by Mandy Hager
I have to squeeze through a pack of guys in the hallway to escape the kitchen. One of them blocks my path. ‘Well, well, well. Tara McClusky. I didn’t expect to see you here.’ Louis Winiata: tall, handsome — and completely confident of his status as Number One Hunk. The annoying thing is that it’s true.
He leans in close, one arm braced on the wall above me. He reeks of beer. ‘I’ve seen your paintings in the art room. They’re really cool.’
‘Thanks.’
‘That one you painted recently of yourself …’ I flinch. My picture of Van. ‘It doesn’t do you justice, Tara the Untouchable.’ Beside him someone sniggers.
I tense. ‘What?’
‘That’s our name for you. Most people think you’re a snob but Roshane reckons you’re just shy.’ He flips his body around in one fluid motion, until he’s leaning close beside me. Dips his head, coming across all confidential. ‘You know you’re the smartest, prettiest girl in the whole school?’
I laugh. ‘Yeah, right.’ My heart is speeding up and, deep inside, something contracts. His hip presses into mine.
‘Truly,’ he says, feigning hurt. ‘I’ve had my peeps on you for quite a while.’
Peeps? I roll my eyes.
‘If you ever need a nude model I’m happy to oblige.’ He strikes a bodybuilder pose.
I swat at him until he stops, though his laughter carries on as I nervously down my drink. I press the empty cup between us. ‘Any chance of a refill?’
‘Sure thing.’ He sniffs inside. ‘Vodka and orange?’
‘I guess.’ Vodka? No wonder my bones are starting to unhinge. I should tell him not to bother but he’s already pushed his way through to the kitchen.
He hands the full cup to me like a ceremonial offering. ‘For you, Madam.’ As I reach out he ambushes me with a kiss. Just a quick peck on my nose, but it totals my insides. I hear Van’s voice: This is how a boy should treat you, honey, not like that sanctimonious bastard who rejected you last night. I open up my mouth to defend Johannes’ actions, then realise this exchange is all inside my head. God! I’m either going completely mad or I’m drunk. Again.
I take a big gulp, shuddering as the vodka hits the back of my throat. This one’s strong. Louis’ eyes are bitumen black. They track my every move as he sings along, quite tunefully, to Pink Floyd’s ‘Hey You’ — putting special emphasis on all the words like naked, fantasy and touch. It’s so corny I start to laugh again and he joins me. He slips his arm around my shoulders, his fingers looping into my hair.
He whispers in my ear, hot and moist. ‘You wanna dance?’
Oh god. I nod and try my best to appear nonchalant. ‘Okay.’
He grasps my hand and leads me through the crowded kitchen to the lounge next door. There are couples making out in all the corners, others huddled in the middle while the singles boogie in between, showing off. I stop somewhere that’s neither in nor out, hoping he’ll get the message, but he hauls me through until we’re in the eye of the storm.
He drapes his arms over my shoulders and starts to rock from side to side. I don’t know what to do with my drink so I scull it, trying not to gag. I wrap my arms under his ribs and join the flow. His sleek, athletic body rubs against me and he nuzzles at my ear. Whispers hot and breathy, ‘You’re beautiful’, then slides his lips down my neck to kiss the hollow near my collarbone. I nearly groan.
I draw in a deep breath to tell him he’d better stop but he pre-empts me, planting his lips directly onto mine. They’re not as soft as Johannes’, but wet, hungry and enquiring. It dizzies me. I push away.
‘I need the loo.’ I don’t wait to see how he reacts, just stumble through the groping bodies to find Roshane. She points me up the stairs. I lock myself inside and plonk down on the toilet. What the hell is going on? I don’t know what to make of this — part of me yearns to go further, the rest screams to pull back. And now here’s Van as well: You gonna be a sad-sack virgin all your life? I try to block her out. All the warnings I’ve had about sex fight for attention in my head.
When I unlock the door, Louis is waiting. My insides twist. ‘Good plan,’ he says, and takes my hand again. He leads me down the passageway and through an open door. Shuts it behind him and snibs a lock.
It’s a bedroom, probably Roshane’s, judging by the male pin-ups on the walls. I hold my hand up to repel him but he moves in fast. He’s kissing me again, pressing me against the door. Heat melts all my bones as he grinds his pelvis into mine.
Now his tongue breaks through our crush of lips, darts in and out then plunges deep. I try to pull away — I don’t like it — but my head just butts the door. His hand reaches under my tee shirt and slides up until it’s cupped over my left breast. My nipple rises to his touch. Jesus. He purrs right in the back of his throat as his other hand snakes in behind me. With one deft move he’s unhooked my bra. When his fingers meet my risen flesh, it’s so electrifying I jolt him back.
‘No,’ I say, my voice ridiculously husky. My head is in a spin. Why not? Van shrieks. Don’t you deserve a little love?
He smiles down at me with his engorged lips. ‘It’s okay. I’ve got one of these.’ He fumbles in his jeans pocket and brandishes a condom. ‘Come on, baby, help me put it on.’
The picture that explodes inside my head is so X-rated it scares the holy crap out of me. ‘No.’ I turn my back on him and grope for the lock. It gives beneath my hand and I fling open the door.
‘Teasing bitch.’
Screw him. I take off down the stairs, contorted as I try to rehook my bra. I’m sure what’s happened is stamped all over my stupid face. I wanted it. For a few amazing, intense moments, I was ready to give in. I push out through the gaggle by the kitchen door, not daring to meet anyone’s eye. When I reach my bike I almost sob out a Hail Mary in relief.
I race like Satan’s after me, though clearly he’s already in my head. What’s wrong with me?
I don’t see the deep pothole till my front wheel hits it. Next thing I’m flying through the air.
I smash onto the road, bike tangling on top of me, and lie staring up into a starless sky. My palms and elbows sting. My forehead too. I try to move. Everything hurts. I can’t stop the shaking or self-pitying tears.
When the worst of the shock dies down, I force myself to my feet. I pick up my bike and push it back to Max’s place, gritting my teeth against the rub of my jeans on my grazed knees. It’s a hell of a way to sober up.
The lights are on in the upstairs flat. I wheel my bike around the back, hoping to slip in without Johannes knowing I’m home. God damn. He’s sitting on the steps, his face lit up in horror as the security light pings on.
‘Bloody hell! What happened?’ He takes the bike off me and parks it on its stand.
‘More proof of my stupidity.’
‘Did you fall off?’
I nod. When I scrabble for the key, he produces his. I limp into the bathroom and switch on the light. Not good. Both my palms are skinned and full of gravel — as are my knees. The mirror reveals my blood-streaked face. I’m cut above the eye.
Johannes appears in the doorway behind me. ‘I’ve been waiting for you since you finished work.’ He sounds accusing, as if we’d made a plan.
All I can do is shrug — the new default of Tara the Untouchable. That famously unlovable, teasing bitch.
For the second time in as many days, he takes antiseptic and cotton wool from the first-aid kit and gently washes the gravel out. I bite my lip to hold back my pathetic groans. When it’s over and I’m smeared in antiseptic cream, he makes cups of tea.
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘I’m really sorry about everything. You must think I’m a total flake.’
He takes a loud air-filled sip. ‘Not total.’ He grins. ‘Just now and then.’
‘Has Max told you exactly what’s been going on for me?’
He shakes his head. ‘Just that you’re having a hard time.’
My laugh is bleak. ‘Yeah, you could say that.’ Should I tel
l him everything? Why not? It’s not like he can think any less of me than he does right now. I sip my tea. Prepare myself. Okay …
I tell him about Dad’s stroke and about the way that Mum and Dad have treated us. Our rotting house. Van’s death. Mum’s lies. I even hint about the way Vin and Van compete inside my head. I leave out tonight’s hideous fiasco. All through this he says nothing; his steady gaze unflinching. It’s like stripping off my clothes and standing naked — though, just as he did when I was in the shower, he somehow makes it feel safe. Please God, don’t let him think that I’m a total loon.
‘Shit,’ he says at last. ‘I understand your paintings better now. That’s a hell of a story.’
‘It’s not been a whole lot of fun.’
‘So do you know the man you saw your mum with?’
‘I don’t have a clue who he is.’
‘Maybe you should ask her. It’s possible he’s just a friend.’
‘Funny way to hang out with a friend. Anyway, you saw the way she goes psycho when I stand up to her. Besides, how can I believe a word she says?’
‘True. Have you thought of writing to your uncle? Perhaps he knows something that would help explain the way they act.’
Uncle Royan? Why didn’t I think of that? He’s the only one who showed concern for Van. ‘Yeah, thanks. Maybe I will. Anyway, enough of my dirty laundry — how about you?’
He looks flustered. ‘What do you mean?’
‘Come on. When I asked about your dad the other day you nearly bit my head off.’
‘Did I? There’s not much to tell. He and Mum had a fling at university. It didn’t last.’
‘You don’t see him?’
‘When I hit thirteen I had this overwhelming urge to get to know him. Up till then Mum and Opa were enough. He agreed to meet me but he didn’t have a clue how to react. He’s a full-on pointy-head — spends his life researching some obscure amoeba. After a couple of excruciating failures at the father–son thing I gave up.’
‘I’m sorry.’ I reach over and brush my hand down his arm. ‘It’s lucky you inherited his smarts without his hang-ups then.’
‘If only … I’m pretty sure the main reason he didn’t want a bar of me is that I couldn’t match his brain.’ He sounds so sad. So full of disappointment at himself.
‘Max doesn’t think so. He told me you’re the smartest guy he knows.’
His eyes light up. ‘He did?’ He places his cup beside him on the floor and stretches out his long, long legs. ‘Did he tell you his own story?’
‘About his aunt? Yes, just tonight.’
‘No, I mean about what happened before he left Vienna.’
‘No. What?’
‘It’s kind of personal, but I’m sure he won’t mind if I tell you. Just be careful if you mention it.’
‘Of course.’ I try not to look too eager but really want to know.
‘The story goes that by the time Opa was fifteen, things were getting pretty ugly in Vienna. Nazi propaganda about the Jews was spreading everywhere. Because Opa’s mother was a practising Catholic and Opa looked like he came from good pure Aryan stock — blonde hair, blue eyes — he was seen as the perfect candidate for Hitler Youth. He tried to stay well clear of it — people think we have peer pressure today, but they don’t know the half of it — but he had to be careful in case he gave his father away.’
‘It must’ve been horrible. Scary too.’
‘You bet. One afternoon he went out with a bunch of schoolmates and they came across this old tramp who did paintings in the backstreets. He was a brilliant painter, Opa said, but not all there. The ringleader of Opa’s pack outed him as a Jew. Said they should dispose of him for Austria’s good.’
My heart is firing up. I’m not sure I want to know what happens next.
‘At first Opa tried to stop them but when they started hassling him about why he’d want to save a Jew, he knew he couldn’t risk them asking questions about his father’s family. Even if he ran away he feared they’d accuse him of sympathising — that was enough to bring suspicion down on him as well. They forced him to watch while they beat the old man to a pulp.’
‘My god.’
‘It really screwed him over. He still has nightmares. That’s why it took him so long to return after the war. Every time he thought of home, all he pictured was the old man’s splattered brains. They threw them round. Opa ended up covered in the poor old bastard’s blood and gore.’
‘Poor Max. How does he live with it?’ What was it he said tonight? Running causes just as much torment to us as it does to those who chose to stay.
‘Philosophy — and lots of therapy,’ Johannes replies. ‘And a determination to protect all underdogs.’
I can’t resist it: ‘Woof.’
He grins. ‘I didn’t mean it like that. I think what drew him to you was your love of Van Gogh. He feels the same. I think he sees parallels between Van Gogh’s life and that poor old man. Both ridiculed and victimised. Both killed by ignorant young men.’
‘But Vincent killed himself.’
‘That’s what people used to think. The guide at the Musée d’Orsay said that now there’s evidence some local kids tormented him and he was shot.’
Vincent murdered? After all my hours of reading, researching and studying, how is it possible I didn’t know?
9
But what’s your ultimate goal, you’ll say. That goal will become clearer, will take shape slowly and surely, as the croquis becomes a sketch and the sketch a painting, as one works more seriously, as one digs deeper …
— VINCENT TO THEO, CUESMES, JUNE 1880
AFTER JOHANNES LEAVES, I crawl into bed. I still can’t believe what he told me. Vincent shot? And not by his own hand? I’m as shocked as when Mum kissed that man. All my illusions shattered.
The thing I can’t fathom is why, when Vincent staggered back into that little French village, he didn’t say that he’d been shot by someone else. He didn’t die until the end of the next day. There was time for Theo to come and sit with him, for them to talk. Even if it’s true, he lay there in his brother’s arms and willed his life away, of that I’m certain. His last reported words to Theo have stayed with me since I first read them: I want to die like this. I guess it’s possible he didn’t shoot himself but, deed done, walked towards it — welcomed it. Dying’s hard, he’d said, but living’s harder still. That’s what Max meant. I’m sure it’s how Van felt. And maybe she was right.
I get up as soon as it’s light. I have to paint this out. I shower to loosen my grazes so I can wield a brush, then set up a fresh new canvas and prepare my palette — blacks and browns. They fit my increasingly dark mood.
So Vincent just gave up the fight? No great dramatic suicide. No ‘fuck you’ to the world. Instead he let the circling wolves call the shots. No wonder Max could see the parallels.
Well, I’m not letting someone else decide my life for me — where I live, what I paint, when I die. I’m quite capable of doing that for myself. I’m not going back to school. In fact, I realise now, I’d already decided when I asked Ms R to bring my paintings here, I just didn’t have the guts to admit it, even to myself. But after last night’s humiliation in front of everyone I have no choice. Hell, Vincent lived his own way. I’ll up my hours at the rest home. Find a flat. Something — anything — to escape.
I check out Max’s CD collection but he owns so many I don’t know what to choose. I settle for what’s in the player: a Shostakovich symphony. It bursts straight into life, all pounding kettle drums and brass, the instruments pushing and shoving in a musical debate.
I glide my brush across the canvas and form a circle. A face appears, with narrowed, angry eyes. Of course it’s Mum — it was never going to be anyone else. I stab the brush in time to the percussion and the canvas comes to life. It’s Vincent’s best-known portrait of Gordina de Groot, but I replace her strange old-fashioned cloth bonnet with a nest of spitting snakes. Instantly her moist brown eyes take on
a crueller glint. Ha! My mother as Medusa: if you gaze at her directly you’ll turn to stone. Only, while Medusa was delivered of a mythical winged horse, Mum gave birth to Van. I paint Van now — the butterfly who got away — the only patch of colour in this underworld; her wings a bright flamboyant orange, warm and full of life. Protestant Orange. Screw you. They thought they’d wiped her out — but now the stain’s on them.
I dab myself in too: a broken crown that’s tossed aside. When I found out my name meant ‘queen’ I was enchanted. Now it’s just one more bad joke on me.
Dear Vincent,
Did you ever, in the cool light of dawn, paint your parents as they really were? Your mother struggling with anxiety and swinging moods, gloomy and over-sensitive. Your stern, reclusive father, prone to paranoia, so self-righteous he’d rather throw his son into a loony bin than take him home and give him love.
Why do we want to please them so? Turn inside out to be the person they decree? We never can achieve it. And never will escape the fact we’ve failed.
There’s a knock on the front door. I glance up at the clock. Just after twelve. If it’s Max or Johannes they’ll come around the back. I lean in to make a tricky brown touch-up as two women walk towards the sun porch door. Shit. It’s Ms Romano and our earnest counsellor.
‘Tara,’ Ms Romano calls. ‘I thought you might be here. May we come in?’
I usher them through to the lounge, aware how rough I look. I’m wearing shorts to spare my scabbed knees. My tee-shirt sleeve stops short of the marks on my arm. The bruised graze on my head is quite dramatic too. It complements my smarting palms.