A Palace of Art

by J. I. M. Stewart

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘All right by me.’ Jake chucked the packet in air as if it was a tennis-ball and smacked it with an open hand. It flew across the bar and landed in the lap of a stout lady drinking Guinness. Nobody seemed annoyed, least of all the stout lady. It was a friendly sort of bar. ‘We’ll be making tracks,’ Jake said.

  The gallery lay at the heart of an agglomeration of brutal concrete walls and parapets. Gloria judged the effect oppressive. It was as if the peaceful Thames-side hard-by was a stretch of savage Atlantic coast which, in Hitler’s legendary wars, had been weighed down beneath fortifications so massive that they must endure to astonish savages in aeons yet to come. But it was a trendy quarter as well. Somebody had been round plastering it with stickers urging dispraise or boycott of somebody else’s allegedly reactionary film.

  ‘In here,’ Jake said, and paid for two tickets. ‘Penny plain first.’

  One might have expected something like the interior of a gun-emplacement, but the gallery seemed rather good. There was still a lot of concrete in evidence, but they’d used the dodge of letting it set against a rough-grained wooden planking, so that it now itself looked like ash-grey wood. Gloria thought this rather clever. She felt she liked the whole place. It was plain without being bleak, which was more or less her idea of what places should be. The people wandering round were a bit like that too. They included some young women pushing perambulators. She wondered vaguely whether the occupants of these were infants of precociously aesthetic inclination.

  But now she had to start looking at the pictures. At a first glance ‘penny plain’ seemed just right for them, since all were in black and white. The white seemed white beyond the wildest dreams of the advertisers of washing-powders, and the black was blacker than Indian ink. This notably held of her first picture: a big white canvas hung on a bigger white wall and spotted with a random scattering of small black discs in various sizes. Almost in the moment she looked at this, something began to happen. From the black discs white discs – whiter even than that unnaturally white background – detached themselves and floated lazily around the canvas. Then they drifted beyond the confines of the canvas to wander over the whole wall. Finally they seemed to break away from the picture-plane altogether, and fade and vanish like soap bubbles in the free air of the gallery.

  ‘I like that one,’ Jake said. He was plainly moved less by the impulse to make any verbal communication than by the duty civilly to fulfil some lay expectation. And the remark proved to be the only one of its kind that he offered during the visit. In fact, he was rather like the white discs. You couldn’t be sure quite where he was, or even if he was there at all. Gloria found this disconcerting conduct in a lover.

  It turned out that all these black-and-white pictures did things. Gloria was sufficiently clear-headed – at least at first – to realise that the doing was all inside herself; that the way her pulse beat and so forth was dictating their delusive dance to what were in fact perfectly static objects on the walls. On the other hand, whoever had created the objects was dictating something to her; was dictating, really, that she helplessly confound appearance and reality. It was foolish to be dismayed. But when she came upon one or two pictures which (doubtless because of some imperfection in her neural organisation) remained obstinately inert she had a relieved sense of momentarily coming up for air.

  There was what was like a downward-moving escalator in the Underground up which a fine film of water was unnaturally moving; there was an affair of innumerable fine parallel lines from the surface of which sinuous ribbons of thicker parallel lines detached themselves, swam towards you, and gently oscillated against their background; there were undeniably flat surfaces upon which ranked or scattered blobs nevertheless emerged round curves or vanished round corners in a way that couldn’t explicably happen in Flatland at all. There was a silky grey diamond covered with silver spots geometrically disposed, and over these spots there came and went a blush of blue here or there as your eye moved – which was the only hint of colour this whole stretch of the exhibition showed. For it was a kind of zebra universe, Gloria thought, into which she had been introduced. Not that lines and zigzags absolutely predominated. There was an infinity of these – but an infinity, too, of discs, circles, ellipses, cones, whorls, and figures she had no names for. Sometimes there seemed to be hundreds of them, thousands of them – and hundreds and thousands of hair-lines, whether straight or undulating, on a single canvas. Every picture was, whatever else it was, a nightmare or miracle of application. But what, Gloria asked herself, were they all about? They didn’t have names, and it hadn’t seemed to occur to Jake to buy a catalogue.

  A catalogue might not, of course, have left her any wiser. And she knew she mustn’t, in front of one of these things, simply ask Jake, ‘What is it?’ But some information she had to have – which was why she suddenly demanded, ‘Jake – what’s the name of the artist?’ It was perhaps a vain enquiry from one who wasn’t even clear about Giorgione, and she wondered whether this was why Jake for a moment looked at her vaguely, and why his reply came with the effect of his being a swimmer who had to take a couple of strong strokes before reaching her.

  ‘The artist’s Miss Gunga Din.’

  ‘You mean they’re by a woman?’ Gloria had to decipher this bizarre reply in bits.

  ‘Yes. Hadn’t you spotted it? Divine patience.’

  ‘Is that what you like in women?’

  ‘One thing. And here it is. Michelangelo crawling upside down on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel for years on end just isn’t in it. Even although he was on the androgynous ticket quite a bit.’

  Gloria didn’t let herself be side-tracked by this incomprehensible remark. She was realising that Jake knew as much about art as Octavius did, but that he didn’t pause to explain things to the children. Perhaps this was a quite pleasing form of good manners. Or perhaps it was just that he was too absorbed in his own concerns to bother.

  That what Gloria herself knew at least included a few familiar quotations was shown in her next question.

  ‘Jake, do you mean Miss Gunga Din’s a better man than you are?’

  ‘For Christ’s sake, Gloria! Of course she is. Nothing else like this in all Europe or America. I shan’t touch it if I live to be a hundred.’

  ‘Is it exactly what you’ll want to be touching if you live to be a hundred?’

  ‘Good question. Upstairs now. Twopence coloured.’

  Upstairs the general principle seemed to be the same as down below. You could treat it all as parlour tricks of a dazzling (and it was certainly dazzling) cleverness – or more seriously as a kind of supernatural soliciting designed to convince you that nothing is but what is not. Gloria, having Macbeth’s experience not exactly pat in her mind, didn’t frame it precisely like this. But she had the idea. And if she didn’t much worry about it all as art – since that wasn’t her affair – she did feel it had to be thought about – this since it was Jake’s affair. She believed—or was it hoped?—that Jake was a serious young man, and that she was here because he had conscientiously resolved she must be shown what might be called his context. Did this mean he was reliable? She had discovered – all within a scandalous twenty-four hours she had discovered – that just what Harry had Jake had too. Only, Jake had it plus something else. The something else consisted in his being uniquely Jake. Harry was no doubt uniquely Harry. But Harry’s uniqueness was somehow not so near the centre of his picture as Jake’s was. Here, once more, was the complicated sort of thing that she knew herself to be not too good at analysing out. She was left with instinct. This she did clearly know – as an instance, it may be thought, of the wisdom that young women savingly generate at times in a crisis of their fortunes. And she also knew (to go back) that a man must be reliable if it’s to be any good at all.

  The large rectangle of staring pigments she was now confronting was the antithesis of the reliable. It made some deep assertion of everything as flux, as in essence elusive and prot
ean. (It didn’t occur to her that a certain unschooled ability to arrive at such perceptions was the fundamental reason for Jake’s chasing her up; that Jake had, in fact, a wisdom of his own.)

  She looked at the picture – the biggest of the twopenny ones. On a white ground there were bright red diagonals, and down the middle of these red diagonals were thinner stripes alternately of green and blue. But wherever you held an area of the huge canvas only in peripheral vision the red faded to brown or to a sort of gold. You chased it round, and that was what happened. Perhaps it was again a small parlour trick. And perhaps there was a simple sensuous pleasure in it if you had the right reactions to colours, a pleasure as simple as coming on the ice-cream beneath the soufflé or the hot chocolate sauce. Only she suspected that something deeper was involved – a kind of verdict against the possibility of securely knowing anything at all. Certainly these things – all these things, for she was now circling the room – were far more powerful than a bombe glacée. Absolutely, they had to be reckoned with. But it was desperately unfamiliar ground. Carpaccio was kid’s stuff in the comparison.

  She tried further to attend to the coloured pictures – the more resolutely because Jake continued not much to attend to her. He was now, so to speak, right at the other end of the swimming-bath. He was floating where she’d never do other than flounder. She had to face that.

  At this point Gloria, who had been rather at a stretch, realised she had shot her bolt. The pictures began to flicker, flash, come at her in a distressing way. All round her, innumerable multi-hued stripes in wavy parallel undulating like snakes, like the hair of Maenads, like railway lines melting or gone mad, were coming at her. Nothing was staying still.

  ‘I think that will do,’ she said. ‘We’ll go out.’

  ‘No. There’s one downstairs I want to look at again. Come on.’

  She was about to resist when it came to her that Jake was no longer speaking more or less in disregard of her. He was very serious. He was presenting a small ultimatum related in some fashion to a blue-print he’d constructed of what he thought of as stretching before them to the grave. Men must work at whatever incomprehensible assignment they’d taken on. And women must weep – or at least put up with a headache. His idea was approximately in that area.

  She followed Jake down.

  Ten minutes later they were outside. They walked to a parapet, propped their elbows on it, and gazed out over the Thames.

  ‘Well,’ Jake said, ‘that was it.’ He gave Gloria a glance which she saw was meant to look mischievous, but which revealed itself as nothing of the kind. ‘Do you think it might be all all right?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I’m not an R.A., or anything.’ As Jake made this foolish remark, his face was transformed. ‘Gloria,’ he said softly, and kissed her. He stood back. ‘You can’t have known for very long.’

  ‘I think I found out in the train.’

  ‘Romantic British Rail.’

  Constrained to the idiom of their time, they looked at each other the more gravely. Just for the moment, they had to take out their feelings like that.

  ‘We’ll get some lunch,’ Jake said. ‘If your blessed solicitor can wait.’

  ‘I expect he gets quite well paid.’ Gloria was reminded of something as from very far away. ‘Jake, what shall I do about the collection?’

  ‘The collection?’ It was almost as if Jake had to place this. ‘I’ve told you, haven’t I? Give it away. Do you like Chinese food? What a lot to learn!’

  ‘Yes, I do.’ Gloria wondered how much she still had to learn about Jake. She seemed suddenly to have enormous knowledge to be going on with. He was a perfectly ordinary young man, blundering round after himself, trying out tough airs and unrealistic political opinions. He was a little like Octavius in that sort of blundering. But whereas Octavius would find maturity and stability in an honourable profession and modest achieved goals Jake had this overmastering thing. It was possible – it might be, as they said, statistically probable – that its higher reaches would prove totally beyond him. In which case he might take alternately to drink and tranquillisers. Or he might go mad. Thinking these entirely sensible thoughts, Gloria caught Jake’s hand in hers.

  The restaurant proved, with a glorious absurdity, to belong to somebody called Young Young.

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  VETERIS VESTIGIA FLAMMAE

  ‘Gloria – My Dear!’

  As the train made its first lurch out of Paddington, Harry had tumbled into the compartment – an otherwise empty compartment. He looked unfamiliar. This was because, like Jake, he was in a gent’s suiting. The suiting didn’t suit him. But he was probably unaware of that. Although he must have known of his mother’s disclosure of his affianced condition, he also appeared unaware of turpitude. He was looking at Gloria delightedly and unabashed.

  ‘Yes, Gloria your dear: and I’m the most gorgeous girl.’

  To make this remark was very wrong of Gloria. She did it partly because she was irresponsibly happy and partly because she was annoyed. She had jumped to the conclusion – probably quite unjustifiably – that Harry had lurked on the platform till the last moment, and thus secured her undivided company.

  ‘Of course you are. What have you been doing?’

  ‘I’ve been seeing a lawyer.’

  ‘So have I – about some land.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Gloria pulled herself together. ‘Harry, I’m very glad indeed about your engagement. I’m sure Miss Mercer is just right. Congratulations.’

  ‘Thank you very much, my dear.’

  ‘As a matter of fact, I’ve got engaged too.’

  ‘You’ve lost no time.’ As he produced this prompt and not very obliging remark, Harry’s eyes had rounded. ‘Congratulations handed back. No, that’s wrong. Reciprocated. May I kiss you?’

  Gloria allowed herself to be kissed. She was in a state of bliss making her feel, quite wrongly, that she owed Harry that. Harry’s kiss was of the most unblemished brotherly sort. It was the end of the affair. At least in Gloria’s mind it was that.

  ‘What tremendous fun!’ Having said this, Harry was distinguishably at a loss. ‘Would it be a wild guess,’ he asked, ‘that it’s your cousin?’

  ‘Yes, Jake Counterpayne.’ Gloria was now rather at a loss herself. She suddenly saw that she must appear an extremely inconstant person. She would have to explain that only yesterday her engagement had been a thousand miles away. She also saw the construction to which her incontinently changed state lay open. She might be held to have done something on what they called the rebound. Perhaps – she thought in momentary panic – she had; Miss Mercer was the prime agent in the affair. It was as simple as that.

  ‘If ever any beauty I did see, which I desired and got, ‘twas but a dream of thee.’ Harry’s good grammar-school must have provided him with this wholly surprising shaft. ‘Tell him that.’

  ‘Harry, you mustn’t be impertinent.’ Gloria said this quite gently. ‘Not if we’re going to go on being friends.’

  ‘As we are, my dear. And I’m sorry.’ Harry could say the completely handsome thing. ‘And Jake’s a good chap. I have an idea he once wanted to lay me out – not that he’d have had much chance at it. But he’s a good chap.’

  ‘Why ever did he want to lay you out?’ Gloria, although anxious to get off delicate ground, would not have been woman if she could have resisted this curiosity.

  ‘He came on me in a situation he thought revolting in anybody who had anything to do with you.’

  ‘I see.’ For a moment Gloria was revolted herself, for she could make at least a rough guess at the sort of thing that must have occurred. But, after all, she had known about Harry. Of course she had! And it hadn’t made Harry any less attractive. Nor did it do so now. Or not in certain obvious if superficial regards. Harry, for instance, was as good-looking as Jake – although Jake, in his turn, was happily as good-looking as Harry. They were equally upstanding young men, nicely formed – you co
uld be pretty sure – all over. So in terms of the spontaneous response you make to that kind of appeal it would be dishonest to claim that Harry was, so to speak, suddenly drawing a blank with her. Did this mean that she wasn’t really in love with Jake? Or that she was by nature a depraved, inconstant, or trivial person? Gloria had a moment of dismay, in which she confusedly felt that the memory of all those phantasmagoric pictures bore some part. At least what she had needed on this journey home had been to relax – into a deep contentment which was never going to leave her again. So Harry had been a bit much. And now Harry, with the clairvoyant power she had sometimes remarked in him, moved in with a question relevant to at least a part of these thoughts.

  ‘Gloria, my dear, where did you get engaged?’

  ‘Where?’ It would surely, Gloria thought, have been more natural to ask when. ‘Oh, it was outside a picture gallery. After Jake had been showing me some pictures he rather likes.’

  ‘I suppose he likes yours too. He’ll quite have glory, picture-wise. If you’re going to live at Nudd. Are you?’

  ‘No, definitely not.’ It startled Gloria to discover that Jake and she hadn’t remotely discussed where they were going to live, or how – or, for that matter, on what. She knew what they wouldn’t be living on. The afternoon had seen to that.

  ‘Did you like the pictures Jake likes?’

  ‘I don’t know. I’m not sure.’ Gloria answered this innocent-seeming question even while she resented it. ‘I didn’t get the hang of them very well. Perhaps they’re what people call problem pictures. I didn’t know where I was with them really.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter, does it? Not since you know where you are with Jake. Or are he and the pictures a bit mixed up?’

  Gloria wasn’t exactly scared. She had a feeling that Harry was teasing her – and on the strength of some devilish acuteness which was as much his specific thing as becoming an artist was Jake’s. She didn’t want much more of this.