‘Then teach me.’
‘No.’
‘Please.’
She picked up a coloured cardboard circle. It was divided into wedges with ‘primary colours’ and ‘secondary colours’ written on it.
‘What’s that?’ I said.
‘This? A colour wheel. It shows you how to mix paint. Basic stuff. Don’t you know?’
‘Aunt Tempe showed me how to make purple from blue and red, and green from blue and yellow. But not all . . . that.’
Mrs Valier shook her head. ‘There’s so much you need to know. I suppose . . . I suppose I could lend you an anatomy book. But what if your mother finds it?’
‘She wants me to be a doctor.’
‘Oh. Well. You might look at some cartoons too.’ She thumbed through a paint-spattered magazine. ‘Here.’
I moved to her desk. That perfume again, a haunting mix of jasmine and lemon.
‘They use very simple devices to depict movement.’
I looked at the cartoon character. Circles around its arms made it appear to be falling. A frog had semicircles beneath its legs to show it jumping.
‘Degas’ ballet girls,’ she said, pulling a book from the shelf.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to do Stefi like Degas’ ballet girls, doing up their shoes and things. I want to draw her moving.’
She closed the book. ‘Then perhaps you’d better find someone else.’
‘There isn’t anyone else.’ To my horror my voice wobbled.
Mrs Valier sighed. ‘Well, then you’re stuck with me.’ She passed me an anatomy book. ‘Study this. Watch how people move and how they hold themselves. Try to see them as shapes rather than arms, legs and bodies. Get a feel for their passion for movement or their resistance to it. Stay alert, Lindsay, you have to be watching all the time.’
A fortnight later I brought her a drawing. A tulip. In the left bottom corner I’d drawn it closed; at the top right, open. On a curved line between them I’d shown the flower blooming in stages. I’d coloured the whole picture with chalk – pink, lavender, green and red.
‘You said to feel their passion, and that’s what I kept seeing; Stefi as a flower.’
She nodded. ‘It’s a lovely drawing, but what I see here is your passion, rather than hers.’
‘Is that bad?’
‘No, it’s fine. But it’s not Stefi dancing, it’s Stefi loved.’
‘Then show me Stefi dancing.’
She let out a long whoosh of air. ‘Oh . . . what the heck. May as well be hung for a lamb as a sheep. You’re one persistent lamb.’ She pulled out a chair ‘Sit.’
Chapter Seventeen
I scooted down the hill on my bicycle trying to imagine Mama on a motorbike.
‘I’m sick of that darn jeep,’ she’d told Dad one Sunday.
He’d stirred from his siesta and half-opened his eyes, like a koala bear.
‘I want a car with doors. I’m too old for that rattletrap.’
‘You’re not even forty,’ Dad said. ‘And we can’t afford a car, we’ve just bought a house.’
He’d toughened up lately. It suited him. Not quite the sponge cake he used to be with Mama and he didn’t look so lost. Maybe he was starting to forget Helen Valier.
‘Seven months ago,’ my mother said. ‘And I’m earning good money. I want a car.’
‘A bike,’ Dad suggested cheerfully.
‘A what?’
‘A motorbike.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Nice and cool. Economical. I can teach you how to ride.’ He began to whistle.
‘You know what you can do with your motorbike.’
I pushed my bicycle behind the hibiscus bush at the back of Boroko Books and went inside. There it was, everything laid out for me: ceramic dishes, paints, brushes, water, rag paper and two tea towels – one for the front of my smock, another across my lap. Every Wednesday since that first magic afternoon when I learned you can make not only green and purple, but every colour in the rainbow with just three – red, yellow and blue.
Helen was on the phone when I went in. She nodded at me and went to the business end of her desk, shuffling papers as she talked. I sat down, tucked in the tea towels, picked up a brush – the next size up from Stumpy – and shut my eyes, planning. Painting was different now, more precious. Not just because I had only an hour a week but because I understood more. When Helen had taught me how to mix colours she’d remarked that I was a fast learner. On an impulse I’d told her that perhaps it was because I could see auras. She’d looked at me with envy. ‘What an advantage for an artist. I’m jealous.’
I wet the brush and drenched the top half of the paper, then touched a worm of Cerulean blue to the water and watched it speed through, firing into corners and resting in flowers. I hammered the floor with my boot. An hour fled by. I looked anxiously at my watch. It was my last visit to Helen before Christmas but this year I was in no hurry for the holidays. No school meant no Christopher Bright and no Wednesday afternoons. I said goodbye to Helen and pedalled home.
In my room, I took out the beautiful shoes. The day before, Mama had come home and handed me a box. ‘For the pantomime,’ she said.
The Christmas pantomime. Everyone in Moresby went to it. This year it was a ballet-drama of Tales from the Arabian Nights and Stefi, who’d been dancing only six months, had a lead role. I’d taken the box from Mama and lifted the lid cautiously.
Shoes. Black patent-leather court shoes.
‘Mama!’ I wanted to hug her but her arms were folded. ‘Thank you.’
‘You do realise your limp will be more noticeable?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you’ll have to be extra careful that you don’t trip.’
‘I know, Mama. Please don’t spoil it.’
‘Okay. Sorry.’ She sat down and patted the sofa. ‘Sit for a moment, Lindsay.’ A flash of yellow whipped around her ears and disappeared again.
‘Why?’
‘Oh,’ she shrugged. ‘I just want to ask you something.’ She patted the sofa again and I sat on the edge.
‘I’ve had a letter from St Catherine’s School in Sydney. A place has come up, only one, for grade eight next year. It’s a fabulous opportunity. Would you consider going?’
So that’s what the shoes were about.
‘I don’t want to go to boarding school.’
‘You’ll have to eventually, you know.’
‘Not until grade ten. You promised. Only for the last three years of school.’
Mama stood up. ‘Yes, I did promise. But I hoped you’d change your mind. I wish you understood what you’re throwing away.’
On the pantomime’s opening night I wore a new sleeveless red dress and my beautiful shoes. Tim was home from Melbourne and all of us were going. I desperately hoped Chris would be there; I’d never felt so gorgeous.
Mama French-braided my hair. ‘No wonder you can’t manage it,’ she said, wrestling with four hanks. ‘It’s nearly to your waist. You need twelve inches off.’
‘Never.’
In a clinging white sheath and pearls, her black bob as shiny as patent leather, she looked incredible. At the theatre I saw Diane Rudge, smug and lacy as a five year old, and Chris sitting next to her. What was it about her?
The lights dimmed and Stefi began to dance the part of a slave girl imprisoned in a harem. In gauzy silver pants, a blood-red top and silver cap, she spun and dipped across the stage as light as a paintbrush. The audience thumped their feet on the floor, whistled and cheered. Tim stared at her.
‘Crikey. Little Stefi.’
Mama and Dad stayed back afterwards talking to friends. I hung about for a while, then went outside. Chris was sitting on a low stone wall, alone. He wore a tie. He was unbearably handsome. I felt a rush of love, an oceanic swell that gathered me up and swept me through the warm night air. As I went towards him, his eyes flickered down my body. When they reached my feet they stopped, and the million tiny muscles in his
face went still. His smile, when it came, was not his smile and his voice was not his voice.
‘Hello Lindsay.’ Strange, thick.
At home, I put the shoes in the box and the box at the back of the wardrobe and I stared at my naked, mortifying foot. Mama was right. Who did I think I was kidding? Clear as day; one foot sleek and straight, the other knobbled and twisted. The shoes were a joke.
On Christmas Eve, Dad took Tim and me aside. ‘Your mother’s present.’ He held up a set of keys. ‘A motorbike.’
‘A what?’
‘Shhh.’ Dad said. ‘Tomorrow after all the presents have been dished out, I’ll give her the keys. CP, I want you to take a photo.’
‘She won’t like it, Dad.’
‘She’ll love it.’
‘Where’s the bike now?’ said Tim.
‘Under the house. I’ll bring it up early.’
The following morning Dad cooked a special Christmas breakfast of eggs and imported smoked salmon with dill sauce. We opened gifts and took photos and then Dad handed Mama a fat envelope. He kissed her cheek. ‘Happy Christmas, Lily May.’
She tore open the envelope. ‘Keys?’
‘Your present’s in the driveway.’
Mama’s eyes narrowed. She stood up and walked slowly to the door, pushed open the screen and went outside. Dad, Tim and I crowded along behind her. She stopped suddenly. We all stopped. In the middle of the driveway was a gleaming black and chrome motorbike.
Mama turned disbelieving eyes on Dad. ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
He grinned and pointed. ‘Look. Up there.’ On the road above the driveway stood a perky new Ford Prefect, iris blue.
‘Oh . . . oh!’ Mama said. ‘Mine?’
‘Yours,’ said Dad.
She ran up to the road and trailed her fingers across the car’s glossy paint. ‘It’s beautiful!’ She smiled at Dad over the bonnet. ‘Thank you so much, Ed. But what about the bike?’
‘Mine,’ he said. ‘A Velocette Venom, before I get too old. I can teach you to ride it if you like.’
Mama did let Dad teach her to ride, though she only took the bike to the bottom of the hill, and always carefully. Dad was careful too, compared with the way he drove the jeep.
‘Too old,’ he said.
He wasn’t. But sometimes he looked it.
Beyond the fly-wire, rain gushed onto the earth. I could hardly see Josie’s boi-haus thirty feet away. Later, when the rain stopped – as it would, as sharply as knife through marrow – I’d go to Helen’s. I hadn’t held a paintbrush in over a month.
That morning Mama had flown to the highlands to photograph a sing-sing. ‘Come with me,’ she’d urged. ‘Bring your camera and I’ll show you how to make the most of it.’
‘I can’t go where you go,’ I’d said. ‘My foot.’
‘Handy sometimes, that foot, isn’t it?’
The rain stopped. I got out my bike and rode a sluggish path to Helen’s, steam rising from the road like a plate of soup. Sweat dribbled down my neck and under my arms and blossoming chest.
Helen was leaning on her desk when I went in, muttering over a drawing of a flying squirrel. A fan in the corner whirred. She turned as I went in.
‘Happy 1961, Lindsay. She picked up a glass of water and gulped it down. Let me get you a drink. I’m supposed to be doing accounts but it’s too hot for numbers.’
I pushed my face in front of the fan. ‘I did a drawing using numbers once, a picture of my teacher. It got me into trouble at school.’
‘You’ve a habit of getting into trouble at school. I heard about the stolen paints. You could have asked me.’
‘It’s more fun to steal,’ I said.
She tried to look indignant. ‘Well! I was going to give you paints for Christmas but maybe you’d rather steal them?’
‘Maybe,’ I smiled.
‘So, how was Christmas?’ she asked.
I thought about Dad and the motorbike and the car but said nothing. Helen belonged to a different life. The only person who knew about her was Stefi and she’d been horrified.
‘It’s not worth the risk. Your mother would kill you.’
‘What would you do if your mother banned ballet?’
‘She wouldn’t.’
‘What if ? I said.’
Stefi stared at her feet. ‘I’d dance, I guess.’
‘Christmas was fine,’ I said to Helen. ‘Yours?’
‘Quiet. I’ll have mine when you lot have bought all your school books and the new term starts. I’m closing the shop for three weeks and going to Canberra to visit my dad.’
‘Oh.’ Three more weeks without painting! ‘Here,’ I said, trying not to show my disappointment. ‘I did this for you.’
Helen took the sketch I’d done and spread it out on the table. It was a picture of kids playing marbles at school. A girl knelt by a circle ready to shoot and across from her another girl sized up her shot. Beside them a boy stood with his arms crossed, looking impatient while another kid whispered in his ear.
Helen snorted. ‘I love this kid here, trying to unsettle the other player. It’s so very . . . you, Lindsay, every line. Thank you.’
‘I got you these, too.’ I handed her a packet of velvet ribbons; green, burgundy and black. ‘Oh, how lovely!’ She grabbed a fistful of hair and wrapped it in the burgundy ribbon. ‘How do I look?’
‘Nice.’ She was nice, and I wished I could have got her something better than just a picture and ribbons. Every time I tried to give her money for lessons she waved me away. We squabbled constantly over the price of paints. She never took as much as I knew they cost.
She fanned her face with a card and tugged at her shorts. ‘Why aren’t you wearing shorts in this heat?’
Fine for her. She knew perfectly well why I wasn’t wearing shorts. I took my irritation out on Stumpy in my pocket. ‘I don’t like shorts,’ I said.
‘You don’t like shorts or you think your foot would be more noticeable? It wouldn’t, you know. In fact those smocks you wear draw more attention to it than if you dressed like everyone else.’
If I hadn’t been sitting down I’d have fallen down. I was used to this crap coming from my mother but not from Helen.
‘I mean, here it is stinking hot and you’re wearing clothing past your knees. If that’s not a declaration of a hang-up I don’t know what is. Your foot’s not perfect, but it’s part of who you are.’
‘It’s not me! I’m in here,’ I thumbed my chest. ‘And here.’ I flicked my sketch. ‘I’m not my foot. I thought you saw that. But you don’t. You’re just like everyone else.’
‘I see all of you, Lindsay, and you don’t end at your knee.’
I stood up, grabbed my bag and hurried outside.
Helen followed. ‘I’m sorry!’ she called out. ‘I shouldn’t have said that. Come back, Lindsay, please.’
I pulled my bike from the bushes and pushed it through the muddy puddles.
Helen splashed after me and laid her hand on my arm. ‘I was wrong. Please forgive me; I promise I’ll behave better next time.’
‘There won’t be a next time.’
Helen looked at me sadly. ‘Then I’ll miss you, Lindsay. All of you.’
My mother’s photographs of Goroka sizzled. They brought the smells, sounds and sights of her travels into our living room. Black faces swept with red and ochre, noses skewered with pig tusks, bare bums peeking from beneath purple tee-shirts, towering bird-of-paradise headdresses, spears and beating kundu drums. Glistening thighs, rippling torsos, faces in firelight. A comatose python in kikuyu grass, a goat outlined in its belly. A grass-skirted meri, piglet at one breast, baby at the other, stared through the camera into eternity. Caverns breathed mist, waterfalls plummeted, serrated mountaintops soared against a peach-coloured sky.
Stunning.
But something was missing. The person who looked through the viewfinder and pressed the shutter. No sign of Mama in her photos, no sign of what she felt when she saw such
incredible sights. Mama’s pictures could have been taken by anyone.
Something else was missing: Stumpy, and I was worried that my mother might find it.
A few days later I started grade eight.
Stefi handed me a brown paper bag. ‘It’s from Mrs Valier,’ she said. ‘She gave it to me when I got my school books.’
Inside were two brushes. One was Stumpy, which I must have dropped when I fled Helen’s shop. The other was Stumpy’s perfect twin, brand new, every hair intact. There was a note:
Which one do you love more?
I hated Helen Valier. I hated her having the last word, I hated her getting under my skin and inside my mind. I hated how much I missed her.
The three weeks that Helen was gone seemed longer than the six weeks of holidays. The first Wednesday after her return I pedalled furiously to her shop, telling myself my rush was only because I needed art supplies and that I had to thank her for the brushes. There was no need to hang about. Do what I had to do and leave.
She was at her desk when I peered through the bead curtain, dipping a paintbrush into water, and muttering. I wondered if she muttered because she was lonely.
‘Hello,’ she said, without turning.
‘Oh . . . hello,’ I replied. ‘I just came for supplies, and to thank you for the brushes.’
‘Not at all.’ She swivelled around. ‘Come in.’
I went in, and stopped. There, at my usual place on her desk, my art things were all set out, waiting. My heart began to thump furiously. How dare she? She picked up a small parcel and tossed it at me. It landed at my feet and I left it there.
‘An apron.’
‘I don’t need an apron.’ I did need an apron.
She put her brush in water and lifted up a picture that was leaning against the wall. ‘I haven’t hung it yet. Maybe you could help me decide where.’
My sketch of the kids playing marbles. Framed, it looked like a proper piece of art and I felt a surge of pride. Yet, there was something wrong with it.
‘Do you approve?’ said Helen.
‘Yes . . . sort of, I don’t know . . . something’s not right.’
The Beloved Page 19