The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt

by Tracy Farr

  She turned to me at the door. I waved her away.

  ‘Go on! And come straight back, love.’ She looked unsure. ‘Go on, darling, straight there and straight back. Careful on the road. I’ll make us toast and honey when you get back and we’ll take it back to bed.’

  Another wave of cramping passed over me, and I grimaced as she closed the heavy door behind her.

  It should have taken Grace no more than fifteen minutes to walk to the shop and back, even if she dawdled – it was only around the corner. When Cath arrived home half an hour later, shopping spilling from her bag, Grace had not yet returned. Cath yelled for Eric, who raced off as fast as his gammy leg could carry him. He quickly reported back that Grace had at least reached the shop; Mrs Watson had exchanged the bottle of pills for the coins in Grace’s pocket, sent her on her way back home. Eric had checked at Uncle Valentine’s house; my uncle was at work, but Mr Anderson in the garden, Mrs Anderson in the kitchen, neither of them had seen Grace.

  I ran to the boarding house where Gus was staying, hauled him out of bed. The three of them – Gus and Cath and Eric – prowled the streets, circling out, while I stayed in the kitchen at the Pav, waiting for her to come home. Someone must have called the police; uniforms appeared on the street, men from the submariners’ hostel – my friends, men I’d danced with, had played music for – spread through the streets of our little community by the sea.

  I sat at the kitchen table at the Pav, drinking cups of tea. A cold, hard pain knotted in my belly.

  It was late in the afternoon when they brought her home. Cath pushed open the door and ran to me, held me, oh Princess, she said, our little darling.

  Gus carried her. He walked through the doorway into the kitchen and he held her, her little dark head lolled against his shoulder. Tears streamed down his face. Her hair was darker where his tears dripped down, matting it together. I stood and moved towards them. I touched her bed-matted hair, the back of her head. There were leaves in her hair, stuck to her cardigan, tiny leaves from a ti-tree; I picked one from her hair, crushed it, smelled the sharp medicinal smell of it. I reached out my arms and Gus folded me into them, into him and Grace who was no longer Grace. I could not believe the terrible lifelessness I felt in her body.

  A man in a dark uniform and a woman in a nurse’s frock came. They stood by the kitchen door, his head bowed, hers upright, waiting. I held Grace, Gus held us both; Cath cried at the table. I brushed the hair from her eyes with my hand, kissed her on both cheeks, in the European way, then kissed her cold lips. Then – too soon – they took her away, my darling. I did not understand what had happened. As they carried her away, I turned to Gus and fell into his arms; we gathered Cath in, and the three of us stood, shaking, trembling, as the sun dropped lower in the sky through the window behind us.

  Then I broke away – burst through the kitchen door to the street, watched as the ambulance and the police car pulled away slowly. A sound came from me, a sound I had never heard and have never heard since; a low keening, not of this life.

  I turned away from the ocean and faced the land, the dying light of the day at my back. I saw the lines of the streets marked by the rising tips of the tall dark pine trees, black-green triangles above the houses, their branches reaching down in curves towards the ground. I walked away from the ocean, towards the land, the trees. The arms of the pines stretched out to me.

  COTTESLOE

  1991

  Ghost notes

  SWEET SMOKE STILL

  I remember ti-tree leaves in her hair, on her dress, remember the smell of them. I cannot stand that smell, still; it makes my guts roil. I remember the note, remember pinning it to her dress, remember the pain in my belly. I recall her now, as I have tried all these years not to. Dark hair, dark eyes, humming on the beach, the tiny star around which I revolved.

  She was my grace note, my appoggiatura: she added to me, accented me, augmented me. Linked to me with the most delicate of curves, she was not quite there; then she was gone, leaving me bare, unadorned, raw, all alone again. The Italian appoggiare means to lean upon. We leaned upon one another, and when she was gone, for a long time I didn’t want to hold myself up without her.

  It is May, now, this month. Her birthday was in May. She was born in weather like this, heavy, thick weather. It was May when she left me, too. What an awful, awful month, all leaves turning, weather with cold on its tongue, thunder in its bowels.

  *

  She is filming me, again. She asks about then, about that time. Her questions come to me as if through glass, or through water.

  ‘You came back here, as an adult, just as war was announced, in 1939, is that right?’

  ‘Before then. Before the war.’

  ‘And you lived right down on the beach. Could you talk about that?’

  ‘At the pavilion, yes. I wasn’t there at first though. I stayed with my uncle. He was close by. I moved to the Pav quite soon though, and I was there by the time the war broke out.’

  ‘Why there? Did you work there?’

  ‘Mmm? Work? No, I paid a little rent to the people who did though. It was – oh, I suppose an escape. A place to be away. To have my own space, you might say.’

  ‘You were there for some time, until after the war, is that right?’

  I close my eyes, block out the light. How can I tell her why? I can’t, I can’t tell her. How can I, now, when her body and mind are growing a child? And why should I? Everyone who knows is gone; there’s no one left but me.

  I imagine a woman, dark-haired, not thin – with meat on her bones. Fifty years old; older than Mo. Perhaps with children – God, even grandchildren! – of her own. I imagine her humming, under her breath, as she works.

  ‘Lena?’

  I open my eyes. ‘Mmn?’

  ‘You left here soon after the war, is that right?’

  ‘I don’t remember.’ I shake my head, try to muster my thoughts. ‘I suppose – let me see – I left in ’forty-seven. Yes. Went to Paris, at first.’

  ‘What prompted you to leave? I imagine Europe was so much more damaged than Australia, from the war.’

  She sits with her notebook balanced on her knee. It is not just her. The three of them are there. I can’t see the boy, Jonno. Caro is behind the light. In the silence I imagine I can hear them breathing. All I can see is Mo, and all I can see of her is the notebook balanced on her knees, the pen resting lightly in her hand, her feet in their heavy black boots, close together, pointing towards me, in the backwards spill from the bright light.

  ‘Lena? Are you all right?’

  ‘No.’ I start to rise out of my seat, then sit back down. ‘Can we – I don’t really want to talk about it. I’m happy to discuss my work, my music, but I really don’t want to talk about – can you please turn it off?’ I hold my hand up towards the camera, shielding my face. She is standing now, reaching out. ‘Please.’ The sound from the camera changes as she switches it off. I drop my hands to my lap, bow my head. ‘Thank you.’

  I make an excuse, tell her I am feeling unwell. She bustles out, hustles her little team away with her; I hear her tell them to pack up, to finish up. She comes back to me, brings me a glass of water. I take it, drink from it. My hand is shaking. She takes the glass from me, places it on the table. She is solicitous, asks what she can bring me, if I need anything. Poor old woman, no one to look after her. I’ll be fine, I tell her, I just need to rest. The strange humidity this past week, I say to her, it’s harder on me than the strict heat of summer. I find it harder.

  I stand in the doorway, she on the verandah. She asks me again if I am all right.

  ‘Yes. Yes. I’m fine.’

  She holds out her hand, takes mine, wraps her other hand around it.

  ‘You know…’ she starts, then stops, then starts again, as if with a prepared speech. ‘It’s the untold stories I’m interested in, the stories that hold secrets. That’s my challenge as a filmmaker – to find ways of showing those secret stories, especial
ly the dark parts, while still respecting the subject. Respecting you.’

  I shake my head. ‘It’s difficult.’

  ‘I know. I know. But – you know, I’ve always felt that, when I’m making a documentary, I have moral obligations that I don’t have when I’m making a dramatic film. When I’m making a documentary – telling your story – my responsibility for you goes beyond the finished film. I’m responsible for the emotional aftermath of the film. I feel very strongly about it. If I didn’t, I’d make it all up – it’s as simple as that. I wouldn’t be interviewing you. I wouldn’t be making documentaries. I’d make movies, make it all up.’ She is still holding my hand in hers. She pats my hand, squeezes it, then releases it. ‘I want to tell your story. If you’ll let me.’

  I nod my head, but I don’t speak.

  ‘May I come again?’

  I nod.

  ‘Give you a few days, though, eh? Perhaps after the weekend?’

  ‘Yes. After the weekend. Yes.’

  ‘Okay. I’ll call you, we’ll set a time.’

  She turns, steps off the verandah, then turns back to me.

  ‘It’s good, you know? This story, your story, this film – it’s good. You’re remarkable. People want to know about you.’

  There’s no answer I can give her. I smile, grimly; I nod.

  I watch her walk up the path, under the jacaranda tree, through the garden, and away out of sight.

  My scrapbook contains press cuttings, charting my musical career over the years. It bulges with newspaper articles – in English, French, German, Russian – photographs, clippings from magazines, programmes from shows I have played. In truth it is not so much a scrapbook as a scrap box, spilling out and only barely contained.

  I open the lid of the box. The smell of old paper meets me, and under that, the ghost note of light perfume, of stage make-up, faded to must. At the bottom of the box is my oldest scrapbook, from the beginning, from Sydney. The paper is old, thick, and dark brown, coffee-brown, more stiff card or board than paper. Memories are tucked within the pages, spilled as I leaf through them: a programme from the State Theatre, wild with the colour and shapes of Trix’s design; a letter from the Professor; a sketch Trix made of me, draped in a kimono, my hair loose, my body formed by her in quick, loose lines on the page. From the very back of the book – tucked there, out of time – I take a photograph. It is small, square, its black, white and grey bordered by a frame of white. I kneel on the sand on the beach. I am wearing my bathing costume, dark in the photograph, and a large-brimmed sunhat. I am holding my arm upright, reaching out in front of me, my finger pointing directly towards the camera. I am smiling a deep, wide smile. Enclosed by my other arm is Grace, naked and brown, dark hair wet and rimed with salt, eyes screwed up against the sun, fat little hand up to shade her eyes, nose screwed up, laughing as she looks toward the camera.

  I touch my fingertip lightly to her face, the glossy surface of the image sticky, almost liquid. From a drawer in the kitchen I take an envelope. In it I place the photograph, a newspaper cutting, and a flattened sprig of ti-tree, pressed deep in the spine of the book, grey with age. I lick the sweet mint gum and seal the envelope, place stamps on it, write the filmmaker’s address.

  I walk to the postbox by the shop on the corner, and drop the envelope through the slot. I do not have the energy to walk further, to go to the beach, to swim. It feels hot. It’s gunna be a hot one. No, it can’t be hot, winter is coming. It is May. The rain will come soon, the winter rain. I walk home, slowly, through air that feels heavy. Perhaps there will be thunder.

  I go to my bedroom. I lie upon my bed. I prepare a smoke. I feel the hit. I feel its numbing, welcome it. My hands clench, fingering the air, tapping time on the surface of the bed. I curl into myself, climb in.

  Stay with me. Nearly there.

  The filmmaker is here again. I open the door to her. She says my name, then she stands, immobile. She puts her hand on my shoulder, on the top of my arm, and rubs the thin skin there, like rubbing a sore muscle, or patting a dog. How long it is since anyone has held me. How very long.

  ‘I’m so sorry,’ she says. ‘I didn’t know.’

  I turn, and she follows me. We go into the front room, the music room. I stand near the theremin. I can feel the droop and stoop of my shoulders. I can feel the sweet smoke still. I can feel the filmmaker’s sadness.

  ‘Thank you for telling me,’ she says. She tries to meet my eyes with hers. I look down, look at my feet, the rug beneath my feet. ‘I can’t begin to know how you must feel, must have felt then, but – well, at least I know, now. About Grace.’

  I flick my eyes up when she says Grace. My head nods lower, sadder; it feels heavy on my neck, too heavy to bear. She steps towards me; I step back, as if following her lead in a dance.

  ‘And they never found out what happened? Who did it; if anyone—’

  ‘No,’ I interrupt her. ‘No.’

  ‘Lena,’ she says.

  I can’t look at her.

  ‘Do you want me to stay?’

  I shake my head: no.

  ‘Do you want me to go?’

  I lift my head, drop it, lift it, drop it, a slow motion nod: yes.

  She reaches out, touches my arm again. I nod, just slightly. And then she leaves me.

  COTTESLOE, EUROPE, COTTESLOE

  1944–1991

  Singing my daughter down

  JUST WALK AWAY

  Sometimes, you just have to walk away. As it turned out, it took me a couple of years to walk away, after Gracie died.

  In the meantime, I walked; at first, all I did was walk. Up and down those streets, and through the back lanes, under the Norfolk pines, along the beach, my head down, alone. I don’t remember much of that time. Gus was there, and Cath and Eric. Uncle Valentine gently suggested, I seem to recall, that I move back into the big house with him. But I stayed at the Pav, in the tower, sometimes looking out at the sea, but mostly folding myself in on myself, curled in a ball on the rug on the floor, just holding on for dear life; just.

  I couldn’t bear to think of her under the ground, so she turned to ash and smoke, my Grace. Ash like chalk, like limestone, ground. I stood with her in my hands, cradled the box that held her, the wind behind me in rhythmic gusts and soughing troughs blowing out over the wintry ocean. I let Grace fly from my fingers on the wind, whispered her over the water, humming low in my throat. She whorled, a perfect chalky spiral on an eddy of water, before turbulence dispersed her. Soon she would be everywhere, in every ocean; but the grit of her stayed deep in the cracks in my hands.

  There was a sheet of paper still in the typewriter, in the room in the north tower, words filling half the page. It stayed there for days, then weeks, then months. Then one day, I ripped it from the machine. I packed the papers – all of them, the unfinished story, my story, our story – tied them neatly with blue manuscript ribbon, put them in a box, put the box in a drawer. The typewriter stayed where it was, another cold machine in the corner of the room. I didn’t need it; I didn’t need to finish the story, now. But I couldn’t throw it away. I just put it in a box. Put it away.

  I became very thin, I know that. Eating didn’t seem appropriate. I became so thin that my flow stopped, my breath stank. My body started to eat itself from the inside out. They would all have worried about me; I understood that later. And they were grieving too, of course. But I was her mother. I grieved hardest.

  I don’t know when I first used opiates to dull the pain, to take its sharp edge away. Gus knew a man, who knew someone else, who knew one of the Americans. Smoke soothed smoothly, ate the pain, uncurled me, at least while it unfurled through my body. Gus and I sat in the tower, sat and smoked. It was dark, often; perhaps I slept during the day. The war ended, I remember that. I remember it not meaning anything – so, the war was over, so what?

  And the dances continued, sound drifting through the walls and under the door and in through the glass of the window on the night air, hoots and
hollers and horns and loud stamping glory, all happiness and peace. What did they know? Gus and I sat in the tower. I’ve said that. We sat in the tower, and we smoked, and sometimes the pain edged away enough so that I let him hold me to him, my face against his dark hair, the smell of it, the smoke, the sweat.

  And in the daytime, people came there too. They came to the beach, paid their coins at the pavilion and put their swimsuits on and padded out on the sand and lay there in the sunlight. I saw them. I saw them swim in the water, swim out to the pylon, around it and back to the beach, saw them haul themselves onto the beach and lie on the sand, brown and dripping, as if nothing had happened, not the war, not anything. I saw them climb onto the pylon and leap off; I saw joy on their faces, damn them. Sometimes I would stand with my face pressed against the glass of the window overlooking the beach and imagine myself outside my body and in that water, inside it and underneath it and letting it rush through me; imagined cool beads of water effervescing up my arms, on my thighs, on my eyes.

  I stayed in the tower. Gus and I sat in the tower. Stay with me. I’m getting there.

  I came back to the world, slowly, and so did Gus. He came and went with the band; sometimes he was away for months. He would stay with me in the tower when he was in town. With time, I could function in the world again; I ate, moderately; I could smile at someone in a shop who did me a small kindness. Still smoke smudged the edges, kept me afloat.