Gillespie and I (6 page)

But I am getting ahead of myself.

Towards four o'clock, the hour appointed for our meeting, I made my way outside, into the sunshine, and strolled over towards Van Houten's Cocoa House. The exterior tables were all fully occupied, and so I found a place on the grass, from which vantage point to watch for the approach of Annie and Elspeth.

From where I stood, I could see Kelvingrove Mansion, and the stream of visitors, emerging—benumbed and replete—having just gorged themselves on the sight of Her Majesty's many gifts: the silver caskets, battleaxes, bejewelled slippers, and so on; an array of useless, opulent articles which (to my mind) struck a vulgar note when contrasted with the poverty evident elsewhere in Glasgow, a city that teemed with beggars, many of whom were children—an inequity to which these day-trippers seemed oblivious. Is it only me who is tempted, in such circumstances, to shout insults, such as ‘Imbeciles! Fools! Pudding-heads!'? Of course, one resists these urges, and tries not to feel too much in common with the ragged, drunken little men who often seem to crop up in public places, shaking grubby fists at the throng, and uttering oaths and imprecations; I do sometimes wonder whether I myself—by sheer force of will and dint of imagination—have not conjured up these little fellows to berate the multitude on my own behalf: the very daemons of my psyche.

My daydreams were interrupted by the hoot of the little steam launch on the Kelvin. So lost had I become in my thoughts, as I stood there on the grass, that I had failed to notice the passing of time. Now, glancing at my watch, I saw with surprise that it was half past four o'clock, long after the hour that Elspeth had proposed that we meet; of course, I had no idea, then, that the Gillespies were
always
late, for
every
occasion. I hurried into Van Houten's and peered into each salon, but my new friends were nowhere to be seen. Thereafter, feeling disappointed, I gave up, and decided to return to my rooms, by way of the lake and the Hillhead exit.

Beyond the Mansion, I took the path towards a crossroads where several routes converged, just south of the lake. It was at this point that I heard a strange yelping sound. Thinking that perhaps some poor dog was in pain, I glanced in the direction of the noise, only to see Elspeth Gillespie bearing down upon me. The high-pitched cry that I had mistaken for a canine yap was, in fact, emanating from her throat, apparently as a means of attracting my attention. ‘Youp!' she cried. ‘Youp! Miss Bexter! Youp! Youp! Herriet!'

In her wake came Mabel, walking closely with a gentleman in a straw boater (he had, at that moment, bent his head to light his pipe); and, behind them, Annie and the children, trailing along with a younger man, who was staring off, towards the river. Just then, the gentleman in the boater looked up, exhaling a mouthful of smoke. He was a broad-shouldered individual of about the middle height, with even, handsome features, his eyes perhaps a little sad. I recognised him, at once, as the artist whom I had met those several months previously in London.

Here, then, was Ned Gillespie: the man himself, walking towards me. Of course, I feel a thrill now in describing this moment but, at the time, I cannot think that it meant terribly much to me to see him there in the park, especially since I was obliged to direct my attention to his mother, who already had me in her clutches.

‘Miss Bexter! Lovely to see you! We are a little late, but it took some time to get organised. Allow me to introduce you to…'—she peered over her left shoulder; Mabel and Ned had just drawn abreast of us, behind her, and Annie had paused to admonish Sibyl for some misdemeanour, so that Elspeth's gaze fell instead upon the young man, who was fast approaching—‘… to my son, Kenneth. Kenny, dear, this is Miss Herriet Bexter, the lady I told you about, who saved my life!'

The young man greeted me, briefly. I judged him to be about twenty-four years of age, and handsome enough, notwithstanding a slight puggish cast to his nose, and his hair, which one might, in all politeness, describe as ‘auburn'. He was dressed in checked trousers, cutaway coat, and fob watch and, despite the studied nonchalance with which his bowler was perched upon his head, he emanated mild discomfort and impatience. This, I interpreted (perhaps wrongly, as later events might suggest) as youthful shame at having to be seen
passeggiare
with his mama. We exchanged a few pleasantries, and then he turned to Elspeth, saying: ‘I'm away to the refreshment bar, mother', and, without further ado, he strode off down the path.

‘Don't stay out too late, dear!'

Elspeth frowned anxiously after his retreating figure, leaving me to exchange greetings with her daughter-in-law. Compared with the last time that we had met, Annie's face appeared a little tired and pale. Diplomacy was required and, since she had clearly made an effort to dress smartly—in a narrow-skirted plaid frock, and jade velvet tam o' shanter—I paid her a compliment. ‘What a delightful costume, Annie!'

She looked surprised. ‘Thank you, Harriet. Did we keep you waiting?'

‘Oh, on such a day as this, one doesn't mind a little wait.'

I turned to her girls, whom good manners required that I also acknowledge. With their shining cheeks and stiff, short dresses, Sibyl and Rose had the scrubbed, chastened look of children who have been soundly bathed and fastened into their finest clothes. ‘What a pretty dress, Rose! How smart you look, Sibyl!'

The younger girl grew bashful, and attempted to hide her face, while Sibyl raised a coy shoulder and gave me an affected grin across it, displaying her little fangs. Seconds later, however, the smile vanished, and I found myself, once more, unsettled by her dull-eyed, unflinching gaze: it was not malicious, exactly, yet neither was it pleasant.

Meanwhile, Mabel had linked arms with Ned and—somewhat impolitely, I felt—steered him off down the path, rather than stopping to say good afternoon. It was of no consequence, but I daresay that I was mildly curious to be reacquainted with the artist. However, Mabel was possessive of her brother to a degree that might almost be regarded as—one hesitates to say
unnatural
—but all her actions concerning him were coloured by an anomalous proprietary instinct. I noticed that Kenneth caught up with them and appeared to borrow money from his brother before hurrying off, and then Ned and Mabel paused to converse with some acquaintances.

Our little group, consisting of Elspeth, Annie, the children and myself, began to move in their direction. Unfortunately, Elspeth hampered our progress somewhat by stopping in her tracks, every so often, the better to speak. She began to tell me about a person that an acquaintance of hers had once encountered; somebody whom I was never likely to meet, and whom, moreover, Elspeth
herself
had never met—but apparently none of these particulars prevented her from expounding at length on the subject of this complete stranger.

I could have wished for some moral support under this torrent of verbiage, but Annie, exhibiting no fellow feeling, soon wandered off the path to pick up a leaf, and then became lost in contemplation of its form, thereby falling behind. Sibyl and Rose skipped on ahead. As Elspeth continued to chatter, my gaze drifted over to where Ned stood with the others. He had turned away from his companions in order to gaze across the park at the Waterbury Watches balloon, which was just visible above the trees, over by the Machinery Section. His arm was half raised, and he appeared to be fiddling with something at his wrist—a cufflink, perhaps, or a timepiece. I found myself wondering whether or not he would remember our previous encounter in London.

Just at that moment, he happened to glance in our direction and, almost without thinking, I waved to him, as one might to an old friend. To my surprise, he instantly broke away from Mabel and the others, and hurried towards us, tapping his pipe to dispose of the cinders. I felt sure that he must have recognised me. At the very least, his approach interrupted Elspeth's monologue.

‘Come and meet Miss Bexter, Ned dear! Herriet, this is Ned, my other son.'

The artist doffed his hat and then, turning to his mother, said simply: ‘Well?'

‘No sign yet, dear,' replied Elspeth. ‘But we must wait until we get to the Palace. That's where we're most likely to see him.'

‘Aye,' said Ned, and gazed off towards Annie, who was still standing on the grass, some distance away, examining the leaf that she had found. As he considered his wife, his expression softened, and he smiled.

Clearly, he had not recognised me—not at all—but why should he have? A professional artist might well be introduced to dozens of strangers during an opening at a gallery like the Grosvenor, and if his work appears in several other shows over the course of a year, the number of new faces that he encounters must mount into the hundreds. I would have been extremely silly to be hurt that he had not remembered me.

‘What's she doing?' said Ned—fondly, to himself—and then he called out: ‘Annie, dearest! Keep up!'

He beckoned to her, but she simply waved back, smiling very prettily: I suspect that she was too far away to hear him. Ned laughed, and blew her a kiss, and then he gave a happy sigh, and set off down the path, swinging his cane. Elspeth and I fell into step with him, and the children began to dart amongst and between the three of us, singing a nursery rhyme, something about bluebells. A passer-by might have taken us for a family, on a day out, with myself as the mother figure: the thought of it rather amused me.

‘So, Herriet!' cried Elspeth. ‘You don't mind if we make haste, do you? Only we're looking for Mr Hamilton, of the Fine Art Committee. We're hoping to get Ned's picture moved and we've had an idea of how it might be achieved.'

She went on to explain that the poor location of
By the Pond
had been a source of concern since the start of the Exhibition. Indeed, in the opening week, Ned had taken the measure of writing to Horatio Hamilton, politely requesting that the painting be moved. Hamilton (now long forgotten) was then a well-established painter of the old-fashioned ‘gluepot school': artists so called because of the dark, sticky nature of their preferred medium, megilp, and also, perhaps, because of their subject matter, which was often gooey, mawkish, and overly moralistic. As such, Hamilton was probably not one of Ned's natural allies, but he was a leading light of the Fine Art Committee for the Exhibition, he ran a well-respected gallery in Bath Street and, crucially, he had been one of Ned's tutors at the Art School. Without Hamilton's support, Ned felt that he would have little chance of persuading the organisers to shift his painting. Thus, according to Elspeth, he had sent the man a letter, but received no reply. A second letter had also been ignored.

This was all fascinating information, and I was flattered to be taken into their confidence, although I noticed that Ned did not join in the telling of the story. Indeed, in the beginning, he tried to dissuade his mother from divulging too much, but he might as well have been a newborn kitten in the path of a runaway bull. He soon gave up attempting to change the subject and concentrated on beseeching his mother to walk while she talked. Meanwhile, the little girls continued to run rings around us. Sibyl, in particular, seemed to barge into us almost every time that she hurtled past and, once or twice, I did wonder whether she had jostled me deliberately.

‘It's a well-known fact', Elspeth was saying, ‘that Hamilton always takes a wee tour round the park between five and six o'clock. Now, Herriet, our plan is that we bump into him, as though by chance, and then, in the course of conversation, we can talk him into making sure that Ned's painting is shifted. We won't let him leave the park until he's agreed to do what we want. I shall
sit
on him, if necessary!' Although this did not strike me as an advisable course of action, it would have been impolite to suggest as much, and so I simply looked thoughtful, as though giving full consideration to what she had outlined. ‘If all else fails,' cried Elspeth, to her son, ‘you must put the man in his place. Tell him he's an old fool. Tell him he's a pompous over-rated fat bald-pated snobbish old nincompoop!'

‘Yes,' said Ned, with a smile. ‘That would certainly win him over.'

‘And while you're at it, dear, should you not
insist
that your pond picture be displayed somewhere that
everyone
will see it? Why not move it out of that gallery altogether? Hardly anybody goes in there.'

‘That is the British Sale Gallery,' said Ned, kindly. ‘The painting has to be in there, Mother, since it's on sale, not on loan, and it's classified as British.'

Elspeth dismissed these trifling details with a wave of her arm. ‘But it
hasn't
sold, dear, because it's in such a terrible location. They should put it next to that picture of Balaclava! Everybody stops to look at that one. If your pond painting were beside it, then all the visitors queuing to see Balaclava would be
forced
to stare at your picture while they waited in line!'

‘How gratifying,' said Ned, evenly, ‘to think of them being
forced
.'

‘Or—what about the main hall? It could be hung there. Then it would be the very first thing that visitors saw as they entered the building.'

‘Now, Mother dear, that would be neither feasible, nor permitted.'

His words made excellent sense, and yet Elspeth persisted. Her cheerful loyalty to her son was to be admired, even if her suggestions were impractical.

‘Could they not construct
another
gallery,' she continued, ‘to display just a few of the best paintings? And your work could be given a prominent position.'

Ned appeared to consider this.

‘Perhaps they could call it “The Gillespie Wing”,' he said, drily.

‘Ebbsolutely!' squawked Elspeth, having failed to note the twinkle in his eye. She clapped her hands together. ‘What a brilliant, brilliant idea.'