Once Again Assembled Here

by Sean O'Brien

  ‘Well, then. No harm done. Shouldn’t think he noticed, in fact. Are you going to sit down?’

  I joined her on the settee. ‘But why did you rush off?’ I asked. ‘You’d seemed so keen to be there.’

  ‘To be honest, the place gave me the creeps. As I said, it stank of old age.’

  ‘I suppose it does a bit.’

  ‘And then I was cross about missing the chance to take the boat out. Oh, it was just one of my moods.’

  Do it, I thought. In the name of reason, and to save your miserable hide, do it. Get out. But Maggie was beautiful in an autumnal way, her beauty on the edge of inevitable dissolution. It seemed to be the pathos that provoked the desire. She looked at me with amusement, her eyes narrowing in the smoke of her cigarette. I’m sure she knew what I was thinking.

  ‘Shall we take up where we left off, then, Stephen?’

  Later we ate bread and cheese at the kitchen table. I told myself that this was simply a postponement and that in due course the right moment would present itself. Or perhaps she’d take the initiative and drop me. That would be easier. It would look better, too. Meanwhile the envelope went on burning a hole in the inside pocket of my coat.

  I wondered how to raise the subject of Charles Rackham. In the end the wine had loosened my tongue, so I said, ‘Do you ever think it’s a bit odd that you and your brother have so little to do with each other and yet work in the same place day after day?’

  She thought for a few moments.

  ‘I suppose it might look odd. But then there are married people who have less contact than Charles and I do. For unavoidable reasons, as you know, I don’t see much of Robert, for instance.’ She paused and stared into space. I tried to remember if she had ever mentioned visiting him. ‘So I suppose it’s all relative. Anyway, it all seems normal to us now.’ Given Maggie’s unguarded mood, I thought I would risk further enquiries.

  ‘Normal?’

  ‘I mean I’m used to it. It’s been like that as long as I can remember. We were never great ones for birthdays and all that. Just not made that way. He knows where I am if he needs me and vice versa. But it never comes up. And actually, he wasn’t very keen on Robert. The feeling was mutual.’ She sharpened the coal of her cigarette on the rim of the ashtray. ‘Does it all sound a bit strange? I can’t tell. They say you can get used to anything. Why?’

  ‘I’m sorry. Do you mind talking about it?’

  ‘I suppose not, but I don’t think there’s much to say. And really it’s not what you and I are here for, is it?’

  ‘But it’s curious. There must be a story. Were you ever close?’

  ‘I thought it was women who behaved the way you are behaving. As children, yes, I suppose we were close. But people grow up and they change, don’t they? For a long time, during the war, I didn’t see him, of course. He was a prisoner.’

  ‘Do you like his writing?’

  ‘I think I do, rather. Not that I know much about it. He’s neglected, of course. Like all the best poets.’ She laughed. ‘I mean, he must be one of the best, obviously. Otherwise he wouldn’t be doing it, would he?’

  ‘I suppose he is neglected. Certainly not a follower of fashion. Tim Connolly tries to keep us up to date with his work.’

  ‘That drip? Does he really? I shouldn’t think he understands a word, except perhaps at a pinch “and” and “the”. Dreary little man with his ghastly washed-out wife and their little tribe. Who does he think they are? The Quiverfuls?’

  We drank silently for a while.

  ‘I don’t suppose you ever finished that picture of me?’ I said.

  ‘I did, more or less, I suppose. God, now I suppose you want to see it, do you? Vanity, Stephen – beware of it. Remember, you might not like it. I don’t think I really captured your naive beauty. It’s just a picture.’

  ‘The pitiless gaze of the icy heart. I was worried about that.’

  ‘That’s the one. I can see you’ve done your homework. Come on, then.’ She led me upstairs to the attic she used as a storeroom. It was piled with years of work. ‘Careful,’ she said, as she switched on the light. ‘Some of the boards are loose. I’m the only one who ever comes in here, so it never seems worth getting anything done about it. You’re one of the first, you lucky boy.’ I seemed to be spending a lot of time in women’s attics.

  She retrieved the canvas from a stack resting against the fireplace. The picture was about two feet by two, a half-portrait.

  I propped the picture on the mantelpiece. I was shown seated in the light from the north window of the studio, my gaze directed slightly downwards. Maggie herself could be seen at her easel in a mirror that she had invented for the purpose of the picture. I was wearing the sleeveless pullover with its muted colours and old-fashioned horizontal pattern. The whole thing – like the landscape I’d commented on before – was finely done yet slightly anachronistic, as though painted before the war. I looked pale and somehow powerless, as though undergoing questioning I would not be able to satisfy.

  ‘So,’ she said. ‘Shall we go back to not talking?’

  ‘No, no, it’s very good, Maggie. Very strong. It’s just a bit eerie to find oneself represented. Laid bare.’

  ‘You’re fully clothed.’

  ‘You know what I mean. I don’t cut a very impressive figure, I suppose.’

  ‘If you say so. No, you’ll do. Anyway, it’s not meant to be a Sargent, otherwise you’d be wearing a ballgown. Of course, if you buy it, you can burn it, like Clemmie with the Churchill portrait. I think that was quite a stylish thing to do, actually. Showed who was boss.’

  I looked again at the young man marooned in the picture, at the brisk contrast with the image of the painter at work – that dark, slightly disturbing line of her brow, the green eyes looking straight through to a vanishing point. It was clever work, but I didn’t like it. It seemed like a pretext.

  ‘I don’t suppose I could afford it.’ I made a sad face.

  ‘Better wait till your birthday, then. If you’re good, we’ll see.’

  ‘What other people have you done?’

  ‘Oh, all kinds really, over the years. Can’t remember offhand.’ She looked through another stack and then stopped, seeming bored with it, all her sharp energy gone in a moment. ‘Why don’t you have a look? If you want to. I’m going to get a drink. Don’t forget to turn the light off when you come down.’

  I searched through the stack by the fireplace. There were a couple of pictures of her husband seated at a kitchen table. One showed him reading; one had him looking at his hands with a book face down to one side. He was being absorbed into the dark ground of the picture, as though into an anglicized Bonnard, without the benefit of Mediterranean light.

  With a jolt I discovered that there were also several paintings of Rackham, two of them with Maggie occupying the same position as in my portrait. One showed Rackham in uniform, seated by a window in autumnal sunlight. There was an unmistakeable satirical swagger about him – as though to indicate that he could carry off the look as well as any Guards officer but that the role did not define or contain him.

  Next to her signature was the date: 1945. Rackham had been happy to wear the uniform in peacetime, to sit for a portrait as though everything was perfectly normal. Perhaps it was normal. Perhaps there had been mitigation that Carson never knew about.

  Next was a half-portrait dated 1950 with the same set-up as the picture of me. Rackham looked up from under the family brow, his black hair half in his eyes, his expression one of complacent assurance and challenge. He wore no shirt under the pullover, but there was a red bandana round his neck. Maggie’s facility was remarkable: here he might have been painted by John Minton. Behind this was a brown and bloody impersonation of Sickert, with a naked figure who, going by his black hair, could well have been Rackham, reclining on a disordered bed in the sour, impoverished light from an unseen window. No date this time. Another, dated earlier this year, showed him seated in suit and gown, his black hair
unchanging in the cold spring light, his expression unreadable. How occasional could the contact between brother and sister be, to produce this body of work?

  There was also a reclining nude after Manet’s ‘Olympia’, with Rackham in the role of the African attendant. This was a good deal more recent, because the model for Olympia was quite clearly Shirley and the setting was Maggie’s own bedroom, the high brass bedstead spread with white covers. Shirley was wearing her red stilettos. I remembered her shoe box of pictures – society portraits of a place where I would never belong, whose inhabitants I knew but scarcely recognized.

  I went back downstairs to the kitchen. Maggie was at the table, going through a back copy of Vogue with a pair of scissors, cigarette in mouth, blinking against the smoke.

  ‘I’ve opened another bottle. Since it’s the weekend. Find what you were looking for?’ she asked. I poured myself a glass and sat down opposite her.

  ‘There are several portraits of Charles.’

  ‘The old days. Long ago and far away.’ She lied without hesitation, while knowing I must have seen the most recent picture.

  ‘It was a surprise to see Shirley. I didn’t know she did modelling.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Shirley. The girl in the homage to “Olympia”.’

  ‘Oh, her, yes, Olympia. Shirley? Is that what’s she’s called? Quite a natural. She models at the art school sometimes. I used to teach the odd session there and I was looking for someone suitable for that project. She came recommended. I’d forgotten you knew her. Of course, Shirley. She was good in a sleepy sort of way. Didn’t mind taking her things off. Good at lying there. Didn’t seem to know what was going on half the time.’

  ‘Well, let’s face it, who does?’ I said.

  Maggie smiled without looking up.

  ‘Do you really never exhibit?’

  ‘Not so far.’ She lit another cigarette and carried on cutting things out.

  ‘But you’re serious about your work, so shouldn’t you?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘It’s because I’m serious that I don’t exhibit.’

  ‘I don’t follow.’

  ‘Just use your eyes,’ she said.

  ‘The work is very accomplished.’

  ‘Yes. Isn’t it? I’ve got nothing to add but the desire to add something.’ I found that it was cruelly important to me that she should say this aloud. She put down the scissors and poured another glass of wine. ‘But it’s something to do in between all the rest of it.’

  ‘The pictures of your brother are striking.’

  ‘Well, he is. He was.’

  ‘And you don’t see much of him.’

  ‘As I said. No, I don’t. Why?’

  ‘I don’t know, really. It just struck me.’

  ‘He has his own life to lead.’

  ‘But you still paint him sometimes. That must take a while.’

  ‘Sometimes, yes.’

  ‘You seem very different from one another.’

  ‘Perhaps. But again, why are you interested? Has he said something?’

  ‘No. It’s not that. Well, in fact he’s said a lot, most of it about the mock election.’

  ‘Oh, that. Isn’t it a nuisance? I should think you’ve more than enough to do without taking that on.’

  ‘Carson used to organize it,’ I said. ‘I inherited the task.’

  ‘Oh well, if it’s ancestor-worship.’

  ‘Your brother and I disagree about the election,’ I said. ‘He sponsored the BPP candidate.’

  ‘Did he now? Well, Charles can be a bit mischievous when he wants to.’ She laughed. ‘He gets bored, you see. But I don’t really want to talk about him any more.’

  ‘Can’t I be interested in your life?’

  ‘Charles is not my life. And no, you can’t, not really. What we have is here, at times like this. This is it. This has to be enough. Christ. Why are people so sentimental? It’s just – it’s something to do, isn’t it? Anyway, it’s getting late. Are you staying?’

  Later, when I was sure that she was asleep, I went back up to the storeroom and placed the envelope in the space beneath a loosened floorboard. It seemed suspiciously like taking the initiative, but I had no idea what the next move should be.

  I awoke before her. As I dressed, I looked at her face in repose. It was cruel, somehow, and as if never-sleeping. I turned to go and she called out, a word or a name I couldn’t catch.

  TWENTY-SIX

  Bonfire Night came and went. On Wednesday morning the city smelled of the aftermath, with spent rockets lying in the street and poking out of hedges, and vast, ashy, red-eyed circles smouldering on bombsites. Some idiot had fired a marine flare which had fallen on a greenhouse in the allotments behind the school. The morning paper called for tighter regulation of this danger to life and property.

  Wednesday afternoon was given over to sport. Sporadic cries could be heard from the House rugby matches. I was in the library deciding which items among the older fiction stock could safely be transported to the storeroom and then forgotten about until someone braver had the temerity to dispose of them. Claes would have hoovered them up, I thought, though the idea of him on the school premises seemed unnatural. Marryatt and Henty, I supposed, had better stay. Percy F. Westerman could go, and I would risk removing Sapper. Q? Who had ever read Q in the first place? The Buchan material could be thinned out. The Riddle of the Sands could stay, though it had not been borrowed since a new edition had been bought five years previously. The Four Feathers had better stay. Jock of the Transvaal could go. I found this task calming.

  Feldberg, who was excused games on medical grounds, perhaps having the disease of preferring reading to blundering about in the clinging mud and fog of the rugby fields, was assisting me, wheeling the laden trolley to the storeroom, where the books would await some kind of further organization – by my successor, at this rate. Inevitably as we worked our way along the stacks we both ended up reading passages from some of the books, while maintaining a desultory discussion.

  Anthony Hope, sir.’

  ‘Keep it.’

  ‘Meredith.’

  ‘Storeroom.’

  ‘Ouida.’

  ‘How did that get in here? Storeroom.’

  Feldberg made a note and added the book to the trolley.

  ‘Are you happy at Blake’s, Feldberg?’

  He became wary. ‘I’m not sure I understand, sir.’

  ‘I didn’t mean it to be a difficult question. I mean, do you like it here?’ This was going wrong already.

  ‘It enables me to study what I wish,’ he said. ‘Captain Carson was very encouraging.’

  ‘And you miss him.’

  He nodded, uncomfortably.

  ‘Well, we’ll have to do our best.’ Another nod. My enquiries seemed to have stalled. I had merely exposed my own perceived inadequacy in comparison with Carson. I was myself a symptom of decline. Feldberg would be glad to see the back of the place, which would in turn choose not to remember him.

  ‘Is there something else, sir?’

  I felt I must press on, however crass the effect. There might not be another chance to talk.

  ‘Do you feel at home? Do you feel you belong?’

  ‘Does it matter?’ he replied with a faint edge of irritation.

  ‘I think so. It’s important to belong.’

  ‘But you can’t choose it, can you? A person cannot belong by himself, if you see what I mean. Of his own volition.’

  ‘And that’s how you feel.’

  ‘It’s the way things are,’ he said, patiently. ‘The school is a means to an end.’

  ‘I don’t think Captain Carson would approve of that view of the matter.’

  ‘But he might understand.’

  I seemed unable to direct the conversation.

  ‘To be honest, sir, I’m not really interested in belonging here. I just want to get to the A-levels and Cambridge entrance. The others can have the place in perpetuity and
become Old Blakeans and all that, if that’s what they want. I suppose that’s another reason I don’t belong. Not Old Blakean material.’

  I stifled a grin and went blundering on. ‘Are you being bullied or mistreated?’

  ‘Sir?’ He seemed shocked.

  ‘You would tell me, I hope.’

  ‘If the other boys were doing that, no, obviously I wouldn’t tell you. Any more than they would in the same position. That’s just how the place works. Anyway, the sixth form is different from the lower school. More gentlemanly perhaps. Less fisticuffs, generally speaking.’ He gave a cold smile. ‘After all, the founder wanted to educate the boys to be Christian gentlemen.’

  ‘And other than the boys, how do you find it? Do the staff treat you properly?’

  Again the cold smile. ‘No comment, sir. This is not the place where such matters are settled.’

  I didn’t follow this last point. He took up his list again and I looked out of the window, at a loss.

  ‘And the mock election?’

  ‘I expect we will lose, given the political complexion of the electorate.’ Feldberg kept a straight face while saying this.

  ‘But there has not been any trouble?’

  He considered this.

  ‘People make a lot of noise. It remains to be seen if they will actually do anything more than that.’ He turned back to the books. ‘What about Sorrell and Son, sir?’

  Below in the masters’ car park the Bentley arrived with elderly grace in a space under the vast copper-beech tree. The Colonel got out of the driver’s side. His passenger was Hamer. Gammon appeared and greeted the pair, ushering the Colonel towards the Main Hall. Hamer looked up, saw me and came towards the library. It was not yet three o’clock, but already the afternoon was darkening.

  ‘Sir? Sorrell and Son?’

  ‘Put it on the trolley, Feldberg. Take that load through to the storeroom and then you can go and do some of your own work in the carrels.’

  If Feldberg was surprised at this abrupt change of activity he did not show it. Time to read was always welcome.

  I went to the librarian’s office and sat down, pretending to examine some publishers’ catalogues. There might be nothing in the visit. The Colonel could be here in some benign military capacity. But that would not necessarily account for his companion.