The Sparsholt Affair

by Alan Hollinghurst

  ‘Ah, no, I suppose not . . .’ said Dax.

  ‘Sic transit,’ said Iffy.

  Johnny felt he must be clear. ‘The reason I came was to bring you this, from Mr Hendy’ – handing over his parcel crumpled at the edge now from carrying.

  ‘Ah, yes!’ said Freddie, as if the evening had suddenly become interesting.

  Johnny bit his lip gently while Dax tore the wrapping and let it drop away when he took hold of the inner cocoon of tissue paper. ‘Mr Hendy says he’s done the best he can, but some of the damage was quite severe.’

  ‘Right, let’s see,’ said Dax, with a little throat-clearing at the mention of damage.

  ‘Oh, that’s come up nicely,’ said Freddie, as Dax discarded the tissue and held the picture under the light from the candelabra. ‘I’d quite forgotten it was that colour.’

  ‘What’s this?’ said the grey lady, coming up.

  ‘It’s the little Goyle, Jill, you may not remember, it used to hang in my study. One of the first pictures I ever bought.’ Dax turned it over – it was signed on the back ‘Goyle 36’. ‘I don’t know what Stanley did to his blacks, but they always crack up. And no doubt thirty years of coal fires and cigarette smoke had rather dulled its impact.’ To Johnny, in the shop, the wonder had been that something so modern could look already so injured and antique; though out of its frame, the original colours, covered and squashed by the off-white slip, had showed brightly round the edges, as if still wet. Now, restored, the small abstract landscape, thick blocks of black and green beneath a stripe of white, gave no hint of these indignities. ‘Well, there you are.’

  Jill seemed cautiously satisfied. ‘I’m sure Ivan will be pleased,’ she said.

  ‘Oh . . .’ said Iffy. ‘Ivan’s not here tonight.’

  ‘I’ve just seen him,’ said Jill.

  ‘Do you know Ivan?’ said Freddie, with raised eyebrows and a wondering shake of the head, his amusing readiness to picture Johnny’s confusion.

  ‘Um, I shouldn’t think so,’ said Johnny. ‘Who is he . . . ?’

  ‘Ah, there he is!’ said Dax, warmly focusing attention away from himself. Just inside the door now was a smiling young man also in a tweed suit, talking to Herta as if she were the Queen and not just the grumpy old woman handing him a drink. He gave a hoot of laughter, then charmingly pursued an anecdote of some kind, while Herta, head on one side, looked up at him with coy signs of the approval she had firmly withheld from Johnny.

  ‘You don’t know him?’ Jill made sure.

  ‘I don’t know anyone!’ Johnny said.

  ‘Oh, you’ll like him,’ said Iffy, with her heavy nod.

  ‘We’ve all grown awfully fond of him,’ said Jill. ‘He’s Stanley Goyle’s nephew.’ Johnny wasn’t sure if this was offered as the reason for their fondness.

  ‘Oh, I see . . . really . . .’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ said Freddie, with another humorous shake of the head, ‘you won’t easily dislodge Ivan from our affections.’

  Now Ivan slipped across the room towards them, neat, self-possessed, with the hunch of playful apology, dark eyes glittering in the candlelight. Johnny felt curious, relieved, and under some kind of social expectation, as in childhood, when there was someone else his own age he would have to play with. He tried not to take Ivan’s suit, not new, but smart, and worn with a waistcoat and wide red tie, as a comment on his own tight cords, bush jacket and open-neck shirt. Ivan greeted his elders with rapid nods, ‘Hello, hello . . .’ and grinned at Johnny, and shook his hand. ‘You must be Jonathan,’ he said, with a Welsh lilt and sense of meaning something more: ‘I’m Ivan.’

  ‘You missed a marvellous talk,’ said Freddie.

  ‘Oh, I know, I know, I’m sorry . . .’ said Ivan, kissing Iffy, nodding to Jill, and then kissing Dax himself on both cheeks, which caused a fleeting self-consciousness in them both.

  ‘Ivan’s been helping me with it,’ said Dax. ‘He knows all about it’ – looking at him, Ivan’s suit somehow mimicking the older man’s style. ‘He’s been a terrific help.’

  ‘Isn’t that Denis’s job?’ said Jill.

  ‘Oh, Denis has got his own work to see to,’ said Dax.

  Jill looked round for Denis. ‘I thought you were his work,’ she said.

  *

  Johnny went to the lavatory, and waited politely some way from the door but not too far off to claim he was next. He was happy to escape from Ivan and then as soon as he’d left the room he was anxious to get back. Along the carpeted passageway many pictures hung, and he picked up the candlestick from the table to see them better. There was a large brown portrait photograph of a man with a bald head and a white moustache who Johnny thought might be Evert’s father; two framed cartoons of impenetrable pre-war humour; and nearest the bedroom at the end (beyond whose open door his candlelight bobbed back at him from a mirror) a red chalk drawing of a naked man, with a body-builder’s chest and ridged stomach, artily cut off at the knee and the neck, and with a high-minded blur where the cock and balls should be. He heard the loo flush just as Denis came towards him along the hallway. ‘Aha . . !’ Denis said, and stopped to peer briefly at the drawing too. ‘Ancient pornography – is there anything more sad.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ said Johnny, as if nervously agreeing.

  ‘Or perhaps you like it,’ said Denis.

  ‘Well,’ said Johnny, ‘no, not really my sort of thing,’ but seeing it almost as a symbol of the London life – it could certainly never have hung in his father’s house, or even his mother’s.

  ‘No, I’m sure.’ Denis pondered for a moment. ‘Come and look at this,’ he said, going past him into the bedroom.

  ‘Is it urgent?’ said Johnny, and laughed apologetically – the lady who’d been interested in his hair was emerging at that moment from the lavatory.

  ‘It won’t take long,’ said Denis sharply, but then stopping and giving him an abruptly courteous, almost grateful smile. Johnny had to leave the candle where it was for the lady and followed Denis stiffly into the bedroom. It was more than a mere reflex that made him flick the dead light switch on and off. The glimmer from the passageway showed red curtains hitched back, the side of a wardrobe, and the shadowy edge of a bed. He saw himself stoop forward, in the mirror, in cautious silhouette.

  ‘There’s a flashlight here somewhere,’ said Denis, feeling on a bedside table behind the door – there was a clatter of small things knocked over. Then a beam of light, stifled at first in the shrouded hump of the pillows, then swinging round, blindingly reflected for a moment in the uncurtained window. ‘Ah, there you are.’ Denis played the torch up and down, with the murmur of uncertain judgement, over Johnny wincing and turning his head. It was a game whose rules had yet to be explained. ‘I thought, since you like art’ – he let him go, sent the beam across to where a dark-framed picture hung above the fireplace. ‘Yes, that’s right, you’re the art-Johnny.’ He reached out to steer him across. ‘Come over here,’ taking Johnny’s wrist.

  ‘Oh yes . . .’ – dazzled and cringing he saw Denis was mocking him for suspicions they both knew he was right to feel. The white glare of the torch floated on his retina, jumped and floated across what seemed to be a large Graham Sutherland, its hooded picture-light now casting shadow, the red skeletal plant or tree dramatic in the gloom. ‘Mm . . . great,’ said Johnny, who’d been taught to respect Sutherland but had never really liked him.

  ‘I knew you’d like it,’ said Denis, relaxing his grip – at which Johnny took his hand back. ‘I’ve never cared for it myself, though I’m told it’s worth a packet’ – and he laughed, as he had stared earlier, with an odd mixture of respect and disdain.

  ‘Yes, I suppose so . . .’ said Johnny. The unworldly ethos at Hoole, when he was a student, discouraged all talk about the price of a picture, and he still felt unhappy with the subject now he found himself working for a dealer. Denis toured the torch’s beam across the painting, which showed it as eerily material, a surface blankly unconcerned with w
hat it depicted; the rough sweeps of white and grey flared back.

  ‘So are you often to be found in the Notting Hill station Gents?’

  ‘What . . . ?’ Johnny said, blinking as the light swept into his face again, and feeling for a moment as if the sudden arrest he’d felt almost certain of there had come for him now. The idea only lasted for a dreamlike two seconds, but the blood rose to his face. All he managed to say was, ‘I don’t know what you mean.’

  ‘You probably couldn’t see much through all that hair’ – Denis seemed to dare him to move as he reached out and lifted Johnny’s hair and pushed it back past his right ear and held his scared but indignant gaze with his large dark eyes. ‘But I saw you,’ he said, ‘very clearly,’ just as he turned off the torch and tossed it on to the bed. He laughed distantly, pulled Johnny hard against him, made him gasp and in that same moment stuck his tongue into his open mouth. For a breathless five seconds of surprise and curiosity, Johnny let it happen, not quite responding as Denis’s tongue, neither warm nor cool, and abnormally long, seemed to worm its way into him – until he twisted his head away. Denis had him caught against the side of the bed. ‘What?’ he said.

  ‘Sorry . . .’ said Johnny, ‘please . . .’ pushing at him, but with an anxious sense that perhaps this was what people did, he was rejecting a compliment, even a privilege – Denis, under that waistcoat and silk tie, was hard and sinewy, his breath in his face as he pressed against him, but visible only as a dark obstruction against the faint candlelight from outside. It was confusing, the moment Johnny gave in, Denis lost interest, and had let him go.

  ‘I see you’re not your father’s son,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said Johnny, and Denis gave a surprising laugh, as if pleased at a show of spirit after all. Johnny slid round him and out of the room, and locked the lavatory door behind him with a gasp of relief, though his face in the mirror revealed something further, the little flinch of guilt, whatever happened.

  Ten minutes later he was sitting on the window seat with Ivan, their plates on their laps. He smiled at him and said, ‘So you were expecting me.’

  ‘Mm?’ said Ivan, shaking the tip of his fringe from his eyes.

  ‘You knew my name.’

  Ivan smiled back. ‘Oh, well, Denis said you might be coming.’

  ‘Oh did he?’

  ‘A little surprise for Evert, I think.’

  Johnny wanted to say he’d had a bit of a surprise himself, but he didn’t like to sound stupid. He had the soft burn in his mouth still, and kept it to himself, but imagined just mentioning it, not sure if Ivan would think he was complaining or boasting. Denis was going round with two wine bottles, and when he got to them he refilled their glasses with a bored look as if he barely knew who they were.

  ‘Why would it be a surprise?’ Johnny said.

  Ivan looked at him and after three seconds gazed out and nodded at the rest of the room. ‘Well . . . fresh blood,’ he said.

  ‘Oh . . .’

  He lowered his voice. ‘The thing is, Denny’s still quite young, and as you can see most of the rest of the gang are getting on a bit. You know Freddie and Evert were at Oxford together – well, you’ve just heard. So was Jill. Freddie’s going to be fifty-five on the fourth of June.’

  ‘Is that all?’ said Johnny.

  Ivan shot him a glance. ‘The old lady talking to Evert was one of his father’s girlfriends, Glynis Holt. She’s the one Evert mentioned in his reading. I thought she looked a bit shocked; but you know that’s the point with the Memo Club – they have to tell the truth.’

  ‘Oh, do they.’

  ‘Not all the time, obviously! – just on the third Tuesday of the month . . .’

  ‘Right . . .’

  ‘You know, that’s when someone reads a memoir.’

  ‘And how do you fit in, then?’

  ‘I sort of come and go,’ said Ivan. He peered at them all fondly.

  ‘I’d have thought you were a bit young to write a memoir,’ said Johnny.

  ‘Yes, but I’m saving things up,’ Ivan said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know where to start.’

  ‘Ooh, I don’t know about that.’ Ivan looked at him oddly, Johnny felt the attraction of his soft pale face and brilliant dark eyes that he watched the tips of his fringe slide into and be blinked away. His small white teeth leant inwards in a moistly carnivorous way. ‘So how is your father?’ he said.

  ‘My father . . .’ Johnny blinked too. ‘He’s fine.’

  ‘Because he remarried, didn’t he, after . . . all that?’ said Ivan quickly, and as if David Sparsholt’s personal happiness were his main worry. He went red but he went on, ‘His secretary – if I’ve got that right.’

  ‘Well, yes, he did – it was a while ago now. Six years.’

  ‘Ah . . . good, good’ – and perhaps sensing he was going too fast on the question, ‘And what have you been getting up to in London?’

  Johnny told him, flatly, taking a moment still to get over the previous question: working all day on pictures and picture frames, with the bus down to Chelsea each morning from Shepherd’s Bush. ‘I’m living with my aunt,’ he said.

  ‘And is that OK for you? Your father’s sister?’

  ‘No, my mother’s. It’s all right,’ said Johnny, though Kitty’s determined attempts to look after him only made him miss his mother more. ‘I don’t want to be there for ever.’

  ‘We’ll have to see what we can do about it,’ said Ivan, whose confident grasp seemed to reach into the future as well as the past.

  ‘And the three-day week, as well, it’s all been a bit strange.’

  Ivan tilted his head towards the group sitting nearest them, where the situation was being talked about. The man who’d been speaking when Johnny first arrived, a tall, red-faced man with a bow-tie, said, ‘The City’s virtually ground to a standstill. I wouldn’t be a bit surprised to see total collapse within a month.’ One of the people with him looked crushed by this, the other slyly sceptical. ‘You know what Gerry’s saying – sell up while you can, the Communists will be in charge by the end of February.’

  ‘What am I supposed to sell?’ said the worried man. ‘You mean the house?’

  ‘And I’ve been going to some concerts,’ Johnny said. Ivan smiled sympathetically. ‘I went to hear Haitink conduct Mahler 6 last week.’

  ‘How was it?’ said Ivan.

  ‘It was amazing,’ said Johnny, ‘as you can imagine.’

  But it wasn’t clear Ivan could. ‘You’ll have to talk to Evert about that – he’s mad about Mahler. I think he may even have been there. Is it the very loud, very long one?’

  ‘Well, yes . . .’ Johnny said, not feeling that this told the whole story, or indeed distinguished it from half a dozen other Mahler symphonies. ‘It was the first time I’ve heard it live.’

  ‘Brian, of course,’ said Ivan, his smile redirected at two older people who’d been going round with their plates and not finding anywhere exactly right to sit down. One of them was the pointed little man with a grey beard and half-moon glasses who’d been drawing Johnny earlier, now with the small pretty woman who’d been worried about his hair; the subject seemed still to be between them, a possible link or embarrassment. The boys shoved up together, thigh to thigh, and when Ivan reached round Johnny’s shoulder to put his glass on the windowsill behind them Johnny felt the first glow and lift of nearly certain consent and concealed his excitement with his napkin.

  ‘I’m Brian Savory,’ the man said, as they settled.

  ‘Oh, Brian and Sally,’ said Ivan: ‘Jonathan Sparsholt.’

  ‘Johnny,’ said Johnny.

  ‘That’s a good name,’ said Brian, with a quick smile, spreading his napkin. ‘Yes, we had a Sparsholt generator at our last place – started up like a dream, never gave us a moment’s trouble.’ This was a kind of blundering tactfulness Johnny was used to, and didn’t mind. ‘You must be connected? . . . It’s an unusual name.’

 
‘Yes, that’s right,’ Johnny said.

  Sally seemed more conventionally sensitive to the matter. She gave her hesitant smile: ‘Did you say you work with Cyril Hendy?’

  ‘That’s right,’ said Johnny again.

  ‘Wily old Cyril,’ said Brian.

  ‘You know he knew Sickert?’ said Sally.

  ‘Yes, I did, actually,’ said Johnny.

  ‘I expect he talks very fascinatingly about it. He worked for Sickert when he was a boy.’

  In fact Cyril was reserved, nearly silent, on all subjects of such obvious interest. ‘He doesn’t talk much,’ said Johnny.

  Sally narrowed her eyes for a moment. ‘I think he even knew Whistler.’

  ‘He can’t have known Whistler, love,’ said Brian. ‘Whistler died seventy years ago.’

  ‘Well, how old’s old Cyril . . . ? No, I suppose you’re right. But Sickert he certainly knew – knew him very well. And a lot of the painters, I think.’

  Brian sawed off a square of cold beef and balanced some coleslaw on top of it. ‘Evert’s memoir was rather good, I thought.’

  ‘Mm,’ said Johnny, with a mouthful himself, a valuable delay.

  ‘Do the young still read the great A. V., I wonder?’

  ‘Oh,’ said Johnny, swallowing, ‘well, I haven’t . . .’ He looked to Ivan, who said,

  ‘Did you know him, Brian?’

  ‘I met him once, very briefly. I’m not sure I could read him now.’

  ‘He’s not my author,’ said Sally.

  ‘Not much fun, is he, love,’ said Brian. He smiled at Johnny. ‘You’re a friend of Denis’s.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Johnny. ‘Does Denis have a lot of friends?’

  ‘Oh, you know, a certain amount,’ said Brian. He glanced across the room. ‘I keep meaning to say, I like your trousers.’

  ‘Oh, thank you . . .’ said Johnny, confused, though he loved them himself.

  ‘Elephant cord, aren’t they?’

  ‘Are they, yes, I think . . .’ – feeling now that Brian was trying to put him at his ease about being so casually dressed.

  ‘Jolly snug, I bet.’