The Attachment Read online

  My mother reported that the hapless Mitzi got a serious whacking and was left to follow the jeep home, while I was fussed over in the front seat, and checked from top to toe for bites, stings or structural damage. Cossetted. Adored.

  My inheritance from Ning and Mum was the confidence to walk the world expecting only flowers and wonder, safe in the knowledge that even if lost, I will always be found. I hadn’t considered it till your story, so thank you, compañero.

  Gracias. In Spanish, it means ‘grace’, you know.

  Ailsa

  Ailsa,

  Now here is a connection you might not have been expecting . . .

  The Gospels tell us that Jesus walked everywhere.

  There is a reason for this.

  When one walks one can also talk, one can stop and have time for others, one can eat and touch people and interact with them. Walking allows us a particular life-pace. It makes possible a way of understanding and looking with open eyes; it is about having a capacity to make visible what is invisible; of paying attention to inconvenient suffering; of taking responsibility for what is broken in our world whether it is wounded people or a damaged environment.

  You know this, of course.

  But I wonder if you ever consider that other walker as you step out into the world.

  Tony

  Dear Tony,

  Don’t wish to sound grand, but I have been told often of a tradition of walking mysticism. Holy men and women who take to the road. Prophets, saints and other teachers. Hadn’t considered it before, but Jesus is often ‘on the road’ isn’t he? Maybe that is why I think of the road as a sacred place.

  You are spot on with your reflections about the pace of walking and what it brings. Why didn’t bible studies tell me that when I was little? Clearly you had better teachers.

  Now, I have a favour to ask. Throw a few more memories my way, would you? I loved that picture of the little boy amid the blue-tongues. I’d like more. Maybe a potted history? Even your CV? Anything that comes to mind. Our backgrounds were so different—me in the bush, and you in your big watery city of Sydney. How about it? I mean, what else do you have to do other than entertain your new pen-pal?

  Buen camino from the wandering tyke with her arms full of Everlastings.

  Ailsa

  Ailsa,

  ‘Three feet of ice are not frozen in one day,’ the Chinese say. Nor are eight decades easily summarised in a few lines. But one word from the Captain, and I drop my preparation for the three weddings this weekend, and spring to attention. Here goes . . . hang on to your hat.

  Let me begin with a few scattered memories: our Lane Cove family home being threatened by the ’38 bushfires; being taken to the school’s basement air raid shelter when the midget subs attacked Sydney; seeing Frank ‘the dancing man’ McAlary waltzing down Martin Place at war’s end; rattling across the Harbour Bridge in a toast-rack tram with the conductor hanging perilously on the outside (how I dreamed of being a risk-taking conductor one day); riding the waves at Curl Curl for hours on a rubber surf-o-plane; bringing a school mate to my home and being asked ‘Are you rich or poor?’ and having no idea what he meant; being dressed up by Mum as Mae West, complete with cigarette holder, at the Sans Souci guest house at Katoomba when I was five, or was it four; trips to Manly with Mum so I could cure my whooping cough by inhaling the sea air—it was a bloody long way, and we had to take three buses to get there; Sunday tucker—kidneys on toast, boiled eggs and shallots, cold rice and milk, roast lamb, mashed potato and peas; drinking Coca-Cola for the first time—brought by American sailors to Sydney; chewing gum in long strips rather than the little white pillows; attending my first live show—The Gondoliers!—at the glamorous-beyond-belief Theatre Royal; eating Balmoral pudding on summer holidays at a guest house in Terrigal; trying to stay still during the sermon of the impossibly old, white-haired Monsignor on a steamy Sunday morning; seeing the first screening of Gone With the Wind with Mum and her friends when I was four or five—Mum couldn’t believe her little wriggler stayed still and quiet for the whole four hours.

  Today, for some reason or other, I feel far more sympathy for white-haired Monsignors searching for Sunday morning words.

  Strange, isn’t it? No matter how busy I am, there’s something deeply satisfying about fishing events from childhood out of my memory. It’s a wet Sunday afternoon habit of mine. But these intimate disclosures don’t come for free, you know. What’s your memory like, my young friend? How about applying yourself to the same task?

  I’m off to turn on the lights and attend to the brides.

  Tony

  Dear Tony,

  Thank you, my white-haired Monsignor. Actually, I feel a tinge of sympathy for you today. Three weddings!

  How you must marvel at Sydney when you zoom around in your silver hatchback. The layers of history—trams rattling (I must find out when they stopped); midget subs (ever feel nervous when you’re swimming?); air raid shelters and American sailors bearing gifts. Such palimpsest in those streets of yours, layers painted over and over with stories and changes.

  Must admit, I’d like to have seen you togged up as Mae West. Was this some particular form of maternal torture? And your complete innocence about whether you were rich or poor really struck me. If only we could hang onto that ignorance. So much time is wasted worrying about how much we do or don’t have, when we, in Australia, mostly have plenty of everything. Perhaps our real poverty is in our unwillingness to acknowledge that we could make do with less and share more.

  Good grief. Now I’m sounding like a preacher.

  I envy you your memories. Such images don’t come easily to me, no matter how I dive for them. I’ve always comforted myself with a line attributed to Ingrid Bergman—‘Happiness is good health and a bad memory.’ That’s me, Monsignor. Were I to spend a rainy Sunday afternoon looking over my shoulder, there would be very few memories before the age of about seventeen. Fragments only. Mostly I rely on photos and anecdotes, but I do recall the smell of the waterbag on a hot still afternoon, and I can remember being shocked at the noise made by the ocean when I first saw it. No one had told me it roared. There are sensory snippets—the taste of home-made cumquat jam smeared on Mum’s drop scones; the crinkly texture of those pink Everlastings; the smell of Brylcreem when I hugged my grandfather; the click-clack of the heavy wooden rosary beads that hung from Sister Michael’s waist; the muffled sound of Dad’s voice behind the office door as he talked on the pedal wireless. I do remember when we first got a TV, after we had moved south, and Mum stuck a layer of purple cellophane over the screen. It was supposed to make the picture clearer, I think. Can’t imagine why.

  Isn’t it odd? Just listing off those little memories was quite easy. Maybe telling myself I couldn’t remember took the heat off. Or perhaps I should just stop saying I can’t remember. Maybe my brain has started to believe its own publicity. Regardless, I don’t feel quite so inadequate.

  Thanks, Antonio. A gift, you gave me.

  Who was the dancing man you mentioned, please? And what on earth is Balmoral pudding? We had Golden Syrup dumplings, but I’ve never heard of that. Is it a west coast/east coast thing? A city/country thing? Or heaven forfend, generational?

  Tell those brides to wait. I need some answers.

  Ailsa

  Ailsa,

  You don’t know Balmoral pudding? What sort of deprived childhood did you have? Picture a large light-coloured mound of pudding topped with custard dribbling down its sides. Sort of spotted dick without the spots.

  On the day peace was declared in 1945 ‘an anonymous dancing man’ was photographed in Sydney’s Martin Place. The photograph became a famous moment of exuberance felt by all. Frank McAlary was the dancer—a friend of mine who at the time was a cash-strapped law student, who, when all was said and done, really wasn’t much of a dancer.

  I feel enormously lucky to be able to remember so much.

  Tony

  Hello lucky man!

 
This is the deprived child from the south. Hope the brides were all on time, and that Balmoral pud was served at the receptions.

  You must be getting so excited about your trip. I’m not envious. Not a bit. No, really. I’m not.

  Actually, I write because I was just sent a quote from Paul Theroux remarking on the difference between tourists (lightly disparaging of them) and travellers. It reminded me of the phrase given to me by a hotel clerk in Córdoba: ‘A tourist makes demands for many things, whereas a pilgrim gives thanks even when given nothing.’ You are a pilgrim, so I know you will travel with a light and grateful heart.

  I’m writing a little travel piece at the moment—a pilgrimage of bookshops. I’m so moved by the way they create community. They are ‘holy places’ for me, because their owners are the custodians of our stories. A sacred responsibility.

  Thank you again for the CD you gave me at lunch. The music is so evocative of the mysterious nature of the whole pilgrim undertaking. I played it last night, after watching a documentary on Woody Allen. Strange pairing but it worked! Have I mentioned my love of Annie Hall, by the way? Do you know it?

  Happy preparations. I will look forward to your return, and to our next meeting.

  Buen camino! My favourite blessing on a favourite pilgrim.

  Ailsa

  Ailsa,

  You have to stop doing that!

  Talking about Paul Theroux, I mean. Believe it or not I’m currently reading Fresh Air Fiend: Travel Writings. At least he didn’t quote the snippet you mentioned. Not yet anyway. Haven’t finished.

  I know reading two books at a time is the sign of an underdeveloped and restless mind. I have to admit (excuse me, confess is the word) to reading three and sometimes four at once. Beyond help. I need some yet-to-be-invented twelve-step program to assist my rehabilitation.

  And while we are at it—another coincidence—Woody! You may be talking to the only Monsignor in Christendom who owns the written scripts of four of his films (including Annie Hall herself).

  You know, after reading your book, I have become a bit more conscious of what I pack. Did you really weigh your shoelaces? Good Lord, woman. Obsessive doesn’t even begin to describe you.

  Me, I am very haphazard about socks and phone chargers, but I never leave Australia without lifting a glass to James and Mary Doherty and their two-year-old John. They’re my Donegal great-grandparents who, having been evicted from their home in the tiny village of Derryveagh, climbed aboard The Abyssinian with their few possessions to make a twenty-week voyage south through the Atlantic and across the freezing Southern Ocean, to hit the coast of Oz somewhere about Victoria’s Great Ocean Road. As I watch my in-flight movie I try to get my head around an almost unimaginable voyage like that with a two-year-old. Impossible to picture it.

  The story of any family, any people, is carried in its scars. Well, the story of the Derryveagh evictions is a tale of an uprooted people, travelling down a road devoid of hope, heading to an unknown future. Never knew about it in my childhood. Don’t even think Mum and Dad knew. This is it in a nutshell:

  James was thirty, Mary twenty-eight. They had one child, little John, and she was pregnant with another. They were tenants on a property in the wild hills of Ireland’s Donegal. The property owner had plans to import black-faced sheep and wanted to clear the tenants off his land, so a charge of collusion to murder was brought against them—250 men, women and children. The ‘crowbar men’ accompanied by the local police knocked the roofs of their houses down and evicted them lock, stock and barrel into a bitter northern Irish winter. A grim example of the flakey justice of the time.

  With remarkable luck, I discovered the man who supported the voyage of so many refugees of those days. There were thousands of them. His name was John McEncroe, an Irish priest regarded as a hero by Sydney’s Catholic community. He set up the Donegal Relief Fund, enabling James and Mary to escape the Letterkenny workhouse (where they would surely have died), and travel to Australia.

  And, my shanachie friend, how’s this for coincidence? More than a century later, I was appointed Dean of Sydney’s St Mary’s Cathedral, only to discover that McEncroe’s grave lies in its crypt. An astonishing cycle of history.

  And now here I am, about to retrace some of their steps in the air-conditioned comfort of a Boeing 747. To repeat the old line—life is not entirely fair. Certainly not for those whose lives are in the hands of someone with a lust for power or property, and little or no conscience.

  Which reminds me—I must book to see your Duchess of Malfi when I return. A bit of lust and power-play there, isn’t there?

  You know, I’m scarcely thinking about ‘away’ at the moment—having too much fun here talking to you. So stop distracting me please—I have to concentrate on some packing.

  Happy days.

  Tony

  Spooky! Witchy, even! Your email arrived just as I was typing your name.

  I loved your reflections, but the tale of your ancestors sent a chill through me. It’s exactly the story of the refugees we’re seeing now, arriving in their frail boats. We need more McEncroes.

  And yes, incredible coincidence that you should have been working where he lies—I’d like to have seen your face when you discovered that connection.

  Peter and I travelled to Ireland a few years back. We both have some Guinness in our blood—him more than me. That little island has been worked over and over by such cruel forces, yet there’s so much life and laughter there. Darkness, too. Signs of the black dog of depression everywhere. But for song and malarkey and poetry—where else would you go?

  I particularly recall one evening, walking home through silent dark lanes in Sligo, on the north-west coast. Yeats country. A pilgrimage of sorts for me, to the home of a favourite poet . . .

  ‘But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you . . .’

  I’ve returned to that poem for decades. I think I know it, then I find something else in it.

  All Sligo seemed to be sleeping that night, the little one-up-one-down houses shuttered and dark. Peter and I rounded a corner and there was a slant of yellow light falling onto the cobbles, and a rhythmic murmur wafted to us on the night air. We reached the opening—one of those wooden doors, like a stable, with an upper and lower half—and leaned our heads in. It was a tiny room, perhaps originally a parlour. There were four people sitting against the walls on benches, and a miniscule makeshift counter in the far corner where whiskey bottles stood in a neat row. The man behind the counter beckoned us in, motioning us to be silent so as not to disturb the ancient ‘leprechaun’ who was reciting an epic poem in Gaelic. The sounds were all swish and softness, but the waves of emotion were clear—excitement, sorrow, hope, grief. The audience of three listened with rapt attention, nodding occasional agreement or wiping a tear, barely registering us as we sipped our whiskey and held our breath. It was mesmerising. The old man was a shanachie, I suppose! I have no idea what was being said, but I got every bit of the story. It was a tale of loss and valour, and of the inheritance of grief. It was a tale of survivors; people like your James and Mary, perhaps.

  Then there was applause and hugs for all, including the kangaroo interlopers, and a song or two and more whiskey, and we were required to tell a little of our stories, and when finally we wandered back into the street at 3 am, we were glowing. We were family.

  The old man called me macushla when he hugged me. I don’t know the meaning of it—maybe you do?—but it struck a chord because my grandmother, Ning, used to call me Macushla Macree. I don’t know if I’ve spelled it properly, but I loved to hear her say it, and I loved to hear it on that old man’s lips with his thick accent.

  Oh, I’m getting all sentimental now. Enough! Really. Pack your rucksack and don’t weigh your shoelaces!

  Ailsa

  Ailsa,

  You may never realise how easily Irish stories can divert me. Your image of the rough bar—just great. I could sniff the whiskey on the breath of the old man.

  O
ne of the sunny memories of primary school was the practice of our teachers, when the pressures of exams were over, to have us sit back while they read us stories. Warm happy memories. Our young minds didn’t have to strain over some half-understood mathematical puzzle or a boring grammatical construction—just relax and be caught up in the magic of storytelling. It was all joy. I wonder sometimes whether even the teachers appreciated how important those sessions were. I’ll never forget how I felt listening to them.

  You’re a real shanachie, you know. I suppose that’s what creating theatre and the craft of the writer is all about. I think I might have come to the appreciation of storytelling a bit later than you, but there is a healthy dose of it in my game, too. The best tradition of the Gospels, indeed all of the bible, is carried in story form. If we’re worth our salt at all, we priests should be compelling storytellers.

  The Irish had a keen appreciation of this. They saw the shanachie as a physician for damaged memory. Without our stories, they were convinced, we perish.

  Now, you asked about the old Irish word macushla. Well I do know it. It’s a Gaelic word meaning ‘my darling’. You’re not old enough, of course, but it was the title of a song that goes back to the 1930s or 40s. Have strong memories of my ambitious mother at the piano coaxing me to sing it in my shaky boy soprano. She also harboured plans for me to be an accomplished pianist. Hated practising. At about the age of nine I fell out of a tall tree at a school I was attending—Riverview College—and smashed up my arm. All I could think was—thank God, no more boring piano scales.

  But my mother had other ideas.

  While I was relishing being free from piano practice, the doctors in the hospital emergency ward were examining a seriously crushed nerve in my elbow. With a certain trepidation, I am sure, they informed my distraught mother—‘Mrs Doherty, your son has suffered a shocking injury. It looks like the only two possibilities are that he will have a withered arm for the rest of his life, or we will have to amputate.’