A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  For the rest of the day Adrian felt sorry for himself for having to spend his Sunday lying on his bed dreaming of the Catskills while O’Mullane was having a real adventure at Caulfield Racecourse.

  That afternoon he left his train at Caulfield and walked across the racecourse to the paddock that O’Mullane had described. He walked quickly across it, looking for a place where the grass was flattened, but there was nothing to tell him where the strapper and the girl had been. He stood where the grass was tallest and looked all round. The place was really only a large yard. It was not even private—a footpath ran close by, and one end of the yard was the wire fence of the public tennis courts.

  Adrian hurried out of the racecourse and down to the little shopping centre in Yarram Road. He went into the milk bar. A young woman with red hair came out through the curtained doorway and said, ‘Yes, please?’ He looked down to avoid her eyes and asked for two packets of PK chewing gum. He stared at her furtively while she served him. She was nothing like a film star but she was pretty in her own way. What surprised him most was how ordinary she looked for a girl in a story. He could see the pores in her cheeks and the freckles on the backs of her hands. And when she handed him his change and he stared at her apron, he saw the vague shape of her breasts rise and fall as she breathed.

  He got out of the shop as fast as he could. The story of Macka and the girl was preposterous. He could not believe that on an ordinary dull Sunday afternoon, while he was lying on his bed listening to the wind and the rowdy New Australians next door, a girl with freckles on her wrists and no make-up on her face walked out of her sleepy milk bar and rolled round in the grass on Caulfield Racecourse with some strapper.

  O’Mullane must have made up the whole story—perhaps because he was bored too. And it was a pretty poor story compared with what happened in the Catskills.

  When he was younger, Adrian Sherd used to wish he had been born the eldest son of an English country gentleman in the eighteenth or nineteenth century and gone to one of the great public schools.

  At school he would have read the classics in his private study and played cricket or rugger every afternoon. In his holidays he would have ridden across the broad acres he was going to inherit from his father. The tenants would have tipped their caps to the young master and told him where to find birds’ nests and badgers’ setts.

  But after he had gone to St Carthage’s College and learned from Cornthwaite and his friends what women were for, he realised there was something missing from the life of the young English gentleman.

  When the son of the manor visited his neighbours, he could never meet the daughter of the house alone. Her nanny or governess or music teacher was always with her. The young fellow stood beside the harpsichord and turned the pages of her music, but the neck of her dress was too high for him to see anything.

  Sometimes in his own house he followed the maid into the pantry to look up under her dress when she climbed to the highest shelf. But he always heard a discreet cough behind him and turned round to see the butler looking at him severely.

  On his rides across his father’s estates he saw plenty of girls—the daughters of yeomen and labourers and gamekeepers. But the English climate was so bad that they were always rugged up in spencers and mufflers. He wasted a lot of time dreaming of the warm weather when he might surprise a young woman bathing in a stream after a hard day’s work in the harvest. And he realised why so many English poets praised the springtime.

  At school it was painful to read stories of the pagan Greeks and Romans and their sunny Mediterranean lands while snow covered the quadrangle, and the only female in the building was the elderly Matron with her mustard plasters and camphorated oil. He was reduced to dreaming of a day when one of his chums would receive a party of visitors. The chum might invite him to take his sister’s arm and do a turn of the garden path.

  In the nineteenth century, when things were worst for young Englishmen (the women with iron hoops in their clothes and long leather boots and collars up to their chins), they heard about a land where people dressed less formally because it was summer for six months of the year. It was no wonder that so many of them flocked to Australia.

  But if the young Englishman had a hard time, it was harder still for the poor Irish lad. Adrian Sherd had no doubt that in all the history of the world the worst possible place for a young man was Ireland after St Patrick had converted it to the Catholic faith.

  To begin with, the country was overcrowded. Watchful old men sat outside every cottage door and pious old women in black shawls passed to and fro along every country lane. A young man trying to spy on a girl or catch her alone in a quiet place was nearly always reported to the parish priest.

  Even the landscape was against the young Irishman. There were no dells or dingles or forests or prairies in Ireland. The country was mostly bare stony fields and peat bogs. When a young fellow finally grew so desperate that he had to do it to himself, the only place he could go was behind the largest stone on some hillside. Many a time the stone was not even big enough to hide him properly and he had to lie with his legs drawn up or crouch like a hare against the grass while he relieved himself as best he could. If he forgot himself in his excitement and let his twitching legs protrude from behind the stone, he was sure to be observed by some gossiping jarvey on the nearest road.

  It was almost certainly this problem that drove the early Irish explorers out into the Atlantic. They were looking for the Western Isles or O Brasil, Isle of the Blest—some uninhabited place where a young man and his girlfriend or a man and his wife or just a young man by himself could get away on their own whenever he felt like it. If the Irish had reached America, as Adrian Sherd’s father claimed they had, it would have been the perfect land for them. They certainly deserved it, after all the misery they had put up with at home.

  But there was one thing that helped the young Irishman in his trouble. The women of Ireland practised the virtues of modesty and chastity like no other women in history. Thousands of them spent their formative years as Children of Mary. They imitated Our Lady so faithfully that they ended up looking like Madonnas with their white complexions and their dark eyes demurely downcast. Thanks to the exemplary virtues of Irish womanhood, the young Irishman was never tormented by the sight of bare legs or daring swimsuits. In fact, Adrian suspected that with priests and parents watching them closely, and the women of Ireland so careful not to tempt them, many young Irishmen might have avoided sins of impurity altogether.

  When Adrian was still at primary school he used to go every year to the St Patrick’s Night concert in his local town hall. One of the items was always ‘Eileen Aroon’ sung by a choir of girls from Star of the Sea Convent, North Essendon. When the girls came to the words ‘Truth is a fixed star’, Adrian was always so inspired by the unearthly beauty of the melody and the innocent upturned faces with their rounded pink lips where no foul young man had ever planted an impure kiss, that he looked up past the blazing chandeliers of the town hall, out over the north-western suburbs of Melbourne and across the thistles and basalt rocks of the plains beyond, towards the dark sky over Ireland. There were fixed stars shining over Ireland—the stars in the dark-blue mantle of Our Lady, who was still guarding the daughters of that holy country as she had for centuries past.

  The last time Adrian had seen the concert (in the year before he began at St Carthage’s) he was so moved that he made a vow never to think an impure thought about any girl with an Irish-looking face or an Irish-sounding name.

  Adrian had kept his vow faithfully. None of the hundreds of females he had used for his pleasure had been Irish types. But he often wondered how he would have survived in the Ireland of his ancestors, where the only girls he ever saw would have been Irish colleens. Probably he would have emigrated as his ancestors had done. He hoped he would have had the sense to head for America instead of Australia.

  On some afternoons Adrian Sherd caught a tram instead of walking down Swindon Road from St Car
thage’s to the Swindon railway station. The tram was always crowded with boys from Eastern Hill Grammar School and Canterbury Ladies’ College. Adrian knew that these schools were two of the oldest and wealthiest in Melbourne. He felt very ignorant not even knowing where they were among the miles of garden suburbs beyond Swindon.

  Whenever he looked at the Eastern Hill boys Adrian felt awkward and grubby. He held his Gladstone bag in front of his knees to hide the shiny domes in his trouser legs. He remembered all the brothers’ talk about St Carthage’s being a fine old school with a reputation for turning out Catholic doctors and barristers and professional men. It was bullshit. The Eastern Hill boys never saw Adrian, even when he was crowded so close that his sweaty maroon cap was only inches from their faces. When the tram lurched and he fell among them, the superb voices kept up their banter while one of the fellows brushed Adrian away like some kind of insect.

  After a few weeks on the trams Adrian learned to stand unobtrusively near these young gentlemen, keeping his back to them but listening carefully.

  One Eastern Hill fellow went to a party every Saturday night. The parties were in strange places that Adrian had never heard of—Blairgowrie, Portsea, Mt Eliza. At Blairgowrie the fellow had met a girl called Sandy and taken her home and crashed on with her. He said he was going to ring her up and ask her out to a party at Judy’s place in Beaumaris. Judy’s parents were to be in Sydney for the weekend. The party would be a riot.

  The fellow went on talking, but Adrian couldn’t take any more. He wanted to sit down in a quiet place and try to comprehend the incredible story he had just heard. But then the fellow told his friends he must move along the tram and win Lois. Adrian had to watch.

  The fellow walked purposefully up the tram and leaned over a group of Canterbury girls. A girl with shapely legs and large innocent eyes gazed up into his face. They talked. She nodded and smiled. The fellow said something funny. He let it slide out of the corner of his mouth. The girl leaned back and showed the full length of her white throat and laughed. The fellow stood back and admired his work. Then he said goodbye and walked back to his friends.

  They took the whole thing quite calmly. One of them said, ‘Are you going to ask her out?’

  The party-goer said, ‘I don’t really know. She’s a nice kid. She’d be lots of fun. I think her parents make her study most weekends. I might wait and take her out to some quiet party not too far from her home.’ The others were gentlemen enough to drop the subject.

  It was some weeks before Adrian dared to stand near the Canterbury girls. He didn’t want to offend them with the sight of his pimply face and crumpled suit and the Catholic emblems on his pocket and cap.

  There were four Canterbury girls who were always huddled at one end of the tram. Whenever Adrian sneaked a look at them they were chattering or smiling with their gloved hands pressed daintily to their lips. They spoke so confidentially to each other that he guessed they were talking about boys. Each day for a week he stood a little nearer to their seats, always keeping his back to the girls. He hoped to learn something that even the Eastern Hill boys didn’t know.

  When he finally stood within earshot of them he was shocked to hear them talking the whole time about clothes—the ones they wore last weekend, the shops where they bought them, the alterations they had to make before they could wear them, the way they creased or crumpled after wearing and what they were going to wear next weekend.

  Adrian was disappointed at first, but he worked out later that the girls only worried about clothes because they wanted to look beautiful when they went to parties with the Eastern Hill fellows.

  As Adrian got to know the Eastern Hill men better, he discovered that some of them weren’t perfect. There was one chap who was on the training list for the first eighteen in the public-schools football competition. One day on the tram he was limping. He told his friends the story of the torn ligaments in his knee. Each time he said the word ‘torn’ he winced ever so faintly. It was the first time that Adrian had caught an Eastern Hill fellow doing what the boys at St Carthage’s did so often. It was called putting on an act.

  But when an Eastern Hill man put on an act it really worked. The fellow with the injured knee limped up to a group of Canterbury girls and told his story again. Each time he winced, the concern in the girls’ faces made Adrian almost wince himself.

  Sometimes a Canterbury girl put on an act too. One day Adrian heard some girls talking about a debate. They thought their own side should have won. The topic of the debate had been ‘That the introduction of television will do more harm than good’. At St Carthage’s any boy who tried to talk about schoolwork outside the classroom would have been howled down, but the girls in the tram chattered eagerly about the effect of television on family life and reading and juvenile delinquency.

  Then a girl who was angry that her side had lost the debate said, ‘Illogical. The opposition’s case was utterly illogical.’ The big words embarrassed Adrian. The girl was putting on an act.

  Some Eastern Hill boys joined the girls. A tall fellow with a voice like a radio announcer’s said, ‘What are you so excited about, Carolyn?’

  Adrian listened hard. The Eastern Hill boys never discussed schoolwork on the tram. What would the fellow say when he realised the girls were only talking about a debate?

  Carolyn explained exactly why the opposition’s case had been weak. When she was finished, the tall fellow said, ‘I quite agree with you,’ and looked genuinely troubled. Carolyn smiled. She was very grateful for the fellow’s sympathy.

  Late in the year the elms around the tram stop at the Swindon town hall were thick with green leaves. When Adrian boarded the tram after school the sun was still high in the sky. In the non-smoking compartment the wooden shutters covered the windows, and the Canterbury girls sat in a rich summery twilight. After Adrian left the tram it turned sharply in the direction of St Kilda and the sea. He always watched the tram out of sight and wondered whether the young men and women still on board could smell salt in the evening breeze.

  The Eastern Hill fellows had begun to talk about the holidays. They were all going away somewhere. Some of them said they would try to catch up with each other on New Year’s Eve, but God knew what they might be up to that night. The way they chuckled about New Year’s Eve was not quite gentlemanly.

  The girls were going away too. They were talking about beachwear and party frocks. Adrian wished he could warn them to be careful of their friends from Eastern Hill on New Year’s Eve.

  It was the athletics season at St Carthage’s. On House Sports day the weather was as hot as summer. Adrian noticed a strange girl watching the races with O’Mullane and Cornthwaite. Nobody introduced her properly but Adrian worked out that she was O’Mullane’s sister Monica from St Brigid’s College, the girls’ school along the street from St Carthage’s.

  The boys from St Carthage’s rarely saw the girls from St Brigid’s. But on St Carthage’s sports day any St Brigid’s girl with a brother at St Carthage’s was allowed to miss the last period and visit the sports. (The girls had their own sports afternoon on the lawn behind their tall timber fence. Boys walking past heard them cheering politely but saw nothing.)

  Adrian wasn’t brave enough to talk to O’Mullane’s sister but he wanted to impress her. He developed a limp. He explained to O’Mullane that his ligaments were probably torn somewhere. He sat down and ran his fingers along his calf and thigh muscles. The girl took no notice, but O’Mullane glared at him when his fingers moved above his knee.

  Adrian tried to amuse the girl. He called out, ‘Come on, Tubby,’ to a plump boy struggling in a race. He told O’Mullane he would love to see some events at the sports set aside for the brothers—speed strapping contests, or sprint races with all competitors wearing soutanes. Monica O’Mullane looked at him but didn’t smile.

  Cornthwaite went onto the arena and left his tracksuit behind. Adrian tied the legs of the tracksuit together. When Cornthwaite came back and tried to pu
ll the suit on he fell with all his weight against Adrian. Adrian lost his balance and knocked O’Mullane against his sister. The girl dropped her gloves and program and had to pick them up herself.

  No one laughed. Cornthwaite said loudly, ‘You pathetic idiot, Sherd.’

  After the sports Adrian walked alone to the tram stop. He caught a tram much later than usual. He saw none of the young men and women he knew, but in one corner a strange fellow from Eastern Hill was chatting with a Canterbury girl as though they had been friends since childhood. Adrian heard part of a story the fellow was telling—something about him and his friends greasing the horizontal bar in the gym just before someone called Mr Fancy Pants started his workout. The girl thought it was the funniest story she had ever heard. As she laughed she almost leaned her head on the fellow’s shoulder.

  Adrian Sherd knew very little about Australia. This might have been because he never saw any Australian films. As a child he had seen The Overlanders, but all he remembered about it was how strange the characters’ accents sounded.

  Australian history was much less colourful than British or European or Bible history. The only part of it that interested Adrian was the period before Australia was properly explored.

  In those days there was no reason for a man to go on being bored or unhappy in a city. Just across the Great Dividing Range were thousands of miles of temperate grasslands and open forest country where he could live as he pleased out of reach of curious neighbours and disapproving relatives.

  Adrian had an old school atlas with a page of maps showing how Australia had been explored. In one of the first maps, the continent was coloured black except for a few yellow indentations on the eastern coast where the first settlements were. Adrian drew a much larger map with the same colour scheme, except that the dark inland was broken by tracts of a sensuous orange colour. They looked small on the map, but some of them were fifty miles across. They were the lost kingdoms of Australia, established in the early days by men after his own heart.