Steeplechase Read Free Page A

of the windows in the studio. Our grandmother locks the windows to protect us, this is what she says. There are people outside, murderers, rapists, bad people who would hurt the children. She has been put in charge of the care of the children. Our mother has faltered in this task and it has fallen to our grandmother. We are her first concern, apparently.
    Sometimes, like tonight, I hear her pause in her locking routine. She stands in her studio and I know she is looking at the art. She is the guardian of paintings worth more than all the land in this town. Work by famous artists is placed in her temporary care while she picks at the dirt and sludge of years, stripping everything back to its original glory. Sometimes she lets us come into her studio with our hands behind our backs to look. There will be some new work there, propped up on an easel or flat on the table, and it will be just another painting, some rich lady in pearls, some man at his desk, some landscape with trees, perhaps a lake.
    I settle down onto the pillow and look towards my sister’s side of the room, the calm side, the neatness butting up against my chaos. My sister is painting another horse. She rarely paints anything else. A huge majestic animal, chest heaving, eye turned to face the world, large and somehow seeming angry and frightened at the same time. It seems incongruous, this wild creature leaping from a canvas in the midst of the order that is my sister’s side of the room.
    â€˜Old people die of heatstroke.’
    â€˜What?’ I am whispering. Our grandmother is still just across the hallway, distracted by something in her study, picking at spots of glaze with a toothpick or easing dust away with a soft, dry brush.
    â€˜Old people are so afraid they lock all the doors and windows and then they get heatstroke and they die, or else there is some kind of electrical fault but they are deadbolted inside and the fire burns them to death.’
    â€˜Okay,’ I say. ‘I didn’t know that.’
    â€˜Don’t you defend her.’
    She is speaking too loudly. I would like to tell Emily that I am not defending her but Oma would hear me say this. I bite on my bottom lip and roll over, away from the clean side of the room, my sister’s side. I look towards the stuff I have left in uneasy piles leaning against a wall splattered with blobs of paint and coloured fingerprints.
    Our grandmother turns the light out in her studio and continues on her rounds, the windows in the kitchen, the windows in the lounge room, the back door with its bolt and lock. We are safe now, the night will pass without a home invasion. Safe, protected, locked up tight.

Life Drawing
    I pause outside the room. I am a little late. There is a rustling inside, wild creatures pacing in their cage. I know how lion tamers must feel, the effort it takes to perform the confidence trick. I set my face to smiling. I have put some effort into my clothing, just formal enough, just a little bit casual and the socks are mismatched, which was not planned but which is good for the look nonetheless. I am self-conscious. I am self-conscious about my own self-consciousness.
    As I open the door the rustling abates and they are all there waiting. The girls are too thin and fashionably shy. They wear little cardigans and cute red shoes with buckles. Their hair is braided or cut into a fringe or tugged into pigtails. The boys are elegantly crumpled. They have almost all mastered the art of boredom. They sit on their own, preened and perfect and so uber-cool that even a simple conversation must be a carefully thought out interplay of style and ideas. The room smells of linseed oil and even here it is a scent that transports me back to childhood.
    The easels are scattered about the edges of the room. The students hover close to but not directly in front of their sketchpads so as not to seem too keen. The model is young, quite pretty. She is wearing a simple wrap-around dress