Those Brisbane Romantics, page 23
She made a cup of instant coffee and wandered through the chaos of the house. No one else was up, there was no sign of Cass. She dressed and pulled on the fleecy-lined jumper Joe had left behind—she could have that much of him anyway. In the front yard she began weeding one of Leigh’s abandoned flower beds. She needed to think, and the simple act of weeding had always helped to crystalise her thoughts.
She had a lot to think about. Her mural for the new Sugar Building was finished, although it would not be unveiled to the public until the building’s gala opening at Christmas. Because word-of-mouth on the mural was good, she’d been offered a commission for an even larger one. Her mentor Jon Molvig had warned her that to refuse was professional suicide. “At this point in your career,” he told her, “you must say yes to everything.”
But to accept the commission was suicide of a different kind. She could not go on working two jobs. Yet the idea of giving up her salaried position frightened her. She’d studied hard for it, and a part of her wanted desperately to keep it. The money was good, she liked the work, and she had a future in it. It seemed there were prices for everything. Choose this, lose that.
Cass came out an hour later. “This,” she said, holding up an opened sardine tin and a half-full bottle of whisky, “is high living.” She took a swig of the whisky. “I take it you’re just as virtuous as ever. You look as fresh as the nauseating, sickening proverbial daisy.”
“It’s only the clothes,” Tara said. She liked good clothes, and she could afford them. Another reason not to quit her job.
Cass sat down on the grass and started eating the sardines with a silver cake fork. “You always attribute things about yourself to other things and other people. Well, they’re not. They’re you.”
Tara was feeling sombre. She’d had plenty of time to realise what a huge mistake she’d almost made the night before. “I sometimes think there is no me, Cass. Just a box with a space around it, moving through a bigger piece of space.”
Before Cass could reply to this, the front gate squeaked. Bill came up the path carrying a kitbag in one hand and a large parrot cage in the other. He set down the items he was holding and greeted the women.
Wash House was sitting in the parrot cage, looking disgruntled.
“Where’s he been?” Cass asked, indicating the big cat that sat looking accusingly at them from behind the bars.
“He’s been at Aunty Pop’s.”
Tara’s penchant for whimsy kicked in. “You brought him on a tram? Did he enjoy the ride, do you think?”
Bill leaned against the derelict fountain and began to roll a cigarette. “Wash House doesn’t like trams.” He waved off the bottle Cass proffered and took a deep drag on the cigarette. “Hell, it was a nerve-racking trip. Ole Wash House got tram sick.”
“He looks a bit shaky on it.”
“Ah, he’ll be okay. It’s mostly his pride that’s hurt. He’ll huff for a while, but after that, he’ll be all right. Give me the rest of those sardines. He could probably do with a feed.”
Soft rain began to fall, a passing shower. Bill freed Wash House from the cage and picked up his gear; obviously, he was moving in. The three of them went inside, the big cat huffing along behind them.
Immaculate in tails, Joe carried a battered violin case in one hand and a cigarette in the other as he, Tara, Cass and Bill walked along George Street towards the City Hall that night. Bill had a fit of the giggles when he saw Joe from behind.
“Cripes,” he said to Cass, “he looks like a bloody penguin. Hey, why don’t they sew feathers on the bottom of ’em? Ooh, what a pigeon.”
Joe puffed agitatedly on a cigarette. “I’ve got a suggestion,” he said to Cass. “You and Bill walk in front. Tara and I’ll walk behind.”
Things were quieter after that. As they approached Ann Street they passed John Hicks’ furniture shop with the raked sign that ran along the base of each display: YOU ARE LOOKING IN JOHN HICKS’ WINDOW. Tara had always thought that sign so elegant. This John Hicks fellow, whoever he was, must be so self-assured.
She caught Joe admiring himself in one of the mirrored posts. “You vain wretch. You know you look handsome in tails.”
“And you look beautiful in bronze.”
They had been distracted from the kerfuffle in front of them. Bill turned around. “I lost my shoe,” he explained.
“Where’s the shoe now?” Joe asked.
Cass took the opportunity to light up a Gauloise. “It got up and ran away and hid in that gutter.”
Bill hobbled over to the kerb and plucked the shoe out of the gutter. It had rained in the city that afternoon, the gutters were still running. The shoe was sodden. Bill held his nose with one hand, and the shoe at arm’s length with the other.
“Ark, it’s all wet and kacky-kacky!”
Joe made one of his lightning changes of pace. “Put it on, damn you! We’ll be late.”
Bill shook his head. They crossed Ann Street, Bill hobbling along, one shoe on, the other still at arm’s length and, in this fashion, they resumed the walk to the City Hall.
As they rounded the corner into Adelaide Street Joe threw his cigarette into the gutter and seized Tara by the elbow. Sure enough, when she caught sight of the crowd on the City Hall steps, she tried to pull away.
“I don’t think I want to go now. I’ll just catch a tram home.” Although she wasn’t carrying a handbag, she always had a pound note tucked inside her bra against emergencies. Bugger the lace handkerchiefs.
Joe tightened his grip. “Baby, baby, you don’t want to be afraid of those people. You just look them in the eye and say to yourself, ‘I know you bastards would rather be at the Victor Borge concert.’ ”
There’s never a tree when you need one. In the foyer, a couple of rubber plants struggled in pots. They wouldn’t do. It seemed to Tara that hundreds of elegant and musically erudite people were milling about. Her heart began to hammer in her chest.
“Smile, Little,” Joe said as the Courier-Mail reporter took their photographs.
Margot pushed her way through the crowd. “Cass, this is a surprise. I didn’t think you frequented these things!”
“Where’s Lucky Tim?”
He tapped Cass on the shoulder from behind. “No sniping inside the hall.”
At a quarter to eight Joe went backstage, and ushers opened the doors to the concert hall. People surged in, carrying Tara’s group with them. Alastair, Cluster, Rupert and Ann were already there, having snuck in a side door. The three men sitting resignedly in the chairs brightened when they saw Bill.
The lights dimmed.
“Good,” Alastair said in a hoarse whisper from behind Tara. “Now everyone can sleep except the Courier-Mail reporter. Not that Joe isn’t good; the experts assure me he’s very good. Something about his tone or something.”
The crowd stood for a minute while the trio played “God Save the Queen”. The anthem sounded strange and thin, accustomed as they were to the full orchestral version played in cinemas.
“What I wouldn’t do for a cuppa tea and a lie-down.” Alastair stifled a yawn as the music of Brahms’s Piano Trio in A Major rose around them. “Prod me if I snore, will you?” He arranged himself and went straight off to sleep.
Tara settled down. Here, in the dark, she could watch Joe without fear of discovery. This was her pay-off, the beginning and the end of all her passion: to be able to watch him play for ninety minutes. To touch, because she’d touched him, the music he produced. Be happy with that, she told herself.
Olga, the cellist, moved to turn over a page. For a moment, the light from the lamps caught the fabric of her frock. Tara switched her gaze, but the vision of beauty was fleeting, and she returned to Joe. First, she watched his face. Then she stared at his bow arm coat sleeve until everything around her faded way.
Tara was not one for visions, so it was hard later for her to explain what happened next. In this dream, if it was a dream, she was in a car on her way to an unknown destination, but dressed in dress clothes, not wedding regalia. Suddenly she realised they were on the outskirts of Oakey. She told the unknown driver to stop when they reached the railway refreshment rooms and, unlike in the Wedding Dream, he did.
Tara jumped from the car and began to run, filled suddenly with the knowledge that her mother and aunt were there, just as they had been when she was three. She rushed through the wrought-iron gate into the back yard, past the blue hydrangeas, up the back steps and into the big kitchen.
The table with its ornately turned legs was set for breakfast with the cloth her mother had embroidered. Her Aunty Mag was toasting bread over the wood stove, an apron tied around her waist. She turned when she heard Tara’s footsteps.
Tara flung herself into her aunt’s arms. “You’re alive. You’re all right!”
Maggie put down the long wire toasting fork she’d been using to turn the toast on the top of the stove. She hugged Tara tightly and laughed at her amazement. “I was always all right,” she said.
Her statement, I was always all right came as a revelation. It slid about, that sentence, and could become an existential stance: we were always all right, we are always all right. I am always all right. The light in her aunt’s kitchen was numinous and, at that moment, Tara knew there was no such thing as time.
Her aunt took her by the hand. “Come with me. I’ll take you to your mother.” She led Tara towards the cottage across the road.
“You can clap now,” Alastair said. “It’s all over.”
Tara came back from wherever she’d been. The Mates were still sitting behind her in the high-backed chairs, Ann was holding Rupert’s hand. For a few seconds she still had the feeling: there is no time. Then she heard the ticking of the old wall clock near her, saw its hands dragging her on to who knew what. But the experience she’d just had, whatever it was, had been as clear as a telegram.
Her mother was with Mag. Mag was dead. Therefore …
Around her, people were preparing to depart, gathering bags, putting on scarves and gloves against the August night. The crowd thinned reluctantly. Tara’s group went backstage. Joe pulled himself away from the circle of admirers and made his way over to where they were standing.
“I could see you farmers looking superior.”
“Can you blame us?” Alastair said. “Shit, why don’t you put in some bongos? You’d double the crowd.”
Margot placed a hand on Joe’s coat sleeve. “Alastair’s just a philistine. If it weren’t for people like you and Olga and George, this place would be a cultural backwater.”
“Let’s go home and celebrate.” Bill was carrying his sock and shoe, unnoticed in the crowd. “C’mon, fellers. How about you, Tazza? Are you and Joe coming now?”
Joe answered for her. “Not yet. I have to see to a few things, fix lights. Leave us the Land Rover, Tim. You and Margot can squeeze into Alastair’s car.”
Alastair ran a hand over Tara’s hair. “We know. You just want to get her alone.”
“Hey hey, keep your hands off other people’s property,” Joe said.
On the way to the tower house, Joe drove past the city building where Tara had been offered the second commission. Had she been with Doug, she would have asked him to stop so she could study the foyer, but she said nothing to Joe.
They parked by the river in Tim’s Land Rover, relieved the evening had gone well. Joe stroked her face with the tips of his fingers.
“I used to think you’d be rough,” she said.
He sighed. “There’s a time for roughness and a time for gentleness.”
“What did your other women like?”
Joe laughed. “Tell me the story about the wolf, Uncle Joe.”
“Tell me.”
“No.”
“Would you always be gentle with me? You wouldn’t be rough?”
“Not unless you wanted me to be, bimba.” He put an arm around her and leaned back against the seat. “Oh hell, I’m tired.”
Tara rested her head on his shoulder and stroked his hair. Her heart felt as if it were rising up through her throat. A terrifying tenderness threatened to engulf her.
“Oh Tara,” Joe said, “I’ve been through a bloody awful time. I felt I couldn’t play anymore. The way people feel they’ve lost touch with God I felt I’d lost touch with my music. You stopped the dreams, the terrible dreams I used to have.”
And who would stop hers when he was gone?
Joe went on. “But tonight everything was the way it used to be. I’ve felt it coming ever since you turned in that doorway last night and came back to me. You get this feeling, see? It’s big and it flows out of you. Then you know that tonight you can do no wrong; you’re on top of the music, climbing up to somewhere. Other times everything’s wrong. You see a high note coming and you think, God help me.”
“I’ve had troubles of my own,” Tara said. She told him about the psychiatrist.
Joe was horrified. “Good god, he didn’t give you any pills, did he?”
Tara had to admit he had, and that she felt much better since she’d been taking them.
“Throw them away,” Joe advised. “You don’t need pills. You’re just highly strung.”
“Why are they making me feel better then?”
Joe waved a hand. “It’s just some kind of chemically-induced euphoria. You’ll poison your system, ruin your looks.” He lit a cigarette to calm his agitation.
“I want to be a painter,” Tara said heavily.
Joe drew the smoke in sharply. Exhaled. “Can you make it alone?”
Could she make it with him? That was really the question. “I could make it with Doug. Can you make it alone?”
“I don’t know. Once, I’d have told you, Go to hell, I can make it without anyone. But this is a man who knows his limitations. A sadder and a wiser man.”
“Ancient mariner,” Tara whispered.
The trees rustled in the wind, and the river spoke to her, ancient things. Did he hear them as she did, or had she been blinded all these years by his charisma?
“I’ve sailed the seas in my ship of dreams,” he said, “but it wasn’t seaworthy. Now I’ve come home.”
He pulled her to him. The artificial bronze rose at her breast was crushed between them. But all the while, Tara was thinking, There’s no safety in the arms of another. If you graft yourself to someone else, something can come and tear you apart, bleeding. There’s no safety anywhere except in yourself.
20
Spring
Every weekday morning as Tara signed the attendance book at the Government Botanist’s Office, she passed the same old newspaper thrown down on the bench. Every morning the same caption caught her eye: BETRAYED BY A SANDWICH, it read. Underneath the caption was the photograph of a young man looking sad. After a while, the caption began to annoy her, but she lacked the energy to turn the newspaper to a different page at that time of the morning. Someday, she thought, she’d get a good night’s sleep. But she was working two jobs, and what sleep she did get was troubled.
Was she crazy? Tara wondered later that day as she made her way to Baxter’s office and stood outside, hesitant as usual, with the letter of resignation in her pocket. Crazy about people, crazy for resigning—just plain crazy maybe?
The Government Botanist was a small solidly-built man with a tremendous quickness and vitality that never failed to intimidate her, slow-moving and slow-thinking as she was. Now he was tired from signing letters, checking experiments planned during his absence and delegating responsibility.
“Mr Baxter?” Tara vacillated in the doorway.
The tiredness showed in his voice. “Oh, it’s you, Tara. Come in, come in. You’re looking thinner,” he said, with sudden atypical demonstrativeness.
“It’s all this thinking I’ve been doing.”
“Here, sit down, sit down.” He pushed a chair out for her with his foot. “What’s this about thinking?”
“Sometimes there are decisions to be made.”
Baxter gave one of his customary snorts. “The only decision you should have to make is which man to marry.”
Et tu, Baxter.
The Government Botanist leaned back in his swivel chair. “Well, have you chewed it over?” he asked in his strange, tired voice.
Tara pushed the letter of resignation across his desk. Baxter didn’t try to talk her out of resigning, he just went straight on to the next thing: while she worked out her month’s notice, she would have to harvest the wheat variety trials Tim and Joe had planted on the Darling Downs.
“Me, sir?” Having nearly three hundred miles between herself and Joe suited Tara just fine.
“It’s harvest time,” Baxter said shortly. “They’re up to their necks in work out west. Can you drive—no? Take Cass with you, you need two operators anyway. See Almay about it this afternoon.”
This was it. This was the end.
“Have a good holiday, Mr Baxter.” Suddenly Tara felt sorry for him, although she knew he must be feeling sorry for her. She would walk out of here in four weeks’ time, leave this place. He would be here until he retired—or died. Whichever came first.
“Good luck!” Baxter said as she rose to go. “You’re going to need it.”
Tara felt terrible. She didn’t want to leave this place. The dust, the dreams, the discontent were dear to her now. She returned to the main staffroom, but already she felt withdrawn, not part of the flow of the place anymore. On her desk a pile of correspondence was banking up, waiting to be answered. She went out to the room adjoining the library and began to put up the 1963 calendar she’d bought on the way to work that morning so that some part of her would remain when she was gone. For a little while anyway.
Calendar in place, she went to see Dr Almay, who was to be acting director of the department while Baxter was away. It was an unpleasant half-hour. Somehow, he’d gotten wind already of her resignation. “You’ll regret it,” he told her. “You’re throwing your career away—and for what? A whim, a fancy.” They didn’t speak to each other after that. Which was awkward, as they were always bumping into one another in the narrow corridors.
