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HISTORY/HERSTORY
John Irving – the first convict to
be pardoned
After larceny?
The hulks, transportation on the
First Fleet,
Sydney Cove, a full pardon, Norfolk
Island and
Parramatta.
Females
on ‘The Scarborough’, ‘The Prince
of Wales’:
sick.
Got a few
through.
West side of Sydney Cove,
scurvy, dysentery, brewing tea from
native plants.
Making do for a couple
of years.
Someone must have had a
word with Phillip.
Off to Norfolk Island on ’The
Sirius’
with that full pardon and Captain
Hunter
who ripped the bottom out of her
but came good.
Flying through the tempest seas
on a grating.
Landed.
Dried his clothes soon enough.
There was plenty of work.
Good for the record.
Recalled.
Parramatta.
Settling.
Commended for a post mortem
on a partially blind man, stabbed
by a butcher,
his mate.
Dead.
A couple of days later
the order came through
to pay him
a hundred pounds.
Dorothy Parker – wit.
Pushed off to Europe
(“Guess who’s on board?
Marlene Dietrich.
Guess who’s not?
My trunk”).
Spain
(throwing the portable typewriter
she’d just bought
down to Ernest standing on the
wharf
when he shouted up he didn’t have
one)
and Switzerland
Montana Vermala.
A sanatorium in which the Murphies
had generously installed
a bar to brighten up the place
where their son was dying.
Dorothy came to help
(patting the back of Sara’s hand,
“I hate society too”).
And really she was pretty good.
Down to her whisky sour for
breakfast
(waving gaily from the bar,
“Sweets for the sweet”),
wine with lunch,
two or three martinis
and cognac swirling, swirling with
the Murphies
after dinner
(DowDow, “Look, Mrs Parker’s a
gypsy.”
Sara, “Tell us our fortunes,
oh do Dorothy!”
‘Cross my palm with gold.”
Gerald tossed her his lighter
which she carefully inspected, lit
a cigarette with
and placed in her pocket-book with
her own,
then inhaled and said,
“Now let me see …
I see a spring. a summer and a
fall”).
And so it was.
Switzerland.
God it was boring.
Switzerland for a spring, a summer
and a fall.
She’d even been glad to see Scott
Fitzgerald
when he’d turned up.
Really, Dorothy was very good.
The doctor would talk to her,
that was how they’d come to know
and
she was always so neat
with her little black dresses and
diamond clips.
Sara had to send off to Paris
for some more underwear and for
that book
Dorothy had talked about when the
food was
so terrible that night.
And she’d walk with Patrick in the
wood
(sitting writing to Mr Benchley on
her beautiful stationery
-
Sara,” Oh let me see Dorothy,
please,
you must write such wonderful letters
to him”
“Mountains, mountains everywhere,
How I long for coasts.
Mountains, mountains all around,
I cannot leave my hosts”)
and later, along the terrace.
Much later Sara confessed
when asked what Dorothy Parker was
really like,
“She’s really very practical.
She helped us – Gerald and I
to make
all sort of arrangements.
Do you know we discussed giving her
but DoDow said,
“Why don’t we just thank her?”
Somebody heard her quote a line
in the Wordsworth Room
at Scott Fitzgerald’s funeral
(to which nobody went).
She stood there for a while
in her little black dress
looking at the pickled body
before tossing her wreath,
“The poor son of a bitch.”
Owl-eyes
at a funeral.
Later still, her play failed
(“it was the only thing I ever did
that I was proud of”)
and she left what she had to
The Association for the Advancement
of Coloured People.
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