Page 35 of Bare
Rory’s eyebrow went up. ‘I’d be wrong.’
‘The nightingale poem isn’t about a bird. It’s about wanting to dissolve into something beautiful because your body is failing. Take away the failing body and you lose the urgency. The poem needs the cough.’
‘That’s a horrifying position for an English teacher.’
‘It’s an accurate position for an English teacher.’
‘Bollocks,’ Rory said. ‘I paint better when I’m eating and sleeping properly. The starving artist thing is propagandainvented by people who don’t want to pay artists. Caravaggio was a genius and also a murderer, and I don’t see anyone arguing that the murder improved his brushwork.’
‘Caravaggio’s chiaroscuro is directly informed by the moral darkness of his...’
‘Neil. He stabbed a man over a tennis match. That’s not moral darkness. That’s poor sportsmanship.’
Neil laughed. The sound surprised him. He didn’t laugh often, and the register of it caught him off guard, too loud for the flat, too unguarded for him.
Rory noticed. He smiled into his wine and didn’t say anything, which was worse.
The commission came up. A client who wanted ‘something cheerful.’
‘I tried. Mixed yellows. The canvas looked like a dentist’s waiting room.’
‘You can’t force warmth into paint.’
‘You can, actually. Cadmium yellow over a burnt sienna ground. Physically warm. But the painting was still dead.’ He swirled his wine. ‘Because cheerful isn’t a colour. It’s a lie. Joy is a colour. Joy’s got weight. Joy costs something.’
‘What does it cost?’
‘Admitting you’ve got something worth losing.’ He said it to the wine bottle.
Neil recited Heaney from memory. Four lines, quietly, looking at the bookshelf rather than at Rory because looking up would have turned it into a confession.
Rory sat up straighter. ‘Say that again.’
Neil said it again.
‘Christ.’ Rory stared at him. ‘How is writing that good?’
‘Because he meant every word and he chose every word and those are not the same thing.’
‘Meaning and choosing.’
‘Two different skills. Most people can mean. Most people can choose. Doing both. That's the trick. In writing. In painting. In anything worth doing.’
‘You sound like you've thought about this.’
‘I'm an English teacher. Thinking about this is my entire profession.’
‘It's more than that. You care about it. About words. About whether they're right.’ Rory turned to face him, one knee drawn up, elbow on the sofa back. ‘Most people use words like they use cutlery. Pick them up, use them, put them down. You use them like tools. Specific tools for specific jobs.’
‘Everyone should.’
‘Everyone doesn't. That's why most of what's written is rubbish.’
Neil laughed again. Short, startled out of him by the accuracy of the observation and the grin and the wine and the rain and the late hour and he was sitting on a paint-splattered sofa in his socks arguing about art and poetry with Rory. Paint on his face. Bare feet.
He had become it anyway the most important person in his life after Freddie and Gemma.
The laugh changed the air. When Rory heard it, his face changed, the grin softening. Quieter. More private.
