1
LE BAISER DE LA FÉE
Dinner with Patrick White
After the Musica Viva concert (the Amadeus Quartet) I stood beside the uni
acquaintance who now worked for the Council for the Arts while he schmoozed
and was schmoozed by Maria Prerauer. The Musica Viva crowd still had a
sprinkling of the astrakhan collared and coated. It was a freezing winter’s night in
the days when we still had such things and astrakhan had not yet become extinct
in Sydney.
I ended up giving Mrs Prerauer a lift home and being invited in for coffee. I
accepted out of a confusion of thinking I needed to know such people (she was a
music critic who wrote for The Sydney Morning Herald), interest and fear that it
would be bad manners not to.
It transpired I was required to listen to a diatribe principally against the Nazi
Elizabeth Schwarzkopf, Mistress of a Kommandant of a concentration camp, but
also against some others.
I held myself very still during this, as I was, for several reasons, appalled. One of
them was that I adored Elizabeth Schwarzkopf and was ‘one of that type of young
man – you know what I mean? – who cheers after every song and some even run
to the stage and throw flowers’. I had had no idea Elizabeth Schwarzkopf had
been the Mistress of anyone, much less the Kommandant of a concentration
camp. Also I knew I was ‘one of that type of young man’ and was wondering just
how many others knew – you know what I mean? I was far too stitched up to
cheer and throw flowers.
2
I didn’t know what to say, so I nodded and upon leaving gave Maria Prerauer a
kiss in consolation, of faux rapport. She reeled back then looked rather thrilled.
A few weeks later I was astonished to receive a phone call from her. I was to
come to ‘a simple meal’ and talk to Patrick White about Australian literature. I
later learned my Australia Council friend couldn’t make it so he had given Mrs
Prerauer my phone number.
It was just the four of us (though Mr Prerauer tended to stay out of his wife’s
action) and kept simple for me. Mrs Prerauer thimbled out my wine (Patrick White
got a whisky) and we ate like aristocratic nuns (a slice of smoked salmon, in
those days a rarity, and a slice of roast veal). Despite my hostess’s efforts (she
had probably been warned) I got drunk but stayed sealed in politeness and
predictable responses. My moment of danger was when White, who had all but
pointedly ignored me, suddenly turned and demanded, ‘And what do you think of
Barbara Baynton?’
My self had been racing around its innerscape delighting in reflections on the
situation it found itself trapped in and fantasies of being elsewhere, or scintillating
in this one. So while I felt the searching light of interrogation had suddenly been
shone into my eyes, I was too drunk with the thimbles of wine and by this stage
boredom and insult to be paralysed in its glare.
I came to the realisation I had not thought of Barbara Baynton very much but
here was some sort of opportunity to step forth in this room at this table as
myself for a moment. It was a moment more dangerous than my companions and
to a lesser extent I realised. I searched my mind for memories of Barbara
Baynton. Nothing.
3
The pause must have extended almost into the dramatic. Then an association
came to me with ‘The Drover’s Wife’ and a tramp with a butcher’s knife circling a
humpy back o’ Bourke one dark night in the 1890s. Just as Patrick White opened
his mouth to sweep on in utter dismissal of my existence I said, ‘Gruesome.’
Mrs Prerauer, Patrick White, Mr Prerauer stared at me. I sliced some veal on my
plate. When I looked up to chew, Mr Prerauer (who I suspect was subtle) had just
begun to smile, Mrs Prerauer’s astonishment was transforming itself for the
benefit of Patrick White into angry contempt and his astonishment was
transforming itself into interest. ‘Quite right,’ he said. Mrs Prerauer’s glance shot
from one to the other of us as if at a tennis match then she beamed at me.
Through the rest of the simple meal she kept darting assessing, puzzled glances
at me and trying to draw me out. But I, who had never really spoken to her,
never really did so. In this way the rest of the evening passed without incident.
In a few more weeks I received another astonishing phone call. ‘Hello,’ it said,
‘this is Manoly Lascaris speaking. Patrick wants you to come to dinner.’
Along with everyone else who read or pretended to, I knew who Manoly Lascaris
was – Patrick White’s … We had not given ‘partner’ its current connotations, it still
felt like a euphemism for ‘boyfriend’. And ‘boyfriend’ was obviously not right for
Patrick White’s … They had been together for years. And years.
‘Oh thank you,’ I replied.
I was told when and where.
I had accepted in trepidation: I knew I must inevitably disappoint. With everyone
else who read or pretended to, I knew next to nothing about Australian literature
and I could not be witty and tell anecdotes in the approved theatre bound manner
4
of the era and I was dreadfully shy. Silence: brooding, calculating, critical, satiric
was my medium and defence. Most people took me for ‘quiet’. And I was a good
audience. He though, would see through me at once. Still, one could not refuse
the challenge.
In the intervening ten days I fantasised about coming into my own, Patrick’s
beautiful house, the wonderful food and the abundant gin or vodka and really
good wine, the dazzling company, my entrée into a world – a world where I would
take my place. I would no doubt move into the Eastern suburbs.
I drove. With every intention of getting stonkered, I drove. We did in those days.
I took a bottle of Pouilly Fumé I had found in my desperation in David Jones (the
old George Street store, now gone). It was astonishingly cheap. Maybe it was too
old, maybe it was not a good wine, maybe they had mispriced it (things were
laxer then) most likely it had sneaked in during a hiatus in our tariff restrictions.
I climbed the steps in the dark, Centennial Park whispering and rustling as if to
footfalls behind me. I noted that I could take refuge in it if things got completely
awful.
After a while the door was opened and Manoly in almost ludicrously heavy black
framed glasses stood there inspecting me. I explained myself and he silently
stood aside to let me enter.
I entered a room full of people. There was another inspection. Behind me Manoly
said, ‘Patrick’s in the kitchen. Would you like a drink?’
‘Oh yes.’
5
Someone smiled at my tone and went back to her conversation.
I handed my wine over; it was instantly whisked away.
I settled myself near someone about my own age who I knew was blossoming in
the theatre. Maybe Patrick had invited me to keep him company. His parents
were also there, a man of the opera, a woman of the theatre, a young lawyer and
a not young art dealer. I knew I could hide in the crowd. Manoly pushed a drink
into my hand. Red wine. Ugh. There were those black olives sweating their oil in a
crude dish and taramasalata waiting to be scooped up on rags of that Lebanese
bread stuff. I settled for anorexia and the red wine (it was quite rough to my
taste but what did I know and poured from a crude jug).
The first of my fantasies had hit the dust. I had dreamt of being in a kind of
Hollywood art deco interior, all shining chrome, table lamps throwing soft lights
up, bare wood floors focussed by a striking rug, pictures (perhaps idealised
portraits of the occupants, a major Margaret Preston, a Nolan to show how they
knew) with their own little neon lamps craning to get a better look at what they
lit, Lalique vases holding sprays of cymbidium orchids, Chinese planters holding
cyclamen (these were not yet tiresome), cocktails – martinis catching the
wonderful lights.
He was ahead of the hippy earthy pack, I’ll say that for him. Soon everyone was
to be pouring rough red (which these days would not seem rough at all) from
earthy jugs into earthy goblets. Alienated though I already was, further years
deeper in the clayey wilderness were ahead of me.
The parents of the promising young man in the theatre spoke to me in lieu of
him. I had almost begun to forget myself in their kindly interest (obviously they
were the only ones in the room who would forgive me for being such a nonentity)
6
and the first effects of the wine when Patrick White swept enormous into the
room oven-mitted hands clasping a smoking trough of something. He threw it
onto the table, ordered Manoly to seat us and charged off.
Manoly (for a moment I saw him as a dutiful but potentially vicious Border Collie
– not a good omen for my future behaviour) quickly fussed us to our places. I
was at the bottom of the table on his left. Mercifully the parents of the young
man of the theatre were next and opposite to me. The man of the opera was next
to the mother; he had a gentle, bemused, benevolent glow in his eye.
Patrick was back with a glass of whisky and a ferocious demeanour. Fortunately,
by now the red wine I had been skolling had made me bold: I wanted to laugh.
However the appalling mess he served wiped any inclination to smile off my face.
I could not eat it. It was all sorts of dissolving things swimming in oil – were
those carrots? No capsicum. That is eggplant. Hunks of onion. A clove of garlic
surfaced and sank again. More of those bloody black olives. Oregano billowed off
the surface of the ugly terracotta bowl to further nauseating effect.
Where were the slices of boiled egg, the caviar served in crystal bowls nestling in
ice, their tiny silver spoons gleaming in the candlelight? Where was the soft white
bread roll from Schlederer’s Bakery, the curl of fragrant fresh butter, the
miraculously thin slice of lemon?
A wooden platter on which sat a loaf and its slices was thrust at me. I took a slice
to help me to pretend to eat the other thing. Sawdust is no doubt softer. I think it
was made out of corn cobs pressed once all the kernels had been eaten then not
finely ground pumice sprinkled on top. Patrick glared at us to see who was not
eating. Everyone was trying. The silence was monumental. ‘Very nice,’ I
contributed and manfully demonstrated lifting a fork to my mouth. Then I took a
tiny bite of the cornboard. There was no butter, presumably as a concession to
7
the oil sliding around our plates. ‘Is it a Greek dish?’ the mother of the young
man of the theatre inquired, smiling at Manoly.
Oh well, there were two of us.
Others bent over their penance with the self-absorbed smiles of the supercilious.
I knew I was suburban. So I took a deep draught of the wine. I wished he would
bring on another – a white. Surely he would serve something that went with
white after this? Something delicate. Pheasant maybe, if pheasant was delicate –
didn’t they have to hang it or something? Please god, not pheasant then.
He continued to sip whisky and glare. Then he hoed into the stuff, dentures
clacking. I averted my attention. Manoly was smiling at me in what I took to be a
malicious manner.
The next I knew there was another commotion. Act I was rung down with cries
of, ‘Superb!’ ‘Real food!’ ‘I could feel it doing me good.’ This latter earned the
woman of the theatre a sharp glance from the mineral blue eyes but she played
out her tone (whatever it had been) resolutely. The terracotta bowls and trough
were whisked away. More wine was poured. I asked for white.
The second course was a beef daube and edible though there were not really
enough potatoes (boiled whole in their skins). My request for white had been
patently overlooked. Anyway I enjoyed the daube. It strengthened me and I was
able to be more part of the occasion.
The whisky must have made its way to White’s limbic system for he was now
waving his earthy goblet and interrogating in order to muster subject matter for
his diatribe.
8
It became clear to me what the dinner was about: audience. We were merely an
audience for the Sybil of Centennial Park. I felt hugely relieved.
‘And I suppose you’ve feeding that woman after her performances?’ he screeched
at the man of the opera.
‘Yes, Patrick. Dame Joan has kindly consented to come over for supper after a
performance or two. We keep it very simple, as you know. She wants to relax
after a – ‘
‘Saw her in The Carmelites, didn’t we Manoly?’
‘Yes Patrick.’
‘Dreadful. Utterly unconvincing. The complacency!’
I cannot convey in print what he made of that word. In general if might be noted
that he would have been a great singer himself, if he could sing. In any case he
did not let his unfortunate voice stop him from performing miracles of expression.
I laughed for sheer pleasure at his theatricality, his audacity, his outrageousness.
He glanced me into submission. ‘I was not moved, not for a moment. How could I
be if I were not convinced?’
He did a wonderful thing with ‘convinced’ also. Somewhere in it there was a
snake hissing. Possibly Satan as he had been when he approached Eve.
‘A Strathfield housewife in a church hall production. No understanding.’
9
‘I think she’s a Darling Point girl, Patrick,’ the young lawyer said.
‘I thought it was Vaucluse – it’s somewhere in the Eastern Suburbs, maybe Point
Piper but I don’t think so.’
These examples of literal mindedness were – it was something stronger than
dismissed yet milder than obliterated – intensely overlooked with a sweep of the
pale blue eyes.
‘A Protestant dressing up as a Carmelite for a fancy dress dance.’ (Again, no
alphabet could convey what he did with that final word).
‘I think she might be Catholic, Patrick.’
‘The Singing Housewife!’
‘Now Patrick,’ the man of the opera gently intoned.
‘She’d be nothing without him.’ Here followed an entirely unrepeatable analysis of
Richard Bonynge, about whom White appeared to know everything. He related
Bonynge’s breeding and personality to his work in music. To my young ears it
was brilliant beyond crediting. I was ready to sit at the feet forever.
However this was not to be.
Before dessert and after Richard Bonynge Bob Hawke was circumspectly
quartered.
10
Dessert was a clafoutis aux pommes, a good contrast to what had preceded but
dry and the apples (Granny Smith) far too tart. Mercifully no wine was served
with it.
We adjourned to the lounge for Act III.
White had returned to whisky. I was planning my escape, considering whether I
could send a note rather than ring to thank them.
‘And you, young man, we hear you are lectured by Professor Kramer.’
I admitted that I was in one of her tutorials. But hastened to add there was
another tutor as well. My mind had reeled over the possibilities of saying
something clever about her but nothing arrived.
Everyone was staring at me; more was required.
‘She plays her game very subtly.’ Something had arrived. I had no idea what I
meant.
‘Aha! That is not our impression. Professor Kramer,’ he stated.
I knew I had nothing further to add.
‘She’s a friend of James McAuley,’ the woman of the theatre saved me.
‘They‘re all in it together, the profupials!’
11
‘The profupials’, was repeated by several with those spirit annihilating trod-the-
boards laughs. The father of the boy wonder of the Australian Theatre politely
wagged his head in distant tribute to amusement.
I was desperate to get away.
The Platonic monologue had turned on Professor A D Hope whose work I found
repulsive but I was too far gone in fear that something further would be required
of my inadequacy to enjoy the butchery … ‘The greatest eighteenth century writer
working in the twentieth. Huh!’ Which had become careless. Something had gone
terribly wrong with the evening.
I had to move. I rose to examine the paintings.
These were, my secret inner voice suggested, ‘dreary’ (this word was much used
in those days by those who wished to be smart). I recognised a Godfrey Miller, a
Ian Fairweather, both either beyond me or too desperately seeking what would
forever evade him in the case of the former or addled in the latter. To my horror I
found White standing beside me. ‘What do you think?’ he demanded.
‘Patrick (I took that risk), I must go.’
‘Quite right,’ he said for the second time to me, only this time I was not at all
sure of the tone.
As I was traversing the huge stage of the lounge room Manoly entered from the
wings bearing a J C Williamsons wooden tray laden with the accustomed glazed
muddy vessels. He paused wonderfully to take in my departure before going to a
sideboard to lay the salving jugs and chalices down. ‘Oh, you are not leaving? So
soon.’ He thus turned the production into The Mikado with its hints of real
12
execution in most unpleasant manners. ‘We are all just about to have tea. Coffee
is so bad for you. Patrick forbids it.’
‘Quite right,’ I said. And quickly to the repertory ensemble poised to carry on the
real drama after the necessary bit player had ushered himself off, ‘Good night, it’s
been lovely talking to you.’
I will regret that for the rest of my life.
‘Did you have a coat?’ Patrick demanded of me as I was about to enter the dark
wing from which no player returns.
‘I’m wearing it.’
‘It’s cold out there.’
Not as cold as in here, my inner voice said.
I shut the front door behind me.
I heard a peel of laughter. A concerted stagy bellow as I picked my way down the
testing front path to the gate.
I stopped before I got into my car to breathe the sweet air of freedom. A tang of
Centennial Park hit my nostrils. The silence of the park prevailed over the
occasional distant murmur of car, the roar of a bus. I longed to wander towards
its unknowable depths to render null the awful fool I had made of myself, to
immerse myself in sweet oblivion. The key found the lock.
13
To my horror I heard Manoly’s voice. Patrick would like me to come to dinner,
again.
I heard my own go high and light as I lied, ‘I would love to.’
During the following days I racked my mind for excuses. None would be more
than that; I had to go, ‘chickening out’ was against my religion. But I promised
myself that this would be the last time.
I was steeled for the ordeal but what would I take? It was also against my
religion to turn up empty-handed. And I had to make a special effort in order to
compensate for my inadequacy and awkwardness. There was no more French
wine at ridiculously cheap prices in D Js, I believed flowers were an encumbrance
to hosts, the Manoly-Whites did not seem chocolate type of people though one of
those wooden boxes from Personality Chocolates might be presentable – but no, I
could feel his contempt … Oh, I’d just take a reasonably expensive bottle of red.
Then I remembered Bill’s Charcuterie in Miller Street – dare I? Living way over
there in Centennial Park they had probably not sampled his delicacies though
they would have heard of him. I bought a slice of his duck liver pâté and one of
his pâté de campagne. They looked meagre so I bought a pot of his béarnaise
sauce for them too.
Thus armed, I trod up the treacherous path.
It was another cold night. The dogs barked out the back. I smiled at the memory
of a girl complaining in a tutorial about the dogs in … was it The Solid Mandala,
Riders in the Chariot? licking their balls or something. The tutors had exchanged
smiles. Someone else had exclaimed, ‘But Angela, that’s what dogs do!’ Angela
had thought it ‘unnecessary’.
14
The door was open and there was the eternal Manoly tacitly snickering. I was
dressed in a rather dramatic Army Stores navy trench coat. He made sure he led
me in for inspection before helping me to divest myself of my interest. Patrick
was waiting, semi reclined on the couch, bailed up in a huge armchair was a late
middle-aged woman. She was staring into some mystery or torment.
‘Ah, you’re amongst us again,’ Patrick said, ‘have you been drafted?’
No, my name hadn’t been drawn in the ballot to go to Vietnam, I apologised.
‘Well Phillip is among us to escape it.’ Phillip, it transpired, was a draft-dodging
American of literary training.
The nearly elderly woman was Christina Stead. I was cursing myself for not
having read The Man who Loved Children.
She looked like an elderly zoo lion who would have been rather mangy but for the
fact he had had his mane severely trimmed and very tightly permed. It was
evident he had never accustomed himself to captivity and though possibly
arthritic would crouch and spring when it was least expected. She had just
finished a whisky and clearly wanted another. Manoly saw to it and to Patrick’s. I
was again given wine (red also again) and my offerings whisked away.
Patrick was going on about War. His war. The desert, the boredom, being straffed
by the Wadi something or another. Manoly came in with plates with things on
them. ‘We’re bivouacking,’ he said. I noticed my pâté de campagne on one of
them.
Miss Stead said, ‘No thank you, not at the moment,’ when offered something
(black olives needless to say, those stupid dolmades, salami and my contribution
15
which were apparently to be aligned with slices of that bread). Her voice was
clear, precise and her very Australian accent in the process of becoming
antiquated. She deliberately lit a cigarette then drank. I am sorry to say I cannot
remember all that she said that night but will carry to my grave an impression of
huge strength of some very unusual kind and of a regard which was without
compassion or malice, neither gimlet, calculating nor unfocussed; I Am a Camera
comes to mind. Christina Stead was the antithesis of whimsical and self-
regarding. She was not silent, she was not loquacious, she did her duty by the
conversation and believe me her clear and strong voice betrayed no doubt as to
her opinions. I was terrified Patrick would demand what I thought of The Man
Who … or even if it were studied in the University. Girls of my acquaintance had
been led to read it by their High School English Honours teachers. Several, who
knew my home life, had told me I ought to read it. The tone in their voice made
the prospect of the book’s revelations terrifying to me and when I had peeped
between its covers I had found its style daunting. As was its author.
Phillip, unlike the greasy theatricals, was unimpressed by being in the Presence.
He chatted on, blithely. He was very nice in his impossible innocent American
manner.
The other guests were the Duttons, over from Adelaide. Geoff was all gleaming
with some joy he was ill-equipped to disguise, Nin was not. She was restless and
edgy. She was wonderful to look at it; the epitome of forties beauty and she
spoke with warmth and vivacity. I was very sorry she was so unhappy.
Despite being denied the gin or vodka I craved, I got intoxicated on the pre
dinner glass of red (it was glasses this time; the dinner service was again earthy
but smooth this time – Arabia ware I would guess, popular at the time). I was
fine (that is to say I was dull and polite) through the soup (celery with which I
was allowed a white) but by the time the rabbit (!) was borne in (au moutarde
16
and garlic, garlic, garlicky served with these coarse large white boiled bean things
– the Manoly-Whites could not, it would seem, abide a fine texture) I was away.
Mrs Dutton became a puma about to slice someone’s face open with her claws
and obviously it would not be the permed lion’s, nor the Sage of Centennial
Park’s; Manoly’s defence of sweetness was complete, that left the American and
me and her husband.
The wine had lifted my spirits, I was looking again at the paintings glowing from
the walls. One was of a biplane just hatched from an egg. ‘I love surrealism, don’t
you?’ I announced.
Phillip asked what made me say that and I explained. Everyone looked at the
painting then at me. Phillip asked Miss Stead if it were true she had attended the
First International Congress of Writers. She nodded and sipped her wine. ‘In
Paris?’ Miss Stead nodded and sipped her wine. Nin asked her if she were writing
at the moment and she nodded and sipped her wine. I thought I had heard of the
First International Congress of Writers – some left wing/Communist thing, they
were using glasses and plates with textures which weren’t sandy and here I was
with Christina Stead and Geoffrey Dutton, owner of Sun Books and his lovely,
elegant vivacious wife and Phillip from America who seemed to be camp and
Patrick White and his …. Manoly. ‘Isn’t it good Thea Astley won the Miles Franklin
again?’ I contributed to a lull in this labouring evening.
The dormant Patrick now erupted, ‘That wicked, back-biting bitch! She was a sure
thing. Miss Beatrice Davis B A runs the thing. She’s her editor at Angus and
Robertson’s. She makes sure her horses come in. It’s fixed, it’s fixed! Their tiny
little sapphic circles run Lily Literature in this state.’
‘I thought Thea Astley was married. I met her husband in Adelaide,’ Nin Dutton
said. She was sitting next to Patrick. She laid her hand across his.
17
I noticed Christina Stead’s gaze take this in, then Geoff Dutton then me. So I
said, ‘She’s such a sophisticated writer. Surely she’s the most satiric of our
writers? She’s brilliant, without being great perhaps, as you are.’ I looked at the
two greats. Patrick looked mollified, Miss Stead waved a hand as if languidly
indicating an infinity to her left and sipped her wine. Phillip stared at me. Manoly
had decided we had finished with the rabbit.
He returned to the table with photographs. He hovered over me. ‘This is Patrick
on holiday with Geoffrey on his island,’ he said placing the rather good black and
white photograph in front of me. It was of Geoff and Patrick with fishing gear.
They were tanned. Geoffrey looked relaxed and happy, Patrick looked satisfied.
Manoly’s finger rested on Geoff. I looked at him, I looked at Geoff’s image. ‘Did
you catch anything?’ I asked Patrick. His pale blue eyes flickered. I smiled up at
Manoly. Manoly whisked the photograph away. He came back with another,
framed. It was of a much younger him in army uniform. He placed it in front of
me. I was puzzled. ‘What a beautiful photograph. Of you,’ I said. ‘Was it taken
out here?’ ‘Near Alexandria,’ Manoly said and took that photograph away. I knew
something was going on but I had only dim notions of what.
Dessert was crêpes suzette. They were not done at the table. Their texture was
fine and rubbery.
We adjourned. I asked for a gin and was given brandy.
‘How has Australia influenced your work?’ Phillip asked Miss Stead.
‘You ought to be writing! Not running this foolhardy publishing concern,’ Patrick
plosived at Geoffrey Dutton. ‘It’ll burn you up and take all your money.’
18
‘I feel Sun Books had an important contribution to make. To Australia. Now is the
time,’ Geoff replied.
‘What are you publishing?’ I asked.
‘Picture books!’ Patrick answered.
‘There is a market for colourful – creative books, designed by … We have to take
the opportunity now you can get the colour work done so cheaply in Hong Kong.’
‘Leave it to that shyster Gordon Barton! You have your own work to do.’
‘Do you feel you missed out on … because you left Australia?’ Phillip persisted
with Miss Stead. Was he just polite?
Miss Stead sipped her whisky and appeared to be considering returning her
conscious attention to this room and perhaps even the question. She did so. ‘I am
not sure there was anything to miss out on, one always misses out on something
by being somewhere else. I was somewhere else.’
Patrick White said something (no doubt wonderful) in French and Miss Stead
replied (no doubt wonderfully). Her French sounded very good to me (his had
not). No doubt she spoke German, Italian and Spanish as well. Hadn’t she been in
the Spanish Civil War?
‘Yes but,’ Phillip said, ‘you’re back now. So much must have changed, I wondered
if … you felt you … Australia – what does Australia have to offer?’
The room was intently focussed on this returned expatriate, this near ruin.
19
Miss Stead was not alarmed by attention. Her pale blue furious eyes retained
their limpid quality. She and Patrick could have been siblings. Blue eyes, furious,
tall … she was more elemental than he.
As she appeared not to be answering, Patrick declaimed, ‘One runs but always
carries this dried sponge of a country with one. It will suck you up (oh that kind
of sponge) but will fill you with its dull colours and swirling dust (here he
wheezed) – Opals! Bloody opals with their slimy phosphorescent greens and
cataract whites, their whorish mauves.’ He appeared to be struggling for breath,
wildly batted Manoly’s ministrations away, sucked on a whisky and glared at the
angels listening in their tiers just above the slate tiles of the steep roof.
‘The Spring tides at Watson’s Bay spoiled me for anything else, perhaps,’ Miss
Stead announced to Phillip.
We all sat stunned.
I felt it was my duty to save the evening.
‘I know what you mean,’ I worse than dreadfully presumed, ‘you can swim – glide
over the rocks you have to clamber over and oyster cuts always fester. No-one
eats them now because you get hepatitis,’ I warned Miss Stead.
Before she could acknowledge this kindness the Centennial Park geyser blew. ‘We
know about you!’ he declared. ‘The meat industry.’
As it was directed at me I felt obliged to respond in some way. ‘Meat industry’
must be some jargon of sophisticates for … it was usually sexual. So I nodded.
‘Where did you get that wine? The Pouilly Fumé?’
20
The brandy had given me some kind of clarity. ‘La collection de mon père,’ I said
and was astonished by the perfection of my school accent. My father had been
dead for years and I had never known him to drink wine.
‘Aha! We thought so. And what are they running these days - Shorthorns?’
‘They’ve had a bit of trouble in the Gulf Country so they’re trying out Brahman
crosses.’ I had seen a television program about this so if we were talking about
the meat industry, perhaps this would do. ‘They’re repulsive,’ I added in case we
weren’t and it wouldn’t.
‘They pay for French wine.’ With this asseveration I was more or less dismissed
though I could see he wanted to add more in the way of the reproachful.
He turned on Geoff Dutton and his failure to apply himself to the Great Project,
the nature of which was not revealed. Phillip asked and was informed the time
was not ripe for revelations and was asked what he intended to do with himself
while he dallied out the war Downunder.
Manoly disappeared, to bring in the tea, I hoped. They were talking now of Miles
Franklin and how she had blossomed at sixteen and her blossoms had thus set for
the rest of her life. I gathered there was much Patrick approved about her.
Manoly appeared, not with the tray but with more photos. ‘Sidney Nolan.’
‘I know,’ I said though I didn’t.
‘John Tasker. He directed some of Patrick’s plays.’
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‘Oh,’ I said.
‘David Foster.’
I examined the photos. They were all the one person and I was in there with
them. They were a type. I had a revelation – oh, this is what they meant when
they said ‘s/he’s his type’. I got it. I was Patrick’s type – thin, straight brown hair,
artisticky and quietish.
Manoly saw I had got it, took the photos and exited to prepare for his next
entrance.
I looked around. All were engaged in Phillip’s defence of his fleeing the draft to
Australia except Miss Stead. Her steady gaze absorbed me while I came to the
conclusion that I had been invited to these madmen’s house, not because I had
hidden, astonishing depths, wonderful potential, was interesting in some way not
apparent to me but because I was White’s type. She saw, sipped her whisky and
turned her attention to Phillip at bay.
The room became squalid; self-possession began chelating in me.
I went to the kitchen. Manoly was doing his J C Williamsons wooden tray.
I thanked him.
He said he would see me out.
‘Good night!’ I declaimed as I re-entered the lounge.
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No-one said ‘Oh you’re not going?’ of course, they just stared at me shadowed by
Manoly.
Something swept me: I must gain something from this abasing encounter. I
strode to Miss Stead and aligned one cheek and then another in formal intimacy
with hers. Her response was expert and maybe terribly kind. I turned and bore
down on Patrick White. He was glaring ahead then foolishly looked up into my
face. I kissed him on the forehead and smiling, considered him. His flinty eyes
kaleidoscoped resolving into velvet softness; mine turned adamantine.
‘Good night,’ I said to the others as I trod calmly off, shadowed by Manoly.
As I stepped into the stinging freshness of freedom he called from the doorway,
‘Patrick finds you a little interesting, he calls you our farouche young friend.’
As my feet hit Martin Road I realised I was terribly drunk. I couldn’t drive across
the Bridge in this state. I walked to my mother’s car and sat in the front
passenger seat. I couldn’t drive and I feared encountering again the other guests
as they made their escapes. Then I noticed a gate into the darkness of Centennial
Park; it was slightly ajar.
I knew I would pass out soon if I didn’t wake up so I ventured through the gate –
a walk could only help, even if I had to walk for hours.
I plunged down a lawn gully into further darkness. The cold intensified and the
grass began to crackle; frost. I thought the cold would help me to sober up. I was
shaking.
I reached the bottom of the gully. There was a huge log. I sat on it and dozed off.
A noise – a gurgling – brought me back to consciousness. What was it? Moonlight
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now illuminated the freezing gully. I could still not see the source of the strange
noise so I got up to search.
It was a tap of a very old kind and water sparkled and ran whitish with myriad
tiny bubbles from it. It was the milk of Paradise and I drank. It was wonderfully
cold and pure.
It was the only miracle I have ever experienced: I was instantly sober, dreadfully
tired but clear of sight and steady of hand and foot.
I made my way out of the gully and drove home.
In the two days of rage and remorse which followed I decided those two were
appalling, that they entertained chiefly in order to indulge in Get the Guest, that
Patrick White was mad and Manoly bad, that Miss Stead had said that thing about
the Spring tides at Watson’s Bay merely as something to say and that it had been
rather feeble.
Over the following years I saw Patrick White several times and we kept our
distance. The last was on Central Station. He was wearing a light khaki trench
coat and heading west. It was an odd time of night, nine o’clock.
Several decades later I read For Love Alone and realised Miss Stead had not been
rather feeble; the Spring tides at Watson’s Bay probably had unfitted her for life
elsewhere, though that she had to have.
© Ian MacNeill
