by JH Fletcher
As Grace grew older, things remained the same. She ran to meet Marie whenever she came to the house; demanded Marie’s constant attention; threw tantrums when she didn’t get it. When she knew Marie was paying a visit, so Aline told her, she would talk about nothing else for days beforehand.
It was difficult for Marie to resist such hero worship, nor did she try very hard. Her affection for her niece was huge. More than affection. She allowed her to sit beside her while she was working, something she tolerated in no other human being. Once Grace was old enough, she began taking her for walks, sharing with her the ecstatic secrets of flowers and ducks and grass. They exchanged confidences, she read to her at night, she loved the little girl to death.
One day, when nobody was looking, she stood for an hour watching Grace seated in the middle of the sandpit that had been built for her to play in. Grace was not playing; she was not doing anything, but sat, while the sunlight and bees came and went. She might have been watching what was going on around her, but Marie did not think so. No, she told herself, she is existing, one with the universe of which, unknowingly, she is a part. To be a true artist I, too, shall have to return to the centre, to let light and all creation flow through me. I must, yet I do not know how. It will not do to try, deliberately, because that will mean being self-conscious, and the state of oneness has no knowledge of self.
The arrival of the new baby put Grace’s nose out of joint. Now more than ever, she turned to her aunt, who took her to see the paintings in the Sydney Art Gallery. Marie explained each one, persevering even when it was obvious that Grace did not understand. The child was bright; Marie reasoned that what did not register now might still penetrate her subconscious, so that, later, she might find she understood, after all.
They were golden hours for them both, Marie’s delight in her niece so sharp that she felt pain as well as pleasure when well-meaning ladies congratulated her.
‘Isn’t she well behaved!’
She was, keeping her temperamental flourishes for her mother, while Aline began to wonder aloud whether Marie was taking over her child completely.
It was summer. Grace had her third birthday on a horrible day of heat and humidity and flies, with storm clouds bruising the eastern horizon.
Aline had organised a party to which other small children came in droves, shepherded by nursemaids whose black dresses and starched aprons whispered confidingly against a sullen background of thunder.
Grace was upset because Emily, her particular friend, was ill and couldn’t be there.
‘It’s not fair!’
She was mollified by Marie’s presence. Marie had gone back to Woonga a month before, but had made a special effort to be here for her niece’s birthday. She gave her the doll she wanted — her mother’s child in that, at least — and a painting of her own, of a posy of flowers so gay that you could almost smell them.
To begin with, the children were awkward with each other in the unfamiliar environment of a party, but gradually they relaxed. They ran, and screamed, and drove their minders crazy. Everyone had a good time, even to the extent where one little girl, pushier than the rest, was pushed, ironically, into the goldfish pond. To the excitement and games and cakes were added the wails and drenched clothes of tragedy.
The storm blew up and rain fell in torrents. Aline’s marble halls echoed to screams and running feet, and the adults were exhausted long before the children. Everyone had a wonderful time and Emily was not missed, after all — Emily who, it was rumoured, might be seriously ill, although with what no-one knew.
The day after the party, Grace was tired and crotchety, which was not surprising, but the day after that she was worse, with a flushed face and runny nose.
‘A cold,’ Aline said.
‘Perhaps a doctor?’ Marie suggested.
‘I hardly think that’s necessary.’ Aline had had enough of her sister’s interference. ‘For a cold.’
However, the next day there was a temperature, too, and Grace cried continuously in a feeble, broken-willed way.
So the doctor was summoned, after all, and examined the child and emerged from the sick room with a grave face.
The two sisters, deferential to the medical profession upon which most women were compelled to place such reliance, would have waited for the ponderous weight of his considered judgement, but Charles, home from one of his forays into the jungles of business, had no reverence for doctors or their rituals. ‘Spit it out, man. What’s the matter with her?’
The matter was smallpox. Silence and dread fell upon the grand house that could protect from neither. The doctor insisted that Grace be taken to hospital where, he said, she could get better attention, but people like the Widdecombes had never used hospitals and were not about to start now. A nurse was installed, the doctor visited mornings and afternoons. People tiptoed through the echoing house. Callers left cards and well wishes. Several other children, some of whom had attended Grace’s party, went down with the disease, and one of the nursemaids. Now the authorities might have enforced quarantine, but Widdecombe influence soon put paid to that. Grace would survive, or not, at home.
Despite her husband’s protests, Aline never left her child’s bedside.
‘You have another child …’
That was true, but this one needed her more, and Aline would not be moved.
‘I shall send Gregory to my mother’s,’ Charles threatened. ‘To keep him away from danger.’
Aline supposed it made sense. She was too tired and frightened, too focussed on the survival of her sick daughter, to care one way or the other. And said so.
‘Do what you like.’
Charles, affronted by Aline’s apparent callousness to his son, did.
Marie could not bear to stay in the house. She went out and walked, regardless of heat or rain. She walked around the grounds, she hugged the cold and indifferent trunks of trees, she followed winding trails without regard to where she was going or why. She came back, trembling for the latest news. Which remained grave.
Grace was no worse. No better, either.
‘Holding her own,’ the doctor said.
Grace was so young, so small, so weak; how long could she fight?
That, the doctor agreed, was a question. But would volunteer little, reinstated in the position of proper eminence which the chastened Charles had surrendered to him.
Now it was Marie who had no patience with him and his fancy airs. ‘Will she get well or won’t she?’
The doctor was used to quelling the unreasonable questions of distressed relatives. ‘Neither I nor anyone else can answer that. The child is in God’s hands.’
Who had better do a good job, then. And again Marie went out into the doom-freighted day.
She remembered how she had behaved after her climb to the eagle’s eyrie. Hubris … Now was the reckoning. She told herself that the two events could not be connected but remained unconvinced; in this situation, logic had no place. She had presumed; now the sword of judgement had fallen upon them all. If she had been the cause, as her instinct insisted even as her intellect denied it, it was for her to make things right. It was her duty to humble herself, to offer a sacrifice acceptable to fate.
She decided what she had to do. Giving herself no time for second thoughts, she set out purposefully through the bush, not needing to look where she was going. After an hour she saw therock pillar rising from the parched ground, imagining, while far off, the scream of the eagle as it brought food to its young.
Here, where the offence had been committed, she would do what must be done to put things right.
She reached the base of the rock and placed her hands flat upon it, feeling the stone’s gritty warmth against her moist palms. She knew what she must say, but dreaded doing so. Her heartbeat menaced her. She waited for courage. When she was ready, she drew breath deeply into her lungs and prepared to give up all that was meaningful in her life.
‘If Grace is spared …’ and paused, clenching
her will like a fist as she sought the courage to say what instinct insisted must be said. She shut her eyes and forced the words from her reluctant tongue. ‘If Grace recovers …’ Once more she garnered breath, then said, in a rush: ‘I shall give up painting. I shall never touch a brush again.’
There. It was the greatest sacrifice she could make. She had done wrong. Now her penance would make things whole.
Slowly she walked back through the awestruck silence of the bush. The weight of her promise bent her shoulders, her feet dragged dispiritedly in the dust.
Like a panicked bird, her mind flew around and around what she had promised. Had she meant what she had said? Could she mean it? Yes and yes: because to say such a thing and not mean it would be sacrilege greater even than her earlier cries of joy.
I must mean it.
But how could she? To throw away her whole life …
She shut her mind to the implications of that. She had said it and must stand by it. Must. Must.
All the way back to the house, she recited an endless litany of what she had promised and dreaded more than death. I shall not paint … I shall not paint … You must stand by it. You must.
She went into the house, still and cool after her hot pilgrimage. Within the disciplined rooms, the air held no presentiment of death.
She is better, Marie told herself. I feel it. Yet feared the sacrifice even as she welcomed the thought. Grace will be whole. It would be an outcome for which any sacrifice would be worthwhile. Yet she felt ashes in her heart. Never to paint again …
You must stand by it. You must.
The nurse was coming down the sweeping staircase from the upper floor. It was the thing Marie remembered most from her first visit to the house: her sense of awe that her own sister could have a house with such a staircase. She had already known, in theory, of the Widdecombes’ wealth, but it was the staircase that had made it real.
Now something about the way the nurse walked and looked made her mind fly at once to that old memory as though, by so doing, she might hide herself from tragedy. For the nurse was advancing, gravely, slowly, with muffled drums in each step. She reached the bottom of the staircase; without pause or speech or change of expression, walked towards her across the room.
Marie waited, heart and breath clutched tight within her body.
‘Grace?’
The nurse stopped and looked at her with dark-ringed eyes. ‘The child is dead.’
Marie knew she would never forget that dreadful moment or the spasm of relief that engulfed her, so treacherously. At once she tried to crush it, deny its existence. Too late. The truth lay like a stratum of rock, impervious, beneath her denials.
Memory, now, became the enemy.
There would have been a funeral which she attended. She could remember nothing. Afterwards condolences for the ashen-faced parents; for herself, too, perhaps. She could remember nothing. She remembered only what she had sworn to do, had Grace been spared, and the moment of treacherous relief when she had realised that her sacrifice would not be required of her. For which never, never, could she hope for forgiveness.
Dear God and Fate and devil, I did not mean it. I did not mean. I did not …
On and on, in place of the tears she was too arid to produce. She could neither forget nor weep. Instead, she walked like a fragile and damned ghost amid a vale of the darkest despair.
I willed her death. God read my doubts and discarded my promises, knowing how little they were worth. Had I made a true sacrifice, she would have lived. I killed the child who loved me. The child I loved. I have killed love.
Even speech was denied her. She walked in silence, she stared in uncomprehending silence at those who tried to speak to her. She turned from Aline, from Martha, from everyone and everything.
The darkness returned, the black tunnel shod with crimson light in which was crying, and guilt, and a longing for death.
9
In her dark and secret centre, Marie knew she would never get over the trauma of Grace’s death, but eventually she came back to the world and got on with her life.
Lukas had a new model, a nineteen-year-old named Katie Vanning. Marie found out about her when she turned up unannounced at Lukas’s studio one day and discovered Katie, long yellow hair draped over her shoulders, standing naked on a podium in the middle of the room, with Lukas doing sketches of her more intimate bits.
‘Good day,’ she said to them both.
The model did not move but smiled; Lukas ignored her and Marie knew at once, from his attitude and the ardour she detected in his pencil, that Katie was not just another model. There was nothing surprising in that; Marie suspected that in Lukas’s life there had been many Katies, and she remembered Dorrie and the child taken by the forest. Another child, she thought. Now both of us have a child to haunt us.
She watched, silently, while Lukas worked. When he had finished, Katie put her clothes on and they went out to a cafe. To celebrate, Lukas said.
‘Celebrate what?’
He laughed. ‘Life. Always.’
Marie decided Lukas must be in love.
Katie had an accent, strong but unidentifiable. She said, ‘You are the first person I have known who did that.’
‘Did what?’
‘Say good day to me.’
‘Why shouldn’t I?’
‘Most people come to an artist’s studio, they see a model, they treat her like the furniture. You know?’
‘Your accent. Where —’
‘I am Russian,’ Katie said. She saw Marie’s expression and laughed. ‘Which surprises you, yes?’
‘I’ve never met a Russian before.’
‘We are the same as everyone else.’
‘So I saw.’
But beautiful, she had to admit, if only to herself. Lukas, clearly, was enamoured. He touched her all the time with his hands, his eyes. It was affecting to see, although what Katie Vanning thought about it was harder to tell.
‘Katie Vanning,’ Marie said. ‘Is that a Russian name?’
‘Katya Vannovskaya is my real name.’ She proclaimed it proudly, a bray of trumpets in her voice. Then smiled. ‘But here no-one can say it, so I am Katie Vanning.’
Which seemed a poor neighbour, by comparison.
‘What brought you to Australia?’
‘I came with my mother, five years ago, when I was fourteen. My father is a revolutionary who wishes to overthrow the Tsar. He was banished to Siberia, but my mother said that was no place for a child, so persuaded the police to let us leave the country instead. We came here.’
‘Why here?’
‘There was a boat coming here. There are many other Russian emigrés in Sydney.’
‘A boat,’ Marie repeated. ‘It sounds as though you and I have a lot in common.’
‘Why? Are you a model, too?’
‘An artist. Or trying to be.’
‘Then maybe I can work for you, as well. Yes?’
‘Perhaps.’
Lukas was getting fidgety. He turned to Katie. ‘We’d better be moving.’
Where, he didn’t say, but Marie thought she could guess. Either way, they were gone, hurrying hand in hand through the busy streets. Marie walked in the opposite direction. A model, she repeated to herself. Perhaps I could use her, at that.
She had in mind a painting that she hoped might lay her demons to rest. It was plaguing her, but not yet ready to put on paper. There was a column of rock in it, a desert place, sere and vast, with a yellow sun, painted as a child might paint it, and purple shadows swimming in silence. A giant bird, which might be the messenger of God or devil, or both, that hovered with outspread talons while a child, multiple-imaged, diminished into the vastness, the figure of a woman, naked as bone, in pursuit.
Perhaps it would bring her peace, she hoped. Although who would buy it … She shrugged.
In truth, no-one was buying paintings at all. The depression was deepening every month, the collapse of banks and land companies no long
er news. No-one had money for art.
So far Horace had survived, but Martha told Marie he had taken to spending more and more time away from home, trying to shore up his various interests. Marie wished him no harm, but was concerned for herself as well. ‘My allowance?’
‘Safe, for the moment. I’ll make sure of that. But for the future …’ Martha shook her head. The way the world was, even tomorrow was unsure. Which made the saleability of her paintings an important matter, indeed. But, sale or no sale, the painting of the desert and fleeing child would have to be completed. When she was ready.
It took a month. She walked, ate, slept the painting which, like the bird of her imagination, had set its talons in her and would not let go. The tension grew until she could have screamed, could bear neither her own company nor anyone else’s. The stone column illuminated her nights, its purple shadows lay between her and the dawn’s first light. And then, one morning, without fanfare or fuss, she was ready.
Trembling, sweating, she laid the first line upon the paper. And looked. So much, depending upon a single line. Another line, that curved, seemingly of its own volition, to touch the first. She dashed off a series of lines, hack-slashing at the paper with bold, thrusting strokes that brought the outlines of her images into the light. Yes, she thought. She felt power flowing through her finger ends, the gush of blood in her exultant veins. Yes.
She worked until she had finished the outline, without hesitation or correction, the images pouring one by one onto the page. Now the need to get on tormented her, shaking her with its intensity. She needed Katie, needed her now. She went straight to Lukas’s studio, had a moment of wry amusement as she wondered what she might find this time, once again walking in without warning.
She need not have worried. No-one was there. She could have screamed. There was no point waiting. She left Katie a note and went home, where Katie found her that evening.
‘Is this your own house?’ Eyeing the grand rooms, the elegantly laid-out grounds.