My Tongue is My Own by Ann-Marie Priest

Author:Ann-Marie Priest
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781743822319
Publisher: Schwartz Books Pty. Ltd.
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Her own reading, on the Wednesday night, was shared with Vincent Buckley and younger poet Andrew Taylor. She had her doubts about how Vin would perform, as he was drinking heavily, but on the night he was ‘superb’. The next day he took her to lunch, then ‘back to his room to meet his Irish mates, who sat drinking whisky and cursing the Queen’. That night, they went to a party at Evan Jones’ house. Most of the University of Melbourne’s English department were there, as well as a goodly crowd of young poets, and Gwen was impressed by the ‘marvellous food & oceans of drink’ and by the beauty of the young women, who ‘looked like film stars in their boots and miniskirts’. Frank Kellaway’s grown-up children were there, and played the guitar while everyone sang. ‘Jesus! it was beaut.’17

The Beatles were on the hi-fi when Gwen got a drunken Vin up to dance with her. They whirled around the crowded room to ‘Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds’, ‘dismembering in affectionate whispers practically every poet in Australia’, until Vin lost his footing and sent them both tumbling into the fireplace. They were not hurt, though their dignity suffered.18 (Gwen told Tony a week later that she still had ‘a great bruise where I fell on to Evan’s fireplace’.)19 Even so, the whole evening was magical in her memory. She was moved by Vin in a way she couldn’t quite explain. ‘I learned more about him by dancing with him than by talking to him, but he is always masked,’ she wrote to Tony. ‘He reminds me of a picture (Watteau? Fragonard? I can’t remember) of a jester holding up a small image of himself; Vin is simpler & more generous than the effigy he so drunkenly displays.’

When she got home to the Tanners each evening, she and Eddie stayed up late, talking and talking. She had been shocked when she first saw him; a year earlier, he had suffered a stroke which had left him in severe pain, and more recently, he had undergone neurosurgery. She thought he had recovered, but now found that ‘he plainly hasn’t’. ‘He used to be like quicksilver – I could never talk fast enough to keep up with him or stay beside him without running; now he is essentially slow and shuffling.’20 Nevertheless, the affinity between them was unchanged. In their late evening chats, Eddie told her stories of his life – ‘if only I had a tape recorder or a shorthand book!’ – and she made her own confidences. ‘Remember that our midnight talks are PRIVATE PRIVATE PRIVATE,’ she warned him afterwards, ‘and if you ever tell a word of them I will close my mouth like that character who said “From this time forth I never will speak word.”’21

But on Sunday night, on the plane home to Hobart, it was of Vin that she found herself thinking. She was happy after her ‘wonderful week’, conscious of being ‘absolutely restored’, and,

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