The Master (41 page)

‘I’m sure his mother wants him back in Newport, in fact I know she does, but we intend to keep him here. Everybody wants him. That is what is so lovely about him. I believe you have
been a daily visitor to his studio.’

‘Yes,’ Henry said, ‘I rather admire his industry.’

‘And what we might call his genius perhaps? You must have known about him before you came to Rome. I believe his fame has spread.’

‘No, I met him in your house for the first time.’

‘But you had heard about him? He certainly had heard about you.’

‘No, I had not heard about him.’

‘Oh I thought you would have heard about him from Lord Gower who so admired him when he visited Rome.’

‘Lord Gower remains unknown to me to this day,’ Henry said.

‘Well, he is a writer on many subjects and an enthusiastic collector. So enthusiastic indeed that he adored our young sculptor, saw him every day and wished to keep him.’

Her voice became confiding and conspiratorial.

‘I’m told he wished to adopt him and make him his heir. He is tremendously rich. But Andersen would not have him, or did not wish to be adopted, or both, so he will not be inheriting
all Lord Gower’s money. Perhaps he is waiting for a better offer, or a more interesting one. He has not a penny of his own. Like one of your heroines, he is more interesting, perhaps, because
he has turned down a lord. But I think in the end, if he is not careful, we will have to compare him to Daisy Miller. He flirts, does he not? In any case I cannot see him returning to New
England.’

‘Perhaps a spell there would improve us all,’ Henry said. He smiled.

‘Mr Andersen says,’ Maud Elliott went on, ‘that you have invited him to Rye.’

‘Perhaps, since you have been so kind,’ Henry replied, ‘I should extend the invitation to you as well.’

T
HE NEXT DAY
he called at Andersen’s studio to find that another large piece was in production, a set of naked garlanded figures, both male and
female, to represent the spring. Andersen was at his happiest under such conditions, sure that the work would shortly find a sponsor, and fresh from the physical exertion of the morning. As Henry
walked around, his eye was caught by a small bust which he had not noticed before, it was rather more placid and modest in its style than the surrounding work. It was, Andersen told him, a bust of
the young Count Bevilacqua and had been much admired. There was, Henry saw, something raw and clumsy about the piece, but also, perhaps because of the quality of the stone and its size, it could
easily have been a piece of archaeology, something buried under one of the streets on which they walked. Immediately, he wished to take it with him and pay handsomely for it as a token of these
weeks with his new friend. Once Andersen understood that he not only admired it but planned to buy it, he noticed him quicken with pride and ambition. Selling his work, making his mark on the
world, Henry understood, seemed to mean more to him than any number of friendships. He darted about the studio in excitement and embraced Henry warmly once a price had been agreed, holding him with
strong affection. He promised that he would come to England as soon as he could. He discussed how the piece would be packaged and sent and how soon it might arrive. What Henry noticed more than
anything was how unable he was to conceal his pure delight.

They had supper together that evening in Andersen’s local restaurant to celebrate Henry’s purchase. Andersen, he saw, had dressed almost formally for the occasion and as soon as they
sat down and a candle was lit at their table he adopted a tone which was new. His expression became interested and deeply involved as he asked questions and listened with care to the answers about
how Henry lived, why he was in England and why he travelled less as the years went on. Henry was almost amused at the seriousness of his manner as he put the same boyish energy into his
interrogations as he had put into his previous silences and monologues. It was only when Andersen attempted to draw out from Henry things about his father and mother that Henry ceased to be amused
and wished instead to turn the conversation back to less intimate matters. As the sculptor began to rail against his own father, after a slight provocation from Henry, Henry was almost pleased
although he viewed the sculptor’s tone as too personal now and too petulant and too ready to discuss freely what Henry believed were deeply private matters.When they left the restaurant he
was happy that Andersen would accompany him as far as his hotel, the night being warm and the streets of old Rome at their most seductive. This would be their last evening alone with one another,
as both had agreed to attend a large gathering at the Storys’ apartment on Henry’s last night, which would fall on the morrow.

It struck him that he had not himself changed in the twenty-five or thirty years since he had strolled like this in Rome at night. He had never discussed his parents or his ambitions with
anyone; his talk in all the years had been finely balanced and controlled; he approached his work even then with consistency and care. Andersen was not like that, and now, it occurred to him that
Andersen would not change either. He would remain all his life innocent and confusing, charming and open. As they grew silent, Henry wanted to turn to his friend to say that he should take as much
from life as it would offer him, that he was young still and should want everything and live as much as he could. As they reached the foot of the Spanish Steps, he was inclined for a second to
point out to him the window of the room where the poet Keats had died, but he knew that such an invocation of death and suffering would break the spell of now. When Andersen, at the door of the
hotel, stood back having embraced him, he could not help watching his smile intensely, trying to hold it in his mind, knowing how much he would need to remember it when he returned to England.

W
HEN HE ARRIVED
at Rye, being met by a cheerful Burgess Noakes, complete with wheelbarrow, he saw the town as if through Andersen’s eyes. He
realized how very small it would seem and how drained the colours. The spaces in Lamb House seemed like hallways or ante-rooms compared with the living quarters in Roman apartments, and even the
garden, which he had spoken of so proudly to his new friend, seemed reduced, confined. He watched Burgess unpack as he set about repossessing his own house, wondering what it would seem like to
Hendrik Andersen.

He did not write to Andersen until the small bust arrived, although he composed many letters to him in his mind, telling him how fresh he remained in his thoughts, and how satisfying, now that
both he and the weather had settled, the English afternoon could be, and how magnificent, now that he had become accustomed to its proportions, was his own private, walled garden. He knew that none
of this would interest Andersen very much, but he had difficulty finding a tone and a subject matter both warm and restrained.

When the bust was unpacked, however, and a broad base for it was constructed in the corner of the room at the chimney piece, and it rested there happily and easily, he could write to Andersen
expressing his delight with the piece and praising its charm, knowing that such praise would interest his friend, being able to picture Andersen as he hungrily took in the words. For his own part,
speaking to Andersen from such a distance about his work being tenderly unpacked and lifted and laid bare and having it constantly before him as an admirable and much-loved companion and friend
gave him pleasure. Telling Andersen that his piece of sculpture was so living and human, sympathetic and sociable, adding that it would be a lifelong attachment, was easier than telling Andersen
that he himself was in Henry’s thoughts all day, that sometimes when he worked he would pause, wondering what the cause was of a strange glow of happiness or warm expectation which came over
him, and realizing it was the afterglow of his time in Rome and his hope that Andersen would come to visit him in Rye.

Soon, Andersen wrote back and in his awkward handwriting and with his bad spelling announced that he would, indeed, come to visit. Despite the brevity of the letter and the rudimentary
epistolary style, his voice was there in the sentences, rushed, undisciplined, serious, nervous, sincere. Henry held the letter close to him, finding that he did not want to part with it, until he
forced himself to leave it aside. But he could not stop himself studying his garden, placing Andersen’s ample frame in a chair under the wide-spreading old mulberry tree, imagining both of
them in the languid sunlight. In the dining room as he ate alone he placed Andersen opposite him and allowed the two of them to linger over the wine before ascending to the drawing room. He did not
mind if Andersen’s talk would be scattered or boastful. He wished for him to come before the summer was over, to share the long bright evenings with him, to keep all other company at bay so
that he could enjoy his friend and so that Andersen could see life on a smaller scale.

It would be simple, he decided, to renovate the small studio which formed part of his property and gave onto Watchbell Street. As he wrote to Andersen and arranged the date of his coming, he
began to imagine his friend, having seen how splendidly Henry managed to work in the garden room in the summer months, realize that the studio could so easily become a place for his labours during
a part of his year. He found a key for the studio and examined its contours and saw how with close consultation between Andersen and the architect Warren, work could begin on making it a modest and
stylish place for a sculptor to spend his days. He imagined his own solitary happiness, as he set about creating new work, knowing that not far away the sculptor Andersen was working in stone. He
knew that his mind was moving too quickly and that the picture he drew for himself of their joint industry belonged to the realms of the unlikely, but this vision also allowed him to live his days
with a sweet edge to them and allowed him to make other plans with a happier grace.

As the time for Andersen’s arrival approached, despite the fact that he had promised to stay merely three days while he was en route to New York from Rome, Henry constantly dreaded his
departure and prepared for the moment when he would meet him from the train while working out how best to entertain him during his time in Rye. This must be, he thought, how others felt, how his
father must have felt in the time after he met his mother, or how William felt waiting for Alice to become his wife. He wondered if this state of bewitched confusion came to him more deeply now
because of his age, and because of Andersen’s short stay, and because of the impossibility of his imaginings. As he walked through Rye, or took his bicycle through the summer countryside, he
watched people at random, wondering if they had ever experienced such tender longing, such rapturous tightening of the self in anticipation of another’s arrival.

Andersen’s decision to stay a short time was, despite his dreaming, not only a sentence of disappointment but a way for him to experience again, but more sharply now, the sense of doom
which came with longing and attachment. As if to ward off the ache which fresh disappointment might bring, he went over the time in Paris with Paul Joukowsky more than twenty years earlier. He had
gone through that night so many times in his mind. It lived with him in its drama and its finality. He remembered circling and circling, presuming that he would move away soon, return in the misty
night to the grim sanctuary of his Paris flat.Yet he had moved closer. He had stood on the pavement as night fell and the mist became rain, and even thinking about it now made him afraid but also
excited at what might have been. He had waited there, staring up at Paul’s window which was etched in lamplight, desperately holding himself back from crossing the street and making himself
known. For hours he had stayed there, his long vigil ending in defeat. For years, it had come to haunt him at unlikely moments, as it haunted him now.

B
URGESS
N
OAKES
was, by this time, used to visitors, especially in the summer months, and the rest of the staff, since the departure of the Smiths, were
in constant readiness to receive the small stream of old friends and family who came to stay at Lamb House. Burgess Noakes was not by nature curious; he took things as they came. Now, however, just
before the arrival of Hendrik Andersen he began to appear in front of Henry, embarrassed and slightly stuck for words, to ask various questions about Mr Andersen’s habits and preferences.

On the day when Andersen was to be met from the train, Henry noticed Burgess Noakes hovering about the breakfast room and later standing idly at the door of his study. He observed that Noakes
was dressed more carefully than usual and had a new haircut and seemed more sprightly in his movements. He smiled at the idea that his own vague and uneasy hopes and dreams had become palpable in
his household. At seven o’clock, Noakes was waiting for him at his front door in semi-military pose, his wheelbarrow at the ready like a cannon waiting to be fired.

A
NDERSEN BEGAN
talking as soon as he alighted from his carriage. He wished to point out several people with whom he had shared his compartment and, as
the train departed, he saw them off with many waves. Burgess Noakes, having taken control of Andersen’s baggage and placed it in his wheelbarrow, kept his eye firmly on Henry, placidly
studying him, and never once, as far as Henry could ascertain, cast the smallest glance at their visitor, and avoided him when they arrived at Lamb House as though he might bite.

Andersen moved around the house offering casual glances as if what he saw were familiar to him. Even the bust of Count Bevilacqua in the corner of the dining room did not receive more than a
cursory inspection. Travelling seemed to have unsettled him so that he did not, he insisted, wish to go to his room and change his clothes, nor did he wish for any refreshment, nor a seat in the
garden, nor a seat anywhere else. It was as if he had recently been wired for electricity and all the switches had been turned on. He was all buzz and blazing lights as he told Henry of his work
and who in New York he was to see about it and what they might say and what they had already said. The names of dealers and collectors and city planners mingled with those of millionaires and
society ladies. Paris and New York and Rome and London were all mentioned as places where there was much admiration, he said, for him and hunger for his work.