‘Yes.’
‘In what way?’
‘I see things.’
‘Yes,’ I said slowly, looking at the floor. ‘It’s not a very pleasant experience, is it!’
‘I see things in trams.’
She paused a moment and touched her forehead with her pale fingers. She began talking again, rapidly, with urgency.
‘I’m a normal girl. I work in an office. I type—type letters.’
She had stretched her arms out in front of her and her fingers danced as if she were typing. She pulled out an imaginary sheet of paper with a sweep of her arm. As she continued talking she mimed all she described. Her arms and hands were never still, her expression changed in rapid illustration of her statement.
‘I talk to the girls. I eat my lunch. I go home to where I board. I’m normal. I do all normal things. I go to pictures. I can talk about them. I go out with a boy.’
She paused then added sadly, ‘When he’s in Melbourne.’ She clenched her hands and curved her body over them then straightened and looked at me again. I did not speak.
‘I’m normal. I must be. I was a child and I grew up and I played games and I was smacked. Then I worked and I loved a boy but now … now …’
She leant towards me with an upward pointing finger poised between us.
‘More and more. Every week more. Every day more, I think of things on trams and I can’t stop. I think of eternity. It goes on and on and there’s no end to it. There’s no time when it stops. And I’m in it, in it all the while. It’s so futile, everything. Sometimes I am seated in the corner of a tram and I leave myself, I step out of myself, and I go to the other end of the tram and look at myself crouching up there in a corner with a book I’m not reading. I see myself staring past the book and I think: In a hundred years all that is alive now will be dead. You’ll be dead. I’ll be dead. We’ll all be dead. All the trees and animals that live now will be dead. And I think of space. It is empty forever. It goes on forever and you could fall into it …
‘Sometimes I leave myself in the tram—clattering, clattering all the way and the cars blowing horns—and I leap out and go up and up and up and I can see myself going up. Then I’m only a speck and I’m still going up. And then I am gone.
‘But I’m still in the tram and I get out and go to work and all through the day I don’t think about it. Then in the tram at night, I do. And in my room, I do. In bed all the night and the clock ticking and spider-shadows on the wall and I sit up in the dark and there’s nothing I can see that’s real.’
She stopped speaking, her hands were still. She sat crouched in the chair with her head down, her lovely hair like a curtain concealing her lowered face. She was sobbing.
I rose from my chair and went over to her. I raised her face with my hand and kissed her on the cheek then I went back to my chair and waited a little while till her sobbing stopped.
‘Help me,’ she said, and I could just hear the words.
‘Where are your parents?’ I asked.
‘In Brisbane. They live there.’
‘Do they know all about this?’
‘No, no. It would upset them too much.’
She kept repeating hopelessly, ‘No, no, no, not them, not them .. .’
‘You know,’ I said at last. ‘I get thoughts like that. We must be very much alike. The only difference between us, I think, is that I rule my thoughts; your thoughts rule you. I can forget them and think of other things, you can’t. Now they are beginning to boss you. You’ve lost control, that’s all.’
I told her stories about myself that I thought might comfort her, stories of trial I imagined were similar to her own. She listened, a little relaxed now, able to concentrate. ‘You know how we get sick,’ I went on. ‘Physical sickness—measles, flu, colds, things like that. They’re always cured. Sometimes our mind becomes sick and it can be cured too. Your mind has become sick. Why, I don’t know, but I do know a man who can cure you. He is a doctor, a psychiatrist. You’ll like him. I do. Here’s his card. You call on him tomorrow. I’ll ring him in the morning so he’ll be expecting you. You will call on him, won’t you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good,’ I said, ‘now there is no need to worry.’
She had risen to her feet and I moved to open the door for her.
‘By the way,’ I said, ‘if you wake up tonight and the shadowy things have come, look down at the end of your bed and you will see me sitting there and I’ll be smiling. They’ll go then.’
She looked at me steadily, seriously. ‘I believe you,’ she said.
She turned to me when she was on the veranda and said quietly, ‘I suppose you are wondering what started all this.’
‘I was, but you needn’t tell me if you don’t want to.’
‘I do. I had an illegal operation some months ago. Since then I’ve gradually lost control of my thoughts.’
‘That could be a factor,’ I said.
‘You see, the man I’m going to marry works on a ship. I only see him once every three months. It makes it very hard. We are both saving up to get married.’
‘Get married as soon as you can,’ I said.
I was at her wedding almost a year later. Bewilderment and strain had vanished from her face. The world she looked upon had no terrors.
She gave me a flower from her bouquet. ‘It’s one of those you told me to look for in the grass,’ she said.
27
I began by being paid thirty shillings a week for this column but by requesting increases I persuaded the editor to raise it to three pounds ten at which figure increases stopped.
The work, involving answering letters and interviewing people, took up my entire week and I had no time for other writing. I felt I was poorly paid and decided to discuss this matter with another columnist in the same magazine.
This man, who wrote under the name of Colin Street, was a qualified doctor, a practising sexologist of world fame. His column, though often condemned, was widely read and because of this he managed to survive the attempts of religious bodies to have him removed from the magazine and often more sinister attempts to have him jailed.
He had practised in Harley Street, London, for many years, had written books on sex problems and was often quoted in works by similar authorities.
I travelled to Sydney in the truck of a haulier I knew and set off to find his flat in Elizabeth Bay. After threading my way through twisting streets that clambered up and down between the houses, I found myself confronting a block of flats that I felt resembled a warren for rabbits rather than homes for people.
It was dingy and forbidding. Granite steps led up to doors, brass-knockered and peeling, behind which I sensed dry aspidistras stood without movement in an atmosphere of marble clocks and high plaster ceilings moulded and scrolled with cherubs and acanthus leaves.
I knocked on one of the doors which was opened by a middle-aged housekeeper with the face of one trained in reticence. Her eyes asked no question of me, conveyed no welcome. They observed me and waited.
I gave her my name, told her I had an appointment with Colin Street and followed her down a carpeted hall after her flat, expressionless ‘Come in’ had accepted my explanation.
She took me through a long room lined with sideboards laden with silverware. There were ornate teapots, fruit bowls, urns, jugs and trays. Two of the sideboards were crowded with nothing but cruets. Each cruet was an assemblage of four related containers. Pepper, salt, mustard and Worcester sauce bottles were bound together by silver rings welded to a centre stem crowned by handles enriched by the clasp of hands now dead.
They stood in serried rows, paraded as symbols of a period that must have witnessed their present owner’s greatest influence and importance.
All the silverware gleamed from frequent polishing. The rich wood of the sideboard bore no dust. The room was heavy with silence and nostalgia and the perfume of lavender leaves confined in muslin sachets lying somewhere within the sideboard drawers.
There were no faces here, no people, only things.
The next room into which the housekeeper led me was a lounge, a dark brown lounge of panelled walls and book-cases and big chairs upholstered in leather. Large windows divided one of the walls and through these I could see the squares and angles of thrusting buildings similar to the one I was in.
The housekeeper left me and in a minute a man walked in. He came straight up to me with extended hand holding towards me a packet of cigarettes.
‘Do you smoke and will you?’ he asked.
His appearance had disconcerted me. I fumbled with the cigarette projecting from the packet he held while I adjusted myself to impressions I had not expected.
He was a tall man, over six foot high, and wore a dark lounge suit too small for him. He had long, thin legs upon which rested a barrel of a body. The strained buttons of his vest bore witness to its bulk and looseness.
His trousers formed a cloth cup for it before they stretched their stems down towards his shining black shoes where they stopped above his ankles and the blue socks that covered them.
He had no neck. His head nestled between shoulders that drooped away from his ears like the curves of an umbrella. His cheekbones were wider apart than his temples. He wore glasses and had a squared, black moustache.
He held the flame of a gold lighter to my cigarette then sank back into one of the leather armchairs, one leg extended before him, the other bent back so that its knee was higher than the seat of the chair.
‘Ah!’ he exclaimed softly as if welcoming rest.
At first he couldn’t face my gaze with comfort. He looked at the ceiling while speaking, the tips of his fingers together. When, after a while, he had assessed the quality of my mind and found it inferior to his own, his gaze came down to me. He raised himself erect in the chair and kept his dark, faintly amused eyes directly on mine, confident now in his feeling of superiority.
I told him why I was visiting him, explained that I felt I was being underpaid and that a comparison with the figure he was receiving might enable him to suggest a fair payment for me.
‘It’s not a matter of the worth of your articles,’ he said. ‘We are all paid according to dominance. Your stature as a personality capable of convincing is the measure of your value. I suggest you are being paid what you are worth. What did you say you were getting, again?’
‘Three pounds ten.’
‘Three ten—yes, that’s right. Well, I’m paid fifteen pounds for the same number of words but my payment is a tribute to my ability to convince the editor I am worth that. You have no such ability therefore you will always be paid what I would regard as a paltry fee. I wouldn’t worry about it if I were you. Be content with what you are. The world needs people such as you to supply comfort to people whose needs are greater than yours.’
As he spoke I experienced a feeling of great pleasure. An entomologist discovering some rare wasp of which he had read but never seen would experience such a feeling, I thought. I wanted this man to continue expressing views incredible to me so that through him I would understand the type of mind he represented. I was afraid that he might say something with which I agreed and thus deprive me of revelation.
‘You feel then it is my duty to live in poverty so that others can live in luxury?’ I said. ‘You don’t think there is enough for us all, is that how it is?’
‘It’s not a matter of there not being enough,’ he said patiently. ‘There’s always enough provided people are content with what they deserve. You don’t deserve as much as I do. My charlady, for instance, can live in a room with five people. Her nerves are different from mine. She is content and happy living in a room with five people. Should I strive to deprive her of an existence that is in keeping with her temperament and needs and is satisfactory to her with the object of substituting a life like mine with the luxuries I need? Rubbish! She would be most unhappy.
‘I have two Rolls Royces,’ he went on, settling back in his chair again. ‘I have never had the desire to travel in two cars at once but I need two in case one breaks down. Since for my contentment and happiness and as aids to my special skills I need two Rolls Royces I should have them. My charlady should have a room with five people. It makes her a better charlady. Madame Melba couldn’t have lived like my charlady. If she did she wouldn’t have been able to sing. She needed luxury. Therefore it is our duty to keep her in luxury merely for the privilege of hearing her sing.’
‘You don’t think I should be kept in luxury?’
‘Certainly not. You are neatly dressed even though your clothes are cheap. You have expressed your taste in them. You are not starving. You would be most unhappy living in apartments such as these. Your happiness lies in an identification with the upward struggle of Man, to use a hackneyed and ambiguous phrase I read in one of your articles. You find pleasure in commiserating with the poor. You could never commiserate from a position such as mine; it would be in bad taste. Any worthwhile contribution you make to life will be as a result of poverty. You must preserve poverty since from it you have developed talent.
‘When you first mentioned the question of your salary to me you did it self-consciously as if by the very mention of money you were revealing a weakness in your character. In fact you were almost apologetic. You suggested you were worth more while at the same time there was a feeling within you that you were lucky to be paid anything at all.
‘No, you are receiving ample for people on your level of character. What you are contributing doesn’t matter at all. It is a matter of one’s capacity to convince others of the value of one’s work, not of its actual value. It is a matter of one’s capacity to survive contentedly and with submission on the level allotted one by society. To lift you to my world, even if that were possible, would be to render you a disservice. You would be unhappy. You would squander your money on useless things. You would lose your incentive to write. It is necessary and proper that you should always be on the breadline. It supplies the spur you need. Artists thrive on poverty; money and comfort destroys them.’
I smiled at him.
‘That’s better,’ he said. ‘Over the years you have developed defensive measures I find interesting. I’m sorry I can’t invite you to stay to dinner. I’m a diabetic and have special meals. In any case I like eating alone.’
I made a move to rise.
‘No, don’t go,’ he said raising his huge pale hand with its long fingers. ‘We’ll have a glass of Madeira. I’m enjoying your company.’
He took a bottle of wine from a cabinet and poured two glasses, one of which he handed to me. He lit another cigarette.
‘These cigarettes are special ones. You would probably enjoy your own better.’
‘Are they made specially for you?’ I asked.
‘Yes. They have my monogram on them.’
He began pacing the room. ‘Don’t think for a moment,’ he resumed his conversation, ‘that I don’t know what it is to go hungry. I do. My father was a Pole who ran away from Poland after being fired on by border guards. I was only twelve at the time. We lived in England then came out to Australia when I was eighteen.
‘My father did well in the clothing trade here. I was the youngest son and was thus the only one to benefit from his prosperity. He was able to give me a university education. My brothers were not so fortunate. I went back to England and opened a practice in Harley Street. I had to allow myself sixpence for breakfast and sixpence for lunch until I became established. I know what it is to be without money. That is why I value it.’
He paused in his pacing and looked out of the window. In a moment he turned to me again.
‘I succeeded,’ he said. ‘When I left England to come back to Australia I was employing twenty servants, owned a building in Harley Street and I also had a mansion in the country.
‘An agent in London recently wrote to me with an offer to sell my two English homes for fifteen thousand pounds each. I accepted his offer but this morning I see they are going to devalu
e the pound. I immediately cabled him to stop the sale. What would thirty thousand pounds in cash be worth to me if it dropped in value!’
‘Wouldn’t that affect everybody?’ I asked. ‘You’d still be wealthy.’
‘You know nothing about money,’ he said shortly.
He paused in thought, ‘Money!’ he murmured looking at the floor. He turned his head and looked at me, ‘What would you do with it, I wonder?’
‘I know a man,’ he went on briskly, resuming his pacing. ‘I was asked to treat him for nothing. He had been out of work and was starting on a job at twelve pounds a week. Do you know what that man did? He gave twenty-seven pounds ten for a wireless, and he hadn’t even started on the job.’
‘You have a wireless,’ I said. ‘Why begrudge him one?’ ‘Why!’ he exclaimed in astonishment. ‘Even I would think twice before giving twenty-seven pounds ten for a wireless.’
‘Do you mean to tell me you would deprive yourself of anything you want?’ I asked. ‘Be honest. You buy everything you want.’
‘I certainly do not.’
‘Then you are hoarding money like a miser.’
‘I must think of my old age,’ he defended himself. ‘I must consider the future.’
‘Yes, and I must consider my future too. That’s why I came to you.’
‘You have nothing to lose,’ he said. ‘With nothing to lose there is no worry. Financial disaster can never strike you. It could strike me. My money is not secure. I must strive to make it so. Wealth brings with it great responsibilities of which you have no knowledge. Your state demands no effort or strain to preserve it. All your life you will continue to live on a level of existence suitable to you. It is not certain that the same could be said of me.’
He walked the length of the room waving his soft, capable hand in front of him. ‘Fortunately I am a good business man. I proved it in England. I still own my homes there. Yes,’ he grew pensive. ‘When I left there I drove in a Rolls Royce and had a chauffeur at thirty shillings a week.’
‘What a paltry salary!’ I commented.
In Mine Own Heart Page 25