I think this, also, about the comparison. People suppose that when they light a match, the hottest part of it is in the centre of the flame. This is a mistake. The hottest part of the flame is not inside it, but outside it, just above it, in fact. The hottest place is where the fire ends and the smoke begins, exactly there. Interesting, hein?
I am considered wise by some people, and that is because I hide my pessimism from them. People want to believe that, yes, things may be bad, but there are always various possible solutions, and when one of them is the case, then things will be better. Patience and virtue and a certain modest heroism will be rewarded. I do not say so, of course, but something in my style implies that all of this is quite possible. Oliver, who pretends, who promises that he is writing films, once told me the old wisdom about Hollywood, that what America seeks is a tragedy with a happy ending. Therefore my advice is also Hollywood, and people think me wise. So, to get a reputation for wisdom you must be a pessimist who predicts a happy ending. But my advice to myself is not Hollywood, it is more classical. I do not believe in the gods, of course, except as a sort of metaphor. But I do believe that life is tragic, if it is possible to use that term still. Life is a process during which your weakest places are inevitably discovered. It is also a process during which you are punished for your earlier actions and desires. Not punished justly, oh no—that is part of what I mean by not believing in the gods—simply punished like that. Punished anarchically, if you like.
I do not think that I will have another lover in my lifetime. That is a thing you have to acknowledge at a certain point. No, no, do not flatter me. Yes, I look a few years younger than I am, but that is no particular compliment to a Frenchwoman who has spent as much money on produits de beauté as I have during the years. It is not the case that it is no longer possible. These things are always possible, and in these matters one can always pay, officially or unofficially—oh, stop looking shocked—but it is more that I do not want to. Ah, Mme Wyatt, you cannot say that, you never know when love will not strike, it is always the dangerous time as you once told us, and so on. You misunderstand me. It is not so much that I do not want, as that I do not want to want. I do not desire to desire. And I will say this: I am perhaps now as happy as in the years when I did desire. I am less occupied, less preoccupied, but no less happy. Or no less unhappy. Is this perhaps my punishment from those gods who no longer exist—to realise that all the heart trouble—is that the word?—which I endured, all that searching and all that pain, all that expectation, all those actions, were not, after all, as I thought, relevant to happiness? Is this my punishment? Such is how things are for me now.
Ellie Took me a long time before I could call her Gillian. Did it on the phone first, tried it out talking to other people about her, finally did it to her face. She’s that sort of person, very together, very sure of herself. And she’s nearly twice as old as me anyway. I mean, I’m assuming she’s in her early forties. Wouldn’t dream of asking her. Though if I did, I bet she’d tell me straight out.
You should hear her on the phone. I wouldn’t dare say some of the things she says. I mean, they’re the truth, but that makes it worse, doesn’t it? You see, there are clients who send us work because they secretly hope we’ll find Leonardo’s signature underneath all the crud and make them pots of money. Yes, it is often as simple as that. They haven’t got any evidence, they’ve just got this belief, and they somehow think that sending the picture off for cleaning and analysis will prove their hunch was correct. That’s what they’re paying us for, right? And most of the time we know just by looking, but because Gillian likes to work with all the evidence, she doesn’t tell them what they’re hoping is out of the question, and because she hasn’t actually said it, that raises their expectations even higher. And then in the end, ninety-nine times out of a hundred, she has to tell them. And some of them take it like a poke in the eye.
‘No, I’m afraid not,’ she’ll go.
Then there’ll be a long blast down the other end of the phone.
‘I’m afraid that’s just not possible.’
More blast.
‘Yes, it could be a copy of a painting that’s been lost, but even so we’re talking about 1750, 1760 at the very earliest.’
Short blast.
Gillian: ‘Well, let’s call it cadmium yellow if you wish, though cadmium wasn’t discovered until 1817. Yellow of this mixture did not exist before 1750.’
Short blast.
‘Yes, I am “only” a restorer. That’s to say, I can date a painting within certain parameters from analysis of the pigment. There are other ways to date pictures. For instance, if you’re an amateur, you can have “a certain feel” for pictures, and then really you can date them whenever you like.’
This normally shuts them up, not surprisingly. But not always.
‘No, we removed the overpainting.’
‘No, we analysed all the paint layers back to the canvas.’
‘No, you agreed to that.’
‘No, we haven’t “damaged” it.’
She keeps her cool, all the way through. Then she says, ‘I’ve got one suggestion.’ Then she pauses to make sure she’s got the man’s attention. ‘When you’ve paid our bill and when you’ve collected the painting, we’ll send you our full pigment analysis and report, and if you don’t like it you can burn it.’
That usually ends the conversation. And Gillian, when she puts down the phone, looks—what?—not exactly triumphant, but sure of herself.
‘He won’t be back in a hurry,’ I say, meaning partly: aren’t you turning away business?
‘I won’t work for pigs like that,’ she says.
You might think this was just a quiet, scientific job, but there can be a lot of pressure put on you. This man, he’d spotted a painting in a provincial auction, his wife liked it, and because it was very dark and a biblical scene, he decided it was by Rembrandt. Or if not, then by ‘someone like Rembrandt,’ as he put it, as if there was any such person. He’d paid £6,000 for it, and he clearly regarded the cleaning and analysis as an investment to make that initial outlay grow into tens or hundreds of thousands. He didn’t like being told that what he had at the end of it was a cleaner picture, properly restored, still worth about £6,000, as long as someone else wanted to pay that much for it.
She’s very straight, Gillian. And she’s got a very good eye for fakes. Human as well as artistic. Then and now.
Oliver Now here’s a funny thing. I dropped my little testamentary heirs and assigns off at the local force-feeding establishment, where the pretty little goslings have their throats gently massaged while the Big Honker pours in knowledge like so much corn. The flat looked as if the lares et penates had done some heavy partying, and my artistic yen to reduce chaos to order being what it is, I’d stacked a few things in the sink, and was just trying to decide whether to give the Unpublished Shorter Fiction of Saltykov-Shchedrin another go or have a three-hour wank (don’t be envious, only teasing), when the shrill borborygmus of the telephone alerted me to what philosophers preposterously maintain is the outside world. Might it be some Hollywood exec, propelled by the unputdownability of my screenplay into unfamiliar nocturnal existence: the slow loris of Malibu, the Edward’s potto of Bel Air? Or might it, more plausibly, be some drubbingly mercantile reminder from my dear moglie about the projected shortage in the short to medium term of washing-up liquid? But reality proved—and in this respect the philosophers have down the millennia been altogether too dismayingly right—not entirely as I imagined.
‘Hello, it’s Stewart,’ said a rather smug voice.
‘Well, good for you,’ I replied with all the acerbity of matutinal melancholy. (They’re always far worse in the morning, the glooms, don’t you find? As far as I have a theory on the matter, it goes like this. The layout of the day, such as it ineluctably is—dawn, morning, afternoon, dusk, night—represents such a bloody obvious paradigm of the transit of human existence, that while the approach of felty du
sk, with obliterating night on its coat-tails, is a forgivable time to suffer a heightened awareness of human frangibility and inevitable fucking demise, and while early afternoon is a similarly logical location, as the echo of the midday gun wails like tinnitus in your ear, the notion of cornflake tristesse, of yoghurt despair, is prima facie contradictory, if not an insult to the metaphor. Which contradiction makes the black dog’s teeth the sharper in the morning, irony bubbling like rabies in its saliva.)
‘Oliver,’ the voice repeated, manifestly cowed by my rebuke. ‘It’s Stuart.’
‘Stuart,’ I replied, and immediately felt I had to play for time. ‘Sorry, I heard you as a Stewart.’
He didn’t respond to this. ‘So how are things?’ he asked.
‘ “Things,” ’ I replied, ‘are, depending upon your philosophy, either a great illusion or really and truly the only “things” there are.’
‘Same old Oliver,’ he chuckled admiringly.
‘Now that,’ I riposted, ‘is a matter for physiological as well as philosophical debate.’ I gave him some top-of-the-head summary of cell replacement strategy, and the likely percentage of Oliver-tissue still present from the artefact he had last glimpsed however many millennia previously.
‘I thought we could meet.’
It was only then that I realised he was not some phantasmagorical emanation of my morning mood, or even—briefly acknowledging the ‘world’ to be such as many perceive it—calling long distance. Stu-baby—my Stu-baby—was back in town.
6
JUST STUART
Stuart Oliver seemed rather taken aback to hear from me. Well, I suppose that’s not surprising. The person making the phone call is always thinking more about the recipient of the call than vice versa. There are people who ring up and say, ‘Hi, it’s me,’ as if there was only one person in the world called Me. Though, in a funny way, while this is a bit irritating, you usually do guess who’s at the other end, so in a way there is only one Me.
Sorry, that’s a bit off the point.
After he’d got over his initial shock, Oliver asked, ‘How did you track us down?’
I thought about this for a moment, then said, ‘I looked you up in the phone book.’
Something about the way I said it made Oliver get the giggles, just like he did in the old days. It was a sound from the past, and after a while I joined in, even if I didn’t find it as funny as he obviously did.
‘Same old Stuart,’ he finally said.
‘Up to a point,’ I replied, meaning: don’t jump to conclusions.
‘How so not?’—which is a typical Oliver way of phrasing the question.
‘Well, the hair’s gone grey for a start.’
‘Really? Who was it used to maintain that prematurely grey hair was the sign of a charlatan? One of the wits and dandies.’ He started listing names, but I didn’t have all day.
‘I’ve been accused of many things, but being a charlatan won’t hold water.’
‘Oh, Stuart, I didn’t mean you,’ he said, and I even sort of believed him. ‘With you such an accusation would be a veritable colander. You could drain pasta in such a charge. You could—’
‘How about Thursday? I’m out of town until then.’
He consulted a non-existent diary—I can always tell when people do that—and managed to fit me in.
Gillian After you’ve lived with someone for a while, you can always tell when they’re holding something back, can’t you? The same way you can tell if they’re not listening, or would rather not be in the same room as you, or … all those other things.
I’ve always found it touching, the way Oliver stores up things to tell me, then comes like a child with both hands cupped together. I suppose it’s partly his nature, partly the fact that not enough happens to him. One thing I know about Oliver is that he’d be really good at being a success, he’d enjoy it to the maximum, and in a funny sort of way it wouldn’t spoil him. I really believe that.
We were having our supper. Pasta, with a tomatoey sauce Oliver had made. ‘Twenty questions,’ he said, just at the moment I thought he would. We’ve taken to playing this game, not least because it spins out delivery of the news. I mean, I don’t have that much to tell Oliver either, after a day in the studio, half-listening to the radio and half-chatting to Ellie. Boyfriend problems, most of the time.
‘All right,’ I said.
‘Guess who phoned?’
And without thinking, I replied, ‘Stuart.’
Without thinking, as I said. Without thinking that I was spoiling Oliver’s game, apart from anything else. He looked at me as if I’d been cheating, or tipped off in some way. He obviously couldn’t believe that it had come to me just like that.
There was a silence, then Oliver said, in a really petulant voice, ‘What colour’s his hair then?’
‘What colour’s Stuart’s hair?’ I repeated, as if this were a normal kind of conversation we were having. ‘Well, it’s a sort of mousey-brown.’
‘Wrong!’ he shouted. ‘He’s gone grey! Who said it was the sign of a charlatan? Not Oscar. Beerbohm? His brother? Huysmans? Old Joris-Karl—?’
‘You’ve seen him?’
‘No,’ he replied, sounding not exactly triumphant, but at least as if he was in charge again. I let it go—I mean, the part to do with marital challenge.
Oliver filled me in. Apparently, Stuart is married to an American woman, he’s become a greengrocer, and his hair has gone grey. I say apparently because Oliver’s apt to be a bit approximate in the news-gathering business. He also didn’t seem to have found out various key things, like how long Stuart is over for, and why, and where he’s staying.
‘Twenty questions,’ said Oliver for the second time. He was a bit more relaxed by now.
‘All right.’
‘What herb, spice or other wholesome additive, nutrient or condiment did I put in the sauce?’
I didn’t get it in twenty. Perhaps I wasn’t trying very hard.
Later, I thought: how did I guess Stuart straight away? And why did it give me a jolt when I heard he was married? No, it wasn’t as simple as that. ‘Married’ is one thing, and no surprise with someone you haven’t seen for ten years. No, it was ‘married to an American woman’ that gave me the jolt. That’s pretty vague; but suddenly, just for a moment, it all seemed a bit too specific.
‘Why now?’ I asked on the Thursday, when Oliver was setting off for his drink with Stuart.
‘What do you mean, why now? It’s six. I’ve got to be there at six-thirty.’
‘No, why now? Why is Stuart getting in touch with us now? After all this time. Ten years.’
‘I expect he wants to make up.’ I must have looked at him in disbelief. ‘You know, as in, be forgiven.’
‘Oliver, we did him damage, not the other way round.’
‘Oh well,’ said Oliver cheerfully, ‘it’s all blood under the bridge by now.’ Then he squawked and waggled his elbows like a chicken, which is his way of saying ‘must fly.’ I once pointed out to him that chickens didn’t fly, but he said that was part of the joke.
Stuart I’m not much of a one for the touchy-feely stuff. I mean, a handshake is one thing, and sex is another—at the opposite end of the spectrum, naturally. And there’s foreplay, which I also enjoy. But all the shoulder-slapping, body-hugging, bicep-punching, hi-fiving side of human behaviour—which, when you come to think of it, is all human male behaviour—sorry, I can’t do it. Not that it mattered in the States. They just thought it was where I come from, and I only had to say, ‘I’m afraid I’m just a tight-assed limey,’ for them to understand and laugh and slap me on the shoulder some more. And that was OK.
Oliver has always been a hand-on-the-wrist type of person. He links arms at the slightest opportunity. He’s a two-cheek kisser, and what he really likes to do is take a woman’s head in his hands, one paw on either side of her forehead, and then slobber all over her, which I find rather repulsive. It’s how he sees himself. As if to prove
that he’s the relaxed one, he’s leading the show.
So I wasn’t at all surprised at his reaction when we met again for the first time in ten years. I stood up, extended my hand for him to shake, which he did, but then he kept my hand in his and ran his left hand up my arm. He squeezed my elbow a little, then my shoulder a bit more, then ran his hand up to my neck and gave that a squeeze, and finally sort of ruffled the back of my head as if drawing attention to the fact that I’ve gone grey. If you saw that sort of greeting in the movies, you’d suspect that Oliver was a mafioso reassuring me that everything was fine while another villain crept up behind me with a garotte.
‘What can I get you?’ I asked.
‘Pint of Skullsplitter, old friend.’
‘I’m not sure they have that, you know. They’ve got Belhaven Wee Heavy. Or what about a Pelforth Amberley?’
‘Stuart. Stu-art. Joke. Skullsplitter. Joke.’
‘Ah,’ I said.
He asked the barman what wines they had by the glass, nodded several times, and ordered a large vodka tonic.
‘Well, you haven’t changed, you old sod,’ Oliver told me. No, I haven’t: ten years older, hair gone grey, no longer wear specs, lost a stone and a half thanks to my exercise programme, and dressed from head to foot in American clothes. Yup, same old Stuart. Of course, he may have meant internally, but that would have been a bit premature.
‘Nor have you.’
‘Non illegitimi carborundum,’ he replied, but it looked to me as if the bastards had ground him down quite a bit. His hair was the same length, and the same black, but his face was a bit lined, and his linen suit—which looked remarkably like the one he had ten years ago—had various stains and marks on it, which in the old days would have seemed bohemian, but now just looked shabby. His shoes were black-and-white patents. Pimp’s shoes—except they were all scuffed. So he looked just like Oliver, only more down-at-heel. On the other hand, it might have been me that had changed. Perhaps he’d remained exactly the same; it was just how I was seeing him now.