Authenticity (16 page)

‘Oh, sure,’ she said. ‘There’s no point in brooding on things, is there? Who knows, maybe something even better’s going to happen to me soon.’ Almost immediately she qualified this, to Roderic’s mind, almost perverse optimism by adding wistfully, ‘Don’t know what it could be, though. Italy would have been great. It was the smaller cities I particularly hoped to visit. Ferrara. Urbino. Also, I’m trying to change direction in my work at the moment and I thought it might help to go away for a while.’

‘Change in what way?’

‘When you’re ready we can go up to the studio and I’ll show you.’ He demurred but she insisted. ‘It’s all right. I’m asking you now.’

In the studio she showed him a series of boxes on which she was working, full of coloured feathers and glass beads, old photographs and torn letters. On some of them she had been experimenting with tinted glass that subtly altered one’s perception of the boxes’ contents. He complimented her sincerely on the work, remarking upon its beauty.

‘I’m glad you said that. I know it’s old-fashioned, but it’s important to me that the work should be beautiful. There’s enough ugliness in the world without me adding to it. I’m always struck by the – pleasure, for want of a better word, although it’s something much more than that – to be had by simply looking at a beautiful object.’

‘Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.’

‘That’s where I want to go next,’ she said. ‘It’s why I want to move away from making objects, because it’s not just the thing, it’s the person who’s looking at it. You know this idea that everyone can be an artist? I don’t believe that. But I do think that many people are artists without knowing it. It has nothing to do with craft, you know, the ability to paint or draw.’

‘I’m not sure I’d agree with you there,’ he said, ‘but that may be because I’m more than twenty years older than you.’

He couldn’t help feeling slightly piqued when she didn’t contradict this, but nodded and said, ‘Yes, that’s probably true, but let me explain. Take my father. I was out for a walk with him a while back and he pointed out to me a little tree that was growing in a clump of wild yellow irises. There was something about the relationship between the two – the fragility of the tree, the sense of multitude the flowers gave, yellow, green, and the whole thing moving in the wind, it was alive. I can’t explain. But it was for just that moment, that
particular
moment when my father noticed it, because

I passed the same spot a week later and it looked quite nondescript. It was just, you know, a tree.’

‘And that makes him an artist?’

‘In my book, yes.’

Propped against one of the walls beside where she was standing was a cork pin-board to which were fastened several papers including a telephone bill, an invoice from a shop selling art materials and a postcard reproduction of a still life. While they were talking his attention had been caught by the image on the postcard, and he gazed at it now: at the silver and the glass, the nutshells and the broken pastry, the luminous yellow light in which the whole was bathed, and suddenly it astounded him. ‘To think,’ he said ‘that people once painted like that. That was how they saw the world. And now we can’t trust our own eyes, can’t believe that what we see before us is what it is: a table, a bottle, a dish. Why is it, do you think, that people like still life paintings so much nowadays? Is it for the quality of attention that is in them?’

Together they looked at the postcard for a few more minutes.

‘No,’ Julia said. ‘A still life is full of repose. That, above all, is so hard to find in the world as it is now. That’s what people respond to, that’s what they seek.’

‘So where,’ he asked, ‘do you see your work going?’ and she laughed.

‘That’s another story altogether. I’m experimenting at the moment, but I’m going on with the boxes in the meantime. It’ll be a long time before I have the confidence to show the new work. I’m playing with ideas for the moment. Perhaps you could help me?’

He said he was willing and she gave him a paper and pen, asked him to write down all the most evocative smells he could think of. It took him quite a while, for he paused to think for a long time, then wrote something, then paused again. At last he handed her the paper and as she read it, she
started to laugh. ‘I should have told you,’ she said, ‘to be more specific. I was thinking of things like coffee, you know, or bread, things like that.

This was what he had written on the page:

‘What was the name of the perfume?’ she said.

He told her that he didn’t remember, and he knew by the way she looked at him that she didn’t believe it. ‘I hope you’re not going to ask me,’ he said, ‘what they mean to me?’

‘Not these things, no. But the project would be developed around that, about finding scents and offering them to any number of people, and then asking what they summon up to them. I have this theory,’ she said, ‘that it’ll all come down to either sex or childhood.’

‘I think,’ he said, ‘you may be on to something there.’

The draught Julia made as she left the room had wafted the postcard right to his feet. Roderic glanced down at the image; knew it at once for a Holbein, and picked it up. Unthinkingly, he turned it over. The handwriting was as neat and legible as print, and before he knew it, his eyes had scanned the message. He disliked the general tone of it, and the last line hit him like a hammer blow. He turned the card over again. The woman, in her oddly shaped fur bonnet, stared off inscrutably into the middle distance, as though pointedly ignoring him. The squirrel crammed a nut into its mouth and looked, Roderic thought, as though it was trying hard not to laugh. He turned the card over again and re-read the message, this time with conscious intent, for he needed to be sure that there was no mistake, that it wasn’t some wild fantasy of his own.

In his mind’s eye, as vividly as though he were watching a film, Roderic saw himself sitting at a café table in Paris. His recall of the scene that day at the end of last October was perfect: the small, thick white coffee cup, the sugar cubes wrapped in paper, one torn open, one intact, the glass and carafe for water, the scatter of silver coins, and the bill, crumpled and torn by the waiter, the fake marble of the table itself. And in amongst all of that was the paraphernalia of pens, stamps and the postcards he had bought in the galleries. He saw himself writing the cards, checking them off in his mind: one each to his daughters, choosing which would suit them best, one for Dennis. He had had Julia in mind when he bought her particular card and the teasing note he would add as a postscript.

But how did this other man, this William, know about it? How did
he
know?

He could hear Julia clumping back upstairs now from the shop. Hastily he replaced the card on the mantelpiece from which it had fallen, and just as he sat down again she came into the room. She had only been gone for moments, but the impact of her presence was considerable. Roderic gave her a look that he hoped would come across as merely enquiring. ‘Hester said someone bought the wardrobe today, so there’ll be room in the shop for the table,’ and she nodded towards the item as she mentioned it. ‘Someone will come to help move it down tomorrow morning. I can’t say I’ll be sorry to see the back of it’

‘What about the trunk?’

‘Oh, I’m hoping she’s forgotten about the trunk,’ Julia said. ‘It’s been there for so long I sort of consider it mine now.’

She went on talking about how much she had learned about antiques since she started to work for Hester; that the table was a hunting table, that the wood it was made of was actually … Roderic’s attention drifted away from her, and he became again wholly absorbed in his own thoughts.

He hadn’t known that William had called to the gallery in March. Julia hadn’t mentioned it: why not? And what had happened there? He wondered if he should bring up the subject of the postcard, but didn’t know how to broach it. The matter of his having read it made the issue a delicate one, as did the weird coincidence of the final message. Perhaps she would be angry, would think he had been deliberately prying in her private correspondence. He had always known his visual memory was good, but never, until now, had he thought of himself as having a particular aptitude for remembering language. And yet every last line of the text, every prissy phrase and stiff conjunction was burned on his mind …
understanding means more to me than
I can easily say … for that I offer sincere apologies … With
affection
.

‘Roderic? I said, don’t you think so?’

He stared at her dumbly.

‘You haven’t heard a single word, have you? You haven’t been listening.’

He couldn’t even begin to hazard a guess at what she had asked him, and had to admit as much.

‘Oh, it was nothing too important,’ she said, and his absentmindedness appeared to amuse rather than annoy her. How irritated Marta used to get when this happened, and it had been a common occurrence. She would begin some long discourse about getting the shutters painted or buying new bed linen or planning a dinner to which her family were to be invited: domestic details that bored him so immensely his mind would simply close down and move on to a more absorbing subject.

‘I see you’re admiring my postcard,’ Julia said unexpectedly. Without realising it, his eyes had kept straying back to the picture of the woman with the squirrel. ‘William sent it to me from London recently. You remember him – William Armstrong? He’s got nice handwriting, hasn’t he?’ She lifted the card down and handed it to him.

Duplicitously, Roderic pretended to read the message. ‘The last line,’ he said. ‘What’s that all about?’

‘I thought that was a bit cheeky myself. Your card was in the book I lost that he brought back to me. Obviously he read it and remembered.’

‘I didn’t know he came to the gallery’

‘Surely I told you about that? No? I could have sworn I did … oh, he came all right, it was a weird session. It really spooked him; he’s quite prim and proper.’

‘Oh, I can believe it,’ Roderic said quickly. ‘Awfully tight arsed and buttoned up, I’d have thought, just on the strength of that one meeting.’

‘He’s not that bad,’ Julia protested. ‘A bit stiff in his manner, but good hearted, I think. The photographs, you remember? The women and the babies? They really shocked him, and as for the installations … I shouldn’t laugh, for he really was mortified, but it was terribly funny.’

‘I’d have thought taking off his shoes and crawling up a fake vagina was just what he needed,’ Roderic said.

‘Why do you dislike him so much?’ Julia said. ‘What is it you have against him?’

‘If he’s as great an art lover, a collector, even, as he claims to be, he should be more at ease with contemporary art, I’d have thought.’

‘In fairness, he had his children with him, and I think he was bothered about the effect it might have on them.’

‘And what did the kids make of it?’

‘They had a ball. Of course they hadn’t a clue what it was about. As far as they were concerned it was just some kind of funfair.’

‘Children are pure hearted,’ he said, ‘and unless a thing is in and of itself corrupting, it won’t harm them.’

‘They liked the gallery,’ Julia said, ‘the boy, I think, in particular, but the way their father reacted made them uneasy’

‘Speaking of the exhibition,’ Roderic said carefully, ‘I wonder if you’ve seen this.’ Reaching down to a bag at his
feet he took out a magazine and handed it to her folded open. ‘Brace yourself: it’s pretty grim. Begin with the last paragraph.’

‘Jesus,’ Julia said.

She tried to smile at Roderic, but she couldn’t quite manage it, and he noticed that the hand that held the magazine was shaking. He wished he could tell her that the first time was the worst, that in the future something like this would fail to bother her, but he knew it wasn’t necessarily true. Instead he said, ‘If it’s any consolation, he hated the photographs and the vaginal thing even more. I mean, what can you say about a man who finds pictures of women with their babies squalid? Put it out of your mind. You’ve met Brendan: I rest my case.’

They had, at least, stopped talking about William, but Roderic knew that wouldn’t be the end of it. When they met again three days later, she said that he had called to the shop that morning.

‘And how is he?’

‘Slightly better form, I thought. He’s converting a bedroom in his house into a studio.’

‘I hope he doesn’t think that’s going to solve all his woes.’

‘Who’s to say? He seemed pleased about it. If I had his money I wouldn’t settle for a bedroom. I’d set myself up in a first-class studio with loads of space, but I got the impression it’s important to him that it be in the house. I think it’s some kind of declaration of intent. Good luck to him. Anyway, he didn’t just call for a chat. He told me he’d liked my work very much and he’s interested in buying a piece.’

And Roderic was genuinely pleased to hear this.

For well over an hour now they had been in the studio, choosing things that she might offer for sale. The ones they settled on were all smaller than those she had shown in the exhibition. The smallest of all was a kaleidoscope containing not fragments of coloured glass but a series of tiny photographic transparencies that appeared and disappeared, multiplied and were reduced in number as the viewer turned the ring. The largest was a peepshow: a long wooden box with the side farthest from the viewing aperture covered in parchment. The box contained leaves, hundreds of pressed leaves arranged with a series of mirrors and magnifying glasses so that the viewer saw them doubled exactly, saw green ribs and veins, saw the leaves receding away to the back of the box. It gave the effect of being absorbed into the still and silent heart of a forest irradiated with light.

Roderic straightened up and stood back, glanced over at Julia. She was staring hard at one of the other pieces and was chewing her thumb, as she always did when she was anxious. It was as if he had never known her, as if their relationship counted for nothing when faced with the work and the knowledge of that distant, inviolable part of herself from which it came. He was so fond of her he sometimes forgot how good an artist she was, and he chided himself silently for it now. Was he already beginning to take her for granted?

Julia noticed that he was looking not at the work but at her.

‘Well?’ she said. ‘What do you reckon?’

He pointed to each of the pieces in turn and named a price.

‘God, as much as that?’

‘You do good work,’ he replied. ‘You should never sell yourself short.’

‘Still and all, I don’t want to price myself so high as to put him off. I don’t want him to think that I’m pushing my luck.’

‘He said he wanted to buy. You’re not doing him a favour, nor he you.’ But he knew himself that he
was
pushing it, and that the figures he advised were at the limit for a young and unknown artist. He took out a paper and pen, and wrote down each price in turn, saying it aloud and revising downwards from his earlier suggestions. ‘Go no lower than that,’ he said as he handed her the page. ‘Above all, don’t give an inch on the one with the leaves.’

Still she looked doubtful.

‘People like William Armstrong are not like us,’ he said simply.

‘We need them, though.’

‘They need us too. The difference is, they don’t realise it. Remember that he’s doing this for himself. He wants a bargain, and he’ll be getting one.’

She smiled. ‘Thanks for helping me with this. For the moral support, as much as anything. I can’t tell you how glad I’ll be when this is over, however it goes.’

‘Don’t let him try to haggle. Be businesslike with him,’ Roderic urged. ‘Be distant, and be firm.’

Julia nodded, and he risked adding, ‘Be wary of him.’ She looked at him curiously.

‘What makes you say that?’

‘He’s a bit of a lame duck. The depression and so forth, you know. People like that can be more dangerous than they realise.’

‘Dangerous.’ She repeated the word in a tone that implied he needed to explain further.

‘Someone as devitalised and miserable as that needs energy. He’ll take yours, if you give him half a chance. He’ll suck you dry.’

‘You make him sound like a vampire,’ Julia said, laughing.

‘He’s due to call tomorrow afternoon. I’ll let you know how I get on.’ And the moment did not seem right for Roderic to press the matter further.

He dreamt that night that he was in a railway station made all of white marble. From high windows, shafts of light came down to where he was standing under the clock, waiting for someone. When that person arrived they would take a train together, and it was vital – a matter of literal life and death – that they did not miss it, although he did not know why that should be, nor even the identity of the person for whom he was waiting. All he knew was that his expected companion had not arrived and that the train was due to leave in five minutes, five minutes that took an hour to pass. Someone in the endless crowd that streamed past, jostling and pushing him constantly, murmured without looking directly at him, ‘Why are you here? You were to meet at the ticket office, not under the clock.’ Was this true? What if he left his post and the person he was waiting for arrived? What if they were indeed waiting for him at the ticket office? Should he move or stay where he was? There was no luggage at his feet. He had had a suitcase – hadn’t he? A shrill train whistle blew, and then he woke up.

‘Guess which one he bought.’

‘The one with the feathers? No? The one with the leaves?’