Goya'S Dog (32 page)

“Style. Style. There are conventions, and then there's style. If you're an individual you need to find your own way to work. But often it's the result of—I don't know what to call them—negative choices.”

He knew exactly what to call them. Outside, a dog howled twice. They waited for it to howl again but it did not. Dacres worried briefly for the cat. He went on, “All the times you decided not to do this or that. By which I mean: the times you did not follow convention.”

She was looking at him, quite absorbed. It was a long time since anyone had listened to Dacres; he thought being listened to might corrupt him quite easily.

“All the times your hand decided or your head decided, it doesn't matter which, ultimately. But it's a choice you make not to do
x
or
y
. When
x
or
y
would be the right thing to do. Meaning style is the mistakes you make.”

He rested his hands on the cushions, satisfied with his tasty paradox.

“What's your style then? I don't want you to make me into some Pre-Raphaelite drowning girl.”

“Don't worry. You're made of sterner stuff.”

That's not art, he was going to say, that softness; but she was talking.

“I've only ever seen your beaches.”

“My style,” he said: “One big mistake.”

“I don't think I do understand, actually,” said Darly moodily, and said she needed examples. So he told her about painters who do one thing very well, but only that one thing. He told her about the widespread underanalysis of the foot. He told her about Tiepolo's massive repertory of limbs and tiny stock of faces. He couldn't think of exactly the right example now, and he felt he was making a case he didn't believe in for an art of weakness. So he hugged his knee and changed tack.

“How about this: the first artist was not God but Lucifer. In the sense that God created the convention and the devil the exception. See?”

“The devil?”

“What I mean is that whatever you say about Lucifer, you have to grant him his originality. That's what it comes down to.”

Her hands were tightly closed fists, he saw, her knuckles were hard on the dusty floor. The slightest touch and she'd fall backwards into lying down. She was looking up at him, rueful and hopeful, then she slowly nodded.

“In Plato,” she said, “Socrates is always the paragon of reason. But close to death he says he's always listened to a voice that told him what to do. Or rather: what not to do. He listens for it.”

Dacres scratched at his belly through his shirt. Was she agreeing with him or disagreeing?

“What's so funny?” she asked.

“Nothing.”

“What?”

“I don't know how I always end up talking to such knowledgeable women. You're quite spectacular.”

She blushed and said she should go, and eventually he helped lift her up off the floor. He tried to stall her but she was resolute. He watched her turn, wait in the open doorway, and then go.

He looked out through his undraped windows, imagining the light from his room must be shining out over the whole country. He stood, he rocked the little table back and forth on its uneven legs, wondering if she was waiting for him behind the closed door, wondering if Burner had gone to bed or was telephoning in his study or making terrible plans for him. We've said some things, Dacres thought. We've all said some things, tonight. But he was indisputably content. For a moment he thought he heard music coming from somewhere but then it was gone.

There was nothing to clean up but he pottered about as if there was. This is the time, he thought, yawning, when you pick up what you've done during the day and assess it, knowing you really oughtn't to until the morning. But doing so is good because it means you work at it during the night, in your sleep. He went to the bathroom, and there he spat twice into the sink.

“You look like a farmer, Dacres,” he said to his red face in the mirror.

Darly was waiting for him outside his bedroom door, lingering. He was surprised, he stopped, he came towards her.

“Is something the matter?” he said.

“Nothing's the matter,” she said. Her eyes shone. She took his right hand and held it tight in her two, brought it to her, turned it around, looked closely. He wondered what she was going to do next. He moved in closer, they were inches apart.

“I just wanted to thank you, for what you said.”

Dacres was about to ask what, but a door closed downstairs; hearing that seemed to wake her, and just as sharply she was gone.

Sunday: they were playing at man and wife, almost. Burner had been called away to Ottawa and it was Mildred and Goucher's Sunday off: they'd gone to church with their cousins in Belleville. Dacres and Darly had the house to themselves. He sat at the dining room table with his feet at rest in his slippers. In front of him there was a bowl full of cherries and an empty bowl for pips. Darly came in with a salver.

“Ta-da!” she said and pulled the cover off to reveal a toasted cheese sandwich. She rested her hand on his arm momentarily. She was wearing a beautiful light dress and nothing over her shoulders. Inside the house it was pressingly hot and close, not a single molecule of air had shifted all day.

“I made it myself,” she said. He inspected, peering at four lilac spots. “That's Worcestershire sauce.”

“My favourite,” said Dacres, tingling with the discomfort of this game, at the fact that there was no one there to catch them.

They spoke about food and Mildred and the garden until she broke off.

“Edward, I was thinking …” He waited, worried.

“The devil.”

“What?”

“What you were saying the other night. About pride and style and the devil.”

He didn't really remember but he nodded. He hated talking about Art but at least she didn't have any more plans: he'd been worried she was going to try to get him a job. Why couldn't she just whisper sweet nothings into his ear?

“It's pride, isn't it?”

He was hungry.

“I suppose …”

“It's pride to go against the current. You have to be so proud to disappoint everyone, the people who do everything for you. You have to be tremendously sure, don't you? You were talking about making mistakes and pursuing them.”

He tried to remember: had they discussed this? In fact, he wasn't sure what was moving her now, or if she was talking about painting or something else entirely. What he knew was that she had been up at night thinking over an idea that his casual words had inspired. He shivered. He was looking at his lunch, wondering if he should eat it with knife and fork or fingers.

“Yes,” he said. “I don't know. No.”

“You said you have to give the devil his due. But look how Lucifer ended up: Satan.”

“Indeed,” Dacres said, treading water. “But it's just an analogy.”

When he looked at her she made him feel warm. He had melted cheese on his palate. She'd brought him nothing to drink.

“Not everyone's so original,” Darly said sadly, pursuing her idea. “Not everyone's so strong in their will.” And then briefly buoyed again: “Thank God. Otherwise the world would be—well, not everyone can plot their own course. It's not allowed.”

He thought this over. Half to himself he added: “It's true. If you depend on something inside, there's always the risk it might gutter out. If you knock a candle over it can't relight of itself. Only that's what you've been living by and now you're in the dark. What you said about Socrates. Others are deaf. This is a nighttime conversation.”

Her face changed.

“Do you want to work or walk?” she said, smiling and exploratory, calm. He'd finished eating, he was dabbing at his lips.

“Ooh.” That was easy. “I vote for the post-prandial constitutional. We'll work afterwards.”

“We'll have to be quick: it's clouded over. And I don't want to get in your way, Edward.”

“What a notion.”

“If you should be at work—”

“Even Bach took a holiday once in a while, Darly.”

“You told me the whole point of Bach was that he didn't.” “Touché.” He grabbed his heart.

Darly was smiling, coy. “But I do have to find a way to pay you back for the lesson.”

“I'm sure you'll think of something,” Dacres muttered. Was he leading or being led on? This was all different from their easy flirtation in the grill, months ago: now he was here; no one else was. He couldn't find his feet with her: every time he knew her she became something else. Well hold on tighter, he thought, squeeze out an answer. Or just leave it be: that would be best.

By the time they got outside it was raining hard. Dacres smoked on the terrace, watching God pound the earth for unspecified sins. The smoke refused to dissipate, it hung around his shoulders and head. Aura borealis.

She picked up the ball again; she'd never had it out of sight. “If you don't show me what you've done so far it's like you're hiding something from me.”

He didn't answer. The air was so heavy that it made him feel tired all over his insides; his lungs felt squashed, like an invalid at the top of a mountain. He was about to say “I've done nothing today” when she spoke again.

“Are you having difficulties? Is it that I'm just too ugly?”

“Darly!”

“I want to help, you know. I don't want to hinder you, in your work.”

He had to give her something so he breathed out smoke and said, “But don't you see? We are working. We're working now.”

He could see she didn't believe him.

“This is work,” he said. “Any time spent with you is an education. I mean this.”

It was raining so hard that the ground couldn't absorb the water. Puddles stood in the mud at the edge of the lawn, bullets shot down into them. The sky hissed. He smoked. She pressed down her dress at the sides. He didn't like this go-getting side of her, this aspect of her character that couldn't rest until it had explored every cranny of the subject at hand.

“I sometimes wonder, Edward, what you are like.” She said it as if it were something airy. “I am trying to understand you.”

Now I am the case and you are the constable, he thought. It was supposed to be the other way around.

“Why are women always trying to understand things? It doesn't help, you know.”

He was thinking of endless discussions with Evie. Trying to get to the bottom of this foible of hers, or that world historical question.

“Is it really a self-portrait?”

“I don't try to understand things,” he said idly. “I just want to see them.”

“Is that what it is? I mean, can you paint a portrait of someone? Or do you just end up painting yourself?”

That bit. He looked down. He dropped the cigarette and ground it out with his heel.

“Is that what happens?”

“You've no idea what you're talking about,” he said, slowly.

Her face was rounding with emotion, feelingful and cut.

“You have to have some idea of how things are, out in the world, don't you, to paint? To work. You haven't left the house since you arrived, you haven't expressed the slightest interest in—”

“I am a ruddy convalescent, Darly.”

She ignored that.

“What I mean is: we're all a little like this, I'm a little like this, but if you are, how do you work? I mean: is it just your own face looking out at you, when you draw? Is that why you can't do any more? I worry.”

She was not calm, saying this, Dacres saw; perhaps she knew it was a real knife she was wielding, that it might sink deep. Nor was he calm in answering.

“Stop now,” he said.

“Because it just ends up a mirror,” she finished, “not a screen.”

“You're a child,” he said sharply, finger close to her cheek. “Don't forget that.”

He walked out into the tormenting rain, ensign pushed off the pirates' plank. But she followed him.

“You're incredibly irritating,” she snapped from behind his shoulder, “
you're
the child,” and when he didn't listen she pulled him around. In the rain and this light her hair was darkening further. “Don't walk away from me, don't ever. You're massively irritating.”

The rain poured down and his slippers, an old pair of Goucher's, were getting soaked through. He began to turn away again, to disappear into the wet, but she sprang. She put her arms around him, she pressed her body close, her elbows, inside, crushing his ears. Her hot tongue was in his mouth, and then he had one hand on the back of her neck, to wrench her closer still.

“I'm not a child,” she said.

After that she still came to the studio, she still took up the pose, but he'd push the paper away after a few minutes each time, unable to hold off any longer. He'd sit down next to her and she'd laugh in real greeting. The pretence of work dropped away, and incredulous he'd touch the yellow fabric of her dress. She'd stand and he'd turn her around in his hands, incredulous.