Alan Hollinghurst - The Sparsholt Affair

‘Oh . . .’

‘The whole business of Dad’s death put me out by a few weeks.’

‘Oh . . . darling, of course it did,’ said Bella. ‘And are you all right?’

‘I’m all right about him dying, really, yes.’

‘Hmmm. All the other stuff, though . . . I must say I felt for you, when I saw all that.’

‘I ought to be used to it by now, but it was all so long ago I’d got used to it being forgotten – and young people of course had never heard of it.’

‘Well, I hardly had, you know, myself . . .’ – not knowing how to place herself.

‘Anyway, everyone knows now.’ Bella wasn’t someone to confide in, but her fame and energy drew something from him, a desire for validation. Not, of course, that he’d ever heard of her till she asked him to paint her.

‘Funny, though,’ she said, ‘having an affair named after you.’

‘It’s not quite the honour it may seem,’ said Johnny, not for the first time. ‘It’s not like a TV show, say . . .’

Bella hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t tell you this, it’s what my Samuel calls the picture – our portrait, I mean. The Sparsholt Affair .’

‘Oh . . . yes . . . hah.’ Again this wasn’t original of Samuel.

‘Seriously, though,’ said Bella, ‘I suppose with something like that, it could colour your whole life, if you let it.’

‘Well . . . I dare say everyone’s whole life is coloured by something.’ Given the chance, he forgot it for months on end, but could never be wholly free from requests to explain, and have feelings about it, though his cautious patter was now nearly meaningless with repetition. ‘I do remember how terrible it was when it all blew up, I’d just started a new school, and I think I told you I always had problems reading.’

‘You were dyslexic, darling.’

‘Yeah, thick was the word in those days. The other kids read about it in the papers – they knew more about what Dad had been up to than I did.’

Bella nursed her mug. ‘Think what they’d know now,’ she said.

‘Well, I suppose.’

‘It scares me, what my kids can see online. Porn, and – oh god, I shouldn’t tell you this, I found Samuel has one of these dating apps on his phone.’

‘Oh, lord!’ said Johnny, and went over and looked closely at Alan Miserden’s gleaming left loafer.

‘It must feel strange,’ said Bella a bit later, ‘when you finish a big piece like this. I know I feel awful when we’ve wrapped a new series.’

‘I always have something else on the go,’ Johnny said. ‘I’m never not doing a job. That’s something really positive I get from my dad.’

‘You’re a worker,’ said Bella, ‘like me.’ And she went off a few steps round the back of her own picture to see what else might be going on. ‘Anything interesting?’

‘Oh . . . well, I’ve been painting my daughter – I told you she’s getting married next month, so I want to do it first.’

‘Before you lose her – aah, darling,’ said Bella.

‘I hope not.’

‘Can I see . . . ?’

‘Well, it’s not nearly finished . . .’ It wasn’t a good idea to show sitters other work in progress – it gave them unhelpful ideas, retrospective doubts. Yet he wanted Bella to admire this one – the sitter as much as the picture, eyes, nose, mouth worked on with extraordinary care amid the loose swirls of hair and curve of her collar. He went over to where it was propped up, not touched for a week, and covered with a cloth – he lifted it out, and she followed him to the light.

‘Oh, she’s a beauty, isn’t she.’

‘Her dad’s not the best judge of that,’ said Johnny.

Bella glanced at him. ‘I can see her mother in her, but she’s more like you.’

‘Really?’ This pleased him, as the picture itself did; the patient re-creation of his own daughter lent the work on the portrait a challenge and a charge of emotion quite lacking in the Miserden job.

‘And you like the husband – husband-to-be?’

‘Yeah, he’s OK,’ said Johnny, and grinned – neither of them quite knew what he meant.

‘Well, thank you for sharing,’ said Bella, watching as he took the canvas away. ‘And what’s this?’ There was a danger of her getting into her stride, and Johnny said absent-mindedly,

‘Which one’s that . . . ? Ah, no, that’s not by me.’ He came over and they looked at the drawing hanging by the door into the hall, Bella with eyes narrowed, as if preparing to speak. ‘It was left to me by an old friend who died a few years ago – Evert Dax?’

She half-nodded, then made a little moue: ‘I don’t think . . .’

‘Fran knew him – in fact I first met her in his house, long ago.’

‘Ah . . . yes.’

‘It’s by an artist called Peter Coyle, who was killed in the War, very young. I’ve only ever seen one other thing by him.’

‘Well, it’s very striking,’ said Bella. ‘I mean, marvellous drawing . . .’ There was a little teeter on the boundary between them, what could be said about so much muscular male flesh.

‘I’d been looking at this picture for years at Evert’s house without guessing what it was.’

‘And that is?’

Johnny paused respectfully, ‘It’s my father.’

Bella’s head went back. ‘My word, Jonathan.’

‘Done when he was a student, early in the War.’

She leaned in more closely. ‘No wonder he had affairs!’

Johnny didn’t mind this. ‘He was a handsome man,’ he said.

‘But he didn’t want his head in the picture.’

‘I suppose not – who knows?’

‘You never asked him?’

Johnny’s eyes ran over the ridged abdomen and sleek pectorals, familiar in chalk, in reality known differently, and remotely. ‘We never talked about things like that.’

‘No . . . perhaps . . . And you never painted him yourself?’ – Bella turning her gaze on him now.

‘Sadly, no. We had a first sitting for a portrait about twenty years ago, but then we had a terrible row, it was impossible.’

‘That’s a real shame.’

‘We never really knew each other,’ said Johnny, ‘what with everything.’

It wasn’t clear from Bella’s thoughtful stare if she was absorbing wisdom or about to dispense it.

When she had gone Johnny drifted back almost reluctantly into the studio, and looked at the family portrait again. The afternoon was darkening, and he switched on the big lamp – the colours leapt into gallery brilliance, and the handling seemed more exposed and temperamental. He knew Bella felt it could all have been glossier, goldener, while part of his own regret was that he hadn’t been blacker and sharper. He had failed as both eulogist and satirist: it was the compromise of his trade, though at best, of course, the truth. Then the sweep of harp strings in his pocket, the upward run after all, Johnny read the words carefully and smiled.

A week later a boy came to take the Miserden family away and enshrine them in the massive gilt frame that Bella had ordered, twenty times the weight of the canvas itself – which was so long, on its light pine stretcher, that it wobbled and twisted slightly as they lifted it. He was called Eduard, a Catalan, yes from Barcelona, lean, long-faced, clear-skinned, with short dark hair that was roughed up into a sort of quiff at the front, and at his nape, as he bent forwards, tapered and graded so delicately to the neck it seemed more like nature than barbering. His white teeth and his short dark beard were together something Johnny wanted to paint, so that he was smilingly distracted in the way he looked at him doing his work. Eduard wore green boxer shorts whose rear waistband, and a crescent of brown back, were shown every time he squatted down or leant across the package once he’d laid it flat. Johnny studied the waistband for ten seconds, the word overlapping itself nonsensically at the join.