Nostalgia

by Jonathan Buckley

  ‘I can’t see that proves much,’ Claire remarks.

  ‘Except that Chabrier was an idiot,’ adds Robert.

  ‘Not only Chabrier,’ Gideon points out. ‘He was far from alone. And there are Chabriers all around us,’ he goes on, scanning the room as if one of them may be present this evening. ‘Hacks and flatterers. The yes-men of the so-called avant-garde. Sheep who mistake themselves for wolves.’

  Three plates of pasta are presented, enforcing a pause, but Gideon has things to say about the cult of self-expression; many things. The artist in earlier times was a valued member of his society. He served his society; he was paid, you might say, to represent the best of it, to give form to its beliefs, its values, its ideas. Art was a business of the spirit, you could say. Nowadays the business is all about business and self-promotion. Whereas art was once a visual philosophy, an occasion of disinterested contemplation, of elevation into a world that was a refinement of our quotidian reality, nowadays we are required to submit to art that celebrates the individual and the trivial. Artist and public used to engage, through the sense of sight, with truths that were greater than themselves; art now is all about ‘transgression’ and the supremacy of the Self. We must pretend to be shocked by Nazi atrocities restaged with toy soldiers. We are asked to find evidence of genius in a diamond-encrusted skull or a film of a bowl of rotting fruit.

  ‘But how can a bowl of rotting fruit be dismissed as self-expression?’ asks Claire. The question is like a pebble lobbed into a river in full spate.

  ‘How can it be called art?’ Gideon replies. He adduces other examples of artistic inanity, fraudulence, incompetence. He decries the shallowness, venality and vanity of the failed artists and jumped-up journalists who pass for art critics today: these masters of the meretricious, these purveyors of pseudo-profundity. Some of the riper fatuities of James Hannaher are quoted: ‘paintings that have a meaning, that are interpretable, are bad paintings’, and so on. And it’s people like Hannaher who dictate what will and what will not be shown to the public. A woman who empties the contents of her laundry basket onto the gallery floor and would have you take this gesture as some sort of artistic statement will be taken seriously, whereas a painter of Gideon’s cast is excluded from the charmed circle. ‘We are no longer “relevant”,’ he states. ‘We must not be seen.’

  ‘But you are seen,’ Claire manages to interject. ‘You have an exhibition at the moment.’

  ‘In a backwater town in Italy, yes.’

  ‘You’ve had shows in other countries.’

  ‘A few. But back home, nothing.’

  ‘That’s not true, is it? Haven’t you—’

  ‘Group exhibitions – no solo shows. In Britain I’m persona non grata to the commissars of the art world. Which means I’m invisible to the public.’

  ‘Hardly invisible. What about the website?’

  ‘Not the same as paintings on walls, Claire. Being in a gallery is what matters.’

  ‘But more people can see the website. And once you’re in cyberspace you’re there forever, aren’t you? Better than being in any magazine.’

  ‘An image is there forever, maybe, but it’s not the real thing. Unless you see the paint, unless you’re in the same space as the canvas, you are not experiencing the picture. And people are not being given the opportunity to experience work that doesn’t meet with the approval of the self-appointed guardians of contemporary culture, if culture it can be called.’ And so on and so forth, until – in the middle of a recitation of some of the less sympathetic comments that his work has provoked (he knows whole paragraphs by heart) – he interrupts himself with: ‘You look tired, old chap.’

  Robert, bored, apologises. He is indeed exhausted. ‘If you don’t mind,’ he says, ‘I’m going to turn in.’

  ‘Fine. We have plenty to talk about,’ says Gideon, putting a hand on Claire’s. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Maybe see you back at the flat,’ says Claire, alarm momentarily apparent in her eyes.

  9.12

  Gideon walks slowly, hands in his pockets, saying little; his face assumes a mild and benign smile, as if his purpose were merely to share with her the pleasure of wandering without purpose through this tranquil little town at night. And it is pleasurable, to amble along the warm and quiet streets, under the dark purple sky, with bats wheeling in and out of the lamplight, and no sounds louder than the sound of their footsteps. They walk through the light of the Caffè del Corso; Giosuè – the only person inside – raises a hand as they pass. At the theatre Gideon stops for a few seconds and examines the building, as if to check that all is in order. ‘Perhaps it’ll open again, one day. Who knows?’ he remarks. It’s the first thing he’s said for at least a minute. It’s clear she’s being readied for a significant moment.

  As they turn away from the theatre, the owl cries. ‘Let’s see if we can find him,’ Gideon suggests, and he takes her along the alley that ends at San Lorenzo. ‘He’s normally there,’ he says, pointing across the square, where, when they get closer, she sees the cast-iron bracket of a defunct streetlamp, jutting from the wall. There’s no owl. ‘He likes to perch on that,’ says Gideon, as another cry comes, from behind the houses. Gideon goes over to the church steps, where he picks a flower from the ground; he tucks it into a crack in the wall. He regards the graffiti, and has a comment to make on it: ‘The world has no effect on them, so they have to impose their effect on it,’ he says, with sadness.

  Rather than respond, she looks at ILARIA SEMPRE; Gideon may think she’s considering the profundity of his observation.

  He descends the steps to stand beside her and join her in reading the message. With a movement of an arm he suggests that they continue their walk, then he says: ‘Robert told me about what happened with Joe. I hope you don’t mind.’

  ‘I thought he might,’ she replies.

  ‘I sympathise.’

  ‘No need for sympathy,’ she tells him. ‘Long past. Almost forgotten.’

  ‘Almost forgotten is the same as remembered,’ says Gideon.

  ‘No,’ she says. ‘It’s almost the same as forgotten.’

  ‘Well, anyway,’ he says, with a smile for her unconvincing but understandable protest, ‘I was sorry to hear about it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ she says, wondering if the aim of their walk has now been achieved. Immediately – from the look of heavy compassion that is being directed at her – she knows otherwise.

  A ruminative silence ensues. ‘You know,’ Gideon begins, ‘we’re alike in many ways.’

  ‘We are?’

  ‘We are, yes. We say what we think. We have candour, which too few people do,’ he says, with the melancholy wisdom of the older man. ‘And you’re not easily impressed. I like that.’

  ‘You mean I’m bolshy.’

  ‘No. Not at all. I mean what I say.’

  They have come to the main street, close to the market square. ‘A quick tour of the piazza, then back to the hotel?’ he proposes; so he hasn’t yet said what he wants to say. At the centre of the piazza he stops; he looks at the spotlit summit of the tower, rakes his neck with two fingers, and says: ‘We’ve had similar experiences, you and I.’

  ‘Well, we’ve all had similar experiences, haven’t we?’ she answers. ‘We couldn’t talk to each other if we hadn’t done the same things.’

  ‘Yes, but I’m talking about specifics. Specifically, I know how it felt, how it must still feel – the situation with Joe. The same thing happened to me.’ He turns his face to her, so that she might look for the scars of his great misfortune. ‘I think I have to tell you this,’ he goes on. ‘I wasn’t going to, but I’ve changed my mind. It is something you should know.’ Still gazing at the tower, he is like an actor taking a last deep breath in the wings before going on. ‘Your mother and I,’ he commences, ‘were once a couple – in a relationship, as we say nowadays. I was fond of her. Very fond. We were, I think, heading towards marriage. Then, without warning, it was over. There
was, of course “someone else”. She confessed this, and I had no idea who it was, absolutely none. I had never suspected anything. They had met at a family gathering, and things had gone rapidly from there, very rapidly. “A bolt out of the blue”, I was told, as if this made it better. No names were given, but soon I knew who it was, this “someone else”,’ he says, narrowing his eyes, as though the culprit might be hiding in the tower. ‘It was my brother. Isn’t that terrific? Betrayed by my own brother. By the better-looking, more bankable doctor. How grubby, eh? How tawdry. How squalid.’ This is addressed to the sky; the memory, she is to think, is too painful to be retold face to face. Now he looks at her, and his expression – eighty per cent sorrow, twenty per cent disgust – tells her that he expects her to feel something of the pity of it.

  It takes her a few seconds to find her voice. Gideon appears to believe that she is silent because she is shocked – and she is, but not as he imagines. Some words – idiotic, selfish, complacent, tactless, insensitive – come to mind, and are almost spoken. What she says is: ‘That’s it? Jesus Christ almighty – that’s it? That’s the great revelation? My dad stole your girlfriend? That’s the thing I really had to know?’

  He recoils an inch or two and does a florid frown; it’s as though she’d suddenly started to speak Swahili.

  ‘Why did you imagine I needed to know that?’ she demands. ‘What difference did you think it would make to anything? In what way would it improve my life? Am I supposed to be applauding your “candour” now? Am I supposed to think differently about my parents? Is that the idea? My mother went out with you and then she married my father. So what? So fucking what? Big deal. It happens all the time. But what on earth is the point of telling me? What the hell were you thinking of?’

  ‘Well,’ he says, quietly, in a low tone, as if embarking on an explanation for the benefit of someone who’s a bit slow on the uptake, ‘it’s an aspect of our history. You wanted to know—’

  ‘Give me strength – “an aspect of our history”? Let’s get a sense of proportion here, for God’s sake. We’re talking about my mother chucking you, not the fall of the Roman empire.’

  A man is crossing the piazza, on a course that will take him within a few feet of them; Gideon shuffles sideways, encouraging a move out of earshot; she stays where she is. ‘What I’m talking about—’

  ‘Look,’ she interrupts, at twice Gideon’s volume. ‘I’m terribly sorry that my father nicked your girlfriend. That was a naughty thing to do. Or maybe not. I don’t know how things were. But there are at least three sides to this story, two of which are now unavailable. It wasn’t all black and white, I’m sure.’

  ‘I’m not saying it was. All—’

  ‘And the thing is, it doesn’t matter. It’s of no importance. None.’

  ‘Well, in the great scheme of things—’

  ‘And Joe swanning off with his big-chested bimbo doesn’t matter either. It was a bit of blow, but I got over it. I’m better off without him. Joe was an arsehole. But my father wasn’t. He was a good man. I loved him. And I loved my mother too, and she loved him. But you seem to want me to think badly of them, because of something that happened before I was born, for reasons I know next to nothing about—’

  ‘If you’ll let me get a word in—’

  ‘I just don’t want to hear it, Gideon.’

  ‘That’s obvious.’

  ‘You shouldn’t have told me.’

  ‘I regret it.’

  ‘No point in regretting it. It’s done. Now I know: my dad stole your girlfriend, so you don’t speak to him for the rest of his life, give or take the odd word once in a blue moon. You don’t come to his wife’s funeral because your grudge against them is your number one priority, and you don’t come to his funeral because the grudge must prevail at all costs, even when there’s no one left to hold a grudge against. A thirty-year sulk – pathetic, that’s what it is. Totally pathetic.’

  He’s standing three or four paces back, arms folded, lips pursed, head angled to one side; he looks ill at ease, but not apologetic; he seems perplexed as to why his disclosure should have produced such a reaction. ‘No, Claire,’ he says, as patronisingly as possible. ‘There’s more to it than that. Much more. As I’ve told you already, we never much liked each other. We—’

  ‘Well, I did like him. I liked him a lot. And I knew him. You didn’t. You don’t have the faintest bloody idea what he was like, because for most of his life you weren’t there, not even on the end of the phone. And the same goes for my mother. It’s getting on for forty years since she dumped you. It’s no longer relevant, if you’ll pardon the use of the word. It hasn’t been relevant for a very long time. So I don’t want to hear another word about it. Not one word. OK?’ She’s so angry, only now does she realise that she’s crying. ‘Jesus Christ,’ she mutters, not quite to herself, ‘what a man. What a fucking idiot.’ She walks off, expecting to be called back, but he doesn’t call and she doesn’t turn to see if he’s still there.

  10

  10.1

  CLAIRE LOOKS UP from her book and there’s Gideon standing in the middle of the street, presenting to her an expression of pantomime repentance. With his hands he requests permission to approach; gratefully he advances, bestowing smiles on the other customers of the Caffè del Corso. He takes a seat beside her. ‘I think we should clear the air,’ he says, toying with the spoon, too abashed to look her in the eye. ‘I wouldn’t want last night’s disagreement to overshadow your day.’

  ‘It won’t,’ she assures him.

  ‘Nevertheless,’ he says. ‘There are things I’d like to say. To put right. Just a few words,’ he requests. ‘I’ll wait for you outside. Take your time.’

  She tries to take her time, but within five minutes she is outside, where Gideon is sitting on the steps of the church, in a slanted column of sunlight, an English newspaper spread open on his knees.

  Smiling, encouraged, he stands up; a sweep of a hand ushers her in the direction of Corso Diaz. ‘We said some things that would have been better left unsaid,’ he begins.

  ‘Not sure I’d agree with you,’ she says.

  ‘Well,’ he answers, exuding magnanimity, ‘let’s agree that I said some things that would have been better left unsaid.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘It’s one of my greatest failings,’ he goes on, sounding like a man speaking modestly of a virtue. ‘I lack a self-editing function. I should count to fifty before opening my mouth, I know. I have a tendency to be impulsive,’ says the champion of the daily schedule.

  ‘Seems to me that you needed to say what you said,’ Claire tells him. ‘Not sure why you didn’t tell me straight away, but—’

  ‘I think I would have had to tell you before you left. But right at the start—’

  ‘You thought you’d save it as a going-away present?’

  ‘I felt, in the end, it would have been dishonest not to say it,’ he responds. ‘But honesty isn’t always the best policy.’

  ‘Oh, I wouldn’t say that.’

  For a couple of seconds he looks at her, as though this utterance were of sphinx-like subtlety; he looks away, with an approving smile. ‘I know what you think,’ he says.

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You think I’m obsessed. With what my brother did.’

  ‘And my mother. Let’s not leave her out of it.’

  ‘I’m right, yes?’

  ‘Can’t say that’s what I’m thinking at this precise moment.’

  ‘But it’s what you believe,’ he states. ‘And I have to admit that in many respects I am obsessive. All artists are to some extent obsessive, by definition. Which is why they can be difficult to live with. Or impossible, in many cases,’ he says, opening his hands as though leaving it to her to decide if he should be placed in that category. ‘But my brother is not an obsession. I am obsessed with my work, and only with my work. David is very rarely in my thoughts. I don’t dwell on the past, and if I’ve given you that impression I mu
st correct it. I didn’t like him for what he did, that’s true. But we didn’t love each other anyway,’ he says, then he laughs, making a noise as harsh as a shattering vase. ‘Which, you want to say, is understandable in his case, with me for a brother.’ The eyes do not emit good humour; they are watching her, to gauge whether his persuasion is succeeding.

  ‘I couldn’t say, Gideon,’ she answers. ‘I wasn’t there.’

  He wants her to understand that when he thinks of her mother – which, he has to confess, is not very frequently either – it’s with gratitude more than anything else. It was Lorraine who brought home to him that he must live alone. There are certain things, certain comforts, that an artist cannot permit himself. Her mother had wanted a life more comfortable than he could have given her, and he did not blame her for this. Her requirements were reasonable; they were perfectly conventional; but the artist’s life cannot be a conventional life. It would have been better if she had left in different circumstances, rather than doing what she did, but a hard lesson was perhaps what he needed. ‘I’m not made for anyone other than myself, and she made me see that,’ he says. ‘Anyway, an apology is due, and I apologise,’ he declares, holding out a hand. ‘I mean it,’ he insists, with an earnestness that does not seem insincere. ‘I am sorry.’ She takes his hand and he pulls her towards him, gently, to put an arm around her shoulder in a sort of quarter-embrace.