The Portrait (3 page)

You had come to take me to dinner, and were waiting with unaccustomed patience for me to clean myself up enough to look respectable. Normally it was the other way round, with me waiting like a young girl for her first beau. I’d only known you for a month or so then, and was already captivated. A chance, overheard remark in a museum, and you came up to me and invited me for a drink. The Café de l’Opéra! Champagne! Brilliant conversation, so worldly and knowing. You were already known, and had started writing reviews of Paris exhibitions for the newspapers in London. Were the editor of an advanced journal with no circulation, someone who turned up at parties and dinners. Had a reputation for—something, although no-one really knew what. Yet you pursued me, initiated the friendship and cultivated it. You chose me to be your friend! You singled me out, paid attention to me, began my education. I was twenty-seven, but so inexperienced of this new world I wished to enter I’m sure I seemed much younger. You were near thirty already, but almost jaded from having seen so much.

I think the others laughed at me behind my back, but I didn’t care. I wore my adoration, my reverence, like a badge of pride. “William says . . .” “William thinks . . .” “William and I . . .” Heavens, but I must have been ridiculous. You encouraged it, flattered and cajoled. “Don’t worry about the others. An artist like yourself . . .” “You have something special; real ability . . .” All those phrases; I lapped them up, wanted more, wanted you to say them again and again. It was like bathing in milk. And I didn’t realise how much I filled a need in you: everything was fresh for me; you had seen everything before, many times over. With me in tow you could catch some of the excitement of discovery and feel the joy of novelty once more. I think it is why you so earnestly advocate the new in art. You are constantly in search of something to excite you and stir an enthusiasm that a too-fortunate education has snatched from your grasp.

No-one had ever taken me seriously before. You were the first not to regard me as skilled only in self-deception. You patronised me, of course, but then you patronised everyone. But even I realised that you liked to be around when I saw something for the first time, discovered a painter I had never heard of, gazed with wonder on a masterpiece you had known all your life. You could tell me everything about the artist, dissect his skill and turn his genius into words. But you couldn’t be frozen in amazement, couldn’t tremble with emotion. I provided that for you, and in return you gave me an education. Until you came along, I was sustained only by a deep-seated Scottish doggedness, but I knew already it wasn’t going to be enough. I loved you for that, always will. Because you were right, after all: I am a good artist.

I threw myself into my work under your tutelage, labouring all hours of the day and night to make myself better, laying my improvements before you like a faithful dog coming back to his master with a stick. And I did get better, improved in ways I scarcely thought possible; I learned to take risks, not to be safe and hide behind my skill. Oh, bliss it was! I still look back on those evenings we spent together as the happiest part of my life, and I wanted it to go on forever. I didn’t want to get to know you any better; didn’t want to think about the shadows and the subtleties. But innocence is only pleasurable because it is transient.

How is it that expressions change? I have spent years looking at people’s faces, and it is still a mystery to me. A minuscule, immeasurable movement of an eyebrow in relation to the eye and nose; a scarcely discernible tightening or loosening of the muscles in cheek and neck; the barest tremor on the lips; a shine in the eyes. But we know the eyes do not change; the most significant manifestation of emotion is pure illusion. And this fractional shifting is all that distinguishes contempt from respect, love from anger. Some people are crude; their faces can be read by anyone. Some are more subtle, and only those close to them can read the face correctly. Some are incomprehensible even to themselves.

It has taken me years to unpick the expression on your face when you looked at Evelyn’s work that day in the atelier. I sometimes think my entire career, my life, even, could be cast as the quest to decipher that look, to peel away layer after layer, to plunge down into your mind and piece together the fragmentary emotions and responses that I saw but could not understand. I managed it eventually; I will tell you how soon enough.

So the expression was obscure, but the response was not. That was as clear as a bell. A polite dismissal. Not even contempt. It carried weight, I followed you, but not so far as to make some comment; even then I could see something of myself in her. And I was not comfortable. Because my own immediate reaction had been different—the brief start that comes into the mind when faced with something unexpected and surprising. I could have dismissed that easily, of course; but it was echoed by the momentary hesitation I noticed in you; a sliver of time between your looking and your response.

That’s what I want in this picture, the one I have been carefully sketching out all this while. I want that look, that penetration. I want that ability to see reflected back on the viewer, want the person looking at this portrait to think that it is he who is being assessed, not the other way round. And unless you manage to give it to me, old friend, I’ll have to try and conjure it up from my memory. No-one will understand but me, of course; it may be that it will all go down as merely a piece of bad painting, or be overlooked entirely. It doesn’t matter; this is not just a public portrait. It is also a private matter, between you and me. So that you understand my understanding, if you follow me.

You see, the problem I have at the moment is that you have grown just a touch sleek in the last few years. I hadn’t expected that before you arrived, so I am having to rethink my approach. You’ve become a bit
too
self-confident, somewhat priggish. All those years back, there was a faint anxiety to your features. It made you more human, more complex at the same time that it made you more difficult and—let us not beat about the bush—more prickly. Your snobbishness, your arrogance, your ambition were all nearer the surface then, and even though they are not normally appealing qualities, they made you a more attractive person, and certainly an easier one to paint. Now years of success have worn all that away; I see none of it anymore. But it is still there, somewhere, and I intend to bring it out. I know you haven’t really changed.

At the moment you look merely sardonic, detached. No good at all. You’ve ruined my morning. We will stop here. No, I’ve no idea what you should do for the rest of the day; that’s your problem. I suggest a walk. You have too much of the urban about you; it makes you pale and rather lifeless—desiccated, even. Fresh air and exercise would be very much better for you than those nasty little pills. Besides, there are some things to see around here if you look; they are careless of their history in these parts and leave it lying around in the most surprising places. I like that tendency in them; they are concerned with the present, and feel no need to preserve and catalogue every last stone of their past. They have been futurists for generations. The avant-garde can tell them nothing they do not already know.

I admit Houat is not much to look at, at first sight; it doesn’t yield up its charms easily. There’s nothing for a man schooled in Gainsborough, who knows of the sublime beauty of the Alpine landscape, the wooded gentleness of Suffolk, or expects his Campagna to be peopled with be-sporting nymphs and shepherds. There are no mountains, no woods. Scarcely even any trees. You have to look to see the clumps of wild carnations, the yellow of the broom, or the jasmine. The variety of grasses, each with a subtly different colour. All these things need to be studied, but above all you have to study the sea, which is the alpha and omega of this place, its definition and cause. The colours, the tones, the shapes of the sea in its different guises are all the scenery you need; it is an endless show, and can conjure up every emotion and mood. I recommend a closer look; walk along Treac’h er Goured—the whole island, after all, is only a couple of miles long; even you could manage it—and find the holy fountain. Sit by it while you smell the wind and feel the sun. Stay long enough and you will begin to see what I mean, perhaps. Go to the church in the village, take a walk along the beach, the cliffs, and look out over the sea. Consider the fort overlooking the island, the stonework of the quay. There are menhirs and dolmens here, although such echoes of a pagan past are supposed to have been destroyed. What more could any reasonable man want? There is enough for a lifetime of contemplation. Tell me what you think tomorrow.

And while you are at it, I will cast an eye over my morning’s labour and, no doubt, find it wanting. At the moment, though, I’m not displeased with my efforts. I’ve caught that way your chin rises above the horizontal and gives you the air of aloofness and superiority you use so well. But not too much; don’t worry. I haven’t yet descended into caricature. And no, you can’t see it. This isn’t a collaboration. I paint; you sit. When you are in that chair, you are stripped of your expertise, of your taste and discernment. Your opinion is of no more value to me than that of the old peasant I sketched last month. You are defenceless until I am finished.

Don’t look petulant; it is only a passing torment you have to endure. Painters have to live with the opinions of others forever, and so we try to ignore them as much as possible, like these islanders who do not notice the stone memorials to the hardships they have witnessed. Think of the cruelties you have inflicted on others with your pen—for the most part justified I am sure, but no less hurtful for that—and consider how petty my revenge will be. Besides, I have to be true to what I see; I cannot be too harsh on you when I trace the line of that chin. I remember too well how it made me laugh, how I flung myself into agreement with its disdainful movements.

Shut the door when you go out. The wind is getting up and I don’t want my papers blowing about.

DO YOU KNOW, after you left yesterday I spent the next hour walking about this little room—which I grandly call my studio—cursing you? And myself, for not throwing you out the moment you set foot over the threshold. Why did you suggest I paint your portrait? I know the reasons you insinuated in your letter, of course—expressed delicately and gravely, you felt I needed help. Needed to feel you still loved me. That you didn’t resent the way I abandoned you and went off without a word. A portrait would perhaps restore my self-confidence, and give me some much-needed income. A picture of you at some exhibition would be a fine way of advertising my continued existence, maybe even ease my return to London. Is that it? I am grateful; touched. It has always been your worst characteristic, to bestow generous aid and ask nothing obvious in return. No wonder so many people distrust you. I can see you talking it over with your wife, as she sits on the sofa and reads, you at your desk by the big window. Proof-reading a review? Working up a lecture? Are you still working on that book you started in Paris? You look up. “I’ve been thinking about Henry quite a lot recently. I really think I should see if I can help him a little. . . .”

And she smiles. She had a lovely smile. “Such an awkward man! You know I never really took to him. But I know he is an old friend of yours, my dear. . . .”

You go on: “What about writing to him and seeing if he’ll have another go at a portrait? I hear he is not at all well. His last few letters have been rambling, almost incoherent, so I’m told. That way I’ll be able to find out how he is. . . .”

So your excellent wife—a fine woman, who has never directly denied you anything—gives her assent, and you write to me. Maybe I am inventing; but I’m sure I am close.

But that is not it, is it? I have been here near four years now, with not a peep from you before. If you wanted to send me money, there are easy enough ways of doing it. And no amount of friendship would make you spend more than ten minutes on this island unless there was some compelling reason. People can change, but not that much. You get faint crossing Hyde Park. Nature has never been one of your loves. So what is it that makes you need to sit in my presence for days on end? What is it that you are after, that you evidently cannot ask me directly? That is the way you draw people in, is it not? Sit silently, until they speak to fill up the silence; give little away yourself while the other person reveals their soul?

You see, your very presence takes me back into the past and wakes up all sorts of memories I had forgotten about for years, which have not troubled me for a long time. I got no work done whatsoever after you left, and had recourse in the early evening to that wine which you find so revolting. I drank far too much of it, had only an omelette for dinner; I didn’t want to go to Mère Le Gurun for fear you would be there. The prospect of an evening’s conversation with you made me feel perfectly sick, so I stayed put and made myself feel ill all on my own. I slept badly. I haven’t really slept well for years now. Not since I left England. Some nights are better than others, but last night I scarcely slept at all, despite the pharmacopoeia of potions I have in my little cupboard. I am in a bad mood, mainly because of my ageing stomach, which I find can take less and less of any sort of ill treatment. The man who once used to go for days without sleep in a frenzy of work is no more. Dead, my friend, and buried; only a shade remains, which needs an early night and cannot take too much wine.