My Tango With Barbara Strozzi Read online

  ‘Dangerous females!’ I said. ‘What other kind is there?’

  10

  Barbara Strunk

  OK, I love him or so it seems. But is love enough? Do I want to spend the rest of my life with a guy who writes boring? I’m trying not to be a talent snob but I’m not sure he’s got what it takes to come up with an interesting book. Sticking with him through weeks and months and years of boring would be really heavy work. When I rejected Brian and he asked me if I could do better I said, ‘Maybe I already have.’ But have I? Brian has talent and he’s getting better all the time. He’s fun to be with and he makes me feel good. I like the kind of person he is and he likes the kind of person I am. That can’t be bad, can it? He’s taller than I am too.

  I was thinking these thoughts (and feeling guilty) as I lay in bed with Phil beside me. I could tell by his breathing that he wasn’t asleep either. I was still awake when the Underground started running and the room got light. I guess we both got some sleep then, and around seven Phil got up, went to the bathroom, showered and got dressed. I followed him, and in due course we appeared in the kitchen, kissed each other good morning in a small way, and had orange juice, toast and marmalade and coffee. ‘Let’s eat out tonight,’ said Phil.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘See you,’ and left for work.

  The studio was always a cosy place and this morning’s music was Emmylou Harris but the eye I was painting was giving me a cold and fishy stare and I felt shut off from the world. At lunchtime I went to The Blue Posts hoping to see Grace Kowalski and there she was with Irv and a half of Directors. ‘Hi,’ I said. ‘Have you posed for Brian yet?’

  ‘Yup,’ she said. ‘He did some nice studies of my face. He really looks when he draws.’

  ‘Well, he has to, doesn’t he.’

  ‘No, what I mean is that he doesn’t show off with style, he’s modest and respectful and plays it straight.’

  ‘Funny – I’ve never thought of Brian as modest.’

  ‘When you’ve known somebody for a long time you get used to seeing them always the same way and you might not notice that they’ve changed. Brian thinks the world of you.’

  ‘I know.’

  ‘How is it with you and Ockerman? Still too soon to say?’

  ‘I don’t know – maybe too late.’

  ‘If they both disappeared by magic and you could make only one of them reappear by pushing a button, which one would it be?’

  ‘The one that’s no work,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there you have it,’ said Grace. ‘Let me buy you a drink. What’s your pleasure?’

  ‘Thank you. I wouldn’t mind a dry martini – the American kind that’s mostly gin with just a little vermouth and an olive.’

  ‘That sounds radical,’ said Grace.

  ‘This is a time for radical decisions,’ I said.

  ‘Radical martini coming up,’ said Grace. ‘And I’ll have a vodka to keep you company because it’s that kind of day. You stay put and I’ll fetch the drinks.’

  When she came back with the martini and the vodka and a couple of packets of crisps she said, ‘What’ll we drink to?’

  ‘Absent friends?’

  ‘Good one,’ said Grace. ‘Absent friends!’

  The absent friend I was thinking of was Brian. After work I didn’t go to my place and I didn’t go to Phil’s. I went to Cheyne Walk and stood at the door. If he’s in and alone when I ring the bell, I thought, that’s it. I rang the bell and he came down and opened the door. ‘Hello,’ I said. ‘Can I come in?’

  Later, as we lay comfortably together watching the sky darken to evening I said, ‘Did you think you’d ever see me again?’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I had no idea when or how but I couldn’t believe you’d be out of my life for ever.’

  ‘You feel like home.’

  ‘That’s how you feel to me. Have you …?’

  ‘Ended it with Phil? I have to tell him but I don’t think he’ll be surprised.’

  When I rang Phil up he said, ‘Is this a Dear John call?’

  ‘Were you expecting one?’

  ‘Yes. I felt it coming on when we were eating the pizza.’

  ‘I don’t know what to say.’

  ‘You don’t have to say anything. It was just one of those things, just one of those crazy things – a trip to the moon on Barbara Strozzi. Now you’re Bertha Strunk again.’

  ‘I feel so sad, Phil.’

  ‘I think you probably feel more relieved than sad. Let’s not try too hard for an exit line – we can nod and smile if we pass each other in the street but for now let’s just say goodbye.’

  ‘Goodbye,’ I said, and he rang off. Brian was down in the studio; I was alone, so I cried for a while, remembering what Phil and I had been to each other – what I thought we’d been anyhow – remembering what we’d said and done. And felt? Were my feelings real? Was I real, or just some kind of machine that did whatever it had to do to gain its objective. Shitty! And scary. And very, very sad. I was a selfish bitch who’d dropped Phil because life was easier with Brian but all I had now was sadness and I didn’t know if I’d ever feel good again.

  11

  Phil Ockerman

  I was sitting in Caffe Nero with an espresso for an excuse to sit there and I was trying on different ways to feel. Suicidal? Relieved? Numb? While I was doing that a thought came out of the closet in my head where it had been hiding: I’d said to myself that I wasn’t going to write about Bertha/Barbara and me but now I thought why the hell not? Surely I was owed that much. While thinking about it with my eyes closed I might have dozed off a little when I heard a chair scrape back as someone sat down opposite me. I opened my eyes and there was Mimi with a cappuccino.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ I said.

  ‘I come here every now and then wondering if you might turn up.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Sometimes I do things for no reason.’ She was wearing a very conspicuous brooch copied from William Holman Hunt’s painting of the scapegoat that is driven out to the demon of the wilderness.

  ‘Azazel,’ I said.

  ‘That’s me,’ said Mimi, ‘waiting in the wilderness. Are you in the wilderness?’

  ‘I don’t want to be rude but what’s it to you?’

  ‘Oh come on, Phil, loosen up. I’m interested in your career.’

  ‘Oh really! Aren’t you the ex-wife who told me I was running out of ideas?’

  ‘I said maybe you were. That’s not to say I wasn’t interested.’

  ‘So what’s your particular interest right now?’

  ‘Don’t be so defensive. Can’t we just sit here and chat like old acquaintances?’

  ‘Not yet,’ I said. ‘I’m off.’ And I left, angry with myself because sitting there with her had been like comfortable old times. Mimi was the one who’d wanted the divorce. She’d said that living with me was too depressing. So why had she married me? We’d met at the preview of The Genius of Rome exhibition at the Royal Academy. We had both paused at Leonard Bramer’s The Fall of Simon Magus. The card explained that Peter the Apostle commanded the devils who were raising Simon Magus to let go and he fell to earth.

  ‘That hardly seems fair,’ I said. ‘Where would anybody in the arts be, Leonard Bramer included, without the help of devils?’

  ‘Are you in the arts?’ she said, obligingly responding to my pawn-to-king-four opening. So I told her I was a writer and was delighted to hear that she’d read my last novel. One thing led to another; over the following months we had many conversations about books and music, paintings and films. We were both keen on George Eliot and had given up on Woody Allen so we had something to build on. Plus my status as a rising novelist. It was when I fell to earth on three consecutive flights that she began to find me depressing and now we were each other’s exes. I was the same failure she’d given up on so I was justifiably sceptical of her present overtures. I didn’t trust her and I didn’t trust myself.

  What kind of relat
ionship had we had, actually, even before I became boring? Back when I was the successful rising novelist she managed to make me feel that she was the judge of what I was and what I wasn’t. I showed her my pages, looked for her approval and welcomed her comments. It was very comfortable and it made me feel less of a man and ashamed. I realised now that she needed to be the one who judged – if she were shut out from that position she didn’t know what to do with herself. Did I want to go back to how things used to be? Not likely.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the woman who was still Barbara to me. It seemed impossible to me that she could have said and done all those things only to use me to get rid of Troy Wallis. When I was leaving for Diamond Heart and said I’d be faithful to her because I didn’t want to break the connection she’d wanted to let my words linger in her ear! She’d wanted us to walk around in each other’s heads while I was gone! Well, that was then and this was now. Work was the sovereign remedy so I started making notes for my next big thing. Would it be a put-together thing trying to pass itself off as a novel? Too soon to say but it felt good to be back at work. The doorbell rang. That would be Mimi looking for a piece of the action. I buzzed her in.

  ‘You’re working again!’ she said.

  ‘So it seems,’ I said.

  ‘Are you going to let me see pages?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because that’s how it is now: you’re not my wife, you’re not my editor and you’re not my friend. You dumped me when you rated me a failure and now you find that you need to get back into your old position as critic and mentor. That’s not going to happen, so it’s time for you to move on and find a new interest.’ As I said that it hit me that it had probably been she who bailed me out.

  Mimi drew herself up like a column of mercury rising in a thermometer. ‘OK, champ,’ she said. ‘You’re on your own,’ and left.

  I have to admit that I experienced a sudden droppedness, and at the same time an untethered-balloon sensation that left me drifting helplessly over land and sea until I was out of sight. ‘Steady the buffs!’ I said to myself. Kipling?

  I found myself at the word machine without knowing how I’d got there. The cursor was flickering at me like the tongue of an adder. ‘All right already,’ I said, and typed:

  MY TANGO WITH BARBARA STROZZI

  1

  PHIL OCKERMAN

  When she told me that her name was Bertha Strunk I said, ‘Is Bertha’s trunk anything like Pandora’s box?’

  ‘That isn’t something you can find out in five minutes, ‘ she said. This was at the Saturday evening tango class for beginners in the crypt of St James’s Church, Clerkenwell …

  That looked like a pretty good beginning to me; got you right into the thing and made you want to know what was coming next. Next came Mimi with her greeting about my terrible reviews: some opposition for the protagonist. The dialogue flowed nicely and then we were back in the tango lesson and I felt the solid warmth of Bertha Strunk under my hand as we carefully moved our beginners’ feet to the knowing rhythm of ‘La Cumparsita’. Typing out the words I lived it again and lifted my right hand to her absent back. How could she be gone! It was like a stone in my stomach. The reality and non-reality of it were too much for me. ‘“And wylt thow leave me thus?”’ I said. ‘“Say nay, say nay…”’ And then of course I had to get Sir Thomas Wyatt off the shelf:

  And wylt thow leve me thus?

  Say nay, say nay, ffor shame,

  To save thee from the Blame

  Of all my greffe and grame,

  And wylt thow leve me thus?

  Say nay, say nay!

  Then of course up jumped Rabbi Moshe Leib wagging a finger and saying, ‘Nu? And did you bear the burden of her sorrow?’

  I thought I had, but who can know the nature and extent of another person’s sorrow? I had been working towards an objective and I’d seen everything in that frame of reference. When Troy Wallis was dead I was left with the realisation that I really didn’t know love at all. The walls were closing in on me so I went out.

  I walked up the North End Road and stood opposite the door of the building where she no longer lived. I thought of our first kiss and how unsimple that had been. ‘Nothing is simple,’ I told myself, ‘and you might as well accept that as a working premise.’

  ‘OK,’ I said, ‘I accept it. Now what?’ As if I could track the answer physically I went into the Underground and travelled to Farringdon. When I got out of the train the Yahoo ad on the wall opposite the platform was still there saying FOUND. Outside the station the headline at the news kiosk said OCKERMAN BEREFT. The street lamps were still overwhelmed by the darkness but over the road the clustered lights and colours of FOOD & WINE, Fruit & Veg beckoned along with the Bagel Factory: the American Original. At the Chariots minicab stand the same four men stood waiting. How long since my last visit? Months? Years? Time seemed a matter of opinion and I had none. At Cowcross Street cows still refused to appear.

  What was Bertha/Barbara doing while I was doing this? Posing naked for Brian? Lying naked with him? I clenched my fists as I reached the corner of Turnmill Street with the Castle Pub burnished with vertical gleamings in the dark. The people inside, were all of them happy? No, I couldn’t be the only bereft one in the world. Next as I entered Turnmill Pret A Manger featured sushi and espresso as in the near or distant past, whichever. Then Ember with a free-standing menu that said ‘Dust ’n’ Ashes’ Fresh daily.

  As before, I left the zone of conviviality and crossed to the left side of the street. Below me on the left the long shape of the main line showed its dim blind lights as I was swallowed up in the visible darkness. My mind brings up the same words or songs when I revisit a place, so now it gave me, as before:

  The moon’s my constant Mistrisse

  And the lowlie owle my morrowe,

  The flaming Drake and the Nightcrowe make

  Mee musicke to my sorrowe.

  As before, there was no moon.

  The voices and laughter and music not of this time had stopped only a moment ago and now the silence rose up tumultuous. From Benjamin Street on the opposite side came volleys of reproach from left-handed slingers. Turk’s Head Yard knotted me in intricacies of regret. Slightly downhill on Turnhill became, as before, slightly uphill as I neared Clerkenwell Road. Turned right into Clerkenwell Road, then crossed into Clerkenwell Close where the Crown Tavern beckoned but carried on and around a dark corner and there was St James’s Church high above the rest of London, its spire aimed at the night sky where my Moon was opposed by Pluto, there was possible action pending from dangerous females, things looked generally dodgy and it behoved me to watch my ass.

  ‘Now what?’ I said to myself.

  ‘How about work?’ was my answer. So I went home and took up my narrative following the tango lesson and carrying on through my telling Bertha about The Rainmaker and our first kiss. The future had seemed bright then. And now the Louisville Slugger stood in its corner unused and Bertha/Barbara was gone. No matter how many times I said that to myself I couldn’t accept it as reality.

  12

  Bertha Strunk

  Life with Brian was all that I expected it to be. We were comfortable in every way and the improvement in his work was impressive. But I was feeling two different kinds of guilt. There was the obvious one from how I’d ill-used Phil and there was the ingrained one of my Protestant Work Ethic; I was shirking a heavy job and I was ashamed of my laziness. Living with a writer who wrote boring would be hard work but where is it written that life was meant to be easy? Maybe I could get used to it, like bad breath or premature ejaculation. Or maybe he might get into less boring – you never can tell.

  Brian could see that I wasn’t easy in my mind. ‘Maybe,’ he said, ‘it would help if we took a little break.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said.

  ‘We could go to Paris for a few days or a week. How about it?’

  ‘I guess I could get a week of
f.’

  ‘Good. As soon as you give me the word I’ll book us on Eurostar and into a hotel.’

  So I talked to Karl and Georg and the following Monday we were on the train and there was that little travel-thrill to take my mind off my troubles. London zipped past, then Kent, then came the darkness of the tunnel, then France.

  When we pulled into the Gare du Nord I felt as if we were really away from what we’d left behind. The sounds and echoes were full of farawayness; the roman numerals on the old clock told a different time. We queued for a taxi with smiling patience, no hurry. ‘De Fleurie Hôtel,’ Brian said to the driver. To me he said, ‘I think you’ll like it. It’s in St Germain des Près, the Latin Quarter. For your first time in Paris, the Left Bank is a good place to start.’

  ‘Have you stayed at this hotel before?’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, ‘but I Googled very carefully and looked at photos.’ It was a sunny day and Paris was delightful as it went past the taxi windows. The three-star hotel was as charming as advertised and from our window we could look across the river to the Eiffel Tower. We had champagne with our dinner and the whole thing felt a little like trying too hard but I was willing to try.

  Brian made a big effort – we went to a lot of places and did a lot of things but most of it was lost on me in my current frame of mind. In any case I’m not good tourist material; I tend to fasten on one thing and let everything else pass me by. It was the gargoyles of Notre Dame that got to me. We earned a close view of them by a long weary climb up hundreds of steps, even as far as the great bells. Then out into the air with all Paris spread below and the gargoyles looking out on their domain. For me they are the true soul of Notre Dame, these stone creatures that seem to hold in themselves all the sorrow and cruelty of life and the world. Also the sorrow and cruelty of God, maybe, who put into human minds the idea of these animals and demons, especially the one who’s eating a human victim like a banana while others brood and think their stone thoughts high above their city.