AND THE WINNER IS...
Grey-garbed schoolgirl. Bony legs. Defeated spine. Narrow chest, face,
thoughts. Skin peeled-pear pale. Perched in a gazebo, sucking pencil,
clutching pad. Brolga knees pained by the hard wood bench.
'Draw a
building,' her teacher had said. 'One of the big ones in town.'
The
Ballarat main street, traffic-eroded trench, had a central nature-strip. The
gazebo erupted from that. Pompous roof. Steel arabesques. Grey-garbed
schoolgirl bauble in a bon-bon. She gazed at buildings familiar as feel of
teeth to tongue. Uninteresting she felt.
Mostly, she felt cold.
Cold high, dry, bitter air, sucked across the plateau like thin cloud
meant for marble-eyed highland sheep, not fleeceless girls in uniforms made
less for the body than the eye.
Pricked lungs, steamed breath. Twitch
blazer collar up. Hold schoolbag to shelter chest, leather hard as cold as
tin.
Town Hall tower. Tower of the old hotel. Tower perched on the
emporium like dropped ice-cream in cone. Viewing towers? To hold up clocks,
see fires? Never anyone up there. Pointless. Just for show.
Spikes of
cold.
Draw or freeze.
Then she noticed the Gas Company a
building one room wide with facade so fractured it seemed a new crackpot had
built each floor. Arched windows, square ones, some with columns at the
side. Broken arc at top with ornate stone bowls... jumbled heroics parading
to washed-out sky. Beside it, a low thirties-style showroom sidled around
the corner in a curve, its blank pastel fascia streaked with green-painted
grooves.
Old and modern rivals jostling for esteem.
Next,
centred in the side-street, a cream-brick council shithouse hissed its
cisterns.
In front of it was a model of the State's biggest nugget on
a plinth.
Come and see, then have a pee. What a dumb bit of town.
Her pencil frolicked on the page, caught outlines as if the skill came from
her hand.
Features formed. The vain Gas Company wider at the top and
sagging forward with grandeur. Exaggeration helped.
Pencil bitten by
chattering teeth.
It looked weird, was going to be beaut.
The Leaving Certificate Art Exam required students to submit three
paintings. Two she'd finished. This was the third.
In her room with
the broken blind that her father never fixed she pinned paper to board and
took out oil paints.
Cratered tubes of lead, labels semi-detached,
tops that didn't turn.
Shrunken things. She loved the battered tubes,
loved bending the hairs of each brush, smelling paint, varnish, turps.
Happiness was this.
Painting took a week. The brushes made the
streetscape live.
It became a timeless textured world with a separate
quirky life. It amazed her.
When she showed it to her teacher the
woman said, 'My God.'
She placed it on a chair, surveyed it for a
time. 'It's satirical, affectionate. Brilliantly done as well. You've really
captured something. And it has a marvellous sense of charm.'
She was
delighted. 'Isn't it funny like a little world all its own.'
'I know
exactly what you mean. It's wonderful, dear. A regional masterpiece. Best
thing you've ever done.'
She left school skipping, anxious to send the painting in.
At the
upper end of Sturt Street, beneath trees with falling yellow leaves, she
noticed a letterbox-mouthed toddler running through dappled shade.
The
tot stopped near a ball discarded by a five year old boy. She picked it up,
smiling, bright eyes asking if she could play.
The boy snatched it
from her.
Shock on the child's face as hurt went through her unbraced
heart. The horror of the world in one incident. Life forming scars.
She crouched to soothe the child but knew the damage had gone in.
She passed the Leaving Certificate, passed the Art Exam. Months later
they returned her paintings.
Only two.
The streetscape never came
back. Lost in the system, they said.
Or had an examiner fancied and
kept the regional masterpiece?
Blue-garbed sophisticate. Attractive legs. Straight spine. Tempting
breasts, face, hips. Skin moisturized and clear. Perched in an advertising
agency, sucking Pentel, clutching pad, fighting a lingerie deadline.
Scribbling concepts, hurting head.
Presentation
Thursday.
Four-way pitch.
Idea-dry, stress-jagged, eyes glazed,
she remembered the old town.
The ball and the toddler's shock. She
still hurt for that child.
The girl freezing as she drew. She felt
wistful about that girl. About her sadness when the wonderful painting was
lost.
Back to this pad, this scrawl, this stupid
slogan she was stuck with.
Four way pitch.
They'd never get it.
Hell!
After her Cleo, Golden Lion and Mobius she knew she'd score.
But
Commercial of the Year! Unreal.
The presentation. Her speech.
Congratulations, photographers, interviews. An ardent alcoholic kiss by the
agency Chairman. Tomorrow, she'd get calls asking her to name her price.
She floated home in a taxi, secure for a year or three at least, wanting
to breathe night air, smell moon-silvered sea, exult and dream.
She left the taxi two blocks from her flat, schlepped on soft grass, the
world at her feet. A glance at the stars. A flood of tears. Release.
Sadness for that girl. Where was her painting now? If she could only
bring it back, for that funny small person she'd been.
What mattered?
A lost school painting? Wasn't this present triumph great enough?
Shoe-glint in ebony grass, shifting silk and blowing hair.
She
would paint again.
She spread her arms as if to fly.
What
mattered?
Too drunk to know. But something did. Something not yet
forgotten. To do with heart? Hope? Need?
What mattered?
Key in
door.
Familiar hall.
No lover this month. Just the fish.
Hello, fish. We won!
The award held against fish-tank glass.
Check this out, guys! We WON!
What mattered?
Stagger out of
clothes. Clean teeth. Glance at the mirror. Hello, beautiful. You're
whacked.
Stumble to unmade bed.
Lights out. Goodnight world.
If only she could see that girl again. Say to her, 'Look where you are
now!'
That girl who felt life expanding with every step. The opening
to things. How much she'd now been through. How many shocks and
disappointments. How carefully honed her defence.
Grey-garbed
schoolgirl. Bony legs. Defeated spine. Narrow chest, face, thoughts. Skin
peeled-pear pale. Perched in a gazebo, sucking pencil, clutching pad.
Woe unto ye who offend these little ones.
'Oh God,' she sobbed.
'Oh God.
'Oh God.
'Oh God.'