The Shifting Light Page 6

  ‘Couldn’t resist – I had to Google you. Love your style too. I’ve never seen landscapes stripped back to abstract patterns like that before.’

  ‘Me? Oh, you know … there are patterns to be found in everything …’ She felt herself begin to babble, as she always did when her own work was mentioned. ‘I’ll show you the gallery over at The Springs later. There’s a few of mine and more of Dad’s.’

  ‘Yes, please.’ The toast popped. ‘So, you’re in luck. Only a select few have tasted one of my famous breakfast specials. I’ve ordered for you – hope you don’t mind – an omelette with everything and more. Sound okay?’

  ‘Sounds awesome,’ said Nina. ‘You certainly know your way around a kitchen.’

  ‘Well, it’s fairly straightforward,’ Lachlan said, buttering toast. ‘Everybody keeps tea towels in the third drawer and cooking utensils in the second, easy.’

  ‘Ha! Not that easy,’ said Nina. She propped her elbows on the bench and relaxed. She had always liked the kitchen at Kurrabar, with its cream gloss paint and original lino. The airy weatherboard bungalow was built by Heath’s grandparents in the ’50s. Cutting edge in its day. She loved the speckled bench-tops, the sliding doors and the original glass louvres. She only had foggy memories from her childhood of Heath’s parents, Jenny and Scott. They were killed in the same light plane crash six years ago that left Ben in a wheelchair. Heath was the pilot that day and the guilt and sadness sat on him like a scar, no less than the burn mark that ran down his neck to his chest. A familiar pang washed over her. She missed him.

  ‘By the way, that painting in the lounge …’ Lachlan interrupted her thoughts. ‘It’s not Jim’s – it’s yours, isn’t it? The billabong? I love the way the water, well, looks so, so watery.’

  ‘Watery? Yes, I guess that was the plan,’ Nina said smiling.

  ‘And where’s the painting that won the Flynn?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Nina blushing, ‘that’s in the gallery. How did you know?’

  ‘Isobel told me about it when she was buttering me up in Sydney. No flattery intended but still … what a family. I’ll have to email Mum, and tell her about you. She still has the odd lucid day. Hardly an art buff but she knows what she likes, as they say. I think she would love this. Jim was much bigger on the scene than I realised, tied up with the Stir and all that crowd. Oh gosh, the bacon!’

  Lachlan pulled out the griller in the nick of time and was soon piling crisp bacon, a Spanish omelette, garlic mushrooms and buttery toast onto Nina’s plate.

  ‘Wow – I won’t need lunch or dinner,’ said Nina as they both sat at the table.

  ‘The pleasure is all mine,’ said Lachlan, coffee cup poised mid-air.

  A squeak, footsteps and the screen door swung open. Syd barked and Nina’s cup clattered to the floor, splashing Lachlan with the hot, milky liquid.

  ‘Don’t worry about it. It’s only a scald, but it hurts like no-one’s business,’ Lachlan grimaced as Nina brought a bowl of ice water to the table.

  ‘Here, dunk your hand,’ she ordered. ‘You can still eat with your other one.’

  ‘So I can!’ smiled Lachlan spearing a mushroom with his fork.

  ‘Any coffee left?’ asked Heath.

  ‘Sorry,’ said Nina. ‘I’ve hardly said hello with all this drama.’ She bent over and kissed him lightly on the lips.

  From the moment he had entered the kitchen, pandemonium had broken out: the spilt coffee, a burnt hand, rapid introductions and Syd chasing some dropped bacon under the table. With order restored, Heath eyed the new guest. He was only an inch or two taller than Nina. Twitchy, a bit hyperactive. But he was definitely a Larkin. Seeing them side by side, the resemblance was striking. ‘You must take your coffee extra hot,’ he said as he cleared the broken cup from the floor. ‘Seems painful.’

  ‘What’s that? Yes, I do,’ said Lachlan. ‘There’s plenty of breakfast left if you want some?’

  ‘Here,’ said Nina, handing Heath a bacon sandwich. ‘This should hit the spot.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He smiled at Nina and put his arm around her, drawing her close. He had been looking forward to their reunion and the last thing he felt like was making small talk with a stranger, particularly one wearing his pyjamas.

  ‘So, you’re the mysterious cousin,’ he said, turning to Lachlan and forcing a smile.

  ‘Well, not that mysterious,’ Lachlan replied. ‘I hope to become less so in time. I’m keen to learn more about the Larkins. Family means a lot to me.’

  ‘You married?’ asked Heath, perhaps a little too abruptly.

  ‘Sadly, I’m separated,’ said Lachlan. ‘I was telling Nina last night that my wife found greener pastures. Don’t mind telling you it’s hard.’

  ‘That’s tough.’

  ‘Yes.’

  There was a silence.

  ‘Anyway, thank you both but I’d best head off to my room at the Royal. I don’t want to take up any more of your morning.’

  Thank god, thought Heath.

  ‘No, Lachlan. You must stay here. Tell him, Heath.’

  ‘No, I insist,’ said Lachlan. ‘You’ve been too hospitable already. Time for me to head into town and take a look around.’

  ‘Please stay,’ Nina tried again.

  ‘Are you really sure?’ said Lachlan.

  Nina nodded.

  ‘Well, maybe for a little while. Thanks, both of you.’ He stared at Heath for just a second too long.

  ‘All good, then,’ managed Heath.

  He was tired.

  Syd shot ahead of Nina as she opened the heavy door of the old weatherboard stables.

  ‘I love how it still smells a bit horsey,’ she said. The stalls had been gutted and the lime-washed walls provided the perfect background for 21 artworks. Light filtered down from a row of narrow windows under the eaves.

  ‘That’s got to be Jim’s,’ cried Lachlan marching forward before Nina had even flicked on the gallery spotlights. Her eyes took in the swirls of thick blue and green paint that built a heaving seascape that Lachlan was striding towards.

  She felt herself colour with pleasure. ‘No, actually, that’s mine, but it’s the one painting that’s often mistaken for his. Those on that other wall are all Dad’s.’

  Lachlan scanned the room. ‘And this is the one that won the Flynn, isn’t it?’ he asked, as he moved to plant himself in front of her largest canvas, legs apart, hands folded behind his head.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nina of the picture of Mount Cubba. The earthy colours of the monolith were composed of hundreds of cross-hatched lines of paint. She had spent months getting the balance and energy right.

  Lachlan leaned in to inspect the intricate pattern work and Nina held her breath.

  It seemed like forever until he spoke.

  ‘Wow.’ He swept his long fringe back and shook his head.

  Again, they stood in silence.

  Why does this matter so much?

  Finally, he swung around to face her. ‘The accolades were spot on. It’s even better in the flesh.’

  ‘Thanks,’ said Nina, though she flinched. ‘And that’s a Possum Brody over there,’ she continued quickly, pointing to a black and white lino print. ‘One of the Catfish Dreaming series.’

  ‘What’s up? Aren’t you happy with “Mount Cubba”? Everybody else is.’

  ‘I am … now.’ Nina hadn’t properly worked through how she felt about her prize-winning painting, but whenever it came up, it always caused butterflies to swoop around her stomach. She folded, then unfolded her arms. ‘I didn’t believe it could actually be good enough to win, but Possum and the others insisted I enter. People seem to like it. I suppose if that panel decided it was worthy, then it must be.’ She shrugged.

  ‘You’re kidding. Your dad was good, but this is incredible.’ Lachlan gestured to the wall containing Nina’s work.

  Her blush intensified. She made towards the door but stopped when Lachlan spoke.

  ‘What is it? Are you okay?’ His voic
e was soft. Unhurried.

  Nina felt the lump in her throat just as her eyes began to sting. She pressed her tongue to the roof of her mouth, hoping that would settle her, but it didn’t.

  ‘Sorry.’ Lachlan seemed to read her discomfort. ‘I didn’t mean to …’

  ‘No, it’s me. It’s stupid really.’

  ‘No it’s not.’

  ‘What if “Mount Cubba” was a fluke?’ There, she’d said it. ‘Or it was a sympathy vote.’ Her voice trembled.

  ‘No …’

  Nina slid down and sat with her knees under her chin, arms around her legs. She focused on her row of paintings. Lachlan sat next to her, mirroring her pose, though he said nothing.

  ‘It came so soon after all the publicity around me finding Dad’s body,’ Nina continued. ‘Everyone wanted part of the story. Of me, really. You know – brilliant artist cut down in his prime. And suddenly everyone cared, though nobody had for the 20 years he was missing. The value of his paintings flew through the roof. I even sold a few at the time.’

  ‘So?’

  She turned to Lachlan. His patient eyes searched hers.

  ‘Maybe I got the prize because of him, because of who I was to him. I know that’s what some people are saying. I was the story of the day.’

  ‘You’ll just have to show them – with your new work.’

  ‘And what if I am a one-hit wonder?’

  ‘Then, so be it. But you’ve got to find out if you’re worthy of being a prize-winning painter.’

  ‘Or not. I want to paint so much. And I mean … paint well.’

  ‘It’s only your fear talking, Nina.’ Lachlan reached over and took her hand. ‘I know what it is to be immobilised by a lack of faith in yourself.’

  She glanced sideways at him.

  ‘It cost me my marriage, but this isn’t about me. You need to get to the bottom of why you’re feeling so vulnerable.’

  ‘I’m alright,’ Nina said. ‘I know “Mount Cubba” is good enough. It’s just a matter of making everything else as good.’

  ‘And you can. Just look around. And people are buying your paintings, aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, but I need so many more. I’m committed to an exhibition at the Phoebe Mitchell Gallery in Sydney in a matter of months and I can’t get enough hours at the easel.’

  ‘Phoebe Mitchell. My god – no wonder you’re nervous.’

  ‘Oh, thanks.’ Nina managed a laugh.

  ‘You’re under too much pressure. Does Heath realise?’

  ‘Of course.’ Did she just snap? ‘He says the same as you. That I need to have faith in myself.’

  ‘Yes, but does he realise how you need to be freed up to paint more?’

  ‘Sort of.’ Nina got to her feet.

  Lachlan followed and circled the room, stopping at Jim’s painting of Durham House, the ruined mansion that stood only a few hundred metres from the gallery. Nina had pointed the site out to Lachlan as they had driven into The Springs.

  The scene, with its tricks of shade and mottled tones, used to hang in the flat in Woolloomooloo and had always been Nina’s favourite. In front of the crumbling stone wall stood a gothic-revival fountain. In the distance a man walked away from the viewer, towards the plains beyond.

  ‘Interesting,’ offered Lachlan. ‘Almost menacing.’

  ‘Yes, I made a kind of companion piece. In mine, the man is Dad, but I turned the figure around to face me and brought him closer. I spent months trying to nail him.’

  ‘And did you?’ Lachlan smiled.

  ‘Yes, the man became Jim alright. But then I turned him back again. Walking away – out of reach.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘That was my first serious piece, I suppose,’ mused Nina.

  ‘Where is it now?’

  ‘Here. In the sitting room. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  CHAPTER 8

  Below the burnt-out ruins of Durham House, the four artists scoped out vantage points for their easels. The gnarled magnolia tree, the fountain, the charred single wall of the Victorian mansion and the blocks of stone scattered in the long grass were some of Nina’s favourite subjects.

  The group were second-generation Australian Chinese painters who had challenged themselves to find new ways of melding the art of their heritage with Australian narratives. Nina couldn’t wait to see the results.

  ‘This house is just the sort of thing we were talking about at breakfast,’ she said as she went amongst them, checking that everyone had what he or she needed. ‘So many different stories layered over each other, just like we paint new scenes over old ones.’

  ‘You mean like pentimenti?’ asked a tiny young woman who had introduced herself as Lily.

  ‘Exactly,’ Nina smiled. ‘As you probably know, pentimento is when we paint over something that just isn’t working. It could be the whole picture or just some details. But what’s underneath never goes away entirely.’

  ‘I bet the people who spent time here over the years never thought they’d get painted over by another life someday,’ said Lily.

  ‘Yes,’ said Nina. ‘There’s the Murrawarri people that you’ve heard about from Auntie Moira. Then there’s the first white settlers that lived here in the 1850s – my family. Those Larkins had nothing more than a shack. Then along came the Blacketts who built this mansion in 1885. It was supposed to last hundreds of years or more, impressing everyone with its European flourishes, like this.’ She pointed to the fountain. ‘Instead, the house stood for only 20 years, until a fire destroyed it,’ she continued. ‘They say the Blacketts’ young son was caught on the stairs as they collapsed. When I was little, playing make-believe here with the boys next door, we used to scare ourselves with the fire story. For me, this place has a melancholy.’

  The three-metre stone fountain, with its two gothic bowls, lay before them. On the smaller, high bowl Cupid balanced on one toe, his arrow now lost. The fountain was not only shadowed by the giant magnolia but by the events that had played out around it.

  ‘Your dad used to paint here too, right?’ asked Lily, squeezing a blue blob onto her palette.

  ‘Yes – another layer of the story,’ said Nina. Since the discovery of her father’s body, his life story had been rehashed endlessly in the media – some of it true and some pure fantasy.

  ‘He did paint here, and hang out with friends. It was very boho – lots of champagne and weed and skinny dipping. I don’t know what the original Blacketts would’ve made of it. There’s actually a great nude he did here of my mother – I’ll show you a photo of it when we get back to the house.’

  ‘So now we are another layer, right?’ said an older woman, already at work sweeping black ink onto paper with a traditional Chinese wolf-tail brush.

  ‘You are. And you’ll leave your own stories here when you go.’

  ‘See? Some art group 30 years from now is going to be asking Nina if the great Henry Lee once painted here,’ laughed another young woman.

  ‘Naturally,’ laughed the painter in question, a slight man in his 20s with magenta highlights in his black hair.

  ‘Let’s get cracking,’ called Nina.

  As Nina leant over the older woman’s shoulder, marvelling at her economy of line, there was a stir in the group.

  ‘Now I’d like to paint that,’ said Lily.

  ‘Yeah, all over, with chocolate sauce,’ added Henry.

  It was Heath, riding Jet. He cantered past Durham House and drew up at the ornate rusty gate.

  ‘There you are,’ he called, seemingly oblivious to the group around her. ‘There’s two lines of fence down in the south paddock. You’ve got a wire tensioner here somewhere, don’t you?’

  Couldn’t he see she was working? ‘No idea. Look in the shed.’

  ‘How could you not care that your fence is half down?’ He sounded irritated.

  ‘Remember the deal, Heath,’ she said, forgetting for a moment that they had an audience. ‘You farmer. Me painter. Okay?’

&nbs
p; ‘Yeah, right, like I’ve got the time.’ He frowned and, with a twitch of the reins, turned the glossy black horse around and headed for the equipment shed.

  ‘And yet another story is added to the pile,’ said Lily mischievously from behind her canvas.

  CHAPTER 9

  ‘We both did everything we could to keep it together,’ said Ben, moving his wheelchair restlessly along Kurrabar’s verandah. ‘I mean, Olivia and I … we were great.’

  Heath’s brother looked straight at Nina. ‘You know how she is.’ He paused.

  ‘Remember that electric tiara? And those orange fur boots?’ said Nina, twisting the top off her beer.

  ‘I liked the tartan hotpants myself,’ laughed Ben. ‘But a job at MoMA and the chance to live in New York … things like that only come along once in a lifetime. I told her that.’

  ‘You don’t want to go too?’ asked Nina carefully. Under Ben’s bluff exterior she could sense soft ground where she needed to tread gently.

  ‘Not much call for agricultural skills in Manhattan,’ Ben smiled wryly. ‘Kurrabar’s where I was always meant to end up.’

  ‘Glad you’re back, mate – even with the hipster beard,’ said Heath from the doorstep.

  ‘Don’t listen to him.’ Nina gently pushed Ben’s shoulder. ‘I think it makes you look rugged. Like Sam Worthington or … an explorer. Mawson maybe, or Burke and Wills.’

  ‘Geez. Thanks. And that ended so well.’

  The three smiled as they gazed out beyond the garden fence to the rows of saltbush seedlings like a miniature army marching into the distance under the pale lilac of the evening sky. Beyond them, on the roof of the hangar that housed the Cessna, Heath’s steel bird-of-prey sculpture burned rosy in the light. It was crooked, Nina saw. One of the struts holding it in place must have come loose. How had Heath not noticed? It must be more than a year since he had worked on any of his sculptures, she realised. Too busy. She sighed as Heath pointed to a stand of trees in the distance and began filling Ben in on what they were for and when they were planted.

  ‘Another?’ she interrupted, motioning to her beer. They nodded their thanks and kept talking as Nina went inside to fetch more.