Headlong (6 page)

Something, somewhere, in that great cycle of the year is missing. On this point almost all the authorities agree.

But what? That depends on what the five surviving pictures represent, and on this the authorities sharply differ.

I struggled with my mountain of accumulated scholarship all the way northwards in the train, frustrated by the difficulty of cross-referencing between a dozen different books with nowhere but my lap to put them. Exhilarated too, though, because they’ve one other single point of agreement: that the solution to the problem lies in the
iconography
. Bruegel (they all concur) didn’t choose the seasonal labours and activities in these five pictures on the basis of his personal knowledge or observation of country life, in spite of all the espionage recorded by van Mander. He used symbolic ones. They’re the labours and activities traditionally shown associated with particular times of the year in the calendar that formed part of a Book of Hours. ‘A placid, bucolic, unchanging world’, says Wieck in his study of this best-selling mediaeval title, ‘in which there seldom penetrates any of the hard work and harsh poverty that was the reality of this life.’

So Kate and I can work on the problem together. She knows at least as much about the iconography of a Book of Hours as any of the authors I was balancing on my knees. The Book of Hours, in all its various manifestations, is as familiar to her as the works of Occam are to me. It was in a
way through a Book of Hours that I met her – on a flight to Munich, when she was on her way to study the manuscripts in various south German archives and monasteries, including the celebrated
Calendrier flamand
preserved in the Bavarian State Library. Not for the first time I bless Lufthansa, and my admirable quickness and recklessness in pressing my refresher, paper napkin and even my handkerchief on her when the old-fashioned fountain pen she was using leaked over her; and the happy morning that followed two months, one week and three days later, when she used her fountain pen once again, and let me use it as well because I’d forgotten to bring anything to write with, in a room embowered in plastic flowers at Camden Town Hall.

In fact it will kill two birds with one stone, because her involvement in solving the iconography might also help to solve the problem I have of breaking the news to her, which seems to be more difficult the more I think about it. Any sudden dramatic announcement, I realize, even when I’ve fully mastered my accompanying brief, is going to risk her resistance. Much better to let her guide me through the undergrowth with no knowledge of where we’re heading, so that she’s led gently, step by step, to discover my discovery for herself.

Difficult, though, to find the right moment to broach the matter. Not, obviously, when I came out of the station and found her walking up and down trying to quiet Tilda. Not while she was driving me back to the cottage; not while we were eating dinner (which she, of course, had already made, in spite of my repeated assurances); not while she was telling me about exactly when Tilda had slept and woken, and how much she’d taken at her feed, and what Mr Skelton had said about the septic tank; not while she was being so careful not to ask me what I’d been doing in
London, or what the arm-breaking contents of my two plastic carrier bags were.

So now the following morning Kate’s working at one end of the kitchen table and I’ve got all my books concealed as best I can behind my open laptop at the other end, stacked almost as awkwardly as they were on my lap on the train, because I’m trying not to let her see their titles, or any telltale illustrations. And what she’s doing is trying not to look, because she has a pretty good idea that whatever I’m working on, it’s not nominalism or its impact on Netherlandish art, and she doesn’t want to know for sure and confirm her disappointment in me.

Am I frightened that she might not share my opinion? Not frightened, exactly – anxious to avoid the reciprocal disappointment in her that I should feel if she didn’t. I’m as reluctant to lose the remembered brightness of the sky beyond her head in the window of seat 25A on flight LH4565 as she is to lose the remembered boldness of my smile as I offered her my accumulated airline tissues.

No, I’m frightened. I’m going to need her moral support in the next few weeks, including her agreement to let me back my judgement by borrowing rather a lot of money from the bank, and if she doesn’t accept my identification when the moment comes I don’t know how I’m going to manage.

I certainly wish I had her practical help right now. Because it’s not iconology that’s at issue here – it’s straightforward iconography. The range of possible interpretations, and the various permutations of them, are bewildering. On the table in front of me I have Friedländer (of course), Glück, Grossmann, Tolnay, Stechow, Genaille and Bianconi. They quote each other freely, together with various other authors not available in the London Library – Hulin de Loo, Michel, Romdahl, Stridbeck and Dvořák – and they refer to
the often mutually contradictory iconography used in two breviaries illuminated by Simon Bening of Bruges in the second and third decades of the sixteenth century, the Hours of Hennessy and the Hours of Costa; in the Grimani Breviary, also done, a little earlier, by Simon Bening and his father Alexander Bening, although the calendar itself is attributed to Gerard Horenbout; and in our own dear
Calendrier flamand
, as I think of it, in the Bavarian State Library.

Which month, for a start, does
The Hunters in the Snow
represent? According to Hulin de Loo, a snowy landscape is characteristic for February. Tolnay dissents; in the Da Costa Hours the snowy landscape illustrates December, and in Hennessy it goes with January, in which month Hennessy also places hunters, though for hares rather than foxes, which seems to be Bruegel’s own variation on the theme. Glück agrees with the idea of January. But what are those women roasting over the fire they’re tending in the snow outside the village inn? Glück believes it’s corn, which reinforces his diagnosis of January. Tolnay thinks that it’s not corn but pork, which both the Hours of Hennessy and the Hours of Costa show for the month of December.

So the
Hunters
might show any one of the three winter months.
The Gloomy Day
turns out to be just as indeterminable. Among the peasants pollarding the trees in the foreground are three who are not labouring at all. One of them’s eating something flat and rectangular, like a matzoh or a slice of pizza, and holding a piece of it up in the air – perhaps to keep it out of the reach of a child wearing a paper crown and carrying a lantern. Tolnay sees the food as a waffle, which together with the lantern suggests that the allusion’s to Carnival, in February, and Romdahl agrees. This, of course, overlaps with Hulin de Loo’s placing of the
Hunters
, but de Loo, having set the
Hunters
in February, believes that
the paper crown identifies the child as the Bean King, whose celebration is at the beginning of January –
before
the
Hunters
; Michel accepts this. But Glück places the scene in March, and Stechow agrees that in Hennessy (though not in other calendars) March is the month indicated by tree pruning.

So the possibilities for
The Gloomy Day
also range over three months – and the two pictures may even be in reverse order.
Haymaking
is a little more tightly confined, within a range of only two possible readings. For Hulin de Loo, Michel and Glück it’s June, the month clearly established by the baskets full of beans and cherries being carried down towards the valley by the peasant women in the foreground. But in Hennessy and Grimani haymaking itself, the activity which occupies all the middle ground of the picture, is the main theme of July; as Stechow points out, the Netherlandish word for July is
Hooimaand
, Hay Moon. For Michel and Glück, though, July is the month of
The Corn Harvest
. But Stechow reminds us that
Oegtmaand
, Harvest Moon, is August – the month for which Tolnay says harvesting, the peasants’ repast and siesta are all themes in the calendars; though he opens the possibility of a third month here as well when he warns that what appears to be a game of
boules
in the middle ground could be alluding to September.

Which leaves
The Return of the Herd
. This is apparently not a theme that figures in the calendars, but Tolnay believes it’s Bruegel’s adaptation of the return from the hunt, which the
Calendrier flamand
offers for November. Michel and Glück concur, and Hulin de Loo notes the bareness of the trees, and can somehow feel a cold wind blowing in the picture, both of which also suggest November. But then Tolnay draws attention to the ripe vineyards and nets in the valley below, and points out that both the wine harvest and the netting of birds are traditional for October. Stechow is like
wise in two minds here, though at any rate not three.

So which months do the five extant pictures show? According to the iconography, so far as I can disentangle it, they may show any or all of them.

Except two. There are two months, and only two months, that are not identified in any of the various schemes, however many pictures are missing.

April and May.

For the first time since I set eyes on it, I allow myself to think about … about
it
, yes, about the unknown substance, the object for identification.
The Merrymakers
, as the label on the back names it. About my picture, as it’s going to become. About the mud underfoot, the flush of green spreading through the bare brown woods, the little town in the distance, where people must already be sitting outside in squares and on street corners in the fresh warmth of the sun.

It’s too late in the year for March, too early for June. So, yes, it must be either April or May. And once again I feel the uncontainable tide of excitement rising inside me, the insupportable anguish.

I have either April or May; it all fits. The only question is which.

Well, does it matter? One would be as good as the other, and to have found either is a miracle.

But there’s one possibility that would be more miraculous still, so miraculous that for the moment I daren’t even think about it. I need to know one simple thing first: April? Or May?

I cast my mind back to the weather in the picture. It’s ambiguous. It feels like April where we’re standing; it looks like May that we’re heading towards.

What can we glean from the iconography?

‘In the calendar,’ I suddenly find I’ve said. Kate looks up.
‘The calendar in a Book of Hours. What are the signs for April and May?’

She frowns. Is she going to ask me why I want to know? If she does I’ll tell her. The same principle applies, I decide in that instant, with her as with Tony Churt: no lies, no unnecessary truths. But she’s maintaining
her
policy, too: no questions that might provoke either.

How do we get into these ridiculous situations with the people we love?

‘I don’t know much about the calendar,’ she says warily. ‘I’ve only really looked at the devotional sections.’

I wait for the cautionary academic smoke screen of disclaimers to clear.

‘The signs for April and May?’ she repeats finally. ‘You mean Taurus? Gemini?’

‘Not the zodiacal signs … Why, do they have zodiacal signs?’

‘In some calendars.’

I’m trying to remember, now she’s suggested it: are there any bulls or twins lurking in the depths of the
Merrymakers
?

‘I mean, what are the traditional labours?’

She frowns again. I don’t think she needs to frown for very long to remember something that must be almost as rudimentary to her as the letters of the alphabet. I think she’s trying to work out, without asking me, what I’m up to. She’s guessed that it’s something to do with that last picture at the Churts, the one she didn’t see. Like me, she’s trying to identify it – but at one further remove, with nothing to go on but what I let fall about it. She may manage it, too – may have managed it already, I think in a moment of mixed panic and relief.

‘Well,’ she says, ‘for April you sometimes get planting and sowing.’

I can’t recall any planting or sowing. ‘What about May?’

‘Sheep going to pasture. Cows being milked.’

‘How about cows going to pasture?’ I’m thinking of that tiny herd in the distance, that will come down again past us in the foreground in October or November.

‘Possibly, though I can’t think of an example offhand.’

But now she’s warming to the work. I recognise the old awkward, diffident eagerness in the way she moves her head as she talks.

‘Actually April and May tend to be rather a special case, because they’re often illustrated not by labours but by pastimes. It’s quite striking. All year round the peasants toil – and then when it gets to be spring the gentry suddenly put in an appearance. They own the entire countryside, of course, and now the weather’s more agreeable they come outdoors and start enjoying it for a bit.’

‘Like us,’ I say, warming to her warmth.

‘Yes, though I can’t immediately think of a calendar where they get the septic tank repaired.’

‘Poor souls. So what else is there for them to do?’

‘In April they go hawking.’

‘
Not
like us.’

‘No, but then they also pick flowers.’

‘We’ve picked the odd flower in our time.’

She looks away. ‘The other thing they quite often do is flirt.’

‘I seem to recall something of that sort,’ I say softly, but what I’m actually remembering is the comic couple in my picture, with their two gallant little daffodils and their expectantly protruded lips. ‘All this is in April? I don’t like to think what they’ve moved on to by May.’

‘Riding. Maying. Hawking again sometimes. And courting still. Making music.’

‘Which reminds me – the mice have eaten through one of
the speaker leads,’ I say, but what I’m hearing is the drone of the bagpipes and the heavy pounding of the dancing feet, and what I’m smelling is the choking scent of the mayflowers that the people beyond the dancers are pulling down.