by Tracy Farr
I fledge my manuscript (I have come to think of it as such now, as a manuscript, though perhaps typescript is more strictly correct), ready it for flight. I prepare to send it off into the world to make its way, to find its feet or spread its wings.
I do my homework. I look at the little symbols on the spines of books on Frank’s shelves, and I go to the library and do the same, until I find what I am looking for. There is a publisher in London, Cygnet & Swan (est. 1921), that publishes very fine quality illustrated works, and some poetry. Their colophon attracts me: two swans, the larger with neck curved like a snake, bent down to the smaller, a fluffy bundle.
I write a letter in my head, ready to send to them when I have finished my plates. I enclose my original illustrated manuscript for your consideration. My faery tales are, I feel, as much for adults as they are for children. I look forward to your response. Yours sincerely, Miss Rosa Fortune. My hissing swan, my tiny dancer, my baby wrapped in blue, and all the others, all bundled in brown paper, flying away to London to find their own fortune.
11. Sixty-eight years ago
Oh, it is lovely, working in the photographic studio, after so many years in the dental clinic! Gone are the X-rays and ether, the probes and amalgam, the dusty smell of tooth enamel burning under the drill. I do not miss staring into mouths, rank breath, screaming children, the meaty tang of rotten gums. There is certainly less blood. Few people fear a trip to the photographer as they might fear the dentist’s chair. I use different chemicals now, have swapped jars of sterilising liquid for developer, fixer and vinegary stop bath.
Mr Golden calls me Miss Fortune, his kind face never breaking into a smile until, a week into my employment, I invite him to call me Rosa. He teaches me the basics of photo colouring, in my first weeks working for him in the studio. Building on the watercolour skills I’ve taught myself over the years I learn fast.
I keep my desk at the studio just so, everything where I need it. It’s a pleasing process, precise. I touch the tip of the paintbrush to my tongue, just lightly, then slip its tip between my lips and kiss it to form a point. There are the colours I’ve mixed, in shallow depressions in the white china palette on the desk in front of me. Just a little at a time. Mustn’t be wasteful. I dip the tip of the brush into the pale pink wash that will form the undertone of the skin. The face in the centre of the photograph in front of me is tiny, a fine oval pale under the shelter of a great, broad hat looped with lace and topped with a pale silk flower. I touch the tip of the brush to the slim face, feel it slicken, see it bring colour to the face. I lift the brush. I purse my lips and blow on the photograph, blow on the face, just gently. The surface dries quickly; I watch it change from slick shine to dully dry.
I wash the brush, kiss it again to a fine tip, then dip its very tip into the deep rose colour. I touch it to the lips of the face in the photograph, brighten them, enliven them. I dab water lightly to the cheeks, using a damp cotton swab, moisten them just enough, then touch the tip of the rose-red brush to each shining circle. The colour wicks outwards from each of the tiny pink points, makes rosy apples of her cheeks.
I blow again to dry the surface, then work quickly and carefully to touch colour to the neck and shoulders, down to the soft line of lace at the dress’s neckline. I touch pale pink to the hands that rest so, on the back of the chair, and so, on her husband’s shoulder.
I do the same to paint the rose in a baby’s apple cheeks, a rattle in its hand, or an alphabet block, add colour to bring the images to life.
10. Sixty-eight years ago
At one o’ clock each working day, Mr Pritchett the dentist appears in the doorway of the treatment room, wipes his hands down the front of his white gown, says You’re in charge, Miss Fortune! then turns and closes the door behind him, signalling the beginning of the lunch hour during which, according to his strict instructions, he is not to be disturbed. He eats his lunch in the examining room. I imagine him sitting in the leather dentist’s chair, a bib around his neck to catch his sandwich crumbs (scraps of leftover chicken, or curried egg, or tomato gritty with pepper and salt) and wipe his mouth. I hear the tap run. Perhaps he rinses and spits when he is done.
Every working day, for the twelve years that I have worked here for Mr Pritchett, has been the same.
I am in charge, and left to my own devices, during that hour. Mr Pritchett expects me to mind the front room, to file records (to pin tiny X-ray films, their teeth gleaming white, to the top left corner of index cards, matching patient name to patient name), to type payment reminder notes, to fill the steriliser and straighten the small selection of magazines and newspapers on the table between the chairs in the waiting room. I’m to welcome the two o’clock patients, and bid them wait, if they’re early (though people are rarely early for the dentist, I find). Most days, though, I spend my lunch hour alone, sitting behind the desk with my lunch and my notebook, writing or drawing whatever is in my mind, working on one or another of these odd stories, that come so freely now, and flow from my mind to my notebook. There are, perhaps, a few too many caves among my drawings. I put it down to all those mouths.
Today, the door opens early. A hat appears around the door, a face emerges below it. The face belongs to Mr Golden, from the photographic studio on the corner.
I wonder, might I? he says.
We’re not – that is – we’re closed until two. I wave my hand towards the clock on the wall.
Well, I don’t have an appointment, but it’s rather an emergency, he says. My tooth.
He opens his mouth, inserts a stubby finger.
Eeets thvery sthaw.
When he pulls the tip of his finger from his mouth, a thin line of saliva connects, thins, then breaks. Like gossamer, I think, in a faery tale.
I can’t disturb Mr Pritchett until two. He may be able to fit you in then.
Very kind.
He takes off his hat.
Thank you. Uh – may I?
He waves his hat at the chair.
I suppose so.
He smiles, sits, clutches his hat on his substantial lap, then picks up one of the magazines I’ve not yet bothered to straighten.
I return to my sandwich (cheese and gherkin), and my notebook, pick up my pencil, resume my drawing. I see him watching me.
Do you draw? he asks.
Oh, just for myself.
Might I?
He is risen before I can say no. He is behind me. He is a fat man, and tall. He leans over me, and I can smell the meaty smell of rotten tooth, like meat hung too long, or cheese left out in the sun.
That’s very good.
He flicks through the pages, flicks backwards, so that I feel a little dizzy.
Yes, really very good. You have quite an eye. A sense of colour, too.
Well, I –
No, no, don’t be modest, it’s not everyone, you know. It’s rare. I wonder – no, I’m sure.
Wonder what?
Well, I need a photo colourist. Someone to learn the business. I don’t suppose you’ d consider? No, I shouldn’t –
I don’t know –
And at that moment, Mr Pritchett opens the door, slapping his hands together, smacking his lips. Mr Golden leaps backwards, away from me. I hand him his hat, dropped by my notebook.
Who’s our two o’clock, Miss Fortune?
Mrs Adams and her two bratty children are late, as always, for their two o’clock appointment.
Mr Golden, come this way.
As Mr Pritchett washes his hands noisily at the basin, Mr Golden makes his way to the big red leather chair. At the head of the chair, I fix the bib around his neck. I lift Mr Golden’s head, curve the metal chain under at the nape of his neck, bring the alligator clip around at the side and fix it to the cotton bib at the front. I lean into him and shift his head, just slightly. He nestles against my chest.
9. Seventy years ago
I don’t know why I’ve started writing these stories, after never writing anything more than a letter
or a shopping list before in my life. They are dark faery tales, each one lightened with a flash of colour at its heart.
I’m not sure where the stories come from. Here and there and everywhere and nowhere. A fragment of song gives a nudge; words click together in my head. I sit on the bus, and a phrase occurs to me. I’ve taken to carrying a small notebook with me in my bag, with a small propelling pencil that fits through a loop. I capture the stories in the notebook, sketch figures and scenes to illustrate them. I have missed my bus stop more than once, found myself stranded at the trolley-bus terminus, instead of getting off outside the dental clinic.
At work, I slip the exercise book out when I can, at lunchtime, or when Mr Pritchett is busy, and jot down phrases, add to a drawing. The words for each story come first, but the illustrations to match those words seem always to follow close behind. Figures are elongated, often in shadow, drawn quickly. Closing my eyes, I can see the image as it needs to translate to paper. The image glows on the inside of my eyelids.
There are stories about children, abandoned or orphaned, by one or both parents; or children much-wanted, but unachievable. There is magic in the stories. It’s not music hall magic, not women run through with swords and knives but miraculously uncut; this is the older, earthy kind, the real magic of herbals and botanics, or pharmacopoeia; the magic of elements put together in the right way at the right time in the right proportions and sequence. They are more often recipes than magic, and more often than not they focus on colour. For the tales are often inspired by a colour. Not Snow White and Rose Red, nor Little Red Riding Hood; not Rumpelstiltskin spinning straw into gold. There’s a woman spinning green nettles into cloth to bewitch a stranger; there’s a wet baby rolled for warmth in the gentle ash of a forest fire, releasing the colour from leaves. This is earthy magic; real magic. And god knows where it comes from, or why now – perhaps it’s the War – but here it is, so I write it down.
8. Seventy-five years ago
Back at my workaday job at the dental studio, it is as if I was never away from here. Now, three thousand miles and nearly a year away, I look to my notebook, and my feathered hat from Wellington, to remember my travels. How lucky I was to slip my New Zealand trip in before this war. But how long will I have to wait before I can get these itchy feet once more upon the road?
My New Zealand notebook is filled with words and little drawings. Its pages are fat and puffed, stuffed with mementoes and keepsakes I picked up on my travels. There are bus tickets and concert programmes, pretty picture postcards in colour and black and white, and a paper napkin stamped with the New Zealand Railways crest. Leaves, picked for their shape or colour, rest with flowers pressed between pages stained dark by their petals.
There is the photograph of me with Guide Ana, framed by the meeting-house gate. I wear my modish home-sewn coat, my Wellington hat with its fine feather. Her great feather cloak drapes down and out from her shoulders so that, at its base, it touches the hem of my coat. She looks like a queen. I look like a shopgirl.
My descriptions in the notebook are mostly those of a shopgirl, too, mundane, boring. Today I caught the bus. Today I had tea and sandwiches. I shared my cabin with a lady from Adelaide, and her two married daughters. Once in a while, behind my lacking, listing descriptions, I catch a glimpse of the adventure that I remember: the dark, rich smell of the forest, so unlike Australian bush; the unsettling rise of mountains, the deep wet green of hills, the ferocity of the weather, the sky so close, closer and smaller than home.
7. Seventy-six years ago
I continue my travels in New Zealand’s North Island. Rotorua smells of sulphur and brimstone. All the earth’s geology, its innards and workings, are there to see, exposed and raw and strange. It’s as if the world is turned inside out, as you turn a ripe fig inside out to eat it.
I dress up to go to a fine show at the meeting house, to see the famous Guide Ana who has performed for Dukes and Duchesses. She sings in Maori and English, ‘Pokarekare Ana’ (is it about her, I wonder?), and ‘Now is the Hour’ in Maori, and other songs I do not know, but like none the less for that. She wears a skirt of native grass, not soft as I expected, but stiff, so it clatters and clicks as she moves. Her hands make waves in the air as she sings. Her voice is clean and clear and strong.
When the whole concert party takes the stage, the men and women are all in the same stiff skirts, all barefoot, the men bare-chested. Some of the women are draped with cloaks that are, I think, made of fur, or feathers, tufted, patterned. They have headbands, like Red Indians, and the women’s hair is long, dark and thick. Their voices rise and hold together. The sound is not like a European choir, but has its own sound. There is a catch in their voices, that sounds almost like sadness.
After the concert, I join the line of tourists eager to pose for a memento photograph with Guide Ana. She smiles at me as I take my turn. Side by side, under the high, carved gateway that leads to the meeting house, we face the photographer, and smile at his shout.
6. Seventy-six years ago
I used to dream about travel; now, here I am, after all those years of scrimping and saving.
New Zealand is green and beautiful. And cold, so I’m glad I took the time and expense to line my winter coat. And that coat has gained me a hat, for the fashions here are behind even ours at home, and I find myself modish, admired, a very strange state of affairs. In a shop in Wellington, the proprietress admires my coat so much that she asks if she might trace a pattern from it.
Leave it with me for an hour, she says. I promise I’ll take good care of it.
I’ll tell you what, she says in the face of my obvious uncertainty, you must choose a hat! Any hat! In return.
It’s early afternoon, the sun high enough that I’m sure I can wander the long, curving main street coatless for the hour it will take her to trace my coat, to map its making. But the brisk wind soon sends me into a teashop for shelter, and I am forced to spend money I had not budgeted on half an egg sandwich and a pot of tea.
When I return to her shop, the proprietress meets me, grinning, at the door. I choose a pretty felt hat that I notice in the window, the same deep green as my coat, with a feather curving around from the brim. It is well worth the cost of the tea and sandwich, after all.
5. Eighty years ago
I start a new job, working for Mr Pritchett the dentist.
The pay is better than it was in the office, so I can better afford to save my money to travel. Mr Pritchett says it doesn’t matter that I’ve no experience as a dental assistant, he just needs a pretty face around the place. He pinches my cheek when he says it. He’ll train me up, he says, and this way there aren’t any bad habits to break.
Mr Pritchett doesn’t look like a dentist. He has great big forearms covered in thick black hair, the forearms of a butcher, or a wharfie. When he washes his hands in the basin in the treatment room, the hair on his arms goes flat, dark, aligns like seagrass in the shallows on an incoming tide. He smells of disinfectant, carbolic soap, and the sweet, pink alcohol that the clean instruments are stored in.
4. Eighty-six years ago
Sister Bernard raps the ruler across my knuckles.
Stop dreaming, Rosa Fortune!
I jump, and blot my copybook.
There’ll be no more looking out the window when you leave school, my girl, she says.
I am not her girl.
But I bow my head like the other girls, and I dip my pen and write.
I can’t wait to leave the nuns behind, to go out into the world. I stare at the map on the wall, its Commonwealth colours, its great oceans, its land masses, its possibilities. I rest my chin on my hand and imagine myself anywhere but here.
3. Ninety-three years ago
Oh, but everything goes so quickly now! Here I am, at school with the nuns.
Sister Clotilde is kind and soft, and has a pretty face, but the other sisters frighten me. All in black, they smell of sweat and mince. I fear their hidden hair, their sharp wa
ys.
Sister Mary Joseph has a wart on her chin, with a hair growing from it. Pongy Sally says Sister Mary Joseph’s a witch. Betty Murray says that Pongy Sally would know all about witches, just look at her granny!
2. Ninety-nine years ago
Pull me up on Mama, her breadsmell skirt. Bump on the floor, o o oh! Mama making pikelets, round like mouth, sticky jam. Want more!
I’m off! O o oh! Watch me crawl! Off I go, all the way back.
1. One hundred years ago
Whack! Cry! O o oh, it is Rosa!
HOPE
‘Now, Mistress Queen, what is my name?’
The Brothers Grimm, ‘Rumpelstiltskin’
Sunday
The year’s deep midnight
The baby wakes in the night. Only her mother hears her. Kristin rolls out of bed, stumbles to the baby’s side. She has to hesitate a moment, half-remember where she is – this house, these rooms – but without coming to a full waking state. Actions come without connections to conscious thought – hold the baby, check her, feed her, pat her back, rub her tummy. Voice stays in that low register, that murmur. Words need not make sense. It’s better if they don’t. Shush shush shush sounds like the rain on the roof, like water flowing, like grass, like the ocean, the wind. And you rock back and forth, without thinking of it, just doing it. Come, Baby. Sleep, darling. It’s alright. It’s alright. S’alright now. Sh-sh-sh-sh-shush.
