Gerald Murnane - A Lifetime on Clouds

‘But it wasn’t just the pagans who couldn’t control themselves. If you read your Old Testament you’ll realise how far some of the Patriarchs were from being good Catholic husbands. Solomon had hundreds of wives and treated them like playthings to minister to his lust, David coveted another man’s wife, and Abraham had a bond-woman to amuse himself with when he tired of his lawful wife.

‘I have to confess that when I was much younger I sometimes felt like complaining to God that I was born in New Testament times instead of the centuries B.C. It didn’t seem fair that those old fellows all pleased God and got to heaven after having all the women they wanted, while young Catholic chaps like me had to turn their eyes away from pictures of girls in bathers and only go to films for general exhibition.

‘But after I met you and fell in love, I realised the men of the Old Testament were far worse off than me after all. They never knew the rare pleasures that I enjoyed in the years when I was wooing you. Solomon might have gazed all day at the hundreds of indecently clad wives sprawling on cushions in his luxurious palace, but he never knew the happiness of sitting in the Coroke train and waiting for one long soulful look from a girl who kept her beautiful body carefully concealed beneath a convent uniform. And no matter what pleasure he got from his women when he summoned them to his bedchamber, it could not have equalled my joy when I first kissed you on the day we became engaged and I knew I would one day possess a bride who had never even glanced immodestly at another man.’

A few weeks before the September holidays, Adrian’s mother told him he deserved a rest from all his studies and homework. His uncle and aunt had agreed to have him at Orford for a week. If he behaved himself around the house he could go by himself on the train.

Adrian was anxious to let Denise know about his trip. When he went with his mother to book his seat at the Tourist Bureau he took away a coloured leaflet entitled Spring Tours to the Grampians — Victoria’s Garden of Wildflowers. (The Grampians were a hundred miles from Orford, but there were no leaflets for any place nearer.) The following night on the Coroke train he stood near Denise and made sure she noticed him poring over the leaflet. She might have been surprised to think he was interested in wildflowers, but at least she would know what direction from Melbourne he was when she wanted to think of him during the holidays.

Adrian had a window-seat in the 8.25 a.m. to Warrnambool and Port Fairy. He left a few inches between himself and the window for Denise. He and she were not long back from their honeymoon, and the trip to Orford was to show her off to his relatives and let her see something of the Western District.

The pictures in the carriage were Treeferns, Tarra Valley and Bulga Park, Yarram. Adrian whispered to Denise that a moist valley in Gippsland would be the perfect spot for a weekend trip. She snuggled closer to him and squeezed his fingers. She understood that he was thinking of the kisses he would give her under the shady treeferns.

They looked into all the slum backyards between South Kensington and Newport and told each other how lucky they were to be able to live in a modern home with the bush right up to their windows. After Newport, when miles of grazing land came up to the windows for their inspection, they passed the time by imagining how they would like to live in this or that farmhouse, and giving each place a points score out of ten.

Adrian’s uncle, Mr McAloon, met them at Colac station. Adrian left a space for his young wife in the back seat of his uncle’s car. He watched her face closely all the way and enjoyed the surprises she got. She had no idea that Colac was such a busy town. She had never seen such green paddocks and rich red soil as she found on the farms near Orford. And she thought the view of rolling plains from the McAloons’ house was nearly as exciting as all the mountain scenery in Tasmania (and gave Adrian’s hand a squeeze when she mentioned the place where they had spent their honeymoon).

Two of Adrian’s cousins, a boy and a girl, sat in the back seat with him. They had pale faces with freckles of all shades from fawn to deep chocolate. Adrian always found it hard to talk to them. The girl went to the little brick Catholic school at Orford and the boy to the Christian Brothers in Colac. He travelled to and from Colac each day in a truck driven by a Catholic neighbour of the McAloons.

Mr McAloon said to Adrian, ‘I suppose you’ve read in the papers all about the school bus dispute.’ (Adrian had never heard of it.) ‘It’s the same old story. Catholics have to pay taxes to support the secular education system, but when they ask for a few seats in the high school bus to Colac, all the non-Catholic bigots and wowsers for miles around are up in arms and writing to the Chief Inspectors in the Education Department in Melbourne.

‘Of course all the top Inspectors and public servants are Masons, as you should know.’ (He spoke as though Adrian and his parents should have done something about this years before.) ‘Anyway, the result is that all the Catholics round here have banded together and organised a roster of cars and trucks to take the kids to secondary schools, and all the Catholic teachers in state schools have resigned from their union because of the anti-Catholic stand it took. We’ve got a long hard fight on our hands but we’re not going to give up until we get elementary British justice for our children.’

After lunch Adrian showed his wife, Denise, around the farm. The freckle-faces weren’t interested in going with him. They stayed on the back veranda and played Bobs and Disney Derby. Adrian pitied them. They mooned around the house all day and never knew what was missing from their lives. Two or three of them were old enough to have boyfriends or girlfriends. The miles of green dairy country should have inspired even the dullest freckle-face to fall in love with a face across the aisle in St Finbar’s Church and then wait for months in suspense until the face turned round one day and showed by the faintest of smiles that there was some hope.

Adrian of course was much more advanced in his love affair than that, because he had so many proofs already that Denise returned his devotion. As he walked towards the farthest paddock he was already sharing with his wife the joy of looking back on the September holidays in 1954 when he walked alone across bare paddocks and wished his loved one had been with him.

That night Adrian found he had to share a bed with his oldest cousin, Gerard McAloon. Adrian kept his genitals carefully hidden while he undressed. Since meeting Denise he had rarely looked at them himself. They were no longer exclusively his, but the joint property of his wife and God and himself, to be used only in the marriage act on the nights when his wife agreed to it. He shuddered to think of the pale McAloon boy peering at things that were a secret between Denise and himself.

Next day Mr McAloon took Adrian and Gerard and two younger McAloon boys to visit a place called Mary’s Mount. They drove to Colac and then south into the steep timbered hills of the Otway Ranges. Adrian’s uncle talked all the way about the people of Mary’s Mount.

‘They’re modern saints. Some of them are doctors and legal men and chaps with university degrees. They’ve given it all up to get back to the medieval idea of monasticism and living off the land. They bought nearly 600 acres of bush with only two cleared paddocks and they’re turning it into a farm to supply them with all their needs. Except for books and clothes they share almost everything in common. They built their cottages and chapel with their own two hands. In a few years they’ll be weaving their own clothes and tanning their own leather for sandals or shoes. It’s the only sensible way to live.’