In a small white cottage in Launceston, Tasmania, a woman called Beatrix Maree Henry conducted a nursing home for birthing mothers. Business was slow during the early 1940s. The War had taken most of the available sperm bank overseas to fight on the beaches.
A small white woman in her late forties presented at the nursing home to produce an unwanted fourth child. Reality was elusive and birth pain unacceptable. The new wonder drug "Twilight Zone" gave the reluctant mother several dreamy days of non-reality in which the pain separated itself from her body. The Macquarie Dictionary advises that ‘twilight sleep’ is a state of semi-consciousness produced by hypodermic injection of scopolamine and morphine in order to effect painless child birth. Police records indicate that the small woman roamed the nearby streets in her French lawn nightdress for three days without even feeling the cold of a Tasmanian mid winter.
Beatrix Maree Henry was particularly kind to the small middle aged woman during this time. On a Thursday the woman gave birth to a surprisingly large and healthy female child. The child was named Beatrix Maree after the woman who brought her into the world. The small woman and her elderly husband had not discussed names.
The child was remarkably alert and vigorous given the drugged state of the mother prior to her birth. A woman was engaged to care for the child and to see to her daily needs.
Beatrix's early memories focus on nightmares that thrashed the high ceiling of her huge white bedroom. The War was raging and her father listened to the short wave radio reports late into the night while the small child clung to his legs. At the end of the street where the child lived, war posters dominated the billboard. Two children in rags clutching each other - one child on crutches with a leg missing. The Red Cross needs your help. The Red Cross needs your help. The Red Cross frightened Beatrix Maree.
Young men left the local railway station in their new khaki uniforms. Proud to be Australian. Brave and blonde. They leant out of the train carriages to wave to mothers, wives and sweethearts who wept in the cold half-light. The town sang "wish me luck as you wave me good-bye" without realising that words need meanings.
The child in bed would be filled with fear. Fear of the War. Fear of the Germans. Fear of the Japs. Fear of the guns. Fear of the men. A fear that was black and inside her. When the fear became too great, she would race across the miles of polished tiles, through the arch of the entrance hall to the warm and comfortable bed of her parents. The voice lay lost inside her. The parents remained asleep. She struggled back to the small white cold bed to wait for the first light of morning.
Sometimes the child was sent to the aunts. The aunt who loved children and the aunt who was an artist. Spinster women in their sixties. Remarkable women who rescued the child from her nightmares and took her into their warm and cosy bed when the nights grew cold. Remarkable women who taught the child to read and write. To play the piano. To draw and colour. To know the names of flowers and birds. To swim in the salty river.
When the child was four the War ended. The War to end all wars. All the bells in the town rang. The bells in the Catholic churches competed with the bells in the Church of England near the city square. People lined the streets and cheered. The aldermen gave the children small silk British flags and brown paper bags of hard brown lollies. A bonfire was built near the show ground and the flames rose gloriously with sky rockets into the starry sky.
The child's name was in the local paper twice that summer. She had insisted on swimming in the local swimming lessons. Adults had given way at her fierce insistence. On the day of testing she was left till last. Furious she fronted the beginning tape and began to dog paddle. Twenty-five yards later she demanded recognition. On the day the certificates were handed out the child received hers last. The pest of a child. A man from the local paper took her photograph and reported the story - that the child was a remarkable.
Her mother took some notice and sent to the local paper a poem the child had written. A poem about 'the baby Jesus. The child won the prize which was signed by an important woman. A book of small moral verses with a red cord through the binder. A remarkable poem the woman said.
This was the summer the child started school. Too early, her father's friends and the aunts said. On the first day the child took her notebook and pencils and wrote a story for her aunts. The nun in charge found that she was writing words and took a ruler and smacked the small fingers. Whack! Whack!
The child's father had to be summoned from his work at the City Hall. The child bawled loudly and long. Tears and snot running down the father's suit. The father sent for the aunts. This child is a most remarkable child the aunts told the teacher and the father. She must not be hit.
Beatrix Maree stopped writing and was afraid to sleep. She was sent to the aunts and was allowed to sleep during her days. To draw and paint and write into the night. To play the piano, to sing and tell stories in the half-light. To climb into bed between the warm soft bodies of the aging aunts. To have dreams that were no longer nightmares.
Beatrix Maree's first interest remained writing and her visual art was a sideline until she met the artist Hilary Meyer in the late 1960s. Since then painting has been her major interest. She has produced a large oeuvre of figure subjects including many vivid and unusual images of women and an interesting collection of autobiographical essays.
She sits in her, garden of red poppies and tells her grandchildren and great nephews about the aunts. The women who saved her from reality and allowed her to dream. Introduced her to the twilight zone.
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