There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [47]
Fury said to a mouse, That he met in the house, “Let us both go to law: I will prosecute YOU.—Come, I’ll take no denial; We must have a trial: For really, this morning I’ve nothing to do.” Said the mouse to the cur, “Such a trial, dear Sir, with no jury or judge, would be wasting our breath.” “I’ll be the judge, I’ll be the jury,” said cunning old Fury: “I’ll try the whole cause, and condemn you to death.”
Like the tail of a creature; yes; the poem had gone down the page in the book shaped like the tail of a creature.
He’ll tell Miles; Miles will be interested. Miles will maybe know what the poem is.
But when Mark comes out of the bathroom the bedroom door is shut.
For a moment he thinks Miles must have gone downstairs again. He turns to go himself. But then he stops. He stands in front of the shut door and puts his ear against it.
He goes downstairs. He stops before the dining-room door, which is half closed, and stands outside. In there they are talking about someone. There is a great deal of laughter, as if someone is the butt of a joke.
He listens. They are talking about Miles, maybe.
No, he’s great, I mean, he’s your stereotypical gay man, Caroline is saying. Your professional working gay man, I mean.
He didn’t comment on my clothes at all. They’re supposed to comment on your clothes, Hannah is saying. And he’s not as neat and clean as they usually are. They’re usually more pressed or ironed or something.
Loves his mummy, Richard says.
His mother’s dead, actually, Hugo says.
That’ll be why he’s not so ironed-looking as he should be, Richard says.
Someone, Hannah, laughs.
How do you know about his mother? Caroline says.
He told me, Hugo says. She took her own life when he was a boy. Eleven or twelve.
They’re not talking about Miles. Took her own life. It is a kindness in Hugo, to be so drunk yet to choose to put it as if he is holding it in gloved hands.
Sad, Jen says. That’s very sad, isn’t it?
She was some kind of painter, Hugo says.
House? Richard says.
Laughter, somebody, subdued.
He was brought up by an aunt, Hugo says. His father was away or not there, something like that, and he was brought up by an aunt after she, his mother, after she went. She was quite well known, well, she was after she died, I’d never heard of her. Faye or Faith or something.
You mean Faye Palmer? Bernice’s low voice interrupts. His mother was Faye Palmer?
His second name is Palmer, Hugo says.
Oh, Terence says. Oh my God. One of Faye Palmer’s sons.
He’d be about the right age, Bernice says. Oh, that’s amazing.
Who’s Faye Palmer? Hannah says loud and incredulous.
Faye Palmer, Bernice says.
The Bayoudes tell the table about Faye. Young. Jewish. Wildly talented. Hugely promising. Original. Seminal. Visual artist. 1950s. Strikingly beautiful when you see photos of her. You must have heard of her, they say, she’s often referenced alongside Plath.
Oh yes, Hugo says, Plath, someone’s wife, wasn’t she, and completely brilliant, and insane as a nest of snakes.
Bernice describes Faye’s most famous work, History Sequence 1 to 9, and how it begins with the faraway woman in the chair and, as you come closer, progress from canvas to canvas, you see that the woman is tied at the wrists and ankles to the chair, and then that she looks like she is crying, and then that what she is crying is blood, and as you come closer still you see that her eyes are a bloody mask.
Then you’re right up against the face, up against the eyes, and you see that the eyelids have been sewn shut, with foul little bloody little black stitches, Bernice says. In number 8 there’s nothing but these stitches in extreme close-up. It’s like an abstract, but it isn’t, it’s painstakingly figurative. And then in the final canvas, she goes beyond the mask, right into the eye, and there’s no eye in there, the socket is empty, there’s a foul-looking insect and it’s eating the lining of the socket.
Oh gross, Hannah says. Oh that’s the grossest thing I ever heard.
It’s true, Terence says. It’s an image from reality.