by Ella Carey
Bees danced around the lavender and roses that were directly in front of the house. Sunday might be a proponent of modernism in art, but her garden was a blend of formal French box hedging, well-tended fruit trees, lawn, and a wild English flower garden. The whole space was a beautiful palette. Sunday, Rebecca thought as she climbed out of the car, may not be an artist who painted on canvas, but her Heide garden was clearly her way of expressing herself.
Smoke curled out of the chimney in the white wooden cottage. Sidney Nolan sat on the small front porch, sketching in the sun. His brow was furrowed in concentration and his handsome dark features were enhanced in the sunlight. Rebecca found herself desperate to pull out her own materials and sketch him in turn.
Sidney laid down his pencil and rolled up his sleeves when Edward pulled up outside the front door. His shirt hung loose over his khaki shorts and his face lit up in a genuine smile. He shook Edward’s hand and kissed Rebecca, avoiding her newly healed cheek.
Footsteps sounded through the green painted door under the archway in the brick wall. Sunday appeared, holding a basket full of salad leaves in one hand, while in the other she held a straw hat. She wore a soft cashmere sweater and corduroy trousers. And it struck Rebecca again that Sunday was so outwardly conservative, and yet here she was, behind modernist artists and a publishing enterprise that was seriously avant-garde.
Sunday’s light-colored hair was held away from her eyes with a headband again. She moved toward Rebecca, hugging and then releasing her and running her eyes over Rebecca’s face. Rebecca looked down at the ground. She would always be self-conscious about what her mother had done.
“I’m so pleased you could make it,” Sunday said, her voice quiet and soft. “I can’t wait to talk to you. You must be starving! Our lunch is straight from the garden.”
Rebecca was grateful to the older woman for talking about ordinary matters while she led them into the cool interior of the house and down a long hallway, its high ceilings providing more wall space for art. Rebecca had to watch that she didn’t trip over the artwork that was stacked down each side of the hallway. What she would give to sit down, lay them all out on the floor, and take them all in, in one glorious afternoon.
She had a glimpse of the famous Heide library through the first door on her right, its walls lined with dark wooden bookshelves. Comfortable chairs and a soft sofa sat opposite the fireplace. A desk was set in the bow window, overlooking the fruit trees and roses in the garden outside.
Sunday led them farther into the house. On their left, John and Sunday’s bedroom door was open. A baby grand piano sat against open French doors that led to the side garden. In the long, narrow kitchen, with its old farmhouse range at the back of the house, Sunday put the kettle on, and Rebecca leaned against the wooden dresser that was filled with charming blue-and-white crockery.
So perfect, and yet it was all such a rebellion against Sunday’s privileged background. Rebecca knew that Sunday had dispensed with servants and such trappings of her class, preferring to do her own cooking and spending hours working in the garden herself. Rebecca watched while Sunday prepared their simple lunch. Sidney helped, and Edward offered to slice salad onions.
Sunday placed a huge loaf of whole wheat bread on a wooden platter.
“We churn our own butter.” She smiled, pulling two perfect butter pats with her own seal decorating them out of a cool safe.
It was hard not to marvel at this enterprising woman. She had grown up as the daughter of one of Melbourne’s wealthiest real estate families, coveted, indulged—and here she was showing how love and good companions provided more sustenance than all the comforts money could buy.
When they filed into the dining room, Rebecca clasped her hands tight. Tins of paint were stacked at one end of the long dining table along with sticks of charcoal and tins of linseed oil. Against the wall, paintings that were immediately recognizable as Sidney Nolan’s were lined up. The imagery in the artist’s work was stark—Ned Kelly, the legendary bushranger who fought hard against corruption among the late nineteenth-century wealthy squatters and the police force, his helmet looking like a vast black cage on his head. Rebecca turned to Sidney, who hovered behind them, his eyes running over his own pieces, frowning.
“Sid has been up all night,” Sunday said, moving over to one of the striking pictures, running a hand along its top edge. Almost in a proprietary manner.
“Sidney and Max Harris returned yesterday from a trip up north to Kelly country,” Sunday went on.
“I grew up with stories about the old folk hero from my grandfather,” Sidney said. “My grandfather was one of the police officers who were involved in the manhunt for Kelly in Victoria in the late 1870s. But regardless of this personal connection, I’m fascinated by the way myths such as Ned Kelly’s famous rebellion against colonialism become associated with our country. Kelly and his battles have become ingrained in our psyche. You know, I see the Kelly story in some ways as representative of us, here at Heide, of what we are trying to do. We’re questioning the Establishment in the same way Kelly did, albeit in a less dramatic manner.”
He looked at Rebecca then, as if he were studying her face. To her horror, she felt a red flush stain her cheeks. Did he, too, know of her shameful secret, of her difficulties establishing any sort of independence from her own mother? He had avoided kissing that cheek . . .
But as he went on, his storyteller’s lush voice sending them all quiet, Rebecca forgot herself. Ned Kelly had fought against the odds, Sidney reminded them, and was hanged. He’d lost. Or had he? The legend was one that every Australian knew. It was part of the country, part of who they were. Kelly’s defiant stand against the Felons Apprehension Act, a draconian law allowing any citizen to shoot a declared outlaw on sight, and his pleas to end discrimination against poor Irish settlers opened up people’s eyes in the end. Was it possible, in time, that modernism, too, would one day be recognized as something worthwhile by society if the Heide circle persisted with their quiet protests?
“Max and I went to Glenrowan,” Sidney said. “We wandered around where members of the Kelly gang were killed by police during Kelly’s last stand in 1880. And it was as if the old vigilante was still there. His ghost lingered, you know, around the Glenrowan Hotel. You can feel him where he took his stand, but let the townsfolk go, only to be shot and wounded himself before they hanged him in Melbourne Gaol for murder. Kelly was protesting against everything. The antihero. The outlaw. You know he wanted Australia to be a republic?”
Rebecca’s eyes widened.
“He was modern,” Sidney said, his voice soft in the silent room. “Just like us. Looking for a deeper truth, a better altar at which to worship than keeping the status quo and following the old rules of society. They shouldn’t mean anything here. We are all humans. None of us are any better than anyone else.”
Rebecca cast her eyes over Sidney’s thoroughly modern sketches. Ned Kelly had suffered for questioning everything. And the fact that he was an everyday man made him the Australian epitome of a hero. Rebecca sensed again that something important was happening at Heide. She hoped that one day this small revolution would bear fruit. And she wanted, more than anything else, to be a part of it. She reached a hand up to the place where her mother had hit her.
“I don’t know what I’d do without Sun,” Sidney said, turning to Sunday.
Sunday moved over and took her lover’s hand, and they stood there. And Rebecca was struck again by Sunday’s sensitivity toward everything, by her affectionate nature and her very open heart.
“She stayed up with me all night,” Sidney said, running his free, paint-stained hand over his chin. “Feeding me coffee while I worked. I’ve almost done the whole bloody series overnight.”
After lunch, Rebecca curled up on the floor in front of the fire in the library, sketching, surrounded by the high walls lined with books. Edward went for a walk with Sidney and John. Sunday sat on one of the sofas. The crackle of the fire was a comfort
ing companion while Sunday watched Rebecca work in silence. It was as if the older woman were attuned to the process. It was as if she had some rare gift for understanding not only art, but the artist herself. Sunday was a nurturer, in every sense of the word.
When Sunday finally spoke, Rebecca continued to draw, and the woman’s voice became a counterpoint to her work.
“You know, people criticize John and me for being rich people looking for a creative outlet. But I only invite people here who pursue truth in life and art. Watching you work, Rebecca, seeing the expression, the concentration on your face, only serves to reinforce my beliefs.”
Rebecca stopped drawing for a second and stared into the gleaming red coals in the fireplace. Something stirred inside her; perhaps it was the woman’s mesmerizing voice.
“I see much of myself in you, twenty years ago,” Sunday said softly.
Rebecca looked at her.
“I know that our backgrounds are different,” Sunday went on, her voice a murmur against the open window. “But you see, in many ways, they were the same. Great expectations were placed on my generation too. We were taught to obey, just as your mother has tried, and failed, to teach you, Rebecca. We were taught not to be the center of our own world, but rather to curtail our ambitions. You see, speaking out or having an opinion was not done in our circle. We were expected to marry our socially engineered matches. Our educations were not rigorous. Girls of my class were never taught to think. Rules, regulations—our lives were governed by those at the all-girls’ school I attended in Toorak. We were warned, you know, to avoid undue displays of emotion. We were told never to ask probing or impertinent questions in any conversation; touchy subjects were to be avoided at all costs. It was unthinkable to disagree with any man, let alone our fathers. Expressing ourselves and using our brains was discouraged. If we wanted to graduate to our careers, which were marriages to hand-picked husbands, then we needed to obey all the rules. If you didn’t . . . well, you became an outcast. It was brutal.”
Rebecca curled her legs underneath her body and stayed quiet.
“Those rules were taken for granted back then, Rebecca. No one considered questioning them, not in my class. Wealth and a successful husband were too alluring an attraction to risk being oneself.”
Sunday stood up, moving across to stand closer to Rebecca by the fire. “But, you see, I hated school. And I was starting to question the patriarchal nature of my well-to-do Melbourne family. I married young, to my family’s great concern, a man called Leonard Quinn. He left me, in Paris, alone and very ill. I thought I would die.” Her voice cracked.
Rebecca stayed still.
But then Sunday frowned. Determination appeared to come back into play. “You see, the point is, things can get better, Rebecca. You must always remember that. You trust someone, whether it is your mother, or a lover—your husband, the man whom you have been told you must trust with every ounce of your heart. But then you reach a lowest point, after that person has let you down, abandoned you, when you must decide whether to move forward, to stay put, or to go backwards. You always have a choice.”
Rebecca laid her pad of paper aside, tracing her fingers over the intricate patterns on the Turkish hearth rug. Her heart pulsed in her chest. Sunday was hitting every note that mattered now.
“I would like to think,” Sunday went on, “that I’ve managed to move forward rather than stay in one spot. Moving forward involves risk. You have to trust again, but, believe me, you can. The only way to trust is to trust.”
Rebecca felt her jaw tighten.
“One day you might thank your mother for a difficult childhood. It probably inspired you to become an artist.”
Rebecca looked up sharply. Was that what she was?
“And, Rebecca, don’t be afraid of loving Edward, because no matter what you have been through, love is something that is always worth it in this life. Love and art are what I believe in, because they both spring from a place of truth.”
Rebecca waited for a moment before she spoke. “I still worry that I am wrong for him,” she said. And glanced up toward the window. If he were to be out there, to hear her voice her fears . . . “He hasn’t introduced me to his family, you see, Sunday. And we are getting so . . . close to each other.” There, she admitted it. She hated to think of what Edward’s family would think of her—of where she came from.
Was Sunday right about forging ahead no matter what, or was she just a lucky aberration, a woman who found an extraordinary man in John Reed, who felt the same as she? And the fact was that they had both been confident enough to stand up for their beliefs not only within their families, but in society, where they were reviled by both the established art world and the upper echelons of Melbourne. Sunday and John’s views on equality were too threatening. They were seen as communists, which was the very worst insult people could give them.
Would Edward have enough conviction to live as he felt?
Sunday moved back over to the nearest sofa, sat down, and reached out and stroked Rebecca’s head. “Lose the script that’s been placed in your head, Rebecca. I did. We women have to do that or we are simply absorbed. I see a relationship between you and Edward that has the potential to become as wonderful as what I have with John. When it happens, take the opportunity with both hands. Run with it. Otherwise, you will only regret what could have been.”
Rebecca reached up and took Sunday Reed’s hand. She felt at home here and if there was any chance that she could find such a place for herself—such a life for herself as this, a Heide of her own—then she was not going to leave any stone unturned.
Sunday stood up. “Let’s go for a walk down to the river. Then it will be time for my famous arvo tea!”
Rebecca stood up, too, laying her sketches aside. Perhaps she would leave them here, as a parting gift for this extraordinary woman.
“They have challenged everything,” Edward said, as they drove home in the twilight, replete with Sunday’s delicious apple cake, which they had enjoyed by the fire in the library as afternoon tea. The gum trees on either side of the road took on ghostly, asymmetrical shapes. “And they have won,” he said, his words seeming to sift out into the still paddocks.
They drove in companionable quiet through the countryside and all the way back to Little Collins Street. Gino had left lights on in the shop so that Rebecca could see her way upstairs.
She pulled out her key, leaned across the car, and kissed Edward. “Thank you,” she said. And then, not wanting to hold it back, Sunday’s words deep in her heart where she knew she would always keep them, “I love you.”
He leaned forward, his forehead touching hers. “I’m in love with you,” he whispered. “Darling, come to Haslemere for Easter. Come and meet my family.”
Rebecca ran a hand over his cheek and he took it from her and caressed it with tiny kisses, like stars scattering on a fresh canvas. Surely, if Sunday could love freely, so could she. If Sunday could make a marriage and a love affair work, surely a love affair between two people of like minds but different social backgrounds could work too.
Warmth radiated through Rebecca’s entire body while Edward kissed her. And she thought she had never been luckier, or happier.
All she asked was that it would last.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
New York, 1987
Every meeting at the office was filled with Leon’s congratulations toward James. Tess started avoiding working there; she slipped out whenever she could. She’d chosen to spend her lunchtime at a small diner near the office. The cappuccino here was so strong a spoon could stand up in it, and the chocolate powder that was scattered on top of the milky coffee was thick and lustrous.
Tess pulled out a notebook and made a list, an action plan.
Here was the sum of the situation. Negatives: First, Edward insisted on setting the book in Australia. Changing that was clearly a deal-breaker for him. But it would not enhance sales in the US. Second, Edward wasn’t going to accept any deadline
s. So she had no idea when the book was going to be released.
Tess took a sip of the too-hot coffee and winced.
Positives: Edward was sending in regular chapters, so he seemed to be in the swing of writing. And Tess now knew that the book was autobiographical. But she still had to convince Edward to let the world know that Rebecca had existed.
Tess picked up Edward’s old book of poems, settled back, and read on.
The poetry was filled with strong, simple lines. The language was economical, and the meaning was as clear as a bell. It was such a shame he had stopped writing for so many decades, such a shame he hadn’t developed further, as he had the beginnings of a remarkable voice. Something had stifled it.
Tess sighed, then jumped as the sound of footsteps in the otherwise quiet restaurant stopped right at her table.
“Tess?”
She looked up.
The scent of sophisticated aftershave eclipsed the greasy fried-food smells that lingered in the diner. James Cooper stood over her. Tess cursed herself for choosing a table in the window, where she could be spotted so easily from the street. She tried to slide Edward’s poems back into her bag.
“How are you finding them?” James asked.
“Fine,” Tess said. And put the book away.
“Can I join you for a moment?” He shot a glance around the diner while tugging at his navy blue tie.
Tess shrugged, indicating with a flick of her hand that he sit opposite her. She stirred her coffee, blending the chocolate with the foam into a whirl.
A waitress appeared.
“I’m not ordering,” James said. “Thanks.”
The waitress didn’t budge. Tess’s lips curled upward. Tough, old-school New York style.
“Surely you could enjoy a cappuccino, James?” Tess murmured. “Or an espresso? It’s smaller. Which means you can leave sooner.”
She didn’t miss the twitch of James’s lips.