The Calligrapher

by Edward Docx

  ‘How you doing, Jasper – on schedule?’

  ‘Yes. Absolutely.’

  ‘That’s the main thing. Don’t be late – whatever. And when you’re done – you’re coming to see me and we’ll go someplace we can goddamn talk.’

  At least the lunch reminded me of the world beyond Bristol Gardens, and by the end of July, Madeleine and I began to get out more – initially only as far as our local, the Wellington, an old pub as yet unafflicted by the mania for the distressed ephemera of faux authenticity so beloved of the ‘gastro-pub’ marketeers and the misbegotten polenta-tendency for whom they cater. But it was a start.

  The summer sun was sinking like a burning ship into the west. We were outside, sitting opposite one another across the trestle table: Madeleine in her shorts, a sleeveless vest and sunglasses and me in a T-shirt, jeans and my Roman sandals. A warm wind was ruffling through the sycamore trees. It was still hot enough for the ice in Madeleine’s gin and tonic to be perceptibly shrinking. And whenever I picked up my beer, the wood felt sticky where someone had spilt a drink in the afternoon. I was reading one of Madeleine’s travel articles: ‘Souked Up. Madeleine Belmont is converted on the road to Damascus.’

  ‘Does Guy Wesley still own this paper?’ I asked. I already knew the answer to this question. But for some reason I was suddenly feeling the urge to tell her about my client. I suppose it was something to do with sharing a confidence – sharing a confidence with her and only her. Something to do with formally affirming our intimacy.

  She didn’t look up from her book. ‘Yes, I think he does. I mean, I know he does.’

  ‘Ever met him?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I wonder what he’s like?’

  Now she raised her head. ‘The media caricature – Mr Dumb-it-Down Hardass – is probably bullshit.’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, ‘being a press baron, he’s bound to get a bad press. Poor guy. I bet he spends all his private time weeping for the fate of humanity while list—’

  ‘I’m sure he’s a human being as well.’

  I couldn’t see her eyes behind her sunglasses but her tone was short. I decided against it. Saul’s warnings came back to me. Madeleine, after all, was a journalist. It wasn’t worth risking. I’d only be showing off. I’d tell her all about the commission when the work was finished. So I said nothing more. I let the subject go and returned to her article – just as she had returned to her book.

  Among the many library shots of Syrian splendour, there was a single picture of Madeleine herself, seated in the middle of what I took to be a market store. She was wearing a burka though with the head-dress cast back, trying on a western-style shoe, her foot resting in the rough palm of the hunched and kneeling assistant as he fastened the strap around her ankle. Her robe was drawn up so that her shin almost touched his concentrating brow. But she was looking away, sticking out her tongue at a cat.

  Some minutes passed. I tried to read other pieces but it was useless. All pages lead back to the picture and the picture lead only to the person. I cleared my throat and addressed her across the table.

  ‘Madeleine?’

  She looked up from her book again and replied with mock formality: ‘Yes, Jasper.’

  ‘How would you feel about – when it’s a bit darker – maybe going into the garden?’

  ‘What for?’ She grasped the point with her usual alacrity. ‘Oh, right. You mean – to make out?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Sure.’ She made her whatever-you-say face. ‘Is there anything that you would like me to wear or is this a straightforward location assignment?’

  I took a sip of my London Pride. ‘Your blue dress.’

  ‘You mean the one I was wearing when you first started spying on me.’ She peered over her glasses.

  ‘That’s the one’

  ‘OK. Anything else?’

  ‘Can we start on the bench?’

  ‘Sure we can, Jasper.’ She paused for a second and then she said: ‘Have to watch out for Roy, though.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He’s started hanging around the garden with a camcorder, hoping to catch sight of me naked through the windows.’

  ‘You serious?’ As usual, I couldn’t tell if she was joking.

  ‘Yeah. I pretty much caught him. He was on my patio. I went out the front and came round the other way.’ She cackled. ‘I couldn’t believe it: he was just standing there with the thing trained directly into my flat. He told me he was the gardener, filming for a “before and after” project thing for the council. He’s not a very good liar.’ She shook her head. ‘But the poor guy looked so – you know – so caught. I almost invited him in. He’s only a kid. It would make his year. And I kind of like him, even though he’s a pervert.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what that was all about. I thought you were having an affair with him.’

  ‘Give me a little credit. I’m very choosy about who I have my affairs with.’ She took off her shades. ‘Anyway – like – if I were: you wouldn’t know about it.’

  ‘No.’ I took another sip of my Pride and helped myself to one of her cigarettes. ‘Does it offend you, though?’

  She likewise fingered a cigarette from the pack. ‘What?’

  ‘That kind of – that side of maleness.’

  ‘You mean the grossness?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Grossness – yes, that offends me; but men’s obsession with women’s bodies – no.’ She took the light I was offering. ‘The real truth about all that – you know – men gawping stuff is that it depends where the attention is coming from. If the guy is a stinking bum with an attitude problem who’s breathing beer in your face while you’re tired and trying to get home then, yes, it’s deeply offensive. But if it’s someone like, I don’t know, let’s use the clichÉ– if it’s some good-looking movie star you meet by accident and he’s obviously got the hots for you, then no, absolutely not. His desire is not offensive at all.’ She exhaled the smoke through her nose. ‘Really, it all depends on who – what kind of man – is doing the wanting. But the wanting in itself is not offensive. Not to me anyway.’

  She waved her cigarette near a wasp which was buzzing around the rim of her glass. ‘Actually, straight women who go on about how they dislike men objectifying them are mostly hypocrites who talk a lot of horseshit. Every woman deep down likes to be a little objectified now and then. As long as it’s by the right man. When it is, well – nobody is ever gonna admit this – but it’s kind of reassuring in a weird way. As long as he doesn’t turn out to be incapable of any other mode of behaviour.’

  I nodded.

  ‘So, no, male behaviour does not offend me. Not as a general rule. Certain men do. Others don’t. I figure it’s the same for you with women.’

  ‘Yes. It is. Sort of. Although I kind of have a soft spot for all women all the time.’ I coughed as the acrid smoke filled my lungs.

  She smiled. ‘Secret filming, though – now that’s a whole different issue.’ She killed her remaining gin. ‘Hey, I’m going to pop home. I need to get some clothes and shit. Prepare me something amazing for a midnight feast.’

  ‘OK.’

  ‘I’ll meet you at eleven sharp in the garden.’ She winked, replaced her sunglasses and got up to leave.

  At first, ‘The Dream’ looks like Donne’s most lyrical poem of rapture, but by the third verse doubt has once again slipped into the bedroom: (in)constancy, (in)fidelity, (un)truth. In the final lines, he asks of his lover: is this how she ‘deal’st’ with him (deal’st – a mean and mercantile word lying low amidst the finery)? Does she leave him to return? If not, he will die. And this time, mainly, I think, he means die for real, not ejaculate:

  Perchance as torches which must ready be,

  Men light and put out, so thou deal’st with me,

  Thou cam’st to kindle, goest to come; then I

  Will dream that hope again, but else would die.

  But I didn’t really notice th
at lurking anxiety the first time I read it. I was too busy with all the ‘Dear love, for nothing less than thee’ stuff. I was too busy with ‘The Dream’.

  19. Love’s Growth

  I scarce believe my love to be so pure

  As I had thought it was,

  Because it doth endure

  Vicissitude …

  I do not wish to give the impression that Madeleine was in any way touched by the supple fingers of psychosis. Far from it. She was as lucid and as sane and as on-the-money as Dorothy Parker two drinks in on a good Friday night. But, to flirt for a moment with Dr Freud, humanity’s most sophisticated and intelligent pervert, I would say that her personality, her belief system and certainly her family history would make for a fascinating study. What, for instance, would the bearded but ever-twinkling Sigmund have deduced from our trip to Tate Modern?

  Yep, back there again. Her suggestion, bien entendu, and offered at the time (atop one of those tourist buses while eating smokily delicious smoked salmon sandwiches) as part of our ‘getting to know London’ programme.

  Poor fool that I am, my initial anxieties on receipt of the proposal centred not on any thought that the ghosts of Lucy or Cécile might return to haunt the galleries, but rather on an idiotic uncertainty as to how much or how little I should know. Though some of the exhibitions were bound to be new, I realized, many were likely to be exactly the same as they had been in March and I was therefore in a good position – should I so wish – to appear more than casually abreast of the currents of modern art. On the other hand, memories of the barging excursion still lingered … and for some reason I no longer felt the need to be such a berk. Instead, as we swung into Trafalgar Square, I decided to tell her the truth: that I had last visited on my birthday with ‘some friends’.

  To which declaration, her next question was, I suppose, inevitable.

  To which enquiry, my explanation naturally followed. ‘I went with William and Nathalie and my then girlfriend.’

  To which clarification she then smiled, perhaps malevolently, inclined her face towards mine and exclaimed: ‘ “Then” girlfriend! It was only four months ago or whatever, Jasper. No need for the emphasis. Not unless you’re feeling bad about me, or her, or something else? Are you feeling bad? What was her name?’

  ‘Lucy.’

  ‘Well, one day you can tell me all about her.’

  Now we were sitting together in the wide café on the top floor of Tate Modern. Having elected to go self-service (rather than wait patiently for the next millennia to pass), I had just come back to our table, bearing a thinnish and inexpressive Darjeeling for myself and a dark and syrupy espresso for Madeleine. She was preoccupied, reading her exhibition guide. I sat down quietly and set about encouraging my emaciated tea out of the dank and suffocating prison of its bag.

  Outside, the summer evening was swaying home like a belly dancer returning to her scarlet caravan upriver. For a while I watched the London skyline basking. Then I turned to my fellow gallery-goers but seeing nothing there of interest or beauty, I soon settled my gaze on Madeleine’s face and began trying to read her thoughts as they flickered across her features. The imp of a frown pestered her brow and a faint line declared itself on her forehead.

  ‘Some of these titles are fucked up,’ she muttered, as much to herself as to me.

  ‘It’s a cheap trick modern artists use,’ I offered, ‘the play between work and title – aggressive dissonance, coy irony or clunky literalism – it’s a way of creating the impression of depth or extra meaning.’

  She looked up impatiently – yes, we all know that, Jasper, thank you – and then carried on reading.

  More and more in her company, I noticed, I was saying directly what I was thinking – being, for want of a better word, ‘honest’. I transferred my attention to her lips and began a brief debate with myself about whether the best relationships were built on emotional transparency, the trading of confessions, or a certain selective blindness, the trading of forgiveness. But just as I progressed this thought far enough to give it an alliterative title – ‘The Cowardice of Confession and the Courage of Conspiracy’ – Madeleine gave up with the guide.

  ‘It sucks.’ She flipped back over a previous page. ‘I mean, check this, Jasper: “Fatherhood #15: The Forest”, “Rancid TV Dinner: September 10th”, “To God, Whoever She Is”. Are they asshole titles or what?’

  ‘Is that the Macy Blake stuff?’

  ‘Yeah.’ She reached out a cigarette. ‘Macy Blake,’ – Madeleine did a cat whistle – ‘she looks pretty hot in her picture.’ She held up the artist’s portrait. ‘Would you – if you had the chance?’

  ‘You know me: if it looks good, I’ll sleep with it. Is she American?’

  Madeleine grinned. ‘Yeah, she is.’ Without heed to the fact that the café was non-smoking, she lit up. ‘You know – it’s hard to know whether or not we’re supposed to admire this kind of woman. Obviously she is full of shit – hence her titles and hence her work. But then so are all the men in here; and at least she’s making everybody look at her shit instead of more men’s shit and … Christ, is that a good thing? I’m lost on what’s good for women in art. Anyway, it says here she was born in Boston, which makes me suspicious …’

  She began to read what I presumed was the artist’s biography. I watched her eyes following the lines. Then, without paying any real attention to what she was doing, she reached up and accidentally poured salt into her espresso instead of sugar. This in itself was understandable: the post-modern salt-cellar had a little silver pipe coming out of the top and looked like one of those sugar shakers you get at cheap cafes and coffee bars. I was about to stop her drinking but – I don’t know why – I was sort of transfixed by the moment and I found myself just staring as she bought the cup to her lips to sip … and didn’t even flinch. She simply drained the whole espresso and swallowed. There was no visible sign that she tasted anything untoward – no spitting, no wincing, no ‘Yuck’, not a muscle did she move. It was deeply, unnervingly disturbing.

  She looked up calmly and repeated one of the titles as if to herself. ‘Mmm. So. “To God, Whoever She Is”.’ Then she said: ‘How about you, Jasper, do you believe in God?’

  A fruitcake’s question if ever there was one.

  ‘No,’ I said, presumably looking aghast, ‘not exactly. Why do you ask?’

  ‘Not exactly. What does that mean?’

  ‘Are you really asking me?’

  ‘Sure. I’m really asking you. Why do you always say that? And what’s up?’

  ‘You just drank that coffee with salt in it.’

  ‘I know. Why didn’t you tell me I had put salt in it? You were staring at me.’

  ‘Because …’ this was a little tricky, ‘I wanted to see how you would react, I suppose.’

  ‘Well, now you know.’ She flicked her ash in her saucer. ‘So: do you believe in God?’

  ‘If you’re asking …’

  ‘I am asking. That’s why I’m asking.’

  ‘Sorry,’ I shrugged. ‘It’s the English distrust of big questions; it’s in my blood.’ More truth-telling, I thought: once you start, you just can’t stop – it’s worse than bloody lying.

  She waited for me to continue.

  ‘Well, obviously, I think God is just a figment of the human imagination. But I also think he’s the single most important and galvanizing figment. A figment without which we’re lost. A figment without which all that is left to us is a kind of virtuoso triviality at best, or, at worst, and much more likely, a miserable descent into the furnace of unbridled greed, vulgarity and unenlightened selfishness – hell by any other name. I think that every other human generation, or at least their various high priests, understood the need for this figment. And I think that our own problem is that we do not. In killing God we have destroyed human kind’s most impressive, life-affirming and imaginative creation. We have, if you like, given ourselves a collective lobotomy. Which is why pre-lobotomy art – Bach and d
a Vinci for example – is so much better, intrinsically, than most of the post-lobotomy stuff you might find in here.’ I sat back in my chair and finished my tea. ‘There. How about that?’

  ‘Very fluent.’

  ‘I’ve honed it a fair bit over the years. How about you? Since we’re on the subject.’

  ‘God bores me. But I’m happy to pay up and go see the Macy Blake cod feminist bullshit collection before we go. Do you want to? I feel I should. It might be fun.’

  I had the same idea – but whether before or after her, I will never know. To the committed sensualist (I like to maintain) every location is a potential backdrop to the act of love. New scenery. New acoustics. New blocking. And, no offence to Ms Blake, as Roy Junior would say, but ‘Fatherhood #15: The Forest’ was surely made – was surely installed – to furnish Tate Modern with an appropriate space for private public intercourse. There could have been no other reason for its creation, nor for the curators to show it. Looked at from a certain standpoint, the whole work was one giant sexual gauntlet. (Not that there was anything wrong in that: after all planet Earth is surely just one big huge giant sexual gauntlet.)

  The forest occupied one end of a large room. It consisted of thirty or forty tall wooden statues, the majority of which were about the thickness of a garden tree trunk and between eight and fifteen feet high. They were arranged to appear randomly spaced but were suspended or supported at crazy angles – so that the impression of the viewer was that he was looking at a branch – and foliage-free forest in the twisted aftermath of an earthquake. The statues were all of men – grotesque and distorted, stretched and without discernible limbs – but definitely male in their faces, their gnarled genitalia and, presumably, their fatherhood. The whole was roped off by an apologetic strand of thin white string.