'Self Portrait' by Barry Oakley

In the small hours of Saturday, 31 August, after the wind-up dinner of the Association for the Study of Australian literature in Armidale, John Hanrahan told the writer not to forget the self-portrait he had promised for Australian Book Review. The writer, at that stage somewhere between exhaustion and tranquillity, assured him it would be done soon. Later he regretted what he’d said, because, at fifty-four, he didn’t like looking at himself in mirrors. Perhaps though, if he softened the lights just a little ... The Writer’s Wardrobe A faded black zip-up jacket bought at New York’s Lower East Side market for $20, from merchandise probably stolen from Kennedy Airport. (He was fifty before he could bring himself to wear a zip jacket.) Four pairs of trousers, including jeans. He’ll buy no more jeans. He’s decided he’s too old for them. Two pullovers. When he unpacked the more recent one at home and put on his glasses, he found it had a Christian Dior label. He cut this off with scissors. Underwear: three pairs of underpants, now of a bronze-blue chemical colour so strange they can’t be hung out publicly. Bought at Marks and Spencer, London, eight years ago and only now, after innumerable indignities, starting to wear out. His Family Married to Carmel Catherine Hart, of Maryborough, Victoria, in May 1957, at St. Mary’s Church East St Kilda, Melbourne, in an out-of-date ill-fitting double-breasted suit from The Leviathan. Wore one white glove only, with the other held in the hand. Before the ceremony took an Oblivon, a large greenish capsule that had helped get him through demonstration lessons during his Diploma of Education year (Valium had yet to be invented). Six children. One in London, one in Melbourne, and four in Sydney, two of whom still live with them in their Paddington terrace, whose rent is becoming harder and harder to afford. Wife so loves pot plants there are some out the front, locked to the wall. If someone grabs hard enough at them, the whole house might move – a sudden lurch in the middle of the night. This is also the time, when everything is still, that the century-old floorboards creak outside the bedroom door. Hot and cold flush: the boards, muttering to themselves, or an intruder? The peculiar helplessness when one is suddenly awakened from deep sleep: half in dream and half out, more spirit than body, arms and legs not ready to obey instructions. Lie there, totally still, and listen. His Habits Works at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation as Writer-Producer, Radio Drama and Features. Rise at 8 am, Vita Brits, toast, paper. Walk through Darlinghurst, where crazy men wake from their alcohol sleeps and wander William Street, shouting at the world. Enter building the colour and shape of dog biscuit, take lift to third, overheated air, box of an office, sit at desk, take out glasses, open folder, begin. Turn on fan. Its breeze ripples the yellow cards on the programming board. They look autumnal, deciduous – program budget has been cut nearly fifty per cent. His Books Should fire engulf the terrace, after his wife and children, these would be what he tries to save. Save his books! The top shelf especially, lined with Australian works, most of them signed by their authors. (One is dedicated to him. But dedicator and dedicatee don’t speak anymore.) Below are the Americans, another whole shelf, merging, at Henry James, into English works, then French, German, (getting smaller each time) Italian, Scandinavian, Spanish, Latin American – down to the Renaissance, Middle Ages, and (some cobwebs now) beyond. It’s not so much a collection as a miniature library, and the colours of the spines make a pattern, a mandala the size of a wall, a reflection of western civilisation and of him. It has hidden touches, subtleties: Auden is hard up against Isherwood, Rimbaud against Verlaine, D.H. Lawrence commits frottage against Virginia Woolf, and Henry Lawson leans heavily on J.F. Archibald. There’s no more room on these shelves. As new books come in, old ones must come out. Lesser works are being continually demoted downstairs. Maybe, by the year 2000, this red bookcase will house the perfect library – everything of quality, authors and countries represented in exactly the right proportions, a wonder of balance and justness that one can contemplate in itself without ever having to take out a single book. Social Life Many of the writer’s friends are ex-Melburnians like himself. Even after eight years he has never gained total acceptance in inner-Sydney literary circles. Those who are in them have their own way of reminding him of this outerness, this marginality. They stand at a slight angle when talking to him, and look, not at his face but over his shoulder, as if expecting someone more central to come along soon. He goes to films rarely, and to plays less often than he used. Eats out cheaply about once a week, after which his wife often cautions him about his drinking. ‘You’re drinking too much,’ she says. ‘Is it some macho male thing?’ It is not. He’s not sure what it is. The mirror is now too close, and he looks away. Literary Expectations After fifteen years away from long-distance fiction, he feels ready to try again. He’ll call his new novel Minogue. Minogue is a middle-aged Melbourne playwright who, after once dominating the local scene, is now having his first play performed for ten years. A young man, himself an aspiring writer, comes down from Sydney to write a piece on him for a national weekly, and finds himself more and more caught up with him and his wife. Now read on … The writer, this writer, sits at his desk and thinks about his novel. It is a modern Italian desk, red-frame, black top, bought with one of his first royalties. The writer gazes down into the blackness and hopes that the Idea, tempted by his constant trailing and angling, will well up from its depths so that he can glimpse its shape, its colour, and perhaps its pale particularity.

Barry Oakley

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