Night Street (9 page)

‘It's well over a year since I was his student,' Clarice interjected contrarily. She was weak and needed to assert herself. She continued, rather pretentiously, though without intending it: ‘I really don't see myself as anyone's follower. My style is my own. I can't blame anyone else for it.'

‘Well, it takes nerve,' Bella persevered, ‘spunk might be the word, to be outside the main current.' She had turned her head slightly, as if searching for something out of the corner of her eye. ‘It wouldn't be easy.'

‘No.' Clarice was closed-off, peevish. She could not help it. ‘Guess not.' She should have filled the silence that followed with an explanation and perhaps a polite question.

But it was Bella who had to speak, taking it on herself to imagine a question; she was drawing the conversation into her terrain. ‘I'm very happy to be a mother,' she affirmed. ‘That's not easy either.' She sipped delicately, philosophically from her punch. Then sipped again with greater determination, as though just remembering how full the glass was. Indeed, it was a miracle that none had spilled—she must have unusually steady hands. ‘I suppose nothing worthwhile is easy,' Bella finished, with a tranquil face. There was not a thing more to say.

Clarice was left with the unfortunate sense that she might have liked Bella, who appeared to possess some invisible but redoubtable strength. Or if not liked at least admired her, as one admires a neat, airtight idea. And yet some hours after, without thinking twice, here she was kissing the woman's husband on his forbidden, inviting mouth.

12

In the wake of the confrontation, Father was stationed behind a newspaper in the drawing room by the droning wireless, Mum inert on her bed with her silky blue foulard shading her eyes, and Clarice in the kitchen, rapt.

Her morning's work on Beaumaris Road had been pesky but seductive, nature looking newly lustrous, baroque, somehow, in its beauty: so hard to dismantle and portray with any simplicity. She had far yet to go with her art; she knew this. But some days, she was an absolute beginner again. Returning home in a flurry, she had opened the gate and pulled her cart over the slight resistance into the yard; she was a manic Sisyphus, always lugging her burden uphill.

Father intercepted her near the verandah. He had been making his rounds. She thought this compulsive reconnoitring of his territory was a sign of restless discontent; he called it exercise. She detested being accosted as she was coming in from work—she was emotionally disjointed.

‘Well,' he said. ‘Let's see what you've done.' And this was worse than usual. He wanted to see what she had been up to.

She hesitated, then tried for a very light tone, which was sometimes useful: ‘Oh, it's nothing much.' On the contrary, what she had done that day was imperfect, probably failed but important and so private in its failure. ‘I'd rather not.' Her coat was damp from a fine rain that had fallen an hour or two before.

‘No, no. Come on, then. Let's see the
art
.'

His mistrust of it was blatant. He could not accept that she had rejected the marriage proposals in favour of spinsterhood and this freakish occupation. He might have been less alarmed to have an artist for a daughter were she less public about the whole thing and if it did not involve so much gallivanting about. Her hands on the handle of the cart, she observed his uneasiness. She moved away eventually, but first lifted the lid of the cart and propped up her delicate creation; she did not want him touching it.

The painting was a shadowy wash of silver-grey. In the background, tree trunks rose to their dissolving grey-green tops, like slender nudes reaching languidly up through the mist. At the right-hand edge, a telegraph pole was the straight, taut affirmation—the ballast—meant to keep the scene's spectral tremble from coming undone.

The strange heart of it: a car approaching, headlights casting thin yellowish beams of light onto a lushly rain-wet road that was marbled and curved like a river or some fun-house mirror.

Disquieting, really. Far from mawkish, surely. But too shadowy? Too evanescent? Anyway, this was the painting for now; with drying, time, a different mood, it might change. New failings might be revealed. Something that had seemed beautiful as it was being made might flatten out into banality, or the humdrum could turn beguiling, unexpectedly valuable.

Her father inserted himself between Clarice and the cart, effacing it. His heavily lined face appeared sculpted. If his eyes had been a little less certain, he would have been handsome. From the old photographs, you could see why Mum had been taken with him. He had always been arresting; and pride and inflexibility seem more excusable in youth, temporary postures that might be abandoned in the next moment—an outburst of laughter sweeping them away, perhaps, and all the grim composure gone.

She looked away from the dramatic, intransigent face to the shed at the end of the garden where she was impatient to hide her cart away. The chickens were restive, their complaints repetitive, absent. She could not watch him assessing it.

He cleared his throat and leaned closer to the painting, making something lurch inside her. She would have liked to say, You are too close.

They existed in different spheres, yet he affected her. Father very naturally released an aura of power that put fear into her, mixed with a murky shame. However, he was not always astringent. He had his inoffensive moments and could even be congenial, allowing peace to flower in their house and refraining from disturbing it. But he knew how to be frightening; he was talented at disregarding the viewpoint of others, at making Judgements.

‘Hmm,' he uttered, a cold declaration.

There was no poetry in him. This was their tragedy— hers, Louise's (though
she
had escaped the house), perhaps even his, but Mum's especially; because Mum was a romantic confined to a life with a man who—at least to all appearances—had a blank in place of dreams: a hollow where you would hope for inventiveness, maybe, or compassion. He stuck to the pragmatic, scrupulously denying himself astonishment. It was as if he refused to leave the close air of a man-sized box, a kind of premature coffin he bore around with him. It was difficult to tell what kept him alive. His certainties, she supposed. He was her father.

‘Isn't it a bit dreary?' he pronounced at last. ‘They all look similar to me, I'm afraid. But I'm no artist.'

He could evenly make a comment like this that condensed itself into something so hard that she carried it away from the encounter with her, a stone in her shoe, hobbling away and limping for the rest of the day. He upset her, sometimes. But the effect could be more ambiguous, as though, leaning forward, he had simply breathed onto the glass of her mind; his breath's milky imprint lingering, not fading or only ever so slowly, so she was obliged to peer through it at the world. His presence had become more wearing since his retirement and the move to Beaumaris. Perhaps it was having too much time on his hands or those nerves that had him tightly wound. In fact, Father did not often come near her, but he gave the opposite impression, even when they kept carefully to far ends of the house. They had a way of circling one another. And although the circle was wide, she sensed him as she would a dance partner.

‘You were a dreamy child,' he noted, stepping back. ‘Often gloomy.'

Her mouth pursed, she reclaimed her painting and began to drag the cart away, tossing over her shoulder, ‘How astute of you to notice.'

‘What was that?'

‘Toast—for breakfast?'

But she could not be sad or irritable. It would have been at odds with the metamorphosis that had covered everything in a lambent sheen of new life. She fluttered.

At lunch, Clarice and Father—without even talking to one another—were somehow sparring again. He presided at the head of the table with his almost-handsome face, Mum a subtler force beside him. There was leftover lamb stew with bread and butter and an unremarkable salad. Clarice had planned and unfortunately announced a steak and kidney pie, which she had set about preparing with determination. It had burnt. A terrible waste, but she was too high-strung with pleasure to concentrate. Anyway, kitchen work was against her nature, which was simultaneously too scattered and too focused for it. So the pie had been ruined, the charred disaster quietly disposed of, and it was leftovers again. Father's suspicion of her ineptitude had been further confirmed. The kitchen smelled acridly, regretfully of smoke.

The plan was that Mum would raise the topic, and she got to it with a skilfully detached air towards the end of their hasty meal, over the peaches and cream.

In a gentle susurration, she announced, ‘Clarice is going out for the evening.'

A soft voice is not always as defenceless as it seems; Mum had the trick of it. Her disposition could be fragile, but she was clever. She would not let Father dominate her and at times she swayed him or even put her foot down. As her health weakened, she became more spirited and he appeared to have less protection from her; this made Clarice think that he must love her, in his way.

He looked up, spoon in mid-air, a little cream on his startled upper lip.

‘Where?'

‘To visit Ada Anderson. From Mr Meldrum's school. You spoke with her on the phone, remember? Ada's father will drive Clarice home.'

She was sorry to have lied to Mum, but had seen no alternative. Mum cared for her; it was just that her attention tended to roam. Louise's absence had brought them closer. They still did not really talk, though lately there had been increasing warmth between them. Since the vain attempt at matchmaking, her mother was perhaps less opposed to Clarice's spinsterhood. If she remained baffled by the conundrum of a daughter who shunned matrimony and measured time by how long it would be till she could next be off painting, it seemed she was not, finally, entirely disapproving.

Clarice shovelled peaches into her mouth. She remembered to breathe. Father savoured an idea of himself as decisive and strict. This could be subverted or it could be quite a bother; right then, Clarice feared it. Raising his empty spoon pointedly, like an instrument of discipline, he made his counter-attack: ‘Clarice is always out.'

‘Nonsense,' Mum contradicted him. ‘She almost never goes out . . .'

His spoon twitched.

‘. . . socially,' concluded Mum.

An onerous silence as he registered Mum's coup. Such an interchange was the closest they came to a fight. Under the table, Clarice found Mum's hand and squeezed it. After a moment, the squeeze was faintly returned.

Father glanced at Clarice, at Mum, then lowered his accusing but overpowered spoon.

‘She has to have a change of air.' Mum got up from the table, having given this last word, and retreated to her bedroom, where she closed herself inside an exhausted silence.

More and more, Mum resembled her voice at its most peaceful and most canny. She was becoming softer—not soft-brained but gentler in the mind, somehow, and physically, too, she was softening, her cheeks growing pillowy, her bones less obvious; there was something nebulous about her. She relied heavily on Clarice, but was in conflict with herself over this, not wanting her offspring for a servant. She may have come to realise that her daughter had needs beyond the walls of their house.

Clarice stood up breathlessly and began ferrying dishes from the table to the kitchen. Father pushed back his chair and rose, then ambled out, showing that this small defeat did not trouble his status as lord of the manor.

A moment later, when she heard the wireless he would use to mesmerise himself into submission, she slumped over the sink. In just a few hours, she would see Arthur. Her heart clenched around her excitement, like a jealous fist on a prize. Tenderness for Mum seeped through her, for the softening creature lying utterly quiet in her room; she almost wanted to go in and curl up with her so together they could slip into a lavishly upholstered sleep.

13

She appreciated that he abstained from small talk, though this left them wobbly, rather naked. A stormy feeling to the atmosphere. He wore a navy jacket and the mystery that perhaps must surround a new lover, before you have filled many of the blanks in your knowledge of him. On Collins Street, electric light spilled in glamorous waterfalls from high windows, the night a jolly, frantic spectacle. Clarice's heart beat fast. She was festive with trepidation, hoping her good hat made her sophisticated and incognito.

They needed frivolity, so he took her to the De Luxe. The thick red carpet in the picture theatre promised a rich oblivion. They sat close, naturally; she sensed the heat of his leg. It seemed to take a long time for the picture to start. Tiny bubbles from her orange drink fizzed on her nose. She turned to study the wall to her left, which was decorated with trompe l'oeil windows. The nearest framed a landscape, a steep-sided mountain, a body of water in the foreground. She wondered if he noticed her knees shaking. The distant ceiling darkened into a simulated night; the two of them were lost in a palatial cave.

But they were not alone. They were surrounded, and their fellow spectators would assume them man and wife, or lovers. She imagined the weight of the arm he would not drape around her; someone they knew might have seen them. It was partly this awareness that had them laughing so hard with the rest of the audience at the first reel, once it began. A little too hard—a laughter that had a scared silence at its heart and ached.

There was no time to go anywhere afterwards; the hours together had been stolen time. Like a fine chocolate slipping down the throat almost before you could taste it, the treat was ending. She had been so happy, anticipating their evening, but now felt unwell and guilty.

They did not hold hands in the street, even as the crowd thinned around them. She saw his fingers stir, fall loose. The quicker it was over the better, but Arthur lingered near the van.

There was a homeless fellow on a bench close by, whom she would have preferred not to look at. He had a pink sore on his forehead. The worst was that he was reading a newspaper, or pretending to—surely there was not enough light to see by—and falling asleep over it. He would ruin his eyes. When he dozed off, the pages of the paper spilled onto the footpath, a mess. He slid down onto his knees beside the road to gather them up, the poor devil; he had a stunned look as he did this. She could not watch any longer.