Your Coral xxx
Despite more than ten years’ full-time newspaper experience under the belt, Les was still looking for professional reassurance on the quality of his work.
At the Herald I hear absolutely no comment on my work. I asked the Chief of Staff what he thought of it and he said: ‘all right’. Nonplussed, I said ‘No complaints?’ and he said ‘No’. How’s that for caution. But it does not convey any criticism. I am put down regularly for work and sometimes my copy is a little cut. Space is very tight.
Now I must fly, Darling. At times I feel a terrible desolation here, which I know only your presence could dispel. So do hurry back. For God’s sake don’t fall in love with anyone else – or even begin to, will you? You’ll never get anybody as good as me.
Till next time sweetheart, you fine girl, lovely girl, Hemingway girl – Les
Coral, writing from Launceston, had her own problems. She needed Les to offer some advice and sent a stop press:
Eileen has suddenly got in a panic about the amount my fares are costing her and wants to leave me in Melbourne while she goes to Adelaide. Ditto Sydney while she goes to Brisbane. What’s your view – to encourage her to think she can do without me or to offer to forgo some salary or to contribute towards travelling expenses in order to stick with her? You see there were very small houses at the Tasmania concerts due to the small dead population. They were worthwhile every way but financially and she’s starting to think she’s not getting enough money out of the tour. White hates the thought of her being or travelling alone and thinks she is silly to dispense with me. Let me know your reactions to all this quickly. I feel a little tired of the whole business myself. If only you were here to talk it over.
Au’voir, sweet. Since you are complaining seriously about our separation just as this happens, perhaps we won’t be separated for much longer …
Les’s job on the Herald, while not extending him, remained profitable.
A day’s work yesterday was to see three films (one of them screened in a theatre specially for me & Josephine O’Neill of The Telegraph) and attend an Independent Theatre production of Man with a Load of Mischief. 35/- for that is jam, don’t you think? Some days I have only half a day’s work – 18/6. This consists of seeing one film.
Enough of money. You must not think that my mind naturally hangs on money-making all day, but if we are to settle here for a while we must do the best for ourselves. Meanwhile we ought to save a bit. Very soon I must be sending my mother her old 10/- a week, as when I was there, I found she had all kinds of debts.
It is lovely to be able to confide in you – pity you weren’t here to discuss things while we cuddle in bed. Make those months scud by like storm clouds and come back to your ever-waiting Les.
Les was anxious to meet members of the literary community. He had already made a fortunate connection with Frank Dalby Davison who had swum into almost unbelievable success with his novel about a wild cow. Unable to find a publisher for Man-Shy, he had the novel printed and then hawked it from door to door. That book was becoming the talk of the town.
Davison took Les to meet Marjorie Barnard, a librarian, with whom he had a secret liaison. Marjorie was a writer of short stories and, with collaborator Flora Eldershaw, produced historical novels under the pseudonym M. Barnard Eldershaw. (The most famous is their first, A House Is Built.)
Yesterday I went to Marjorie Barnard’s for lunch. Marjorie lives in a lovely spot up the Harbour. There are innumerable little bays and points and the Barnards live on the slope of a bay with gardens in front of them sloping down to the water and a complete view of the city. They live in some style, with a servant and a general English middle class atmosphere. We talked till about four and Davison and I caught the ferry back to Sydney together. He is a decent fellow, very young and simple with a slight embarrassment of manner. He says Man-Shy was the easiest thing he has written – wrote it almost without knowing it.
But Les was increasingly insecure about Coral’s fidelity and desperate to talk to her.
I am very lonely when I am not actually working – sometimes even then. I hope your friend, living in the same hotel, is a gentleman. Of course, you must have an outing and get some fun but I don’t mind telling you that I am as jealous as hell. I’m certainly sorry for Leon but I’m glad he’s flirting with Eileen and not with you.
It’s lovely to know we’re mutually yearning. I didn’t see your photo in The Australian Women’s Weekly but shall immediately buy same. About ringing me on Sunday. Yes, I’ll make myself free at 1/4 to 1. It would be grand. I hope I can find a private place here to talk. The number is FL 2303.
Darling, this separation is ghastly: I really don’t know how I’ll stand another four and a half weeks of it and then another couple of months after a week together. I’m thinking, quite seriously, that we’ll have to do something about it. It’s not what we planned. We planned to go about Australia together.
We’re both meeting with so much success that it’s ungrateful to complain and yet too often it rings hollow in my ear. When you attempt to tell me how chronic you feel, I can complete your meaning out of my own experience before you are finished. I have found that the only way is to keep busy. But I positively dread having a night free. Loneliness would envelop me. This afternoon I imagined I was going to be free tonight and in a panic thought: ‘I’ll ring Nugget Coombs and go there.’ I can see you are the same. I did not think that four months could be so bloody long! I don’t like it. There’s too much danger of it interfering with our permanent happiness.
The general atmosphere of the Herald office is not stimulating – precisely because it is so reminiscent of The West Australian – the dull-witted Chief of Staff poring over his engagement book, the rather nondescript collection of Cable men and sub-nibs takes me back a few years. Then there is a big bare reporters’ room with chaps hanging on telephones and in shirtsleeves, also a notice board littered with unclaimed copies of The Journalist – how these newspaper ‘daily’ offices run to type. My position is still vague and expectant – they’re a cautious lot of b—s, as the elfin Eileen would say. The new News Editor, who perused my Press Books with great interest, has quietly suggested that reorganisation of the staff is in the wind.
Meanwhile Coral had more worries with her contract. Eileen had ‘turned snakey’:
Eileen is definitely leaving me in Melb. while she does her week in Adelaide. My fare to Adelaide would have cost her £7 and what with my salary she feels she can’t afford it. I offered to suffer reductions to oblige her but she refused. Leon White tried very hard to get the ABC to pay my travelling expenses, but nothing doing. He says, however, he’s going to insist on my going to Brisbane with her (worse luck!). At the present rate, it doesn’t look as if she’ll be wanting to take me back to Perth or even to Adelaide. This sudden craze of Eileen’s to save money is alarming. She feels that other people are getting more out of the ABC than she is and has turned snakey.
Coral was also worried about their future. They had talked of eventually settling down to family life but she admitted to Les she was fearful of childbirth. Les immediately wrote to reassure her:
Poor darling! How you are always meeting with people, reading books, hearing stories that make you fear having a child. Or is it that only the bad stories impress themselves on you! Well, look here, if you fear having kids, we simply won’t have any damn kids. They’re not worth it to us. You’re everything and everyone to me and there’s no need for anybody else. Family raising is largely a conventional habit. We’re self-sufficient.
Coral wrote back:
You were a darling about the children, beloved. It’s lifted a weight off me. Otherwise I feel there’s an ordeal waiting ahead – like a visit to the dentist, which one is trying to put off, or like death which is inevitable but must be daily avoided. But I promise to be sensible, darling, if and when the time comes. In the meantime, to
know that we are sufficient is heaven! It is more than one deserves; and that in itself is frightening. Oh, I’m mopey. I want your arms around me, that’s all. Then I wouldn’t care what happened, either way.
Shortly I must go to the station and see Eileen and Leon White off to Adelaide. He’s taken her to his home for the afternoon. She’s very moody and uncertain. There’s nothing in their flirtation, of course.
Darling. I hate saying goodbye. Your letters are the only thing which makes life worthwhile. Life’s going to be superlatively excellent when we are together again. In the meantime, love me every minute as I love you.
Les was consumed by loneliness, too.
Seldom have I felt so lonely for you in such a ghastly condition of dependence. I’ve had a quiet three days on the Herald – only half a day of work in three days. This wouldn’t weary me financially, if only it doesn’t let me down in other ways as well. You can’t make arrangements to go out and see people at short notice. So I’ve been left on my own all this time, chafing at the bit and fed up with only a single ambition in life – to have you with me. At the same time, I am oppressed by my terrific and dangerous dependence on you – wonder if it is right for two persons to live in one another. Supposing you didn’t come back, would life have any meaning or savour again?
And all sorts of small things have aggravated my emptiness.
No letter from you yesterday morning – I kept on looking in the box all day. Did you miss the post or has it gone astray? I tried to write an article and felt hopelessly restless. At night I went to a couple of concerts. Does that sound queer? However, that’s the Herald’s doing. Friday afternoon I took Nugget Coombs to tea – life consists of taking people to meals or being taken – we have arranged to meet next week. I might stroll out there this afternoon.
Coming home last night I put through a call to you, feeling I must have a word with you. Now just where were you before midnight, big girl? I was bitterly disappointed, but they said, in any case, they didn’t like taking calls after 11 pm at your end.
Sweet – I have been doing a bit of thinking about our future. If we can earn £15 a week, we ought to be able to get a good flat – a modern flat with the proper equipment for you. That means spending a couple of hundred quid on furniture, etc. then we want a car. And all we have now is £100 and some vases and pictures. So we’ll have to work hard – just concentrate on raking in the cash for a while.
I also have other plans. I may as well set up as an authority on drama, if we are to stay in Australia. It might be an idea to rewrite that old thesis of mine and get my MA. I should like to make some contact with the University – there may be the opportunity of lecturing on drama as we once visioned.
At the Fellowship of Australian Writers Les met Mary Gilmore:
Mary Gilmore is a fine type of woman, rather aged and shaky but an obviously sterling person. She talked to me and I said I should like to call on her and she was delighted. Gave me her address, which happens to be across the road from here – in Darlinghurst Road. Isn’t that decent? I want to get a series of interviews written with Davison, Mary Gilmore etc. – valuable in the future and more immediately for The West Australian. This introduction of me to the Fellowship in laudatory terms will be valuable. Davison and I have obviously ‘clicked’. But I’m so used to you sharing every move of mine that I don’t like going ahead with meetings on my own – I want you to join in.
Coral wrote from Melbourne:
I’ve been struggling with Eileen’s enormous Press Book. Last night I felt so desolate here I walked down Collins Street and came to a big Hoyts Deluxe theatre with Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing on a 20ft hoarding outside. There were crowds pouring in and I feared I should be turned away. But 2/6 did the trick and I went up the imposing marble stairways. I let myself sink into the film, just like the thousands around me.
I’d like to ring you tonight if there were a faint hope that you’d be in and if I can find a private spot to speak – which is doubtful. Sydney and Melbourne seem so close compared with places like Perth and Hobart. We’re a mere 600 miles apart. Must now force myself to say goodbye, darling. I’m sorry this is such a gloomy letter. I’ll be cheerful again soon. Very much love and send some message every day, won’t you.
And don’t be jealous of me, dearest, I’m not letting anyone get within coo-ee of me.
Les wrote:
What do you think I’ve been doing today? Having lunch with Mary Gilmore. I received a letter from her yesterday asking me to call, as she wanted to ask my advice on London publishers and agents. Extraordinary. I called today – she’s just across the road. Has a flat full of notes, notebooks, press-cuttings and pen drawings of herself around the wall. A rather rough practical-looking place. She brought me in – seems to be there on her own, though 70, and immediately began telling me about the ‘New Australia’ colony in Paraguay forty years ago – of which she was a leading member. Then she made me a cup of ‘yerba mate’, a South American beverage like china tea. Then lent me some of her books and took me out to lunch.
She’s a remarkable woman. Has an extraordinary agility of mind, packed with ideas, beliefs, memories and anecdotes. I felt anaemic and colourless, not to mention inert, beside her. She claims a good bit for herself and seems to have been ‘in’ at the beginning of everything. For instance, she advised Henry Lawson on the publication of his first book, gave Dorothy Cottrell her first encouragement, and so on. She is a Communist-Socialist and reckons that the New Australia experiment gave the idea to Russia. You’ll like her though she makes you feel just a bit limp. She has stacks of notebooks full of early reminiscences – stuff she realises should be set down. There may be a job for you or me. She said: ‘I’ve got all the material but it’s the hardest work writing it down. I need a collaborator.’ This may have been a hint thrown in my direction. To help her with a book or two might not be worth much money but it would be vastly interesting. She has a mind as rich as a plum pudding. The smell of the pioneer is about her. I have an idea she won’t last much longer. Mentioned that her heart gives her trouble – and she has a slightly blown-up look. [Dame Mary Gilmore lived on till 1962.]
Coral was finding Eileen a continuous challenge:
You’re right about the fact that I’m not saving much money. Eileen is such a dilatory and uncertain payer. One can’t roll up to her on a Friday and say Payday! She may be in tears, in bed, preparing for a concert, getting over a concert, being trainsick or seasick; and since great tact is necessary I have to be accommodating. If she were here to pay me today’s fiver I should have £9 in hand. I could send you £5 if I didn’t have to buy myself another warm dress and Mum’s present and keep myself till the end of next week.
I’m glad to have your mature considerations on the Eileen question. I feel very sick about it at the moment – uncertain and foreboding – but the atmosphere must be cleared one way or the other when she returns next Tuesday.
Our separation has given me new insights into life and this week of aloneness has given me new insights into death. I tended to get so smug and cocksure when we were always together and always happy. Now I know what life must be like for people who are not together and not happy. I always thought I had enough inward resources to cope with any situation. Well, I can make a show of coping, but …
Les replied:
It is nice of you to refuse invitations out with men on my account. But you mustn’t ask me for a decision what you should do, darling one. That’s not fair. You must decide for yourself. Personally, the idea of taking other women out just bores me – like you, I prefer to go by myself. Apart from jobs of work, I’m afraid I’m frightfully tired about going anywhere without you. I’ve definitely turned down the invitation to the ball. Without you, it’s just sheer hard work to be on special evening dress behaviour all night. I wish I wasn’t so tired. I seem to have exhausted all my youthful enthusiasm and I can’t find any sort
of experience – here or in London – that excites me. Except the thought of reunion with you.
A week and a half till you arrive. People are getting excited about Eileen Joyce’s return season – which for me means your return season. Nevertheless, can you get me any tickets for any of her concerts here? I’d like to hear the orchestral one particularly.
Sorry to hear you are still rather miserable – I can understand it exactly and sympathise to the last inward pang because I have been through it myself. I dread having a day alone. Chronic, isn’t it, for two full-grown persons to go on thus.
Love and more love and yet more and more still till next time.
Coral reassured him by the next day’s post:
Darling One, I’m in the middle of yet another struggle with Eileen’s Press book, but I must just say at once that I love you madly and that I’m so lonely for you that I’m physically sick about it. It’s like music in my ears to hear that you are worried about your dependence on me because that’s just what’s got me down. I don’t and can’t live apart from you. That’s flat. I’m useless. I just don’t function. And if anything’s going to happen to you, let me know and I’ll rush in on it, too. That’s all I want.
The fact that I’ve been socially accepted by the more interesting element in this house did ease things a bit at first. It’s better than brooding absolutely alone and left out. But you’re my only panacea. And these are just a set of jolly people to smoke and talk and have a drink with, and when I’ve left them I feel as bad as ever. Sometimes even when I’m with them. We’re in such a state about each other that the rest of the world simply has no bearing. I don’t know how much longer we can bear this separation.
Tues 3 pm.
Eileen arrived this am and I haven’t breathed since.
With Eileen back in Melbourne after the Adelaide concerts, Coral wanted a definite answer on her contract:
A Paper Inheritance Page 12