(I Don’t Want To Go To) Chelsea

The National Gallery sits on the edge on Trafalgar Square, right where every tourist thinks everything in London is located, including the Tower of London, Big Ben, BuckingHAM Palace and Madame Tussaud’s. And Shakespeare’s house, Windsor Castle and Oxford University.

I was transfixed by Jan Van Eyck’s masterpiece, the Arnolfini Portrait, all darting light and reflection, humour and narrative, texture and shadow, painted in 1434…1434, Christ, hundreds of years ahead of its time and yes, we all got the memo that the scene it portrays isn’t actually a wedding – well, duh, that’s what all the old guys thought, we know better now…

…when my phone vibrated, ringtone switched off but still active. I spoke quietly into it, giving my name, still staring at the happy Arnolfinis...

“Hello, mister McCabe, I used to call you Stevie, is that okay still? This is Della Maguire, did ye get my message?”

“I did, Della…you’ll have to forgive me, has it been a while? I don’t remember your name, sorry.”

“Ah, right, no problem. I used to stay up the next close to you in McCulloch Street, mind? I used to work in the wee dairy at the foot of the close, know?”

“Oh, Jesus, Della? Della! Christ, that was a lifetime ago. Sure, I remember you, you were always in there in the mornings when I got my rolls…I used to be in there most days, s’pose.”

“Aye, we used to get in that Guardian for you. ‘Course, that was afore the Pakis bought it off Mister Fulton.”

Giovanni Arnolfini, hand half raised as if in welcome, looks towards two figures reflected in the mirror behind him on the back wall, one of them – surely – the artist, the other a mystery. His wife, Giovanna Cenami, lays her hand on a swelling belly but, no, they tell us she isn’t pregnant, merely posing fashionably…well, those might have been their names, and that might have been what they were doing, but we don’t really know. The picture retains its tease, its suggestion.

“See, it’s my daughter, Mel? You mind her? She would be only wee when you lived by Cully, wee blonde one? I had the three daughters, and wee Brandon. Dana’s married onto one of those…ach, would you listen to me now? I’m talkin’ shite. It’s no’ aboot Dana, it’s aboot Mel. She…”

“Aye, you said in the message. I’m awful sorry to hear that.”

“I warned her, you do, don’t ye? Warned her about who she hung aboot wi’, but ye canny tell them, aw naw, they know best, right? Aye, right. So, she goes out the other night, cuz there’s been trouble round about here, riot this, riot that, she went to see whit’s goin’ on.”

“Hold on a second Della, why are you tellin’ me all this?”

The couple were Italian, but lived in what we now call Belgium, rich merchants garbed in velvet, sable and damask, fabrics in which they traded and made their fortunes. Well, somebody had to pay Van Eyck for his work and the mere bargees of Bruges lacked the coin. And they lacked much 15^th century bling, the type of thing merchants and nobility would drench themselves in.

“Well, I saw your name in the paper, the Daily Banner, right?”

…not again. That rag and its payoff were riding me down.

“So, I thinks to mysel’ at the time, I know him, that’s Stevie used to live over by us, aye says Tam – that’s ma husban’ – so it is. So when, y’know, this ‘hing happened, your name was right there, in my mind. I’m thinkin’…he’s in the papers, Stevie McCabe, top ‘tec they called ye in the Banner. You must be some kinna big shot, jist the man to help us out, so I phones up the paper -”

“-The Banner?”

“Uh-huh, and the guy there gives us this number.”

“Aw, for fuck’s sake. Ogilvie, him?”

The artist’s name was emblazoned right there, like high graffiti, and – right next to the name - that date so long ago, and a flurry of symbolic messages to ponder today. Cherries, signifying love…oranges signifying purity…a wee dog, a bizarre squirt of a canine with a pirate’s facial hair, signifying…that the Arnolfinis owned an ugly wee dog (interpretation my own).

“Thing is, Della, I know you saw me in the papers and everythin’, but I’m jist a one-man band, I don’t…I can’t…investigate things like…I can’t just say I’m gonny take on a rape case. Anyhow, I’m not in Glasgow, I’m in London the now.”

“Ah, it’s like that, is it? The bright lights? Made yer fortune and doon to the smoke?”

“Della, I hardly know ye. I haveny lived in McCulloch Street for, I dunno, a wheen of years. I don’t need you gettin’ on my case. How can you not just get the coppers to do their job?”

“Well, that jist it, they willny. Jist point-blank refused, said…whit did they say?...said it wid be bad for community relations, they said that. Could inflame tensions, that was another one. Cuz of these riots and that. All cuz it was one of they Pakis raped her.”

Oh, no…

Light, all light, true light, daring techniques nobody had dreamt of, searing back off a  chandelier, a mirror, a brass frame, a golden chain, the whole scene reflected perfectly in the image-within-the-image, subtly insinuating from the convex glass of the mirror, a perfect non-Euclidean transposition of the objects…the guide said.

“Della, I really don’t need to be hearin’ this. I’m awful sorry to hear about your daughter, about Mel, and I wish you well, I do, but I’m not your guy. It’s not about bein’ mister-high-and-mighty, it’s just…you don’t ask a fireman to bake you bread, you ask a baker. Jist not my job.”

“Wis it cuz I said ‘Paki’?”

“Naw…it’s…well, that’s not the reason, really not, but tell the truth, I’m not comfortable hearin’ that, no. I know ye’re upset and that….”

“Okay, well, one of they Asians done it, how’d’ye like that? Mel was out on Albert Drive and it was all kickin’ off. She’s doin’ her nosey, mibbe had a wee drink, and this is whit happens? She comes home to me, comes home in some state, says mum, somethin’ terrible’s happened…”

“Listen, Della…if I could do somethin’, I would, but like I say, here’s me in London and that’s no good to you and Mel. You need to get the polis to do their job right. Sorry I canny do anythin’ more, but that’s jist how…”

I was speaking to empty space; Della was gone.

None of the other paintings in the room, mainly facial portraits with a scattering of devotional scenes, interested me at all, but Jan Van Eyck’s creations gazed at me from half a millennium away and spoke of status, hopes, vanity and the transitory nature of it all, the Arnolfinis puckish compatriots to Shelley’s Ozymandias and Fitzgerald’s Gatsby.

Or, at least, that what my exam answer would have said.

I left the gallery educated, provoked, perplexed…disappointed, dismayed and feeling several different brands of shabby. It seemed like some kind of bait had been cast and I was the quarry.

*** *** ***