A Paper Inheritance

by Dymphna Stella Rees

  Dymphna was married to a writer herself so had a more realistic view of the equity of the Rees partnership. She wrote to my father:

  It wasn’t easy – for either of you. I remember one day – I think it was our last lunch together – that Coralie told me how marvellous you were. Indeed we had a competition, comparing our marvellous husbands and our marvellous luck!

  Many of the letters remarked upon the way Coral and Les had managed to combine their writing and broadcasting output, travel and family life in a sustained and harmonious way:

  You grew up together and have done everything that mattered to you both together which is a rare and wonderful thing in a marriage.

  One of Coralie’s friends, a staunch feminist and pillar of the League of Women Voters, wrote to my father:

  Your partnership is one of those all too rare True Life stories. What wonderful times you have shared. Leslie, may you find some comfort in taking your memories out of storage.

  As I look over the collection of letters and expressions of sorrow I’ve so long kept, I see how many of my mother’s qualities, ‘her generous outgoing warmth’, ‘her stimulating intellect’, ‘her graciousness and sensitivity’ were admired and respected, ‘an inspiration to all her friends’. But the word that appears again and again is ‘courageous’ – everyone seemed to admire her ‘admirable fortitude under so obvious difficulties’. Gwen Meredith, creator of the ABC’s long-running serial Blue Hills and one of Coralie’s circle of close women friends, wrote:

  I am deeply distressed and cannot really believe it. Although I have known for years that Coralie was ill and suffering, she was always so magnificently courageous that somehow I had come to regard her as capable of going on indefinitely.

  Doris Fitton, grande dame of the Independent Theatre, North Sydney, recalled:

  The last time I saw her was at Kenneth’s Hair Salon where she was so happily attending to her glamour. She was such a charming person, so clever and brave.

  But it was the letter to me from a family friend that shone a light on the source of Coralie’s enduring strength, her inner fortitude:

  Over the years my admiration and affection for your mother has deepened. I shall never forget her. I shall remember our laughter and good times shared, and I shall remember too the evening we spoke of serious things, and she told me of her faith which enabled her to live without fear of the future. We only talked once this way but it helped to explain part of her incredible bravery.

  Coralie grew up with an Anglican view of God in a family that, while not rigorously devout, followed Christian principles and practice. Leslie, however, described himself as agnostic, interested in religion purely from an intellectual point of view and in churches for their architecture. When my sister and I were growing up, our parents encouraged us to explore various faiths by going to all the different denominational scripture classes offered at school. ‘Try them all and make up your own minds,’ was my father’s liberal advice. When I was in primary school, I was so enthused by winning a Scripture prize that I asked my parents if I could go to Sunday School. ‘Certainly, if you would like to,’ was their reply. So every Sunday I would dress in my very best clothes and take myself on the tram up to the Presbyterian enclave just a block away from my school at Neutral Bay Junction, sometimes even staying on for the church service, a lone child among the adult congregation. My sister had a later phase of churchgoing and in her teens was confirmed in the Anglican Church, my parents supporting her choice and attending the service.

  When I was preparing for my marriage ceremony with its Christian rites and values, my mother revealed regretting that for her nuptials she had not also chosen the age-encrusted words of the Book of Common Prayer rather than that terse bureaucratic exchange in a London registry office for the price of ‘seven and sevenpence, please’.

  On her journey through the challenges imposed by ankylosing spondylitis my mother became interested in forms of meditation and spiritual healing: she was seeking some inner sustenance and trying to find the right form for her particular needs. Then she was introduced by a thoughtful friend to Subud, a practice and belief system that allowed her to become strong and peaceful in her inner life.

  Subud is not so much a faith as a practice called ‘Latihan’. As a path to God it has more in common with true yogic meditation than with any form of ritualised worship. Latihan, like other forms of structured meditation, aims to bring about an inner quiet, a sense of peace and contentment, whatever trials or chaos the outside world presents. Subud is non-denominational and non-discriminatory. It has no particular dogma or teaching. It originated in Indonesia and is now spread throughout the world.

  Subud Latihan became an important part of my mother’s life and was critical to the last seven years of her journey. She attended Subud meetings as often as she could and my father supported her in her practice. For Subud purposes, the name ‘Stella’ was bestowed on her – just as it was on me by Miles Franklin.

  In 1969 my parents travelled to Toronto, Canada, to see Megan and her family and decided to go via Indonesia in order to meet with Bapak, the world leader of the Subud movement, at his headquarters in Tjilandak.

  While at Tjilandak, my mother apparently wrote a letter to Bapak after her first formal meeting with him. It was full of questions she hoped he could answer, questions that were burning in her, questions that reveal much about her responses to the challenges she faced. Only recently I discovered a draft of this letter, written on odd bits of paper stowed inside the cover of a Subud book, Songs of Submission. I do not know if Bapak responded to her questions.

  Tjilandak

  April 25, 1969

  To Bapak

  First I would like to thank you for receiving my husband and me in your home last Saturday night and for welcoming us to Tjilandak. It is a great joy and a privilege to be here, and our visit will be all too short – just a taste or a prelude, I hope, to a longer visit in the future. While we are here I would like to ask you, if I may, a few questions:

  Is my name Coralie right for me or is it slowing up my spiritual progress? I like it very much and have always been happy with it, but could you tell me whether it has anything to do with the deformed shape of my spine? This deformity did not start to become evident till I was about 40 years old (I am now 60).

  Doctors are uncertain whether it started with a small injury to a vertebra when I was a child or is wholly due to an arthritic condition inherited from my mother. My mother (now 80) has a similar curvature but mine is very much worse than hers. Is there a meaning in Subud for the physical ills we have to endure? Have they anything to do with our ancestors? Or are they the expression of our own wrong living? In other words, is there possibly a deeper reason than the medical ones why I have been afflicted with this unusual condition of the spine?

  I know that ill-health which has resulted from my spinal condition has brought me into closer touch with spiritual values of life through Subud. So in that I was regarding my deformity as a blessing and I give thanks to God that it has led me to Subud – or made me ready for Subud to find. At the same time, if I do Latihan patiently and sincerely is there hope that my spinal condition will improve? I have been in Subud nearly five years and during that time the shape and strength of my spine has become worse with increasing age but my patience to bear it has improved.

  I would also like to ask you what is the Subud belief in the afterlife? I think about this a great deal. When my husband asks me to explain Subud to him, on this I cannot.

  I would be most grateful if you could grant me a short interview to answer these questions. Our all-too-short visit to Tjilandak ends next Tuesday afternoon (April 29th) when we have to take our plane to Greece, England, Canada (to see our daughter) and so back to Sydney across the Pacific. If you cannot spare the time for an interview perhaps you could have your answers to these questions posted to me.

  I wish to
thank you deeply and sincerely for the unforgettable experience of visiting Tjilandak. I feel sure the strength of Latihan here will be a great help to me during the strenuous journey that lies ahead. My husband, who is not yet ready for Subud, has been deeply impressed by all his experiences here – by the quality of the people he has met, especially the Indonesian people, and by the effect Subud has upon them in creating an all-embracing world brotherhood. He is a writer and intends to write a book for Australian children about children in Indonesia.

  Please give my affectionate respects to Ibn. I hope she is feeling better.

  Yours very sincerely

  Coralie Rees

  25

  The Dream Museum

  With Coralie’s death came the end of that productive literary partnership of forty plus years. In reality, the writing would go on for many years – but differently. There was a seismic shift from the plural Rees to the singular, bringing an end not only to their published and broadcast collaborative works but to the detailed planning, vociferous discussions, honest debate, ruthless critique and mutual encouragement on which they both had relied and which was the substance of their writing teamwork.

  Of course Les’s life was immeasurably changed, losing in one blow his wife, writing partner and best friend. At sixty-six, he was still distinguished-looking, vigorous and energetic, in excellent health and brimming with ideas. His buoyant and gregarious enthusiasm was temporarily dimmed but not extinguished.

  Domestically, he put his energies into the new generation. At the time of our mother’s death, Megan and I had seven children under ten years of age between us so the ministrations of a devoted grandfather were greatly appreciated. Besides, we had lost our adored mother, our role model, confidante and supporter, and were struggling to cope while keeping on bravely with the endless demands small children bring. Les found it very lonely living in their small home so resonant of his Coral and the daily patterns of their shared life. He would spend part of each week at my family’s boisterous ménage on the rural outskirts where he bashed away at his typewriter in the dedicated small space we called ‘the Mouse House’. Our children called him ‘Mouse’ after an early attempt by our daughter Christiana, his first grandchild, to articulate his chosen title of ‘Gramps’. Mouse was known to protest that he wished she’d chosen a marsupial rather than a rodent, as the name stuck.

  These were productive years for Les as he turned to a subject that was truly his passion: drama. He drew on his accumulated experience as a critic, playwright, editor, adapter and producer, as well as his twenty-five-year term as chair of the Playwrights Advisory Board. He had made his entrance as a drama historian in 1953 with Towards an Australian Drama, the title indicating the goal of a truly indigenous drama was yet to be achieved. After 1966 he addressed himself to a wider and more complex analysis: the birth and development of Australian drama from the earliest European beginnings, the convict era, right up to the 1970s. It was an enormous effort of research and writing, culminating in The Making of Australian Drama, published in 1973.

  Such a wide-ranging study had never been made before and the book’s publication coincided with a rising interest in Australian literature, particularly in academia. It became a seminal reference, regarded as the Bible of Australian drama, and the first edition sold out quickly. The publisher planned a second edition and asked for a companion volume to bring the history up to date with developments in the period from 1970 to 1985. So the monumental two-volume History of Australian Drama of over seven hundred pages covering the period from the 1830s to 1985 became ‘the most comprehensive work in its field and the most consulted’. What separated Leslie Rees’s critical history from academic analyses that followed was that he had been an active participant in much of the development of drama in this country, particularly in the forty years from the late 1930s.

  There were achievements in the children’s books arena, too. Right in time for a second wave of eager family readers, Leslie’s Digit Dick series and the series of Australian animal biographies were republished by Hamlyn with new illustrations and in colourful large-format editions, bringing the characteristic Rees model of children’s literature to a new generation of readers. As environmental and conservation concerns started to become more mainstream in the 1970s and 1980s and the list of Australia’s native creatures facing extinction became longer and longer, these children’s books with their educative message became more widely relevant.

  Always a West Australian at heart, Leslie was now an acknowledged member of the State Library of Western Australia’s Hall of Fame. He is there with Randolph Stow, Elizabeth Jolley and Tim Winton, among others.

  Les made frequent returns to Perth, including as writer-in-residence at the Fremantle Children’s Literature Centre, where he would stay in accommodation at the old jail and give talks to children and their teachers about his books. The Leslie Rees Fremantle Lecture continues to be held there every year in his honour.

  Despite losing his travelling companion, Leslie’s thirst for adventure remained unquenchable. He was forever planning travels to parts of the globe not yet explored. He made two trips to Russia where some of his children’s books were published in translation with peculiar illustrations of Australian animals by an artist relying heavily on imagination rather than observation. Here he was escorted around by members of the Russian literati and was able to make a splash with the roubles, as he wasn’t able to take his royalties out of the country. He visited Yugoslavia in his capacity as ‘a writer-spokesman on the move’, assisting the Australian ambassador to achieve a reciprocal cultural agreement. In Bucharest he spoke with the head of Romanian radio and attended the office of the Romanian Writers’ Union, impressed with their reading and translation of some Australian works. In Bulgaria he was surprised and delighted by the Bulgarians’ unremitting enthusiasm for book publishing. He returned again and again to holiday in California where he was welcomed by a community of like-minded people and where he had valued friends for many years.

  One of the happy outcomes of my father’s adventures in Russia was his meeting with Irina Golovnya, who made a specialty of translating Australian works, including Steele Rudd’s bush-battler classic On Our Selection and Marcus Clarke’s For the Term of His Natural Life. Irina had also translated some of Dymphna Cusack’s novels and the two women had become friends. My father arranged for Irina to come to Australia in December 1990 and to stay with him at Balmoral. In January she was invited to discuss Russian translations of Australian fiction with Robert Dessaix at an event for Sydney Writers’ Festival.

  But first there was Christmas.

  My father was expected to join us for a family celebration at our property on the north coast of New South Wales. Several of our children would be there, two with partners, so it would be quite a houseful. I invited Irina to come too. Imagine her face when the small plane landed on the strip of Grafton airport, where a man was engaged in keeping the kangaroos off the tarmac! On the twenty-five-kilometre drive back to the property, I called in to a roadside shop and came out with four litres of milk. Irina couldn’t believe it. Such luxury! She told me milk was rationed in Moscow and they had to stand in long queues to get it.

  Our charming guest delighted in her bush Christmas amid two hundred wild acres and kept looking out over the Orara River and beyond to the forest of eucalypts, murmuring in amazement, ‘Zee bush! Zee bush!’ Around the table, she entranced us all by her stories of how glasnost had been achieved – and by preferring to drink the local milk rather than the more festive libations the rest of us were downing. Three days after Christmas we packed up the four-wheel drive and David drove us through the national park and down a spectacular and rocky incline to where the Nymboida River flows over glistening river stones, sparkling in the sun. In that remote and beautiful spot, we celebrated my father’s eighty-fifth birthday: an Australian picnic I was sure Irina would not forget.

  Between his adventure
s, Les set about documenting his fifty years in theatre, radio, television and books. Hold Fast to Dreams was the result. Intended to be about his working life and participation in literary fields of creative activity, it focuses mainly on the professional rather than the personal.

  When it was published, my then seventy-seven-year-old father gave a talk called ‘The Agonising Art of Autobiography’ to an audience of fellow writers, revealing that the writing of it had been particularly difficult for him as in everyday life he was shy about self-disclosure.

  There was still one aspect of his craft he longed to master: the sophisticated adult novel. Les had completed his first weighty fiction manuscript in his twenties but even in his eighties he was slaving on an ambitious magnum opus, one that eventually defeated him. He privately expressed his sense of failure in a wistful cry from the heart:

  To have written and been thanked for that dream-novel, a novel in which I would have put my knowledge and experience and understanding of life and its people, as well as transmitting a worthy yarn – that would have been the great fulfilment. To have captured a world in imaginative and holding terms, imposing my own sense of shape, movement and character in keeping with the truth of Life’s fundamental design, eventually finding some ‘central stillness’ (Vivian Smith’s words). To have had the joy of writing it well so that it found its mark and won its own kind of celebration …

  Alas, alas!

  Perhaps it was not only his Edwardian reticence about exposing human inner lives that held him back. His childhood had been mired in poverty, his innocence throttled by family violence. Smothering his feelings was his survival strategy. How is a small child able to process these assaults without curling up inside himself? Little wonder he was so inhibited about exploring fictional journeys in the country of the mind and heart.

  However, in Hold Fast to Dreams, he at last cast his reticence aside to reveal the struggles of his early life and to give a riveting depiction of the horrors of his childhood, the fear and humiliation he endured from his alcoholic father.