Silver Wattle (51 page)

A short while before dawn, I was shaken awake by Esther. It took me a moment to realise that I was lying in the armchair in my room and not the bed. Esther held a lamp near her face. She was pale and her pupils were dilated.

‘Hugh?’ I asked, sitting up. ‘Is he dead?’

Esther shook her head. ‘I think he’s going to be all right.’

Although Hugh was well a few days later, I insisted we take him back to Sydney to rest. We only had the shots of the extras playing the evil beings to complete and we could return to the mountains for those. I was not worried about the cost. I was worried about Hugh. Robert and Klara invited Hugh to stay in Lindfield and I went with them. When she could see he was better, Esther withdrew her ministrations and let Klara and Mary take over Hugh’s care.

One afternoon Robert, Esther and I were discussing the editing of the first part of
The Emerald Valley
in the Swans’ sitting room while Hugh was resting on the veranda, when Peter arrived.

‘I heard the news,’ Peter said to Hugh when I showed him to the veranda. ‘You are very lucky. Why didn’t you have Giallo with you? He would have given the thing a run for its money.’

Robert and I sat down with Hugh and Peter while Esther joined Klara in the garden where she was playing with the twins.

‘I think it is kookaburras you are thinking of,’ I told him. ‘Cockatoos don’t eat snakes.’

It was nice to see Peter again and, even though it was spring, he still wore his cap and scarf.

‘Not many people survive a tiger snake bite, my friend,’ Peter said. ‘Certainly not one as deep as the one you received.’

‘We’re not sure it was a tiger snake,’ Robert told him. ‘But it was something deadly. It was probably Hugh’s build that saved him.’

Hugh, who had been quiet while we were speaking, shook his head. He gazed out to the garden where Esther was tickling Marta. ‘No,’ he said. ‘It was something else.’

When the editing of
The Emerald Valley
was completed, I returned to the cottage to await Robert’s news on distribution. The first thing I did on arriving home was to drag a ladder to the side of the house to see where my resident mountain possum was entering the roof. The air had summer in it and the garden was bursting with new shoots and flowers. I found a space near the eaves above one of the bedrooms and peered into the hole. I could make out the fur of the sleeping possum and the rise and fall of his rump as he breathed.

Because summer was hot in the mountains, I slept with all the windows in the house open. The possum, who I had named MP, liked the arrangement and sometimes I would hear rustling in the kitchen at night and find him sitting on the table working his way through the fruit bowl.

‘MP! What are you doing?’ I would scold him. ‘Go and eat some gum leaves!’

MP would slow down his chewing and hold the piece of fruit in his front paws, responding to my lecture with an innocent stare. He must have sensed my soft spot for him because more than once I awoke at dawn to find him in bed with me, curled up against my leg.

‘This has got to stop, MP,’ I told him. ‘You are not a cat! Go and find yourself a nice girl possum and have some babies.’

To help MP readjust to his life as a possum, I cut wood from the timber pile and made him a box with an opening in the front. I took some of his nesting material from the roof when he was out for the evening and put it in the box, then rubbed a slice of apple around the opening. The next morning I pulled out the ladder with the intention of securing the box in the pine tree near where MP exited the roof in the evenings. I wanted to place the box as high as possible so that he would be safe from cats and foxes, but once I got to the top of the ladder I froze, memories of my experience in the flying fox over the valley flooding back to me. I managed to steel myself enough to bind the box to the tree and secure it in place. Then I gingerly climbed down the ladder, my heart thumping.

‘He had better use the box,’ I said to myself. ‘I don’t think I have the courage to move it somewhere else.’

A few weeks later I received a telegram from Robert. I drove to Sydney full of expectation. I had asked him to secure the State Theatre for the premiere of
The Emerald Valley
. It would not be showing at Tilly’s Cinema this time because, after the Royal Commission, Uncle Ota had retired from the industry. He had sold his cinemas on the south coast to Wollongong Theatres and Tilly’s Cinema to Greater Union.

‘All the fun in screening Australian films is gone,’ Uncle Ota told me. ‘It doesn’t look as if the states are going to cede the powers the Commonwealth needs to implement the recommendations made by the Commission. Australian production is at its all-time lowest and no one is going to do a thing about it. But even if America doesn’t finish the local industry off then sound-on-film will.’

During the editing of
The Emerald Valley
, Ranjana, Uncle Ota, Thomas, Hugh and I went to see
The Jazz Singer
at the Lyceum. The picture was billed as the first ‘talking picture’, but I had seen a few of those before. When we had been setting up the Cascade Picture Palace, another showman had sound discs to accompany his pictures. Ranjana and I were intrigued and visited his show one afternoon. Things started well enough with a music track and sound effects, but at the beginning of the second reel something must have jolted the needle and the picture and sound went out of synchronisation. For the rest of the picture, the sound effects did not match the images: a gun went off when a man sat down and a rooster crowed as a lady began to sing. The showman sweated over his projector, trying to get everything to match again, but he had lost his audience to laughter. Ranjana and I were in stitches all the way back home.

It was a Saturday night at the Lyceum and we were treated to an organ recital, a chorus line and a jazz band that played a few numbers from the picture. After the rendition of ‘God Save the King’ and a speech from the theatre manager saying that what we were about to see would change our lives, the lights dimmed and the screen lit up. At first it seemed that
The Jazz Singer
was like any other silent picture with a recorded soundtrack of music and sound effects, when all of a sudden the soundtrack ceased and the picture shifted to sound on set with Al Jolson singing. The audience went wild and clapped enthusiastically. That’s it? I thought, shocked that Al Jolson’s voice sounded scratchy and trebled, like a bleating sheep.

Afterwards, we stopped by the Vegetarian Cafe and discussed our impressions of the ‘first talkie’.

‘The camera work was poor,’ said Uncle Ota. ‘It looked static.’

‘That’s because they encase the camera in a booth and shoot through glass so it doesn’t pick up background noise and the hum of the lights,’ Hugh explained.

‘I’ve heard that they hide the microphones in flower pots and telephones and that the actors can’t move from the one spot,’ said Ranjana.

‘That is probably why I thought it resembled a radio play with pictures,’ I said, sipping my camomile tea.

‘Well, I was impressed,’ said Hugh. ‘I think sound-on-film is where the future of pictures lies.’

Rubbish, I thought. It is just another fad. Like flagpole sitting and dance marathons.

I arrived at Lindfield just after three in the afternoon and was happy to see that Robert had afternoon tea waiting for me. ‘Hello!’ he said and waved as soon as he saw me step out of the car.

He has good news for me, I thought, clenching my hands with excitement. He’s got the big one!

The State Theatre was due to be completed in a few months. Just when the country’s economic problems seemed to dragging down the mood of Sydney, with factories closing and the Australian picture industry on the brink of collapse, Stuart Doyle had stepped in bravely to build a ‘Palace of Dreams’. I had read that when completed the theatre would be breathtaking. The interior was to be a fusion of Gothic, Italian and Art Deco styles with a Kohinor-cut crystal chandelier weighing over four tons. There would be paintings by William Dobell, Howard Ashton and Charles Wheeler in the dress circle gallery, and even the restrooms were to be lavishly decorated in different styles reflected by their names: Pompadour, Empire Builders, College, Futurist, Butterfly and Pioneers.

‘Klara and Ranjana have gone shopping with the twins and Thomas,’ Robert said, passing me a plate.

I folded my hands in front of me, waiting for Robert’s good news. He sat down and looked at his palms for a minute then at me. My throat suddenly felt dry.

‘I have approached Greater Union and Hoyts cinemas about the picture,’ he said. ‘But they won’t touch it.’

My heart dropped to my feet. ‘What do you mean?’

Robert grimaced. ‘Stuart Doyle said
The Emerald Valley
is the best film ever made in his lifetime and that you are the finest director but…’

‘But he won’t distribute it?’ My voice rose in pitch. ‘Why? Is it something to do with Freddy?’

I would have been disappointed with a lesser theatre than the State, but now it looked as though there would be no major theatre at all.

Robert shook his head. ‘No. It’s because it’s a silent. And nobody is buying silent pictures any more. The public have gone crazy over sound films. That’s all they want. The silent picture industry is dead.’

I tried to take in what Robert said but it was too hard to believe. ‘But it could not have just died overnight,’ I said.

Robert pursed his lips. ‘It has, Adela. It’s gone. For good.’

T
he public flocked to the new pictures. They were an escape from the worries about the worsening economy and it was cheaper to see a light-hearted musical or comedy at the cinema than it was at the theatre.

The sound-on-film technology fascinated Hugh. He wanted me to see every new ‘talkie’ with him. ‘There’s merit in the technology,’ he said. ‘With the sound and film together on one strip, there’s no problem with either getting out of synchronisation.’

‘But the equipment is so expensive. How will we ever afford to remake
The Emerald Valley
as a sound film?’

‘Australia will have to follow the Hollywood model,’ he replied, bending so Giallo could transfer himself across his shoulder blades. ‘We need to form into studios with continuous productions and contracted actors.’

My mind drifted to a friend of Mary’s who had made a society drama and managed to get it premiered at the Prince Edward Theatre. It had cost all of her inheritance of six thousand pounds and had not returned her a penny. Still, six thousand pounds had been enough to produce a picture with PJ Ramster as the director and Jessica Harcourt and Gaston Mervale as the leads. She would never have been able to do that if she’d had to do it with sound. I thought of all the homespun stories that had been made for under one thousand pounds. That would be impossible now.

‘Out of all those glitzy Hollywood pictures you are so enthusiastic about, Hugh, can you name one that was directed by a woman?’

He thought for a moment then shook his head.

Our stories will be lost now, I thought. I knew that my picture-making days were over. I longed for beauty, I ached for it. I was sure that I would not discover it in pictures made by large studios with chauvinistic directors whose main concern was commerce, not art. I remembered the first time Klara and I had gone to the cinema with Uncle Ota and Ranjana. Felix the Cat coming to life before my eyes had been magic. What I was witnessing on the screen these days was not. The actors’ voices dripped with evidence of elocution lessons and their performances were static. Instead of showing us the story, the producers saved on costs by having the actors tell it.

‘I miss Charlie Chaplin and his funny little mimes,’ Klara confided in me one day when we were walking with the twins. ‘I enjoyed guessing what the actors were thinking. It was like reading a book: you filled in the gaps with your imagination. Now the comedies are one-liners that get used over again and all the thinking is done for you.’

‘The technology will improve and the art with it,’ Hugh assured me, when I relayed my conversation with Klara to him. ‘Now everyone’s enamoured with speaking but they’ll find ways to make the camera move and then visual images will be important again.’

‘I will try to keep an open mind to it,’ I told him. ‘But now I have one more favour to ask of you.’

Hugh stood back, eyes open wide, when I told him that
The Emerald Valley
would never be a sound film. I had made it for Freddy and I was not going to leave it to rot in some vault along with all the other silent films that had been made obsolete overnight.

‘What are you intending to do?’ he asked. ‘The cinemas aren’t going to screen it.’

‘I am going to do what Australian directors have been doing for years, only Freddy protected me from it. I am taking
The Emerald Valley
on the road.’

‘We need another person to help steady the equipment,’ Hugh said when we were loading the truck for our trip down the south coast. Ranjana was going to drive and Hugh was to navigate. Uncle Ota and Esther were coming with me in the supply van. Thomas was staying in Sydney with Robert and Klara.

‘So you want Uncle Ota to go with you?’ I asked.

‘No, you need a male with you in the van. I’m talking about Esther,’ Hugh said.

I raised my eyebrows. The truck was heavy enough now. It was better for more people to travel in the van to avoid the truck getting bogged on muddy roads.

‘I will be driving in front,’ I said. ‘You’ll be able to see me. You will need someone stronger to help with the equipment.’

‘But what if we get separated?’ said Hugh. His voice was pleading. Ranjana cleared her throat noisily. I glanced in her direction. She rolled her eyes.

‘Oh!’ I said, the penny dropping. ‘All right, Hugh. Esther can go with you.’

Uncle Ota and I climbed into the van while Ranjana started up the truck.

‘Just as well you don’t act in your films,’ Uncle Ota said. ‘You’d be terrible.’

I glanced back at Esther who was climbing into the equipment truck. Hugh offered her his hand to help her up. She accepted it cautiously. She had been hurt by his indifference so I did not blame her for her uncertainty.