Madeleine

by Helen Trinca

  He said he was going to go to England to ‘sort things out’ with Madeleine, but that he wanted to stay in the US in the long term. He was about to start work on a documentary about the resistance to the Vietnam War draft.

  Meanwhile, Madeleine moved in and out of shared houses, usually taking a single, sparsely furnished room. She hung her carefully chosen clothes from pegs on the wall, collected odd cups and saucers and invited friends to high tea served from an upturned crate that did duty as a table. Madeleine was obsessed with her weight, often eating only rice for days. Once, so weak from this diet, she collapsed on the Tube.

  There was camaraderie in the Aussie ‘club’. One Christmas, a group of Madeleine’s friends went to the food hall at Harrods and shoplifted the ingredients for a feast, stuffing chickens and sausages and hams under their commodious winter coats and cloaks. Madeleine was not among them, but she joined the illicit Christmas dinner. London was her place. She would come to love the seasons and the flowers, the fact that you could rent cheaply or squat in the heart of the metropolis, the access to culture, the buses, and the buzz.

  Chrissie de Looze, an Australian art teacher who was part of Colleen Olliffe’s circle, felt Madeleine was often wary: ‘It took Mad some time to warm up to a person, but she was also very endearing.’18 She had presence. She could be still and observe. But she was always broke, thanks to her erratic work pattern, and her friends made concessions for her lack of money. Chrissie did a lot of listening as Madeleine pined for Chris and anguished over her lack of a boyfriend. She had met Michael Chesterman, a young Sydney lawyer who was teaching at University College. He would eventually become one of Australia’s prominent legal academics and law reformers. He was handsome and charming and Madeleine fell for him. It was not much more than a one-night stand, but Madeleine was inconsolable when Michael did not pursue the matter. For months she drove her friends crazy with talk of her unrequited love. It didn’t help when Michael began seeing Colleen Olliffe. He knew Madeleine was disappointed that nothing had come of the dalliance, but he was shocked in 2012 when told how obsessed Madeleine became with him.19

  At the end of 1968, a year after Madeleine’s arrival in London, Chris acknowledged the marriage was over. On 18 December, he told his mother that he had written to Madeleine about going to London to see her before coming back to Australia with Martha and Matthew. Madeleine was still wearing her wedding ring and wondering what exactly Chris was up to. But she was also still infatuated with Michael Chesterman. Early in 1969, she wrote to her cousin Felicity:

  I went to a party that M. Chesterman was at. I think I gave a brilliant performance—very self-assured, contained, detached & so on. Stole sideways glance at him, enough to assure me that a direct & proper look would be fatal, & talked brightly to simply everybody else, & all like that. I see I am still in love with him—absurd phrase, whatever can it mean—but the whole thing, because of the way I am & so on, lives in a realm of its own which I suppose is no bad thing—see Marvell: ‘My love is of a birth as rare/As ’tis for object strange & high/ It was begotten of despair/ Upon impossibility’.20

  Madeleine told Felicity that she had not heard from Chris and did not know ‘where on earth he can be’, even though she knew Chris was still on the west coast.21 He was sharing a flat with others in San Francisco, having completed Narodniks, a documentary on draft resistance. Their contact was now intermittent, but Madeleine was happy to ask Chris for favours. In one letter, she requested a book she could not find in London, some ‘Skippy’ crunchy peanut butter which was not available in the UK, and some pot. Chris laughed at Madeleine’s assumptions he would run after her, but nonetheless set about filling the order.22

  Madeleine wanted a divorce and arranged with Ted to launch proceedings in Sydney. She blamed her father for her psychological distress, but she turned to him to help her with the divorce. Chris told Joan: ‘I haven’t yet heard on what grounds, or whether she is seeking alimony. We each, when we write, try to deal gently and honestly with each other, but it’s very unsatisfactory as so many things on each side seem to get misinterpreted.’23 Chris was determined to have a life with Martha, and he continued to reassure his mother that the breakup of his marriage was rational and to some extent amicable.

  In London, Madeleine was far from rational as she tried to get treatment at the Tavistock Clinic for her depression. She admitted to Felicity Baker that she was in a ‘very boggy state’:

  Not very brilliant at all darling. Am about to go and create Big Scene at Tavistock Clinic & Freak Out in their Foyer if we don’t see some action soon. I rang them the other day. ‘Wot’s Happening?’ I said. ‘This won’t do you know’…and they apologised and seemed to be saying that there had been a mistake or a file mislaid or something & they would fix me an appointment soon & I say it had better be. So that is the story of my life recently. In fact you see, I am not making a success of anything at all at this point, except the utterly necessary—going to work.

  On my day off, the effort has utterly debilitated & exhausted me & I spend almost all of it sleeping. On Sunday, I watch clouds, if there are any, for most of the day & I think—about very little, I must add. I’ve written one more poem, about animals at Cambridge. It isn’t finished yet. This is such a dull letter, and really I did not mean it to be. I wouldn’t say that I am dull exactly—it’s just that anything real I have to communicate now is terribly hard to sort out and write down, or even say. For a start, I am finding people very threatening & much time and spirit seems to get wasted & every issue is confused by various defensive manoeuvres. And so forth. I am really very alone; it is the only state where I can feel at all safe; and I think I have absolutely accepted a state of constant unhappiness, a perpetual garment. Anxiety and despair in any unbearable degree are precluded by the hope of therapy—I should say the whole trip is a kind of Micawberism.

  I’ve quite given up every kind of endeavour, until, until—like a cripple sitting motionless in a chair, waiting for the crutch to be delivered. He sees the others walking about on the green with a detached envy, knowing that any attempt to rise and join them is perfectly futile till the crutch is there. The difference between my trip—I having had therapy before & knowing where it’s at—and the trip of any other neurotic, is that the latter doesn’t realise that his efforts to rise & walk are bound to failure; he will keep trying & the anxiety of his continual falling & failing quite exhausts him & makes him worse all the time. Of course I could go on just sitting here but it remains my ambition not merely to walk there with all the other cats but even to run and perhaps even leap up and down every now & then. So I think that’s enough about that. In this state of refrigeration, to change the metaphor, thought it time for a bit of variety, I’ve not done/seen much lately that would provide interesting news for you…

  Madeleine apologised for unburdening herself but said she was really trying to ‘say something I really mean’ rather than ‘merely inventing a self for the purpose of the letter which is something I am still capable of tho’ it becomes harder & is really rather despicable’.24 Almost two years earlier, she had written to Felicity from Boston, identifying Sylvette’s death and Ted’s subsequent treatment of her as the cause of her psychological problems. Now, she seemed to take responsibility for herself and tried hard for a more honest conversation.

  Chris too was trying to be honest. Joan had asked, in effect, ‘who left whom’. In March 1969, Chris wrote back:

  Madeleine and I both thought the original separation was a good thing for both of us, she in London, me in California. Maybe we were too young, too unsure of ourselves to understand what we both meant by doing that—that we really wanted to part; perhaps—but the important question isn’t allocating the blame, or even allocating the responsibility. About each other, as persons: we were never, during our time together, sufficiently at home and comfortable with our own selves to be able to view our relationship detachedly—which is the first necessity in working out problems together.25
>
  Chris told his mother that he had been low in spirits for the previous couple of months but that things were now much better. He was not sure, however, about his future with Martha.

  As Madeleine struggled in London, back home in Australia Ted was making waves. The Liberal member for Warringah had been lauded for his principled stand on the Voyager inquiry but, in March 1969, he risked the ire of his colleagues again by denouncing his own prime minister, John Grey Gorton, whom he considered a ‘dangerously irresponsible’ playboy.26 Sex was in the air in Canberra, just as it was in London, and Gorton was a party boy, a drinker and a man at ease with himself and with women. For months there were rumours about an evening in November 1968 when the prime minister turned up at the American Embassy with nineteen-year-old journalist Geraldine Willesee after a press gallery dinner. The Americans wanted to talk about the crisis in Vietnam but the prime minister spent the next two hours in conversation with Willesee. The story became a source of gossip around the press gallery and then seeped into the public arena. It gripped the country for weeks, with voters divided between those who saw Ted as a prude and those who saw the incident as proof that Gorton must go.27

  The prime minister was popular in the press gallery, and so was his American wife Bettina. A few days after Ted’s outburst, she circulated a poem, adapted from one by William Watson, to the press gallery:

  He is not old, he is not young,

  The Member with the Serpent’s tongue,

  The haggard cheek, the hungering eye,

  The poisoned words that wildly fly,

  The famished face, the fevered hand,

  Who slights the worthiest in the land,

  Sneers at the just, condemns the brave

  And blackens goodness in its grave.28

  Ted copped further criticism for his actions. Alan Reid, the veteran reporter, later described him as:

  Napoleonic in stature, thin faced and lipped, precise of speech and manner, religious, abstemious in his habits, bespectacled, proud of what he considered to be his morality and high principles, and possessed of a Savonarola-like zeal to secure their adoption by others, a zeal which earned him a high reputation and a wide berth.29

  At a meeting of his parliamentary party colleagues, Ted refused to back Gorton. He resigned from the Liberal Party and went to the crossbenches. He was undeterred and decided he would contest the next election, later in 1969, as an independent. He wrote A Time to Speak, an account of the sensational events that justified his actions and laid out his views on democracy and society. He wanted his version of history to be recorded and his reputation retained.30 Ted fought a strong campaign but lost his seat.

  Madeleine must have known of these events—Ted’s sisters were in contact with her in this period—yet she gave no indication in letters of her views on the matter.

  By May 1969, Chris was back in Cambridge, living with Martha and Matthew and planning their journey to Australia. Madeleine wrote to him saying that despite her depression, she was very happy, liked her job, her flat in Belsize Park, and—especially—London. He had not heard from her for about three months, and was relieved to receive the letter.31 They continued to correspond even as they contemplated a divorce. Sometimes the exchanges were happy, ‘sometimes less so’.32

  Chris, Martha and Matthew booked a passage on a freighter to Sydney. Martha had divorced her husband and was now pregnant to Chris. Chris wrote to Madeleine to tell her about the baby. ‘I am afraid it will make her sad, especially as she has been pleading with me to just visit her in London,’ he told Joan.33 Madeleine must have been devastated by the news. She wanted a divorce, but the speed with which her husband was creating a new family must have been difficult to accept.

  Martha was advised not to tackle the sea voyage because of the risk of miscarriage. The boat left without them, but Martha still lost the baby. A few weeks later she flew with Chris and Matthew to Sydney and they went almost immediately to visit Joan. Chris quickly signed up for casual work back at the ABC and stevedore work on the wharves.

  Soon he was served divorce papers. Madeleine cited adultery as the grounds and named Martha as the co-respondent. She also sued for a share of her husband’s estate. Martha, in a move she would later deeply regret, did not spare Madeleine’s feelings. Charged with committing adultery, Martha and Chris responded by naming in court documents dozens of locations across the US and Australia where they had had sex. Chris also attempted to argue in the proceedings that Madeleine was the one at fault because she had deserted him.

  It would be another three years before the divorce was formally granted by the New South Wales Supreme Court—on the grounds of adultery—but by late 1969, the ‘marriage of children’, as Madeleine once called it, was over.34 Thirty-five years later, Chris would write that Madeleine, like his mother, blossomed after parting from her husband. But, for Madeleine, that blossoming would take a very long time.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  To the Edge and Back

  Madeleine’s psychological state deteriorated in 1969. Some of her friends realised she was in a bad way. They were worried, too, about Colette, who had spent the summer as a hippie in Ibiza, but then wandered around London trying to live, in effect, without money. The sisters had little contact with each other, but one winter’s night Colette called on Madeleine at her rooms in Belsize Park. Colette was shoeless, homeless and penniless, but Madeleine would not allow her to stay.1

  Madeleine had just turned twenty-eight. Her efforts to find appropriate therapy for her depression had yielded little, and she was desperate. She took an overdose and was taken to St Stephen’s Hospital and then admitted to an asylum on the edge of London, a grim institution where patients were locked in wards and heavily sedated. It was a horrific experience.

  Christine Hill was dismayed when she went to visit Madeleine at the asylum. ‘They were injecting her with sedatives and she could hardly move…They would come around and give her pills and I would say, don’t take them…People were in there for twenty years.’ Christine visited several times and recalled that Madeleine was lucid but in despair and ‘just terribly sad about Chris’.2 Some years later, Madeleine told Felicity Baker that she had meant to kill herself, but that the aftermath had been so ghastly that she was determined she would never do it again.3

  The Hellers were back in London after their time at overseas universities. Florence was alarmed when she saw Madeleine: the glorious, if unhappy, young woman she had seen in San Francisco was huddled on her bed, clutching an antique doll called Cloud, childlike and vulnerable.

  Some weeks later, Madeleine wrote to her aunt and asked whether she could stay with her after her discharge. Frank had always been very hospitable to the St Johns but he ruled this out. Madeleine was expressing very negative feelings towards Ted, and Frank did not want his three young children to be exposed to her hostility. He offered to pay for a bedsit, but Madeleine did not take up the offer.4 She went to stay with friends. It would be a long, slow road back to mental stability.

  Early in 1970, she sent a handmade card to her aunt and uncle, Margaret and John Minchin, congratulating them on their thirtieth wedding anniversary. She decorated the card with a drawing of daffodils and wrote:

  I’m sorry this comes a little late, but the daffodils have only just begun to bloom…I wish you many congratulations on your 30th wedding anniversary. Please forgive the paper—all I have with me at this moment! & the general amateurishness (I borrowed a 4 year old’s messy paints)—I have just come out of hospital & this is almost the first thing I have done. I am being cared for very beautifully by some kind friends & I feel very reborn; a bit shaky but very eager. I hope to go away to the country on Sunday; meanwhile, London is very sweet—the sun is just shining through mist like a pearl & birds can be heard singing…5

  Madeleine was still fragile, but she was determined to recover her health. Her father believed she had inherited her mother’s mental instability and that little could be done to help her, but Madelei
ne was a survivor and she began the painful task of rehabilitation. She felt unable to hold down a professional or office job and instead became a cleaning lady. Among her clients were filmmaker Clive Donner and his wife. They were so taken with their rather unusual cleaner that they invited her to stay with them at their house in the south of France—an invitation she did not take up.6 Madeleine was a meticulous housekeeper and kept her own rooms beautifully. She used this work to help her climb out of depression.

  Colleen Olliffe, now married to Michael Chesterman, organised a cleaning job for Madeleine at their flat at Number 2 Regent Square. Madeleine was still carrying a torch for Michael: had wept at the wedding reception, pouring out her heart to others at the table.7 She was an unorthodox employee at Regent Square. She was friends with everyone in the flat, which was also shared by Winton Higgins, his wife Sue Young and another Australian, Ronny Matthews. Madeleine often stayed on for dinner, enjoying the joke of being such an upmarket charlady. She smoked copious amounts of marijuana, and her friends were amused that while she never seemed to have much cash, she always had enough for dope.8

  Regent Square was a cerebral household, host to a floating population of academics, artists and political activists. Among those who often stayed was the young Czech photographer Josef Koudelka, whose clandestine photographs of the Soviet invasion of Prague in August 1968 had made him an underground hero.

  Madeleine’s friends knew she was often unhappy. Her relationship with her father remained problematic and she told Sue she was distressed about a forthcoming visit from Ted.9 But she did not talk of her suicide attempt or her hospitalisation. Mixing with the people she had known at university a decade earlier, Madeleine presented as lively, clever and acerbic. She told friends of her efforts to find jobs, including as an assistant to the stage director Kenneth Tynan.10