Tonight as they came in, her father said, ‘Dinner in ten minutes,’ and she hurried upstairs to her room. The hall, stairs and landing were thick with his pictures, ‘Sparsholt’ or ‘JS’ all the way up, too many of them to look right; were they the treasures kept back or the ones no one wanted to buy? They were records of years of encounters in which she had played no part. The hang kept changing, and she noticed there were one or two new things staring out as she ran past; these looked like sketches for portraits, which were too good to throw away, and according to her father had more life in them sometimes than the finished article. Her own little room had a weird blue landscape over the bed, not by her father – it was a view she’d got used to, but with no warm feeling of knowing what or where it was. She carefully detached the picture of her mother from the grey glue binding of her sketch pad, and propped it up on the dressing table. The high bed with frilly pink pillow had the counterpane turned down but neither the comforting hump of a hot-water bottle nor the flex of an electric blanket was to be seen. Still, her row of books was on the mantelpiece, between two black elephants, there were frocks and a cardigan she’d half-forgotten in the wardrobe, and when she caught sight of herself in the wardrobe mirror she saw someone very nearly at home here. She went out to the bathroom (they didn’t have a separate lavatory), which was the opposite of the bathroom at home – throwaway razors, not thrown away, but heaped up on the dirty glass shelf, two kinds of shaving soap, a laundry-basket full of smelly grey boxer shorts and vests. There was a shower with a mildewed curtain that hung over the bath, and dark bottles of body-washes, and an odd rough glove for washing with. When she had a bath or anything here she did it as quickly as possible. The towels were heaped thick on the heated rail, and even her clean one had a remote male smell.
There was a knock at the door and a ‘Sorry!’ when the handle was tried; she hurried to wash her hands. It was Evert, looking perplexed. ‘I just awfully need to go,’ he said, with a distant look on his face, sliding past her as she left and not locking the door behind him. She went back along the landing, and sitting at the little pine desk with her pencils, she coloured in a bit more of her mother’s hair, in a much stronger yellow than the real colour, but it was all she had. The eyes too became a fiercely bright blue. In a minute there was another knock, and Evert looked round the door. ‘Ah! Hello,’ he said. ‘It’s you, um . . .’
‘Hello . . .’ she said, with the hint of reproach of any artist interrupted at work.
He came and stood over her. ‘Ah, yes, now . . . who’s this?’
‘Don’t you know?’ she said.
He sucked in his breath. ‘It’s someone I know.’
‘Yes!’
‘It’s . . . er . . . it’s not, no . . . oh god.’
‘Don’t you know?’ she said again, excited, and then sensing, when she looked up at him, a shallow breath of panic under his fixed smile. Maybe it wasn’t only names he couldn’t remember. ‘It’s . . . Francesca Skipton.’
‘Ah, yes.’
‘She’s my mother, of course.’
‘Well, I know that, darling! I’ve known your mother since the day she was born.’ She held it up again and Evert craned forward, like the visitors in the gallery, and with his own private flinches, as an art expert too. ‘You’ve only got those colours, I expect,’ he said.
‘Yes, I’m afraid so.’
‘It’s not a bad thing – you must make the most of what you have.’
‘Do you think it looks like her?’ said Lucy.
‘It’s hard to draw someone who’s not in front of you,’ he said. ‘We remember things differently, you see, when we can’t see them, especially faces, and so we make things up. You’ve made what I’d call a speculative portrait of your mother.’
‘Oh . . . yes,’ said Lucy. It was hard to tell if this increased or compromised its interest.
‘I’ll just sit quietly before dinner,’ said Evert, ‘if you don’t mind, I get so terribly tired,’ and moving the baby-sized doll from the little nursing chair where Lucy often sat to read, he lowered himself with a smile and a sharp grunt. She was surprised but didn’t object to a visitor who sat quietly; she got on with her drawing, which had now become problematic in ways she felt powerless to solve. So in a minute she started a question, glanced round and saw his eyes were closed – but yes, he was still breathing, and her fright turned into a kind of amusement. She didn’t want to look at him in case he opened his eyes and caught her. There were voices in the hall, Pat saying ‘Is he all right?’ in his competent way, footsteps on the stairs. There was a new tap at the door, and her father looked in, glanced from her to Evert in the armchair, chin down now in a snooze that looked thoughtful, the closed eyes of complete concentration – he pushed his chin forward a little as if grumpily accepting a point. Then he opened his eyes – stared at them both blankly for a second or two, and said, ‘Is everyone here?’
‘Yes, we’re all ready,’ said her father.
As they went downstairs she heard Clover saying to Pat, in the businesslike way of adults among themselves, ‘How old is she now?’ and Pat saying, ‘Oh, God, seven, would she be? I think she was two when we met.’ Lucy was small for her age, and aware of the mild concern this was causing her parents. All she minded was being treated as more of a child than she was.
‘I wonder what it will be,’ Evert said to her as they sat down. He peered at Pat, his aproned bulk obscuring the hob where pans simmered on the flames.
‘Mm, I wonder,’ said Lucy.
‘Do you eat creatures?’ Evert said.
Lucy admitted she did.
‘And so do I, I’m afraid. Which ones do you like eating best?’
Evert’s tone obliged her to be childish too. ‘I think lambs,’ she said.
‘Ah, yes!’ said Evert.
Her father made a horrible face.
‘Now here we are,’ said Pat, turning round with a frown.
A dinner this late was a Fulham thing, not tolerated in Belsize Grove, and she did her practical best to live up to it. It was a thick soup like green porridge to start and they all tried to guess what was in it: she was the one who identified courgettes. She found herself over-active with excitement and determination not to let herself down. Pat said, ‘Well done,’ and she smiled and kept on tasting, almost giving the impression she liked courgettes.
‘I’m sorry Ivan can’t join us,’ said Clover, in her usual tone of not minding very much.
‘I know,’ said Evert.
‘But he’s all right?’ said Pat. With Lucy, on the few times they’d met, Ivan had been very awkward; she’d really had to make the conversational going herself. He was an old friend of her mother’s, and he was one of the funny men who lived in the House of Horrors in Cranley Gardens.
‘Yes, he’s fine. He’s been an angel to me, you know, with this recent thing. But I can still get about by myself!’
‘Well, give him our love,’ said her father. ‘Clover, some more bread?’
‘No, thanks . . . Perhaps some wine . . . So do you have anyone sitting for you?’ she said, not taking her eye off the glass as it was filled.
Lucy’s father looked at Evert as he said, ‘I’ve just started on old George Chalmers, in fact.’
‘Oh, you’re doing him, are you?’ said Evert.
‘Well, thanks to your recommendation.’
‘I’m glad it came off,’ said Evert quietly; he looked at Clover, ‘I don’t expect you know George Chalmers. He used to hang around in Oxford when I was there, though he was still a schoolboy. He was a famous beauty, though rather hard to deal with.’
‘No, I’ve met him, I think,’ said Clover.
‘Why was he?’ said Lucy.
‘Why was he what, darling?’
‘Hard to deal with.’
Evert sighed as he looked for the answer, as though he’d gone into the junk room and didn’t know what to bring out. ‘I suppose really he was just terribly vain, you know . . .’
‘No change there, then,’ Lucy’s father said.
‘Ah, I’m sure . . . Does he come to you?’
‘He does now. We started off down in Wiltshire – you know, I went for the weekend.’
‘Was he all over you, I suppose?’
‘Never came near me’ – he grinned at Lucy, as if to sweep over the matter. ‘A bit old for him, I think,’ he said quietly.
‘Well, you know of course my friend Peter Coyle and George . . .’ said Evert.
‘I don’t think there’s much Johnny doesn’t know about George Chalmers’s private life by now,’ said Pat, who tended to get left out of these art talks; ‘if you can even call it private.’ He laughed, and kept smiling at Lucy too, with a hint of solidarity, as he stood to clear the soup bowls. Lucy smiled cautiously back, at this friend of her father with his unshaven face pink from cooking and drinking wine, and the soft dark eyes.
‘Now how are you liking your lasagne?’ Pat said to her five minutes later.
‘Very nice, thank you,’ said Lucy, with an almost reluctant awareness that she was quite enjoying it; there was something in it remarkably like mince. She thought she had better not mention it, in case Pat had made a terrible mistake, and they would have to go upstairs and make themselves sick, which had happened more than once, apparently, when they were in hotels abroad.
‘Is it Quorn?’ said Clover. ‘I’ve read about it.’
‘What do you think?’ said Pat.
Lucy glanced at her father, who had his deaf-to-all-arguments vegetarian face on.
‘Awfully good!’ said Clover, picking out a tiny forkful, and so behind the others that she was bound, as usual, to leave almost everything on her plate. And yet she was enormous, bigger than Una, so perhaps like her a snacker. She lifted her empty glass – ‘Could I?’
‘Ah, yes’ – Pat leant over to fill it with red wine, and she said,
‘But what about your work, Pat?’
Did he sense, as Lucy did, the hint of helpless courtesy in the question? ‘My work,’ he said, ‘is notoriously boring.’
‘Really?’ she said. ‘I don’t believe that.’
Pat shook his head happily at her. ‘I don’t mean I find it boring, not in the least, I love it, but it bores the socks off anyone I talk to about it.’
This was a challenge, and Clover, pushing her food about with her fork, said, ‘I know it’s organs.’
‘Aha!’ said Pat.
‘Historical, though,’ said Lucy’s father.
‘Restoration,’ said Pat.
‘Yes, of course, you restore organs.’
‘No, Restoration organs.’
‘Ah . . .’
‘Organs built in the 1660s.’
‘Oh, I see. So you do Restoration organ restoration!’
‘I do,’ Pat smiled politely.
‘Goodness!’ said Clover, and took a big swig of wine. ‘I think that could be awfully interesting.’
‘Well . . . So what are your plans, Evert?’ said Pat.
‘Well,’ said Evert.
‘You’ve got this trip, haven’t you, Evert,’ said Lucy’s father.
‘That’s it, darling,’ said Evert tactfully, as if unsure how many shared the secret.
‘And where are you going to?’ said Clover, almost teasing the poor man, Lucy thought.
‘Well . . . !’ – Evert sat back and smiled over their heads.
‘Of course, you’re going to Antwerp,’ said Pat. ‘Isn’t that right?’
‘That’s it,’ said Evert again, with a nod. Now it was out, and they could talk about it. Still, he seemed a little uneasy. He turned to Lucy. ‘Do you know where Antwerp is, darling?’
‘It’s in Belgium,’ said Lucy.
‘Very good,’ said Clover.
‘It’s a port.’
‘Mm, that’s right,’ said Clover.
Evert had the whole thing now. ‘I’m going to an Alternative Book Fair,’ he said. ‘They’ve invited me, to talk about A. V. – you know, he’s coming out in Dutch.’
‘You mean you’re coming out in Dutch,’ said Lucy’s father.
‘Yes – well, he’s in Dutch already, he always has been,’ said Evert. ‘You know, I get a cheque every year for sixty guilders or something, and it’s the royalties.’
‘It’ll be more now,’ said Pat.
‘Will it?’
‘With your book!’
‘Oh, well, let’s hope.’
They sat for a long time over their plates, forgetting Lucy. Pudding was still to come, but to her it was almost too late. Her appetite itself was falling asleep. Her father caught her eye now and then, in an irksome way. But the talk by this stage had moved into a baffling square dance of first names, combining and recombining, Evert and Pat themselves at cross-purposes, and the Olivia, whom she followed hopefully at first, urging her on with smiles of recognition, turned out to be a quite different Olivia from the one who was a friend of her mother’s. Well, she’d known it would happen, the obvious truth of the night was that the adults had their own endless things to talk about, and the wine they were knocking back made them all speak more freely and with less and less thought for her. She was aware of the light burden it put on any adult seated next to her, to keep one ear on the real conversation while they turned to make small talk with her. Now her father was mentioning his mother, who’d been in hospital, but of course was not a celebrity patient like Freddie.
‘Do you know my granny,’ Lucy asked Evert, ‘Granny Connie, I mean?’
‘Well,’ Evert stared at the table, ‘I knew her, let me see, it’s 1994, fifty-four years ago.’
‘It’s not,’ said Lucy, ‘it’s 1995.’
‘Ah, well, in that case even longer. It was when she was engaged to your grandpa, during the War.’
‘Did you know Grandpa David then?’
‘David . . . oh, yes, I knew him awfully well,’ said Evert. ‘We used to do things together . . . sometimes, you know . . .’
These two sentences sounded a little inconsistent. Lucy saw he was being polite, or perhaps couldn’t really remember. She smiled understandingly, but it was too long ago to be interesting now, and a stronger wave of sleep swept through her, she yawned before she could help it. In a minute she was standing and waving them goodnight, pulled in by Clover for an approximate kiss, and then, at a nod from her father, she went off upstairs.
2
A bleak scene, lasting less than half an hour, was enacted some weeks later at the Mortlake Crematorium. Ivan went with Evert, who made a point of wearing a pink scarf with his black overcoat, and sat biting his cheek and pursing his lips so that Ivan couldn’t tell what he was feeling or thinking. Above all he seemed impatient. He had insisted, as an old friend, on sitting at the front; Ivan had to come out of the pew to let someone else get by, and stood looking frankly across the half-empty rows behind, nodding and giving rueful smiles to Brian Savory and Sally, and old Dorothy Denham; he was surprised to see Dorothy here, and when he sat down again jotted her name on the back of the order of service; he wasn’t sure if they had anything on her or not. He had been to a good few funerals, of Evert’s friends and of others he took an interest in, but it was his first time at Mortlake – sunlight through a cloud seemed to pick out the dormant first syllable of the name. They spoke of this room as a chapel, though Christian symbols had been carefully omitted from its design – and seemed none the less to lurk, for those who craved them, in the arrangement of the room, the coloured glass and the woodwork of the pews, with their narrow prayer-book ledge. Where the altar would have been was the automated bier, looking more than anything like a four-poster bed, with pillars and a canopy.
On the printed card there was a recent photo of Jill, in colour, caught at a party in a genial mood. Seeing it, Ivan heard her, telling him what to do or, more probably, what he should have done, with the dogged irony that was her disappointing means of engaging with all comers. Over the loudspeakers came, mildly distorted, a tune Ivan had heard bef
ore, the ‘Dance of the Blessed Spirits’ by C. W. Gluck, a flute solo ushering onstage an incongruous new Jill, liberated, light-footed, welcomed into the next world, which she had perhaps thought of herself in pagan more than Christian terms. An unprompted silence fell over the congregation. ‘Ah, here’s the party,’ said Evert – they stood and half-turned to check as Jill was borne in. Her friends were too old for it, and she frightened the young, so the pall-bearers were the men from the undertakers’, one of them wall-eyed, another, put at the back, with a surgical boot. The V&A had sent a coldly artistic wreath of white lilies, which bobbed its way along at head height on top of the coffin towards its brief stay at the front.
And Jill had chosen hymns; she was a pagan but she wanted them to enjoy themselves, and singing was the only enjoyable part of a funeral, as a rule. She had sung herself, in one of the London choirs in the fifties, and referred just occasionally to Sir Adrian Boult as one might to a long-ago fling. It must be a woman from a choir now, a row or two behind them, an old but unembarrassed soprano with throbbing vibrato. Either the others were encouraged by her or they gave up altogether. Ivan glanced across the aisle at the military-looking man on the end of the row, looking forward, lips parted, an occasional drop of the jaw intended to convey the act of singing.
The Sparsholt Affair Page 31