A Town in Time

1953
by Geoff Page
UQP, 2013, 117 pages, $24.95

How does he do it? The question nagged at me more than once as I read and re-read Geoff Page’s verse novel 1953.

There are no showy poetic flourishes, yet the lines never drag like prose. Scarcely any rhymes but a pulsing little chirrup of rhythm to keep you reading. And the people …

The people of Eurandangee are the first secret weapon of this remarkable work. Stan the town clerk, Niko the proprietor of the Greek café the Paramount, Dr Godfrey Baird, better known as Dr God, and his efficient secretary Sandra—these and a dozen others come to life in the quietly observant, unhurried lines.

It is 2.30 p.m. on Tuesday, February 17, 1953. It’s a quiet time at Clarks’ general store, but one little boy enjoys watching the whirr of the cashier’s flying fox overhead as his mother’s payment goes back and forth. The few students in the Leaving form at the Central School are writing essays from an old exam question, their gold or steel nibs filling pages with Quink.

Michael Rourke, the publican, is proud to know that the Royal is regarded as the best hotel in town, even by “the darkies” who buy their Seppelts out the back. He has his standards (and, in fact, his rhymes):

I run a decent hostelry,

classiest in town by far.

We serve the coldest beer.

A lot of stories start from here

but complications of the heart

are better done in cars.

Eurandangee is on the railway line, four hundred miles north-west of Sydney. That capital is the escape route for many locals, including a pregnant teenager whose parents invent an ailing aunt. The richest woolgrowers spend their cheques there, to the chagrin of Clarks’ general store. Peggy, the town clerk’s wife, dreams of life in Darling Point. Dr God handles most cases himself, but sends the complicated ones to Sydney. Those who complete the Leaving Certificate nearly always leave Eurandangee for Sydney.

The retired telephonist who once knew every story in town is growing a little forgetful these days, living in retirement at the convent.

Peter Smith, the newsagents’ son, has elected to stay in town. He’s doing well at the council, and is weighing up his chances with the doctor’s receptionist, Sandra. Meanwhile Sandra’s predecessor at Dr God’s, the glamorous Peggy, now married to the town clerk, has managed to deceive everyone except Ryan, the police officer, about her dalliance with the flash real estate salesman, Eddie Rennel. Her girlfriends, gossiping about her as they sip shandies in the Ladies’ Lounge at the Royal, are also on the hunt for scandal.

Throughout 1953 there is a sense of lurking danger, just as there is in the town’s name. (How does he do it?) It’s not just the heat or the gossip. It’s not just the number of Eurandangee residents who suffer after-effects of war, waking in fright in the early hours or scaling back their ambitions after bouts of malaria. It’s not just the loving description of all the guns in a catalogue, though that is getting closer. It’s a pervasive sense that the suspended animation of this sunstruck wheat-and-wool town, with its main street “straight as parted hair” is about to be interrupted by some dreadful event.

Will it be something to do with the Aboriginal families from the edge of town, where Sharon, a mother of five, keeps her bright teenage daughter home from school to mind the kids? Janene hopes to stay on at least until the Inter, or even sit for the Leaving, but her mother envisages her with her own tribe of kids soon enough. Auntie May, the local elder, lost her own child to Protection Board officials, and worries for Sharon and her brood.

Will some awful warning from next Sunday’s readings come to pass in this quiet corner of western New South Wales? The rector goes through the readings on Tuesday afternoons, although he suspects that John of Patmos

sent himself a little mad,

sleepless there in the Aegean,

singing to the number seven,

seven candlesticks and churches,

seven stars and seven cities.

Are “all those barking dogs and whores / sorrowing outside the city” trying to tell him something? The minister dozes off without an answer.

Is the coal mine altogether safe? There are days when the miner has an uneasy sense of foreboding. Will the Country Party parliamentarian’s Chevrolet manage the gravel west of Eurandangee without mishap? Will Eddie tell Peggy that she’s dreaming? Will the grazier’s wife be able to present him with a son after their two daughters?

The climax, when it comes—and I won’t give it away—is as quietly moving as anything in recent Australian writing.

Compassion, a faultless ear, unforgettable characterisation, a gift for spare but effective narration—Geoff Page’s work has all these things. 1953 is not just a brilliant time capsule of rural Australia. It shines with truth about life.