A Season on Earth

by Gerald Murnane

  Adrian was unsure about the ending of his short story. His readers would surely want the young woman to meet the writer, however briefly. And he understood that every story published in the Women’s Weekly had to have a so-called happy ending. He could meet these requirements only by inventing a preposterous turn of events: the celebrated recluse was not what he seemed. He had been secretly hoping for years that a fetching young woman would come to hear of him and would seek him out and violate his privacy.

  Adrian put aside his notes for the time being.

  It was nearly summer. After tea each night Adrian spent an hour or two in his shed before the daylight faded. His parents still thought he was studying for his matriculation exam. He knew he would have to tell them soon that he had given up his studies long before. He would have to tell them too that he intended to resign from the public service and live the life of a poet-recluse. But often, on warm bright evenings, he thought he should just furnish his shed quietly and spend more time there each day until they realised that was the life that suited him best.

  He still had to wait twenty weeks until he could afford the renovations to his shed. In the meantime he looked for pictures from magazines to decorate his walls. He had a small stack of the Women’s Weekly and the latest issue of St Gerard’s Monthly, bought from the bookstall outside Our Lady of Good Counsel’s after Sunday mass.

  Mrs Patricia Gollogly was hanging out her weekly wash in her backyard at Blacktown, NSW. One of her four children was playing on his tricycle nearby. It was exactly the kind of scene Adrian needed for his walls. After an hour of hard writing in his solitary retreat he could look up at the young housewife posing beside her gleaming wash-day result. Her smile was not the vacant wide-mouthed expression so common in Women’s Weekly advertisements. Mrs Gollogly was pleased with herself, but also faintly amused by the sudden fame that had descended on her. Her smile did not reveal all. She held something in reserve. She was almost certainly intelligent as well as being rather attractive.

  Whenever Adrian looked at Mrs Gollogly he would allow himself for a moment to envy her husband. Mr Gollogly would come home in the evening and feast his eyes on the wavy hairstyle, the wry smile, the creamy-coloured V of bare skin above the open neck of his wife’s blouse. While they embraced they would exchange news of the day’s events—he telling her about some business deal he had arranged, she describing the visit of the washing powder people.

  At this point Adrian would stop envying the husband and begin to despise him. Mr Gollogly was only a humble underling in an office. Stripped of his white shirt and tie he was a physical and emotional weakling. Without his wife to boost his self-confidence and gratify his passions he would never have had the strength to keep going. If he had to spend a week in the solitude that Adrian Sherd endured for year after year, Gollogly would have collapsed into tears of self-pity. And yet his wife admired him and listened patiently to his stories of the office and took pride in getting his shirts whiter than white.

  Then would come the climax of the exercise. Adrian would stare hard at the pretty young housewife from Blacktown, NSW, and laugh—a long mocking laugh, varying in pitch and intensity as it summed up all aspects of his situation. He would laugh at the folly of the woman in yielding her body to such a mediocre man; then at the injustice of a world which kept beautiful young women enslaved to Golloglies while the men who valued love most highly, the poets and writers, were locked up in solitary rooms or sheds in backyards; and last of all he would laugh at himself for wasting his time with such a woman while the great task of his literary compositions was waiting to consume his energies.

  It would be a subtle, complex laugh. Adrian practised it. While he was still getting it right he noticed that Mrs Gollogly’s pose was not really that of a shy housewife photographed by surprise and overcome by the amazing success of her weekly wash. It was a provocative pose. Her lips were slightly parted; one arm was lifted high as though to adjust a clothes peg but in fact to display the white skin above the elbow where the short sleeve of her blouse must have only just covered her underarm hair; and one leg was thrust forward and bent a little sideways to reveal the perfect curve of her calf muscle. Most significant of all, the expression that at first had seemed a modest, fetching half-smile was actually the beginning of a laugh just as scornful as his own.

  Adrian moved slowly closer, keeping his eyes fixed on her face. He was daring her to utter the first syllable of her laugh. His right hand was poised near the front of his trousers.

  The blame for what happened next was entirely hers. If she had been the shy young housewife she pretended to be, she would have checked her laugh and turned back to her washing or even told him discreetly that he was making a fool of himself. Instead she shook her dark curls and tilted her delicate chin and set her shapely breasts trembling and laughed at all the solitary poets and writers who had no wives to float away the grime from their shirts.

  Adrian strode forward and kicked over the cane laundry basket. The great heap of newly dried washing tumbled onto the lawn. And in the sunlit backyard in Blacktown, NSW, while she lay among her gleaming whites and gayest coloureds, he took his pleasure from Mrs Gollogly, mother of four.

  When the sound of laughter had died away in the shed, Adrian wiped himself and fastened his trousers. Then he put away his magazines and sat down to finish the notes of the story he had planned for the Women’s Weekly.

  But the story as he now envisaged it would not be suitable for the Women’s Weekly. In fact there was probably no magazine in Australia that would dare to publish a work so outspoken on sexual matters. The final scene would describe, with a wealth of physical detail, how a writer was enticed away from his desk by a young woman and discovered that the most powerful aid to imaginative writing was not solitude but the fullest possible expression of his sexual urge.

  A few weeks before, Adrian had read in Time magazine about an American writer named Henry Miller who made a good living by writing of his sexual experiences. Adrian intended to find out the name of Miller’s publishers. They might be interested in Australian stories with a predominantly sexual content. Adrian’s stories would not follow Miller’s in being straightforward accounts of his actual experiences. It would be too easy, for instance, to write a coldly realistic report of his adventure in the Blacktown backyard. What he had to do was to transform such events into works of fiction.

  Next morning on the train Adrian looked boldly at the first young typist who took his fancy. She seemed aware of his interest, but she refused to meet his eyes. He wished he could have told her she was rejecting the chance to be the anonymous heroine of a story that left nothing to the imagination.

  That same day he remembered a report of a criminal trial published by the Argus during its last days. He consulted the newspaper files in the State Library and read again the story of the photographer who took four attractive models into a lonely part of French’s Forest near Sydney and criminally or indecently assaulted all four of them. What the Sydney photographer had done was by no means original. Adrian himself had planned similar adventures in America years before. (He was sure he had taken five or six women to a desert playground in Arizona on one occasion.) But the story of the fellow’s trial had made headlines in the Argus for days on end. The reading public wanted to hear about these things. Adrian would find a keen demand for his stories.

  That night in his shed he decided to broaden the range of experiences that he would draw on for his writing. He took his St Gerard’s Monthly and turned to the centre-page photographs of large Catholic families. The most attractive of the mothers was Mrs P. Driscoll of Deniliquin. There was nothing provocative about her pose. But Adrian was inflamed by her expression of demure virtuousness. It seemed to imply that she and her husband (and perhaps a few other Catholic parents) were the only ones privileged to know why God had implanted a sexual urge in the human male.

  Adrian tore Mrs Driscoll away from her family and showed her that a solitary writer could be jus
t as passionate as a Catholic husband.

  It was after his experience with Mrs Driscoll that Adrian realised his way of life was not soundly based on a consistent theory. He still believed himself a recluse but in fact he was spending most of his spare time locked in his back shed with pictures of women. He needed a doctrine that would justify his thoroughgoing sensuality.

  He remembered Mikhail Petrovich Artsybashev. The great Russian was no recluse. He strode out to meet the world with his coloured silk blouses blazing in the sunlight. As a true nihilist he took his pleasure where he found it.

  On the following night Adrian approached his shed with the air of a nihilist. He wore no coloured silk, but he tousled the hair on his head and undid the two top buttons of his shirt in keeping with his repudiation of all social responsibility.

  He picked up a Women’s Weekly and turned the pages idly. He disregarded its moral exhortations. All he wanted was a brief encounter with one of the chic young women in its full-colour illustrations. If she tried to resist he would let her know he was a nihilist. She would realise it was no use arguing with a man who believed in nothing and had no illusions.

  A certain young miss was boasting that her skin stayed soft and smooth under all circumstances. She ran down a glaring sand dune in her onepiece bathers. She stood so close to a waterfall that its cold droplets settled on her hair. And in the evening she wore an off-the-shoulder ballerina frock and sat close beside a young man in a restaurant. Wherever she was, her pretty face had the same smug look, because her skin could bear the closest inspection.

  Before he took her for his pleasure, Adrian asked her questions such as Artsybashev would have used to convert people to nihilism. She was forced to admit that she kept her skin silky-soft for no other reason than to make her attractive to men. And since men, under their veneer of good manners, were only preparing to gratify their passions with her, the way of life she followed was no better than a harlot’s. The young woman was amazed to see how nihilism could expose the emptiness beneath the complications of modern life. She was ready to be converted. She urged Adrian to enjoy her body to the full in the spirit of true nihilism. In his enthusiasm, Adrian ripped off the corner of the page showing the product that kept a woman’s skin soft to the touch. He felt like Artsybashev tearing away all the pretence and hypocrisy from society.

  For several nights afterwards Adrian read the Women’s Weekly as a Russian nihilist would have done. Yet even while he stripped the advertisements and illustrations to their essentials he knew in his heart there was still one body of doctrines that nihilism might never shake. And he knew that eventually he would have to face the problem of how a writer could publish stories with a prurient appeal and still be a practising Catholic.

  He had hoped he wouldn’t find anything in the Women’s Weekly to remind him of his religion. But one evening when he was gloating over a bridal group in the social pages he learned from the caption that the wedding had been celebrated in the Catholic church in the most exclusive of Melbourne’s garden suburbs. And sure enough, behind the bride and her attendants was a steeple surmounted by a cross.

  The cross, stark against the blue sky of a Melbourne spring, challenged him to oppose his nihilism against it, and he knew he could not. The ravings of a black-bearded Russian anarchist could not stand against a creed that had endured for twenty centuries.

  In his confusion and humiliation he needed the help of a young Catholic woman. The bride in the picture already belonged to another. The bridesmaids were more likely single and heart-whole. Two of them were looking away from him towards the happy couple. But the third was smiling at the camera as if she knew that weeks later someone would search the Women’s Weekly for the inspiration to amend his life.

  According to the caption, the bridesmaid’s name was Jenny Windebank. It was not a Catholic name, but the wedding had been celebrated with a nuptial mass and a papal blessing. And the sweetness and serenity of her smile could only have come from a soul that was in the state of grace. A groomsman from the wedding party stood beside her, but only for the sake of ceremony. The faint hint of eagerness with which she surveyed the world suggested she had not yet found a man worthy of her love and trust.

  Adrian used scissors to separate Jenny Windebank from the rest of the wedding group. Then he mounted her photograph on a small piece of cardboard. He printed her name on the back and fitted the card into his shirt pocket. He meant to carry it wherever he went. If he was knocked down by a car and taken to hospital it would be all he had to identify him. The police would contact all the Windebanks in the telephone directory, asking for Jenny. When they found her, and she heard about the mysterious fellow with her photograph in his pocket, she would have to come to the hospital to see if it was anyone she knew. It was probably his surest way of starting a conversation with her.

  But he wasn’t at all anxious to get to know her. His affairs with Denise McNamara and Clare Keating had ended badly because of his urge to hurry things along. With Jenny Windebank the spiritual element would be paramount. He would be content to know that somewhere in Melbourne a beautiful Catholic girl was still waiting for the love of her life. Not that he would go to the opposite extreme and languish for an imaginary woman. Jenny Windebank would be closer to him than Denise or Clare had ever been. Her photograph, in full colour, would be with him always.

  Already she had made a marvellous difference to his life. He was no longer a nihilist. He belonged once more to the great multitude of normal people who found happiness in simple human affection. And he was not so anxious to write. The notes he had prepared in the past few months seemed a little too fanciful. He would do better to base his plays or stories or poems on his actual experiences. If he observed himself closely for a few weeks and noted the effects of love on his character, he would have all the material he needed. He might be surprised to find that after all his efforts to imagine plots and characters, his own life was full of material for a realistic work of literature.

  On the following Saturday he went to confession. He had to ride his bike to a neighbouring parish. The priests at Our Lady of Good Counsel’s might have remembered that he was the same fellow who had gone off to join the Charleroi Fathers a year before. If he confessed sins of impurity to any of them, he would seem to be going backwards spiritually.

  But the priest he confessed to was not going to let him off lightly. He asked Adrian how old he was and how long he had been committing that sin.

  Adrian was not frightened. He said, ‘I’m eighteen, Father, and these few sins I’ve confessed today were the first for two years. And I’m confident I won’t fall again because I’ve just become very interested in a wonderful girl.’

  ‘Is she a Catholic, this girl?’

  ‘Yes, Father.’ He was not lying. He genuinely believed Jenny to be a Catholic.

  The priest was not impressed. He said, ‘I want you to come back here in a fortnight. And see if you can keep your hands off yourself—and off the girl too.’

  Adrian sang all the way home. He would not go back to the irritable priest—not because he was going to sin again, but only to avoid awkward questions about Jenny.

  No priest could have understood how it was between them. He smiled at the priest’s suspicions and the idea that he might touch Jenny Windebank improperly.

  That same Saturday afternoon, Adrian sat in his shed looking through Women’s Weekly magazines for any other picture of Jenny that might have appeared in the social pages. The magazines seemed different. In the past he had turned page after page of pictures that meant nothing to him. They were pictures of a world he was shut out of—a world where tables were elaborately set and dishes were served with sprigs of green parsley around their edges, where smiling hostesses carried trays of strange drinks towards guests in suits and long frocks, where a fishpond or a fernery could turn a neglected garden corner into a centre of interest. But now he was anxious to study these scenes, and he wondered why.

  Trying to live as a reclus
e without the love of a woman, he had been preoccupied with remote or abstract subjects such as poetic styles or the lives of long-dead authors or the philosophy of nihilism. He had been cut off from the everyday world where husbands and wives enjoyed the simple pleasures—dining together by candlelight or entertaining old friends or beautifying their garden. Poetic emotion was all right in its place, but too much of it could be unhealthy. It was a joy to be in touch with real life again. Adrian settled down to enjoy every page of his Women’s Weekly.

  Magi-Bake Instant Dessert came in four flavours—Vanilla Whip, Chocolate Foam, Lemon Snow and Strawberry Treat. The most attractive way to serve them was in glass goblets very different from the coarse china bowls that the Sherds called ‘pudding plates’. A cultured woman like Jenny Windebank would know where to buy properly shaped goblets. Each night for four nights she would serve her husband a different Magi-Bake flavour. When he had decided which appealed to him most, she would make sure there was always a goblet or two in the fridge.

  The contents of a tin of Rosella sausages and vegetables had been photographed close-up on a plate to show the tempting lilac colour of the plump sausages, the delicate pale green of the peas and the vivid orange of the diced carrot. It was the sort of snack a man could expect his wife to serve on a nippy autumn day when he came in from the garden.

  As for the garden, Adrian read an article entitled ‘Creepers for All Positions’. It would have seemed like gibberish to a solitary man, but knowing his wife would expect him one day to lay out a garden, he took a keen pleasure in learning the preferences of plants, their whims and peculiarities and feeding habits.