The Fern Tattoo

by David Brooks

  A friend, Paul Benjamin, had wanted him to meet the woman they had come, in joking office conversations, to call the Ice Lady. The meeting, at a party in a large house in Rose Bay, was for Paul’s benefit rather than Daniel’s. In Paul’s eyes, if not in Daniel’s own, Daniel was a renowned womaniser with what appeared to be an extraordinary rate of success. And Paul sought an opinion, that was all, something to pin a hope upon from someone who might know, since he was so close to his own wits’ end. He had some notion that Daniel could see things that he himself could not and, having met her, could advise him as to what next to try.

  Paul had been infatuated with Lilian Grey since meeting her at an engagement party in Bellevue Hill. Since then, he sometimes thought, he had come a great distance: they had become friends; they had been to tea; they had been to the art gallery and a symphony, had taken various long walks together – but also, it seemed, had got nowhere. Beyond a certain point she was cold to his hints or advances, had an apparent aversion to any kind of intimacy and yet, since she would telephone him also and was happy each time to see him again, showed no other real signs of discouraging him. It was even – although their conversation sparkled often enough – hard to get to know very much more about her than he had learnt at their first meeting. She had only recently returned from overseas, and seemed to know Germany, Austria and Italy well, but what she had been doing there, whether working or travelling, he had not been able to discover. It would seem, while he was talking with her, that she was being quite candid, telling him her feelings about one thing or another, describing things she had seen, experiences she had had – but afterward, going over them in his mind, he found them strangely without frames, locations, things to situate them in particular times and places. Short of following her home, which he had actually attempted one night until he thought she caught sight of him, he had not even been able to find out from her where exactly it was that she lived.

  His Bellevue Hill friends had been sympathetic, but also not very surprised. She was a private person, they said, almost eccentrically so, and even they did not know where she lived these days – had only the same telephone number that she had given him. She had always been like that. She had been one of the most beautiful girls at the university, and several of the male students had been in love with her, or thought that they were, but when she befriended any of them it was in much the same way as she had befriended him. Most of them she would have nothing to do with, or else be very friendly toward at first and then back away completely. If anything, she had come back from overseas more secretive than ever. She had family, but when she spoke of them it was only in the most general terms. There was the impression that her father was a fairly important man, but whichever of the notable Greys he might be was still anybody’s guess. As for what she might have been doing overseas, or how she might now be earning her living, they were no more enlightened than Paul. She was always beautifully dressed; whatever it was that she did must be well paid, unless she had family money. She had once spoken of work in the City, but that could have meant anything. Indeed, given the number of years they had known her, it was puzzling to each one of them to think that this was all they could tell. Paul, hearing this, had bitten back a protest that they surely knew more, that they were shielding her. But what could be the reason? And what, if it were so, could be the point in complaining about it, and risking his few connections with her?

  So Daniel, biting his tongue, and holding back yet again a lame joke about melting the ice, agreed.

  At the time of Paul’s request, in any case, Daniel’s attention was elsewhere. He was not quite the ladies’ man he seemed in his younger friend’s eyes. Since commencing with Fields & Rigby scarcely a week after his return – almost a year ago now – he had instead immersed himself in his own and the Company’s projects, and except for professional contacts had seen and met almost no one he had not known before. At a dinner soon after his arrival, Selwyn Debbs, who was now, in retirement, editor of the prestigious Australian Journal of Architecture, had been particularly interested in his travels and had asked him to write an architectural account of them. When Daniel protested that this seemed backward-looking, his old professor had proposed a second essay, provided he complete the first, on Daniel’s own ideas about Australian architecture, his vision. A challenge. So the weekends and days away which, as much for his friend’s amusement as for his own, he had allowed Paul to think were spent in various amorous engagements were in truth being spent in excursions to the mountains or to various parts of the surrounding countryside to see notable colonial buildings and to search out others that might help him the better to articulate his feelings. Something had gone wrong in them, he thought, and something right; and rather than in the great European and American advances, it was in a better understanding of this particular mixture, this equation, that Australian architecture should find its direction. There was a forest style, a mountains style, a plains style, a beach style, a desert style, all different, distinct, though they would all, too, share secrets of light and shadow, air, openness, sound, matter – and all unknown to any of the architectures that had so far tried to teach them, or that they had so far thought they could learn from. If he was reluctant to tell Paul much of this it was not for fear of a theft of his ideas or even of misunderstanding, but because the threads so far were so tenuous, so hard to find words for, that he feared damaging them by rushing into conversation. The wrong words, in this sense, might well scare the right ones away. The wrong track, once set out upon, might be hard to trace back.

  The handful of stories he had told Paul, when pushed, were a deflection only, spun out of memories of Lydia, Isobel, Hazel Parish. The one fresh experience of a woman that he had had he would not have thought amorous at all, at least not in any but the most vicarious of senses, and then not even an experience of flesh and blood but rather, like the architecture it helped him think about, a matter of voice, or light, the play of leaves, on a blue sky, held aloft by the monumental trunk and branches of a Moreton Bay or Port Jackson fig.

  He had been living in his father’s house, a large timber and sandstone building on the eastern edge of Centennial Park, since the day he had disembarked. In Daniel’s absence Martin Freeman had developed a heart condition, and though encouraged to exercise more frequently was reluctant to climb the stairs if he did not have to, and had given Daniel the run of the second floor, with its four spacious rooms, wide verandah and broad views of the park. And from almost his first day with Fields & Rigby, Lucy Scott, his father’s long-time housekeeper, and the nearest to a mother that Daniel had experienced since the death of his own, had made him sandwiches to take to the office, as much because this had been his father’s habit as to save money and to allow him to work through the lunch-hour. But in the mounting heat of the summer, with less work to do than his father might have been used to, Daniel preferred to eat these outside in Hyde Park or the Botanic Gardens, or, as these became more crowded, on the grass under the giant fig trees around a large, squat building two blocks away, where he could read for almost the full hour, or doze, or simply think quietly, while staring up at the sky.

  Although he would readily have identified it as such had he ever been called upon to do so, he had not, in anything but name only, registered that the institution he lunched by was the Conservatorium of Music until his third visit, when the monotonous playing of scales on a tuba drove him to discover a quieter and even more secluded place on the other side of the building. This new position, far preferable in almost every aspect, itself remained quiet only for another four days before it, too, was disturbed by someone’s practice, though in this instance practice of a kind far more likely to make him linger than move away. Having finished his sandwiches, he had fallen asleep while lying down on the grass watching the play of light on the leaves above him, and was awoken not by scales but by the strong, confident and, as far as he could tell, virtually faultless voice of a soprano, already part-way through ‘Verranno a te’, wh
ich the singer then repeated almost immediately, only to break off and re-commence when, as Daniel supposed, someone listening, a teacher, interrupted with a suggestion or correction. The woman sang unaccompanied, evidently working upon a problem, a flaw in the rendition which Daniel himself could not detect. She was never joined by the tenor, although the song is a duet – unless, of course, one is prepared to admit Daniel’s own, imagined part as he carried it, through the afternoon traffic, across Macquarie Street and down Castlereagh, or again that evening as he walked, as he suddenly and uncharacteristically chose to, back home through Centennial Park, taking bread from a bin to feed the ducks in the large central pond at twilight.

  Thereafter he listened for the voice daily while the weather held, but heard it only twice more, working each time on a piece from the same opera. Even on the days when it did not sing, however, the place was inflected by his memory of it, transformed by his expectation, and when it became apparent that this person would not come again, or had ceased to practise at this time, the fact that this was the place where she had done so – where he had heard her – was enough to mark it, if only subconsciously, as his own. For a few weeks afterward he looked in the newspapers and on the hoardings for notice of a production of Lucia, but could find nothing. He even began to attend musical performances again, though these were surprisingly few and far between, and almost never extended to opera proper. And as he listened – none of these voices he came across seemed quite the voice he had heard, striking though some of them were – he began instead to think how inadequate were most concert halls to the height and breadth and colour of the music that a few adventurous people were attempting to bring to them, and wondered why this was, and thought to build this into his vision, his cultural equation.

  The party at Rose Bay, a crowded pre-Christmas affair, was in full swing by the time he arrived. A renowned Irish singer, John Mayberry, in Sydney as part of an Australian tour, was a friend of the hosts and had agreed to sing carols. The hosts, Irish themselves, were in the wine and spirit trade, and the combination of music and alcohol seemed to have drawn people from all circles. Daniel knew a number from university and later professional connections, and it occurred to him that he must surely have received an invitation through other channels than Paul, had he paid more attention to renewing contacts after his return.

  He was surprised at how much he enjoyed seeing some of these old friends again and at how welcoming they were, and spent well over an hour relaxing into their company before straying into the rest of the house in search of Paul, whom he eventually found sitting with a large group out on the broad, high terrace enjoying the late sunshine and the sweeping views of the harbour. He was introduced around the circle, and recognised her name. He was surprised. He was not conscious of having formed any particular image or expectation of her beforehand, but at least on initial impression would not have called such a person the Ice Lady. It was not that she was in any way loud or gregarious, or even particularly sensual, but she was darker when he might have thought her fair; wideeyed, wide-lipped and very attractive, even beautiful when he had, as he now realised, expected someone more severe. The only thing that did not surprise him was that Paul should have become infatuated. Indeed – she smiled familiarly as if she herself might have been briefed for the meeting, and motioned to a vacant seat beside her, and he caught, as he sat, a delicious whisper of her perfume, and glimpsed the sheen of her hair – he rather envied him.

  Within minutes they were in relaxed and easy conversation. He tried, for a time, to remember some of the things Paul had told him to look for – watched to see whether she systematically avoided answering his questions, or turned them back on him – but if she was treating him in the same way it was so skilfully that he did not notice it, and he very soon forgot his assignment entirely. They talked about books, theatre, architecture, Europe, the Pacific and Orient line, state politics, strange fashions, music – until a general emptying of the terrace cued them to the night’s chill and the fact that the singing was about to begin. As they stood and moved toward the lighted house and the voice that would supposedly enthral them, he had even thought to tell her about his experience outside the Conservatorium, and perhaps would have done so had not Mayberry’s rich tenor so quickly silenced them.

  When Paul approached him as the party broke up he deflected the inevitable question, irked by the duplicity it seemed now to involve, and the next day, a Sunday, left the house early in part to avoid the telephone, pondering more than once upon what he could say, whether there might be some way he could turn the question back on Paul himself. When, the following morning, Paul came directly to his office, he tried as best he could to reassure him, suggesting only that such a relationship as his was with Lilian might perhaps develop better if he were to relax about it, to pressure it less – but felt, even as he said this much, a touch of guilt, as if he had stepped over a border, and to say anything more might be a betrayal, if not of a friend, then of someone who might yet become one.

  He did not see her again for several months – that is, if glimpsing her from an upper railing as she left a ferry he had just boarded a stop before, or thinking he saw her in the audience of a play, or catching her, in his mind’s eye, when he came across the same perfume be not counted. His workload in the firm increased as the weather cooled, and his own project kept pace. Whether he liked it or not, and although for the most part things apparently continued as they had before, Paul informed him regularly of developments in his relationship. His characteristic anxiety proved hard to keep in check. Eventually a more open and desperate approach on his part had brought forth a more direct response on Lilian’s. She valued him as a friend, she told him, but as a friend only. She was not averse to a more serious relationship with someone, but had never thought it would be with him. If, as she now saw that she may have done, she had used him, a little, as a shield to fend off others, and had seemed to encourage him, she was sorry indeed, but it had not been done consciously, and she had thought for some reason that he had been different, had understood. And if she seemed secretive about her own life, as no doubt she did, she was quite well aware of it, and did whatever she did in this regard with good reason; she could do no more than ask him, as a friend, to accept this. For a short time Paul tried, but decided at last that she was asking too much. To be a friend alone was a poor substitute for what he had dreamt of. As he explained to Daniel, he wanted more in his life at this point, and was afraid that maintaining the kind of friendship she desired would get in the way of his achieving, with some other person, the kind of relationship he wanted. It was time to move on, he had eventually determined, and having made the decision he moved on with alacrity. A few months later he was in love with someone considerably more responsive, and speaking of Lilian as of a strange episode, an aberration drifting further and further into his past.

  When Daniel did meet Lilian Grey again, face to face at a funeral, they were therefore all the freer to take up the possible friendship they had left suspended when they had pushed back their chairs, almost eight months before, to hear John Mayberry. They were also, as it happened, provided immediately with a pretext and a first topic of conversation. The funeral was of Rose Lawless, an old friend of Daniel’s family, who had been very supportive when his mother had died and for whom he’d long held a special affection. It had been she who had given him his first piano lessons, she who had first – much more successfully – introduced him to the taste of coffee. He was curious to know why Lilian had come, how it was that she too had known Rose, but Lilian had to leave immediately, said she would tell him another time. He pressed for an early meeting, perhaps tea somewhere that week. She hesitated, in apparent doubt as to whether to accept, but then, having thought better of it, agreed, suggesting the Art Gallery since it was so near his office, on the Wednesday afternoon. And on that day, a day of wild wind and rain and reversion to winter cold after an early burst of spring – a day when either, had they been asked, might have
told the other that they had not thought the other would come – they met and talked, and he asked her about Rose Lawless. An hour later, having walked her, in a break in the rain, to her tram on George Street, after a conversation at times almost intimate, since they had spoken of Paul and his frustration, he realised that she had never actually answered him.

  It continued like that for weeks, the reticence, the deflections, the backings away. If they did not disturb Daniel as they had Paul it was most likely because he was the better prepared, although it might also have been because, in other respects, there was no reticence at all. One morning in early summer – it was barely three months since the funeral – he awoke in her bed, and was looking out into the sky over Inner Harbour at a kestrel hanging motionless, high in the air, and realised that the voice he had been hearing was not, as it had usually been, a voice in a dream, but Lilian Grey, in the next room, singing.

  Lilian Grey was not Lilian Grey, but Margaret Anderson, she explained. Her father was Angus Anderson, the puritanical Moderator of the new Church of Australia. The later name, a stage name of sorts, was a trap she had made for herself on entering university. A few of her school and university friends knew about it, or had discovered, but even they had become so used to it that they rarely employed or even remembered the other. It had been intended as an escape or a protection from something that mattered a great deal at the time, and still did, though perhaps not as much since her life as Lilian Grey had become a thing of its own. She had wanted to sing, and had studied – yes, Rose Lawless had been her earliest teacher – but her father, though never actually fighting or forbidding her, had never condoned it. Defying him nonetheless, she had promised herself – and him, as a concession – that he would never have to face it directly. It had been difficult to enrol at the conservatorium without his active cooperation, but with her mother’s help, and the help of friends – Rose Lawless especially – an arrangement had been made, and she had been Lilian Grey, her maternal grandmother’s name, thereafter. Eventually there had been a scholarship to Berlin for two years, though she had in fact, at the encouragement of her professors, spent the second year in Milan, under Antigone Denotti. When she returned, at about the same time as Daniel himself, she had been invited to teach in the Conservatorium. For a time, since her mother was ill, it had seemed better to do that than to start immediately looking for a way to go overseas again to join a company and begin singing professionally. Now that her mother was somewhat better, however, and Lilian had begun to acquire a small reputation, she had decided to make some first steps. When he had heard her singing from outside the Conservatorium, she had been preparing for a Melbourne production – that was why he had not seen it in the Sydney papers. It had gone so well that the fledgling Sydney company was pressing her to join, and she had agreed to do so in the new year.