Ellie & the Shadow Man

by Gee, Maurice

  Angela caught Ellie as she crossed the gallery. ‘What on earth did she have in that bag? It wasn’t a cat?’

  ‘Yes, it was. Called Beria. Hollis, it’s good to see you. Thank you for coming.’

  ‘What an extraordinary way to live your life. I think I can smell it,’ Angela said.

  ‘David will bring some air freshener. Thanks for buying one of my paintings.’

  ‘Oh, I like them. Hollis says they’re expressionist.’

  Ellie turned to him. ‘Don’t put labels on them, please.’

  His face coloured – a self-betraying face in spite of its stillness. She wondered if he was able to smile.

  ‘It’s just,’ she said, ‘I don’t like words you throw like a blanket over things. Sorry.’

  ‘I meant there’s more than just technique.’

  ‘Don’t write off technique. There’s lots of plain bad painting around.’ I hate this sort of conversation, she thought. ‘Excuse me, I’d better save my mother.’

  Who was not in need of saving, was perfectly at ease, watching David fix another pin in the wall.

  ‘What does a blue one mean?’

  ‘On approval, something like that.’

  ‘There’s two red now and one blue. Is that good?’

  ‘For someone like me, in Wellington, very good. A lot of exhibitions don’t sell anything at all.’

  She was pleased with her mother, more relaxed with her. Mrs Brownlee had taken care to look her best: new flat shoes, a piece of blue glass jewellery, blown into a bubble, nestling in an Indian scarf at her throat. Where did she get that? Her new freedom, easier smiles, were a mystery too. She seemed to miss out the step she had learned from George – that shuffling pause caused by reference to some body of law. Perhaps a new man had come along. Or – Ellie preferred this – with George gone (poor George) she was recovering herself.

  They waited until the last person had left, and stood with David in the empty gallery. Ellie looked at her paintings and felt a shock: they’re good. She turned away, believing she might cry.

  ‘Three sold and one maybe,’ David said. ‘That’s more than satisfactory, my dear.’ (Her first ‘my dear’.) ‘I think I detect a little groundswell, maybe. The only thing you might have done – some fetching title, some, oh, grabber perhaps. People like things easy. They don’t care so much for enigmatic.’

  ‘I’ll try to remember,’ Ellie said.

  ‘The lady who bought that one –’ Mrs Brownlee pointed – ‘said she liked it because it seemed to mean all sorts of things.’ She squeezed Ellie’s hand as they went out. ‘It’s lovely to see you doing well.’

  Ellie stayed in Wellington another day. She caught a bus down Brooklyn hill in the afternoon, and nosed around in bookshops and galleries. Then she walked along the waterfront to Oriental Bay, where the tide held its fullness before turning. It was a moment she had watched in inlets at Waimea and Collingwood, wondering how to catch the moment, like a deep slow breath, like a turning over in sleep – catch it in paint. I need my paintings to be human, she thought. Did that mean she must always put a person in? She walked along past Hay Street and Grass Street – names she liked – making for the steps leading down to the sea opposite the ugly hotel that spoiled the furthest part of the Parade. She wanted to take her shoes off, wet her feet – wash her feet. I don’t mind message any more, she thought. (Be quiet, Fan.) I don’t mind me in my paintings. Why should I? I suppose I’ll always stick at $800: David should really let me go. The painters who were starting to make their names, all the new ones, were cool and clever, or clever and cruel, or witty and unconnected, and she could not go in any of those ways, would not want to, any more than be contented with colour and light. Yet she retained the happiness she had felt the night before when she had seen that her paintings were good.

  ‘Ellie,’ said a man sitting on a seat. He tapped with his stick on the pavement. Hollis Prime.

  ‘Hello. Can I sit down?’

  He made room. ‘I always hesitate to interrupt when someone’s as far away as that.’

  ‘Was I? I suppose I was. Euphoria from last night. What are you doing here?’

  ‘Looking at the Hutt. Have you ever been back?’

  ‘Not really. Passing through. I’ve never seen the hostels again. Have you?’

  ‘No. If I came back to Wellington I’d want a house up high.’ He pointed his stick at Wadestown.

  ‘I’ve got one where I am. I look down the hills and over the sea. Are you thinking of coming back?’

  ‘One day maybe. Not for a while.’

  ‘Are you still doing the same sort of thing? Tax law?’

  ‘Yes. The same.’

  ‘For Barry?’

  ‘Among others. He –’ Hollis grimaced – ‘he fell in a hole. I’m trying to get him out. It’s mainly get Angela out, I suppose.’

  ‘What sort of hole?’

  ‘I can’t talk about it. It goes back to pre-1987, when everybody was getting rich.’

  ‘And not too concerned about how. Equiticorp and all those others.’

  He looked at her sharply and she said, ‘I’m not saying Barry was like that. I’ve got some shares. They were left to me. Mostly Brierley.’

  ‘Hard luck.’

  ‘What should I do with them?’

  ‘I really don’t know.’

  Ellie was amused by his stuffiness. ‘I don’t like shares. Money making money. It seems to me people should do it – with work, I mean, not shuffling bits of paper and punching keys.’

  Hollis laughed. ‘You’ve just wiped the stock market out.’

  ‘Oh, good.’

  He laughed again, but said nothing more, just tapped the toe of his shoe with his stick. Then he leaned back. ‘It’s nice sitting here.’

  ‘Does your leg still hurt?’

  Hollis smiled. She thought there was something sad in it.

  ‘I remember your way of coming out with things,’ he said.

  ‘I thought polio got better. I mean, improved.’

  ‘It does for a while. Then it gets – do you want to know?’

  ‘Only if you want to tell me.’

  ‘I’d rather find out about you. I haven’t forgotten, Ellie. That night we drove down to Petone beach. Something nearly happened that night.’

  ‘I might be the best sheila you never had.’

  ‘I don’t mean sex.’ (What a serious fellow, she thought.) ‘You set something going in me. I might have found something out.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I don’t know. Then of course Dolores got in the way. I couldn’t help going after Dolores. So – I kind of closed up again.’

  He disappointed her. This backward looking and romanticising made it seem as if he had some sort of limp in his mind.

  ‘I think I might have disappointed you,’ she said.

  He squinted at her in the lowering sun. ‘I don’t think so. What are all the things you’ve done, Ellie? Have you got time?’

  ‘You want my life?’

  He looked at his watch. ‘It’s only half past three. Would you like a coffee? I think there’s a place.’

  ‘No, let’s sit here.’

  ‘Starting from when you told me what a ratbag I was, down on the wharves.’

  That’s just across the water. We’ve come in a circle, she thought; and then was reluctant. Wasn’t it imprudent, perhaps dangerous, to give your life away in lumps the way he wanted? She was afraid, superstitiously, of what she might lose, and she said, ‘My life’s pretty boring’; then was angry with herself: No it’s not. See, I’ve lost something already, saying that.

  ‘I left school and got a job in a library. And lived in a flat and met some boys and travelled around.’

  ‘Pretend you’re painting it,’ Hollis said.

  It took her breath away. It was as if he’d leaned forward and touched her face. As if he had touched her intimately.

  ‘You don’t know anything about that,’ she said. She began to say that paint
ing was her job and nothing special, which was only half true, then fell silent as she understood that in her work she had regained her past in a way most people could not. She was not aware of putting it on the canvas, yet it was there, in what she chose, in what arrived unchosen, in her brushstrokes, in her palette. She reached a kind of deep acquaintance with herself. So she described her life to Hollis Prime and had the sense of working, making detail, but also of making huge strides, of stepping long over tens of years, until she was able to say, ‘That brings me right up to last night.’ She might have added, ‘brings me up to now’.

  ‘That’s quite a life for pretty boring,’ Hollis said.

  ‘I didn’t mean that.’

  ‘I didn’t think you did. Where did he come from, the figure in your paintings?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. I never knew my father. Maybe it’s him. Or men I’ve known. Or something else. Maybe not a man. It could be me. Or what Mrs Nimmo talked about … No, cancel that. I learned how to paint from a woman who hated meanings. I don’t want to go after them.’

  Hollis worked a piece of asphalt free with his stick. He picked it up and lobbed it over the wall into the sea.

  ‘I bought one,’ he said.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last night. The one where he takes up half the space.’

  ‘I thought that was Barry and Angela.’

  Hollis smiled. ‘He was my frontman.’

  ‘Why did you do that?’

  ‘Because I didn’t want to talk about it right then.’

  ‘With me?’

  ‘Anyone. I didn’t want to have to explain.’

  ‘Explain what?’

  ‘It seemed a kind of warning about –’ he shrugged – ‘things that are going on. And where I am.’

  She had wanted something more personal but still was pleased. ‘I’m glad you chose that one. I like it best.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And I’m pleased you didn’t buy it just because you know me … I could have given you a discount.’

  ‘No way. You’ve got to make a living. Painting’s your job.’

  They sat a while in silence, watching a ferry move out. Traffic roared sporadically behind them. The sea slapped on the wall with a kind of exhalation then the hiss of retreat. It sent up a clean smell of seaweed. She turned her head as Hollis turned, watching the ferry.

  ‘The Hutt,’ he said, looking beyond it.

  ‘As good a place as any, I suppose. You know – I think I saw you – the black figure, I mean. When you followed me over the sandhills down on Petone beach …’ Then she told herself, Stop there.

  He seemed to understand, not want to go on either. ‘Long ago and far away,’ he said, standing up. ‘I’m catching a taxi back into town. Do you want to share?’

  ‘No, I’ll walk.’

  They went towards Quayside restaurant.

  ‘Things that are going on?’ she reminded him. ‘Where you are?’

  ‘It’s a long story. I might tell you one day.’

  ‘Visit me in Nelson if you like.’

  He looked surprised. His face began to colour, which amused her.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said. Then: ‘What I said about Barry …’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘I shouldn’t have told you really.’ He went redder. ‘I don’t mean I don’t trust you, of course …’

  ‘That’s all right.’

  ‘Barry isn’t a crook. He’s just a fool. A greedy one. But he’s generous. He likes people …’

  ‘He told me once he nearly cried when his friend hung himself.’

  ‘And then he’d forget.’ He stopped at the crossing where he would turn away. ‘I want to …’

  ‘What, Hollis?’

  ‘I want to get it finished. All this.’

  Ellie touched his arm. ‘Come and see me.’

  She walked towards the city and in a moment saw him pass in a taxi, sitting straight; not pretending not to see her but turning his problems over in his mind.

  He’s strange, she thought, he’s all cramped up. Like a woman in a tight skirt trying to walk fast.

  Ellie grinned; she laughed, feeling excited. But it was a rational excitement, wasn’t it, and not schoolgirlish? She had not reproached him, had not needed to, when he had mentioned Dolores.

  It was like brushing her hair and finding that a knot had come free.

  Ellie stopped her car on a low rise and looked at the land across the river. Clearings had been cut in the scrub – wide ones shaped like ping-pong bats, long ones like flax leaves, running towards the foothills of the Quartz Range. She saw a tractor standing driverless on one of them, and wondered if it belonged to Gethsemane. Nine years ago she had driven down this metalled road to show John the railway carriage where she had lived. They had found the gate locked and the scrub cleared on the near side of the river. Men worked on the foundations of a building too big for a house – perhaps a meeting hall or a church. The clearing where the garden had been was turned into pasture, and the railway carriage was gone.

  ‘I suppose they broke it up for firewood,’ she said, imagining the roof in flames, with her first real painting coming to light under the tar.

  They had driven further down the road and walked across the footbridge. She showed John the undercut bank in the river bend where two kayakers had drowned, and the waterfall on Salisbury Creek, but the scrub was too thick for them to find a way to the creek where Mike had abandoned his sluice. They turned back and drove to the head of the Heaphy Track where they walked a little way so John could bounce across the river on the first swing bridge.

  Driving back past the commune she had thought, At least they can’t get to the other side.

  It seemed she was wrong. The green and brown clearings probed and licked between the gorges. The Earlyites must cross on the new concrete bridge below the bend, and have their own road leading into the ranges and more bridges built over creeks. The place where Mike had grown his marijuana was probably used for grazing sheep.

  She drove on and found a gate with Gethsemane painted on it and no prohibition against entry. The name was strange, she had thought, driving over the hill from Ruby Bay. If she remembered her Divinity right, Gethsemane was the garden where Jesus was betrayed; where he was sorrowful even unto death and said, O my Father, let this cup pass from me. Why use it for a community where everyone followed him?

  But where – Ellie stopped the car – was everyone? The place was deserted. Not a movement, not a sound. There were four houses, including Terry’s A-frame; two large buildings, one hangar-roofed and double-storeyed; and half a dozen others – workshops, barns, storage sheds – built of green-painted corrugated iron. But no people, none in the gardens behind the buildings or in the orchard of silver trees – olive trees. Vehicles stood empty. Across the river the tractor sat unattended. It’s like the Marie Celeste, Ellie thought. She felt she might be ambushed.

  Then a man wearing black trousers and a white shirt came out through the double doors of the largest building and stopped on the forecourt, staring at her. He had the isolation of a survivor, the last person left. For a moment she thought he was Derek – but no, he was too thick in his build and pale in his hair. She drove across a cattle stop, along the drive and pulled up in front of him.

  ‘Hello.’

  He made no answer. A stern-looking boy, rather like a reborn economist. In a tie and jacket he’d be at home at No.1 The Terrace.

  ‘My name’s Ellie Crowther. I telephoned Mr Early and he said I could come and visit my brother.’

  ‘Stay in your car, please.’

  He turned inside, crossed a wide foyer and went through another door, closing it behind him. There was no sound except the murmur of her car. Ellie switched off the engine, hoping she might hear the river. Where had Robert Early hidden his people?

  Doors concertinaed at the back of the foyer and suddenly the space was surging, full. The doors to the forecourt opened. Men in grey boilersuits, women in blue long
dresses and white head-scarves, poured out, silent except for the chattering of their shoes. They broke around the car, went by on either side, giving Ellie no more than a glance. They made her think of Bruegel peasants on a village square – which was wrong, because the women’s dresses were nun-like in their fullness and the men were hair-trimmed and closely shaved and clean. She tried to shake off the fear she felt. There was no hostility, but an absence of curiosity that she found unnerving. Many of the women were young. All looked placid and some were beautiful. Children ran and hopped and clung to hands. They too seemed incurious. The boys wore white shirts and black trousers, the girls long blue dresses and headscarves like their mothers.

  How many? It seemed more than a hundred people had passed. They walked away, the women and children to the hangar-like building, the men to the vehicles and sheds. They must have come from lunch, Ellie realised. Everyone would gather for meals, even at midday, from the furthest corners of the farm. She watched for Derek coming out. Wouldn’t he find Gethsemane like a school? He had hated school.

  The young man reappeared with an older man at his side. He indicated Ellie and turned away.

  ‘I’m Robert Early,’ said the man. ‘And you are Mrs Crowther.’

  Ellie did not risk correcting him. A dogmatist. And ‘Ms’ or even ‘Ellie’ might get her expelled. ‘It’s good of you to let me come,’ she said.

  ‘Would you like to get out?’

  Ellie obeyed, hoping that her floral culottes would not offend him. He was dressed like the young man – white shirt, black trousers – while the older women coming from the dining hall were clothed identically to the earlier ones, except that some wore headscarves bordered in blue. It made Ellie look at their faces. Perhaps that was the idea.

  ‘I was hoping I could see Derek Brownlee,’ she said.

  ‘I think he went out the side door. They’re haymaking in the river paddock. I’ll send someone for him later on,’ Robert Early said. He was looking steadily at her face as though trying to read her. It forced her to talk.

  ‘I used to live here once, in a commune called Good Life. I lived in a railway carriage down there.’ She pointed towards the river, then fell silent, seeing that he had no interest.