Autobiography of My Mother (33 page)

But a car pulled up and the awkward silence turned to an expectant hush. Betjeman came walking up the front path.

An enormous garden spider had spun its web diagonally across the front porch between the lassiandra flowers and the front door. Betjeman stopped dead in front of the web, mesmerised by the spider. ‘The most beautiful thing I've ever seen!' he exclaimed. ‘But aren't you terrified that this monster from the jungle will invade the house?'

‘Oh, no, it's harmless,' I said. ‘It may look alarming hanging up there, but it's quite harmless. Spiders that live underground are the dangerous ones.'

Betjeman lingered a few minutes more, admiring the monster from the jungle, then he joined the party. The room exploded into talk and it never ceased all night.

The poets were in great good humour and voice. One discussion I remember particularly was Slessor talking animatedly about Tennyson, Doug being eloquent about Browning, while FitzGerald boomed out Longfellow. Betjeman sent an appreciative letter from England thanking me for the dinner and making brief reference to the spider.

Later I picked up a copy of
Vogue Australia
, with a lengthy account of the dinner party – and the spider. Finally I saw an English
Vogue
in which Betjeman described a strange antipodean dinner party in a suburban bungalow guarded by a giant spider the size of a hand's span.

It had been a fairly large spider, but not as large as that.

The same summer we had two cyclonic storms and the spider, now christened John Betjeman, survived them both, to my surprise. But not long afterwards I went out in the morning and John Betjeman had met the fate of many a garden spider. He was lying on the ground with his tummy picked open. I put him in a bottle in the sideboard; he's been there ever since.

Then there were other unforgettable, special nights when Ken Slessor entertained us in his Chatswood establishment.

Ken meticulously prepared and presented the dinners himself; avocados again, filled with chilled consommé, superb rare roast beef, and afterwards, always port and walnuts. The polished furniture gleamed in the soft light like Ken's own face beaming as he recalled and recounted anecdote after anecdote.

The verandah was full of aquariums belonging to his son Paul. The light shone through the tanks so the front room was lit by gleaming goldfish while the glittering lights of the city and beyond to the western suburbs lit up the back windows. We sat, caught in conversation, between two walls of golden light.

During our early years at St Ives I painted steadily. In 1958 I had an exhibition down at Canberra in what was described as a ‘new gallery space', actually a disused army tin shed. It was the middle of winter and the weather was freezing; organising and hanging the show was far from comfortable. However, the exhibition was opened by the historian and scholar Archbishop Eris O'Brien, a gracious, humorous soul who lent some semblance of style to the occasion and soothed away other irritations. He was interested in painting and I gave him a couple of watercolour lessons in return for his opening the show. The next year, I had another exhibition at the Forum Club in Sydney.

Malcolm Ellis the historian presided over this opening and Ken Slessor bought two paintings for the Journalists' Club. The show was made up of paintings on silk. Someone had brought me a roll of silk from Japan and I had started
experimenting. For silk, you paint with the brush, not using any pencil, so you must be very sure and accurate about what you're doing. If you are, the results are nice. The silk paintings have a delicate, almost luminous, ethereal quality. The paint sits on one side of the material. When you hold it up to the light, the back of the painting is quite free from pigment.

Painting on silk, I became so adept with a brush that now I hardly ever draw flower pieces, even on paper. I just paint. Any detailing I need is done with a fine brush. This keeps my watercolours clean, no pencil marks showing anywhere. I do sometimes draw landscapes first, or rather I make an outline with a few strokes, but still with a fine brush, not a pencil.

‘Let the water do it,' was what Norman taught me about the secret of watercolour. No scrabbling around with a brush in thick paint; watercolours must be painted with plenty of water.

I do enjoy painting. Sometimes, though, it's terribly hard to get started, despite all that advice I gave about getting to it in the morning after breakfast. Sometimes it's equally hard to finish a painting. You will get three-quarters there and find your energy petering out, or you simply don't know what to do next.

Don't abandon the painting; just go ahead and finish it, is what I've learned.

Sometimes I thoroughly enjoy a painting all the way through. I love painting in the high Kosciusko country, with all its accompanying difficulties such as ants and flies. I have to douse myself in insect repellent and wrap up from head to toe in long-sleeved clothing and rugs. I spread a rug on the ground to ward off the ants and put another around my legs for the March flies with their deadly long stingers. Once
I can contend with the ants and the flies, once I get started on a painting, I forget about them, except for the odd especially vicious nip from a March fly.

Painting the mountains became a regular summer pilgrimage for me. It grew out of Doug's trout fishing trips when we stayed at a famous old boarding house called the Creel outside Jindabyne.

I found I had an affinity with the Kosciusko gums and clear mountain air really agrees with me.

I became aware of how attractive the blue of the trees is there. The bush has a lot of blue in it, but particularly this sort of peppermint gum with its pinky-whitish trunk. It took me quite a while to realise their distinct colouring.

While Doug went off fishing, I took myself up the hillsides and painted. My dedication to painting these trees long outlasted the now-drowned Creel and other places where we stayed. The best ones are halfway up the mountain; the trees that grow down by the rivers and trout streams are not the same.

Doug and I had a pact. Our holidays were divided into painting and fishing times. Doug organised himself around me and drove me about for the first half of our holiday and on the other half fishing took precedence. I really lived for that summer's painting in the mountains.

I have painted alpine flowers, too, little silvery grey everlastings, dwarfed mossy heathers and strange black and orange-skinned corroboree frogs so like their namesake. But the Kosciusko road is cut off before the summit and I had to give this up because I couldn't do the walking.

For the whole of the 1960s and some of the 1970s I concentrated on mixed exhibitions and local shows. I could earn a living from these without the added expense and
bother of my own shows. I didn't have another show of my own until I shared an exhibition with Arthur Murch at the Wagner Gallery, Paddington, in 1977. I have had an exhibition at Wagner's every year since, except for 1983.

In 1969 I won the Pring Prize for watercolour (part of the Wynne Prize at the Art Gallery of New South Wales) with a Snowy Mountains painting called
Dry Summer
. The
Daily Telegraph
had a report about it, headed: ‘Housewife wins the Pring Prize'. A housewife is certainly not the way I have ever thought of myself! However Hal Missingham, the director of the Art Gallery, described the work as ‘straightforward and lyrical', which was an improvement.

The Watercolour Institute has remained part of my life since I first exhibited there in 1934. I have been a committee member as well as vice-president. I've also maintained my involvement with the Royal Art Society.

Janna Bruce from Rubbo's class and the Watercolour Institute has stayed my firm friend. Alison and George were also loyal members of the Institute and my close friends until they died. Alison and George remained devoted to each other and to art all their days. George's longstanding association with the Watercolour Institute added to the bond between us. He died first and Alison asked Lloyd Rees, whom they both admired greatly, to speak at his funeral. Lloyd Rees spoke most movingly about George; only twelve months later he gave another oration, this time for Alison. I don't think Alison could bear living without George.

The sad thing about getting older is seeing so many people you love die. It's heartbreaking. Beryl McCuaig, Ken Slessor, David Campbell, Dora Jarret. Norman died in November 1969. The cicadas shrilled with an intensity I will never forget on the bright blue hot summer's day Norman
was buried in the little gum-treed Springwood cemetery. Unbelievable that our friendship through so many years had come to an end. Too sad to think of. Shortly before he went, he wrote a note to Doug and me: ‘Dearest Margaret and Dear Doug,' it read. ‘I go ahead of you, that's all. Love Norman.'

As for the family, the year after Doug and I were married, Dad came up to Sydney and moved back in with Mum. Grandma had died and the business in Yass had been sold up. Dad was lonely and at a loose end, so he and Mum decided they might as well live out their old age together.

Dad could still never really do the right thing by Mum. She found housework increasingly difficult as she grew older. ‘Put the vacuum cleaner [a recent acquisition] over the house, King,' she said to Dad, who was hovering around wanting to be helpful. Dad did the bedroom first and came back out to Mum.

‘I don't understand why you women use these stupid things,' he said. ‘The room looks dirtier than when I started.' Dad had put the blower on the vacuum, not the sucker. It was hours before the dust settled.

King and Mary were stationed up at Charleville with the bank and Mum went to stay with them for a holiday. Dad took advantage of her absence to treat himself. When I went to clean up for him before Mum's return, beside his bed was a whole bundle of theatre programs. Dad had been to every theatre in town, I think, while Mum was away. He was irrepressible and remained fun-loving and genial until the day he died.

After Dad died, Mum's remaining years were spent in a private hospital near me at Pymble. I visited her daily after I
had done my painting, and amused myself by sketching some of the other elderly lady patients.

Mum had a great mate in one hospital called Mary Jane. They used to play endless games, although Mary Jane seemed to get rather the rough end of the stick. Mary Jane was the servant, while Mum was the mistress of the house.

‘Mary Jane,' Mum used to say, ‘you haven't done this room at all well today. Look at this bed! It's a mess. Yesterday it was perfect; today it's a mess.'

They both loved this game. It allowed them to escape from hospital monotony, I suppose.

Mum kept her senses right to the end. Only in the last twenty-four hours did her mind wander in the slightest. Her mind just wore out, the doctor said. Ninety-two years is a long life.

Mollie moved from the Taxation Department to the GPO and became very much involved in the fight for equal opportunities for women in the Public Service. As soon as they were finally introduced, Mollie applied for a new position. Although she had matriculated well, Mollie, by this stage in her late fifties, was told that in order to be eligible for this job, she would have to do the Leaving Certificate again. Undaunted, she set to and went back to school. During the day she worked at the GPO; at night she studied.

The day the results came out, the phone rang. Mollie was on the other end in tears.

‘Oh, Mol, what's wrong?' I asked.

‘I've come first in the state,' Mollie choked out.

Mollie (whom Mum outlived by almost four years) died of cancer in 1966, following a mercifully brief illness. King died in 1982; Jack is still going stronger than ever.

Doug died suddenly aged seventy-one at the beginning of
1985. He had been frail for a long time, but it is still hard to believe it has happened. He was buried at the Frenchs Forest Cemetery which used to be the bushland where we went painting with Johnny Maund and were so happy. I miss him sorely.

We did have similar sensibilities. I remember we were driving home from visiting Norman at Springwood, way back in the days when we were first married, and suddenly Doug said, ‘I think there is something wonderful on the road ahead,' and stopped the car. A procession of about twenty-five caterpillars linked together making its way across the road off into the bush was what we stopped to watch.

After the romance and passion of youth wear off, being able to enjoy things together and being good companions are what's most important in a marriage. Doug and I respected each other's work. When Doug really liked a painting of mine, such as
Moon Over Ku-ring-gai
, he bought it for himself to make sure it stayed in the house.

I am still painting. The trouble is that as you get older you do feel that time is running out. The young think time will never run out; they feel they have forever to do things, they waste time. It's only as you get older that you realise if you are going to do anything good you had better get on with it.