Sun in Splendour

by JH Fletcher

  But Maurice was French and knew his place, which was vastly superior to most of his employer’s friends, and did not deign to reply.

  I don’t care, Marie thought. It smells good to me. She was happy to enjoy them, unaided by the superior chauffeur, and to watch the effect of light through the branches of trees decked with fresh green, now that spring had truly arrived.

  She was determined to make the most of the drive because she feared she would get little pleasure from the rest of the outing. She enjoyed Isadora’s company, but the children … She was afraid they would make her sad and guilty, thinking of her own child, who continued to trouble her conscience, from time to time.

  She was also determined to drink no more wine. I am not a drinker, she told herself. And have no plans to become one. The thought made her feel virtuous.

  The engine banged and popped as the car negotiated the steep gradients; the brakes squawked as they trundled downhill, while beneath them the river ran quietly in shades of olive and dun light. It doesn’t sound right, she thought. But did not like to say anything: what did she know about cars?

  Despite her fears, she enjoyed the day. The children — Deirdre, aged seven, and Patrick, two years younger — were not spoiled but alive, as children of that age should be. In her own house Isadora seemed more relaxed, found time to contemplate, with her guest, the splendid view from the shaded balcony. The house was set high over the tranquil line of the river, the poplar trees like slender fingers pointing skywards along either bank. It was a happy time, and Marie hoped she might have found a friend.

  ‘Next time you must bring Brett,’ Isadora said. She had never met him, but they had spoken of him, as well as the men in Isadora’s life.

  ‘He is in Brittany,’ Marie said.

  ‘Painting?’

  ‘Among other things. He is very political. There’s talk of a demonstration at the Naval Base.’

  ‘Politics,’ Isadora said contemptuously. ‘Boys playing power games.’

  ‘Aren’t you a suffragette?’

  ‘Life is more important than politics.’

  ‘But politics decides our lives.’

  ‘Brett starts messing with the government, it’ll certainly decide yours. They’re quite likely to chuck you out of the country, altogether.’

  ‘I’ve nothing to do with it. Besides, I am French.’

  ‘Would you stay, if they deported him?’

  That was a thought, indeed. ‘I hope I never have to decide.’ The time came for the children to return to Paris. They spent their weeks with a governess on the outskirts of the city, coming home to their mother only at weekends.

  ‘I hate parting from them, but I am away so much,’ Isadora said.

  It might have been an excuse, but was not; now that Marie had seen the three of them together, she had no doubt about that. Isadora hugged and kissed them and piled them into the car, laughing and smiling and crying all at the same time. The maid was already in her seat; Marie squeezed into the back with them while Maurice, taciturn as ever, climbed behind the wheel.

  Isadora waved to them; they waved back. The car jerked and roared before driving, popping and banging, out of the driveway. The children were used to being separated from their mother and chatted cheerfully to each other, to Marie, to the maid. To Maurice, too, who said nothing, as always, but whose silence seemed less oppressive than before.

  Down the steep hill they went and up the other side.

  Five-year-old Patrick craned his neck, looking back at the river. ‘If the car stops, will we fall off into the water?’

  Marie smiled. ‘Maurice wouldn’t let anything like that happen. He is here to look after us.’

  The reached the top and began the next descent.

  ‘You see?’ Marie said. ‘I told you it would be all right.’

  ‘If the car stopped here, perhaps we would fall forwards,’ Patrick said. Deirdre, laughing, covered her eyes.

  ‘Can you swim?’ Patrick asked Marie.

  ‘Yes. Sort of.’

  ‘What’s a sort of?’ demanded Deirdre.

  ‘Jeanine can’t swim,’ Patrick informed Marie importantly, while the maid laughed, too, all of them very jolly and joking about the accident that they were quite sure would not happen.

  Up the next hill they went, the gradient steeper than ever.

  ‘We could really fall off here,’ Patrick said, looking behind him once more and making faces at the river that was flowing immediately beneath them.

  The car banged, coughed, and stopped.

  ‘Merde,’ said Maurice.

  Now the passengers were still, waiting for someone to do something. Behind them, the roadway was like a cliff.

  ‘We have stalled,’ Maurice said. To Marie’s relief, he sounded angry rather than frightened.

  ‘What are we going to do?’ Patrick asked, eyes wide.

  ‘Start it up again, of course. Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘It will go fine, once I re-start the engine.’

  He pulled the cranking handle out of the box beside the driver’s seat.

  ‘One moment,’ he said.

  He got out of the car — which creaked, shuddered, and began to roll backwards down the hill.

  A moment of disbelief in which nothing moved but the car. Rapidly, uncontrollably, it gathered speed. Marie saw Maurice receding from them, open-mouthed, the crank handle beating furiously at the compliant air as, in futile frenzy, he began to chase after the rapidly plunging vehicle.

  That image was overwhelmed by a barrage of screams that erupted from the straining mouths of the children, the maid, herself, the cacophony remaining constant as the floundering chauffeur was left far behind.

  We must stop the car. Inside her head the words were as shrill as any scream yet, even as she thought them, Marie knew there was nothing that any of them could do. The controls were out of reach, the speed too great for them to throw themselves out.

  If the car stops …

  Patrick’s voice mocked beneath the screams that rose to a crescendo as the car reached the bottom of the hill, careered backwards across the roadway, was for a second airborne before landing in a huge gout of spray in the river.

  Momentarily it floated but the river came flooding in and it lurched and began to sink. The water rose: to their waists, then their throats. For a second or two it stopped. Marie was surrounded by screams, terror, thrashing limbs. She grabbed Patrick from the tangle of terrified bodies. The slippery body plunged in futile attempt to escape the clutching water and was gone. The river, cold, opaque, rose again in a rush to cover Marie’s mouth, nose, head. Through the murky water she saw a huge bubble of air shining silver where it was trapped against the underside of the roof. The car turned as it sank through rapidly intensifying darkness. The bubble escaped through the side screens and was gone.

  Panic prised at her lips; she fought to keep them shut. Let the treacherous water into her mouth, and she would be lost. It was dark; what might have been an arm struck her across the nose. She groped, could grab none of the others, who had been packed in so close beside her but now were gone, in or out of the car. A thud as the car struck the bank, or the river bed. A swirling cloud of mud cut off the last residue of light. She fumbled with the side screens, yanking them open with frantic hands. The car scraped again, dragging on the bottom. One hand gripping the opening, she used the other to grope once again for the children or the maid. She felt nothing. She wriggled through the opening into the river, which carried her away at once. She had no idea which way to head for light and air, knew only that she could afford no mistakes.

  She let a bubble of air out of her mouth and followed the glinting sphere upwards. Her lungs were bursting, red lights were flashing before her eyes, but the darkness was fading, turning from black to grey to brown to green to —

  She erupted into sunlight, head and shoulders above the stream as she sucked air into her starved lungs.

  The current had carried her a long way from the accident site; t
urning in the water, she could see Maurice standing on the bank, hands clutching his head as he stared into the river. Then she was swept past a bend, and he was gone.

  * * *

  It took her a long time to get to the bank. She might never have made it at all had she not been seen by some workers on a jetty, who managed to throw her a rope.

  ‘What happened to you?’ they asked after they had hauled her out.

  Terror, exhaustion and shock made it barely possible to reply. ‘Accident,’ she managed eventually.

  Little by little, she told them.

  ‘A car? In the river?’ They stared, seemingly unable to understand what she was saying. ‘Where? When?’

  ‘Where the steep hill climbs up from the water. I don’t know when. Quarter of an hour ago? Half an hour?’

  One man turned to the others. ‘Let’s get up there. See if we can help.’

  It’s too late. She wanted to tell them that the children and the nurse must be dead, that the only one to have survived was herself, that it was too late, too late, too —

  ‘Shut up, for God’s sake!’

  One of the men was shaking her, shouting, and she realised she must have been gabbling her thoughts aloud, that she was hysterical, crying in frantic gulps. He slapped her hard, a sudden explosion of light and pain. Her screams were cut off in mid-breath. She covered her face with trembling hands.

  The man patted her shoulder, awkwardly. ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘You all right, now?’

  She was drained, empty; it was all she could do to nod.

  ‘You,’ he said to the youngest of the group. ‘You stay with her. The rest of us’ll get up there, see what we can do.’

  There was nothing anyone could do. Later that day the three bodies were recovered. There was a funeral, to which Marie was not invited. No-one was invited. Isadora Duncan buried her children in private. She cancelled all engagements.

  Marie, overwhelmed by guilt at having survived, sent her condolences. She heard nothing.

  4

  The tragedy fuelled her determination to do something about her own family.

  She wrote to Laura Otway, offering hospitality to her and Alice if they cared to make the long journey to Europe.

  It is a wonderful place. There is so much to show you, so much here that we cannot see in Australia.

  She listed some of the attractions: the art galleries, ancient cathedrals, the Alps … Most significant of all, the fact of being in another place, of seeing other people, hearing other languages, experiencing other aspects of life.

  She visualised the three of them taking a holiday together, of travelling the length and breadth of the continent that had become home to her, even perhaps of visiting England.

  The Tower, she wrote. The National Gallery. It will be such a wonderful time. We shall become friends.

  Above all, there would be Alice.

  Laura’s reply, when she got it, was polite, but cool. It was kind of Marie to suggest it, but Alice’s education and Laura’s own commitments made such a visit out of the question.

  We both send our kindest regards, and hope you are prospering.

  ‘As though it wouldn’t be the best education Alice could have!’ Marie was tearful, beating her head against her nature and her past. But she was not defeated yet. She wrote to Eugénie and to Martha, whom she had neglected shamefully, although the loan had been repaid. By coaxing them into visiting her, either together or separately, she would perhaps assuage the sense of guilt that continued to gnaw her conscience.

  Again she permitted her hopes to run away with her. She would have a high old time with her two mothers. They would visit the ancient cities of Europe, experience the life and sights of the civilisation from which they had all sprung. Again, perhaps inevitably, she was doomed to disappointment.

  Eugénie wrote, thanking her for the invitation, but declining to make the long journey. I am too old, she said, and cannot leave my husband. Whom Marie would have dumped in the harbour, if she could.

  As for Martha … An envelope edged in black, a formal letter from Horace. Martha was dead.

  Now, like Isadora Duncan, she was alone. At least she had Brett, but his efforts at consolation barely scarred the surface of her loneliness.

  ‘You have no-one,’ Marie told her reflection, leaning close so that no-one but themselves could hear. ‘You chose to abandon others; now they have abandoned you.’

  The darkness hummed and tears gleamed like fragile stars upon her cheeks.

  5

  For months Marie walked in terror. Awake and asleep, a confusion of images tormented her. The white and bloated faces of the drowned children merged with the masks of foxes and wolves to pursue her down the chasms of her imagination. She woke each morning before dawn, testing herself to prove that during the night she had not fallen into the ocean of insanity and terror that she knew was waiting for her. Let that happen and she might never reach land again. So to the images of the lost children — Patrick, Deirdre, Grace and Lukas’s son Jamie, swallowed up years before by the forest — and to the demons of nightmare was now added another horror: the vision of an institution, grim-walled, where the insane were locked in perpetual torment.

  Despite her terrors, Marie remained, precariously, in this world. Days, weeks, passed. She was painting again, light and graceful pictures that on the surface gave no hint of the turmoil within her brain. Yet in their depths …

  A pastoral scene, the banks of the Murray remembered from her visit all those years before: superficially, a straightforward painting of a straightforward scene yet, as always, with more to it than met the eye. Because my eye, she told herself, sees what lies beneath the placid surface of the river, what lies everywhere. The bodies of the drowned inhabit the painting, as they inhabit my life. You cannot see them, but they are there.

  Yet even this passed, with the years. Success helped and, after all the years of waiting, success was plentiful. Then, one morning early in 1919, after years of productive work had at last enabled her to establish the reputation that she hoped would be forever hers, after achieving a level of prosperity that she could never have imagined when she left Australia, Brett came bursting into her studio, eyes popping with excitement, flailing the air with a piece of paper.

  6

  ‘What have you got there?’

  ‘A letter. We’re going to Russia!’

  Meticulously, Marie added another dab of paint to the canvas on which she was working. She willed her expression to show nothing, although hearing his words was like having the floor collapse beneath her feet.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ Brett ablaze with excitement and impatience.

  ‘I heard you.’ Another dab, her eyes still on the canvas. ‘Why are we going to Russia?’

  It was a crazy idea. In Europe the war was over at last but, in Russia, it was a time of turmoil, of privation and danger. Two years before, the Revolution had cracked the foundations of the world. Across that vast country, people in their tens of thousands were being crushed beneath the collapsing structures of the old order. It was impossible to think of a worse time for going to Russia.

  ‘Because, look, an invitation …’

  Even after Marie had given up their nightly meetings, Brett had continued his involvement with the Russian émigrés, mired to their armpits in bloodthirsty plots to destroy the world. Marie had been tolerant of his ferocity; as a hobby it was harmless and kept him amused. Then came 1917 and the downfall of the Tsar, and it seemed that the ferocity had not been so harmless, after all. One of Brett’s groups had been in contact with Zurich, where Lenin had been in exile. Brett had wanted to return to Russia with Lenin; fortunately, the war had made that idea impracticable and the crisis passed.

  Marie had continued with her painting and her life as an acclaimed artist, but Brett had kept in touch with his old comrades.

  Now this. He waved the letter under her nose. ‘Read it!’

  She took one look, then stared at him. ‘It’s in Ru
ssian!’

  ‘Give it here.’ He snatched it back, impatient of her inability to read a language that he had spoken all his life. He translated it aloud, voice trembling. It was an invitation, signed by someone called Aramilev who was, apparently, Commissar for the Arts. Whatever that might mean.

  What it said was clear enough. Brett had long been a true ally of the Socialist cause, and the Soviet peoples wished to offer him the privilege of being appointed an official artist, to record for history the triumphs of the Revolution.

  To Marie it made no sense at all. ‘It doesn’t say how you’re supposed to get there, how much they’re paying you, what arrangements they’re making for accommodation —’

  Brett waved his hand, dismissive of detail. ‘All that can be settled when we get there.’

  We.

  ‘It might be a bit late by then.’

  She saw that nothing she could say would make any difference; logic had no place. She could go along with him or not; what she could not do was persuade Brett by argument.

  Russia, she thought. Russia was in chaos; even, people said, on the brink of war. A land with a morbid suspicion of foreigners, even in peacetime; it would be a thousand times worse, now. And Brett wanted to leave everything they had built up here — comfort, reputation, security — to plunge into a maelstrom that had nothing whatever to do with either of them, where the only prospects were hardship, anguish and the likelihood of death.

  He is mad, she told herself. No way shall I go.

  And yet …

  Katie; the memory of Katie’s voice.

  There will be justice. A true brotherhood …

  The peasant woman, Sophia Kalganova, whom she had painted in the slums of Sydney.

  A vision of endless forests, the steppe stretching to the most distant horizon, of snow and cold and silence. The magic of what was new.

  Lukas smiling at her, and Lucien Henry. You are an artist. You must always reinvent yourself.