The Biographer (4 page)

The man and the woman, side by side. How did they go together? Did they fit? The woman looked older than the man, which was not surprising since he was still young and radiated vigour. But he was fixed at a point of historical time, and she, existing in real time, had aged twenty-five years. How would a biographer read them as a couple? He would see that this man was anything but secretive. His emotions were there for the asking, ready to jump out of his skin.

Sunday 9th July
He was in for less than half an hour this morning. Only 5 left unsold by 6 o'clock. He looked in bad shape.

We ignored each other.

From the kitchen terrace, scanning across the valley floor Greer could just make out a moving speck. It was a car, coming from the north. She watched as it crawled along the curving road, sliding in and out of sight as it dipped below the scrub of ilex trees, hawthorn and poplars. Could it be Antony? He'd said late afternoon, well after yardarm time, and it was only just after midday.

Besides, he might not be coming today at all. Greer handled the computer, Mischa
being useless with any kind of technology, and she had accidentally erased
the email. It might have said tomorrow, or even the day after.Then she saw
another car trailing behind, and another. She turned her back on the view.This
was absurd. It must be the beginning of the tourist season, if indeed it ever
came to an end. She had better things to do than watch the road, than wait
for the arrival of an unknown visitor.A person whose impending arrival was
unwelcome. Whose arrival, she faced up to it, filled her with dread.

Mischa appeared to have no such qualms. Guy was right: he had been full of ebullience
since the emails stepped up and the biographer's arrival became imminent. But
there was an edge to this sustained, almost bombastic, good humour. Mischa
had used it to deflect all attempts to broach the subject, by Greer or anyone
else, almost as if the biography were some whimsical construct, a poem by Edward
Lear or an unsuitable joke. In any case, Greer had found the subject well nigh
impossible to broach. From its very first mention the biography had assumed
the loaded status of a taboo topic between them.

Mischa had not referred to Antony Corbino's introductory letter for some time.
And had he in fact been the first to mention it? Greer couldn't even be certain
of that, not entirely. Her first inkling that a biography was on the cards
may well have been a concerned remark from one of Mischa's dealers. It was
so unlike Mischa to agree to such a thing she could only conclude that he must
have been diverted, briefly, by some notion of seeing himself silhouetted on
a canvas, pictured through the prism of another's eyes. She suspected he would
rapidly lose patience with the interviewing process. He had never much liked
talking about himself.

It was always likely that Mischa would be the target of a biographer, sooner
or later. Greer knew this perfectly well, but until recently the idea had been
simply that – a vague possibility that might never eventuate. She felt angry now, and principally
with herself.Why had she been so passive? Her attitude had been like that of
a passenger on an aircraft, suspended in limbo between two points and unable
to influence the outcome.

Not that Mischa was susceptible either to other people's opinions or for the most part to persuasion, whether gentle or robust. She firmly believed that in all his life he had probably never once asked of anyone: what do you think I should do? He always knew what he wanted to do, and whether he should or should not be doing it didn't come into it.

Greer knew that she could, on occasion, and if she put her mind to it, divert him from his chosen course and get him to do what she wanted. She knew she might have had a good chance of success if she had come right out and spoken her mind. If she'd said: this biography is a very bad idea. It would only get in the way of your work. It's not too late to withdraw your permission.Then he might have said: if you really want me to, Mrs Smith, I will. Fuck it, let him waste some other bugger's time. And that might have been the end of it.

But I couldn't say that, she thought. It would be like sabotage. A biography is a natural outcome of a successful career. It's inevitable. If not this one there would be others, and behind Mischa's back and mine, which might very well be worse. Besides, Rollo would think I was mad.And mean-spirited. Rollo would be bemused to know, she felt sure, how much she valued his good opinion.

Greer and Guy were the winemakers, working through changing seasons and in all
weathers. They saw themselves as extracting treasure from the stony soil, and
saw each other nearly every day; their friendship – jokey, rooted in practicalities – thrived on it.Yet it was with Rollo that she felt she had the more organic relationship.
She found it hard to believe she had not known him all her life. Rollo was
like a close sibling. In her imagination she positioned him as a much older
fraternal twin. Mischa, on the other hand, was nothing like her sibling or
her platonic, jokey friend.

She was unprepared for the thought that arrived without warning: these are the
only men in my life.

The first letter had arrived nearly three years ago, soon after the appearance of an article on Mischa's recent work in the journal
Artnews
.The writer of the article and the follow-up letter was an up-and-coming young art critic from Los Angeles named Antony Corbino. The article was a well-written, perceptive piece and Mischa approved of it.

Corbino's letter introduced himself, presented his credentials and declared his wish to become Mischa's first biographer. He wanted primarily, he said, to focus on Mischa's career path, his place in the annals of contemporary art, rather than what he called the banal personal detail. He asked for Mischa's permission to go ahead. Mischa had written straight back, without consulting his dealers in London or New York, and without a word to Greer. He'd only mentioned it to her in passing, days later. He had given the project his blessing and then put it aside.

Antony Corbino had kept in regular contact with Mischa by letter or telephone during the next couple of years, and sometimes via Greer by email. Mischa enjoyed these little communications, which were pithy and rather witty. They were mainly concerned with the location and provenance of particular paintings, and reconstructing Mischa's meandering route over several years from Prague to Melbourne. And then trying to pin down the sequence of Mischa and Greer's wanderings, post-Australia, pre-Italy.

There was ongoing light banter over inconsistencies in printed biographical details.
Arty in-jokes abounded. In addition,Antony had set up a website with an email
address and posted updates on articles and references to Mischa's work in publications
around the world. It had all been straightforward enough and, Greer had to
admit, in her role as aide-mémoire and fact-checker, completely unthreatening. Mischa was happy – he felt that he and Tony, as he was already calling him, had a good rapport.
He was chuffed, as Guy said, and it seemed almost churlish to cast a pall over
his pleasure.

From below the terrace she heard her name called. It was Guy, with the three Welsh wine buyers who had been staying in the guest cottage for the last couple of days. She ran down the kitchen steps to say goodbye.The men were clients of several years' standing, a convivial, blasphemous trio.There had been a dinner, a very rowdy dinner the night before, with Guy and Greer presiding over the table, a virtual couple for the evening.

The men loaded suitcases into their boot. Guy was about to take them up the road to a friend's vineyard for a farewell lunch. They pressed her to change her mind and join them. Leave the artsy critic to fart around. He'd get lost on the way, anyhow. And she already knew what he'd be like: a poncy bugger, like all of his ilk. They kissed her warmly. Singing wine bores like themselves were more amusing in their fashion, weren't they?

Oh, loads more laughs, she smiled. 'And in the normal way I would. But I think I should stick around, just in case he inflicts himself on us . . .' She didn't add, I'd give a great deal, you know, if only this were in the normal way.

She had been part of the business for so long now it was hard to recall the time before it.When she and Mischa first arrived Guy was already in the process of establishing himself as a winemaker. From the start he had put much stock into building personal relationships with his buyers and suppliers. He liked to dispense hospitality, and one night he'd roped in Greer as his date and social hostess. The evening had been a success, and she found it surprisingly congenial. It had quickly settled into a habit during the buying season.

When Guy was laid low with bronchial flu one November, Greer had found a way
through an administrative labyrinth of red tape that had entangled him for
months. Guy put this triumph down to three factors: her appalling Italian,
incomprehensible accent and entirely bogus air of feminine helplessness. She
had, he said, achieved a mathematical first by transforming three negatives
into a positive. Whatever, it disarmed the men he needed to rubber stamp his
future and he began to make use of it on a semi-regular basis.

Then there was the discovery, wholly fortuitous, that she had an exceptional palate. Asked to adjudicate in a tea-making domestic between Rollo and Guy – a row over whether milk should be added before or after – Greer, blindfolded, had correctly identified which cup was which. Her prowess hadn't settled the interminable argument, but it was often reprised as a party trick for visitors.

Looking back it had been a seamless transition, her march towards a hands-on role in the winery. From Guy's virtual wife she had morphed into his decidedly existential wine-making partner, and normally at this time of year she would be based in the office co-ordinating business. Dealing with buyers and the daily round of consignments, ordering bottles and corks, checking the pigments of labels. Endlessly schmoozing, as Guy put it, the bloody bureaucracy.

She could easily wander over to the office and give Giulia a hand. But Giulia, who was relieving her and having boyfriend trouble, would think she was being checked on. There were friends less than twenty minutes away, or at the end of a telephone.And there was always Mischa, who never minded her coming in. He pleased himself, simply went on working away through any kind of disturbance; he was capable of turning his back on anything or anyone. But she didn't feel like talking to Mischa's back, or to a friend.

Rollo would be in his studio again after his half-hour coffee break. Generally he disliked being interrupted, but during his episodes of painter's block he courted distraction. On impulse she threw some things into a basket: salami, pecorino, tomatoes, this morning's loaf. And an opened bottle of workaday wine, their flinty, quaffing white that Guy referred to as the dregs. Rollo was partial to a glass at lunch. She almost ran across the wide expanse of the parade ground to the chapel abutting the house opposite. She knocked on the door.

Rollo was lounging on his squashy sofa with two pugs, listening to Wagner. He held up a cautionary hand as Greer pushed open the heavy wooden door, introducing a shaft of bright light into the murky interior.When Rollo was in full flight the door would be ajar and all lights burning. Now he sat sunk in classic gloom. She waited until the
Siegfried Idyll
, a favourite of theirs, drew to a close.

Rollo's paintings hung everywhere and were stacked up against the walls. He was
preparing for a Christmas exhibition in Milan. Two easels carried works in
progress, both stalled. She examined the pictures while she listened and waited.They
looked the same as they had a week ago. One was a large expanse of untouched
canvas surrounding a half-finished, painstakingly detailed washbowl and jug,
next to a silver photo frame.

Beyond the easel was a backdrop set up on the old altar, containing the objects in the picture.The photo in the silver frame was of Rollo's mother. Behind it and still to be painted were a woman's Edwardian riding hat and cape draped over a mahogany clothes horse, roughly and whimsically carved in the shape of a stallion with tossing head and tail.

The other canvas was even more sparsely covered and stood in front of a pair
of heavily pitted medieval doors from Sicily. Over one door knob hung a man's
cravat, on which was pinned an extravagant filigree brooch in the shape of
a pear tree, whose fruits were seed pearls and emeralds. Greer knew that the
brooch, which had been found the year before in a Viennese street market,would
most likely end up in her hands, exquisitely wrapped, as a Christmas or birthday
present from Rollo.

Whenever he was away, Rollo made a point of seeking out the local markets – antique, flea, or trash and treasure. He was an obsessive hunter of fabric samples and bric-a-brac, from which he would construct sought-after miniature stage settings, the backdrops for his pictures.There had been several sell-out exhibitions of these charmingly theatrical pieces. Guy maintained Rollo was just a window-dresser at heart.

Even in the incomplete form on display, Rollo's technique was dazzling. It had
a trompe l'oeil quality that flirted with the surreal and was much admired.
They may try to emulate but they never equal, as he said himself of his many
imitators. His blockages often struck in the middle of a prolific period, as
now, and their origin mystified everybody except Guy, who claimed that they
were an invention when Rollo wanted to be waited on.

'Darling, you're an angel.' Rollo turned the volume down.'I couldn't stand my own indolent shadow a moment longer. I've always known you were psychic. Is it warm enough to eat outside? Should I bring my fur coat?'

They carried the food to a long table under the pergola at the front.There were pergolas all along the south and west walls of the house, supporting thickets of wild climbing roses and mature grapevines. This one, with its shaggy hammock of a canopy, was in bad shape.The old beams were bent, visibly rotting in places, and about to be replaced.

Guy had cobbled his early attempts at making drinkable fermented grape juice from these very vines, plus the few stragglers remaining in the home paddock, picking up the basic tricks of the trade from local farmers. For his first vintages he had gone to the lengths of crushing the grapes in traditional style, or so he liked to boast, using sticks with branches like horns.

'It still might never come to anything, Roly.The biography. Don't you think?'

Rollo plonked the magnum of olive oil he had fetched from their kitchen on to the table. He poured a lavish amount on to a plate and dunked a wedge of bread. He rolled it around on his tongue.'This is his best yet.Gooseberry-ish, lovely and peppery, almost a hint of jalapeño, wouldn't you say? But not
too
hot. Just right. He's getting better at it all the time.'