The Life and Loves of Lena Gaunt (14 page)

I
don’t know if Trix felt the lump before I noticed it. She must have: by that time it was the size and hardness of a pebble from the beach, rounded by the passage of time, by wearing against fluid; or of a small egg. It sat, her pebble, her egg, under the soft skin in her right armpit. Once I knew it was there, when I saw her lift her arm – or if she rested it behind her head, on the bed, against cold sheets – I could see it, hard under the surface as she held her arm aloft.

There was nothing that could be done, the doctor told her when I made her go to see him. She’d cycled in to town, her satchel over her shoulder. I waited in the kitchen for her, drinking tea. I heard her bicycle clank against the gate at the front of the house, heard her footfall on the steps, on the verandah; heard the door open, heard her walk down the hall; all these sounds came to me as if through liquid, under water, slowed down and other-worldly. Trix sat down at the kitchen table opposite me, her satchel draped over her shoulder. She sat very still. I went to the stove to fill the teapot, to make fresh tea. When I poured it for her, she put her hand over mine on the table.

She started a painting that day, when she returned from
town, tired, grey-faced, started it in a frenzy that day but came to finish it, that week, with a strange sort of calm. She faced out from the canvas at a quarter turn, so that you could see the outline of her right breast, clearly, against a background of pebbles, grey stone, damp, on a beachscape littered with grotesque sculpted seaweed, bull kelp blades like seal corpses, kelp stipes white like skeletons. She stared out of the painting with clear, blue eyes, her mouth a thin strip of lips pale as death, but smiling, turned up, just like that, at the corner. In her left hand, cupped gently between her breasts, there was an egg, mottled grey on ivory. Reflected, barely there on the top surface of the egg, you could see her eyes. She wore a pale blue smock, a simple shift, its texture quite clearly that of linen, the nubs of it silky, soapy on the surface of the canvas. The sky in the painting was a calm blue-grey and in it were two birds – one to the left, one to the right – with their wing tips almost touching in the middle of the painting, in the sky above Trix’s head, almost forming a circle surrounding her. In the open palm of her right hand, extending into the foreground of the painting, defying perspective, she held a sea star.

I could not bear to look at the painting then, when she seemed well. Later, as she became sicker, and sicker, I could look within it and, seeing her calm, feel some comfort.

Trix was able to finish the teaching year, though her health slowly ebbed, leaving her thin, tired, and grey. In June we moved to a furnished flat in Tennyson Street, to be nearer to the school, to save Trix the bicycle ride each morning
and evening. From Tennyson Street, she could walk up the hill to Stuart Street in the mornings, when her energy was at its peak for the day. In the afternoons, I would walk up and wait for her by the steps of the school; we’d walk home down the hill together, quiet, Trix leaning into me, her thin body against my side. She’d drink tea, eat a small meal I put in front of her, then she’d fall into bed and sleep a hot, restless, fitful sleep. We’d kept separate rooms as studios in the big house in Tomahawk Road, but – out on the coast, away from people – had shared a bedroom. In Tennyson Street, in town, we kept separate bedrooms once again, as we had years before in the house in Mosman. I cleaned the house, cooked for us, washed her sweat from bed sheets.

On occasion – to escape the sense of enclosure, of tightness I felt in town – I’d ride Trix’s black bicycle down to the beach at St Clair and along the road skirting the coast, prop the bicycle by the gate of the house in Tomahawk Road, and walk down to the tide line, picking over the pebbles and seaweed strewn there. I’d walk back up from the beach, back between the salt grey stones of the cemetery and up through the gate, letting myself into the house, walking through its quiet rooms, filling them with the sounds of my footsteps, my breathing. I’d draw open the curtains in the kitchen; lift the lid of the piano and play an arpeggio, play scales, play anything that came to me. Often, I slammed my hands into the keyboard, up and down the length of it making noise, uncontrolled outbursts of noise, no musicality, no organisation to it, just pure, horrible, terrible noise; mimicking the thunder of the waves on the beach but without rhythm, without tone, just pure noise.
I raised my voice with the sound of the piano – hammers against wires – raised my voice to hammer against the air, in a wail, a scream, a cry; I screamed until my throat was raw. I’d sit then at the piano, dry-faced, empty.

Trix’s studio in Tomahawk Road was filled with her paintings, her sketches and notebooks, an easel. Paintings were propped up, most of them facing the walls, covered with dustsheets; dotted around the room, Trix stared at me from other paintings left face-out. The smell of her was everywhere: turpentine, smoke. In my room was my theremin. There was no electricity to power it. I stood by it, stood in the position in which I would play it, held my hands as if to play, but it was dead, silent. My hands dropped to my side; I closed the doors to the rooms as I left, closed the front door behind me, locked it with the key I wore on a plait of red wool around my neck, and rode back to town.

T
he graduate show was her last hurrah. We chose our outfits with care, dressed more extravagantly than we had in years, as if to acknowledge the significance of the night.

I drew a bath for Trix, warm, full, and knelt beside her while she washed. I sponged water down her back with a flannel; she shivered, although the water was warm. As she stepped from the bath I wrapped a towel around her shoulders, wrapped her in my arms, her back against my front. Her clothes were laid out on the bed, and I helped her into them, straightened her jacket, buttoned the silver buttons, buckled her shoes; although she could still do all of these things for herself, it was somehow a service I could perform for her, a gift, that night. I dressed quickly, gathered the train of my dress in my hands and, from the mantelpiece, took the ampoules of morphine the doctor had left that day. Trix sat at the kitchen table. I injected her as the doctor had shown me, watched relief suffuse her face.

When Armin arrived to pick us up, Trix and I sat, quiet, her hand on mine, at the kitchen table.

All our friends gathered around us that night, the whole group. But Trix tired early; I could see the labour behind her eyes as the night progressed, as the morphine wore off. Armin drove us back to the flat in Tennyson Street. We slept together – just slept, just held one another – that night for the last time, my arms around her thin body feeling her restlessness, her fitful sleep, and the deep, strong heat of the sickness all through her.

T
hat summer, after the end of term, we moved back to the house in Tomahawk Road. Trix stopped painting me, stopped painting anything or anyone but herself. She painted many self-portraits during her illness, charting the course her body took, the effect of the disease on her body, her face. But she didn’t paint what she saw in the mirror. Her image in the mirror was a reference, like gridlines on a page, like the converging lines of perspective drawn as guides to the eye. Trix didn’t paint to the image; she painted away from it. She painted herself from the inside out.

She painted again with a frenzy and fervour, in the first weeks back at Tomahawk Road, needing little morphine and less food, surviving on tea and cigarettes and the smell of paint. I walked to the shops for food, even walked again on the beach, but never far away, and never for too long.

Armin visited most days; Mardi, Tom, the others came often. They came in the daytime, brought sandwiches and fruit, cigarettes and gossip, and we’d sit in the kitchen,
talk, eat, drink tea. Trix would curl on the daybed pulled close to the stove, pillows behind her, red wool rug over her feet. Ash from her cigarettes would drop to the floor, gritting the rug in front of her. When she’d had morphine, her head would nod as we talked, her cigarette held aloft, held lightly between her fingers, dropping lower, burning lower; I’d watch it, carefully take it from her to stop it from burning the mattress, the rug, her clothes. Armin and the others didn’t stay long, when they visited. They’d kiss Trix’s cheek as they left, bend over her as she reclined on the daybed. I’d walk them to the door and it was me they embraced, tight, hard, as if I was dying; as if it was me they might not see again the next month, or week, or the next day.

She stopped painting, just stopped. She moved herself to the daybed, to the red rug, the pillows, the ashtray, although the cigarette in her hand remained unlit, there for comfort.

I went to the studio where she’d been sleeping, to strip the sheets from the bed, to wash them, wash away the sweet sick smell of her. There was a canvas on her easel. She’d told me it was finished, but there were great patches of white on it, the prepped canvas underneath showing through, lacking paint. Where there was paint, the colours were muted, grey. The usual fracturing of light that always fragmented her works was missing from this. Her face shone with pallor from the centre of the canvas, her brow wet with sweat. Her right hand was raised, the painting of it not complete, half of it in outline still.

P
eople are quiet in the house of the dying. Armin and the others would let themselves in, walk softly, reverently to the kitchen, kiss me, take my place by the daybed, rest their hand on Trix’s. We’d all speak in lowered voices, like the genteel murmur of a cocktail party. We didn’t play the piano; no one sang. We ate sandwiches; no one cooked any more.

It was quick, in the end, although it didn’t feel quick from within; time seemed to drip by, moment by moment, like honey, or treacle; like paint. The doctor came, and nurses. Morphine stayed the pain, for a while; then it could no longer. I would sit with her, sit by the stove, by the daybed. I would sit, hold her hand in mine.

When I slept, I slept in her studio, surrounded by her paintings. I made the bed with clean fresh sheets, thin wrinkled waves forming a front as I smoothed the white cotton across the surface of the bed with the palm of my hand. From the canvas on the easel Trix’s hand was raised in greeting, or farewell.

On the last day, sun shone through the window in the kitchen. I prepared the morphine, as the doctor had, as the nurses had. I held my breath; I exhaled. As her breath eased, I slid beside her on the daybed, lay the length of her, our bodies still.

She was buried, of course, in the cemetery by the sea. We stood there in the wind, the salt on our lips, all of us – you could have seen us from the window of the kitchen of the house in Tomahawk Road if you’d leaned far enough out. We walked back from the graveside to the house, arms linked, eyes gleaming, ready to make noise again. We drank beer, then the wine in flagons that Armin had brought. There was bread and cheese, sausage rich with garlic, a plate of curried eggs; there were oranges, and grapes, and apples. A bowl of walnuts was in the centre of the table. Someone had made a fruit cake. Tom played the piano, and we sang. Someone brought more beer, perhaps sherry. I was sick in the flax bush by the verandah, in a great, hot, wine-dark wave.

A cool cloth bathed my forehead; a glass of water pressed against my lips. The bathroom was dark; no, the bedroom was dark. The sheets were white, smooth, cool against me. Trix, her hand raised in benediction, was by my side.

I slid my arms around the smooth, broad back above me, over me, felt prickling lips on my lips, my forehead, my breasts. I felt hard pain, where I had not felt pain before. It felt like the pain of loss. I cried out, sang out, loud, still alive.

W
ith Trix’s death came a strange, in-between time, the house busy with solicitous visitors, but hushed, reverent. I missed the noise, from the time before sickness. But at least there were people. Mardi and Celia came often, would bring me food, stay for tea, then leave me, kissing me gently on each cheek, rubbing my back, smiling sadly. Armin and Tom came one day with boxes of Trix’s papers and paints, cleared from her desk, her studio at the school. They brought two bottles of beer, and we drank them sitting at the kitchen table, as we always had. As they left, Tom hugged me, the empty bottles in his hands clinking together behind me. While Tom took the bottles to the car, Armin took my hand, the two of us framed in the doorway. He pressed my hand between his hands; I felt his beard brush first one cheek, then the other, felt his stubble then his lips on my forehead. He patted my hand, then dropped it, and walked to the car. I walked to the edge of the verandah, and waved to them both as they drove away.

I had nothing to do, no job to attend to, just myself to feed. I shopped for groceries, just enough for one, ever-thankful
for the money in the bank that funded it. I walked on the beach each day. I tended the garden. I slept in Trix’s studio, her paintings around me. I stopped expecting to hear her voice, smell her cigarettes, every time I walked through the front door. I realised that a week had passed, then a month, then two.

I lay on the bed in her studio, my hands on my belly, thinking of her hands, thinking of other hands. I had not bled since Trix was alive.

My uncle had sent me a telegram the week Trix died:
Darling Lena so so sorry for loss. Love always Val.
A letter had arrived a week or so later.
My darling girl,
he wrote,
you must know you always have a home here if you want it, in this house that is too big for me alone
. I had not known what to reply, had not been able to decide what to do, where to go.

I walked to the cemetery, stood by the mounded earth where Trix lay, no longer Trix. I crossed my arms, tucked my hands in hard. I bowed my head against the cold wind, closed my eyes against its stinging. This cold, conventional city was no place for the artist’s unmarried, orphaned niece to have a baby.

That afternoon I walked to the post office and sent a telegram.
Dear Uncle. Yes please. Coming home. Will send details. Love Lena.

In the weeks before I left Dunedin, although my belly had not yet started to swell, I could feel the subtle changes in my body, and knew that Trix would have felt them too.
I noticed changes in my mind too; an inner anaesthetic calmed me, soothed my days and nights, as a drug might. I hummed to the shape forming inside me, hummed too to Trix, sent vibrations into the air, the aether, to connect us. I spent less time in the house, with its furniture and quiet, and more on the beach, walking into the keening wind. On the beach I felt alive, felt Trix close, felt the three of us together.

One warm day, I watched from the kitchen window as sudden spring rain pelted in from across the ocean. I ran from the house, ran down to the beach, my dress soaking and dragging at my legs, the smell of me rising from the wet wool of my cardigan. There was no one but me on the beach. I stripped off my cardigan, my dress, threw my arms wide, my face to the sky, let the rain soak me, let myself cry to the sea and sky. This was how Trix stayed with me; I did not need corporeal reminders. And so, as I prepared to leave Dunedin, I determined to rid myself of our possessions.

Furniture Trix and I had accumulated, softened with the shapes of our bodies; tools we had used to dig and tend our cold, salted garden; these I left in the Tomahawk Road house for whoever would live there next. All of Trix’s clothes, her notebooks, her paintings – I could not bear to keep these; I could not. I burned the clothes in a great bonfire in the back yard at Tomahawk Road, on the night before I handed over the keys to the land agent. Her notebooks, her paintings, I handed over to the care of Armin and Mardi and Tom. I took with me few things: one trunk of clothes, another of
linen and sheet music, my fat scrapbook tucked inside; and other than these, my theremin, packed in its crate, with just two small paintings – one of me, one of Trix – nestled beside it, turned inwards, facing one another.

All of the stories of my life have begun and ended with the ocean. And so I left Dunedin, boarding yet another ship. While I considered myself an old hand at travel by sea, the voyage was my daughter’s first. It was to be her only voyage by ship. She was doubly buoyed on that journey, by waters exterior and interior – my daughter travelled from Dunedin to Fremantle within me,
in utero
, not yet her and yet her, already kicking and rolling with the waters’ movement.