Poor Shalimar, she loved the circus so much. I forgave her for the kick she had given me when I saw her radiant face and her peals of laughter. She looked as smart as paint that day, in a red-and-white-striped dress her mother had made for her. All these years later, I can still hear – in dreams and sometimes when I first wake – Shalimar’s cries of delight over the trapeze artists and the clowns squirting each other (and us) with water pistols.
In my dreams, sometimes, I see Shalimar, small and vulnerable, glowing, alive, in the sawdust ring of the circus. For some reason she’s wearing a silver top hat and silver spangled tutu. Ponies canter around her. She is laughing, cracking her whip, controlling the wild animals as they surround her. And then I see blood on the sawdust, Shalimar’s blood, and I know the circus has taken her, killed her. I look around at the other audience members but they have vanished and in their place are currawongs. Hundreds of them, silent and waiting, perched under the big top. I wake in terror at their piercing eyes, beaks, claws and, their shiny, black, knowing presence.
25
Death’s Garden
The ninth of November 1945 is a notorious date for people of my generation, who were horrified by the fate of one little girl. Shalimar’s tragic death captured the imagination and empathy of a country already reeling from inconceivable loss and devastation. It seemed everyone had either lost someone in the war or knew someone who had. Shalimar Partridge symbolised the loss of Australia’s innocence after the six years of war. That’s my theory, anyway, for how else to explain the media’s interest over the death of one kid? The combination of Shalimar’s beauty and Rupert’s notorious reputation courted newspaper space at the time, and magazines still mention Shalimar today when they cover sensational Australian crimes of the past century. Everyone loves a mystery and everyone has a theory. But I believe that in the forties, Shalimar embodied the mass mourning of Australian citizens.
The ninth of November was also memorable for me because it was my last sitting with Rupert, though of course I didn’t know that at the time. I woke early as usual, to the familiar sounds of Wanda snoring in the tower room opposite. I half hoped Rupert wouldn’t call me to the studio as I was looking forward to some leisure time reading. The Partridges were generous with their library and I had been catching up on books I’d never had a chance to read before; authors like George Orwell, Robert Louis Stevenson, Miles Franklin, Nevil Shute and Evelyn Waugh. I also hoped to avoid seeing Doris, as I just couldn’t face her; a growing sense of anxiety about being at Currawong Manor was nagging away at me from the moment I opened my eyes.
After a hasty splash from the jug and basin, I threw on a simple pale blue cotton dress and found my sunhat. When I got downstairs to the kitchen, I found Doris eating toast at the table. She looked as weary and drawn as I felt. The household had been irritable from lack of sleep. Warnings were sounding on the radio, saying this was going to be the worst summer yet for fires in the mountains.
To make conversation, I enquired about Shalimar. Doris complained that as a result of yesterday’s circus she had been difficult to rouse. She had certainly been overexcited when we put her to bed. ‘She’s driving me mad already,’ Doris said. ‘I couldn’t get her to settle for breakfast. I sent her outside to play in the garden.’ The mention of food made her look at me more closely. ‘Eat, Ginger! You’re losing weight and you’re so pale. Rupert will get cranky if you get any skinnier.’ She went on, distractedly, ‘Miss Sharp’s offered to mind her for the day. I’m not keen on the idea. Perhaps you could watch Shalimar here instead, and Miss Sharp could have the day off? No, you can’t do that as Dennis said Rupert wants you in the studio. Where are lazy Wanda and Kitty? Are they planning to sleep all day?’ Doris didn’t look kindly on people who slept in. She was such a bundle of nervous energy that she couldn’t comprehend others preferring to relax by doing nothing.
My heart sank as I mentally bade farewell to my daydream of sitting in the shade with a good book for company. I barely registered Doris’s next comment – another complaint about Wanda, I think – as I scraped a piece of toast with a minute dollop of homemade raspberry jam. I forced myself to nibble on it, though the thought of food made my stomach turn. The sweetness of the jam against the hard toast felt revolting. I felt fretful and I didn’t understand why. I tried to focus on Doris’s words as she continued speaking.
‘I’m nervous about snakes in the glen,’ she was saying. ‘Miss Sharp says they are everywhere at the moment. I feel as if a storm is on its way. And speaking of storms, watch your step with Rupert today. He’s in a foul mood.’ I watched her as she continued to nag at me, avoiding my eyes as much as she could.
‘About bloody time,’ Rupert snapped as I entered the room. Bloodshot eyes and a heaped tower of empty bottles of his homebrew showed how he’d spent the previous night. I wondered if Wanda had been with him; it would explain why she was still upstairs, sleeping like the dead.
Without a word, I headed behind the screen and changed into a jade-green robe. ‘Well, where do you want me?’ I asked as I re-emerged. He grunted as he began setting up his canvas to continue his work from the last few days. Around his easel were piles of gardening books for reference, and a large selection of artificial flowers. The three of us girls were portrayed naked in a garden scene filled with both foreign and native flowers; long before Australian natives became popular with gardeners, Rupert was painting them – banksias, bloodwoods, eucalyptus, grevillea, mountain devils and so on. A blinding light illuminated the three of us like a bolt from heaven. At first glance the painting looked like some lush and sensual Pre-Raphaelite work, but when you examined the flowers closely, each one was actually a body part. Among golden wattle were rows of tiny teeth, bottlebrush had blotches of blood-splattered gore, devil’s twine had human hair winding around it, ears were painted amongst the sarsaparilla and so forth. Death’s Garden is now one of his most respected paintings, recognised as being one of the first surrealist works in Australia, along with those of James Gleeson. Unlike Gleeson, Rupert didn’t consider himself a surrealist but I knew he was an admirer of surrealist principles and was influenced by Gleeson, Nolan and the surrealist elements in Max Dupain’s photography. He had laughed about Dalí’s work, L’homme fleur, and the outrage it had provoked in 1939, with Lionel Lindsay publicly claiming the work as an example of Freud’s dirty mind because of his views on sexual flower symbolism. Ma would have been so proud, even if she didn’t have a clue what surrealism was – and if she did know she’d think it plain weird and a waste of paint.
The public remain fascinated with Death’s Garden because it was his work in progress when the artist’s daughter met her cruel fate. As most art scholars and fans of Rupert’s work know, when you look very closely at the tall sunflower, Shalimar can be seen inside it – like the children’s book Where’s Wally?, where you search for the little figure. People assume it’s either another war painting or one of his decorative nudes. Tiny Shalimar, hiding inside the lone solitary sunflower in a garden of bones, blood and decay. Lost forever, obscured from our view, surrounded by strange beauty.
On that day, my last sitting with him, I wasn’t posed with the tiger or monkey, which was one blessing; instead, other than my ridiculous headdress I was fully naked among flowers (yes, finally showing the map of Tasmania with no blushes). I had my arms stretched back, looking plaintively into the distance. The pose was quite uncomfortable, but I did my best to maintain it and earned a slightly warmer tone from him for my efforts. I began to feel smugly superior as I held that difficult pose, daydreaming that I was spotted in a painting by a talent scout for MGM studios, leaving Rupert begging me to stay. Strange to think that my daydreams, indulged in as a distraction from the tedious poses in that eccentric studio, did bear real fruit many years later! I’ve long been a believer that you get what you settle for or dream of in life. I knew where I was headed even when it seemed impossible to dream as big as I did. Surry Hills rats didn’t wind up marrying millionair
es and travelling the world, but even though I felt like giving up at times, I never relinquished my self-belief. There was nothing I wouldn’t have done to get there, believe you me.
Over the years I’ve seen many girls from far wealthier backgrounds than my cramped Surry Hills terrace tilt their caps at fame, but they didn’t have the recipe for success. Most of them folded at the first rejection, whereas every setback made me stronger, and every disappointment nailed me harder to my own certainty. Still, everything has a cost, and the devil always demands a payment when your dreams come true. My devil is passing me the bill now. And I bet he wants a tip to go with it. So be careful what you wish for – the gods have a sneaky sense of humour, and the devil’s always hovering, rattling his money box to settle the account.
Several hours drifted by in the studio, the monotony broken only by the buzzing of flies and Rupert granting me one short break to use the outside dunny, grab a cuppa and a rollie (a habit I’d acquired from Wanda that took me years to overcome). I saw Dennis in the distance fussing over something in the garden; I waved and he half-heartedly returned the greeting, looking unusually low in spirits. A bit like the atmosphere really – although the sun was shining as strongly as ever, with no sign of clouds in the sky, there was a feeling of pressure in the air.
Carefully stubbing out my fag, I was gratefully stretching, ready to return to Rupert and my arduous pose, when I looked up at the towers and saw them. Currawongs, around a dozen of them, were flying over the manor’s roof and towers. A shiver went down my arms. ‘Someone walking on your grave,’ was how my ma always described that feeling. That’s how I felt when I saw those birds.
‘There’s about a dozen currawongs on the roof!’ I reported, feeling panicked and slightly nauseous on my return.
Rupert cleaned his brushes and lit another rollie. ‘I don’t want to know about those bloody birds,’ he snapped. ‘They’re an ill omen for this house. Best not to think about them. Let’s get back to this painting. Dress off, please, Ginger.’
Of course, I thought Rupert was raving, but I dutifully resumed the pose.
Shortly afterwards Edgar Cabret visited the studio. He and Rupert discussed their upcoming Sydney trip and the art supplies they planned to buy. I silently praised myself for being a total professional and not breaking the pose or glancing in their direction. I’ve learnt that if you don’t praise yourself you can be waiting a long time for the fools around you to give you the gong. It’s best to stick out your chest and place a ribbon on it rather than wait for the world to notice you.
‘Ginger’s been a brick and we’ve got a lot done today,’ Rupert said, with unusual warmth. ‘I worked on Wanda’s section last night. Edgar, stop prowling around like a caged cat and sit down, for Christ’s sakes!’ Edgar had been admiring his elegant silver hair in a Venetian mirror on the wall and glancing about him at the studio’s paraphernalia with all his usual curiosity.
Finally, near afternoon tea time, Wanda and Kitty turned up bearing a basket of sandwiches and fruit cake, and Rupert said I could have another break. Outside, Shalimar played, making a fairy house from flowers, leaves and stones. She stuck out her tongue at me when she saw me approaching, and I retaliated by putting my hands behind my ears and waggling them, screwing my face up horribly for good measure hoping to get a laugh from her.
‘You shouldn’t do that!’ she whined, pouting. ‘I’ll tell Doris that you’re being rude to me. And if the wind changes, you’ll be even uglier than you already are!’
‘That’s enough, Shalimar,’ Dennis rebuked from behind me. ‘I won’t have you being rude to any of the Flowers in my garden. You’ll annoy the fairy folk if they hear you talking in that tone of voice to grown-ups. You know what they do to whining, grumbling children, don’t you?’
‘There’s no such thing as fairies,’ Shalimar mumbled, but then she couldn’t help herself. ‘What do they do, Dennis?’
‘Every time a wee fairy hears a child being naughty, they spit in their breakfast porridge when the child is still asleep,’ Dennis said. ‘And if they hear you say you don’t believe in them, they wipe their fairy boogers on their toast. Don’t tell me you don’t believe in fairies when you’ve spent hours this morning making a house for them. What about the lovely fairies your dad found?’
Shalimar thought this over as Dennis continued, ‘I’ve seen several in this garden, and my old man saw hundreds of them.’
‘What about Ginger?’ Shalimar said suddenly. She squinted up at me from where she sat on the ground with her dolls, her lovely white dress spread out heedlessly around her, now marked with grass stains that would take hours for Miss Sharp to remove.
‘What about me?’ I said, lighting a cigarette. I was aware of Dennis’s eyes dropping to my chest. He could look as much as he liked, I figured. I wasn’t about to give anything to a gardener, not even one as good-looking as Dennis.
‘Have you seen fairies, Ginger? Do you believe in them?’ She looked up at me curiously.
I looked around the garden, which seemed to sparkle in the sunshine. The birds were calling melodiously to each other; bees were busy around the flowerbeds. You could feel the earth coming to life after the harsh winter. A few butterflies were dancing in a glorious display. Every direction I looked, I could see splashes of colour as flowers burst forth with new life. But the peace of the garden seemed chilled and there was a sombre feeling to the air. The trees seemed to press down upon us and a few grey clouds were replacing the earlier sunshine. I steeled myself and glanced back up at the roof where the currawongs had multiplied over the towers. A slight breeze blew my hair back and I glanced away, not wishing Shalimar to notice the birds or be witness to my fear.
‘Do I believe in fairies?’ I considered her question, taking a drag on my cigarette. I almost imagined I could hear chuckles from the large ferns near the stone wall, as if the tiny folk Dennis teased Shalimar about were waiting for my answer. ‘I’d have to see one before I believed in them,’ I challenged.
‘Why would they appear anyway to a grown-up woman like you?’ Shalimar said.
I ignored her jibe and walked away into the part of the garden where Rupert had built the Diana folly. A small iron bench sat next to the statue, and behind it was a trellis on which malmaison roses cascaded surrounded by bluebells and bright yellow jonquils, tulips and aromatic jasmine. But I glowered at the folly, the dappled beauty and the magical atmosphere in the garden only intensified the longing striking my heart like a serpent’s fangs. I felt childishly like smashing Diana to pieces. I hated this public testament of love when he had thrown me over so easily.
‘Those days are gone, aren’t they.’
Dennis’s voice behind me made me jump. When I turned around I saw in his shrewd eyes that he’d known my secret all along.
‘What makes you say that?’ I asked.
Dennis kicked the stone base with his boot and pulled out a few weeds, a rollie dangling from his left hand. ‘It’s a shame, Ginger Flower. Rupert doesn’t seem as interested in his love folly now. And Doris seems to avoid it. Maybe if I get rid of the weeds and thorns, they’ll return?’ Shake, shake, shake; he whacked dirt from the weeds against Diana. He crouched down, working away at a prickle bush, then glanced up with a knowing smile. ‘Or perhaps they need to get rid of the Flowers,’ he said.
I felt like dismantling Diana and her bloody cherubs with my bare hands until they were only a pile of rubble.
‘They’ve been through so much,’ Dennis said. ‘Doris . . .’ He studied me reflectively. ‘Well, I think you know about Doris. You more than anyone knows what she’s been through.’
I couldn’t bear his judgment and his expression of contempt. Bad enough that Rhonda, Edgar’s housekeeper, had openly vented her spite – what could you expect from an old frump? But Dennis’s change in demeanour genuinely wounded me. Having displayed only friendship and warmth when I had first arrived, he was now noticeably chillier. Was I to be blamed for everything? Was Rupert – or even D
oris herself – never to be held accountable for anything?
‘I wouldn’t be lying awake over it, Dennis,’ I said, trying to sound flippant. ‘I’ll be leaving very shortly, as soon as I can get enough money together. Will that make you happy?’
‘You pining for King Paintbrush, Ginger Flower? You’re as pale as a ghost. The old boy is in a right foul mood, isn’t he? He always gets worked up when he’s trying to plan a trip. I guess the poor old devil feels safe here in his manor. King of the bloody Ruins. Or perhaps he doesn’t want to leave his precious daughter. Either way, that’s not much for a man to be proud of.’
I glanced at him, surprised by the bitter edge to his normally jocular manner. ‘Shouldn’t take a man’s money if you feel like that about him,’ I replied.
Dennis dragged on his rollie, and blew out a puff of smoke. ‘I’m here for the garden, not for bloody Rupert Partridge.’ I couldn’t see his eyes properly under his hat, but I sensed his anger. ‘If I didn’t look after the garden here, who would? Doris can’t be expected to do it all on her own – not with Baby Lois. Rupert wouldn’t even notice what grew under his nose.’
‘He does his best.’ In spite of my own disappointment and anger with Rupert, I couldn’t help rising to his defence. ‘It’s not easy for men when they return. What did you do in the war, Dennis? Fertilise roses? Grow some white feathers?’
He advanced on me and I stepped back. He suddenly wasn’t the man I joked and sparred with on a daily basis.
‘He’s not normal,’ he said. ‘Never has been. The runt of the litter, but it never stopped him getting the women.’ He looked me up and down with contempt. ‘You think I don’t know about you and him? I’ve known since you first arrived here. Doris confides everything to me. But don’t fool yourself for one second that he ever loved you. He just wanted what you gave him so freely, and his real passion went into building this folly. The only person he loves is Shalimar. And it ain’t right! Not with poor Doris with the baby. But I’ve fixed him with his perversions today! I should have done it years ago!’
Currawong Manor Page 26
