What You Will

There was another silence. Was anyone to blame? Had someone committed a crime? Were they all still on the same side?

‘I gave you his name, didn’t I?’ Lawrence said contritely, looking sorrowfully at Hilary. ‘I’m awfully sorry. I had no idea he would prove to be –’

‘So irresistible?’ Hilary demanded. ‘Come on, it’s not your fault. The guy knows his antiquities.’ Her voice was raw, defensive and aggressive at once.

‘Well, I’m glad to hear it,’ Lawrence said sympathetically. ‘But after all, a reference from friends. We ought to have been able to vouch for him personally, somehow. We ought to have –’

‘I interviewed him,’ said Hilary, bold, sarcastic. ‘It was never a requirement that he subscribe to any particular code of conduct. That he be straight, marriageable, a match made in heaven –’

‘Still, it’s hardly professional –’ Lawrence was grasping for some way to ease her pain, to let her off the hook.

‘On the contrary. He behaved perfectly correctly. I was the one who lost my cool, wasn’t I?’ She seemed to be challenging him with her toughness and her hurry, insisting on keeping control of her own story, rather than be its pitiable victim.

‘But the way you tell it, or Gwen tells it, he sounds rather – slimy. There’s some level there of false ingratiation. And – something –’

He looked at Gwen, but Gwen was just as bewildered as he was. She only nodded. ‘He’s doesn’t sound like a nice guy,’ she observed lamely. ‘Not – forthright. I think – pretending to make friends – what is that? Leading you on. He knew. I’m sure he knew. After all, women are always getting blamed for that kind of behaviour – using their looks, their feminine wiles, to get what they want.’

Hilary nodded, suddenly speechless, self-conscious.

And Roland leaped in, in a schoolmasterish voice, summarising the merits and demerits of Paul. ‘He’s clever, of course. Very good company. But lazy, really – unless he’s outgrown that. Quite a high opinion of himself – presumed he’d go far, I reckon. And he could do. Impressive grasp of detail, very strong sense of style. Gifted with languages. Even as an undergraduate, he had several ancient and modern ones.’

‘Gifted with languages,’ Hilary echoed, dry-mouthed.

Gwen knew just what Hilary was thinking – that Paul had lied about being lousy at Italian.

‘Hardly a historian, and certainly not a philosopher,’ Roland went on, unstoppable. ‘Not that I ever taught him philosophy. Could have done anything he set his mind to, really, but he used to tell me that he hated talking about definitions and logic. Called them puzzles. Disdained Aristotle, Plato, metaphysics, ethics – plain old good and evil. What happens happens is what he would say. Capable of memorising anything he read, but didn’t want to think too hard. Not joined-up thinking. Text-based history suited him fine, but he wasn’t much with analysing a problem. Useless with an economic model; he’d tell you what every pottery shard looked like, who made it, where it came from, based on certain visual qualities, but never get on to caring or understanding how the pottery trade might have worked in a pre-capitalist economy. Equally, the coins to him were lovely bright objects to collect and admire. He has the mind of a connoisseur really, an aesthete. And for ever stuck in the one-damn-thing-after-another school of thought. What, honestly, is the point of that? Life as a series of accidents? I take it, Hilary, that has somehow included you? Some – accident?’

‘An accident,’ Hilary breathed. She gave a tight chuckle, feeling that Roland was scolding her, taking her to task for having failed to see what she was dealing with in Paul. ‘You seem to have the nub of it.’

Gwen thought, I’ve never seen Roland being so pompous, so cold, so unbelievably condescending.

Lawrence was diligently working his way through his plateful, head down, shovelling it in. ‘Maybe he was quite happy to achieve some hold on Hilary,’ he said with his mouth full, chewing. ‘Maybe he did do it all deliberately. C’mon, Hilary, stick up for yourself. You mustn’t let Roland be hard on you. Maybe Paul was after your – inheritance. Your candelabrum.’

Once again, Roland went red, realising he’d crossed some line. ‘Do forgive me. I have no intention of being hard on anyone. And I don’t think you should let Paul Mercy get the better of you. He shouldn’t be allowed to – hurt your feelings. Or anyone’s feelings for that matter.’

Gwen caught Lawrence’s eye across the table as she poured sparkling water and he poured more wine. She was thinking that Roland, in some ghastly, awkward way, was trying to cheer Hilary up. She felt certain that Lawrence was thinking the same. She gazed at Lawrence, half smiling, considering that wine on top of fourteen years of marriage dissolved any barriers between their minds, that he knew even now what she was thinking as she thought it: that all this bluster was Roland’s idea of gallantry, cutting Paul off at the knees, reducing him to a slip of an undergraduate figure, a schoolboy even, truant, with a lost homework assignment.

What is it with these dons? She wondered if Roland’s efforts would succeed, looking at Hilary, looking at Roland. Surely Lawrence would never stoop so low, belittling a rival? Or were all men like that?

And now she heard Hilary starting in on how ridiculous she must have seemed, throwing herself at Paul.

‘Here,’ Hilary cried out, flushed with wine. ‘Have my heart.’ And she made a gesture, like throwing something down on the floor. ‘Stomp on it for me.’

Oh, don’t tell these stories against yourself, Gwen thought. She felt, suddenly, that the evening was destroying Hilary’s morale. It’s the tone of voice – abject, self-abasing. Come on, Hil, Gwen was thinking. You are not such a loser as all that. And why, why, tell Roland so much about the broken engagement. I mean not with such gusto. It’s my fault, Gwen considered. She warned me, Not yet.

‘Maybe Paul was somehow intrigued by you – authentically,’ Lawrence proposed. ‘Maybe he felt comfortable knowing nothing need happen between you. There are plenty of men like that, gay and straight.’

‘And are there plenty of women like that?’ asked Hilary, open-eyed.

‘Plenty of women?’ Lawrence echoed. ‘For whom nothing need happen?’ He felt strangely pinned down by her, targeted, and he found himself stuttering, ‘No,’ then, ‘I don’t know,’ as it came over him that he had always presumed that women were not comfortable unless something did happen. Not a wise presumption, he advised himself. Yet he felt certain that it was true for this woman: something would need to happen for Hilary to feel comfortable. Lawrence felt it distinctly.

Roland turned away just then from Hilary. Gwen felt his attention shift with a snap, like the mainsail of a boat going about in a stiff breeze. The weight of the evening fell towards her heavily, life jackets, picnic bags sliding down across the cockpit. He began to ask her about her upcoming exhibition.

‘I’ve banned my dealer from my studio,’ she announced. ‘It’s not until after Christmas, and he’s already sold a piece. Had it shipped to Aspen to some movie producer. That was sort of – withering.’ She hunched her shoulders up around her neck like a vulture, curled her fingers together in front of her face, miming avarice. ‘He arrives from New York with this big black portfolio, peers at all the canvases, scavenges little scraps of drawings lying around. There’s a lot of money on offer. The figures are going way up, which starts getting inside my head, right inside my imagination. Once I’m done with the paintings, OK, I’ll want them all out – instantly –’ She waved her hand imperiously. ‘But I work back and forth from one to another and I need them all together until they’re finished. You don’t want someone buying your flat, really, if you’re still living in it. Even though you might need the money. You want to find your new place first, where you’re going to live next.’

‘Same with books,’ Roland murmured as if to himself, chewing, ruminating, so that Gwen had to sit up close to hear him. He swallowed, bent his head towards her, spoke more clearly, his lips near the curve of her cheek. ‘I never tell a colleague, or even a student, something that I’m writing about; it’s only natural for them to try to use it before I can publish it. Anything we say aloud – it’s up for grabs, isn’t it? Anything at all. But on the other hand, we writers don’t really have to part with our books. Not like paintings. Everyone can have a copy of a book. More that the publisher worries nobody will want one.’

Gwen laughed at this. ‘My dealer’s pretty commercial,’ she confided. ‘American. You’d think I’d want big exhibitions and the high prices. But I feel a little pushed. A little packaged. Who are these clamouring millionaires? I need to paint without worrying about what sells; otherwise, I get on this roll that isn’t my own. I hit one thing that someone really goes for, and I know I could do it again, and there’s a lot of adrenalin there, and maybe even a temptation – a kind of challenge to please some supposed audience. But then, what would I really be doing? Are they hot for just whatever it is I’m producing? Or am I producing something they’re hot for?’

She whirled her fork through the air. ‘Sometimes I think I might have to run away from it, back to the country. So I don’t become part of something dreamed up by other people. But right now, the work’s OK. There’s a lot happening fast. More coming. I can’t stop. You’d have to pry my brushes out of my hands.’ She gripped the fork hard, making a fist.

Now Roland laughed, a murmur in his chest, pleasure, interest, leaning down towards her. ‘Part of art?’ he asked, as if she knew what he meant. And when she looked bemused, he went on, ‘To please the audience, to give them pleasure? Nowadays all parts of our culture are infected by a kind of marketing mentality. Even Lawrence. What do the people want? That question shapes everything – politics, education, health, transport. But can one ever be right in thinking one knows what the people want? And do the people want the right things in any case?’

Gwen poked at a nearly invisible fish bone on her plate, pushed it to the very edge, and without looking up said dreamily, almost as if she were thinking aloud, ‘When I’m out in the landscape, looking, or even just being there, I don’t think of any of that. It’s something else – something that carries you right out of yourself, out of normal experience. Like some loophole you can get through in time, where it’s slower or deeper – and actually real –’

‘That’s quite a palatable form of religion – nature worship. But quite primitive, eh? Pantheism, Wordsworth, the Druids. A sense of awe before the natural world? What about mankind, Gwen? What about civilisation? Or God, for that matter. Far more complex and intriguing.’

‘What about God? What are you saying?’ she demanded, sitting right up into the flow of his talk. ‘I’ve copped out? Picked the easiest subject matter?’

‘Not necessarily,’ Roland said, smiling a smooth, almost syrupy smile, as if he were stroking her mind to quiet it. ‘You’re a painter after all.’

This was worse. ‘So it’s painting that’s not good enough for you? What is wrong with this country, that painting isn’t anything? And you’ve had so few great painters!’

He fell silent, looking confused. Then he said, ‘Your paintings please me enormously. And I think art should please; it should be beautiful. Marketing, after all, is a lowbrow commercial name for something that has always been going on – and going on for perfectly good reasons. I like to see you think hard, that’s all. You could do anything you wanted to. You might be more thoughtfu—’ he corrected himself, ‘more analytical – if you were pushed to it.’

‘Watch your step, Henry Higgins!’ Though she joked, Gwen was hurt. I reveal something personal, she thought, and he comes at me with that arrogance. Why does everything have to be an argument or a theory supported by evidence, a proof of something true or untrue? Who the fuck does he think he is?

Roland looked at her, down at his plate, at her again. Gwen sensed that he wanted in some way to apologise. She glanced at Hilary, wondering how the evening seemed to her, safely chatting with Lawrence.

‘Of course I have my own favourites,’ Hilary was saying, eyes on the hem of her napkin which she was folding and unfolding on the tabletop. Then she leaned a little towards Lawrence’s reply.

‘You won’t ever be content if you let someone else get their hands on those. Will you?’

‘I don’t talk about it. It’s not really appropriate to have my own opinion about the collection.’ Hilary was demure and self-contained.

‘But that’s ridiculous!’ Lawrence offered friendly outrage. ‘You must have your own opinion! How can you ever have been a student of mine and not have an opinion? You must summon some nerve and tell me what it is! I’m longing to hear it!’

Hilary’s cheeks darkened with his enthusiasm.

That’s more like a conversation, Gwen thought. And it dawned on her that Roland was hardly coping with life away from Oxford. He was stuck after all in the tone of voice, in the useless style of put-downs and sparring. Roland only wants to please, she thought. Wants to be noticed and admired. But he doesn’t know how to give ground. He doesn’t believe as much as he pretends to believe in anyone else’s vitality. He just knows how to question.

Tonight he had a chance – in theory, he had a chance for love. And he blew it. Before he even got into the room. He’s the one who recommended the heartless Paul to be Hilary’s assistant. So he’s taking revenge on me as well as on Hilary. He won’t even risk considering whether or not he likes Hilary, or how he ought to talk to her; he’s just leaving her to Lawrence. He must have failed at this a hundred times, agonisingly, and he’s trying to prove to us that he doesn’t care – about women, about romance. Which shows that he’s terrified. Gwen saw it all so suddenly and so clearly.

Oh, she thought with pain, he doesn’t set out to hurt. He only needs someone to encourage him. To straighten his hair and spruce him up a little. Then he could shine. It occurred to her that, until tonight, she herself had been able to bring out what was generous and alive in Roland because she wasn’t a chance for love. She was already taken; with her, he was safe from failure, and so with her, he succeeded.

As she thought of this, she looked up at Roland with such warmth, such forgiveness, that he blushed brick red, almost purple, like a bruise, and the blush made a bond between them, a certain understanding. She could easily be the one if she cared to; he’d admitted it. It made the insides of her nostrils burn with surprise; she felt a flush of energy in her chest. She looked over at Hilary again, thinking, this should be you, Hil. And yet she felt a furtive pleasure that Hilary was still deep in conversation with Lawrence.

Gwen smiled a long easy smile at Roland. She felt gratified. She liked knowing she could be the one with him. She liked considering him as if she were single like Hilary. It was a long time since she had looked at a man with unmarried eyes.