‘Nothing is quite what it seems,’ Katherine murmured. And then, more brightly told Portia about the notion of her own gallery.
When she returned to New York, she started somewhat erratically to look around. Walking through the Village, or SoHo, Madison Avenue or the Upper East Side, she would find herself examining spaces, thinking perhaps here. Or here. She did research on the subject, talked to other gallery owners about their turn-over, their expenses. She also mentioned it to Jacob. He was enthusiastic about the idea. ‘Since I can’t seem to get you married off,’ he chuckled as she froze momentarily, ‘a new project may not be such a bad thing.’
On her next trip to Cologne, she talked at length with some dealers. Also without thinking about it, she repeated the French episode. A man, a hotel room, a single night. No ties. No commitments. No questions asked. No memories. It became something of a pattern. But never on home ground. Never at home. Never near Natalie. A secret. Containable. Controllable.
Natalie and Doreen came to join her in Geneva. They travelled to Princesse Mathilde’s. She was as always delighted to see them. Natalie played with the dogs, gambolled over grounds. She said to the Princesse, ‘You must come and stay with us in New York. I would like that.’
‘Perhaps, one day,’ the Princesse demurred without refusing. ‘I’m feeling my years now,’ she turned to Katherine and laughed. ‘I prefer lying around here and simply looking out the window.’
‘Nonsense,’ Katherine refused the Princesse’s age. ‘You look as beautiful and fit as ever.’
She smiled at Katherine reflectively. ‘I would, however, like to make one little trip, if you’ll allow it. I’d like to take Natalie to visit the Contessa. She hasn’t been well and I know you won’t take her. But Natalie should meet her grandmother before the old thing, silly as she is, dies.’
Katherine turned away. The proposition startled her and troubled her. She had never known the Princesse had views on all this.
‘Katherine, look at me. It is only right that Natalie meet her. And I know, though I don’t know why, that you won’t go.’ The Princesse scrutinized her with all the intelligence of her years. ‘Natalie is not you. She may, when she’s older, hold it against you. That you kept all that back from her. And I feel responsible.’
‘I’ll think about it,’ Katherine said softly.
‘I count on you,’ the Princesse was sterner than usual. ‘And I shall tell the Contessa that it won’t be long now.’
Katherine did think about it, thought about it through the entirety of the long flight home. The prospect filled her with unbearable anxiety. She had wild fears of her child being stolen away from her or seduced into the enchantments of a Roman labyrinth. She held onto Natalie’s hand tightly. Held on to it as if it were her own life.
On the 10th of May 1977, the Katherine Jardine Gallery was ready to open its doors to an expectant public.
Katherine, after much thought and consultation with Thomas, had chosen a prime site just off Madison Avenue, a mere stone’s throw from the venerable Metropolitan Museum and amidst galleries whose reputation was securely established world wide. She had selected this location for two reasons. The first was that it was close to home and Natalie. She knew that she would be increasingly busy. The second was that her gallery, where she had determined to show brazenly contemporary work, would provide a contrast to the staider establishments in the vicinity, something it might not have done in the increasingly trendy streets of SoHo.
And then, too, she had fallen in love with the space, its gracious proportions, the long generous sweep of the two main rooms, the rounded arches which led into more intimate alcoves, the cheerful blue and white awning at the front, from which banners could be hung announcing shows.
On the night, Katherine was a bundle of exhilaration and nerves. None of this was visible on the surface. As always, her gestures were calm, unruffled, and her features bore no trace of her emotion. In a tailored linen dress, set off only by a rakish clasp of bold design, she was the very image of elegant composure. The papers and the magazines had already commented on this.
Thomas had insisted that she hire a publicist who would spread word of the Gallery’s opening and, as a result, profiles of Katherine had appeared in a variety of places.
Seeing herself refracted through a public lens in this way had thrown her into commotion. She didn’t recognize herself in anything she read.
Male journalists had waxed lyrical over what they called her arresting beauty - a beauty, as one said, which forced you to search your mind for the forgotten original of which it seemed to be a type. The women journalists preferred to focus on her status as a working mother and on her ideas for the gallery, which were, they said, unique - a gallery which linked an exploration of tradition with an exhibition of the new.
There were barbs as well: a little scurrying into her professional past brought out the armies of envy alongside the well-wishers. People said she was cold, implacably ambitious, a medusa who vanquished her opponents by turning them to stone. Others called her judicious, intelligent, compelling. She was labelled everything from Ms Iron Pants Jardine to The Show’s Best Exhibition.
Over the last weeks as the articles came out, Thomas had simply patted her hand and consoled her with the statement that all news was good news prior to the launch of an enterprise.
He had been with her a great deal during these last months while the gallery was being refurbished and ideas took on material form. As soon as the space had been found, she had determined that she would open with a sequence of shows which introduced current art from Germany, work which boldly combined paint and other materials to reflect with a tortured melancholy on that country’s bitter twentieth century history.
It was Thomas who had hit on the idea of juxtaposing images from the twenties and thirties with the contemporary. His eyes had sparkled when he had suggested that Katherine select apposite pieces from his own collection to exhibit alongside the work that was for sale.
Once he had convinced her that he had no reservations about loaning his canvases, was indeed enthused by the notion of sharing them with other eyes, she had thrilled to the idea. It was a brainstorm which sparkled with possibilities. The past and the present side by side, one illuminating, reflecting upon the other. Continuity and rupture.
Katherine had selected the work for sale and then over slides they had endlessly discussed juxtapositions, placings, materials for the catalogue. More than once, his eyes had glowed over her and he had said, ‘You do know, you really do know exactly what you’re doing.’
‘And since I know,’ she had smiled, ‘I also know that you must write an article for the catalogue.’ She had swayed him and he had done so in the witty, terse style which was his. Katherine was more than pleased.
And now there it all was - the pictures hung, the objects and sculptures and lights carefully positioned, the floors polished to a high sheen, the champagne glasses and catalogues at the ready.
Katherine checked once more that everything was in order and then raced up the stairs to the second level.
Thomas, with Natalie at his side, was chatting with the twins, Ben and Amelia, whom she had hired as her assistants. Their shy serious grace had won her over from the first and they had proved as deftly efficient as she could wish.
‘Come Schätzchen, let us have our own private celebratory drink before the crowds arrive,’ Thomas winked at her and popped a cork. Then with an air of great formality poured champagne. For her, for an excited Natalie, for the twins, for himself.
Katherine watched the man whose life was now so inextricably bound with her own and whose presence seemed to extend back as far as she could remember into her past. Thomas, her good angel. Thomas whose movements were a little slower now, but whose eyes, as he turned them on her, were still those of a young man, replete with humour and energy. She raised her glass to him.
He twinkled as he raised his. ‘To the Katherine Jardine Gallery. It will be a great success.
I know.’
‘Thanks to you,’ Katherine glowed at him.
He shook his white head. ‘No, Schätzchen. Thanks to you.’ He squeezed her hand, teased her. ‘In these feminist days, you must at least learn to accept the responsibility of your own achievements.’
‘Oh Thomas,’ she giggled. ‘Still trying, always and ever trying to teach me how to be a good woman.’ She kissed him.
‘Who knows, one day I may succeed. What do you think, Natalie?’
Dark eyes gazed at them both with mock solemnity. ‘Maybe,’ Natalie said tentatively. ‘ Just maybe,’ she grinned.
‘You little horror,’ Katherine embraced her and then announced, a little breathlessly, ‘It’s time to open the doors.’
She held on to Thomas’s hand as they made their way down the stairs.
‘It will be a great success,’ he whispered emphatically in her ear, giving her courage. ‘I know about these things.’
And as the crowd coming through the doors separated them and Katherine recognized in its midst a welter of critics, collectors and cognoscenti, she knew that Thomas was more than probably right.
Chapter
Twenty-Two
__________
∞
Jacob Jardine put his arm firmly round his daughter’s shoulders, took Natalie’s hand and forced them both to walk. Walk down the long leafy avenue of the cemetery. Away from Thomas Sach’s grave.
Katherine was weeping. Blindly, silently. Weeping the way he had only ever seen her weep as a small child. There had never been any visible tears for Sylvie. Nor had she shed any at Carlo’s funeral. But now, all the tears she had stored over the years seemed to have burst forth. Decades of tears released in the ten days since Thomas’s death.
He had meant even more to her than Jacob had ever altogether realised.
But then, for all their closeness, there was always a great deal about his daughter that he never altogether knew. She had locked herself away in her little box of secrecy many years ago. Already as a small child. And he hadn’t wanted to probe too much, to interfere, to control with that terrible controlling knowledge of his profession.
And a professional distortion had resulted nonetheless, he now increasingly thought. Oh yes, he had managed to avoid some of the traps he had seen his colleagues fall into. He had eschewed the little controlling experiments on the domestic terrain, the veiled extended analyses by the all-seeing father, the spilling over of analytic ploys on the home front. And their often tragic results. But he had failed in the opposite direction, cut himself off, not intervened quite enough. With Sylvie and with Katherine.
He kept his arm firmly round her and guided her and Natalie towards gates, already closed. They were the last mourners in a darkening cemetery. There had, to start with, been a great many of them. Thomas was known, liked and men of all generations in trim pinstripe suits had come, together with hatted women, their faces sad, respectful, a little uncomfortable as the living always were in the presence of the dead. But now, there were only the three of them: his daughter, her shoulders too straight, her face all-but obliterated under the vast black hat; Natalie, gripping his hand for reassurance.
Jacob found the guard. The well-oiled gates were opened. He led his little family towards a waiting limousine.
Yes, he thought again, as he settled into the seat and patted Natalie’s hand, where the most important things were concerned, Katherine couldn’t, wouldn’t turn to him. Perhaps that was the way it had to be. But he worried. A father’s prerogative. Worried about her solitary state. Worried about the emotions, the anger he could feel simmering beneath that mask of cool composure, that self-control.
Worried, too, about that secret little box she had stored within her. Her box of memories, locked, forgotten, even it seemed by herself. Sylvie, Carlo, whatever they had meant, whatever she had felt for them, locked and stored into oblivion. Denied existence. And with them, a part of herself. So much energy put into the act of denial, into the process of forgetting. It fuelled distortions. Made her resist intimacy. It was dangerous.
What if something should trigger the lock on that secret box? Would Katherine cope? Had Thomas’s death done so. Was she coping now? That tear-streaked face was turned away from him.
Jacob held Natalie’s hand more closely. How often he had pondered those twin pivots of memory and forgetting. His life was spent in the work of memory, the work of unearthing the buried past, bringing unconscious memories to the light of day, making them visible and hence robbing them of their dark force. Making memories forgettable. Without forgetting, life was impossible. Memory trapped one in the vicious grip of repetition, a rat’s treadmill, a constant return to the poisonous point of departure.
The twin pivots of memory and forgetting. The line stretched between them was the tightrope of life.
Natalie was shivering, despite the warmth of the evening. He was worried about his grandchild, too. Katherine was almost too close to her. Despite all the demands of work, she guarded the girl too nearly. Tried to play mother, father, sister, friend, all at once. She was making up for Sylvie’s lacks. But Natalie might end up resenting her. Resenting her, too, for Katherine’s obliteration of her father.
He looked at the two of them, saw Natalie plant a kiss on Katherine’s face. No, she didn’t resent her yet. Perhaps she never would. Perhaps he was simply an old fool with outmoded ideas. After all, all those years ago he had been wrong to worry about Katherine and Thomas, about his interest in her. A silly jealous father was what he had been, like a character out of a Moliere comedy. And now, Katherine was doing so well. He was proud of her. And these weeks of tears might help. Help unblock her somehow. The self was not a fixed entity hewn in stone. It was a fiction, a story we told ourselves to live by. And those stories could change, shift. Until the end came. And then others took up the narrative, determining its course, in part by its end.
‘Thomas would have been pleased with the manner of his death,’ Jacob suddenly surprised himself by saying. The words hung there unanswered over the hum of the engine. But he had to go on now he had started. It was necessary to speak about it, if only for Natalie’s sake. ‘So quick, so clean, in his sleep. Without illness. His mind still as sharp as ever. A Thomas sort of end.’
Katherine didn’t respond. She gazed out the window.
‘But he won’t come back,’ Natalie said softly after a moment. ‘The dead don’t come back.’
‘No,’ Jacob murmured, remembering another conversation. ‘They don’t come back. Except in our thoughts. And that is something.’
‘I miss him already,’ Natalie said. ‘I’ll miss him forever. He always gave me such good advice.’
Jacob squeezed her hand. ‘I’ll try to give you good advice in his guise now.’ He allowed himself a little laugh. ‘“Old men love to give advice. To console themselves for not being able to set a bad example.” A very intelligent Frenchman called La Rochefoucauld said that once, Natalie.’
She smiled at him kindly, as if to console him for his efforts.
Katherine lay in her hotel-room bed, a whiskey glass in her hand. Jacob had taken Natalie down to dinner. It was a relief to be alone. She wasn’t good for anything, for anyone. She seemed only to be able to weep. Thomas’s death, so sudden, coming so soon after the opening of the Gallery when she had last seen him brilliantly alive, had shocked her out of any semblance of composure.
She replayed the sequence of events again in her mind. They hadn’t seen each other for a week after the opening, but they had spoken every day. And then, one day, when he hadn’t rung, she had simply assumed that he was busy, had other things to get on with. The next morning, she had rung him, but there had been no answer at the house. She had tried again, later. Still no answer. Perhaps he had omitted to tell her that he would be away for a few days.
So the next day, she tried again. Susannah picked up the telephone. Katherine, as always, irritated by Susannah, asked for Thomas in cool, professional tones.
‘He’s dead,’ the voice had replied, point-blank, almost blithe.
‘What?’ Katherine had shrieked into the telephone.
‘Yes, Miss Fancy Pants. Died this morning at the Charles Hospital.’
Katherine had caught the first plane for Boston. She didn’t believe that voice. Didn’t recognize it. The drawl was gone. Susannah was lying.
But Katherine had gone to the hospital. Nurses had confirmed Thomas’s death. She had asked to see him, and then when they realised she wasn’t a relative, she had had to beg, exhort, scream to be granted that permission. A nurse, in order to keep her quiet, had finally led her to a cold, gloomy room. And there, when the sheet had been drawn back, she had seen Thomas. A pale, slightly puffy Thomas, but his face his own. A trace of surprise hovered over it.
She had kissed him.
Two hours later, the weeping had begun. It still wouldn’t stop.
Thomas was dead. Thomas who had been a true friend to her. Her closest friend ever since she could remember. Thomas who had stepped into her life and saved her from it. Saved her from her mother. Thomas who had chided and advised and loved. Thomas, who had watched and sheltered and cared. Thomas, whom she had never repaid. Who had only given. Dead. Dead in the flesh. She had seen him. The physical finality of him.
Not like Sylvie or Carlo. She thought of them now. She had fled from them. Wanted them obliterated. And everything in herself they stood for. But Thomas, who was good. Who had done good. Whom she loved. Who was her better self.
She felt small. Alone. Utterly abandoned. No matter how many times she told herself she must pull herself together for Natalie’s sake. No matter how many times she told herself Jacob was still there. She still wept.
Over the coming weeks and months, the weeping gradually ceased. But at odd times, never predictably, it would still come upon her, take her by surprise, contorting her face in the midst of a meeting or at table with Natalie, so that she had to run to a lonely place and hide until it ceased. Out of the weeping came the sense that she must behave as Thomas would have wished her to. She worked harder than ever to make a success of the Gallery. She lavished care and affection on Natalie and Jacob, on those closest to her.
Memory and Desire Page 60