The Girl In the Painting

by Téa Cooper

  Her lips dried, along with her ability to speak. The past days working with Timothy had been full of laughter, and she’d enjoyed every moment of their time together. ‘I hope we haven’t forgotten anything.’

  ‘Does it matter? As you said, it’s a dress rehearsal. Besides, it might be a little late. Here they come.’

  Michael’s cane tapped on the floor as he and Elizabeth walked in, arm in arm, looking very much the guests of honour. They stopped in the middle of the room and Michael gazed around then nodded his head. ‘A remarkable job, young lady. Congratulations.’

  ‘Uncle Michael, Aunt Elizabeth, I’d like to introduce Timothy Penter. His mother is the artist, Marigold Penter.’

  A smile lifted the corner of Elizabeth’s lips. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, Timothy, and I look forward to meeting your father and mother. I believe they’ll be with us in a few days.’

  ‘Yes, I’m expecting them very soon.’ He handed Michael and Elizabeth a copy of the catalogues they’d had printed and gestured to the first of the paintings.

  ‘You go with them. Everyone else is arriving.’ Resisting her need to let out a great whoop of excitement, Jane pulled the doors wide and a raucous babble of voices filled the room. ‘Catalogues for everyone.’ She handed them out, taking no notice of the snooty look on Lucy’s face, and tried very hard not to comment on John who, dressed in a suit and tie, escorted his wife across the room as though he was the sole guardian of the Crown Jewels.

  Michael made a slow tour around the perimeter. ‘Why in heaven’s name would the national gallery purchase English artworks. We are our own country now. Federation saw to that. What is wrong with the works of the Heidelberg School? They purchased one of Streeton’s landscapes thirty-odd years ago, and what about Roberts’ wonderful Shearing of the Rams? We need more of pictures like that …’

  Jane let his political ranting wash over her as she made a quick circuit of the room, checking for problems. Give it another five minutes and Michael would be in full flight.

  God help them!

  It was only when Jane stepped up to straighten one of the paintings that the strange humming noise registered.

  Elizabeth stood, her gaze riveted on one of the pictures.

  Jane moved to her side. ‘What did you say?’

  The humming stopped and Elizabeth lifted her head with a sigh. ‘Such a lovely scene. Look at the cottage with its thatched roof, and the beautiful garden with the apple tree. It makes me want to step inside and sit under the tree.’

  She’d never heard Elizabeth say anything so, well, so fanciful. She was all practicality and common sense. Jane was the one who got accused of being preoccupied, though not with paintings.

  Elizabeth moved on to the next and stood staring, her arms clutched tight around her waist. Jane slipped into the space beside her and followed, a little tired of the bucolic scenes. More thatched cottages tucked into the fold of the hill and village scenes.

  If asked, Elizabeth couldn’t have described the colour of the clothes worn by the girl sitting under the tree. Perhaps a grey blue, almost as though she might fade into the distance. Up at the window of the cottage another face pressed against the glass, chin in hands, staring down. ‘The girl has such a look of longing on her face. I want to reach out my hand to her. I feel such a sense of peace when I look at this picture. It’s gentle. A calming scene. As though no harm could come to anyone. Yet there’s a sense of wistfulness about it. Does this place exist? Do we know where they were painted?’

  ‘Timothy says they live in the West Country, in England, although his mother has spent a lot of time in Paris.’

  Trust Jane to know, such a voracious appetite for information. The pictures were almost too idyllic to be true. Mullioned windows, picturesque dormers and thatched roofs, neatly designated fields edged with stone walls and flowering hedgerows. None of the dusty, barren paddocks of Australia stretching further than her imagination. ‘I’d like to know exactly where.’

  ‘I’ll ask. I won’t be long.’

  Surprisingly, it was Bessie who put her on the right track. ‘Them pictures. They remind me of the stories me gran used to tell about home. Used to say it was a fairy tale. Everything so pretty. Little stone cottages and trees, so many flowering trees. Apple orchards they were.’

  ‘Apple orchards, you say?’ Elizabeth studied the painting.

  ‘Miles and miles of them, and the bees buzzing so loud they hurt your eardrums, that’s what she said.’

  ‘Where was she from, your grandmother?’

  ‘Down south-west of London somewhere. They sailed from Plymouth. Convict she was, accused of stealing a handkerchief. She did no such thing.’ Bessie shook her head. ‘Still had to serve her sentence. Seven years for picking up a handkerchief, if you please. Just fourteen she was.’

  ‘Look at the girl at the window—she has such a face, a sad face.’

  ‘Looks angry to me, maybe even jealous. As though she’d like to be out there under the tree.’

  ‘I wish I knew why.’ Elizabeth’s skin tingled and her breathing slowed.

  ‘Look over there on the hill, there’s gypsy caravans and look at that, them two walking down the path. It’s like a tunnel the way the leaves on the trees meet. Nice life for children.’

  The urge to cry came over Elizabeth, tears welled and left a big ache, blurred by something she didn’t understand. She moved on to the next painting.

  A church, a crooked fence, long forgotten gravestones, and in the foreground a circular building, the light glancing off the slate roof. The picture wavered and shimmered like the horizon on a scorching summer’s day.

  A violent explosion of sound sent her heart leaping against her ribcage. Birds, hundreds of them. Wheeling and diving in a vast black cloud, their feathered wings beating against her cheeks, the darkness, overwhelming darkness, black as night. She stumbled back against the wall, gulping in deep, unsteady breaths of dusty air, her face damp with perspiration, her head swelling with the constant pounding in her ears.

  She drew herself upright. The pounding louder, more rhythmic. The colours in the painting blurred, blended in swirling distortion. ‘G’woam. G’woam.’

  The linoleum spiralled up to meet her.

  ‘Aunt Elizabeth.’

  ‘Give her some air.’

  ‘She needs smelling salts.’

  An eternity before the room flickered into focus and reality trickled back. Jane’s face hovered, her fingers grazing her forehead as if checking for a fever.

  Elizabeth’s mind snapped into the moment. Next she’d be in a darkened room having cold compresses, cups of tea and nasty little glasses of laudanum forced on her.

  ‘I’m perfectly fine. Help me up.’ All the fuss and carry-on would drive a saint to purgatory.

  ‘Was there something about the paintings that upset you?’

  Michael crouched by her side, his body warmth and strong arm comforting her as always. She let out a long, slow breath.

  ‘Everything’s going to be all right. We’ll make sense of it all,’ he said.

  ‘I feel as though it is the picture of my dreams. The scudding clouds, the woodlands and the hedgerows are so familiar.’ Elizabeth swallowed her strange strangled cry.

  ‘That is the painting from the technical college,’ Jane said.

  Was it? She didn’t remember seeing any of these paintings at the college, only the birds in their glass-fronted cabinets swooping. She wrapped her arms tightly around her body to still her sudden tremor, clamped her lips to prevent the wail building in her throat escaping.

  She was slipping, everything dark, as though her balance had somehow deserted her.

  ‘Come and sit down.’ Michael led her to the chair in the corner of the room and she sank down, couldn’t prevent her hands coming up to protect her head.

  The focus of the room wavered again, drowned by the noise, the beating of wings filling her head.

  ‘What is it?’ Michael’s voice hitched, a ting
e of panic in the raised inflection. ‘Look at me. Are you having trouble breathing?’

  Every one of her muscles strained, her stomach churned, and the raw aching gasps wracked her body. She couldn’t contain them a moment longer. ‘G’woam. G’woam!’

  Her thoughts blurred, twisted and tumbled together. She wanted Jing, someone to hold her, assure her she wasn’t alone. Where was Jing? She blinked away the yearning.

  Her instinct told her to forget the paintings, never look on them again, get rid of the memories they evoked. The same way she’d tried when Michael made her leave Jing. It was the only way to cope. Not let the past crowd out the future.

  ‘G’woam. G’woam!’ She brought her hand to her mouth, burying her knuckles between her lips, willing the sound to stop while tears poured silently down her cheeks.

  Michael wrapped his arm tighter and drew her closer until the terrible tension in her body lessened and her breathing settled.

  ‘What’s she saying?’

  ‘I’ve no idea.’

  ‘It was the same at the technical college.’

  ‘John, call a cab. I’m taking Elizabeth home. Jane, you close up.’

  Twenty-Five

  ‘I’m sorry to drag you out on a Sunday afternoon. I’m at a total loss.’ Michael raked back his hair.

  ‘Please don’t concern yourself. Explain to me again what happened.’ Lethbridge paced across the room then came to a halt in front of his desk.

  ‘Nothing different. I hoped time would help Elizabeth recover. She seems to be getting worse. It’s as though she’s lost all control. She’s made mistakes in the ledgers, railed at Jane when she pointed them out, abused the Benevolent Society women, hounded them out of the house. Now this. A repeat of her initial turn at the technical college.’

  ‘As before, I can find nothing physically wrong with her. She’s complaining of a slight headache, that’s all. I’ve given her a sleeping draught. We are going to have to come to a decision—she cannot spend the rest of her life in a laudanum-induced haze.’

  ‘This idea of a rest-cure is not an option. I am not having Elizabeth locked away in some establishment for the mentally unsound.’

  ‘You’re overreacting. A month, maybe two, in a different environment might be exactly what she needs. Carefully administered drugs will allow her mind to settle. It’s a private establishment on the banks of the Hunter River. A delightful house built in the 1840s, not far from Neotsfield, one of the Dangar properties. It caters for women who …’ Lethbridge cleared his throat. ‘Nostalgia can, in itself, become a death sentence.’ He laced his fingers into his waistcoat pockets and rocked on his heels. ‘I have no doubt it’s the change.’ He muttered the words through tight lips, his cheeks burning with embarrassment.

  The change. What change? Elizabeth hadn’t mentioned any change. The man didn’t seem able to come up with any diagnosis or remedy.

  ‘It can be simply arranged. We need two doctors, myself of course, and one other to agree with the diagnosis and sign a certificate.’

  ‘A certificate for what?’

  ‘Cases of melancholia at this stage in a woman’s life are not unusual. Particular emphasis is placed on the natural environment aiding the recovery. Nostalgia is not a diagnosis to be ignored. Untreated it can lead to the victim wasting away and losing their ability to adjust and cope with daily life, falling into a deep depression, becoming consumed by sadness, apathy.’

  Whatever was he talking about? It came to Michael in a flash. Lethbridge thought Elizabeth had lost her marbles. ‘No. The answer’s no.’ Elizabeth was no more senile or demented than he. ‘If you can’t come up with any alternative, I shall take her to Sydney for a second opinion. Better still, London. I have a mind to travel to England.’

  ‘You are in no fit condition to consider that option.’ Lethbridge let out a disgruntled sigh. ‘If you won’t entertain the rest home for Elizabeth, we must go over the events, yet again, and see if we have missed something.’

  He would have to come clean, but how to approach it? His heart gave an unwelcome stutter. ‘There is something that perhaps might shed light on the matter.’

  ‘Something you haven’t told me?’ Lethbridge dropped into the chair opposite him and leant forward, pointing a long finger at him.

  Jaysus! What was he? A recalcitrant child. ‘Is it possible an event in the past could trigger these attacks?’

  ‘It’s possible, it depends on the magnitude of the event and the outcome.’ The man was far too knowing. His eyes narrowed, pinning Michael to his seat. ‘How long have we known each other?’

  And what had that to do with anything? A man was entitled to his privacy, a woman too.

  Lethbridge didn’t wait for his answer. ‘My first memory is the time Elizabeth forced you to see my father. A small accident with a ladder and a broken clavicle, unless I’m mistaken. Slates on the roof. Almost forty years ago.’

  Was it so long? Why in God’s name had he procrastinated until it had reached this point? ‘You’re not mistaken.’

  ‘And we have been friends ever since.’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘In that case I think you should, for friendship, and Elizabeth’s sake, tell me what the hell is going on.’ Lethbridge’s voice reached a crescendo.

  Michael pushed out of the chair; he needed a drink, a large drink. He waved the decanter in Lethbridge’s direction and much to his surprise, didn’t receive a lecture on consumption, but instead a nod. He splashed the amber liquid into two tumblers and handed one over.

  ‘To friendship.’ He clinked Lethbridge’s glass and took a long slow pull at the whiskey, embracing its welcome warmth, and before he could change his mind said, ‘Elizabeth is not my sister.’

  Lethbridge gave a splutter, knocked back the rest of his drink, mopped his mouth with his handkerchief. ‘Then who the hell is she?’

  ‘That is the conundrum. I don’t know.’

  ‘You don’t know?’ Lethbridge waved his glass in the air and he refilled it, and his own. ‘Start at the beginning, man, and take it slowly, it’s going to take a while to sink in.’

  ‘You’ve heard the story of the past. I’ve no need to go over that again. Arriving in Australia, Hill End and here, Maitland.’

  Lethbridge nodded, his eyes firmly fixed on his face as though trying to read him. From the look of his tortured frown he might have been speaking Gaelic.

  ‘Me sister Lizzie, God rest her soul, died in a fire at Brownlow Hill, Liverpool, in 1862, the day before I set sail for Australia.’

  ‘Liverpool, the telegram Mrs Shipton’s been yabbering about. The one the entire town is debating.’

  ‘Aye, that’s the one. The chapel and the girls’ dormitory went up in flames. Lizzie got caught inside with twenty-one others. She burnt to death.’ The horror of it still made Michael’s gorge rise. Only the whiskey held the agony back.

  ‘Who the hell is Elizabeth?’ Lethbridge repeated.

  He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Lizzie took a shine to her; they shared a bed.’

  ‘But what’s her name? Where did she come from? They must have records.’

  ‘That’s what I can’t tell you, and the reason I sent a telegram to the workhouse. I hoped they could tell me but there’s a hundred-year moratorium on their release. I’ve written to someone who might have some information. As yet I’ve had no response. I have to find out who she is and how she ended up in the workhouse.’

  ‘More to the point, how did she end up on a ship with you?’

  ‘Aye, well, that’d be the bit I’m not so proud of. I was standing in line, ready to go aboard. I had the papers, gave them to the clerk and next I knew the little mite was holding onto my hand. The bloke asked if she was my sister, and well, she looked at me like I was her saviour, and so I said yes. How was anyone to know? And Lizzie wasn’t going to be coming aboard. She never made it out of the dormitory.’ He choked back another mouthful of whiskey. By all that was holy he was a fool.

  ‘
Has she no memory of boarding ship?’

  Michael shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘You’ve kept it a secret from her for all these years? Surely it must have plagued you.’

  ‘Aye, it did, does, but so does the thought of losing her. All I wanted was to see her safe. She had no understanding of death. Once the ship sailed I told her Lizzie was in heaven with the angels and what did she say?’ A massive sob wracked his body, the memories he’d held back for so long squeezing the core of his being. ‘She asked how long it would take us to get there.’

  ‘Take a moment, we’ve plenty of time.’

  Michael shook his head. Now he’d started he had to finish, he’d held it back for too long. ‘When we got to Australia I left her with the Camerons, people we’d met on the boat. The clerk in the immigration office told me Mam had passed, and there was a note with the Diggers Rest, Hill End written on it. Da was never a man of letters, he was a man of words, big and brash and full of promises. The writing was far better than I’d seen from his hand, I think someone wrote it for him. I had no idea what I’d find when I got there. All I knew was I couldn’t take Elizabeth into the unknown. Just as well, because when I got out west I found Da with a broken skull, in the grip of the opium. She stayed in Sydney with the Camerons until I could take her to Hill End. I wanted her with me.’

  Lethbridge’s eyes narrowed. ‘You’re not going to tell me something that might be better for the confessional, because—’

  ‘No. I’ve nothing to be ashamed of. Nothing the good Father needs to hear. We’ve lived as brother and sister, nothing more.’

  Though he’d nearly lost her to the Chinaman. He’d behaved like Christ Almighty and bundled her out of Hill End. It was simple jealousy, not the loathing for Orientals he’d allowed people to believe. He couldn’t bear the thought of giving her up. Over the years he’d come to rely on her, and love her as a brother—and now this.

  ‘Other than the fact you kidnapped her and gave her a new identity.’

  ‘I don’t look at it like that. She’d no family. Been dumped at the workhouse. I saved her from that dreadful place.’