echidna—but remember, they have no resistance to anything.

  A x

  Didn’t think those bloody spikes were working.

  Eddie the Echidna

  PS Did you have any notion that on the Saturday morning you visited my home, on the table (carefully positioned between us) was a small plastic fridge magnet echidna. Been there for weeks—without me paying any attention. Whence it came—only the Phantom do know!

  Pilgrim,

  Your instructions, should you choose this assignment, are to matter-transport yourself to Hamilton St so you can be at this table I am preparing. You would love it. I’m copying off poems and scattering flowers and feeding a fatted calf. I will put a poem out for you.

  By the way, your thoughts on the word PIOUS?

  I was driving home and decided that ‘pious’ was the opposite of Louise and something I never want to be. Am I showing ignorance of something wonderful that has been lost?

  A x

  Ailsa,

  As usual our emails crossed the Murray about the same time. I wonder if they wave to one another.

  Let me tell you a closely guarded secret—I stand in awe of intelligent female writers and would be reduced to an incoherent mumble in such a group. My entire resources are focused on keeping my secret safe from one highly intelligent author.

  HowamIdoin?

  I’m off to a wedding—the bride can’t be kept waiting.

  Ant

  Hope that bride wasn’t tapping her feet. Mary Oliver wrote a bride poem which is my mantra. Words to live by. Google it and see why. It’s called ‘When Death Comes’.

  I am bursting-at-the-seams happy. I’ve had a whole day playing with flowers, fruit, vegetables, poems and places at table, and dreaming up ways to fete my friends. I’m a feeder. I love to sit in candlelight and hear arguments and laughter and watch those I love become full. And I’ve adored the prep, in spite of the fact that it’s thirty-seven degrees. I’m singing to Paul Simon and dancing from task to task in the ugliest outfit I own—and that’s saying something! My falling-apart T-shirt and shorts are old friends with many memories in their fibres, and I won’t abandon them. And now I’m trusting the clouds that are building to the west—let them bring me a cool change from my birthplace. I will think of it as a Fremantle doctor.

  This is a postcard that reads ‘Wish You Were Here.’

  A x

  Good morning.

  Hungover?? Repairing a shattered house? Out walking, tasting again the memories of rich friendships and shimmering minds? Or still asleep?

  Thought of you this morning while talking to my fellow travellers at Mass. I was quoting Thomas Merton: ‘The biggest human temptation . . . is to settle for too little.’ Let me assure you that this is one temptation you have beaten to a frazzle. Never could it be said of this explorer of the human condition and explorer of the road. Hope last night was as wonderful as you imagined.

  Tony

  And good morning to you, Eddie!

  How are the spikes? Are you bristling? Or are you happily occupied, digging ever-deeper into the earth? Did you swim the swim of the happy echidna?

  No, no, not hungover, unless you count an adrenaline detox.

  Peter is doing the last round of dishes, and I’ve been reading two books in between doing some work. Rather wish I was still asleep, but lying in is something my constitution doesn’t enjoy. Five hours is what my body allows before it starts agitating—much to Pete’s dismay, at times. And so, in spite of rising yesterday at 5.30 and not turning in until 3, I rose at 7 and have been padding about the house, inhaling flowers grown by friends, responding to emails and texts as the others surfaced, and trying to decide what to do with today and tomorrow.

  Anyway, it’s blissfully cool, so I can choose and know that whatever I do, it will be easy. But to last night . . .

  I was so moved by my friends, old and new. This year has been a battle between my extrovert and introvert selves. I’ve been away so much, feeling an overwhelming desire to meet and thank readers of my book, and to bring my best to them, wherever I meet them. But that has often left me without time or energy for my nearest and dearest, those who made it possible for me to go questing, secure in the knowledge that my home village was underneath me, buoying me. I’ve felt guilty about them, hungry for them, angry at myself for not being able to manage more people, but desperate too for the silence that is vital.

  So yesterday was a distillation of all I had missed.

  The day began with rhubarb, which set me up for my walk with Louise. Fast, ripping into the hot wind as we bowled around Albert Park Lake, talking a thousand to the dozen and rebuffing the northerlies. God, I love walking with her. We go at the world as we go at life.

  Home and into the prep! Bare feet on floorboards, chopping, dicing, planning, prepping, singing, dancing. Up to my study to forage in my postcard collection for images for the table, which Peter hired from a party shop because ours would never have stretched to ten people. Gardenias and tea-lights in glass holders. Poems at each place. It looked so pretty.

  In the kitchen . . .

  I decided on a loosely Italian theme, because it’s the cooking I know best. I learned it when I went there at twenty—a Perth kid, amazed by what they did with flowers and veges. With everything. Here is what was plated in six heavenly hours of kitchen play . . .

  Antipasto . . .

  Grilled eggplant and radicchio. Asparagus with buffalo mozzarella. Broad beans with mint and saltbush leaves. Marinated anchovies and Sicilian sardines. Button mushrooms and multicoloured radishes. Zucchini cream—a bit spicy so beware. Salami with fennel and chilli bought at a local farmers’ market. How lucky are we?

  Served with laughter and prosecco.

  Within fifteen minutes of folk arriving, I was in the kitchen chopping mint when I looked up and thought I would burst—laughter, stories, hilarity, and most of the guests had only just met! So by the time we got to the table, you can imagine how things were flowing. All those amazing people, tumbling about each other, picking up the odd postcard and sharing stories about it and themselves, nibbling at my handiwork. Fellowship in motion.

  Mains . . .

  Fennel and pork sausages roasted in the oven with apple, red onion, beetroot and rosemary. Beyond description.

  Cous-cous with orange rind, currants, Ras el Hanout spice mix (diverting from Italy), pine nuts and almonds. Oh, parsley thrown through, too!

  Green beans and greener broccolini, separated by deep purple carrots. Pretty and pretty darned good.

  We talked. We talked. We talked.

  Dessert . . .

  Meringues folded through cream whipped with vanilla (Pete may have a severe case of RSI from this task), then served with diced strawberries and a dollop of ginger rhubarb.

  Cheese. Dried figs. Grapes. Quince jelly. Breads.

  GRATITUDE.

  More talk.

  Laughter. Mime. History. Tall tales. Affection.

  Friendship cannot be taken for granted—it requires nurturing. And that takes time. Well, yesterday I gave it time, with so much happiness and pleasure, and how it rewarded me. When finally we called it a night at 2 am, and Peter and I replayed the evening as we did a few dishes and packed away food, I realised that an entire day devoted to feeding and delighting the people I love may well have been the most creative thing I’ve done in weeks. Every bit of me felt full. Not with food, I don’t mean that. For all that outrageous list of edibles, it wasn’t a heavy or bloated night. W
e filled each other, and I felt blessed to have broken such bread.

  I must go and decide about my day. I have a feeling this chair, this desk, this screen, will claim me. Even if I don’t write much, I just love the idea of being in the house post-dinner, and soaking up some of the energies that are still floating about. Not to mention staring at the vases of flowers that fill the place. Hydrangeas are such decadent blooms. I want to look at them and feel rich.

  Thank you for thinking of me in relation to the Merton. Sometimes in the little there is majesty, but ‘to settle for’—that is the toxic phrase, isn’t it? I also like whoever it was who said we never regret what we do, only the things we don’t do.

  I run on too long. I go, I go—see how I go.

  Love,

  Ailsa x

  Good morning Ailsa,

  Well you said you were an early morning person. So am I.

  Just heading for the healing waters of the harbour before a proper reply to the pageantry and passion of your party.

  It’s raining here. Swimming in the rain is a special treat.

  Happy days.

  Tony

  A

  Now I’m flying out the door. The first tee calls.

  T

  T!

  The first tee, indeed. What a frivolous sort of creature you are, splashing then chipping. And don’t give me the philosopher-golfer stance. I don’t buy it. It’s all greens and crashing waves and frolic with you.

  Hit well—or whatever one says to you addicts of the putt.

  I’m staying at the desk. Will keep an eye for the early bird’s missives.

  Love from the snail on her trail . . .

  Ailsa

  Dear Ailsa,

  Have I ever told you adequately what joy I get from your mail?

  I go around here smiling my head off and when asked what this is all about—I haven’t been able to find a way of telling them it is this blithe spirit in Victoria who brings poetry and light into my otherwise dull existence.

  I end up mumbling something about indigestion.

  They remain unconvinced.

  No—haven’t been drinking. Well perhaps one or two.

  Where to start a proper reply?

  First your description of Babette’s Feast has me copying down the recipes.

  But how could I serve it with the zest and playfulness of such a host? And besides I can’t dance and cook at the same time. For me a far more serious endeavour.

  In one sense you didn’t have to describe in words the utter joy you felt at having such friends around you and dazzling them with your vivacious hospitality. I sensed it in the language. Can’t remember reading such undiluted happiness.

  Must go to bed.

  Eddie

  Hello Tony,

  It’s 5.43 am, and I’m beginning to fear long draughts of sleep will never again be mine. I didn’t go to bed until about 12.30 am.

  Thank you for saying my mails make you smile. I worry that this avalanche of correspondence is ‘too much’. All my life, ‘too much’ has been the fear, and sometimes the catch-cry. I’m grateful you’re not folding under the load.

  You know, I’m not a ‘true believer’ in much. I loved that newly learned phrase you gave me by virtue of Bishop Holloway’s book—‘agnostic Christian’. As you know from my book, I’ve always longed to believe, to claim faith in the way of those old ladies in the Spanish churches, but the only faith I can claim is in working and walking and the wonder of here and now. And I was so relieved to hear him speak, your Richard Holloway, about the Jesus with whom he can sit comfortably, and the other, who is owned by the Church. Much of what he said was like a balm.

  Sorry.

  Back on the road, not the side tracks.

  Dawn has come and gone while I’ve been writing. I have a 9.30 voiceover, which will bring me some actual lucre. Hooray! I don’t think about it much, because there is no point in walking down a road that makes me frightened or miserable or envious—I don’t enjoy being that person who feels those things—but I am so grateful when income finds me.

  OK, Eddie. Prickle up, shuffle off and get to work.

  Terimah kasih from the deep south.

  A x

  Ailsa,

  I often wonder about how you manage to balance finances and work and life. How you deal with rejection and the constant pressure to produce—whether that pressure is external or internal. The artist’s life seems to me to be one of constantly exercising a kind of faith—as you say, ‘faith in work’. But there must be days when it falters. You speak of them rarely, but I am sure they are painful, so I thought you might be glad of this . . .

  My morning prayer for Ailsa.

  May those who love us, love us.

  And those who don’t

  May God turn their hearts.

  And if God doesn’t turn their hearts

  May he turn their ankles.

  So that we recognise them

  In their limping.

  Amen to that.

  Ant

  Antonio!

  What a prayer! Thank you. I love it. And in return, here is one for you . . .

  My morning prayer for Tony.

  For days that begin with crossing wires

  For mornings that ring with the laughter of recognition

  For a friend who turns up and puts in, every day

  I give thanks.

  I lift my croaky voice and join the cockatoos, squarking my good fortune to the tumbling sky.

  May blessings rain on you, spiky swimmer.

  A x

  Ailsa

  Your letter arrived in today’s mail. You’re right. A handwritten letter is entirely different. Must say I thought you a tiny bit romantic talking about the distinction between a handwritten letter and email. Let me withdraw my scepticism with some embarrassment.

  So. How is your handwritten letter different to your email?

  More vulnerable, stronger feelings, and even a touch more human.

  Thanks for the stories about your dad. Loved what you wrote—‘a gentle man and a gentleman.’ I realised that I had never asked you about him. Good to get a bit more Piper backstory.

  So much to say in response to your questions about my father. To commence—with apologies for not writing by hand!

  Dad was 39 when I was born. A little older than some dads when I was growing up. As I write this, I realise that, when he died, he was six years younger than I am now.

  Like yourself, he held few values higher than friendship. His family and his friends were what mattered. Unlike his more enterprising wife, the loftier ambitions like income or owning your own home were unimportant. They were both ardent party givers. To us kids there seemed to be a shindig most Saturday nights. Either home or away. He expressed his affection easily. A little sentimental at times, I guess. Had no hesitation at greeting women with an enthusiastic hug. Thank God the habit was not hereditary.

  As I’ve mentioned before, as a nineteen-year-old, Dad enlisted for the Great War. After experiencing the horror of France, Dad was invalided from the front.

  When he died in 1972 I went before an ex-servicemen’s tribunal in an attempt to win a war widow’s pension for Mum. The challenging task was to prove Dad died of war injuries 54 years after they were first inflicted. It took some careful argument. To make the case, it fell on me to research a period of his life, before I was born, of which I knew precious little. I had to stretch my imagination to collect the story: my parents never owned their own home; never owned a car; never had more than a few bob to bless themselves with. What their Saturday night parties lacked in lavish catering was made up for with loud music, and enthusiastic singing. They were never dull.

  Despite all that lack, they conjured up bursaries for Peter and me at Riverview.

  Caught up by the private school culture of entitlement, I developed a horrible case of being disappointed by my NSW Railway draughtsman father. My future was going to be the stock market and Pitt St—striped ties
and double breasted suits. In a word, I was simply a prick of a son.

  My research developed, with me feeling increasingly ashamed, as the picture of their life continued to emerge . . .

  A young man shipped off to the war to end all wars. Coming home quite shattered, getting married, not having enough money to have a decent honeymoon, caught up in the Depression of 1929. And then another war. I have strong memories of his coming home during WWII after working three jobs, now a civilian, grey-faced with fatigue, touching on exhaustion. Experienced manpower was at a premium.

  The tribunal allowed me to argue the case for a full hour—the best hour I have ever spent. I had realised the dimension of my father’s real story for the first time. It was heroic. It filled me with a deep shame at how frequently I had underestimated what I owed him. What we all owed him.

  This led me on to a determined search for my Irish roots. To discover my father’s father. Too long to tell you tonight but (for me) equally fascinating.

  What the hell. Here’s a taste of it.

  Can’t help myself.

  Have I ever told you that Dad had the most elegant handwriting? You’d have loved it. He was a professional draughtsman. Not only that, he had a hobby creating what the Irish would call illuminated text—think the Book of Kells. For him, designing the most elaborate letters in the tradition of the Celtic monks in their ‘beehive’ cells was a passion. One eerie coincidence arising from our family history is that St Columcille, the giant figure in Irish tradition and the person responsible for the Book of Kells, was born in the same tiny Donegal village where Dad’s grandparents lived.

  How’s that for genetic inheritance?

  To get back to your handwritten letter, though.

  Can I tell your future from your handwriting? No! But from everything else that is happening to you I believe you are powering along. It’s an exciting ride simply being caught in the wash.

  Had our parish meeting tonight about the sexual abuse issue. It provided a safe space for all of us to express our dismay, emotional turmoil and confusion. Everyone was generous and honest in their responses. It went well. The people who came showed such openness and adulthood. I felt very lucky to be part of this community.