Joseph Gray's Camouflage

by Mary Horlock

  My only worry is what will happen now. Perhaps, once every story is told, there won’t be the same need to discuss Joe. By going back over him constantly I am keeping him alive. I want him to have hope, potential, even after all this time, and I want Maureen to feel it. Because I am terrified of losing her, too.

  Few artists achieve financial security, and critical success is even more elusive. Joe was in his fifties when the war was over. Wasn’t there still time? I saw it enough in my years at the Tate – artists who aren’t recognised until later in their life, or who slip into obscurity for a decade, can enjoy a sudden career resurgence. It is part of the excitement, it is part of the promise of creation. Looking back now, I see those immediate post-war years as wasted. Joe was preoccupied by his steel wool claim – it distracted him for too long. He wanted something that would last longer than an exhibition, and that is understandable, but it’s ironic to want to be recognised for how well you hid things. Did he spot the paradox? I look back at the tired and yellowed pages of Camouflage and Air Defence, the book he never published. In each draft he has made revisions in pen and pencil. It remains a draft forever, never quite finished or finessed. This was the first time he left something unfinished, and after that it became a habit.

  If Camouflage and Air Defence had been published things might have been different. Instead, years after the war was won, Joe was juggling his canvases, going back to them constantly, adding and editing, like an author unable to lay down his pen.

  When Joe stared at each painting what did he see? Did everything have to be ‘harmonized’ and blended into one? Camouflage became art and the art became camouflage.

  The little house in Marlow became overcrowded with pictures, two or three deep resting against each wall. Joe never knew when to stop. The purest form of painting was the action itself. If he stopped, where would that leave him? He had to paint like he had to breathe.

  ‘When is a painting finished?’ I keep asking my artist friends. They all agree finishing is the hardest part, an intrusion of sanity, a terrible breaking off. To step back from a canvas needs conviction. ‘For, fleeting, momentary reasons, a finished painting seems to be the best painting one can do at that exact moment, and for its own reasons it just stops,’ says one.3 ‘It’s finished when it stares back at you and says so,’ replies another.4 Nothing was so clear for my great-grandfather.

  ‘If you won’t sell or show, who are these paintings for?’ Patricia asked him once.

  ‘That is simple,’ he replied. ‘They’re all for Mary.’

  Mary smiled. ‘Yes, but I’d rather have a bit of money!’

  Joe either didn’t hear or pretended not to.

  My mother feels certain Joe wasn’t insecure about his work. Although he painted over some, he never cursed or complained, he just continued.

  ‘He was definitely a perfectionist. But he didn’t suffer. There were no theatrics. I never saw him get angry or upset.’

  Still, I am not convinced. Was it all part of another deception, a self-deception? Doesn’t an artist need an audience? Without that confrontation, how does the art live? I have met many artists who have told me resolutely, insistently, that they only make work for themselves. I imagine it starts that way but surely in the end you want a conversation.

  I prod and push my mother for more answers.

  ‘Joe must’ve had a plan,’ I insist. ‘He was always thinking ahead. I am certain he must’ve intended something to happen to all these paintings.’

  My mother is silent. This is rare.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she admits. ‘I did suspect that maybe he thought he would be recognised only after his death and then Mary would know she had been right to support him all these years and also reap the benefit.’

  I remember a letter from 1948, when Joe tells Mary he has written his will: ‘after all I might leave valuable patent rights – not to mention valuable works of art, etching plates, etc!’ Is this the key? I want clear answers so that I can understand, but then I wonder why I’m pushing so hard for clarity.

  At this moment a writer friend shows me a copy of Stanislaw Lem’s Memoirs Found in a Bathtub. It is a darkly funny tale about an aspiring secret agent in search of a mission, trapped within a strange and confusing bureaucracy where everyone he meets leads him in a different direction. There is a passage underlined, a conversation between the protagonist and another agent.

  ‘Using your argument, we’d have to conclude that everything is code.’

  ‘And so it is, absolutely everything. Code or camouflage. Yourself included.’

  ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘I’m a code?’

  ‘Or a camouflage. Every code is a camouflage, not every camouflage is code.’

  ‘Perhaps, I said, following it through, ‘if you are thinking about genetics, heredity, those programs of ourselves we carry in every cell . . . In that way I am a code for my progeny, my descendants. But camouflage? What would I have to do with camouflage?’5

  Joe often talked of legacies – perhaps that mattered most. But I fear it’s another camouflage. His art would be revealed only once the artist himself had disappeared. Isn’t that the perfect camouflage?

  Notes

  CAB = Cabinet Papers

  CD, TC, CDTC = Camouglage Development and Training Centre

  HO= Home Office

  IWM = Imperial War Museum

  PREM = Prime Minister’s Office Records

  TNA = The National Archives

  WO = War Office

  Jack Sayer, ‘The Camouflage Game’, refers to his unpublished, hand-written memoir, courtesy of Gillian Ward.

  To avoid repetition, the majority of quotes from Joseph’s letters to Mary are not noted. Unless stated otherwise, they form part of the Barclay family archive. Similarly, images reproduced form part of this archive, except where credited otherwise.

  1 Quoted in Ross Anderson, Abbott Henderson Thayer, ex. cat. Everson Museum of Art of Syracuse, New York, 1982, p. 33

  2 Charlotte Lewis in a letter to the author, 28 September 2008

  3 Conversation with Nigel Cooke, 5 November 2011

  4 Conversation with Gary Hume, 2 April 2011

  5 Stanislaw Lem, Memoirs Found in a Bathtub, Harcourt Publishers Ltd, 1986, pp. 60–1

  Retrospective

  It was a sunny afternoon in May, the year was 1963. Victoria Barclay, aged thirteen, skipped up the steps to her front door. After the rancours of a school day she was glad to be home. The house in Ndola was light and airy with every surface finely polished. She called out a hello but nobody answered. This was strange. It was late afternoon and her mother’s car was in the garage. Victoria traced her fingers along the wall of the long corridor leading to the bedrooms. Just out of her reach were etchings of moody Scottish Highlands, a landscape that seemed as unfamiliar and distant as the moon. She headed for her parents’ room, searching for signs of life. Then she heard noises coming from another bedroom further down the corridor, the room that belonged to her older sister, Fiona. She tiptoed quietly and peered through the half-open door. There sat Maureen in one of her immaculate sundresses, usually crisp and starched yet today crumpled like paper. She was clutching a telegram and tears streamed down her face. Victoria had never seen her mother so distressed.

  She ran into the room and threw herself down at her mother’s feet.

  ‘Oh Mummy, what’s wrong?’

  Maureen looked up from the telegram, eyes red and swollen.

  ‘My father’s dead.’

  She almost choked on the words.

  Victoria rocked back on her heels, startled.

  ‘But,’ she said, struggling to understand. ‘Your father? I didn’t even know he was alive.’

  It was a bleak February night in 1966 – bitterly cold and raining hard. They hovered on the pavement outside the gallery, their shoes and tights already drenched. Light and noise spilled out onto Bond street, and passers-by, surprised at the hubbub, asked who
was exhibiting inside. The name Joseph Gray didn’t mean anything to them.

  Maureen, flustered from running so late, gripped Victoria’s hand and propelled her through the door. She had brought two of her daughters – Victoria, now sixteen, and the newly married Fiona – as moral support. Fiona’s husband David had driven them to the gallery in his battered little car, cursing the weather and London traffic all the way.

  ‘We have missed the speeches,’ Maureen breathed. She forced out a smile. ‘But never mind, never mind.’

  They pushed into the first room, and what a crowd it was.

  The exhibition had been opened by the now Sir William Coldstream, a kind-looking man surrounded by other guests. He was apparently the principal at the Slade School of Art and had been a friend and colleague of Joe’s, but Maureen didn’t know him. She didn’t hear his kind words, nor would she meet Freddie Beddington, Jack Sayer, Kenneth Dalgliesh, or any of the camouflage chaps who had come along to celebrate. But they were all there, milling around and enjoying this small reunion. A few of Joe’s old RE8 cartoons had been hung alongside his oil paintings and etchings. Jack Sayer was annoyed to find they had already been sold. So much, in fact, was already sold.

  Maureen, confronted with an enormous and anonymous crowd, began to panic. The rooms were crowded to suffocation, but through the throng she glimpsed Mary. Mary Gray, the artist’s wife, now his widow. She was talking and gesturing, smoking constantly. She looked as nervous as Maureen felt.

  ‘Come and meet Mary.’ Maureen pulled Victoria along to be introduced.

  The two women embraced.

  ‘Thank goodness you are here,’ said Mary. ‘It would have meant so much to Joe.’

  It was the first time they had seen each other since since he had died and there was now a surge of understanding – how they missed him. Maureen tried to look delighted as she admired her father’s work and sat for a moment beside Mary. The photographs that were taken would be convincing. Maureen had chosen her outfit carefully: a matching pale blue suit with navy trim, accessorised with a single string of pearls. With her hair freshly coiffured she looked almost regal. She had her father’s eyes and the same thick brown hair; did anyone make the connection?

  Mary squeezed her hand, glancing around at the walls.

  ‘It’s rather like my children are leaving home.’

  Maureen nodded gently. They were losing Joe all over again and neither particularly liked it. Moving away from Mary, she clung to the edges of the room and tried to focus on the paintings. She wanted to feel proud but instead she felt empty.

  ‘Aren’t they marvellous?’ someone said. ‘To think he kept them hidden. He was so naughty, he would not show.’

  Maureen knew about her father’s refusal to show work. It was just another part of him she wouldn’t understand. Then came a tightening in her chest as she realised something else. She looked at the pictures again, anxiously reading the labels, walking around each room.

  Victoria was happily adrift, staring in wonder at this well-dressed adult world, caught up in the laughter and conversation. Then she felt her mother’s grip close around her arm.

  ‘We have to go.’

  Victoria turned, confused.

  ‘Why? We’ve only just arrived!’

  Maureen shook her head, swallowing back tears. ‘No.’

  Fiona was beside them quickly, sensing something wrong.

  ‘It’s rather hot, is it the heat?’ she asked. ‘Shall we step outside?’

  Maureen raised a hand to her temple, ducking her head as tears welled up.

  ‘We have to go,’ she repeated. ‘Now.’

  Fiona ushered her mother towards the door, glancing round for David.

  Once they were outside, the tears came quickly.

  ‘What is it?’ Fiona wrapped her arms around her mother. ‘Tell me.’

  Maureen shook her head, her voice shrank to a whisper. ‘They’re all sold.’ She made a circular gesture backwards. ‘They are all sold.’

  Victoria twisted her head to look back into the room and realised for the first time what those small red dots beside each painting meant. It was true. Everything had sold.

  In the darkness of the street Fiona and Victoria watched on in horror as their mother crumpled before them. Her shoulders were heaving and she wept bitterly, almost unable to stand. They stroked her arms, trying to shield her from prying eyes and hoping the storm might pass. But it was unrelenting.

  David, embarrassed, rushed to fetch the car.

  The photographs from that night are preserved in a makeshift album, along with press cuttings from the show. There are also some large black-and-white photographs of several of the oil paintings. I look first at the snapshots, tacked to the page with curling Sellotape. There’s one of Maureen seated beside Mary, another of her standing with Fiona by a seascape, and yet another of her with an older couple. Mary is smiling, she wears darker colours and holds a cigarette, with her large black handbag spread across her lap. Looking at these snapshots, it would be hard to guess that anything was amiss. How easily we hide our feelings for a frozen instant. We want to make happy memories, because the reality resists easy explanation.

  ‘She felt completely overwhelmed,’ Victoria remembers. ‘We were late and I don’t think she had expected such huge crowds of people, every room was packed. It was incredible, but also bewildering, because there were so many faces she didn’t know.’ Victoria shakes her head and smiles sadly. ‘Then she saw the dots. She was seeing all these pictures, they were a part of Joe, and already they had been lost to her.’

  Fiona agrees. ‘I remember the tears. I think all the memories of the difficult times during the thirties came bubbling up and she said how often it was that an artist wasn’t recognised until after their death . . . it was all so very sad. Mum, as Joe’s daughter, should have been in the spotlight, and it could have been a wonderful celebration of Joe’s life, but it didn’t work out that way.’

  Having missed Joe’s funeral, his memorial exhibition was Maureen’s first real chance to mourn, so of course it hit her hard.

  When I broach the subject with her I make sure there is sherry, but she remains calm and composed.

  ‘Yes, I was devastated. It was awful. But you know I went back the next day, when it was less busy, and Mary said there were other paintings that hadn’t sold and so we fixed it up.’ She offers me a consolatory smile. ‘I felt better after that.’

  Yes, the exhibition was a sellout, which is presumably what Mary wanted. I venture to suggest that Mary must have felt very proud, since at last Joe had made her some money. My grandmother shrugs non-committally.

  ‘I don’t recall.’

  ‘Actually, I don’t think it was ever about the money,’ Fiona corrects me. ‘I remember quite distinctly that Mary had put a high price on the paintings, because deep down she hoped they wouldn’t sell. The reason she held the exhibition was simply to recognise Joe’s talent and achievements, to show him off. She became quite agitated when they sold so quickly.’

  I should have known. What Mary wanted was for the work to be seen and for Joe to be remembered as a good artist. And he was. The reviewers made comparisons with Augustus John and Matthew Smith. ‘One feels that with a little more luck or push he would be in line with the familiarly known English artists of the first half of our century.’1 The Arts Review commented: ‘When he paints the English countryside he absorbs the whole scene but at the same time he remembers all that he has learnt from 19th-century French painting, its beauty and colour, directness of touch and the quality of texture.’2 And so it was that Joe’s work was seen and judged and bought, only after he himself had gone.

  Perhaps he wasn’t so bad at endings, after all. Mary wasn’t with him when he died. Her mother was, though. Kitty Meade had become a fixture at their Marlow home, keeping Joe company whenever her daughter was out. They were sitting together in a companionable silence when he had his second heart attack. Kitty would never be able to explain wh
at it was that made her look up, but as she met Joe’s eyes for the last time he gave her a wave as if he knew.

  ‘Dear Joe. It helped me a great deal,’ Kitty reflected. ‘I wasn’t afraid of death after that. He really took the sting out of it.’

  Then she died too.

  Mary had lost the two people she was closest to. It opened her up to a new kind of loneliness she hadn’t known before. The house in Marlow had always been cluttered but now objects blocked her in mentally and physically. She wasn’t ready to surrender yet, and so by 1970 she had sold up and moved back to London. The idea was she could return to her old life in Chelsea, take up some hobbies, see some old friends. Unexpectedly, my aunt Victoria became a new one.

  Having glimpsed Mary at Joe’s memorial exhibition, Victoria hadn’t anticipated they would ever get along, but she was working at the United Nations and Mary thought that sounded rather grand. Victoria was soon invited to Sloane Avenue Mansions for afternoon tea, to a tiny flat where every inch of wall space was covered with Joe’s pictures. Victoria finally got to know her grandfather at one remove, and whether her mother liked it or not, she too would turn out to be a very good artist.

  Mary did her best to fill her time creatively, she saw her nieces and her nephew. There were theatre trips and evening classes. But London had changed, it was fiendishly expensive and life moved too fast now for her to keep pace. As the years slipped by objects piled up around her, and she held on to them, hoping to feel more in control.

  Eventually it became too much. Mary felt she was trying to recapture something long lost. By her eightieth birthday, she had returned to Marlow, to a new house in a familiar context. She was comfortable there and for many years kept up with a regular stream of visitors. Yet slowly and surely the clutter crept up. The stairs became a problem; they were narrow and steep and Mary found she simply couldn’t manage them. So the top floor was abandoned. Objects piled higher and higher down below. Charlotte remembers a house where memories spilled out of every cupboard, where the extraordinary and the banal gathered dust together. There were bags of whale-boned undergarments in excellent condition, hundreds of knitting needles of different size, length and colour, art books of some value, magazines of little value, scraps of material, cuttings from old newspapers. So many things were accumulated without reason, or with a clear reason that was then forgotten. And amidst all this there were Joe’s paintings, stacked haphazardly, rearranged sporadically, a living presence beside her.