Watercolours (20 page)

‘It's lovely to finally meet you, Mrs Roper,' Mr Symonds says. ‘We're used to seeing your husband.'

‘Yes,' says Eleanor. ‘Gerard deals with things when they're running smoothly. But today we have a problem.'

There is a weird silence. I look up and see that Mr Symonds doesn't look so friendly anymore.

‘This continued delay is simply unacceptable,' Eleanor says. ‘Sinclair's has a loyal customer base and I cannot have my farmers waiting for essential supplies a moment longer.' She goes on with a reasonable smile. ‘Now, I'm here. You're here. And between you, me and this giant head office I'm sure we can sort out the trifling matter of one container.'

She sits back and slides the plate of biscuits towards me. I take another one and start crunching it. I'd like to take a photo of Mr Symonds to capture the gawky look on his face but I'm still working on the tidal wave. Besides, I can always draw him later.

 

Afterwards, Eleanor is too happy to be cooped up in a taxi. She wants to walk, striking out along the footpath and I have to trot to keep up with her. It's lunchtime now and there are even more people swarming everywhere. Among the fumes of cigarettes and perfume, oil and aftershave, B.O. and hairspray, I turn to
look up at the building we have just left. I have to lean way back to see where the top strikes blue and when I finally catch the angle the height of it shoves me backwards. I almost fall over but Eleanor grabs my hand. She leads me through the crowd like this and it's a relief not to have to concentrate on keeping her close; instead I can ride along with the current and let all the bodies pummel me. I wonder if this is how a stick feels, tossed into the river.

We walk past the Queen Victoria Building and some big movie theatres and then turn down a side street into Chinatown. Stepping over streams of water we keep walking past piles of old lettuce leaves and boxes of funny-looking vegetables until we're standing outside a tiny, packed restaurant. Somehow we are squeezed inside and a lady brings us a pot of tea. Eleanor orders us dumplings and a plate of noodles, rolled and stretched by the smiling man in the kitchen window. When the dumplings arrive, Eleanor shows me how to dip each one into a dish of dark vinegar. After lunch we wander the aisles of the supermarket next door, looking at strange dried shapes in plastic packets, trying to guess whether they are plant or animal. Eleanor buys some jars of brown paste for cooking, the sort you can't get in Morus, and I find a little pink bowl with a yellow dragon painted in the middle for my mother and a bunch of incense as thick as a small log that I'm surprised doesn't cost more.

It isn't until we're walking up through the park full of ibis eating hamburger scraps that I notice something is missing. The cicadas are gone. I feel my chest. Not a scratch or a twitter, not one cellophane wing. Just my heart and my breath, quick from the slope we've been climbing.

I'm confused. Why would the cicadas leave just as I found proof of the river's connection to Nonno? Did the noise of the plane frighten them off?

Eleanor takes me into the war memorial, where we stare at a hundred names melted into bronze, but I can't concentrate. I keep wondering about the cicadas. Maybe they can't travel far from the river. Or maybe we've flown so fast and over such a long distance they have been left behind. I have outrun them! Even if they come searching now there's no way they'll be able to find me.

For the first time in a long time there is no pressure in me to draw. There is no scratching, no bird following me with its secret messages to work out. Just me, my own body, empty as an eggshell.

Suddenly I feel so light I could lift off the ground, right up into the stained-glass dome above us like a lost balloon. We head out into the sunlight and I practise walking in my new empty state. It feels strange. Everything — trees, birds, office workers eating their lunch — ignores me. I am on my own; free. In the space that the cicadas have left, relief flows in like warm water.

At the top of the park we hit a big intersection and I have to focus on making my way across without getting flattened. We keep on going up a busy street where cars and buses tremble at traffic lights like frightened animals and I notice how the shops are changing. Chemists have signs saying
24 hours
in pink and blue neon, rows of faceless heads display crazy wigs, there are mannequins posing in dangerous-looking studded-leather outfits and every single shop throbs with music. All sorts of restaurants tempt us but we are full of dumplings and keep going, past Thai places with pyramid cushions instead of chairs, Indian places
with hot trays full of bright liquid, kebab shops where men with muscley forearms carve strips off glistening spits.

Eleanor stops when we get to a restaurant with a barbecue in the window. A big hanging vent like the trunk of an elephant sucks up the smoke from the fish and slabs of steak charring there. The smell makes me think of summer and camping, of hot afternoons with Mum and Dad and barbecue dinners by the river. I feel my eyes start to burn. My throat aches like it's being squeezed. Suddenly I miss my parents and want to go home.

Just then I see a dark doorway off to the side. Eleanor is standing there, her eyes shining.

‘This is it,' she says.

 

Stepping from the busy street into the calm of the art shop feels like entering the doorway to a new universe. Behind me is everything I have done so far; ahead is everything I still have to do. It only takes a second to cross from footpath to paint-flecked floorboards — I am blind for a minute until my eyes adjust to the gloom — but in that time my whole idea of drawing, of pictures, of paper and pencils and paint, of what it means to
make
something, changes forever.

The aisles are stacked right up to the roof with every kind of art supply you could imagine. I stand there with my mouth open in the middle of it all and feel like I'm staring into the future. Surrounding me is a never-ending landscape ready to be born — hills and valleys and oceans and rivers, animals and people and all of their relations, everything still raw but ready. Waiting for me to give it life.

I can hardly believe how much stuff there is in the shop and how many different ways there are to use the stuff. Two whole
walls are full of paper and cardboard, all with different textures and thicknesses; some have sharp edges, some are shaggy, some look soft and pulpy as fabric. The creamy shades all seem the same until I read their names — Moonstone, Flannel, Lily, Bisque — then I can see the differences. I decide I like Moonstone best, then Lily.

I move in dreamy, scuba-diver steps past blank canvases and frames and measuring equipment, right down to the shop's murky bottom to find sea sponges and soft blocks of clay sweating under plastic wrap. Packets of moss and tiny trees are here, and rolls of wire-form and matchsticks packed like ammunition, and every other thing you'd ever need to make model worlds. Here there are a million ways to tie and wrap and hold. Glues and solvents wait side by side, ready to be set on each other. Turps and resin and varnish and wax, rice glue, pearl glue and cereal starch — so many brown liquids and so much pale, thick mush ready to be mixed and slopped. I turn the corner and cliffs of oil paints and acrylics rise either side of me like a giant social studies map ready to be explored: Indian Red, Windsor Blue, Naples Yellow, French Ultramarine. I tumble past Umber. Rose Madder snags me. There are palettes, spatulas, knives and blades set out like utensils in a kitchen, ready to prepare the most colourful, fantastic meals.

On I wander, my fingers trailing over dust-masks and cotton gloves and visors, armour to guard against the wild-flying bits and pieces of creation. I stop beside a wooden dummy to rearrange its limbs, run my hands over a timber easel and a portfolio case way too grown up for someone like me. Here and there I come across things Miss Morrison has already introduced me to in my lessons up at the high school — woodblocks and silk-screens and pastels
— but most of what I see I never even knew existed. And now that I know they exist, I start to think what I might do with them. And once I do this — imagine myself back home in the shed with all this at my fingertips — my anchor strikes rock bottom. The clang sends an awful shudder through me. Slowly, water fills up my lungs until I am suspended on the bottom of the sea, powerless, crushed by the weight of the treasures I have found.

I sink down onto a pile of acid-free sketchbooks and slap my hand to my chest. My fingers press and search but they find only my own heart beating, nothing else. Why have they deserted me? At first I was happy to be rid of their constant buzzing and scratching; now my chest aches with emptiness. All I know is that I can't face a project this big without them. I just can't do it on my own.

Outside, the street is horrible. Buses roar. Cars spit. People push past in both directions, none of them bothering to look in the art-shop window. Nobody notices me slumped alone in the shadows, my hand on my heart. For a moment I think I catch the rumble of thunder, but it's only a truck passing.

 

Back at the hotel at last, Eleanor kicked off her shoes, scrunched her stockinged toes and sighed with relief at the feel of soft wool carpet. She slipped her jacket onto a hanger and flopped face-down onto the bed with a groan.

Her legs ached from all the walking and the varicose vein behind her left knee was throbbing. Her suede heels were generally good for getting about the city, but she and Novi had covered quite a distance today and by the afternoon a twinge had developed in her lower back. She knew it was time to get
some sensible walking shoes and yet she resisted this surrender to middle age. Sensible shoes were dowdy and unflattering and would do nothing for her silhouette. No, she was not beyond heels just yet. Her calves were still too elegant for her to abandon vanity in favour of comfort.

Poor Novi was exhausted, too. She had found him practically collapsed near the counter of the art shop. He barely had the energy to choose the materials he wanted and she was dismayed to realise she had run the poor boy ragged. It was only that she had wanted the trip to be stimulating for him, to give him some special experiences not available back home.

She yawned. Such a dear little creature, so sensitive. It was fascinating to watch how he studied things so closely and then sorted it out in pictures with his pad and pencil. But she'd definitely overdone it. It was a pity because she'd been looking forward to the treat of the art shop. As it was, she had to encourage him along the aisles and make a hundred suggestions before he chose anything at all. He seemed unwilling to spend any money, even though she explained that Rotary would cover it all and urged him to stock up. In the end the shop assistant gave him a mail order catalogue to take home so he would be able to send off for more things when he needed them.

Now that she was lying down and thinking straight Eleanor could see she should have left the art shop for the following morning; that way Novi would have been well rested and might have enjoyed it more. But there was the Gallery to visit tomorrow, and the Museum as well, which was enough to get through before their afternoon flight. It was just as well Gerard's family didn't know she was in town. There simply wouldn't be a chance to visit them.

She closed her eyes and stretched her toes luxuriously. High above the commotion of the streets, she let the city work its magic. Slowly, one by one, she felt the cells of her body unclench and swell. Somehow the crowds, her insignificance within them, allowed her to let her guard down.

The air-conditioning purred. Her limbs felt so heavy. They would both feel better after a rest and some dinner. She had planned to take Novi to a movie afterwards, something foreign or art-house, but now she decided it would probably be too much.

It was a wrestle, the tenderness she felt for him. She wasn't sure how to express it. At times she wanted to scoop him up and hold him close but she resisted, not wanting to frighten him. It was his eyes, his expression sometimes, so much like his grandfather's. She was wrenched between wonder and sadness when she caught these glimpses of Umberto, especially here in Sydney, the place where the two of them had finally come to know each other.

Umberto had always been Gerard's friend, both Rotarians and thick as thieves. He was ten years her senior, a lifetime when they were both growing up in Morus. She'd never met his wife — all that happened before they'd become properly acquainted, although she'd heard the story, how he'd met her on a trip to Italy and brought her out but she hated it, pined for home and went back after only a few years. Umberto had insisted Mira stay with him, and as far as Eleanor could tell he only missed his wife for Mira's sake, sometimes feeling overwhelmed by the mysteries of femininity. Eleanor had offered to mind Mira now and then, and she gave him advice whenever she could, but he didn't really need it. Umberto loved Mira with a ferocity that was apparent in everything he did.

She and Gerard were connected with Umberto through the business and they all socialised together occasionally, but Eleanor had always felt a distance between Umberto and herself and it had been a surprise to run into him in Sydney that day. She hadn't known he was going to be at the business management seminar and was caught off guard, they both were. They'd smiled in awkward greeting and approached each other across the room at morning tea. Unused to being alone in each other's company they were unsure how to behave. Both were from the same town, had vaguely known each other all their lives, and yet here they were in a crowded auditorium, shy as strangers. They would never have thought to have lunch together had they bumped into each other in the street in Morus. In Sydney, so far from home and familiar company, it seemed the natural thing to do.

A taxi took them through the city to a little Italian restaurant run by an old friend of Umberto. Here, Eleanor tasted carpaccio for the first time: thin slices of raw beef dressed with fruity olive oil and shavings of parmesan cheese. From childhood, she'd been reared on a diet of beef, but this dish was a revelation. She enjoyed it so much that Umberto ordered her a second plate, and then, in cahoots with the spirited restaurateur, proceeded to present her with a sample of everything from the menu that she had never tried before. She nibbled a tiny quail leg and found it sweet and gamey. Dipping a freshly steamed artichoke, leaf by leaf, into lemon vinaigrette, she pulled at the increasingly fleshy mounds with her teeth until her mouth felt clean and tingly. The crisp salad of sliced fennel was sprinkled with crimson pomegranate seeds, little tart explosions against her tongue. The ladleful of rich goat stew was surprisingly tender. Every time her fork met her lips, Umberto watched her closely, anticipating her reaction. His
moustache curled with triumph when she pronounced each dish utterly delicious.