In the failing light his face is unreadable, and so I let the question hang unanswered.
I AM WITH JOSHUA, upon the hill, when I see the horses on the path, moving slowly up the slope. Lost in the act of drawing, Joshua does not notice them at once, his eyes moving from the view to the page and back again. Only when the quality of his attention changes, do I know he has seen his father there. Then, looking down again, he returns to his work, determinedly, though the fluidity of before is gone, his hand moving awkwardly upon the page.
As they approach I lift my arm to shade my eyes: the day is clear, and bright, Bourke reining in his horse and greeting me with a hand upon his hat.
‘I had thought to find you here,’ he says, though I am sure it is not me but Joshua, still bent over his book, that he had thought to find.
‘You ride out?’ I ask, and Bourke nods.
‘Not far.’ Then with a hand he indicates his companion. ‘You have met our new neighbour?’
‘I have not had the pleasure,’ I say, still shading my eyes.
‘Edmund Winter,’ says the figure on the horse. He is a thin man in his early thirties, dark-haired and precise in his saddle, and though he is careful enough in his words he does not offer me his hand. Joshua sets down his pen.
‘Thomas May,’ I reply. I turn to look down the hill.
‘You have bought the Wemys property?’
Perhaps he finds my questioning distasteful for he lets the question hang unanswered a moment longer than is polite.
‘And the land upon its northern boundary.’
‘But you are new to the colony?’
Winter stares down at me. ‘I am,’ he says. His mouth is a little wide and full in his high-boned face; in another it might lend an air of sensuality to his looks, but in him it seems somehow cruel.
‘Sydney’s gain is Hobart’s loss,’ Bourke says, good-humouredly, but Winter glances at him as if this revelation displeases him.
‘How do you find it here?’ I ask.
Winter smiles thinly. ‘Handsome enough,’ he replies.
Once they are gone I direct Joshua to return to his sketch. Westward I can make out the border of the land that was once Major Wemys’s. For three years it has lain deserted, its fields left to go to seed, its stock sold by the executor while the cousin he had willed them to was found and informed of his good fortune. A solicitor in Somerset, I have heard, or Surrey, but with no desire to see this land he has come into unexpectedly. For a time Bourke himself thought of buying it, as did others hereabouts, but one by one they each declined, and so the agent was bound to seek buyers elsewhere.
Beside me Joshua sets down his pen again, interrupting my thoughts. The image on the page before him having faltered I refrain from directing him to continue, telling him we will finish for the day.
Walking back to the house Joshua talks, and laughs, the encounter with his father seemingly forgotten. By the gates he asks me to accompany him inside, assuring me his stepmother would be happy to see me, but I shake my head and tell him I have business of my own, and so we part.
It is a delicate thing, my relationship with the Bourkes. In the three years that I have known them I have gone from a thing bought and sold, to being their employee and, finally, a friend. And yet between us there is much unsaid, omissions and questions unpursued. When first I sought work it was Bourke who engaged me to educate his son, and, later, Mrs Bourke who found me work with the ladies of the settlement. This would be enough to place me in their debt, but still they treat me as one might a friend, a kindness I am uneasy with.
I make my way back down towards the road, my portfolio upon my back. At the sound of approaching hooves, I step aside and turn, expecting to see Bourke come after me to pass on some word or make some request, but it is Winter. Pulling his horse about he stops in front of me.
‘Mr May,’ he says, ‘I had thought to find you at the house.’
I shake my head. ‘I have other business that needs attending to.’
He nods almost imperceptibly.
‘Your lesson with the boy is done?’ he asks, and I nod.
‘Bourke says he has talent of a sort.’
‘He draws well,’ I say, ‘and finds pleasure in the act.’
Winter looks me over. ‘You take other pupils, I understand?’
‘I do,’ I say.
‘I have a sister,’ he says slowly then, ‘unmarried, and with too little to fill her days. It would do her good to have some accomplishment to find pleasure in.’
Something in his manner makes me hesitate. ‘You have discussed the question with her?’
He smiles coolly. ‘She is my sister, Mr May, I think I know her mind.’
Drawing a card from his jacket he places it in my hand. ‘Call on us,’ he says. ‘Next week, if you will.’
I place the card inside my jacket. ‘Very well,’ I say. Then pulling on the reins Winter turns the mare about and sets off across the hill.
MY HOUSE IS QUIET when I return, the shadows long about it on the ground. In the air the smell of the eucalypts, the dusty fragrance of the bush. Setting down my portfolio I loosen my waistcoat and collar, drawing water from the bag that hangs behind the door, its wetness coming cool and close with the memory of the stone from which it sprang. Before me the evening stretches out in solitude, an unbroken space.
There are those to whom it would seem strange that privacy should be a luxury in such a place. The colony is small, and the roads between the settlements and the houses long and little travelled. But solitude and privacy are different things: though a man may easily go a week here without crossing another’s path, in truth it would be easier to pass unseen amongst the press of a London street, to lose oneself in the throng of the passing multitudes than to go unnoticed here in solitude, for in this place all know the business of their neighbours, and gossip travels far, and fast.
It is a strange kind of solitude then that I have found for myself here. I am one amongst the people of the colony, and yet not. My profession grants me entry to their circles and some measure of trust, but for all of that I still keep myself apart, for I find no ease with them.
This is not a privilege I have always enjoyed. For the space of my sentence I lived and worked with other men, sleeping rough upon the ground, and later in beds six to a room. I was not happy thus, nor unhappy, instead I learned to mind myself, to make a place inside of me where my thoughts might be my own. And when my time was done, Bourke gave me first a room, and, later, the lease upon this house and land adjoining his estate.
Though it is small, with little in the way of amenity, the rent was cheap and the neighbours few, and so I took it gratefully. It had been an officer’s, a man returned to England five years past, and had been abandoned long enough to be reclaimed by the bush. Cockatoos nested in the chimney and possums scuttled in the roof, and leaves and dung were scattered on the floors. No doubt it was convenient for Bourke to have me here, for I cleaned it out and fixed the roof and walls, and kept the blacks from burning it or escapees making it their own, but his was an act of kindness nonetheless.
Another might be lonely here, but I find pleasure in the solitude. I have little taste for company, travelling only when I must to take specimens for those who commission me, or to teach amongst the ladies of the settlement. No doubt I could make a better living other ways; there are many who would have me make their likeness, or those of their loved ones and family. Many too who desire portraits made of animals they possess: most often horses, but sometimes cattle and dogs, and even once or twice a pig of great consequence. But I have no taste for this work; though I am a fair hand at the rendering of the human form there seems something false and overweening in this desire to have one’s likeness set down for posterity. And so instead I teach, helping guide the hands of ladies who would attain some degree of accomplishment in the art of drawing and water colours. For though it requires me to gild my words and to flatter them, there is an honesty to it nonetheless, a truth in th
e moment when a student finds something perfect and true in a line, which brings me happiness. But more importantly, through my teaching I am left alone, the world I hold inside and my other work kept private and inviolate.
A WEEK PASSES before I find time to call on Winter. The day is fine, the unearthly song of the cicadas shimmering in the air. Though I have passed it many times I am not familiar with the property, only with the house as is visible from the road. Approaching up the winding drive I look about myself at the gardens, half-wild with neglect. Once this was a place such as an English gentleman might feel at home in – save for the immensity of sky and the annihilating light, the shrieking parrots in the trees – but left on its own it has grown wild and strange, snakes slipping in along the branches, wattle trees and native bushes seeding themselves amidst the dainty English roses.
Upon the step I knock, and in the quiet that follows I hear from somewhere within the sound of a pianoforte, the tune gentle and sad. Then footsteps, the door opening to reveal a woman in a housekeeper’s uniform, her face hardened first by the memory of some London slum, then by the unforgiving sun of the antipodes. She regards me dubiously as I tell her my name, looking hard at the card I give to her, then taking it she directs me to a little parlour by the door and leaves me there.
Left alone I listen to the music from above. The tune is not known to me but it suggests itself in such a way that I almost feel it might be. Still listening I set down my portfolio and look about. The room is small and plain, two walls decorated each with a painting in the style of Gainsborough, a shelf of books against another wall. Above the fireplace hangs another painting, a portrait executed in a cruder hand. Stepping closer to examine it I see a man of middle years dressed in the fashions of twenty years ago. The painting is of no great artistry, its flat and awkward composition betraying some untrained hand; nonetheless it captures some quality of kindness in its subject and though its subject is an older man, and heavier, I fancy I see Winter’s face in his.
Lost thus in the picture I am startled to hear the voice of the housekeeper behind me in the hall, remonstrating, then another voice, quiet and firm. Overhead the music has stopped, I realise, and turning towards the door I see a woman standing there. I am not sure what I had expected her to be, but I know at once it was not this. She is young, not more than twenty-two, and dressed in a pale dress of great simplicity, her ash-blonde hair tied back in a manner quite unlike the showy styles so popular with the other ladies of the colony. Like her brother she is slim, but where his face is imperious hers is gentler.
‘Mr May?’ she asks. I would take her hand, but something in her expression repels that familiarity.
‘Your brother told you I would call?’ I ask, and she gives a little nod.
‘It was his wish I give you instruction in draughtsmanship, so you might have something with which to fill your days,’ I say.
‘Yes,’ she says, ‘he spoke of it.’ Behind her in the hall the housekeeper is observing; following my eyes Miss Winter turns to her.
‘Thank you, Mrs Blackstable,’ she says. The housekeeper lingers, then nods sourly, and turns back down the corridor.
‘I am sorry you should be greeted in such a manner,’ says Miss Winter, turning back to me. She gestures at a pair of crates which stand opened in the corner of the room. ‘As you can see we are not yet fully settled in the house.’
I shake my head, telling her there is no need to apologise. ‘I am told you are late of Van Diemen’s Land? You are a native of that place?’
‘I was born there,’ she says, her voice dropping away at the sentence’s end, leaving little doubt as to how her parents made their way across the sea. But lifting her eyes she looks at me with a sudden, steady gaze, as if defying me to find some shame in her. At last she looks away.
‘You are a painter then?’
Stepping forward I take up my portfolio from the tabletop. ‘I may show you some examples if you need references.’
She looks at the portfolio for a second or two. ‘No,’ she says, ‘I do not think that will be necessary. Has my brother discussed terms with you?’
‘Not as yet,’ I reply.
‘I am sure they will be acceptable. No doubt he will confirm them with you when he returns.’
Resignation and defiance are so strangely mixed in her manner I am unsure how to respond. Groping for some common ground I set down my portfolio.
‘I heard music before, the pianoforte. It was you that played?’
She looks up, her expression suddenly wary, and at once I fear I have misspoken, breached some barrier. But then she nods.
‘Yes,’ she says quietly.
‘I thought it very fine,’ I say, but she looks away.
‘Thank you,’ she says. I think she will say something more, but instead she lifts her eyes to mine, the challenge they contained before returned and altered in some subtle way.
‘I will look forward to your brother’s letter,’ I say. But at the door she steps after me.
‘Mr May?’ she asks. ‘What is it you paint?’
I look out through the doorway.
‘Birds,’ I say at last, ‘only birds.’
ENCLOSED IN THE CAGE of my hand she trembles, a hot weight, scarcely heavier than breath. Only moments ago she fought and shrieked in the net’s entangling strands, now she does not move, her body poised motionless within my grasp. Not stunned, or injured, merely stilled, her tiny form seeming to quiver with the arrested urgency of flight.
Though my hand is closed about her it is but loosely so. Were I to open it she would spring away, her body cast into the air on beating wings and gone, quick as memory. But while held she does not strain; instead she waits, as if for some sign from me.
It is a dreadful sort of power this. To hold a life so small in your control. And yet it is not the power to give or take that life which makes it terrible. After all, to live, to die, each is a simple thing. Rather it is the intimacy of it, the way that in the possession of such power you are made naked in the gaze of another, as they are in yours. And for that brief second it is possible to glimpse what it might mean to leave the cage of the self and touch another, to know them as you know yourself.
Behind me in the air the net shifts upon the breeze, its silken strands barely visible against the fading light. On every side the birds are in motion, magpies and lorikeets, screeching cockatoos. And closer in, her own fellows, their tiny bodies shooting round about me in desperate circles. With each dive they cry out, urgently and ferociously, in a panic for her life, the grace of their bodies marvellous as they arc and wheel on the air. What must it be to live like that, I think, a life as hot and quick as blood, all its meaning concentrated in the moment of being?
In my hand I feel her tense, and looking down again I see she is watching me. Beneath my thumb her body seems to flicker, the mothbeat of her heart quicker than a child’s pulse. Moving faster now her flockmates spin and turn about the two of us, their cries coming sharper from their chests, more urgently. With each cry she seems to start, as if with a half-remembered pain. I feel it too, I think, an ache inside of me.
Willing the other’s cries away I lift my hand, slowly tightening my grip about her tiny form. She is so light she might be naught but heat. Beneath my thumb now the dome of her skull, fragile as an egg. She must realise what I intend and yet she does not fight, not even now, her eyes just watching mine, liquid dark. I could close my eyes, or look away, or cast her up into the air so she might fly again, but I do not. Instead I let my thumb press down against the tension of her neck, gently at first, and then harder, until at last it gives a little pop, and in that moment she is dead.
Though the days are not yet hot I pack her quickly, for the heat that lingers in her body will not last. Already her eyes are dull; in an hour she will be cold, her legs gone stiff, feet curled back, in a day spoiled. Though it brings me no pleasure to take her life, later I will imagine her back into being, learning from her body’s details, erasing t
he deceptions of the eye. Though one must know the habits of their kind, the way they move and hold themselves, the trees in which they rest, life will tell only so much about the semblance of a bird. To make an image which is true one must also know the way a throat is banded, where the colours of the belly give way to the tail. Just as the brilliant white of the cockatoos is in truth shot through with yellow, this same hue lending the feathers their unnatural clarity, so too those birds which might seem dull black or drab brown will reveal colours within themselves when held in the hand, midnight blues and viridian, shades which shimmer and shift.
It is a fragile thing, the line within an image which contains the whole. Yet in its finding it transcends all other considerations. Like a note played clear and true it reveals itself as if already there, plangent and unadorned. And in its finding we may move without awkwardness or artifice, somewhere outside of language, outside of care.
THOUGH WINTER’S TERMS when they come are generous, my first impulse is to send the letter back, reject his offer outright. I have no reason for this, only the feeling that his generosity is too easy to accept, its taking buying my complicity in some purpose I do not fully understand. But something in the memory of her manner decides me otherwise, and so by letter I accept, and set a time to call three days hence.
On the day appointed I have a lesson at the Robertsons’ first, and so it is mid-afternoon before I may call. These past days Winter is much discussed by the ladies of the colony, who would know more of him, more of his intentions here. At the boundary of his property I see a group of men moving raggedly across the hill, bearing tools upon their backs, as if to start the work of repairing nature’s damage these last years. They are Company men, I know at once, not by their clothing but by the way their gaze follows me without ever meeting mine, the uneasy questioning of their eyes.
Nearer the house, work has begun as well, the lawn now cut, limbs lying here and there, lopped from the overhanging trees. The door is open, a girl standing within; greeting her I give my name and business and a moment later Miss Winter appears. She has that same look of broken defiance I remember from our first meeting. Then she nods, though whether in greeting or disappointment I am unsure.
The Resurrectionist Page 19