After She Left Read online

  Friends helped her through the weighty burden of those times when time itself seemed to stand still. Janet and Paul made sure she ate, Olivia walked with her along the rocky coastal cliffs or on the beach, and Howard brought crates of French wine. Geoffrey and Tamsin poured tea and gave her huge hugs. Everyone helped to distract Deirdre and Maureen and to simply be with them and wait for this time, which seemed like an eternal winter, to pass.

  Anniversaries were the worst.

  At the first hint of spring the bulbs that had been quietly growing in the shape that Charles had planted them bloomed. He had told Maureen that when they flowered on the front lawn they would spell out ‘MO’ in glorious bright lemon and yellow daffodils and jonquils.

  Deirdre did not know whether to laugh or cry. Koula next door was astonished. She told Maureen, ‘It’s a sign that your daddy in Heaven is watching over you.’

  Maureen appeared to be absorbing this but Deirdre knew she was thinking what her mother was thinking: that bulbs come up every year no matter what happens. They do not require heavenly intervention.

  Perhaps Maureen did derive a little comfort from the display – Deirdre hoped so. For Deirdre in that first harsh year, it broke her heart a bit more every time she stepped outside or looked through the front window.

  *

  Colour is good for the soul, whether Deirdre remembered it or not. One drab morning during the second winter, Deirdre was walking barefoot along Coogee Beach. There was nobody about except a couple of fishermen in the distance. The sky was dreary, the temperature cold, and the slow-moving seawater dull under low, pewter-grey clouds.

  Missing Charles, she was, and missing her mother, missing the White Strand – the best beach on the Great Blasket – and missing her old self of the light heart and ready laughter. She would never be that carefree girl again. Unimaginable that life could look different than the way it did now. She stared at the sandy water.

  After a second, the clouds parted and a shaft of eastern sunlight fell, illuminating all she saw. The sand grains churning through the water glistened like grains of gold. The change was so sudden she gasped. Wasn’t Australia famous for gold half a century or so ago? Could some of that gold be in the sea, eroded into tiny pieces too small for use but making a gorgeous glittering spectacle if you looked closely?

  The brilliant grains winking in the sunlight whirled in the water. Looking closely was the thing. People walked past things without seeing them. The sun disappeared behind a cloud again and some bits of the gold still shone, even without the sun, if she looked closely enough.

  She walked further, feet in the water, the frothy foam washing past and the gold sandy grains scrubbing her toes. The rolling, restless ocean lulled her mind into a walking dream, a waking dream as she drifted along the beach, merging with the water and the salty sea air and the tiny tumbling grains of gold.

  We can focus on one aspect or the other in life, and it was those grains of gold she would be looking for in future.

  *

  Somewhere between chance and mystery lies the imagination, and somewhere between her old life and the new lay the enigmatic style Deirdre developed.

  She painted the Blasket Islands of her childhood, surrealistic domestic scenes, the landscape of her loss. And after burying herself in art and history books from East Sydney Tech library, she did sketch after sketch of Captain Cook, bizarrely juxtaposed with the Australian bush.

  Images of this iconic figure in the landscape grew into a series that later confounded the critics and divided her audiences. Here was the great man, his face and hands pallid and colourless, his uniform bright and crisp, insinuating his body around the trunk of a banksia, and there in another he draped his domineering form amidst the high branches of a eucalypt. His smile was sinister, his body snake-like.

  He was surrealistically supple and liquid, a malevolent melting ectoplasm squeezing the life out of the trees around him.

  She sketched and painted and after the time wore itself out, she looked up from an old grief and saw a new horizon. Her painter’s hand flew free again, exulting in its own agility, surprised at the pictures it produced.

  Again and again she painted Captain Cook looking completely alien in the serene and secretive landscape, she painted through forgotten meals brought by Olivia and Janet, through the postman’s whistle, through other friends’ comings and goings and cups of tea turned cold. She painted until there was no more light, she painted until exhausted and she lay down on the couch in her clothes and slept.

  14

  MAUREEN

  January 1972

  In the absence of maternal guidance, the wisdom of the Church stood Maureen in good stead, especially after losing her father. Over the years the wise counsel of the nuns at Saint Vincent’s and of the parish priest were her trusted guides.

  She felt secure and at peace, protected within the Church’s fold. Through her childhood and young marriage, through the baptisms of her babies and their schooling and once-weekly Sunday Mass, the sacraments and ceremonies, the milestones and routines were finely woven inextricable threads that made up the texture of her life. She was busy. She was happy. She could take her peace of mind for granted.

  Until now. Maureen’s fingers went up to automatically touch the little gold cross on the fine gold chain around her neck that Lillian Burnside had given her for her twenty-first birthday, two and a half decades before.

  Occasionally at Mass, Father Muirhead or Father Hanna would use the Sunday sermon to drop a hint about how decent Catholics should be voting in the next election. But recently Father Hanna was making politics the focus of his sermons.

  Rowan was staying at Beach Lane between jobs. He faced the unspoken hostility from his father for ‘always chopping and changing’ but loved the time spent with his mother after being away. He had been living in Tumut working for the Forestry Department when he decided he’d had enough and wanted city living again. Before that he’d worked on the railways and before that had tried out a couple of office jobs and worked at the Fairfax printing press.

  While looking for another job and a flat to rent he moved into his old room with Michael and shared many a session smoking and talking with Maureen. As a concession to her he went to Mass with the family on Sunday.

  Tension between Rowan and his father had been brewing at Beach Lane for some time. Maureen was almost happier when he was away – because then he was away from Jim’s judgmental gaze and implicit or explicit criticism.

  ‘There are so many of us who believe that the Vietnam War is wrong that the authorities are coming down like a ton of bricks on conscientious objectors now,’ Rowan had said the previous afternoon.

  ‘It’s simple,’ said Jim, ‘you do what the law says you must, whether you like it or not.’ He’d snapped shut his newspaper, emphasising that the subject was closed.

  But here was Father Hanna thundering in the Sunday sermon about Chinese communism and the danger of Vietnamese communists taking their dogma to the rest of Vietnam and then to all the countries between it and Australia.

  ‘Australia herself is at risk,’ he boomed from the pulpit, ‘and this threat must be fought. We must help our ally the United States to resist this vile threat.’ On and on he went, finally concluding it was necessary to risk sacrificing Australia’s young men for this noble cause.

  Rowan was bristling with outrage beside Maureen. She stretched her arm to put a hand on his and looked into his eyes. He glanced quickly away.

  After Mass, Jim drove Maureen and the others home as usual while Rowan rode his BSA motorbike back to Beach Lane. Maureen made a cup of tea for Jim, who drank it at the kitchen bench while reading The Sun-Herald. Maureen went to sort the laundry in the adjoining dining room. Michael was kicking a soccer ball around the backyard with Rowan. Jimmy and Sean were eating melting moments that Maureen had put on a plate. They started playfully thumping each other.

  ‘No biscuits without a plate,’ said Maureen. ‘And don’t fight inside
.’

  ‘No need for a plate,’ said Jimmy, ‘no crumbs!’ And he crammed the entire biscuit into his mouth.

  Sean immediately copied him.

  Maureen sighed and shook her head. The boys kept jumping about, in constant movement like molecules. Jimmy grabbed a balled-up pair of football socks from Maureen’s pile, leapt in the air, and threw it at Sean, saying, ‘You’re an idiot, Bolt! What are you?’

  ‘Jimmy, don’t talk to your brother like that,’ said Maureen.

  ‘Brother Benedict does,’ said Jimmy, catching the socks that had been hurled back at him and chucking them quickly back at Sean.

  ‘He does not,’ said Maureen.

  ‘He does! Doesn’t he, Sean?’

  ‘Yes! He goes like this with his chalk.’ Sean threw the balled-up football socks across at Jimmy, yelling, ‘You’re an idiot, Bolt! What are you? Stand up!’ And we have to stand up and say, “I’m an idiot, Brother,” and then sit down again.’

  Jimmy tossed the socks back at Sean.

  ‘That’s appalling. Jim, did you hear that?’ Maureen called into the next room.

  ‘What did they do to provoke Brother Benedict?’ said Jim.

  ‘It doesn’t matter what they did, it’s a dreadful way to speak to anyone,’ said Maureen.

  ‘They must have done something to deserve it,’ said Jim.

  Maureen shook her head. At that moment Rowan came in.

  ‘What are we having for lunch?’ he asked.

  ‘Roast chook.’

  ‘Yes!’ said Sean, thrusting a triumphant fist in the air.

  ‘None for me, thanks Mum,’ said Rowan.

  ‘Oh, how could I forget?’ said Maureen. ‘You’re a vegetarian now! I’ll make you something else.’

  ‘You’re an idiot, Bolt!’ yelled Sean, laughing and throwing the balled-up socks at Rowan, who caught them in one hand and tossed them back at him.

  ‘You’ll eat what you’re given!’ called Jim from the next room.

  ‘I won’t be a part of cruelty to animals,’ said Rowan, ‘just as I won’t be a part of cruelty to innocent Vietnamese people.’

  ‘You will obey the law,’ said Jim, standing up and going into the dining room, looking like thunder.

  ‘Only if the law is morally right, and in this case it’s not,’ said Rowan. ‘Father Hanna is wrong – communism isn’t contagious. The domino theory is untested and unproven, invented by the United States to justify the invasion of other countries to exploit their raw materials to expand their capitalist empire.’

  ‘Who’s been filling your head with propaganda?’ asked Jim, his hands on his hips.

  ‘It’s not propaganda. Conscription is the first step towards a totalitarian state. And some of us are burning our draft cards – that’s what I’m going to do!’

  ‘You’re a self-indulgent idiot!’

  ‘Jim! Don’t say that!’ said Maureen.

  ‘I can’t stand it here anymore,’ said Rowan.

  ‘You can go then. Leave my house now.’

  ‘Your father doesn’t mean it,’ said Maureen, going towards Rowan.

  ‘I do mean it.’

  ‘Fine!’ said Rowan. He walked quickly into his and Michael’s bedroom and shoved clothes into a duffle bag, ignoring Maureen, who had followed him. He shrugged on his leather jacket, strung the duffle bag cord across his shoulder and stormed out of the house into the backyard.

  His brothers and parents looked out the backdoor as he kicked repeatedly down on the pedal until the spark plug caught, pulled hard on the twist-grip, violently revving up his bike, and disappeared down the driveway.

  That night, when Maureen cried Jim did not comfort her.

  15

  KEIRA

  February 1973

  Maybe her mother was right. Maybe she was ‘chronically disorganised’. Nessie said she was ‘comically disorganised’. But no. Keira was about to prove them wrong. She was going to make a success of her honours project, with or without her mother’s cooperation, and no more stuffing around. She had a stack of background information on surrealism and on the Australian art scene between the wars. Now, Heide said, she needed to start interviewing Deirdre’s contemporaries.

  Heide handed her a piece of paper with a phone number on it. This is Geoffrey Pettifer’s telephone number,’ she said, ‘ring him and have a talk.’

  ‘But you know most of Deirdre’s works went up in the fire at that gallery? And my mother said he’s probably dead, and when his wife died he closed the gallery they had after the fire. If he is alive, do you really think he’ll be able to tell me much?’

  ‘Yes. I do. And he’s alive and kicking. No more buts – talk to him,’ said Heide, smiling her wide grin that revealed her large perfect teeth so she looked like a model in a toothpaste ad. ‘He will remember Deirdre Wild.’

  *

  ‘Yes, of course I remember Deirdre Wild,’ said Geoffrey Pettifer. ‘You resemble her, but you’re taller.’

  A white moustache took up much of Geoffrey Pettifer’s large, florid face. He wore fawn flannel trousers, an open-necked white shirt and a tweed jacket. ‘Do you mind if I smoke?’ he asked, taking a pipe from the leather-topped desk beside him.

  Keira shook her head and asked, ‘Do you mind if I take your picture?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  She took out her Nikon, slipped off the lens cap and focused. The smell of the pipe was soothing, rich and chocolaty. As Keira pressed the shutter she thought she might take up pipe-smoking herself. ‘Mr Pettifer,’ she said, ‘do you remember much about Deirdre Wild’s work?’

  ‘Wild experimentation, no pun intended,’ he said. ‘She started collaging very early, before anyone else was doing it in this country, even Eric Thake. The European artists were doing it but no one was doing it here at that stage.’

  Keira knelt with one knee on the Persian carpet to take his portrait from a different viewpoint. He assumed a heroic stance, shifting his bulky body, turning his profile to her and lifting his chin, and said, ‘I do hope you’re capturing my good side!’ They both laughed.

  He looked serious again. ‘Deirdre hated what she said the English were doing in Australia to the land and its original inhabitants,’ he said. ‘She did a series of paintings showing Captain Cook sort of oozing around gum trees and banksias, looking extremely sinister, as if he were smothering the life out of them somehow. Those works didn’t sell,’ he said.

  ‘What a pity I can’t see one’.

  ‘Perhaps some photos might turn up. I don’t think I have any but I’ll have a look. They were groundbreaking. Sidney Nolan and Albert Tucker also had subversive visions, which were not understood or appreciated at the time. But Deirdre’s strange take on the English settlement of this country confounded people. Public opinion was unthinking loyalty to the Mother Country and these works played with people’s cherished concepts – they were practically treason!’ He shook his big walrussy head. ‘They made people uncomfortable.’

  ‘Isn’t that what art is supposed to do?’

  He emitted a brief burst of mirth. ‘That’s what those communists she hung about with believed!’ He pointed a knobbled arthritic finger at her. ‘But propaganda ain’t art.’

  ‘But you don’t think that’s all her work was, do you?’ asked Keira, standing up and taking more shots from different angles.

  ‘Oh, no – she had beautifully drafted flora and fauna at first, and there were the domestic surrealist works, very innovative, and ones based on Clovelly with an eerie atmosphere like de Chirico. There was her dead birds series after Charles died. One couldn’t pin her down because she was experimenting constantly, evolving a style. Critics don’t like that – they want artists to settle on one style and stick to it.’

  ‘Such a tragedy about the fire,’ Keira said, ‘destroying all that diversity of work!’

  ‘Yes, it was indeed. But all was not lost.’

  ‘Really?’ Keira asked. ‘How do you mean?’

  ‘The fire
happened halfway through. We’d sold a dozen works by then. Tamsin and I had insured the gallery against fire so we were able to start again. But we wanted to lessen the pain for the disappointed buyers. We gave Deirdre a list of the sold works and asked her to paint them from memory and her preliminary sketches and so on. Then when she mailed them to us from Spain we would get them to the buyers and post Deirdre a cheque for each.’

  ‘Are there any Captain Cook works anywhere?’

  ‘No. As far as I know they were all burnt and no one had bought any and she didn’t do any more.’

  ‘She went to Spain so soon after the fire?’

  ‘Yes, it was terrible timing really. But good for her – Owen Wynter had just been released from jail – Franco had the communists locked up or killed and Owen was lucky he was only imprisoned. Everyone assumed he must be dead. As soon as Deirdre heard from him she just wanted to leave and go to him.’

  ‘Right,’ said Keira. ‘And what did she think of your idea about painting the sold pictures again?’

  ‘She was reluctant. It wasn’t in her nature to look back to the past or to repeat herself. But Tamsin managed to persuade her. She felt obligated to those disappointed art lovers and probably to us as well. She did them, one by one, and they were naturally a bit different, but everyone was happy – the buyers, Tamsin and me, and Deirdre getting those regular cheques after we’d taken our percentage.’

  Keira put the lens cap on her Nikon and sat down again. ‘Do you still have a list of those buyers?’

  ‘I do. Of course it was a long time ago and many will have moved or died, but I can give you the list.’

  ‘That’s fantastic! Thank you!’

  ‘You’re welcome. I hope you can track some of them down.’

  ‘Where did you go after the fire?’

  ‘The Gipps Street Gallery. We bought it with the insurance money. The chap who sold it had built it into an excellent gallery so we bought its good name too, plus we didn’t want to draw the attention of Jake Phipps. Better to stay a little under the radar. You know, young lady, I might also have some of Deirdre’s letters. Tamsin kept things like that.’