The Best Australian Essays 2015 (28 page)

The other surprising thing was how difficult it was to read the bad reviews, or the negative parts of the mixed reviews. I had seriously overestimated my ability to deal with criticism; ten years of rigorous study and critique in graduate school had not prepared me for what public criticism would be like. I disappointed myself, and still do, with my painful sensitivity. Like many writers, I am shockingly insecure, a symptom that goes oddly hand in hand with the monstrous vanity that declares one's own work good enough to be read and bought and sold and discussed by others.

It felt sometimes as though, despite my best intentions, every negative word engraved itself in my brain in solid Roman capitals, while the words of praise were of a thinner substance. I felt an obligation to read reviews in a way that I hadn't felt for the profile pieces preoccupied with what it was like to grow up with feuding poets in the house (answer: I had my head in a book and didn't notice or care). I was so fortunate to be reviewed, I reminded myself, and to be reviewed by critics I admired. Reading them seemed respectful. But very quickly I decided to avoid the negative ones, a decision with which I have stuck, even though I'm fairly ashamed of it.

If bad reviews just made me feel terrible that would be one thing, but the problem is that they derail the writing – and the muse is fickle enough as it is. I know several writers who read everything written about them, and I admire their courage and ability to just not give a fuck, their capacity to distance themselves. But my policy is to rely on others – my publicist, my husband, my parents, my friends – to vet the reviews.

What I soon noticed – and it keeps me relatively sane even now – is that for every reaction there was an equal and opposite reaction. My characters were superficial; my characters had great vivacity and vigour. I was a tough plain stylist; my writing was as rich as expensive brocade. It was a haphazard story; it was a satisfying mystery. You will struggle to get through the first paragraph; you will wish that you were ill so that you could stay home in bed with this book.

It was difficult to recognise some reviews as being about the same book. I began to understand that the image of reproducibility I'd seen in those stacks of printed books, all identical, the mass of them, was a mirage. The book meant something different, lived a different life, for every reader. That seems so obvious now, but wasn't at all obvious then, despite the fact that I'd spent years arguing about the meaning of books.

I hadn't written the book to please reviewers. I hadn't written it to please readers, although I hoped that it would be pleasurable to read. I hadn't even written it to please myself, exactly, but more to please a very demanding and rigorous muse who felt at times quite separate from myself. And yet once the book had a physical form, I discovered an uncomfortable desire to please everyone, knowing this was impossible. I hated to disappoint anyone who had given their time to the book. I suspect that this is something that women experience differently to men. To be modest, to be inoffensive, to be self-effacing: these are traditional feminine virtues, and publishing in some way violates all of them.

As I was preparing to write this essay, I came across an interview with Janis Joplin, the last one she did before she died. I listened to a recording of it. It's hard to imagine anyone who embodies the spirit of not giving a fuck more than Janis. But what she said was, ‘It was important whether people were going to accept me or not. In my insides it really hurts if someone doesn't like me.'

And then she lit into herself for having this reaction in a way that felt very familiar: ‘I should be able to get past that. I should be able to do that. Girls need to be reassured. It's silly.'

It is silly, meaning it's a reaction I wish I could put aside. But it is a surprisingly stubborn and unresponsive reaction, one that refuses all invitations to leave, all attempts to shame it out of existence or to tell it to ‘get past that'. I've decided that all I need to do is put the response aside enough to be able to write.

Overland

An Uneasy Masterpiece

Stephen Romei

I witnessed something a little out of the ordinary at the recent Kibble Awards for Australian female writers. As has become the charming custom at the awards lunch, extracts from the shortlisted books were read by students from North Sydney Girls High. It's a moment to relax, sip some wine, whisper a comment to your neighbour about this book or that. And so it was – until we came to Helen Garner's
This House of Grief
, her account of the two trials of Victorian man Robert Farquharson, who drowned his three young sons by driving his car into a dam on Father's Day in 2005. Farquharson, who claimed he blacked out due to a coughing fit, escaped the sinking vehicle. Jai, ten, Tyler, seven, and Bailey, two, did not. Found guilty of three counts of murder at his first trial, Farquharson was sentenced to life without parole. He won an appeal. At his second trial he was again found guilty on the same three charges and sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum term of thirty-three years.

When the bright young student started reading from Garner's book, the crowd at the State Library of New South Wales fell silent. The chosen passage was grim: the testimony of the female police diver who was the first to reach the submerged vehicle and feel, in the darkness, ‘slightly protruding from the car, a small person's head'. I looked around at my fellow lunch guests. People had their heads down, their faces set. The room was still and tense. We were waiting, quietly, politely, for something deeply unpleasant to be over. It strikes me this may be the prevailing attitude towards Garner's book, which has been in the running for several awards but so far won none (the Kibble went to Joan London for her fine novel
The Golden Age
). I wonder whether judges see the power of this book but in the end hesitate to celebrate it. We respect the author – she's one of our best – and admire her previous works, but why this story? Why ask us to think about the unthinkable?

It's a question she tackles in a recent piece for the
Monthly
. In the book, she quotes perceptively from the 2007
60 Minutes
interview with Farquharson's wife, the boys' mother, Cindy Gambino: ‘Most parents who've never lost a child can't fathom the thought of it. They get to a certain point in their thoughts and they just go, “Nuh. Not going there.”'

I admit to having done exactly that. When Garner's book came out I skimmed its pages, but I didn't want to read it. I relied on trusted critics – Peter Craven said it was some sort of masterpiece – to tell me it was a work deserving serious attention. Garner understands this reluctance: late in the book, when she has decided Farquharson is guilty, she says she still ‘would have given anything to be convinced he was innocent' because ‘in spite of everything I knew about the ways of the world, it was completely unendurable to me that a man would murder his own children'.

It may be clear now that I have read the book. I decided to do so after the Kibble lunch, and read it last weekend. It is as harrowing as I knew it would be: we will never know how long it took the boys to die, and so in this work of non-fiction our imagination has space to torture us.

And it is indeed some sort of masterpiece. Surely I am not the only reader who will think of Dostoyevsky's great novel
Crime and Punishment
. It is a deeply human work, touching on the lives of the dozens of people affected by a terrible crime. It stares into the dark side of love. It is also a tribute to our judicial system, flawed but magnificent. Garner's eye for people is so sharp – in a few lines we know them, or someone like them – and she records the toll on the participants, including herself. ‘What was the point,' she writes towards the end. ‘What was the truth? Whatever it was, it seemed to reside in some far-off, shadow realm of anguish, beyond the reach of words and resistant to the striving of intellect.'

It's an important book and I'm glad I read it.

Two weeks after this essay was published,
This House of Grief
received the Ned Kelly Award for best true crime book. Garner said: ‘The Neds are the only people with the guts to give this book a prize.'

The Weekend Australian Review

The Insults of Age

Helen Garner

The insults of age had been piling up for so long that I was almost numb to them. The husband (when I still had one): ‘You're not going
out
in that sleeveless top?' The grandchild: ‘Nanna, why are your teeth grey?' The pretty young publisher tottering along in her stilettos: ‘Are you right on these stairs, Helen?' The flight attendant at the boarding gate: ‘And when you do reach your seat, madam, remember to
stow
that little backpack
riiiight
under the seat in front of you!' The grinning red-faced bloke who mutters to the young man taking the seat beside me: ‘Bad luck, mate.' The armed child behind the police station counter unable to conceal her boredom as I describe the man in a balaclava, brandishing a baton, who leapt roaring out of the dark near the station underpass and chased me and my friend all the way home: ‘And what were you scared of? Did you think he might hit you with his umbrella?'

Really, it is astonishing how much shit a woman will cop in the interests of civic and domestic order.

But last spring I got a fright. I was speaking about my new book to a university lecture theatre full of journalism students. I had their attention. Everything was rolling along nicely. Somebody asked me a question and I looked down to collect my thoughts. Cut to the young lecturer's face surprisingly close to mine. ‘Helen,' he murmured, ‘we're going to take you to the medical clinic.' What?
Me?
Apparently, in those few absent moments, of which I still have no memory, I had become confused and distressed; I didn't know where I was or why I was there. He thought I might be having a stroke.

The rest of that afternoon I lay at my ease in an Emergency cubicle at the Royal Melbourne, feeling strangely light-hearted. I kept thinking in wonder,
I've dropped my bundle.
All scans and tests came up clear. Somebody asked me if I'd ever heard of transient global amnesia. I was home in time for dinner.

Next morning I took the hospital report to my GP. ‘I've been worried about you,' she said. ‘It's stress. You are severely depleted. Cancel the rest of your publicity tour, and don't go on any planes. You need a serious rest.' I must have looked sceptical. She leant across the desk, narrowed her eyes, and laid it on the line: ‘Helen.
You. Are. Seventy-one.
'

I went home and sulked on the couch for a week, surveying my lengthening past and shortening future.

I had known for years, of course, that beyond a certain age women become invisible in public spaces. The famous erotic gaze is withdrawn. You are no longer, in the eyes of the world, a sexual being. In my experience, though, this forlornness is a passing phase. The sadness of the loss fades and fades. You pass through loneliness and out into a balmy freedom from the heavy labour of self-presentation. Oh, the relief! You have nothing to prove. You can saunter about the world in overalls. Because a lifetime as a woman has taught you to listen, you know how to strike up long, meaty conversations with strangers on trams and trains.

But there is a downside, which, from my convalescent sofa, I dwelt upon with growing irritation. Hard-chargers in a hurry begin to patronise you. Your face is lined and your hair is grey, so they think you are weak, deaf, helpless, ignorant and stupid. When they address you they tilt their heads and bare their teeth and adopt a tuneful intonation. It is assumed that you have no opinions and no standards of behaviour, that nothing that happens in your vicinity is any of your business. By the time I had got bored with resting and returned to ordinary life, I found that the shield of feminine passivity I had been holding up against this routine peppering of affronts had splintered into shards.

One warm December evening, a friend and I were strolling along Swanston Street on our way out to dinner. The pavement was packed and our progress was slow. Ahead of us in the crowd we observed with nostalgic pleasure a trio of teenagers striding along, lanky white Australian schoolgirls in gingham dresses and blazers, their ponytails tied high with white ribbons.

One of the girls kept dropping behind her companions to dash about in the moving crowd, causing mysterious jolts and flurries. Parallel with my friend and me, an Asian woman of our age was walking by herself, composed and thoughtful. The revved-up schoolgirl came romping back against the flow of pedestrians and with a manic grimace thrust her face right into the older woman's. The woman reared back in shock. The girl skipped nimbly across the stream of people and bounded towards her next mark, a woman sitting on a bench – also Asian, also alone and minding her own business. The schoolgirl stopped in front of her and did a little dance of derision, flapping both hands in mocking parody of greeting. I saw the Asian woman look up in fear, and something in me went berserk.

In two strides I was behind the schoolgirl. I reached up, seized her ponytail at the roots and gave it a sharp downward yank. Her head snapped back. In a voice I didn't recognise I snarled, ‘Give it a rest, darling.' She twisted to look behind her. Her eyes were bulging, her mouth agape. I let go and she bolted away to her friends. The three of them set off at a run. Their white ribbons went bobbing through the crowd all the way along the City Square and up the steps of the Melbourne Town Hall, where a famous private school was holding its speech night. The whole thing happened so fast that when I fell into step beside my friend she hadn't even noticed I was gone.

Everyone to whom I described the incident became convulsed with laughter, even lawyers, once they'd pointed out that technically I had assaulted the girl. Only my fourteen-year-old granddaughter was shocked. ‘Don't you think you should have spoken to her? Explained why what she was doing was wrong?' As if. My only regret is that I couldn't see the Asian woman's face at the moment the schoolgirl's head jerked back and her insolent grin turned into a rictus. Now
that
I would really, really like to have seen.

By now my blood was up. At Qantas I approached a check-in kiosk and examined the screen. A busybody in uniform barged up to me, one bossy forefinger extended. ‘Are you sure you're flying Qantas and not Jetstar?' Once I would have bitten my lip and said politely, ‘Thanks. I'm okay, I think.' Now I turned and raked him with a glare. ‘Do I
look
like somebody who doesn't know which airline they're flying?'

A young publicist from a literary award phoned me to deliver tidings that her tragic tone indicated I would find devastating: alas, my book had not been short-listed. ‘Thanks for letting me know,' I said in the stoical voice writers have ready for these occasions. But to my astonishment she poured out a stream of the soft, tongue-clicking, cooing noises one makes to a howling toddler whose balloon has popped. I was obliged to cut across her: ‘And you can
stop making those sounds
.'

After these trivial but bracing exchanges, my pulse rate was normal, my cheeks were not red, I was not trembling. I hadn't thought direct action would be so much fun. Habits of a lifetime peeled away. The world bristled with opportunities for a woman in her seventies to take a stand. I shouted on planes. I fought for my place in queues. I talked to myself out loud in public. I walked along the street singing a little song under my breath: ‘Back off. How dare you? Make my day.' I wouldn't say I was on a hair-trigger. I was just primed for action.

I invited an old friend to meet me after work at a certain city bar, a place no longer super-fashionable but always reliable. We came down the stairs at 4.30 on a Friday afternoon. Her silver hair shone in the dim room, advertising our low status. The large space was empty except for a small bunch of quiet drinkers near the door. Many couches and armchairs stood in appealing configurations. We walked confidently towards one of them. But a smiling young waiter stepped out from behind the bar and put out one arm. ‘Over here.' He urged us away from the comfortable centre of the room, with its gentle lamps and cushions, towards the darkest part at the back, where several tiny cafe tables and hard, upright chairs were jammed side-on against a dusty curtain.

I asked, ‘Why are you putting us way back here?'

‘It's our policy,' he said, ‘when pairs come in. We put them at tables for two.'

Pairs? Bullshit. ‘But we don't want to sit at the back,' I said. ‘There's hardly anybody here. We'd like to sit on one of those nice couches.'

‘I'm sorry, madam,' said the waiter. ‘It's
policy
.'

‘Come on,' said my pacific friend. ‘Let's just sit here.'

I subsided. We chose a slightly less punitive table and laid our satchels on the floor beside us. With tilted head and toothy smile the waiter said, ‘How's your day been, ladies?'

‘Not bad, thanks,' I said. ‘We're looking forward to a drink.'

He leant his head and shoulders right into our personal space. ‘And how was your shopping?'

That was when I lost it.

‘Listen,' I said with a slow, savage calm. ‘We don't
want
you to ask us these questions. We want you to be
cool
, and
silent
, like a
real
cocktail waiter.'

The insult rolled off my tongue as smooth as poison. The waiter's smile withered. Then he made a surprising move. He put out his hand to me and said pleasantly, ‘My name's Hugh.'

I shook his hand. ‘I'm Helen. This is Anne. Now, in the shortest possible time, will you please get two very dry martinis onto this table?'

He shot away to the bar. My friend with the shining silver hair pursed her lips and raised her eyebrows at me. We waited in silence. Soon young Master Hugh skidded back with the drinks and placed them before us deftly, without further attempts at small talk. We thanked him. The gin worked its magic. For an hour my friend and I talked merrily in our ugly, isolated corner. We declined Hugh's subdued offer of another round, and he brought me the bill. He met my eye. Neither of us smiled, let alone apologised, but between us flickered something benign. His apparent lack of resentment moved me to leave him a rather large tip.

On the tram home I thought of the young waiter with a chastened respect. It came to me that to turn the other cheek, as he had done, was not simply to apply an ancient Christian precept but also to engage in a highly sophisticated psychological manoeuvre. When I got home, I picked up Marilynne Robinson's novel
Gilead
where I'd left off and came upon a remark made by Reverend Ames, the stoical Midwestern Calvinist preacher whose character sweetens and strengthens as he approaches death: ‘It is worth living long enough,' he writes, in a letter to the son born to him in his old age, ‘to outlast whatever sense of grievance you may acquire.'

I take his point. But my warning stands. Let blood technicians look me in the eye and wish me good morning before they sink a needle into my arm. Let no schoolchild in a gallery stroll between me and the painting I'm gazing at as if I were only air. And let no one, ever again, under any circumstances, put to me or any other woman the moronic question, ‘And how was your shopping?'

The Monthly