Crow's Breath

by John Kinsella

I call it an honest style. I paint it as I see it. People out here don’t like frills. They don’t want a photo, they want atmosphere, but they also want it to look like the place they know. It’s all about the light.

  *

  He’d picked up a few commissions from that newspaper article. It wasn’t much of a piece, but it did include a photo of his shop window, and he’d had one of his signature paintings on display – a favourite from ten years ago. One of the district mansions and surrounding sheds and yards. It was actually a near copy of one he’d done for the family. He’d liked his effort so much, he’d repainted it later.

  His studio was down by the river. On the rare occasions that the river flooded, he would have to remove all his canvases, paints and sketchbooks, and take them upstairs to his living area. It was cramped in there, but he didn’t mind living with his work, even closer than usual. He could always smell the fumes of the oil paints and linseed and cleaning fluids rising from the studio up through the wooden floorboards, even when things were well. It was a historic building. He had painted it dozens of times. A painting of it hung over his bed, which was lonely since his wife’s death. She’d been a schoolteacher. He wasn’t interested in a new partner, though women his own age were often hanging about the studio … he gave the occasional lesson when business was slack. But he was never known to exploit his students.

  Business wasn’t what it once had been. A few young people visiting his studio – tourists, really – told him his ‘style’ was really quaint, meaning outmoded. If he deigned to reply, he would say, Art isn’t about being fashionable. Still, business had dropped off.

  So those new commissions were welcome. He would never intimate, nor in fact show the slightest sign of negativity, but found the ‘servicing’ of the town’s amateur painters tedious. He felt, well, demeaned. What a waste of an artist, he brooded over his glass of white in the evening. A white-faced heron stalked the green river’s edge in the half-light below the window. His window frame was a living painting, an embodiment of his own ‘style’. My paintings capture something for all time, and show the movement of place. A moment, and movement. That’s my gift. He didn’t suffer from depression, he assured himself, but the ignorance and crassness of the modern world did depress him. But he kept that to himself.

  Once such a view would have gained the approval of farmers for miles around, who reinforced their inherited colonial possessions with furniture made to look ‘olden’ and ‘rural’. But it was different now. Tractors guided by satellites, genetic modification, houses built from ‘new materials’. The farm scenes he was asked to paint were often more like factory scenes, or decorations for business cards. All that was left of the ‘old’ was the nostalgic, and he had to admit his paintings were tending to fall into that trap. New places, all business, but with a desire on the owners’ part to show the new with ‘ye olde-worlde charm’. He knew what they wanted and he dished it up in buckets. His first couple of commissions via the novice journalist’s country stint were like this.

  Then there were the hobby farmers dripping with dough who wanted their weekender painted, so they could hang the paintings in city lounge rooms or offices, to remind themselves they had weekends to look forward to. He had done plenty of those over the years. The hard-up smallholder didn’t have the money to commission the artist, nor the interest – a photo would do! But the pretend farmers needed to convince themselves they were rural, and he was more than happy to assist.

  The last of these commissions was different. For starters, it was for a younger couple. They were what one might term ‘alternative’. They had rings through their noses and many studs in their ears; they were decorated with tattoos. Okay, he’d seen plenty of that, but not running a huge property out beyond his usual range, and with committed ecological politics. They were farming organic wheat on a commercial scale. After agreeing to take the commission and ‘live in’ for a couple of weeks, he found that they’d once been members of an influential rock band. The woman had inherited the farm, which they’d ‘converted’. They wanted a series of paintings capturing the ‘essence’ of what they were doing.

  *

  I’ll do most of the work here and touch up in the studio.

  Do you mind people looking over your shoulder every now and again?

  Not a problem – I’m used to it, though I will probably ignore any ‘advice’. Everyone had advice for painters. As the contract says, You’ve agreed to accept the outcome done in good faith.

  No worries. So when did you start painting? Gemma asked.

  When I was a child. I did it at school, but because I had to work on the farm for my father, I learnt by correspondence after that. No fancy art schools for me. And we lost the farm, so I went ‘commercial’. Mind you, those courses are all about commercial anyway. And you were in a rock band! Sorry, I’m embarrassing myself. You’re probably very famous.

  Well, we were notorious. If you google us you’ll read more about our drug … ex-drug habits than our music. And our fights. Our break-ups. Our behaviour … It’s a long time ago.

  But you’re still so young!

  Long time ago in rock-music terms. A few years. This is a better life.

  Oh, and I don’t google.

  *

  She was looking over his shoulder. He could feel her breath. Smell her through the dry of the stubbled paddocks. He could see her face through the back of his head: all that metal. And young as she was, you couldn’t say she looked ‘fresh’. His mother would have described her as looking like a mile of bad road. But she was interesting. She exuded something. His brush faltered. Damn!

  Sorry, am I disturbing you?

  Not, not at all. I am used to people watching.

  And giving advice.

  And giving advice.

  I like the light effect on the shed roof.

  It’s all about the light.

  He repaired a slight error and persisted with the machine shed roof. He found himself playing up the light effect more than he’d intended. For her? He was usually immune to flattery, to judgement … to anything but his own vision, while he painted. It went on like this for ten minutes.

  It’s getting warm, she said. How can you stand being out in the sun all day?

  Lots of sunscreen, loose clothes, a broad-brimmed hat. And then he was thinking about the music they’d played after dinner. So that’s the kind of music you played? Composed. I like it … it’s not really my thing, but I can hear that it’s good. It’s the Mahler in me that responds to it. It has a grandeur and a finesse at once. It is so modern, yet there’s something classical about it too. And Gemma, that’s some voice you have. You could have been an operatic contralto. You are a contralto. Yes, sorry. I just meant you could have sung opera. And Reg, you play that electric guitar like Django.

  He’d had a few wines, and felt Reg and Gemma thought him … well, the only word he could come up with out of his own youth was ‘square’. He’d squirmed a little, but had actually been having too much fun to let it ruin his night. And they’d spoken about farming organic wheat, and about making flour, and a little about painting. Their tastes were clearly ‘postmodern’, judging from the pieces throughout the house. There was a lot of pop art. Copies of Warhols. Actually, that one’s an original print … Gee. Can’t say I like it, but he was a good commercial artist. Reg had twitched his nose ring, ever so slightly. Gemma had rubbed one of her tooled-leather cowboy boots against the other. He’d felt that Gemma and Reg were discussing him through twitches and looks and silences. Then with a light, throw-away warmth, Gemma had saved them all again: Well, we had our fifteen minutes …

  Now she broke into his reminiscing. Your shed looks so much like our shed.

  What do you mean?

  Well, it doesn’t really have to look like a shed to be a shed, does it?

  He wondered if this was a question, a statement or an answer, before saying, Well, it’s a scene I’m painting, that’s what I do. He shifted uncomfortably on his seat, and
pulled away from the canvas.

  I am disturbing you, sorry!

  Well, a little. I thought you wanted me to paint in my style: the style you saw in the picture in the paper.

  That’s true, but talking with you, and being with you (did she move closer?), I realise now that anything is possible. You could take the next step.

  He bristled. The next step? He started to feel the heat of the day and thought, Maybe that’s enough. Back in the morning. He’d work in the shade now, on a different scene – one from the verandah, of the rainwater tanks with the paddocks spreading out towards the hills behind. But she’d make the same comment. It had been said. He felt it would be said when he lay down in his bed at a distant end of the colonial mansion with its modern furniture and paintings, with its banana-shaped lounges, glass tables and state-of-the-art stereo. There was even a cellar that had been turned into a recording studio. They’d let him poke his head in there. Falling asleep, he’d half-thought he was like some kind of transitional object for them. An old farm-scene painter who would be gently dragged (barely screaming and kicking) into their alluring modern world.

  *

  He stared through the front window of his shop, into the nothingness of town. The river was almost empty, so there was no comfort in the flow of water over rocks filling in the background. He looked circumspectly at his new work in the shop window. A copy he’d executed with disturbing precision. It would stay there, though it had become a running joke around town. For the first few weeks people had stood and laughed, outright laughed in the street. A few of his old friends had invited him over for dinners, where he knew over dessert and port they’d broach ‘the subject’. Was he alright? The women thought he might be having a late midlife crisis. They’d stopped coming for lessons, their husbands worried about their safety. That mess in the window, with its confusion of lights and sheds and distorted animals, seemed predatory. Actually, the husbands had never liked him – that arty stuff their wives distracted themselves with. Their hobbies.

  But eventually the women did return. They’re seeping back, he told himself. Broke, even with the hefty commission he’d received from Gem and Reg, he gradually went back to teaching in his earlier style. He no longer painted, himself. My painting days are over, he said in answer to those rare enquiries that came in from outside the region. No one within cooee bothered to ask these days. Painted farm scenes had kicked one last time, and then passed away. Satellite images, blown up to almost wall-size, came into fashion. Fashion without confusion. And he removed the painting from the front of the shop, being the weak man he was, but he never replaced it with another. He hung it in his bedroom, where he’d often fall into bed after too many wines, and stare in wonder; its breath over his shoulder as he slept deep, empty, lightless sleeps.

  THE RECEPTIONIST

  Eighteen-year-old Bec offered to work at the lowest legal rate. The Doctors Kellys had just had to lay off two full-time senior receptionists who’d worked for the practice more than a decade. It was heartbreaking. Mrs-Dr Kelly found it hard to say yes to Bec, but she couldn’t answer the phones herself.

  The practice was struggling. Its doctors had served a wheatbelt area of hundreds and hundreds of square kilometres, with success and respect for over twenty years.

  Cutbacks in their funding from the local authorities had meant Mrs-Dr Kelly and Mr-Dr Kelly had to look after the vast practice by themselves, unable to attract doctors from elsewhere. They’d lost their special housing and subsidy for vehicles, and found it hard to meet even rent on premises in the heart of an increasingly unfriendly, violent and unruly town.

  When Mr-Dr Kelly broke his hip and was out of action for months, it fell on his wife to keep the battered ship afloat in the glut of wheat. It had been a bumper year for harvests, accidents and sickness. Mrs-Dr Kelly had to remind herself of the Hippocratic oath more than once when squeezing in a councillor who claimed an urgent need to be seen, the nearest other practice being more than eighty kilometres away.

  Not long in town, Bec came with scant references. But her boyfriend was working on one of the larger farms of the district, and people spoke well of him. He and Bec lived in a donga near the shearing quarters.

  While ringing to make an appointment for a sore throat, Bec had detected a fluster in the voice of Mrs-Dr Kelly and sensed an opportunity. I sniffed it out over the phone, she told her boyfriend. At the end of the appointment, during which she’d reproached Mrs-Dr Kelly for neglecting to dye over grey roots, she had made herself necessary.

  I was a receptionist for a while at a big city surgery. She handed over a reference – ‘she worked here for four weeks’ – which Mrs-Dr Kelly might get around to following up … but with people lined up in the waiting room and the phone crazy, Bec heard exactly what she’d expected to hear, what she’d sniffed out. Yes, yes, dear. I’ll sign you in to the computer and you can work out the rest. And so it happened.

  Bec had things sorted within the week, and those who were rude to her on the phone or in person, and those who ‘just didn’t feel quite right’, found the earliest appointments they could get were weeks away. Better to travel elsewhere, she warmly advised.

  Bec eventually met Mr-Dr Kelly when he hobbled in on a frame one afternoon. Getting out and about, he said. Bec smiled a fraction too long, and said lightly, You won’t be making any high-speed getaways any time soon.

  *

  When a woman rang asking for an urgent house call, or rather farm call, Bec didn’t hesitate before saying, I will be there in forty minutes. She bristled with approval and excitement.

  Mrs-Dr Kelly wandered out to find Bec when her next patient wasn’t listed on screen. The waiting room was filled and people were angry.

  This isn’t like Bec, she told herself, though she wasn’t really sure what Bec was like. Mr-Dr Kelly had taken an instant dislike to her, but he was oversensitive in his present state. And Mrs-Dr Kelly had no time to bother with such trivia as personality.

  Sorry, sorry. Where’s Bec? she asked, staring over the patients’ heads, careful not to make eye contact. She became vaguely aware that her underwear was showing over the waistband of her skirt.

  A tattooed gentleman … yes, Mr Irons … Mr Irons was yelling at her. She walked out forty minutes ago, doctor!

  Why?

  She said she had a ’mergencee, said an old lady, trying hard to hang on to her manners.

  Oh God. What on earth …?

  *

  Bec loved driving through the countryside. It was harvest, and large machinery was frequently hogging the road. She didn’t mind, she was quite happy to pull over to let a header or tractor pass. Then she’d plant her foot on the accelerator and make up for lost time. She loved the crests, her stomach dropping to the floor as she roller-coastered her way into the unknown at maximum speed. A few times she’d lost it on the gravel, but her boyfriend had been giving her lessons and she reckoned she could handle it pretty well now, occasionally dropping the back end out and letting the car fishtail just for the fun of it.

  In the city she’d been known as a bit of a party animal. She was full of life. Her favourite word was ‘zesty!’ and when she’d had a few drinks, she’d call out, Joie de vivre! Joie de vivre! She was a positive influence on all those around her. Knew how to party! In the mirror, she saw herself as vivacious, even if doubts nagged enough to make her turn away and say, I’ve got better things to do with my time than worry about my looks.

  *

  Plainview was a big property for the region – four thousand acres. The house was a grand double-storey stone building from the 1870s. Bec just loved it at first sight. As she rolled up before the front gate after parading down a long, treed driveway, she admired the lush green lawn enclosed within, half wondering how they managed to keep it so green. By the time she’d stepped out of her car and got her hand on the gate latch, a woman was running across the lawn.

  Thank God you’re here. We should have called an ambulance but he hates hospitals. Do y
ou have your bag with you? Her eyes searched the girl, the car, the space between car and girl. You’re not a doctor? I thought the Kellys might have a new doctor on. Was it you that answered the phone? My husband is very unwell. He’s been vomiting. I told you that on the phone, didn’t I? It was you? Can’t the doctor come?

  Bec laughed lightly. Calm down. I did first aid at school. The doctor is so busy, no need to bother her with a house call. No need, is there, my dear?

  The lady at the gate look nonplussed, then angry, then desperate. Well, come in. You can see my husband but I am going to ring an ambulance.

  Probably no need, said Bec. It’s a zesty house you have here. I’d love to live in a house like this. Every day an adventure! I’ll find my way, she said, following the woman in.

  It was a house of jarrah, stone, and period furniture. There was an aerial photograph of the property on a large corridor wall, and Bec drank it in. All this, yours.

  A moan came from deep inside the house. From upstairs. Bec broke away from the Lady of the House (snooty!), and followed the sound up a grand staircase, down a corridor, to a door that opened into the master bedroom. Mild protests from downstairs faded and evaporated. A middle-aged man, far from handsome, moaned and dripped saliva into a vomit-filled bowl by the side of the bed.

  Gee, I’ve never seen a four-poster bed! exclaimed Bec.

  Who the fuck are you?

  I’m Bec! I’ve just come out to check on you.

  Who sent you? Where’s the doctor? Where’s my missus?

  The Lady of the House is downstairs. Maybe she’s making us all a cuppa, I’m parched. It’s quite a drive from town.

  Where’s the bloody doctor?

  She’s not available, sorry. Her appointments are full. And I know, because I’ve had to work hard to squeeze everyone in. So many people trying to take advantage. They tell me they’re personal friends, or important people, or on death’s door.

  Get out of here!

  Now calm down, sir. You can’t speak to me like that. There are laws against abusing medical staff.