The Lovers

by Catherine Rey

  The Lovers

  Catherine Rey

  GAZEBO BOOKS – ELIZABETH BAY 2018

  Gazebo Books

  P.O. Box 752

  Potts Point

  New South Wales 1335

  Australia

  gazebobooks.com.au

  First published 2018

  Copyright © Catherine Rey

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  National Library of Australia

  Cataloguing-in-Publication Entry

  Rey, Catherine, 1956–

  The Lovers

  First edition

  ISBN 978 0 9876191 1 2 (paperback)

  Cover and interior design by Mountains Brown Press Printed and bound by Ligare Book Printers, Australia

  Cover and frontispiece image: Rob McHaffie,

  Touching face II 2014, oil on linen, 46 x 36 cm,

  Kleimeyer Stuart Collection.

  Courtesy of Darren Knight Gallery.

  for Etienne, for Sophie

  Act I

  Ernest Renfield

  Longland

  New South Wales

  Officer Lawson, pleased to meet you! Come inside! Come in! Goodness me, it’s freezing outside. What an endless winter indeed. Let’s go to the sitting-room. This way… to the right and then down the hall. Yes, it’s a big place, far too big for me. When was it built? 1887. Further down the corridor… nearly there. Now this door to the right, please… After you… Have a seat. Would you fancy a drink? A tea? A coffee? A drop of alcohol maybe? No? Not even a glass of water?

  Lucie, yes, Officer Lawson, have you heard anything yet? What happened to her, for God’s sake? I’m completely wrecked… When was the last time we spoke to each other? Well, that would have been the Sunday before last… I had organised a dinner party to celebrate our anniversary, let’s call it an engagement party. Lucie has been my common-law wife for two years and I intend to marry her.

  You winced. I saw you. Yes, you winced, didn’t you? I’ve never been married, that’s right, I’ve never had lasting relationships, I’ve never had children and still I want to marry her. She’s young enough to be my daughter, well, yes, that’s what people say. I’ve never been bothered by what people think. Truly, I don’t give a damn about what people think of me.

  Yes, I had chosen the Sunday before last to celebrate Lucie, to honour her, to tell her she was my ladyship. I invited those friends who’ve always liked and supported my work. Gary Whitehall, my art dealer. Peter Brown, the art critic, who came along with his boyfriend Rony Hack, a young stage actor, not very talented but extremely good-looking. Pietro Negri, the Melbourne publisher. Edy Garudo, the architect, who flew in from Cairns. Garudo? You must’ve seen Garudo’s fountains of glass in Canberra at the National Gallery… Magnificent, I agree… Samuel Hackton, the celebrated playwright, flew in from Canberra with his wife. My brother Raphaël came as well. As none of them were going back before the next day, they all stayed the night. I had a full house.

  That’s right, the Sunday of the party was the last time I saw and spoke to Lucie… Why didn’t I immediately report that she was missing? Well, good heavens, I assumed she had just gone away for a couple of days. The business card of a local taxi driver was lying on her dressing table. I gathered she was off to her friend Nicole’s. She was giving herself some breathing space before coming back. I didn’t want to worry myself sick.

  Had she ever gone off? No, never, but I wasn’t at all surprised since we’d had a few words that morning… Yes, well, Lucie got cross with me. When she checked the guest list, she saw Rosy Barth’s name and worked herself up into a jealous rage. Why? I had a fling with Rosy… That was ages ago. We were so young. Rosy was only eighteen. We hadn’t seen each other in such a long time and I was looking forward to catching up. Rosy is an old girlfriend. Lucie had nothing to fear; yet my little missus got it all wrong. Look, Officer Lawson, it wasn’t a serious fight, just a little argument.

  I beg your pardon? What was she wearing when I last saw her? Hmm, a long black gown and high-heeled shoes… Oh yes, and a tweed jacket.

  As for the last guests, they left my place at four-thirty, quarter to five, yes, it would have been at sunrise. The three couples that stayed went to bed. And after everyone had gone? Well, I went straight to bed myself. Lucie was nowhere to be seen. I called out to her, checked to see if she was in the bathroom. That’s when I saw the business card of the taxi company on her dressing table. That’s about it. I was exhausted. I fell asleep in no time.

  Huh? Why didn’t I call the police instead of letting Nicole do it? Well, that’s not exactly what happened. Let me explain, Officer Lawson. Nicole called me last Wednesday because she hadn’t heard from Lucie. I was extremely surprised as I assumed Lucie must have been with her. Nicole thought we should call the police and I agreed. That was indeed the best thing to do. So I went to the local police station to file a report… Yes, I filed a report on Thursday morning at the Watooga police station and drove back shortly after to provide a recent photo of Lucie… Yes, absolutely, the report was filed on Thursday, four days after Lucie disappeared. You can check. Huh? You already have?

  Was I worried? Yes and no. In all honesty, I thought Lucie needed some fresh air. Life with me can be stifling. Life with any artist can be stifling. Do you think Picasso was an easy fellow to be around? I can be difficult to live with, I must confess. Everyone will agree to that! People say I’m hard work. No argument there! When I’m engrossed in my painting I need peace, solitude… I cannot stand any disturbance. Besides, Lucie and I, we’re a modern couple. Mm… How would I put it? We act like modern people do. I like my freedom and I don’t abide by the “stultifying discipline of monogamy”, as D.H. Lawrence put it, and the same goes for Lucie. I don’t object to her going without warning wherever she wishes.

  Has she ever been unfaithful to me? I don’t think so, but as you may have gathered, I don’t subscribe to conventional views. Lucie doesn’t either. Faithful, unfaithful, it’s a bit outdated, isn’t it? If she wants to have fun, why can’t she? Yes, we live like a modern couple. Still, she gets jealous, I know. Women can be irrational! You’re married, aren’t you, so you’ll agree with me. Lucie was jealous of a woman she hadn’t even seen, jealous of my past… But you’ve got to understand, living in Longland is an entirely different life for Lucie. She might have felt like a fish out of water. In all honesty, I don’t know if she’s enjoying living in Australia. I could fathom the workings of her mind when she moved here two years ago. She looked happy. Then her moods started to swing. I slowly lost track of her. She grew distant, cold, her behaviour became disconcerting. I worried for her. I was glad when she befriended Nicole, very glad… Yes, Nicole is French as well.

  I began to wonder if I had done all that I could for her. Are you happy here, I would often ask. Would you like to move somewhere else? If the house isn’t to your taste, well, let’s sell it and move to a warmer place, by the ocean, in Queensland. Of course, this is a beautiful house, on ten acres of land, it’s in a good location, not too far from Sydney. I could get good money for it… Oh yes, I would happily move somewhere else, but I must admit, I’m used to Longland. I grew up in this house and after my parents’ death, twelve years ago, decided to settle back here. Sydney is too noisy for me these days. Relocating at sixty-two doesn’t thrill me. But I didn’t want to be selfish. I would do whatever Lucie wanted, telling her, if you want to leave, we’ll leave. If you don’t like the house, I’ll sell it. I’m convinced I did all I could for her.

  Anyhow, the more I did the less happy she was. Th
at was my impression. The harder I tried, the more she grew distant, irritable, neurotic. Women know how to string us along, don’t they? The more we give, the more they want. They love us as long as we feel sorry for them. Now, I guess I sound cynical, I shouldn’t, no, I shouldn’t. That’s not fair… Oh, look, I’m mad at her for taking off like a thief. My weakness is that I love being on my own and, by the same token, dread being on my own. That’s the paradox. The truth is that I cannot conceive of my life without Lucie.

  I was instantly besotted when I met her at the State Library. She was wearing a floral summer dress and gold sandals. Her toenails were painted red. These ten dots of bright red nail polish were fascinating… She was the prettiest little faun I’d ever seen. She stood in profile before the front desk and she instantly reminded me of this painting by Domenico Veneziano, Portrait of a Young Lady… I’ve seen it, at the Kaiser Friedrich Museum, in Berlin. Have you been there? You must go. What an ugly part of town, by the way. Between Friedrichstrasse and Alexanderplatz. I remember how stunned I was. I can still feel the tears running down my cheeks. Such an enticing painting and not a wrinkle after five hundred years! Imagine a young maiden in profile against a cobalt blue sky. Her flesh and her hair with the translucent tint of smooth ivory. She wears a brocade dress. Her plaits are tied up, twisted into the shape of a small peasant bonnet… Lucie reminded me of this painting. Her alabaster skin, her Venetian blond hair, her large grey eyes, her long delicate neck, her round shoulders, her grace, her divine breasts beneath that thin summer dress… What a beauty! I have a photo of her. Take a look! Isn’t she stunning? When I saw her, I knew I’d been waiting for her my whole life. And when I heard her lilting accent as she spoke to the librarian, I felt like falling to my knees. I looked at her. She smiled. She smiled, yes! Women don’t smile at me these days. I’m too old. Too fat. They only smile when they realise who I am… Renfield, the famous Ernest Renfield! But when that foreign beauty smiled at me, I walked up to her. She said her name was Lucie… Lucie, I thought, I’ll carry you like a princess, like a queen, carry you so that your legs never tire and your toes never touch the ground. I’ll carry you through life so that you never have to worry. I’ll brush your hair at dusk before putting you to bed. I’ll sing you lullabies. Do, do, l’enfant do… Yes, that day, I thought life was worth living again.

  The photo? You’d like to keep this photo? Oh, not this one, it’s my favourite photo, but let me search through my desk. I shot dozens of photos of her… By the look on your face, Officer, I can guess what’s going through your mind. Oh yes, I can read minds. Ernest Renfield, the renowned painter, has been granted all a man could wish for. He’s had his fill of women. What more does he want? What difference is a pretty girl going to make? Well, believe me, Lucie’s made a hell of a difference.

  Did you know that talent wears out? Life runs by. You have less energy. Strength fades away. And one day you wake up, you look in the mirror to realise old age has snuck up on you without your consent. Would you believe me if I told you that I’ve kept the shirt I was wearing when they took a photo of me for the cover of Time magazine? 1966. I was twenty-eight. Quite a while ago. I had a solo exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art, in New York. Two hours before the photo shoot, I ran to Madison Avenue to buy a new shirt. I wanted to look good. This would be my lucky shirt. It was the following morning that I realised my photo would make the cover of Time. On the day I bought the magazine, I couldn’t help looking around to see if anyone recognised me. Did anyone recognise me? No! No one… How ironic, how funny! People hurried past me… And you know I haven’t thrown away that flowery shirt, it’s upstairs, somewhere in a drawer. Smells musty. I look at it every so often. I look at it, touch it, smell it, so that I remember who I was, what I’ve done, just to have the solid proof that New York wasn’t a dream.

  I’m turning sixty-three at the end of the year, not long to go. What choice do I have? Tell me, Officer Lawson. Do I have any choice? Truly, the answer is no. I have to keep painting. It’s my life. I have nothing else. I’ve been given one unique talent, and I don’t intend to bury it in the ground like that stupid fool did in the parable. A coin buried in the dirt will never bear fruit. Remember the Parable of the Talents? Aha, you aren’t into parables. Well, the point of the story is that you’ve got to let your talent flourish, expand, burgeon, grow. Paint, paint and paint! That’s the one lesson I got from the Good Book. I like the Parables. They’re intriguing. As for the rest of the Bible, it’s rubbish. Anyhow, if I don’t paint, I cannot stand the masquerade called life.

  But let’s get back to the point. I began going downhill. Recalling what I’d accomplished, the MOMA, the Tokyo exhibition, the Helsinki retrospective, the many distinctions; none of these achievements mattered anymore. No, they meant nothing! See, when I started painting at the age of eighteen, I saw that my generation was fed up with the old way of fashioning the world according to European dictates. Society took a radical turn in the Seventies. People loosened up. All over the world, things were cool, as we used to say, young people wanted to have a good time. Rock, long hair and drugs. We were thirsty for novelty, any sort of novelty. They called me the “New Age Surrealist”. Why not? Surrealists lived outrageously. That was pretty much my philosophy. In no time, I became the leader of the Australian avant-garde. I was painting subversive stuff, oh yeah… I never favoured decorative arts over art. I hate decoration in all forms of art. Art isn’t supposed to be ornamental.

  The critics gave me a rough time, they were outright spiteful. My painting was too confronting for their petty conformist views. Oh yes, they found my work immoral, sick, obscene, revolting. But my work challenged them. I know it did. They didn’t like it and at the same time they couldn’t help talking about it. They were annoyed, irritated, horrified, yet intrigued because I knew how to yield the existential angst lacking in this country. If you want my opinion, Australia is like a harp. It knows how to play the gleeful notes, how to celebrate a life of hedonism and sensuous pleasures. But this very harp is mute when it comes to expressing the low notes, a sense of gravity appended to the predicament of being alive. No tears here, no drama, no Cassandra.

  See, my ambition was to paint the whole arpeggio… and my career is proof that I can. I’ve had huge exhibitions overseas. I had a major retrospective in Canberra last year. They even thought of making me a Living National Treasure. It’s just a matter of time.

  But experience doesn’t help. Each time you start a new painting, you doubt. You doubt even more as you get older. I don’t know how it happened, oh, might have been eight years ago, but one morning, I realised painting was too much of an effort and I couldn’t go on. I went up to my studio, looked out to the forest, sat down on a chair and cried. I was old, so old. Death was around the corner, and I didn’t know what to do about it, and I kept on crying… Then, something remarkable happened to me – Lucie. She was standing in the State Library and I saw in her the woman who would revive me, like some fresh-water spring. Yes, I suddenly realised how thirsty I’d been and for how very long; how much I’d turned into an old fart from living on my own, from being solely concerned with myself and my bloody painting. Yes, Officer Lawson, when I saw Lucie, life was given back to me. I was in awe. Her face, her hair, her complexion, her grace, her freshness. I had forgotten how beautiful women could be. It knocks you down. Their silky hair, their pencilled eyelids, the grain of their skin, their inviting cleavage. Lucie drove me mad.

  She was on holidays in Sydney and I suggested that staying at my place would be cheaper than a hotel room. I drove her to Longland and we had the most exquisite time. I took her to the secret spots I’ve cherished since childhood, like the hidden paradise of Burning Palms Beach, where I took my first girlfriend. First kiss. I was fifteen. Beneath the same trees I kissed Lucie for the first time. The blue ocean roaring down the cliff hadn’t changed. The thick green woodland creeping up the escarpment to the rocky ridge was the same. The king parrots and the rainbow lorikeets squawking
in the trees offered a timeless sound. I was fifteen again.

  Let’s go on a pilgrimage, I said. Let’s trace D.H. Lawrence’s footsteps! Lucie could hardly believe that he had lived around here. The real D.H. Lawrence, she asked, the Lawrence of Lady Chatterley’s Lover? I laughed and then I drove her to Thirroul. We gave each other our second embrace on the beach, that aphrodisiac beach, down below Wyewurk, the cottage where Lawrence and his wife Frieda had lived. This Frieda by the way, what a woman! After sunset, in homage to their freedom and their non-conformist lifestyle, I suggested a skinny dip. Lucie didn’t get my meaning, but applauded the idea after I began stripping off my clothes. We jumped into the waves and danced beneath the full moon, uniting with the force of the earth and the infinite cosmos all around. It was ecstasy. I felt ageless. We returned dizzy from the sweet smell of the sand and the even sweeter smell of the ocean. That very same evening we made love as if there were no tomorrow. I wanted her so badly and she turned out to be the most delicate, the most caring of lovers. Her smooth fingertips running down my body… It was a kind of heaven and for two weeks we lived in harmony and closeness. My desire to be alive was renewed and the yearning to paint was coming back. It was as if the raven pecking at my heart had gone away. I’ve entertained a raven for many years, but that’s another story…

  I saw Lucie like some angel. Two weeks went by in no time. Lucie flew back to France as she’d planned to do. Shortly after, we began to write to each other. Her letters drove me mad. We also called each other. The more I listened to her adorable accent, the more I wanted her, and the more I knew she was the woman of a lifetime…

  I can’t bear the thought that she may have been harmed… You hear so many gruesome stories these days. The world is going crazy… Sorry, I’m not an emotional sort of man but I can’t imagine my existence without her. I can’t go on living without her. Thank you for your understanding, Officer Lawson.