The Matisse Stories - Antonia S. Byatt [17]
‘Certain combinations have certain effects. For instance the opposition of yellow and violet, blue and orange, that can appear natural in a way, because natural shadows are blue or violet. Light and shade, you see? Whereas red and green, if you put them next to each other—sometimes you can see a kind of dancing yellow line where they meet—and this isn’t to do with light and shade, it’s to do, possibly, with the fact that if you add certain reds to certain greens you can make yellow, which you would never have guessed.’
‘Geraniums are natural,’ said Mrs Brown.
Robin stared at her abstractedly.
‘Natural red and green. They don’t make yellow.’
‘Look,’ said Robin, pushing together the soft heart and the hard apple. He could see the dance of unreal yellow. He was entranced.
‘Hmn,’ said Mrs Brown.
‘Can you see yellow?’
‘Well, a sort of, how shall I say, a sort of wriggling, a sort of shimmering. I see what you mean.’
‘I try to make that happen, in the paintings.’
‘So I see. It’s interesting, once I know what you’re up to.’
The sentence was a concession, unsmiling, not wholly gracious. She accepted that he had given her what he could, the battle was, she obviously considered, won, and by her. Robin was relieved, really. He was not so far out of touch with real life that he could not sense Debbie’s fear of losing Mrs Brown. So he had given Mrs Brown his secret vision of the yellow line. Mrs Brown went out, head high. She was wearing a kind of orange and green camouflage Afro-wrapper, and a pink headband.
Shona McRury telephones. She asks to speak to Debbie, who has in fact answered the phone, and spends a long time congratulating Debbie on an article on feminist art in A Woman’s Place, an article about the amorphous things that women make that do not claim the ‘authority’ of ‘art-works’, the undignified things women ‘frame’ that male artists have never noticed, tampons and nappies but not only those, and the painted interior cavities of women, not the soft fleshy desirable superficies explored/exploited by men. Debbie has made a lovely centre-spread of the crayon drawings of an artist called Brenda Murphy, who works in the kitchen with her children, using their materials, crayons and felt-tips on paper, creating works that are a savage and loving commentary on their lives together. Shona asks Debbie if she knows if Ms Murphy has an agent or a gallery, and Debbie answers abstractedly, praises the interesting variety, the eclectic brilliance of Callisto’s shows, and is rewarded by Shona McRury’s request to see Debbie’s husband’s work, which is so witty, she thinks, she just loves that mysteriously funny little painting in Toby’s loo, a jewel in a desert. Debbie thinks a jewel in a desert is a good phrase, but is not sure the idea of wit bodes well. Robin is, she recognises, somewhat humourless in his driven state. But she fixes something exact, for this coming Wednesday, without consulting Robin. Robin is perturbed and threatened by the closeness of Wednesday, as Debbie has foreseen. She becomes ever so slightly minatory, and at the same time plaintive. ‘It isn’t so easy to get a chance of getting the work seen by a gallery, you can’t just pick and choose your moments or you end up with none, as you ought to know by now, and I’ve done my best for you, I pinned her down, you have to, she’s so busy, even with the best will in the world …’
Robin condescends, in terror, to have his work viewed.
Shona McRury has topaz eyes and long, silky brown hair, like a huge ribbon, caught up at the back with a tortoiseshell comb. She wears topaz ear-rings, little spheres on gold chains, that exactly match her eyes, and an olive silk suit, with a loose jacket and a pleated skirt, over a lemon-yellow silk shirt, all of which tone in impeccably with her eyes. (Debbie who is now a professional in these matters sees immediately how the whole delicate and powerful effect is constructed around the eyes, reinforced by a subtle powdering of olive and gold shadow shot with