—You are a wicked child, he said, to run off without a word like that—and dear god there were tears in his eyes, in the candlelight you could see them glistening!
—Do you think they’ll let me smoke? Everybody’s stopped eating.
—Smoke, smoke, said Jack, smoke your little lungs out, just don’t go off without telling us again.
—You weren’t really worried.
—I was out of my mind.
—Gin, was he out of his mind?
She turned to me and whatever apprehension she may have had about facing the pair of us, it had quite evaporated in the warmth of her reception. She was softer in her manner than I’d ever seen her. It seemed entirely sincere.
—He was, I said. We both were.
—Well I’m sorry.
—So where were you? Account for yourself. More wine, I think. Where’s Luis?
—Hasn’t touched a drop since you left, I murmured, the pair of us now complicit in the joke of Jack going out of his mind with worry.
—I was at my mother's.
—Wrong. We phoned your mother several times. No answer.
—We thought it was you. We decided not to pick up.
So it was going to be all right after all, I thought. If she believed the worst of Jack she wouldn’t be behaving like this, playful and affectionate, almost flirtatious. The relief was washing over him like a shower of rain. He looked ten years younger. Luis appeared, and at last Jack let go of her hand, and ordered more wine: a good bottle this time. Luis saw we were celebrating, and without a change of expression produced an ashtray from his pocket and slid it onto the table.
But what was to happen now? Now that we’d all expressed how nice it was to see one another again? What had she learned from Vera, and how had it affected her feelings towards Jack? And how were we to begin to talk about any of this?
—I didn’t know my mother taught you how to paint.
The tact of youth. But Jack was far too well tempered to bridle for even a second.
—That’s what she told you?
—Yeah.
She grinned at him through a cloud of cigarette smoke. Jack lifted his wineglass and for a few seconds his proud head, with its blade of a nose, and the soft love in the hooded old eyes, was the head of my father. It was many years since I’d seen such tenderness in him.
—It’s true, he said.
He was so tender he was honest.
—I took a lot from her, he said. I mean I stole a lot from her. I took it when she wasn’t looking.
—She told me.
—What else did she tell you?
I was silent as this went forward. We were serious now. Jack laid his hands flat on the table and was staring at them, frowning, as though they displeased him in some way. Anna was suddenly off balance, unsure of herself.
—She said you took her canvases and worked them over.
Dear god I hadn’t heard that one before! Jack continued to stare at the table. A few long seconds ticked by. He lifted a hand as though about to make a solemn declaration, then laid it gently back down on the table. He regarded Anna with an expression of mild injury.
—I only did it once.
Even so!
—Well, twice.
—That’s very bad, right? For a painter.
She knew nothing!
—It’s pretty bad, said Jack.
Then he explained how he’d been desperately stuck in his work, and he’d gone into Vera’s studio and found a canvas on the easel, and for the first time in weeks something had moved in him, so he took the canvas into his own studio and carried on where she’d left off, and that got him going again.
—She was pissed off, right?
—Oh, she was pissed off, said Jack.
I wasn’t as brave as Anna. I didn’t ask him how he could have done it again. I presume in identical circumstances, with identical results. It must have been worth it. Perhaps he felt justified by his vision of a family partnership in art. But it was quite enough for one evening, and he didn’t ask her what else Vera had said about him. The point was, Vera had spared him. She had not turned the girl against him, and she so very easily could have done.
—What are your plans? I said.
—Can I stay at the house a bit longer?
I glanced at Jack.
—I think that might be possible.
—I’ve got an idea but I don’t want to talk about it yet in case I jinx it, do you know what I mean?
Yes, we knew what she meant, and we left the restaurant soon after, doubtless to the relief of Luis, what with all the smoking and shouting that had come from our table. How strange it was to come up the steps to the front door, the three of us together again, and how different our mood from what it had been just two hours before. And Jack, instead of mourning a ghost, was emanating a profound contentment. He was himself again, and this was a source of no small comfort to me, for I had been seriously concerned that he was losing the ability to distinguish the fictions of his own mind from the truth.
The next morning I came downstairs to the kitchen to find Anna on the phone to her mother. She hung up. She told me that Vera had travelled down to the city with her.
—Gin.
—Yes.
—I know I’ve upset your life but I’ll be gone soon.
—You’re very welcome, Anna. I mean that. You must stay here as long as you want to.
A little later I called the hotel from my study and asked Vera if we could meet.
We met in a busy coffee shop at Broadway and Chambers which displayed in the window framed photographs from the 1950s of various holders of the Miss Subway title. It was a nice day in early April. The morning was pleasantly cool, the sky a cloudless blue. By day Chambers Street is crowded, teeming, the traffic dense and noisy. Vera was sitting in a banquette with a pot of tea and an English muffin in front of her. It made me smile. I thought her more a neat-scotch-rare-steak sort of a woman. I said so.
—Gin, it’s ten in the morning.
—And?
She allowed me my joke.
—We had a lovely time with Anna last night, I said.
—She told me.
—I wanted to thank you.
—Why?
—I think you know why.
—Tell me.
So I told her. I said that Jack’s relationship with Anna was very important to him. He’d be badly upset, I said, if the girl were to take against him. Vera regarded me coolly. In the light of day I was able to get a good look at her at last. Extraordinary that all the hard living had failed to ravage her utterly. She could pass for fifty, or less, and it was only when she turned her head to the window and the sunlight flooded her face that I saw the work of the years stitched into the skin around her eyes and mouth. The jaw was firm, the teeth were white, more or less, minus the one still missing in the top row to the left. Her hair was threaded with silver now and heaped in an untidy bun pinned with combs and pencils. Silver rings on her fingers, several with turquoise stones from New Mexico. She had been sober for some years. She wore a baggy black sweater under a denim jacket with various pins and brooches on the breast.
I wondered was her lover a man or a woman. Women our age often tire of the male. We opt instead for the tenderness and candour and faithfulness of our own species. It’s all we want, really. And to be made to laugh.
—I’m glad you appreciate it, she said.
—I hate to see him distressed. He’s quite frail.
Then to my astonishment she bridled.
—The hell with that, she said, frail!—and she leaned in toward me, tapping a fingernail smartly on the tabletop.
—I didn’t tell Anna everything I know about your brother, she said, but I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you.
—I know my brother.
—Gin, you know nothing.
I was certainly startled by this turn in the conversation. I had wanted simply to do the woman the courtesy of thanking her for her discretio
n, but it seems I’d enraged her by referring to Jack’s frailty. I was on my guard at once. I thought: She may be sober but she’s as volatile as ever. I didn’t think I wanted to know what she apparently intended to tell me, but I had little choice in the matter.
—Jack’s not frail, she barked.
—He spent twenty years in Port Mungo raising your daughters while you were running around.
—That’s what he told you?
—I saw for myself.
She eyed me silently for a moment or two then glanced out the window. Pedestrians streamed by. Some blocks away a siren wailed. She wheeled back, and spoke fast, barely drawing breath, the Glasgow thick in her voice and the eyes sparking, the fingernails again tapping an angry tattoo on the table. She told me that Jack only ever wanted one thing from her. Knowing she was better than he was, he took whatever she had, and for him that’s what life was all about, she said, stealing ideas from other people because he was a third-rate artist himself.
—And I suspect you know it, Gin, she said, but you two have this myth of Genius Jack. Well that’s a crock. He dragged me down there because he couldn’t bear to see me succeed up here. He was all eaten up with jealousy, and I truly think he found it absurd that a woman could have more talent than he did and that’s why he wanted me down there in that dump, so I’d be invisible. Why do you think he wanted babies? It kept me quiet while he got his painting lessons.
There was a grain of truth in all of this, but not much more, I knew Jack’s history. She hadn’t finished. She got restless, she said, of course she did, what woman wouldn’t? She had lost her way, turned into a lush and screwed up a promising career.
—But if you think Genius Jack stayed down there all that time out of discipline or perseverance or whatever, you’re wrong. He stayed down there because he was scared to show his stuff where it mattered, and that’s the only reason he was around for Peg, fear. That’s right. Simple as that. And if you think he did well by Peg then think about this, Gin. If it wasn’t for him she’d still be alive.
She stopped as abruptly as she’d started. We stared at each other for several seconds, and her words hung in the air between us like a bad smell. I didn’t know where to start, I was reeling.
—So his work’s no good—
The appalling tension she’d created slackened off markedly. She was brutally dismissive.
—Everybody knows that.
—And the shows? His success, his name?
—He got lucky. He came back here with that neo-primitivism, or neo-tropicalism, or whatever the hell you want to call it, and it struck a chord. There was a ton of rubbish out there then, and a ton of money too. He was very clever. He convinced a lot of people he was Gauguin come back from the dead. It was a hoax, and if you had an eye, Gin, you’d have seen it.
—Sour grapes.
—Oh don’t be so ridiculous. Jack wrecked my prospects long before that.
—I thought you had more . . .
I couldn’t think of the word.
—So did I. You think I’m proud I let him derail me? He knew what he was doing. He used me, Gin, he took whatever he could get—
It astonished me, and it saddened me, to hear her blaming Jack for her own failure. I was silent. She was staring out the window again. Then she hauled her bag up into her lap and groped around inside it, and though she kept her face down I could see the tears falling. The stories we tell ourselves so as to go on living and not go mad. She hated Jack because he had succeeded where she had failed, and she blamed him for that failure. Suddenly up came a tear-streaked face with both eyes blazing.
—Don’t you feel sorry for me—I know you, Gin Rathbone!
—I don’t think it’s Jack you’re blaming here.
—No, you think it’s all me. You’re wrong. I’m not too happy with how things have turned out but I do okay. I just thought you should know your brother’s a fraud, worse than a fraud.
I gazed at her. I shook my head sadly. There was a reason she’d made such a mess of things, as an artist, as a woman.
—You’re just like him, aren’t you? she said suddenly.
She spoke in a tone almost of wonder, as though a light had been lit in her mind. I saw at once what was happening.
—So I’m a fraud too.
Here she snorted with laughter.
—You don’t have an attic full of bad painting to show for it.
I rose to my feet.
—I’m sorry you feel this way, Vera, I said. I only wanted to thank you for keeping your feelings to yourself while Anna was with you. The effort was clearly too much for you.
—Gin, you can be such a pompous bitch, you know that?
—Goodbye, Vera.
With that I left, and not until I was out on the street did I allow the rage to rise, and for a moment I could not move. I stood there on the sidewalk, and the crowd parted round me as though I were a rock in a stream. Then I looked for a cab.
There is something viscous about a lie. One knows it for the lie it is, but all the same—something sticks. I have said that there are two large pictures in the big sitting room downstairs, Jack’s Narcissus and Vera’s massive Vandal at the Gates. Each has a wall to itself. The house was empty when I got back, and I went into the big room and stood first in front of Jack’s painting, then in front of Vera's. Then back to Jack's. For fifteen minutes I went back and forth. At the end of that time I had convinced myself that Vera’s scabrous critique of my brother’s work was motivated by envy and nothing else. All the same a whisper of doubt troubled me, until this idea of viscosity occurred to me. One knows a lie for what it is, but all the same, something sticks.
How pleasant it was to have Anna with us for cocktails again! She came in just after six as I was pulling a cork. Jack had not yet appeared. She flung herself into an armchair and blew air at the ceiling.
—Jesus I’m knackered.
—This will revive you.
—Gin.
—Yes.
—I have something to ask you.
But at that moment Jack appeared in the doorway. He had been in his studio all day and hadn’t changed his clothes, or even washed, as far as I could tell. He looked utterly unkempt. He stood a moment regarding the happy scene.
—I should like a glass of that, please, he said.
Then in he came, and there we were again, together as we had been before all the trouble started. Jack sat down and gazed at Anna, grinning. I don’t believe I had ever seen quite that sort of a grin on my brother’s face before, all teeth, I mean, distinctly canine. There was an odd fixity about it. It lasted too long, and I saw Anna grow uncomfortable. She glanced at me. The moment passed. We decided to have dinner at the Spanish place, which seemed a declaration that we intended to go on as though nothing had happened. The evening passed off smoothly enough, although Jack was very quiet. I was a little surprised by this, for I knew how profoundly relieved he was to have Anna with us again, and I’d expected him to be animated.
I woke up at two in the morning. Utter silence. I turned on the bedside light. I am a good sleeper, this very rarely happens to me. I knew at once what had awoken me. It was not a sound but a thought. It had occurred to me earlier in the day and been repressed, then it had thrust up into my sleeping mind. Not surprising that I’d been unable to deal with it, or that when my defences were relaxed it would announce itself with enough clamour to sit me bolt upright from a deep sleep.
I padded down to the kitchen and made myself a cup of tea. I knew I would not sleep, and at half past four I took a pill. I woke up some hours later, rather groggy. After a shower and a cup of coffee I called Vera’s hotel but she had checked out. I called her house upstate. There was no answer. I sat thinking what to do for ten minutes, then packed a small bag and asked Dora to please tell Jack and Anna that I might not be back till tomorrow. By eleven o’clock I was out on Sixth Avenue looking for a cab to take me to Penn Station.
An hour later I was on a train going up the Hudson
. It is a trip I have taken often, and normally it gives me great pleasure. I consider it one of the best train journeys in the world, although I have little with which to compare it. But this day I barely glanced at the river, or rather I glanced at it, I stared at it, but I barely saw it. My mind was elsewhere. When I got off the train at Rhinebeck I had only the most sketchy idea where Vera’s house was, but the taxi driver at the station knew at once who I had come to see, apparently she was well known locally.
The house stood on a bluff with a distant view of the Hudson far below. A short switchbacked driveway gave off a quiet road that wandered into the hills high above the river, near the site of a skirmish in the Revolutionary War, marked by a plaque at the side of the road. A pickup truck was parked beside a large barn, and off in the trees on the far side of the barn I glimpsed a number of wood-and-metal structures. Art. Sculpture. Somewhere a dog was barking. The day was cold and the sky was blue, with bulky white clouds kicking across it high above the river. The back door of the house opened and Vera stepped out onto the porch, wiping her hands on a rag. Seeing me emerge from the taxi she leaned on the railing, and in her expression I detected no ill-feeling but amusement, rather. And curiosity. As I crossed the yard she shouted at me, had I come all this way to apologize?
—I never called anyone a pompous bitch!
—Gin, I’m sorry about that. You’re not a pompous bitch most of the time.
—It’s a bit damn windy up here.
She took me into a kitchen with a long table down the middle of it. The windows on the north side had sheets of clear plastic stapled over them. She made me a cup of coffee. She didn’t ask me what I was doing up here, nor did I tell her, not straightaway. Somehow it didn’t seem strange to either of us that I was there. We sat at the table with our fingers wrapped round our coffee mugs. I felt as though I were in some rustic restaurant that lacked the benefits of central heating.
—I know why you’re here, she said.
—I thought you might.
She was silent. We heard somebody moving around upstairs. Her eyes flickered to the ceiling.
—Do you know that Anna wants to go to art school? she said.
Port Mungo Page 21
