Iain Pears - The Portrait

So on I went, waiting for that feeling of being there. Do you know what I mean? The feeling that you are home, even though you have never been there before. The sense that where you are is where you should be. I can describe it no better than that, I’m afraid. It’s not a feeling you get in a big city, as when you are in London or Paris you are never anywhere in particular. So I avoided the towns and took the train slowly up through France, sometimes coming close, sometimes trying to persuade myself that I had found what I was looking for, because it was a long voyage, and a frustrating one. I wanted it over, and took no real pleasure in the trip. The landscape, the sights, the architectural marvels, were not important. They were not what I was chasing.

And I ended in Quiberon, a poor and depressing place, as I’m sure you noticed, and was not especially tempted by it. But I wandered down to the port to kill time until I could continue my journey, and saw a fishing boat unloading their catch onto the quayside. I had been looking for some time before I realised that I could understand what the men were saying. Not the understanding that is filtered through learning and education, mind, but real understanding, without even having to think. They were speaking the Gaelic. A distant variant of Scottish, of course, but close enough to the language I learned from my grandmother when I was packed off to her to live whenever my father was out of work and couldn’t afford my keep. Fairly often I spent months there, and she spoke Gaelic to me only. She was a gentle woman with a fierce pride that was expressed only in these words. Unlike many, I never tried to forget the language, even though it was of little use to me.

And those fishermen reminded me of her through their conversation. A strange accent they have, with dozens of words and expressions that are different, but just recognisable. So I asked them, in Gaelic, where they came from. They found my speech as odd as I found theirs, but the curiosity of a man so obviously foreign speaking to them in something close to their own tongue tickled their fancy, and they responded. They were the first people I had had a decent conversation with in weeks, they shared a drink with me, told me of a little house which I might rent. I was home. My journey was over. I crossed over with them the next day.

I’ve only left a few times since, to go to the morgue in Quiberon to study my corpses or to pick up some paints and canvasses. You think I am in exile, I see myself as being in refuge. Not the first Scot to be so, either. I have an illustrious forebear. If you want, go back to the church, and look at the statue. Saint Gildas. Another man of the Clyde, although a bit before my time. I must say he had escaped my attention before I came here, but Father Charles told me all about him. Gildas fled the tumult and beastliness of England and took sanctuary on this island so he would not have to submit to the opinion of others who considered him a heretic. Thus the version of the story I was told.

A perceptive man, our priest. He says little, but sees much. You still haven’t been to visit him, I note.

The islanders welcome me in their fashion, but think I’m a bit crazy as well. No-one else has chosen to live here for 1500 years, and no English—they think of me as English despite everything, which is a big disadvantage—since the smugglers were defeated half a century ago. No-one stays unless they have to, or if they can think of anywhere better to go. They don’t even have any people spending the summer; nobody in their right mind would come to Houat, to this island with no running water, where it is devilish hard to get fuel for your fire or food for your plate. But here I stay, and here I would have stayed forever, had I not summoned you here and had your presence not reminded me of the advice I gave to Evelyn—that a painting unseen might as well not exist. I am thinking—no, I have decided—to go back, to re-enter the fray; but on my terms only.

What was that again? I summoned you? How dare I presume? You wrote to me, did you not, proposing the commission for a portrait? Your attempt to begin my reintroduction into the world of English art, the only one that matters to folk like us, poor though it be. To lure me back and help me take up the reins once more. No, no, my dear friend! We are trying to look below the surface now. It was I who summoned you; I who knew you would come, would have to come to see me. I lured you here. I needed to see if you would come.

I have written few letters in the past couple of years; my bank has received most of them, and they have not been so important. My demands on its services are small these days. One was important, though; the short note I wrote to your protegé Duncan a few months back. That I laboured long over, once I knew what I must do, because I knew you would read it. That was the letter which brought you here; to which you had to respond, if all was as I thought.

One sentence only, in fact, made you pack your bags and take the train to Paris, then out to Quiberon, the fishing boat over to the island, and walk across it until you arrived at my door. One short sentence made the difference. “I hope you and William are still friends; many have drowned in his displeasure.”

You read things, words and pictures, with an intensity greater than any man I have known. You seize on the little detail—a colour contrast, the shape of an ear lobe, the crook of a finger, one malformed sentence, a curious use of words, and tease it until it gives up its secrets. But what secret did my letter conceal? It tantalised, that clumsy sentence, but remained mute.

It was no slip of the pen, my friend, not a piece of babbling from someone losing touch with reality, a poor joke made by someone forgetting even the basics of English grammar. I wanted to see if you would come. It was the final test, every word considered and laboured over. Besides, I needed you here, if I was ever to break through the block which has stopped me painting anything truly satisfying.

I THINK it’s time to tell you what made me leave England. You’ll love it; it will appeal to your egotism. You did. It began at half past nine on a Tuesday morning, May 10, 1910. I was sitting having my breakfast, and cursing the weather, as it was dull and cloudy and I wanted brightness for a picture I was working on. At the very least I knew I would be doing nothing at least until lunchtime; maybe not even then. So I decided to read the Morning Chronicle and take my time over my scrambled eggs and coffee that my landlady had just brought me. I started, as I always did, with the notices and advertisements, then worked my way through the news, foreign and domestic, then, for a final pleasure, turned to the reviews.

I had been looking forward to it; Evelyn’s show had opened a couple of days before, and I knew there would be something. At worst, only a little mention; at best, something more fulsome. I didn’t know who’d be doing it; the Chronicle is always cagey about that, for some reason. It was the sort of show some young lad would be given to review, not important enough to justify paying some figure of influence. She was scarcely known, after all.

The reviews for your show had run the previous week and were dreadful, the letters from outraged colonels and academicians had followed. Your show was a perfect disaster critically, and a fine success in every other respect. In a matter of days, everybody in the country who cared for such things now knew the names of Gauguin, Seurat, Degas, and all the others.

I thought this boded well for Evelyn; she was likely to benefit from not being part of your group. Besides, I thought the critics would have exhausted their stock of vitriol on you, and would find it agreeable to say something nice for once. But no; they were having too good a time hurling abuse at the French, and most journals had passed her by to give over more space to you. Only the Chronicle ran a review, an anonymous one as occasionally they did. Better than nothing; any review at all was a good start. And the moment I started reading, I knew that you had written it. You have a style with words as distinct as any artist’s with paint. The way you cluster adjectives, the rhythm of the sentences, the complexity of your subclauses, each one diving into another so that the meaning is almost lost as your thought races on—no-one writes like you. I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who recognised it, although I could see why you didn’t want your authorship generally known. You liked to think of yourself as a gentleman, after all.