A Paper Inheritance

by Dymphna Stella Rees

  Through their studies of literature, both had spent years deconstructing other writers’ notions of love and observed the way memorable characters experienced it, dating right back to The Canterbury Tales and that eternal motto Amor vincit omnia – love conquers all.

  From the time she first came upon it, Coral embraced Shakespeare’s sonnet ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediments’, and she went on quoting it all through her life. This became her ideal: a marriage of true minds, an intellectual as well as an emotional partnership that rides out the storms and endures – ‘even to the edge of doom’.

  Oh, a thousand times a day I offer prayers of thanks for this love of ours. Do you realise how blessed we are to be experiencing it? You say that countless people through the ages have felt as we are feeling, dearest, but I can see and think of many who have not. We’re phenomenally lucky to have one another – don’t let’s forget it. We must never tire for one minute of making ourselves worthy of each other, of the priceless jewel which binds us together.

  My heart’s heart, you ask me to live on until you return. Beloved, I shall live only on my hopes and plans for an ultimate life with you. You are the very breath I draw.

  I think I’ll stop writing now for tonight, beloved, and go to bed. How very often since you went away have I done nothing but spend whole evenings with you. It is as great a measure of compensation as is possible. Never mind – if I get the scholarship, it won’t be long before I shall be with you in the flesh, dearest.

  Until then may my never flagging love and devotion wrap you around always.

  Coral could now spell out the details of her surprise. Yes, she had won the scholarship! She would be leaving for London at the beginning of June. But Les would not know about it till the letter arrived in five weeks’ time.

  Oh at times like this, imagination and memory are a torture – it shall be wonderful, wonderful to be with you again, dearest – don’t let’s be matter-of-fact for a second. Let’s try never to get over the breathless excitement of having one another. For the first six hours after I arrive in England don’t let another person come near us. Just ourselves for a long timeless stretch until we can bear to separate ourselves in the presence of outsiders. Say you feel the same burning yearning as I do. How can I wait?

  Les, meanwhile, was working on another play. Coral was fulfilling her role as chief encourager. She apparently still had her eyes on the stage and envisaged playing the lead in Les’s plays when they hit Shaftesbury Avenue on London’s West End.

  My wonder playwright! I shall not be surprised if by now you have enough one-act plays to fill No. 1 of your collected works of drama. For the lead’s sake send me copies of this work of genius ‘Mother’s Birthday’ as soon as possible. Your fecundity is amazing, dear. I feel like an arid desert when I think of what you are doing.

  (The play Coral refers to here became the basis of Mother’s Day, which was first published in a book of collected plays in the 1950s. It has also seen stage performances – though not with Coral as the lead.)

  It is delightful to discover married literati. But I can’t imagine how people can keep up a violent interest in each other with no common ambition. Have you ever now the effrontery to wish that my interest and ambitions were not identical with yours? If I were a musician or an artist, how could I sympathise with you with a genuineness born only of personal experience, when you wrote your plays, poems and articles? We might admire one another’s work with broad discrimination but we could never understand it or each other as we do now, could we?

  To Coral, the sharing of their work as writers was central to their relationship. The only problem: she herself was not getting any writing done – due both to lack of time and to what she regarded as the more menial tasks demanding attention. This would become her familiar lament; indeed, the story of her life.

  Are you disappointed and surprised at the little, in fact almost entire lack of, freelance writing that I find time and energy to do, dear? – that is apart from The Dawn and these letters to you? If the number of words in each of these sources of literary activity were counted they would be found to run into several volumes, I’ll warrant. It’s disgusting that I never have time to think of anything but The Dawn from as soon as I wake in the morning until about 8 pm at night and then I write to you and sometimes go out and after that I’m too tired for anything. It’s a wretched state of affairs. I often have the most brilliant ideas for articles and plays and am forced to put them aside for the time being, and that means for forever – for I scarcely find time to go back to them. I know that ‘procrastination is the thief of time’ but what can one do with an octopus like The Dawn around one’s throat and you so far away that I have to take hours over painful transcription of a few of the things I long to talk to you about.

  I feel a tremendous power to write within me, dear. If only one weren’t forced by competition to a time limit. However, I shall make big efforts during the next few months.

  No more for tonight, my dearest love,

  I am Coral, your betrothed, and full of love and kisses.

  9

  Betrothed

  It seems that right up to the time she was getting ready to go overseas, Coral was still considering a stage career – though she only ever envisaged herself as the lead, a fact that reveals her boundless optimism and alarming degree of self-confidence. In immediately putting in for a scholarship so she could join Les in London, she had not faced up to certain realities. How was she going to support herself? It was clear Les would not be able to help. He was living frugally off his savings and already going without the odd meal. Of course they could not live together – that would be unthinkable – so she would require her own accommodation. Under the contract offered by the shipping company, they could not marry for at least a year. Of course she would apply for jobs – but the Depression was biting already, even in Perth, and Les had told her that in London many journalists were already now out on the street.

  There was another thorny problem. Although both their families knew that Les and Coral had become close, marriage had not been mentioned. Perhaps Coral was being super cautious as she had already had a brief engagement with someone else.

  As youngsters, we used to laugh about this. It was part of the legend my parents wove about themselves. My father used to say:

  The best thing I ever did for your mother was to save her from that dreadful fate. She would have been bored to tears and never written a word if she’d become the wife of a school master in some remote little town in Western Australia. Can you imagine it! Coralie – your mother – living a life like that?

  Apparently he convinced her, too, because an end was quickly put to the previous arrangement. But it was not entirely forgotten. My sister, Megan, who used to write funny rhyming verse for special occasions, immortalised Mr Rejected as ‘Poor old Hal Adam / who just missed being Pa’.

  Although women and their assets no longer passed to their husbands on marriage, the social conventions in Australia in the 1930s were surprisingly similar to those of Jane Austen’s time. The business of marriage was hedged with protocols and processes that one did not easily ignore. There were important steps to be undertaken. First, the suitor needed to approach his future bride’s father and ask him to give ‘the hand of his daughter’. The father would interrogate the anxious swain about his financial prospects before any permission was given. ‘Can you keep her in the manner to which she is accustomed?’ he would sternly ask. If he gave his consent, the couple could announce their engagement and seal it with a ring. They might put a notice in the paper. This would allow their friends and family to get accustomed to their approaching status while signalling to any other contenders they were both now off limits – bespoke. It would also allow the bride time to build up her glory box, filling it with necessities like teaspoons and doilies, vases and silver trays. She also had to collect a trousseau with a
‘going away’ outfit for her first appearance as a Mrs and, more importantly, fine underwear and nightgowns ready to entrance her new husband as they took that first step into unknown territory as sexual partners. ‘The marriage bed’ had its own mystique. Some women approached it with delight, even relief. Others (Les’s sister, Averil, among them) regarded it as an alien landscape where the distasteful obligations of matrimony had to be endured.

  But the situation in which Coral and Les now found themselves, afforded no time for ceremony, let alone convention. Coralie must have written hurriedly to Les – maybe even sent him a cable. I’m on my way but we must be engaged.

  When Les heard the news he was bowled over:

  It had taken me quite a time to adjust to the news (brewing for some time) to realise what a tremendous difference the change would make to my life, as well as hers. Gradually there grew the expectation of a season of daily companionship as we faced our problems of make-do together.

  So in Perth, Les’s mother, Mary, duly received a letter from her son announcing their engagement. Mary invited Coralie to tea. She had written a reply to Les on his important news, a letter for Coralie to take with her.

  Les was particularly close to his mother. He wrote to her every week from London and she wrote back, recounting what was going on in Perth and with the family. But now he was taking on responsibilities for another person, Mary decided it was time for her son to understand some home truths about her life, facts she had never before spelt out in order to protect him.

  But darling it’s this way. I know you have not understood half of the worry I had to go through when you were born and after for many years, in fact until the boys were able to help a little towards home expenses I had a fearful battle as when you were just a baby (9 months) I had to turn out to work for you all which meant that your sister Averil had to take charge of you (she was just 13) so you really have to thank her a lot as she practically brought you up when you were a young baby. Things should have been different, Les. Your father was a well educated man and gave promise when we were married of becoming a great man both in teaching and in music and he held his first-class certificates. So you see you have really him to thank for your brains. I was very proud of him I can assure you and loved him and still hold his memory dear. But his fault or weakness was the demon drink. It got the better of him and his ambitions. Today we could have been in a good position and I might have been able to do such a lot for my dear children. But no! I have had to endure shame and to fight for your bread to eat at times. I don’t like to think of the terrible times I had for a few years after my arrival in this state with all my children growing up. As soon as they could work they have done their very best for me. So now dear as the years are going by, I have had no regrets for you have all turned out so good and it has been my great comfort. So now dear you will understand perhaps what made me seem hard at times. It was I could not give you what I would have liked to help you in your young life because it has been a constant struggle to live and keep out of debt which, thank God, I have done.

  I congratulate you Les on your choice and I can assure you I shall be very happy to have Coralie for my daughter-in-law. You are a very lucky man to get such a fine girl in every way and you certainly have everything in common which is a great thing in married life because each is such a help to the other as long as you both love each other. I am expecting Coral to tea tomorrow (Sunday). I have not seen her since I received your letter about getting engaged. What about her Father and Mother? Perhaps they may not give their consent.

  She enclosed in the letter a gift of twenty pounds as her ‘little present – it is hateful to be short’.

  Coralie’s father, apparently, had not been so impressed when his eldest daughter brought Les home to meet her family. ‘That young man has a lot to learn,’ he told Coral. Maybe Les, who was not used to having a male parent, had shown a little less respect than the restrained paterfamilias demanded. And now his daughter said she was engaged to this man and was about to disappear to the other side of the globe to join him. Guildford Clarke penned a letter, making it clear to Les that he expected him ‘to make good in one or more of the avenues which you have selected as a means of advancement’.

  However, he softened a little to end his missive with a drop of cordiality:

  I just briefly wish to acquiesce in your engagement to Coralie and feel sure that both of you are destined to have many happy years of companionship adorned with all the material advantages which your respective talents are reasonably certain to ensure.

  Sylvia, Coralie’s mother, also wrote to Les:

  I would just like to add a few lines and say there is no one I would like better than you to take care of ‘Coral’ – I took a fancy to you the first time I saw you and feel that I know you very well by now and I also know that since you have been away Coral has not been the same girl and I’m sure it is her longing to be near you that has urged her on to work for this scholarship. I am sure you are both going to be very happy as your tastes are so much the same.

  Coral has been a wonderful daughter and naturally we feel the parting very much but as you may some day know that parents feel all the joys, hopes and sorrows of their children so that her happiness is our happiness. She has always been ambitious and worked hard and this just seems a fitting climax to her scholastic career.

  I feel so relieved that you will be there to greet her and be with her until she gets used to things and now Les I am only going to wish you both success, health and happiness in the future.

  I remain,

  Yours affectionately

  S. Clarke xx

  Just to make sure all looked above board, when my mother safely arrived in London, the Clarke parents put a notice in The West Australian, announcing Coralie and Leslie’s engagement.

  10

  Luxury and Freedom

  Coral was later to say of the Orient Line scholarships that took them separately to London:

  They give you a free passage, a first-class passage ironically enough; and considering that we only had such a little bit of money and so few clothes, it would have been better, really, if they were tourist-class passages.

  This might have been true for Les who, judging from his letters, squirmed amid the sumptuous first-class décor and its unfamiliar protocols. But when Coral set off on the SS Orsova at the beginning of June 1930, she found herself not only at ease in the opulent surroundings but lapping up every aspect of shipboard life. There were endless elegant meals, dances after dinner, picture shows, a fancy dress ball and other evening entertainments, games on deck and a sea pool.

  It is positively staggering the way excitement upon excitement piles up when one is doing a trip like this […] it’s also amazing how the time just filters away from one during these days aboard ship. I don’t know how anyone could find them dull. For me they are never long enough.

  Then there were the other passengers, among them a seemingly inexhaustible supply of admirers willing to share in the enjoyments of the trip and offering to escort Coral while exploring various ports. She revealed them all openly in her letters to the family and with a degree of insouciance, as if having a string of willing suitors was every girl’s natural right.

  At Colombo, their first port, Coral’s eyes opened wide with her first experience of a foreign country and its different peoples. She was shocked to see the underprivileged Tamils who were loading coal into the ship by hand from an adjacent barge in mid-harbour. A party from the ship planned to go ashore for the day and she with them. But, perhaps by design, her escort for the day, Dr Riccardo Robotti (later referred to as ‘Richard’ and then ‘Ric’) was delayed in getting his passport stamped and so they were separated from the boat party. They missed the car and train taking them to Kandy.

  Instead, Richard suggested they explore on their own. Their day together began with a visit to an impressive store of treasures, ‘a rio
t of rich colour and silky attraction’ where Coral bought some silk underwear for a friend in Australia. After negotiating the challenges of the postal service, they hired a rickshaw. Richard was already familiar with Colombo and wanted to show his ingenue the Cinnamon Gardens with their luscious blooms, and then the museum. After that, he took her on an hour’s journey through the countryside to Mt Lavinia, a seaside resort with a gracious hotel right on the beach. They had lunch on the cool terrace.

  The vista was very novel to me: full-sailed Arab dhows now and then on the ocean before us and on either side stretches of carved, yellow-sanded beach, down to the very shore on which bent thick groves of coconut palms.

  It was then back to the bazaar for Richard to buy some luxurious women’s pyjamas for his mother and sister – or so he told Coralie – and then to the ice-cream parlour and back to dinner on the ship.

  Richard wanted to take me rowing on the Harbour but there was not time for that so we lounged upon the cool deck, surveying our last of the twinkling lights of Colombo until the anchor was withdrawn, the ship had turned and was again gathering speed outside the harbour.

  When they passed through the Suez Canal, Coralie was utterly entranced. The way she described the scenery in her letter home foreshadowed the travel writer that would emerge in the years to come.