The etiquette of the X

..for
somebody who is not my uncle, my aunt or my uncle’s client.
I have friends who have permanently separated but still go out together, even
sleep together, although presumably only on cold nights. It all seems very modern
and, as divorce impacts at least a third of all marriages, nothing unusual.
It may be encouraging that marriages are lasting two years longer before divorce;
an average of twelve years. Children are allocated with the parents and grandparents
of various marital episodes with gay abandon and the assumption that no harm
can be done. There are suburbs and outposts of Australian civilisation where
children wait with quiet despair to see who their parents might be that weekend,
wonder at which fast food outlet the handover will occur.
We are all directly or tangentially affected. I may have occasionally commented
that my parents have not spoken, nor I think seen each other, for nigh on sixty
years. At my daughter’s christening in Auckland many years ago, only one
parent was allowed to attend and, even though the event was arranged by his
mother, my father was compelled to stay in the sulphurous, steam-wreathed realms
of Rotorua.
However, unlike my parents, where there was a degree of acrimony, my Wife Number
One and I left on quite amicable terms outside the Sofia Pizza Restaurant in
Camberwell soon after a rather farcical appearance in the halls of Justice.
There were no children so little legal complication, even in those bizarre days
before no-fault divorce. We were very young and I was intent on being an artist
and travelling to Germany after completing my post-graduate studies at the National
Gallery. She realised that this meant more years in relative poverty supporting
me – a person who was compulsively self-centred and petulant – and with
diminishing chances of realising her own dreams. And neither of us spoke German.
The divorce regime prior to the current Mark XXIII version with the aluminium
wheels and Candy-Apple Tangerine Flake paintwork of today was characterised
by the wonderful A. P Herbert of Misleading Cases fame roughly as follows.
‘If Wife Number One and I had gone to the courts and said,” We are
guilty of no crime, of no dishonourable conduct, we made a mistake, and we have
honestly tried to make the best of it and failed. In our considered judgment
is impossible for this partnership to succeed; moreover the failure of the marriage
relationship is adversely affecting our usefulness to the State in our respective
callings; we therefore ask the court to release us from our obligations under
the contract.”’
Had we done so the judge would have answered that this was very interesting
but that neither of us has committed a misconduct. It would be strongly hinted
that we should go away and commit misconduct and then come back and tell the
Court. However, only one us must do this thing, without consulting the other;
otherwise it would be collusion, connivance and conduct hateful to the law.

This was all the result of trying to maintain that marriage was both a sacrament
and a civil contract governed by both the principles of Common Law and the
Ecclesiastical tradition. When the Whitlam Government proposed changing this
anachronistic arrangement, the Church, most especially and vociferously the
Roman Catholic variety, took time off from molesting altar boys and said that
it was the end of civilisation as we knew it. It wasn’t and the legal
profession was poorer, but the lives of many were less blighted by unhappiness.
The day in court was not without amusement. I turned at the chambers of the
barrister, who had been chosen to represent me in my petition to the courts,
only to find that he had no idea that the case was coming up before the Judges
in about sixty minutes time. Nor could he remember any salient details such
as my name. Fortunately I had written a pretty good brief for him and he managed
to don his robes, glue the horsehair to his scalp and make his appearance
before the bench without fluffing his lines and without me laughing at the
cynicism of the exercise. He still charged me over $600 in 1980 dollars for
his time. Real money.
But, time slipped by like a river and it had not actually seeped into my limited
consciousness that I had not spoken to Wife Number One for about thirty years.

Curiously, one would have thought that living in the same city we would have
bumped into each other at least once in three decades but, much like having
the winning Tattslotto numbers but never having them drawn, our paths never
crossed. And so she remained in my heart and imagination an attractive young
lady of around twenty-five. Or twenty-six. At least twenty-something. What
had happened to her I really had little idea, though we had acquaintances
in common.
But, the world changes and whilst holidaying in New Zealand I received a phone
call saying that she was seriously ill. So, we met again and I realised that
a fault-line that had been drawn across my life many years ago. She has a
marvellous husband and three adult children and had led a life of considerable
intellectual and emotional richness. I realised that, not only is she in many
ways a very different person, but that I am also. During the years we have
both reinvented ourselves changing our inner and outer lives. I no longer
recognised myself.
And I realised the truth of the opening lines of L. P Hartley’s novel
‘The Go-Between’. ‘The past is a foreign country; they do
things differently there.’