By Roderick Heath
The fourth in an exclusive excerpt series from Claudia, the author’s as-of-yet unpublished fifth novel.
In March of that year, four months prior to Claudia’s birthday, Rémy Gaston Larquey had been given the honour of a solo exhibition at the Herbert Bourne Memorial Wing of the New South Wales Art Gallery, to celebrate the occasion of his sixtieth birthday. It was a special event for the art community in general and Rémy Larquey personally, the crowning achievement of a long career riddled with both great success and abysmal interludes of private and commercial failure. Despite years of proven worth as a seller and exhibitor of paintings world-wide, Rémy had not yet become truly fashionable in his adopted homeland. This event was destined to make him at last highly popular with the mass-media whose gears he had failed so conspicuously to grease by reducing his work or himself to a fine homily, and his art retained its savage dignity so that even phrases like ‘enfant terrible’ still seemed apt, indeed could hardly encompass him. Rémy was now finding acceptance, perhaps because he was passing into a grandee age few had expected him to reach, and he could be safely categorized even as he remained a terrifying, terrific sage. The floodgates of society page money would now open to him.
Claudia Rossi had received her invitation by mail a week before the event. She had glanced at it casually, wondered how she had made it on that mailing list, then noticed it had been signed by Rémy himself, a detail which started Claudia’s belly boiling. Rémy meant very little to her and she had built good things for herself without him. She would not go. It would be easy not to go. Too easy, perhaps. It could not bring much pleasure, although the event might be looked upon as little more than an excuse to filch hors d’oeuvres and explore the finer entrails of the social scene. She had surely hovered around the edges of many of such events. There was the chance to inspect Rémy’s art, which defied all her anger. She still worshipped Rémy as a creator. She would at some point go to the exhibition, so it made sense to take this opportunity and step into a social centrifuge. The price she did not know yet. There was certainly a price.
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She continued this argument with herself for the week leading up to the event, and then on the morning before the exhibition received a note, hand-written, reading simply, “See you this evening – Rémy.” Claudia sat at her kitchen table and sobbed as she felt all the muscles in her body grinding like gears on each other. Then came lucid emptiness, and it all seemed small, another of those daily absurdities life seemed to keep in store for her. Claudia dressed shortly after, donning her best, blackest dress. She made up her eyes carefully in pools to the point where she felt herself beginning to disappear. She located eye drops in her bathroom cabinet and put them in and after a while they looked clear. It was really quite funny, she considered maliciously, how easily she could be thrown into such a tawdry weeping confusion. It was a hard hateful face that looked back now.
At seven-thirty Claudia approached the gallery. Rain was forecast for later but now the evening air sloshed and swam with slow-bleeding heat, air from the gardens welling pregnant with blossom and humus and foliage damp from sprinkler spray. The evening was flushing deep blue through which harbour lights throbbed, the far shore gleamed like coals spilt from a fireplace. Throughout the gallery sounded a rippling groan of gathering guests. Cars passed by in regular procession. Claudia walked from St. Mary’s Station, her high heels swinging in her fingers until she neared the entrance. She donned the shoes there, opened her purse and withdrew the invitation, which she presented to the suited security guards. They ushered her on with deferential smiles. She was marked by the card as an especially important person.
Inside, she followed amusingly hand-drawn, hastily-tacked signs that directed guests through the white twisting walls of the gallery interior, closing in on the streaming sounds of a string quartet that sat in one corner of the new wing’s large, bustling space. Claudia felt her wits centring, her poise engaged. No, there was nothing about this she could not handle. She could be the perfect animal for this rarefied atmosphere. As she removed a glass of champagne from a tray, a flare of light caught the rim of her vision and she looked rapidly to see a photographer turning away from her with a pleasant, thanking smile. Claudia smiled in return, feeling intensely flattered, then a note of panic struck in her head as she realised if the photo appeared in a newspaper or any such place, her careful veneer of anonymity, vital to her job, would be endangered. The panic quickly dulled to mild concern and she was careful of the further photographers and TV cameras scattered around the function.
“Claudia!” came a cutting Darlinghurst accent. Claudia was faced by a young woman stepping forward, taller than Claudia by several inches and erect with studious pride. She was a girl with model looks, radiant blonde hair and an expression of studious boredom.
“Isla Munroe.” Claudia cried as the pair fell into a sisterly embrace.
“I didn’t think I’d see anyone as cool as you here.” Isla breathed as they parted.
“How did you get here?”
“Friend of ours, Alec, he invited us. He’s part of the show. I don’t know where he is. Probably out screwing one of the platter girls or having a toke. How about you?”
“Special invitation.”
“Oh, you snotty bitch. How’d you get that?”
“Mysterious contacts. Are you still with that guy, the filmmaker, Ben?”
“We got married last month.”
“Oh, congratulations!” Claudia kissed Isla’s cheek. “I thought you said never get married.”
“And now I’m an unrepentant hypocrite. Ben!”
Isla had shouted over her shoulder towards her husband, a man with that familiar look of the inner-city intellect, all insect limbs and ascetic face and glasses that looked like a prop. But Ben Cohen’s smile was always genuine, his mouth had a wry twist that seemed to letting you in on a joke. He looked up briefly, waved for patience to Bianca, gave that smile, and concluded his explication to the girl.
“He’s pretty good-looking when you get past the poseur uniform,” Claudia said.
“He’s not just that. He’s just a damn fine man, and there’s few of those.”
“You’re happy,” Claudia bestowed.
“Yes I am.”
“I’m very glad to see it.”
“I’m very glad to be it. Truly. No irony. Anyone on your horizon?”
“I don’t see Claudia Rossi settling down getting married yet”
“Seen Selena lately?”
“Selena? She went to London, with the band, months ago.”
Isla shook her head. “Oh god I’m starting to sound like some smug married. Please, forgive me, shit.”
“I absolve you, sister.”
The two women stared at each-other, trying to read un-stated truths behind their words. Ben approached from his coterie of females and drew to Isla’s side.
“What’s up darl?”
“Ben, do you know Claudia? My old school friend?”
“No. Good evening Claudia. You have a remarkable face, I just gotta say.”
“Thank you. So do you.”
Isla explained for Ben. “Claudia put together that mob of anarchists I used to run with, the Wayside Chapel Marching Choir. What are you doing these days, Claudie? Anything like that?”
“No, I decided I had zero artistic talent.”
Isla protested: “Hell no, you were a terrific dancer.”
Claudia shrugged: “I have no regrets. I freelance. I do well for myself.”
“I’m glad someone does.” Ben sipped champagne. “What kind of freelancing?”
“I could tell you but then I’d have to kill you.”
“Go ahead. The rate we’re getting finance for this short we’re working on it’ll be a posthumous work anyway.”
“If you’d stop playing solitaire and listening to old Bruce Springsteen records I’m sure it’d go much faster,” Isla suggested.
“Darling, pretty please, shut up. Hang on a moment Claudia, I’ll see if I can find Alec, you might like to meet him.”
Ben turned and marched off purposefully.
“Who is this Alec?” Claudia asked exasperated.
“Alec Wakefield. The poet.”
“Poet,” Claudia nodded firmly. “He was in an anthology of bright young things I bought last year. Yeah, he’s good.”
“And he’ll agree.”
Ben returned, shaking his head.
“The ego has bolted.”
“Pity, I’d have liked to meet him.” Claudia said. “So what are you making at the moment, Ben? I saw one of yours at last year’s Tropfest.”
“Did you like it?”
“It had promise.”
“Thanks,” Ben’s mouth rolled its wry way, “The one I want to make next, I want to get that whole Truffaut – Jules and Jim – New Wave vibe. I think I’d better stop now before I sound even more like a pretentious shit.”
“I’m sure it won’t be worst we hear tonight.” Claudia turned an apologetic face: “I do have to go and find someone. I’ll call you, I promise, Isla, if I don’t see youse again.”
Claudia swivelled and moved on through the crowd. She liked Isla and Ben. They were pleasant and intelligent people, and she was not interested in pleasant, intelligent people at this moment. She swiped from a passing tray another glass of champagne and shot half its contents down, bubbles burnt the back of her throat and stoked her cheeks. She was hungry and her hunger always had need for spunk and blood. She scanned the suits and silk for a central knot of usurers, dilettantes, sightseers and luminaries that would probably be fixated on Rémy. She caught sight of him, being shielded from a scrum of such eager types by his art broker, Evan Baldwin, and Rémy’s current wife, Helena Morton-Parkes. Rémy himself stood well apart, conversing with the gallery administrator and one of the money-men, Daley Strafford, whose height, white hair, tired-looking skin, deeply stained by sun that looked to have been picked up on the decks of yachts, all spelt a certain majesty of presence, even as his eyes, with their globulus, weepy aspect, spelt subtle exhaustion and cynicism.
Rémy Larquey leaned against a metal rail, that rich painter with his flesh painted like plaster-of-paris mixed from cocaine sludge across his razor-tight cheekbones, the large eyes with irises of green washed to a ghostly pale fire, providing insight into a soul truly burning itself up and its fleshly frame long since wasted. Yet he remained upright, lucid, curiously buoyant, as if his body weighed so little his head with helium genius could keep it floating. Claudia stood watching him for some moments, she could not yet make that short walk over to him, and used his being obviously occupied as the excuse. She leaned against a vaulted U-shaped roof support, in the centre of which sat a young man, legs propped up idly, staring at the ceiling in an assumption of distracted reverie. Claudia studied the face of Helena Morton-Parkes as she conversed in poise-perfect arrogance with a noted art critic as they were filmed by an ABC crew. Now there was a tough bitch behind the powder-puff grace. Not that the woman she was confronting was a difficult target, Fenella Stevens, who had that hard-lacquered look of a bloodless dilettante. Helena Morton-Parkes had the look of someone raised to deal with difficult statesmen and captains of industry, and Claudia began to suspect this lady of having done the work that had resulted in this public embalming of her husband’s art.
“Are you as bored as I am?” the secreted young man drawled in her ear. Claudia turned with dismissive dignity to take him in, and looked into eyes of cool blue insight. He had his back against one side of the ‘U’ and feet cocked against the other, the black jacket he had worn for admittance folded on his lap, only a navy-blue sweater now on his body, the pitch of which suggested latent, lazy inspiration, but it was the crisp intelligence of his face that made him worth answering.
“I enjoy studying people.”
He groaned, tilting his head back to view the ceiling. “If you dig a whole lot people who think they’re more interesting than they actually are.”
“Like you?”
“Maybe,” he shrugged unfazed. “Why are you here? Just a gawker?”
“I was invited. I don’t know why yet.”
“Oh, a mystery,” he sat up attentively. “I came for the free champagne. You know a friend of mine once told me to frequent art galleries because there you find the most beautiful women.”
“Was he right?”
“He was right. Of course, he was a lawyer so his observations are rightly suspect.”
Claudia released a small bark of amusement. The young man lifted a triumphant finger.
“I got a laugh!”
“Why are you here, if I can ask?”
“Oh, I’m being shown off. Pet artist, do not feed. I’m supposed to read a poem to this lot.”
“Must be intimidating.”
“Oh, I’ll hold up my end. It’s what I do. So what are you? You’re too well-dressed to be an artist. Unless you’re famous or your daddy’s rich.”
“Oh, boy, you’re pretty full on aren’t you.”
He placed his blue eyes on her directly, without a hint of patronisation or ire. “I’m just being . . . playfully impolite.”
“Well, both my parents were painters. I know art. And I know enough to know I’m not good enough to make money at it.”
“Shows remarkable self-perception.”
There was a supercilious surface to him, but also a glimmering of real anger and real elation in him that was challenging. It was like being a boxer’s sparring partner, her opponent planning for the ring. She decided to throw a sneaky jab, to suggest perhaps this was the bout that mattered.
“Your friends are looking for you, Mr Wakefield.”
“Apparently you know me.”
“I know Isla Munroe.”
Alec Wakefield’s head lolled back on the pillar. “Ah, Isla. I have a mild crush on her. Which isn’t a good idea. Her husband’s my best friend. It’s not diplomatic.”
“Ben’s your best friend?”
“Since university. Which I only attended briefly. I’ve done lots of things briefly. So, since you’re not an artist, what do you do?”
“I freelance.”
“That leaves a lot of room.”
Claudia knew Alec Wakefield for his fine work, and reputation for combativeness with journalists, literary figures, and editors, which had supposedly endangered his standing even as he gained it. This was not quite the man she had expected. There was some of the slouching, mock-aristocratic half-Irish irony familiar from his photo in the book. He was larger than expected, his humour clean and easy, not aggressive, his face dryly expressive, but with some withheld quality.
“What do I strike you as?” she asked, a half-smile suggesting nothing was unwelcome if artfully phrased.
Alec Wakefield considered her.
“I don’t know. It’s like you’re watching everything through a telescope. You’ve got that tilt of woman of great sensual intelligence and also the ah, the pitch and tension of someone who’s very easily bored with dithering and men who lack sensual intelligence. You prize mental agility but you respond to the physical variety first.”
Claudia stared without expression for some moments, then nodded slowly.
“I see why your poetry always seems to describe people I know. You know everyone.”
Alec Wakefield kept eyes on her with a half-smile. He seemed to be deciding how genuine she was. Claudia felt the pressure of his study attractive as gravity. She could feel her bending half-willingly towards him, and a rigidity in his pose suggested the same pressure was working on him. With sudden consciousness, Claudia drew back her left foot, feeling awful resistance, but she managed to step back two paces.
“I’ve love to continue this, but really, I’m dithering myself. I hope I see you again, Mr Wakefield.”
“Call me Alec please. I hope to see you again, too.”
*
The series:
Monday: She had come to enjoy, amidst the scattered pleasures of that line of work, the arts of dressing and painting herself for a rendezvous.
Tuesday: A modern woman in the oldest profession. Fifteen hours, four thousand dollars.
Wednesday: A note of panic struck in her head as she realized if the photo appeared in a newspaper or any such place, her careful veneer of anonymity, vital to her job, would be endangered.
Tomorrow: She had long known she wore her outsider status like a jailhouse tattoo, but something new had provoked her now. Too many ghosts had just waved their rag-and-bone scriptures in her face.
Posted on March 29, 2007