Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man

His cars have always been one mile away from expiration it seems — cheap to buy, and cheap to run. They’re usually crumpled European bangers, with slack steering and alarmingly high tickovers that suggest ambition to get airborne. There’s a certain runt-like motor he favours — the no-frills variety. Cars with snapped-off window winders and hard, haemorrhoid-inducing seats. Cars with simple interior mechanics to tinker with and a recessed shelf by the oil reservoir to tuck in a rag. Often a boot where the engine should be. These ones are the best; he likes unloading paintings from the front end at the galleries. It feels like theatre, like a magician grasping a series of rabbits by the ears and extracting them from an improbable cavity. What’s that called again? Counter-intuition.

It’s not a question of money. They’re doing OK now, better than OK. There have been good years and bad years over the decades. In this profession it’s always the way. There are things he’ll blow his wad on — distilling equipment, limited editions, Indian black. Cars though, are not worthy of great expenditure; this is another rule of practicality he should make sure to pass along to the kids. So long as they get where they should be going and back again — that’s what matters. It’s about the skill of the driver anyway, not anti-lock brakes and air-conditioning and all that rubbish. At least he bloody well drives! Lots of his arty friends don’t, or won’t, or can’t, or claim not to have any inclination to, especially the bloody poets. Donald doesn’t, nor Robson. They take some kind of socialist pride in it, and at being able to expediently decipher bus and train timetables instead. ‘The number forty-four will be here in eight minutes, comrades.’ And they’ve developed a sort of royal posture and odd passenger tics. Reading the review sections and getting colicky rather than looking at the passing scenery for one. Dexterity with radio tuning, but an inability to locate the washer fluid if it’s required while Peter’s rolling a smoke and steering with his knees.

He’ll be sad to see it go, this latest motor — a boxy, bug-eyed Daffodil — for the acquisition of which he talked the man in the dealership down to under two hundred pounds. Not a bad little deal. Then he sportingly upped his own price by a quid, saying the beast was on the endangered species list of cars and he’d better acknowledge it. And Jimmy Walton of Walton & Sons laughed and shook his hand, and was glad to see the wrecker trundling off the forecourt, whirring like a helicopter, and spotting on the ground. Another man might be embarrassed to drive such a car. Another man might consider it an inferior status symbol. Not Peter. Life’s too short for material displays.

In any case the Daf does well on the hills in winter. Its thin rigid tyres suit the snow, slicing through it like knives through icing sugar. And its engine pitch clears hares from the road without him having to beep them back into their burrows. Two gears — forward and back, both as quick as each other — an ingenious system, if ever there was one. Steep gradients require agriculture-speed struggles, of course, but the thing usually makes it in the end. It’s not often he has to leave it stranded at the bottom of the moor and walk home. Lydia uses her own car, a smart little Volkswagen Beetle, a dependable runarounder. Susan says it’s ‘a false economy’, buying cheap cars and having them conk out hither and thither. It seems whenever he arrives back at the cottage from a trip out these days, she’ll be waiting, shaking her head, and ready with a stern lecture before he’s even clambered out of the offender. ‘Wilse’, she’ll say (‘Wilse’, not ‘dad’, not ‘father dearest’, but ‘Wilse’, the slang for all the local Peters), ‘What a clapped-out old heap!’ And just to make the case for her when he turns off the ignition some spastic belt along one of the engine cones will continue squealing. ‘Look, kiddo, there’s no point in getting a new Merc and having it lathered in shit from driving through the farmyard every day.’ She’ll roll her eyes, and kick the dinted hubcap. ‘But the place looks like a wrecking yard, Dad.’

Touché, daughter. There is of course ‘The Whale’—the enormous, filthy-white Volvo, his previous fin-de-siècle automobile, now parked up by the cattle-grid and growing over with ferns. An industrious branch of bracken has furled its way up through the rusty hole in the floor and is filling the interior, like a splendid Victorian glasshouse, with greenery. And yes, at some point it needs to be towed away to the scrappy. It’s just that he’s not got round to it yet. He’s a very busy man. ‘I think it looks adamantine,’ he tells her. ‘Like a Ted Hughes poem.’ At which point she grimaces and stalks back into the cottage. Missy Miss. Suzie-Sue. ‘Is that brother of yours in my pouch again?’ he calls after her. A bony shrug while she’s departing. Stoner brother’s not high on her agenda of reform it seems. Just crazy pikey dad.

That rich drift of percolating coffee is killing him, as is his walnut bladder. He can hear female laughter downstairs, and groaning. Lydia and Susan are trying to wake up the under-stair monster with a spritz or two from the watering can. ‘Tip it, tip it, tip it!’ Poor lad. Still, that’s probably his cue; if the ladies of the house are feeling feisty he should surface pronto and avoid a dousing. He hauls himself up out of the bed’s soft vegetation, straightens the quilt out with a flap, and goes for a whizz. Remember to put petrol in the car, put petrol in the car, he chants. And get a quote for a tow-away. Maybe.

In the bathroom the toilet looks a long way down; maybe it’s been shrinking overnight too. Maybe there’s a conspiracy of shrinking things. He puts a hand against the wall, leans over and unleashes. He starts, then stops, then starts the stream of yeasty yellow properly. Oh prostate, dear prostate. The Daf will cope, a good few months left in it, he’s sure. Besides, you can’t avoid the battle of machine against nature. Danny had a picture book called Tractor Max when he was little — Peter remembers the illustrations it contained. Those massive sweeping fells and turgid fields, vivid and sky-less. Human endeavour seemed diminished within the grandness of that landscape. Every time he read it to Dan at bedtime he felt something wobble in his gut from the sheer bloody tenacity of that little tractor hauling away. He felt like he might fall off the bunk bed. Yeah, that illustrator knew the score.

He pulls the chain on the cistern and water dumps down into the bowl. It should be another rule — a good image should tip you off your comfortable perch, stir up your notions of safety, and make you dizzy. Like vertigo. Like Rothko! He’ll have to remember to tell the kids that one. He’ll have to write these rules down or something, for posterity. It’s useful information after all. He can hear Lydia calling ‘Peter, Peter, are you…’ as he pads down the hallway to the top of the stairs. Below is a strange scene. Danny is naked and curled against the bottom step, having made it no further than a few feet from his berth. His skin is glistening wet, his eyes behind his eyelids flickering. Probably still dreaming of that rave in the old art-deco hotel down the coast (hey, maybe he should pilfer some of Dando’s little dove pills and give them a whirl, quid pro quo et cetera). His sister is standing over him with a primed watering can, looking lethal.

In the cool back room of her mother’s house Annette measures rose stalks with her forearm. The stems must be kept long, the length from her fingertip to her elbow. They must be trimmed under running water to prevent their white heads drooping, like nuns in prayer. She snips the stalks, one by one, then turns off the tap, closes and locks the blades and places the shears to one side. She arranges the roses in a pottery urn and takes it across the courtyard, careful not to trip on the uneven stones. She puts the spray into the back of the van, next to the freesias and the gaggles of narcissi, and closes the double doors with a gong-gong.