‘Oh, just writing,’ said Ivan, and since Evert was sitting in the middle of the sofa, ‘Budge up . . .’ lifting and plumping a cushion as he sat down next to him.
‘Cheers!’
‘Cheers.’ Ivan gripped Evert’s forearm for a second, bracingly. Sitting beside him, facing the fireplace, Ivan’s thoughts forming and flowing along the fronds and curls of the tapestried fire screen, running half-seeing across the line of postcards and invitations on the mantelpiece, beneath the brown frame of the biggest, the most valuable Ben Nicholson . . . He smiled, and it was as if Evert could sense him smiling.
‘You still haven’t told me,’ he said, with a reproving pause, ‘about your visit to West Tarr.’
‘You had our card?’
‘Yes, sweet of you, but it didn’t tell me anything I wanted to know.’
‘Oh . . . well, it was OK.’
‘The house was all right?’
‘Yes, not bad – a bit damp and dirty, but we made do.’
‘Oh, good. I’d been wondering how you got on.’
‘The two of us, you mean?’
‘I’ve grown very fond of that boy.’
‘Yes . . .’
‘He’s a good artist – good drawer, I don’t know what his painting’s like.’
Ivan didn’t want too much of Johnny in the room. ‘He sort of lives in a world of his own,’ he said. ‘I got him to open up a bit.’
Evert revolved his glass. ‘He’s quite smitten with you, I fancy.’
Ivan made a soft snuffle of disparagement.
‘Did you . . . um?’ – Evert seemed embarrassed. ‘One knows so little about the young.’
‘Oh, the young,’ said Ivan and laughed.
‘Though a certain young man knows far too much about this old one.’
‘Really . . .?’ said Ivan, pricked by the teasing, but turning his head to smile at Evert, who turned and smiled too.
Ivan didn’t know how he would do it, but he knew it would happen. He savoured his own calm conviction, as they turned and faced forward again; something undeniable had been said in that smile. They leant lightly on each other, sliding down a little on the yielding cushions. Each held his glass in his right hand, and there was a moment’s confusion as Ivan slid his fingers between Evert’s – Evert lifted the glass in his other hand, took a swig from it as Ivan’s hand took possession of his and they were clasped together. They sat, for ten strange exploratory seconds, small reciprocal pressures of fingers and palm, Evert’s hand strong and hard with experience. ‘I don’t know if you want some music on,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t have to be Mahler!’
Ivan grunted dismissively, leant forward to put his drink on the floor, fell back, shifted up and reached up to pull Evert’s head towards him – in the mere moment of hesitation, Evert’s eyes, dark, close-up, blurred by the buried arc of his bifocals, seemed to question, assess and then, as Ivan kissed him, to accept. He held his drink still in his left hand, and they had to disengage for a moment for him to seize another swig and set it down. His lips and tongue were whiskey, a tingle where his stubble grazed Ivan’s soft lips and smooth jaw. They had their arms around each other, in the clumsy fervour of being still side by side. In a minute Ivan climbed on top of him, sat straddling his knees, Evert wincing, bracing himself as he took his weight. To Ivan there was something more stirring than their kisses in Evert’s eyes, which had looked at lovers long before he was born, and now looked at him. He lifted his glasses off, leant aside to place them on the table, quick practicalities deepening the charm of the moment, the surrender to what had to happen. Evert blinked at him, his face naked for the first time, his bed-face – he groped Ivan, ran his hands up over his chest, ‘I can’t see a thing . . .’ and down very confidently to rub and squeeze the hard ridge trapped at an angle in his jeans. It was as if with his glasses off he couldn’t be seen: he coloured up not with shyness but with re-engaged appetite.
Ivan unbuttoned Evert’s shirt, pushed his vest up, stroked him, went down on his knees between his legs to kiss his stomach, reached up to squeeze his small hard nipples. He saw that he’d once been quite fine, in the way that lean men are who never think about exercise; and then he’d been a soldier, wonderful in uniform, thirty years ago. Now he’d thickened sexily round the middle, his hairless chest had slid downwards and sideways by a creased half-inch, there were lovable creases of age under the arms. So one beauty melted in another, surviving youth and exquisite decline. To reveal him and look at him and touch his naked skin made Ivan’s heart thump and his mouth go dry. He swiftly undid his own fly and pushed his jeans and pants down, tensed himself against the sickening chance of coming at once, his problem. He had really to think about something else, as he unbuttoned Evert’s trousers at the waist and pulled the zip towards him, practical and blank-faced as a nurse.
FOUR
Losses
1
She sat on the hard wooden bench just in front of the portrait, and heard what members of the public were saying. Some strolled slowly past, others stood for ten seconds until the next picture, or the very bright one beyond it, caught their eye, and now and then a couple, or more often a man or woman with no one to talk to, gave the portrait their full attention for a minute or more, obstructing the sociable onward drift of the crowd. She herself felt proud of the picture, but bored by the long two hours of the occasion; she had her own sketchbook with her, which after initial uncertainty she got out of her bag, with the old cardboard packet of crayons, striped inside by the tips of the crayons when they slid in and out. It was hopeless drawing people when they kept moving, so she drew other things out of her head, or her memory, a house, and then a portrait of her mother; she would show it to her tomorrow, when she went home.
She was pleased if she heard someone praise the picture of Mary Harms, with her staring blue eyes among hundreds of red flowers (it was painted in a kind of conservatory), but took it philosophically if they said they didn’t like it or made funny faces of their own in front of it; the people who strolled past talking about something else and not even looking were the ones she hated. It was a big painting, and a great deal of work (six months, on and off) had gone into it. She didn’t know what she thought of it really, it was what her father did and had always been doing, and it was impossible for her to judge. An old lady, rather mad-looking, in a beret with a pewter badge on the side, spent five minutes studying the picture, getting so close an attendant asked her to stand back. She turned, and smiled sadly at Lucy, as if about to speak, as if she saw the connexion, but then moved on. The others closed in, curious for a moment as to what she had found in it – it wasn’t clear if they found it too. Perhaps she was mad. The crowd at these Portrait Society events was certainly very mixed. ‘Ah! I thought you were drawing a picture of a picture,’ said a large man in a dark suit and a tie with elephants on it, looking over her shoulder.
‘Oh . . . no,’ said Lucy, and let him see what she was doing, since she thought it was quite good.
‘Ah, yes, marvellous – you’ll soon be showing here yourself, I should think.’ Lucy smiled up at him. ‘And what do you think of this portrait, tell me honestly.’ It was almost as if he’d painted it, though she was pleased to know for sure that he hadn’t.
‘I don’t know, really’ – they both stared at it, beyond the intervening figures. She wanted to hear what he said before she explained. The people in her father’s pictures often looked a little bit uncomfortable, as if something was being revealed about them that they’d rather have kept to themselves.
‘It’s my wife,’ he said; and now she thought his stare had something else in it, he felt more exposed, in a way, than his wife, who’d been offered up to the public. People’s comments wouldn’t only be about it as a painting, they were also about the woman, Mrs Harms, and whether they liked the look of her. But before she could decide how to answer, Mr Harms had been called to by another man and with a little encouraging nod to her he drifted off.