Rosa-Marie's Baby Read online

  Also, Normo and Dobbo were in town and left a painting each for you at Talbot’s. So did that drunken bullshit artist Jacques San before he left. I put them around yours for protection and bound them all securely with that heavy, green canvas Talbot kept in his garage. The other paintings are framed, but they didn’t weigh all that much and I was able to send them by post. If I remember correctly Bernard’s address in Lorne is Father Bernard Shipley, Church of the Blessed Madonna, 2 Corio Crescent, Lorne, Victoria.

  Well Rosa, I did my best to be brief, so I’d better sign off and also, I want to get this in the post before the boat leaves tomorrow morning. I could have left it with Talbot, but he’s such a nervous Nellie, I fear if the police knock on his door he’ll piddle his pants and give it to them.

  In a way, I’m looking forward to the voyage home. I managed to get some good opium in Chinatown for my headaches so the trip should be quite relaxing, if nothing else. I’m certain I can get some in Auckland, too. In the meantime, take care of yourself, Rosa. I hope everything goes well with your exhibition in Melbourne and I hope there are no complications with the abortion. It is a late one this time. I will write to you again when I get settled. Write to me care of the post office at Te Aroha. That way I know I’ll get your letters. Oh and do me one favour will you, darling? When the time comes, will you make sure that cunt McBride finds out it was me who stole the paintings.

  Till we meet again. With love, your friend forever,

  Emile Decorice.

  Everyone in the kitchen finished reading the letter at the same time. Les placed it carefully on the kitchen table alongside the envelope and turned to the others.

  ‘Well, what do you make of that?’ he said.

  Warren shook his head. ‘I’m not sure what to make of it. It’s … it’s weird.’

  Clover pointed to the name on the front of the envelope. ‘He called her the Witch of Kings Cross. Who was she? I’ve never heard of her.’

  ‘Me either,’ said Les. ‘And I’ve been working up there for a while. But she must have been an artist and this Emile bloke’s gone in and got her paintings.’

  ‘Yeah, why would they want to burn them?’ said Clover. ‘That’s a bit heavy, isn’t it?’

  ‘Because she was a witch, I suppose,’ said Warren.

  ‘Very funny, Warren,’ said Clover.

  ‘Shit! What a letter,’ said Les. ‘It’s all in there, isn’t it. Witches, a black mass. A priest, a bishop.’

  ‘Opium, abortions, Callan Park,’ said Warren.

  ‘I wonder how old the letter is?’ said Clover. ‘I wonder if they’re all still alive?’

  ‘I’d say it’s pretty old,’ said Les. ‘The trams stopped running years ago, for a start.’

  ‘Yeah,’ agreed Warren. ‘And no one catches boats to New Zealand anymore.’

  ‘What about Emile?’ said Clover. ‘I wonder who he was. Her boyfriend?’

  ‘Sounds like it,’ answered Warren. ‘He’s got her up the stick and pissed off to New Zealand when they let him out of the rathouse. The swine.’

  ‘Except it turned out he had a brain tumour. Poor bugger,’ said Clover.

  ‘Where’s Lorne?’ asked Les.

  ‘The other side of Melbourne,’ said Warren. ‘On the Great Ocean Road. We shot a Holden commercial down there once. It’s nice.’

  Clover shook her head slowly. ‘You know, I’m getting a weird sense of deja vu about this letter.’

  Les shook his head firmly. ‘No. There’s definitely no deja vu about it,’ he said. ‘But something like this did happen to me once before.’

  ‘Yeah,’ nodded Warren. ‘Like when you sent me a postcard from Cooktown and you got here before it did.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Clover. ‘Warren dearest, why don’t you go and have a shower first, and I’ll see if I can trawl something up on the internet.’

  ‘Good thinking, Ninety-Nine.’ Warren took a last look at the letter then headed for the bathroom.

  ‘You reckon you’ll find anything, Clover?’ asked Les.

  ‘You never know. Something might turn up.’

  ‘Okay Clover. Have a nice time in cyberspace,’ said Les.

  Clover turned for Warren’s room to fire up his computer. Les flicked through the old letter again before folding it up and replacing it carefully back in its envelope on the kitchen table. He got another beer from the fridge then took it into the lounge room and switched on the TV.

  Well, if that old letter don’t beat all, Les mused as he sat down to watch the ABC news. It could only happen to bloody me. Les had almost finished his beer when Clover walked into the lounge room.

  ‘How did you go?’ he asked her.

  Clover shrugged and handed Les a single sheet of paper. ‘That’s all I could find.’

  Just then Warren called out from the hallway. ‘Righto. I’m finished.’

  ‘I leave you with it.’

  ‘Okay. Thanks, Clover.’ Les began to read what was on the page.

  Rosa-Marie Norton. The notorious Witch of Kings Cross. Born an only child in Wanganui New Zealand in 1920, she came to Australia with her parents in 1929 and went to school in Apollo Bay, Victoria, where her father worked as an engineer. When her parents moved to Sydney in 1934, she went to school at Asquith and studied art at East Sydney Technical College before moving to Kings Cross when her parents returned to New Zealand in 1940. Rosa-Marie then went on to become a bohemian artist and gained notoriety as the Witch of Kings Cross, where she painted macabre, satanic paintings and held black masses in her Roslyn Gardens apartment, much to the consternation of the church and the ultra-conservative Australian establishment of that time. She was arrested on numerous occasions and is the only Australian artist to have their paintings confiscated and burnt. Despite her dubious reputation, Rosa-Marie Norton was popular within the Australian art community and corresponded with famed overseas artists like Yves Tanguy and Salvador Dali, as well as occultists like Aleister Crowley. And studied the works of Eliphas Levi. Rosa-Marie Norton died in Sydney in 1951 leaving very little money. Yet one of her paintings, Sleeping Beast, was sold in Sydney recently for $50,000. Further information can be found in The Mystical Mind of Rosa-Marie Norton by Kenneth Raymond. At the bottom of the page was a fuzzy printout of a slender woman with dark hair.

  Les read the page again then went back to watching TV. A few minutes later, Warren walked into the lounge room with Clover. Clover had the same clothes on except for a black satin jacket and a pair of tan Doc Martens. Warren was wearing a dark blue, chalk-stripe, double-breasted suit, a dark blue shirt with a maroon, yellow and white tie, blue and white two-tone shoes. Sitting squarely on his head was an oyster grey snap-brim fedora with a blue hat band.

  ‘My God!’ said Les. ‘It’s Natural Born Killers meets Bonnie and Clyde.’

  ‘Don’t sweat it, pal,’ said Warren out the side of his mouth. ‘Punks like you are a dime a dozen where I come from.’

  ‘Did you read the printout, Les?’ asked Clover.

  ‘Yeah. There wasn’t a great deal,’ replied Les. ‘But thanks anyway, Clover.’ Les offered the printout to Warren. ‘You want to have a look, Woz? Sorry, I mean Archie.’

  Warren’s head shook slightly beneath his snap-brim fedora. ‘Ain’t got time, pal. I gotta go and close the Sorrelli case.’

  Les drew back the sheet of paper. ‘I should have known.’

  Clover made an open-handed gesture. ‘We have to go.’

  ‘Okay. Have a good night,’ smiled Les.

  Les heard the door close and went back to the TV. After a while he tossed his empty beer bottle in the kitchen tidy and made a delicious. Warren had brought a video home from the agency, O Brother, Where Art Thou? Les slipped it in the VCR and settled back on the lounge.

  Les enjoyed the movie. George Clooney and his two dumb mates were a hoot as the escaped convicts bumbling around the deep South during the Depression. The music was good, the singing was great and when the Soggy Bottom Boys finally g
ot up on stage, Norton cracked up. He made a point to buy the CD with the soundtrack from the movie. But as much as Les enjoyed watching the video, every so often his eyes would drift back to the printout Clover had given him. When the video finished, Les made a mug of Ovaltine, washed up, then read both the letter and the printout again before switching off the lights and taking the letter and printout into his bedroom with him.

  After he climbed into bed, Les scrunched his head back into the pillows and stared up at the darkened ceiling. What happened today had to be more than coincidence, he told himself. A letter like that doesn’t just get lost in the system for years then turn up out of the blue. Was it an omen? A voice from beyond the grave? Divine intervention? Les needed to know more about Rosa-Marie Norton, the Witch of Kings Cross. And the best way to find out was to get that book by Kenneth Raymond. After a while Norton’s eyes started to flicker and he drifted off into the cosmos.

  Wednesday was a little warmer and the northerly had swung round more to the west. Norton was up around seven; Warren was still in bed snoring. Les changed into his old blue tracksuit, had some tea and toast then tossed his training gear and a towel into an overnight bag and drove down to North Bondi to meet Billy and Eddie for a workout. Billy was leaning against the railing opposite the Surf Club wearing a tracksuit much like Norton’s and a pair of sunglasses.

  ‘Where’s Eddie?’ asked Les.

  ‘Something’s come up and he had to go round to Price’s,’ answered Billy.

  ‘Did he say what it was?’

  Billy shook his head. ‘No. He probably just wants Eddie to shoot the local fire chief.’

  ‘Yeah. And old Karl that owns the restaurant.’

  ‘If there’s any real drama, we’ll find out tomorrow night, I imagine.’ Billy nodded to the Surf Club. ‘What do you want to do first? Have a run?’

  ‘Righto,’ said Les. ‘Then we’ll get on the skis. You fancy a bit of breakfast at Speedos after?’

  ‘Okay.’ Billy feinted a left rip into Norton’s ribcage and they walked across to North Bondi Surf Club.

  They jogged six laps of Bondi then paddled four laps on their skis. After that they smashed into each other with a medicine ball inside the Surf Club. During the run Les decided not to say anything about the letter for the time being. In fact Les didn’t talk about anything much when they were running, because Billy kept the pressure on. After the workout they strolled across to Speedos, found a table inside and had a late breakfast of mineral water, OJ and a pile of scrambled eggs and bacon washed down with creamy flat whites. On the way back to their cars Billy said he wouldn’t be able to train the next morning as he was going to the dentist. Les said okay. He’d see him at work tomorrow night. They got in their cars and drove off.

  Les stopped for the Telegraph on the way home, then changed into his blue shorts and a white Roosters T-shirt and had a read while his laundry was going around. The two water dragons were sitting under the Hills Hoist; he fed them a few grapes before going back inside to read the old letter and the printout again. Les had a think for a moment then wrote something down on a piece of paper, put it in his overnight bag and drove up to Bondi Junction via Birrell Street. He fluked a parking spot in Denison Street, right opposite Waverley Library. Norton had held a library card for as long as he could remember. On a rotten, cold, boring day in winter, Les liked nothing better than to kill a few hours in the library, going over big old books about ancient ruins and other countries and their people. And the new, fully modernised cream and brown building now housing Waverley Library was bigger and better than ever, plus the staff were always helpful and patient. Les locked the car and walked across to the tiled courtyard of the Ron Lander Centre.

  The double doors swished open, Les turned left at the wide, flat marble-and-stainless-steel statue in the foyer and through the two security gates inside. There was a man standing behind a counter on the left and two women seated at their desks in the corner to the right: a blonde in a grey cardigan and a brunette in a maroon shirt with matching earrings. Les approached the lady in the maroon shirt.

  ‘Yes. Can I help you?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes please,’ answered Les, placing a piece of paper on the counter. ‘I’m after this book. Do you have it?’

  The woman looked at the name on the piece of paper then punched it into her computer. ‘Yes we do,’ she smiled. She pointed to the rows and rows of books behind Les and the section Ra–Sh. ‘Just over there.’

  ‘Thanks very much.’

  Les started running his eyes up and down the spines of all the books. Raymond’s book was a large coffee-table type sitting between Belle On A Broomstick by Pat Richardson and Just Another Angel by Mike Riley. Les took the book over to the self-checker, placed his library card in the slot, pressed the book’s spine against the red tape, there was a thump as it registered and Les picked up his printout receipt. Before he dropped the book in his bag, Les had a closer look at the cover.

  The book itself was wide and long. The cover was a fiendish yet beautiful woman’s face, in all the swirling, devilish colours of the rainbow, looking at you from above a darkened skyline of burning buildings. She had gorgeous lips and sinister emerald eyes that leapt from the cover and transfixed the viewer with an hypnotic gaze. In striking red and white print, it said, The Mystical Mind of Rosa-Marie Norton by Kenneth Raymond. Les zipped his bag closed and walked back to his car.

  Despite getting caught in a gridlock of cars near Waverley College and nearly getting T-boned at Ocean Street by a woman in a 4WD talking on a mobile phone, Les was whistling happily when he pulled up outside Chez Norton and stepped inside. Finding Raymond’s book was easier than he expected. He looked at his watch and thought: why not? It was getting cloudy outside. He got a bottle of Warren’s beer from the fridge and settled back in the lounge room with his book.

  On the inside cover was a photo of Rosa-Marie Norton wearing a military-style shirt and a hand-painted tie. She was very attractive with thick, shiny black hair, sensuous lips and plucked eyebrows that arched up giving her a sinister haughtiness. But it was her eyes, dark and lidded, that exuded a tigerish sexuality that bored deep inside you.

  Amongst the printed matter were pages of her paintings. Some were black and white, but most were done in wild swirls of fantastic burning colours and flames, like the face on the cover. The subject matter was mainly esoteric satanism. Devils with four eyes, faces that turned into tarantulas, snakes with cat’s heads. Genies coming out of buildings, buildings walking away on chicken’s legs. Camels with heads for humps, superbly muscled men with horse’s or goat’s heads and penises with snake’s heads. Except for one painting of a baby on a bed of pink flowers surrounded by buck-toothed rabbits titled Tanybryn, it was paintings of horned men and panthers making love to beautiful, cloven-hoofed women, more devils and demons, piranhas with forked tongues and werewolves holding magic wands; with titles like Snake Blood, Demon at Rest, Love in Hell, Tarantula Power, Hair Hair the Storm Demon. The painting on the cover was titled The Temptress. Les had a last look at the cover, then turned to page one and read the first paragraph.

  Rosa-Marie Norton occupies a position unique in the annals of Australian art history: that of Australia’s most persecuted — and prosecuted — female artist. Amongst the incidents which contributed to this dubious honour were her position as the only woman artist to be charged with ‘having exhibited obscene articles’, the only artist in Australia to have had a book of her works prosecuted for ‘obscenity’, and also — and most outrageously — the only Australian artist (male or female) to have had her works destroyed by judicial sanction.

  Les spent the rest of the day poring over Raymond’s book. A stiff neck later and as the sun was starting to set, Les finished. He stretched, made a cup of tea and placed Raymond’s book on the kitchen table next to the letter. Between the two, Les felt he’d been given a small window into Rosa-Marie’s amazing life. Many people in the past had voiced their opinions on Rosa-Marie Norton, the
Witch of Kings Cross. Les sipped his tea, sat back and tried to draw his own conclusions from what he’d read in Raymond’s book.

  She was years ahead of her time. And although totally outrageous, also an extremely talented artist. If she had been alive today she’d be rich and her works appreciated. Behind the devil and demon subjects of her art, the colours she created were brilliant and dazzling. One fellow artist had described her as a ‘female van Gogh’. She disliked children and preferred cats to people, yet lived life to the full and, sexually, would be in anything. From sado-masochistic orgies to bondage and devil worship. Drink, drugs. You name it. Rosa always brought plenty to the party and would be the first there and the last to leave, in her colourful clothes, twirling a jewelled cigarette holder. She entertained local artists of both sexes and her fame and notoriety were well known overseas. If you could handle a brush and palette, liked kinky sex, drink and drugs and staying up for days on end, call in to Kings Cross and see Rosa. American, English and European artists would visit her and literally kneel at her feet. Men fell in love with her one after the other. She modelled for Norman Lindsay, and Jacques San was an American artist who fell passionately in love with her on a brief visit to Australia. When Rosa-Marie cast him aside, he almost drank himself to death before he packed up his paintings and returned to New York. She always had trouble selling her paintings. Yet a Bishop Thomas Elsworthy from Victoria bought two, supposedly to show his parish exactly what evil and depravity was all about. And from the sale of the two paintings Rosa was able to buy a car and spend an entire summer travelling around country New South Wales and Victoria.

  Emile Decorice was a homosexual poet who shared a house with Rosa and was one of her closest and most devoted friends. The police persecuted him as well as her and had him committed to a mental institution. He went back to New Zealand only to catch pneumonia during the voyage and died a week after the boat docked in Auckland. Talbot was Talbot Houlcroft, the editor of an avant-garde magazine, Guichet. He, too, was a good friend of Rosa’s and published her art and articles she wrote. He even published an expensive book of her art, but went broke when the authorities declared it ‘offensive to public chastity and human decency’ and had it banned. McBride was Sergeant Arthur ‘Buster’ McBride, a Kings Cross detective who constantly harassed Rosa-Marie and Emile. The newspapers and any muck-raking journalists of that time rarely left her in peace. They made headlines out of her smallest misdemeanour and wrote anything they could think of about her, mostly lies and sensationalism. According to Raymond, however, she gave an interview to a university paper in which she said she studied occultism and eastern philosophy and claimed she went along with the Witch of Kings Cross infamy because she enjoyed being a nonconformist in a conservative, Christian country like Australia. Plus it drew attention to her art, and any publicity was better than none.