There but for The_ A Novel - Ali Smith [48]
Oh I’m going to puke, Hannah says, I really am.
And the big controversy after her death, Bernice says, was that she replaced the man to whom this really happened with what ostensibly, in her paintings, appears to be a series of self-portraits.
Oh, ostensibly, Richard says.
Bernice ignores his mocking. She goes on to tell them that this appropriating of history, the fusion of personal and historic, is the thing critics of Palmer’s work still argue about most. In many ways, she says, a continuing tendency to dwell on the details of her autobiography, particularly on the fact that she committed suicide and the possible reasons why, has blocked the proper aesthetic reception of the work.
Oh, aesthetic reception, Richard says.
Shut it, Rich, Hugo says.
Why did she? Caroline says.
History Sequence 1 to 9, they’re called, Terence says. You must know them. You will, you’ll have seen them.
And how did she? Caroline says.
I’d know if I’d seen one. They sound really disgusting, Hannah says.
You’d absolutely know if you saw one in real life, Bernice says. You can’t not. They’re unforgettable. They’re shocking to the core. But also, they’re really shockingly beautiful.
No way, Hannah says.
They are, Bernice says. They just are.
You wouldn’t take your child to see one of those pictures, though, would you? Jen says.
Our child sees worse things every day on TV, Terence says. She just needs to type a couple of words into a computer to see things every bit as bad, and, worse, to see them as if she’s not really seeing them. Seeing a picture like one of Palmer’s is very different from seeing something atrocious on a screen. There is no screen. That’s the point. There’s nothing between you and it.
And to leave a child, Caroline says. What a choice. It’s unthinkable.
Unthinkable just to leave your own self. Think how robust your own heart feels, and your arms, and your legs feel, someone (it must be Eric) says.
Very selfish, Hugo says.
Most difficult thing in the world, Caroline says.
I’m amazed you’ve heard of her. I’d never heard of her, Hugo says.
But you’ve seen her, Bernice says. You will have. You’ve seen her without seeing her. She’s hugely influential, she was hugely important in the ways artists, especially women, came to treat history and to examine how history had treated them. And you can see so clearly now too with hindsight, how they parallel Bacon, practically initiate the post-war self-infliction artists of the 1960s and 1970s, and even, in their colour planes, anticipate Hockney.
That’s not possible, Bacon and Hockney together, Hugo snorts.
Trust me. They do. They do both, Bernice says.
Faye Palmer’s son, Terence says.
Oh God, Jen says. Jewish. And I served him pork.
Bacon and Hock, Richard says. Ha-ha!
Yes but he ate it, Jen, Caroline says. He’s probably one of the ones who don’t mind what they eat.
Mark stands just beyond the door.
In his muscles he is thirteen years old and the hush is about to happen all over again, will happen in a moment’s time when, small, thin, in the still-too-big blazer, he’ll enter the prep-room full of boys at St. Faith’s, and no longer be just the Jewish one, like Quentin Sinigal is the coloured one. Now that the inquest has been in the paper and everybody knows, he’ll also be the one whose mother—like in the old joke about Jamaica, whispered behind his back for months and months to come (in fact there will literally be years of this whispering)—went of her own accord.
He glances back up the stairs. He can see the closed door.
The nice chap, Miles, is safe behind it.)
Say that a man is fully formed by not / just what’s remembered also what’s forgot Mark sat on the circular bench at the gate of the park. It was a warm October day. What would he remember from his visit