Goodbye Again

by Joseph Hone

  Well, here it all was, the real reason why Katie had dropped me: she had found a reciprocated love with her father. Though she was right about me in one way. I was a here-and-now man, a believer in the visible. That was where I found the wholeness and holiness. And most of all I’d found this with Katie. And to have dropped fidelity to me for the sake of a philandering madman who believed the British were the children of Adam and Atlantis – this was madness indeed. There was more in this part of his notes, mostly along the same lines – Katie setting her father’s inspired sleuthing against my limited mind.

  I couldn’t read any more. Whatever the confusions in it for Katie, the message for me was clear. I’d banked everything on her, and lost. Like her father I was always one to defy reason. The big difference was that I did this with life in hand, not with crazy dreams of a British master race and myths of Atlantis. I suppose, in biblical terms that her father would no doubt have acknowledged, Katie had ‘risen to the Father’. Her suicide was her way of joining him.

  But why in the living Christ, dear Katie, did you not rise with me? I’m not the grail you sought and thought you’d found with the return of your father. Better the urgent sex in fields of flax and clover than the dry bones in hill forts and long barrows. Better the naked sinner than a crazy knight in shining armour.

  I opened a bottle of the Rioja Reserva.

  Always take long odds on a woman, or set her on a canvas in a splash of colour – the body was the ultimate honesty. This had saved me – as Katie’s crazy confusions had condemned her, just as Elsa’s conscience, faced with the horrifying truth about her father, had killed her. They’d still be alive if they could have taken just a leaf or two out of my corner-cutting book – the book of laughter and the half-litre.

  More practically, if I wasn’t to sink in the swamps of drink and muddy self-justifications, there were things to do. I had to keep occupied. I called Martha in New York the next day. She hadn’t much more to tell me, she said, only adding by way of rather sour comment here, ‘I’m sure you must know about Elsa and me already.’

  ‘Yes, she told me quite a bit about you,’ I said, returning the sourness in my voice.

  But her next words and tones were conciliatory. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just her death … I feel somehow responsible.’

  ‘Maybe. But I was much more responsible. It was more finding out about her father that killed her. And you know all about that now.’

  ‘I’d no idea about who her father really was.’

  ‘I did. And I shouldn’t have driven her to finding out about him, as I did.’ And I gave her a précis about the Modi nude and about our trip through Europe. But I didn’t want to go on with it over the phone. ‘Maybe another time,’ I said to her, ‘I can tell you things in more detail.’

  ‘Yes. I’d like that.’

  ‘What about the other details with Elsa? She had no family. The funeral, her apartment, her estate – and she had this big house in Dublin.’

  ‘I know about the house. I can see to everything. She made me executor in her will, some time back. I’m an attorney.’

  ‘She told me.’

  ‘Do you want to come over? The funeral is at the crematorium in Brooklyn.’ She was literal, business-like, the sort of person Elsa had unhappily described to me, a woman with chilly undertones, an eye for tidiness and survival, as much in practical affairs as those of the heart.

  ‘I don’t think so. Maybe one ex-lover’s enough,’ I added, unable to keep the bitterness out of my voice again. There was jealousy beyond death. Elsa had loved Martha better.

  ‘I understand,’ she said. ‘Her death, it’s very difficult …’

  I stifled the urge to scream ‘But no! She’s not dead!’ Just as it had been with Katie, when I couldn’t believe that she had incinerated herself in the oven of the flaming car, so I couldn’t accept Elsa’s death – that this whole life, this body that I had loved was soon to be ash in the wind.

  And then I understood – that which you loved most you were going to lose twice over, as I had lost each of them, the good in one, the faults in the other. I’d loved Katie’s flaws just as much as I’d loved Elsa’s virtues. Jekyll and Hyde were the same person after all.

  There was a charged silence on the phone, as if Martha and I both had a lot more to say, as indeed we had. But we didn’t. It wasn’t the moment.

  ‘We’ll be in touch,’ I said at last, not believing this.

  ‘Yes, we’ll be in touch,’ she said, in a tone that didn’t make me believe she meant it either. No doubt she was jealous of me as well.

  My God, with this sort of thought starting to haunt me, I have to keep busy, I thought: make plans, see Harry in Paris. I needed a future more than ever. I knew I certainly couldn’t face another winter in the barn alone. I had enough of Elsa’s money left to get to Paris, and Harry would advance me some real cash on the strength of selling the boat. I called him at once, took an early train to London next morning and got a Eurostar standby ticket over to Paris at midday, taking the Modi nude with me.

  It was crisp and sunny that afternoon rolling down the boulevards to the Marais, a day between seasons, a stillness in the weather, when a long time of heat is over and winter is no more than a hint on the calendar. Bright with a fine sharpness, a little crackle in the air of an Indian summer.

  Harry opened the door, taking me into the large salon looking over the neat little square.

  ‘Well, home is the hero,’ he said, laconic as ever. ‘From the wars, I see,’ he added, looking at my arm, still in a sling. I could now use it to eat with, at least. He noticed the bubble-wrapped picture under my arm. ‘One of yours – or Modi’s?’ he asked.

  ‘His,’ I said.

  ‘Good. You managed to hold onto it through your adventures.’ He gestured to a pile of newspapers on the sofa. ‘It’s been everywhere, your Carrara story.’

  ‘Yes. More’s the pity.’

  ‘What d’ya mean? Wasn’t that what you wanted? To prove your father a crook? And you nailed his partner, too – that guy Pfaffenroth, the real war criminal.’

  ‘Yes, I nailed them all.’

  ‘So what’s the problem?’

  ‘Pfaffenroth turned out to be the father of the girl I was with, who looked so like Katie – Elsa Bergen. When she found out who her father really was she killed herself. Didn’t you read that in the papers, too?’

  ‘Yes. But I didn’t think … I never met her. I didn’t associate her with the girl who was with you here, when you came to see me that morning. Christ, I’m sorry.’

  ‘You were right. I shouldn’t have turned over old stones.’

  I rolled a cigarette. He said, ‘Sit down, Ben, have some coffee, or a vodka, and start from the beginning.’

  And I did, telling him the whole story of our trip across Europe.

  ‘A journey I should never had made. Elsa would still be alive if I hadn’t. What possessed me?’ I was shaken.

  ‘That’s very tough, Ben. Let’s have a shot.’

  ‘And you certainly told me not to,’ I went on. ‘Offered me ten million bucks for the picture, in effect not to go on with it.’

  ‘Yes, I did that.’

  ‘You didn’t want those old art-looting stones turned over either, did you?’

  He stopped halfway to the kitchen. ‘No, I didn’t.’

  I left it at that. I’d exposed enough damn truths and secrets. He returned from the kitchen with a bottle of chilled Polish vodka and two shot glasses. We moved over to the window.

  ‘Ben, it’s a damn sorry story, but if it’s any consolation let me tell you now you were right about that Modi painting, and I was wrong when we last met that morning. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.” But good men sometimes have to say nothing – for the success of happiness.’ He raised his glass.

  ‘Yes.’ I raised mine. We drank.

  ‘Tell you what,’ he said. ‘Talking of provenance – that Modi of yours, selling i
t and giving the proceeds to Emelia and the nuns – well, your being Modi’s grandson and the woman herself still alive, and the dedication, gives the painting superb provenance, adds another couple of million to it at least.’

  ‘You think?’

  ‘Sure I do. I can get you – I’ll give you – ten, fifteen million bucks for it. Whatever it’s valued at.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean I love it, Ben. I can have it valued here and buy it myself. Full value. You’ll lose twenty, maybe thirty per cent of it – two or three million – at auction, remember.’

  ‘You? You have fifteen million dollars to hand?’

  ‘I have plenty of dollars, don’t worry. And if I need any more, I can sell that Renoir nude, or the Soutine – each one around ten million alone, and I’ve seen plenty of them. I’d prefer to look at your grandmother for the rest of my life.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, okay. Then I can look at her, too.’

  ‘Right! Let’s celebrate – lunch at La Tourelle?’

  I nodded. Harry and I were back where we’d started, twenty-five years before, when he’d bought two of my early canvasses and he’d taken me to celebrate at the same little restaurant.

  We walked out into the sunshine, across the square, down to the quays, towards the Pont Neuf. The way I’d gone with Elsa two months before, and before that with Katie, making for the same restaurant. And as if he sensed my thoughts, he took my arm, and said, ‘I’m sorry, Ben – giving you hell about all your women that morning.’

  ‘Yes, I wondered why.’

  ‘Because you think too much about women, Ben. And maybe you’re right. I’m not a painter. So you see, I don’t know the processes, whatever it takes, the inspiration. And if it’s women – any woman, prim and prude or naked under fur coats riding circus horses – why, that’s the best possible inspiration, and certainly a hell of a lot better than pickled sharks and tins of Campbell’s soup.’

  ‘Yes, those frauds made a real meal of that.’

  ‘But listen,’ he turned to me, taking my arm again. ‘The great thing is that you’ve survived. So the work must survive. You’ve got to get back to it, Ben.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ I wasn’t very convincing. We walked on, crossed the river and entered the restaurant.

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ he said, after Madame had greeted us and led us to a corner table, and we’d ordered the coarse pâté and the plat du jour, the lapin à la moutarde they had on that day, and a bottle of Beaujolais. ‘You know I have a share in that gallery round the corner. Get a dozen or so canvasses together, whatever’s good in your barn and some new stuff, and I’ll organize an exhibition for you. But we’ll need some new material. Right?’

  ‘You’re sure?’

  ‘Course I am. You’re a damn good painter. Told you that last time we met, when I said some of your nudes were like Modi reincarnate. Well, as you’re his grandson, it turns out I was right about that at least.’ He smiled.

  ‘I’ll get some work together. Thank you, Harry.’

  We drank the Beaujolais and chattered of other things, among all the other local chatterers, all squashed in together, the heady fumes of food and wine going nicely to my head.

  And that was it, I thought. Paris, a new beginning. A week later, back in the barn when I had a letter from Harry saying that ‘Emelia’ had been valued at between fifteen and twenty million dollars, and that he’d buy it, I realized I could take a flat in Paris with my ten per cent, for that winter and the next. Paris was for painters, as well as lovers. I’d lost the latter. I could concentrate on the former.

  What an autumn it was when I got back to my barn, days on end, still and gold and warm. Each morning was like the start of summer, except for the leaves of the chestnut tree and the beech above the privy, turning yellow, orange, ochre. My arm healed and a week later the sling and bandages came off. Harry had advanced me ten thousand dollars cash in Paris against selling the boat and the picture, so I had a phone installed, paid Tom three months’ rent, had the Bentley serviced and drove up to Yorkshire to see Angela and our daughters.

  The girls were excited by their own young lives, and it was exciting for me that they were happy and doing well. They listened to my Carrara story, bemused. Not that Molly and Beatty didn’t want to know of my adventures, looking for the truth behind the painting and of Modigliani himself, their great-grandfather, and of Luchino, their grandfather, and hearing of what the latter had done in Auschwitz and afterwards. But it asked from them an understanding of which they were not yet capable. I didn’t speak more of the story. The two of them were perfectly aware, at least, that it was, in fact, unspeakable. So there was silence at the end of my telling.

  As for meeting Angela again – that was rather speechless, too. I told her I was coming into some money and that if she needed any that wouldn’t be a problem now. She declined politely. She was a woman of principle too – albeit that she maintained this at the expense of deceiving her lover’s wife, and living mostly on his money.

  I had brought two thousand pounds in cash to split between Molly and Beatty. They accepted their share with some surprise, and grace. Molly said she’d use it to take her apprentice forester boyfriend to a holiday cottage near Loch Lomond, and the more prudent Beatty said she’d put it into her building society savings account.

  When I left, driving down the rough track, waving furiously at the three of them standing outside the cottage, I felt a bad tug of familial sadness.

  Back at the barn, with the ready money I had now – cash that I kept under the mattress – I stocked up on new paints and canvases for my Paris exhibition, a new music centre, new Verdi CDs, and some decent château wines. I went to Oxford and bought a few expensive art books from Blackwell’s, and visited my favourite pictures in the Ashmolean gallery – Pissarro’s The Tuileries Gardens in Rain and one of Cézanne’s views of Mont Sainte-Victoire, and gave myself another treat – a formal, donnish lunch alone at the Elizabeth restaurant.

  I spoke to Tom and Margery the next Sunday, telling them of the money I was coming into. Would they be interested in selling me the barn? They would. They were both getting on, wanted to retire, and were thinking of selling the entire farm in any case. I could buy the barn first.

  ‘Thank you,’ I said. And Tom got out the gin bottle, dispensing a good whack of it in our tea mugs. We raised our mugs, and on the way home, driving down the lane, I sang ‘The Skye Boat Song’, loudly.

  I tidied up my studio, sorting out possible pictures for the exhibition and finding old ones that I could work on again. I turned the nude of Elsa to the wall, along with the others of Katie. All over. Finished. For the first time since Elsa had died I was almost happy.

  It didn’t last. I fiddled about with some old paintings – one of Tom and Margery, a trial for a portrait I’d given them several years before, and thought again with what I might start afresh. But what was there that could genuinely excite me, without a sitter, a model, a woman?

  I thought of putting an ad in the local paper. ‘Model wanted, to work nude, for local painter.’ In our rural area such a request might have been misinterpreted. Or I could advertise as a portrait painter, looking for a commission, and perhaps, as a result, some wonderful new woman would swim into my ken, as Katie had. I doubted it. I might have set my brush to paintings of old horses, pet dogs, cats and prize porkers. There was a market these days for that.

  The fact was I hadn’t any enthusiasm for painting pigs or for models or for strangers in my studio, nude or not. I was depressed. So much had happened in the last months, so much activity, danger, emotion and loss, that I was drained of any kind of response. The juices had gone, leaving me stranded on a dry shore, facing a cold winter alone.

  One evening, after a week messing around pointlessly in the studio, I gave it all up. Instead I uncovered some of the old nudes of Katie and the reclining nude of Elsa. I brought the paintings downstairs, put them in semicircle by the big fire so that the peachy flesh ton
es, the lemon of thighs and ochre shadows between their legs glimmered memorably in the yellow flickering light. Unable now to distinguish between the women, they seemed as one – limbs moving, inviting, alive in sensuous delight. I gazed at them. I put on my new Tebaldi and Domingo Traviata CD and opened a bottle of the Rioja Reserva. And another.

  It was early evening, a week later. I was outside the barn trying to start the Bentley. I hadn’t driven it in a while, and it had been damp and humid the last few days, which was why the bugger wouldn’t start. Thunder grumbled distantly in the air. I heard the sound of a motor coming up the lane. I looked round and a smart new red Peugeot drew up in front of me. A woman got out.

  She was in her late thirties, smallish, with a delicate, rather plain face, two swathes of reddish hair to either side of a central parting, rather formally, unfashionably dressed in a black wool skirt, cream silk blouse with a cameo brooch and brown buckled shoes. Fragile and dainty, an air of reticence, but in control.

  ‘Hello.’ She stood there in the darkening air, both of us now uncertain. ‘I’m sorry – I left a message with your farmer friends up the lane.’ The voice was old-fashioned American. The words clearly enunciated. New England, I thought.

  ‘I’ve not been out for a while,’ I said sourly. I was in no mood to entertain strangers. She looked at me, a trapped look. ‘I don’t think I know …’

  We were both trapped now, standing gazing at each other, until she broke away.

  ‘I’m sorry. I’m Martha. Martha McGowan. Elsa’s friend. I’m over here in Oxford at a legal conference, Association of the American Bar. So I thought I’d call on you.’

  ‘Of course – Martha.’ We shook hands. I gestured to my car. ‘Damn car won’t start,’ I said.