The Walking Stick (13 page)

So Leigh untied his parcel and dropped brown paper and string on the floor and took out the first painting and put it on the easel. His face was dead pan.

A painting of two tugs passing in the river, a barge, the derricks against a cloudy sky, swans in the foreground.

‘Yes,’ said Lewis Maud thoughtfully. To me: ‘Do you smoke?’

‘No, thanks.’

Silence fell. Leigh put up the second one. It was the interior of his studio, littered with the stuff that usually lay about: old cushions, paint brushes, magazines. Light fell through the
window, fell obliquely, cleverly, I thought; dust hung in it.

‘Yes,’ said Maud. ‘Yes, I see what you mean there.’

Leigh took down the first two paintings, propped them against chair legs. All around us in that small room were other people’s works, clamant, rival, accusative. A drawing of an old boat
by a modern French painter priced at £850. A couple of little impressionist paintings of St Tropez in the nineties, probably worth £7000 the pair; a Pissarro in a corner.

Leigh put up his third, the second river scene. A much darker work, almost colourless, done in black and white and metallic grays. He looked at Maud and then at me.

Maud struck a match and lit his cigarette. There was room on the easel for the fourth painting, and beside the river scene Leigh put my portrait.

‘That’s unfinished,’ he said. ‘I need a couple more sittings.’

There was a squeal of brakes outside and the blaring of a horn. Lewis Maud looked up absently. ‘This traffic,’ he said. ‘You’re better without a car these
days.’

‘Yes,’ said Leigh. ‘I had to park mine in Brook Street. You feed a meter sixpences like giving sweets to a greedy kid.’

Maud tapped the ash off his cigarette and brushed a freckle off his sleeve. ‘Well, Mr – er – Hartley, I know you’d want me to be frank, wouldn’t you?’

‘That’s what I came for.’

‘That’s what you came for. Yes . . . Well, I’m afraid I have to tell you that these paintings are not at all in my line.’

Leigh stood back and put his hands on his hips, staring at the paintings himself with a painful air of assumed detachment.

Lewis Maud glanced apologetically at me. ‘They’re really not in our line, Miss Dainton, not in the tradition of what one comes to appreciate and look for after thirty-odd years in
the business. But of course it’s a personal view.’

‘Yes,’ I said.

Maud went on talking half to me and half to the pictures, rather avoiding looking at Leigh. ‘If I said that they were not in the tradition of modern painting, that might make you think I
meant modern fashion. I don’t. I mean in the development of technique, the – the
understanding
of technique. These are – pictures, if you know what I mean. They’re no
better and no worse than hundreds of others about. But they’re not really – forgive me – paintings, as I understand the word.’

‘Well,’ said Leigh, ‘that’s straight enough, isn’t it?’

‘Look, Mr – er – Hartley, don’t think I mean this the wrong way. In this country alone there are hundreds, thousands of painters, amateurs, who paint for their own
pleasure. It’s a wonderful recreation for them. But that’s rather different from the professional with something to say, some original vision, the spark that sets him above his fellows.
That’s what we all look for. But he’s hard to find, and . . .’

‘Surely,’ I said, trying to pick the right words, ‘isn’t it partly a matter of development, of trial and error, of hard work and extending one’s vision . .
.’

Lewis Maud worried his cigarette with fingers and lips.

‘Mr Maud doesn’t think so,’ Leigh said.

‘No, I don’t,’ Maud said. ‘If the spark is there,
then
the hard work, the development, the extending of one’s vision – these are all necessary, vital.
But—’

‘Do you not like the portrait?’ I asked.

‘I think the portrait has more feeling. But it’s – romantic, old-fashioned in its approach. Look.’ Maud got quickly up and went to fumble among the stacked canvases and
presently came back with one that he put on the easel beside Leigh’s river scene. It was a painting of an old woman lying on a bed. ‘What I am trying to say is that you may well be able
to sell your paintings at a fine arts shop where people go who want a picture of what their own eyes would see, a painted photograph. Fine. But it’s a surface thing, an imprint, unrealized.
Look at this old woman. The Frenchman who painted her saw her lying just like that, but he didn’t put down
just
what he saw. He built her up, first bone, then flesh, then clothes, so
that now she’s not just a black design against yellow and blue but a great heavy lump, solid, sculptural, pressing down the bed so that you can hear the springs creak. You can smell the old
black woollen jacket and the black serge skirt. Mind, I’m not saying it’s a great painting, but it’s a good one, and I’d back my judgement on it. But look now at this river
scene of yours. Do you feel those tugs have got machinery inside them? Can you smell the seaweed and the oil and the smoke? No. It’s the work of an illustrator, not of an artist. It may well
appeal to people who want just that, a conscientiously drawn and painted illustration. It may sell, and others like it may sell. People will pay twenty or thirty guineas for that sort of thing. But
I don’t think the London galleries are the place for them.’

‘Well, thanks,’ said Leigh grimly. ‘Thanks a lot.’

Maud looked at him briefly, assessingly. ‘I’m sorry. Too many people paint, you know.’

‘Or too many people take themselves seriously, you mean?’

‘Well, yes. Art is a wonderful recreation. I paint myself. But it’s a terrible way of making a living. It’s the old story of many being called and few chosen.’

Leigh began thoughtfully to wrap up his four paintings.

Maud said to me: ‘Mr Hartley is modest in his approach. I only wish I could help him. I get so many people offering me their paintings – a dozen a week – and the worse painters
they are, usually, the more insanely conceited they run.’

‘Well,’ said Leigh. ‘Glad to have stepped out of the ruck in one respect anyhow. Goodbye to you, Mr Maud.’

I’d thought he would refuse to see Arthur Hays, but with a sort of grim patience he went along and I went with him. Mr Hays was an altogether more polished person than Lewis Maud, but
although his response to the four paintings was suaver and more oblique, it was equally dismissive. We came out and walked back to the little car. Leigh opened the door for me, thrust the parcel
into the space behind, and then got in beside me. We sat in silence.

‘Did you get the feeling they didn’t like my paintings?’ Leigh said.

I stirred uncomfortably and bit at the skin around my forefinger.

‘Definitely,’ he said, ‘they don’t recognize genius, that’s what it is. Every artistic Messiah is rejected by his own generation. Wait until I’m
dead.’

‘I’m
sorry
,’ I said miserably.

‘Not to worry. That painting of you, in a hundred years it will be in the Louvre and called the Mona Deborah, and beginners’ll sit round it trying to fathom the secret of its smile,
see. And I in my pauper’s grave won’t be able to tell ’em. Cup of tea?’

‘Anything you say.’

‘We’ll have to move from here, anyhow. I borrowed somebody else’s unexpired time, and a bloody little Blue Boy is watching us.’

We had tea in a café in Piccadilly. After his brief rally of jokes he sat silent, sipping his cup and staring out at the traffic.

I said: ‘I’m sorry I took you now. But it’s got to be kept in proportion. We’re no worse off.’

‘Well, thanks for the “we”.’

In fact I knew we were both worse off. He, because no one is the better for having his work damned. I, because I’d hoped so much that there was something there.

The following week I was going to join Erica in Ireland, and there were things to do, washing and ironing, clothes to pick up from Hampstead and another suitcase. I had intended to leave him
after the two interviews. Now I found I couldn’t. We sat for a long time over tea.

He said: ‘I think I’ll get away for a bit if you’re going away. To Paris and Rome, look around. I’ve never been abroad. Never had the time or money. Maybe I need time to
think. Get a new direction.’

‘Can you afford it?’

‘If I sell this portrait to Jack Foil.’

We got up, and he drove to the Queensway rink, but it was closed. Rain was falling and we sat in the cramped little car not speaking. He bought an evening paper and looked through the cinema
advertisements, but there was nothing we wanted to see.

‘Do me a favour?’ he said at last.

‘I’ll try.’

‘Come home and let’s cook a meal. Are you a good cook?’

‘No. Moderate. But I—’

‘I’m moderate too. Two “moderates” might make a “good”. We could pick up a cooked chicken some place and start from there.’

I knew I should say no, but I felt desperately sorry for him, and this was a new feeling flavouring the old one.

Most shops were shut but we found an uncooked chicken – which they jointed for me – and some stock cubes and a few vegetables, and drove out to Rotherhithe. The studio was tidier
than usual – Friday was the day he had a charwoman – and with the lights on and the curtains drawn we shut out the wet evening. As soon as that was done he began to kiss me. I’d
known he would and had been waiting for it. He buried his head in my shoulder and we held each other tight, as if with a mutual recognition after separation, as if for comfort after deep
disappointment, as if for joint protection against the hostility of the world.

. . . Presently we had drinks and then I went to the kitchen to prepare the chicken. In a few minutes I heard a thudding noise and limped out to find him breaking up his canvases. In the room
were three ladder-back chairs with long protruding knobs at the top. He was impaling his canvases by banging them on to these, so that each one was crowned with a broken picture in its wooden
stretches.

I shouted: ‘Leigh! Don’t! Stop it! Stop it!’

He didn’t look very angry when I caught his arm. He scratched his head and then shook it as if to clear it. The picture he held in his hand he resignedly skimmed across the room till it
landed by the door.

‘You’re right – it’s – it’s . . . But hell, I have to have one show of temper, don’t I?’

‘But that’s no good. Doing that is no good at all.’

‘What’s any good?’

‘Supper. Come and help me. I want to try to do a fricassee of chicken in white wine sauce.’

When I got him into the kitchen he said: ‘Anyway, there’s no white wine.’

‘Red will do.’

He sat down on a chair and put his head in his hands. ‘Christ, I feel a mess.’

‘Help me. Have you a casserole?’

‘That cupboard over there.’

‘And the wine?’

‘There’s three or four bottles under the sink. God, I think this is an all-time zero for me.’

I poured him another drink and he took it, swallowed it at a draught. ‘Now you.’

‘I’ll have some with supper.’

‘No, now.’

‘All right.’

After ten minutes or so, during which I got the chicken ready for the oven, he stood up. ‘Picture of the artist wallowing in self-pity.’

‘Don’t be silly. It’s only the opinion of two men.’

‘Is it the opinion of one woman?’

‘Who?’

‘You.’

‘This interests me,’ I said.

‘Why?’

‘Haven’t you always been preaching the virtues of courage and perseverance to me?’

He put down his glass. ‘On target, that was. Bang on target. Every time a coconut.’

I put my head on his shoulder. ‘
Sorry
. I know how you feel – how you must feel.’

He put his hand round my legs. It closed on my knee and was warm there. It was the wrong knee.

‘Don’t.’

‘Why not?’

But I had moved away.

We ate about nine-thirty. The cooking had come off well – never a certainty with me. We drank a bottle of wine between us. He went into the kitchen and came back with
another one.

I laughed. ‘No more for me.’

He filled my glass and then his own. His face had paled with the food and drink.

‘Do me a favour?’

‘It depends.’

‘That wasn’t what you said earlier. Then you said “I’ll try”.’

‘Drink makes me cautious.’

‘Well, just
tell
me something then. Am I a failure in other ways?’

‘Oh, that’s not a question you need me to answer!’

‘What I mean is: am I a failure in the other big way? With the girl I love.’

I sipped at the wine and then put it down. ‘How can I answer that question?’

‘Truthfully. On the chin.’

‘And if I said yes?’

‘I reckon I’d jump in the river.’

‘So it’s blackmail.’

‘No, I want the truth.’

‘Well, you can stay out of the river.’ My heart was thumping, and that was not the effects of wine.

‘Really? Really, Deborah?’ He didn’t smile, but the tight creases in his face changed and lifted. ‘That makes a lot of things worth while.’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Breathing for one.’

I laughed again.

He said: ‘Can I ask that question again? Do me a favour?’

‘What?’

‘Stay here tonight.’

I looked at my glass. It was still nearly full. The wine was a sort of old rose colour. For wine is bright at the goblet’s brim . . .

An answer; you’re twenty-six; you know your own mind; it’s out of the question; say no before he gets the wrong impression; sleeping with him, naked together, a whole night, you, a
cripple; you must be insane even to think of it. He’s insane to ask. But nothing’s insane for him to ask, or to do.

A shiver (try to suppress it) went corkscrewing in womb-dark depths. Over. Now sense. Take it easy.

‘Deborah,’ he said. ‘Please . . .’

He did not wear his scarlet coat, For wine and blood are red . . .

This isn’t love, this violent passion, taking the breath, making the blood drumbeat; it’s a sexual hand, clutching. But such a nice girl with a good upbringing and such intellectual
parents. This man, over here; this one waiting; not next week; tonight; in half an hour; the unutterable invasion of privacy; intimacies often considered but never known. Put it off. In a month,
two months, not now.