‘Tread carefully now. I’m losing my good humour.’
He grinned. ‘I just thought I’d take the opportunity to let Miss Conroy know what I truly think of her work. Before those other critics go parroting your press release and fill her head with applause. If that’s OK by you.’
‘I’m sure Elspeth can stand to hear an opinion,’ Dulcie said. ‘Even an ignorant one.’
They both looked at me.
‘Actually, I wouldn’t mind knowing what he thought,’ I said.
‘Then I suggest we move our discussion elsewhere,’ Wilfredson replied. ‘I refuse to discuss art in a place like this. Let’s go and have a cocktail.’
Dulcie quaffed her wine. ‘You had me fooled for a moment there. If all you wanted was a quiet drink with Elspeth, you should’ve just said so.’
‘Can’t bear the sight of oysters, that’s all.’
‘I’m not really much of a drinker,’ I said.
Wilfredson paused. ‘Thing is, people tend to resent me for having an opinion, even when they’ve asked for it. So if I buy them the best daiquiri in London first—well, who could possibly resent a man after that? I take it you’ve never had cocktails at the Connaught.’
‘No.’
‘There you are then. A whole new world of happiness awaits.’ He stood up and threw on his coat. ‘I’ll be outside.’
‘Stay where you are,’ Dulcie said. ‘He isn’t worth the trouble.’
Wilfredson turned up his collar. ‘So she’s heard, anyway.’
When he was gone, there was a momentary hush. Max stroked breadcrumbs from the tablecloth. ‘Phew, he’s a bold fellow, isn’t he? What’s his name again?’
‘Wilfred Searle,’ Dulcie said.
‘Searle. He wouldn’t be related to Lord Searle by any chance?’
‘Nephew.’
‘Blimey.’
‘They just gave him Phil Leonard’s column at the Statesman.’
‘Blimey.’
‘Yes, do keep saying that, Max. It’s helping.’
‘But—wait a minute. What happened to Phil Leonard?’
‘Early retirement.’
‘Damn. Poor bugger. Always liked Phil.’ He tossed his napkin to the table. ‘That’s a fair readership, you know. More than a drop in a bucket.’
‘Which is why I invited him to join us tonight. I was told that he loved oysters.’
‘Remarkably poor research on someone’s part.’
‘Quite.’ Dulcie did not glare at her assistants, but they slumped into their chairs at the mere implication.
Then one of them said, ‘It’s not right what he was saying, though. About the diptych. We had some firm enquiries.’
‘Yes, the Levins asked me if the panels could be sold separately,’ Max added. ‘Just the mountains, not the baby. I told them, “How much would I have to pay to separate the two of you?” They seemed to think I was joking . . .’
Dulcie ignored him. She reached across the table to pat the back of my hand. ‘On reflection, darling, there’s never a bad time for a daiquiri. And you might enjoy hearing his views. Couldn’t hurt to keep him company.’
‘Is he really that important?’ I said.
‘Not right now. But he will be eventually.’ She patted my hand again, as though we were sisters in church. ‘I was watching him all night—he kept sneaking glimpses at you through the crowd. They’re all the same. Critics. Men. Can’t ever separate the woman from the art.’ She nodded to the glass façade of the restaurant where he was waiting. ‘They don’t make very good friends, I’m afraid, but we wouldn’t want them as enemies. I don’t think he knows which one he wants to be yet.’
My mother had raised me to be wary of good-looking men. But even she—a woman so disheartened by the chores of marriage that she was impervious to romance—would have softened in the presence of Wilfred Searle. He was refreshingly decisive about life’s small details: instructing the cabbie to drive us to the Connaught and directing him as to the fastest route to Mayfair, taking my coat in the lobby and delivering it to the cloakroom, ordering our drinks as he escorted me to a table: ‘Two daiquiris, please. And stick to the recipe. We’ll have that table in the corner.’ He was just as commanding on the subject of art, and somehow made his disapproval of my work sound charming, as though he felt I was capable of greatness but was allowing my potential to be squandered by other people. When he talked, I had to look across the room, at the bar, at the monograms on the carpet. I hoped my aloofness would help me seem invulnerable to criticism.
‘There’s an undertone of something in the rest of them,’ Wilfred said, ‘but it’s hard to say what—you’ve buried the meaning too deeply in the paint. Your approach to abstraction is rather cumbrous. I don’t know if that’s what you’ve been encouraged towards in art school, but it’s all so oddly constrained. You make one or two leaps of expression here and there—not enough for my liking. I don’t blame you. It’s a symptom of the bad advice you’re getting. You have considerable talent—there’s no doubt about that. But your show tonight was so competent it bored me. I mean, it was perfectly—oh, here we are. Thank you.’ The barman arrived with our cocktails. He lifted them from a silver tray and set each one down on a crisp paper coaster. ‘Look, if you want the absolute truth, I know there’s a lot more to come from you. They’re not awful paintings, on the whole, they’re just painfully unmoving. But then you pull that diptych out of your sleeve, that completely spectacular diptych—come on now, dig in.’ He handed me a glass and clinked it with his own. ‘If it had been the only piece in the show, I would’ve gone home and written my review right away, the kind that’d make old Dulcie’s knees knock together. But then I suppose we wouldn’t be having this little moment together, would we? How’s that daiquiri treating you?’
I sipped at the dainty drink and made the favourable noises I thought he was waiting for.
‘Not very hard to make one of these, you know,’ he said. ‘Just white rum and lime, a bit of crushed ice, that’s all there is to it. Staggering how often people mess it up.’
‘It’ll do,’ I said, and turned to look at the night. There was a row of stately red-brick houses across the street from the hotel. Under the lamplight at the side of the road, a man was unfurling the tarpaulin on his sports car. For a moment, I felt an urge to be out there with him. I imagined going with him all the way to Southampton.
‘The thing about Dulcie, as much as I detest her company,’ Wilfred went on, ‘is that her instincts are usually sound. She can tell when an artist has longevity. That’s why she let you show the diptych. She’s no fool.’
‘She didn’t let me. I insisted.’
‘If you say so.’
‘That’s how it was.’
‘In any case, her style of management isn’t for everyone. It’s too early to say how you’re going to fare with her, but you shouldn’t get complacent. I know she didn’t think much of your friend Culvers, or his work for that matter. I always thought he had some promise.’
‘You know Jim?’ I asked.
‘Only by reputation.’
‘That’s how most people know him. He’s a good man, really.’
‘I don’t doubt it. Someone told me he’d dropped off the map.’
‘Well, Jim was never really on the same map as the rest of us.’
‘Yes, I could tell that from his paintings.’ Wilfred smiled. ‘It’s a shame he lost his way. I liked his early stuff. Before he started with those Hopper pastiches.’
There was a time when I might have taken exception to this remark, but I had come to view Jim’s old ‘absence portraits’ as nothing more than portents of his disappearance—great flashing signs that I had failed to see. ‘I don’t want to talk about Jim tonight,’ I said.
‘Good, because I don’t have much else to say on that score.’
The daiquiri was strong and, after a few long sips, the rum began to bite the back of my throat. Outside, the man turned the ignition of his sports car and it gave
a rusty, disappointing sound underneath the bar’s piano music. ‘He’s been trying to start that bloody thing for ages,’ Wilfred said. ‘There’s a point at which perseverance becomes denial. I think we’re about four weeks past it with this chap.’
‘I suppose you must come here often,’ I said, which only showed him my naïvety.
‘You mean, do I bring all my women here?’
‘All? That implies a fair number.’
‘I can’t deny it’s a popular place.’ He thinned his eyes at me. ‘You have an unusual way of talking, you know that?’
‘I grew up near Glasgow.’
‘It’s not how you speak, it’s what you say. Your accent’s very gentle.’
‘Don’t you ever stop criticising?’
‘No. It’s a permanent vocation.’
‘Well, frankly, the way I speak is none of your concern.’
‘It just seems to me that you’re very careful with your words, very measured. Makes me wonder if you approach painting the same way. It would explain a lot about the show tonight.’
‘Your ice is melting,’ I said.
He looked down at his drink, as though remembering it was in his hand. ‘I like to let the lime settle a bit first. Tastes better.’
‘I wonder what that says about you.’
He simpered, putting the glass down on the table, twisting its stem so the coaster spun beneath it. ‘Look, obviously I’m not going to get to know you in the course of one evening, Ellie, so I’m having to make a few assumptions—is it all right if I call you that?’
I nodded.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with the name Elspeth, of course.’
‘That was nearly a compliment.’
‘Close enough.’ The glass came to rest in his fingers. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you got in the cab tonight, I thought you were going to be like all the rest of them.’
‘The rest of who?’
‘You know—’
‘I’m afraid I don’t.’
He blinked. ‘There’s a certain pliability about the women Dulcie takes on at the gallery, if you get what I mean.’
‘You make it sound like a bordello.’
‘That wasn’t my intention. Really,’ he said, tidying the cuffs of his blazer. ‘I was only trying to say that you’re not the average Dulcie Fenton sort of artist. I thought I’d buy you a drink, tell you a few cold truths, and you’d cry on my shoulder and I’d say, There, there, darling, your work will get better, I know you have it in you. But I can tell you prefer to keep people at a distance.’
‘Not everyone.’
‘Just me then. Why? Because my opinion is important?’
‘Actually, you have a very high opinion of your own opinion. It could just be that I don’t like you very much.’
‘Ha. Maybe so.’ Wilfred moistened his lips. He sat forward, bringing a cigarette case from his breast pocket, flipping it open. There was only one left. He held it out for me to take but I declined. ‘What I know for sure,’ he said, drawing out the cigarette, tapping it on the back of the case, ‘is you haven’t come here for praise.’
‘That’s lucky.’
He smirked, taking the hotel matchbook from the ashtray and tearing off a strip. ‘It’s confirmation you want, isn’t it?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘I think you do.’ He angled his head. The matchflame illumined his face like a Halloween pumpkin. ‘It’s not that you need me to explain why the diptych is so good. You already know that. It’s authentication you’re looking for. You’re here to make sure I understand how good you are.’
For the first time all night, I looked directly into his eyes. They were not quite the colour I had thought they were—a murky, gutter-moss green. ‘Honestly, I couldn’t care less what you write about me in your magazine. Where I’m from, people who sit around criticising other people’s work all day instead of doing their own get a very bad name for themselves. I happen to like men with strong opinions. I find them interesting to talk to. But don’t fool yourself—it’s not your approval I’m after.’
‘Then what?’
‘Nothing. Just a chance to have a proper conversation about art. I haven’t had a genuine discussion about painting since—’
‘When?’
‘A long time ago. Since I moved to Kilburn. It’s difficult to be taken seriously when you look like me.’
‘I have a similar problem.’
‘You’re a woman too, are you?’
‘No, but I look younger than I am, which puts me at a certain disadvantage.’
‘Oh, please. Don’t even try to compare.’
‘Well, all right—we’re getting off topic.’ As he inhaled and savoured the smoke, his arm succumbed to its old habit, drooping over the chair-back. ‘You should care what I think, because I care what you paint. That’s how it works. Our interests are aligned.’
‘You presume an awful lot.’
‘I do, I know.’ He edged forward, shifting his legs. ‘Give me a moment and I’ll explain.’
‘It’s past midnight already.’
‘Five more minutes.’
I leaned back. ‘Three.’
‘I’ll start with the diptych then,’ he said. ‘A quintessential Elspeth Conroy painting, if ever there was one.’
I laughed. ‘And how would you know?’
‘Easy. I don’t read press releases. They go straight in the dustbin. I just look for the piece that resonates most. I could tell that painting came from a different place than all the others.’
‘So you haven’t even seen my other work? That’s hardly fair.’
‘Context is overrated. It wouldn’t have mattered if the diptych were the first work of yours I’d seen or the last. I’m no artist, but I can tell when one is fully in tune with herself, not just trying to fake it for the sake of an exhibition. You can feign a lot of things in modern art, but emotion isn’t one of them. It has to be there in the paint, not tagged on after. And it’s probably the most important thing a reviewer can convey, that distinction. Not everyone can spot the difference, so they leave it up to people like me. And whether I print it in the Statesman or stand up on a soapbox in the park and shout it out loud—doesn’t matter. Real artists come along so rarely nowadays that modern art is hard to justify. Most people can’t tell pitch dark from blindness any more, and that’s what makes our interests so aligned. I need artists like you to make great art so I have something to shine a light on. And you need critics like me, or nobody will notice what you paint. That’s the nature of the game we’re in.’ He slugged the whole of his daiquiri, blinking away the sourness. ‘Can I buy you another?’
‘I should really be getting home.’
He twisted round and made a circling gesture to the barman anyway. ‘You’re still not convinced,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I’m not like you. I don’t see art as a game.’
‘All right. Let’s try it another way.’ He picked something from his tongue—a tiny node of lime-flesh—and flicked it to the carpet. ‘I’ll bet when you painted the diptych you weren’t even thinking of painting, were you? You didn’t have a purpose in mind, not even a theme, you were just trying to express a feeling—you let your arm go wherever it wanted until you ended up with mountains. Am I warm?’
‘I’m still listening,’ I said.
He wet his lips again. ‘Something felt wrong after that, I’ll bet—I don’t mean erroneous. Less than whole would probably be more like it. Anyway, let’s say you stepped back from the painting at this point—exhausted most likely, sweating a lot and ready to give up working on it altogether—but then—and you don’t know exactly where it came from—you saw another form leaning against that panel: not completely there, in the same frame, just set off against it somehow, almost joined but not quite. It just dropped into your mind. And that’s how you painted the baby on the right—from nowhere. You didn’t copy from a photograph—not your style. You just p
ainted it straight out of your imagination, didn’t you? From memory. It just sort of felt right to paint it, so you carried on. And, I don’t know, maybe you were afraid of what you were painting as you were doing it, mountains and babies not being your normal kind of subject matter, but you had to see where it all led. Because it felt right. In fact, it probably seemed as though the entire thing was somehow predetermined. Like it was happening to you. What was that old line Michelangelo had about his sculptures waiting for him in the marble? That. I’ll bet you made the whole painting so quickly you didn’t even stop to eat or sleep. And that’s why you begged for it to be in the show. Because you composed all the others yourself, thought about them very deliberately, but that diptych was pure inspiration.’ With this, he sat back, returning his cigarette case to its frayed little pocket. ‘See, that’s the kind of thing you need someone like me to communicate. Your average person can’t just intuit it when they walk in off the street.’
Our corner of the bar now seemed more private. The gentle piano music had become an unmelodious ripple, as frustrating as a dial tone that never engaged. ‘You might have a bit more understanding than I gave you credit for,’ I said, and took a last sip of daiquiri, just to steady myself. His level of insight had disarmed me. ‘I suppose you’d like me to cross your palm with silver now.’
‘We’ll consider it a freebie,’ he said. ‘There’s no magic involved. Anyone who’s ever created anything remotely original will explain his process in the same way. As if he had no control, just influence. Channelling—that’s the word that seems to get used.’
‘And I take it you’re more cynical than that.’
He shrugged. ‘I told you, I’m no artist. I don’t know for certain. But I prefer to think that great work is made through talent and sheer hard work. If some can channel greatness and the rest of us can’t even get an outside line, it’s a very unfair system.’
The Ecliptic Page 16
