Fishing in the Styx

by Ruth Park

  That walkabout of D’Arcy Niland’s, undertaken in the face of my wrath, was one of the most valuable he ever had. He had chosen for his travels just the kind of country he needed for stimulation at that point in his literary growth. Though he loved the succulent scenery of the green east coast, thereafter what drew him most was the pitiless wilderness, the yellow light over the shelterless plains, the sun veiled with whirling silt.

  Remembering, Beres often lifted his voice querulously. ‘If there are two ways of doing a thing, he’ll always choose the hardest. I don’t want to sleep rolled up in a blanket on the bare ground. One night we camped on the fringe of an aboriginal settlement; they came shyly into the firelight with a plateful of pink iced vovo biscuits. Real nice people with eyes like possums. In the night frost settled on my blanket, and I had to get up and throw on another dog.’

  The brothers struck west into the drought country, boarding a train illegally to do so.

  ‘We were the greenest pair of rattler jumpers in the business,’ wrote D’Arcy. ‘We travelled down to Port Pirie in a truck of lead-ore concentrate. We were so frozen we couldn’t get out of the truck when the guard saw us. But he was a lovely fella. First he kicked our backsides and then he brought along a billy of hot tea. We looked like redheaded Fijians with the rust and the dust.’

  They zigzagged across the southern end of the continent, ending at Andamooka, an opalfield now fully developed but then only a desolate corner of a vast cattle station. The heat was so great that most of the miners lived underground.

  The sky was bluemetal, sandpapered smooth. The land is up and down country, brooded over by space and silence. Sand, stone – it lives on the lip of the sun. We were stony broke and hungry as hell. That night we camped in an abandoned dugout, wrapped up in sheets of the Port Augusta Examiner against the killing desert cold. We spent some time discussing whether we’d eat meat if we had it (it was Friday), and we ended up agreeing we’d eat the priest. The dugout was dry and full of spiders. Every time we lit the candle you’d see every cranny sparkling with a faceful of eyes. Crikey, it was woeful. Then there was the crack of stoping giving way and the whole thing caved in with the sound of thunder. We got out by the skin of our teeth, and there was a man with a hurricane (lantern). He’d walked half a mile over the field to ask us over for a feed and a shakedown. His name was Wally. Mrs Wally said they’d gone to the pitchers for their honeymoon. Reminded me of us and the Chinese opera.

  The man called Wally gave D’Arcy half a threepence and kept the other half. D’Arcy’s half was in his wallet when he died. Like Sister Roche’s scapular, the half-threepence was a testament of friendship and so he treasured it.

  D’Arcy always kept a store of tiny cheap notebooks in his shirt pocket. Mostly his notes are about people – ‘near the dugout door he has a barrel, a water barrel. Harsh artesian water. It’s lidded with a blue circle of sky and this is his mirror when shaving or combing his hair.’ ‘The storekeeper threw away a couple of dockets when we paid our bill. It is his way. His name is Absalom.’ ‘I saw the Southern Cross turn over, Wally said it’s the old drover’s signal for changing the watch. Call me when the Cross turns over, they used to say.’

  Many of these scenes and people turned up later in the novel Call Me When the Cross Turns Over, and several short stories, notably the fine ‘Without You in Heaven’, which won so many prizes that the writer had a mind-boggling discussion with the Taxation Department which was inclined to categorise him as a professional prizewinner.

  To reinforce his rebuttal of this accusation, he took our account book to the Taxation Department, and showed the officials one page, dated from June 11 to June 28, fifteen submissions and three acceptances.

  ‘How do you write so much in seventeen days?’

  ‘It’s necessity. When we have fifteen submissions and say, ten acceptances, we’ll take it easier.’

  But although our percentage of acceptances did naturally become higher in time, he never did take it easier.

  On this expedition, Beres confided, D’Arcy had occasional chest pains – perhaps indigestion because of long periods without food, and then, probably a hearty meal at ‘the Greek’s’ in some small handful of a town, steak, eggs, chips. Or the boys had been forced to drink at some dying waterhole, blowing aside the scum to get at the water.

  That was, I think, the first intimation that his cardiac condition was worsening, though I had no thought of that at that time.

  By the time he had settled in again, most of the uproar about The Harp in the South had died down, but I was still at a loss to explain it.

  The literary people who had written to me – Kylie Tennant, Jean Devanney, Christina Stead, Vance Palmer – gave literary reasons for the extraordinary outburst against the book. The public had a pinched, hysterical cultural imagination, they wrote. These self-righteous ravers either were not readers, or were burdened with a modified illiteracy. Though illiteracy was common in Surry Hills, I had no idea of the percentage of illiteracy in the general population. Dame Mary Gilmore said it was 10 per cent amongst army inductees at the beginning of the war. This may have been one reason. These people had read scarcely anything else, and the realism of the story and the locations shocked them.

  The Herald, overjoyed at the publicity for their competition, had orchestrated the protest by printing daily the number of letters for and against. The righteous love jumping on the wagon no matter what the wagon carries, so long as it’s in the news. If on television, a hundred times better. The themes of today are different, but the type of person is the same.

  All through this time of trial D’Arcy put aside reviews, letters and clippings, growling as he did so. He was the packrat, not I. For over forty years I did not glance at them. Things happen, they hurt, they change your life, but it’s not good to keep picking at the scab. But for this current book, this autobiography, I had to go through them carefully, and I saw at last the reason for the inexplicable public reaction of 1947 to a modest book which, after all, has never gone out of print; has been translated into thirty-seven languages; was never badly criticised internationally; became a Book Society and Book Club choice not only in English, but three or four other tongues; was shortlisted for several literary prizes including the Vie Femina, and was destined to end not as a controversial novel at all, but as a book on secondary schools’ reading lists for the Higher School Certificate.

  ‘When did all the hue and cry begin?’ I asked myself, as I read through the detritus of a bygone time.

  The answer was, with the synopsis. Yet the synopses of the other two novels appeared at the same time. The third prizewinner was a traditional, unexceptionable country tale. Jon Cleary’s was different, far tougher than mine, set amongst petty criminals in Paddington which was then an old, rundown slum. Did Jon Cleary’s book, let alone the synopsis, attract any flack at all? The answer was no. No public harassment. No letters to newspapers. No private abuse either. Here was a carbon of my 1947 letter to him, inquiring; here was his answer.

  In 1992 I contacted Jon, now living in Sydney, to check again.

  ‘All I got was the usual single ratbag letter when the book was serialised,’ he replied.

  Aside from a basic similarity in the backgrounds of our books, Jon Cleary’s age and literary apprenticeship fairly well paralleled my own. How did I differ from Jon? In two ways only. I was a woman and I was not an Australian. In an age when the words should not and ought not, with or without justification, were profusely applied to women, I had stepped over the invisible boundary line. Similarly, though Jon Cleary with photographic realism depicted an underclass of Sydney society, he was an Australian, an insider, and thus allowed to do so. I was a New Zealander, a foreigner, and could not be permitted to do the same. My novel had to be either misrepresentation or derogatory criticism. In other words, the mob was not objecting to the story at all, it was objecting to the writer. But excuses had to be produced, as the true objections were too prejudiced, too embarrassing to
be stated.

  Jon Cleary went forward to become the most consistently successful Australian writer. A master technician, he is the author of forty odd novels, several of which have been filmed. By turning his face away from the freelance world, he and his family probably had a calmer and more prosperous life than D’Arcy and I had. But for us novels were only one variety of writing. We were to continue with our richly varied literary endeavours all our lives.

  Just before I left Sydney to bring my children home from New Zealand, the little Gilles de Rais, now six and ever more inventive, stretched a trip wire across the stairs and caught his grandfather, the old greengrocer, Mr Buckle. He was taken to hospital with several broken bones and I never saw him again.

  With foreboding I brought Anne and Rory back to this dangerous place, only to find that the remnants of the de Rais family had gone. A large group of music-loving, goat-rearing Turks took their place. Very kind and sweet they were to our two little infidels.

  In Petersham our second son Patrick was born, I wrote Poor Man’s Orange, and D’Arcy, temporarily putting aside his hatred of novels, wrote Gold in the Streets which won a prize of £500 in another literary competition.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Maybe there’s something in this novel writing after all. But it’s the short stories that really come out of whatever I am.’

  Still, the financial returns were, after tax, small or very moderate. Our own home was as far off as ever, and sometimes we despaired of ever having one. We missed Beres’s cheerful presence as well. Tiring at last of his peripatetic life in Australia he went to New Zealand, whence his younger brother Joe was soon to follow him.

  Both boys were to marry in New Zealand, Beres to my sister Jocelyn.

  • 3 •

  At the close of 1949, in a fury of ambition contaminated beyond all reason by optimism, we gave up our Petersham flat, put into storage our few pieces of furniture, plus the four herring-gutted folders that contained what I cared to preserve of my literary lifework and D’Arcy’s eleven tea chests packed with books, manuscripts, notebooks, letters from forgotten people and certificates from children’s pages in newspapers. I protested, pointing out that this packrat treasury added to our storage charges. All I got was a wounded look and an indignant, ‘But they’re all my Things.’

  I have read that literary men almost invariably gather and protect such a store of Things - no collective word correctly covers these items - all of which are based on paper. Often very small pieces of paper, with one word written on each.

  ‘There is no doubt in my mind that you are the Great White Father of all the packrats,’ I informed him, an insult which brought forth nothing but a modest smile.

  We were about to set off for England via New Zealand, where we planned to stay briefly with my family. After seven years of financial pillar to post we had decided to chance the old country with its broader and better-paying markets. But I had grave doubts.

  ‘Jon Cleary did it,’ I encouraged myself. ‘Morris West, too.’

  ‘And look at Katherine Mansfield,’ urged my partner.

  ‘Katherine Mansfield didn’t earn a living, she had a rich Dad.’

  ‘You’ve got that awful don’t-want-to-go look on your face again,’ he accused.

  ‘I can’t help it. I’ve a bad feeling.’

  ‘What kind of bad feeling?’

  ‘Like the feeling you have when you swallow too hot coffee.’

  This was a lie. My bad feeling resided in that small awkward corner of my psyche where I kept my handful of second sight. I could not share D’Arcy’s excitement, this conviction that as freelances we could manage to make our way in England. Our savings were modest, my health unreliable, and we now had a third child prone to chest ailments. It was true that by nature I was a risk taker but now I was also a mother, and as Sean O’Casey justly remarks in one of his plays: ‘A mother with a child at foot is a desperate coward.’

  ‘Michael Joseph promised to introduce us to all the editors!’ my husband reminded me.

  My London publisher, youngish, handsome, charming beyond all anticipation, had visited Sydney recently, and had assured me of all kinds of good prospects. But I feared that maybe he was a promiser, expansive as so many people are when far from home.

  ‘Come and stay with us for as long as you like!’ they press. ‘Don’t worry about work, I have contacts everywhere!’

  And then when you turn up they don’t remember your face. Or so I’ve been told.

  ‘And then there’s Ireland!’ added D’Arcy. The Republic was already murmuring about bestowing tax-free status on visiting artists and writers.

  ‘It hasn’t happened yet and it mightn’t.’

  ‘There you go, wet blanketing again. I’ve had enough of it. You’ve got cold feet, that’s the beginning and end of it. And it casts a man down, I can tell you. It discourages a man, takes the wind out of his sails.’

  Transcript of the letter reproduced on opposite page

  My dear Ruth Pork this is a large sheet on which to write a little letter, & taken (& done) a-purpose.

  You break my heart with your writing because you know the things I know; they are in your blood as they are in mine, and I never was able (too much work & too poor) to write them till I was old. Memory stirred in the ashes, but the fire—the young fire—was dead.

  But the fire is not dead, only the hearth is changed. More than that, the world will never die while the Celt is alive.

  and if your children don’t carry on your torch—writing, science, art, or even shinty—in a hundred years time I’ll get up out of my grave and wallop them—for the world is really worth saving.

  May the thunder & the wonder of life’s sea stay in your heart.—Mary Gilmore

  addendum.

  2 Claremont

  99 D’hurst Rd.

  King’s Cross

  21.5.47

  Your letter just came—and P. S. you needn’t answer this. It is already answered by your letter.

  Like other Australian men my husband always dropped into the third person when any emotion or even sensibility made its appearance. A declaration of love from him was, ‘A man can’t help being fond of you,’ as though a man had battled bravely against it.

  Off he went to have a farewell beer with a few more old mates. But the feeling of impending failure, disaster, something adverse, remained with me. Every Celtic ancestor I had rose up and growled.

  ‘Oh, for one year without tax,’ I thought. ‘What a difference it would make! Then we wouldn’t have to go.’

  For in Australia, payment for literary work was still pitfully low. When the Sydney Morning Herald serialised my second novel, Poor Man’s Orange, they paid £121.5.0, take it or leave it. When I objected to such low rates the editor concerned said they could buy Daphne du Maurier for £19, an unfair comparison as the du Maurier book was syndicated, and the Herald’s publication the forty-fifth instead of the first. Even the Australian Broadcasting Commission paid only £25 for an hour-length play and five guineas for a read short story.

  Royalties did not provide a fortune either. I had one royalty statement from the US that was $6000 at the top, and $87.25 at the bottom. Withholding tax of 30 per cent was still imposed, and inexplicable fees, State taxes and agents’ cuts occurred all the way down the list. I felt I was working for a great many people other than my own family.

  In my heart I acknowledged that I often despaired of ever raising our standard of living above that very moderate one we had struggled to reach in our years together. When I thought of my children I was fiercely determined that they should not have the austere childhood I had had. I wanted them to have books, good education, music, a comfortable home. But perhaps D’Arcy was right, I had cold feet. Had I become too timid to leap out into the unknown once more? What was I afraid of? I could not tell my insistent husband of the shadows in my mind, for they were nothing but shadows.

  I wanted to be large-souled, confident, even audacious, as sur
ely I once had been. In vain I repeated to myself Carlyle’s infuriating words: ‘Miserable biped, wherefore dost thou pip and whimper?’

  In the end I muttered, ‘All right, we’ll go.’

  After D’Arcy’s death, during the many cold months and years, I stood back and looked at my marriage. It was a monumental thing, at the same time mysterious and declarative. Here I am, it said, to begin with unwished for, often unwanted, unalterable now. By that time it had ruled more than half my life, neither full of light nor full of darkness. That year in New Zealand, (for we never got to England) was the darkest yet. Betraying my instinctive foreboding, I had gone against that and my own good sense, believing that because I was married, I owed my marriage partner some acquiescence in his resolution, though I knew it unwise.

  ‘You should have told me to jump in the lake,’ said D’Arcy later, with a certain cheerfulness. ‘A man expects that from his missus.’

  ‘I did what I could,’ I retorted, in the churlish tone of all women invited to be the prime cause of their men’s bad judgement.

  It was a very unsettling year for everyone. Shortly after I arrived in Auckland I discovered I was pregnant. My mother, dismayed, went into her usual chambermaid seduced by Lord Byron lament, giving the author of my misfortune reproachful looks and little beyond chill courtesy. Even he understood that her attitude was based on solicitude and anxiety for me, but life became painful. Poor dear, it was an afflicting time for her. My sister and Beres married that year, again to my mother’s great uneasiness. She was overworked and overtired, worried about Mera’s health, not young herself.

  Nevertheless, many of her forebodings originated in her own highly imaginative nature. In her mind, I think, girls never grew up, remaining tender creatures blown about by cruel chance, bullied by menfolk into doing things they shouldn’t, such as having too many children. Men, on the other hand, had heavy moral responsibilities, possibly beginning at the age of twelve, which they tended to dodge if they could. In the face of her exquisitely kind care of my father, she was very tough on men in general.