Wings of the Storm

by JH Fletcher

  Suddenly, unreasonably, Cal was angry. ‘For three months? Just when I’m starting a new project?’

  Tantrums were wasted on Angela. Her expression did not change.

  ‘You’re not the only pebble on the beach, dear. Just as well. Way things have been the last twelve months, I’d have starved.’

  Deliberately Cal turned his head, surveying the wreckage of the meal, the plates, the puddled glasses.

  ‘Thank God there seems no danger of that.’

  ‘Small thanks to you.’

  And moved on, leaving Cal to his futile anger.

  Betrayed twice in one evening …

  It was a child’s reaction, egotistical and unreasoning; he despised himself for it but it remained, for all that. Made him, if anything, angrier than ever, his re-awakened confidence still too fragile for such shocks.

  He found Dave. Whom he was quite willing to blame, though for what would have been hard put to say.

  ‘I’m out of here.’

  Angela overheard. ‘I wanted to introduce —’

  ‘Skip it. I’m not in the mood.’

  The spoilt brat stalked down the corridor, a plush hush like a millionaire’s casket, and hammered the button to bring the lift. Already, too late, he was having second thoughts. It was the sort of conduct he despised in others, the hooligans who insult in order to demonstrate to themselves their own importance. In which no one else believes. It would serve me right if Angela dumped me, he thought.

  ‘I shall ring her,’ he told the silent lift as it whisked him to the ground. ‘Make things right.’

  As for Doctor Charles Chivers …

  Have to sort him out.

  It had been raining. He headed south on slick roadways, gunning the motor despite his good intentions. On South Road, just past Flagstaff Hill, picked up a stream of slowly inching traffic. After five minutes he passed the flashing blue lights crowded around a wrecked car that had left the road and overturned. The CFS was working, had already hosed down the highway where fuel, it seemed, had been spilt.

  Cal glanced briefly as he edged past. It looked bad, the remains of the car a crumpled ruin. There was an ambulance, but no activity, the car’s occupants presumably still trapped inside the wreck.

  He drove home. He parked the car and walked up the path and stood on the cliff edge, letting the wind blow away the residue of the evening’s anger. It had diminished him, not in the eyes of the other guests, who did not matter, but in his own. Self-perception had become important, linking what he was to what he must become if he were to carry out the work that once again had become important to him.

  ‘I really will ring her,’ he told the night, and this time meant it.

  Half an hour later, back in the house with his feet up, the phone rang.

  ‘Hullo?’

  ‘Thank God! Thank God!’

  Dave’s voice, strangled by alarm even as he laughed.

  ‘What’s the problem?’

  ‘You, man! You! I thought it was you!’

  Heaven preserve us, thought Cal. ‘Thought what was me?’

  ‘There was an accident on South Road.’

  ‘I know. I saw it.’

  ‘It was on the late news. A man, they said, driving alone. Driving like a maniac, by the sound of it. Lost control on a bend. Stone dead. They haven’t identified him yet.’

  ‘Why did you think it was me?’

  ‘The car. A red Commodore, like the one you drive. And the way you left the party —’

  Cal felt a cold finger touch him. Dave was right. He remembered the car upside down beside the traffic-choked road, saw again the revolving blue lights, the CFS crew working, and knew how easily, in his mood and those conditions, it might indeed have been him.

  Walking with Kathryn beside the green-shadowed river, he had discovered for the first time in a year that he no longer wanted to die. Now, holding the phone, he knew that things had gone much further than that. Now, most ardently, he wanted to live.

  That brought an awareness of danger. When he had sailed south in search of his ultimate storm, danger had not existed. Now things were different. Shortly he would be flying with Hennie Loots around the Outback. There was danger in that, the potential for disaster. How ironic it would be if, having searched so long for death, he should find it now, when he wanted so much to live!

  ‘Hullo? Hullo?’ Dave’s voice squawking in his ear.

  ‘I’m here.’

  ‘I was so shaken when I saw it. I rang the newsroom but they said they didn’t know who he was.’

  Cal was smiling: at Dave’s relieved agitation, at the darkness beyond the window, at the blood coursing richly through his veins.

  ‘You know what Mark Twain said. When a newspaper reported he’d died?’

  Cut off in full flood, Dave floundered. ‘What? No.’

  ‘Reports of my death are grossly exaggerated.’

  He was close to laughter, not that a stranger was dead but that he, gloriously, was alive. Nothing will take that away, he thought. I shall not permit it.

  Now Dave was laughing, too. ‘I’m glad. There’s another party you might like to go to, if you can face it after tonight. Next weekend at my place.’

  ‘Don’t say you’re rushing off as well?’

  ‘Just a quiet evening with friends. My niece will be there.’

  * * *

  Not only Kathryn; Margaret Videon was there, too. Cat’s eyes and spiteful smile, legs that went on forever. Seeing her brought back memories which she was quick to proclaim, hinting, nudging, laughing in the high yip-yip that, now he had been reminded, he recalled with much distaste. To hear her talk, they might have been the best of friends, as — hard to believe — they had indeed been once.

  ‘Sydney,’ Margaret told the room. ‘My God, darlings, shall I ever forget it? Cal had just started in those days. Even then I could see how different he was from the rest.’

  And smiled, publicly sharing a past. They had been together for only a few months. The relationship had little to do with art, a great deal to do with chemistry. Twelve months after they broke up Cal had started to make a name and for this Margaret would never forgive him.

  ‘Sex and creativity,’ Margaret said. ‘They say they go together, don’t they? I’ll tell you, darlings, Cal has always been very creative.’

  And laughed, drawing the room into a joke with nails in its paws. Perhaps imagined that Cal, with Kathryn beside him, would be a soft target. But that was something he had never been.

  ‘One thing about Margaret,’ he said, sharing the laugh, ‘she may not be creative, but she’s always been one for sex. Ask anyone.’

  Which shut her up, and the laughter.

  After dinner, as soon as there was a moment, Cal and Kathryn slipped away. They stood outside the door in the cool darkness. Down the drive moonlight shone on the surface of the parked cars and, at the bottom of the hill, the bay was a blaze of fairy fire.

  ‘I’m sorry about that.’

  ‘She was jealous. It’s not important.’

  Looking at her, Cal believed her, that for her the ugly exchange across the dinner table had not been important at all.

  They walked silently along the track, past the occasional wind-beaten tree supplicating the stars. There was a stone wall with a gate in it. They passed through the gate and came out on the cliff.

  He put his hand on her arm. ‘Listen …’

  In the darkness the breakers gnawed.

  ‘We are very high here,’ Cal said.

  He took her hand and walked forward until they were on the very edge. Beneath them was nothing but crumbling stone and air. The cannonade of the breaking seas echoed dizzily. He felt her tension.

  ‘I grew up here. I know what I’m doing.’

  And felt her relax as she surrendered herself into his care.

  For a few moments only; soon they turned and walked back down the path to Dave’s house. Both knew that the moment of trust had done something to seal their feel
ings, had brought them beyond acquaintance into something a good deal more important.

  At the door he paused, hand once again on her arm.

  ‘Where are you staying?’

  ‘Here. With my uncle.’

  ‘I’ll come and see you in the morning. If I may.’

  The gleam of moonlight on her teeth as she smiled. ‘Will you? Truly?’

  ‘Will seven be too early for you?’

  If it was, she gave no sign. ‘I’ll be ready.’

  Before he knew he was going to do it, he put his arms around her. It was the first time he had touched her so intimately and, for an instant, he felt her stiffen. Then, as on the edge of the cliff, she relaxed and came closer into his arms.

  Cal was filled with a fearful, tremulous joy. He drew her close, feeling her body pliant and amenable against his, the ardent length of thigh and belly and breast. There was an essence there, something free and unattainable. It was the core of her being, could be captured or even touched by no-one, yet the need to do so was great. He yearned for her, and for it, as some men yearn for the remotest realms of space; forever there, forever dear, forever unattainable.

  He kissed her hair and released her, the fragrance of the kiss in his mouth.

  ‘Coming in?’

  The idea of plunging back into the spiteful pool of Dave’s party, of being indoors at all, appalled him. What he needed now was freedom. Freedom to walk, to breathe, to be.

  ‘Say sorry for me.’

  He touched her cheek gently with the back of his fingers, saw the warmth kindle in her eyes. He turned and walked away up the path. Somewhere behind him the door closed. He was alone — to run, to shout, to brandish arms and spirit at the moon.

  He returned to the place on the cliff top where they had stood minutes earlier. Beyond was a ledge, no more than a few centimetres wide, angling steeply down the vertical face of the cliff until it levelled out twenty feet below. No handholds, no bush or tree to grab in case of a slip. Below lay nothing but a swoon of air, a lonely crying of gulls, the resonance of the distant surf. He had edged along it in daylight, had sensed stones along the path edge falling like crumbs into space. It had been dangerous, then; at night it was madness. Which was the point. Life welled within him, needing the exultation of danger.

  He walked purposefully forward, set his feet on the steeply angled path, inched downwards into the plunging dark.

  In the darkness, memory.

  While he had been studying in Paris, he and Gianetta had taken time in their one Christmas together to go to England. In London they had visited the galleries, had explored with their eyes and ardent breath the masses of Moore, ponderous yet light as air, the pre-cubist explorations of Cezanne. They had gone west, to Exmoor. Had stayed in a farmhouse far from roads and people.

  A track sketched in mud probed the moor’s dark roots. One night, after a day of rain, they went out at dusk and followed the track until they reached an amphitheatre between great rocks.

  Alone, Cal clambered to the highest point, stood with his face to the icy wind. The temperature was plummeting, the clouds promised snow. He knelt to be one with the structure of the mud, touched where the imprint of a hoof revealed a horse’s passing. In the compression of the mud sensed the animal’s heat. He smeared the mud on hands and face, trying to discover its essence as, earlier, he had tried to discover the essence of the girl. Again he failed.

  Ceremoniously he stripped, white skin shrinking in the ice-edged wind, while from the track below Gianetta screamed of danger, folly. Which was the point, the ultimate sharing with oblivion.

  On the ledge he paused, the cliff’s vertical face propelling him outwards, while a cascade of loose stones fell silently. Gravity sucked. One more step. Another. He reached the end. Heart and brain sang, on fire with life. Terror was one of many flames.

  A gull’s wing brushed the darkness. Cal inched around until he faced the sea, space. He stood straight-backed, not permitting himself to touch the cliff behind him. He took a deep breath and raised his arms, like a diver. Stood motionless, free, upon the ultimate brink of oblivion. Again his mind went back to the ecstatic moment, naked upon the frozen moor.

  A movement. In the ardent wind, a fox, loping. It reminded him of a tale told him by a writer he had known back in Oz. Half-drunk at a party, the man had talked of a fox he had seen crossing a paddock near his home, how the sighting had triggered a series of images that he planned to incorporate in a novel. Now Cal watched the silhouette of the animal as soundlessly it crossed the path. A momentary glimpse, so close, then it was gone, leaving upon the darkness its rank stench, the texture and memory of movement like an owl’s cry painted upon a frosty canvas.

  Ceremoniously he lay down, spread-eagled upon the turf, feeling the awe and oneness of creation, its ardent singularity.

  With desperate speed he dragged on his clothes. Hauling Gianetta protesting behind him, returned to their room in the isolated farmhouse, at once began work on the painting that critics later hailed as a new departure, a giant step forward from the ‘Coastal Sequence’ that had made his name.

  Fox By Moonlight.

  A tree, the slash and zag of moonlight through naked branches, a bleak and snow-bleached hill rising into a black sky. The mask of a fox, superimposed. In the tree, the bundled shape of a koala. Upon the glare of the hill’s white breast a nude study, in the blue of moonlight and spangled with frost, of Gianetta.

  Making love to her with the brush as, earlier, he had made love to her with the flesh.

  Three days later they went back to Paris. Where, in the following summer, she died.

  The world, the glitter of ice, the promise of moonlight upon his ardent flesh, were dead. All, all, all dead.

  Now, on the cliff, daring the edges of oblivion below the turning of the stars, Cal heard the night surge of the sea’s slow offering and knew that life had returned once more.

  Enough.

  He had made his sacrifice of nerve and danger. Now the instinct to survive was strong again. He lowered his arms and edged back along the ledge. To what he willed would be safety.

  FOUR

  The next morning, seven o’clock as promised, Cal went to call on Kathryn Fanning.

  For no reason he laughed into her smiling face, his spirits on tiptoe this bright morning, and knew that in this, too, life was returning.

  ‘Why are you laughing?’ Laughing herself as she said it.

  ‘Because I’m happy.’

  Hand in hand, they went out into the day’s promise.

  ‘I want to show you everything …’

  He did the best he could.

  They went first to the summit of The Bushranger. They sat on the edge of the drop, feet dangling in a vertiginous swoon of air. All around them the sea was sparkling, brilliant.

  ‘Had a bit of a scare off here, not so long ago.’ He told her about the storm, the nail-biting return to harbour through the violent wall of surf, but nothing of his motive in going out, nothing of his companion. He pointed. ‘That’s the harbour where I keep my boat.’

  ‘What’s her name?’

  ‘Jester. I’ll take you out some time, if you like.’

  Below them a sea eagle swooped with eloquent tilt of wings amid a screeching cloudburst of gulls. Far beneath, a sea lion glided along a line of buoys, sleek body gleaming, upturned flipper imploring the air.

  Further along the coast, two islands sailed into the brisk wind. In the distance, anchored to the mainland by a causeway barely visible in the early morning light, was the island where at night the fairy penguins roosted. Much closer, the second island was little more than a pile of rocks. At which Cal would not look, nor at the roof of Stella’s house, gleaming amid the boulders.

  ‘Come on …’

  They spent the rest of the morning exploring the coastline. He talked to her, awkwardly, about his work, how he tried to find the hidden significance in physical things.

  ‘A tree standing alone in a paddock is more
than a tree. It is loneliness, or at least solitude.’

  ‘And a woman on a rock?’ Kathryn pirouetted against a backdrop of restless sea, white-flecked. ‘What is she?’

  ‘Who can ever hope to understand a woman?’

  Laughing as he teased her, joyously.

  Suddenly serious, she turned to watch the waves. ‘Sometimes I am afraid …’

  He did not ask of what. Had no need to; happiness had its own terrors.

  ‘We are all afraid,’ he told her. ‘That is why people worship. Some in churches, some in the bodies of others —’

  ‘Some in paint.’

  ‘Worship, yes. But not fear. Only that the work might be inadequate to convey —’

  And paused, searching. All there is to convey. But could not find the words and gestured, helplessly.

  A single breath consumed the rest of the morning. It was early; they were happy; the next thing it was lunchtime.

  ‘Where’s the morning gone?’

  They grabbed a roll from a cafe in town, walked to a beach Cal knew, a kilometre away. To get there they had to use the path that skirted the cliff edge, dipping periodically almost to the rocks, crossing the beds of dried-up watercourses before climbing again. Below them the sea stretched like a piece of crumpled silk to an horizon blurred by haze. It was the path that ran past the island where Stella lived.

  Kathryn paused. ‘What a wonderful place to have a house!’

  Cal did not look. ‘Gets a bit wild in winter, I reckon.’

  ‘Who lives there?’

  ‘Bloke I know. Pilot. He’s away most of the time, working in the Outback.’

  ‘Why does he keep the house, then?’

  Cal did not slacken his stride and Kathryn went with him, turning at the corner of the path to stare back with envious eyes at the little bridge connecting the island with the mainland, the house perched amid the rocks.

  Cal watched her impatiently. ‘Thinking of making him an offer?’

  ‘I wish. It would be wonderful to have a place like that. So free …’