Christie’s Beach

The dark had come down early and a wintry night had settled on Larksrest. When Thea reached for her hat and coat from the hallstand, Tiney asked in a whisper, ‘Can I come too? Please?’

Thea looked puzzled. ‘You want to come to the life drawing class at the Society?’

Tiney blushed. ‘I thought it was a lecture. You said there was something about Normandy. Mrs Colbert talking about her trip to paint the ruins. I thought I could ask her about France and . . .’

Thea touched Tiney’s cheek. ‘Darling, not your mad plan about France again.’

‘Please let me come.’ Tiney glanced down the hallway anxiously.

‘What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t bear another evening here alone.’

‘Mama and Papa are here.’

‘But Papa just stays in his study, working on Louis’ scrapbook, and Mama works on her embroidery, and I feel so alone. I don’t know how only children bear it.’

Thea smiled. ‘Put on your hat and coat. You can’t come to the life class, but why don’t you go to the library and then we can walk over to Hindley Street together and have a hot drink at West’s Coffee Palace.’

Thea had joined the Royal South Australian Society of Arts back in 1915 but now it was the focus of her life outside Larksrest. As the tram rattled into town, Tiney took the Society’s newsletter and a catalogue of recent work out of Thea’s bag and flipped through the pages. The symbol of the Society was a seated Grecian woman, bare breasted, holding an easel and a palm branch. Even though Tiney knew that Thea never modelled in the life classes, only drew, she couldn’t help but think of the goddess as being connected somehow to Thea.

Tiney ran her finger down the list of members, searching for Sebastian Farr’s name but he wasn’t mentioned. Then she saw the announcement. The Society was calling for entries to their annual prize. There were categories for still life and portraits but the biggest prize was for a landscape. Fifty pounds – half a fare to London. Tiney slipped the newsletter into her bag and then opened up the exhibition catalogue.

Nette and Minna always said the Society was full of stuffy old fuddy-duddies, but since meeting Sebastian at the Alstons’ ball, Tiney had begun to think they were quite wrong. There was something romantic about sitting in a room full of people focused on capturing beauty, even if it did mean staring at a nude for hours.

‘Is Sebastian Farr a member of the Society?’ asked Tiney. ‘His name isn’t listed in any of these pamphlets.’

Thea blushed and snatched back the exhibition catalogue.

‘Candidates have to submit two paintings and have them approved before they can even become an associate member,’ she said.

‘Will they approve him?’

‘Of course he’ll be accepted. He was a war artist. His sketches of the battlefields and the men are brilliant.’

Tiney smiled. She’d never seen Thea so animated talking about anyone.

They walked up North Terrace in the crisp evening. Thea hitched her canvas bag of art materials higher over her shoulder. Inside were her sketchbooks, a box of conte and a set of pastels.

The sisters parted ways outside the Society and Tiney wandered over to the library. She climbed the stairs to the third floor. She loved the way the internal balconies wrapped around the walls and the bookshelves rose up to the high ceilings. It began to rain outside. Settled at a desk in a corner between two shelves, Tiney felt unexpectedly happy. The interior of the library was so familiar, like the home of an old friend. When she was small, Louis would bring her here, lift her up high to reach books on shelves out of reach. She would sit quietly reading at a table with him while he studied and afterwards, he would take her down to the coffee palace for a treat. Though the world outside was changing faster than she could bear, inside the library she could feel safe.

Tiney collected several books on nursing. Between the influenza epidemic and the returned wounded soldiers, there was plenty of work in nursing, though the pay was even less than for teachers. After half an hour, she returned the volumes and lapsed into flipping through picture books about France. She drew the Society’s newsletter from her bag and smoothed it out on the table in front of her again, studying the information about entering the art prize.

At the appointed time, Tiney skipped down the stairs and out into North Terrace to find Thea standing with several of the other artists.

She overheard one of the older gentleman say, ‘The Society should refuse pictures that are offensive to good taste.’

‘Art isn’t simply decor,’ said Sebastian. ‘Surely there’s a role for art to provoke.’

‘I am a fellow of this Society. If I interpret a work of art as offensive, then I believe it will offend others as well. We shouldn’t subject the public to such unpleasantness.’

‘Unpleasantness?’ said Thea, her voice trembling with barely suppressed rage. ‘Mr Farr’s work isn’t about what’s “pleasant”. It’s about what’s true. I’m sure there was nothing pleasant about the trenches. Mud, pain, suffering, death – that was the truth he saw in France and if he chooses to submit his work to the Society we should be honoured to hang it in the Spring Exhibition.’

‘Miss Flynn!’ said the older gentleman. ‘I didn’t mean to cast aspersions on Mr Farr’s heroism.’

Thea looked flustered and was about to speak again when Ida Alston came flying down the steps of the Society of Arts, almost colliding with the group. She wrapped an arm around Thea and literally dragged her away.

‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ she called over her shoulder to Sebastian and Tiney. ‘You must all be starving for supper.’

Tiney was relieved by Ida’s unexpected rescue. She’d never seen Thea so worked up before. The elderly painter bade them goodbye and Sebastian and Tiney fell into step behind Ida and Thea as they headed along the wet pavement towards West’s Coffee Palace on Hindley Street. Tiney looked up at the turrets and flags fluttering in the wintry evening breeze. She glanced ahead at Thea, her face so steely as she brooded on the argument, and then at Sebastian. He was smiling, not at Tiney, but at Thea, as if he were laughing at her.

‘Mr Farr, you have to appreciate that my sister is a very serious creature,’ said Tiney, almost apologetically.

‘Don’t call me Mr Farr. I’m only Seb. And there’s nothing creature-like about Thea, unless she’s a creature such as a butterfly.’

‘Thea? A butterfly? Our brother Louis said she was a swan maiden.’

Seb smiled. ‘I can see that too. Definitely something beautiful, with wings. Old Oswin managed to ruffle her feathers.’

‘That was your fault,’ said Tiney. ‘She was trying to defend you.’

‘There’s not a lot of point. The old men always win,’ said Seb, his brow suddenly creased. He thrust his hands into his pockets. His pace slowed and he fell behind the girls. As they were about to cross the road, she looked back and saw him standing with his fists clenched, kicking a lamppost with terrible force.

‘Seb!’ called Thea.

At the sound of her voice, Seb strode to join them but his expression was bleak and he responded brusquely to Thea’s gentle questions. Tiney was shocked to see his mood turn so quickly. They walked in silence the rest of the way along Hindley Street.

Inside West’s Coffee Palace, trade was slow. Most of the waitresses had been replaced by waiters over the past few months as women gave up their jobs for returned servicemen. The lone waitress, dressed very plainly in a long brown skirt, also wore a face-mask. It was hard to understand her through the gauze covering.

‘I suppose we should all drag our face-masks out too,’ sighed Ida. ‘It would be just my luck to catch this wretched disease as it starts to wane.’

‘We should still be careful,’ said Thea. ‘Millions have died, mostly people our age.’ She reached into her bag and drew out two neatly folded cotton masks.

Tiney screwed up her nose.

‘Please, Thea,’ she said. ‘I can’t drink my tea wearing that mask.’ Even though Mama had embroidered small flowers on them to make them less drab, Tiney loathed the feel of the cloth against her nose and mouth.

‘I think what we all need is a jaunt out of town,’ announced Ida. ‘Especially you two Flynns. Let’s all go down to Christie’s Beach. You know Mother and I have a sweet little shack down there, on the clifftops. We could go painting seascapes together. Seb could come too, couldn’t you, old digger? If there are three girls to chaperone you, everyone will think you’re either an utter roué or an absolute lamb.’

Seb laughed, the moody darkness in his eyes evaporating. ‘Three women for every man. . .’ he sang.

‘That’s a terrible old song,’ admonished Thea.

‘I know,’ said Seb. ‘But I always thought that line about how “women are angels without wings” was rather fine.’

Thea laughed and Tiney saw something in her sister that she’d never seen before; something bright and fierce and breathlessly happy.

Rain off the sea beat against the windows of the house at Christie’s Beach. It was much nicer than Ida had led them to imagine: a cottage, not a beach shack, with paned windows and whitewashed walls and geraniums scrambling up the back trellis.

Tiney put another log on the fire and looked across the room to where Thea and Seb sat side by side on the sofa. She was glad she’d insisted on being their chaperone. When Ida’s mother fell ill and Ida couldn’t come on the planned escape, there’d been fleeting talk of finding an elderly relative to accompany the Flynns, but Tiney had talked her parents around. Thea and Seb wouldn’t have been able to relax with some old biddy fretting over their every move.

The holiday had been perfect. During the day, they all walked down to the beach and Thea and Seb would set up their camp-stools and easels in the shadow of the chalky, white cliffs. Tiney paddled in the water or read in the shade of a beach umbrella while the two painters worked on their canvases. Sometimes they pencilled her into their sketches. These were the ones that Tiney loved the most.

Thea painted carefully, studying the waves as if they were her infant children. Each brushstroke was placed with a sharp, focused precision. In the same time that it took her to paint a single small canvas, Seb had completed three. Even when the sea was calm, his paintings were infused with restless energy. Though the surface of the water appeared serene, Tiney had the sense that for Seb nothing stayed still. Everything was moving and surging beneath the surface of the calmest seas. His skies were full of bold clouds, the wind tore along the beach, and every detail was infused with movement. The whole canvas seemed to heave with a forceful undercurrent.

When he was done, he would lie beside Thea and watch her work. Sometimes, he leaned forward to study her technique with intense interest and then, if she gazed too long at her subject, he would languidly stretch out at her feet like a gold lion and fall asleep in the white sand.

The third night they were at the cottage, Tiney was wrenched awake by the sound of screaming. It made her heart pound. She glanced across at Thea’s bed. Her sister was sitting up, scrabbling for her glasses.

‘What was that?’

‘Seb,’ said Thea. ‘It’s Seb.’ She snatched her kimono dressing gown from the end of the bed and tied the cord quickly.

The girls ran along the narrow hall in the dark, following the painful cries to their source. The screaming made the glass in the windows rattle.

Thea stopped outside Seb’s bedroom door. She looked at Tiney, as if she wasn’t sure what to do next, then rattled the doorknob.

‘It’s locked,’ she said.

Tiney pushed in front of her and pounded on the timber. ‘Seb, Seb, Sebastian,’ she called. ‘Let us in!’

‘It sounds as though someone’s torturing him,’ said Thea. ‘We must wake him.’

‘If I go around the side, I might be able to climb in through his window,’ said Tiney.

Thea looked appalled. ‘You can’t do that.’ Then Seb let out a heart-stopping cry and Thea gripped Tiney’s arm. ‘Quickly, I’ll give you a leg-up,’ she said, dragging Tiney through the front door.

The window was narrow with four small panes and a brass latch that was loosely fixed to the frame. Tiney and Thea curled their fingers around the edge of the window and wrenched it open. Then Thea boosted Tiney up and over the ledge.

Standing in the small, dark bedroom, Tiney realised that perhaps she should be afraid. She could see the outline of Seb’s body thrashing on the narrow metal bunk. She wanted to shake him awake but his flailing limbs alarmed her. She grabbed a jug of water from the dresser, stepped closer to the bed and called his name, staying out of arm’s reach. When the screams continued, she tossed the water onto Seb’s face. He gasped and shouted as he struggled to consciousness. Tiney leapt away from him, clutching the jug to her chest. Thea, like a ghost at the window, called out, ‘Sebastian, it’s all right. It’s only me and Tiney. We’ve come to wake you. Quickly, Tiney, open the door for me.’

Then Thea was in the room, sitting on the edge of Seb’s bed with her arms around him, as he shivered to waking.

‘I’ll put the kettle on,’ said Tiney, for want of anything better to say or do. In the kitchen, she filled the kettle and set it on the gas. Sitting on a cane chair by the burnt-out fire, her knees pulled up to her chest and her nightgown pulled down over them, Tiney wished she were at home. She shut her eyes and listened to the sound of the sea breaking on Christie’s Beach.

When the kettle boiled, she made tea and took it into the bedroom; but she found Seb and Thea asleep on Seb’s narrow single bed. Thea lay outside the covers, her arms around Seb, one hand cradling his head. Seb nestled his cheek against her fair hair, his face serenely peaceful as he slept.

Tiney fetched a crocheted blanket from her room and laid it gently over Thea before going back to her own bed.

In the morning, Tiney poured the cold tea-leaves into the bin and sat alone in the small kitchen, watching rain beat against the windowpane. Much later, Seb and Thea finally emerged, looking sheepish and strangely relaxed. There was an ease in Thea that Tiney had never seen, as if her limbs had become more lithe, as if all the tight, intense unhappiness that bound her to her canvases had been swept away.

When the rain had lifted, they all went for a walk along the beach. Tiney ran ahead while Seb and Thea walked behind, holding hands. Tiney felt suddenly lonely in the lovers’ company. She left them standing at the water’s edge and climbed the path to the clifftop.

On the bus heading back to Adelaide, the sisters sat together. Tiney could feel a crackle of electricity that emanated from the seat in front of them where Seb was sitting alone, reading a book. It was as if his body was sending out invisible waves of heat and energy that made Thea smile and blush.

‘Seb,’ said Tiney, tapping him on the shoulder. ‘Shall we swap seats?’

Seb and Thea slept for the rest of the bus trip, Thea’s head settled gently on Seb’s shoulder. Tiney knelt on her seat and turned around to watch their faces. They were so beautiful she wished she knew how to draw so she could capture the moment. If Seb and Thea were to marry, it would be the most romantic ceremony. Not like Ray and Nette’s wedding, where shadows of doubt had shown on everyone’s faces. It would be a union of true souls.

Papa liked Seb from the moment he walked into the house. Although Seb would deflect any question that Tiney or Thea asked him about his time on the Western Front, on his first visit to Larksrest he spent over an hour in Papa’s study talking about the war. Mama loved Seb’s gentle good manners.

On Violet Day, a week after they’d returned from Christie’s Beach, Seb dropped by Larksrest uninvited, a small bouquet of the purple flowers in his hand. Thea wasn’t at home but he spoke with Papa and then took tea with Tiney and Mama in the kitchen, insisting there was no need for them to entertain him in the front parlour. It was as if he were a member of the family already. When Mama asked him how his painting was progressing, he laughed.

‘Thea says I must enter work in the Spring exhibition, but I don’t think old Oswin will back my inclusion. He seems to find my work too “disturbing”.’

‘You should submit one of your seascapes,’ said Tiney. ‘They’re beautiful.’

‘Thea’s are finer. I’ve never seen anyone capture light on water the way she can.’

‘She’s finished that canvas she started at Christie’s Beach,’ said Tiney. ‘Come and see. It’s on the easel in her studio.’

‘Tiney, perhaps you should allow your sister to show Sebastian her own work,’ said Mama.

‘Thea won’t mind,’ said Tiney, though a flicker of doubt almost made her sit down again.

Seb followed her across the back garden to Thea’s studio. Tiney found the studio key underneath an upturned terracotta pot and unlocked the door. Seb grew quiet, almost reverent, inside the small space. He stood for a long time in front of Thea’s canvas, simply staring at the work.

‘I wish she’d submit it for the art prize, but she says she doesn’t think it’s good enough,’ said Tiney.

‘It’s perfection,’ said Seb.

‘I’d submit pictures on her behalf, but I can’t afford the entry fees,’ said Tiney.

‘I can afford it,’ said Seb.

Tiney smiled. ‘Can you really? When she wins, we’ll pay you back. But Thea mustn’t know. And we can’t possibly submit this one, she’d notice it was missing. But she has lots of canvases stored in the rack over there.’ She began to pull out some of her favourites of Thea’s paintings, showing them to Seb with sisterly pride.

‘We should put her up for every prize in the country,’ said Seb, conspiratorially. ‘The Sydney prize has a category for drawings. Thea would be a strong contender. Would she notice if some of her line drawings went missing?’

Tiney clapped her hands. ‘Perfect!’

Together, Tiney and Seb sifted through Thea’s folios, picking out several works that Seb promised to frame. Tiney took the collection of drawings and two paintings from Thea’s store of older works and slipped down the side path with them so Mama wouldn’t see Seb carry them through the house. As she snuck beneath the windows, she was reminded of playing hide-and-seek with Louis. It was almost too good to be true that Seb had the same sense of mischief and adventure as her brother.

Tiney spent the rest of the afternoon whistling while she worked at scrubbing the kitchen floor. At dinner, though, she found that Papa was grim with anxiety at the latest news from Germany.

‘How can the Germans sign the treaty when Scheidemann and his cabinet have resigned in protest against it?’ he said, gloomily. ‘The coaltion will have to form a new German government and who knows where that will lead us.’

‘But there won’t be another war,’ said Tiney. ‘There can’t be.’

‘In Paris, General Foch has ordered the mobilisation of the allied armies, and today the Germans scuttled their own ships in Scapa Flow. The German sailors are now prisoners of war. Madness, chaos.’

Tiney wanted to cover her ears. Instead she began clearing the table. As long as she was working, she could keep the dark thought of another war at bay.

Tiney had just drifted off to sleep when the loud trill of the phone echoed through the house. For a moment, she imagined someone was calling to announce the outbreak of war. Thea was first out of bed to answer it. Tiney heard the gentle murmur of her voice and then a horrible sound, like an injured animal wailing in the night. Tiney ran to the door. In the dimly lit hall, Thea lay on the floor in her nightgown, curled into a ball, rocking and moaning. The telephone receiver dangled at the end of its cord and banged against the wall.

Tiney knelt down beside Thea and tried to pull her hands away from her face, to make her speak. Mama and Papa came out of their room, their eyes wide. Mama knelt down on Thea’s other side and tried to put her arms around Thea but she wouldn’t be comforted. Papa reached for the phone and asked the operator to reconnect him to the previous caller. He listened carefully to the speaker on the other end, then he replaced the receiver.

Mama had gently led Thea into the kitchen and was making her a cup of warm milk, hoping to coax some sense from her. Papa looked down at Tiney with a numb expression.

‘It’s Sebastian Farr. He’s gone missing. The police believe he has drowned. There was a note, for Thea, among his things.’

Not even the news of peace could lift the darkness that had settled on Larksrest. On the 28th of June, 1919, the Germans signed the Treaty of Versailles but while Thea grieved for Seb, celebrating seemed unkind. Seb’s death was almost more than the family could bear.

The police had found Sebastian’s clothes, neatly folded in a small pile beside his leather shoes, at the base of the cliffs at Christie’s Beach. Ida drove Thea and Tiney down to the cottage at the beginning of July in the hope it would give Thea a chance to grieve properly. Though Adelaide bustled with plans for Peace Day celebrations in late July, Ida decided she would stay with the Flynn sisters at Christie’s Beach as long as they needed her.

Thea spent most days standing on the clifftop above Christie’s Beach staring out at the horizon. It was frightening for Tiney to see her sister standing so still, so frail, as if an updraft might sweep her into the sky. She wanted to drag Thea inside, to keep her somewhere safe and sheltered.

Every morning, Thea rose at dawn and walked down the winding track to the cliff edge to watch the sea, as if staring might bring Seb back to her, as if the waves might part and she would see him rise from the ocean like a Greek god. And every morning Tiney would follow her, picking her way carefully over rocks and low scrub to watch over her sister and stand vigil.