The Sparsholt Affair

by Alan Hollinghurst

  ‘Well, we’ll go and see, shall we?’

  ‘Before it falls down?’ She looked narrowly at him.

  And so it was that two months ago, on a cold Sunday morning, they had taken a huge walk up the Fulham Road, turning into Cranley Gardens at last about eleven o’clock. She saw now which house it was, though several were shabby and neglected, with dead brown plants on the balconies and weeds round the area railings; Evert’s house had a piece of tarpaulin suspended above the top-floor windows. ‘It’s just to catch anything if it drops off,’ her father said. They darted in under the porch. There was a muddle of doorbells, several not working, new ones fixed with makeshift wiring. He let her work it out: DAX / GOYLE: she pressed it, smiling forbearingly. As they waited he explained: Mrs Lenska, the Polish widow, had the ground floor (‘Please, Press Hard, Twice!’) and Parfitt, a banker no one ever saw, the first floor. The basement was empty, because of the damp. The smart new entryphone, more permanent-looking than the rest, had the label DRURY.

  ‘Hello, it’s Lucy!’ she said, and after a moment’s uncertainty they were in.

  On the table in the hall she noticed many unopened letters. They climbed the stairs, Lucy just behind her father, peering at the antiquated lift that ran up the centre in a cage. ‘Evert’s father had that put in,’ he said. ‘You know, having only one leg.’

  It was just the sort of thing she’d been expecting. ‘Oh, dear!’ she said.

  ‘I’m afraid it hasn’t worked for years.’ She assumed he meant the lift.

  There was a tall window on each turn of the stair, throwing dirty light across the carpet, which was worn through to the floorboards in places. As they climbed they passed large dim oblongs, huge hooks, black drapery of cobwebs where pictures must have hung for a very long time. When they reached the landing they saw them stacked against the wall, in their heavy gilt frames, trying to stay dignified while peering nervously over each other’s shoulders. The pictures left hanging, perhaps not worth selling, looked hopeless without them. Lucy was intrigued to be walking upstairs in someone else’s house and looking at things. On the second-floor landing there was a nasty sweet reek that went to the back of the nose – she wasn’t sure what it was, though she’d smelt it once or twice at home, when friends of Una’s had been round. A lock snapped, a door opened and two men came out, in jeans and T-shirts, no shoes – it was rather odd because it was a lavatory. She said nothing but as they went into the room in front they must have heard her, and her father. ‘Oh, my god!’ said one of them, and the other turned too and said, ‘Ooh, hello . . . !’ They were young men, in their twenties, and the first one had extraordinary big eyes swimming in his face. She didn’t think they could be workmen.

  Her father put his arm round her shoulders. ‘Is Evert around?’ he said.

  They both laughed. ‘Which one’s he?’

  ‘Is he the old guy?’

  ‘You’re in his house,’ her father said.

  ‘Oh, are we!’ The one with huge eyes giggled and gripped the other round the arm. ‘We’re just friends of Denis’s,’ he said. They went into the big room beyond, still laughing, their arms round each other. The sense that something wasn’t right made Lucy stick close by her father – she followed him into what seemed to be a pleasant drawing room, but the curtains were still closed, and with only a couple of lamps on it was hard to tell. In the odd daytime gloom she made out Denis Drury, lying on the sofa, looking away from them.

  ‘Put some more music on,’ he said. There was a stereo on the far side of the room, and a heap of records out of their sleeves. Her father seemed angry, but it wasn’t his house – he waved his hand as if to clear the smell and said,

  ‘Hello, Denis, I’ve come to see Evert.’

  Denis tensed, then turned his head slowly, and smiled at them. His cheeks in the lamplight were red, and his flat shiny hair stood up in spikes here and there; his black eyes were bulging too. ‘Mister Sparsholt!’ he said, and half sitting up – ‘and Miss Sparsholt, my goodness me . . .’

  Lucy didn’t correct him, there were bigger things to worry about.

  ‘Have you got anything a bit more, like, modern?’ said the man by the record player, giving up on the pile of discs and looking round. The large-eyed one had sat on the floor and was making a giant cigarette by pulling apart several other cigarettes and heaping up the contents. Denis looked very carefully at his watch and said,

  ‘Have you come for lunch? I’m afraid you’re rather early if so.’

  ‘I told Evert we’d come this morning and help him with the pictures. Musson’s coming at twelve.’

  Denis thought, and said quietly, ‘Oh, she’s not, is she?’ He clearly wasn’t himself, the change itself was alarming, and yet there was something nicer about him than usual – he gave them an almost friendly look. ‘This is Kevin and Gogo,’ he said. ‘Jonathan and Lucy.’

  ‘Hello, Lucy,’ said Kevin.

  ‘George,’ said Gogo, grinning at her over the tobacco. It was spread on a record box – she construed the word ‘Resurrection’, and when he lifted the giant cigarette to lick the paper she saw a picture of an old man in glasses smoking a pipe.

  ‘Is this Evert your boyfriend then?’ said Kevin.

  ‘Oh, no . . .’ said Lucy, then looked anxiously around.

  Denis lay there with a strange smile. ‘Years and years ago,’ he said, ‘I was his amanuensis.’

  ‘Ooh, what’s that?’ said Gogo, and watched Denis raising his hand and wiggling his fingers as if pulling on a rubber glove.

  ‘I’m going to find Ivan,’ her father said, and they went back out on to the landing, just as Ivan came downstairs. His sleeves were rolled up and he was wearing an apron.

  ‘Hello,’ he said, ‘hello,’ going past them, really too busy to talk. They drifted back after him into the room. ‘Can we have this room clear, please?’ he said.

  ‘Oh, my god, it’s the housemaid!’ said Denis, falling back on the sofa. ‘Boys, meet Ivy.’ Lucy’s mother and Una sometimes spoke of him as Ivy, but she held her breath to hear him called it to his face. He stood, small and plump, in front of the fireplace, with his hands on his hips.

  ‘We’ve got Hughie Musson coming round any minute.’

  ‘Is he cute?’ said Gogo.

  ‘You wouldn’t say cute, would you, Ivy?’ said Denis. ‘Or perhaps you would . . .’

  ‘Hugh Musson is a very important man. So I need you all out of here, please.’ Denis rolled his head moodily. ‘You can all go and play in Denis’s room.’

  ‘Sounds good,’ said Gogo.

  ‘I’m too exhausted to move,’ said Denis. ‘How long were we in that club? Eight hours? In that hell-hole of debauchery?’

  But Ivan crossed the room and tugged back the curtains, and the cold lunchtime light seemed enough to push them upstairs, blinking and lazily protesting.

  Lucy helped, and in ten minutes the room was straight, the carpet hoovered, and the records put hastily into sleeves – she knew some of them were in the wrong ones. The window was left open to clear the air, and it got quite chilly. Probably it had been a lovely room once, but it was all a bit shabby and sagging now, the walls covered with pictures like a junk shop. In Grandpa George’s drawing room there were just three pictures, each worth fifty thousand pounds. In Evert’s there were (she nodded as she turned from wall to wall) thirty-seven – how much they were worth remained to be seen. They went into the kitchen, and Ivan took off his apron.

  ‘Where’s Herta, when you need her?’ said her father.

  ‘Who’s Herta, Daddy?’ Lucy said.

  Ivan set about making coffee with a paper cone and a glass jug. ‘Poor Herta,’ he said. ‘We went to see her last week.’

  ‘She was Evert’s housekeeper for years and years,’ her father said.

  ‘She was his father’s housekeeper,’ said Ivan.

  ‘You mean the man with one leg?’ said Lucy.

  ‘A. V. Dax,’ said Ivan, ‘the novelist.’

  Ever
t came in, looked at them, waved a kiss at them with his fingers. ‘Is Denis about?’ he said.

  ‘He’s gone upstairs,’ said Ivan, ‘he’s got some young friends round.’

  ‘I thought I heard something,’ said Evert.

  When the coffee was made, and Lucy given the Pepsi Ivan said she would prefer, they went off for a preliminary look at the pictures. ‘Let’s go to Johnny’s room,’ Evert said. They entered a small bedroom, opposite the lavatory, where perhaps a dozen paintings stood propped against the chest of drawers.

  ‘Why do you call it Johnny’s room?’ said Lucy.

  ‘It’s so sweet of you,’ said her father.

  ‘Your dear papa lived in this room, darling, long ago,’ said Evert. ‘Twenty years ago?’

  ‘That’s right, 1975, wasn’t it, my early London period . . .’

  ‘A good year or more, I should think,’ Evert said.

  ‘Just about,’ said her father.

  ‘About ten months,’ said Ivan.

  Evert hoisted up a medium-sized brown painting. Lucy imagined her father then, with his awful long hair, coming into this room each day, sleeping on this hard bed, which now had a big folder of drawings lying on it. She’d never thought of him not having a house of his own.

  ‘These are Victor’s pictures, then?’ he said.

  ‘That’s right. I think I’ll probably sell most of them.’

  ‘I’ve not seen this before, I don’t think’ – her father peered forward at it.

  ‘It’s Witsen, Rotterdam Harbour. It’s a bit dirty, but it’s meant to be more or less that colour.’

  Ivan made a deeply unimpressed face. ‘We’re aiming for a much sparer hang, Johnny,’ he said. ‘Get rid of a lot of junk.’

  ‘Oh, I like it,’ said her father. ‘But yes, I guess . . .’

  ‘I remember it very well when I was a boy,’ said Evert. ‘It used to hang in the dining room downstairs. My father knew Willem Witsen, I think he bought it off him; it may even have been given to him, since Witsen was rich, and very generous. Do you know about him?’

  Lucy shook her head. ‘Not really,’ said her father.

  ‘Oh, a fascinating figure – also a very good photographer, wealthy, but extremely bohemian. I always wanted to put on a little show somewhere, you know, at a small gallery, but—’

  ‘We just can’t keep getting into all these reminiscences all the time,’ said Ivan, ‘darling – or we’ll never get anywhere.’

  ‘Well . . .’ said Evert.

  ‘OK . . .’ said Lucy’s father, with an embarrassed laugh.

  ‘In or out?’ said Ivan.

  Evert looked at him, obediently, but with a last hint of resistance. ‘Do you mean in or out of the house, or in or out of the sale?’

  Ivan smiled tightly. ‘Out of the house,’ he said.

  ‘In that case . . . out, I suppose.’

  Lucy thought she’d never seen anyone look so sad.

  *

  First of all Hughie Musson looked at the pictures on the landing. ‘Your father thought big, didn’t he.’

  ‘Oh, always,’ said Evert.

  Hughie glanced down the cavernous stairwell. ‘He had a lot of walls to cover, of course, I can see that . . .’ He himself was big, he’d wheezed his way up to the second floor with several pauses to peer at the unworking lift. ‘Quite a period piece,’ he said.

  ‘It was the same in his own work,’ Evert went on, ‘he felt space was there to be used.’

  ‘It’s awful,’ said Hughie with a grin, ‘I’ve hardly read him.’

  ‘He had no time for what he called minchers,’ Evert said.

  ‘Ah, yes . . . ! Well, no . . .’ said Musson; and businesslike after all, ‘Well, I don’t think any of these, I’m afraid, for our show.’

  ‘I’m sure you’re right,’ said Evert, and smiled. ‘We’d better look at the things in the drawing room.’

  ‘I want to see the Sutherland,’ said Hughie. ‘Modern British art: after you . . .’ and as they went through: ‘I’ve got an idea about who could write something – you know, for the catalogue.’

  ‘Oh, have you . . .’ said Evert.

  ‘This is marvellous,’ said Hughie, surveying the mad jumble. ‘I’d forgotten just how good it was.’

  Evert turned round, and nodded slowly, as though seeing it all again for the first time – and also, Lucy thought but didn’t say, for the last. If she didn’t like much of it herself, she was impressed that Hughie did. He was in his element. He took things down, reaching higher than Ivan, who was helping him; she was entrusted with a small picture herself, which she carried across the room and propped on the sofa for them all to stare at. ‘You’re thinking of an exhibition, of course,’ her father said. ‘I’m trying to remember the space.’ It was the exercise of a skill that couldn’t be explained.

  ‘The big Ben Nicholson, obviously,’ said Hughie.

  ‘Ah . . . yes,’ said Evert.

  ‘The two little Nicholsons,’ said Ivan.

  ‘Well, they’re marvellous. One I think not in good nick.’ This turned out to be Lucy’s picture.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Well, have a look at it,’ said Hughie. Lucy peered at it, propped on the cushions, and thought it looked very rough indeed, the paint in a thick brown corner actually chipped off.

  ‘Oh, and what about the Chagall?’ Ivan said.

  Hughie was charming but brisk. ‘I think just paintings, don’t you? I mean, it would probably sell, but it wouldn’t fit.’

  ‘Which one’s that?’ Lucy asked her father. He showed her – a lovely, rather funny, picture of a red man, a green woman and a blue cow flying overhead. She read in the corner, ‘À mon ami Dax’.

  ‘It’s just a print, you see, Lucy.’

  ‘Oh . . . yes, I see,’ she said. He’d explained prints before.

  ‘There’s a lot of prints,’ said Ivan, with a frown at this unexpected objection. She sensed it was something he was going to come back to.

  ‘Now there are half a dozen Goyles,’ said Evert.

  ‘That may be too many,’ said Hughie.

  Lucy peered at Ivan: was he a painter? Her impression was that Ivan didn’t like art, was bothered by it somehow, as he was by children.

  ‘I remember that one,’ her father said, as a little painting, green, white and black, was unhooked from above the bureau.

  ‘Of course, beside the Nicholsons . . .’ Hughie said, with a sharp breath. ‘I know he’s a favourite of yours, Evert!’

  ‘I do think he was good,’ Evert said mildly.

  ‘What do you think, I wonder, Jonathan,’ said Hughie, ‘as a painter?’

  ‘Oh . . .’ – as if he’d never thought about it. ‘No, he’s got something, hasn’t he . . .’

  ‘I mean he’s far from contemptible,’ Hughie said, ‘obviously’ – though contempt, now he’d mentioned it, seemed to steal into the room, like the draught from the window. He grinned. ‘There’s something rather brilliant, in a way, about the total lack of intellectual interest.’

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said Ivan. ‘Poor old Uncle Stanley!’

  The other thing Hughie said he very much hoped they would have was the sculpture by Barbara Hepworth. The others looked down on it on its table in front of the mirror, while Lucy had it at eye level, the back of it reflected, smooth as a bowl, when she moved her head to right or left. It was hollowed out, the rim polished, the rougher inside painted white. Or it had been white once; now she peered into a tilted cup that was yellowish at the top and at the bottom almost grey, as if water had stood in it. The painted surface had fine cracks over it, and she noticed that one of the strings across the gap had been replaced – it had a bigger knot underneath the rim, which only she perhaps could see. ‘Simply stunning,’ said Hughie. ‘Nineteen-fifty or so, I imagine.’

  ‘I expect you’re right. I bought it after my father died, which was 1952. Ivan will correct me if I’m wrong. I’ve always loved it.’

  ‘I’d have thought,
what . . . thirty thousand?’ said Hughie.

  Lucy gave it a stern look, as if haggling the price down. She thought it was nice, as a little thing to have, but £30,000 made her want to laugh in protest.

  ‘Well . . .’ said Evert, who seemed rather thrown by the price himself, ‘I’m glad you like it’ – he turned away suddenly to look for something in the bureau.

  To see the Sutherland they had to go to a bedroom along a short passage also lined with pictures. Lucy glanced at them in a carefully expressionless way; they seemed to be drawings and photographs mainly. But her father stopped and, a little shortsighted now, looked at one of them, a red drawing of a naked man, obviously, but with no head and cut off above the knee; there was a funny squiggle where his tool, as Thomas called it, should have been. ‘You’re keeping this, I hope?’ he said.

  ‘What?’ Evert turned back. ‘You’ve always had a soft spot for that one, haven’t you. I think I’ll have to leave it you when I die.’

  ‘Ah! Thank you,’ said her father, and touched Evert’s sleeve: ‘Though I can wait! It’s by . . . remind me . . . ?’

  ‘It’s by Peter Coyle,’ said Evert, ‘you know . . .’

  ‘Oh, that’s a Coyle,’ her father said. ‘Coyle not Goyle!’

  ‘Oh, very much not Goyle,’ Evert agreed. They stood pondering it for a moment, it must have been some body-builder, a bit grotesque, frankly. Ivan said,

  ‘What would that be worth, I wonder?’

  Hughie came back. He made a humorous show of giving it his consideration. ‘Coyle?’ he said. ‘His time has yet to come. Who can say, he may enjoy a revival.’

  ‘I knew him, of course,’ said Evert. ‘You know he went into camouflage in the War – painting whole ships. It satisfied his sense of scale.’

  ‘He thought big, like your father,’ said Hughie.

  ‘Well, there you are,’ said Evert.