The Serpentine Cave

by Jill Paton Walsh

  ‘Well, I’d like to know how come I got a lick-spitting double, walking around the town, confusing people,’ said Mathy.

  ‘Maybe you would, Mathy boy, but I’m asking ’im.’

  ‘I think my mother would like to know,’ said Toby. ‘I think not knowing has been hard on her. She thinks now she should have asked before Stella died. I can’t think why she didn’t.’

  ‘Well, maybe she didn’t like to,’ said Mrs Vanson. ‘I can’t say as I would have liked to in her place. You young cocks live in such a wicked world you don’t understand it. But in my generation we knew shame. Now, the person to ask is Mathy’s other grandmother. Tremorvahs is that side of the family. And if you don’t mind I’ll talk to her myself, before sending you. Just in case she doesn’t like it. You leave me a day or two, and I’ll let you know. All right now?’

  ‘Thank you. Quite all right,’ said Toby. As they got up to leave, Mrs Vanson said, ‘Thank you for my supper, Mathy.’ And to Toby she said, ‘He catches a good mackerel, that boy.’

  ‘More mackerel than pilchards, anyway,’ said Toby, straight-faced.

  ‘It must feel very odd,’ said Alice to Toby. She was cutting his toast into fingers for him to dip in his boiled egg. They were lingering over breakfast in their mother’s absence, perceptibly released from some kind of unspoken expectation about when meals will be, and how long they will take.

  ‘Not having one’s appearance for one’s exclusive use?’ he said. ‘Yes, it does. It makes everything else about me feel rather provisional.’

  ‘Because it could have been otherwise? It could have been otherwise for anybody, I suppose.’

  ‘Yes. I could look like me, and be Matthew—’

  ‘And he could look like himself and be you—’

  ‘So what you look like and who you are are separate propositions, suddenly.’

  ‘Unnerving. It would be horrible if you didn’t like Matthew.’

  ‘Luckily I do like him, rather a lot. Although he isn’t the sort of person I would have expected to like.’

  ‘Not clever enough for you?’

  ‘He’s not clever enough to be having my sort of problems,’ said Toby bitterly. ‘Or perhaps I mean not stupid enough. Either way, I envy him.’

  ‘You don’t; not really. He hasn’t got any money, and you—’

  ‘I what?’

  ‘Can’t see the point of anything else. You take after Dad.’

  ‘I bloody don’t!’ said Toby indignantly. ‘I’m here, aren’t I?’

  ‘Sorry I spoke,’ said Alice. ‘Darling brother, you’re going to have to get all that straightened out, you know.’

  Marian took the train to Royston and got a taxi. Darkness fell as the train rattled onwards, and it was raining when she arrived at the house. It seemed to have got dark early, and to be sharply cold compared to Cornwall, and the house, empty and unheated, felt bleak and damp. It was full of the days they had spent there waiting for Stella to die; Marian felt suddenly dejected. She should not have come back alone – she didn’t have enough freeboard for it. Shivering, she plodded across the green to find supper and warmth in the pub.

  Later she came in, and went through to the barn, still wearing her coat. She reached for the electric light switch, and then stopped. Moonlight fell through the huge window, and faintly made visible the shadowy stacks of paintings that were her inheritance. Darkening and brightening behind scudding clouds it showed her, propped on the easel, the shadowy face of Thomas Tremorvah, just discernible, staring at her out of the past. She turned away. His visage haunted her troubled sleep in the cold bedroom, the unaired bed.

  Things look better in the morning. It had stopped raining, and Marian went for a brisk walk, and bought fresh coffee in the village shop, and a packet of biscuits to offer vestigial hospitality to the art dealer who was coming at eleven. She looked round the house to find, if she could, bits and pieces worth keeping, before the house was cleared. There wasn’t much; even less than she had expected, only some pretty glasses and a few plates. It wasn’t only that things just didn’t stick to Stella, it was that she destroyed things – mixed paints on plates as temporary palettes and forgot to clean them, left dud batteries in the bedside radio until they spewed corrosive effusion that destroyed the plastic casing – inflicted every sort of dereliction that neglect could accomplish. Whimsically, Marian collected one or two battered and spattered objects as eloquent souvenirs – for herself, for the children – and was delicately wrapping ruined things and packing them into a cardboard box when the doorbell rang.

  The dealer was smartly dressed, and spoke in a classy drawl. He introduced himself, ‘James Gennyflower, call me James,’ and accepted the offer of coffee. Marian disliked him a good deal by the time they reached the door to the barn.

  ‘This will take me a little while,’ he said, putting down his briefcase beside the easel, and producing a clipboard and a pen. ‘Would you like to leave me to it?’

  Marian wandered out into the chilly garden. Mildewed clumps of asters struggled in the rampant flower-beds. How vulgar Stella would think it to have paintings valued! But hadn’t she priced them somehow, herself, when she wanted to sell them? Instinct answered Marian at once, that Stella would have known the difference between a price and a value; no doubt the price was more related to the pocket of the buyer than to the nature of the picture. Not that there had been many buyers. ‘We do have to get probate, Mother,’ she told Stella’s lingering aftermath.

  ‘Call me James’ took over two hours in the barn. He emerged with dusty hands and a dishevelled appearance. It was half-past one, and there was not a bite to eat in the house. Marian suggested the pub, but declined to accompany him.

  ‘I’m not through, I’m afraid,’ he said. ‘I’m expecting to take the rest of the day.’

  Marian withdrew to the living room, and began to make phone calls and write letters, arranging for the phone to be disconnected, the meters read, the bills sent down to Cornwall. When she had done all she could think of she moved on to dealing with the clutch of bills from her house in Hull sent on to her by the colleague who rented two upstairs rooms from her there. Marian knew where she was with a gas bill. She had never lived beyond her means. Even the leave of absence without pay from the chemist’s shop where she worked could be afforded without trouble. Donald had been generous to her financially, and her needs were modest. So now, she ordered her estate, and the residue of her mother’s, and hoped for the comfort such a tiny triumph over chaos usually brought her, and did not find it. Without Stella’s example to traduce, her competence had lost its schaden-freude.

  It was half-past six before ‘Call me James’ emerged from the barn, more dishevelled than ever, and said, ‘Right, I’m ready to report to you now. I’ll send a written report, of course, but I expect you’d like to hear the gist. Let me take you out to dinner. The Pink Geranium used to be good. On me. I insist.’

  Over pink tablecloths, then, and pink candles in silver candlesticks, and delicate portions of exquisite food and wine, which James had ordered for both of them with minimum consultation with his guest, he began to talk about Stella’s pictures.

  ‘Someone has sorted them out for you already,’ he said.

  ‘Leo Vincey.’

  ‘Do you know Vincey?’ He looked and sounded impressed.

  ‘He was a friend of my mother’s.’

  ‘Of course; he’s a St Ives man, isn’t he? I would very much like to meet him.’

  ‘Is he good?’

  ‘I think so. He’s controversial. Some would say now Hepworth is dead he must be the leading British sculptor, but he isn’t a pile of bricks man. Not a dustbin lid and jerrican man. He’s a craftsmanly worker. Very unfashionable. But I admire him.’

  ‘But I thought he was a painter—’

  ‘Both. He does both. Now, your mother’s work. She hasn’t a front line reputation, as I’m sure you know. But there is a sort of interest by association in any painter who worked in St Ives
during the war years.’

  ‘I know so little about it.’

  ‘Well, you’ve heard of Ben Nicholson. Bryan Winter? John Wells? Patrick Heron? Bernard Leach? Barns-Graham? You knew that Hepworth worked in St Ives? OK, look, I’ll give you a bird’s eye view in a nutshell …’

  Marian laughed, and James laughed too.

  ‘There’s wonderful light down there.’

  ‘I do know that,’ Marian said.

  ‘It had been an art colony for a long time. The war displaced people, and brought refugees to England from all over Europe. They had a very cosmopolitan view of things. They gathered in London, at first, and then when the blitz started some of them went to St Ives. Naum Gabo for instance. Nicholson and Hepworth. There was a hugely influential melting pot of ideas simmering away down there. Nicholson was deeply influenced by Alfred Wallis, a local primitive artist – you’ve heard of him?’

  ‘Yes, I have,’ said Marian.

  ‘They all influenced each other deeply. And they quarrelled. There was a prolonged struggle with traditional artists about hanging modern works in the art shows, and some of the moderns split off and founded their own society – the Penwith. But almost at once they were at each other’s throats again and the Penwith split again—’

  ‘It’s not a very edifying story, then.’

  ‘No, not really. Now the point of all this is that your mother was among them, painting. And what she painted while she was in that circle, open to those influences, is very interesting. You can trace the effect of that artist and the other artist – she was struggling to paint something which took account of the new ideas while still being recognizably in the older tradition. They don’t have much value in themselves, you understand, because there isn’t much of a market in very minor modern artists, but they have a historical interest, and there are collectors of St Ives school paintings. We might try putting them on show as a group and seeing if we could nudge her reputation up a notch or two.’

  ‘What about the others?’

  ‘No good, I’m afraid. She had something when she was there, she was beginning to get something quite individual, something right on the cusp, and then she lost it. She reverted to form if you like; and the form she reverted to had been overtaken. It’s an absolute calamity that she left St Ives. You don’t know why she left, do you?’

  Marian shook her head.

  ‘After the war constructivist and abstract art took over, and the vanguard moved to New York.’

  ‘Would she have known, do you think, that she had taken a wrong turning?’

  ‘I can’t tell you that. People often get this wrong, I think. There’s a tendency to call artists derivative when they influence each other, and yet the influences can produce wonderful things. Cross-fertilization would be a better word, I think.’

  While they talked Marian’s idea of him had been changing. No doubt he was in the art business to make money; but it was also for love. He knew his subject. And what was wrong with her, that she should so instantly take a dislike to enthusiasts of any kind? He pulled a notebook from his pocket, and put it down beside his coffee cup.

  ‘This is the low-down,’ he said. ‘There is a little pot of gold for you, because there are three Wallises. Worth around ten thousand each. There is also a Nicholson, worth about thirty thousand. You might get a few hundred apiece for the better St Ives canvases, if we get a gallery to show them together, and write them up a bit. The rest are worthless. In money terms, I mean.’

  ‘I’m going to take some as mementoes, and ask you to deal with the rest,’ said Marian.

  ‘Your decision, of course. What you keep might appreciate, but I wouldn’t hold my breath.’

  ‘Why is Wallis so valuable?’ Marian asked. ‘I’ve heard people be very rude about him.’

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you that,’ said James. ‘But you might be able to see it if you looked. Go and look in Kettle’s Yard.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ asked Marian.

  ‘Just down the road, in Cambridge,’ he told her.

  Alice was looking for Leo’s house. She got lost in Downalong every time she walked there, and usually enjoyed the experience, but this time it was wet and windy. She asked three people, all of whom were tourists, and at least one of whom was lost herself. At last she found it – a sort of cellar door, down three steps and under an overhanging balcony, all up an unnamed sideways alley off a tiny steep street. A fancy pottery house label called it The Fish Cellar, but when Leo let her in, without comment – he had not been expecting her – it seemed to be the upstairs of the house, because a narrow stair led down. The room they were standing in contained a kitchen sink, a disintegrating armchair, and a television set, standing on a bare boarded floor.

  ‘I’ve come to see you,’ said Alice.

  ‘I’m working,’ said Leo.

  ‘OK, I’ll wait.’

  ‘Come down, then,’ he said. He was brusque, not his usual provocative roughness, but really. She followed him down. It should have been a below-ground basement, but it wasn’t. The lower floor opened at the back into a large workshop, and the workshop had a set of French windows from wall to wall, giving onto a steep garden, falling away further, and with a view across to the far side of the bay, where the holiday camps were. At the foot of the stairs against the underground wall, beneath a sloping skylight that might have been a coal-chute once, and was now closed with very dirty glass, was an unmade bed, with a sagging curtain rail round it. There was a curtain, but it was pulled back, leaving the crumpled bed in view.

  Leo immediately returned to a bench with an array of strange tools, chisels and mallets and scrapers. He was apparently at work sharpening something on a grindstone worked by a treadle under the bench. It made an unpleasant whine of varying pitch.

  Alice took in, and was aware of her amazement at, the state of the workshop. Apart from the bed it was immaculately tidy. A chart chest stood in one corner, lacking its drawers, and full of sheets of paper. A shelf held a row of jars in which carefully assorted brushes stood like arrows in quivers. An amazing device hanging overhead like an old fashioned airer held arrays of tubes of paint, in processions of graded colours, slotted in by their caps, as in a toothpaste holder. A row of palettes hung on the wall. Leo’s pictures were stacked like gramophone records, sideways on in sectioned bins beneath the workbench. There was not one on show.

  At the far end of the workshop disorder had crept in. There was a table thickly plastered with gobbets of terracotta clay. A claggy turntable stood at one end of it. There was no work at this end of the workshop either, but a large crate was standing on a platform in the middle of the floor.

  ‘Since you’re here, you can help me open this,’ said Leo.

  ‘However did you get that down the stairs?’ asked Alice. The crate was eight feet or so long, and both tall and deep.

  ‘Through the yard gate, and those doors,’ said Leo. Alice saw that above the crate on the ceiling was a sort of gantry, an overhead steel beam with a pulley and chains running on it. The crate had been manoeuvred into place with that.

  ‘What do I do?’ asked Alice.

  Leo gave her a cold chisel, and said, ‘I’m going to lever the lid up. You lever the other end. Gently.’

  It took some time to get the lid off. Time enough for Alice to spot and read the label on the far end of the crate: Rogers Parsons and Sons. Tilbury. Bellfounders. Lifting the lid revealed nothing but swathes of bubble pack and wood-shavings. Leo proceeded to lever off the ends of the crate, and then detach the side panels from the base. He worked methodically with great care, issuing directions to Alice, whose role was to keep parts of the crate from springing back when they were prised open. She did as she was asked, having recognized Leo’s extraordinary tension; he was strung up like her quartet just before a performance.

  When the crate was completely dismantled, the chains and pulleys which had positioned it were tugged out of the way against the wall, and Leo began to remove the packag
ing. The wood shavings, smelling faintly of Christmas trees, spilled out across the floor. The bubble pack was tackled with an ivory paper-knife. Alice picked up a knife from the tool bench and Leo bellowed at her, ‘Nothing sharp!’

  At last everything was unfixed, and Leo reached out both hands, and pulled the packing away. A bronze wave. What he uncovered was a bronze wave. It rose from its rectangular base whale-backed, and curved over, captured in the moment of breaking, with a hollow vortex under the crest. At one end the wave was peaking, with an almost cutting edge, at the other the avalanche of foam was spilling expansively. Leo had gone very still. He was standing in an intense sort of trance. Alice had been looking for some time before she saw, in the tunnel formed by the wave-crest, an exiguously moulded shape – the shape of a nearly submerged human figure.

  Leo was pacing round, looking from every angle. ‘Well?’ he said suddenly.

  ‘Did you make this, Leo? I don’t know what to say—’

  ‘It isn’t finished.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  ‘It needs fettling. And burnishing.’

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘Glad you like it. Since it’s yours. Or, Marian’s, rather. Or Stella’s, really. Stella wanted it.’

  Suddenly, awkwardly, Leo began to cry, wiping away tears with angry strokes of the back of his hands.

  ‘Oh, Leo, I know!’ said Alice, putting her arms round him. He went absolutely rigid.

  ‘Don’t touch me,’ he said. ‘Do you know how like Stella you are? As she was, long ago … I can’t answer for myself if you touch me.’

  ‘It’s all right, Leo,’ said Alice, ‘I’m a grown-up. I’ll answer for both of us.’

  Kettle’s Yard turned out to be a house – well, barely more than a cottage, really. Someone’s house, filled with paintings and sculpture and bequeathed to the university. The tiny rooms were painted white, and had rather minimum furniture. Arrangements of beach pebbles lay on battered tables. And there were pictures on every available wall, even in the bathroom.