The place was a mess and I needed to tidy, and I would tidy, just not then, not when I was remembering something, and not when I was famished. I vaguely considered going out to the Café of Madam Tweed but the weather was so foul, so blustery and wet, that I put together a slice of toast, a packet of crisps and a cup of tea, saying goodbye to the last of the bread and milk. I sat at the table and turned the mirror over. I had already known what I was going to find in the up-above. I had noticed it on that second ascent to the attic, when I retrieved the auction-house receipts, and I had seen it again, a few days ago, in the church at Barbroke. Flowers blossomed from the handle, pressed in silver, bruised with tarnish, a long way from the purity of white marble. I wondered how it, too, had ended its life in the remains of Matthew Taylor’s effects.
A knock at the door made me jump. It was Alison. She stood in the porch, sniffing and blowing her nose. An etiolated thing at university, grown thin and wiry from late-night darkness and smoke-filled rooms, her features had softened, and she remained thankfully free from the air of fatalism and resignation that I saw developing in other friends. Her blonde hair was slightly darker, and there were the beginnings of lines at the corners of her mouth, but she still possessed the same smile, which privileged the left side of her face over the right. True, I had seen her recently, holding grapes and hopes for the future, but these changes struck me anew, as though we had parted at graduation and were freshly reunited at some overpriced fund-raising dinner.
Alison took on an air of seriousness with which she seemed ill at ease. I listened to her expressions of concern, which flowed with all the stiltedness of social niceties, however sincere their emotional origins. The real tension came when she tried to drive the conversation towards the general everyday, but away from my everyday. I assured her that I was coping and would be just fine.
When she noticed the painting she asked if it belonged to me and I told her that it did, and that I was researching its provenance. I did not ask her for her opinion, but I received it. It was one area in which she could engage me without the need for some desperate formulation of plausible pretence.
“So, late nineteenth then, I’m guessing. Pre-Raphaelite-y. Not bad, but not great. Romantic mediævalism, chivalry. Something Shakespearian. Or Malory? Morte d’Arthur. Grail legends. That sort of thing.”
I nodded. “That sort of thing.”
“Well? Where did you find it?”
“We bought it in an auction over near the coast. It’s late nineteenth, as you say. I’m not sure who painted it. The faces seem to have been added late in the process. White ground visible in places at the edge of the canvas. Copal varnish. That’s just a guess. The usual.”
Alison let out an “mmm” of agreement as she walked around the painting.
“Subject?” she asked, but did not wait for a reply. “The foreground figure, the one looking out to the right, he’s—”
“She,” I interrupted, and regretted my correction.
“She? I suppose you could be right, yes. The curve of the tunic over the chest? She seems resigned to… What? Something’s coming. And the other, how does she look to you? Beseeching? Reflective? Yes, reflective. She’s not really looking out at the viewer. She’s not really looking at anything. She’s lost in her own thoughts. She’s trapped by them.”
“I really thought she needed my help.”
“Your help?”
“Just someone’s, I suppose. I think she is our invitation to become part of the story.”
“What story, though? What did the auction catalogue say?”
“It must have said the same as the receipt. A late-nineteenth-century piece, artist unknown.”
“Okay. What do you say?”
I was beginning to feel as though I were being cross-examined. Soon she would shine a desk lamp into my eyes and I would give in and share everything with her and lose my Penny and Diana. Exhalation. Everything started to rush at me. I told myself that she did not know anything and that whatever I told her was her truth and she would be fine with it.
“Anna? What do you think is going on?”
“Well…” I took a breath and composed myself. Alison was wearing her unease again. “You’re probably right that it’s Shakespeare or something similar, but I’m not sure what. I think they’ve been there for a while, because of the burnt-out candle. They’re waiting. They’re waiting for an ending.”
“An ending?”
“Yes. Whatever’s going to happen, they believe it will be the end of something. The figure in the dress is resting on her love for the last time. That’s what her eyes are saying. If you’re right that they aren’t looking out at us, it’s not just because she’s lost in thought, it’s because she cannot see, would rather not see, anything of her future. And the nearer figure, the one in the tunic, is dispassionate, because she sees no other way to face whatever’s coming. Or if she does, she doesn’t want to show it to her lover.”
Alison looked at the picture again.
“Yes,” she said, “you could be right. Or wrong. It’s hard to know without more information.”
I had not lied about the receipt. There was no title given.
“I’m not sure we’re supposed to know,” I said. “We’re each supposed to construct a story of our own. It’s a single frame from a film.”
“But a film has a script, a story it tells. It might be ambiguous, but there’s a core narrative that drives each frame. Are you trying to talk about abstraction?”
I remembered having these types of debate at college, late into the night, fuelled by coffee and cheap alcohol. At some hour the audience would dwindle, plod home, leave the world to darkness and to me. There were never any resolutions. The system would have collapsed if we had ever reached a solid conclusion. People would have become worried about making a contribution, about sounding foolish. In the cottage, talking to Alison, that was exactly my worry: that, and her thinking me somehow incapable.
“It’s more than abstraction,” I said. “It’s recognizing the possibilities within figurative art. Yes, it’s limited, informed by, prescribed by the image, but it’s still there.”
Alison narrowed her eyes a little but said nothing. I could not tell whether she thought what I was saying was obvious or incomprehensible. I pressed on.
“Look. It’s a cliché, a picture paints a thousand words. And it does. It does that easily. It would take at least a thousand words just to cover the detailed visual content of the painting. But there could be thousands upon thousands of words spent on its meaning and message, yes?”
Alison nodded. She pulled a dining chair from under the table and sat down.
“But it only takes a few words, a title, to close it all down. Those words force a specific meaning onto the picture, more than it shows. Suddenly the man in the mirror is the newborn child’s father. The man on the bed is a dead poet. That’s fine. But it steals a thousand other meanings. It’s personal to the producer, and impersonal to the viewer. All I’m saying is, maybe the painter didn’t want to do that, didn’t want a figurative painting to become a narrative painting. Or did, but wanted it to show your narrative, or mine. Finding out more is precisely what you shouldn’t do if you want to understand.”
And even as I said it I knew that I was speaking for Taylor, not for myself, and that only Alison retained a genuine ability to impose herself onto the picture. If Penny were to remain mine she had to be a painting, not a photograph, and yet I was carving away my own chance of ambiguity, hacking at it, day by day, diary entry by diary entry, inexorably.
“Yeah. But that’s nothing new,” said Alison. “It’s Gombrich’s ‘beholder’s share’, or the ultimate elliptical narrative. Everything removed but that single frame. We spent an age on this stuff, remember? I wrote a god-awful essay on it and you brought schnapps to my room, for consolation.”
I did remember, but it was not like this, it was not personal, or important, or mine. I could feel myself getting upset. Alison contin
ued.
“Besides, I know you. You’ll discover every last detail and then it’ll be an Erased de Kooning Drawing in oils.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“You know. Robert Rauschenberg. Nineteen fifty-something.”
I was starting to get annoyed.
“Assume I don’t,” I said.
“Rauschenberg has been painting his white canvases. The white ground of your Pre-Raphaelites, but without any more paint on top of it. Roughly.”
“Roughly.”
Alison paused, but I said nothing more and she hurried to fill the dead air between us.
“But he loves drawing, Rauschenberg, loves it and wants to capture it in the white-paintings series. So… Should I carry on?”
I nodded.
“So, he tries drawing on paper and rubbing it out, but all he ends up with is an erased Rauschenberg drawing. He knows that somehow that isn’t right. What he needs to do is begin with art, art with a capital ‘A’, and who better than Willem de Kooning? Big artist, huge name. So he goes to see him—”
“He goes to see him with a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and hopes he won’t be at home, so that the art can be a piece de Kooning never even drew because he was away when Rauschenberg called.”
“So you do know it?”
“I know it. I just don’t see what you’re getting at, Alison.”
“Well, de Kooning agreed, right? Even if he was a little reticent, he agreed. He gave Rauschenberg a piece he considered important, and something that would be hard to erase. Charcoal, paint, pencil, crayon. It took Rauschenberg a month.”
“And? What’s your point?”
“There’s no room left for your construction of narrative, Anna. The Erased de Kooning is a blank canvas, well, blank paper, but the narrative is defined by the process which brought it into being. It cannot escape its creation story. And that’s what you’ll do to this painting.”
She pointed over to Penny and Diana. They rested quietly on their bed, untroubled by the discussion, however personal it may have become.
“You’ll define it by the story of its creation,” she said. “That’s not a bad thing, nor good. I’m just warning you.”
“Do you know what Rauschenberg said when he was asked how he saw the finished piece?” I asked.
“No.”
“He said it was poetry.”
Alison studied me. She was trying to read my emotions, I was sure, even as I tried to keep them unwritten. She shrugged.
“Yeah. Okay. Right,” she said. “Why don’t we just say it’s Shakespeare for now?” She laughed.
I laughed, too. I could not help myself. It had been too long and I could not fail to take advantage of the opportunity. I sat on the couch and Alison joined me, sideways on the cushions with one foot tucked underneath her and the other resting on the floor. She took my hands in hers and explained that she was going to help with the move back to the London flat. I had always known there would be an end to the cottage. She asked me if I would like help packing. I told her I could manage.
Vincent left his bedroom, the one in Arles—lemons and lilacs—for an asylum in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence, in 1899. I left mine for London, on a Sunday, when Alison returned in her red car; left with purples and yellows, and with Penny and Diana on the rear seat. On Monday Alison and I visited a church, but we did not stay long, and left early, without farewells.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Monday, 23rd January, 1888
It is three days since I returned to college, and I do not think I have ever found Oxford to be so drab and dull. Elizabeth has been a friendly presence, of course, though she has become distinctly reserved in my company. I suspect that she has guessed the nature of my relationship with Mr. Taylor, but has neither the evidence to support her belief nor the backbone to raise the matter with me.
Mrs. Taylor remains inseparable from life at college. She and I are perfectly civil to each other, but nothing more. She would seek to expose me as some sort of fallen woman were it not that, in doing so, she would condemn herself by association, and Lady Diana, too.
It has hardly stopped raining for more than an hour since I arrived. Most of my time has been spent alone, in my room, reading in preparation for the start of this term’s lectures. Occasionally I have been distracted by the new—that is, the older—Warber, not for its content but for its existence as an object and a gift. I left the second edition with Father, giving its fragility and need for protection as my reasons. He declined to accept my bootlaces, not feeling they were quite proper for the purpose of bookbinding.
I hold the lock of hair between thumb and forefinger, wondering to whom it belonged. Hannah? Or Warber himself ? I must find something for Diana, to repay her the kindnesses of last term and the New Year. She should be arriving today, but since she is not lodging here in the college house I am not sure I shall see her until later in the week.
What of Matthew? Away from Barbroke, back within the familiar stones of Oxford, I am afraid that I may have jeopardized the relationship which he and I have allowed to form between us. I worry that Diana sees Matthew as Paris to her Romeo, but perhaps her last letter is more representative of a calmer demeanour than the jealous tantrum thrown at Barbroke. A mash is, after all, just a mash. She may be spooney on me, but she must see that we are of an age when these sentiments begin to gutter and die, and the realities of life take hold. I have the perspective of boarding-school, which she lacks, and therein lies the difference.
Matthew left a note for me. He seems to assume that I shall always be at college, able to receive his letters before his wife sees them and we are discovered. Unless, that is, he is indifferent to the possibility; but I cannot believe that to be the case as he takes the trouble to disguise his handwriting on the envelopes, however ineffectually. To date, however, we have been fortunate. He tells me that he has recovered from his pangs of self-doubt, and wishes to arrange further sittings. He was also kind enough to say that he has missed the pleasure of my company over the past weeks and is looking forward to our spending more time together this term. I replied yesterday afternoon to say that I should be delighted to sit for him again, but must wait until Lady Diana returns before making a commitment to precise dates and times.
My reply was the poorest of compositions. I struggled to express my feelings for him whilst simultaneously adopting an air of one who has been wronged. In one line I became too sentimental, and in the next too formal; in one thorough, in the next perfunctory. I am reminded of my attempts to write to Diana after my departure from Barbroke. I considered beginning anew, or even postponing the writing until today, but it was late and I doubted I should make a success of it under any circumstances. I hope to hear back from him later in the week.
Diana departed mere moments ago. To my great delight she called on me after dinner. She came into my room in a whirlwind of furs, which she proceeded to slough and throw onto the bed. She lay upon them, looked at me—I was still sitting at my desk, not having had opportunity to rise—and said, in a most affected voice, “Darling Penny! You must tell me all the news.” Then she began to giggle and patted her hand on the coverlet. I sat beside her and she clasped my hands in hers and told me that she had missed me terribly and was so relieved to be back in Oxford with me. Other than a single “Diana” when she had first come through the door I had not said a word until this point, and when I did begin to speak I imagine I must have sounded like an idiot. My exact words were not much distant from, “I… You… When did you… I am so glad… Diana.” She rolled over onto her side and curled herself around me so she could look up at my face. She had, she said, come straight to college directly her bags were off the carriage at her Oxford place. Everything at Barbroke had been a bore since I left, and she could not bear the thought of one more evening without “the incomparable delights of my companionship.” I offered her tea. I think this must have offended her or, more precisely, its being a substitute for a more intimate response offended her.
She sat up sharply and asked if I were not truly happy to see her. Thankfully I had had sufficient time to muster some degree of coherence, and I reassured her that indeed I, too, had been waiting impatiently for our reunion and was simply taken aback at her sudden arrival. This seemed to calm her. She leaned towards me and rested her head on my shoulder as she had done at the temple.
I had no real news to tell her. Nothing of interest has happened to me since I left Barbroke. I told her that she would not want to hear my stories of dinners with aunts and afternoons in the company of young cousins who live only to play at endless games of hide-and-seek. Diana repeated that her life had been much the same over the past weeks, and whilst I do not doubt the veracity of her account, her dinners and afternoons must have been on a far grander scale. She said nothing at all about the memorial service for her brother. If she wants to tell me of it then I am sure she will do so, just as she took me to the church when she was ready. We talked a little of the term ahead, of our hopes for our education, and of the events which we might attend, of which there were few for which we expressed real enthusiasm. We spoke of the University Galleries and our lectures, of Barbroke and that night in the Temple of Minerva.
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