Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

Their affair was not all peaceful. One night a girl from Canterbury Ladies’ College stood near Adrian on the Swindon station. She was one of the girls he used to see chatting to Eastern Hill boys on the trams. (Adrian wondered why she was waiting for a train to the outer suburbs when she should have lived deep in the shrubbery of a garden suburb.) If she got into his compartment and saw him looking at Denise and guessed that the girl from Mount Carmel was his girlfriend, the Canterbury girls and Eastern Hill boys would laugh for weeks over the story of the Catholic boy and girl who travelled home together but never spoke.

Adrian was ready to walk up to Denise and say the first thing that came into his head. But the Canterbury girl got into a first-class compartment, and he was free to go on courting Denise without being judged by non-Catholics who didn’t understand.

Every day Adrian wrote the initials D. McN. on scraps of paper — and then scribbled them out so no one would know his girlfriend’s name. It bothered him that he couldn’t write her address or telephone number and enjoy the sight of them in private places like the back covers of his exercise books.

One night he stood in a public telephone box and searched through the directory for a McNamara who lived in Accrington. There were two — I.A. and K.J. Adrian knew how to tell Catholic names from non-Catholic. He guessed the K.J. stood for Kevin John and decided that was Denise’s father. Kevin’s address was 24 Cumberland Road.

Adrian found Cumberland Road in a street directory in a newsagent’s shop and memorised its location. Every night, walking down the ramp from the Accrington station a few paces behind Denise, he looked across the railway line in the direction of Cumberland Road. There was nothing to see except rows of white or cream weatherboard houses, but just knowing that her own house was somewhere among them made his stomach tighten.

He longed for just one glimpse of her home, and envied the people who could stroll freely past it every day while he had to keep well away. If Denise saw him in her street she would think he was much too forward in his wooing. The only way to see her house was to sneak down Cumberland Road late at night, perhaps in some sort of disguise.

On Saturday nights Adrian worried about Denise’s safety. He hoped her parents kept her inside the house out of sight of the gangs of young fellows wandering the streets all over Melbourne. The newspapers called the young fellows bodgies, and every Monday the Argus had a story about a bodgie gang causing trouble. Bodgies didn’t often rape (most gangs had girl members known as widgies) but Adrian knew a bodgie wouldn’t be able to control himself if he met Denise alone on her way to buy the Saturday night newspaper for her father.

Adrian looked through the racks of pamphlets in the Swindon parish church. He bought one called So Your Daughter is a Lady Now ? The picture on the cover showed a husband and wife with arms linked watching a young man with a bow-tie draping a stole over their daughter’s shoulders. They were all Americans, and the girl was obviously going on a date. Denise hadn’t been on a date of course (Adrian himself would be the first and only man to date her) but she was old enough to attract the attention of undesirables.

Adrian intended to warn her parents of their responsibilities. He sealed the pamphlet in an envelope addressed to Mr K. J. McNamara, 24 Cumberland Road, Accrington. He kept the envelope hidden in his schoolbag overnight. Next morning he could hardly believe he had planned to post it to Denise’s father. He saw Mr McNamara opening the envelope and holding up the pamphlet and saying to his daughter, ‘Got any idea who’d do an idiotic thing like this? Any young fellows been making calf’s eyes at you lately?’

Denise looked at the young man in the bow-tie and thought at once of Adrian Sherd who stood devotedly beside her seat in the train each afternoon. She was so embarrassed that she decided to travel in another carriage for a few weeks until Sherd’s ardour had cooled a little.

Adrian tore up the pamphlet and burned the pieces. On the back of the envelope he rearranged the letters D-E-N-I-S-E M-C-N-A-M-A-R-A, hoping to find a secret message about his and Denise’s future happiness. But all he could compose was nonsense:

SEND ME IN A CAR, MA

or SIN NEAR ME, ADAM C.

or AM I A CAD, MRS NENE?

He counted the letters in her name and took fourteen as his special number. Every morning at school he hung his cap and coat on the fourteenth peg from the end. Every Sunday in church he walked down the aisle counting the seats and sat in the fourteenth. He looked up the fourteenth verse of the fourteenth chapter of the fourteenth book of the Bible. It described Judah and the Israelites taking rich booty from captured cities. Adrian interpreted the text metaphorically. It meant that God was on his side and he would prosper in his courtship of Denise.

One night he wrote the names of all the main towns in Tasmania on scraps of paper and shuffled them together. The fourteenth name he turned up was TRIABUNNA. The quiet little fishing port on the east coast was destined to be the place where he and his wife would consummate their marriage.

The Tasmanian countryside was at its most beautiful in early autumn. In the days when dead elm leaves blew against the windows of the Coroke train, Adrian thought of the first days of his marriage.

Sherd and his wife spent their wedding night on a ship crossing Bass Strait. The new Mrs Sherd was still shy in her husband’s presence. She went on chattering about the day’s events until nearly midnight. Sherd knew she was worried about undressing in front of him. When she couldn’t put off going to bed any longer he decided to make things easier for her. He took out a book and buried his face in it. He looked up at his wife once or twice, but only when she couldn’t see him.

Sherd undressed quickly while his wife was kneeling with her face in her hands and saying her night prayers. Then he made her sit beside him on the bed. He kissed her gently and told her to forget all she might have heard from radio programs and films about the wedding night. He said he had never forgotten the story in the Bible about Tobias or someone who told his wife on their wedding night that they were going to pray to God instead of gratifying their passions.

Sherd said, ‘The whole story of how we first met in Our Lady of Good Counsel’s Church and got to know each other on the Coroke train and then learned to love each other over the years is a wonderful example of how God arranges the destinies of those who serve Him.

‘I know you’re tired, darling, after all you’ve been through today, but I want you to kneel down beside the bed with me and say one decade of the Rosary just like Tobias and his bride on their wedding night.

‘We’re doing this for two reasons — first to thank God for bringing us together like this, and second (Adrian hung his head and sighed, and hoped she realised he had been through a lot before he met her) because I want to make reparation for some sins of mine long ago and prove to God and you that I married you for love and not lust.’

Sherd was surprised how easy it was to spend his wedding night like Tobias. While his wife dropped off to sleep beside him in her nightdress (should it have been a style recommended by the National Catholic Girls’ Movement, or was it all right in the privacy of the marriage bed for a Catholic wife to dress a little like an American film star to help her overcome her nervousness?) he lay with his hands crossed on his chest and congratulated himself.

He remembered the year long before when his passions had been like wild beasts. Night after night he had grunted and slobbered over the suntanned bodies of American women. Nothing could stop him. Prayers, confession, the danger of hell, even the fear that he might ruin his health — they were all useless.