It’s been a long time, you wrote, and I hardly know where to begin. But when I wrote those words on the first postcard I sent you, I remembered how you used to sing that Rolling Stones song, ‘Long Long While’. You remember?
Baby, baby, been a long, long timeBeen a long, long time, been a long, long timeI was wrong girl and you were right.
It was the B side of ‘Paint It Black’, 1966, you said, you liked it better than the A side because it had less pretensions about it. Very simple lyrics, but Jagger sings them with real emotion, you loved that little off-key catch in his voice, you said. I hadn’t realised then that you were such a Rolling Stones freak, and you would say you weren’t, it was just if you had a choice between the Beatles and the Stones, you’d go for the Stones any day. More edge. But I knew you liked Mick’s style in general, and, despite your protestations, I think you were fascinated by that English middle-class bad boy thing, you liked the fact that he read books as well as listening to the blues, and you liked the clothes. Not that you dressed like Mick Jagger, but you had just a little touch of flamboyance. That first time I saw you in the xl Café, the first thing I noticed, beyond your face, was the tie you were wearing, looked like a Forties tie, pale grey with a washed-out pink diamond pattern, went nicely with the Donegal tweed jacket. I think maybe I fell in love with you a little just then, because it seemed that you wore the clothes almost at a distance from yourself, you didn’t seem to be a natural dresser, it was something more considered, as if you had a picture in your head of how you should look, or how you might look to others. And, as I got to know you, I thought it was a little bit like how you looked at paintings, admiring but not fully entering them, and I liked that hesitancy in you, the way you adjusted your tie as I looked at you from the corner of my eye.
Anyway, it’s been a long, long time, and you’ll want to know why I started this whole thing, this correspondence. And I hardly know myself. But it must have started with the cards, I’d buy postcards in whatever place I’d be, not to send to anyone, but as mementoes, or just because I liked the pictures. I stored them in a shoebox, a men’s shoebox, Church’s brogues, you could still smell the leather off the cardboard. Years of postcards. And I was flicking through them one day when I saw that one I began with, the Empire State Building struck by lightning, I couldn’t even remember where I bought it, but it reminded me of us in New York, you remember, how excited we were, lightning flickering above the skyline of the city, us laughing in the downpour. We’d taken shelter in one of those dives off Bleecker Street, you remember, it was like something from the 1940s, there was a black girl doing Billie Holiday numbers, standing on a little raised platform under a spotlight, and those little tea-lights in faceted glass holders on the tables, you could see hands and cigarettes and cocktail glasses, a face or two, and the smoke drifting up into the spotlight. And she was really good, she sang the songs with respect, but she put her own heart and soul into them too, and when I glanced at you over the tea-lights I could see that there were tears in your eyes, and then tears came to my eyes too.
So when I saw the lightning in New York postcard, I thought of you, and of our time there, and thought it might have been possible that you’d been in my mind when I bought it, however subliminally. And then I started going through the shoebox again and I began to find a pattern, this card or that would remind me of this or that time we’d spent together. So many memories began to well up. Like Colette when Lee Miller met her, you know, going through her photographs. And I could have chosen others, too, besides the ones I ended up with. There’s a lovely 1950s 3-D one of the Chrysler Building, all metallic greens and silvery blues, and I remembered how you’d talked about its automotive architecture, it had never occurred to me that the Chrysler Building had anything to do with cars, and you said, Well, that’s one for your little red book, Nina, you’re always looking for these little style details, maybe you could do something with that, and I said, Yes, it’s like the way those big American cars with the big bench seats were made for the dresses, the big flared skirts and petticoats, and I wrote down ‘Chrysler Building haute couture’ with my Dinkie pen that first brought us together, you remember …
Dear Nina, how could I forget? I’d been looking for a match for that pen ever since it occurred to me to begin collecting. And I found it just last week, or perhaps it found me. I’d had a couple of long-standing requests in with Beringer, you remember Beringer, his shop in Winetavern Street? One of them was for the Dinkie, the other for a Parker Royal Challenger, 1939, I’d just missed one on eBay, and the more I’d looked at its photograph, the more I wanted one, I loved the Art Deco stepped clip, very Chrysler. So I called in with Beringer on the off-chance. Ah, Mr Gabriel, he said, the Royal Challenger, he said, and he took the pen from his breast pocket and handed it to me, barrel first. It was indeed lovely, brown pearl bodywork with a black chevron pattern that matched the clip, it’s another take on the Parker arrow emblem. How much do I owe you? I said, and he named a price, I named a lower price, he came down a little, I came up a little, and so on, till we met halfway, as we knew we would. Ah, you drive a hard bargain, Mr Gabriel, he said, but I’ll tell you what, just to show there’s no hard feelings, here’s a little luckpenny, and he shot his cuffs, held open his two hands before me, made fists of them, and said, Pick a hand. I looked at him somewhat sceptically, and touched his left hand, and when he opened it, lying on his palm was the twin of your Dinkie. Of course it wouldn’t be an identical twin, Conway Stewart never made two of these black and red mottled rubber models alike, but as it looked as near to yours as I could remember, I was delighted.
I didn’t know you did magic, Beringer, I said. Oh, only for special customers, Mr Gabriel, it wouldn’t do to let the general public know that an antiques dealer has stuff like this up his sleeve. As a matter of fact, I learned that one from your late father, God rest his soul, he said, and I suddenly remembered that when I was a child my father had a whole repertoire of these tricks, making things appear from nowhere. So here I am now, writing with the Dinkie that came from nowhere — though Beringer, true to form, did give me an elaborate account of its provenance. When I saw it I realised it wasn’t quite as spectacular-looking as some of the pens I’d acquired before it — the Oriental Peacock Dinkie, for example — but nevertheless its colours glow with the intensity of my memory of them, and it gives me pleasure to write with a pen that resembles yours so closely, as I here transcribe the words of your letter, knowing that by writing them again in my own hand, following the loops and curves of your thought, I will gain a better understanding of them.
… you remember, red and black, you wrote, le rouge et le noir, I wrote all those letters to you then with my Conway Stewart Dinkie. I don’t know who started that business, writing to each other practically daily sometimes, whether it was you or me. You used to joke about it, said it would be good training for mo2, all those memoranda I had to write, or was supposed to write. But when I began sending the postcards, I knew I couldn’t write at any length, I had to work up to it, for I didn’t entirely understand myself what had happened. You must know that after I left you I was very confused. ‘Paint It Black’ kept going through my head
I see a red door and I want it painted blackNo colours any more I want them to turn black …