Mine: ‘A powerful, emotive and sensitively written story about love and loss' Louise Jensen

by Clare Empson

  Jake tells me – and I know he is right – that a childhood lived in the shadow of a volatile and vengeful father has corrupted my self-confidence. But slowly I am learning.

  Robin Armstrong, more than any other dealer and gallerist in London, has the power to accelerate an artist’s career; it’s hard not to feel like an imposter when it’s me, not Rick or any of the other star students from the years above, who is getting this break.

  As soon as Lawrence Croft hears of my impending show, he calls a meeting with Gordon and Rita.

  ‘I can safely say we’ve never had this happen to a first-year student before. Congratulations, Alice,’ Lawrence says. ‘What an opportunity. We must think how we can best support you.’

  ‘You deserve this,’ Rita says. ‘The work you’ve been doing in class recently is outstanding. You’ve really put the hours in.’

  That, at least, is true. These past two weeks, Jake and I have barely slept, working through the nights. And how I have loved it, the silent consensus that the two of us are wholly committed to our art. It is Jake who has made me feel like an artist and not a fraud.

  Gordon says, ‘It seems to me that next term Alice should be allowed to focus solely on her work for the show, and this can count towards her degree. Rita and I can oversee her progress with one-to-one tutorials. It’s true that you have great skill, Alice, and you deserve to succeed. But the thing that really distinguishes you from your associates is your grit.’

  Later Jake takes me to Kettner’s, our customary haunt for celebrations big and small. We order four seasons pizza and drink house white from a small carafe.

  ‘The thing about you, Alice Garland,’ he says in a mock-Scottish accent, ‘is that you’re full of grit.’

  Later, though, in the darkness, curled around each other in bed, he reaches for my hand.

  ‘He’s right, you know,’ he says. ‘You do have grit. And it’s your childhood that’s done it, weathering the years with your pig of a father. Standing up to him like you did the other day. I’m proud of you.’

  I cannot see his face clearly, but I know that he is watching me, doing that thing where he hopes to transfer all his thoughts to me without words.

  ‘You’re a survivor, Alice,’ he says just before we both fall asleep.

  A throwaway line that would turn out to be more prescient than I could ever have imagined.

  Now

  Luke

  The trickier reunion to navigate is often that of the adopted child and his birth father. With a male child in particular there may be a feverish desire to attach coupled with an instinct to emulate his absentee role model. Jung aptly described this obsession as ‘father hunger’.

  Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris

  Lunch with Rick at Nobu, summoned by text earlier today after the travesty of the colliding mothers. You don’t say no to lunch with this famous artist, who by some bizarre quirk turns out to be my father, or to one at Nobu, which is still one of the toughest places to get a table, unless you happen to be him. I arrive at Park Lane clenched with a toxic permeation of dread and anxiety, even though he assured me in his text that there was nothing to worry about.

  Bottom line, I screwed up massively, which are my first words when I’m shown to his table, black-clad waiters tearing up and down with their enormous trays of sushi.

  ‘Rick, I’m sorry. I completely messed up last night.’

  ‘Complicated situation. Not entirely your fault. Don’t beat yourself up about it.’

  He stands up and we hug a little awkwardly.

  Rick is wearing a pink and orange checked shirt, electric, loud, look-at-me colours in a known celebrity hangout, and here I was thinking he was a recluse. A waiter comes over with a Sapporo beer for me, which I didn’t see being ordered, and starts talking to Rick about his work.

  ‘Last year’s show at the National Portrait Gallery was incredible. Would I be able to get your autograph before you go?’

  ‘Sure.’

  ‘I thought you didn’t like being recognised?’ I say once the waiter has gone. ‘That’s what Alice says.’

  ‘Some days I do quite like it. Some days I need it.’

  He passes me the menu.

  ‘Have whatever you like. I come here a lot, I know this menu inside out.’

  It’s a masterclass just watching him talk the waiter through our choices – a tuna sashimi salad and rock shrimp tempura with ponzu sauce first, then blackened cod and grilled beef teriyaki, followed by a selection of sashimi and sushi.

  ‘We’ll have a carafe of sake served cold, please.’

  The hallmarks of a great lunch are here and I should be relaxed, but instead I’m counting down to the serious conversation I know is coming. And sure enough, the moment the first cup of sake is poured, Rick says, ‘Right, Luke, I’m just going to come straight out with it. I don’t think Alice should be working as your nanny.’

  ‘But she loves—’ I say and Rick holds up a hand.

  ‘Hear me out. I haven’t said this to Alice because I know it would break her heart. As you say, she adores Samuel, she loves looking after him. But you’ve got this whole thing back to front. It’s you and her who need to be spending time together. And her working for you puts the relationship on an awkward footing, doesn’t it? Like what happened yesterday. I can’t really believe either of you thought it was a good idea.’

  ‘So you’re saying we should find a new au pair? We should ask Alice to leave?’

  ‘I felt like I should tell you my concerns. The whole thing makes me uncomfortable. You see, there’s a lot about Alice you don’t know. She’s fragile. After she lost you, she wasn’t very well. Something like yesterday, when she was having to pretend to be someone she wasn’t, like you were actually ashamed of her, could push her over the edge.’

  ‘God, the opposite is true. I’m proud of Alice. I think she’s amazing. I’m so happy she’s my mother.’

  Here Rick smiles, a full beam of a smile; he adores her, that much is clear. If I didn’t know differently, I’d think he was in love with her.

  Our sashimi salad arrives – a whole mound of raw tuna slices on a bed of rocket, covered in some kind of dressing – and Rick says, ‘Let’s pick this up later. Nothing should spoil your tuna. Death row meal for me.’

  The rock shrimp tempura, arriving next, is outrageously good: hot, crunchy mouthfuls of prawn dipped into a sauce I’d really like to eat by the spoonful. Rick constantly refills our glasses and orders more sake with the merest hand signal, one finger raised to a waiter who always happens to be looking. (This guy is so cool, my feelings towards him are growing ever more complex. Never mind that he’s my father; like Ben, I might actually want to be him.)

  Over lunch he talks about some of the commissions he is working on. A nude portrait of a pregnant film star: ‘Not a fluffed-up Demi Moore,’ he says. ‘She’s very brave and self-confident, this woman; she’s allowed me to draw her slumped back in a chair, legs apart, breasts drooping. Not a flattering portrait in the traditional sense, but to me very feminine and rather wonderful. And she loves it.’

  There’s a member of the royal family sitting for him – he won’t say who – where again he was asked to do something mould-breaking.

  ‘People who come to me tend to know about art. They are looking for something that will interest them and they think I can deliver it,’ he says, without a note of arrogance, just the self-belief that must come with years of acclaim. ‘When the papers get hold of this particular painting, they will go ballistic. I can hardly wait.’

  We talk about Graham Sutherland’s portrait of Churchill, the one he hated.

  ‘That was a groundbreaking portrait in many ways. Presenting such a famous man warts and all. Of course, others before him had done that – Rembrandt’s commitment to naturalism was considered merciless at the time. But it wa
s unusual for someone so famous to have a portrait without all those conciliatory nips and tucks.’

  Fuelled by sake and beautiful food, our mood lightens throughout lunch.

  I tell Rick about a recent meeting Hannah had with Jay Jopling, sharing the most salacious details, and he retaliates with gossip about Lucian Freud.

  ‘He was a guest lecturer when we were at the Slade; only interested in the girls, and Alice in particular. She was – still is, I think – so extraordinarily beautiful, but she wore it carelessly. She had no idea how good-looking she was and I think that made men want her even more. It still breaks my heart what happened to her. She had everything – and then suddenly nothing.’

  ‘I don’t know anything about that time. Alice never wants to talk about it.’

  ‘She was so talented. The only one in our year to have a show, which was unheard of for an undergrad. She would have made it as an artist, definitely.’

  ‘But why couldn’t she go back to it? After me?’

  ‘She was traumatised. She shut down inside and it took her years to be able to function again. And she lost her character, her spark; it never came back. That must sound dramatic to you, but that’s how she was. And she never talks about that time now, not even to me. Because I don’t think she can say the actual words.’

  I notice that Rick has tears in his eyes as he tells me this; I feel a little like crying myself.

  ‘But that’s exactly why Hannah and I wanted her looking after Samuel. Because of the way she lost me. We could tell it wrecked her life.’

  ‘One baby can’t make up for another. You know that really, don’t you?’

  ‘It’s more that we wanted Alice to become part of our family. Only it’s not really working. I feel childish saying this, but I’m jealous of the way Alice and Samuel have bonded. I feel a bit left out.’

  ‘Luke, that’s exactly it.’

  ‘But I don’t see how we can ask her to stop looking after him. Even if we wanted to – which we don’t.’

  ‘You’re probably right. Let’s try a different tack. I think you and Alice need to get to know each other better. Spend more time together. That’s what’s missing at the moment. You know, don’t you, that you’re going to have to tell your adoptive mother about Alice sooner or later.’

  There is time now to examine my reasons for not being honest with my mother.

  Number one, I’m an only child and my mother is a widow. I was shipped in many years ago to resolve the grief of her infertility, a wound that still fuels her sadness almost three decades later.

  Secondly, my mother has made it clear – many times – that she thinks I have no interest (for which read no business) in finding my real parents.

  ‘Controversial suggestion,’ Rick says, when I tell him this, ‘but how about you put yourself first for a change?’

  It’s a radical idea, given that I have carved a career out of pleasing other people.

  ‘I’m not sure I could do that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m scared of rocking the boat. I’ve spent my whole life trying to keep it steady. My mother is prone to depression, but I’ve only recently understood that. As a kid, I thought her black moods, those periods when she pretty much refused to talk, were something to do with me. I thought I didn’t live up to her expectations. I wasn’t the child she wanted.’

  ‘You were the only one we ever wanted.’

  He says it quietly, carelessly, but his choice of word, this use of ‘we’, wedges itself inside my heart.

  ‘Why didn’t you keep me then?’

  It is the only question, and he must have known I was going to ask it, yet I see real pain flash into Rick’s face.

  ‘It was Alice’s decision and she made it for my sake, though she’d never admit it. She thought I would jeopardise my career by not going back to art school. We were so young and we had no money, and she didn’t want you to grow up poor. She convinced herself that giving you up was the ultimate sacrifice. Trouble was, she never got over it.’

  Impulsive and fuelled by sake, I just want to make amends. I want Alice and me to fast-forward through the decades of pain, hers and mine, the two of us grieving in our separate universes. It’s my suggestion to extend the day and go and find her. And Rick knows exactly where she will be.

  ‘Weekends she’s always in her studio. We won’t phone her. Let’s make it a surprise.’

  Mentally I haven’t prepared for this impromptu meeting, I realise as we stand outside the door of Alice’s studio half an hour later, Rick camouflaged by an enormous bunch of sunflowers.

  ‘Sure we shouldn’t have warned her?’

  ‘Don’t worry, she’ll be thrilled. You and I are her favourite people after all.’

  And she does seem ecstatically happy to see Rick, who is standing a little in front of me – ‘I’ve brought you a surprise!’ – though her face falls instantly when she realises that the surprise is me.

  ‘Luke. I can’t possibly let you into my studio.’

  She looks a little older in this light, without make-up, streaks of white and blue paint in her hair. But lovely, always. She’s wearing a paint-spattered shirt and loose blue trousers, a pair of espadrilles on her feet.

  The sake swirls through my veins, my brain, while I try to make sense of what she is saying. Her body language is chilling, arms spread out as if physically barring us from entering the studio. I’ve allowed the lunch with Rick to lull me into a false sense of security; Alice is clearly reeling from yesterday’s cataclysmic collision.

  ‘I’m so sorry, I know how much last night must have upset you.’

  ‘It’s fine, Luke. Really. You mustn’t worry about that. The thing is – and now I’m going to completely spoil it –I’m working on a present for you and Hannah and it isn’t ready to show you yet. If you come in, it will ruin it.’

  I laugh, relieved. ‘You had me worried there. I thought you couldn’t bear to see me. With good reason; it was inexcusable to forget about my … about Christina coming.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ she says. ‘I understand. It’s awkward for all of us. I’m just a bit protective of my “art”, that’s all.’ She makes ironic speech marks with her fingers.

  ‘In that case,’ Rick says, ‘let’s go to the pub. Luke and I are well on our way to getting completely smashed. May as well finish the job.’

  He takes hold of Alice’s arm.

  ‘Just the three of us,’ he says. ‘A bit like old times.’

  Then

  Alice

  None of us expected the unlikely alliance between Tom and Rick, a friendship that hovers on the tightrope of something more.

  ‘Are they lovers?’ Jake asks me one night when we’ve left them drinking alone in the pub.

  ‘I don’t think Rick has lovers as such, not in the relationship sense. None that he admits to anyway. I think he’s still getting used to the fact that he can be open about being gay.’

  Tonight it’s the four of us for Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon gig at Earls Court, a show we’ve been talking about for weeks. There has been so much hype around this album; everyone I know has had it on their turntable for the past six months. But to see it performed live in an arena like Earls Court, with a troupe of backing singers and musicians, a backdrop of films and special effects culminating in the sound of an aeroplane crashing onto the stage during ‘On the Run’, well, our minds are collectively blown.

  ‘Us and Them’ is my favourite song on the album. I love its slow, soothing church-like beginning, the heartbreaking sweetness of Dave Gilmour’s vocal when he sings ‘we’re only ordinary men’. And then the exploding crescendo of the chorus, so dramatic and powerful and shockingly loud that my chest feels tight and I realise I am close to crying.

  Most of all I love to watch Jake, who stands motionless, expressionless, as i
f he is in a trance. I want to grab his hand and tell him, ‘This is going to be you,’ but he is lost to everything but the music.

  It feels after the final encore – ‘Eclipse’, two minutes – as if we have witnessed something momentous. When the band finally leave the stage, there’s a fragment of stunned silence before the screaming begins.

  Afterwards, we try to find a pub that’s still serving, but everywhere is shut.

  ‘We can’t just go home after that,’ Jake says. ‘We need to mark tonight. We need an adventure.’

  ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ Tom says.

  ‘Like a road trip?’ Rick asks.

  ‘Exactly. Where shall we go?’

  ‘My aunt has a place in Southwold, right by the sea,’ Rick says. ‘She says I can use it whenever I want.’

  We leave London an hour or so later in Tom’s beaten-up Austin Maxi, a wreck of a thing the colour of French mustard. Tom drives, Rick navigates and Jake and I sit in the back, my head resting on his shoulder, his hand tucked between my thighs. Before we’re even out of town, I’ve fallen asleep, and when I next wake it is as if to a dream, the car parked up beside a row of pastel-coloured beach huts – primrose yellow, mint green, sky blue – and in front of us this vast flat sea, grey with flecks of silver. The sky is beginning its transition – we couldn’t have timed it better – and the four of us jump a few feet down from the car park straight onto the beach. It is perhaps the best sunrise I have ever seen, a sheet of deep purple with flashes of hot pink and orange, the slow backlighting of yellow and gold. I think: I’ll remember this when I’m old. It’s one of those moments so intensely visceral it must be burnt onto my memory.

  The house is one street back from the beach, a sloping two-up, two-down terraced house painted pale blue with a bright yellow front door. It is so close to the beach you can hear the waves crashing from every room in the house. Rick opens up an airing cupboard and finds clean sheets for us – Jacob and me in the room with the double bed, Tom in the single room – and Rick says, ‘Oh, don’t worry about me, I can sleep anywhere,’ which tells us to ask no questions.