A Temporary Life, page 5
‘Whisky?’
She crosses to a cabinet behind the door.
‘What’re you going to have yourself?’
‘I’ll have a gin.’
She pours it out.
The barking, after a while, dies down. Other bowls of flowers are scattered round the room. On a low table are set out several magazines: Home and Beauty, Woman’s World, House and Garden. Over the fireplace hangs a ‘View of Delft’ several inches larger than the original itself.
‘It’s quite a house.’
‘Do you like it?’ She brings across the glass. ‘I’ve put in soda. I hope it’ll be all right.’
She watches while I drink.
‘I think it’s far too large.’ She gestures round. ‘The house.’
‘Enough to be going on with, I suppose,’ I say.
‘More than enough,’ she says and laughs.
She carries her own glass between her hands. She’s scarcely drunk from it at all.
‘Do you want to sit down here or go upstairs?’
‘Upstairs?’
‘I’ve got them in my room.’ She waves her arm, vaguely, above her head.
‘If you think it’ll be all right.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Shouldn’t I meet your parents first?’
‘They’re away,’ she says. She shakes her head. ‘If you like,’ she adds, ‘I can bring them down. It’ll take me ages, I suppose.’ She looks around. ‘It’s not really the sort of place to see them in.’
We go upstairs. Apart from the dogs, there’s no sign of life in the house at all.
At the end of a landing a window looks down to a shadowed mass of trees.
‘I have this room at the top,’ she says. ‘It’s quieter there. I get more done.’
She hasn’t as yet taken off her jacket. Her glass, half-full, she’s left behind. She kicks off her shoes as we mount the stairs. At the end of a landing a second light goes on.
‘No one had lived up here for years.’ She gestures round. Doors open off from the landing on either side. In her hand, I notice, she’s brought the Scotch. ‘The things we found in some of the rooms.’
‘And now?’
‘Oh,’ she says. ‘They’re not there now.’
She opens a door: a cat comes out. A moment later she steps inside.
There’s a crash of drawers; a chair, or perhaps some heavier weight, is dragged across the floor. I hear a groan: some other object, it seems, is lifted up. A second later, with a crash, it’s lowered.
‘Come in.’
She’s taken off her jacket. Underneath she wears a sweater. She pulls it down as I step inside.
‘You’ve brought your drink?’
‘That’s right.’
She looks around. Drawings have been pinned across one wall; several more are scattered on the bed. One or two more are lying on the floor. A window, with its curtains undrawn, looks out, I presume, towards the heath.
‘These are some of them,’ she says.
She steps aside. I cross over to the wall.
The room is small; in its proportions it’s not unlike a cell: there’s room for a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair. There’s no sign of things you might normally find in a woman’s room; no mirror, no bottles, jars, combs, pins, brushes. There’s a tin of paints, a pencil, a piece broken from a rubber and a book, The Life of Modigliani, lying on the chair itself.
The drawings on the wall are virtually identical to the one I’ve seen already at the college: triangulated trees and buildings stand amidst triangulated fields, divided up, here and there, by triangulated hedges. A self-portrait, inscribed as such, shows a triangulated face broken up by triangulated features; on the floor there are sketches of a triangulated horse, of several triangulated houses, and a triangulated figure, female, sitting in a triangulated chair.
‘What do you think?’
I narrow my eyes; I incline my head.
Before I need to answer she starts to fill my glass.
‘Jack Daniels,’ I tell her.
‘Daddy brought it from America.’
‘My favourite.’
‘Really.’
‘When I can get it.’
‘We’ve got two or three more downstairs. You can take it with you if you like.’
‘I wouldn’t want to put you out.’
‘Honestly,’ she says. ‘He wouldn’t mind.’
I glance once more towards the wall.
I step back, as far as the width of the room allows; I narrow my eyes again, incline my head.
‘I like their consistency,’ I tell her.
She gazes at the wall herself, intent.
‘You seemed to feel at the college it was too formalized,’ she says.
‘Yes?’
‘The drawing.’
‘Now I can see quite a few of them, I can see the sort of thing you mean.’
‘Mean?’
‘Projecting,’ I add, ‘the principal areas and masses.’
‘Yes.’
She inclines her head herself, narrows her eyes: her body is still heaving from running up the stairs.
‘It’s damn good Scotch.’
‘You like it?’
‘Whisky really, I suppose,’ I tell her.
‘Tennessee.’
‘Better, I suppose, than Scotch.’
‘I forgot to bring my gin.’
She seems disinclined to go back down.
‘I wondered if you could shade a few of them in?’
‘Yes?’
‘The squares.’
‘The triangles.’
‘The triangular masses.’
‘I’ve thought about that since you mentioned it.’
‘It might give some variation. To the surface of the picture-plane,’ I add.
‘I’ve started on one or two,’ she says.
She opens one of the drawers beside the bed. Inside, I can see, are several folders, not to mention a number of sheets of drawn-on paper.
She’s set the bottle on the floor. Having tipped back the glass, I fill it up again. Visions of Yvonne begin to fade.
The girl draws out a folder, unfastens a string and allows two or three sheets to drift out on the bed.
As she’s already intimated, the shapes in these drawings – or the greater part of them – have been shaded in: dark, triangular masses recede into a general background of pencilled fingerprints and smears. A triangular tree, with triangular leaves, droops, in a triangular fashion, above triangulated eaves: in the sky a triangulated sun is partly obscured by triangulated clouds. A flock of triangular birds are about to alight on a triangulated roof. Triangular, shaded smoke streams out from a tall, triangulated chimney.
‘Dramatic.’
‘What?’
‘With the shading, I suppose, it’s more dramatic.’
‘Yes.’
I empty the glass.
‘Have you thought of drawing with rectangular shapes?’ I ask.
‘Square?’
‘Rectangular, I suppose, is best.’
‘Less uniform.’
‘That’s right.’
She shakes her head.
‘Or just drawing the forms,’ I say, ‘directly.’
‘Directly?’
‘As you see them.’
‘But I see them all,’ she says, ‘like this.’
Below, suddenly, a door is closed. There’s a sound of footsteps; another door is closed.
‘A triangular shape,’ she adds, ‘has greater variation. That’s why Picasso used it, I suppose, and Braque.’
‘Mondrian, of course, used squares.’
‘And lines.’
‘And lines.’
She sees the empty glass.
She lifts the bottle. With her tongue between her teeth she pours it out.
‘I suppose it’d be too much to ask for one?’ I tell her.
‘What?’
‘A drawing.’
‘Really?’
The drink has spilt. We crouch down. Our heads collide; with a handkerchief she’s produced we mop it up.
‘Honestly. Would you like one, then?’ she says.
‘I’d have to forgo paying for it, I’m afraid,’ I tell her.
‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ she says. ‘Honestly. It’s the first time anyone’s asked for one,’ she adds.
The glass replenished, she watches, smiling, while I pick one out.
I choose, in the end, a triangulated house.
‘Is there any reason for picking that particular one?’ she says.
‘It’s representative, I suppose,’ I tell her. ‘It’ll remind me,’ I add, ‘of all the rest.’
‘It’s super of you to ask for one,’ she says.
‘It’s good of you to let one go.’
‘Oh, I’ve any amount. Mummy and Daddy won’t let me hang them up downstairs.’
‘Perhaps you could show a few to Mr Wilcox. Mr Pollard, I know, is very keen.’
‘Keen?’
‘On acquiring work.’
‘I suppose I could take a few of them to college.’ She looks across. A line of mascara accentuates the darkness of her lashes. ‘I find schools of art are very backward places, in any case,’ she says.
‘They provide one or two people with a living, I suppose,’ I tell her.
‘Is that how you look at them?’ she asks.
‘Anything else, in the form of tuition, is a sort of extra.’
‘They say at the college you’re always drunk.’
‘Drunk?’
Her gaze, it seems, has scarcely changed.
‘That your work is so modern that Mr Wilcox won’t even look at it,’ she says.
‘It’s so modern that it’s practically invisible,’ I tell her.
She laughs.
‘Honestly.’ She shakes her head. ‘They say, at the college, your wife’s gone mad.’
‘In a manner of speaking, I suppose she has.’
She waits, patiently, for whatever other confessions might be forthcoming.
‘I suppose, in reality,’ I add, ‘it’s time I left.’
‘Left?’
‘Here.’
‘Oh,’ she says. She shakes her head.
‘It was good of you,’ I tell her, ‘to let me come.’
‘In the day-time, you see, they’d have looked much better.’ She gestures to the window.
I start to collect the drawings from the bed.
‘I’ll put them all away,’ she says. ‘You can leave them there for now.’ She produces a cardboard folder, her name written on it in capital letters, and puts the drawing I’ve chosen carefully inside.
‘It’s a tiny room.’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t you fancy anything larger?’
‘Than this?’ Perhaps for the first time she looks around.
‘I suppose you’ve bigger rooms than this.’
‘Oh, much bigger.’ She gazes at the wall beyond my head. ‘I suppose I feel safer, being in here,’ she says.
I take the glass. As an afterthought she takes the bottle.
We go back down. Faintly, from below, comes the barking of the dogs; a door is closed. The barking fades.
On the landing below she takes my arm.
‘If you like,’ she says, ‘you can look at this.’
She opens a door almost opposite the stairs.
The room beyond, as she enters, is flooded with light.
A red-curtained, four-poster bed stands against one wall. White curtains, undrawn, drape the room’s four windows.
‘This is Mummy’s and Daddy’s room,’ she says.
A photograph of a blond-haired man, genial, relaxed, smiling, stands on a table beside the bed. To Ann, with all my love, N. is scrawled across the bottom. He looks like a middle-weight boxer, his expression that of someone caught in the midst of some appeal.
‘They’ll be coming back, I suppose, next week.’
‘On holiday?’ I say and add, ‘I mean, just now?’
She shakes her head. ‘Daddy’s working. Mummy went with him. Though usually,’ she says, ‘she stays behind. Unless all of us go, that is, as well.’
‘How many are there in your family, then?’
‘Oh,’ she says, and adds, ‘Just me.’
She puts out the light.
‘Just look at the view.’
Having moved to the window she steps aside.
In the distance, beyond the darkness of the heath, are the lights of the town: the sky, to some extent, has cleared. The lights give the impression of some vessel out at sea.
‘In daylight,’ she says, ‘it’s quite a view.’
I’m aware of her vaguely as she moves across the room; seconds later she’s standing at the door.
Outside, as we reach the stairs, she adds, ‘Would you like another drink? We could have a meal. Or watch the telly.’
‘I ought to be getting back,’ I tell her.
‘For tennis.’
‘A bit too late, I think, for that.’
She disappears towards the back of the house as we reach the hall.
There’s the sound of a woman’s voice, a laugh; a moment later the girl, smiling, has reappeared.
‘Bennings’ll take you back,’ she says.
She holds out a bottle as she comes across.
‘Jack Daniels,’ she says, and lifts it up. ‘The other, it seems, you’ve almost finished.’
‘Like time.’
‘Gone before you’ve noticed. Yes.’
I give her the glass. She regards, broodingly, the folder in my hand.
‘I’ve quite a few more, as a matter of fact.’ She adds, ‘In a different style. They’re sort of expressionist, I suppose you’d call them. Yes.’
‘I’ll look forward to seeing them,’ I say, ‘another time.’
‘If you’d ever like a meal. We could even play some tennis. We’ve got a court, you know, at the back.’
‘I play, usually, in the municipal park.’
‘I haven’t played for about a year,’ she says.
A car horn, like a trombone held to a single note, sounds moodily from the drive outside.
As we move to the porch a door at the end of the hall is opened and a stout, middle-aged woman gazes out. White-smocked, red-faced, she looks across; then, without any comment, the door is closed.
The car stands in the drive below the porch. The thin-faced chauffeur gazes up, the rear door open.
‘I’ve told him where to drop you off.’
She holds out her hand.
I move the bottle and the folder to my other arm.
‘It was very kind of you to come,’ she says.
‘See you at the college, then.’
I shake her hand.
She ducks her head as I climb inside the car.
She stands waving, silhouetted against the light as the car, soundlessly, descends the drive.
I look back at the house as we reach the road; but for the lighted porch, however, it’s obscured by trees.
Half-way down the heath I’m suddenly, aware of the chauffeur’s eyes: they gleam back at me from the mirror by his head. As soon as I look they glance away.
‘Not much life here after dark.’
‘Dark?’
‘Night-time, sir.’ He gestures round.
‘None at all. After six-thirty each evening the entire population subsides,’ I tell him, ‘into a kind of coma.’
‘I suppose, if you know the place, there are one or two spots.’
‘Spots?’
‘Where there’s still a bit of life,’ he says.
‘There’s an evening life class at the college.’
He laughs. The eyes, briefly, meet mine as he glances in the mirror.
‘How long have the Newmans been living here?’ I ask.
‘Mr Newman’s been here almost since the spring,’ he says.
‘You travel with them?’
‘I’ve been with Mr and Mrs Newman for the past five years,’ he says.
‘I gather he’s away at present.’
‘That’s right.’
He concentrates for a while on the road ahead.
We reach the river: the road sweeps up, steeply, towards the town.
‘Then again, I suppose, there are one or two clubs,’ he says.
‘Clubs?’
‘Singing. Drinking.’
‘Strip-tease. Any amount of those,’ I tell him.
His gaze drifts up, dreamily, towards the mirror.
‘But then, a comatose condition is necessary even there.’
The eyes, narrowed, examine mine.
‘In a place like this, immobility, frequently, is one’s passport to a better life.’
‘You have few illusions about the place,’ he says.
‘It’s a kind of grave. A morgue. Inhabited by zombies.’
I can feel the Jack Daniels heating up my chest; it’s like, after its first mellow prickling, a steady fire.
‘I suppose we’ll have to hope we won’t be here for long.’
His eyes, now, revert to a more familiar look: a bird’s eyes, a fox’s, a weasel’s; a predator’s before it strikes.
‘What does Mr Newman do?’ I add.
‘He travels quite a lot,’ he says.
‘What does he travel in?’ I ask.
‘Usually in aeroplanes,’ he says.
The street comes into view. It’s as if, for fifteen minutes, I’ve been sitting in a room.
When the car has stopped and he opens the door I can feel the disillusioning rush of air outside.
‘Thanks for the lift.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ he says, and adds, ‘Good night,’ calling again, then, as I reach the door, holding the folder, ‘Sir,’ he says, ‘you’ve forgotten this.’
I move the Jack Daniels to my other hand, nod, take it, and, without another word, climb slowly to my room. By the time I reach it the fire has died.
Part Two
1
‘If you hadn’t have come back,’ she says, ‘I don’t know what I would have done.’ She rocks briefly in her chair, then drinks her tea. ‘I’ve no one else to turn to now.’
Visible, through the rear window of the room, is a tiny yard. Beyond, stand the brick supports of a railway viaduct. Even as she talks a train starts passing by: there’s the panting of the diesel, the rattle of the trucks. I only hear the last few words: ‘… for you to come up here, that is.’
