In the eyes of the kids, my insistence that we eat together made me a character out of Jane Austen – the movies, not the unread novels. Even more oppressive was my blanket-ban on electronic gadgetry at the table, something Sunday thought should be raised at UNESCO. I had joint custody, so they were at my place every second week. Their mother had ended up with the family home – despite it being my family’s home, the one Mum inherited from Ella – and after the settlement the only thing I could afford in Brunswick was a two-bedroom flat in a 1960s cream-brick block that the real estate agent called a ‘retro apartment complex’. It was light and in reasonable nick, and the neighbours, a Pakistani family below and a Bhutanese one to the side, were friendly. The only problem was that it was one bedroom too small. Then again, the Gajanis were a family of five and their flat was the same size.
I had read the divorced dad’s handbook, or at least spoken to blokes who thought they had written it, and knew that if the kids were to be happy they would need their own rooms. This meant the lounge room had to double as my bedroom. Noah and Sunday drew straws for the master bedroom and Noah won. Then on their second stay, after we had put up shelves and posters to make the rooms their own, he decided the master bedroom had too much natural light and he wanted to swap. The second, smaller bedroom made for a better bunker.
‘Leave me some!’ Sunday demanded, reaching to take the bowl of parmesan from her brother. Sunday had always looked like her mother, but increasingly the comparison was not with the Nat in the fading colour photos of her as a kid in the seventies – posing in bathers by the Clark pool in her back yard, astride her cousin Bobbie’s dragster in the middle of a street in Fawkner – but as she was when I first met her in the eighties: the melted chocolate eyes, the full lips, the brown wavy hair. It’s disconcerting to walk past a kitchen chair in your divorced-dad digs and suddenly see your ex-wife as she was twenty years ago, when she loved you.
‘Two good things,’ I said, referring to a game we used to play around the table when they were younger. Sunday rolled her eyes; Noah had a face full of pasta, shovelling it in to return to his computer. ‘I’ll go first,’ I said. ‘This morning my tram was late but the train was even later, which meant the connection was seamless. I got to work early!’
‘Life in the fast lane,’ quipped Sunday.
‘Hey, it was never meant to be about big things … Anyway, my real highlight was beating Martin, the PE teacher, at table tennis at lunch time. Twenty-one, eighteen.’
‘What happened in the other games?’ Sunday smiled.
‘Two good things, it’s called. Not three disappointing things. What about you?’ She played with the spaghetti, twirling it around her fork.
‘Too easy: Mr Buhagiar was away for double maths and we had this old woman who was like seventy and who basically let us do whatever we wanted. And the second thing …’ She bit a single strand of pasta dangling from her fork. ‘Eden actually treated me like a human being.’
‘In class?’ I asked. ‘Or was this at lunchtime?’
‘Lunchtime? She wouldn’t be seen dead with me out of class!’
Noah was mopping up leftover sauce with some bread. ‘Why would you want to hang out with her? Any more up herself, she’d be inside out.’
‘Nice,’ I said. ‘What about you, your good things?’
‘Does two o’clock this morning count? If it does, I was on an awesome killstreak.’
For once I resisted the bait and said nothing.
‘That’s only one,’ Sunday reminded him.
‘Um … in Chem we got Ms Berger talking about Breaking Bad. She’s an addict.’ Shuffling his chair back from the table, he added, ‘Of the show, not crystal meth!’
By the time Gilbert and Marjorie arrived in London on 15 July 1958, their relationship had undergone its first significant test, one that either revealed or initiated the stresses which would in time become the fissures that ultimately broke them apart. Soon after embarkation, word got out that Australia’s most promising young author was on board. Petty Officer Durham, in charge of Entertainment and Culture, promptly contacted Madigan and suggested he give a lecture, followed a week later by a reading. Initially feigning reluctance, Madigan negotiated a suitable fee and proceeded to play the part of the Famous Author, a role for which he had developed a taste in the twelve months since the publication of The Falling Part.
Speaking on the assigned topic of ‘Literary Life in the late 1950s’, Madigan charmed the largely female audience, making them laugh at jokes about bohemian squalor (‘Our third-class cabin seems spacious compared to our Carlton digs’),* and impressing them with his up-to-the-minute erudition. An early believer in the future scholarly significance of even his most incidental writings, Madigan preserved everything he produced, including the notes for this talk; notes which reveal that his off-the-cuff comments and asides were in fact carefully crafted. With a measure of what was to become his customary bombast, he announced that, ‘With the exception of the ribald liveliness of Kingsley Amis, English literature in England is moribund. The most interesting literary creations now emanate from the United States. We need only think of the desperate urbanity of John Cheever’s stories or the anguished alienation of Saul Bellow, whose Seize the Day I have just finished – a superb rendering of mid-twentieth-century man’s existential condition, his suspension between belief and unbelief, action and inaction. All of which makes me wonder why I’m sailing to London. I don’t suppose we could convince Captain Cole to re-route us to New York!’
For the first forty minutes after the lecture, Marjorie sat in the back stalls of the hall and waited patiently for Madigan to finish servicing those audience members who, for whatever reason – a perceived connection with the author, a desire to have their own opinions heard, the allure of fame, even in its first flickering – felt the need to experience his charm as something focused and personal. One imagines there was, at least initially, some reflected pride for Marjorie in seeing people fawn over the man who had chosen her as his wife. Certainly Madigan warmed to his task. The attention of strangers energised him greatly. In a letter written a month later to his friend Ronald Kemp he confessed, ‘I can’t imagine ever tiring of the affections expressed by those who emerge from the faceless crowd to announce themselves as my readers. What a privilege and thrill it is to meet those who have in some way connected with words and thoughts composed in the desert-island isolation of my den.’ Time and reality would quickly expose this as a blind spot in an otherwise capacious imagination, for less than a year later, affecting the guise of the world-weary writer, he wrote to Patricia Mills, saying, ‘It’s a relief to escape the claustrophobic world that is Australian literature, where every second person wants to bore you with praise and have you explain (or worse still, explain to you) what it was you really meant by having your character wear a cardigan rather than a pullover – surely a symbol of class!’
After half an hour, the number of devotees had dwindled to two – a silver-haired man who mounted a vigorous defence of post-war British literature, placing Iris Murdoch, Graham Greene and William Golding in the front line, and a young blonde woman sporting a Doris Day bob and wearing black capri pants and a white V-necked top that clung alluringly to her breasts. Having heard out the old man, Madigan excused himself from the blonde woman and dashed up the aisle to where Marjorie was waiting. Sensing her restlessness, he acknowledged how boring it must have been and, despite saying he would soon be finished, suggested she go to the cabin and change into her swimsuit; that he’d meet her at the pool in fifteen minutes. Perhaps on some level Marjorie knew this was a test of her trust, for she did not protest. Doing as instructed, she waited at the pool for an hour and a half, at which time a flustered Madigan arrived, claiming to have been bailed up in the gangway by another crushing bore, an ex-military man who wanted to talk to him about the dearth of poetry inspired by World War II.
Marjorie ate her dinner alone in their cabin and did not talk to her husband for the re
st of the evening.
* In fact, their cabin had been upgraded as a condition of his speaking engagement.
Sinclair Hughes, Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, p. 47-48.
CHAPTER THREE
Mrs Henderson’s pre-dawn knock is one of my earliest memories. It was loud and repeated. I heard Gil stumble to the door and open it. Struggling for charm, trying to mask the sleepiness in his voice, he said, ‘Mrs Henderson. To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?’
‘Sorry to bother you, Mr Madigan, but I’ve just had a call from Australia, from Mrs Madigan’s mother.’
We didn’t have the phone on in the cottage. Mrs Henderson had been widowed in the war and ran the village post office. Marj and Gil had given their parents her number in case of emergencies.
‘I’m afraid it’s bad news – Mrs Madigan’s father has passed away.’
Mum had followed Gil into the hallway. The moment he closed the door she released a sound I had never heard before, something animal, a growl that barely left her body and tore at everything vital inside of her. I had seen Mum cry before – their rows often ended with her rushing from the room, wiping her eyes – but I’d never seen her wail and sob like this. Kneeling beside her, Gil rested a hand on her balled back. Seeing me in the doorway, he waved me back to my room.
Later, he made her drink some tea. Once she had retreated to bed, he poked his head into my room and said, ‘Keep an eye on your mother, Mick. I’m just popping down the street.’ When I heard the front door close behind him, I abandoned the farm animals I had been playing with on the floor and snuck in to see her. She was coiled up on the far side of the bed. The blankets juddered with her weeping. Climbing up on Gil’s side, I placed a hand on her shoulder.
‘Leave me alone,’ she snapped, shrugging me away. ‘I should never have left them.’ Her whole body heaved. Another spasm of grief. ‘At least he never knew the truth about you.’
Confused, I whispered, ‘Mum … ?’
She swung round, tugging at the blankets beneath me. Her face was bloated and red, her hair squashed and misshapen.
‘Oh darling,’ she said, her hand reaching for me. ‘Not you. I didn’t mean you. Give your mum a cuddle.’
I nestled into her shoulder, and she patted my hair with her free hand. In comforting me she seemed to comfort herself. Having stopped crying, she told me about my grandfather, whom I had never met; how strong and yet gentle he was, how hard he had worked making bricks. ‘That’s what he did. He spent his life making bricks for other people’s houses so he could make a home for your grandma and me. One day I’ll show you where he worked. When I was your age, he told me the chimneys at the brickworks were fingers reaching for the sky. He meant it to be playful, but I kept thinking there was a giant buried under the ground trying to get out. For years I was frightened of those chimneys.’
Mum wanted to return to Australia for the funeral, but sailing took too long and the price of air travel was well beyond their means, with Gil barely supporting himself penning occasional reviews for The Evening Standard, and Mum waitressing at Williams Tearooms in Stroud.
Hours later, when he finally returned, they argued in the bedroom. ‘You know we can’t afford it. I don’t know why we’re even discussing it.’
‘You could ask your parents.’ Her words were bloated with tears. ‘Or one of your posh friends.’
Reginald Madigan was a prominent Melbourne solicitor, a specialist in contract law. He believed his eldest son was wasting his talents scribbling for peanuts. If Gilbert had followed his advice he would already have been made a junior partner of the firm.
‘No, I can’t. And you know I can’t. Don’t ask me to do things you know I can’t do.’
‘Won’t do. Pride’s the only thing stopping you. They’d be thrilled to help out, and you know it. Mick could go too. Your mother would love that. They have a right to see their grandson.’
‘One man’s pride is another man’s integrity. Not that you could be expected to understand that.’
The tears left Mum’s voice, left it hard and brittle. ‘Of course not, me not being a man!’
‘No, you not knowing what you stand for! You can’t have integrity if you don’t stand for something.’
There was a pause, and I imagined the fight was over. Then, in a calmer, quieter tone, Mum said, ‘I stood by you.’
When I see young men carrying infants strapped to their chests in papooses or pushing kids belted into the latest path-hogging 4×4 pushers, I can barely remember doing it; can’t imagine myself doing it now. Yet at the time, ten years ago, I did it with relish, without thinking. Thought of it merely as a practical solution to the challenge of getting us from one place to the next.
I have come to realise that I’ve suffered from such forgetfulness all along. It’s as if each phase of parenting is so intense and all-consuming, so in your face, that it disallows the kind of distance needed for perspective, each new phase erasing the one that preceded it.
Beyond the routines of feeding and changing, putting them down to sleep, what did I do with the kids when they were babies? Nat suspected I joined them for their naps, but I never did. To do so, I thought, would have been to lose any sense I had of myself outside of my role as their dad.
Still calling myself an artist, I would snatch whatever time I could to draw. Painting was impossible. I would just get the paints squeezed, the brushes ready, and a snuffle or scream would end what had barely begun. I didn’t want to resent the kids, and on some deep, gut level already knew – even if I hadn’t fully acknowledged it to myself, and certainly not to Nat – that my art didn’t really matter, that it wasn’t worth the sacrifice of my children.
So I did allow myself to be with them, to be present with them, but as to what we actually did … I can barely recall. I guess we talked a lot. Or I talked and they gurgled and yelped, and later on they asked questions that I struggled to answer. I know I read them endless stories, about bear hunts and the coming of trains, full of the thrill of rhythm and rhyme and repetition. And, I must confess, I often used to sing to them. Nothing from the old Solo Project days, more like tunes from Porgy and Bess. There’s nothing like a captive audience, one cradled in your own arms. We played and cuddled and imitated each other, and I took every opportunity to walk to the park or the shops, to be out in the world. All of which is why I find it so strange that I struggle now to see myself in the young fathers I encounter around the neighbourhood.
When Noah was about five and Sunday two, I met up with an old friend from school who had become a lecturer in history at Melbourne Uni. Drew’s three children were around the same age as ours. Nat and Deb, Drew’s partner, had stayed at the house to prepare lunch while we took the kids to the park.
They clambered over the play equipment, constantly interrupting our attempts at conversation, demanding we look, help, comfort, offer endless, unwavering attention. Having obeyed Sunday’s command to lift her to the top of the small slide, I yelled ‘Wheee!’ as I let her go, adding to her excitement. Delighted, she hurtled down the dip, only to land on her backside rather than her feet. Shocked, outraged, she sat in the tanbark and bawled.
Before we could stop him, Drew’s six-year-old, Marlowe, propelled himself down the slide and expertly vaulted Sunday. ‘Can’t you see she’s hurt?’ Drew rebuked him. ‘You could’ve kicked her in the head.’
Marlowe ran off to straddle a spring-loaded motorbike, catapulting himself from side to side, bucking about like a cowboy on a bull. I picked Sunday up and cuddled her. Her breath hot and humid, she buried her face in my neck.
‘I’ll go down with you,’ I said, ‘like we used to.’ At first she refused and clung to me while Drew and I tried to mend the torn threads of our conversation. ‘I saw the review in The Age – you must’ve been happy with that?’
A month earlier Drew’s doctoral thesis on the history of Australian conscientious objectors had been published as a book (Conscience) to coinci
de with Anzac Day. ‘Yeah. The one in the ABR was even better – very …’
Sunday was pulling at my hair, whispering in my ear. Then Noah was calling out from the monkey bars, asking me to lift him so he could reach the first rung.
‘Sorry, Drew.’
I spotted for Noah, supporting him as he tried to reach for rungs too far apart for his short, striving arms. Sunday, refusing to let me put her down, clamped herself to one of my legs. When Noah abandoned the monkey bars for the swing, I climbed the slide and took Sunday down on my lap. Then did it again.
‘More?’ she pleaded.
‘One more, and that’s it. Then I’m talking with Drew.’
She demanded another turn. I stood my ground and refused either to give in or comfort her. Drew, meanwhile, was negotiating with Marlowe, over food this time.
‘You have to wait,’ he said, working hard to keep the anger from his voice. ‘We’re going back soon, anyway.’
Perching on the edge of the retaining wall that marked off the playground from the rest of the park, he looked up at me, his brow crinkled in the glare of the sun. ‘I don’t know how you do it! I couldn’t do it. That’s what I tell Deb. I’d go crazy. For me, times like this … If you weren’t here, I’d be counting down the minutes. It’s purgatory. At the end of the day I’d be like, “What have I done?” There’s nothing to show for it.’ He paused, still staring up at me. ‘I’m serious, I couldn’t do it. People like you and Deb are incredible.’ He dropped his gaze to his feet, which were busily mounding tanbark into a heap. ‘And the kids, they never appreciate it, just like we didn’t. All that effort … for what? Where does it go?’
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