Mad Meg

by Sally Morrison

  I could see I’d made her furious. She was bottling in a rage, it twitched in her fingers and shuddered in her chin. Her eyes were skidding. She thumped down her glass and strode outside, her arms folded. I looked at the shoes she’d left behind on the floor; long, skinny, Ferragamo Brolga shoes.

  I walked over to the French doors and looked out. I could see her lying face-down on her brother’s grave, her shoulders heaving in grief. So, she had some real emotions after all. I couldn’t hate her, didn’t hate her anymore. She commanded, at the very least, my respect. Nor did I hate Checkie. I didn’t really know Checkie. I didn’t think I ever could know her. There had been occasions when I’d heard her being droll, occasions, too, when she’d laughed at some funny thing I’d said. But I could not like her; she was mercenary, she and Allegra were natural antagonists, and I had loved Allegra. I loved her still. I could feel her inside me, looking out.

  It was Reg who sent Viva to the beach house to have things out with me. At first, she said she’d come only on condition Dadda’s paintings went to Checkie, but Reg would give no undertaking, and she came quite possibly in the hope of manoeuvring me into relinquishing my claim. I have to say she almost succeeded, but if she loved Dadda then so did I, and if he meant so much to her, then he meant easily as much to me. She had an idée fixe that Checkie would become the Australian expert on Henry Coretti; maybe she’d write a detailed biography. She wanted the story of herself and Dadda known, but she wanted it told in her terms. I had known for quite some time that Jerry Gospel’s friend, the reluctant Nyle, had sat at her feet in the role of Checkie’s tape recordist, but I’d imagined Viva told a rather different story from the one she told me. I think she surprised herself with the extent of her own admissions to me. She’d held me in contempt formerly, as if I’d had no entitlement to know and was quite unworthy of knowing. It hadn’t been beyond Viva to feed David with some vicious one-liners about my work. Knowing this history didn’t help my relationship with Viva, and when, in defiance of Reg, she tried to bully the decision she wanted out of me, I told her to remember that Nin and Eli, being Dadda’s descendants, also had a claim on the paintings. When she came up with a plan that was reasonable and suited the three of us, we would acquiesce.

  Harry Laurington died instructing Viva to make my mother, Eli, Nin and me members of the Trust. It was a bit late as far as my mother was concerned, as her memory was, by this, quite impaired, but I would consent to the release of the paintings if the children and I were made full members of the Trust.

  Now Viva is old and frail, bringing to mind dear old Beryl’s comment about orchids and the doggedness of frailty, and I am here at Reg’s, still waiting for a reasonable proposal from her – or for news of her death. Without Harry’s wisdom to guide Checkie, she is inclined to take her mother’s part, but Reg says he is sure he can talk her out of it – for I also believe it is important for the work and its history to be handed down together.

  Kelly Kelly and her bloke Guitar have opened a branch of their business up there, and between us we give Nin what we can of a family life. We take her out painting. She is learning to use natural textures. There is much you can do with a limited palette around here, where nature’s calligraphy is at once intricate and vast. David has legal access to Nin, but we are blessedly far away from Melbourne for the time being, and there is little risk of him pressing a demand.

  Eli went to America a while ago to find his father and came back saying he hadn’t missed much and nor had I. He liked his father all the same, and thought he’d keep in touch. Arnie was shipwrecked on his third divorce. Eli is in South-East Asia now, sending home articles on Cambodia. I’m trying to place them in newspapers, but not having much luck. He doesn’t keep in contact with David, who is still hanging round with Jerry and Pattie Gosper, the reluctant Nyle and Barrie Bull.

  I have thought for a long time about the breach between me and Eli. I think I am in the category of women once mentioned by Rose, who mourn when their children grow up. I missed my little child, but now, in his place, I have a man, and the love I feel is different. Eli was never the person I was expecting; he was himself. All a mother can do is provide an environment for the self. The environment Eli grew up in had some deficiencies, but he learnt to use those in order to know himself better. I think if I had adhered to some strict notion of upbringing, if I had been a textbook Marxist or militant feminist, Eli would have had to wear it and he may have been a good deal longer finding his way through life’s trials than he has been, though his childhood wish to be normal was never granted. Normality, after all, is only academic.

  It is morning here now. The Midnight Knitter is stirring in her chair. You, whoever you are, are about to arrive. What do you want to know? What can I tell you? About a lonely cup on a tabletop I once painted? Womb and nourishment, but through art – the gift the world would not allow me to bestow. I didn’t think it mattered if a painter was male or female. I started out thinking a woman could be an artist, but now I know the artist is also a woman.

  The rain has stopped and everything is clear.

  About the author

  Scientist, writer, biographer and historian, Sally Morrison’s many interests are reflected in a dense, layered writing style that has captured the attention of critics and readers over a long and rich career.

  Born in Sydney, raised and educated in Canberra, and now living in Melbourne, Sally originally trained as a molecular biologist before beginning her writing career in the 1970s. Her work includes the play Hag, short story collection I Am a Boat, a biography of Clifton Pugh, After Fire, and novels Who’s Taking You to the Dance?, Against Gravity and The Insatiable Desire of Injured Love. Her most recent novel, Window Gods, is set in the same world as the award-winning Mad Meg.

  www.sallymorrison.com

  www.facebook.com/SallyMorrisonWriter

  First published in 1994

  This edition published in 2015 by Hardie Grant Books

  Hardie Grant Books (Australia)

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  658 Church Street

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  Hardie Grant Books (UK)

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  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers and copyright holders.

  The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

  Copyright text © Sally Morrison

  A Cataloguing-in-Publication entry is available from the catalogue of the National

  Library of Australia at www.nla.gov.au

  Mad Meg

  eISBN 978 1 74358 3425

  Cover design by Nada Backovic

  Cover image courtesy of Miguel Angel Munoz/Arcangel Images