A Change of Texture

by Paul Maxwell Taylor

  I left the room, walked in circles, killed time tidying what didn’t need to be tidied, wiped some benches, then, forty minutes later, returned to the lounge room. I propped myself on the couch, like a nervous theatre goer. I decided to focus on only one aspect, so I concentrated on the sea in the background. To my surprise, I realised that what I thought was blue was far more. Blue is primary colour, it’s basic, I thought I knew it, but the harder I looked the less I knew. There were shades, nuances, layers, suddenly the water moved, I was lost in its complexity. I breathed deeply, I must have been holding my breath, could I hear the sea, was that salt I tasted, why had I not noticed before, I was amazed. I was lost in it, my memory danced to Maxine, the two of us at Sorrento, eight years ago, we’d only been together six months. She’d called it a perfect holiday. I wiped away tears with the back of my hand. My sense of fulfilment had been replaced with confusion, my admiration replaced by loss. I still wasn’t ready to know the painting, and certainly not ready to decide where to hang it, so I placed it back in its bubble wrap. The painting had taken on a new scale, another dimension. I will go there again, look deeply again, but there was no hurry…I will do it, for her sake, I will, I have to believe that.

  CHAPTER 12

  ‘Shelagh; her name’s Shelagh,’ said Lawrence. He turned and nodded in her direction. ‘She just started in the legal department, evidently she’s quite a bright lady. And she looks all right, mate; go and chat to her.’

  ‘What…bloody hell, what do you think I am? Shit, I’m still trying to get over my loss, and you want me to go and chat up someone. Do you really think…?’ My jaw was clenched, and I felt my pulse racing.

  He took a step backwards as if he’d been pushed, his eyes blinking rapidly. ‘Oh, mate, sorry, I didn’t mean any disrespect. Oh shit, I wasn’t thinking… I wasn’t serious.’

  I turned away, looked at nothing, let my breathing return to normal. My temper subsided. I swigged my beer and, out of the corner of my eye, saw him sway as if lost in some imagined storm. I reached over and patted his arm. ‘It’s all right…just forget it.’

  We stood quietly, not looking at each other. I knew his capacity for self-loathing. I wanted to change the subject but he was struggling.

  ‘I’m so fucking sorry, Burko.’

  Despite it all, I grinned. ‘You know, I reckon you’re the only person who still calls me that. Burko – makes me feel like I’m still at school.’

  A grin edged onto the long face I knew well. I’d first met Lawrence at high school, where he didn’t fit the mould and didn’t try too hard to do so. We’d seen each other a few times after school, but then found ourselves working together at Lockham Logistics and our friendship grew. Lockham had been wonderful after Maxine’s death. The head of the personnel department, where I worked, said I had been a good employee for eight years, and they would pay me for a further four weeks on top of the leave that was owed to me and keep my job open for six months. I was grateful and intended to return to work. I was here because Lockham was moving into new premises and saying goodbye to the old, and Lawrence had talked me into it. I agreed because he had shown me much support and I knew he wanted me to go with him.

  I now felt bad that I had overreacted to his earlier comment. Sex was something I tried not to think about but I’d failed. When I first acknowledged it, I was disgusted with myself, cursed my male weakness. It was Maxine the person, her soul, that I missed, and that was absolute, categorical. I couldn’t picture myself with another woman, couldn’t imagine there would ever be an appropriate time. But simple physical pleasure seemed like it would be a good hiding place and celibacy was beyond my comprehension. I shook my head; it was time to think of something else.

  Lawrence headed off to the bar and I started to follow him, then heard a voice.

  ‘G’day, Carter. Good to see you, mate.’

  It was Graham, who worked in accounts. The walking chat was his trademark; he was like a postman who dropped mail in your letterbox with a wave and smile and cycled past. I wondered what worried Graham the most: having an enemy be too close or having a close friend.

  ‘You too, Graham, you look fit.’ I grinned, raised my glass. I watched him walk away and was sure he would look back: he did, with a furtive glance, then quickly turned away again. I somehow enjoyed thinking my stare might have embarrassed him.

  I turned back to look for Lawrence and found myself facing Shelagh. Each of us had just finished our last conversation, and there we were, in a place where common courtesy required introductions.

  ‘I’m Shelagh Murray; newly of the legal department.’

  ‘Carter Burke. Nice to meet you.’

  ‘I don’t think I’ve seen you around. Where in our noble organisation do you work?’

  ‘The personnel department but I’ve been on leave a while.’

  I was glad she didn’t ask why. Her face was attractive and strong, she held eye contact confidently, but her smile didn’t say, ‘Wow, I am happy to be here and chatting with this man.’ I reckoned my expression sang a similar song.

  She nodded in Lawrence’s direction. ‘He’s a nice man; doesn’t seem to have a nasty bone in his body.’

  ‘Yes, he’s been a great support to me when I’ve needed it the most.’

  She gave me a quick, seemingly curious, glance. ‘I notice everyone calls him Lawrence, but he seems a perfect candidate for Lorry.’

  ‘Yeah, I know what you mean, but there’s a good reason. Evidently, his mum loved the name Lawrence but hated Lorry, or Larry. She passed away when he was only fourteen; it was liver cancer. He was away from school for weeks and, on his first day back, he suddenly stood up in class and said, “Sir.” The teacher just stopped what he was doing and said, “Yes, Lawrence,” and then, really slowly, he asked everyone to call him Lawrence because it’s what his mum wanted. I remember it so well, the look in his eyes: it was sort of a mix of sadness and strength. The way he said it, I don’t know, somehow, we all knew we had to do it. Even the knuckleheads, the tough guys, they gave him a hard time, but they called him Lawrence. It was quite a moment, I’m not sure if I’m explaining it well.’

  She raised her eyebrows, ‘I think you’ve explained it well. I’ll not call him anything else.’

  ‘So, are you enjoying working here?’

  ‘Still working all that out,’ she said, in a way that stopped me asking more. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘Yes, I’ve found them good to work for.’

  ‘So, no plans to move on?’

  It seemed an unnecessary question. ‘Oh, I may resign and write my book; you know, the great Australian novel.’

  ‘Right.’ Her eyes offered polite interest. ‘So, how’s the great Australian novel going?’

  ‘A long way off being finished. I started full of enthusiasm, but things got in the way.’

  Thankfully, she did not ask what.

  ‘I may not be the next Tim Winton.’ I was pleased when she smiled.

  ‘Tim Winton may not be the next Tim Winton,’ she said. ‘I wanted to be the modern, female version of James Joyce. I had a plot built around a bright young female executive who wants to turn around the amorality of the corporate world, and gets to the top, only to fall into greed and self-loathing…then rationalises it all and manages to live with herself, a sort of corporate AntiChrist…and I was planning a tragic end. Anyway, it was all too hard, and after fifty pages, I decided I had nothing new to offer, and so that’s my writing career.’

  She was in another place. Her right hand moved in circles as she spoke and then turned into a wave, as if to say goodbye to the idea. It didn’t matter in that moment who she was talking to. Then, with a shake of her head and a self-conscious grin, she returned to the moment.

  ‘Have you ever had anything published?’ I asked.

  ‘One short story in a literary magazine two years ago. They even paid me fif
ty dollars.’ Her grin had become a smirk and she twirled her finger as if to say, ‘Big deal.’

  ‘Hey, that’s good, I’ve submitted short stories to competitions in the last few years and got nowhere.’

  Then she stopped talking, her body language changed. She looked at me through narrowed eyes,

  ‘Now I remember where I’ve seen you before. In a pharmacy, a few weeks ago. I remember you because you looked odd, confused. Do you remember, a chemist’s shop in...ah, Loncol Street, I think?’

  I don’t know how long I stood there as her words echoed around me. I didn’t like that question; it squeezed and itched, it made me uncomfortable. ‘So, it wasn’t my stunning good looks that caught your eye?’ The words were hardly out before I regretted them.

  ‘You don’t remember?’

  ‘I don’t think it was me.’

  Liar.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘maybe I’m wrong.’

  Then her attention was elsewhere. I wanted to rewind, to admit it was me, but how could I explain what I didn’t understand?

  ‘Nice to meet you, Carter. Please excuse me. I’ve just seen someone I must talk to.’

  Our eyes met in mid-air; they offered nothing genuine. Then she was gone, leaving me with my embarrassment. I exited self-consciously to the courtyard. It was nearly empty.

  ‘You all right, mate?’ It was Lawrence.

  ‘Yeah, fine.’

  ‘I see you met Shelagh.’

  ‘Totally by accident.’

  ‘She a good bird, and pretty smart too.’

  ‘Yes, she is, but I’m not sure she was impressed with me.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh nothing, mate. Just me being my usual dickhead self.’

  Lawrence was about to ask another question that I didn’t want to answer, so I grabbed his glass. ‘I’ll get us another beer.’

  Thirty minutes later, I headed for the mens and noticed Shelagh, who was saying goodbye to one of the secretaries. She turned and again we were face to face.

  I was surprised to hear myself saying, ‘Shelagh, I owe you an apology. I do remember that day at that chemist’s shop. I was…it wasn’t a good day for me. Something had just happened and life was a bit weird. I should have said so earlier, so, I’m sorry… I hope I didn’t offend you.’

  She looked at me blankly and said nothing.

  I turned, breathed deeply, swore quietly and walked quickly away.

  CHAPTER 13

  As I cleaned the house, I gave little thought to the previous day. In the past, the cleaning had been done by someone who only occasionally demanded my participation. I worked in the garden, did basic house maintenance and prepared my share of the meals, and we usually did the food shopping together. I didn’t enjoy housework, but I had to do it and didn’t let myself dwell on the idea that it was some form of penance. I couldn’t avoid a sense of obligation, and couldn’t bear to think how annoyed she would have been If I let the place go. So, the mop did a solo waltz across the lino; the vacuum cleaner was like some alien being that took my hand and led me to things it wanted to eat; the bed sheet was like a large white kite that flew away from the place it should be tucked in.

  Maxine and I had been comfortable in the house and now she was reflected in every angle of it. I applied myself to what the counsellor had called ‘intimate reflection’. She’d told me not to hide from memories. I had wondered whether there were places to hide and, besides alcohol, couldn’t think of any that suited.

  I felt like the director of a play when its season was over, reflecting on how it could have been better: I should have recast that part, or changed the scenery, or insisted the bloke playing the major role be more sympathetic. I found myself contemplating my partner’s life before I knew her. She spoke of her past as I did of mine; we were honest. I felt I should get closer to her mother, Gloria. Was it a sense of obligation or that I wanted to cling to what was? Maybe I should invite her over. She had never invited herself or dropped in unannounced and that’d been fine with me. She had knocked back a few invites and that had disappointed Maxine, but we generally visited her. She and Max often met for coffee at a local cafe and I was sure they talked about anything of consequence then.

  I had no doubt Gloria loved Maxine and that the feeling was reciprocated. The world was the place Gloria lived; she didn’t try to grasp and shake it, she simply moved through it, as if it was yet to explain itself. She wasn’t nasty or judgmental. I was her daughter’s partner but not legally. I now wondered if that mattered to Gloria. It didn’t to Maxine, she said more than once she didn’t see the need for marriage; commitment was its own obligation, she said. I now thought Gloria would have preferred that I made an ‘honest woman’ of her daughter. One evening, Stephanie had solemnly told us that Gloria had an aura that was ‘the colour of self-pity and we should try to help her’. She was adamant it emanated from the bad hand Gloria believed life had dealt her. Maxine just nodded tolerantly and let her tall friend do her thing but I felt Stephanie might be onto something.

  Gloria lived with her only other child, Virginia, who was four years younger than Maxine; the sisters didn’t seem close. Then there was Maxine’s stepfather, Richard, but Dick suited him more. His marriage to Maxine’s mother ended after four years, and he lived in Queensland with a Philippino lady, twenty years younger than him. I had met them twice. The first time was two years ago, when he visited Melbourne, we had them over for a meal. His lady introduced herself as Sue, but he called her Doll and told us to do the same. He drank a lot of beer and got louder as the night went on. Sue/Doll said very little and smiled at him incessantly with a smile that, by the end, had a tinge of sadness. I liked her more than him. The next time I saw Dick was at Maxine’s funeral. He hadn’t seen Maxine her for two years, I don’t think he’d contacted her in those two years, however he cried loudly in the church, hugged me twice, and told of his uncontrollable sorrow to all who would listen and many who didn’t want to.

  Gloria married Dick four years after Maxine’s father died from a heart attack, Maxine was only twelve. She told me how she loved her father, and cried as she described the confusion and sorrow that engulfed her when he died. She had decided her mother was so sad when she lost her first husband that she hoped a second one would cure her. It was obvious that Dick was a long way short of the first edition. Some sequels read badly.

  CHAPTER 14

  It was Saturday. I was in the lounge room, where the painting still sat on the sofa in its cloak of bubble wrap. Before second thoughts could change my resolve, I unwrapped it. Its presence, like last time was potent. I absorbed it for moment. We were becoming more familiar with each other, but it still frightened me. Curiously, the signature, was somehow the least personal, it was a third person, it offered no demons that I knew of. I decided to examine it, I found the magnifying glass in a drawer in the spare bedroom and was soon kneeling over the painting. However, it was impossible to see only the signature, under magnification the painting offered more than I had previously seen, this time it was not the colour that surprised, it was the depth. The thickness of the oil paint provided a new dimension to the work, there were changes of texture, and the surface seemed to rise and sink as I moved the magnifying glass. The colours were numerous and subtle, blending seamlessly. The first letter of the signature was an E; then there was an L. Maybe Eleanor? No, too many letters, and it wasn’t an R at the end; it was more likely to be Elaine. The second word started with either a T or an F, a T seemed the most likely, Tyron, maybe, or Tyson. Either way, I was sure I’d never heard of either Elaine Tyson or Elaine Tyron.

  As I typed Elaine Tyson into the search engine I wondered why I’d left this so long. If anyone had asked me, I would have told them I wasn’t ready, and they would have nodded solemnly – ‘Of course, I understand.’ But no one would have asked. As I read, I felt like a voyeur, as if I’d visited someone’s
house and glanced at their diary while they were out of the room. This made me curious, was it a sense of foreboding, was I scared I might find something I was unprepared for? I shook the question away, maybe it was for a more pensive moment. There were multiple entries.

  ‘Born in 1929 in North Sydney… died tragically in 1989…An outstanding and enigmatic personality, with a unique talent….warrants her place at the zenith of Australian artists….extremely versatile, produced stunning work as a landscape artist and as a portrait painter, influenced by surrealism….her love of art came from her artistic family, who migrated from Surrey in England, late in the 18th century….Elaine studied art at Sydney University but disagreed with the pervasive conservative views and dropped out…at nineteen, she started a longstanding affair with Charles Labourian, an English-born poet and author, and lived with him in France for three years, before returning alone to Melbourne in 1953. Later married Thomas Appleby, a businessman who was a patron of the arts, and they had two children, Alexander in 1953, and Geraldine in 1958. Elaine Tyson was considered headstrong ...did not play ball with the art establishment, spent 1966 in South Africa…came back to Australia and was a strong voice in the anti-apartheid movement...Prone to depression, struggled with alcohol, stopped painting at the age of fifty…In her later years, she shunned publicity. Died aged only sixty…did not leave a large body of work.’

  Her life read like a movie script and I felt I should have heard of her. I kept reading, there were articles by a myriad of reviewers and art historians. I glanced at images of her work but saw none, and no mention of any work, that matched the painting in my possession. How the person who found it in Kyneton would have loved the possibility it was an unknown Tyson.

  I needed to ignore, or at least postpone, the slight stir of excitement that came from the possibility the painting had real artistic credentials and maybe valuable. At some stage, I would get it examined by someone who would know. But now was not the right time; not that I had any idea when the right time would be. I had no knowledge of its provenance beyond the short time it was at Kyneton Collectables.