Aunt Margaret's Lover

by Mavis Cheek

  As she had achieved the Grand Order of Foolishness by reconstituting Mark, I did not doubt that she would all too soon be suffering once again. But I had to admire the professional in her: she was already in the process of turning it into a script. I did say, hesitantly, that perhaps Mark would find it a bit ... well, embarrassing to be the focus of such public scrutiny, but she gave me a pitying look. What, after all, did a small-time picture-framer - one who has lost her man to the fucking jungle - know about true creativity? Conjuring up Tintoretto was particularly hard after that; if Verity had stumbled at that point I would, quite easily, have kicked her. 'You are so brave,' was her parting shot and, as she turned on the path, she gave me a little moue of pity.

  Too much to swallow whole. 'How's the legs?' I called, for the entire street to hear.

  'Mark treats them with lavender oil for me every night. He is so sweet to me now . ..'

  Jeezus, I thought, the illusions and delusions we can create for ourselves. It made me and Oxford look like a small-time conjuring trick.

  But that little exchange was the first scratch on a bite which had been received a little earlier, when Saskia called. It had begun easily enough with her saying how much she was looking forward to getting home, how amazing that this time next week .. . etc. All the right stuff But then the change of emphasis - I knew her so well - which set my heart beating uneasily.

  She was looking forward to getting back and would look for a proper studio - just to work in - so that when her father came over he could stay in it. For the really exciting news was that Fisher had come up trumps, done his bit, and found a venue for the exhibition in the autumn. Time for healing now, was the message. So Dickie would be back - if only for the opening of the show - and it would take me back to other private views in the past, other back-slapping art events, where he had been fussed and fawned over and made drunk, while my sister cruised around with that wide, hurt smile on her face - making the best of it, always making the best of it. This time it would be worse, for it would be a hero's return. Raw, then.

  We took another bottle up to bed and sat up close to each other. 'Are you up to hearing a confessional?' I asked. I knew then that we would not make love again. It was a swap. If I was to unburden myself about the past, it would leave me too open. He was no longer my lover, this Oxford man, he had passed over to the other side. If he was to be anything at all, this Oxford man, he would now be my friend.

  So I told him. And suddenly it was as if the sky had been rolled back. 'So he's got away with it,' I ended. 'His daughter loves him without asking him to account for anything. Just like her mother did.'

  'You don't blame Saskia?'

  'No.'

  'Then why not give her this happiness too?'

  'Because I can't bear the thought that he should be so perfectly free.'

  'You're never free,' said Oxford. 'Believe me.'

  'Are you all right?' I said eventually.

  'I'm thinking,' he said. 'And drinking.'

  I flopped back on the pillow and raised my glass. 'Here's to success. You deserve it.'

  'Hmm,' he said, noncommittally. He put his arm round me and we chinked glasses. Then he pulled my head to his chest. 'I'm going to tell you something.'

  'Something you need to get drunk to say?' I quipped.

  'Yup. My confession now. You wanted to know about my past, and why Nicaragua. Pin back your ears.'

  This was the last thing I expected, the moment when both of us removed our masks and stepped in front of the closing curtain. I duly pinned back my ears and sat still and quiet, hardly daring to breathe.

  'I was still at architectural school when I met my wife. She was doing secretarial work, as a temporary, though she wanted to be a model. She was extremely beautiful and extremely young. She, her mother and her aunt came with her when they fled the Somosa regime and they lived in a scrubby little house in Hounslow. I was twenty-four. She was nineteen, and all the students fancied her like crazy. We were a randy lot - no one dared go into morning lectures without a hangover and tales of deflowered virgins. I thought it was great. She worked there and suddenly we all found reasons to visit the office. She had a pair of eyes that knocked us out, and she was just beautifully made. Tiny. Too tiny for modelling. No flirt, but friendly. We all tried to take her out but she wouldn't. We almost ran a book on who'd succeed. Salad days.

  'It went on for about a year like that and we were all due to leave. I got a bee in my bonnet about her. I had a way with women and it peeved me that she wouldn't even come out with me. It got to me. I began to court her in earnest. Flowers, walking her to the tube, giving her poetry - stuff like that. By now I was in a small practice so I bought her things. And I turned up at her house. Met the mother and the aunt, all that. Gradually Jani succumbed. But not in bed. It became such an obsession that I ended up marrying her. Everybody happy. I had something exotic to flash about with, and I messed about elsewhere. It was a great life. We were married for eight years. I didn't want children and I suppose I thought it would go on like that for ever - best of both worlds. And then she died. Brain tumour. Pop. Gone. It was only then that I realized what I'd lost.

  'At the funeral her mother told me all the things that Jani had kept to herself. Horrific truths. And I began to understand that thing Lorca calls duende, "the blade of pain". It was a fairly standard story for Nicaragua, probably for most places that are permanently at war. Raped at twelve; father shot in front of her; brothers missing; still some family left out there. Nobody ever spoke of it. I think she might have tried once or twice but I wasn't a good listener. I became one at her funeral, though. I knew that I, too, had betrayed her, and I began to grow up. Not at first but slowly. I had no idea what losing her would mean. Then a solution came - not a cure, but a solution.' 'Why did you advertise?'

  He shrugged again. 'The old me surfacing? Or maybe I just wanted to let a little affection in - and out - without harming anyone in the process. I wanted to do it honestly.' He smiled suddenly, slightly wickedly, and was much more like the old Oxford. 'Once I'd made my mind up to go away, I got a huge burst of positive energy - brain and body. It's a strong force.'

  He began to dress. 'Well,' I said, watching him for the last time. 'It doesn't seem to have done anybody any harm.'

  A dip in a pillow, two used glasses and two nearly empty bottles of champagne. The residue. 'Bye,' I whispered, as his cab turned the corner.

  It was about midnight. I sat on my bed, mopped at the tears, and wondered what to do. Sassy was coming home in a week. If I was going to make any reparations, it was better that I did so while she was still there. But not yet, I thought, not before I'd had a good stiff drink. Despite the solemn and dreadful warning of Verity, I needed a good stiff shot of something and went downstairs to get it.

  Chapter Eight

  Fisher was holding a large catalogue up to his face and above it his very blue eyes creased in mock fear. He backed away as I came into the room, feigning supplication. 'Are you going to hit me?' he said. 'You might like it.'

  'Tut, tut.' He laughed and put the catalogue down on his desk. 'People have a strange view of my sexual orientation. I don't like to be hurt, not at all.'

  'Neither do I.'

  'Neither does anybody, Margaret.' He sat down opposite me, gesturing to one of the chairs.

  'It's all right,' I said. 'I've spoken to Saskia. So long as I don't have to put him up when he's over I can tolerate it.' I sat down, crossed my legs, and gave him what I fancied was a penetrating look. 'It'll be quite a coup for you, won't it? Bringing Dickie back to London for his first show in however many years?'

  Fisher looked at his nails. 'It will,' he agreed, with great satisfaction.

  'And a father and daughter show will pull in the press and the punters.'

  'Most certainly. But Saskia is a good painter. Early days, but she is undoubtedly worthy of an exhibition with her father. His work is very fine. She sent me some slides.'

  'Did she, now?'

&nb
sp; 'She's been very professional in her approach. And determined. Especially determined that he should come back here to show again. If it hadn't been me, it would have been someone else. The bait was too strong. London is stagnant, longing for revivals, look at the sixties show. It will be good to put on something that looks back as well as forward.'

  He got up, went to a chest at the side of the room, and took out a file. 'Do you want to look at them?'

  'No,' I said.

  He removed a sheet of slides and held them up to the window. 'They are very good. Figures, quite monumental. They have something of Nash and Moore about them - but not derivative. The torso as hero - or heroine.' He gazed a bit longer. 'Quite, quite exceptional.' He held up another sheet. 'And these are landscapes - or rather snowscapes, done very recently, and some heads - Saskia, I think. Beautiful. Beautiful form, real feeling. The earlier ones, a series of heads .. . female . . . were not so good.' I could tell that he was genuinely caught up by them, no longer playing around. 'And these' - he held up another series - 'are Saskia's. She's begun by working from photographs, I think. Deadish. But then she's thrown out the snapshots and worked more freely - mostly drawings and gouache. Quite simple but very effective. Talented.'

  'We knew that before she went.'

  'Have a look?' he said.

  I crossed to the window and held them up. They were from photographs I knew very well - me, Lorna, Dickie, Sassy as a baby. Fisher was right: the initial ones were woodenly graphic, but most were very fine. I had to smile. 'Chip off the old block,' I said grudgingly. 'He was precocious, too.'

  Fisher drew his watch out of his waistcoat pocket. 'Julius will be here soon. And this time' - he raised a finger at me -'I want you to say nothing whatsoever. Especially nothing about the beauties of the masterly phallus. I don't think Linda will ever recover from that.' He chuckled. 'I'm not sure I will either. Just look cool. Unimpressed even.'

  'I always am unimpressed with Julius.'

  Fisher was an acute man. 'Did he make a pass? Tut, tut.' 'His wife didn't understand him.'

  Fisher laughed. He was pouring sherry and stopped to give me a look. 'She'll get her swimming-pool - and without touching a hair on the Mortimer collection's head. Well, not so's you'd notice.'

  I wandered around the room, sipping my sherry, leafing through old catalogues - Derain, Frink, Medieval Ivories, the Barron Collection. Even Fisher's catalogues were a collectable item nowadays. Part of me was still angry about Dickie, but part of me was curious.

  'Where will the show be?'

  'Ah!' he said, pulling something out of his antique plan chest. A real poseur in some respects, Fisher. 'West End. Cork Street, as a matter of fact. Oddly enough - and this was pure coincidence - we got the old Blake Gallery. Which is where, of course, this was shown.' And he heaved my Picasso portfolio on to his desk.

  'I remember it well,' I said wryly. 'Mrs M. gave her own private view there, with her electric wheelchair. It was chaos.'

  'Quite a girl,' he said. 'And quite an eye. Remember that Matisse head?'

  'Of course. The tender line.'

  He nodded. 'Indeed. The tender line. The girl was one of the Stein grand-daughters - patrons of his from the early years. Some say he was a dirty old man with her. Sherry?'

  Julius arrived, pink and flustered, having been - he said -caught in traffic. Since he had a smear of lipstick on his chin, and since it didn't seem to be his colour, I had a feeling he had been caught in something more than that. 'Oh, isn't Linda with you?' I said brightly. He said no, she was away with the boys. 'Ah,' I said, 'I .expect that makes you feel lonely. You've got jam' - I peered - 'or is it lipstick on your face?'

  He looked at me shiftily as he rubbed the mark away. My hearty kiss on both cheeks made him look only more uncomfortable. He gave Fisher a flat, square package done up in brown paper. Fisher took it and unwrapped it carefully. Inside, beneath two stout pieces of cardboard, was the framed drawing I had coveted, the Matisse Head of a Girl. I waited for him to expostulate, to sigh, to make one of his genuinely rapturous remarks, but bore in mind that I must not follow suit. In the event there was just a calm nodding and an offer to Julius of sherry and a chair. I longed to look at the head more closely, to see it the right way up, but stayed put.

  'Nice day for April,' I said to Julius. He grunted. 'Give your wife my love, won't you?' He crossed his legs and flicked some imaginary fluff from his knee. I wondered why he was here and why he had brought the Matisse. Art lives beyond the tawdry human ways from which it springs? Fisher and I agreed that often enough over a glass or two when the braying interior designers had gone home. Otherwise we could never walk through a cathedral, nor wonder at the Colosseum or St Mark's, for being conscious of where the loot to build it came from and how many died in producing the dream.

  Some papers were signed, first by Julius, then by Fisher, and then by me. At last I realized what was happening -and he had asked me to remain impassive? From the moment the blotting paper descended and the ink was dry I became the owner of the Matisse, and Julius and Linda Mortimer became the owners of the Picasso portfolio. Like swapping tinsel for gold - you can't eat either but you know which you prefer.

  'Hmm,' I said, looking at my new possession impassively, critically even. 'It'll go very well in the hall by the potpourri.'

  Fisher had the grace to turn away for a moment and affect a cough. Julius noticed nothing. He left the portfolio where it was and turned to leave.

  'Aren't you going to take it with you?' I asked.

  He shook his head. Why did he look so smug when the smugness belonged to me? 'It will be safe here,' he said, 'until the right time to sell.'

  'What about Linda's swimming-pool? Be simply awful for her if we get a good summer again.'

  'Work has already begun,' he said shordy, and escorted by Fisher, still in his Grand Consultant mode, he left.

  I ran my finger around the glass of the frame, following the line. Whatever else Matisse had done, this was pure enough to be holy.

  Fisher was not the man for kisses and hugs, so lunch seemed the best alternative. With champagne, of course, and with the drawing propped up on the chair next to us - the third guest, the most honourable. I wondered how he had persuaded them to part with it, for I knew very well that it was worth much more. He would not discuss the matter. Everything was perfectly in order, he assured me, the paperwork was quite legal, and neither the Mortimers nor Aunt Margaret had been dishonoured. It was only then that I realized he had made up the difference himself - which was why the swimming-pool was being built.

  He continued to refuse an explanation despite my questioning, so I vowed to ask Julius, at which point he got quite huffy and made to leave the table. I had to back down to keep his company. We looked at the girl, who looked back at us in innocence, with her infinitely tender, tender line.

  'Worth it,' said Fisher suddenly. 'Wouldn't you say? Despite any possible iniquity surrounding it?'

  I nodded. 'Worth it.' We chinked our glasses. I could not resist trying again. 'How much did you pay on top, Fisher?'

  He looked at me, sipping from his glass, the periwinkle eyes all impish again above its rim. 'Have you any idea,' he said, 'how much commission I stand to make when the sale of everything goes through eventually? And have you any idea how much I intend to make out of Dickie and Saskia's exhibition?'

  'I thought you had retired.'

  He winked. 'No, not quite. But I will after that lot. And handsomely. Now I suggest we change the subject. How is that chap of yours?'

  I told him.

  He was not very impressed. 'You don't seem at all good at keeping your men. Dickie was your lover once, I think? Before Lorna swiped him.'

  A direct hit. I don't think anyone else would have dared. I just stared at him as if he had smacked me.

  He tapped the picture. 'Life goes on, Margaret,' he said. 'As does great art.'

  As if that wasn't enough, the next day I received a card posted from Heathrow - a picture of C
oncorde - which said:

  These are the lines that follow on from yours:

  Be yourself.

  Especially do not feign affection Neither be cynical about love

  In the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass . ..

  Unnecessary. I had already spoken to Saskia. And, though briefly, to Dickie.

  Perhaps for Elizabeth also the masque, the games, the glory were unsatisfactory? Yes, she might strut out bejewelled to applause, but the pearls she wore were once the famed possessions of her cousin Mary. Avaricious disregard, or the tender link, memento mori? She signed the paper, certainly, but she also wept copiously when the news came from Fotheringay. Did she weep for the loss of a queen or for the death of a woman? Both, probably. And her mother was a third. Did she understand then why her father had also signed such a piece of paper? Or if not understand, did she forgive, if only a little? She did not keep Mary's crucifixes, although they too were beautiful and precious. Those she emphatically did not want; only the pearls. Poor Elizabeth, vain virgin of the baroque: the masque had to continue for she could not afford it to stop.