In the Frame (15 page)

‘All European, in this room,’ the gallery keeper said. He still sounded bored. He wasn’t Australian, I thought. Nor British. Maybe American. Difficult to tell.

‘Do you have any pictures of horses?’ I asked.

He gave me a long steady peaceful gaze. ‘Yes we do, but this month we are displaying works by native Australians and lesser Europeans.’ His voice had the faintest of lisps. ‘If you wish to see horse paintings, they are in racks through there.’ He pointed to a second plastic strip
curtain directly opposite the first. ‘Are you looking for anything in particular?’

I murmured the names of some of the Australians whose work I had seen in Melbourne. There was a slight brightening of the lack-lustre eyes.

‘Yes, we do have a few by those artists.’

He led us through the second curtain into the third, and from our point of view, most interesting room. Half of it, as promised, was occupied by well-filled double tiers of racks. The other half was the office and packing and framing department. Directly ahead a glass door led out to a dusty parched-looking garden, but most of the lighting in here too came from the roof.

Beside the glass door stood an easel bearing a small canvas with its back towards us. Various unmistakable signs showed work currently in progress and recently interrupted.

‘Your own effort?’ asked Jik inquisitively, walking over for a look.

The pale gallery keeper made a fluttering movement with his hand as if he would have stopped Jik if he could, and something in Jik’s expression attracted me to his side like a magnet.

A chestnut horse, three-quarters view, its elegant head raised as if listening. In the background, the noble lines of a mansion. The rest, a harmonious composition of trees and meadow. The painting, as far as I could judge, was more or less finished.

‘That’s great,’ I said with enthusiasm. ‘Is that for sale? I’d like to buy that.’

After the briefest hesitation he said, ‘Sorry. That’s commissioned.’

‘What a pity! Couldn’t you sell me that one, and paint another?’

He gave me a small regretful smile. ‘I’m afraid not.’

‘Do tell me your name,’ I said earnestly.

He was unwillingly flattered. ‘Harley Renbo.’

‘Is there anything else of yours here?’

He gestured towards the racks. ‘One or two. The horse paintings are all in the bottom row, against the wall.’

We all three of us pulled out the paintings one by one, making amateur-type comments.

‘That’s nice,’ said Sarah, holding a small picture of a fat grey pony with two old-fashioned country boys. ‘Do you like that?’ She showed it to Jik and me.

We looked at it.

‘Very nice,’ I said kindly.

Jik turned away as if uninterested. Harley Renbo stood motionless.

‘Oh well,’ Sarah said, shrugging. ‘I just thought it looked nice.’ She put it back in the rack and pulled out the next. ‘How about this mare and foal? I think it’s pretty.’

Jik could hardly bear it. ‘Sentimental tosh,’ he said.

Sarah looked downcast. ‘It may not be Art, but I like it.’

We found one with a flourishing signature; Harley Renbo. Large canvas, varnished, unframed.

‘Ah,’ I said appreciatively. ‘Yours.’

Harley Renbo inclined his head. Jik, Sarah and I gazed at his acknowledged work.

Derivative Stubbs-type. Elongated horses set in a Capability Brown landscape. Composition fair, anatomy poor, execution good, originality nil.

‘Great,’ I said. ‘Where did you paint it?’

‘Oh… here.’

‘From memory?’ Sarah said admiringly. ‘How clever.’

Harley Renbo, at our urging, brought out two more
examples of his work. Neither was better than the first, but one was a great deal smaller.

‘How much is this?’ I asked.

Jik glanced at me sharply, but kept quiet.

Harley Renbo mentioned a sum which had me shaking my head at once.

‘Awfully sorry,’ I said. ‘I like your work, but…’

The haggling continued politely for quite a long time, but we came to the usual conclusion, higher than the buyer wanted, lower than the painter hoped. Jik resignedly lent his credit card and we bore our trophy away.

‘Jesus Christ,’ Jik exploded when we were safely out of earshot. ‘You could paint better than that when you were in your cradle. Why the hell did you want to buy that rubbish?’

‘Because,’ I said contentedly, ‘Harley Renbo is the copier.’

‘But this,’ Jik pointed to the parcel under my arm, ‘Is his own abysmal original work.’

‘Like fingerprints?’ Sarah said. ‘You can check other things he paints against this?’

‘Got brains, my wife,’ Jik said. ‘But that picture he wouldn’t sell was nothing like any Munnings I’ve ever seen.’

‘You never look at horse paintings if you can help it.’

‘I’ve seen more of your pathetic daubs than I care to.’

‘How about Raoul Millais?’ I said.

‘Jesus.’

We walked along the scorching street almost without feeling it.

‘I don’t know about you two,’ Sarah said. ‘But I’m going to buy a bikini and spend the rest of the day in the pool.’

We all bought swimming things, changed into them, splashed around for ages, and laid ourselves out on towels to dry. It was peaceful and quiet in the shady little garden. We were the only people there.

‘That picture of a pony and two boys, that you thought was nice,’ I said to Sarah.

‘Well, it was,’ she repeated defensively. ‘I liked it.’

‘It was a Munnings.’

She sat up abruptly on her towel.

‘Why ever didn’t you say so?’

‘I was waiting for our friend Renbo to tell us, but he didn’t.’

‘A real one?’ Sarah asked. ‘Or a copy?’

‘Real,’ Jik said, with his eyes shut against the sun dappling through palm leaves.

I nodded lazily. ‘I thought so, too,’ I said. ‘An old painting. Munnings had that grey pony for years when he was young, and painted it dozens of times. It’s the same one you saw in Sydney in “The Coming Storm’.”

‘You two do know a lot,’ Sarah said, sighing and lying down again.

‘Engineers know all about nuts and bolts,’ Jik said. ‘Do we get lunch in this place?’

I looked at my watch. Nearly two o’ clock. ‘I’ ll go and ask,’ I said.

I put shirt and trousers on over my sun-dried trunks and ambled from the outdoor heat into the refrigerated air of the lobby. No lunch, said the reception desk. We could buy lunch nearby at a takeaway and eat in the garden. Drink? Same thing. Buy your own at a bottle shop. There was an ice-making machine and plastic glasses just outside the door to the pool.

‘Thanks,’ I said.

‘You’re welcome.’

I looked at the ice-making machine on the way out.
Beside it swung a neat notice: ‘We don’t swim in your toilet. Please don’t pee in our pool.’ I laughed across to Jik and Sarah and told them the food situation.

‘I’ ll go and get it,’ I said. ‘What do you want?’

Anything, they said.

‘And drink?’

‘Cinzano,’ Sarah said, and Jik nodded. ‘Dry white.’

‘O.K.’

I picked up my room key from the grass and set off to collect some cash for shopping. Walked along to the tree-shaded outside staircase, went up two storeys, and turned on to the blazing hot balcony.

There was a man walking along it towards me, about my own height, build and age; and I heard someone else coming up the stairs at my back.

Thought nothing of it. Motel guests like me. What else?

I was totally unprepared both for the attack itself, and for its ferocity.

They simply walked up to me, one from in front, one from behind.

They reached me together. They sprang into action like cats. They snatched the dangling room key out of my hand.

The struggle, if you could call it that, lasted less than five seconds. Between them, with Jik’s type of strength, they simply picked me up by my legs and armpits and threw me over the balcony.

It probably takes a very short time to fall two storeys. I found it long enough for thinking that my body, which was still whole, was going to be smashed. That disaster, not yet reached, was inevitable. Very odd, and very nasty.

What I actually hit first was one of the young trees growing round the staircase. Its boughs bent and broke and I crashed on through them to the hard driveway beneath.

The monstrous impact was like being wiped out. Like fusing electrical circuits. A flash into chaos. I lay in a semi-conscious daze, not knowing if I were alive or dead.

I felt warm. Simply a feeling, not a thought.

I wasn’t aware of anything else at all. I couldn’t move any muscle. Couldn’t remember I had muscles to move. I felt like pulp.

It was ten minutes, Jik told me later, before he came looking for me: and he came only because he wanted to
ask me to buy a lemon to go with the Cinzano, if I had not gone already.

‘Jesus Christ Almighty,’ Jik’s voice, low and horrified, near my ear.

I heard him clearly. The words made sense.

I’m alive, I thought. I think, therefore I exist.

Eventually, I opened my eyes. The light was brilliant. Blinding. There was no one where Jik’s voice had been. Perhaps I’d imagined it. No I hadn’t. The world began coming back fast, very sharp and clear.

I knew also that I hadn’t imagined the fall. I knew, with increasing insistence, that I hadn’t broken my neck and hadn’t broken my back. Sensation, which had been crushed out, came flooding back with vigour from every insulted tissue. It wasn’t so much a matter of which bits of me hurt, as of finding out which didn’t. I remembered hitting the tree. Remembered the ripping of its branches. I felt both torn to shreds and pulverised. Frightfully jolly.

After a while I heard Jik’s voice returning. ‘He’s alive,’ he said, ‘and that’s about all.’

‘It’s impossible for anyone to fall off our balcony. It’s more than waist high.’ The voice of the reception desk, sharp with anger and anxiety. A bad business for motels, people falling off their balconies.

‘Don’t… panic,’ I said. It sounded a bit croaky.

‘Todd!’ Sarah appeared, kneeling on the ground and looking pale.

‘If you give me time…’ I said. ‘… I’ll fetch… the Cinzano.’ How much time? A million years should be enough.

‘You sod,’ Jik said, standing at my feet and staring down. ‘You gave us a shocking fright.’ He was holding a broken-off branch of tree.

‘Sorry.’

‘Get up, then.’

‘Yeah… in a minute.’

‘Shall I cancel the ambulance?’ said the reception desk hopefully.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I think I’m bleeding.’

Alice Springs hospital, even on a Sunday, was as efficient as one would expect from a Flying Doctor base. They investigated and X-rayed and stitched, and presented me with a list.

One broken shoulder blade
. (
Left
).

Two broken ribs
. (
Left side. No lung puncture
).

Large contusion, left side of head
. (
No skull fracture
).

Four jagged tears in skin of trunk, thigh, and left leg
. (
Stitched
).

Several other small cuts
.

Grazes and contusions on practically all of left side of body
.

‘Thanks,’ I said, sighing.

‘Thank the tree. You’d’ve been in a right mess if you’d missed it.’

They suggested I stop there for the rest of the day and also all night. Better, they said, a little too meaningfully.

‘O.K.’ I said resignedly. ‘Are my friends still here?’

They were. In the waiting room. Arguing over my near-dead body about the favourite for the Melbourne Cup.

‘Newshound
stays
…’

‘Stays in the same place…’

‘Jesus,’ Jik said, as I shuffled stiffly in. ‘He’s on his feet.’

‘Yeah.’ I perched gingerly on the arm of a chair, feeling a bit like a mummy, wrapped in bandages from neck to waist with my left arm totally immersed, as it were, and anchored firmly inside.

‘Don’t damn well laugh,’ I said.

‘No one but a raving lunatic would fall off that balcony,’ Jik said.

‘Mm,’ I agreed. ‘I was pushed.’

Their mouths opened like landed fish. I told them exactly what had happened.

‘Who were they?’ Jik said.

‘I don’t know. Never seen them before. They didn’t introduce themselves.’

Sarah said, definitely, ‘You must tell the police.’

‘Yes,’ I said. ‘But… I don’t know your procedures here, or what the police are like. I wondered… if you would explain to the hospital, and start things rolling in an orderly and unsensational manner.’

‘Sure,’ she said, ‘if anything about being pushed off a balcony could be considered orderly and unsensational.’

‘They took my room key first,’ I said. ‘Would you see if they’ve pinched my wallet?’

They stared at me in awakening unwelcome awareness.

I nodded. ‘Or that picture,’ I said.

Two policemen came, listened, took notes, and departed. Very non-committal. Nothing like that had happened in The Alice before. The locals wouldn’t have done it. The town had a constant stream of visitors so, by the law of averages, some would be muggers. I gathered that there would have been much more fuss if I’d been dead. Their downbeat attitude suited me fine.

By the time Jik and Sarah came back I’d been given a bed, climbed into it, and felt absolutely rotten. Shivering. Cold deep inside. Gripped by the system’s aggrieved reaction to injury, or in other words, shock.

‘They did take the painting,’ Jik said. ‘And your wallet as well.’

‘And the gallery’s shut,’ Sarah said. ‘The girl in the boutique opposite said she saw Harley close early today, but she didn’t see him actually leave. He goes out the back way, because he parks his car there.’

‘The police’ve been to the motel,’ Jik said. ‘We told
them about the picture being missing, but I don’t think they’ ll do much more about it unless you tell them the whole story.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ I said.

‘So what do we do now?’ Sarah asked.

‘Well… there’s no point in staying here any more. Tomorrow we’ll go back to Melbourne.’

‘Thank God,’ she said, smiling widely. ‘I thought you were going to want us to miss the Cup.’