by Adam Nevill
She laughed, and drank from her wine glass to hide the warmth of the blush suffusing her entire body. Why hadn’t she thought of dating older guys before? ‘Well there might be a family connection.’
‘Yes, you mentioned that on the phone. I’m all ears.’ He took a mouthful of his linguine vongole.
‘My great-aunt Lillian lived in the same apartment building. Barrington House. And she passed recently.’
‘I am sorry.’
‘It’s OK. I never knew her. But she left the apartment to my mom. And because she’s terrified of flying I came over to sort out the estate.’
‘In return for half the spoils.’
‘I’ve already earned it. You should see the place.’ She thought of making light of the mess, but levity seemed inappropriate; the apartment just wasn’t something she could laugh about. ‘She writes about him in her diaries.’
‘You’re having me on.’
Apryl shook her head, relishing his interest, the pause of fork from plate to mouth. ‘And they never got on. But the thing is, Lillian, my great-aunt, wasn’t well. You know? She was really disturbed, and she kind of blames Hessen for it, so I just had to find out more about him. And I found this website and read your book. And . . .’
‘Now you’re smitten.’
‘Not exactly. I find his pictures like really creepy, but . . . this whole mystery about him and his connection to my great-aunt, it’s quite a kick. I never guessed I’d be into all of this, but I have to know what happened to Lillian and Reginald in that building. What he really did to them. Because he did something. And the more I find out about him and his art and the people that knew him, the more I just know there’s something not right. Something terribly wrong, in fact. My great-aunt may have been crazy, but she wasn’t making it all up. I’m convinced about that now. But what was he doing to her, and how did he do it?’
She then bit down on mentioning her own experiences with unexplained phenomena inside the apartment. He’d think her mad.
Miles nodded, and began to refill her glass. ‘Did you know that everyone who was at all close to him had a personality disorder? They all died young or ended up in institutions. He attracted the disturbed, the damaged and the eccentric. Misfits and outsiders all of them. People who couldn’t function in the world they were born into. Individuals who saw things. Other things. And not necessarily what everyone else was able to see. They orbited him. But I think you are suggesting that he made your great-aunt that way. Which is a novel perspective. So maybe it was his effect on others that explains their behaviour. An idea I never considered.’
Apryl’s glass was full. He rotated the bottle to avoid a dribble. He was trying to get her drunk. To remove the last vestiges of her nervous formality. She decided she didn’t mind at all. It was good to unravel a little. London was a bewildering place, but just when the city had begun to make her feel really low, it suddenly had this romantic side too. It had been ages since she’d made a real effort and dressed up for a date. And tonight, it was the sense of infinite opportunities in the city that seduced her. How could you ever get to the end of such a place? Miles filled his own glass.
Apryl took a sip of her wine, narrowing her eyes over the rim. ‘You know so much about him. But can you respect a man who was so fucked up? Why you are into him is more interesting to me right now.’
Miles smiled. ‘I like the underdogs in the art world. And he was interesting. Fascinating, in fact. He felt compelled to try and complete an artistic vision outside the values and tastes of his own time. I’m impressed by that. It must have taken courage. Great courage to go where he went.’
‘To draw corpses? And skinned animals? And those nasty puppets? A fairly bleak world view, isn’t it?’
‘It is. But then his world changed so much, from the end of the nineteenth century onwards. Imagine what Darwin and Freud did to religious belief. Not to mention the horrors of the First World War. Mechanized slaughter. And industrialization. The rise of Marxism. The beginnings of Fascism. The great war of ideology brewing. The flux was represented in so many ways. Fractious, discordant, chaotic ways. Modernism, if you like. And he took his place there, but his reputation could only be posthumous. I think he knew it all along. But he wasn’t interested in acclaim. He never cultivated peers or curried influence. He did it for its own sake. And for himself. Don’t you find that incredible? Especially these days? To dedicate your life to one vision with no thought of reward?’
Apryl smiled. ‘Sorry, I was only playing devil’s advocate. It’s a bad habit.’
He winked at her. ‘It is. Life could have been very comfortable for Hessen. Privately wealthy . . . educated at the Slade . . . handsome . . . erudite . . . cultured . . . talented. Come to think of it, he was a bit like me.’ He said this with a straight face until she began to laugh.
He offered her the basket of bread. ‘He had access to the great minds and talents of his age. Not to mention the queue of eligible connected beauties who would have fawned over him. But he made decisions guaranteed to make life difficult for himself. Incredibly difficult. He looked for and drew death, constantly. The moment of death in hospitals and the moment after death in the morgues and operating theatres. He obsessed over medical curiosities. Deformity. Disfigurement. He spent his best years trying to understand death and the idea of being trapped. By disability, and by social immobility. Wallowed in it. Spent his weekends bribing undertakers in funeral homes, his days sketching skinned sheep and offal in the abattoirs of the East End. Or drawing the deformed limbs and faces of the poor wretches who suffered every conceivable disease and incapacity.’
‘Must have been a barrel of laughs.’
‘Precisely. And what about his evenings when he was a younger man? No parties for Felix. Instead, he investigated every mystic, seer, and black magic practitioner in town, or attended séances held in front rooms and parlours. There is no evidence of him ever relaxing. Or being in love. He never seemed to do a single thing not directly connected to his vision. I know of no other artist so determined. To spend a decade trying to perfect line and perspective, and then to launch into distortion, which he claimed was the only true vision. A recreation of the Vortex. The absolute epitome of wonder and terror and awe. A place after this world, accessed only by madness, by dream, by the deep subconscious, and by death itself.’
‘You really think he was that good?’
‘Hard to say. Because what of that did we see? What survived? Those terrible final drawings of the human and the animal, imprisoned in those unformed landscapes. You see, I think Hessen is more interesting from the perspective of what he was trying to achieve. The drawings are only studies. Initial plans for the paintings no one has ever found. And to also go public in support of fascism with his Vortex paper – how could I not be fascinated by the guy?’
Apryl smiled. ‘I’m convinced. What was his name again?’
‘Don’t make me come over there.’ He raised one eyebrow and looked at her in such a way that she felt part of herself melt.
‘I looked on Amazon and there’s only your book.’ She didn’t mention the dozen bad reviews written by members of the Friends of Felix Hessen.
‘In this country, we’re very bad at looking after our artistic heritage. America is the place to find anything of value about British painting or poetry in the twentieth century. Ironic, I know, but there’s nothing left of him here. Though I believe there was very little to begin with. Hessen’s contribution to modernism is hard to gauge. That’s the problem. The myths that surround him are far greater than any actual evidence of his ability or influence. Besides the drawings there’s nothing left. Had he painted it would have been different. But sketches and chalks are not enough. Some of them are extraordinary, I know, and perhaps hint at a formidable vision. But I doubt it was ever realized. No one ever saw a single painting apart from a few acquaintances. And one must, surely, cast some doubt over the reliability of their testimony. I mean, they all saw something different.’
Miles took a long draught of his wine and she liked the way his face flushed with excitement as he talked. And that voice. She didn’t want to interrupt his flow. He could have been reading from the back of a detergent box for all she cared. She could listen to that voice all night.
‘But he was ahead of his time. He potentially created a new visual language, steeped in an anti-aesthetic, and in philosophy and radical politics. Outside vorticism, futurism, cubism, surrealism, he operated alone, and followed his own creative discourse from an early age. You could even call him an occult philosopher. Misunderstood in his own day and virtually ignored ever since. The scourge of middle-English conservatism and safe Bohemia. A painter who saw art as the worship of something supernatural. And as the means of finding it. What’s more startling is that no one wrote of him before me.’
That mention of the supernatural made her feel suddenly uncomfortable. It nearly spoiled her mood. ‘Do you think . . .’
‘What?’
‘That he had powers or something?’
‘Powers?’
‘I know it sounds freaky, but my great-aunt was really scared of him.’
‘Well, he was steeped in occult ritual. Was probably tutored by Crowley, the Great Beast 666, in the most advanced summoning rituals. Who knows what Felix could have suggested to the impressionable.’
‘But what if it wasn’t all suggestion?’
Miles laughed and tore a bread roll apart with his fingers. ‘You’re pulling my leg again.’
‘I guess.’ It was a foolish question and one she immediately regretted having asked. All around her people were eating and talking under bright lights in a modern restaurant. Outside, taxis were trundling past and people were lining up to enter an opera house. This was a world of cell phones and credit cards. There were no ghosts. Maybe she was starting to lose the plot by filling her head with so much of Hessen’s and Lillian’s madness.
‘And the mysticism, of course, is not in his favour as far as the critics are concerned,’ Miles continued. ‘In fact, all the informed responses from art historians and curators who were familiar with Hessen were the same when I was researching the book. They all thought him absurd, and a minnow in comparison to his contemporaries.’
‘I guess you can believe anything you put your mind to,’ she said quietly.
Miles didn’t hear her but was looking intently into his wine glass at the syrupy crimson surface. She took a sip from her own glass. ‘Do you really think he painted anything?’
‘I don’t doubt he painted something. But I suspect he destroyed it when it fell so short of his ambition. Which was considerable. He was hard on himself. Set himself unfeasible expectations. Either that, or prison ruined him.’
‘I wonder about it. You know, whether he did produce paintings, and if people really saw them. Like my great-aunt and uncle.’
‘You think there is some dusty cache of crates filled with his work? Some have suggested he produced paintings more radical than any other modernist, or than any artist since his time. Now that would be nice. But where are they?’
‘You’re taking the piss.’ She liked the expression, had picked it up since arriving in England.
‘No. I’m not. I’m merely echoing my own disappointment at finding nothing. And you know I looked hard. I contacted the estate, distant relatives, and the children of anyone who ever mentioned him. Not to mention the family of the collector who acquired the sketches prior to Hessen’s imprisonment. Hessen gave them away. They had served their purpose. But I didn’t find one genuine lead to provide reliable evidence that he produced a painting.’
‘But what about after the war? Did you find out anything about him then?’
‘Barely ventured beyond the front door of his flat. Became a recluse. He never had more than a small crowd of acquaintances, and they were mostly gone before the forties. And there’s no evidence of any correspondence after his release from Brixton prison. So even if he painted something, who would have seen it? I once wondered if he might have given away any paintings he produced before he disappeared, perhaps to a private collector. But unless that individual comes forward, or their descendants, it’s gone. It’s tragic. I do believe he was on the verge of painting something incredible, but for some reason he either never began it or he destroyed it. I find the latter the more likely course of action. For all of his determination and grit, he was very unstable.’
‘I still wonder.’
‘I did too.’
‘And I’d still like to show you my great-aunt’s journals. Just to see what you think. You’d have more idea what to make of them than me.’
Miles smiled. ‘Apryl, I’d love to. I’m sorry, I suspect I’ve been an awful bore.’
‘Not at all. I’m kinda reaching saturation point with Hessen though. It was never supposed to be about him, but about my Lillian. I wondered if I could learn anything about her by finding out about him. I’ll go to that Friends of Felix Hessen meeting. And there’s a couple of people I’d like to talk to in the building, but then I’m done with him. For good. In case I end up like Lillian.’
He frowned at her, then raised an eyebrow. ‘Well, I know what you’re saying, but . . .’
‘What?’
‘But I have a little suspicion about you. Despite your physical charms and the doors they must sweep aside, Apryl, I suspect you’re an outsider like Hessen, and are secretly drawn to his mystique.’
She blushed. The thought of him making a pass suddenly made her afraid but also thrilled. ‘Maybe I am an outsider, but I’m no fan of Felix Hessen. And I’m not a mystical kinda girl. Anyone connected to him is crazy.’
‘Me included?’
‘Particularly you.’
They both laughed at exactly the same time.
‘I wonder what happened to him,’ Apryl mused. ‘He’s supposed to have disappeared, but Lillian’s journals give the impression that he never left. It’s weird.’
‘Well, everyone loves a good mystery. And to vanish without trace is a trite legacy, but a legacy all the same, and one that might amplify a limited reputation and not just keep it alive, but give it the potential to grow into something it never was in the first place. Especially irresistible to those of a mystical bent – vanishing along with his so-called masterpieces.’
‘The Friends of Felix Hessen disagree with you.’
‘I never expected too much from them. They’re enthusiastic enough for amateurs, but not an academic organization. More of an occult outfit. It’s the ritualistic side of Hessen they’re obsessed with. Though they do make claims of being rigorously scholarly, I seem to remember. In their publications and so forth. Bit of a weird bunch. You’ll probably meet a few oddballs if you go to the lecture. I know I did. We used to get petitions from them to view our archive at the Tate. They sent them to all the galleries. They were after the secret cache of his forbidden illustrations. Stuff we’ve apparently suppressed for being sympathetic to the Nazis or some such nonsense. But despite it all, I do have a soft spot for the gifted amateur.’ He laughed. ‘And who knows, old Felix may have been pleased to have been the inspiration for a cult convinced of his importance who periodically harass the major art galleries. And maybe, after all is said and done, it’s the likes of the Friends of Felix Hessen who have the right idea. Perhaps the occult route and the interpretation of dreams is the only true method available to understand him.’
‘You don’t believe that?’
‘No, you’re right, I don’t. But I did stop looking. And not only because I drew such an almighty blank.’ He sat back in his chair, dropped his napkin on the table and sighed. ‘And I don’t have much interest in him any more either. Lost my appetite a bit.’
‘Why?’
Miles shrugged. ‘He got under my skin.’
Apryl laughed.
‘No, I mean it. You look at his work for too long and you might feel the same way. It even gave me nightmares. It’s very strange. I felt he was getting closer to me,
but I was getting nowhere near him. What he was all about, I didn’t like it. And I feel much better since I finished the book. To be honest, I shan’t be upset when it’s out of print. I don’t like being reminded of it. The period in which it was written . . . it was a difficult time for me, personally. There were other things on my mind, but his art didn’t help. It started to change the way I thought. I became something of a nihilist. Because that’s what Hessen was. He couldn’t see anything but the end of life. Misery. The essential loneliness of death. And his predictions of what came after were equally grim. I’m not actually a masochist, Apryl.’
Apryl thought about what Miles had said. It made sense. After looking at Hessen’s sketches and reading about him for any length of time, she’d also felt a need to reintegrate herself into normal life. To go to a movie, to eat in a restaurant, to walk amongst other people. His vision was so oppressive. So consuming. So crazy. It managed to suck her inside herself and make her morbidly introspective.
‘It’s a shame you don’t live in London,’ Miles said, after a final gulp of wine. The bottle was empty. They both had purple mouths.
‘Why?’ she asked softly, deliberately lowering her eyelids. It had been so long since she’d had an opportunity to be provocative. It felt good.
‘Because I’d like to see more of you. We could join the Friends of Felix Hessen together. Go on dates to their meetings. It would be so romantic.’
Apryl giggled. She wouldn’t mind staying on in London for longer if hanging out with Miles was on the cards. At last she’d met someone sane and gregarious, and sexy in that British way. And someone who could help her understand the maniac who’d had such an impact on her distant family. She couldn’t help feeling seduced by his quiet confidence, his dry humour, that deep voice and the wicked smile in his eyes. All of these things were ganging up on her now. Making her feel wanton. She’d never lacked attention or been accustomed to rejection from men, but some guys made more of an impact. Or did she just have a crush on him?