by Alex Miller
Jessica lobbed the stone. ‘Come on,’ she said. ‘I’ll show you the rest of the place. We can walk round it in five minutes.’
But we didn’t get up. I’d been drawing while she was talking. She looked over my shoulder at what I’d done. We stayed there till it got dark.
I began a series of nude studies in oil late that night when I got home, working from my drawings of the figure up on the bank. My studio was beginning to fill up with images of her. It wasn’t the look in her eyes that interested me with these little oil sketches. If she’d decided to stay in the valley when she was a girl, instead of rushing off to London like everyone else was doing in those days, she would have had the physique to manage the garden. She would have had the build for it. Her mother was right. I saw Jessica lifting a redgum fencepost, embracing it against her body and dropping it into the hole. I see her raising the bar and ramming the clay and the stones until they’re so tight the post hums when the bar strikes the ground at its base. Her arms have kept their strength. And her thighs, on which she pivots against the swing of her torso when she’s doing something physical and is absorbed in the action of it. So these pictures are of Jessica labouring. They’re notes. They absorb me for weeks. I don’t stretch the canvases but pin them up on the wall opposite the windows, a row of them, a dozen side by side and I work on them all at the same time, going from one to another, building them up, memory and guesswork mostly, and those little drawings I did that day down by the Araluen creek behind her mother’s place.
My father resented having all his time taken up looking after the two of us. My sister and me. Having to work for money to keep us all going. He never got over that. He thought he should have had a chance to do something himself after the war and that we took it away from him. And he was right. It was true. He was cheated. We weren’t the whole story, of course, but our existence was another thing to add to the list. We cheated him. He had once expected to achieve something, then we denied him the time and the peace of mind. So he took his revenge on us. I accused him once. I told him straight out, it made my heart stop to do it, ‘You’ve got no dignity Dad.’ He just cursed me. People who have nothing turn on each other. You see them staggering about screaming at each other. They hate doing it. Their lives are filled with remorse because of it. But they can’t help it. They just go on doing it. It takes over and makes them wretched. It’s like they were listening to someone else screaming and yelling. It’s not really them. They know that. They’re not really like that. They can’t explain to anyone why they do it.
We don’t hesitate now. We blame him for everything. He’s the one we blame so we don’t have to blame ourselves. So we don’t have to be self-critical. He was the polar bear in the zoo, pacing backwards and forwards in his pit. We hung over the railing and tormented him. We didn’t have to do anything. Just being there looking at him was enough to drive him mad. If we let him out we’d be the first ones he’d kill. We were fascinated. We used to get too close sometimes. We used to dare each other to get close. We loved him. He got hold of her one day, my sister, and threw her against the wall. He terrified us. He terrified himself. More than sixty years later I can still feel her little body hitting the wall. ‘Here he comes, quick!’ We screamed and grabbed hold of each other. It used to make our flesh crawl with fear, the sound of him coming up the stairs of the flats. We’d go quiet. We’d try not to be doing anything. We’d try not to be there. We were always hoping he’d be in a good mood. He knew he was supposed to be everything and he knew he was nothing. And all he saw when he looked up was us hanging over the edge of his pit tormenting him.
They were all like that in our neighbourhood. Everyone’s father was like that in those days. We were afraid of them. We don’t have to ask ourselves why. The bit of promise they’d had, the hope, it was embittered. They went around in a rage. Even on a good day the rage was only just below the surface. Even on a happy day you knew the murderous impulses were only just being held in check. The balloon could go up any second. You waited for it. You watched your step. Any little thing could trigger it. You knew you were going to make a mistake sooner or later. You waited for it. You were accident prone.
They never had a chance.
Once when he came home on leave from France we devised a play. A little drama of our own to help everyone forget the big drama that was going on over there. We were staying with our mother in this beautiful old house in the country. He never touched her. I never saw him hit my mother, or even threaten to hit her. The Malt House, it was called. Pink tea roses grew up the walls, and when you looked out the windows of the attic there they were, framing your face.
My sister and I hung out the window with our arms round each other’s necks and our hot cheeks pressed together, and my mother went down on the lawn and took a snapshot of us. That’s us! An oval vignette by Antoine Watteau. We ran around half naked in the heat that summer doing what we liked. It was our billet. We were on the move in those days. They got us out of London to avoid the bombs. He never knew where we’d be when he got his next leave. It was an adventure. The woman who owned the Malt House encouraged us to have some fun. There’s another snapshot of me and my sister in our drawers trying to uproot a fruit tree, with the woman standing there laughing at us and egging us on. We’re tiny pale things with hardly any flesh on us. Our ribs stick out and we look eager and excited and old. Our eyes are black dots. Baby bears in the zoo, practising for the real thing. I was surprised by the tenacity of that tree. Our combined strength had no effect. I learned something about trees. About the world.
We performed the play in the attic, which was our living room while we were at the Malt House. The attic was a sunny room with three dormer windows that looked out over a view of green fields towards tight dark woods and some smoky hills. I don’t remember which one of us was the author of the play. I was supposed to protect my sister from the witch. I was nervous. I knew the task was beyond me. My mother was the witch. But when my mother made her entrance, draped in a black silk shawl and shaking a yard broom at us, instead of saying, Go away you big black witch! I panicked and screamed,
‘Go away you big black bitch!’
We rolled on the floor laughing till we felt sick. And every time it came to that line in the play we fell about laughing and could never get to the end of the scene. We didn’t complete the play. I don’t remember what was supposed to happen in the end. We stuck on the word bitch and it stayed with us for ever. It’s still with us. It’s as far as we got in my family. We never got to the end of the story.
In the portrait I did of my agent, Michael Vay, with his back to the viewer in his gallery, he’s looking at a portrait of me facing the viewer. Which was just a picture of a man in a dark blue suit with his back to us looking at a portrait. But everyone recognised Michael. No one doubted it was him, Michael Vay, the director of v, the dealer everyone wants to be with. ‘It’s him,’ they said and they had a good laugh. No one commented on the absence of his likeness. What does resemblance consist of? The absence of his facial features, that is. Which proved to be superfluous to the portrait. And he liked it! I’d sent him up. I’d told the truth about him. And he liked that. He bought it from me. It’s hanging in his dining room. ‘I’ll never sell it.’ This is what he says. But that’s a lie. With Michael everything’s for sale. That’s what Michael’s like. It’s the way he sees things. He’s not like me. I need this place. I need to own it. I’m not going to sell it. I’d be lost without it. Michael surrounds himself with possessions but he doesn’t need to own any of them. I need to own the few little things I keep around me. They’re not much by Michael’s standards but all the same I don’t want to part with them. They’re not for sale. Michael couldn’t care less. One thing’s as good as another to him. He’ll sell one thing and go and buy something else. There’s always something new whenever you see him. He’s really not acquisitive, it’s me who’s acquisitive. He just needs to make money. That’s what keeps him happy. Making a profit on things
. It’s where his joy in life comes from. It doesn’t take much to make Michael happy.
But there’s more to him than that. He loves artists.
Showing people my portrait of him makes Michael happy. He wants all his important visitors to see it. The clients. The aficionados. The collectors. It’s a phase with him. It’s the first thing he wants them to see when they get to his house. ‘Come and see this!’ he says, and he drags them through the place before they’ve had a chance to say anything about anything. Before he’s given them a drink. And we pull up in the dining room and there it is. It’s huge. A little man with a bald head in a blue suit facing a wall with a large portrait of me on it. ‘That’s what the bastard thinks of me,’ he says. And he laughs and grabs me round the shoulders and hugs me as if he’s my brother, or my father. ‘You bastard!’ he says, dragging me around so they’ll all think we’re in love.
It’s an aside. A slice of life. My life. The way it was then. That’s all it is. The side of my life I told Jessica I’d like to do without. ‘If I had the strength,’ I said to her, meaning if I had the moral strength, ‘I’d do without all that stuff. I’d clean up my act. I’d be more ascetic, I’d be sharper, I’d be leaner and meaner. I wouldn’t bother going to Sydney.’ And she said that was silly and that I ought to just determine my own life and not worry about those things.
She doesn’t understand. The artist’s freedom is double edged. If an artist keeps to himself that’s it, nothing happens. You’ve got to get out and meet the right people. You’ve got to be a bit of a showman, a performer. You’ve got to succeed in other ways than with your art. Pictures aren’t enough on their own. Otherwise you’re Charles Despiau and no one knows how good you are and you don’t get any commissions till you’re fifty. It’s easy for her to say that. But I’m not that strong. That’s Bonnard. He was strong enough for that. He never faltered. You only have to look at Brassai’s photograph of him. Pierre Bonnard, the Frenchman. There’s a portrait without vanity! Just a bit of one cheek and a touch of moustache sticking out from under his hat. It’s only a fragment. But it’s enough.
My father was right. ‘Be a man, son!’ That’s the last thing he called out to me on Paddington railway station when he was waving goodbye. I looked round at the sound of his voice and saw him wave. I still see him waving now. I can still feel his despair. His defeated hope. God knows what he meant. I thought he meant be cruel, be hard, show no feeling for anything and stand up to all kinds of pain and disappointment without complaint. I never even tried. I knew I couldn’t do that. And if Michael Vay ever stopped treating me like a precious son I’d be sick with worry. Michael enjoys being effaced by me. Michael earned my view of him. It proved his necessity and revealed my weakness. My weakness for success and money and for having aficionados celebrating my work while I enjoyed the luxury of pretending none of it mattered to me. Who wants the tragic life of Charles Despiau? It’s our conspiracy. Me and Michael. He looks at the world through me. He’s a dealer and he deals with the world for me. We still allow each other the freedom to play this game, so we can each keep a little private space open for the real thing. And maybe I do love him, in a way. A word is never going to decide these things. Words are powerless to decide these things. Words don’t touch the emotions. Words are part of the mask. We know there’s always someone listening for an echo of themselves in everything we say. There’s always someone reading our thoughts over our shoulder as we write them down, or watching us paint our little images and commenting on the way we’re doing it, criticising us, deriding our weaknesses and our lack of courage, and urging us to try something new and more challenging. It’s me listening for Jessica’s private thoughts and imagining I hear them, and it’s Jessica knowing she’s being listened to. There’s always someone out there ready to tell you how you should be doing it.
Art is more interesting than reality. Art is more interesting than life. But it’s only glimpses and guesswork. With art you’re never going to get the whole picture. There’s a blankness at the heart of each of us. Art is our dispute with that blankness, that mute place. Art is our dispute with reality. You have to find the emotional drive, the engine of necessity, like Bonnard, if you’re going to keep going with new projects and not give up and start repeating yourself. It always begins with a question. A doubt. And then you’re off, in search of yourself, and it’s not long before you come across these strange tracks and you ask what kind of creature would have made tracks like these. And you go in search of this elusive creature. And they’re your own tracks. And that’s what you have to learn. And every time you learn it you’re learning it for the first time. You surprise yourself.
We’re in my studio and I’m showing Jessica the little oil of her mother. It’s late. We’re both tired but we’re happy. We’re in that tired, happy, satisfied state you sometimes get to when you’ve done a good day’s work. We’ve had a long session. She’s talked a lot and I’ve painted a lot. We’ve been dealing with things and we’ve got this sense between us of companionship and respect. And it’s more than that too, but what can you say? Like I said, it’s only glimpses. That’s all you can ever get. Guesses. Small things. She’s surprised I’ve painted a picture of her mother. I tell her it’s not the only picture of her mother I’ve painted. We’re not looking at the perfect image. We’re standing here beside each other looking at this picture of her mother, where I’ve propped it on the solander, and she suddenly takes hold of my hand. And here we are if someone walks in on us, standing side by side in the twilight holding hands.
My sister’s older than me. Two years older. And she’s taller than me. She’s ungainly, angular, gangly, ugly. She always was. Right through school. Her nose is enormous. Her big feet sit out at a silly angle from her bony legs. She’s got great knobbly knees that are grey and scarred. She’s wearing a school dress. It’s a check cotton dress and it’s dirty and ripped. I’m face down on the floor and she’s sitting on me. I love her and I wish for her sake that she were beautiful. She beats me with her fists, systematically, driving her fists into my back as hard as she can, with all her strength, without fear of reprisal, hurting me. She’s going at it. She’s doing a real job of work on me. And I’m bearing the beating without complaint. There’s a reason for this, only neither of us knows what the reason is. We just know there’s a reason. That’s what we have in common, this silent knowledge. And my lack of a reaction to her blows enrages her. Beating me hurts her more than it hurts me. Neither of us knows why she beats me. And eventually she begins to cry. ‘That was lovely,’ I say. ‘Don’t stop! Keep going!’
She weeps helplessly, pressing into my back with the flats of her hands, kneading the hurting muscles of my back, sobbing without restraint. ‘What’s up?’ I say, as if I’m surprised at her distress, as if this isn’t our familiar ritual. As if we’re doing it for the first time. She gets off me and she runs in to her room and she slams the door. I follow her and listen at the keyhole. That’s what I do. I gaze into space and witness her crying in her room, sitting on her bed staring out of her window, her face wet and streaked with dirt, staring out at the elm trees along the road and the flats opposite. This little girl in her room sitting on her bed crying. My back’s hurting. It serves me right. The pain from the beating is severe. I can hardly bear it without groaning. My back will be covered in bruises in the morning. I feel strangely peaceful. Cleaned out. Emptied. I’m at home. I feel like laughing and crying at the same time. I lean down, listening at my sister’s bedroom door and I whisper her name, to myself, not loud enough for her to hear. I like to hear her name. Later, after she leaves home, she will abandon the name my mother and father had her christened with and will adopt a strange new name that has been unknown to our family till then. I’ll never be able to think of her new name as being her. She’ll always be the old name for me. The new name will be a betrayal. It will be as if she has ceased to exist for me when she changes her name. As if she has wanted to cut out that childhood period of her life and me
with it. As if she has decided to forget those beatings and the silent knowledge we shared. As if she has had to forget our childhood together and to go on alone. I didn’t write to her, ever. Not one letter in all those years. There were times when I would have liked to have written to her, and at those times I probably composed letters to her in my mind. She wrote to me when I had my show in London. But I didn’t reply. She wrote to tell me she’d taken a couple of days off her job and had travelled down from Leeds especially to see my show. And I’d been there in the gallery and hadn’t recognised her. She’d seen me talking to people and she’d hung about but had thought it best not to interrupt me. In the end I had to write and tell you, she wrote. I didn’t reply to her letter. I didn’t know how. I couldn’t start. I couldn’t bring myself to address her as her new name. By then for her an old name, but still her new name for me. And I couldn’t bring myself to insult her by addressing her as her old name. Our old name for her. My sister. So in the end I let it go. Then eventually so much time had gone by that there was no longer any point in replying. A letter from me after all that time wouldn’t have been simply a reply, it would have been an invitation to resume an elaborate contact that had lapsed twenty years ago. I’m not sentimental enough for that.