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was a telepathic call from Gwen that brought him to Australia. And who can say it wasn’t? They were married after a decent spell of being engaged, all with the blessing of Dr and Mrs Pocock, and were soon settled in the Brighton house where, apart from visits to his folk in Dumfries and to relatives of hers in Derbyshire (or wherever they were), they remained for the rest of their lives. Gwendoline bore two healthy children, a son then a daughter. The son, Ian Augustine, was killed on the Somme, and the daughter was Maud, Edith’s own mother. Thomas, so it turned out, had been just the man for the brown tones of the Melbourne world of art. His brothers in art from Cormon’s carried on staging their revolution without him.
    Edith steps away from the sink and draws in her breath sharply, her hand going to her chest. It is as if something binds her. It is always as if something is binding her. The whisper of the breakers coming ashore from the Great Southern Ocean, the concussion of them, a tremor transferred from the ground into the timber floor, a tremor within her womb. Four years after his death her grandfather’s pictures have been forgotten. They appear from time to time among the effects of deceased estates and fetch very little. The tremor in her belly, where the child whose existence Pat does not yet know of lies … Perhaps the old mare is not expecting someone to come over the hill, but is from the hinterland and is in a state of passionate wonder at the exalted voice of the sea? Edith is comforted by the presence of the horse. It is like having a new friend. The binding in her chest is a kind of desperation. About all of it. Everything. Unlike him, she is not at liberty but is responsible. She must get back to her work.
    She rinses her mother’s floral cup and saucer and dries both pieces, then she sets them beside the other pair on the shelf by the icebox and returns to the studio. She cannot imagine where he has gone or what he is doing. Should she paint into her picture some notation of the yellow oxalis flowers? It is an oil study of the house and the field, sketched initially from the rear, where the great broken cypresses are. Or are they pines, planted there by the founding Scots a hundred years ago? Great black pine trees wherever the Scots have been, like the dooming drone of their pipes and the clenched averted silence of their religion. She closes her eyes and sees her painting before her, perfectly conceived. She is in despair. Her mother wrenching up handfuls of oxalis from her perennial borders. And each spring the oxalis returning more luxuriant than the previous year. As if decimation inspires the weed. Does her mother believe a spring will eventually come when the oxalis will at last be vanquished by her Presbyterian endurance? Edith’s grandfather called oxalis by the gentler name of wood sorrel, and calmly painted fields of it. ‘See! It closes its bells when the sun goes behind a cloud.’ Another hour has gone and she is hungry. She cannot bear to look at her picture. The thought of it disgusts her.
    She lifts her hands and sweeps her hair back from her face. Gripping her hair in a tight hank behind her head and closing her eyes, she reties the green silk ribbon, securing the bow with a final tug. Her hair has lost its lustre since they came down here. The trouble is the chip heater is rusted and not working properly. So there is no hot water, except what she can heat in a saucepan on the wood stove. He has said he will fix the chip heater. But can he fix rust? She is beautiful and young and she is in love. She knows she should not be unhappy. The lightis poor at her end of the room. Pat stomped into the house ahead of her and took the sunny end of the room the first day and said nothing about it. Like an infantry captain leading his platoon up a hill, he secured the advantage.
    She is not prepared to fight for it. She can’t compete. His vigour is as relentless as the oxalis. It’s not