Autumn Laing

by Alex Miller

  ‘It wouldn’t be the first. He must be very grateful to you for your faith in him.’

  ‘It’s not gratitude Pat feels for me. Did he tell you we’re having a baby?’ She smiled at the thought of the child and passed a hand across her belly.

  ‘It’s great news for you both.’ He felt he should say something more encouraging but he was thinking of Autumn and hoping the subject of babies could be avoided. He could not see how he might share his private thoughts with this young woman, no matter how responsive to her trust he hoped to be. In taking on Pat Donlon, it had begun to seem fairly clear to him that Autumn would be not simply supporting the career of a difficult young artist but taking on the welfare of a family. He wondered how much thought she had given to this, if any, in her enthusiasm. It was his first sense that there might be trouble ahead for Autumn in her guardianship of what she had begun to refer to as Pat’s genius, a relationship she had set her heart on elaborating. He said, ‘How will the three of you live?’

  ‘We’re both resourceful people.’

  ‘You’re not afraid of poverty?’

  ‘Not nearly as afraid of it as I was before I experienced it.’

  Arthur was self-conscious about the tendency of his cherished good manners to render his responses to people merely conventional and platitudinous. How to be real with people had always been a puzzle for him. Even at school he had struggled with this dilemma. And as an adult he had never quite given up trying to resolve it and often found himself wanting to be more spontaneously responsive and open with attractive strangers, men as well as women, than he was able to be with a convincing naturalness. The problem, as he saw it, was how to have good manners but not conceal himself behind them. His sense of the absurd was in fact quite well developed but almost never received the grace of expression, except when he was on his own; in his office, in the bath or on the toilet, and sometimes on the train, when it was not unheard of for him to laugh aloud at some inner observation of a fellow passenger. At such times he could be quite witty and was often able to scan a wide field of irony in the lives of the people around him, clients and fellow passengers especially. The moment he was socially engaged with another, however, the shutters went up, as his mother had once put it. All he could think of then was to be perfectly gracious and polite. He had always found it easy to be kind, and sometimes wondered if kindness with him hadn’t become merely a substitute for something more real, something deeper that was really him. People usually appreciated kindness, however, and he liked the feeling of being appreciated. Whereas Freddy and Barnaby were prepared to be misunderstood and thought cruel in their observations. You avoided one field only to flounder about in the neighbouring field. Life, he supposed. Wasn’t it? How to exist in the confident zone of behaviour where others seemed to sit without effort? It was unimaginable to him that he would have been capable of doing as Pat had done just now, walking up to Autumn and taking her hand like that, and going off with her in that harum-scarum way down the hill on the bike, as if she was a young girl. Had it been merely his habit of kindness, he wondered now, that had prompted him to invite that hungry and rather forlorn young man to dinner that night? Today a young man neither hungry nor forlorn. What might he have set in motion with that invitation? Whatever it was, he was aware that the consequences of his kindly act, whatever they were to be, had passed out of his control. He sighed and lit another cigarette and looked down at Pat’s wife. How was she managing? She looked up at him and smiled. He decided to risk a confession.

  ‘I’ve never been without sufficient funds to do the things I’ve wanted to do,’ he said. This wasn’t quite the confession he had intended, but it would suffice. ‘It is only a lack of ambition and imagination, not a lack of opportunity, that have prevented me from attempting something first rate.’ He smiled, wondering how she was taking this. He saw no reason to hold back. ‘Unlike you and Pat, and unlike Autumn too, I’ve never been troubled by a desire to excel at anything.’ He shrugged. ‘Not really. That’s the truth.’ He frowned. It was the truth. He decided something needed to be added to this and tried rounding it off with, ‘I can’t imagine how dreadful it must be to be poor.’

  She said easily, ‘Poverty’s something our families dread more than anything else. The idea of it haunts them and they give us an unreasonable fear of it. But it’s something they have no experience of. Pat’s family is poor. But they never give their lack of money a thought. I discovered with Pat that the poor don’t fear poverty as we have been taught to. If it is mentioned at all it is to laugh at it. Unless his dad has spent the rent money on the horses. Then his mother gets seriously upset. It’s a matter of honour with her to have the rent money ready on the right day and to never have to ask for a postponement. Our artists are wrong when they show working people as unhappy and oppressed. Pat’s mother’s always singing. They are happier than we are. If we are with the person we love, poverty isn’t frightening. And anyway, it won’t last for me and Pat. It will be a precious period of our lives. It will be our period of struggle together. The time when we prove ourselves. And I’ve been offered illustrating work with the Age. It pays quite well.’ She said, ‘I’d like you to have my painting, Arthur.’

  He must have looked uncertain, or a little startled.

  ‘It is a present from me,’ she explained.

  ‘I can’t possibly accept it, Edith.’ It was the first time he had used her name. The colour had returned to her cheeks and he thought her very lovely. He almost said so but restrained himself, recognising the urging of the champagne and the claret just in time. ‘It’s very generous of you, but you must keep it and show it one day.’

  ‘You and Autumn have given so much support to Pat just when he needed it. No one else has done that. The others have scoffed at him and ridiculed him. He appreciates your kindness more than anything. So do I. I think you can accept my picture and not be troubled by my generosity, Arthur.’ She reached and put her hand on his arm. ‘It is from me to you. It’s not a repayment of a debt or anything like that. I’ve decided to give it to you, so there.’

  Arthur put his hand on hers. He said nothing. A life with her could be imagined: the two of them seated by the fire reading, their child (children?) safely asleep in bed after he had read the little boy (it was a boy) a story. How he had wanted children! A man was not supposed to care so much. This was the confession he had wished to make to her but for which he had failed to find the words. The shutters of his mind. Would his law practice have meant something real to him if he and a woman like Edith had had children together? Would that missing thing in his life, the thing that other people seemed to possess and which he did not possess, the thing that made them care deeply and want to do something excellent, the thing that made them behave as if they were real, would it have been satisfied in him if he’d had a son? It saddened him to think that he would never know the answer to this question. To have been a boy’s father. He closed his eyes. The image that came before him was not that of a child, but was his mother’s anxious features relaxing into a smile. Grandmother.

  ‘Please, Arthur!’ She shook his sleeve. ‘I just know it should be yours.’

  Arthur turned and took the painting from the easel and held it. As he took the picture in his hands his throat tightened and he might have wept.

  ‘I love Pat,’ Edith was saying. ‘But I’m not like him. He and I are opposites. We complete each other. It has always been like this between us. Isn’t it like that with you and Autumn? Forgive me, but I think you and she are opposites too, aren’t you? Pat is boiling inside with an enormous need and energy to make something new with his art. I believe he will succeed in doing it. And I want to be there with him and to support him until one day, whenever it is to be, his hopes for his work become a reality.’

  Arthur did not hear what she was saying. He was holding her picture and looking into its tranquil meadow embroidered with the golden stars of the oxalis. He cleared his throat carefully and said, ‘Thank you, Edith. I shal
l treasure it.’ He turned and leaned down to kiss her cheek. He felt himself blushing.

  ‘There is also a need in us for tranquillity,’ he said. ‘That is what you have achieved here. The mind is invited to rest in your picture. The new is always a little frenzied. A little afraid of itself. The new is driven by chance, by risk and by uncertainty. In seeking to establish itself, the new seeks to disestablish the old order. The new is apocalyptic and is forever exulting in its courage to court failure, as if there is virtue in that.’ He drew breath and turned to her. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’m going on rather.’

  ‘No,’ she said, ‘you’re right. That is Pat you are speaking of. It is why he needs me.’

  •

  Autumn was running along the sand, the seas of the Great Southern Ocean making their landfall in an explosion of spume to her right, riding themselves in against the slant of the rain. She could see she wasn’t going to catch him. She wanted to call out to him to stop but she was out of breath and her voice would be lost against the thunder of the seas. They had left their shoes with the bike on the black rocks at the bottom of the ramp behind them. She kept going, her legs tiring, her lungs unable to take in enough air. He was dancing from one foot to the other, daring the waves. A big sea rushed up the slope of sand and knocked him down. He went over and rolled and the following crest burst against him. He regained his feet and stood a moment, arms flailing, one leg coming free of the turmoil as if he mocked the waves, then the back tow took him off his feet.

  She stopped running, standing on her toes at the edge of the tide, a hand to her eyes, the roaring of the great waves terrifying now. She began to run again, calling his name, her voice whipped from her mouth and lost. Before she reached the place where she had seen him taken into the sea she saw him rise up and wave a hand, then he was in a dip of the water and was gone again, like a little boat. She thought she heard him call but it could have been the cry of the speckled skewer riding the green and white hills of the thundering water. Then there he was again, further out now, his head the size of a floating coconut, an arm coming out of the green undercrest. No one could swim in such a turmoil of water. She was sick in her stomach and stood staring out to catch glimpses of him until he was to be glimpsed no more but was gone forever into the boiling ocean.

  The windbroken crests of the roaring waves were higher than her head and she could not see into the troughs. Then suddenly he was coming towards her, body surfing a wave almost to her feet. He stood and ran to her and picked her up, then turned around and ran into the sea with her. She screamed and beat him about the head and he laughed and stood in the foam a moment before retreating and carrying her back up the beach out of the reach of the waves.

  He set her on her feet and stood with his hands on his hips laughing at her.

  She hit him in the mouth with her closed fist and screamed at him.

  He ducked away, stung by the blow, his hand going to his mouth. He looked at the blood on his fingers. ‘Jesus Christ!’ he said. ‘I’ve a good mind to chuck you in the fucking sea, you bitch.’ He stepped up to her and she backed away, raising an arm to shield herself. He pinioned her arms to her sides and kissed her hard on the mouth. He drew away then he kissed her again, leaving his blood on her white teeth.

  She cried out desperately and he released her arms suddenly and she fell backwards onto the sand. As he came towards her she scrambled away from him. He stood over her and held out a hand to her. She crawled backwards away from him up the sand then got to her feet, pulling her dress down and beating at it with her hands. He didn’t follow her but stood watching, fingering his split lip. He examined his fingers. The wound was sore, the salt firing it up.

  They stood looking at each other, the rain coming down. She turned and began walking back along the beach towards the ramp. He watched her a moment then followed her. He caught up with her and walked alongside her. The sky was heavy and grey out over the ocean, the great seas colliding furiously with the land.

  After they had gone a little way she stopped and turned to him. ‘Is your lip all right?’

  ‘No, it’s not. It’s bloody sore.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have kissed me.’

  ‘You looked ready for it.’

  ‘Don’t talk like that. It’s cheap. I’m Arthur’s wife. I love him. I want you to understand that.’

  He narrowed his eyes and examined her. He couldn’t help smiling.

  ‘What are you smiling at?’

  The rain streaming down her face, her blue dress soaked and covered in sand. ‘You,’ he said. ‘I’m laughing at you. You’re a sight.’

  ‘This is not funny.’

  ‘I think it is.’

  They stood on the deserted sands of the long beach in the rain.

  ‘Well?’ he said. ‘Is it funny or isn’t it funny?’

  She said, ‘You’re quite mad.’

  ‘You’re crazier than I am,’ he said. ‘This is better than being stuck up there in the house, isn’t it? Admit it.’

  She said, ‘What are we going to tell them?’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘How you hurt your lip, for one thing.’

  ‘I’ll tell Arthur you smacked me in the mouth for kissing you.’

  ‘You wouldn’t.’ She looked worried.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Please don’t do that.’

  He shrugged. ‘It’s the truth.’ He was glad to see her looking worried. ‘We have to tell the truth. No? We can’t start off with a lie.’

  ‘Start off? What do you mean? I’m getting cold.’

  ‘Let’s run.’

  ‘I couldn’t.’

  ‘Okay. Let’s walk then.’

  He took her arm and they set off along the wide sand, two figures, the man holding the woman by the arm. The woman the taller of the two. From a half-kilometre distant they might have been a mother and son.

  13

  November 1991

  THE FIRST OF THE SUMMER HEAT STRUCK US TODAY. A BLOW IN THE face when I went outside this morning. Our nameless north wind from the desert. It wasn’t predicted on the radio. Then this afternoon it rained. Everything is damp to the touch. A smell of mouldering already in the closet warmth of these rooms. The page of my exercise book sticks to the side of my hand as I lift it. John Waters, Grade 3, Albert Park Primary. My shift hangs on me as heavy as armour. And there’s a rash under both my arms. I’ll be red raw by tonight. If it weren’t for Adeli I’d go about the house naked in this weather but I have no wish to disgust her. I saw her naked a few days ago. Neither she nor I have spoken about it. If she doesn’t mention it soon then I shall. It is too delicious to leave in the silence.

  I thought she had gone out and I decided to take a peek into the dining room to see how she was progressing with the papers. I had a sneaking desire to view her ordered piles of neatly catalogued materials. Thinking she wasn’t there I didn’t make a particular effort to be quiet and stumped along the passage gripping Barnaby’s knob as I usually do. I eased the dining room door open a crack and was astonished to see her posing completely naked in the middle of Arthur’s father’s dining table. Spread in a circle around her on the table were Pat’s drawings of Mr Creedy’s daughter. Adeli was smiling coyly and turning this way and that the better to view her reflection in the large mirror that is screwed to the wall above the fireplace. She was enormous. Far larger than I had imagined. And she was beautiful. Yes, it was her beauty that astonished me. Her skin was of a light creamy tone, silken and shading, in certain parts of her anatomy, to a delicate pink of exceptional gloss and smoothness. Adeli is a perfect Max Factor. So there! The only blemish, if it can be called a blemish, was a beauty spot below her left breast. Her belly was not gross but shapely. She was jiggling it, the way some African women jiggle their backsides, rhythmically. Only this was her frontside. I gazed at her in wonderment. Sherry was on the table with her, looking up adoringly, as mesmerised as I was—Sherry worshipping at the feet of his deity. I have no ho
pe of ever winning his allegiance back again.

  Adeli’s extraordinarily refined beauty was a revelation. Are all fat women like her under their tents? I have always worshipped the tall and the slim, in honour of myself I suppose. Though it occurred to our ancestors, particularly to Rubens, it had never occurred to me to imagine that these hidden acres of beauty were real presences nearby—indeed herds of them in the supermarket. The fatter the better. It is a competition, surely, to see who can be fattest.

  She saw me and went still, her stomach appearing to deflate and lap over her crotch, rather like the distended crop of a New Guinea bird of paradise when it has completed its mating dance. We stared into each other’s eyes for a timeless moment before I eased the door to and crept away, shamefaced for my intrusion, but strangely elated.

  As I tiptoed down the passage back to the kitchen, I was reminded, with a sudden sharp revelation of memory, of my feelings on the way home with Arthur the night after our visit to Pat and Edith at Ocean Grove. An echo of that particular mix of shamefaced guilt and private elation sparking across the years to touch the old scene into life.

  The more I write about my past the more detailed my memories of it become. Vivid prompts of my imagination, such as this one—more usually making their entrance during the night or when Andrew is prodding about with an enema up my backside—carry me down into deep layers of memory I had believed lost forever. But there they are! Bright treasures of perception, as good as new, standing before me as if no time had elapsed since they were experienced, ready to be clicked into my present reality like Lego blocks, each with its predetermined place in this dream of a purposeful life that I am spinning with my pen. Is that what I am doing? Am I to title it A Purposeful Life? When I first wrote in this (let us call it an exploratory memoir) of Edith’s painting, I could not then recall how it had got into the loft. I hadn’t even remembered it was in the loft or that we still had it here or that we had ever had it here. Now that I have recovered the whole of the story of that picture it is as if I had never forgotten it.