Autumn Laing

by Alex Miller

  ‘Well, young man,’ Sir Malcolm said, freeing his hands from the butcher’s paper and stepping away from the desk, leaving control of the drawings to Pat and lightly dusting off his fingers. ‘You’d better stop by Guy Cowper’s office on your way out and show these to him. I leave judgments about bursaries in his capable hands. He’s the finest this country has.’ He summoned a cold smile to his eyes and held out his hand. ‘Miss Barquist will show you where Mr Cowper has his office.’ Sir Malcolm moved to the door and held it open for him.

  Pat shook his hand and thanked him for his kindness in seeing him, then he tucked his untidy bundle of drawings under his arm, gripped the brim of his hat between two fingers and went out the door, which closed behind him with that curt little click he had noticed before, the brass lock evidently well aligned, his father would have been pleased to know, and sweetly oiled, thanks to a man doing the rounds with his long-nosed oilcan and a wad of cotton waste whipped from the back pocket of his green dungarees, making his periodic appearances in the executive suite after the boss and his bosomy pal had gone home. The invisible maintenance of things so dear to his dad’s heart. Was it where he was always going to belong himself? Pat wondered. Although he loved and respected his mother and father, and wished to retain their love and respect for himself and his way of life, he had a cold horror of becoming trapped in their class. Of being like them. As he left Sir Malcolm McFarlane’s office that day the piston in Pat’s head was thumping and he was longing for a smoke.

  When Pat stopped talking the only sound penetrating through the thick glass and stone of the building into the foyer was the squeal of a tram going past along Flinders Street.

  ‘What do you do with yourself all day here?’ He was looking over Helen Carlyon’s head at the agitated blue and grey field of the great Wyndham Lewis on the wall behind her. The painting now seemed to him forlorn and stripped of its power, displaced and not belonging here, pillaged from its rightful home on the other side of the world by Sir Malcolm’s foraging critic, the much-feared Guy Cowper. It came to Pat then that a work of art can only retain its full power in its own place. Looking at the picture he knew in himself a kinship of exile with it, a sense that each of them had been subjected to the same wilful coercion, the same peculiar cultural violence, of the men in command of things. Those who could command the pillaging. Displayed here in this silent foyer, Wyndham Lewis’s masterpiece had become a trophy merely of wealth and power, a rare and expensive object, like the Chinese celadon vase on the cover of Apollo, with which to augment the prestige of its owner, the great chairman of the board. Pat’s voice broke across the empty spaces of the foyer. ‘I’d go bloody starkers sitting here all day with that looking over my shoulder.’

  ‘I thought you liked it,’ Helen said gently. ‘And there’s no need to swear, Pat. You’re upset. Go on with what you were telling me. I’ve got plenty to do. Don’t you worry. The foyer is my kingdom.’ She giggled at this. ‘Go on! Tell me what the great Mr Guy Cowper said to you.’

  Pat looked down at her upturned face, her red lips parted just sufficiently to reveal her two front teeth, like a tiny new pair of glistening ballet shoes presented to him for his inspection. He could lean down and kiss them. He was confident he was the most interesting event in Helen Carlyon’s day, possibly in her entire week.

  ‘He was sitting at that big fancy French desk writing something,’ he said. ‘An article for Sir Malcolm’s newspaper, I suppose. Thinking up how he was going to rubbish some poor bugger’s paintings. He didn’t even look up when your mate Agatha showed me into his office. He just sat there with his head down and went on writing as if nothing had happened. I waited half a minute for him to say something. I was thinking what a rude bugger he was. I should have turned around and walked out of there, but I was still hoping he might like my drawings. So I said, Sir Malcolm said I was to see you, Mr Cowper. Well, he sort of paused and frowned at this, as if the sound of my voice irritated a sensitive nerve in his head. He laid down his pen, carefully lining it up with the edge of his blotter. You would have thought it was costing him a pound to do it. Then he took his time blotting the page, pressing it down evenly all over. When he’d done fussing around with this performance he stood up and came around his desk. He was still not acknowledging my presence in any way at all, no hello or how do you do or even a little smile of welcome. Not a thing. My drawings might have arrived on his desk by magic. Hello! I should have said. I’m here too, you know! He flicked through my drawings with a sneer on his face, a dreadfully distasteful chore for him, obviously, to be interrupted in the middle of his important work with this—his lips were twisting around as if he had his nose in a stinkpipe.’

  ‘His lips are too wide for his mouth,’ Helen said. ‘They’re all over the place. And did you notice how still his eyes are? They’re uncanny. The way he looks through you gives me the creeps. I feel like turning around to see if I’m standing behind myself.’

  ‘It took the mongrel about thirty seconds to make up his mind,’ Pat said. ‘You would have thought I’d insulted his mother. You’ve got no respect for art, Mr Doolan, he said. It’s Donlon, I told him. He went straight back and sat at his desk and picked up his pen and he examined it as if he thought it might have got contaminated and then he started writing again. Is that it then? I said, raising my voice. I was getting angry.’

  ‘I’ll bet you were.’

  ‘He did look up at me then. I know what you mean about his eyes making you feel like he’s looking at someone standing behind you. He barked back at me like a sergeant major, Learn to draw! Learn some respect for the craft! You’re untrained! I replied that I intended to do my own training. Then do it with your own money, he said. Not on Sir Malcolm’s charity. Now get out of here and take that rubbish with you. You’re a charlatan.’

  Helen put a hand to her mouth. ‘Did he really call you that? A charlatan? You’re not a charlatan, Pat. You’re definitely not that.’

  ‘I had to hold myself back from going around the desk and belting him one over the ear.’ But Cowper was right. Pat knew he was a charlatan. The man was right. The trained critic in him had seen it at once. It hadn’t taken Cowper more than a few seconds to sniff it out. He was only stating what Pat already knew about himself.

  ‘I’d have paid good money to have seen that,’ Helen said. ‘Someone needs to punch him. Which reminds me.’ She ducked down and opened the cupboard under the drawer in her desk and took out her handbag. She ferreted around among the numerous treasures in her bag and drew out a little blue leather purse with a gold butterfly clip. She clicked the purse open. ‘I owe you five bob.’

  ‘You don’t owe me anything at all,’ he said.

  ‘I pay my debts, Pat.’

  He looked at the two half-crowns in her palm. She was offering them up to him. ‘I won’t take your money,’ he said. It wasn’t his dad’s moral authority that was stopping him from taking her money. His dad would have said it was a fair bet with Helen and needed to be settled. It was his mother who was Pat’s guide in matters such as this, a woman for whom honesty was not degrees and opinions but was something as simple and clear as washing day. Pat was with her when she found a bag of banknotes on the footpath. He was twelve. She handed him the bag and told him to take it around to the police station. Which he did, with a weight of great reluctance on his soul that he could still feel a trace of lingering there now. He knew his mother had two shillings in her own purse for the shopping that day. ‘I’ll not take your money, Helen. You can hold it up as long as you like. I’m not taking it from you. It wasn’t a real bet.’ Why didn’t he tell her Cowper was right about him?

  ‘My word’s my word, Pat, joking or not.’ She looked him steadily in the eye with her own green-flecked eyes. ‘Take it!’

  Pat smiled. ‘You remind me of my mum.’ Wasn’t Helen just like what his mother was like when his dad first met her? In Luna Park, it was. His dad had told them the story a hundred times. It was his regular song after coming h
ome from drinking with his mates. Your mother and me first met one summer evening in Luna Park, didn’t we, darling? Clawing his way back into her good books after doing the housekeeping on the gee-gees and the beer. Pat loved his dad, he loved him passionately and was proud of him for all sorts of reasons. But he wasn’t going to be like him. He felt a sudden rush of fear that he might lose the honesty of his own eye, whatever that was to be, and he didn’t know yet the form it was to take, but knew it was the most precious thing he had. He knew too that if he were to hang around currying favour with the likes of Sir Malcolm and that slimy bastard Cowper he would be certain to lose any chance of his own way of seeing. And it wasn’t some romantic innocence he was talking about either. When he got his eye in, if he ever did, it would be something real as hell. He was sure of that much. An eye like the flaming tongue of Rimbaud. He could have wept for himself.

  ‘You’re away with the fairies there, Pat!’ Helen touched the sleeve of his jacket. She was holding up a business card to him. ‘He cares about artists like yourself. He cares more about art than anything. He stood here telling me all about himself after he came out of a terrible meeting with Mr Cowper. He and Mr Cowper had fierce words. I could hear them shouting at each other in the lift. I’ve never forgotten him. He was a man my father would have called a gentleman. I would have been happy to run away with him if he’d asked me to. He wasn’t at all like Mr Cowper, always wanting to be the centre of attention and haughty with everyone, letting me and Agatha know we’re only Sir Malcolm’s servants. Which makes me want to vomit over his shiny shoes. And he’s only working for Sir Malcolm himself. This man wasn’t at all like that. You’ll like him. I promise you. Here, take it. It’s the only help I can offer you. He was trying his best not to look like a lawyer, but I had him pegged for a lawyer the minute he walked through that door.’

  ‘You’re a bright girl, Helen.’ He took the card from her.

  ‘Don’t you patronise me now, Mr Pat Donlon.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s all right. I’m the forgiving kind.’

  ‘Do you have a boyfriend?’

  ‘I do. And I suppose you have a wife?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘Well, that’s that then, isn’t it? Good luck, Pat. Let me know how you get on.’

  ‘I will,’ he said. He put the card in his breast pocket and leaned down, intending to kiss her goodbye on her rose-scented hair, but she presented her cheek to his lips at the last minute. He straightened and put his hat on his head. ‘You’re a lovely girl, Helen.’

  ‘I’m a woman, Pat, not a girl any longer. It was nice meeting you. I hope you get what you want from life.’

  ‘Is your boyfriend good to you?’

  ‘Yes, he is. He’s a kind man. We’re going to be married.’

  He stood there, knowing he should leave, but reluctant to go.

  ‘There’s no chance of anything between us, Pat, if that’s what you’re hanging about for. You know that. Be off with you now. I’ll bet anything your wife’s a lovely woman.’

  ‘You’d win that one.’

  ‘I know I would. I have an instinct for people.’

  ‘You have.’ He smiled. ‘I don’t know why I’m standing here.’

  ‘Neither do I,’ she said. ‘Life’s a funny business, isn’t it?’

  ‘It is that.’

  8

  Arthur

  THE DOOR AT THE TOP OF THE SHORT FLIGHT OF WOODEN STAIRS was half open, a pale light filtering across the landing, dust flecks dreaming in a thin pall of aromatic cigarette smoke. The muffled sounds of the street outside. Pat looked again at the card Helen had given him: Arthur C. Laing—Laing, Carter & Playord, Barristers & Solicitors. He went up to the door and tapped with his fingernail on the frosted glass. There was no response. He put his head around the corner of the door. A man was sitting at a desk in the corner of a small cluttered office. He had his feet on the desk and was reading a book. In his free hand he held a cigarette close to his lips. He was taking little puffs from the cigarette, as if he was sipping a drink, his lips forming a fish mouth from which one perfect smoke ring followed another. A faint smile of deep interior pleasure enlivened the man’s handsome features. At his back a tall uncurtained window, its numerous panes of glass streaked with vertical deposits of grime, looked onto a nest of tram wires and the elaborate brick facade of a mock Gothic building on the far side of the street.

  Pat took his hat off and stepped into the doorway. A board groaned under his weight.

  The man looked up. ‘Ah, you’re here,’ he said. ‘I’m so sorry.’ He took his feet off the desk. ‘I didn’t hear you. Do come in, please!’ With a deeply perplexed look at the page he had been reading the man closed the book and set it aside. He stubbed out his cigarette in an ashtray that was already the mass grave of a dozen or so crushed butts. He brushed at his tie and shirt front then looked up. His dark hair was long and uncombed, falling about his ears in glossy waves. He was wearing a bright carmine and canary-yellow tie over a pale blue shirt. His jacket was silvery grey, an expensive sheen to the material—the gleam of a sylvan glade in moonlight. He pushed the hair back from his face. ‘Do forgive me.’

  Pat stood across the desk from him. ‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ he said. ‘You weren’t expecting me. Unless Helen phoned you and said I was coming? My name’s Pat Donlon.’

  The man leaned across the desk, offering his hand. ‘Arthur Laing.’ He smiled quickly. ‘Do excuse the mess in here. How can I help you? Sit down, won’t you. It’s a bit cramped there. Put that stuff on the floor. Can you fit yourself in?’

  The smell was a mixture of the dust peculiar to old books and ledgers that have not been opened for decades—not since Pat’s mother was a young woman like Helen Carlyon, no doubt—and the smell of the foreign cigarettes. There was something else that Pat could not identify. ‘Helen Carlyon gave me your card, Mr Laing.’

  ‘Helen?’

  ‘At the Herald offices in Flinders Street. She’s at the desk in the foyer.’ Pat made a wide sweep with his free arm, as if he would summon before them an image of Helen sitting at her desk in the tomblike silence of her kingdom, overlooked by Wyndham Lewis’s exiled masterpiece, her white teeth on point.

  ‘Ah, yes, Helen. Of course. I’m sorry, I thought you were referring to a client. I have a client whose name is Helen Carpentier. Or had, I should say. A distant cousin, so she told me, of the great French boxer Georges Carpentier. You don’t have an appointment, you say? That’s fine. I’m not busy, as you see. I was about to leave the office when this came.’ He tapped the book. ‘I couldn’t resist taking a peek.’ He looked up. ‘You’re in luck. I’ve missed my train.’

  ‘Helen said you’re supposed to be interested in art.’

  ‘Supposed to indeed, Mr Donlon. And are you an artist yourself?’ Arthur Laing sat down again. His gaze drifted over Pat’s rags and settled on the bundle under his arm.

  Arthur Laing’s dandyish appearance didn’t appeal to Pat at all. He decided the man was too full of himself to be of any use to him. He was tired and fed up with being dismissed by these superior types. A bolt of resentment flared through him at the lazy tone of Laing’s question, and a determination to reclaim his self-respect made his face flush. Helen had obviously been sucked in by this bloke’s grand manner and his smart looks. ‘Whatever you or anyone else might think of me, Mr Laing,’ Pat said, his tone belligerent, challenging the other man to contradict him if he would, ‘I believe that’s what I am. An artist. Okay?’

  ‘Well, bravo, Mr Donlon,’ Arthur Laing said cheerfully. ‘And aren’t we defensive about it.’ He put his hand over his mouth and gave a soft laugh of amusement. ‘Please do sit down. I beg you. The world is full of misunderstood geniuses, Mr Donlon. I have met a great many of them. I do hope you’re not a member of that unhappy tribe. Won’t you please sit down? If you can fit yourself in there. Tell me, what is it you hope I can do for you?’

  An upright chair stood in t
he cramped space between the wall and the desk. There was a pile of files on it. Pat placed his bundle of drawings on the desk in front of him, shifted the papers onto the floor and sat down. He was glad to set the drawings aside.

  Arthur Laing picked up the book he had been reading and turned it, holding it up for Pat and waiting for him to read the title, which was embossed in gilt on the spine.

  Pat read, The Modern Movement in Art, R.H. Wilenski.

  Arthur Laing had a pixieish smile in his gentle grey eyes. ‘My credentials, Mr Donlon. Interested, that’s the word for what I am.’ He put the book down flat on the desk, leaving his hand on it, as if he was about to swear a solemn oath by the virtues of modernity. ‘Can I ask what you were doing at the Herald offices, apart from chatting to our friend Helen?’

  ‘I was seeing Sir Malcolm and his art critic mate, Guy Cowper.’

  ‘You had an interview with these men?’ Arthur Laing’s tone remained carefully without inflection but his eyebrows betrayed interest, and some incredulity. He picked up a blue packet of cigarettes and offered it across the table. ‘Not everyone likes these. But I’m an addict, I’m afraid. Nothing else tastes quite like a real cigarette once you’ve become accustomed to the bite of these little devils.’

  Pat reached over and gripped a cigarette between his thumb and forefinger, and slid it from the soft embrace of its packet, on which was displayed a blue dolce far niente of a gowned woman in an attitude of dreamlike dance among curling smoke. ‘I was asking them for money.’

  Arthur Laing laughed. ‘And how did Cowper respond to that? I’ll lay you odds Sir Malcolm wasn’t privy to that discussion?’

  ‘He threw me out of his office.’

  Arthur Laing grew serious. ‘Ah, yes. Guy Cowper is a difficult man to warm to. And is that why you’ve come to see me? To ask me for money?’

  Pat lit the cigarette and drew the smoke into his lungs, the sharp clutch of the darkly aromatic tobacco on the back of his throat making him catch his breath. He said huskily, ‘I thought you might buy these.’ He spread his fingers over Edith’s mac. ‘Fifty quid. It’s all I’ll need to get myself over to England and the Continent.’