Painted ghosts, p.3
Painted Ghosts, page 3
‘This is Yakshi,’ he told her.
‘Oh.’ She could make out the small shape: a sensuous young woman only barely dressed. Branches wove under her outstretched arm, her greenery sparkling like a halo around her head. She had a charming seductive smile, so there was something earthy and present about her but something ethereal too, as though earth and air met at the borders of her halo of foliage and penetrated her glassy stare.
Daphne bargained, getting it for a price she was happy with, and explored the image with her index finger, enjoying the Yakshi’s cheeky grin.
‘I must see the princesses properly tomorrow,’ Daphne said over the evening meal at the hotel. They shared a thali of red lentil dhal, cumin rice, plain yoghurt with a small bowl of spicy mixed vegetables. ‘You’ve seen your reclining Buddha. It’s my turn now.’ She smiled at him.
He nodded. ‘I’m as keen as you. They do look amazing in the book. You’re right, we only did get a glimpse at them.’
‘There’s something that draws me back to them — and the other figures — the Yakshi.’ She relived the private dream she had had while he was talking to the guide. ‘Just like my little trinket.’ She stopped eating and held up her dancing tree spirit on the end of a little silver chain.
He took it from her and twiddled it around. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It’s just you. Are you going to wear it as a bracelet.’
‘Too fragile. I tried it.’ She took it from him and tucked it back in her purse. ‘It’s safe in here.’
‘First thing tomorrow — the two princesses—’
She slept with the Yakshi trinket under her pillow and woke refreshed and ready to see the painted women. Rushing through breakfast and chivvying Ben on, she got the receptionist to book a rickshaw to take them to the entrance to the cave complex.
‘No more photos outside.’ She laughed as she pulled him along the track to the first cave. ‘You’ve got all you need of them now—’
He tagged on smiling.
The sudden darkness inside blinded her as she headed for the princesses, and as her eyes began to adjust she could make out the back of a young woman in a sari near them. The whites of the eyes of the two princesses on the wall shone through the gloomy light making them appear for a moment as real as the figure standing near them. To the left of the painted image the younger princess with the lotus flowers had large circular earrings, while her sister had jewels and finery adorning her large uncovered breasts. Both had tiaras of worked gold with tiny dangling links and chains also joined to other ornate gold shapes. The sister on the left was looking directly at her sibling, while she looked down. Both had full lips slightly upturned which, with the serene gaze from the pair, gave a look of calm and contentment, although Daphne could read some sadness in the downward gaze of the sister on the right. Both had several necklaces, each with one necklace with two black beads at the front on either side of a red one.
Ben concentrated on the picture for several minutes, but Daphne needed longer, allowing him to slip away looking at other images.
Daphne was distracted by the woman to her left who had also been enjoying the painting of the two princesses. Daphne surreptitiously glanced at her now and again, so as not to stare rudely. No woman could not be jealous of her figure and her long black hair woven with tiny flowers to her waist. Daphne guessed her to be about nineteen — around the age of the figures on the wall — and wondered why she was alone.
Far over to the left and in the background the Yakshi figure was poised in branches.
The young woman turned to her, staring at her with large brown-black eyes. Daphne was right about her age; her skin was young and unblemished, her face had perfect symmetry. She had a small nose and full lips like the princesses. But it was the fieriness of her aura that excited Daphne, attracting her with an alluring half-smile she stood as poised as a goddess with her princesses painted like ghosts behind her on the wall.
Daphne was off-guard and suddenly nervous, feeling as though the woman was gazing into her thoughts.
‘Yakshi,’ Daphne said, her words echoing through the shadows in the cave. ‘The trinket I bought yesterday. Yakshi.’ She searched the wall a second, finding the figure caught up in the tree. ‘You’re a Yakshi.’
‘Some years the monsoon does not come,’ the woman whispered, her voice sweet and mellow to Daphne, as though she was singing the words. ‘People think all India has rain, but in many places the monsoon does not come. They wait. Trees and people. And no rain.’
Daphne found the trinket in her bag and explored it with her fingers. The two were alike, the silver figure and the woman behind the princesses.
‘If the monsoon does not come,’ the woman said again, ‘the ground is hard.’
‘Yes.’
‘Nothing grows.’
Daphne wanted more from her. ‘What’s your name?’
‘Trees die.’
Daphne compared the painted image with the figure in front of her. ‘You’re alike. The same.’ When she turned back the young woman had disappeared in shadows and she was left with the two princesses and a figure in a tree over the back in semi darkness. ‘Yakshi.’
3
‘It’s hot, Carl, sticky, sticky hot. I’d forgotten how it gets in Ajanta,’ Daphne could not keep herself from fiddling with the painting, prodding here and there with a brush loaded with oil paint. Carmine. ‘It’s been so long.’ She brushed aside a few strands of hair from her face. The combination of sun, sea and dust was washing out the brown and letting the real grey through. ‘And this damn painting. What’s wrong with me. It just won’t work—’
‘Put the air conditioning on, mum.’ Carl went to the fridge and got some tonic water and ice to add to his gin.
Agitated, she said, ‘I simply can’t get used to cold air blowing all over you, it’s just—’
‘You can regulate it. Look — controls. You can set it how you want, whatever temperature.’ He swirled the liquid in his glass. ‘I said mum, before we came — the heat. How long is it? It can’t be since you married dad.’
‘I’m trying to concentrate here.’ She did not intend to sound snappy, but she found it hard to focus on painting while people were around. They talked, they distracted, asked difficult questions, while her mind was in a different sphere, plotting, shaping, colouring, configuring.
Frustrated with her efforts, she pushed paint around the background behind the figure.
‘Forty years?’
‘Probably.’
‘May is just too hot in India.’ He fiddled with the controls until she nodded that he had got the temperature right.
She dabbed the background with Ultramarine again and tutted. She did not like Carl’s drinking, it reminded her too much of her father, and of Ben — he could knock a few back too. Carl had Ben’s eyes and nose, and something of Daphne’s lips. He had a youthful grin, the charm of his father in his smile, but his eyes did not dart about excitedly and with curiosity about the world and people like Ben’s. She must tell him to cut down, he was putting on weight, it didn’t suit him, and whatever weight you put on in your late thirties and early forties you carried for the rest of your life, adding as you went along.
‘I told you.’ Carl flopped heavily in the little sofa. ‘But do you take any notice?’
‘Ajanta seems to draw me here,’ she said, dabbling. The central figure would not work either, the face was all wrong, the body not slim and young enough. She struggled to get that sexy look, the eroticism, the sensual nature of the pose into the figure. Daphne cursed herself for having lost her youthful gifts, for not spending her free time after work pursuing the graft of painting. Doubting they would come back after all this time, she challenged whether she ever really did have any talents of worth.
Carl leaned back, crossed his legs and sipped his drink. ‘There are plenty of other places in the world you could have spent your sixtieth birthday.’ He flung up the open palm of his right hand.
‘I want to see the caves again,’ she said firmly, pushing aside a nostalgic memory of herself with Tommy and the book open at the two princesses. ‘And Shanta.’
‘They’re still here. Why didn’t you come before?’ he said with an edge of sarcasm.
‘You know why.’
‘It can’t just have been running the business and bringing me up. Dad came over plenty of times. Even brought me a few times.’
‘You know I had a touch of malaria. I was very ill and scared. Damned mosquitoes. I wasn’t up to it until now. And then I had to look after my mum before she died.’
‘But May, mum — just before the monsoon.’
‘I might not get another chance.’
‘Of course you will.’
Daphne stepped back, sighed, tossed the brush down and looked out of the window. Ochre ridges edged towards the horizon and over to the left a cleft in the hills led down to the caves at Ajanta. The thrill of being back for the first time in forty years shook her. The trains were the same and the stations, always full of people from all walks of life, from beggars to policemen, businessmen to newly married couples. There were more cars on the road, not just old Ambassadors but new Fords and other makes. Lots of men had scooters and occasionally a motorbike would come by with a man driving, a woman sitting side saddle on the back and a child sitting in front of the driver, holding the handle bars, a big grin on its face. More houses had television aerials. In the city she had seen McDonalds, and people were drinking Coca Cola everywhere.
Ajanta was unchanged though except for a new ticket office. The caves carved in the cliff side of the ravine were the same as before, rock faces were the usual ochre and umber colours and the dark stains where the waterfall cascaded during the monsoon looked as dirty as when she first came.
This time everything had been going wrong: taxis breaking down, trains missed or late, tickets lost and found again, money lost. She was particularly frustrated by the obstacles on this trip as at last this was a time when she was free enough from ties and controls actually to start painting herself — and the picture was a mess. She hated herself.
Circles had to be completed and it was important to fulfil what Ben had requested in his Will. With the excitement came feelings of apprehension. Although she had spoken on the phone to Shanta and corresponded with her numerous times, Daphne had not met her before.
Shanta was now one of Paint Clever’s main suppliers: from her base in Karnataka she exported hand made papers, hand made brushes, powder pigments and inks. Ben had set up the link through his friend Jagar. When Jagar had got married in India over twenty years ago, Ben had gone to the wedding. Keen to help Ben’s business and that of his cousin Shanta who was running some kind of cooperative for women, Jagar introduced Ben to her and deals were struck. So successful in the shops at home were the sales of the Indian sourced goods, Ben travelled back, usually at least once a year, to develop further contacts with Shanta’s Kali Ko-op. Shanta and her partner Vishnu were able to source brilliant fabrics, icons of Buddha and Hindu gods, carved boxes and silver trinkets, enabling Paint Clever to expand.
‘You’re thinking about me, I know you are.’ She was gentle with Carl. ‘But I’ve done the grieving for your father now.’ She could not turn herself away from her view of the dusty hills.
‘I’m not so sure, mum.’ Carl got up, went to the fridge, found some ice and clunked it in with another top up of gin and tonic. ‘Grief doesn’t simply evaporate in a matter of a couple of months. Does it?’
She carried on gazing beyond her easel and canvas. Now there were several hotels in the village. Their previous one looked shabby, but The Shining Buddha Hotel where they were staying was more upmarket, consisting of about twenty cottage-like buildings scattered over a grassed garden that had seen no real rain for months. Every evening a little man came out of a back door to the restaurant, took up a hose and sprayed the grass which responded weakly by turning from yellow to a weak shade of sap.
Each little abode had a veranda facing the hills ahead of the valley of the caves. Daphne was about to open the French doors and step out into the heat, but Carl called her back with mocking laughter, ‘You can’t have the air con on and open the doors mum—’
‘All right.’ She threw up her hands. His expressions and gestures were so similar to Ben’s it aggravated her. The way he sat down, the way he leaned to the left when he was sitting and talking, the way he held his glass up and waved it about as he spoke were all a reminder of her late husband. She wanted none of his righteousness now either, especially when she was trying to paint, and not from a thirty nine year old son who was also no stranger to living life to the full. ‘Ben was a wonderful husband to me — entirely faultless — and a great father to you, although you won’t admit it. And now because of the loss you’re being over protective. Are you like that with your daughter? I hope not.’
Carl gave her a wry grin. ‘We can’t have that, now can we?’
‘I’m serious.’
‘All I’m saying is you still need time, and a trip to Karnataka just before monsoon is just, well — and I could be—’
‘Yes, you could be doing lots more back home. But you know Shanta. You can introduce us while she’s up in this district. And you can get us down to Karnataka and back, you’ve done all this before.’ Daphne did not mean to stress her words so strongly.
‘I don’t like leaving Paint Clever for so long with Geoff in charge. Things go wrong when I’m not running things. We’ve done Goa, you’ve swum in the sea and enjoyed yourself, it’s been five weeks — The smell of that bloody Turps in the room—’
‘I wanted the door open for you, I knew you hated it—‘ She was about to head for the doors again but he was shaking his head.
‘I’ll put up with it.’
Having screwed the cap back on the Turps bottle, she sat with him on the sofa. ‘I know it’s been hard for you, Carl.’
‘You don’t have to, mum—’
‘Well, it has.’
‘There’s so much needs doing,’ Carl persisted. ‘We’re expanding the framing side of things, we need more storage space. But mum, there’s even more important things—’
‘Running a business is never ending, you don’t have to tell me.’ She sighed.
‘If we don’t get our act together we’re going to get overtaken and lose our place in the market.’ He was getting agitated. ‘Our website is way out of date and we have to develop our online business — selling art materials and all the wonderful fabrics and icons and stuff on line. That’s the future, mum.’
‘I want what’s best for you, but it’s time for me to hand that all over to you and to do what I should have done years ago: paint.’
‘All I’m saying is meet Shanta here — if I can get hold of her. She’s always busy doing this and that, sourcing materials to send us and so on. And then we go back.’
‘You have to get hold of her. Ben left a lot of money to Shanta out of the inheritance his family left him. Let me contact her directly—’
‘That’s good.’ Carl shrugged. ‘It’ll keep Kali Ko-op going and make the business relationship with Shanta even stronger.’
‘It seems so much to leave—’
‘Dad always knew what he was doing. The links with Shanta have enabled Paint Clever to grow. She’s essential — Leave it to me. Since you’ve let go of the reigns of the business I’ve been in constant touch with her. Let me see if I can get hold of her.’
‘Which is why I must meet her. And I want to see this Kali Ko-op she runs.’
‘It’s just a cooperative for women—’
‘Destitute women?’
He nodded. ‘To get them working and supporting themselves.’
‘It’s such good work. I’d like to see it for myself.’
‘A full day’s drive away in Karnataka in the heat — mum—’
‘I may not get another chance—’ She regretted that conversations with Carl always seemed to turn into a joust.
‘You’re so melodramatic.’ He laughed. ‘You’re going through your second youth — painting—’
She did not want to alert her son to the worries she had of another bout of malaria and the fact her doctor was worried about her heart.
Surveying her canvas on the easel, she decided she should radically adjust the face, make her younger, give it more symmetry with slightly higher cheek bones, more depth to the eyes and with kajal round the edges. She could see what was wrong, but doubted her ability to correct it.
Daphne looked back at him. ‘I know what you’re thinking. “Did she really have to bring this painting gear?” Well yes, I did as a matter of fact.’ She put on the surly tones she knew he hated. ‘I’ve been denied it all these years. Now I’m doing it, wherever I can and whenever I can. And it’s not a lot: a small box of starter oils and a portable easel. It all dries much quicker in this heat —’
Picking up the brush she wiped the remaining paint away from the tip and searched for Burnt Sienna with dabs of Naples Yellow to brighten some of the skin tones. Her hand moved clumsily and she had trouble stilling a mild trembling from her wrist for a moment.
She had painted a ghost, a lost figure with no dimension to her, staring out of the picture. She could not paint anywhere near as well as the ancient artists in the Ajanta caves — perhaps never would, and perhaps would never be able to create a meaningful picture at all. Had it really all gone, that talent? She doubted it was ever there and then inwardly cursed her mother and father.
‘Damn this painting.’ She screwed up her face.
‘Don’t throw one, mum, it’s too early in the morning.’
‘Throw one?’
‘Why do it if it never works out?’
‘Why indeed.’ She carried on scowling at her work, prodding here and there. Maybe it was a mistake even starting it before she had been back to the caves. She wondered if once inside she would experience again the strange dreamlike visions she had had before — the shifting images of the Yakshi she was trying vainly to paint.
‘You haven’t painted for years, mum.’
