Edward Docx - The Calligrapher

‘Perhaps I should enter the church.’ I helped myself to more bread.

‘No, you’re too handsome for that. Besides, I didn’t say I couldn’t help you. Calligraphy is about the only thing in the world that I can help you with. You have the talent, Jasper, and I have the contacts. If you promise to go to Roehampton, then I will fix you up a meeting with my friend Saul – he works out of New York. America is –’ Grandmother broke off. A warm breeze, that seemed to come from the Gianicolo hill, had suddenly disturbed her white hair. She adjusted her ancient sunglasses on her head. ‘America is the only place to make any sort of money these days. If we are to get you to the front of that queue, you really need a big New York agent with a serious client list. Saul was a friend of your grandfather’s. In fact he was your father’s godfather. I think you’ve met him once.’

I must have looked blank.

‘He started off in rare books years ago and he has hung on to that side of things, even after he moved into paintings and traditional art. He’s become a bit of a dealer in his old age but he is respected and there is nothing that he cannot sell.’ She finished her wine. ‘He is definitely our man. In the meantime, you must begin by doing some speculative pieces – let’s say three or four of the famous Shakespeare sonnets in a few different hands – so that we have something to send him when the time comes.’

I pretended injury. ‘Why didn’t you suggest this when I was twenty-one? I’ve wasted five years labotomizing myself in offices.’

‘Because you wouldn’t have listened to me when you were twenty-one.’

‘Yes, I would.’

‘No, you wouldn’t. You only listen to me when you have already decided something for yourself.’ She picked up her battered clutch bag. ‘Shall we go to Babington’s for afternoon tea?’

‘I thought you had to go back to work.’

‘Oh bugger that. I am seventy-five – I can do what I like. And anyway this is work. I am a consultant. You are consulting me.’

I stayed in Rome all that summer courtesy of the Vatican and the remains of the money left to me by my mother. I practised and I learnt, studying more intently than ever before and seeking constant advice and criticism from Grandmother. I returned to London in September, rented a threadbare room and enrolled on the course. By December, she finally gave the all-clear (never was quality control so merciless) and we sent six Shakespeares to Saul, each done in a different hand.

Two weeks later I received notice that one of them had already been sold as a Christmas gift – for $200. While this was by no means a great deal of money, I felt that at least I was on my way.

My first real commission came the following spring (just as I was preparing for my exams): twelve ‘Let me not to the marriage of true minds’ at $750 a shot. That was more like it. In all they took four months to complete. But I was reasonably certain that they were well done. And Saul – to whom I spoke more and more on the telephone – was confident that if I could stand doing ‘True Minds’ for the rest of my life, then I would be able to survive.

I walked the exams and was one of only three to sell my work at the end-of-term exhibition. I received a second commission on the back of the first, and then a third. I became a little faster and the money got better every time. Then, in the autumn of that year, I flew to New York and met up with Saul himself – a man of such significant girth that you might journey for several seasons to encircle his waist once.

And it is Saul who saves me still. Since then, my commissions have come from the heart of art-loving America, where he is thick as thieves with that little band of insightful millionaires, who consider that the best gift they can give their satiated friends is an original manuscript copy of something beautiful. For these people, I am truly grateful. But I owe Saul the most. He was responsible for securing me my current work – the most interesting and extended job to date: thirty poems taken from the Songs and Sonnets of John Donne.

Busy old fool, unruly sun,

Why dost thou thus,

Through windows, and through curtains call on us?

‘So, what is for my breakfast?’

‘What would you like?’

‘Something nice.’

‘OK. Something nice it is.’

I rose and stepped silently into my pyjamas. Always a good way to begin the day.

‘Strawberries. And coffee. Not tea.’ She lifted her head from the pillow to open one eye a challenging fraction.

It was the morning of Saturday, 16 March, seven days on from my birthday, and the sun was indeed insinuating its way through the gap in my carelessly drawn curtains. Give the old fool three hours, I thought, and the brazen slice of light now lying across the chest of drawers by the window would find its way across the room to where she lay in bed. But by then, she would probably be gone.

Between you and me, I find it almost impossible to guess breakfast requirements in advance for women like Cécile. As with so many children of the ecological revolution, you would presume that she prefers fruit – cleansing, nutritious, zestful. And yet no doubt she sometimes wakes to find herself craving the immoderate satisfaction of a chocolate croissant or even, on occasion, the wanton candour of bacon and eggs. In the end, I’m afraid, I don’t think there is any way round it: you just have to accept life as an uncertain business and make provision for all circumstances.

Even here there is danger. The talented amateur, for example, will stride merrily out to the shops on the eve of an assignation and buy everything his forthright imagination can conceive of – muesli, muffins, marmalade, a range of mushrooms, perhaps even some maple syrup. Thus laden, he will return to stuff his shelves, fill his fridge and generally clutter his kitchen with produce. But this will not do. Not only will his unwieldy efforts be noticed by even the most blasé of guests – as he offers her first one menu then another – but worse, the elegance and effect of seeming only to have exactly what she wants is utterly lost, drowned out in a deluge of les petits déjeuners.

No – the professional must take a very different approach. He will, of course, have all the same victuals as the amateur but – and here’s the rub – he will have hidden them. All eventualities will have been provided for, and yet it will appear as though he has made provision for none. Except – magically – the right one.

Anyway, thank fuck I got the strawberries.

‘It’s OK if I use your toothbrush?’ she called from my bathroom.

‘Yes, of course. You can have a bath or a shower if you like. There are clean towels in there.’

‘After, maybe.’

I listened to her moving about. She was light on her feet.

I live in this attic flat, at the top of what was once a smart stucco-fronted Georgian house on Bristol Gardens, near Warwick Avenue, London. What with all the eaves and so on, I’m afraid it’s not exactly roomy: OK-ish size lounge, small studio, bedroom, en suite bathroom, and a so-called hall with a kitchenette at one end and the stairs down to my internal front door at the other. But at least the relative cramp prohibits dinner parties – a real mercy in these blighted days of celebrity chefs and self-assembly furniture.

When I moved in, there were two bedrooms; as I only needed one, I was able to switch things around and have my studio at the back. This arrangement ensures that I get street noise when I am asleep and not when I am working; additionally, it has the great benefit of allowing me to have my draughtsman’s board by the north-facing window, which overlooks the beautiful garden below – a retreat surrounded on four sides by old buildings similar to my own and which is for the communal use of all the residents. North – because calligraphers prefer an even light.