The Making of Christina

by Meredith Jaffe

  Christina watched Jackson clean his fingernails with his teeth and sighed. How right Mary-Lou was. Time had certainly taken some of the shine off their relationship but she needed no reminders of what life would be like without him. Every time he went to Vietnam, loneliness threatened to engulf her. She tried to make the most of the girl time with Bianca, but sometimes she swore Bianca avoided her, splitting her time between Phoebe and the ponies. Soon Bianca would finish school and make her own way in the world. Christina would be lucky then that she did have Jackson. If she’d remained a single mother, she’d be all alone.

  Christina made her way to the bathroom, washed her hands and checked her face in the mirror. Forty. Goodness. Finally, unavoidably, middle-aged. Turning this way and that, she searched for new lines, stray hairs, signs of grey. ‘C’mon, CC, get a wriggle on.’ Jackson poked his head through the door. ‘I’ve booked the table for seven.’

  Christina was grateful that at least this birthday Jackson was making an effort. He had booked at Bartholomews Table, the newly renovated restaurant at the Grand Hotel. For a man who never drank, Jackson spent much of his spare time there, which Christina suspected was due to the new licensees. Dave and Sharon treated Jackson with a level of deference bordering on worship. Jackson enjoyed basking in the warm rays of their attention. Christina found them sycophantic but she never said anything; she didn’t want to get her head bitten off.

  Between courses, Bianca gave her a body lotion and soap set from the chi-chi homewares store in town, a purchase she knew was funded by Jackson. Far more meaningful was Bianca’s handmade card. It had an arty photo of Sugar and Licorice in a misty paddock on the front cover and on the back was Bianca’s hand-drawn Busy Bee logo: the words ‘made with love by’ circling a little gold and black bee.

  ‘Thank you, sweetheart. I love it.’ Christina reached across the table and clasped Bianca’s hand. Bianca dipped her head, her long curls concealing her face.

  Christina contemplated her daughter. Bianca had blossomed from the skinny little girl who was all elbows and knees. She wore a top Christina thought too mature for her when they saw it in the shop, but Jackson had vetoed her decision, saying, ‘Bianca’s old enough to pick her own clothes.’ And so her half-woman daughter sat in the soft glow of the candlelight in a diaphanous peach top with barely there straps and an immodest amount of cleavage. Christina supposed she would have to get used to this. Rebellion was not Bianca’s nature and if this was as far as her rebellious streak went, then Christina had much to be grateful for.

  ‘Happy Birthday, CC.’

  Christina blinked. Jackson held out a flute of French champagne, an amused look on his face as if he had already said this once.

  She released Bianca’s hand. ‘Sorry, honey. I was thinking what a beautiful woman Bianca is turning into.’

  Jackson surprised her by passing Bianca a glass of champagne too. ‘Like mother, like daughter.’ He splashed champagne in his glass and raised a toast.

  Jackson had once told her why he didn’t drink. At seventeen he’d been at a party where he’d drunk himself into a stupor and he’d never touched the stuff again. Strange, then, that he would encourage Bianca.

  ‘To my beautiful partner without whom I’d achieve half the things I do.’ They clinked glasses, Jackson putting his down untasted. Bianca sipped hers, rubbing the flavours across her lips with her tongue before taking another, more generous sip and relaxing back in her chair. Christina expected her to wrinkle her nose but she acted as if she drank French champagne all the time. She was definitely growing up way too fast.

  By the time they got home, Christina was a bit tipsy. She kissed Bianca goodnight and watched her walk down the darkened corridor until Bianca switched on her bedroom light. When she walked into their bedroom, Jackson ordered her to close her eyes.

  Christina giggled. ‘Why? It’s pitch black in here. What’s happened to the lights?’ She bit her lip as Jackson tied a silky cloth across her eyes and led her to the bed. When he pushed her down, she laughed, her body tingling with anticipation. It had been months since Jackson had instigated sex.

  ‘Don’t move,’ he said.

  She heard him padding across the floor, a rustling sound on the other side of the room where Jackson kept his drawer of toys. Not knowing his intentions escalated her excitement.

  Jackson returned, pulled her to a sitting position and removed the blindfold. The smile on her lips faltered and died as Jackson stood before her, fully clothed. He switched on the bedside lamp. ‘Do you notice anything different?’

  She dropped her gaze to his feet, followed a line to his face and found nothing but his grin. Christina dragged her eyes away from him and scanned the room – bedside tables, the chest of drawers, a painting.

  Christina sprang to her feet. ‘Oh my God! Jackson, it’s . . . It’s . . . Where on earth did you find her?’

  It was so much bigger in real life – at least the size of a small dining table. Although she had studied the photo countless times, it was like removing a veil and revealing its true face. Christina stepped away so she could study the painting in its entirety.

  The subject was a young woman reposing nude on a chaise lounge covered in crimson velvet and edged in gold brocade. Her hair was the colour of burnished copper filled with golden highlights that cascaded in a curling mane over her creamy shoulders. At her side crouched a much older man, his billowing white shirt undone to the waist, his hand raised to touch the pale pink nipple centred on a full and milky breast. One of the maiden’s hands covered her pubis, the other she offered to another man standing behind her. He was kissing the pale skin inside her slender wrist and a mass of dark locks hid his face from view. A third man cradled the heel of one foot in his palm and kissed her unvarnished toes, leering up at her through bushy eyebrows. To the right of this scene was an ornate gold pot in which grew an apple tree covered in blushing fruit. Above it, a small window framed a starry moonlit night. In the other corner lay a King Charles spaniel with its head resting on its paws, looking up at its mistress with doleful eyes.

  Onto the gilt frame was screwed a small gold plaque with the painting’s name inscribed on it. She knew its name but how wonderful to run her fingers over its etched grooves and say the words aloud, ‘The Ravishing of Sophia by Bartholomew Rivers.’

  A picture in an art history book had not prepared Christina for the real thing. The painting assaulted her senses. Leaning in close, she swore she could smell the varnish. She patted the roughened texture of the canvas, felt the ridges of oil paint and traced the almost illegible scrawl of Bartholomew Rivers’ signature. What startled her, what she had not anticipated, was the depth and vibrancy of the colours. Close up, the individual oils Rivers had used to create the translucent skin of the maiden separated, every hair in the bushy eyebrows of the kneeling man was an individual stroke. The fullness of Sophia’s lips and the pale pink of her nipples were the same hue. Her eyes shone, black with just a rim of hazel, her eyelids fluttering so that her gaze seemed unfocused and full of lust. Sophia was glorious and, like the apple tree in its pot, burdened with ripeness for the picking. That’s what made the picture so disturbing.

  ‘It must have cost a fortune,’ she said.

  ‘It was worth every penny, my love.’ Jackson folded his arms around her and rested his chin on her shoulder. ‘I know you think I don’t care about this project of yours, but the truth is, I seem to have absorbed all your prattle by osmosis. I thought if I bought you one of his paintings, you might shut up about Rivers for five minutes.’

  Christina laughed. ‘Are you crazy? I think you’ve just made it worse.’

  Jackson groaned. ‘Oh, well. More fool me.’ He turned her around and kissed her in a way she had almost forgotten, but her body remembered. ‘I just thought that a beautiful rare girl deserves a beautiful rare gift once in her life.’

  A fist of heat burned in her belly.
>
  Jackson lifted the hair from the nape of her neck and kissed her there. ‘Happy Birthday, CC.’

  As he kissed her, Christina studied the magnificent Sophia, the way her locks curled and wound around her shoulders almost as if they were alive with desire. So much younger than Christina had thought from the photos and so much more beautiful. She shuddered as Jackson’s kisses descended her spine. Her nipples tightened as Jackson slid the straps from her shoulders and the dress slipped to her waist. His hands ran over her skin and she knew she would give him everything, anything, as long as he kept touching her this way.

  ‘How did you manage to keep her a secret? I would have been bursting.’

  Jackson pressed her dress over her hips so it slid to the floor. ‘That’s half the fun,’ he said, ‘keeping a secret.’

  He swung her around onto the bed, lifting her knees and spreading her legs. Christina opened them more, she wanted him to see how ready she was, but Jackson shook his head, positioned her knees back the way they had been. He moved up her body, put pillows beneath her shoulders and lifted her left arm above her head so her breasts sat high on her chest. He glanced at the painting and placed her other hand over her pubis, making sure her fingers fell the same way. Lastly, he arranged her hair in cascading curls over her shoulders. Satisfied, he stepped back so he could admire the painting and Christina in one glance. He smiled and said, ‘So do you want to pretend you’re a beautiful young virgin and let me ravish you?’

  chapter sixteen

  It was late spring of their fifth year at Bartholomews Run before Christina turned her attention away from the garden and back to the house. An unusually dry winter meant the time was now perfect to sand and polish the timber floors of the main rooms. They were decamping to the south wing so the resealed floors could cure.

  ‘Only you could get this excited about parquetry,’ Jackson grumbled as they manoeuvred Bianca’s bed into one of the spare rooms.

  ‘Hmmph.’ Bianca blew a loose strand of hair out of her face as she shuffled after them carrying armfuls of clothes. ‘Clearly you haven’t seen Mum in the kitchenware shop in town. People have been born and died in the time it takes her to pick tea towels.’

  ‘Oh ha ha, Bianca,’ Christina shot back over her end of the bed. ‘I could say the same about you in the saddlery.’ Was it just Bianca, or did all teenagers think they had the wisdom of the universe? Still, at least Bianca was talking to her. That always made a pleasant change.

  Despite Christina’s imagined artists’ retreat, the south wing had remained unheeded since they moved here. They had more than enough space in the main house to never bother with these rooms. Visitors were rare and on the odd occasion anyone did stay over, it would be rude to banish them to the far reaches of the house. Della had stayed one time when Jackson was in Vietnam. Izzy and Bianca had ended up sleeping top to toe and Tom and Della had bunked down in the room next door to Christina. That was years ago though. Somehow a second visit had never eventuated. Time and distance had undone the spontaneity that was once the hallmark of their friendship. Christina missed Della and their shared confidences, but she guessed their friendship could never be the same without the constant contact they once enjoyed.

  The bed installed, Christina walked through the south wing. It consisted of a long hallway with a series of rooms opening out onto the sandstone terrace. At the end of the corridor was a room unusual for its hexagonal shape. Revisiting it reminded Christina how lovely it was. On the far wall was a marvellous fireplace flanked by bookcases made from the honeyed timbers of Queensland maple. French doors opened onto the terrace. Christina tried the doors and found them locked. None of the keys in her possession fitted.

  Irritated, she searched the shelves for the missing keys but found nothing more than mouse droppings and wafers of dead silverfish. Reaching the centre of the bookshelves, she tugged on the mother-of-pearl handles of the one cupboard. It sprang open, revealing a lid with a bevelled mirror. Green baize lined the interior and glass shelving went around the perimeter. Its purpose was obvious even before she picked up a broken swizzle stick.

  Christina wondered why Rivers would have put a cocktail cabinet at the far end of a long corridor at the furthest reaches of the house. In the days when people changed for dinner, it wasn’t the most convenient place to congregate for aperitifs. But after four years spent sourcing stories about Bartholomew Rivers, Christina had tired of trying to second-guess him. She circuited the room, noted the unusual sunburst pattern of ceramic tiles around the fireplace and a set of pokers that again featured those little gnomic men from the driveway gates, this time on the handles. She examined one for the BR brand and found it at the top of the shaft. The man from the Heritage Council had found Bianca’s discovery of the brand interesting but insufficient. As a result, Bianca’s momentary enthusiasm for the project had waned. Christina didn’t blame her; she too flagged as every avenue of inquiry turned into a dead end.

  Earlier in the year she’d received a curt reply from a second cousin of Mary Rivers who said their family had no interest in discussing that ‘dreadful’ man. More recently, her hopes had risen when Constance Sutton’s niece had said she’d love to help Christina with her inquiries. Thrilled, Christina had responded with an eager offer to visit them at Bartholomews Run and see the gardens for herself. However, Carol’s reply had intimated that her visit would be dependent on financial restitution. Christina had declined the offer but not before Jackson said, ‘I told you so.’

  It was always the way. Jackson had no problem with Christina’s ‘obsession’ so long as it did not involve him. She knew he humoured her quest for heritage listing for one reason and one reason alone – it would add substantial value to the property. He had zero interest in unravelling the secrets of Bartholomew Rivers.

  Christina closed the lid of the cocktail cabinet. The mechanism was a little jerky but nothing a few drops of sewing machine oil wouldn’t fix. She ran her hands across its surface, thinking how thrilled Jackson would be about this marvellous piece of furniture. By now Jackson could name every country town that held a fete, spring fair or car boot sale, whether a village had an old wares shop or ran to a full-blown antiques store. He and Bianca regularly set out early on a Saturday morning and returned late in the day with a haul of junk. Bianca had a collection of porcelain ponies, and chickens for some reason; a pair of stag heads hung above the fireplace in the lounge and they now had a designated games room with a full-sized period billiard table including revolving cue stand and a restored marking board. The hidden cocktail cabinet would be a further delight.

  Christina turned to leave but stopped short. To her left, painted into what she’d thought was a blank wall, was a cupboard. She ran her fingers around its perimeter. There was no architrave, so the door sat flush in its frame, and someone had sealed it there with several coats of paint. She needed something to jimmy it open with.

  Intrigued, Christina strode down the hallway. She checked in on Bianca who lay on her bed leafing through a back issue of an old Hoofs & Horns magazine, just as Christina had when she was fifteen. Jackson had stumbled across a car boot full of them at a sale and picked up a couple of boxes for five bucks each.

  ‘A bargain!’ he’d said, lugging them through the house and dumping the boxes on Bianca’s bedroom floor.

  ‘Ew!’ Bianca had recoiled. ‘Why exactly would I want some mouldy old magazines?’

  Christina had fallen to her knees. ‘Oh, I used to devour these as a kid. Every month I’d get off the bus in town and go straight to the newsagent for the new issue. It meant an hour’s walk home and having to put up with Mama yelling at me for being late, but I didn’t care.’ She pulled a random issue from the closest box and leafed through it. ‘God, how I dreamed one day it would be me on the front cover, Pizzazz all sleek and shiny with a row of championship ribbons tied around his neck. Maybe it will be you instead, Bee, huh?’ Jackson and Bianca had stare
d at her as if she were mad.

  And yet, here lay Bianca, headphones on, foot tapping along to the tune blasting in her ears, giving an excellent impression of being as engrossed in an old Hoofs & Horns as she used to be. Christina checked her watch: two-thirty, Jackson was due home soon; if she hurried and opened that door, she might have a surprise for him. Scrabbling through the toolbox, she found a paint scraper with a narrow blade and a torch.

  Passing Bianca’s bedroom again, Christina noticed she was getting changed. ‘Are you going for a ride, sweetheart?’

  Bianca whipped around, a pair of jodhpurs in her hands. Silhouetted against the window, revealed the curve of her chest and a narrow waist. Thighs made strong and shapely via horse riding had replaced the skinny legs of childhood. The ubiquitous sack of a school uniform kept all this shapeliness hidden. Christina found it hard to reconcile this blossoming woman with the traces of the girl she carried with her from childhood – the braces on her teeth, the way she covered her mouth when she laughed, and tattered Bluey Baa-Baa flopped on the chest of drawers. She hadn’t shared a bathroom with Bianca since Sydney. In this rabbit warren of a house, they could pick and choose where they bathed, every day if they wanted to, and she now saw the price of such affluence. In Sydney, teeth had been cleaned whilst someone showered; makeup had been put on despite someone’s pressing need for the loo. In Sydney, Christina had known every inch of Bianca’s body.