But by the time she was a teenager she knew: a childhood in Balmain meant certain assumptions were made about you. She knew she was appraised by others in a way a North Shore girl was not. As if Balmain was not just where she lived but who she was. As if she’d breathed in squalor, that it leaked out through her pores. For a long time she might have believed it herself, worried that her eyes might filter bleakness, might process it differently than theirs. That she would not know beauty when she saw it. But not anymore. Years after her mother’s death she saw it for what it was. A kind of social conspiracy. She was relieved; could love it as she always had. Saw that her preference for odd-shaped houses, for lanes that bent and went nowhere, began here.
It was barely altered. Still down at heel and crumbling. As a child she’d never stopped to appraise the place: it was what it was: her home. All tar and stone and irregularity, the air acrid with tallow and smoke. Now she could see that it was true, there had been no collective urge to beautify, to upkeep. It was rough. The fact wasn’t remarkable; no one noticed. Why would they? Everyone lived and worked and went to school within its margins, within its uniform dishevelment.
In her childhood, the whole suburb was at eye level, more or less, except the cranes in the shipyard and the factory chimneys, and even then, nothing lined up straight, nothing was plumb. Dog’s breakfast, her mother had said, but this was what Pearl loved most, the unpredictability, the sudden dead ends and surprising corners, the wayward streets. And really, so did Amy. Even the sky is uneven, she’d say, laughing. And it was true. Its pitch was determined by where you were standing, by what you could smell and hear. Only the harbor was constant. The masts and sails and tugs at the horizon were ever-moving reminders of the sea.
She walked towards Datchett Street. Their own house had been like most others, uneven, squeezed up against another and hemmed by a neighbor’s wall. In the scrap of yard her mother grew spinach and carrots. Peas tendriled on a wire. In spring jasmine splayed, and once she’d grown a climbing rose her father named Pearl. But its tiny blooms were red, and Pearl was not unhappy when it was dashed to pieces in a storm. She’d wanted creamy white, not red, she’d wanted subtlety and beauty. Well, I loved them, her mother said as she gathered the debris that day and one of the twins cried out from a thorn. But Pearl was unmoved.
The little house was different now, partly repaired and extended, its roof replaced. There were roses once more, overblown and languid on a picket fence. Pearl stood on the opposite side of the road and wondered if the new people felt the old beneath their feet, the rough scales of the lives lived here before them. The cries and laughter of children, the plunge and knot of grief. If Suze was right and everyone was linked somehow, the life of every single person drifting through another, then surely these people would feel the rub of her parents’ hard days, the relentless grinding hours.
A breeze came up the hill from the water and Pearl adjusted her shoulder bag. Constance Shaw, then.
Number sixty-two was a house of old brick and faded weatherboards. Some kind of vine, its few ragged flowers, crept along the veranda rails, against peeling window frames. But the garden was neat and the bones of the building were good. It held itself well, like a rich dowager refusing the effects of age, or hard times.
Pearl climbed the steps that clung to the side of the house. The woman who answered the door did not look rich or famous. Or act it, at any rate. She didn’t wait for Pearl’s greeting but turned back into the light-filled flat, shuffling in slippers, a newspaper in her hand. Not sure about all this, said Constance Shaw, lowering herself into a cane chair by the window and motioning Pearl towards the other. But it breaks up the day. What is your name?
Pearl closed the door and stood for a moment, adjusting her scarf, sweeping the room with a journalist’s eye. Thinking: she matches the room, the house. A kind of rough-edged gentility, a studied carelessness: well-cut jacket though the slippers were worn at the heel, sagging cane chairs that looked out over an expensive view. Sidney Nolan hung above a red laminex table. The carpet worn to nothing beneath it.
Pearl Keogh.
Constance Shaw struck a match to a cigarette held between long fingers. Inhaled in a short breath, leaned back. Keogh, she said, exhaling. Let me guess. Irish Catholic. She regarded Pearl through smoke as she sat opposite her, retrieving notebook and pencils.
Pearl straightened her skirt. She didn’t much like the woman’s tone, but looked her in the eye and smiled. Is it strange to be home?
Constance looked to the ceiling, where mold bloomed in delicate tracery. The Catholics run the newspapers here. She drew once more on the cigarette, blew smoke through an open window sash. Home. Strange, yes. Discomforting. I find I’m appalled and consoled at the same time.
The pencil moved noiselessly over Pearl’s notebook. She began to prickle with anticipation. Constance was irascible, clever; the usual platitudes had already been foregone. Already they’d run roughshod over the usual rhythm of interviewing: the dissection, the gentle flaying, a subject’s skin peeled off so skillfully, they didn’t see their own fingers at work. Pearl lifted the pencil. Consoling and discomforting, she said. Like your work, perhaps.
There was a good hour of provocation—Greene’s a misogynist, how could you not see that? You have to get out of Sydney, my girl. Give me Brisbane or even Adelaide, Melbourne is so self-conscious. (Then why are you back? Pearl ventured. Constance sighed. At least dignify all this with a decent question, my dear.) And then Pearl detected a thaw, an adjustment in tone, an occasional flash of humor or warmth. Most surprising, the odd concession to Pearl’s own intelligence.
They had been discussing critics, book reviews. Constance waved her hand. They don’t like me here. Her tone arch, defensive again. Look, most critics are consumed with envy. Really. It’s a coward’s game. Why else would you do it? Only if you dearly wanted to write but were too afraid to.
Pearl let the words hang between them.
Don’t you think? Australian newspapers are so . . . pompous. And male. Full of swagger and certainty. It comes from feeling second-grade, I suppose. The suspicion that you’re not quite up to it. Constance had been watching the breeze flip leaves and papers along the footpath outside, but now she turned back to Pearl. I don’t know why a girl like you would waste your time with them.
Pearl thought: “Affront.” The things women had to do to be published. Aren’t newspapers the same everywhere? She’d flicked through international editions in the newsroom and already knew they were not. But Constance saw through her. Rhetorical, she said, frowning. Ask me a real question.
The clock ticked to one thirty, two. It had taken Pearl the first hour to breach the writer’s austerity, to establish a fledgling trust. She knew it was one of her strengths, to set a person at ease. She sought any common ground; it was invariably there, even if it was irrelevant to the interview. In this way she offered up her own vulnerability; they both, interviewer and subject, stepped into the arena together. After nearly a decade in the job, this was the best deal she could offer: to give as much of herself as she asked of the other.
As Constance warmed they spoke about her books, her life in London, the writer in private and in public. About reputation, melancholy, marriage. Love. The possibility of relinquishment.
Of relinquishment. A surprise in the tone Constance had used, making the word sound positive. To Pearl it had always smacked of grief, of loss, of things foregone or given up.
Whatever doesn’t work for you, the writer was saying. Relationships, guilt, shoes that pinch. The past. She raised her substantial brows. Clicked her fingers. Get rid of it. Vamoose.
Pearl watched her pencil press marks onto the page. But saw only the file on the library bench, the stories suggesting Constance had lied about her years in London, about her marriage, about the true subjects of her books. That she invented a history to suit each situation. She’d made no comment on these stories, ever, mounted no defense. (Though later Pearl would ask the literary
editor, who remembered a quote in an old interview in The New York Times. Quizzed about the allegations, her version of things, Constance had said only: It is how I see it.)
Now Pearl glanced up at the woman sitting opposite her, winter sun on skin paled by her years in cold places. Her gray hair was drawn back in a chignon, leaving her face and its lines and shadows exposed. No makeup, no artifice; if she was prone to lying it wasn’t about her age. And if anyone was exaggerating, it was the editor; what exactly was elderly, she wondered again. Perhaps it meant something different when applied to a woman, because Constance was, what? Late sixties? No older. It occurred to her then that men like Henry might be confronted by women like Constance. Strong, successful, single, a public figure who called her own tune. Brought to heel by one word—elderly—a suitable punishment for breaking the rules. For being the one who got away.
Pearl decided she would not raise the question of lies and inventions now. Partly out of fear, it was true; the woman would eat her alive. But mostly out of respect. Pearl had begun to admire her. She went back to her notebook, thinking: who owns the facts of our lives anyway?
She was weighing the next question, trying to phrase it, when Constance spoke again. I’m weary, she said, and thirsty. Levering herself up from her chair. A vein in her hand swelled and settled. Come and have a drink with me. She shuffled to the kitchen table, pushed off her slippers and pulled on plain street shoes. Moved towards the door. Pearl was sure Constance was more upright than before, propelling herself now with assurance, with determination. She watched her fish in a jar and draw out a wad of notes, which she tucked into a pocket. Smoothed her hair. Desultory. Come on. The words spoken over her shoulder. We’ll go to the Royal Oak. You’ll need a drink too.
Pearl rose, suppressed a laugh that bulged in her throat, and followed.
As they reached the street Constance turned into another person. The shuffling gave way to a kind of hurtling walk laced with commentary, on the weather, her brother’s children, newspapers. For pity’s sake girl, the news pages are as bad as the women’s, she wheezed. The path was uphill, but her pace didn’t slow. At least in women’s you can do interviews like this. Something intelligent. Australian conservatism, American bluster, English naïveté. The compulsion of travel. Get out of the country. This as they slid at last into a booth in the ladies’ parlor of the hotel. It was almost empty after the lunchtime rush. Constance had ordered gin for them both from the barman before Pearl could speak. You’re a bright girl. Go to London, if you still want newspapers. Or Paris. Can you speak French?
The drinks arrived in tall glasses, cool to the touch. Pearl winced. So far she hadn’t managed a word.
Fleet Street. Constance spoke without looking at her. Chewed ice. It’s a different world. London will—what do they say?—blow your mind.
Pearl wanted to say: I can’t go to London. Or anywhere. Not now. But didn’t. Moved the conversation back to books, the ban on Lady Chatterley’s Lover, George Johnston’s Miles Franklin award.
Constance said: Should have gone to his wife. Brilliant, but her books are set in Greece. Those columns she writes—raising her glass to her lips—she should have got it for those. And for putting up with him. She lowered her voice. Let’s see if next year’s a woman, she said, as if she was thinking aloud.
They were quiet for a while, drinking, listening to the barmen unload beer barrels in the yard. The scrape of wood on concrete, sentences laced with expletives. And above it all, a crow barking.
But the young will win. Eventually. Constance had drained her glass. It’s only been days but I can see that, right enough. They’ll rise up. Vietnam, Aboriginal people. Women. They won’t take it. This young Dane at the opera house, all the jealous old men. They just wish they’d designed it.
Pearl thought of Axel, his obsession with the architect, his godlike vision of the man and his cathedral. Those people, he’d spat one day, indicating Macquarie Street, they have no idea. I think they are afraid of Utzon. Of the building. Or ashamed of it. That’s how they act.
Now, above the grunt of men hauling kegs, the sound of singing. Muted, as if someone had opened a car door and left the radio on. The two women leaned in unison towards it. “Joe Hill.” Paul Robeson, the voice thick as molasses, singular. When the song finished, Pearl said: He was here, five years ago, down at the opera house. He sang to the workers. The memory of his voice, the men listening. An Italian laborer had said to her, I will never forget this. Emotion stark on his wet face. She knew then that Robeson had made a memorial of the building, noun and verb.
He stands for them, Constance said. And for his people. He’s fearless. She paused. A shame he loved Stalin.
Pearl began to ask: Stalin? Constance didn’t hear. But he spoke against the fascists in Spain . . . You’re too young to remember. He said, “The artist must take sides.” The words hung between them like a banner.
Then Yes, Pearl said, I know.
Something like: “He must choose to fight for freedom or slavery.” Well, of course we must, all of us. Constance drained her glass and looked at Pearl levelly. That, my dear, is why I write. To take a side. If you’re looking for something to say about me, say that.
The cab ride back to the office might have taken hours. She sat in the front and urged the car on silently, anxious to be back. Constance had slumped as she left, looked suddenly older, or perhaps it was the gin. Faith, she’d said, her smile crooked as Pearl turned to the door. It’s like luck, my girl. You have to make your own. Get lucky and the world will love you.
Yes, she thought now as the city reared up, shining. Luck. As they’d talked about Robeson, the hero he was, a thunderbolt: the workers. Will and Jamie were workers. And they were their father’s sons: they would be in a union. She had no idea why she hadn’t thought of it before.
In the newsroom she left a note for the industrial roundsman, Peter, and went to the cafeteria for strong coffee. Then sat at her desk, typed up her notes, and began to draft the profile of Constance Shaw. The library file lay beside her notebook, open at the most recent photograph they had: a grainy portrait, five years old. Pearl consulted it every few minutes, reaching for something that was not in her notes. Something between the imperiousness, the almost regal bearing, and the generosity she allowed as, piece by piece, the carapace was breached. As some original version of Constance was allowed out.
Then Peter was walking towards her through the swarm of typewriters, a piece of folded paper in his hand. There’s the Missos, but start with the Builders and Laborers man, he said. Not sure how much he can help, or if he wants to. Stop-work meetings this week. He proffered the single page, with a single name and a number.
She made the call immediately, her voice contained. The union man, gruff, busy, said he’d see what he could do.
Axel leaned over the metal casting box. The day before, he and the men had filled the long rectangle with damp sand. This morning the wooden mold, pressed into and against it to create their impression. Now it had been removed; he could see the curves and lines were clean and clear. Sprays of color: red, the brown of tree bark, flecked the hollows. This was not the most anxious stage of the process but still he felt his breath shorten. As if the weight of air exhaled from a man’s chest might affect the texture. Might collapse the shape pressed into the sand, or the idea projected there. The months of thinking and reading this place, of translating vision and emotion, and now this first attempt to turn his thoughts solid. It was a trial only, a scale model—he had still to solve the technical problems of a full-size piece—but today he would finally move from theory and emotion to the tangible.
Behind him two men moved around the crucible, checking the temperature of the lead crystal glowing crimson within. Twelve hundred degrees centigrade. Axel turned to them; they nodded. He took three small pieces from the shelf beside him, items from his walks and searches, and placed them lightly into the sand. Each movement made with exactitude. When he finished and stood back, one of the
men reached into the crucible and filled a ladle with molten glass. The heat was a living thing; sweat pricked their faces, the skin on their arms above the long thick gloves. Their eyes narrowed. But the form was soon full and alight with color, pulsing with its own life.
It was now a matter of watching, of vigilance.
He left the cast with three of the senior men and walked back to Bennelong Point. The whole day was yellow and blue, Sweden’s colors, and the winter air rang. As he walked, his lungs opened and he realized that, during the morning, he’d held his breath for long periods as the glass was poured and the pieces settled. Now his body unclenched. A girl smiled as she passed him and he knew he must be smiling too. Must be happy.
He walked through the site, nodding at men who recognized him now. But he was anxious to get to his shed, to the experimental pieces from the small furnace. It was important to test his ideas in this way, trying to feel, between wrist and glass, some expressive potential. The notion of perfection: it was still debated among the glassmakers and also among the students, who had been schooled in its necessity, their work judged against myriad bars, all subjective. Axel grimaced at some of their views and their taste, the hard symmetry that bored him, the cleanliness of it. Some glass artists were happy in that space, but to Axel it felt cold, bloodless. He was trying for something beyond it; for disturbance and emotion, the elusive quality of dreams. Ambiguity. Still, the mastery of skills and techniques was essential: he had to be sure that vision and idea did not collide with the practical matters of the hot shop.
It was most important now. He had been quietly experimenting in the privacy of his small shed with an old-fashioned Swedish method of blasting. Among his tools was a blast lamp, which used compressed air and sand. First he applied stencils on the parts to remain transparent; the blast lamp gave a matte finish to the remaining surface of the glass. But it required concentration, and peace.
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