‘No, that’s not it,’ said Eli. ‘If a man isn’t accepted by other men, it’s just as hard on him as it is on a woman not accepted by other women.’
With David, History played the puppeteer. It jerked him mercilessly round the central axis of his being without allowing him to assume a natural identity. Bart had been right about him; he was more the child than Nin. He cried on every doorstep, believing he would never survive without Allegra. His despair was terrible, and genuine, too. We had to act as though it were not.
He even went to our mother to ask if she could put him up, or ‘talk sense’ to Allegra, but though she fed him a hot meal, she would not take him in.
For a while, David slept in Miles’s flat; but that was only a temporary arrangement, since Anita was expecting a child and would need the room. Miles said he didn’t sleep, anyway, but paced about all night smoking, and when Anita didn’t think she could stand it any longer, he had had to ask David to find somewhere else.
There are in Melbourne hotel-hostel type establishments, as I dare say there are in all big cities, where drifters and addicts and forsaken people go when they are not destitute enough to qualify for doss houses nor wealthy enough to rent a bed-sitting room. Such people are usually men in middle age whose families have broken up. They are defeated domestically and socially, so they go to these places where they might be offered a meal a day or provided with an electric jug and a hot plate in the same room they sleep in. It was Miles who told me that David had gone to live in one of these. He did not do it as some sort of trick designed to fill us with pity; he did it because, though he had enough money to rent a house had he wanted one, he knew no better than this.
We did pity him, and for half an hour even considered having him back. In the long run, however, we did not need Miles to tell us that we would only revive a hideous moral situation by having him. David did not need us; he needed the world in which to face himself as an adult. He started to talk to Miles about buying a house with enough room in it for Allegra, Nin and him. Miles would tell him to stop pretending, but David was incapable of that.
Our biggest agony came when we had to begin the process of selling Mad Meg. We were informed we had a caveat on our title. It was in David’s name, but as he would never have come up himself with an idea like that, it had to be that he’d befriended someone who would. He was arming himself with every available weapon; this just about had to be a retaliatory act by The Brolga, on whom we’d served caveats. When David began to say he’d have it lifted as soon as we agreed to a final settlement of Dadda’s will, we knew it was The Brolga. Then he came knocking on my door with a new, more generous offer for us; we were not to ask him how the offer materialised, but we would, of course, realise that David was entitled to half Allegra’s share and if we wanted to get out of our financial difficulties, we’d accept.
‘Strange how the will keeps altering and probate keeps being deferred though Dadda’s been dead six years,’ Allegra commented. We had had the caveat lifted, our advice being that David couldn’t block the sale although he could sue for half Allegra’s share of the proceeds. That, however, would barely yield him the cost of litigation and it did not cross his mind that if he could sue Allegra, she could sue him. We didn’t know how much money David had but, according to Miles, it was probably quite a deal more than Allegra had, because Therese Turner had given him the proceeds from the sale of the Turner family house in Sydney as a wedding present. It was something Allegra hadn’t known and was cause for more humiliation. David could have saved Mad Meg with less than a sixth of Therese’s gift.
My ruined show had to come off the walls at last. It had become the topic of much art criticism, had been photographed many times and visited as an Incidental Installation. Troupes of young girls, dressed in several oversized sweaters with gaping necks, came chucking their tangled tresses over an eye as if their heads were clogged salt shakers and saying, ‘God! Bor-ing!’ ‘Boring’ was enjoying a brief vogue as an expression of disgust.
It was like seeing ourselves again in our uniform of youth. They painted their lips, they smoked, they chewed their nails. Their world was aggressive, competitive and heartless; the ones without contacts would blossom into unemployment, the ones with, into chronically junior positions. It was not surprising they dressed like tramps, deliberately making holes in their clothes and sticking safety pins through the lobes of their ears. ‘It makes me feel greedy,’ said Allegra, ‘when I thought by this time, I’d be feeling proud of something.’
In the eighties climate of extravagance for some and defeat for others, when obnoxious references to the ‘downwardly mobile, genteel poor’ were being made on talkback radio, Viva Hallett-Laurington-Coretti, The Brolga, was having the time of her life. No longer did her thin hair bristle across her scalp when one of her stepdaughters was nearby. She simply ignored us on those few occasions fate threw us together.
Repeated bouts of ill health were keeping Harry Laurington from work. It was thought he had some sort of slow virus, multiple sclerosis or muscular distrophy, and he was often confined to bed. Eventually, he signed Siècle over to Checkie. Mother and daughter now joined forces to become the femmes formidables of art dealing in Melbourne.
When the government semi-privatised alcoholism in a bid to tighten up per capita grants to charitable institutions, the ex-Methodists, who had long ago amalgamated with the Presbyterians and the Congregationalists into the Unitings, decided to put the Harcourt-Wilson and its neighbouring church on the market. The price of real estate was rocketing up.
Our caveat on Not-Only-Hallett-But-Also-Coretti having been withdrawn because we could not afford to bring an action against her, The Brolga made a killing by selling it at the peak of a crazy market. A couple of weeks previously she had stood to one side of the vulgar horde at the auction of the Harcourt-Wilson, waited until the other bidders were all done and put in a bid no one could top. She did it on an asset base that someone somewhere must have considered more than ample.
Evidence that Christians once used to worship in the corner church was to remain only in the form of their concrete floor, upon which the purchaser had painted neat, even chic, black strips, between which the art-buying public could now happily park their Mercedes and execute lyrical turns in keeping with the delight engendered by the conclusion of a deal at Siècle.
Not-so-Mercedes still nosed their way up the lane to Figments, though when The Brolga opened a neo-Mussolinian coffee lounge on the ground floor of what had been the Harcourt-Wilson and was now renamed the Siècle Trust, the local council, thoroughly Brolga-ised by her attendance at their meetings during which she would toss in suggestions from the public gallery, had produced a plan for a pedestrian concourse. It was to be paved with pale gold bricks and graced here and there by a dainty Cootamundra wattle of the rare dark variety which appeared at the rate of about one per thousand germinations, and consequently was about a thousand times as expensive as its dust-grey siblings. Miles Turner was furious. Not only did it mean no car access to Figments, but it meant accepting second-fiddle status to Viva Laurington (the Turners never got around to calling her Coretti) and a rate increase.
Miles lodged objections but the issue fell short of splitting the community. The plans, drawn up by The Brolga’s suggestion of the ideal architectural draughtsperson, yet another young man called Gosper who was by happy coincidence related to The Brolga’s own assistant, Jerry, were put up in the bowels of the town hall for any interested rate payer to come and see. Memories of the days when our mayor had himself locked into the freeway building site with the protesters were stuffed away in files in old grey Brownbuilt filing cabinets for which no further use could be found, the offices being recarpeted and the affairs of the city now being stored on computer. The Brownbuilts were stored in the obsolete furniture repository on the town hall roof with the vague idea that they might be auctioned off to the public at a later date. In the meantime, several new artworks had come to grace the mayoral chambers.<
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A debate began in the letters page of the local paper. ‘Anonymous Person, Name Supplied’, wrote to complain of projected ‘improvements’ to the local environs, which served no purpose other than pushing those who could not afford the subsequent rate increases out of their homes and their businesses. ‘Visionary, Name Not Very Difficult to Guess’, replied, writing of the crime being perpetrated against the city of Melbourne by those who insisted on occupying valuable space to which no improvements were being made. People must live at higher density, Melbourne was far too sprawled, the city must be livened up and young career people encouraged to come back to Melbourne’s heart. WHERE WILL WE GO? ASK PENSIONER RESIDENTS, was a headline beneath which Big Ernie Kelly, now divorced by Bridget and rendered homeless through the sale of the Harcourt-Wilson, was to be seen smiling ruefully; it had been his home off and on for thirty years or more. Seen also, avoiding direct eye contact with the camera, was the one-time coordinator of the detox, saying his welfare group had bought up some houses a little bit further out in which they were going to try some experiments in community living. Detoxificants would have bathroom and kitchen facilities where they would be afforded more privacy than they’d had in the past and would be able to prepare their own meals.
Courtly Tom, who must have known he was not to be ‘prioritised’ by the new order of people in charge, ‘impacted’ upon the remaining cubic centimetre of his liver with a bottle of gin, taken neat on the Harcourt-Wilson steps the day before takeover. He now lay in state in a local funeral parlour, where a ‘For Auction’ sign blocked the muted in-flow of light through the tasteful beer-bottle brown Religious Windows. These windows would have overlooked the tramscape on the main street had it not been for the sign and the hearse, hired from another firm for the ride out to the crematorium with the corpse. Inside the parlour it was not unlike what being inside a bottle of beer must be like. The mourners, who had once strummed their guitars, praised the Lord and never lost hope in the reverberating concrete chamber on the corner, consecrated in the name of the Most High (before becoming a car park), stood around with their shoes shined and their hair slicked down, talking about the good old days (before the Most High saw fit to turn a blind eye on the escalating price of real estate in the inner suburbs, sending the Most Low out under sheets of newspaper in public parks).
Beryl Blake, chief botanist at Bunurong Gardens, would bring the Most Low gifts of warm hand-me-down coats; she attended the Drug Rehabilitation Clinic herself, and they were mutually acquainted. ‘It’s their self-esteem,’ she’d say to me, ‘their self-esteem.’ She knew how they felt, but was on a salary and had a warm bed and a home. Sometimes she’d go out and lecture them on nutrition, saying if they must drink, they must also eat some protein. Luncheon sausage was known to change hands.
The Brolga’s black onyx cross was never to be seen these days, bashing against her breastbone. She was out of mourning with a vengeance. No doubt seeing an opportunity, she took an interest in David. She had known him in Sydney in the pre-Dadda days and, in public, had always maintained he was intelligent. Sometimes he would be seen lunching with her and Checkie in the Siècle Trust coffee lounge, oblivious of the fact that Miles might find it objectionable in any way. He would tell Miles he had the wrong impression of Viva.
The friendship blossomed enough for David to be seen quite often in the company of Pattie and Jerry Gospel, and even – how times change! – in the company of Viva’s star artist, Barrie Bull. On the opening nights at other galleries, the coterie would swoop in, The Brolga in the lead and Checkie not far behind her. But, regaled as he may have been by those who fawned on Viva, David still went home to his wretched room at nights.
So suited was The Brolga to the times that she accused Rose of having a set of Henry Corettis belonging to the Trust stowed away in some unknown nook. In fact Rose and Laurent, in accordance with the agreement they’d made with Harry, had sold the Corettis not earmarked for the Trust in order to have something to live on. Accordingly, when Viva produced a document which purported to name the Corettis due to come to the Trust and included among them the ones that had been sold by the Hirschs, Rose was appalled. Eventually, she was to receive a letter with the letterhead of Gosper and Co., demanding restitution.
Even supposing the demand had not been outrageous, Rose had no money. She’d never had money, and Laurent’s had gone on buying the boarding house years ago. They had run it in such a way they’d lost money while gaining friends. I sat with Rose in her little labyrinthine house, reading the letter which seemed so out of place among the dolls of her imaginings as to be made doubly ludicrous. Her financial history was not that of a profiteer.
When they first came to Melbourne, Rose and Laurent hadn’t been slow attracting friends, even though these were not the people they met in the normal course of a day. Their source was Grace Lonsdale. Grace painted, therefore she knew artists; she was political, and therefore knew politicians; she was fascinated by the natural world around her, and therefore knew natural scientists; and she spoke French and German, was married to a linguist, and therefore knew some of the more sophisticated local Europeans.
Though artists had had studios, the concept of the salon was not really known in Melbourne, and it took two highly eccentric minds to think of setting one up. It had begun with a show, in the basement, of paintings by Rose, to which came Grace Lonsdale and a bevy of friends, and Uncle Julius and Aunt Orpah (in spite of everything and remembering that moral support for the boy was important, even if he never changed his mind and took up a suitable profession). Some of the boarding-house residents came, and among them the latest arrival, a good-looking but aloof young girl about whom nothing much was known, Viva Hallett.
She said she was twenty, but Rose knew she couldn’t possibly be. She arrived on Rose’s doorstep one Friday evening, wearing a new summer dress and a charming sun hat and carrying a smart case. She had a somewhat proud air about her, which might also have been taken as defiance or defensiveness, but she wasn’t twenty. She had asked for a room and Rose had taken her up six flights to the third floor, where there was a cool, west-facing room with a view of St Kilda Beach. Viva said she would take it and was able to pay a week’s rent in advance. But in truth, Viva had no job, nor even enough money to buy food, and Rose soon noticed that the hat and dress were all she appeared to own in the way of clothes. The smart suitcase had sounded suspiciously empty when placed on the floor and the hangers in the wardrobe remained tellingly unencumbered after she’d settled in.
She had been going out each day as if to a job, but Rose knew there was no job and climbed the stairs to see her one evening. Would she not come down and share a meal with Rose and Laurent and their friend Signor Coretti?
It was probably the first time Viva had received such an invitation and it took her some time to frame an acceptance. She said eventually, and as though she had studied it in front of a mirror, ‘Oh, I’d be charmed.’ When Rose took her by the arm to go downstairs, Viva stiffened a bit, but she was quick to pick up on politesse, and Rose said that by the time she was halfway down she’d adopted the comportment of a Marlene Dietrich. At the meal she behaved as if everything in her life were in order, but it was obvious to Rose that she was a child still, and in need of help.
She had said she would like to learn French so she could join in the conversation better, and Rose had said she would teach her, adding that Viva could stop pretending to go to work each morning and come to her for a French lesson. With a sangfroid that was to become characteristic, Viva said, ‘Oh, you’ve guessed I haven’t a job. Well, you might as well know also, I can’t pay for my room.’ In a situation in which most young women would have been moved to cry, Viva remained dry-eyed.
‘You know, I admired ’er for zat,’ said Rose. ‘She ’ad substance.’
Concerning Viva’s unemployment, Uncle Julius was to come in handy. On the night Rose and Laurent opened their salon, Uncle Julius was very taken with Viva and asked whether she wo
uld come and work for him. He needed a secretary. He said it out of earshot of Aunt Orpah, who would never have allowed him to employ anyone female under fifty.
From this time on, Viva took a passionate interest in France and everything French and, with her instinct for elegance, wore her inexpensive clothes with panache. Apparently Uncle Julius was entranced, because in no time at all Viva had the money to go to France, a journey Aunt Orpah was only too happy for her to take. Going meant there were some admissions Viva had to make. She was sixteen, not twenty. Her mother was dead, but somehow she was able to get, or fake, her father’s permission and obtain a passport. Rose heard that the Lichtblaus allowed her to name them as next of kin, and in the off-peak travelling season of 1934, she sailed by herself for France. She docked at Le Havre and went directly to Paris.
‘Fancy,’ said Rose, ‘she lived wis my family, made friends of my friends and regarded our boarding ’ouse as a ’ome she could return to. Why is she suing me?’
Eventually, Rose approached Harry over the matter. He was ill in bed in his Toorak house. Here he lived, as he put it, with his shadow and his reflection. Checkie had arranged a nurse, a housekeeper and a gardener. He told Rose the only part of the day he looked forward to was his morning coffee, which the nurse, Jean, a delicately made Eurasian of about thirty-five, would make for him, following his directions, after she’d given him his morning wash.
When he had heard Rose out, he asked her to go and fetch me, as he had something to say that he’d like both of us to hear.
Harry lay in a single bed with his head in a window niche so he could see his azaleas, red, pink and white, without having to move more than was comfortable. He told us he’d put the Siècle Trust into Viva’s hands entirely, abrogating any responsibility for it the moment Henry Coretti returned to the Siècle fold. But ‘Don’t give her anything,’ was his advice. ‘Split up everything you’ve got, even what’s promised to the Trust and still to come. Give it to your friends to take care of – Reg, even Allegra if she has somewhere to keep them, because one thing’s for certain, Allegra will never give anything to Viva. The ownership of those paintings isn’t clear-cut. It’s quite possible I could sue her successfully for some of them, though I’m tired and I won’t live forever.
Mad Meg Page 36
