Night Street (17 page)

Nothing had changed since the last time Clarice looked at Mum's face: only the trace of an opaque smile from which it was impossible to pinpoint a mood. Her skin was cooling frighteningly fast; time, having been distended and unrecognisable, was reasserting a tight rhythm.

The stopped heart. Mum's weak heart.

Clarice put a hand over her own, presumed similarly weak, the weakness predetermined. There was its light thump, a little jittery with fatigue, but reliable. She would have known were her heart weak, would she not?

She had an odd sense of family. She saw each of them in turn. Father, making a careful lap of the garden. Louise, surreptitiously sucking at a cigarette, as seductive as a film star. Herself, hand over her stunned heart, in the smoky morning light. And their deceased: the young Paul, constructing himself a good foolproof noose; Mum, not as she had been in that bed but lifting a spoon of apricot jam to her waiting lips. Maybe they all shared, in their own fashion, unlikely resilience.

Pink flowers in a cut glass vase on the bedside table. What flower was that? The blooms had a somewhat artificial appearance. Clarice was not sure how they had got there. One of the Murphys must have brought them or else Louise, or Dr Broadbent, as a token from his wife. She had never been inspired to learn the names of flowers. Names—why? These had not wilted, despite the heat. In fact, when she inspected them, she discovered that the petals were firm and resistant, with something of the disconcerting upholstered feel of moths' wings. Touching them left her fingertips coated in a powdery residue, its scent surprisingly strong— too sweet, as if of some poisonous nectar. She lifted the flowers out of the vase; they dripped a ragged trail of water as she went to the kitchen.

Tea had been left out for her, but thankfully no one was there. She squinted at the flowers to grasp their mysterious forms, to comprehend how the yellow light touched them, where shadow adhered.

The unnatural flowers went into the garbage bin with a clean, sharp movement. Clarice rinsed the vase and her hands thoroughly, and inverted the vase to drain. Bending down, she removed her socks; it was important to have her feet naked against the jarrah floorboards, against the foundations of the house and the earth beneath. She carried her tea to the door, a bare foot pushing it open. Looking out, with eyes that had forgotten full light, she took a first swig of lukewarm tea.

And the grim and banal formalities of death ensued. When these too were behind them, the weeks became formless.

There was just painting, jumbled memories and Father's requirements to fill the time. As if there were a law by which there must always be illness in their home, Father's arthritic condition worsened. He took on a nurse to assist him, a rather difficult woman named Mrs Marks; maybe he was hoping to distract himself from Mum's desertion.

Clarice tried to envisage Mum in a realm of exquisite, unearthly light, such as that of a rainforest—or a beach at dusk, light like the surface of a pearl. She saw only a dark room with no windows in its walls. The room empty, unfurnished, dank.

There was not enough new work for her regular solo Athenaeum exhibition. Meldrum wrote urging her to visit again and to send some paintings for the coming group show. She wrote back saying she did not much feel like exhibiting, for the moment, but she was grateful for the offer.

Ada, strangely undaunted by Clarice's neglect and their stillborn friendship, showed herself to be an angel by sending a letter in which she suggested that Clarice go to stay with her family in the country. It came just in time, perhaps; with hindsight, Clarice realised there was not much good she could have done herself at home. Ada wrote lightly of
cheering up
, words becoming gossamer and limp close to death.

And Clarice received a second very great gift, from Mrs Hamlin. Fifty new panels, delivered by her son, who claimed they had been bought with the proceeds from the sale of a number of her paintings; he did not say which paintings or who had bought them. She had a surge of love for Mrs Hamlin, for her eagerness, her finery and her eager, fine heart.

By then, her supplies had dwindled to four canvases, three panels, a little linseed oil and not a lot of paint. The bit of pocket money Father had used to give her each month, supplemented occasionally on Mum's urging, had not been forthcoming of late. She suspected there was no money to spare, not with the funeral expenses and Mrs Marks' salary. To preserve her precious materials, Clarice had taken to painting, with some blend of despair and amusement, on the backs of Wheaties packets: an appropriately flimsy, insubstantial experience.

After Mrs Hamlin's son had gone, she cried a little, holding the new panels. Tears, it seemed, were inexhaustible.

She had never particularly hankered for travel, except the kind that took her in a train to the city or in a motorcar to an art camp. She had not envied Herb or others for going abroad, to London or Paris, not really. There had always been plenty to keep her occupied, so much to overwhelm her where she was.

But she gave in to Ada because it was essential then that she get away. She saw no other way forward. She did not ask Father's permission, only informed him. There was a train ride and Ada's father came for her by car; she could not concentrate fully on the country she passed through. After, her recollection of that trip was a feeling of great age, slackness of mind and, when a window was opened, the wind as a cool surprise. At one stage, some grit had caught in her eye and it had taken a long time to dislodge it. Finally, they arrived at Naringal.

The Andersons, she discovered, were well-meaning people to whom, embarrassingly, she had absolutely nothing to give. They were an older couple but kept themselves fit, even athletic, maintaining their house and property on which they ran sheep and a few other animals for their own needs. Their four children (a fifth had perished in the Great War) were spread over three cities. Mr and Mrs Anderson seemed happy or unworried, eating large, quiet meals and going to bed early, always together. Clarice did not look forward to bedtime, to lying down—as if she fully expected to sleep—in the pose of a corpse.

The days at Naringal were a succession of cups of tea, sturdy china cups with perfect chains of roses around their rims. Clarice had little to say and was sure her company had to be a tiresome burden. Her sorrow was a stain in the Andersons' spotless, placid house; they showed no sign of noticing, however, and were gentleness itself. She did her best to eat the food they served, an overabundance of plain, nourishing stews and weekend roasts. Mrs Anderson thought Clarice's frame could use some fattening up.
Her
children were good eaters, the lot of them. The boys, in particular, had hollow legs, but even Ada enjoyed her meals, as Clarice would know. In fact, she knew nothing of their daughter's appetite and understood that the Andersons did not realise how negligible her knowledge of Ada actually was, not imagining that Clarice had avoided her supposed imitator, turned away from her as if from her own inconsequential shadow.

Cramped and moody with sleeplessness, she got up early with her hosts and stood a while after breakfast on the cold verandah, listening to the birds rouse the day. She was tender-headed, as dark and misty as the fields. She often feared she would not be able to keep down her porridge and would deposit the shameful, steaming contents of her stomach onto the admirable vegetable garden.

She was still Mum's daughter, there on the verandah so early in the morning you could have sworn it was night. She was the daughter of an emptiness, of emptiness—somehow even more a daughter now. It was strange how much love for a parent could feel like a wound. She clenched her teacup in her unfeeling hands and waited for a smudge of light.

Clarice was her own mistress, the entire day at her disposal, but she stuck to the old pattern, going out mornings and evenings.

Her preference was for empty paddocks with an especially bare look. It hurt a little to walk; she was out of condition, and her joints were not what they had been, her body officially no longer a girl's. Once, for a second, she thought she saw Arthur. That box of guilt had long been empty. At the far, right-hand margin of her sight, he stood watching her, smoking a meditative cigarette.

She was a ghost too, at first—she was painting like a ghost. Out of habit, without precision or wonder. She was like a priest deserted by his faith, who nonetheless continues to go through the motions, getting up at dawn to the ritual of prayer, as much a part of him as that of breathing. She saw that self-hatred played no small part in devotion. The discomfort of her body, stiffly shaped to her will, was gratifying. Points of pain tingled in her arms. Tightness bound her wrists. Fatigue ignited a slow fire in her back. When she swayed on her feet from long concentration, she steadied herself with her easel, one hand clenched around the mast. She was pleased, on the verge of collapse.

It took many days to see the place, to make sense of it. Close to the end of her stay, it dawned on Clarice that the tea she drank continually at Naringal was strong and golden-glossy with the decadent cream of farm milk. Around this time, she stopped reusing her panels, painting heartlessly over scenes she had already painted.

Her mind and soul in the mud, a moment had finally come in which she knew, truly understood she was a painter. Painting did not matter anymore. Nothing mattered but painting. This was all there was. And there was nothing to achieve. The paintings might be seen by few, might go unseen. So be it. They were enough unto themselves.

Painting in the void. What made a day intelligible was the donkey work of teasing something into being in tone and form where there had been a blank. She could do anything she wanted with paint, anything. She could fail and succeed, suffer uncertainty, but all of that would be beside the point. Everything was permitted and possible. She felt the weight of her vocation. The startling freedom of it. She was born to this. No Clarice outside painting; she was Clarice because she was a painter and she was a painter because she was Clarice.

In twenty-one days, she completed two canvases and thirty panels. She enjoyed working on board, the smooth flatness of paint gliding onto wood, without the drag that canvas imposed on the brush. She kept the work quick and fluid, unmediated by thought, as far as it was possible: physical. Paintings of Naringal paddocks. In some the sun was smaller, and in others, larger, fuller. There were more or fewer trees. The trees were far or close. Sometimes, fence posts could be discerned in the distance. Or the grasses appeared to undulate. It amused her to give the scenes names. There was one she called
The three trees
in homage to Meldrum, to his brave work of perhaps two decades earlier. Many were informatively entitled
Fields
,
Landscape
,
Summer Landscape
or some such thing. The Andersons went to great pains to be complimentary, and even bought several, but found them, Clarice could see, perplexingly monotonous and drab. She was surprised to note her eyes going to their faces to find approval—the old reflex.

Just as her self was annihilated and definitively fused to painting, Clarice re-emerged. She became a woman again, of blood and impulses; she had confident hips and strengthening thighs, greater mental elasticity. It was being out in the open, day after day, in the new place. It was the wind stroking those dry grasses, the unstoppable rolling of the sky. It was the aching of her arms and the endless, conquering renewal of change.

One morning as she was finishing up, she tipped her head back and her hat fell off. The breeze teased the sweat on her forehead. Her head was so far back that there was a slight pain in her throat and her legs folded. She was sitting in the middle of the paddock. She pried the palette and brushes from the fist of her left hand. The rough grass tickled through her stockings.

Those desiccated fields were the colour—the
exact
colour—of the sand of certain beaches she knew intimately. The name of the colour was on her tongue.
Gamboge
. So came the revelation confirming what for some time she had dimly sensed. The grass she was looking at was a veneer, which, scratched away, revealed itself to be sand; while sand, if approached correctly, could no doubt be similarly peeled back to expose the underlying grass.

It was all fashioned of the same matter. Each landscape was far deeper than itself—yet indivisible, one.

When she was finished with the fields, when she went home, she would paint Port Phillip Bay as it had not previously been painted. Indeed, her paintings would not resemble any others; they would be the whole truth of what she saw.

Retrieving her hat, she whimsically decided that she would also try putting a man in a landscape, as an experiment, to see what would happen. In the meantime, mornings and evenings she checked her kit was in order and set out for work, recommencing the occult, triangular conversation, stepping into the circle made by artist, paint, subject. She was a grateful labourer.

25

Her hands were always thinking and ready, a pulse of energy tapping at her fingertips. She slept little and sporadically. It was not like the insomnia she had known at other times; there was none of that dread of the next day feeling squishy and afflicted, like spoiled fruit. Her body was simply loath to waste the hours set aside for rest, preferring to lie in bed vigilant, crisscrossed by bright, flitting ideas, priming itself for the dawn. Sometimes, she read—joyful Whitman, treatises on theosophy, mysteries, anything she happened across.

Things were as different after Naringal as she had imagined they would be that day in the field when her hat fell off from staring at the sky. She achieved the vantage point that made homemaking routines fences within which she could run. She was no domestic angel; books lay open and splattered on the kitchen bench and her matted hair hung in front of her eyes as she peered erratically into steaming pots, her cooking giving queer results. But Father, oddly, did not often complain. There was more space for her mind, her artist's mind, a liveliness cutting through anything tedious and soul deadening. She was stronger, harder-headed or higher-spirited than ever before. She ate with appetite again, if not plentifully, her principal hunger not being for food. She got very thin, turning into some strange sister to the whip of a girl she had once been.