Night Street

by Kristel Thornell

  She hurried to the shed. Its door was open but had not been tampered with. She always kept it locked; it was her corner of private territory. It appeared that, by some bizarre accident, that day she had not locked it. It was true there was no room left in there. It had become a great struggle to close the door: she had to lean all her weight against it. And she was forced to store new paintings in her room, under the bed, on top of the closet and in every available spot. Mum had said, shaking her head, ‘One day, you’ll wake up floating on a sea of landscapes.’

  Clarice had returned to the fire. She was a little peaky from the smoke or the unexpected emotion, but when she saw what it was he was burning, she collected herself; she became almost casual. Fortunately, he had initiated the proceedings with that old portrait of Louise. Louise’s nearly black eyes gazed placidly from the flames. Clarice had never been fond of that painting. She had made Louise too sweet and sisterly. Those eyes not properly irresistible, too staid.

  ‘I think that’s enough arson for today,’ she told Father, with a steely smile. Curiously, she had the upper hand. ‘I see your point about the shed. It does need clearing out, but it’s no concern of yours.’

  He blinked, off-guard. Now that she was getting used to the situation, it was not so much rage in her, not exactly, but more a tension released. As if she had always known he had this destruction in him, this denial, and he had simply made explicit something that had long gone unspoken between them.

  She went for a bucket of water and doused the little holocaust. When she turned, he had gone.

  They had exchanged no further words on the subject. She did not tell her mother about it, not wanting to worry her. She had been sleeping at the time. Perhaps Mum’s poor health affected Father more than he let on. It seemed to Clarice, too, that his own ageing was a surprise to him. He walked stiffly, as though on new legs he had not yet got the hang of; it was no doubt in part the arthritis.

  After this, she had entrusted the bulk of her paintings to Mrs Hamlin, who was delighted to take them into her care, clearly considering this a Task of Great Importance. Her son came to collect them in a van on three consecutive days and each time Clarice saw him off depleted, as if sending beloved babies away to boarding school. But she liked knowing her paintings were safe and sound in a fine barn in Daylesford. Mrs Hamlin had promised to try to sell some of them, which would not be easy; Clarice could have done with the money, though, for supplies.

  The shed would never be left unlocked again.

  She resumed:

  Mum is steadily frailer and hardly goes out anymore. One of the last times, incredibly, was three years ago, when we went to see Anna Pavlova and her company. The tickets were a treat from Father for Mum’s birthday. Pavlova was an inspiration to me. I’m nervous to describe her, lest I dispel the magic with pedestrian words. Let me venture that she was equally sparkling and sombre, a silver apparition somewhere between sunshine and moonshine but within a live body absolutely athletic and refined, sensual and spiritual. There. I’ll stop before making myself any more ridiculous. The evening was a throwback to the more stylish life we used to lead, when there was more money for cultural outings. It was really quite an idyll: Mum and me watching as if our lives depended on it, me manically sketching. I later tried a couple of little studies of my dancing idol, wispy things—total lightness being the only possible approach. There is no equalling her, of course. I could only fail miserably.

  Louise has not had an easy time of it. The marriage soured. Both of them may have been a little too fond of drink and of having their own way. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Ted had behaved vilely. L is now living alone with the kiddies, as we still call them, though her boys are turning into young men. The youngest, Charlie, has been problematic, rather taking after his father, I gather. L comes infrequently to the house, so we hardly see one another, except, very rarely, for a picture in town.

  They had gone to see Spite Marriage and laughed side-splittingly at Buster Keaton’s heartbroken face.

  Leaving the theatre, Clarice said, ‘The wayward girl’s wicked deed is put right.’

  ‘Quite. A nice fairytale. Keaton is awfully handsome.’

  Clarice agreed. He made continual humiliation hilarious, but there was a sorrowful shadow about him or in his dark, dark eyes. It seemed that light could not stick to him, though his yearning for it could hardly be borne.

  ‘That scene where he’s trying to get his wife onto the bed!’

  The shapes that floppy, stone drunk girl got folded into, and all those times she fell. It had been very intimate to watch that, like spying on an unimagined, subtle violence. But a different sequence was playing itself out in Clarice’s mind. The married couple is alone on a ship at sea. The wife asleep, unknowing; Keaton, her husband, who masqueraded as a gentleman and has inadvertently become a sailor, finds himself in the engine room. He is up to his chest in water. All he can do is take the small bucket on hand, fill it, hurry like a trained monkey up the stairs onto the deck and empty it over the side. And back down the stairs. And over and over. All through the night, this endless, minute unseen work with the bucket to stop the boat from going down.

  ‘Was it supposed to represent marriage?’ she asked. ‘The part on the boat with the bucket?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh.’ Louise chortled. ‘Maybe. Rather accurate, in my experience.’ She was quiet, then said, ‘I think in many marriages someone uses a bucket and someone sleeps.’ A few moments later, she added, ‘It can be hard to tell the difference between floating and sinking.’

  Clarice was sad for Louise, who had not got what she had anticipated from her destiny. And she did not have art or, say, religion to sustain her—a powerful distraction. Clarice sometimes felt as if Louise had thrown her to the wolves by leaving home to marry, but this was completely absurd.

  It was a rare opportunity to be tender, and all she managed was, ‘He wasn’t good enough for you.’ Though it sounded vacuous, she had meant it.

  Louise said, ‘Who would you want to play you, if they made a picture about your life?’

  Clarice had never considered it.

  ‘I’d choose Louise Brooks, my namesake. It’s funny. Everyone says we look so much alike.’

  I’ve kept to one solo exhibition per year at the Athenaeum and it is no trouble to produce this quantity of work. I’m not so scared of openings as I used to be. There is always the last frantic arduous night of hanging—the running around in a flap, shifting something, extracting a piece and adding another. I find it satisfying, and when the moment of reckoning comes and I’m standing there in a group of well-wishers in my Sunday best, I’m less uncomfortable in the limelight than you might think. Not that I relish the role, but I try to rise to the occasion and thank people and smile enigmatically, even if I am unslept and red-faced from childish bashfulness and wine. I have remained largely a teetotaller, so the latter goes to my head. The last show did not go badly, I suppose. A couple of critics came, but the crowd consisted mainly of old friends, Meldrum’s cohort and admirers, plus the inevitable uppish stranger come to look down on me. Few purchases—nothing new there. Mrs H, the dear woman, bought several.

  Mrs Hamlin had indeed outdone herself: crimson lipstick striking the senses first, then a powdered phosphorescence, veiled hat and formidable silk gown baring a long, abundant white back. Desperately wanting to be ravishing, she was.

  She is her own work of art and I appreciate her more and more. Meldrum was there too, recently back from America, and quietly supportive. He said he was thinking of writing a second book on his theories. Though he was missing some of the usual vitality. He insisted I pay him a visit at Olinda. It had been ages—years—since we’d talked art. I have been remiss, out of touch with everyone, really.

  I was true to my word and took the train to Belgrave, where he came for me by car. It’s a lovely, bucolic place they have.

  Meldrum had still seemed lacking in verve, a tad doleful, diminished, even in that peaceful setting. She n
oticed a little more grey in his beard, but nonetheless he recovered his energy and his step was lithe as he prowled the studio, presenting his recent work to her. He really was a skilled showman. Without quite wanting to reveal it, he appeared anxious for her response, almost as if he considered her his equal. She had not been his student for so many years, but now it was final. She had wondered if such a day would come and now that it had, her limbs were heavy; she was listless, somehow.

  What to say? The work was, of course, technically irreproachable. And she had a soft spot for his fields, gums and dappled light, the resolute simplicity of his subjects. However, there was something rigid or limited in what she saw. It hurt her to notice it, as it had hurt, as a child, to observe the limitations of Mum’s watercolours. She could have been wrong, but she sensed in Meldrum’s new work, more than anything, his self-discipline like a hard fist. She could not breathe deeply, looking at it; her mind was corralled.

  ‘Masterful,’ she said.

  It occurred to her that he might set so steadfastly about depicting just what the eye could see (the innocent eye) that he forced himself to look through too small an objective and so forgot the edges of his vision. Out of his hatred for sentiment and storytelling, could he have gone too far, stripping away also feeling and suggestion? These, she had come to believe, were inseparable from sight, if not wound up in its very heart. How innocent was the eye, finally? The artist tried to be honest and clear-visioned, but remained human— an individual, with the sensitivities of his own gaze.

  M is terrifically loyal to me. He was disgusted, he said, with the critics for their treatment of me, partly blaming himself for the attacks, so similar to those that plague him and all his ‘followers’ (uninspiring, mundane, dull, et cetera). He is depressed by Australian and particularly Melbourne parochialism, though Europe, easily seduced by ephemeral fashions, suffers from its own evils, in his opinion. He’d come across one generous review of my show, however, and read it to me. I’ve kept the clipping. There is a part of it that touches me, to the effect that some of my paintings give the viewer an impression of looking through an opening. Forgive me for mentioning this. I pretend to be indifferent to critics and at times I really couldn’t care less, or laugh rather contemptuously about them. But I confess that in weaker moments I’m quite undone, so when there is a little bit of honey, it’s hard to stop it from going to my head, like the wine I’m not used to drinking. One bolsters oneself as one can.

  I remember our sunrise sessions and morning bathes with affectionate nostalgia. Were we children, then, in a way? Your circle must be fun and I’m glad they’re appreciating you, as they should. Myself, I have no real coterie at present and have pretty much lost my hand at socialising—or don’t need it. You’d call me a hermit, only I’m always out on the streets. Hardly seclusion.

  You say that the girl is too young and you are not yet tempted to settle down. I understand you. Oh, dear: look at all these sheets. What a ramble! Paint up a storm. Catch that mellow, golden light.

  Fondly,

  Clarice

  She was surprised to see this flood of words emerge from the intense quiet of her days.

  23

  The doors and windows were kept firmly shut, only at night letting in the thin breeze. Against this background of torpid summer heat that had them dozy and short-tempered, they toasted subduedly with their teacups to the new year of nineteen thirty-four.

  After some clotted days spent in bed or else dozing in her chair by the window, Mum abruptly became wakeful and alert. At all hours, unpredictably, she could be found wandering through the house’s stale rooms, her floral nightgown shifting softly against her loose flesh, a waft of L’Heure Bleue lingering after her. She had painstakingly preserved that bottle of perfume and the alcohol in the scent had begun to move forward, a hint of fermentation there; its intense powdery sweetness had formerly seemed excessive, headachy to Clarice, but now it was dulled and forlorn. The ageing perfume was eloquent: those last years of the tightening purse—no maids, so little entertaining and few excursions—had been hard on Mum.

  Of course, she knew the house like she knew the inside of her own mind, but she now navigated it tentatively. She touched objects, a table, a dresser, a red curtain, as if they were hypotheses she was testing. Clarice followed her on these experimental walks, hovering a few steps behind and watching as unobtrusively as she could in the hope of catching a clue. Was Mum taking her bearings by those familiar landmarks? Or conducting some late inventory? Clarice breathed the close air threaded with murky old perfume, pining for transparent smells, ocean wind and the pungent sweat of eucalyptus leaves.

  Very late one night, hearing Mum up, Clarice climbed out of bed and went to find her. She was in the drawing room, where the moon showed the opening arms of the mantelpiece clock paused at three. Her hand descended cautiously over a lamp. Just when it appeared she would touch the lamp, her hand grew nervous; it soared up, then plummeted. Mum’s stance, arms hanging slackly, suggested she was absorbed by something more primitive than thought. She swayed on her feet, about to fall.

  Clarice rushed forward; was this like a mother’s worry? But the old woman had regained her balance.

  ‘Hannah! Where’s Hannah?’ Father called from their room, groggy and imperious.

  Mum turned. Her face did not recognise her husband’s voice. There was no bewilderment in it. Just, perhaps, a certain irony. Plump, cherubic, Mum’s face said, I’m going along with appearances for now. But I see what this is. I see right through it.

  With Mum now obeying an arcane set of rules, Clarice began to go to the city less often. She did not regret this; maybe she had finally sated the hunger that used to drive her there. She would concentrate on the sea, for a time at least. But before she did, there was one other subject she wanted to paint. A railway station.

  The platform’s black awning was interrupted by a vertical rectangle filled with orange-yellow lines that hinted at departures and arrivals. White parallel lines were train tracks. A red signal light gleamed darkly from the top of a black pole. Other black poles rose into the air, several pairs joined near the top by cross beams, like a strange, unfinished edifice waiting for its roof. The poles became dimmer as they retreated towards the horizon through a pale blue haze. Pinkish blobs of light shone through this haze, and above it sat a secretive creamy sky.

  There was no train in sight. No travellers. The place was deserted, an empty stage. No one going anywhere. There was just the possibility of travel, the idea of coming and going, a pure dream of movement in which everything was still.

  The soft colours and edges could have been the result of tears in the viewer’s eyes. Tears of the one left behind? Or traveller’s tears?

  In the house at Beaumaris they waited for the heat to give, but it did not, continuing merciless, somnolent, and Mum settled once more in her bed; she was a little pale now and often short of breath. She read novels, with great focus. Clarice and Father spoke laconically of meals and the invisible progress of the weather. It was an inward time of hushed voices and solemn footsteps. Mrs Murphy from across the street had her husband bring them groceries regularly; the Murphys were of a type that knows how to behave, dependably and almost imperceptibly, in a crisis.

  Dr Broadbent dropped in to see Mum every couple of weeks. Then each week. The two conferred in private, like conspirators or lovers, Mum seeming to derive a somehow voluptuous pleasure from his visits. Clarice was not told what had been discussed, and did not ask. There was a new air of vulnerability in the house—of anticipation. Still, Mum did not give the impression of being out of spirits, not more than usual. She was eating small servings, but particularly savoured apricot jam and peanut biscuits, whatever had sugar in it or the aura of a treat. She was peaceful: if anything, only a touch more self-important than before, enjoying her laziness, tending towards smugness after Dr Broadbent had been around.

  Clarice realised that she herself had a case of the doldrums. It was not being ab
le to get away to paint. One aimless afternoon, she looked up doldrums in the dictionary and was relieved to discover among its meanings: ‘certain parts of the ocean near the equator that abound in calms, squalls, and light baffling winds’. It cheered her to have this oceanic panorama to set against what she was experiencing; she rolled the word around in her mouth, envisioning flat but easily ruffled waves.

  It was sometimes possible to pass the awkward edge of sleep by entering, through her mind’s eye, one of her own landscapes, its forms more and more gentle until it had become a window into dreaming.

  She had given Mum a sponge bath, got a fresh nightie on her, combed her thin but springy hair and finally applied a parsimonious drop of the muted L’Heure Bleue to each crepe de Chine wrist. A languorous, heavy afternoon like many that had preceded it. There was a stretch of hours yet to traverse before it would be time to get the supper on. Clarice thought of slipping out with her trolley for a while, but she had to be here, at hand.

  Folding a damp washcloth, she said, ‘Pot of tea?’

  With a tone that did not seem insensitive, Mum asked, ‘What news of your artist friends?’

  ‘Ada? She was well, last I heard.’

  ‘The Meldrumites.’ Mum smiled. ‘The mud-slingers— wasn’t that the term?’

  So Mum had read some reviews. ‘It was, indeed. I had a note from Mr Meldrum recently. The group is having another artists’ colony at Anglesea.’

  ‘When’s that, dear?’

  ‘It starts next week, I think.’

  ‘And you’re going?’

  ‘Oh, no.’

  ‘You don’t want to?’ An implacable look in the faded dusky green of Mum’s eyes.

  ‘They’ve invited me—they always do. But I said no, of course.’

  ‘Tea would be just what the doctor ordered. Just the thing. I’m parched.’