CHAPTER
FOUR
The Thursday morning of
the following week brought James Kelly to the West End in order to discuss a
new project with his agent, and later that day, with business concluded more or
less to their mutual satisfaction, he decided to visit the nearby National
Gallery in Trafalgar Square - a thing he hadn't done for several years, largely
because, as an Irish citizen, he considered it irrelevant to his nationality.
Arriving at the gallery in an optimistic frame-of-mind, he
headed straight for Room 45, where the Impressionists were exhibited. In consequence of anti-Christian sentiments
he always preferred to start his tour of the rooms back-to-front and to follow
an anti-clockwise direction, thereby guaranteeing himself the maximum of
patience and concentration for the secular works, which he feared might not get
investigated at all were he to begin the other way around, as presumably most
visitors to the National did, and thus wade through medieval Christendom
first.... Not that he was entirely prejudiced against the religious paintings. For there were, among their considerable
number, some he still quite admired on account of the brilliance of their
colours and the precision of their details.
But, generally speaking, he was more drawn to the secular than to the
religious works, which was why he invariably began at the end.
On this occasion, however, with the exception of a brief glance en passant at
Seurat's Bathers, Asnières, which he admired more for the degree of
perseverance required in the execution of its pointillist technique than for
its simple subject-matter, he ignored the Impressionists altogether and
proceeded straight to Room 35, in which a number of Canaletto's Venetian scenes
were hung. It struck him as being
singularly appropriate, as he stood respectfully in front of View of the
On the other side of the room, the Regatta on the Grand
Canal, Venice presented a much more intricate spectacle to the
eye as, with mounting humility in the presence of such skill, Kelly took
especial note of the great crowds taking part in the regatta where, in the
foreground, every figure had been given a carefully defined costume and a
no-less carefully defined physiognomy.
There could be no question of any of the numerous participants being
confounded with insignificant blobs of paint, as in the case of much
twentieth-century art, where the conceptual took precedence over the perceptual
and emotional subjectivity accordingly prevailed. This was not decadent art, still less
anti-art, but painterly art-proper and, as such, the depiction of everything
had to be highly meticulous, in accordance with the more concretely objective
criteria of that age.
Passing on through the nearest rooms, it soon became apparent to
James Kelly that the National Gallery was playing host, as usual, to large
numbers of foreign nationals of mostly Continental origin who wandered from
painting to painting in small groups and talked between themselves in
respectfully subdued tones, occasionally halting to inquire of a uniformed
attendant, as best they could, where one could find a certain painting or
gallery. It was indeed pleasing to
behold all these French, Italian, Spanish, and German tourists who were only
really there, after all, because of the large amount of art which their
ancestors had produced and which, by some quirk of historical fate, now reposed
in England's foremost gallery.
The Adoration
of the Golden Calf by Nicolas Poussin, one of those ancestors
who happened to be French, brought Kelly's wanderings to a temporary halt in
Room 32, which appeared to be the largest in the entire building. Although the actual subject held no great
appeal for him, it served to remind him of the Poussins he had viewed in the
Louvre, a few years previously. He
recalled that virtually the entire length of a ground-floor gallery had been
devoted to the works of this singular genius, who obviously held a special
position in the hierarchy of French classical art. In addition to the 'Golden Calf' motif, which
could also be found in the Louvre, Kelly now unearthed some fragments of memory
associated with classical ruins - a subject which seemed to figure rather
prominently in Poussin's vast oeuvre.
But he had to admit that the colour schemes usually adopted by this
master, with their ochreous mixtures of brown, red, pink, and pale orange,
usually depressed him after a while, as did his rather down-to-earth choice of
subject-matter, and this occasion was to prove no exception!
On the other hand, The Preaching of St. John the Baptist by Van
Haalem (1562-1638) providentially provided him with the antidote he required to
disperse the depressing effects of Poussin, whose matt tones were now eclipsed
by the brilliant colours of this magnificent painting. There was nothing of late-Christian austerity
or melancholy about this colourful outpouring of religious fervour, as the
great prophet confidently announced the glad tidings of Christ's Coming to a
motley crowd standing in a forest glade which, bathed in luminous light from
the open spaces beyond, was distinctly suggestive of the Supernatural, so
ethereal was the overall impression. For
James Kelly, paintings of this nature partly redeemed religious art in his
eyes, made them appear precious to an otherwise irreligious or secular
temperament. Even if, from the
vantage-point of late-twentieth-century secularism, one despised traditional
religion, with its objective faith in miracles and superstitious clinging to
outmoded beliefs, of which the concept of a unitary Creator was the most
fundamental in Kelly's estimation, one was constrained to admit that it had
inspired a wealth of extremely beautiful art, and some of that art, no matter how
irrelevant from a contemporary standpoint, was deserving of due recognition.
Abandoning the small central area between the two main parts of
Room 28, Kelly immediately headed towards Room 22, wherein he wanted to gaze at
The
Toilet of Venus, the divine cynosure of which suggested a likeness, in his
imagination, to the supple body of Paloma Searle, whom he had never seen nude
but was inclined to suppose, from recent experience, the possessor of a
similarly shaped body herself. However,
he had only just set foot in this particular room when he caught sight of a
young woman with long wavy-blonde hair who was viewing the work in
question. Freezing in his tracks, he
gazed with rapture upon the hair and shapely calf-muscles of this fair person,
whose physical appearance, seen from behind, almost surrealistically connoted
with the Adoration of the Golden Calf he had viewed only a
few minutes before. Dismissing the
connotation as frivolous, he discreetly approached the real-life woman, so that
they were standing side-by-side in front of the Velazquez, and endeavoured,
with a slight turn of his neck, to peer into her face, which at that moment was
presented in profile. However, this
slight movement was insufficient to distract her attention from that part of
the painting in which its subject's face is reflected in the small mirror held
up to her by a cherub positioned at the foot of the luxuriously draped bed upon
which the goddess of love reclines. But
before he could muster the courage to risk another glance at her, she had taken
leave of the painting and was heading towards the exit.
Panic-stricken at the prospect of losing sight of her, Kelly
automatically abandoned his intention of studying the Valazquez and, slightly
self-consciously, followed her at a discreet distance. Once more, he had time to note the seductive
contours of her pale-stockinged legs and the volatile texture of her hair,
before she came to a gentle halt in front of Rubens' Rape of the Sabines
in Room 20. Not wishing to follow her
directly to that turbulent painting, which was hung in the middle of the
nearest wall between two other works by the same artist, he brought himself to
a halt beside The Triumph of Julius Caesar and gave its vibrant colours,
painted in the manner of Mantegna, a cursory inspection. But although this was one of the paintings he
had particularly intended to view, his gaze soon reverted to the unknown
beauty, whose attention he so desperately wanted to attract.
This time, however, he was more successful. For she turned a pair of inscrutable eyes
upon him just long enough to enable him to discern the extent of her facial
beauty. His heart leapt excitedly, as
his mind registered its full impact. But
he was unable to prevent a feeling of acute self-consciousness from marring an
otherwise objective appraisal, and quickly returned his attention to the Rubens
again. He suddenly felt the urge to
swallow hard, but was afraid he would only make a noise which would compromise
him and increase his embarrassment.
Ironically, the perfectly representational painting in front of him had
been transformed into a jumble of nondescript shapes and blurred colours, akin
to abstract expressionism, under pressure of his emotions, which threatened to
break out of the prison of skull containing them and explode in all directions
at once, bespattering both viewers and paintings alike with bits of his
brain. At that moment he needed to sit
down to recover his aplomb, but the few seats in the room were already
occupied. An elderly couple came from
nowhere and stood next to the woman who had ignited his emotions, tantalizingly
blocking his view of her.
Turning away from them, he strode across to a painting directly
opposite the one he had been trembling in front of and, with considerable difficulty,
managed to decipher its title.
Ordinarily he would have had no trouble distinguishing the broad
outlines of The
Judgement of Paris. But since the
thunderbolt of love struck him, he found it difficult to even recognize it as
one of Rubens' paintings, regardless of the fact that he had stood in front of
it on at least three previous occasions and noted the turbulence and, to his
mind, excessive flabbiness so characteristic of this master's buxom
females. Today, however, he was
conscious of only one thing - namely, the desire to make the blonde his
girlfriend that very day!
A second or two later he became freshly conscious of a slim
figure in a white vest and matching miniskirt passing closely behind him - oh,
so closely as to gently brush the arm of his sleeve! A faint aroma of sweet perfume lodged in his
nostrils as she turned the corner and disappeared from sight. Overcoming his timidity vis-à-vis the room's
attendant, who stared directly at him as he broke away from the Rubens, he
followed the young beauty, at a discreet distance, into Room 15, where she
subsequently came to a respectful halt in front of Correggio's The School of Love. Unable from shyness to follow her directly to
it, he took up a parallel position in front of that same master's Ecce Homo,
the other side of one of the room's exits.
He was conscious, as he came to a halt in front of this painting, that
the young woman was perfectly aware of the fact he had been following her. For she stared across the intervening space
at him a moment, before returning her attention to the canvas in front of
her. As he in turn returned his
attention to the Correggio, he noticed, out of the corner of his right eye,
something bright and, turning his head towards the wall which formed a
right-angle with the one in front of him, he beheld a portrait entitled A
Blonde Woman, whose long wavy-golden hair and impassive face, painted with
what appeared to be consummate skill by Palma Vecchio, struck him as profoundly
akin to the woman he had just followed into the room. Admittedly, the eyes were brown instead of
blue, but in so many other respects the face bore a remarkable resemblance to
that of the real woman who stood no more than eight or nine yards to his left. Perhaps this was a lucky omen, an indication
that he ought to make her acquaintance in this very room and thereby achieve
the initial part of his romantic objectives?
He didn't really know what to think.
But, correspondences aside, he realized that he would have to act pretty
soon if he didn't want to lose her and perhaps spend the rest of the day
regretting his indecision!
Glancing back over his shoulder, he noticed that the young
beauty in question had taken up a position in front of Bronzino's alluring Venus, Cupid, Folly,
and Time, the far side of the room.
This intriguing allegory, in which Venus is being kissed and fondled by
Cupid, while Time, in the guise of an old winged greybeard, holds up the
pale-blue drapery upon which the goddess poses and Folly clasps his demented
head in what appears to be jealous disapproval, was easily the most erotic of
all the nude paintings in the National Gallery, forming, for most people, the
undisputed cynosure of the room. It
occurred to James Kelly that if he could muster the courage or willpower to go
across to the painting and make a show of admiring it, he would have an
excellent opportunity to attract her attention with a smiling glance, and thus
make it perfectly clear to her that he was interested in doing something
similar. From then on, everything should
follow like clockwork.
Calling upon every shred of willpower at his disposal, he
crossed the room and stationed himself beside the blonde. With a brief inspection of Venus' naked body
behind him, he stole a glance at her latter-day counterpart, whose lips had
formed into a gentle smile. Could it be
that she was smiling from pride at being admired by such a handsome young man
as himself, or was there something about the painting which amused her - say,
its overly erotic proceedings? Naturally,
it wasn't a question he cared to dwell on there and then. What mattered was finding the courage to say
something to her and somehow get a conversation under way.
Already the words were on the tip of his tongue and, just as he
was about to open his mouth and allow them to tumble out, along came a
middle-aged man in expensive-looking clothes who stationed himself immediately
to her right! He swallowed hard to quell
the incipient tumble of admiring words and simultaneously stifle the anger and
frustration mounting inside him, as the incident brought a fresh rush of blood
to his face. It was as though he had
been caught red-handed in the act of doing something dishonourable. For even the painting, ordinarily one which
would have added some amusement to his aesthetic appreciation of its graceful
outlines, now caused him to feel uncomfortable in light of his seductive
intent.
Confined for the nonce to the cage of his psychological
discomfiture, he kept his attention focused on the dove beneath Cupid's right
foot at the bottom left-hand corner of the painting, in an attempt to conceal
his embarrassment from the other viewers.
What he actually saw of it was little more than a blur, but at least
this stratagem provided him with something to cling-on to in the face of his
shameful predicament. But why oh why did
that idiot have to come between him and his intentions at the vital
moment! How could he possibly be
expected to commit himself to making the young beauty's acquaintance in front
of a middle-aged intruder whose respectful demeanour created the distinct
impression that such a thing wasn't done in galleries, least of all in
galleries of this magnitude, where classical and religious art ruled
supreme? Admittedly, he had never
attempted to pick anyone up in a gallery of any description before, since a
certain moral misgiving about the whole idea of 'picking up' female strangers
had often installed itself into his consciousness at critical times, making him
mindful of the risks involved, and having more than a little to do with his
unwillingness, as a cultured person, to be seduced by appearances alone, which
would somehow have struck him as somehow cheap and superficial. Ideally, one waited for the right female to
come along, and one only got to know her by degrees, as the regular contacts
one had with her blossomed into an amorous relationship. In the meantime, one just had to be patient
and play the waiting game.
But there were times - and this was evidently one of them - when
one was literally overwhelmed by the stunning beauty of a delightful stranger
who happened to cross one's path and, no matter where it was, felt literally
compelled to 'pick her up'. At such
times, the power of beauty, the promise of real sexual fulfilment, seemed to
overrule any abstract ethical conceptions one might ordinarily have adhered to,
in consequence of which one found oneself committed to securing her
companionship on the grounds that such beauty precluded the likelihood of
psychological incompatibility and accordingly rendered preliminary associations
irrelevant.
It seemed an eternity to James Kelly as he stood in front of the
Bronzino and continued to stare at the white dove, not knowing what to do
next. Although he had only been there
little over a minute he felt that if he didn't act immediately, either by
wrenching himself away from the painting altogether or, preferably, turning
towards the 'Venus' beside him to unburden his heart to her, the situation
would become too conspicuously embarrassing and people would become cynically
suspicious of his motives for standing where he was, in such close proximity to
the young woman in question. Then they
would follow him through the room with disapproving eyes or whisper between
themselves in sarcastic derision at his lack of cultural reverence.
Confined to the cage of his personal subjectivity, Kelly could
only speculate along these rather paranoid lines. For in this unbalanced state-of-mind it
simply didn't occur to him that other people might not give a damn whether he
said anything to the female by his side or not; that they might even take them
for lovers anyway, and be more interested in viewing paintings than
listening-in to other people's conversations.
He was much too self-centred to think anything of the kind, so
preoccupied had he become with the struggle going on inside him between the
desire to avoid making a fool of himself and the much more positive desire to
obtain what he was after. And, not
surprisingly, it was the latter which was winning out, since he now resolved to
speak to the woman regardless of the consequences. The smartly-dressed bourgeois tourist had
been reduced, as this resolve took shape in a moment of supreme defiance, to an
insignificant foreigner whose opinions didn't matter and who, in any case,
stood about as much chance of 'picking up' the blonde at his expense as he
would stand if, as a balding English tourist with a burgeoning paunch, he was
attempting to 'pick up' some beautiful Italian woman at the expense of a
handsome young Italian in some Florentine or Rome gallery.
Clearing his throat for the benefit of the beautiful stranger,
he turned his neck to the right and ... but no! How could it possibly be? For he encountered the middle-aged tourist
and another, younger man whom he hadn't noticed before! His expression immediately changed to
horrified amazement at the sight of them and, tearing himself away from where
he stood, he hurried across to the centre of the room to get a better view of
his surroundings. Of the twelve or
thirteen other people there, not one of them was wearing a white vest or
displaying a beautiful pair of firm legs beneath the rim of a tight-fitting
miniskirt. He recalled that he had been
so embarrassed, on first sighting the middle-aged tourist, that he had
endeavoured to conceal it from the young woman by riveting his attention on the
furthermost corner of the painting from her.
And, during that time, she had evidently taken her leave of it and
exited the room! But in which
direction? After all, there were three
exits to choose from here, which made it trebly difficult to come to the right
decision. It was unlikely, anyway, that
she had returned through the one which had served them both as an entrance to
the room, so that left two. Since a
poker-faced attendant was standing by the exit in front of him at that moment,
he decided to try the one to his right.
Taking no interest in the paintings exhibited in the adjoining
rooms, he kept his eyes peeled for the woman whose beauty had so captivated him
earlier that afternoon. He passed
through at least four rooms in quick succession, but without visible
success. She was nowhere to be seen!
Too annoyed with himself for having lost track of her, yet too
intent on finding her again to be particularly disconcerted by his swift
passage through successive rooms, he gave the greater part of his attention to
scrutinizing the visitors encountered en route, ignoring, where possible, both
attendants and paintings alike. Only in
Rooms 9 and 10 did he allow his preoccupation with the elusive beauty to be
shelved awhile, as some of the paintings there captured his attention. In Room 9, for instance, The Family of
Darius before Alexander stopped him in his tracks for a moment as, with
slightly less than his customary attention to detail, he granted this huge
masterpiece by Paolo Veronese a sort of reverential inspection. Nearby, Tintoretto's St. George
and the Dragon managed to arrest his attention in like fashion, whilst, on
another wall, the same master's Origin of the Milky Way returned him to
something approaching his usual self, as, forgetting the cause of his recent
tribulations, he permitted his gaze to wander over the entire range of this
highly imaginative canvas, noting, in particular, the golden stars which
spurted from the breasts of the naked mother of the Milky Way who, raising
herself on one hand from the luxuriously draped bed to the left of the
painting, receives the attentions of a suckling child held up to her left
breast by a father-figure, presumably God, whose nudity is wrapped in
salmon-pink drapery. In addition to four
cherubim, one beheld two pheasants to the lower right-hand side of the canvas
and an eagle, or other bird of prey, carrying in its talons what at first sight
looked like a crab but which, on closer inspection, transpired to being a sort
of bushy-tailed monster with pointed limbs and a sharply protruding tongue - in
short, the Devil. The entire scene, set
in the heavens, with clouds above and below the naked woman, was suggestive of
some strange surrealism peculiar to the sixteenth century. The colour combinations used in its
composition were still extremely impressive.
Stationed there with hands in his jacket pockets, Kelly found
himself wondering why none of the nudes he had seen on canvas that day seemed
to possess any pubic hair, but generally presented an appearance of innocent
sexlessness. The erotic content had been
narrowed down, in the vast majority of cases, to the breasts and thighs, so
that only a mild stimulus resulted.
Obviously, it was necessary for the gallery not to create a public
scandal or give offence to various people by displaying anything highly
erotic. And it was evidently just as
necessary not to encourage the wrong sort of people into the gallery for the
wrong reasons, including a desire to masturbate in front of something or
someone. Somehow a golden mean had to be
established in the interests of both gallery and public alike. But, even so, Kelly wasn't completely
satisfied by this conviction as to the real reason for the absence of pubic
hair from such nudes as presented their lower abdomen to public scrutiny. Heading towards Room 10, he convinced himself
that it was simply not the done thing, in religious art of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries, to depict pubic hair on canvas.
However, the despondency which had earlier engulfed him at not
being able to find the young woman he had lost track of in Room 15, temporarily
palliated by the genius of Tintoretto, now returned to him in full measure, and
it was as much as he could do to adopt anything approaching a receptive
frame-of-mind as he stood in front of Mantegna's Agony in the Garden
- a work which, on previous occasions, had never failed to impress
him. Of the two paintings by this title
hung to either side of the nearer of the two exits from the room, it was the
Mantegna rather than the Bellini which he had a special fondness for, even
though the latter was unquestionably a significant work. However, much as he could still appreciate
its brilliant colour-scheme, his disturbed state-of-mind made him somewhat
critical of the fact that the wonderful aesthetic effects created by its highly
engaging colours, reminiscent of the Van Haalem noted earlier, were at distinct
loggerheads with the theme the painting sought to convey. Instead of being made conscious of Christ's
agony, one's attention was arrested by the beauty and technical mastery of the
composition itself. And the same
criticism could also be levelled at Giovanni Bellini's version, though perhaps
to a lesser extent, in view of the sombre clouds which hovered ominously above
the Saviour's head, like some dark bird of prey, and the less-vibrant tones
employed in its execution. He felt quite
certain, at any rate, that had a modern artist like, say, Francis Bacon or
Eduard Munch tackled this subject, the agony of Christ's suffering would have
been conveyed to the viewer in no uncertain terms!
Taking his leave of the manneristic works in question, he
reluctantly allowed himself to be seduced into admiring Mantegna's The Introduction of the
Cult of Cybele at Rome. There was
something about the silver figures before his eyes which mitigated the
despondency he had been plunged into anew, in consequence of his unappeased
desire. Perhaps the fact of their being
pertinent to an engraving rather than to a painting had some significance in
this respect? He couldn't tell, but he
was grateful, all the same, that the work of this leading fifteenth-century
artist had an effect on him akin to a mild soporific. However, he hadn't entirely abandoned all
hope of finding the young woman and introducing himself to her. Admittedly, he wasn't as keen now as he had
been, a few minutes before, to hunt through successive rooms in search of his
sexual quarry with a near-philistine disregard for their time-hallowed
contents. He had virtually resigned
himself to having lost her. But there
were still a number of rooms to investigate and, for all he knew, she might
well be in one of them.
He had arrived at an area between rooms with a winding staircase
leading to the downstairs galleries.
Never having visited them in the past, he thought it worth his while to
check things out anyway, in the hope that, even if his quarry wasn't there, he
would encounter something he hadn't seen before. But despite his interest in a few of the
exhibits, he couldn't draw any real relief from this change of scenery. In gallery A, which was by far the largest,
he found himself walking between numerous rows of paintings hung on elongated
wooden supports, thereby enabling the gallery in question to exhibit hundreds
of works in the immense space between the walls, which, in any case, were
almost entirely hidden behind paintings.
Conscious of the many attendants on duty there, Kelly feigned interest,
as best he could, in the exhibits, turning his gaze to left and right as he
went up one row and down another, so to speak, and briefly stopping in front of
one of them every so often. On the end
of a row to the left of the gallery, a work entitled The Worship of the
Egyptian Bull-God, Apis genuinely intrigued him. But, although he would have ideally preferred
to give the gallery as a whole more attention than he actually was doing, this
Fillippino Lippi notwithstanding, the recollection of his real motive for being
there spurred him on to taking his leave of it.
Yet the golden-haired woman was nowhere to be found in any of the
adjoining galleries either, and, of all the colourful paintings being
exhibited, he could only bring himself to halt briefly in front of two - the
first, in gallery B, entitled Cognoscenti in a Room hung with Pictures,
which was attributed to the Flemish School Ca. 1620, and the second, in gallery
F, entitled The Toilet of Venus, from the studio of Guido Reni (1575-1642),
which, though manifestly inferior to the one upstairs, nevertheless intrigued
him on account of the fact that he hadn't realized there existed another
version of this theme, but had been content, for some curious reason, to regard
the Velazquez as the only one of its kind!
And neither had he been aware that, in addition to Nicolas Poussin,
there was also a Charles Poussin, an engaging example of whose work had been
put on show in one of the downstairs galleries.
But he couldn't permit himself to linger any longer in this particular
department of the National Gallery since, at that moment, the sensual desire to
set eyes on the real-life 'Venus' again was much stronger than the aesthetic
desire to contemplate any number of representational paintings, for which, in
any case, he had much less enthusiasm, these days, than formerly.
Once upstairs, however, he felt his heart sink at the immensity
of the task before him, of the vast number of rooms he would still have to
traverse in his endeavour to find her!
He had already walked backwards and forwards from room to room and
gallery to gallery with no success and, not altogether surprisingly, his legs
were less fresh now than at the beginning.
By the time he got to Room 8, he had resigned all hope of achieving his
objective and, with a sigh of defeat, he slumped resignedly onto one of its
soft-leather seats. In front of him, da
Vinci's The
Virgin of the Rocks appeared more melancholy than on any
previous occasion he could recall - in fact so melancholy, that he could hardly
bear to look at it! He felt doubly
cheated for having lost the woman who had, wittingly or unwittingly, seduced
him into following her in the first place and, through his obsession with her, deprived
him of a studious appreciation of a number of paintings which, despite their
manifest antiquity, weren't entirely without some contemporary relevance. It seemed to him, as he sat with bowed head,
that the afternoon had been thoroughly misspent; that he should never have
elected to visit the National Gallery in the first place. In consequence of which, the only sensible
thing to do now, not to prolong the agony, was to apply the coup de grâce
to himself and leave the place without further ado!
Forcing himself up from the seat with this in mind, he ambled
towards the exit, scarcely bothering to pay any attention to those around
him. To the left and several yards ahead
of him, in one of the smaller rooms, a middle-aged woman was being informed by
a stern-faced attendant that it was illegal to step over the rope to take a
closer look at the paintings. Undaunted,
the woman then blandly informed the attendant that she had absolutely no
intention of touching or damaging anything.
But the attendant, trained to do a specific job, still requested her to
step back over the rope. Not taking any
notice of him, the woman continued to inspect the small painting before her
eyes, and the attendant, growing sterner by the second, persisted in requesting
her to step back over the rope and thus abide by the rules. As Kelly passed by the room he heard the
attendant call for the supervisor, and felt a bitter anger growing inside him
at the stupidity and unreasonableness of the offending viewer. It didn't occur to him that she might be
short-sighted, but it certainly occurred to him, as he took a passing glance at
her, that it was just the sort of futile scene to mark the climax of an
altogether futile afternoon.
When he arrived in the commercial area, however, his glum
state-of-mind suddenly took a turn for the better, and he decided to buy a
postcard of The
Toilet of Venus to commemorate the occasion of his first setting eyes on the
young woman who happened to be staring at that painting at the time. In addition, he bought a few other postcards,
including Van Huijsum's Fruit and Flowers, which circumstances had
prevented him from viewing in the flesh, as it were, of the actual work. Then he headed for the exit and, pushing his
way through its swing-doors, came to an abrupt standstill just outside. For the person who caught his attention at
that very moment was none other than the woman for whom he had been frantically
searching all afternoon! And she was not
staring-out over Trafalgar Square or looking at other people. Standing with her back to the railings, she
was staring directly at him!
As though at a command from her eyes he was beside her and
mumbling an invitation to a meal somewhere.
She smiled her acceptance and, within a couple of minutes, they were
walking down the steps together and proceeding in the general direction of
Charing Cross Road. He soon learnt that
her name was Sharon, and that she was an actress.
