by JH Fletcher
She wrote. Whenever she had a moment. Or didn’t. On scraps of paper, the backs of old duty rosters, on anything and everything. She read what she had written, loathing it. Tried again, despaired, tried again. And again. Little by little, very humbly, hoped she might be learning. The gulf between aspiration and achievement was as wide as the universe.
One day, when she was off-duty, a silence filled her. Words crystallised, conjured from darkness, from the stillness within her head. Images flowed, coalesced. Exultation shimmered but she suppressed it sternly, barely daring to hope but wondering, wondering. When she had finished she could hardly bring herself to read it but did so, trembling. She sat back in her chair. Relief flowed like the tide. Glory.
The precious emotion warmed her through weeks and months of renewed frustration. She cudgelled herself, writing when she should have been studying or sleeping. What she wrote she destroyed. Tried again. Remained dissatisfied. She told herself it did not matter. What she had done once she would do again, in time.
That other nonsense, her father had called it.
Sunday morning Ruth drove over to Kapunda to see her Aunt Laura.
Laura lived with husband Fred, originally Friedrich, in a villa set in a small garden fronted by wrought-iron railings. The house was solemn, narrow, plain. To Ruth it was a dreadful place, a prison of the spirit where even the air was ladled out in teaspoons.
Laura herself was quite different from the house. She was blonde turning grey, plump, with the family’s grey eyes. She was highly strung, easily excited and voluble. Unfocused thoughts erupted from her like an explosion of tiny birds. She spoke in shrill squeaks, agile as bats, that flew about a room crowded with heavy furnishings, antimacassared and ponderous. The solemn air was stifled by rectitude and dust.
‘My dear,’ Laura exclaimed, ‘how good of you to come. We are living behind bars here.’ She dared an agitated glance through the unbarred window, on the lookout for a lynch mob, but beyond the railings the street remained stubbornly empty. ‘No one will speak to us, of course.’
‘Why?’
‘Naturally because of Franz.’
‘But Franz isn’t your fault. He isn’t even your son.’
Laura ran frantic fingers through her frizzled hair. ‘No one cares about that, my dear.’
‘Have you heard from him?’
‘His father had a letter a week before this dreadful war started. Franz wrote it three months ago. He told us how everyone in Germany wanted peace.’ She laughed bitterly. ‘Thank God Peter is at university.’
But Peter, her only son, would be nineteen next month. He was old enough for the forces and both of them knew it.
‘Where is Uncle Fred?’
‘At work. What little work there is.’ Her expression was tragic. ‘No one will trade with the father of a traitor.’
‘Has there been any trouble?’
‘Not so far.’
But spoke cautiously. In the First World War stones had been thrown, windows broken, some German migrants had been roughed up. Fred, who had arrived from Prussia four years before that war started, had experienced his share of trouble. Twenty-five years later Laura was not about to tempt providence by assuming it could not happen again.
‘Families at war with each other,’ Laura wept. ‘If the Germans come here Franz will be some kind of gauleiter, I suppose.’
‘The Germans aren’t coming here.’
‘Franz is not a bad boy,’ pleaded Laura.
But arrogant, always. In the beginning Ruth hadn’t minded. She’d had a crush on Franz in the old days, had even welcomed the arrogance as part of his heroic aura. Franz was bright, in 1934 had won a scholarship to a German university. Ruth had thought herself heartbroken. She had nursed the delusion until 1938 when, briefly, Franz had come home again. She had watched him inspecting the land of his birth through eyes that had not tried to hide their contempt.
‘What a country,’ he said, not caring who heard him.
Ruth tried to be civil, despite everything. ‘What are things like in Germany?’
Ardour glowed. ‘We are creating a new world. Everyone united, one nation that knows where it is going.’
He was so proud of what they were doing in that reborn country, under their new leader. The pride made him seem innocent. She felt the faintest flicker of her old feeling as he smiled at her.
The feeling had not lasted. His arrogance had become gross. Three months later he disappeared back to his beloved Reich and she told herself she was glad. Yet still managed to mourn the boy he had been before the Nazi virus took hold.
‘Irma caused it,’ Laura explained. ‘If only Fred had never brought her out here.’
Irma had been tall and bony, blue eyes cold as ice, a bristling personality. A cousin whose fiance had been killed in the war, the recently-widowed Fred had brought her to Australia in 1919 to look after himself and the three-year-old Franz. Resentful of Germany’s defeat and her own loss, she had raised the boy to be as ardent a nationalist as she was.
Three years later Fred had married Laura, which put the seal on things. To Irma it was a betrayal. By marrying an Australian Fred had lost any right to bring up his own son.
‘Play your games with your new wife. I shall raise your son to be a good German without you.’ Her corrosive contempt of all cultures but her own had hung barbs on each word.
What did it matter? Ruth thought. It was history, now.
‘I only dropped in to see if you were all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve got to be getting back.’ The stagnant, reproving house repelled her, as always. How Laura bore it she could not imagine.
Laura stood on the whitened step to see Ruth off. ‘What will become of us?’ she besought the sky, but neither it nor Ruth could help her. ‘I ask myself what we have done to deserve it. There seems no justice.’
But what justice had to do with life she did not say.
Back at the farm a gay little car, bodywork a gleaming yellow, mudguards black, brightened the day as it sat outside the kitchen door.
Ruth recognised it at once. It was probably the only car like that in Australia. Its owner was one of a kind, too.
‘Aunt Dorrie!’ Running.
Dorrie was as different from her sister Laura as it was possible to be. For a start she was twenty-two years older, yet in everything except the calendar she was half Laura’s age and always would be. She was wild, eccentric, orange hair flew from her head like a triumphant flag; she was an individualist to the core. Had, in a sense, been more of a pioneer than her own father, who had been one of South Australia’s earliest European settlers. One of the first women to graduate from the University of Melbourne, she had been an ardent socialist in the days when politics was no place for a woman, a pacifist during World War One, in the forefront of civil rights and progressive legislation ever since. As for the adventures of her early years … She had told Ruth about them years ago, when Ruth was fourteen and according to Dorrie old enough to understand such things.
Brother Bob had been outraged when he had found out but Dorrie didn’t care what he thought.
‘Mate,’ she told him, ‘if you were just a tad more stiff and starchy I reckon they’d stick you in the ground and use you as a fence post.’
Bob had never had any time for his sister, neither her humour nor her politics. My bolshie sister, he had told people who knew them both, making a joke out of what was an embarrassment, but it was no joke. A few years earlier Bob Ballard had flirted with the New Guard and for such a man to call anyone a bolshie was fighting talk. As for the way Dorrie had chosen to live her life …
‘Ruth’s only just turned fourteen. I won’t have you polluting her mind by talking to her about such things.’
‘I was only sixteen myself,’ Dorrie told him. ‘It was the most fulfilling time of my life. Everything that’s happened since has been one long anticlimax.’
Dorrie’s whole life had been lived in defiance of convention. Perhaps her temperament would have
made that inevitable but it had, in fact, been forced on her. Along every step of the way she had been greeted with hostility and outrage that anyone should imagine they had the right to live their own life, least of all a woman.
‘To hell with them,’ Dorrie had said. She had often used stronger words, too, but these she had not repeated to her fourteen-year-old niece. Let her discover some things for herself. In the things that mattered she had been less reticent.
‘Follow your own judgment. Don’t let anyone tell you what you must think or do. It won’t be easy. In some ways it’s the hardest thing in the world. But do it anyway because if you don’t you’ll never know what it is to be truly alive.’
It was advice that Ruth had never forgotten. It had not been easy, as Dorrie had warned her, but Ruth hoped that she had to some extent managed to put it into practice.
Now Dorrie was seventy years old and as young as tomorrow. Ruth loved her as she loved no one else on earth. She would have liked to believe she was like her but could not; Dorrie was unique.
Dorrie was in the kitchen with Ruth’s mother. Mary had no more in common with her than her husband but at least they could talk. She found Dorrie fascinating, like some exotic orchid. Whether the orchid was poisonous as well as beautiful she had never been able to decide but was prepared to risk it, for a time. Perhaps she recognised in Dorrie the self she would have liked to be, had she been able. It was nice to listen to her, to enjoy being shocked by her more outrageous utterances. It made Mary feel unconventional, too, adventurous, and for a woman who lived the most conventional of lives it was a delight to be wicked for an hour. Mary knew she could never be like Dorrie, would not have wished to be, but it was fun to pretend. It lent colour to her day.
Ruth’s father had taken refuge with the sheep.
‘Dorrie!’
Ruth came in like a thunderbolt; she might have been ten instead of twenty-one but Dorrie had that effect on people.
They embraced.
‘I wondered where you’d got to,’ Dorrie said.
‘I’ve been to see Laura,’ Ruth said. ‘She’s upset.’
‘She would be.’ But Dorrie was not unduly concerned. All her life Laura had been prostrated by trifles; it was hard to take her seriously now.
Dorrie asked, ‘Is she upset because Franz is a Nazi or because there may be trouble?’
‘Perhaps both.’
But was unsure as, suddenly, she was unsure of everything. Of the stability that had been a feature of her life nothing now remained. The future was opaque. For Ruth, facing cataclysm, the past offered the only security. Not her own past, that was too mundane to have significance, but the past as exemplified in the stories Dorrie had told her. Dorrie had known struggle, defeat, tragedy, yet despite all had survived. Perhaps that was what made the tales significant — the affirmation that it was possible to triumph gloriously in the face of overwhelming odds.
Ruth felt an urgent need to hear again those stories that seemed to her to underpin and provide evidence of the fabric of her own existence. Later, when she was able to get her aunt on her own, she asked her about them.
‘Those old yarns?’ Dorrie teased. ‘Again?’
Yet seemed to understand that in a world in chaos they represented the bedrock upon which a foot could be set.
‘Where would you like me to start?’
FIVE
Nineteen years old, with all the beauty and vivacity of youth, Dorrie ran through a patch of sun-dappled bush, the gum trees white columns, the sky blue with an early summer radiance. Beyond the bush, a sapphire blink of sea. She came out from the trees into full sunlight. In front of her the bay was embraced by the voluptuous curve of the shoreline, green and gold against the blue water. A hundred yards distant, on the edge of the cliff, a solitary man was sitting working at an easel, his back turned to her. Dorrie ran towards him. Her skirts, worn long in the fashion of the time, flew about her ankles.
‘Lukas,’ she called. Her voice was high, joyous.
He turned swiftly at her call. His beard was long and golden in the sun. He waved and leapt energetically to his feet. They ran to each other.
Dorrie laughed as his arms enfolded her. ‘I love you,’ she cried exultantly. In her breast, pressed close to his, she could feel the beating of his strong heart. ‘Love you!’
She did not care who knew it: the trees, the birds along the shore, the whole world. In matters other than dress she was not of her time at all. Some called her brazen, some a great deal worse than that. She knew that, too, and did not care.
Arms around each other, they walked to the easel.
‘How’s it going?’
‘Look for yourself.’
Lukas’s palette contained all the colours of sunlight. Amber and cadmium and saffron, yellow ochre, cinnabar and palladium, blue madder and cerulean. The half-finished painting blazed with brilliant light.
‘It’s wonderful.’
Dorrie was filled with delight for the wonderful painting, the brilliance of the unspoiled day, the ecstasy of loving this man.
‘God, Lukas …’
He heard the desire in her voice, laughed and ran his hand swiftly down her neck so that she shuddered, leaning closer to him. But turned away. ‘I can’t stop. The light is liquid, it changes all the time. I’ve got to catch it before it goes.’
And looked away from her, picking up his brush, immersed again in his subject, the painting before him.
Obediently she sat in the sweet-smelling grass. She had taught herself to be utterly subservient to him in the matter of his work. Such behaviour was foreign to her nature but she told herself it was part of her love for him. She had known him for three years, since her sixteenth birthday, had known from the first that she would always have to share him with his work. If she felt resentment she had never allowed herself to admit it, even to herself. An artist marched to a different drum from the rest of the world.
They had been years of glory.
She had first heard of Lukas and his colleagues from a friend, Madeleine Grant, who claimed to know all about art.
‘The Heidelberg group, they call themselves. Roberts, Streeton, McCubbin. And Lukas Smart, of course. We mustn’t forget Lukas.’ And had laughed.
‘Why must we not forget Lukas?’
‘My dear.’ Madeleine was four years older, and professed a sophistication and experience that perhaps she had. ‘Lukas Smart is the most talented of the lot of them. Besides, he’s the closest thing to a Greek god you’re ever likely to meet.’
‘And are we going to meet him?’
‘They’re putting on an exhibition in Melbourne. If we go to it we shall be sure to see him. I’ll introduce you, if you like.’
The exhibition was held in a small house in a Melbourne suburb. Lukas Smart was not there. The paintings troubled Dorrie. They were all strangely alike, explosions of light and energy hurtful to her eyes. She could see no pattern in them, no identification with anything she knew. She could not relate to them at all.
‘They’re not like any paintings I ever saw,’ she complained.
‘They’re not supposed to be. They’re trying something new.’
It was a novelty that did not appeal.
They left but Dorrie had always hated to be beaten by anything. She wanted to understand the chaos of brilliance that had confused her so badly on her first visit.
She went back. No one in the little room. The light was wrong, she could see that, and there was insufficient space. It frightened her to think how much more powerful these paintings might be, properly displayed. Even so, she would have liked to see them like that, the raw energy pulsing in the light. Even in these inadequate surroundings the paintings filled the room, their colours vibrating in the still air; they made her feel an intruder. She wanted to touch them but did not dare. A light so brilliant might turn to fire beneath her fingers. Life was a consuming fire; she knew that already. Knew, too, that in the right time and place she would welcome the fire, would
be eager to become one with the glory and majesty of life. But not now, not yet. Let me be free a little longer, she prayed. She turned slowly, eyes watching the paintings that hemmed her in. Their energy was too much for her. She closed her eyes. She stood in the middle of the room, feeling the pigments beat against her closed eyelids.
Out of the darkness a voice said, ‘You’re supposed to look at them.’
Dorrie opened her eyes. A tall man, golden beard across his breast, a smile of surprising sweetness. A Greek god, as Madeleine had said.
‘I am feeling them,’ Dorrie told him.
‘Feeling colours?’ And laughed but was not all laughter, Dorrie saw. He did not dismiss her remark although made by a woman. He smiled still but at her, not her words, and his eyes were serious, trying to understand.
‘Of course feeling colours,’ she told him. ‘It is not all in the eye. If you’re an artist you must know that.’
They talked, and later walked down the street together. It had been a hot day and the evening sky formed an opalescent arch above the roofs.
‘We are going to Gemsbrook,’ he said. ‘Up into the Dandenong Ranges. To paint in the open. We shall camp.’
‘It will be cool there.’ After the day’s sunlight the narrow street pulsed with heat. Dorrie brushed a strand of hair from her moist forehead. She was filled with longing for the green coolness of the hills.
‘You could come,’ he said. ‘If you liked.’
It was out of the question. At the moment all her options lay open before her. Take such a step and she would be cut off from a major portion of life, the respectable portion. Forever. There would be no way back.
Out of the question.
‘As your model?’ She did not look at him.
‘That, too.’
She did not know him. Everywhere one heard stories of women who had done such things. And paid.
‘Life is for living,’ he said.