The Biographer (26 page)

Greer remembered clearly what had gone through her mind. She'd thought: Charlie's
response is that of a primitive, elemental male defending his own property.
And then her own reaction, also from the gut: I'm not going to hang around
here for five more months. I simply couldn't do it.

She knew how Charlie's mind worked. She knew that however drunk he was, he had
taken a position he regarded as right and would not budge from it. And that
however fundamentally good-natured he was, he would be a formidable opponent.

At that point Charlie had left the table without another word, poured himself a tumbler of neat whisky and slumped down with his back to her in front of the TV. He switched to an Australian Rules football game and turned up the volume.

Greer grasped the opportunity to retrieve her shoulder bag and run upstairs. She had a small studio that connected with their bedroom, where she drew and painted. She riffled through the filing cabinet for her passport, some family photographs and her diary, and crammed them into a compartment in her bag. It was an instinctive move, and she would have reason soon to be thankful for this foresight.

Behind a curtain in the bedroom was a recess that they used as a dressing area. It had hanging rails and racks of wire baskets full of folded clothes.The cream crepe suit she had worn for the opening of Mischa's show was in its plastic bag, fresh from the dry cleaner. She took it down and was folding it when the sound from the television ceased abruptly. She heard Charlie's feet on the stairs.

'Greer! Are you in there?'

He sounded more subdued than before. He came in, his tread cushioned by the carpet. She thought, maybe he's calmed down a bit.

He said,'Let's go to bed.We're both whacked.'

He wanted me to wait for five months and then reassess the situation. From his perspective this was entirely fair and reasonable. It was the least I could do.

But I couldn't contemplate it.

They undressed in silence and lay side by side.A full moon gleamed through gaps in the timber blinds.

Charlie had levered himself on an elbow and turned on his side towards her. She was reminded, and was not blind to the cruel irony, of the painting of herself she had been looking at only hours before.

He said, 'Look, you can go on seeing this bloke occasionally, if you have to.
I can accept that. I mean, it can't go on for that long, can it, let's face
it? It might get him out of your system.'

She had said, with helpless conviction, 'It wouldn't, Charlie. Nothing will.'

Unexpectedly he had begun to sob, in a jerky, unpractised way that suggested
to her a car engine misfiring. She remembered now how she had lain there next
to him and observed, with a sadness that was at the same time deeply implacable,
the way the chalky light sparkled on Charlie's tears. They looked like trickles
of sequins. She had pressed her face to his and felt them, wet and cold against
her cheek.

Greer had waited until Charlie's breathing slowed into a heavy and regular pattern.
He had drunk such an unaccustomed amount she assumed he must have sunk into
a stupor. She went quietly into the dressing alcove and made a pile of winter
clothes, scooped them up, slung her bag over her shoulder and ran barefoot
down the stairs and out into the garage. It was raining outside and bitingly
cold, but in her fervour she was scarcely aware of it. She flicked on the garage
light.

Her father's tin trunk from the war was stored at the far end, along with an old fridge, some outdoor furniture and leftover paint tins.The empty trunk was covered with dust and cobwebs. She gave it a cursory brush with her hands, hauled it into the back of her station wagon and dumped the armful of clothes inside.

Then she ran back upstairs. Charlie had turned on his back and was breathing stertorously. She cast around the darkened room for a container and seized on the outlines of the covered linen basket in a corner of the bedroom. She upended it, spilling the dirty clothes on to the floor. With rapid and economical movements she gathered up boots and shoes and threw them into the wicker basket, heaping whatever summer clothes she could cram in on top. She heaved the basket down the stairs and into the car.

She risked a third trip.This time she snatched a dressing gown from the hook and put lambswool boots on her icy feet. Charlie hadn't moved, although his noisy breaths sounded more explosive and spasmodic. Her art materials were in the studio. She closed the connecting door softly and switched on a light, then moved through, snatching up drawing books and works in progress and placing them on the table. The biscuit tin that was her artist's workbox was packed with chalks and crayons. She reached for it, and as she did so she heard a noise from the bedroom.

She inched the door open. Charlie was sitting up in bed. He switched on the reading lamp.'What are you doing?'The words were groggy with sleep. He blinked in the light.

She said soothingly,'Nothing.It's all right.'

She hovered in the doorway, her workbox and two sketchbooks tucked under one arm. She saw Charlie taking them in, and her dressing gown and boots. His eye fell on the floor, and the tumbled heap of dirty clothes. She saw it dawn on him.

'You're not
packing
,are you?'With a burst of speed that took her by surprise he dived clumsily out of bed, arms extended. She dodged them and ran for the stairs. Halfway down, the sketchbooks slipped from under her arm. She left them where they fell.

She had reached the bottom with Charlie close behind when he tripped on one of the two spiral sketchbooks and stumbled down several steps. He skidded into her.They both fell. Greer scrambled to her feet, but Charlie had hit the floor heavily and was momentarily winded. She raced for the garage.The keys to both cars hung on hooks just inside the connecting door. She grabbed her bunch and had the presence of mind to take Charlie's too. She hurled those away into the encompassing darkness of the garden.

She slammed the door of the station wagon and gunned the engine. It caught immediately – she had never been more grateful for Charlie's insistence on regular maintenance.
In the headlights she saw him burst into the garage and dive between the cars.
His fingertips grazed her door handle as she reversed out at high speed. Charlie
spun round in his pyjamas.

In his present condition she predicted it would take him several minutes to locate his spare set of keys. Moreover, he had no idea where she was heading. Greer guessed he would lose more precious time ringing Josie. Fortunately, Josie too hadn't a clue where Mischa lived. Verity did, but Charlie would have no after-hours number for her.

Greer put her foot down. In those days she regularly broke the speed limit, but the station wagon had never exceeded it by such a reckless margin as it did on this break-neck journey from Melbourne's outer rim to St Kilda in the inner city. She had driven for a full thirty-five minutes before she remembered she hadn't closed the back doors of the car. In the rear-view mirror she glimpsed the reassuring lid of the trunk. Rather than stop to bang the doors shut, rather than risk capture, she drove on.

When she thought about this turbulent night, which was rarely, and only in the
early years, Greer was never entirely sure what she had originally intended
to do that evening. Had she really meant to break the news more gently, to
discuss everything in detail with Charlie, to give him more time? Did she haveVerity's
favourite adage,'Forewarned is forearmed', looming large in the back of her
mind as she sorted, coolly and efficiently, through her belongings?

She suspected now that she had acted instinctively, without analysing anything, like Mischa.

Greer had pounded up Mischa's stairs and into his room. There were no coverings on the high windows, nothing but encrusted dirt, and the glow from the street lamps enabled her to pick her way over the debris to the lumpy mattress in the corner. She flung off her dressing gown and boots and slid under the scratchy felt blankets. She was shivering uncontrollably, and the army blankets were appropriate.

She imagined this was what escaping from a war zone must be like. It felt like surviving a perilous skirmish in which she had been in life-threatening danger, and coming home.

Mischa stirred as she pressed her cold hands against him. She always remembered how he had said nothing and evinced no surprise at all, but he was naked and reacted to her instantly.

In the middle of the night I ran out of the house and drove to Mischa in St Kilda. I was still in my nightclothes. It was cruel to leave Charlie in such a way and so abruptly, but I think I was gripped by a superstitious fear that he might otherwise prevent me,physically,from leaving.And I knew that more arguing could not achieve anything other than delay, which I could not countenance.

Very early the next morning Mischa and I loaded up my car and left for Sydney.

In her study Greer read through what she had just written. As a summary it was woefully inadequate, almost to the extent of the one-line dismissal dashed off by her younger self.There was something important she had left out.

Charlie said I would come to regret it later on.And he said I had no conscience. I think it was true that I had none.

She rubbed out the full stop, substituted a comma, and added:

at the time.

Tony stood in the chapel, one of Rollo's assertive gin and tonics in hand, before the latest oeuvre.The carved clothes horse with its tossing mane, riding hat and cape was taking sophisticated shape on the canvas.

'I think you're very brave trying to write about painting, Tony,' Rollo had remarked.
'I couldn't do it. I tend to side with Voltaire: we must apologise for daring
to speak about art at all.That's how Mischa thinks, of course. He's far worse
than me.'

'Greer believes his work is a conduit, but I'm not sure of what.A form of energy,was my best shot.'

'Does she? She's the best judge, you should listen to what she says. Well, all paintings conduct an energy, don't they? Even when their subjects are still and serene, like mine. It's that perfect trinity of light, line and space. Sometimes I think we're nothing but energy conductors, you know, we funny old artists. Nothing but human radios. We channel the energy and the work emits it through colour and light.'

Rollo looked unusually solemn, drink in one hand, paintbrush in the other.

'When I have my blockages,Tony, it's as if all the energy has dried up and I'm not a focus for it any more.That's why the blockages are so deeply depressing. When I'm in one I think, oh no, is this what ordinary people feel like all the time?'

He made a face.'How awful, I think to myself, to be a normal person and not a human radio. But that's a very conceited idea, isn't it?' He turned on Tony a sharp, searching look.

Tony responded with a vehement shake of the head. 'No way.Artists are privileged people.It must be an enviable thing, to be a radio.'

He watched Rollo poking and prodding at his canvas with a slender brush. 'What do you say to Bonnard's idea that art is all about the primary conception? Trying to grasp that, and make it visible.'

'Oh, I think Bonnard had it right.' Rollo looked down at Tony's little recorder.'Are you sure the tape thingy hasn't run out? If we're going to heavily name-drop I'd hate it to be wasted.'

'It's on.Trust me.'

'If you insist. Guy always says I'm too gullible. And not only about technology, Tony.' He gave the young man a sportive glance. 'The primary conception, yes, indeed. Picasso said much the same thing, really, didn't he, but in a simpler way? What you're doing is trying to capture the feeling you have when you look at a tree. I've always found that a very useful thing to tell people.'

'Well, that notion goes all the way back to the Greeks, doesn't it? Energy expressed as the form of a thing, its idea. Its essential truth.'

'And takes it a step further. The reaction you have to that truth. The encouraging thing is that everybody's reaction is subtly different. If that weren't the case I suppose art would peter out. Isn't peter a good word? It also means cock, but you don't hear that meaning bandied about very much nowadays, at least not in our provincial little circles.'

Rollo swallowed his nearly neat gin at the same time as making finely calibrated adjustments with his brush to fade the delicate pattern on a china bowl, which was coming into being in the foreground of the canvas.

Tony said, 'Picasso also spoke about aspiring to a truth reached by lying.A higher truth,maybe.'

'I'd forgotten that one.So he did,Tony,so he did.What a cunning little observation that was too. You're right to point it out. If there are higher truths to aspire to,' Rollo waved his paintbrush near Tony's face, 'does this mean we can reach the lower ones along the way? Do we bypass them? Are there gradations?'

'This is the artist's playground, isn't it, Rollo? A vast philosophical theme park.'

'A theme park, that's a good way of putting it.' Rollo became animated. 'I've often wondered about the whole truth question and so has Gigi, your Greer. We wonder together in unison, you know, about all sorts of weird and wonderful things.'

He looked quizzically at Tony. 'Well, it's your biographer's job description
too,isn't it? You're just like Goldilocks and the Three Bears. Which porridge
are you after, Tony? The higher truth, which might be too hot, the lower truth
that might be too cold, or the middle-sized truth that could be just right?'

Tony said tentatively,'I guess what I'm after is the whole truth and nothing but.'

Rollo took another gulp of his gin.'Are you really? The whole catastrophe? Well, Gigi and I would say you've set yourself an impossible task because there are too many competing components.'

'The higher truth would be fine by me.Always remembering, Rollo, that it's reached
by lying.'

They traded sunny smiles.

Rollo said, 'And we can't have that in a bio, can we? Well then, what about the
John Lahr variation? I think it was John Lahr and not Bert. He talks about
disenchanting the citizen from the spell of received opinion. He thinks that's
the job of the critic, but I think it applies to artists and biomeisters even
more. Good, isn't it? Very succinct and subversive. Someone read it to me from
something recently, somewhere. Probably from an old
New Yorker
. It's a
New Yorker
sort of sentence.'

He gazed with renewed zeal at his painting on the easel and picked up a narrower brush with a blunt tip. 'The feeling, the truth and the lying. I'm not sure about your bio, but they're the holy trinity of art,Tony.'

'And the greatest of these?'

'They're inextricably entwined. Feeling, truth, and lying to illuminate, or
exhume
the truth.They're the essential oils, but I'm not sure you can separate them.They would be all you needed if you had to explain art to a Martian, wouldn't they?'

'I guess they would at that.And they'd explain poetry as well, or is that too much of a stretch?'

'I don't think that's stretching it. Not at all. There's a mystical link between painting and poetry, as there is between painting and music – I've always felt that.Well, if it's good enough for the Martians it should do for us as well.'

He wiped his brush and upended it. 'There you are, Tony, we've solved the problem of conveying the essence of art for you. If there was a problem. You've written on Mischa's work before, haven't you?'

'I have a bit.That doesn't mean writing about his work ceases to be an ongoing cerebral wrestling match.'

'Ah well, that must be because his paintings display "an unambiguous ambiguity". Or was it the other way round? That was what one critic famously wrote, wasn't it? Famously or fatuously. An
unambiguous ambiguity.
I'm not surprised it's a challenge, when you have that sort of thing to contend with.' Rollo gave a throaty chuckle and blew out his cheeks.

'I'll try not to emulate that effort. But I can't resent the project as a whole, it's an ongoing addiction for me right now, and has been for a fair while.'

Rollo subsided into the big squashy sofa with his thighs comfortably spread and patted the seat next to him.Tony sat down, leaving some space between them. It emitted caution. He inserted his recorder there. Rollo regarded it and him benignly.

'You're pretty keen on the art bizzo as a whole, aren't you,Tony? You're not just motivated by a venal desire to see your name in neon lights.'

Tony took a careful taste of his drink. 'Well, any lights would be a welcome bonus. But yes, the art's the thing. I guess it's my grand passion. If you can't hack it, if you can't be one of your pylons, write about it. For better or worse.'

Rollo looked satisfied.'Oh,always for better.There's no great difference between the practitioner and the scribbler in that regard, I've always thought. Not if they both partake of the passion. It's not such a bed of roses for the lovers though. Have you raised the subject with Gigi yet?'

'I haven't. It's a tricky one.'

'Mischa's passion is his work. The work always comes first, and Gigi knows this. Anyone living with an artist knows they're a step behind in the pecking order. Guy knows it.They have to play second fiddle, and that's not an easy thing.'

Tony began, 'But maybe Mischa –' He stopped, appeared to change his mind and embarked on a different question.'Do you think Greer – Gigi – resents it?'

'You can keep on calling her Greer if you like, I know exactly who you mean.' Rollo sipped his drink meditatively. He prodded the slice of lemon with his tongue. 'No, she doesn't resent it because she's a sensible woman and knows it would be a waste of time. It's an established fact of life and there's nothing to be done about it.'

'How about Guy?'

A snigger.'Guy holds it against me, but he keeps his end up. Up, up and away. His Majesty knows how to get his own back.'

He became subdued all of a sudden and subsided into himself.Tony's eyes moved over the stone walls of the studio, festooned with all the decorative flourishes, the sconces and wall-hangings and myriad knick-knacks Rollo called his gewgaws.The windows and the altar, and a couple of pews laden with painterly accoutrements, were the only clues to its earlier function as a chapel.

Greer had told him, however, that an aura of stillness, a contemplative quality,
remained at large in the atmosphere, uniquely conducive, as Rollo's work exemplified,
to creativity. Rollo had refused to have it deconsecrated lest he lose his
divine inspiration.

The silence threatened to become oppressive. Tony broke it. 'You two have had a long partnership, though, Rollo.There has to be a secret there.'

Rollo seemed to buck up. He looked gratified. 'We have, haven't we? What is our secret? We haven't been all that monogamous, not in a big way, so it can't be that. I know what it is. Frequent separations, with my painting and his wine.Lots of trips.They've been a help.'

'Is his wine a passion?'

'I suppose it might be. That means I'm superseded in the pecking order by bottles of Brunello.' His eyes were far away. 'But, do you know, Tony, I think what saved us was Gigi and Mischa. I think we were saved by them coming on the scene. We were at a bit of a fragile juncture, an over-heated stage in the relationship, rather like a pressure cooker steaming away. Their arrival had a stabilising effect. They were the valve that let the steam escape.'

'It was a gamble though, wasn't it? Inviting them to buy into this place.You hadn't known them that long.'

'No, you're quite right. We hadn't known them that long at all. But we didn't need to, you see, we both felt that. We knew they were the right ones. It was just like when you fall in love,Tony.We fell in love with them.We were quite sure and we hardly talked about it. It's all legal and above board, of course. We've got bits of paper that say we each own our turf and bailiwick.'

'And what about the common areas? You all use the guesthouse, right, and the pool? Do you have a formal agreement for them?'

Rollo baulked visibly.'Formal agreement? Ugh.What a ghastly idea. No, we just tell each other when we want to book guests in. It works very well. Nobody hogs it.'

'And Mischa and Greer immediately liked the idea of moving here?'

'Well, I think they'd been wandering around for years, living this nomadic life
in different exotic places, and perhaps they were ready to stop. Gigi, at any
rate. I think she was ready for a home. And Mischa needed a base. Even he was
getting tired of packing and unpacking, and things not reaching him because
people didn't know where he was. The time just happened to be right. So many
important things in life boil down to a matter of timing, don't they?' He shifted
his weight.

'Don't they just. Had you been actively looking for a while, then, for people to join you here?'

'Oddly enough I don't think we'd even mentioned the possibility until they came along. Ask His Majesty, his memory's in better nick than mine. No, we were introduced to them in Paris at something or other and we just got on. We hit it off straightaway. And then we found out that they didn't have children,which was an advantage.We didn't ask them if they had any, we were worried it might have been a sensitive subject.We found out in a roundabout way.'

His forehead furrowed. 'I don't know if Gigi would have liked children. I've always left it up to her to raise the subject, but she's never brought it up. Which makes me wonder if it's a painful area. Do you get the impression it's a deep regret,Tony?'

Tony said,'I haven't asked her about it.'

'But you'll have to, won't you?'

'It's something I'll need to get on to, I guess.' He drank again, somewhat less gingerly.

'Of course, there's no doubt Mischa would have regarded the whole idea of children
with complete horror. He never wanted to be tied down at all.That was why he
came to home ownership so late. He was fifty-five by then, you know. He'd been
a young man in the swinging '60s – well, I suppose they did the odd bit of swinging behind the Iron Curtain, by
osmosis – and he saw the whole domesticity thing as dangerously stultifying.'

Rollo cast a complacent eye over his surroundings. 'Whereas his nibs and I were suckers for the nesting. We didn't hesitate when we saw this place, even though it looked like the aftermath of the bombing of Dresden back then. But, you know, I think Mischa came to see that settling down here brought a surprising freedom in its wake, whereas the old life of endlessly trudging from one place to the next had been quite restrictive, in its own way. That's how life often works, I've found, Tony. Through a series of paradoxes.'

They both jumped at the blast of a peremptory baritone. 'Rollo, are you still breathing in there, or have you died?'

Guy swung through the internal door that connected the chapel with the house, pugs snorting at his heels, and raised an eyebrow at the reclining couple on the sofa.'Why are you lurking when you could be having a bracing drink on the terrace with a ravishing view? Get a move on, Gigi's already there.We've laid on a good sunset for you,Tony.'

Rollo drained his glass and extended an arm. Guy took the empty glass with one hand and heaved him to his feet with the other.

'What was the name of that exhibition in Paris where we first met Gigi and Mischa?'

Guy ruminated. 'It was a photographic show. Landscapes or nature, by someone
with an odd name. An American.What was it? You'd know him,Tony.'