After She Left Read online

  ‘That’s why you’re blushing.’

  Maureen smiled and turned away. She looked forward to work these days.

  At lunchtime she and Jim walked to Hyde Park, as had become usual, and sat on the lawn, eating their sandwiches and talking about work and their families. Jim’s family were Catholics too, but there the resemblance ended.

  She and Jim were sitting under a poplar. Maureen’s salad and cheese sandwich tasted particularly delicious. The shade-speckled sunlight spilt just the right amount of warmth. She looked across at him and heaved a luxuriously long happy sigh. ‘How lovely it is to sit on the grass in the summer sunshine with a quiet, dark-eyed, mysterious man,’ said Maureen. Jim smiled.

  ‘Would you want to go to the beach with me this Saturday then?’

  ‘Would I?’ said Maureen.

  *

  Jim and Maureen walked along the coastal path from Clovelly past Waverley Cemetery and along the rocks to Bondi before buying fish and chips and settling on the beach. Maureen never allowed her gaze to stray to the headland with the hangman’s house and its ghastly secret. Jim had his own no-go areas from a war spent mostly in Changi prisoner-of-war camp and the two dimly recognised and respected each other’s need for certain memories to stay hidden.

  Jim unwrapped the fish and chips, deep-fried in lard, hot, crisp and delicious. Maureen broke off a portion of the battered fish and ate it with a chip.

  ‘This is even better than my mother cooks,’ he said, ‘and she makes the best food in Australia. Is your mother a good cook?’

  ‘My mother is too interested in what shade of green she will use in her painting. She doesn’t regard food as very important in the scheme of things. The only reason we didn’t starve was because of me!’ Jim smiled. ‘Oh, look – it’s starting.’

  They watched as the Bondi Surf Life-Saving Club members began to march across the beach.

  ‘Just my type of man,’ said Maureen with ironic disdain, ‘big, bronzed Anzacs.’

  ‘What is your type?’

  She glanced at him. ‘My type, if I have one, is for pale, strong silent types – comme toi.’

  ‘Com what?’

  ‘Didn’t you do French at school?’

  ‘Did commerce instead.’

  ‘It means “like you” and using the familiar, intimate version of “you” rather than the formal, impersonal one.’

  ‘Why would you use that?’ he drawled, looking into the depths of her eyes, hazel in the sunlight.

  ‘Because I like you, you man of few words.’

  They had both stopped eating the chips. He moved closer to her, leant his hand in the sand and said, ‘Likewise.’ He kissed her. He gently bent her back until they were both lying half on their towels and half on the sand.

  By the time they thought of them again, the fish and chips were cold.

  *

  The following Saturday Maureen slept in until ten o’clock, waking to a dreary grey morning with intermittent rain. Deirdre was in the studio. Maureen shrugged on her dressing gown, lit the gas burner and put the kettle on before going to the bathroom.

  She was toasting some bread when she heard a noise. The side door opened. They never locked it. Howard barged in, strode across the kitchen and went to take her in his arms.

  ‘Have you been avoiding me?’ he said as she resisted his embrace.

  Maureen smelt his expensive cotton shirt and cigarette breath, and pushed him away. She grabbed the breadknife and threatened him with it, pretending to be playful. But underneath she was terrified and holding onto the breadknife with all her strength.

  Howard took it as easily as if it were a toy and threw it on the bench. He grabbed her to him, pinning her upper arms down, and pressed his mouth into hers. Her heart thumped with panic. She struggled and kicked.

  Olivia, wearing a silver raincoat, had come in the back gate and was walking up the path towards the studio when she glanced in the window. She rushed through the side door into the kitchen.

  She looked at Maureen and back at Howard. Maureen was crying. Olivia’s eyes went wide with fury. She grabbed the scissors off the side-table and brandished them, moving for a moment like a whirling dervish in her silver raincoat with her silver scissors flashing. She flew towards him and stabbed him in the neck with one of the blades. Blood spurted out.

  ‘Fuck!’ he cried. He put one hand to his injured neck and shot the other fist out and punched Olivia backwards. ‘You fucking mad bitch!’ he said. ‘Jesus!’ He pulled the blade out and threw the scissors. They clattered onto the wooden floor.

  Howard grabbed a tea-towel and held it to his neck. He yelled, ‘Jesus Christ! You women with your knives and scissors! You should all be locked up!’

  Deirdre, who had heard the commotion, appeared just as Olivia was running out of the house, closely pursued by the enraged Howard, still pressing the bloodied tea-towel to his neck.

  *

  For several days, Deirdre stopped painting and hovered over Maureen, giving her whatever she wanted and in general behaving in an uncharacteristically concerned and sensitive way.

  To Maureen, she said, ‘I should have protected my daughter from that predator. Olivia and I were so absorbed in our collages that we’ve been spending most of our time in the studio. I am so sorry!’ She put her hands up to her head in a histrionic gesture. ‘Please Maureen, can you ever forgive my delinquency as a mother?’

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ said Maureen, who by this stage had told Deirdre the entire story. ‘I didn’t tell you I was going out with him. And I didn’t even think it was “going out”. I mean, I know he’s married but it didn’t seem relevant to what I thought was happening. He was like an uncle to me.’

  ‘But if I was a proper mother, I’d have noticed something. Oh, God, I feel so awful!’

  And Maureen endlessly reassured her mother it was not her fault.

  Deirdre had tried to find Olivia. She had telephoned Olivia’s mother, Mrs Kettlewell, but Olivia was not there. There was no point in going to the police about anything connected with Howard because they were his friends.

  ‘In a fight between justice and Howard Dathcett, Howard will win, every time,’ said Deirdre. ‘Alfred Foote said that Howard managed to get himself to a hospital – Alfred is as good a source of gossip as Madge Burnside! Now what would you like for lunch, darling? What about a salad from the garden? And there’s still some meatloaf left so we can have that with it.’ Maureen agreed to the suggestion.

  Once they were settled down to eat, Deirdre asked, ‘You don’t feel sick?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Do your breasts feel a bit tender?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Well, that’s a sure sign. You probably won’t get morning sickness. I didn’t, with you. My own mother never got it either. It’s hereditary. Sturdy peasant stock you come from. At least on my side.’

  ‘Do you know much about my paternal side?’

  Deirdre shook her head. ‘All I can tell you is that Carlo Trimble’s father was from Dublin and his mother was Italian. Carlo came to Dublin to study at Trinity College.’

  ‘You didn’t stay in touch?’

  ‘We couldn’t. It would have been too awful if his wife found out. And he was as generous as could be – paying my fare here and some money besides to get me started. A lovely man he was, Protestant or not.’

  ‘If I am pregnant,’ said Maureen, ‘I won’t be able to say that the father was lovely.’

  Deirdre smiled ruefully and reached across the table for her hand. ‘Darling, if you are, we will manage. Time will tell and we just have to wait.’ She finished her meal and put her knife and fork together. ‘Are you still seeing that lovely fellow?’

  ‘Jim – yes. He’s coming over this afternoon. We’re going to the beach again.’

  ‘Have you told him?’

  ‘Not yet.’

  6

  DEIRDRE

  October 1930

  She was fascinated with the brillianc
e of the Australian light. Even the shadows here were actually a subdued light. Deirdre wanted to capture the light in the shadows with her paintbrush. To model forms by their light and shade, that was what she was after, and to make forms shimmer as they did in the Sydney sunlight.

  The way Grace Cossington Smith made the sheer energy shimmer in her series of the Harbour Bridge construction, as if the two arches were soul mates desperate to be together. In that series the might and strength of the steel construction virtually flashed against the pure Australian sky. Perhaps one could paint the worker Vincent Kelly’s massive splash as he slipped and fell sixty yards into the harbour that day last week.

  She wrote the idea into the notebook she always carried with her. Vincent Kelly had miraculously survived, emerging with six broken ribs and some bruising. Everyone was talking about it. She loved painting water and she could experiment with the splash that the paper said went twenty feet high.

  Her notebook was a doorway into a space where she could sketch and doodle, play and dream, her pencil dancing across the page, thoughts tumbling onto paper for later, feelings spilling into form and shape, and enough rough drawings and pencil marks to capture the colours and contours of landscape and ocean once she was back in the studio.

  With painstaking attention to detail she painted life in the tidal pools just a few hundred yards from where they lived on Beach Lane, Clovelly. She observed shells, crabs and seaweed. She walked further afield, gathering bones and bird skulls, feathers and pebbles, and these found their way later into her larger still lifes.

  The organic compositions based on flowers, plants, insects and flotsam represented an art of transformation, marking Deirdre’s change from a working-class single Irish woman with a baby to a married middle-class Celtic-Australian raising her child with someone she loved.

  Her paintings evoked a new world and were the working-through of a new identity. Their bedroom caught the eastern light and Deirdre was up with the first of it, walking to the seashore with her charcoal and sketchpad, drawing the sea creatures and the wet white lace of the foamy shoreline, washing back and forth, back and forth, for all eternity.

  She returned, slipped off her skirt, blouse and underwear, and got back into bed beside Charles, his warm body vulnerable and boyish, belying the fact that he was fifteen years her senior. He drew her to him, close against his flannelette pyjamas. She was lithe and cool, her hair salty from the ocean breeze.

  ‘My sea witch,’ he said, ‘my darling girl, my goddess. Come to me, my bride of the wind!’

  ‘Mummy?’ called a small voice.

  Deirdre raised her head to see Maureen in a long white nightgown standing in the doorway. ‘Yes, darlin’ – oh, let me just put m’ nightie back on, and then you can come in here.’ She quickly put on her nightie and raised her side of the bedclothes. Maureen ran over to the bed and climbed into the warmth beside her mother.

  ‘Happy now?’ said Deirdre.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maureen, snuggling close to her mother.

  *

  Howard had wanted the party to be in the afternoon so everyone could admire the view. Deirdre was wearing her turquoise dress with a beaded, square neckline and dropped waist with a matching hat. Janet featured a purple sleeveless fine cotton shift with matching stockings and silver shoes. A silver mesh snake bracelet twisted itself around her upper arm.

  But it was Olivia’s dress that drew everyone’s attention. Long-sleeved black chiffon made up the top, with a minimum number of artfully placed shiny black feathers inside the chiffon preserving some degree of modesty. The transparent chiffon went down to the dropped waist where the rest of the dress was made of black silk. Sheer black stockings, black heels and a cloche hat made of the same shiny black feathers as those just covering her breasts completed the outfit.

  ‘Stunning!’ said Deirdre.

  ‘Indecent!’ laughed Janet.

  ‘You made it? – How?’ asked another guest, and all the women gathered round her to listen as they wandered towards the edge of the cliff with its magnificent view.

  ‘I bought this house from the son of Nosey Bob the Hangman,’ Howard was explaining to the crowd of friends as they stood on Ben Buckler Point at the back of the house. ‘Called Nosey because a horse kicked him and destroyed his nose. Handsome man before that, successful. After that, the only job he could get was hangman at Darlinghurst Gaol.’

  ‘Now the Art School?’ asked Mrs Kettlewell.

  ‘The very same. I bought this house for a song. It’s on the finest headland of the finest beach in the world. One day, my house will be worth a fucking fortune!’

  ‘Howard, please,’ said Olivia, who had just come up beside him, ‘language!’

  ‘S’cuse my French. Now, have some more French champagne, it’s from 1915, when they made it in caves to avoid destruction from German artillery – nobody’s drinking enough. You’re here to enjoy yourselves.’ He poured the bubbly gold liquid into glasses and asked Olivia to bring out more hors d’oeuvres.

  ‘I understand you are a lover of art, Mr Wild?’ asked Mrs Kettlewell, balancing her teacup on the saucer as they stood looking out at the Pacific Ocean.

  ‘I am,’ he said, putting an arm around Deirdre’s shoulders. ‘I am a lover of art and artists. ’Specially this one.’

  Howard Dathcett enjoyed the look of shock on Mrs Kettlewell’s face. Charles could be a bit stuffy but in certain situations he was good value.

  Olivia stepped into the circle and offered a tray of dainty ribbon sandwiches. ‘Do have some of these – Janet brought them. They’re delicious.’

  ‘We were just talking about art and artists, Janet,’ said Howard. ‘Olivia has bought one of Deirdre’s works, which now hangs on our wall in all its incomprehensible mystery.’

  ‘It’s not incomprehensible, Howard,’ said Olivia, with a placatory smile. ‘Deirdre’s paintings tell a story.’

  ‘What story is that one then? You floating in the sky! People can’t fly like birds. And the proportions are all wrong, the town underneath so tiny and you so big. It’s stupid.’

  ‘Howard – please! It’s not stupid – it’s a new way of seeing. Artists don’t need to depict total realism anymore. They have the camera to do that now. Artists are liberated to do more sophisticated things.’

  ‘Well, it’s too sophisticated for the likes of me,’ said Howard. ‘Who’s for more champagne?’ And he went towards the kitchen for a fresh bottle.

  Charles lifted Maureen into his arms and said to Deirdre, ‘She’s grizzling a bit. Might be time for her nap.’

  ‘Time for your sleep, sweetie, isn’t it?’ said Deirdre.

  ‘No, no. Want stay here,’ said Maureen, squirming in Charles’s arms.

  ‘You want to stay here?’ said Charles. He put her down on the lawn.

  Olivia crouched down to her and said, ‘Would you like to see my bedroom?’

  Maureen considered this proposition, looked at Olivia and nodded slowly. She allowed herself to be walked inside, one hand in Olivia’s and the other in Deirdre’s. As they passed, Janet and Paul were having an animated discussion.

  ‘Sydney is more like London than Paris,’ said Paul, ‘and that’s not a bad thing. People complain about English food but I say there’s nothing wrong with it.’

  ‘You can eat well in England,’ said Janet, ‘ just have the breakfast three times a day.’ Paul guffawed in protest and she smiled smugly.

  Once inside the bedroom, Maureen was enchanted with the small mountain of coats on the bed. She sat on the edge while Deirdre took off her soft leather shoes and pale yellow socks.

  ‘Which coat do you like best?’ asked Olivia.

  ‘Mummy coat.’

  Deirdre settled her on the bed and laid her green wool coat over the little girl. She kissed her. Then Olivia kissed her. ‘Close your eyes now.’

  ‘You no go, ’Livia.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Olivia. ‘I’ll sit right here.’ She made a gesture to Deirdre to go.
/>   Deirdre returned outside.

  ‘Why is it,’ Janet was saying, ‘that death, war, illness, misery and catastrophe are all feminine in French?’

  ‘Well, you tell me,’ Paul said in a hearty, teasing tone. ‘There must be some reason …’

  ‘I will tell you the reason. It is that the word-makers were all masculine. This is how things like this happen – they’re not accidents. They are the choices of powerful men.’

  Deirdre walked past a young woman with bobbed blond hair and a long black cigarette holder, who announced to a group of men in suits, ‘Art should be a swim in pure feeling.’

  ‘I’d rather swim in pure money!’ said one of the men, making his mates guffaw.

  Deirdre sauntered up to Charles and some art class students who were talking about the collapse of the American Stock Exchange the year before.

  ‘Things are getting really grim,’ said Lizzie, a shadow passing over her freckled face. ‘More and more people are losing their jobs.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Charles. ‘More unemployment, less spending by government, reductions in everything people need, but as usual the rich continue to be fine.’ He looked mournful.

  ‘I heard someone say the government should spend more to stimulate the economy. Maybe that will happen,’ said Lizzie.

  ‘I wouldn’t hold my breath,’ said Charles.

  ‘Well, whatever happens, Howard will be all right financially,’ said Deirdre.

  Howard was walking towards them again, eating a crab sandwich from the plate Maddie was holding. She was walking beside him, explaining in a tipsy voice, ‘Modernism is an art free from the tyranny of representation. True art does not seek to imitate nature but to express the artist’s deepest feelings. Isn’t that so, Signor?’

  ‘Yes. When we use form and colour to express mood and emotion, we are liberating art from the pedestrian and stale, and letting it fly freely into higher emotional and spiritual realms.’

  ‘When you’re inspired …’ said Howard, enunciating the word with elaborate distaste and letting it hang in the air, heavy with irony.

  ‘No, Mr Dathcett, that is a common misconception,’ said Roberto. ‘It is perspiration, not inspiration, that is most important – work, work, work!’