Goya'S Dog (28 page)

“Lorne, this is absurd: it would knee the other one in the head. For God's sake. Really.”

“What if the other one were to duck,” said Burner, nodding his head and swooping his hand back over it.

Instantly Darly said, “Daddy, a horse can't jump over a duck, it's ridiculous.” No one laughed and she reddened. “Maybe we should agree that we don't know for sure.” She put her fork down softly and looked to her father.

“It's got to jump for height or distance. It can't do both.” Dacres illustrated with the salt cellar. “Maybe you saw it jump a Shetland pony.”

“I know what a bloody pony is, Dacres,” Lorne said with more heat. Then into the silence he added, “Are you trying to make me out to be a liar?”

“Lorne,” Darly said in a stage whisper, looking directly across at him. “He's still not well.”

Dacres could see her anxiety in his peripheral vision.

“There's something I want to discuss,” said Burner.

“Horse can't jump over another horse,” Dacres muttered and Lorne's eyes flashed.

“Why don't we talk about something else,” Burner went on. “Listen to me. Please. Listen. I have a proposition. Good.”

Burner cleared his throat.

“Now, Dacres: these two are getting married.”

Another phase of the conversation began but it was hard for Dacres to free himself of the weeds of the last one.

“Are you sure now's the time, Daddy?” Darly asked.

“Don't be silly. He'll be delighted. Ahem: Dacres, my little girl, she's getting married. I can still scarcely believe it.”

“Me neither,” said Dacres to himself.

Lorne reached for Darly's hand across the table.

“Now, Dacres,” Burner went on. Dacres wondered if this was supposed to be a lesson in public speaking. “You're a gentleman. And a gentleman isn't happy eating another man's bread, is he? So let's lay things out on the table, shall we?”

Darly, Dacres could see, was looking at her father stiffly, excited.

“Dacres, you've been in the wars. We know that. No shame in that. And Darly and Lorne, they're getting married.” His hands, chopping
the air together, moved from Dacres to the couple. “So—and you don't have to accept now, you can think it over—you're recuperating, you're convalescing, you're getting back on your feet. But soon you'll be fine and you'll want to be active, you'll want to make use of your time. So, we have a commission for you. I think you'll like it. I'm building Darly a house. You're a painter: you paint her portrait. It's a wedding present; well, the house is the wedding present but it'll hang in the house. It's another wedding present. They'll hang it over the fireplace in their new home. You paint, you're happy, we're happy. What do you say?”

No words came out of Dacres's mouth.

“You don't have to answer now. You think about it. But it would make me very happy, too. And Darly. She does admire you, Dacres.”

“Daddy ...”

“I don't have a creative bone in my little finger but Darly plays the piano beautifully, she used to do mud sculptures in the garden when she was eight … Where does it all come from, Darly? What do you think, Lorne?”

“Splendid idea, sir,” Lorne replied.

“Good chap. And I know Darly likes it. After all, it was her idea.”

“Was it, Dolly?” asked Lorne, turning to look at her full-face.

“Dacres? You still haven't said anything.”

“It's all right, Edward,” said Darly. “You can think about it.”

“I can't wait to see it,” said Lorne, low.

“I would like to suggest,” Dacres said at last. “I'll defer my fee.”

“What's that?”

“If I could stay.”

Pause.

“Wouldn't it make sense for me to stay? Rather than have Darly traipse back and forth over town to a studio and back. If I were just to stay.”

“Oh. Ah.”

Burner was momentarily taken aback; Dacres knew what he was proposing was outrageous.

Lorne said, “Can't you just use a photograph?” but no one listened.

“Well,” said Burner. “I had assumed …”

Dacres was depending on them not knowing how little he actually needed the sitter.

“Couldn't you,” Burner began. But then he caught his daughter's eye. “I don't see why not,” he said uncertainly.

“Yes, Daddy,” said Darly—and that decided it.

Mildred appeared to clear the plates away.

Then Burner was telling Lorne how much grain the Prairies would have to grow to feed England.

After ices they went out onto the terrace and all was calmer. Burner and Lorne lit cigars, and then eventually Lorne departed, and Darly pulled Dacres off for a walk in the garden. They made S-shapes around the flowerbeds. All Dacres's good-do-nothing feeling had been burned off by the lunch, by Burner's proposition, by the ridiculous squabble. At least walking with her made him feel he might not have nightmares about Lorne naked on a circus stallion, but he wasn't sure. His throat felt scratchy and diseased.

She took off her shoes and carried them in her right hand.

It helped that after a winter that had smelled like nothing, now the world was full of scents. The manurey smell of the soil and the tempting burnt odour of the cigars, the flowery air that hung behind Darly. And the devastating sunshine. He saw a giant bumblebee crawl out of a flower and fall into the air, sated.

“The sun before the crash,” Dacres said. “Beautiful afternoon. But the crash has already happened and the sun just goes on shining.”

“Here maybe,” said Darly. “Not everywhere.”

“Of course,” he said, and what he'd said made him feel crass.

“But it is unusually warm,” she admitted. And then: “Are you all right?”

“Fine. Fine.”

They walked: the grass curled up around her feet at each step and
he considered offering to carry her shoes for her—“You're a gentleman, Dacres”—but did not.

“Will you do it?” she asked, next to him. When he said nothing she added: “It is a commission.”

“Oh,” said Dacres, slowing down. “Oh yes, I suppose. Certainly.”

“I wasn't sure if it would be too soon.”

“It's not too soon.”

“You don't seem too happy about it.”

“I am,” he said. “I am.” Confused thoughts: he didn't want to say he was in no position to refuse the offer, though that was one thing he was feeling. Nor could he say that he doubted his chances of being able to produce anything satisfactory. The whole idea made him feel a little too arranged, like a princeling, married off, a fourteen-year-old, on his wedding night. At least, he thought, he didn't have to find another hotel, not quite yet.

“Have you walked around?” she asked. “Have you been down to the stream? I used to net minnows and Mildred would scream. And the woods are full of elks and bears.”

“Really?”

“No, of course not.” She laughed. “Were you scared?”

Dacres shrugged his shoulders. “It's a lovely house,” he said blandly.

He scratched at his neck, fingernailed an insect that wanted to be an intimate. He wondered where Pico was. They went parallel to the bushes where roses would soon sprout, then curved left, then went down along the next bed. He stopped for a moment to take off his jacket and folded it into the triangle his elbow made and watched her stroll. He wondered what she was thinking about, and the weather reminded him of shirtsleeves order, the last days of school before the holidays.

She'd stopped, arms crossed. She had an anxious question.

“How are you feeling, Edward? I don't know how to ask it. Are you well?”

He looked back at her, puzzled, and she waited to hear.

“Not completely steady. But I'm not going to throw myself into the river, if that's what you're asking. I'm well fed. I'm very calm.”

She looked relieved.

“It's just a stream, really.”

“Ah.”

“You could try the duck pond.”

“Man, forty-one, pecked to death by heiress's flock.”

She snorted at the word
heiress
.

They were going down a little slope now. Dacres wondered who had done the landscaping because there was a certain choreography to the place. Over his shoulder he could see the house but not the terrace and ahead was the stream she'd been talking about, bushes and willows and the black glaze of the sun on the water.

“But seriously,” she said.

“Seriously?”

“You'll try it? You don't have to.”

“I will, Darly.”

Her father was calling her up to the house. She clasped his hand hopefully in farewell, her face close. And then she was a girl again, racing back up the hill in five steps. She didn't look back at him.

Dacres realized he was grinning like an idiot.

That evening, Darly sat Dacres down at the table at the side of the sitting room. She had a pad headed “Burner Brass” and two sharpened pencils. He looked at the carriage clock on the mantelpiece and the mournful-looking detached spigot next to it: he wondered what the significance of that was. The first one produced by the plant? She had told him she wanted to work, and he had no clue what she meant. He had been planning an evening of sitting by his window watching the sky darken. “The studio,” she'd said, insistent. “I want you to tell me what you want. What would be your ideal place to work?”

He almost said the past, but refrained.

He saw that she had written down, “Edward Dacres, studio and
materials,” and the date. It looked bizarre. Now as she waited with gleaming pupils he saw a family resemblance. If they did not look similar, Darly and her father shared gestures. They had enthusiastic quick hands; and then they sat the same way, the same right elbow supported by left-hand knuckles, the same posture of leaning forward into life. He saw that he was becoming her task; he had already become her task.

“I don't know,” he said.

“Try.”

“Well …”

“Just think of one thing.”

“Well, first of all, light, obviously,” he said. She wrote down “LIGHT” and underlined it twice. She held the pencil in a tight fist and scored the paper heavily.

“And?”

“Well, all my gear is at the bottom of the lake, along with bone chips from my forehead, I fancy, and God knows what else. The wreck of the
Medusa
probably. So paints, easel, oils, varnishes. I can make you a proper inventory. Canvas, nails, wood. Paper. Charcoal. In Paris you pay for your materials twice a year.”

He had to wait for her to catch up to his dictation.

“We could make some actually. Do you know how to make charcoal?” He was uncomfortable in his body, suddenly he wanted to talk about something else. “Get a tin of golden syrup, any empty tin I mean, and you put some twigs in it and throw it in the fire. Wait a few days and
voilà
.”

“What about the room itself? The studio?”

“Well: no carpet. Giant windows. Access to coffee. Some old rags and spatter sheets, like an old bedsheet. None of these things should be that hard to find, I suppose. Cimabue kept pigs, you know, he made brushes from their snout hairs.”

“Should I add that, brushes?”

Defeated, he said, “I suppose so. Or just add: pigs.”

She hadn't looked up from the paper in some time: he could see her
collarbone very clearly, pressing up through the skin. He looked elsewhere.

“My friend Regina knows an art store near campus. We could all go together.”

He winced, and patted his thigh as if there were an injury there.

“Or I could go.”

“Some interesting furniture,” he said. He tried to imagine, tried to get into the spirit of the thing. “No wallpaper—terrible distraction, terrible invention. Drinks trolley, in case we get thirsty. Things for you to sit on, for the model to sit on. One key: only I have it. A view of St. Paul's.”

“Did you have a view of St. Paul's in London?”

“Of course.”

“No you didn't.”

“No, of course not. Right, the windows look out over the gardens, not the courtyard. No cars, no noise. You see? Some old bottles, wine bottles, say, but in different colours.”

“Good,” she said. “Now you're getting specific.”

He looked up at the ceiling.

“Do you know
Don Giovanni
? Do you know how Da Ponte wrote the libretto?”

She was writing scratchily; the very tip of her tongue appeared in her slightly open mouth.

“I'll tell you: in a hurry. In his patron's castle. Sturdy wooden table, pile of paper, inkpot, and quills.” Dacres realized he shouldn't tell the story but it was an old favourite, and he'd already started. “A view of the valley. Two doors, left and right, and two little bells. When he rings the silver bell the door on the left opens and there's a heaving banquet of food. When he rings the other bell … well through the door on the right there's a girl …”

Darly froze, blushed completely.

“Brushes,” he said quickly. “The main thing is brushes.”