An Exquisite Sense of What Is Beautiful (10 page)

Macy grabbed his arm and led him away.

Outside, he took off his jacket, slung it over his shoulder, tried to keep up with her as they walked towards Berwick Street. The pubs were full, forcing sweaty-faced customers out on to the pavements with their pints. Jazz music filtered up into the street from a basement club. The smell of thick, sweet coffee. There was a definite pulse to the evening, a noisy, frantic, sexual beat. He tried to take Macy’s hand but she pulled away.

‘Why didn’t you support me in there?’ she snarled.

‘What?’

‘You heard me.’

‘It was all about you and your father. What could I do?’

‘You could have stuck up for me, that’s what. Just like I did for you.’

‘What did you do for me?’

‘I said your work was good.’

‘So did I. But you’d rushed off in a tantrum before you heard me.’

‘Yeah, sure you did.’

He stopped walking, stood looking at her. Her face had twisted into an angry-red ugliness. In that moment, he hated her. He felt it right down to the core. A deep, all-consuming hatred. Yet when she turned and walked away from him, he never wanted her so much.

CHAPTER NINE

Tokyo, Japan
•
2003

He awoke. Slowly. Very slowly. Dragging himself out of the fuzzy pit of his subconscious. Gripping the dark edge of exit with his fingers, then trying to struggle up on his elbows. He could see over the rim. The slatted blinds were half-open casting a dull light into the room and a striped shadow on to the floor. But he couldn’t recognise where he was. Panic. His legs scrambled to find a grip, to push himself up and out. He must be in a ward. That was always the default mode. ‘If I do not know where I am, I must be in hospital.’ But at least he was alive. His mouth felt terribly dry. He shifted his head. His neck hurt. There was a desk. A dead computer. A sink. A magazine on the floor.
Tokyo Art Lover
. His head clearing now. The veil of death and illness
disappearing
. He lifted off the blanket, noticed he was without jacket, tie or shoes. Collar and cuffs unbuttoned. He then raised himself to a sitting position on the couch. The cushion on which he had lain was dusted with flecks of dried skin. Another layer of him had died, shed itself while he slept.

‘I will get up,’ he thought. ‘I will go over to the sink, splash water on my face, drink from that tumbler, and return here to read
that bloody magazine. Find out what she said. That shall be the order of events to remember. I will now get up.’

But he couldn’t find his cane. He slid over to the edge of the couch where an armrest afforded some leverage. He managed to hoist himself to his feet, then in a half-crouch followed the ledge of the desk, hand-over-hand against the wall with its diplomas and degrees until he reached the sink. He splashed water on his face. So convenient to have a sink in an office. So typical of a Japanese university to ensure this comfort for its staff. He must remember to install one in his own study. He could have a drink of water anytime. Or make some tea. Or rack up some phlegm as he was doing now, spit out the green-yellow gunge and wash it down the plughole. Just like that. So undistinguished for a man of his stature. There was a handtowel too with a little university crest embroidered into one corner. A glass of cool water. Just the
slightest
taste of fluoride. He dabbed his lips. He could stand up straight now. And there was his cane. In the umbrella stand by the sink. He moved over to the window, played impatiently with all the
different
lengths and loops of cord until he managed to shift the blinds halfway up and on a slight tilt. Then there was light. He had an easier task with the lever to open the lower half of the window, let in some much needed air. Gulped in a breath, then looked around the room, knowing there was something else to do. He massaged the heel of his palm into the tightness in his neck. That felt good. Ah yes, the magazine. Where was the damn magazine? He
eventually
found it hidden away under the blanket. Then he had to get up again, fetch his glasses from his jacket slotted into a hanger on the back of the door. So much moving about. He sat down behind Jerome’s desk quite breathless.

He thumbed through the pages until he found the article. It was one of those interviews with the page split in two between the English and the Japanese translation. And there was Macy. “
The abstract expressionist Macy Collingwood
.” In Tokyo for a
retrospective
sponsored by some high class department store. Looking pretty smug about it too. Silver hair still thick and lush. He could see that even from the photograph. She had fattened out a little, gone a bit
jowly and sun-dried but she looked healthy. Faded denim shirt. That Native American jewellery with those little turquoise pebbles setting off her colouring nicely. She had turned ethnic. Or
Californian
. Or vegetarian. Or whatever it was the Yanks did these days to keep so damn fit. He nervously scanned the text, looking for any mention of his name. There it was.

Interviewer: “
I understand you first met Edward Strathairn in
London
in the early 1950s. Could you tell me something about that first
meeting
and if the two of you were part of a wider circle of artists and writers of the time?
” He could imagine her laughing at that. Throwing her head back the same way she did the first time he saw her in the queue outside Westminster.

“
Yes, I first met Eddie back then. But no, there wasn’t a clique or
anything
like that. All the real writers were in Paris. Camus, Sartre, Beckett, de Beauvoir. It was just a coincidence Eddie and I got to know each other. To be honest, I can’t even remember where and how we met. He was just starting out at the time
.”

Interviewer: “
And did you influence his work in any way
?”

“
His first published story was about me
. ‘Roller Girl’.
Something like that. Stupid title really
.
I doubt if it is available anywhere
.
So, yes, you could definitely say I influenced his early work
.”

The sexless interrogator continued: “
And what about Sir Edward
?
What kind of influence did he have on your work?”

“None whatsoever.”

Edward flinched at that. Not at the truth of it but at such assuredness. She still did those Jackson Pollock lookalikes. There was one propped up beside her in the photograph, resting right up beside her scuffed leather boot, which probably spent most of the day looped up in a stirrup or engaged in some other West Coast outdoor hobby. Macy might have moved right across America after her mother died but she had never moved on from abstract
expressionism
. She had stayed exactly where she was, let all the fads come and go until they came round to her again. That was Macy.
Immutable
. And unforgiving.

He read on, fearful of what she might have said next. But
thankfully
the interviewer had moved on to her more recent work.

He heard the door open. Jerome’s face in the gap, eyes
narrowed
in a scan of the room.

‘Still alive then?’

‘Just a short nap.’

‘A bit more than that, Eddie,’ Jerome said, still lingering in the doorway. ‘I was worried sick about you.’

‘What are you talking about? I feel fine. Quite invigorated.’ He performed a half-swivel in the chair to show off his vitality.

‘Relieved to hear it. But you had a real nasty turn there.’

‘I still don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You don’t remember?’

‘No.’

‘During the question and answer session. I think you had a dizzy spell or something. You kind of half-fainted. We had to drag you up here. The nurse even came. Temperature. Blood pressure. All that sort of thing. Perfectly normal as it happens. In the end, we just let you sleep.’

‘For how long?’

Jerome looked at his watch. ‘Must be two hours. You still don’t remember?’

He shrugged. ‘Just a bout of tiredness. Or jet lag. Or that bullet train. Travel is very energy-sapping at our age, don’t you think? Anyway, as I said, I feel fine now.’

He rocked back and forward in his chair as Jerome moved over to a filing cabinet, began to drag open drawers. Dusk outside. The crisp voices of the young crossing the campus. Final lectures to attend. Tutorials. He had read all about Tokyo teenagers. Ginza coffee shops. Snatched hours in love hotels. Sumo on TV.
Pornography
on the Internet. Hooked on computer games. No plots of revolution for this generation.

‘Got them,’ Jerome announced, placing three small boxes on the desk. Grey cardboard containers, stapled at the corners to form their loose rectangular shapes. Jerome plucked off the lids, laid out the photographs in an orderly fashion on the desk. Like cards stacked for a game of patience. Edward noticed the slight shaking of the hands as Jerome positioned the prints. He had an overwhelming
urge to touch him then, to place an arm around his shoulder, to ask him so many questions. Has your life been a happy one, Jerome? Did you find love? Are you frightened of death? Does anything have any meaning for you these days? Are you angry? Are you
bitter
? Are you simply waiting for the end? Do you know what
happened
to Sumiko? But instead, he looked along the line of photos.

‘There are so many of them.’

‘Well, I always was a bit obsessive with the camera. Still am.’

‘Never owned one.’

‘Never owned a camera? How in hell’s name do you remember anything?’

‘I write it down.’

‘What do you mean? In a journal?’

‘No. In my novels.’

‘Thought that was all fiction.’

‘The narrative is. But the feelings underneath are real.’

Jerome turned to face him. ‘Photographs are my memories,’ he declared. ‘They are my narrative. Without them I have nothing.
Zilch. Nada.’

‘Are you telling me if you hadn’t taken these, you wouldn’t remember any of this?’ Edward swept his hand over the desk.

‘Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m saying.’ Jerome folded his arms, leaned back against the desk in what must have been his
practised
lecture mode. ‘I’ll tell you something, Eddie. I don’t know about you but it’s not death that scares the shit out of me. It’s the fear of forgetting. If we knew we could carry our memories to wherever we go next, then there would be nothing to fear. It’s just the thought that all this life might be forgotten totally, that’s what frightens me. And therefore the photographs. Problem is…’ He laughed, a watery, almost sobbing kind of laugh. ‘I can never remember where I put them.’

Jerome had laid out the prints in chronological order in three columns, each according to the year on the lids of their respective boxes. 1956, 1957, 1958. Good strong, black and white images, still quite glossy despite their age. Jerome had a way with contrast, with composition, always fussing with his posers to position them
just right. A lot of the usual tourist shots, friends larking about, but also the occasional artistic effort. There was one of construction workers, padding around in cloth boots on the iron skeleton of a high-rise building, heads wrapped in towelled bandanas, skinny arms sinewy with muscle, lips clinging aggressively to cigarettes. Hods, wheelbarrows, mixer. A homage to the new Tokyo, to the new concrete skyline.

‘I like this one,’ Edward said of the photo.

‘Yeah. Me too. That one was published.
National Geographic
.’

‘Impressive. And this one too. The Imperial Hotel in Tokyo. The one designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.’

‘The Imperial’s gone, I’m afraid. I mean there’s still a hotel there by that name but all the Frank Lloyd stuff’s been dismantled. Too many earthquakes, too many bombs. Probably wouldn’t have lasted another tremor. So they took it down, re-assembled parts of it somewhere. Nagoya, I think.’

Edward liked what they were doing. Just the two of them.
Picking
out photos, chatting easy, a laugh about this one, glassy-eyed over that one. He had forgotten what this could be like. Remembering a shared past. All the more precious as the end approached for both of them. Exciting too, as he waited for the shots of Sumiko to emerge. And there she was. In her kimono. Standing in the crook of his arm, head rested against his shoulder, head tilted to the camera, the shyest of smiles. In the background, the Giant
Buddha
statue looking serenely down at them, heavy-lidded eyes
closing
out the obvious non-Buddhist attachment being displayed in front of it. She wouldn’t have liked the outward display of affection either. Tense in his arms, leaning in against his clasp just to please him.

‘Yeah, that was a great day,’ Jerome said, peering over his
shoulder
. ‘The three of us, down by the sea in Kamakura. That was the first time I met her. I remember us walking along the beach together. Trying to find Kawabata’s house.’

‘That’s right. She loved his books.’

‘She hurt her ankle and we had to carry her back. A goddamn pity. She so much wanted to see the great man’s house.’

Edward looked again at the photograph. ‘Is that the only one of her from that day?’

Jerome picked up the print, squinted at it. ‘Yeah, that was it.’

And that was the end of the matter. Sumiko had pressed herself into their minds for an instant, before disappearing again. Like a curious butterfly. Edward was desperate to talk more about their day together, to resurrect her memory in shared conversation,
perhaps
even to ask to keep the print, but a shadow passed over the window, distracting him. The bony swoosh and creak of a broad span disturbing the air. He saw a large crow swoop down across the yard to perch on the edge of a metal bin by the library. It was a monster of a bird. Arrogant. Fearless. It dipped its head into the bin opening, a few tugs, then flew off with a tied-up plastic bag in its beak. By the time Edward had returned his attention to the room, Jerome was already packing the photographs back into their boxes.