by JH Fletcher
Which was true. But. Not now. Not yet. She had said it herself, not an hour earlier, in the tiny room belaboured by the paintings’ blinding light. Let me be free a little longer.
It was no use. The paintings as much as the man had changed the balance of her universe. Life was for living, as he had said. Life the most precious commodity of all.
The paintings they had left, the hot and dusty street, were as nothing compared to the heat she felt now.
She smiled, looking him in the eyes. ‘When do we go?’
It was a green world empty of people, full of light and shadow, the fugitive forms of animals watching them from the undergrowth. They pitched tents on the bank of a creek, they swam in the cold water. In it dissolved dust, fatigue, all the inhibitions of her earlier life. She ran naked through the grass, feeling the sun’s heat, the tender stems brushed her thighs. She lay on her back in the grass. The stems enfolded her, talked to her in gentle, sibilant voices. She waited for Lukas to come.
As he did. He stood looking down at her. The sun made a golden halo of his hair. Slowly he knelt. Her eyes closed. She felt his hands moving upon her. Her skin was alive with little starts and spurts of feeling. Without conscious decision, without thought, her body opened to him. Eyelids closed, she felt herself stand outside her body, watching. Then things changed. Fire licked, consumed. As well as the thrusting weight of the man, the rapturous ardour of the paintings possessed her.
‘We are experimenting with the qualities of light, the techniques needed to transfer light to the canvas.’
Four years earlier, in 1881, Tom Roberts had gone to England to study. Now he was back.
‘I am on fire,’ he said. His hands flew as he spoke. ‘Utterly on fire. I went on a walking tour in Spain. What a revelation that was. The burnt land, the colours of the sea! You notice I say colours, my dears. Turquoise, ultramarine, sapphire. And white! White,’ he repeated, tasting the word, ‘but what white! White as you have never seen it. White like a cry of purity against the blue.’
A man who lived his life on a cliff of ecstasy, who sometimes over-balanced into the depths. He talked to them of painters whose work he had discovered in Europe, names previously unknown to all of them. Manet, Sisley, Monet.
‘They, too, are disciples of the light.’
It could have been affectation but was not. Sincerity was another colour in Tom Roberts’ palette. He lived and worked like he spoke — in an explosion of exclamation marks. They all did. In everything they sought to push experience to the limit. Sometimes, beyond the limit. Tom tried to seduce Dorrie. Or not so much seduce as took it for granted that she was common property to be shared around. Or at least with him.
Dorrie told him no. He laughed, groping for her. She slapped him hard, setting him back on his heels.
‘All of us acknowledge him as leader of the group,’ Lukas explained.
Dorrie stared. It had never occurred to her that he might take Tom’s side in this. ‘He can keep his hands to himself,’ she said. ‘Leader or no leader.’
It was the first crack in the smooth surface of their relationship.
It was unimportant, she told herself. But did not believe.
Days followed, prickly with accusing silences. Dorrie was enraged to find Lukas blaming her.
‘I’m with you, not him.’
‘We share everything,’ Lukas pointed out.
It was only partially true. They shared only the things that did not matter. Neither talent nor vision, only property. Dorrie was no man’s property. Not Tom Roberts’. Not Lukas Smart’s.
It was hard. She loved him or as much of him as she could reach, which wasn’t much. He lived for his work and there she could not follow him. She had thought he loved her in the same way, with that portion of himself that was not locked away in contemplation of the light. Now she found herself wondering if he loved her at all.
For the first time since coming away with him she felt alone.
Slowly things improved. Tom Roberts left her alone. The time of jagged silences passed. Dorrie and Lukas explored the emerald glory of the hills. They camped, sleeping bags and a billy, by the banks of creeks. They watched the smoky blue of sunsets, the grey curtains of rain, they waited with their breath on tiptoe for the golden wonder of the dawn. Lukas’ work was going well and as always it made him passionate. They made love under the stars, in the sunlight, beside the singing creeks. Dorrie’s cries of ecstasy were as abandoned as those of the rosellas that flew like splinters of jewelled light through the shadows of the forest.
They returned to the main camp, stayed a few days. They even visited Melbourne itself. Dorrie had forgotten that anywhere could be so grey. They wandered the streets hand in hand, limbs as brown as gypsies, conscious of how exotic they were in contrast to the pale-faced people they passed. Dorrie gloried in their difference but despised the city, could not wait to return to the Ranges.
The first night of their return she dragged Lukas into the forest. The black silence of the trees, the smell of the forest surrounded them; they were alone yet not alone.
It was so dark. Lukas could not see her. Her voice came to him out of darkness.
‘Love me.’
A command, an entreaty.
Groping, he found her. She was naked. Beneath his questing hands her skin was soft, as smooth as pearl. Now he could see its faint glimmer, smell the ardour of her arousal. Breast and thigh wove their sensuous dance. Her legs embraced him. Her passion was a red heat in the darkness. His own rose to meet hers. Until at last a silence. They were poised together upon a pinnacle higher than the trees. Higher than the world. Lifted out of body and mind to wait, to observe, to feel. Waiting. Welling.
A cry, high-pitched and exultant, from the depths of being.
They lay side by side, Dorrie’s head resting upon his chest. The sweat dried on them. Lukas’ hand trailed limply between her thighs. She turned, feeling the weight of her breast against him, and kissed him softly. She did not speak. Her actions had said all there was to say. The silence enfolded them, everything they had been together, everything they would be in the future together. Do not speak, she besought him silently.
Lukas said, ‘I would like to be able to paint that.’
Two months later, when there was no longer any doubt, she sought him out. As always, he was painting.
‘We’re going to have a baby.’
Brush poised, he studied the painting, leant forward and applied a dab, just a dab, sat back, considered.
‘A baby?’ he said, eyes still on the painting.
She felt dirty, humiliated by his indifference to what should have been a sharing of wonder.
I shall kill him, she thought. Or myself. But could no longer think of doing that. Not now she knew.
‘I am glad,’ Lukas said. He put down the brush, was on his feet, crushing her against him. He danced exuberantly, swinging her around. Through a rush of grateful tears she could smell heat, turpentine, the sunlight on his skin. ‘So glad.’
Thank God.
‘It will change things.’
Lukas looked questioningly at her. ‘Why should it?’
‘I will have to go to Melbourne to have it, I suppose.’
Within her belly, heavy and hard, thrusting at the front of her dress, the baby kicked.
He shook his head vehemently. ‘Have it here.’
If only it would have been possible. But she could not agree.
‘I will take care of things,’ he told her.
‘You’ve never done it before. Neither have I. Neither of us knows what to do. If anything goes wrong —’
‘Nothing will go wrong.’
She willed it would be so but could not be sure.
‘I am sick of the city,’ he said.
They had been in Melbourne all through the winter while the hills lay shrouded in cloud, driving rain, even snow. No place for camping, then. Now they were back.
‘In the greening of the year,’ Lukas proclaimed. It w
as a phrase that meant little in country where the trees — gums, the occasional pine — were never wholly bare and the green, in spring as other times, was in any case no more than olive.
‘You wouldn’t have to come.’
‘No,’ he said. ‘I intend to be there for the birth of my child. I do not intend to go back to the city. We shall have it here.’
We.
Yet Dorrie was relieved. She, too, had not wished to leave the Ranges. She had an enduring vision of herself holding up the newborn child as an offering to the trees, their trunks like columns rising through the green light.
‘We shall have it here,’ she agreed.
The first quake, little more than a murmur within her.
She rested her hand on the small of her back, waiting, senses alert, but there was nothing and she relaxed. She carried on dressing the meat. Lukas had returned from the city the previous evening. He had sold two paintings and to celebrate had bought meat and wine. Now Dorrie was preparing it for the fire. The weight and size of her belly made everything awkward. She moved with difficulty on swollen legs, crouched with difficulty beside the flames.
Lukas had bought potatoes, too. A treasure; Dorrie could not remember the last time she had eaten potatoes. She fetched the bag that contained them and took out three: two for Lukas and one for herself. She began to peel them.
The murmur came again.
And, just as she was finishing the potatoes, again.
She stood, waddled big-bellied down the creek bank towards the spot where Lukas had told her he would be working.
As soon as he saw her she could tell by the look on his face — apprehensive yet irritated — that he knew. He had always hated to be interrupted while he was working. Then the look vanished and he was all concern.
He came quickly to meet her.
‘Yes?’
‘I think it’s coming.’
The last contraction had no longer been a murmur but a pain with an edge to it. As she was speaking it came again and she heard her voice go up on the last syllable, felt her face grow taut.
‘How often are you feeling it?’
They had learned this was one of the questions you were supposed to ask. Lukas had got a textbook from a doctor he knew and they had studied it together. Most of it had been incomprehensible with undue emphasis, they hoped, on the things that could go wrong. The book contained drawings of certain parts of the female body. Dorrie had examined these with considerable interest but had difficulty in relating them to anything that might be going on inside herself. The doctor had warned Lukas that the book was the product of advanced thinking. To many people, even in the medical profession, such drawings were shocking. He had made them promise that they would never tell anyone where the book had come from as he could be in trouble if it ever came out.
‘About every ten minutes,’ Dorrie told him.
‘We’d better get you back to the camp.’
But packed up his paints first, while Dorrie waited. Now that things had started she was frightened and wished she had not agreed to have the child out here in the wilds. She thought of all the things that could go wrong, things listed in the book that they had skipped, certain that none of them would apply to her. She was young. She was healthy, she was fit, she was happy. She had everything to live for. All through the pregnancy there had been no complications at all. The baby kicked like a footballer so it didn’t look as though there could be much wrong with it, either.
‘We are the ideal patients,’ she told the baby and herself as she waited for Lukas to pack up his things. ‘What can possibly go wrong?’
She had thought it would be romantic to have the baby out here, the three of them with no outsiders, the trees and green hills standing guard over her, but now was not so sure. She was terribly aware how little they knew. Their ignorance was a burden heavier than the baby itself.
‘I still haven’t got those leaves right,’ Lukas said, studying the painting on the easel.
Dorrie set her teeth. ‘Would you mind very much if we got back to the camp? I mean now?’
She hardly recognised her own voice. He looked up, startled.
‘If you don’t want me to drop it on your feet.’
‘Sorry.’ But was angry, Dorrie saw, hating to be told anything.
He helped her, all the same, his hand under her arm. It seemed much farther back to the camp than it had been coming and the pain came again before they got there, causing her to stop and gasp and drops of sweat to stand out on her forehead.
‘All right?’ he asked her anxiously.
‘I’m fine.’ But was shaking as though she would never stop.
When they got to the camp she went into the tent where everything was ready, the bed and a big iron pot for water and the book, in case of any of the complications she was not going to have. She averted her eyes from it. The book would be no use; if anything went wrong she would die, she knew that now. She might as well put the book away. But left it where it was and lay on the bed.
The pain came again, harsher, with the first hint of teeth, and her hands clenched. When it went away she struggled out of her clothes and lay naked on top of the bed, breathing deeply and waiting. Through the tent’s open flap she could see the crowns of the gum trees moving against the brilliant sky and thought she had never seen anything more beautiful, the green branches and the sky behind them. She looked lower and saw the swollen mound of her belly sticking up in the air. It was dark and mottled and the skin was shiny. Things were happening under that shiny skin. She did not want to think about them. She wanted to forget the entire business but knew it was not going to forget her. Oh no. It was going to grind her and grind her and possibly she would survive and possibly she wouldn’t.
And where was Lukas? her mind demanded in mounting hysteria.
He had abandoned her, that was what it was. He had resented being interrupted in the middle of his painting and had gone back to get on with it, leaving her here by herself. Alone with a book. A book that was very, very shocking. That was very, very useless.
The pain came again, tearing her with its sharp teeth, and she gasped and cried out a little.
Lukas stood in the tent opening and Dorrie realised he had been outside all the time. It made her want to cry that she could have been so wrong. Instead she smiled at him, a very good, beaming smile if a little ragged about the edges.
‘I’ve got the water on,’ he said. ‘It’ll be boiling soon. And I’ve got the rope for you to pull on.’
As he spoke he tied the end of the rope securely to the tent pole, yanked on it hard to test the knot and put the other end where she could grab it when she needed it.
Those were the other things that they had been told they had to have, the rope to haul on, the water intended to wash everything with, they supposed, when the business was over.
They waited, looking at each other, but nothing happened and eventually Lukas went out into the sunlight and she could hear him pacing up and down outside.
Then the pain really bit and she cried out in earnest, the pain ripping at her now, and she felt her feet curl and the toes clench. A few minutes peace then it came again with very little time to recover before the next pain. Lukas had returned and was holding her hand. She clung to him when the pain took her, smiled at him when it left her, all the time felt herself being dragged along remorselessly by something much greater than herself, something cruel and unrelenting that shook her again and again like a rat in its jaws of steel.
She lost all count of time, lost thought of everything. Only the pain and fear and Lukas’s hand and her own voice, harsh and high-pitched and unrecognisable beneath the canvas of the tent. Later he must have put the rope into her hands. She could feel its roughness against her palms as she hauled and hauled, sweating and crying. Behind her shut eyes there was a blood red mist in the blackness and still she hauled. Things were happening, she could feel a heavy movement that she wanted even as it tore her all to pieces.
&n
bsp; Her legs were spread, she could feel her toes knot, the pain continuous now. Somewhere out there beyond the fiery circle of pain Lukas’s voice. ‘I can see it. Push, Dorrie! Push!’
And push she did, hauling on the rope, sweating and whimpering and pushing, pushing. And the weight shifted within her, moved more quickly, and she felt the baby slip away from her.
There was silence. In the core of the silence, peace.
Soreness, too, and a great weariness, but peace all the same. The fangs of pain were still.
She opened her eyelids against the great weight that lay upon them.
Lukas was looking down at her. His beard gleamed golden in the lamplight.
She managed, ‘The baby …?’
‘Fine. It’s a boy.’
Despite everything she had come through.
Dorrie looked at the tent opening behind Lukas’s head. Hours must have passed. Now the sky was dark but her heart shone with a light of release and joy.
Three days later Dorrie took the child into the forest. It had been a windless day of searing heat. Even now, with evening, the leaves of the trees hung limp. Shadows lay in pools about the bases of the trees, flowed like smoke through the undergrowth, sanded the dying brilliance of the sky.
Dorrie stood, the baby in her arms, breathing the dusk, the tender exhalations of the trees. On the ridge a gigantic tree stood in a patch of open ground. She walked towards it through the clotted leaves, the young growth like ropes that snared her feet. She reached the great tree and stood beneath it. She could see where its trunk had been scarred by the wounds of generations. Boughs had been broken, holes populated by owl and possum. A litter of fallen twigs showed where the wind had bruised it. Despite the scars the tree stood erect, dominating the forest. The breeze talked in its leaves and its branches fingered the sky.
Dorrie lifted the child silently, the ritual too important for words. Ceremoniously she presented him to the trees.
The boy grew sturdy and vociferous. She called him Jamie. Dorrie winced as Jamie’s gums clamped on her nipples. He sucked her dry, yelled for more. At fourteen months he walked, back as straight as a man. In his confidence, his will, he was already a man. In miniature, but a man.
