Seemingly Harmless
Finally, we turned into parking areas beside Fremantle Arts Centre. Ominous with high brown-grey stone walls yet a vast complex basking in weekend West Australian sun.
‘Can I use the rear-view mirror to put on some lipstick?’
‘You hardly need it.’
‘Oh sure! I look terrible.’ This morning’s exercise gestated red facial blotches. ‘I wish I’d brought more make up.’
Pouted and painted my lips a shade of pink that I suspect match my labia.
‘You look fine. Just let natural you shine through.’
I glanced over incredulous; surely, he can’t really believe that? When John called to make these arrangements, ‘Meet you on Sunday, we’ll go to that book launch…’ I’d been tempted, to turn him down.
‘Oh John, that is Terry’s Sunday 90-minute aerobics class, it’s my workout religion.’
‘I’ll meet you afterwards,’ he insisted.
I never anticipated shucking out of my leotard, trying to change amid a haze of deodorants and hair products with limited elbow room, reflected in Health Club sauna misted mirrors. And before my lover’s face pressed up against windows, a stupid grin, and my face responding by flushing redder.
The Arts Centre, foreboding, even if adorned with nooks of coffee tables which looked crayon on water-colored around edges. As if all those years as a lunatic asylum, (Can I say that anymore?) funny farm, a crazy house, psyche ward…whatever applicable name. Used to house residents who might now be classified as bi-polar, PTS, OCD or merely suffering from PMT or menopause. Nowadays clerks mark those patient files; release into the community.
We walked through a cloister reminiscent of housing for criminally or otherwise insane. Spaces between high broken glass topped walls formed a secure yard. These same buildings also endured many years of use as an infectious disease hospital. Thus, they retained sinister auras.
Passing the café, I felt a cool other-world breath on my neck and goose-bumps which weren’t about cool shade, jostled for space. Emerging into an open area of lawn coffee fumes spilt where may once have been an exercise yard, filled with loose shift dress clad, pale faced women. Their shapes, semi-visible, at least inside my head, still paced about. A feeling of being as isolated as those inmates, patients or do I call them cases, settled. I wondered if previous residents looked up at skies, watched clouds float, let raindrops fall on their heads, ponder, as I do now, a lighthearted blue?
A power emanated; maybe an aura of a dead person, or spirit trapped in this purgatory eventually being released by a sudden, violent death. I sensed the rattle of One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest eerie music as the Chief finally jogs off into the mist. Tell myself to settle down, this buzz is just weekend nuances of coffee, cappuccino machines and sugar heavy cakes.
Casual introductions began, ‘this is Beth,’ John said. My name only uttered, clipped without explanation. I long to hear an accreditation; give me a role, please, or at the very least a title…
My physio: deals with so much more than knee and back pains. Oh those miracle hands.
An exhibit attendant at the museum, destined to remain so - until our fingers met across drawers of ancient artifacts.
My friend, I recognized our kindred natures when I saw her bent over writing furiously in the café, and asked what she had penned.
Beth knows my cleaning lady. We all use the same baby-sitting co-operative. I got to know her when invited to a birthday party, she zeroed in for some slow dancing, navel engagement style.
Oh yes, twelve years in my office, never really noticed her, until that team building weekend.
Receptionist at my wife’s counselor’s clinic, she really understands the façade my marriage has become. Beth agrees to tag along to these things because my wife refuses.
But nope, I remained just a name, nothing further. His secret kept safe. Subjected to a non-specific-introduced, I felt like a spectator to some sort of occultist ceremony, or perhaps a human sacrifice. Today we offer to the artisans… the anonymous Beth.
I blinked and official speeches were underway.
One speechmaker referred to Brett Whiteley, “…my father suggested I might like to buy some of his paintings. After viewing them, my response was to wonder, had to be a joke.”
This humor goes right past, overhead, circling beyond my grasp, like helicopters, so noisy, so close. I am in another dimension preoccupied by all sorts of building vibes. Sure any moment now the reputed resident ghost will emerge. I will look up just in time to see a scepter peer out one high, dark framed window, sunlight catching on diamond shaped panels. I am sure there is truth to rumors of a resident ghost, despite John’s display of newspaper clippings and photographers permitted overnight access. I tried to hide behind a model exhibition launch audience person façade. Attempted to laugh in appropriate places, fain interest where needed. A newcomer barrier remained, akin to experiencing mass in an unfamiliar church, where the first non-Latin services were being conducted. Unsure of when I should stand, kneel or if I should join lines to take communion.
Speeches over, John says, ‘Have you even heard of Brett Whiteley?’
‘Yes. He’s an Australian Artist.’ Thinking my lover should credit me with a little nous.
‘What are his paintings like?’
‘I don’t really know. Wasn’t he a heroin user?’ As these words erupt John’s expression admonishes. Yep, I am a victim of media about Whiteley. Looking back, I want to blame my naivety on facts that Whiteley had not yet become such a doyen of Australian visual arts. At the time I sunk deeper into sensations akin to Shaw’s Pygmalion, taken to Ascot way too soon.
John engineered our movement out of peopled spaces, now milling toward book signing tables, thus I am shepherded clear of seemingly harmless exchanges. Who can tell what gaffs I’d make, or curiosity I’d draw from officials or book-launch audience members? So he guides me deeper into Fremantle Art Centre’s ghostly realms, into gallery bookshop spaces. There amongst toys, games, calendars and pottery, nestle some figurines made by my sister. John puts his hand on a large blue book and removed it from shelves, Brett Whiteley in gold lettering along the spine. Looped letters both connected and unrelated to each other.
‘How can you do that?’
‘What?’
‘Walk straight into a book shop and immediately locate the book you want? You didn’t even look for it.’
‘I never thought about it, I suppose, years of doctorate research, a lot of time browsing in book shops or just a way I have… Does it infuriate you?’
‘No, just intrigues me.’
‘Faye hates it.’
Did I glimpse, in his green-grey eyes, frustration at his wife’s foibles?
John flips open a page, showing me human figures in what appears to be an act of copulation. Flicking past scratchy line drawings, black on white, shapes of female buttocks. Bodies have no heads; seem disproportional, random limbs foreshortened. Pages slip by. Splashes of color; not vibrant, all faded, muted tones. Seemingly unconstructed pieces of disjointed subject matter; swirls and distortions parade before me. Nests of eggs, tucked into abstractions – but of what? Landscapes; like they’ve been in the rain: streaked and defused. I find the bright, electric blue almost blinding. The artist’s face jumps out, innocent curls, tear lines and deep shadows. Pieces of human anatomy, brains, and intestines, splattered into what seems an unstirred witch’s cauldron. These paintings are madness, a cacophony of madness. Whiteley belongs here, mixed with the art’s center pervious inmates, locked in the asylum that dwells behind bars of his substance abuse. I wondered if his art embodies the spirit and nature of Whiteley’s LSD hallucinations. I am beginning to get the earlier joke. What I am shown is bewildering, but I find myself strongly attracted.
Right about when we are at risk of crossing paths with any museum or literary noteworthy from the book launch, John says, ‘I’ve got a shopping list, do you mind if we spend time at the market?’
As an alternative to the launch crowd, haunted vaults, ambience of unfamiliar knowledge, and hushed artistic reverence; silent but not empty corners and stifling air that resides within Fremantle Arts Centre, the markets boiling noise appealed. There are rows and piles of seasonal fruit and vegetables, real still life arrangements. Buskers, brighten everything with their yells, even sisal of basket weavers’ sparked connections.
‘Let’s see,’ John unfolded a list. ‘She wants me to buy pears, mushrooms, lettuce…’
I recalled a set of instructions given to my ex-husband, ‘will you get some ‘greens’ from the market?’ Resultant green apples, green peaches, green celery, green pasta and green (sage) cheese, motivated by ignorance, animosity or perhaps his brother’s goading.
Ignoring bargains John descended on articles most visibly appealing, paying exorbitant prices. Before we have completed one circuit through produce stalls he exclaimed, ‘no more! I’ve already spent the budget.’
I pictured Faye, owner of purse strings, scouring; what did you spend that much on? Where have you been so long? What were you doing, the book launch was over two hours ago? And why does the back of the car smell like a gym?
‘I’ll just take this to the car,’ breaks my revelry. His box of vegetables becomes a hindrance. ‘If you wait, I’ll meet you back here in a minute. Then we’ll go for coffee? Don’t go away.’
‘Well it’s a long walk home.’
I could just walk away, as contemplating going back to the Arts center café, with its jars of Byron Bay cookies which resembled anatomical specimens is frightening. I know up behind those grey stone buildings is supposed to be where sunlight tickles bowls of geraniums. Warmed with herbal fragrances; lavender, rosemary and basil. Toodyay stone pathways puzzled together, but I can’t deal with notions of brushing up against interred shadows. Thinking about this now causes an empty grumble, countering any desire to sit still.
So, I am relieved when John opts for softer domain amid Lycra clad cyclists, South Terrace. Further dotted with Greek and Italian men come from Cathedral Services, they amble down wide footpaths as if inspecting their own fig or olive groves. These men, even though squat present large dimensions, walking with tall strides. Back in high school I heard newly arrived migrant boys shoved socks down their tight jeans in an effort to overawe.
After gelato, coffee and idle people watching further filled up our early afternoon, safe from any prying eyes, be they pacing streets in Sunday mode, or ethereal visitors from another realm. The Fremantle Doctor sea breeze swung in as and we returned to his Porsche. Two giant Packenham pears sit, like gnomes, guarding the black leather seats.
‘I thought you might enjoy a nice pear.’
‘What’s wrong with the pair I’ve got?’
I attacked offered fruit hungrily, juice trickling down my arm, sure to suck all evidence away before it dripped onto car seats. ‘Aren’t we going?’ I asked between mouthfuls.
‘Not yet, I am enjoying watching you eat.’
The radio plays Australian Crawl, something about ferries bobbing their way to Circular Quay, maybe past those Whiteley-esque landscapes I might see one day. The chorus – Don’t be so reckless…Throw down your gun…
Those words hung there, like wisps of love’s afterlife. Words, nothing more than symbols, hints of danger, embedded with notion of surrender. Words I should heed. Those lyrics and this day foretold any future with John would include fighting against currents. James Rayne tried to warn me, but I was as helplessness as any addict. No matter how many times I pass Fremantle Arts Centre, how many times I walk through that café, how many exhibitions, launches, openings are endured I will still be trying to stop memories of this day from haunting.