by Dasia Black
Trying not to appear too eager and letting the man be the hunter, I determined that I would let him take the initiative in the relationship. But I rarely acted on this resolve. I would call them and then felt annihilated if they did not respond, if they refused to be my designated rock. They, in turn, were surprised, since I presented as so independent. Many a time I confided to my diary during those early post-divorce years that I longed to be held warmly and protectively in a man’s strong arms. I disguised my feelings of enormous sadness, my despair at ever finding a life partner. Fortunately, with time, these feelings diminished, especially during my busy professional weekdays.
I also revelled in the company of an increasing number of women who, like me, were newly independent or single and with whom I could go to movies, the theatre and on excursions, without being painfully aware that I was somehow incomplete. This is how I felt with some, though not all, of my married friends. Many considered me as in a transitional state between one marriage and the next, rather than making the most of a completely acceptable way of life as a single woman.
An enduring feature of my friendships was the special connection with women who, like me, were only children born immediately before or during the War, who had spent our childhoods surviving the Nazi terror. This had not been a time for Jewish parents to have children and, for many, when the War finished it was too late. We were sisters to each other, the sisters we would have liked to have had.
I gained deep satisfaction and energy from seeing my sons blossom as they progressed through their university studies while I was researching and writing my doctoral thesis. I prepared and delivered my lectures, attended meetings and did research during university hours, then came home and attended to the shopping, cooking, laundry and household chores. I had dinner with Simon and Jonathan and sometimes with their friends, and then went up to my study and wrote until midnight. Next morning I would wake early to go to work. In many ways I felt fulfilled. How could I envisage that within two-and-a-half years I would meet what I perceived to be my destiny?
XI
Henry
One spring evening in 1981, my friend Renata called me to say that Henry, a friend of her husband Kevin’s from his days as a transport engineer in Papua New Guinea, was visiting Sydney. Would I like to meet him? Renata told me that Henry was an economist who had made a distinguished career as a public servant in the Department of Territories and now ran his own economic consultancy in Canberra, advising on government policy. He had been born and received his early education in Germany so we had a European background in common. He had recently divorced and had an eleven-year-old daughter and an aged mother, both living with him. He was Jewish and was sixteen years older than I. He was a highly-respected and witty man with an original mind, much loved by his numerous friends and colleagues. He was rather lonely, however, so they suggested we meet.
This was enough information to frighten me off. What was the point of meeting someone so much older and living in another city? Why would he be interested in me and I in him? But I was attracted by the original mind and the risk-taking part of me agreed to meet him on the proposed blind date. It was May 1981, a wintry evening. Renata and Kevin picked me up and we drove to a restaurant in Kings Cross where we were to meet Henry. My first reaction was shock. His face really did look older. His forehead was broad above penetrating steely blue eyes, slightly sunken cheeks, a protruding nose and a narrow chin. Certainly not for me, was my snap judgement, though I noted also that though Henry was short, he had a strong, muscular body.
But when he started talking in his deep gravelly voice, I listened – and kept on listening. Here was a man of intellect and wide knowledge. He had a pithy comment on every subject that came up, from politics and economics to art and literature. It was a lively evening, with Kevin and Henry reminiscing about their times in Papua New Guinea and the many acquaintances they had in common, and gossiping about what was going on in Canberra politics. On the way back to the car, as we walked and talked, Henry lightly put his hand around my waist. An electric current went through my body. I felt that this was the touch of a man.
He asked whether we could meet again and I replied that I would enjoy that, but was in the throes of finishing my PhD. Another meeting would have to wait until I had finished. A couple of months later I sent him a note saying that I had just handed in my thesis and would be pleased to meet him on his next visit to Sydney.
Henry called Kevin and asked him to arrange another foursome. Renata said that they would be happy to arrange an evening together but that Henry needed to phone me himself and ask to meet me. He eventually did. We arranged to meet at a restaurant near the arty Five Ways in Paddington. He arrived at the appointed time, an astounding feat for Henry, as I would soon learn. He was never on time for anything else.
Renata and Kevin did not show up. There was some issue about a tradesman coming late, they said, so they regretted they could not join us. I wondered if they had done this on purpose. In any case, Henry and I were thrown into each other’s company. We talked for hours. After dinner we transferred to a café in Double Bay to talk some more. We discovered that we had much in common. For instance, as children we had both been great fans of Karl May, the German adventure writer who had been my passion in my last year in Stuttgart.
We were fascinated by each other’s backgrounds. Henry was an ‘enlightened’ German Jew with strong anti-religious beliefs, a German of the Jewish persuasion. He expressed his feelings about the claustrophobia of a solely Jewish setting such as a synagogue, where I felt at home within my people. I also detected a rather superior attitude towards Jews from Eastern Europe, Ostjuden like my family, most of whom had lived in the small shtetls (villages) of Poland and the pale of Russia, many in great poverty, steeped in their traditions of religious observance and the study of the Torah. It was true that some, like my father’s family, were engaged in small business, but like my father had entered the professions and formed a lively circle of intellectuals, writers, poets and painters.
Henry had been sent to England at the age of sixteen, after Kristallnacht. Although he had been cared for by his mother’s former governess and her brother, he was in reality on his own from the age of fifteen. During the War, his family was dispersed to North America, Australia and Europe. His mother, Erna, spent the War years in Switzerland and his brother, Ernest, in Switzerland and the United States. His father had made his way from England to the United States. It took twenty years before Henry saw his parents again.
The experiences of his youth may have accounted for his fierce independence, which he treasured in a way I found difficult to fathom. He told me that evening about his hatred of any form of regimentation. His habit of being late for everything stemmed from this feeling. Henry was a man who refused to be pushed into anything, who often made unilateral decisions about matters involving others, and who had to arrive at a decision in his own way in his own time. He seemed an unlikely candidate for being part of a committed couple, yet it was these very difficult qualities of his that fascinated me. Unlike me, with my fear of incurring anyone’s disapproval and my overwhelming desire to live in harmony, Henry welcomed and even relished confrontation.
I learned much later from a Canberra friend that he had been one of the Dunera Boys, young Jews from Germany who had been taken into detention by the British authorities as enemy aliens and sent to Australia on the Dunera for internment during the War. The Allied officers and men on the ship treated their passengers as enemies. They ridiculed them, looted their luggage and tossed it overboard. They constantly exerted their authority. When I asked Henry about the Dunera, he told me briefly about the many petty humiliations, which he did not want to remember. He did describe one episode where an officer grabbed his one and only pair of glasses and crushed them under his boot, leaving short-sighted Henry disabled for the rest of the voyage.
The Dunera and subsequent internment camp experience contributed to Henry’s strong anti-authoritarian str
eak. Many of the young internees were, of course, eager to fight against Hitler and when that was discovered and recognised, they were allowed to join a non-combatant army corps. Those who stayed in Australia after the War went on to make significant contributions to Australia’s public life. They became economists, philosophers and entrepreneurs. They brought with them a commitment to building a just nonracist society in their new world. Being a Dunera Boy came to be seen as a mark of distinction.
After the War, Henry had studied Economics and though offered attractive jobs with money-making potential, he chose to go to Canberra and become a public servant in the truly idealistic sense.
During that first evening together, I learned a lot about Henry. But we both knew we had just begun getting to know one another. We decided to meet again. The following day Henry returned to Canberra and after such a promising start, I expected to hear from him again soon. But there was nothing – not a phone call, not a note. I tried to forget that for one wonderful evening I had felt the possibility of a strong mutual attraction. I was deeply disappointed, even though getting involved with an older man for whom being a Jew was not a significant part of his identity raised questions.
It was not until three weeks later that Henry phoned and invited me to visit his home in Canberra. I accepted. This was based on a strong impulse rather than a rational decision.
I drove to Canberra. I enjoyed the blueness of the hills on the approach to the city and its crisp air. Henry’s home was part of a short, tree-lined street off the Common that surrounded the Lodge, the home of Australia’s Prime Ministers. The house was barely visible from the street, and was angled towards the north at the back. The front was actually a grove of trees with a gravel path leading to a white timber gate. The large living room was grand, yet understated. Its walls were white and its floor black slate. A modern black and chrome settee and chairs provided an austere contrast to the large colourful Afghan rug hanging on the wall. This was the first thing a visitor saw on entering from a small, lavender-filled courtyard. There was a display of Gandhara figures on glass shelves, busts and heads of Buddha. I soon learned that these had originated in a region in what is now Pakistan. Henry had acquired them while working there as part of a Harvardbased team helping implement a five-year development plan. They were his most treasured possessions.
Across the hallway from the living room was the study, lined floor to ceiling with books. The dining room had a long Spanish-style wooden table with leather-upholstered chairs. The bedrooms and kitchen were untidy and in need of a fresh coat of paint and some repairs. The main white-painted bedroom had three small windows just below the ceiling, giving privacy but showing off the peaches loading the branches of the tree just outside. The kitchen and a small family room, also lined with books, opened on to a larger courtyard at the back, surrounded by peach and lemon trees and shaded by a beautiful Japanese maple tree which turned red and gold in autumn. Big wooden planters were filled with jasmine and more lavender. A few steps up there was a swimming pool surrounded by a stone-paved area and also shaded by trees. They made necessary the continuous chore of removing fallen leaves from the pool, but they delighted the eye and the spirit.
Henry’s home, including the grotty bits, exuded the confidence of an individual who knew how he wanted to live and was absolutely unconcerned with fashion. I had never visited anywhere like his home. It was a tranquil place. I loved being there.
Henry’s daughter, Kim, lived with him during the week and with her mother Joan on the weekends. This would often allow Henry and me to have time together on weekends. Sometimes, however, Kim stayed with her Dad, and this presented problems for both her and me.
When I told my mother about this man I had met who lived with his eleven-year-old daughter and ninety-year-old mother, she replied: Oy gewalt! (In Yiddish, Oh, horror!) She did like to dramatise. His mother, Erna, would always join us for dinner when we ate at home and Henry would prepare a meal for her when we went out. I admired his devotion to his mother and daughter. But where would I fit in?
It was Henry’s intellect that I found most seductive, along with his phenomenal memory. He could quote at length from Goethe or Shakespeare or Milton, refer to a particular view of Bertrand Russell or effortlessly quote contemporary philosophers. When an issue came up for discussion or in the newspapers, Henry’s first response was often: What would Plato have said? His experience had led him to believe that the Ancient Greeks had thought about most important issues.
Knowing him allowed me to enter the vastly different world of Canberra’s intellectual and political élite. The first time Henry took me to dinner at the Commonwealth Club we met another Dunera Boy, one of the country’s leading economists. They discussed a man standing across the room, to whom they referred as a lightweight academic. That’s what they would call me, I immediately thought. I had neither published books nor taken part in national debates. I remarked that they were standing next to another such person.
On that first visit to Henry’s, he took me to meet his friends Les and Dulcie. Les had been the last Administrator of Papua New Guinea, before its independence and Henry had worked closely with him. I soon found that many of Australia’s top public servants had at one time worked in PNG and that they still formed a tight group committed to, and understanding developing countries. My background and interest in history and politics allowed me to participate to some extent in their discussions, but most of the time I was lost. They seemed to know everyone, including Bob Hawke, soon to become Prime Minister. At times I felt like a peasant from the provinces. But I took it all in, full of awe before these important people.
During his time in the Economics faculty at Melbourne University, Henry had loved to debate politics. He had made friends with equally passionate fellow students, most of whom now held influential positions in Australia’s public life. He had met the artist Arthur Boyd, who had offered him a painting or two in exchange for some tax work. Henry had refused, needing cash for his weekly rent, little knowing that Boyd’s paintings would a decade later be worth hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Later in our relationship, when Henry and I visited Melbourne and stayed at the Athenaeum Club in Collins Street, we met and spent long leisurely evenings and extended days meeting and talking with his friends. Though I relished these encounters, I initially held back in conversation, though I gained confidence with time. In fact, I made a discovery. Henry’s friends accepted me with all my differences, my accent and not being part of the Canberra scene.
I began to spend weekends in Canberra. We entertained Henry’s friends, academics at the research schools of the ANU or his mates from the upper levels of the Public Service. I also renewed friendships with Daniel, who was now a Professor of Composition at the Canberra School of Music and Julia, an ardent feminist who had been a school friend and fellow student of History at Sydney University. It was good to spend time with people who knew me as more than Henry’s girlfriend. I invited them when we entertained.
Entertaining à la Henry was quite different from the way I and my friends did it in Sydney. As a rule there were no invitations a few weeks ahead and no carefully-planned meals. I would arrive in Canberra on Saturday around noon, and Henry would suggest that we invite people for dinner that night or for lunch the next day. I would protest that they were unlikely to be available at such short notice. They either are or are not, he would say blithely. We just ask them. Often as not, they were happy to come.
Then there would be the rush to the markets. Henry concentrated on getting a big piece of beef to roast. Choosing, then carving it was one of his favourite activities. He would also choose the accompanying wine and cheese. Salads, vegetables and fruit were unimportant to him and could easily be skipped, since he had no time for ‘rabbit food’. I, however, insisted on their place on our menu. His friends’ enjoyment of my culinary additions eventually convinced him that they were not out of place in a meal. Copious amounts of red wine were consumed, especially w
hen we were invited back to some of Henry’s friends’ houses, and I often wondered about the shrinking brain cells of many of our public figures.
I was stimulated by this new world. There was no doubt that I was fascinated by Henry with his erudite mind and savage wit, and that there was strong mutual attraction. But what about Henry the man, Henry as a potential life partner?
If there was one quality in him which I especially loved, it was his streak of frivolity. He had an uncanny ability to be totally engrossed in his work, pacing up and down for hours, dictating lengthy documents on to his tape recorder for his secretary to type and then within minutes of finishing, becoming playful. Lightness and enjoyment were important dimensions of his life, and he very quickly detected they were not a natural part of my make-up. In fact he had commented to Kevin and Renata on our first meeting that he liked me, but considered me too serious.
He set about changing this. When he called me in Sydney to enquire about my day, his first question was: Have you frivelled today? Once in Sydney, as we drove to my home from a concert at eleven o’clock, a time when I was more than ready for bed, he asked what I felt like eating. I confessed that I rarely asked myself this question, especially so late in the evening. What would he like? Some smoked salmon with caviar and iced vodka was the immediate response. Only one place could provide this so late at night, the Hungarian-owned Hunters’ Lodge in Double Bay. We ate there with a Gypsy band playing in the background. It was a perfect evening, but one I would never have consciously desired.
Some years later we went on holiday to Hamilton Island. Our cabin had a terrace opening directly on to the beach. I immediately started unpacking, putting things away and reading the brochures about what was on offer at the resort and planning what we would do. And Henry? He entered the cabin, put down his bag, changed into shorts and sat on the terrace in a comfortable lounge chair, totally relaxed and deep into his book as if he been there all his life. Mundane tasks could wait. He taught me to ask myself: What is it that I want to do? before throwing myself into action.