‘We better get down to the river quick,’ said Tom ‘The smoke is getting so thick out there it’s hard to breathe. We’ll take a wet blanket to cover ourselves. It won’t take us long in the skiff to catch the others.’
‘I can’t go with you,’ said Lucy. ‘I don’t want to slow you down and I have to stay here.’
‘Oh no you don’t!’ said Tom, taking Lucy by her wrist and trying to lead her to the front door.
Lucy twisted her arm free and raced down the hall to the outside–inside room. The wall she needed to pass through was lined with furniture and she had to clamber up onto a desk to find a clear section. She touched the plaster and felt the familiar flicker of magic.
Tom charged into the room and stared at her, bewildered. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I’m sorry, Tom. I have to go,’ she said.
She flung herself against the wall and hurtled back across time.
The More Things Change
Lucy tumbled out of the painting and landed on the dining-room floor with a thump. Her whole body ached. She listened for movement from Big’s bedroom but the house was quiet. So quiet she could hear the ticking of the kitchen clock, even though it was two rooms away.
The painting of summer was still and beautiful, with no hint of smoke or fire. She touched the flat paintwork gently with her fingertips and thought of Tom. The magic had closed over.
Lucy tiptoed to the bathroom, which was in a lean-to at the back of the house, and turned on the shower. She wanted to wash away the past. She was so glad to be back in the present, to find the house just as she’d left it. She stripped off her sodden shorts and shirt and let the hot water stream over her, shampooing smoke and river water out of her long fair hair and squeezing out the drips.
When she stepped outside, with her towel wrapped about her, she saw the sky had changed to a soft blue and beyond the hill it glowed pink and gold as the dawn rose over the valley. She walked out from beneath the passionfruit vines and around the house to the front where the river lay still and dark in the dawn light. The morning chorus of kookaburras was laughing from somewhere up on the hill, while a family of magpies in a nearby gumtree were warbling their song to the morning sky. Lower on the hill kangaroos and wallabies grazed peacefully.
Lucy had never been awake early enough to see the valley at dawn. She stood watching the night fade away and a bright, clear summer day unfold.
‘Lucy,’ called Big. Lucy turned to see her aunt standing on the verandah in an old blue-and-green tartan dressing gown. Her silver hair was plaited and hung over one shoulder. ‘You’re up early.’
‘It’s so beautiful,’ said Lucy, sweeping her hand in a gesture to include the entire valley, from its darkly shrouded bush to the smooth, glistening surface of the river.
‘It’s the most beautiful place in the world,’ said Big.
Lucy stared at Big, the old woman who had once been April. It was hard to believe they were the same person.
‘Would you like an egg for your breakfast?’ asked Big.
Lucy nodded. The chickens on the other side of time had probably died in the fires. The idea that the chickens of her time were still cheerfully laying eggs made her feel safe again.
While Lucy pulled on clean clothes and a pair of gumboots, Big collected a bucket of scraps from the kitchen. Lucy carried it for her, swinging the red bucket by her side as they walked down the hill to where the old chook house was covered in bougainvillea. There were four chickens and a rooster inside, but it could have housed twenty chickens very comfortably.
‘I reckon these chooks live like they were in the Hilton Hotel. Spoilt rotten, every one of them,’ said Big. ‘Only Speckle is still laying. The rest of them are useless old things but I keep them anyway. I don’t really need an egg every day, so I can’t even eat everything Speckle lays for me.’
Big swung open the wire door of the chook house and stepped inside. She hitched her dressing gown up a little higher and Lucy saw that the old lady’s pyjamas were tucked into her gumboots. Big caught Lucy’s eye.
‘Some days, I stay in my pyjamas all day long,’ confessed Big. ‘When you live alone, some days, you don’t feel like getting dressed.’
Lucy looked up in surprise at the a hint of sadness in Big’s voice. But before Lucy could say anything, Big took the bucket of scraps from her and tipped them into the chickens’ feeding tray. Then she took the lid off a big bucket of feed and mixed some in with the scraps. The chickens flapped about their ankles making excited gobbling noises, and as soon as Big and Lucy stepped back, they dived at the food.
‘Now you check that nesting box. Speckle always lays her eggs in the last one.’
Lucy peered into the dark, straw-lined nest at the end of the nesting box. There were two eggs inside. Lucy picked them up in her hand. One was large and brown and still warm, the other was cool and a pale soft blue.
‘Is there something wrong with this egg?’ she asked, holding it up. ‘It’s a funny colour and tiny.’
‘That’s a turn up for the books. That little silver-grey hen, the araucana, must be laying again. You’ve brought some luck to the coop, Lucy. It’s good to have you here.’
Lucy felt a rush of pleasure. It was the first time Big had said anything kind to her. It made the old lady sound so much more like April.
Back in the kitchen, Big popped the eggs into a pot of water on the stove, and put a slice of bread in the toaster.
‘I’m going painting on the other side of the river again today. Are you coming or not?’ she asked in her prickly way.
Lucy smashed the top of her egg and thought about riding up through the bush with April. She thought of the river glistening in the valley beneath them. She looked Big in the eye and said, ‘Yes.’
‘Nice to hear you sounding so sure of yourself.’
After breakfast, Big brought out two worn old khaki backpacks that looked as if they’d come from an army surplus shop a hundred years ago. In one she packed a thermos of black tea and some sandwiches. In the other she placed her art materials.
Lucy took the picnic backpack and followed Big down the track to the river. A worn pink boat was moored at the end of the jetty. Lying in one end of the boat was a small, paint-spattered easel and a folded-up tarpaulin.
Big made Lucy climb in first and then lowered herself into the boat as if it was painful for her to move.
‘Are you okay?’
‘Once we’re out on the water, I’ll be fine. Sometimes my old bones make too many noises,’ said Big.
For a moment, Big looked very old and worn-out, but then she reached for the oars, confidently pushed the boat away from the dock with one oar and began to row. They glided smoothly into the centre of the wide river.
‘Your parents think I’m too old to be rowing myself up and down the river. But I’ve been doing this since I was half your size. This river and me, we’re old friends. There’s nothing we don’t know about each other. It’s the river that keeps me alive. Though once it nearly took me.’
Lucy turned to watch the shore receding and the house perched high on the hill above. From down on the river, it looked as though the vines and garden were swallowing up the house. Lucy was glad Bob Timmins had cleared all the undergrowth. As they glided along, Lucy saw that the shape of the river had changed since 1939. The beach where she’d swum naked with April had washed away. Lucy couldn’t spot the giant gum tree with the swinging rope, unless it was one that lay half submerged in the river. She gazed at Big. Like the river, April had changed beyond recognition.
The Painted World
Even though Big managed the boat smoothly, she looked too frail to be pulling on the oars. There was a small outboard motor on the back of the boat but Big didn’t set it going.
‘Why don’t we use the motor?’ asked Lucy
‘Too noisy,’ said Big. ‘Don’t need that racket. It drowns out the birdsong.’
Lucy shifted uneasily on the hard bench in the stern. It felt wrong
to let such an elderly woman do all the work. But she felt shy of asking Big to let her take over, knowing that the old lady had once been April, the girl who liked to do everything for herself. Lucy thought carefully before she asked, ‘Could you teach me to row?’
Big looked at Lucy as if sizing her up. ‘ I suppose you should learn how to handle an oar.’
The boat rocked precariously as they exchanged places. Lucy’s hands weren’t big enough to wrap all the way around the oars. It had looked so easy when Big was rowing, and when Jimmy had taken her along the river, that Lucy was surprised how tricky it was to make the oars work at the same time. One oar slipped too deeply into the water and Lucy struggled to stop it sliding out of her grip. The other flailed wildly in the air and then hit the water with a rude splash.
‘Settle down,’ said Big. ‘Take both oars out of the water and get the feel of them before you begin. Keep your elbows close to your body and relax your hands. You look like you’re trying to strangle those oars.’
Lucy sighed. On family trips, everyone tried to tell Lucy how to do things, as if she were a baby. She braced herself for a long lecture.
‘Don’t fret. You’ll work it out. Nice and relaxed. Lift the oars out of the water at the end of each stroke and feel the boat underneath you, get a sense of it on the water. We’re not in a hurry. Take your time.’
Then Big reached into her bag and took out a little sketchbook. Lucy waited for more instructions, but Big began to draw. Lucy took a few deep breaths and tried to relax into the movement. As if by magic, as soon as she stopped trying so hard, the boat began to glide across the river. The blue bush rose up the banks on either side of them, and Lucy began to settle into the rhythm of rowing while Big drew.
‘Now we’re going to turn into that sandy bank over there,’ said Big, pointing to a small strip of beach. Lucy expected Big to take over, to make her shift out of her seat so a grown-up could guide the boat to land, but Big simply nodded her head. ‘Take that oar out of the water and drag the other one. That will turn the bow towards the shore.’
A trickle of sweat slipped down the back of Lucy’s neck. If she had been with her family, any one of them would have taken charge by now. She noticed that Big kept one hand on the rudder but the old lady said nothing as Lucy carefully manoeuvred the boat towards the bank with the oars. The boat scraped against the sandy bottom.
‘You’d better jump out and tie her up,’ said Big, tucking her sketchbook back into her bag.
Lucy waded through the shallow water in her gumboots, holding the rope that was attached to the boat’s breast hook.
Big had climbed out too and was gathering up her things from where she’d stored them in the bow. She threw a worn tartan rug onto a stretch of dry sand and laid out her art materials. She had brought two tiny folding easels and a pair of fold-up stools that she set in the sand beside the rug.
‘I’ve brought some paints for you too,’ said Big. She reached into her battered army backpack and drew out a small wooden box.
‘This set used to belong to Claire, but she never used it much. Maybe you’ll be the next artist in the family.’
Lucy took the wooden box and sat down cross-legged on the rug. When she opened the box she caught her breath. There were so many beautiful colours. Ten small circles were set in a white china palette. There were seven colours alongside two circles each of black and white. The tenth circle was empty. Lying along the edge of the box were three small brushes.
‘Call me old-fashioned,’ said Big, not looking at Lucy as she spoke, ‘But I think they’re all the colours you need to start. ‘Chrome yellow, cobalt blue, Prussian blue, raw sienna, rose madder, burnt umber, Venetian red. You don’t need a bigger palette. You can mix your other colours yourself using that lot.’
She handed Lucy a sketchbook. ‘You can use this to start. When you’ve got a feel for the paint, I’ve got this one for you.’ She took out a leather-covered sketchbook from her bag and offered it to Lucy to examine. ‘This is real watercolour paper. It’s already stretched and sized. For when you’re feeling a bit more confident.’
Then Big turned away and settled down to her own work. Lucy looked at the paints. She hadn’t done a painting since she was in Grade Two. She liked to decorate her schoolbooks with textas and pens, but she’d never had any real paints to work with before, only cheap poster paint.
She glanced over Big’s shoulder. Big had put some sort of glue on the stretched paper that she was working on and was studying the opposite bank. A giant gum tree hung low over the river, its branches almost touching the water. Its thick trunk was gnarled and twisted, and the water washed up against its roots. There was no beach on that side of the river, only the bush rising steeply.
Big deftly outlined the tree with a small brush and then began putting splashes of colour around it. The picture took shape so quickly that Lucy felt it was magic. One moment the paper had been a blank sheet and the next the opposite bank had appeared on the easel.
Lucy took her sketchbook and dipped the brush in some water and then in the little dry palette of red paint. The brush felt loose and clumsy in her hand. She tried to paint a horse, but the pony on the paper looked more like a strange cow.
‘I can’t draw or paint,’ said Lucy sadly, laying the brush down on the palette.
‘Everyone can draw or paint if they want to,’ said Big.
Lucy tore the picture out of the sketchbook and scrunched it into a ball. Then she folded her arms across her chest and stared down at the crumpled paper. Big glanced at her, picked up the drawing and smoothed it out.
‘Well, that’s a start,’ she said. ‘Come over here.’ She gestured for Lucy to kneel beside her campstool. Then she picked up another small sketchbook and flipped it open.
‘It’s easier to draw a horse when you can see her, so what you have to do is make a picture of her inside your head. Don’t think ‘horse’ or ‘pony’, you’ll just draw a symbol of a horse and it won’t look right. Try and think of a particular horse and really see her inside your head.’ Lucy thought of Banjo with her dappled grey coat and short black legs.
‘Can you see the shape of her rump? Her neck? The length of her legs?’
Lucy nodded and giggled, thinking of Banjo’s silver-grey tail swatting away flies.
While she was thinking, Big started to paint. At first, it didn’t look like anything at all – only an assortment of shapes – but with a few deft brushstrokes the shapes came together to be parts of a horse. It didn’t look like Banjo. It looked more like Midnight. Big picked up a stick of charcoal and used it to colour in the contours of the horse. She used her little finger to make the charcoal lines smudge into the horse’s coat. It was perfect, right down to the detail in the horse’s mane.
‘Every creature on God’s earth is made up of shapes and colours. You think about the shapes first and the colours after, and that’s what you paint or draw. You try with the charcoal first. Then when you understand the shapes go back to the paint.’
Lucy became so absorbed in filling the paper with horses and ponies she didn’t notice the morning shadows receding and the day growing warmer. She was surprised to look up and see Big packing up her materials and setting out their picnic lunch. There were boiled eggs and salty crackers and an apple for each of them. Big had a thermos of soup as well.
‘When I was little, I always made my tea in a billy over an open fire. But now we have these fire-ban days, you can’t get away with that. It’s a good idea. Can’t count the number of fires started by kids or tramps when I was a girl. We were always careful, but some folk were reckless.’
They sipped the soup and gazed out at the afternoon sunlight sparkling on the surface of the river.
‘Now it’s going to get too hot to spend the afternoon out in the sun here,’ said Big. ‘We might have to use the motor to get upstream if we’re too tired to row against the current. But let’s have a swim first.’
‘I didn’t bring my bathers,’ said Lucy
.
‘Never mind,’ said Big. ‘There’s nobody about to see us.’ And without batting an eye, she started undressing, right in front of Lucy.
Lucy was so embarrassed she didn’t know where to look. She turned her back and stared into the bush. In a moment, she heard a splash and when she looked around she saw Big was in the river, only her head visible above the water.
Lucy didn’t know what to say. She didn’t want to speak to her. Grown-ups, especially old grown-ups, really shouldn’t go swimming naked in rivers.
Then Lucy had a strange feeling. April loved to paint and so did Big. April loved to skinny-dip and so did Big. If Lucy grew old, would she stop loving the things she loved now?
Lucy stood up and peeled off her clothes. She walked into the river, feeling the soft sand squelch between her toes before she dived deep under the water. When she surfaced again, Big was smiling at her.
‘You’re braver than I’d given you credit for, Lucy McKenzie.’
Fractured Dreams
That evening, Lucy and Big sat on the verandah watching the sun sink behind the dark hills. The sky glowed orange and copper. White-and-gold clouds swelled above the line of charcoal-black trees. Even the river changed colour from dark blue to soft mauve. Within half an hour the sky had moved through every colour of a painter’s palette, from shades of blue to smoky grey, from peach to pink and gold, before settling into a deep cobalt blue with a fingernail moon rising above the hills.
For a long while, neither Lucy nor Big spoke. Then Lucy turned to Big, studying the old woman’s profile, searching for traces of the girl April.
‘Why do you live here alone, Big?’ asked Lucy. ‘Don’t you get lonely?’
‘Too much to do to get lonely,’ said Big. ‘Too many pictures to paint to worry about who I’m not chatting to.’
‘But when you were little, when you were a kid, did you ever imagine that you’d still be here when you grew old?’
Big laughed. ‘I thought I’d be living in Paris. Thought I’d be a famous painter. I remember saying to a boy who fancied me once, that he wasn’t to squeeze my hands too tightly because they had important work to do. When I was a little girl, I used to have a secret place in the bush where I drew. Some days I’d sit up there sketching and dreaming all afternoon. I’d imagine all the things that I was going to be when I grew up.’
The Four Seasons of Lucy McKenzie Page 7