Port Mungo Page 3

  Chapter Three

  When I first met her, Vera Savage was an established artist of thirty who alone of her generation had had work shown in America. Two of her paintings Jack had declared to be masterpieces. One was called Spirit of the Blitz, a caustic and irreverent picture which had caused something of a scandal when it was first exhibited. The other, Vandal at the Gates, was remarkable for its hugeness if for nothing else. Both were figurative—this itself an oddity in the heyday of abstraction—and both were executed in loud clashing tones and with a kind of insolent brash energy which owed nothing to pictorial understatement, or linear decorum, or tonal restraint, or any of the other qualities traditionally favoured by the English artist; though in fact Vera was not English, she was from Glasgow. But Jack had confidently declared that this was the only way one could possibly paint any more. It was 1957 and he was seventeen years old, and Vera Savage was coming to St. Martin’s to lecture us on modern art.

  So there we were, one damp Thursday evening, milling about on the pavement outside the college with various other students when we heard raised voices, there was a melee of sorts, a scuffle, and we glimpsed a grinning dishevelled figure in black stockings and a shabby cocktail dress being escorted on tottering stilettoes into the building. Jack liked the look of her at once, this was clear, and for this reason: she dressed like a prostitute. She stood there at the podium, a loud, bosomy woman in a tight dress and pancake makeup, one hand cocked akimbo on her hip and the other flapping the air as she spoke to us with a kind of hoarse nervous bravado, and I remember thinking her opinionated and not very clean, or entirely sober. Her hair was the colour of coal, her lips were scarlet and she had lost a tooth, whose absence lent her a distinctly menacing aspect when she grinned. What was it she talked about? Much of it I have forgotten, but I know she told us how pointless it was to attend art school, which raised a cheer, and then she spoke about inspiration, and how travel, drink, the colour black, bodies of water—passion—these were the sorts of things that inspired her. It was our duty, as artists, to find what inspired each one of us. She also told us we should be able to work anywhere. Her own studio, she said, was a disused operating theatre in the basement of an old fever hospital. She also declared that a real artist would sooner let her children starve than work at anything but her art, at which Jack jumped up and loudly applauded, provoking laughter throughout the hall. After the lecture she sought us out and attached us to the group she led next door to the pub. Seven weeks later Jack ran away with her to America.

  Seven weeks. In seven weeks he abandoned everything: his family, his home, also what I thought of as the bohemian life we shared in an untidy flat in Kennington, where we threw wild parties—at least they seemed wild to us—and never washed a dish or made a bed or swept a floor. I think Jack did not sleep at all, the night we met Vera. At one point, finding himself seated next to her at the back of the pub, and having said something that caught her attention, and having then sat with lowered eyes and sunken head as she spoke energetically to him, to my horror he took her face in both hands—pronounced some kind of blessing on her—and kissed her on the forehead. Then he screamed.

  She was amused. She promptly seized him by the hair and kissed him back, hard on the lips with her mouth open. Jack was flushed but not with embarrassment, with a sort of brazen excitement, and he looked about him, he caught my eye, glorying in his own audacity. I was standing at the edge of the group, quite sober, and staring at him with palpable dismay. For the rest of the evening the pair of them talked to each other in low tones, occasionally shouting with rude laughter and both drinking a lot. The last I saw of Vera Savage that night she was in the middle of the Charing Cross Road and producing for Jack’s benefit a sweeping bow with copious baroque flourishes of the wrist. He shouted to her that he would see her tomorrow, as hissing I dragged him away.

  The next day at lunchtime we walked into the pub and there she was, by herself, waiting for us. Or rather, waiting for Jack. Why? Beneath a façade of studied eccentricity he was still very much the earnest art student, his limited experience of the world lending him the merest patina of sophistication with which to conceal the depths of ignorance within. But he was ambitious, and he was bold, and he took himself extremely seriously, and perhaps this was what attracted her. A day or two later, when she saw his work, and liked it, apparently, the thing was cemented. I believe she recognized a dim echo of her own style, albeit immature and unformed, and was flattered. As for Jack, he was in love, he had told me so the night before. It had happened in the pub, he said, and although he had never experienced such an emotion before, he was in no doubt at all as to what it meant. He knew the precise moment: at one point in the conversation, in fact just before he planted his lips on her forehead, she had put her hand on his for several seconds, and that was it. It was as simple as that. I knew it had more to do with the loud, slutty aspect of the woman, and the fact that she painted as he wanted to paint, but I also realized that no matter how tarty her clothes, no matter if they reeked of cheap scent, when Vera Savage was aroused, which was often, for she contrived arousal with alcohol, she seemed to possess a life-force to which men were irresistibly attracted. Jack was no exception, in fact he responded with immediate enthusiasm to her vitality, in particular to her louche talk and her expressive, tactile behaviour.

  We talked soberly, the three of us, in the pub that day. She was wearing the same old cocktail dress from the night before, but she had scrubbed off her makeup and looked much younger, almost girlish in fact, her skin so pale you could have traced the faint blue veins beneath. Also, the Glasgow accent was much less broad, clearly she modulated it to suit the occasion. We talked about painting and I was astonished to discover, in the clarity of daylight, and herself at ease, and not in front of an audience, that she was without dogma, she was without conviction of any sort at all. We spent an hour together, and as I remember it now Jack bombarded her with questions which to her ears must have sounded laughably naÏve, for he held to his ideas with no little intensity, believing with all the ardour of his youth that art had to be cleansed of the corrupting influences of the past, though quite what those influences were I cannot now recall. But to all his impassioned certainties she responded with mild shrugs and worried frowns, and discovered exceptions to every broad, sweeping law he proposed, and seemed uncomfortable with anything that smacked of theory or abstraction. Finally she apologized—I’m awful sorry, Jack—and laid a hand on his arm and said she supposed she was a practical sort of an artist, and if a thing worked, it worked—she supposed he must think her very stupid—?

  That stopped him in his tracks. That shut him down all right. That with his flood of talk he should elicit from Vera Savage an apology for her own stupidity—in that moment I think he jettisoned every idea he had about painting and started again with a clean slate, for he was young enough then that such a shift was possible. Personally I considered it not unikely that she was very stupid, but at least we now understood why, in her lecture the evening before, she had resisted generalization, and had worked her way back to certain painters, Kandinsky in particular, and what she had learned from each of them.

  This was as far as we got that day. Almost as an afterthought, as she rose from the table, she said she was going to a party later, would we like to come? Yes, we would; and I scribbled the address on the back of a beer mat.

  We had fetched up in a small house in a shabby street in Camden Town. We had found Vera in a smoky kitchen surrounded by a group of men, and the serious thoughtful woman of the morning was gone. This was Vera out on the town, with her face painted, and more than a few drinks in her, and she was telling them loudly that it was all over with Europe, that the war had done for Europe, that the future of art was not in Paris—certainly not in London—no, it was in New York. The men groaned and sneered, but all the same it was an impressive spectacle: there she stood, or swayed, rather, a fake-leopardskin coat draped about her shoulders and a glass in her hand, shouting tha
t she was sick of the English and their hypocrite ways, at least with Americans you knew where you stood, and some wag, a poet called Julian, I think, said that if she knew where she stood how come she fell down so much? There was loud laughter at this, hoots of it. I was exhilarated by the whole scene and thought Jack would be too, but oddly he hung back, maintaining an unsmiling reserve amid the hilarity.

  Later the three of us sat on a windowsill in the yard at the back of the house and Vera talked more about New York. She was quiet now, serious, maudlin, very drunk. She repeated herself, she made grandiose claims, she declared New York the greatest city in the history of the West and produced several reasons why. Jack listened intently. Impatiently he cut in, he asked her questions about the city, about the art that was being produced there, and became ever more thoughtful as he pondered what she told him. Then he asked her what New York looked like, he wanted her to talk about the architecture, and there was more in this vein—he wanted to know what things cost—and when at last we left the party, the damp streets of Camden Town, the industrial brick chimney towering black against the night sky, and the rain slanting through the lamplight—it all seemed as gray and mediocre and finished as Vera had earlier said it was. It was an important night, largely because of this idea of New York as a shimmering, dynamic focus of restless energy, of unfettered creativity, of artistic freedom, and limitless aspiration—

  Vera took my hand in both of hers and warmly told me we were going to be great friends. Jack she took by the lapels of his overcoat, and for several embarrassing seconds they kissed noisily on the doorstep, him with his hands rummaging round inside her coat until I loudly coughed.

  I will never forget the fevered conversation we had on the way home, a conversation which continued for most of the next thirty-six hours. It was momentous, and it changed the course of all our lives, this is no exaggeration. When Jack met Vera two days later it was just the two of them. They were in the back of the Salisbury, in Covent Garden, at a small brown table with peeling varnish and black cigarette-burns all over it. The pub was quiet, late morning, and a beam of sunlight full of swirling smoke came shafting down. Vera sat with her hands clasped about a large gin-and-tonic and told him she was a married woman.

  —I know that, he said.

  Up came those sleepy eyes, thick with smudged mascara, small gods of humour sporting about the painted mouth.

  —I know all about Gordon, he said.

  He was apparently a piece of work, this Gordon she was married to. We’d done a little research.

  —I don’t care about him, he said, I care about you.

  The gods of humour allowed the grin to split open, so the black slot showed, but only for a second. I realized she must have heard this before, and it was one of her games, it was as if she said to all her men, all right, you be the one to take me away from him, go on, do it. The difference, I’m afraid, was that Jack was the one.

  —I know you don’t love him.

  Apparently this provoked laughter. She pushed herself back in her chair and regarded him with some amusement and also, I think, no small amount of affection. I think by this time she was well taken with him.

  —Here’s what we’re going to do. We’re going to have some more drinks, then we’re going to a hotel.

  —To do what?

  —What do you think?

  He certainly had her full attention now. All this he had planned out beforehand, and discussed with me in detail. She leaned forward and put her elbows on the table.

  —And what are we going to do after that, Mr. Rathbone?

  —After that we’re going to a travel agent in the Strand and book passage to New York.

  I don’t believe any of her men had come up with a strategy like this one before. It seems she let out a loud shout of surprise. She slapped the table. She was intrigued. In some ways she liked being told what to do. She was a strong artist but a weak woman. The trick was knowing which was which.

  —But I’ve agreed to spend six months in England.

  —Then I’ll go by myself.

  At this point Jack, frowning, thrust his hands in his trouser pockets. Vera was staring at him, squinting and smiling at the same time. She was amused, perplexed, threatened by this intense young man. She was also tempted. She liked the sound of this. It was mad enough for her, wild enough, it was dramatic, and Vera was easily bored. Now came the coup de grâce. From out of a pocket Jack produced a roll of ten-pound notes fastened with a rubber band. He tossed it onto the table, where it came to rest in a patch of smoky sunlight.

  —That should do us a few months.

  From the bank account set up by my father to see us through our first year of art school, that morning I had withdrawn half the money: Jack’s share. Vera fingered the tight roll of banknotes. He told me later that watching her touch the money he knew he had her. It was not that he’d bought her, exactly, but he had made the decision, made the plan, she need only acquiesce and the adventure was hers, and it wouldn’t cost her a penny. She pushed her chair back and rose to her feet. She stood over the table gazing down at him, the sunlight streaming around her from the top of the pub window, and her breasts—he modelled their roundness with his hands—swelling up under her cardigan till he was giddy with desire, he wanted to have sex with her there and then, on the floor, in the sawdust, in the spilt beer and fag ash, and he told her so. Dear god, but how young he was, to be acting so boldly!—but that was Jack. He told me she bit her lip when he said it.

  —Did you want another drink, hen? she said.

  They had more drinks—he could go one for one with her even in those days—and then went to a hotel. Back then you had to go somewhere seedy if you wanted a room for an hour or two and had no luggage. There was a place off Russell Square she knew, and she preferred to go there rather than to our place in Kennington, or the old fever hospital. They went by bus and sat on the top deck holding hands. Afterwards, when it was all over, they went to a pub round the corner. They were ravenous with hunger. They had pork pies—and god, he said later, how good they tasted!—and were in a dizzy mood, side by side on a bench at the back of the public bar, the pub transformed into a theatre and the two of them, he said, the only audience—life a comedy performed for their benefit alone—they were silly with love, or at least with sex, and drunk already on the American plan, the beer and the gin having nothing of the potency of this fierce happiness which had sprung to life between them.

  For it had gone well in bed. Jack told me all about it later. I listened with mixed emotions—hard not to think of little Miss Splendour in the schoolroom that night—as he described in some detail the dowdy, cramped room with the grubby lace curtains on the window, and a large dark wardrobe at the foot of the bed with mirrored doors of tarnished glass, and yes, it had gone well. Slow and cautious at first, the pair of them had clambered from opposite sides into a musty bed and lay between cheap sheets, holding hands, Vera whispering that this was enough, they need do no more than this. They lay there for a few minutes, there was some tentative stroking, then a kiss—and that woke them up. That got the blood moving, and somehow they discovered how—or their bodies did, rather, for it was their limbs in their shifting negotiations under the sheets that found a fit, and the fit of their bodies, convex to concave and thigh upon thigh led them without difficulty and with sudden growing pressure of passion to the moment when Jack flung back the sheet and rose up on his knees to pull off his shirt, and Vera the same in manner more demure, and it was consummated then; and they clung whimpering to each other for many minutes afterwards. Vera was really rather a reticent lover, Jack once told me, her libido weaker than her personality might suggest, but bed, in the early days, served to instill in them the sense of fusion that set them apart from the world, and rallied them to the cause that swept them clear across the Atlantic, that cause being—them against England!

  So they sat in the back of the little pub off Russell Square eating pork pies and drinking beer and talking about Amer
ica. He never wavered for a minute. He later said that he had seen it all quite clearly the night of the lecture, that he’d known then that he wanted her but could never have her in England. The plan had been formed that night, he said, and by the time she was making her idiotic bow in the middle of the Charing Cross Road he was certain they were bound for New York.

  This was not strictly true, and I was there, but this was how Jack liked to remember it.

  It was a fraught time for all of us, those last few weeks in London, as Vera disentangled herself from Gordon the Terrible, as we now referred to him, and we waited in a state of breathless suspense for the great day to dawn, I mean D-Day, Departure Day. My own position was delicate: put bluntly, I disliked Vera, and I disapproved of her, but I couldn’t risk alienating Jack by saying so. And though I was learning more about the woman every day—Jack talked of nothing else, of course—none of what I saw or heard aroused my sympathy, much less my affection. She was more complicated than she appeared, this I did admit, and she was possessed of a powerful original talent, but she had little control of that talent, nor did she seem to want to control it, in fact at times she seemed determined to trash it, for there was a self-destructive quality to her drinking even then. I saw vulnerability and isolation in her, and of course there was the damage done by her upbringing, which was a Gorbals tenement building, violent father, alcoholic stepmother, too many children in too small a space. None of her deep damage would manifest for a while yet, but what did alarm me was that she had an impulsive streak every bit as unpredictable as Jack's: they were too much alike, and what they saw in each other was little more, I believed, than a reflection of themselves. And although I hoped that because she was married she would back out of their arrangement at the last minute, I could not be confident about this.