Silver Wattle (34 page)

I did not want to tell Freddy that I was finding it difficult to write because I was thinking about Philip. But somehow he saw through me.

‘I know you were in love with Philip Page, but Beatrice had the claim on him and that’s the past now,’ he said.

I was astounded by his brazenness. ‘You don’t mince words.’

‘Mincing words is a waste of time. If you respect someone, you tell them the truth.’

The shock of the truth in what Freddy said unsettled me. Klara had said the same thing and Uncle Ota had hinted at it. They were all right: if I was to move forward I had to put Philip behind me. But whenever I thought of him, I wanted to hold on to the memory a little longer and that was what was keeping me trapped.

‘I thought you didn’t approve,’ I said. ‘Of Philip and me.’

Freddy’s brow wrinkled. ‘I was jealous. Philip was lucky.’

The band played a quickstep and Freddy spun me around. Perhaps he thought Philip was lucky to have had two women in love with him. I remembered Robert saying once that Freddy was lonely. His parents had passed away and his only family was an old aunt who lived in New York.

‘What have you been doing if you haven’t been writing?’ Freddy asked when the band took a break. ‘Taking photographs?’

Apart from helping Uncle Ota with the cinema and bushwalking with Klara, I had not done much at all. I told him about Angel and how Klara and I had saved her life.

‘That’s nice,’ said Freddy, leading me off the dance floor. ‘You raised a possum. Are you going to make it into a collar or something?’

After believing that Freddy might be more sensitive than he appeared, my hopes were dashed. The suit has changed but not the man, I thought.

I awoke the next morning with an idea for a film, and jotted down the seeds of the story before getting out of bed. My conversation with Freddy had sparked something, because every morning after that when I woke up I knew what was going to happen in the next scene I had to write. The story was about a society girl engaged to a wealthy man. They have an argument one day and to make amends the man takes the woman shopping and tells her that she can have anything she wants. She decides on a coat made of possum fur. But each time the woman wears the coat she is struck by bad luck. She wants to show off her coat to her girlfriends at a restaurant but is stung by a bee on the eyelid before she leaves home. She wears it to visit her parents and her father chokes—nearly fatally—on a pea. She wears the coat to a society function and her fiance trips and breaks his ankle. The woman, however, cannot see that her bad luck is related to the purchase of the coat.

After breakfast I typed out the scene I had imagined in the morning. As the script grew, I reviewed the pages with a sense of excitement:
I
wanted to know what would happen next.

The couple’s wedding is to take place in a church on the south coast. But the woman wears the coat to the rehearsal and the church burns down. At a party in the couple’s honour, the woman overhears a young man, a friend of her father’s, tell another guest that the possum is known in Aboriginal legends as a curious, sometimes mischievous, but always kind animal. He jokes that these are not traits of the woman, who was rude to him on a previous occasion. ‘She’s wearing the wrong coat. She should be wearing skunk.’

When I reached the end of the story, however, I became stuck. Then one evening when I was feeding Angel gum leaves and pieces of apple, an idea came to me. I scribbled it down in the margins of the newspaper I used to line her cage.

While driving home one evening, the woman’s fiance—drunk and cantankerous—hits a possum on the road. He wants to drive on but the woman, burned by what she overheard about herself, insists that they stop to check whether it is alive or dead. The possum is still alive and has a joey in her pouch. The fiance suggests that they run over the possum again, but the woman says that she might just be in shock. She wraps the possum in the only warm thing she has—the coat—and takes her home. While holding the possum in her lap the woman runs her fingers through the animal’s fur and then looks at her coat. It dawns on her what it is made of.

The next morning the possum is alert—she was only suffering concussion—and at dusk the woman takes her to the forest near where they found her and lets her go. The woman realises her coat has blood on it, but rather than get it cleaned she buries it. Then she tells her fiance that their engagement is off. She finds the young man from the party of the previous night and tells him that she did not like what he said about her but he was right. The man looks at her differently and the audience is left with the impression of a possible relationship for them in the future.

Klara was the first person to read the script. ‘The sense of magic reminds me of Prague,’ she said. ‘But the story feels Australian too.’

I sent it to Hugh, knowing that if there was a fault with the script he would have no qualms about pointing it out.
The story never lags, which is important
, he wrote in reply.
But it is a fantasy and bitter-sweet. Australian audiences usually want realism and a straightforward ending. But that does not mean you cannot take a chance; it only means you will have to find a producer willing to take that chance with you. In terms of the camera work, this picture could be visually stunning. But we cannot use leftover stock for this one, Adela. You are going to need to raise about three thousand pounds.

Hugh was right. Most Australian films were about station life and bushrangers. There might not be an audience for my picture—and three thousand pounds was a lot of money.

From my photography work, I managed to keep Klara and myself. The funds Aunt Josephine had sent amounted to one thousand pounds and I wanted to save the money for emergencies that might arise. I was not going to be able to make the picture without investors. I was hesitant to approach Freddy because the subject matter would go over his head and I needed a producer who could sympathise with my vision. Uncle Ota gave me the idea of approaching local businesses to see if they would invest in return for advertising. But it was obvious from the polite smiles and the offers of cups of tea I received that none of the businessmen I met with took me seriously. The most I was offered was two hundred pounds and an invitation to dinner. Part of me wanted to retreat, and have Uncle Ota or Hugh stand in my place when asking for money. But Aunt Josephine had instilled in me the belief that women were capable of anything, as long as they had faith in themselves. So I had faith, but it still did not bring me any money.

Half a year passed before I progressed further with the script. The Cascade Picture Palace was turning into a successful venture and Uncle Ota planned to put a manager in charge of the cinema and move to Balgownie to create another picture palace there with Freddy’s backing. Ranjana and Thomas would go with him. It was time for me to return to Sydney to be with Klara. She was entering her senior years at the Conservatorium High School and needed my support.

Esther had proved a dedicated chaperone to Klara, but it was clear to me that my sister’s feelings for Robert had become serious. She spoke with undisguised enthusiasm about all the things they did together: attending lectures at the Theosophical Society; sketching the bowerbirds in Robert’s garden; rowing boats in the National Park. I could not leave Esther in charge of my sister forever. Klara was blossoming into a lovely woman but she could be wilful too and I wanted to make sure nothing distracted her from her studies. In truth, I was also jealous. As Robert and Klara’s mutual adoration grew, I felt my own part in my sister’s life diminishing and I wanted to be at the centre of it again.

I had not been successful in attracting investors for my picture and was on the verge of giving up on the idea when I saw a film that was to change everything. On my last night in Thirroul, Uncle Ota screened Fritz Lang’s
Siegfried
. My breath was taken away by the retelling of the Nordic fable. It was simply too beautiful for words. I lay awake that night remembering the magnificent sets and costumes. A picture like that would cost more than three thousand pounds. I rolled over and turned on the light. Perhaps I had set my sights too low? But there was only one person I could go to who I knew could provide the kind of finance I needed to make my film into a masterpiece: Freddy.

The following day, I returned to Sydney with Angel in a cat basket. We had become inseparable. I looked forward to dusk when she woke up to munch the native leaves and blossoms Thomas and I collected. When she was a baby, she would climb out of her cage and sit on my back, as if I were her wild mother. But once she emerged from her pouch and moved into the hollow branch I had hung in her cage, she began to outgrow her home.

At Esther’s house, Klara and I put Angel in an aviary in our room, with some branches for her to climb and a hatbox with a hole cut in it for her to sleep inside. I left the door open at night so she was free to wander the house. But in the morning there would be broken dishes on the floor and droppings on the carpet. No one complained about cleaning up after her because we all loved Angel, but she was a wild animal, not a cat that could be house-trained. The unsuitability of keeping her as a pet was dawning on us. To curb some of her habits, I tied a rope from the end of my bed through the window and out to a tree in the back garden. In this way, Angel could wander from the bedroom to sit in the tree to eat her fruit and do her droppings.

For the first three nights, we found Angel back and asleep in her hatbox in the morning. But after the fourth night, she did not return. Klara and I searched nearby gardens and parks for her. We left corn out at night, and found in the morning that it had been nibbled, but whether the raider had been Angel or another possum, or a flying fox, we did not know.

‘You will see her again,’ Klara reassured me. ‘She has probably found some other possums to play with.’

Each night I looked out my window in vain. There was no sign of our Angel. ‘What if a cat has caught her?’ I lamented. ‘Or a dog?’ I shuddered when I remembered that greyhound trainers used possums as bait.

Angel was born to be wild
, Uncle Ota wrote to me.
She has gone to do what is natural to her. She will be there somewhere around, you will see.

I tried to take comfort in his words, but I felt the loss of my animal friend.

The empty space left by Angel motivated me to send my script to Freddy. He replied by telegram:
Come straight away
.

I was ready to throw myself into work.

H
ugh and I went to see Freddy at his home in Cremorne. He did not bring Giallo. ‘He would compete for attention,’ he said.

We entered Freddy’s driveway and found ourselves on an estate that was the opposite in every way to the shade-dappled gardens and genteel features of the houses around it. Freddy’s house was a two-storey mansion with a bell-cast roof and Moorish arched windows, minarets and towers. It might have been attractive if it was softened by a leafy garden, but it stood solitary in the middle of an expanse of lawn. Perhaps the architect had advised Freddy that it would appear imposing that way, but it looked like a mausoleum. The atmosphere of domination extended to the parterre garden. The trees and shrubs had been sculptured into cones, corkscrews and pyramids. No plant had been left untouched. It was as if Freddy thought that the flowing shapes of nature should be subjugated. The garden was lifeless too: there was not a bird to be seen anywhere.

I hesitated at the door and glanced back at the garden. Was Freddy the right person to produce a film about nature? I sighed. What choice did I have? I nodded to Hugh who turned the ringer.

A maid with a long nose and black hair greeted us at the door. ‘Mr Rockcliffe is in his study,’ she said in a Spanish accent. ‘Come this way, please.’

We followed her down a hallway with a Gobelin tapestry on one wall and a suit of armour against the other. The maid knocked on a door and opened it. ‘Mr Rockcliffe, your visitors are here.’

‘Come in,’ said Freddy, rising from his desk.

I walked into the room and stopped in my tracks. Freddy was wearing a blue checked suit with a mustard-coloured shirt but that was not what shocked me. Spread-eagled on the floor was a polar bear skin. I had seen tiger, zebra and wolf skins in the houses of people I had photographed but I had never seen a pelt like this one. The head was still intact and the mournful glass eyes stared at me. A rope was twisted around the animal’s muzzle and extended to its outstretched paws, as if it had just been trapped and was looking death in the face.

‘Christ!’ muttered Hugh when he came in behind me.

‘You like it?’ asked Freddy, signalling to his maid to prepare tea. ‘The first director I made a film with gave it to me.’

A fire burned in the fireplace and the room was stiflingly hot. It had been cold outside but now my head boiled under my cloche hat. I patted my neck with my handkerchief.

‘Please, sit down,’ Freddy said, indicating two wingbacked chairs.

Hugh and I edged our way around the rug, not able to bring ourselves to step on that unfortunate animal.

The maid brought the tea. I was glad for the excuse to look at my cup instead of the rug or Freddy’s suit. Maybe he does these things on purpose, I told myself. To unsettle people.

Freddy sat back in his chair and folded his hands behind his head. ‘I’ve read your script, Adela,’ he said. ‘And, boy, do you have some work to do. It’s full of flaws.’

‘What flaws?’ I asked.

‘Well to start with, the assumption that people might care about a possum the same way they care about a dog. Don’t you know that Australians slaughtered five million possums last trapping season? Why the hell should they care if one of them gets hit by a car? Or if a dozen of them are turned into a coat for some society lady to wear?’

I knew possums were hunted for their fur but the number that were being slaughtered left me speechless. I thought of Angel’s innocent eyes. She was more beautiful than any dog or cat. How could people kill animals like her?