by JH Fletcher
‘I live here, that’s all. I’ve a small studio round the back.’
Katie’s smile was savage. ‘You should see where I live …’
They started work on the painting the following day, Marie’s pent-up energy flowing as she moved the model this way and that, positioning an arm so, a leg so. She sketched, destroyed, sketched again. Destroyed again. Groping for the essence behind the flesh; behind the bone; behind, perhaps, the soul. The essence, like a silver light on the edge of awareness, that she could not capture. But would.
They broke after an hour, during which Katie had not moved. Now she stretched, rubbing her arms, and walked around Marie’s studio, careless of her nudity, examining the paintings stacked along the wall.
She paused at a preliminary sketch, in oils, of Rupe Scales. ‘Who is this?’
‘A man I used to know.’
‘A lover?’
‘No.’
‘Never?’
‘No.’
Katie looked again, bending so close that her nose almost touched the canvas. ‘How were you able to get so far into him if you have not loved him?’
‘I painted what I saw, and felt.’
‘It is very good.’ As though she were as expert in art as she was, perhaps, in life. In her own type of life. ‘Do you have a lover?’
‘No.’
‘You mean, not now? Or …?’
‘I mean no.’
Katie laughed: a rich, luscious peal. ‘You Australian women …’
For the first time in her life, Marie thought, and said, ‘French.’
‘French?’ Katie repeated, and laughed even harder. ‘But the French are known as lovers.’
Not this one. But Marie said only, ‘Can you come back in the morning?’
‘Of course.’
‘Will that be all right with Lukas?’
‘Lukas,’ Katie said, and discarded him.
After she had gone, Marie walked slowly across to the house, thinking about what Katie had said. The French are known as lovers. Well, she thought, I told myself once that I had found love. Of a kind and intensity I never imagined. Yes, it is true; I found a kind of love. But the other, no. And the one I found betrayed me, or I it. The dark-ringed eyes of the nurse. The child is dead. The ash-strewn faces amid a midnight tolling of bells.
You mean, Not now? Or …?
I mean no.
Who will love me, having done what I have done?
And turned, fleeing on trembling feet. She returned to the studio, went inside and took the sketch of the rock pillar and bird and fleeing figures of the past that lingered so damningly in every breath and heartbeat. She was a hair’s thickness from tearing it and tearing it, but the feel of the paper stayed her hand. She breathed deeper, deeper. She thought, it was not I who caused Grace to die, but God. She died because I could not bring myself to throw away the talent that He gave me. If God did that, then God is the enemy. That gives me freedom, because without God there can be no guilt. Art becomes the only spiritual force I need acknowledge. Call it God, or In-Place-Of-God. Call it the devil, or what you like. For me, it will be forever the one thing that matters in my life. So that, when the dead bones rise at the latter day, it will be art that calls them home.
She took the sketch and laid it carefully, reverently, on the table. I will not raise my hand against the source of my own life. I will lift up my eyes unto whatever force it is that guides my hand and eye and heart.
At once she was in tears, not knowing whether she wept for the loss of the child or her own innocence, or for the hopes and prayers that lay so heavily upon her now. Only art. If I am able.
If I am not … But would have welcomed death rather than pursue that thought. Because, without art, there was only damnation. In which she believed, and did not believe.
She finished the painting in a blur of days that slid away, unnoticed. Afterwards, Marie could remember nothing of what had passed, how she had sought for the true aura of the place, the figures and memory that she sought to exorcise even as she retained them forever upon the canvas. She felt as though she had used her own blood in place of paint; it left her as exhausted as she had ever been in her life.
When it was over, she permitted Katie to look at it. The model examined it for several minutes without moving, then looked curiously at Marie.
‘I don’t understand …’
Marie was too weak even to smile. ‘Neither do I.’
‘But its power … Who is the child?’
‘A child.’ She could not explain; even to breathe tore the spirit from her body. ‘Who died.’
‘And the woman?’
‘Myself.’ That she managed, at least.
‘Lukas should see this,’ said Katie.
‘No!’ Instinct leaping ahead of thought, she knew that would be intolerable to them both.
‘He told me you were his student. It would make him proud to see it.’
More like a knife in the dark, Marie thought. To see the child … Another child, it was true, but always and forever the same.
‘It’s not that I don’t want him to see it. But there is something in his past —’
‘The child who was lost, you mean? He told me about that.’
‘But don’t you see? A child —’
‘He needs to be reminded that he is not the only person in the world to suffer.’
Marie promised she would think about it. Perhaps Katie was right. Unlike most of the models she had met, Katie was no fool. She had come to like her a lot during their sessions together. She could remember little of what they had said, knew only that they had become friends. She knew instinctively that Katie had skills that she lacked, above all an awareness of how the world was and how to deal with it.
‘You need a lover,’ Katie told her seriously. ‘So much emotion locked away inside you … It makes me wonder what kind of artist you will be afterwards.’
‘Afterwards?’
‘After you have taken a lover. Perhaps several lovers.’
Marie laughed. The thought of a single lover made her breathless, never mind several.
‘I have met no-one.’
‘But will.’
‘I wouldn’t know what to do, if I did.’
Katie turned and tapped with her fingertip upon the newly finished painting. ‘The woman who painted that picture knows.’ At the door she paused. ‘One more thing … You cannot go on staying here.’
‘Why not?’
‘It is too rich. Too comfortable.’
‘What’s wrong with being comfortable?’ Marie’s earliest memories had cured her of any romantic delusions about poverty.
‘Great art does not come out of luxury. Suffering makes the artist. Besides, this place …’
‘What’s wrong with it?’
‘Woonga?’ As though it might be: The Simpson Desert? ‘There is nothing here.’ She scowled at the vastness that lay all about them, as though daring it to object — as the consequential house might indeed have done, had it been asked. ‘You have to get away. How will you learn, if you do not meet other artists? How will you develop? You must move to Sydney. How can you portray the world if you bury yourself here?’
‘And live on what?’
‘Whatever is necessary. On your lover, perhaps.’ This fantasy figure who, it seemed, must not only be ardent but rich, too.
Marie laughed. ‘I don’t see Horace thinking much of that.’
‘Why should you care what he thinks?’ Katie’s Russian consonants slurred most vehemently. ‘Your only duty is to your art.’
Marie sought to dismiss Katie’s ferocity with a smile. Live in Sydney, indeed … Yet the words lingered. It was a thought, undeniably.
Two weeks later, on a bleak and squally day, Marie went to see her mother.
The house was no more than a quavering echo of what she remembered. Behind the curtains of rain the imposing portico, once gleaming white, was as grey as rotted ice. The decline was even more evident indoors;
the rooms that she remembered full of expensive furniture were now empty. Their footsteps clanged like funeral bells against the desolate walls as Eugénie swept Marie rapidly towards a small sitting room at the back of the house.
‘We live very quietly,’ Eugénie said. ‘At least we have a roof over our heads.’
Henry was in the sitting room; perhaps he had nowhere else to go. It was cold inside the house and he looked up from the handful of burning sticks that was the only fire. Marie remembered him as sleek and self-confident, but the financial crash had taken more than Henry’s money. Now he was grey-faced, hair sparse and untidy, linen soiled.
‘Forgive our poor hospitality. We are having temporary difficulties, as you can see.’ His eyes did not quite catch hers; he spoke, seemingly, to the air. ‘But all this will pass. I have plans, great plans.’ He rubbed his hands, as though about to leap energetically to his feet and put them into effect, but his lost gaze told a different story. This man had fallen far from self-respect, as well as greatness and wealth.
‘Great plans …’ he repeated, a mantra to the feeble flames, then fell silent, contemplating the fire-rotted sticks as they tumbled into ash, in common with all his schemes and dreams.
‘Come …’ Eugénie spoke in a whisper, as in a room of death, and led the way into the large kitchen where, in the old days, servants would have scurried beneath the steely eye of the housekeeper. Now these, too, were gone. What remained was a table, two plain wooden chairs, a blackened pot upon the stove. ‘One of Henry’s old managers has money from a small inheritance,’ Eugénie said. ‘He lets us have something when he can afford it.’
Charity … No wonder Henry had become the figure he now was. A ruined man: for the first time Marie understood that it meant far more than the loss of money.
It is my day for learning new things, she thought. Into her mind, unbidden, came Katie’s words.
You must move to Sydney. How can you portray the world if you bury yourself here?
‘Is there no hope?’ Of recovery, of getting back to where you were before?
‘One lives on hope.’ Her mother laughed bitterly. ‘It is all we have. But you saw him, and ask me that?’ Her eyes scoured the past. ‘I thought he was a man. When I first met him … I have made many mistakes but that, I think, is the worst. Henry’s mother was ten times the man he is.’
‘Can’t she help?’
‘She is dead. Sensible of her.’
‘Then her money —’
‘Lost. She poured it all into Henry’s final stupidity, buying up the shares in those failed companies. How he dreamed! We shall own the whole of Sydney: I can hear him now. His mother thought he was right. By the time she found out that he was not right, that everything she had in the world was gone, it was too late. So she … died. Very sensible of her, as I said.’ Although there was more of contempt than admiration in her voice. ‘She could not handle it, either. Could not handle the idea of being poor. Yet still she was more of a man than my husband. I would respect him more if he were in his grave than dead the way he is, sitting by the fire.’
‘And the house?’
‘He does not own it. But it is safe.’
‘How will you manage?’
‘I will tell you something,’ Eugénie said. ‘When we first came to this country, I would have become a prostitute, rather than have us starve.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Now I am too old, I think. But I was a dressmaker, once. If necessary, I can be a dressmaker again.’
They both knew that there were no jobs anywhere, or money for those who would have bought dresses.
Marie had come to ask her mother if she could stay with her, if she moved to Sydney. Now she saw that was out of the question; instead, she spoke of something else that had been for a long time on her mind.
‘My father …’
‘The greatest of all the Impressionists.’ It had become an article of faith.
‘Tell me about him.’
‘Why?’
‘Because he was my father. Because it is my right.’
10
Hearing her mother talk was like watching a door opening on the past. Through the door came a stench of darkness, of evil times and evil men. Yet there was light, too, a sense of belonging that enhanced Marie’s self-awareness and gave another dimension to her life.
‘He died for what he believed,’ Eugénie declared. ‘I tried to stop him, but could not.’
Marie saw that her mother was proud of the stubbornness that had taken her husband to his presumed death.
‘So you never heard definitely that he was dead?’
‘I knew it, all the same. The soldiers killed him.’ It was another article of Eugénie’s faith: on the one hand, the evil forces of government; on the other, the martyr. Marie saw that her mother had to believe in them; they were the only things that gave meaning to all that had happened in her life since. The loss of wealth was unimportant; her belief in the legends of her past had nourished her throughout her life and would sustain her now, despite her husband’s self-pitying collapse.
‘It seems that once again I have to be the man,’ she said.
She would be alone in that, as she had always been alone. Marie had wanted to find out about her father and, possibly, herself; instead had found the mother whom she had thought she knew but who, she now realised, had always been a stranger to her.
She did not want to lose this new mother, as she had lost her after her previous visit to this house. Henry Pearman was unlikely to interfere this time, but Eugénie herself might provide an obstacle, out of pride.
So it proved. When Marie suggested she should visit her more often, her mother rejected the idea. ‘That would not be a good idea. In the circumstances.’
‘I want to get to know you better. I don’t care about the circumstances.’
‘But I care.’
‘What happened is hardly your fault.’
‘We are not discussing fault.’
Not fault, perhaps, but humiliation. The humiliation of being poor when she had been rich, of having to live amid the wreckage of past grandeur. Eugénie did not care what Marie wanted. She wanted no-one, especially her daughter, to see her now, because that would compel her to see herself.
I care.
Marie had made another discovery. Stripped to the bones of her existence, her mother would survive as she had always survived, by thinking only of herself. Consideration for others was foreign to her, an indulgence; security lay in ruthlessness and self-interest.
It was a chilling thought: that life might in time compel her, too, to learn so harsh a lesson. She would not permit herself to brood upon it. There would be time enough for that later; for the present, she would look elsewhere. For Katie had persuaded her; she had made up her mind that she would follow her advice and move to the city.
Martha protested when Marie told her. Marriage to Horace Ingersoll had brought contentment, of a sort, but had also drained vigour from the woman who had taken over two little girls and reintroduced meaning to her existence. Now she wanted Marie to stay because she feared what her departure might reveal of the emptiness that had become her life.
‘You have your studio here, no-one interferes with you …’
Not quite true, with Horace’s often disapproving presence never far away, but now was not the time to pick a fight over Horace.
‘I’m too isolated here.’
‘Where will you stay?’
‘I’ll find somewhere.’
‘You don’t think your mother —’
‘I need to be in the city, not on the North Shore.’ She did not want Martha to know that she had already approached Eugénie and been turned down.
‘Walk with me,’ Martha said.
If Martha thought a stroll through the bush would change Marie’s mind, she was in for a disappointment, but Marie went anyway. After twenty years of unfailing kindness from the woman who had raised her, it was the least she could do.
They crossed the bri
dge spanning the pond and went through the wrought-iron gate into bush that so far Horace had not attempted to tame. Martha walked slowly, legs stiff with disuse. Marie was so used to her that for years she had seen her only with the blindness of familiarity. Now she was shocked to see that Martha was, if not old, at least poised upon the very lip of age. The late fifties, she thought. That is what she is. Only that.
The late fifties were not old, but the evidence was before Marie’s eyes. It disconcerted her to think that age could suck the marrow out of life and not even be noticed.
She had expected Martha to try and talk her out of leaving, but she did not. Instead, she seemed willing to let the bush do her talking for her.
Not that Marie was prepared to listen to that, either; she was conscious of a greater obligation. ‘I love it here,’ she told Martha. ‘But to develop as an artist, I have to move to the city. You can understand that, surely?’
By her silence, Martha showed that she did indeed understand. Marie had assumed the walk was intended to influence her decision; now she understood that it was nothing of the kind. It was to help Martha come to terms with what she had accepted was inevitable.
Marie was grateful for Martha’s understanding, but would not let it weaken her determination: gratitude, too, could be dangerous. Art is the thing that matters in my life. She had told herself so, repeatedly. She had to move to the city, meet other artists, so that she could learn from them and grow.
The two women stood side by side and stared through the trees at the distant mountains. Marie knew that her awareness of this landscape would nourish her, always, but from now on she would see it only from a distance. She was leaving it behind. Already she felt nostalgia for what was slipping away, but was excited, too, by the life that awaited her just over the horizon. Expectation kindled joy as bright as fire as she turned and seized Martha’s hands. ‘Isn’t this a wonderful place?’
Martha came to Sydney with her, as Horace had stipulated; he had made it plain that he would not tolerate Marie living in a manner that could reflect upon himself.
‘You must comport yourself in a seemly manner. If people think I’m somehow involved with those bohemians, it might damage confidence …’ That, with business confidence at rock-bottom, could be catastrophic. ‘Make sure she stays somewhere presentable,’ he told Martha. ‘A woman who will keep an eye on her. And report back to us as necessary.’