A Stolen Season

by Rodney Hall

  So he turned out the way he was, mystified when chancing on Robert Burns’s cry from the heart:

  O, wud some Power the giftie gi’e us

  To see oursells as others see us!

  John Philip had no idea how he could be otherwise. Nor could he tell if any of his friends actually liked him. And did they ever mean what they said? This was the puzzle. In contrast to such suspicions he could accept his physical misfortunes with a certain graceful fatalism.

  The decades slipped past, noticed only accidentally, as it were, until maturity invested him with round shoulders and a cadaverous complexion. The handsome house he lived in, plus a sizeable portfolio of shares—having come to him with very few strings attached by the HFT, the family trust—were enough for him to live free from employment or purpose of any kind. The things around him were too good to let go, so he hadn’t a clue how much they would cost to replace.

  Once or twice he encountered a Hardingham who was not connected. He found the thought of their lives strangely enviable. They were, by definition, obscure. And free of the need to pay the price. His bushy hair turned grey and his hairline receded in an unattractive manner. Even the Jaguar parked in the garage acquired vintage status. Then middle age itself was shown to have limits: he turned sixty and a clan of condescending cousins flew to Melbourne to celebrate the fact. Oh yes, they were still aware of his existence. They remembered. They were counting. They were, after all, related . . . though he knew next to nothing about what had happened to them during the last half-century or so. The HFT office sent a card and a pot of homemade cumquat marmalade. Soon (indeed immediately after sixty-one) sixty-seven was upon him. Then momentously—at sixty-eight—he discovered a use for the faith he had in his parents’ belief that he would one day be someone special.

  At this late stage John Philip came into a curious legacy.

  His great-granduncle, who died privately and childless in 1912, left instructions in his will that ‘the first son of the first son of my brother Oswald’ should inherit a sealed package lodged with the Leigh-on-Sea branch of a famous British bank.

  It is for this that John Philip has waited, unawares, all his life. A legacy for him and him alone. He cherishes the novelty of the idea as a deeply emotional event: someone has thought of him—amazing.

  The bank cannot say what the package contains but willingly provides him with dimensions: 36cm x 22cm x 5cm. He responds by declining to have this windfall sent by courier. Instead he will claim it in person. That seems proper. Accordingly he travels to England in the first available business-class seat from Tullamarine. Nothing is any longer any trouble.

  On arrival ‘at home’ in the UK, John Philip Hardingham purchases a leather satchel of appropriate size and spends two nights in a modest but comfortable hotel near Paddington Station, convinced that this suitably marks the end of the obscurity he has been saddled with since childhood. Well, he has a premonition. Perhaps England, after all, will turn out to be the land of opportunity.

  Once his identity has been established the package is retrieved from the bank’s vault and placed in his hands. Heavy and stitched into a calico wrapping it looks a hundred years older than expected and comes accompanied by an envelope sealed with a medallion of red wax. Suppressing heart palpitations he takes delivery of his good luck, as if all this fuss is the greatest bore. After the requisite exchange of thank-yous and obligatory disclaimers he carries his precious future out to the privacy of a park bench overlooking the Thames estuary.

  First he broaches the letter, extracting a single sheet of thick paper, which unfolds to reveal an enigmatic message in copperplate handwriting.

  To be opened one hundred years from this

  8 January 1912

  by the firstborn of the firstborn, etcetera, provided he be twenty-one years

  ______

  I leave you this book, as it was left me by my uncle Sir Nevill Hardingham in December 1879, complete with the comments of the noteworthy critic, John Ruskin, Esq., who wrote, “You may imagine my shock, Hardingham. Our greatest master (whose high reputation is the subject of my own life’s work) has left sketchbook after sketchbook of the most shameful sort—women’s pudenda: ‘that of which we ought to be ashamed’ indeed—a horror utterly inexcusable and to me inexplicable. All must be burnt for the sake of Mr. Turner’s good name and the history of British art.”

  Left for a few moments in charge of the fire, he took it upon himself to rescue at least one book of drawings as evidence. Thus it came into my hands and I have protected it with secrecy ever since. Here you will find thirty-nine sketches, all but one addressing the same subject. My ownership is legitimate in light of the fate which would have befallen the book without our intervention. However, when it came to the point, I found I did not have it in me to risk inflaming public outrage, as feared by Ruskin—who was, after all, a true friend to Turner—hence my compromise of providing a further century for a decision to be made and a responsible recipient to make it. It is my sincere hope that you, who hold this letter in your hand, will know best what to do.

  Monckton Hardingham

  It is his. His alone. John Philip Hardingham assesses the hard-edged parcel and its cloth wrapping. He crosses the street to beg the loan of some scissors from the receptionist at a nearby Bed & Breakfast. Thus equipped, he takes himself back to the park bench and begins unpicking the stitches. No one in his family knows anything about this—that’s what so galvanizes him—or about his purpose here at an obscure seaside town. Not one of them suspects he sits on any such bench breathing the sea-laced air. Proliferating Hardinghams are everywhere except here. He removes the calico covering, folds it and stows it away in the satchel. He has the book in his hands, heavy as marble and cold as the vault where it has been kept.

  John Philip savours the most profound moment of privacy he has ever known.

  A disturbance of chilly air from the estuary invades the land to engulf him. He shivers briefly. He lays his hand on the book. He is its witness. The cover board has been scuffed and scored, with one corner quite seriously burnt. He absorbs this information before choosing his moment. Without haste he opens the first page, on which is written a single word, Secret, with a date at the bottom, 1851. The next page reveals a drawing of a vagina. He gazes at the thicket of hasty pencil marks—which might equally express delight, defiance or brutal rage—slashed on the page. With nothing held back, the artist’s passionate energy is as utterly exposed as his subject.

  John Philip has no need to proceed further to guess what he has in his possession.

  The January day envelops him in gentle changeability while he puts his past failures forever behind him. A vast body of water thrusts with leaden persistence against the embankment below the park bench. An hour passes. He does not feel the need to turn another page. The sweetness of power whisks him up into the grey sky. He has in his hands the means to set things right. He can, if he chooses, retrieve his stolen youth. There is a kind of perfection in the operations of fate. He sheds the utterly empty life he has lived, his lack of love, his consistent disappointment in those who volunteered friendship before choosing a hurtful moment to withdraw it, his weary indifference, encumbered by things that would outlast him, and the carcase of betrayed loyalties. Thrilling anxiety seizes him in its talons. The entire Thames estuary stirs with musical agitation. His hands tremble. Light flickers throughout his root system of nerves. His bones lock in place, the remote legacy of a hereditary warrior awakening after dormant millennia. In a flash he is charged. The flesh wakes. He has purpose. He is replete.

  His own hypocrisy and servility are now revealed as having been no more than a tactical camouflage. The insults he has smiled through, the tears he suppressed are not lost. Nemesis, at last, comes home to roost. Those old Greeks knew a thing or two. An end to modesty. The honey of hatred is his, even as old loyalties turn toxic. Here and now the torments of obscurity cease.
He will punish the wise and stupid alike. He will unmask their secret thoughts and turn their stomachs against themselves. He will plant a humiliating nightmare in the minds of the unsuspecting. All thanks to the sanctified Monckton.

  He closes the cover and safely stows the sketchbook away in the satchel. He walks out into space.

  Once seated on the train and halfway to London he realizes he forgot to return the scissors to the Bed & Breakfast. It bothers him for an instant only. He has a cyclone of possibilities to think about. Of course, he has heard of J. M. W. Turner, though art never much interested him. Rattling along among stained walls through the outskirts of the great city he consults Google on his mobile. Here he chances on the information that, only a matter of four months previously, on 21 September to be precise, a long-lost Turner oil painting (purchased for £3,700) sold for £20 million.

  Breathe.

  *

  Quentin Martinez-Morini allows her surprise and amusement to show when the oddest thing happens. While watching a workman fit her new nameplate to the front door in Clarendon Street, East Melbourne (she still somehow doubts her own existence, let alone having confidence in her newly acquired qualifications), she notices a stranger crossing the road. Tall, grey and distinguished, he is a man in late middle age. He approaches her and immediately announces his intention of commissioning a building. No . . . he has not consulted her website, no . . . nor looked at her work online. He has not even heard of her. What attracts him is the simplicity of the shingle the signwriter has just fixed in place: Quentin Martinez-Morini / Architect.

  ‘I live in a house just around the corner,’ he explains, ‘which I wish to convert. The downstairs is to be a lobby for the small gallery you are to build on some land at the back. Whatever the cost. You are to have a free hand. The design needs to be top-of-the-line, appropriate for a small collection of works by a world-famous artist. There will never be more and never less than thirty-nine drawings on permanent show. Plus a display cabinet for three extra items: the cover they were bound in—with a card to explain the context of a burnt corner—a calico outer wrapping and a single page letter. The building will be called The Hardingham Family Turner Collection.’

  Quentin Martinez-Morini says yes.

  An architect having been engaged and her concept approved, John Philip moves to Sydney to keep himself from interfering, so the fulfilment of his plan won’t be dulled by watching the building take shape . . . nor will his pleasure be spoiled by the inevitable disagreements and overrulings, the frustrations and delays of preparing the site, waiting for materials to be delivered, suffering the noise and dust, the intrusion of a labour force, haggles over budget concessions and the anxieties which plague every stage of an incomplete building. He is better off out of it. He has attended to everything necessary—legal advice about the rights of inheritance and potential issues with artworks leaving the United Kingdom—all satisfactorily resolved. In Sydney he proposes dividing the last year of his obscurity between the opera and a beach umbrella. Satisfied to leave everything in Quentin’s hands, including how to frame and hang the collection (the book has already been meticulously dismantled by an expert—though astonished—book-binder, the scholarly John Stinson of North Carlton), John Philip’s instructions include keeping every aspect of the gallery secret. Even the picture framer is paid extra for strict confidentiality. Prior to the launch no arrangements are to be made that might suggest the least hint of anything special in the offing. And categorically no information leaked to the press. On his return he plans to move back into his bedroom upstairs and live there. In his own good time he will attend to the matter of when and how he might declare the exhibition open. First, he reserves the right to experience the full impact by walking in—as might a total stranger—to experience for himself, alone and without the complication of witnesses, the artworks he has inherited.

  So now, having been notified by Quentin Martinez-Morini that the building is ready, he arranges for her to meet him at the airport and drop him home. As instructed, she hands him his security key and then drives off down the street to park a block away where she must wait until he emerges with his verdict. She can have no idea that his reason for insisting on this arrangement is to protect himself from disappointment—because why should this be different from the rest of his life?—and to provide time for recovering his equanimity.

  The exterior looks pretty much as it always did: a Federation house built in 1909 (just before the bequest letter was written), discreetly restored and repainted, with no sign of the new building concealed behind it. Belatedly noticing an unfamiliar feature, he smiles with relief: the window frames and front door have acquired narrow steel outlines, establishing a twenty-first century context. Exactly the quality of detail he hoped for but could never have suggested. He turns the key. His mother’s salon has been fitted out as the reception area and ticket office. With a delicious thrill he anticipates her horrified expression when she sees it. She has no sense of humour. The corridor with closed rooms on either side leads to where the garden door once was—and so into a glass box connecting him with the first clean concrete space of the gallery.

  He walks through. In the middle of the parquetry floor he stops. He looks. He turns to his right, he turns to his left. Shocked by Turner’s obsession. Turner’s certainty. Finally he is in a position to assess the advantages of having kept the contents of the sketchbook secret from himself, the first drawing being the only one familiar to him. Gut-sickened, he despairs at the brilliant success of the surprise. All around him hang drawings celebrating the cunt. Artworks: powerful, immediate, alive. Their intensity takes him completely off-guard. He suffers a stab of envy for those unborn generations who will be free to stand where he stands and see what he sees without any of this unsettling agitation. The shock is not just a question of subject matter. He is arrested by the artist’s sublime impertinence—thumbing his nose at time and death—the joy and pain of a man who has mustered courage to declare his mania. A man who, having eliminated every mitigating circumstance that might soften the act of staring down his own mortality, then flings it in the faces of his detractors.

  Dated the last year of Turner’s life, these images with their lovingly erotic shading and ferocious frankness grasp at truth so greedily that the quest, the monomania, seems as much bafflement as a cry from the heart. Oddly they evoke the paradox of our species, ready to slaughter one another by the million for the sake of a few wrong words or a different name for God yet touchily insecure when confronted by the mystery of creation . . . and at the same time busily overpopulating the world! Well, right here is where that creation begins: the call. Also the call to a rapture which his own life lacks. John Philip Hardingham finds himself transfixed, mesmerized, tempted and repelled.

  He draws breath. Contrary to expectation the exhibition speaks to him. He is not indifferent. He gets it: morphing one thing into another is how art works! That’s how it interrogates the natural order. Scribble becomes hair, grief music, paint flesh. In this case the artist’s own fall embodies, in itself, a denial of time and change—made all the more overwhelming by the luminous silence of deflected daylight trapped by ceiling recesses (Quentin’s subtle achievement) to cast a shadowless light on the pale grey walls.

  Here and now in his own gallery John Philip satisfies his curiosity. He stands. He stands back. He stands close. He trembles. Each study he observes with insatiable scrutiny. He progresses round the room and into the second exhibition space, rising to the third, engrossed in the examination of the privacies of women—in two cases with the intrusion of male sexual parts—drawings that probe the mystery. Some a tangle of dense black lines, some delicately suggestive and whimsical. One of them, but only one, with an alleviating touch of colour: a faint pink smudge, delicate as a rosebud.

  The show is a success. A triumph, no less. Time stops. He feels unutterably alone. He has reached the end.

  But no . . . not the
end . . . where the ramp leads back towards the lobby a suspended frame displays the last drawing. Quentin has chosen to separate it from the rest, afloat in an oblong of light. It shows a young beardless male, naked except for the peaked helmet he wears, disfigured by obscene splashes of red. Dreadfully mutilated he is pictured in the act of collapsing—or perhaps, more hideously, rising from the ground—a broken figure contorted by the agony of survival. The resurrection indeed. The re-arisal. Was it possible that Turner in his arrogance (the great Turner) had reached a stage of understanding beyond the doubts that plague the rest of mankind? Pencil marks dug into the paper suggest some such violent certainty as disgust or self-hatred. Tight as a second skull, the helmet with its narrow brim casts just enough shadow to blur the eyes. The head lolls. The upper lip hints at a sardonic leer. A red thumbprint on the chest—even more personal than the signature in the bottom corner—imparts to the wounded man’s blood the most intimate touch the artist could possibly have placed there.

  John Philip Hardingham recoils from a passion so intense it enters simultaneously the language of the eye and the soul . . . the bitterness of his own wasted life is shown to be not only unbearable but inexcusable.

  Quentin Martinez-Morini, waiting across the road, watches him emerge from her steel-trimmed doorway, surprised that he stumbles slightly. He steps down to the gravelled front garden. He has not looked up. Reduced to a bundle of sticks, he perches on the wrought iron bench as if weightless and brittle.

  Any minute he might blow away.

  She decides the time has come to face the music, impatient to know what he could possibly object to. She braces to withstand a disagreeable episode. And he meets her unspoken question as she draws close. His gristling throat contracts, making several attempts to speak. His eyes seem to see beyond her. Can it be that he needs time to recover? She feels a lightning flash of resentment that Turner’s secret works have moved him with an intensity she herself missed.