Chapter Eight

8

Anglican

Cowgirls

KATHERINE & MARTIN & GEORGE

Among the swaying towers of the chartered banks, the Imperial Trust draped her new matte grey marble skirts a mere twelve stories up from the Bay Street sidewalk. Elegant and discreetly rich, the dowager kept a smaller house. Even so, she had needed a tuck or two, a cosmetic lift to catch the eyes of oilmen, had to show her bones for American money. No whore like an old whore, George Preston had been heard to say when the refurbishing plans had thumped onto the boardroom table.

When Katherine pushed on a bronze lion’s face, thick grey glass swung silently in and silently closed behind her, swallowing the sharp street noise in a cavernous well of stone and light. Across what seemed a seamless floor of slate, a wall of flat dove-coloured marble soared forty feet alone; business murmured behind that, barely a pulse in the temple.

There, she thought, that’s where I should hang! My thin skin of plastic, my perfect rocks against that cliff! If I were on that wall… I’d never have to paint again! A swell of blood for a moment staggered her, so that she heard her name called thickly and had to shake the vision from her head.

“Katherine!” A young man, carefully blond in corduroy and tweed, glided swiftly to her side and hugged an arm with both hands.

“Martin. Hi.” She shook her head again and patted her bag.

“You okay? What’s…”

“I feel a little… Lunch, maybe. I feel a little heavy from lunch.”

“Yah. Sorry I couldn’t get there. But what are you doing here?” He fingered a particularly fine bangle. “You should be home, saving yourself for tonight.”

“David came and told me you said…”

“Oh, he did, eh?” Martin dropped her arm and flicked fingers through the part in his hair. “Didn’t think he’d bother. Didn’t sound like he gave a damn when I called!”

“Yes, well, he was nice enough to come out to the restaurant to tell me, and lunch with us.”

“Oh! He did, did he? Hunh. I thought he was cutting the tie that binds, taking a powder, walking out, aban…”

“Don’t!” Katherine turned away from his indignation, a hand to her temple; something cold to press against it would be nice, a vodka and tonic… No! Business!

MARTIN

Martin Knight’s father, Harold, a short, round ginger-coloured man with shuttling eyes, was a mattress-maker whose real passion was weaving tartan. His mattress factories, which did a sideline of casket satins, lay along the bracelet of train tracks across the wrist of the city affording him a piece of understated Rosedale real estate with a potting shed for his loom at the back of the garden, a bit of Haliburton cottage country done up in birch, and marriage with a low-Anglican private-school girl from Brantford who had enough gall to pretend that they had been there forever. She, Madge, manic and not trusting the motives of medicine, took sherry and doted on a succession of nasty fat Corgis trained to unravel anything in plaid. She collected furniture and was not allowed to drive.

Martin was the tail of three sons and grew up largely unnoticed. He thrived in a confusion of quality, quality being the solitary virtue of his mother’s passionate acquisitiveness. In his own bedroom an overwrought Beidermeir sofa fought a Louis Seize escritoire, sharp with ormolu, and a pair of dry Regency bookcases for elbow room; one corner bristled with a Directoire display cabinet stuffed with the hair of mourning rings, mourning wreaths and black Wedgewood bric-a-brac. His bed was authentic American Colonial, the dresser a Cape Cod mahogany sarcophagus, the wardrobe early religious Quebec and his treasure chest was a Waterloo County dower box garish with Mennonite hex signs. One real Casson and thirteen moralistic, water-spotted engravings of great moments in mythology covered the walls in busy frames.

Somehow his brothers managed to smuggle their hockey cards, soccer boots, rackets, flasks and deck shoes intact into the real world of decorators and three rooms of furniture for one price. But Martin didn’t like teams. He screamed with claustrophobia from the bottom of scrums. Instead, he draggled, caught a sleeve on the Beidermeir and spent the age of twelve infatuated with Hohenzollern history. At about fifteen, something, either the dangerous desk or the gilt-pronged display case, tipped him to Dumas, père and fils, who introduced him to Flaubert, whose Salambo showed him Carthage, whose elephants he accompanied as far as the Alps, where he noticed similarities to his treasure box before he dove into the Italian Renaissance and came up breathing in Montmartre making Giacometis in the basement out of spaghetti and plaster.

Whatever caught Martin’s imagination inspired experimentation and petered-out in frustration. The dam between eye and finger forced him to bloat as a child, to guilty narcissism at puberty, to promiscuity at eighteen, to attempted suicide at nineteen and to work thereafter, poorly paid, uninterested, and seldom missed in the offices of mattress publicity.

Had he left home at twenty, Martin would certainly have wanted the Beidermeir, the Directoire with all of the Victoriana, his treasure chest and far too much else, but at twenty-four, having cultivated ascetism, burgundy and a single platonic relationship with a not very attractive woman named Prue who read Genet and drank vermouth, he bought a queen-sized futon and took the Casson.

Prue liked to dress with what she called flair and have Martin attend her to picture-hanging parties. One night in a reclaimed loft with rolling floors and boring pictures, he tripped over Katherine Bailey’s bag as she squatted on a couch drinking wine and talking cars with an elderly sculptor. Martin actually fell at her feet. She asked if those were his cigarettes by his shoulder and could she have one – hers were too damned light and she needed a real taste of nicotine – and would he get her a refill if he was on his way to the bar. He found Prue and introduced her to a pair of boys who bred seal-point Siamese and were writing post-dated cheques for one of the pictures, then he treated Katherine to late-night breakfast in a greasy spoon.

MARTIN & KATHERINE & GEORGE

The right-hand wall of the Imperial Trust foyer was a slender framework of stone encasing vast sheets of the same grey glass as the street doors. The left-hand wall echoed the glass with a massive veneer of marble, but was interrupted at floor level by twin pairs of elevator doors, and above, at the third level, the centre was breached to create an extraordinary balcony.

An eager design to modernize the bank’s gothic escutcheon into a flashy logo recognizable on anything from billboards to t-shirts had been dismissed by the Directors as vulgar, awfully bold and unhealthy. Blazoning the initials I.T. even in stolid roman lettering was considered to be perhaps a good way to sell something, but not quite right for looking after people’s money. A bloody damned target! Brigadier Monteith was allowed to grumble, in case other members of the Board were dim to priorities. So, the gothic curlicue persisted, encircled with laurel, flanked by lions rampant and surmounted by a complicated crown. It was etched in glass, printed on cheques and carved in stone; carved for the balcony’s façade in a corniced entablature supported by acanthus-capitalled Corinthian pilasters all waisted with a bow-bellied balustrade of cast iron pomegranates.

On the floor between the banks of elevators stood Katherine’s crated painting, Martin’s red tool box and a coil of rope. “So,” Katherine heaved a grim sigh, “this’s the mess, is it? Rope. I don’t believe rope. What’s with these idiots? If they’re going to buy the damned thing…” The beginning of a wail brought Martin back to attention.

“Easy, take it easy. It’s all right. They haven’t really said yes yet, not that they won’t, don’t worry, Liz Preston’s in my pocket, believe me, but as long as it’s not official they won’t allow us to use permanent fixtures. They’re bankers, Katherine, caution’s a side-order at lunch for these guys.”

“Okay, okay! But is this going to work? Can you get it up?”

“Katherine, dear!” Martin raised an eyebrow and cocked his head at her, “Impotence has never been my problem.”

“Oh shut up!” She was snarling, “Can you get… can you raise that goddamned thing off the goddamned floor and get it on the goddamned wall and…”

“Yes, yes, yes, please! We’re in a cathedral of commerce, Katherine! Such talk from the lady artist.”

“Shit! You sound just like Bea! What I don’t need is another damned mother. Or a wimp!” She saw Martin wince and the flood of her own pain drowned the rage. The strap of her bag slid from her shoulder, Martin caught and held it with a tentative, offering gesture. There were occasions on which he would have liked very much to swing that bag in a wide, heavy arc to the side of Katherine’s head; occasions when her infuriating certainty, her dictatorial possession of moments, tromped boot-heels over the most discreet and reasonable objection. Yet, so often was her assumption of control a hot and ready desire to make the most of a situation, a wish to include the world in a happy project produced from her fertile imagination, directed with her imperious hand and up-staged by her self-centred performance, so often was her arrogance blessed with the best of intentions, that Martin, when she weakened, forgave. “Oh, Jesus, I’m sorry, Mart. It’s just this day’s starting to fall apart, nothing’s going right. First my coffee, then my hair – you should see my hair! I should be bald. I almost am bald! And then David… And then the heel’s just waiting to fall off this boot – see? it wiggles, and these weren’t cheap! And that woman in the restaurant! Oh… Martin!” Her face fell towards tears.

“Oh, you poor thing.” Martin rather liked the evidence of tears. “You’re forgiven. I don’t mind. I’ve been called worse. But you really should try to keep it together. It’s not going to help any if you’re all red and swollen. Calm down now, take deep breaths… That’s the girl! This’ll work fine. See? The rope almost matches, blends right in.”

“Not very thick.” The little-girl sad voice was understood to be charming.

“Doesn’t have to be, heavy test stuff.” Martin squatted beside the coil and took an end in hand. “I tie it in dead centre, a single line up the wall and around that middle pineapple…”

“Pomegranate.”

“I know. Around it, and… Presto! Nice rope, eh? Ran all over looking for it, nothing but that awful yellow nylon crap everywhere. Found this one in one of those sail places, real rope, in keeping with the artistic integrity, my dear.”

“Martin, you’re the best! Forgive my temper. Do you just tie it? What if somebody pulls…”

“Not to worry. Your man in the marketplace had the foresight, may I say brilliance, to get the sail salesman to show me a knot that won’t undo unless the weight’s lifted up. And we’ll worry about that later, they’ve got lots of maintenance muscle around this place. I’ve got some lined up to help soon as I get this tied in. I go up,” Martin bounced upright, pointing to the farthest elevator, “that one opens at the back on three. I go ’round the corner into the balcony, they push, I pull and… Heave Ho, Up She Rises! And soon as the doors close for the day, the caterers set up along that side – booze, cheese, nibble stuff – and that way there’s the whole length of the place to get good perspective. Won’t have to crane their double chins.”

“But why does it have to be this wall with that jesus kitschy temple hanging off it? It should be that wall.” Katherine flung an arm, bangles crashing, at the free-standing back wall, sheer and monolithic. “That wall’s perfect.”

“I know, I know, but listen, sweetheart, they weren’t going to hang anything in here until I leaned on Liz Preston. She doesn’t like this wall either; she’s all for the temple effect, but thinks the elevators look like washroom cubicles. And they do, kind of, all this marble, there should be urinals along that wall.” In his turn, Martin pointed to the back wall. “So, I told her that if your painting could hang in the centre here, it’d restore the visual integrity of the interrupted surface – stone on stone, d’you see – or some kind of donkey-dung along those lines. And, I told her my mother is interested in it, which she isn’t, of course, but it did the trick and she…” In the act of remembering to lower his arm, Martin was distracted by a figure crossing the floor to the street doors. “…you haven’t… Hold on!” And he darted across the foyer.

Katherine watched him speak to a white-haired man wearing an expensive grey coat and holding a dark homburg in gloved hands. His posture appeared attentive towards Martin, but Katherine thought she saw reluctance in the fingers drumming the hat brim as he was conducted to her side.

“Katherine, this’s perfect timing. I don’t believe you’ve met George Preston, the man in charge. Mr Preston, Katherine Bailey, the painter.”

“How do you do, Miss Bailey. I trust everything is satisfactory?” He bowed his head in apology for his gloved hand.

“How do you do, sir. It’s Mrs and I’m annoyed, actually.” It wasn’t that he had had quite enough time to remove the glove as he came across the foyer – Katherine was laissez-faire on the fine point of etiquette, as long as he knew what he was supposed to do, she didn’t mind him not doing it; it wasn’t even because Martin had forced this introduction – she was always shy of meeting people, especially when unprepared, afraid of embarrassing herself, afraid of contempt. No, it was Martin’s blithe ‘of course’ that raised her chin. From previous description, she could well believe that his mother might be indifferent to anything painted since Gainsborough washed his last brush, however – where the hell did the ‘of course’ come from?

Martin heard the edge in her voice, “Now, Katherine.”

“Annoyed is nicer than what I really am, Martin.”

George Preston’s fingers stilled on his hat brim. Temperament, he thought, watching Katherine’s eyes stab from Martin, to wall, to crate and back. Not entirely sober, either, I don’t think. Ah, the rope, she’s upset about the hanging arrangement, cheesy, but there’s no help for it. Should have approved the purchase beforehand, so she could nail it to the wall good and proper, but the Board has to poke at it and grunt first. Elizabeth ought to have stepped on their heads and signed a cheque. She needs more… Nerve? Not bloody likely. She’s no more taste of her own than old Monteith, but she can spot a fellow like Martin who can fill up the shop window for her. If she’d just learn to polish her brass. “What seems to be the problem, Mrs Bailey?”

“Ro-pe.” Two syllables, but that’s how her head felt, split in the middle.

“I understand. Hanging is one thing, isn’t it? But hanging by a rope is quite another. You are remarkably generous to allow us to take such advantage of you. If it could have been otherwise, I assure you it would have been, but we have a rather old-fashioned set of citizens on our Board who think it was badly managed when the shepherds got in before We Three Kings. They’ve come to live for the glory of the first look-see, pride of possession. Aristocracy tends to get thin and mean in a socialist state. D’you know,” George pointed his chin up at the ornate balcony above, “when we settled for that over-wrought bit of handicraft, our Brigadier Monteith very proudly declared that it made him feel positively Venetian. So, you see what we’re up against.”

“Philistines.”

“Oh, Philistines, of course, they’re always about, quite thick on the ground, really,” he hung his hat from one hand and waved the other at the walls of marble, “preferred ground, naturally, in a bank. But if you’ve the jawbone of an ass, you can clear space right enough.” There seemed to be a very small smile in the corners of his mouth, “D’you know my wife then, Mrs Bailey?”

“No, no, they haven’t met yet.” The gathering lines in Katherine’s face sent Martin rushing in before she could organize a response. “Tonight! Tonight’ll be the big event. Your wife’s a tremendous fan of Katherine’s work, eager to meet the artist. It’s so exciting it’s almost too much. I’m sure they’ll have a whole lot to say to each other.”

“That I wouldn’t doubt.” George was pinching a grin. “Well, I must get off. A pleasure to have met you, Mrs Bailey. Goodbye, Martin.” With a nod, he turned to recross the floor.

“Bye! We’ll see you tonight.” Martin called after.

George hesitated in the two-handed act of placing his hat on his head and looked over his shoulder. “Oh? Oh, yes, of course. Good afternoon, then.” And was gone through the grey glass doors.

“Yyyyyaaaaa…”

“Please, Katherine! Not now, please!”

“That son-of-a…” She bit it off, glaring. “Jawbone of an ass…” She bit again and breathed roaring through her nose. “Jesus H. Christ, Martin! You’ve sold me down the river, to the enemy, to the goddamned Philistines themselves! David’ll…”

“Oh, David, David, David!” Martin was quick to match her anger, “What the hell does he know? Wouldn’t recognize art if the Sistine roof fell on his head. He’s so busy chasing his fly around town, robbing cradles…”

“Martin!” She grabbed at his arm.

“Oh, never mind. Sorry. But it’s true, makes me so damned mad, what he’s doing to you.”

“Just forget it. Okay?”

“Okay, okay. But look, forget old George, don’t worry about him, he’s harmless, pompous maybe, but not so bad. It’s Liz who calls the shots. She and my mother were…”

“And your mother, what the hell…”

“Never mind the rest of it, the important thing now is that they’ve been prigs together since school and for some reason, god knows why, Liz thinks we’re just the most cultured things since yoghurt, and she believes anything I say. She’s no hell for niceness – the girls up at Holt’s call her Dragon Lady, according to Madge – and the Peter Pan collars are a blind, but she is the Chairwoman. If she wants to patronize the Arts, my dear, you be Art and let her patronize away.”

“Just let her patronize me!” Katherine lowered her head and growled, “I’ll rearrange her collar for her. God, I bet she wears a cloth coat in January!”

“Katherine, please.” Martin pinched his cheeks to look long-suffering.

“Just kidding. I’ll behave. Are you going to be done in time for dinner? David’s doing fish.”

“Well, I don’t know…” He pursed his lips.

“Oh, come on, don’t be silly. I need you. It’s not going to be easy for me, you know. This’ll be the last… Holy shit! I forgot to tell you… Gran and Bea are coming!”

“For dinner?”

“No, after. But I mean they’re coming here!”

“But your mother never…”

“I know. Gran decided she wanted to come and she’s making Bea bri:^….

there is a line missing here which I’ll have to look up…thankyou.