by JH Fletcher
It came in many forms. The most extreme example would have landed him in deep grief had he been caught. He had come across a big boy, a notorious bully, attacking a little kid with a stick. Cal, fourteen now and strong for his years, had had a bad day. Told the bully to stop and got a mouthful for his trouble. There was a sack washed up on the beach. He stuffed the boy in it, tied a knot, left him for a couple of hours to think about things. When he let him out, he told him he’d kill him if he breathed a word or tried his nonsense ever again. Said much the same to the victim.
It was only later that it occurred to him that he might easily have killed the boy, anyway. The word got out, as it always does, but vaguely, a rumour that was never brought home to Cal. The bully’s father, a bully himself, threatened mayhem but, scared of Mick Jessop, did nothing.
A week later a master got hold of Cal. In his hand one of Cal’s caricatures, a lady teacher looking like a spaniel, with pouting breasts.
‘I never seen it in my life,’ said Cal.
The master smiled. ‘Every time I get hold of one, I put it in a file. I’ve quite a collection by now. I expect them to make me a packet, one of these days.’
It had never occurred to Cal that his drawings might be worth anything.
‘You have talent,’ the master said. ‘It won’t do you any good unless you work at it. But I’m hoping you may find it more rewarding than tying kids up in sacks.’
Cal gave him his blank look.
‘Try it. There are books in the school library. Have a look, why don’t you?’
And left him to think about it.
Cocky Cal did nothing for a while. Then, one day when there was no-one about, slid into the library and had a look at what was on offer.
So it went. The more he read, the more he practised, the stronger grew the urge. Until everyone, even himself, accepted that he really was an artist.
Years later, the Art Club exhibition, the meetings with Dave Holt and Angela Scales.
‘Trouble with you,’ Angela said, ‘you’re illiterate.’
It was true that he had never bothered much at school and a fishing boat was no place for catching up. Not that he was about to admit it to this pushy lady.
‘I’m a fisherman,’ he told her defiantly. ‘I know all I need to get by.’
‘You’re an artist.’ Her tone slapped him down. ‘Or could be, if you took the trouble.’
How he longed to believe her. But reality said bullshit.
‘You telling me I need to go back to school?’
‘At least do a TAFE course. Learn something about design.’
He dismissed it; thought about it; did it.
That was the next stage, he thought now. Doing it had triggered a response, not only to the visual arts, but to education generally. He found that the chore of study, that he had detested so much at school, was a chore no longer.
He had learnt and, as he learnt, he thought. It made a difference. Angela got him into the Adelaide School of Art. He absorbed what it had to teach him, moved on. Then came the success of ‘Coastal Sequence’.
He could truthfully say that it had never gone to his head. He knew what he had put into it, how much further he had to go; he had no plans to be a prima donna.
He had an up and a downer with Mick, told him to stuff the fishing. He got hold of a tutor to give him the rudiments of French, found he had an aptitude, knew enough to get by when he went off to Paris.
Paris, he thought, let me think about Paris. Because Paris had been much more than Gianetta’s death. It had been his first real city but, more important even than that, had shown him the possibilities of life.
To begin with, he had been conscious only of how much it differed from anywhere he had known before.
The smell of French cigarettes was one of the first things he had noticed. Early morning cafes pungent with the fumes of Gitanes and Gauloises. A plunger of coffee, strong and black, on a zinc counter, while about him jostled the sturdy shoulders of morose, blue-shirted men.
From the first he had preferred working men’s cafes to the places where students hung out. The men were not friendly, more than ready to turn their backs on someone so evidently a foreigner, but there was a sense of reality about them that the others lacked. He had come a long way from the day Angela had called him illiterate, but was still more comfortable with people who talked racing and football than with those whose idea of a breakfast conversation was Rimbaud and Verlaine. Even though they did not know it, these were his type of people. Back home they’d have been fishermen, too.
For weeks he crisscrossed the city on foot. Not only the obvious places like Montmartre and the Eiffel Tower. He poked his nose everywhere, from Boulevard Haussmann to cité Falguière, where Edith Piaf had been born.
Even then he felt more at home on the streets than in the museums although, conscientiously, he paid his dues there as well. Jeu de Paume, Museé de l’Orangerie, Niarkos Collection, the Louvre …
The river at night, the lights of bridges reflecting in the dark water. Bookshops and fruit markets, with the spire of Notre Dame soaring overhead.
With friends, idling away Saturday mornings at pavement cafes, drinking red wine when they could afford it, Perrier Citron when they could not.
And everywhere the clatter of French, pervasive as the traffic, the suicidal, maniacal drivers of the Place de la Concorde.
A whore, once; a couple of fellow students; Gianetta at a party. Both of them giving each other the eye until he went across and took her out of there.
Gianetta, he thought, and now Kathryn. I loved Gianetta truly, but she is the past now. Whereas Kathryn … What a future we shall have! All I have to do is get out of here alive.
For the rest of the day he stayed put. Twice he thought Hennie was dead; twice his breathing, momentarily interrupted, resumed its hoarse, spastic snore. When the sun went down, he swallowed a miserly mouthful of water. The bottle was less than half full now, and they had seen no sign of water since the waterhole two days ago.
He was weak himself, the landscape blurred by more than the gathering darkness. He had heard no planes today; probably they’d been written off, another two adventurers swallowed by the immensity. I hope Kathryn has not written me off, he thought. Not yet.
I am coming … He wanted to shout the words loud enough for her to hear them, believed that somehow she would hear them, anyway.
Going barmy, he told himself, but did not believe it. Kathryn, the link he had with Kathryn, the faith and hope and trust he had in Kathryn, his love for Kathryn, would bring him home.
It grew dark and cold. Still Hennie snored intermittently; still Cal waited.
If he never comes to, I’ll have wasted a whole day. It might make the difference between survival and death.
Yet waited, still. A superstition hovered in the darkness. If I abandon him, I, too, shall die.
Dave Holt prevailed upon Kathryn to go with him to a get-together: one or two artists, one or two dozen hangers-on. Dave was flying to Europe the next day, so this would be his last opportunity for a while, and he did not want to miss it. Dave was a great one for parties; they provided the oxygen that fuelled his precious eccentricities.
‘Go ahead,’ Kathryn said. ‘Don’t mind me.’
‘I wouldn’t think of it.’
Kathryn had thought she would refuse but, when it came to the point, could not bear the thought of another night of anxiety and dread, chewing her fingernails in darkness. So she let him talk her into it; later wished she had not.
She knew no-one and no-one knew her or, blatantly, wished to do so. Braying laughter slapped the air, the cacophonous clatter of asinine voices. The large-roomed house was an enclosure in which the party-goers guzzled and munched. Beyond the walls lay worlds unknown to them and, therefore, not worth knowing; a calculated indifference to strangers who, by definition, could not be relevant.
On the walls hung reproductions of Australian art produced by artists — some a hundr
ed and fifty years before, some many centuries before that — who had stretched their world by celebrating visions that their mind and eye had seen, visions that these people, tonight, sought to banish through contempt. Because disregard of the new, the unknown, the incorrect, screeched contempt.
Kathryn’s only consolation was knowing that such attitudes were destined to failure. The inevitability of change was undeniable, even as it was denied.
She stood in a corner of the room, an untasted drink in her hand, and watched the zoo. Beyond the imprisoning walls lay the desert, the sea exploding in smoking pillars stitched with rainbow glints.
She remembered what Dave had said to her the previous day, when they had been in Cal’s studio together and she had stared in perplexity at the profusion of canvasses.
‘Has he done all these paintings since he got back from Paris?’
‘Plus the ones he sent to New York.’
‘He must never stop.’
‘All successful artists have the same problem,’ Dave said. ‘They keep on and on, either out of habit or because they need the money. The biggest names have to work the hardest to keep up their reputation, even though they’ll tell you they don’t care about that. The irony is they know the importance of spiritual solitude, yet never have time for it. Society forces them to become entertainers. There is no space left for dreams. The bravest ones make their own space. That’s why Cal has gone. He tells himself it’s to discover the Outback and, in one sense, he’s right. But his real reason is to find himself.’
‘And when he has found himself, will he be changed?’ Kathryn asked. How much she wished that this would not be so.
‘Probably. All true artists have to change, constantly. They have no choice.’
She picked out one of the paintings, a rectangle of black set against a white ground.
‘I like this …’
Dave looked at it with her. ‘It reminds me a little of a painting by Mondrian, a silhouette merging into darkness. But I suspect this could be beyond Mondrian. Sometimes I think Cal has the potential to go beyond all the artists who have preceded him. He has to, of course, if he is to discover the new worlds he’s looking for.’
What about me? Kathryn wanted to ask, like a child. Where do I fit into all this? But could not.
Instead said, ‘I love him.’
Dave studied her gravely. ‘I hope I haven’t injured you by bringing the two of you together.’
‘Never.’ She was resolute in her denial. ‘Even if nothing comes of it, if he never comes back, or worse, if he comes back and doesn’t want me, I shall never regret what has happened. Even,’ smiling ruefully, ‘what has not happened. Because he’s given me a vision of how my life should be. Enlightenment …’ Again the smile. ‘Isn’t that what the Buddhists are supposed to look for? Well, I’ve found it. You are the reason it happened, and I shall never be able to thank you enough.’
Brave talk; yet now, watching the milling herd, she asked herself what she would do if Cal had indeed changed and no longer wanted her. What would she do then?
After returning from the party, Kathryn lay on the bed in her room at her uncle’s house. She thought:
He is alive, still. He cannot survive much longer, but I know that, if he dies, I shall be with him, as I am with him now. In this life, or another life. This time, or another time. Past, future, present. All one. I am with him and shall be, forever. He is my love and I, in the infinite complexities of the universe, am his. He comes at night into my room. From the mouths of ewes, the slink eyes of foxes, the artist who, even in the face of death, has contrived a universe. He has gone to a distant place, has taken me with him. Now, if he has to go on, I shall go with him, also. It is inevitable, because I am his. I am his. Even into the flame and ecstasy of stone.
FIFTEEN
Some time before dawn, Hennie awoke.
‘Cal.’
‘I’m here.’
The pilot relaxed, panting.
‘How you feeling?’
‘Okay. The pain’s gone.’
‘Soon have you up and running.’
‘Right.’
‘The Gammon Stakes. Don’t forget; my money’s on you.’
Silence drifted; Hennie’s hand, cold and damp, clasped in his own.
Out of nowhere, Hennie said, ‘Say hi to Stella for me.’
Even now Cal would not admit what they both knew. ‘Say it yourself.’
‘I know,’ Hennie said presently.
A flicker in the mind, the gut. ‘Know?’
‘About you and Stella. I’ve known for months.’
Silence, then.
At last Cal said, ‘How’d you find out?’
‘There’s always a friend. Can’t wait to tell you, some of these okies.’ Silence as, painfully, he breathed. ‘Couldn’t expect much else, I suppose, the way things were. If it hadn’t been you, it’d have been someone else.’
A breath of air came coldly out of the north. To the east, beyond the ridge that still remained to be climbed, was the first faint lightening of the sky. The idea of the ridge, still waiting, reminded Cal what had happened when he had been up there a day and a half ago.
‘There’s something wrong with the compass,’ he said. ‘We’re heading too much to the east.’
‘The compass is okay.’ The effort of speaking echoed painfully in a voice so faint Cal could barely hear it. ‘There’s magnetite in the rocks. It throws the needle out. I should have warned you.’
‘How do you allow for it?’
‘Easy. First thing in the morning, get a fix on the sun. That’s east, near enough. Ninety degrees. All you got to do is take the bearing and adjust for the difference. Don’t forget to allow for the variation.’
‘You’ll be able to show me how to do it.’
‘When I first heard about you and Stella, I was mad as a snake,’ Hennie said. A croaking gasp as he tried to laugh. ‘Don’t seem to matter much, now.’
Again silence.
‘Say hi to her for me,’ he said again.
‘Sure.’
The light grew stronger, diluting the darkness. Hennie sighed once. Was dead.
‘Hennie?’
Too late.
It was impossible to bury him on the rock shelf.
Cal took Hennie’s shirt and put it on. Also took his water bottle and emptied the contents carefully into his own. There wasn’t much, but even a drop was worth saving. He tidied the body as best he could, wondered whether to say anything. Decided against it, in the end. What was there to say, after all?
He turned again to the ridge, still half-hidden in the darkness, and began to climb.
The fifth day. Dave had left; Kathryn had run him to the airport. When she got back she went for a walk, going nowhere. She had been to all the places, had felt Cal in her bones and blood. There was nothing else she could do. Or perhaps one thing, a gesture to challenge fate.
The wind was strong. Along the cliff top the grasses streamed like hair. Her own hair was tugged by its cool fingers while the surf grenades exploded upon the rocks. She found her way down to the water’s edge, walked in the iodine aroma of seaweed and damp sand. She clambered onto the black and glass-slick rocks. She picked her way, precariously, to the outer limit of the shelf upon which the seas were breaking. She stood upon the edge, enduring the pounding fist of the seas as again and again they broke over her. It was dangerous, foolhardy, but she did not move. If she permitted herself to endure the frenzy of the waves, if she suffered, Cal would be safe. Alone upon the slippery black rock, she faced the ice-cold spray, the breath-thieving buffeting of water and wind.
Later, drenched through, she went back to the house. Where visitors awaited her.
‘We came to see how you were going …’
Marge all smiles, eager to commiserate over what Kathryn was determined had not yet happened. Behind her, Charles stood uncomfortably.
‘I’m good.’
But her mother was already exclaiming over the
state of her clothes.
‘Kathryn, you’re soaked!’
‘It’s nothing. Spray.’
‘But you’re drenched. You have been in the sea,’ she accused this daughter, of whom all things were possible.
‘I am fine.’
The words neatly spaced, with gaps between them. She could have screamed them in Marge’s face, but took a succession of measured breaths and did not. Even managed to smile at Charles.
‘How you going?’
Charles was clearly unhappy at being brought here, like a load of washing. Or a husband-in-waiting. Their last meeting breathed.
‘There is no news?’
She managed a smile. ‘I would be the last to hear. No-one even knows I exist.’
Apparently this was true no longer.
Her mother said, ‘There was a mention in the paper …’ Which obviously had not pleased her. ‘It said there were two women by the coast waiting for news. The other is apparently the pilot’s wife.’
‘Stella. They must have got it from her.’
‘They called you a friend. It made you sound like —’
‘A lover?’ Kathryn, who had been both lover and non-lover, did not know whether to cry or laugh. But this, Marge was not prepared to say.
‘I have come to bring you home,’ she proclaimed. ‘You need your family around you.’
‘I shall go and change,’ Kathryn said. ‘You will stay for lunch?’
She did so, deliberately choosing the brightest of the few things she had brought with her: a plain white skirt, a blouse of red and blue and golden flowers.
She saw that her mother had expected something more sombre, to suit the occasion. Kathryn smiled, said, ‘When Cal gets back, we plan to go sailing. I’d better be here when he arrives, or he may decide to go without me.’ And laughed, quite merrily, at such a ludicrous idea.
Charles did not know where to put feet or hands.
Kathryn gave them a stew of scallops and prawns, leftovers from the meal she had cooked the previous day as Dave’s farewell treat. At the time she had forced herself to do it, to focus her mind at least for an hour or two on something other than Cal, and now was glad. Although her mother expressed surprise that Kathryn should make herself so free with the kitchen of someone else’s house.