by Ella Carey
She started at his word, but her gaze remained fixed straight ahead.
He wanted to take her in his arms and hold her. But outside her mother’s house? He had to keep himself in check. Edward turned the car in a circle, away from the beach, past rows of bungalows, their windows lit up in the inky darkness.
“Thank you,” she said, but her tone was half-dead.
He drove down the street and onto the next one, a mirror image of the last. Every one of these avenues in endless stretches of suburbs seemed to go on and on. How many dramas were being enacted in these benign settings? He pulled the car over. Shut the engine off. And turned to face her.
“Rebecca,” he said, steeling himself against what he knew he was about to see.
She looked back at him, holding her head up. The deep bruise across her left cheek was slashed with a jagged cut that glimmered red in the glow of the dashboard. Edward forced himself not to swear. Instead, he reached forward and rested his hand on her arm.
“You have to promise me that you’re not going back.” He was surprised by the growl in his voice.
The soft sounds of her breathing lingered in the space between them. He sensed that she fought emotions that brimmed so close to the surface that she would break down if she talked.
Edward turned back to the steering wheel, his face set. He started the car and drove on, grimly, toward the city, plans forming in his head as he wove his way up the Paris End of Collins Street, past Georges department store with its magnificent window displays—stilted mannequins showcasing imported fashions with plastic smiles planted on their fake plastic faces. He thought of his mother and his sister on their endless shopping expeditions in these places—it was how they filled their days.
What if he were to show up with Rebecca in this state at their house in Toorak?
The idea was a joke.
“My mother works in that shop there,” Rebecca said suddenly, her voice still heavy, looking out the window for a second before facing the front again.
Edward nodded. Rebecca’s listlessness sent chills through Edward’s heart.
Edward glanced out the window at the shop opposite Georges department store, taking in the small boutique’s pale pink facade, its black front door and elegant potted plants on either side. More mannequins stood staring out at him through dead eyes. Just so. He knew that boutique well enough. Vicky and his mother frequented it too. It was one of the acceptable places to shop. There were a few. Edward scowled and drove on.
He approached Little Collins Street. If his plan didn’t work, he would come up with something else. Once he’d stopped outside No. 166, he turned to Rebecca and took her in his arms, achingly aware of her cut and bruised cheek, which rested so close to his own.
It was as if he could feel the gash burning his own skin.
When he looked up, one hand stroking her hair, a light came on in Gino Nibbi’s Leonardo bookstore, and the bookseller whom Edward had known since he was a teenager appeared in the yellow light behind the window. Gino had provided Edward with a haven during the trips he’d been forced to take with his mother and sister to town. Edward had wandered into his shop one day in his youth. It was Gino who encouraged Edward to follow his deep desire to write. Now, the light from the old man’s bookshop illuminated Rebecca’s face. Edward gazed at Gino’s distinct profile, his aquiline nose, his still-black hair that stood straight up. When the older man looked toward Edward, Edward raised a hand.
Gino moved toward the door of his shop.
“Rebecca?”
She stirred. Beauty, Edward thought, scarred by the brutal reality of life.
“Darling, we can trust Gino. He is a friend,” he said. “I have an idea that might work, but we need him to help us.”
She nodded and a little sigh escaped from her as if she were weary of this world and everything in it.
Edward, hating this, climbed out of the car, shutting the Aston Martin’s door with a quiet clip that resonated up and down the narrow street with its shops and studios. Rebecca would find comfort here. She’d fit in with the artists who crowded the studios. Café Petrushka and Ristie’s Coffee Shop were places she’d enjoy. And a block away, the Eastern Market would inspire her, with its mix of hatters and cobblers, cheap clothes and food stalls. She’d be amid life. Not stuck out in the suburbs with her mother. Things would seem less overwhelming with so many people about. Cities created distractions. Edward knew that. Even now, people strolled down the vibrant, well-lit street, past signs flashing and blinking in the night. He opened Rebecca’s door, waiting while she climbed out.
Silently, at the shop door, Gino took in Rebecca’s injuries and led them through his charming bookshop, past his beautifully arranged collection of art books, his finest-quality prints of the Impressionists and Gauguin. Just being here, surrounded by art, Edward felt a sense of comfort. But then anger bit at him. If people like Sunday Reed wanted to garden and support artists, if people like Gino wanted to surround himself with books, then these were their own forms of beauty. What right did people like his parents have to criticize such benign choices?
Gino pushed open the white-paneled door that led to the back of the shop. In silence, a timeless silence between humans that was complicit and that said more than any words ever could, Gino indicated that Rebecca go into the bathroom, handed her a washcloth and some antiseptic cream that he retrieved from a cupboard. Then he placed his hand on Edward’s shoulder and led him back out to the bookstore, closing the kitchen door behind him.
“It was her mother,” Edward said.
Gino listened while Edward talked.
“I am more than happy to lend her the studio upstairs,” the older man said after a while. “My wife used it occasionally to teach Italian to singing students, but she has a job at the Conservatorium now. The studio is empty. It’s basic, but there is a bed that Rebecca can use.” Gino’s Italian accent rippled through his words.
Edward almost sagged with relief. “I am more grateful than you know. I’ll go home and get her some supplies from the kitchens. She is an art student, by the way. It might help if I give her some art supplies while she’s here. I have some things at home . . .”
His mother had dabbled in sketching years ago. Celia had engaged an expensive art tutor one summer. Her work had been striking—the tutor had encouraged her. But then Edward’s father had started to drink even more heavily as the Second World War became inevitable. He hadn’t dealt well with the Great War and the thought of another one overwhelmed him. He would rant about the state of humanity until the family could bear it no more. Celia never sketched again.
Gino nodded. “Yes. She’ll want to draw.” He ran a hand over the stubble on his chin. “I should be able to get her a job when she is ready. Not yet, but when she is. A job at a restaurant down the street. I know the family there. They are a nice family. It will only be waiting tables, but it is better than doing nothing. There is nothing worse than that.”
“Thank you.” Edward looked at Gino, this man who had been decorated for bravery during the First World War, only to become a pacifist at the end of it, and saw two simple things: strength of character and kindness.
Rebecca appeared through the door that led out back. She reached a hand up to her face, still patterned with flecks of crusted blood. Edward moved toward her and held her. The older man rested a hand on Edward’s shoulder.
Rebecca woke early the following morning. She lay on the narrow bed a few moments and gazed around the studio. Everything seemed to shine in the bright morning light. Apart from the bed, there was a kitchen sink, a rudimentary oven, and a small wooden table set with two wooden chairs up against the window, which looked straight out at the other buildings in the narrow street. The floorboards were bare but clean and the bed was covered with a quilt that was pale blue and white.
The easel that Edward had brought last night sat ready with a fresh piece of sketching paper pinned to its front. Charcoals and pencils were lined up on the horizonta
l board underneath, along with a brush and ink. Morning city sounds peppered the studio: trams, the odd shout, trucks delivering their wares to the shops.
Rebecca reached a hand up to her swollen cheek. She sat up, swinging her legs slowly over the side of the bed. They ached too. Every part of her body seemed to ache with tiredness and sadness and lack of hope.
But on the small cabinet near the sink, either Gino or Edward had placed a bottle of antiseptic for her face, along with a ream of cotton wool that reminded Rebecca of her days working as an assistant nurse on an air force training station during the war. Mostly, she’d dealt with small accidents that occurred during exercises. But twice there had been plane crashes. Now, she felt as if she had returned from battle herself.
Tenderly, she washed the good parts of her face, the water like a cool stream running over hot rocks. Then she tore off some of the bread that Edward had left for her, buttered it, and spread it with honey. She sliced and ate the apple that sat on a blue-and-white plate, and after she had dressed and used the bathroom downstairs, went to the little easel.
Two hours later, the beginnings of several sketches laid out on the table, she heard the unmistakable sounds of Gino opening the shop downstairs. She listened while his solid footsteps made their way around the bookshop. When she heard the click of the door that led from the shop up the narrow staircase to the studio, she moved toward the door and opened it.
“Rebecca,” he said. “Are you all right this morning?”
“I am, thank you.” She felt her sore cheek burn red.
The older man simply nodded. His tone was calm and kind. “Rest today, Rebecca. I’ll be in the shop if you need me. Edward is coming in to bring you lunch. I’ve already spoken with him this morning on the phone.” He looked thoughtful for a moment. “He and I will help you,” he said. “Please don’t worry.”
Rebecca nodded and sent her own silent thanks toward him. Last night, she had hit a new low. Before she rang Edward, once her mother had finally stalked out of her bedroom—the effects of destruction lying around as if Mrs. Swift had laid waste to Rebecca’s entire life—she had lain on the bed shaking and crying, curled in the fetal position. She had never found herself in such a desperate state before, and now she shuddered to think about it. Sometimes it seemed that life was like one great brick wall that wanted to stop her from having the love in her life that she wanted, from doing what she loved—creating art. Were those things too much to ask for in this world?
Was the world so cruel that it would deny her, a young woman, the simple kindness that seemed to arrive effortlessly into other people’s lives? She knew it existed. Look at Sunday and John Reed. Her mother’s torturous cruelty seemed like a full stop that overruled everything.
But this morning, as she listened to the steady tread of Gino’s steps retreating down the staircase, Rebecca realized that if one human could take away all your dignity, there were others who were there to give it back. She knew what had begun to stir in her. Edward and Gino had given her back hope.
Three weeks later, if someone had asked Rebecca about the last tumultuous month of her life, she would have told them that after the worst that could have happened had happened, it seemed that everything had started to turn around. Edward and Gino had been to visit Mrs. Swift on the day Rebecca moved into the studio, and her mother had apparently caved at the sight of the two distinguished men who had arrived at her doorstep to advocate for her daughter.
Rebecca’s determined protectors returned with her clothes packed in a brown suitcase that had belonged to her father once, along with her drawing supplies and, touchingly, several small ornaments from her dressing table. Gino’s idea, Edward told her. Edward brought her enough books to keep her occupied—several biographies of artists—and Gino hung three Impressionist prints on the walls of her funny little studio, a Monet, a Gauguin, and a Manet. He laid a Turkish rug on the floorboards that he said was a gift from his wife.
Once the bruising on her face had become less repugnant, and when Rebecca became confident enough to step out into the world, she accompanied Gino to an interview at the Italian restaurant at the end of the street. She was struck by the warmth and the seemingly unsinkable happiness of the large, boisterous family that owned the little trattoria. The simplicity of their life seemed to prove that when things worked well, life could be weightless.
But even so, Rebecca’s easel became the repository for all her tumultuous thoughts. She found inspiration for her work on solitary walks on the streets of industrial South Melbourne. Somehow, making sketches of the people who worked there, people who spent their whole lives toiling in factories, spurred Rebecca to express how she felt about this new life after the war. She was compelled to reflect the relentless repression of the human spirit that had started during all those harsh years of world conflict.
She allowed her imagination to roam free while she took in the faces of people whom she studied, day after day, in the street. The gray, lifeless realm of the factories was a metaphor for her own troubles.
When Edward arrived as usual one Sunday, Rebecca was sitting in her small studio surrounded by brush and ink sketches. No longer did she have to hide her work from her mother. And for the first time in her life she could express properly what she wanted to say outside the confines of the Gallery School, where such dark themes expressed in the modernist style would be denounced as oppressive, as unsuitable. She still attended classes, but she questioned whether she should continue next term.
Edward leaned down and examined them all. “Darling,” he said, “these are seriously good.”
He picked up a drawing of a woman, a factory worker. Rebecca had distorted her features, overblowing her body, while her head was small. She’d used crosshatching to emphasize the perspective of the stark building behind her that loomed larger than the woman, overwhelming her, while the large, sweeping brushstrokes that she’d employed for the woman were inspired by the other modern artists who believed that true essence could be found in only a few lines.
“You capture people’s inner selves in the most extraordinary way,” he said. “I’m taken with how you use distorted shapes and break away from structure to convey meaning in your subjects. I’m so glad you can work freely here.”
Rebecca knew that Edward understood and accepted her without reservation. The closer she became to him the more she could open up and draw. And at the same time, she seemed to be on some sort of determined mission—every new sketch had to outdo the last.
She looked forward to her late-night discussions with Edward and Gino over a bottle of wine, in which they all agreed Australian artists needed to become more confident in expressing their own idioms on the canvas, rather than following the European traditions.
Rebecca moved over to stand behind Edward, wrapping her arms around his waist. She leaned her head on his shoulder.
He turned to her, murmuring in that intimate way that was his own. “If a writer has to find his own voice, then an artist needs to find her own style. It doesn’t matter if it changes over time,” he said, “because that doesn’t change the truth of it. But there’s something here that is and will always be uniquely yours. It’s what matters most. And that is the very thing that will move people when they encounter your work.” He took her face in his hands. “No one can take that away from you. No one. Remember that.” His eyes darkened, and she reached up, kissing him and closing her eyes for one delicious moment.
“You know that Sunday and John Reed have people to Heide only by invitation?”
Rebecca nodded. “I know. No matter how modern their ideas are on art and life, they are not people who encourage uninvited company.”
“Well. We have an invitation, darling. They invited us there today when I saw them last night. Would you like to come out to Heide for lunch with me? Sidney Nolan will be there; other than that, it will be you, me, Sunday, and John.”
He tilted his head to one side, and for a moment, Rebecca sensed that he was sl
ightly nervous in asking her. And that struck her as sweet. The Reeds’ world seemed perfect, and Rebecca dared to hope that their way of life was something that Edward might consider replicating with her.
“What better way could there be to spend my Sunday afternoon?” She smiled. “Thank you.” Her hand lingered in his.
These days, she was almost able to smile at the fact that her mother used to criticize her for her passionate nature. Edward seemed to revel in it. The overwhelming sense of living life to the fullest that she felt around him was as addictive as drawing itself. The only worry that coiled inside her was the fact that he had not introduced her to his family as yet.
Edward took the road out to Bulleen, winding his way through the Yarra Valley, the same countryside that had inspired those earlier Australian artists in the Heidelberg School. There was something mesmerizing and dreamy about the green paddocks, the old market gardens, and dairy farms that meandered along the riverbanks. The air was scented with the tall eucalyptus trees that lined the water’s edge.
As they approached the long wooden fence that protected John and Sunday Reed’s home from Templestowe Road, Rebecca thought how accepting and different her new friends were. There were no judgments being made about where any of them came from. And they all lived and expressed themselves in their own ways—there was no one way of expression, and yet they shared such common ideas about what art should mean.
Edward drove up the pale gravel driveway that circled a lawn planted with fruit trees. Rebecca didn’t know where to look first. Sunday and John’s wooden house sat to the left of the immaculately raked driveway. Sunday would sometimes get down on her hands and knees and smooth the gravel out herself, Rebecca knew. In front of the painted house, neat box hedges surrounded a small front garden, and beyond this was a high old brick wall. The wall’s green door was open, showing glimpses of Sunday’s famous vegetable garden.
Rebecca knew that Sunday was a beautiful cook. She was renowned among her circle of friends for her gorgeous, simple lunches, and Rebecca was comforted at the thought of being nurtured by Sunday, even if only for a few hours.
