Sun in Splendour

by JH Fletcher

  Katie’s image smiled in the shadows, the darkness warmed by the flames’ rosy glow. I thought‚ play your cards right, he might be willing to take you with him.

  There was no doubt about the cards Katie had meant. Well, she had come away with him, they were here together by the great river, and she had made no promises. Neil had said nothing, yet Marie was uncomfortable, conscious of unfinished business. To be here, alone, with a man … Now was the time to settle things, one way or the other.

  The damage would have been done already, as far as Martha and Horace were concerned. As far as Marie’s friends were concerned, too, although they would not have thought in terms of damage. They would take it for granted, as would Martha and Horace, that it was impossible for a man and a woman to spend days together in solitude without entering into a sexual relationship. Especially when desire existed, as in Marie’s case, it certainly did. Horace would, of course, have denied such a possibility, repelled by the notion of desire in a woman.

  The question, now, was what to do about it. If anything could be done. Because Marie had discovered another gradation in human relationships: reconciled to the idea of a sexual adventure with Neil Otway, the prospect of initiating it herself remained unthinkable. All the more frustrating, therefore, that Neil should so far have shown no sign of wanting to do anything about it.

  Can you ravish a man? she asked herself, not knowing the answer or intending to find out.

  She wielded her paintbrush like a dagger, slashing her taut emotions across the canvas. She walked alone beside the river, watching the suck and flow of the water, the sinews upon the surface marking the presence of currents and whirlpools. The suck and flow … There was sensuality and frustration even in that.

  The firelit tent at night, the togetherness that had become a torment, that was not togetherness at all.

  I cannot bear it, she thought.

  Then, one day …

  2

  A morning, glossy with new sunlight. The burnished light flooded her eyes with its brilliance. Every tree and blade of grass, every dewdrop, blazed. It was a holy fire, filling her. Marie wandered wide in what had become her world of water and wonder. The ecstasy and desire of that world intoxicated her. She walked until, in an upsurge of emotion, she threw herself full length upon the grass. She could smell dampness, sense the infinitesimal chirrup of creatures too small to see. Her eyes probed a forest of green: grass stems rich and dense, through which the sunlight kindled emerald flame.

  It was so brilliant that she had to close her eyes against it. There was torment as well as glory in seeing such things: pain, both physical and emotional, in being blinded by the intensity of the light.

  Into this brilliant world Neil came running.

  ‘Are you all right?’

  She turned on her back, smiled up at him. ‘Of course.’ Hearing languor in her voice, feeling it in the soft warmth pouring through her body that knew instinctively, as Marie herself knew, that now was the time. ‘I’m fine.’ Or will be.

  ‘I saw you fall. When you didn’t get up —’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  And lay there. She saw his expression change. He knelt at her side. His fingers touched hers, so cautiously. She stirred, feeling heat flush her face. His fingers moved.

  She floated in light but also within the shadow of the man, who filled her, and the world, with glory. The pressure of the unfamiliar … She had always thought she would be frightened to go through that gate into the unknown, but discovered now that she was not. Doubt — of the future, of being bound — vanished. There was now, only now, and the light.

  Another day:

  I lie on my back in the grass, feeling the warm breast of the earth sustain me. I thrust the length of my spine into it. I press every inch of my body against it. Were it possible, I would take off every scrap and tatter of clothing. I would lie naked to embrace the fecund earth, the warm early summer air.

  Let me think about that. We have been in this place for three days, in that time have seen only the river, the hunch-shouldered trees, the sky. An occasional flight of birds, jewel-bright. A kangaroo here and there. Not one person. Someone may come to disturb my communion with the earth, but it does not seem likely.

  Very well.

  I stand. Gravely, I remove my clothes, every scrap and tatter, as I promised. Promised whom? Myself? The earth? The spirit of whatever is? It does not matter to whom the silent promise was addressed, simply that it was. Knowing this is also freedom.

  Naked, I stand before the earth, the sky, the hunch-shouldered trees. Before myself. As though entering upon a sacred rite, I kneel, then lie full length, face downwards, breathing the essence of the earth. I cling to its warmth, embracing it with lips, breast, belly, thighs. Even my toes embrace it. I am one with the earth.

  I turn upon my back. I watch through slitted eyes the clouds drifting above me in stately procession as though they, too, were part of the ritual. I hear the wind’s voice; somewhere a parrot’s cry punctures the air; I sense the earth’s slow breathing in my own.

  Neil is somewhere, nowhere. Neil, for the moment, is irrelevant, as though he has never been. Yet, without the knowledge of myself that he has brought me through the simple act of taking the virginity that I barely knew I had, my present thoughts and feelings would never have come into being. By rupturing my hymen, Neil has guided me into another world of perception and thought. Communing with the earth, I am one with all things. My artist’s destiny is to record whatever the spirits of air and earth and light conjure from my subservient hand.

  I do not want Neil to discover me as, in this instant, I am. He will read false messages in my nudity. There are times when I welcome his pounding thrusts that bring my blood singing through my veins, but not now. Now I want to be, only that. Alone, I am one with all things. Alone, I am not alone.

  Marie remembered when she had returned home from school and first heard the name of Atlas Pentecost, the artist who had come into the district and into their lives. How innocent she had been, how unstained by the world! And then Atlas. Ah, Atlas, who had touched, not her flesh, but so much else: her attitude to the male, to Aline, to the world. Most of all, to herself, that shy creature standing at the crack of the partly-open door, staring at —

  Aline, sighing, groaning, in the throes of

  the satyr face looking down at

  the blow to her own pysche.

  Tell the truth, now, was there nothing Aline’s sighs, her ardent limbs gleaning light of heat, of a sharing from the storeroom window, motes of dust gleaming in the warm-smelling air as she wove the lazy patterns of the sensations that you felt vicariously, of ecstasy and surrender the moist throb of awakening heat?

  And knew that yes, there had been something, and that it was that rather than the spectacle of her sister in the sexual throes that had created such tumult within her. Such guilt. That she should watch her own sister weaving the patterns of lust and herself feel lust.

  Lust, again, in the arms of Katie Vanning. The forbidden touching you are so beautiful the harshness of her own breath oh yes, do you like that? And that? oh yes.

  For the first time, she saw what had been her home through Katie’s eyes. Now the splendour of the house and grounds, even the vastness of the view, oppressed her. It had become alien, beyond her comprehension.

  She lied about what she had been doing, admitting to the trip along the river, but making up a party of several men and women, who — naturally — had acted with decorum throughout. She had brought with her some of her paintings, to show them and to put at rest any anxieties that Horace might have as to what she had been doing. She even sat and listened as he discoursed upon the problems of his various businesses, the lack of investment capital, the reluctance of overseas financiers to sink funds into Australia.

  ‘Without which we shall all be ruined,’ he declared. ‘Ruined! But what can you expect, when we have a workforce that behaves so irresponsibly? It’ll be starvation next, starvation
for the lot of us.’

  Yet, to look at him, plump within his plump house, he had weathered the recent economic storms better than most. Certainly better than Henry Pearman who, it seemed, had not recovered from his downfall.

  ‘No guts,’ Horace said, who even now could be trapped by an unseemly phrase into betraying his origins. Oblivious of such niceties, his smile held a certain smugness. ‘You’ve got to fight, no matter what,’ he said.

  Marie found it easier to talk to Martha but, even with her, took care to guard her tongue. More perceptive than her husband, Martha no doubt noticed her reticence, may even have suspected its cause, but said nothing.

  ‘Have you heard from my mother? Or Aline?’

  Nothing from either of them. ‘We live very quietly here,’ Martha said. ‘And of course we are rather out of the way.’

  She did not point out, as she might have done, that Marie, living in Sydney, was better placed to keep in touch with her mother than Martha was.

  I shall go and see her as soon as I get back, Marie promised herself. I have something to talk to her about, now. Because Eugénie, after all, had known artists. With her she could be more open than was possible here. And Eugénie was not supporting her, whereas Horace was. It seemed unreasonable that she should blame Martha for that, but she did.

  Only once, while they were strolling together through the rose garden, did Martha come close to mentioning how Marie had chosen to live her life.

  ‘Businessmen collect a great deal of information. It is important to them, to know what is going on in the world.’

  Marie detected an obscure warning in the words, but did not know what it might be.

  Martha examined a bud that was just breaking into flower. ‘Mr Ingersoll has interests in the Hunter Valley.’

  Still Marie was no wiser, nor had any wish to play guessing games.

  ‘There is a man there, a big landowner, whom he has come to know very well. His name is Otway. He has a son,’ Martha said. ‘Neil. Who knows you, I think.’

  Somehow Marie held onto her face. ‘He is a friend.’

  ‘He went with you on this trip along the Murray?’

  ‘He was one of the group. Yes.’

  Marie had known nothing of Neil’s background, had never thought to ask. He was one of them; that had been enough.

  She waited nervously for Martha to probe further, but she did not.

  ‘There is a new rose over here I want to show you.’

  Evidently the subject of Neil Otway was closed, but the warning, if that was what it had been, had been delivered. Marie did not need to be told what Horace would do about her allowance if he ever suspected what had been going on.

  She stayed with them two days, breathed a sigh of relief when she got away. Martha had been her friend all her life. She owed her everything, yet now Martha’s loyalty was to her husband. And Horace, particularly upon questions of art and the ways of artists, had views.

  * * *

  She spent a few days with Aline before going back to the city. Another grand house, older and more comfortable than the one she had left, although the excrescences that Charles Widdecombe called art still hung upon the walls.

  Aline, Marie saw at once, was restless.

  ‘What’s wrong?’

  Knew before Aline answered what the trouble was. Aline was lost.

  ‘I feel so shut in …’ She had everything that the material world could offer yet, like so many people, was dissatisfied with the choice she had made. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are, being able to come and go as you like, live as you like.’

  After two days of probing questions from Horace and Martha Ingersoll, Marie was in no mood for her sister’s nonsense.

  ‘You have money, a position in society —’

  ‘And you paint.’

  Martha’s prophecy had come true: Aline, who had abandoned art for marriage, now envied her sister for having what she could have had, had she so wished, and did not.

  Marie had no patience with her. ‘This business of painting … You know as well as I do that it’s got many more dramas than triumphs. The number of times I’ve felt like giving up, because a painting hasn’t come out the way I want. The number of times I frighten myself, thinking how far my talent falls below my ambition.’ Frustration overflowed. ‘It’s impossible to be a woman artist in this world,’ she declared furiously. ‘I can’t go out and do the things men do. Even to have a drink with them, talk over technical problems, exchange ideas…. If you try, people think you’re a whore. Even the artists think it. I went out once, with a woman friend of mine, and one of the men she knew wouldn’t take his hands off me.’

  ‘You mean he touched you? Truly?’

  ‘Everywhere. He wouldn’t stop.’

  Aline was fascinated. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘I threw a glass of beer in his face.’

  Laughter, then, and incredulity. ‘What happened?’

  ‘There was a bit of a fight, then we all went home.’

  Marie listened to herself and marvelled. That was how it had happened, but already it was hard to believe. How I have changed, she thought.

  Aline scoffed. ‘You live like that and still claim you’re not free?’

  ‘It didn’t feel like freedom at the time. You’re far better off than I am. You have a husband who loves you, a fine son, a lovely home. What do I have? Nothing at all. Every woman needs affection, yet I’m alone, and likely to remain so. I’d count your blessings, if I were you.’

  Aline gave her a sly smile. ‘Do you really have no-one to give you affection?’

  Marie had intended to tell her sister about Neil Otway, but now thought better of it. Aline had never been a person you could trust with dangerous secrets.

  ‘I have no-one.’

  Time enough to tell her about it, she thought, when there’s something to tell.

  4

  Marie moved in with Neil as soon as she got back to Sydney, abandoning her garret studio without regret; Neil had a much nicer place, with plenty of room for them both, and an outlook that gave them all the light they could wish for.

  ‘When you fall in the water,’ Katie said, ‘you really go in with a splash, don’t you?’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ She knew — oh yes — but derived such pleasure from hearing Katie say it.

  ‘You were the one who was always so worried about your independence. Now you not only sleep with him, you’ve moved in with him.’

  ‘You live with Dougie.’

  ‘That’s no different from my job. All I have to do is take my clothes off. You’re an artist.’ She rolled her eyes most fearfully as she said it. ‘You are supposed to worry about such things.’

  Katie’s reaction to the new Marie was an odd mixture: indulgence, humour, impatience and — yes — perhaps a little jealousy, after all. Meanwhile, Marie ran through her new life on tiptoe; she would not have cared had the world come to an end that minute.

  ‘I love him,’ she explained.

  That brought out the darker side of Katie’s nature. ‘Love comes and goes like the wind, I think.’

  Perhaps with Katie it did, but Marie did not believe it would blow away quite so easily, in her case. She hoped not in Neil’s, either — although he had certainly changed since they had come back to the city.

  For that Marie blamed Jack Huggett.

  Jack was notorious and proud of it, a wild man, a sort-of artist of huge physical energy, all of it bad. Marie had summed him up the first time she had met him; now, knowing danger when she saw it, she would have preferred to avoid him altogether. Unfortunately, that was impossible; while Marie had been staying with Martha and Aline, Neil had palled up with him. Now the two men were out every night, with her or without her, boozing in this pub, fighting in that one.

  Jack was a man built for trouble. Invariably he found it; it wasn’t hard in a city with larrikins spilling out of every alleyway. He drew catastrophe as surely as metal draws lightning, yet N
eil seemed bewitched by the man.

  ‘He’s got the cheek of the devil,’ he said admiringly.

  Marie was sick of hearing it. ‘I don’t know what you see in him.’ Yet she had her own theory. She had learned a lot about Neil since they had moved in together. His father owned a good chunk of the Hunter Valley and was determined to own a good chunk of his son as well. He had been violently opposed to Neil becoming an artist; Neil’s mother had talked him round, eventually, but he still expected to be told, in detail, what his son was up to. Grown man or not, Neil was under orders to write home every week, sending his father a report of everything he had done during the previous seven days.

  Marie had been incredulous. ‘And you do it?’

  ‘I skipped it once, to see how he’d react.’ A wry smile. ‘He cut off my allowance. Now I’m a good boy and check in every week.’ He had tried to put a brave face on it. ‘Not that I always tell him the truth, mind.’

  As well; yet she had seen that Neil despised himself for submitting so tamely to his bullying father. Once, when he was drunk, he had called himself The Eunuch. Which Marie had pointed out was far from the case. ‘I should know, if anyone does.’

  Neil had been in his self-hating mood. ‘You know perfectly well I’m not talking about that.’

  Marie believed that Neil’s self-contempt had pushed him into the arms of Jack Huggett; he was trying to prove to himself that he was a real man, after all. With Jack as he was, that meant going along with all the devilment that stuck like glue to his heels.

  Marie hated the situation. It would have been bad enough had Jack been a good artist, but his only talent was for trouble. Yet Neil was not the only one to be bewitched by him. Another member of what Marie privately called Jack Huggett’s Mob was Pete Marchant, a nonentity who carried a pistol to prop up his suspect manhood. Even Katie hung around with them, off and on, in the company of another model. Phyllis Gould was young, wilful, and Pete Marchant was besotted with her. She gave him a hard time, but he never complained. On the contrary, he loved it. Had Phyllis wanted to wipe her boots on him, Pete would have lain down in the street without a murmur.