The electricity had been shut off over a year ago, so the famous oval hallway of Elizabeth Bay House appeared an even vaster cavern than it did in daytime, its size exaggerated by the unsteady glow of many dozens of candles in jam jars. Shadow and light embellished every architectural detail, bringing them to life—the architraves around the doors swelling like varnished tree trunks and the iron banisters on the staircase bending like bulrushes in the wind. The dimness also served to hide the state of decay and filth that the grand villa had fallen into over the last ten years.
Peering into the gloom, Joan could see figures milling about, talking, embracing, laughing drunkenly, making glorious fools of themselves. The spiral staircase was packed with bodies: men with jackets off, shirts unbuttoned; women loose-bloused, hair down. Jazz was playing loudly on a gramophone in an upstairs room, the trumpet shrieking of Louis Armstrong punching out the melody of ‘All of Me’ in staccato bursts. ‘My beautiful Amazon!’ cried a voice with a syrupy foreign accent. It was Bernie’s lover, Laszlo, eager to show off his muse to a circle of male acquaintances. Bernie, who loved the spotlight, allowed herself to be swept off with Jess in tow.
As Joan pushed her way through the throng, she saw many familiar faces, all haloed in a benign glow thanks to the cocaine. It was not hard to spot the two German-born artists who lived here, both beautiful, earnest boys with cornsilk hair. Wolfgang had renounced his well-to-do family’s traditional calling of medicine, declaring he wanted ‘to paint bodies not cut them up’; Paul was lucky that his mother was a painter and his family supported his studies at the Julian Ashton Art School. In the front hall lurked bright-eyed, baby-faced Rex. He was a gifted painter but felt he was condemned to live in the shadow of his famous commercial artist father, Harry Julius, loved for his newspaper cartoons and the satirical sketches he’d done for the wartime newsreels.
Joan worked her way from the front door to the hallway and into the former dining room, with its imposing black marble fireplace now cluttered with empty beer bottles. She had already started work on a second Resch’s. More friendly faces floated by, waved, winked, blew kisses, patted her on the shoulder. It was just as well that the young men here tonight were passable to good physical specimens, thought Joan, as their togs did them no favours. Stained shirts with frayed collars, buttonless jackets out at the elbows, trousers held up by string belts, shoes with soles hanging out like the tongues of panting dogs: the bohemian male ‘uniform’ of sorts. These men of ideas and dreams resembled a bunch of bagmen on the susso with their scarecrow clothes and pinched, hungry faces. The bachelors (without the benefit of wives to wash, iron and mend) not only looked shabby but stank of tobacco, beer, turps and stale food. The older men (with the benefit of wives) scrubbed up better in the sartorial sphere, but their youthful profiles and physiques had been ruined by years of lousy food and copious alcohol consumption. Joan felt a complicated affection for them all.
Was that Virgil Reilly slouching against the doorway to the old library? He was busy sweet-talking a living embodiment of one of the slinky, semi-clad flapper ‘Virgil Girls’ that he drew for Smith’s Weekly. The women here—all dolled up in high heels, stockings, bangles, pearls, diaphanous gowns and skull-hugging cloche hats pulled tight over peek-a-boo bangs and luscious curls—were either hard-working office girls starving themselves to afford their glad rags or daughters of the genuinely rich enjoying a night slumming it with the bohemian fringe. Either way, if the women were keen, the men like Virgil were up for it. Excepting perhaps Oscar, Felix and Gerald, the trio of frocked-up drag queens who always added a note of extravagance to the evening’s regalia but trod carefully when it came to drunken flirting.
The saddest figure in the room, over by the old servery stacked high with bottles of bootleg, was Rayner Hoff. He sat alone, drinking steadily, purposefully. He was the most talented sculptor of his generation, a gentle, generous teacher at East Sydney Tech, loved by his students, most of them women. He had a big rectangular head—not unlike the rough-cut blocks of stone he worked with—and a handsome Clark Gable face, thick moustache and deep-set, soulful eyes. Dressed in drag as a fairy godmother at last year’s artists’ ball, Rayner was no stranger to fun and frolic, but in the last few months his reputation had suffered a blow. In Joan’s opinion, Hoff had designed and carved the most dignified monumental sculptures of serving men and women imaginable for the Hyde Park War Memorial. The central interior sculpture in bronze was shocking and heartbreaking all at once: a wartime Pieta of a dead soldier, a naked youth, borne on a shield by his wife, mother and sister. But some of Rayner’s other work for the memorial had seen him embroiled in controversy. Outraged by the maquettes for two sculptures featuring female nudes, one as Civilisation Crucified and the other as Victory After Sacrifice, Archbishop Kelly and other leaders of the Catholic Church had accused Hoff of blasphemy and obscenity. The forces of wowserism had triumphed yet again, forcing a humiliated Hoff to shelve his ‘offensive and indecent’ statues. Now poor Rayner, formerly the liveliest merrymaker and prankster at parties, sought solace and self-obliteration in alcohol.
‘Oh, Joan, it is you! You were missed at lunch on Saturday. But then I heard all about your macabre murder. Such a horror! And all within the walls of your humble digs!’
Joan knew the man to whom these fruity tones belonged. She turned and smiled at Sam Rosa—short, pink, bald Sam with his pudgy hairless arms and skull-like grin, the Grand Master of the Noble Order of the Evil Itchy, one-time fearless anarchist and two-time fearless editor of Truth. Bernice, up for any challenge, was one of his favourite freelance writers. She in turn indulged him at the madcap meetings of the Evil Itchy, acting as his sidekick to ‘initiate’ all new male members with long, lingering kisses while Sam himself was ritually kissed by the younger, prettier female members. The pair had been friends since the heady early days when the club met at the Café La Boheme in Wilmot Street, before a police raid closed the place for good. Sam had welcomed Bernie’s protégée, Joan, with open arms.
‘Thanks, Sam. It’s been a bloody nightmare, let me tell you. But tonight I’m here to drown my sorrows—and to raise a toast to poor Ellie!’ Sam solemnly raised his beer glass and they clinked.
‘To poor Ellie, another victim of the class war!’ he declared.
‘Any other Itchies here tonight?’ Joan asked.
‘I think Reg Punch could be moping about somewhere, the gloomy bugger.’
Joan was interested to hear that; she might seek him out to reassure him that her novel was going well and he would soon have some chapters on his desk.
As Sam drifted off after a passing lithesome beauty, Joan made her way through the crowd in search of Reg. ‘Another victim of the class war indeed!’ sniffed Joan. Why were women always victims or vixens in men’s eyes, wives or whores, muses or mistresses? Always stand-ins, mascots for something else: liberty, revolution, motherhood, purity, piety, beauty, eros, art? Could men never just see women as people first? As strong or weak, ashamed or brazen, self-sacrificing or self-interested like themselves?
Distracted by a tap on the shoulder, she turned to find Jess, a little unsteady on her feet, frowning. ‘Are you alright?’ Joan asked, taken aback at the intensity of Jess’s expression.
‘There’s something I have to tell you, Joanie. Come here.’ Jess drew Joan into a quieter corner and spoke low into her ear. ‘You have to promise to keep an eye on Bernie.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘She won’t tell you, but she loved Ellie.’
‘No, no, you don’t understand,’ said Jess urgently. ‘I mean, they were lovers.’
Joan was lost for words. What was Jess saying? Joan had suspected that Bernie had had a crush on Ellie, which may well have deepened into feelings akin to love. But lovers?
‘What about Laszlo?’ Bernie had been seeing her Hungarian sculptor for the last year.
‘Bernie said she would give him up in the blink of an eye if Ellie did the same.’
‘You mean give up the game?’
‘No, no. That’s work. It has nothing to do with this.’ Jess sounded impatient, as if Joan was being deliberately obtuse. ‘Ellie had another lover too, but she never told us much about him. She wanted to keep him a secret. All I know is that she called him her knight in shining armour and said he was going to take her away from all this. I never saw Ellie look so happy as when she said that.’
‘Cripes!’ Joan’s mind was racing as she tried to take it all in: Bernie, Ellie, a secret lover … Could Ellie’s lover have been Gordon? With his wealth and power he might well have appeared to be a knight in shining armour. Had he made promises to Ellie he had no intention of keeping? ‘What did he look like?’ Joan demanded. ‘Was he an older man?’
‘I never got a good look at him; he only called round to the flat once. Came to the front door. Ellie was furious—she didn’t want anyone to see him. He seemed familiar though. Something about his voice.’
‘How long ago was this?’
‘January, maybe? I’m not sure.’ Jess seized Joan by the arm. ‘But listen, the thing is I think somehow Bernie found out about him. She and Ellie had a fight. A really bad fight.’
‘When?’
‘About a week ago. In our flat.’ Jess was crying now. ‘I wonder if maybe Ellie tried to break up with this man and it ended badly. Who knows?’
‘So you don’t think it was Frankie who killed Ellie? It could have been this fellow?’
‘I don’t know. I’m just worried …’ Jess choked on her words. ‘I’m worried that Bernie blames herself for Ellie’s death. I’m worried she could do something … you know … stupid. Please don’t tell her I told you any of this.’
‘I understand.’ Joan kissed Jess on the cheek. ‘I’m glad you told me. I won’t say a word to Bernie. I’ll keep an eye on her. And you take care of yourself. This is hard on all of us.’
Jess wiped her eyes and lifted her chin, all trace of vulnerability gone. ‘Ellie always said life’s too short to feel sorry for yourself.’ She took another swig from the beer in her hand then pushed her way into the throng.
The air of unreality Joan already felt all around her had just become more dreamlike. Over the last four years, she and Bernie had become good friends who shared their daily frustrations like sisters. Joan could not help feeling disappointed that Bernie had not confided in her about Ellie. Was it possible that she felt ashamed of her own desires? No, Bernie was not one to feel shame. Did she fear that Joan would be shocked or unsympathetic, perhaps?
Female desire was hardly ever spoken about. It was as if men—and most women for that matter—didn’t want to admit that it existed. It made the whole sex thing complicated and awkward. A man’s sex drive was a force of nature that had to be tamed and controlled while a woman’s desire was nothing more than the maternal drive to reproduce. Let’s face it, women weren’t meant to like sex; it was generally agreed that they tolerated it to please their spouses and to increase the progeny of the race and nation. Except for the women of the Ladies’ Bacchus Club, who had sought out Eleanor’s knowledge as ‘a celebrant’ of female desire on Bernice’s recommendation: not as a prostitute, it now occurred to Joan, but as a lesbian, well-versed not in men’s pleasure but in women’s.
Joan drained her beer and grabbed another one. The alcohol was starting to work its magic.
She began to climb the spiral staircase, pushing up through the crush of sweaty bodies, glimpses of breast and belly, heads thrown back, mouths gaping, guffaws, eyes and then hands, unabashed, lascivious, craving buttocks, hips, thighs. She had lost track of time, with the gramophone jazz speeding everything up with its feverish, rocketing rhythms. A woman on the landing was doing handstands so that her skirt fell down, revealing long, stocking-less legs and lacey tap pants. Sometime later in the night, Bernice would show off her famous splits, her favourite party trick and part of her repertoire of acrobatic turns acquired during her brief theatre career in America.
God, how lovely this grand colonial house must have been in its heyday, Joan thought, her eyes drifting upwards to the oval dome high overhead. Unexpectedly, it brought to mind the domed ceiling of the Hall of Silence in the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park. That ceiling was studded with stars, one for each man and woman who had served in the Great War. Under each of these exalted domes, Joan felt her heart lift, the wings of her soul unfold. Artists! It was always artists who were given the sacred duty to tell these stories, evoke these feelings. Paid for by rich men, patrons private and public. And what a fraught dance that was between the art men and the money men!
Joan almost tripped on an empty beer bottle under her feet and lurched towards the balustrade. It was a miracle nobody had gone over and broken their neck yet, though there’d been plenty of episodes of drunks spewing over the side onto the heads of those below. Joan was pretty groggy herself; was this her third beer or her fourth?
For a moment she thought she recognised the woman at the centre of a knot of men just across the way. Could it be German Annie, the true Queen of Bohemia, worshipped by every man in artistic Sydney? For years, she had worked as a prostitute in the Cross, telling anyone who cared to listen that she was the daughter of the brilliant academic, Professor Christopher Brennan. Shocking stories were whispered about her father’s unnatural fixation on Anne, his drunken jealous rages, their vitriolic fights. But this woman couldn’t possibly be Anne. Anne had died of TB four years ago, heartbroken after her husband had been taken by a shark at Bondi; a life of exuberant survival ending in tragic melodrama.
She could remember the night she’d heard the news of Anne’s death and how she’d wept. It was the same feeling the night she heard about Jo Lynch, that gloomy but always funny Smith’s cartoonist, who fell (or was it jumped?) off the Mosman ferry, dragged down, they said, by his coat-pockets laden with beer. The riotous decade-long party that was Sydney Bohemia was starting to lose its innocence and charm. And there was going to be one hell of a hangover to pay for all the merriment when it was done.
Dancing couples in the hallway were swaying slowly now to Ella Fitzgerald crooning about pansies and tough guys. Other couples were disappearing into the dark, musty studios upstairs or the maids’ quarters or the servants’ backstairs for a quick knee-trembler or a tumble on a dirty mattress. Joan was not oblivious to the grunts and moans of pleasure in the candlelit rooms all around her. She was the beggar at the feast, starved for sexual pleasure, her loins aching for a man, having done without for six months at least, God save her!
And then, as if summoned by the strength of her desire, a beautiful older man, tipsy but not blotto, appeared before her like an angel of mercy in corduroys and a collarless shirt. She had never seen him before, this lovely fellow, did not know his name, did not care. Dark wavy hair, olive-skinned, thick eyebrows, clean-shaven jaw, coffee-brown eyes. An Italian maybe or a Croatian? Nothing would surprise Joan at parties like these. He grinned and nodded as if he could read her dirty thoughts. Without a word he began to caress her face with a broad, coarse hand (was he a sculptor, a painter?) and she did not resist but sighed deeply as he pulled her towards him. She could smell alcohol on his breath, Armagnac or cognac. She did not resist the first kiss or the second or third. He tasted good, felt good, pressed against her.
Hugh hated all bohemians, had nothing but contempt for their unworldliness and lack of politics and morals, and he also hated the ‘wogs’ from Germany and Eastern Europe whom, he claimed, were intent on stealing the jobs of honest diggers.
‘Forgive me, Hugh’: this was Joan’s short, sharp prayer of penitence before the stranger hungrily kissed her neck and then her mouth and then cupped one of her breasts in his warm, rough hand and lowered his head to nuzzle her there and they both stumbled towards a niche of dark polished wood, an upstairs linen cupboard. Hugh need never know, Joan assured herself. It would change nothing. But, oh, how she had missed this …
In the darkness of the cupboard she could barely make out her lover’s face and so she was immersed in this lovely, tense dance by touch and smell only as, with her green satin dress hitched high, the stranger held her firmly in his arms and made love to her. She moaned and her lover answered her moans with increasing urgency until they both cried out. Her whole body was flooded with the sweet absinthe of release, momentarily dissolving all her grief and fear.
The man kissed her again, tenderly, and whispered, ‘Thank you.’ She was grateful he did not linger or insist on conversation. Perhaps he did not even speak that much English. Like one of Norman Lindsay’s satyrs he had carried her off into the forest, had his fun with her and galloped away to the music of panpipes. It was exactly what she wanted, exactly what she needed.
She resented the twinge of guilt in her head, the thought that she had somehow betrayed her wounded warrior-poet. Nonsense, she told herself. None of this was planned. There was no deceit, no betrayal. I have no obligations to Hugh. I am free to do as I wish. But even buoyed up by cocaine and beer, Joan could not shake off a sense of dread that, whatever she told herself, there would be a kind of reckoning.