by Martin Boyd
I read on, but this was all I could find. It made a pleasant enough picture, a rather thin watercolour, but was hardly material for a novel. There was one skeleton of which I knew. I had heard of it from Uncle Arthur who had painted the portrait in the lobby, but I doubted that it would be referred to in these pages, where there seemed to be nothing more than a little tepid local colour of the period. I certainly did not want to write a book in which the women were only dummies to hang with crinolines, their feet only something to rest on beadwork stools, and it appeared that poor Grannie could provide nothing more robust.
I picked up the diary for 1893 to read about the day I was born, but the only thing of interest was the fact that my mother ate for luncheon some fish which had been caught by a Russian. This again, no more than Mr Whistler’s exhibition, or the meet at Boyton, or the lime-burners’ pretty smoke, was the subject for a novel.
I glanced idly through the rest of the book, thinking that now I would be able to go to sleep, when I found that for a whole fortnight in October it was written in French, some of it in very small writing. I took the trouble to read a page or two, and then I could not stop. There were references to events twenty years earlier, and I went back to the uniform case for the diaries of the early eighteen-seventies. At the same time I fetched a magnifying glass, possibly the same one which my grandmother had used for this minute writing, as I had known it from infancy, and like so many of my possessions here, had seen it also on the other side of the world.
In the morning I told Julian that I would try to write the book he wanted.
* * *
* La Prisonnière by Marcel Proust, trans. by C. K. Scott-Moncrieff.
2
It is said that all mankind looks back to the golden age of Saturn; to most of us the golden age is not so remote. It is more likely to be our own childhood. Perhaps my own was here at Westhill, before at the age of thirteen I was taken to England. And yet the other night when with Julian I walked up the dark passage, carrying the uniform case, it did not seem only to contain the ghosts of the dead from whom we spring, but also the ghost of the living, of the child I was, equal bestower of treasures and calamities. Here I had been brought dripping and covered with leeches after I had bathed in the dam. Here I had suffered measles and chicken pox and had shed my first teeth. Here I had endured at the age of eleven, the pangs of apparently unrequited love for a governess. Here the body of my eldest brother had been carried and laid on his grandmother’s bed.
I think then, that the golden age for me must have been before this, the earliest days of the country in which I then lived, Australia, the only place I had known since I left the cradle. There is no country where it is easier to imagine some lost pattern of life, a mythology of vanished gods, than in this, the most ancient of all lands, where the skeletons of trees extend their bleached arms in the sun, and giant lizards cling to their trunks. But my imagination only went back as far as the first European settlers in Victoria. They provided my mythology and I was as closely connected with them as the heroes of Homer with the gods from whom they claimed descent. The gods, too, were my grandparents. I saw them as living always in one of those Australian mornings of the early spring, the mornings of the golden age. Then the leaves of the gum trees hang in the air, so still and pure and fresh that their beauty is completely revealed, without any veil of atmosphere or confusion of movement. In this crystal air the shouts and laughter of the children are as liquid as the falling notes of the magpies in the field. The still morning absorbs all the sounds and turns them into music. The sun is not scorching but sparkles softly on the bridles of the ponies. The mountain ranges are of a blue so peaceful and mysterious that they are an invitation to adventure, and against this sunlit land one would not be surprised to see a frieze of naked Spartans. However, in this scene the first human being I visualise is not a Spartan boy, but the small black figure of Cousin Hetty.
It is not on a spring morning that I see her, but on a winter afternoon in the schoolroom of the deanery, that grey gabled house, something like Kilawly, with the little pseudo-romanesque cathedral, of which her father was dean, on the other side of the garden. It was too wet to go out and the Mayhew children, with their cousins the Langtons and their friend Alice Verso were amusing themselves with historical charades. At the moment Hetty was standing with her back to the fireplace, holding a cardboard crown, and shouting defiantly: ‘If I can’t be queen, I’ll burn the crown.’
This created so much commotion that Mrs Mayhew came up to see what was the matter. All the children explained at once: ‘Hetty wants to be queen again.’ ‘She’s been Eleanor with the burghers already.’ ‘Now she wants to be Queen Elizabeth.’ ‘It’s just because Austin’s to be Sir Walter Raleigh.’ ‘It’s Alice’s turn to be queen.’
Alice, the only one who was not a relative, stood apart with a faint embarrassed smile.
‘You must play some other game,’ said Mrs Mayhew. ‘There’s far too much noise. Hetty, you mayn’t have any jam for tea. I’ll tell Miss Tripp.’
Hetty, without any preliminary protest or whimper just opened her mouth and roared with rage. Mrs Mayhew shrugged her shoulders and left the room. Austin, smiling with half-brutal good-nature, took the crown from Hetty’s hand and jammed it on her head.
‘There, you may have it now,’ he said. ‘It’s torn anyhow.’
This is what Arthur Langton, my grandfather’s younger brother told me, but, although he was present, he was only eight years old at the time. He was a colourful, though never a very reliable witness, as I shall explain later, but he is almost the only authority I have for these early days, which must therefore remain partly mythological.
Arthur said that when Hetty was seven years old, Austin kissed her under the mistletoe and that she never forgot it. She regarded it as a betrothal and Austin as her private possession. This was understood by everybody all through their childhood and adolescence. The understanding arose simply from Hetty’s own grim determination that it should be so. Austin, a good-natured boy, flattered and amused by her attitude towards him, and regarding her as of a different generation—she was four years younger than himself—acquiesced in it. When her brothers wanted to tease her they called her ‘Mrs Austin,’ but this only provoked an expression of fatuous smugness, like that of a cat which has eaten all the cream. I have seen a daguerrotype of her as a young woman. Her eyes were dark and flashing, her mouth full and voluptuous, and her jaw as square and strong as a sergeant-major’s. Though she was not conventionally pretty, even this faded photograph gives an impression of tremendous vitality. In her old age, though she was not genial, she suggested a Buddha or a Gong. Her massive build seemed an affirmation of willpower rather than a result of good-living.
The Langton and the Mayhew children always played together, but when the Langtons were not there, Hetty would go and sit by herself in a remote corner of the garden, meditating on the subject of Austin, her dark eyes glowing with joy in her square, determined face.
Alice also played with these two families. She had her lessons with the Mayhews, but she learnt more from her aunt Miss Charlotte Verso, who, like her name-sake and contemporary Charlotte Brontë, had once taught in a school in Brussels. Alice’s father was the younger son of a Lincolnshire vicar. He had come out to Australia to make his fortune. He bought for a few pounds some blocks of land in Bourke Street and Collins Street, and then died, leaving a widow and one daughter, Alice. At first they were very poor, but the land increased rapidly in value. Mrs Verso was married for her money by an engaging and dissipated young adventurer named Drax, who then discovered that the property had all been left to Alice. Miss Charlotte Verso, hearing in her Lincolnshire vicarage of the rackety household in which her little niece was living, came out to rescue her. The Draxes willingly handed her over—Mrs Drax probably for the child’s own sake—and went off to Sydney, where every quarter they squandered Drax’s remittance from England in bars and on the racecourse, and then starved till the next i
nstalment arrived. Miss Verso bought a little house in East Melbourne and settled there with Alice.
Arthur said that when Drax was drunk he used to put his wife, who was, I am afraid, my great-grandmother, across the table, lift up her skirts, and beat her with a broom handle, but that she enjoyed it. Because of rumours of this sort of thing, Miss Verso was anxious that Alice should only form the most respectable associations, and although it was unnecessary, as she was a far more competent governess than Miss Tripp, was glad for her to share the lessons and games of the dean’s children, and through them of the Langtons, whose father was the Chief Justice. She was also careful, as Alice’s income increased, not to make any display of wealth, so that she should not be classed with those dreadful people who had recently made fortunes at the gold diggings, and now drove in fine carriages about the streets of Melbourne, where a few years earlier they had walked as kitchenmaids and pot-boys. The result was that a large part of that income went back to increase the capital.
The state of affairs between Hetty and Austin, of fierce emotional possession on the one hand and kindly tolerance on the other, lasted until he left for Cambridge. It is possible that Austin felt a little more than tolerance for Hetty, as he always liked people who amused him, and although she was quite humourless, she was often very funny. She could imitate the bishop or a bucking pony with equal virtuosity, and the fact that she did not know how funny she was made the other children shriek with laughter.
Austin was indignant when told he was to go to Cambridge. His father said that he must have a gentleman’s education. Austin said:
‘I’ve been to the Melbourne Grammar School.’
This astonished Sir William, as he had only sent Austin there from necessity, and hardly considered it a real school.
‘You must have what in England will be thought a gentleman’s education,’ he said.
Austin said that he did not live in England—that he was an Australian.
‘What is that?’ exclaimed his father contemptuously. ‘A convict—a gold digger. You were born in England. It is your home and we shall go there when I retire.’ As he looked at Austin, he must have been dismayed to find that although he had been successful, he could not pass on to his son the fruits of his success, as the conditions which had made it possible also made Austin unable to enjoy them properly. This did not prevent his insisting on his leaving for Cambridge.
Before Austin left, his mother gave a farewell party for him. He must have been very upset at the prospect of leaving every friend he had, to go among strangers, even if some of them were relatives, on the other side of the world. Because of this his brothers and cousins would all have been especially dear to him on the night of this party, and perhaps because Hetty made it more obvious than anyone else how much she would miss him, their association was less one-sided than before, and he told her, half as a joke, much in the same tone as he had told her she could have the cardboard crown: ‘I’m going to marry you when I come back.’
She was then fourteen and the next morning he had already forgotten that he had said it.
All the relatives went to see him off at the ship. At the last terrible moment of farewell he went round kissing them. When he kissed his mother, Hetty was standing beside her, the tears streaming from her eyes down into the corners of her grimly closed mouth. It was the only time that he had seen her cry without roaring with rage. He was so surprised and touched that he bent and kissed her too. She was the last person he kissed and she gave this enormous significance.
It was nearly four years before Austin returned. I have little idea of what the lives of the Langtons and Mayhews were like during that time. It would be possible to reconstruct it from the accessories, crinolines and beadwork and croquet, but that would not tell us what Hetty and Alice were feeling. When an English mail ship had arrived, the Langtons and Mayhews would foregather to compare news from home. If Mrs Mayhew went to the Langtons, Hetty managed to go with her. There was not always a letter from Austin as he was not a good correspondent. He did not once in the four years write to Hetty, but twice he sent her a message, and as she was the only Mayhew he mentioned by name, again she gave this great importance.
When Austin returned, his parents were living at Bishopscourt, the blue stone building still standing in East Melbourne, which they had rented for a year, until Sir William went home on leave, after which he thought of retiring, as his health was poor. Because of this he had taken advantage of a good offer to sell his house. Only Austin’s father and brothers had gone to meet him at the ship. The rest of the clan were gathered in the Bishopscourt drawing-room. Austin, a little shy at the change in his own physique, but full of boisterous affection, in the midst of his general greetings, catching sight of her exclaimed: ‘Hetty!’ and kissed her again after a four years interval. She entered this as another item on her small but solid credit balance with him.
A few days later his mother gave an evening party with dancing to welcome him home. Hetty had known for months beforehand of this dance, at which she had arranged to make her debut. She had also formed in her mind for this evening other intentions that were unrelated to any probability. She would dance more dances with Austin than was conventionally permissible. People would begin to talk about them, saying they were too much together. She would be indifferent to this, would flaunt her daring behaviour, and then at the end of the evening their engagement would be announced, and she would be triumphant, the queen of the party. She had a new dress, folds and folds of white muslin. She wore a crown of white roses on her glossy hair, and an expression of determination on her square glowing face, of which the only beauty was in its vitality, in the texture of her skin, and in her rather too magnificent eyes.
The Mayhews arrived early, and in the role she had designed for herself, Hetty stood beside Lady Langton and Austin at the drawing-room door, where they were greeting their guests. Lady Langton suggested that she joined the other young people, and Mrs Mayhew tried to lead her away, but without success, feeling herself blackmailed by the threat of a scene.
Then Alice was announced. She was a girl of fourteen, reserved and not very noticeable when Austin left. Now she was a young woman and a very pretty one. She was far more agreeable to look at than Hetty. She had not Hetty’s splendid Savonarola eyes, which were a rather frightening asset, but neither had she her massive figure nor her grim jaw. Her eyes were grey and level, her hair fair and shining, and her nose straight. The curves of her mouth made charming a face which otherwise might have been a little stern. It was as if Jupiter, who had given her wealth, had bestowed with it other Jovian qualities, a bearing and a look in the eye which would make any liberties dangerous.
Austin always liked the best of everything and naturally assumed that he should have it. It was inevitable that as soon as Alice came into the room, he should have eyes for no one else. Everything about her attracted him, he liked being surprised and she was a great surprise. Her clothes were very good, being made for her in London. He always noticed things like clothes, the harness of horses and carriages. He danced with her as much as possible, and ignorant of the grotesque anticipation seething in Hetty’s head, he forced on Alice the role which his cousin had designed for herself.
It is from Arthur that I learnt what I know about this period and it must contain a good deal of conjecture and mythology, but I remember him at the age of seventy or more, standing in a Toorak ballroom, in that brief decade when it was my turn to be a young man, and shrugging his contemptuous shoulders at the jazz and the dancing of 1913, while he described to me this very evening at Bishopscourt, at which he had been present.
‘I remember your grandmother then,’ he said. ‘She was like some shimmering fairy, a sylphide, so modest and so graceful and with such a charming dignity. No one would have dared to touch her as that young man over there is grabbing that young woman who appears to be clad in gold plate, which is doubtless necessary for her protection. I hope he hasn’t a tin-opener in his pocket. How diff
erent these young people are from those beautiful girls, with their billowing white skirts which swayed as they danced to real music, not to a negroid din.’
‘Did Cousin Hetty look like a sylphide too?’ I asked, as I knew that Arthur had disliked her.
‘She looked more like one than that young woman in armour,’ said Arthur gruffly.
Even if Hetty looked like a sylphide, she did not feel like one, for a sylphide which had received such a terrible blow would surely want to fade and die, whereas although she was suffering a pain which was almost physical in its intensity, she by no means contemplated defeat. She was one of those who are quite oblivious of their own attractions or lack of them, and who rely more upon will-power than on love to secure the object of their affections. When this hideous evening, which my great-uncle saw in retrospect as full of graceful girls and roses, came to an end, and Hetty in her wreath and her muslin went out to her parents’ carriage, she was less like a sylphide than a nun who is dressed as a bride only to pass to a symbolic death. But, unlike a nun, she had no intention of renouncing anything.
She was tormented by her obsession. The young Langtons and Mayhews met less frequently than when they were school children. How Austin behaved to Hetty at one of these meetings regulated not only her own peace of mind until their next meeting, but that of all her family. If he showed her some cheerful chaffing attention, she was in heaven. If he went out riding as soon as she called with her mother at Bishopscourt, and just nodded a casual goodbye from the door, she was in hell, and when she was in hell she saw to it that the rest of the Mayhews shared her situation. She nursed the instrument of torture which she had created in herself.