The Sparsholt Affair

9

Fran said Johnny must do a picture of Una and herself together. The lesbian double portrait would be a novelty – at least she and Johnny couldn’t think of any. Male lovers together were rare enough. There was the one from the 1940s where Benjamin Britten appeared oddly collaged on top of Peter Pears, and Johnny had cut out a picture from a magazine of a Hockney portrait of Isherwood and his boyfriend, sitting in chairs some way apart. But women together? They didn’t discount the chance of there being some, but as Fran said it was the men who got all the attention. And now how were they going to be done? ‘I’ve got a few thoughts about that,’ she said.

The next Friday, after the shop had shut, Johnny walked down the street and round the corner into Cheyne Walk. He carried the black leather drawing case his mother and Barry had given him for his twenty-first, ‘J. D. S.’ stamped in gold across one corner. It was a bright early evening, the river at high tide, the throb and fume of traffic along the Embankment. He hadn’t been asked to Sir George’s house before, and he saw the visit as a nice step forward in his friendship with Fran, just shadowed by a feeling that he’d been called in, like some other workman, to do a job. He had an almost oppressive sense, as he pushed down the latch of the tall iron gate, which swung closed on a weighted string behind him, of being on her father’s property, his flagged front path, in front of his tall red-brick house, a place where Fran and her friends would be kept in check by his sarcasm; and there was something further, intermittent but persistent, despite everything, the feeling of trailing a hint of scandal, in his makeup and in his very name, into places that would rather have done without it. Well, Sir George was away, ‘In Frankfurt,’ said Fran, as if that explained everything. Johnny stood a moment and looked at the beautiful old building. An ancient wistaria climbed up between the ground-floor windows and under the frail white balcony above, which it seemed to hold up while surely, over many slow decades, wrenching it away from the wall; mauve droplets of flowers showed still among the leaves. Two French windows gave on to the balcony, and one of them was open now, the narrow panes at an angle throwing back the sunlight.

Johnny spoke into the entryphone, but Una came down to let him in. In the gloom of the long narrow hall, closing the door and slipping past him to lead him upstairs, she was not just a friend but the inhabitant of Francesca’s life, he felt it now – she went ahead of him, barefoot on the dark rugs and polished oak, with a kind of moody pride in the whole set-up, and a shy sense, when she showed him into the drawing room above, of admitting him to some new intimacy. But this, after all, was what he was here to capture. She stood and watched as he took in the room, the mild gleam from the river on plain oak panelling, the rich scent of polish, beeswax with a trace of turpentine, mixed up with the sweetness of white lilies in tall vases. He’d expected the place to be crammed with paintings, like Evert’s house, but in this room at least there were only three, each glowing under its own brass picture-light: the Whistlers. He crossed to look at the smallest one, above the bureau opposite: a dusky horizontal with a boat and a man at the oar in silhouette against the grey water.

‘This is amazing . . .’

‘Do you like it,’ said Una.

Then he had the dilemma of which to look at next. All three were Thames views, calmly hanging a few hundred yards from where they’d been painted. There was something worrying as well as wonderful about the narrow focus – it had the cool ruthlessness of Sir George himself, it was the soft-spoken proof of a complete success.

Francesca came in a moment later, kissed him on both cheeks and sat down before she’d really looked at him. She winced as she lit a cigarette, and snapped the lighter shut. ‘You’d better take your shoes off, Johnny, with these priceless carpets.’ He couldn’t tell how much mockery, how much boredom at this house rule, was concealed by her hint of a smile. He felt the more clumsy as he set down his drawing case and hopping forward undid his desert boots. She was wearing pointed black heelless slippers, with tight black silk trousers and an embroidered red chemise.

‘Doesn’t your father wear shoes in the house?’ Johnny said, placing the boots together by the door.

‘What? – oh, Daddy does, yes, but his shoes never get dirty.’

He stood kneading the short silky pile of the carpet through his old socks.

‘Do you want a drink?’ said Una. And though he did he said,

‘No, I’ll wait till I’ve done the drawing, it’s probably best . . .’ – wanting to be sober, and not wanting them drunk, when he was working.

‘We’ll all wait,’ said Francesca, and looked thoughtfully at Una.

Johnny went to the window, stepped out, a bit testingly, on to the thin strip of the balcony, with its delicate wrought-iron fence. It was curious, the little altitude above the pavement, the island of public garden with holly trees and benches, and then the road, the balcony trembling when the lights changed to amber and the juggernauts started their rumbling ascent through the low gears. Beyond the traffic, between the plane trees, lay the grey expanse of the river, the cold wellings and streakings of its currents. And on the other side, an odd ruinous nothing – which Whistler (when Johnny came back in and looked again) seemed already to have noted in the three brown brushstrokes whose mere accidents, the spread and flick of a loose hair, the ghost of a bubble, the sticky split second as the brush left the canvas, were also small miracles of observation, a wall, a roof, a chimney rising through mist. Well, it was genius, and he smiled round at the women, who were looking at each other steadily through Fran’s cigarette smoke.

Genius was inspiring, but Johnny felt he would rather not draw them in here. ‘Is there another room we can use?’ he said.

‘Another room?’ said Fran.

‘Somewhere a bit brighter?’

‘Oh, I see,’ she said, with a smile that showed she was only partly convinced.

‘The kitchen,’ said Una.

‘Well, OK,’ said Johnny.

‘Or what about upstairs?’ said Fran.

‘OK,’ said Una.

Fran stood up and carried her cigarette on to the balcony, from where she flicked it into the garden of the adjacent house. ‘I’ve got this idea for the pose,’ she said.

‘Yes, I’ve got a few ideas,’ said Johnny. He felt it was important to keep some control of the situation. He followed them upstairs, and along a passage, taking everything in slyly as they talked. And there, above a bowl of potpourri on a walnut chest, was Late Summer, Dusk. ‘Aha!’ he said.

Francesca turned, saw him smiling thinly at it. ‘Oh, isn’t it your picture, darling?’

‘Yes, it is . . .’ He was proud to find it here, ahead of him, but it was worrying too, after the pristine works downstairs. The retouches gleamed treacherously. He didn’t like to look too closely, but surely Sir George must know?

It was something he wondered again as they shifted things round in the bedroom. If Fran and Una, pulling up the duvet, throwing clothes into a cupboard, were so in love and so inseparable, if they were even planning now to have a baby, Sir George must be aware of it all, and have accepted it, more or less. They occupied that large enlightened room he had not yet dared to enter with either of his own parents – Evert’s room came the closest to the image in his mind.

There was a small French sofa whose curved back would bind the composition. ‘Grimly uncomfortable,’ Fran said, but they tried it out, the girls at an angle, both looking down, past each other, as if absorbed in the same thought. ‘That’s good,’ said Johnny.

‘You don’t think we should touch more?’

‘No, it’s really good like that.’ It had crept up on him, but this was really the first day of his professional career, he had to do it as if he knew how to do it, on his own – there was instinct, of course, and training, he had a Diploma, and memory of a hundred portraits, more a muddle than a help. And then when they were set he had to find his own angle on them, and his own distance. He looked round, shifted a chair, carefully moved the black bra that was on it, and sat down to draw.

He loved drawing, but it was a funny thing about portraits that you had an audience. Still, in a minute or two he settled, in the self-aware silence they all kept, just Una’s breathing and the soft scratch of the chalk. ‘You can put some music on if you like,’ he said.

‘Oh, let’s not bother,’ said Fran.

Their two heads were a contrast, and there was a question he hadn’t thought out as to which of them should have more prominence, Una being bigger, but Fran the dominant partner, so it seemed to him. So there was tact in it.

‘How are you getting on?’ said Fran, slightly breaking the pose after five minutes to look across at him. Johnny smiled pleasantly as he worked with the edge of the chalk and stared across at them, not as conversationists but as subjects, whom he was free, and obliged, to stare at. ‘Coming along?’

‘Well, you know, I think so.’ He was pleased by how little he now felt frightened of her.

‘How long will it be, do you imagine?’

‘Mm, don’t be so impatient.’

She settled back, was silent for a minute, and then spoke with eyes dutifully averted. Only her blinking betrayed her tension. ‘We were wondering if you might do a baby for us.’

He tried pretending to himself he didn’t know what she meant, his heart raced and the heat flooded his face; he took refuge in obtuseness. ‘How big?’

‘Well . . .’ – the girls looked at each other.

‘I mean, in oils, or a drawing like this?’

Una made one of her rare statements: ‘We want your sperm, for god’s sake.’ He gasped, blushed deeper, shaded heavily with the chalk.

‘Oh, I see!’ he said.

‘You see, we’ve rather set our hearts on having a baby,’ said Fran.

‘Right . . .’

‘But we need, you know’ – she glanced at Una – ‘a donor.’

‘We think you’re quite nice,’ said Una, in the tone of an unforeseen concession – she kept her pose, but there was something fleeting in her face now that Johnny would never capture.

‘And reasonably good-looking,’ said Fran. ‘We don’t want a hideous baby. And you’re healthy, aren’t you, darling.’

‘Um . . . yes, I think so,’ said Johnny.

‘You mustn’t do it for at least a week before,’ said Una. ‘You know, with anyone else.’

‘That shouldn’t be too much of a problem,’ said Johnny, feeling they were getting ahead of themselves.

‘Or indeed with yourself,’ said Fran severely.

‘Can I think about it?’ said Johnny, though it sounded already as if he couldn’t.

‘Darling, of course you can,’ said Fran, as if she too thought it merely a formality.

‘I mean . . . who’s going to be mother – if you don’t mind me asking?’

‘No, fair question,’ said Fran. ‘I am.’

‘Well, we’ll have one each, love,’ said Una. ‘We agreed on that.’

Johnny kept drawing, he worked up the back of the sofa between the near-blanks of the faces, glad of the task. He sensed the girls themselves, both a little flushed now, were glad of the pose – it made the whole strange conversation possible. But it wasn’t so easy for the artist. He put his head on one side, and made showy marks like someone pretending he could draw. To be asked for your sperm seemed an outrageous compliment and then huge consequences, of a kind any young man might rather avoid, reared beyond it – the whole thing was a challenge, to his humour, his friendship and that untested thing his manhood. Had they really asked Ivan? If so, he had turned them down; and that in itself put pressure on him, even as it gave him an excuse, a precedent.

‘You said you haven’t got much money?’ said Una.

‘No, not really,’ said Johnny, relieved for once, and not liking to ask how much they had. ‘I get twenty-five pounds a week from Cyril; and my dad gives me ten pounds a month. I mean, we’re not getting married, are we?’ – finding he hadn’t been paying attention to that large part of the conversation that hadn’t yet happened, but that his friends must have been through ahead of him in great detail. He thought the lack of funds might be an invaluable get-out clause.

‘You mean to both of us?’ said Una, and smiled distantly at his silliness.

‘Would the father be allowed to see the child?’ said Johnny, taking shelter in a more abstract view; he supposed if they didn’t get him they’d get someone else. He was surprisingly jealous of the idea, the ridiculous image, of Ivan with a baby.

‘That could be part of it,’ said Una, ‘yes – if you like.’

‘She’d have to take my name, though,’ said Fran.

‘Or he . . .’ said Una, and Johnny, not quite in unison.

‘Well, all right,’ said Fran impatiently – whether at their simple-mindedness or at this undesirable alternative. Though it was other alternatives that occurred to Johnny – he felt his child was being taken away from him within seconds of its first being mentioned.

‘I’ll have to think about it,’ he said absurdly and again.

‘I want you to think about it very carefully,’ Fran said.

He laughed at the redundancy of what he was saying – ‘I mean, I’ve never done anything like this before.’

‘No, nor have we,’ said Una, very simply. Johnny saw it was a clever ploy. They had already planted the unthought-of possibility of being a father in his heart. He imagined for a moment telling his own father the news, the uncertain pride in this nearly heterosexual act, the unhoped-for vindication; and then he started thinking of all the richly ironic reasons he couldn’t tell him.

‘I can’t do any more on this today,’ he said with a surprising loud laugh, and flipped the cover of the pad back over the drawing. He felt things would be very different for all of them the next time they sat.

Fran sighed. ‘Oh, thank god,’ she said, quickly getting up. ‘Let’s have a drink.’

They went down to the kitchen and in a minute they all had cold glasses of rosé in their hands – ‘It looks like a rather important one,’ Fran said as she slipped it back into the fridge; but a strange mute fell over them, the felt lack of a toast, there being nothing, as yet, to celebrate. Johnny was glad of the drink, even so, whose effect he felt descending and spreading to mask the simultaneously spreading sense of everything that was entailed. Shouldn’t he just say at once it was impossible? An odd diplomacy kept them off the subject, now it had been named. The girls sat down at the table side by side again, Johnny opposite them, with a sudden sense of his own yearning inadequacy, not having a partner of his own. ‘Now, how was your romantic weekend in Wales?’ said Fran.

‘It was OK,’ said Johnny.

‘Oh . . . only OK?’

‘The house was lovely.’ He could smile at this at least.

‘Did you really think so? You’re too sweet about Grandpa’s work.’

‘Don’t you like it?’

‘I’m never totally sure. And I’m not sure Mummy is, either, to be absolutely honest.’

‘All the stuff’s still there, lots of Stanley’s drawings.’

‘Fascinating . . .’ She lit a cigarette, snapped the lighter shut. ‘And what about, you know . . . ?’

‘What’s that?’ said Johnny.

‘Sex,’ said Una.

‘Oh,’ Johnny blushed yet again, ‘a bit of that.’

‘At last!’ said Fran. ‘Thank god.’

‘Of course,’ said Johnny, ‘he’s really a gerontophile.’

She took a long drag, exhaled. ‘Well, you knew that, darling.’

‘I got the feeling he’s more in love with my dad than he is with me.’ Fran looked at him oddly, but kindly. ‘Yeah . . . and’ – he didn’t like to use the word cockteaser – ‘yeah,’ he said, and nodded, and emptied his glass.

It was cold when they went into the drawing room, and Fran closed the windows. The Whistlers glowed more richly in the slow dusk. It wasn’t clear what was happening next. He was hungry, and it would be just as reasonable for them all to have supper together as it would be awkward. He picked up his boots by the door and followed the girls downstairs again, to the hall. The hall had been quite unknown when he arrived and now, with its console table and mirror and parked hall chairs, it was witness to the end of a visit – it was the same, but he saw it differently. Fran opened the door. ‘Will you give me a ring, darling?’ she said.

‘Oh!’ – he laughed – for a second he thought it was part of the compact, their not-quite wedding.

She didn’t see it. ‘I think you’ve got the number.’

*

Now Ivan found the planets were aligned. Yesterday, the painful row, flaring, three times, downstairs, the shocks of slammed doors passing up through the building, only a few phrases clear, shouted shamelessly, incredulously loud, among long silences; then new initiatives, guarded, expressionless at first; and at the third climax, Herta, splendid in her way, screaming out ultimata that nobody took any notice of. Denis had gone somewhere, his overnight bag, toothbrush, lubricant all missing when Ivan made his noiseless visit. Herta had indeed left too, though only, Evert said, for the weekend: Evert had coped as best he could, uncertain where things went, kitchen science tenuous from disuse. Ivan had helped him with the washing up, Evert in shirtsleeves and waistcoat drying, in a silent routine which to Ivan was a perilous vision, a quick trial run at happiness. Last night’s plate, mug, wine glass, whisky glass; the morning’s plate, bowl, spoon and cup and saucer: he turned them gently in the soapy water, rinsed each one under running water, before placing it on the rack or, once or twice, in Evert’s hands. Evert went out to lunch, got back at seven, made phone calls. Ivan with his door left open heard the slick pop of a wine cork about eight; then from behind closed doors, orchestral music.

At nine, the daylight was fading in the attic room, and the moon, full, or one night shy of fullness, hung above the parapet and looked in, mild but implacable, over Ivan’s table, his diary, the bundles of letters and cuttings, the rare Oxford photo of the Brasenose First Eight, Michaelmas Term 1940. He hardly saw it now, in his excitement, coming up from the third-floor bathroom, washed, baby-powdered, shaved and after-shaved. Johnny had told him his tight black jeans were sexy, and he pulled them on, over clean underpants; he felt bucked up by Johnny’s compliments, steered by them. Tonight, if all went well, the girls were going to put their question to him. It would be another chapter, an amusing one, in the folder he had long been keeping, marked ‘The Sparsholt Affair’. He chose a white Oxfam shirt, collarless, and left two buttons open, sleeves rolled up tight to the pale biceps. And no shoes. He would go down to Evert barefoot, caught in the act of dressing or undressing by his own desire. He would go down like a message from the brain to the pained heart and neglected body.

The old boards, the threadbare carpet on the landing, the last of the day through the skylight, the veil-like shadows on the upper stairs – he didn’t turn the light on . . . The stairs creaked under him, as always, but his tread was the possessor’s not the burglar’s. A narrow strip of gold leaked out beneath the sitting-room door, and Ivan stood with his toes just touched by it, as if his nails were painted. The music came more freely, large, undomestic, far from what Ivan would have chosen, at a time of crisis (but he wasn’t musical, Johnny said so, in a tone of odd stored-up resentment when they drove back from Wales). Evert was, he was terribly musical; well, they would work something out. He raised his knuckles to knock, his hand hovered in deep shadow then fell with a noiseless conviction to the round black doorknob, which he turned, and pushed the door open, the small squeak of the handle as it sprang back drowned miles deep by the howling brass of an enormous orchestra.

Evert was sprawled on the sofa in his shirtsleeves, and it was dark enough now for Ivan to see in the window the image of his face, head back, eyes closed, tie loosened – though his right hand rose and swept outwards beside him, inches from the carpet, in response and encouragement. He was conducting on his back. His unawareness of Ivan’s presence in the room made it by moments more dreamlike and more problematic. To look at him unseen was a luxury Evert might resent if he opened his eyes. He tensed himself and cleared his throat, a small effect annulled by unrelenting horns and trombones. They ebbed away. ‘Evert,’ Ivan said. ‘Hello, Evert.’ And the old man started, twisted round as he half sat up and looked at him.

‘Oh, hello, poppet. Gosh, you gave me a turn.’

‘Sorry . . .’

‘I didn’t know anyone was here.’ There was a glass too on the floor, empty. Evert groped for it as he swung his legs round and looked up at him. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Oh . . . no, no,’ said Ivan. He came forward, gently, to allay any fears, the carpet he’d often stood on in his brogues pleasingly rough under his bare feet. ‘I just wondered if you were OK.’

‘Ah . . . yes, sweet of you.’

The music had its own drama, and was clearly reaching for a climax it was hard to ignore politely – Evert was distracted by it still. ‘Is it Mahler?’ said Ivan.

‘Mm, well done,’ said Evert. They looked in each other’s eyes, as if focusing together on the music, and to Ivan Evert seemed already captive.

‘Can I get you another drink?’

‘Oh, why not?’ said Evert. ‘The usual’ – offering up the glass.

‘I think I know what that is,’ said Ivan, and went towards the tray, which was next to the stereo on the far side of the room. Evert said nothing more, sitting forward, arms loose between his thighs, under the spell not only of Mahler but of alcohol. The last rasp of the soda siphon barely diluted the dark two inches of Jameson’s. ‘Tell me if it’s too strong,’ Ivan said as he gave it him.

‘Ooh,’ Evert gasped, debated. ‘No, it’s lovely. What are you having?’

Ivan gave himself a long vodka and tonic. ‘Can I get some ice?’

‘Yes, of course’ – Evert looked round – ‘well, you know where it is.’ And Ivan did. From the kitchen he heard the music end, with an almighty crash and falling off, and swung back in quickly just in case Evert put on something else. But the arm clicked back, the disc was still, just the red light and a brief reminding crackle through the speakers when the fridge started up next door. ‘What have you been up to?’

‘Oh, just writing,’ said Ivan, and since Evert was sitting in the middle of the sofa, ‘Budge up . . .’ lifting and plumping a cushion as he sat down next to him.

‘Cheers!’

‘Cheers.’ Ivan gripped Evert’s forearm for a second, bracingly. Sitting beside him, facing the fireplace, Ivan’s thoughts forming and flowing along the fronds and curls of the tapestried fire screen, running half-seeing across the line of postcards and invitations on the mantelpiece, beneath the brown frame of the biggest, the most valuable Ben Nicholson . . . He smiled, and it was as if Evert could sense him smiling.

‘You still haven’t told me,’ he said, with a reproving pause, ‘about your visit to West Tarr.’

‘You had our card?’

‘Yes, sweet of you, but it didn’t tell me anything I wanted to know.’

‘Oh . . . well, it was OK.’

‘The house was all right?’

‘Yes, not bad – a bit damp and dirty, but we made do.’

‘Oh, good. I’d been wondering how you got on.’

‘The two of us, you mean?’

‘I’ve grown very fond of that boy.’

‘Yes . . .’

‘He’s a good artist – good drawer, I don’t know what his painting’s like.’

Ivan didn’t want too much of Johnny in the room. ‘He sort of lives in a world of his own,’ he said. ‘I got him to open up a bit.’

Evert revolved his glass. ‘He’s quite smitten with you, I fancy.’

Ivan made a soft snuffle of disparagement.

‘Did you . . . um?’ – Evert seemed embarrassed. ‘One knows so little about the young.’

‘Oh, the young,’ said Ivan and laughed.

‘Though a certain young man knows far too much about this old one.’

‘Really . . .?’ said Ivan, pricked by the teasing, but turning his head to smile at Evert, who turned and smiled too.

Ivan didn’t know how he would do it, but he knew it would happen. He savoured his own calm conviction, as they turned and faced forward again; something undeniable had been said in that smile. They leant lightly on each other, sliding down a little on the yielding cushions. Each held his glass in his right hand, and there was a moment’s confusion as Ivan slid his fingers between Evert’s – Evert lifted the glass in his other hand, took a swig from it as Ivan’s hand took possession of his and they were clasped together. They sat, for ten strange exploratory seconds, small reciprocal pressures of fingers and palm, Evert’s hand strong and hard with experience. ‘I don’t know if you want some music on,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to be Mahler!’

Ivan grunted dismissively, leant forward to put his drink on the floor, fell back, shifted up and reached up to pull Evert’s head towards him – in the mere moment of hesitation, Evert’s eyes, dark, close-up, blurred by the buried arc of his bifocals, seemed to question, assess and then, as Ivan kissed him, to accept. He held his drink still in his left hand, and they had to disengage for a moment for him to seize another swig and set it down. His lips and tongue were whiskey, a tingle where his stubble grazed Ivan’s soft lips and smooth jaw. They had their arms around each other, in the clumsy fervour of being still side by side. In a minute Ivan climbed on top of him, sat straddling his knees, Evert wincing, bracing himself as he took his weight. To Ivan there was something more stirring than their kisses in Evert’s eyes, which had looked at lovers long before he was born, and now looked at him. He lifted his glasses off, leant aside to place them on the table, quick practicalities deepening the charm of the moment, the surrender to what had to happen. Evert blinked at him, his face naked for the first time, his bed-face – he groped Ivan, ran his hands up over his chest, ‘I can’t see a thing . . .’ and down very confidently to rub and squeeze the hard ridge trapped at an angle in his jeans. It was as if with his glasses off he couldn’t be seen: he coloured up not with shyness but with re-engaged appetite.

Ivan unbuttoned Evert’s shirt, pushed his vest up, stroked him, went down on his knees between his legs to kiss his stomach, reached up to squeeze his small hard nipples. He saw that he’d once been quite fine, in the way that lean men are who never think about exercise; and then he’d been a soldier, wonderful in uniform, thirty years ago. Now he’d thickened sexily round the middle, his hairless chest had slid downwards and sideways by a creased half-inch, there were lovable creases of age under the arms. So one beauty melted in another, surviving youth and exquisite decline. To reveal him and look at him and touch his naked skin made Ivan’s heart thump and his mouth go dry. He swiftly undid his own fly and pushed his jeans and pants down, tensed himself against the sickening chance of coming at once, his problem. He had really to think about something else, as he unbuttoned Evert’s trousers at the waist and pulled the zip towards him, practical and blank-faced as a nurse.