4

CROSSING THE LINE

Over the previous few weeks Myatt had been getting calls from his ex-wife. She said her boyfriend was becoming abusive and had hit her on several occasions. The calls grew increasingly frantic, and late one night, after Myatt was in bed, he picked up the phone to hear her frightened voice begging him to come over. He jumped into his car and raced to her house. When he arrived, he found her bruised and bloodied. She told him that she feared her boyfriend would return and hurt her more seriously.

Myatt packed her into the car and drove her home to Sugnall. He said she could stay with him as long as she needed to. She would be safe with him.

She stayed for a week, and Myatt was glad to have her around. She was a real and familiar comfort. Soon, however, she was talking about going back to her lover. Myatt argued against it. He was worried about the children’s safety. He had custody of them, but he’d promised her he wouldn’t stand in the way of their visiting her. Having her there in the farmhouse felt tantalizingly like old times, as if the family were whole again, and yet he realized that he no longer loved her, and that he was feeling more and more confident as a father, even though his life hadn’t been easy since she left. He was torn.

Myatt turned to Drewe for advice. The professor always seemed happy to listen to him when he had a problem at home.

“Don’t be a fool!” Drewe said firmly when he heard about the latest round of fireworks. “You’re not responsible for her well-being. You’re divorced. Except for the children’s safety, what matters most now is your work. You have to paint. You must provide for the children.”

Myatt agreed to put an end to his ex-wife’s extended stay, and placed a call to his former in-laws to tell them that their daughter needed help. Before long, his ex-father-in-law had moved her out of her boyfriend’s house and into a new one near Myatt, and the boyfriend began to come around less and less.

Within a few weeks the storm had passed, and Myatt felt comfortable enough to let her take the children when she wanted to. He returned to his painting full force. Several weeks later, however, he received an unpleasant surprise visit from Social Services. It was billed as a routine checkup to make sure he was providing a healthy environment for the kids, but the experience left him shaken. It was clear that he was barely making ends meet. The house was a single-father nightmare: frames and canvases, toys and finger paints, food and diapers were everywhere. In addition, the sleeping arrangements were far from ideal. Amy slept in the attic, up a steep, narrow flight of stairs, in a room with a ceiling that sloped so badly Myatt could hardly stand up straight. Sam, a fretful child, had the room next to his, so Myatt rarely got a good night’s sleep.

The visit from Social Services ended without incident, but Myatt was rattled by the notion that the government could simply march into his house, declare him an unfit father, and take off with the kids. A few days after the visit, when he took the train to Euston station to drop off another piece for Drewe, he was still in a deep funk.

“Calm down,” said Drewe, who was waiting for him at the bar. “You don’t have to be a perfect housekeeper or live in a palace to prove you’re a good father and a good man. This will pass.”

Again Drewe encouraged him to focus on his painting and not to let anxiety get in the way of his life with the kids. Family and loved ones came first, he said. Something would turn up. Myatt’s finances would improve. All he needed was patience.

Drewe was no stranger to family upheavals. When he was a boy, he told Myatt, his father, a scientist, had beaten up Drewe’s mother after learning that she was having an affair with one of his colleagues. The scandal ended in divorce, and his father spent a year in prison for assault. Drewe hadn’t seen him since. To dissociate himself from his family’s unsavory past, he had changed the surname he was born with, Cockett, and become John Drewe, adopting a variation on his mother’s maiden name.

While Myatt was digesting this news, Drewe went on to say that he had married a Cambridge mathematician, the love of his life, but she had left him and broken his heart. Her work took precedence over their relationship, she’d calmly explained. He was devastated, but he’d gotten over it.

“Look at me,” he said. “I’ve suffered a great deal, but I’ve put my life in order. It takes time. Things work out in the end.”

Myatt nodded. Drewe was apparently living happily with Goudsmid now, well off, successful in every respect.

“You’re spending too much time teaching other people’s children and not enough time teaching your own. Your job is a drain on your talents.” The most important thing in the world, he reiterated, was for Myatt to provide for his children, preferably without having to suffer the daily drudgery of working for a pittance.

Myatt had always wanted to work from home and manage his schedule around the children’s, so he listened carefully. By now, even though Myatt was nearly three years older than Drewe, the professor was a father figure to him, someone with authority and compassion who could guide him through the difficult moments. What Myatt didn’t know was that Drewe had invented most of his tragic narrative, conjuring it from air to tug at Myatt’s heartstrings and tighten their emotional knot. Drewe’s father wasn’t a scientist but an engineer for the telephone division of the British Post Office,⁷ and the failed marriage to the Cambridge mathematician was pure fiction. If Myatt had been aware of any of this, he might have walked away, but he was already in Drewe’s pocket.

“Remember that Gleizes you painted a few weeks ago?” Drewe asked him suddenly.

Myatt had been captivated by a reproduction he’d seen of a small elliptical pencil drawing, a 1916 sketch titled Portrait of an Army Doctor, by the cubist Albert Gleizes. The sketch had prompted him to make a painting of the doctor in the artist’s style, as what he called “a small homage” to Gleizes. He couldn’t afford real oils, so he’d bought house paint from the hardware store. Once it was dry, he’d applied a thick coat of varnish until it looked very much like the real thing. Drewe had framed it nicely and hung it on his stairway wall. Myatt thought it looked glorious and was quite proud of himself.

Drewe said he had shown the piece to an acquaintance at Christie’s, who believed it was genuine and could fetch at least £25,000 at auction.

“You know, you don’t have to sell these paintings to me exclusively,” said Drewe, “though of course I’m happy to handle them for you. For the Gleizes I can get you £12,500.”

That was more money than Myatt had seen in years. He could buy shoes for the kids, stop worrying about the rent, and have more than enough coal for the stove. It would solve all his problems.

“We don’t have to stop there,” said Drewe. “You can make a decent living at this.” He held out a fat brown envelope full of bills. “It’s yours if you want it.”

It hit Myatt that Drewe had already sold the piece. He could no longer deny what he had suspected, that Drewe was passing off his works as genuine. He had already painted fifteen or twenty pieces for the good professor, and Drewe wanted more.

Myatt took the cash and realized that with that one small gesture he had crossed the line.

“What would you like to paint next?” asked Drewe.

Myatt thought for a moment.

“Giacometti,” he said.