I have always taken excitement from the moment when the print is unpeeled from the bed of the press and you see for the first time something you have created yourself but which is completely new to you, transposed, left to right and right to left to make something so immediately unfamiliar that you can criticize your own work without that uncertainty which is always introduced by long familiarity. Then of course, you may take up the scratching tool again and adjust it to your heart's content. You can look at yourself in an altogether different way, too. The first time I drew myself on a copper plate, I was appalled by that fresh print. It was me as I had never seen myself, the right way round, the way others see me. I preferred the way the mirror had me. Now the carter had his business to do and it seemed, to my relief, that we were to stay in this city overnight before starting back at first light. Marvell made some enquiries after some items Amelia had requested, then took me to a comfortable inn which faced the Minster and there was nothing more I wanted to do than sit down on the bench in front of the inn with a jug of wine and start straight in on rendering that great edifice on to copper before the light faded. Marvell ordered the wine and sat beside me, scribbling lines. I have no idea why he needed to be out there. As I have said, it wasn't as if his inspiration came from anywhere outside his own head. I think it was mere showmanship. He wanted people to say, 'Oh, look at that clever man, writing.'
I had the main proportions of the great church to my liking in minutes and was lost in a happy daze of creation, feeling with every light stroke of the tool how the ink would flow on to the paper. The first pressing or two are the best, because the edges of the copper are still rough and the ink blurs out delightfully from them. I could sense through my fingers how the great window would dominate the print and how blackly its glass would drag in the eye. Then someone said, 'I know you,' and they said it in Dutch.
No one knew me in York. No one who did not know me would have said it in Dutch. I looked up and saw, to my utter dismay, someone who could say that sentence truthfully. I knew him for a dangerous man but I had to wrestle his name and the variety of his danger out of the recesses of my memory.
Laroon.
A pedlar of influence as well as art, he was from The Hague, not from Amsterdam and, like so many from that place, he had the tricky ways of the Court running through him.
Laroon, the man who had helped spread far and wide the tale of what I did to the woman Geertge without ever telling the tale of what she tried to do to me. Laroon, Above all, he was a man who knew me by my first name.
'Well now, here's a surprise,' he said and I sensed Marvell, the far side of me, pulling himself back from whatever mawkish swamp of rhyme he had meandered into and starting to take an interest.
'Van Rijn,' I said emphatically, sticking out my hand as if he might have forgotten who I was, forestalling any need on his part to use my name.
He looked at my hand in surprise. 'I know who you are. What I don't know is what you're doing here.'
'That's a long story.' I noticed there was a small boy peering from behind his legs. 'Who's that?' I asked, to change the subject.
'Marcellus the younger,' he said, and I thought never trust a man who gives his son his own name. It is remarkably big-headed.
'So why are you here?' I said.
'I might settle,' he said. 'Lots of work in this country. All this trouble there's been. A great number of pictures get burnt in a civil war. There's a host of bare walls needing to be filled plus a lot of new heads of households which have lost their heads if you understand me. You doing the same?'
It made me sound like some sort of low-grade opportunist. 'No,' I said shortly. 'Can we talk later? I'm losing the light.'
'Oh yes,' he said. 'I'm staying here too. I'll see you at supper no doubt.'
They went off, to my considerable relief, and Marvell gave me a hard look before his versifying reclaimed his attention. About a minute passed and then the kid reappeared.
'My papa said I was to stay here,' he announced in the sort of piping voice that makes you ache to strangle the speaker. 'He said I could watch you.'
'Oh, did he?'
'He said you are a famous engraver.'
'Ah.' The man was not a complete blaggard, then. 'What else did he say?'
The boy smiled the flattered smile of a child who finds himself possessing information an adult needs. 'He said you put paint on like other people shovel horse-shit.' He went on smiling.
'Just sit here and watch and hold your tongue while you're doing it.'
He stopped smiling and I went on working while he watched but I knew I should never have begun because the incoming tide of dusk was too fast for rne. The fading sun was letting in the shadows to fill up the finer detail.
'What time are we leaving tomorrow?' I asked Marvell, who sighed the exasperated sigh of someone who, in being disturbed, has just lost the perfect line which might have secured him everlasting renown.
'First light,' he said. 'We have wasted enough time.'
He looked down at his paper and sighed again.
'Lost it?' I said.
'I have been working on this for a year on and off,' he said. 'It is for someone who does not understand how short our space on this earth is,' he said.
Did I ask? Did I?
'It is a plea to them to realize that love demands we act now to fulfil that love and that we should not have to wait until time has eaten the flesh off our bones.'
I could be enjoying myself in Amsterdam, I thought, dodging my creditors. It was a toss-up.
'It has been in my head for years but it somehow lacked the force of reality. It was only a theoretical emotion. Now I know it has been waiting there for this moment and this person.'
'A woman, is it?' I asked, as if I didn't know.
He looked at me dolefully. 'As beautiful as the most beautiful woman you will ever see.'
And that was when Marcellus Laroon the younger said, 'Rembrandt? I need to go and take a piss.'
He was gone and Marvell was miles away still, dreaming of perfect beauty. That was close.
It didn't last. The brat came back. 'Master Rembrandt, I splashed my pants.' May black buboes form on his testicles.'
The echoes of his shrill words hung between us and this time, Marvell looked towards me and frowned.
'Take this,' I said to the kid, handing him the copper plate and the needle. I knew I would never have the chance to finish it. 'You do it. See if you can.'
'Rembrandt?' said Marvell. 'Van Rijn? Rembrandt van Rijn?' He looked me up and down. 'Now that is a name I have heard many times. So what are you? Are you Harmenszoon or are you Rembrandt?'
I might have braved it out but I knew we were going to encounter the brat's father inside and it was highly unlikely I would be able to persuade Marvell, who was nothing if not acutely inquisitive, to take no further interest. Anyway, I had had enough of his high-handedness. This might make him think twice about challenging my art.
'My father's father was Gerrit, therefore he was Gerritszoon. My father was Harmen, therefore I am Harmenszoon. My first and given name is Rembrandt. Yes.'
"The Rembrandt?'
'That depends on what you mean.'
'The Rembrandt who painted The Blinding of Samson?'
'Every bloody painter in Holland has painted a Blinding of Samson.'
'The Company of Banning Cocq?'
'Yes, that was mine.'
He whistled. 'Good Lord above,' he said, 'I had no idea. How odd life is. And I said I had never heard of you. You, painting Dahl. What in Heaven's name brought you to stow away in …'
I cut him off. 'Listen to me. Bullshit's best left in fields. I'm just van Rijn over here and that's the way I like it, so keep your lip buttoned, right? I don't want my name attached to anything. I want to be nobody while I'm here, understood?'
'But why? I'm sure Dahl would be delighted if you told him.'
'Of course he would. He would want my signature on that sorry thing I'm making of his
portrait and he cannot have that, not with paint like dog-turd to work with. In any case, I am not meant to be overseas. As a bankrupt, I'm not allowed to leave Amsterdam.'
'I must tell him.'
'Listen, mister poet with his private ode to someone special at Paull Holme Manor, I don't think you would want Dahl to know about that any more than I want Dahl to know who I am. Do we have a deal?'
He jumped when I said that and he agreed with gratifying speed. Before I went inside I looked over the shoulder of Laroon's lad at the scratches he was making. What a waste of good copper.
FOURTEEN
Monday, April 9th, 2001
More than half an hour passed before Amy gave up on Don, not knowing he had already been, and seen, and gone away. Tel, who was going back to get his wallet, gave Amy a lift to the house and when she got out of his car she saw Don's light on in the tower. Nowhere near used to being his lover, she tapped uncertainly on his door, heard only silence and went in anyway, feeling that at least it was now her right, to find him lying on the bed, his head turned to the wall and her book, Amelia's book, lying next to him.
'You didn't come,' she said.
'Didn't I?'
'I waited for you.'
'Was that what you call it?'
His sullen, challenging response disturbed her.
'Do you want to tell me what's bugging you?' she asked.
'You are. You and bloody Dennis.'
'I have no idea what you mean.'
'I came to the pub. I got as far as the door.'
'Why didn't you come in? I didn't see you.'
'No, you didn't. You were too busy kissing him.'
The absurdity of his statement made her start to laugh. The venom behind it choked the laugh before it got going and the outrageous assumption that fuelled it filled the vacuum where her laugh had been with a rising tide of indignation.
'You stupid man,' she said. 'If you'd been there you would have seen what that was about. It was the end of a joke. You could have shared that joke if you'd been with us instead of lurking outside like some hurt kid. I don't need to justify what I do to you. Why don't you get your act together, Don, and grow up?'
He was off the bed in a flash with his arm raised as if to strike her and it took all her courage to face him out without flinching away. They stood like that for a few seconds and she was poised to kick him as hard as she could if the punch came, then he sagged and let his arm fall to his side.
'I couldn't go in,' he said. 'Half of them hate me.'
'In that case half of them don't,' she replied as calmly as she could. 'Why don't you sit down and tell me what all this is really about?'
'Some time.' His face changed and he held out his arms to her. 'I'm sorry,' he said.
For a moment his open arms were a trap, then the bait of his waiting body overcame her common sense and she went into them. They stood there holding each other.
The power to decide what happened next lay in her hands. She could have slid them under his shirt, run her nails up and down his back, raised her mouth to his and they would have been in bed again in a second, but the memory of how he had just been kept her still, holding him calmly for a little longer, then stepping back.
'Did you read anymore?' she asked, looking at Amelia's book lying on the bed. She imagined Don deep in Amelia's words, pages on from where they had stopped, trespassing into the secrets which she had wanted for herself.
'I can't really make it out.'
He couldn't read Amelia's writing. She felt an unworthy joy.
'You and me,' he said, 'you and me. We could puzzle it out together.'
Unsure of the constant shifts in his mood, she sensed there was greater safety to be found in the act of reading rather than the act of love, then she sat down, set his table light to shine on the page and pored over the faint ink.
'It starts off: not at his ease, then something I just can't make out. Oh hang on, it's a name. Marvell. Have you got anything to write on?'
One or two pages had come apart easily, stuck only by the butterfly pressure of time. Others were still welded together, clumped at the bottom where the pages had swollen in a thicker lump. The open page in front of her came after such a clump, perhaps nine or ten pages further on from the opening section she had read earlier, Amelia had written on one side of the paper so the writing was only on the right-hand sheet.
'There's a pad in my bag. See? Under my camera. Should be a pencil there too,' Don replied.
Amy began to jot down words, leaving gaps then going back to fill them in as she got into her stride and the form of the faint writing began to reveal itself. Don sat on the bed and waited patiently.
'Right,' she said in the end. 'I've just about got it. Do you want to hear?'
'Oh yes.'
'Like I said: not at his ease. Then, Marvell, who had been full of the grandest accounts of his parliamentary business, coaxed him for the sake of our game and after wheedles and inducements, he told us his given name is … I don't know. I think it's Harmanson, then it goes on: He was much perplexed by our game, lacking our tongue, and Marvell came near to picking a hole in his coat by rhyming on his account when it came to the limner's turn. It seemed that Vanrin formed the opinion that Marvell was scandalizing him with his rhymes …'
'Rhymes?' she said. This couldn't be Marvell the poet, could it? You know, Andrew Marvell?'
Don frowned. 'There's a famous Marvell who was a politician round here. He was Hull's Member of Parliament I think. There's a pub called after him.'
'I suppose that fits,' said Amy. 'She talks about his parliamentary business. Pity. Let's see: formed the opinion that Marvell was scandalizing him with his rhymes though in truth it were only to divert us so that they broke in pieces each with the other and the limner became ill-tempered. When I saw the party was gone all to pot, I did say we would change the game and brought out the cards for gleek which was a game the Hollander did not know. We three played the game while he did sit with his tobacco and his pitcher and observe us in what we did. I marked that Marvell did show the pigeon and the Hollander had his measure. He is not a man to be got the better of. Marvell is sometime all honey and sometime all turd. It is arranged by Marvell that Vanrin will paint my own picture although for whose gratification that may be is not so apparent to me. They must go, they say, to York for all the best pigments because the colours they have are suited to my husband but not to me. I shall go with … That's the end.'
'What does all that mean? Showing the pigeon and all that?'
Amy looked down at the words. 'It sounds as though she's saying Marvell chickened out and let the Dutchman win the argument.'
'Let's separate the next page.'
That felt like a step too far for her.
'No, I don't think so,' she said. 'I want to take this slowly. What do you make of it?'
'We know his name, anyway. What was it? Herman?'
'Harmanson Vanrin.'
Don nodded. 'I want to find out more about him. I like the sound of him.'
'Why?'
'He's tough. He doesn't let people push him around.'
'That's good, is it? That's what you find admirable in people?'
'I reckon. Why not? You're an artist. Have you ever heard of him?'
'It's a familiar name,' said Amy, It itched at her, trying to get out. 'I'll have to look him up. And Marvell. It could be the poet, couldn't it? Perhaps he was a politician too? This one makes rhymes. Amelia says so. When was he, Marvell the poet, I mean? Must have been seventeenth century, surely, or was it the eighteenth?'
This wasn't the sort of conversation she would normally have with a man whose smell was still on her. Was it better or worse that their common ground had shifted from hot sweat between their skin to dry words on an ancient page? For the moment it felt safer.
'I don't know. My degree was Civil Engineering, not English Lit.'
'You've got a degree?' As soon as she said it, she knew how bad it sounded.
&nbs
p; 'No, I'm lying,' he said. 'Course I haven't. I couldn't be a builder and have a degree, could I? That wouldn't fit. You'd have to build a new pigeonhole for me, wouldn't you? I'm a builder so I must be fucking thick.'
'Stop, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it like that,' Amy said quickly. 'My mouth sometimes says things before my brain tells it to.'
'You don't have any idea,' said Don. 'What do you see? A bloke in overalls. An ugly bloke who gets paid cash once a week. You don't know who I am.'
'That's not what I see. You have to give me a chance.'
'Why? What would be the point?'
If Amy had spoken with her heart, she would have said, because you're not in the slightest bit ugly, because you're difficult and proud and dangerous and sexy and those are all the things I like. Dennis's oblique warnings came back into her head and got in the way of the words.
'I don't do that with just anybody. You're different.'
'What does that mean?'
'It means you're a long way from being a typical builder.'
'And you're a long way from understanding that there's no such thing as a typical builder. In fact there's no such thing as a typical fucking anybody.'
She took the book and left the room as he turned his back on her. She lay on her air bed in the room next door, hoping that the door would open and an ardent, apologetic Don would come to her, but eventually, fitful sleep came instead.
The following morning, she took her time over getting up, had toast and coffee downstairs as the house picked up the rhythms of the working day and went upstairs to start work, wondering if Don would still be exacting a price for the previous night. He was already there, with his goggles on, sander in hand, and he was talking to Peter Parrish who was clutching a bulging folder of papers. They broke off when she came in.
'Very nice,' said Parrish, looking up at the ceiling, 'Very nice indeed. You've got a lot done. There's no need to rush it, you know.'
Alarmed, she inspected her work for signs of haste. 'I'm not. I'm only drawing outlines at the moment.'
'I was just saying to Don here that some of these panels may need to come off. The mouldings need very careful stripping. That sander looks a bit of a beast. It can't get into the corners.'
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