‘I’d picked up something of stonemasonry from m’ grandfather and also something of bar work in my uncle’s pub. And on the island I fished and set lobster traps and learnt how to make naimhóga – that’s canoes to you. I’m making one here, for a Gladesville man. I’ll show you later if you want to see.’
‘I’d love to.’
‘They called the Blaskets “The Island of Stories”. In Kerry, they say the gift of poetry passes from father to daughter and the gift of story from father to son. Poetry is akin to painting. Straight to the heart they both go. Whereas stories can meander and philosophise along the way, like I’m doing now. Deirdre O’Mara inherited both. Her gift of poetry she put into her pictures and her pictures tell a story.’
‘How do you mean exactly?’
He shrugged. ‘Her pictures went straight to the heart like poetry does.’
‘I’m interviewing people who knew her,’ said Keira, ‘but I need to see more of her works …’
‘You’ll find more pictures that belong to various dealers and collectors and piece together her story that way; I can tell you the story I know; and you can compare it later with what you’ve learnt from other sources, then tally up the various accounts to see what seems right.’
Seamus Mike launched into the sort of convoluted talking that Keira’s father reckoned was typically Irish – he criticised Maureen for doing it – starting off with colours, which reminded him of something else and of Irish rain and by the end, Keira’s head buzzed with art and weather and Deirdre’s father all mixed together.
‘All those greens in her work, a person could drown in ’em. The greens o’ the ever-changing sea, pure green or mixed with blue or greyish-white, the emerald o’ long winter grass growing on a cliff side, the lime o’ new spring shoots. Australia doesn’t have that many greens, not compared with Ireland; Australia has forty shades o’ straw!’ After another long ramble he paused. ‘Deirdre was like water, she was never still. Have you ever been at sea?’
‘Only on ferries.’
‘I’ll have to take you on the naomhóg when it’s finished.’
‘I’d love that.’
‘At sea is a different world, a better world. The colours of sea and sky change all the time, and nothing stays still. Deirdre was like that, always moving or her thoughts and feelings moving deeply within, you could see it in her big eyes. She’d the quick, dark eyes of a teller of tales. I had to be a storyteller and she had to paint her stories, for the country we came from was full to the lid o’ songs and stories and people makin’ music of all that was happening.’
He drained his glass and concluded: ‘Well, talking never brought the turf home yet, and stories nourish the soul, but you’ll be wanting your tea now. I can offer you some here if you don’t mind pub food but it’s other plans you might have and another time we could meet.’
‘Yes, maybe next Sunday?’
‘Next weekend, it is. Would you like a lift home now?’
‘No, thanks, the buses go all the time, from just outside. I’m going to my boyfriend’s place in Darling Street.’
‘If you’re sure you don’t need a lift.’ Seamus sighed as he made moves to stand up. ‘The long years are gone in a gallop and some of those in my story gone, too, as the mist goes with the wind.’
‘But Deirdre’s not gone, is she? Just sort of lost.’
He laughed at that. ‘She’s not gone.’ He looked enigmatic and they edged past the crowd of drinkers.
*
The next day, Keira was interviewing Ros Thwaites in her sunny Potts Point kitchen.
As Keira was looking at a painting on the wall, Ros said casually, ‘That’s one of hers.’ It was an oil painting of an unpeopled beach with trees in the foreground.
‘Gosh!’ Keira moved off her chair to get closer. The beach was viewed from a distance, the grey waves full of white caps and all the trees in the foreground with their branches blown to the right hand side of the frame. ‘Those cold hues and the bitter wind – you can really feel it.’
‘Yes, at first it looks conventional.’ The painting was a study in grey, white and dark navy and some lighter greyish-blues. ‘But after a while you start to feel a little chilly.’ She laughed. ‘It’s not surrealistic, too early for that, but it has a grotesque sort of power.’
‘Grotesque!’ echoed Keira. ‘I don’t think I’d go that far!’
‘It seems that way to me because I hate wind. She was used to the fierce gusts off the Atlantic roaring round the Great Blasket island so she never minded a stiff breeze from the sea.’
‘Could I photograph this?’
‘Go ahead.’
‘Could I get some of you too, please?’
‘Why not? You don’t want me posing formally, do you?’
‘No – just keep talking and doing whatever you want.’
Keira raised her camera.
Ros said, ‘In Deirdre’s landscapes traditional perspective was upended, I mean with the geography but also with history, as in the Captain Cook ones. People weren’t ready for that.’ She got up and reached into a cupboard to retrieve a packet of almond biscuits.
Keira took one and said, ‘I recently met an old friend of Deirdre’s called Seamus Mike. Have you met him?’
‘The name doesn’t ring a bell.’
‘He lives in Melbourne mainly. He knows a lot about the Blaskets …’
‘Oh, yes, yes, he came with her on the boat to Australia. I heard about him. But we never met.’
Keira lowered her camera. ‘He told me that in County Kerry they say that the gift of poetry passes from father to daughter and the gift of story from father to son.’
Ros yelped with laughter. ‘And what gifts do the sons and daughters get from their mothers, eh? The ones who gave them life itself. Do you not think the mothers give their sons and daughters some special gifts, too? It’s obvious, but the mothers will never get the credit for it, not in that priest-ridden place and not in this country, either. And you’ll find that when men do research and write it up, it’s called history, and when women do it, it’s called gossip!’ She rocked with a big belly laugh as if it was the funniest joke in the world.
‘And in Deirdre’s time Australian society was very blokey, wasn’t it? Do you think the sexism affected her career?’
‘It did, as it did every woman. She and other modernists – men, too, but it was the outspoken modernist women they were baffled by. The women threatened their bastion of male privilege and power.’
‘Do you think she regretted coming to Australia?’
Ros looked thoughtful. ‘No. She made the most of it here. The thirties were tough, what with the Depression and the cultural isolation, but there was an artistic community where people supported one another. Her work was considered too weird to exhibit in the main galleries. Sydney then was a colourless, xenophobic place with dark shadows of corruption affecting ordinary lives. Most people lived in poverty but certain types just kept getting richer and richer. It was probably better for her to go to Spain.
‘You know, thirty major artists left Australia after the second war. It was safer here during the war but it was culturally cut off, too isolated. So many lovely young men went to fight and didn’t return. Some came back wounded, physically or mentally. My dear, it was a terrible time.’
Keira thought of her father, who had been a prisoner of war. Maureen said that was why he was moody. When Keira was a child the war was remote and even in high school it seemed distant. But the older she got, the closer it seemed.
When she started thinking about Vietnam because of Rowan’s stand against it, it looked to her as if they called a war for every generation and used its young men as cannon fodder.
‘How is your mother?’ asked Ros. ‘I haven’t seen her since she was a girl.’
‘She’s okay. But she won’t talk to me about my project. She’s totally against it. Why do you think she’s like that?’
Ros paused, looking out the window. Then
she shrugged, turned back to Keira and said, ‘Most children want their parents to be conventional. Perhaps Maureen wanted her mother to stay home doing housework and not paint strange pictures and have dangerous friends.’
‘Dangerous friends?’
‘Like me! Communists! Seen by the government as a threat to society, and actually we were a threat to society! To the rich, anyway. Actually, the real dangerous people were the ones in the Razor Gang. It wasn’t Deirdre so much as her close friend Olivia Kettlewell with those connections. She’d married Howard Dathcett –’
‘Howard Dathcett? The son of the hangman?’
‘No, that was Bob Howard. Howard Dathcett just lived in the hangman’s house. Howard part-owned racing horses, had gambling and boxing interests. There are patterns in people’s lives. Some people have success and luck and are always in the right place at the right time. Others have a pattern of loss and pain. Like Olivia.’
‘Some ex-art students from Rowe Street said she might still be in the asylum.’
‘Good Lord, no. She came out after a couple of years. But she went back from time to time. She was in there again after the war. The drugs changed her. But that was a long time ago. You should talk to her.’
Keira’s mouth dropped open. ‘Could I? There are no Dathcetts in the telephone book. You know where she lives?’
‘As far as I know, with her mother at Dover Heights. It’s years since I saw her but she may be still there.’ Ros went to get her address book.
28
DEIRDRE
Early May 1973
Deirdre opened the cottage door. ‘Janet! I’m so glad you’ve come,’ she said, and stepped aside to allow her into the low-ceilinged little hallway. Janet was so sane and sensible and if anyone could make her feel better, it would be her.
‘You found it all right?’
‘Easily,’ said Janet. ‘It’s the middle of nowhere but at least you’re not far from the railway station. Your letter sounded a bit desperate.’
‘Come into the kitchen and I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Deirdre. When they were in the tiny kitchen she struck a match, lit the gas ring and put the kettle on it. She turned back to Janet and said, ‘The truth is, it’s desperate that I am!’ She burst into tears.
Janet stepped towards her and opened her arms. Deirdre clung to her, crying hopelessly. Janet’s familiar jasmine perfume was soothing.
‘Have you got anything stronger than tea?’ said Janet. Deirdre’s reply was indecipherable and Janet said, patting her back with vigour, ‘P’raps we can pop down to your local. I don’t like the look of that gas stove. You do know that this is where the famous poet Sylvia Plath put her head in the oven ten years ago, don’t you?’
Deirdre sniffed. ‘Not here, in this house,’ she said.
‘Well, that’s a relief, but in North Tawton so probably next door, considering that North Tawton has a population of about thirty-seven people! Why on earth did you come here?’
‘Sit down,’ said Deirdre, ‘on this uncomfortable little couch,’ gesturing towards a small couch covered in faded red velvet at the far end of the kitchen, in the space of an old fireplace. The two women went over and sat.
‘We came here to do a series of yoga and meditation workshops,’ said Deirdre. ‘Remember we’d got right into that in India? Owen made an impact in the newspapers with his pieces on the Beatles and Mia Farrow doing the same thing we were doing.’ She blew her nose on a damp, limply crumpled hankie.
‘No wonder those articles were a hit,’ said Janet. ‘They had everything: famous people, exotic location, tantric sex …’
Deirdre started crying again.
‘Oh dear, no more tantric sex, eh? How tactless of me – I tell you what, let’s get off this terrifically uncomfortable sixteenth century couch and I’ll take you to lunch at the pub. Grab a jacket.’ She shrugged on her own coat again.
Janet turned off the gas under the kettle and they set off. The local was only a few minutes away.
‘If only I’d never seen that advert for the workshops, if only we’d never come here,’ said Deirdre, and released a vast sigh. ‘The age gap between Owen and me never seemed like anything until a few years ago. That was why I was so keen on keeping myself fit and doing yoga and all that. I thought I was doing pretty well. And then we came here – and it was our young yoga teacher he fell in love with.’
In the plate glass window of the butcher shop Janet commented on their reflections: ‘I’m all tallish and thinnish and practical-looking. Look at you. Bride of the wind – isn’t that what Charles used to call you?’
‘Yes.’
‘You got through that loss and you are going to get through this one, all right?’
‘I suppose so. This is the pub just up ahead,’ said Deirdre. ‘Owen claimed he wanted someone his own age, or rather, in this case, someone fifteen years his junior!’
They went into the Railway Hotel, a two-storey whitewashed building. ‘It’s a bit of a “spit ’n sawdust” pub, this one,’ said Deirdre.
‘Spit and sawdust?’
‘It’s where the local farmers and tradesmen drink, but the beer is excellent and the food fresh. They get their fish from Saint Ives, not far away.’
‘Scotch for you?’ said Janet as they approached the oak bar.
‘Lovely. T’anks. Hello, Nancy, how’s it goin’?’
‘Not bad, love, and you?’
‘Me? I’m doin’ a bit better now, t’anks. This is my friend Janet Bell, come to rescue me.’
‘Nice to meet you, Janet,’ said Nancy, pouring their drinks. ‘She needs a bit of lookin’ after, this one!’
Janet laughed and turned to Deirdre. ‘After all these years, you still say “T’anks”! Hasn’t all your travelling rubbed off a bit o’ the brogue yet?’
‘Apparently not. But it’s ordinary Irish, not the old, incomprehensible west County Kerry accent. I got rid of that early because it was hard for Australians to understand me.’
‘Remember when we used to vow to only speak Spanish to each other in the early days in Majorca so we’d learn it faster?’
‘Completely unrealistic,’ said Deirdre, nodding. ‘We could hardly talk fast enough to each other in English.’
They ordered lunch from the blackboard and Deirdre recommended two pints of Blackawton ale to go with it. They sat at a booth near the fire.
‘The yoga teacher is called Jessica. She is everything Owen usually despises: upper class, rich, spoilt. Resembling a pre-Raphaelite artist’s model might have won him over – long, crinkly, reddish-gold hair and enormous blue eyes and enormous breasts, and I’m sure that they are transcending to some wonderful places together when they meditate.’
They sipped their Scotches and Janet asked, ‘Where are they now?’
‘Somewhere on the hippy trail to Kathmandu. Owen submitted his articles and they went to stay for a bit in her flat in Kensington Court. They were going to travel to Tibet and places after that. I had a postcard from Amsterdam from him saying he hoped we could still be friends.’ She rolled her eyes.
Their soups came and they buttered a chunk of granary bread each. ‘This is the best homemade bread,’ said Deirdre. ‘I haven’t felt like it lately but I think you’ve managed to bring back my appetite.’
‘Good,’ said Janet, ‘you could do with a bit of fattening up. Now, listen, I’ve actually been gestating a plan.’
‘Oh, God – you and your plans. What is it?’
Nancy brought over their beers. Janet told Deirdre about the letter from Geoffrey Pettifer. She said, ‘I take it that you’re not planning to stay in North Tawton for the rest of your life?’
Deirdre laughed briefly. ‘I’m just paying rent as we go. My landlady’s like me – not much of a planner. I can leave with two weeks’ notice.’
‘Good. Geoffrey wrote to me a few weeks ago. He mentioned that Keira – your granddaughter – had been to visit him and that she is at East Sydney Tech …’
‘Yes, M
aureen wrote to me that she was doing a visual arts degree.’
‘Yes. She’s specialising in photography and for her honours year she is doing a photographic essay on you!’
‘On me? Really?’
‘Yes, on your work. And I’ve been thinking that you could go back to Australia and help her with it. Australia’s got a prime minister in favour of the arts now – it’s all changing over there – an ideal time to go back. At least for a holiday.’
Deirdre put her spoon down. ‘I’d so love to see Maureen again, and all the grandchildren, as well as Keira. But it’s a touchy subject. Maureen’s probably still angry with me …’
‘Remind me why again.’
‘Oh, mainly we are such different temperaments. She has never really forgiven me for putting her in Howard Dathcett’s way and every time we meet I seem to commit some other terrible sin. I’d like to help Keira but I’d need to step carefully.’
‘You? Step carefully?’ Janet laughed. ‘That would be a first! Now, let’s formulate a plan so it doesn’t all go haywire because of your complete inability to plan.’
Deirdre frowned.
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to insult you – I am only trying to help. But you don’t want to risk getting on the wrong side of Maureen again. You can work behind the scenes, at least at first. Have you got any of your work here?’
‘Sketches and some collages I’ve made in the last five months. Why?’
‘Didn’t I see one of your paintings on the wall back at the cottage?’
‘Oh, yes – The Silent World – I always take that with me. It’s got Keira as a little girl in it, along with her brothers.’
‘Perfect! Send it to Keira.’
‘Why?’
‘To start the ball rolling. It would help with her project and add to her collection of photographs of your work, which must be pretty small. And you can do it more or less anonymously. Send it without a note, just as a sort of … bequest or something.’
After She Left Page 17
