Sneaking back from washing her face awake in the nearest bathroom, Rohimun opened her door to see a man standing before her easel. She was conscious of a frisson of fear, then disappointment. Dad. He didn’t visit often—it was generally Tariq’s job to bring her meals and check on her—and he had never come right into the room before. He was holding her lunchtime tiffin and peering at the rose. As she watched, he walked slowly backward then stopped about five feet away, still staring at the image, seemingly unaware of her presence.
“Abba,” she said, going toward him, her towel and toiletry bag awkwardly tucked under one arm. She wondered if Richard had spoken to him, imagined the scene if he had, what Dad would do to her then. She’d be straight on the plane to Bangladesh for sure. She bent to touch her father’s shoes with her free hand, warily.
“You have been painting.”
“Yes, Abba.” He had spoken to her, the first time since she’d come back, although it had not escaped her notice that he was not using her name. She walked to the duffel bag to pack away her stuff. One thing about squatting here in so much secrecy: it’d sure made her tidy.
“This, this is beautiful,” he said, waving two fingers at the painting. “The depth of color, the translucency of this flower, is number-one.”
He stretched an arm out in her direction, his hand beckoned, and she scuffed over in her flip-flops and stood next to him, pretending to look, hardly daring to hope. He picked up one of her brushes and used it like a pointer to follow the dark lines of the hair as it spread over a third of the canvas.
“This is lovely, very lovely indeed,” he said. “Alive, like in Edvard Munch. Better, because he needed to put a river behind the figure: remember The Scream? But you have the river in the hair already.”
He pointed at the female figure. “She is a holy figure, like the great Renaissance Madonnas. You have spoken to Rossetti here: his Proserpine you have conflated with a Renaissance Mary—when she turns in profile, and looks, to see the Angel of the Immaculate Conception. One might well say, an Adoration of the Rose.”
She nodded; her throat had tightened up.
“There are echoes of Millais here, his drowned Ophelia, with her outward-facing palms as well as the floating hair, the room made for her presence by nature. There is the surrender and the gift inherent in such a gesture, you know?”
She nodded again, swallowed tears. This was better than forgiveness. She felt like a favorite student, a star pupil. She had only seen him like this at art gallery exhibitions and, occasionally, when she’d sat in on his university lectures and he’d go off on a riff about Early English and the Perpendicular style. Now it was about her, her painting.
He sighed. “You have truly excelled yourself with these colors: the glaze of such depth, the richness of that fabric.” He turned to look at her. “This painting of yours, not even finished yet, it is the best you have done. Truly number-one.”
She cleared her throat, finally got the words out. “You’ve seen my portrait work, Abba?”
“Yes, yes, very competent, very good. You always were a good student. But this, this.” He swung the paintbrush in an elegant arc that encompassed the painting as a whole. “You have matured as an artist, I can see that.”
There was a pause between them then, a little space to allow for the great adjustment that had taken place. And then her father hurrumphed, put down the brush, folded his arms and moved further back, still regarding the painting.
Rohimun, following his cue, went to her palette and started to talk, in fits and starts, about the halo she wanted to create around the hands, how it needed to fall onto the ground, like a blessing, but also radiate back toward the giant rose.
Dad stood and watched as she worked, and occasionally he spoke: something about yellow, its universal reputation as a holy or spiritual color. And Kandinsky’s singular refutation of this, asserting yellow’s essential earthiness.
Her lunchtime tiffin went cold as she painted, sitting unheeded on the floor where her father had left it, and while she painted, he continued to talk, telling her stories about possible alchemical influences upon the old painters’ recipes for mosaic gold and lead-tin yellow, the Romans’ use of slave labor to mine the poisonous, gold-like orpiment, the ancient Egyptians’ preference for yellow lead antimonite.
She had forgotten about his knowledgeable, intellectual side, and had rarely glimpsed his aesthetic sensibilities in a positive light. So much of his behavior at home, with all of them, had been about appearance and prestige: like a fat peacock, all noise and show.
By the time she started to think of a break, half the afternoon had passed, and the two of them sat down on the floor in a patch of sunlight near the window. They opened up the tiffin lids and shared Mum’s cold chicken curry and rice.
Then her father left, with some return of his distant manner but promising to send Tariq at eight with her evening meal, and she walked back to the magical painting that sat at the center of the room. She could do no more with the late-afternoon light until the latest layer of glaze had dried out some more, but the figure, she could work on. She washed out her brushes and placed them in the drying jar on the windowsill, then took a close look at the image.
Those important hands were almost complete, with the beginning of the yellow glaze around them. The logical next step was the neck and face. What a pleasure it was to mix in burnt umber for skin color. To place faint shadows under the eyes to show maturity, rather than crow’s-feet.
The painting’s transformative effects on her father, herself . . . She had to be true to it, not fall back into the populist, Freud- and Bacon-imitating portraits of her London years that had, along with Simon, eventually dried up her creativity.
When things had been at their height, and she’d had a waiting list of sitters and her agent chasing her for more canvases, the sight of the flashing light on her answering machine or the stack of invitations on her mantelpiece was enough to make her feel physically sick. Then at that first and only solo exhibition, she’d overheard one of the top-flight dealers, Deirdre somebody, say how of the zeitgeist her paintings were, perfect for gen Y. That said it all really.
Now she was with her father, and she had painted, was painting, something extraordinary, beyond her known capacities. And he was placing this painting into history, into the canon of those objects of irrefutable, inherent value that would outlast them all.
Twenty-three
ON THURSDAY MORNING, Dr. Choudhury’s colleagues greeted his arrival at the monthly faculty meeting with rather more surprise and spontaneous enquiries about his health than he was completely comfortable with. Surely he had not been away that long.
He took his seat and picked up a copy of the agenda, but once again found himself in the position of being utterly unable to read the document. The long drive, combined with the prospect of this meeting, in this stuffy, ugly room with nothing but urn-stewed tea and stale digestives to sustain him, had reduced his motivation to virtually nil. The lone fly crawling on the windowpane behind Bertha seemed to have more purpose and meaning than the papers in front of him and the murmuring and asides of his peers.
As item one, the minutes of the last meeting, was announced, Dr. Choudhury picked up a pen and started to doodle pilasters and pediments on the margins of one of the subcommittee reports. Soon he had turned it over to make room for a classically inspired folly, which would look very well situated at the bend in the river that marked the halfway point between Abbey and cottage. At length, some time after he had detailed the moulding of the cornices, the decoration of the entablature and the form of capitals of the columns, and decided, after debate, upon a frieze with an idyllic theme of cavorting maenads and satyrs, Bertha came, with much important hemming and shuffling of papers, to the final item on the agenda: Special Business.
His doodling, which had now progressed to the interior of the folly, slowed and stopped. Certain w
ords and phrases were percolating through to his conscious mind. Professor Beeton had moved on from speaking in general terms of the tidal wave of Arab funding that was about to hit the faculty, to an attempt to provide intellectual, even moral legitimacy for it.
“. . . and of course, historically speaking, the Wahhabi, that is the desert sect of Islam that dominates the most forward-looking nations of the Middle East, is, arguably, Islam in its purest form. I understand that the Wahhabi movement can be traced back to . . .”
“I object.” Dr. Choudhury found himself standing, his drawings disregarded, leaning forward with his hands splayed on the table for support. “These people of whom you speak, with more wealth than they know what to do with. They are not educated people, for all their universities of marble and ivory.”
Bertha’s chair scraped back abruptly. “Dr. Choudhury, do you mind!”
He hurrumphed and raised a palm. “I am obliged to object, Professor Beeton. You know not what you do.”
A gasp ran around the table; all eyes were upon him. “These people, whom you should call Saudis not Wahhabis, they are intellectually dishonest, number-one politicians, every last one of them. And their intention, Professor Beeton, their only intention, is to purchase power and influence with their thirty pieces of gold.”
Bertha clutched her new and quite heavy-looking necklaces to her bosom and again attempted to speak, but he would not yield the floor.
“To borrow the prestige of this institution to further entrench their right-wing influence in fair Albion, to cause students in our care and protection to view Saudi social and political values, and Wahhabi practices, as legitimate alternatives to democracy, moderation in religion, cultural inclusiveness, toleration. You do not understand what you do. These, these men and women are number-one villains for what they do, and want to do. Do not be fooled by their compliments, their flattery, their gifts.”
He forgot himself so much as to point his finger at his head of faculty at this juncture, and he could not help noticing that she flushed an unpleasant shade of red. Brickish: dreadful with that pink top.
“This, this is the thin end of the wedge: a wedge of gold. They will start pressing for an end to Oxford’s Christian traditions, push non-Muslim students out of the prayer rooms, object to the drinking traditions and to figurative paintings in the Ashmolean. You do not know it, but I have already seen this, this Wahhabism.”
Silence greeted his words, until Bertha, her voice shaking a little, told him that his interjection had been out of order and, with a warning look to Marjorie, would not be minuted. Still standing and breathing fast with emotion and the unexpected excitement of it all, Dr. Choudhury wondered if this was how Richard Bourne felt in court.
His colleagues had all heard him: that was what mattered. And it might even save him from a few of those irritating subcommittee duties. And Bertha from attaching herself to him any more than she had done already. Perhaps he should make the effort to come to future faculty meetings—they had no idea of what they were dealing with, of the motives behind those Saudis throwing their money around. How true the proverb of the ivory tower.
Bertha broke up the meeting and bustled out before him. He would soon, no doubt, have to endure a haranguing in her office over points of order and probably something in his behavior that she identified as patriarchal, but what was that to him. He would be away from these internecine, infantile politics by twelve o’clock at the latest. And, being tenured, he was secure from whatever machinations she might engage in.
He would give Bertha a minute or two to compose herself, and so took the opportunity to repair to the men’s room and check that his outburst had not ruffled his appearance. Satisfied by what he saw, he set off for her office and knocked on the door.
“Come in.”
He opened the door and stepped onto a fine Persian rug that covered most of the floor. Other things had changed too. On the rug was an elaborate octagonal coffee table inlaid with brass and mother-of-pearl, and Bertha’s mismatched collection of chairs had been replaced with a set of upholstered leather couches that looked Italian. Bertha seemed unchanged, however: in those ill-fitting jeans and the long pink tunic striped with silver that he now recognized as a Baladi dress, for performing the northern African peasant dances.
As she stood up from her desk, Dr. Choudhury realized two black-robed figures were seated before her, and they rose now too. He started with surprise and an instinctive repulsion. They were women, covered from head to foot in the Arabic way. They were also gloved, and with fine black gauze where their eyes should be.
Bertha introduced them to him as a visiting Wahhabi scholar and her postgraduate student, from Dubai. The salaamalaikums were cursory on both sides. Like most of his Desi generation, he abhorred the covering of women. And he knew what many Arabs thought of, and how they treated, their Bangladeshi guest-workers. Bertha ushered the women out with a promise to catch up with them later on.
“Sit down, Dr. Choudhury. It is so long since I’ve seen you. Properly. I’m afraid, as you seem to have been ignoring my emails, there is much to tell. In your absence, Humanities has undergone a significant restructuring.”
Dr. Choudhury cleared his throat. “Due to the extra funding, I assume?”
“A little more than extra funding, Dr. Choudhury. Marvellous avenues have been opened to us, vistas of opportunity that are contingent upon, I mean, concomitant with, a fresh look at every aspect of the Humanities . . .”
He began to realize that this meeting was not about the Bourne Abbey secondment coming to a close. She was not going to be increasing his lecture and tutorial load, pressuring him into subcommittee memberships, or even picking on his publication record. This was something else.
She steepled her fingers and spoke down to her nails which were, as always, grubby and unmanicured. “As a result of this university-wide reassessment, Dr. Choudhury, to which, I may add, you were asked on several occasions to contribute, it became apparent that there was a certain duplication in the services offered by Architecture and History.”
She seemed to have the bit between her teeth now.
“In short, Dr. Choudhury, a rationalization has necessarily had to occur, for the sake of the students, of course. And the faculty.”
“But I am tenured, Professor Beeton.” His voice sounded like a tentative bleat even to him, and he leaned forward, trying to force some eye contact. “I am a tenured Fellow of this establishment. There are rules.”
Bertha avoided his eyes. “Of course there are rules, Dr. Choudhury, and we would have been most remiss if we had not consulted with all the appropriate authorities: the Pro-Vice-Chancellors of Planning and Resources and Personnel have been consulted, even the Proctors.” She spoke hurriedly, as if the end of this conversation was in sight, to her at least. “Your tenure is not being tampered with, you see. That”—and here a shade of regret seemed to cross her face—“cannot of course be tampered with. Your salary will continue. It is Historical Architecture as a separate, ah, subject that is otiose, and on that basis you may wish to consider an extended, ah, sabbatical. From all active duties.”
“But my students . . .”
“Such as they are, Dr. Choudhury. There are not many any longer. Most of the undergraduates are now sitting much more comfortably within Architecture, under the guidance of Dr. Felmstedt. The postgrads and a few strays more suited to History have been taken by Ellen—you remember Dr. Ellen Haversack, over from Stanford?”
“So . . . so you are taking away my lectureship, my students, my office as well, I suppose . . .”
She stood and began to clash papers noisily together. “Well, of course, why have an office when no work is done, you are never here.”
“My secondment was approved.”
“I must be off, Dr. Choudhury. You would have been aware of these changes weeks ago if you had been keeping abreast of college affa
irs, and now I have a meeting that I really must attend to.”
Their eyes met for a second, her expression a strange mixture of triumph and embarrassment. “I have meetings for the rest of the day. Marjorie has cleaned out your office and everything is boxed up.”
He stood as she hurried past him, then sat down again, found his handkerchief and blew his nose. His legs hurt, as if he’d been standing all day.
After a little while he walked down to his old office, treading quietly. The thought of running into one of his colleagues filled him with horror. His room seemed large and light with all the books and pictures packed away, and archive boxes were stacked in the middle of the room.
Marjorie materialized beside him. “I’m so sorry, Dr. Choudhury,” she said softly, as if she too did not want to be overheard. “I’ve organized for everything to be delivered to Windsor Cottage this afternoon.”
He tried to speak but failed.
“I do hope that’s alright, Dr. Choudhury.”
He nodded, defeated.
With relief in her voice and a certain forced cheer, she adjusted one of the boxes to line up perfectly with its base. “It’s such a pity it’s all happened just before the Long Break. But we’ll give you a proper send-off when Michaelmas starts. For your sabbatical, I mean.”
“Yes, of course, of course . . .” he said, backing out of the room and looking down the corridor. If he could just get out of this building and to his car without bumping into anybody. He could be home before midday. Tariq should be there. He already felt like a ghost of his former self, the one that had been a part of these buildings, this university, for almost thirty years.
—
RICHARD SPENT THURSDAY morning in Chambers, irritable without a smoke, trying to clear the decks for the anticipated cross-application by the Reid son next week. Meetings with instructing solicitors and anxious juniors about a number of briefs consumed much of his morning, leaving him concerned that the Reid matter would eat into his planned long weekend. It was going to be a demanding brief, as well as one that was increasingly feeling too close to home, though it somehow seemed timely as well: acting not for Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue for a change; arguing for the preservation and proper use of a family Trust, rather than its destruction. There was certainly more merit in the supporting authorities than he’d first thought.
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