WesterlyMagazine

Long weekend reads

What better than a long weekend to slow down and do some reading? We’ve trawled through our archive to compile for you an Easter reading collection. Below you’ll find poems by Dick Alderson and Wong Phui Nam, a short story by Joan Birchall, and a work of creative nonfiction by Elizabeth Jolley.

Enjoy, and remember: you can read past issues of Westerly for free on our website here.

Easter 2020

Dick Alderson

Dick Alderson’s work has appeared in various journals including Westerly and Australian Poetry Journal, and in the Anthology of Western Australian Poetry. His first collection, The Astronomer’s Wife, was published by Sunline Press in 2014.

‘Easter 2020’ was published in 2020 in Westerly 65.2.

isolated in my back yard
late afternoon
talking to you in Germany

I hold your voice
close to my ear
we hear a crow—you exclaim!

and I notice the houses
tinted, soft watercolour
and its call again
in my call

there
on the neighbour’s antenna

two crows
so close
touching beaks

Words for Easter

Wong Phui Nam

Wong Phui Nam (20 September 1935—26 September 2022)  was a Malaysian economist and poet. Wong saw his work as part of the beginning of a Malaysian body of literature, viewing Malaysia as containing strands of other cultures rather than having developed a common national culture. Although Wong wrote in English, he felt no connection to English literary tradition. Similarly, he felt little affinity to what is seen as Chinese culture and described being an outsider in the country he considered his own. Wong’s poetry often reflected these feelings, examining language, place, and identity.

‘Words for Easter’ was published in 1989 Westerly 34.1.

(Night. Two women washing the body in the labour lines.)

How this room closes itself about your death;
the shock still hangs white about the walls.
Horribly you set, the face kept taut over stiff bone,
and twisted into the cheek a soft clay
where your fright and pain have died.
A second time your death has to come—I knew—
a second time. Only my heart is drawn tight,
choked upon the strange dark fruit
of your body. The pent smoke
of the kitchen fires grows thick among the rafters
that cross the blackness beneath the roof.

 Gently, wash out gently sand
 from the gashes in his side.

That day you came
daylight was longer than we ever were used to
up these parts of the old estate. The crinum
burned like candles, throwing rich wax
upon the gravel driveway of the master’s house.
and when the moon was up…

 Soak clean the traces
 of man’s blood that clings about the bunched claw
 of his hand.

When the moon was up
there were noises as if the wind stirred
in the vegetation. Even then I knew your strangeness,
swaddled and dirty, a black unwanted child
with cow’s eyes.

Your words have become confused
as our shadows grappling across the walls.
What shapes they make of two old crones!
And what stays is white-wash, concrete, squashed stains
of lice. Touching this coarse hair upon your arm
I cannot retain now what you meant,
and this mud caked about your soles,
what you meant about the kingdom.
But those who heard you knew your words
were real. I too knew they were real
as this flesh, and the malignant dreams
it harbours. I look down upon my shrivelled paps
and thighs, think of the pain, some mornings, hang
like a crab about the groin, and ask
what is to be done,
what is to be done, this desolation
that has crept into the flesh when now it withers.

Uselessly you died, just because
some stupid young girl loved you for your eyes.
I cannot weep but hold you embalmed
in my darkness. What then is there
that makes me wait; what is it that I have heard;
I cannot figure who there is will move
this boulder, this heavy fleshiness, from the heart.

Easter Sunday on the Beach

Joan Birchall

Joan Birchall has won a number of literary prizes and has her stories broadcast on radio.

‘Easter Sunday on the Beach’ was published in 1990 in Westerly 35.4.

I went for a walk along the beach today, after I’d been to see my oId mother-in-law in the Home.
 I’d been wanting to walk on the wet sand all season and here the season was almost over.
 I was alone, me with a husband and a son and a daughter and six grandchildren. All alone, dangling my shoes in my hand, walking along the edge of the ocean, the water running up to me, seemingly to tease at first and then, in a sudden rush of pity, bathing my feet, cooling the red arthritic joints.
 I should have gone earlier in the season. I shouldn’t have waited. There’s my mother-in-law waiting there in that Home and she’s got four sons, six grandchildren and eight great grandchildren. It all comes to the same in the end.
 Mind you, my mother-in-law is surrounded by people. They sit in this big room facing each other. Before she went senile, my mother-in-law objected to a woman across the room who laughed and said she could see her bloomers.
 She doesn’t object to anything now. Occasionally she gets into a panic about her money and then I let her feel the few coins I leave there in her purse.
 She said the children had been in to see her today.
 “That’s nice,” I said.
 The pauses get longer all the time and casting about for conversation, I asked her what they were wearing.
 She described a cardigan she had knitted for my son when he was ten years old. It was green, with a Fair-Isle yoke. I remembered how nice it was.
 I reminded her that she had knitted it.
 “How old is he?” she asked eventually, after another long pause.
 “Thirty-six,” I told her, but she didn’t appear to have heard me.
 She looks up at the ceiling. Her tongue rolls around in her mouth. It is Easter Sunday and the nurses come in parading their Easter Bonnets.
 “They’ve gone to a lot of trouble,” I say. “Just look at this one!” and I explode into laughter for my mother-in-law. “See, a chamber pot! That tall nurse puts me in mind of the old Queen, don’t you agree? Her hats always reminded me of chamber pots.”
 My mother-in-law sniffed, “Larking about in the staff room. There’s been nobody on here since breakfast.”
 I shuddered, remembering that tone in her voice.
 ‘I had a very nice hat when I met Tom,’ she said. ‘We had huge hat pins to hold them in place then,’ and she grinned, the paper-thin skin glowing grotesquely with its roseate rash.
 ‘Jab with the hat pin,’ she gestured and laughed out loud. The glint in her eyes was evil.
 ‘Mrs Carter was ninety-three yesterday. She got a baby for her birthday,’ she continued. ‘It’s nice to have children—that’s what I told her. Now you’ll never be lonely again.’
 ‘What did she say to that?’ I asked her.
 She struggled to concentrate.
 I looked out of the window. There was a brown butterfly hovering there. When it landed on a flower, I saw how precise the design on the wings was. Neat circles and a fan shaped border. I wondered why I thought all butterflies were female. Were they?
 ‘Her daughter isn’t coming in today,’ she whispered sotto-voce. ‘She’s gone off with another man.’
 ‘But isn’t her husband dead?’ I asked.
 ‘She’s off with other men,’ she said.
 The nurse stopped in front of us to let us admire the bonnets.
 She ignored them.
 A nurse with arms bursting in the too tight sleeves, her uniform straining on her hips, exposing her thighs, bent over my mother-in-law. She wore a Swagman’s hat with pill bottles substituted for corks. She thrust her face up to my mother-in-law and playfully touched her nose with her fat clean pink forefinger.
 My mother-in-law turned her face away.
 When they’d gone, I said, ‘I think I can smell pork. It’s roast pork for your dinner.’
 She pulled her mouth down. ‘Mince,’ she said. ‘It’s always mince.’
 ‘Not today,’; I said. ‘It’s Easter Sunday.’
 She gave me a pitying look.
 ‘What a lovely day it is today,’ I said to the old woman sitting in the chair next to her. The old woman was tied in the chair with a piece of sheeting. She lifted her head. It was egg-shaped and almost bald. Whisps of white hair, like mercerised cotton, were stretched back into a meagre knot, exposing the pale scalp.
 She looked at me, her eyes blank, uncomprehending.
 Humpty Dumpty sat in a chair.
 Humpty Dumpty had a big stare.
 ‘Nurse, I want to go to the toilet,’ she suddenly whined.
 ‘There’s nobody here. They’re all off having morning tea,’ my mother-in-law stated in a flat tone.
 The old woman reared forward, clutching, clawing at me.
 ‘You can take me. You take me,’ she cried. ‘Take me to the toilet.’
 ‘I’d better wait for a nurse. Sit still or you’ll fall. They’ll all be back soon.’
 All the King’s Horses… All the King’s men…
 ‘I want to go to the toilet,’ my mother-in-law chanted.
 ‘They won’t be long, they’ll be back shortly,’ I said.
 ‘They’d better hurry, or there’ll be a fine mess,’ my mother-in-law chortled with glee.
 The old woman fell back into the chair, continuing to whine.
 Then I fancied I heard the clatter of clogs on uneven cobblestones. My mother-in-law heard it too. Her eyes opened slyly, but it was only the old woman who totters about all day with her walking frame; her pink face smiling, her cotton-wool head nodding, her heavy shoes slipping off the shrunken feet with each tiny step, clip-clopping. She moves fast, with the momentum of a clockwork toy.
 The clip-clopping amused her so much, that no sooner had she sat down, than she got up again and clattered off across the room and up the passage.
 ‘She’s off again,’ I remarked, smiling to my mother-in-law.
 ‘It will do her good. It will make her baby grow,’ she said.
 Then she sat silent, her eyes shut.
 I watched her. Her features are my husband’s. They are cast from the same mould.
 ‘You’d better go now,’ she said.
 ‘It’s all right. I can stay a bit longer.’
 ‘No, go away.’
 ‘Would you rather be alone?’ She didn’t open her eyes.

 And there I was, on the beach. I saw a starfish washed up. I saw the skeleton of a dead crab. It shone so brightly in the water, like silver, that I bent to pick it up. I looked down at my hip for a child to show it to, but there was none there.
 A young man came towards me, walking in the water, his body firm and brown. He smiled at me and I smiled, hitching my shirt just a little higher—to save it from getting wet.
 I reached the far end of the beach and using my shoes to rest my head on, I lay stretched out on the sand, the sun warming my knees.
 A single cloud hovered ahead. I examined it, the cotton-wool edges all teased out, like it had been pulled off a roll.
 There was a cupboard full of cotton wool there in the Home. Why did they need so much of it?
 It was so quiet, only the gentle lap of the water as the tide came in. ‘Hush,’ it said, ‘Hush, hush, hush…’
 And I closed my eyes.
 But my thoughts darted about like a dozen dragonflies, probing the hidden parts of me. I had watched the sun come up and I’d seen it go down again before my labour ended when my baby was born.?
 ‘I couldn’t have faced another dawn,’ I’d said to her.
 ‘The other girl never even cried out,’ she’d said. ‘And me, I had to have chloroform at the birth of my children,’ she’d continued. ‘They were such big babies.’
 Lucky old you, I should have said, not having to face it cold turkey, but she wouldn’t have understood. How could she—cold turkey was served for lunch on Monday when she was young.
 There was a man on the railway bridge. ‘Come here little girl,’ he said to me. ‘Come and see the rabbit: come and see the bunny.’
 I knew it wasn’t a rabbit.
 They gave my mother-in-law an Easter egg in the Home today, as if she were a child.
 She behaves like a child. I’ve heard them chastise her. ‘Naughty girl. Oh you are a naughty girl.’
 There was another Easter, a long time ago, when I lay on the sand, limbs entwined, his eyes shut in passion; mine wide open, searching his face, striving to imprint his features on my mind to keep for after, but I never could recall his face afterwards, not then, not now.
 The sun’s caress was gentle, an Autumn embrace. The fire had gone out of it, but it was still warm.
 I felt a certain déjà vu. I felt so young, like a child, like I had this day to waste and all the rest to squander, like the tide would never reach me.
 The sun was so warm, the sea was so gentle, lapping, licking and smooth sand.It was hard to remember it was Easter and the end of the summer; that winter would soon be upon us.

Images of Western Australia Easter Moon Easter Lily

Elizabeth Jolley

Monica Elizabeth Jolley AO (4 June 1923–13 February 2007) was an English-born Australian writer who settled in Western Australia in the late 1950s where she forged an illustrious literary career. She was 53 when her first book was published, and she went on to publish fifteen novels (including an autobiographical trilogy), four short story collections and three non-fiction books, publishing well into her 70s and achieving significant critical acclaim. She was a pioneer of creative writing teaching in Australia.

‘Images of Western Australia Easter Moon Easter Lily’ was published in 1988 in Westerly 33.2.

26 November 1959. I do wish the children would stop screeching and fighting. They are much too hot of course and both refuse to give up their corduroy for the nice new cotton shorts and tops.

We have been in Western Australia almost a fortnight. The people on the ship were right about the bath water going out anticlockwise but wrong, as far as I know, about screw top jars for stockings and under clothes. Certainly there are ants everywhere but not in our clothes. White ants have been eating the kitchen door post and the wood exposed looks like corrugated cardboard. I thought at first it must be a particular kind of Australian wood.

The other evening at a party a guest, a woman lifted up my skirt. She wanted to know, she said, whether the pattern went right through. Was it real embroidery or not. I felt dreadfully shy and awkward, twice as tall as anyone else in the room! Very new in another country but also having only recently come out of a different world which has nothing to do with leaving Britain. I feel shy because of those years I have just been through, shut away in the kitchen, the nursery, the playroom and the seclusion of the locked railings of the Queen Street Gardens. For a long time I have been only in the company of prams and push chairs and little legs buttoned into leather gaiters and the jingling bells on that useful harness which tethers the parent to the child. I realise I am not used to talking about clothes at parties. The pattern is only pressed onto the material, it’s not some interesting hand embroidery from Hungary or Tibet. The woman, I didn’t hear her name, blushed. I think it was with the exertion of bending down, not because she felt she had been impolite. Because she was small I could see her blush spreading down her neck and down the front of her dress. I don’t think I have ever seen the full extent of a blush before.

It feels like being in a foreign country to come here. It is the brightness of all the colours and the very clear blue sky. There is no smoke. The light is so bright and the sun is out all the time and this makes our clothes seem dreadfully shabby. I have thrown our Burberry raincoats away. The dustbin people did not take them at first because they were not in the bin, only rolled up on top.

I want to write about the trees with their clouds of blue flowers, as the flowers fall they look as if they are growing in the grass as well. On the street lawns there are gnarled little trees with long fragrant leaves. These make pools of shade. Going to the shops we went from one pool to the next. The trees remind me of dolls. People have their letter boxes by the footpath. Mostly tins on posts and you can see people wandering across their gardens to fetch their letters. Barefoot is nice. Especially where there is a water sprinkler. I did not know the feet could be so receptive. Leaves and grass.

All the women here seem to have well shaped sun-tanned legs. English legs seem ugly in comparison. The children here have brown legs and square cut sunbleached hair and a kind of vacant expression which I suppose comes from being in the water, the sea or the river, for long stretches and perhaps it is the thick coating on the forehead and the nose of a white zinc cream ointment. When I close my eyes and hear the strange cries of birds or the soft liquid crooning of a bird they call a magpie I know I am in a strange country. There is too in the shops a sweet fragrance of peaches, apricots and nectarines and every garden seems to have a lemon tree. Quite old women stand in their thin night-gowns in the mornings watering their front gardens and the street lawns. The street lawns look fresh and green in spite of the hot sun. It is ominous to see the signs of what people will be doing to ameliorate the great heat when it comes. I feel hot now what is it going to be like later…  I have never seen or eaten a fresh apricot before…

Of course a blush is universal and so is the shyness of the newcomer or the shyness of the mother emerging after being, for some years, absorbed by the needs of small children. Those things are not really images. The impressions written in the diary have all been written about over the years but every person writing adds something to the picture.

Heraclitus said it was not possible to step in the same river twice. All things flow, he is said to have said. He did not add that images of things are even more fleeting. Images change with the maker of them, whether he is in good health, whether he is tired or hungry, frightened or lonely or bored or disappointed; or whether he is happy and at peace. Images are essentially personal.

A memory can be an image so sharp that it remains for ever. The image can spring from an action which has to be recalled. Actions and feelings and images are so often universal but often there are details which can place them in a specific part of the world.

Images of Western Australia. There was a time when Western Australian writers seemed to deny their region. The best fiction is regional. It is in the very places where the writer lives and walks and carries out the small details of everyday existence that the imagination from some small half remembered awareness springs to life. In Western Australia there are many regions, the coast, the suburb, the city, the sand plain, the escarpment, the bush, the half rural, the forest, the wheat country, the desert… observation can be personal or objective. The trained journalist and the imaginative fiction writer may well produce entirely different images from one tiny corner of a wheat paddock. Sometimes it is difficult to recall images without being pestered in the mind by memories and comparisons which come from a previous country and which are heightened by travelling. Often the first image is the one which remains during times of change. Perhaps the Easter lilies are a reminder of this. Uncherished the Easter lilies appear every year with surprising suddenness, their pink and white long-lasting freshness bursting out of the brown bald patches of earth at the edges of newly made car parks and in those places which have been left out from the spreading bitumen.

The suburb which used to consist of old houses complete with gables of corrugated iron, bullnosed verandas and turned wooden veranda posts began to present a picture of neglect as the houses were taken over for business offices and consulting rooms for specialists.

A dog lost in a garden, which is no longer cherished as a garden, gazes at the passer-by with mournful eyes as builders and cranes and concrete mixers follow in the wake of demolition. In the once quiet residential streets there are now tall buildings, floor upon floor of offices, all faced with gleaming windows, some lit up and some dark. At sunset, those windows facing west glow as if on fire. The buildings rise from parking lots all similar but unrecognisable. Small trees and bushes planted hastily as ornaments offer a few twigs and leaves—a poor replacement for the previous riot of colour, the pink and white oleanders, the apple-blossom hibiscus with their richly glossy, dark green leaves and the masses of red and purple bougainvillea. Perhaps the image which might be peculiar to Western Australia is that the buildings are not at peace with their surroundings. They have been forced to be a part of the landscape and are an imposition. They do not match or complement each other and they have taken away any tranquillity, any special quality of human life the streets may have had once.

There is too the ever-growing disaster, the evidence of great wealth in some suburbs where, it seems, people caring even less about each other no longer want to be able to see the light of the rising sun through a trellis of leaves and branches or to hear the doves talking softly, to and fro. The million-dollar mansion and the high-density luxury apartment, the crowded supermarket and the fashionable boutique, the American ice-cream bar and the expensive seafood restaurant are taking over from the weatherboard and iron, the bleached grass and the pressed tin. The Easter lilies pushing through cracked cement herald the Easter moon. The moon hangs in the branches of a single tree left between the new buildings.

The new images of Western Australia, the enormous hotels, one with an atrium and another built to resemble a ship forever in harbour, the casino, the ballooning quilted stadium and the flourishing pawn shop not too far away are universal. It is difficult for the traveller, waking up in his hotel room to remember which city, which country he went to bed in.

It is a good idea to feel car sick coming down the long hill on the Toodyay Road. There is, by an outcrop of granite, a place to pull off on the left side of the road. From high up there is a wide view across the sand plain of the Swan Valley. It is especially fine when the weed, Paterson’s curse, is in full flight and the neat green ribs of the vineyards are framed in a delicate purple mist. Beyond the vineyards is the changing skyline of the city. And shining blue, beyond the buildings, is the joining of the sea and the sky. The rim of the sea gleams, catching at the horizon a last light from behind a bank of cloud. And at sunset the sun disappears in a miraculous flash of green.

The Easter moon races up the sky. The stunted ornamental bushes look as if torn white tablecloths have been thrown over them. The buildings are like cakes which, having taken three days to ice are now finished. Perhaps it is the kind of icing which breaks when it is cut and which is impossible to eat.

The moon and the lilies cannot be claimed as images of Western Australia. Others will claim them too.

It seems on reflection that there is something which does seem to be an image which can be said to belong to us and that is the dead tree which goes on standing among living trees. It is as if the dead tree has a strength which keeps it a part of the vulnerable living forest. Sometimes a tree which looks completely dead has a strip of bark which sustains life and a branch, sometimes a whole tree, sprouts and grows from the side of the gaunt ghost.

Like the dead tree which still offers life perhaps the lilies are a reminder and a comfort. Without fail they flower at Easter. Forgotten till they flower, an unsought simultaneous caution and blessing.

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