Rhetoric had always been his strongest suit: a desire to dispel absurdity, invariably by abuse. He was, to this extent, making progress, if the field for opportunity had been suddenly reduced. Divesting himself of previous assumptions – assumptions which, on the whole, had stood him in good stead over the previous sixty-odd years – he was clearing the ground for further progress – presumably on the lines less proposed than insisted on by Simone. New formulations, if they were formulations, were falling into place on either side, a sense of purpose, chiefly, pointing in the one direction (up the hills – Haverstock, Rosslyn, Holly Bush) to her house. The indignity (the humiliation) of the geriatric support group, arguing each other into a less negative frame of mind, had, in itself, inclined him to assume that little by little he was ridding himself of earlier pretensions, earlier perceptions. Having fallen so far, in his own eyes, there was little if any scope to fall further: disencumbered of wife, family and job, he could set about – set in motion – his own revival. He could, to this extent, re-formulate his life, disencumber himself of structures – or have them disencumbered for him – which had supported him until now but which, post-tube train experience, could support him no longer. Bereft of his past there was no knowing what he might achieve.

  With reviewing, he’d been on the point of pulling down the temple, the one place which was still, if tenuously, offering him shelter: first his near contemporaries, then those preceding, Cézanne’s demise to be followed, presumably, by others: the parodic Picasso’s, the decorative Braque’s (Matisse and Chagall in a category he had, cautiously, set aside), anticipating, prognosticating that which would last, that which would not, in the same fashion as he was identifying the same within his own nature: what was Maddox now was not what Maddox had been a few weeks ago.

  The exclusivity of declining powers, the inclusivity of those ascending: he had a picture devoid of illusions, something pristine, if not prestigious, a resolution to take little of anything for granted: a corresponding willingness to abandon everything – in favour of what?

  He had to make clear: he had to define, even if, as yet, he couldn’t identify, except for one thing, what he was moving towards: an absence of awareness was one thing, an awareness of the increasing absence of awareness another. Absolutes were beyond him, yet absolutes were what he had previously lived by: love, marriage, paternity, fidelity (not much progress with that), vocation – perceived, all of them, as ideals, anxiously subscribed to.

  The anxiety remained, growing stronger, more insistent, that anxiety regressing into terror, terror, in turn, informing his determination (a fresh anxiety) to stay alive. The premium he had put – was putting – on his decline as a necessary precedent to his survival was growing clearer all the while; conversely, his pretensions to a personal life were growing increasingly obscure, his insistence on something outside, and beyond it, all the more marked. The vehicle which, recently, had carried him so far, via the day-hospital, the life-class, was, he concluded, in the process of being dismantled, if not abandoned, broken up, he determined to construct an alternative of his own.

  Almost idly, he picked up from the floor the review of the British Millennium Exhibition which Devonshire had rejected and, retrieving a pen, a ball-point, from several scattered on the floor, began to amend the text: Freud’s predilection for rendering human flesh as butcher’s meat a necessary re-assertion of a Berliner tradition (Bosch, Grünewald, Dürer, Grosz, Auerbach), a redressing of an otherwise British aversion to rendering flesh as anything other than an agreeable transposition of the reflexive angle of the picture plane, Bacon’s a not disconnected insistence, Celticly acquired, on the perversity of flesh being flesh at all. The knighted Hodgkin’s infectious appetite for colour as much as form – transference of sunlight into a chromatic purity – a Sufistic transposition, sensually extended, resonant of the tiled domes and arches of Isfahan.

  As for Moore’s Carrara marbles, what more could he say about the nature of stone and its mesmeric identification with the human spirit, a resonance echoing back, as far as he could tell, to the beginning of life itself? Plus, Cézanne’s visionary elevation of paint in his final, unfinished pictures to the plasticity not to be rediscovered until half a century later in the textural evocations of American expressionism.

  Not convincing, but there it was: thinking, to this degree, had come to a halt, something almost consciously brought about, as if, unbeknown to him, he had been slipping free of everything, nothing left amongst his mental acquisitions but Simone; as if the very act of leaving go had ensured his taking hold of her – a tug, as it were, to tow him back to the ocean. Once free, he surmised, he would float on his own, drawn, once again, into reflecting on the significance of this perplexing woman who, in her own way, if not as comprehensively as himself, was leaving go of something: professional propriety, perhaps – something, he concluded, as simple and, presumably, as damaging as that – moments later lying back on the bed, the amended sheet falling to the floor, the pen still in his hand, the police helicopter, once more, returning, chuntering overhead, conscious only of the approach of that which he had, he concluded, desired the most, next to the embrace of Simone: oblivion.

  5

  It was as if, in sleep, particularly during the day, he was subjecting everything to clarification, subsequently recalling the contents of his dreams in the hope that something so subjectively arrived at would point him more decisively in the direction he was going (death alone on the skyline). Certainly, on waking, he looked for amendments, if not radical changes to everything which he had been disagreeably aware of, afflicted by, before he had fallen asleep. No such clarity, however, had emerged. More firmly in place than ever, his uncertainties and doubts engaged one another in an increasingly familiar manner. Yet somewhere, somehow, resolution (revelation, even) would arrive, he waking, on this occasion, from his afternoon sleep – no lunch having been taken, a Marks & Spencer prepared food item in his microwave oven (another ‘gift’ from Charlotte and Gerry, intended, as the others, to do him an unspecified ‘good’) – aware that the change, or the ‘charge’, he’d been warned to look out for was still some distance off. Temperament inclined him to expect its arrival at any moment, its speed of approach, unfortunately, as unpredictable as the change or ‘charge’ itself – this curious conjunction of imminence and discomposure, of expectancy and inertia, sufficient, finally, to get him out of the house.

  He resumed his walk of barely a few hours before, turning northwards, however, instead of south and, proceeding, past Chalk Farm, up Haverstock Hill, emerging, as if from a polluted lake, into the fresher air before the less steep ascent to Belsize Park, the restaurant tables partially occupied on the forecourts either side, the level interval beyond leading to the climb of Rosslyn Hill.

  A reminder now, in his heart, his lungs, in his knees, his hips, he was getting older, entering the area of boutiques, cafés and restaurants of the High Street until, beyond the tube station, stooped, bent almost double, he set off up the worn stone steps which, rising fifty or sixty feet above his head, took him finally to Simone’s door.

  Her voice was audible as he entered the hall and, assuming from her tone, its evenness and persistence, she was dictating a letter for Mrs Beaumont, he went upstairs to the kitchen.

  Aware of his approach, the cat was already waiting, stretching its hind legs, extending its claws, crossing to the fridge, in front of the door of which it sulkily paraded.

  Removing an already opened tin, Maddox measured a spoonful into the bowl by the sink, dropped in several pellets from a container kept beneath the sink, and re-examined the interior of the fridge for what he and Simone might eat.

  At moments like this he was aware again of how much he welcomed distractions, however slight, his attention drawn to anything of a familiar nature, preferably undemanding: walking to the house, for instance, the evening rush-hour underway on the tube underneath, the road convoyed with northbound traffic, feeding the cat, examining the possibility of preparing a meal from the contents of the fridge – which, on this occasion, he hadn’t supplemented or refurbished – even hoping, in this instant, that Simone would be further delayed (voices on the answering machine, heard every few minutes) so that he could enjoy the indulgence of being in her house alone. Here he was released from those preoccupations which came spontaneously to mind when he was at home, reflecting, on this occasion, in hers, on the propriety of writing (e-mailing or faxing, using Simone’s machines) to Donaldson as his former tutor and more recent colleague: ‘someone has to throw discretion to the wind. With little left to lose it might as well be me …

  ‘… as a child brought up during the Second World War my elucidation of what, at the time, was referred to as post-war art is probably more tendentious (more generous, more open-minded) than yours. This drift into trivialisation …’

  had dominated his consciousness for a considerable number of years, no Third World War having occurred to distract it

  ‘… to the point that trivialisation has acquired a dynamic of its own. This transposition of everything into accessibility. Devonshire, by the way, has put me out to grass. I got my head knocked off, as you were probably aware, a year ago – shortly before my recent illness – by suggesting that women, as a whole, had trivialised art and literature throughout the century, this in itself part of an overall process …

  ‘… a doomsday text which adequately ensured I’d never work – at least, in the field of commentary – again.’

  He paused, reminded he’d intended writing to Devonshire to amend (reverse) his previous assessment (flexibility, resilience, adaptability, subservience to the fore), not to his loquacious, prematurely balding former pupil: eyes like marbles, glistening – a peculiar phenomenon – in the dark, due, allegedly, to a congenital eye condition, if not, in Donaldson’s own account, a visionary conceit.

  Skin like marble, luminescent, too, in certain lights, flecked with acne, a languid, languorous, skeletal figure, suited in blue corduroy as a student, affecting a cravat and a loosely displayed top pocket handkerchief, a conspicuous oddity in a world characterised exclusively at that time by denim, perpetually on the move from one student bar to another, his inimitable nasal drawl now frequently heard on radio and late-night television (occasionally, recently, on news items), someone convinced of his destiny, of one sort or another, from the age of eighteen, his first appearance at the Drayburgh, his paintings – ‘expressionist’ – suggesting a sensibility, modishly perceived, struggling into existence – to deteriorate, finally, with indecision, into the chaos from which they had presumably emerged, his immoderate commentary on his efforts transposed effortlessly, vocationally, almost, certainly with relief, to the work of others, entertainment (‘enchantment’) taking over, ‘the singing stamen’, Pemberton had once described him (his last retrospective having been neglected in Donaldson’s column).

  No wonder Devonshire, who hadn’t witnessed this transformation of slug to butterfly, of weed to orchid, had signed him up at once, an ‘intermediary’ (as he saw himself) of the same generation, ‘conceptualism’ (intellect, reason, accessibility) in common, an antagonist of Maddox’s New Philistine Agenda, its progenitor ploughing an increasingly solitary furrow (Taylor, a rural heritage behind him, might, in his own time, have been a suitable recruit).

  ‘On the other hand, although we differ on the cyclical nature of creativity, art one moment moving precociously ahead of public perception, the next judiciously behind, the latter phase currently in operation, the regressive element involved is, in my view, full of potential. Namely, in deciphering in the downward surge those elements which may well comprise the next inevitable upward drive. “Progress” has a perverse, self-generating momentum (its only credential), something, as you once gratuitously suggested, “springing from the heart” – in this case, of course, of Judas, worn conspicuously on the sleeve, along with everything else (so many badges! so many designations!). More sobering times, however, I am predicting ahead, not annihilation, exactly, but something appropriate, let’s say, to the fate of Ozymandias, the decay of an empire endowed with everything destined, at one time, seemingly, to last for ever. In my view …’

  In his view?

  But then, he hadn’t a view: who, in any case, was listening? He was running out of steam. Devonshire’s intrusive telephone call had, once again (unwelcome, this time), distracted him. Here was a mind full of Ruths, Annas, Ailsas, Judiths – Alexes and others: the debris of a ‘cultural exercise’, the like of which had never previously been recorded, bringing him to the daily reality of a life bereft of common sense – and here was art, in its most meretricious and, he now realised, resented form, once again imposing itself. He had, he’d concluded, taken on ‘humility’ in order to redress a situation in which something like the opposite had operated for the previous sixty-odd years. He had looked to the exalted companionship of the saints in the past, those quattro- and cinquecento giants, Giotto, Donatello, Masaccio, della Francesca, together with their heirs: now, however, he was looking to the companionship of his crazed and largely suicidal fellow sufferers. ‘Something’s eating out my brain,’ he had confessed to Charlotte at the onset of his illness, she, post-illness, offering him Simone to mark, as she described it, his ‘recuperative phase’. Continuity, of a sort, he reflected – one which, with hindsight, might develop into something more significant than that, but, he’d confided to Charlotte, this ‘eating out’ was as tangible as a caterpillar eating a cabbage, its daily consumption removing the possibility of any further source of sustenance (‘my brain’s disappearing’), day by day, more glaringly, night by night, removing the certainty which came, he’d always assumed, with experience …

  ‘… judgement increaseth as talent decays an axiom – not Simone’s – that scarcely needs confirming …’

  yet here he was, day by day, almost hour by hour, proposing, if not confirming, something significantly different.

  Wasn’t this why he resented Devonshire’s intrusion? Didn’t Donaldson signal an ascendancy he no longer recognised or cared about, the vestigial spasms of a hack still in his system but, like everything else, being gradually, through exhaustion, sifted out?

  And there was Simone, a woman he scarcely knew or recognised, coming into the kitchen where, absently, distracted, he’d laid out the cartons to be processed in due order in the microwave (what other devices, he wondered, had she hidden about the house?), he looking up at her lovely face, fatigue lending it sensual charm, taking her face between his hands as if, without this reassurance, it might disappear, securing his lips on hers, aware that she, at some point – conceivably on her way up – had refreshed her make-up, the brown-irised eyes framed beneath the dark-lashed lids, the lids lowered as, out of focus, their faces blended into one another, as if, he reflected, she and he were one.

  There was something here he would have to construct: the enigma of his death-in-life predicament, the unforeseen attempt to kill himself: wipe the page or the canvas clean, the opportunity here, at least, to start again, to create, compose – to bring her, for instance, steelily alive, page after page, picture after picture, as if she, after her corresponding number of years, was only now becoming recognisable, something mercurial (he’d recognised before: her varied moods, inquisitor, one day, enthraller, the next), something transitional, confining itself to one form, only to precede its re-formation as something else.

  His own powers, he further reflected, were consistent with this, recalling sitting beside her in the dark, ensconced in the armchair comfort of a cinema in Belsize Park, turning to gaze at her (the mesmerised look of everyone around, focused on the screen), awareness fluctuating in response to a beam of light, emerging later into the machine-driven street: the fumes, the traffic, an oppressive awareness of too many people, proliferating, or so it seemed, before their eyes, a ‘spetial’ enterprise, a genetic conundrum, an outrageous extrapolation of ‘a reason to live’, the highest form, he concluded, of animal life canvassing extinction by means of a machine of its own device.

  ‘It’s ready when you are.’ He indicated the row of boxes, adding, ‘Expediency,’ the telephone ringing, she depositing a file on the kitchen table, declaring, ‘Give me a minute. I must take a call,’ disengaging from his hold, his hands having drifted down to enclose her back, her waist, her hips, her voice, moments later, coming from the sitting-room. He feeding in the boxes, one by one, the pinging of the machine as each one was finished: his laying-out the food and taking it to the table by the window which, with foresight, earlier in the day, she’d prepared: plates, glasses, cutlery, napkins. A glass vase containing flowers, taken that morning from her roof, occupied the centre of the table: beyond that, the window looked out to the studio window opposite, invariably dark, its inner surface strewn with climbing plants.

  And she: poised on one foot, one knee resting on a chair: the shape of her calf, her hips, her waist, her breasts delineated within the folds of an almost formal, anonymous black dress which she occasionally wore for clients of ‘distinction’. Who today?

  Her voice animated, she laughing, evidently female the other end: an arrangement to meet in town one evening.

  One less for him, he ungenerously reflected.

  A bird (Gerry came censoriously to mind): as elegant as a heron: one leg, a body devoid of post-menopausal flesh, a demonstration of something which her early life – photographs she’d shown him of an urchin-like creature with a more than androgynous look – had scarcely suggested, if not actively denied. Out of that uncertain, unfocused, if not neutered child – dark-haired, dark-eyed, soulful – had emerged this elegant, assertive, straight-backed, celebratory figure, with its unconsciously requesting if not solicitous look – which suggested (insisted) you should tell it all: everything! everything! a receptor, a provider, a provisioner of goodwill, a wholly charitable intention contained in that unchangeable, delicately proportioned head.