by Susan Green
About How Bright Are All Things Here
Drama is a hard habit to break, and besides, life is awfully dull when it’s naked and truthful.
Glamorous, charismatic Bliss Henderson has led a flawed, fascinating life; from country Australia to the art world of 1960s London; from lust to love and loss.
Now, in her last days, she is reliving it all. But as she excavates her past, deeper layers emerge. Secrets she still can’t reveal, not even to herself.
As her stepchildren hover around her, she wants them to judge her fairly. But how can they when they don’t really know who she is?
Susan Green has created a charming, lyrical novel of secrets, art and love.
CONTENTS
Cover
About How Bright Are All Things Here
Dedication
Epigraph
Chapter One: How Like an Angel
Chapter Two: Paula Takes the Tram
Chapter Three: Darlingness
Chapter Four: Miss Smarty Had a Party
Chapter Five: Fish Finger Sambo
Chapter Six: The Heart in The Window
Chapter Seven: Paula at The Shop
Chapter Eight: I Am Betty Brown
Chapter Nine: Anne and Maura Visit
Chapter Ten: All Things Bright
Chapter Eleven: Minerva Turned Her Shining Face
Chapter Twelve: Anne Can’t Sleep
Chapter Thirteen: The Bird, A Nest
Chapter Fourteen: The Artist’s Wife
Chapter Fifteen: Unravelling
Chapter Sixteen: Letting Them Go
Chapter Seventeen: Dancing with The Stars
Chapter Eighteen: The Silver Link, The Silken Tie
Chapter Nineteen: The Way to Hell
Chapter Twenty: Paula Calls Tom
Chapter Twenty-One: Sorting It Out
Chapter Twenty-Two: Anne and Tom
Chapter Twenty-Three: Warm and Wonderful
Chapter Twenty-Four: Reunion
Chapter Twenty-Five: Anne Takes Charge
Chapter Twenty-Six: Home
Chapter Twenty-Seven: La Ronde
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Blue Screen
Chapter Twenty-Nine: Are You There?
Chapter Thirty: Under The Weather
Chapter Thirty-One: C’est Fait
Chapter Thirty-Two: To Chelsea
Chapter Thirty-Three: Judith
Chapter Thirty-Four: By The Shore
Chapter Thirty-Five: Going Home
Chapter Thirty-Six: Anne and Matty
Chapter Thirty-Seven: How Bright Are All Things Here
Acknowledgements
About Susan Green
Copyright Page
In memory of my parents,
Helen Harris Green (1924–2008) and
Douglas Green (1921–2002).
‘The self is also a creation, the principal work of your life, the crafting of which makes everyone an artist. This unfinished work of becoming ends only when you do, if then, and the consequences live on.’
Rebecca Solnit, The Faraway Nearby
(Granta, London, 2013)
HOW LIKE AN ANGEL
Am I dead yet?
It can’t be long now, darling. Can you tell me when? I mean, exactly?
Or is it meant to be a surprise?
I know, I know. Joking about death – especially here, at Rosevale – is in such bad taste, but what else is there to do? It’s such an uncertain business. When pressed for an answer, the doctor informed me, ‘With advanced heart failure like yours, it could be anything from a week to . . .’
‘To?’
‘It’s hard to say.’
Harder to hear, doctor dear. ‘A month? Six months?’
‘Something like that.’ His smile was professional but not entirely unsympathetic. ‘You’re an intelligent woman, Mrs Henderson, so I know you won’t mind me asking this: do you have everything in order?’
I nodded and he left.
Sometimes a bit more of the bedside manner would be nice.
That was at the beginning of the year, when I first arrived at Rosevale. Or is it Rosedale? Vale or dale, either one is imaginary, for there’s not much in the way of topography in this part of Melbourne. And as for roses, that row of standard Iceberg doesn’t count.
They used to call these places Old People’s Homes. That’s nice, don’t you think? Hopeful, no matter how misleading. They changed the name, I suppose, in order not to appear patronisingly old-fashioned, and so now it is an Aged Care Facility. Those words – and especially the last – do not exactly gladden the heart, do they? But it’s nearly seven months now and the heart keeps beating, on and on, as it has done for the past seventy-eight years. They haven’t yet popped me into Palliative, although I was offered a room of my own a fortnight ago.
I said thank you, but no.
‘But you’d have more privacy.’ My daughter Anne advocates fiercely for the best that money can buy. ‘And it’s not as if we can’t afford it.’
‘I know I can afford it. I don’t give a damn about privacy. I like sharing with Ivana. She’s a darling. We get on so well.’ In the increasingly rare moments when we’re both awake and lucid. ‘And she doesn’t mind me talking.’
Sunny – for sheer amusement value, she’s my favourite carer – tells people I’m talking to myself.
She says, ‘Poor Mrs Bliss,’ and taps her head. ‘Wandering.’ Then she lowers her voice and whispers confidentially, with that fetching accent of hers, ‘She’s away with the foxies, as high as a cat.’
In any case, we all know what she means. Drugs. Opiates. Ordine, or, if you like exactitude, morphine hydrochloride oral solution 2mg per ml. When the pain on their neat scale of one to ten edges towards infinity they put it into a kind of syringe and let me suck on it like a babe at the breast. At first I didn’t like the floating sensation, that feeling of being outside myself and way beyond. Now, at times, I find I crave it.
Of course, I do wonder if it’s a foretaste.
After all, outside and way beyond is my next and final stop. Alec’s sure to know; I must ask him. Oh yes, I know he’s dead. He’s been dead for years. But lately I’ve been feeling that what separates us is only a breath, a shadow, a curtain. Or a door.
Sunny belongs to a happy-clappy church that has her convinced there is an afterlife. Add to that her abiding optimism, and she assures me that Alec’s more or less in the next room.
‘So why doesn’t he answer when I talk to him?’ I ask.
‘Is it for us to know?’
Her smile is gentle and it occurs to me, not for the first time, that perhaps I underestimate her.
If only I could open the door. Would I find him in his chair by the window among his African violets and begonias, with a blanket over his knees and the radio on, and the flesh of his ears glowing a deep mysterious pink as the light shone through them? I could ignore his ruined face and concentrate on the closest ear. Oh, dear old ear, so vulnerable and tender, with its soft lobe and downy hair around the rim and behind it, half hidden, a pucker of little wrinkles.
When he was alive, I could never resist reaching out to stroke those creases. He’d shake his head and bat my hand away, embarrassed I suppose, or perhaps simply irritated. You know, however cross I was with him, for his fussiness, his slowness, his hidebound masculine plodding, one look at his ears and I remembered.
Third time lucky, three’s a charm – isn’t that what they say? Alec was my third husband but it was the only real marriage, and too brief. Oh, darling, too brief. I have a picture of us here but there’s no point to it. Anne had it done for our twentieth anniversary so I have to keep it on display, but Alec had an aversion to being
photographed and so his face is set in ungracious, faintly hostile lines. And I happened to be going through an ill-advised big hair phase. I really don’t like that picture.
Sunny tells me that it won’t be long. I’m not sure this is meant to be part of the Rosevale service, but she prays for me. Prays that soon I will be with my husband, among God’s angels.
Though I’d like to be with Alec, I am not at all sure about angels. The only angel I ever knew stood swathed in ivy with a smirk on her face, gazing heavenwards in vain.
‘Look down, you silly thing!’ I told her. ‘That’s where all the action is.’
Anne visits weekly, but my other daughter, Paula, comes every day. Sometimes twice a day. I’ve told her she doesn’t have to, but I’m glad she does.
‘How are you?’ she asks, and before I can reply Karen – she’s my next-favourite carer – says, ‘We’re well, aren’t we? And last night we had a good long sleep.’
‘You may have, but I didn’t.’
They laugh as if I’ve said something funny.
‘Sit down, darling Paula,’ I say. In my mind I’ve already gone to fetch teacups and biscuits before I remember there’s no kitchen. I pat her hand. ‘You look so tired. You can make yourself a cup of tea, darling. There’s an urn and teabags and little plastic pots of milk in the alcove near the double doors – it isn’t nice, but it’s hot.’
She shakes her head. ‘No, thank you.’
She has so much to do, so many worries, and yet she comes into this room every day, making the time, taking the time, though she never has enough.
Could I give her some of mine? Lord knows I’ve wasted enough, on tears and fears and falling in love. But still, in spite of all I’ve let slip through my fingers, there is so much time left. It flows and folds, loops backwards and forwards simultaneously like an endless ribbon. I go back, back, back. I find my mother’s button jar, plunge in my hand and watch the buttons scatter with a clattering sound. Pearl, horn, shell, glass; shiny jet from an evening gown; bakelite from a shirt. Here I am, in my bed. What will I find if I reach in? More time. All the times of my life.
How like an angel came I down!
How bright are all things here!
I try to clutch the dancing sparkles that spin above me in the sunlight – so close! – but they always, always whirl away from me up into the air and stay suspended, glittering, just out of reach.
That’s all very poetic, but down to business. Time is running out. Since that day in the kitchen, it’s been a flat-out fucking gallop. Pardon my French; it just slipped out. As it did when I stepped in that puddle of dog’s urine on the kitchen floor. A slip and a trip and we suspect a broken hip. The incontinent Maltese looked on, unconcerned. Nothing to do with me, it said.
The ambulance men were young, and one of them was a woman. Chris and Danuta spoke slowly and reassuringly as they took in the dog, the puddle and me. I nearly passed out when I tried to move, and they introduced the Scale of Pain.
‘A ten,’ I gasped, and Chris handed me a green plastic tube.
‘It’s Penthrox, Mrs Henderson.’
I stared at it.
‘Did you ever smoke, Mrs Henderson? Yes? Then draw back.’
A sweetish vapour and then I was in heaven.
But the drawback was I woke in hospital. In more pain. And endured X-rays and scans and rehab and exercises with physiotherapists younger even than the paramedics. They were infants and they had no idea. So much effort for so little return.
My Team – Anne called them that, not me – got me home from hospital at last, but three months later there came another fall. The Fall. No Maltese this time; I simply lost my balance like old people do. Nothing broke, but I did myself a mischief of the permanent kind. Once, everything could be mended, patched, put back together, but this – no. Intractable lower back pain, says the doctor’s notes. Poor design, the back, don’t you think? No going home. No home. Just here.
‘Are you comfortable, Bliss?’
I’d forgotten Paula for a moment. I sigh. ‘Relatively.’ Relative to what? To the rack, the thumbscrews, the Iron Maiden?
‘And are you sleeping? Because if you’re not, we can always ask Dr Moran for something.’
‘Yes, I’m sleeping. I’m sleepy now.’
Actually I’m so tired I can barely keep my eyes open. I don’t tell her that at night I drift in and out of acute wakefulness and my senses seem to revive in the dark. Especially my hearing. I hear breathing, sighing, the sounds of dreams, cars on the road, possums, music, dead leaves in the gutters. And sometimes there’s a faint, distant roaring. At first I thought it was the central heating, but it’s more like the sound of the grinding machine the council uses to mulch twigs and sticks. I get a macabre satisfaction from the knowledge that mine is just one of the millions of lives that will be chewed up and spat out as compost for the next generation.
And sometimes I’m rather scared.
*
I blink my eyes open. ‘Paula?’
‘She’s gone,’ says Ivana.
‘Oh.’
‘You’re so lucky, Bliss. Your daughter, she’s good to you.’
‘You’re lucky too, Ivana.’
She shrugs. ‘At least they let him visit me,’ she mutters darkly. ‘So far.’
Vassily, Ivana’s only child, has joined a cult. Apparently he now eats nothing but raw fruit and vegetables and drinks so much water that his urine has no odour.
‘And I’ll bet his shit doesn’t stink either,’ I say.
‘You’re so naughty, Bliss!’
‘Is he coming today?’
‘He came last night. You were asleep.’
Ah! That explains the somewhat chilling moment when a silent white figure floated past my bed. It smelled of incense and I confess that angels did briefly cross my mind.
‘It’s no good,’ Ivana continues. ‘Vassily, he’s too thin. A man should not be thin, he’s got no . . . what you call it?’
‘Energy? Vigour? Virility? Balls?’
‘Balls. He’s a good boy, but when’s he going to get married and have some kids? You’re so lucky, Bliss. George and I, we try and try but we could only get the one. And now, no grandchildren! How many children again?’
‘Three, Ivana.’
‘Three.’ She sighs and shakes her head.
Actually, there were four. Paula, Tom, Caroline and Anne, lined up like a guard of honour in the living room. Best clothes, best behaviour. Beatie, Alec’s oldest sister, who’d looked after the children when their mother became ill, was smiling a welcome off to one side.
Naturally I was nervous. I’d met and married their father without ever seeing them and I’d scarcely given them a thought until we docked at Station Pier. Then, on the interminable drive to Balwyn, it began to dawn on me. Four motherless children. Real children. Alec had shown me photographs of course, but they could have been dwarves or even well-dressed chimps. I found myself hoping they weren’t ugly. I’d have found ugly children too, too depressing.
What a silly thing to say. It’s not even true; the truth is, I was terrified. I thought of them as wild animals, shy, suspicious, ready to hide or bite. They didn’t have to like me, but oh, I wanted them to.
Paula had a kind of delicate charm, though she already displayed that characteristic combination of eagerness and worry. Then Tom and Caroline; not twins, but they could have been, male and female versions of the same divine beauty. I had never in my entire life seen children so lovely to look at. And Anne. Anne was not quite four. She was a sturdy little thing, with dark hair and grey eyes, and she was the only one who took after Alec. She was also the only one who wasn’t frightened or guilty or, in Caroline’s case, almost incandescent with rage.
Pulse and temperature. Laxatives. Panadol. The rattle of the tea trolley.
‘Do you want a cup of tea, Bliss?’
Is it morning tea already?
Where were we?
Buttons? Dust motes? Ah, yes – poetry
.
I’ll stop you, though, before you start to imagine I’m terribly erudite. The truth is I’m almost completely uneducated and everything I know, I’ve picked up on the run. My first husband used to laugh at what he insisted was my wilful ignorance, and once introduced me to a whole dinner party as his ‘barbarous bride’. Despite the best efforts of two state primary schools and a very expensive ladies’ college, I was never much of a scholar. A for Art, but Abysmal, Atrocious and Appalling for almost everything else. These days I’d probably be diagnosed with some kind of learning difficulty, but since I was quiet and very shy, my teachers assumed I was stupid and left me to it.
What I do have is a memory. You see, in the olden days, when I was a girl, there was no internet. We learned by heart our times tables, lists of archaic measurements, the dates of battles and executions and reigns, and they’re still in there, filed uselessly away. Elizabeth I reigned from 1558 until her death in 1603. And a rod is sixteen and a half feet.
But there was poetry, too. Every child could recite and I have permanent recall of bits and pieces from Palgrave’s Golden Treasury and, courtesy of Daddy, the border ballads. I tried to introduce some poetry into the children’s lives, too, but it didn’t take. Though, come to think of it, there was Ben.
Long ago, when Caroline had a moment or two off the heroin, she had – amazingly – a proper relationship. She and Ben even lived together for a few months. He was handsome, gentle and, unusually for one of her playmates, literate. He wrote poetry and talked seriously in capitals about Spiritual Beauty and Unconditional Love. I assumed they smoked pot together, but by then a reefer or two chez Caroline was the least of our worries. All in all, I liked him; he was a welcome change from the usual dealers and users and tattooed bikers, and under his influence we had a brief reconciliation. She visited a few times, and once we went out to dinner at a vegetarian restaurant in Carlton. Unfortunately, after she broke up with him the whole Forgiveness thing was off. She pitched a hardback copy of Jonathan Livingston Seagull at my head and I have the small scar to this day.
