by Leanne Hall
Tears sprang up in Iris’s eyes.
All this time, she thought, Aunt Ursula knew. I didn’t have to pretend.
‘There’s more.’ Iris forced herself to complete the picture. ‘My dad’s firm is part of the group trying to make the theme park happen. I found a brochure with his company logo on it.’
Ursula’s mouth made a perfect O.
‘If my parents get their hands on Bosque de Nubes, everything will be be lost. And it will be all my fault.’
Her tears fell, then multiplied into embarrassing sobs.
Señor Garcia stalked past the couch, trying to exit without a sound.
‘Oh, you poor dear.’ Ursula put her arm around Iris. ‘If it makes you feel better, I’ve so many secrets I’m confused about which ones to keep, and which ones to tell.’
Iris wiped her nose. ‘You have to tell my parents that you hate me, and that we didn’t get along at all! And then you should say that you’ll never, ever leave them anything in your will.’
My parents will think I’m a loser, she thought, but that’s better than helping them.
Aunt Ursula made Iris look her in the eye. ‘It’s not your fault and I don’t blame you. Leave it up to me. I’ve been through wars, remember? A few pesky businesspeople are hardly going to defeat me.’
The cottage was unlocked, so Iris let herself in.
Jordi lay on the couch, surrounded by comics and computer games and bottles of soft drink.
‘I am starting to think about pizza,’ he said when he saw Iris. ‘I think this means I am not going to die. It’s a pity. You were going to get my bike and my football.’
‘That’s a bummer.’ Iris nodded towards the kitchen. ‘Your dad’s not home, is he?’
‘You are safe.’ Jordi wiggled up to a sitting position. ‘You may not believe it, but he likes you. I think he is going to ask Señorita Freer to let you visit every year, so I learn more English.’
Iris sat in the armchair. She’d love it if she could come to Spain every year too, but there weren’t going to be any more visits. Her parents would probably ground her for life. It sucked that Jordi and Willow lived in Spain.
‘You didn’t tell him that my dad is in cahoots with the developers, then?’
‘I don’t understand cahoots, but you are not your parents, si? You can’t help the things they do. Anyway, I am going to make an internet petition against the park. My teacher has decided it can be the class project.’
Iris poured herself a glass of flat lemonade. ‘I got my times and days mixed up. I fly tomorrow, but at 3am, which means I really leave tonight.’
Jordi looked crushed. ‘Then you must tell me now. You were gone all night—what happened?’
‘Well, I found the tiger. And it’s nothing like what we thought it was.’
‘I can’t believe it!’ Jordi hit his doona repeatedly. ‘I’m a bummer.’
Iris put the catalogue in front of him, but he pushed it aside.
‘I already see the painting—tell me about the tiger. Did it try to eat you?’
‘Look,’ Iris insisted. It was so obvious to her now that Iris Freer was the tiger, she couldn’t not see Iris Freer as a tiger. ‘Look again at her jumper and her hair and her skirt. Do you see it?’
‘Just tell me about the tiger.’
Iris sighed. The fun of the painting was in seeing it for yourself.
‘Then try this. What if she had a tail? Can you see if she has a tail? Anywhere?’
‘No,’ said Jordi. Then, ‘Oh. Oh. I see it. A blue tail. Wait. Tiger stripes, ears, oh! Wait! She is the tiger!’
‘Finally!’
‘I am blind. Or an idiot, maybe.’
‘Everyone is an idiot in that case. In all the art books I read, no one said who the tiger was. Even at the gallery—nothing.’
Iris felt bad that she hadn’t told Jordi everything. But she wasn’t sure that Señor Garcia’s secret was hers to tell, or Aunt Ursula’s either.
‘I have a big question about all of this: if there was a battle between a tiger lady and an Exquisite Corpse creature, who would be the winner?’
Iris laughed. ‘You really are feeling better, aren’t you?’
‘If the lady had mutant tiger powers, it would be a close fight.’
‘You should introduce yourself to Willow Dangercroft and then she can draw you a comic about it.’
Jordi screwed up his face. ‘You are okay, Iris. But I am really not sure about other girls.’
The book had a brown leather cover and cream pages inscribed with faded ink. It held the stories of a brother and sister who had painted together as if they were the same person. It had started when Aunt Ursula moved to Spain to live with James and his wife, Iris.
At first, James and Aunt Ursula had painted separately, sharing only the greenhouse studio and their paints. Everything changed, though, when Iris Freer died.
‘James lived for her,’ Aunt Ursula had said when she gave the book that recorded all their paintings to Iris. ‘The only other thing that mattered to him was art. After Iris’s death he stopped eating and talking and even painting. He never went outside, never smiled. I grew very scared.
‘I knew I had to make him paint, and the only way I could convince him was for us to paint together. It kept us both afloat, really.’
Iris stood alone in the ballroom and tried to match the paintings on the wall with the entries in the book. The paper was crinkled at the edges and smelt musty.
The book contained pages and pages of lists made over forty years. Each page was ruled into columns, with dates of when a painting was started and finished. James had started the book on his own and had finished it with Aunt Ursula. They’d used their initials to show who had done which stage of the painting, and there were spaces for the title, date it sold and price. The initials J.F. looked remarkably similar to U.F.
Iris searched for Iris and the Tiger first. Uncle James had painted it six months before Aunt Ursula had come to Spain permanently. She discovered that James had also painted Courtly, the tennis court painting, on his own, a few years before Iris and the Tiger.
Those flowers have been playing tennis for a long time, she thought.
Most other paintings on the ballroom wall were untitled, so Iris had to play a guessing game. There was a listing for Ant Sonata, which had to belong to the grand piano in the painting and the sitting room. James had mostly painted it, with Aunt Ursula adding the finishing touches.
Technicolour Storm might refer to a painting of a rainbow puddle, and then there was My doctor told me I had a split personality. Iris thought that might belong to a painting of a man with two faces. It had been Aunt Ursula’s idea—she’d made the sketches for it, and then she and James had taken turns to complete the painting.
Iris thumbed through the pages. There were no insect paintings on the lists, and no portraits of Aunt Ursula either. It made sense that the insect portraits weren’t in the book, as Iris knew they’d been done after Uncle James’s death. So Aunt Ursula must have done the portraits too, painting herself over and over and over, like some of the girls at school who were obsessed with selfies.
Something tickled the back of Iris’s mind but refused to come into the light.
Aunt Ursula’s face in the dark…
Iris left the ballroom and fetched her torch.
The east wing corridor was as dark as ever. Iris did not feel overjoyed to walk its length again, even though this time she was boss of her own feet. She was beginning to suspect the story about the rotten floorboards had been designed purely to keep her out, but she still jumped when the floor creaked.
The corridor went rapidly from merely dark to suffocating. Iris flicked the torch over the Aunt Ursula portraits hanging on the walls. There were so many of them.
The air grew colder as she passed the pale rectangles of doors to unknown rooms. Gradually, she was able to identify the shadowy shapes of half-moon tables and mini-chandelier lamps and a grandfather clock and the stairca
se leading up to the roof. She lost count at forty-seven self-portraits.
The corridor continued on, seemingly forever. The square of light behind Iris, the way to the normal house, was small and distant. Iris wasn’t scared. She’d faced the famous cloud-mists, the Beast Car, the Exquisite Corpse creature, and the detested feet-boots.
Up close, the wallpaper was flocked with velvety fir trees. There were more canvases leaning against the wall, all of them with Aunt Ursula’s face. The self-portraits had to number in the hundreds.
Aunt Ursula was a wonderful painter, easily as good as Uncle James. She hadn’t hidden her too-big nose or her strong jaw. The self-portraits had their own luminosity: blush cheeks, sparkly eyes, smooth skin. A slender neck, dramatic bobbed hair. A young woman in the prime of life.
Iris recalled the photos on the sitting room walls, and how Aunt Ursula still looked almost the same as when her mum had visited thirty years ago.
She remembered standing in the forest at the painting place; what it had been like to have Iris Freer’s pretty curls and long legs, even only for a few minutes. She pictured the way Señor Garcia’s human shape rolled over his insect form.
Aunt Ursula had painted things as she’d wanted them to be. She’d said her whole life was a lie and then hadn’t explained what she’d meant.
All these long years she’s been cheating time itself by painting herself young.
Now Iris finally understood.
Iris dragged her suitcase down the sweeping carpeted staircase, hating afresh the detestable Chen Architects logo printed on the front. It was hard to believe that her ten days in Spain were ending.
Aunt Ursula had asked her to pack early so that they could go out to the forest together before the long drive to the airport.
She was halfway down the stairs when a painting spoke to her.
‘Beware, Iris,’ it said in a tinny voice. Iris stumbled—only her suitcase, with its sturdy handle, saved her.
The talking painting was very old, and showed a voluptuous young milkmaid lying on a chaise longue. She held out a hand-painted sign: Iris Danger.
Iris looked at the dried ridges and cracks in the paint; it was as if the sign had always been there.
‘I’m Iris Chen-Taylor,’ she told the milkmaid, ‘not Iris Freer. So, thank you for your concern, but you don’t need to worry.’
Iris sat on Aunt Ursula’s canopied bed while her great-aunt sponged makeup onto Iris’s face.
‘Did you find what you were looking for in the forest?’ Aunt Ursula asked.
‘I got caught in the mists,’ admitted Iris. ‘That was scary. But beautiful. And I found the place where Uncle James painted Iris and the Tiger. Well, I suppose he didn’t exactly paint it there, but I found where the painting is set.’
‘We used to sketch outside and then take it to the studio.’ The feathery strokes of the makeup sponge were relaxing against Iris’s cheeks. ‘No run-ins with the Exquisite Corpse creature?’
‘No. I wonder where it’s gone. I did see my friend, the shadowhound, though. That’s what I call him, anyway.’
‘Iris used to call him Mister Come-And-Go. She loved that dog.’ Aunt Ursula stopped. ‘I think I’m done. Tell me what you think.’
Iris rushed to the vanity table. Aunt Ursula had painted the apples of her cheeks golden yellow, blending into brown stripes on the sides of her face and forehead. Her nose was dark brown; she had whiskers, white eye sockets and a funny, square mouth. The blue ends Willow had put in her hair still looked good, even though her mum would probably make her cut them off as soon as she got home.
‘It’s perfect!’ she said as Aunt Ursula washed her hands in the en suite. ‘And you’re sure it comes off easily?’
‘Did I say easily?’ Ursula returned to the main room. ‘We can try with some cold cream. You might have to put up with looking a bit fancy for the plane trip home, though.’
She joined Iris at the mirror, bumping her along the seat. Aunt Ursula wore none of her usual gemstones on her fingers or neck. Instead she was dressed plainly in white. Iris gazed at her great-aunt’s reflection. She’d plaited Aunt Ursula’s thin hair with ribbons and flowers, mimicking the style of the Mexican lady with the monkeys.
I wonder how much older you’d look without the self-portraits? she thought. Aunt Ursula had looked so gaunt and drawn after their trip to Barcelona.
I suppose she can’t leave here too often, or for too long. Señor Garcia too, unless he wants to be found out.
‘You look pretty,’ she said out loud.
‘You’re very kind. But I was never a great beauty, even when I was young,’ Aunt Ursula replied. ‘It never bothered me too much. Show us your teeth.’
Iris bared her teeth and Aunt Ursula laughed. ‘There’s a tiger, if I’ve ever seen one,’ she said.
‘Explain Day of the Dead again,’ Iris said.
Señor Garcia had taken them out to the forest in a golf buggy that Iris suspected had been obtained by dodgy means.
‘It was my favourite part of the year in Mexico. On All Soul’s Day people go to the graves of their family members, and keep them company. They drink and eat and play music—a proper party. The living and dead come together for one night. And then they go their separate ways for another year.’
The trees were shadowy giants, streaked with the light from their hurricane lamps. Señor Garcia followed behind them, pushing a wheelbarrow along the uneven forest path.
Don’t think too much about the living and dead hanging out together in the forest, Iris told herself.
When they reached the clearing, Iris had to pretend that she hadn’t known James and Iris were buried on the estate. Aunt Ursula unpacked the wheelbarrow. Together they laid a picnic blanket between the two gravestones.
After dozens of candles were lit, the clearing was hazy. They piled the packets of Spanish lollies on James’s grave, and croissants and a bottle of champagne on Iris Freer’s. Aunt Ursula brushed the graves with a cleaning brush, while Iris unwrapped a basket of sugar skulls painted with food colouring. The flickering light cast ghoulish shadows across Aunt Ursula’s face.
What would happen if she stopped painting herself? Iris thought. Would she just age at a normal rate from that point, or would she immediately collapse in a dusty pile of bones and clothes?
Painting yourself young seemed like the kind of thing a person couldn’t do forever, but Iris didn’t want this to be the only and last time she ever met her great-aunt.
When they’d finished tidying up both graves, Aunt Ursula draped them with chains of paper skeletons.
‘Will people find any new insect paintings by Uncle James?’ Iris asked.
‘I hope not. I prefer to paint just for myself these days. After I found my own way with my painting, I realised that I didn’t need to be a part of anyone’s club to make art.’
Aunt Ursula appealed to the towering trees.
‘But it took me too long to find my purpose in life, and now I don’t want to stop.’
Iris took a deep breath. ‘Aunt Ursula, I’m going to do everything I can to convince my parents to pull out of the theme park.’
Aunt Ursula smiled. ‘Iris, my brother made himself sick with worry about Bosque de Nubes being destroyed or discovered, but it never happened. He made all our servants promise not to talk and they never did. We were always safe, even when the political situation here got rough. Bosque de Nubes has been very good at keeping its secrets, over the years. Anyway, I have a new plan.’
‘What is it?’
‘Something mysterious has happened here this week. The magic has been more active, as if it’s been refreshed. Maybe Bosque de Nubes is a place that needs someone young and full of dreams. So I’ve decided to leave you the estate, young Iris. The whole kit and caboodle—house, land, all the paintings, everything.’
‘What?’ Iris wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. ‘No! That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do! That’s what my parents want.’
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��But what if—’ Aunt Ursula, dressed in white and topped with ribbons and flowers, seemed to pulse with energy. ‘What if you didn’t inherit the estate until you were eighteen? What if I can one hundred per cent guarantee that I will stay alive for another six years until you’re of age? What about then?’
A normal person would argue, of course, that this was an impossible guarantee to give, but Iris knew it was possible.
It might even be possible for Aunt Ursula to live forever, she reminded herself. You haven’t ruled that out.
‘I do want to come back,’ Iris said, at last.
Aunt Ursula beamed. ‘Then it’s settled,’ she said.
Elna had turned on every light in the house, so that the windows spilled yellow across the front yard. The cream car was parked in front of the fountain and the sky was infinitely starry. Señor Garcia had already put Iris’s suitcase and her purple backpack into the boot.
Aunt Ursula and Iris wore matching fur coats that they’d dragged out of the upstairs wardrobe. Iris felt elegant for the first time ever, even if her coat dragged on the ground and the tiger stripes hadn’t washed completely off her face.
She took in a lungful of cold night air as if she was trying to breathe in Spain and keep it there. Now that the week was over, Iris began to wonder if she’d made the most of her visit to Bosque de Nubes.
She thought of her life in Australia. There were going to be some interesting conversations with her parents when she got home. And after making such good friends, so quickly—with Jordi and Willow, and even Elna—it was going to be difficult to return to school, and her shaky friendship with Violet.
But the world was bigger and more full of possibilities than it had been before, and Iris would never forget that. She’d hold on tight to everything she’d learnt at Bosque de Nubes.
‘Are you ready?’ Aunt Ursula asked.
Iris wasn’t. Jordi had promised he would be here to see her off, but he hadn’t shown. Maybe it was better that she was leaving at night. It would have pained her more if she could have seen the stables and the greenhouse and the cottage and the big mansion clearly.