Connections

by Robert Nicholls

  That day he looked at the fence with nearly clear eyes for the first time in years. And when the dog had been retrieved, the child sent away, he was left with a mild sense of disquiet. In his working years, he assured himself, things had not gotten away on him like that! Dogs should not go through fences!

  “A little fence with no ambition,” he mumbled in vexation. “I didn’t build you to have you fall under me!”

  * * *

  Next morning, the children slowed in their passage, cocking their ears to the slow scritch-scratch of sandpaper on metal. What is the old goat doing now, they whispered. The sun has cooked his noodle at last! They skipped along, looking over their shoulders but, as always, the old man’s eyes stayed hidden under the brim of his hat. His hands moved slowly, begrudgingly, like divers, far beneath a sea.

  That day and several more passed ploddingly, as had some hundreds of others that had closed around old Billy, like a sly fog, becalming and distracting him. But by week’s end the fence, at least, had begun to shrug off its lassitude. Mesh had been hitched up, like loose trousers, and secured into place. Weeds that had twined and curled themselves into the metal fabric had been prised away and rooted out. The posts and rails had taken on a dull but earnest sheen. It was a fence of some integrity again. The old man surveyed his work and thought: Now, at least you are an honest fence – one that the dogs will respect. He put away his tools and placed his arms once more atop the rails.

  * * *

  “Why doncha paint it?” called a child from the safety of her afternoon group. “Paint it yella, like the sun!”

  The other children first gasped at their member’s temerity then:

  “Nah! Paint it purple, like that bougainvillea!”

  “. . . blue, like the sky!”

  “. . . red, like Marcie’s cheeks!”

  “. . . green, like Jamie’s jumper!”

  They paused barely a moment, then swept on, laughing loudly, embarrassed by the old man’s puzzled frown. Funny old goat, they sang from the comfort of distance. He don’t understand English!

  But he did understand. And the grey little man raised his eyes just far enough to see the shadows on the ground, reaching toward him, even as the children carried them away. A faint breeze seemed to stir around him, to touch him, and he muttered to it vaguely, “Righteo! I will!”

  * * *

  The very next day the yellow began, along the rails and posts. And it wasn’t a thin, dead-grass sort of yellow, either. It was an enamelled brilliance of yellow, like butter on new corn, or phosphorescent moon-glow on a night sea; so shining and rich and creamy that passers-by swivelled their eyes and glanced over their shoulders. Whoa, they thought! There’s a fence you couldn’t miss!

  Perhaps it was in that shine, that radiance, that effulgence of colour that Billy’s mopish lamentation for times past began also to pass. In any case, not only did the pungent smell of the paint and sweep of the brush hold his attention all through the long day, but actual plans seemed to sink in and out of his mind, as quick as sea sprites.

  In the afternoon the group of children slowed to assess the work, yielding to a new, if skittish sense of familiarity.

  “You gonna sell your house, Mister?” called one.

  Such voices never surprised Billy; even when he was alone, they were always with him and, as always, he answered this one without looking up.

  “Nope,” he said. “Not sellin’ the house.”

  “You sure doin’ some work on that fence, Mister. We thought you might be fixin’ to move.”

  Straightening and stretching his old limbs, Billy sighted along the rails. He was surprised himself at the warm sunrise glow that seemed to percolate through his eyes.

  “Nope,” he repeated, this time through the faint inkling of a smile. “I guess I’m fixin’ to stay!”

  The shadows on the ground lay long and still for fully a minute or two before being dragged away.

  * * *

  The yellow took two days to finish and the fence seemed strangely to grow under it. On the third day, the old man, resting in his house, watched in fascination as a boy, dared to courage by his mates, raced across the road to touch it.

  “It’s dry!” he shouted. “Hard as a rock!” And he scurried back.

  Billy smiled to himself. Such excitement! Over a colour! He squinted hard to see their bright faces, but they were too far off.

  From then, Billy worked daily on that fence and every day it became bolder, more boastful, more demanding of attention. First the middle metre of each rail turned a velvety purple, as deep and alluring as a split in the sky. Then wide bracelets of red, green and blue appeared. The capping pieces on the posts became pink, one day, like metallic carnations, and stripes began to appear on the mesh, so faintly that they could only be seen from the corner of the eye. It was a hilarity of colour, a carnival of colour, a regular hurrah, loud and solid and clear.

  And as the fence changed day by day, so the shadows that had flitted for so long beyond the edges of the old man’s vision began to tarry, to become more tangible. Some of the townspeople, of course, tapped their heads and smiled knowingly; but not the children. For them the fence became an article of amazement, a grand mystery of design. It became a Notorious Fence. When at last they crossed the road in twos and threes to learn at closer hand what plan the old man had, it was as though they’d always been there, their curious voices creeping out of the air on cat’s feet.

  “Why you paintin’ that fence like that, Mister?”

  From habit, Billy scarcely glanced up.

  “Why? Because this fence has a job to do matey! An important job to do. That’s why. And I don’t want it to forget, see? This here paint is just a little reminder that it ain’t quittin’ time yet!”

  “Looks very nice, we reckon. Is it nearly finished?”

  The old man straightened slowly and ran his eye, for the hundredth time, across the burgeoning array of colours. He scraped at his bristled chin and pushed his hat back to show a pale streak of forehead.

  “Finished? Well, I can’t say for sure! Might be close, I s’pose. Just seems to need a little somethin’ or other more, don’ it? Here an’ there?”

  “Wouldn’ be room for much more, would there?” they asked. “She’s pretty near full!”

  “Ooooh no!” Billy wagged his head decisively. “It’s not fullness we’re after! Not at all! No sir! Well, I guess a thing can be full to the brim – full to over-flowin’ even, can’t it – an’ still not be right? No sir! I do reckon this fence just definitely needs a little somethin’ more!”

  He turned to the group of children then – a dozen or more, grouped and staring like a school of curious fish. And very nearly, he felt, he had moved too quickly; his amazement was too obvious. They seemed to vibrate a quarter of a step away from him. The wide clarity of their eyes had caught him unprepared; the tension, the newness, the smoothness of their presence nearly overwhelmed him so that he reached out to the fence for support. He gaped at them for a brief second before turning away, hearing in his mind a distant echo of their shuffle and laughter as they ran away. But this time, they did not go.

  “What job’s this fence got to do, Mister?”

  Billy heard but his mind seemed once again wildly out of focus, like a gyroscope suddenly broken free from a prison of rust. A remembrance of credulity and innocence, of trust in things wonderful, was roaring through his chest like a high wind, testing out the strength of an old mast. And at that moment, as at all moments, the world was renewing itself in the glow of cheeks and blue and black of eyes and the gold of anticipation.

  “Well now! Fact is, fences can do heaps of jobs, see? They can keep things in, for one. And they can keep things out! And they can keep you from spillin’ over into places you’d be better stayin’ out of! This fence is doin’ all those jobs, see? A very responsible fence, this one!”

  “So how you gonna know when it’s finished?”

  “Aaah!” Billy could f
eel the blood hammering out to his very finger tips. “It ain’t always easy to know, is it, when a thing’s finished? No sir! I guess some things might seem finished when there’s still heaps you could do. An’ I guess there’s some things just never seem finished at all! But I reckon one day this ol’ fence just gonna whisper to me an’ say, ‘Finish off what you’re doin’ there, Billy, an’ that’ll be enough’.”

  “Fences can’t talk, Mister!”

  “Can’t talk? Who told you that?” Suddenly, the joke and the joy were all Billy’s. “Why, everything talks to people who know how to listen! An’ I can prove it! Here!” he demanded of one. “You take this little paint brush here an’ put it in your hand. Hold it like you was gonna paint somethin’. Go on! Wiggle it ‘round a bit, like. How’s it feel, orright?”

  “Okay, I guess!”

  “Good! It ain’ sayin’ nothin’ to you is it?”

  “Nope!”

  “Okay, ‘cause sometimes I find that little ‘un gets to natterin’ so much you can’t hear yourself think. Now look. I’m jus’ gonna pop the lids on these little can’s o’ pain, here. You take yourself a minute to study on these colours. Okay?”

  “Okay.”

  “What you reckon? That paint sayin’ anythin’ to you?”

  “Nope.”

  “That brush sayin’ anythin’ to you?”

  “Nope.”

  “Righteo. Here’s a harder one. You reckon there’s anythin’ goin’ on between that brush an’ any o’ those colours? You try real hard, before you answer, to feel if that brush’d just like to dip in any o’ those colours and paint a little somethin’. If it wants to, you just help it right along.”

  “But what if it messes up your work?”

  The old man pushed his hat back and wiped at his forehead. The air seemed so clear. It was as though a fog had rolled away to reveal a sparkling new sea. He felt like an explorer.

  “I think we’re gonna have to risk it,” he said. “I think we’re gonna have to sail right into it and see what that little brush has to say.”

  The boy fidgeted reluctantly but Billy’s eyes were clear and full on him.

  “She’ll be right, matey. It can’t stay the way it is, anyhow. Take my word. If things ain’t goin’ ahead, they’re goin’ back. Ahead’s the better way.”

  And so the first child painted. In the following days and weeks the children stopped, sometimes in twos and threes, sometimes a dozen or more. They would listen to the concourse between brush and paint and they would argue good-naturedly over what should next be done with the fence. And they would talk with the old man.

  He would sit on the grass and listen to them, sometimes offering advice, sometimes requesting that a particular pattern be repeated, sometimes even dozing. And always he was fascinated by the joy and anticipation that emanated from them. The world held magic for them because their focus was always ahead, on the unknown. He was, in the rawest sense, rejuvenated by their presence.

  By purest good luck the Notorious Fence was finished the very week that school holidays began. It had become a yard-sized kaleidoscope of stripes and circles and arabesques and pin-lines that dove in and out of the sun. It was never the same from one moment to the next, from one light to the next. Passers-by invariably smiled and pointed and mentioned to the next person they saw, “Have you seen the old man’s fence today?” It was truly Notorious and it was wonderful. And it was finished. And the children drifted off to holidays.

  Old Billy folded his arms atop his and the children’s creation and he looked beyond, to the grey curbing, to the quiet street. He looked to left and right and scratched beneath his chin. The years mumbled within him, like planks in the hull of an old ship, settling out the stresses.

  “Well,” he said aloud. “That’ll never do!”

  With a heavy brush and half a dozen little pots of paint, he moved outside the fence. He knelt at the curb and began to brush away the dust.

  “Altogether too grey,” he smiled, and already his mind had leapt ahead into rainbow pleasure of anticipation. He was an old man under full sail, still striving.

  Shadow Play

  Adrienne had it all blocked in before Dennis glimpsed the power of the quilt. He’d scrutinized the initial concept and overseen the selection of fabrics and, weeks ago, lost interest. It would be a representation of his sculptor’s studio, he knew. But he hadn’t counted on this!

  His passing glance called up a second glance which stretched into painful minutes of disbelief. It wasn’t the column of honeyed sunlight that unnerved him. Nor was it the stump pedestal with his last, unfinished sculpture, standing to the right of centre. It was the skein of lurking shadows that leered out of the background, making his work place look like a room under siege.

  “They’re alive!” he stammered, looking over her shoulder. “The shadows! They’re alive!”

  Adrienne’s laughter was sharp and appreciative.

  “You’ve no idea the trouble I had, getting them from ‘down there’ to ‘up here’. And then pinning them in place! They didn’t like that!”

  * * *

  ‘Down there’ was Dennis’s studio. Out amongst the trees on the hillside, separate from the house where Adrienne worked, it sat like a dreaming head. Once it had been an inspirational place for Dennis to work and for others to visit. A place of angles and blocks, multi-hued slabs of marble and granite, log pillars, weathered flitches of wood, clamps, grinders, mallets and winches. Photos, drawings and half carved forms had filled every corner and, in the centre, beneath the skylight, the sun had poured down all day.

  When he used to work, Dennis would swing through that pillar of light, coaxing form out of wood or stone – hammering, filing, sanding, polishing, stroking and, when company came, expounding, demonstrating, laughing and always creating. It had been a place where mercurial sprites boiled endlessly up out of the dust. But no more.

  “I’m tired.”

  That’s what he’d said when she found him sitting listlessly in a dim corner with the dust clouds mewling about his feet.

  “My arms! It’s like they’re anchored to my sides. And worse, I can’t seem to find a line! Can’t decide how to go ahead! It’s like the figure is fighting me!”

  The figure that had been on the block for months was a depiction of a woman kneeling, plucking serenely at something in her lap – Adrienne, captured at her work, as concentrative as Penelope, weaving for love of Ulysses. It should have been simple, he knew her shape so well.

  * * *

  “What do you mean, “they didn’t like it’? The shadows didn’t like it?”

  “No, not a bit! Except for this one! Can you see this, down in the corner? Just the suggestion of a face, peering out of the darkness? Now that’s not one I planned. It just kind of appeared! Like it was a thing all of its own, there, waiting for me! What do you think of that?”

  “I don’t know!” he stammered, thinking more of his own burgeoning weariness; as though half his own warp and woof were gone. “I don’t know what to make of any of it! You’ve never done anything as . . . powerful as this before!”

  “No. It’s eluded me for so long. I’m glad you see it, though!”

  * * *

  As artists, they’d always been mutually supportive, playfully competitive in their endeavours. But since she’d known him, Dennis had been the innovator: a seething basket of concerns; a loud challenger; a push-me-pull-you man; an ego on legs. What he did, he did wonderfully well: what she did required his approval.

  In previous months, though, his creative rhythms had begun to falter. And lately, when he looked for himself in the mirror, he saw only a desiccated, half-transparent stranger looking back at him. When he listened for himself, he heard only a whispery sound, as though his head was stuffed with hay. He’d become reluctant to speak because, even to himself, his words seemed no more than a hubbub of mice. He was becoming, he feared, like the man on the stair who wasn’t really there.

  Then th
e mice in his mind cleared their throats and planted a vaguely disquieting intuition there. There were changes and subtle alterations happening in his world, they squeaked; just beyond his ken; things he needed to see. If only he cared enough to look.

  I care! My work is everything! Where should I look?

  Look in the quilt, they cried. See what she’s done? See what she knows?

  He found reasons, then, to spend increasing amounts of time near Adrienne, watching as she cut and stitched and restitched, coaxing her work closer to completion. In the quilt he saw that the work area of his studio remained awash – as it no longer seemed to be in reality – with light. A clear, vibrant light in which sculptures once grew like ferns in a rainforest.

  “Maybe that’s what’s happened!” he suggested hopefully. “The light’s changed! Have you noticed a change in the light?”

  “Yes,” she said. “The light is changeable these days. Just wait a bit, love. It’ll go the circle and come back.” Then she’d patted his huge, idle hands and gone humming back to her quilt; back to the picture she was holding in her mind of his studio.

  * * *

  Finally a day came when she cut and placed a tiny cloth man and the mice in Dennis’s head squealed in alarm. She’d formed her sculptor in such a way that he was half out of the light – half out of the work area. He was looking, in fact, not at the rough figure on the block but rather, directly out of the quilt, as though to see whoever was looking in. And the hands – those sculptor’s hands – hung like dead things at the cloth man’s sides, secured in place by Adrienne’s precise threads. Lilliputian bands, grappling him into stillness. Why has she done it? What does she mean?

  * * *

  And then, when Adrienne brushed at the work with her hand, sending a ripple racing across the fabric, in a hazy corner of his eye Dennis caught what seemed the slightest wave or nod; some infinitesimal gesture that was gone in the moment he saw it. He looked closer and, to his horror, the eyes of the cloth man actually caught his own – came roaring out at him like a high wind of appeal. As though it were alive.

  Dennis reeled back, clutching at his face, feeling the chalky coldness of skin beneath his fingers. A sense of foreboding exploded in his mind like a suffocating fume.