Part 20 (2/2)

'Bought it off an Aussie I saw in the street.'

'I thought you were in Liverpool.'

'I was. I couldn't stand any more of it, so I took a few days off.' John was sitting low on his spine, arms folded, the wide-brimmed hat pulled down over his eyes. His costume - an almost threadbare velvet jacket in olive green, once apparently belonging to a game-keeper, corduroy trousers much bagged from the rain, thick boots - proclaimed the artist. So did the earring, the almost black beard.

'Liverpool isn't London?' Denton said.

'The Liverpudlians believe that only Greece, Rome and dead people in fancy clothes can be proper subjects for art. They're astonished and censorious that I could think the gypsies in the fields or the workers at the docks could interest me. They display the very best taste of the eighteen-fifties.' He sighed heavily and looked over at Denton, who was beginning a negotiation with a waiter about the choucroute garni. John said, 'My sister said she'd seen you. Gwen was rather taken with you. She likes older men.'

'I'm certainly one of those.'

'She said you were looking for a girl.'

'Not what you think.' Denton pa.s.sed over the leather envelope that held the drawing and told the waiter he'd have the chicken pie.

John took the drawing out and looked at it. His head came back as if his eyes were too close to it. 'Right piece of s.h.i.+t, isn't it,' he said.

'Gwen said Burlington House.'

'Oh, yes.'

'You don't recognize her? She was in her first year at the Slade.'

'Might. I used to drop into the drawing cla.s.ses, might have seen her. Dreadful piece of work, this.' He put his head forward and brought the drawing up almost to the brim of his hat. 'The remarques are more interesting.'

'The little drawings in the corners?'

'Not awfully well done, but they're Slade work, which is something. '

'Different hands did the head and the little things?'

'Oh, of course. The girl might have done the remarques, in fact - they look about right for first-year work. But she didn't do the head - that's Academy stuff, somebody immensely pompous and outdated. Bit odd, putting remarques on somebody else's drawing, more so when the drawing's of you. Little mementoes.'

'Of what?'

'Who the h.e.l.l knows? One's a doorway; means nothing to me. The other-' John laughed. 'Christ on a crust, it's Himple!' He laughed again. 'Sir Erasmus Himple, RA - one of the great old t.u.r.ds of Burlington House. The drawing is his Lazarus. It's obvious. I have a friend who insists that it looks like a man preparing to let out a colossal fart. That look of intense stupidity - the open mouth, the rolling eyes - old Himple said it shows Lazarus at the moment of realizing he's alive again. I suppose one could wake with a fart, eh?'

'”His Lazarus”?'

'Himple put a painting of the raising of Lazarus into the last exhibition. Huge thing - took up most of a wall. He described it as his ”chef-d'oeuvre” and made much of the fact that his Lazarus is young and his Jesus is a Jew. And indeed, the Christ has a nose like Shylock in a burlesque, but everybody else in the painting is as English as Boadicea, so it looks as if the Jew of Malta has wandered into a palace garden party. Himple is unmatchable - a genus unto himself.'

Denton was turning over the name - Himple. Somebody else had mentioned Himple. Who was it? He was eating chicken pie, bending to look over John's shoulder at the drawing. 'I thought maybe the man in the drawing was screaming.'

'Well, he could be. One's never quite sure with Himple. You know, on closer inspection, I think that Lazarus looks a bit like the woman in the big drawing? And I wonder if she was perhaps the model for Lazarus's sister, who's shown in the painting as tripping over the ground as if she's weightless, one hand extended like a hostess introducing the dustman to the Prince of Wales.'

'I should have a look at the painting.'

'It's worth the trip, if only for the comic effect.'

'But why would Lazarus look like a woman?'

'The girl in the drawing was a model?'

'Now and then, they say.'

'There you are.'

'For Lazarus and and the sister?' the sister?'

'Well, it's like old Himple to want to show a family resemblance. He likes to be authentic, you know - brothers and sisters always look alike, right?' He laughed. 'Like Gwen and me.'

Denton looked more closely at the little drawing. 'And Lazarus is what she'd look like as a man?' He was thinking of the brother who had picked up Mary Thomason's trunk from her lodging house.

John stirred. He found a pencil in a pocket, searched through others until he found a folded piece of cartridge paper, on one side a list of some sort. He smoothed it out on the table and began to draw with quick, sure strokes. To Denton, it was like theatrical magic: one moment, blank paper, the next a face very like Mary Thomason's but male.

'I've cut his hair for him. Or we could have him with a beard, like Lazarus.' He made another sketch just as quickly, and the same young face appeared with a short beard, even the slight scantiness of the youthful hair shown. The economy of line was remarkable, and all at once Denton understood 'the Slade look'. He told John as much, praised his ability.

'I've thought of doing portraits in Trafalgar Square - sixpence a head. I'd make a fortune.'

'Can I keep those?'

John slid the paper over the tablecloth. 'You can tell your grand-children you own an original Augustus John.' He took the paper back and dashed off a signature, shoved it over again.

'You're not lacking in confidence, anyway.'

John laughed. 'Not on Tuesdays and Thursdays.' He sighed. 'I mean to get very drunk and possibly find myself a woman. That sound like a programme that would interest you?'

'Afraid not.'

'I think Gwen wondered if you were attached to anybody just now.'

'I am, actually.'

'Oh.' John slid down on the banquette again. 'It's just as well. Gwen's really interested only in her art. Everything else is ”secondary”, as she puts it. I wish I had her concentration. You heard I was married?'

'Mmm.'

'Hard on the concentration. Gwen's quite right, actually. She'll wind up a nun of art. I'll wind up a bigamist. Or a trigamist. I can't live without women. Half a dozen of them, if I could afford them. Oddly, having only one is surely more distracting than two or three - they could entertain each other. Isn't that so?'

Denton had ordered coffee. He sipped. 'I was married once. It was distracting, yes.'

'What happened?'

'She killed herself.'

John seemed to ponder this. He put his eyebrows up, then c.o.c.ked his head, frowned. He said, 'I came to London to cheer myself up, and I'm not being cheered. It's time to get drunk.' He wandered away.

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