Night Street (16 page)

M is terrifically loyal to me. He was disgusted, he said, with the critics for their treatment of me, partly blaming himself for the attacks, so similar to those that plague him and all his ‘followers' (uninspiring, mundane, dull, et cetera). He is depressed by Australian and particularly Melbourne parochialism, though Europe, easily seduced by ephemeral fashions, suffers from its own evils, in his opinion. He'd come across one generous review of my show, however, and read it to me. I've kept the clipping. There is a part of it that touches me, to the effect that some of my paintings give the viewer an impression of looking through an opening. Forgive me for mentioning this. I pretend to be indifferent to critics and at times I really couldn't care less, or laugh rather contemptuously about them. But I confess that in weaker moments I'm quite undone, so when there is a little bit of honey, it's hard to stop it from going to my head, like the wine I'm not used to drinking. One bolsters oneself as one can.

I remember our sunrise sessions and morning bathes with affectionate nostalgia. Were we children, then, in a way? Your circle must be fun and I'm glad they're appreciating you, as they should. Myself, I have no real coterie at present and have pretty much lost my hand at socialising—or don't need it. You'd call me a hermit, only I'm always out on the streets. Hardly seclusion.

You say that the girl is too young and you are not yet tempted to settle down. I understand you. Oh, dear: look at all these sheets. What a ramble! Paint up a storm. Catch that mellow, golden light.
Fondly,
Clarice

She was surprised to see this flood of words emerge from the intense quiet of her days.

23

The doors and windows were kept firmly shut, only at night letting in the thin breeze. Against this background of torpid summer heat that had them dozy and short-tempered, they toasted subduedly with their teacups to the new year of nineteen thirty-four.

After some clotted days spent in bed or else dozing in her chair by the window, Mum abruptly became wakeful and alert. At all hours, unpredictably, she could be found wandering through the house's stale rooms, her floral nightgown shifting softly against her loose flesh, a waft of L'Heure Bleue lingering after her. She had painstakingly preserved that bottle of perfume and the alcohol in the scent had begun to move forward, a hint of fermentation there; its intense powdery sweetness had formerly seemed excessive, headachy to Clarice, but now it was dulled and forlorn. The ageing perfume was eloquent: those last years of the tightening purse—no maids, so little entertaining and few excursions—had been hard on Mum.

Of course, she knew the house like she knew the inside of her own mind, but she now navigated it tentatively. She touched objects, a table, a dresser, a red curtain, as if they were hypotheses she was testing. Clarice followed her on these experimental walks, hovering a few steps behind and watching as unobtrusively as she could in the hope of catching a clue. Was Mum taking her bearings by those familiar landmarks? Or conducting some late inventory? Clarice breathed the close air threaded with murky old perfume, pining for transparent smells, ocean wind and the pungent sweat of eucalyptus leaves.

Very late one night, hearing Mum up, Clarice climbed out of bed and went to find her. She was in the drawing room, where the moon showed the opening arms of the mantelpiece clock paused at three. Her hand descended cautiously over a lamp. Just when it appeared she would touch the lamp, her hand grew nervous; it soared up, then plummeted. Mum's stance, arms hanging slackly, suggested she was absorbed by something more primitive than thought. She swayed on her feet, about to fall.

Clarice rushed forward; was this like a mother's worry? But the old woman had regained her balance.

‘Hannah! Where's Hannah?' Father called from their room, groggy and imperious.

Mum turned. Her face did not recognise her husband's voice. There was no bewilderment in it. Just, perhaps, a certain irony. Plump, cherubic, Mum's face said,
I'm going along with appearances for now. But I see what this is. I see right through it.

With Mum now obeying an arcane set of rules, Clarice began to go to the city less often. She did not regret this; maybe she had finally sated the hunger that used to drive her there. She would concentrate on the sea, for a time at least. But before she did, there was one other subject she wanted to paint. A railway station.

The platform's black awning was interrupted by a vertical rectangle filled with orange-yellow lines that hinted at departures and arrivals. White parallel lines were train tracks. A red signal light gleamed darkly from the top of a black pole. Other black poles rose into the air, several pairs joined near the top by cross beams, like a strange, unfinished edifice waiting for its roof. The poles became dimmer as they retreated towards the horizon through a pale blue haze. Pinkish blobs of light shone through this haze, and above it sat a secretive creamy sky.

There was no train in sight. No travellers. The place was deserted, an empty stage. No one going anywhere. There was just the possibility of travel, the idea of coming and going, a pure dream of movement in which everything was still.

The soft colours and edges could have been the result of tears in the viewer's eyes. Tears of the one left behind? Or traveller's tears?

In the house at Beaumaris they waited for the heat to give, but it did not, continuing merciless, somnolent, and Mum settled once more in her bed; she was a little pale now and often short of breath. She read novels, with great focus. Clarice and Father spoke laconically of meals and the invisible progress of the weather. It was an inward time of hushed voices and solemn footsteps. Mrs Murphy from across the street had her husband bring them groceries regularly; the Murphys were of a type that knows how to behave, dependably and almost imperceptibly, in a crisis.

Dr Broadbent dropped in to see Mum every couple of weeks. Then each week. The two conferred in private, like conspirators or lovers, Mum seeming to derive a somehow voluptuous pleasure from his visits. Clarice was not told what had been discussed, and did not ask. There was a new air of vulnerability in the house—of anticipation. Still, Mum did not give the impression of being out of spirits, not more than usual. She was eating small servings, but particularly savoured apricot jam and peanut biscuits, whatever had sugar in it or the aura of a treat. She was peaceful: if anything, only a touch more self-important than before, enjoying her laziness, tending towards smugness after Dr Broadbent had been around.

Clarice realised that she herself had a case of the doldrums. It was not being able to get away to paint. One aimless afternoon, she looked up
doldrums
in the dictionary and was relieved to discover among its meanings: ‘certain parts of the ocean near the equator that abound in calms, squalls, and light baffling winds'. It cheered her to have this oceanic panorama to set against what she was experiencing; she rolled the word around in her mouth, envisioning flat but easily ruffled waves.

It was sometimes possible to pass the awkward edge of sleep by entering, through her mind's eye, one of her own landscapes, its forms more and more gentle until it had become a window into dreaming.

She had given Mum a sponge bath, got a fresh nightie on her, combed her thin but springy hair and finally applied a parsimonious drop of the muted L'Heure Bleue to each crepe de Chine wrist. A languorous, heavy afternoon like many that had preceded it. There was a stretch of hours yet to traverse before it would be time to get the supper on. Clarice thought of slipping out with her trolley for a while, but she had to be here, at hand.

Folding a damp washcloth, she said, ‘Pot of tea?'

With a tone that did not seem insensitive, Mum asked, ‘What news of your artist friends?'

‘Ada? She was well, last I heard.'

‘The Meldrumites.' Mum smiled. ‘The mud-slingers— wasn't that the term?'

So Mum had read some reviews. ‘It was, indeed. I had a note from Mr Meldrum recently. The group is having another artists' colony at Anglesea.'

‘When's that, dear?'

‘It starts next week, I think.'

‘And you're going?'

‘Oh, no.'

‘You don't want to?' An implacable look in the faded dusky green of Mum's eyes.

‘They've invited me—they always do. But I said no, of course.'

‘Tea would be just what the doctor ordered. Just the thing. I'm parched.'

When Clarice came back carrying the tray, Mum turned from the window, a cushiony mass amid the frilly pillows of her bed. ‘You'll go,' she declared, with the peculiar, daunting determination of the infirm.

Mum had begun to remind Clarice of Herb, before he left—she seemed to have the same steady assurance that there were good things in store for her. They had become curiously close, in a way, she and Mum, and it was not just the intimacy that physical dependence creates. Clarice had fantasised about escaping the house, longing for the richly ventilated present that was unfolding beyond the sickroom, as if on another temporal plane. But she did not think, now that an opportunity had been presented to her, that she could spend a fortnight away. It was more than a decade since she had gone to Anglesea and she would not even have considered going again were Mum not vehement, decided, apparently, on using her last sizeable strength to give Clarice some liberty.

Go
, she breathed tensely, almost a moan.

It felt like love. And rejection.

The packing, the parting and the quick leaving were hideous. She arrived at Anglesea only to find that Father had telegraphed for her immediate return. She did not paint a single board there or even walk down to the place where the estuary flowed, at regular intervals, into the sea.

24

Though she had long thought of her mother as sickly, it was deeply implausible there could ever be an end to the continuum of her, yet here Clarice saw the plain evidence of a life concluding. She returned that same day from Anglesea to find that Mum's skin appeared to be petrifying and her smell was changing, less powdery now, sweetening into a strangely universal scent. In some barely conscious state, Mum did not open her eyes nor speak.

Clarice had known to expect something like this, eventually, but she was dumbfounded. What was happening was not only implausible; it was unacceptable, unnatural. Aberrant. It had to be stopped. She felt Mum's tepid forehead; she fussed with the already straight sheet. She stood, immobile, by the bed. There was nothing to do. What was her role? She retreated to a chair in the corner of the room, confused by her own helplessness. She watched, for hours. Others came and went by the bed. Father. Louise. Mrs Murphy. Battling to breathe, Mum's lips were bluish, bluer. Perhaps death and the end of the love act had this in common: the sensations experienced could not be fully shared; the dominant feeling at both times might be loneliness.

Sometime during the night, contemplating the slight significant shapes of the familiar body beneath the sheet, Clarice thought: she was my first seascape, the interior sea, a bone shoreline curving like a half moon. Floating in her, in the forgetful twilight before birth, I prepared for the waters of Port Phillip Bay. There, I was taught to seek nourishment curled in on myself. There, I first saw the feeling that haunts a shadow or a splotch of light; I knew her moods as dark washes or orange-red flashes against my unborn eyes, and my parents' affection for each other, perhaps, as a dull opalescence. Then, it was all incomprehensible and accepted.

At another indeterminate point, Louise touched Clarice's arm and said, ‘You need to sleep.'

She studied her younger sister briefly. Louise's eyes were as she had never seen them, slow and deep, beautiful with mourning. ‘I'm alright. Not tired, really.' Grazing the hand on her arm, she added, ‘You go and rest.' Perfumed air. ‘Wait.' Clarice took Louise's wrist and laid her nose to it, like a bloodhound; the old L'Heure Bleue, powdery and heartbroken. Delicately, she kissed that pale perfumed skin.

When the dawn came, she was remembering the watercolours that had hung in her parents' bedroom, especially the bird of paradise. She was calmer. In the deep shadow edged with pink, her mother appeared to be wearing a faint smile. She went over to the bed to see it better. It certainly resembled a smile. Contentment? Detachment?

Back in her chair, she sat up straighter. Her role, if not to share or understand, was to watch. It was always the way. I am your witness. This was far from passive; the effort required, the participation were devastating. Still not a lot to offer, but maybe a kind of gift.

Soon there was no expression on her face at all. Mum let go of her hold on the physical world and there was a shifting inwards, the vessel that housed her hinting heavily at absence. Then suddenly, quite clearly, starkly, the vessel was uninhabited; its tenant had moved on. She had departed this life.

Astonishing. Remarkable—this. So
large
. Clarice closed her eyes; she only half knew herself.

The house was warm and quiet, though there were more in it than normal. A relaxed Anglican, even in her distant days of singing in the church choir, Mum had not expressed an interest in seeing a priest; but Dr Broadbent had been called an hour earlier, when her breathing became more agitated and wispy. He now said, ‘She's at rest.' Turning to Father and exhaling heavily, ‘I'm sorry for your loss.' Glancing at Clarice and Louise, ‘It's good to know she's finally at peace. I'll leave you all alone with her. Don't worry—I'll see to . . . things.'

‘Thank you,' Louise said, uncertainly giving him her hand. He smiled.

‘I'm going out to get some air. And to stretch my legs,' Father said. His face was as impassive as it had been all night, but he walked off with an unusual torpor.

‘I'll go and help Mrs Murphy with the tea,' Louise murmured. Her steps travelled in the direction opposite to that of the kitchen; she was probably going to smoke in secret and to cry.