Relatively Famous

by Roger Averill

  I had heard of Sinclair Hughes before, years ago. Seeing Gil for the first time in ages, I had mentioned that he looked exhausted. ‘Is it any wonder?’ he said, hunching his shoulders, clowning oppression. ‘Can’t you see them on my back? I’m carrying a whole bloody academy! Countless careers rest on these shoulders, Michael. I met another yesterday, a Dr Sinclair Hughes, interviewing me at the festival. His onstage introduction was a five-minute soliloquy advertising his new book, Transcending the Antipodes: Cosmopolitanism and the Novels of Gilbert Madigan. I was, I think, meant to feel honoured. Flattered, at the very least.’

  Gil’s hair had receded like a tide, leaving the lines on his brow looking like water marks, ridges in sand. As he’d aged, Gil had inverted Patrick White’s metamorphosis from misanthrope to patrician charmer; curmudgeon for a cause. Having spread his charm so generously for so long, by the time he approached his eighties Gil’s reserves of goodwill were down to small change and pocket lint.

  Hughes’s initial email to me didn’t mention a biography as such, but referred more vaguely to him ‘developing a reading of Madigan’s work informed by a nuanced understanding of its synergies with his life’. Really, he said, all professional considerations aside, he was just a huge fan of the work and wanted to meet me to hear what it was like to be Gilbert Madigan’s son.

  I warned him that I knew little and could talk about even less, because I had long ago promised Gil not to discuss his life with journalists, academics, and especially not biographers. If, however, he wanted to meet and talk with me about the weather and football, then I could see no harm in it. I suggested he join me for a coffee at a local cafe, Ray’s, the one in Victoria Street covered in graffiti, not far from Sydney Road. An equal mix of flattery and curiosity, a desire to see for myself one of those creatures riding on my father’s back, led me to make the offer – one which would alter the very orbit of my life.

  Hughes’s enthusiasm for the cafe – ‘highly rated on Beanhunter’, his email informed me – acted as a warning. I like coffee, and if forced to choose one beverage and forsake all others, it would, I think, be my drink of choice, challenged only by single malt whisky. My faith in coffee is old and home-brewed, though, so I am not a convert to the caffeine revival that has Melbourne in its grip – adherents of all ages, but especially the young, clutching takeaway cups to their breasts, raising them to their lips much as medieval monks once grasped and kissed their crosses. So when I nominated Ray’s as the location for our rendezvous, it was not out of some denominational loyalty or doctrinaire belief in a particular brew or bean, but merely because it was the only place I could remember.

  ‘By way of a calling card’, Hughes had sent me a review of Transcending the Antipodes, along with a photo of himself looking scholarly-chic: closely-cropped, grey-speckled hair, matching stubble, rimless glasses, wry smile, furrowed brow. I got to the cafe early, positioning myself at a table opposite the counter, thus allowing me to see anyone entering. Despite this, Hughes spotted me first. He was on his phone and lifted a finger, an eyebrow, to signal recognition. I wondered how he knew what I looked like. The only images of me on the net were ancient publicity shots for The Solo Project.

  Men of my generation are awkward about greeting each other. Having more or less abandoned the formality of our fathers’ handshakes, we are now left, not with the hugs we used to exchange in the early eighties to demonstrate how secure we were in our masculinity, but a shadow-shake, a ritual pause; a kind of agnostic’s prayer. I began to stand as Hughes approached. He slipped the phone into an outside pocket of his leather satchel and, with his other hand, reached for what I thought was the back of the chair. In fact he was proffering his hand. Caught midway between sitting and standing, I shook it awkwardly from a crouched position, as if bowing as well as shaking, like a caricature of a Euro-Asian cross-cultural exchange. Looping the strap of his bag over the back of the chair, he sat down, looked me directly in the eye, and smiled. ‘Thanks for taking the time. It’s wonderful to meet you.’

  Even though it was me who had what he needed – information about my father – there was never any doubt who was in control. Straight away I could tell he had the kind of confidence I had always lacked, a clarity born not of reflection but a lack of it.

  ‘Perhaps I should tell you a little about myself,’ he said, and proceeded to provide a verbal curriculum vitae, replete with anecdotal annotations and references from older academics, none of whom I had heard of. ‘Charles Rickman at Brandeis declared Antipodes the best critical study of your father’s work yet written. I mean, coming from him that was really something. As you’d know, Rickman’s not prone to hyperbole.’

  I had met people like Sinclair Hughes before, most of them academics, but also musicians, artists: people whose passion for their own world convinces them that it is the world, the one the rest of us inhabit.

  ‘I assume you’ve read his book from the eighties, Gilbert Madigan?’ His face momentarily dropped when I confessed I hadn’t. ‘Well, you must. It’s brilliant. It was the first. Always will be. And those of us who follow must pay homage.’

  I didn’t tell him that it took me until I was twenty-five to read all of my father’s early books. Like Nat, I’d had to study The Falling Part in Year Twelve. The trauma of it had put me off reading the rest of Gil’s books for years. When I’d first heard it was on the syllabus I thought it would be fun, a lark. It didn’t take long for the torment to begin.

  My English teacher, Miss Hamilton, was young and handled the situation appallingly. Her first mistake was to assume that my parents were still together. She actually asked me if my father would come to the school and address the Year Twelve cohort. Had she not heard the gossip, not read a single profile piece on the author of the book she was teaching?

  Once my classmates twigged to the connection, their hassling was relentless. They all thought I could get them the inside running on the book. How could the examiners argue with the author’s son? Then, when I had no secrets to share, despite having succumbed to the pressure and written to Gil for tips – ‘it’s about how the dignity of work doesn’t militate against the wasting of lives’ – I was accused of keeping the best stuff for myself.

  I knew the main character, Harry Balfour, was modelled on my mother’s father; that his wife, Eleanor, was really Grandma – but how did that help when neither Mum nor Grandma would talk about it? ‘That book took years off your grandfather’s life,’ was all Grandma said.

  In the end, I avoided it in the exam and wrote on Nineteen Eighty-Four.

  A young waitress with short black hair and red painted lips placed our second round of coffees on the table. Her shirt had a low, looping neckline that exposed a Disneyfied red robin tattooed on her bolstered breast. The bird quivered as she spoke, its open beak seeming to move as if releasing the musical notes that trailed towards her throat. She saw me looking and smiled. I imagined the line Gil would have used, but said nothing. Hughes, fiddling with his phone, didn’t notice her.

  Trying to keep it casual, he asked, ‘So, what can you tell me?’ Tilting his head at the mobile lying on the table, he added, ‘You don’t mind, do you? If I record it?’

  ‘Not at all,’ I said, ‘but it’ll be a John Cage number.’ He smiled in a way that made me think he didn’t get the reference. I paused to help him make the connection. ‘The fact that I’m honouring my pledge not to talk to people like you probably tells you as much as you need to know. More than I can say.’ I’d pre-planned this and slurped my coffee for effect, enjoying my moment in the conversational driver’s seat. ‘Gilbert Madigan was an absent father to a loyal son. That statement isn’t all about me. There’s a difference between hurt and disappointment. My father never tried to hurt me.’

  Hughes nodded. ‘Some people get to eat their cake, keep it, and donate the crumbs to charity.’

  ‘Something like that,’ I said, scraping the residue of froth from the side of the cup and licking it off the spoon. ‘Have you spoke
n to him?’ I asked, confident of the answer.

  He told me about the on-stage interview at the writers’ festival and how he’d recently written to Gil about his new project. ‘He hasn’t responded yet, but it’s early days.’

  Once he realised I had said all I was going to, he began talking about a paper he was giving at an upcoming conference in Stockholm. ‘At the same place Gil was writer-in-residence in 1972. They host a Madigan conference every five years. Pretty cool, hey?’

  Pretending to notice the time on my watch, I made out I had to leave.

  ‘Good luck with it all,’ I said, standing. ‘And if by some miracle Gil gives you the green light and is happy for me to say more, let me know. I wouldn’t get my hopes up, though. You’ve read that piece in The New Yorker, right?’

  Hughes pulled his wallet from his pocket. ‘This one’s on the leeches!’

  Out on the pavement, we were about to shake hands again when he asked, ‘How’d you get here?’ When I told him I had walked, he insisted on giving me a lift. ‘My car’s just there,’ he said, pointing to a lime green Honda parked on the other side of the road. ‘You’re west of here, yeah? It’s on my way back to town.’

  I again suspected he had been researching me and somehow already knew where I lived; had probably viewed the house on Google Maps, zoomed in on the vegie patch, plonked the little yellow snoop right out front to view it from the virtual street.

  Driving along Dawson Street, approaching the brickworks, the chimneys now phallic monuments to a once potent past, the old foundry converted into dollhouse apartments, he said, ‘So this is where it all began, eh? Your parents’ romance, your grandfather’s work, The Falling Part.’

  Refusing to be drawn in, I nodded and showed him where to turn. ‘I guess so. Though it’s pretty well documented that my folks met at Melbourne Uni.’

  ‘Here’s fine,’ I said, a few doors shy of the house, encouraging him to double park.

  Crossing from the other side of the street, Nat appeared as I was opening the car door. Her hair was in a ponytail, the way I liked it, her face framed by long tendrils of curls that had wriggled free.

  ‘Hi,’ she said, resting her arm along the top of the opened door, leaning to look in.

  ‘You’re home early.’

  I motioned to stand but she didn’t move.

  ‘Who’s your friend?’ she asked, looking past me.

  ‘Sinclair Hughes,’ he said, thrusting his hand at her. ‘I’m a big fan of Mick’s father’s work.’

  ‘Me too!’ She beamed. ‘Nat Farella, Mick’s partner. And there,’ she said, pointing over her shoulder, ‘is the Balfour house. The humble abode of Harry and Eleanor … and us!’

  I made crazy eyes at her, but she ignored them.

  ‘Would you like to come in and take a look?’

  ‘Maybe another time,’ I said, pushing her back with the door as I stepped from the car. ‘I have to collect the kids from Maxine’s.’

  Nat dodged round me to lean further in. ‘Let me show it to you, then.’

  As Hughes parked the car, I told her he was a biografiend, that I didn’t want him in the house.

  ‘Too late now,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry. You should’ve told me. I thought he was your friend.’

  As I drove away, I saw Nat ushering him through the gate; Hughes smiling, taking everything in.

  Since Orwell’s injunction against clichés, most writers have tried to avoid them in their work, if not their lives. Madigan’s response to his first writing dry spell was to wet it with alcohol, a move lifted straight from the Dylan Thomas handbook.

  In later years, Madigan referred to the early 1970s as his Oliver Reed period. In truth, his enjoyment of a drink was amateurish compared to the dedicated professionalism with which both Reed and Thomas approached that pleasure. The Reed comparison was a flippant, self-deprecating reference to an incident in 1973 when, much like the actor – who in the ’70s and ’80s garnered a reputation for appearing on TV chat shows in various states of inebriation – Madigan gave a less than sober radio interview.

  Seemingly unable to perform the primary task of a writer, Madigan reassured himself that he remained one by engaging heavily in all the secondary roles an author can play: festival guest, writer-in-residence, literary commentator, interviewee. Desperate to return his charge to the desk, his agent, Harold Beason, was by 1973 refusing to book him media engagements.

  However, that didn’t prevent Madigan from arranging his own. In early March of that year, attending yet another party in Hampstead, he found himself chatting to Quinten Morley, a BBC Radio 4 producer. By the end of their conversation Morely had teed Madigan up for an interview on Radio 4’s new arts and science program, Kaleidoscope. What Morley had failed to disclose was that the interview would be conducted by the irascible conservative broadcaster Kenneth Robinson, whose politics, religion and aggressive on-air demeanour Madigan detested.The late hour at which the program was broadcast also contributed to the fiasco. By the time it went to air at 10.30 p.m., its guest had spent an enjoyable two-and-a-half hours fortifying himself in the Crown & Sceptre, where he had befriended two young Australian travellers, Jean Matthews and Jonathon Lombard.

  Twenty years later, in her post-Orwellian travel memoir, Out and About in Paris and London, Matthews recalled the encounter:

  Sitting at the bar of some pub near Holland Park, I’d been facing one way talking with Jon, when suddenly I tuned in to the strange, orotund voice of an Australian male speaking charmingly to the barmaid. Ordering another round of pints, I took the chance to check out the man. I immediately recognised him from the flyleaf of The Raven’s I, a battered copy of which lay in the backpack at my feet. On hearing me order, Gilbert Madigan noted my accent and started up a conversation. He was drinking Irish whiskey and seemed halfway to County Clare. When I introduced Jonathon to him as my boyfriend, his face suddenly saddened. It brightened again, though, as we talked of Paris. Surprisingly, one of Australia’s most famous novelists seemed genuinely interested in us and our travels.

  One hour and three whiskies later, he announced he had to go to Broadcasting House, to be interviewed on the Beeb. He swayed a little as he stood to leave. I asked if he thought he was up to it. He waved my concerns away. It was Jonathon who offered for us to accompany him.

  It would be wrong to say we had to support him as he walked, but correct to suggest he might not have made it to Portland Place without our guidance. Standing in front of the curved facade, under the statue of Ariel and Prospero, Madigan slapped his cheeks a couple of times, then combed his fingers through his greasy hair. Thanking us for our troubles, he shook Jon’s hand and kissed me on the cheek. Declaiming, ‘Our revels now are ended,’ he turned and entered the building.

  Once inside, the producer gave Madigan a strong coffee and tried to assess if he was fit to go on air. Deciding he was, he wished him luck as he ushered him through the soundproof door.

  At first the interview went well. Robinson was less snide than usual, and the alcohol seemed to have smoothed Madigan’s edges. Then Robinson quoted some ancient negative remark Kingsley Amis had made about In Daniel’s Den. Suddenly sounding like a sailor on shore leave, Madigan slurred, ‘You know what, Kenneth? I don’t give a shit what Kingsley Aimless shaid!’

  Sinclair Hughes, Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, p. 162-163.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  I see more of Mum in spring than any other time of year. I try to see her once a month, but in spring it is more like every second week. There’s not a lot of grass on her block, but the dual risks of fire and snakes mean that what little there is needs to be kept short. She used to mow it herself until one day a couple of years ago she had a dizzy spell pushing the mower in the heat. She blacked out, she thinks, and afterwards realised how dangerous the situation might have been. Ever since, she’s accepted my offer to do the mowing for her.

  Noah rarely makes the journey, using homework as an excuse so he c
an dig himself deeper into his foxhole while I’m away. Sunday, though, has always had a special connection with Marj, and more often than not she goes with me. Generally we travel in silence, me keeping company with my own thoughts, she with music through earbuds and with her friends on Facebook. I’m not allowed to listen to my CDs because they’re too loud and interfere with her personal soundtrack. Sometimes, though, when I’m too tired and need the noise to keep me concentrating or too belligerent to be accommodating, or on those even rarer occasions when our moods align and allow us the freedom and friendliness we used to share, I play my music regardless. When that happens and it’s good, she calls me DJ Daggy Dad and admits she quite likes Wish You Were Here or Bowie’s Heroes – all the pompous pop I pretended to hate when I was her age and into punk. When it happens against her will, she folds her legs and puts her heels on the edge of the seat. Resting her phone against her thighs, she stares even more intently at the screen, blocking me out, my music, the whole passing world beyond the windows.

  Mum must have been in the garden when we arrived and heard the tyres on the gravel driveway. As we approached, Sunday spooled her earbuds’ lead around the phone, jamming both into her pocket. Before I had even switched off the engine, she’d rushed out to greet her grandmother. Sitting, watching them through the windshield, I liked that they could do for each other what I can no longer do for either of them – give physical expression to their love. I’m glad for them; sad for me.