by JH Fletcher
Look at my grandmother’s paintings. She came to Australia while she was still too young to remember anywhere else. Australia was her country. She spoke with an Australian accent, her loyalty was here and nowhere else. She had an Australian passport, that idiotic piece of paper without which the bureaucrats of all countries — the first true internationalists — claim we do not exist.
And yet …
To anyone who studies her paintings, the message is unequivocal. Taken from her home when she was a few months old, her father having been shot as the rebel he never was, brought to this land on the far side of the earth by a woman half-demented by the terrors that had so nearly engulfed her on the way, Marie Desmoulins was truly at home nowhere on earth. And that is the other side of the adventurer’s coin: all of us — Vivian Fuchs, Ed Hillary, Chris Bonnington and Alan Lassiter — seek the idea and fulfilment of a far-off place because we have never learned to be content with the place we have.
I would have walked the Martian deserts, had it been possible.
Perhaps that is why I always felt so close to Marie, despite the difference in our ages. Because she, like all artists, was always seeking. Except that, where I sought fulfilment in the far places of the earth, she looked for it in landscape and in men’s hearts.
I have a portrait of myself that she painted when I was eight. The corner of a dark, heavily furnished room. The pressure of the furniture, of the things that menace the spaces of the canvas so oppressively, is almost palpable. In the far recesses of the painting, almost lost within the shadow, the child. Alone.
Fifty-seven years ago, yet I remember the occasion so well. The ferns about the doorway were like bars. Marie could see not only what was in her heart but also in mine. There it hangs, upon the wall. I have had huge offers, but shall never sell it. It will remain there, always, to remind me of the prison from which I escaped and to which, in the end, I returned.
I have other things she left me: the use of this house until I die, when it goes to the nation; some money; a vase so horrendously ugly that I find it hard to believe she allowed it into her house, never mind her life. I smell a story attaching to that vase, but what it is I do not know. The thing of real value that she left me is, of course, my memory of her; but that was never laid down in any legal document, and is all the more precious because of it.
I do not want to attend tonight’s dinner because Giles Kingdon will be there; one of his authors has recently published a book about core samples taken from the icecap. No doubt it contains much useful data. I have not read it.
It is not because of the book that I am reluctant to meet him. It is because I know that he will be at me once again to come up with — what was the extraordinary expression he used? — the good oil about Marie Desmoulins.
What he really wants from me is scandal, tales of orgies to titillate the minds of those who believe that the famous, the achievers, are so much worse than the rest of us. Unhappily, it is an Australian trait. Tall poppies must not only be cut but trampled: unless they are sportsmen in the pay of bookmakers.
He will get no tales of orgies from me, or of anything.
‘There must be papers, old letters. Photographs …’
‘There is nothing.’
‘I could send someone to give you a hand, have a look through the records. You wouldn’t be troubled, at all.’
‘There are no records.’
I do not care that he does not believe me.
On the wall of her studio Marie had a portrait, not her own, but the reproduction of an ancient work. Edward Plantagenet, later Edward IV of England.
There is a legend, perhaps true, that the sun, distorted by mist, rose over the field where later that day he was to fight a great battle. He is said to have heartened his men, alarmed by the sun’s double image, with the cry ‘Behold the sun in splendour!’ He won the battle, and the sun in splendour became his emblem.
From the time she first heard the story from Lukas Smart, it became my grandmother’s emblem, too. For the most part, although not invariably, her battles were not with soldiers but with light. Light and the sun were the most important symbols in her life yet, towards the end, she came to believe that even these had betrayed her. The blackness engulfed her, the pressure of fame and other people’s eyes compelled her finally to hide from the light.
I shall not prolong her suffering by permitting any further invasions of the privacy that was so fundamental a part of the protection she sought against the world.
‘But she is dead,’ Kingdon would protest. ‘She has been dead forty years.’
She is not dead but vigorously, vibrantly alive. In any case, who is to say that the dead do not suffer? She certainly suffered a good deal in the earliest days of her life. Even after the three of them finally reached Sydney, the city on the far side of the world that they had never thought to visit, things were hard. Although it is true that they became better in time — in material ways, at least.
Eugénie
1
The dock was crowded, small boats everywhere. The jetties, too, were thronged with people yet, to Eugénie, standing at the rail as the vessel was made fast after its long journey, all — the bustling city, the land itself — might have been as deserted as the ocean they had just crossed.
She and the children seemed the only ones with no-one to meet them. All around, other passengers were leaning over the rail, waving excited hands and calling to people on shore. Their voices scourged the breeze that brought with it the alien scents of an unfamiliar land and, with them, the threat of loneliness and abandonment. After so many weeks, the ship had become home or, at least, a haven. Now they were about to leave it, to set out into this new and terrifying place where they knew no-one, had no-one who knew them, no-one to care whether they lived or not.
She had been seeking a new life; what she might find here could quite easily be death: of hope, of life itself, perhaps. She had been alone in France, had been terrified in France, but there, at least, she had been comfortable with the language, the way of life had been natural to her, there had been people whom she knew.
Even her cousin and his woman, the police themselves, would have been a welcome sight here. Where all, all, was strange.
‘Do you see your cousin?’
She looked at the tall woman standing at the rail beside her. ‘Elle n’est pas là.’ She is not there.
She had told no-one of the absurd misunderstanding that had brought her to the far side of the world, instead of to England, as she had intended.
‘I’m sure she’ll be here soon. You did tell her you were coming?’
‘J’ai écrit.’
‘Speak English. You will have to, when you get ashore.’
‘I … I have written.’
‘Perhaps the letter went astray. Never mind. Things will work out well in the end.’
Since she in fact knew no-one, Eugénie had no such expectations, but would not admit it. ‘I think they will. Perhaps.’
Madame Chevalier was the woman who, with her family, had also boarded the ship in Noirmoutier. They had become acquainted during the voyage. The relationship had meant little — after so many weeks and so few people to talk to, Eugénie felt she had become personally acquainted even with the cockroaches — but Madame Chevalier had been kind. Condescending, too. She was an Englishwoman married to a French lawyer. Her husband had been compromised by his association with the Commune’s leadership, but remained a lawyer, nonetheless; it was not to be expected that the wife of such a man could have much in common with a young woman who had been married to an artist.
Perhaps it was because the two refugees had been drawn to each other by their shared situation; possibly Madame Chevalier had needed a friend or at least a confidante to while away the tedium of the voyage. Either way, Eugénie had been amenable, understanding that her role would be to listen much and say little. Yet it had not turned out quite like that, and there had been benefits for her, too, in the relationship.
‘How will you manage in Australia, not speaking the language?’
‘I do not know.’
‘I shall teach you,’ Madame Chevalier had decreed. ‘It will be of value to you and help pass the time for both of us.’
And had done so. Eugénie, to her surprise, had found it easy to pick up the rudiments of the language. Enough to get by, at least in the beginning.
Notwithstanding the gulf that Madame Chevalier had been at pains to preserve, they had got along quite well together. All things considered. Now they stood side by side at the rail, watching as the hawsers tethered the ship snugly to the wharf.
‘You must come and see us,’ Madame Chevalier said. ‘When you have settled in. We shall be able to support each other in this strange place.’ And laughed, as though the idea of needing support from anyone was absurd.
Her remark might have offered an extension of their shipboard friendship, but Eugénie was not deceived. Madame Chevalier was being polite; such an acquaintance could not be expected to survive the cold realities of the life that now would begin for both of them.
However, one courtesy deserved another, and to know one person in a strange country, even remotely, was preferable to knowing no-one at all. ‘That will be very agreeable, Madame. I look forward to it.’
They went ashore. Madame Chevalier was gone. With most of what remained of her savings, Eugénie found a room in Tench Street, a row of rundown tenements not far from the docks.
The lavatory, fly-blown and stinking, altogether horrible, was located in a wooden hut behind the building and was used by all the tenants. By contrast, the heads on board ship had been luxury. The first time she used it, Eugénie inspected it in dismay; that night she lay on the room’s bare boards, listening to the howling cacophony of drunks in the street below her window, and wondered despairingly what she had come to. It was the realisation of all her shipboard fears. They had arrived in a country where there was none to cherish them, where they could expect no-one to care if they lived or died.
The morning broke grey and blurred with rain. She did what she could to smarten herself up. Mustering her courage and the smattering of English that she had learned from Madame Chevalier, she knocked on the door of the next room. Discovered only a dilapidated man, old and booze-stinking, and thought better of it. She left three-year-old Aline in charge and went out to find work.
Somewhere, anywhere.
There was no work. She dared not stay away long; even so, by the time she got back, Marie was stinking, stupefied with screaming, while Aline, white-faced, was almost catatonic with fright and the responsibility that she had been too young to bear.
The next day Eugénie found a woman, managed to get her to understand what she wanted. For a consideration, the woman agreed to sit with the children until Eugénie returned.
Good. She set her teeth, her jaw. Today I shall find work.
And went out, her spirit a blare of courageous trumpets.
A greyness of streets to match the greyness of the day. Grey and cold, as the people she spoke to were grey and cold.
No work; no interest; no hope.
She asked where the artists lived; she could become a model, perhaps. No-one knew any artists and, in many cases, seemed affronted at the suggestion that such creatures might exist in a city caring, it seemed, as little for art as it did for Eugénie Desmoulins and her children.
One man glinted his eyes slyly at her and promised work, of a sort. Even with her little English, she understood what he was saying. She had not lost husband, home, country, all the familiar and consoling beacons of her life, had not undergone the terrors of the past year in order to end up on her back in a Sydney brothel. She walked away, but knew that the day might come when she would be compelled to return.
Another day; another.
A woman said, ‘But what can you do, dear?’
‘I used to be a dressmaker …’
Sent her to see a woman she knew, at the smart end of town where Eugénie had never ventured.
Mrs Vesta Franklin, very grand in her very grand establishment that sold the latest gowns, looked her up and down disparagingly, was about to send her on her way. Heard her accent, discovered that she came from Paris and was at once thoughtful.
‘Are you familiar with French fashions?’
‘But of course …’
The fashionable quarters of Paris had been as foreign to Eugénie as Africa, but she would have told this jut-busted woman she knew the fashions of Saturn, had it seemed likely to help.
Mrs Franklin suspected that the accent — so obviously genuine — might translate into gold.
‘Perhaps there may be something …’
A pittance, but a start. The brothel could wait.
She worked for it; oh yes. Nothing for nothing.
‘So talented,’ Mrs Franklin confided to her more favoured customers. ‘A genuine couturier. From a major Paris house. I tell you in confidence, of course.’ Knowing that the word would get around.
Eugénie was no couturier, but had been good at her job. She survived. She had been a striking-looking, almost beautiful, woman. Now, with the stress of the past months behind her, settled into a comfortable place far from the horrors of Tench Street, she became beautiful again, although not to the extent of alarming her employer. As well, for Mrs Franklin did not employ beautiful women. Her customers feared their impact upon husbands and protectors, who must themselves be protected from temptation. Eugénie, luckily, was beautiful in a discreet way, and so survived.
Life was looking up.
Months passed. Fluent in English now, but still with the accent, so delightful to Mrs Franklin, that she would retain all her life, Eugénie flourished. As did the children, who had managed to avoid the more dangerous illnesses of infancy. In Tench Street they would not have been so lucky.
Eugénie had recovered to the point where she was beginning to think in terms of a social life of her own. Discovered a problem. The children, undeniably, were an inhibiting factor. Not their fault, of course. She told herself she loved them as dearly as ever, but they did not fit in well with a social life. As she increasingly felt the need for adult company, for a man, as more and more she came to resent the restrictions that the children imposed upon her, she tried to ease her conscience by telling them stories about their father.
In these tales he was a glorious figure, handsome and powerful, wise and witty, loved by all. Above all, a very great artist. It wasn’t true. She had loved Alain with a clear-sighted vision that had told her, even in their first days together, that he was none of these things. He was a decent, gentle man, utterly without fire, unremarkable both in looks and personality. During their marriage it had not mattered, but now, as her attachment to his memory faded, she found it increasingly necessary to build him into something he had never been. As for his ability as an artist …
She had a painful memory of an occasion when some of their acquaintances had come to examine a selection of Alain’s paintings. When they had finished, one of them, known for his waspish tongue, had turned to another:
‘Why are we wasting our time with this fool?’
Eugénie had taken fire at once. ‘Let me tell you something, M’sieu Degas. Not everyone thinks as highly of your paintings as you do.’
She had dusted the floor with him but, in her heart, had known he was right. Alain would never be more than second-rate. She had defended him against the world, but the knowledge infuriated her. To starve with a genius was one thing; to do so with a man who would never amount to anything was a different matter entirely.
Then had come the Commune and questions of talent had flown out of the window.
To hear Eugénie tell it now, her husband had been the leader of the group that had come to be known, derisively, as the Impressionists, but her attempts to inflate his memory did not help her come to terms with her own way of life. She had not gone through all she had in order to work in a brothel, but neither did she have any amb
ition to be a nun.
Gold was found at a place called Charters Tors; Mrs Franklin was outraged by rumours of legislation to restrict the working week to forty-eight hours; shortly after the second anniversary of Eugénie’s arrival in Australia, an event took place to change her life.
2
M‘y sister is coming to stay for a few days,’ Mrs Franklin told Eugénie. ‘Poor Martha.’
Martha Shawcross was ten years younger than her sister but already a widow. She had become so three years earlier. She, her husband and baby son had lived at Woonga, in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. One night, while they were sleeping, fire had broken out. Husband and child had died in the flames; Martha herself had been appallingly burned, but had survived. After a fashion.
‘I sometimes believe it would have been better if she had died as well,’ confided Mrs Franklin. ‘She is badly scarred, poor thing.’
It was true. Martha Shawcross walked with a lurching limp; down the left side of her face the flesh had been melted by flame, leaving scar tissue that shone red and shiny in the light. Yet you could tell that she had been a well-favoured woman, once.
‘Of course, no-one will have her now,’ mourned Mrs Franklin.
It did not seem likely, indeed, although the rest of her face had been untouched by the fire and her eyes and mouth were kindly, with a life in them that the dead tissue would never have again.
Aline stared at her with interest. ‘What have you done to your face?’
Mrs Franklin looked outraged, but Martha smiled. ‘It got burned.’
‘Does it hurt?’
‘No.’
And that was that.
Martha Shawcross sat with Eugénie in the little office at the back of the shop. She was probably in her late thirties. She was not gracious, as Madame Chevalier had been and as Vesta was, when she remembered. Instead was friendly and interested.
