The Sparsholt Affair

by Alan Hollinghurst

  Evert was sprawled on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, and it was dark enough now for Ivan to see in the window the image of his face, head back, eyes closed, tie loosened – though his right hand rose and swept outwards beside him, inches from the carpet, in response and encouragement. He was conducting on his back. His unawareness of Ivan’s presence in the room made it by moments more dreamlike and more problematic. To look at him unseen was a luxury Evert might resent if he opened his eyes. He tensed himself and cleared his throat, a small effect annulled by unrelenting horns and trombones. They ebbed away. ‘Evert,’ Ivan said. ‘Hello, Evert.’ And the old man started, twisted round as he half sat up and looked at him.

  ‘Oh, hello, poppet. Gosh, you gave me a turn.’

  ‘Sorry . . .’

  ‘I didn’t know anyone was here.’ There was a glass too on the floor, empty. Evert groped for it as he swung his legs round and looked up at him. ‘Is something wrong?’

  ‘Oh . . . no, no,’ said Ivan. He came forward, gently, to allay any fears, the carpet he’d often stood on in his brogues pleasingly rough under his bare feet. ‘I just wondered if you were OK.’

  ‘Ah . . . yes, sweet of you.’

  The music had its own drama, and was clearly reaching for a climax it was hard to ignore politely – Evert was distracted by it still. ‘Is it Mahler?’ said Ivan.

  ‘Mm, well done,’ said Evert. They looked in each other’s eyes, as if focusing together on the music, and to Ivan Evert seemed already captive.

  ‘Can I get you another drink?’

  ‘Oh, why not?’ said Evert. ‘The usual’ – offering up the glass.

  ‘I think I know what that is,’ said Ivan, and went towards the tray, which was next to the stereo on the far side of the room. Evert said nothing more, sitting forward, arms loose between his thighs, under the spell not only of Mahler but of alcohol. The last rasp of the soda siphon barely diluted the dark two inches of Jameson’s. ‘Tell me if it’s too strong,’ Ivan said as he gave it him.

  ‘Ooh,’ Evert gasped, debated. ‘No, it’s lovely. What are you having?’

  Ivan gave himself a long vodka and tonic. ‘Can I get some ice?’

  ‘Yes, of course’ – Evert looked round – ‘well, you know where it is.’ And Ivan did. From the kitchen he heard the music end, with an almighty crash and falling off, and swung back in quickly just in case Evert put on something else. But the arm clicked back, the disc was still, just the red light and a brief reminding crackle through the speakers when the fridge started up next door. ‘What have you been up to?’

  ‘Oh, just writing,’ said Ivan, and since Evert was sitting in the middle of the sofa, ‘Budge up . . .’ lifting and plumping a cushion as he sat down next to him.

  ‘Cheers!’

  ‘Cheers.’ Ivan gripped Evert’s forearm for a second, bracingly. Sitting beside him, facing the fireplace, Ivan’s thoughts forming and flowing along the fronds and curls of the tapestried fire screen, running half-seeing across the line of postcards and invitations on the mantelpiece, beneath the brown frame of the biggest, the most valuable Ben Nicholson . . . He smiled, and it was as if Evert could sense him smiling.

  ‘You still haven’t told me,’ he said, with a reproving pause, ‘about your visit to West Tarr.’

  ‘You had our card?’

  ‘Yes, sweet of you, but it didn’t tell me anything I wanted to know.’

  ‘Oh . . . well, it was OK.’

  ‘The house was all right?’

  ‘Yes, not bad – a bit damp and dirty, but we made do.’

  ‘Oh, good. I’d been wondering how you got on.’

  ‘The two of us, you mean?’

  ‘I’ve grown very fond of that boy.’

  ‘Yes . . .’

  ‘He’s a good artist – good drawer, I don’t know what his painting’s like.’

  Ivan didn’t want too much of Johnny in the room. ‘He sort of lives in a world of his own,’ he said. ‘I got him to open up a bit.’

  Evert revolved his glass. ‘He’s quite smitten with you, I fancy.’

  Ivan made a soft snuffle of disparagement.

  ‘Did you . . . um?’ – Evert seemed embarrassed. ‘One knows so little about the young.’

  ‘Oh, the young,’ said Ivan and laughed.

  ‘Though a certain young man knows far too much about this old one.’

  ‘Really . . .?’ said Ivan, pricked by the teasing, but turning his head to smile at Evert, who turned and smiled too.

  Ivan didn’t know how he would do it, but he knew it would happen. He savoured his own calm conviction, as they turned and faced forward again; something undeniable had been said in that smile. They leant lightly on each other, sliding down a little on the yielding cushions. Each held his glass in his right hand, and there was a moment’s confusion as Ivan slid his fingers between Evert’s – Evert lifted the glass in his other hand, took a swig from it as Ivan’s hand took possession of his and they were clasped together. They sat, for ten strange exploratory seconds, small reciprocal pressures of fingers and palm, Evert’s hand strong and hard with experience. ‘I don’t know if you want some music on,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to be Mahler!’

  Ivan grunted dismissively, leant forward to put his drink on the floor, fell back, shifted up and reached up to pull Evert’s head towards him – in the mere moment of hesitation, Evert’s eyes, dark, close-up, blurred by the buried arc of his bifocals, seemed to question, assess and then, as Ivan kissed him, to accept. He held his drink still in his left hand, and they had to disengage for a moment for him to seize another swig and set it down. His lips and tongue were whiskey, a tingle where his stubble grazed Ivan’s soft lips and smooth jaw. They had their arms around each other, in the clumsy fervour of being still side by side. In a minute Ivan climbed on top of him, sat straddling his knees, Evert wincing, bracing himself as he took his weight. To Ivan there was something more stirring than their kisses in Evert’s eyes, which had looked at lovers long before he was born, and now looked at him. He lifted his glasses off, leant aside to place them on the table, quick practicalities deepening the charm of the moment, the surrender to what had to happen. Evert blinked at him, his face naked for the first time, his bed-face – he groped Ivan, ran his hands up over his chest, ‘I can’t see a thing . . .’ and down very confidently to rub and squeeze the hard ridge trapped at an angle in his jeans. It was as if with his glasses off he couldn’t be seen: he coloured up not with shyness but with re-engaged appetite.

  Ivan unbuttoned Evert’s shirt, pushed his vest up, stroked him, went down on his knees between his legs to kiss his stomach, reached up to squeeze his small hard nipples. He saw that he’d once been quite fine, in the way that lean men are who never think about exercise; and then he’d been a soldier, wonderful in uniform, thirty years ago. Now he’d thickened sexily round the middle, his hairless chest had slid downwards and sideways by a creased half-inch, there were lovable creases of age under the arms. So one beauty melted in another, surviving youth and exquisite decline. To reveal him and look at him and touch his naked skin made Ivan’s heart thump and his mouth go dry. He swiftly undid his own fly and pushed his jeans and pants down, tensed himself against the sickening chance of coming at once, his problem. He had really to think about something else, as he unbuttoned Evert’s trousers at the waist and pulled the zip towards him, practical and blank-faced as a nurse.

  FOUR

  Losses

  1

  She sat on the hard wooden bench just in front of the portrait, and heard what members of the public were saying. Some strolled slowly past, others stood for ten seconds until the next picture, or the very bright one beyond it, caught their eye, and now and then a couple, or more often a man or woman with no one to talk to, gave the portrait their full attention for a minute or more, obstructing the sociable onward drift of the crowd. She herself felt proud of the picture, but bored by the long two hours of the occasion; she had her own sketchbook with her, which after
initial uncertainty she got out of her bag, with the old cardboard packet of crayons, striped inside by the tips of the crayons when they slid in and out. It was hopeless drawing people when they kept moving, so she drew other things out of her head, or her memory, a house, and then a portrait of her mother; she would show it to her tomorrow, when she went home.

  She was pleased if she heard someone praise the picture of Mary Harms, with her staring blue eyes among hundreds of red flowers (it was painted in a kind of conservatory), but took it philosophically if they said they didn’t like it or made funny faces of their own in front of it; the people who strolled past talking about something else and not even looking were the ones she hated. It was a big painting, and a great deal of work (six months, on and off) had gone into it. She didn’t know what she thought of it really, it was what her father did and had always been doing, and it was impossible for her to judge. An old lady, rather mad-looking, in a beret with a pewter badge on the side, spent five minutes studying the picture, getting so close an attendant asked her to stand back. She turned, and smiled sadly at Lucy, as if about to speak, as if she saw the connexion, but then moved on. The others closed in, curious for a moment as to what she had found in it – it wasn’t clear if they found it too. Perhaps she was mad. The crowd at these Portrait Society events was certainly very mixed. ‘Ah! I thought you were drawing a picture of a picture,’ said a large man in a dark suit and a tie with elephants on it, looking over her shoulder.

  ‘Oh . . . no,’ said Lucy, and let him see what she was doing, since she thought it was quite good.

  ‘Ah, yes, marvellous – you’ll soon be showing here yourself, I should think.’ Lucy smiled up at him. ‘And what do you think of this portrait, tell me honestly.’ It was almost as if he’d painted it, though she was pleased to know for sure that he hadn’t.

  ‘I don’t know, really’ – they both stared at it, beyond the intervening figures. She wanted to hear what he said before she explained. The people in her father’s pictures often looked a little bit uncomfortable, as if something was being revealed about them that they’d rather have kept to themselves.

  ‘It’s my wife,’ he said; and now she thought his stare had something else in it, he felt more exposed, in a way, than his wife, who’d been offered up to the public. People’s comments wouldn’t only be about it as a painting, they were also about the woman, Mrs Harms, and whether they liked the look of her. But before she could decide how to answer, Mr Harms had been called to by another man and with a little encouraging nod to her he drifted off.

  Her father’s own attitude was odd but she thought she understood it – he felt uncomfortable hanging round by his own work, so he just came past every few minutes, to check she was all right, and sometimes to introduce her to people, who could be surprised to find he had a daughter at all. Off he went again, not quite such a tramp as usual, he’d done what he thought of as dressing up for the occasion, though it was hardly what you’d call smart. ‘You may have to wear a uniform,’ he said, ‘but I don’t.’ He decided the day he left school he would always wear just what he wanted to wear; and anyway he was an artist. Now a rather drunk couple, the man in a pinstripe suit and bow tie, with gleaming black hair, the woman in a short red and black frock, were looking at Mary Harms’s portrait.

  ‘Sparsholt!’ said the man, jutting his jaw as he peered at the signature. ‘Hmmm, I don’t think I’d advertise that.’

  The woman said, ‘Don’t be silly, Henry, he can’t help what he’s called.’

  ‘Well . . .’ The man paused, as if trying to be fair. ‘I mean you wouldn’t want . . . I don’t know . . . “Crippen” scrawled all over your portrait, would you?’

  ‘There’s no comparison, hardly. And anyway he’s rather a good artist, don’t you think? That could almost be Mary.’

  ‘Mm, almost.’

  ‘Oh, you’re impossible,’ said the woman and laughed at him happily.

  The next couple were much nicer.

  ‘It’s quite contemporary, isn’t it,’ said the man.

  ‘Oh, I like it,’ said the woman.

  The man smiled and stood back a little. ‘I like it too, my love, in a gallery, but not to live with.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of buying it,’ said the woman, taking his arm. ‘Gosh, I thought that was Germaine Greer for a moment . . .’

  ‘It is Germaine Greer,’ said the man with a giggle as they moved on to the bright picture two along.

  ‘Daddy, who’s Crippen?’ said Lucy, when her father came to get her at the end.

  ‘Crippen?’ he said, with a cautious laugh at the things she picked up. ‘He was a man who murdered his wife.’

  ‘He escaped on a ship with his girlfriend,’ said Evert, ‘but he was caught by a telegram.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ said Lucy. It was more mysterious now, and something told her not to go on with it.

  ‘I don’t know what you’ve been reading,’ her father said.

  She zipped up her bag. ‘Oh, nothing.’

  ‘Right, shall we get out of here. Pat will have supper ready – are you hungry, young lady?’

  ‘Quite,’ said Lucy, not sure she would like what Pat had cooked.

  ‘You’re probably rather tired,’ said Evert. ‘I am.’ His face grew round as he hid a yawn; then he smiled goodbye at the portrait of Mrs Harms. ‘You must be pleased, darling,’ he said – but this was to her father. ‘It’s jolly good.’

  ‘Oh, thanks, Evert,’ said her father, placing his hand on the old man’s shoulders as they steered out of the gallery.

  ‘Daddy,’ said Lucy, ‘why does Evert call you darling?’

  ‘I’m getting rather forgetful,’ said Evert, turning and smiling at her, ‘so I just call everyone darling – it’s much easier.’

  She thought about it. ‘You remember my name,’ she said.

  Evert seemed almost shocked. ‘Of course I remember your name, darling,’ he said.

  ‘Now, let’s get our coats,’ said her father.

  In the taxi she sat squashed between Evert and Clover, and her father went on the seat facing backwards and hanging on to the handle; now and then he glanced over his shoulder. These journeys through the dusk, turning off at the lights beside road signs to unusual places, excited her, but were still slightly coloured by regret that she wasn’t going to her real home, where most of her things were. Evert and her father were talking about art, with names she didn’t know, and she peered out blankly on one side then the other, till Clover said, ‘So how are you getting on at school, Lucy?’, which was the most boring question one had to deal with.

  ‘It’s OK, thank you.’

  ‘What do you like best?’

  Lucy pretended to think. ‘I’m top in English and art, but third in maths.’

  ‘Well, third’s not too bad,’ said Clover.

  Lucy looked out of the window with a strict little smile. They travelled on, her father now answering questions about money, which always made him uncomfortable – how much a picture had fetched, or would fetch.

  ‘And how are Mummy and Una?’ said Clover next.

  ‘Una’s got a cold, but Mummy’s all right.’

  Clover gazed for a moment at the passing shops. ‘And how’s your grandfather?’

  ‘Which one?’ said Lucy.

  ‘Oh . . . !’ said Clover – she hadn’t thought. It was a funny thing about their family but Lucy had three grandfathers, Sir George, of course, Roy Davey, Una’s father, and David Sparsholt who was her father’s father, whom she seldom saw. In a way there were four, because her big brother Thomas had a different father from hers, who, like her father, lived with another man, and had a father of his own, who was a hopeless drunk and lived in Majorca. Lucy had a curious nature, but her questions about why things had worked out like this were never really answered. ‘I meant Grandpa George,’ Clover said.

  ‘Oh, he’s very well, thank you,’ said Lucy. What all the grandfathers had was a kind of fierceness, not expressed directly
to her but making things a bit tense when they were around.

  ‘What’s the latest on Freddie, Clo?’ said her father suddenly, so that she felt ensconced in the middle of the adult talk. He used a tone of voice she knew, earnest and direct to cover up his guilt at not having asked about Freddie before.

  ‘Mm . . .’ – she wrinkled her nose as she said in her usual lethargic way, ‘He should be out on Monday. They’ve taken out the thing, you know, but there’ll be masses of chemo to come.’ She put a heavy hand on Lucy’s arm, so as not to frighten her.

  ‘Is he in good spirits, though?’ said Evert, as if that would see him through.

  ‘Oh, you know Freddie,’ said Clover. ‘He’s propped up in bed, reviewing Anita Brookner for the New York Times, and of course getting hundreds more visitors than anyone else in the ward.’

  Her father’s house was in Fulham, an area that lay in Lucy’s mind under a thin grey fog: Fullum they said, a dead footfall, flour shaken in a Tupperware box (unlike sugar, with its quick shoosh, which to her mind was the sound of Chelsea, where Sir George lived, close by but a world away). In the Fulham Road the numbers went up and up, what did they get to? – 600 – 700 – she kept a look out as they passed – and for miles it seemed there was nothing but lamp-shops, window after window hung from ceiling to floor with chandeliers. Then they turned off into streets with no shops, which seemed twice as dark. When they stopped outside the house she felt relief and a faint tension, it was home of a kind, but something would have changed since her last stay with her father. The house was semi-detached, square, with a white porch, and frankly a bit decrepit. In the hall there was always the chemical mystery of paint in the nostrils, and turpentine. Just visible through the sitting-room door on the left was her own portrait, painted four years ago, and life-size then, though not so now. She was always very curious to see it, tacitly proud of it, but embarrassed by it too as she grew older and the wide-eyed child in a blue smock remained just the same. Two tall doors opened from the sitting room into what should have been the dining room, but was now her father’s studio, facing north-east, and avoiding direct sunlight. This meant they had to have meals in the kitchen – sometimes whole evenings were spent in the kitchen. It was like watching TV, you followed Pat making ratatouille or a ‘roast’ of some kind from scratch, and if you were an adult you got drunk. This could take an hour or more. Then, when you were just about to die of hunger, he slammed the oven shut and said, ‘Right! That should be done in forty-five minutes.’ Often she shyly declined the strange food that was served while they waited, the horrible hummus Pat made in the blender, and tapenade, bitter and oily (it was meant to have anchovies in it, but no ‘creatures’ of course were allowed in the house).