by JH Fletcher
‘Hear from Neil at all?’ Katie asked, as though he were no more than a friend.
The innocence and hypocrisy of one for whom the past did not exist, who attached no importance to what had happened, who had even, perhaps, forgotten what had happened … But she had kept the photograph, Marie reminded herself, and wondered whether Neil, too, had one tucked away in a drawer — with who knew what other pictures of himself, of women, of himself and women.
Where? Marie thought. Here? On this couch that I am to sleep on? How many times? Had they cared for each other? Was it still going on?
And once again she buried the questions, and the memory.
Love comes and goes like the wind, I think.
Perhaps Katie had been right, after all.
6
A‘ren’t you going to let Neil know you’re back?’
‘Perhaps.’
She had intended to, but so far had not. In the meantime, she was painting. She tried something new. Pete Marchant, dead, lying on a bier, a candle burning in the background: the religious ceremony that the Church had denied him because of the manner of his death. And the candle flame, shaped like a woman’s orifice, the orifice shared by Jack and Katie and many others, no doubt, the symbol of what Pete had seemingly never possessed and that had brought him, in the end, to his death. Yet it was only a candle flame to those without eyes to see beneath the surface.
‘What d’you want to paint him for?’ Katie wondered.
‘To remind myself how nearly I came unstuck.’
‘With Pete?’ Katie laughed. ‘A no-hoper like him? I don’t believe a word of it.’
Marie did not explain. Love comes and goes — Katie, Pete, Phyllis — like the wind. And Neil.
The candle flame, burning in darkness. As a reminder.
7
After the trauma of what she had discovered during her snoop through Katie’s things — serves me right, she thought — she had told herself, once again, to focus on one thing only: her art. Easily said, but it was not so easy to rid herself of desire. Katie seldom slept alone and, for Marie, lying in darkness behind the rag-tag curtain that concealed nothing of what was happening on the other side, it proved an intensely frustrating experience. Marie told herself she was disgusted, and was not; that art precluded other considerations, and discovered how shaming it was to lie to oneself.
She went to see Lucien Henry, at the East Sydney Tech. Found a young man on fire with love of art.
‘Bring me some of your work. Let me see something.’
She had not dared throw her work at him uninvited. Now she had no choice. She spent the evening making up her mind what she would show him and finally picked out two that she thought would be safe enough to appeal. At the last moment, she threw in with them her latest painting, the portrait of the dead Pete Marchant.
At the Tech, Lucien propped the canvases against the wall of his office. He walked up and down before them in silence, fingers folded under his chin, eyes intent, while Marie waited and prayed for the ground to swallow her.
Eventually he sat down behind his desk. Only then did he look at her.
‘Tell me about them.’
Marie did not know what he wanted her to say. ‘That one is a painting of the harbour I did in Macquarie Street, looking down past Mort’s Warehouse —’
‘I know where it is. I want to know why you painted it. And how.’
‘Why? I think, perhaps, something about the light.’ She groped to put into words what she had thought adequately expressed in paint. ‘The contrast between the solid building, four-square on the earth, and the delicate rigging of the ships, the light on the water …’ Her voice petered away; it was impossible to explain in words. ‘I don’t know why I painted it.’ He nodded as though her tangled words had satisfied him. ‘And how?’
‘In oil —’
He interrupted her at once. ‘Not that. In the studio? Or plein air? There, on the spot,’ he explained.
It was the jab she needed. ‘You do not have to tell me what plein air means,’ she said haughtily. ‘My father was an artist in Paris. A friend of Monet,’ she added, to rub it in.
If she had hoped to impress him, she was disappointed. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
‘There. On the spot. In plein air,’ she added spitefully.
‘Why?’
‘Because that seemed the best way to do it.’
‘Most of the Impressionists touch up their work in the studio.’
‘Monet doesn’t.’
‘So he claims.’
She stared at him while he smiled at her: the knowing smile of a man who thought he knew better. I detest him, she thought. She felt like picking up her paintings and walking out, leaving him to get on with his life. But did not.
This, too, was something to be borne.
‘It was how I wanted to do it.’ Each word was razor-edged; her eyes scraped skin from his face.
He nodded and turned his gaze to the next one. ‘And this?’
‘A woman I met in the slums, and the man she lived with.’ She contemplated the painting, a chronicle of the wreckage of human lives. A bottle, glasses, bloated features, glazed expressions, an overwhelming aura of dirt and despair. In the background, the blank walls of tenements clamped fetters upon the air.
‘Gin Lane,’ Lucien said. And again smiled at her. ‘Will you be cross with me if I say “by Hogarth”?’
‘I never heard of him.’
‘An eighteenth-century English artist who worked in the London slums. Gin Lane is one of his most famous works. Although this,’ looking back at the painting, ‘reminds me more of a work by Degas.’
‘My mother couldn’t stand him.’ And wondered why she found it necessary to try and impress this man.
‘I understand he is hard to like. And what about this one?’
‘Someone I knew. He killed himself, so they buried him in unconsecrated ground.’
‘Are you religious?’
‘No. Neither was he. But it seemed wrong to judge him for what happened. I was there and they weren’t.’
‘Was he a friend?’
‘I didn’t even like him. But I knew I wouldn’t feel right about it until I’d painted him.’
‘And do you feel right?’
‘Yes. I’ve got rid of it.’
‘And the candle flame? It looks like —’
‘I know what it looks like. It’s meant to. That was why Pete killed himself. Because of a woman.’
This man was the only one who had seen it and understood, yet he had known none of them or the circumstances of Pete Marchant’s death. Marie found herself rapidly revising her first hostility to Lucien Henry.
He stared at her assessingly while she stood, half-fainting, her heartbeat filling her chest. ‘What do you want me to say?’
‘I want you to tell me what you think of them.’
He nodded judiciously. He got to his feet and once again strolled slowly over to the paintings. He looked them over, bent down to study the brushwork, taking his time about it, while Marie could have screamed in frustration and terror. At last he looked at her. She forced herself to meet his gaze, every muscle tense, expecting the blow she had invited and that was now about to fall upon her. She had gone beyond fear or expectation or hope; she stood mindlessly, eyeing him in silence.
His smile was warm and genuine. ‘They are wonderful,’ he said.
8
Afterwards Marie could not remember how she had got home through the exultant streets.
Wonderful, he had said. They are wonderful.
He had said other things, too. A major talent. Most precious of all: As soon as you can get enough paintings together, I’ll organise your first one-man show.
Katie was home and saw at once that something huge had happened. ‘What did he say?’
Marie told her, barely able to hold back her tears.
Katie leapt to her feet and danced in the middle of the room. They would have to celebr
ate, she said. A few friends, a bottle or two of wine. ‘Or of grog,’ she said.
‘Of anything,’ Marie said and laughed, scarcely able to believe that she was alive, that this day of reckless joy, for which she had longed for so many years, had arrived at last. Katie wouldn’t let Marie lift a finger. ‘It’s in your honour!’ Marie luxuriated in it; it filled her with voluptuous pleasure to be waited on by a friend, from love, rather than as she had previously known it, by servants at Horace’s house, paid to do what they were told.
The little apartment was decorated with balloons and streamers; it was tidied by the simple expedient of shoving everything into corners, so that at least the centre of the room was clear. Into it, armed with bottles and exuberant laughter, with offerings of food and raised voices, crowded those whom Katie had invited to share their celebrations. An arty mob, for the most part, although there were one or two of Katie’s Russian friends, heavily-bearded, who Marie hoped, romantically, might be anarchists. She knew hardly anyone, but it didn’t matter. Neither Jack nor Phyllis was present, and she was glad. Lukas wasn’t there, either; Katie had broken with him long ago, but there was still bitterness between them. Two people arrived whom she had not expected. Lucien Henry, from the East Sydney Tech, came armed with a lethal-looking flagon of what the label claimed was fruity red wine.
‘He’s the reason for this shindig, after all,’ Katie said. ‘It seemed only right to ask him along.’
The second visitor was Neil Otway.
Despite everything, Marie felt her heart thump. ‘Hi.’ Not what you would call an inspired greeting, but she could think of nothing more to say.
‘How you going?’ Neil, as comfortable as a roo with its leg in a noose.
‘Good.’ She wanted to say more, but could not get the words out. Behind her eyes hammered the memory of that photograph of this man making love with Katie. Her friends. Her lovers. If love was the word for it, she thought viciously, and smiled at him with lips as stiff as leather.
She had a glass of the fruity red in her hand. She slugged it. It tasted like paint stripper but it hit the spot, and she had another.
‘Things going well with you?’ The wine was unlocking her tongue; now she was proud of the way she was chatting to this stranger whom she had told herself she loved.
‘You didn’t write,’ he said.
A bit cool from someone who had also not written. She smiled at him brightly, while the wine — a thousand-proof, by the feel of it — lit flickering fires beneath her skin. ‘I thought you’d developed other interests.’ A challenge, of sorts, which he could take up or not, as he chose.
‘Of course I haven’t.’
But his eyes flickered, and she knew that he understood. Or at least suspected. She had imagined it would be humiliating to let him see that she knew about Katie and still be willing to talk to him, but it was not like that at all. She felt triumphant that she could withstand even this, that she could look at him, see so clearly the image of what he had done, and still smile. Her knowledge and her reaction to it — letting him see while saying nothing — had made him her prisoner. She would never give him the satisfaction of confirming her knowledge but, despite or because of that, would hold him, always, in the palm of her hand.
It was not what she had wanted. She would have liked a man strong enough to dominate her, to command — and receive — her obedience. Neil was not the man for that. At least now she could dominate him, but there was sadness as well as triumph in the thought.
Marie, too, had received a message. Katie had no reason to suspect that Marie knew what had happened but, by bringing her together again with Neil, was signalling that she had no claim.
Now she gave Neil a changed smile, warm and promising. ‘I’m glad to see you. I’ve thought about you a lot.’
Another message: that, when the evening was over, there were pleasures that she would bestow. Or not, as she chose.
The guests, many of them stumbling, raucous, were gone at last. The curtain, more taggy than ever, concealed nothing. It was there only as a symbol, dividing and uniting friends, and lovers.
Neil had not wanted to stay. ‘It’ll be more private at my place.’
Now it was his eyes that were sending hot messages, but Marie disregarded them. She had decided what was to happen and was not interested in anything he might have to say about it.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Here.’
In this apartment, on this couch. Here, almost certainly where Neil and Katie had lain together, she would reclaim him. Call it vengeance, or symmetry; call it what you like. Here, or nowhere.
Some men would not have stood for it; it rankled that this man, who accepted his father’s tyranny for the sake of money, should be willing to put up with this, too, but that was how Neil was. It was no use yearning for anything else, she told herself. A more forceful man might have dominated her: but where, then, would be her freedom?
Yet it was sad that there seemed nowhere that a man and woman could be equal, uniting their complementary aspects of humanity without need for domination or submission. If only I could find such a place, and such a man, she mourned. That must be what people meant when they spoke of soul mates. In the meantime, she would settle for what she had. Painting was as necessary to her as breath, but even painting was not enough. It fulfilled her emotionally, spiritually, but could never give the sense of physical wholeness that she also needed from life. Hence Neil, until a more complete being appeared.
The darkness was heavy with the sound of breathing: here, and there. Beyond the curtain, Katie was with a young woman, little more than a child. Marie could hear the girl’s high voice arching into exclamation points of sensation as Katie introduced her to pleasure and the long-term probability of alienation and despair.
Do you like that? And that?
Marie shut memory from her mind, told herself to concentrate on what was happening between herself and Neil. Now she encouraged him to dominate her, most pleasurably, setting her mind adrift. Even in the midst of sensation, she knew that, in this too, Neil was obeying her will, that it was happening only because she had decided it would. Even in this, she thought. Dominated but free: might it be possible, after all?
Always there was a coming back. Always the waves subsided, and the prosaic world of fact and calculation returned. Yet, despite everything, it was good to be with Neil again. She felt herself drifting towards sleep, while he lay leaden beside her and, beyond the curtain, all was silence.
Tomorrow, she thought. We shall talk. And plan. Talk and …
She slept.
Awoke to daylight, a dry mouth and pounding head, and to tearful expostulations beyond the curtain.
‘When shall I see you?’
Katie, by her voice, was unmoved. ‘We’ll have to see.’
Wails and protests as the girl was bundled into her clothes and out of the door.
‘I’ll speak to you,’ Katie said.
‘Soon?’ besought the tear-stained voice.
‘I promise.’ And she shut the door on tears, and promises. ‘You awake?’ Katie called.
‘Yes.’ But Neil was not.
Katie appeared, grinning. ‘Good night?’
‘At least Neil won’t wail when I chuck him out.’
‘Poor kid. I can’t bear them in the morning.’
‘And will you see her again?’
‘I shall have to. She won’t let me go so easily.’
‘She thinks she’s in love with you.’
‘She’s probably right.’ And grinned again, eyes bright with shared memories. ‘What about you? You in love, too?’
Don’t move. Simply … accept.
‘Why should you care?’
‘We are friends, are we not?’
And have been lovers.
Love comes and goes like the wind, I think.
‘Of course I’m not in love.’
They exchanged smiles, knowing each other very well. She guesses I have found out about herself and Nei
l, Marie thought, but will say nothing. As I, too, shall say nothing. It is better to keep quiet. Besides, it no longer matters.
The memory was buried, at last.
9
Neil and Marie couldn’t stay at Katie’s place. There wasn’t room; besides, after that first deliberately-orchestrated night, Marie had no wish to exhibit herself before someone who already knew her too well for comfort.
Neil had his own apartment, as before, but did not want Marie to stay with him, for fear his father might surprise them.
‘He does that, you know. He drops in from time to time.’
‘Checking up on you.’ Marie detested this man she had never met, whose domineering ways weighed so heavily upon her life.
‘Of course.’
Neil was philosophical. Marie, with no money at all, despised him for it, yet was happy to let him keep her, if he would. Even that, she discovered, would not be easy. Now his father demanded not only a weekly accounting of how Neil spent his days, but a cash accounting, too, of how he spent his money. Or, as Mr Otway would have said, how Neil spent his father’s money.
The fact remained that Marie had to stay somewhere. They found her a one-room apartment just around the corner from Neil’s place.
‘I’ll tell him I’ve decided to rent a studio,’ said Neil.
‘What if he wants to see it?’
The brushes and paints scattered about, the odd easel and unfinished paintings should be enough to convince Mr Otway, if he came to inspect. How they would explain Marie’s presence was another question.
‘I’ll tell him I’m lending it to you,’ said Neil, ever optimistic.
Marie doubted Mr Otway would fall for that but, if Neil were prepared to risk it, she would not argue with him.
It was a bit of a hovel, but Marie didn’t care; the light was good and, during the daytime, she did indeed use it as the studio that Neil had told his father it was. The nights were another story, but hopefully Mr Otway would not be around then.