The Walking Stick

  CHAPTER TEN

  While I was sitting on the Saturday morning, he said: ‘I’d like to tell you about Lorne.’

  ‘Oh . . . It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It matters to me. I want you to know about it.’

  ‘She was five feet four and dark, with blue eyes.’

  He painted steadily for a minute, refusing to be put off. ‘And twenty years old. She’d come from Cork and had got a temporary job as a receptionist to a coloured dentist in Jamaica Road. I had a toothache and went along to the first brass plate I could find. She let me in.’

  I stirred.

  ‘Don’t move. It’s just great as it is . . .’ He picked up a tube of paint and squeezed some on to his palette. He dabbed it with a brush and began to mix. ‘She was horribly lonely, see? She couldn’t bear London. She knew nobody out of all the millions. They’d no friendliness, she said . . . I suppose it attracted me, her being like that . . . She was pretty in a way. I was her only real friend in London, she said. One day we decided to get married.’

  A cloud moved over the sun and he looked up, scowling, as if someone were standing in his light. He said: ‘Living together’s different from loving together, isn’t it. We never somehow made it. I’ve always heard of the Irish – haven’t you – as being happy, easygoing, careless, untidy, willing to live in a mess. Just like me in fact. She wasn’t like that. She was all for neatness, carefulness, looking after details. And she always worried. If I’m painting I like to stop when I want to stop, not when the potatoes are ready. And when I stop I like to drop things where I can pick ’em up next day. She was forever struggling to make me live as she thought I ought to live, quiet and orderly, see, and it just didn’t work.’

  ‘You don’t like order?’

  ‘I don’t like someone who worries about it. But Lorne never settled here in this studio, she never settled in this district. She thought it was ugly and everything about London was big and hard and cold and grey. She made no other friends. And the break-up was partly my fault. In those days I expected people would like what I painted and want to buy it – some of it at least. I wasn’t – geared down to failure, as you might say, and that made me pretty short tempered. She was nearest to me, living here, and got what there was. She didn’t like it. I don’t blame her for that.’

  ‘Generous of you.’

  He smiled. ‘Well, I wanted you to know it wasn’t some grotty Bohemian affair, it was a genuine marriage that genuinely went wrong, the same as it can in your swank Hampstead circles. We haven’t divorced, because she’s a Catholic, but she left me eighteen months ago and I haven’t even seen her for twelve.’

  ‘Why don’t you try again?’

  ‘I don’t want to. No more would she.’

  When we’d finished that morning he said: ‘One more sitting’ll do it. Like to see it now?’

  I slid off the chair and limped to the easel. One isn’t ever much of a judge of one’s own portrait, and I couldn’t decide whether the girl with the coppery brown hair and the dark eyes and the fair complexion was like me or not. I thought I looked as if I were listening to something. Somehow he’d made me look a bit more lush, a bit more sexy than I really was, as if he was maybe reading into me what he wanted to see there.

  I said: ‘Did you mean it, what you said just now? About being geared down to failure?’

  ‘What?’ His eyes were suddenly a very clear grey as he blinked toward the river. ‘Oh, that. Yes. Nasty medicine, but better to swallow.’

  ‘D’you think being reconciled to failure at twenty-five is a good thing?’

  ‘It’s better than living among the ostriches . . . But of course I’m making a big drama of it. I don’t really think my stuff’s hopeless, otherwise I wouldn’t push on. I mean failure in a money sense.’

  ‘Hasn’t Jack Foil offered you a hundred guineas for this?’

  ‘Who told you?’

  ‘He did. He came into Whittington’s a couple of weeks ago.’

  The morning was cool, and I’d brought a light linen coat with me. I went to pick this up.

  He said: ‘Can’t we lunch somewhere before I take you home?’

  ‘Leigh . . . I know lots of the people who run the galleries in the West End.’

  He was putting his brushes in their jars of turpentine. ‘Can we lunch?’

  ‘Yes. I ought to be back by three, as Virginia is coming home.’

  ‘I’m afraid of going to these West End sharks. They’re interested in nobody but the latest French discovery or some gimmicky bloke who frames his pictures with old lavatory seats.’

  ‘Not these. Of course they run with public taste – they have to if they’re going to live. But I’m sure they’d be absolutely honest with you.’

  He put out his bottom lip doubtfully.

  ‘How long is it since you tried any gallery in the West End?’ I asked.

  ‘About eighteen months.’

  ‘Well, haven’t you improved, moved on since then? Just this portrait seems an advance to me. Jack Foil thinks the same.’

  ‘I know.’ He wiped his hands on a much stained cloth. ‘All right, if you think so. And thanks for the interest. That’s the one certain good thing that can come out of it.’

  Through Smith-Williams I was able to make an appointment with Lewis Maud, the older of the two brothers, for Friday at three, and another with Arthur Hays of the Cheltenham Galleries at 4:30.

  The Maud Gallery was at the smarter end of Grosvenor Street, but its windows were old-fashioned, and they’d done nothing to liven up the inside with modern furnishings. All the same its turnover was probably as big as any in London. Lewis Maud was a third-generation English Jew of about fifty and was the sort of man you’d never notice in a group. Quiet-spoken, badly dressed and casual, he had no pretensions and no side. Everything about him was strictly workmanlike, and he’d no room for theories and schools. For this reason I thought he would appeal to Leigh; at least they could talk the same language, whatever was said in it.

  Leigh had brought four paintings. I felt apprehensive about the whole thing now it was on me, but hopeful and excited as well. I introduced them and they talked amiably enough, and Lewis Maud pointed out one or two new names among the pictures on his walls. We trailed about the gallery, Leigh making a few assenting grunts and I trying to comment intelligently. There was no one else in the place, but after a few minutes Maud led us into his office at the back, in which there was nothing much but a desk and an easel, and said: ‘Well, I think we have to see these paintings of yours, Mr Hartley. If you’d be obliging enough to put them on that easel one by one, I’ll sit here. The light’s good. Sometimes in the winter it’s dark in here . . .’

  So Leigh untied his parcel and dropped brown paper and string on the floor and took out the first painting and put it on the easel. His face was dead pan.

  A painting of two tugs passing in the river, a barge, the derricks against a cloudy sky, swans in the foreground.

  ‘Yes,’ said Lewis Maud thoughtfully. To me: ‘Do you smoke?’

  ‘No, thanks.’

  Silence fell. Leigh put up the second one. It was the interior of his studio, littered with the stuff that usually lay about: old cushions, paint brushes, magazines. Light fell through the window, fell obliquely, cleverly, I thought; dust hung in it.

  ‘Yes,’ said Maud. ‘Yes, I see what you mean there.’

  Leigh took down the first two paintings, propped them against chair legs. All around us in that small room were other people’s works, clamant, rival, accusative. A drawing of an old boat by a modern French painter priced at £850. A couple of little impressionist paintings of St Tropez in the nineties, probably worth £7000 the pair; a Pissarro in a corner.

  Leigh put up his third, the second river scene. A much darker work, almost colourless, done in black and white and metallic grays. He looked at Maud and then at me.

  Maud struck a match and lit his cigarette. There was room on the easel for the fourth painting, and b
eside the river scene Leigh put my portrait.

  ‘That’s unfinished,’ he said. ‘I need a couple more sittings.’

  There was a squeal of brakes outside and the blaring of a horn. Lewis Maud looked up absently. ‘This traffic,’ he said. ‘You’re better without a car these days.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Leigh. ‘I had to park mine in Brook Street. You feed a meter sixpences like giving sweets to a greedy kid.’

  Maud tapped the ash off his cigarette and brushed a freckle off his sleeve. ‘Well, Mr – er – Hartley, I know you’d want me to be frank, wouldn’t you?’

  ‘That’s what I came for.’

  ‘That’s what you came for. Yes . . . Well, I’m afraid I have to tell you that these paintings are not at all in my line.’

  Leigh stood back and put his hands on his hips, staring at the paintings himself with a painful air of assumed detachment.

  Lewis Maud glanced apologetically at me. ‘They’re really not in our line, Miss Dainton, not in the tradition of what one comes to appreciate and look for after thirty-odd years in the business. But of course it’s a personal view.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  Maud went on talking half to me and half to the pictures, rather avoiding looking at Leigh. ‘If I said that they were not in the tradition of modern painting, that might make you think I meant modern fashion. I don’t. I mean in the development of technique, the – the understanding of technique. These are – pictures, if you know what I mean. They’re no better and no worse than hundreds of others about. But they’re not really – forgive me – paintings, as I understand the word.’

  ‘Well,’ said Leigh, ‘that’s straight enough, isn’t it?’

  ‘Look, Mr – er – Hartley, don’t think I mean this the wrong way. In this country alone there are hundreds, thousands of painters, amateurs, who paint for their own pleasure. It’s a wonderful recreation for them. But that’s rather different from the professional with something to say, some original vision, the spark that sets him above his fellows. That’s what we all look for. But he’s hard to find, and . . .’

  ‘Surely,’ I said, trying to pick the right words, ‘isn’t it partly a matter of development, of trial and error, of hard work and extending one’s vision . . .’

  Lewis Maud worried his cigarette with fingers and lips.

  ‘Mr Maud doesn’t think so,’ Leigh said.

  ‘No, I don’t,’ Maud said. ‘If the spark is there, then the hard work, the development, the extending of one’s vision – these are all necessary, vital. But—’

  ‘Do you not like the portrait?’ I asked.

  ‘I think the portrait has more feeling. But it’s – romantic, old-fashioned in its approach. Look.’ Maud got quickly up and went to fumble among the stacked canvases and presently came back with one that he put on the easel beside Leigh’s river scene. It was a painting of an old woman lying on a bed. ‘What I am trying to say is that you may well be able to sell your paintings at a fine arts shop where people go who want a picture of what their own eyes would see, a painted photograph. Fine. But it’s a surface thing, an imprint, unrealized. Look at this old woman. The Frenchman who painted her saw her lying just like that, but he didn’t put down just what he saw. He built her up, first bone, then flesh, then clothes, so that now she’s not just a black design against yellow and blue but a great heavy lump, solid, sculptural, pressing down the bed so that you can hear the springs creak. You can smell the old black woollen jacket and the black serge skirt. Mind, I’m not saying it’s a great painting, but it’s a good one, and I’d back my judgement on it. But look now at this river scene of yours. Do you feel those tugs have got machinery inside them? Can you smell the seaweed and the oil and the smoke? No. It’s the work of an illustrator, not of an artist. It may well appeal to people who want just that, a conscientiously drawn and painted illustration. It may sell, and others like it may sell. People will pay twenty or thirty guineas for that sort of thing. But I don’t think the London galleries are the place for them.’

  ‘Well, thanks,’ said Leigh grimly. ‘Thanks a lot.’

  Maud looked at him briefly, assessingly. ‘I’m sorry. Too many people paint, you know.’

  ‘Or too many people take themselves seriously, you mean?’

  ‘Well, yes. Art is a wonderful recreation. I paint myself. But it’s a terrible way of making a living. It’s the old story of many being called and few chosen.’

  Leigh began thoughtfully to wrap up his four paintings.

  Maud said to me: ‘Mr Hartley is modest in his approach. I only wish I could help him. I get so many people offering me their paintings – a dozen a week – and the worse painters they are, usually, the more insanely conceited they run.’

  ‘Well,’ said Leigh. ‘Glad to have stepped out of the ruck in one respect anyhow. Goodbye to you, Mr Maud.’

  I’d thought he would refuse to see Arthur Hays, but with a sort of grim patience he went along and I went with him. Mr Hays was an altogether more polished person than Lewis Maud, but although his response to the four paintings was suaver and more oblique, it was equally dismissive. We came out and walked back to the little car. Leigh opened the door for me, thrust the parcel into the space behind, and then got in beside me. We sat in silence.

  ‘Did you get the feeling they didn’t like my paintings?’ Leigh said.

  I stirred uncomfortably and bit at the skin around my forefinger.

  ‘Definitely,’ he said, ‘they don’t recognize genius, that’s what it is. Every artistic Messiah is rejected by his own generation. Wait until I’m dead.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said miserably.

  ‘Not to worry. That painting of you, in a hundred years it will be in the Louvre and called the Mona Deborah, and beginners’ll sit round it trying to fathom the secret of its smile, see. And I in my pauper’s grave won’t be able to tell ’em. Cup of tea?’

  ‘Anything you say.’

  ‘We’ll have to move from here, anyhow. I borrowed somebody else’s unexpired time, and a bloody little Blue Boy is watching us.’

  We had tea in a café in Piccadilly. After his brief rally of jokes he sat silent, sipping his cup and staring out at the traffic.

  I said: ‘I’m sorry I took you now. But it’s got to be kept in proportion. We’re no worse off.’

  ‘Well, thanks for the “we”.’

  In fact I knew we were both worse off. He, because no one is the better for having his work damned. I, because I’d hoped so much that there was something there.

  The following week I was going to join Erica in Ireland, and there were things to do, washing and ironing, clothes to pick up from Hampstead and another suitcase. I had intended to leave him after the two interviews. Now I found I couldn’t. We sat for a long time over tea.

  He said: ‘I think I’ll get away for a bit if you’re going away. To Paris and Rome, look around. I’ve never been abroad. Never had the time or money. Maybe I need time to think. Get a new direction.’

  ‘Can you afford it?’

  ‘If I sell this portrait to Jack Foil.’

  We got up, and he drove to the Queensway rink, but it was closed. Rain was falling and we sat in the cramped little car not speaking. He bought an evening paper and looked through the cinema advertisements, but there was nothing we wanted to see.

  ‘Do me a favour?’ he said at last.

  ‘I’ll try.’

  ‘Come home and let’s cook a meal. Are you a good cook?’

  ‘No. Moderate. But I—’

  ‘I’m moderate too. Two “moderates” might make a “good”. We could pick up a cooked chicken some place and start from there.’

  I knew I should say no, but I felt desperately sorry for him, and this was a new feeling flavouring the old one.

  Most shops were shut but we found an uncooked chicken – which they jointed for me – and some stock cubes and a few vegetables, and drove out to Rotherhithe. The studio was tidier than usual – Friday was the day he had a charwo
man – and with the lights on and the curtains drawn we shut out the wet evening. As soon as that was done he began to kiss me. I’d known he would and had been waiting for it. He buried his head in my shoulder and we held each other tight, as if with a mutual recognition after separation, as if for comfort after deep disappointment, as if for joint protection against the hostility of the world.

  . . . Presently we had drinks and then I went to the kitchen to prepare the chicken. In a few minutes I heard a thudding noise and limped out to find him breaking up his canvases. In the room were three ladder-back chairs with long protruding knobs at the top. He was impaling his canvases by banging them on to these, so that each one was crowned with a broken picture in its wooden stretches.

  I shouted: ‘Leigh! Don’t! Stop it! Stop it!’

  He didn’t look very angry when I caught his arm. He scratched his head and then shook it as if to clear it. The picture he held in his hand he resignedly skimmed across the room till it landed by the door.

  ‘You’re right – it’s – it’s . . . But hell, I have to have one show of temper, don’t I?’

  ‘But that’s no good. Doing that is no good at all.’

  ‘What’s any good?’

  ‘Supper. Come and help me. I want to try to do a fricassee of chicken in white wine sauce.’

  When I got him into the kitchen he said: ‘Anyway, there’s no white wine.’

  ‘Red will do.’

  He sat down on a chair and put his head in his hands. ‘Christ, I feel a mess.’

  ‘Help me. Have you a casserole?’

  ‘That cupboard over there.’

  ‘And the wine?’

  ‘There’s three or four bottles under the sink. God, I think this is an all-time zero for me.’

  I poured him another drink and he took it, swallowed it at a draught. ‘Now you.’

  ‘I’ll have some with supper.’

  ‘No, now.’

  ‘All right.’

  After ten minutes or so, during which I got the chicken ready for the oven, he stood up. ‘Picture of the artist wallowing in self-pity.’