Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man

Peter is accused among his peers of a disconnection from the modern world. He is warned of being labelled out of date. My friend, how well I know this charge! Even after all these years such notions are put to me. Is production of the still-life merely the ventilation of a dying genre? Is this lyricism and formality now redundant? Elsewhere artists swing paint cans tied to their hearts, people tell me, and these are expressions of the unbound spirit. I was told this again by the young journalist last week, as if I were a man in a cave kept in darkness. Of course, I said to him, it’s like the incense swung by priests. This is neither a riddle nor an invention.

This is the age of abstraction and the split atom. And yet, as Peter writes, the infinite shoreline is so much greater than the reactors. He suggests that if I pass a hand over his letter I might feel the cold of the northern sea and that I too should wear gloves. Perhaps he is a fan of the ‘marvellous reality’! In his spare time he is studying Fra Angelico and he hopes one day to walk the pilgrim paths in homage. He is saving money to visit Italy. He is working at night cleaning the stalls of the philharmonic orchestra. I imagine him standing against a great ocean, like the monk by the sea. I imagine his rock portraits. Bravo, Peter. Bravo!

I have collected each edition of La Voce that survives. The publication existed for less than a decade with only one thousand to each print run, but its influence has been wide. Like so many birds, its ideas have migrated to every corner of the globe. The theories of those brave editors have opened many minds. To be free of spite in such a century of hostility! To have unveiled eyes and no vendetta! To be radical and respectful, to know history and yet embrace the definite future! There is no comparable forum now. There are no independent voices and there is no comprehensive inquiry and it saddens me. The demagogues and the elitists prevail. It is as if we do not want to understand art, nor will we protect its integrity. Those editors were the finest thinkers, and perhaps the best men, of my generation. Some of the copies lie in tatters, their pages rubbed away from the thumbing and the words faded.

That which is radical is often that which is formal. Even the sea has its tides.

Today I have rearranged the objects on the table. Antonio will like the different symmetry I think — he will be surprised by my choice. The light in the afternoons has been good. If I finish a new painting before the snow comes perhaps I will spend some time in Bologna with Antonio. The truth is that winter here is particularly unkind to the old, but a long time has passed since I last travelled. Now there are unified passenger cars and the trains pass by at two hundred kilometres an hour. The Fascist emblems are gone. I could take my suitcase on the ferry to Sardinia or arrange rooms in the Vatican City. I have read that in Rome Howard Hughes keeps an aeroplane in a hangar, always fuelled. I suppose I could leave, and see some more of my country. It has been years since I attended the Biennale and I have a liking for the salty fish of the Adriatic, which are pressed in oil beneath heavy stones until they become tender and the bones can be cleanly pulled. It is not Lent but Theresa might ask the market vendor if our fast trains have brought anything from the clear green waters of the Dalmatian. Then she might bake a flat corn bread on which they can be served.

Lydia is baking when he gets back from his run. He can see her through the open window, sifting clouds of flour. Her hair is caught up in a loose bun at her neck, which looks nesty and sparrow-built. Her elbows are patched with white powder and a white handprint sits above her rump on the brown twill of her skirt. Who is that lovely lady, he wonders. Who is she and what is she doing in this house? There is music coming from upstairs-one of the kids has the stereo booming and Lydia is sashaying a little as she works. ‘Free from the filth and the scum…’ There are moments when he catches a glimpse of her and she is not the woman who has given birth to their children. She is not the woman who squeezes the remaining toothpaste to the top of the toothpaste tube so it is gathered conveniently at the nozzle for him to use. She is not the woman who digs the vegetable patch over with a hoe, and takes punnets of redcurrants to the market. She is unknown, this apparition floating amid the bakery dust. She is the girl on the grass by the priory that he once lay down next to, all those years ago. Someone who revealed the workings of the hinterworld to him.

Light-headed, he needs to eat something. He’s dragged the old bones ten miles-the whole loop of the valley-on a fag and an espresso, and feels like he’s running on fumes now. His legs are brittle, knees like rusty hinges. It’s not good enough, mister, says the voice in his head. Used to be able to do it nay bother. Then do it again. Howay, Peter.

He hefts his leg on to the window ledge, stretches the tendon, and peers into the cottage. Definitely some strange vapour in his noggin. There’s river-life inside the house. Look, there. A dark scarf on the windowsill like an otter’s pelt-did it move just then, did it stroke a whisker, flex a paw? There are sparks behind his eyes. The woman inside is waving a ghostly white hand. Hello, husband. Welcome to your disassociated reality.

Lydia bustles outside, tells him to take off his filthy trainers; in fact gets him to strip completely naked at the front door before he can come in. She disposes of the damp, splattered shorts in the corner, while he stands in the kitchen, red and steaming. ‘Arts North West have rung again,’ she says. ‘They want to know if you’re applying for a grant this year. If you are, the application’s got to be in by Friday. It would be good to have your name, they say’ He huffs and tears a corner off the loaf on the table, chews through seeds and walnuts. ‘Bugger them. Hey I tell you what though, Suze should go for it, shouldn’t she? If she put in her portfolio? She’d bloody walk it.’

Lydia shakes her head, wobbling the fluffy bun. If there are any eggs tucked inside it they’re in danger of rolling out and smashing on the flagstone floor. ‘She won’t qualify if she’s in London. Peter! You’ve got mud, even in your beard.’ He brushes breadcrumbs and dirt from his face and fills a glass of water at the sink. ‘Well, it’ll go to some winnety postgraduate who’s painted a church floor with his girlfriend’s tits then.’ Lydia laughs, her head tipped all the way back. The eggs are safe. ‘Go on. Get Danny out of the bath and go in yourself before you set like a clay pig. He’s been in there an hour with his wacky baccy, steaming up the windows.’ No, with my wacky baccy, Peter thinks; Two of Two’s been raiding my stash again. Lydia puts a hand on his arm. ‘I’m heading out. Yoga. Won’t be too long. You should come-it’d be good for you. You’re very stiff.’ She smiles with those two long incisors, dental pronouncements the twins share, and gives him a slap on his bare backside. ‘Giss-giss then, pig.’

He goose-skins through the house. The cottage floor is even colder than the river ford. A pair of brown tights is hanging on the radiator: two dead moles on a fence. Danny’s banged-up old steamer trunk at the bottom of the stairs looks like the cows’ mossy drinking trough. The blue silk pincushion on the pile of mending: a waterbird. When he runs along the river it’s always too fast to see kingfishers on the crooks of the branches. They flit away, turquoise, faster still.

In the bath, the mud on his shins slowly dissolves. His memories have started to do that too lately. Curse of breaking the half-century, he supposes. Unlike his formative years of coal dust and cod and library books, the spell in America is becoming worryingly erased. His early twenties-Susan and Dan’s age now. Bloody hell. Where does the time go? Emigration. His first wife, Raymie. The transatlantic crossing-how many stops did it involve? London. Shannon. Gander. Boston. Music and bright times in Golden Gate Park. That insane army medical when he was drafted: a knock on the chest to test the heart, and please bend over, sir. And up into Canada to avoid reporting for duty. There are carefully edited notes about that period. There are yarns and inventions. Somewhere along the line the stories he’s told have supplanted anything real. Sometimes he wonders, did any of it even happen? Was he even present?