There were moments when Rhoda became so recognizably himself, together they blotted out the twin nightmares of war and misunderstanding.
Rhoda wrote:
My dear Hurtle,
Our Father is dead. He died on Tuesday of a stroke. I found him lying on the floor of Mummy’s little sitting-room: he was already gone. Mummy is inconsolable, as though she were responsible. But everybody is responsible. He could never forgive me because he made me. I loved him, and couldn’t have shown him even if I had been allowed. I think it is never possible to show those we love—only to try to pick them up after they have fallen.
You wouldn’t believe, but on the same day my Pushkin was hit and killed while crossing the street. Do you know that a cat looks like a human being as he waits to hurl himself under the wheels? Of course he must have been sick and distracted too. I picked up his poor little body, so limp—the fur and other mangled remains . . .
He must write to Rhoda. During several days’ leave he carried around a sheet of paper which grew grubby at the edges in his pocket. His stylo wouldn’t work. He was carrying a pencil too, the lead of which he drove into the ball of his thumb, through grasping it. In the end he didn’t write: he did a drawing of some moss roses, which he stuck in the envelope, and sent.
Rhoda didn’t reply, perhaps because the last shot had been fired; for the guns were suddenly still: there was an armistice. Those who had survived were presumably saved. The knowledge floated, palpitating, on the waves of silence, flooding the travesty of fields, and on into the streets of cities, where people had begun to rejoice for the privilege of dying in other ways.
During the year in Paris when he washed dishes by night to justify himself by day, he was Duffield again. A fresh start, but at the same time a squalid one, seemed to call for the old name. In any case, how could he ever be a Courtney? However intense the nostalgia, he was no longer a member of his ‘family’ as he looked back: at decent Harry, the Edwardian torso now disintegrated; at Maman, no doubt still dancing ‘on the landings and along the passages’ in girls’ white; at little pink-eyed Rhoda, nibbling at the edges of what she would never be allowed to consume. He had gratified at least some of the desires of all three. If he had left them bearing him a grudge, it was because total love must be resisted: it is overwhelming, like religion. He certainly wasn’t religious: he was an artist. But didn’t this reduce him to the status of little pink-eyed Rhoda nibbling round the edges? The association made him focus his mind on other, immediate realities.
When not washing dishes at Le Rat à l’Oeil Ouvert, he was hanging round l’Huissier’s studio, with two American ladies of doubtful age, a youngish Englishman of taste, and sundry Scandinavians, all of whom were making the ‘new’ approach to art. Painting was going to be pure at last. It should have been very new and exciting, but he found it wasn’t what he wanted to do.
If he continued paying for l’Huissier’s formula in hard francs, it was because he hadn’t yet thought how he might extricate himself. In the same way, his physical attitudes were uncertain. He was either hunching himself at his drawing-board, hoping to contain the smell of dishwater and poverty, or alternately, on more extrovert occasions, he flaunted his condition, from unwashed hair to piss-stained crutch.
Altogether the kindlier of the American ladies bought him a meal and wished to discuss ‘organic integrity’, and the youngish Englishman arranged himself tastefully on a divan after coffee, he remained virtually friendless because he had nothing to offer in return.
He was bankrupt by the war, he would sometimes explain, though only to himself. There were also the occasions when, sitting in his cupboard of a room, holding his thunderous head, in the smell of grey water he had brought in with him at four in the morning, he knew that this wasn’t true: what he needed was to go home, to renew himself, if there had been somewhere specific, some person left with whom he might establish contact. It wouldn’t have occurred to him to write to Maman or Rhoda: these links were broken, together with others less obvious in the emotional chain by which he had always secretly imagined he might haul himself to safety. So he sat in his cupboard-room, rocking, cherishing the dregs of a sour red wine, and listening for the bursts of gunfire, the scattering shrapnel, which no longer came.
In one of these fits he remembered May Noble his fellow artist. He would write to May. Detached, and as he remembered, honest, the cook might be expected to illuminate the situation—if she replied.
May did reply:
Dear Mr Hurtle,
I got the palpitations when I read the Name at the bottom of your note, had begun to wonder if you hadn’t died behind our backs ha-ha!
Thank you for your kind news which reached me just in time at ‘the old address’. It is disposed of as they say by agents since your Mommong left. You will of been told about it all. It isn’t for me to remark on, but a person wouldn’t be human. It was a very nice wedding it appears, I didn’t go. St James’s, all the nobs! Edith went, she was always more cool and calm, she could always dress the part, while I have my bunion which mean I can’t get a shoe on without its hell.
Well it was a white wedding in spite of her a widow. Your Mummy we know liked a display especially if it was her own self. There was no bridesmaid. With all the other frills Edith says it made it funny, no maids. Little Rhoda wouldn’t of looked right poor thing though she and me we never hit it off. Then who else for the Maid? Not old Mrs Hollingrake ha-ha! Any way they are now all gone Miss Rhoda too to live in England your Mummy always said Australia was common. I hope our Mr Julian Boilew will treat her kind. A lot of these marriages with young husbands are over after the first few kicks. And Rhoda always on their hands.
Hurtle dear I oughtn’t to say but have invented a dish which is the real mackay of lobster and creamcheese and double fresh cream with a scent of brandy and extra chunks of lobster flesh you mould it and it looks and tastes a dream.
Well dear, I wonder if we will ever meet. I am going to a lady on the North Shore (never thought I would end up there) she likes it nice and plain, but the money’s tidy. Edith is well placed, practically only cleaning the silver, with a newspaper man up Bellevue Hill.
Well dear Hurtle love, I hope to see you turn up before I am wearing a nappy with the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Your ever affectionate
may Noble
P.S. Edith read about the funny will you will of heard of how Mummy gets it all. Of course she will see about her kids but it is odd that Father who was so fond of you and Rhoda should have left it that way, as if he didn’t care. Keep is passed on did you know at Maroullan. She piled it up, but nobody to leave it to except a neece she was always fighting with. Well, that is the way it goes.
Edging along the sea-wall, flicking prawnshells into the water, his old army overcoat rubbing and catching on the pockmarked stone, the young man had every opportunity for night thoughts, except that the night itself, with its smears of oily light and sounds of lolling, tepid sea, was so accommodating.
Then, too, his early dislocation, when Duffields sold and Mr and Mrs Courtney bought him, helped him accept May’s information as final. He hadn’t bothered to keep up a correspondence with someone he remembered with affectionate respect: she had fulfilled her purpose. In any case, he hadn’t the cook’s new address. He had even less clues to the whereabouts of Mrs Julian Boileau and her entourage. Returning home by cargo he had sometimes wondered whether the glittering liner they were passing carried the Julian Boileaus in it. He visualized them stretched on deck-chairs, sipping a frosted nightcap and making languid conversation. Rhoda he imagined, head between the rails, watching their long turbulent wake, just as he was standing watching his.
Of course he could have exerted himself, through agents, solicitors, lapsed acquaintances, to trace his ex-‘family’, but lacked the ultimate belief in the efficacy of family ties. He was dependent on himself for anything he might become, and when he was too tired, too poor, too hungry, too discouraged, self-o
pinion was his consolation: to sign himself ‘Duffield’, not on the half-realized paintings he almost immediately painted out, but on those he was still only capable of painting in his head.
In the deserted park at that hour the sounds of Sydney were solider than the shapes of night: opaque fluorescence of a fog-horn somewhere in the harbour; drawn-out squeal of a leaping train; empty bottle slapping fat water; a smoker’s cough. In the not-so-deserted park he realized somebody was approaching, following the curve of the sea-wall, stubbing and rubbing. At moments it sounded as though a thigh was cannoning off the stone upholstery; while he continued leaning, elbows riveted to the wall: he should have been able to avert the collision, but didn’t seem to have the power to move.
‘Holy Moses!’
A woman’s rather large, soft, furry form spattered against and around him: not all soft; her forehead on his was hard as a billiard ball.
‘Though I hit an iron post!’ she yelled. ‘A bloody lamp-post without the lamp!’
Because she had got a fright she sounded angry at first, then began to laugh, her laughter smelling of scent and brandy. ‘You haven’t got much to say,’ she said, as she continued standing against him, as he continued standing or leaning where he had been put.
‘I don’t feel like it.’ He heard his own awkwardness.
‘Feel like what? Wait till you’re asked!’
‘Thought it was the man who asks—and the woman decides.’
‘Not always she don’t! By crikey, no! More often than not, she takes what comes. Arr, dear!’
She leaned over the wall beside him; the tail of her fur hung down black, pointing at the water.
‘I’ve always been hopin’ ter find something of value in the sea.’ The brandy was making her dreamier. ‘A pearl, or somethun. And never found nothun—but a used Frenchie!’
Again she went off into shrieks, not particularly for him, for some larger audience of abstract, night faces, and as she laughed a finger of light picked at the gold in her open mouth.
She must have felt his recoil, for she began revising her performance at once; she stuck her arm through his, and said: ‘What about goin’ for a little walk? Up to my place. Eh? What do they call you, dear? Eh?’
‘Hurtle.’ He let her have the naked truth.
She sounded melancholy. ‘Some of them think from the start you’re gunner come at blackmail. They think of funny names.’
‘My name isn’t funny,’ he rasped. ‘Or if it is, it’s the only one I’ve got.’
‘Is it?’ She disbelieved. ‘They call me Nance,’ she told him in an ever so slightly formal voice.
He hung back: suffocated by fur and brandy, he’d had enough of Nance.
‘Aren’t you comin’ up to my place?’ she asked and tugged, hopeful still.
‘I got a hole in me pocket.’
She started shrieking again. ‘You have, eh? Then you can walk behind and do it for nothun!’
The silence shut her up at last.
‘If that’s what you meant.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘It wasn’t what I meant. I meant I’m stone-broke. ’
He began to slip away over the trampled grass. If he had dared, he would have started running; but the woman might have started too, her fur flopping, her breath trumpeting after him.
‘What makes you think it’s a luxury?’ Not only her voice, the sound of her feet was following him over the dead grass. ‘’Oo never asks, never finds out.’
He imagined too strong a jaw raised against the night to deliver its oracle.
He didn’t answer, but went on slithering across the park, his army overcoat by now as heavy as an inescapable dream.
On the edge of an oval, faint dandelion lamps were flowering.
‘Hey, dig?’ she called. ‘Wait a mo, digger.’ She was thundering over the iron ground. ‘’Ow d’you know we wouldn’t like each other?’
‘How do you know?’ he answered feebly back.
Light from the lamps had turned his coat a sour greenish-yellow. His skin must have gone that colour of old pennies, with burnt-out sockets instead of eyes.
‘Eh?’
Her brandy breath alone told him they were almost level again.
‘People do like each other,’ she said. ‘It isn’t all business, is it?’ She added at once, ‘You gotter find out, though.’
She was a fairly large woman, in a large black hat, of lace or net, at the back the largest, wired bow, which had failed to keep its symmetry. Not unnaturally, the artificial light had turned her lips and cheeks to puce: her lips, her eyes were the moister for exertion, or booze.
‘Bit obsessed, aren’t you?’
‘Obsessed? I’m not educated,’ she grumbled, lowering her eyes.
Shame made him simplify his accusation; he said almost gently: ‘You’ve got only one thing on your mind.’
‘They won’t let yer forget about it.’
Walking side by side they could have been quarrelling home from the tramstop after an evening with relatives. His arches, he felt, were falling before their time, while her shoes accompanied her voice in a gritty patter.
‘Can suit meself,’ she was saying. ‘Now and agen. If I like. I’m not a bolster.’
‘Aren’t you drunk?’
‘I’m not sober,’ she said. ‘Or I wouldn’t be trottin’ like a donkey after you.’
It didn’t destroy their intimacy: it seemed, rather, to solder it. Their feet sounded leaden on the hill. Of course he could break away at any point, if he chose, as he had done already in his life. Or had he? Had the breaks, perhaps, been chosen for him?
He tried to concentrate on a Poussin he had seen in the Louvre: solid enough evidence of the painter’s own infallible will.
‘Anyhow, we got here,’ she said.
Standing for an instant in an archway which draped the shadows on her in better imitation than the old black fur, she was looking at him out of the depths of another woman, offering him experience itself rather than the shabby details of it.
Then she was dragging him under what appeared a half-raised curtain of iron lace and cobwebs, into what must have been the carriage yard of a once considerable house. He was walking on the balls of his feet, bumping, rubbing against her shoulder as if he too were suddenly drunk.
‘I oughter tell you’—she had taken his arm and, holding it to her, begun to milk it from the biceps down—‘to tell you there are people in this house who are jealous of others. But I mind my own business. Strickly.’
He didn’t expect they would encounter jealousy at that hour, when a door opened on one of the landings. Almost at once it closed, on a glimpse of blue light and a jaw sprouting orange stubble.
‘Who was that?’ he whispered too loud.
‘The landlady. She was in the trade herself once. But developed varicose veins.’
‘Is she decent?’ he chattered as they went on bumping their way up the once graceful stairs.
‘As a matter of fact,’ said Nance, ‘a cow’s arse is decenter.’ She nearly bust herself, and because he was joined on to her he reacted equally to their Siamese joke.
The light she switched on brought immediate sobriety. It was not a large room, and almost all unmade bed. Such furniture as he caught sight of had most of the drawers and doors open. There was a door open too, on a balcony converted into a kitchen, from which drifted a slight, and probably permanent, smell of gas.
‘Well,’ she said, looking, her nose swivelling at him, ‘you’re a bit different to what I expected. Aren’t you?’ Her sighs and snorts sounded partly reconciled, however.
‘Nothing’s ever what I expect. Not exactly,’ he answered because he had to say something.
It was true though, particularly as he watched the woman take the squashed lace hat off the head of hair to which it had been pinned. She wasn’t the bobbed sort. Her thick black tail of hair was kept wound round behind with the help of a tortoise-shell and paste buckle. It was the kind of hair, he could see, which woul
d always be coming down: too much of it, and too heavy.
‘’Ere,’ she said, kicking off her shoes, ‘aren’t you gunner take yer duds off. A busman’s holiday don’t last for ever. I sometimes get a client as early as the milk.’
In her enthusiasm and hurry a roselight had begun to pour out of the straining camisole; her natural, moist mouth had worked off the cheap veneer; the whites of her eyes, rolling and struggling in her fight for freedom from her clothes, were brilliantly enamelled with naked light.
‘Don’t know why I’m wastun me time! What are you staring at?’ she shouted.
He was staring at the streaming golden paddocks on which the sun was rising through his boyhood as he sat between Sid Cupples and Father. The ridges were perhaps more silver than gold, the gullies more shadowy in which the strings of ewes heaved into a rolling scamper.
‘I love you, I don’t think!’ she muttered. ‘You’re bloody stoopid!’ Coming and nipping him on the cheek. ‘Or perhaps yer dad told yer not to forget the pox.’
Nothing seemed less likely as she began to strip resistance from him, layer by unnecessary layer. (Father would only have thrown a fit to see the suit crumple round his ankles—if it hadn’t been so nasty cheap.) She was peeling, paring; he might have been something else: some exotic fruit.
While his own fingers began itching out after homelier pears, bruised in parts; the gash in a dripping water-melon: the marbled, sometimes scented, sometimes acrid flesh of all fruit ever.
He let down her hair. It fell around them.
He experienced a shock when Rhoda was projected for a moment in amongst the other slides: the pink shadow in her little legs. It might have ruined everything if Nance hadn’t been in control.
‘Not too bad,’ she kept muttering between her teeth. ‘Tisn’t—bad.’ Might have been Boo Hollingrake, except that Nance was holding the Delicious Monster against her periwinkle of a navel.
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