‘Put some more music on,’ he said. There was a stereo on the far side of the room, and a heap of records out of their sleeves. Her father seemed angry, but it wasn’t his house – he waved his hand as if to clear the smell and said,
‘Hello, Denis, I’ve come to see Evert.’
Denis tensed, then turned his head slowly, and smiled at them. His cheeks in the lamplight were red, and his flat shiny hair stood up in spikes here and there; his black eyes were bulging too. ‘Mister Sparsholt!’ he said, and half sitting up – ‘and Miss Sparsholt, my goodness me . . .’
Lucy didn’t correct him, there were bigger things to worry about.
‘Have you got anything a bit more, like, modern?’ said the man by the record player, giving up on the pile of discs and looking round. The large-eyed one had sat on the floor and was making a giant cigarette by pulling apart several other cigarettes and heaping up the contents. Denis looked very carefully at his watch and said,
‘Have you come for lunch? I’m afraid you’re rather early if so.’
‘I told Evert we’d come this morning and help him with the pictures. Musson’s coming at twelve.’
Denis thought, and said quietly, ‘Oh, she’s not, is she?’ He clearly wasn’t himself, the change itself was alarming, and yet there was something nicer about him than usual – he gave them an almost friendly look. ‘This is Kevin and Gogo,’ he said. ‘Jonathan and Lucy.’
‘Hello, Lucy,’ said Kevin.
‘George,’ said Gogo, grinning at her over the tobacco. It was spread on a record box – she construed the word ‘Resurrection’, and when he lifted the giant cigarette to lick the paper she saw a picture of an old man in glasses smoking a pipe.
‘Is this Evert your boyfriend then?’ said Kevin.
‘Oh, no . . .’ said Lucy, then looked anxiously around.
Denis lay there with a strange smile. ‘Years and years ago,’ he said, ‘I was his amanuensis.’
‘Ooh, what’s that?’ said Gogo, and watched Denis raising his hand and wiggling his fingers as if pulling on a rubber glove.
‘I’m going to find Ivan,’ her father said, and they went back out on to the landing, just as Ivan came downstairs. His sleeves were rolled up and he was wearing an apron.
‘Hello,’ he said, ‘hello,’ going past them, really too busy to talk. They drifted back after him into the room. ‘Can we have this room clear, please?’ he said.
‘Oh, my god, it’s the housemaid!’ said Denis, falling back on the sofa. ‘Boys, meet Ivy.’ Lucy’s mother and Una sometimes spoke of him as Ivy, but she held her breath to hear him called it to his face. He stood, small and plump, in front of the fireplace, with his hands on his hips.
‘We’ve got Hughie Musson coming round any minute.’
‘Is he cute?’ said Gogo.
‘You wouldn’t say cute, would you, Ivy?’ said Denis. ‘Or perhaps you would . . .’
‘Hugh Musson is a very important man. So I need you all out of here, please.’ Denis rolled his head moodily. ‘You can all go and play in Denis’s room.’
‘Sounds good,’ said Gogo.
‘I’m too exhausted to move,’ said Denis. ‘How long were we in that club? Eight hours? In that hell-hole of debauchery?’
But Ivan crossed the room and tugged back the curtains, and the cold lunchtime light seemed enough to push them upstairs, blinking and lazily protesting.
Lucy helped, and in ten minutes the room was straight, the carpet hoovered, and the records put hastily into sleeves – she knew some of them were in the wrong ones. The window was left open to clear the air, and it got quite chilly. Probably it had been a lovely room once, but it was all a bit shabby and sagging now, the walls covered with pictures like a junk shop. In Grandpa George’s drawing room there were just three pictures, each worth fifty thousand pounds. In Evert’s there were (she nodded as she turned from wall to wall) thirty-seven – how much they were worth remained to be seen. They went into the kitchen, and Ivan took off his apron.
‘Where’s Herta, when you need her?’ said her father.
‘Who’s Herta, Daddy?’ Lucy said.
Ivan set about making coffee with a paper cone and a glass jug. ‘Poor Herta,’ he said. ‘We went to see her last week.’
‘She was Evert’s housekeeper for years and years,’ her father said.
‘She was his father’s housekeeper,’ said Ivan.
‘You mean the man with one leg?’ said Lucy.
‘A. V. Dax,’ said Ivan, ‘the novelist.’
Evert came in, looked at them, waved a kiss at them with his fingers. ‘Is Denis about?’ he said.
‘He’s gone upstairs,’ said Ivan, ‘he’s got some young friends round.’
‘I thought I heard something,’ said Evert.
When the coffee was made, and Lucy given the Pepsi Ivan said she would prefer, they went off for a preliminary look at the pictures. ‘Let’s go to Johnny’s room,’ Evert said. They entered a small bedroom, opposite the lavatory, where perhaps a dozen paintings stood propped against the chest of drawers.
‘Why do you call it Johnny’s room?’ said Lucy.
‘It’s so sweet of you,’ said her father.
‘Your dear papa lived in this room, darling, long ago,’ said Evert. ‘Twenty years ago?’
‘That’s right, 1975, wasn’t it, my early London period . . .’
‘A good year or more, I should think,’ Evert said.
‘Just about,’ said her father.
‘About ten months,’ said Ivan.
Evert hoisted up a medium-sized brown painting. Lucy imagined her father then, with his awful long hair, coming into this room each day, sleeping on this hard bed, which now had a big folder of drawings lying on it. She’d never thought of him not having a house of his own.
‘These are Victor’s pictures, then?’ he said.
‘That’s right. I think I’ll probably sell most of them.’
‘I’ve not seen this before, I don’t think’ – her father peered forward at it.
‘It’s Witsen, Rotterdam Harbour. It’s a bit dirty, but it’s meant to be more or less that colour.’
Ivan made a deeply unimpressed face. ‘We’re aiming for a much sparer hang, Johnny,’ he said. ‘Get rid of a lot of junk.’
‘Oh, I like it,’ said her father. ‘But yes, I guess . . .’
‘I remember it very well when I was a boy,’ said Evert. ‘It used to hang in the dining room downstairs. My father knew Willem Witsen, I think he bought it off him; it may even have been given to him, since Witsen was rich, and very generous. Do you know about him?’
Lucy shook her head. ‘Not really,’ said her father.
‘Oh, a fascinating figure – also a very good photographer, wealthy, but extremely bohemian. I always wanted to put on a little show somewhere, you know, at a small gallery, but—’
‘We just can’t keep getting into all these reminiscences all the time,’ said Ivan, ‘darling – or we’ll never get anywhere.’
‘Well . . .’ said Evert.
‘OK . . .’ said Lucy’s father, with an embarrassed laugh.
‘In or out?’ said Ivan.
Evert looked at him, obediently, but with a last hint of resistance. ‘Do you mean in or out of the house, or in or out of the sale?’
Ivan smiled tightly. ‘Out of the house,’ he said.
‘In that case . . . out, I suppose.’
Lucy thought she’d never seen anyone look so sad.
*
First of all Hughie Musson looked at the pictures on the landing. ‘Your father thought big, didn’t he.’
‘Oh, always,’ said Evert.
Hughie glanced down the cavernous stairwell. ‘He had a lot of walls to cover, of course, I can see that . . .’ He himself was big, he’d wheezed his way up to the second floor with several pauses to peer at the unworking lift. ‘Quite a period piece,’ he said.
‘It was the same in his own work,’ Evert went on, ‘he felt space was there to be used.’