How Bright Are All Things Here

by Susan Green

  ‘Is anything wrong?’ After a few seconds she added sharply, ‘Are you there, Paula? What’s happening?’

  ‘Nothing, really.’ Paula struggled to get herself under control. ‘She’s okay, she’s just . . . Anne, I don’t think she’s got very long.’

  ‘What do you mean? Is this just your opinion, or has Dr Moran said something?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him yet. I talked to Martine again this morning. You remember she took me aside a few weeks ago? Well, since then I’ve been noticing that Bliss just isn’t herself. She’s increasingly tired –’

  ‘She’s nearly eighty, Paula, and she has a heart condition. Of course she’s tired.’

  ‘No, I mean more than usual.’

  ‘She was fine when I saw her on Friday.’

  With the usual ballooning sense of unreality, Paula tried to explain. ‘But I see her every day, Anne, and at this stage . . . well, Martine says that things can change quite quickly.’

  Silence.

  ‘That’s what Martine said.’

  The silence continued.

  This is why I dread talking to you, thought Paula. You’re so touchy you turn anything into some kind of conflict. There have been weeks and even months when you won’t speak to me, and I’ve never had a clue what it’s been about.

  She took a deep breath. ‘I was thinking, Anne, perhaps this week you could come on the weekend and bring Maura and Jake.’

  ‘Jake’s in Sydney. I told you that.’

  Had she? Surely I would have remembered, thought Paula. But, then, with so much going on . . . ‘Sorry, Anne, I forgot. Maura then. It’s been a while since she’s –’

  ‘A month, if that.’

  ‘Yes, of course. I just wanted to suggest that you bring her with you this time.’

  A few seconds’ silence, and then Anne said, ‘Okay.’

  ‘Do you want me to tell Bliss?’

  But her sister had already hung up.

  Ten minutes later, her mobile chirruped. It was Iris, calling in response to her text.

  ‘Meet you for lunch,’ she said. ‘One o’clock? I can pick you up.’

  ‘Lovely,’ said Paula. ‘Just what I need.’

  Iris was a new friend. Paula needed new friends after Sue died; during the course of Sue’s illness, almost everyone around Paula seemed to melt away. She didn’t blame them. She was lousy company, always tired, preoccupied and sad. In the months after Sue’s death, she went through the motions at lunches and movie dates but before long she found herself unobtrusively dropped. It didn’t really hurt.

  What did hurt was the break with Tanya. Paula, Sue and Tanya had shared a flat when they were at college together and Paula thought of Tanya as her oldest friend. But back at Paula’s after the funeral, Tanya got stuck into the wine and let rip.

  ‘You could never see it, could you? I mean, Sue cut you off from everyone. She used you. She just wiped her feet on you. She was absolutely, totally selfish.’

  Tanya was right. Sue was selfish. That was partly why Paula liked her. Sue was simply herself; you could take her or leave her, she didn’t care which. She knew what she wanted and she went out and got it. By using people, yes, but there was nothing personal about it, no malice, and if you said no (as Paula had done a few times during their thirty-year friendship), she just shrugged it off. The thing was, Sue wasn’t needy. Not until the very end.

  Paula met Iris when, in search of inner peace – or at least some relief for her tight shoulders – she started yoga classes. Iris was a retired dental nurse in her early sixties, small and skinny, funny, rich. Her husband, a dentist, was nearly a decade older. According to Iris, he was a workaholic and would drop dead while filling a cavity. He’d filled a few other cavities in the course of their marriage, too. They’d separated four times, but Iris always took him back. She had a wide circle of female friends – dentists’ wives, mostly – but she didn’t expect Paula to join it.

  ‘This is nice, just you and me, don’t you think? Lunch and some wine and a good, long talk . . .’

  Paula wrote BACK AT 2 PM on a piece of card and taped it to the door, then took it down and amended it to 2.30.

  *

  ‘Well, something’s shifted,’ said Iris.

  ‘What do you mean?’ Paula, after a glass of merlot with her meal, asked the question with lazy curiosity.

  ‘Just that. You were stuck in that horrible job, and –’

  ‘It wasn’t the job that was horrible.’

  ‘Okay, with that horrible boss; don’t quibble. And Dave – now, you’ve got to agree – he was so stuck, he was starting to fossilise. You have to tell me what’s happened.’

  ‘Clare sacked me and Dave’s brother-in-law had to have a knee reconstruction. And for some reason – I can’t really work it out – we’re . . . we’re almost happy.’ She giggled at the expression on Iris’s face.

  ‘I think the stars must have aligned. I thought it would take gelignite to get you two functional again.’

  ‘I wouldn’t say we’re functional. We’re –’ She thought of Dave singing in the shower and heading out to work smiling, with a packed lunch and a little thermos. ‘I can’t believe it, Iris. I’ve actually spent half the morning feeling shitty with him for not being depressed.’

  Iris had a low, throaty laugh. ‘You bitch.’

  ‘No, really. It’s as if I’m not quite ready for him to feel good. It’s not that I don’t want him to. It’s been awful for him, of course. But for me too.’ She stopped, remembering. ‘Really awful and I don’t think I realised. You see, I haven’t been able to help him.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t want your help, sweetheart. Isn’t that what we women always complain about with our men? That they want to fix things and all we want is to be heard?’

  ‘I spent the other half of the morning thinking that it was all my fault.’

  ‘Oh, please! Paula, none of it is your fault. How can it be your fault? Listen to me: stop being so hard on yourself. You’re a deeply kind person.’

  ‘Oh, Iris.’

  ‘Hell, sweetheart, I think you’re the almost-impossible combination – you’re good without being a bore.’ She barked out a laugh. ‘So just ease up on yourself, okay? And let Dave get on with it in his own way.’ She poured them both another glass. ‘You’ve got to forgive, honey. Yourself, and him. It’s all you can do.’

  Iris had a face that was clownishly mobile – eyebrows, forehead, mouth – but her eyes held steady. ‘Look at Avram and me. His bloody affairs. I’m good with the love, not so hot with the sex, and in the end – after forty years! – we both know it’s the love that counts. And what are we here for anyway? If we don’t give anything of ourselves, we’ve just passed through the world using a lot of oxygen and leaving a pile of shit. That’s the Wisdom of Iris for today. What do you think? Will it sell?’

  Paula drained her glass and smiled. She wasn’t usually much of a drinker but today she welcomed that fuzzy cocooned sense of distance from the world. Her body felt loose and warm. She wondered if she would be able to last the afternoon in the shop without dozing off.

  ‘And how’s the old girl?’ Iris had gone with Paula to see Bliss a few times. ‘Feisty as ever?’

  ‘No. Actually, she’s . . .’

  ‘Slipping? Let’s hope it’s quick for her, then.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, but I don’t want her to go. She’s been there – well, not forever, but it seems like it. I suppose I’m being selfish.’

  ‘Selfish? You?’ Iris put her hand over Paula’s and said softly, ‘I don’t think so, honey. Bliss must have been heaven after the mad mother.’

  Mad mother. Paula hadn’t talked much about her childhood, but obviously she’d said enough. She must have jerked her hand slightly, for Iris grimaced.

  ‘Shit,’ she said. ‘Sorry. I am so crass.’

  Paula took a moment before she answered. ‘Did I tell you my therapist thinks Mum was bipolar?’

  ‘No, but that would explain it.
’

  ‘Yes. I didn’t really want to consider it at first. Just wanted to think it was post-natal depression but – well, no. It all began long before she had us kids. I’ve been like Dad, not really able to accept that she was sick, that she’d always been sick. I think Dad kept hoping that she’d return to normal and come back to him, to us. But you know, I remember hoping . . .’

  ‘Hoping what?’

  ‘That she wouldn’t. And feeling so guilty, Iris. It was just that you never knew where you were, what was going to happen. She was exhausting. Even something simple, like buying my school shoes, could turn into something else. This one day, in Myer, we didn’t even get to the children’s department. It was straight up to the after-five wear, and Mum tried on dress after dress after dress . . .’

  And looked more enchanting in each until, when she emerged from the changing room in a flame-red chiffon, twirling to make the skirt unfurl around her like a full-blown rose, the sales ladies and customers burst into spontaneous applause.

  ‘People thought she was a movie star. I was mortified, but sort of proud of her at the same time. When she was high you could practically see the sparks fly off her. Perhaps she should have been an actress.’

  ‘Perhaps she should have been on lithium. It wasn’t her fault, sweetheart.’

  ‘No, it wasn’t. But I never missed the craziness, Iris.’

  ‘And Bliss was your real mother?’

  Paula shook her head. ‘Oh no.’

  Bliss, from the first, had treated Paula if not as an equal, then as a co-conspirator, a confederate in the task of bringing happiness to Alec. It was little Anne who needed mothering, not her. She’d had enough to last a lifetime.

  ‘Bliss wasn’t a mother to me, but she was . . . Actually, she was wonderful. The older I get, the more I appreciate how real she was. It’s like she was in colour and the rest of us were black and white. She tried to teach us to enjoy life – even something simple, like having a cup of tea, she made into a gorgeous little ceremony with the cup and saucer, the canister, the spoon, the pot . . . When I left home, she’d come to visit me in my flat and she’d always bring a present. Caroline thought Bliss was trying to buy us, but she couldn’t have been more wrong. It was about bringing joy – it could have been a plate or some flowers or even a tea towel, but it was always something beautiful. For my eighteenth birthday she gave me perfume in a Baccarat bottle. It was Nina Ricci’s Farouche. You know what that means? It means fierce, wild, savage. And she said, “She’s in there somewhere, darling. You just have to let her out.”’

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’

  ‘There was a kind of richness to her. Like Belgian chocolate.’

  ‘But sometimes too much of a good thing?’

  It had seemed like that at times, but not now. There was not much of the good thing left.

  ‘It’s the final loss, isn’t it?’ said Iris. ‘When Bliss goes, you’ll be an orphan. Everyone shuffles up a place. And then you’re it.’

  ‘It and a bit.’ As Bliss would say.

  I AM BETTY BROWN

  They show me a drawing. Frenzied white crayon on fluoro pink paper.

  ‘Dimity brought it for you. It’s Pippa.’

  Pippin? Wasn’t that a musical?

  ‘Their dog. Remember? Little Dimity and Anna-Mae. The nice Chinese people from your flats.’

  Pippa has two tails. Or is it five legs?

  ‘I’ve made a mistake.’

  ‘Let’s have a look.’ Mother has a special teaching voice, which is patient and very slow. ‘When I make a mistake,’ she says, ‘first I try to turn it to my advantage. A drawing has a life of its own. Sometimes you have to let it take the lead.’

  I consider my picture for a few more seconds and then shake my head. ‘It doesn’t look right.’

  ‘Well, we’ll just have to cover it up. See this white paint? Berlin white, it’s called, or flake white. You can use that.’

  ‘But what if I make it worse?’

  ‘You won’t, Bliss. Not if you know what you’re doing. You mustn’t rush or hurry. You just need confidence and a certain élan.’

  ‘What’s élan?’

  ‘Dash.’

  Aunt Emu’s dog is called Dash. He is fat, old and slow.

  ‘Play with me. Please, Mother. Please, please!’

  ‘I can’t, Bliss. I have to work.’

  ‘You always have to work.’

  No, that’s not true. You work in the mornings, starting before I wake up, and I have to be patient and wait. You sit at your drawing board and I sit on the floor. I watch you, and sometimes a picture of a cat or a little mouse slips off the table and lands next to me so I know that however busy you are, you are thinking of me. You give me a flat white plate to mix paints on, a jam jar for water, and some brushes. My paints are in a metal box and come in little tablets of colour. If I want pencils, you sharpen them for me with the metal blade, dropping little curls of wood and coloured filings into the wastepaper basket. The sheets of paper you give me are blank and creamy-white and open to all kinds of possibilities.

  When I’m older, you show me how you use pen and ink for line drawings. The nibs come in small blue metal boxes, and they give you a fine, even, mechanical line. When you want a livelier line, one that’s supple and variable, you use a brush and ink from squat pots of Winsor & Newton Indian ink. It goes on black and shiny, like freshly polished shoes, like beetles. You keep your brushes in Chinese ginger jars, bristles up. I know almost before I can talk not to leave the brushes standing bristles down. Do you know why not? It’s because if you do, the hairs will bend and you can never make them go straight again. Thick brushes are for washes, thinner ones for strokes of colour, and the finest of all are for lines you can scarcely see. Most of the brushes are made from the hair of weasels, squirrels and badgers; the most expensive are made from sable, like Aunt Emu’s fur coat. But the very best have a special spell to stop you from being clumsy, and they are made from unicorns’ tails.

  The most magical of Mother’s drawing things is her diamond. It’s a cloudy greyish sphere set on the end of a little stick. Much more useful and beautiful, says Mother, than the sparkly kind on ladies’ rings. If ever she makes a mistake in a pen drawing, she scrapes off the ink with a razor blade, and then she uses the diamond to polish the paper so that any blemish is gone. She tells me that the diamond contains a story, millions of years old, about a tree. The tree lived and died, then rotted in a swamp, and compacted layers of rocks and hills and more trees were laid over it until it was turned to coal and then became, at last, a diamond in the caverns of the deep.

  Deep, deep down the dead things lie. Deep in the Devonian. The Devonian, as you may know, is a geologic period of the Paleozoic era. It was not billions and trillions of years ago (those kinds of numbers apply only to the stock market) but a mere four hundred million. It was an exciting time. Fish got legs. Seed-bearing plants multiplied and great forests began to cover the planet. Ammonites bobbed in their sedate curled shells and sharks (more plentiful than in the Silurian period or even the Ordovician) ruled their world. As they still do. As they ever will.

  Strips and stripes of colour, with dots and dashes and cross-hatching, mark the eras and periods of geologic time. I have open on the floor in Mother’s room The Atlas and Illustrated Dictionary of Geologic Eras; including Maps, Charts and Illustrations of the Most Interesting Fossils, Landforms &c. by Professor Robert Hastie, Oxford, 1919. I am quietly contented for hours on end, drawing and painting page after page of lines and patterns. They are the Cambrian, the Carboniferous, the Permian, Triassic, Jurassic and, of course, the Devonian.

  *

  Our little house, among the tree ferns at the foot of a mountain, was called Devon.

  ‘Devon is in England,’ Mother said. ‘It’s very beautiful there. There are rolling green hills and little farms and wonderful rich cream to have on scones.’

  I thought she meant all England; I thought it was a green land of afternoon t
eas, and the pictures I saw later, of bombed-out streets and bandaged children, puzzled me.

  Daddy died in England in 1940. It was a hero’s death, according to Aunt Emu. He was helping to dig people out of the rubble in a bomb-damaged shop when a wall collapsed. I hadn’t seen him for months when it happened, and I was upset that I couldn’t make his face come into my mind except as the publicity photograph on the back of his books. But I could hear his voice, and that was a kind of comfort.

  Daddy was a great talker. I suppose you could say he liked the sound of his own voice, but, then, we liked it too. He could have been on the stage, Mother used to say, or in Parliament. Once or twice, Mother kept me up late to listen to him give a talk on the wireless, but he never sounded like the Daddy I knew.

  In winter, when we were all together around the fire in the living room, he used to read to us or, even better, recite. I liked the border ballads best, for his Scots accent would thicken by the syllable, making me giggle at first, and then cry. I loved ‘Young Lochinvar’, but my favourite was always ‘Sir Patrick Spens’.

  O forty miles off Aberdour,

  ’Tis fifty fathoms deep,

  An’ there lies gude Sir Patrick Spens,

  Wi’ the Scots lords at his feet.

  Daddy was Malcolm ‘Mac’ Adair and his weekly column was syndicated in papers all over the country. You’ve probably never heard of him, for his day is gone, gone, gone, like the newspapers and magazines he wrote for, all blown away or burned or put on the bare boards under linoleum. He was in London as a correspondent when he died, but before that, all through the thirties, collections of his columns and essays were published by Georgian House with titles like What Was the Question? and Forays and Where I Trod. The photograph on the back cover was never changed. At first it looked older than he did, stiff, moustached and serious, and then he grew like that to match. I used to find his books, dusty and unwanted, at throw-out prices in second-hand bookshops, the same bookshops that had my mother’s Betty Browns in precious glass cases behind the counter.

  Betty Brown. That was what Mother was doing with her unicorn-hair brushes and her diamond. Mother wrote and illustrated fifteen books. There was Betty Brown and the Bunnies, Betty Brown at the Beach, Betty Brown on the Farm – you get the idea. Would you believe that a Betty Brown and the Pixies in mint condition fetched a record two and a half thousand dollars at Christie’s a few years ago?