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THE WITNESS, BORN in Sydney, published her first novel when
she was thirty-seven, exactly the age at which her father, a
rainmaker (to whom the book is dedicated) crashed when
he was flying his plane and died. The debris of the plane and the man’s
remains were never found. Margaret’s father, thus, is eternal. He cannot
be killed in an accident or by an act of writing. He cannot be remembered,
written in or written off. Margaret was only four when he died in 1952.
Notwithstanding this blemish on her integrity (that her dead father
will outlive her, his grand-son and all possible descendants) and the fact
that she never accepted to play the muse for another artist, not even
herself, or maybe for these very reasons, she is a passionate woman, an
active and lively intellectual, a chain-smoker whose exacerbated sense of
humor makes her cough with chronic bronchitis, and whose dark beauty
(as Edith Wharton would put it) also attracts more diverse interests
—love or hatred, fascination or repulsion, confidence or distrust— than
she can accommodate in her impaired capacity for survival. « Margaret
n’est pas mon vrai nom, dit-elle lors de l’interview, mais j’ai choisi Rita
comme nom de personnage dans mon livre dont le titre peut se traduire
à la fois par “Lignes de fuite” et par “Lignes de vol”. Celui qui m’appelle
Margaret doit savoir pourquoi il prolonge mon propre jeu de pseudonymie,
mais il n’est pas exclu qu’il ait eu aussi d’autres motifs, soit qu’il voulût
créer une confusion dans l’esprit d’autrui, soit qu’il désirât expliciter le
rapport, l’affinité, homologique ou autre, que je pouvais entretenir dans
son esprit avec une autre personne qu’il connut à la même époque et qu’il
appelle Jenny. » She does not wish to speculate on ulterior motives at this
stage. Depending on the contents of the private papers, she will expand
or not on this topic. She does not feel that this is the right time.
MATILDA HAD CALLED her at about seven thirty last night;
she said : “I’m so glad I caught you. You will be my
saviour! Can you do me a little favour, dear? —Yes, sure,
what is it? —You’re going to laugh at me. It’s just that my neighbours,
Jane and Don, you know, have invited me to dinner tonight, and I can’t
bear the thought of it. They’re good people, but I am not in the mood.
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