The Corpse at the Haworth Tandoori (6 page)

Declan didn't know much about art, and wasn't even sure he knew what he liked. He recognized that the half-finished picture on the easel was not an abstract, but beyond that he could make no judgment on it. The colors were predominantly green and blue—a natural scene, then—and they were in great blocks of color: blue toward the top, a central section of green, with some yellow to the sides and at the front. Fields, Declan thought, and sky. But when by a natural association of ideas he raised his head and looked through the long window, he could see no resemblance between the picture and the long field and stables behind Ashworth, which the studio overlooked.

“Keep your mind on what you're doing, and not on what I'm doing,” snarled Ranulph. Fine, thought Declan. Except that I'm not actually doing anything at the moment.

He soon was. Byatt eased himself forward, took a more delicate brush from the pot, and gazed intently at the picture. There was silence in the room for a minute or two.

“Take the palette and keep it close to my hand,” directed Byatt at last. “Kneel or sit—whichever is easier.”

Declan sat with his back to the canvas, holding the palette immediately under it. Now he had the best possible view of Byatt, who did not seem to mind, or even to register his gaze. Declan amused himself by trying to imagine the man as he had been in his prime. There were one or two photographs around the farmhouse, but he had not yet inspected them closely. He knew all about the
effects of aging, though, from his own family, who were long-lived.

He saw Ranulph Byatt in his forties as tall—maybe six foot two—upright, with a good pair of shoulders and a decisive manner. The face had probably always been gaunt, and the gauntness had inevitably given him a forbidding air. That, combined with the glinting devilment in the eyes, must have made relationships difficult. Had he been capable of softness, of tenderness? Declan reserved judgment on that. Certainly Byatt seemed capable of inspiring devotion, discipleship. So had Adolf Hitler.

He kept returning in his mind to the eyes. They were not things Declan could study closely, because it seemed like impertinence while Byatt was painting, and Declan sensed that impertinence was something the man would never tolerate. But he did, finally, manage to get a sidelong look at those eyes, and it struck him still more forcibly that they were the last things to age; pale blue, piercing, merciless. If Byatt had been a schoolmaster, children would have quailed beneath that gaze. Headmasters too. He stared ahead at his picture, seeming to analyze, dissect as he painted. To him, Declan thought, nothing else seemed to exist as the brush—slowly, calculatedly—applied strokes sometimes bold, sometimes delicate. Nothing else exists, least of all me, he thought. So he was surprised when Ranulph Byatt spoke.

“Not
the
field,” he said. “Not the field I see in front of me.
A
field.”

Declan was quiet for a moment, then realized he was responding to his first action when looking at the picture.

“I see,” he said.

“I am brought down to painting imaginary landscapes,”
Byatt went on, his voice harsh as he paused between strokes. “
My
field, a field I've seen, a field in a photograph, a field in someone else's painting. Then they come together to become a field picture. . . . Pap. That's all I can paint now. Small-gallery fodder. But I have to paint.”

“Do you never paint portraits?” asked Declan naively. The eyes were turned momentarily on him.

“Never! Cash-on-the-nail, painted-to-order stuff. I wouldn't prostitute myself. I sometimes paint—how can I describe it to someone like yourself?—I paint my reactions to people, what effect their personalities have on me, pictures
based
on people, springing from them. Events, happenings too: I paint the impression they have on me, the force with which they impress me. But rarely, rarely . . .”

“And when you do that, would they be a more abstract kind of picture?” Declan asked.

“You could say that.” Byatt started painting again. Declan had the odd sense of being played with, as an angler plays with a fish. There was relish in the performance, as if Byatt enjoyed talking to someone totally ignorant of art more than he would have enjoyed talking to a fellow artist or a connoisseur. “I did think of ending my days painting hundreds of different views of that field outside, like that charlatan Bacon and his bloody popes. Couldn't face it. And they wouldn't even be gallery fodder. No one would have been interested at all. No, better as it is. Perhaps that fool Stephen will make me hate him so much that I can get a picture out of my hatred. . . . All right. That's enough. Now I must sit and think.”

He waved Declan away. Not quite knowing what he should do, he got up and stood beside the palette stand.
Ranulph Byatt sat back in his chair, gazing at the easel. Time passed. There was a total silence. Not even a clock ticked in the studio, and the rest of the house seemed to Declan almost exaggeratedly quiet. Declan felt as if he were mounting guard at some enormously impressive state funeral. When Byatt spoke, however, it was in tones of dissatisfaction and frustration.

“Why do I bother? Why do I plan tomorrow's work? This stuff is on a level with my art-student work just after the war. I should be ashamed. . . . Come on: lift me up.”

So the earlier journey from room to room was done in reverse. Declan first put his arm across Byatt's hunched shoulders and eased him up. The old man seemed already to be used to the routine, happy to rest his depleted height and weight on the young man. When, slowly but confidently, they reached the landing, Byatt paused: he had heard, as Declan had, a slight sound from the bottom of the stairs. He waited to get his breath, then roared:

“You don't need to spy on us. He'll do. You're redundant for the moment, Martha. You can come and teach him about care of the brushes, then you can take your cards. Resume the husband hunt. I'm well suited with the lad here.”

As they continued with their walk, Declan's mind registered two things: first, that Byatt's hearing was as acute as his sight; second, that he dismissed his daughter from her place as his helper with all the relish of a Victorian mill owner sacking his hands. Whatever inspired his womenfolk's devotion to him, it was not considerate treatment.

 • • • 

That evening Declan went with Stephen to the Grange. They picked up Jenny Birdsell and Arnold Mellors on the way. They had been standing by the big gate, talking and gesturing, and they volunteered their company rather than waiting to be asked. Stephen looked as if he could gladly have done without it.

The Grange was a nondescript pub, but one with angles and crannies, and the Ashworth party made for a corner that seemed to be theirs by tradition. While Stephen made for the bar to get the first round—and probably because he was not with them, Declan thought—Mrs. Birdsell said, “I hear things went awfully well today.”

“Not so bad,” said Declan.

“That's wonderful. Because Ranulph doesn't take to everybody.”

“No, I suppose not.”

“It must feel such a
privilege
to be approved of by him, and to be able to help him.” She looked up, and saw Stephen handing over a note at the bar. “But I mustn't say any more, or I'll be accused of sentimentality! The most terrible of crimes! Isn't it odd to be called sentimental when you
care
passionately about England's greatest living artist?”

Declan said nothing. He felt himself on unknown terrain, where silence was the best policy. He had an odd sense of being drawn into a conspiracy that he felt was nothing to do with him. People who said they cared passionately about something usually were using this as an excuse for any kind of shabby conduct or dirty trick. Stephen's sardonic expression when he sat down with them showed that he knew the direction the conversation had taken.

“Now tell us about yourself,” he said, handing Declan his half pint. “And about Ireland. If you went by your countrymen's reputation, you wouldn't think there was an Irishman alive who drank half pints.”

Declan was relieved—and he saw Jenny and Arnold were disappointed—by the change of subject. He started hesitantly. He didn't tell them about his drunken father, or his drunken uncle, or, come to that, about his occasionally drunken aunts, but he got into his stride when he talked about growing up in rural Ireland, the perpetual fight against poverty, the struggle for education, the still-powerful priests. Soon he was talking well: in that respect, at least, he was the Englishman's stereotypical Irishman. When he finished it was time for the next round.

“I'll get these,” said Arnold Mellors, getting up. “Same again, Stephen? Declan?”

“And I'll have another vodka and tonic,” said Jenny Birdsell. “Then my daughter won't smell it on my breath.”

“That's a
legend
, Jenny,” said Stephen with a world-weary sigh. “Anyway, she guesses you've been drinking when you fall upstairs.”

“Sure, it's a terrible thing,” said Jenny in a stage Irish voice, and smiling at Declan, “to have a pious daughter who's always shakin' her head at her ould mother's lapses from grace.”

Declan smiled noncommittally.

When Mellors returned with the drinks he was followed by a short, squat, waddling figure in a frilly navy blue frock; she in her turn was followed by a man, slightly taller but hardly more easy on the eye, dressed in baggy trousers that seemed to date from decades past, with shirt open at the neck, and a straw hat at a rakish angle that did
nothing to dispel his air of bile and self-preoccupation. He was carrying two glasses.

“Mind if we join you?” the woman said. Jenny Birdsell nodded unenthusiastically.

“Charmayne Churton, and her brother, Ivor Aston,” said Mellors, and then gestured toward Declan.

“The new handyman, Declan O'Hearn,” interrupted Charmayne, a strong element of gush in her voice. “We've all heard about you.”

“Not an easy job you've taken on,” said her brother. “We hear that you've made an excellent start.”

“Charmayne and Ivor have cottages on either side of me,” said Jenny Birdsell. It seemed something of an effort to keep her voice as neutral as it was.

“We're devoted to Ranulph,” said Charmayne, sitting down and producing the statement as if it were some kind of certificate or passport. “We agree on that. We sometimes
tiptoe
to the studio—with Melanie's permission, of course—just to see the work he's been doing that day.”

“We'll rely on you to tell us when we can do that without disturbing him,” said Ivor Aston. “Which means when he's asleep, basically. Ranulph has very acute hearing.”

“Yes, I've noticed.”

“We wouldn't think of trying to watch him at work. It would be intrusion. Quite apart from the fact that he would hear, and have one of his rages. To be the object of one of them would be shattering to someone of my temperament.”

“Isn't it remarkable,” said Stephen to no one in particular, “that my grandfather inspires such devotion?”

“Not really surprising,” put in Arnold Mellors quietly, “considering he's one of the country's great artists.”

“Was,” said Stephen. He turned to Declan. “Grandfather feels no affection, you know. He's incapable of it. That's why it's remarkable that he manages to inspire it in others. Even my mother, whom he treats like dirt, seems genuinely fond of him. To me it's a great mystery.”

“Not really a mystery,” said Jenny Birdsell, her manner quite schoolteacherly, “when what we really feel—what we feel
primarily
—is not affection but admiration.”

“Hmmm,” said Stephen, considering that. “Partly true, I suppose, like most things. But it's not true of my mother, for one. What she feels is affection—love. It's incomprehensible.”

“Love often is,” said Declan feelingly. “People love the most terribly unsuitable people—husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters. And it
is
incomprehensible to outsiders. There's no logic to it, or it wouldn't be love.”

Stephen shrugged.

“Maybe, maybe. But I hope when I love I don't waste it on someone who's incapable of feeling affection herself.”

“Maybe someone who's incapable of loving back is a lot safer than the other kind,” said Arnold Mellors.

“Safer?” said Stephen, his voice rising. “You don't understand much if you think loving my grandfather is safe. You watch it, Declan, or you'll fall victim too. Because he has one other clever trick that can be deadly—absolutely deadly.”

“What's that?”

“He makes you know what he wants done without having to tell you in words. And he makes you want to do it for him.”

The next morning Declan took over the male nurse part of his duties for the first time: he helped Martha to get her father up, then alone he helped him to shave, dress, and relieve himself. He had had a great deal of advice the night before from Martha about what needed to be done, and what Ranulph Byatt liked or disliked in the doing of it. In the end he just went his own way, doing things as he had done them with his elderly relatives back home. Only once did he displease his charge, when he pulled the old man's trousers on little by little.

“Put them around the ankles, then pull them
up
!” he roared.

“Oh, is that how you like it, sir?” said Declan, unfazed. “Then that's how it'll be done.”

The getting ready process tired Byatt, and he sat for some minutes getting his breath.

“Does my ancient body nauseate you?” he asked suddenly, looking at Declan with a loathing that seemed to be directed not at him but at himself.

“Not at all, sir,” said Declan truthfully.