by Gee, Maurice
‘Eat it while it’s hot, Mike. Then I’ve got work to do.’
‘Painting? Is that what you do?’
‘Yes.’
‘Those yours?’ He waved across the bench at the living room.
‘No, they were done by Fan Anerdi.’
‘Modern stuff.’
‘Fan was a modern woman.’
‘I like that one you were doing better.’ He swallowed a mouthful of stew, which had not been heated enough. Ellie left hers. She would put it back on the stove when he had gone.
‘So, how about it, Ellie? You got a spare bed?’ He stopped and seemed to shrink as a thought struck him. ‘You haven’t got a bloke, have you? That’d be my luck. Hey, you haven’t, I can tell. Women get a certain kind of look.’
‘Don’t be cheeky, Mike.’
‘Just cracking jokes. You know me.’
‘I don’t have a partner, but I might have soon.’ Where did that come from? Invention? Prophecy?
‘Yeah. OK.’
‘And I’m expecting my brother.’
‘I didn’t know you had one.’
‘I’ve got two. And a sister as well. My son’s coming home.’
‘I didn’t know – kids?’
‘A lot of things can happen in twenty years.’
She was sorry for him but not enough to do more than let him finish his meal. He ate another spoonful and pushed his plate away.
‘You wouldn’t have another beer, Ellie?’
She fetched him a can.
‘So,’ he said, twitching his shoulders, turning over what he might say.
‘Where do you go from here, Mike?’
‘Dunno. Travellin’ man.’ He tried to grin. ‘I might try Good Life.’
‘It’s not there any more. It’s turned into a religious place.’ She smiled at him. ‘Not your style.’
‘No. Ellie, what say a couple of nights? Then I’d be gone. I could do a bit of work in the garden. I need –’ he surprised her – ‘need to be still now and then. Put myself together. I haven’t had it easy, Ellie, I guess. If I can have some peace and quiet I can go on.’
It might have been half true, but the rest was bogus. Ellie saw it in his eyes as he watched for his effect on her. His couple of nights would turn into three or four. There would always be reasons. He would dig in and she might never be rid of him. Peace and quiet would graduate into lounging around and guitar strumming and beer and pot and sex. He’d want sex. Ellie wanted work, she wanted painting, she wanted herself.
Whatever you’re going to do, do it now, she told herself.
‘Sorry, Mike.’ A refusal for her own sake, not John’s. ‘Have you finished eating? I want to get back to work.’
‘Ah, Ellie, you’ve grown hard.’
‘Not especially. I’ve learned what I want.’
‘Don’t you think there’s too much selfishness in the world?’
‘Oh shut up, Mike. Just drink your beer. How much money have you got? Do you want some money?’
It stopped him and changed his direction, although he said, ‘You don’t have to insult me.’
‘I’m not trying to.’ She got her bag from the sideboard and rummaged for her purse. ‘There,’ she said, tipping coins and banknotes on the table, ‘does that help?’
He swallowed and slid his eyes away. ‘I’ve got to buy petrol to get away from here. So sure, I’ll take it. You’ve turned into some sour old bitch, Ellie.’ He scooped the money – fifty, sixty dollars – in one hand, put it in his pocket. ‘Can I use your bog? Or do I have to piss out in the drive?’
‘Down the hall.’
She put his bowl on the bench and tipped hers back into the pot. She wanted to get Mike out of her house. Get him out. He would make her dissatisfied with where she had been. She wanted her past solid and square, not marked and twisted retrospectively. She stood by the back door; stepped into the yard when the toilet flushed.
‘Out here.’
‘Can’t wait to get rid of me, eh?’
‘There’s no work in Nelson, Mike. It’s the wrong season.’
‘Is that a way of running me out of town? I wouldn’t have treated you this way, Ellie.’
‘No, probably not.’
She saw him hunting for another insult. ‘Sour bitch’ had not been strong enough. Instead, his eyes filled with tears. ‘Anyway,’ he said.
‘What?’
‘Thanks for this.’ He tapped his pocket, jingling coins. ‘I’ll have enough to get my car on the ferry now. Just about.’
‘You’re heading north?’
‘Might as well.’
He did not know where he would be from one day to the next; but she held herself hard.
‘Goodbye, Mike.’
He turned away, then stopped at the corner of the path. ‘I don’t care how you remember it, you were the best sheila I ever had.’
She went through the house and watched him from the veranda; saw him step over the gate.
‘It’s a bloody pity you turned out how you did.’ He got into his rusty Toyota under the pines and drove away.
Ellie ate her lunch. She tore bread and wiped the bowl clean. Sour bitch? She saw how it might seem as true as ‘best sheila’ for him – and how ‘best sheila’ made him better off than her. She had no memory of a matching sort. But she had John. And, whatever the loss, she had saved herself.
She locked the house and drove into Motueka. Drew cash from the bank, did her weekly shopping, drove home hoping that Derek would have arrived. She wanted to be with someone, wanted to talk. He had phoned the week before to say he was passing through. His man’s voice had surprised her, so strong had been her feeling that George and her mother had left him no way of growing up. The thought of seeing him had set up the same quiet humming in her that came when she knew that a painting was going to work. As for John coming home, that would not be until the university holidays in August, so in a way she had lied to Mike, allowing him to suppose that John was a child expected home from school. Clever, she thought, not liking herself.
There was no Derek waiting on the porch. She began to be angry with him, and calmed herself by sitting in the back yard in pale sunlight from across the bay, listening to the wind in the pine trees and the sound of cars on the coast road. She poured a glass of beer and drank it slowly, wondering about the slow ruin of Mike’s life. She could not understand such easy choices, such lack of will. She tried not to feel guilty. She wanted to forget him.
Clouds came up and hid the sun. The sea darkened. Separation Point turned from blue to grey. Ellie went into her studio. The painting on her easel seemed insipid. She had meant it to be strong but all she could claim for it was that it was nicely painted. What was in it except a creek and rocks and bush and a hill? All these things had substance, yet no substance was there. She squeezed black paint on her palette and took a thick brush with stiff hairs. She dragged paint down the hill, not knowing whether she was crossing it out or adding something – a single thick line against the grain. She dragged a second time with a drier brush, broadening it and making the edges scratch, then let it fork and made a figure, a man, scarcely defined, only suggested, not requiring anything more, swell or bulb of head, or shoulders, feet. She let him fade in scratches at the edge, let him peter out, but saw how much he was present, how he inhabited the landscape. Even though I’ve ruined it, she said. Who is he? No one. Someone. Someone with a right to be there. He came from the bush and hill but equally from her. He wasn’t Mike. Or Neil. Or John or Derek. Anyone. Not her father. He wasn’t the new partner who had suddenly appeared in her conversation with Mike. Was he a man? Yes. Not a woman. She had known that as she dragged her brush against the grain.
Ellie took the painting down from the easel and leaned it face out against the wall. She took another, not choosing, from the dozen she had worked on recently (creek and hill), and propped it in place. She made the same vertical stroke, with her brush even drier, increasing the scratchiness at the edges; made the fi
gure two limbed, walking not on the hill but in front of it, his footing unseen so he seemed to float, while the solid black (she increased it) at his centre, like a spine, anchored him deep into the land. She drew her breath; her quiet humming began, although another painting was ruined. She looked at it a long while, trying to feel, not understand. I’m doing this, she thought, it’s not one of Fan’s accidents. ‘Be quiet, Fan.’
She put another painting in place.
Ellie worked late into the night, then ate and slept, and went out to the studio as soon as it was light. The paintings she had finished (ruined) stood against the wall: hill, bush, creek, black figure, some smaller than her first, some large (one was a torso blotting half the canvas out). She did not know what the right proportions would be – if there was ‘right’ – or if she would paint many or just one; but began, calm in her movements, with a new canvas (she prepared her own: soaked them and stretched them and put the gesso on); moved her brush loosely, smelling the piney solvent in the paint – creek, bush, hills again, visualising them without a figure but knowing he was implanted there. Who was he? What was he? She did not any longer want to know. Hold him back a while, he’ll turn up in his own good time. All she wanted was for the paint to go on …
Ellie photographed her paintings and sent copies to a dealer in Auckland. Thank you, he replied, but I’m afraid … Silly cow, Ellie thought. She tried David Shea, who saw her for the first time as more than a female upstart hoarding Anerdi paintings she didn’t deserve to own. Yes, he would show her work in a November slot that by good chance had become available. Would she prepare an artist’s statement, please, and perhaps find a more appealing title than Figure 1–10? Spirit of the Land or The Human Occupation or Do I Belong? – how about that? Oh no, Ellie thought, no dressing up. (Fan would have called it ‘spreading jam’.) What I’ve named it is what it is. She would not write an artist’s statement either; quoted Fan a second time: ‘I’ve never read one that isn’t some sort of gorse hedge growing round a painting.’ She wrote an autobiographical paragraph, giving little away, but allowed David to add: Friend and pupil of Fan Anerdi.
John had examinations and could not leave Christchurch, so Ellie went to Wellington alone. She stayed in Brooklyn with her mother and learned that Derek had by-passed Ruby Bay and gone to Golden Bay. He was living in a religious community.
‘What’s it’s name?’
‘Gethsemane.’
‘But that’s where I was. I mean, geographically. It was Good Life. Then some religious cult moved in when Terry and Rain left. What’s he doing there?’
‘I don’t think it’s a cult, Ellie. You’ve never been fair about what people believe.’
‘Sorry, sorry. They’re Anabaptists or something. New Testament Christians anyway. They don’t like the Old. Earlyites they call themselves. That’s the name of the boss. Robert Early.’
‘Yes, I know. He’s hardly “boss”.’
‘How does your church feel about them? And what’s Derek doing there? He doesn’t believe that stuff.’
Her mother was vague – ‘Just seeing what he thinks,’ and, ‘He’ll come back. Derek knows there’s only one true way.’ Then she let her worry surface: ‘Ellie, I can’t go there. Will you go? Go and see?’
‘They wouldn’t let me past the gate.’
‘Yes they would. Visitors are allowed. I think you should write first, though. Ellie …?’
‘Well, I’ll see. Would Derek want me? He didn’t make any effort to call in.’
‘He likes you, Ellie. You and he clicked, he said.’
‘Ha, clicked. I’ll think about it. I don’t promise.’
She took her mother to the opening next night. She had sent an invitation to Neil and his wife, Amber Somerville, a radio journalist. (The novel that might have been Ellie’s was dedicated to her.) They did not come. Angela and Barry Abbot came, bringing Hollis Prime. Ellie turned from a conversation and saw him standing inside the door, leaning on his stick. He’s a sort of shadow man, she thought; although her heart gave a jolt as if something more substantial, a car or bus, had pulled up with a screech in front of her. She smiled at him – a minimal smile – then was engulfed by Barry and Angela. When she was able to look again, he had his back to her and was moving along her paintings.
‘Is Hollis down here now?’ she said.
‘No, he’s visiting,’ Angela said. ‘He doesn’t like Wellington much, his ex-wife lives here. He advises Barry, doesn’t he Barry?’
‘He certainly does. He never stops,’ Barry said, beaming.
‘I saw where you gave up politics,’ Ellie said.
‘It gave me up. It chewed me up and spat me out. Ellie, these are great paintings. What do they mean?’
‘Whatever you like.’
‘I’m a simple guy. I need to be told.’
‘Don’t be boring, Barry. Which one shall we buy?’ Angela said.
‘It’s a matter of where we’d hang it,’ Barry said. ‘Is this someone you know, this feller in them?’
Ellie supposed she should say something clever. Instead she was confused: he might be one person or a multitude. ‘They’ve all got names, Barry. They’re Figure 1–10.’
‘You must spend a lot on paint, putting it on so thick.’
‘I’m modest compared with some painters I know.’ She wanted to be away from here – sitting in the twilight in her back yard with the trees and her cat for company. She excused herself and talked with other people, then joined her mother, who said, ‘Does that red pin he stuck in mean a picture’s sold?’
‘Yes. Oh, good.’
‘Eight hundred dollars.’
‘He gets a third. Did you see who it was?’
‘That man you were talking to. The one who smiles all the time.’
‘Ah, Barry. I suppose Angela told him to.’
‘Who are they?’
‘I was with her at Willowbank. He’s some sort of property investor.’
‘Who’s the funny woman at the door?’
Ellie felt her heart lighten. She was joyful suddenly, as though every one of her pictures had sold. ‘Excuse me, Mum. It’s Mrs Nimmo.’
‘She looks like a baglady.’
‘Doesn’t she?’
A supermarket bag with something – clothing, shoes? – in the bottom. A fur coat with patches like mange. Rumpled socks, multi-coloured sneakers. A crocheted cap with wisps of white hair poking through. Serene face.
‘Mrs Nimmo, I’m Ellie Crowther. I was hoping I got the invitation right, but I wasn’t sure you’d remember me.’
‘Of course I remember.’
‘It’s such a long time. It’s thirty years.’
‘You don’t measure memories by arithmetic,’ Mrs Nimmo said. ‘You weren’t a waste of time, Ellie, so it’s yesterday.’
‘Thank you for coming.’
‘It’s my second visit. I came this morning when the pictures were going up, so I could see them properly.’
‘David didn’t tell me.’
‘The fat man? He shooed me out. Tried to. I don’t shoo. This time I came to see you.’
‘I’m glad.’
‘I’ve never had one of my girls become a painter. Now these – did you think about them a long time, or just pick up your brush and start to paint?’
‘Oh, both,’ Ellie said. ‘But I think about them now, all the time.’
‘So there’s more to come?’
‘Yes. But I’m not sure what.’
‘Where did you get him? Out of your dreams?’
‘He just arrived. I don’t know who he is or what he means. They were only landscapes at first.’
‘And you let him stay. You took the risk.’
‘Oh, I don’t know. He might be a friend. All I know is I like the paintings. I think they’re good.’
‘Yes, they are. I’ll come again one day when no one’s here, if that man will let me. He wants you to circulate, look at him. Did the stil bistroel work?’
‘I
t wasn’t for me.’
‘Your friend, you said. Did she take it?’
Ellie looked nervously at Hollis Prime. He was out of earshot, talking with Angela. She smiled at him fleetingly, then whispered to Mrs Nimmo, ‘No, she didn’t. She got cross with me. She was a Catholic.’
‘Plenty of them have abortions, dear. I did myself when I was a girl.’
‘You’re not a Catholic, are you?’
‘I was once. Perhaps I still am. Mine was with knitting needles on a kitchen table. It finished me for children, I’m afraid. So your friend had hers?’
‘I don’t know. She went away to Sydney … oh, what’s that?’ Mrs Nimmo’s bag pressed on her knee. ‘Good heavens, a cat.’ She peered inside and made it out – a tabby crossed with Siamese lying on a bed of tartan blanket.
‘He’s old and sick. I’m sorry if he smells a bit. I suppose you thought it was me.’
‘No, no,’ Ellie said.
‘Of course you did. Be still, Beria, I’m taking you home.’
‘Who?’ Ellie said.
‘Oh, Beria. He murdered all my sparrows one by one. Merciless. Then he moved in, the way cats do. Now he’s old and I can’t leave him to die alone. So he comes with me. What can I do?’
‘Have you given up politics? – Yes, in a minute, David. I haven’t finished talking with Mrs Nimmo.’
‘I haven’t got time,’ Mrs Nimmo said. ‘Communism was a great idea perverted – by monsters like this.’ She gave the bag a shake, which made the cat mew. ‘I believe in original sin now. Not the Christian sort, of course. Although I do wonder what comes next. Life has been interesting but I’m getting just a little bit divorced. That’s why it’s nice to come and see this. Now, I must go. That’s enough, Beria, you’ll have your basket soon. Goodbye, Ellie.’
Ellie went to the door with her and kissed her cheek. ‘Will you let me give you a painting?’
‘No, dear, no. I’ve got no room. I mean in my head. You’ve no idea how nice it is just seeing one of my girls. That’s enough.’
‘I’m glad I had you for my teacher.’
Mrs Nimmo changed Beria to her other hand. She nodded and smiled and went away, but turned after a step or two and said, ‘Oh, Ellie, I meant to say, don’t waste too much time with Angela Prime. Not when you’ve got your work to do. Goodbye, dear.’