For George, a lifetime bachelor with few prospects of finding a wife, the ship must have offered several opportunities to meet young women. But most of them would already have been attached to husbands, whether present or waiting for them in Sydney. So to meet Alice, unmarried and relatively old, must have struck George as an unexpected stroke of fortune. With poor eyesight and few assets of his own, he wasn’t exactly a prime candidate for a young woman’s affections; after all, for most women marriage was the biggest financial decision of their lives. But Alice was different: she wasn’t impressed by shows of wealth or displays of charm. She had once made the mistake of confusing them for genuine affection. What she was looking for was trustworthiness, reliability, steadfastness, sincerity—qualities that to an inexperienced girl in the flush of romance might appear dull, but shone steadily as moonlight to a woman whose life had changed forever because of their absence. After a long time spent travelling over a bottomless ocean, Alice’s feet once again touched solid ground.
George returned to his farm, and Alice secured a job cleaning a guesthouse not far from Nance’s home in the suburb of Merewether. The two corresponded for eight months before George formally proposed on his second visit to Newcastle. In 1922 Alice May Morrison Taylor disappeared for the second time. She became Mrs Alice Lloyd of Yeoval, New South Wales.
28
AFTER TWO YEARS OF PLATONIC FRIENDSHIP, David’s persistent charm and sense of humour had coaxed me from my metaphorical piano stool. Though I now called him my boyfriend, and was working three jobs so we could travel together after I finished my degree at the end of the year, our physical relationship was such a disappointment that I often regretted straying from the piano.
From a wobbly start to undergraduate study, I had worked out how to write for my professors. I completed a four-year honours degree in English Literature with a long essay on jazz poetry by Langston Hughes, Mina Loy and Philip Larkin. I was inspired by writers whose work in turn was inspired by musicians who sounded like nobody else. My fevered passion for jazz, which had only intensified after my abandonment of serious piano study, was channelled into my research. Theoretically speaking, the essay wasn’t sophisticated, but as an act of sublimation, it was total.
Having accidentally timed my graduation to coincide with the recession that the then Australian prime minister told us ‘we had to have’, I emerged with high marks and low prospects. My first-class Bachelor of Arts degree carried about the same vocational value as a coupon from a packet of cornflakes. But ever the ostrich, I decided not to worry about a job until I returned from my travels in the new year. What a luxury to be able to make that decision, I think now.
While we were overseas, David and I heard a lot of jazz: the Chick Corea Elektric Band in San Francisco, our first stop; unnamed musicians at Chumley’s speakeasy in New York, where my jaw dropped on first sight of the Manhattan I’d dreamed of for years, and pretty much stayed open every day we were there; and a trad jazz band at Le Caveau in Paris.
I was grateful for the hospitality of David’s extended family—we had places to stay in expensive cities, and meals we didn’t have to pay for—but I couldn’t shake the growing realisation that he and I weren’t a good match. My savings quickly dwindled, and I dreaded having to ask my parents for a temporary loan to get me home. David didn’t understand my concern; he was neither cautious with his travel money, nor concerned about how to access more. Unlike me, he hadn’t worked like mad around his classes to save up. Still studying Law and living at St Paul’s College, he worked no job. He’d simply asked his grandmother for the money, and she had given it to him.
By the time I was ready to come home, which was still ten long and expensive days before the date printed on my ticket, I’d decided our relationship was over. But in Rome, on the final leg of our journey, David shocked me by announcing he thought it was a good idea that we move in together. That night, whether prompted by a dodgy dinner or by his declaration, I went to the bathroom and was violently ill. Once again I was lying to myself and, by extension, to David. But I couldn’t afford to change my flight. I would end it when we got home.
During the trip, I sometimes phoned my parents to assure them that I was still alive. During one of those brief conversations, my mother informed me that I’d been offered a scholarship to undertake a graduate research degree at the University of Sydney: a meagre stipend that would pay for me to complete a Masters in English Literature, or an unimaginable PhD down the track. But there was a deadline for responding to the offer, which would close before I returned to Sydney. Without thinking too much—other than how handy it was to have that up my sleeve while I tried to get a real job—I asked my mother to accept the offer on my behalf. When I got back, I discovered that I wasn’t the only one who had been omitting key information in the mistaken belief it was in the best interests of another person. My parents had chosen not to let me know that my brother, now eighteen, had been unexpectedly hospitalised for ten days while I was traipsing around Europe. ‘We didn’t want to spoil your trip,’ they explained. My love for my
