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Copyright © Carmel Bird 1997.
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KNIFE
If, while I was sleeping, you had looked under my pillow when
I was fifteen, you would sometimes have discovered a carving knife
wrapped up in a table-napkin. I would hide the knife because I
was afraid that my mother was going to kill me -- go berserk and
kill me, kill my father too. She used to threaten to kill me,
but I can't say she ever brandished the knife. And I never actually
heard her threaten to kill my father. The first time I put the
knife under my pillow was one night after I had been to a dance.
I don't know how the emotion grew and escalated, but I remember
it as something like this:
I went to a dance, with the permission of my parents, accompanied
by a boy they knew. I knew him better because we used to have
(in the grotesque manner of the 1950s) something close to sex
in the back of his father's car. Well sometime during the night
my father took it into his head to drive to the hall and get me,
to stop the boy from driving me home. This was bad and humiliating
enough for me, but the next thing was it really enraged my mother
who was waiting for us at home in tears. We all shouted at each
other in the kitchen and during the row I had a kind of flare
of perception that my mother would come after me with the carving
knife which was in the drawer behind her. It was the kind of argument
in which each person is opposed to two of the others. When they
had gone to bed I was left behind in the kitchen. I took the knife
from the drawer, wrapped it in the napkin, and carried it off
to hide it under my pillow. The next day I put it back in the
drawer, and every now and again I would repeat the exercise which
became exciting and pleasurable. I don't recall when or why I
gave this practice up.
I was the one with the knife. Who was in danger here, and from
whom?
The unconscious or semi-conscious logic of it is beautiful, and
I wonder what we would have made of this in pre-Freudian times.
Since that is impossible to know, I can only record that the bond
between me and my father was alive with unmistakable symbols.
I had collections, for instance, of fountain pens and pocket knives
to which my father (and my grandfather) added from time to time.
My father smoked a pipe and this delighted me and fascinated me.
And I must record also that I was aware from an early age that
some of the feelings I had for my father were sexual feelings.
A friend suggested to me that there was possibly a need for a
book about fathers and daughters, and I was filled with a longing
to bring this book into being. What if somebody else decided to
do the book, and didn't invite me to contribute. Quickly, quickly,
do it yourself. As it turned out, women were not falling over
themselves to write essays about fathers -- neither were men very
keen to write about daughters. It is dangerous country this. After
all, I carried a knife myself.
Would I be writing this, like this, if my father were still alive?
I can't really answer that question. Probably not.
The parents and siblings and partners and children of writers
are in a strangely vulnerable position, especially the parents.
The night he rushed out and picked me up from the dance, my father
couldn't know he was the subject of a study, the result of which
would not be published until now.
This luxury of writing is available to me because my father is
dead. He can not approve or disapprove in any real way; of course
I can imagine his approval or disapproval, but I think there is
a lot of difference between the attitudes of a living relative
and the attitudes I might imagine in a dead one. One the one hand
I can't deliver him injury; on the other hand I can't deliver
him love at this distance.
He died ten years ago.
I want to know what it was between us that caused him to come
and get me, that was so urgent and dramatic, so troubling and
problematic. By fixing on the story of the dance I am giving more
importance to it than it probably deserves, but writing is linear,
and I had to start somewhere. I wanted to start with the knife
because it is such an obvious symbol of sexual desire and threat,
and the dance explains the knife. In a way.
So I am not writing a story about my father; nor am I writing
a story about myself; I am writing a story about the relationship
between my father and me. 'Relationship' is an abstract noun,
and is not a word that comes easily to me in the context of what
goes on between people. However, here, with this exploration of
the spirit, the abstraction of the father and daughter bond, no
other word will do. And the only way I know of to do this is to
examine incidents in my life with him, and to describe my feelings
about those incidents. The relationship was a transaction that
took place between us; I want to take a good look at that transaction.
This will not really be a story; there is no beginning and no
end, unless you say that I was born and later on he died. The
middle is only a collection of incidents.
As I write, it is more than a year since I decided to edit this
book. During that year my mind has been always to some extent
occupied by what I would write here. As a video machine tracks
the picture, I have been tracking this 'story'. I will continue
to track the story long after the words have been written. As
I have been tracking my story I have wondered what was going on
in the essays of all the other writers whose work accompanies
mine. I have edited other collections, but I have never before
had the experience of being conscious all the time that a bunch
of other people were engaged on the same project, were sitting
down somewhere in the world thinking about their fathers or their
daughters and writing down what they thought. And tracking my
story is one thing -- getting the picture up on the screen and
moving -- that is another.
This is not so much about who my father was, or what my father
did, as about what he could make me feel.
HANDS
I don't know how old I was when this thing that used to happen
with my hands stopped happening, but I think I was about thirteen.
Before that, just a few times in my life, I would look at my father
and feel all the strength suddenly go from my hands. I had no
words for it, but I know I had a perception that this was a sexual
powerlessness. I never articulated any of this; in fact I think
this is the first time I have ever spoken of it. I still don't
know what to say about it, except that I can see it is very important
in the relationship between me and my father. I felt in those
moments as if a power supply had been cut off. I would be a little
breathless, a little faint, speechless, but the principal sensation
was of a loss of strength in my hands. It didn't last long. I
haven't heard of anybody else who had this feeling, but perhaps
it is common, and one of the things we never talk about.
My mother used to say I had my father's hands, and she would compare
my hands to those of my father's sisters both of whom were known,
in the family, for their embroidery and their piano-playing. I
was always conscious that my mother's comment was double-edged,
for there was a certain competition between her and my father's
sisters. Was it good, was it right for me to have those hands?
Was II also involved in a competition? One of my mother's sisters
had no fingers on her right hand. Is this relevant?
We had a thick blue leather book of Grimm's Fairy Tales illustrated
by George Cruikshank with small, dense, troubling black and white
drawings. In this book there were several stories I used to read
over and over again. One of these stories I used to think of as
'The Girl With the Silver Hands' -- it was in fact called 'The
Handless Maiden'.
As a child I made no conscious connection between myself and the
girl with the silver hands.
As is often the case in fairy tales, the story starts with an
act on the part of the father. Very often this act is the death
of the father, but in 'The Handless Maiden' the father sells his
daughter (inadvertently) to the devil. I am relying on memory
for the details of the story, rather than re-reading it, as I
think the details that mattered to me when I was very young will
perhaps have stayed with me, and will be useful. The daughter
washed herself with water and drew a chalk circle round herself
so that the devil could not reach her. Then the devil forbade
her the use of water, but she wept so that her tears washed her
clean. At this point it says that the tears 'washed her hands',
and this is the first mention of the hands in the story. For some
reason the devil then says the father must chop off the girl's
hands with an axe. And he does. It happens just like that, with
no mention of blood or bone -- or noise of any kind. The whole
scene is left up to the imagination of the reader. I think that
is one of the things I found most powerful, that the key moment,
the chopping off of hands, was not described. The details were
all mine, as much or as little as I wanted or could stand. It
was the moment I could identify with deeply, the moment when the
father could chop off the daughter's hands.
Now I know, from having read this story a few times between now
and childhood, that plenty of things happen to the girl and that
she eventually finds happiness as the wife of a king and the mother
of children. But the next salient point for me when I was a girl
was the fact that the king made her some silver hands. The two
images that haunted me were those of the chopping off of the hands
and the supplying of the silver hands. Never mind that in the
end the real hands grew back -- that seemed to me to be a bit
of an anticlimax, perhaps because it was impossible, whereas the
silver hands and the chopping were possibilities of a kind.
I was even tempted to call this section of my essay 'Silver Hands'
instead of 'Hands', but then I realised that there was a progression
from 'Knife' to 'Hands' that deserved to be preserved and followed
up. By what?
BLOOD
This is weird and makes me laugh now, and I have certainly never
mentioned it before. I may even delete it before I'm finished
here. When I was a child, and sometimes lost the power in my hands
at the sight of my father, I also sometimes experienced, in my
imagination, when I looked at him, an image of tomato sauce. I
would think of the taste of tomato sauce, and the smell of it.
I could feel it in my mouth and in my nose. I liked this part
of the feeling, and I liked the dreamy sensation I got behind
my eyes and the sudden swish of lightness that swept through my
abdomen. I compared it to the feeling I got on a swing when the
highest point was reached and there was an instant of nothingness
before the ground came rushing back. (Once on a swing I scraped
my toe on the gravel and there was blood everywhere and my father
came running up and took me in his arms and calmed me down and
bathed the wound and dressed it. There are tears in my eyes as
I write that sentence.)
I make my father sound like the most incredible sex symbol, a
creature that could make his six year-old daughter climax on sight.
I even had a sense that the sauce was only a substitute for blood,
as if my imagination had stage-managed everything and wasn't going
to use the real thing. By the time I put the knife under the pillow,
the tomato sauce images had disappeared. I had my own blood to
think about. And In fact I think I can be certain that with my
own physical maturity my sexual feelings for my father ceased
to exist. I know I make that sound so simple; it wasn't simple,
wasn't swift, was fraught with scenes, occasional scenes such
as the time he picked me up from the dance. I can't remember all
these scenes. My memory selects.
FATHER
So? He was well-built, had curly brown hair, very fair skin, brilliant
blue eyes. Played cricket, badminton, went fishing and swimming.
Photography. He was mad about building and although he was not
a professional builder he built our house, a fairly standard 1930s
weatherboard decorated on the outside with fancy fretwork. He
grew roses and fruit trees and liked to graft fruit from one tree
onto another -- a nectarine onto a peach, for instance. He excavated
the cellar and established an elaborate workshop where he made
things -- cupboards, toys, gadgets -- in his spare time. He was
an optician and was in love with eyes and lenses and light and
sight. He cleaned lenses with methylated spirits and there was
always at least a faint aroma of this about him. I liked that.
His own father had a sawmill, and (or but) my father was an early
fanatic about the preservation of Tasmanian forests, used to give
public lectures on 'Re-afforestation' in the fifties, and later
he was an ardent follower of Bob Brown and the Greens. When I
was young he used to perform with a Scottish pipe band, not piping,
but swinging swords or flaming Indian clubs. The memory of my
father in a kilt and a tam-o-shanter and white singlet standing
alone in the centre of a darkened ballroom and moving in a strange
balletic rhythm to the yearning sound of the bagpipes while describing
patterns in the dark with the flames in the end of the clubs comes
back to me like a visitation from a dream.
EYES
My father was colour-blind; he couldn't see a new cricket ball
on a green field. When I started compulsively doing oil paintings
in black and white and shades of grey he thought I might be a
rare daughter who inherits her father's colour-blindness. But
it turned out I was only experimenting with black and white and
grey.
We had elaborate and beautiful diagrams (in colour) of eyes, but
best of all we had a large board on which were stuck glass facsimiles
of the eyes of many species of animals. I'm not sure of the purpose
of this display, but it was very fascinating. It was kept in a
shed at the bottom of the garden and the wall of the shed that
faced the house was made from frosted glass. Imposed on the glass
wall was the image of a huge pair of spectacles, the lenses of
which were mirrors. These spectacles glinted through the branches
of the fruit trees. I saw nothing odd about this when I was young
because the wall of the shed had always been like that, but now
that I think about it, it sounds strange.
HIS
I used to sit in the branches of an apricot tree and read, and
from time to time I would glance at myself in the mirrors. They
were my father's mirrors; it was his shed; the trees, all the
trees belonged to him. The car was his, the house. He built the
house before he married my mother. The chooks were his. My mother,
my sister, my brother and I -- we all belonged to my father. The
cellar was his cellar -- it was called 'under-the-house'.
'Where is your father?'
'He's under-the-house.'
'Tell him his dinner's ready.'
It was his dinner. I don't think any of this ownership was unusual
-- I observed much the same thing in other families -- but it
was powerful, so very much taken for granted. I knew a girl whose
father died and I truly couldn't understand how the family could
continue to function. My mother owned the sewing machine, the
piano, the stove and the dinner service.
The table and the fireplace seem to me to have been owned communally.
Our table, our fire.
GIRLS
The presence, in the house next-door, of my mother's sister and
her husband and three daughters made a significant difference
to our lives. The other girls, including my sister, were all older
than I was, and we were all like sisters. I think this overwhelming
presence of females must have had an effect on the men. My uncle
also spent a lot of time making things in his cellar, although
his cellar was not as fancy and comfortable and well-fitted as
my father's.
I envisage the houses now as consisting of an underground domain
where the men were safe, and of an upper part where the women
and girls cooked and sewed and washed in order to make things
good for the men. We also laughed and sang and talked a lot. And
the preoccupations with the rituals of hair among five girls and
two women must have been enough to send the men underground. Both
families went on summer holidays together, the fathers taking
the girls fishing while the mothers gossiped in deck chairs on
the beach -- and prepared food of course.
BOY
My brother was born when I was eight, changing the shape of the
lives of all the people in both houses. He was known simply as
'Boy', and everyone adored him. He was a great novelty to me and
I treated him rather like a doll or a pet, although I knew he
was really a little prince. He inherited the brilliant blue of
my father's eyes, but the large size of his eyes came from my
mother. I received from my father some of the overflow of his
devotion to Boy, sitting in on endless glorious readings of books
such as Wind in the Willows which I had heard before, in my own
time, but which now acquired even more magical meaning. I could
re-run some of my own early childhood snuggled against my father
while my brother lay in the crook of his arm looking at the pictures,
sucking his thumb and pulling his earlobe. We wore out at least
two copies of Wind in the Willows.
BOOKS
The other girls were all old enough to belong to the children's
library, but I wasn't. I was six, and you had to be seven. One
of the things I longed to do was borrow library books. So my father
took me to the adult library and let me borrow on his card.
The library was a hushed and sacred place with a special smell
that I associated with books. The smell was probably disinfectant,
but it was particular, and brought to mind the smell of glue paper
and beeswax and leather. The building was old and dignified, with
winding staircases and polished wood and a strange golden light.
I was almost delerious with joy -- self-importance, expectation,
love.
My father held my hand as we went up a narrow staircase with high
bookshelves on either side. We were on our way to the books of
Charles Dickens. Up, up, up we went, me and my father, and I had
the sensation we were moving inside the spiral of the shell of
a beautiful transparent snail. This image came to me as a piece
of spontaneous knowledge, a gift from my imagination, from my
father's loving patience at taking me to borrow a book.
That's the important part of the library story, but perhaps I
should record the fact that the book I borrowed was Barnaby Rudge.
I liked the illustrations very much, and the name of Dolly Varden,
but I discovered I really was too young to have this book -- although
I could read a lot of the words, word by word, I couldn't make
much sense out of them.
Yet I went through the book slowly page by page, crying a lot
of the time.
Most of the books in the house belonged to my father. My mother
and aunt used to get romantic novels from the public library,
and didn't seem to have the same interest as my father did in
owning books. There were a lot of different kinds of encyclopaedias,
but the one I liked best was Harmsworth's Household Encyclopaedia
in six volumes. My father gave these to me about a year before
he died. They constitute 'A Practical Guide to all Home Crafts
written by the Leading Experts of the day and containing upwards
of 15,000 Illustrations'. Many of the illustrations are on coloured
fold-out pages, for example: 'Boat: sets of natural drawings with
natural colour photographs for the construction of a model cross-channel
steamer and a model sloop-rigged racing yacht'. I am sometimes
asked by journalists to comment on my favourite book. I have never
had the courage to confess that Harmsworth's Household Encyclopaedia
is actually the one.
When I was a child I was inspired by the coloured pictures of
cakes and puddings and I used to make things from the recipes
to serve at parties. I recently had one of the fold-out pages
showing coloured diagrams of the plans of houses copied and framed
and hung on the wall.
The first volume begins with an essay 'My Ideal House' by Marie
Belloc Lowndes, the Celebrated Novelist, Author of "The Heart
of Penelope", "The Lonely House" etc. The essay ends with this
sentence: 'To be quite perfect my ideal garden must also have
some kind of stream running through it -- a stream deep enough
for the children to bathe in on very hot days, and yet not deep
enough to drown them when Mother isn't there to save them.' I
was interested that there was no mention of Father in the text.
His absence suggests that his presence arches over all He has
provided the Ideal House and part of the Ideal is the presence
of Mother and children.
And these books don't pull any punches, in spite of the romantic
flavour. 'Not deep enough to drown them' it says.
And there is an entry 'Death -- The Necessary Steps' as well as
'Hysterics -- Common Sense Treatment'. (The room should be cleared,
as the presence of a crowd of excited and sympathizing friends
tends to foster symptoms. A douche of cold water to the face.
The ammoniated tincture of valerian in dram doses, every three
or four hours, is a good remedy.)
I searched in vain for an entry on Daughter, but I found one on
Father. It is a legal description of fatherhood. 'While the father
and mother are living together the father is the sole guardian
of the children.' This is followed by an entry on Father Christmas.
'Mother' comes after 'Moth Ball' and comes before 'Mother Eve's
Pudding'. The mother of an illegitimate child is its only parent
in law. Then the entry for child is headed: 'The Child and its
Training' and points to further articles such as Adenoids, Mumps,
Exercise and Teeth.
his brings me to the subject of teeth.
TEETH
There is of course no reference in Harmsworth to the connection
between an absurd anxiety about teeth and anxiety about sexuality.
But I think it's fairly commonly understood that this is the case.
I gave up, grew out of -- whatever the expression is -- my anxiety
about my teeth when I left home and went to university. Suddenly
I got my teeth into perspective. But until then -- let me tell
you:
he first thing I recall about teeth was when my baby teeth fell
out and my father made a joke about it. He called me a 'gummy
shark', and there was even a photograph he took of me dressed
as a fairy, grinning broadly, displaying toothless gums. I usually
liked any jokes or teasing by my father, but with this one he
had really touched a nerve. I tried to be agreeable about it,
but I felt as if I had been suddenly attacked in a vicious way
by a most unsuspected, loved and trusted ally. Betrayed. Bad enough
for my body to be getting out of control without my father making
jokes. I resolved that I would take incredibly good care of my
second teeth.
At about this time, or so it seems, the daughter of a friend of
my mother came from the country to stay with us while she had
all her teeth out. She was a young adult with rotten teeth and
diseased gums. Horrors. I was secretly hysterical about this,
and my decision to care for my teeth developed overnight into
mania and obsession. I cleaned my teeth before and after meals,
immediately. I had a rotating system of toothbrushes so that I
always started with a dry one. I discovered floss. I refused to
eat chocolate. When we went on picnics I carried water for cleaning
my teeth. If I ran out of water we had to find a tap for me. My
father became accustomed to having to stop the car at my will
to call into a pharmacy where I would buy a toothbrush and request
the use of the sink. This was not a passing phase, but went on
for years and years and years. If I couldn't see where I was going
to be able to clean my teeth, I would refuse to eat.
My father was as trapped in it as I was. He seemed to be bemused,
bewildered by the passion and vigour of my beliefs and my campaign.
When my mother tried to discuss it with the dentist, the dentist
didn't really know what she was talking about. The other girls
seemed to know not to tease me about it, but it drove them mad.
Powerful, to say the least.
WEDDINGS
All the girls got married, and the fathers GAVE US AWAY.
DEATH
My mother died fifteen years before my father. He re-married and
this act put him at a new remove from me. When he was dying I
went to his bedside in the house he had built himself, and I followed
an instinct, primitive and childish, to lie down on the bed beside
him to touch him and talk to him. When my step-mother saw this
I think she must have been shocked out of her brain. What she
said was:
'It's so good for him to have his mother with him.'
Her error articulated, at least for me, a truth, a strange and
sudden revelation. In that instant, and only for that instant,
I was his mother, his wife, his daughter. The moment passed, and
a few days later he died in his sleep.
When I kissed him for the last time he was an icy corpse.
But just in time our spirits had been fleetingly united in an
expression and tender celebration of the relationship we share.
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