Madeleine (29 page)

When Val received Madeleine's letter asking for the remaining $5000, she wrote back that she was ‘saddened that you have so little trust in me as to write as you did. However I do understand your frustration at the delay.'
³
She outlined her financial situation and said that the ‘boys have received nothing and in fact Patrick has been helping me'. Val explained that contracts had been exchanged on the Mt Elliot block and that the settlement would take place at the end of July:

You may be sure that all sums will be sent off as soon as possible after that. Also, after the payment of my debts, I hope to be able to do something to help Colette with Aaron. I haven't had a chance to tell you how pleased we were to hear of your Booker Prize nomination and also how much I have enjoyed your novels. With love, Val.
⁴

Madeleine was astounded. She did not believe there was so little money in Ted's estate. She wrote back, demanding an explanation of how Ted had managed to die ‘virtually penniless':

That my late father should have made bequests totalling $50,000 which he hadn't the assets to cover, plus the simple fact itself of his being unable to leave even $50,000 behind, is so entirely out of character and beyond all probability that one is left in a state of total confusion; and that you yourself should at a stroke have been abandoned to the state of penury you describe after having enjoyed, while he lived, a more than adequate income, only compounds the confusion.
⁵

Two weeks later, Val wrote to say the money would be deposited forthwith. She tried to explain:

As I have said, I have had to live frugally in the past four years but I was never living in penury. The loss of Ted is still an aching void but nonetheless I live a very good life with a loving family and a large circle of friends who include me in their activities…Yes, we lived comfortably. We were never rich; we always seemed to have a big overdraft. I am proud of the fact that throughout his career T gave so much time and effort to the causes of justice, the underprivileged, international peace and the environment. He often worked without fee and if you remember at the time we brought you to Sydney for a holiday he worked for 6 months on the infamous Chelmsford case for ‘legal aid', which scarcely covered his overheads. To be sure, living in that lovely house at Clifton Gardens was perhaps beyond our means, especially in the lean parliamentary years and before he returned to the bar but it gave us great pleasure and as we paid off the mortgage over 25 years we knew that we would sell it to pay for our retirement. We had no pension or superannuation but chose to invest in the real estate of our home instead. As you know, during his retirement, T worked tirelessly on the causes of world peace—his book and the World Court Project. A large amount of money was spent in the process (lobbying at the UN in New York, attending conferences, research books, etc). I was happy for this to happen as I was proud of what he was doing and I shared in all his undertakings. To be sure, we also had holidays, which we perhaps could not afford, but these were wonderful times and amongst our happiest memories. He had a very hard life with enormous pressures and I am so happy that he had these special interludes. Also I rejoice that I spent a lot of money on a slap-up 75th birthday party for him so that his friends and family could praise him to his face and that he could hear the things which we were not to hear again until his death.
⁶

Val told Madeleine that if Ted had lived, they would have been forced to take a mortgage on Bayview till the Mt Elliot land sold, so short were they of cash. She had had a tough time with her stepdaughters, and Madeleine's demands brought back those old stresses. In that same 1998 letter she wrote:

Madeleine, I have recently been sorting family papers and came across a loving card from you in November 1989 to us both after we had visited you in London. That was the last time I saw you and I remember what a pleasant occasion it was and how I was conscious still of my affection for you. When Ted and I married in 1955, I did my best to care for you with love and sympathy. I, at 27, didn't try to take the place of your mother but wanted to care for you and make up for the difficult time that you had had…It appears that I did not meet your needs and I am sorry for that but I loved you and did my best for you. Your criticism of me at the time was that I tried too hard. Now I am afraid that your feelings towards me have turned to hostility and I am sorry. Wishing that things were different between us, with love, Val.
⁷

On Val's instruction Ted's solicitors sent Madeleine a copy of her father's will. Madeleine knew now just how far he had gone to stop her getting an equal share with her sister and half-brothers.

It ought to have been the end of the matter, but there were more recriminations to come. In November 1998,
HQ
magazine published a long profile of Madeleine written by Jane Cornwell, an Australian freelance journalist in London. It was based on Cornwell's conversations with people in London and Australia, an interview with Madeleine and material provided by Ed and Val. Madeleine had initially refused an interview. Cornwell spoke to Bruce Beresford, who suggested to Madeleine the article was a good idea because it would help with his efforts to raise funds for the film of
The Women in Black
. Madeleine was greatly influenced by Bruce. She thought him ‘a really cool guy, so unaffected, so untouched. Like somebody holy really.'
⁸

In the end Madeleine granted the interview, believing it to be ‘on the quite explicit undertaking that the family (evidently of some initial interest to the author of this piece) would not form any part of the inquiry—let alone constitute its reason for being'. She expected the article to deal ‘wholly with
The Women in Black
plans for film of, friendship at Syd. Uni with B. Beresford et al, etc…' and the interview would be confined to ‘strictly anodyne, non-family non-private matters'.
⁹
Jane Cornwell interviewed Madeleine at Colville Gardens and Steve Pyke took photographs.

Cornwell liked her subject, and the article in the November/December issue of the magazine was largely sympathetic. Headed ‘The Essence of an Expat', it ran over five pages. There was the usual Madeleine attack on an ignorant Australian audience, and Cornwell neatly captured a writer, defensive yet intelligent, acerbic and amusing. On the final page Madeleine was quoted describing Ted as ‘around the bend' and her family as ‘dickheads'.
¹⁰
Later, Madeleine claimed that she had made the comment about dickheads in the context of Ed St John's 1997 article in the
Sydney Morning Herald
. She had told Jane Cornwell that Ed's decision to ‘publish his account of my private life and griefs was the action of a dickhead'.
¹¹
Cornwell's article continued:

Madeleine St John avoids listing specific grievances against her father but maintains that his whole goal in life was to upset her and her sister Colette as much as possible. ‘Basically,' she asserts, ‘he was around the bend.' She is equally scathing about other members of her estranged family: she loathes her stepmother Valerie and says it's impossible therefore, to have a relationship with her half-brothers Ed, Patrick and Oliver. ‘Me and my sister are in one armed camp, they're in the other.'
¹²

Invited to respond, Ed defended his parents and expressed pride in his half-sister. He and Val provided a handmade birthday card Madeleine had sent Ted, to show the relationship had not always been dysfunctional. Madeleine was appalled. She went through the article line by line, annotating the offending sentences, the ‘gross misrepresentation' and ‘serious falsehoods'.
¹³

She engaged Sydney law firm Tress Cocks & Maddox for advice on a possible defamation action against ACP, the publishers of
HQ.
She was outraged at the reproduction of the birthday card and vowed to defend the copyright of her letters. Sarah Lutyens worried that Madeleine was obsessed with the case and was wasting her time and money.

Madeleine felt Cornwell had obtained the interview ‘under false pretences'. She believed she had been duped.
¹⁴
She was adamant she had ‘never spoken about, much less discussed or in any other way published, family matters—history of, relationships with, feelings about, or any other aspect whatsoever—with any journalist, freelance or other, anywhere, at any time'. She was angry at Val and Ed for ‘collaborating' with Cornwell and she insisted that:

none of the statements, feelings, attitudes or etc etc etc imputed to me concerning the family in the article originated with me. They are all, in other words, false, mendacious, fanciful and—in that they imply my having talked about these private matters in the press, if not for other reasons in addition—defamatory.
¹⁵

Madeleine's reaction was extreme, but not surprising. She was pathological in her desire to control her environment and interactions. But she had been naïve about the processes of journalism and publicity. Cornwell had followed usual practice, using some material already published and comments that Madeleine considered throwaway lines. A more pragmatic person might have brushed the article aside. But Madeleine was not easily pacified: in a letter to her lawyers on 14 May 1999, she sought redress. She said that ‘as injurious as any single item' in the article was the general implication that she had ‘actually sat down one day' with a journalist and discussed intimate, private matters. She was upset at suggestions in the article that she was ‘batty' and involved in an ‘alleged' family feud.
¹⁶

Jane Cornwell recalled in 2012 that Madeleine had ‘been on the warpath' after the publication, and she was alarmed she had hurt the writer, whom she had liked.
¹⁷

The lawyers advised against a defamation action. The chances of success were remote and it was not clear that the article was defamatory, but ACP could be asked to publish an apology or retraction.
¹⁸
They also advised against copyright action, but informed Madeleine that they could warn Cornwell and ACP that she held the copyright to her letters. Madeleine was astonished at the legal advice and argued that she needed protection against her own family. ‘These people are capable, given the opportunity, of anything,' she told the lawyers.
¹⁹

The
HQ
article reinforced a view of her life and her family that was now central to Madeleine's sense of herself. To see Val and Ed's behaviour as anything less than monstrous would be to admit her own failings. On 21 July, Madeleine's lawyers wrote to Val asking her to hand over all of Madeleine's letters within seven days.
²⁰

Val's lawyers declined on her behalf, arguing that the letters were part of Ted's personal estate.
²¹
ACP refused to run an apology or retraction but agreed it would not republish the article without Madeleine's written consent. The magazine denied there were any factual errors or misquotes and argued the reproduction of the birthday card was fair dealing under the Copyright Act.
²²
Madeleine threw in the towel. She had spent $1386 and had to concede ‘nothing further can reasonably be done'.
²³

The letters that Madeleine had sent Ted and Val over the years—sometimes grateful, sometimes cutting, always emotional—remained an issue of contention in the family. Madeleine wanted them back because she thought they might be used against her; Valerie held on to them because she thought they might be used against Ted. The tug of war over the letters embodied the bitterness Madeleine felt for her stepmother, a bitterness that did not fade with time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
A Stairway to Paradise

Madeleine was now more financially secure than she had ever been. After the Booker shortlisting, Sarah Lutyens negotiated a much higher advance, £30,000, from Fourth Estate for her next book,
A Stairway to Paradise
. Madeleine splashed out on travel and shoes, but she found it difficult to complete the novel:

Once I know what I am doing, it's plain sailing, but I must confess I find it's very difficult to get to that point, to the point where one is really sure of where the thing is going…[I am] spending an awfully long time pussyfooting around, because it's getting to a stage now where it's too easy to repeat myself and do something that's pretty much like what I've done before. So I think it's starting to get more difficult.
¹

She was distracted: the isolation that had helped her to write had been broken by renewed attention from friends and family. But her success restored a confidence that had been battered over the years. She revelled in her new literary status and enjoyed reconnecting with friends. The Booker also brought her a New York publisher. Kent Carroll, a principal at the firm of Carroll & Graf which he co-founded in 1982, sought out her work on a trip to London.
²
The firm published Beryl Bainbridge and Jane Gardam, and Carroll was always on the lookout for new women writers of similar style. He found Madeleine ‘quite wonderful, smart and interesting'. He enjoyed the way she told her stories: she established characters, gave the reader information and drove the narrative with ‘authentic dialogue, pitch perfect'. It was as if you were overhearing the secret life of her characters, he said.
³
Kent and Madeleine began a trans-Atlantic friendship. Whenever he visited London, Kent took Madeleine and Sarah Lutyens to lunch. Madeleine was possessive of her publisher and sometimes ordered Sarah to depart so she could talk to him alone, tutoring him in the cultural offerings of the capital, telling him which concerts and plays to attend.
⁴

Somehow, Madeleine finished
A Stairway to Paradise
. Once again, her characters worry their way through life in professional inner-London where a perfect salad can seem more vital than world peace. Madeleine was concerned not to repeat herself, but
Stairway
deals with the issues that dominate all her work: love, sex, rejection, moral choices.