The Scent of Eucalyptus
Barbara Hanrahan, artist and novelist, was fifty-two years of age when she died in 1991. She studied at the Central School of Art in London during the sixties, and for many years divided her time between London and Adelaide, the city where she grew up and where many of her novels are set. She has had many one-woman exhibitions and her art is held in the Australian National Gallery as well as most state galleries. The Scent of Eucalyptus, her first book, was published in 1973. Her last book, Michael and Me and the Sun, was published in 1992. She is the author of fifteen books, including two collections of stories and the novels The Albatross Muff (1977), Where the Queens all Strayed (1978), The Peach Groves (1979), The Frangipani Gardens (1980), Annie Magdalene (1985), Flawless Jade (1989) and Good Night, Mr Moon (1992).
OTHER BOOKS BY BARBARA HANRAHAN
Sea-green
The Albatross Muff
Where the Queens all Strayed
The Peach Groves
The Frangipani Gardens
Dove
Kewpie Doll
Annie Magdalene
Dream People
A Chelsea Girl
Flawless Jade
Good Night, Mr Moon
Iris in Her Garden
Michael and Me and the Sun
To
IRIS PEARL GOODRIDGE
See with what simplicity
This Nymph begins her golden days!
In the green Grass she loves to lie,
And there with her fair Aspect tames
The Wilder flow’rs, and gives them names:
But only with the Roses plays;
And them does tell
What Colour best becomes them, and what Smell.
Andrew Marvell
ONE
My mother hedged about my birth: said she found me in a rose. And I believed her — saw myself pink and perfect as a rubber dolly, added some modest gauze, even a little crown. Of course I went too far — tried to make it perfect; cheated with shears and a criss-cross net — no thorns or suckers, gall or fly or chafer.
My mother lied — that rose-birth wasn’t true. I was born the same as any other. Stripped of any past pretensions to wisdom, I entered the world; lay naked before strangers who meant nothing to me, but to whom I, by my very helplessness, meant a lot.
I was offered as a sop to strangers — a sop for hoarded (but unacknowledged) disappointments. I was a prize, presented on an off-chance, that for an instant deceived — tricked them into thinking that real life bore some resemblance to the thing they thought was life: a wan pretence fabricated by newspapers and politicians; made safe by shops that sold lounge suites and latest season’s costumes on hire-purchase, bearable by wireless jingles and long-range forecasts.
That paltry thing they were offered bound insidiously — in a moment that became all future time. It fastened closely — yet never completely. It erased with cheap comforts the original world — yet never entirely. In the end it dissolved — but always too late. They were left free when there was nothing to be free for; bled so empty there was nothing left them, but to dissolve as well.