Night Street

by Kristel Thornell

  When Clarice came back carrying the tray, Mum turned from the window, a cushiony mass amid the frilly pillows of her bed. ‘You’ll go,’ she declared, with the peculiar, daunting determination of the infirm.

  Mum had begun to remind Clarice of Herb, before he left—she seemed to have the same steady assurance that there were good things in store for her. They had become curiously close, in a way, she and Mum, and it was not just the intimacy that physical dependence creates. Clarice had fantasised about escaping the house, longing for the richly ventilated present that was unfolding beyond the sickroom, as if on another temporal plane. But she did not think, now that an opportunity had been presented to her, that she could spend a fortnight away. It was more than a decade since she had gone to Anglesea and she would not even have considered going again were Mum not vehement, decided, apparently, on using her last sizeable strength to give Clarice some liberty.

  Go, she breathed tensely, almost a moan.

  It felt like love. And rejection.

  The packing, the parting and the quick leaving were hideous. She arrived at Anglesea only to find that Father had telegraphed for her immediate return. She did not paint a single board there or even walk down to the place where the estuary flowed, at regular intervals, into the sea.

  24

  Though she had long thought of her mother as sickly, it was deeply implausible there could ever be an end to the continuum of her, yet here Clarice saw the plain evidence of a life concluding. She returned that same day from Anglesea to find that Mum’s skin appeared to be petrifying and her smell was changing, less powdery now, sweetening into a strangely universal scent. In some barely conscious state, Mum did not open her eyes nor speak.

  Clarice had known to expect something like this, eventually, but she was dumbfounded. What was happening was not only implausible; it was unacceptable, unnatural. Aberrant. It had to be stopped. She felt Mum’s tepid forehead; she fussed with the already straight sheet. She stood, immobile, by the bed. There was nothing to do. What was her role? She retreated to a chair in the corner of the room, confused by her own helplessness. She watched, for hours. Others came and went by the bed. Father. Louise. Mrs Murphy. Battling to breathe, Mum’s lips were bluish, bluer. Perhaps death and the end of the love act had this in common: the sensations experienced could not be fully shared; the dominant feeling at both times might be loneliness.

  Sometime during the night, contemplating the slight significant shapes of the familiar body beneath the sheet, Clarice thought: she was my first seascape, the interior sea, a bone shoreline curving like a half moon. Floating in her, in the forgetful twilight before birth, I prepared for the waters of Port Phillip Bay. There, I was taught to seek nourishment curled in on myself. There, I first saw the feeling that haunts a shadow or a splotch of light; I knew her moods as dark washes or orange-red flashes against my unborn eyes, and my parents’ affection for each other, perhaps, as a dull opalescence. Then, it was all incomprehensible and accepted.

  At another indeterminate point, Louise touched Clarice’s arm and said, ‘You need to sleep.’

  She studied her younger sister briefly. Louise’s eyes were as she had never seen them, slow and deep, beautiful with mourning. ‘I’m alright. Not tired, really.’ Grazing the hand on her arm, she added, ‘You go and rest.’ Perfumed air. ‘Wait.’ Clarice took Louise’s wrist and laid her nose to it, like a bloodhound; the old L’Heure Bleue, powdery and heartbroken. Delicately, she kissed that pale perfumed skin.

  When the dawn came, she was remembering the watercolours that had hung in her parents’ bedroom, especially the bird of paradise. She was calmer. In the deep shadow edged with pink, her mother appeared to be wearing a faint smile. She went over to the bed to see it better. It certainly resembled a smile. Contentment? Detachment?

  Back in her chair, she sat up straighter. Her role, if not to share or understand, was to watch. It was always the way. I am your witness. This was far from passive; the effort required, the participation were devastating. Still not a lot to offer, but maybe a kind of gift.

  Soon there was no expression on her face at all. Mum let go of her hold on the physical world and there was a shifting inwards, the vessel that housed her hinting heavily at absence. Then suddenly, quite clearly, starkly, the vessel was uninhabited; its tenant had moved on. She had departed this life.

  Astonishing. Remarkable—this. So large. Clarice closed her eyes; she only half knew herself.

  The house was warm and quiet, though there were more in it than normal. A relaxed Anglican, even in her distant days of singing in the church choir, Mum had not expressed an interest in seeing a priest; but Dr Broadbent had been called an hour earlier, when her breathing became more agitated and wispy. He now said, ‘She’s at rest.’ Turning to Father and exhaling heavily, ‘I’m sorry for your loss.’ Glancing at Clarice and Louise, ‘It’s good to know she’s finally at peace. I’ll leave you all alone with her. Don’t worry—I’ll see to . . . things.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Louise said, uncertainly giving him her hand. He smiled.

  ‘I’m going out to get some air. And to stretch my legs,’ Father said. His face was as impassive as it had been all night, but he walked off with an unusual torpor.

  ‘I’ll go and help Mrs Murphy with the tea,’ Louise murmured. Her steps travelled in the direction opposite to that of the kitchen; she was probably going to smoke in secret and to cry.

  Nothing had changed since the last time Clarice looked at Mum’s face: only the trace of an opaque smile from which it was impossible to pinpoint a mood. Her skin was cooling frighteningly fast; time, having been distended and unrecognisable, was reasserting a tight rhythm.

  The stopped heart. Mum’s weak heart.

  Clarice put a hand over her own, presumed similarly weak, the weakness predetermined. There was its light thump, a little jittery with fatigue, but reliable. She would have known were her heart weak, would she not?

  She had an odd sense of family. She saw each of them in turn. Father, making a careful lap of the garden. Louise, surreptitiously sucking at a cigarette, as seductive as a film star. Herself, hand over her stunned heart, in the smoky morning light. And their deceased: the young Paul, constructing himself a good foolproof noose; Mum, not as she had been in that bed but lifting a spoon of apricot jam to her waiting lips. Maybe they all shared, in their own fashion, unlikely resilience.

  Pink flowers in a cut glass vase on the bedside table. What flower was that? The blooms had a somewhat artificial appearance. Clarice was not sure how they had got there. One of the Murphys must have brought them or else Louise, or Dr Broadbent, as a token from his wife. She had never been inspired to learn the names of flowers. Names—why? These had not wilted, despite the heat. In fact, when she inspected them, she discovered that the petals were firm and resistant, with something of the disconcerting upholstered feel of moths’ wings. Touching them left her fingertips coated in a powdery residue, its scent surprisingly strong— too sweet, as if of some poisonous nectar. She lifted the flowers out of the vase; they dripped a ragged trail of water as she went to the kitchen.

  Tea had been left out for her, but thankfully no one was there. She squinted at the flowers to grasp their mysterious forms, to comprehend how the yellow light touched them, where shadow adhered.

  The unnatural flowers went into the garbage bin with a clean, sharp movement. Clarice rinsed the vase and her hands thoroughly, and inverted the vase to drain. Bending down, she removed her socks; it was important to have her feet naked against the jarrah floorboards, against the foundations of the house and the earth beneath. She carried her tea to the door, a bare foot pushing it open. Looking out, with eyes that had forgotten full light, she took a first swig of lukewarm tea.

  And the grim and banal formalities of death ensued. When these too were behind them, the weeks became formless.

  There was just painting, jumbled memories and Father’s requirements to fill the time. As if there were a law by which there mus
t always be illness in their home, Father’s arthritic condition worsened. He took on a nurse to assist him, a rather difficult woman named Mrs Marks; maybe he was hoping to distract himself from Mum’s desertion.

  Clarice tried to envisage Mum in a realm of exquisite, unearthly light, such as that of a rainforest—or a beach at dusk, light like the surface of a pearl. She saw only a dark room with no windows in its walls. The room empty, unfurnished, dank.

  There was not enough new work for her regular solo Athenaeum exhibition. Meldrum wrote urging her to visit again and to send some paintings for the coming group show. She wrote back saying she did not much feel like exhibiting, for the moment, but she was grateful for the offer.

  Ada, strangely undaunted by Clarice’s neglect and their stillborn friendship, showed herself to be an angel by sending a letter in which she suggested that Clarice go to stay with her family in the country. It came just in time, perhaps; with hindsight, Clarice realised there was not much good she could have done herself at home. Ada wrote lightly of cheering up, words becoming gossamer and limp close to death.

  And Clarice received a second very great gift, from Mrs Hamlin. Fifty new panels, delivered by her son, who claimed they had been bought with the proceeds from the sale of a number of her paintings; he did not say which paintings or who had bought them. She had a surge of love for Mrs Hamlin, for her eagerness, her finery and her eager, fine heart.

  By then, her supplies had dwindled to four canvases, three panels, a little linseed oil and not a lot of paint. The bit of pocket money Father had used to give her each month, supplemented occasionally on Mum’s urging, had not been forthcoming of late. She suspected there was no money to spare, not with the funeral expenses and Mrs Marks’ salary. To preserve her precious materials, Clarice had taken to painting, with some blend of despair and amusement, on the backs of Wheaties packets: an appropriately flimsy, insubstantial experience.

  After Mrs Hamlin’s son had gone, she cried a little, holding the new panels. Tears, it seemed, were inexhaustible.

  She had never particularly hankered for travel, except the kind that took her in a train to the city or in a motorcar to an art camp. She had not envied Herb or others for going abroad, to London or Paris, not really. There had always been plenty to keep her occupied, so much to overwhelm her where she was.

  But she gave in to Ada because it was essential then that she get away. She saw no other way forward. She did not ask Father’s permission, only informed him. There was a train ride and Ada’s father came for her by car; she could not concentrate fully on the country she passed through. After, her recollection of that trip was a feeling of great age, slackness of mind and, when a window was opened, the wind as a cool surprise. At one stage, some grit had caught in her eye and it had taken a long time to dislodge it. Finally, they arrived at Naringal.

  The Andersons, she discovered, were well-meaning people to whom, embarrassingly, she had absolutely nothing to give. They were an older couple but kept themselves fit, even athletic, maintaining their house and property on which they ran sheep and a few other animals for their own needs. Their four children (a fifth had perished in the Great War) were spread over three cities. Mr and Mrs Anderson seemed happy or unworried, eating large, quiet meals and going to bed early, always together. Clarice did not look forward to bedtime, to lying down—as if she fully expected to sleep—in the pose of a corpse.

  The days at Naringal were a succession of cups of tea, sturdy china cups with perfect chains of roses around their rims. Clarice had little to say and was sure her company had to be a tiresome burden. Her sorrow was a stain in the Andersons’ spotless, placid house; they showed no sign of noticing, however, and were gentleness itself. She did her best to eat the food they served, an overabundance of plain, nourishing stews and weekend roasts. Mrs Anderson thought Clarice’s frame could use some fattening up. Her children were good eaters, the lot of them. The boys, in particular, had hollow legs, but even Ada enjoyed her meals, as Clarice would know. In fact, she knew nothing of their daughter’s appetite and understood that the Andersons did not realise how negligible her knowledge of Ada actually was, not imagining that Clarice had avoided her supposed imitator, turned away from her as if from her own inconsequential shadow.

  Cramped and moody with sleeplessness, she got up early with her hosts and stood a while after breakfast on the cold verandah, listening to the birds rouse the day. She was tender-headed, as dark and misty as the fields. She often feared she would not be able to keep down her porridge and would deposit the shameful, steaming contents of her stomach onto the admirable vegetable garden.

  She was still Mum’s daughter, there on the verandah so early in the morning you could have sworn it was night. She was the daughter of an emptiness, of emptiness—somehow even more a daughter now. It was strange how much love for a parent could feel like a wound. She clenched her teacup in her unfeeling hands and waited for a smudge of light.

  Clarice was her own mistress, the entire day at her disposal, but she stuck to the old pattern, going out mornings and evenings.

  Her preference was for empty paddocks with an especially bare look. It hurt a little to walk; she was out of condition, and her joints were not what they had been, her body officially no longer a girl’s. Once, for a second, she thought she saw Arthur. That box of guilt had long been empty. At the far, right-hand margin of her sight, he stood watching her, smoking a meditative cigarette.

  She was a ghost too, at first—she was painting like a ghost. Out of habit, without precision or wonder. She was like a priest deserted by his faith, who nonetheless continues to go through the motions, getting up at dawn to the ritual of prayer, as much a part of him as that of breathing. She saw that self-hatred played no small part in devotion. The discomfort of her body, stiffly shaped to her will, was gratifying. Points of pain tingled in her arms. Tightness bound her wrists. Fatigue ignited a slow fire in her back. When she swayed on her feet from long concentration, she steadied herself with her easel, one hand clenched around the mast. She was pleased, on the verge of collapse.

  It took many days to see the place, to make sense of it. Close to the end of her stay, it dawned on Clarice that the tea she drank continually at Naringal was strong and golden-glossy with the decadent cream of farm milk. Around this time, she stopped reusing her panels, painting heartlessly over scenes she had already painted.

  Her mind and soul in the mud, a moment had finally come in which she knew, truly understood she was a painter. Painting did not matter anymore. Nothing mattered but painting. This was all there was. And there was nothing to achieve. The paintings might be seen by few, might go unseen. So be it. They were enough unto themselves.

  Painting in the void. What made a day intelligible was the donkey work of teasing something into being in tone and form where there had been a blank. She could do anything she wanted with paint, anything. She could fail and succeed, suffer uncertainty, but all of that would be beside the point. Everything was permitted and possible. She felt the weight of her vocation. The startling freedom of it. She was born to this. No Clarice outside painting; she was Clarice because she was a painter and she was a painter because she was Clarice.

  In twenty-one days, she completed two canvases and thirty panels. She enjoyed working on board, the smooth flatness of paint gliding onto wood, without the drag that canvas imposed on the brush. She kept the work quick and fluid, unmediated by thought, as far as it was possible: physical. Paintings of Naringal paddocks. In some the sun was smaller, and in others, larger, fuller. There were more or fewer trees. The trees were far or close. Sometimes, fence posts could be discerned in the distance. Or the grasses appeared to undulate. It amused her to give the scenes names. There was one she called The three trees in homage to Meldrum, to his brave work of perhaps two decades earlier. Many were informatively entitled Fields, Landscape, Summer Landscape or some such thing. The Andersons went to great pains to be complimentary, and even bought several, but found them, Clarice c
ould see, perplexingly monotonous and drab. She was surprised to note her eyes going to their faces to find approval—the old reflex.

  Just as her self was annihilated and definitively fused to painting, Clarice re-emerged. She became a woman again, of blood and impulses; she had confident hips and strengthening thighs, greater mental elasticity. It was being out in the open, day after day, in the new place. It was the wind stroking those dry grasses, the unstoppable rolling of the sky. It was the aching of her arms and the endless, conquering renewal of change.

  One morning as she was finishing up, she tipped her head back and her hat fell off. The breeze teased the sweat on her forehead. Her head was so far back that there was a slight pain in her throat and her legs folded. She was sitting in the middle of the paddock. She pried the palette and brushes from the fist of her left hand. The rough grass tickled through her stockings.

  Those desiccated fields were the colour—the exact colour—of the sand of certain beaches she knew intimately. The name of the colour was on her tongue. Gamboge. So came the revelation confirming what for some time she had dimly sensed. The grass she was looking at was a veneer, which, scratched away, revealed itself to be sand; while sand, if approached correctly, could no doubt be similarly peeled back to expose the underlying grass.

  It was all fashioned of the same matter. Each landscape was far deeper than itself—yet indivisible, one.

  When she was finished with the fields, when she went home, she would paint Port Phillip Bay as it had not previously been painted. Indeed, her paintings would not resemble any others; they would be the whole truth of what she saw.

  Retrieving her hat, she whimsically decided that she would also try putting a man in a landscape, as an experiment, to see what would happen. In the meantime, mornings and evenings she checked her kit was in order and set out for work, recommencing the occult, triangular conversation, stepping into the circle made by artist, paint, subject. She was a grateful labourer.