A Führer for a Father Read online

  Even as he relished life there, Jim was planning the next move. Putting his free time to good purpose, he began attending classes at the School of Mines – in engineering, maths, and machine design. The goal became obvious, even as the Depression began: he would go to Melbourne.

  LESS THAN A HUNDRED KILOMETRES FROM SPREYTON LIES one of the loveliest parts of Tasmania. Advancing westwards from Launceston, the old road – sometimes lined with hawthorn hedges – leads you to plains spasmodically dotted with sheep and clumps of cattle; the Western Tiers beyond, often of a uniform blue, are surprisingly trim for a mountain profile. It is the English colonial dream made real. A number of Georgian houses are prominent in the landscape, and two or three villages still have an early-nineteenth-century charm. The one that doesn’t, Hadspen, nevertheless retains the shape of its claim to distinction: it is one of the few in Australia that, like a number in England, grew up at the gates to serve a ‘great house’.

  It is a serene landscape now, but rural Tasmania (at least in the early-settled parts) often gives the impression of still recuperating from its violent first fifty years. My mother’s Hay ancestor was partly shaped by them. David Hay arrived in the colony in 1832, as an indentured labourer; an obituary (a bit loose with dates) told of him leading a small party crossing untamed rivers and avoiding ‘marauding blacks’. Some time later – but well before the birth of his grand-daughter, Marion – he came to the Westbury district as a tenant farmer on one of the great estates. She would be of the third generation to live there – under the watch of Quamby Bluff – on what had become an independent farm.

  Marion had no intention of remaining in the Westbury district. Deep class divisions, all the stronger for there being a considerable Irish Catholic community, spurred her on to develop social ambitions. Marion would claim – over-compensating for convict-clouded Tasmanian origins – that she was a cousin of the Earl of Erroll, who was a Hay; a claim later briskly dismissed by her eldest daughter. Diminutive, unsmiling, and fiery, she crossed the Strait with her sister, and before long appeared with her on the front cover of a Melbourne weekly. The photograph was captioned ‘Two Tasmanian Belles’.

  Quick-spoken and spirited, Marion had qualities which Norman Tiernan realised he lacked. An early photograph shows him, around the age of thirty, as clear-eyed and good-natured, satisfied with himself and with the world, given his place in it. There were stories on this side of the family, too, of fortunes won and lost on the goldfields, but the Tiernans had also soundly invested in real estate, with astonishing results. Grandma Tiernan – a forceful matriarch – sold a property at the Bourke Street entrance of the Royal Arcade in 1920 for £100 000 (around $7 million today). She then made, on a first-class steamer, the enviable trip Home, something Norman never managed to do.

  Norman had done well at school in Latin, and for a time was an accountant. While reliable and dependable, he was also indolent by nature. Being a gentleman – in Edwardian times technically meaning that he didn’t have to work for an income – suited him very well. Marion would provide the energy which formerly came from his mother. But there was a problem: she was Presbyterian, he Catholic. She would never agree to her children unilaterally being brought up in the faith. And so a compromise was reached, of a kind not uncommon, then: any boys would follow their father, and any girls would be Presbyterian like their mother. That settled, Marion and Norman were married in 1896, and went off for their honeymoon to the newly fashionable Bayside resort of Sandringham.

  In the event, the three children that followed were all girls: Olga, Norma, Tasma. The recurring ‘a’ of these names, when recited, reveals the musical pulse that ran through the family. This came from the Tiernan side: Norman was so much a Gilbert and Sullivan fan that he named their Elsternwick house ‘Iolanthe’ – only to wince whenever he heard the postman call it ‘I-ole-unth’. (In those days house names were common, as newer streets often lacked numbers.) Yet it was from Marion that the quickness vital for a good performer came. In Olga, it combined with her father’s placidity to lead her to the harp, and basically to a secondary role, producing a softening, sweetening effect. ‘I love harmony’, she would say, for by temperament she was a peacemaker. With Norma, one of the younger twins, that quickness exploded on the keyboard, producing the bright melodies of the 1920s, ‘Chopsticks’ and even honky-tonk. But the star of the sisters was the other twin, Tasma: her emotional intensity and spontaneity, allied with an impressive technique, made her an exceptional cellist. She was the one professional, fortunate in that when she was starting out radio – and radio orchestras – were becoming big. She toured to Perth a number of times, and developed quite a following. As one admirer sighed,

  When Tasma plays the ’cello

  My heart joins in the tune:

  So sweet & low & mellow –

  (Now steady there, old fellow!)

  And in working-class Footscray, a fan in little Tiernan Street put up a plaque, naming his house ‘Tasma’.

  Music was the efficient secret of the household, its real currency, uniting the family as they coped with the dominating and uncompromising mother – to whom it was a matter of indifference. When the gramophone arrived, how they loved it when the man on the cylinders used to announce Edison recordings; and how they would… scamper to the overture to Zampa, revelling in the instant gaiety music could afford. Norman’s sense of humour, which ran to pulled faces and funny walks, might prolong the mood.

  Meanwhile Marion took to croquet – dressing up to the nines in her whites with such enthusiasm that someone derisively called her ‘Girlie’. The name stuck. ‘Playing ladies’, as her daughters styled it, was her preferred milieu. An invitation survives for an ‘at home’ held on 5 June 1912 – by Mrs Norman Tiernan as President of the People’s Liberal Party Women’s Section, Elsternwick. We may be sure that her daughters were brought on to provide musical entertainment. Norman took these occasions in his stride; so respectable had he become that his Catholic affiliations gradually faded away. The conscription referenda, the Irish rebellion and the suspicion that the loyalty of his co-religionists could never quite be taken for granted, given their allegiance to the Pope, would do their work. Ultimately, the only flicker of the old attachments was that Norman could never quite turn away a man seeking work when he bore an Irish name.

  A virtually bookless household, it was informed by the prejudice of caste. They took their privileged existence for normality: Norman was shocked, when promenading one day with the rest of the family, to be shouted at by a man up a tree, ‘Down with the toffs!’ Me? A toff! Yet he would think it harmless fun to pretend to be doing a line for the maid – just to hear her say, with her speech impediment, ‘’Top it, Midda Tiernan!’ A certain lordliness went with the Edwardian style. Once, at the theatre, he was annoyed by a woman talking loudly behind him, and turned round to urge her to be quiet. This time it was she who turned to her companion to say, ‘My, isn’t he ungovernable!’ Imperial assumptions underpinned these attitudes. Late in life Olga, who never went overseas except to New Zealand, would say: ‘Australians! They’re always striking!’

  All three sisters were sent to the Presbyterian Ladies College, of which they generally had fond memories. Its motto from Goethe – ‘Without haste, without rest’ – would license Olga’s thoroughness, and she quoted it often. A liberal institution, it did not insist on overly standardised handwriting, and the three sisters developed their own quite distinctive styles. There was Tasma’s, a simple, unevolving Edwardian script, straight up and down; a counterpoint to her impulsive temperament. Then Olga’s, both rounded and curt, sensuous with jabs at modernity. And finally Norma’s, wavy, with periwinkles of self-involvement.

  Olga became the centre of gravity in the family. As Tasma did not get on with Norma – who had the hardness of Girlie without the purpose – she became close to her big sister, and relied upon her. All three – Norma possibly less – adored their father in his benign ineffectuality; and Olga seemed best placed to mediate with the mother. In fact, while doing her best to love her mother, Olga was often alarmed at her behaviour, and quelled by her sharp remarks. As if to clinch a case, Girlie would declare, ‘You know what you are!’ Easily intimidated, Olga became diffident, socially hesitant; she would not advance unless absolutely sure of her ground. Photos exist of her in large groups of picnickers, at places like Sorrento, Warburton and Cowes; standing with her head to one side, sometimes in a reverie of her own. Yet she had quality, and something of the Hay attack: as well as playing the harp in Melbourne’s only (amateur) orchestra, she became a first-class secretary and stenographer, and – more surprisingly – an expert horsewoman. The one broad smile in her surviving photographs was taken when, after a gallop, she was preparing her horse to cross a stream.

  Apart from the tugs of romance, it is not surprising that the sisters began to look for a way out. Norma fell for an advertising man, Stan Coleman; since her mother would not approve the match, she arranged to go with him to the registry office and tie the knot there. Tasma was induced to go too, taking along some beau. But somehow Girlie got wind of it: the double absence, and perhaps the strange behaviour of Carrie the maid (who must have known what was afoot) would have alerted her. Once she found out what was going on, Marion swept into the rehearsal room of Alberto Zelman, the kindly conductor: he must do all he could to prevent it. So persuasive was she about the impending double marriage – carrying off his prime cellist as she clumsily parachuted from the Tiernan household – that Mr Zelman accompanied her to the registry office. To Girlie’s horror, Norma had already been ‘done’, and was no longer a Tiernan; Tasma’s ceremony was to take place shortly. That was instantly cancelled. Tasma was brought home.

  Girlie remained furious about Norma’s wedding: it was so much less than the kind of match – or wedding – she wanted for her daughter. Later, with some reluctance, she gave the marriage a limited approval, arranging for a clergyman to come to her home and bless it in a little ceremony. But she was heard to darkly mutter that she hoped there wouldn’t be any children.

  Olga, as the good daughter, had followed her mother’s bidding earlier, with disastrous results. In 1920, when not yet twenty-two, her engagement was announced to a pastoralist on a property near Naracoorte, South Australia. She did not find the man compatible, and the engagement was broken off. Girlie was reluctant to give up on her social engineering; Olga did come to have a gentle romance with a pleasant man who treated her tenderly. But it failed to clinch.

  THE TIERNANS HAD BEEN LIVING AT ‘LANGI’, IN COPPIN Street, East Malvern, for fifteen years or so when Jim Davidson first appeared on the scene, on his motor bike. The house was a little old-fashioned, all red brick and roughcast, with Corinthian clusters of leaves gesturing towards the red-tiled roof. But it had an agreeable corner casement window, and a pleasant veranda, much used in the cool of summer evenings. The grounds were extensive, taking in a couple of additional suburban blocks. There was room for a croquet lawn and summer house, while beyond the dividing lattice and the fernery was a chook run. Here was also kept a buggy, the horse being stabled nearby.

  Norman was mellowing, and broadening, into a regular paterfamilias. Another grandson remembers accompanying him to various properties he owned to collect the rent personally; after appropriate pleasantries were exchanged over a cup of tea, he would pull out his fob watch (he had three) and say he must be off. At home, he had taken to sitting in a rocking chair, where he imbibed his opinions from the conservative newspaper The Argus. Meanwhile Girlie was bustling about, and never more so than in 1934, when it became known that the visiting Duke of Gloucester (the King’s son), would be going to Ferntree Gully. The Tiernans had a weekender there, and so Girlie was in the thick of fund-raising for a silver tray to be presented to His Royal Highness. Eventually the great day came, and the presentation made. The Duke was a man of few words. ‘Thank you!’ he said, curtly. The royal family never held quite the same sway over Coppin Street again.

  All three daughters were living at home, although Tasma would set sail for Europe a few months after Hitler came to power: she had high hopes of taking lessons from Pablo Casals, and advancing her career overseas. Norma was back home, too, since her marriage with Stan had ended; with her was one of her two little boys, Peter. Tasma was often out, rehearsing or performing, and since Norma was often hitting the high spots, it was Olga – apart from his kindly grandfather – who spent time with Peter. She became so attached to him that years later she would occasionally slip into addressing me by his name. She would then remember with amusement that it was in front of ‘Langi’ that Peter Coleman, literary figure and conservative politician, had set up a cart and sold copies of his first (home-made) newspaper, The Lucky Star.

  Olga could appear quite seductive, with her dark eyes and black hair, complete with a winsome curl, contrasting with unusually fair skin and fine, regular features – animated by her quick movements and natural vivacity. At ‘Langi’, extended on a pile of cushions while her elbow took the weight as she faced the camera, she could look the femme fatale. But it was a pose she could not sustain for long: her sense of humour kept breaking through. She thought it funny that a woman would sing – in the standard translation, then, of ‘O don fatale’, ‘Oh, my fatal beauty!’. Beyond that, sex to her ideally was an emanation; the mechanics were absurd and nonsensical. At PLC she had once arranged Wagner’s Liebestod effectively for a school production, to widespread approval. Unwittingly following Berlioz, she handled coolly the things that are most fiery. She would have died to be told that the piece was a male orgasm rendered as tone poem – or more likely, would have simply said, ‘Don’t be silly!’

  For Jim Olga was a prize worth going for. He could see that she was highly competent, but not altogether confident: a useful combination. And he and Girlie were kindred spirits: they at once responded to the ratbag in each other. (It was about this time that Marion, having a domestic with Norman at Ferntree Gully, suddenly pulled out a red-hot poker from the combustion stove, and held it close to his face.) She didn’t care for Olga’s suitor Jack, dismissing him as ‘a worm’ – despite his war wound. By contrast, there was Jim, recently returned from Thursday Island, full of stories. Why don’t you get yourself a real man, like Jim Davidson? she asked. But Olga was not to be rushed, and had become quite expert in gently resisting her mother.

  Besides, she was enjoying life, and had no great desire to take on such a strong personality, this wild man. So different from Thorold Fink – son of the more famous Theodore – her boss at the Herald office: she loved Fink’s good manners, his urbanity, his appreciation of her skills as a charming secretary and an accurate typist and stenographer. (They were almost exactly the same age.) And she enjoyed meeting the people who turned up there, years later recalling the novelist Roy Bridges – with whom she got on – and Walter Burley Griffin, in his big, broad-brimmed hat. And Jim Davidson, freshly returned from Thursday Island. So when the Tiernans – perhaps pressed for money – thought of selling their extensive property in Coppin Street to buy four smaller, older ones, Olga decided she would not move the whole way with them. Instead of joining her parents in their new home at 14 Wynnstay Road, Armadale, she would get a small flat nearby.

  Suddenly Jim had his motor accident. He was laid up in hospital for nine months, since he had not only broken his leg, but also his pelvis; a kidney had to be removed. Unhesitatingly Olga visited him, frequently. Their relationship steadily deepened. So once he was discharged, the courtship began in earnest. He took her canoeing on the river, and camping in the bush, experiences she had never had before. There is a photo of her in long shorts and a bush hat, standing in front of a tent with her hand placed high on the tent pole. It gives the impression that she was trying out a role, and enjoying it.

  But Jim was restless. He had never cared for Melbourne, and having become a qualified surveyor since arriving there, he began looking around for jobs. Jim threw away his stick (metaphorically speaking), lost his limp and was off to Fiji, where he would work as a surveyor on a gold mine. Years later, Olga said to me, when I was setting off on long overseas journeys of my own: ‘You Davidsons! You just want somebody to say goodbye to!’

  Among Olga’s remaining papers is an item in my father’s neat printing hand. It’s a poem, of only eight short lines. It reads flatly and seems quite perfunctory, until examined closely. ‘You are far away’, it begins, rising to

  Though every hope

  May wane and set,

  Yet thee I never

  Can forget.

  It’s written from a distance – perhaps a very great distance. Could it be that Jim’s second big adventure was that of a man disappointed in love? That he had returned from Fiji, only to find himself still in a stalemate with his beloved? Olga would not commit. His return to the Islands – this time, New Guinea – where he worked for the Standard Oil Company on the headwaters of the Fly River, is perhaps best read this way. Jim had stories about both Island experiences: those of Fiji were more responsive to what he encountered, vivid, romantic. But while he was in New Guinea, he was emotionally distracted.

  Jim returned. At Coppin Street he could always count on a warm welcome from Girlie, and so laid siege to her daughter once more. He put the question again to Olga. And pressed her. Desperate, he threatened to take an overdose of morphine tablets if she would not have him. Knowing the kind of man he was, and in a crisis being one more inclined to respond to others’ initiatives rather than act decisively herself, the day came when Olga said, ‘Yes’. She had learned to live with Girlie; she would learn to live with Jim. Besides, he was undoubtedly fond of her.