After She Left

by Penelope Hanley

  ‘Very funny. We’ve just taken up where we left off – except that in the intervening thirty odd years we’ve become much better people than we were then and more interesting in every way. We just seem to “click” even better than we used to, and at our age, why waste time?’

  41

  KEIRA

  August 1973

  The young Asian-looking woman and her Citroën were there again when Keira and Seamus emerged from the house and stepped into Woodstock Street. They were becoming a fixture. Keira gave the woman a little wave before climbing into Seamus’s car to be driven to the State Library.

  The leather-topped desks, green lamps and hushed ambience encouraged studious research. Keira’s absorption threw the chaotic events of the night before into the background as her fingers flicked through the long, narrow polished wooden drawers and found the catalogue cards for the Blasket books she had not yet read.

  She skimmed Eileen O’Sullivan’s Letters from the Great Blasket and Michael O’Guiheen’s A Pity Youth Does Not Last, taking some notes. Beginning Tomas O’Crohan’s The Islander she saw that Chapter Six included ‘Beating the Law’ and turned to it, skimming until she found the following:

  A big boat crammed with men put out from the ship’s side, and when they came inshore they were astounded to see the vast gathering above the harbour. They had expected that every living soul would be hidden in terror. And no wonder! For every one of them had a gun ready in his hand. But these women weren’t a bit afraid of them … The women gathered round, every one of them with a chunk of rock in her hand … two of them [the men] standing in the prow … with their guns levelled at anybody who should lift a hand against them. As soon as the first man left the boat, a woman flung a great stone down that came near to knocking him off his feet. He glanced up at the cliff and pointed his gun at them, but not a woman stirred. They kept their ranks unbroken above the harbour. Soon a woman threw another stone, and then another, and another, till they made the whole beach echo with the clatter.

  Tomas had helped bring the rocks to the women. Keira turned to the back cover’s biographical details: he was born in 1858 and died in 1937. No specific date for the incident but 1873 was the date mentioned for other events in the same chapter.

  Thirty-four years before Deirdre was born. The date of the boat theft by the tax collectors was 1888. Still way too early.

  Keira stared unseeingly into the distance, a jolt of puzzled shock chilling her stomach. Her brain buzzed with a multitude of questions. Her heart raced, hot with confusion.

  Romantic notions. Maureen’s phrase was stuck in Keira’s head. She hoped her mother wouldn’t take advantage of the opportunity, now those notions had been smashed, to say, ‘I told you so.’

  Keira caught a bus to Dover Heights for her interview with Olivia Kettlewell, still hot with anger about Deirdre’s deception. But when she reached the wide verandah of Olivia’s Federation sandstone house and rang the bell – a sonorous chime like a church organ sounding deep inside the house – the appearance of Olivia made Keira forget about her anger.

  Olivia’s ash-blond hair was cut in a geometric Vidal Sassoon style to just below her ears. The hair pushed behind her right ear revealed a small perfect oval with discrete whorls, which Keira glimpsed when Olivia hugged her. She smelt like Johnson’s baby powder. Blue-grey eyes beamed at Keira with disarming affection. Her fine white cotton shirt was tucked into a dove grey velvet skirt and though her grey suede boots were flat, she was taller than Keira.

  Olivia led her into the large dining room, sank to her knees, graceful as a ballet dancer, and continued packing books into small cardboard boxes.

  ‘Any bigger and they’re impossible to lift,’ said Olivia, leaning back on her heels. ‘Sorry, I must get on with this to be in time for the movers tomorrow.’

  ‘Let me help you,’ said Keira, kneeling down. ‘It’s taken me so long to find you. You’re not in the phone book.’

  ‘We had a silent number in the new house. Mother’s idea. Just in case Howard tried to find me again. She wanted it to be a new start.’ Olivia looked into Keira’s eyes. Her smile was warm and her blue-eyed gaze soft. ‘And it was,’ she said.

  While they packed they talked about painting. Keira was careful to avoid mentioning anything upsetting like the Razor Gang and certainly not the newspaper articles in Alfred’s scrapbooks about Olivia, Deirdre and Owen finding Luke Jamieson’s body on Coogee Beach, apparently drowned but with massive bruising on his body. That was in April 1935 but the trauma would have left scars on Olivia’s psyche. When the boxes were packed, Olivia led Keira into what she called the sitting room, en route to the kitchen, for afternoon tea. Propped against the wall were three paintings. Keira walked closer to them and stared.

  ‘Are they …?’ she said.

  ‘They are. And I was the model for two of them. The first one is called Cubic Nude Three (the others were burnt in the fire), the next one is part of another series that went up in flames, the Captain Cook series. It’s called Twilight of the Bush, and the third is A Fragile Geometry.’

  ‘Oh, my God – you’ve got a Captain Cook one! This is amazing – I’ve been dying to see one and I’d given up hope,’ said Keira. ‘This is like gold!’

  Olivia smiled and left her there to look at them. The first was on canvas – a careful application of layered oil paint in cream, pink, apricot and olive green – of a statuesque blond reclining on a couch. The nude was reduced to elemental shapes, accentuating the cylindrical and spherical, modelled in light and shade, and foreshortened so that the roundness was emphasised, like a cubist version of Ingres’ Odalisque.

  Whereas the overriding impression of the first was warmth and solidity, the second, Twilight of the Bush, felt cold and threatening. The oil on canvas depicted a small girl with a pale face and long black hair sitting at a table, her fist resting under her chin and the other hand turning a page of a large book. Behind her was a window, divided into six panes. Through the neatly divided glass stood a gigantic eucalyptus, a Sydney blue gum. In the biggest branch Captain Cook reclined, with his unhealthy pallor and crisp uniform, a dress sword at the hip of his tight white trousers. He looked through a pair of opera glasses aimed at the girl and emanated an air of sinister intent. It was shocking. He looked like a pervert, whereas Keira had never thought harshly of him at all. Quite the contrary. Hadn’t he caringly protected all his sailors from scurvy or something?

  No birds flew in the cold grey sky. A thin column of smoke rose from the distant bush. The eerie mood of silent desolation recalled de Chirico’s works, thought Keira.

  The third, an oil on masonite with collage, A Fragile Geometry, depicted Olivia floating in a silvery-mauve sky above Clovelly, an enigmatic smile lifting the corners of her lips. The mood was dreamy and whimsical, the figure huge compared with the little township far below, on the edge of the beach. A tram was pulling out of the tram stop near the ocean. White yachts dotted the sea like toy boats in bathwater and kookaburras sat in the hillside banksia trees.

  Above Olivia was a strange arrangement of tram tickets and cut out engravings of fish floating in the sky. Olivia’s long blond hair blew about in the breeze, some of the strands composed of letters spelling out mysterious fragments like: Until time bends back upon itself like a mighty blue wave; The materials are real but they create an immaterial state – that which is beyond matter; We live in a fragile geometry of trust and bliss...

  Keira jumped. Olivia had come quietly to her side.

  ‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. Would you like to photograph them before I pack them?’ Olivia took her own Nikon from a French polished side table, took off the lens cap and said, ‘May I?’

  Keira nodded. Olivia took photographs from a variety of angles, with the paintings and without, sitting and standing, while Keira was talking and while she was not.

  At the end of the session Olivia replaced the lens cap and smiled. ‘You and I ought to have a developing and printing session
together,’ she said. ‘I’m going to set up a darkroom in my new house. I have some photographs I took of Deirdre too, from decades ago. You can use them for your project.’

  Keira’s eyes widened. ‘Thank you!’

  ‘You’re welcome.’

  42

  DEIRDRE

  August 1973

  Deirdre was relieved and happy that her reunion with Maureen at Keira’s house had gone as well as it had. They were sitting companionably together in the living room, listening to the footsteps and voices down the hall announcing the arrival of Keira and Olivia.

  ‘Olivia, how well you look!’ said Maureen.

  ‘You too, you look beautiful,’ said Olivia, ‘clearly a family trait.’

  Deirdre hugged Keira and kissed Olivia, and she and Olivia stood together holding hands.

  Olivia did not want any tea. The movers were coming in the morning and there was still the kitchen to pack up. Deirdre was leaving with Olivia.

  ‘Deirdre,’ said Keira, ‘today I read Tomás O’Crohan’s The Islander where he describes the women repelling the rent-collectors with rocks.’

  Deirdre waited, wondering why Keira sounded accusatory.

  ‘I wanted to ask you … well … I’m confused, Deirdre. It’s just that … it’s not possible that you were there – it happened years before you were born.’ Keira shook her head, staring into her grandmother’s eyes.

  ‘It was my mother who told the story, she it was who threw those rocks with the other women.’ She looked at Keira straight with her big, dark eyes.

  Keira stared at her. ‘But you said it was you.’

  What didn’t Keira get?

  ‘It was a story. Stories like that are told to entertain – to make people laugh and maybe teach ’em something. They’re called seanchas.’ She spelt it, and pronounced it ‘sharna-hars.’

  ‘They’re not lies, they’re part of our oral tradition of ancient legends and recent history.’ She saw the doubt in Keira’s face and added, ‘They really happened.’

  ‘But not to you.’

  ‘That’s not the point.’

  ‘What is the point?’

  ‘The seanchas point to a larger truth.’

  When Keira said nothing, she continued: ‘Traditionally the men built the houses. The women defended the island. My mother’s mother had done the same thing when necessary. The authorities were scared of us. People said of islanders that we were wild in our mother’s womb.’ It was something Deirdre was proud of.

  They were silent until Maureen asked, ‘Why didn’t it happen in your time?’

  Deirdre let go of Olivia’s hand, sat on the edge of an armchair and looked from Maureen to Keira and back again.

  ‘We were too poor,’ she said. ‘Our land had been worked for too many generations. French and English fishing fleets with mechanised methods were depleting our supplies of fish and lobster. The last time the rent-collectors came, the islanders saw them coming and drove what few stock they had to the far west of the island out of sight. The women did once again repel them with rocks.

  ‘But unbeknownst to the women, a smaller boat sneaked round the back, they disembarked on the White Strand and were on the island before we – they – could stop them.’ She looked sad. ‘When they saw what little we had, they called off the raid. In the end, the Congested Districts Board bought the land from the Anglo-Norman aristocrats that had owned it for centuries, and no one had to pay rent anymore.’

  ‘Okay,’ said Keira after a few beats. ‘I can see the appeal to a people degraded by centuries of English repression and poverty and hardship of sounding heroic rather than pathetic.’

  43

  MAUREEN

  August 1973

  ‘Tea?’ said Keira to Maureen, after they’d gone.

  ‘You have one. I’ve been drinking it all day.’

  Keira made herself a mug, sat down again and said, ‘Well?’

  ‘Well, what?’

  ‘How did it go? Did she tell you all about Owen leaving and why she was away so long and everything? Did you have a big fight? What happened?’

  Maureen laughed. ‘Always in such a hurry, Keira! It went well.’

  ‘I want to hear all about it.’ Keira rested her tea mug on the coffee table.

  Maureen sighed and said, ‘Typical of Deirdre’s extremes that we don’t talk properly for decades, and then we talk for six hours or so!’ She paused. ‘Time passes and you get a different perspective.’ She looked away and added quietly, ‘You should remember that, Keira.’

  Keira stared at Maureen, while Maureen stared into space. Finally she looked at Keira, who was fidgety with anticipation.

  ‘One thing we talked about was her travels, of course. She went back to Ireland a few times to see her family, in nineteen fifty, nineteen sixty-three and nineteen sixty-eight. On the third trip she made contact with her old art teacher, Carlo Trimble – you know, my biological father.’

  ‘Oh, wow. How did she find him again?’

  ‘She stayed with her aunt Maeve in Dublin. Maeve had kept him informed from time to time about her and about me and how we were doing. You know he was a Protestant and married.’

  ‘Yes, Seamus told me.’ Keira paused. ‘Do you want to meet him?’

  Maureen paused. ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Did he have other children?’

  She nodded. ‘He had a family already, yes.’

  Keira sipped her tea and said, ‘Wow, you’ve got half-siblings on the other side of the world who have no idea you exist! And they’re my aunts and uncles, or half-aunts and uncles. We should go and see them! And you’ve got artists on both sides. You should do more with all that talent you’ve inherited.’

  ‘Do? What could I do?’ Her expression turned serious. ‘I’ve done enough already!’ She put her hands up to her face and started crying.

  Keira brought over a box of tissues. Maureen took one and blew her nose. She wailed, ‘What have I done?’

  She saw the confusion on Keira’s face. She was never this emotional. Keira was clearly thinking that after a lifetime’s conservative living, her mother was certainly letting it all hang out now.

  ‘Mum, it’s okay. Steve’s been wanting to break it off with Mel for ages, so don’t feel guilty about …’

  ‘It’s not about that!’ Maureen took another tissue. ‘I’ve been married for twenty-seven years. I’m nearly forty-six!’

  ‘Well, you look much younger, everyone says so.’

  ‘Life is about more than looks. I never got an education.’

  ‘Now’s your chance – from next year it’s free!’

  ‘I have to look after Sean, I can’t go gallivanting off doing my own thing.’

  ‘Mu-uum, Sean’s fourteen, he could cope with you going to some lectures. Stop looking dismal. You could go to art school or do anything. Do a law degree. Just imagine – in four years you could be a lawyer!’

  Maureen whipped out another tissue and wept into it. ‘In four years I’ll be fifty!’

  ‘Yes, in four years you’ll be fifty – why not be a fifty-year-old qualified lawyer?’

  Maureen blew her nose and laughed briefly. ‘I couldn’t do that!’

  ‘Yes, you could. You’re smart.’

  She looked up at Keira. ‘Suddenly I’m too exhausted to contemplate anything like that.’ She stared out through the window then widened her mouth in an enormous yawn, took a cigarette out of the package and put it back again. ‘It’s not easy.’

  ‘Will I take those away?’

  ‘Deirdre did and I got her to give them back again a couple of times today.

  I still haven’t had one but it’s a comfort to know they’re here.’ She held them out to Keira. ‘Don’t take them too far away.’

  Keira put them on the mantelpiece. ‘They both look so fit and young!’ she said.

  Maureen nodded. ‘Deirdre’s teaching Olivia Tibetan yoga. Deirdre’s certainly a good advertisement for it.’ She picked up a small red cushion,
put it on her lap and fiddled with the fringe on the edge. ‘And she’s much more serene than she used to be. Well, she was never serene at all! That’s why I was happy at boarding school.

  ‘Thank God Charles left Deirdre the money to pay for it. It was ordered and safe, a world away from the artists and models, poets and crooks that Deirdre encouraged. And away from her … intensity.’ She paused. ‘I always felt more grown up than my mother. After Charles died I learnt to cook scrambled eggs and at ten I could make a soufflé. I had to. Deirdre couldn’t cook. Charles used to make tea and toast – and stew if it was called for. It often was.’ She paused again, fiddling with the tassel on the cushion, and said softly, ‘He was a wonderful father.’

  They looked at each other for some moments. ‘Gosh,’ said Keira. ‘All the loss in people’s lives: Deirdre losing a husband and you losing your father – or stepfather really – to TB, and Olivia losing her boyfriend, Luke. It puts things in perspective. At least losing Alan isn’t necessarily permanent.’

  ‘No. I think there’s every chance of you two getting back together – if that’s what you want.’

  ‘Yes, it is what I want. I think. Hey, Mum, when Olivia was in the asylum did you visit her?’

  ‘Not the first time. Deirdre told me she had gone away, not exactly a lie. But I did visit her later, once or twice a year after you were born. It was sad. She was in and out of there, one step forward and two back, on drugs that worked and drugs that didn’t – they all had side-effects. Some were addictive. Then I got busy with you kids, and I stopped visiting. Her family and Lillian and Madge Burnside and Alfred Foote kept visiting, she was being looked after.’

  ‘Madge Burnside? You knew her?’

  Maureen nodded. ‘She was great friends with the LILACs next door –remember them? The Ladies in League Against Communism. Jim called them the Harpies.’ She rushed on: ‘Madge Burnside was a malicious gossip, but her sister Lillian was a saint. She fed stray cats and looked after lame ducks. Olivia ended up being one of Lillian’s lame ducks.’