by Sarah Hall
He still doesn’t know why, though he’s come up with plenty of interesting explanations over the years, some nonsensical, some verging on the supernatural. In his own head he has always struggled to define this obsession with substance, this sensibility. Ever since his father walked up the return, sooty-faced, with that marine fossil he had tapped out of the limestone above the coal seam, coming in and placing it on the table in front of his son, Peter has been held. The boyhood interest in cave art, hieroglyphics, the collecting of petrified roots and heathers, arrowheads, dobbies. The brickworks, the amphitheatres, the Greek marbles. Caspar David Friedrich, Brancusi. He can hear himself wittering on about muses, callings, proclivities; he can see himself drawing figure-eight infinities in the air with his smoking hand while the camera records him; and simultaneously that pedantic voice is saying, no, that’s not it, you’re talking rubbish. Never stopped him trying.
He is a bit dippy on the subject, admittedly. He is a bit evangelical, a bit happy-clappy. But there are the facts of the matter–the geomagnetics. Geiger readings tell strange stories in these parts of the British Isles; they are often high, very high. Their stoddering needles lend authenticity to theories of nuclear infection, blast-off sites or alien visitation, the hum of an energy not kinetic, not electric, not periodic either, but energy nevertheless, stoked into the earth’s layers. There is some undiscovered life-force, he is sure of it. Something living. Something assayable. The rocks really are alive.
He can’t tell people this of course, this nuttiness, this flapdoodle, science bastardised into conspiracy theory. Though he often does tell people, or tries to. Over the sticky bar in the Queen’s Head. Into the fuzzy microphone and the amused face of the journalist. It’s what he says and is known to say–eccentric, florid things. This is who he is–England’s traditional modern landscapist, full of brio and home-cooked whisky, working three thousand feet up and pretty close to the edge of entertaining psychosis.
Ivan Dyas understood it of course. Good old Ivan. A giant in his field and Peter’s only amenable tutor at the Liverpool art school. The prescient, sweaty man slapped him hard on the back when Peter revealed his peculiar fascination. ‘Excellent. Many would kill for such an infatuation, laddo. It’ll be this that does the business for you, if you let it.’ They were such good pals. All those trips to exhibitions. The hours spent in the pubs-The Throstle’s Nest, The Why Not, and Doctor Duncan’s. The debates and discussions, the drinking competitions, looking at the wannabes in Kavanagh’s. It all seems such a long time ago now. Ivan Dyas. ‘What a man. Council park sculptor, glassblower, bronze-scale northern Casanova. He remembers him manifesting in college one day like a lusty fawn god before the class, in a long leather coat and a porno moustache. Combining Mersey Beat style with tradesman’s knowledge. Espousing wisdoms on a come-and-see-me-after basis, theoretical and metric, practical and prophylactic.
Peter can still see him, sitting on the studio table, one knee flung wide, bollocks straining against the trouser plaid. He knew about rock all right-both kinds. ‘You can bang at flint and quartz all you want,’ he would say, ‘with your big wild swings. But it’ll never let you in. It’ll not undress for you. You’ll break a wrist first, and blunt your instruments, and the Chancellor’ll have a fit, but you’ll not make a single clean cut. Now. Watch this.’ And he would gently tap and pull the hammer and the chisel, as if he was stroking himself off. First Lesson: brute force is more likely to shatter a thumb than damage an igneous block. Not until they understood the grain, the compound, curve, and tensile strength, not until they understood the inherent direction of matter itself, would they progress any further in sculpture (and life, boys and girls, and life!). Sculpture was about respect and intuition, collaboration. Sculpture was seduction, like sex with a young lady (plenty of which was had by the man, much to his wife’s dismay).
Peter’s time there would have been a waste were it not for him. He’d arrived in Liverpool with scholarship grades and a second-hand donkey jacket, proud son of a miner. He was now, officially, an academic and a painter, two anomalies in the Caldicutt family and proof of the new social mobility. His was a conventional grammar education; he respected the canon and the system that had enabled him, and he would become something of a formalist behind the walls of the studio. But he felt guilty: guilty for his library card, guilty for wanting to read and for his admiration of classical things. He was fashionably working-class, fashionable according to those who weren’t. Another form of pity, his old man would have said, another way of telling you what you are, and aren’t.
People expected him to be radical, representative, a spokesperson. People ennobled his upbringing, thought his duty was anti-establishmentarianism-popular word back then: they all had to know how to spell it. Never mind his interests. Never mind his freedom. The tutors wanted him to paint in black. They wanted Lowry, they wanted grit. He was back to the mines, back to square one. All he wanted was to smell those heavy, stitched-leaf books and paint the sea. Some bloody revolutionary.
But Dyas was something of an atavist too, for all his current record collection, his praise of contraceptives and new European architecture. There was room for all creeds in his philosophy-Baroque to Bauhaus, Mondrian to Mitchell. Didn’t matter, so long as it had integrity, something poignant to say. He’d stride into class, dirty blond curls bouncing round his head, cunny-lip goatee suggesting nothing less than the female labia, and the lecture would begin. The kicking shut of the door-boom. A fist pounding the table-bang. His releasing of the projector roll-wham, chugger-chugger-chugger. ‘So. You think Picasso didn’t have a clue about proportion then? Right. Put that pencil between your lips, Yvonne,’ he’d yell to the black-lashed kitten on the back row. ‘Go on, love, and give us a nice pout if you like. There you go. Lovely. Now the rest of you, the measurement from spirit level to eye…’
First on the dance floor, last man standing at the bar. An intemperate lover, except when he had loved Raymie. At the funeral four years later, divorced and wrung out from amphetamines, and from worrying about his wife’s casual, suicidal joyrides, Peter had missed the reconciliation he so badly desired. He had arrived at the cathedral half cut, and had spewed forth a beery eulogy, to the disgust of the family. ‘To my hero, to my bloody hero,’ and then he’d put his face on the dead man’s lapel and cried like a Spanish widow.
Dyas would get a kick out of this now, surely. Seduce your way out of this one, Petie, he would bellow, spreadeagling himself on a nearby boulder, and knocking the top off a bottle of stout. ‘Something of a predicament, eh. Something of a rum position, kiddo. Whatever shall we do?’ If he could decant the man from his memory into the world again, he would, no matter the bad history. The clouds have moved over and the darkness is intensifying. His mood of levity has left him and he is inalienably alone. Even the company of ghosts would do. Even if it meant standing trial, digging over the offences committed and hearing the charges read. Usurper. Bad friend. Thief. But the chance to apologise to Ivan-wouldn’t that be a fine thing, wouldn’t he risk unholy resurrection for it? The chance to say he was sorry, that he was cuntstruck, that he was too young to know better. Yes, he would raise corpses for it, Ivan’s at least, though maybe not the other one.
Maybe it’d all be water under the bridge anyway-so much time has passed. Maybe they’d just have a good old natter about the state of things. They could opine on various interesting developments. The Piss Christ. Mandela. Dubrovnik. Betting odds. Or they could reminisce like two old codgers. Remember the marble pissers in the Philharmonic? You could whizz like a king. Remember Dolores McArthur’s splendid tits? Oh yes. Epic. Maybe they would shake hands like decent friends, sit in the cold together and wait for the re-emergence of the stars. Dyas would be incisive, as always. ‘Hate to say it, Peter old son, but that sounds like rain.’
And true enough, there is an aspirin flavour to the air, an impending fizz. He can feel the first few drops arriving on his forehead, and then a steady patter begins. Peter loo
ks up. There is just blackness and water. A few minutes, and he is soaked through. The wound begins to nip and sting, and he knows then that the flesh is open. He tears a wet strip from the hem of his shirt and ties a tourniquet at the top of his calf. He doesn’t know how much he is bleeding. He doesn’t know if he is scratched, or if his life is draining away. He can smell minerals being released from the stones all around, the perfume of the mountain.
The Divine Vision of Annette Tambroni
When the blindness came it was not unexpected. Dottor Florio had outlined the disease. Also there had been a series of unfortunate events and Annette felt she was simply the next in line, like a domino toppling over because the one before it had toppled. First Signor Giorgio had died. He had not come to the school for many weeks. Signora Russo had told them that he was in grave health, and that they should pray for him to recover. They were to continue sketching, of course, and improving their skills. She herself would take the lessons, she said. She placed apples in front of them, and pieces of earthenware. They were to attempt to replicate the sheen and the depth. Once she sat in a chair at the front of the classroom and invited them to attempt a portrait, but there was too much laughter and nonsense, and after ten minutes Signora Russo stood up and invited them to paint their own hands instead.
Not long afterwards she announced at the end of class one day that Signor Giorgio had passed away. She took a handkerchief from her sleeve and pressed at the corners of her eyes and then she sneezed. ‘Children,’ she said, ‘we should not ever forget we were lucky to have received his wisdom. The rest of Italy has not understood Signor Giorgio well. Here, we might have turned our back on such a man. But he was, nevertheless, our comrade. Let us all remember how he graciously shared with us his time and his knowledge. Let us not be too sad.’ She blew her nose loudly. When she had recovered she folded her handkerchief into her blouse sleeve, and said there would soon be a museum dedicated to him in the city of Bologna, where he had once studied. When they were older they might like to visit it and admire some of his paintings and read about his life. He had survived very turbulent times, she said. She said those who thought he should not have received the Grand Prize were foolish. She drew out her handkerchief and blew her nose again. Then they sang the anthem, with Signora Russo conducting, and class was dismissed.
As Annette walked home an odd thought occurred to her. She wondered what had happened to Signor Giorgio’s big spectacles. Perhaps he’d had them on when he died, because sometimes death came right in the middle of what a person was doing, as it had come to her papa. Perhaps Signor Giorgio had died without his spectacles. Perhaps he had taken them off before he slept and he had died in his sleep. Annette often forgot to take off her glasses when she climbed into bed, and then she would wake up and the frames would have slipped and gored into her nose. If he had died without his spectacles, would he be able to see in heaven? Perhaps in heaven his eyesight would be perfect. She also wondered what he had heard and what he had seen when he died. A red field or the citrine wolf’s eye? Bluebottles buzzing? The keys of an old Olivetti striking against its ribbon? Perhaps a firework wailing? She wondered if in any way the Bestia had been involved.
Next there was a disaster at the greenhouses. A mysterious blight had arrived in one of the beds and quickly spread to others. Textbooks were consulted. Vincenzo, Maurizio and Uncle Marcello raked and pruned, uprooted bulbs, and burned piles of leaves. Dark grey, musty-smelling smoke rose from the gardens. The panes of the glasshouses were disinfected with vinegar and newspaper. But the blight continued. In the evenings Uncle Marcello would place a black-spotted leaf next to him on the table and he would study it while eating, sometimes turning it over by its stem, as if it might reveal to him its sinister properties and its transmission code. He telephoned the London botanical gardens and had a difficult conversation in broken English. Afterwards he looked at them and shrugged. After three weeks, he said there would be no profit that year. They would have to rely on the lavenders, the olive oil and the vegetables. Annette’s mother said it was a bad omen.
Perhaps it was, because then Vincenzo announced that he was going to South America. Their mother cried for a week, and said she had suffered enough humiliation and desertion already. She accused her son of keeping a whore, of stealing money from the family, of corruption and the abandonment of Italy. But the ticket was already bought and the suitcase packed. He shook hands with his brothers, kissed Annette and baby Tommaso, and unhooked Rosaria Tambroni’s clawed fingers from his wrists. ‘I will write,’ he said. He picked up his suitcase, put on his hat, and walked to the station.
Castrabecco fell into despair afterwards. For days nobody spoke. Nobody dared to sit at Vincenzo’s place–a black shawl was folded neatly on his chair, and the chair was turned to face away from the table. Even Mauri’s teasing and tickling and playfulness was suspended. Their mother lay in her room with the door locked. Twice there was the sound of violent weeping and something smashing. The family waited in abeyance. Finally it was Tommaso who broke the spell. He pulled himself up off the floor while no one was watching and pushed the mourning chair like a barrow around the room, making the noise of a purring, spluttering engine. He pushed it down the steps and out the door of Castrabecco into the courtyard, where it was left overnight in the rain. Annette retrieved the damp shawl and Uncle Marcello broke up the chair legs and tossed the pieces on to the smouldering bonfires of blighted leaves.
Then it was Annette’s turn. It began as a tickle at the back of her throat, as if a tiny funnel spider were spinning a web between her tonsils. When she swallowed, she could not get rid of the spider or its weaving. Other children were sick at the school. There was talk on the radio of a pandemic in the region, and the school was swiftly closed. It was too late. Annette’s temperature rose. Dottor Florio was called and he confirmed that a virus was in her system. ‘It’s in the glands, so we must watch her closely,’ he told her mother. ‘This could trigger the degeneration. I think you’d better prepare yourself, Rosaria.’
Annette was sent to bed to rest. It was hard to sleep, and then it was too easy to sleep and she slept for hours and hours. Once she woke and thought it was the middle of the night, but outside the shutters the sun was very bright. She got up confused. Her face, when she located it in the mirror of the bathroom, was strung with pink and white blotches. She looked like a wedding garland. Her hair was wet, as if she had just washed her face, and she felt very cold. The spider had completed its work. Her throat was closed up, full of silk threads, and she had to suck hard at the air. There was a deep tenderness under her arms, as if she had been rubbed with a leather shaving-strop right down to her ribcage.
She went to the kitchen. She wanted to sit by the warm fire, and explain about the spider living in her mouth. Her mother was speaking with Uncle Marcello, who was scrubbing his nails in the sink with a stiff brush. Tommaso was sitting on the floor at their feet. ‘She’s the only one in the family to be born with such a weakness,’ her mother was saying. ‘I don’t know where it comes from. Perhaps she remained in the womb too long. I don’t like to speculate, but you see pictures of those little animals from the forest with eyes like moons that only come out at night and cannot bear the daylight. Who do they remind you of?’ Uncle Marcello scrubbed harder at the dark red clay lodged under his nails. ‘Yes, she might be from another world, I suppose.’ Her mother sighed and then leant out of the shutters and shouted to Mauri to come in and eat. ‘Do I see cigarette smoke! Do I smell cigarette smoke? Come in immediately!’
Annette sat beside Tommaso. She was feeling very unwell. Her head ached and shivers kept flurrying through her heart. The floor was unsteady beneath her, as if it contained many new slopes and rises, as if all the tiles were tilting and tipping. ‘I see you are up, Netta. We should probably have kept you and Tommaso separate, but now it’s too late. Will you try to eat something with us?’
Over dinner there was a discussion about transplanting specimens. Uncle Marcello was co
nvinced his plan to bring in new varieties would be a success. ‘If the Duke of Tuscany can collect jasmine from China, then I am certain Marcello Tambroni can grow the plain English daffodil for Easter and encourage a few orchids next to the oven.’ His voice rose over the clinking of spoons in the tureen. Annette’s mother disagreed. ‘How are you going to pay for these imports? It’s a ridiculous plan-nobody will buy such a thing. Besides, the soil is too bitter here. They’ll die. We’ll go broke. This is a traditional business. Joseph would never have attempted something so risky.’ ‘But Joseph is not here, much as we all wish he still were.’ There was a pause. Her mother changed the subject. ‘This is not the issue. The issue is that the van will not start, again. We need to buy a reliable one. Andrea could order it from the factory-at trade price.’ Uncle Marcello made a snorting noise through his nose. ‘And we’ll pay for it with what? There is only blight in the bank account!’ Tommaso was stirring the sauce on his plate with a finger, and Mauri was catapulting pellets of cheese rind out of the window with a fork. There was a ping every time the metal handle recoiled.
Annette did not feel like eating. Very quietly, very softly, snow was beginning to fall in front of her eyes. She was sure it was only spring, but snowflakes were spiralling down. The green of her vest began to blanch. The golden spools of the lustreware began to fade. In her uncle’s wiry hair and along her mother’s cowled neckline delicate bolsters were forming, and on the table around the oil and the pepper pot white drifts were beginning to collect. ‘Is it wintertime already?’ she asked. Her voice sounded very far away. They all turned to her. ‘Annette looks like an icicle,’ said Mauri. ‘Oh, God! The child looks appalling!’ exclaimed Uncle Marcello. ‘Shall we call the doctor again?’ Annette did not hear anyone reply yes or no. The whiteness was now blowing fast and swirling around her. She was freezing one second, and too hot the next. Suddenly she slid sideways from her chair on to Mauri’s lap.