Chapter Eighteen

19

Anglican

Cowgirls

ELIZABETH & MARTIN

“Martin!” Elizabeth raised two imperious fingers, “Reconsideration time, I’m afraid. Terrible mistake, I’m hearing disapproval, complaints, Board members not happy, that sort of thing. We must…”

“What?” Martin rocked on his heels desperate for a focus. He tried her nostrils, but they kept moving like a pair of dancing black olives.

“We must consider the opinion, in fact the fact, that this sort of abstraction is just not the kind of statement that the Imperial Trust cares to make. After all, we are a… preserving institution, our task is good taste and the better sort of values and people are saying their grandchildren could do as well, which we both know of course is silly, but they’re saying it and in this case, perhaps… I mean, it’s not as if there’s very much paint on it, and it’s not as if it really means anything. Rocks, well, we all know what rocks look like. Don’t we? I mean, what’s the point?”

Watching her lips was making him dizzy, which he understood, writhing red snakes could do that, but the growing ball of fury in his stomach was a mystery.

“I’m sorry, since she does seem to be a friend of yours and you’ve gone to some trouble over this, but apparently it’s just not appropriate. People want a nice landscape, trees, a lake, what they’re used to. It’s a shame, but we did agree that the Board had the final decision. Didn’t we? Yes. So, tomorrow, if you would arrange it, to take it down, early would be best, before opening, we’d all be pleased and…”

“You chicken…” Focused on the hands that plucked the neckline of her grey challis, Martin had steadied enough to hear and understand the ball of fury, “…footed, chicken-hearted, chicken-headed, double-crossing, stupid, old… Dragon! Who do you think you are?”

“Don’t you speak to me like that, Martin Knight! Your mother and I…”

“My mother’s a doorknob, she pours sherry on her cornflakes and trains Corgis to eat people. Don’t give me that schoolgirls-together crap, you’re just as out of control as she is. In charge and out of control. Well, I’ve had it up to here.” His head bobbed under his upraised hand, “Had it with you women telling me what…” His mind went blank and his brows grew fierce in concentration, “…telling me anything!”

“I think you’ve had too much to drink, Martin.” Only her lips moved. “We’ll leave it at that. Okay?”

Martin chose the future, “You know George, your husband? Fellow with the nice white hair? He just sneaked up to his office with a couple of gypsies.” Martin rounded his eyes and nodded his head, “Girl gypsies. I think you have a problem. We’ll just leave it at that. Okay?” He flipped his hair and he strode away with a whistling in his ears.

PAUL & KATHERINE & MARTIN
& DAVID & TILLIE & BEA

“You’re Katherine Bailey, aren’t you? Painter of the evening, wife of David who is a God. I like your picture.”

“And you are…?”

“Paul Magarry. Saint Paul, in some circles dedicated to the works of man. Woman, too, of course. Just a figure of speech. Man. It’ll be turned into myn, one of these days just to please somebody. I was once a colleague of David’s. Well, a slave under his whip. I should be so lucky. At the group home. Now I only see him when he comes to look at the one or two good paintings that the A.G.O. admits it owns and which I guard with my life. I’m a ‘don’t touch the art person’ at your local public gallery. Come on down and feel good about what the really sensitive people have done for you. I actually do like your picture.”

“I once knew an anthropologist who believed that ‘it’s a fact’ and ‘actually’ were followed by a lie.”

“Why d’you suppose people lied to him so much?”

“He was an anthropologist. It’s not a bad bit of painting, is it? It was fun. Keeping it clean was a job. You don’t think it’s just pretty?”

“Nope.”

“Not that there’s anything so wrong with pretty, it’s had a bad rap from all this ‘back to the urban blight’ movement. Fucking hippies! I’m glad you like it.”

“Why?”

“Why? Because there are some people, like my mother, who have yet to come anywhere near it and…”

“No. Why rocks? It is a rockface?”

“Yah. It’s the stone of my mother’s heart. Yes, it’s a rockcut. The first one, actually. There, it’s a fact, the first rockcut north on the 400, at Strawbridge. I grew up there, beside the road, between it and the river and when they built the 400, so Toronto could get to the cottage before dark, that was the first place they had to blast, the edge of the Shield.”

“You weren’t white trash, of course, living beside the road. All the white people lived along the road, right?”

“You’ve been there.”

“I’m from Bannock.”

“Well, there’s your answer. Fightin’ and shootin’ and drinkin’ country. Somethin’s movin’ in the bush, lad.”

“Best wear something orange, they don’t like oranges.”

“Who don’t?”

“Bears. Indians. I don’t know, look at their teeth.”

“You’re pushing it.”

“Somebody has to.”

“You’re right. So, you’re Paul. I’m glad to meet you.”

“So, why rockcuts?”

“Oh, ’cause they’re easy. I’ve stared at them all my life, I should know what they look like. I’d have to be a walking hat-rack not to get it right. And anybody who finds an absence of anything can just leave. I’m sick of this ‘find yourself’ in my painting bullshit. I don’t know you, I didn’t paint it for you. I don’t mean you, you know what I mean. People bitch because they can’t find their experience in my picture. I say, screw them, if they’re going to complain because they didn’t bring anything with them. They can go home. Blah, blah, blah, that’s what I say.”

“And very well, too. But why rockcuts?”

“Jesus, you’re a nag. Because when they blasted that first rockcut it was their first time and a great big boulder, huge, a chunk of the Shield went straight up in the air and came right down in the middle of our house, right through from attic to basement.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. And they always said around Strawbridge that the guy who lit the fuse was on the bus before it hit the ground. It’s a fact. That’s why rockcuts, I guess, if you need that kind of reassurance.”

“I see. So, they’ve been throwing stones at you since you were a girl. Were they trying to hit you, d’you suppose, or were they just trying to stop you?”

“Whether they hit you or not, it hurts. They’re throwing them, aren’t they?”

“Maybe they’re just trying to attract your attention.”

“You know something…? Let’s get a drink.” Offering a companionable hand and turning, Katherine collided with Martin on a roll.

“I told you.” Martin wagged his finger at Katherine, “I told you. Didn’t I tell you? The woman’s a monster. I told her that. A dragon. Old Claw-foot Liz. I said, ‘My mistake? Excuse me! You have a problem.’ She says it’s the wrong ‘statement’, I said she had the wrong idea about just who the hell she thinks she is anyway and…”

“Martin, what the hell’re you talking about? Liz Preston? What’d you do? What’d she say?” Katherine took a handful of lapel, “Martin! What did she say?”

“She said they think your picture stinks. She wants it down.”

“She fucking what!?” With her fist in the fabric she pulled Martin to her.

“I got her, though. I got her. I told her old George the sex maniac just hustled those gypsy broads up to his office couch like Paul said and…” He rolled his head for a wink at Paul, “…and she took off like…”

“What did she say, Martin?” Katherine rocked him back to make sure he could see her eyes.

“She didn’t say a word, just sort of waved her nostrils and headed for…” Martin lost breath as he was yanked in again.

“I mean, you babbling asshole, what did she say about my picture? Do you hear me?”

“She said I have to take it down early in the morning,” he winced and whimpered, “and I am going to be in so much pain in the morning.”

“Why, Martin? Not why you’ll be in pain, I know why you’ll be in pain.” Holding her patience with a deep breath, Katherine released her grip on his lapel and smoothed it with a couple of light punches, “Why, Martin, does she want the picture to come down?”

“I don’t know!” He listed toward Paul who adapted a straight-arm prop into a matey-looking clutch. “She says the Board says it’s too abstract for the bank, or something. They want the lonesome pine they know, the Grope of Seven stuff that won’t scare the horses. It’s not the bank’s kind of statement, she says. What the hell, if that’s what she wants, she can have mine; I’ll show her a bank statement that’s seriously overdrawn. And that’s another thing, there’s not enough paint on your picture.”

Katherine said nothing and felt only cold, but her body screamed such outrage that Paul blinked from the punch and steadied Martin in his grip. Scanning, he spotted David with Tillie and Bea and summoned them with urgent jabs of his chin.

“He’s yours.” Paul let David get a good grip, dropped his hand from Martin’s shoulder and turned to Tillie who had managed herself into a three-point buttress next Katherine, “She’s just been hit with a rock. Liz Preston pitching. She says they don’t want the painting after all. I’m going to have a little chat with her, the woman’s got problems. Tell Katherine I’m going to blow her up real good.” Turning, he blew a kiss at David and was gone.

KATHERINE & TILLIE & BEA

“She hates me.”

“She doesn’t hate you, Katherine, she just knows who you are, I expect. She did something out of pure meanness a long time ago and tonight she’s going to do it again. It happens with old sins, they repeat on you and they’re a lot less pleasant coming up than going down. A bit like cucumbers. She’s Bessie Everett, Katherine. It seems to be a very small world. I think I know everybody now.”

Limp in David’s grip, Martin swallowed hard on the rolling wash in his stomach and managed, “What the hell is going on, please?”

Beatrice massaged her temples with one hand while the other kept a white-knuckled hold on her purse. She looked at her mother’s gentle hand at Katherine’s elbow, at David’s sure hand on Martin’s shoulder and she couldn’t keep her tears any longer. “She told a lie, Bessie did, Elizabeth Preston, she was Everett then, she told a lie because she wanted what I had, or she thought she did. Her lie destroyed what I had and there was never anything else that I wanted.” Bea bit at her tears, fumbled into her purse for a tissue, blotted her cheeks, “That’s my own fault, not hers. I might have wanted something else; she couldn’t know.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, Bea! You carry this sainthood business too far. You’ve turned the other cheek so often you’ve been slapped silly. Get over it.”

“Gran.” Katherine’s voice was firm and disapproving, her mother’s tears looked so much like her own in this morning’s mirror and she saw some of her mother’s loneliness, the black of many colours. She reached and drew Bea to her, “Maybe men just leave, Ma, because they’re too stupid to stay.”
Martin collapsed so suddenly that David almost lost him, but an underarm save preserved appearances long enough for David to remove him from the women, steer a path to the buffet and prop him next to the biscuits.