by Thea Astley
Not a word.
VII
I refuse to admit to failure.
Driving on to the coast I examine my progress so far.
Gaden Lockyer’s youthful workplace, the Jericho Flats Joint Stock Bank, had been submerged by a small supermarket and carpark—no frills and only family sized. The town map of Jericho Flats assured me of that. I have failed to enter his settler hut—and when I say “enter,” I mean merge with.
Are the people I encounter beginning to regard me askance from the moment I open my mouth? I am certain I look less of a negative that I did at eighteen. One of Seb’s husbandly jokes was to say, “You’re so fair, Belle, it’s as if you’re not all there.” Gales of manly laughter to follow.
As I stab my foot on the accelerator I comfort myself that I am a genuine quester probing the unknowns of a district’s past. There was nothing strange about Fawcett or Amundsen or Stanley except their obsessions and a delighted public (cheers! cheers!) regarded their obsessions as commendable. Expansion of territory. Profits and spoils of colonialism. Scientific interest. All the shabby reasons with which political leaders manage to cloak their greed in glory. Make it personal and it becomes a bad joke, a laugh. What is lesser about my own exploration?
And hello coast, at last, Sugarville, and intolerable heat boring down on the lazy river between fields of sweetgrass with the whole plastic enclosing blue turning the town into a sauna.
In my Fawcett-Stanley-Amundsen role I pitch camp at a motel, shower, eat lunch in a vegetarian café that is playing headbanger tapes and make for the local newspaper and its files ready to flash my purloined press card. I am dressed for the part in tailored skirt and shirt and carry a businesslike briefcase so that I can seduce their reluctance. An hour there reveals notice of daughters’ marriages and a photograph of Mr. Lockyer presenting an award at the Chamber of Commerce. In the Historical Society’s rooms above the School of Arts, the lode is richer. I am bemused by a studio portrait of ten town worthies taken against drapes. There’s a mass of suit and vest and watchchain and unstated sweat, the faces disposed into expressions of forward-looking gravity, a preponderance of which is directed by Mr. Gaden Lockyer, the Member for Walla, center front row, who is fixing the camera with an ancient mariner eye of political purpose. Gaden, how could you?
Where is that quirk of a smile that directs self-mockery at the whole pretentious business?
Are you worried?
The moment when you are about to be attacked in Parliament for political graft is close.
Is it the man to your right or left for whom you achieve preference?
I dig more deeply and discover the gentleman on your right is a mill-owner for whom you have finagled ten new miles of roadway and rail-track and who has gratefully advanced you the money to move into a town house whose spaciousness and style would have been beyond your purse. In fact, within another half hour I unearth two photographs of house and prize-winning gardens where the sweep of lawn and shadow velvet under the massed poincianas seems edenic.
Better, the back of the photograph has a faded inked address.
It is nearly six o’clock when I drive round in the stored-up heat of the day to find the right street and the right number.
The house is still there. My God, it’s still there, still with its splendid garden but no sign of Mr. Lockyer and his wife, with their aging smiles, standing by the veranda steps as they had in that early photograph, her sunshade dipping against a clump of frangipani. It’s what they call a genuine old Queenslander, roof pulled down like a hat brim over the wide cool verandas, set back in an acre of palms and hibiscus, its trellised porches half hidden by bougainvillea and allamanda vines. It has been loved right into this decade and its paint-slick graciousness would make any real-estate agent slobber. Parked across the road from its gate, eyeing its ecstatic green shadows, its almost timeless splendor, I am filled with a kind of lust myself, not to possess but to be possessed by. The roof is new, I can see, but gable and rail decorations have been preserved and even the broad flight of steps leading up from the purpling lawn, although perhaps replaced over eight decades of Wets, retains its essential sense of welcome. It is as if nothing has disturbed this place between then and now.
At this penultimate stopping place I sit and smoke a quiet cigarette, wondering if my parked car excites attention, if I will be cautioned for loitering. Lockyer’s journal is stacked beside me on the passenger seat and I pick up the last of the notebooks and thumb through until I come to one of the later entries. It is now 1912. Now. Then and now. There is a Euclidean immutability about any day in any year. Moments capture their own immortality and remain, I decide, static.
… if a day in 1912 is drawn to meet a day in …
August 15th, he writes in that determined cursive I now know as well as my own nervous scrawl and which, I confess, I can counterfeit with accuracy, today is the day I have decided to retire from public life. It has been decided for me. It is only seven years since I received the mandate of the electorate but I feel there is little I can achieve in a country so pig-headedly individualistic and conservative. I can’t sleep. Betsy snores these days so I get up, make myself tea and take it out onto the veranda. This is the end of it, then. I am writing this between sips. In the morning dark, the odd lights from other houses prick out across the township and I sit here smoking my pipe and watching the garden, all those trees and shrubs we have tended so lovingly, assuming their daytime shapes.
The hills are a long way off. There is a flatness about this town that exactly echoes my spirit. As the garden solidifies with sunrise, a small wind saturated with smells of cane and fish comes from the river. The last day. I have drafted my letter of resignation. I have explained my part in this latest business venture with regard to the mill. I deny completely any implications of self-interest or fraudulent handling of monies in the Chillagoe affair. Everything I did was for the ultimate benefit of this State. My letter will be posted today.
There are clouds like pink fish swimming above dawnlight.
I’m alone but feel not alone. I’m aware that the Opposition has its spies. Could they stoop so low as to watch my house?
Same day, night. There was someone watching me beyond the picket fence and as it grew lighter I walked down the path between the palms to look over the gate. Oddly enough I wasn’t afraid. And there was no one there. No one, though I sensed someone. I could have sworn there was a shape across the trackway watching me at the gate and I was reminded of that time, so long ago now, when I imagined a girl or woman walking before me in the streets of Rockhampton, taking tea in the old café and vanishing. All my years telescope and blur as I weep. Thank God no one can see me. What has it all been for, this public life, to end so shadowed by the implications of disgrace? It’s so brief. It’s so nothing.
It’s me watching, Gaden. Me.
The sun has opened up every shadowy cave in the garden before its last western plunge. Then it dies. I am aware how obtrusive my presence is, trying to pluck up the nervous energy of my idiocy to get out of the car, go through that gate and knock on that door.
Tomorrow, I tell myself. Tomorrow.
I’ve no excuse for this. I know next morning I have no excuse, though by now I’ve discovered the name of the present owner of the house and have prepared an elaborate fabrication for the telephone call I shall shortly make.
Journalists can intrude anywhere. My camera is glutted with film. Its shutter longs to wink at everything it passes. I might have mentioned that I have a press card borrowed from a nervous cub reporter. Well, actually, that’s a lie too. I didn’t borrow it. She left it lying around in the canteen. I do wish that phrase it takes a thief et cetera wouldn’t keep surfacing. I refuse to think of Gaden Lockyer MP as corrupt despite the fact that this country, from its very beginnings, has been built and thrives on scam and corruption.
Is there so much difference between then and now, especially as my now will soon be then; or his then my now, whicheve
r way the day takes me.
Seb was always rude about journalists, perhaps because his was the sort of job that attracted no media attention. Television appearances have the gutsy force of public baptism. Made it! Criminals become folk heroes, victims scum. My amiable eccentricities must be regarded as merely amiable. Even mother has had her share of media attention if only from publications like the Banana Bowl Weekly or the Dingo Express. Criminals and eccentrics—that’s what the media love. Once in Brisbane when I was a schoolgirl I went shopping with Aunt Marie who had arranged to meet me at the foot of the escalator in a large department store. As I stood there waiting for her return from another department, fingering the scarves, examining the perfume racks, I was stunned to see my aunt appear at the top of the escalator, survey the milling crowds on the midday ground floor and burst into song. My aunt has a rotund and thrilling soprano. She sang as much of “One Fine Day” as she could fit in before the escalator brought her to the bottom. Shoppers were riveted. They began to applaud. I slunk away to the street entrance, wanting to die.
Sorry, Aunt Marie. Sorry about that. I understand now. I really understand.
The current owner of the house is called Solferino. Signor Solferino is at work in his real estate agency uptown. Signora Solferino is at home and expecting me, though when her door opens on my twitching (it’s only excitement!) face, “Yes?” she asks too curiously as if I am not what she expected. The door opened behind her displays the gleam of costly possessions.
I remind her of my call. I flash the press card. I repeat my telephone lies.
My paper, I explain, has been co-opted to do a series on beautiful homes of the north for Belle, Vogue, Interiors, Architecture Now. I make up a couple more titles as I go along. Merely utter the word “house” and add a superlative. This is socially acceptable pornography. “The articles we are compiling will be syndicated throughout these magazines,” I say. “And we need pictures.”
I’m taking a risk. Signora Solferino has the sharp look a real estate agent’s wife needs. If I had thought this thing through more thoroughly, had known all the facts, I would have written weeks before. A spot of letterhead opens lots of doors.
She notes my Ricoh, my clipboard, my briefcase. I don’t look like a mugger, I’m too much of a negative. But I could be the vanguard. Still, she invites me in. (When I want to be carried over the threshold!)
I hesitate skillfully. “Are you sure?”
We are doing, I tell her, ten houses only and hers is the only one chosen in this town. The melting point!
I detect a tailfin flicker of vanity and pleasure cross her expensive facial and “Yes, of course. Come in. Please,” she says. “Really,” she says.
After that thudder of an opener, I am barely aware of her.
I am entering Mr. Gaden Lockyer’s penultimate front door and attaining—was it his center?—his career point of peak and decline.
The proportions of the room into which she leads me are beautiful. A wide hallway cuts the house in two but the rooms branching off are large and airy, I can see, looking past the elegant Solferino shoulder at other open doorways. I unstrap my camera, adjust various levers and timers and take several snaps, angling my lens at green-filled windows, half-opened doors, a swoop of archway between living and dining rooms. “Beautiful,” I keep murmuring, giving her the word like a Valium shot. “A splendid example of its period. Absolutely splendid.” I toss in terms like “finial,” “architrave,” “soffit.” I put down my camera and draw small sketches of wooden ornamentation. Cautiously I mention historical interest and confess that this, too, will be background to the article.
“I don’t know a thing about the earlier owners,” the signora says. She pats glossy hair as if ignorance is virtuous. “My husband saw it as a good investment, what with overseas buyers coming here and so on. It wasn’t really rundown when we bought it. Paul has a wonderful eye for a good buy.”
I bet he had, I think nastily. And the signora isn’t a bad buy herself with those leggy good looks and Poppeia profile. And I bet, too, he wears a gold chain and a silk shirt open to the navel. “That’s Paul,” she says, becoming matey, pointing to an overlarge family portrait in decorator tints and my God he does wear a gold chain.
Their flashy latinate brilliance makes me paler than ever.
“We had that taken in the garden just after we bought. Of course we probably won’t keep the place, you know. Not with this market. It would be madness, wouldn’t it?” I agree it would be madness. “Especially when Ricky and Francesca have finished school. I mean who wants a place this big?”
“Yes, who?” I agree. I am adjusting flashlights, checking distances.
“Do you mind?” I ask, snapping off two of her posed against the baronial table, a sop to her vanity. Then moving through the archway back into the hall I make quick complimentary sounds to cover the fact that I am photographing far too much, and really odd things like the angle of floor meeting doorway, ceilings, perceived glimpses of the back garden through a rear door.
I’m wrong, baby, wrong! You can never take enough photos, especially if you promise copies. She points out even better angles. She leads me to the master bedroom (her term), the children’s rooms, the sun porch, the kitchen, pantry, bathroom and laundry. I snap the lot. Gaden is nowhere to be felt, not with her stagey animation, her shiny assurance.
She demands publication dates. Her eyes are a bold shade of brown and challenge.
I suggest a couple of months. “We’re calling it ‘Pioneer Splendour.’ Do you like that?” She likes that. “You’ll be sent copies, of course.” She smiles. “But there are three more houses to do. Two in Cairns and one in Townsville. I’ll certainly let you know. You’ve been more than kind.”
She believes me.
“We’ve had the kitchen and bathroom done up,” she says, “as I’m sure you noticed. Service areas are so important to potential buyers.”
“Lovely,” I murmur. “Lovely. But it’s a pity in a way.”
Her eyes harden.
“What way?”
“Well, we had rather hoped to feature the colonial straggler mum coping despite.” We both laugh lightly at the idiocy of this. “What was in the bathroom when you bought the place?”
“You won’t believe this,” she says. “A chip heater.”
I certainly believe her. I send mental messages to mother.
“But that would have made the most marvelous illustration! Coupled, of course, with what you’ve done. Arduousness of pioneering and all that. Drover’s wife stuff. Wife chopping the kindling. I suppose you’ve read The Drover’s Wife?”
“No,” she admits. “I can’t say I have. Best seller?”
“Sort of,” I say.
“And I certainly haven’t chopped kindling!” More pals-together mirth. Her hands are heavy with rings. She seems repelled by the idea of chopping anything.
“Do you know,” she says, “that old heater’s still up in the shed. We kept the shed. Color, you know. Paul had thought he might do the heater up and sell it. Those old meat safes fetch a fortune. Heaters! Well!”
I wish she would leave me. I want her and her money-gabble eliminated, dissolved. Her presence has emptied the house of all ghosts which, I suspect, are wavering outside windows and doors, longing for her absence. I take more photos of the refurbished kitchen (pine veneer and calico-look Formica), the back veranda as we walk across, the back steps with a sudden glimpse of Gaden Lockyer, once the signora has headed up the lawn, standing in contemplative fashion leaning against a supporting post, tapping his pipe out on the railing. Will he emerge in the developed film or remain a negative like me?
We move swiftly through the luxuriant garden to what was once a chicken shed.
“It’s in there,” the signora says, tucking rich tresses back, pointing for my nosy camera and then becoming involved with a closer inspection of her nail lacquer.
“What is?” I have been distracted by the saddened face of my disgraced lov
er.
“The chip heater. I told you.”
I am dragging the door open before she can even look up from her high-gloss hands.
The heater is so ancient it might have warmed water for Pliny’s up-country farm. It certainly warmed water for Gaden and Betsy. Despite rust and years it retains its shape. The flue has been detached and is propped against the wall awaiting my next move. One of my hands, quite of its own volition, reaches out and strokes the firebox door, touching the knob his hand once touched.
“I’ll buy it,” I say instantly.
“Good heavens!” The signora tears her attention from a chipped plum talon. Has my approach been too crude? Or not crude enough? “I don’t know about that. I’ll have to ask …”
I squat on the earthen floor of the chicken shed and open the firebox.
“Seventy,” I say. Things are becoming vulgar.
“Well,” she worries.
“Eighty. Cash. Now.” It is a mistake to bid higher with people like this. They attribute an unjustified worth when the value for the bidder is purely personal.
“Done,” she agrees with a girlish flutter and light tinkle. “Done.”
We seal the bargain with a coffee in the laminated kitchen which Gaden leaves the moment we enter. Her husband, apprised at his office of the sale, arrives within the quarter hour to help load the heater into the car trunk which refuses to close and has to be lashed with rope into a semi-shut position. The signor’s teeth and chain both gleam as he gives my car’s hi-gloss an over-familiar slap. He is assessing my blondeness rather too intensely.
“Looking for color, are we?” he asks unfortunately and with fulsome house-side manner. “Now if you were looking for real estate I could really help.” His hand comes to pause on my shoulder and his wife watches his hand.
“The only place,” I say, “that would interest me would be yours.” I nod toward the bungalow behind us whose only horror is that he lives there and his hand shifts away.