Absolute Truths (57 page)

THREE

‘
.. the process of artistic invention probably casts as much
light as anything human on God’s devising of the world.’

AUSTIN FARRER

Warden of Keble College, Oxford,

1960-1968

Lave Almighty and Ills Unlimited

‘
Charles, m terribly sorry,’ she said, ‘but my car’s expired at the
top of Canonry Drive, the gates of the Close are locked and m
marooned. What’s the best thing to do?’

After a fractional pause I said: ‘I’ve got a key for the gates. I’Il
drive you home.’

‘If there’s a taxi-service I can call –’

‘
No, the last taxi will have left the station by now, and you
won’t get anyone turning out at this hour. Just let me tell Martin
what’s happening.’

I retreated upstairs knowing I should ask Martin to rescue me
but he was in the bath. Moreover his reaction when I called out
the news was: ‘What a lovely treat for you, old chap, but do be
careful if she invites you to see her etchings,’ and after this breezy
display of sanity I felt that any show of reluctance on my part
could only seem neurotic.

I tried to pull myself together. I told myself that I was not going
to bed with Harriet March, that there was no question that I
would go to bed with Harriet March, that it was utterly beyond
the realms of possibility that I would go to bed with Harriet March
– but immediately I was haunted by those famous words of St Paul:
‘For the good that I would, I do not; but the evil which I would
not, that I do.’ There indeed was a desperate and chilling glimpse
into the darkest corners of the human psyche.

Still inwardly shuddering I retrieved the appropriate key from
my study and rejoined Harriet in the hall.

‘
This is very good of you, Charles,’ she said, and as I realised
she
was
genuinely grateful I saw her not as a siren but as a woman
now merely anxious to return home after an arduous round of
socialising. My uneasiness ebbed – until I remembered Abba Cyrus
of Alexandria saying that one had to think of fornication in order
to avoid it. Perhaps I needed to remain uneasy. Perhaps uneasiness
was not, after all, a neurotic symptom but a manifestation of sanity,
a hint that my instinct for self-preservation was still alive.

Feeling almost as if I were taking my life in my hands I led the
way outside to my car.

Once I had relocked the gate of the Close behind us we said little.
Starbridge was at that hour deserted, its lighted streets casting
long shadows down the ancient alleys which honeycombed the
centre of the city. After following the boundary wall of the Close
past St Anne’s gate I drove under the new by-pass and headed
south on a minor road which led to Upper Starwood, three miles
away.

Beside me Harriet was very still, her long mane of hair falling
forward and shielding her face. Her coat was unbuttoned; the
short skirt of her dress rose above her knees; I could see the curve
of her legs in the glow from the dashboard.

‘
You’ll have to direct me,’ I said abruptly as we entered the village. ‘I’m not sure I can remember where your house is.’ It
seemed a long time since my visit to her studio at the height of
the pornographic sculpture scandal.

We turned down a lane by the church, and soon afterwards
forked left towards open fields. Seconds later Harriet’s cottage appeared on the right and I recognised ‘the outline of the barn
which she had converted into a studio.

‘
Come in for a moment,’ she said. ‘There’s something I want to
show you.’ And as I hesitated, immobilised by all my
uncertainties
,
she added dryly: ‘It’s okay – I shan’t tear all my clothes off once
the door’s closed.’

To what do I owe this disappointing departure from routine?’
She laughed and suddenly, to my astonishment, I found I could
relax. It was as if
we
had succeeded in domesticating the under
current of sexual attraction by acknowledging its presence and treating it as mundane. ‘I’ll give you some coffee,’ she said. ‘It’s
the least you deserve for your chivalry in bringing me home. And
we’ll drink it in the studio. You’ll feel quite safe there.’

‘Will I?’

‘
Oh yes. In the studio I never waste time on mere trivialities
like sexual intercourse.’

‘You see sex as trivial?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It’s all right if you’ve got nothing
better to do.’ As I halted the car she added: ‘When I’m working
sex just seems an inexcusable waste of time and energy.’

I then had the most unexpected thought; perhaps the realisation
that she was obviously speaking the truth set me free to relax and
view the situation more imaginatively. I saw that she too, like Hall
and Martin, was someone whom before Lyles death I would have
dismissed without a second thought. And I saw that perhaps she too, like Hall and Martin, might have some message which could
help me as I struggled to survive my bereavement. The possibility
seemed fantastic, but I felt that if I could stop thinking about
Harriet’s sex-appeal and start listening to her views I might not only survive the night without making a disastrous mistake but
even survive the next few days without having a breakdown.

‘
Can you see anything?’ enquired Harriet. By this time we were
moving down the path to the barn. ‘You’d better hang on to the
back of my coat.’

‘I can’t see the back of your coat.’

‘Never mind, we’re almost there.’

A moment later she was turning the key in the lock, crossing
the threshold and switching on all the powerful lights.

Following her I found myself in the long rectangular room
which I had seen two years ago. At first sight it seemed chaotic,
crammed with alien paraphernalia, but gradually it became clear that the chaos was an illusion and that all the tools and materials,
all the work finished and unfinished, were arranged with an intri
cate order. I was reminded of the appearance of my study when I
was working under pressure but still well in control of all the
mounds of paper on my desk.

‘
Have a seat,’ said Harriet, plugging in the heater which stood
by the small iron table, but I ignored this invitation and stood
gazing at my surroundings. Unlike Elisabeth Frink, Harriet did
not work in quick-drying plaster which was then chiselled into its
final shape. I noted a large clay-bin and a block and plenty of wire,
and a couple of finished pieces, heads cast in bronze, not large,
which were labelled as if about to depart on a journey to some
exhibition. Various tools were lined up on a bench which ran
along one wall, and beyond this a small shape, shrouded in white
cloth, rested on a plinth.

‘
"Clothed in white samite,’" I quoted, “‘mystic, wonderful."‘
That’s what I wanted to show you.’ Harriet switched on the
electric kettle and joined me. ‘Come and look.’

I followed her over to the plinth, and when she pulled away the
cloth I found myself staring at a pair of ugly hands which had
been modelled with such skill that the result was a work which
manifested both extreme delicacy and extreme power. In fact so
struck was I by the innate ugliness of the object and its transforma
tion into a creation which radiated both beauty and truth, that I
could only gaze at the hands in silence.

‘Recognise them?’ said Harriet at last.

‘
No.’ Then light dawned. ‘Good heavens!’ I exclaimed stupefied.
Aysgarth!’

‘
Yes.’ She touched the clay with a sensuous gesture which
implied a satisfaction physical in its intensity, and not for the first
time I thought how strange artists were. With their capacity to seal themselves away in a private world and retreat deep into a
forest of mental forms which no ordinary person could penetrate, they seemed almost inhuman
as
they slaved constantly to explore humanity. Harriet caressed her work like a mother; I suspected it
would always mean more to her than any infant of flesh and blood,
and that it was probably no accident that she was childless. Yet I
felt that she must know more about the deepest emotions of
maternity than some mothers, and I saw then that although she
was obviously capable of profound passion, every ounce of it was
poured into her work. I saw too why she was so fond of Aysgarth.
Any affectionate, amusing, intelligent male who made no time-
wasting demands would be a highly-prized acquaintance.

‘It must be very good,’ I said as I continued to gaze at Aysgarth’s
broad, gnarled hands clasped in prayer, ‘because I find it disturbing
as
well
as
moving.’

This was evidently the right thing to say. She decided to confide
in me. ‘I always wanted to do those hands of his,’ she said, ‘but I
could never see the right way to present them. Then about a year
ago they began to haunt me. I dreamed about them, thought of
t
hem night and day — until finally I saw how they had to be done.’

‘
And after that did everything go smoothly?’

‘
Good God, no! Quite the reverse.’ She sighed before adding:
‘Creation has to be the greatest pleasure in the universe, but it can
be pretty damned harrowing when the work’s in process.’

I gestured towards the hands. ‘You never thought of giving up?’

‘
Don’t be ridiculous! When things go wrong I don’t chuck in
the towel,’ she said, caressing the hands again with her forefinger.
‘I just slave harder than ever to make everything come right.’ She
ran her forefinger down the back of the left hand and around into
the hidden area at the base of the palm. ‘Making everything come
right,’ she said. ‘That’s what it’s all about. No matter how many
disasters happen, no matter how many difficulties I encounter, I
can’t rest until I’ve brought order out of chaos and made everything
come right.’ She moved dreamily around the plinth. The caressing
hand seemed almost to impart life. I half-expected the sculpted
hands to unclasp themselves in response to her touch.

‘
Of course I made a lot of mistakes,’ she was saying. ‘I turned
down various blind alleys and had to rework everything to get
back on course. But that’s normal. You can’t create without waste
and mess and sheer undiluted slog — you can’t create without pain.
It’s all part of the process. It’s in the nature of things.’

On the counter behind us the electric kettle was coming to the
boil but she was oblivious of it. She was almost oblivious of me.
At that moment she had eyes only for those ugly hands which
were so beautiful. ‘And don’t throw Mozart at me,’ she added
as
an
afterthought. ‘I know he claimed his creative process was no
more than a form of automatic writing, but the truth was he
sweated and slaved and died young giving birth to all that music.
He
poured himself out and he suffered. That’s the way it is. That’s
creation.’

Suddenly she swivelled to face me. ‘You theologians talk a lot
about creation,’ she said, ‘but as far as I can see none of you knows
the first damn thing about it. God didn’t create the world in seven days and then sit back and say: gee whizz, that’s great! He created the first outlines of his project to end all projects and he said: "Yes,
that’s got a lot of potential but how the hell do I realise it without
making a first-class balls-up?" And then the real hard work began.’

‘
And still continues. Theologians don’t believe God withdrew
from the world after the first creative blast and forgot about it.’

‘
Of course he couldn’t forget! No creator can forget! If the
blast-off’s successful you’re hooked, and once you’re hooked you’re
inside the work
as
well as outside it, it’s part of you, you’re welded
to it, you’re enslaved, and that’s why it’s such bloody hell when
things go adrift. But no matter how much the mess and distortion
make you want to despair, you can’t abandon the work because
you’re
chained
to the bloody thing, it’s absolutely woven into your
soul and you know you can never rest until you’ve brought truth
out of all the distortion and beauty out of all the mess — but
it’s agony, agony,
agony —
while simultaneously being the most
wonderful and rewarding experience in the world — and
that’s the
creative
process which so few people understand. It involves an
indestructible sort of fidelity, an insane sort of hope, an indescrib
able sort of ... well, it’s love, isn’t it? There’s no other word for
it. You love the work and you suffer with it and always —
always
—
you’re slaving away against all the odds to make everything come
right.’

She turned away but I went on staring at Aysgarth’s hands as
she made the coffee. Eventually I heard her say: °there’s no milk.’

‘
It doesn’t matter.’ I moved to the counter to join her. ‘And
when the work’s finally finished,’ I said, ‘does every step of the
creation make sense? All the pain and slog and waste and mess —
how do you reconcile yourself to that? Is every disaster finally
justified?’

‘
Every step I take — every bit of clay I ever touch — they’re all
there in the final work. If they hadn’t happened, then this —’ She
gestured to the sculpture — wouldn’t exist. In fact they
had
to
happen for the work to emerge
as
it is. So in the end every major
disaster, every tiny error, every wrong turning, every fragment of
discarded clay, all the blood, sweat and tears —
everything
has mean
ing. I give it meaning. I reuse, reshape, recast all that goes wrong
so that in the end nothing is wasted and nothing is without signifi
cance and nothing ceases to be precious to me.’

‘
So you’re saying that the creative process includes a very strong
doctrine of redemption.’

Again she turned away abruptly. ‘I don’t trust those theological
words.’