coming in, that the sun is setting, and that the wind continues to blow. Have you been to see the fort yet? You should; it is a sad enough spectacle to make anyone thoughtful. Built by Vauban, that great military engineer, to fend off the English. I don’t believe it was ever used for that purpose. The English turned up anyway, and the good folk of this place know fine building stone when they see it. Whole walls, escarpments and abutments and whatever they call them, have vanished in the night, turned into docks and houses and shelters. One of the strongest forts in Brittany, falling to pieces because no-one loves it, while the little church, unprotected by the state and far weaker in construction, is in fine shape, sustained only by the affection of the populace. I will leave you to figure out the moral for yourself. That’s where I will end up, I think. The next few days will be important, and I need to prepare myself for what is to come. I find being in that church helps me, for some reason. Father Charles encourages it; he says quiet contemplation is as good as prayer or instruction. Not that he disdains instruction, although he teaches in hints, rather than in injunctions.
I occasionally test him, which is a bit naughty of me, set him a moral conundrum and see how he copes, all in the guise of asking for direction. What would happen, Father, if you knew of a terrible sin, but were the only person to know of it? What if you knew no-one else would believe you even if you told someone? What should you do?
“You should find a way of redeeming that sin,” he replied.
Easier said than done, I replied. A fluffy answer.
“Look into yourself,” he said quietly. “You are a painter. Does the sin make you angry? Then use that anger to paint. Does it make you sad? Use that. Was it a sin against another person? Try to help them. Against yourself? Then try to forgive.”
But what if you can’t forgive?
“Then find a way to do so. True sinners often suffer worse fates than those they hurt. Like the murderer who receives a just punishment. Then forgiveness comes more easily.”
He has taught me much, the good father. I have come to rely on him greatly in the past year or so. He is a comforting presence, and has helped me more than he knows.
Come back early, if you will. There is a chill in the air first thing, and that suggests the weather is breaking up. There will be a storm soon, and that means bad light and slow progress. I need to get this all finished, otherwise the ending will be postponed for a week. You needn’t concern yourself, though: it is already too late to leave. The seas are too rough, and no boat will be able to take you back to the mainland for days.
DO YOU KNOW, I had a sleepless night last night? Nothing unusual about that, I suppose, but this was worse than usual. Much worse; I tossed and turned because I was angry. Not with you particularly, but with myself. I had this sudden horrible feeling that I had made a mistake.
I should have painted you outside. Not simply because the light would have shown up your character the better, but because it would have made you uncomfortable. The inside is your sphere. The drawing room, the gallery, the dining room, the restaurant. You are a creature of the interior. Outside in the fresh air you shrivel a little, become less than yourself, a touch uncertain. Afraid, even. That fear, I realise now, is part of you, always there but hidden deep down under your never-ending movement. What are you afraid of? Not other people, or at least not anyone you have yet met. Some circumstance you know you will one day encounter but which has not yet materialised. A hint, perhaps from that long week in Hampshire when I was painting that first portrait; your son was sitting on your lap—such a good, devoted father you are—and dropped a glass on the table. It shattered and dozens of shards of glass spun across the table, onto the floor. The noise was remarkable, I remember. It didn’t just break, it positively exploded. An expensive glass, too; good crystal, a present from your wife’s family. Some of the fragments scudded across the table towards you. And do you know what I saw?
Let me tell you. You moved your child—both hands round his waist—you moved him very quickly a few inches as you turned your head away. But not to safety; not out of the way of the shining, twinkling fragments. Into their path. You moved your own child’s body so he would serve as a shield. Oh, ’twas but a moment, but I saw it, although I forgot it immediately afterwards. It couldn’t be right, could it?
Yes it could. You were prepared to use the body of a three-year-old boy to protect yourself. It was an instinctive response, a tunnel which suddenly opened up, allowing a little light to fall onto your soul. An incident of perhaps one part of a second, maybe less, before the tunnel closed once more. A laugh, a jocular remark, a good-natured reassurance that the boy was not to mind; it was only a glass. Tousled his hair. The servants called in to sweep up the mess. Another glass brought; the child sent out to play in the garden once he had been checked to make sure no sharp fragments had lodged in his clothes.
It doesn’t make any difference. Or does it? Why do I feel that half a second cannot be erased by hours, days, years of different behaviour? Why is it that half a second gives the lie to a reputation for fearless courage and audacity, built up over so many years? Because it is the truth, and because the child knows it too. It is his inheritance from you, that moment. Whatever is beyond your control frightens you; that is why you must control everything and everyone. That’s why I should have painted you outside. Above all here, where there is nothing but nature, and when the storms come, they are violent beyond your imagining. Not the storms of paintings, not the colourful storms of Turner, or the well-behaved and disciplined storms of someone like Vanderwelde; not something that can be neutered by three-quarters of an inch of frame. Not beautiful, either; that is a misconception. Real storms are ugly and brutal; there is little pleasing aesthetically in them; their appeal goes much deeper.
We are coming into the storm season. Shortly, perhaps even tomorrow, we will go for a walk, you and I, along the cliffs. Don’t look so worried; we will wrap up well, and face your fears together, stand in the howling gale and shout our defiance at all the uncontrollable forces in the world. You must not turn me down, you will never have the opportunity again; it is a once in a lifetime offer that I am making. It will be worth it.
Shortly after I arrived here, you see, I was down at Madame Le Gurun’s by the port during one of those storms. I had walked down there to see if there was any bread, but didn’t realise quite how quickly the weather can deteriorate, nor how long the storms can go on. So I thought that I would have a drink and sit it out for an hour or so. It made me feel quite foolish; the storm eventually blew itself out after three and a half days. I stayed only for three hours before boredom drove me out into the worst of the rain, to walk home. How I made it I don’t know, because it was pitch black and the wind was too strong for any lantern.
I got lost, and wandered too near the cliff face. Not much of a cliff, as you will see. Quite a gentle, low thing; you can scramble down to the beach in good weather, when the tide is out, and arrive scarcely even breathless. At night, in a storm, when the tide is pounding waves against the rocks, it is another matter entirely. One slip and you’d be gone; I nearly went. I was more petrified than I had ever been before in my life, and when I got home, the fire was out and a window had blown in; my papers were soaking and all over the place. A few hours of weather had reduced my life to ruins and had cut me down to a shivering, whimpering carcase. I needed a fire, urgently. And I needed to block the window. I used sketch pads for one, and a canvas I’d been working on for the other. My art saved me; the first time, to be frank, it had ever been of any use at all. I recommend both, by the way; sketch pads are good quality paper and burn well; canvas thickly covered in oil paint is a perfect way of keeping out the rain.
I ramble; my point was that while I was in the bar, a fishing boat came in, and the crew tumbled in for hot brandy to revive themselves. They were exhausted, exhilarated. The wildness of the storm had communicated itself to them. Their eyes burned, and their faces had been lashed by the rain into beauty. Even their movements had an extraordinary elegance; after fighting against the sea for many hours, moving across a room, lifting a glass, talking in a normal voice was absurdly easy. There was a life in them that burned all the more brightly because it had come close to being snuffed out altogether. And their women responded to it as well; even the most shrewish of them gathered round with renewed interest, touching them and showing in countless little ways that they were aroused by the danger. I bet that, even though some of the men were so tired they could barely stand, that many a baby was conceived that night. Storm babies, they are called.
Good life; bad art. I studied them carefully as they sat there, talking so quietly and with such animation. The high-flushed colouring of their cheeks, the animation of their eyes, their movements alternating between quickness and langour—but the langour of exhaustion, not the drawing room variety of the bored. Such ugly pictures they would have made. Those excessive colours, those poses which would be so absurd once the movement was taken out of them. You could produce a fine picture, but it would have been such a poor reflection of the reality it would scarcely be worthwhile.
