Sun in Splendour

by JH Fletcher

  Marie was appalled that anyone could accept degradation with such dog-like devotion. It was not love, but sickness; she was certain no good would come of it, and events soon proved her right.

  5

  T‘here’s a party,’ Neil said one night. ‘At Franchesca’s.’ It was a new restaurant that Jack’s Mob had taken to visiting whenever they had money. Trotting behind Jack Huggett as usual, Marie thought sourly, while the only reason he went was because he was hoping to talk the woman who ran it into his bed.

  Marie felt uncomfortable in such company. She disliked Phyllis almost as much as Jack, while for Pete Marchant she felt nothing but contempt. On the other hand, Katie would probably be there and she knew that, if she refused, Neil would go without her. So she smiled and went along, hoping she would enjoy it, after all.

  Enjoyment was hardly the word for it; it was a catastrophe from the start. Jack tried to chat up the padrone and had no luck, which made him mad. Phyllis who, Marie suspected, knew Jack a good deal better than she let on, was in a sulk and took it out on Pete. Katie had not turned up, after all. Neil chatted and laughed with Jack and took no notice even when Jack tried to feel Marie up beneath the table. All of them were drunk. It was terrible, terrible. Then, just as Marie was telling herself that she could bear it no longer and would have to go home, with Neil or without him, disaster erupted.

  On the other side of the table, Pete and Phyllis had been bickering interminably and with increasing heat, like a pot coming to the boil. Now, all of a sudden, the pot spilled over.

  Chaos, out of nowhere, with Pete trying to clamber on to the table while Phyllis, screeching, tried to drag him back.

  Jack, as indulgently loyal to Pete as to a dog, pushed her away. ‘Let him say his piece, if he wants to. We might even hear some sense, for a change.’

  She took no notice, hauling at Pete’s shirt and shrieking fit to burst a boiler. Jack did not take kindly to being ignored, especially by a woman. He backhanded her casually, smashing her back in her chair. ‘I said belt up!’

  Marie, aghast, hand over her mouth, saw:

  Pete Marchant, swaying and spluttering, standing on the table at last;

  Phyllis Gould, half-stunned, the imprint of Jack’s hand flaring red across her cheek;

  Jack, leaning back in his chair, arm resting across Marie’s shoulders, as he laughed with red mouth at the frenzy erupting around him;

  Neil, chuckling indulgently, unconcerned.

  Herself, watching with horrified eyes the red flare of rage, anguish and impending tragedy combine with the gold lights of the restaurant, the white faces of the diners and Phyllis Gould’s sapphire dress, in an explosion of colours that seared her sight like shards of ice, creating a polychromatic impression of catastrophe, terrifying and inevitable.

  Into which Pete’s voice spilled, as thin as wire. ‘I have told Phyllis I love her. That we love one another —’

  His words brought Phyllis to life again. ‘Shut up, you fool!’

  ‘That I want to marry her …’

  Jack was laughing, beating the table with his fist, cheering Pete on …

  To disaster. So clearly Marie saw the plumed riders, the horses with fiery wings. The clamour of their hooves pounded in her head.

  She turned frantically from one of them to the other, but found comfort nowhere. All of them, Neil included, were caught up in the catastrophic plunge into disaster, avid lips cheering, the lust for ruin lively in their eyes. Into all this Phyllis’s voice fell like an axe.

  ‘I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in Australia!’ Jack’s handprint still brilliant upon her cheek, she took Jack’s fingers and caressed them with her lips, her eyes staring mockingly at Pete, teetering upon the tabletop.

  He ignored all the signs, eyes resolutely shut as he raised his voice to shout above the hubbub. ‘We love each other. Now, in front of all of you, I am asking her publicly to marry me.’

  Marie saw Phyllis drop Jack’s fingers and stare, mesmerised, lips parted, as Pete bent to look into her eyes.

  ‘Marry me!’

  Phyllis shrank from him but otherwise did not move, imprisoned like the rest within the tragedy that was sweeping them all away.

  ‘Marry me!’ Pete knelt amid a litter of smashed and sliding plates, bottles, glasses, trying to snatch at Phyllis’s fingers as though, by capturing them, he might capture her, too.

  Galvanised by his touch, she snatched her hands away. She turned to the rest of them, furiously. ‘He can’t even get it up, for God’s sake! Look at him. You sorry bastard!’ she screamed, their faces almost touching. ‘Why don’t you leave me alone?’

  Pete scrambled once again to his feet, uttering a cry redolent of despair, rage, betrayal, barely human yet all too human, the sound emerging from the straining lips of this man who lacked so many of the attributes of a man. He straightened and drew his gun, aiming at Phyllis and firing at the same instant. They were only feet apart; it was impossible to miss her. Except that Jack, who might be Satan’s brewmaster but was still less drunk than the rest, reacted the instant he saw the weapon come clear of Pete’s belt, his clenched fist punching the barrel skywards in the instant before it went off.

  It happened so fast that Marie could not interpret the confusion of images that assailed her: Pete staggering, clutching the gun, Jack’s fist still scything the air, while the combined impacts of detonation, jetting smoke and stench of cordite held her transfixed and unbelieving, amid the erupting frenzy of the room.

  Phyllis was falling sideways behind Jack’s chair, while Pete brandished his weapon.

  ‘One for you!’ he shouted. ‘And one for me!’

  Even Jack’s reflexes were not quick enough to prevent him thrusting the muzzle into his mouth. Marie’s tight-clenched eyes shut out sight, but could not obliterate the sound, muffled yet portentous, that fell like a blow upon her ears.

  There was a crash as the table went over amid a shattering of glass, followed by an eyeblink of utter silence into which poured a maelstrom of screams, her own agonised awareness of the tragedy that had erupted and that now seemed certain to engulf them all.

  6

  Except that it did not. Pete’s brains were strewn across the room but Pete, by his own inadequacies, had been a doomed man in any case. Phyllis was unscathed, having thrown herself behind Jack’s chair for protection in case Pete tried a second shot. If Jack, having saved her once, resented being used as a human shield, he gave no sign.

  The police came, asked questions and left. Attempted murder might have made their day, but not when the perpetrator was dead. As for suicide … No prospects of promotion there.

  The four of them hung around, waiting for the body to be carted off to the mortuary, while Jack assured them repeatedly that they had all come out of it pretty well. Apart from Pete, of course, but Pete had always been a no-hoper.

  ‘Who is going to pay?’ Franchesca, if that was her name, assailed him with fists and voice.

  Jack turned, face ugly. ‘Talk to him about it,’ he said, pointing with massive chin at the covered body. ‘Why don’t you?’

  The ambulance came and left. Jack took Phyllis off, his eyes and lascivious smile promising comfort after what had been a most traumatic evening.

  Marie walked home, barely conscious of Neil at her side. Her brain was frozen with horror and disbelief at what had happened, what had caused it to happen, at the evening’s callous ending.

  A man was dead, and all any of them had been concerned about was that they should be blamed for nothing, be required to pay nothing. A man dead …

  I shall never get over it, she thought. I saw what was coming and did not lift a finger. We are all to blame, but I more than the rest, because I saw and understood, and they did not.

  I did nothing and a man, Peter Marchant, whom I did not like but who had done me no wrong, is dead because of it. I killed him, as much as the bullet, as he himself. I knew and did nothing.

  I promised myself that
in the city I would be whole. And look at me. Look at all of us.

  7

  Jack, claiming so effortlessly the body of the woman for whom Pete Marchant had killed himself, might have thought they had got off lightly, but there were repercussions.

  The newspapers got hold of the story and, in the way of newspapers, made a huge drama out of it.

  STUDENT SLAIN. DISASTER OF DOOMED LOVE

  SUICIDE, ATTEMPTED KILLING AT DRUNKEN ORGY

  WOMEN LAUGH AS ARTIST TAKES OWN LIFE

  Those present that evening were identified. Comments were quoted, or invented. Leading articles spoke in sombre tones of irresponsibility and — infinitely worse — of degeneracy and vice.

  CAN WE PERMIT SUCH CONDUCT IN OUR FAIR CITY?

  Jack didn’t give a damn.

  Horace Ingersoll did.

  8

  Marie and Neil went to Pete’s funeral. It, too, was dreadful, a fitting end to what had been a dreadful business from the start. Neither Jack nor Phyllis was there. Neil would have preferred not to be there, either. ‘What’s the point?’

  Her own conscience troubling her, Marie thought he should feel guilty, too. ‘It’s the least we can do.’

  And dragged him along, regardless of protests.

  ‘Unconsecrated ground,’ she mourned afterwards.

  It was the fate of suicides who, after all, were guilty of self-murder. Or so the church said.

  ‘What of it?’ Neil’s mood was as sharp as knives. ‘Pete didn’t give a damn about the church.’

  Even so.

  They went home in sombre mood, at odds with each other, to find Horace on the doorstep.

  A burst of fury, like shrapnel. I track you down. Find you living with … The life you are leading. Appalling publicity. At my expense.

  ‘You have a clear choice,’ Horace told her. ‘Come with me now, or I shall turn my back. Cut you out of my life. Forever. Choose.’

  And stood, glaring. As though such decisions could be made within an instant.

  ‘I need time —’

  ‘No time!’

  But Marie was no longer the child Horace had known, vulnerable to anger, who could be coerced. ‘I need time to arrange my affairs.’

  Her words struck a chord, as she had intended; Horace had been arranging affairs all his life. ‘How long?’

  ‘Two days.’ To decide what to do. While Neil stood open-mouthed beside her, as much use as a lump of wood.

  ‘Very well. Two days. No longer,’ he warned fiercely. ‘If you are not home the day after tomorrow, that’ll be the end of it. I shall cut you out of my life. You understand?’

  And was gone, brimstone in a tall hat.

  ‘Does he mean it?’ Neil wondered.

  Oh yes, Horace meant it. It made life difficult, because Neil’s father, too, was up in arms.

  ‘Damn the bloody newspapers,’ Neil said.

  Indeed, but cursing the papers didn’t help. Without money …

  ‘I don’t intend to starve,’ Marie said.

  ‘Then what do we do?’

  ‘You go home. Sweet-talk your father. Tell him the newspapers made it up. Tell him what you like. He’ll come round.’ A bitter smile. ‘You’re his only son, after all.’

  By contrast, she had never been more than a burden to Horace. One that he had been willing to shoulder, admittedly. He was a decent man, for all his bluster, but this … The prospect of embarrassment, of losing face before his peers, of losing confidence, was unacceptable.

  Do I blame him? she thought. And did not. That made her own decision easier.

  ‘What will you do?’ asked Neil, compliant in the face of crisis. Marie did not know whether she welcomed his docility or despised him because of it. Both, perhaps. ‘I shall go home, too.’

  Neil was crestfallen, as though she had spat at them both. ‘What about us?’

  ‘We’ll put it on hold, for the moment. It’ll come right, you’ll see. Then we’ll get together again.’

  ‘You still care for me?’

  ‘Don’t be silly.’

  She proved it to him that night, or tried to. But knew, even as she cried out within his arms, that she had not answered his question, or her own.

  9

  All in all, things went better than she’d had any right to expect. Martha was kind, if subdued; Horace was starch-stiff — no fatted calf for this prodigal — but at least he didn’t gloat. Nothing was said; even the silence, in this world enfolded by the peaceful arms of trees, did nothing to reproach. It helped that she had disliked Pete; even after what had happened, she could not help thinking how typical it had been of him to cause them so much trouble.

  Neil, too, was diminished by the distance between now and then. She had discovered flaws in him that she had not expected, yet was more tolerant of his involvement in Pete’s death than she was of her own. Whether this was a measure of her affection for him, or of her contempt, she was unsure. What she did know was that being away from him had put him into perspective. It was hard to think of him, now, as the man with whom she had explored the unknown territory, not only of the Murray Riverlands, but of herself and the mystery surrounding all things.

  PART VI

  THE PROMISE RENEWED

  I eat the air, promise-crammed

  — William Shakespeare (Hamlet)

  Alan

  Spare a thought for Horace.

  By 1897 the smell of politics was beginning to sweeten the air for those interested in ruling and shaking the world, or at least the antipodean corner of it. Then, as today, those with money thought they had a divine right to rule. The prospect of Horace becoming a minister, even perhaps the prime minister, of an independent Commonwealth was being discussed, more or less openly. Heady dreams, which would be wounded seriously, perhaps mortally, by Marie’s antics with her unspeakable friends. The last thing Horace needed was his adopted daughter letting the side down. So far the papers had not brought his name into it, but they were bound to make the connection eventually, if things weren’t sorted out. So Horace cracked the whip, Marie came home, and all was well. Or sort of.

  It was at Woonga that my grandmother did some of the best of her early work. Those paintings of the Woonga landscape hang in every major gallery on earth. The Hermitage in St Petersburg has an especially fine example, a view from the knoll at the back of Horace’s house. The house itself is in the foreground, standing before a sweeping panorama of plains and rolling hills thick with trees. Most of the timber is long gone but, in those days, the bush would have been a brooding presence not to be forgotten by even the most worldly of those who congregated regularly in Horace’s drawing room. In 1897 there were many visitors; Horace had survived the depression that had wiped out so many of his competitors and become a Great Man. Wealth increases a man’s stature, so that even the most insignificant bruise the earth like giants when they have money in their pockets.

  It is no coincidence that the St Petersburg landscape carries within it a shadow of darkness: the weighty house presses upon a landscape seemingly too ephemeral to support it. The light is structured in such a way that the viewer’s eye focuses at once upon the glowing stonework, while the countryside remains under a pall of gathering dusk. At first sight, the painting celebrates Horace’s wealth and success in terms that he himself would have approved, the palatial house triumphant against a cowering and subdued landscape, yet later, after the observer has gone about his business, it is not the house that he remembers but the bush itself, the seemingly subdued land emerging quietly out of the darkness to lap against the arrogant walls, like the forest of thorns in the fable, sprung up about the sleeping princess. Perhaps for this reason, when you look closely into the depths of the painting, you discover two more images, neither of which exists in the actual landscape that the painting is supposed to portray: the gleam of a river with the hint — no more than that — of two pale shadows on its bank. The tiny figures may not be human, may be kangaroos, perhaps, but are too far away for the viewe
r to be sure. Nevertheless, the feeling conveyed is of a man and a woman. They may be lying asleep amid the shadows, and may not. They may be the sleeping princess, and the prince come to awaken her. And may not.

  The name of the painting? Enigma.

  All her life my grandmother enjoyed deflating pomposities. In her later years, she had the status to do pretty much what she liked but, in those early days, she had to be careful. Horace was paying the bills and had been sadly shaken by her antics in the city. If she wanted to eat at his table, she had to toe Horace’s line — in social things, at least.

  She did so, which in itself was a remarkable exercise in self-discipline, for one of Marie Desmoulin’s temperament.

  I have never seen anything wrong in that, although some critics have taken her to task because of it. She should have stood tall, so the theory goes. She should have spat in Horace’s eye and told him what he could do with his house, his attitude, his allowance. These fools tell us that this would have freed her from an oppressive relationship, enabling her to produce the masterpieces that they claim were lost to the world because she did not break free. ‘An artist in shackles cannot be a true artist’ — one contemporary critic has actually put his name to such garbage. It comes well from a man who, if rumour is to be believed, is not unfamiliar with shackles himself: shackles and whips and muscular ladies in leather boots and little else, dominating and humiliating him so deliciously.

  It is enough to make you despair of the human race. Of course Marie could have left Horace’s house and the security it offered. And then? How was she supposed to live? To eat? To find a place to sleep? Do these people seriously suggest that there is greater freedom in starvation, in the degradation that would most certainly have accompanied her, than in doing what she did?