The Beloved (23 page)

‘Did your mother mind you painting?' I asked.

Helen shrugged. ‘I never knew her; she died when I was a baby. Dad raised me, with the help of a nanny. My brother's older than I am and he wasn't around much.'

So many people Helen had lost: her mother, her husband – and with him her chance for a baby – and Dad. Yet she was still soft. Mama had grown a shell as hard as a limpet. All that mattered was getting somewhere, being someone. ‘My mother says painting isn't a real career.'

‘It's a difficult career; very hard to make money. I'm lucky I can earn a living at it but this type of art isn't my first choice.'

‘What is?'

‘Bigger.' She shrugged. ‘Looser. More heart.'

‘Like mine?'

‘No. Not like yours is at the moment, anyway. Hopefully that'll change.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Lindsay, you have plenty of talent. Flair. Insight. Your work is very promising. Being able to see colours puts you ahead when it comes to understanding people and painting them, but what's missing from your paintings is you. If people can't see you, they can't connect with your work. They want to know what you feel, not just what you see.'

Like Mama and her photos; no sign of the photographer. No! I was nothing like my mother.

‘Where are your paintings with
you
in them?' I said.

‘At home.'

‘Can I see them?'

‘Perhaps . . . one day.'

Chapter Eighteen

Sydney, May 1961

Boarding school might be years off but my mother and Mrs Breuer were making plans for Stefi and me at St Catherine's School. We'd been accepted as pupils but the headmistress wanted to meet us. So in May, Stefi, Mrs Breuer, Mama and I went South. At the airport, Stefi and Mrs Breuer were whisked away by friends. Tim was supposed to be joining us in Sydney but Tempe met us with the news that he was still in Melbourne, with chicken pox.

‘I'll have to go to Melbourne,' Mama wailed.

As soon as the interview was over, Tempe and I took Mama back to the airport. She pecked my cheek. ‘Have fun. I've told your aunt to make you buy some jazzy clothes. Those smocks are so depressing.'

‘She's right about your clothes, Bertie,' Tempe said as we walked to her car.

‘Please don't call me that.'

‘What? Oh, sorry, I forgot. It's just that you don't look like a Lindsay to me. Lindsays are fair-haired and pale and nice. Do you feel like a Lindsay?'

I shrugged. ‘It's my name.'

‘So was Roberta, and I always liked it.'

‘Don't.'

‘Look, I'm sorry, Slug, but we've got a problem.' Tempe gazed at me across the roof of her Austin. ‘Your mother made me promise not to let you have anything to do with art.'

‘Oh. I should have guessed.'

‘She started on about how art made you a thief and if I didn't promise she'd send you to stay with the Breuers. So I promised.'

‘All for a handful of paints, over a year ago.'

Tempe slid into the driver's seat and leaned across to open my door. ‘Poor old thing. Have you really not painted in all that time?'

‘No, well . . . not . . . officially.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I sketch a bit.'

Tempe put the car in gear and we drove away from the airport in silence. As we travelled through the rain-washed city, afternoon sun splashed rainbows of light over the water.

‘Look at that light,' I said. ‘All that colour.'

‘If it weren't for light there'd be no colour.'

‘If it weren't for light the world would be black.'

‘I don't mean that,' she said. ‘See this car in front of us, the blue one? It isn't blue at all.'

‘You could have fooled me.'

‘Aha. Well it's not. It looks blue because the pigment swallows up every colour in the spectrum apart from blue. The blue gets reflected back, that's why we see it.'

‘So you're saying a green leaf isn't green at all?'

‘That's right.'

‘And if I use red paint, I'm actually using paint that's every colour except red?'

‘Yep.'

I wondered why Helen had never told me that vital piece of information. Hadn't got around to it yet, I supposed. Never enough time.

Outside her flat Tempe yanked on the handbrake and slammed the door. We clambered up the stairs with the groceries and she put them away, banging drawers and jars and crockery.

‘Did I say something?' I asked.

‘No, it's not you. It's this damn promise. I'm your aunt but I'm also an artist and it's ridiculous to expect us to spend a week together and not do any art. I've no problem with breaking the promise; the question is how we handle it. Either we keep it a secret, in which case we lie, or we come clean, in which case we'll both be in strife.'

‘It's easy, Tempe. We lie.'

‘It's not easy. Lies have a way of backfiring. We need to think about it.'

‘I thought about it long ago.'

‘And?'

‘And nothing.'

‘What do you mean,
nothing
?'

‘Well, I do paint.'

‘Oh? And how do you manage that?'

‘I go to a friend's.'

‘What friend?'

‘Just . . . a friend.'

Her eyes narrowed. ‘A name, Slug; I mean it.'

‘All right. Your friend.'

‘
My
friend?'

‘Helen Valier.'

Tempe's mouth dropped open. She shut it. It fell open again. ‘Are you kidding me? Are you
mad
? What do you think you're doing? What does Helen think
she's
doing?'

‘Like you said, banning art is dumb; Mama's punishing me because Dad's ex-mistress is an artist.'

‘Jesus, Harry and Joseph. If your mother finds out you'll be history. Helen must be off her head.'

‘Mama won't find out. I paint at Helen's shop and if she discovers I was there I'll just say I was buying a book. It'll work. Once, anyway.'

Tempe shook her head. ‘Helen Valier. It doesn't bear thinking about.'

We went to the city to buy clothes. ‘You'd better do something to please your mother.'

At David Jones I bought a new skirt, patterned like one of Tempe's paintings, and afterwards we went to see
South Pacific
. I drooled over John Kerr playing the lieutenant and suffered through Mitzi Gaynor clutching her bleached curls and washing that man, whom she didn't deserve, right out of them. Rossano Brazzi was too old for me but why he was attracted to the likes of ditzy Mitzi was beyond me.

We went for a late lunch afterwards. ‘What do you think of Rossano Brazzi?' I asked, sucking chocolate malted milk through a pink-striped straw and crunching toasted cheese sandwiches.

‘I rather like Mitzi,' Tempe said.

I burped. ‘Yuck.'

The doorbell jangled.

‘That'll be Allie,' said Tempe.

After a lunch of avocados, salami, bread and olives, Tempe, Allison and I went to an exhibition of Old Masters. The paint on some of them had cracked but they were still stunning.

‘Because their structure is good,' said Tempe. ‘That's why drawing is so important. Art is much more than splashes of paint.'

She let me use her studio and all her art things. ‘You might as well be hung for a lamb as a sheep,' I said.

‘Smarty-pants.'

‘Not me. It's Helen's.'

‘Oh, really? She shouldn't be so cavalier. She might yet hang.'

I sketched out a street scene from Kings Cross while Tempe prodded clay and cast glances at my work. ‘She's been teaching you a few tricks, I see. Nice composition. Your perspective's out though. Move over.' She dumped the clay back onto a heap and slid beside me on the bench. With a ruler and pencil she drew V-shaped lines across my drawing. ‘Larger here at the bottom, smaller up the page. Stay between the lines to get the sizes of the buildings right in relation to one another.'

As I worked Tempe leaned her chin on her hand. ‘You were rather anti Mrs Valier once upon a time. What changed your mind?'

‘She did, I suppose. She's kind of . . .' In my mind I saw her at her desk, curls tied in one of my ribbons, the tiny heart winking on her wrist. I saw the sink lined with jars stained cobalt, vermilion, emerald green and through the window the limbs of the gum tree jutting across the sky. A breeze clacked the bead curtain and fluffed Helen's skirt and she turned to me and smiled—

‘Slug?'

‘What?'

‘Where were you?'

At home. With Helen. I missed her.

‘I'll certainly hang if your mother finds out,' said Tempe, ‘but I'm taking you to my life-drawing class nevertheless. It's too good an opportunity for you to miss.'

‘Naked ladies?'

‘Yes.'

‘Naked men?'

‘No. And forget that sketchbook. We'll be using much bigger paper.'

The tutor helped me set up an easel and pin up an enormous sheet of paper. A lady wrapped in a chenille bedspread draped herself over an old-fashioned settee and dropped the bedspread to her waist. I'd seen plenty of black breasts before but not white ones. These looked like ski jumps. I didn't know where to start. The tutor came and put a mark either side of my sheet. ‘This is where she starts, this is where she finishes. Now mark points in between where things belong. Middle here. Three-quarters, one-quarter. When you're starting, it can help to see her simply as shapes and tones. A knee is a curve and a bump related to a straight line here and then the curve of the calf, and up here, a Y-shape. Don't get sidetracked by the idea of what you're drawing, just draw what you see.'

Echoes of Helen. Draw the shapes, not the idea. Two hours flew by in a landscape of contours, curves and colours. At the end we viewed each other's work. Everyone had drawn the lady differently, some more professionally than others, but each had something unique: a scar, a wisp of hair, a look of boredom, a reflection of light. I felt like I was in the Tiger Moth with the world spread out before me, and all I had to do was jump.