The Attachment Read online

  Praise for The Attachment

  ‘Unless your heart is made of stone, The Attachment will stir in you a deep yearning for connection, for quiet communion, for conversation, for intimacy, for wisdom, for faith, for love . . . for a joyful engagement with life itself. It is the chronicle of an unlikely but beautiful friendship that will inspire you to value your own friendships more highly, and to nurture them more carefully.’ Hugh Mackay, author of Beyond Belief

  ‘The Attachment captures the intoxication of being swept into a new and deeply nourishing friendship. It fizzes with joy and humour, wrestles with agonising questions, always anchored in compassion and wisdom.’ Debra Oswald, author of Useful

  ‘From the first seed of recognition, the feverish exchange of ideas and confidences, to a deep and abiding appreciation, The Attachment is a candid, illuminating journey into the heart of a profound and unexpected friendship, and a testament to the art of correspondence.’ Kat Stewart, actor

  ‘The Attachment made me want to notice my world, love my world, shape it into words. It is a book about friendship but more than that, these two letter-writers—these unlikely friends—are mature enough to know the value of the moment, the value of friendship, how precious and fleeting life is. Both writers are warm, curious, playful, and their letters are rich and full of story and connection. I was moved, and surprised, and completed the book in a veil of tears. Because I felt the mystery behind the letters, I felt the presence of death and darkness in so much light, and life. Both authors are vulnerable travellers, questioning their corresponding worlds, appreciating the good, challenging the bad, the wrong. I appreciated the way Ailsa and Tony were open about their differences. I loved it that both writers ask What is God, What is life and What do we live for? And in the very next sentence they will share the weather, breakfast, the chores of the day. The book enriched me, and inspired me. It felt to me full of dignity and searching.’ Sofie Laguna, Miles Franklin award-winning author of The Eye of the Sheep

  ‘The Attachment is a beautifully written, soulful book about friendship and what really matters in this life. To read it is to be present at the unfurling of a tender friendship between two thoughtful, compassionate humans, and like all the best collections of letters it’s also a discursive wander through life’s big questions. It will make you grateful for what you have, while urging you to seize the day with the people you love. It made me think about atonement, and responsibility, and freedom; memory, and poetry, and how to farewell the dying. The Attachment is a hymn to paying attention, to walking and swimming and to the deeply consoling role of ritual in our lives. It will make you want to write letters: good ones. I will read this book again and again.’ Charlotte Wood, Stella Prize-winning author of The Natural Way of Things

  First published in 2017

  Copyright © Ailsa Piper and Tony Doherty 2017

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to the Copyright Agency (Australia) under the Act.

  Excerpt from Walter Burghardt reprinted from America (4 August 2013) with permission of America Press, Inc. (2017). All rights reserved.

  Excerpt from Between the Monster and the Saint by Richard Holloway reproduced with permission of The Text Publishing Company. © Richard Holloway 2009.

  Allen & Unwin

  83 Alexander Street

  Crows Nest NSW 2065

  Australia

  Phone: (61 2) 8425 0100

  Email: [email protected]

  Web: www.allenandunwin.com

  Cataloguing-in-Publication details are available from the National Library of Australia

  www.trove.nla.gov.au

  ISBN 9781760294687

  eISBN 9781925576573

  Internal design by Romina Panetta

  Set by Midland Typesetters, Australia

  Cover design: Romina Panetta

  Cover photographs: Mihail Ulianikov / Getty Images

  FOR OUR FAMILIES.

  YOU BEGAN THE CONVERSATION.

  Contents

  Dear Reader - Ailsa

  Dear Reader - Tony

  Autumn

  Dear Reader - Tony

  Dear Reader - Ailsa

  Winter

  Dear Reader - Ailsa

  Spring

  Dear Reader - Tony

  Dear Reader - Ailsa

  Dear Reader - Tony

  Summer

  Dear Reader - Tony

  Dear Reader - Ailsa

  Postscript

  Acknowledgements

  About the Authors

  DEAR READER ,

  This is the story of an unlikely friendship.

  My name is Ailsa Piper. I’m a 57-year-old writer, walker, teacher, theatre director and, once upon a time, actress. The other half of ‘us’ is an 82-year-old swimmer, walker, educator and priest called Tony Doherty.

  Friends used to look at me sideways when I mentioned him.

  ‘Tony? Is he your priest mate?’

  They’re used to the idea now, but it took a while. I’m not a churchgoer and I don’t seek conversion, so I wasn’t on the lookout for a conversation with a cleric. I grew up kind-of Catholic, but if I had to define myself in terms of belief systems I would perhaps call myself an agnostic with pantheistic leanings—a fence-sitter!

  I’m prepared to cop such sledging on the chin. I’m content to be undecided, and live comfortably with the idea that all we have is uncertainty. As a lover of ritual and things mystical or mysterious, I’ve often yearned for belief, but I’ve never been able to make that leap. So a friendship with a priest took me by surprise.

  How did it happen?

  Well, at Easter 2012, Tony was given a copy of my book Sinning Across Spain, by a mutual friend. As Tony tells it, the last thing he wanted at Easter (peak season for a priest) was a book about sins, but he read it and three weeks later, he wrote to me.

  That book is an account of a 1300-kilometre walk I took on a pilgrim road in Spain, shouldering the sins of friends, colleagues and strangers. Back in 2010, I was doing some research for a play I was adapting, when I found an intriguing little piece of information. It stated that in medieval times, a person could be paid to carry the sins of another to a holy place. On arrival, the stay-at-home received absolution, while the walker got to keep any blisters they’d earned on the way.

  Before I could think about it I put out a call. ‘Pilgrim seeks sinners for mutually beneficial arrangement,’ I wrote. It went viral! People donated sins to me. They wrote to me of their shame and regret. A swag of ‘sinners’ confessed and I carried, wanting to test whether healing, or transformation, might result. That was the premise of the story Tony read over Easter. So I guess our friendship began with sin; with ‘disclosure’—a word Tony uses a lot.

  Disclosure characterised our exchanges. That first email of Tony’s was answered immediately by me, and the correspondence grew like topsy. Few boundaries constrained our exchanges, even though we are more easily defined by our differences than our similarities. We endeavoured to listen with care and respect. Tony and I share a love of conversation and a wish to find common ground—if not agreement—on everything from afterlife to walking to the best licorice allsorts. As a result, there were surprises, laughter and, occasionally, tears. Best of all, though, a fr
iendship began.

  Whenever I spoke about our letters, people frequently expressed longing at the possibility of a thoughtful pen-pal and, even more often, curiosity about the content of our correspondence. What was this ‘odd couple’ finding to say to each other? At a time when much of the talk between people from opposite sides of fences is so polarised, we thought we might see if our dialogue could be of interest. (Not that we oppose each other in everything, but it must be said that Tony’s insistence on rugby as football offends my AFL sensibilities.) We decided to use our correspondence as the basis of a book.

  We spent months wrangling, in person and via email, trying to develop our ideas and playing with form. We wrote dialogues, trying to articulate the sorts of conversations we had. We took turns writing essays about what we felt mattered. We wrote and re-wrote, slogged and got bogged. We put the text down for over a year, thinking it would never see the light of day.

  Then, I was awarded a writing residency at Bundanon, a property gifted to the nation by the artist Arthur Boyd. On the banks of the Shoalhaven River, it’s a place of natural beauty and silence, two things that ignite my imagination and work ethic. One day, unable to make headway with another project, I decided to have a look at our manuscript.

  I read and read, all day and into the night, as wombats snuffled and growled under the floorboards. I couldn’t put it down. I was taken back to the beginning of our correspondence, and marvelled at how far we had come. It’s easy to forget beginnings when you’re a long way down the track. This is something I know from walking. The first steps of an epic hike are rarely as memorable as the last, and yet they should be. They’re built on hope and possibility, two things without which our days are bleak.

  Not stopping to draw breath, I cut 30,000 words, paring the manuscript back to nothing but our early letters. I sent the text to Tony, saying I thought everything else we had written was too pretentious or self-conscious, and didn’t sound like us at all. I suggested we interpolate some letters to a Reader—to you—and leave it at that. Tony agreed immediately. Whenever that rare occurrence takes place, I figure we must be on the right track!

  And so, dear Reader, you are holding in your hands a piece of two lives. It might seem a little strange to give you words that were not intended for publication, but they are a heartfelt offering, and they are us—for better and, sometimes, very much for worse!

  These letters were the beginning of a friendship that supported me through some of the darkest and most frightening days of my life. For that—and for Tony—I am grateful. Every day.

  I wish for you Tony’s customary sign-off: happy days. It’s easy to write those words, but to be able to recognise a happy day, and to embrace it and be grateful for it, may be one of the most important things we can do. Here’s to living in happy days.

  Ailsa

  DEAR READER ,

  Few friends would argue with the proposition that I talk a bit. Lucky, really—in my job you’re expected to talk a lot. What I like most, however, is just easy conversation—a little unhurried time for a meal, a lazy hour in a pub, stories that cause belly laughs and the odd tear.

  Sadly, a lot of my talking is monologue. A pulpit homily doesn’t allow for much genuine feedback. At its best, conversation dances—opening up, exploring connections, sharing stories, earthy humour, at times a little weep. Even wracking sobs. The letters that follow were the beginning of a conversation that continues to unfold . . .

  My name is Tony Doherty. Last big one, birthday that is, was 82. Should have retired years ago, of course, but much of my work is simply fun. Almost all of it carries a quiet sense of deep satisfaction, even in the damaged Church we have today.

  As a Catholic priest who had been standing still in pulpits for over five decades, a few years ago I felt this baffling impulse to walk a 350-kilometre section of the famous Camino Frances, an ancient pilgrim road in northern Spain that leads from the Pyrenees mountains to Santiago de Compostela. I reached the cathedral at Santiago on the day of my 75th birthday—rather chuffed, really.

  On the road, I’d listened to deeply human stories—stories that were golden. Sometimes they were in a language not my own, but still I understood their meaning. A little, at least. The irony is, however, that one of my richest Camino conversations did not take place in Spain but has been here in Australia, with a woman who, although we share the same language and are both veterans of the pilgrim track, has a vastly different background and foreground to my own.

  The night before Good Friday 2012, a book by Ailsa Piper, an author quite unknown to me, arrived in the mail. I read it over the Easter weekend. It was about taking on the load of other people’s sins. Connections began to form in my mind.

  On Friday the parish church is full, listening again to the story of judgement, torture and death. The mood is sober. The message is Jesus ‘carrying our sins’—now there’s a link! On Sunday, people are lifted with a story of new life and resurrection. This is the normal Easter fare.

  But there is a backstory that always catches my attention.

  Where were those young friends, apostles we will call them, on the Friday of the execution? They were hiding in a locked room paralysed by fear, staring into the abyss of their own cowardice. All their enthusiastic promises of support were cold ashes in their mouths. The newly risen Christ appears in their locked room. There was no recrimination. No demand for explanation. No mention of broken promises. What he offered them was shalom—the ancient blessing of love, understanding, abundance and fullness of life. What he gave them was forgiveness.

  The origins of the Christian story are grounded in the experience of a group of terrified, broken, vulnerable people—not the usual foundation story told of heroes. The Easter event carries a painful reminder that new life often comes in brokenness. Sometimes in the brokenness of others.

  Ailsa’s book reminded me that in the far-off Middle Ages, pilgrims attempted a highly unusual way of being connected—by carrying one another’s sins. This notion, initially seeming like rank superstition, spoke directly to the Easter story, and seemed to have a surprising foundation of good common sense. I began to ask myself fundamental questions: To what extent are those of us who come together in church a practical community? How are we really connected to one another? How do we take genuine responsibility for each other?

  In this monologue world of mine, I talk a great deal about a family of believers supporting one another. We in the Catholic Church claim to be a community whose aim is to take on the task of being a healing agent in the wider world. On a bad day—and those days are becoming more frequent in the light of the stories of abuse—it’s hard to recognise such a grand vision.

  We build hospitals to help people with broken bodies. We minister to the dying. We teach children. We provide shelter for the homeless and try to share their alienation. We struggle for the rights of refugees. Why, then, do we find it hard to imagine carrying the sins of others? Why do we find it so confronting to face this gospel responsibility?

  That’s how my conversation with Ailsa began. It wasn’t long before the ensuing emails became a vehicle for personal sharing.

  We are a generation apart in age—or is that two generations? Ailsa grew up on an immense sheep station in Western Australia. I grew up on Sydney’s Lane Cove River. Her life has been in the theatre. My life has been in the Church. She’s a walker. I’m more of a swimmer. Our conversation, between Melbourne and Sydney, was by email. Ailsa’s language is not always my language. She will use the word ‘love’ with little restraint. There is a cautious philosopher locked away somewhere in me that wants to make all sorts of distinctions. Ailsa chides me that I’m splitting hairs or just plain fearful. She likes to chide!

  Our correspondence grew out of mutual curiosity, and explored many issues—for example, the nature of belief—from two quite disparate points of view. Belief has many faces, it always has had. The battle lines drawn up between believer and unbeliever often seem childish to me, like kids w
restling in a playground. Not that our letters were debates between belief and unbelief at all—but the nature of human belief is never too far away from what occupies our minds.

  I like the word ‘belief ’. It has always intrigued me. The word comes from an old English word lief, which can be translated as ‘love’. Belief, at its heart, is ‘to be in love’. Faith is paying endless loving attention to the meaning of our existence; to be in love with life at its ultimate level.

  Perhaps Ailsa is the true believer!

  That’s not the entire story, of course. Where do we find the time and the vocabulary to tell even part of a person’s story? But that will do for a start.

  Tony

  Ailsa,

  Sandy Gore sent me a copy of your book just before Easter.

  I simply want to tell you how much I enjoyed it.

  Being a parish priest facing Easter celebrations I thought it could wait for a week or two before I got into it—but dammit I made the mistake of reading a couple of pages and it picked me up and wouldn’t let me go. Started it on Good Friday and finished red-eyed late Easter Monday morning.

  Thanks.

  Have read several accounts of pilgrim adventures—none better than yours. I have to confess (nice word in this context) I’m a bit of a Camino junkie—Léon to Santiago 2009; Le Puy-en-Velay to Conques 2010; and a track you might not have heard of, the Cammino delle Dolomiti in Italy 2011.

  When I finished the book I had to nail my feet to the floor to stop getting on a plane and heading back. And I hope you realise—it’s all your fault.

  I caught your conversation with Phillip Adams on ABC radio. Noted that no theologian had responded to the idea of carrying another’s sins. It’s now my favourite question to ask over dinner—it causes mayhem and wonderful arguments. I’m no professional theologian but I have found the idea a new and fascinating concept about how we are so closely connected and responsible for one another.