Absence Makes

by Bruce Menzies

  ‘This is Jim’s studio.’

  They were inside the building. It took her a few moments to adjust to the light. An overwhelming smell of paint filled the space. Canvasses were stacked along the walls and three or four incomplete paintings perched on easels. There was no sign of the artist.

  ‘He’s probably out the back.’

  They picked their way through the studio and exited into a small courtyard. Hunched on a tree stump, a man sat smoking.

  ‘You have a visitor, Jim.’

  He must be over eighty, like Baxter, Simone thought, as he turned to face her.

  ‘She’s a pretty one, Celia. Where did you find her?’

  Uncharacteristically, Simone blushed. She saw a pair of piercing blue eyes and a brown leathery face, half-hidden beneath a shock of white hair. He was grinning, a lopsided grin revealing gaps along a row of tobacco-stained teeth.

  Celia left them together. Simone sat cross-legged on the grass.

  ‘So Baxter’s alive, is he?’ Jim’s gaze had not left her.

  ‘He certainly is. And he’s desperate to have news of Alice and the children.’

  The old bloke pulled on his cigarette. She watched as he blew a succession of perfect smoke rings.

  ‘They’re not here. Haven’t been for years.’

  ‘Can you tell me where they are?’

  He did not answer directly. When he spoke, he avoided her question.

  ‘That Baxter, how’s he doing?’

  ‘He’s pretty good, considering the life he’s had.’ She wondered how much Jim knew.

  ‘When I last saw him, they were hauling him off to Graylands.’

  She gave him an abridged version of Baxter’s history. He listened without comment.

  ‘So Alice and the kids lived here with you and your wife?’

  His response was measured. ‘No, not here. We lived in the city. Grace and I came up here just before the war.’

  She wondered how much she could press. ‘And the others?’

  ‘Why does Baxter want to know about this? It’s a bit too late for making up.’

  ‘Is it, Jim?’ Now or never. She had to make her pitch. He held the key, Jim Townsend. The keeper of the secret and unless he opened up, she was stymied. And that was not an option that sat well with her.

  ‘He’s old, Jim. He’s full of regrets. He knows he made a mess. And now he simply wants the chance to find out what happened to his family.’

  More smoke rings. He’s not to be rushed. She tried to imagine him at the easel. Not the frenzied type, more of the slow-hand approach. Would he show her his paintings before she left? She hoped so.

  ‘Have you ever posed?’

  She blushed again. ‘Never. Why - are you short of models?’

  He stubbed his cigarette on the stump. ‘Not around here. But there’s something interesting about you.’

  ‘Are you trying to bribe me?’

  He laughed. ‘Why not? What’s it worth for me to spill the beans?’

  You crafty old codger. Any excuse to get a girl out of her gear.

  ‘I’m too shy for that sort of thing.’ You lie, girl. Pathetically, too.

  He shrugged. ‘Suit yourself.’

  Within a few minutes they struck a deal. She’ll pose and he’ll talk.

  ‘Can you paint and talk at the same time?’

  ‘You bet I can.’ He gave her a wink. ‘Unlike that fellow Lyndon Johnson dumped on, I can also fart and chew tobacco at the same time.’

  ‘Wasn’t it gum?’ He was thinking of Gerald Ford. Newspaper columnists made a meal of it.

  ‘Maybe,’ he said, and they went inside.

  It was cool in the studio. He arranged her on a platform, a foot above the floor. Her clothes lay in a heap on an upturned crate.

  ‘Twist slightly to the left.’

  She complied.

  ‘Not just your head. Your whole body.’

  Her extremities tingled. She felt like frozen beetroot.

  ‘I’ll close the door if you like. There’s a touch of draught.’

  She watched him shuffle across and push the door shut. His face was impassive as he returned to his easel.

  ‘What are you using?’

  ‘Charcoal. I work mainly with that now.’ His hand moved in wide strokes across the mounted paper.

  ‘You’d better tell me the story before I’ll freeze to death.’

  ‘Are you cold?’ He looked puzzled. ‘I guess Perth’s still an oven in summer?’

  She nodded. ‘Can you get on with it? I have a plane to catch.’

  He looked at her, a little more tenderly, she thought.

  ‘They went to England.’

  ‘To England?’

  ‘That’s right. Peggy met some dentist chap in the war and when he went back they took Alice with them. They left by boat, from Sydney.’

  Bit by bit, it came out. Jim and Grace had taken in Alice and the three children when they arrived from Perth. Six of them, packed together in a tiny terrace house. It was the Depression and hardly anyone they knew had a job. ‘We were on the susso,’ said Jim, ‘like everyone else.’ It hardly paid enough for the rent let alone for food. ‘We lived on rabbit stew and boiled cabbage. Times were tough then, bloody tough.’

  Jim was trying to paint and shared a studio where he used Grace as a model when she wasn’t looking for work. They had no children of their own. After he and Grace moved to Montsalvat, Alice and the children rented rooms in Brunswick. He couldn’t recall the address but it was off the main street. From there, they shifted a couple of times. Peggy and Alex left school early. Both held down jobs until Peggy married Claude de Baal. Kenny never seemed to work. He did amateur acting and was always out and about.

  ‘And Alice? Did she have to work?’

  ‘Too right. She was bright, Alice. While the kids were at school she was mostly at home but she and Grace always managed to bring in something. During the war she got an office job. With the Defence people, I think.’

  ‘Did Alex or Ken get married?’

  He shot her a look. ‘I heard Alex did but I don’t know where he wound up. As for Kenny, he took off for Sydney. Sends me a card from time to time. Funny fellow, that Kenny.’

  After they finished she asked for addresses. He rummaged through a drawer but couldn’t find his notebook.

  ‘It’s ancient history.’

  ‘Please let me know if you turn up something,’ she entreated. ‘It would make Baxter happy.’

  ‘I can’t promise,’ was all he would say.

  Baxter paced up and down the pathway outside the office. Simone was late. She had something to tell him. There had been progress, not much but some. When he put down the phone, his hand was shaking. Old fool, he reprimanded himself. Don’t get your hopes up.

  At last, he saw her car swing into the driveway and head towards the parking area.

  ‘There’s the good news and the bad news.’ She was seated beside him on the bench.

  ‘The good news is I’ve tracked down Jim and found out where Alice went. The bad news is we have no address, and I need to do some more detective work.’

  He digested what she had said. ‘De Baal. What kind of name is that?’

  ‘I’m not sure. Maybe Dutch. But Jim said he was English.’

  ‘Can’t be too many de Baals in England.’

  ‘I agree, Baxter. I’ve written to a friend and asked her to check for me. It’s too hard from here.’

  ‘What about Kenny?’

  ‘I’ve been to the Post Office and gone through the Sydney telephone directory. No mention of him. The same for Alex. I thought he may have gone there too.’

  Suddenly he felt the futility of it all. If his family had wanted to be found, they could have contacted him. Jennie stayed in touch with Grace and had remained a conduit. But no one bothered to reciprocate. He was shut out and left to atone for the pain he’d caused. That must be biblical, he thought, atoning for your sins.

  ‘The Buddhists call it
karma.’

  He had expressed his despair to Simone. She held his hand as they watched a pair of magpies dive-bombing a crow.

  ‘That’s like atonement,’ she continued. ‘But they also believe we can change our destiny depending upon how we act. We always can overcome our past.’

  He looked at her dubiously. ‘I’ll be dead first.’

  She laughed and squeezed his palm. ‘If you’re a Buddhist, that’s no excuse. You get another life and another chance.’

  He sighed. ‘Another life? This one’s bad enough. Why can’t I just go quietly?’

  ‘Because you won’t, Baxter. Not unless you’ve done everything in your power to find your family.’

  He knew she was right.

  ‘Where’s that Angela? I think we both need a cuppa.’

  The crow had given up and the magpies returned to their nest. He looked up through the branches of the grey gum and saw the clouds form strange patterns as they passed. His life had been full of strange patterns, a tangled web, really. Apart from his incarceration, the years had flown. He rarely got bored. Sad and sorry for himself but rarely bored. A vision of Tom flashed before his eyes. Tom clambering over a parapet and shouting a battle cry in the instant before a sniper’s bullet ended his life. Tom struck down at twenty-three, a hero but dead all the same. Where’s the justice in that, he thought? Was that Tom’s karma? He was too young to have much to atone for. As were the hundreds of thousands of others who were decimated in that odious conflict. What would the Buddha say to that? And God, for that matter?

  ‘I want to say how glad I am to have met you, Baxter.’

  He glanced at Simone. Her eyes were shining.

  ‘I don’t know why you waste your precious time on an old rascal like me.’

  ‘Maybe it’s my karma, destined to hang out with old rascals. There could be worse things.’

  He could hear Angela approaching. He withdrew his hand and smiled.

  14

  Keep on the lookout, she said. For what? As he thumbed through the paper, checking out the job ads, Ross pondered the question. His last session with Simone was fun at first but ended with him feeling out of sorts. He realised she meant well but he resented being put on the spot. Beyond her probing, he detected a slightly superior air and that annoyed him. He resolved to say something when they next met. Meanwhile, he replayed in his mind the conversation he would like to have with June. Since the night he acted the voyeur, his agitation had abated. Fascination replaced anger. He could not fathom whether her affair with Claire was for real or whether it was simply an offshoot of her insistence she was finished with men. He imagined this sort of remark might be common where women shared their woes. To him, it sounded like a throwaway line, expressing exasperation and not much more. He wished they could talk about it. But when he dropped by the bookstore, the owner told him June was away for a couple of weeks.

  He gave up on the job ads and turned to the front page. ‘Nixon Impeached.’ Watergate had done its work. Since his conversion to existentialism, Ross lost any zest for changing the world but continued to keep a jaundiced eye on political events, viewing each machination through the sharp lens of cynical realism. When Gough called a snap election in May, he was tempted to vote informal but at the last moment cast his lot for the Emperor, if only to cancel out his father’s vote. In the aftermath of the narrow victory, he was quietly exultant but refrained from dancing on his family’s grave as he had done eighteen months earlier. Now, with Tricky Dicky on the way out, a similar feeling came over him. Perhaps there was some potential for justice, after all? Perhaps it was an omen for his future?

  Although he was yet to see it, the Sartrean grip was loosening. Beneath the constructed carapace nestled a weak romantic residue; an airy hopefulness that would mushroom into dalliances with gurus, astrology, the Enneagram, Croatian psychics and associated blueprints whispering a miraculous resolution to the deep-seated angst that dominated his life. However, in that lonely winter, whenever the voice of hope dared to emerge from its burrow, he would slap it down and return to his readings on the meaninglessness of existence.

  One Saturday, after the first spring shoots appeared on the vines, he heard the bell ring.

  ‘Can I come in?’ June stood in the doorway. It had been raining and he saw her hair was wet.

  ‘Sure.’

  They sat in the lounge.

  ‘It feels like home,’ she said, glancing around. Many of their knick-knacks remained on the shelves. She did not comment on the dust.

  ‘How are you, June?’ He was surprised how formal he sounded.

  She looked at him. ‘I’ve been better.’

  They spoke earnestly for two hours or more. He did not have to confess his spying. Early in the conversation she stated she and Claire were lovers.

  ‘You aren’t shocked? I thought you’d be appalled?’

  He had not said anything. ‘Are you a lesbian?’ he finally asked.

  She looked at the fireplace. ‘I don’t think so. Claire might be but I still like men.’

  He felt a tremor of relief. ‘What are you going to do?’

  ‘That’s why I’m here, Ross. I don’t know. I needed someone to talk to. Nobody else knows and I can trust you.’

  He thought of his face pressed against her window and swallowed.

  ‘What’s it like, being with a woman?’

  ‘I knew you would ask that.’

  ‘I’m curious, that’s all.’ Titillated, more like it, he thought to himself.

  She frowned. ‘When I moved into Claire’s, I had no idea how it would turn out. She was just a good friend and we could share a lot of stuff. It was like that for most of the time. I needed a shoulder to cry on when you and I were getting into strife. I imagine you did too.’

  ‘I didn’t have a shoulder. Not at the time.’

  ‘And what about now?’ She looked at him expectantly.

  ‘Not a lover. She’s a social worker. A friend of my brother.’

  June tried to read his face. ‘Does she do therapy with you?’

  ‘I don’t think you could call it that. She doesn’t try to psychoanalyse me.’

  She threw her hands in the air. ‘Freud’s completely passé. There are lots of new things. Since I dropped out of that hopeless psychology course, I’ve come across a heap of good stuff.’

  ‘I thought you liked psychology? You studied like there was no tomorrow.’

  Her laugh was caustic. ‘I wanted to prove myself. You don’t know what it is to grow up with a father like mine. Anyway, I finally realised psychology at uni was a waste of time. I would have ended up as an overeducated academic with no experience of real people with real problems. And with no tools to deal with my own unhappiness.’

  The comment about her father registered with him but she did not add more. Instead, she described her explorations with alternative therapies. Psychodrama had been given the flick. ‘Useful but limited,’ she said. Her current favourite was Transactional Analysis.

  ‘It’s amazing, Ross. Every time two people meet there’s a transaction. Something goes on. Some kind of exchange. And we play different roles, depending on the circumstances.’

  ‘Like right now?’

  ‘Yes, right now. Right now, you and I are having a civilised discussion. We are acting like adults.’

  It’s a nice change, he thought.

  ‘But if you push any of my buttons or I push yours, what happens?’

  She looked incredibly appealing as she leant forward. He wanted to kiss her.

  ‘Umm……We react?’

  ‘Yes, we react. Usually not as adults. We react as either children or parents.’

  ‘You’ve lost me.’

  ‘I can’t explain it very well. But I can lend you a couple of books if you’re interested.’

  He nodded. The desire to kiss her had faded.

  ‘Can we be friends, Ross? I’m confused about Claire, and it’s hard to sort it out in my head. I feel we’re in a place w
here we can help each other.’

  He agreed. It was not easy to sort anything out in your head. His search for answers had drawn a lot of blanks. If he was honest, he had to admit June continued to intrigue and attract him, and the stirrings in his body were a challenge to his enforced celibacy. There might be a range of ways they could help one another. Or so he hoped.

  He noticed she looked again at the shelves, as he escorted her to the door.

  In the weeks following his conversation with June, he was filled with energy. They met again, usually on a Saturday when Claire had commitments. June gave him a selection of books. In a display of diligence, he spent his evenings by the fire, learning about Games People Play, I’m OK; You’re OK, and The Art of Loving. He responded well to Eric Fromm. The writing was simple and direct yet challenging on many levels. Immature love, decreed Fromm, was based on the premise I love you because I need you. Mature love was the reverse - I need you because I love you. Ross thought about this for a while. He was not sure he understood it and made a mental note to ask Simone. Fromm also spoke a lot about narcissism, claiming we are all narcissists when we view ourselves as the centre of the world and refuse to be objective about what goes on around us. Only by being reasonable and humble can we emerge from our childish dreams of omnipotence and omniscience. Sounds fair enough, he thought, but can we be reasonable and humble all the time? Nobody he knew went that far.

  As he ploughed through his homework, Ross noticed the authors wrote extensively about the role of the family. He had not given this much consideration. His parents seemed like most other adults he knew. Clearly, they wanted the best for their children. Equally clearly, they tried to impose their own values, with mixed results, certainly in his case. Why were his brothers so different, he wondered? In many respects Jeffrey and Seddon were replicas of their father. Of course, they had their peculiar quirks but essentially they exuded a confident, respectable, bourgeois persona that enabled them to fit like comfortable socks into the male society of their era. Their lives are mapped out, he decided. No boats will be rocked. He would be proved wrong on the last assumption but otherwise his estimate was more-or-less accurate.