Henry would, she thought, have been just the father Daniel needed – and that was finally one thought too many for her.
PART IV
Greville Auctioneers, Friday 12th December 2014
Paintings and drawings by Nicholas Comyn, from the collection of the late Henry Jones
Lot no. 4: Cellist, 1993
This is one of several portraits Comyn painted of musicians. The face of the young female cellist is hardly glimpsed: she is shown side on, her body wrapped around the cello and her head bent to hear the resonances of the strings. Her hair – similar in tone to the cello – falls forward in a skein of bronze, introducing a sense of movement that brings this portrait vividly alive.
The setting is a small room rather than a concert hall, which contributes to the sense of intimacy – but even the painter is excluded from the world the cellist inhabits. One could argue that this is a depiction of music itself as much as a portrait, although the sensuality of the figure makes it impossible to disregard her as a presence. The fluid, organic rendering of the cellist is foregrounded by a rigid metal music stand, but it is not possible to decipher the music that sits on it.
Although there are strong similarities with the famous series Comyn painted of members of the Capella string quartet, this portrait is exceptional in its expression of musicality. Comyn was himself a competent cellist, and it is possible that he knew the subject of this portrait personally. The inclusion of certain objects in the composition – a letter thrust back into an envelope, a teacup on the floor – suggests a specific setting. In the mirror on the far left, a shadowy figure is just visible, hinting at the presence of another person in the room.
This painting was damaged at some point and subsequently restored. The site of the tear is just discernible as a straight line across the body of the cello and the cellist.
32
‘What a beautiful garden,’ Landon said, as Flora emerged from the back door with a tray. ‘I can imagine sitting just here all summer.’
It was a flawless day. Flora was pleased that Les Violettes was looking its best for him – and still more than a little amazed that he’d had time to come and visit her before flying home. She recalled their conversation in the interval of the concert, the way things had been simpler than she’d anticipated, almost as if this meeting had been planned.
‘I had no idea you were singing,’ she had said.
‘I had no idea you were in France,’ he’d replied. ‘I rang you last week, actually. At Orchards. I left a message.’
‘I’ve been here for six weeks now. I’m becoming quite the ex-pat.’
‘How delightful. Staying with friends?’
‘No, I –’ Flora had hesitated. The speed with which things had happened, plans had formed, had seemed indecorous once she had to explain it. ‘I’ve done a house swap,’ she’d said. ‘Just for the summer.’
People were moving back towards their seats by then. Flora had glanced over her shoulder, conscious of Francine hovering discreetly a few feet away.
‘Can we meet afterwards?’ Landon had asked.
‘Don’t you have to see the organisers? The other singers?’
‘Only for a drink.’ Landon had smiled. ‘Let’s make a plan.’
She’d rarely known him to be so impulsive: the version of Landon that had always – almost always – been just out of her grasp. He’d been playing a part that evening, of course – but then so had she, and in a strange way that had made things easier. They were Landon Peverell the celebrated baritone and Flora Macintyre the retired surgeon meeting on a public occasion, and those were roles they could carry off without a blink.
The odd thing was, she thought now, that although they’d known each other since childhood, they’d seen rather little of each other over the years: Landon had never been at anyone’s beck and call, except of course Rosanna’s. He was always dutiful on that front, Flora was sure of that, but loyalty to his friends had never been expressed through the frequency of his visits. But he had always made things better between her and Henry when he did come; that was an irony. He’d been common ground for them. Looking at him now, sitting in the garden she had got to know so well in so short a time, she felt a stab of grief for the years that had passed when she might have known him better.
‘I only have Vouvray,’ she said, setting the tray down on the stone table. ‘I hope that’ll do.’
‘My dear!’ Landon laughed, making a little parodic moue. ‘You are funny.’
‘It’s true,’ said Flora. ‘My landlord took me to buy some, and I’ve been drinking my way through it. Rather slowly, I might say.’
‘In that case I shall feel duty bound to assist.’
He smiled in the way he always had, lifting his head a little. Like a tortoise raising itself into the sunlight, Flora thought, though nothing else about Landon was remotely tortoise-like. He looked, just then, like the youthful Landon in the portrait by Nick Comyn, wearing a fur cape and a garish waistcoat to play Leporello. She imagined his face in a then-and-now photograph, his square cheekbones and his long nose unchanged, his eyes more serious. That much must be true of them all: the sobering effect of everything they’d seen. Everything they’d done, or not quite managed to do.
She hadn’t followed Landon’s career in detail, but she’d been aware of a few highlights, and then of the lack of them. There had been that ENO production, years back – Falstaff, was it? – that had been so hideously panned. Not Landon’s fault, but he’d caught the fallout, as Henry put it. Though of course that wasn’t the whole story.
She handed him a glass, and he tilted it towards her.
‘Well,’ he said, ‘I’m very glad to see you comfortably settled here. I worried about you, you know. What you’d do. This I wouldn’t have guessed.’
‘Life is full of surprises.’
‘I’m not surprised you nosed out this little gem,’ Landon said. ‘But I’m intrigued by your host. A man of impeccable taste, clearly.’
‘I could introduce you,’ said Flora. ‘But he’s at Orchards and I’m here, and then he’ll be here and I’ll be there.’
Landon looked at her for a moment.
‘But you hit it off,’ he said. ‘You must have hit it off rather well, to come up with this arrangement.’
‘It was my idea,’ said Flora. ‘I thought how much I’d like to spend more time here.’
‘I don’t blame you. If your landlord is as charming as his house you could do worse than install yourself permanently.’
Flora must have looked distressed, because Landon was suddenly contrite. ‘My dear Flora, I apologise. That was in bad taste.’
‘Yes,’ said Flora. And then, before she had time to think better of it, ‘How’s Rosanna?’
‘She’s well, thank you.’
‘Good.’
Landon hesitated for a moment, then he said, ‘Better these days, generally speaking. She’s painting a little.’
‘Good,’ said Flora again.
Flora had only met Landon’s wife a handful of times. She rarely accompanied him, either to concerts or to visit friends. But she knew Rosanna’s story – the stillbirths, the long course of depression. She’d had terrible luck, Flora thought, in everything except her husband. For twenty years now she’d lived in the cocoon she’d retreated to within a few years of their marriage: a life lived truly on the timescale of an exotic butterfly, born to flourish, to dazzle, for a day and a night. At least, Flora thought, there had been something solid about Henry, and their marriage, even at its most chaotic and difficult. Their lives had been fully lived. She was glad of that; glad she hadn’t traded in her own tokens for so little return.
‘I saw the girls at the Morris Prize show,’ Landon said.
‘How was it?’ she asked. ‘Tell me about the Bacchus.’
‘Quite startling.’ Landon raised his eyebrows. ‘She’s very good, you know. Alice. It’s very like him. Moving, too. And the cancer, of course.’
‘Wha
t?’
‘The cancer, on his chest.’ He looked at her. ‘You didn’t know about that bit?’
‘No.’
It was odd, Flora thought: it wasn’t that she’d stopped thinking about Henry over the last few weeks, but the pattern of memories had changed. She hadn’t thought about his illness for a while; it caught her off guard.
‘I’m sorry,’ Landon said. ‘That was clumsy, too. More clumsiness.’
Flora shook her head, but she didn’t ask any more. Of course Henry’s cancer hadn’t been visible, it wasn’t something you could sculpt, but she supposed that was a question of artistic licence. She of all people shouldn’t feel squeamish about representations of human flesh.
Landon put a hand on her knee. That was nice of him, Flora thought, but even so, some of the pleasure had gone out of the evening. She put down her wine glass, feeling a little wave of self-pity rising inside her.
‘I missed it, you know,’ she said.
‘Missed what?’
‘The cancer. He’d noticed a lump. I would have looked at it, but we . . .’ She laughed abruptly. ‘His mistress rang,’ she said, ‘at just the wrong moment. God knows which one, but I’d thought there wasn’t one anymore. I forgot about the lump. I didn’t – there was a froideur, after that. I didn’t see him undressed for quite some time. The next I heard it was invading the chest wall. There’s an irony for you.’
‘Several, I should say.’ Landon didn’t move, but she felt him come closer; felt a door opening between them. ‘Poor Flora,’ he said.
‘Life with Henry was all ironies,’ Flora said, ‘some more painful than others.’
‘You could have left him.’
‘For you?’ She hadn’t meant to say that: it felt as though the words had been sprung on her. And then she heard her voice again: ‘You know, for years I thought you were in love with me. It meant quite a lot, believing that. It wasn’t until –’
‘I was, in a way,’ he said.
She stared at him, astonished and angry and jubilant all at the same time.
‘What the hell does that mean?’
‘You chose Henry,’ he said. ‘I’m not a great romantic. You were both my friends; I put it aside.’
Flora was silent for a moment. The years seemed to swim in her head, that great stretch of years, and all the threads of emotion and experience they had contained. She could hardly tell, in the confusion of them, which thread she would pull out.
‘Your dedication to Rosanna has been pretty romantic,’ she said eventually.
Her heart fluttered in her chest. This was a forbidden subject: the extraordinary sacrifices Landon had made for Rosanna. She waited for him to react, but his expression didn’t change.
‘I’m glad you see it that way,’ he said.
‘I thought of you when Henry was dying,’ Flora said. ‘When I was looking after him. I thought of you and Rosanna.’
She felt shaky now, as though the last of the scaffolding that held her in place, held them both in place, had come away.
‘I’m glad I did it,’ she said. ‘Took early retirement, and had that time with him. It was – I loved him, you know. I really did.’
‘I never doubted it,’ Landon said.
‘I did. I doubted it all the time.’ Flora made a sound that was half laughter, half a groaning, animal noise of pain. ‘Those last few months were some of the best we had together. I had him all to myself. I used to think about that too: how shameful it was that I should triumph in my sole possession when he was dying.’
‘Hardly shameful to want to have the nursing of your husband to yourself. Lots of women wouldn’t have done what you did. He knew you did it for love.’
‘God, he was a swine,’ said Flora. ‘Why the hell did I have to fall for such a swine?’
Landon came and knelt beside her then and put his arms around her. She could imagine him speaking, saying things that were comforting or platitudinous or intended to make her laugh, but he said nothing more, and nor did she. Even though this was the moment, she thought. This was the opportunity to tell him. There was no doubt that was the generous thing to do – but it was more complicated than that, and she owed less to him than to others. She shut her eyes, keeping the words back and wondering how this moment would resolve, how they’d get back to normality from here, take up their wine glasses again and find something else to talk about. And then suddenly he was speaking.
‘It would be the easiest thing in the world to go upstairs now,’ he said, ‘and find our way into bed together. Twice in a lifetime would be forgivable, I think. But I don’t think we should do that, Flora.’
Flora opened her eyes in astonishment. It hadn’t occurred to her for a moment that they would end up in bed, but now he’d mentioned the possibility it seemed the right way, absolutely the right way, for the evening to end. Wasn’t that what he meant, in his roundabout way? Wasn’t it a proposition?
She would never have believed, either, that desire could be kindled so rapidly, from such an unlikely start. Not so much the prospect of pleasure as the identification of unmet need, she thought – but she was hardly thinking at all; there was hardly time to think.
‘Why not?’ she said. ‘Why on earth not?’
April 2014
‘Not God be in my Head,’ Henry says.
‘What?’
It’s a little while since he last spoke; Flora realises she must have dozed off. It’s very hot: she turned the heating right up this morning, and the sun is streaming through the windows now.
‘For the funeral. Not God be in my Head. Appalling piece.’
‘Well,’ says Flora, struggling to settle on the right tone, ‘I’m relieved you told me. It was right at the top of my list.’
Henry manages a smile. ‘You’re supposed to take me seriously. Prerogative of the dying.’
‘Take you seriously?’ Perhaps not the right tone; the navigable waters between the over-hearty and the sentimental or the querulous seem narrower than usual this morning. ‘Good Lord, Henry, where would we be if I started taking you seriously?’
‘That’s very unfair. I’ve always taken you deadly seriously.’
He coughs; not a violent cough, but it’s painful to watch, as though it might easily tear a hole in him. Flora wonders whether the heat is drying his throat. Perhaps she should turn the thermostat down. She stirs herself, preparing to get up.
‘Do you want anything?’ she asks. ‘Cup of tea?’
‘I mean it,’ he says.
‘I’ve got it.’ Flora smiles, patting his hand. ‘Not God be in my Head.’
Henry moves his head on the pillow. ‘Not that,’ he says. ‘I mean that I’ve always taken you seriously. Been your greatest admirer. I hope you know that.’
Flora looks at him, his face altered almost beyond recognition but those eyes, when he’s fully alert, still very much his.
‘I know,’ she says. ‘You’ve told me. You’ve often told me.’
‘No,’ he says.
He looks cross: he wants her to do more of the work in this conversation, Flora understands. He wants her to give him a break – to forgive him, even. She feels a prick of annoyance, a feeling she hasn’t had for some time. Isn’t she doing enough? Hasn’t she made enough sacrifices to be sitting here with him? It’s not like Henry to want to gloss things over. They’ve survived, all these years, on the finest of nuances, on tacit acceptance rather than pretence.
‘Flora,’ he says, ‘I’ve been very fortunate.’
Flora hesitates. In what way, precisely? she wants to ask. Fortunate in having me, or in having all the others as well? But he’s dying; she can’t say any of that. Or doesn’t want to.
‘Good,’ she says. ‘I’m glad. Let me make you a cup of tea.’
Before he can speak again she sweeps out of the room, the stiflingly hot room, and through to the kitchen. She finds, as she fills the kettle, that she’s trembling. It distresses her that she doesn’t know why: whether it’s the menti
on of Henry’s funeral, or his sudden desire to make amends, or to justify himself; whatever he hoped to do just now. That’s not the deal, she thinks. That sort of conversation has always been . . . And haven’t these last months been proof enough, anyway? Can’t that happiness be allowed to stand for – whatever it is that he wants to say?
As the kettle comes to the boil she stares out of the window. The piece of garden outside the kitchen is better tended than any they have ever had, this little area that was replanted after the building work turned it into a mud bath. The shrubs whose names sound to her oddly like diseases (hydrangea macrophylla, viburnum rigidum, rosa rugosa) are about to flower. Their foliage is thick with buds, waiting to reveal the colours neither she nor Henry have yet seen.
Godammit, Flora thinks. God bloody dammit. The thought of Henry speaking from the maw of death frightens her, but so does the idea of cheapening what they’ve been through by tying it up in a trite little parcel at the last, as if to prepare it for burial. So does the feeling that she’s expected to humour Henry, now, in a different sort of game.
She takes a teapot and cups out of the cupboard and puts them on a tray. Niceties she wouldn’t have bothered with before, she thinks, but there is so little left that she can do.
Henry’s eyes are shut when she goes back into the bedroom. Flora feels that icy plunge that has become familiar these last few days – although she knows about death, she reminds herself; she would recognise it – and then she puts the tea tray down and leans over to check the morphine pump. They have the minimum of medical paraphernalia, but its presence consoles her. Not just because it keeps Henry comfortable, she knows that.
‘Kitty’s coming later,’ she says, and Henry’s eyes flutter open.
Oh, there’s no hiding his preference now, Flora thinks. Poor Lou; Henry will never know that he should feel more for her, by rights. Rights never got much of a look in, though, in this family. No point in weighing her own part in that against . . . But she stops herself. God be in my head and in my understanding. No wonder Henry doesn’t want that sung at his funeral.
The Things You Do for Love Page 23