by Clare Empson
Moonlight so sweet and pale from heaven falling,
Wavelets that murmur low to us are calling.
I’ve heard it so often that the words and melody have saturated my brain. I fall asleep hearing it, I wake up anticipating it. Once, worryingly, I walked downstairs one morning and heard Alice singing in the kitchen. Of course, by the time I got there, the singing had stopped, which raises the obvious question: Dude, are you imagining things?
I haven’t told Hannah about this. But my silence is driving a wedge between us. More and more, I catch her watching me with that little stripe of anxiety between her eyebrows. Not long ago, I used to crave her concern; now I want to avoid it. I won’t let anything come between me and my lunch-hour sleuthing, my daily fix of Alice and Samuel, this flatline into my past.
I arrive home at six o’clock to find Hannah and Alice sitting at the kitchen table.
‘Tea?’ Hannah asks, gesturing at the pot.
‘Beer,’ I say, heading for the fridge.
Alice says, ‘Right, I must be off. I’m already late.’
I say, popping open my can, ‘Where do you go, Alice, when you rush off like this? Is there someone you have to visit?’
I’m not even sure where I’m heading with this, but since Ben raised the suspicion that Rick might not actually be my father, I’m wondering if someone else is going to come out of the woodwork. At this point nothing would surprise me.
I look into her eyes as I speak, just to see what’s there. Her face is expressionless, as always, but I detect a wariness.
‘I rush off to my studio, Luke. I have work to catch up on.’
‘Please stay for a few minutes. I feel like I never see you.’
‘Sure,’ Alice says, but there’s no warmth to her voice, none at all.
I join them at the kitchen table, where Samuel is in Hannah’s arms, having his bedtime bottle of milk, eyes darting from left to right like he’s reading a hymn sheet. And the instinct to self-sabotage rises within me, serpent-like, impossible to ignore.
‘What did you and Samuel get up to today, Alice?’
‘Oh, the usual. We went to the library this morning. He’s obsessed with books; I think you’ve got the makings of a real bookworm.’
‘Did you go to the park? Did you feed the ducks?’
‘Yes, how did you know?’
‘You sing to Samuel, don’t you, Alice?’
‘Sometimes. But—’
‘There’s a song you sing. “Santa Lucia”, it’s called. I looked it up. Did you sing it to me when I was a baby? It’s just, when I heard you singing it, I felt something. Perhaps it was recall, a memory. Do you think that’s possible? Do you think I might remember?’
I’m asking too many questions. I’ve stood up now and am pacing. Unable to stop.
Alice says, voice calm, ‘But when can you have heard me sing it?’
‘Today in the park.’
‘You were there today? And you saw us? Why didn’t you come and say hello?’
Hannah is staring at me, aghast, no other word for it, and Alice looks a little horrified herself. But the strange thing is, I just don’t care. I am unravelling rapidly, and I no longer mind – me, the anxious people-pleaser – who gets to see it.
‘I was in a rush.’
Alice stands up from the table, squeezes my shoulder perfunctorily and says, ‘Well, another time please join us. We’d be so thrilled to see you.’
We.
Alice and Samuel. Alice and Charlie. The mother with the interchangeable baby.
The moment the front door has closed behind Alice, Hannah says, ‘What the fuck is going on?’
I sit slumped over my beer, head in hands.
‘Why do I think you’re following Alice in your lunch hour?’
‘Because that’s what I am doing.’
‘Why? For God’s sake, Luke.’
‘I don’t know. Something about her is making me uneasy. Don’t you feel it? Can’t you tell how obsessed she is with Samuel?’
‘And that’s why you’re stalking her around the park? Your mother and your son. Can you hear how that sounds?’
I sit scrunched up, arms wrapped around myself, a primal curl.
She reaches across the table for my hand.
‘Babe,’ she says, ‘this whole Alice thing has really taken a toll on you, hasn’t it? I wish we’d never asked her to look after Samuel in the first place, but he adores her. And we feel safe with her looking after him. That counts for everything, doesn’t it?’
‘Does it?’
‘I think we need to find someone for you to talk to. I think this situation has triggered some kind of …’ she breaks off to choose her words, ‘psychological collapse.’
‘You’re not listening to me, H. Alice is taking our baby away and you can’t even see it.’
Then
Alice
I have learned so much about Jake in these weeks and I understand how to look after him. I am watchful, like Eddie, but I never mention his depression or the shadow of his childhood. There’s a new comprehension between us, that’s all. I encourage him to avoid alcohol and to take up exercise and he obliges, most days he runs in Hyde Park. When he is quiet, when a look of sorrow falls upon his face, I am quiet too. Silent but present, that’s my intention. I can soften his solitude, I can show him that he never needs to feel alone. And we are happy again, the blip of his five-day drinking binge, almost, but not quite, forgotten.
I am six months pregnant by the time of my show and the dress I choose to wear at the opening, a long, silky thing in vivid poppy red, clings to my swelling stomach. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror admiring my profile while Jacob blind-shaves in the bath.
‘Definitely pregnant now,’ I say, and he laughs.
‘Why, were you thinking you might not be?’
‘I like that it shows. I like people knowing.’
‘Me too,’ he says. ‘But there will be press tonight and that means photos …’
He trails off; no need to say the rest. For I still haven’t told my parents that I, an unmarried girl of nineteen, am expecting a baby in May. This shouldn’t matter in 1973, but to my father it will be the worst of crimes. I am jolted back to one of his more cringeworthy lectures, post-church, mid-wine, during a lunch to which I had foolishly invited a school friend. The wine, as always, was just for him, the morality sermon custom-designed for the two teenage girls at his table. The most odious part, I recall, was his slurred, clichéd repetition of an old biblical verse: ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies’, or words to that effect. The friend, Matilda, dropped me soon after that and I never invited anyone home again.
Even so, I feel a little melancholy getting ready for the biggest moment of my life knowing the woman who gave birth to me, who brought me up to the best of her beleaguered ability, will not be there to share it. And Jake, as always, knows what is in my head.
‘Soon we’ll have our own family,’ he says as we set off for Robin’s gallery, ‘and that’s what matters.’
In both of us, a deep desire to give this unborn baby of ours everything we didn’t have ourselves. Beyond words, beyond bone; he will be confident, loved, listened to, encouraged, allowed to veer from any path. Choice, freedom, unequivocal support, oh we can get really quite evangelical on the subject of what makes for a perfect childhood. The opposite of ours is the shortcut.
How to describe the feeling of walking into a gallery where my painting of Jake and Eddie hangs in the window, where my name is spelled out against the white walls in huge capital letters: ALICE GARLAND. As instructed, we are half an hour early, yet there are already several people walking around, glass in hand, observing the art. It makes my stomach swoop just to see them.
‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ I say low-voiced to Jake.
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br /> ‘You’ve already done it,’ he says, with a brief kiss to my cheek.
He throws his arms open to take in the gallery, its walls covered in my art.
‘Your time has come,’ he says. ‘And you, Alice Garland, are one hundred per cent ready for it.’
Rick is already here, drinking champagne and chatting to Robin’s guests. Unlike me he is entirely at ease amidst a room full of art lovers, thrilled to be introduced over and over again as Robin’s ‘latest discovery’. If he carries on with his avant-garde portraiture, Robin has intimated that the next show will be his.
‘Your paintings look so beautiful,’ he says, hugging Jake and I in turn. ‘I actually wept when I saw them. See that guy?’
He points out a collector he recognises.
‘The one in the red corduroy jacket and black polo neck? Robin told me he dropped eight thousand pounds in this gallery last year.’
Corduroy Jacket seems fixated by the pietà, titled Apparition, me seated with Jake asleep in my lap. I like the way his dark hair flops over my left hip, his hand curled between my thighs, his face, eyes closed, so beautiful in repose.
Robin comes over carrying two glasses of orange juice (Jake has avoided alcohol for three months now and is in better shape than ever).
‘I invited Jasper to come before everyone else,’ he says, nodding at the man. ‘Early reports are favourable. He’ll buy a few tonight, I think, but that’s the one he likes best.’
With his established artists, Robin takes a sixty per cent cut of the sales. As a lowly second-year art student, I was awarded a generous advance, but all the takings go to the gallery.
‘If we sell the lot, there’ll be a big bonus for you,’ he said at the time, ‘and dinner at San Lorenzo either way.’
‘I don’t want to sell that one.’ The words are out before I can stop them. Both Robin and Jake look at me, confused.
‘But, Alice, my dear,’ Robin speaks slowly, as if to a child, ‘all the work has been priced up. I bought it from you with the advance, I thought you understood that.’
It’s a moment before I can speak, irritated to find I’m fighting back tears.
‘It’s so personal. Me and Jake. I don’t think I want it hanging on someone else’s wall. Can’t we put a red sticker on it?’
‘It’s the best painting in the show. With the highest price tag.’ Robin’s voice is neutral, patient; he wants to be kind.
‘You can do another one,’ Jake says, a whispered aside.
I shake my head and have to wait before I’m able to speak. Even so, my voice cracks a little.
‘You can’t just knock out copies. It doesn’t work like that. The reason I love that painting is because it holds all my feelings about you. Why would I want someone else to have it?’
Jake says, ‘Robin? Could we keep it? Alice will give you back some of the advance. How about that?’
‘The whole thing,’ I say, ‘if you like. I haven’t spent any of it. I just want to keep that painting. It’s too personal to sell.’
I wonder if my pregnancy hormones are getting the better of me, but I don’t think so. I need to protect Jake’s vulnerability; this painting leaves us too exposed. My love for him, my desire to keep him safe from the darkness he tries so hard to hide. The self-loathing I now understand. It’s all there in this picture.
At exactly this moment, Jasper turns around and catches sight of the three of us talking, Jake with his arm wrapped around me.
‘Ah,’ he says, ‘the artistes.’ He pronounces it with an exaggerated accent. ‘Congratulations. Your work is wonderful.’
We shake hands, and although I avoid Robin’s eyes, I can feel his fierce scrutiny. I know what he is thinking: please don’t mess this up. He may be at the top of the food chain, but he still has bills to pay; he can’t allow an overemotional girl to get in the way of his business sense.
‘I’m particularly interested in Apparition,’ Jasper says. ‘The style is reminiscent of classical religious art. Is that what you intended? You spent the summer in Florence, I believe?’
And so I tell him about my visits to the Accademia, my obsession with the work of Stefano Pieri and in particular his pietà.
‘There was something so sad in that picture, sad but not in the slightest bit sentimental, almost as if it had been caught off camera. That’s what I wanted to capture with this show.’
‘And why the title, Apparition?’
‘I suggested that,’ Robin says. ‘I’m not sure exactly why. I just got this peculiar sense of déjà vu when I first saw the painting.’
‘It’s a very private piece,’ I say, and Jake squeezes my hand.
‘Exactly,’ says Jasper. ‘That’s what I like about it. It’s full of emotion and love and pathos. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to buy it. And a couple of the others too.’
‘Wonderful news.’ Robin has a firm smile for me as the two of them walk away to secure the deal.
Jake says, ‘Please don’t let it ruin your night. We can do as many pietàs as you want. I am your forever life model.’
The gallery is filling up now with the young and beautiful, Robin’s hand-picked crowd of artists, musicians, actors and models, art buyers and journalists, photographers with cameras slung around their necks. Jake is more used to this, and when a photographer from the Daily Express approaches us as we stand beside the pietà with its little red sticker, he puts his hand around my waist.
‘Could you just turn towards Jacob a little, Alice?’ the photographer asks, framing the shot.
Instinctively, I rest one hand on my stomach, emphasising the pregnancy in that unconscious way of new mothers.
‘A little closer together, please.’
Other photographers have begun to gather around now, and they join in, calling out requests.
It’s easiest for me to look at Jake instead of the photographers, and so I stare up at him and he drops a kiss on my forehead, both arms curved around me, and this is the shot that will make most of the papers tomorrow, the one my parents will see.
Now
Luke
The childhood of an adoptee is characterised by its secrets. Rarely, for example, is the true genetic identity of the child revealed. A successful reunion between adopted child and natural parent relies upon stark honesty between both parties.
Who Am I? The Adoptee’s Hidden Trauma by Joel Harris
Rick has a studio in Clerkenwell, a few blocks down from his apartment. I know exactly where to find him. I’m intrigued to see this place and a little bit excited to catch him unawares, but I hadn’t counted on having to deal with his abrasive assistant first. Of course Richard Fields has an assistant. Doesn’t Damien Hirst have about fifty of them? I should have expected this.
The studio, actually the ground floor of a former factory, has an intercom beside its locked double doors, announcing several companies and the intentionally misleading ‘Fields’.
I press the buzzer and a male voice, not Rick’s, floats towards me.
‘Hello? Can I help?’
‘Yes, I’m here to see Rick.’
See my cunning employment of the abbreviation by which he is known to his friends.
‘Do you have an appointment?’ The man seems unimpressed.
‘No, but if you tell him Luke is here, that will be enough.’
‘Look, Luke, I’m sorry, but Richard cannot be disturbed when he is working. And if you were someone who knew him well, then I wouldn’t need to tell you that.’
‘Perhaps you should tell him his son is here to see him. That might help change his mind.’
Electrifying silence between us, then the buzzer goes and I push open the front door. Behind another closed door I hear male voices, Rick’s slightly raised and his assistant’s more of a murmur. They come out together, Rick frowning, the assistant, a tall man
around my own age, with undisguised curiosity on his handsome, model-like face. He’s wearing a white T-shirt that reads Love is the Drug, with paint-spattered Evisu jeans, the iconic ‘E’ visible on both arse cheeks when he turns around.
‘Luke, this is a surprise. Just to say, I hate, loathe, detest being dropped in on, and if it wasn’t for your shock declaration about our relationship, you’d never have got past my assistant. This is Henry, by the way. But now that my concentration has been well and truly wrecked, what can I do for you?’
I struggle, momentarily, for words. Why am I here disrupting this intensely famous artist, who looks fucked off to say the least? But then I remember. Actually it’s me who is fucked off.
‘Shall I say in front of Henry?’
My voice is as hostile as I feel. Rick considers me in silence. He looks at the watch on his wrist, an elegant thing I’ve noticed before, silver with a navy-blue face.
‘Is this your lunch hour? Shall we grab a coffee? I won’t be long,’ he says to Henry, who is watching this interplay virtually open-mouthed.
I follow Rick out of the building and along the street and neither of us says a word until we reach a café with bleached wood floors, white walls and two hostile-looking baristas standing behind a counter.
‘Best cup of coffee in London,’ Rick says. ‘There’s a roastery out the back.’
He orders two espressos without consulting me about my choice and we carry them through to a little courtyard at the back. Rick, who has always been warm, welcoming, fun, is none of these things. It’s unnerving, this cool and silent scrutiny; he’s not going to make it easy for me.
‘I suppose I should tell you why I’m here,’ I say, and Rick just nods and takes a small sip of his espresso.
It’s hard to begin with, to enunciate the interior chaos, the slow and steady collapsing of my world, but once I’ve started, I find I cannot stop.
