Contents
Title Page
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Acknowledgements
About the author
Copyright Page
‘God, who’s that loser?’ croons my recently made friend, Louise-who-wants-to-be-a-painter, her plump pink lips at my earlobe. She’s down from Daylesford for my exhibition opening.
‘You mean that one over there?’ I say, pointing to where my son, who’s come straight from the gym in his tracky daks, is sauntering past my big triptych, Madonna, Madonnina, sipping nonchalantly on a champagne he’s swiped from the silver tray at the entrance.
‘Someone ought to chuck him out,’ says Louise-who-wants. ‘He’s just wandered in off the street and pinched a glass of bubbly! I’m going to tell the organiser.’
‘Well, hang on,’ I say and I call through a gap in the gathering that aligns my low-slung mouth with his high-slung ear, ‘Eli!’
He hasn’t heard. I’m about to tunnel through the crowd to grab hold of him, when Louise says, ‘Do you know him? Who is he? Is he mentally ill or something?’
‘No, he’s just wearing his gym clothes.’
‘To an opening like this?’
It’s true the place looks plush with its Victorian decor and famed collection of Australiana. Marian, the organiser, and I have hung my work among it, hoping, with a long pull on the bow, that it won’t look too out of place – after all, the images derive from monumental buildings of a similar era, only they belong to Milan, not Melbourne. Milan has history for me, being the place where my father spent his early life – besides, it’s very paintable.
‘Don’t worry about him,’ I say to Louise, ‘come over and meet my partner, Mick.’ And I haul her over to where Mick is standing, large and companionless in his best clobber, kind of circling round his champagne flute, no doubt looking for the top of my head in the throng. Poor chap has only been to one other exhibition opening and was so at sea that he kept swooping past the food table and bucketing up handfuls of hors d’oeuvre to bring me, thinking it was all we’d have for tea.
We push through the expensively perfumed guests, almost none of whom I know. There are those from my painting workshops, like Louise, and those from my weekend classes and one or two dear stalwarts – I suppose I recognise about ten people. At short notice, because I was double-booked out of my original venue, Marian – gallery manager for the big business venture housed in this building – took me on and invited the company guest list, saying, ‘It’ll be a smash hit, just you wait and see!’ Marian’s a trouper, good-natured, funny and chaotically organised – nothing falls into the pit, although it looks as if it might, which is just the way I like it. The people here are by and large the owner’s friends who’ve stayed back in the city after work to sit out an extraordinary weather alert in this safe and opulent place, with free and fancy food laid on. The weather bureau is tipping one hundred and fifty kph winds; there’ve already been some appallingly noisy blasts and the trams have stopped running. I yank Mick’s coat bottom. He says, ‘Oh, there you are!’
‘Meet Louise, pet. I’ve just got to scoot off for a tick and…’
I’ve brought some clothes for Eli. They’re in a backpack in the conference room behind the gallery. Unfortunately, the TV crew’s in there and they aren’t letting anyone in. That’s why he’s dressed the way he is. He’s a journalist: he’s returning to Afghanistan tomorrow, all his ordinary clothes are packed and I had to bring in his old wedding suit from its storage place in my wardrobe. I shuffle up to Marian, who’s serving the wine, and she says, ‘I’ll get your son to hop into the gents, Isobel, and I’ll whip his kit in there away from that ridiculous TV crew. Why they have to have it all to themselves, God knows.’
Half the gathering’s already noticed Eli and people are forming temporary clumps to look him up and down in a mixture of mystification and distaste. He’s arousing far more interest than my paintings. They’ve probably decided that he’s a tramp or homeless, that he’s come to sit out the disastrous storm that’s supposed to be upon us within the hour and that the security on the door isn’t up to scratch.
I take over from Marian, who walks purposefully up the corridor that leads away from the exhibition space, opens the forbidden door, retrieves the backpack and beckons Eli down another corridor where there is a gents and where he would have come in had it not been that the weather alert meant the side door had to be shut.
People come up to the table ignoring me as if I am a waitress. They ask each other questions like ‘I’ve never seen any of this person’s work before, have you?’ and give each other answers like ‘She’s Henry Coretti’s daughter, you can tell.’ ‘Yes, there’s a problem with painting dynasties, the kids never seem to be able to get out of their parents’ shadows.’
‘Actually,’ says one of my mother’s many relatives who hasn’t noticed that I have just become a menial, serving the wine at my own do to someone who doesn’t know I’m the star turn, who thanks me for the champagne and takes my glass, ‘she won some major award a few years ago. Can’t remember the name of it, but the Art Gallery acquired the work. It’s in the Australian collection.’
‘Really?’
‘They’re a very artistic family. I’m related to her mother.’
‘Not Viva Laurington? I thought she was dead.’
‘Not Viva, no. She is dead. Stella Coretti, his first wife, is my second cousin.’
‘There was another wife!’
‘Oh yes. And two daughters. Isobel is the younger one. The older one, Allegra, committed suicide.’
‘I thought Henry Coretti only had one daughter…I thought Cecilia was an only child…Suicide, you said?’
‘Married the wrong chap. Terrible fellow. Isobel and Allegra had an art gallery – he got jealous and laid waste to a show of Isobel’s work.’
‘Oh, they should have called the police! Killing yourself’s just letting someone like that get away with it!’
‘Yes, well…The pity of it was that there was a child. A little girl. In the end, Isobel and Stella took her in hand.’
‘And all along I thought Cecilia Laurington-Coretti was an only child!’
‘Well, no. Which puts a spoke in the wheel of the inheritance. You’ll have heard the kerfuffle over the Siècle Trust, I suppose?’
‘I thought Cecilia ran the Siècle Trust?’
‘She’s on the board. Isobel and her niece, Nin, own some of the pictures but Cecilia and her mother wanted them in the Trust – the pictures, I mean, not Isobel and her niece. Cecilia and Isobel are at daggers drawn…’
(Really? Are we just? At daggers drawn! I don’t own a dagger. I pass out more champagne to reaching hands, ears pricking.)
‘Oh, you might be able to help me with something,’ goes one of the women the relative is talking to. ‘Somebody told me this and I’ve always wondered if it was true. They said that Henry Coretti was a spy in France during the war…’
Laughter… ‘Oh no. No. Henry came to Australia before the war broke out. He came out from France…’
‘I must have got it wrong…’
‘No, no, not altogether. You see, his family were émigrés from Milan…’ (How she loves that word émigré.) ‘That’ll be the Milanese connection in these paintings – they were anti-Mussolini and went to Paris when Henry was still a teenager. They lived in Paris where the parents worked for the Italian underground. They ran a newspaper, or helped to run it. Henry was a courier.’
‘I heard he met Viva in Paris.’
‘Yes, well, that’s it, you see. She was staying in the same apartment. She’d gone over as a guest of the Coretti’s host family. They were living all-in-together. Imagine, in one of those poky Paris apartments. I stayed in one – you couldn’t swing a cat! If you ask me, Melbourne’s a much better place to live, these days at least.’
‘Absolutely. And Paris is so expensive.’
‘Didn’t you get one of those travel card things? I did, but there you are, you see Viva was hardly more than a schoolgirl, although she’d known the host family’s relatives back here and they more or less sent her off. Quite possibly…’ chortle, ‘to improve her French.’
‘Like finishing school?’
‘No, no, no, no! No! Not like finishing school. No, by all accounts, Viva had a pretty rough start. Guess who was her brother?’
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘Leslie Hallett!’
‘Oh, wasn’t his father a woodcutter or something? Wasn’t that in the paper recently?’
‘Yes. They’ve begun writing about him and that group of artists. So talented. If he’d lived they say he’d have been better known than Henry Coretti.’
‘I’ve forgotten how he died…’
‘Leslie Hallett? Another suicide. He was gay, you see. But that article in the paper didn’t say who his lover was,’ says the relative, knowingly.
‘Who?’
‘Harry Laurington!’
‘Really? No! I thought he was Viva’s brother.’
‘No, dear. She was married to him for years before she married Henry Coretti. It was a cover. Oh, it suited Viva! There she was, you see, caught short with Henry’s bun in the oven…’
‘Oh, I thought Henry Coretti had always been with Viva.’
‘Did you darling? Ha, ha, ha!’
‘But why didn’t they stay together if they’d known each other so long and she was pregnant? Oh, I’m on her side!’
‘He was mad about someone else.’
‘Your cousin?’
‘Oh no. Not Stella, more’s the pity. No, it was someone he knew in France. She died, you see. He was devastated. Maybe he had a one-night stand with Viva or they did have a brief affair, but he found out about this other woman’s death and went walkabout, not knowing Viva was pregnant. When he came back, it was a fait accompli – wedding ring and baby.’
‘Oh!’ Swallowed shrieks. And, ‘Gosh, how do you know so much? I mean, that article in the paper wasn’t that revealing!’
‘Angela Crawford’s doing it for her mature-age PhD at Swinburne. Naturally I was fascinated because of Cousin Stella. I don’t suppose it matters much to her now though. Another cousin, Audra Cordage…’
‘Gosh, Audra and I were on the Scotch mothers’ committee. It must be forty years ago. But go on.’
‘Well, Audra told me that Isobel’s had Stella put away in an old folks’ home. Audra’s livid!’
‘Give her my best, won’t you?’
‘Certainly. Funny old thing, Audra, but loyal, you see. Anyway, who’s for more champagne?’ And she turns around and… ‘Isobel!’ And then, to cover her tracks, she breathes a little smile that catches on her tonsils and while she’s doing that, I give her a cold stare and skedaddle towards the loo past Marian, who is back, pulling herself up to her full-breasted, capable size, glasses round her neck on a lanyard.
Eli is scrubbing up and now I have to let my indignation cool and get ready to face the cameras.
The light in the lady’s loo is kind to me, thank God. Nevertheless, splashing my face with cold water was a mistake and I have to keep dabbing my front while I screw up my eyes in search of the lashes with the mascara wand.
Last week, when I was in the middle of preparing for this launch, there was a knock on my door. When I opened it I had a paintbrush in my hand and spraypaint goggles pushed back on my head. ‘What?’ I growled. I hate being interrupted in the middle of work and I have to kick myself every time I allow it to happen. I had my mind on the physics and geography of my far-too-small studio and no free fingers to take hold of the sheaf of papers the interrupting bastard on the doorstep was proffering me. Mick was away. I was very, very busy, but the bastard kept on thrusting the papers at me, saying, ‘You Isobel Coretti?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, I’ve been ordered to serve these on you.’
‘Serve?’
‘Legal papers.’
‘Fuck!’
‘Sorry.’ And he looked sorry, like a roadside weed in a hailstorm. So I took off the goggles and the rubber gloves I was wearing and while I was doing that, he said, ‘It’s not really that urgent, but you have to take the papers. It’s a Statement of Claim and I have to verify that I’ve delivered it.’
And there on the top page of this statement was the name Cecilia V. Laurington-Coretti, as Checkie likes to style herself. In the claim she was described as the owner of Siècle Art Gallery and Director of the Board of Trustees for the Siècle Trust.
She was claiming ownership of an important group of paintings that my niece and I were awarded from Dadda’s estate.
Why couldn’t he have just saved his sperm for Allegra and me? Why did he have to test his proclivities for procreation with bloody Viva? Checkie claims that the estate has never been legally finalised and that since I appear not to have the means of maintaining them, the paintings should come to her as part of the Siècle Trust to which our father belonged.
I deeply resent having to waste time even thinking about Checkie, but she has announced publicly and loudly that she is the true owner of the paintings in my care, and now a blasted current affairs program has found enough mud in it to ring me and ask if they could televise my opinion on the matter tonight.
They’re not here to talk about my paintings and the effort it’s been to paint such big and intricate work in the tiny premises of my home – no! Not here to gauge the difficulties involved in painting large when you’re knee high to an ant and have to tie your brushes onto the ends of giant sticks in order to get the sweep and the buzz going – no. Not here to talk about the years involved in planning things on this scale! Oh no! They’re here to talk about what they call the Coretti dynasty and now I have to rehearse it all quickly in my head before I talk to them.
We all shuffle trivia to a greater or lesser degree to make the world reflect more glory on us, but Viva Laurington-Coretti did it par excellence. Viva had quite a story behind her: the story of a poor girl made good, even heroic with her flight from Mussolini’s henchmen and a handsome young man tucked under her arm. She and Dadda had gone to Normandy to drop propaganda to two leaders of the Italian resistance just before the Cagoulards waylaid the leaders and murdered them.
Stella would never have been able to handle such a story. Political intrigue, murder and being on the run were outside her ken. At the time she met Dadda, Singapore had fallen and she was numbly trying to concoct a tale that would disguise from her suffering self the deaths abroad of all the dear young men in her life – her three brothers and her fiancé. It took all her energy just to save herself from the impact. If she was clever, that cleverness was never allowed to grow – all was covered in the luscious vines of charity which extended to envelop Dadda over the counter of the bank where she was his teller.
She did not know that Dadda had come to Melbourne with Viva; she barely knew that he was allowed in because he had a French passport and an uncle in Melbourne who was able to sponsor him. She did not know that in Melbourne, Dadda had a liaison with Viva for want of knowing anyone else. She did not know that Viva exulted in this relationship a
nd saw it as the culmination of a high-minded adventure.
Viva’s dream of landing Henry Coretti for herself came true once they arrived in Australia. She kept urging that dream to stay up where she’d put it, but the more she strove to empower it, the more she realised that she had in her arms a man who was grieving over someone else. She could not hide her bitterness. She was deeply, enduringly jealous. I don’t know whether Dadda weakened before news of his beloved’s death reached him. If it had been me, I dare say I might have weakened, fatalistic creep that I am: it was very doubtful that, once he left, Dadda would ever see her again. He must have been heartbroken and in need. Whatever happened, while he was off wandering, Viva had a better offer.
Harry Laurington’s Siècle was one of the first private art galleries in Melbourne. It showed the work of young contemporaries. Dadda showed with Siècle at first, but, after Checkie arrived, decided against it because Harry was bringing her up as if she were his. But Leslie Hallett, the painterly brother, had always been a troubled person: add to that the fact that he was having an affair with his sister’s husband and perhaps it was enough at the time to drive him over the edge. He committed suicide, so instead of the marriage liberating Viva, it meant that she lost both her lover and her brother and had a gay man for a partner.
She had to take on Leslie’s death somehow so she began a myth that was one of the props of her existence – had he lived, Leslie would have been the greatest painter of his generation. A certain lore grew up around Leslie’s name. He had mystique. He became the subject of research and writing. Harry Laurington formed a trust in which his work was preserved for posterity. But there wasn’t enough of it for posterity. More painters of Leslie’s generation had to be inveigled to add work to the Siècle Trust in return for lore to be established around their names as well. There were already some paintings of Dadda’s that were included in the Trust – his thoughts were that they might end up with his daughter as a gift that Harry and Viva could explain.
One way of looking at his marriage to Stella was that it was his key to Australian citizenship, which, combined with his French passport, gave him a fictitious place of birth and kept him from being interned as an enemy alien. But I don’t believe it was just the practicality – I think he actually fell for the hazel-eyed flirt in the bank with her sad story of dead soldiers and her desire to make good her losses in children. I think Dadda became willingly entangled in her vines. He did love her once. We all loved her: she was funny, warm, kind and soulful.
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