The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt (11 page)

A candle stood in its centre with an electric light as a flame. A device was inside the cake, surely. As I approached, the candle lit, first flickering then glowing steadily. As I moved closer, the whole table started to rotate, going faster the closer I stood; then as I stepped backwards, the rotation slowed, the glowing candle faded to a flicker. I stepped forwards and backwards, my hands to my face in delight. I stepped away and raised my hands in front of me – almost in the position I would adopt to play the theremin – to see if the proximity of my hands was enough to rotate the cake, but it needed a greater body mass, a greater disruption of the electrical field than my hands could provide; it needed my whole body.

All the people of the crowd had moved around me, forming the shape of a crescent moon, oohing and aahing,
clapping quietly. The Professor stood by my side, smiling at me, nodding as I understood what he had done, as I played his invention for him. The people in the crowd added their bodies and their arms to the influence of the cake and the table, and soon all were in a huddle, a scrum, hands and bodies moving together and apart in delight, in wonder. Mr Britten moved to my side and kissed my cheek once more, his hand straight to the small of my back and lower, caressing, and his breath in my ear was warm, wet, unpleasant as he hummed
Happy birthday, darling girl
, and I shrank into myself to avoid him, my eyes seeking the floor, seeking escape.

But then I saw the glossy patent of her shoes appear by the pale silk of mine, toe touching toe.

‘Edward Britten, for godsakes leave the poor girl alone, won’t you? You’re dreadful, darling, honestly.’ Her arm slipped around my waist, her lips brushed my cheek, close to my own lips; I caught her scent: the honey wax of lipstick, tobacco, turpentine faint in her hair. ‘Happy birthday, darling Miss Gaunt. Your playing was wonderful. Don’t mind Edward; he’s a dreadful slut, and he always goes running back to Delphine, don’t you, Edward?’

‘Thank you, Miss…’

‘Beatrix Carmichael, doll. Call me Trix. Run away and bring us drinks, Edward; you’re not looking after your guests.’ Her arm still around my waist, loose but warm, slipped lower – just slightly, just lightly – so her hand rested on my thin hip. She was shorter than me, the top of her head at the height of my eyes.

There was a shout from across the room as Madame
Petrova and the Professor clinked small glasses one against the other, and we turned, Trix and I, to watch them down the liquor in unison, shouting something guttural as they finished.

I turned back as Trix did, so that I turned my face into hers – we were facing one another, my face above hers, hers tilted up towards mine. I caught her breath under my tongue, smoke and whisky, as she said in a low voice, ‘Come to the beach with me, doll. Let’s go to Manly. Tomorrow.’

W
e met at Circular Quay. Beatrix was dressed in trousers, wide at the ankle. I saw her first from a distance; she faced away from me, yet I knew it was her. She turned, as if she felt my eyes on her, and as she turned, the legs of her trousers swished and moved like the sails of a ship, revealing ankle straps on her glossy shoes. Her face was lit with a smile. She wore a white fedora over bobbed hair, powdered face and the reddest of red lipstick on her wide lips. Yet while her clothes and appearance were a mixture of mannish and womanly, no one could see her at that moment and not know she was a woman.

Beatrix doffed her hat, winked at me, walked towards me, rested her hands on both my shoulders and kissed me on one cheek and then the next, in the European way I was used to from the Professor and Madame Petrova.

‘Ready, darl?’ she asked me, turning so that we faced in the same direction, towards the ferries, and taking my arm with hers. ‘I took the liberty’– she squeezed my arm gently – ‘of purchasing tickets for the two of us to travel. We’re just in time. Hustle your bustle, doll.’

Whisked along as I would come to expect by Beatrix,
we joined the flow of people boarding the ferry berthed at Manly Wharf. The day was fine, and we secured a position on the deck, sitting close together on wooden slats that bounded the cabin. Beatrix took a packet of cigarettes from her pocket, and offered them to me. I took one, and Beatrix leaned in and lit it for me, her hand around mine around the match to shield the flame from the breeze.

We talked about everything and nothing on the trip to Manly; and we watched the bridge.

‘Look at it,’ Beatrix said, ‘God, it’s so beautiful. I love painting it. Not just the bridge. The water, the light. The shapes. The spaces between the shapes. The way they change as we move past them. I like to try to paint that.’

From the water, the view of the bridge was different than from anywhere on land – from that low angle, looking up, it seemed so much larger. Its overall shape had not changed since my view of it from the
Houtman
as I’d steamed into Sydney for the first time. The shape was the same, but denser, spaces filled, lines and curves connected. It looked stronger, more permanent, even though still the two arcs of the bridge did not meet. The air around and between the arcs hummed and rang with the sounds of construction from the bridge, of human voices drowned by metallic ringing.

The air had been still that morning, heavy with humidity and unseasonal warmth for autumn. On the water, air moved past us as the boat moved through it, creating a cooling breeze. It felt like an escape, to be surrounded by water, by its sound. The sweat on my back, under my arms, dried quickly in the breeze. I felt light again,
released from the dragging effect of the city. I wore the dress I had worn for my first meeting with the Professor: black and white, elegant. I felt myself cool underneath the dress, felt the fabric move against me.

The ferry docked at Manly and the crowd of disembarking passengers streamed off onto land. Beatrix – she had said again, on the ferry,
call me Trix
– Trix took my arm. Her arm was cool; I could feel my sweat slicken the soft underside of my elbow against her dry skin.

Trix walked us to tearooms that overlooked the water. We took a table in the rotunda, outside but shaded from the sun. She ordered tea, sandwiches, and cakes. We talked as we ate. I learned that she was an artist, a painter, and that – born ten years from the close of the old century – she was more than twice my age. Having long ago escaped from the cold southern town of her birth across the water in New Zealand, more recently she’d returned to Australia from living in Europe, in places with romantic names, Paris, Vienna, Berlin. I spoke of my music, of my conversion from cello to theremin, of my interest and delight in the modern. We were loud, sometimes, over tea that day. We were looked at, by quieter patrons. I rested my hand on the table; Trix covered it with hers, cool and slight.

We walked down past the hotel and on to the beach, shoes off, sand crunching and squeaking between our toes. I could feel the stretch in my calves, felt myself push against the hard wet sand low on the beach. Trix linked her arm through mine. The waves were quiet that day, not booming, just a light, rounded swell. At the western end
of the bay, where the beach curved around, long shadows from Norfolk pines fell on the beach, formed strips of shade on the white sand. We fell in and out of darkness as we walked.

We caught a late, crowded ferry back to Circular Quay. People smelled of beer and oil and sweat and fish. Trix and I resumed our places at the front of the boat, where the air moved the smells away, and the boat thrummed underneath us with its rhythmic tug. We were quieter now, all talked out. We listened instead to the talk around us, talk of football and fish and Missus this and Mister that. We smiled at each other, smiled at the same overheard fragments.

I looked at Trix. The light from the low sun glowed. She reached for my hand, resting in my lap. As she reached, tucking her little hand around my long fingers, her knuckles brushed against me, pressed the fabric of my dress to touch me lightly, underneath. I glowed with the sun, with the touch, with heat, a spark in me fired.

We arranged to meet again the next day. I waited for Trix at Circular Quay, watched her step from the ferry and stride towards me. She placed her hands on my shoulders, brushed her left cheek first against my right cheek, then her right cheek – slowly – against my left cheek. She breathed out hot breath against me, spiced with cigarette smoke.

‘I’ve brought lunch.’ She lifted a large, worn velvet bag. ‘And a little drink.’ She linked her arm through mine, and we walked together. I matched my long stride to her smaller
step. We walked for hours in the autumn sun, through the Domain, the Botanic Gardens. At Mrs Macquaries Chair we sat and ate cheese sandwiches unwrapped from waxed paper, washed down with sherry from a tin bottle, all drawn from deep in her velvet bag. We sat close on the seat in the shade, so close I could smell the sherry on her breath. She lit a cigarette for me, and one for herself; she shifted closer to me, turned her body, just a little, so that she looked at me. We sat and smoked and watched the world, watched each other.

We walked back to Circular Quay late in the afternoon. Trix held her bag in front of her, low, almost dragging on the ground as she walked. As we approached the terminal, she turned to me, placed her hand on my arm.

‘Come to my house. Come for tea. My paintings – I want to show you. Come on.’

We chattered up the hill from the ferry dock at Mosman to Trix’s house in Royalist Road, leaning in on one another, giggling and scurrying like two schoolgirls. We climbed up the steps onto the verandah that wrapped around two sides of the house.

‘Turn around, look!’ Trix told me. ‘This is where I paint, sometimes.’

From the verandah you could see the bridge. The shapes and curves of it, the two halves like the swell of full breasts, or pregnant bellies, reached towards each other, approaching completeness. You could imagine the arc the finished bridge would form; your eye drew it in, filled the space, completed it, connected the two pieces. We stood
for a moment; I could think of no words to say. I could feel her next to me, and nothing else mattered.

The house was quiet, dark inside; no one answered Trix’s
coo-ee!
as we slammed in through the front door from the verandah.

‘Sherry? Mmmn, sherry, yes. Come on.’ She took my hand and pulled me with her through to a lean-to kitchen where, on a shelf, bottles of liquid shone, next to glasses of every shape, none of them matching. They stood upon embroidered linen, next to candles in silver sticks, as if on an altar. Trix poured amber sherry into two glasses, one of panelled red glass, the other fine crystal. She handed me the red glass, clinked the crystal against it, and took my hand again.

‘Come on. I want to show you.’

She led me down the hallway, through an open door. It smelled of paint, of turpentine, of smoke, of our sherry.

‘Look,’ she said, ‘let me show you. The light. What we’ve been looking at. What I see. What I can make it do.’

She drew the curtain aside, let in the pale light of the dying day. The room was full of paintings. Canvas rested against canvas, some framed, most of them not. Paintings faced out into the room, or turned their backs to us, faced the wall. They were on the floor, on a bookcase, a desk. They hung on the wall, they sat on a well-stuffed chair by the window. She lifted one – small, barely bigger than the width of a dinner plate – and held it to me. I took it from her.

It was the bridge viewed from the verandah. Somehow, though, I could see it not just from the verandah, but from
the ferry, from the other side of the harbour, from Mrs Macquaries Chair, all at once; all of those views and angles were combined. The painting was all about movement, and shape. It swam before my eyes.

‘But how?’ I said. ‘How do you – how does it move like this?’

She took the painting from me, kissed my cheek – just shy of my mouth – and placed the painting on the chair by the window.

‘Ah, see, that’s why I wanted to show you. It’s what I do. I trick the light.’ She held her hands wide, inviting me, enticing me to move around the room. I looked at canvas after canvas of the bridge, the rooftops, the sky and the water. Still lives – the altar of wine and glasses – cigarettes and matchboxes. People I did not recognise, their faces and bodies formed in shapes and planes and colours.

‘And this, look at this. Ah, it’s old, but still…’

A cello was fractured into parts; not the parts of a cello, and yet somehow, combined, they made me know they formed a cello. The dun colour of the wood was enlivened, shot through with blue, light reflecting from glass under the instrument. It stood by a window; that was it, a window. Or was it water? I couldn’t tell.

‘I used to play – before the aetherphone – I played cello.’

‘You told me.’

‘It’s beautiful. But I don’t understand how you do it.’

‘I interpret what I see. This is how I see the world. This is how I make it look.’

The cello in the painting was a cello, and yet not a cello.

‘It makes me think – of the sound I make with the aetherphone. Not like a cello, but like it. Both more than it, and less than it, at the same time, and yet itself as well. I’m not making sense, I—’

‘No, no, it makes sense. I think that’s it exactly. Itself, and more than itself, and less. Everything connects.’ She stubbed her cigarette out in a bowl on a table. ‘Everything connects!’

She moved towards me, took the empty red glass from my hand, placed it on the table next to the ash-filled bowl. She reached up to place her arms around me; her hands hooked over my shoulders and her fingers reached under my chin, their touch gentle.

‘Beautiful girl.’

I breathed in, almost could not breathe out. My face turned to the left and I kissed her finger.

‘Oh.’ She made a noise like
tsk
, with her mouth. ‘Beautiful, beautiful girl.’ And she raised up on her toes, and I leant – just slightly – downwards, and we kissed, our lips light at first, then heavy upon one another, smoky, sweet, intense.

We fell into one another. Beatrix took my body and fractured it into parts, so that I felt every part, every piece of my body with an intensity that was new to me, delicious. I felt the parts put together into a whole that was greater than it had been, before Trix. All of the planes and curves of my body were showing, all at once, inside me and outside me and all around me.