Vanessa Chapman’s diary
I’m in Naples, where the air tastes of salt and sulphur and the sky at night is purple and you can walk by the sea and watch all the kids, all these ravishing Italian teenagers, laughing and shouting and kissing each other in the half-light.
By day, the heat and the men are relentless. Walking down the street is exhausting. The last time I was here I was a child, I remember the wolfish way men looked at my mother, how she smiled and laughed. I scowl and swear. Despite my vanity (maybe because of it?), I’ve never liked to be painted or photographed, I’ve never liked to be looked at.
I came to look.
I came to look at Gentileschi’s Judith and Holofernes at the Museo di Capodimonte.
I remember that from when I was here last, too: then I think I was just fascinated by the horror of it, by the gore, now what I love is the way the two women are working together, seriously, really applying themselves to their task. Caravaggio’s Judith is tentative and afraid, but this Judith—red-lipped, in her dress the blue of a Neapolitan sky—is determined, unflinching. Her sleeves are rolled up. And her servant is not just standing passively or helplessly to one side; she is fully involved, she holds him, presses him to the bed, her eyes on his face. You can almost imagine she relishes it.
I was standing there, in awe of these magnificent women, when a shadow fell over me. A man was standing too close, taking up all the light. Tall and broad-shouldered, square-jawed—he looked like he’d taken a wrong turn on the way to the bookies. I was about to move away when he said, are you Vanessa Chapman? I swear, my jaw dropped.
He said he’d seen my pictures at Cube. His name is Douglas Lennox, he has a gallery in Glasgow, and he says he’s interested in representing me.
I let him take me for a drink and then, after a few, to bed. Probably not the best idea if we’re going to work together, but he was very good—and he is married, so he shouldn’t really cause me any problems.
* * *
Julian has been home for five days, sulking. Apparently it is all over with Celia. He is broke and his father is refusing to lend him any more money. I don’t have any to give him either.
* * *
Douglas Lennox turned up yesterday. He rang me from the station in Oxford, said he was just passing.
From Glasgow??
He didn’t like the paintings I did of Blenheim Palace, the ones everyone else admires. Sentimental, chocolate boxy. He loved the hedgerows. Bold, he said, ambitious—taking landscape in a new direction. That’s what you want to do, isn’t it? Julian came into the studio while we were talking, we were standing very close together, my hand was on Douglas’s arm, or maybe he had his hand on the small of my back, we were touching at any rate—anyway, Julian—who knows how touchy-feely I am, with everyone—stormed out.
Douglas and I talked for a long time; I talked about wanting to move almost toward something three-dimensional, making marks with the palette knife that tend toward carving. He pointed out that the best work I have done has not been here—the pictures from Cornwall and Italy are more successful. This landscape—which once thrilled me—now palls.
When Julian came back to the house in the evening he confronted me about Douglas and I laughed at him. I thought for a moment he might hit me—I think I wanted him to. If he hit me then I could walk out, couldn’t I?
* * *
We have had thunderstorms three days running and I feel as though my body has absorbed the electricity in the air. I paint and paint; I feel revitalized, made new.
London tomorrow, going to the Art Fair.
* * *
I thought I had been forgiven for the Douglas incident, but I was wrong. When I got back from London I got the old one-two.
The jab: he is seeing Celia Gray again—and it’s not a fling, he says he loves her.
The cross: while I was away, he took one of my Italy pictures (Naples Seafront) to “a dealer friend of Celia’s” and sold it.
I can’t describe how I felt; it wasn’t just despair, it was darkness like I have not known before, it was hatred. Sometimes his cruelty takes my breath away—as though his infidelity is not enough, he helps himself to my pictures, too, and the money I have worked for.
I have to be single-minded, I have to put work at the heart of my life.
And I have to leave because, if I don’t, I think I might kill him. Or he me.