jmgoyder

Tony is one of my oldest and dearest friends. We first met when I was a child-like teenager and he was heavily involved in the church choir. I never actually had a crush on him but I adored him immediately because he was a bit older, a bit wiser, and, in retrospect, I realise now that he took me under his wing.

Tony was the reason I passed French in my leaving exams as he tutored me. He and I kept in touch, then kind of lost touch, only to pick up where we left off, numerous times over the decades since we have known each other. He studied theology and became an Anglican priest; I studied nursing and the arts and became an aspiring writer.

Tony originated from England so still has a rather posh accent. The way he says “appalling”, for example, is the kind of Tony-word that resonates endlessly ….

And yes, Tony thought that many aspects of my relationship with Anthony were just that – appalling. It wasn’t just the age difference, the peculiar family dynamic (see previous post), or that I was obsessively in unrequited love; it was also that I had become so unhappy.

Tony cared about me – he really cared. Tony was the one who reluctantly took me to the airport to fly to Sydney to meet Bill, the man who briefly became Anthony’s all-of-a-sudden rival. And Tony was the one who picked me up from the airport, on my return, and listened to all of my amazed gut-spill about Anthony proposing. Tony was my confidante and, to some extent, I was his too; we meshed.

It was Tony who married us in the tiny Anglican church in Picton, Bunbury.

It was Tony who came down from Perth to bless Anthony in a last-rites sort of way when I thought Ants was about to die and, when Ants didn’t die for another year, I thought Tony had done some sort of beautiful magic.

It was Tony who conducted the funeral and I will forever be grateful to him for this. Even though the funeral is a bit of a blurry memory for me I do remember Tony’s comforting presence.

The other beautiful thing about my best male friend is that he was the first to see Ming after he was born. Tony didn’t hesitate to come straight from Perth to the Bunbury hospital to see us – incredible!

Tony has always been honest and, sometimes, ruthlessly forthright with me. I am having lunch with him tomorrow and I can’t wait!

I just hope he doesn’t tell me that this post is appalling because Anthony, Ming and I regard him as a hero in our lives.

Yes, indeed, my best male friend is an Anglican priest.

I thought I had finished writing these vignettes but I keep remembering more and more. The delay in piecing all of the fragments of the longer story together is due to me discovering a wonderful person who is now helping me with format. So this is a rather useful delay in that it gives me more time to re-remember and write more of these little stories.

In writing the horrible in-law stories (I think there were three posts), I unwittingly put myself through a weird, retrospective trauma and experienced feelings of absolute rejection that, as a new wife, I was too busy to acknowledge at the time.

It was useful to gain insight from the daughter of my brother and sister-in-law, but it has also meant yet another falling out with her and, when I suggested to her that I email her parents with a view to reconcile, she was adamant that “Mum will not respond.” She was right.

After that, I realised that I had to stop being so afraid to tell the truth of my experience. I don’t enjoy writing about these situations, but I do think it’s important to relate how cruelly we were treated from day one of our engagement.

The engagement ring fiasco is a good example:

Anthony had picked out an engagement ring at Marjorie Young’s antique jewelers in Perth and I loved it! We had so much fun that day and, when we stopped at a restaurant for lunch, he put the diamonds onto my finger and laughed at my shy, embarrassed joy.

But, halfway through our smoked salmon salads, he said he had something to ask me. I was a bemused as we had already gone beyond a marriage proposal.

ANTHONY: Would you be willing to sign a pre-nuptial agreement, Jules?

I only vaguely knew what this was as I did occasionally read magazines. I think I thought he was joking at the time but I did get a bit of a shiver of alarm.

ME: Is this a joke, Ants?

ANTHONY: It’s not my idea, Jules.

ME: Oh, I see.

So I took the engagement ring off my finger and calmly put it on the table in front of his bread roll, got up and walked away and down the street. In those moments, Anthony’s brother nearly won, as I was in tears of despair that my future husband would have so little trust for me.

It took many weeks for the trust to return – not his trust for me, but mine for him!

After we were married, Anthony and I tried so many times to reconcile, or at least be able to make small talk, with his brother and wife, but it was mostly impossible. Now that Anthony is gone, it is even more impossible because I inherited his farm, a legacy they wanted and I actually understand their disappointment but not their behavior.

The engagement ring fiasco is the last bad memory I want to talk about in this blog-book. I am certain that this kind of experience is not mine alone.

I was doing a Graduate Diploma in Creative Writing at Curtin University and one of my lecturers was, in my opinion, one of Australia’s most interesting and famous authors, Elizabeth Jolley. I was in awe of her writing and even more in awe of her person as she was stern, eccentric, and my absolute hero as a writer.

She could be both gentle and terrifying at the same time, so we students were always kept on our toes. During workshop sessions, we would have to read our short stories out to the whole class after which Elizabeth would either sigh, make a short comment, or (rarely) appear to be interested.

Sometimes, her constructive criticism was ruthless and I well remember her asking me to share a story I had written that she had already failed (I received a 4/10 grade). She made me read it out to a class of around 30 students in order to point out to them why my story was so poorly written. I was so humiliated and yet strangely grateful for the group feedback, which of course echoed Elizabeth’s.

Later, privately, she took me aside and said, “I know you can do better, Julie. You may rewrite it for a pass grade.” I almost felt like bowing!

A few months later, my writing had improved, so I entered a short story into a Curtin University competition. By this time, I had a different lecturer but my muse was still Elizabeth Jolley.

I know I have the clipping somewhere but, like many memorable bits of paper, I can’t find it. Anyway, not only did my short story “The Clocks” win second place, it was also published in the university magazine: my first ever published story! I was elated and also astonished to find that Elizabeth Jolley was one of the judges. Luckily, our submissions were anonymous so there was no bias to give me another 4/10.

Of course the first person I wanted to tell this good news to was Anthony and he was so proud of me despite the fact that “The Clocks” was a story about a young woman in love with a man whose clocks meant more to him than she did. In fact, the last paragraph was about how the ticking of all those clocks began to sound to the young woman like the ticking of a bomb.

ME: “Do you not see the parallels, Ants?”

ANTS: “Of course, Jules; you are a brilliant writer!”

ME: “So I didn’t hurt your feelings?”

ANTS: “Of course not! She’s a burster, isn’t she – Elizabeth Jolley.”

ME: “I am beginning to think you don’t get the point of the story, Ants.”

ANTS: “You sound annoyed – what’s wrong, Jules?”

ME: SIGH

ANTHONY: “I’ll turn all the clocks off for the weekend – how’s that?”

The thing about Anthony was I often didn’t know if he were kidding or not. My clocks story was, by implication, extremely critical of him and yet the fact that the story was published overrode everything and, by then, he too was an Elizabeth Jolley fan.

My little cottage is now home to the most precious of Anthony’s clocks. I think it’s about time I wound them.

One of the things I loved most about Anthony was his sense of fun, of mischief; even his scatalogical references were fun rather than crude, which, in retrospect, is rather ironic in terms of his chronic constipation in the latter years of his life, and the enematic solutions! You don’t want to know.

More than anything in the world, I wish Ming had known this funny, fun-loving, guffawing Anthony. He loved so much to stir things up and once convinced a nephew’s girlfriend that he usually tied me to the clothesline until I was needed for cooking duties. He rather liked to shock people so he probably rather liked the situations in which I would be mistaken for his daughter.

I remember once waiting in the car while he was in a business meeting. I was a not particularly mature 24. I had the car radio up really loud and my bare feet on the dashboard when the man he was meeting looked out of his office window and said to Anthony, “Your daughter can join us if she wants to.” Anthony got a kick out of replying, “That’s not my daughter; she’s my girlfriend.”

When Anthony reiterated this to me on the drive home, after telling me sternly to get my feet off the dashboard, he laughed and laughed about my mistaken identity.

I, on the other hand, was quietly delighted to finally be identified as Anthony’s girlfriend, by him.

When we stopped for petrol, I asked him for a banana paddle-pop and this became an ongoing joke between us, especially when I threatened to yell out, “Hey, Daddy, paddle-pop pleaaaase?”

We had fun with people’s disapproval, judgements, assumptions because of how inviolable our relationship was. I had always been a happy, grinning child/teen/adult but I don’t think I had ever guffawed myself until I met Anthony.

My ongoing grief is permeated by such wonderfully funny moments, even during those years when Anthony was in the nursing home, that I often find myself laughing into my tears.

That beautiful, witty, resilient husband of mine is still the great big funny smile in my heart.

Fun!