Sun in Splendour

by JH Fletcher

  She said, ‘I am going to Sydney.’

  ‘Do you want me to come with you?’ Marie asked, hoping she would not be required.

  ‘No, thank you, dear.’

  ‘Will you be away long?’

  ‘I shall be back tonight.’

  And she was.

  ‘I have been to see your mother,’ she said.

  It was so long since Eugénie had featured in her life that Marie had to think for a moment who Martha meant.

  ‘How is she?’

  ‘She is good.’

  ‘I could have come with you.’ Now that the question had come up, it seemed wrong that she and her mother should live such separate lives. I don’t know anything about her at all, she thought, and was indignant at fate, Eugénie, even Martha herself, for creating such an unnatural situation. ‘I would have liked that.’

  ‘I hope you will be seeing a lot more of her in future. That was why I went to Sydney. To arrange it.’

  Marie was pleased, and angry. Aline’s words — we had no say in any of it — were true, she thought. Even in this. Could she not at least have consulted me? Yet it was obvious that Martha had meant only to be kind.

  ‘I’m not sure that I shall want to do that.’ Determined to exercise independence, even though — or because — she wanted to do it very much.

  Martha would have no such talk. ‘She is your mother.’

  ‘Perhaps you should tell her that.’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘She abandoned us.’ Marie would have looked down her nose, had it been longer. ‘I do not wish to meet her.’

  Martha had a way with nonsense. ‘It is your responsibility.’

  ‘I have no responsibility to her!’

  ‘Not to her. To your art.’

  Marie had enjoyed the heat of her righteous indignation, but now was unsure. ‘What has meeting her to do with art?’

  ‘Lukas says you have a great talent …’

  Martha explained her theory about cultural roots and the need to cultivate them.

  Marie was suspicious; she turned the idea over, looking for flaws. ‘How can my mother help me?’

  ‘She can talk to you about your background. The past. I understand she knew a lot of your father’s friends. Renoir, Monet … They are famous names, now.’

  Marie did not want to believe her. She wanted to think that her mother could offer nothing, had ceased in every way to be relevant. Yet she knew that Martha was right; Renoir and Monet were famous names. Others, too, whom Eugénie had mentioned from time to time: Sisley, Pissarro, Degas … Her mother was a living dictionary of Impressionism, yet she had shut her mind to that, wilfully, as she had to everything else to do with her mother and the abandonment that had scarred her. Even now it was hard to admit that Eugénie might be in a position to offer anything that Marie could want, from which she might benefit.

  She mustered scorn, like artillery, to blast away such a notion. ‘You told her she should talk to me? I’m sure she laughed herself sick over that idea.’

  ‘She said she would be happy to do anything she can to help you.’

  ‘A bit late.’

  Martha understood that hurt had made Marie hard, if only on the surface. She decided a frontal assault might be best.

  ‘Why should the rest of us try to help if you won’t help yourself? As I said, it is your responsibility, not ours.’

  Marie disliked talk of responsibility. ‘I didn’t ask to be a painter.’

  ‘But you are one. And want to be nothing else. You think it’ll just fall into your lap? Don’t fool yourself. You’ll have to work at it, harder than you can imagine. There’ll be a hundred times when you curse yourself for having this talent, but you have and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Aline did something. She got married.’

  ‘Is that what you want? A house? A husband? Money?’

  ‘What’s wrong with it?’

  ‘Nothing’s wrong with it. But are you willing to pay the price?’

  Once again scorn flashed. ‘What price has Aline paid?’

  And was as quickly dismissed. ‘Do you think she will never regret what she has done?’

  ‘She will still be able to paint in her spare time. She told me so.’

  ‘Do you believe that real art permits half measures?’

  And Marie was silent.

  4

  At the last, boarding the Sydney train, panic engulfed her. She tried to fight the idea of meeting her mother, after so long. ‘What do I say to her?’

  Martha shovelled her aboard, with her doubts. ‘You’ll think of something.’

  But what? The rhythm of the wheels asked the question all the way to the city. Enough to madden anyone. By the time the train drew into the station, clanking and belching steam, Marie was fit to fight the world. Of which Eugénie, arrayed in silk, hat like a cartwheel on her head, was a fashionable representative.

  ‘Did you have a good journey?’

  Eugénie spoke French but Marie, long ago, had become a good Aussie. She even thought of claiming not to understand, but would not demean herself. Martha and this woman wanted her here? Very well; here she was.

  ‘Yeah.’ She answered in English, all flat vowels and truculence.

  ‘That is good. Come,’ Eugénie said, sparkling, gay. ‘I have a carriage waiting.’

  And carried her off, impervious to Marie’s sulks.

  In the street a procession of ragged men bore banners, marshalled by a bevy of mounted police.

  ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Some strike. They are always having them.’

  As for the details … Eugénie neither knew nor wished to know. Concentrated only upon this strange woman who, astoundingly, was her daughter. To whom she continued to speak French.

  ‘Mrs Ingersoll — that is her name nowadays, is it not? — tells me you wish to be an artist? Like your dear Papa?’

  Her interest, like the persistent gaiety, was as brittle as glass. Marie would have liked to smash it, had she known how.

  ‘I am an artist, already.’

  So there. But Eugénie had learned how to handle such declarations twenty years before and took this one, too, in her stride.

  She smiled indulgently. ‘Just like Papa …’

  Having followed the road all around the blue reaches of the harbour, the carriage drew up before the portico of a house that gleamed starch-stiff in the sunlight. A flight of steps led to a terrace, beyond which tall windows stared haughtily at the girl from the country, who had made up her mind not to be intimidated by anything. And who, as her mother preceded her through the entrance, stuck out her tongue at the snooty house.

  Inside they ate pastries and drank coffee poured from a silver pot by an aproned woman in black, as starched as the house.

  While Eugénie talked.

  For the moment she had decided to forego questioning her daughter about her present life, for which Marie was grateful. Spoke instead of all that had happened when Marie was a baby to bring them to Australia after the carnage of Paris.

  Marie had no memory of the events her mother narrated, yet listening to Eugenie’s voice describing the terror of leaving the city, the long journey through France, the race across the Noirmoutier causeway against the incoming tide was like revisiting a country that she knew from dreams, or hearing the barely audible chiming of a distant silver clock.

  For the first time Marie wanted to reply to her mother in French, but discovered she could not. Her tongue was stiff with disuse, the intonation a burden; in many cases the actual words escaped her. She was horrified, bereft. The fact that she had been unaware of her loss made the discovery even more poignant, as though a portion of herself had been torn away. Now, in contrast with her feelings when they had first met, she wanted to talk and talk. Found herself telling her mother things she had never mentioned to anyone.

  Even now she would not betray what had taken place between Aline and Atlas Pentecost, but spoke instead of lo
ss: not of her sister or the man to whom she had imagined herself attracted, but of innocence and trust.

  She tried to explain her compelling need to purge emotion in paint, to seek new ways of visual expression.

  ‘It is something that I know will occupy all my life …’

  She took Eugénie step by agonising step through the Jim Keith episode, reliving her helplessness and unbelieving terror, her incredulity at Rupe Scales’s antagonism. Most horribly, how he had punished Jim in a way that had demonstrated his contempt, not only for Jim, but for herself.

  She had never imagined she would be able to speak of it; doing so left her empty and exhausted, the taste of pastries sickly upon her tongue.

  Eugénie, who had grown brittle with wealth, who had abandoned her as a child to experiences such as this, extended her hand to take hers while Marie wept. Eventually, after minutes of silence riven only by sobs, she spoke.

  ‘You wish to become a painter. An artist.’

  ‘Yes.’ Fervently. It seemed the only salvation.

  ‘You must understand one thing,’ Eugénie said. ‘I have been through it all and understand what you cannot be expected to know. If you do this, if you spend your life as an artist’ — how carefully she picked her words, one by one, as though their edges might lacerate most fearfully — ‘you will be doing something that no woman in this country has ever done. You will be alone, more alone than you can imagine. You will be despised; it is bad enough for a man, but a woman … I do not think that society will accept such a thing. It will be a fearful business. My poor child,’ and her fingers tightened on Marie’s hand, ‘it may destroy you utterly. You have to understand that.’

  ‘I know it will not be easy,’ said Marie, but was unafraid, bewitched by dreams of ardour, the glory of captured emotion, the flicker of truth within the brushstroke.

  Eugénie’s fingers tightened on hers. ‘It will most certainly not be easy.’ Speaking deliberately, she said, ‘It is as well you had this experience with the man Jim Keith...’

  ‘As well?’ Marie tried to free her hands, outraged that her own mother, to whom she had entrusted such secrets, should dismiss them so casually, but Eugénie held her fast.

  ‘That is right. As well. If you do not understand that, you understand nothing. If you choose the life of an artist, you will experience such things every day.’ Again Marie tried to protest, but Eugénie spoke through her. ‘I tell you, you will be violated again and again. Measure yourself against what you have already experienced. Consider the fear and pain, the sense of betrayal. You will face all of them, over and over, if you follow this road.’ She placed her fingers delicately about her daughter’s face and raised it until they were staring into each other’s eyes. ‘Fear, pain, betrayal,’ she repeated. ‘Not one day without them. You must ask yourself, very seriously, if you are strong enough to bear it.’ She released Marie’s face and sat back. Tonelessly she said, ‘If you cannot, it will kill you.’

  The intensity of their shared emotion dissolved in the air of the ice-cool house. Bereft, Marie struggled to keep it alive. ‘It is not a question of choosing to be an artist,’ she said. ‘It has chosen me.’

  Eugénie patted her hand, once more composed. ‘Your Papa was the same. It is glorious, but terrifying. We must hope you are strong enough, then.’

  ‘One thing I have to tell you,’ said Marie. ‘I did not want to come here today. But I am glad, now, that I did.’

  ‘You are French,’ Eugénie told her. ‘It is important that you do not forget that, either as a woman or an artist.’

  ‘I did not mean that,’ Marie said. ‘I meant I was glad to have found you again.’

  Tears, then, from both of them. Tears and clutching hands and promises.

  ‘We shall see each other often,’ Eugénie declared, breath warm in Marie’s hair. ‘We shall become close again.’

  A week later, a letter arrived. It was strange how, even before she opened it, Marie knew what it would say.

  Mr Pearman believes that a woman’s nurturing role brings out the finest in us all. This cannot be achieved by individuals promoting their selfish interests in defiance of the normal rules of society. He has great affection for you but considers it would be wrong for you to follow the course we discussed. I naturally share his views. I hope you will reconsider your plans and so enable us to go on seeing each other. If you cannot, you will understand that further meetings will not be possible.

  Marie put down the letter, staring sightlessly at the blue tiers of hills. How appropriate that her mother should be the first to demonstrate the truth of her own warning. The process of violation, inexorable and eternal, had begun.

  5

  Anger. Hurt. Resentment.

  Marie went out of the house and down the steps to the lawn, where she could remember playing as a child with her sister and the dog Victor.

  Victor had been dead for years; Aline was married, with a child of her own; Eugénie and Martha had remarried; all the world had moved on. Except for me, she thought. Only I am as I always was. No husband, no child, no dog, no sister and now, it seems, no mother. I have nothing, am nothing.

  She had been betrayed, abandoned. The pain accompanied her as she went into the trees. She felt the gradient tug at her legs as she fought her way downhill through the debris of fallen branches, the ankle-snatching fingers of roots. She came to the creek at the bottom of the slope. Here was moss and silence broken only by the trickle of water, but neither moss nor silence could soothe her outrage. She did not stop, but pushed on up the reverse slope, climbing steeply now, feet sliding in the dusty soil, until she came out into sunlight high on the hill’s shoulder and saw the valley outstretched beneath her.

  She was panting; she sat on a level section of ground, knees raised beneath her skirt, her arms about them. On the far side of the valley, the ground rose in a series of forested ridges, one behind another, fading at length into the blue haze that had given the mountains their name. She stared with angry eyes across the distance, remembering what her mother’s letter had said.

  It will be impossible to go on seeing each other if you continue along the path you have chosen.

  And what path was that? The path of being herself, of becoming the artist that she was determined to be. Was that so terrible? she thought. To be an artist?

  Fury goaded her once more to her feet. Her heels punished the earth as she strode on across the ridge and down the other side. The sun was hot upon her back, the shadowed ranges beckoned, the air was a shimmer of insects.

  At length the hard walking calmed her, succeeding where the forested creek had failed. Again she paused, drawing breath into her lungs. My mother has rejected me, she told herself. So be it. That, too, I shall survive. This land, whose warmth pulses in my veins, whose watchful stillness echoes in my heart, will stand in her place.

  Rather than the woman who had abandoned her, the land itself would be her mother. She opened herself to its immensity. A sense of peace, of belonging, replaced anger. This was her land and she would be its voice and eyes. It was arrogant even to think such a thing, yet Marie’s feelings were the antithesis of arrogance. On the contrary, she was humbled by the vision of what she might become, if only she were capable of accepting so great a challenge.

  She got to her feet, more quietly now, and walked on, climbing across a succession of rocky ledges that jutted like ribs through the dust. The gum trees’ shade dappled the ground. It was no way to walk in the bush, working her way across the grain of the land instead of following the line of ridges and valleys, but Marie’s instinct told her that it was important to keep going in the straight line that she had chosen at random, or that perhaps had chosen her.

  My journey of initiation, she told herself. I have been here a dozen times, yet it is as though I have never been here before in my life.

  Up to the sunlit summit of the next ridge, down again into the blue-shadowed depths. Again up, each ridge growing progressively higher and more rocky. Brea
th ragged in her chest, sweat flowing beneath the dust-smudged clothes, she felt herself drawing closer and closer to the edge of … What?

  Of knowledge. Of feeling. Of becoming herself.

  She knew now that this journey, impelled by hurt and rage, had become one of discovery. Now she was exposing herself, deliberately and sacrificially, to the land’s vastness and indifference. Because that, too, was part of it. She could offer up her life, her soul, and the land would neither welcome nor reject her. Her sacrifice would signify nothing, a gesture with as little impact as scratching with her finger nails upon the rock. She was, and would remain, irrelevant. The knowledge was grief, yet strength, also — because her awareness and acceptance of its indifference was part of what she knew would be a lifetime quest for identity with this land. It had selected neither her nor her talent, its indifference too great for that, but it would permit. No more could be asked. She was, as it was. She would celebrate its being in her own, in her art. When all else was gone, that would remain. No longer her art, but art itself, another of the unending manifestations of the land.

  One more ridge. At the top she paused. She had brought no water and her throat was clogged with dust. Behind her, house and township had long disappeared from sight. Ahead, successive ridges flowed like waves to the horizon and beyond; to infinity itself, perhaps. Where truth, perhaps, was to be found. If she had within her the capacity to discover truth, or to recognise it when she had done so.

  For the moment, she could go no further. She was not equipped for an expedition, would be afraid to travel on into this land of rock and heat and silence. Yet the burning plains beckoned. She stood on the highest point of the ridge and stared out across the distant crests, the vastness of the blue-smudged air, to that place where the land’s spirit waited, as it had waited for a hundred million years, beneath and within its own fiery heart.

  ‘I shall come.’

  Her voice barely scratched the stillness, was absorbed at once by the trees and glittering air. It was right that it should be so: even the most vehement oblation was of no account, here. So she gave her promise reverently, speaking aloud, not to the land that cared neither for her nor her promises, but to herself. Her intention was the altar upon which she laid her destiny and herself, in sacrifice.