Autumn Laing (22 page)
I was ready for Arthur and his interesting bloke that evening, my rabbit pie in the oven and the crème caramels cooling on the stone shelf in the pantry. I’d had time to have a bath and change, and had put on just the lightest touch of lipstick and a feathery pass or two of powder to my perfect cheeks—perfect they were, but even then, at thirty-two, I searched the mirror for the first signs of wrinkles, the dread that I would find my beauty flawed by the beginning of ageing, the anxious question ever in my thoughts, When is my decay to begin?
Waiting for them by the fire in the library that evening I was the cool one. I took down our copy of Rimbaud’s
Une saison en enfer
, the only work of his we possessed, and sat in my favourite place on the couch to the right of the fireplace. Arthur had told me the man he was bringing to dinner was a Rimbaud enthusiast. I imagined a sophisticated European, perhaps a few years older than Arthur and me. I’d been careful to ration myself to one gin while I was preparing the dinner and was enjoying a pleasant sense of intrigue and expectation at the prospect of the evening ahead. The fire was drawing well and the room was warm. I don’t remember what I thought of Rimbaud’s poem. The words were no doubt just sliding past my eyes. It was years since I’d read him and I wasn’t really in the mood for his youthful extremes of emotion. I was probably rather enjoying just being me; that comfortable self-satisfied state of being which Arthur and I both slid into without effort in those days, before Pat Donlon entered our lives.
ARTHUR CLOSED THE FRONT DOOR AND WAVED PAT FORWARD, indicating the first door on the right-hand side of the passage. Pat set his bundle of drawings down against the wall and opened the door. As he stepped through, Arthur was so close behind him that the hard toe of Arthur’s brogue caught the soft heel of Pat’s dilapidated plimsoll and as Pat went to step forward the sandshoe was yanked off his foot. Pat stopped abruptly and put his hand to the doorjamb to steady himself while he reached down and retrieved his plimsoll and pulled it back onto his foot. When he straightened he saw that he had entered a long high room. The walls were lined with well-filled bookshelves. The only break in the impressive ranks of books, apart from the fireplace at the far end of the room, was a deep bow window behind him, a table in front of it with a great bowl filled with pale roses.
At the far end of the room, on the mantelpiece above the fireplace, a large brightly coloured abstract painting in its
unframed stretcher leaned against the wall. A woman was sitting on the couch to the right of the fireplace. She was smoking a cigarette and holding a book aside in her left hand, which rested on the couch, and was watching him with interest. His stumbling entrance had evidently surprised her.
‘Sorry,’ he said, and lifted a hand to her in the sign of peace. ‘My sandshoe came off.’ He moved to one side and Arthur came up and stood beside him.
Arthur said, ‘This is Pat Donlon, darling.’ He turned to Pat. ‘My wife, Autumn.’
Autumn did not get up. She said coldly, ‘It’s good of you to call on us, Mr Donlon.’
‘It’s nice of you to have me.’ Pat bent and adjusted his left sandshoe, which having tasted freedom once seemed intent on leaving him again. After the chill of the Pontiac’s cabin on the way up from the railway station the library was cosy. The house smelled of wood smoke and cooking and had a welcoming, homey feel to it. Pat’s stomach growled. He was dizzy with hunger. He had had nothing to eat since Sir Malcolm’s guardian angel Miss Agatha Barquist’s cup of tea and two Dundee shortbreads. His eyes met Autumn’s. ‘What a great collection of books,’ he said.
Autumn did not respond to his remark but turned and set her book on the arm of the couch then stood up. ‘I’ll go and see to the vegetables, shall I, darling? I’ve set places for us in the dining room. Perhaps you could look in and see how the fire’s going in there.’ She came across the room and as she drew level with him Arthur stepped forward and leaned to kiss her. She closed her eyes and presented her cheek, her head turned away from him.
As she stepped past him to go out the door Pat said, ‘It smells great, Autumn.’
Beside the tall figure of Arthur Laing, the stoop of his shoulders lending a patrician humility to his appearance, his expensive silvery suit and his long hair, Pat knew he looked more like the man who had come to collect the rubbish than the man who had come to dinner. He would like to have explained his odd getup to Autumn but she gave him no opportunity to do so. She left the room without pausing, closing the door so firmly behind her he wondered if she had meant it to seem to him that she had slammed it in his face. The whiff of violence he caught from her impressed him and he looked at Arthur.
‘We’ll have a drink, Pat,’ Arthur said. He was looking thoughtful. ‘Why don’t you sit by the fire and get some warmth into you.’ He handed Pat his packet of cigarettes. ‘You look half frozen. I can let you have a cardigan. That jacket of yours is wet.’
‘It’s all right,’ Pat said. ‘I’m okay.’ He lit one of Arthur’s cigarettes and handed the packet back to him, then he went to the far end of the room and stood in front of the fire and looked at the painting. He did not recognise the artist and there was no signature. He turned from examining the painting and picked up Autumn’s book from the arm of the couch and read the title. Rimbaud’s
A Season in Hell
, in the original French. Surely it was a message to him? He sat on the couch in the dent in the cushion where she had been sitting. The cushion was warm through the thin material of his trousers. Arthur handed him a glass of whisky. Pat took the drink and thanked him.
Arthur said, ‘Cheers,’ and drank from his glass, then placed his glass and the bottle on the low table that stood between
the two couches at either side of the fire. He took a black iron poker from its stand and jabbed at the fire with it, as if he were thrusting a sword at his enemy. At his first jab a panic of sparks raced up the chimney. He saw in the shower of sparks a flight of children and mothers crying out in dismay, a whole town of innocents raped and murdered. He put another piece of wood on the fire and stood with the poker in his hand, a troubled expression on his long intelligent face. In the deeply private place where he kept his feelings, at that moment Arthur Laing might have been entertaining the idea of a gentlemanly melancholy.
Pat began to read Rimbaud’s poem aloud, the book held out in front of him. ‘Once, if I remember well, my life was a feast where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. One evening I seated Beauty on my knees. And I found her bitter. And I cursed her.’
Arthur turned from the fire and reached for his drink. ‘Don’t stop. I’m so glad you read French, Pat. Please go on. You read well.’ He stood looking down at Pat wonderingly. ‘Go on. Please.’ His entreaty was gentle and persuasive, his mood evidently affected by the poetry.
Pat considered the book. He said gloomily, ‘I don’t read French. I know the English translation of this pretty much off by heart.’ He drank the whisky as if it was beer and made a grimace. ‘Jesus!’ he said. He held the empty glass at arm’s length and looked at it as if it had contained acid. He had never tasted whisky before. He set the empty glass on the table and looked at the book in his hand. ‘Rimbaud had the sense to give up writing before he was my age.’ He seemed about to go on with his reading, but turned instead and put the book
on the arm of the couch face down, where Autumn had left it. ‘He changed his life and never wrote another word of poetry. It can be done.’ He looked up at Arthur, who was standing above him in front of the fire, as if he hoped the older man was going to contradict him. The flames were reflected redly in the silvery sheen of Arthur’s trousers, as if muscles rippled beneath the material. Arthur said nothing but sipped his drink and looked into the fire.
‘We think we’re going in one direction,’ Pat said. ‘Then we go in another.’ He took a drag on the cigarette and picked up one of the magazines from the table and riffled through its pages. ‘We’re not really in charge. We only think we are.’
Arthur said, ‘You sound just a little dispirited about things, Pat. You’ve no cause to be. Your drawings are interesting. I told Autumn I’ve not seen anything quite so fresh for a long time. She’ll want to see them later.’
Fresh fish, Pat thought. The magazine in his hand was the October edition of
Cahiers d’art
from the previous year. He put it back on the table and picked up a copy of
Siecle
.
‘So where do you get these?’ He waved his hand over the crowded table. He was thinking of Edith at the cottage on her own and wishing he was with her. They were going to be a family. He would have to bring them both back to the city, his wife and child. She would be afraid of the dark down there on her own. The unfamiliar night noises in the cottage. The rats playing polo in the ceiling wouldn’t be funny without him beside her to laugh with. He was able to make the strangeness of it all seem like fun to her, but on her own she would hate it and wouldn’t be able to sleep. He could see her sitting up at the kitchen window with a blanket round her shoulders right now,
watching for a sign of his bike lamp coming up the track. It would be black as hell down there tonight. He was a criminal for coming to this place instead of going home. He could have been almost there with her by now, the two of them cosying up in their bed. With him beside her she wouldn’t give a rat’s arse for the rats. When he’d settled them in Melbourne he’d take himself down to the tram depot and apply for a conductor’s job. His dad would see him right with the supervisor. His dad would be over the bloody moon. I’ve never said anything, son, but I can say it now while your mother’s not with us to hear me. I’m glad you’ve got that art business out of your system at last. The Donlons have never been artists. Your mother’s people neither. The Egans were rhubarb growers in Kilkenny. That was her lot. Honest working people all of us. You wait, once you’re on at the depot the super will be promoting you to inspector before me. His dad would get excited and start exaggerating things. Making stuff up to clothe his son’s disaster in a story of success. He’d take him down to the Albion and shout him a beer with his mates. They’d all be yelling and carrying on at him and giving him a hard time. But privately they’d be celebrating that Jimmy Donlon’s son was no different to their own boys after all. It would be a confirmation for them. We’re all one here, Pat. A tribe. And you’re one of us, lad. His mother, alone of all of them, would know the depth of his misery but she would say nothing. She would offer him and Edith his old bedroom until he had some money coming in for rent and the two of them could find a place of their own. He would never accept charity from Edith’s people. For some reason he saw himself and Edith walking along Acland Street in search of a wardrobe. Why a wardrobe? Why Acland Street, for Christ’s
sake? A wardrobe was going to be the least of their worries. The stupid things we think of. Edith’s brothers would have a good laugh. Australia’s greatest artist! They’d never let up on him. Ting-ting! How about a ticket, Mr Conductor? It would be on with those two bastards. They’d be fucking merciless.
‘My life was a feast,’ Arthur said, quoting from the poem. He gave a small satisfied laugh with the warmth of the whisky and the fire in it. ‘I like that. Where all hearts opened and all wines flowed. It’s years since we’ve read him. It gets rather gloomy after that lovely opening if I remember.’ He looked down at the book on the arm of the couch. ‘Indeed, if I remember
well
. Yes, we’ve a number of subscriptions to international art journals. These are just a few of them. There are plenty more. You’re very welcome to borrow whatever you like.’ He leaned down and picked up the copy of
Cahiers d’art
that Pat had discarded. He opened the magazine and handed it to Pat. ‘Miró. Do you know his work?’
Pat looked at the coloured illustration. A random scattering of bright shapes and lines on a hard blue background. It meant nothing to him. Did it mean anything to anybody? ‘Do you like him?’ he said. ‘Is he one of your favourites?’
‘We’re a generation behind Europe,’ Arthur said, telling a serious truth that troubled him. He refilled Pat’s glass and topped up his own then reached for the poker and gave the new log a hard jab in the ribs. It flinched from the blow and emitted a hiss. ‘I mentioned your enthusiasm for Rimbaud when I called Autumn earlier to tell her I was bringing you to dinner.’
Pat looked at the piece of wood in the fire and drank from his glass. The whisky burned its way down his throat and lay in the void of his stomach like a pool of mercury, an eye of
unease. He suppressed a belch. ‘Your wife doesn’t like me,’ he said. ‘Maybe I won’t stay for tea after all. I can probably still make the last train to Geelong if I get going. There’s a bus to Ocean Grove.’ Edith wouldn’t chide him for neglecting her when he finally got home but would forgive him and fold him gratefully in her warm embrace. This wife of Arthur’s on the other hand, Mrs Autumn bloody Laing, or whatever her stupid name was, was set on giving the pair of them a hard time. Autumn? They should have called her Winter. Well, fuck her anyway, he thought. We’ll see who gives who the hard time if she starts anything. He sat staring into the fire, the warmth on his face. There was no way for him to make the Geelong train tonight. It would take an hour or more just to get back into Melbourne. His jacket had begun to steam. It was giving off a not-unpleasant smell rather like fresh horse shit. He wondered if Arthur could smell it. Arthur was poking at the fire again uselessly. It was beginning to look as if this man might turn out to be a fucking idiot after all.
He looked around the room. The house wasn’t exactly posh, not in the way Edith’s people’s houses were posh, but it was obviously the house of well-to-do people, people of taste and refinement. This impressive collection of books. He would have liked to be left alone in here with the books and the fire. He envied them their books. He would not deny that he knew the meaning of the word envy. The worn coverings on the couches, plain, expensive and well worn. The abundance of roses in the bowl in the bay window, as if they were always there and always freshly cut. The casual way the painting was leaned against the wall above the fireplace and had not been framed or hung properly. It was all a confident acceptance of
their position. Their affluence. Comfortable and unquestioned. Nothing showy. They could do anything they wanted to do. No need to make a point of what they had. The bulk of it kept quietly out of sight. Land and property and shares in companies, all that and more than he could think of, for sure. Substance. Deep, enduring and inherited. He thought of his mother’s scruffy savings-bank book and the few pieces of china she kept dusted in the front room. He wouldn’t deny it, he envied these people the quality of their lives, the depth and richness of it. But he would not wish to
be
them. He did not envy them their being. Their ease with French, if nothing else, was surely to be envied. To read Rimbaud as he had read himself. Only a fool would not envy them that. He pressed his palm into the downy softness of the cushion beside him. You could sleep off a hangover on one of these couches. And plenty of people probably had done just that after a big night of talk about art and life and drinking themselves into a stupor. No one was going to feel they had to fluff up these cushions before they left the room. And how long was it since that fireplace had been cleaned out? The ashes were a foot thick. His mother cleaned out their fireplace every morning. It was the sound he’d woken to before getting up and getting himself ready for school. Her scraping about in the grate with her brush and pan and singing to herself. Something suddenly occurred to him. He said, ‘That painting’s not another Wyndham Lewis, is it?’ Arthur gave up blowing smoke rings. ‘No,’ he said and laughed. ‘No. If only it were we’d all be rich and I could stop work tomorrow. It’s by a friend of ours. He’s living in France these days. Splendid, isn’t it? I’m not sure that I understand it, but it has something to do with his theory of colour scales
and their relation to musical scales. Synchronism, he calls it. Now don’t ask me what that means. If you want an explanation you’ll have to ask Autumn. Autumn’s the one for theory in this house. I’m afraid I’m not much chop at it. But it’s a strong painting, isn’t it?’ He stepped away until the backs of his knees were pressing against the edge of the low table, holding his head on one side then the other, as if he was trying to form a new judgment of the picture. He gave up and stepped to the fire again. ‘There’s a blindness about too much familiarity, isn’t there? We usually move our pictures around. This one’s probably been sitting here looking at us rather too long. There’s a dozen good pictures in the hallway with their faces to the wall for that reason. It’s our resting paddock.’ He looked down at Pat. ‘Roy’s our most important abstract artist. By a long way.’