The Legacy

by Kirsten Tranter

  ‘There’s room in my house for you,’ she said, easily. ‘It would be a break for you from paying rent. That would be good this year, with your studies, no? Less need to work. And I’ll stay out of your way.’

  I thought about it over the course of the movie and said yes to her at the end. I knew it signalled some kind of end of an era. Kirribilli was practically closed to me now. I’d hardly been there in the past three months, and Ralph fought with Eve or picked fights with me whenever I visited. No more surreptitious drug-taking in the bathroom, only extended drinking at the table. My aunt’s house wasn’t that far away from Kirribilli – it was in another North Shore suburb, looking out onto another part of the water that surrounded the city, a long walk from the same ferry line.

  There was something soothing and alienating all at once about the anodyne upper-middle-class blandness of the neighbourhood. I wanted a break from the inner city, all the places there that were now wrapped up with exhausted friendships. It was a long drive over to campus, but I liked that, and crossing over the bridge on the way back to the house was a relief. Jenny’s overgrown garden met me at the gate when I arrived, tendrils of flowering vines pushing their way through the wood and metal hinges, and I would snap them off, or pull them through and wrap them around the fence.

  The house had always been a kind of sanctuary for me and Peter. When we were little we would stay there every other weekend, both in a room towards the back of the house with two creaky single beds in it. The fibro walls were still covered in patches with the stickers we had stuck there, faded blue Smurfs and animals, glittery ice-cream cones, BMX bikes, rainbows that ended in a starry cloud. There was a bookshelf too, stocked with paperback classics and old books from Jenny’s childhood – boarding school adventures, horse stories – that I worked my way through. Even then, Peter was obsessed with medicine and science and gravitated towards the lower shelf, which held an incomplete set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and a huge anatomy text, its thin, slippery pages covered with terrifying illustrations of the body’s interior, secret places. In there he found a world that was knowable, bounded, that could be mapped and mastered, an antidote to the uncertainty we lived with at home.

  Every once in a while Jenny would let us sit in the studio while she painted, and those were the most magical times. It was always at the end of the afternoon, with hot, late sunlight in the room, and she would talk to us while she worked, priming a canvas or finishing the corner of a painting. Most of the time the door to the studio was closed while she painted and she didn’t mind us being noisy or watching television, which we were allowed to do for hours at a time.

  It was quiet there, but in a peaceful way, not like the quiet of our house. That was the quiet of emptiness, waiting for our father to come home, and then the quietness that he enforced and demanded, punctuated by his raised angry voice, almost always aimed at Rachel, occasionally at Peter. I suppose he must have spoken to us directly once in a while, and he must have fought with her in front of us, but in my memory that sound always comes from behind a closed door, dampened but not silenced by the walls of the house.

  Those weekends would sometimes end up stretching into weeks – we didn’t think it was out of the ordinary, and there was something exciting and adventurous about making the long trip from Jenny’s house to school. At the end of those times, when we prepared to go back home, I would often beg her to let us come and live with her. It’s hard to remember how seriously I meant it when I was still not even eight years old. Then there was the car accident, and our father was dead, and Rachel was in hospital for a while, and Jenny came to stay at our house while Rachel got better and off the crutches. I remember thinking with that child’s kind of superstition that I’d got my wish, that we could live with Jenny, but that it hadn’t happened how I’d really wished for, with Peter and me (or just me, in the most selfish versions) at her peaceful house; instead, it seemed that with my wishing I had brought about a horrible set of events. It was difficult to miss our father, but for months our mother was even unhappier than she had been before, and Jenny seemed tense and unhappy at our house as well, not like she was at her own house where she was happily quiet, always relaxed and ready to smile at us, preoccupied with her work but patient with our questions and demands when she left the studio. That’s how it seems from this distance anyway.

  So when Jenny asked me to come and live at her house that night at the movies it was like a belated and transformed response to those begging questions from my very young self. My first thought was about the stickers on the wall, knowing I couldn’t bear to live with them but equally couldn’t stand to remove them.

  ‘You can have the room at the side,’ she said. ‘Not that old one where you used to stay. There’s a terrible patch of damp in the corner there now where the gutter pipes leaked. You have the one off the verandah. I’ve cleaned it up.’ I had known this room before as a closed space filled with unused furniture and old canvases.

  There was surprisingly little to take with me to Jenny’s house. The room had been cleared of the old canvases, and there was a bed and a writing desk with a chair I liked already in the room, an ugly old wardrobe and a small chest of drawers of indeterminate age, painted white. I had mostly books to bring and a couple of suitcases of clothes and other things. Peter came over with a friend’s borrowed station wagon and helped me load everything in the car, and we drove over to Mosman with boxes and lamps piled precariously in the back. He carried it all inside with me, and disappeared for a few minutes into the old room at the back with the stickers and damp corner. He came out looking solemn and I wondered what he had been remembering.

  ‘There’s room for me in there,’ he joked. ‘I’ll move in next week and it can be just like old times. We’ll have to update the encyclopedia though.’

  My aunt had come into the room, where I was staring at a box, preparing to open it, and she gave Peter a vaguely alarmed smile.

  ‘Not really,’ he said.

  ‘No, I know,’ she replied. ‘Come on. Sit down and we’ll get something to eat. Julia – you too.’

  In that moment it was just like it used to be, and the spell didn’t break right away when we followed her into the kitchen and sat down at the table, but seemed to fade out gently without our noticing and getting suddenly sad about it.

  My new bedroom had windows all along one wall looking out onto the verandah, rippled glass that muddled the light as it came through. The walls were white, with floorboards that had once been painted and were now bare and unpolished. An oval rag rug in a faded rainbow of colours covered the floor in the centre of the room. There was an oval mirror hanging on the wall over the chest of drawers, stylised flowers etched around the top and bottom of the glass. I stuck a postcard there, wedged it inside the metal grips that held the mirror to its back. My only card from Ralph – an old image of the Eiffel Tower that he’d bought in Paris and used to write a note to me in the hotel: Back later, let’s have dinner ma cherie! R. That was it. I unpacked and it was home.

  After Ingrid left for the States for good, I blamed George a lot. Sometimes Ralph agreed with me, and then he would change his mind and fight with me over it, and we would argue back and forth. A lot of his anguish went into those arguments, the grief over losing George, losing Ingrid, his own powerlessness, his own sense of culpability. The arguments pushed us further apart in those months after she left.

  ‘You know it was George’s fault,’ I said to him one morning over breakfast, when we had managed to get through a whole night without talking about it – a quiet party for a new book by one of his teachers, followed by a long night of drinking with other academics and classmates at the pub around the corner. I had lain awake for hours that night on Ralph’s comfortable couch, unable to keep my eyes away from the photograph of Ralph and George and Eve all together, taken years before, that faced me on the mantelpiece above the fireplace.

  ‘It was all about the money,’ I continued.

  Ingrid ha
d glowed with relief when she told us about the great uses to which her money would now be able to be put, in Grey’s capable hands. Bequests. Purchases. The growth of his cache of modern art. His transition from dealer to collector. ‘He’s been building a serious collection for years but without the funds to fufil what he wanted. Now he will be able to really complete it. Well, we’ll own it together. It’s significant – collectors like Grey can really have a lot of influence. Not that he cares about that. He’s so committed to nurturing new artists.’

  My stomach quivered with sleeplessness. Ralph’s moping was becoming tiresome. When she’d left it had seemed as though there was a chance that something of the old intimacy between us would return. Instead we saw each other even less, and his depression was impossible to shake.

  ‘OK,’ he said. ‘If there hadn’t been the money it might not have been the same. But you don’t know. It might have been. She might have gone to Venice anyway, she would have met Grey. You may as well blame Maeve for encouraging them. You may as well blame Eve for bringing her over to Sydney to begin with.’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘I thought you blamed Dad.’

  ‘I do. I blame him. I blame them all.’ He looked at the table. ‘And you encouraged him,’ I said, shocking myself.

  ‘What?’

  ‘About the money. I know you did.’ I hadn’t known this, but suddenly I did.

  He twisted one side of his mouth, a habit he had when he was thinking.

  ‘I thought it would be a good thing for her,’ he said eventually. ‘I didn’t need all the money. Why not?’

  ‘But you never wanted her to leave!’ I protested.

  ‘I didn’t want her to leave but I knew she wanted to. That’s the thing.’ He turned his coffee cup around on the table by the handle, just like Ingrid used to do with the teapot. I remembered his dead stillness the day I was there after the news of the will. ‘I didn’t imagine that she’d never come back.’

  ‘You made her …’ I struggled for words. ‘Like … like a piece of prey to him.’ The words were horrible. I thought of Homer, the lines Ingrid loved to quote: What words are these that have escaped the fence of your teeth?

  Like me, Ralph now put his forehead in his hands. ‘Fucking hell.’

  ‘I miss her too, you know. I feel bad about it. You aren’t the only one.’

  He didn’t look up.

  I said, ‘Look, I didn’t mean that – I mean, that you did that. She made her own decision about it. Stupid idiot.’ This was a formulation we had argued through before, since she had decided to marry Grey. It was her decision, after all. He said, ‘Let’s just not talk about it anymore.’ ‘OK, fine. Good.’

  ‘I mean it. I don’t want to talk about it anymore.’ ‘You shouldn’t feel guilty, Ralph.’

  ‘I mean it, Julia. I don’t want to talk about it again, period. That’s it.’ ‘OK.’

  And so we didn’t.

  10.

  Ingrid and Grey were married in New York in a small ceremony at Grey’s property on the Hudson River in May the following year. Ralph and I were invited, but it was hard to tell how genuine the invitation really was; they held a party in Sydney a few months later that was meant for Australian friends and family who couldn’t make it overseas, and it felt as though I belonged there rather than at the New York event. Financially it was close to impossible in any case. Ralph made up some excuse about needing to study for his Russian exams.

  Ingrid sent a set of photographs of the Hudson wedding to me and Ralph, small prints tied together with a ribbon and a note, identical for each of us: Here’s Mrs Me! Wish you were here. Love, Ingrid. The note was written on a square, pink card. I saw Ralph’s when I was visiting one night. The photos were scattered under the coffee table and the ink had run in the note where the base of a wine glass had left a wet, red circle.

  In these pictures Ingrid looked slightly drugged, stunned and happy. I examined the photographs for hours at night, turning their tastefully white-bordered edges. Few of the people in the background were familiar. All were good-looking and well-dressed. There was Eve, draped in a yellow scarf, and Victoria, Ingrid’s sister, whose face in one picture was casting a resentful look at someone just outside the frame. I recognised Fleur in one shot, small and slim with her long, fine hair fixed in complicated braids. She stood between her father and Maeve, looking mistrustfully at the camera, refusing to pose or smile.

  In one of the images Ingrid looked like a white ghost against a dark bank of trees, grass green under her feet. Strings of lanterns were visible in the near distance, little coloured blurs against the trees and twilight sky. One arm hung down, holding her bouquet as though she were about to drop it, flowers pointing towards the ground. Peonies and dahlias, flashes of scarlet, pink and rose. The diamond on her hand caught the light. Her hair was pinned up but had started to fall down. It seemed to be the end of the party. Her dress looked vaguely Roman, pleats in fine linen that reached all the way to the ground, obscuring her feet. Ivory-coloured cords snaked around her waist and around her shoulders, binding the dress to her body. The other arm stretched out from her side, holding Grey’s hand. She faced the camera with her mouth slightly open. Grey wore a light grey suit, white shirt just open at the collar, no tie. There could be no mistaking his expression as he looked at her, handsome profile to the camera, just a hint of shadow along his jaw. I’ve got you, he was silently saying. I could hear his voice saying it. His hand gripped Ingrid’s lightly. Their hands were slightly blurred, as though they were swinging their arms when the camera caught them. Ingrid looked as though she was walking, though Grey stood obviously still.

  I held the photograph in one hand and a glass in the other. My thumb creased the paper. I was trying to prepare myself for the gathering in Sydney the following weekend. Ingrid’s eyes shone, and now she looked like a slightly crumpled flower, a white gardenia just taken from the tree. I put the picture down with the others.

  The party in Sydney was a bit of a disaster, although the evening probably improved after we left. I had spoken to Ingrid about the event only once on the phone, just before their New York wedding. Her voice had been easy until the issue of Sydney came up, and then the strain was evident.

  ‘We’ll have a celebration in Sydney, of course. It will be beautiful, a real celebration. It will be nice to do it that way, won’t it? I think it will.’ She talked fast, not waiting for an answer. ‘Because you can’t all make it, all of you, all my friends in Sydney, my family, you can’t all make it to New York. And it’s my home, I feel really that it is. New York will be my home now, but Sydney’s home, it’s so important.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, and reflected that Ingrid could well afford to bring her friends to New York if she really wanted to. I was still half-hoping that she would press me to come and half-dreading it. The idea of being at the Hudson wedding seemed romantic, but my imaginings always turned cold – it would be chilly there in the spring evenings, I felt for some reason. Sometimes these ideas included a handsome artist friend of Grey’s pouring champagne for me, but then I remembered that other people would be doing that, waiters hired for the occasion, and thinking about talking to a wedding full of strangers filled me with dread.

  ‘You’ll be there in Sydney,’ Ingrid said. ‘And Ralph will come if it’s in Sydney. He’ll have to.’

  ‘He’ll come,’ I assured her. ‘He’ll be there. Don’t worry.’

  There was a short pause.

  ‘Do you want me to tell him?’ I asked, realising only then that this had been the real point of the phone call. ‘Is that what you want?’

  ‘Well … thank you so much, Julia! Thanks. I didn’t. I couldn’t see … Anyway, thank you.’

  I didn’t say I’d do it, I thought.

  Ingrid talked on about the party, relieved to be done with the issue of Ralph. ‘. no speeches, just really want to see you all and bring you all together …’ Her voice trailed off.

  I began to understand that Grey didn�
��t want to have the Sydney party.

  ‘Doesn’t he want to come all the way here? He’s never been.’

  ‘Oh, it’s so far, I know, it’s true. It’s so far. But we won’t be there for long. He doesn’t want to spend all that time away – I mean, we’ll be away for a few weeks, a honeymoon, but it’s hard for him to spend more time away from his work, and Fleur’s in school.’ She was silent for a moment, holding in her breath. ‘He’s making a bit of a fuss. But it will be all right. It’s important to me. Victoria’s helping to arrange it all.’

  I had to stifle a snort. ‘That’s great. That’s really great.’

  ‘Her PA, Meredith, is really so wonderful. She’s so helpful. She’s sending all these things over the internet, pictures.’

  I thought about saying, ‘I’ll help you,’ but didn’t.

  ‘That’s great,’ I repeated. ‘Where –’

  Ingrid cut me off. ‘I have to go. The florist is calling on the other line. It’s so hard to arrange for peonies right now for some ridiculous reason, can you imagine that?’ I could hear Grey’s voice in the background, talking to the florist on the other line.

  I wished her luck. The line was dead.

  I pictured Grey’s house on the Hudson that had been there in the background in the photographs. It was a massive, untidy Victorian structure with turrets and many storeys. The river was down there below the grounds somewhere, beyond the trees. I imagined fields of peonies behind the house, pale pink and overblown, shedding their petals in the breeze.

  After the Hudson wedding, with its flowers and coloured lights, they spent three weeks in Florence at an apartment belonging to one of Grey’s friends. They were to make a short trip to Venice to visit the site of their first meeting, and Grey had someone to see there about the next Biennale. After my talk with Ingrid I heard nothing about the Sydney party for a while. The date originally planned came and went. She sent a postcard from London, worded briefly: Still on for Sydney, August now, will call soon. London’s so rainy and cold, Ingrid. And two weeks later an ornate invitation arrived. Ralph called just a minute after I opened mine.