True Stories by Helen Garner Page B

their parents that started with the word Dearest.’
    A few years ago, Four sent One a telegram: ‘Dearest Darling, happy birthday, from your Darling.’ The telegram was read, marked, learnt and inwardly digested, then thrown into the rubbish bin. That night a strong wind blew, and overturned the bin into the running gutter. Next morning an angry young man knocked on One’s front door. He thrust the crushed and sodden telegram in her face: ‘Is this how you treat a man’s heartfelt declaration of love? Shame on you!’ ‘It’s not a man!’ cried One. ‘It’s my sister. ’ He stared at her strangely, and stamped out the gate.
    If one of us uses an endearment on the phone to a child, a friend, a lover, while a sister is in the room, she glances nervously behind her to make sure she is not being mimicked. None of us would dream, however, of mocking someone for doing this. In fact, we would (I believe) like to pet and treasure each other, to pour out floods of sweet words. But we are all engaged in the same struggle against inherited embarrassment, against a terrible Australian dryness. We maul and stroke each other’s children: it’s the closest we can get. And our children submit to their aunts’ possessive handling with patient smiles.
    Class
    From the middle of the middle class there are paths leading in both directions. A family can rise or fall in class over twenty years, so that its eldest child is brought up at one level, and its youngest at quite another.
    â€˜I used to escape from the bedlam,’ says Two, ‘by going to my friend’s place over the back lane. Her father listened to opera, and her mother always did beautiful ikebana flower arrangements that I loved—she was so creative. They had posh accents. The parents didn’t just have single beds, like our parents did—they had separate rooms. I liked their accoutrements: engraved silver, crystal, a back sitting room. They had two spaniels called Kismet and Ophelia. They were what I aspired to be: Geelong Grammar posh people. We were down market. I wished our parents said dahnce and cahstle. Three always disapproved of my lifestyle, later on. Once I said to her, “I’d like to have a marblised wood dining table. I suppose they must be really expensive”—and she came back at me: “Even poor people have dining tables, you know!”—almost as if she thought my whole life was devoted to…acquisition. It probably is! I wouldn’t deny it! I don’t care about that now, but I used to.’
    â€˜Once I went with Two to a department store,’ says Three, ‘to buy our kids some pyjamas. I headed straight for the bargain bin, and she made a beeline for the quality shelf. When we met at the cash register, her stuff cost six times as much as mine. After I came back from Papua New Guinea I couldn’t believe the way people in Australia spent money. Two Papuans from the mission where I worked came and visited Mum and Dad. Later they wrote to me, “What a lot you gave up, to come to us. Your family lives in a huge house, with many comfortable chairs and two cars.” I wrote back, “Yes, but in that house I have not learnt what I need to know.” ’ ‘One’s friends,’ says Two, ‘were band-y, interesting, creative people. That got her into trouble with Dad. Whereas I had boring, stable, middle-class friends, which was approved of.’
    â€˜I remember asking and asking,’ says Four, ‘what the working class was. I mean—where was it? As soon as I got the chance I headed down market. I was desperate not to be middle class. Even my friends at school were rough as bags. I was smart but I was always in trouble.’
    â€˜Two was deeply offended, I think,’ says Five, ‘when I didn’t marry X. She wanted me to marry an American and go and live on Long Island or in Hawaii. That was her