My great-aunts, half of whom I never met in their lifetime, have sustained me throughout mine. In childhood with laughter, in adulthood with the recollections that gave birth to this book. Although only supporting characters in the fabric of those recollections, without them the singular nature of my family structure might have lacked the resonance that propelled me into recording it. So the four single aunts who never spoke to me during their lives are here still chattering on, and would not take kindly to the fact that they are doing so through the medium of this little memoir. In fact, they would hate it.
I came to record them and the rest of the family because of my husband’s death at thirty-three while undergoing one of the first open-heart operations. A doctor, he had published one book under a pseudonym and was at the time halfway through an autobiographical novel based on our marriage. ‘If I die having this operation,’ he said, ‘will you finish the book?’ This seemed logical to me, and easy, so I made the promise.
After his death I fled wintry England with my two small children, fourteen months and three years, to a calm haven in Italy. I failed to finish Emmet’s book but managed to write a diary for my children should I, too, die young. This is that diary.
It sat, yellowing in a drawer and forgotten, for seven years. One night, by then an established literary agent in London, I was at a cocktail party sharing a drink with publisher Anthony Blond. ‘Why do you never send me anything?’ he asked.
Mellowed by champagne, searching my mind for an unencumbered manuscript, I told him I didn’t have any books. ‘All I can think of is a fragment, which could be a play, I think, written by a dotty woman I went to school with.’
Anthony drove me home, demanded the pages before he left and after finding them and handing them over, I forgot them.
Two days later Anthony rang. ‘Where is this woman? She’s got to finish this book.’ Panic set in. ‘Oh, Anthony. She’ll never do that. She’ll never write another word. She’s Australian. She’s mad.’ We argued for some minutes, Anthony accusing me of odd behaviour for a literary agent, and finally announcing his intention to publish it as it stood—stands still today—hedging his bets with large margins, illustrations and thick paper, hopefully giving it the illusion of substance; I protesting that he couldn’t possibly publish 22,000 words as a book.
Eventually, I gave in and signed a deal over a delightful lunch in the garden of his office. Anthony asked me at last for the name of this untraceable, intractable, mad woman. I confessed. I became a reluctant Blond author. I changed no identities, not thinking a copy would ever reach Australia, in my mind carelessly consigning it to the equivalent of a publisher’s bottom drawer.
I am happy, though, that it was a success for Anthony—it remained in print for a respectable time—did not, I hope, offend too many people, except for the remaining aunts, and that I managed to hide under my maiden name, Robin Eakin, so that all the wonderful writers who seemed to value my opinions as their agent would never see me exposed.
Fifteen years passed. I began, with some timidity, to confess to a very few people that I had written a book. Safely out of print, my exposure could not be too widespread.
Among my clients was the dramatist Ben Travers, then in his nineties—three plays running in the West End of London, and still standing on his head for Michael Parkinson in TV interviews—a companion in laughter at our weekly dinners. He asked me about my Australian childhood. I gave him the old book, and he became its devotee. Many London publishers were vying for his autobiography, which I was urging him to write. He reluctantly agreed to do so on one condition—that whoever published his book must also re-issue mine.
I did not mention, nor consider, this when extracting bids from publishers for Ben’s book and when the best bid came in from Jeffrey Symmons of WH Allen, Ben and I were taken to a clinching and celebratory lunch by Jeffrey. When we rose from the table at its jolly close, flushed with wine and achievement, Ben clutched my hand. ‘You’ve told him the condition?’
Jeffrey’s glow diminished somewhat. ‘Condition?’ he asked nervously. As Ben disclosed it, his glow disappeared entirely. Poor Jeffrey, desperately embarrassed and in the kindest tone he could muster, said, ‘Robin, I didn’t know you had written a book.’ He saw the Travers manuscript drifting away from him; or encumbered by a nasty adjunct.
But, miraculously, it appeared that Aunts had been Jeffrey’s snatched bedside reading for some years. Glow back, we all three strolled back to the WH Allen offices for a conference with the marketing manager—Jeffrey now with not one, but two prospective authors. I was asked if I thought the book would have any sales potential in Australia. I had been sent, in addition to a steady trickle of ‘fan’ letters over the intervening years since publication, a copy of an advertisement from an Australian newspaper placed by one Max Harris, seemingly the proprietor of a chain of bookshops, proudly announcing a coup. He had unearthed fifty copies of Aunts Up the Cross—one copy per person only; first come, first served. This appeared ample proof of demand.
The marketing manager was delighted. Max Harris was not only known to him but was something of a literary guru in Australia and his endorsement would influence the number of copies printed. A letter was dispatched asking him for this. Ben was sent home to write a preface to the new edition, and I to update it in minor details.
Two weeks later came the reply from Max Harris: ‘Aunts Up the Cross was a good little book in its day but no one would buy a copy now.’ Apologies and embarrassment from Jeffrey; indignation from Ben; a shrug of shoulders from me; and abandonment of publication from the marketing division.
A year or so passed before a chance encounter uncovered a nest of misunderstandings. Max Harris, as literary advisor to Macmillan in England, had been chasing me for possible publication by Macmillan. His letters were never received. Kisses were exchanged and misunderstandings healed, and Aunts was published for the second time by Macmillan, who enjoyed as much success as Blond had and who swore the book would never fall from its back list.
It did. A few years passed. I was approached by Penguin, who rescued it from oblivion and sold it successfully until I asked for a reversion of rights as a film of the book appeared to be hovering in the background. In the background the film remained.
So now, for the fiftieth anniversary of the original publication, I have slipped happily into the company of Text authors.
Robin Dalton, 2015