In a True Light

by John Harvey

  ‘I was angry.’

  ‘Out of control.’

  ‘I’d just come out of prison, remember.’

  ‘And now you feel differently.’

  Sloane stared out into the near-darkness of the lake. ‘You can’t stay angry for ever. Even with you.’

  ‘Dear chap.’ Parsons smiled and touched Sloane lightly on the arm, and Sloane caught himself wondering if Parsons and Elms might have gone to the same college, the same school. Harry Wharton and Tom Merry, too.

  Parsons flicked the remainder of his cigarette towards the water. ‘The thing we’ve never done,’ he said, ‘never capitalised on, is getting you to do something in your own style.’ He moved closer, lowering his voice. ‘There’s a small group of Abstract Expressionist stuff coming on to the market, a private collection. Big names, Pollock and the rest …’

  Sloane was already shaking his head. ‘Attribution on that work’s too clear-cut. We’d never get away with it. It’d be Vuillard all over again.’

  ‘No. What happened there was sheer chance. One in a million. It couldn’t happen again.’

  ‘Easy for you to say. You weren’t the one doing time.’

  ‘Listen,’ Parsons urged. ‘You’re right, of course, I’m not suggesting we come up with some gigantic new Pollock canvas, too many complications all round. But imagine this instead: a number of small paintings, five or six. Pieces he did when he was getting into his Jack the Dripper period, test runs, if you like. Transitional. God, he used to trade those things in at the general store for bourbon and cigarettes, give them to women he met in bars as a way of getting into their drawers.’

  ‘And as far as potential buyers are concerned, you came across them where?’

  ‘Part of the collection, of course. Personal gifts, treasured, never displayed. Till now.’

  Sloane stared out across the water at the shapes of the trees on the other side, empty of definition as a series of Rorschach blobs. He wondered to what extent Valentina was involved, how much detail, if any, she knew.

  ‘These pieces,’ Sloane said, ‘you think the money would be there? Serious money?’

  ‘Dear boy, if anyone had bottled them, I could get you serious money for one of Pollock’s farts.’

  Sloane got to his feet and Parsons followed suit.

  ‘I shall have to think about it,’ Sloane said.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘If I go along,’ Sloane said, after several moments, ‘I’ll need start-up money, cash in hand.’

  ‘A thousand,’ Parsons said airily. ‘Something along those lines?’

  Sloane laughed.

  ‘Two, then.’

  ‘Five.’

  Parsons breathed deeply, akin to a sigh. Lit another cigarette. The music from the gallery seemed, temporarily at least, to have stopped and, in its place, laughter rolled down the slope towards where they were standing. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But I need to know soon, within a couple of days at the most.’

  ‘Tomorrow or the day after,’ Sloane said, starting to move away.

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And you’ll have the money ready?’

  ‘I doubt,’ Parsons said, smiling, ‘I could afford to risk another Giacometti.’

  They set off towards the gallery, side by side, but at the car park Parsons paused.

  ‘You’re not going back in?’ Sloane asked.

  Parsons shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’

  They shook hands and Sloane watched as Parsons crossed towards his car. Safe from sight, he reached inside his jacket and switched off the small recorder, aware of the sweat thinly layering his back and scalp.

  Moments later he was brought up short by the sight of Rachel Zander, in a full-skirted turquoise dress, cream shawl across her shoulders, standing just inside the main entrance to the gallery, quite alone.

  She was staying at a hotel in Covent Garden, close by the Royal Opera House. In the taxi she suggested supper at Joe Allen’s. ‘Unless you’re sick of the place, that is.’ Sloane had never been. Sitting up to the bar while they waited for a table, Rachel talked with enthusiasm about the show at the Serpentine and of a young artist whose work she’d seen earlier, paint and collage mixed with video and sampled sounds. Sloane nodded, listened, drank his Beck’s from a glass – drinking beer from the bottle an affectation too far.

  They were shown to a table by the far wall, beneath a signed poster for Liza Minnelli in Cabaret. Sloane ordered the lamb and Rachel the Caesar salad and a portion of fries on the side. Finding a Cline Mourvedre on the wine list seemed to give her inordinate pleasure.

  ‘You know,’ she said, ‘I haven’t exactly been handing you an easy row to hoe. Always rushing off somewhere. Never relaxed.’ She laughed. ‘I made a promise to myself, if the chance came up, I’d make amends.’

  ‘And that’s what this is? Making amends.’

  ‘We’ll see.’ The light catching the green in her eyes just so, making it shine.

  They talked easily about very little, titbits of conversation, inconsequential scraps. Movies, writers, art world gossip. Drank and ate. When the waiter came to take away their plates and enquire about coffee or dessert, Sloane asked when she was going back to New York.

  ‘Soon. A couple of days. A few more people to see, a couple of plays.’ She looked at him across the top of her glass. ‘I might not see you for quite a while.’

  ‘Don’t be so sure.’

  ‘You’re coming back over?’

  And without having intended to, he told her the whole story, more or less. Jane and Connie. Delaney. Rachel sat there listening, transfixed.

  ‘When I left,’ Sloane said, ‘I thought that was the end of it, I really did. I’d carried out my promise to Jane as well as I could and that was that.’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Now I have to go back.’

  ‘Even though you’re not certain if she’s your daughter or not? Connie.’

  Sloane nodded. ‘Yes, that’s right.’

  Back up on the street, Rachel linked her arm through his. ‘Care to walk me home?’

  ‘Why not?’

  Within minutes they were outside Rachel’s hotel.

  ‘I’ve had a nice evening,’ she said.

  ‘Me, too.’

  ‘You know,’ Rachel said, ‘after we talked about Jane Graham I went to look at some of her work.’

  ‘And what did you think?’

  ‘She’s great. Stronger than I’d remembered. Generous. Sensual.’ A smile played at the corners of Rachel’s mouth, crinkling the skin around her eyes. ‘I bet she was a wonderful lover.’

  Sloane surprised himself by kissing her, Rachel freezing just for a second or two, then kissing him back. One of his hands pushed up beneath her hair, fingers tracing small circles on her neck.

  ‘Don’t you think we’re a little old for this?’ Rachel asked when they broke apart.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Necking in public like a couple of kids.’

  ‘Probably.’

  So they did it again.

  ‘This isn’t the point,’ Sloane asked, pausing, ‘where you invite me up for a drink?’

  Rachel shook her head. ‘No way. But I could be free for coffee tomorrow, around, say, eleven, eleven thirty.’

  ‘Then come to my place,’ Sloane said. ‘There’s something I want you to see.’

  Rachel stood in front of the canvas, not too close, not too distant, quite still. Above the unbroken hum of traffic from the nearby road, the sound of a train slowing into the station.

  ‘Remember, it’s not …’

  ‘Sshh.’

  Sloane turned away to the window and looked out: the train that had just arrived was already pulling away; two magpies and a crow doing battle around the chimney stacks; of course, he was stupid to have asked her to look at the bloody thing so soon – Sloane, you idiot, you fool!

  ‘Look, why don’t we …?’

  ‘Stop fussing!’ Rachel said.

  He
went downstairs and pottered, washed his breakfast things in the sink. He could hear her moving around now, imagined her looking at other canvases with increasing dismay as she struggled for something polite, not too damning, to say.

  And then there she was, facing him at the foot of the stairs. ‘I think you may have something,’ she said. ‘Of course, it’s too early really to know, but there’s a life to it, real promise. And the colours – the colours are really strong and unlike the others, the earlier work – I mean I only took a quick look – instead of crowding out all the light, here it’s letting it come in.’

  Sloane was blushing, a grown man, sixty years old, actually blushing at praise.

  Rachel laughed. ‘Of course, there’s always time for you to screw it up.’

  ‘Thanks!’

  She looked at him and raised her hands, fingers spread. ‘Christ, Sloane, you bring me here, stick me in front of your painting like I’m some oracle and expect me to pronounce.’

  ‘It’s okay.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘What you said.’

  Rachel smiled. ‘Good. I’m glad. And I’m grateful for letting me see what you’re working on, I really am. And now I must go.’

  The taxi taking her to her meeting with the director of the Whitechapel was waiting outside. Sloane kissed her lightly and she squeezed his hand. ‘See you soon,’ she said and as the cab turned out of sight at the corner of the street, Dutton and Boyd sidled into view.

  Inside, first one, then the other listened to the tape on headphones, nodding contentedly, even smiling once or twice.

  ‘So?’ Sloane said, anxious for them to be gone. ‘It’s what you wanted?’

  ‘It’s a start,’ Dutton said.

  ‘You’ll meet him again,’ said Boyd.

  ‘Tomorrow, probably.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘And Dumar?’ Sloane asked.

  ‘All in good time.’

  ‘I need better than that.’

  ‘The wheels of bureaucracy …’ Boyd began.

  ‘Fuck the wheels of bureaucracy,’ Sloane said. ‘If Elms doesn’t follow through on his promises about Dumar, you won’t get a word out of me in court and without that these tapes won’t fly.’

  Dutton looked at him with sharply, eyebrow raised. ‘Something’s put lead in your pencil. Wouldn’t be that redhead, sailing off in the cab, I suppose?’

  Sloane held the door open for them to leave.

  32

  Sloane worked on the canvas for eighteen hours solid, eating only when he remembered, alternately drinking bottled water and Scotch whisky, cat-napping, fully clothed, in a chair he had dragged upstairs. The telephone he had unplugged; he was oblivious to any hammerings on the front door. Through all of this process the basic shape of the composition, what he had achieved on the first morning, remained the same; other sections he laboured over, trying this shade, this shape, always moving close, stepping back, wiping away, covering up and starting again. Building. Remaining true to the same basic core colours, purple and gold. Remembering what Rachel had said about the light, the importance of letting it shine through.

  Parsons he met in the restaurant on the upper floor of the National Portrait Gallery, views out across the rooftops towards Nelson’s Column and Whitehall. Sloane asked for more details of the pieces Parsons wanted, sizes, frames; the dealer would need to be setting up accreditation before they were all finished, contacting likely buyers, oiling the necessary wheels.

  ‘This means working fast,’ Sloane said.

  ‘When did you work any other way?’

  A waiter drifted close, then drifted away.

  The envelope Parsons passed across the table was plump and pleasingly heavy in the hand.

  At the exit they went their separate ways, Parsons south towards his club on Pall Mall, Sloane cutting through to meet Dutton at the ticket booth on the south side of Leicester Square, a quick handover of the tape, then the Tube and home.

  The telephone was ringing when he arrived.

  Rachel’s voice was slightly breathless, the ambient noise from the airport lounge busy and loud.

  ‘Mason Ranch,’ Rachel said, ‘that name mean anything to you?’

  Sloane remembered a friend of Jane’s, a short, portly man with a shock of hair he was forever pushing away from his face when he read his poems, Monday nights at the Five Spot, poetry and jazz, the cadences of a Southern accent undisguised.

  ‘Yes, of course. Why?’

  ‘I’m going up to see him next weekend. I thought, just as long as you’re going to be around, you might like to come along.’

  Sloane ran it through his mind, sensing Rachel’s slight anxiety, her eye running down the departure screens, seeking out her flight. ‘Can I let you know?’

  It wasn’t exactly the answer she’d been expecting to hear. ‘Sloane, you’re not blowing cold on this, are you?’

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘I shouldn’t think so. There’s just a few more things I have to do.’

  ‘Like finish that painting for one.’

  ‘Exactly,’ he said, though it was only part of the truth.

  ‘Good luck,’ Rachel said. ‘And call me. Okay?’

  ‘Okay.’

  And she was gone.

  Sloane made coffee, strong, and carried it upstairs to where the canvas waited. An hour later – or was it two, or four? – pleased but not yet satisfied, suddenly hungry, he went to the nearest shop for milk, butter, bread, eggs and cheese. Made himself an omelette and ate it with a fork, straight from the pan. His mind drifting back to Mason Ranch, he recalled one night in particular, a conversation about poetry and painting between himself, Mason and Jane, which had started, as so many conversations did, in the Cedar Bar and continued in one of the coffee houses on Bleecker or MacDougal. Jane loving the oils Grace Hartigan had done, incorporating lines and phrases from O’Hara’s poems. Out of that evening, Sloane believed, had come collaborations between Jane and Mason Ranch that he had never seen.

  He threw cold water on his face and went back to work.

  Not allowing himself to rush, to overcrowd, pacing back and forward, forward and back, this brush, this rag, this colour, that. Back aching, a vein throbbing low on his left leg, he stopped, he smiled, it was finished, he knew. Nothing more he could or should do.

  Below, he took a long bath before crawling into bed and falling, almost immediately, asleep.

  Someone was tapping at the window when he woke.

  Olivia and her friend, Nicky: Nicky, a slender girl with Doc Martens and stubbly pink hair, her white skin laced with studs and rings; Olivia smiling excitedly when Sloane, having pulled on shirt and jeans, finally opened the door.

  ‘My dad,’ Olivia said. ‘It’s gonna be okay.’

  Sloane smiled and Olivia threw her arms round him and held him tight.

  ‘It’s okay,’ Nicky said, sly smile in her grey-green eyes. ‘She’s always doin’ that. Grabbin’ hold of old men an’ snoggin’ ’em.’

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ Sloane said.

  ‘He rung me this morning,’ Olivia said, releasing him. ‘Dad. These fellers from the Home Office been down to see him, about asylum. He reckons it’ll all be fine. Should be home here in a week or so, maybe less. He said I should thank you for what you done.’ Her face lit up with a smile. ‘I thought we could, you know, have a drink, celebrate.’

  ‘What time is it?’ Sloane asked. ‘I’ve lost track.’

  ‘Half-four,’ Olivia said uncertainly. ‘Five?’

  ‘Five twenty-three.’ Nicky looking at her watch.

  They went to the pub on the corner of Holmes Road and sat outside, drinking beer, chatting about nothing in particular.

  ‘You know,’ Nicky said when Olivia had gone to the toilet, ‘when Livia come round mine the other night, the way she was going on and on about you, I thought she had this crush, right?’

  ‘And now?’

  ‘Bollocks, i’n’it?’ Nicky said and grinned.

  Back in hi
s studio the painting still looked finished, its colours vibrating across the canvas, brushstrokes live and strong. Perhaps he wasn’t fooling himself this time. Hoping it wasn’t too late, he phoned Rachel at home and then the airline.

  He thought it wouldn’t be easy to sleep again, but when he woke early next morning, the lamp was still burning and the book he had been reading lay open where it had fallen. In the small park behind the station the railings gleamed damp, dew was silver on the grass and above the light was gathering in the sky.

  One of the runways was out of action at JFK and planes were stacking up the length of the eastern seaboard. Sloane’s flight finally landed a good fifty minutes behind schedule, its passengers whey-faced and irritable, and punching the buttons of their phones the moment they were freed into the terminal, alerting family and friends, altering arrangements. Sloane shouldered his carry-on baggage on to the bus and then the train, finally into the cab that took him the short distance from Penn Station to his hotel.

  33

  Vargas had promised herself a new bed. After spending weeks on a borrowed couch and, before that, an antique hand-me-down with a metal cross-piece that regularly woke her from sleep with dreams of crucifixion, she owed it to her body to purchase something better. Pliant but firm. A bed to which, when and if the occasion arose, she could invite a close companion without fear of discomfort for them both; a bed to which that companion might return. Yet a bed which, this being a studio apartment, could be folded away each morning, opened out each night.

  After a diligent search she found the perfect one. Of course, it was several hundred dollars more than she’d intended to spend and delivery would take, the sales clerk had told her, six to eight weeks. Minimum. Until then she’d be sleeping on the floor.

  ‘Is this the last?’ Cherry called, hefting a box on to his shoulder and heading for the stairs leading to Vargas’s new apartment.

  ‘I doubt it.’ She followed him with two brimming bags in each hand, clothes draped over both shoulders and round her neck.