Tales from the Tower, Volume 2 (21 page)

‘No. I am artist, Greer. I am not caught so easily.'

Caught?
Caught!
Greer was speechless.

‘You are poet!' he went on. ‘You do not want babies. How can you have babies and be poet and farmer?'

Why did he mention her poetry only now? She had not written a line for months, and he had always been indifferent to her work. She stood abruptly and went to her bedroom, shutting the door firmly. She lay on her bed, her mind threshing between impossibilities as the hours ticked by, and he did not join her.

In the morning Greer made him coffee, feeling too queasy for anything more than weak tea. When it became clear that she would not be cooking breakfast, he slammed into the pantry and came out with eggs, bacon, garlic, onions and bread. The smells sickened her, but she sat there as he listed his requirements and fried up a pile of food for himself. She would have her little baby, but he would need a studio, a large studio, big enough so he could show his work. A studio gallery. There must be room for him to paint and draw, and for a press – he had decided to return to printmaking since his trip – and space for him to sleep if he needed peace and quiet. His first European show was in six months' time. It was necessary that he attend, and he would be away for at least six weeks. It could not be helped. And if Greer insisted on such foolishness, she must understand that he could not be trapped like this. ‘You must pay all, Greer, if you want babies like every stupid woman.'

‘I do want babies,' Greer said quietly, ‘and I hoped you would, too. But if you don't, then I will have this baby alone, and I will care for it alone.' For a moment sorrow welled in her, but she fought it down. There at the kitchen table she determined that she would ask him for nothing. She would manage as she had always managed, and he could have his studio.

‘The orchard's the obvious block to sell, Greer, if you must.' Charlie's voice was kind, but he was frowning.

‘I've got no choice. I can't go back to the bank, and I've got feed to buy and bills to pay, and the mortgage, and I'm . . .' She couldn't say it, couldn't tell him. Even asking his advice seemed unfair.

‘I could—'

‘No, Charlie. It's my problem.'

He sighed, nodded. ‘Well, the orchard, then. It's on its own title, there's easy access from the road, and it'd make a nice weekender for somebody, although the pigs might be a problem.'

‘I can keep them further to the south. That next paddock can be used for crops. I'll figure out something.'

‘Greer, I'd buy it myself, but it's too far from my place, and you'll get more if you sell it as a house block.' For an instant she slipped into a parallel life with Charlie and a baby, finding to her surprise not tedium but safety and kindness and ease. Almost, she thought, love, then shook herself.

It was decided, the orchard had to go, the trees her grandparents and parents had planted and tended must be sold. It felt like cutting away part of herself.

Greer felt better and stronger in her second trimester. The smokehouse was finished and the product trials had been surprisingly successful; she had more orders than she could fill for her hams, farmhouse sausage and salami. Business was looking good, and she began to feel more hopeful. She caught herself whistling or singing as she worked, something irrepressible rising in her. She hadn't felt as buoyant since her parents were alive. It was the child growing steadily within her, she was sure.

Otto had produced an etching of the flying pig for her labels, which managed to look both elegant and rustic, but apart from that he took no interest in the business, only in the smoked meats. His appetite was prodigious. Greer looked at him crossing the yard, and saw that he had ballooned into a humpty dumpty; face round as a plate, the strong planes of cheeks, forehead and jaw blurred. His clothes no longer fitted.
More expense
, Greer thought. Each day he would cut slabs of bread and ham or salami for his lunch and take them into town, where he rented a studio. It was necessary, he said, until his new studio was built. Her parents' room where he had painted for months no longer sufficed. ‘I must be seen. The farm is too isolated, too quiet. I need people, Greer. People will buy my paintings.' And he needed to go to the city regularly to negotiate with one of the big galleries. Once he signed with them, he would be rich. ‘Money for studio is investment, Greer. Like smokehouse. You have to spend money to make money.'

The half-built studio was on a rise overlooking the orchard, which had been sold to people from the city. They had pulled out half the trees to clear a large building site, but left most of the rest, for which Greer was grateful, as she was for the money, but she felt a deep shame over the loss of the orchard. She had failed her family, failed herself. The rustic building she had envisaged for the studio, with its recycled timber and second-hand windows, quivered and dissolved. Otto insisted on double-glazed industrial windows from floor to ceiling, ‘for the light'; masonry walls for a stable environment for his papers; water was necessary, and a toilet, and also a small kitchen. And proper heating. Greer tried to talk to him about the mounting costs, but he flew into a rage. ‘You who have so much begrudge me this? How can I paint if I have no studio? I am an artist! Where can I work? I cannot print in your little kitchen! It is dirty. Painting is dirty. You do not want me and my dirty paints when you have your little baby.'

He was jealous, Greer reasoned, and felt touched. She'd be less blunt when next they talked, she promised herself. But each time they fought, she would find something broken, or missing. The shattered green vase she found pushed to the back of the wardrobe. Her mother's pearls, gleaming in a dark still life with a china teacup and a silver spoon, simply disappeared. When she asked about a crystal ewer, he looked at her with such loathing that Greer, worried she would drive him away once and for all, learned to be mute. Children needed two parents, she was convinced. Her baby must have a father. She should practise detachment, like the Buddhists. She should not put such store in mere things.

‘You are losing weight, Greer. Are you eating sensibly?' The midwife jotted down the figure with a frown.

‘Yes, I . . .' In truth she was often too tired to eat, or felt too unsettled.

‘You are pregnant. You need to eat and rest. If you don't, you will endanger the health of your baby.'

Greer's eyes prickled with tears and her hands, gripped in her lap, blurred and swam. She nodded. There was nothing to say. She had to work, now more than ever. Otto was travelling again, organising exhibitions he said, in a chain of galleries in several big cities. He had to be there in person to close the deal. Without Otto to share meals with, she often fell asleep in her clothes, too exhausted to eat, and woke later, shaking with hunger and fatigue.

Greer had been to the bank manager to try to extend the term of the mortgage and borrow a little more, but there was no sign of the warmth he had shown Otto. ‘If you need to borrow money for daily expenses, you are not managing your finances or your business properly,' he said coldly. ‘No offence.' This time there was no convenient block to sell. The rest of her land was on four large titles and if she sold one of them, she would have to rearrange the rotation of her paddocks and lose good cropping land, but it was that or lose the farm, which secured the mortgage. She sold one, and somehow it was Charlie who managed to buy it, and pay a fair price, even though he knew she was desperate.

When Greer's waters broke, almost a month early, it was Charlie she called. He did not mention his own farm, or the shearing waiting for him, or Otto, a capable man, living with her but apparently unable to work, and now gadding around Europe . . . He just came when she needed him and said nothing. Charlie would never understand that Otto was an artist, and therefore exempt from the rules that governed the lives of others, but the effort of explaining it all was beyond her.

On the trip to hospital, feeling her body in the grip of a powerful spasm that she had seen often enough in her labouring sows, she remembered to tell him that her best sow had just farrowed, and needed to be watched. ‘Not to worry,' he said, ‘I'll keep an eye on the litter and I can feed the pigs and the dogs till you're back on your feet.'

The baby was born underweight but healthy, his little limbs thin as twigs, his old man's face rehearsing expressions from the grandfather he would never know. Greer loved her son with a ferocity that frightened her. When the midwives carried him off to the nursery and exhorted her to rest, she felt a painful tug in her chest, as if there really were heartstrings that could stretch unbearably.

Three days after the birth, she woke to sunshine and the sound of Otto's laugh. ‘You are too kind,' she heard him say. Then there was more laughter, and one of the midwives showed him into the room bearing an enormous bouquet of brightly coloured flowers.

‘Aren't they divine! I'll get a vase for you while you meet your beautiful son. We'll need a big one.'

‘Ah, please. I am so grateful.'