The Keeper of P and D’s door was closed, he’d noticed. Douglas, the Keeper, was in Madrid overseeing the transfer of an exhibition to the Prado there, but Conrad would no doubt be in already to cover informally. Any excuse.
Lucy, the assistant conservator, arrived next.
‘Good morning!’ he heard her call brightly from the area by the coathooks where they left their coats and bags. She came in, then stopped a few feet away.
‘Andrew?’
‘Yes, Lucy.’ He half-turned in his chair towards the sound of her voice. ‘Good morning. Good morning to you today! And how are you? Feeling good?’
Lucy stood there, not moving. She looked at Andrew, then at the Danish and coffee in front of him, then back at him. She did not speak.
‘I have here in my possession a mochaccino.’ Andrew playfully tappety-tapped the lid with his fingertips. ‘It is – apparently – some kind of coffee and hot chocolate combination. Combo, I should say, no doubt. And it is, I have to tell you, surprisingly yet considerably less nice than either – a horrific hot-drink chimera, if you will.’
‘Are you… are you OK?’ Lucy looked at him again, then away towards the closed door of the Keeper’s office.
‘I am not just OK, I am okey-dokey, tip-top, absolutely fantastico, thank you.’
Lucy said nothing. She stood there for a few moments, then crossed to the Keeper’s door, knocked firmly and – without waiting for an answer – went in.
After a couple of minutes, Conrad emerged and entered the conservation room. Andrew was sitting at his work-table in his dressing gown and pyjamas. One side of his face was shaven, the other not. In front of him was a disposable cup and the remnants of some sort of Viennoiserie, Conrad deduced. There were flaky, buttery crumbs scattered in a wide arc radiating out from him. This table, which was meticulously, obsessively cleaned each day to remove the smallest particle of dust, the tiniest residue of oil or grease from an unthinking hand. This room, in which no form of food or drink, other than bottled water, was ever brought. Ever.
‘Andrew?’ Conrad pulled up another stool and sat down next to him.
‘I bought a mochaccino,’ he said.
‘Yes.’
‘I’ve never had one before.’
‘No.’
‘It’s truly unpleasant.’ He looked at the cup with loathing. ‘Too sweet but then bitter, both at the same time.’
‘I see,’ Conrad said. ‘It’s all right now.’
‘It’s just –’ Andrew turned his palms upwards, helpless. ‘It’s just – all – too difficult, you see. All of it. The teeth-brushing. And the shaving. And the dressing. Over and over. It doesn’t stay done. None of it… it never stays done…’
Conrad awkwardly patted his arm and, suddenly, Andrew crumpled against him. Silently, he cried, his head making little jerks against Conrad’s collar-bone and his tears leaching through Conrad’s shirt. The older man held himself stiff as a lamp-post at first, but then, at last, put his arm around Andrew.
‘I know,’ he said, squeezing this trembling form the way a father might comfort his child awoken from a nightmare. ‘I know.’
38
The Painting
1982
‘Marriott.’ Conrad answers the phone in his office at the BM.
‘Hello. It’s Philip Herbert here.’
For a few moments, Conrad cannot place the name or the voice.
‘The painter. Your painting is ready. You can come and collect it. Or I suppose I could deliver it to you if you’re not miles away…?’
The painting. Oh dear God, the painting. She swims into his head again, though she is never absent for long.
‘No, no, I’ll come and fetch it. Tomorrow. Remind me of your address.’
Conrad has been there only once before, at the first sitting for the portrait. Commissioning it was entirely his idea but she recommended a painter, a friend she described as ‘overburdened with talent’. Conrad pulled her onto his lap then, and traced the curve of her cheek with his fingertip.
‘But he’s bound to fall in love with you – sitting there gazing at you for hours while he paints you. I wish I could paint.’
‘He won’t. Trust me.’ She kissed him, gently sucking his lower lip between her teeth. ‘He’s gay.’
‘Gay? Oh, queer, you mean?’
‘Oh – you.’ She pinched him playfully. ‘You can’t say “queer” any more. It’s perjorative and intolerant. Besides, it makes you sound about a hundred.’
‘In my day, gay meant jolly. “We had such a gay time at the village fête”, that sort of thing.’
‘Well, it doesn’t any more. You have to keep up.’
‘Why have you stopped kissing me?’
‘I haven’t. I was merely pausing to reprimand you.’
‘Reprimand accepted. Resume kissing.’ His hand moved over the soft swell of her breast, and he started to fumble at the buttons of her satin blouse. Suddenly, he rose to his feet in a single movement, lifting her in his arms easily, and carried her back to the bed.
‘Again?’ She laughed. ‘I thought you’d have tired of it by now.’
‘Never.’ His voice low and rumbling as he nuzzled the soft hollow of her throat. ‘Never, never.’
Philip Herbert’s studio is surprisingly orderly for an artist, Conrad thinks. He recalls that she had teased him – Philip – about his neatness; they were very chummy and relaxed with each other, a little like brother and sister; he had noted a pang of envy in himself. He had no friends with whom he could be so completely playful and at ease.
That earlier visit, Conrad looked at a few examples of Philip’s paintings. He was clearly exceptional. He thought about the pictures on his walls at home – Christ, how tame they were! How polite. How fucking dull. These were like some completely different species: technically extremely fine but also fizzing with a curious sort of intensity and depth of colour that made them compelling. Mostly portraits but also some rather beautiful cityscapes, with buildings in extraordinary colours.
Philip wanted to begin at once and directed her to the window seat, telling her to find a position in which she could be comfortable for him to start his preparatory drawing.
Conrad looked round for a chair where he might perch and watch Philip work.
‘You’re not staying?’ She sounded half-amused, half-horrified.
‘Well, I rather thought I might.’ Conrad cast about him again, but the only potential seating other than the peculiar three-cornered stool on which Philip was sitting was a wooden chest with a brass-studded lid, which looked far from comfortable. There was a divan at the far end of the room but it would be hard to see from there.
‘No. Sorry – I can’t have people in the room while I’m working.’ Philip didn’t even look at him. ‘It’s distracting.’
‘I’d keep completely still.’
‘No. It’s out of the question.’
Conrad paused for a few moments, wondering whether to face up to the man. He was the client with the cheque book, after all. Philip had turned away and was poking about in a nearby plan chest for something. Conrad looked back at her. She looked at him with such love and tenderness that he felt something inside him give. She flicked her head in a tiny gesture towards the door and smiled. Conrad strode across and kissed her full on the lips.
‘Shall I really go then?’ He murmured close to her ear.
‘Yes, Dear Heart,’ she whispered back. ‘Call me later?’
‘Will do.’ Another kiss. He straightened up. ‘I’ll be off then.’ A curt nod at Philip. Bloody cheek of the man. Still, Christ, he could paint. What a thing to have a talent like that.
And then Benedict pulled his little joyriding stunt and that changed everything, forced him to face up to his responsibilities. He is managing without her. Not well, of course, but he is surviving by taking one day at a time and by immersing himself in his structured plan for Benedict, which involves checking Benedict at agreed half-hourly intervals while he do
es his homework, and working to a rigid timetable. When Benedict does well and completes the homework he has been set, he is allowed a small glass of beer with supper or to have a friend over at the weekend but they must both stay within sight and earshot. Benedict has been given an extremely stern talking-to by the family lawyer and does at least seem to have grasped that he was within a hair’s breadth of ending up in a youth custody centre.
Night-time is the worst, for it is then that she comes unbidden to his mind, his thoughts – her voice, her body, her glorious laugh. Then he thinks he will go mad, that he cannot live without her. Sometimes he slips silently out of bed, careful not to wake Marcia, goes down to the study and sits at the desk, looking at the sole photograph he has of her – one she gave him a couple of years ago. He keeps it in his desk, tucked inside an envelope, secreted inside a second envelope, in a small stack of old correspondence in a box file, somewhere no one would think to look. He leafs through an old, red spiral-bound sketchbook of hers he’d asked to keep: a few of the pages are covered with sketches of himself – reading, just sitting, looking rather stern, a study of his hands, one half-dozing in bed, and another of him in three-quarter profile – ‘always the hardest,’ she said. He found it most peculiar being drawn, the way she looked at him so intently but as if she had never seen him before. It is all he has.
He replays his memories endlessly, tormenting himself by picturing her in every possible situation – walking in the park, standing naked by the stove stirring a saucepan of tinned soup, that intense earnestness when she was arguing about something, or the way she’d tease him when he was being pompous or didactic, and he would suddenly see himself through her eyes and laugh at himself. He was a better him with her, no question. Most of all, he conjures up what she was like in bed – her face on the pillow next to his, the transported look on her face as she comes, or when she is lying on top of him, her hair loose, a curtain around her face, around his – enclosing their own private world. He has written to her, begged her to take him back, but there has been no answer. If he doesn’t hear from her soon, he is minded to go round there and pound on her door until she will see him. But then what would he say? Nothing has changed. He still loves her, but he cannot leave. Not yet, at least. She would understand, surely?
He trudges up the many steps to Philip Herbert’s studio. Depressing stairs covered in brown linoleum with dirty white strips defining the edges. The hallway lights have timed switches, set to click off just before you have reached the next switch so you are suddenly plunged into darkness. He knocks on Philip’s door. There doesn’t seem to be a doorbell or even a knocker. Philip lets him in, nods hello and waves him towards the painting, sitting on an easel in the middle of the room.
And there it is. There she is. He hasn’t seen her for well over a month, the longest break since they first met over three years ago. But here she is now, right in front of him, captured and captivating. It is the most extraordinary thing. He thought that maybe he would just pay Philip but tell him to keep the painting or give it to her, that he wouldn’t be able to bear it if he has this reminder in his house. But now that he is here looking at it, he knows at once that he needs it, that he must have it. If he has to survive without her, at least he can have this. It has caught her expression absolutely – that look she has where you can’t tell if she is looking at you with love or a sort of half-suppressed assessing amusement or a strange kind of wry pity.
He stands there, lost in another world, until Philip coughs.
‘So… erm… it’s OK, right? I mean, do you like it?’
‘Hmm?’ Conrad surfaces from the depths.
Philip nods towards the picture, a question.
‘There is not a single brushstroke you could improve upon.’
‘Oh. Right. Thanks.’ Suddenly, the man looks quite boyish. ‘Yeah, I’m pretty pleased with it.’
‘It is…’ Conrad pauses, ‘… absolutely her. I… I—’ He cannot speak, turning away then to take out the money to pay him, looking down to count it out. Clears his throat, straightens up. ‘Have you seen her lately?’
Philip makes a non-committal movement that conveys nothing, then says, ‘I guess you haven’t seen her yourself?’
He knows then.
‘No. It’s – ah – been difficult.’ This is such a preposterous understatement that he wonders he could even say it out loud.
Philip nods. ‘Sorry to hear it. I guess love is never easy, right?’
‘Right.’
‘You do still want the painting, though?’ Philip’s hand closes around the wad of notes. ‘I mean, maybe you’ll work things out?’
‘Mm, maybe.’ Conrad hears the over-cheerful note in his voice, as if he is wishing that the weather will brighten up. He hates himself when he is like this. He does not know how to be him any more unless he is with her. He has become the way he used to be, a competent, stiff parody of a human being. He watches himself from the outside, functioning, talking, making decisions, a dry husk of a man.
‘And, yes, I want the painting, of course. Do you have some paper to put round it?’
‘Sure.’ Philip retrieves a roll of brown paper from a cupboard and some packing tape. ‘And let me point you towards a decent framer, if you want one? It’s really not far.’
Conrad nods. Yes, he will have it framed; he can take it straight there now. It deserves a good frame and it will give him a little more time to think about how he might have come by the painting. Marcia has been somewhat attuned to his movements in the last few months, asking more questions about his whereabouts in a way she never used to. These last few weeks have been well-timed, in fact, as he has been coming home promptly straight after work and is unmistakably present around the house at weekends, keeping an eye on Benedict and making him earn his allowance by doing his homework, helping in the garden with the digging or washing the car. Marcia has even made some no doubt well-intentioned remarks about it: ‘I’m sure having you actually in the house as you should be is making a world of difference to Benedict, you know.’ And the school is pleased, at least.
Eleanor notices everything but says very little, only commenting once as she kissed him good night, ‘I like it when you are here for supper. So I have someone to talk to.’
39
A Woman Who Could Make Him Happy
Andrew let himself in as silently as he could, keeping on his coat but shucking off his shoes to secrete them neatly in the understairs cupboard, as dictated by High Decree. The front door wasn’t double-locked so she, or both of them, must be in. Bugger. He stifled his jangly keys and slipped them back in his pocket, rather than hanging them on the keyboard on the back of the cupboard door.
He wouldn’t put it past his mother to have installed some sort of laser-beam crossing the hallway, which would alert her to his presence. But then why go to such unnecessary expense when her own inbuilt radar could detect the sound of a coffee mug being set down not on its assigned coaster from two rooms away?
Today, he really wasn’t in the mood for her. He told himself he was being unkind, ungrateful, but still he craved just a few glorious minutes of peace and silence to himself before he could face her and the rat-a-tat fire of questions that would surely follow. If he could just go and sit in his room, maybe lie down for ten minutes, he’d feel better then, and could come down and sit at the kitchen table and ask about her morning and just listen without trying to curtail her account of the minutiae of Summerlee Avenue: who had walked their dog ten minutes later than usual, who had come back from the shops laden with bags clinking with bottles, who’d had a visitor spotted sneaking out at six o’clock in the morning. He would sit, sip his tea, and say ‘mmm’, just like his dad did, like a good son should.
But not now this minute. He wanted to slip into the silence like a pool of glorious cool water on a sweltering day. He set his foot on the bottom step, glancing along the hallway towards the closed kitchen door. He could hear the TV on in there, so that was a help. Dad would
no doubt be filling time in his shed, keeping busy and out of Herself’s way. Second step. Skip the third as it creaked. Take it easy now. Resist the urge to rush. Four, five. Six – scoosh to the left as it was dodgy on the right. Half-landing. Breathe out. Tiptoeing up the rest. Yes! Victory was his. A fleeting moment of smugness was replaced by a stab of self-loathing: God, you sad bastard, is this really your idea of a triumph: getting upstairs without being detected? What are you – eight years old? He tucked himself quickly into his bedroom and quietly shut the door. Breathed out, then lowered himself onto the bed. The bedsprings be-doinged in response. He stood up immediately and tried the chair. It was bolt upright, white, with an elongated, narrow back, the seat upholstered in olive-green Dralon. Andrew disliked it intensely, even more so now that he came to sit in it and realise just how uncomfortable it was.
Maybe he’d pop to the pub for a quick pint? He checked his watch. It wasn’t even 10.30 a.m. yet. The café, then. He could go for a coffee and read the papers. Maybe go to the pub later. He could call one of his friends and arrange to hook up, have a pint or two, go for a Thai or a curry; yes, go out like other blokes of his age, have a drink, chat up some women. Why not? Because most of them are married and half of them have kids, you prat – that’s why not.
Out of boredom, he opened the top right-hand drawer of his chest of drawers. His underpants, neatly arranged in staggered layers by colour: navy, grey, black. He’d thanked his mother innumerable times for doing his laundry but she was deaf to his insistence that really, she could just dump his washing on his bed and he’d put it away. It was no bother, she said, she was putting everything else away anyway, why shouldn’t she do his, honestly she didn’t mind. She was not attuned to subtle hints so either you’d have to be blunt and say, ‘DO NOT put my washing away, it creeps me out and I’m not five or an invalid, so please, for the love of God, please STOP’ – and risk leaving her with that wounded face and your feeling as if you’d kicked a puppy, or you’d learn to live with it. And, of course, she was doing something nice, so you should be grateful and not keep trying to circumvent her when she meant no harm by it. In his sock drawer, the socks were not just balled roughly into pairs, as he would do, but flattened and perfectly aligned, possibly – he shuddered – even ironed. His work socks were on one side of the drawer, his casual socks and ‘comic’ socks – given to him each year by his mother at Christmas, with golf-playing Santas or ice-skating reindeer or drunken snowmen cavorting on them – on the other. It was like a scab now that he couldn’t resist picking, relishing the deep irritation he felt at her.
Growing Up for Beginners Page 27
