The Portrait (10 page)

In truth, I should thank you, though. That trip to Hampshire brought my worries to the surface, set me on the road to France and the embrace of God in his most Catholic variety. Because I realised, as I unpacked my paints and brushes, and got myself ready, that I was doing your bidding. You don’t remember the moment, I am sure. I chose the position I wanted, and in my mind’s eye I knew how I wanted you to sit. A stark portrait, it would be, head and shoulders, with nothing else to attract the eye. A bit Titian-like, I thought, the background so dark that it would be almost black, just a faint hint of a bookcase.

And what did I begin painting? The sunlight. I wanted to please you. No bad thing in a portraitist, of course, but the skill lies in making your own vision pleasing. I tried, many times over, to force myself into painting what I had imagined as I travelled down, but every time, the desire to please overwhelmed my instincts. And then I realised the truth: I was merely a hired hand, no different from the fat old woman you employed as a cook or the skinny little consumptive who served as your maid. They, at least, were under no illusions about their position, whereas I had persuaded myself that all these society women and gentlemen farmers who were fast becoming my stock in trade were something other than my masters. That I was their superior and your equal.

Not that I minded the clients so much; with them the relations were clear. They wanted a portrait making themselves looking grander, more respectable, more human than they were, and were prepared to pay for it. I obliged; and as I was able to turn flattery into art—decent art as well; I never became a hack—they were happy to pay more than usual. That was why I was a success, and in truth I am not ashamed of it. I did much good work; the problem was that it was not the work I wanted to do.

No; the problem was not my clients, who at least gave something in return for my subjection. They paid well and when the relationship came to an end—the money paid, the portrait hung—their power over me ended as well. The problem was you, who gave nothing and whose power never ended. The critic is a demanding god, who must be constantly appeased. You make your offering, then have to make it again, and again.

I lost my contentment during that trip to Hampshire. The sun had gone on the journey back to London; I felt every lurch of the train, the other people in the compartment irritated me. One stupid woman kept on trying to strike up a conversation, and I was extremely rude to her. I scowled at the ticket collector for no reason. Well, a very good reason, in fact.

THIS MORNING, I want to go for a walk. No; nothing subtle. It’s not as if I want to get the colour into those pale aesthetic cheeks of yours, or make some point about bodily exercise and spiritual insight, so I can translate it into a portrait in some masterful way. I merely feel like a walk, and I am prepared to have your company. I walk fairly often, I’ll have you know. There is something always a little unsatisfactory about it, mind. It is too enjoyable to walk here, except in deepest winter. One does not suffer; there is no sense of triumph in the experience. I remember once going for a long walk along Ardnamurchan shortly after I came back from Paris. I went up to Scotland, just me and my sketch pad, to draw anything and everything that took my fancy. I went back to see if I could live in my homeland again; I really wanted to, but knew the moment I got off the train it would be impossible. Do you know there is no Scotsman who lives in England who does not feel slightly guilty? Not about living in England, but about not wanting to go back. I have discovered that coming to France does not have the same effect.

Anyway, for three weeks I tramped over the land of my forefathers. It was in my etching days, when all the world wanted to be the Scottish Whistler, or the Irish Whistler, or the Tunbridge Wells Whistler. Any place at all, as long as critics like you made a comparison to Whistler. The whole country, I believe, was awash with earnest young men of middling talent, clutching little sheets of metal in their hands, hunting for that perfect aspect, that moment in the doorway, so they could capture it and transmute it into copper, then gold, then fame.

It eluded me, of course; there is something about the Highlands that cannot be fixed down. Not by me, in any case. Look at the Highlands and you see suffering—if you can see at all. It is a ruined landscape, denuded of trees and people. There animals and men and forests have perished, and the weather reflects it. It is melancholy even when the sun shines. But not for everyone. You have to be tuned to the resonances to see the sadness, pick up the despair in the purple of the heather, the anguish in the wind as it whips up the waves on a loch surface. And if you are not, all you see is a landscape, and all you imagine is men in kilts with a bottle of whisky in one hand and a set of bagpipes in the other.

No one has ever picked up that misery in line; David Cameron picks up the spiritual side, but misses the human dimension. I tried; I came close, indeed, but not close enough and I didn’t want them to be misunderstood. Can you imagine how it would have felt to have made pictures out of the landscape of human suffering and had them seen as pretty views of Highland scenes? That is what would have happened; I know, because I showed you some of my sketches once. You misunderstood them entirely because your eyes are forever turned towards the continent. The transcendental in your own backyard is of no interest to you. But you have never been to Scotland, never stood at the head of a glen with that wind nearly knocking you down, hearing it echo all around you, and listening to the generations who once lived there.

They talk, you know, the dead. Not in words, of course; I am not losing my sanity. They talk in the wind and the rain, in the way the light falls on ruined buildings and dilapidated stone walls. But you have to listen and want to hear what they have to say. And you do not; you are a creature of the present. The modern. Well, right enough. Savages and wild men they were. And now, it seems, rich savages, living off the fat of the land in America and Canada. Best thing that ever happened to them, leaving Scotland. What would that Carnegie have been, had he stayed in Scotland, eh? A poor weaver, all that boundless energy going into setting up illicit stills and drinking himself paralytic on a Friday night.

I can’t hear the dead of this island. Not that they are not talking away; they are. Sometimes, late at night, I hear a sort of chattering in the wind as it rattles round the rooftops; occasionally a conversation almost starts up in the light shining through the puddles after a summer rain. But it never really gets going. We are on neighbourly terms, them and I; we nod to each other, smile occasionally as we pass, but have no desire to take our acquaintanceship further. I am a stranger here, after all, and they do not wish to burden me with their stories. And if they did, what could I say? I would listen politely, but could do little more.

So, eventually, I will have to leave. I will have to go back to Scotland, because if we do not have those conversations we wither a little every day. Oh, to be more portable! How convenient it must be to be Jewish, and carry your ancestors around with you, not needing lumps of dirty soil to strike up a conversation. They are reviled for it, but they are the fortunate ones, not us, who must pine away if we so much as move one country to the left or right.

Ardnamurchan? Oh. Yes. I went to recover from a broken heart. I had been rejected. Don’t smile so; it is a bitter thing and to be avoided, as you always did avoid it. You never did love your wife, did you? I kept my own passion a secret. No-one wants their humiliations known, and I was refused when I went down on my knees and said my piece.

Evelyn, of course; I see I have surprised you. How inappropriate, you are thinking. What a bizarre choice. You would never be so careless; were not. You picked your wife with the same care you pick your clothes or your painters. Someone who will reflect well on you, help you along. Love does not come into it. But I loved Evelyn, I think, and that made all the difference.

You think? Don’t you know? Surely it is not something you can be unsure about?

Well, yes. It is. If you have never felt the emotion before, and have had no practise. Love is not something that comes easily to people like me. It is too much bound up with sin. Love for God, that is simple. Love for your fellow man is also straightforward, if, generally speaking, quite unjustified. Love for a friend—quite easy although not without its complications. But love for a woman—ah, well now. That is the hardest, because it involves the carnal. Such feelings should surely be reserved for the low and the unworthy. To love a fine woman is to bring her down to the gutter.

Don’t look at me like that! I’m not saying I approve, merely that this was how I was brought up. I am, after all, the only evidence that my parents ever even touched each other. When I grew up, when I was playing the painter, I bathed myself in all the lusts I could think of, to coat myself in sin and create a gulf between myself and my beginnings that was so wide I could never go back. But it was not with real pleasure; I did not truly enjoy sin, and that, of course, takes most of the point of it away. I sinned because I felt I ought to. Even fornication was turned into a duty. By running away from my origins, I found myself coming back to them, like an ant walking round the rim of a plate and ending up back where he started.

Evelyn was different, hence the proposal. I think I knew it the moment I first talked to her in Paris. We were alone in the atelier, and she had been strenuously ignored by everyone there. That wasn’t unusual, I suppose; it was a sort of initiation rite, to test people out, see how tough they were. And she was a woman. At least we didn’t riot and burn her canvasses, like the French students did when women were first let into the Beaux-Arts. Many a man was treated in the same way for a month or so. We were a group, and mistrusted outsiders. But enough was enough, and she clearly wasn’t taking it very well, so I called over to her one evening, after everyone else had gone home.

“What do you think?” I asked. I’d been working hard all day on a painting, building it up from sketches I’d been making for the last month. I’d persuaded myself it was good. I was not yet vain, but I was growing rapidly in self-confidence. Besides, you had already seen it and paid fulsome compliments. I was letting her see it to give her a little treat. Show her what good painting was. I didn’t want her opinion, and expected only her admiration and her thanks for including her, taking her seriously.

Evelyn came over and looked. Very seriously, with a frown on her face. But not for long. “Not very good,” she said, eventually.

“Pardon?”

“It’s not very good. Is it? It’s too cluttered. What is it? A woman in a kitchen? She looks more as though she’s finding her way through a junk shop.” She paused, and thought some more. “Clean out the background, let the eye go to the woman herself. The pose is fine, but you’re wasting it. Where’s the centre? What’s the point? If you want the viewer to figure it out, you’ve got to give them a little help. What are you trying to do? Show how clever you are? How much you’re in charge of perspective and colour?”

“That’s your opinion?”

“It is. And you will no doubt disregard it completely. But then, you shouldn’t have asked.”

And her eyes went back to the canvas, then flickered back to me, for a brief moment. There was laughter in them, even though her face was otherwise totally solemn. She knew full well she was being presumptuous considering I was both older and more experienced than she. She was testing me, seeing how I would react. Would I be pompous, take umbrage and start lecturing her about the fine qualities of my work? “No, no, you don’t understand it. If you look . . .”

But that is not where my vanity lies. And the faint twinkle of amusement in her eyes touched me. I laughed myself. I wasn’t completely sure she was right, although cramming too much in has always been a weakness of mine. But we signed a contract with that glance. The complicated relationship of fawning and flattering she had seen when I was with you was not her way. She would give neither. And I wanted neither from her. From that moment on I liked her but was also a little disconcerted. For she had challenged you with those remarks, and bit by bit I saw how empty your compliments could be. You were being lazy with me; you did not take me so seriously after all. She was right about the picture; you were not. You were fallible.

On the other hand, I rarely showed her any of my pictures again. Not the ones I cared about, anyway. I was too frightened of what she would see. A man can take only so much criticism. I never thought she might be equally wary of my opinion about her efforts.

Do you know what it’s like to like someone, you who acknowledges no equal? Not to see all things in hierarchy, not to strain to be better, or more powerful, than the person you are with? Not to classify someone as friend or enemy, dependent or patron? Not to envy or be envied? It is friendship; I thought it might also be love. I still can’t tell them apart.