‘That’s old. That’s very old,’ he says as if Stella’s life were neither deserved nor undeserved, nor to be compared to his sixtytwo years.
‘Did I ever tell you that you have ugly arms?’
Why that? Why now? ‘Yes, David, you’ve told me that.’
‘Why do you think I told you?’
‘I can’t read your mind.’
‘It was tenderness, Isobel, tenderness.’ He has strained forward, as if it is the most earnest thing he has ever said…
‘But it was so very odd, David…I had the feeling it was tenderness but it was such an odd way of expressing it – tenderness in a hurtful statement.’
‘Ugly is beautiful. Ugly is unique. No two ugly things are the same.’
‘That’s a fine thought, David. But why are you so bitter? Why do you act so appallingly towards me? I’ve done my best for you, my level best…’ and I feel the tears rising.
‘Listen. I want you to listen to me.’
‘I’m listening.’
He runs the back of his fine hand down my ugly arm in the most tender of gestures, just as he did on the day he married Allegra. ‘Nin…’ He starts coughing. Everything starts to crack up with pain, to derail. Water doesn’t help. Soon he is screaming and a nurse comes. It’s a male nurse. He quietens him down. ‘There, there,’ he says. ‘There, there.’
‘No. No. No. No, don’t give me morphine yet. Isobel?’ the voice squeezes past the iron grip the illness has on his throat.
‘Yes.’ It is terrible to see so much pain, but my breath keeps going in and out.
‘Nin is not my daughter.’
‘Oh for God’s sake, David! How could you? How dare you say that?’ ‘No. No. You don’t understand. Isobel. Nin is Barrie Bull’s daughter.’
‘What!’ Barrie Bull was the painter whom David belted up in the fight that wrecked my show.
‘You don’t understand. I was cruel to Allegra. She went off with Barrie Bull and got even with me.’ He is spluttering and in agony.
Once again at his expense, I feel the withdrawal of my blood cells from my capillaries. ‘You melodramatic bastard!’
‘She did, Isobel. I was cruel and she hurt me. I suspected – and when Barrie Bull mocked me, I hit him. Nin isn’t mine. I didn’t realise. I didn’t want to realise.
’ ‘I don’t believe you. You’re making it up. You’re saying that to spook me. You wrecked my show out of straight-out jealousy. You’ve never owned the pain and harm you caused.’
‘Oh, I’ve owned it. I’ve owned it.’ And he sobs, deep, body shuddering sobs. ‘Nin isn’t mine. I wish she was mine. I wish that Nin was mine.
’ ‘Oh David!’
‘I can’t go on,’ he wheezes.
‘No, you can’t go on.’
‘My muvva came to see me,’ he says. ‘She thinks that Nin is mine. Please don’t tell her. Please.’ David has always had a childish speech impediment, his mind has never found its way around the words ‘mother’ and ‘father’.
‘You ruined me,’ I say. ‘You ruined my show.’
‘Please don’t tell my muvva, Isobel.’
I sat with him an hour or so longer, too emotionally played out to move. He hardly spoke again. Sometimes I stood up and looked out the hospital window. I saw the old street where Mad Meg was and the old house still is, though not visible from where I was standing. Further up the hill were Miles Turner’s Figments, a dark, plain front and right at the top, the building that housed Siècle, its roof a splash of red in the afternoon light. I thought back to the time when David flooded us with his excited and clever ideas on art and introduced us to painters we hadn’t heard of and to ways of looking we hadn’t known. Part of me wanted to thank him for those days and the gifts he gave before the first manifestations of his violence but the violence got in the way.
How could he pretend that Nin was not his child? Or if she were not, how could he have pretended all her life?
I went back to the bed and said above his body, ‘Are you telling the truth?’ and from the centre of the place where he was lying, he said, ‘Yes.’ And there was no apology forthcoming, even on the brink of death. If there were to be an apology, it would have to come from there; I was not going to coax it: without an apology I could not forgive. If he was too small, then he was way too small.
It is hard to be at a deathbed and to find that there is no graceful exit. There was no way away from that last impression, a breakfast tray pushed to one side with nothing eaten, the smell of illness, then of warm piss when he wet himself and let out a cry. The nurse came in to clean him up. I had to go. I could not stay.
Out on the street again, it was still and hot and Sunday. Some big event was on in town and the streets were deserted. I waited a long time for the tram with my eyes closed, listening to the sound of the occasional indifferent passing car. Eventually the ringing of tram wheels, the sigh of the opening doors at the stop, the sound of my shoes on the steps as I climbed inside, and the emptiness within.
Later, when Mick had roused me with food and coffee, I found the strength to call Jeremy and he asked me to come into the bookshop for a talk. We sat in his office. He held my clammy little fist in his dry, warm hand.
‘Is it true that he isn’t Nin’s father?’
‘Yes. And when Nin had him arrested, he just let it all hang out.’
‘In front of Nin?’
‘Yes.’
‘How can I take this?’
‘As a fact of life, Bel. Nin knows. She is blood group B, David and Allegra were both A.’
‘Why don’t people tell the truth?’
We sit in silence, his enveloping hand a comfort. At last it moves gently away, my eyes come open and he sits back in his chair. ‘Nin has taken it well,’ he says.
I ask, ‘You don’t mean flippantly? Ninny has a tendency to flip…’
‘No. She has spirit and courage. You brought her up. She’s resilient. And she has Wendy and Wendy is resilient. Now you must be resilient.’
‘He is a wound, that man.’
‘But he’s not your wound. You mustn’t wear him.’
‘He’s taken so much from my life.’
‘If it’s any consolation to you, Isobel, you were the only person who ever looked deeply into David and found what was there.’
‘What do you mean? I never picked his work up, showed it, promoted it, held it up for people to see.’
‘None of that matters to David. What you did was coax it out. You pulled on a thread and he felt it and spent the rest of his life following that thread that you located. You can take hold of your life, now, your thread.’
‘Funny you should use that metaphor. A thread…’ It is true that his art started to develop when we painted alongside each other, he at Figments, me at Mad Meg. We thought about work then, what it was to be painters, what art was. ‘Oh, I have hold of my thread. Yes, I still have hold of it, just that my thread is made up of so many different strands, I’m not always sure I can hold it without its unravelling. David told me that his mother came to visit him. Did you meet her?’
‘His mother?’
‘Yes. He has a mother somewhere. I’ve never met her. She’s the sister of Miles and Bart Turner.’
‘Odd. Miles Turner told me that David’s mother died a long time ago. She lived in Terrigal or somewhere and had two or three other kids. I think she died while you were living out of Melbourne…’
‘But he said, “Don’t tell my mother.”’
‘Could he have meant “your mother”?’
‘Hardly. He and she hated each other. But it’s funny, he asked me how old she was now. Isn’t that weird? What a thing to ask on your deathbed – hello, Isobel, how old’s your mother now?’
We’ve resorted to the whisky bottle.
‘And how old is she now?’ asks Jeremy.
‘Ninety-nine. What the fuck?’
‘Well, here’s to Stella!’ And we drink a toast to her.
‘Their birthd
ays are within days of each other. She’s a Taurus and he’s a Gemini.’
‘Well, here’s to Mad May,’ he says.
‘When’s yours?’
‘Christmas Day,’ says Jeremy.
‘Well, here’s to the Christ Child as well. Have you known or suspected for a long time that Nin wasn’t David’s?’
‘Quite a while.’
‘Did anyone else suspect?’
‘The only person I know who did was Barrie Bull.’
‘Really? I thought I could see characteristics of David in her. Her beautiful hands and feet. Her thick hair.’
‘Allegra had those. Your hair’s thick and straight, like Nin’s. That comes from your side. David’s neat.’
‘God, Ninny’s not!’
‘No. And there’s a stiffness to David, you know. He strides, he jerks, even when he’s being eloquent, there’s a staccato element to it, a kind of prissiness. Nin isn’t prissy. Not at all. But she is limber. She can turn a somersault. Her thumbs turn back, yours don’t. David’s don’t.’
‘Gosh. No. When you think of it…’
‘Barrie Bull’s do. And he’s an athlete. Used to do gymnastics.’
‘And would he want to know about his daughter?’
‘He’s never suggested it to me. He already had two daughters by the time Nin was born.’
‘Oh Christ! It’s sounding like our family story all over again. Does Checkie know?’
‘No. To my knowledge only Barrie, Nin and I are in on it. But Barrie hasn’t shown any paternal interest in Nin. David has. You can’t reject David as Nin’s father, except genetically. For all intents and purposes, he’s as much Nin’s father as Wendy is Daniel’s mother.’
‘I suppose; although Wendy’s a caring and supportive parent.’
‘David cares. He’s just completely inept.’
‘I guess that’s right. I’m going to have to come around to all these new concepts of parenting that are abounding. I have a friend who calls them “modern arrangements”. And so they are.’
There’s half a bottle left and half an hour to go before Mick comes to pick me up.
‘So many genes in the world,’ I say, ‘that we’re all pretty closely related.’
‘Yes,’ says Jeremy. ‘Like you and David. If you ask me, you’re David’s mother, the one he didn’t want you to tell. You’ve divided yourself in half for David and now he’s expecting you to keep something from yourself. Can’t be done, Isobel, can’t be done. You’d better tell his mother what you know.’
‘Crikey. That’s the most modern arrangement I’ve heard in all my life. Why do you think David never felt moved to apologise to me?’
‘I don’t think he allows himself to feel guilty for the way he’s treated you. He’d be overwhelmed if he did. He can’t repay you and can’t restore your work or your reputation.’
‘Then it doesn’t matter that I told Bronwyn about the brawl at Mad Meg. Why did you say at the book launch that I shouldn’t have brought it up?’
‘David was using me as his confessor, Bel. I was thinking of it from his point of view. He was terrifically hurt and angry about Allegra’s affair when he picked the fight.’
‘It was wanton and wrong.’
‘Yes.’
‘I didn’t deserve it.’
‘No. I know you didn’t and I’ll never forget what you said to me that night. “I don’t want to be known as a feminist test case. I want to be known for what I do. That’s not too much to ask for a lifetime of trying.” I might have jested about you going broke because you didn’t keep your books properly but I understand the rightness of the wish to be known for what you do. Keep doing it, Bel.’ And he smiles a smile that’s been carrying good cargo between us for forty years.
Such news isn’t taken in in a moment. I hadn’t fully absorbed it by the time David died four days later. I might never take it in completely – that from sheer, desperate desire to belong, he could keep this information from us. I felt deep pity for him, so deep that it overrode my own despair at having been used.
Used is one way of looking at it, proven is another. For I have also been proven.
The funeral was an odd affair, organised by Checkie before she and David fell out. Apparently he wanted Catholic rites because his mother was Catholic but in the event it was done in the High Anglican manner with a rather beautiful sung introit. She did turn up – indeed, she played chief mourner. It was a chance for her to resurrect the black onyx cross that she had worn after our father died. Her allies were all there, including Elspeth Roach. Jeremy was good enough to give the eulogy. He spoke of the Turner uncles, Bart and Miles, and said that nobody would pretend that David was an easy person to get along with. He was an artist of originality and his contribution would be celebrated at Siècle where he had worked for many years with his one-time sister-in-law, Cecilia Laurington. He left a daughter, Nin, and a mother to whom he’d recently been speaking – I let myself smile at that.
Nin and I came late, while the singing was on. We sat at the back. Checkie sat in the family pew. She held her head high and pretended not to see us. She is older than I am but has no wrinkles on her face. ‘Never goes out in the sun,’ Nin whispered. ‘Lives all her life in the dark.’ We stayed in the church for a while afterwards, then we went to the altar and lit candles.
In spite of the pomp, he was cremated and stuck in a wall at Fawkner. ‘Cheap,’ said Nin.
A few days later, Nin and Wendy welcomed a daughter into the world. She was called after her grandmothers with her great aunt stuck in the middle. Gorgon’s name is Georgia and Georgia Isobel Allegra took the surname Coretti, as Nin had always done. Thinking back on it, Allegra chose Coretti, saying that a daughter should take her mother’s name. It was a feminist statement.
It is January. My mother has gobbled her last Christmas dinner and sung her last carol. She is being handfed and refuses anything that isn’t ice-cream or chocolate or some other kind of treat. She’s failing.
Liz has arranged for us to go into a pleasant room that was about to be renovated when Stella stopped taking food. ‘You can stay over with her here. I think it would be best. In my experience, people have been brought back with drips from this point but really all that does is put a great pocket of saline under their skins, makes them uncomfortable and gives them bruises. We do it when relatives are coming from far away but in Stella’s case…’
‘Well, we want her to be comfortable. No point in suffering now.’
She isn’t speaking anymore. The room is big and light and has its own bathroom. There is a little garden outside the window. The last word she said as she swung by my head on the patient lifter was ‘Sibella’. Perhaps she recognises who I really am at last. She has never called me Sibella. Never. It was Dadda’s name, his special address for me.
There is an old priest who lives alongside the hospital in an independent residence. Liz has called him in to give the Last Rites. He is a nice old fellow with white hair and a pleasant manner.
He puts the stole around his neck and removes the holy oil from his bag.
‘In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost,’ he says and makes the sign of the cross on her forehead. ‘Through this Holy Oil and through the great goodness of His mercy, may God pardon thee whatsoever sins thou has committed….’
‘Ththththt…thrup!’
She has blown a raspberry.
‘Oh Lord! I’m so embarrassed, father. I’m sorry but I’m going to have to run for an Anglican.’ But the poor old father is already out the door with his pyx back in his bag and his stole folded. Liz comes in and holds me by the shoulders. We look over to where she lies, her eyes wide awake, staring at the ceiling, fuming, the Anglican breath still in her.
I pause on the steps before the church, hoping that the Anglican is in. I can see an office through the glass. The sunlight is warm, not to say blazing hot, on my back. I am struggling for wording. ‘I wonder if you could help me…’ yes, that seems the
right way to begin and soon I am in the office and the next moment standing before the vicar, a tall, unrumpled, grey-suited, dog-collared, bald chap, saying, ‘Um. I wonder if you could help me? My mother is dying. She’s an Anglican but she’s in a Catholic home nearby and this was the nearest church. She has just refused the Last Rites from the priest there and I was wondering if you would come…’
‘Is she a practising Anglican?
‘Well…’
‘I mean, does she go to church?’
‘She’s ninety-nine and not quite up to that, I’m afraid.’
‘Was she a regular attender?’
‘I wouldn’t say regular but she did go sometimes with her cousin.’
‘And what was her parish?’
‘Well she didn’t go in her own parish. She went in her cousin’s.’
‘And where was that?’
‘East Melbourne.’
‘High or Low?’
‘I don’t especially know. But she was christened in Scunthorpe. Her uncle was the bishop there, actually.’
‘I mean Catholic or Evangelical.’
Not liking the connotations of Evangelical, I say, ‘Well, we always used to say, “I believe in the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of the body and the life everlasting, Amen,” so I suppose Catholic.’
‘No. I don’t think you follow. There are two Anglican churches in East Melbourne. One follows the Catholic procedure.’
‘Really? I thought Catholic meant inclusive and Evangelical meant…well, bible bashing.’
He laughs, almost. ‘Catholic means observing the original rites of the church.’
‘Does it? I’m sorry, I’m out of my depth.’
‘We don’t give Last Rites.’
‘What! What do you mean?’
‘The Anglican Church doesn’t administer Last Rites.’
‘What do you do, then?’
‘Oh, don’t misunderstand me. We call it by another name. Extreme Unction.’
I feel I am going to lose my temper at any moment. ‘Look,’ I say, ‘I don’t really mind what you call it but my mother is at death’s door and she wants the Anglican rite, whatever it’s called, to see her out of the world. I would be devastated if she could not go with the rite she so desires. She no longer speaks and yet she has managed to make it quite clear it is you she wants, not the priest who is at the home. If I go and get her cousin to explain the nature of her faith to you, perhaps that will clear things up.’
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