by Alex Miller
‘Don’t try to explain,’ she said softly.
A moment of stillness between them as they stood hand in hand in the sunlit studio . . . Then her gaze shifted, suddenly, to the open door behind him, a warning in her eyes. He let go of her hand and swung around, a guilty flash of Teresa walking in on them. A man was going past along the lane, a pusher ahead of him with a child in it, shopping in plastic bags slung from the handles of the pusher. The man and the child looked in through the open door of the studio as they went by. The man scanning the tableau of the two figures, who might have just drawn apart hurriedly from an embrace; two people observed by the trio in the painting. The man’s curious gaze sweeping the interior of the studio. Then he was gone.
Toni did not look at her but reached and lifted the painting down from the easel and laid it on the floor. ‘Perhaps we should make a start,’ he said.
They mixed a neutral glaze and knelt on the floor and began painting out the man adrift against the black sky with its cold floating world. They worked in silence, conscious of the nearness of the other. It was Robert’s vision they were obliterating: the knowing comment of the artist on his image, the self-conscious inquisition of the subject; Robert’s restless intelligence forever seeking the means to unlink himself from the images of his imagination, as if he wished to bestow upon them a perfect autonomy of existence. As he worked beside Marina, Toni felt that he was seeing into the secret history of Robert’s art; his sense of the three of them linked to each other in ways they would never unravel or fully understand. He wondered what he would have been doing at this moment if they had not returned from Sydney. He could never explain to Teresa in a way that would satisfy her that it was only through Robert and Marina that his work had found a renewal.
•
They stood and cleaned their brushes. Standing above the altered painting, he realised he could still make out the naked man adrift under the fresh medium, like a body frozen into the ice. The ghostly persistence of Robert’s influence interred beneath the neutral glaze. He liked the accidental effect and felt sorry it was to be sacrificed to the trees.
‘What is it?’ she asked.
He pointed. ‘See? It’s haunted.’
She looked and said nothing.
‘Let’s take it over to Richmond.’
She stood considering him. ‘You don’t think you should take a day or two to think about this?’
‘Let’s just do it.’
Out in the lane they loaded the picture onto the roof rack of his wagon and she got into her car. He leaned down at her window. ‘Theo gave me his sketchbook. Did you know?’
She looked up at him. ‘Yes, he told us. He said he was sure you’d make good use of it.’
‘He made me promise not to show you and Robert.’
‘We’ll see it one day.’
There was a question in her eyes, even the moisture of a tear, a need perhaps to be reassured. He might have kissed her then—have kissed her lips and sealed it. ‘I’ll be right behind you,’ he said and straightened. He stood back and waited for her to drive away. He watched until her car turned into the road at the end of the lane and was out of sight. When she had gone he went back into studio and got a brush and a tube of black. He lifted the painting and wrote on the back of the canvas, The Schwartz Family, 200 × 200cm. March 2003. AP 17. A homage to Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s The Soler Family.
eleven
She was waiting for him on the verandah. As he came up to her carrying his painting she said, ‘Oriel’s viewing our pictures for the show.’ She reached and took hold of the other end of the canvas. ‘She brought Geoff Haine with her. It looks as if Andy’s here too.’
‘The whole family!’ he said. He was not delighted by the idea of Haine and the others seeing his unfinished painting.
‘It will be all right,’ she reassured him. ‘They’ll be impressed. You’ll see.’ She set off ahead of him through the house, holding up her end of the painting.
In the studio Robert and Haine were standing talking in front of Chaos Rules with Andy Levine and the Bream Island curator, Oriel Liesker. Theo was sitting in isolation on the hard-backed chair over by the wall, a one-man audience to the group around the painting. He had dressed for the occasion and was wearing jeans and a purple silk shirt open at the throat. His feet were bare as usual and his pale hands were jumping and twitching in his lap like freshly landed fish, his fine silver hair shimmering around his skull as if it were not attached but merely accompanied him. Misty was sitting on the cupboard in front of him, solemnly observing the group by the painting. Theo and the cat turned and looked across as Toni and Marina came into the room carrying the painting. Theo inclined his head and raised one hand in solemn greeting, as if he saw himself as some kind of presiding chieftain.
Marina said, ‘Sorry, but I’ve got to hear what Geoff has to say about my picture,’ and she abruptly left him standing with his painting and walked over to join the others around Chaos Rules. Oriel’s physical presence dominated the group around the painting. She was a large woman in her mid-fifties, her abundant flesh modelled around the bones of her Frisian forebears. She was taller than Marina and the three men, and broad in the shoulders, a wild tangle of richly hennaed hair piled on top of her head and held precariously in place with an elaborate arrangement of combs and pins, as if she were perversely determined to make herself appear older and taller than she really was.
Andy left the group and came over to Toni. ‘Here’s the boy himself,’ he said and he stepped up and pinched Toni’s cheek, as if he were a familiar aunt greeting a favourite nephew.
‘How you doing, old buddy?’
‘Yeah, I’m good, mate. How’s it going?’
Andy took hold of The Schwartz Family and turned it around, squatting to examine it. He called, ‘Come over here and look at this, Geoffrey! This is something!’ He looked up at Toni. ‘You’re on to it here, mate. I’ve got collectors out there queuing for this.’ He stood up, one hand steadying the canvas, as if it had already been consigned into his care.
Haine walked over and stood looking at the picture.
‘Tell him all about it, Geoffrey.’ Andy patted Toni’s cheek. ‘You keep doing this and you’re going to be as rich and famous as our Geoffrey here.’
Marina came over with Oriel and Robert and joined them. Robert stepped in close to the picture and squatted in front of it, adjusting his glasses, his eyes on a level with the eyes of the figures in the picture.
Oriel gave him a steady look.
Andy put his hand on Toni’s shoulder, his fingers gripping the back of his neck as if he had caught a thief. ‘Toni Powlett, Geoffrey Haine. Have you two met? Painter to painter. You should be friends.’
Toni took Haine’s hand. ‘Good to see you again.’
‘Yeah, likewise.’ Haine was a short, heavily built man in his late fifties, his manner cautious and reserved. His bald head was oiled and tanned, his eyes hard and black and attentive.
Andy said, ‘What do you say, Geoffrey? Listen to the voice of Geoffrey Phillip Haine, people! We’ll quote him in the blurb to your show, Toni. How about it, Geoffrey? Is this what it’s all about?’
Robert stood up and turned to Toni. ‘I see you’ve freshly painted out your background?’
‘Marina’s doing a new background for it,’ Toni said. He spoke without thinking.
Marina gave a small smile.
Robert looked surprised but said nothing.
Toni waited for his verdict. His old teacher seeing the build-up of texture, smelling the freshly applied glaze, his practised eye cutting through the surface illusion to the intention behind the artifice—still the master assessing the student’s motives and aspirations.
Robert turned to him. ‘That’s our Man Adrift you’ve painted out.’ Robert detecting the ghostly remainder of his own presence under the thin glaze.
Toni felt as if his private thoughts were on display to Robert in the picture. Robert seeing him behind his composition.
‘It’s very good,’ Robert said. It was not a wholehearted endorsement of the picture.
There was a steady silence in the big room then, as if a motor had been switched off. They stood looking at the unfinished group portrait. The three members of the Schwartz family gazing out from the strange, inaccessible dimension of the painted image. Robert, Marina and Theo, more real in a way than their realities, something of the truth unmasked in their stony images, something of the inadmissible hinted at in their expectant unease that silenced the onlookers.
Toni feared they might see his picture as merely caricature-in-depth, an exaggeration of the most obvious features of his subjects, and dismiss the work. He had not noticed before that the black frames of Robert’s narrow spectacles in the picture resembled the slits of a gun turret. It seemed a crass overstatement to him now, almost a cartoonish effect. He was sorry it was not a more generous portrayal of his friend. The Robert he referred to here could be read as a man lost to himself, a man older than his human counterpart, becoming his own father. The body of the woman seated between father and son was faintly visible through her shirt, a hint of the veiled and the erotic in the manner of Marina’s depiction, her slim lips polished jade in the greenish light. It was all there for them to see, every thought that had been in his mind while he had been working alone through the warm summer nights in the privileged silence of his studio. He knew that these people saw through the artist’s sleight of hand. That was their job. They were not the bidden public. When they looked at a work they looked at the artist, not at the subject of the picture. He thought with envy of his father, who had never laid his work before strangers.
Oriel was the first to break away, her movement abrupt and impatient. Her shirtfront was open almost to her waist, a necklace of heavy amber beads swinging between her breasts like a slave chain. She flourished a packet of Marlboros. ‘I’m stepping out. I need a cigarette. Anybody care to keep me company? Andy, how about it?’
Andy waved her away.
‘No? All pure as the driven snow.’ She laughed, a big fruity bellow that filled the studio with its overbearing sound. She turned to Toni. ‘You haven’t got Marina yet, Toni. It’s a bloody good picture, mate, but you haven’t got her.’ She waved her cigarettes at the picture. ‘She’s your centrepiece, but you haven’t got her. Okay? You’ve got her cat. Stay with it, there’s a way to go with this one yet. How many of these are you putting in my show? You and I are going to need to talk. I’ll come around to your place in a week or two and have a look at what you’re doing for me.’
‘It’s not finished,’ he objected unhappily. He caught Haine’s watchful eyes on him. ‘It’s not finished,’ he repeated, a little truculent. The older man turned away, keeping his doubts about the quality of the painting and the newly collaborative situation with Marina to himself. Apart from the fleeing figure of the running man, the human presence was scarcely represented in Haine’s work. His paintings were whole, complete, autonomous and entirely his own. Toni was aware that in Haine’s classic perception there was almost certainly no such thing as background, and that such an idea would undoubtedly offend his sense of the artist’s responsibility to the work.
Oriel strode across the clean-swept space of the studio towards the door, calling back over her shoulder, ‘For my money you haven’t got her, Toni. You’ve got her cat.’ She laughed again as she went out the door, careless and uncompromising, foisting upon them the humiliating perception that Toni had begun painting again merely in order to fulfil her commission for the island.
Andy put his arm around Toni’s shoulders and stood close, steadying the painting with his other hand. ‘Don’t worry about Oriel, old mate. She’s always doing that. She doesn’t like you guys getting too big-headed. This is brilliant. The punters are going to love it.’
Alongside Andy’s small frame and tight curly hair Toni felt large and untidy. There was a disarming innocence about Andy Levine that had often led people to underestimate his toughness and the subtlety of his intelligence. Andy could have been his fight trainer here, his pose saying, This is my boy! Toni stepped impatiently out of Andy’s protective embrace and retrieved his painting from him. He carried it across the studio and set it with its face to the wall, as if to say, That’s the end of the show for today, folks!
If only!
On the back of the canvas in his bold black lettering, The Schwartz Family, 200 × 200 cm. March 2003. AP 17. A homage to Pablo Ruiz Picasso’s The Soler Family.
Haine gave a short explosive laugh.
Toni was dismayed to see how immoderate his dedication must appear to Haine and the others. He caught Marina’s eye and she smiled and gave a small lift of her shoulders, acknowledging his predicament. In this formal recording of the work he knew Haine must believe himself to be viewing something more private even than the unfinished painting. And it was true, after all, for Toni had not chosen to paint his picture on a cheap pine stretcher with cotton duck but had used a hand-crafted mitred European cedar stretcher with fine Belgian linen. It was clear, even without the dedication, that he had always seen the picture as a durable artifact, a precious object destined for the permanent archive. The bold black lettering on the back was not only a message to Marina, it was an indication of the reach of his ambition. In art, his father had once told him, there can be no such thing as neutral space. In art, as in dreams, to conceal one motive is to reveal another. He would have liked to tell Haine that most of these people remembered that his award-winning portrait of his mother had been painted on fifty cents’ worth of masonite board from the local hardware store.
Theo’s chair was suddenly banging and whacking on the floorboards. They turned and looked. Theo was struggling to get himself upright, the chair teetering on two legs and swivelling precariously under him. Was he endeavouring to come to Toni’s aid? Toni was closest and he reached Theo and steadied him before Robert got there. Theo looked up at him and grinned. ‘Come and see me. Let’s do some talking.’ Robert came up. ‘Thanks, Toni. I can manage.’ Toni watched father and son falter across the studio and go out the door. When they had gone he turned back to the room. Marina was talking with Haine. He thought of joining them but Haine had his hand on her arm and was intent on sharing something of significance with her, no doubt his opinion of Chaos Rules. Toni walked across and stood looking at her picture.
Andy came up and stood beside him. ‘She’s good, eh?’
‘She’s great.’
‘She’s doing a new background for you.’
‘So why shouldn’t she?’
‘You’re doing it. I just sell pictures.’
The fierce half-naked young man confronted them from the centre foreground of the canvas. The young man’s torso soft above tight blue jeans. Something of sex and violence in the image.
Andy said, ‘How’s our beautiful Teresa?’
‘Busy.’
‘The travel agency is doing good?’
‘So-so. You know?’
‘I’ll call over and have a peek at what you’re doing in that studio of yours. Don’t worry about Oriel. I’ll keep her off your back. Are you going to have a show ready for me one of these days?’
‘I hope so, Andy. I really hope so. Drop in any time. It’s been too long.’
They embraced then stepped away.
Andy stabbed a finger towards The Schwartz Family. ‘Just keep doing it like that.’
Toni walked over to Marina and Haine and said goodbye. In the passage, Theo’s door was open. Toni paused and looked in. Theo was lying back on the pillow, his eyes closed, his mouth slack. The dying man returning to his son to distract himself from his grief. You won’t tell Robert? It was another portrait study. Haine would never see such a modest arrangement of the human form as a suitable subject for his art.
On the front verandah Robert and Oriel were talking. They fell silent when he came out.
He said goodbye to them then stepped off the verandah and walked back along the street to
his car. As he turned the key and the VK started with its customary roar, he realised he had his next picture. He laughed. He could see it. In his imagination it was already complete. All he had to do was paint it. He did a U-turn and took off with a squeal of tyres, leaving a blue plume of smoke hanging in the air of the quiet street, the VK almost airborne over the speed bump he had forgotten.
twelve
He parked in the lane behind the studio and stepped out of the wagon. He was fired up to begin working on his new picture. He had its title, The Other Family, and was visualising himself blocking it in with big confident sweeps of the loaded brush—Oriel’s monumental form dominating the centre of the group. He would do studies of them all later; for now, he just wanted to get the strength of the composition down on the canvas before he lost it. He was hungry to be alone and lost in the work.
He opened the back door of the studio.
Teresa was standing over by the red lamp holding up a corner of the drop sheet, as if she had been looking out the window, watching for him to come across from the house. His brother Roy was standing by the plan press, the top drawer pulled out, Marina’s island sketchbook by his hand, the small 35 x 60 cm oil of Marina asleep on the island propped on the press in front of him. Roy and Teresa both turned and looked at him as he came through the door from the lane. He noticed Theo’s black sketchbook was also lying open on the press.
Teresa let the sheet fall back into place. She was wearing her tailored black suit over a white blouse, the vivid collar of the blouse out over the jacket, her dark hair drifting across her face. After endlessly examining the slight, almost tenuous figures of Marina and Robert and Theo these past weeks, Teresa looked bigger and more robust to him, as if she had grown physically larger. ‘Why aren’t you at work?’ he asked. He saw then that she had been crying and he felt a touch of alarm. ‘Where’s Nada?’
