Ghost Town by Patrick McGrath

Author:Patrick McGrath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-08-25T04:00:00+00:00

The last detail of the story I had after a conversation with him. I have said that Jerome Brook Franklin was a gruff man, and he often exaggerated that trait in order to amuse me. When my mama took me to visit my grandmother I would slip away and dart up the stairs, then tiptoe along the corridor to his studio. Often the door was slightly ajar, and from the corridor I was aware of the powerful smell of the chemicals with which he cleaned his brushes. I would see him there before his easel in the long coat he wore when he was working, a loose brown garment such as might be worn by a janitor. Always the brown coat, always the cigar, and sometimes a model, a girl, naked or loosely draped, arranged upon a platform with a broken pillar and perhaps a clump of trailing ivy. At other times some grand dignified lady with a vast bosom and hair stacked high would sit imperiously before him, and on the easel I would see her painted head, and beyond it the head itself.

My grandfather was aware of my presence even though I had made no sound at all. Without turning he would bark at me in a tone of mock annoyance.

—What is it you want, nuisance child? You have come to distract me because the women don’t want you, is that it?

But he would not turn, nor would his eyes move from their single track, the sitter and the canvas, back and forth, and the brush in his hand flickering here and there as the cigar smoke streamed from him as though he were an engine. I said nothing, merely hitched myself up onto a paint-spattered stool in the back of the studio and sat silently watching. He talked about me to his sitter.

—My daughter’s child, he would say. She’s a van Horn like her mother. All mad. My brother-in-law, they had to send him away! Into my mountains!

So it would go, and a large part of the pleasure I took from being there came of listening to my grandfather talk about the family, which he did in tones of faux horror, saying we were all mad. It was a good joke. After a while he would turn to change his brushes and see me perched on my stool, and pretend to be surprised.

—Are you still here, you damn little monkey? Go on, get out, get away downstairs, I’ve had enough of you!

Off I would go then and wander about the house until I heard my mama calling me. Then we would go home.

But one day my grandfather adopted a different tone. He had no sitter in his studio that day and he seemed in good humor. There was a bottle of red wine on the floor by his easel and a glass of the stuff close to hand. He was putting a few last touches to the portrait of an eminent banker with a high bald head and a mean face.

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