The Hope Fault

by Tracy Farr

  Being in this place is like being in a book, or walking through the image on a postcard. I know the streets and buildings so well, the buses, the taxi cabs; I know the very weather, the landscape, from reading it, from films, and from paintings (but from photographs of paintings; seeing the real paintings in galleries, walking up to them, seeing the light move on brushstrokes, seeing the size of a painting: these are remarkable things; remarkable). Photographing this place feels like photographing a fiction. Its commonplace is my unreality.

  18. Sixty years ago

  Letter from London

  March, 1954

  Dear Frank,

  This short note to let you know: I have arrived. I am Overseas, with a capital O!

  Today I wore out boot leather tramping the streets (those streets and squares and railway stations so familiar from the playing board!), staring about me like the colonial yokel I am. Oh, the weather is dire, the streets are dirty, but even so, I find I love it already!

  Tomorrow I meet with Mrs Swan, the publisher, for tea. Tea with my publisher!

  Oh Frank, excuse my excitement, my rambling. If I don’t tell you my news, there’s no one I can tell.

  I hope the new girl is working well in the studio.

  With fond regards,

  Rosa

  17. Sixty-one years ago

  Letter from London

  Cygnet & Swan, Publishers

  November, 1953

  Dear Miss Fortune,

  I enclose a copy of the first review of Miss Fortune’s Faery Tales. As you will see, it is extremely favourable. My dear, you should be very pleased with this reception of your debut publication – and in the Times!

  I hope this will be the first of many such shining reviews for your delightful book.

  Cordially,

  Mrs Barbara Swan

  Publisher

  P.S. Have you thought further on a possible trip to Britain? All of us here at Cygnet & Swan would love nothing more than to show off our Antipodean author, here in London. We’ d be fortunate, indeed, to be visited by Miss Fortune.

  16. Sixty-one years ago

  Story from a book of tales

  Rosa Fortune, Miss Fortune’s Faery Tales, Cygnet & Swan, London, 1953

  THE HISSING SWAN, OR HOW MISTER WILLOW CAME TO MISSUS MAKER

  Once, long ago, in a land much greener than this, lived a good woman, old and wise, who had everything but love. Now this woman was an inventor, quite a talented one, and she fended very well for herself. She was surrounded by the products of her own clever mind and hands: from the mill that ground the flour for her bread to the chiming clock above her stove to the tiny mechanical mice that she made for fun, to scurry out from under the chair and worry the lazy cat.

  She was the mother of her own inventions, and she could turn her creative mind and hands to anything, big or small, industrious or comical, for all the elements of her life. To even the rude mechanicals of lust she could deal, but true love can only come from another.

  She felt this lack of love keenly, but managed, most days, to put it to the back of her busy mind. It was in the long nights that her thoughts would linger on it, mull the problem over. Finding no solution, she would most often manage to sigh with regret, then settle into dreaming wistful dreams of perfect love.

  One night though, stricken with sadness and unable to slip into sleep, the old woman rose from her lonely bed. At a minute to midnight, wrapped warmly about with her quilt filled with finest down, she slipped out through the front door of her house. There she sat, on the river’s cold bank, the tears on her cheeks quick like silver in the moonlight, dripping and mixing into the fast-flowing river at her feet, so the salt of her tears was made fresh.

  As the clock above her stove chimed out through her open front door, striking midnight, a shadow passed in front of her and stopped just out of sight, in the middle of the river.

  ‘What ails you, good wise woman?’ asked the shade in a gentle hiss. The dark birdy voice drifted to her across the water’s surface, undermuddled by the glisten sound of fat red feet paddling unseen. Peering into the darkness, she recognised the thick stiff curve of the black swan that lived on the river just above her mill.

  The old woman sniffed a snotty sniff, wiped her nose on the quilt, and stemmed her tears for the moment it took to say ‘O good wise swan, I really mustn’t grumble. I can tend to all my needs, bar this: I need a lover. I have everything I need right here – forged by my own hands! – save this one thing.’

  The swan paddled this way, and it paddled that way, then it stopped, hissed three times, and sang in its birdy voice:

  O good wise woman, I too love lack.

  Shall we scratch each other’s back?

  Do it yourself, as you always do,

  Make plans, invent, use metal and glue.

  Be here at midnight, at midwinter deep,

  Bring a lover for you, and one for me.

  Make them with love, and for love, and love will survive,

  Lasting and true; a mate for life.

  And he hissed thrice more and was gone before she could answer.

  Midwinter deep was only a month away, so the good wise woman worked, as she knew she must, as if in a fever. She set pencil to paper that very night, making measurements, drawing plans, and by sunrise those plans were fixed. Then, over the days and nights of the month that followed, she made herself a lover, built him from the ground up, to her own careful specifications, so he was fit: fit for purpose.

  She built his armature first, made him strong from willow wound loose enough to give, and tight enough to spring stiff. But she made him for love, not lust; made his skin from silk, white like marble, like sand, like milk. She framed his face with hair dark and thick as a bear’s; she gave him eyes of cobalt blue, the colour of deep water hiding secret treasure; she spun him a mouth soft as faery tale kisses, from spidersilk purpled with beets.

  Into his milky silk chest, last of all, she placed the heart she’ d made him. It was this heart over which she’ d laboured longest, sitting hunched at the high bench in her workshop, lit in the daytime by good low light from the sun through the window above it and, once the day’s light had left, lit long into the night by clever lamps of her own design. Finally, after many days and nights of work, on the night of midwinter deep it was complete, and perfect: a heart of finest clockwork, quartz precision. She wound the heart with a wee silver key, inserted in a tear in the silk of his chest, til the mannikin’s heart was ticking hot to trot, but still cold as only metal can be cold.

  Over the tick tick ticking of her mannikin’s heart, the clock above her stove struck eleven. She realised with horror that she had only an hour to make the swan’s mate. Lacking time to make it with skill, she took extra care to make it with love. She fashioned the plump round body from her best sourdough, and covered it thick and warm with bright white feathers born through a slit in the quilt from her bed. She lifted the great hank of her own thick white hair and with silver scissors lopped it off at the neckline. She formed the hair into three thick strands and plaited them to make the swan’s mate’s neck, curved serpentine over a strip of yielding willow. She wove the ends of the plait through the loops of her scissors, so the scissor blades formed an open silver beak, and the loops formed dark staring eyes.

  At five minutes to midnight at midwinter deep, she carried the heavy white swan outside and placed it by the river. As she arranged the white swan’s head in place, she shivered in the cold, missing her hair’s weight down her back; missing her warm down quilt over her shoulders. As she shivered, the scissor blade slipped and sliced her hand. Her blood stained the scissor blades a deep swan-beak red. Sucking the blood from her hand – staining her own beak – she hurried inside for her mate.

  At a minute to midnight at midwinter deep, the good wise woman carried the cold little still little mannikin to the river, and seated him, naked, there with his milky silk feet toeing the water’s edge. By the river he shone breathless in the m
idwinter moonlight, his cold heart tick tick ticking.

  As the clock struck midnight at midwinter deep, she leaned in to kiss his cold beet-red lips, and left a stain of her own bright blood. Out of the dark midnight light, the black swan spread its wings and hissed at her from the middle of the river. The woman rose to her feet and stretched both arms wide, to the cold white swan by her left side, to the cold ticking mannikin by her right.

  O good wise swan, I’ve done my part.

  A mate for me with a perfect heart.

  Scissors, and hair and blood and so

  Make a mate for you, warm with love and dough.

  The good wise woman trembled with cold, though she held herself steady and did not show it. She trembled too with fear, for she was not used to making magic contracts but knew, from tales heard tell, how easy it was to be tricked by word or deed into terrible consequences.

  The black swan swam close in response. He reared up and seemed to grow to twice his size, snaking his sleek neck up to overlook the trio on the riverbank: the wise woman, the white swan and the tick tick ticking mannikin.

  Good wise woman, you’ve done your part.

  Now I’ll do mine: make warm these hearts.

  The black swan spread its wings and hissed. Quietly at first, then louder, the white swan’s feathers bristled and rustled, and the willow of its neck creaked and stretched under the thick white braid. The red-tipped silver of its beak dipped down to the riverbank then raised up to meet the black swan’s beak in a touch of recognition: like meeting almost-like, mirror-like.

  The black swan spread its wings and hissed once more and the mannikin’s stone-cold heart woke, hot and sharp with love, as nearly alive as invention and desire and spells could render.

  As the little man’s cobalt eyes flickered open, as a blush of life touched his milky silk face and body, as his willow stirred and strengthened, the woman showered him with kisses. Even in the face of such enchantment, such happiness, the good wise woman kept her wits (and her manners) about her. She looked up from her gentle waking man, raised her hand to the swan’s dark breast.

  ‘How ever can I thank you, good wise swan?’ the woman asked.

  The black swan hissed again, three times, in an answer she could not fathom, as the white swan stepped down from the riverbank and glided out onto the river’s dark surface. The black swan and his shining mate swam to the centre of the river, their necks entwined. The good wise woman leaned in likewise to her little mannikin, and he to her. Four of them, two by two, paired now for life.

  And so it was that the good wise woman lived happily with her warm-hearted mannikin year upon year ever after, in the house by the river. She called him Mister Willow; he called her Missus Maker. She never forgot what the wise black swan had done for them, and forever after made two batches of good sourdough each baking day. They never ever after went hungry for bread or love.

  15. Sixty-two years ago

  Letter from London

  Cygnet & Swan, Publishers

  February, 1952

  Dear Miss Fortune,

  Thank you for submitting your manuscript (untitled) for our consideration.

  I apologise for the time it has taken to respond to your submission.

  I found your manuscript, with its strange characters, colourful events, and its odd mixture of science and magic, delightful and surprising. These are faery tales (to use your quaint spelling) that disturb, in the way that the best old tales did and still do. I admit that some persuasion on my part was required to convince my partner that there is a place for your book on our list.

  However, convince her I did, and so I am pleased to tell you that Cygnet & Swan would very much like to publish your book. We would like to give it a title which, as well as being informative, is a cheeky play on your name: What do you think of ‘Miss Fortune’s Faery Tales’?

  We would hope to make a feature of your beautiful watercolours, and would print these as colour plates facing the title page for each story. Might it be possible for you to produce additional drawings or paintings for those few stories which lack them?

  We anticipate this book having at least as much appeal to adult readers as it does to children, and this will prove a fascinating challenge to booksellers.

  If you wish to proceed with a publishing contract for the book, please let me know by return mail, so that I may draw up a contract.

  I look forward to working with you.

  Yours sincerely,

  Mrs Barbara Swan

  Publisher

  14. Sixty-three years ago

  Frank is good company, a pleasure to work for, and I continue to learn the photographic trade (I am even becoming adept behind the camera). I keep middling busy in the studio. Yet with every clatter of the postie’s bike, my heart skips. Still nothing comes from Cygnet & Swan – not my own fat package back, rejected; nor a slim envelope offering solace, and publication. Month after month after month, nothing comes, until nothing is what I expect.

  And so I focus on my work. Each day I sit at my desk in the studio with my brushes and gum and paints, and I tiptoe the brush to touch faces and gaps, bubbles of light. Specks of dust leave dots of light on photographs, specks of nothing, absence. I fill them in, make them good. I add colour, sometimes; that’s the skill that Frank values, that’s the showy side, but it’s correcting the tiny imperfections that pleases me most.

  As I make good the imperfections of others, I try to forget my own silly, imperfect faery tales, and the folly of my grand plan, to send them off to London to make their fortune, like Dick Whittington and his cat.

  13. Sixty-four years ago

  From manuscript sent to Cygnet & Swan, Publishers

  THE UNCOVERY OF BLUE

  Some of the best magic in stories is not magic at all, but simply nature, wisdom, and good chemistry combined; the magic rests in the uncovery, and the telling. This is one such tale. It has a woman and a forest, a journey and a fire; it holds a baby fast at its heart, and in the end, a great colour is revealed.

  It may or may not surprise you to hear that the woman in this story is neither young nor beautiful; she’s middling old, past bearing. The baby she holds is not her own, nor is it her grandchild. It is not of her blood but it is of her village and in her care, and she feels fiercely the need to protect it, to feed it, to love it as her own. Now, it happens that harsh times and bad luck have brought their once-fine village to despair and poverty. One by one, two by two, family by family, the people of the village have walked away from their houses to make a life in the city on the other side of the forest. In the near-silent village, when finally the baker, the grocer and the miller have all gone, the woman decides that she and the nameless baby must leave, too, and make their way to the city.

  She packs her last half loaf of bread and her last dry rind of cheese, and they set out before dawn. They travel first on open road, then on well-trod way, until they find and take a faint path that she knows from long ago, that veers off under close-growing trees, through forest that lets in little sun. The woman carries the child close to her, strapped to her, shaped to her front. She stops only briefly, to eat bread and cheese. She puts her finger in the baby’s mouth, and feels it tug at her. She spits bread she has chewed onto her finger, and the baby gums it, greedy, needy. Sometimes when she stops to eat, she stops a little longer. Then she feeds the baby goatsmilk and water, sweetened with honey and stored in a curdybladder that she carries on her back, tied to a cord slung over her shoulder.

  She walks all day, until finally she comes to the forest’s edge. She keeps to the thinning trees, not yet ready to break from their cover. She stops before it is night, and makes a small fire. While the food is warming, she lies the baby down on the forest floor, on a bed of leaves, in a pool of sunlight that comes to them through the thin cover of trees, breaking through their low canopy. The baby is in a little pool of light and warmth, lifting its arms and hands to the light, absorbing it. She cleans the baby as best she can, th
en wraps it in soft, fresh leaves, chosen carefully, picked from where they grow in the dappled light under the trees of the forest’s edge. She bundles her fine woollen shawl around and over the baby, binding leaves close to skin, applying gentle calming swaddling pressure, until the baby’s wrapped snug like a sausage, or a soft doughy pudding.

  As she eats, and the baby sucks its goatsmilk and honeywater, and a little of her own chewed cud, she lets the fire die down. In the deep dark night she spreads the ashes to make a soft, warm bed, and together they lie down to sleep. Her sleep is deep and untroubled, and when she wakes with the first light of the day she is content, refreshed, and the baby too is smiling. The baby raises its hands to her, reaching, waving. She lifts the bundled baby and commences to brush the fine ash from the shawl. As the ash is removed, blue is revealed. Blue of the sky, picked out in ash patterns, in shapes and constellations, on the fine wool of the shawl. The baby’s dampness, the soft leaves, the alkaline ashes – they have made colour, turned the wool sky-blue.

  And that middling old woman, when they get to the greysky city, will pin the shawl to the ceiling of the room above their heads, so the sky is always with them. And the baby will grow up knowing colour, and – grown to adulthood, one day in the future – will become not just a great artist, but a watcher of leaves and trees and light and fire, noticing the science that is their magic.

  12. Sixty-four years ago

  In the daytime, when the light is good, in the gaps when we are not busy in the studio, I work on plates to illustrate my stories. From sketches I’ve made and coloured in my notebook, I make good copies onto acid-free card. I add mats and sleeves to protect them, using offcuts from the studio (or if they’re not strictly offcuts, I’m sure Frank does not mind me taking them). At night, I offer to close the studio so that I can stay late. It’s too dark to paint, so I use the typewriter in the office to type clean copy of my stories, double-spaced and with wide margins, onto good bond paper, bright white.