Sun in Splendour

by JH Fletcher

‘Stop it, now! Stop it at once!’

  The hand, the foolish lips, did not listen.

  ‘I said stop it!’

  He mumbled, words spit-gobbled. She heard ‘Kiss …’

  Tried to back away but could not, held fast by the shovel hand.

  ‘Jim, you’re hurting me.’

  What effort it took to remain calm, not to excite, to allow no fear to show. Not to him or, especially, to herself. Crash bang went her heart.

  Jim was pulling at her, bruising, careless. Amid the hoarse panting of the wet lips, a deafening, silent scream of terror. That went on and on.

  Her dress tore. His lips burrowed, seeking hers. He pressed his long hard length against her, bending her. Panting, seeking, with frantic but determined haste.

  She stabbed at his eyes with the paintbrushes. And again. He staggered, bawling, pawing at his face.

  She ran, sensing that he was after her, reaching for her. His fingers brushed the air through which she had passed an instant before. Faster and faster she ran, feet miraculously avoiding rocks, holes, fallen branches, patches of mud … On and on through the forest, the close conspiracy of leaves and darkness. She dared not pause, look back, draw fresh breath into lungs seemingly devoid of breath. Instead she ran in a silent scream of terror until she burst out suddenly into sunlight and heat, with Rupe Scales watching open-mouthed from the inn door. Straight to him she fled, tearfully, even now expecting the massive hand to seize her, to draw her back.

  ‘What’s got into you?’

  Turned, gestured at … nothing.

  Rupe, shaking her. ‘What’s the matter?’

  Could manage only, ‘Jim … Jim …’

  ‘Settle down. Take your time. What happened?’

  ‘Jim. Wanted to kiss me. Wanted … Wouldn’t let me go.’

  ‘How d’you get away from him, then?’

  ‘I stabbed his eyes. With my brushes.’

  ‘His eyes? Jesus!’ Looking at her, as at a stranger. ‘Stay here. I’ll see what’s going on.’

  ‘Don’t leave me —’ She tried to grab him.

  ‘You’ll be right.’ But he sounded very much as though he did not care if she were or not. Instead turned and sprinted away down the track. The trees swallowed him.

  She thought to hide inside the inn, to do anything but stand here helplessly, nailed to the ground, waiting for Rupe to come back. Or for Jim, who might know another way. It was a terrifying thought, yet fear bound her feet and she did not move.

  Rupe returned, shoving Jim, shambling and crying, before him. Jim with swollen eyes, the marks of fists on his face.

  Marie, hand raised to her mouth, watched aghast.

  ‘Go on, then,’ Rupe said to Jim’s intimidated back. ‘Say it.’ And cuffed him again, as Marie watched.

  They stopped in front of her. Jim’s eyes watched the ground. His lips worked.

  ‘Say it!’

  ‘I’m … sorry.’ Gulping, with tear-torn voice.

  ‘Sorry for what?’ Rupe’s cruel voice was hammer-hard, bruising as his fists had bruised.

  A whisper, doleful, barely audible. ‘For frightening you.’

  Marie watched in silence until at last she found her voice. ‘That’s all right, Jim. I forgive you. Don’t worry about it.’

  Rupe shoved him once more. ‘You heard her. She forgives you. All right? Now get inside and make yourself useful. And remember: another stunt like that, I’ll kill you.’

  Jim was gone. Rupe turned to Marie, eyes unfriendly. ‘What happened?’

  ‘I told you already —’

  ‘Tell me again.’

  She tried, haltingly, amid a flurry of questions, how and why and what. Until at last Rupe said:

  ‘Kiss and cuddle, for Christ’s sake. That’s all he wanted. Just a kiss and a cuddle. Is that so bad?’

  Marie remembered the thick voice and hulking body, the stifling, claustrophobic terror. And now this, to have terror dismissed …

  She had thought Jim had been about to rape her. She still believed it, but rape was not a word she could use to this man, to any man.

  Just a kiss and a cuddle … Rupe’s reaction violated her, all over again.

  ‘I know what happened,’ she said. Behind the haughtiness that was her only defence, her psyche was bleeding, bleeding. ‘I don’t want to talk about it.’

  ‘I gave him what for,’ said Rupe. ‘You saw me. I only hope you’re satisfied, that’s all.’

  ‘I didn’t ask him to attack me!’

  ‘Kiss and a cuddle, that’s all he wanted. He’ll be useless for days, now.’

  As though it were somehow her fault. She chucked her defiance in his face. ‘I didn’t encourage him, if that’s what you’re saying.’

  Rupe was implacable. ‘Not on purpose, maybe.’

  Despite all that had happened, she had been about to ask about Jim’s eyes, to fetch her easel and paints from the forest. Now she could bring herself to do neither. Instead she ran, while the hateful tears gushed over her face, her soul.

  That night Marie slept as though axed, without dreams, but that was her only respite. The following day, the following night, a succession of nights, things changed. Life became an ongoing blackness of terror and self-contempt. The blackness was literal: she could see it, a circle of darkness that fringed the edges of her sight, drawing closer and tighter, cutting her off from the world of light. People, and things, became visible only as shadows at the end of a black tunnel. It affected more than her sight; her mind, too, felt as though it were being crushed.

  I did not encourage him …

  The protest screamed deafeningly, futilely, within her head. There was no-one to hear beside herself and she no longer knew what she believed. Uncertainty sullied her.

  She could never have brought herself to go back into the bush, to fetch her easel and other things, but fortunately there was no need. Rupe returned them silently, eyes not quite meeting her own. She should have thanked him for his trouble, but could not. At the end of her tunnel of darkness, Rupe capered, beyond touch or meaning or voice. She remained silent, in a world that had become silent. Or almost silent.

  Within the darkness, voices jeered.

  She set up her easel and tried to work, but the encircling darkness prevented her. Even work was denied her.

  Martha saw that something had happened. ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’

  Marie knew that to tell her would relieve some of the dreadful pressure that she felt, but could not do it. If she had, Martha would perhaps have felt obliged to tell her husband, and Marie could not bear to think of that. For a man to know her fears would be to renew the rape that Rupe’s reaction had made reality. She could tell no-one. She turned away, sinking back into the swirling darkness that had become her refuge.

  ‘Nothing is wrong. Nothing.’

  3

  Slowly things improved, as much as they ever would improve. There remained nightmares, the sense of stain, but the encircling darkness had gone. Marie had come back into the world.

  She returned to her easel, saw at once that what had happened — or not happened — had made an impact on her work. She tried to identify what the change was, but could not put her finger on it. Knew only that a sombre hint came through, despite the continuing brightness of her palette.

  Lukas remarked on it at once, said that whatever it was marked a new maturity and depth in her work.

  ‘How would you describe it?’ Marie asked.

  She really wanted to know, hoping that by identifying it she might be able to put the demons to rest. Not that she had any hopes that Lukas could do so, was surprised when he came up with what might be the truth.

  ‘An awareness of pain,’ he said.

  He had naturally noticed her absence; all she had told him was that she had been sick. It was symptomatic of her new attitude to the world that she was unsure whether he believed her or had heard the story and, like Rupe, thought that she had encouraged Jim Keith, only to lose her nerve at th
e last minute.

  If he had heard, he gave no sign. ‘Whatever you had certainly knocked you about a bit.’

  She acknowledged the possibility, cautiously. ‘Perhaps …’

  ‘Be thankful,’ he told her. ‘You seem all right now, and it’s given a new quality to your work. You’re a better artist because of it.’

  That was something, she supposed.

  She went to see Aline, drawn to her for the first time since the business of Atlas Pentecost. Her sister was glad to see her, delighted to show off her grand house and the grand manner that she had cultivated to go with it.

  The house was certainly very fine, with a view, and paintings that would have agonised, had Marie not found them funny.

  Aline was at once defensive.

  ‘Charles is fond of them,’ she said. ‘I believe they suit the room very well.’

  They did not; the room itself was not in the least vulgar, unlike the paintings and most of the furniture. Marie saw that Aline was insufficiently sure of her new status to laugh about such things, so she told a bold lie in the interests of friendship.

  ‘I think they are very fine.’ Smiling as though she believed it.

  They inspected the baby, a round and peaceful blob they had named Grace — which, perhaps because she was still so young, was the least conspicuous of her qualities.

  ‘Charles’s mother says she looks exactly as Charles did at that age.’

  It was a mercy that no-one had said Grace looked like Atlas Pentecost.

  Marie might have said as much, having learned cruelty with pain, but did not. Instead, she observed Aline’s expression as she looked at her child and saw the tenderness that filled her.

  ‘I would like to do a picture of the two of you,’ she said. ‘If you’ll let me.’

  Stripped for the moment of her grand manner, Aline beamed with delight. ‘That would be wonderful.’

  Marie thought of the excrescences upon the walls. ‘Will Charles not object?’

  ‘Charles…’ Aline smiled, dismissively. For a moment the sisters were as they had been once. ‘I shall take care of Charles.’

  ‘When would you like me to start?’

  ‘Whenever you like. Tomorrow, if you can. You can stay here while you’re doing it. It’ll give us a chance to talk.’

  Marie did not know what she could say to the woman that her sister had become. On the other hand, if she were able to rediscover the Aline she had known before, it would be pleasant to talk. Heaven knows, she told herself, thinking of Atlas, there was plenty to talk about. And felt an unfamiliar glimmer of amusement. Whether that subject would be discussed seemed, in the circumstances, extremely unlikely.

  Yet it was the first thing Aline mentioned.

  ‘I know what you think. About Atlas Pentecost.’

  Marie was still studying the structure of the painting she hoped to do. ‘Why should I be thinking anything about him?’

  ‘You think we had a … relationship.’

  The cradle with the lace curtain, so. Aline herself, so.

  ‘Sit a little further forward,’ Marie instructed. ‘Look at Grace, not at me. That’s the way. And did you?’ she asked, Miss Innocence herself. ‘Have a relationship, I mean?’

  ‘Of course not.’ Aline laughed, a thin tinkle of sound. ‘Not in that way, I mean.’

  Marie was busy with some sample sketches, the charcoal crayon moving confidently across the paper.

  ‘In what way, then?’

  ‘We were friends.’

  Marie remembered her sister’s flesh clinging to Atlas so ardently and said nothing. Aline pursued the line that she had obviously decided would put to rest any doubts Marie might have.

  She must never know I saw them together, Marie thought. She would never forgive me for it. Her attention wavered between the drawing and Aline’s gush of words, eagerly bringing her version of events into the light. Eager to believe them herself, perhaps, to bury what could not be permitted to be the truth.

  ‘Atlas was important,’ decreed Aline. ‘Important to both of us.’

  ‘His style of painting was very old-fashioned,’ Marie objected.

  ‘Painting…’ Aline dismissed the idea, airily, as though painting had been the last thing in either of their minds when they had taken up with Atlas Pentecost.

  ‘That was why we went to him. To learn painting.’

  Aline smiled, indulgent of the Aline who might have believed such a thing once, the Marie who seemingly still did. ‘Atlas’s painting was never important. What mattered was the way he showed me how I could live my life, if I were brave enough. How I could get away from all the silly rules that tell us what we can do, what we can’t do, how we’re supposed to live.’

  The technical challenge, Marie thought, would be to show the baby clearly, yet through the lacy curtain of the crib, so that the details of both were clear. It would mean a degree of over-painting that she had never tried before. With pleasure in the challenge, she wondered whether she dared try it; there were so many forms of courage.

  ‘And were you?’ she asked. ‘Brave enough, I mean?’

  Aline looked complacently at the possessions arrayed about her: the house, the furniture, the absent husband. ‘I don’t think I’ve done too badly.’

  ‘And you don’t miss painting?’

  ‘You have to choose.’ Aline dismissed the thought of painting, which might have damaged the fortunate course of her life, had she permitted. ‘You’re too young to remember, but I shall never forget what it was like after Papa went away, being frightened all the time, not being able to do anything about it. I told myself I would let nothing like that happen to me again.’

  Another sketch, showing the haze of the veil, the baby’s head clearly visible through it. Yes, she thought, it’s going to work. And felt cautiously triumphant.

  ‘It didn’t happen,’ she said.

  ‘But might have done. After all, neither of us had any control over our lives. You still don’t.’

  ‘I’m doing what I want to do.’

  ‘But what happens when you get married?’

  ‘I have no plans to get married.’

  ‘But you’ll have to.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ It would be expected, certainly. She herself, if she were honest, expected it — which might be the hardest taboo to break.

  ‘Papa left us. He went out and I never saw him again. I remember him so well, yet none of us knows what happened to him. We were helpless.’

  ‘We were too young to be anything else,’ Marie pointed out. ‘I was only a few months old.’

  ‘It would have made no difference if we’d been twenty! After that Mama left us. Then Martha got married. We had no say in any of it.’

  ‘Martha has been very kind to us. Horace, too, in his way.’

  ‘Yes. In his way. Not in ours. Nobody asked what we thought. If I want to move the furniture, I move it. I don’t ask the chairs what they think. We were like that. We had no more say than the furniture.’

  ‘And now you have?’

  ‘Now I am a married woman.’

  And more captive than ever, Marie thought. A prisoner of all the things that own her. The house. The garden. The chairs and beds and husband and child and, most oppressively, the mother-in-law, who is reputed to have views. The expectations of society. Whereas I, who do not know what it is to sleep with a man, am free.

  She knew that Aline would not agree. The thought saddened her, but not because their opinions differed. She foresaw a future in which they would be unable to share anything that either of them claimed to value, because they had embraced different values. In doing so each had lost something, too, which seemed good reason for sorrow.

  I do not know what it is to sleep with a man …

  And suddenly she was trembling, the crayon slipping from her fingers as Jim Keith’s shovel hand reached for her, his breath and heat engulfing her. For a moment she could not move, while her heart pounded and nausea wove its acid coil within her thr
oat. Once again the darkness swooped upon her, but passed as quickly as it had come. Eyes closed, she slumped in shipwrecked stillness, waiting for her fingers to cease their dance.

  While Aline’s furniture, Aline herself, noticed not a thing.

  A friend spoke, casually, to Horace.

  ‘How’s the little French girl coming along?’

  Horace passed on the enquiry to Martha. The little French girl, she thought. Of course. I forget about that, but it is true.

  Marie’s painting had become a burden. Not in itself, but in the talent that Lukas told her repeatedly she had.

  ‘You need to be careful,’ he had told Martha. ‘She has the capacity to become a real painter. A professional. She might turn out to be very good indeed. If that is what you want for her.’

  There were few things Martha wanted less.

  ‘Are there other lady artists? Professionals, I mean?’

  ‘One in France, a few years back. Woman called Berthe Morisot. Not in Australia. Not that I know of.’

  ‘And how did she manage? This Berthe Morisot?’

  Lukas shook his head. ‘I doubt it was easy for her.’

  ‘And Marie?’

  ‘Being an artist is hard for anyone. Very hard. For a woman? Ten times harder. Talent’s not enough; she’ll have to be tough. As leather, or iron. If she’s not, it may destroy her.’

  ‘Does she understand how difficult it will be?’

  ‘Even I don’t understand. I know, but to have a real understanding of what it means … I don’t think anyone does. Yet she must have an idea. After all, she knows what it means to be a woman.’

  ‘In a man’s world, you mean?’ Somehow the words slipped out.

  Lukas shrugged, unwilling to get into that. ‘Perhaps.’

  ‘But she is good? You are sure?’

  ‘She’s the best.’

  That made Marie’s French origins important. Somewhere Martha had read how inherited culture was critical to artistic development. But there was no way Martha could reunite Marie with her French past. She had no French blood, couldn’t even speak the language. Only her mother could help. Whether she would be willing was another question.

  At least let me try, she thought. I owe that much to Marie, and myself. Even, perhaps, to the world.