Fishing in the Styx

by Ruth Park

  ‘Would you like my scapular, chickie?’ he asked tenderly as I prepared to set off for my Herald appointment. ‘Just for good luck? I’m told it was blessed by a one-eyed bishop, and you know what that means.’

  Off we went to the city, by now a little nervous. Somewhere in the hallowed upper halls of the old Herald building in Hunter Street, I bumped into Old Preposterous, who gave me a sour, crumpled stare. He probably thought I was leaving rather than arriving to hear whatever news there was.

  ‘There’ll be trouble,’ he said out of the blue. ‘Terrible trouble. Oh, I told them, you may be sure.’

  With that he doddered off, leaving me feeling rather as I had as a child, when eight out of ten adult utterances seemed to me to be raving potty. Shaken, I went on my way, finding at last a palatial office and an agreeable elderly gentleman called Mr Threlfall, who informed me that I was one of twenty-eight finalists.

  ‘In which section, please?’

  ‘Good God, did you enter more than one?’

  ‘Everything except the war novel,’ I confessed.

  It was revealed that I was, incredibly, a finalist in the novel competition. I tottered out to rejoin the boys, twitching restlessly from spot to spot in the Herald’s classic portico.

  ‘Oh, crikey, I can’t believe it.’

  ‘Mr Threlfall couldn’t believe it either. I could tell by the way his nose swivelled around. He thought I am too young, too goofy … something or other.’

  I could not bring myself to tell them of my enigmatic encounter with Old Preposterous. I had no clue at all about the meaning of his words, but I suspected they indicated I was a lot closer to the prize money than twenty-eighth.

  The Herald management kept us waiting for a week before they called me in and told me that The Harp in the South had won first prize. Then, with a hushed air I was led into the office of the managing director, Rupert Henderson, a dark and terrifying person who fixed me with a practised glare and with little preamble offered me a job on the Herald at £20 a week. As I was a girl who earned more like £20 a month, this sum was the stuff of fantasy.

  ‘But I have two little children,’ I said, faintly.

  ‘Good heavens!’ he cried, disgusted at the very idea that children could get between me and the Herald. ‘Get a nanny or something!’

  I could see he thought I was soft in the head when I declined. He spun his chair around and presented his back to me. Not knowing what else to do, I tiptoed out. This extraordinary procedure was Mr Henderson’s manner of indicating extreme rage. It happened to me several times in succeeding years, but regrettably I saw it not as a majestic gesture of contempt but as a refined form of mooning, or the presenting of the bare butt to the disapproved person, and went away chortling.

  ‘If you really want to take that job, I’ll look after the kids,’ said my husband. I knew he would have done it, and done it well. He was much better with babies and very young children than I was, for he had been nursemaid and caregiver to all his mother’s younger children. He was an old hand at croup and colic, and he had perfected mysterious ways for putting infant howlers to sleep.

  ‘And I’d make a beaut nanny,’ added Beres. ‘Say the word.’

  Though appreciating their offers, I wished to look after Anne and Rory myself. I liked those little creatures, and liked being around them. As a member of a largely female family, I had no damnfool ideas about maternalism, a concept created by men so that they would never have to endure the murderous tyranny of the infant. Though I loved all my children as babies, and was tigerishly defensive of their welfare, they did not become interesting to me until they got up on their pins and began to show personality. My children were now at charming and ever-changing ages. I did not intend to miss any of their company.

  Nevertheless, it was fortunate, though by chance, that the children were in New Zealand, for this left me free to cope with a most painful and incomprehensible circumstance.

  Probably people who win large lottery prizes felt as we did. Having got by on the barest minimum income for almost five years, £2000 seemed a colossal sum to us. It was certainly enough to put a deposit on a home. How I wanted a little house! The desire burned in me day and night. Small enough to put in a walnut shell – I didn’t care. Just as long as it had a safe place for Anne and Rory to play, a little garden where I could grow things, and privacy. I had spent years almost in the pockets of other people, often people alien to me, finding that contiguity is not cosy, but the root cause of much human dissension.

  Already D’Arcy and I could see that house in our imaginations. We dreamed and built on those dreams like any young couple.

  ‘In my mind’s eye I can see a whole wall of filing cabinets for our writing stuff.’

  ‘Oh, yes! I’m just so tired of keeping my papers in a suitcase under the bed.’

  ‘And a desk.’

  ‘Two desks.’

  ‘Eh? Oh, yeah, two desks.’

  We did not guess that the prizemoney would not only be taxed, but that provisional tax would also be charged as though I were bound to win the same prize the following year. I was to appeal to the Tax Department without success.

  What I eventually received was less than £800, but nevertheless that was a windfall which proved a turning point in our life together.

  On December 28, the Herald announced the results of the novel section, giving also synopses of the three winning novels. This first literary competition had drawn a magnificent response; many of the runners-up, which were also serialised, seemed to me stronger than the prizewinners. But judges are judges. Messrs A, B, and Madame C will not choose the same books as Messrs D, E, and F. It was my luck, and Jon Cleary’s luck, to have our work judged first and second, and thus be given strong impetus in careers already precariously established. All three prizewinners were guaranteed publication by Angus & Robertson Ltd, then the country’s oldest and most prestigious publishing house.

  Almost at once a hideous clamour burst out, not only in the literary world, but in Australia at large, and this on the basis of the synopsis only of The Harp in the South.

  Normally I would not enlarge on this extraordinary row, for after all it happened long ago and far away, and very nearly in another galaxy. But it is, in its way, a unique psychological study of the popular mores of the late 1940s and early 1950s of this century. Old Preposterous, hardnosed journalist attuned to that peculiar thing, the reading public’s common denominator, was right. There was trouble.

  The first nick of the knife at my throat came in a church, where D’Arcy and I attended Mass. It was a thanksgiving Mass for us. D’Arcy, as I have said, was extremely devout.

  We were stricken when the celebrant devoted his sermon to the Herald; its scandalous judgements; wicked books; immorality in print and to what it would lead; young women and their conscienceless slandering of that great race, the Irish. Nay, it was his sincere belief that I had taken the axe to the foundations of Ireland itself, island of saints and scholars.

  ‘Can you believe this?’ hissed my husband.

  The priest was now well away on Our Lady and her chaste example to all. He implied strongly that in her lifetime she would never have stooped to writing a book of any kind, let alone that to be published in the Herald.

  ‘Ah, that a great newspaper should …’

  ‘It’s not fair!’ I muttered. ‘He hasn’t even read it!’

  ‘Bugger needs a poke in his godly snoot.’

  Ten years later I would have risen and marched out down the centre aisle, but then I was so shocked, so humiliated I felt faint. My husband was all for going around to the vestry and pulling the priest’s biretta down over his lugs, but I needed him to lean on on the homeward journey, for my knees intermittently gave way.

  ‘Why? Why?’

  ‘Don’t ask me. Gone mad with all that celibacy.’

  The next day Mr Threlfall rang, gentlemanly creature, who confessed that he’d had the legs knocked from under him by the torrent of phone ca
lls, telegrams and mail the Herald had received since the announcement.

  ‘Do you want me to send some of it on to you?’

  ‘My goodness, no! Please read it yourself, Mr Threlfall.’

  ‘Well, as a matter of fact, we have … and well … it’s quite, quite baffling …’

  Serialisation commenced to the accompaniment of appalling hullabaloo. True, of the letters to the newspaper the majority were in favour of the book; it was just that the letters against were far more forceful, angry and abusive. My distress was aggravated by the fact that I had no idea of what people were objecting to. The gravamen of their complaints varied perplexingly. Conclusive statements were made that Sydney had no slums, therefore the novel was a cruel fantasy. Other correspondents maintained that yes, there were slums, but they were populated exclusively by criminals and deadbeats. The novel, which dealt with decent people, was therefore a sentimental fantasy.

  Some took a stern, political view of me rather than the book.

  Because I wrote about poor people I was a Communist. On the other hand because I wrote about poor people I was a capitalist – I wrote about them only to jeer, or, alternatively, to make money.

  The book was immoral, filthy in fact, though no specific filth was ever mentioned.

  Some letters were well-intentioned and written by people who gave their names and addresses. The filth-protestors mostly signed their letters Yours Prayerfully, A Christian. Or, Catholic Mother, and gave no addresses.

  I have often wondered how these timorous souls would react to the prospect of martyrdom.

  To those correspondents who were patently well meaning, I wrote to suggest we form an organisation liaised with the City Council and various social services departments, which could work to improve the lot of the underprivileged whose daily lot was so bad it should not be written about. But I never had a taker.

  Similarly, when I offered a personally conducted tour of Surry Hills and adjacent slums to those who maintained there were no such places, I had only one answer. This was from the beautiful little Welshwoman, Pixie O’Harris, who devoted most of her life to producing comforting artwork for children, especially sick children. Pixie did not simply inspect Surry Hills. She organised a vociferous group that over weeks and months harassed the City Council and the Housing Department into accelerating their sluggish slum-clearance programmes. Much of the public housing in the Surry Hills–Redfern area owes its genesis to Pixie O’Harris and her energetic friends.

  It was a bad, agitating time, full of conflicting currents. More than anything else I was perturbed by the writer Miles Franklin’s mysterious enmity. I can see her yet – slight little lady, spine ruler-straight, rimless glasses, an ornamental hat set straight across a fine forehead and still dark hair, a seventyish woman, to whom I was introduced at some literary bunfight. I was delighted to meet her, for although she had published so little, she was (and is) one of the legendary figures of Australian literature. She responded to the introduction mutely. With a brisk nod of acknowledgement she moved away.

  At that time I did not know she was an unsuccessful entrant in the Sydney Morning Herald’s novel competition. Still, not for a moment can I believe that disappointment could have been the only cause of her untiring hatred. There was something obsessional about it, for although she was openly and venomously defamatory about everything I wrote, my personal life, and even my appearance, it seems she continued to read my books, view or listen to my plays, even attend any function where I was speaking. Thus she fed her inexplicable ire for years.

  What was the reason for such an intelligent woman’s capitulation to malice? Was I a symbol of something she detested? Or something she had missed and lost? I sometimes think it might have been the latter, for although she was cruelly disparaging of most women writers, the only other person of whom I know, and whom she actively traduced for a long period, was the clever and charming sixteen-year-old, Catherine Gaskin, whose first book was a bestseller, and who went on to write many others.

  This darkness in Miss Franklin has not been adequately addressed by her biographers. The question remains why a person who was, in several ways, an exemplar of the old-fashioned virtues, would indulge herself in so base a manner.

  We looked forward with nervous excitement to the publication of The Harp in the South by a real publisher.

  ‘Our first book!’ exulted Beres.

  But even that was a disturbing matter. Beatrice Davis, senior editor of Angus & Robertson Ltd, sent galleys by the Herald, told me, ‘It’s not the kind of book A & R cares to publish but we have a gentleman’s agreement with the Herald.’

  Even then I suspected that a reluctant publisher is no better than no publisher at all, and left Angus & Robertson in deep dismay.

  A week later I had a cable from London. As soon as galley proofs were obtainable we had airmailed a set to Michael Joseph Ltd, whose booklist I had always admired. Michael Joseph had H.E. Bates, hadn’t he?

  The cable shook me.

  HARP IN THE SOUTH SUPERB MAGNIFICENT STOP EXCEPTING HOW GREEN WAS MY VALLEY BEST NOVEL MICHAEL JOSEPH HAS HAD PRINTING DOUBLED ROBERT LUSTY.

  After Angus & Robertson’s blunt expression of indifference this was too much. Weeping, I babbled, ‘I don’t understand publishers. I’m going back to newspaper work.’

  D’Arcy was decoding the cable. ‘This means they’ve accepted the book. We know that much, anyway.’

  Tremulously we celebrated. Would this be the big break for which we longed? But how could two publishers have such different opinions?

  A week later a delayed letter from Michael Joseph himself arrived, enthusiastically accepting the book and enclosing a contract – as fair as all subsequent contracts from this publishing house were to be.

  Later Sir Robert told me how, home in bed with the flu, he had read the Herald galleys, reached for the phone and increased that print order. A reserved, stately man, Lusty was the active spirit of Michael Joseph Ltd, and later of Hutchinson’s huge operation.

  On the same day as the cable I received an English letter addressed to The Harpy in the South, which was bad enough. But worse was the fact that it came straight to me without any readdressing or Please Forwards.

  In a high state of confusion, I no longer knew which way to turn. I was, I think, nervously overwrought almost to extremis. Yet at this time I met many wonderful people, and made four or five friends whose loyalty lasted a lifetime. The trouble was that without warning my trust in people had been publicly and severely damaged. Not until more than twenty years later did I trust them again, but then I approached humankind along a different road.

  D’Arcy could not understand the extent of my agitation. He burned obscene letters, wrote fiery answers to the sanctimonious, cursed Earnest Christian and Catholic Grandmother.

  ‘Oh, let the silly bastards go hang!’ he fumed. ‘What’s the matter with you? Michael Joseph loves the book, and you’ve just heard that the New York agent has sold the novel to Houghton Mifflin in Boston. Are you jumping out of your skin? No, you’re having fits about something said by some unknown knucklehead who not only has never gone without a meal but won’t admit there are thousands of people who have and do. I thought you had more nous.’

  ‘You don’t understand.’

  ‘I do. Maybe more than you.’

  ‘Then why don’t you postpone your trip?’

  Day by day, as I watched him prepare to go off with Beres, leaving me to the wolf pack, my resentment had grown. I believed it his husbandly duty to remain and support me in my tribulation, and the longer he did not offer to do so, the madder I became.

  ‘You’d only have to put it off for six weeks.’

  ‘But I can’t. You know very well Beres is going off in a month.’

  Beres had agreed to help out with the circus while it was in winter quarters. He had a rare touch with elephants.

  Did I say that I needed D’Arcy’s presence, that though I conceded he might understand my agitation, he di
dn’t understand it enough? No, I snapped, ‘There is plenty in life external to Beres!’

  ‘Yes, but he makes it all such fun,’ he explained, putting his arms around me. He was perfectly correct about Beres; I was the last person to deny it, so, having no answer, I made myself into a plank and stayed that way until his arms dropped down disconsolately.

  ‘Go then!’ I said coldly.

  ‘Sod it, I will.’

  Long afterwards he told me that if I’d said I needed him, he would have stayed home.

  ‘Anyone in his right mind would have known I needed him!’

  ‘But I thought you a warrior woman. Aren’t you?’

  Four hours after he left, I had a wire from a railway station Missing you like BillyO already. The next morning there was another: Don’t be crook on me, I’m not such a bad bloke. In a week yet another arrived: Ag Pigen. After a while I worked out that this translated At Pigen and meant I could write to the post office there. I looked up Pigen on the map and in the gazetteer; I searched over the border in South Australia and the Northern Territory. Certainly, it was an extraordinary name, but a country that can produce place names like Pantapin, Galiwinku, Gnarpurt and Liapootah can come up with anything.

  In fact, the message that D’Arcy had entrusted to the untender keeping of the telegraph service was Aw, Tiger.

  ‘I thought it simple and moving,’ he explained.

  But soon he wrote from Port Augusta and I was so pleased to hear from him that thereafter we fired back and forth our usual fusillade of letters.

  ‘I’ve a new assignment from the ABC,’ I wrote. ‘An adult radio serial. Half an hour. It’s called Stumpy, and the ABC is paying £4 an episode!’

  This serial ran to 140 episodes, and provided the first starring role for the much-loved actor, John Meillon, who was eight or nine years old at the time. After I accidentally heard him auditioning at Station 2UE for a radio version of Tom and the Water Babies, I pressed the ABC to try him out. A consummate actor, John Meillon had a half wry, half sad personality. He was a witty man, with an expressive, crumpled face, and a beautiful comedic talent. His life however was somewhat unhappy and he died unexpectedly in middle age.