Дом у моря
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Дом у моря
Лис едва успела выйти из машины, когда и без того подозрительный, все время косившийся на нее водитель дал по газам в мгновение скрываясь за поворотом.
Покрутив пальцем у виска она полной грудью вдохнула свежий морской воздух разглядывая большой белый дом за аккуратным, невысоким заборчиком. Широкая бетонная дорожка от въезда до двери, а по бокам заботливо подстриженный газон. Справа на нем была сделана миниатюрная детская площадка. Аккуратная самодельная карусель с сиденьями зверятами, качели на цепочке, мерно покачивающиеся в такт легкому прибрежному ветру и небольшая песочницы. На песчаном берегу — это довольно странное решение, но возможно избавляет ребенка от желания бежать на песок к воде.
Сзади тихо шумело море, выкатывая на берег белые барашки пены на лазурных волнах. Кричали заходясь чайки, то осторожно переговариваясь между собой то разражаясь руганью на не угодивших товарок.
Лис радостно улыбнулась, ей понравился и дом, и вид вокруг него. Ближайший месяц отпуска она проведет здесь.
— Здравствуйте, вы Лис? – пока девушка разглядывала дом, домочадцы разглядывали ее и хозяйка, решив, что это все же их постоялица вышла поздороваться.
— Да, здравствуйте, — Лис, перехватив сумку в левую руку поспешила к женщине с протянутой для приветствия правой.
— Какая вы славненькая, — вполне искренне улыбнулась ей хозяйка, пожимая руку, — я Эмбер, а внутри вы найдете мою дочь Риту и мужа Паоло. Только, вы же помните, я вас предупреждала, — перешла Эмбер на негромкий шепот, — мой муж.
— Да, конечно, я помню. – Эмбер и вправду во время звонка предупреждала, что ее муж, потеряв несколько лет назад вторую дочь Молли, немного тронулся. Окружив вторую девочку гиперопекой и перестал разговаривать. При этом Эмбер уверяла что в остальном он остался вполне вменяемым мужчиной и не доверять ей у Лис не было оснований.
— Проходи, пожалуйста, — пропустила Эмбер девушку вперед.
— Здравствуйте, — в большой гостиной, заставленной различной мебелью до неприличия, на бежевом пушистом коврике сидели мужчина с девочкой и играли в машинки. Вид был настолько умильный, что Лис просто-таки расплылась в улыбке.
— Здравствуйте, — тоненьким радостным голосом поздоровалась девочка, лишь на миг оторвавшись от игрушек.
Отец, напротив, встал и улыбнувшись подал руку для приветствия.
— Пойдем, пойдем, я покажу тебе комнату. С некоторых пор у нас много свободного пространства, так что мы освободили тебе самую большую и удобную, – Эмбер не переставая рассказывать весьма бодро поднималась по ступенькам.
Лис, с довольно тяжелой и неудобно-квадратной сумкой слегка отставала, но обижаться не спешила прекрасно разглядев, как поздоровавшись с ней отец метнулся обратно к дочери, бросая какой-то затравленный взгляд на темные углы гостиной.
— Вот смотри! – Эмбер вновь пропустила гостью вперед, позволяя первой войти и оценить обстановку комнаты.
Большое помещение с огромным, почти во всю стену окном и небольшим балкончиком, выходящие к морю. Большая кровать, застеленная голубым покрывалом с переплетением цветов и птиц, кресло перед окном и небольшой столик и. все.
-Нравится? – улыбчивая Эмбер с удовольствием наблюдала смену эмоций на лице Лис.
— Очень, — искренне призналась она.
— Вот здесь, за стенкой, гардероб, — Эмбер сдвинула незамеченную ранее дверцу открывая проход в небольшое помещение с кучей полочек и крючков. – Сан узел, как выйдешь налево и в конце направо. Мы с семьей пользуемся тем что на первом этаже, так что этот полностью в твоем распоряжении.
— Вот и славно. Ну, обживайся, обед где-то через час, так что времени у тебя достаточно, — всплеснула руками Эмбер, вспомнив что неплохо было бы оставить девушку наедине с собой.
Быстренько разложив вещи и приняв душ, освежившаяся Лис расчесавшись и сколов волосы заколкой пошла знакомится с остальным домом. Стоило спуститься на первый этаж ее перехватила Эмбер, уже собиравшаяся идти наверх за ней.
— О, как хорошо, что ты спустилась. Обед готов. Идем, – резко изменив траекторию она все так же бодро вернулась на кухню, уже оттуда продолжая разговор, — у нас сегодня почти праздничная трапеза, в честь твоего приезда. Так что тебя ждет бифштекс, салат с омарами, лазанья и вишневый пирог.
— Спасибо, — робко улыбнулась Лис, входя на кухню и разглядывая уже сидящих за столом Риту и Паоло, почти прижавшихся друг к другу. Остальная кухонька, небольшая по сравнению со всем домом, являла собой отражение гостиной. Много-много всего — расставленные вокруг горшочки с рисунком, корзинки, наполненные фруктами, полотенца с вышивкой. – Как у вас здесь мило! – усаживаясь на подготовленное для нее место похвалила Лис.
— Нравится? Люблю я всякие мелочи декоративные, ничего не могу с собой поделать, — улыбнулась Эмбер на похвалу.
Если бы Лис взяла с собой за стол карандаш и бумагу смогла бы нарисовать подробную карту местности с обозначением всех достопримечательностей и точек куда ходить не стоит. О ней Эмбер так же выспросила все и даже больше. Лишь в конце, когда Лис, поблагодарив, намекнула, что очень хочет к морю, извиняющимся тоном попросила, — ты извини меня. Я привыкла говорить за всех, создавая шумовой фон, а то с ними совсем тоскливо бывает.
Лис понимающе улыбнулась и выбравшись из-за стола решила сначала подняться к себе и взять полотенце. У лестницы, немного притормозив, заинтересованно уставилась на две одинаковые двери, стеклянные, прозрачные. Хмыкнув подошла к первой, дернула ручку, но дверь не поддалась. Любопытно вглядевшись в застекольное пространство рассматривала совсем другую, непохожую на остальной дом обстановку. Пустой коридор окрашенный в коричневые тона, и в конце сворачивающий направо. Слева, у самой двери лавка, похожая скорее на вокзальную, чем пригодную для дома и еще одна такая же в маленьком тупичке за поворотом.
Любопытная часть дома, но не настолько чтобы ломится туда. Возможно старая пристройка в не лучшем состоянии вот и заперта, чтобы любопытный ребенок не залез. Выпрямившись Лис удивленно разглядела слева, за стеклом, в специальном держателе ключ.
Источник
The Sea House: A Novel
Описание
“Unexpected and satisfying.” — New York Newsday
The architect Klaus Lehmann loves his wife, Elsa, with a passion that continues throughout their married life despite long periods of separation. Almost half a century after Lehmann’s death in the village of Steerborough, a young woman, Lily, arrives to research his life and work. Pouring over Klaus’s letters to Elsa, Lily pieces together the story of their lives together and apart. And alone in her rented cottage by the sea, she begins to sense an absence in her own life that may not be filled by simply going home.
The Sea House is the story of the village of Steerborough and the marshes and the sea beyond. It is the story of one generation living in the footprints of another; of a landscape shaped by lives, and lives shaped by landscape. With characteristic skill and a new depth and range, Esther Freud explores the twisting paths that people take—and the places where those paths meet.
Об авторе
Esther Freud is the great-granddaughter of Sigmund Freud and the daughter of the painter Lucian Freud. She trained as an actress before writing her first novel. Her books have been translated into thirteen languages. She lives in London.
Связанные категории
Предварительный просмотр книги
The Sea House — Esther Freud
1
Gertrude’s house was pink. That stone-ground Suffolk pink that managed to be manly, and from the front it looked closed in and dark. Max waited for a moment before knocking on the door, wondering who had built on the ugly flat-roofed porch, and then a shadow appeared behind the mottled glass. ‘Come in, COME IN.’ Gertrude spoke too loudly, unable to accept Max couldn’t hear, and he stood quite still in the open doorway and watched the exaggerated movements of her mouth.
Max Meyer was in Steerborough to see if he might do a painting of Marsh End. It was a mercy invitation, a probable last wish from his sister Kaethe, but all the same he was grateful to have been asked, grateful to Gertrude for remembering him and asking him to come. Dear Max, she’d written. I know how much you must be suffering your loss, how much we, all of us, miss Kaethe, but would you consider coming up to do a picture of my house? I shall be here all summer. If you feel you can, please let me know and I’ll explain about the trains. The letter was dated May the 29th, and, to his surprise, within a week he had packed up his paints and brushes, a roll of canvas and some clothes, and set out for Liverpool Street Station to catch the first of three connecting trains.
Gertrude Jilks was a child psychoanalyst, a woman with no children of her own, but standing beside her on the doorstep was a small boy with white blond hair. Gertrude didn’t introduce him, and he stood there looking at his feet, shuffling them back and forth inside his shoes. ‘COME IN,’ Gertrude said again, and Max remembered with a pang that she disliked him.
‘Yes, thankyou, of course.’ He lowered his head and together they stepped through into the main part of the house, a drawing-room with French windows open to the lawn, dark furniture falling into shadow after the shock of so much sun. Max walked across the wooden floor and out into the garden. The lawn was rich and wide, spreading out in lanes to one tall tree, a spruce pine with sand around its roots, and as Max walked out to it, his bag still in his hand, he imagined that behind the raised ridge of garden hedge the ground was shingle to the sea. ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I will paint the house, the back of the house certainly.’ There was a bench cradled up against one wall and the windows of the upper floor were open to the sky.
‘That is the house.’ Gertrude had followed him. ‘Alf,’ she said, turning, ‘you may go.’ Alf was seven. He was the only child of her cleaning lady and Gertrude was paying for him to learn the piano. He didn’t want piano lessons, but it didn’t seem right just to give him money, so each Saturday at half past two he went to Miss Cheese for his lesson and then came back to give her his report. No, he wasn’t making any progress, she explained to Max, but there was nothing else to do but carry on.
‘I see.’ Max nodded, although he wasn’t at all sure that he did, and Gertrude picked up his bag and showed him to his room.
All his life Max had dreamt of houses. It didn’t need a psychoanalyst, not even a children’s one, to explain to him why that was so. But even before the move from Germany that was likely to have shaken him, he’d been dreaming of his home. He’d made a map of his house, Heiderose, when he was ten years old – the garden, the park, the big and little woods, the fields, the river and the road. This map had been one of the few things he’d taken with him when he left. The map, and an unwieldy wooden table he’d carved from one of the estate trees himself. Why he’d taken the table he still didn’t know, when he’d fully expected to return, but he’d sealed his lifetime’s correspondence up into its one deep drawer and had it shipped ahead to England. Max had the table, the letters in their drawer, but not the map, and it occurred to him he might even with his eyes closed, now in 1953, sit down and draw it from memory.
Houses, walls, villages and roads. Since the start of Kaethe’s illness his dreams were overrun. He’d be travelling, always at the wheel of some majestic car, when he’d take a turning and find a hidden piece of land. Sometimes it was a cluster of houses, high up, their pathways dropping to the sea. Or he would come round a bend, out into the open, and find white railings, a square in a village that had not been there before. But what he never found was the actual house he dreamt of in the day. It was always just around the corner, out of his view, and sometimes his search was like a tunnel, leading only to one oval patch of sky. Now he dreamt of Gertrude’s house, its rich, dense lawn, and the pine tree so straight and feathery, a lookout over the sea. He’d start with that, he thought, it was thin enough to stand right in the foreground of the painting and not obscure the view.
2
Someone was photographing Lily’s cottage from the road. The road was so narrow at that corner of the Green that the man had backed on to the grass and was squatting down in an attempt to fit it into the frame. Lily had rented the cottage through an agency and the woman had given her a hand-drawn map with the key. The map was simple – one long, narrow road running along a river to the sea which then turned a corner on to a triangular green.
‘Is this Fern Cottage?’ she asked, just to be sure, and the photographer looked at his plan of the village, turning it upside down to catch the name. Lily assumed he was taking photographs for the agency so that in future people could see what the cottage looked like from outside.
‘Yes,’ he called to her, ‘that’s right,’ and then, with the key half in the lock, she heard the whirr of the shutter and turned towards him, startled, as he took three quick pictures of her standing outside the house.
‘I know mine could do with a lick of paint . . .’ An old lady in a dressing-gown was calling to him from across the lane. ‘But I don’t want to be left out.’
The photographer smiled. ‘Don’t worry yourself, Ethel, I’m getting to you next.’
Ethel stood and watched him. She had a round face with dimples in her cheeks and chin, and her hair was white and curling, like a halo round her head. She rested her hands on the slats of the front gate, her face watchful as the camera swept over her house, the walls peeling, the window-frames flecked with splintering wood.
‘Will I get a smile?’ the photographer asked her, and she tilted her head and beamed into the lens.
Lily’s cottage was decorated in every shade of brown. Brown carpet, pale brown walls, a sofa and two chairs in clove and amber stripes. Even the curtains had clusters of hazel and beige flowers. There was a garden, shared between her cottage and the next, where one large tree stretched roundly out over the lawn. Someone’s washing flapped on the line. A towel and two pairs of children’s leggings, one yellow and one pink. Upstairs there was a large bedroom, with a window that overlooked the Green, and there on the horizon, strangely high like a child’s drawing, sat a deep blue stripe of sea. Lily leant there on the window ledge and let her eyes rest on the thin line that separated the sky from the sea. All the tension of the drive seeped from her body and she closed her eyes against the work she had to do. There were twin beds, their ends stretching towards her, their bedspreads thrown over a mound of blankets, and just for a moment Lily lay down, feeling the rough wool as she edged in under the quilt, the feathers of the pillow tickling her ear.
She was woken by a sharp cry, and the shudder of something slammed into a wall. She started up, not knowing where she was.
‘Don’t!’ It was a man’s voice, low and threatening. ‘Leave it!’ And then the wardrobe in the alcove rattled, and she heard the thud of steps stumbling downstairs. Lily rushed to the window expecting to see a fight burst through the front door, but there was no one there except for two lone girls swinging from the parallel bars of the slide.
Lily set out her work on the small, square sitting-room table, covered with its laminated cloth. She let her hands lie against the sticky texture, the cool plastic of its chequered top, wondering what Nick would do if he was in this room. Would he be able to settle down so comfortably, think about architecture when surrounded by so much brown? And then she remembered that she’d promised to call him, to say that she’d arrived in Steerborough safely. First she hauled her computer out of the car, arranged her papers and her books around it, and, scooping her hand into a dusty carrier bag, she prised out a handful of Lehmann’s letters and set them on the table in a little time-worn pile. Letters from the architect Klaus Lehmann, written over twenty years, and collected by his wife. Where are her letters? Lily thought, and she went outside to find a phone.
In the phone box, which was still red and presumably protected, there was a message under a stone. Call 999. Wait by the wall . . . The writing was hurried and sloping, but after the first line the slopes got steeper and the writing turned into a waterfall of waves. She fingered this scrap of paper and waited for Nick to pick up his phone. ‘You know what to do,’ his message cut in, but instead of speaking she pressed her finger against the connection and with a little satisfying click she cut him off.
Lily stood for a long time in the phone box, her nose pressed against the pane. She knew it was a mistake not to have left a message and now she didn’t have any more change. She pushed the heavy door and stepped out on to the Green. The sea was rolling just behind the skyline, calling her, magnetic in its roar. It’s my first day, she told herself. I need to get my bearings – And she stumbled off along a pitted lane. Below the border of its brambles lay a flat slow river, crossed by a wooden bridge, and then the path struck upwards through white dunes. Lily walked between sharp grasses, her feet sinking into sand. The closer she got the more it drew her until, as she raced and struggled up the last bank, her heart was knocking at her chest. And there it was. Vast and blue and breathless, stretching to the edges of the world. Wind whipped into her ears, blowing clear air into her eyes and nose. Sand sprayed in gritty showers, scudding along in gusts, and Lily pulled her jacket round her and ran down to the shore. It was calmer here, and she crouched to get out of the wind, fingering the wet sand for stones and tiny transparent shells that slipped on to her fingertips like pads. Lily walked along the beach until she came to the black mouth of an estuary. At what moment does fresh water become salt? she wondered, watching as a sturdy motor boat chugged in, and she followed a path that ran above the river, on and on, until she’d left the village behind.
When she arrived back, it was too late to start work. The house was cold and shadowy and the brown lampshades gave off a dismal glow. She went outside to the small garden to look for the bunker for Fern Cottage coal. It was spitting with the first warnings of rain, and she glanced at the lighted windows of the adjoining house and wondered if they knew their washing was still out. When Lily lifted up the tin slat of the bunker, coal flooded out, surrounding her shoes. She knelt down and shovelled it up into the scuttle, feeling for the black lumps around her in the dark. The cottage was extraordinarily well stocked for such a tiny place. In the cupboard under the stairs – the items listed on a label – there was newspaper for kindling, a small pile of wood, and even a box of matches for the city tenants who might come unprepared. Lily held a sheet of paper over the mouth of the fire and waited for it to catch. It was warmer already, she thought, swaying on her heels, tired from the shock of so much air, and then with a roar the paper caught fire, leaping away from her and dancing into the room. She beat at it with a poker, squashing it back into the grate, but even after it was smothered, tiny blackened twirls of charcoal floated in the air.
Lily curled up on the sofa, eyeing the pile of letters she had so optimistically arranged. Eventually guilt overwhelmed her and she went and lifted the top one off the pile and, bringing it back to her nest by the fire, she prised it out of its envelope. The envelope was thin and dusty but inside it was lined with purple tissue, fine as silk. This splash of colour woke her a little and she sat up and began to read.
Meine Liebe . . . The letters were in German. She’d known they would be, but it still gave her a shock. My dear, my darling? She glanced to the end of the letter. Yours, for ever, L.
She’d been given these letters by a relative of Klaus Lehmann who lived in North London, in a flat in Belsize Park. She’d had the inspired idea of looking in the telephone directory and had found this man on only the second call. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to make copies?’ Lily asked, when he offered her the letters, packed in layers into an ancient plastic bag. But the man had simply opened the carrier bag and peered inside. ‘No,’ he said, ‘you look at them. They’re probably of no interest to anyone. And if they are . . .’
‘Yes?’ Lily urged him on.
‘You could hand them on to the Architectural Association. That’s it.’ He began to close the door.
‘Thankyou.’ She wanted to keep him talking. ‘And did you know him? I mean . . .’ She was calculating on her fingers, was he old enough, it was impossible to tell, to be Klaus Lehmann’s son?
‘I assume you can read German?’ he asked instead.
‘Good.’ And with a nod, he shut the door.
Folded into this first letter, dated 1931, was a map of a rectangular room. I’m here in Frankfurt waiting for the plans to be approved, and as always there are delays. Lehmann’s writing was fine and fluid, black ink thinning to a scratch as he sped over the loops of Ks and Ls. Are you aware, my sweetheart, how much of our married life I may have to be away? Although of course as my reputation soars I will be able to demand they accommodate my wife. But there is one benefit. I’ve seen some quite delightful shoes, and cheaper than you’d ever be likely to find at home. Shall I buy them? I hope you’ll say yes as I’ve already reserved two pairs in your size. Write immediately and tell me that I should.
Lily found that she was smiling. Lehmann, with his sharp lines and model buildings, with nothing on his mind but shoes. There is nothing interesting about this room, he went on. Except that there is an empty table-top on which your photograph can sit. So, what can you see from your place here? A wooden bed, not so comfortable, an unusually hideous chair, and one wide window with tiny panes of glass. Lily crept from the sofa to the floor and lay with one side scorched by the fire. If only you were really here, my angel, but then you would be bored, and I should feel worse than I already do. Your writing is becoming more and more beautiful, did you know?
Lily sat up with a start. She’d forgotten to call Nick. She felt in her various pockets, hoping to find change, and found instead the scrap of paper from the phone box. Call 999, wait by the wall. Lily stared at it hard to see if there was any other sense in it, but once again there was only the disintegration of a line of waves. She pulled the curtain and cupped her hand against the glass. It was black outside, without a single street light, only the glow from the red pillar of the phone box shining out like the north star. I’ll wait until the morning, she decided, and she went upstairs to make the bed.
3
‘Will you start soon?’ Gertrude asked a week later over breakfast when Max had still done nothing but pace and measure the space from the French windows to the tree.
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘yes.’ And then, looking up, he asked, ‘Is there a hurry?’
He did want to start, but each morning he woke with a restlessness that could only be eased by looking at every other Steer-borough house. He couldn’t view them openly, but had to pretend to be simply passing on his way. It was the sin of covetousness, he decided, that made him snoop like a spy. So each morning he set off on some errand and, after winding up and down the one long road, he’d veer off after a chimney stack, just glimpsed through the trees. But the truth was he was afraid of starting. It was so long since he’d painted anything at all. And his reputation for being an amateur of promise was based on a period of intensity that had ended almost fifteen years before. There had been one good picture of Kaethe, which hung in their London hallway for everyone to see, and, out of surprise, he felt, more than admiration, visitors stood back to comment on it when they first came in. There had been other pictures, Helga mostly, in the years they’d been engaged, but the more he’d tried to paint her the more elusive the contours of her face had become, so that in his last attempt, he’d ended up with a bench, a branch of lilac, and nothing but a shadowy attempt at her hair.
Max spread paper over Gertrude’s oval table and started to jot in all the houses he had seen. He started with his favourite, a long, red-roofed cottage at the top of the Green, and jumped about the village, putting in the houses as they sprang to mind – the church, the village hall – and then he remembered a strange lopsided building, a glass and wood experiment on the corner of Mill Lane. What is that place? he’d wanted to ask Gertrude, but he’d become so used to silence that the words died in his head. Instead he drew a miniature version of the house. An arched front door, double-height windows and a steepled roof with a high flat terrace on one side. There was a white picket fence around the terrace and Max imagined the owners climbing up there at night to listen to the sea.
With his pen still in his hand he wandered outside.
‘Were you thinking of using water colour?’ Gertrude was lying in a deckchair reading a pamphlet on the phobias of the very young. Max imagined she was longing to analyse him, make a diagnosis on why he was unable to begin.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Oils.’
The whole scene was already a water colour, with no need for him to paint it in. He wondered if this eastern-most coast of England could be painted in oils, and if it was attempted, would it be possible to retain the huge translucence of the sky? Even on a cloudy day, the dome was so immense that somewhere a beam of sun could usually escape the clouds and mark a strip of light across the ground. It turned the grass unearthly green, the puddles Alpine blue, and it made Max think of the studies he had made of Italian church ceilings, the fat cherubs, the fingers of God sparking through.
Max walked away from Gertrude and surveyed the scene – the house, the deckchair, the rug on her knee. And a sudden fear gripped him and he had to lean against the tree.
‘Gertrude’ – the words, more than usual, made a hollow echo in his head – ‘was it Kaethe’s idea that you ask me to come?’
Gertrude looked at him for a moment. Of course. Of course it was Kaethe who’d asked her, made her promise right before the end.
‘No,’ she said, hoping it would help him. She smiled. ‘It was all my own plan.’
Three days later Max decided to go home. He needed materials, he said, materials he didn’t have. It was almost a relief to get on the little train that left from Steerborough, to stop looking and searching, and finally allow himself to relax. The train rumbled across a common, rattled over the river bridge. Sometimes the view was hidden by gorse thickets and sometimes you could see over marshland to the sea. Everywhere there was a smell of sweetness, a cloying honey scent he couldn’t trace. He eased the window lower and leant out. There was a head in the next window, bright blond and pushed out dangerously far.
‘Hello, Alf,’ Max shouted. He saw that the tufts of the boy’s hair were pasted down and even the rush of air made by the train had not been able to dislodge them. ‘Where are you off to, then?’ he called, but just then the train began to slow. There was no sign of a station, but all the same they came to a halt. Alf leaned out as far as he could go and Max, following his gaze along the short length of the train, saw the driver climb down from his cab. He strode over to a thicket of small trees and, after disappearing for some moments, reappeared with a rabbit, grey-brown, dangling from its ears. It gave a desultory kick, as if it knew there was no hope. Soon after, the train started again and, as it chugged evenly along, Max thought of the animal, dying, its eyes milky with fear.
Alf sat across from him now, tapping his toe against the floor. He had a music case in one hand and his knees looked as if they had been scrubbed. Alf didn’t move when the train stopped at Great Wraxham, even when the door of their carriage was tugged open, and a tall thin woman reached in to lure Alf out.
‘Come along,’ she said, ‘or we’ll be late for our recital.’ And with one strong hand she lifted him out.
Max travelled on to Ipswich and changed on to the London train. He drew in a deep breath as they turned inland from the sea, leaving behind the swathes of sailing boats nestled into the curve of the estuary, their sails like white handkerchiefs, a baby armada ready to invade, and he thought of Liverpool Street Station and that first choking smell of London that you grew accustomed to within a minute and a half.
Max stood in his narrow hallway, staring up at the painting of his sister, elongated, superior, hung too high above the curve of the stairs. He’d forgotten what it would be like to come home to a house without her, not a thing touched in the days that he’d been gone. No one to tell him to comb his hair, smooth his unruly eyebrows, buy new laces for his shoes. He sat down on the bottom step and wondered if he had a right to be there, if there was anything in this house that hadn’t been arranged by her, and then he remembered his table and he went upstairs to the spare bedroom. The wood was oak, wide-grained and varnished, and when he slid the drawer open, he saw his letters, tied with a broad red band.
He had thirty-seven prized and valuable letters written to him by the artist Cuthbert Henry. He’d had to pay him for them, that was true, but over the years of their correspondence a friendship had developed that went further than the fee. It had been an idea of his father, after visiting an exhibition of Henry’s in 1927, that instead of formal art training Max could send his pictures to London, and in return for payment Henry would give his valuable instruction on how each one could be improved. Max dutifully sent off three drawings, pen and ink sketches, views mostly from the windows of his house, and with them went his list of questions. Interminable, he realized now. He’d poured out all his misgivings, his terrors, his absurdly optimistic fears, and waited with unparalleled expectations for the reply.
Henry was a stern teacher. No, he remarked often, or, more rarely, Quite good. And once, infuriated, How am I meant to comment on something that is impossible to see? He enclosed some good quality paper and reprimanded Max for using sub-standard materials for what, as far as anybody knew, might turn out to be worthwhile. Some deafness? he responded when Max confided in him. What ever made you think you need your ears to paint?
The letters were arranged by order of their date and now he prised open the knot of the old ribbon and lifted the top one out.
You can only get to understand things by drawing them. If you give up drawing something because you don’t understand it, then you never will understand it. And if you wait until you can draw perfectly, then you will have to wait until you are dead.
Max smiled at the familiar stern tone of voice. He wished he had his sketches now, so he could see what this particular fault referred to, but they’d been left behind at Heiderose, left in his old nursery cupboard to rot.
There is always something fresh to learn. You must know the saying of one great artist at the age of eighty. ‘All I did before thirty was worthless, at the age of sixty I began to understand the forms of plants and animals, now at the age of eighty I’m really beginning to draw and at ninety I shall draw well. If I live to be a hundred, every line and every dot will have a meaning.’
Max sat back stiffly on his heels. He felt old already and he was barely forty-two. He leafed through the remaining letters, feeling their papery advice like braille, fingering one and then another and setting them to one side. Images of his
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