Free Moving Among Strangers by Gabrielle Carey Page B

remember is Catherine repeatedly jumping off the sofa for Alex to catch her, until at last he dropped her. Then she said, in effect: ‘Why can’t I depend on you, Daddy, why do you always let me down?’ I thought this was a striking example of psychological warfare being used against a psychologist. Alex looked considerably chastened for a moment.
    *
    After all these years, one might wonder why it is so important to know when exactly my father came and went between Australia and England. Why is it relevant to me, at this age, to know whether he was at the birth of his firstborn or not? Or whether he was a reluctant father? Or if he had contemplated abandoning his wife and newborn child? Or where Cathy spent her first birthday?
    It’s important because later on, as a grown-up, my sister continued to accuse my father of never being there for her. It’s important because she gradually came to resent and then hate him. It’s important because, for a long time, she was the family storyteller and we, my brother and I, believed everything she said. It’s also important because she was the one, many years later, who knocked on our father’s door and, getting no answer, climbed through his window and found him hanging.
    *
    Back in Sydney, I discovered that my sister’s health had deteriorated. Since her first emergency surgery for endometrial cancer, I had accompanied her to rounds of radiation and a schedule of acupuncture appointments. But while I’d been away she’d received more bad news: diabetes type 1.
    The handsome oncologist told us, as gently as possible, that although he might be able to keep my sister alive for a few years – perhaps five – the cancer would, in the end, kill her. He wasn’t direct but his meaning was clear. As I drove my sister home we didn’t discuss his prognosis and I couldn’t ask Cathy whether she had interpreted it in the same way as I had. Silence seemed to be the only possible way to respond. In the end, his prediction was extremely accurate.



14
    Writers are such melancholy creatures; they are not generally the kind of people who know how to party. They simply take themselves too seriously. For that reason, I spent way too much time preparing my contribution to the 2011 Perth Writers Festival panel on Stow. I am not a natural public speaker, despite decades of practice, and I was conscious that the audience would be full of people who knew way more about the writer than I.
    Writers’ festivals are also odd occasions. People who spend most of their lives in self-imposed solitary confinement are suddenly thrown into luxurious hotel rooms – or at least luxurious compared to the garret-like study cells they are used to – and exposed to days of public attention. The result isn’t always what you’d imagine. You would imagine, for example, that after a day of publicity, writers would gather in the evening for intellectual love-ins, if not wild, overnight affairs. The very least you’d expect is a dinner table of literary types drinking far too much wine and arguing into the early hours over who should or shouldn’t have been short-listed for the latest prize. But in my experience, this is rarely the reality. Instead, you meet The Famous Playwright at the breakfast bar and discuss whether to try the Danish or the fruit toast. Or you find yourself in the hotel bar in the evening with no one you recognise at all. Until you see another person sitting forlornly in the corner; he is vastly overweight, unkempt and alone. He is also Australia’s Most Feted Poet.
    The 2011 Stow panel was held outdoors in the exquisite leafy grounds of the University of Western Australia. Novelist Gail Jones spoke eloquently and insightfully without the help of a single note, then I read from my much-drafted paper.
    Afterwards Gail turned to me and gestured towards a tree at the edge of the audience: ‘Who are they?’
    I