Luncheon was a protracted affair. Eleanor stayed only long enough to satisfy her hunger before returning to her reading in the shade of the citrus trees, but Vane clearly wanted to make an occasion of the meal, toasting my arrival in good wine and maintaining a constant and eventually exhausting flow of conversation. I sensed something of the emigrant’s homesickness in his insistent questions about the country he had last seen more than twenty years earlier, and though I was naturally disposed to respond fully to his enquiries, I was relieved when he pushed away his coffee-cup and rose to his feet.
‘I have business to attend to,’ he said. ‘It might wait until tomorrow but procrastination, as your uncle was fond of telling me, is the thief of time. It’s a maxim I’ve lived by for many years, and I’ve found no reason’ – he spread his hands in a gesture I understood to embrace the villa, the gardens and a good deal more besides – ‘to doubt its essential wisdom.’
‘Of course. Please don’t disturb your routines on my account. I’m used to fending for myself, and I have business of my own. Assuming that my rifle is in reasonable order, I may as well begin this afternoon.’
‘I wish you luck, but I’m afraid you’ll find nothing remarkable hereabouts. Tomorrow I shall introduce you to Bullen. He’ll take you further afield and show you what’s what.’ He chuckled softly, as if at some private joke. ‘Quite a character, our Mr Bullen.’
‘A local naturalist?’
‘I don’t know whether you’d call him a naturalist. He’s not a particularly well educated man – not, by any stretch of the imagination, a scientist – but he has an eye for a rarity, and I know for a fact that several of the big collectors in Sydney regularly buy from him. He has made something of a name for himself in the region, though the Grail, as he calls it, has so far eluded him.’
‘The Grail?’
‘He wants to discover a new species of bird or mammal – thinks they’ll name it after him. I can’t understand it myself, but for him it’s an obsession.’
I might have tried to explain, on Bullen’s behalf, the nature and power of an obsession I understood only too well, but I sensed that my efforts would be wasted on Vane. ‘I’m sure,’ I said, ‘that we shall find we have a good deal in common, Mr Bullen and I. I look forward to meeting him.’
How easy it is, I thought, reflecting on Vane’s words as I strolled later among the eucalypts, to dismiss as unremarkable the marvels that lie most immediately about us. To me, everything was new, and everything a source of wonder, from the vivid green mantis rocking slowly back and forth on its twig to the cockatoos that rose at my approach, lifting into the bright air like a host of raucous angels, their wings suffused with sunlight. There was brilliance there but also, I realised as I began to examine my surroundings more carefully, a remarkable subtlety: I was particularly struck by the delicate coloration of the woodland foliage – the greens more muted than ours but no less various, interfused with soft shades of grey and touched with pale metallic lustres. I was so entranced by my discoveries that for some considerable time I was content simply to observe, and it was with something like regret that, coming upon a small group of parrots feeding in the undergrowth, I eventually unslung my rifle.
My shot was not, I confess, a particularly good one, but one of the birds sat tight as the others scattered, and I knew at once that it had been hit. As I approached, it tried to launch itself into the air but fell flapping to the ground, beating the dust until it died. I lifted it up and wiped the blood from its beak with a leaf.
I had always felt a degree of confusion at such moments, but on this occasion the combination of sorrow and excitement was peculiarly unsettling. I remember pacing up and down, gazing through a film of tears at the curve of the slack neck, the brilliance of the ruffled plumage. Breast upward, the bird glowed rich crimson, its throat patched with blue of an almost equal intensity; as I turned it on to its front, letting its head hang forward over the edge of my palm, I saw how the crimson seemed to bleed between the darker wing-feathers, accentuating their contours with a boldness that reminded me of an Egyptian wall-painting I had once coveted.
‘We call them lories,’ said Vane when I showed him the bird on my return. He had evidently completed his business and was sitting on the veranda steps cleaning his nails with a small pocket-knife. ‘Crimson lories. Ten a penny round these parts – though they’re handsome enough creatures, I grant you.’
I replaced the body carefully in my satchel. ‘I shall have to presume further on your hospitality,’ I said. ‘Do you have an outhouse where I might prepare my specimens?’
‘There’s the barn. Ideal for your purposes, though I shall have to conduct some rather delicate negotiations on your behalf.’ He folded his knife, slipped it into his waistcoat pocket and hauled himself to his feet. ‘Leave the matter in my hands.’
‘When you say negotiations …?’
‘With Eleanor. The barn is her studio.’
‘She’s an artist?’
‘She likes to think so and, to tell the truth, she has a certain talent – though, as with so many things, she makes too much of it. Young women need something to keep their hands and minds busy – patchwork, sketching, embroidery, it doesn’t matter what – and I’ve always encouraged her. But in recent years her art, as she insists on calling it, has become an unhealthy preoccupation. When the mood takes her she’ll spend the entire day in the barn, refusing to let anyone in, hardly bothering to come out. She misses meals, or she comes to the table but won’t speak, bolts her food and scampers away again, like a half-tamed animal.’
‘It doesn’t sound as though she’ll welcome my company.’
‘I can guarantee that she’ll accept it. And it’s just possible’ – he gave a wry smile – ‘that your presence will exert a civilising influence. Heaven knows, she’s in need of it.’
‘You flatter me,’ I said lightly, ‘but civilising influences certainly exist. Indeed, I shouldn’t be at all surprised if she were to be taken off your hands within a year or two and exposed to the civilising influence of matrimony.’
I had intended the remark to be simultaneously humorous and reassuring, but Vane’s expression darkened suddenly and I realised at once that I had struck entirely the wrong note. ‘What I suggest,’ he said abruptly, ‘is that you leave me to settle matters with Eleanor. You might like to continue your exploration of the estate and return in twenty minutes or so.’ He gestured vaguely up the drive, turned on his heel and marched into the house.
Twenty minutes would have seemed time enough, but as I turned the corner of the house and stepped up to the veranda, I heard Eleanor’s voice ring out, shrill and raw, through the open windows of the day-room. ‘If you won’t listen to what I say, then why trouble to ask me? I’m telling you, I shan’t be able to work with him sitting there.’
And then Vane’s voice, half angry, half cajoling: ‘He has work of his own, Eleanor. He’ll not trouble you. And besides—’
‘It’s my studio. I’ll not have it turned into a poulterer’s shop.’
‘Don’t be absurd. And let me remind you that the barn was handed over to you with certain conditions attached. I’ve told you before, either you respect those conditions or—’
‘Just try it,’ she cut in viciously, lowering her voice so that I had to strain to catch the words. ‘Just you try keeping me out.’
One hears of families in which the children are perpetually at loggerheads with their parents, but my own upbringing had impressed upon me the importance of filial obedience. ‘You may disagree with me,’ my father had told me on one occasion, ‘but while you’re under my roof you do as I say.’ As I grew to manhood, I found myself dissenting more and more frequently from his opinions, but it would never have occurred to me to express my opposition in any but the mildest terms. Eleanor’s words shocked me into embarrassed retreat, but as I walked back up the drive I found myself reexamining them with what I can only describe as a kind of excitement. I imagined the unseen tableau with vivid precision – the girl backed, quite literally, into a corner, but staring directly into her father’s face as she spat defiance at him – and I was almost sorry when, a good ten minutes later, Vane strode out to where I was loitering in the shade at the edge of the garden and told me that Eleanor would be delighted to share her studio with me for the duration of my stay.
Predictably enough, our conversation at dinner that evening was not leavened by any expression of delight on the girl’s part. Vane talked loudly and a little wildly, as though he were desperate to distract my attention from Eleanor’s sullen silence, while I did my best to follow, through a haze of fatigue, the twists and turns of his rambling discourse. Only at the end of the meal, as the maidservant cleared away the dessert plates, did he change his tactics, leaning over to address his daughter directly. ‘I’m sure Mr Redbourne will be interested to see your work, Eleanor. Tell him what your instructor said about it.’
‘My instructor was a fool,’ said Eleanor curtly.
Vane turned apologetically to me. ‘There was a falling out,’ he explained. ‘But Mr Rourke is an artist of some local reputation and he told Eleanor in my presence’ – he glanced sideways as though for corroboration – ‘that she had a rare talent as a watercolourist.’
‘What he admired in my work,’ said Eleanor, scratching irritably with her fingernail at a small stain on the tablecloth, ‘were the very qualities I despised in his. My father doesn’t agree with me, Mr Redbourne, but I’m certain that I paint a good deal better without Mr Rourke’s guidance than I ever did with it.’
‘You owe him a considerable debt,’ said Vane sharply, ‘and it’s neither kind nor honest to pretend otherwise.’
Both glanced my way at precisely the same moment, and I saw with sudden clarity that their argument was an old one, now being rehearsed for my benefit. I wanted no part in it. I lowered my gaze and sat staring stupidly at my empty wineglass until Vane, rising abruptly from his chair, drew the uncomfortable proceedings to a close.