Rifling Paradise

by Jem Poster

  I might have tried to explain, on Bullen’s behalf, the nature and power of an obsession I understood only too well, but I sensed that my efforts would be wasted on Vane. ‘I’m sure,’ I said, ‘that we shall find we have a good deal in common, Mr Bullen and I. I look forward to meeting him.’

  How easy it is, I thought, reflecting on Vane’s words as I strolled later among the eucalypts, to dismiss as unremarkable the marvels that lie most immediately about us. To me, everything was new, and everything a source of wonder, from the vivid green mantis rocking slowly back and forth on its twig to the cockatoos that rose at my approach, lifting into the bright air like a host of raucous angels, their wings suffused with sunlight. There was brilliance there but also, I realised as I began to examine my surroundings more carefully, a remarkable subtlety: I was particularly struck by the delicate coloration of the woodland foliage – the greens more muted than ours but no less various, interfused with soft shades of grey and touched with pale metallic lustres. I was so entranced by my discoveries that for some considerable time I was content simply to observe, and it was with something like regret that, coming upon a small group of parrots feeding in the undergrowth, I eventually unslung my rifle.

  My shot was not, I confess, a particularly good one, but one of the birds sat tight as the others scattered, and I knew at once that it had been hit. As I approached, it tried to launch itself into the air but fell flapping to the ground, beating the dust until it died. I lifted it up and wiped the blood from its beak with a leaf.

  I had always felt a degree of confusion at such moments, but on this occasion the combination of sorrow and excitement was peculiarly unsettling. I remember pacing up and down, gazing through a film of tears at the curve of the slack neck, the brilliance of the ruffled plumage. Breast upward, the bird glowed rich crimson, its throat patched with blue of an almost equal intensity; as I turned it on to its front, letting its head hang forward over the edge of my palm, I saw how the crimson seemed to bleed between the darker wing-feathers, accentuating their contours with a boldness that reminded me of an Egyptian wall-painting I had once coveted.

  ‘We call them lories,’ said Vane when I showed him the bird on my return. He had evidently completed his business and was sitting on the veranda steps cleaning his nails with a small pocket-knife. ‘Crimson lories. Ten a penny round these parts – though they’re handsome enough creatures, I grant you.’

  I replaced the body carefully in my satchel. ‘I shall have to presume further on your hospitality,’ I said. ‘Do you have an outhouse where I might prepare my specimens?’

  ‘There’s the barn. Ideal for your purposes, though I shall have to conduct some rather delicate negotiations on your behalf.’ He folded his knife, slipped it into his waistcoat pocket and hauled himself to his feet. ‘Leave the matter in my hands.’

  ‘When you say negotiations …?’

  ‘With Eleanor. The barn is her studio.’

  ‘She’s an artist?’

  ‘She likes to think so and, to tell the truth, she has a certain talent – though, as with so many things, she makes too much of it. Young women need something to keep their hands and minds busy – patchwork, sketching, embroidery, it doesn’t matter what – and I’ve always encouraged her. But in recent years her art, as she insists on calling it, has become an unhealthy preoccupation. When the mood takes her she’ll spend the entire day in the barn, refusing to let anyone in, hardly bothering to come out. She misses meals, or she comes to the table but won’t speak, bolts her food and scampers away again, like a half-tamed animal.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound as though she’ll welcome my company.’

  ‘I can guarantee that she’ll accept it. And it’s just possible’ – he gave a wry smile – ‘that your presence will exert a civilising influence. Heaven knows, she’s in need of it.’

  ‘You flatter me,’ I said lightly, ‘but civilising influences certainly exist. Indeed, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she were to be taken off your hands within a year or two and exposed to the civilising influence of matrimony.’

  I had intended the remark to be simultaneously humorous and reassuring, but Vane’s expression darkened suddenly and I realised at once that I had struck entirely the wrong note. ‘What I suggest,’ he said abruptly, ‘is that you leave me to settle matters with Eleanor. You might like to continue your exploration of the estate and return in twenty minutes or so.’ He gestured vaguely up the drive, turned on his heel and marched into the house.

  Twenty minutes would have seemed time enough, but as I turned the corner of the house and stepped up to the veranda, I heard Eleanor’s voice ring out, shrill and raw, through the open windows of the day-room. ‘If you won’t listen to what I say, then why trouble to ask me? I’m telling you, I shan’t be able to work with him sitting there.’

  And then Vane’s voice, half angry, half cajoling: ‘He has work of his own, Eleanor. He’ll not trouble you. And besides—’

  ‘It’s my studio. I’ll not have it turned into a poulterer’s shop.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd. And let me remind you that the barn was handed over to you with certain conditions attached. I’ve told you before, either you respect those conditions or—’

  ‘Just try it,’ she cut in viciously, lowering her voice so that I had to strain to catch the words. ‘Just you try keeping me out.’

  One hears of families in which the children are perpetually at loggerheads with their parents, but my own upbringing had impressed upon me the importance of filial obedience. ‘You may disagree with me,’ my father had told me on one occasion, ‘but while you’re under my roof you do as I say.’ As I grew to manhood, I found myself dissenting more and more frequently from his opinions, but it would never have occurred to me to express my opposition in any but the mildest terms. Eleanor’s words shocked me into embarrassed retreat, but as I walked back up the drive I found myself reexamining them with what I can only describe as a kind of excitement. I imagined the unseen tableau with vivid precision – the girl backed, quite literally, into a corner, but staring directly into her father’s face as she spat defiance at him – and I was almost sorry when, a good ten minutes later, Vane strode out to where I was loitering in the shade at the edge of the garden and told me that Eleanor would be delighted to share her studio with me for the duration of my stay.

  Predictably enough, our conversation at dinner that evening was not leavened by any expression of delight on the girl’s part. Vane talked loudly and a little wildly, as though he were desperate to distract my attention from Eleanor’s sullen silence, while I did my best to follow, through a haze of fatigue, the twists and turns of his rambling discourse. Only at the end of the meal, as the maidservant cleared away the dessert plates, did he change his tactics, leaning over to address his daughter directly. ‘I’m sure Mr Redbourne will be interested to see your work, Eleanor. Tell him what your instructor said about it.’

  ‘My instructor was a fool,’ said Eleanor curtly.

  Vane turned apologetically to me. ‘There was a falling out,’ he explained. ‘But Mr Rourke is an artist of some local reputation and he told Eleanor in my presence’ – he glanced sideways as though for corroboration – ‘that she had a rare talent as a watercolourist.’

  ‘What he admired in my work,’ said Eleanor, scratching irritably with her fingernail at a small stain on the tablecloth, ‘were the very qualities I despised in his. My father doesn’t agree with me, Mr Redbourne, but I’m certain that I paint a good deal better without Mr Rourke’s guidance than I ever did with it.’

  ‘You owe him a considerable debt,’ said Vane sharply, ‘and it’s neither kind nor honest to pretend otherwise.’

  Both glanced my way at precisely the same moment, and I saw with sudden clarity that their argument was an old one, now being rehearsed for my benefit. I wanted no part in it. I lowered my gaze and sat staring stupidly at my empty wineglass until Vane, rising abruptly from his chair, drew the uncomfortable proceedings to a c
lose.

  6

  The barn had been built in the English style, plain and sturdy, with thick walls of rough-hewn stone and a tiled roof. It would scarcely have looked out of place in a Cotswold village, I thought, setting down my satchel and instruments beside the pathway and shading my eyes against the early morning sunlight. The front wall was pierced by four small unglazed windows, two on either side of the double doors; the aperture in the gable – originally, I supposed, the loft doorway – had been incongruously fitted with a large, rectangular sash, while two square skylights, evidently of recent construction, had been inserted in the roof.

  Eleanor was there before me. Seated at a trestle table just inside the building, she was clearly asserting ownership both of the space she occupied and the light that fell on her through the open doorway. She raised her head as I entered, lifting her paintbrush and fixing me momentarily with a vague, unseeing gaze; then, without a word, she returned to her work.

  As promised by Vane, I had been supplied with a trestle of my own but, whether accidentally or through Eleanor’s machinations, it had been placed against the wall beneath one of the small windows. The light that fell on its surface was adequate for my purposes, but I could see at once that its positioning was significant: I should be working under Eleanor’s eye, but without the opportunity of observing her activities. It crossed my mind that I might simply move the trestle to a more favourable position but, on reflection, I decided against it. There would be time later, I told myself, for such adjustments.

  I unbuckled my satchel, took out the lory and laid it belly upward on the rough surface. ‘Is there a chair?’ I asked.

  For some time she said nothing, her gaze flickering between the paper pinned to her drawing-board and the bright orange nasturtium flower on the table in front of her. She continued to paint, but I sensed something faintly suspect in her concentration, a subtle hint of the theatrical. ‘Under the hayloft,’ she said at last, jerking her head sideways without looking up at me. ‘In the corner.’

  The battered chair I discovered there among the debris was hardly ideal – a little low for the table and with curving armrests that impeded my movements – but by placing a thick plank beneath its back legs, I was able to adapt it to my needs. I untied my canvas roll and laid it flat on the table, with the handles of the instruments towards me; then I drew out a scalpel and set to work, parting the crimson breast-feathers with my fingers before running the narrow blade down the body from throat to vent.

  There is nothing particularly difficult about skinning a bird, but the job requires immense patience. The thickness of the plumage is deceptive: the skin itself is thin and delicate, and separating it from the flesh is a necessarily slow process. I’ve learned by experience not to apply undue pressure but simply to use the end of the blade to tease the skin free of the tissue that binds it to the body. It’s not an entirely agreeable task, but I’ve always found it an absorbing one, and I’m apt, when engaged in it, to lose all sense of my surroundings.

  I don’t know how long Eleanor had been standing there when I became aware of her, close behind me, paintbrush in hand, looking over my shoulder at my handiwork. I started violently, sending the scalpel clattering across the table-top, and twisted round in my seat. ‘Don’t do that,’ I snapped.

  She backed away, but without taking her eyes off mine. ‘I’ve a right to do as I please in my own studio,’ she said. ‘Haven’t I?’

  I was at a disadvantage, embarrassed by my own outburst. ‘You frightened me,’ I said lamely. ‘I mean, I’d forgotten where I was.’

  ‘It happens to me too. I hate it when anyone comes in while I’m drawing or painting.’

  ‘How am I to take that, Eleanor?’

  She shrugged. ‘Take it as you please. You told me how you felt. I’m telling you how I feel.’

  ‘Would you rather I found somewhere else to work?’

  ‘My father says you’re to work here. I’ve no choice in the matter.’

  ‘I’m sorry. I’d never intended—’

  ‘It’s not your fault. But it isn’t easy for me, having you here. I don’t like being disturbed in my own work, and I don’t like the look of yours.’ She glanced down at the exposed flesh of the bird’s breast. ‘What’s it all for, anyway, this killing and skinning?’

  ‘All science,’ I said, easing my chair round so that I faced her directly, ‘is grounded in facts. A collector’s cabinet is a repository of facts from which important scientific truths may be deduced, and new theories constructed. We need these collections, Eleanor, if we’re to understand the world we live in – it’s as simple as that.’

  ‘You’re talking to me as though I were a schoolgirl. I know what science is, and I know what collectors think they’re doing. But what kind of a fact is it, your dead lory? You’ll take the skin back to England with you and you’ll lay it in your cabinet with a label round its neck. Now and again you might bring it out, perhaps for your own private satisfaction or to take a few notes on it, or perhaps to show it to another collector. This is a crimson lory, you’ll say. But it won’t be true. You know that as well as I do, Mr Redbourne. Whatever it is you imagine you’re laying hold of – for yourself, for your precious science – it’s gone the moment you pull the trigger.’

  I knew what she was driving at, and might have acknowledged as much, but she was working herself into a state of high excitement, the words tumbling out in a breathless torrent, and there seemed no opportunity to respond.

  ‘What you’re left with is a handful of skin and feathers – the sort of thing a milliner might use to dress a hat. It’s dead stuff, dry as dust, and nothing’s going to bring back the bird you had in your sights when you took aim. You’d do better,’ she added, turning nimbly and darting back to her table, ‘to try to catch something of its life. This’ – I saw her dip her brush twice and lunge at the paper on her drawing-board – ‘is a lory. And’ – another quick flourish – ‘so is this.’ She tilted the board to show me two running streaks of red slashed diagonally across the paper.

  ‘You’ve spoiled your painting.’

  She let the board fall to the table and put down her brush. ‘I don’t care,’ she said, but her jaw was set hard and tight as though she were biting back some unallowable grief. ‘Anyway, it was already spoiled.’

  ‘Let me see.’ I rose from my chair and stepped over to examine the painting more closely. I saw her move protectively towards it, one hand outstretched; then, with a little shrug, she stepped back and let me by.

  It was not, I saw at once, the kind of study that might have graced the pages of a botanical handbook. Bounded by the two bright slashes of red pigment, it glowed with a similar brilliance, rich and vibrant, but it notably lacked the precision we conventionally associate with scientific illustration. Yet the longer I gazed at the work, the more clearly I recognised in it something of the vital essence of the flower – the extravagance of the flared petals, bright as flame but stained and streaked with darkness, the honeyed light far down in the throat, the cool translucence of the stem.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ I said encouragingly. ‘Truly lovely.’

  ‘Oh, lovely,’ she said scornfully, reaching over and tugging the paper roughly from the board. ‘I’ve had enough of lovely.’ And then, with a quick, angry movement, she ripped the sheet across and flung the two halves to the earthen floor.

  If it had been an act of pure spitefulness, I should no doubt have been well advised to ignore it and return to my work. But something in the girl’s face – distress, I thought, and a kind of bewilderment, as though she had been caught unawares by her own action – held me there. I stooped and picked up the pieces.

  ‘There was no call for that,’ I said gently. ‘If you didn’t want the painting, you might have offered it to me. I should have been glad of it.’

  ‘You said it was spoiled.’

  ‘I didn’t mean—’

  ‘Then it’s yours. Have it.’ It was gracelessly done and I, for my
part, had no time to thank her before she turned away and stalked out into the sunlight.

  I was sitting in my room early that evening, aligning the two halves of the painting on my writing-desk, when I heard Vane call my name softly outside the door. With an obscure feeling of guilt, I gathered up the pieces and slipped them into the left-hand drawer.

  ‘Are you there, Redbourne?’

  I opened the door just as he was readying himself to rap on the panel. ‘Bullen has arrived,’ he said. ‘He’ll be at dinner tonight, but I thought it advisable to have the two of you meet in advance. That way you’ll be able to address matters of business before our other guests arrive.’

  ‘Business?’

  ‘Bullen is more than willing to act as your guide, but he has made it clear to me that he’ll be obliged to treat any excursion as a professional engagement.’ He glanced uneasily down the corridor. ‘The fact is,’ he went on, lowering his voice to a murmur, ‘that the man has fallen on hard times. A few years ago he owned seventy-five acres of good grazing, but he’s been brought to the brink of ruin by unwise speculation. Sugar plantations, the hotel business – knows nothing about either, of course. If it weren’t for his collecting he’d have gone under. I tell you, Redbourne, your arrival is a godsend for him.’

  Vane’s account fell some way short, it seemed to me, of a reassuring character reference. ‘I assume,’ I said, ‘that the arrangement will be equally beneficial to me?’

  ‘No doubt of it,’ he said hastily, ‘no doubt at all. He’s already planning an itinerary for you – local excursions first, and then a trip out to the mountains. Come down and let him tell you about it.’ He turned, evidently expecting me to follow at once. I hesitated for a moment, then fell into step behind him.

  Bullen was sprawled at ease on the sofa in the dayroom, his hat beside him on the padded arm-rest. He sprang up as I entered and advanced to meet me, a tall man, big-boned without any hint of fleshiness, his features hard and angular above a full brown beard. His handshake was firm and his voice, as he greeted me, deep and resonant, but there was something in his demeanour – the hunched shoulders, the evasive eyes – that disconcertingly offset the initial impression of physical strength. Vane had no sooner introduced us than he withdrew, pleading business of his own.