‘Home for Christmas?’
‘Yes,’ says Alice. ‘Term just ended.’
Her voice is soft and musical. Chloe remembers Alice as a silent child. People change.
‘Me too. I’m at Exeter. I’ve been on trains for bloody hours.’
‘I’m at UCL.’
‘How’s it going?’
‘Okay. Still settling in, really.’
‘My first term’s been a total disaster,’ says Chloe cheerfully. Already in such a brief exchange she has satisfied herself that Alice remains one of life’s losers. She can tell from her tone of voice, and from the way she looks at her. The combination of timidity and envy gives Chloe a familiar sensation of power.
‘Why? What happened?’ says Alice.
‘Oh, I got this boyfriend called Hal, and then I had a thing with a guy called Robbie, and Hal went nuts and dumped me, and Robbie turned out to be a pain in the bum, and I had a row with the girls in my house, I thought this girl had such a great personality but really she’s so insecure, and I feel like I’ve not slept for a whole term, so all I’m going to do over Christmas is sleep.’
‘Wow.’
‘How about you?’
‘I’m pretty tired, actually. The work’s been pretty relentless.’
They talk about their work and their teachers and never having enough money, with Chloe doing most of the talking, but little by little Alice opens up. By the time they get to Gatwick Chloe feels able to move on to more personal topics.
‘So what’s the story with boyfriends?’ she asks.
‘Not much of a story at all,’ says Alice.
‘No boyfriends?’
‘I’m not like you, Chloe.’
‘So what? I should hope not. But you look great, Alice. Why shouldn’t you have boyfriends?’
‘Oh, I expect I will. I’m just not very good at it, I suppose. I’m not sure I know how to play the game.’
This interests Chloe.
‘You’re right,’ she says. ‘It is a game. If I fancy a boy I tell a friend, like, hey, I really like Hal, but don’t tell him. So the friend tells him. Then Hal comes on to me, and I play hard to get. Even though I’m the one started it.’
Alice listens and a smile forms on her thin face. When she smiles she’s almost beautiful. Chloe senses her admiration, and it makes her like her.
‘I could never do that,’ says Alice.
‘It’s all a bit juvenile. I expect I’ll grow up one day.’
‘No, I think it’s great. I wish I could do it. But I just can’t.’
‘Why not?’
‘I don’t know. I suppose I don’t really believe it would ever work.’
‘Why not? Don’t you think boys fancy you?’
‘No. Not really.’
‘Well, you’re wrong. Believe in yourself. Think sexy and you become sexy.’
Alice laughs. ‘You, maybe,’ she says.
‘I’m serious. It’s not hard. Boys want girls. You just have to show you’re interested, without being too easy. You have to make them work for it a bit.’
‘But I don’t know how.’
She gazes at Chloe with such a puzzled yearning that Chloe is enchanted. This is a new role for her: teacher of the art of love. Back in the Underhill days Alice had always been cleverer than her. She probably still is. There’s something delicious about this reversal of roles.
‘You want me to help you?’
‘Help me how?’
‘Get you fixed up. Over Christmas.’
Alice blushes a deep red.
‘Who with?’
‘I don’t know. Who do you fancy? There must be some boy you know who you like.’
‘No, not really.’
‘How about Jack Broad?’
Jack Broad comes to mind because Chloe met him on the street in Lewes a week or so before term started, and they stopped and talked for a few minutes. He was friendly, a little nervous, they gossiped about school friends, exchanged numbers so they could link up in the Christmas holidays, maybe get some others together from the old Underhill crowd. Jack isn’t Chloe’s type at all, to her eyes he seems too young, barely fifteen, though presumably he’s eighteen or nineteen like all the rest of their year.
‘I haven’t seen Jack for ages,’ says Alice.
‘He got into Cambridge.’
‘Good for him.’
‘So he’d do, wouldn’t he?’
Alice laughs, blushing still.
‘Honestly, Chloe.’
‘I promise you, it’s easier than you think. It’s all about putting ideas into people’s heads. I’ll meet up with Jack, tell him about you, how you blush when I talk about him, da-de-da, he can look you up on Facebook – you are on Facebook?’
‘Yes.’
‘Got some pictures of you looking gorgeous?’
‘Well …’
‘Sure you have. We all have. So I give him your number or I give you his or whatever. Then you meet up. And you’re away.’
‘Or not.’
‘This is Christmas. People are up for it. All you have to do is look like you want it.’
‘How do I do that?’
‘Like this.’
Chloe puts her elbows on the table and her chin in her hands, and gazes at Alice with her eyes lifted up in the pose made famous by Princess Diana.
‘You look at him like there’s nothing in the world but him, and you’re all his.’
She doesn’t add that it helps to put your hand down his jeans. Alice is a learner. One step at a time.
‘Isn’t that too obvious?’
‘You can’t be too obvious. There’s no such thing as too obvious. The best method of all would be to say, Hey, big boy, want a fuck? But we’re too ladylike for that. Just.’
Alice laughs, covering her mouth with her hand.
Chloe’s phone chirps. A text from Baz.
When RU back?
‘Oh, God. Barry Unwin. Did you ever meet him? Boy with red hair, hangs out at the Snowdrop, thinks he’s going to be a rock star.’
‘No.’
‘I went out with him a couple of times. Big mistake. But I’ll tell you what, he’s got a big one. And doesn’t he know it. It’s like no one ever told him size isn’t everything.’
Alice covers her face with her hands.
‘You okay, Alice?’
She looks out from between her hands, and she’s smiling.
‘How many boys have you slept with, Chloe?’
‘Christ, I don’t know.’
‘You must know.’
‘Well, it’s over ten, because the last time I counted it was ten. Twelve, maybe. No, thirteen. That’s over four years. Does that seem to you like too many?’
‘I’m awestruck. I’m still at zero.’
‘Well, we’re going to put that right.’
The train goes into the tunnel before Lewes station, and all at once they’re scrambling, getting their bags and cases, pulling on their coats against the December cold.
They part in the car park, Alice has only a short way to walk to her house, and Chloe’s mother is waiting in the Range Rover, engine running and headlights blazing.
‘I’ll call you. I will! I’m going to do it!’
Chloe heaves her bag into the boot, slides into the passenger seat, leans across to kiss her mother.
‘Jesus, Mum, you look awful.’
Her mother pulls down the visor mirror and frowns into it, patting her cheeks.
‘I’m fifty-two years old,’ she says. ‘I look like I’m a hundred.’
Chloe feels a wave of exhaustion wash over her. Talking to Alice has kept it at bay. Now she can hardly force her eyes open.
‘I’m just about dead,’ she says.
They drive out and up Station Street, past the War Memorial, on to the Offham road. Lewes looks small and safe and familiar in the glow of the streetlights.
‘So have you had a good first term?’
‘Horrendous,’ says Chloe. ‘What’s f
or dinner?’
‘I got some fillet steak. Only I’m not sure when we’re going to eat. Everything is a bit up in the air.’
She’s using her suffering voice.
‘Don’t do this to me, Mum. Okay? I’ve completely had it. All I want is a long hot bath, and dinner, and sleep. I can’t deal with any more hassle.’
Her mother says nothing in reply. Chloe feels faintly guilty, but it’s all true, no point in pretending. She’s come home for peace and quiet and no demands. So it’s Christmas and Christmas always stresses everyone, but it’s not for two weeks.
I’m allowed a couple of days to get myself together, aren’t I?
9
Lovelorn Christina drives south down the M23 dreaming of breakfast tables set for young families in suburban semis, of blue-striped china, the red-and-green cockerel on the Kellogg’s Cornflakes packet, the amber glow of a jar of Golden Shred. Joe Nola’s visions of domesticity invade her mind and enchant her heart, even as the Puck-like image of the artist himself dances backwards before her, forever seductive, forever out of reach.
Before her tired eyes a river of car headlights streams north from Gatwick. The day ends too soon, the night lasts too long.
Oh, Joe. I love your dancer’s body, your tactile grace. I love your laughing celebration of this disappointing world. But I mustn’t fall in love with you, Joe, because you are the star of my show. Not appropriate for the filmmaker to fall in love with her subject. That way lies conflict of interest, not to mention heartbreak.
Everyone loves you, Joe. Allow me to take my place in line, concealing my adoration beneath a veneer of professionalism and an easy teasing manner. Though as I have taken care to let slip, I am currently, possibly briefly, available. There is a window of opportunity. I am also currently thirty-one years old and not by any means desperate, not in this age of mature pregnancies.
Her mobile rings as she’s passing Pease Pottage and the blue road signs are giving way to green. She shouldn’t answer while driving but she does. It’s Paul, her series editor.
‘Where the fuck are you?’
‘I’m on my way to meet Anthony Armitage. I want to bring him up to the gallery and catch his reactions to the Joe Nola show.’
‘Who the fuck is Anthony Armitage?’
She can hear him Googling the name even as he asks.
‘He taught Joe way back, in some art school somewhere. He was Joe’s mentor.’
Clickety-click. Tappety-tap.
‘Fuck! He’s eighty!’
‘He hates all modern art. Including Joe’s.’
‘Is that a fact?’ She can almost hear Paul’s brain working, clicking its way to the conclusion she herself reached at lunchtime, which is when Joe told her about the old man.
‘So has he agreed to do it?’
‘Paul, this is a man at war with the modern world. He has no phone, no mobile, no agent, no gallery, no dealer, and no known relations.’
Paul ponders through the digital ether.
‘Better and better.’ He’s still on Google. ‘He’s got two of his portraits in the NPG and one in the Royal Collection.’
‘Sure. He’s good. He’s just way past his sell-by date. Like fifty years past.’
‘And he hates Joe’s work.’
‘So Joe says.’
‘Good girl. Drive on.’
Joe at lunch surrounded by the white-tiled proletarian chic of Livebait in Waterloo, eating high-priced fish and chips, pointing his fork at her, tomato ketchup on his lips, telling her about Anthony Armitage.
‘Ran into him at the RA a few years back. He poked my chest with one finger – jab! jab! – and hissed, “Cancer! Cancer!”’
What do you make of me, Joe? Of course I know you take the trouble to charm me because I’m the best boost your career has had to date, or so you hope. I must be made to love you so that the show applauds you. But what happens after transmission? The screen goes black, the credits roll, and then? We’ve been together so much these last weeks. We’ve had fun, haven’t we? What you don’t know is that in my private life I’m shy. I’m only this brazen and self-assured because my job requires it. Take away the film camera and I shrink into the wallpaper. I am the wallpaper.
Here’s the big question, Joe. Are you gay?
The general assumption is, Come on, guys, what you see is what you get. Is the Pope a Catholic? As it happens Joe’s a Catholic, or at least he was raised in that mother-ridden faith. But there is such a thing as strategic gayness, a calculated addition to the image. Consider the blithely ruthless way he dropped the final consonant of his name: Joe Nola was once Joseph Xavier Nolan from one of the rougher quarters of Dublin. And Lottie, the unit gossip, claims to know two women Joe has slept with, one of whom she swears lived with him for over a year.
Oh shit! Nearly missed the slip road onto the Brighton bypass.
Christina checks the printout showing her route. Past Lewes, take a right at the Edenfield roundabout. Through the village, take a left.
Edenfield is where Henry Broad lives, her one-time boss. Her first job in television, and her first crush.
Christ, I was such a child. What can he have thought of me?
What do you think of me, Joe? Are we mates? You’re not in a relationship right now, gay or straight, not as far as I know, and I know everything about you, so there’s nothing to stop us loving each other except that old hump in the road. Between friendship and love the road rises, and the hump can feel insurmountable. What we need is a burst of speed. Move on to the more volatile emotions. I’m talking about the show, Joe. I want to see you caught off guard. Hurt, angry, open to surprise.
‘He’ll never do it,’ Joe says about Anthony Armitage. ‘He despises television even more than he despises me.’
But it’s worth a shot. For a whole lot of reasons.
Driving through Edenfield now. One of those houses might be where Henry lives. And his wife, and his children, and his dog and his cat and his slippers.
Easy now. No need to be bitchy.
Turn left past the Edenfield Place Hotel. It’s a road for about a hundred metres then it turns into an assault course. Her little Fiat, built for town, lurches like a beer can in a mill race. No human habitation in sight. Can one doubt the all-knowing Google? If so, in what can we trust? All is mere opinion and rumour.
A soft gleam in a window ahead. Christina pulls the trembling Fiat to a stop by a wall: beyond, the black bulk of the house draped in night. One window shines a private shine.
Lamplight. Or candlelight. Six o’clock on a Friday evening but here it’s midnight in the Middle Ages.
She has to knock many times before there comes an answering growl through the closed door.
‘I’m not here.’
‘Mr Armitage? I’m a friend of Joe Nola’s.’
She shouts in case he’s deaf as well as blockaded behind a locked door.
‘Who?’
‘Joe Nola.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘I’ve come down from London to see you.’
No answer.
‘Can I please tell you why?’
No answer.
‘I’m a television journalist. I work for Sky Arts.’ She pauses. The magic of television not working its spell. ‘I might even be young and gorgeous.’
The door opens. Men are simple creatures at heart, even in old age.
He stands in the doorway, the light such as it is behind him, presenting a semi-silhouette of some disarray. His white hair sticks out in odd clumps. He wears a thick-knit jersey from beneath which protrudes the tails of a shirt. He’s staring at Christina with an expression of irritable disappointment.
‘You’re not gorgeous at all,’ he says. ‘You’re not even young.’
‘Oh, come on. I’m not bad.’
He’s eighty, for Christ’s sake. Who does he hang out with? Kate Moss?
‘Joe Nola is a fraud,’ he says, still standing like a sentry in the doorway. ‘His real name i
s Joe Nolan.’
‘I know.’
‘He’s a circus act. But then, so are they all.’
‘I’m cold. I’m freezing my tits off out here.’
He looks surprised.
‘A potty-mouth,’ he says. ‘And a liar. Lucky for you I was brought up to respect the fair sex.’
He stands back and indicates that she should go into the room to the right of the front door, the room in which the only lamp is lit. There’s a wood fire burning in the small grate.
‘You don’t respect women at all,’ says Christina. ‘You exploit them. Look at Ariadne, Sleeping.’ This is one of Armitage’s paintings. ‘She’s not sleeping at all. She’s lying naked on a chaise longue like Manet’s Olympia, peeping out from between her eyelids thinking, A hard man is good to find.’
‘The Manet reference is deliberate.’
‘Just like Manet ripped off Velasquez.’
After this he’s putty in her hands. It’s a technique she’s used many times before: flirtatious, obscene, flatteringly well-informed. Men of middle years and more are bewitched. All’s fair in love and journalism.
‘Sit down, now that you’re here. Sit where you get the warmth of the fire. Tell me your name.’
‘Christina Tennant.’
She gives him her card, heavy with professional integrity. He doesn’t look at it. He looks at her. At a guess she reckons he’s revising his judgement that she’s not gorgeous at all. She’s maybe a little bit gorgeous. Seen in three-quarter profile so her nose doesn’t spoil the effect, and in this extremely flattering lamplight.
All round the wall and stacked on the floor are canvases; there must be over a hundred of them. Most of them seem to be figures: group studies, portraits. Also bottles. This man drinks.
‘So what do you want from me?’ he says.
‘I’m making a television film about Joe. You know his work is part of the new exhibition at the Hayward?’
‘Yes. I do know.’
‘He thinks of you as his mentor.’
‘He’s a presumptuous fool.’
‘So I want you to come up and take a look at his work.’
‘You must be insane.’
‘I’d be fascinated to see, and film, what you make of it.’
I Could Love You Page 7