Then Alice
Then
Alice
I have learned so much about Jake in these weeks and I understand how to look after him. I am watchful, like Eddie, but I never mention his depression or the shadow of his childhood. There’s a new comprehension between us, that’s all. I encourage him to avoid alcohol and to take up exercise and he obliges, most days he runs in Hyde Park. When he is quiet, when a look of sorrow falls upon his face, I am quiet too. Silent but present, that’s my intention. I can soften his solitude, I can show him that he never needs to feel alone. And we are happy again, the blip of his five-day drinking binge, almost, but not quite, forgotten.
I am six months pregnant by the time of my show and the dress I choose to wear at the opening, a long, silky thing in vivid poppy red, clings to my swelling stomach. I stand in front of the bathroom mirror admiring my profile while Jacob blind-shaves in the bath.
‘Definitely pregnant now,’ I say, and he laughs.
‘Why, were you thinking you might not be?’
‘I like that it shows. I like people knowing.’
‘Me too,’ he says. ‘But there will be press tonight and that means photos …’
He trails off; no need to say the rest. For I still haven’t told my parents that I, an unmarried girl of nineteen, am expecting a baby in May. This shouldn’t matter in 1973, but to my father it will be the worst of crimes. I am jolted back to one of his more cringeworthy lectures, post-church, mid-wine, during a lunch to which I had foolishly invited a school friend. The wine, as always, was just for him, the morality sermon custom-designed for the two teenage girls at his table. The most odious part, I recall, was his slurred, clichéd repetition of an old biblical verse: ‘Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies’, or words to that effect. The friend, Matilda, dropped me soon after that and I never invited anyone home again.
Even so, I feel a little melancholy getting ready for the biggest moment of my life knowing the woman who gave birth to me, who brought me up to the best of her beleaguered ability, will not be there to share it. And Jake, as always, knows what is in my head.
‘Soon we’ll have our own family,’ he says as we set off for Robin’s gallery, ‘and that’s what matters.’
In both of us, a deep desire to give this unborn baby of ours everything we didn’t have ourselves. Beyond words, beyond bone; he will be confident, loved, listened to, encouraged, allowed to veer from any path. Choice, freedom, unequivocal support, oh we can get really quite evangelical on the subject of what makes for a perfect childhood. The opposite of ours is the shortcut.
How to describe the feeling of walking into a gallery where my painting of Jake and Eddie hangs in the window, where my name is spelled out against the white walls in huge capital letters: ALICE GARLAND. As instructed, we are half an hour early, yet there are already several people walking around, glass in hand, observing the art. It makes my stomach swoop just to see them.
‘I’m not sure I can do this,’ I say low-voiced to Jake.
‘You’ve already done it,’ he says, with a brief kiss to my cheek.
He throws his arms open to take in the gallery, its walls covered in my art.
‘Your time has come,’ he says. ‘And you, Alice Garland, are one hundred per cent ready for it.’
Rick is already here, drinking champagne and chatting to Robin’s guests. Unlike me he is entirely at ease amidst a room full of art lovers, thrilled to be introduced over and over again as Robin’s ‘latest discovery’. If he carries on with his avant-garde portraiture, Robin has intimated that the next show will be his.
‘Your paintings look so beautiful,’ he says, hugging Jake and I in turn. ‘I actually wept when I saw them. See that guy?’
He points out a collector he recognises.
‘The one in the red corduroy jacket and black polo neck? Robin told me he dropped eight thousand pounds in this gallery last year.’
Corduroy Jacket seems fixated by the pietà, titled Apparition , me seated with Jake asleep in my lap. I like the way his dark hair flops over my left hip, his hand curled between my thighs, his face, eyes closed, so beautiful in repose.
Robin comes over carrying two glasses of orange juice (Jake has avoided alcohol for three months now and is in better shape than ever).
‘I invited Jasper to come before everyone else,’ he says, nodding at the man. ‘Early reports are favourable. He’ll buy a few tonight, I think, but that’s the one he likes best.’
With his established artists, Robin takes a sixty per cent cut of the sales. As a lowly second-year art student, I was awarded a generous advance, but all the takings go to the gallery.
‘If we sell the lot, there’ll be a big bonus for you,’ he said at the time, ‘and dinner at San Lorenzo either way.’
‘I don’t want to sell that one.’ The words are out before I can stop them. Both Robin and Jake look at me, confused.
‘But, Alice, my dear,’ Robin speaks slowly, as if to a child, ‘all the work has been priced up. I bought it from you with the advance, I thought you understood that.’
It’s a moment before I can speak, irritated to find I’m fighting back tears.
‘It’s so personal. Me and Jake. I don’t think I want it hanging on someone else’s wall. Can’t we put a red sticker on it?’
‘It’s the best painting in the show. With the highest price tag.’ Robin’s voice is neutral, patient; he wants to be kind.
‘You can do another one,’ Jake says, a whispered aside.
I shake my head and have to wait before I’m able to speak. Even so, my voice cracks a little.
‘You can’t just knock out copies. It doesn’t work like that. The reason I love that painting is because it holds all my feelings about you. Why would I want someone else to have it?’
Jake says, ‘Robin? Could we keep it? Alice will give you back some of the advance. How about that?’
‘The whole thing,’ I say, ‘if you like. I haven’t spent any of it. I just want to keep that painting. It’s too personal to sell.’
I wonder if my pregnancy hormones are getting the better of me, but I don’t think so. I need to protect Jake’s vulnerability; this painting leaves us too exposed. My love for him, my desire to keep him safe from the darkness he tries so hard to hide. The self-loathing I now understand. It’s all there in this picture.
At exactly this moment, Jasper turns around and catches sight of the three of us talking, Jake with his arm wrapped around me.
‘Ah,’ he says, ‘the artistes.’ He pronounces it with an exaggerated accent. ‘Congratulations. Your work is wonderful.’
We shake hands, and although I avoid Robin’s eyes, I can feel his fierce scrutiny. I know what he is thinking: please don’t mess this up . He may be at the top of the food chain, but he still has bills to pay; he can’t allow an overemotional girl to get in the way of his business sense.
‘I’m particularly interested in Apparition ,’ Jasper says. ‘The style is reminiscent of classical religious art. Is that what you intended? You spent the summer in Florence, I believe?’
And so I tell him about my visits to the Accademia, my obsession with the work of Stefano Pieri and in particular his pietà.
‘There was something so sad in that picture, sad but not in the slightest bit sentimental, almost as if it had been caught off camera. That’s what I wanted to capture with this show.’
‘And why the title, Apparition ?’
‘I suggested that,’ Robin says. ‘I’m not sure exactly why. I just got this peculiar sense of déjà vu when I first saw the painting.’
‘It’s a very private piece,’ I say, and Jake squeezes my hand.
‘Exactly,’ says Jasper. ‘That’s what I like about it. It’s full of emotion and love and pathos. I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to buy it. And a couple of the others too.’
‘Wonderful news.’ Robin has a firm smile for me as the two of them walk away to secure the deal.
Jake says, ‘Please don’t let it ruin your night. We can do as many pietàs as you want. I am your forever life model.’
The gallery is filling up now with the young and beautiful, Robin’s hand-picked crowd of artists, musicians, actors and models, art buyers and journalists, photographers with cameras slung around their necks. Jake is more used to this, and when a photographer from the Daily Express approaches us as we stand beside the pietà with its little red sticker, he puts his hand around my waist.
‘Could you just turn towards Jacob a little, Alice?’ the photographer asks, framing the shot.
Instinctively, I rest one hand on my stomach, emphasising the pregnancy in that unconscious way of new mothers.
‘A little closer together, please.’
Other photographers have begun to gather around now, and they join in, calling out requests.
It’s easiest for me to look at Jake instead of the photographers, and so I stare up at him and he drops a kiss on my forehead, both arms curved around me, and this is the shot that will make most of the papers tomorrow, the one my parents will see.