The Sea House (2 page)

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 bed-room. 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.

Dear Meyer
,

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 father swam up through his hands, so pleased he’d found a way of keeping his poor deaf son at home. Each letter, each word of praise from Henry, was one more reason why he’d never have to stray. He could be a gentleman painter at Heiderose for the rest of his days. Max opened the drawer further and felt to the back with his hand. He’d had a sudden hope that his childish map might still be lying there. His map, and the Renoir his father had stowed away for him above the rim. But his fingers only tapped at wood, the four perfect corners, grooved and joined together with much careful mathematics, patience and the lessons of his father’s skill.

4

Lily slept late the next morning, and when she woke the sun was streaming into the room. As soon as she stretched, she remembered Nick and how anxious he would be she hadn’t rung. Quickly she pulled on her clothes and ran straight across to the phone box. The first thing she noticed, even as she dialled, was that the note had been replaced. It was an identical scrap of white lined paper, torn with the same jagged edges around the words. Lily scrutinized it hard, to try and fathom it, but just then Nick answered.

‘I’m so sorry,’ she babbled, frightened somehow that she was about to be told off, but he was busy, already working at his desk.

‘Is it raining there?’ he asked, and she imagined him tipping back his chair. ‘It’s pissing it down here.’

‘It’s heaven’ – Lily felt her excitement bursting up – ‘just being in his village. You know, Lehmann, in the village where he – ’

But at that moment Nick’s other line started ringing and he transferred his attention to it without cutting her off. ‘Yes, but you don’t understand, those tiles won’t last outside. Yes, I know they look pretty, but one hard winter and they’ll start to crack…’

Lily watched her money slowly trickling down. ‘Sorry,’ he said when eventually he was back.

‘It’s beautiful here, full of sky. I wish – ’

His assistant was talking to him now, and then Nick started laughing when really, Lily felt, he should be annoyed. ‘Tell them to –’

‘I’d better go,’ she cut in coldly.

Nick tried to keep her, but it was too late. ‘Was the motorway all right?’

‘What? Oh, yes… Look, I’ll call another time.’ And, although she knew that she was being childish, she put down the phone.

It must have rained right through the night. Everything smelt of earth and, just as she was about to step back into her cottage, Lily found herself veering off along a lane. It was an unmade track that led towards the river with hedges full of raindrops glittering like diamonds on twigs, and spiders’ webs as strong as nylon, catching tiny drops of wet.

If I keep walking, she thought, watching the sun glint off puddles, I might even come across Lehmann’s house. She didn’t have any idea, any directions, but imagined it would be a modern masterpiece, huge slants of glass shooting up into the sky.

The track was mostly mud now, with two ridged lanes of puddles, beaded and looped on either side of a mounded bank of grass. Lily walked on slowly downwards until she saw the estuary, flat and full of sky. There were boats moored up against a row of wooden jetties and all along were signs to warn you to step on only at your own risk. Lily looked out along the river, wondering whether to jump down on to the mud flats or not, and then, half turning, she caught sight of a house, edged into the turning of the lane. It was a brick house, tall and narrow, with one long window on either side of the front door. Before it, like a garden fence, was a row of sand bags piled like piglets three feet high. Lily walked past the house, glancing as she went into its tall bright windows and then, finding the path led nowhere, she turned and walked back. There were no curtains in the windows and her reflection bounced back at her. But she noticed, before politeness forced her to look away, a chalk line between the window and the door. The line was high, just above the handle and there was a date scrawled, 1953.

Just then she heard the low toll of the church clock. She stopped to listen, counting the seagulls sitting on a row of wooden posts, and on the last chime, as if by agreement, they all swooped up and, swirling in formation, arced away. The chimes of the clock reminded her she would have to go back inside. She would have to go in, and sit down at the table. Make a start on her work. If she didn’t start soon she’d never finish her assignment by the end of term. She should be making notes on Lehmann’s use of light and space. Reading through his letters, finding clues and pointers to the development of his work.

Initially she’d chosen Lehmann because it was a building of his in North London, a dilapidated granite and glass block, that Nick had taken her to admire the first evening that they’d met. She’d been giving him a lift home from a party and he’d made her take a detour, surprising her with his confidence and the way he put his hand on her shoulder as if to steer her to the right. He’d made her pull up for a moment so they could admire the balconies, the curve of the windows, the flash of metal against a panelling of wood. They got out of the car together and stood in a light rain and it seemed as if by Nick’s very own order every light in every window flickered on. Yes, she saw then, it was beautiful, a building she’d dismissed until that moment as a huge grey mushroom billowing out above a concrete pond, but for Nick it seemed enough that she had noticed it.

‘You’d be surprised,’ he said, ‘how many people never use their eyes.’ As if to thank her for being observant, for noticing the things he loved, he’d drawn her towards him and kissed her very gently on the mouth.

My dear Elsa
… Lily ran her fingers over the paper’s surface, untouched, she imagined, since 1931.
Here in Palestine my first place of work is by the beach amongst the ruins of an ancient town. As you have asked about it, I shall explain how we could live here. By the sea, or in the mountains, or in the Jordan valley, hundreds of metres below sea level in a tropical climate. But I believe one day we will be able to live surrounded by farmers or within a religious community. Servants could be Jewish or Christian or Arabs, the latter being the most likely. Concerning the girlfriends you are planning to bring, does that mean I have to marry them as well? And is that why you asked about polygamy? And who is it, and how many? You know I am for very many children and several wives, but that isn’t very common any more, not since the times of the patriarchs. But seriously I do hope that we’ll live so simply and hospitably that there will always be room for several guests.

Lily stopped reading for a moment to watch Ethel amble through her gate and out on to the lane. She had her dressing-gown on, wrapped snugly round her, and, nodding sociably to anyone she saw, she set off across the Green.

But, my darling, would you have another look at the parts of my letter that are alien to you and ask me to explain? It would be very painful if we were to always speak two different languages, the one incomprehensible to the other. I can’t believe that our languages really are that far apart. Imagine we were married, and we will be SOON, and then, because this is your concern, could you really believe that being married to me would diminish you, and that I would somehow become someone else? There is only one kind of danger, and that is that I might love you too much.

Lily folded the letter back into its square. If only telephones had never been invented. She could have written to Nick as soon as she arrived, keeping the image she preferred of him steady in her mind, and not had it rudely interrupted by his tone of voice. He might have written back to her by return of post, telling her the details of his day, pleading with her not to stay away too long, and she’d never know he’d let himself be interrupted countless times by questions about tiles.