by Alex Miller
Pat said, ‘They’ll hate it. What show?’
She sipped her champagne. The wine had lost its chill and tasted bitter. She set the glass down again. ‘You sound as if you hope people will hate your work.’
‘Maybe I do. Maybe they should.’ He was noticing things about her.
‘We are hoping to put together a show of modernist work for the winter. There is a new space in Flinders Lane. The freehold is available. Arthur is looking into the possibility of acquiring it. It would become the centre for the new young artists whose work we favour. Our winter show is sure to create a lot of interest.’
Pat said, ‘I’m not putting that thing into a show.’ He had lost his confidence in his ability to make decisions about his work. The energy had gone out of him for it. He was afraid of where his life was going. He felt sure he and his work would never belong with the people these two favoured. It was all a joke. He was sick of the whole thing. Her dress was blue and smooth and had slipped over her body like a skin. There was no shape to her. Her legs were too long and her feet were bony. She had nervous eyes. Slightly mad. Some painters would paint her. Some painters would fuck her. He didn’t like her. He didn’t trust her. She was bony all over. What did she really want with him? Why was she bothering? He was sorry now that he had left his drawings of Creedy’s daughter at their place. Leaving his drawings there might have made it seem as if he had pledged himself to her in some way. He had just forgotten to take them when he left in the morning. That was all it was. They should have brought them with them and given them back today. What were these two doing here anyway, carrying on about acquiring galleries and putting his stuff in a show? It would have made more sense if they’d brought beer with them instead of this French piss. He reached for the champagne bottle and filled his glass and drank it off and grimaced and set his glass down.
‘I don’t think that decision is completely up to you,’ she said, watching him. ‘What an artist makes is his own private affair, but what he shows to the public is a decision he must share with others. Preferably a decision he must delegate to others whom he trusts to have his best interests at heart. Artists themselves are not to be trusted as judges of their own work. What else have you got for us to look at?’
‘There’s heaps of stuff. None of it’s any good.’ He met her eyes directly for the first time. He rejected what she had just said as a load of crap, but found the thought interesting that others would decide about his work. He was trying to remember this tall self-possessed woman who seemed to imagine she had some authority over him in her apron at the stove in the kitchen of Old Farm. An image he had of her a second or two before he vomited at her feet. The one moment when she had seemed to him to be a real woman. He could still feel the strong grip of her hand on his arm as she led him out the back door. She looked frail but she was strong. He must remember that. Just because people were rich, it didn’t mean they were weak or stupid. Did it? His dad would not have agreed with that idea. The rich were all dogs for his father and his mates. In his heart, despite his reasoning, and despite his love for Edith, he believed as his father believed. He had always known he would have to betray his origins if he was to get on in life. And it worried him. It always had worried him. Maybe it had even held him back. Right now he wanted to ask a simple straightforward question of this woman in front of him and get a simple straightforward answer back from her. But what was the question? He didn’t know and it angered him. They angered him. It would not be a bad thing to see them damaged. He would like to try something with this lanky bitch to see just how good she really was. Nothing came to his mind at this moment but he would think of something. A test. Courage might have something to do with it. Physical courage. He’d see how she performed then. It was always the real test. Front the bastards with fear and see how they did. Who the fuck did she think she was anyway? He realised he was breathing heavily. He cleared his throat and stepped away from the table and said, ‘I don’t know what I’m doing yet. I may not go on with art.’ This was not what he had intended to say. ‘I haven’t decided. I haven’t done anything much for a while. I’ve been working for old Gerner next door trying to get a bit of money together.’
She looked at him and he looked back at her. What was it these two hoped for from each other?
‘You have all the right ideas,’ she said. ‘But you don’t have a subject. That’s all it is. You have to find your subject.’
‘Is that all it is?’ he said sarcastically and laughed.
‘Your material, I mean,’ she said and frowned. ‘Do you take that seriously?’
She made it sound simple. As if all he needed was a bit of common sense in order to become the artist he had dreamed of becoming. But he knew there was something stale and unhealthy about that old dream. It wasn’t his any more. He knew he was never going to return to it. If he ever did make art seriously again he would make it for some other reason. He didn’t know what that reason would be. He knew only that it would not be the old reason. The reason that had betrayed him. Or by which he had betrayed himself. He would share these thoughts with no one. Not even with Edith. She would look at him strangely and be puzzled and would wish to understand. But he did not understand himself. He had appealed to the rich bastards for help and they had humiliated him.
‘You must meet people, Pat.’
He shrugged. ‘I met a couple the other day.’ He didn’t know the questions. And he didn’t know the answers. And although he knew it was unreasonable of him, he could not help blaming these people in some way for his ignorance and his bewilderment.
‘Being down here on your own isn’t good for you.’
‘I’m not on my own.’
‘I meant living here isolates you from what is being done.’ Her tone was just a little impatient now.
‘We can’t afford to live in town.’
‘Oh, well,’ she said lightly. ‘You’re obviously determined not to listen to anything I have to say.’ She went over and stood looking out of the window at the rain. The dark pines behind the house, broken limbs torn savagely from the great black trunks as if artillery had been fired at them, the beautiful wild sky rushing along overhead, black and grey and vivid white. So much power. So much purpose. The gods they all longed to believe in. What a shame the excitement of her expectations during the drive down this morning had slipped away from her quite so quickly now that they were here. Why is reality always so disappointing? she asked herself.
‘What a pity it’s raining,’ she said aloud. ‘I was so looking forward to seeing the ocean today.’ As if it was for the ocean that she had left Old Farm so early this morning and driven all that way with Arthur.
Pat said, ‘It’s not a problem. I’ll give you a dink on the bike.’
She turned from the window. ‘On the crossbar, you mean?’
He stood looking at her.
‘But we’ll get wet.’
‘Then we’ll get dry again,’ he said. ‘The stove’s going. Come on!’ He walked across to her and took her hand. Now she would feel his strength. ‘I’m kidnapping your missus, Arthur.’
•
Arthur went out and stood at the kitchen window and watched them. Pat cooeeing wildly and pedalling furiously down the steep hill towards the sharp turn at the bottom where the laneway met the road, gravel spitting from the rear tyre. Autumn’s shriek of terror and delight, was it? The skirt of her pale blue dress flying up like a cloud of smoke, as they neared the turn. ‘Idiots,’ Arthur said quietly.
The Pontiac sat smugly just outside the lopsided gate, its roof and bonnet gleaming in the rain. The sight of his motor car reassured Arthur. He turned away from the window and looked into the hamper that sat on the kitchen table. He took out a bottle of red wine, uncorked it and poured wine into a clean glass. He took a bread roll from the hamper and spread it liberally with the duck pâté and took a bite. He stood by the table alternately taking bites out of the roll and swigs from the glass of wine. When he had finished the roll he took t
he bottle and the glass with him and went back to the studio.
He sat in the vacant chair near Edith’s easel and looked at her painting of the house and the embroidered field, the bottle of claret within easy reach beside his chair. He lit a cigarette and sat smoking, blowing his little smoke rings, and looking at the painting. After a minute he said, ‘Yes, it’s lovely. A piece of music. A little nocturne.’ He drank the wine and puffed the cigarette, being his Uncle Harold being a steam train. The house was quiet. The sound of his own voice made the room familiar and private. The rain pattered steadily on the tin roof and every now and then a cockatoo screeched in the pines. Arthur was pleased with the quiet and the company of the painting. He refilled his glass. Despite his grandmother’s assertions, the claret was far more satisfying to his palate than the warm champagne. Autumn had been excited and had talked non-stop on the way down and he was glad to have this moment alone with his thoughts. He was enjoying the interior effect of the wine, a mist of encouraging claret dreams sitting behind his eyes in the bed of his skull.
He was undecided about Pat Donlon. It was a little disappointing. Pat didn’t seem to be quite the man he had met in his office but seemed less, rather average in fact, here in his own home. Pat was Autumn’s project, however. She believed him to be gifted. Her favourite word; We all have a gift. Well, maybe. Arthur wasn’t so sure about this. What, for example, was his own gift? Contentment? Was contentment a gift? Tolerance? Steadiness perhaps. Were these things gifts? He had not seen any obvious evidence of Pat’s giftedness here in the studio. But he would support her nevertheless. Autumn had rarely been mistaken in her choice of people. He could not now recall what it was that had prompted him to invite Pat to dinner that night. But he supposed he must have detected something about the man that he had thought would interest Autumn. Pat had seemed to him that evening to be someone who might be worth taking up. But from memory it had not been because of his drawings of the large naked girl, which Arthur had thought slapdash, but had been more due to his unorthodox attitude to the artist’s conventional training and his rejection by Cowper. An energy in him that was unusual and which had aroused his curiosity. Any enemy of Cowper’s naturally drew upon his sympathies. He had also been reading Wilenski, whose description of Gauguin’s unorthodox beginnings had fired his imagination with thoughts of the great number of notable artists who were self-taught. Then here was this young man in his office with his bundle of drawings and his determination to be a painter. The moment had been right, he supposed. But was that all it was? Or had there been something else? Autumn had thought him right. He wondered how she would feel towards Pat after today.
He had enjoyed the drive down from Melbourne this morning. Now he was enjoying Edith’s painting and his cigarette and the claret. By the time they’d arrived at Ocean Grove their own ice had melted and it was a pity Pat and Edith had had no ice here for the champagne. Autumn preferred champagne to claret and they had brought several bottles. His grandmother had maintained that warm champagne was good for the digestion. She had died content at the age of one hundred and one. But these facts had never been sufficient to convince Autumn that she might enjoy champagne when it was not perfectly chilled.
Arthur sat there in the studio on his own that rainy afternoon thinking about these inconsequential things, and was soon lost to remembrances of his family and his childhood. He enquired of himself for the thousandth time what it might have been that had convinced his mother to be so implacable about the law for him. His father and uncles were farmers. He lit another cigarette and puffed some more rings and had no answers for his queries. He was still looking at the picture, but he was no longer seeing it. He suddenly became aware of someone standing beside the easel.
Edith said, ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to startle you. I thought everyone had gone out. I was on my way to get a cup of water when I heard a voice in here.’ She was wearing a green velour dressing-gown and had grey slippers on her feet. She held the dressing-gown closed at her neck with both hands. Her hair was dark and uncombed and hung about her face as if she had been out in wild weather.
Arthur stood up. She looked like his idea of Hardy’s Tess. Not what he had expected for the wife of the little Irishman. This girl was a country lass. Pat was all city. A little sad, perhaps? Certainly in hope of better things to come. She didn’t look particularly ill.
‘I’m Edith,’ she said, pressing her palm to her chest. ‘I shan’t disturb you. I suppose you must be Arthur?’
‘Pat’s taken Autumn down to see the ocean on his bike.’ He reached for the back of the chair to steady himself. ‘I was probably talking to myself.’ He stepped forward. ‘Here, let me get you the water.’ He took the cup from her hand. ‘I’ve been admiring your painting.’
‘I’m afraid it’s rather old-fashioned,’ she said.
‘I’m a little old-fashioned myself.’
Their eyes met briefly and they both laughed.
‘It’s a lovely painting,’ he said firmly. He took her hand and led her to the chair. ‘I’ll be back in a second.’ She did not protest but seemed content to sit down and wait for him, crossing her legs and pulling the skirts of her green dressing-gown over her knees. He went into the kitchen and filled the cup with cool water, then came back into the studio and handed the cup to her. She took a sip. He said, ‘Your grandfather would have been proud of you.’
It was what Pat had said to her. ‘Did you know his work?’ she asked.
‘Everyone in our house knew Thomas Anderson. I met him once when I was a boy. I suppose it was during the holidays and I was home from school. I remember his moustache and his kindly smile. But that’s all. My mother has several of his Tasmanian landscapes. And there is a portrait of my grandfather that she is especially fond of. Your palette is lighter than his. I much prefer it.’ Her painting made him feel comfortably at home with her. He knew himself to be a familiar of the values and the social situation in which both she and her picture had their origins.
They both looked at the painting on the easel.
Arthur said, ‘Do you have a title for it?’
‘I call it the embroidered hillside.’
They were both silent again for quite a long time. The silence was not a difficult one, but seemed to Arthur to be a natural extension of the larger silence of the house, which was made apparent by the proprietorial screeching of the solitary cockatoo in the pines. Arthur wondered if someone in the house had kept the cockatoo as a pet. He was aware of sharing something of value with Edith and liked her.
She said easily, without apparent self-deprecation, ‘There’s no future for my kind of painting. None at all. But it’s what I love to do.’
Arthur considered complimenting her again on her skill, which she must certainly have been aware of, but said nothing. Might she not reveal something unexpected to him if he kept his silence? And surely she would close up and say nothing more if he were to say too much. They were naturally in tune, the two of them, he was sure of it, but they were also both modest people who would readily defer to a companion, and for whom an awkward word at this delicate moment might destroy the small area of trust they had discovered with each other. He hadn’t meant to speak, therefore, when a moment later he heard himself ask her, ‘Are you feeling better then?’ It was his habit of good manners, to show care of others, to offer a sense of his concern, that prompted him to break the interesting silence between himself and this young woman. He was annoyed with himself.
But Edith did not respond to his question. ‘It’s Pat who’ll be charting the future of our art,’ she said. ‘Not people like me.’ She looked up at Arthur and held his gaze steadily for a considerable moment. ‘I don’t have any illusions about that. I suppose if I tried I could make a living from painting. But Pat’s work is too strange for people. No one will venture to buy it until it has been acknowledged. People will need to be emboldened before they can have confidence in it. No one knows what to make of it.’
He granted he
r a larger readiness for reality than he and decided she was an admirable person. ‘What do you make of Pat’s work yourself?’ He hoped to hear something from her that might persuade him to believe in Patrick Donlon’s genius.
‘Oh, I can’t say,’ she said simply. ‘Pat doesn’t ask himself what is to be made of his work. What can be made of it? It has already been made. This is not a question with him. The work is just there. He is impatient with talk about art and why we do it and what it means and all that. He has no time for any of it. When people ask him such questions he asks them what they mean and they can never say what it is they mean because there really isn’t anything to mean. The work is either there or it isn’t and when it is there what can be said that will add anything to it? If you ask me what I make of my own pictures, what can I say? That one is there and you say you admire it.’
‘I do admire it. It is very skilled. It is a picture that lets me dream a little.’ He stood looking down at her, waiting for her to say something more, but she sipped her water and looked at the picture on the easel and added nothing. ‘You believe in Pat,’ he said. ‘And that’s enough, is it?’
‘Pat will do something new and important one day. I’m sure of it. I’ve always known it. Since the first time I saw him at the Gallery School. When I saw him I knew at once he was not like the others.’ She laughed. ‘He has never offered anything for sale in case no one wanted to buy it. So I suppose we don’t really know yet if some peculiar person might have the courage to buy something just on their own feeling for it. But it’s hard to imagine anyone doing that.’
Arthur said, ‘Pat offered me his drawings of the nude young woman for fifty pounds.’
She looked up at him. Evidently surprised. ‘Well, I would say you missed a bargain.’
