Poppyland (3 page)

My thoughts break into shards. The taxi has gone, the quay is empty yet romantic, lit with just a few street lights with pools of gold glowing beneath them. I turn my back to the sea and am dazzled by a lighting projection I was too close to see before. The Stettjens Gallery has a façade of exquisite purity. Or
rather, it usually does; I've seen photographs of it in newspapers and design books, and among the paperwork that Hans Stettjens, the owner, has been sending me. Nothing has prepared me for the reality. The strips of steel and glass and concrete have inspired rapturous adjectives from the press and the architectural world at large and it is taut and beautiful. But it is not the building that is startling, it is the projection mounted on its façade. A huge green-lit screen covers the whole front of the building, and on it, slowly changing like a kaleidoscope, are magnified images of my work. It is like a giant window lit up at night with the figures I painted appearing huge, and slowly moving one after another like a giant shadow-puppet show. The effect is bigger than the sum of its parts. No actually, it's not. The projection is big, but so are all the parts of it. The thing that is small is me. It's a bit scary to see such a public representation of my work, but at least it's facing the sea, not a busy street. Probably no one will notice it. Anyway, this is the right place. I should go in.

Gripping the handle of my suitcase, I gaze at the shifting colours on the wall. It reminds me of a lava lamp. I can't go on standing outside for ever, but I also can't bring myself to go inside. So I hang around a bit, gawping up at the projection, unable to make much sense of it. I look across at the harbour mouth and find myself wondering what it would be like to be out at sea and see this vast projection. I haven't got an answer except that I'm sure it would be a lot better than being here in front of it as the accidental
author. I am cold now, and I'm running out of excuses. I set off across the road and then stop again. Until I go in through the door and introduce myself, no one knows who I am or that I am here. This limbo feels the most comfortable place to be. No demands are being made of me, no expectations burden my psyche. This is a moment where I could vanish. I could hide, I could unzip the suitcase and get into it. As it has wheels, there is a good chance that I might roll off the harbour into the sea, and I would have to be Houdini to escape. Or I would float away, bobbing up the coast to another part of Denmark, maybe Elsinore. Vaguely I remember Elsinore is on the Sound. Wherever that might be. At school, Lucy and I fought like cats to be chosen to play Ophelia in the pantomime version of
Hamlet
which our English teacher wrote. Lucy won. It was so annoying, and I had to be Laertes in drag.

‘. . . Was your father dear to you,
Or are you like the painting of a sorrow,
A face without a heart?'

I didn't even know I knew these lines until I woke with them running through my head on the morning of Mum's funeral. And now that they have come back to me, they rush round and round in my head. I'd like to try to make a painting of a sorrow. It might be a painting of Mum, I don't know yet, but when I get back to New York and my studio I can start to make sense of everything that has happened since I left.
Until then I have to go wherever life takes me. I want to see Elsinore. I wonder how I can get there. Who can I go with? Suddenly loneliness hits me, and it is like vertigo in the way it swoops and grabs me from the guts and I wish like a howl that I had someone to go there with. Within the gallery the space is white. Dizzy, soporific white like being inside snow, except for the three large canvases hung at the far end and the paintings on both of the walls leading there. There is a sense of hard-won serenity in the room, a reverberating almost-stillness that I recognise as the aftermath of excessive action. It is like a stage set, and I can feel, though I cannot see, the last dust being swept from the floor, the papers and staple tucked away in a drawer and everybody smoothing themselves down, ready for the evening to begin. The warmth of the space flares and a vein on my temple throbs as loud in my head as a drum beat.

The gallery staff all turn round when I come in and the weight of their anxiety lifts and floats away from them to fall on top of me almost palpably. The pictures are mine and now I am here to speak for them. But I don't want to. I want them to speak for themselves. In the silence someone's bracelet or perhaps the metal strap of a watch hits the rim of a wineglass. The glass sings a pure note into the noiseless moment and the sound is renewing and spine tingling. I shrug off the anxiety I felt when I came in and it is like a coat slipping off.

To no one in particular I say: ‘Oh, I love that. Wouldn't it be great if we had some music in here?'

There is a flurry towards me, a girl with wheat-blond plaits smiles and says, ‘We often have music before the show, we just weren't sure you would . . .' she tails off, looking a little apprehensive.

I smile at her. ‘Don't worry, you're very kind to think of it. I don't want to interfere with your preparations.'

She presses my hand between hers and the warmth of her welcome is physical, too, on my cold skin. I don't feel so stiff and alarmed now, the gallery is running smoothly, the show is hung and looks like someone else's work to me. I like the sensation of seeing it for the first time much more than I thought I would, and everyone here is overflowing with goodwill. A boy takes my suitcase and disappears with it behind a partition. Hans Stettjens comes across from the desk where he has been talking on the telephone and we shake hands. His eyes are long and narrow like flints, and his hair is a dusting of iron filings on his perfectly domed head. He bows over my hand. It is nerve-wracking. I cannot live up to expectation, I have never been able to. I can feel a wobbling expression forming on my face and I bite my lip to get rid of it as he speaks in beautiful English that makes me embarrassed that I don't know a single word of Danish.

‘Miss Hart. I'm so glad to meet you. How was your flight?'

‘Oh. God. I mean good. Please call me Grace.'

He has a sweet smile and is staring at me kindly. Like everyone I have seen in Denmark, he has a fine, chiselled face and nice clothes.

I babble on, filling the silence before it happens, ‘Outside is quite a statement of – of— Well, it's certainly saying something. I mean—' I can't talk properly because I am trying to take Hans in; I am wondering if he will be an ally, and I'm not sure if I can allow myself to like the way he has hung my work, even though he has done exactly what we talked about on the phone.

I struggle with the silence again as his kind eyes regard me, and off I go in another peal of talk: ‘I suppose it's like asking someone else to look after your baby – I mean having someone else hang your show.' I can't keep looking at him looking at me, it's embarrassing and I am getting hotter and hotter in the room. I tear off my coat and just stop myself chucking it on the floor behind me. Immediately the girl with plaits glides over and takes the coat.

‘Thank you,' I whisper, and repeat it as she hands me a glass of water. As I drink it I surreptitiously look around the room at the work. It looks just as I would have hoped if I had dared hope anything. Excitement begins to bubble up inside me.

‘Let me show you the hanging,' says Hans, guiding me around the paintings, his hand under my elbow so I cannot be surreptitious any more. I have to look and I will have to answer, there is no way out as he is beside me, his eyes moving ceaselessly between the paintings and my face, his expression still wise, thoughtful and kind. I do not know him, I am often hostile in a new situation like this, but now I feel his warmth and I begin to relax. In a
comfortable silence, we walk around the pictures, and I begin to absorb what the show looks like as a whole. I smile at Hans without speaking, I am so grateful he has not directly asked, ‘What do you think?' and that he is giving me time.

And the bubbling excitement I felt a moment ago is gaining ground. This is thrilling. I am so excited because I could never have imagined that all together, hung by Hans Stettjens, the pictures could look so amazing. And now I realise what someone unconnected might see and it is fascinating. Hans is clasping one waxy thumb and forefinger in a tight circle about the bony wrist of the other hand. He really wants to know what I think. It is a jolt to realise this. And he is nervous.

I want to reassure him. I open my mouth, ‘I want to cry.' Great. That was definitely not what I meant to say.

‘Oh no, that's not what I mean.' Appalling to say that, when I mean it is wonderful, and now I am crying, tears prick at the corner of my eyes and my nose tingles.

‘They look great. I . . . I can't tell you. I'm sorry I'm not making sense . . .' How maddening. It is so easy to perpetuate a myth, to believe your own demons. So hard not to make the same mistake over and over again. Hans is anxious, his eyes contract into small black knots, he has one hand over his eyes, he swallows. He is a little theatrical, but frankly, so am I. Oh God. The show is about to open and we are all awry with one another and there is no reason
for it. Shit. I press my palms into my eyes and take a deep breath. ‘I love them.' Oops, more crying because it is true.

Hans puts his arm around my shoulders and we face one of the pictures, a big canvas with two figures entwined in the sea. I suddenly find myself wondering whether I should have given them gills and I giggle.

Hans's eyes brighten. ‘Just tell me what is wrong and we will do our best to improve it right this instant. Yes. At this moment we will change it for you.' He flourishes a handkerchief, blows his nose, purses his lips and snaps his fingers. Two young boys arranging glasses on trays put down their tea towels and come over. I take a deep breath, and grab his arm, yanking his sleeve as he issues a torrent of instructions to these boys in Danish, during which they look at me as if I am an alien. Which of course I am, up to a point.

I make myself interrupt: ‘No, no. You don't understand – I mean, I haven't made myself clear. I am not making sense. What I meant was, I love it. The pictures look incredible. They look so much more than they are. Or more than I thought they were. Oh, I'm making it worse, aren't I?' I wish I had made the effort to learn some Danish before coming here. I would love to be making an effort. Instead, I wave my hands and feel smiles bursting out on my face. ‘Actually, I am stunned. It's so much more than I ever thought it could be. It's so exciting, I feel in awe. What I really want to say, though, is thank you, that's all.'

Hans relaxes, relief easing every muscle and bringing the blood back to his pale face so that I suddenly realise that his pallor has been reminding me of a vampire. He rubs his hand over his stubble hair and laughs too.

‘Miss Hart, I mean Grace, it makes a big difference that you are here. I am so glad you like the hanging, it's been . . .' He trails off, and I can feel myself blushing, remembering the stilted phone calls and my endless faxed drawings which must have clogged up his office every morning as I obsessed over how far apart and in what order the paintings should be hung. How can I ever have thought I knew better than this kind, saintly non-vampiric man?

‘You know, it would have been a nightmare for you if I had been here,' I confide, and Hans nods wholeheartedly. I still want to make up for causing trouble, so with a sense of climbing into a tumbrel and heading for certain death, I open my mouth and say, ‘Is there anyone you want me to talk to? I know I said I couldn't, but if you need me to be interviewed or anything, I can. I know I can.'

His eyebrows ping upwards. Hans considers me then claps his hands, and I follow him as he moves down the room.

‘Yes,' he muses, ‘first I think you could do with eating something, you look as though you might evaporate. There will be a couple of people to talk to this evening. Your work has attracted a lot of interest in the press.'

We are in the back office now. Hans opens a small refrigerator and reaches into it. I am expecting a
special Danish snack, but he hands me a tomato and a small carton of milk.

‘That's pretty weird,' I can't help commenting, but he doesn't hear; he is bustling about the office putting things away and tidying. He has a tea towel over his arm and calmly polishes a glass before handing it to me.

‘Of course there is food, but I always have something like this first,' Hans says. I stare gloomily at the milk and the tomato. I especially don't want the milk. He pours it into the glass. There is no way I can refuse, he is being so motherly, and apart from the grossness of what he is actually giving me, I am grateful for the thought.

Hans holds out the milk and, narrowing his eyes, looks at me. He grins half in embarrassment as he suddenly says, ‘You have a look of the mermaid – the Copenhagen mermaid. I think they will photograph you.'

‘What, naked?' I tease, but he is not really listening, he looks at his watch.

‘Jerome Michaels, from the oil company, was scheduled to be here to meet you, but he's been delayed and will arrive later this evening. If you are happy to do press now, I think we should have you with him. Glacon is big money and the press is very interested in their new sponsorship programme.'

‘OK, you just tell me what I have to do. I guess all artists sell out to commerce sooner or later, I just didn't realise I had done it already,' I joke, but the joke falls into space unnoticed. I don't mind, Hans
seems happy and anything that can help me forget the glaring reality of my pictures on the walls must be good. I like Hans, he takes things personally. Hans squeezes my shoulders in an awkward hug. ‘We just need to make sure this is not all too much for you,' he says, and tears sting my eyes because he is so thoughtful.

I wonder if any artist enjoys the experience of watching people looking at their work? I find it unreal, and dreamlike. Or nightmare-like, more often. I keep reminding myself that I am grateful anyone has turned up at all, as the gallery fills with people and flashbulbs explode like snowballs in the crowd. There is an unhurried yet insistent current as the guests mingle, greet one another and move through the gallery in front of the pictures. Often at a private view no one looks at the work. The ones I go to in New York are usually attended by friends and everyone stands in huddles, their backs to the paintings, drinking glass after glass of cheap red wine.