The Point

by Marion Halligan

  Flora has become restless. Elinor takes this as a sign that she wants to get on with her work. She stands up to go. Are you working on anything in particular, she asks.

  The usual. And a dinner for the Slow Food Movement. That’s what’s on my mind.

  You mean the anti fast food people?

  Anti fast life, really. Anti bad food, in fact. For real values. Food as a symbol, an emblem. Though perfectly real, too.

  What are you thinking of doing?

  Well, it’s not easy here. In Italy they go back to traditional produce, like purple asparagus and black celery, or particular long-tailed sheep, or endangered cheeses. Here, we don’t have much in the way of old wonderful habits, we never had them to lose.

  Mutton, tea and damper, says Elinor. White flour, white sugar. Overcoming the tyranny of distance to transport the staples of existence to the depths of the country.

  Nothing local, everything industrial, says Flora. Yes, not a tradition to perpetuate.

  Come to think of it, isn’t Slow Food quite a political movement?

  Mm. It does a lot of lobbying in Europe. All that ‘virtuous globalisation’ stuff. It started with good food, and from there to look after domestic plants and animals that are in danger of becoming extinct, and ways of life that could die out. All sorts of artisanal things. About quality of life for producers and eaters. Good jobs well done sort of thing. Do you know – Flora becomes animated, her eyes shine – do you know, the European Union tried to enforce these terrible rigid hygiene standards on all its members, based on the regulations invented by NASA to keep astronauts from getting sick in space! How normal can you get!

  Hardly more abnormal, I would have thought.

  Would have been impossible for small farmers, all the paperwork, the reporting, the new equipment, it would simply have forced them out of business. They got up a petition, and eventually won exemption for thousands of artisan food makers.

  Wish we could do that here. Cheese from non-pasteurised milk, for example.

  We’re working on it. Anyway, the thing is, in Europe all these small local growers who were dying out, people didn’t want to know about them, are suddenly hugely successful internationally. A while ago they could hardly make a living. Now everything they do is snapped up. Money no object. People are getting hooked on flavour. They don’t care about high yields or cheap produce, they want things that are real and good.

  The search for authenticity, says Elinor. If you don’t have your own, import someone else’s.

  Exactly. That’s a version of virtuous globalisation.

  I’m glad to hear there’s something virtuous about it.

  And when you look at things like mad cow disease, says Flora, it’s time we gave a bit of thought to agricultural policies in general. Post-war in Europe people cared about quantity, they knew a good lot at first hand about hunger. They wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. Now we need to think of quality.

  Flora is pacing up and down, waving her arms, her voice urgent. Elinor is admiring her passion and excitement. Jam today, she says, but Flora doesn’t hear.

  Of course the irony is that a lot of these amazing things that are now delicate and rare and prized for the exquisite pleasure they give us and nobody cares a damn about the cost, were originally simply peasant foods, part of that peasant habit of making use of everything the slightest bit edible, from the weeds in the fields to the intestines of your animals. Age-old intelligent necessitous use of the environment.

  And here we are in a country that’s never had a peasanthood, says Elinor. What are you going to do?

  Excellent question, says Flora. Don’t think I’m not agonising over it. As she speaks it is clear she is getting deep pleasure from this agonising. The thing is, Slow Food in this country has to be about inventing ourselves. It has to be about imagining traditions for ourselves – and be sure I know just how ambiguous and contradictory that statement is. We have to imagine traditions, not to fit our history –

  The billy tea, mutton and damper –

  Exactly. Not our history but the way we live now, the particular society we are making, this society that can take in a whole lot of diverse ethnicities and yet still be a society, singular and yet including all its pluralities. And I know you’re going to say that our sad little Prime Minister is doing his best to wipe out pluralities, but I don’t think it’s going to succeed.

  We’re still going to value our stir-fries and our pastas and go to Thai restaurants with endlessly punning names …

  Thai-me-kangaroo-down-sport …

  I like the simple ones. Thaiphoon. Thaitanic. Thai-dye.

  That’s kind of emblematic, says Flora, and entirely appropriate that it should be. The food I mean. It seems to me an outward and visible sign of a quite deep and imaginative plurality, that we can embrace if we want to but certainly accept.

  I’m less sanguine than you, says Elinor. I fear this government is really trying to get rid of diversity. The way its forebears tried to breed out the black, mixing half castes with whites until aboriginality disappeared.

  It can never happen, says Flora. I’m a new migrant, trust me, I can see these things.

  Yeah? Well, that’s cheering, I suppose. So, what are you going to cook?

  Tripe. That’s as far as I’ve got. I’m going to do goose-necks stuffed with tripey things with a hint of the kind of flavours you get in yum cha, a bit star-anisey, I dunno, I haven’t got far even with that yet. And there’s at least another four courses.

  Witchetty grubs, says Elinor. You’ve got to have something indigenous. Tell you what, I could let you have the possums in my roof.

  Flora looks at her.

  I know, I know. They’re protected. And who could eat such cute little anthropomorphically pretty pointy-faced creatures. I just wish they weren’t in my roof. I’m the one who needs protecting. They sound as big as wombats, very fatty and heavy. I’m sure they wouldn’t be at all nice to eat.

  You can buy them frozen at the Fyshwick markets. Whole. They look like cats. The corpses of cats in the freezer cabinet.

  Yeah? From Tasmania, I suppose. They’re allowed to kill them. Kindly.

  Well, of course I’m thinking of indigenous foods, says Flora. I don’t just want to do a colonial appropriation, though. Possum roasted like lamb, sort of thing.

  You’re making it hard.

  Tell me about it. Flora looks panic-stricken. She crams the coffee cups together with a trembling rattle. Of course there’s Anabel’s vegetables, she says.

  Fish, says Elinor. You know there were great yabbies in the Commonwealth Park ponds till somebody decided to kill off the green algae.

  Carp, says Flora. I could talk to the local Chinese about the way they make the frightful things edible. I’ve heard the Chinese Embassy compound subsists on the carp its people catch in the lake.

  Find out how they get rid of the mud taste, isn’t that the problem? I know a recipe for golden carp. Cut it into three, feed one piece to the wife, who will give birth to two golden boys, one to the horse, which will bear two golden foals, and bury one in the ground, where two golden lilies will sprout.

  Sounds like rather longer term results than I want from my food, says Flora. If women start having twins, I’ll be getting sued.

  Elinor laughs. The carp in question gave instructions for its own fate. Remarkably generous of it, I thought.

  I’ve been wondering about feral pig. There’s somebody round here who shoots them and makes a kind of prosciutto from the legs – kind of wild boar, wildish. Delicious, I believe. Thing is, it’s illegal. He can export them to Germany, but he’s not supposed to sell them here.

  You’ll work it out. Elinor kisses her, once on each cheek, squeezes her shoulders. It will be brilliant. No works of art are ever easy. Can anyone come?

  I think you’ve got to be a member of the Slow Food Movement.

  Maybe I should join.

  It’s quite your sort of thing.

  When
Elinor comes out of The Point she doesn’t get in her car straightaway. She walks along the edge of the lake. Here there’s no parapet, the pavement simply turns a right angle and becomes the wall that gives shape to this man-made body of water. She is meaning to think about happiness but in fact is contemplating the idea of a man-made lake in a man-made city. She expects to like best places that are haphazard, that just grow, though of course people make their marks, Haussmann in Paris, Christopher Wren, who was it, Hoddle? in Melbourne. But not like building a whole city from scratch. What choices, what responsibilities. Were there ever doubts? Public fights aplenty, but deep misgivings, remorse even? It’s worked remarkably well; she’s not looking at any vistas but at the greenish slopping water with vegetation rolling round in it, she’s not even looking where she’s going since she’s following the edge of the paving, but she’s thinking of the city she lives in, in her mind as well as her body, it’s satisfactory; Paris she loves and even more Séverac but she doesn’t want to stay in them for always, they aren’t home the way this place is, that a surprise too since she grew up by the sea and never imagined leaving it for long. And so then maybe she is thinking about happiness, of certain piercing moments, of standing on top of the castle in Séverac and looking over the valley so anciently preserved in the greenish gold amber of its palpable dense light, of her own hill she can see from her kitchen window in Reid, that turns bright pink in certain late afternoons. She almost bumps into Gwyneth, who’s half sitting on a bollard.

  Hullo, she says, how are you? She says this because it’s the way she always greets people and not until too late does it occur to her that it might not be the right thing in these circumstances. That you speak thus to people you know are quite well or at least won’t burden you with wearisome accounts of how they aren’t.

  Okay, I suppose.

  Elinor looks at her. She does look peaky, and not very healthy, not sick and probably quite strong but so thin, the bones in her cheeks casting blue shadows on the hollows beneath, and her eyes so deeply set and dark smudged that her head shows too clearly the skull beneath the skin. Elinor likes to think of herself as good at talking to people but she can’t think of anything to say to this girl that won’t lead into dangerous territory, or anyway places she doesn’t want to go. She’d like just to walk away, but that doesn’t seem possible, not without some pleasantries.

  She takes a deep breath. It’s a gorgeous day, don’t you think? Smells of spring.

  Gwyneth sniffs. I suppose.

  No Anabel windsurfing today.

  Gwyneth looks around, as though Anabel might be there and Elinor failing to see her.

  It would be fun, windsurfing, I reckon. Elinor ploughs on. But just another of those things I’ve left it too late to do. Of course, not for – But she can’t say, not for you, since windsurfing is an expensive hobby, not for the likes of Gwyneth, however young she is.

  Elinor’s usual rule is to get people talking about themselves. But she’s afraid of Gwyneth’s story. She doesn’t want to spend time on it.

  Well, I suppose I’d better be getting on. She wonders about giving the girl some money. A twenty-dollar bill? Or two? Maybe fifty? She tries to envisage what she has in her purse. The girl isn’t a beggar, she hasn’t seen her beg. Elinor cannot imagine her life. But money would have to be useful. But what words to say with it?

  You said, says Gwyneth, you said … that I could come and have lunch, and Clovis, only he doesn’t want to, but I do.

  Oh, yes, of course. Elinor seizes the nettle, that’s how she puts it to herself. Well, what about now? We could go up to the art gallery. Elinor usually lunches in the members’ lounge but if they go to the public restaurant they aren’t likely to meet anybody she knows.

  Oh. I thought you meant your place.

  No good today. Nothing to eat. I have to go shopping. The cupboard is bare.

  Oh.

  Well, shall we do this?

  They walk back along the lake, to pick up Elinor’s car, it isn’t far to the gallery but she doesn’t want to waste any more time. She thinks of Flora maliciously laughing. For some reason Flora does not approve of her trying to get to know Clovis. She’d enjoy her getting stuck with Gwyneth instead. She has no interest in the girl; Clovis is intriguing. But then she thinks of Blanche and Isabel; if they were homeless she would like some kind woman to pay attention to them. On the other hand, Elinor feels she has done her time with teenage girls and young women. If only it were a matter of sending her to find a pumpkin and some rats, and waving a wand and declaring, You shall go to the ball, my dear. It occurs to her that’s what Clovis did on the night of Flora’s feast. Fairy godfathers aren’t part of the usual vocabulary, but that only makes him more intriguing. Dead mothers, stepmothers, godmothers: it’s the mothers that make the narrative. Whereas the men, the kings, the fathers do so mainly out of botching everything up. Marrying wicked women, failing to see what’s going on under their noses, generally being stupid.

  They don’t say much on the way to the gallery or queuing up to get the food. Slow Food, thinks Elinor, who’d intended to go home and make a sandwich out of some rare roast lamb and pepper and thinly sliced red onion, and read the Iris Murdoch novel she is longing to get back to. Sitting at the table she makes the best of it. Words are her thing, after all, and she is especially keen on names.

  Gwyneth, she says. Such a pretty name. And unusual these days.

  Gwyneth glares at her and a dense red flush moves up her face, turning its blue hollows purple.

  Elinor thinks, what now? She says, Gwynnie’s pretty too. I’m sure there’s a Gwynnie somewhere in literature. Gwynnie Gwynnie Gwynnie … is it Under Milk Wood? The brain isn’t what it used to be. That would make it Welsh, wouldn’t it. Do you have Welsh connections? She frowns, trying to catch hold of the Dylan Thomas, she’s practically sure it is, she can hear the rhythms but the whole thing eludes her.

  Gwyneth is still red, still not speaking. Elinor tries again. I don’t think I know your surname. Is that Welsh too?

  No. The girl shakes her head, hard, the particoloured hair swinging. No.

  Surnames have all sorts of odd things happening in them. Take mine – of course, I do have several, as people do. Women, I mean.

  No. Gwyneth stands up. Elinor has picked up a handful of white paper napkins from the counter. Gwyneth’s trembling fingers open them, spread them out on the table, she puts quiche in one, salad in another, bread and butter in a third. Hastily she wraps them up and bundles them in her hands, the salad squishing through the flimsy paper.

  I better go, she says, thanks for … She turns, putting her head down and hurrying away.

  Elinor doesn’t follow. She doesn’t eat her lunch either. She sits and looks at it. She remembers the rhyme, some of it, it is from Under Milk Wood. But it’s not Gwynnie, it’s Gwennie, rhymes with penny. Something about boys giving her a penny so they can kiss her. She can hear the cadences in her head, though not quite the actual words, the high thin voices of children chanting in the music of Thomas’s prose, or verse it is here really.

  Kiss Gwennie where she says

  Or give her a penny

  Go on, Gwennie

  She looks it up when she gets home. So, the verse is in a slightly sinister way about giving Gwennie a penny if you don’t kiss her where she says. It doesn’t make her any more comfortable about Gwyneth.

  33

  Jerome

  I think I mentioned that I got into computers by way of Latin and bookkeeping. I say I think because not going back and rereading means that I may have intended to do a thing but not realise that I haven’t actually done it. Two very precise and elegant languages with severe rules and strict. Their grammar and syntax not supposed to be violated without destroying them. Unlike this English that I write, accurate enough in its way, if I choose, but also playful and susceptible to idiosyncrasy. Though Latin less necessarily correct than bookkeeping, allowing a certain fluidity. I am moderately fuddy-duddy, I like
my English to keep to the rules, generally, though you’ll notice that occasionally I bend them, and I take great delight in the breakers and remakers, the poets who grow their own language out of their fertile breeding grounds. See, there, how I mix my metaphors, and I don’t care!

  It seems odd to fall in love with Latin as a child, but I did, partly because I could do it, partly because it was a refuge from the harsher world of sport and boys’ games. I liked its dependability.

  The shapes on the page governed by rules, and yet bringing an invisible crowd of meanings; so few words, so much significance.

  But Latin and bookkeeping are stern taskmasters, and it was as such that I approached computing. In my palmy days, I mean, when the science was moderately young. They were heady times, when even the most basic functions let alone the vocabulary were unknown. I simply read, incomprehensible manuals and the magazines that in the early days told aficionados what the phenomenon might mean. Until by study and practice I could not only read the language of these exciting new machines, I could speak it too. I could speak it and be understood, its arcane terminology was at my fingerprints – literally. Isn’t that a pretty pun.

  And no harm done by the fact that I have some skills in mathematics. I quite excelled in school, and in my Franciscan days studied some more, although this was not popular, being a bit pure and not evidently to the glory of God.

  I never was a computer nerd, or freak, or whatever those names are that mark the young men whose lives are lived by computers. Like Clement, Novica and Jake, my litany of lads who know so much but not why or how. Who adore computers as a game they play with utter solemnity, and a sense of their own inclusiveness. My computer is a language, a means to an end, admirable and even delightful in itself, but only because the end is so significant. Another way of putting it might be to say that I am a purist where the language of computers is concerned, I mean that interior secret language where they do their work, but I do not care at all for the jargon which is simply a colourful vocabulary, a slang, a nerds’ cant. I used the words nerds’ cant to Novica one day, he is the best informed of my lads, to his complete bewilderment. By analogy with thieves’ cant, I said, their argot, their slang, for god’s sake, and had still to explain that. So much of the rich and multitudinous world is lost to the young these days. Their heads are bursting with facts off the Internet, but their brains lack any means to sort and order them. Webs and nets: sticky and encumbering and entrapping and finally more hindrance than help. So the metaphors suggest.