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insomniac dog walker passed her, but respectfully they did not disturb one another. When she had finished, she squatted to examine a huge yellow starfish, dead and light. With the toe of her shoe, she teased the unclouded perfection of a bluebottle till it trembled violently. Near the shore, the water was crystalline, the air warming and brightening; she turned and saw the first lemon hint of sun at the horizon.
    She recognised Thomas’s long form, hatless, coatless. He was at the end of the beach. He had followed her.
    He had trespassed. She did not want a witness.
    He raised his hand in an ill-defined wave and she tried to smile, but it would have been impossible for him to be sure of her expression at that distance. He had to be cold, dressed so incompletely. He was threatening the self-absorption that she needed; that time must remain pristine. Turning back to the water, she thought, dimly: understand what is happening here.
    No verbal offer was made by Thomas, but his following her that morning constituted, at least in retrospect, the most eloquent proposal she ever received; and her turning away an unambiguous answer.
    For years after, from time to time, Clarice saw the homely tableau they would have made: him reading in an armchair, her reclining on the chaise longue as she gazed out the window, through the palm trees, to the water. She liked to think she would have known how to accept his goodness and repay it. They promised to write, of course, when she left Elenara to live at Beaumaris with her parents, but that was just to be polite.

5
    It was an excellent, indispensable thing, the mobile easel, a veritable studio on wheels, practical and liberating for those who worked en plein air . She was one of the first of Meldrum’s students to adopt it; many of them followed her example, seeing the convenience and freedom it afforded.
    Father would not allow her a studio in the house, but a painting trolley he could hardly say no to. Especially as she went ahead and constructed one herself. As it turned out, the trolley was better than a conventional studio, because it had you continually out in the elements. She had never fathomed nor respected the notion of ‘poor’ weather. Poor? Where most people saw something dismal, Clarice revelled in the quiet sumptuosity, or moody turbulence of greys. In general, grey was so little appreciated—but what of the curiously luminescent bark of gum trees, the ocean turned to mercury by the moon, the simple reflective wonder of a wet road? The lowered light of overcast skies, rain or fog was good for painting, making it easier to distinguish tonal differences. Full bright sun did not show you their delicate divergences, but rendered everything stark and hard-edged, so you were not quite sure in what order you were receiving nature’s impressions.
    Aside from going proudly into bad weather, the trolley was a superior studio, because—obviously, but not trivially—it was not stationary. It worked thus. The body of the cart held your materials (boards, brushes, paints and so on), while extending vertically up from this was the mast of the easel. The handle was comfortable to use, both for drawing the trolley along when you were on the move, and then for shifting the easel back and forth once, a spot decided on, you were in the thick of work. A lot of going back and forth between the observation point and the subject was another of Meldrum’s teachings that she liked and made her own. The trolley very nicely enabled you to bring the board right up alongside the subject, so they could be compared from the observation point. An active style of work that to a non-initiate must seem a puzzling little dance.
    She savoured it, the dynamism, and all things considered, her trolley served her better than a studio, spoiling her with air and space.
    The house in Beaumaris was bought after Father’s retirement—prompted by his delicate nerves—from the