Mr Mac and Me (29 page)

‘What happened to the studio?’ I ask.

‘Well, they worked there for three years, before Frances married. She married my friend Bertie MacNair – as you know – and it was not long before they had a child. That was not easy for Frances. My wife saw how she suffered. How she struggled with the belief she held that there should be no conflict between motherhood and a professional life. How it tore her apart. She loved the boy, that was the problem. So how could she neglect him for her work? How could she work and not neglect him? Well, they were in Liverpool by then. And although we missed her – we missed them both – at least now I had my Margaret to myself.

‘We were married that year. And we made our own home at Mains Street. Just as we wished it. Just . . .’ he looks ahead as if he can see it, ‘as we’d dreamt it. News spread of it. Photographs were published. Architects from Austria, men interested in the modern –
Der Jungen
, they called themselves – there’s another word for you, The Young – came to call on us, and we were invited to exhibit in Vienna. We made a Scottish Room. ‘ “There is a Christ-like mood in this interior.” ’ Mac tilts his nose in the air. ‘ “This chair might have belonged to St Francis of Assisi. The decorative element is not proscribed, but is worked out with a spiritual appeal.” That was the art editor of the
Wiener Rundschau
. And although there were voices raised against us – “a hellish room, furniture as fetishes” ’: he is Scottish again – ‘it was considered a triumph. What a time we had in Vienna. Even though we were announced as Mr and Mrs Herr Macdonald, we were treated with grace and grandeur. The students even pulled us to the station in a flower-bedecked carriage.’ Mac laughs and shakes his head. The light from the lantern warms his face.

‘It wasn’t so long after that Keppie made me a junior partner, I suppose he had to – although he kept much of the commissioned work for himself, and I was to rely on work from Miss Cranston and her tea rooms, and keep a lookout for competitions. But I could hardly complain, not with Jessie Keppie still unmarried, while I had my own Mrs Mackintosh, and Hermann Muthesius too as a supporter – I’ve told you about the German, the art historian – I became godfather to his son? Muthesius began to write about my work, and it was through him that I heard about the competition for “House for an Art Lover”, organised by Alexander Koch at Darmstadt. I was well enough known in Europe by then for my name to be recognised, but it was a requirement of the competition that all entries be submitted under a pseudonym. Anonymous.’ He tapped his nose. ‘A pen name.’

‘What did you choose?’

‘
Der Vogel.
’

‘
Der Vogel?
’

‘The bird.’

‘The bird!’ I want to jump. ‘I knew it.’ But he is still talking.

‘
House for an Art Lover
. The best thing I ever did,’ Mac’s eyes are gleaming. ‘We made it together. Mr and Mrs Herr Macdonald. Well you’ve seen it, you know. It was not just a house.’ He’s talking to himself now. ‘It had our three words in it. On every wall. But the drawings arrived late, apparently, and were missing the required number of interior perspectives. And although the design met with admiration and even wonder – it was the closest I ever got to bringing an ocean liner in to land – these errors, all on my behalf, meant it could not win the competition. And now our house sits in its blue folder, on a desk in a rented room, where most likely it will remain for ever.’

‘Maybe one day, when the war. . . .’

But he is not listening. ‘When I’m out walking, and I look into the distance, up over the heathland and across the estuary, I think I see it, shimmering white against the sky. I even see the rose bushes, when I search with my binoculars, and the poplars, their green heads in a row. “What is it then?” I ask myself, but it’s usually a cloud, or the sun squinting against me, and when I look again it isn’t there.’ Mac stares down at his work. For a long time he doesn’t speak. Then he takes up his pencil and with sure strokes he makes a fine grey box, his initials on one side and his wife’s on the other, CRM, MMM, and the date – 1915 – linking them across the top.

Chapter 51

Now, at night, after checking the Lea House and the beach, after listening for Zeppelins, and the loose chatter of anyone who may or may not be a spy, I scurry up the river path and tap on the hut door. I tap once and wait, and then I tap again and let myself in. Mac sits bent over the sprig of a flower. He looks up for a second and nods. ‘Evening,’ he says, although by then it is night, but I don’t contradict him. I sit in the corner and I watch him work. He has a rare plant, a strawberry tree he says it is, from the garden at The Lodge, although the Latin name, he tells me, is
Arbutus
. I think of all the foreign words I know.
Vogel. Kist. Jungen. Bunt. Cutag. Rundschau. Arbutus
. And I imagine packing them up and taking them out into the world. Vienna I’ll visit first. Then Rome and Florence. And when I’ve seen Paris I’ll set sail for Australia just to feel what it’s like to be so far from home.

Mrs Mac is dreaming of her
Voices of the Wood
, Mac tells me. She would have liked to make it from gesso, but the work is too taxing for her, the panels too heavy. Labourers would be needed to transfer the panels when they’re done, and labourers, quite rightly, are away at war.

I take the hard white pellets of my glue to her. They are sealed in their jar like jam under gingham, although if the cloth is folded back, a rancid smell escapes. ‘Thank you,’ she reels back from its strength. And although she is grateful, she tells me she’ll be making these new panels from paint. She would make them in embroidery, she says, but it will be overlooked as women’s work, most probably dismissed by the Royal Academy where the exhibition is to be held, although maybe, and she gives a mischievous smile, she will slant the strokes of her brush like stitches to give the desired effect.

‘But I have nothing to offer you,’ she holds the jar against herself. ‘We are clean out of cake, we’ve not even any bread until Mrs Mollett comes.’ And so, instead, she opens a pamphlet that is stacked with others on the table and shows me a photograph of a gesso panel she once made. It is titled
The Seven Princesses
, and is so large each picture only captures a small section before we have to move on to the next. ‘
The Seven Princesses
is a play by Maeterlinck,’ she tells me, ‘and is the story of a princess, one of seven sisters, who pines away for love.’

I look closely at the serene face of the princess, her cloak wrapped around her like a shroud, roses, shells and beads meshed into it. There is the prince, coming to claim her in his ship, three black swans sailing ahead of it, their necks curved down as if they know it is too late.

I stroke my fingers against the page. ‘I’d like to see it.’

‘Yes,’ Mrs Mackintosh nods. ‘It was commissioned by a very wealthy man, an Austrian – Fritz Waerndorfer, who wanted the
Princesses
for his own home, but by the time I’d finished it, and it took almost four years to make – imagine, each panel was taller and wider than a door, and there were three – Waerndorfer’s fortune had already begun to dwindle. Now it is completely gone, the house sold, the contents dispersed. Waerndorfer sailed away to a new life in America. But I hear from his wife that my panels have been taken to a museum. The Österreichisches Museum für Angewandte Kunst.’

I look round fearful at so many foreign words, but Mrs Mac sets down the magazine. She goes to a desk, the desk on which the
House for an Art Lover
sits in its blue folio, and she slides open a drawer. I follow her. There are letters there, arranged in neat piles, thin envelopes heavy with stamps, and after flicking through them, she draws one out.

‘This arrived not so long ago,’ she tells me. And she sits on a chair and, beckoning for me to stand beside her, she frowns at the words of the letter.
Liebe Frau Macdonald Mackintosh
, I read over her shoulder, but she swallows and changing each word into English, she begins to read.

Dear Mrs Macdonald Mackintosh,

I want, very much, for you to know the fate of your panels. After much thought and anxiety that
The Seven Princesses
may now be considered an acquisition by an enemy artist and possibly destroyed, the museum that holds them has taken each panel to the basement, placed them into crates and put them against a wall. Then, and in this way they will hopefully remain undetected, they have built a second wall in front of it. Please, dear Mrs Mackintosh, do not alarm yourself when you think of your masterpiece so far away from home.
The Seven Princesses,
at least, are safe.

With affection,

Lili Waerndorfer

‘So,’ Mrs Mac shrugs. And then with no warning tears are streaming down her face. ‘What if no one remembers? What if everyone who knows must leave Vienna, and the seven princesses remain forever sealed into their tomb?’ Her shoulders shake. ‘But at least,’ and to my surprise I find that she is laughing, ‘the colours will not fade. Not like the panels I made for my husband’s houses, which sit above the fireplaces and are already mottled by candle flame, gas lamp and smoke.’

She rises then, and folding the letter back into its envelope she presses it into place in its drawer. ‘She gives herself a little shake. ‘Tell me, how are preparations going for the wedding?’ And without waiting for an answer, she moves through to the kitchen where she pours us both a glass of water from a narrow jug. ‘The thing to remember,’ she takes a gulp, ‘is that it is nothing more than a great lump of plaster of Paris. There are thousands, millions of people who are suffering. It is they who need our prayers.’ And, as if to convince herself further, she turns to me and smiles.

Mac gives me another letter. It is addressed once again to Glasgow.

Dear William Davidson,

Since I wrote to you I find I am in a much worse plight than I imagined. If you cannot buy one of my pictures will you please lend me one pound and send it so that I can get it on Wednesday. I am very sorry to trouble you but please try to do this.

Yours sincerely

C R Mackintosh

I run with the letter to Southwold, and I don’t stop until it’s in the postman’s hands. I run so fast, and with such urgency, that when I no longer have it, I am lost. I walk down to the beach. The tide is out and the longshore boats are pulled up against the shingle. The bathing huts have long since been shunted from the shore, and above us where the cannons once stood are coils and rolls of wire. I climb the steps towards Gun Hill, curious to see the drift of feathers and sticks caught up there, but when I reach the top I slip instead into the warm wooden cabin of the Sailors’ Reading Room. I stop and breathe in the smell. The dust and polish, the mouldering covers of the magazines. I kneel down before the boats and say a prayer for every sailor out there, and when I’m finished I hear the thwack and scatter of a billiard ball hitting the cushion of the table behind the fishermen’s private door. Please God, I add, let me one day be invited into that room. And I feel a beat inside me. To be invited in, I must first strike out to sea.

There is another crack, and a rumble of men’s voices, and I get to my feet and press my eye against the panelled door. There are several men inside. I can make out the leg of one, an arm of another. I stand quite still and listen.

‘If you’re lucky enough to have one good woman and one good dog in your lifetime . . .’ I smile. It is Danky and I’ve heard this line before. ‘I had one good dog,’ I mouth along with him, ‘but the good woman, that was harder to find.’

There is laughter, one soft chuckle that may or may not belong to Jimmy Kerridge, and the smack of a cue against a ball, as I rest my eyes on the lush green of the billiard table.

I could stand there all day, I’m sure of it, before anyone would come out and notice me, but I’m needed at home, and so I turn away. ‘What do you say, boys?’ A voice is raised. A voice that I’m not sure of. ‘Is there a reward in it, do you think?’

I turn back.

‘I shouldn’t see why not.’ It’s Danky again. ‘Information delivered is a valuable thing.’

There are a series of thuds as balls thump against the corners.

‘So who’ll it be then? Who’ll be the one to whisper a warning in the policeman’s ear?’

Danky grunts. It’ll not be him. For he’ll not go near that gun-wielding constable again.

‘But how can we be sure?’ It is Jimmy.

‘How can we be sure?’ Danky sounds disgusted. ‘That’s what they want you to think. That’s the trick they play on all of us, turn us into cowards. Meanwhile the law is turned on good patriotic fellows like ourselves.’

‘I’m no coward.’ I can see the scar on Jimmy’s face filling up with blood. And I wonder if he’ll mention the certificate of honourable discharge that is waiting, even as we speak, to be signed by the king.

‘Of course you’re not a coward.’ The other voice is certain. A fisherman’s voice it is, from further along the coast. ‘Which makes you first choice for the job. Listen, son. No one’s asking you to arrest anyone yourself. Just go along to the constable and tell him what you know.’

‘And what do I know?’ Jimmy sounds unsure.