Relatively Famous

by Roger Averill

  Back in the station, I bought a ham and cheese roll at the kiosk and ate it sitting on a step. A couple of pigeons arrived to peck at my crumbs. One had a spray of emerald feathers down its throat; the other was more timid, its feathers a mottled brown. I tore off a piece of crust and threw it to the brown bird but the bolder one ripped it away. I tried again, distracting the bully bird by throwing it a smaller crumb, then tossing a larger piece to the brown one. The crumb was too big to be swallowed whole, so by the time the brown bird had pecked at it a couple of times its tormentor had arrived to scare it away. As I tried a third time, my donations attracted a crowd and I found myself suddenly surrounded by pigeons, all looking up at me expectantly. One made to land on my hand as I lifted the roll to my mouth. Standing, I shooed them and sent them scattering. Most fluttered a few feet away and began again to push in around me. The original brown bird flapped and took flight, perching on a girder high up in the station’s roof, its freedom framed by a counterfeit sky.

  I tried to sleep on the way back to Devon, but as the sun sank my anxiety rose. Shutting my eyes only provided my mind with a blank screen on which to project my worst imaginings: the house burning down; Nanna in agony with a broken hip; Mum woken in the middle of the night, distraught, helpless; the police notified; posters printed …

  Awake, distracting myself, I read the headlines of the newspaper belonging to the man opposite me: Punk Shocker! Sex Pistols Sent Packing; Villa Upset Champions, 5–1. Not yet interested in punk, I leant forward and read about the soccer: The league leaders, Liverpool, were taken apart by the speed, skill and determination of the entire Aston Villa side as they attacked from the first whistle.

  As if to spite me, the man folded the paper and slid it into his briefcase. He had mutton-chop sideburns and flakes of dandruff floating like pack ice in the waves of his slicked-back hair.

  I pretended to look out the window, but the darkness outside made the glass a mirror and all I could see was my own close-up reflection. Using the angles, I spied on the other passengers, staring too long at a young woman with long blond hair parted in the middle, the ends of it swept forward so they rested on her breasts. Lifting her eyes from her book, she saw me in the reflection, smiled and returned to her reading.

  Nothing I did could quicken time, which dragged like an extra carriage hitched to the end of the train. It was 6.15 by the time we pulled in to Exeter, and another hour and a quarter before I was in Exmouth. Getting off the bus, I ran, then slowed to a walk as I approached my destination, suddenly fearing how Gil might greet me. I wanted him to have been worried, and in a way I hoped he’d be angry so I could be angry back. I had a shadowy memory of him scolding me for entering his den in the cottage at Edge. Apart from that, I couldn’t recall him ever yelling at me and didn’t trust how I might react if he did. I was determined, though, to stand my ground and not apologise. I rehearsed my lines: ‘She’s your responsibility, not mine. So am I, for that matter. I came here to see you, and all you’ve done is work. Can’t you choose me over work, not even for a fortnight? Or was I always coming to look after your mother?’

  By the time I had turned into Nanna’s street I was primed for the fight, my heart bouncing about, straining at its arterial tethers. The house was in darkness. My heart stilled. Then pulled and pounded even harder. I sprinted, pummelling out worst-case scenarios in my mind: Nanna and Gil were searching for me, driving round Exeter, police in tow; she’d had an accident, they were at the hospital; Gil had died in a car crash coming back from Oxford …

  Stuck to the front door was a note. I grabbed it and took it under the streetlamp to read it. This would explain everything. Unfolding it, I saw the handwriting was mine; the note, the one I had written for Mrs Wainwright.

  My guts plummeted to my bowels. ‘Hello?’ I said, opening the unlocked door, switching on the hall light. ‘Hello? Nanna? Anybody home?’ I strode down the hall, poking my head into every room, turning on the lights. ‘Nanna? Gil?’ Above the sound of my own footsteps, through the whirl and throb of the blood muffling my ears, I could hear voices. A blue light flickered from the sitting room. I ran past the dining room, through the kitchen. Nanna was in the chair where I had left her. The glow from the tellie ghosted her slumped body, her gaping mouth.

  ‘Nanna!’ She hadn’t moved. I fumbled for the light switch. Rushing the chair, I grabbed her arm. This time she jolted awake.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, on a gulp of breath. ‘Gil … I must have nodded off.’

  ‘It’s Michael, Nanna.’

  ‘Oh, yes, Michael … You nearly scared me to death.’

  Relief washed through me, leaving me suddenly drained.

  ‘Where is Gil? Did Mrs Wainwright come?’ Still crouching in front of her, my senses regaining their equilibrium, I could smell something sour, metallic. Nanna didn’t answer. Trying another tack, I asked, ‘Have you eaten?’

  ‘Toast. I had some toast.’

  ‘Let’s go to the kitchen and I’ll cook us some eggs.’ Helping her out of the chair, I was suddenly starving. As she stood I saw the stain on the cushion, a damp map of Australia on the back of her dress. I suggested she have a shower while I cooked her some dinner. She didn’t protest.

  Before scrambling the eggs, I went back into the hallway and fiddled with the answering machine Gil had installed after my scare at the airport. I had never seen one before, not in real life, only on tellie. Still shaken, I pressed the wrong button and the tiny cassette popped out of its casing. Slotting it back in, I found the rewind button, then pressed play.

  ‘Ah … Gil … is that you? It’s Verity Wainwright speaking. Gil?’

  CLICK.

  The tape spooled on. ‘Gil. Sorry about that. I’ve never spoken into one of these contraptions before. I’m terribly sorry, but I can’t visit Lauren today. Mrs Lumley next door has taken ill. I’ve called the doctor, but she’s on her own, so I feel I must stay with her. One day next week, perhaps. Bye.’

  CLICK.

  Someone even more confused than Mrs Wainwright breathed loudly on the tape, said ‘Hmmm’ and hung up.

  CLICK.

  ‘Michael, it’s Gil.’ I could hear people talking in the background. A woman laughing. ‘Why aren’t you answering? Scrabble too engrossing? The problem is, I can’t make it back there tonight. The college has put on a dinner for me and it’d be poor form not to show. Can’t be helped, I’m afraid. You can still leave a message for me on that number I gave you.’ The line was muffled for a moment. ‘You’re a good stick, Mick. I’ll see you in the morning.’

  CLICK.

  He was home by lunchtime the following day. He looked exhausted, like he’d been up all night. When he asked how things had been on the home front, I told him about Mrs Wainwright and her sick neighbour, about Nanna’s accident, the stained cushion. There seemed no point mentioning anything else.

  To be fair to Gil, once his aunt arrived he did take me to London to show me the sights. I also went with him to a book-signing session and was told by everyone how lucky I was to have such a talented father.

  The day before I was to fly home, Gil announced he had a surprise for me. I was hoping for a present, something classy and expensive to show off to my friends, a token of my father’s fame. Instead, he took me to a restaurant where he introduced me to my half-brother, Reuben, who had arrived from New York with his mother that morning. Although he was nine years younger than me, exactly half my age, I had the bizarre sense that he was the older brother. The accent and the expensive clothes were part but not the whole of it. Where I was shy, he was precocious. He asked me about my time in England, about Australia, my interests. He was like an adult. Like, I later realised, our father.

  I’d never really felt I had a father, and now, for the first time, I understood that the little I possessed, I had to share. For years after, it became more of an effort to be responsive to Gil. Whereas once I would respond immediately to his every gesture, now it was more on my terms, which meant we were barely in
contact.

  A few weeks ago, Sunday was at her friend Gabi’s fifteenth birthday party. It was a Friday night and I was at home watching football on the tellie – my team, North Melbourne, versus our northern suburbs rival, Essendon. The arrangement was that I would pick her up when she texted.

  North’s Nathan Grima had just run back with the flight of the ball and marked in the defensive goal square. My mobile pinged.

  Ready now THX.

  North was five points down with sixteen minutes to go; they were surging, Harvey running amok.

  Leaving soon. Love, Dad.

  North hit the front, but only for a moment. The lead changed four times. I hadn’t forgotten about Sunday, but thought ten minutes wouldn’t matter. She would be grateful, right, getting to stay longer? The captain, Swallow, pumped the ball long and Goldstein, our ruckman, fended off a desperate last-minute lunge from Essendon veteran Dustin Fletcher to mark in the forward pocket. The siren sounded. We were three points down: kick the goal after the siren and we win; miss, we lose. Nervous for the big man, I stood up and walked behind the couch, readying to leave. The kick looked good off the boot, the ball tumbling inexorably goalward. Then, inexplicably, it drifted left. Goldstein collapsed to his knees, hid his head in his hands. We had lost. My phone pinged again.

  Where r u???

  I texted as I walked: On my way.

  Gabi lived on the other side of Brunswick, but there was no one on the road so it only took five minutes. I knocked on the door, expecting to have to make small talk with one of her parents. Instead, Sunday herself opened the door and stepped out onto the verandah.

  ‘Where have you been?’

  Ignoring her rudeness to me, I asked if she needed to say goodbye to Gabi, if she wasn’t also being rude to her friend. ‘Already have. Why did you take so long? I texted ages ago.’

  ‘Maybe you should change taxi companies.’

  ‘Maybe you should keep your promises.’

  I told her I didn’t know who she thought she was, but that I was her father and didn’t expect to be talked to like that. I couldn’t imagine ever having spoken that way to Gil. But remembering being trapped in the house with Nanna, I thought it might have been better if I had.

  Sunday sulked and didn’t respond when I asked about the party. Later, back home, when I was setting up the sofa bed, she explained that Gabi had abandoned her with some creep who made a pass at her. She helped me with the sheets and apologised for her rudeness.

  By the mid-1980s, after the long gestation and mixed reception of Middle Kingdom, followed by the universally acknowledged misfire that was Glint, critics raised the prospect that Madigan’s best work was behind him.° To that point in his working life, for over thirty years, he had managed to make a living from writing novels. Of course, he had also written short stories (though surprisingly few)* and occasional essays, and had, in times of financial stress, accepted the long, often liquid lunches and generous honorariums of the academy. The fact remains, though, that when confronted by the Employment window on his tax return, Madigan could most accurately describe his professional status as ‘novelist’ rather than by the vaguer, more common epithets of ‘writer’ or ‘author’. Perhaps it is not surprising then that only two months shy of his fifty-third birthday he was attracted to the idea of making a shift in his career; more a change of lanes, though, than of direction.

  Despite the critical and commercial failure of Patrick White’s A Cheery Soul almost twenty years earlier, the Melbourne Theatre Company (MTC) was keen to revisit the experiment of turning an eminent novelist into a playwright and approached Madigan about commissioning him to write a play. Given his professional purity to that point, such a thought bubble would have been ridiculously speculative if Madigan had not a few years earlier provided the oxygen upon which it floated. In 1981, in the New Statesman, he wrote a pulse-taking piece about the state of British theatre and, by way of justifying his credentials for undertaking such a review, declared himself a ‘theatre addict’.

  There is nothing to compare with the visceral thrill of live theatre, its spit and daring and clamorous applause. If I were not temperamentally fixed as a novelist – a kind of recluse locked away in a den to pick the lint from the crevices of my soul, then periodically released to hawk the words I weave with it – I like to think I would have been a playwright, that most gregarious species of writer, engaged in a collective effort and rewarded for his tolerant cooperation by the nightly wonder of seeing his characters embodied, hearing his ink made breath, whispered and roared into the eager ears of an audience.

  Forearmed with this knowledge, MTC artistic director John Sumner presented his proposal in person, in a London pub in June 1985. At first flush, Madigan was resistant. Sumner, though, had spent a lifetime managing and massaging the egos of actors and intuitively played a masterful hand. Assuring his target that this was a private matter inspired by his own deep affection for the novels and his memory of the New Statesman comment, he made out that he was only sprouting the seed Madigan had himself planted. In later correspondence he wrote, ‘No one else knows or needs know of this possibility, so there is nothing at stake beyond the time it might take you to discover whether or not your unique sensibility can find its dramaturgical voice. With other novelists, ones less deft in the art of dialogue, I would harbour doubts, but with you I can honestly say I have nothing but confidence. In truth, I think all you risk is a level of enjoyment and success that will make returning to the monastic pleasures of novel-writing seem like celibacy after an orgy.’

  ° For example, in ‘The Shelf Life of Novelists’ (The Observer, 3 September 1985), Anthony Einzig argued that while many novelists write their best books in their forties and early fifties, most are effectively written-out by their late fifties. He cited the ‘recent decline’ in Gilbert Madigan’s output as an indication that he, too, might be on the ‘long downhill slope that most post-middle-aged novelists find themselves skiing, merely repeating with less élan the manoeuvres their younger, more supple selves once mastered’.

  * In a radio interview in 1972 he said that a novelist writing a short story was like an organist playing a harpsichord. ‘The two forms are as different as they are similar, and not many master both. Me, I’m an organist. I like the depth and range – all those vaulting pipes.’

  Sinclair Hughes, Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, p. 297-298.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Early on, when I told Nat stories about my childhood encounters with Gil, she would become enraged and declare she wanted nothing to do with him. ‘How can someone who writes so sensitively about characters in a book treat his own son so cruelly? What is wrong with Anglos?’ I loved Nat’s sense of injustice, how she embodied it, her righteous rage giving her olive skin a reddish tint. The way she bit her bottom lip as if to keep the anger in, but would, in the end, always have to stand and walk with it.

  Even so, when she vented about Gil I did with her what I did with everyone. I defended him. I had known the pattern for years, but sadly, in my experience, self-knowledge doesn’t always, or even often, lead to self-improvement. Whenever a friend or stranger was uncritical of my father, I felt compelled to puncture their inflated opinion of him or his work with some sharp anecdote or aside. Yet when someone criticised him, I rushed to cover his flanks with praise.

  ‘When you meet him none of this will matter – you’ll love him,’ I said. ‘Guaranteed.’

  I was right.

  Nat and I had been together for over a year when Gil found himself in Melbourne for a night. Knowing Nat’s parents were Italian, he took us to Florentino at the top end of Bourke Street. It was Sydney all over again; everyone he met feeling better for the encounter.

  He had been trying to track down a book by a Spanish poet I’d never heard of, and on the way to the restaurant ducked in to the Paperback Bookshop, an Aladdin’s cave of a shop crowded floor to ceiling with books. The red-haired woman behind the counter recognis
ed him immediately. He pretended otherwise. ‘I’m after the selected verse of Vicente Huidobro,’ he said, hamming the Spanish accent. The woman smiled, her lips redder than her hair.

  ‘Our poetry section isn’t what it used to be,’ she apologised, squeezing between Gil and a teetering stack of books.

  ‘That’s all right,’ he said as she passed, her back brushing against his shirtfront where his belly now bulged above his belt. ‘I’m not what I used to be either.’

  The book wasn’t there, but Gil bought something else so as not to disappoint her.

  At the restaurant, the frescoes, the food and the fancy wine were all incidental, stage props to the main drama, which was Gil’s determination to win over my new girlfriend. My role, too, was minor. If the evening’s conversation had been scripted, my lines would have fitted onto a single page.

  From what I had told Nat – or the parts of what I’d told her that had formed and then confirmed the picture of Gil she’d developed in her imagination – she had expected him to talk about himself, to drop names and regale us with stories of his own importance. Entertaining, perhaps, but no less self-indulgent for that. Yet once the meal was ordered, Gil deflected my attempts to find out what had brought him to Australia (‘promotions, mainly’) and proceeded to turn his total attention onto Nat. Rendered little more than an audience member, I watched her. Suspicious, cautious at first, gradually relaxing, she opened herself up to his enquiries. While their conversation ranged widely, it always orbited her world. She later told me how impressed she was by Gil’s knowledge of the law, which, of course, he had learned from his father. He only talked about himself and his world when its trajectory intersected with hers, explaining, when asked, how he had based the industrial accident in The Falling Part on a tragedy at a mine in Broken Hill, where a soon-to-be-retired foreman felt responsible for the death of one of his young charges. Gil was fascinated and moved by the story of Nat’s uncle’s death on the Westgate Bridge, her father’s fortuitous escape. ‘The thought that that little book, written all those years ago by some young upstart I no longer know or would even recognise, helped you make sense of your loss … Truly, the thought of that …’ This was the closest I had ever come to seeing Gil cry, his deep green eyes submerged beneath a watery lens. ‘I sometimes wonder if it’s been worth it,’ he said, glancing at me. ‘But that helps. It really does.’