Amaryllis Night and Day

  ‘But when she beckoned, you didn’t follow.’

  ‘No, I was suddenly afraid, I don’t know why.’

  Our glasses were empty. We ordered two more half-pints and our lunches. Seamus smoothed down his baldness as he pondered what I’d told him. ‘I have no reason to think this, really,’ he said, ‘but I think you were wise not to get on that bus.’

  ‘You’re probably right. I’m glad I didn’t.’ I said no more about Amaryllis and switched the conversation to The Bridge of San Luis Rey. ‘I’ve just read it again for the fourth time,’ I said. ‘It’s a book that seems to say more to me each time. The part where he talks about La Perichole and Uncle Pio, how they were trying “to establish in Peru the standards of the theatres in some Heaven whither Calderón had preceded them” – that always moves me: the idea of humans dedicated to the impossible.’

  ‘Well, it’s more or less what makes the world go round, isn’t it,’ said Seamus, and we tucked into our lasagne and pizza. Was there, I found myself wondering, an impossibility about Amaryllis that I was dedicated to?

  Afterwards we went to Virgin in Oxford Street and bought various videos, some of which we’d already taped off TV but which we found, in their pretty boxes, newly desirable. When we parted at the Tottenham Court Road tube station it was late in the afternoon and I still wanted to go looking for Amaryllis but I decided to sleep on it so I went home and had a kip. I dreamt that I was standing on a deserted beach, looking at the sea and listening to the pebbles rattling and clicking as the tide came in. Very pleasant, very restful.

  11

  How Clever of God

  Thursday morning I looked at The Beckoning Fair One, my unfinished painting of the woman turning away from the viewer and moving towards the edge of a cliff. I’ve done a lot of thinking about the edges of cliffs; there are those made of earth and rock and there are the other kind, the jumping-off places that appear in one’s life from time to time. Sometimes the two kinds become one. After a while I took a palette knife and a turpentine-soaked rag and got rid of what was on the canvas and gave myself a new undertone on which to begin again.

  The beckoning fair one in the Oliver Onions story was a tantalising ghost who seduced a writer to the point where he went mad; this ghost was exacting in her demands but never to be fully seen, never to be grasped – nothing like the stodgy creature I had painted. All I wanted, really, was the image of a beauty who beckoned but was never attainable, a face that would haunt whoever saw it. I had no intention of leading the viewer over a cliff.

  Amaryllis had that air of unattainability. No one, I think, can be possessed by another person, but with her this was more evident than with other women I’d known. That unpossessability was what I wanted to get into my picture. The more I thought about it, the sillier any attempt at a story-telling painting seemed. A straight portrait of that face that now haunted my waking hours as well as my sleep – that was what I wanted to do. Would she be willing to sit for me? Slow down, I told myself. Don’t rush it. I seldom take my own advice.

  I got through my teaching day uneventfully and decided to go looking for her. Would she be giving a lesson? Was she through for the day? So far our only two venues had been the Science Museum and the Greenfields Café. I closed my eyes and let her image come up like a print in the developing tray. Everything else went away and I saw her face half-turned from me, saw the dear curve of her cheek in the shade of the Greenfields Café awning.

  Into the Underground I went, heading for the Eurydice who would lead me out of darkness. Odd – I hadn’t realised how much darkness there was in my life until I met Amaryllis. Out I came at South Ken into the sunshine, the tourists and the rest of it. I squeezed through the queue at the bus stop, crossed the road between oncoming cars, strained my eyes for a sight of her, and there she was at the same table we’d sat at three days ago. She grew larger in my eyes and I was astonished at how much more there was to her face than I’d remembered – it was quite complex in its beauty, full of subtleties not noticed at first glance. Perhaps that’s why Waterhouse had painted so many similar faces that were all different one from the other. Her T-shirt had words today:

  How clever of God to put two holes in the skin of the cat exactly where the eyes are.

  Georg Cristoph Lichtenberg

  ‘I’ve got that one marked in my Penguin Lichtenberg,’ I said, ‘but it’s: “He marvelled at the fact that cats had two holes cut in their fur at precisely the spot where their eyes were.”’

  ‘I like mine better,’ she said. ‘Where’ve you been the last three nights?’

  ‘The Brass Hotel and Venice and a little shack in the middle of nowhere. I tried to find you but I had no luck.’

  She looked a little sceptical at that. Now that I thought of it, I hadn’t tried all that hard. I seemed to lack tenacity in my dreams. ‘I’m sorry,’ I said. ‘Were you stuck on that bus all three nights?’

  She nodded. ‘I had to kick a few people in the face,’ she said, ‘but I got through it all right and I woke up every time before we got to Finsey-Obay.’

  ‘What’s there?’

  ‘Don’t know. I’ve never been.’

  ‘How come you’re afraid of it then?’

  ‘I never said I was afraid. Haven’t you ever had a bad feeling about some place you’ve never been?’

  ‘I suppose so. I wish I could have done better with my dreaming. Maybe I’ll be fourth time lucky.’

  She seemed untroubled by my failure. ‘Your heart’s in the right place but you’re not going to be able to pull me by yourself, I can see that.’

  ‘Have you met anyone who could?’

  ‘No, but I thought you might just have the necessary weirdness in you.’

  ‘Have you always been able to do it?’

  ‘No, it started with the menarche, when I was thirteen. I tuned into my English teacher and pulled him into quite a hot little love scene. The next day he couldn’t look me in the eye.’

  ‘Have you done a lot of it since?’

  ‘Let’s not lay out our whole histories right now, Peter, OK? Let them open little by little like water flowers as we go on.’ She was only twenty-eight, as I found out later, but sometimes she made me feel like a boy receiving instruction from a teacher.

  I got the coffee and brought it to the table; while we drank it she was looking into the middle distance and apparently turning something over in her mind. At length she said, ‘If I come to your place to spend the night is there somewhere I can sleep other than in your bed with you?’

  My heart leapt up. To have her under my roof through the night! ‘You take the bed, I’ll take the couch.’

  ‘Let’s do it the other way around. You should have the more comfortable place to sleep because your part of it’s going to be more difficult than mine.’

  ‘You’re coming to my place to help me pull you into my dream?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘Actually I fall asleep faster and sleep better on the couch. That’s my napping place, you see – it’s illicit.’

  ‘OK, we’ll do it that way then.’

  I rested my right elbow on the table with my forearm up as if we were going to arm-wrestle. She did the same and we locked our fingers together. Everything went into freeze-frame; neither of us said anything. After a while I suggested drinks so we headed for the Old Brompton Road. Holding hands and looking forward to dreaming together while sleeping apart.

  12

  Cliffs and Edges

  The Zetland Arms dates from a time well before people walked the streets talking into little telephones. On one of the double doors is a brass plate with plain words:

  PERSONS WEARING

  SOILED OR DIRTY CLOTHING

  ARE NOT WELCOME

  Having said that, it offered, once the door was opened, a cool and comforting arrangement of lamps and dimness, smoke and shadows, and from the table where we sat down, a view of daylight through a dark and shapely art nouveau wooden arch and the doub
le-arched glass panels of the doors. The green, gold, and scarlet floral arabesques of the curtains claimed kinship with William Morris; the carpet had heard of Kelim. Etched glass mirrors and machines of many dancing colours varied the background while a juke-box maintained a modest thump-and-whine continuo to the gentle prevailing hubbub. Some of the figures were silhouettes, others were in chiaroscuro; sometimes a hand came out of the shadows into the light; sometimes half a face. On the wall an old clock, once ticking and tocking courtesy of the Brewery, Reading, looked down indulgently, having stopped at midnight unknown years ago.

  The only vacant table was close to a clean-shaven old man whose nose looked as if it had been broken more than once. He was wearing pin-stripe trousers with red braces, a short-sleeved collarless white shirt, and well-shined black shoes. The braces were the kind that button into the trousers. Tattoos on both arms honoured Mother and the Union Jack. He was nursing a pint while an old bull terrier bitch lay near his feet and snored. An empty willow-pattern bowl was near her head. ‘Her name’s Queenie,’ he said. ‘Born here, bred here, worked hard all her life.’

  ‘Doing what?’ I asked him.

  ‘Watching and waiting.’

  ‘For what?’

  ‘Things to get better.’

  ‘That’s not an easy job.’

  Queenie growled a little in her sleep.

  ‘She’s worn out,’ said her master. ‘Bloody yuppies.’ He subsided into his pint.

  ‘Bitter?’ I said.

  ‘With good reason,’ he said.

  ‘I meant your pint. What’re you drinking?’

  ‘John Smith, same as Queenie.’

  ‘What’ll you have?’ I asked Amaryllis.

  ‘Whatever you’re having,’ she said.

  I got a pint of bitter and a large whisky for the old man and a pint for Queenie and a pint and a large whisky each for Amaryllis and me.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the old man. ‘What’s the occasion?’

  ‘This lady is drinking with me for the first time.’

  ‘Well done you!’ He raised his glass to us. ‘May it be the first of many. If God had meant people to stay sober he wouldn’t have created malt and hops.’ He poured Queenie’s drink into her bowl and at the sound she awoke, sighed, and began to lap it up. ‘You don’t look like a yuppie,’ said her master kindly.

  ‘Actually I’m not all that young and I don’t seem to be moving upward.’

  ‘I’ll drink to that,’ he said, and raised his glass again. Queenie stopped lapping and growled.

  Amaryllis seemed preoccupied. ‘See you in my dreams,’ I said. That got a smile, then she drank about half her whisky and began to cry into the rest of it.

  ‘What is it?’ I said. ‘What’s the matter?’

  She wiped her eyes, blew her nose, finished the whisky, started the beer, and reached for my hand. ‘I always spoil everything,’ she said.

  ‘What have you spoiled?’

  With her free hand she made a wide gesture as if to sweep about half the room out of the way. ‘Everything I’ve touched so far.’

  ‘Are you going to tell me more?’

  ‘Not yet. You haven’t got my last name or my address or phone number and I’ve told you almost nothing about me because I’m afraid of what we’re getting into. I’ve tried to find others who could go with me in both lives but it’s never worked out. Maybe it will with you but I’m terribly afraid of failing again if I try to go too fast and I don’t want to get on that bus without you. What scares me is that I think maybe the dream life is the main one and this other one is just what fills in the time in between. Are you with me?’

  ‘Amaryllis, I love you.’ I hadn’t meant to say that, it just slipped out. I’d been in love with her since I first saw her at the Balsamic bus stop.

  ‘Oh, Peter,’ she said, and grabbed my hand and kissed it. ‘Don’t love me yet, not so soon – maybe not ever. If it happens too fast it’ll end too soon with a big drop, like walking off the edge of a cliff, when …’

  ‘When what?’

  ‘When you see me as I really am.’

  ‘And how are you really?’

  ‘Not to be depended on, and maybe you’re not either. Some people need to be in love and I think you’re one of them. So am I, but after a while we’ll both fall out of love, and if I do before you do it’ll be a terrible drop for you.’

  ‘I’m not going to fall out of love with you, Amaryllis.’

  ‘You’ll love me for ever, will you?’

  Lenore came to mind and I had no immediate answer.

  Amaryllis, reading my face, said, ‘Have you ever promised to love anyone for ever?’

  ‘Yes, but it wasn’t the same.’

  ‘How was it different?’

  ‘In too many ways for me to explain. Amaryllis, don’t cross-examine me like this – you can feel how I feel, I know you can.’

  ‘I think you probably feel the way I do: I love being in love but I don’t know what love is. Is it like fireworks that you see in the sky, then the sky goes dark again and there’s nothing but the smell of gunpowder? I’ve never stuck around long enough to find out what comes next. Have you?’

  ‘How I’ve been in the past isn’t how I am now.’

  ‘How are you now?’

  ‘In love with you. You’re different from anyone I’ve known before and that difference has changed me. Whether you believe that or not I can’t alter the way I feel, so we might as well relax about it and just go on as we’ve been doing. When there’s no more ground under my feet I’ll do the big drop or whatever.’

  ‘Have you ever given anyone that big drop?’

  ‘Wasn’t it you that said we should let our histories open little by little like water flowers?’

  ‘You’ve answered my question. People do it to each other all the time. The frog said he’d turn into a handsome prince if the princess kissed him but the princess said she’d rather have a talking frog.’

  ‘You have dashed my hops.’

  ‘So how do we get through the hours from now until dream-time?’

  ‘Hang on,’ I said, ‘we’re empty.’ I stood up to get refills but as I did so the old man appeared with two pints and two large whiskies on a tray which he set on the table.

  ‘Happy days to you and the young lady!’ he said, raising his glass as he sat down again.

  ‘And to you and Queenie!’ I said as we raised our glasses to him. I noticed that he hadn’t got refills for himself and I feared that I’d potlatched him into a gesture he couldn’t afford.

  ‘When I tuned in to you I wasn’t thinking ahead,’ said Amaryllis. I was desperate for someone to connect with, I had a good feeling about you, I pulled you into my dream and here you are up to your neck in my weirdness.’

  ‘It takes two to make this particular weirdness, Amaryllis. I’m not sorry to be part of it. Are you sorry you pulled me?’

  ‘Actually, no.’

  ‘There,’ I said, ‘see how easy it is to get the bullshit out of the way?’

  ‘You Americans – so direct.’

  ‘Now then, about getting through the hours: we can have something to eat and then go to my place and watch a video until it’s late enough to go to sleep. Or we could go right to my place and order something in and watch two videos before bedtime. Or maybe you’d let me do some sketches of you?’

  ‘Sketches for what?’

  ‘For a painting of you.’

  ‘Maybe that’s a good idea – if you look at me long enough you’ll stop seeing the Pre-Raphaelite nymph. Let’s go to your place and order a pizza and do sketches and a video until it’s time to get started on the dreamwork.’

  While we were finishing our drinks the old man picked up Queenie’s empty bowl and she awoke with a grunt. ‘I’d better get her home while she can still walk,’ he said. ‘It was nice meeting you; good luck to you both.’

  ‘And to you,’ we both said as Queenie lurched to her feet and padded after him into the unblinking sun
light. The way the two of them walked made me think there was nobody waiting at home for him and Queenie.

  13

  Nice One

  Amaryllis wanted to see the studio before we did anything else. She walked all around it like a cat sniffing out a new home and as she did so I was newly aware of the smells of my workplace which was my main living-place: turpentine; linseed oil; damar varnish; canvas; gesso; hardboard; the new wood of stretchers; the paint on my palette; the musty cushions on my napping couch; the evaporated whisky dregs in unwashed glasses; mouldy cups of coffee; and the pong of solitary hours.

  She opened the doors to the balcony, went out and had a good look up and down the street where the only action was that of the builders on the scaffolding two doors down and the sound of their drills and Capitol Radio with the revenant voice of Mick Jagger singing ‘I Can’t Get No Satisfaction’. She glanced up at the sky in a weatherwise manner and I wondered if she had a knotted handkerchief for summoning the winds.

  She came back in and pulled canvases out of the rack and studied them critically. Ordinarily I’m moderately arrogant but seeing the paintings through her eyes I wondered if I was as good as I needed to be. After a while she said, ‘There’s a lot of darkness in your paintings.’

  ‘There’s a lot of darkness in everything.’

  She read notes that I’d written to myself and pinned to the corkboard. There were two or three pen-and-ink sketches for the version of The Beckoning Fair One that I’d scraped.

  ‘She’s moving to the edge of a cliff?’ she asked me.

  ‘That’s what used to be on the canvas that’s blank now.’

  ‘Why’d you scrape it?’

  ‘It wasn’t right.’

  ‘Wasn’t right for her to go to the edge of the cliff?’

  ‘Wasn’t the right woman.’

  ‘Who’ll the right woman be?’

  ‘I’ll know her when I see her.’ The late-afternoon light was gilding her with faint music and magic spells. ‘Sit on that stool, Amaryllis, and let me draw you.’