ROTHKOS RED

Sue Hubbard is a freelance art critic, novelist and poet. Twice winner of the London Writers competition she was the Poetry Societys rst Public Art Poet. Her rst collection Everything Begins with the Skin was published in 1994 by Enitharmon. A number of her poems appeared in Oxford Poets 2000 published by Carcanet. Depth of Field, her rst novel, was published by Dewi Lewis in 2000. John Berger called it a remarkable rst novel. She writes a regular column in The Independent.

Also by Sue Hubbard

Everything Begins with the Skin (Enitharmon, 1994; Salt 2009) Depth of Field (Dewy Lewis, 2000) Ghost Station (Salt, 2004)

SUE HUBBARD ROTHKOS RED

Cambridge

published by salt publishing 14a High Street, Fulbourn, Cambridge cb21 5dh United Kingdom All rights reserved Sue Hubbard, 2008 The right of Sue Hubbard to be identied as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Salt Publishing. First published 2008 Printed and bound in the United Kingdom by Biddles Ltd, Kings Lynn, Norfolk Typeset in Swift 10 / 14 This book is sold subject to the conditions that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publishers prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. i s b n 9 7 8 1 8 4 4 7 1 4 4 4 5 hardback Salt Publishing Ltd gratefully acknowledges the nancial assistance of Arts Council England

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2

For Louie and Alena

Contents
Rothkos Red Mona Lisa Jackson Pollocks Curtains The Monarch of the Glen Mondrians Moon Bernini and Leopard Skin Goyas Dark Oi Yoi Yoi The Hay Wain The Laughing Cavalier 1 20 30 42 56 77 94 111 122 137

ROTHKOS RED
ts like your cunt, hed whispered in her ear in front of the magenta Rothko. All that velvety redness. I know it so well; every fold and crevice. I dont have to be an expert on art to understand these paintings. He had been standing behind her in front of the large canvas, his arms wrapped around her waist, his newly shaved chin on her shoulder, as shed talked him through Abstract Expressionism. Shed liked standing like that in a public space, the bulk of him pressed against her back, their smells mingling. She had felt, what? Owned. Later when theyd gone back to the little hotel room with the low ceiling in the Marais and made love in the afternoon, the shrieks of the children in the playground of the cole Maternelle below had oated up through their window. He had brought her to Paris for her birthday and theyd sat in a small side street outside a caf in the April sunlight drinking caf au lait.

[1]

rothkos red When I was trapped in my marriage, this is what I dreamt of, hed said. Sitting having breakfast in Paris with a beautiful woman. No one had said anything like that to her before, none of the occasional lovers who had crossed her path when shed been living alone, trying to make ends meet, struggling to bring up Suzie. They had only been together for two months. On the journey back to London on the Eurostar shed watched their joint reection in the trains dark glass whilst hed slept, her head resting on his shoulder, trying to seal the image in her mind like those fossilised ies in amber that the Algerian trader had wanted to sell them on the steps of the Muse DOrsay; though the amber, laid in rows on a rush mat, had probably been plastic, the ies fake. But they had looked good together. Not quite young anymore, it was true, but an attractive item. And as hed slept, shed been conscious of the need to le and catalogue the moment, aware of its transformation from the present into a memory.

Belle was waiting for Maggie under the clock at Grand Central station. The concourse was busy. It was snowing outside and Manhattan had become gridlocked. Commuters scurried to catch their out of town trains before the weather got worse, hurrying to their platforms beneath the crystal chandeliers across the marble halls as the large akes of snow slowly melted on their hats and scarves. Belle was reading a book, her coat collar pulled up [2]

rothkos red against the icy February chill. The tweed cloth was covered in cats hairs and there was a small hole in the toe of her shoe. She looked up from her reading as Maggie approached and broke into a smile. Hi, you must be Maggie, great to meet you. Maggie lent forward, relieved, and kissed her on the cheek. Belle was Adams cousin once removed on his American mothers side. When Adam had been twelve his father had sent him to stay with Belles family up in their cabin in the Adirondacks. Adam had often wondered if it was supposed to have been some sort of consolation prize that holiday, compensation for his mothers sudden death on that rainy night in that terrible pile up on the M4. His father had never really been able to talk about it, had retreated into the carapace of his own grief, leaving the boys to cope the best they could. He was also a believer in the redeeming power of physical activity. He had thought it was good for both young bodies and minds, especially as Adam and his younger brother, Tom, lived in Fulham. So that summer they had been packed off for a month in the States. They had shed and canoed, had made campres down by the lake, and Adam had tried not to think about his dead mother. During the funeral service at the crematorium, a vicar whom Adam had never met before had compared his mothers earthly life to the state of an unborn baby, explaining that a baby lived in a safe environment, blissfully unaware of what fate awaited it once it was pushed out from its warm watery cradle into the wide world. The baby, the vicar had said, was without fear for its future. [3]

rothkos red And while, in life, we might think we had an idea of what death might entail, we could not possibly conceive of the journey into the light that would follow, imagine the comfort that would engulf us, any more than the baby could imagine being born. For as with innity, the human mind could not comprehend the mysteries that belonged only to God. Adam had tried to listen, but had felt nothing. He was sure they were supposed to be comforting, but the vicars words hadnt helped very much. He had bit his lip hard, hoping the pain would stop him crying. He just wanted his mother back. That summer in the Adirondacks Adam had thought Belle a bit odd. There had been something intense about her, something of the outsider. Although only thirteen, she was already taller than him, with long shin bones and gangly arms and small new breasts that grazed the blue nylon of her baggy shapeless swimsuit. Shed been physically inept, always losing her sneakers or stepping on glass or dropping her swimming costume out of the roll of her towel as theyd gone down to bathe off the wooden jetty in the cold lake. But she had been funny. Hed liked that about her, though perhaps it had been a bid for acceptance, an apology for her clumsiness, but shed been a great mimic and had made him laugh as theyd sat round the campre melting marshmallows on sticks. Before that he hadnt laughed in a while. He had only ever seen her once again, years later when hed gone to a sociology conference at New York University. Theyd met in a bar in TriBeCa. She was tall and angular with big raw [4]

rothkos red hands and an equine face that made him think of Virginia Woolf. No doubt she would have liked that association as she was trying to be a writer, but without much obvious success. Shed been married for a while to one of her Latino students from the literacy class she taught once a week to make ends meet. But it hadnt worked out. There had, Adam thought, been something a little down-at-heel about her, a little desperate. He had bought her dinner, feeling slightly overwhelmed by the details of her chaotic life and been secretly relieved when the evening was over. He had not seen her since, but theyd kept in touch, tied by their childhood summer, she extending a permanent invitation to repay the dinner if he was ever back on her side of the Pond. She always sent Christmas cards. One had mentioned that she had published a story in the Atlantic Monthly. He was genuinely pleased and sent a postcard congratulating her; in fact, whenever he was away, he would usually drop her a card; a Velzquez from the Prado, a Minoan gurine from Crete. While in Paris he had sent her one of the Rothkos mentioning that there was someone new in his life. Her next Christmas greeting, in her familiar looping American script, had generously included them both: To dear Adam and Maggie.

It had been those words that had so hurt her. Their names linked together on the inside of the card, a tasteful photograph of a r tree, its boughs bent with crystals of snow, [5]

rothkos red wishing them Seasons Greetings. It had made her cry, that acknowledgement of them as a couple, an item. But it had come too late. Five days before Christmas Adam had told her he was moving out. Maggie, I cant do this anymore. I just cant give you what you want. I dont understand. I dont know what Ive done. Anyway Ive never told you what I want. You havent done anything. Its probably selsh, but I need more space. I need to be in my own place, have time to get on with my next book. Im sorry; really I am that it hasnt worked out between us. Perhaps she should have seen it coming. But she hadnt. She had thought that now they had found each other they would grow old together. How many more chances did one have of happiness on the slow slide down towards fty? As far as she was concerned, there was nothing much wrong. Nothing that couldnt be negotiated, sorted out through talking and a bit of gentle, mutual care. But that was just the trouble. He wouldnt talk. Not about feelings anyway. She remembered how, when in bed one night as she had lain with her back against the curve of his stomach, his face buried in her hair like two spoons in a drawer, how he had mumbled something about the vicars words being, all those years before, just a formula, how hed never even met his mother, and that he could have been talking about anyone. When she had tried to probe, to draw him out, hed just clammed up, saying there was no point in talking about it. When hed told her he was leaving she had suggested Relate, but she [6]

rothkos red had known in her heart that he would never agree to go. Maggie, thats your solution. I dont do therapy; I dont even accept it as a paradigm. She hadnt meant to love him. When theyd rst met that day, by chance, in the bookshop in the Festival Hall, she hadnt been particularly attracted to him. Theyd both been killing time. He had been waiting for his train from Waterloo, while she, too early for her appointment with the design company for whom she did the occasional watercolour for their greeting card range, had been idly checking the racks to see if they stocked any of her designs and had accidentally knocked over a pile of books with her portfolio. He had helped her re-stack them. She had thanked him, perhaps rather too profusely, and theyd ended up going for a coffee. He had asked about her work and something in the tone of his voice, some slightly forced air of interested politeness, had made her wonder if she had sounded dismissive or rude. She had not meant to be. She knew she could appear either too opinionated or too shy. People who didnt know her thought her feisty. She alternated between feeling wary and prattling on, wanting to say something interesting or wondering if she was just sounding pretentious. She knew her unease made her self conscious. Nevertheless, hed asked for her number and the following week had rung her. Suddenly he was just part of her life. Im not in love with him, shed told her friends, after all he doesnt know a thing about art. How could I possibly be in love with a man who doesnt know his Picabia from his Pollocks? Seriously though, it just sort of works. [7]

rothkos red Hes nice and likes Suzie; I like his sons. We have fun and I fancy him. And now, now after two years, after he had woven himself into the fabric of her life, he had suddenly snipped the stitches, cut and run. He seemed to have done it so easily so that now she was left feeling like a piece of old knitting, the unravelled thread all twisted and furred. She no longer knew whether the man shed been with for two years was the real person or this cold stranger who seemed to have dropped a steel portcullis in his head leaving her stranded on the other side. She hadnt known she would miss him so much; his skin next to hers, the fur of his stomach against her spine, even his snoring. Perhaps you never recognised love for what it was until it was no longer there for the taking. For an intelligent man, he was so disconnected from his feelings. Shed tried to pinpoint when it had started, the shift, the slow, imperceptible withdrawal that only now she could begin to chart. Perhaps it had been when hed agreed to help set up a new course at Newcastle. Hed get up at rst light, leaving her sleeping, to catch the earliest possible train and then not phone all week, caught up with his own agenda in the department. Maggie, why all the fuss? You know Ill be back at the weekend. What is there to say? You know where I am. You know what I am doing. Honestly, you really dont understand the pressure of academic life. Youll still be there when Im back on Friday, but my paper has to be in. She had begun to feel pushed to the margins of his life, as if she was simply lling in the gaps between more [8]

rothkos red important events like that Styrofoam packaging used to send fragile objects through the post. All she wanted was to matter. Was that too much? It had seemed so. Perhaps intellectual intelligence was the last refuge of the emotionally damaged. Work appeared to be the only place where he felt really in control. It was a known quantity. She remembered that night just before he had moved in, how in her cold dark kitchen hed lifted her skirt and, pushing her hips hard up against the edge of the cold steel draining board, had entered her with an urgent insistence and then, quite suddenly, burst into tears. He had said it was for all the wasted years with Joanna; for his inability to resist her histrionics and emotional blackmail. Perhaps that was the moment Maggie had started to care. Vulnerability was, after all, erotic. She had held his face close in the dark and tried to comfort him, wondering, as they had stood in the puddle of shed clothes, if this was the rst time that hed wept since hed been a child; if his tears, as his mouth had reached, wet and hungry for hers, were really those of a young boy for his dead mother. Maybe that was the key to his leaving, maybe excessive childhood suffering had made him cruel because it had left him unduly self-protective, unable to empathise with what she had come to feel for him; this unromantic, daily sort of love. They had gone to the cinema the night hed got back from Newcastle. She had known there was something wrong when she had tried to slip her hand into his and hed withdrawn it. That small movement had felt like a blow in the chest. [9]

rothkos red Why did you do that? Do what? Move your hand. I didnt. Youre imagining it. I was just getting comfortable. She had, for sometime now, had the feeling that things were out of kilter, that there was something she should know about that she couldnt even name. The next evening she had cooked spaghetti vongole, a favourite of his, laid the table with candles, placing each fork and napkin with great precision as if by making everything perfect she could safeguard herself in someway. As they had sat working their way though a bottle of Rioja she had known she had to ask him. Adam, are you going to leave me? It had been then that he admitted it, that something had changed, that he just didnt feel the same anymore. Im sorry Maggie. It was as though he had been waiting for her to force his confession. Hed gone straight upstairs and thrown his things into a holdall. Ill pick the rest up some other time. Theres not much. Just a few books. But shed known he would never come to get them. She hadnt wanted to cry or to make a fuss, to mirror Joannas manipulative behaviour, but the tears had come anyway, silent, unbidden, streaming down her face as she had stood on the doorstep watching him load the car in the icy evening air. All along the street, lights from newly decorated Christmas trees blinked in the brightly lit windows. [ 10 ]

rothkos red Now you are going I can say what Ive never dared to say before, shed said looking him straight in the face, that I learnt to love you. After that she had turned quickly into the house, not waiting to watch him get in the car and drive away, shutting the door against his loss and the winter dark.

Belles apartment was above a Chinese restaurant on the Lower East Side, a tiny oriental island in the once largely Jewish neighbourhood. Whilst some of the old sweat shops and tenement buildings with their heavy iron re escapes had been taken over by young artists, or turned into Tarot reading or tattoo parlours, there was nothing hip about The Lotus Garden with its murky interior, its cheap red lanterns and lurid gilt frames containing dayglo Chinese dragons. The stairway leading from the side door up to Belles apartment smelt of cats and boiled washing. The visit had been a sudden decision. When the Christmas card with the snow-laden pine branches had arrived, Maggie had, on the spur of the moment, phoned Belle. She needed to get away, put some distance between the sense of rejection and confusion Adams leaving had stirred in her, and Belle had seemed genuinely pleased. Come any time. Anytime you like, Maggie, Id be delighted to meet you. I cant believe we have never met before. Ive nothing planned, no commitments. Im so sorry about Adam. Hes an idiot. He never struck me as very in touch with himself. That summer we spent [ 11 ]

rothkos red together as children, he never once mentioned his mother and hed only lost her three months before. To me that didnt seem quite normal. But I just assumed it was his English stiff upper lip. And honestly he hadnt seemed to have changed that much last time I saw him. Maybe that hurt just went very deep. I dont know. But men! Seems theyre just as useless both sides of the Atlantic. There certainly arent any here worth having! Her apartment consisted of three interlocking rooms: a living room with an old oral sofa covered in cats hairs, Belles bedroom, and a room with an old wardrobe, its bursting doors tied together with string, a cat litter tray full of chalky cat turds, and a broken ling cabinet. In the kitchen the table was barely visible under the piles of old newspapers, the bits of photocopying and the latest batch of unmarked student assignments. At the very end was a tiny bathroom. It had lost most of its tiles and from the hairline crack in the sink, which ran from tap to tap, water seeped slowly onto the oor. Hope you dont mind cats. I used to have mice, Belle said taking off her heavy tweed coat and slinging it on the nearest chair. Not at all, Maggie answered, handing her the owers shed bought at the airport orist. She hoped there werent also cockroaches.

When Belle wasnt teaching she spent most of her days at her chaotic kitchen table, surrounded by piles of wash[ 12 ]

rothkos red ing up, correcting and sending out stories to various literary magazines. Shed won a couple of prizes in contests and was waiting for her luck to change. But this week she had to teach most days. She taught a literacy class out in a small college in Brooklyn. Maggie admired her gritty tenacity for she hated the journey, and hated the students who were mostly not interested in learning at all. I also hate, Maggie, that last term I slept with the guy who teaches Math. After a few weeks he told me he needed to get away and have some time to think things through; that he wasnt sure he was over his last relationship and thought he was still in love with his previous girlfriend. I feel awkward being around him now, but I have to go, I need the money.

As she came out of the subway on 68th Street Maggie turned up her coat collar and walked towards 70th Street. The sky was heavy with snow. It was much colder here than in London, the sort of cold that got into your bones, weather straight down from Canada and off the Great Lakes with no Gulf Stream to warm it up, she thought, as she walked west towards Central Park. She had always wanted to visit the Frick with its Rembrandts and El Grecos. She particularly wanted to see Vermeers Ofcer and Laughing Girl. Shed do the smaller galleries in SoHo and Chelsea on Monday and Tuesday and leave MoMA until her last day. The Frick was more like a stately home than a museum with its elegant, serene rooms built in the [ 13 ]

rothkos red European style by the industrialist Henry Clay Frick, in 1914. A luxurious, appropriate home for a successful industrialist and paterfamilias, it was a museum not only to art, but also to an ordered successful life. She particularly liked the enclosed courtyard garden with its marble fountain. Sitting there among the ferns listening to the trickle of water was like stepping into a Henry James novel. She felt sad being there alone. All her recent trips abroad had been with Adam. She had got used to taking him round galleries, educating him about art. He had, for a while, at least, been a willing pupil. But now she had to nd a new centre, make sense of this renewed single status. What was it that all those self-help manuals always talked about loving yourself ? Was that the key? Shed never thought that she would ever have to face being on her own again. Not at this age; shed expected they would turn grey together.

When she climbed the cat-scented stairs to Belles apartment, she found her with her arms plunged in the kitchen sink trying to make half-hearted inroads into the piles of washing-up. A wet pyramid of crockery, saucepans and glass was balanced on the draining board. As Belle went to fetch a cloth for Maggie to help her dry, the whole edice slipped and a tumbler smashed onto the oor. Shit, goddam shit! Belle exploded angrily, bending to pick up the broken glass and cutting her nger, which began to bleed profusely all over the oor. As Maggie [ 14 ]

rothkos red handed Belle a cloth to staunch the cut, she noticed her face was streaked with smudged mascara and that her mouth was set in a tight little pucker. Shed been crying. The son of a bitch didnt even tell me, Belle said shoving her bleeding nger angrily under the cold tap so that the blood swirled among the debris of coffee grouts and unwashed cups. I only learnt by chance. If I hadnt gotten to work there again this term, if Id applied for another job, I might neverve found out that hes getting married. Married! And he never even told me, the jerk. So I stood there in the staff room and threw a cup of coffee at him. Got him right in the groin. That caused a bit of a stir, I can tell you, she sniffed. Belle come and sit down. Hows the nger? Let me have a look. Do you need a bandage? No, its ne, she said parking herself on the only free stool not covered by papers and wrapping the discoloured dishcloth in a wad around her damaged nger. Had you been with him long? No, I wasnt with him at all, thats the point, she said, brushing a strand of faded hair from her long damp face. Maggie noticed, for the rst time, there were streaks of grey in it. He slept with me a couple of times and then made the excuse that he wasnt over his previous relationship and needed time to think. Think. Ugh! And now hes getting married. He didnt take long to think about that, did he? and she started to cry again, hot, angry tears. At least I ruined his new trousers though. A direct hit right where it showed. Was that a good idea? [ 15 ]