Darke

by Rick Gekoski

  There’s a better café at Sotheby’s, cliented by the well-heeled and odoriferous, which makes a lobster club sandwich on an adequate toasted brioche, though the amount of lobster in it just about gets them through the Trades Description Act. If you poke about amidst the lettuce and tomato accoutrements, you will find a bit of that elusive hard-nosed crustacean, minced beyond recognition by tongue or eye. You may not taste its presence, but you pay for it. But before an afternoon auction, there is nowhere more convenient.

  I’d come to preview some mid-level Victorian watercolours, a market that is almost as depressed as I have been, and found – somewhat to my surprise – that even the better ones felt flat on the paper and dead on the wall. Perhaps am growing out of them? Next thing I know I will be buying a Howard Hodgkin, something messy and cheerful.

  The second reason for my visit was to ask one of the ‘experts’ to value and hopefully to offer for sale Suzy’s Rimington (S.), which I had photographed, it being too large for ease of transport. It just about fitted in the back of the 3.8, but I did not want to be seen in its company on Bond Street.

  The ‘expert’ was a stylish young woman in a dark navy suit and – rather butch and sexy, a bit of the old transgenders – sporting a bright red silk tie. Like all her generation, she used too much make-up. You could see a plaster film on what remained of her face. I wanted to touch her cheek, scrape away at it, reveal the pristine beauty of the skin, the youth beneath. Why go around looking like a pancake?

  Suzy didn’t. Just a little touch here and there, a daub of her characteristic scent behind her ears. For years I supposed she didn’t wear anything save the perfume, though she would apply various touches of something or other at her dressing table. I never took it in. What did I think she was doing? No idea, just gazing in the looking-glass, I suppose.

  Pancake Madeleine’s field was contemporary art, and she was delighted to see the Rimington (S.), which was apparently from ‘just the right period’. It’s rather depressing to think of him having been around long enough to have periods, but the implication that prices and quality – and I hope he – have declined in recent years was cheering, whatever the ‘good’ period collaborations were worth.

  ‘We haven’t had one of these in the rooms for five or six years,’ Madeleine said, ‘and that one was neither as big nor as important as yours. Did you buy it from the original show?’

  ‘I didn’t buy it at all. I hate it. My wife, my late wife, constructed it and then purchased it, and I am anxious not to pass it on to my daughter.’

  ‘I see. Well. That’s good provenance. Do you have the original documentation and receipts?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘The next Contemporary Art sale is in four months, and there is plenty of time to get it catalogued, if you wish to consign it.’

  ‘I do, once you tell me what it might fetch.’

  She nodded happily, and got out the relevant forms.

  ‘Let’s get the estimates and terms clear first,’ I said.

  I have no faith in experts, or in auctioneers. Anyone who tells you that they can represent both buyer and seller in the same transaction is not to be trusted, but their publicity machine and social caché is so great that people fall for it. Sell at auction! Get the best price! Buy at auction! Get a bargain! And as for my pretty piece of Madeleine, if she were actually an expert she’d be dealing on her own, or swanning about at a top gallery, making real money. As it is, she dresses up, is mildly patronising to her clients, and takes home just enough to supplement hubby’s income. He will be working in the City.

  ‘Yes, of course. In the light of previous results over the last ten years – you know of course that he has a big reputation in the States?’

  ‘A reputation? What as?’

  She smirked. It was rather sexy. ‘I would confidently expect between £60,000 and £80,000.’

  ‘If you are right, that would be satisfactory. We’ll reserve it at the low estimate. I will pay 6 per cent, not 10 per cent, because you can gouge the big money out of the buyer, and I will not pay for either insurance or for an illustration in the catalogue – though of course you will provide both.’

  She stopped for a moment, and her smirk widened and then transformed into a look, if I may flatter myself, of mild admiration. ‘You’ve done this before.’

  ‘Do we have a deal?’

  ‘We do,’ she said, and shook my hand, rather too firmly for my taste.

  We finished the paperwork, and I returned to the café to risk a coffee. By the time I left I felt pretty pleased with myself, a result of exposure to my tasty Pancake and coffee, and the impending loss of the Rimington (S.).

  A bit of high life in the heart of Bond Street, a few mildly flirtatious moments (were they?) with a sexy woman, the cut and thrust of commerce, a chance to feel superior to pictures from two different centuries – that should have lifted my spirits. I used to love this sort of thing – dealers, pictures and first editions, buying, selling, haggling, but it left no taste other than that of not-lobster and ashes.

  There was a book sale in progress, and I peered into the room where the auctioneer was plodding on, anxious to awaken some enthusiasm in a torpid and largely empty saleroom. I didn’t bother to go in. Auctions are dull, with a few quick moments of action when there is something to bid on. And even then, you either buy the lot or (more frequently) you don’t. Big deal. When I was younger and first chasing my Dickens, this was exciting, romantic even, and I looked forward to auctions for weeks, made strategies, prioritised my various interests, and generally came home with a treasure or two.

  I retrieved the 3.8 just a few minutes before the time expired from its parking place in George Street and made my way home, feeling deflated, garaged it, and walked up the street to buy milk at the corner shop.

  ‘Oh, and might you have a few empty cartons – you know, cardboard boxes – that I could take home?’

  The uninterested boy behind the counter pointed down the left aisle, where a few boxes were unevenly deposited in the corner.

  ‘All yours.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘Saves putting them out.’

  Spared the task of even this minimal degree of effort, he managed a weak smile and a nod of the head.

  It was a bit difficult, the boxes being of the same size, to get more than four into my hands, once the milk carton was deposited in one of them.

  Milk in fridge. Boxes into my study. Pause. I had so little reason to come in here now, other than the task – was it a task or an obligation or a purgative or a relief? – of writing all this journal stuff. I hadn’t looked at my collection for ages, save to confirm that Bronya hadn’t damaged any of the books. Suzy had no interest in them at all, and was scornful about Dickens, who, she maintained, had the soul of a peasant. She meant this unconditionally as an insult. (She thought the same thing of Rodin. The Kiss. Ugh!) As far as I am aware, Suzy is the only person since Thomas Hardy to take the category ‘peasant’ seriously. What she meant, I think, was that Dickens lacked both subtlety and fineness of feeling and of discrimination. And I am beginning, reluctantly, to agree with her.

  Who cares any more? The Rhetoric of Bloody Indignation. The project really lost impetus (if it ever had any) with the coming of the internet, and the multiplicity of sites offering quotations from chosen worthies. One such has over 500 citations from Dickens. What had taken me years of reading, note-taking, considering and filtering, could now be done by a diligent undergraduate in an hour for his weekly essay. And when I entered such sites and poked about, something became clear that I had been aware of in a subliminal way, but had never entirely labelled. Yes, Dickens can be testy, Dickens can be irate, Dickens is occasionally indignant:

  Dignity, and even holiness too, sometimes, are more questions of coat and waistcoat than some people imagine.

  You can locate a number of such instances, and ponder which of the sub-categories of anger they might be placed in. But most of these sentiment
s, when you roll them around in your mouth, aren’t angry at all. They’re cutesified, smug, as unconvincing and self-satisfied as an epigram by Oscar Wilde. For every instance of a sentiment inspired by pity for the dispossessed, and disgust that they should be ill-treated, there are a score of homilies, bite-sized bits of sugar sweets. The instances will come to mind without my needing to go through them. Brush your teeth with Tiny Tim!

  I will honour Christmas in my heart . . .

  I only ask to be free. The butterflies are free . . .

  A loving heart is the truest wisdom . . .

  Dickens is a slobberer. Anyone who can so insistently recommend the goodness of the heart and the primacy of love is never, quite, to be trusted. Bronya knew this instinctively, for when she began interrogating the man she looked beyond the works and emerged on the other side shaking her head wearily. Had she access to the term ‘shitslinger’, she might have used it.

  Of Dickens? My dear Dickens? Could that be true?

  And who gives a damn any more? I’m sick of books, they’ve begun to make me slightly nauseous. Time to have a purge, a proper clear-out. When I used to go into our school library, which had a significant collection dating back to early editions of Chaucer, and a First Folio, covering in depth the great writers in English – or perhaps I mean England – I was often depressed by the sheer number of volumes. And these were only the best ones by the best writers, in a (relatively) tiny holding. For someone trying to hold onto a simple premise – that books matter, that literature guides and teaches and consoles us – there was simply too much of it. I had supposed that one day I could read my way through a substantial chunk of the genuinely serious books, but it keeps piling up, and every year so much more is published, that I get incrementally less well read as time goes by. Too many books, too great and too unrewarding a challenge lurking on the shelves.

  If you are escorted into the stacks of the British Library, left free to wander for a few minutes amidst the miles of shelves and millions of volumes, you are struck not by the extraordinary range of human endeavour, but – as book follows book towards some unimaginably distant biblio-horizon – by the sheer fatuousness of it all. The vast percentage has been untouched since they hit the shelf, save when reshelved in a yet more capacious venue. They are worthless. No one reads them, or cares about them. In the long term – the term of suns and galaxies and black holes – all shall be lost, books, libraries, readers, our puny civilisation. Soon enough, in cosmic time, no one will be around to read, or to care. Goodbye, immortal Shakespeare.

  FATUOUS

  Silly, foolish, inane, childish, puerile, infantile, idiotic, brainless, mindless, vacuous, imbecilic, asinine, witless, empty-headed, hare-brained, pointless, senseless, ridiculous, ludicrous, risible, preposterous, fucking absurd

  Sotheby’s can come and pick him up. Goodbye Charlie! I’ll be visited by one of the young men in the Books and Manuscripts Department, who are quietly efficient and rarely known to do anything other than smile. Bit bland? Not at all, they are sharp as tacks underneath the smooth exteriors and decent suits. But pleasant enough to deal with until something goes wrong, which it often does.

  Five days later, Lucy arrived. She noticed neither the missing Rimington (S.) nor the absent Dickens first editions. I’d replaced the picture with an almost pleasing watercolour, which had been in a cupboard for years, and my glass-fronted bookcase was as full as ever. Nothing to notice, unless you knew what you were looking at or for. And Lucy didn’t. She had scant interest in art, and thought books were objects of utility.

  As soon as she had come in, sniffed a bit, looked round disapprovingly, opened a few curtains and windows, and generally fuss-potted about, I told her about the forthcoming auctions.

  ‘Why would you do that?’ she said sharply. She hates change, and it was insensitive of me to impose it so soon after her mother’s death. I had no right, not yet, to alter my environs, or my possessions, much less Suzy’s.

  ‘Well,’ I said, ‘I have enough money to see myself out, given my advanced years. I can live off capital if necessary, and can make it to ninety if I do. I intend to be frivolous. I might even buy a little place in Italy . . .’

  ‘In Italy? You? You’ve so got to be kidding. Where did that come from?’

  ‘Just because your mum was rude about Chianti-shire doesn’t mean I would hate it. I could eat wonderful simple food, look at buildings and pictures, listen to opera, read, invite friends.’

  ‘You don’t have any friends.’

  ‘I do. At least I think I do. I seem to have mislaid them.’

  She peered at me intently. ‘Oh my God . . . you don’t have a girlfriend, do you?’

  ‘Heaven forfend! Anyway, maybe I will go on cruises. I’d like that. Lovely and indolent.’

  She peered at me more intently. ‘I think you need to see a doctor. This isn’t you. Italy! Cruises! What’re you, crazy?’

  ‘Perhaps. But before I go a-squandering, I thought I would put aside some money for a trust fund for little Rudy.’

  ‘Dad, no! You know my feelings about this, and Sam would be livid. Next thing I know you’ll be laying down port.’

  ‘I did that when he was born.’

  ‘Dad!’

  ‘Anyway, it’s not that much – might come to a quarter of a million, but it will grow over fifteen years.’

  It is hard to silence Lucy, but this did for almost three seconds, during which her jaw dropped and only slowly realigned itself upwards.

  ‘That is more money than Sam and I made together in four years! I hardly need a son who is richer than we will ever be!’

  ‘I just want him to have a nest egg when he turns twenty-one, maybe enough to buy a nice flat, get him set up.’

  ‘Oh, grand! Offer him a life free of genuine adult responsibility. A copy of you?’

  ‘No chance of that.’

  ‘Well, I never had a trust fund, nor has Sam. He hates that sort of thing, you know that. Believes in the equal distribution of capital – ’

  ‘Lucy, stop! Don’t be disingenuous. You will inherit millions when I die! Is Sam going to donate it to the Socialist Workers Party? If so, I – ’

  ‘Enough, please! You’re simply trying to buy us out of our class!’

  ‘On the contrary, I’m trying to buy you back into it. Anyway, let’s stop,’ I said. ‘We’ve been over this too many times. Of course I won’t insist on my little idea. More money for me! More cruises, a better Italian villa!’

  ‘Whatever,’ she scowled. ‘You always do what you want anyway. But not to me, or to my family.’

  I pulled her to me, and she resisted for a moment, then melted into my chest, allowing my arms to enfold her. There was a sound of sniffling from someone or other.

  ‘Let’s not,’ I said. ‘I do love you so much.’

  There was no sense confronting her head on, any more than there’d been when she was three and had a tantrum when asked to wear a red garment, or anything with buttons. The objects and issues had changed over the years, but the resistance had become more sophisticated and prolonged, and could no longer be deflected by the offer of a walk to the newsagent’s for a handful of sour sweets.

  Suzy had rather welcomed the confrontations: win or lose, conflict with Lucy animated her, and to my naive eye it appeared, incomprehensibly, to make them closer. I avoided such conflicts. I’d been rather frightened of Lucy, over-respectful of her moodiness, for as long as I could remember. She knew this, and used it.

  ‘Come and see something, will you? I have a surprise.’

  She allowed me to take her hand. In the kitchen I put the kettle on and made a pot of strong Darjeeling, put a jug of milk on the tray, and led her outside.

  It had taken a gardener a full day to cut the grass, edge and weed the beds, trim and prune this and that. I’d set a table with tea crockery, plates and cake under the tree at the rear, amidst the late-season tulips.

  I leant over, pretending to smell the blooms.

&n
bsp; ‘Tulips don’t smell, silly! Come and sit. Shall I be mum?’ she asked, as she picked up the strainer and began to pour.

  ‘Please,’ I said. ‘Fancy some lemon drizzle cake? I made it this morning, it’s rather good, I think. Sweet, but sourlicious.’

  She took a bite, and pursed her lips. ‘It is! What was that you called it?’

  ‘Sourlicious?’

  ‘Yeah, that. Cute term, I like it.’

  Neither of us had been in Suzy’s bedroom since the night they carried her away – her body away. As I opened the door, fearfully, I felt physically sucked into the space, as if by a current of stale air, inwards into the gloom. Lucy followed behind me, clucking and fussing, opening curtains and windows, turning on table lamps against the fading, dusky light.

  She turned on the bedside lamps, too, where we had spent so much time drawing chairs up to the sides of the bed, sitting and waiting, fewer and fewer words between us as the time passed, and the end approached. Left with nothing to say.

  I pulled the armchair from its place under the window, plumped the cushions – dust rose into the air – and sat down, uncertain of my footing for those moments. Lucy walked around the room slowly, taking things in, hesitating before her self-appointed task of going through Suzy’s things, dreading it.

  ‘Why are you putting yourself through this?’ I said. ‘You can hardly want her clothes . . . wrong size, wrong styles.’

  ‘You mean, I am fat and dowdy? No style at all?! That’s what it’s like when you’re pregnant. Oh and thanks for asking.’

  ‘Asking what?’

  ‘Oh, Lucy dear, how is your pregnancy going? When is the baby due? What plans are you making for its arrival? That sort of thing!’

  ‘I’m sorry, I – ’

  ‘Not half as sorry as I am!’

  Animated by her anger, she opened the walk-in wardrobe, turned on the overhead light and began shuffling through the racks of clothes – so many clothes – pushing hangers aside brusquely, as if they resented her presence.