The Center of the World

by Thomas van Essen

  We walked along in silence for a time, but gradually she managed to draw me out on the beauty of the scenery and other neutral topics. I was in a kind of daze, with the images from the painting commingling in my mind with the beauty of my surroundings. I could not tell if what I had seen in the painting had made the world more beautiful or if this beautiful world had become nothing more than a pale reflection of what Turner had shown me. When Mrs. Spencer spoke, and I turned to look at her face, I saw Helen, the idea for which so many heroes had died, so many cities had been destroyed, so many empires sacked. It was a miracle that I could keep my feet steady.

  On reaching the Rotunda we stood for a moment and admired the view. I felt tears forming in my eyes. When I turned to look at Mrs. Spencer, she was looking straight ahead and tears were running down her cheeks as well.

  She turned to me. “His Lordship bade me tell you that it is time for you to leave us.” Her eyes met mine for a long moment, but then she burst into sobs and threw her arms around me. I too began to weep, and we held each other for I do not know how long, until the paroxysm passed and we sat down on one of the little carved benches and busied ourselves with our handkerchiefs.

  When we were both somewhat collected, she turned to me and took my hands in hers. “Those,” she said, “were the hardest words I have ever spoken. You will understand I had no choice. But you must believe me when I say that I will be eternally grateful for your kindness and sympathy. I could not have survived this time without your company. It breaks my heart. But this is the way of the world, especially for the likes of us.”

  I told her that I had known this moment would come, but that I had tried to delude myself into thinking it could be avoided or postponed. I told her that her company had meant a great deal to me and that I would be forever in her debt. I told her that she was the most beautiful person I had ever known, and that her beauty had reached a painful pitch of perfection since I had seen her reflection in Turner’s painting.

  “Egremont,” she said after a few moments, “is also exceedingly grateful to you. He recognizes that Turner’s great work could not have succeeded without you, and he too feels in your debt. This painting has delighted him beyond all measure, beyond all the other works in his collection.”

  “As well it should,” I said, “for we have witnessed the creation of something extraordinary.”

  “His Lordship,” she went on, “has come, like me, to delight in your company. You have brought both youth and sense to Petworth House, he says, and he thinks you are a young man of great promise. He wishes to support you as you make your way in the world. You will find, when we return to the house, a check for five hundred pounds, as well as a promise that every year at this time you will receive three hundred pounds as long as Lord Egremont lives. There is, of course, a condition. There always is for the likes of us. You must never, as you are a gentleman, speak to any living soul of Turner’s painting and the time that we have passed together.”

  This offer made me feel like a common whore, making cheap what was most dear. Mrs. Spencer saw my thoughts in my face and redoubled the pressure on my hands.

  “I know what you are thinking,” she said. “You must not, for my sake. Knowledge of this painting must never come out in my lifetime, or I would be a ruined woman. I am no Helen, I know, but I can be recognized in that painting down to the very mole on my upper thigh.”

  “But I need not be bribed,” I snapped back, “to protect the honor and reputation of a lady I admire. I am a gentleman, after all.”

  “Don’t be a fool,” she said. “ ‘Lady’ and ‘gentleman’ are very precarious words. This is your great chance. If there are any sins, the greatest is to turn your back on good fortune. The world is too cruel.” She fixed her eyes on mine for a moment and her tone softened. “And besides,” she said, “you must do this for me and the sake of the pleasant hours we have passed in each other’s company. Although the money is Lord Egremont’s, you must think of it as a gift from me also. We must part, but in the years to come it will give me no small joy to think of you making your way in the world and knowing I had some small part in assisting you.”

  I saw a depth of love in her eyes that I had not seen before, and felt I was in communion with a creature half divine. I raised her two hands to my lips and kissed them.

  We walked back in silence; the time for speech had passed. When we arrived at the house I found that all my things had been packed except for my books and papers. Egremont’s carriage was waiting to take me to the coach.

  I went up to the room which had been mine and gathered my few remaining possessions, taking one last look at the portrait of Lady Mary that had kept watch over me. I wanted to take a final look around the galleries, but I saw that my departure, like a well-conducted execution, was to be swift.

  Mrs. Spencer came out, flushed but still radiant. “His Lordship,” she said, “is feeling indisposed, the events of this morning having been quite taxing. He sends you his compliments and his most profound thanks.” She handed me an envelope that was closed with Egremont’s seal. “I do not know when and if we shall see each other again. I hope, at the very least, to hear of you. I will not now repeat those words I spoke at the Rotunda, but know that I meant them from the bottom of my heart.”

  “I fear,” I said, “that these days at Petworth, and my time with you and Turner, have made me into some creature ‘rich and strange.’ I doubt that I shall know myself when I return to the larger world.”

  “Do not fear it. There is a goodness and a beauty in you that will prevail against all odds.”

  I thanked her again for her kindness and asked after Turner. She said she was surprised that he hadn’t appeared, as he had been informed of my departure. She needed to go back to His Lordship, but she would send a servant to fetch him. Then, taking me by the hands again, she kissed me on the cheek and, quicker than thought, was gone.

  The driver told me that we must be off in five minutes or we would certainly miss the coach to London. I waited as long as I could before climbing into the carriage. Just as the driver was about to set his whip to the horses, I heard a cry, and saw Turner running as fast as his short legs would carry him.

  He was flushed and out of breath when he arrived at the carriage door. He thrust a small portfolio through the window. “Sorry. Time and its fleet wings, you know. You are a good fellow and I am much obliged to you. I thought these might be of interest. With my compliments.”

  I grasped his hand and told him that I admired him above all other artists and that I had been privileged to play a small part in the creation of his masterpiece. Turner brushed my compliments aside, but I could see that he was pleased. The driver, meanwhile, reminded us most urgently that I was about to miss my coach.

  “Off with you, then! Time and tide, you know, and the London coach waits for no man. Godspeed!”

  The carriage rattled off. As we drove down the drive I turned and saw Turner waving his handkerchief. He was but a small figure dwarfed by the imposing bulk of Petworth House.

  We reached the inn with only a few minutes to spare. I took my seat on the coach and soon I was on my way. I had hardly thought what was to become of me, David. My departure had been so sudden that I had time neither to despair nor to plan. I knew I wished to return to your arms, but I felt, and the sequel proved me right, that it would be hard for our friendship to be what it had been. I was hardly civil to the two other passengers, as I thought of the small set of rooms that awaited me. An uncertain world, I reflected, was before me, and Paradise behind, never to be regained.

  At length I opened the envelope that Mrs. Spencer had handed me. True to her promise there was a check for five hundred pounds. Also a note:

  Dear Charles,

  I had not the courage to say this when we parted, but we must never see each other again. As you are a gentleman, please do not seek me out. If I seem cruel, you must believe that I am acting according to what is best for both of us. I hold you more dear than my
poor words can express.

  Godspeed.

  I sat back in my seat and watched the countryside go by through my tears. I do not know if my fellow passengers noticed, but I was beyond caring. When my eyes were dry I opened the portfolio Turner had handed me. There were three sketches inside, carefully separated by soft white paper, as well as a note hastily scribbled on the back of the artist’s card:

  With my compliments, and in memory of our time together.

  J.M.W.T.

  The first sketch was the portrait of me that he had done that rainy morning in the Carved Room. There was a kind of agony in my expression that seemed more appropriate to the way I felt now than to how I had felt when the likeness was taken. It was as if Turner had seen what I was to become after the events at Petworth. The second was a pencil sketch that showed me as a handsome young man. I had an air of easy confidence that I had never seen when I looked into the mirror. There was a small inscription in the upper left corner of the drawing: “To Mrs. Grant. Compliments of the artist, J.M.W.T.” I felt a pang of guilt when I saw that Turner had been considerate where I had not. I had only written to my poor mother once or twice during the whole time I was at Petworth and had received half a dozen letters in return. I resolved at once to go visit her after I had got myself settled in London.

  The last sheet was a portrait of Mrs. Spencer. She was seated on the red velvet settee I knew so well from the studio, wearing a loose dressing gown, negligently fastened to reveal the Egremont family jewels adorning her bosom. It was a good likeness of her, unlike Jessica; anyone who saw it would have immediately recognized Lord Egremont’s mistress. Yet there was something, mostly in her eyes and perhaps her lips, that hinted at Helen’s glory. I was quite confident that Turner had given me one of those preliminary sketches that had occupied so much of his time and effort in the early days of his work. The image before me was poised between the memory of the woman I admired and the Helen that I had seen so briefly earlier that day. For me, and for me alone, this sketch would be both a remembrance of the happy days at Petworth and a hint of that secret and forbidden glory that is The Center of the World.

  . 46 .

  IT WAS MUCH MORE beautiful, much more wondrous than I had remembered. It was as if I had never seen it before. No one alive had ever seen anything like it, I reminded myself. There was no me, no marriage, no wife in New York fucking some guy who looked no better than I did. Sometimes my eyes would leave the plane of the painting to focus on something in the barn or something that I could see through the barn window. I would become aware of an old chair that needed a bottom or the crosshatch of branches against the sky. As I focused on these things, I came back into being. I had a plan to bring the painting with me to New Jersey; I thought of Susan taking a shower in Julie’s apartment as she waited for her lover. As I turned back to the world inside the frame, a sentence containing the word “I” would half form in my mind: “Those sandals by the foot of her couch are encrusted in jewels beyond price. I wonder how she walked in them?” But then the sentence disappeared and I disappeared and there were only the sandals and the jewels and the light which created them.

  Toward late afternoon I wrenched myself out of the painting. I wrapped it in its canvas and placed it carefully in the car. I put the bedstead back in front of the recess in the wall. It was just before midnight when I arrived home. I went in to make sure that Susan hadn’t changed her mind and that I had the house to myself.

  I set The Center of the World up on the bureau in the bedroom, adjusting the light as best I could. I piled the pillows up on the bed so I could see the painting, like a pasha looking over his harem.

  I could sense the rise and fall of her breasts and almost hear the passage of god-touched blood as it coursed through her veins and infused her skin with life and color. If I had thought about it I would have realized that I had never been so happy, but I was too happy to think. Soon I no longer saw her image. She was simply present to me and I was complete.

  I called in sick on Monday. I suspected that everyone in the office knew my wife had left me. They would understand if I took a few days off, and they wouldn’t say anything when I came back. It was the sort of thing that happened all the time.

  But I was sick; incapacitated by wonder and ill with happiness. I had fallen into perfection. My marriage, my children, my job, and all the stuff that I worried about faded away. Everything that mattered was in front of my eyes.

  By Wednesday afternoon, however, I found myself gradually awakening to the sense that there was a world beyond the picture frame that I needed to attend to, just as there was a world outside Helen’s chamber. Out there on the plain was where the work of living went on, where the battle was fought, and, farther off, where the grain was grown. In the distance I could see the small towns that housed the farms and the workshops where the silk that adorned Helen was spun. The gods were there too, although more difficult to see than on the battlefield. They were in the light that fell upon men and women and allowed them to do their work.

  On the Thursday after Susan left, I went back to work. I told my colleagues that I’d had the flu. They all nodded sympathetically; no one mentioned Susan. Work seemed better than it had in many months. I felt that what I was doing was useful and interesting, and that if it weren’t for the good work of the foundation, a number of useful projects would remain undone. I did manage to leave every day promptly at five. When I got home I went upstairs to be with the painting. Some nights I forgot to eat dinner. I lost a few more pounds and had one of my suits taken in.

  I talked to Susan a few times a week. At first I couldn’t imagine a greater happiness than being alone with the painting, but gradually the absence of her familiar voice over morning coffee and her warm body in the bed beside me began to bother me. Although I still didn’t mention the painting to her and was very much aware of what I wasn’t speaking of, I was more comfortable now. She was doing well too, discovering a life for herself in the city. At first there were only references to colleagues, but then so-and-so, a friend of a friend, would enter the picture. She was getting connected with a network of fifty-something women, mostly well-off, working, and divorced, who had drinks after work and sometimes went to a movie.

  “You sound good,” I said during one of our calls.

  “I think it’s not having the commute,” she said. “I read this article the other day, where these economists did an analysis of what makes people unhappy, and having a long commute was way up there on the list. But I miss you. I miss our house. I miss the life we made for ourselves. Are you taking decent care of yourself? You sound better.”

  I told her I missed her too. We agreed that we would both take the day off and she would come out to New Jersey on Friday.

  . 47 .

  HOW LONG IT WAS before I came back into the world I could not tell, although later we determined that I had been in the room for about half an hour before I spoke. Egremont was beside me on the couch; we were both still looking at the painting. He kissed me on my brow. It was an uncharacteristically tender kiss, but I was not surprised.

  “I am beyond words,” I said.

  “Yes, he has outdone himself. He has outdone the lot of them. Nothing like it.”

  “And you,” I said.

  “Yes,” he said. “I cannot tell you how I felt. The years slipped away. I remembered when I first set eyes on you, when I first set eyes on Wyndham’s mother, when I first set eyes on Priscilla, down by the outbuildings before you were born. Lord, it all came flooding over me at once, and the feelings too. I feared it would not last, and that is why I called you so impatiently. I hope you are not angry.”

  “No.” I returned his kiss. “For a moment I feared you had suffered a fit or a fall. And then when I saw it, I stopped thinking altogether. That is the most remarkable thing. It was as if I had ceased to be.”

  “Yes. Everything became quite beyond words.”

  “I feel the whole world is somehow here before us. Do you see those
birds there, on that tree? What extraordinary creatures. I fancy I can almost hear them singing.”

  He looked at the place where I had pointed. “No,” he said, “I had not seen them. You are right. They are remarkable. All the colors of the east and yet harmonious. And yes, I can almost hear their song, deaf as I am. But did you see there, down on the battlefield, the fear in the faces of the common soldiers as they flee from that hero in bronze? I feel quite cut up for the poor chaps. They shall be carrion ere long.”

  We spent the better part of an hour wrapped in each other’s arms and admiring the painting. The years slipped away—he took me once again—and I opened myself to him as if I was first in love. We laughed and made jokes like two children. It was the sweetest hour of my life.

  I felt a pang in my heart as I thought of young Grant waiting in the breakfast room, but then a great rush of envy as I realized that he was going to see the painting for the very first time. We dressed and made ourselves as presentable as we could, but I blushed like a girl as I thought that all the servants would know what we had been about when they saw the state of my hair.

  When we returned to the sitting room we sent the servants out of the room. Egremont looked at Turner as sternly as he could.

  “You have played me a nasty trick, sir. I had proposed to pay you good money for your labors, but I find that you have cheated me.” A look of alarm began to cross Turner’s complacent face, but Egremont went on regardless. “I had asked you, sir, to put my jewels in your work and you have not done so. Do you expect to be paid the full measure when you have defied me on my only specific request?”

  Turner saw the humor in Egremont’s eyes, and his alarm was replaced by delight. Recognizing that Turner had seen through his joke, Egremont clasped him around the shoulders. I offered him a kiss. Egremont called in for tea and a bottle of champagne.