Rachael's Gift by Alexandra Cameron Page B

There wasn’t any point in saying anything in front of Francine.
    ‘You seem very confident,’ said Francine.
    ‘Don’t they say to let the work speak for itself?’ Rachael gave a cheeky smile.
    Francine offered to take a look at Rachael’s portfolio. ‘Some people think I have an eye.’
    Was that comment directed at me? Did she want to emphasise the distinction that she was a collector? A real connoisseur? ‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘she’s got talent, unlike her mother.’
    Rachael agreed to let Francine see her work and slid out of the room to get her portfolio.
    Francine smiled smugly. ‘So, the Beaux-Arts?’
    ‘She’s quite brilliant, Francine. She’s won countless prizes.’
    ‘In Australia.’
    ‘Yes.’ Her words stung. ‘If you don’t like it, I’d prefer that you kept quiet.’
    ‘I’d like to see for myself,’ she replied.
    ‘She’s only fourteen.’
    ‘Then we don’t want her wasting her time.’
    No, I thought, remembering a vast room filled with tiered chandeliers.
    ‘I thought you had come to give your mother a proper memorial service?’
    ‘Yes, and for that.’ I kept quiet about the teacher.
    ‘Maman has planned it for 17 November. You know, it hasn’t been easy. When you see your grandfather it’ll be a shock. Maman can barely look after herself.’ She sighed. ‘I had to organise two nurses to take care of him – to dress him, feed him, take him to the toilet. You can’t imagine . . .’
    An image of my mother standing on a pair of bathroom scales muscled its way into my thoughts: I was holding her upright. Her arm was around my neck, her legs like toothpicks. A pink silk scarf was wrapped around her head – the one I bought her for Christmas to wear around her neck.
    ‘He’s living in another world – another time.’ That he would remember me would be impossible.
    ‘Didn’t he always?’ I said, unable to keep the bitterness from my voice.
    Sunlight reflected on the windowpane and blinded me momentarily. I felt her hand on my wrist. ‘I’m sorry. Was it awful?’
    Was this an act? Was she trying to trick me?
    Before I could answer, Rachael appeared carrying her portfolio and sat beside Francine. She began with the photo-reproductions of her self-portrait oil series. She’d maintained a brilliant likeness – the green eyes, the straight nose, the big lips and sharp bone structure – but Rachael was careful not to let her beauty be the focal point; this was realism and she’d painted her flaws as she saw them: cracked lips, a blemish, a freckle, a bushy eyebrow. They varied from close-ups to extreme close-ups; they were dark, figurative, highly textured and enigmatic – searching for something.
    My favourite was
Love
. The semi close-up of her face was shadowed by a figure out of frame – the supposed Love – but the expression in her dilated eyes was one of obsession, not bliss, and a small bleeding tear in the delicate skin of her plump lips implied something sexual. The human face, her own in particular, had always obsessed her as if it was an elusive object that she couldn’t comprehend. I was reminded of Klimt’s flat mosaics and the horror depicted by Goya’s own psychological explorations. In spite of her searching, there was a feeling that something was missing – not from the picture, but from the subject herself – and it made you feel uneasy.
    ‘I see the face as a landscape,’ Rachael explained to Francine. ‘I watch people all the time – on buses, trains, streets – finding entire backgrounds from their faces. What is the life behind the face? I’m like some kind of abstract psychiatrist.’
    ‘But it is like you have not found them. Or you find them but they are at odds with their labels,’ Francine said.
    ‘Exactly. They never turn out the way you think they will. I want to explore the contradiction and the void. Sometimes there’s just nothing.’
    The next series was entitled
Empty Rooms
. It was the same with rooms as