She pulled out another picture and placed it beside the first.
‘What about this one?’
‘I don’t like it as much.’
‘Why?’
‘Because of the colours. They’re … different. I can’t see the … the park anymore.’
Stef studied the composition: she knew it wasn’t working.
‘But there’s no park in the other one either, just colours and shapes and tones.’
‘But it still looks right. There isn’t any nature in this other one.’
‘I’m not interested in nature, Shaun. I’m interested in making a painting.’
‘Okay.’
Shaun continued sweeping and Stef stared at her canvases.
ADELE’S WORK regime hardly faltered. There seemed to be no shortage of older male professionals who, just like their younger counterparts, wanted to be seen in attractive company. Central to the longevity of Adele’s career, it appeared that who was dating whom in the business world was as important as a company takeover, and activities of a strictly personal nature seemed as pertinent to fellow col leagues as frauds, scams and underhand dealings.
Adele kept company with a criminal lawyer whose wife had recently left him when she learned of his homosexual trysts. She dined with a retired footballer at an awards night celebration, she cruised the Yarra as the personal guest of a billionaire whose usual mistress was grounded in Beijing due to the weather.
On this day, she took a call from a potential client who interested her. David Frieberg was the president of the ADRF. He had been asked to speak at a fundraising dinner to be held at Crown Casino where he was to address the issue of the alarming diabetes epidemic. The event interested Adele no more than the meaning of other people’s dreams but she checked it out anyway. The website advertising the occasion mentioned a silent auction and listed the items to be sold on the night. Adele was surprised to see that among them was a large painting by Stefanie Mitchell.
When the artist returned from her studio with Shaun, Adele mentioned it. Stef smiled indifferently. ‘This is the second time they’ve asked me for something. I have diabetes – Type 1 – and somehow this qualifies me to contribute to the cause. I get a wholesale price for the work and the rest goes to research, so I’m told.’
‘Have you ever been to one of the fundraising dinners?’
‘No! They wouldn’t ask me – I’m a lowly artist. They target the wealthy; they want people who will pay twice what my painting is worth.’
Adele chose that moment to present her latest idea. ‘I have a potential client who has asked me to accompany him,’ she said. ‘He’s a guest speaker. Why don’t you take my place?’
‘Are you serious?’ Stef was clearly astonished. ‘I couldn’t do that.’
‘Why not? It’s a black-tie evening at Crown Casino. You could wear your best formal dress – or I could lend you one of mine. You could use my name: Christina. No one would know you and you could gain a sense of how people receive your work. You can have my fee – you are obliged only until the dinner is over and then you can take a cab home. He’s a very nice man, I’m told. Dr David Frieberg, president of the Foundation. You can look him up online. There’re some photos of him. Might be interesting, don’t you think?’
Stef tried to imagine such an unlikely arrangement.
‘What if I’m caught?’ she said.
‘Caught doing what? Accompanying someone to a dinner?’
Adele smiled and Stef’s thoughts returned once more to the regrettable situation of her husband’s infidelity.
SHAUN’S AUNTY Adele often left early for her night appointments, but even on those warm summer evenings the boy did not stay at home with Elton. The television hardly interested him and books had their limitations. Instead, he ventured to the park with the express aim of investigating the unique characteristics of Merri Creek and recording it in his diary:
Dragonfly, large, brown, catches the larva of assassin beetles near the water. They are territorial. No butterflies except for the Cabbage White.
No frogs calling, the water too dirty.
Rat holes in the bank.
Three rabbits on the edge of the golf course.
Birds – Indian Myna, sparrow, starling, pigeon, dove.
Trees – 5 different kinds in the park.
Shaun was drawn to the huge elm at the top of the grade. It was far too big to climb but one of its limbs stretched far out and touched the grass. It was here that he could gain access, and with little effort he could take up a position high in the branches where he could see far out over the creek, over the golf course and towards the new houses in the distance, a long row of identical orange-roofed dwellings. He was up where the birds dwelt and if people came he could observe them easily, a perfect position for note-taking:
The workmen plant flax lily beside the path and put mulch all around. At 6.54 pm a man and a woman dug them up and carried them away in plastic bags.
A lot of boys with skateboards use the bike track. They like smashing bottles.
Old man on the seat has 2 smokes then coughs a lot and goes back to the white house with the palmtree. His tabby cat goes onto the woman’s roof. She squirts it with a hose.
A black cat hunts in the park.
A lot of people had a picnic. Put some of their rubbish in a plastic bag and hung it on a tree.
A new refrigerator delivered in a big cardboard box. At 7.55 pm. a man dragged the box across the street and threw it on the grass.
One evening down below Shaun was surprised to see James. It was not yet dark but the boy had already slipped his notebook under his shirt, readying to leave his sentry post. When James arrived, he recognised him immediately: Jess’s brother who came home via the back lane and left again as night fell. Was this where he went? James stopped just fifty metres away and stood astride his bike on the edge of the concrete path. He stayed quite still as if waiting for something. Shaun climbed down intending to slip away unseen, but at the last minute he marched up behind the motionless young man.
‘Hi’.
James turned and almost lost balance.
‘You’re James, right?’
‘Do I know you?’
‘I live next door to your place. You have the bungalow out the back. I know your sister and your mum and dad.’
‘Right. What’s your name then?’
‘Shaun. What are you doing?’
‘What am I doing? I don’t know, just riding around … What are you doing?’
‘Making notes.’ Shaun pointed to the elm. ‘I sit up in that big tree and watch what goes on. Then I write it down.’ He pulled out his exercise book.
‘You climb that tree?’
‘Yeah. Do you want to see? I’ll show you.’
James considered it – he had no abiding interest but was there anything to lose? He followed Shaun, wheeling his bicycle to the tree, and leaned on the frame while he watched the boy. Shaun had chosen a long branch that touched the ground and he scampered up with ease, soon just a dark shape against the leaden sky.
‘Come on, it’s easy,’ he called.
‘I’ll wait here.’
‘Why? Why not come up?’
‘No, it’s okay.’ James peered up into the branches a moment longer and then dropped his bike. He placed his weight on the branch, tested it and stepped up. None of it seemed logical but why should he care? And it wasn’t as if he had something better to do. Very soon he found himself high above the ground parked on a thick limb two metres from the boy. He looked out on the twinkling lights of Thornbury.
‘How old are you, Shaun?’
‘Twelve … nearly twelve. How old are you?’
‘Twenty.’ James readjusted his weight. ‘What do you come up here for?’
‘I don’t know. I think because everything else is down there.’
The two could barely see each other.
‘Your mum and dad know you’re here?’
‘Don’t have a mum and d
ad. They got killed in the bushfire.’
‘The big fire just recently?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Really? Shit. That’s very bad luck.’
‘Yeah.’
‘Who do you live with?’ James asked.
‘My Aunty Adele.’
‘I’ve met her. And Elton.’
‘Yeah, Elton.’ Shaun sighed. ‘Why do you think Elton never comes out? Out of his room?’
‘Maybe he’s scared,’ James suggested.
‘And Jess – is she scared too?’
‘Probably; scared that no one will like her, scared of the world.’
‘Why?’
‘Who knows – does the world seem safe to you?’
‘Not always,’ said Shaun, reflectively, a forest igniting in front of him. ‘Why do you think my Aunty went out with your father?’
James paused to reflect, he felt comfortable with the boy’s directness.
‘Good question. Why did my father go out with your Aunty? People aren’t very reliable, Shaun. You can’t always expect them to do the right thing.’
Shaun thought of his parents returning to save the house. ‘My Dad did the right thing, but not the best thing.’
James chose not to pursue Shaun’s comment. ‘I hardly know my mum and dad. I mean, we have the same address and everything but they live on a different planet.’
‘They just like art a lot.’
‘It’s all they ever think about. They wanted me to do it as well but I’d rather not, thanks very much.’
‘What do you do then?’
‘A shit job, most people would say … I work for the council. Street repair.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘Used to. But it’s just another shit-kicker’s job, really.’
‘My dad was an arborist.’
‘A what?’
‘An arborist. A tree surgeon. Chainsaws and pruning and collecting seed. Aerial rescue, telling people what’s best and what’s not – and climbing a lot of trees.’
James tried to see the boy in the leafy shadows. ‘He did a course for that?’
‘An Advanced Certificate. At the East Gippsland TAFE and also a lot of study in the wild.’
‘I wouldn’t know a gum tree from a plum tree.’
‘You can learn all that. I know them all.’
‘All the trees?’
‘All the ones around here, anyway. Spotted Gum – Eucalyptus maculata; Swamp Gum – Eucalyptus ovata; Ironbark – Eucalyptus tricarpa.’
‘Bloody hell. I couldn’t learn that.’
‘It’s easy. The Latin names just describe the tree. Citriodora is the Lemon-scented Gum.’
They sat for a moment in silence.
‘You have to climb massive trees,’ Shaun declared at last. ‘You get to carry all sorts of special equipment and you have to be very fit.’
James imagined himself abseiling down from some lofty height. He looked up and saw dark shapes against a denim sky, dozens of beating wings heading west. ‘Flying foxes,’ he said.
‘Or fruit bats,’ Shaun added. ‘Same thing.’
‘They’re a sign of the times, Shaun. One of the blokes at work used to have an orchard. He told me that they showed up in Melbourne for the very first time in 1981. Six flying foxes, there were, and they made the papers. Five years later, six thousand arrived from the north and settled in the Bot Gardens. Know how many we got now? Over a hundred thousand bats, and spreading all over Victoria where they’ve never been seen before.’
‘What do you think it means?’
‘I don’t know, but things are definitely changing. People started it and they can’t stop it, even if they wanted to.’
They sat among the branches a while longer and then James thought he should walk the boy home. He’d had enough that night. They climbed down and James wheeled his bike beside Shaun.
‘An arborist, eh?’
‘The best. He won a bravery award for rescuing some kid stuck in a tree.’
‘Like you.’
‘Not like me. A city kid.’
‘Like me then.’
UNKNOWN TO ADELE, Stef had taken a distinct liking to Shaun. There was something about him, she’d decided: not the attentiveness, not the deference he paid to everything, not the considered pause before he spoke, but something far less describable. Whatever it was, it kept her thinking long after the boy had gone. What went on in the child’s head? Adele had noticed it as well and it reminded her that the boy needed to be kept busy. She had enrolled him to start high school and bought him a laptop and textbooks to replace those he’d lost, but she was grateful when Stef agreed to take him to her studio. And it was there that Stef found herself watching the boy, recognising that her art seemed to take shape on the impetus of the boy’s subtle remarks.
‘Do you like the idea of painting the seasons of the city?’ she asked him.
Shaun looked at her canvas. ‘Yes. And you could also paint the sky.’
‘Everyone’s painted the sky, Shaun – sky and clouds – all the way back to Constable.’
‘But it’s different in the city and different at night. Sometimes it’s yellow with all the lights, or orange with the cars and factories. It changes every minute, all the different shades. Sometimes it’s just dark with all the fruit bats flying through it.’ Stef instantly saw a two-metre expanse of Payne’s grey, warmed with alizarin. Scattered across it were dark triangles representing the silent and ghostly night-flyers.
Shaun examined an array of paintbrushes scattered across a low table. ‘Have you seen the Rainbow Lorikeets fly over?’ he asked. ‘They go where they want. We’re kind of stuck in the city but they are as free as the wind and rain and clouds. Every night thousands of them go west right over our heads. All those colours.’
On one excursion Stef left Shaun at Simon’s studio. Talk to the boy, she said. Ask him. You might be surprised by what he has to say. Simon was not impressed; he hardly needed the words of a child. If the boy gets in the road I’ll phone you, he told her.
Shaun liked Simon’s warehouse space, bigger than a tennis court and piled high with the largest collection of car parts he’d ever seen. He walked across to the mountain of metal and picked up a badge that was once riveted to the front of a Ford Prefect.
‘Can I have this?’ he asked.
Simon scowled. ‘Put it in that drawer. I might want to use it some day.’
‘What for?’
The man sighed. ‘You wouldn’t understand, boy. When you’re older, okay?’
Shaun began sweeping and Simon took up a position behind a wide desk. He started the PC parked to one side, before casting his eye over a series of drawings in front of him. He checked his email and returned to the sketches. Two hours later he still seemed to be shuffling them. At one point he picked up a pencil, held it for five minutes and put it down again. Shaun cleaned up around the vast interior which only seemed to aggravate him.
‘Will you take a break now, boy? Go and put the jug on. Black and one sugar.’
‘Tea?’
‘Coffee, there isn’t any tea. No intelligent person drinks boiled leaves,’ he boomed, his voice barrelling across the factory floor.
Later, Shaun bought salad rolls from the corner shop and they ate them in silence. He wrote in his book: Dane Street Deli – Only the one customer, a fat man doing the crossword.
Mr Warner has lots of car parts stacked up. Some of it is sorted into colours, red, white, black, cream. 23 aerials, about 50 steering wheels, a big box of windscreen wipers. Mr Warner doesn’t like any of it much. I like the headlights.
He glanced up to see the man watching him. ‘What’s that, a notebook?’
‘Yes.’
‘You’re keeping notes on me?’
‘I write all sorts of stuff.’
‘What for?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, it’s a good practice. Every artist keeps a visual diary. Most people go through life hearing no
thing and seeing nothing; they just let the whole world wash over them until it’s time to be wheeled into the big furnace.’
Shaun thought of his mother and father and pushed the memory away. He put his exercise book under his jumper.
‘Are you going to go out with my aunty again?’
Simon stiffened visibly. ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea, do you?’
‘No. I’m going to see if she wants to start a different job.’
The man huffed. ‘Maybe you can think up a different job for me, too.’
Just then the sun came out and the big metal shed sounded a series of hard ticks as the corrugated iron expanded. Bright light shafted through the skylights onto the two of them sitting in the middle of the room, the large man leaning back in a wickerwork chair, the boy upright on a stool. A dusty kilim was scattered before them, its geometric patterns of indigo and maroon spattered with white paint. The artist had his heavy boots planted firmly upon it.
‘What do you see here, son?’ Simon waved his arm around.
‘A lot of old car parts. Never seen that many bits in my whole life.’
‘Do you see any art?’
Shaun scanned the workspace. At one end, a row of mudguards had been lined up across the concrete floor.
‘Maybe that,’ he said, inclining his head.
‘Why do you think it’s art?’
‘Because you put it in a row.’
‘What does it mean then, do you think?’
‘I don’t know.’
Simon huffed again and Shaun recognised it as one of his defining mannerisms. ‘Well I don’t know either. But maybe someone will make sense of it.’ He looked briefly towards the arrangement. ‘You’d be amazed what glamorous things academics can say about your work. I know an art critic who has enough of the right words to turn that into a masterpiece.’
He faced Shaun again. ‘If you had to make something out of all this, some art, what would it be?’
Shaun considered the question carefully. ‘I’d dig out all those headlights. And I’d get some more and stack them right up to the ceiling so people could see how many cars get thrown away. Then I’d plug all the lights in and switch them on.’
Simon stared at him. ‘Just one day in the studio and you suddenly think you’re an artist, eh?’
The Colour of the Night Page 15