Early December. GAZ comes in. He moves around, distracted, ill-at-ease, then sees the portrait. He stands staring at it and scratching.
GAZ: Who did this?
LIZ comes in. She wears a sun hat and is removing gardening gloves.
LIZ: Who do you think?
GAZ: I don’t know. Who? I don’t recognise the style at all. Hockney with balls. [He peers at the signature.] Saul East! It can’t be. It doesn’t look like his work at all.
LIZ: Why not?
GAZ: It’s so gentle! And fragile. Where’s the brutality?
LIZ: Out in the shed.
GAZ: This is inexplicable. How do you figure this?
LIZ: A certain rapport with his sitter, possibly?
GAZ: You’ve known him for years and you despise him. What was it you said?: ‘He’s been around so long he’s even managed to appropriate himself—he repeats himself and calls it quotation’. [He stares at the painting.] It’s extraordinary. It’s like he’s undergone a total transformation.
LIZ: Not really. It would be nice to think so, but it’s only his style that’s different, not him.
GAZ: When did he do it?
LIZ: Last week.
GAZ: You never said anything when I rang.
LIZ: I must have forgotten.
GAZ: How many visitors do you have here? It’s very odd that you should forget. [Checking the detail of the portrait again] He certainly didn’t knock this up in five minutes.
LIZ: He didn’t knock anything up in five minutes.
He stares at her.
He’s done several portraits of me. I think he’s trying to make up his mind which is the most marketable stereotype. [Pause.] He’s spending quite a bit of time here. In fact I thought that was his car when you drove up.
GAZ: You’re expecting him? [He is still staring at her.] What’s going on?
LIZ: We are. Saul and Liz. Formerly Gareth and Liz.
GAZ: You’re joking, aren’t you?
He scratches.
LIZ: No more than you with Carol.
GAZ: Truer than you know.
LIZ: What?
GAZ: Nothing. Never mind. [Pause.] How far has it gone?
LIZ: What do you mean, how far has it gone?
GAZ: Is he moving in?
LIZ: He says the Mountains are good for his work.
GAZ: The Mountains are good for his work.
LIZ: He’s extraordinary. He’s like a machine. He just keeps on going.
He looks at her sharply.
I’m talking about his work. He doesn’t think about what it all means, or whether there’s a future, or any point to it. He just goes blindly on. He’s just a hand with a brush or a pencil in it. Everything is subverted to that one need. I look at him and I think maybe that’s the answer—to find something that takes one blindly on, without thought.
GAZ: You can’t live with Saul! He’s a known wife beater!
LIZ: I’m not his wife, I’m your wife.
GAZ: Every woman he’s ever lived with!—as well as his wives! I suppose you think you can reform him?
LIZ: No.
GAZ: Because, let me tell you, the statistics on the likelihood of that are approximately a million to one! Women make that mistake all the time. Didn’t you read the books I sent you?
LIZ: Women Hating and Our Blood? I read those years ago. Feminism isn’t exactly news to me, Gaz.
GAZ: How come I never read them?
LIZ: They were around. You probably didn’t notice.
GAZ: You could have brought them to my attention.
LIZ: How? I couldn’t even bring the dishes to your attention. [Pause.] Never mind, I’m glad you’re finally reading them.
GAZ: I can’t stop! I used to think I had a social conscience! I must have been blind!
LIZ: And now you’re not?
GAZ: I’m haunted! I don’t know whose eyes I’m looking out of anymore! Everything’s changed. It’s like I got hit by a rocket and woke up behind enemy lines—only the enemy had been misrepresented: they weren’t belligerent. They weren’t even armed.
LIZ is silent.
Don’t you believe me?
LIZ: I’d like to tackle the onion weed while I’m in the mood.
He stares at her.
GAZ: Onion weed?
LIZ: If you’re looking for a test of character I can recommend it.
GAZ: Edwina was right about you: it’s people like you who do the damage.
LIZ: What do you want from me, Gaz?
GAZ: Just a bit of recognition that I’ve changed!
LIZ: I don’t think people’s core beliefs do change. There’s too much one-sided history in the way.
GAZ: Then why aren’t you angry about it? Why aren’t you screaming with rage? It seems like I’ve got all the passion for both of us! [Pause.] You’ve been up here all this time and that’s all you’ve come up with? That nothing ever changes? That’s it? [Pause.] Sleeping with Saul?
LIZ: I needed, I grabbed—okay? Don’t tell me you haven’t done the same.
GAZ: How could you sleep with someone you don’t even like?
LIZ: When you don’t give a damn about someone it’s liberating. You feel equal. Women don’t do it often enough.
GAZ: Jesus.
LIZ: Remember that conference I went to in New Orleans?
GAZ: I kept ringing you and they said you’d checked out. You completely vanished for over a week.
LIZ: I was in a Mafia hotel on Tulane Avenue.
GAZ: You were what?
LIZ: Fourteen thousand ophthalmologists hit town and I couldn’t re-book my room, so I ended up there.
GAZ: How did you know it was a Mafia hotel?
LIZ: Because Hoyt said it was. He said that was why the food was so good. And I could hear a man screaming in the next room.
GAZ: Hoyt?
LIZ: Hoyt was an oil man from Houston.
GAZ: You were in a Mafia hotel in New Orleans with an oil man from Houston you didn’t even know? What are you, crazy?
He scratches madly.
LIZ: I thought I was sane and the rest of my life had been crazy. I didn’t know what my real life was anymore. I had no reference points. No one even knew where I was. I could have disappeared into a Louisiana swamp and no one would ever have known what happened to me. It was wonderful. What are you doing?
GAZ: Nothing. I’m scratching.
LIZ: I didn’t care about him at all. He called me babe all the time and never even used my name.
GAZ: Jesus. What did you—I mean what did you—what did you talk about?
LIZ: I introduced him to Australian wine, and good cognac, and the music of Sade, and he introduced me to gridiron and catfish and Shrimp Jambalaya.
GAZ: You had a high-powered intellectual rapport going. Did you have anything in common?
LIZ: Not a thing. But for weeks afterwards I wanted to be back there, and to be what I was then.
GAZ: What was that?
LIZ: A stranger to myself.
GAZ: [after a pause] You’re a stranger to me too, Liz.
They turn as SAUL enters with an armload of firewood.
SAUL: How are you, you mad bastard?
GAZ: Good question… I’m buggered if I know.
SAUL: You look bloody ratshit. You’ve had a lot of people worried about you.
He puts the firewood down.
GAZ: King of the castle, I see.
SAUL: I’ve called in to see you several times at work. Mark didn’t seem to know where you were.
LIZ: You haven’t been at work? Where have you been?
GAZ: What does it matter?
LIZ: What does it matter?
GAZ: You want to know where I’ve been?
LIZ: There are people who are dependent on you. You’re supposed to be running a business.
GAZ picks up a log.
GAZ: What do you need firewood for? It’s not cold now.
SAUL: It can turn cold very suddenly up here.
GAZ: I kn
ow what it can do up here, I live here! Or I used to. What have you done with Edwina?
SAUL: Edwina can take care of herself.
GAZ: Anyone who could live with you needs to be able to take care of herself.
SAUL: Has he been here long?
LIZ: Not long.
SAUL: Too long, is my guess.
GAZ: You didn’t waste much time moving in on an unprotected woman.
SAUL: Unprotected? This place is a bloody fortress! It’s a country cottage!—you’ve got bars on every window, deadlocks on the doors—
GAZ: [gripping the log] Didn’t stop you though, did it?
LIZ: What do you want here, Gaz?
GAZ: I wanted to make sure you were all right!
LIZ: As you can see, I’m fine.
GAZ: The neighbours are only here on weekends—
LIZ: That doesn’t bother me.
GAZ: You sleep with a light on in the hall!
LIZ: It’s black out there. It’s my version of a street lamp, that’s all.
GAZ: Okay—you’re not nervous.
LIZ: I’m not nervous. Okay?
GAZ: [scratching] You’re in touch with nature.
LIZ: Yes, damn it!
GAZ: That’s what you wanted, and that’s what you’ve got—on its most primitive level. You’ve finally got what you wanted.
SAUL: Look, I’m not going to fight with you, Gaz, so don’t try. I’m in too good a mood.
GAZ: You’re in too good a mood? Bully for you.
SAUL: I had a very weird experience.
LIZ: When?
SAUL: Driving up here. It was very, very odd. I had a vision.
GAZ: A vision?
SAUL: An intimation. An insight. Like nothing that’s ever happened to me before.
LIZ: What are you talking about?
SAUL: These yellow flowers.
GAZ: What yellow flowers?
SAUL: Buttercups. Mile after mile of them, all the way up the mountain. Didn’t you see them, you dozy bugger?
GAZ: They were dandelions.
SAUL: They weren’t dandelions!—they were buttercups—daisies or something, on long stalks.
GAZ: Dandelions.
LIZ: [patiently] Coreopsis.
SAUL: Hundreds of thousands of brilliant yellow flowers on either side of the road, all the way up the mountain, and I thought, I’ve seen flowers in other countries—all over the world I’ve seen flowers and never really thought about them. But for some reason I thought about these flowers—maybe because there were so many of them. I started to think about the energy they represented. I stopped the car and I just sat there and stared, and soaked myself in yellow. I felt like Van Gogh.
GAZ: Van Gogh?
SAUL: I started to think: maybe I’ve missed something. Maybe God’s trying to tell me something—that there’s a whole area of sensibility that I haven’t been utilising—that I’ve been completely insensitive to. I don’t think I’d ever really looked at a flower before. I’d studied them, in Dutch still lifes, but I’d never really looked at one close up.
He puts a hand in front of his face as if examining a flower.
LIZ: I thought you were sitting in the car?
SAUL: I was sitting in the car.
LIZ: You didn’t even get out?
SAUL: It was extraordinary… I really and truly felt like Van Gogh.
He stands, smiling. GAZ and LIZ look at him, bemused, then each other. LIZ goes. SAUL follows. GAZ remains.
January. GAZ props a picture against a chair: a silkscreen print depicting a black-and-white photograph of a graveyard. It shows a hillside of serried rows of graves with a red strip transversing it bearing the message ‘You are an experiment in terror’. EDWINA comes in. She is getting ready to go out. GAZ indicates the print.
GAZ: What do you think?
EDWINA: Bit derivative, wouldn’t you say?
GAZ: I’m just working things out at this point.
EDWINA: Saul and I saw the original in New York. You’ve pinched her words and substituted another picture for the hand throwing the firecracker.
GAZ: But this is better.
EDWINA: I doubt if Barbara Kruger would agree. [She goes to the phone and dials.] Gaz, I have to be somewhere.
GAZ: [ignoring the hint] I thought it was open slather these days?
EDWINA: You’ve got to know the correct strategy. Then you can call what you’re doing appropriation—before somebody else calls it stealing.
GAZ: I think photography’s the way to go—maybe not focused like this: something more tenuous and indistinct—mysterious. You’re not quite sure what you’re looking at.
EDWINA: It’s been done.
GAZ: It’s been done?
EDWINA: There’s a New York photographer, Barbara Ess, who does a sort of abstraction of a photographic image, a sort of blurred reality.
GAZ: Blurred.
EDWINA: Tenuous and indistinct. So you don’t know how to interpret what you see.
It’s meant to be a truthful response, because the idea is we can’t anyway.
GAZ: What?
EDWINA: Interpret what we see.
GAZ: [indicating the silkscreen] So this is stolen?
EDWINA: Unless you do a whole series based on other works—then it’s a statement.
GAZ: And what I was planning to do has been done?
EDWINA: Stick to framing, Gaz.
She hangs up the phone.
GAZ: I’ve given up framing. Signs are my bread and butter from now on.
EDWINA: Signs?
GAZ: My new business: commercial signs. They make a hell of a lot more sense to me than art. I can cope with signs. As Carol pointed out, signs are like plumbing—people are always going to need them. In fact the worse things get, the more demand there is: Last days! Closing down! Everything must go!
EDWINA: Don’t stop believing in art, Gaz. It’s too important. Don’t ever let go of it. Ever. Even being with Saul hasn’t put me off. When I look at Piero della Francesca, or the Wilton Diptych, I know there’s a balance of power somewhere in the universe—that it’s not all horror.
GAZ: I used to think that. It’s like I crossed a line somewhere, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t get back again.
EDWINA: You have to get back—or you won’t survive.
GAZ: Nothing’s changed for you, has it? You can still look at Piero… Rothko…
EDWINA: I like Piero. I like Rothko. I like looking at beautiful things… If I couldn’t look at art I’d go crazy.
GAZ: I think we are crazy. I can’t see what you see anymore. I can’t see the beauty. All I can see is the horror. And even that’s not truly representative—it’s not what she saw.
EDWINA: Who?
GAZ: That girl—the night she died… We don’t see the world as it is for women.
EDWINA: You might not, Gaz—I most certainly do.
GAZ: No you don’t. No one does. [Pause.] Remember the Twentieth-Century Masters?
EDWINA: I remember you couldn’t go in.
GAZ: All those self-satisfied bastards. That smug, self-important posturing. Looking at art’s supposed to broaden our horizons, not narrow them.
EDWINA: You mean we need women’s art instead of men’s?
GAZ: Not one art at the expense of the other. That’s what we’ve got now. It can’t reflect reality; all we’ve got now is an alibi—something to hide behind and point to and say, ‘Look, we’re human’. We’re not human. We can commit any sort of atrocity and then listen to Mozart. What if there’d been no art?—no Shakespeare or Vermeer? What would we see?—if we’d never tried to represent or interpret reality from one sex’s point of view? If we could tear away the veil? What would reality be like? I’ll tell you what it would be like: we’d see what she saw—we’d see what was really there!… There’d be no balance of power in the universe! And we’d have no fucking excuse!
A silence.
EDWINA: What’s happening to you, Gaz?
GAZ: I don’
t know. [Pause.] I’m sorry… I used to think you were a bitch. You’re probably the only person I could talk to these days.
EDWINA: What about Carol?
GAZ: Carol’s afraid of me.
EDWINA: Why? I’m certainly not.
GAZ: I know. That’s why I can still talk to you.
EDWINA: Why is she afraid of you? Muzzy old Gaz.
She gives him an affectionate kiss.
GAZ: [confused] Muzzy? What does that mean?
EDWINA: I don’t know. Muzzy?… Fuzzy?… It just came into my head.
GAZ: Perhaps not really afraid—just uncertain around me. As if she doesn’t know what I might do next.
EDWINA: Do you?
GAZ: No. That’s the hell of it. I don’t. Who would have thought that I’d ever leave Liz?… Did I leave Liz? Or did she leave me?… I’m not even clear about that anymore.
EDWINA: You’re so obtuse, Gaz. You’re both muzzy if you ask me. Hopelessly unobservant. I suppose you took each other for granted—which is one thing I don’t have to worry about with Saul.
GAZ: What do you mean, unobservant?
EDWINA: Fleeing to the country and gardening. It’s one of the symptoms.
GAZ: What symptoms?
EDWINA: Of menopause.
GAZ: Menopause?
EDWINA: It was on television. That old feminist, you know the one—Greer—was talking about it.
GAZ: Christ.
EDWINA: I hate it when people like you split up. It makes it seem like there’s no hope for anyone. [Pause.] When we used to visit you in Glebe your bed always seemed so bridal—all that white lace and broderie anglaise. I used to laugh, but it wasn’t funny really. I liked looking at it. I used to sneak into your room and stare at it.
GAZ: I’m really sorry, Eddie.
EDWINA: What are you sorry for?
GAZ: I don’t know. I’m sorry for everything these days.
EDWINA: You’ve got nothing to apologise to me for.
She dials the phone again.
GAZ: If I hadn’t broken up with Liz, you and Saul would still be together.
The Girl Who Saw Everything Page 5