The Stranding (28 page)

The whole escapade was susceptible to great risk and danger. When the harpoon was fired, a leg could be caught in the rope and an oarsman dragged out to sea and drowned by the whale as it dived or swam away. An injured whale could lift its tail and splinter a boat in one slap. Inclement weather could sink a boat on its return. At any time a person could be lost overboard. It wasn’t a job somebody would do for fun.

Lex moved along the photographs on the wall. Some of them were enlarged prints of the photos in his Killers of Eden book. He stared into the faces of the whalers, trying to understand them and what had driven them, what had made them choose this as a way of life. There was a photo of two men with boat spades standing on the bloated upturned belly of a dead blue whale. The men looked like council workers leaning on their spades at a roadside construction site, except that theirs were specially designed chisels to gouge into the flesh of the whale and cut it off. Flensing, they called it. Another photo was of the try works, and the large pots that the blubber was shoved in to boil it down so the oil could be collected. The place must have had a stench that would rival a morgue.

Lex looked at those men, and there was nothing in their faces that explained it all to him. They were the faces of normal men. Men that were struggling to make a living in a time of hardship. They looked like anyone who worked with a shovel in the sun. They looked like anyone who rowed a boat, or laboured to make money. They looked like ordinary people who had families, ate food, drank water, sweated, toiled, feared, hurt. Any one of them could have been him, if he had lived in their time, in their town, in their situation. None of them looked like the devil. They weren’t gruesome murderers who loved to kill. They were men doing a job. And it was a job that was hard.

He walked from the whaling exhibit into the room about local shipping history, passing cabinets of items retrieved from wrecks along the coast. He stood at the window and looked out at the sea. While he had been indoors, the clouds had split to a clear blue morning, and the sea stretched wide and flat to the horizon. He squinted into distance. This visit to the museum hadn’t been quite what he had expected. Instead of it reaffirming his irritation with the old whalers of Eden and with Vic Wallace, he found much of his anger was gone. Dissolved. He realised that all people had to come to terms with their history, and that it could not be escaped from. Even these men, with their normal faces, had to carry the burden of how they had lived their lives. They had to come to some truce with themselves about how they had conducted themselves, the risks they had taken, the fear and grief they had caused their families.

When he looked at it this way, Lex could see that he was no different. He too had history that he needed to come to terms with. Somewhere ahead he must find his path to absolution.

Twenty-two

It took a whole week for Callista to psych up to ringing Alexander Croft at the gallery. She knew she was procrastinating, but every time she looked at the phone she started shaking. What if he said no? She couldn’t face it, after all this work.

When she finally picked up the phone and dialled his number, her hands were sweating and there was a nervous wobble in her voice. She was embarrassed by his lengthy pause when she told him the theme of her paintings. It was obvious he doubted she could produce a collection of substance. During that long moment, her fragile confidence wilted and she scorned herself for even trying. Only known artists exhibited at Alexander’s gallery. Artists with established names. Artists with clout. Not wishful country yokels like herself. With their heads in the clouds.

She knew Alexander was being kind when he offered to come and have a look at her paintings. His high-pitched nasal voice smoothed over her discomfort. He said he needed a private viewing to assess whether his gallery would offer the best venue to display her work. Callista was aware that it was a marvellously kind and polite deception. She almost refused him, knowing that she was wasting his time.

Alexander came—as she knew he would—in his shiny silver four-wheel-drive, which he parked near the dam wall beside the Kombi. He picked his way across the grass in smart shoes and clothes, and arrived tight-jawed at the foot of the verandah.

She met him quickly and invited him to take the large inelegant stride up onto the deck. The house in the gully seemed an embarrassment. She could see he was annoyed for having played so far into this charade to save her ego. They made a feeble attempt at small talk then Alexander straightened himself in a business-like manner.

‘Let’s get on with it then, shall we?’ he suggested with a small smile that fell short of his eyes.

For a moment, Callista thought she might not be able to go through with it. She knew exactly how it would happen. She would set up the first painting and Alexander’s opinion would be immediately obvious. He would try to hide it, but his disdain would be evident. Of course, he would be careful to give the painting due regard—he was sufficiently shrewd to know about artists and their tender egos. No, a hurried brush-off would be cruel. Having come this far, he would be tactful and kind, but unable to hide his pity. Then he would recommend another gallery that would be more suitable for her work. She would thank him for his trouble, usher him to his car, wave goodbye with false cheer, and file the paintings under her bed.

She hesitated while Alexander jiggled impatiently, and then something crystallised in her and she knew she had to finish it. Quickly now, she glanced at the level of the sun and placed the easel where she knew the natural light would fall kindly on the canvases. She indicated to Alexander where to stand. Then she set the first painting on the easel and stepped away. It was a vulnerable moment and she forced herself not to look at him. Instead she stared out at the tangled green of the bush and tried to slow her breathing and the anxious knocking of her heart.

Alexander remained silent.

Somewhere down along the gully the wonga pigeon whooped. Callista waited a minute or so then she removed the painting, still without looking at Alexander. She placed the second painting on the easel and stepped back. Again she gazed into the gully. In the clarity of those minutes, the birdsong seemed amplified and nature thickened all around her. It was the same as usual—that brief feeling of hope turning sour. She had been kidding herself, of course, that one day she’d make it. But really, country markets were the limit of her talent and she should never have dreamed beyond them. After all, wasn’t that why she had stayed in Merrigan all her life? Pretending it was her love of open spaces that held her here? If she went to the city, she would be confronted with knowing what she had really known all along. That she was a no-hoper, hiding under a costume of alternativism. It was a shield for underachievement. It made being average okay. Misery looped over and over in her chest. It was a shame she couldn’t spare herself this last.

Over fifteen minutes she shuffled through most of her paintings. At the end of it, she walked inside and poured two glasses of wine with shaking hands. She handed a glass to Alexander. He was still examining the final painting. His face was very still and serious. It was worse than she had expected. This silence. This saying nothing.

‘Well,’ he said, finally looking into her flushed face. ‘You have been busy.’

She watched his thumb quietly stroking the stem of his wine glass.

‘Is that the lot?’ he asked.

‘There are a few more.’

‘We’d better see those too.’

Callista rushed back into the house trembling with shock. This was good. He wouldn’t ask to see more if they were terrible. Her hands quivered with excitement as she shyly set up five more paintings. Now she lost her restraint and checked Alexander’s face searchingly to gauge his reaction to each one. He was frustratingly unreadable.

‘Any unfinished?’

‘A few.’

‘Finish them.’

She went to move inside.

‘I don’t need to see them now.’

‘Of course not.’ She stopped, confused.

‘Here,’ he said, handing her the wine glass. ‘I’m done with this.’

He reached out then to shake her hand and she thought she saw surprise and perhaps a new respect in his eyes.

‘They’re good,’ he said. ‘You’ve got yourself an exhibition. We’ll exhibit in a couple of months. About the middle of April. You’d better leave the framing to me.’

Callista felt tears brimming.

Alexander stepped back and looked at her shrewdly. ‘There’s something more, isn’t there?’

‘Not really.’

‘No, come on. You’re working on something else, aren’t you?’

She hesitated. ‘How can you tell?’

‘Call it experience,’ he said with a small smile. ‘There’s a certain tension about artists when they’re wrestling with a new challenge.’ He waved a hand over the storm paintings. ‘You’ve conquered this theme. No, there’s something else. Out with it.’

‘I have been working on a portrait.’

He raised his eyebrows and folded his arms. ‘Who?’ he asked. ‘Who is it?’

‘Henry Beck.’

‘What, the butcher that stabbed himself in the storm?’

‘Yes.’

‘Come on then. Bring it out. Don’t keep me waiting.’

Callista brought out the official portrait of Beck, the commission for the church that she hadn’t yet delivered to Helen Beck. She sat it on the easel.

‘You’re kidding me.’ Alexander snorted. ‘What’s this?’

‘This is the commission. For his wife.’

‘The fake, eh? You have something else.’

‘I’m not sure I should show you. It was just something I had to get off my chest. I couldn’t exhibit it. His wife would never forgive me.’

‘Uh huh. Is she a friend of yours?’

‘There are some things you just don’t do.’

‘Come on. Bring it out.’

Callista went back inside and fetched the real portrait of Henry Beck. Her heart was thumping. Slowly she carried it out and set it up on the easel. She heard Alexander draw breath, then silence.

‘Interesting,’ he said eventually.

‘I can’t exhibit it.’

‘Not here perhaps,’ he said slowly. ‘But there are some competitions we could enter it in.’

Callista paled. ‘It was just for me . . . it was never meant . . . I think I should just put it away.’

He patted her on the arm. ‘You’ll survive it. Sorry, but you can’t just lock it away. Give it to me when you’re finished and I’ll deal with it for you.’

‘I can’t. I’ll paint something else.’

‘But you won’t be able to. Not like this. You’ll be trying to paint a lie. Like the commission. And you won’t be able to find the passion. You have to have enormous excesses of emotion to paint something like this. When everything in you comes together in a painting like this, you have to set other people’s feelings aside and reap the accolades.’

‘I can’t do it.’

Alexander smiled. ‘I’ll work on you.’

Twenty-three

Merrigan Show Day, Lex arrived early to set up his stage for the Show Girl competition. John Watson was already there with Sue’s husband, Geoff, tacking and taping royal-blue fabric around the edge of the stage to fancy it up. Lex offered to help, but they waved him over to a plastic box full of leads and wires that had been dumped on the stage.

‘See what you can make of that,’ John Watson said. ‘Looks like a pile of spaghetti to me.’

Lex lifted off the lid of the box and looked inside. After months chipping away at building a new life, here at last was something familiar. He placed a hand on top of the cables and microphone gear, feeling the texture of the wires beneath his fingers. A tinge of sadness swept through him. He picked up a handful of coiled cables and set them on the stage. The gear was old. He hadn’t seen this sort of set-up for years. But it looked functional and reasonably robust. And everything had been neatly coiled and stacked away. He should be able to get organised pretty quickly.

He screwed the microphone stands together and hooked in the microphones. Then he plugged connecting wires into the mikes and ran the wires out to the amplifier and speakers that had been set up at the front and rear corners of the stage. By the time John Watson and Geoff had finished, he was trying to locate the power source so he could test the microphones and speakers.

John Watson looked up at him. ‘Didn’t know you had a practical bone in your body.’

Lex shrugged. ‘It’s pretty straightforward. Even Mrs Jensen could work it out.’

‘I doubt that.’ John Watson frowned at him assessingly. ‘Trevor Baker will bring over a line for you from the power source. They run it from that shed just over there.’

He left to attend to some other job, and Lex set up the table and three chairs at one side of the stage for the judges. While he was unfolding the chairs, he glanced around the showground, wondering if Callista might be out there somewhere. He hadn’t seen her since the storm and over the past few days his blood had started fizzing as he contemplated the possibility of running into her.

He was still staring out across the grounds looking for her stall, when Mrs Jensen arrived carrying a white tablecloth across her arms. She nodded at him as she passed the cloth up.

‘I hope you’re going to do yourself up before the competition,’ she said.

‘I’ve got a suit in the car.’

‘Just as well. This is a very important event. I hope you’ll do our girls justice.’

‘I’ll try.’

‘When you’re finished setting up you could pop over to the food pavilion for a cup of tea. It’s over there.’ She pointed to one of the corrugated iron sheds around the periphery of the arena.

‘Thanks,’ Lex said. ‘I’ll see if I have time.’

After she left, he hooked everything up to the power. Then he switched on the mikes and checked the sound levels. He was busy taping the wires onto the deck with masking tape so nobody would trip over them when John Watson came by to check on him.

‘Looks like everything’s set up,’ John Watson said, surprised. ‘How did you do it?’

‘Beginner’s luck.’ Lex ducked his head to look at his watch. ‘Nearly eight o’clock,’ he said. ‘Better get a cuppa before the action starts.’