Her tone was no less firm. ‘Charles, I feel rather uneasy about the whole thing. DeForest is coming on Sunday and I can’t just … you know.’
‘You do want to come, don’t you ? Well then, don’t worry about that. I’ll think up some amazing lie for you to tell him.’
That’s just it. I won’t… tell him a lie.’
Oh, for Christ’s sake. ‘Oh, I see. Couldn’t you just sort of say you were going to the Blake and not with who ?’
‘Well, we went together not long ago. And it would be unlikely that I’d get it into my head to go again.’
Surely there was no telling what could get into that battered hold-all. I went hang-dog.
‘I suppose I could say I wanted to see the Gray Illustrations,’ she said.
‘Which are the grey illustrations?’
‘The illustrations to Gray’s poems.’
‘Oh, of course. Say that, then. But he’d still want to come along, wouldn’t he?’
‘Not if I said I was going to see Nanny Rees afterwards.’
I waited. ‘Would we really have to go and see Nanny Rees afterwards?’
‘Do you mind?’
I thought fast. ‘Not at all. But you said she lives in Famham, and, well, that’s quite a-‘
‘No, Fulham.’
‘Fulham? Oh, great, well let’s do that then. She sounds marvellous, I’d love to meet her. Is she Welsh, or what?’
I went along to the Tate, I need hardly say, on the Saturday before, decked out like a walking stationery department, also with a pocket edition of the poet’s work and the well-thumbed Thames and Hudson.
Half an hour of wandering round: I sneered at the militarist paintings on the ground floor and laughed at one or two of the Hogarths. Then it was down to work. I mapped out an approximate route and noted points of general interest. In the hope that he would acknowledge me on the day, I approached (practically on all fours) a winded attendant and talked to him about how much he hated Americans and children of all nationalities. I had a thorough look at the Blakes, marking them up in the Thames and Hudson, and generally got the feel of the place. I was a bit ashamed, actually, having not been along before then. Because I really quite liked Blake – and not just for the fucks he had got me, either.
Two hours later, over barley wines in a pub off the King’s Road, I swotted up some quotes and drafted a few speeches. One on God Creating Adam, to be delivered as we were leaving, by the large windows at the southern end of the gallery; unless I missed my guess, albescent reflections of the sun playing on the river would flit eerily over my face as, voice hushed and brow creased, I spoke these words. I wrote:
There’s so much sexual energy in the horizontal… movement of the painting. The faces of God and Adam [pause] – pained, yet distant. [Ask what she thinks and agree] Yes, it’s almost as if Blake imagined the Creation as an inherently … tragic act. [Laugh here, getting out of your depth] Quite sexy, though. Obviously quite an experience.
Then, in note form, I sketched out a short polemical piece on why I hadn’t been to see (and apparently hadn’t heard of) the Gray Illustrations.
suspicions justified – hopeless insipidity of the material -prim humour – no apocalypse
My face darkened, over-demure – reactionary platitudes – fuck all that
The pub started to fill up with blue-and-white-scarved soccer hooligans, who looked disconsolate, and uniformed senior citizens, who seemed giddy with precarious cheer. Finishing my barley, I read through what I had written. I looked round, coughed, and read it again. Nobody talked like that. Still, Rachel knew a fair amount about Blake, and it was a sort of last fling anyway. After this, I thought, I’ll have to go Lawrence.
I patted my pockets for loose change. Enough for a taxi, or a double whisky plus the tube. Perhaps I should do neither, force down a pie or something. It was a funny thing. I had never been much of an eater, and was relieved now that Jenny had become too preoccupied or whatever she was to cook those marshy dinners for Norman and me (which I had always gobbled up in case Norm thought I was queer). But instead of being merely bland, food had begun to seem irrelevant, superfluous, wholly alien. Must be Rachel. I remembered a Dickens character, Guppy in Bleak House, telling Esther, for whom he had the hots, that ‘the soul recoils from food at such a moment’. ‘Such a moment’: it bothered Guppy only when he was in a flap. It stayed in my body like a dull allergy. It occurred to me that I might be in love.