Johnny smiled but said nothing, waited to hear what would happen next; the footsteps came back, there was a tap at the door – ‘Hi’ as he came in.
‘Sorry . . .’
‘No, come in, Zé. Zé, this is my daughter Lucy.’
‘Hello,’ said Lucy firmly, with a little break of her pose, and a sense of her own pleasantness in talking socially to staff. ‘Zé?’
‘Zé – José. How you do?’
‘Well, as you can see . . .’ said Lucy.
‘I heard a lot about you.’
‘Oh, really?’
‘Johnny talk about you. You getting married.’
‘Yes, that’s absolutely right,’ said Lucy.
Johnny looked across from the canvas at him: could he see him as Lucy saw him, without intimacy, without interest? He smiled and Zé came close for a moment, examined the picture and the sitter in rapid comparison (always a tease to the sitter), then kissed Johnny on the cheek, out of pride it seemed.
*
Johnny thought they might all have lunch, but she only had the ninety minutes for him today. ‘Well, nice to meet you,’ said Zé, going upstairs, he must have thought tactfully, to leave father and daughter alone in the hall.
‘Thanks so much, dear Daddy,’ said Lucy. ‘See you in York!’
‘Oh, darling . . .’ He hugged her, lovely scent of this creature known in a way, but at once with the reasserted push of independence. They heard the door close above.
‘And, you know . . . if you want to bring . . . José.’
Johnny nodded. ‘Well, I’m sure he’d love it’ – more, probably, than he would love it himself. He smiled at her.
‘Let me know, you know, for the seating.’ She looked him in the face, differently now, with no easel between them. ‘He’s rather a find.’
‘Ah,’ said Johnny. ‘Yes, you could say that.’
He saw her off at the door, and when he looked out five minutes later she was still there, sitting in the car, talking on the phone to someone he almost certainly didn’t know. Now and then she ran her hand through her hair, a gesture of self-assertion, of controlled impatience not seen but felt perhaps at the other end of the line. When she turned her head suddenly he wasn’t sure if she saw him watching. He went back into the studio, capped the paint-tubes and peered with familiar yearning and dissatisfaction at the portrait, the eyes the blue-grey (he saw it at last) of her dead grandfather’s, the lips, redone, still wet and workable.
THE SPARSHOLT AFFAIR
ALAN HOLLINGHURST is the author of five previous novels, The Swimming-Pool Library, The Folding Star, The Spell, The Line of Beauty (winner of the 2004 Man Booker Prize) and The Stranger’s Child. He lives in London.
ALSO BY ALAN HOLLINGHURST
The Swimming-Pool Library
The Folding Star
The Spell
The Line of Beauty
The Stranger’s Child
First published 2017 by Picador
This electronic edition published 2017 by Picador
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ISBN 978-1-4472-1145-7
Copyright © Alan Hollinghurst 2017
Cover photograph: Jeff Cottenden
Author photograph © Robert Taylor
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