These Foolish Things

These Foolish Things is the song Dorrigo Evans remembers hearing during visits to his uncle’s hotel in Adelaide. Recalled as a distant sound amid sharp impressions of place, it marks the contrast between what memory preserves and what it cannot recover: the hotel and the music return vividly, but Amy Mulvaney’s face does not.

Appearance in the Memory

Dorrigo’s recollection begins with travel in a baby Austin baker’s van, whose acrid horsehair upholstery and stale flour remain part of the scene. He remembers the heat of Adelaide, his nervousness as he began visiting the hotel regularly, and the hotel’s deep, dark verandahs and rusty filigree iron. Beyond them, the sea appears scattered with topaz-like light. From this setting comes the distant, crackling sound of Leslie Hutchinson singing These Foolish Things, heard as though Dorrigo were bodysurfing a shallow wave.

Memory and Absence

The song belongs to a recollection that is at once precise and imprecise. Dorrigo can summon the van, the hotel, the sea, and the music with striking sensory clarity, yet he cannot remember Amy’s face. These Foolish Things therefore functions as a surviving fragment of the remembered scene, not as a substitute for what has vanished from it. The song’s recurrence in his mind makes the imbalance palpable: surroundings and sound endure, while the person at the emotional center of the memory remains visually absent.