The Ecliptic

Though all artists strive for recognition, they cannot foresee how it will come to them or how much they will compromise to maintain success. All they can do is cling to the reins and try to weather the changes of their circumstance without altering their course. But no woman can improve her station in life without sacrificing a little of her identity. I was an ordinary girl from Clydebank who had somehow established herself as a prospect on the London art scene: was I really expected to remain unchanged by these experiences? Even my father, who had returned from the frontlines of war apparently untouched by its horrors, was not averse to smoothing out his accent when speaking to the council on the telephone. So how was I to supposed to sign away my life to Roxborough Fine Art and still be that same girl who once painted in her parents’ yard? I tried so hard to preserve the Clydebank in me that I soon realised I was forcing it. Perhaps if there had been some grounding presence in my life at that time—a good man like Jim Culvers who could have given me a shake when I needed it—I might have been able to retain a semblance of my old self. But on the preview night for my first solo exhibition at the Roxborough in 1960, I did not have a genuine friend in the room.

Instead, I was surrounded by interested parties and loathsome hangers-on. People like Max Eversholt, who paraded around the gallery as though he had painted every canvas himself, tour-guiding young women in cocktail dresses from landscape to landscape with a delicate grip on their elbows. He brought other artists over to speak with me, one fashionable face at a time, and presumed we were already acquainted (‘You know Frank, of course . . . You know Michael . . . You know Timothy . . .’) because surely all the painters in London were the best of friends? I stood, awkwardly pattering with them, as I might have talked to distant relations at a wake.

Occasions such as these were geared for Max Eversholt and his type. For him, the gallery floor on a preview night was the one place he felt alive. He dialled up his enthusiasm to the point of theatre, revelling in the glory of his involvement in my work, kissing cheeks, patting backs, savouring the thrum of conversations that ensued. I never understood why all this glitz and pageantry was required to sell a picture—it certainly had nothing to do with art. Every painter I respected worked alone in a quiet room, and the images they made were intended for solemn reflection, not to provide the scenery for obnoxious gatherings of nabobs and batty collectors wearing too much perfume. After a while, the company of such people became the norm, and I was expected not only to enchant them with my work, but also to fascinate them with my personality. If I baulked at placating these strangers, it merely served to enthral them even more.

I hovered in the corner with Bernie Cale for much of that private viewing, and we talked for a while about Jim, wondering aloud where he had gone to, if we had seen the last of him. Bernie had heard all the rumours and was not convinced by any of them. ‘I just don’t see a bloke like Jim lasting ten minutes in New York,’ he said. ‘Too many windbags and clever Dicks. Too much competition. And you know how he feels about American whisky. Single malt’s so dear over there, he’d never make it.’

I laughed at this, recalling the strength of Jim’s feelings on the matter. He had declined to share a drink with his neighbour, Vern Glasser, on so many occasions that, one day, I had asked him why he could not try to be more accommodating. After all, I had to share a bathroom with Vern, and their festering resentment for each other was making the atmosphere in our mews house rather fraught. But Jim said, ‘I’ve nothing against Vernon in particular. It’s just that all he has to drink is that awful stuff from Kentucky, and, frankly, I’d prefer to swig from his toilet.’ How I missed being Jim’s assistant. The simplicity of our life together. That everyday affiliation we used to have. The longer I went without hearing from him, the more I thought of those days in St John’s Wood and yearned to restore them.

‘More to the point,’ Bernie Cale went on, ‘if he’s in the States, wouldn’t somebody have bumped into him by now? I mean, it’s not like you can hide in New York, is it? Not if you’re trying to make a name for yourself. It’s a very big scene over there, but it’s all a bit—what’s the word—incestuous.’ I had never been to New York so was not qualified to pass judgement.

The rumours about Jim’s whereabouts were founded on a scarcity of facts, with the gaps coloured in by guesswork. According to received opinion, he had gone to New York to live with his sister. This theory hinged upon a drunken conversation that Jim was supposed to have had with two regulars at the Prince Alfred pub, who had told Max Eversholt that they had held Jim’s ticket for the boat in their very own hands (they also claimed that Jim had begged the barmaid for a lift to Southampton). The problem with verifying this story was that nobody knew if Jim really had a sister. His drinking pals could not remember what her name was, where she might have worked, or what part of the city she lived in. They did not even know if she was older or younger. Eversholt believed their word was reliable, even if the details rang false when I called the shipping companies: they had no recent record of a passenger named James Culvers. All in all, the New York theory was quite unsound, but we had no other clues to follow up on.

Jim had abandoned his studio just a few weeks after I moved out of his attic. ‘A midnight flit,’ was how Eversholt put it. ‘Ditched everything but his sketchbooks.’ He had shown me the eerie state that Jim had left the space in: all his oil tubes thrown into a box, his easels folded down and stacked, the On Highs painted over with white gesso, leaned up by the window. ‘If you want some extra room, it’s yours,’ Eversholt had said. ‘You can work it out between yourselves when Jim gets back. Assuming he’s not lying dead in a gutter somewhere.’ I was revolted by his glibness, and he quickly apologised. ‘Sorry. That was in poor taste, even for me.’ The prospect of a stranger moving in to Jim’s studio was so dismaying that I agreed to take it on in his absence. I used it mostly to store overflow materials, though sometimes I would go and stand in those empty rooms when I needed separation from a particularly mulish piece of work. At first, it helped me to surround myself with the remnants of Jim’s thoughts, to pace in his old circles. But each time I tried to work there, I felt that I was painting over memories of him, changing the meaning of the space, so I stopped going.

Max was good enough to keep on covering the rent for Jim’s flat in Maida Vale. The landlady was thrilled to tell me all about the dirty pots that had been left to moulder in Jim’s sink, how his bins had not been put out for collection, and how she needed to let herself in with the master key when the smell became insufferable. She had promised to put Jim’s things in a storage locker for me if I paid her twelve shillings a month—I was sure that she would only dump everything and pocket the money, so instead I arranged for someone to pack up Jim’s possessions and kept the boxes in his studio, guessing he would thank me for it some day. But fortnights passed and still no hospital could account for Jim’s admittance when I called around, no duty officer could identify him in the drunk tank, no long-lost friends emerged to claim him as their lodger. I waited months for a letter to arrive, a postcard from America, anything. My heart flinched every time the phone rang, tempering when all I heard was the voice of Max (‘Darling, I’m headed your way. Any chance I might swing by with some friends? They’re itching to see what you’re working on’), or another gentle enquiry from Dulcie Fenton, the director of the Roxborough Gallery, who checked on my progress more frequently than I believed was necessary: ‘Anything you need from this end, just say the word.’ It took me a full year to accumulate the pieces for the show. Through that long, intensive period of work, I attuned myself to the idea that Jim would not be there to see the paintings when they were finished. In fact, I began to wonder if he would ever see another work of mine again. I accepted my aloneness, embraced it as my fate.

‘Paris is a decent bet, I reckon,’ Bernie Cale said, pushing out his lip. He picked off a handful of canapés from the server’s tray as it went by. ‘He used to go on about Giacometti and that crowd all the time.’

‘He’d like the lifestyle, I reckon. And the racing’s not bad either. You might want to put the feelers out, just in case.’

‘Paris is a mystery to me. I don’t have any feelers. I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it correctly. Par-iss. Pa-ree? Which is it?’

‘Not a clue.’ He looked for somewhere to put his used cocktail sticks, settling for the floor under his boot. ‘I’ll start asking round, if you want. I know a few people.’

‘Sweet of you, Bernie. Thanks.’ I smiled at him, truly meaning it. ‘I was thinking St Ives might be worth looking into—Dulcie says a lot of painters have been moving down to Cornwall lately. I know Jim always loved the city, but he grew up on that part of the coast.’

‘That’d explain it.’ He stuffed a finger in his ear and waggled it, studying the damp, waxy deposit under his nail. Another server went by with a tray, but this time he let her pass. ‘Well, wherever he’s gone and buggered off to, I’m sure he’s doing all right. Always thought Jim could handle himself, if he needed to.’

‘Course I am.’ Bernie stared at me. There was a slothful quality about his features that made him seem permanently on the edge of passing out. But he seemed to take a particular interest in my face that night, appraising it in long, heavy gazes that I tried to ignore. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I hear this lot are taking you to Wheeler’s after.’ He nodded in the general direction of the crowd, but it was clear to whom he was referring: Dulcie Fenton and her two fawning assistants.

Bernie hung a stare on me. ‘If the gallery’s paying, you should have the number two oysters.’

‘You won’t find better in London. It’s a proper old place is Wheeler’s. They do a cracking dressed crab to start with—make sure you get that. And the turbot, if you’ve room.’ He must have noticed my attention was wandering. ‘Or I could drive you back to Kilburn, if you like. I’m going that way anyway.’

He scanned the room, deflated. ‘All right. But no one’s here to look at your paintings, you know. They’re here to be seen looking at your paintings. I thought you were clever enough to know that already.’

I did not take kindly to this summoning of Jim’s name just to unsettle me. ‘So that’s why you came tonight, is it, Bernie? To make the society page?’

He shrugged. ‘I won’t lie. When Max tells me to be somewhere, I show up nice and punctual. It’s a lucky bonus if I like the paintings.’

This seemed to injure him more than I expected. ‘Actually, I like your other pieces better. Nothing’s really moved me tonight,’ he said.

‘Yeah, that was my favourite. But it didn’t frighten me like the older stuff.’

I could not pretend to Bernie Cale or anyone else that I was satisfied with the work that had been chosen for the show. Only three days before, I had been installing the pieces with Dulcie and had been overcome with such a sense of anti-climax that it took a great deal of resolve not to run out onto Bond Street and hail a taxi home. We had themed and organised the paintings on the walls, rearranged them in every possible configuration before agreeing on the final hanging. The technician had tacked the title cards into place, and Dulcie had said, ‘Wonderful. I think we’ve finally cracked it.’ I had expected this moment to be joyous—the culmination of so much dreaming and endeavour—but I did not feel that way at all. Of the nine canvases that appeared in the show, seven had been worked on steadily, over months, and the labour that underpinned them was much too obvious. I had wanted to include six different pieces: older paintings I had made in a bloodrush late one night in Jim’s attic. These works, I knew, were not as technically refined, but there was an exciting tension in their rawness. Dulcie made me second-guess them: ‘I’m just not sure I understand what you see in them. I mean, they’re certainly striking, and I think they’d be fine in a retrospective further down the line, but we’re looking to establish a genuine presence for you here—you understand that’s the point of this whole exercise, don’t you? It’s a staggered process. It’s fine for the men to go straight for the jugular with their first big show. We have to tantalise a little. Play hard to get. You know what I’m saying. Show the bolder stuff next time, once you have a captive audience.’

Dulcie had a way of turning every dialogue into a soliloquy. She had risen up the echelons at the Roxborough, starting as a secretary to the gallery’s owners, proving her acuity by managing the diaries of artists on the books. Soon, they asked her to stand in as assistant to the director, and, when his tenure ended due to illness, she was made director in her own right. There was no more respected woman on the London art scene at that time. She had established a reputation for intuiting trends in the market and had helped to launch the careers of many artists I admired. Max Eversholt deferred to her instincts on most matters, and I was swayed by her opinions because I thought they were born of an experience greater than my own. When she said that my newest paintings were the most sophisticated, I had to listen. Every time the word ‘collectable’ escaped her lips, it stung my heart and then recoiled into the ether like a wasp to die. Perhaps I would have felt that sting much harder if Jim had been there. Perhaps. Too many perhapses.

As it turned out, the only painting that did not sell at the private viewing was the work I was most proud of: a diptych that Dulcie had agreed to include in the show by way of a compromise. I had called it Godfearing. The left-hand panel was six feet wide and four feet tall, depicting a layered mountainscape in dark grey oils that I had dragged through repeatedly with the edge of a plasterer’s trowel, dulling the paint in sections with the heels of my hands (you could see the grain of my skin impressed in some of them). Across one corner of this image, a dazzle of blurred white stripes was roughly scraped on a diagonal. These stripes flowed into a right-hand panel of the same height and half the width. This smaller canvas showed the hollow profile of a baby. It was a ghostly figure that touched the edges of the space, as though enwombed by the frame; a faceless shape, hiding behind a gauze of pallid streaks. Its arching back was pressed against the left side of the canvas and seemed to hold up the landscape behind it. From afar, the baby appeared to be damming an avalanche with its shoulders, and, in turn, the jagged rocks seemed to keep the baby from toppling backwards. I had mounted the two panels a quarter of an inch apart, hoping to imply a sense of conjunction between them. It was the point of much discussion over dinner at Wheeler’s that night.

‘I’m surprised nobody took it, given the others went so quickly,’ Max Eversholt said. He offered to fill my glass with Chablis and I shook my head. ‘Still, I have to say it looked a tad incongruous. The title alone was a challenge for some people. Ted Seger’s wife didn’t even want to stand near it—and we all know who controls the chequebook in that particular household.’

‘The Segers haven’t bought a piece from us in years,’ was Dulcie’s response. ‘I only invited Ted because he’s a handy chap to have in my pocket in certain situations: tax season looming and all that. Besides, the diptych will find a home eventually. You know what they say in Egypt . . .’ This caused both of her assistants to chuckle, and Max threw me a helpless look. I could only blink back at him.

‘We seem to have walked into a private joke,’ he said. ‘How unfortunate.’

Dulcie straightened her face. Her assistants went quiet. ‘Just something we were talking about on the way over here. In Egypt, when you come to the end of a good meal, it’s respectful to leave a small amount of food on your plate.’

‘Well, terrific. Thank heavens you invited so many Egyptians tonight—oh, no, wait,’ Max said, beaming.

‘Not for the first time, old love, you’re rather missing the point.’ Dulcie shucked an oyster, barely gulping. ‘If we’d sold all nine pieces already, what would I tell collectors once the reviews start coming in?’ She made a telephone of her thumb and pinkie: ‘Yes, that’s right, sir, only one left, I’m afraid—oh, by far the most progressive piece in the show, yes, sir—it would take someone with a particular insight just to see its—pardon me? The price? Well, hold on a sec, and let me check the book for you. I’m not sure the artist really wants to part with it . . .’ Dulcie retracted her fingers. ‘Don’t you know anything about the market, Max? I thought this was your game.’

‘You’re forgetting who brought Ellie to your attention in the first place. I didn’t hear you patronising me then.’ He gestured at the waiter. ‘Another round of number twos over here, please!’

I had become accustomed to this sort of discussion—the type in which I sat as an observer, hearing my own work being spoken about without being invited to contribute an opinion. I was passed around between people like the head on a coin, regarded only when questions needed a quick answer or small points required clarification.

At least I was not the only person who was adrift from the conversation that night. The young man in the seat opposite had not said a word since ordering his green salad, which he had proceeded to nudge around his plate with a lot of indifferent forkwork. He had told me his name on the pavement outside the gallery, but I had misheard it in the drawl of passing traffic and been too embarrassed to ask for it again. It had sounded like ‘Wilfredson’.

He had a smooth, slender face and an attractive way of smoking with one arm slung over his chair-back, as though entirely bored by everything Max and Dulcie had to say. The jacket he was wearing had neat cross-stitching around the lapel in yellow thread, and he kept more pens in his breast pocket than I suspected he required. His blond hair was thickly pomaded, but it flicked into a strip of tight dry curls above his brow, giving his head a curious lopsidedness. ‘If I might ask something about the diptych,’ he said, gazing at me. ‘Unrelated to the pounds-and-pence of things. I don’t want to make you uncomfortable.’

‘This is just a friendly dinner, not an interview—I thought I’d made that clear.’

Wilfredson tapped his cigarette. He seemed irritated by the interruption, resetting his gaze on the table before addressing me again. ‘For what it’s worth, I thought it was the only thing in the show of any substance. Which is probably why nobody paid it the least bit of notice all evening. And why no one bought it. Sorry if that’s a bit forthright. It’s only my opinion.’

I was about to say thank you, but Max got his words out first: ‘Dulcie just said the very same thing.’

‘I doubt that,’ said Wilfredson. ‘Though I admit I wasn’t hanging on her every word like you were.’

‘Well, I’m telling you she did. Progressive—that’s what she called it.’

Dulcie wafted the smoke from her face. ‘They warned me you had an attitude. I can see I needn’t have worried.’

Wilfredson gave a flickering smile. ‘I’m just wondering who decided to shunt the best work to the back end of the room tonight. Can’t think it was the artist’s choice. I mean, I know the Roxborough’s a commercial gallery, but do all the hangings have to look like they’ve been thought out by an Avon lady?’

Dulcie’s two assistants blushed on her behalf. But she would not be distracted from her plate of oysters. She picked up another shell and tipped its glistering flesh right down her throat. ‘Please, go on. I’m not one to stand between a man and a good tirade.’ She reached for her wine glass. ‘Just keep in mind: we only show the work, we don’t make it. So if you’re going to attack the gallery or its staff in print, don’t be surprised to get uninvited to our shows.’ Dulcie tidied the sides of her grey bob and sat back, awaiting a response.

‘Oh, you’ve nothing to fear in that regard. I don’t mention the names of incidental people in my reviews.’ Wilfredson let ash fall upon his meal. His arm was still slung around the chair. ‘Enough old faces in the room tonight, I noticed. You’ll get your flatter-pieces in the broadsheets, no question. How much do you have to pay those good old boys, by the way, Dulcie? They must charge by the adverb, from what I’ve seen.’

He grinned. ‘I just thought I’d take the opportunity to let Miss Conroy know what I truly think of her work. Before those other critics go parroting your press release and fill her head with applause. If that’s OK by you.’

‘I’m sure Elspeth can stand to hear an opinion,’ Dulcie said. ‘Even an ignorant one.’

‘Then I suggest we move our discussion elsewhere,’ Wilfredson replied. ‘I refuse to discuss art in a place like this. Let’s go and have a cocktail.’

Dulcie quaffed her wine. ‘You had me fooled for a moment there. If all you wanted was a quiet drink with Elspeth, you should’ve just said so.’

Wilfredson paused. ‘Thing is, people tend to resent me for having an opinion, even when they’ve asked for it. So if I buy them the best daiquiri in London first—well, who could possibly resent a man after that? I take it you’ve never had cocktails at the Connaught.’

‘There you are then. A whole new world of happiness awaits.’ He stood up and threw on his coat. ‘I’ll be outside.’

When he was gone, there was a momentary hush. Max stroked breadcrumbs from the tablecloth. ‘Phew, he’s a bold fellow, isn’t he? What’s his name again?’

‘Damn. Poor bugger. Always liked Phil.’ He tossed his napkin to the table. ‘That’s a fair readership, you know. More than a drop in a bucket.’

‘Which is why I invited him to join us tonight. I was told that he loved oysters.’

‘Quite.’ Dulcie did not glare at her assistants, but they slumped into their chairs at the mere implication.

Then one of them said, ‘It’s not right what he was saying, though. About the diptych. We had some firm enquiries.’

‘Yes, the Levins asked me if the panels could be sold separately,’ Max added. ‘Just the mountains, not the baby. I told them, “How much would I have to pay to separate the two of you?” They seemed to think I was joking . . .’

Dulcie ignored him. She reached across the table to pat the back of my hand. ‘On reflection, darling, there’s never a bad time for a daiquiri. And you might enjoy hearing his views. Couldn’t hurt to keep him company.’

‘Not right now. But he will be eventually.’ She patted my hand again, as though we were sisters in church. ‘I was watching him all night—he kept sneaking glimpses at you through the crowd. They’re all the same. Critics. Men. Can’t ever separate the woman from the art.’ She nodded to the glass façade of the restaurant where he was waiting. ‘They don’t make very good friends, I’m afraid, but we wouldn’t want them as enemies. I don’t think he knows which one he wants to be yet.’

My mother had raised me to be wary of good-looking men. But even she—a woman so disheartened by the chores of marriage that she was impervious to romance—would have softened in the presence of Wilfred Searle. He was refreshingly decisive about life’s small details: instructing the cabbie to drive us to the Connaught and directing him as to the fastest route to Mayfair, taking my coat in the lobby and delivering it to the cloakroom, ordering our drinks as he escorted me to a table: ‘Two daiquiris, please. And stick to the recipe. We’ll have that table in the corner.’ He was just as commanding on the subject of art, and somehow made his disapproval of my work sound charming, as though he felt I was capable of greatness but was allowing my potential to be squandered by other people. When he talked, I had to look across the room, at the bar, at the monograms on the carpet. I hoped my aloofness would help me seem invulnerable to criticism.

‘There’s an undertone of something in the rest of them,’ Wilfred said, ‘but it’s hard to say what—you’ve buried the meaning too deeply in the paint. Your approach to abstraction is rather cumbrous. I don’t know if that’s what you’ve been encouraged towards in art school, but it’s all so oddly constrained. You make one or two leaps of expression here and there—not enough for my liking. I don’t blame you. It’s a symptom of the bad advice you’re getting. You have considerable talent—there’s no doubt about that. But your show tonight was so competent it bored me. I mean, it was perfectly—oh, here we are. Thank you.’ The barman arrived with our cocktails. He lifted them from a silver tray and set each one down on a crisp paper coaster. ‘Look, if you want the absolute truth, I know there’s a lot more to come from you. They’re not awful paintings, on the whole, they’re just painfully unmoving. But then you pull that diptych out of your sleeve, that completely spectacular diptych—come on now, dig in.’ He handed me a glass and clinked it with his own. ‘If it had been the only piece in the show, I would’ve gone home and written my review right away, the kind that’d make old Dulcie’s knees knock together. But then I suppose we wouldn’t be having this little moment together, would we? How’s that daiquiri treating you?’

I sipped at the dainty drink and made the favourable noises I thought he was waiting for.

‘Not very hard to make one of these, you know,’ he said. ‘Just white rum and lime, a bit of crushed ice, that’s all there is to it. Staggering how often people mess it up.’

‘It’ll do,’ I said, and turned to look at the night. There was a row of stately red-brick houses across the street from the hotel. Under the lamplight at the side of the road, a man was unfurling the tarpaulin on his sports car. For a moment, I felt an urge to be out there with him. I imagined going with him all the way to Southampton.

‘The thing about Dulcie, as much as I detest her company,’ Wilfred went on, ‘is that her instincts are usually sound. She can tell when an artist has longevity. That’s why she let you show the diptych. She’s no fool.’

‘In any case, her style of management isn’t for everyone. It’s too early to say how you’re going to fare with her, but you shouldn’t get complacent. I know she didn’t think much of your friend Culvers, or his work for that matter. I always thought he had some promise.’

‘Yes, I could tell that from his paintings.’ Wilfred smiled. ‘It’s a shame he lost his way. I liked his early stuff. Before he started with those Hopper pastiches.’

There was a time when I might have taken exception to this remark, but I had come to view Jim’s old ‘absence portraits’ as nothing more than portents of his disappearance—great flashing signs that I had failed to see. ‘I don’t want to talk about Jim tonight,’ I said.

The daiquiri was strong and, after a few long sips, the rum began to bite the back of my throat. Outside, the man turned the ignition of his sports car and it gave a rusty, disappointing sound underneath the bar’s piano music. ‘He’s been trying to start that bloody thing for ages,’ Wilfred said. ‘There’s a point at which perseverance becomes denial. I think we’re about four weeks past it with this chap.’

‘I suppose you must come here often,’ I said, which only showed him my naïvety.

‘I can’t deny it’s a popular place.’ He thinned his eyes at me. ‘You have an unusual way of talking, you know that?’

‘It’s not how you speak, it’s what you say. Your accent’s very gentle.’

‘It just seems to me that you’re very careful with your words, very measured. Makes me wonder if you approach painting the same way. It would explain a lot about the show tonight.’

He looked down at his drink, as though remembering it was in his hand. ‘I like to let the lime settle a bit first. Tastes better.’

He simpered, putting the glass down on the table, twisting its stem so the coaster spun beneath it. ‘Look, obviously I’m not going to get to know you in the course of one evening, Ellie, so I’m having to make a few assumptions—is it all right if I call you that?’

‘Close enough.’ The glass came to rest in his fingers. ‘I probably shouldn’t say this, but when you got in the cab tonight, I thought you were going to be like all the rest of them.’

He blinked. ‘There’s a certain pliability about the women Dulcie takes on at the gallery, if you get what I mean.’

‘That wasn’t my intention. Really,’ he said, tidying the cuffs of his blazer. ‘I was only trying to say that you’re not the average Dulcie Fenton sort of artist. I thought I’d buy you a drink, tell you a few cold truths, and you’d cry on my shoulder and I’d say, There, there, darling, your work will get better, I know you have it in you. But I can tell you prefer to keep people at a distance.’

‘Actually, you have a very high opinion of your own opinion. It could just be that I don’t like you very much.’

‘Ha. Maybe so.’ Wilfred moistened his lips. He sat forward, bringing a cigarette case from his breast pocket, flipping it open. There was only one left. He held it out for me to take but I declined. ‘What I know for sure,’ he said, drawing out the cigarette, tapping it on the back of the case, ‘is you haven’t come here for praise.’

He smirked, taking the hotel matchbook from the ashtray and tearing off a strip. ‘It’s confirmation you want, isn’t it?’

‘I think you do.’ He angled his head. The matchflame illumined his face like a Halloween pumpkin. ‘It’s not that you need me to explain why the diptych is so good. You already know that. It’s authentication you’re looking for. You’re here to make sure I understand how good you are.’

For the first time all night, I looked directly into his eyes. They were not quite the colour I had thought they were—a murky, gutter-moss green. ‘Honestly, I couldn’t care less what you write about me in your magazine. Where I’m from, people who sit around criticising other people’s work all day instead of doing their own get a very bad name for themselves. I happen to like men with strong opinions. I find them interesting to talk to. But don’t fool yourself—it’s not your approval I’m after.’

‘Nothing. Just a chance to have a proper conversation about art. I haven’t had a genuine discussion about painting since—’

‘A long time ago. Since I moved to Kilburn. It’s difficult to be taken seriously when you look like me.’

‘No, but I look younger than I am, which puts me at a certain disadvantage.’

‘Well, all right—we’re getting off topic.’ As he inhaled and savoured the smoke, his arm succumbed to its old habit, drooping over the chair-back. ‘You should care what I think, because I care what you paint. That’s how it works. Our interests are aligned.’

‘I do, I know.’ He edged forward, shifting his legs. ‘Give me a moment and I’ll explain.’

‘I’ll start with the diptych then,’ he said. ‘A quintessential Elspeth Conroy painting, if ever there was one.’

‘Easy. I don’t read press releases. They go straight in the dustbin. I just look for the piece that resonates most. I could tell that painting came from a different place than all the others.’

‘Context is overrated. It wouldn’t have mattered if the diptych were the first work of yours I’d seen or the last. I’m no artist, but I can tell when one is fully in tune with herself, not just trying to fake it for the sake of an exhibition. You can feign a lot of things in modern art, but emotion isn’t one of them. It has to be there in the paint, not tagged on after. And it’s probably the most important thing a reviewer can convey, that distinction. Not everyone can spot the difference, so they leave it up to people like me. And whether I print it in the Statesman or stand up on a soapbox in the park and shout it out loud—doesn’t matter. Real artists come along so rarely nowadays that modern art is hard to justify. Most people can’t tell pitch dark from blindness any more, and that’s what makes our interests so aligned. I need artists like you to make great art so I have something to shine a light on. And you need critics like me, or nobody will notice what you paint. That’s the nature of the game we’re in.’ He slugged the whole of his daiquiri, blinking away the sourness. ‘Can I buy you another?’

He twisted round and made a circling gesture to the barman anyway. ‘You’re still not convinced,’ he said.

‘All right. Let’s try it another way.’ He picked something from his tongue—a tiny node of lime-flesh—and flicked it to the carpet. ‘I’ll bet when you painted the diptych you weren’t even thinking of painting, were you? You didn’t have a purpose in mind, not even a theme, you were just trying to express a feeling—you let your arm go wherever it wanted until you ended up with mountains. Am I warm?’

He wet his lips again. ‘Something felt wrong after that, I’ll bet—I don’t mean erroneous. Less than whole would probably be more like it. Anyway, let’s say you stepped back from the painting at this point—exhausted most likely, sweating a lot and ready to give up working on it altogether—but then—and you don’t know exactly where it came from—you saw another form leaning against that panel: not completely there, in the same frame, just set off against it somehow, almost joined but not quite. It just dropped into your mind. And that’s how you painted the baby on the right—from nowhere. You didn’t copy from a photograph—not your style. You just painted it straight out of your imagination, didn’t you? From memory. It just sort of felt right to paint it, so you carried on. And, I don’t know, maybe you were afraid of what you were painting as you were doing it, mountains and babies not being your normal kind of subject matter, but you had to see where it all led. Because it felt right. In fact, it probably seemed as though the entire thing was somehow predetermined. Like it was happening to you. What was that old line Michelangelo had about his sculptures waiting for him in the marble? That. I’ll bet you made the whole painting so quickly you didn’t even stop to eat or sleep. And that’s why you begged for it to be in the show. Because you composed all the others yourself, thought about them very deliberately, but that diptych was pure inspiration.’ With this, he sat back, returning his cigarette case to its frayed little pocket. ‘See, that’s the kind of thing you need someone like me to communicate. Your average person can’t just intuit it when they walk in off the street.’

Our corner of the bar now seemed more private. The gentle piano music had become an unmelodious ripple, as frustrating as a dial tone that never engaged. ‘You might have a bit more understanding than I gave you credit for,’ I said, and took a last sip of daiquiri, just to steady myself. His level of insight had disarmed me. ‘I suppose you’d like me to cross your palm with silver now.’

‘We’ll consider it a freebie,’ he said. ‘There’s no magic involved. Anyone who’s ever created anything remotely original will explain his process in the same way. As if he had no control, just influence. Channelling—that’s the word that seems to get used.’

He shrugged. ‘I told you, I’m no artist. I don’t know for certain. But I prefer to think that great work is made through talent and sheer hard work. If some can channel greatness and the rest of us can’t even get an outside line, it’s a very unfair system.’

‘That’s irrelevant. I’m talking about art. Creativity.’ His face began to twitch. ‘You know, my uncle can’t stand the sight of me. It’s fine. The feeling’s mutual. I just wish people would stop lumping us together.’

‘I’m still right about creativity, though. Science is going to prove it one day. Just remember who it was that told you so.’ He smiled, allowing a silence to gather. ‘What time is it? We ought to see about that cab.’

‘Come on, I’ll fetch your coat. Hope I haven’t lost that ticket she gave me.’ He stood, calling the barman over.

‘Hate to drink alone in public,’ Wilfred said, ‘and it seems a shame to waste it.’

‘For now. I’ve rather fallen out of love with London lately. I’m still working out where I want to go next.’ He made it sound so unrehearsed. Patting his blazer pockets, he mumbled: ‘Where’s that ticket she gave me? It must have got into the lining.’

I had been to bed with two men in my life before that night—enough to keep my expectations low. But I let myself believe that sleeping with Wilfred Searle would at least be an improvement on those shy and muddling art school students who had preceded him, the first of whom had been too conscious of the act’s significance to finish what he started, the second of whom had curtly wiped his mess from my thighs with his shirtsleeve before rolling off me.

It was in this generous spirit that I allowed Wilfred to stoop and kiss me in the hotel corridor, forgiving his clumsy lips and their lingering bitterness. I tried not to be disheartened when he insisted I undress myself in the bright lights of his room, or sigh when his dry fingers worked my breasts like sacks of oats he was trying to prise open. Even as he lay on top of me, lodging his elbows by my head so that his chest-hair tickled my chin, I stared up at the ceiling and politely stroked his back, thinking there would surely be a moment when I would feel connected to him. I let him thrust away with all the stolid purpose of a derrick bobbing in a field, and held on to the fading hope that he would notice the disappointment in my eyes and try to make amends—but he did not even have the good grace to pull out of me. A few minutes later, he fell off me, panting, and I lay tangled in the soggy hotel linen, wishing I had never met him.

‘Where are you going?’ he asked. ‘Lie here with me. We need to make wedding plans.’

‘I’m serious. What’s a good time for you? My Thursdays are free until August.’

‘I suppose you’ll have to organise that with Dulcie,’ I said. ‘She’s in charge of my calendar now.’

‘Ah yes, I forgot—the Roxborough owns you.’ He sat up against the headboard. ‘Do you think if I call downstairs they’d bring me up some Dunhills?’

‘Well, I’m going for it anyway.’ He reached for the phone, patting the empty space beside him on the bed as he dialled. ‘Yes, reception, hi. I was wondering if it would be possible for the concierge to do me a small favour . . .’

I stopped dressing and got back into bed, keeping what I thought was an appropriate distance between his hip and mine.

‘Cigarettes, actually . . . Yes, I know, it’s awfully late, but perhaps there’s a machine somewhere near by? It’s Mr Searle, or did I mention that already?’

Pulling the sheets over my chest only exposed my feet and ankles, and I became aware of Wilfred staring down at them while he bartered with the concierge.

‘Excellent, thank you. Dunhills, yes—two packets, if you don’t mind.’ He covered the mouthpiece and asked me, ‘Anything for you?’ I shook my head. ‘No, that’s it, thank you. That’ll be everything.’ He put the phone down, exhaling. Then he turned to slide an arm across my stomach. I felt his wiry belly hair against my back, needling the silk of my slip. ‘Ten minutes,’ he murmured, kissing my ear. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had to wait so long for a smoke afterwards.’

‘We could make love again twice in that time.’ I assumed he would take this as a good-natured gibe, the kind that we had spent most of the night aiming at each other. But, instead, he planted a palm between my shoulder blades and shoved me forwards, and I almost hit my forehead on the bedside cabinet. ‘What the bloody hell was that for?’

He was already on his feet, walking naked to the bathroom. ‘If you’re so dissatisfied, you might as well go home,’ he said.

He flicked a switch and stood there in the bathroom light, his body taut and wan. ‘Well, I don’t find that sort of thing amusing.’

‘I happen to have some pride in the way I—oh, forget it. I don’t have to explain myself.’ He was scrubbing his hands firmly with soap now, from fingertips to elbow. ‘Perhaps you would’ve enjoyed it more if you hadn’t just lain there looking so horrified. It felt like I was hammering a skirting board.’

‘Just hurry up and leave, would you? I have an early train.’ He shut the bathroom door and locked it. I heard him clattering about in there while I stepped into my dress and found my coat. Then the door flashed open and he came bounding towards the bed. He was wearing a fresh hotel gown, and every stride he took gave off a strange crunching sound, like spare buttons rattling in a box. ‘Still here, I see,’ he said, removing a bottle of pills from the front pocket. ‘Another one who can’t take a hint.’ He dry-gulped a clutch of tablets.

The concierge came knocking then: two discreet pips on the wood, barely audible.

The concierge stepped aside to let me through. ‘Madam, your scarf is trailing,’ he called after me as I made my way along the hall. ‘Madam—your scarf.’ I unravelled it from my sleeve and let it drop onto the carpet. Ahead of me, the lift doors opened but nobody stepped out.

Our Next Great Female Painter?

by Wilfred Searle | New Statesman | 20th February, 1960

One can hardly blame young Scottish artist, Elspeth Conroy, for being a woman. Nor can one admonish the Roxborough Gallery on Bond Street for championing her work so ardently. In this modern art world, dominated by men of soaring talent, the claims of promising female painters are too rarely recognised. But what makes the first solo exhibition by Glasgow Schooled Conroy such a fizzling disappointment is the heightened expectation one carries into the gallery. The Roxborough’s advance publicity material is the main contributor: Miss Conroy is proclaimed to be ‘Britain’s next great female painter’ before the oil on her work is even dry. It would be tough for any living artist, with the exception of Picasso, to match the hysteria of such a promotional campaign, so what chance this young lassie?

Well, although there is plenty to admire in the technical proficiency of all nine paintings on display, one is presented with the same niggling doubts at every turn of her debut show: Is this really the work of a true original? Or does one’s heart simply plead for it because the painter is a woman?

As yet, no practising female painter has been able to replicate the trembling excitement we encounter in the work of Bacon or Sutherland. The fine sculptures of Barbara Hepworth have brought us close, but even this exceptional artist still struggles to elude the shadow of her male contemporaries. There is no doubt that our next great female painter will appear when she is ready, but I am sad to report that this show offers little evidence of Conroy being our girl. Her landscape paintings are so consciously mannered that they only succeed in aggravating, the way a child who finishes all her homework before bedtime invites suspicion from her father. In short: they try too hard to be appreciated.

Conroy has a tendency to overstate each minor brushstroke, resulting in a suite of tepid, unconvincing images: London canal scenes with crooked, wispy figures whose obliqueness is much too premeditated. The careful abstraction of these scenes, though rendered deftly, is a transplant from another (male) artist’s heart: Picasso has lent his influence to everything Conroy paints. This might well be a habit that afflicts too many of our current painters, regardless of their gender, but it is a particularly bewildering trait in the work of a young woman from the banks of the Clyde.

There is just one faint glimmer of promise in this otherwise cheerless show: Godfearing is a striking diptych in which Conroy attempts to loosen her stylistic restraints to tackle themes of motherhood. Still, dragged down by the weight of so much pre-show expectancy, even this well-realised work seems meek and insubstantial. One departs the gallery wishing the artist had chosen to express more of what it means to be a woman in the modern age.