Читать книгу James Penberthy - Music and Memories - David Reid S. - Страница 2

That strip of golden Western Australian sand, City Beach to Trigg Island, is a lotus land where young, middle-aged and old romantics run their lazy lives away. It was there, a few kilometres west of Perth that I spent twenty-seven years of the happiest living available to humans. Victoria, my birthplace, the main arena for my learning, my music, sport and that superior being, woman, had embraced the previous twenty-odd years of my life, but I had sneezed my way through the oppressive heat and cold of Melbourne long enough. It was time to throw away the wet handkerchief and head westward.

But what was my real motive for going west? In a word, fear. I had returned from a war, faced the armed might of the Japanese Imperial Forces at sea, in the air and on land, so what could possibly scare the wits out of me in staid old Melbourne Town? A criminal - a five-foot-six little crook from Melbourne's most famous bayside beach suburb, that’s who. One night I was strolling down the road, enjoying the evening air in cool St Kilda with the imperious ex-Russian ballet star, Kira Abricossova, when just in front of us a little chap dressed in a business suit stole an orange from the display at the front of a fruit shop. Abricossova scolded: "Naughty boy!" He peeled some skin off the orange and threw it in her face. Ever gallant, I also remonstrated: "I say, old chap!" He trumped my ace and spat in Kira's face. I lost my temper. "Now, steady on!" I cried. In return he gave me one for luck behind the ear. I went into action in my best commando fashion and was soon in the process of battering his head against a motorcar parked at the kerb.

Suddenly he darted across the footpath into the green grocer's shop, grabbed a pumpkin knife from the owner and proceeded to cut the buttons off my ex-naval greatcoat. This was too much. Ever alert, I noticed a phonebox nearby. I stepped in, barricaded myself inside and telephoned "Division 4". Minutes later half a dozen of the biggest plainclothes cops in Melbourne arrived and picked him up, took a revolver from his pocket and belted him around the circle. They took him to "Division 4" where the sixteen‑stone sergeant greeted him like a long-lost friend and smashed him insensible to the concrete floor with the weighty Melbourne street directory. As he was dragged off, after coming to, he was yelling at the cops: "I'11 kill your wives and children, you bastards!" The chief policeman told me that this nice little bloke, who had forty-three counts of assault to his name, was one of Australia's three most notorious crooks and was a known but uncharged triple murderer. "Our problem," said the officer, "is that no one will give evidence against him."

"I will," I foolishly promised. I went to court, the vice squad sat with me in the front stalls. The magistrate scolded me for hitting the poor little fellow and fined him ten pounds.

"You see what I mean?" remarked the head of the vice squad.

For the next few weeks my little sparring partner was on every street corner, pointing me out to his mates. This continual harassment eventually got to me so I left for Perth by ship. However, fear was not the only reason for my running. The other part of the story appears later in this book. It is rather strange, though, that, twenty-seven years later I also left Perth in a hurry, running as though twenty-seven devils were chasing me. But on this latter occasion, I paused long enough to get the last word in.

The night before I left the Western Australian Symphony Orchestra, including among its players a rock band, performed my especially constructed farewell - a trombone concerto which said quite plainly: "This man is driven out of here by fear or by some equally disturbing emotion." One of the leading critics said that the concerto reminded him of Beethoven's Eroica, but I was no hero. The leading cellist, who was playing on a Guanarius cello, said that the rock band's vibrations were in danger of shattering the belly of his priceless instrument.

Some time later, after I ran from Perth, someone wrote and told me that, had I stayed, I would have been knighted for my services to music in Western Australia. Nothing in the world would make me believe that I was either that important or that pretentious. Life was too funny, life too precious to waste it on thoughts of undeserved baubles. And anyway, hadn't my father told me: "You are too big for your boots, Jimmy."

The day before I left W.A. I received the news that I had earned the degree of Doctor of Music from the Melbourne University. I knew that some doctors of philosophy could get their awards by saving soap coupons or going to America or writing long essays on the song habits of Colombo ants. But there were only three Doctors of Music from Australia's finest university at that time.

I was leaving Perth after a glorious twenty-seven years of running on the beach, mastering the technique of putting musical notes on paper and making loving friends - friends who had given me so much joy and unselfish assistance. But the party was over - joy had been vanquished by terror. How does one escape fears the second, third or tenth time? Not by standing still. In my coward's book, the answer is by running - shuttling between the east and west of an entire continent.

The question is: Does one ever escape fear by running? What happened to me is the subject of the following chapters. There is happiness in running, of course, that relief from sitting crouched in front of a musical keyboard, or manuscript paper, or conducting ballet in dark theatres. Sometimes the running seemed more important than the arts. No one becomes younger as the years roll by, by concentrating solely on arts, music, business or even education. Relaxation, meditation, exercise and diet may help but living for "now", without beer, potato chips, cigarettes or fear, may help even more. Eventually I learned to put most of my fears behind me, only reserving enough terror in my life to stay out of trouble. For me, as any patient reader will find out, this has been difficult.

In 1952 I was back in Perth, where I had lived as a child, running on the beach daily with sincerity. I was in good company. Herb Elliot was running up the same steep sand hill. If I saw him, I always raised a finger in greeting. He would raise a finger in reply. I would have spoken but I was always too much out of breath.

I lived first in South City Beach with sixteen cats, two children, an ex-Russian ballerina and a dog called Saafi - named after the heroine of a light opera I was conducting. Saafi got distemper and was buried. We moved further south into a small "packing case" called The Butter Box, which my Russian and Polish friends tried to demolish. The cats multiplied and became snake-hunters. Our neighbours were all wonderful.

The next move was to Scarborough, to a war-service house, which became a zoo. I bought land at the right time, almost for nothing - and sold it. On some of it there is now million-dollar development - skyscrapers jutting towards the blue sky, all on my golden sands, twenty yards from the main beach at Scarborough.

We moved again, first disposing of a kangaroo and an emu, enjoying more wonderful life above the Indian Ocean, spread out before us like a private pond. The next-door neighbour became our friend. After a year he built a second story on his house and wiped out the view and became my enemy. So I moved and built a three-storey edifice, two kilometres north on a headland at Trigg's Island. I designed it myself and it cost only $24 000. From my studio, on the top floor, I could see the beach and the ocean from Fremantle to Yanchep. It was all new and a perfect composition space.

I was a "spiritual" millionaire, writing ocean-inspired music. I didn't own a motor car. I ran or rode a bike. What a strange thing. I had more happiness, more leisure, more work, more money - not much, but enough - and more time for everything that mattered. Cars, aeroplanes and computers have played their part in harming society - they might even destroy the world. Nevertheless I had all that time, virtually untroubled by the internal-combustion engine and petrol exhaust. Travelling by train, ship or foot was romantic and imposed no real problems with time. Time on a ship was time enjoyed. Time on a plane is time out of joint.

My life in Perth was lived one way or another by, near or in water, usually salt or hot. Inspired by Western beaches, I was able to write a considerable amount of salt-water music. On a return trip to Perth in 1980 I put a deposit on a house on the beach, north of Scarborough. It had a superb view and in the middle of the sitting room was a large spa-bath. I almost choked with excitement and rushed to the agent. The next day I cancelled the deposit and returned yet again to the East, where the Sydney Symphony Orchestra played my Sydney Symphony. Nobody came to hear it except one of my students, his aunt and a nun. The orchestra, which in earlier years had treated me with kindness, made a mess of it. I had written a mouth-organ solo into the second movement to play a folk tune - The Girl I Left Behind Me. The young woman engaged to play the mouth organ couldn't play the instrument. So back to Perth I fled, where the W.A. Symphony Orchestra gave a marvellous performance. There were at least fifty in the audience.

Again I stayed in the West and settled on a wonderful island in the South-west but, somehow, shuttling back and forth had become a habit. On my next return to the Eastern side, I asked the Australian Broadcasting Commission to play my Sydney Symphony for the 1988 celebrations of that city. The keeper of the A.B.C.'s composer files must have burned mine for I have not received an answer to my letter.

It was on one of my extended retreats from the Eastern States, back to the real Australia in the West, that I began to write about my life. That was in the early eighties. By the time I got up to about Chapter Eight, I thought: "This unhappy man has had a very happy life - God has been very good to this Godless man." So I filed the manuscript under "G" and forgot about it for nearly ten years. Suddenly a co-author appeared with the cybernetic instruments and the inspirational discipline to make the rest of my story possible.

As I have looked forward and backward over my life to this moment, I have revealed some of my secrets, my irregular successes and failures. I have been embarrassed, humiliated, inspired and torpedoed. Still I continue to bounce between East and West and treat the rest of the country as though it doesn't exist. One thing is certain, however. Whatever lies between the two extremities of our land, the pieces of it I know convince me that there is no place like Australia and it's too late for me to worry too much that we stole it.