The Cockatoos

THE COCKATOOS (1974)

Arthur Boyd, from his Cockatoo series (1970s)

“Time passes: nothing better can be said of it.”

Editions:

  • Jonathan Cape (UK, June 1974, 307pp)
  • Viking (US, January 1975, 307pp)
  • Penguin (UK AU 1978)
  • Hear-a-Book (Audiobook, 1978, read by Peg Radcliffe)
  • Bolinda Audiobook (Deidre Rubenstein (2019))
  • All stories collected in Collected Short Stories, Text Publishing (AU 2019, introduction by Gail Jones: “Beautiful and Clumsy”)

Original price: UK £2.50   //  US $8.95   // paperback reissue AUD $2.50, UK 90p

Dedication: “To Ronald Waters for having survived forty-eight years of friendship”

History: By 1973, PW had written five unpublished novellas. While awaiting the publication of The Eye of the Storm, he wrote a final novella – The Cockatoos, and gave this title to the overall collection of the six. He sent it to his publishers in August 1973. The original UK release had a cover design by Desmond Digby. This would be the last traditional collection of short stories PW wrote. Now in his 60s, his fiction output slowed over the remaining years, and he spent much more time focused on theatre and social activism.

Notes: Critics have seen in this collection a darkness, a loneliness, less playfulness than his previous pieces. Certainly there is repeated imagery of marriages and relationships driven dry by time or a lack of passion. This does not match PW’s own life – he was very honest that sex and enjoyment remained in his relationship until nearly the end – but certainly seems to have been a subject of great interest in this period. Interestingly, from his next novel A Fringe of Leaves onward, PW’s characters would develop a freer sexuality.

Sales: Cape published 15,000 copies, a significant investment in a short story collection but one representing PW’s profile, which was at its absolute height in the aftermath of the 1973 Nobel win.

Reviews:

  • Brian Kiernan, The Age 15/6/1974
  • Russell Davies, Observer 16/6/1974
  • Carl Harrison-Ford, Australian, 22/6/1974
  • Leonie Kramer, SMH 22/6/1974
  • Peter Ackroyd, Spectator, 22/6/1974
  • TLS, 28/6/1974
  • New Statesman, 5/7/1974
  • Katharine England, Advertiser 17/8/1974
  • John Docker, National Times 4-9 Nov 1974
  • Publishers Weekly, 25/11/1974
  • SMH 7/12/1974
  • J. Mellors, Listener 9/12/1974
  • Anatole Broyard, New York Times, 14/1/1975
  • Eudora Welty, New York Times Book Review, 19/1/1975
  • Brian Kiernan, Meanjin 34.1 (1975)
  • Anthony J. Hassall, Southerly 35.1 (1975)
  • Biddy Allen, Saturday Review, 25/1/1975
  • J.A. Avant, New Republic, 22/3/1975
  • Hudson Review 28 (1975)
  • Kirkus Reviews 1975:
    • “The combination of hard realism, symbolism, interior monologue, lyricism and every other strategy and skill is sui generis. White is a shifty, complex artist with the ability to hit and run at any point in his narrative — maintaining a distance from emotional involvement while inexorably tightening those screws.”

A Woman’s Hand (1966)

Plot: Evelyn and Harold Fazackerly have made changes to their life now that he has retired; all pathetic Harold wants to do is read War and Peace, but Evelyn is a more calculating sort. Evelyn contrives to match Harold’s old schoolfriend Clem with her friend Nesta Pine. However even in her deepest dreams of a placid romance for the pair, she couldn’t imagine the reality. For Nesta and Clem do discover something in each other, something which becomes serious – to Evelyn’s shock – but which is ended when Clem takes his own life by jumping in front of a bus. Evelyn and Harold take a holiday to officially begin their retirement. But, in the reflected light of the ageing, mentally unhinged Nesta, can this pair really repress all of their separate angsts about a shared future?

History: White wrote this novella in 1965-66, intending it to be part of a volume of three which he would title Presences, as an offer to Sun Books, a new publishing house founded by his friend Geoffrey Dutton. The other two were never completed. PW offered the story to Dutton for his magazine Australian Letters, which was then in its final years. At one point, Evelyn recalls meeting Clem at a party in Egypt when she dismissed a mangy Greek man who turned out to be Clem’s friend. Perhaps there are memories here of White’s own time in the Levant during the War? (He did indeed meet a Greek of his own, Manoly, at a party given in Egypt.)

First published in Australian Letters 7.3 (Aug 1966). First collected in Winter’s Tales 13 (Ed: Alan McLean), Macmillan, 1967. Collected by White in The Cockatoos. Appears in Collected Short Stories. Published in large print as a standalone text, with illustrations by Judy Deykin, by Lewes Sussex, 1987, and reissued by Guild Quality Large Print, 1989.

Reviews:: Geoffrey Lehmann, “A flight of peacocks”, Bulletin 88 (15/10/1966)

John McLaren, Unpublished review, available online.

The Full Belly (1966)

Plot: In the months after the German occupation of Greece, the Makridis family make do with a life that is devastated by hard times. Maroula, an intellectual, and Pronoë, an artist, had a period at the top of the social ladder when their sister, Eleni, married a man who became President. But both Eleni and her husband died young, and the sisters inherited the couple’s two children. Their niece married a doctor who brought no extra money to this crumbling aristocratic family; their nephew is an ascetic pianist. The family’s situation is so dire that the young man, Costa, subsists on weeds. Yet their pride is so great that Maro rejects the gift of a bag of coffee presented to them by a German admirer.  Desperately hungry, Costa wanders the town until he provokes a confrontation at home – with an ironic twist in the tale.

History: The Full Belly was written in 1966, and based on PW’s partner Manoly Lascaris’ family during the occupation. Manoly’s brother was a pianist, like Costa. It is interesting to note here how many stories in PW’s Greek canon (and occasionally his Sarsaparilla stories, as in A Woman’s Hand) feature precious items getting broken which represented the past.

First published in Coast to Coast 1965-66, ed: Clement Semmler (Angus & Robertson), 1966. First collected in We Took Their Orders and Are Dead: An Anti-War Anthology, ed: Shirley Cass, Ros Cheney, David Malouf, Michael Wilding (Ure Smith), 1971. Collected by White in The Cockatoos. Appears in Collected Short Stories.

Reviewed: Michael Wilding, London Magazine 7.3 (June 1967)

The Night The Prowler (1970)

Plot: Felicity, a plain young woman who lives with her parents in Sydney, raises the alarm when an intruder enters the house and apparently rapes her. With her parents concerned about keeping her place in society, and a milquetoast fiancé who is growing unsure about his choices, Felicity uses the experience to develop a new personality. She takes revenge on the bourgeoisie and comes to know herself over another long, dark night.  

History: PW wrote the first draft of this story while in London in 1968, after reading about an incident where an intruder was found in a woman’s bed, and there were questions about whether she had told the truth in what had happened. He came back to the draft in late 1969 after he had finished writing The Vivisector, and finished it in January 1970.

The story was adapted for PW’s only produced screenplay, The Night the Prowler.

First published in The Cockatoos (1974). Republished in The Night the Prowler: Short Story and Screenplay (Penguin and Cape, 1978).

Released as an audiobook by Hear-a-Book in the early 1980s, read by Peg Radcliffe.

Five Twenty (1967)

Plot: The ageing Natwick couple, refugees from the suburbs of Sarsaparilla now living on Parramatta Road in Sydney, grow accustomed to watching the traffic passing each day. One man, a driver in a dusky pink Holden, becomes a sort of idée fixe, reminding the couple of their vacillating fortunes. When Mr. Natwick dies, the passerby’s meaning changes for the woman left behind.

History: After moving to Centennial Park, PW was working on The Vivisector in 1967 when he became intrigued by the imaginary life of a man whom he saw driving down Martin Road (one assumes home from work) at 5:20 each day.

First published in Southerly 28.1 (1968) and in Coast to Coast, 1967-68, ed: A.A. Phillips (Angus & Robertson), 1968. First collected in The Cockatoos. Appears in Collected Short Stories.

Reviewed: A.R. Chisholm Age 18/1/1969 [review of Coast to Coast]

Michael Wilding Meanjin 30.2 (1971) [review of Coast to Coast]

Sicilian Vespers (1973)

Plot: On holiday in Sicily, Australian cancer doctor Charles Simpson and his wife Ivy reflect on their pleasant but never passionate marriage. It is a marriage of equals which has survived only because of the mutually agreed space between them. While Charles struggles with toothache, Ivy befriends a pair of chubby Americans, and contemplates an affair with the husband, Clark. But Ivy is about to get more than she bargained for…

History: The story came to PW while on holiday in Palermo in 1971, and he wrote some of the manuscript at this time. In mid-1973, after finishing The Eye of the Storm, he returned to this novella, realising he would soon have enough material for this second collection of pieces.

First published in The Cockatoos (1974). Collected in Collected Short Stories.

The Cockatoos (1973)

Plot:  In a house not so large as to impress thieves, but large enough to impress those who aren’t, Olive and her husband Mick have not spoken for a decade. Olive went silent when Mick let her budgie die, and they are now locked in a routine of communication through terse, written notes. A stray cockatoo softens the stand-off between husband and wife. As more cockatoos descend, however, a peaceful world is tragically shattered.

History: The story came to PW in mid-1973 as he was collecting his other novellas for publication. PW’s partner, Manoly Lascaris, was fond of feeding the birds – including cockatoos – who came to their Martin Road property.

First published in The Cockatoos (1974). Collected in Collected Short Stories.

Operatic adaptation

The Cockatoos was adapted as an opera, composed by Sarah de Jong with a libretto by Sarah Carradine.

First performed by Victorian Youth Opera, 9-12 December 2010. Trades Hall New Ballroom, Carlton, Melbourne. 80 mins.

Director: Sarah Carradine, Conductor: Brett Kelly, set design: Juliet Nelson, cast: Cailyn Howarth (Olive), Tom Lerk and Astyn Trecate (Tim – alternate nights), Ashley Tymms (Busby le Cornu), Gary Rowley (Figgis) and Daniel Todd (Mick)

Reviewed:
Michael Shmith, The Age, 13/12/10

Theatre adaptation

Adapted by Andrew Hale, artistic director of Perth’s Happy Dagger Theatre. Hale had loved the story for twenty-five years when he adapted it for the stage.

Premièred – Blue Room Theatre, 10-28 November 2015. The original production featured 10 kilograms of sunflower seeds poured in from the ceiling.

Second production – Western Australian Youth Theatre Company. 20-29 November 2019. Directed by Andrew Hale. Performed by: Amelia Burke, Grace Chow, Sylvia Cornes, Rebecca Collin, Alexandra Gerrans, Liam Hickey, Georgia Ivers, Samai King, Christopher Moro, Brent Shields, Zachary Sheridan, Lauren Thomas

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