Yes. Wanda had a lot to thank Eve for. But Luka didn’t need to know all that. Dissembling as best she could, Eve reminisced more generally about Wanda, about Bradley, whose career stalled before he made a lucrative comeback twenty years later playing twinkly silver foxes in porn movies—“let me help you with that, young lady”—and Mike, poor Mike, and the whole crowd, the bio-art, the smeared body fluids and self-inflicted wounds, Fluxus and those sadomasochistic bozos, the Actionists. But she held back on the true story of Wanda, the neediness and tantrums, the adolescent howling and heartache.
Nor did she mention her conviction that Wanda’s success was a practical joke played on the art establishment, that it was a case of the Empress’s new clothes, in which the cheering crowds were also naked. For Luka, despite his passion for Eve’s work, subscribed to the conventional hare-brained view that Wanda was some kind of pioneer. So Eve went along with it. Yes, she knew the great Wanda Wilson, yes, she was close to her, yes, they shared an apartment, and, occasionally, lovers…it pleased Eve to please Luka and so she continued to talk, answering his questions as best she could without alienating him, the art world or posterity, giving a diplomat’s version of her personal history as the camera rolled.
Besides, to tell the story of her New York days, even in sanitised form, was to reclaim her youth, to live it again, as it might have been, without the anxiety, the feuds and self-doubt. In those early days, blundering blindly, still reeling from her bruising entanglement with Florian, she could have no sense of the trajectory of her work. She might have baulked if the veil had parted and she’d seen the years of disappointment ahead, as the art world turned its back on her, belittling her while canonising the megalomaniac mediocrity Wanda.
But then, if Eve had been able to see even further into the future, flashing forward through the wilderness years of marriage and obscurity, if she could have glimpsed herself that afternoon in her studio, her beautiful young lover next to her, engaged in the finest work of her career, all the discouragement of those hard years would have seemed a minor inconvenience. The grunt work was done, the pigment mixed, flat ground painstakingly laid on canvas, against which her achievements would finally shine like pole stars in the void.
17
She passes Bloomsbury Square and waits to cross at the junction of Southampton Row. During the day, the road is a busy midtown intersection but tonight it’s quiet, apart from occasional taxis and night buses which pass by in a spray of rainwater. Next to Eve on the pavement, an East Asian couple, a young man and woman, possibly Chinese, also wait to cross. A breeze gets up, sending debris—fast-food cartons, free newspapers, brochures and handouts—scudding down the street. Eve stands there, buffeted, and remembers reading Jeff Nuttall, a counterculture guru of the sixties and seventies, who mocked the conformists—“straights” was the term—who would wait on an empty road for the traffic lights to change before daring to step out. Nuttall, like all those soixante huitards, was a man in a hurry. Eve is killing time, though she has far less of it to spare these days. She stands with the Chinese couple, waiting for the signal before crossing…
* * *
—
It had all been going so well. Hans phoned. He wanted to see how the project was progressing. She told him that she’d pared back her staff.
“I heard,” he said. “As long as it’s not interfering with the work.”
He arranged to visit the next day. When he arrived, four watercolours, four sets of photographs, three monumental canvases and three floating herbaria were ready and the artemisia sequence was almost complete.
“You’re managing all this without Josette and Glynn?” He turned away from the canvases to hold the nightshade watercolour at arm’s length.
“Luka does more work than all of them put together. And his temperament suits me.”
“I imagine it does,” Hans said, appraising Luka with a connoisseur’s stare.
His expression remained neutral as he walked round the studio, left arm folded across his bon viveur’s paunch, right fist under his chin, taking in the canvases properly: the long view from ten feet away; close up, lifting his glasses to inspect the brushwork, leaning in, nose against the canvas as if he were smelling the painted flowers. Then he paused briefly over the dissection tray and the photographs before peering into the illuminated cabinets of flowers trembling in preserving fluid.
He said nothing and it was hard not to read his wordless scrutiny as criticism. He had never tried to steer Eve in any way, for which she was grateful. But she felt a new impatience with him. For form’s sake, in front of Luka, he could at least say something. This silence was humiliating.
While Hans continued his mute patrol of the studio, Luka set up the computer to screen the monkshood life cycle film. Eve moved over to the desk with Hans and they stood behind Luka as he pressed command. The computer’s whirr sounded like an old movie projector as the sequence began to play.
“No, Luka. Stop it there,” she said, with a prickle of irritation. “Rewind. Something’s gone wrong.”
The film was playing in reverse; fallen brown petals were infused with colour and flew up to reattach themselves to a bent, desiccated stem which grew erect, surged with glowing sap and stretched towards the light. Freeze-frame—the dead flower, sere and broken, was transformed into an incandescent purple wand.
She reached over the keyboard to stop the film.
“No,” Luka said, gently holding her wrist. “Wait!”
He was contradicting her—in front of her dealer. She watched, helplessly, wondering what her next move should be—a public row would be undignified—as the petals flared in their imperial glory then folded away, vivid silks crammed into small green purses which shrank into the stem’s verdant vigour. Freeze-frame again. The plant paled, wavered and coiled downwards, a cobra retreating into a snake charmer’s basket, then one poignant tiny leaf seemed to give a last defiant wave before sinking below the soil.
“Interesting,” said Hans, nodding slowly.
“We need to play it again. The right way,” said Eve. “The cycle. Life to death…No freeze-frame.”
“No need,” said Hans, holding up his hand. “Leave that to the wildlife documentary—predictable, commonplace. This is art—from death to life. Much more interesting.”
Luka was looking at her, his eyebrows raised quizzically.
“You really think so?” said Eve. She castigated herself for sounding so uncertain. “I mean, I know…”
“Really!” said Luka. “You’re challenging the tired old certainties. It’s a brilliant, subtle twist.”
Eve flushed. He’d planned this, ignored her instructions and gone his own way. But then there was Hans’s response. And Luka was at least giving her the credit. Before she could formulate a reply, Hans spoke again.
“You’ve moved on to a new plane here, Eve. A profound interrogation of the big questions. Remarkable. We can really do something with this.”
“I can email you the video file to show to clients, if you’d like,” Luka offered.
Hans nodded. “That would be very helpful.”
Eve reached across Luka and switched off the computer. Then she smiled at him. He smiled back.
* * *
—
On Clerkenwell Road she pauses before the miniature basilica of St. Peter’s, the Italian church, with its mosaic friezes: the miracle of the loaves and fishes; St. Peter receiving the keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Ornate black-and-gold railings protect the memorial to the 471 Italian civilians who were deported from Britain during the Second World War, destined for internment camps in Canada, but died when their prison boat was torpedoed by the Germans. The railings also deter any rough sleepers—immigrants or indigenes—from bedding down for the night in the twin-arched loggia. No loaves and fishes here. No keys to any kingdom. Another sanctuary barred. She walks on, head down against
the biting wind…
* * *
—
She always knew that, once Kristof got back from Singapore, she would have to return to Delaunay Gardens. She never guessed quite what a wrench it would be, like stepping out from the jewelled colours of a Matisse into the monochrome gloom of a Motherwell. Her first evening farewell to Luka, after another long and productive day, was strained. He was so depressed, almost tearful, and she found herself blindly reassuring him that they would be together soon.
“Properly?” he asked, brightening.
“Properly,” she lied.
“How soon?”
“Soon.”
In truth, she had no idea where, or how, this was going to end. Shared meals with her husband in their cavernous basement kitchen were, in the first week after his return, like board meetings—members’ reports, matters arising from the last meeting, any other business. She felt no ill will towards him. She felt nothing at all, in fact. If “apologies for absence” were on the kitchen agenda she could have cited herself. She felt curiously disembodied, moving weightlessly around the ample space and luxury of her family home, longing for the cramped intimacy of the studio’s living quarters.
A new routine began to take shape. In the morning, she would leave home early, before Kristof woke, and arrive at the studio to find Luka already up, gilded by morning light, a young Medici nobleman busy at his tasks. Together, side by side, they would work on intensely until the late evening, their collaboration an act of love more consuming, and transcendent, than mere physical congress.
Kristof, meanwhile, wasn’t curious about her late-night returns and early-morning departures—he had work of his own to attend to. He was about to sign the deal on the project for Wanda’s Art Ranch, and his design for a new tower next to Sydney Harbour was likely to be approved next year.
But a week after he got back, he asked her to accompany him to dinner at the home of an important new client.
“I know you’re busy but I’d really appreciate it,” he said. “Everyone’s bringing their partner.”
She’d assumed her days as a company wife were over.
“It’s the worst time for me,” she said. “I’ve got so much on at the studio. Ines, the Gerstein curator, is coming back to rummage through my old stuff. And Hans is very excited about this new piece, says there might be a bidding war. I’ve got to move fast.”
“Please,” he said, reaching out to take her hand.
Kristof’s client, Albrecht Bernoise, a Swiss hotelier, had approached him to design a new property in the Middle East. An evening of tedium was guaranteed. But, said Kristof, it would seem like a snub, professionally damaging for him, if she stayed away.
“Couldn’t you spend the weekend at the studio to catch up?” He pleaded. “Can’t you allow yourself one night off this week?”
She held back from pointing out that a night away from work and love, demurely supporting her husband in his business aspirations, was not her idea of “a night off.” But he was always so genial when they coincided at Delaunay Gardens, and he made so few demands on her, that she found it hard to refuse him. Besides, the promise of an unbroken weekend with Luka, without any need to make excuses, was irresistible. She smiled, nodded, and squeezed Kristof’s hand.
“I owe you,” Kristof said.
“You certainly do…”
18
She hated leaving work early that Thursday evening. She hated leaving Luka more. He’d made a start on the background wash for the next canvas, the fifth, and planned to work through the night on it.
“It’s my tribute to you—my way of being with you, even in your absence,” he said.
But when the moment came for her to go, he pulled at the zip on her dress and drew her teasingly towards the bedroom. They’d been so busy that they hadn’t made love in days and now, with her cab waiting outside, she felt the rip tide tug of desire once more. If she succumbed, that would be it. She’d never leave the studio.
“No. No. I’ve really got to go…I can’t bear it either. I’d much rather be here with you. But it’s for work…” she said. “Our work. I’ll be back as early as I can tomorrow.”
She was only partially lying. It was Kristof’s work. But she’d learned that Otto Stoltzer, an important Zurich gallerist and collector, would be there too, with his boyfriend, a young Italian artist. “So it won’t all be architects and money men,” Kristof had reassured her. He added that Stoltzer was “on a buying spree,” itching to divest himself of his vast reserves of capital.
In the cab on the way to Knightsbridge, Eve received three texts, framed by affectingly childish xs, from Luka, reminding her that he would be waiting for her when she got back. The journey away from him took her seven and a half miles west, spanning London’s socioeconomic spectrum, from the hard-pressed east of Dickensian poverty, through pockets of youthful bohemianism, past down-at-heel neighbourhoods where the few visible women in the streets were shadowy figures shrouded in black, along a noisy, neon-lit thoroughfare where drunk girls in short skirts and high heels struggled to stay upright as they queued, shrieking, to get into a nightclub, all the way to the plutocratic mansions of the west with concierges, security and valet-parked supercars.
She put her phone on silent as she walked into the penthouse. Its central water feature and marble floors could have been prised from one of the owner’s hotel foyers. She arrived forty-five minutes later than agreed and immediately saw her calculation had been correct—the awkward introductions were over and champagne was already defrosting hosts and guests. Sober and composed, Eve was at an advantage.
“Ah, my wife!” said Kristof, getting up as she walked in. “My late wife!”
There was a susurration of appreciative laughter. The threshold for wit was going to be low tonight. Otto Stoltzer nodded curtly to her and turned back to his boyfriend. She was of no interest; he would not be calling Hans in the morning to arrange a purchase. The evening was, she could tell already, a colossal waste of time. How many hours of this would she have to endure? The rest of the gathering was as dispiriting as she’d feared—two middle-aged men working in finance, hospitality and property development with their younger second or third wives, docile and decorative. The most interesting man in the room was her own husband. It was that bad.
The host, Albrecht, led her towards the dinner table. “So you’re an artist? My wife, Laura, is an artist too. And there’s Otto and Enzo. We’re all great patrons of art here.”
Eve had done her research. Enzo, sleek and feline in a velvet smoking jacket, had built an international reputation with his giant erotic collages made from candy wrappers. Madonna was said to be a fan. Eve and Enzo would not be swapping artists’ shop talk on technique and vision.
Stretching across the table was an extensive arrangement of orange gerbera and ornamental cabbages. Eve saw immediately that her place in the seating plan, marked out with handwritten cards tucked in a cabbage leaf, was doubled-edged—an insult and an honour. She was seated opposite the host, at one end of the table, with no neighbour on her left.
The starters were served by an obsequious waiter who kept one arm behind his back, as if concealing a knife. Eve struggled to make conversation with Albrecht and it became apparent that he only had one subject—the hotel business, and in particular the new site he’d just acquired in Doha.
“We’re planning a thousand-bed Kulturhotel—concerts, exhibitions, performances—which will draw in the world’s elites…”
Eve gazed at her plate, striving to summon another question: “And how is your Kulturhotel in Austria faring in the current economic climate?”
The pink mousse—smoked salmon, at a guess—was framed by oily green apostrophes, as if the chef was making a visual joke on the notion of “food.”
“Given the constraints and uncertainties, it has been remarkably successful,” Albr
echt was saying. “Turnover is excellent and our wellness programme has attracted a lot of media coverage…”
Wellness…another of Nancy’s watchwords—the telling combination of consumerism and narcissism.
On Eve’s right was Clive Etchinghall, a wealth management consultant and board member of Albrecht’s hotel business. He was tentatively poking at his mousse with a fork as if it might go off in his face any minute. He was plump and ruddy-cheeked, with a rasping voice that suggested a staple diet of brandy and cigars and gave an insinuative edge to his most banal remarks. Eve thought it might have been cocaine, rather than a problem prostate or gastric revolt against the fussy food, that drove him, twice, to get to his feet suddenly without apology and head for the bathroom.
His wife, a slender cipher in a cashmere sheath, was opposite Kristof at the other end of the table. They seemed to be engaged in animated conversation. He would be delighting her with details of his own professional achievements.
Having exhausted Eve’s questions, the hotelier turned to his neighbour—in her forties, with a startled stare and buck teeth that brought to mind one of Barry Flanagan’s dancing hares. This was Albrecht’s wife, Laura. Had there been a placement accident? A wrongly distributed name card, for which someone would have hell to pay later? Or had jittery Laura insisted that her husband take the seat next to her as a buffer against possible hostile forces. She was, Eve was told, a “society jeweller” and, if her calling could be described as art, by the look of the clunky gold chains and brutalist pendants resting on her freckled décolletage, she drew inspiration from the hardware store. Clive was attending to his social duties on his right with the gallerist’s candy wrapper boyfriend and Eve, now unoccupied, listened in, with an all-purpose social smile, to the hosts’ marital conversation.
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