by Fiona Capp
I was standing in front of the taller stone, thinking of what Sven had said, when it occurred to me. ‘Those anonymous sculptures you put in fields. This is where you got the idea, isn’t it? Did you carve figures or stories like these?’
Sven threw a rug over the grass nearby and began unpacking the food he had brought: black bread, smoked salmon, local cheese, mineral water and a bottle of white wine. Tiny insects darted low over the ground. He took the bottle of wine and started turning the corkscrew.
‘We only did patterns. Abstract marks. Nothing too recognisable from any culture or age. We wanted them to be timeless.’ He gestured towards the stones. ‘When you look at them, you don’t think about the individuals who made them or the group of artists or artisans. There was probably no distinction between the two.’
‘You don’t think the individuals matter?’
He shot me an exasperated look. ‘I’m talking about the art, what it means to us now. I am so fed up, Esther, so bored by this obsession with the artist’s life. I never want to read another article or biography about Picasso and his women, or Jackson Pollock and his drinking, or any of them. It doesn’t matter who Shakespeare was, or Homer. Why can’t people keep their eyes on the work – its beauty, its strangeness, its power – and forget the rest?’
Sven pulled out the cork with a savage yank. His cheeks were flushed, his wavy hair sticking out at odd angles after hours of being blown about by the wind. There it was, that intensity again. An intensity that came from pitting yourself against the world and knowing it was a losing battle. The way he lived, paring things back to the essentials, had left him with little patience for the foibles and the compromise of most people’s lives. I couldn’t help thinking of Kate, her determination to keep doing what she loved. Her uncompromising convictions that left those of us who couldn’t hold them feeling wishy-washy and half-baked.
Sven put two glasses on the ground and poured the wine. We ate without speaking. Leaning on one elbow, he looked around the field to the pine forest beyond. Two small vertical lines remained etched above the space between his eyebrows. I wondered if he was brooding. The morning had been so perfect, like stepping into a parallel life. I wanted it to stay that way.
I wiped my fingers on a paper napkin and held it up, hoping to make him smile. ‘You think of everything. I always forget stuff like this.’
I toyed with the napkin, folding it this way and that, as if doing origami. ‘Why does it make you so angry?’
‘Am I angry?’ He considered for a moment and sighed. ‘Perhaps it’s because we failed.’
‘You and your friends?’
The corners of his mouth twitched. I couldn’t tell if it was a smile or a wince. He sipped some wine. ‘There was a moment when we thought the idea had finally caught on. Other people began to copy us. Other sculptures would appear overnight, similar to ours. At first it seemed a good sign, as if a whole movement might evolve, as if we might actually change the way people think. Then the others who were copying us went public, claimed our work as their own and started selling it. There was no point challenging them. It would’ve become a petty slanging match over ownership: a betrayal of everything we had been trying to achieve.’
He stopped and pulled a face. ‘Funny the way things come back to you. Until recently, I hadn’t given those days a second thought. Not for years.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘For what?’
‘For bringing it all back. Here you were living your monkish life and then I came along with all my baggage.’
Sven smiled, amused. ‘Politics is just the same here, you know. Some things you can’t escape.’
‘I feel like I have.’
‘Good. That’s how it will stay. No more baggage for either of us.’
We raised our glasses in a toast. I wished I could believe it were possible.
We got back on our bikes and in the stillness of the afternoon, as we cycled deeper into the countryside, passing only the occasional farm or church, I had the strangest feeling that we were moving back in time, leaving behind the modern world and entering a kind of still point where chronology had no meaning; where the past and the present co-existed, as if on an island in time.
David reckoned I was an incurable nostalgic; that I was always hankering after some golden age that never existed. What he couldn’t see any more was that this longing of mine was not so different from his youthful dreams, it just took another form. When I travelled, I wasn’t searching for some idealised past. I’d never liked museums, the way they turned history into a sanitised freak show. It wasn’t novelty or exotica I was after. It was the possibility of a world in which the best of every era and culture – ideas, inventions, events, artefacts, actions or ordinary moments – was distilled. Like the lost library of ancient Alexandria. A world in which wisdom accumulated and multiplied, where it wasn’t a finite resource that kept running short. A world in which old lessons didn’t have to be learned over and over again.
After dinner at a small roadside café, we cycled home through the dusk. The fields and the forests flew by, the small white churches glowing like sugar cubes in the fading light.
‘I hope you know your way in the dark,’ I called out to Sven, who was riding ahead.
He pointed to the horizon where a great amber moon was rising above the tops of the pines, like some heavy, otherworldly fruit.
I kept my eyes on the flickering light on the back of Sven’s bike up ahead. Occasionally, he would turn to check that I was still there and I would give a small wave as the road rushed beneath us. Slowly, under the moon’s cool fluorescence, the monochrome landscape grew sharper, almost as clear as day.
It amazed me that I wasn’t tired or cold or sick of cycling. In fact, I didn’t want the ride to end. I just wanted to keep swooping on through the night, not caring about what lay ahead. As we approached a crossroad, Sven slowed and stopped, suggesting we finish off the last of the bread and the wine.
We sat on a grassy verge by the side of the road, our bikes lying beside us. I stared up at the moon and realised that Sven had thought of this too. That the moon would be full to light our way home. When I asked him about it, he laughed and admitted that he’d developed a habit of tracking the lunar cycle when he and his Irish friends were doing their sculptures. They needed the light of the moon to work by, digging the holes and raising the stones. ‘But we weren’t going to talk about this.’
‘I don’t care, as long as you don’t.’
‘It depends.’
I hesitated. ‘Something happened, didn’t it? Something that you –’
I caught the look on his face and wished I hadn’t spoken.
‘We’ve had a wonderful day, Esther. Let’s leave it at that.’
15
MELBOURNE
August 2010
The three of us sat eating at the kitchen table. Rain was lashing the windows but we hardly noticed it any more. Kate took a mouthful of chicken curry, chewed and swallowed. She glanced across at me and then at David, and smiled.
‘This is nice.’
David savoured a mouthful. ‘I think it’s my best so far.’
‘The curry’s good but I meant us having dinner together.’
‘And it’s going to happen more often.’
I stopped eating. ‘How exactly?’
‘When I’m home, I’ll cook twice a week.’
I wasn’t sure how he thought this was going to be possible. Since becoming leader of the opposition, he’d been travelling around the country in a kind of pre-election blitz, meeting and greeting. I couldn’t remember the last time he’d been here two nights in row.
Kate wiped her fingers on the linen napkin. ‘You shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep, Dad.’
‘Is that election advice?’
‘Whatever.’ She took her plate to the sink and rinsed it. ‘I’m off to Kiko’s. Won’t be too late.’
David pushed his plate forward slightly and sat back in h
is chair. ‘Already? I thought we were having a nice time here.’
‘We were. But how was I to know a week ago that you’d be home for dinner tonight?’
He sighed. ‘Fair enough. What are you doing?’
‘Mum knows.’
‘Tell me.’
‘It’s stand-up comedy night at Kiko’s dad’s bar. Some of the guys from school are joining us there.’
‘Will there be alcohol?’
‘Dad, it’s a bar. What do you think? Kiko’s dad is cool about it. He takes a break from the kitchen and sits with us for a while, buys us our cans of vodka and lime and we pig out on chips and nuts.’
‘Be sensible about it, okay?’
‘I won’t embarrass you.’
‘You know I don’t mean that. Give me a hug, darling.’
Kate pulled a face and stood floppy-armed next to David. With mock reluctance, she draped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. There had been a time when Kate would follow David around the house and curl up with him on the couch whenever she got the chance. When he first went to Canberra she was always trying to dream up special occasions that would bring him home. In spite of his best intentions, something always got in the way and school concerts, parent–teacher meetings and even birthdays went on without him. In her mid-teens, Kate had jacked up and gone through an angry phase, picking arguments and niggling him just for a reaction or attention. After that came the ‘I don’t care’ Kate. Every attempt at conversation ended in an argument. I was harassing her, nagging her. Why didn’t I leave her alone?
It felt as if history was repeating itself and I was in my mother’s shoes, trying to drag Kate out of herself, trying to glimpse what was in her mind. She stopped doing homework, started skipping school, spent most of her time locked away in her room. David had never really known how bad it got. What pulled her through was street art and, through it, finding her own way of being in the world. And new friends who understood.
Kate called goodbye in her high, fluting voice as she disappeared down the hallway. We began clearing the table and at some point I looked up from stacking the dishwasher and saw that David was out on the deck, staring up at the sky. I slid open the door and stood beside him. The rain had stopped and the moon was so bright you could see the mottled clouds being driven by the wind, and the occasional star flickering on and off.
‘It’s freezing. What are you doing?’
David smiled to himself. ‘Thinking of Gerald in parliament.’
‘Out here?’
‘He feels closer somehow.’
I put my arm through his. Gerald had been famous for his antics in parliament. Particularly for his skill as a mimic, the way he transformed the government front benchers into the cast from Looney Tunes. When the prime minister was strutting around, crowing about this or that, Gerald would do Foghorn Leghorn. The minister for education was such an easy target that Gerald only had to stutter and whisper, ‘That’s all, folks!’ One day, the minister for defence stopped mid-flight and appealed to the speaker, demanding that the leader of the opposition show some respect. Without missing a beat, Gerald pretended to be munching a carrot, and beamed, ‘What’s up, Doc?’ The whole house erupted and the government threatened to censure him, but the names had stuck.
David and I stood in silence as a jet flew overhead, filling the night with its hollow, man-made roar. David half laughed, half sighed. ‘It’s not the same any more.’
Gerald’s irreverence had been a kind of pressure valve, a way of putting things in perspective. Of defusing the bluster and keeping egos in check. The sad thing was that he paid for it. The public liked him and enjoyed the performance but over the years he became comic relief. They didn’t want him running the show.
David stared out into the shadowy darkness of the yard. ‘There’s something else I didn’t really appreciate.’
‘Your wife, perhaps? No, tell me.’
‘I was thinking of the licence Gerald gave me. What he let me get away with.’
In the early days, David told Gerald that if he wanted him to run for parliament, the party would have to take him as he was. Gerald had known that it was a risk, that David wouldn’t necessarily toe the line, but he had believed it was a risk worth taking.
‘I used to think he needed me; that I was a useful loose cannon. Said the things he couldn’t. I was so full of my own fucking principles. There must’ve been times when he wanted to throttle me, Est. There’s no way I can afford to let anyone shoot their mouth off like that now.’
I bent down to stroke Jerry, who had come to sit at my feet. The dog never went to David. In fact, he couldn’t seem to work out who David was. Sometimes he even treated him like an intruder, barking at him until Kate or I told him to stop. How would it help saying I told you so? Of course Gerald had indulged him, been overprotective. Had given David a false sense of what it was possible for a politician to be. Now he was learning the hard way. The freedom he had known was gone, as was the sense that he had nothing to lose if he walked away. With the prime ministership within his grasp, he had discovered that he wanted it – more than he dared to admit. All that power. What you could do, what you could achieve: it was dizzying.
We were halfway through Rear Window when the telephone rang. I assumed it was Jasper or one of the other minders. Who else would call so late on a Saturday night?
When a grave voice asked if I was Ms Chatwin, my gut knotted. A voice like that could only be delivering bad news. He introduced himself as a constable from our local police station. ‘I have your daughter here, Ms Chatwin. You might want to take her home.’
Blood thumped in my ears. David was still engrossed in the film. I tried to keep my voice neutral as I asked what had happened.
The constable said Kate had been spotted by their patrol car in a laneway near the shot tower. Defacing public property. In possession of graffiti implements. Normally he would have taken her details, issued a warning and let her go. But her friends ran off and left her. For her own safety, he said, he had brought her back to the station.
I said I would come straight away and saw David’s head turn as I spoke. As I hung up the phone I thought of telling him that Kate and her friends had been picked up for being drunk. But I couldn’t do it, and the truth would eventually come out.
‘Kate’s at the local police station. Everything’s all right. She’s okay. She even had the presence of mind to use my name.’
David was on his feet. ‘What on earth’s going on?’
‘Graffiti.’
He stared at me. ‘You knew about this?’
‘Yes.’
His face went slack. ‘And you didn’t tell me.’
‘How could I?’
Right from the start, when David first went to Canberra, I’d sworn to myself I would never blame him for the time he spent away or hold it against him. Nor would I let it affect Kate. A vain hope, of course. His work inevitably took over, and there was nothing David or I could do. What I hadn’t bargained on was the guilt that he nursed, a guilt that could flare into anger at the slightest hint of reproach.
His lips went thin. A look that said Everything else and now this! And from the last place he’d expected it. He paced across the lounge room and then slammed his palm on the plaster wall and shouted, ‘How could you not?’
I reached for the car keys. ‘I’ll go get her.’
As soon as I opened the front door, it hit me. The smell I’d once associated with that quiet time after making love. It was years since David had given up smoking. The only time he rolled himself one was at funerals or moments of crisis at work when he needed space, a chink of calm.
He was sitting on the couch, abstractedly gazing at the filmy breath rising from his mouth as if his spirit was leaving his body.
Kate stopped in the lounge room doorway, her eyes brimming. ‘I’m so sorry, Dad, for getting caught.’
He turned and looked at her coolly, one eyebrow slightly raised. ‘Sorry for ge
tting caught?’
‘But I gave them Mum’s name and I’m sure the policeman didn’t realise.’
‘You think that was my only concern?’
‘No! I just wanted you to know I hadn’t stuffed up.’
David took a final drag on his cigarette and stubbed it out in the pot plant next to the couch. He dragged his hands through his hair, staring at the floor. ‘No, Kate. It’s not you who stuffed up.’ His voice cracked apart on the final words and he had to stop.
I could see his Adam’s apple working in his throat. It was painful to watch.
‘What I don’t understand, though, one of the many things I don’t understand,’ he went on, ‘is why someone with your artistic gift would waste her talent scrawling on the streets. Gilda’s got a blank wall you could do a mural on. There’s a thing called public art. You don’t have to go lurking in dark alleyways to do it. Have you any idea how dangerous these places can be at night? Druggies doing deals. People getting knifed. Raped. I still can’t believe your mother allowed this.’
He hadn’t looked at me once since he’d got back.
‘It’s not Mum’s fault,’ Kate cried. ‘I would have done it whether she liked it or not. She made me promise to be careful, and set some rules. I’ve always got friends with me.’
‘Some friends! They ran away.’
‘From the cops, Dad. You make it sound like we live in a ghetto. Maybe you’re out of touch with the way things are around here. This whole place is Yuppiesville now.’
‘Ah, so that’s it,’ he said. ‘My daughter is out on the streets breaking the law and getting picked up by the police and the problem is that I’m out of touch.’
Kate clenched her teeth. ‘What’s happened to you, Dad? You would’ve understood once! At least Mum still does.’