The Portrait - Iain Pears

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sin.

      On the other hand, he cannot say that I do not have a wondrous variety of faults to own up to. I keep him entertained; occasionally I hear an intake of breath, and I feel him half-smiling in shock, and, I suspect, with more than a little envy. You must meet him, by the way. I don’t mean that because you will enjoy the experience, although he is pleasant enough. Or because he is the high point of social life on the island, even though that is true as well. You must meet him: it is an absolute obligation. His power in his domain is greater than that of the Pope in what is left of his. This island of Houat is a theocracy. I do not joke. The priest is deputy mayor, but ensures a nonentity has the official role so that everything is done his way. He is head of the fishing syndicate. The magistrate. The headmaster of the school. His nuns control the electric telegraph, and he has only recently given up control of the alcohol supply. You do not annoy Father Charles. Not if you want to stay on this island. He is monarch, head of the judiciary and God’s representative on earth, all incarnate in the same small man. And he has the only good cook on the island. Benevolent, but in his sphere as autocratic as you are in yours. You must go and see him; if you do not, he will come and see you, and that would be impolite. Do please try to make yourself agreeable, for my sake. None of your witty cosmopolitan repartee, if you don’t mind. He is a proud man, very protective of his subjects who, you should know, do not object to their subjection. Were it not Father Charles, it would be someone else, who might not be so enthusiastic at keeping the French at bay.

      This is the man who has taken your place as my guide and confessor. I did my best to enjoy my sins, but I find atoning for them is more pleasurable. Do you know, he once called me a libertine? A marvellously ancien régime term, which I was quite taken by. I came back home and immediately sketched myself as Hogarth’s rake, soaked in debauchery in my studio, with my two favourite models draped all over me. I burnt it, though, as I didn’t manage to put in any severity, only nostalgia, which wasn’t proper. You can’t be forgiven unless you truly regret—that’s one of the rules, apparently—and it was clear evidence that my regret was far from total.

      Besides, it was a lie; my sins were never so elaborate. Even when my very soul is at stake I can’t resist the tendency to overpaint the subject. It is a weakness you pointed out to me years ago, and the Lord knows how hard I have tried to rein myself in, to stick to facts, to obey the law as laid down both by God and William Nasmyth. But I never succeed for long. Sooner or later, I heighten the colour, clutter the image or add an extra model to my memories.

      JACKY WAS ONE of the figures in my sketch, of course, always my real favourite as a subject. She was so disgusting, so common, so vulgar, you couldn’t help admiring her. And a brilliant model, as well. A body like Aphrodite, a face like the Virgin and an ability to stand still for hours in any pose you cared to ask for. I’ve always preferred women on the Rubens scale, myself. None of these skinny Botticelli types for me, all points and angles. With Jacky you got the opulence of form, rounded and full, set off by a flawless skin that was almost like marble. She was the personification of fecundity itself; everything about her was sensual, fleshy. What else could anyone want?

      I imagined initially she was thinking when she sat for me, but eventually I concluded there was nothing inside at all. A complete blank. Time had no meaning. A minute, an hour, a day, it was all the same to her. She had nothing better to do, and so she simply sat still. I think that was what she did when she was on her own; having me pay her to do what came naturally was an extra bonus. But when she did talk, my goodness! The contrast between that angelic expression and dull mouth was remarkable. “So I said to her, I said, if you think I’m going to give you tuppence-ha’penny for that, you got another think coming. I told her straight and do you know what she said to me. …” On and on she would drone, giving details about the price of tomatoes or cloth or how she burned some cake, or couldn’t find a stocking, until your head was spinning and you wanted to jump out of the window just to get away from her. I always thought it most perplexing, because I still, somewhere, held on to the old notion that character is reflected in the face. Not in the case of our Jacky, and the discovery fast killed off any desire. You could ask her to do anything, and she would meekly obey, but it was like making love to a cardboard box; movement but no passion, not even the pretence of any engagement. Just the same vacant stare. I knew, of course, that she had alternative sources of income, that she “entertained a gentleman,” as she put it in a show of primness—I always suspected that somewhere in there was a lower-middle-class housewife, who dreamed, perhaps, of her parlour and of washing day. I do not think the gentleman in question could have been greatly entertained. Nor did I wonder who the poor soul might be; just felt sorry for him.

      A pity she went and killed herself, though; she deprived the world of many a fine picture by her selfishness. I never would have thought it possible, until I read about it in the paper. Part-time prosititute dragged from river, the papers said. She deserved a better memorial than that, despite her many failings. The best model in London, in my opinion, but stupid. Very stupid. Imagine killing herself just because she got herself pregnant! Who would have thought she was even capable of feeling shame? Let alone acting on it in such an extreme way. Very perplexing. She was silly when alive, and died as she had lived, it seems.

      Ah! Such an impenetrable face you have, my friend! Such control. You are a painter’s nightmare, you know. It was something I once admired greatly. The stoicism of the English gentleman is a wonderful thing, unless you are trying to capture it on canvas, because emotions bounce off it and never reveal themselves. Tell you something shocking or wondrous, insult you or compliment you, and that same inscrutable expression comes back. It is like trying to peer through a dirty window: you do not see true, and end up seeing only your own faint reflection instead. That will not do. You must show some strong emotion for me before you leave or I will throw down my brushes and stamp out in a painterly rage. Haven’t had one of those for years.

      Curiously, Evelyn took to Jacky. I passed her on when she came back to London in 1902. She needed a model, and eventually Jacky became her one and only sitter. It was a strange conjunction. Each supplied a lack in the other, I suppose; Evelyn must have liked Jacky’s simplicity, the domesticity of her mind, the vacuity of her tastes. Perhaps she wanted a refuge from all that aestheticism, needed an occasional antidote to the high seriousness of creation. Can you understand such a thing, William? Might it ever appeal to you? And Jacky responded to something in Evelyn; her independence and her silence, perhaps. The inner strength that belied the feeble frame. Or perhaps she saw more than I did, and realised how very fragile she truly was, and responded to her courage. She was laughed at, I know, when people like myself—who thought the low made suitable subjects for art but not for conversation—saw them together in the street. Arm in arm, sometimes. Friends. Not artist and model, or mistress and servant. There was a certain lack of decorum in being so familiar; a bit like taking the parlourmaid out to a restaurant.

      And how they could spend so much time together was a mystery, especially as Jacky would scold her on occasion like some old shrew. I wouldn’t have put up with being talked to in such a way by a mere model, but Evelyn didn’t seem to mind, even showed signs of being properly apologetic. She found friendship in all sorts of odd places, and never really enjoyed the company of other artists. She was one of those people who could winkle out something interesting in almost anyone, if she chose. I thought that with Jacky the effort must have been almost superhuman, but it never looked that way when I saw them together. She seemed far more relaxed than ever she was with me. Not that I thought about it then.

      I need no models now; I haven’t painted any woman under forty for some time. They guard their womenfolk carefully here, and it is a small island. Besides, I don’t find all these lacy coifs particularly appealing, and they don’t go about with their heads uncovered. Nor, for the most part, are they particularly appealing subjects, unless you like to paint weather-beaten faces and the effects of back-breaking work or scant food. Not the sort of subject matter that usually appeals, and they are not open-faced; you would have to know them much better to penetrate their minds and turn them into something worth looking at. Still, beauty can flourish in even the most inhospitable terrain. There is one girl I would love to paint; she has the eyes of the devil. But we have done no more than exchange glances over an expanse of church. I fascinate her, I know. I am to her what you were for me: a new world, full of opportunities, offering everything she wants

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