In the beginning was The Word and the word was GCAT. And the book was the endless Guanosine-Cytosine/Adenine-Thymine ladder, twisting itself into this shape and that, living in this or that agglomeration of cells and it matters not where we came from or where we are going – only that we are. We are nothing but a list of instructions to get the job of life over and done with. As David Silver says so often, ‘We are what we do.’ Amen.
Liz is back with the slipper, refashioned. ‘There,’ she says, ‘That’s better.’ And she eases in the bundle of bunions and hammertoes.
‘Cheap and nasty,’ says Stella. ‘Where are the other ones?’
Liz winks at me. If my husband sold luxury cars, she’d have worn them even if it had killed her.
‘I think they’ll be very nice,’ says Liz, ‘very comfy. And they look smart.’
‘H’mph,’ she waggles her foot around but can’t see it. ‘Let me see, let me see!’ And testily she shoves at the invalid table over her legs.
Big rearrangements.
‘They’re lined with sheepskin,’ she snaps. ‘It’s summer!’
I snap back, ‘Spring, actually, and your feet hurt you so much you can’t wear leather on them. You go into shrieks of agony over your corn whenever I try to put on your sandals.’
‘Well, I don’t like these, they’re hot.’
‘So what are we supposed to do, Mum, stand around here praying that God sends down ideal footwear? I traipsed the bloody shops looking for those. They were the only ones I could find that were soft enough on top for your corns.’
And suddenly, I’m out of patience again and out the door.
Yes, I am strolling now, up and down the corridor to cool off. Blessed Mary MacKillop is keeping her eye on me.
Liz comes up to me and pats my arm. ‘Never mind,’ she says. ‘We’ll leave them on her until she gets used to them and then, I dare say, we won’t be able to get them off her.’
‘I don’t know how you’ve got the patience.’
‘Oh we love her around here. She’s so funny, so naughty. She’s a real bright spark but I know it must be hard for you.’
‘It’s the years, Liz. The years and years and years of her having it her way. She makes me feel like a bit player in my own life.’
‘Oh, I find her terrifically interesting. She has such stories. Sometimes they don’t quite make sense but she tells them with such passion. I suppose you’ve heard them all a thousand times.’
‘And then some.’
What else is my life imbued with but her tales?
When I return to the bedside: ‘You got another chocolate?’ she asks, slittering brown stains over her bosom.
‘You haven’t finished that one yet.’
‘Aw. I don’t think I want one anyway. What time is it?’
‘Late afternoon,’ I say.
‘Yes, but what time!’ Her chimerical old anger is going for a joy ride today and it isn’t even ANZAC Day. She thumps her chair arm so hard she hurts herself. ‘Ow!’
‘Serves you right,’ I say. ‘It’s nearly five. I’ll have to go soon.’
‘You’re always going.’ Melancholy now – little frowns hitch themselves up briefly all over her brow. Nearly dead, but so alive!
And inimitable.
And funny.
‘What are you laughing at?’ she goes.
‘You.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ve got such a funny old head,’ and I plant a kiss on the wide white skull under the hair – Allegra inherited that hair, dark, fizzing and thick. Hard to believe that it’s still pretty dark at ninety-nine, that it still stands up of its own accord no matter that she’s dipped a comb in water every morning for nearly a hundred years to flatten it.
‘Bye,’ I say, ‘I’ll be back tomorrow.’
‘What?’
‘I’ll be back tomorrow!’
‘Oh.’ And her head falls forward, forlorn. ‘What a waste of time,’ she says – and it is a waste of time, this waiting and obeying the rules until someone calls ‘Bingo!’
I generally excuse myself from Mum by saying there’s work to be done; then, when I get home, I read my emails and play endless games of cards on the computer. If I were a Catholic, I’d probably be beating my brow about sin – I would have beaten my head off well and truly by now. I’d be a roaring drunk, probably, whereas I’m just a mild drunk as things stand and an obsessive player of patience.
I cheat, of course, because there’s nothing like the luxury of being able to reverse wrong decisions – would that I were as obsessive about my art; wrong decisions in painting make it a waste of time finishing. A painter has to ask perpetually how can I instruct the viewer in the way I see? Do I do it with a literal instruction or with an emotional connection – a reflection is no more than a puddle of paint. The humiliation comes when someone else does it so much better or achieves it with so much greater ease than you can yourself.
Science works in a similar way, except that in place of landing the image, there are facts of the universe to bring to light and facts have real contours, not just ones that rely on your imagination. Where the imagination comes into play is in the recognising of the contours – the making known, the greeting – yes! I know what you are. An artist doesn’t have the luxury of knowing what it is.
I suppose mine is a singular life. And when I look at my mother, I see that hers, for all its tattiness, is singular, too. I think her life mission was primarily to raise the name of Motte to the level of past glory. Allegra and I fully believed in that glory because it was so vehemently expressed by both our mother and our aunt but the longer I live the more I realise that Stella and Aunt Nina were repeating stories concocted by past believers who were venturing into a world that no longer believed. Now the stories can no longer be established as true or false; they have taken on the trappings of Chinese whispers. My mother tells the tale of her family as if it were the flowering of poems by Wordsworth and novels by Walter Scott. She has sown her fragments along with isolated quotes from famous men into the biopatch, where they will prosper only by dint of chance resurrecting them in a future time.
The early path-finding lessons of my life have led me down a hotchpotch way, although it’s no more crazily paved than the paths I notice other people taking. I find myself at a place where I teeter in three directions at least – there’s the silly version of myself that I have to concoct for Stella’s benefit, then the pathetic version of Isobel that has been constructed by David and Checkie to wipe me out of their lives and, underneath these struggles, the feelings of authenticity that won’t be denied but still aren’t adequately realised, on the cusp of elderly life, to provide the will to be unassailably me.
While Mahni was having her operation after we came home from Afghanistan, I was able to help Meetra with Sultana, and Meetra, in turn, came to visit Stella. While Sultana imagined that I was a nurse, Stella, feebler by the minute, thought Meetra must be a Very Important Personage. After all, my professional contacts were only ever Very Important and reflected glory on the fabulous Mottes. Meetra, Mahni and I had a great laugh about this pair of ancient mothers. ‘We are who we are,’ said Meetra. ‘It can’t be helped that we aren’t the ones like they think.’
It is nearly the end of summer and Nin is due. She has been working hard on the exhibition she is organising for March and so we have seen a lot of Daniel. David has not been harassing us because he has been very ill and now he is gravely ill. Jeremy of the bookshop came to see me yesterday to say that if we wanted to see him it would have to be soon. Jeremy came out of concern for me. He was not under orders. He sat with me in my studio and put it to me that there were ends that needed tidying up. David hadn’t behaved very well during his illness. He’d turned on Checkie as if the illness had been her fault and she wasn’t going to visit him again, nor was her home available for him to return to for his final days.
‘But it’s all being taken care of, Isobel, don’t worry. He’ll die in hospital b
efore they can get him into a hospice.’
‘What about the funeral and so forth?’
‘All under control. You needn’t worry about them. I’ve been talking to him. Sometimes he’s bitter and twisted and in a lot of pain. I don’t admire the way he carries on but there are things that should be done.’
‘Are you talking about the pictures?’
‘No. Not the pictures. Personal things. Personal things of yours and personal things of his. You should see him.’
‘Are you angry with me for the way I behaved at the launch of Bronwyn’s book?’
‘No. Of course not. Elspeth’s a sniper, snipers get hit – touché. He’s a very odd man, David. Very talented, but he lives…kind of like the skeleton of a leaf – enduring, but fragile.’
‘I never said anything about his talent.’
‘I know you didn’t. Of all the people who’ve known David, you might have been the one who best appreciated what he was capable of. There’ll be a big show of his work at Siècle after he’s gone. He’s left his estate to the Trust. That won’t surprise you. In my opinion, it’s a valuable bequest.’
‘Did he make it of his own accord?’
‘Yes. I helped him to do it properly.’
‘It wasn’t because Checkie leaned on him?’
‘No.’
‘She wouldn’t happen to have changed her mind about suing for those pictures, would she?’
‘No. She hasn’t changed her mind.’
‘I wish she’d leave us alone.’
‘I’m sure you do.’
He patted my shoulder and got up to leave.
‘It’s not as if he’s leaving the world without heirs, one way and another. Nin’s expecting another baby.’
‘Yes. I know that. Go and see him, Isobel.’ And he left and I thought of Eli and his words about letting what you know mature in the vat alongside the other things you know before you act. It’s no use racing off the moment you are bid. I thought if David dies before I get to him, so be it – in the meantime…
David used to ask us, ‘What do you think I’m thinking?’ almost as if he didn’t know his own thoughts, but maybe he meant that no one else could read his mind – that he was the only one privy to his thoughts. It’s a strange attitude. Of course, we are the final arbiters of our own thoughts but that doesn’t mean we can’t deceive ourselves – somehow, David does not believe he can deceive himself. He believes his own estimation of himself is the only valid one. All I can say to that is that I’m the person who best knows what it’s like to be me but I’d never say I was incapable of self-deception. David thinks that you cannot deceive yourself if no one can read you because the deception is in their eyes and not in yours. I think I make mistakes and that it’s awfully hard to admit it. I have encountered very few people who are capable of dismantling a mistake. A simple error is easily brushed aside but most people find difficulty even with forgetting to put the garbage out. If more than one person lives in a house where the garbage hasn’t been put out, the guilt is usually spread by way of a diverting excuse made so that the blame is shared.
We can’t anticipate the future, so we’re bound to make mistakes – what’s to blame for them? Maybe no more than the condition of living through time.
Interesting word, mistake: miss plus take – a failure to understand or an inappropriate reaction – yet mistakes are the engine of change. Mutation is nothing more than the coming to light of a mistake.
David sees his actions as part of a great world of guilt and blame – anyone can live in that world, anyone can magnify the trivial to make it fit among the gross crimes of mankind. Just about all of us do it these days, that is, just about all of us who live in middle-class residences in the heart of the democratic dream. The walls we purchase on the never-ending mortgage serve to hide yesterday from today and to reduce the promise of tomorrow to a fashionable colour chart, over which there are bound to be wrangles when the time comes for decorating. The idea of more choice meaning more freedom is a wondrous illusion that leads us further and further away from considering life’s ledger.
As for that stone – that sang – that David hurled at my window, whatever it was that motivated his elbow, only David could make such a gorgeous shape with his missile. It is a Miro bird with a heavy round head that tilts down and forward like a toy. There’s a little beak, quaint in itself, accidental, and the shapes are brown, black and vivid yellow, unified by a subliminal haze of turquoise, reminding me of Matisse. I am holding this vision in my head and I want to land it but I don’t know how. I just have to store it along with the other images I’ve never managed to land – or I’ve avoided landing by doing the shopping or the minding or the cooking or the laundry or going to Afghanistan instead. You can’t believe such a person as David is possible. He is so dismally unpredictable that when goodness and intelligence shine out of him, even accidentally, it’s like divine revelation.
It’s as if his outward displays of misogyny are in direct proportion to his inner capacity to love what he professes to hate. He was incapable of bringing up a child, but it was too dangerous for me to sue him for custody after Allegra died so that the situation would have legal standing. I did not sue, but, by a default that was predictable, Nin came to me. I am Nin’s mother in deed, if not in fact. It would have been so much simpler all around if he’d acquiesced to custody and agreed to whatever level of support he was capable of giving. Instead we’ve been victims of his capriciousness.
I’ve been seeing the psychiatrist now for donkey’s years, having depression kept at bay, being told that David is the cause and that I should get him out of my life as thoroughly as I can. But I have been saying, right at the start, that I suffer from legitimate recurrent depression because I’m thin-skinned. I feel things more than other people do. All I can do is live with it – by now it’s getting on for thirty years of psychiatry and I think the psychiatrist has matured enough to agree with me. Dadda’s leaving, followed by Allegra’s death, cast me into the pit where I’d seen my mother raging against her grief, bringing herself, her mind and her dependants down with her. I’m not much of a rager by nature; I need to paint my way out of the pit of rage that is not mine, it’s my language. Meanwhile, I have listened to indignant advice from the psychiatrist that suggested the law actually acted as a preventative to the people like David. How can the law prevent a person? It can only censure acts and therefore it can only ever have limited effect as a corrective. There has to be susceptibility to correction. David exists and to provoke him is to promote a metastasising misery while, on the other hand, handling him carefully can bring rewards you never knew existed. But who has the luxury of making a life work out of David? He can only be borne through non-engagement or in small doses with long rests in between.
As for David’s talent, the psychiatrist seems to think that an artistic idée fixe such as David’s is an ineradicable neurosis. I haven’t had the words to tell him convincingly that the hypothesis with which the artist is stuck is the lifelong nub against which talent writhes, a cat possessed. You have to stick with the nub despite fashion and fortune – or never produce a body of work. Too bad if your idea is bad or infantile, or proves to be a cul de sac or something that happens before its time. Art is a never-ending fascination with perception. It’s facile to say all people are artists; artists are those who embrace the nub and never give it up.
I understand why people are surprised when they meet artists, expecting to adore them only to find they don’t like them at all. No one can be a rebel against the status quo and be in all ways lovable.
In the public mind, artists are famous faces at a distance – surely they must live exciting, liberated lives? Well, some have the strength, energy, wealth and momentum to carry all before them till they drop. But such people never have time to be self-aware. They don’t look in mirrors and those who don’t die young have to race against the death of their idea. Exciting, liberated life? No – interesting and sometimes liberating
, but not a middle-class life of choice, not comfort laid on, not ‘niceness’. Sometimes David catches himself in a mirror. He sees helplessness and self-hate – not because he lacks talent, but because he feels unworthy of the talent he has.
I’m sitting by his bedside. He’s small and compact, nicely shaped with skin like new caramel in spite of all the tubes keeping him alive. He’s well known in the art world, but not outside it: nevertheless, he’s so distinctive that people assume they’ve seen him before. People will say to me, ‘Oh, you know him! He’s so interesting! He’s so nice! I’ve always loved David!’ They like the idea of David – a person who makes original, exquisite objects. They think he is at home in himself, that it’s peace and beauty that stimulate his output. But it isn’t. It’s despair. And from despair the most delicate beauty flowers. He does so much so doggedly because every time he looks up he reads his own failure in the world. He is tormented and elegant, graceful art is his heaven, the place where there is harmony, joy, innocence and love. He wasn’t made to live forever and he reads that as ‘doesn’t deserve to live forever’. If you ask him ‘who does?’ he’ll cut you off with rage. You’re expected to know that he should live forever: there’s something about him that’s special and sacred – he ought to be given the chance to be with it and stay with it.
His voice that has always had a velvety timbre, even when he abuses its pleasantness in anger, has become feeble now. He has said hello. His eyes are very dark blue and his lashes are long. I can’t deny that, even at death’s door, he’s beautiful. His head moves on the pillow so he can see me and a smile slips up one cheek. How dare it be so precious?
How dare it remind me of the poems he used to read us to foster our feeling for words? Tendril, neck curl, pickerel smile?
But he will surely break it – and he does – ‘How old is your mother now?’ he asks.
‘Ninety-nine,’ I answer. Such a question to ask at the end of his life!
Window Gods Page 38
