In the Neighbourhood of Brian Fitzpatrick

“The unforgotten Brian Fitzpatrick”, of whom I wrote last month, panache unfaded by half a century under the earth, continues to insist on being remembered. Private recollections of him continue to reach me: only a couple of days ago, one of Australia’s most widely-published authors rang to say how vividly he still recalls the startling vision of Brian, stertorous and asleep in the gutter outside my caller’s house.

But this “remembrance” phenomenon seems to enjoy a faculty of renewal: in the “Spectrum” Review of the Sydney Morning Herald of August 1-2, the historian Beverley Kingston reviews Stuart Macintyre’s new book, Australia’s Boldest Experiment: War and Reconstruction in the 1940s. A passage in Kingston’s review might suggest that Brian Fitzpatrick stood high in his own right as a power in wartime and post-war national affairs. He didn’t. In fact if such matters could in any way be brought to rational account, the auditors would undoubtedly certify him as an overall national debit.

It was not merely his general unreliability from the grog. His equivocal standing as between the Labor Party and uncommitted Left generally, on the one hand, and the Communist Party on the other neutered him. As former Labor senator Stephen Loosley has so copiously demonstrated in his recent memoir, Machine Rules, the trick is, or was, easily enough done. Look only at the case of silver-haired and smiling Arthur Gietzelt: nearly twenty years a Labor senator, four years a federal cabinet minister, and once Labor’s national President. And all the time, according to Loosley, holding weighty office in the Australian Communist Party.

In my own dealings with Brian over the years, I always knew in my bones that whatever my position might be on any issue, it would not prevail, if they thought differently over in Moscow. And so invariably it transpired.

I never heard of Brian driving a car, nor once saw him behind the wheel of one. This (apart from its general benign contribution to road safety) much shrank the geographical area over which he could conveniently rove, seeking mischief. But a bicycle powered by his own sturdy legs, clad in shorts and long socks, allowed him, from his modest block of brick flats on the corner of Malvern and Clendon Roads, Toorak, to extend despotic rule across a surprisingly wide fiefdom in Melbourne’s tonier eastern suburbs.

He and I frequently chatted at the kerbside on fine mornings, he sometimes with his little daughter Sheila on the handlebars, and later his son David. Both children became respected historians. Brian’s red and ravaged face glowed with frank parental pride.

Close neighbourship to Brian could perhaps be called a “not unmixed” blessing. Across Malvern Road from him lived the architect Robin Boyd and his wife Patricia. They occupied an almost flagrantly “modern” flat, designed by the profession’s then leader, Roy Grounds; Brian sometimes made a late afternoon call, on his way home, or (put another way) just as Patricia was starting to prepare the Boyd dinner. On one occasion, an afternoon party of some elderly female relations was about to break up when Brian irrupted. With profuse apologies in his fruitiest tones, he begged to be allowed a brief visit to the Boyd bathroom, the location of which was clearly well known to him. The guests suspended departure, so that such niceties as unfinished introductions could be completed, meanwhile hearing loud but mysterious noises—stamping, grunting, banging—through the still firmly closed door. Then, into the living room lurched Brian. “Ladies, ladies, I do assure you, this is a total inadvertence …” and Brian collapsed onto a couch, one leg still inside his trousers, and the other waving free in the circumambient air. Only the strenuous united endeavours of the company succeeded in rebagging Brian. But need I add that work was greatly speeded up on the completion of the Boyds’ new family home out Camberwell way.

My frequent kerbside encounters with Brian and bairns arose from the fact that the house which my wife Davey and I had bought to make our family home in Kooyong Road stood little more than a stone’s throw from Brian’s. Its solid Victorian brick and slate structure was our pride and joy, though terribly shabby. Refurbishment, as with countless other post-war young couples, would be done by the owners themselves, in a strict program of priority; floors of the spacious entrance hall topped our list. There was a sharp alteration—I wonder if you can guess why? Let me offer a hint; the hall floors lost their top spot in favour of the erection of a solid and impervious wooden fence seven feet high, totally sealing off the frontage of our block; the strong gate self-locked. I recall that, with a little casual help from mates, I did the whole job myself, including the post holes, deeply dug and rammed. Like our Lord, I looked upon it, and saw that it was good.

But during the war we had heard much of the virtues of “defence in depth”, and we decided to have some of that too. Out of sight behind the fence came to live a large Dalmatian hound of enormous lung-power and liveliness called “Tally”. Actually, he had a kindly disposition, but what caller would run the risk of proving the point? The faithful old fellow proved to be the final touch on the drunks-exclusion system that never once failed.

If private greed had been a vice of Brian’s (which emphatically it was not) he might have made a fortune from alliances in the steamy world of those who manipulate the prices of high-class residential property. The “true-life” story of Cyril Pearl’s new Toorak residence is almost a little allegory of the opportunities constantly opening at Brian’s feet.

Cyril—author, editor, critic, poet and wit—had been a contemporary of Brian at Melbourne University in the 1920s. They were spacious days, with much of the most serviceable academic knowledge being imparted in the billiards room, or in Naughton’s hotel across the road.

One day at lunch Cyril gave me the good news that he and Irma, his lively and talented wife, had found at last a perfect family home (they had two boys) and would soon move in. Irma was still recovering from a serious illness and her GP was George Shaw, yet another Melbourne University contemporary. I said I hoped the move brought the Pearls and Ryans closer, the more frequently and easily to exchange dinners.

“Closer—quite a bit,” said Cyril. “We’re moving into Clendon Road, Toorak.”

Dread was already shaking me. “That’s a long street, Cyril. What part?”

“Just one door from Malvern Road. There is a small block of flats between us and the corner.”

“Cyril! Your neighbour bang next door is Brian Fitzpatrick!”

He was appalled, but it was too late to change plans, and sure enough, Brian began his interminable early-evening drunken visits. Cyril sought George Shaw’s medical help—with an appeal addressed to Irma’s delicate health; very quickly George appeared in his famous old Kombi van, and went inside to give Brian a serious talking to, which Brian took with contrition and prepared to leave. George, in the hurry of his mercy dash, had grasped all the details except that Brian lived right next door. Loath to turn a drunk loose on the dark streets, he offered him a lift home, which Brian accepted. From a window we watched in wonder as Brian boarded the Kombi van, which trundled off down Clendon Road.

An hour and a half later, George reappeared, to say that he was surprised that Brian lived so far away but, through many twists and turns, he had given confident and clear direction to a house in Moonee Ponds. “Here we are! Thanks for the lift, George.” And he vanished briskly up the driveway. It was four days before Brian was heard of again, and no one knows what he did in that time.

As quickly as they could, Cyril and Irma liquidated their disastrous venture in Toorak, and moved to an outstanding, grand residence in Caroline Street, South Yarra. (A touch I particularly liked was an elaborately carved musicians gallery, adjunct to the dining room.) Those visitors to Cyril and Irma atop the steep rise of Caroline Street, and who knew all about their Toorak débâcle, used to speculate discreetly whether one of the site’s attractions for them had been the difficulties it presented for any portly, unfit old gentleman riding a bicycle.

Both the biographies of Brian are helpful and interesting—one by his daughter Sheila, and one by the leftist writer and activist Don Watson.

Perhaps there is simply no explaining the paradox that was Brian Fitzpatrick, whose academic work was commended by Geoffrey Blainey; who assisted Foreign Minister Bert Evatt in important matters; whose expert evidence was received with respect by courts and Commonwealth government inquiries; no way, in short, of explaining why this valued citizen was equally capable of attacking you with his fists, or passing out horribly drunk across your dinner table. (Some of Brian’s more worldly skills were admired by his journalist colleagues: after a heavy night he could retire to bed, quite legless, yet if there was a pressing deadline, he had the knack of rising early and going straight to his typewriter, and in what seemed no time at all he had produced a fine article, keenly reasoned and clearly expressed.)

One day I met him by chance on that little rise in Collins Street where Bank Place leads up to the famous Mitre Tavern. I was carrying a still-wrapped copy of a new purchase from a splendid nearby bookshop which, alas, no longer exists.

“May I …?” asked Brian, gently removing the wrapping to expose the new Random House edition of what is surely one of the most original—indeed revelatory—books ever written: Thorstein Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class. “My dear Peter! I have always felt that no man can call himself educated until he has absorbed Veblen’s masterpiece.”

It was then about 11.30 a.m.; and what more natural than to ascend to the Mitre Tavern, and over one beer in its hospitable, low-ceilinged dimness, discuss the profundities of Veblen? I still had to read the book, which I later did with all speed, and saw that I had been privileged to an introduction to a great work by a scholar (Brian) of liberal, cultivated, subtle and (above all) gentle mind.

He said he was expecting a few trade union officials to drop in at lunchtime, probably including Bill Bird, granite-fisted leader of the Seamen’s Union, and I was welcome to stay.  Brian’s expected friends began to arrive, and joined us, one by one. The quality of the discourse steadily declined; the likelihood of the conversation continuing to engage anyone who thought of himself as a loyal Australian seemed slight. Had I caught Brian in the very middle of a Jekyll-and-Hyde moment?

Anyway, I left quietly.