Goya'S Dog (31 page)

Five minutes later she told him, without looking at him, that her husband was an executive at a
major
department store. They had a picture department. He should really see about a job.

“Of course now we're in it up to the hilt. Up to the hilt.” Stevenson said.

“But we have to be,” Darly replied. “We should have been, even sooner.”

“I didn't have you down as a warmonger,” the navy fellow said, but Darly was cut off by Stevenson when she began to answer that what was right was right. It filled Dacres with a greater sense of despair than he could possibly express.

Mrs. Yallop said to Dacres that she also had a lady friend at the
Globe:
they were looking for advertising artists, she'd said. She would put them in touch.

“Like the ones for brassieres?” said Dacres, who had seen the pictures. Mrs. Yallop sucked her lip, and he closed his eyes. That woman, Continental, she did nighttime scenes, village dances in the piazza, fat-armed women full of life. What was her name?

At the sideboard, Goucher was ponderously ladling a sad-looking pea-green soup from a tureen. The young maid parcelled out the shallow bowls.

“Dacres here is doing a portrait of Darly,” Burner said later, to include him.

“Oh, how nice,” someone muttered.

They were in the middle of an unusually long fallow season between appetizer and main course. Breaking his silence, Dacres said probably the kitchen was on fire; the comment was greeted with stares, and he regretted it. Mouth, why do you say these things? his brain asked. Why do you hate me so? A gravy boat had appeared, and a plate of mint jelly, one by one. Piecemeal, he wanted to say, wouldn't that be funny?—but this time he held his tongue.

“My gift to them,” Burner beamed. “A wedding gift.”

“You really are
extraordinarily
generous, Stanley,” said Mrs. Yallop, looking at Dacres.

“Yes, we don't really need anything, Daddy.”

“Really? Lorne gave me a list.”

They all laughed, except Dacres.

“Very generous of you,” said the navy chap, to say something.

“Now how long does it take, to paint a portrait?” Mrs. Yallop said to Dacres. When they'd met she'd had a wide-eyed look of amazement, like an insect magnified a hundredfold; but once seated she'd taken on the role of country house detective. She waited for his answer.

You shrew, Dacres thought.

“I said,” she repeated even louder, “how long can one expect it to take?”

I actually tried to kill myself, he thought, because of people like you.

“Edward?” Darly called from his far left. “Six weeks, or six days, or six months. It depends.”

“Six months?” said Burner. “Well, that won't do.”

“Lord-a-mercy!” said Mrs. Yallop wildly.

“Won't take six months will it Dacres?” Burner asked.

“Don't badger him, Daddy.”

Burner flicked her comment away impatiently.

“It took ten years for Ingres to paint Madame Moitessier,” Dacres said quietly to the green lines on his soup bowl.

“Who did you paint? Madam who?”

“It doesn't seem like such a difficult question,” said Mrs. Yallop, too loud.

“It will be ready in time for our summer party,” Burner said firmly. “A month.”

Dacres's heart juddered. He wished Stanley would become depressed again; he'd liked him better then.

“I couldn't sit still for six months,” said Darly's girlfriend.

“You don't sit still the entire time,” Darly said. “Actually, it really is a fascinating process. You should all try. You learn things about yourself, it's very monastic.”

There were titters. Her navy friend said he believed more in doing things.

Art has to come from somewhere, thought Dacres, looking around desperately; it has to come from somewhere.

Burner said: “We have Helen's picture, of course. Though I was never altogether fond of it. He made her look rather terrifying, I think. Whereas she could really look so gently at one.”

All were now respectfully silent.

A curious image had entered Dacres's head: a shack in the middle of the wilderness, in the middle of the night, with a light on, seen from fifty yards. We're sitting here, he thought, in our pearls, eating our soup and waiting for our lamb, and there's a tempest raging outside, raging, and the world is actually ending, and we sit and eat our soup and chat and sit and wait for our lamb. What in God's name is the matter with us?

“Edward says that often the quality of the work is directly proportional to the depth of engagement with the subject.”

“What the devil does that mean?” said Stevenson.

“It's hard to paint people you don't like,” Dacres replied.

“Ah.”

“All Darly talks about now is sculptures and models and artists and galleries,” Darly's girlfriend said.

Heads turned from Darly to Dacres and back, as at a tennis match.

“Well, I'm learning from her,” Dacres said.

“Really? What, exactly?” asked Tucket.

Finally there was movement from the door: Goucher appeared, backwards, then sweating, carrying two silver baskets with bread rolls. He promptly ran away. Burner's smile faded.

“I'm of a mind to see how we're progressing,” he said patriarchally, laying a hand on Dacres's forearm.

“I once heard that oil paint never dries—” someone said.

“I said I'd like to have a look-see. Monthly checkup, that sort of thing.”

“Good idea, Stanley,” nodded Yallop. “Like having an inspector visit the plant.”

“It's really not quite ready,” said Dacres.

“We could go up right now. Lamb's taking an age, for which I apologize, chaps and chapesses. Let's have a look right now.”

He was already pushing his chair back.

“It really wouldn't be worth your while,” Dacres said, attempting to sound casual.

“Oh, let me be the judge of—”

“No,” said Dacres more strongly. “All I have is sketches, preliminaries. They'd be meaningless.”

“But I love looking at plans. All I do all day is look at blueprints. Like their house.” He gestured down to Darly, and Dacres saw her face was tight. She began to say something but Burner talked over her.

“We can tell you if you're on the right track, Dacres.” He paused: “It will entertain … everyone.”

Dacres frowned.

“What you're suggesting,” he said, “is like a premature birth. You'll get a mess, a bloody placenta.”

That silenced them. Mrs. Yallop moaned, appalled, as if she'd been gored.

“Patience?” said Dacres. “Patience is a virtue.”

“Now listen, Dacres—” Burner began.

“You know Orpheus could have had Eurydice back forever but he
looked too soon. Three more steps, but he was too impatient. You end up with something obscene for no reason. Please: please be patient.”

Burner looked at him. They held each other's eyes. Then Burner stood. Dacres looked at him rest his knuckles on the table and did not know if Burner was going to slap him on the back and say “Orpheus!” in delight, or march them all up to the studio for his execution.

“Do you wish to carve, sir?” Goucher asked from the sideboard, where the carbonized joint now awaited.

Dacres excused himself early from dinner, terrified of canasta. He claimed he was seasick, said he had a few things to clear up that evening, gripped the back of his chair tightly, and went upstairs. Ascending, he wondered how far Burner would accommodate him.

His mind was sharpened by what he'd drunk. Lying on the divan with his hand over his eyes he thought about what a close shave it had been. What did he have to show for his weeks here since Darly had arranged things so impeccably? Nothing. He had a commission, he had time, he had respite. So what the hell was the matter? Really he had to start, really.

His fingers on the floor brushed against a squash ball. He picked it up and squeezed it, hard.

The problem was that he didn't know what the problem was. He could no longer blame the city, or not knowing anybody, or even the war. In London he'd blamed the atrocious politics, the too many millions of people, the general iniquity. And of course, there was the conceptual impossibility of painting after the shattering novelty of the 1920s, unless you were a Spanish demon. But he knew that wasn't really the issue, not now. It wasn't about producing something new or good, now. It was about doing anything at all.

On his back, Dacres passed the squash ball from hand to hand, hand to hand. Yesterday, instead of working, he'd kicked it around the room for an hour.

All you could hope for, he thought, was to walk a hundred paces behind a man like that, try to walk in his footsteps. That was enough for some people. Of course there was Evie, he would never put her out of mind. Like old Stanley and his horsey lady; we are two peas in a pod, my friend, Dacres thought. Though you want to kill me. He saw Stanley with a meat hook in one hand and a cleaver in the other, wearing a bloodied apron. He was roaring out Dacres's name through the echoing house. Dacres swallowed the dry lamb taste.

The truth was—another little wound—he'd been thinking much less about Evie, these last few weeks. If he was honest. And she would probably have wanted him to work, in any case. He knew that, he'd said it for years. Now here he was in the company of a girl who gave every indication of adoring him, and he still couldn't work. Why.

His fingers smelled like India.

He heard three soft knocks.

He did nothing, because he knew it was Burner with his firing squad. Hide under the sofa, he thought, but did not move.

The knocks came again a bit more insistently. He wondered could he jump out of the window.

Darly poked her head around the door. For once he had forgotten to lock it.

“I saw your light on,” she said.

“Darly? Thank God.”

“Can I come in?” she asked, and did.

“Have they gone?” he said.

“Yes, everyone's gone now.”

There was silence and he looked at his hands and then: “I'm sorry about what I said. I don't seem to be able to talk to anyone these days. I believe it's something social.”

She said it was all right; she looked concerned for him rather than offended by his behaviour.

“They're not very artistic, Daddy's friends.”

She stepped daintily around the scrunched-up papers on the floor and a pile of unused black clips. They hollowed me out, he wanted to
say. There was a canvas he'd prepared, on the easel. Covered by an old bedsheet. She pulled at the fabric, and let it drop.

“Can I look?” she asked.

“I'd prefer you not to, not just now.”

“Please?”

He didn't answer.

“It's hard to let go of things.” She spoke thoughtfully.

“Yes,” said Dacres.

“I had a question, though.”

His eyebrows lifted. Now she was playing with the unused metal brush cleaner which stood idly on the table.

“I really prefer you to let it be, until it's more advanced.”

“No, it's something else.”

He waited.

“What do you think about when you're painting?”

“Oh Christ, Darly,” he said harshly, “not now.”

She turned and went straight to the door quick and he said,

“Wait.”

She's only curious, he said to himself.

“I apologize.”

Her back was against the door as if he'd slapped her.

“What do you think about when you're painting. Nothing. When you reach for a plum you just reach for a plum. You don't say, ‘Hand, get me a plum.'”

He chose that because she'd brought him a bowl of delicious plums the previous afternoon, and he was trying to make amends. He stopped there.

“It's because it's such a powerful feeling and emotion, isn't it?” she said, full of thoughts. “Expressing the inexpressible. All the transcendence, it all makes life worth living. That's what you work with: that's why it's so hard.”

The words in his mouth were like pebbles. “I really don't want to …” he began, and then stopped. Darly sat down on the floor in front of him, folding her legs into a Z beneath her, watching
him all the time. She lifted his feet into her lap and he felt her warmth.

“What I just said is not true,” he corrected himself. “But it's sort of true, once you're no longer a student. Except when there's a particular problem to solve. I mean it's not that you don't think. Of course you think. Just not like that. This is hard to explain. You have to know everything, of course, before you can do anything good. Giotto, Rembrandt, Delacroix, Zurbarán. But then you have to forget everything.”

He wasn't making any sense, he knew. But she was enjoying it: her eyes sparkled hungrily. The window was open: he heard locusts, cicadas, crickets, all of a sudden incredibly loud.

“I think I understand,” she began.

“It's not something I especially like to talk about, now.”

“No?”

She really was absurdly young, Dacres thought. What a white neck. She must have ancestors in northern Europe whose skin was as pale as this, they must have been the red-haired talk of the village; and then this brunette comes along, a trick of the gods.

“What are you looking at?” she asked.

“Just imagining your face in the doorway of a farmhouse.”

“What?”

There she lies, a pearl.

“Can we talk about something else? Antelopes, shipping, anything. Your lovely cheekbones in the night.”

She pressed her lips together and said, “Style.”

“The tutorial continues?”

“In exchange for room and board.”

He sighed, but her face was full of admiration.

She licked her lips. “Style,” she said.

This, however, was a subject he had thought about at length. He interlaced his fingers.