The Beloved (22 page)

Helen snorted. ‘I love this kid here, trying to unsettle the other player. It's so very . . .
you
, Lindsay, every line. Thank you.'

‘I got you these, too.' I handed her a packet of velvet ribbons; green, burgundy and black. ‘Oh, how lovely!' She grabbed a fistful of hair and wrapped it in the burgundy ribbon. ‘How do I look?'

‘Nice.' She
was
nice, and I wished I could have got her something better than just a picture and ribbons. Every time I tried to give her money for lessons she waved me away. We squabbled constantly over the price of paints. She never took as much as I knew they cost.

She fanned her face with a card and tugged at her shorts. ‘Why aren't you wearing shorts in this heat?'

Fine for her. She knew perfectly well why I wasn't wearing shorts
.
I took my irritation out on Stumpy in my pocket. ‘I don't like shorts,' I said.

‘You don't like shorts or you think your foot would be more noticeable? It wouldn't, you know. In fact those smocks you wear draw more attention to it than if you dressed like everyone else.'

If I hadn't been sitting down I'd have fallen down. I was used to this crap coming from my mother but not from Helen.

‘I mean, here it is stinking hot and you're wearing clothing past your knees. If that's not a declaration of a hang-up I don't know what is. Your foot's not perfect, but it's part of who you are.'

‘It's not me!
I'm
in here,' I thumbed my chest. ‘And here.' I flicked my sketch. ‘I'm not my foot. I thought you saw that. But you don't. You're just like everyone else.'

‘I see all of you, Lindsay, and
you
don't end at your knee.'

I stood up, grabbed my bag and hurried outside.

Helen followed. ‘I'm sorry!' she called out. ‘I shouldn't have said that. Come back, Lindsay, please.'

I pulled my bike from the bushes and pushed it through the muddy puddles.

Helen splashed after me and laid her hand on my arm. ‘I was wrong. Please forgive me; I promise I'll behave better next time.'

‘There won't be a next time.'

Helen looked at me sadly. ‘Then I'll miss you, Lindsay. All of you.'

My mother's photographs of Goroka sizzled. They brought the smells, sounds and sights of her travels into our living room. Black faces swept with red and ochre, noses skewered with pig tusks, bare bums peeking from beneath purple tee-shirts, towering bird-of-paradise headdresses, spears and beating kundu drums. Glistening thighs, rippling torsos, faces in firelight. A comatose python in kikuyu grass, a goat outlined in its belly. A grass-skirted meri
,
piglet at one breast, baby at the other, stared through the camera into eternity. Caverns breathed mist, waterfalls plummeted, serrated mountaintops soared against a peach-coloured sky.

Stunning.

But something was missing. The person who looked through the viewfinder and pressed the shutter. No sign of Mama in her photos, no sign of what she felt when she saw such incredible sights. Mama's pictures could have been taken by anyone.

Something else was missing: Stumpy, and I was worried that my mother might find it.

A few days later I started grade eight.

Stefi handed me a brown paper bag. ‘It's from Mrs Valier,' she said. ‘She gave it to me when I got my school books.'

Inside were two brushes. One was Stumpy, which I must have dropped when I fled Helen's shop. The other was Stumpy's perfect twin, brand new, every hair intact. There was a note:

Which one do you love more?

I hated Helen Valier. I hated her having the last word, I hated her getting under my skin and inside my mind. I hated how much I missed her.

The three weeks that Helen was gone seemed longer than the six weeks of holidays. The first Wednesday after her return I pedalled furiously to her shop, telling myself my rush was only because I needed art supplies and that I had to thank her for the brushes. There was no need to hang about. Do what I had to do and leave.

She was at her desk when I peered through the bead curtain, dipping a paintbrush into water, and muttering. I wondered if she muttered because she was lonely.

‘Hello,' she said, without turning.

‘Oh . . . hello,' I replied. ‘I just came for supplies, and to thank you for the brushes.'

‘Not at all.' She swivelled around. ‘Come in.'

I went in, and stopped. There, at my usual place on her desk, my art things were all set out, waiting. My heart began to thump furiously. How
dare
she? She picked up a small parcel and tossed it at me. It landed at my feet and I left it there.

‘An apron.'

‘I don't need an apron.' I did need an apron.

She put her brush in water and lifted up a picture that was leaning against the wall. ‘I haven't hung it yet. Maybe you could help me decide where.'

My sketch of the kids playing marbles. Framed, it looked like a proper piece of art and I felt a surge of pride. Yet, there was something wrong with it.

‘Do you approve?' said Helen.

‘Yes . . . sort of, I don't know . . . something's not right.'

She nodded and disappeared into the shop, returning with four rulers. ‘Normally, I'd have put a mat around your picture but a mat would cover too much action. Yet look what would happen if I had.' She placed the rulers inside the frame making the picture smaller – too small – but suddenly it sprang to life.

‘Why . . . ?'

‘Look out any window, you'll never see a complete view. Windows crop scenes, your painting shows a complete one. When you crop a picture you create an impression of the scene continuing beyond the frame. More realistic. More interesting.'

Of course, so simple. What was happening out of sight? Another artistic pearl from Mrs Know-Everything-Valier.

I looked at my painting things. All neat, all waiting, just add . . . Lindsay. I moved to the chair, sat down and picked up a brush. We worked in silence for a while, just the
tink
of brush on jar and the creak of our chairs. As I painted, the tightness in my chest gave way. Helen gave me so much; I gave her so little. I stood up to rescue the apron from the floor. As I bent down, I felt a sticky wetness between my legs. I went out the back to the bathroom and found spatters of blood on my knickers. I blinked . . . my first period. Unsure what else to do, I lined my pants with layers of toilet paper. As I walked back inside I could feel it shifting around and I took smaller and smaller steps to keep it in place.

Helen stared at me. ‘What's wrong, Lindsay?'

‘I think, ah . . .' What to say?

‘Lindsay, what is it?'

‘I think I've got . . . it's um . . .' I ran my tongue over my lips. My mouth was dry.

She looked at me curiously. ‘Oh . . . ! Have you, ah, your period?' Colours suddenly rushed higgledy-piggledy around her head – pink, red, orange – a total dither. ‘Well, well . . . no problem. Would you like a pad? First time, is it? Gosh, nothing to worry about, just need to . . . do you know about this? Good, good. Um, I'll get you . . .' She rummaged in a drawer, pulled out a pad and some elastic with metal clips. ‘Do you know how these work?' She pushed the sheer tag of the pad through a clip. ‘Holds like this, see? Front and back.'

I took the things to the bathroom where I struggled to fit the pad and elastic. I went back inside, bandy-legged as a cowboy.

Helen handed me a glass of cordial. ‘Welcome to womanhood,' she said. ‘Some of it good, some not so good. Here, have the rest of these to tide you over.' She gave me the bag of pads. ‘You know it's monthly and all that, I suppose?'

I nodded and sat down. Picked up a paintbrush. Couldn't think what I was supposed to be painting. There was a pillow between my legs and a trail of sticky liquid I couldn't control. I felt like crying, a baby; anything but a woman.

Helen leaned over and put her hand on my arm. ‘Bit of a shock, isn't it? A big milestone, though, but you'll soon get used to it.'

I cycled slowly home. Would everyone be able to tell? Would Chris? He seemed to have forgotten the night of the pantomime, or maybe he was just being polite.

I told Mama my period had arrived while I was at school and that a teacher had given me pads.

She went earnestly through her instructions. ‘Any pain? Lucky you. Cramps are perfectly normal and it's okay to have an aspirin if you need it. Listen, if there's anything you want, anything at all, just ask. Okay?'

‘Okay.'

Please, Mama. Just let me paint.

April. Moresby was drying off. Every few yards I stopped to gather flowers – orange bougainvillea, pink frangipani and white hibiscus – into a fragrant bunch. I tied them with wild passionfruit vine and when I reached Helen's I put them in a jar in front of her.

‘How sweet. Nice to paint.'

A cloth beanie sat on the shelf over her desk. ‘Is this your brother's?' I said.

She reached up and fingered the clay-coloured fabric. ‘No, it was my husband's. He died.'

I didn't tell her I knew. ‘I'm sorry, Helen. What was he like?'

‘Gentle. Gallant. Big. Not in size, but in spirit. He was in the diplomatic corps, like my father. That's how I met him.'

‘You must miss him.'

‘I do.'

Did she miss Dad?

‘But Claude was sick for a long time and sometimes it's hard to remember him when he was well. That's the worst part.'

‘Were you married a long time?'

‘Five years. We were planning a family when he got sick, then it didn't seem right to go ahead.'

And then he died and you met my father and fell in love again, and that didn't work out either. You sent him away.

She carefully brushed sap green over her drawing, a curled leaf with a dew drop inside, lying among pebbles. It was one of a series commissioned by the Australian Post Office for postage stamps and looked so real I reckoned a snail wouldn't know it was a painting. How ironic, I thought; my mother would love Helen's pictures.