A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  One fellow had chosen the lush plains of the Mitchell River near the Gulf of Carpentaria. On a low hill he had built a replica of the Temple of Solomon. The walls were hung with purple tapestries and the servants beat the time of day on copper gongs. The women went bare-breasted because the weather was always pleasantly warm.

  Another man had chosen the park-like forests of the Victorian Wimmera. On the shores of Lake Albacutya he had set up a township copied from Baghdad in the days of Haroun Al Rashid. Each house had a fountain and a pool in a walled courtyard where the women were free to remove their veils.

  In a valley of the Otway Ranges one man had a palace in which the walls were covered with copies of every obscene picture ever painted. A large tract in the Ord River district of Western Australia had been turned into Peru, with its own Inca and Brides of the Sun. Somewhere in Bass Strait was an island exactly like Tahiti before the Europeans found it.

  Adrian had never seen any of the places in Australia where these palaces and cities might have been built. He had only been outside Melbourne two or three times. Those were the few brief holidays he had spent on his uncle’s farm at Orford, near Colac, in the Western District of Victoria.

  The landscape at Orford was all low green hills. Every few hundred yards along the roads was a farmhouse of white weatherboards with a red roof. Near every farmhouse was a dairy and milking shed of creamy-grey stone, a stack of baled hay and a windbreak of huge old cypresses.

  Adrian’s uncle and aunt had seven children. They played Ludo and Happy Families and Cap the Dunce for hours on the back veranda. Sometimes they read Captain Marvel and Cat-Man and Doll-Man comics in the lowest branches of the cypresses or tried to act stories from their comics around the woodheap and the haystack. Adrian asked them whether any parts of their district were still unexplored. They said they weren’t sure, but they climbed onto the cowyard fence with him to point out that their own farm was nothing but grass and barbed-wire fences.

  Adrian stood on the highest rung of the fence and looked all round him. The only hopeful sign was the roof of a strange building behind a line of trees on a distant hill. The heat off the paddocks made ridges and shapes like battlements in the roof. If the right sort of men had been the first to find their way to the lonely parts of Australia, the building might have been a temple of the Sun God or a palace of pleasure.

  But on the following Sunday Adrian went with all his uncle’s family to mass and found that the building on the hill was St Finbar’s church.

  Not just the things that might have happened, but many important events that actually happened were missing from Australian history books. Adrian often thought about the early settlers. What did a man think when he sat down at night and realised he was the only human being for fifty miles around? If he was an Irishman he probably remembered that God and his guardian angel were watching over him. But what if he was a convict shepherd who had never been to church, or an English farmer who didn’t take his religion seriously?

  Somewhere in Australia, in a warm sheltered valley overhung with wattles or in tall grass in the lee of an outcrop of boulders, there should have been a granite obelisk or a cairn of stones with an inscription such as:

  NEAR THIS SPOT ON THE EVENING OF

  27 DECEMBER 1791

  ALFRED HENRY WAINWRIGHT AGED 19 YEARS

  BECAME THE FIRST EUROPEAN

  TO COMMIT AN ACT OF SELF-ABUSE

  ON AUSTRALIAN SOIL

  Of course the Aborigines had been in Australia for centuries before the white men, but no one would ever know their history. They had lived a carefree bestial existence. Some of them, like King Parajoulta of Blue Mud Bay with his eight wives, showed signs of imagination. But without books or films they had no inspiration to do unusual deeds.

  Adrian knew he was right to complain about the dullness of Australian history when he found a certain illustrated article in People magazine. Far out beyond the prairies of America, in a place called Short Creek, Arizona, a reporter had discovered families of Mormons still practising polygamy. It seemed that when polygamy had been outlawed many years before, a few men who wanted to keep up the custom had found their way to a remote district and gone on living the life they wanted.

  It was one more proof that Americans were more imaginative and adventurous than Australians. There were plains and mountain ranges in Australia where whole tribes of polygamists could have settled. But now there were churches like St Finbar’s, Orford, on the hilltops and people like Adrian’s cousins staring out across the plains.

  Adrian studied the photos in People. The families of Short Creek were disappointing to look at. The women had plain, pinched faces with the rimless spectacles that so many Americans wore, and barefooted children hanging onto their cotton dresses. But behind the town of Short Creek, rising abruptly from where the dusty main street petered out, was an enormous mountain range—the sort of place where a tribe of pagans or a palace with a harem of a hundred rooms might be safe from discovery for many years yet.

  •

  One morning Father Lacey spoke to Adrian’s class about the Catholic Press.

  He said, ‘I don’t have to remind you that here in Melbourne we have two excellent weekly papers, the Tribune and the Advocate, to give us the Catholic interpretation of the news. One of these papers should be in every Catholic home every week of the year to give you the sort of news you won’t read in the secular press. I know of several good Catholic families who read their Advocate or Tribune from cover to cover each week and don’t buy any of the secular newspapers. I’m happy to say those families are better informed about current affairs and the moral issues of modern life than most people who can’t do without their Sun and Herald and Sporting Globe.

  ‘You boys are perhaps too young to realise it, but I’m simply amazed sometimes at the stories and pictures they print in the daily newspapers. In my day it was unheard of, but nowadays you can visit nearly any Catholic home and see papers lying around in full view of the children with stories of hideous crimes and lurid pictures staring up at you. It’s one more sign that we’re slowly turning into a pagan society. And far too many Catholics take this sort of thing lying down.

  ‘There’s one Melbourne newspaper in particular that regularly prints suggestive pictures which are quite unnecessary and don’t have anything to do with the news of the day. I won’t name the paper, but some of you have probably noticed what I’m talking about. I hope your parents have, anyway.

  ‘This very morning for example I happened to notice a picture on one of their inside front pages. It was what they call a sweater girl. That’s something else by the way that’s crept into our modern pagan attitudes. I’m talking about the emphasis that some people nowadays put on the female bosom.

  ‘Now, we all know the human body is one of the most marvellous things that God created. And great artists for centuries have praised its beauty by painting it and making statues of it. But a true artist will tell you that you can’t make a great work of art if you emphasise one part of your subject matter out of all proportion to its importance. Any artist worth his salt knows that true beauty consists of fitting all the elements of a design into a harmonious whole.

  ‘I’ll speak quite frankly now. There are many famous and wonderful pictures of the naked female body with the bosom exposed—some of them are priceless treasures in the Vatican itself. But you’ll never find one of these masterpieces drawing attention to the bosom or making it appear larger than it really is.

  ‘But to get back to these newspaper pictures. I must say, I find it very sad to see a young woman being persuaded to stand up and pose in an awkward way to draw attention to the bosom that Almighty God gave her for a holy purpose—and all for the amusement of a few perverted men.

  ‘Now, this particular newspaper has been doing this sort of thing so often that we can safely say it’s all part of a deliberate plan to appeal to the lowest elements among its readers. The men who issue the instructions for these sort of pictures
to be printed are sitting back smugly, imagining that all these sweater girls and bathing beauties are going to sell thousands of extra copies of their paper.

  ‘But that’s just where they’re wrong. Boys, I’ll let you into a little secret. There are large numbers of decent Catholic men right now who are working to make this paper clean up its pictures or else they’ll put it out of business.

  ‘Yes. That’s what I said. There are some of them who’ve formed a little group in this very parish of Swindon. This is real Catholic Action at work. No doubt some of your fathers are forming groups in your own parishes. The way these men are working is to bring these pictures of bosoms and underdressed women to the notice of their workmates and fellow parishioners and friends and point out how unnecessary they are in a daily newspaper. There’s no doubt that every decent person, whether they’re Catholics or non-Catholics, will object to these pictures leaping out at them over the breakfast table or on the tram to the office. And if every one of those people stops buying the paper concerned and writes a letter of complaint to the management we’ll soon get results.

  ‘Our men have a few other tricks up their sleeves too, only I’m not free to tell you about them at the moment. Let’s just say I think you’ll find these bare limbs and exaggerated bosoms will soon be disappearing from our streets and homes. And when they do we’ll have the Catholic men of Melbourne to thank for it.’

  Adrian Sherd was almost certain that the priest was talking about the Argus, which was delivered to the Sherds’ house every morning because Mr Sherd said it was the best paper for racing and football. Most of the women that Adrian took with him on his American journeys had first appeared to him in the pages of the Argus. The poses they struck to excite him (leaning back against a rock with hands on hips and legs wide apart, or bending forward to expose the deep cleavage at the top of their bathers) came straight from the films section of the Saturday Argus.

  If the Catholic men persuaded Mr Sherd to stop buying the Argus, Adrian would have no chance to meet new women. It was different for Cornthwaite and his friends, who were allowed out to films any night of the week. They had all the beautiful women in the world to choose from. But Adrian depended on the Argus to introduce him to new faces and breasts and legs. Without it he would have to live on his memories. Or he might even end up like those old perverts who got arrested for drilling holes in bathroom walls or women’s changing sheds at the beach.

  Adrian talked to his friends afterwards. Stan Seskis said, ‘It’s the Argus all right, and my old man’s one of those that are going to clean it up. He buys it every day and draws big circles in red ink round all the pictures of the tarts. Then he cuts them all out and pastes them in a scrapbook and takes them to a meeting every week at Mr Moroney’s house.

  ‘And it’s not just pictures he collects. Sometimes he cuts out a story about some court case. He puts a red line under certain words that shouldn’t be seen in a family newspaper. I’ll bet none of you bastards know what a criminal assault really means.’

  No one knew. Seskis told them. ‘It’s the same thing as rape. And if you read the Argus carefully every day, in the end you’ll find a story about a criminal assault. And if you use your imagination you can work out just how the bastard raped the tart.’

  Adrian decided to prepare for the day when the Argus had to stop printing the pictures he needed. Every morning in the train between Accrington and Swindon he looked around for young women who could eventually take over from his film stars and beauty queens. It was nearly a week before he found a face and figure to compare with the Argus women. He picked out a young married woman so carefully groomed that she must have worked in a chemist’s shop or a hairdresser’s salon. He studied her closely without anyone noticing him. That night he invited her to join him and two friends on a trip through the piney woods of Georgia. She came along cheerfully but Adrian soon wished she had stayed at home.

  Adrian could not relax with her. Whenever he met her eyes he remembered he would have to face her on the train next morning. She would be dressed in her ordinary clothes again (in Georgia she wore candy-striped shorts and a polka-dot blouse) and he would be wearing the grey suit and maroon cap of St Carthage’s College. It would be hard pretending that nothing had happened between them on the previous night.

  There was another difficulty. Jayne and Marilyn and Susan and their many friends always had the same look about them—a wide-eyed half-smile with lips slightly parted. The new woman had an irritating way of changing her expression. She seemed to be thinking too much.

  Worse still, Adrian realised when he saw her in Georgia that her breasts had no fixed shape. Each of the other women had a pair as firm and inflexible as a statue’s. But the new girl’s lolled and bounced on her chest so that he could never be sure what size and shape they were.

  When the afternoon reached its climax Adrian gave up trying to fit the new girl into Georgia and deserted her for his old favourites.

  Next morning the young woman was in her usual place in the train. Her face was stern and haughty and her breasts had almost disappeared under the folds of her cardigan. When the train crossed the high viaducts approaching Swindon, the morning sunlight came through the windows. The carriage was suddenly bright and warm like a clearing in the piney woods. Adrian looked down from where he was standing and saw a picture in someone’s Argus. It’s title was ‘Why Wait Till Summer?’ and it showed a girl in twopiece bathers on the deck of a yacht. She had a smile that showed she was eager to please, and her breasts were a shape that could be memorised at a glance.

  Adrian looked from the picture to the girl in the corner. Her seat was still in shadow. She looked grey and insubstantial.

  In school that morning Adrian thought of writing an anonymous letter to the editor of the Argus praising pictures like ‘Why Wait Till Summer?’ and wondered if it would help to save the pictures from the Catholic men.

  One very hot Saturday morning Adrian Sherd was staring at a picture of the Pacific coast near Big Sur. He hadn’t been to America for several days, and he was planning a sensational extravaganza for that very night with four or perhaps even five women against a backdrop of mighty cliffs and redwood forests.

  His mother came into the room and said she had been down to the phone box talking to his Aunt Francie and now Adrian and his brothers and mother and Aunt Francie and her four kids were going on the bus to Mordialloc beach for a picnic.

  The Sherds went to the beach only once or twice a year. Adrian had never learned to swim properly. He usually sat in the shallows and let the waves knock him around, or dug moats and canals at the water’s edge while the sun burned his pale skin crimson. At mealtime he sat at a grimy picnic bench with a damp shirt sticking to his skin and his bathers full of grit. His young brothers and cousins jostled him to get at the food, and he shrank back from the tomato seeds dribbling down their chins or the orange pips they spat carelessly around them.

  On the long bus trip to Mordialloc, Adrian decided to make the day pass more quickly by observing women on the beach. He might see something (a shoulder strap slipping, or a roll of flesh escaping from a tight bathing suit just below the buttocks) that could be fitted into his adventures at Big Sur to make them more realistic.

  The two families reached Mordialloc in the hottest part of the afternoon. They were going to stay at the beach until dark. The women and the oldest children carried baskets and string bags packed with cold corned beef, lettuce leaves, tomatoes, hard-boiled eggs, jars of fruit salad, and slices of bread and butter, all wrapped in damp tea towels.

  Adrian put on his bathers in the changing shed. He looked into the toilet cubicles and shower room to read the writing on the walls. Most of it had been whitewashed only recently. The boldest inscription was in a toilet cubicle. It read simply: MISS KATHLEEN MAHONEY YOU BEAUT. There was no illustration.

  Adrian pitied the young man who had written those words. He was some larrikin who knew nothing about life in America. All he could use to e
xcite himself was some girl he had lusted after in his own suburb. And Kathleen Mahoney was a good Catholic name. The girl had probably never looked twice at the uncouth bastard who scrawled her name in toilets.

  If Adrian had had the time, he would have scratched out the inscription. But just then he found something much more important to worry about.

  Even though the day was hot, his cock had shrivelled up to the size of a boy’s while he was undressing. It was too small to dangle properly. When he pulled on his bathers it made a tiny pathetic lump that was clearly visible in the cloth between his legs. He walked out of the changing shed with small careful steps so his miserable button wouldn’t be too obvious.

  He got back to his mother and aunt and saw a strange woman in onepiece tartan bathers standing between them. When she turned round it was only his cousin Bernadette, who was no older than he was. He had taken no notice of her in her ordinary clothes. Her face was nothing much to look at and she always had her young sisters hanging round her. Now he saw that her thighs were as big and heavy as her mother’s, and her breasts were a much more interesting shape.

  Mrs Sherd and her sister Francie told all their children to swim in the shallow water until they were sent for. Francie said, ‘We’re going to sit down and have a good rest and we don’t want any kids hanging round us.’

  Adrian walked down into the sea and sat down. He kept his bathers underwater to hide the stub between his legs and looked around for his cousin Bernadette. She was nowhere in the water, or on the sand. He looked back at the pavilion. She was sitting in her tartan bathers beside the two women. She must have decided she wasn’t one of the children any more.

  Adrian was angry. He had to splash around in the shallows with his brothers and young cousins while Bernadette sat gossiping with the women. Yet he had romped with film stars on scenic beaches in America while Bernadette looked as though she had never even had a boyfriend.