Night Street by Kristel Thornell Read Free Book Online Page A

on bluestone bulwarks, and the steady current of traffic this carried. The palm trees in the foreground, in some way endearing, self-consciously adolescent. The little boats on the mirroring water beneath and above, a maternal, impersonal sky. She thought she would do a quick sketch or two and a colour study to fix it in her memory.
    But she was soon busy with a panel, squeezing obliging worms of paint onto the palette, adding a little of this and some of that and working it together with rhythmic, religious rigour till her colours came towards what she saw, like a tentative meeting of strangers who have recognised something in each other.
    The trance released her when she had done what she could do. She enjoyed it this way, painting in one fell swoop. A premier coup : at the first blow. A storm of painting quickly arriving and departing—a transient frenzy. The finished painting was different to the picture she had held in her mind before beginning. It was never, of course, that perfect. You did what you were able or needed to do at that moment, tried to accept it, to be unafraid. She was developing.
    She entered the studio quietly. Holding the panel with care, she was mindful of the impressionable baby-softness of its wet surface. She pegged it to the wall at the back of the room for drying. She had not quite exited the painting yet; sometimes she lingered within a just-completed work, reluctant to go.
    One of the young men, Henry, came to see.
    He laughed sharply, in spite of himself. Then he hurried over to where the other students were sitting in a loose but attentive group. Ada came to stand beside her, staring at the fresh paint. She had heard it said that the girl was an imitator of her style, but this did not bother Clarice. If some people occasionally did not know to which of them to attribute a work, Clarice herself did not see any particular resemblance between their paintings. Meldrum could always tell the difference.
    She became aware that the men were snickering, while at the back of the disorderly group, slightly apart, she noticed someone she had never before set eyes on. He was leaning against the wall, not participating in the laughter. He was tall and his face was tanned.
    â€˜We’re not making fun of you,’ said Henry, battling to be sober but breaking into mirth again. The tall man glanced at the floor, as though offended. ‘It’s that we were discussing it, when you came in—the very same bridge.’
    He did not mean anything bad, Henry. He was one of several boys who passed the role of joker around; he was not fashioned for seriousness. Mostly nobody paid Clarice too much attention, except when Meldrum mentioned her technique. Then their mouths might twitch into slight smiles, which could have meant scepticism. Still, by and large, she appreciated the others because they cared for art; this somehow unified them all. But she kept to herself.
    She was out of the painting now and looked levelly at Henry, which made him ill at ease.
    The tall man’s eyes touched her as she said, ‘What were you saying when I came in? You can let me in on the joke.’
    Like most of the class, Henry was perhaps ten years her junior. He was immature, though it was not his age. He made a stunted, comic gesture.
    â€˜That Princes Bridge is an eyesore. With those horrid palms.’
    They laughed because she had chosen to paint what they deemed unworthy of paint, the refuse of blemished modern Melbourne. It was always newly startling to discover that her subjects were considered unsightly or irrelevant.
    The tall man was still not laughing and it appeared to her that he had quiet, uncommon ideas of his own.
    Clarice did not want to explain to Henry what she had seen: the ingenuous trees, their tops like unmanaged morning hair, and the rhythm of their vertical offerings to the horizontal bridge, which was itself a homage to the horizon. The optimism of it, the fallible humanness. She