I discovered Marj had been hounded by the same characters.
I had meant to ring her earlier, but by the time I’d dealt with the other calls she had heard the news from a journalist. ‘Don’t let that bother you,’ she said, ‘it’s appropriate. There never was anything private about Gil. He always belonged to something bigger. Some part of me must’ve been attracted to that once. Hard to believe, but there you are.’
I told her about the memorial service and asked if she would go. ‘You go for the two of us, Mick. I’ll plant a poppy for him. I think it’s funny, all the fuss, as if his life was more important than any other.’
In the end, Noah did attend the funeral. He returned earlier than the others, though, and I collected him from the airport. I had learnt not to pepper him with questions, and instead let him release the details in his own time. I didn’t have to wait long. On the drive home, he captured perfectly Peter Kessler’s Oxbridge lisp, giving a full account of his ribald eulogy. ‘It was more like the best man’s speech at a wedding.’ How, I thought, did Noah even know about the speeches made at weddings? Films, I guessed. YouTube.
He had been impressed by the number of celebrities in attendance: Keira Knightley (apparently a massive fan) and Cate Blanchett, which was less surprising given the Sydney Theatre Company was performing The Sons of Others later in the year. ‘And Ian McEwan was there,’ he said. ‘Salman Rushdie, with a bodyguard.’
‘How do you know Ian McEwan?’
Mugging swagger, he said, ‘You’d be surprised.’
‘Sinclair?’
‘Maybe.’
I had begun to think Nat was right, that Sinclair had been good for Noah, lending him some of his confidence. It came as a shock, then, when on the day Nat, Sunday and Sinclair were to return, he asked if he could stay with me full-time. He had been bunkered in his room most of the day, supposedly doing homework, though every so often I would hear a groan or a curse, suggesting he’d taken one for the team. I said it was fine by me, as long as he cleared it with his mother.
The next time I saw him, a few hours later when he was looking for a feed, I asked him why. I suspected Nat and Sinclair were enforcing a stricter homework regime than my ‘it’s up to you’ approach.
‘I don’t like Sinclair’s apartment,’ he said. ‘Too much light. Plus, it seems fairer, if Sunday’s staying with them all the time.’
‘I’m hoping that will change.’
‘Sure, but until it does. Until Munro Street’s finished. It makes sense: you’ll have company, I’ll be in one place, not moving around. And Sinclair will get his study back. Mum won’t mind – I’ll tell her it’s about school.’
He disappeared back into his foxhole, leaving me on the couch: stunned, humbled, fighting back tears.
I had left the dishes after tea and crashed in front of the tellie. A couple of hours later, I forced myself back to the sink. I knew Noah wouldn’t do them, not without me making him. Not wanting to face them in the morning, I switched on the radio and ran the hot water. Above the sound of the filling sink, I heard: ‘I first met Gilbert Madigan way back when I was a teenage communist, in a pub in Carlton, the one near the university. He was with that other Melbourne leftie Stephen Murray-Smith, and, from memory, he had Stephen and the rest of us in stitches. Unlike so many great Australian novelists, Gil Madigan was a real charmer. And we, Gladdies, are about to be charmed, I’m sure, because I have in my hot little hand – actually, both hands, it being such a doorstopper – Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, and, in the studio with me, fresh from the book’s Sydney launch, the author of said tome, Sinclair Hughes.
‘Now, Sinclair, despite hanging out with lefties like Murray-Smith and me, and, it should be remembered, that wonderful depiction of Melbourne working-class life, The Falling Part, Gil Madigan wasn’t really a political writer, was he?’
Sinclair’s reedy voice wasn’t good for radio, which was one pleasing thing. Unfortunately, though, he was ridiculously articulate and managed to reel off a string of funny anecdotes that had his interviewer chuckling. He made a compelling argument for Gil’s literary greatness and recited verbatim the famous passage from In Daniel’s Den where the protagonist admits to himself the extent of his ambition.
Having finished the dishes, I decided on a cup of tea and drank it at the table.
‘Apart from the Nobel Prize,’ Sinclair squeaked, ‘Madigan achieved everything he’d ever dreamed of.’
‘And he was charming.’
‘Yes, and he was charming, though less so towards the end.’
‘Well, the end is rarely charming. So, dear listener, assuming your arms are strong or your block and tackle is in good working order, rush off and buy this brilliant book about perhaps our most brilliant author, the sadly recently departed Gilbert Madigan. As you’ve heard, he was great company, old Gil.’
I had been invited to the Melbourne launch of Sinclair’s book but didn’t attend. I refused to buy a copy, on principle; I told anyone who asked, and many did, that I was waiting for a remaindered one. From the reviews I had seen – one in The Age, the other online in the Guardian – it was being lauded; coming only months after Gil’s death, the timing of it could not have been better. Gilbert Madigan was news again. A teacher at work told me she’d seen my father’s biographer interviewed by Leigh Sales on the ABC’s 7.30 program. I told her I’d search it out, even though I knew I wouldn’t, having not fully adjusted to the new cosmology in which everything worthy or unworthy was granted digital eternal life. Nothing now, except ourselves, being lost to time.
I knew my curiosity would eventually win out and that I would read the book one day, once the hype had died down. Sunday, though, insisted that day be sooner than I’d intended. Not long after Gil’s funeral, she resumed staying with me every second week. We never really talked about the night of the brick-throwing incident, though on a couple of occasions I tried to make light of it. Nat, it turned out, had been surprisingly fine about Noah’s decision, because, I imagine, Sinclair was happy to have his study back, but also because the extensions to Munro Street were months behind schedule and she wanted him settled for the exams.
Technically, it wasn’t my week to have her, but Sunday came late in the morning to have lunch with me on Father’s Day. I had seen Sinclair’s Audi through the window, so I was ready to greet her at the door.
‘Happy Dad Day,’ she said, flapping an arm around me, offering her cheek. I put the kettle on and we sat together at the table. Noah was still asleep.
‘Thanks for coming,’ I said. She pulled a thick rectangular parcel from her shoulder bag. It was wrapped in brown paper. ‘You’re returning my brick?’
‘You could say that.’ She smirked.
Peeling back the wrapping, seeing a black-and-white photo of my father in his pomp on the cover of my ex-wife’s new lover’s book, I understood the source of her amusement. ‘You’ve got to read it,’ she said, ‘he’s your dad. Get over it.’ She draped an arm over my shoulder. ‘I got over mine!’
I kept my promise to her and that night started reading Inside the Lion’s Den. A book that big would usually take me weeks to read, maybe months, pecking away at it a little each night before falling asleep. But against all my prejudices and bitter wishes I found myself gliding effortlessly through Sinclair’s opus, eagerly learning things about a life I knew from close up and far away yet not from the middle distance where most of life is lived. He had some things wrong, of course – an occasional date, a minor location – and I raged against his portrayal of Marj, the lack of space given to the one woman who had loved and supported Gil before he was successful.
After finishing the thing, I delivered a copy to Marj and encouraged her to read it. Listening to my critique, both angry and awed, she declared no interest in lamenting, let alone correcting, her reduced role in Australian literary history. As we talked, I realised what she intuitively knew: that through our withholding we had, together and apart, plante
d our absences in Gil’s Life as posthumous gifts in kind, mirroring his absence in the lives we might have shared.
Sinclair, then, had merely enabled our reciprocity.
The bell to end lunch was due to sound. I was drawing a left-handed portrait of Dame Edna Everage on the whiteboard when someone knocked at the door.
‘What’re you up to?’ Caroline asked, letting herself in. She was wearing black, tight-fitting pants and a plum-coloured shirt; her hair was cut short. She smiled, and I immediately remembered why I had been avoiding her: because these casual encounters were both never enough and way too much – teasing reminders of what I wanted but could not have.
I had a Year Nine class up next and was getting them to do wrong-handed drawings, I explained. ‘I’m trying to free them up, stop them worrying about mistakes. Help them lose their inhibitions. I’m practising. I have to show them how it’s done.’
‘Do me,’ she said, thrusting out her chin, shifting her gaze to the side. I laughed, wishing the double entendre were intended.
‘I’ve been engaged in some research,’ she said.
‘What’s the subject?’
‘You!’
Wiping Edna off the board, I turned and saw a copy of Inside the Lion’s Den clutched to her breast, my father still going places I could only dream of.
‘You don’t approve?’
The bell rang and kids started milling outside the classroom door. Using my left hand, I scribbled some marks on the board: her eyes, crooked but recognisable; her mouth, the lips larger than in life. ‘It’s a portrait,’ I said, pointing to the book. ‘It’s good, but there’s a lot left out.’
‘Like what?’
Gil’s eyes peered at me from between Caroline’s fingers, gleaming, beckoning the world to yield to their vision. The second bell sounded and one of the boys slid open the door. Students jostled in.
Leaning in to make myself heard, my mouth close to her ear, I said I was writing a book of my own. ‘As big as this one?’ She brandished the Life between us. Glancing at it again, the look of confidence on my father’s face emboldened me.
‘Better,’ I said. ‘I’m finally embracing it, Gil’s life. Mine. I’ll give you the draft. Provide cross-references; you can read them in tandem.’
‘I’d like that.’ Her breath prickled my neck.
‘How about dinner?’
‘Yes,’ she said, turning to leave, yelling above the classroom clamour, ‘Definitely. Yes.’
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
To write another person’s life is a massive undertaking, one liable to overtake the living of your own. Indeed, in writing this life of Gilbert Madigan my own life and his have, in profound ways, merged, and not only through our association in print. When I embarked on this project six years ago, I was living as a bachelor in Brisbane and working at the University of Queensland. Now as I complete it, I am living in Melbourne with Gilbert Madigan’s former daughter-in-law, happily step-fathering his Australian grandchildren, while being employed at his alma mater, the University of Melbourne. Never has the phrase ‘labour of love’ been more, or more complexly, applicable than when attached to my writing of this book.
My first and greatest acknowledgement of debt is to my parents, Ian and Maxine Hughes, for the sacrifices they made for the sake of my education, and for instilling in me the belief that I could achieve whatever I set my mind to, no matter what the obstacles.
I wish to thank my former colleagues in the English program in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Queensland, in particular Patricia Herberts and Lawrence Taylor for their steadfast support and careful readings of early drafts of the manuscript. Thanks, too, to my more recently acquired colleagues in the School of Culture and Communication at the University of Melbourne.
To my editor, Alison Hartman, I owe a debt of averted embarrassment, for her spotting of errors of fact and typography. And, it must duly be acknowledged, that any remaining oversights are entirely my own.
A special thanks goes to Annie Edwards, and the last remaining members of the ‘Madigan Circle’, Peter Kessler and Emma Beason, for their willingness to share their memories, photographs (some of which handsomely illustrate the text) and correspondence.
Finally, I must express my deepest gratitude to those without whom this book could never have been written. It is a matter of celebrated record that Gilbert Madigan was not a fan of literary biographies. And while he maintained that position throughout, it is a measure of his generosity of spirit that towards the end of his life he did not block my research and, in keeping with the convoluted kinship patterns of contemporary family life, in fact welcomed me into his home as a de facto son-in-law, the partner of his eldest son’s ex-wife, Natalie Farella.
On that occasion, and others since, his own third wife, Rosalia Madigan, made me warmly welcome and was unstintingly generous with her anecdotes and delicious meals. Gilbert’s youngest son and literary agent, Reuben Madigan, has been similarly helpful and obliging, granting me access to all of his father’s papers and permission to quote from his published works. It is my sincerest hope that this book, combined with Reuben’s exhaustive efforts to keep the novels in print, will successfully reverse the tide of cultural amnesia and restore the name and writings of Gilbert Madigan to the consciousness of all those interested in great literature.
I thank Noah and Sunday Madigan for the open-hearted way they have accepted me into their lives. I feel privileged to be a late addition to their extended family, and I look forward to our shared future.
To their mother,Nat – my advocate,my informant,my confidante, my love – I owe you everything. The book is a bonus. I gave Gilbert Madigan a literary life he never wanted, and in return received the love I always craved.
Sinclair Hughes, Inside the Lion’s Den: The Literary Life of Gilbert Madigan, p. 531-532.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I hadn’t reopened the box since Gil gave it to me, that last time I saw him. On leaving him and Rosalia I went to a post office on the high street and sealed it with sticky tape, to protect its contents for the trip to the Highlands, the long flight home.
As if containing a funeral urn, the box had stood sentinel beside the heater in my flat, its imaginary ashes waiting to be scattered. Its lid remained taped because the last thing Gil had said to me was that he hoped I would find more in it than I remembered, and, despite having glanced in it at the time and seen nothing but bundles of old letters, those final words had created expectations in me that I did not want destroyed. Perhaps, I thought, he had always intended to give me the box as a parting gift, and in preparation had buried some letter of his own under my missives: a last testament, a lament, an apology. To open the box was to rob the future of that possibility, myself of the fantasy.
I did it now, only because I was compelled to satisfy a simpler curiosity.
I had finished the mowing and was receiving instruction from Marj on how to prune her fruit trees, the arthritis in her hands now making secateuring painful. Offering payment in her usual currency of hot tea and carrot cake, she insisted I take a break. Sitting under the wisteria, its twisted branches and flying tendrils naked now for winter, she asked what I had been up to and I told her of my intention to write a book about Gil and me.
‘Whatever for?’ She picked a crumb of carrot cake off her bosom. ‘What’s left to say?’
‘Aside from you and me existing!’ More seriously, I suggested that I want to give a sense of his life by making sense of my own.
Her eyebrows arched into her wrinkled brow, her eyes like pebbles in a pond. She still hadn’t read the biography. She had looked at the photos; that was enough, she said. I told her that apart from its minimising of her, my main criticism was the lazy way Hughes explained all of Gil’s moves and mistresses in terms of a lack of commitment. ‘What does that even mean?’
Mum was staring at the pear tree. I suspected she hadn’t been listening and was mentally selecting twigs for me to trim
. ‘He was a one-man religion, your father. He needed worshippers, not soulmates. And I proved to be neither.’
Turning towards me, she shrugged her shoulders and I glimpsed the girl she must once have been. Still was, beneath the weight of time. I poured more tea into our cups.
Taking a sip, she said, ‘Gil wasn’t running from commitment, he was running towards it, always into the arms of another convert, some other lover. Same with his work. That some people liked his books was never enough. What drove Gil, the Gil I knew, was his need for everyone to love his books. One remaining heretic, and all the true believers might as well never have existed. For him, it was always about the next conquest. The converted didn’t need him – they could look after themselves.’
Later, as I gathered up the lopped limbs and fallen twigs, the echo of Marj’s comments reminded me of something Gil had said in a letter written soon after his return to England in 1984. Responding to the news that my final art school portfolio had received excellent grades and extravagant praise, he said that I should never fear criticism; that it was affirmation I needed to be wary of. An insidious drug, he called it, the first hit increasing confidence, every dose thereafter eating it away. I didn’t realise it at the time, but he was telling me something true and central to his life. I re-read the letter years later and by then had experienced enough of the art world to relate to his claim that each compliment only dug the well of neediness deeper.
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