Rowland And The Muse ( VILLAGE TALES EP. 39 )

A muse takes all forms, and none. What gives any creative person the desire to practice their art and explore their talent to the full is illusive, but without it, little can be achieved. Is it something we strive for in the future, or something from which we are trying to escape from the past, a muse can push us or pull us.

As I walked back from Finches, the home of the artist Rowland Cartwright, I had to solve a problem. Rowland had been paid in advance for a commission by a friend of what he called his ‘bonkers’ sister. After three months and no smell of a painting, the friend was wanting his money back. Fuelled with whiskey, I had arranged with two dealers to advance Rowland cash against two antiques. Rowland had said he couldn’t sell the antiques having been his ‘dad’s’, but I had persuaded him he could put them up as surety in the knowledge that within three months with the sale of the painting he’d repay the advance with ease. It meant that he could get his ‘bonkers’ sister and her friend off his back and, so long as he finished the painting within three months, everyone would be happy, job done. Well done me.

My first instinct at hearing from Dave at the pub that Rowland Cartwright had asked about a picture framer, was not to get involved. Rowland had a reputation as a drinker, actually an alcoholic. He was a jolly one but also unpredictable and unreliable. 

Reality kicked in when the two dealers requested guarantees of the advance being repaid within three months or the delivery to one, of a bronze figure of ‘Elegance’ one of the three graces, and to the other, an ebony and gilt cabinet with pietra dura panels. So if the alcoholic, unreliable Rowland Cartwright, didn’t produce a painting, and the antiques couldn’t be sold, muggins here would have to stump up the thousands instead, which I didn’t have. Very well done me, thanks to Mr. Jamesons.

As I approached the entrance to Finches hoping to see progress, a small Mercedes sports car drove in and a woman got out and preceded me to the front door with a key.

‘Hello,’ I said, ‘I’ve come to see Rowland.

We then introduced ourselves. This was the ‘bonkers’ sister and a more charming and polite person one couldn’t wish to meet.

She suggested I remain in the hall while she found Rowland. There were voices from above and when she returned I explained that I had some money for him. 

‘Is this for a painting?’ She asked and I said it was.

‘One that he’s done or one that he’s suppose to be doing?’

‘One that he’s done,’ I lied, and I told her that he’d told me he needed some money to repay an advance, but he hadn’t given me any bank details.

I suspected the details were hers, but I said only that I would transfer the money later that day. After she’d left I decided to limit the alcohol available and hid as much as I could find before collapsing into one of the voluminous sofas. Then I heard a,

‘Pssst!’

I looked up to see Rowland poking his head round a corner at the top of the stairs.

‘Has she gone?’

I said she had and Rowland being the alcoholic that always had some hidden away, he produced a flask shaped bottle from inside a bible and held it up,

‘Ah!, look,’ he said, ‘the holy spirit.’

In the kitchen we took up our positions at the breakfast bar. Coffee was made, and the top came off the whiskey with an apology,

‘Sorry ol’ chum, we’re on half rations,’ then added in a whisper as if the sister was still within earshot, 

‘I think bonkers sister found the stash.’

Outside, Rowland drew in a lung full of fresh air then spent ten minutes coughing and wheezing before falling into one of several wicker chairs and igniting his roll-up. 

I had asked Rachael, the village’s historian, if she could find out anything about the Cartwright family. People generally aren’t born alcoholics, and I wondered if anything had pushed him in that direction.

Mathew Cartwright, Rachael had told me, Rowland’s father, was a no nonsense northern industrialist, owner of mines, and steel mills. Munitions production during both wars accounted for much of their wealth. Rowland’s mother had died giving birth to him. He had three elder siblings, James, Constance and Marion. James the eldest would have been expected to follow in his father’s footsteps. Young Rowland’s school had recognised his promise as an artist but it was denied by his father who thought art was an excuse for fecklessness and encouraged all sorts of deviant behaviour. Rowland’s awards for art, had either been returned to the school or thrown away. When Rowland was awarded a scholarship to Goldsmiths Art College his father had told Rowland they had refused him due him showing no talent. Rowland’s work was ridiculed by his father as having no merit and something that anyone too lazy to do anything else could do.

Under the Thatcher government of the eighties, coal and steel were not in favour. Cartwrights diversified but in doing so lost money. Then shortly after the company was bought out, James and Constance Cartwright were killed in a car crash, asleep in the back of the car, Rowland survived. Rowland had always blamed by his father for the death of his beloved wife, now he blamed him for the death of his favourite son and his eldest daughter and wished it had been Rowland instead. For the last few years of his life Mathew Cartwright lived with Rowland’s sister Marion, her husband Marcus, a corporate lawyer, and their two sons. His will left everything to Marion, Rowland was not mentioned and it was requested by his father that he not attend the funeral.

Rachael confirmed that ‘Finches’ was owned by Marion Fitzgerald, Rowland’s sister, but why did he call her ‘bonkers’? So I asked him,

‘Bonkers, mad as a fish,’ he told me. He then waved his mug in an arc around himself, spilling some,

‘Oops. All this see, is hers. She lets me live here, free. Free as a bird, would you?’

‘Would I what?

‘If this was yours, would you let me live here?’

‘I don’t know . . . ‘

‘Yes you do. Course you wouldn’t, unless you were bonkers. There you are, case proven your honour, my sister is bonkers.’

He then raised his mug, I imagine to his sister, and then fell silent for some time.

Sat in silence I was puzzled by some thing he’d said at our first meeting,

‘What did you mean,’ I asked him, ‘by ‘money for nothing?’

‘She thinks I’m stupid?’

‘Your sister?’

‘Yep. Who do you think buys the paintings? God knows what she does with them.’

‘Surely your agent sells them through galleries?’

‘That’s just a cover. Who’d buy my daubs, thr’rubbish. Everyone says so,I can’t paint for toffees. Don’t suppose you’ve got any? I just fancy something sweet.’

Rowland was very good artist, some might even say brilliant but from an early age he’d been told he had no talent and his art was a waste of time and anyone can do it. It was easy for him to believe that because he’d found it easy. The only people to believe something’s easy are those that have a talent for it, it’s only when they meet someone who genuinely tries hard to do it and can’t, that they realise not everyone can. That’s when they might admit they have a talent.

With a month to go before I had to repay the dealers I’d given up on the muse arriving. I had to try something radical to get Rowland to believe in himself, and his talent, one that was appreciated, and not only by his sister. Rather than being destroyed as Rowland’s father had intended, both Constance and Marion had rescued Rowland’s awards and certificates, photographs of school exhibitions and prize givings. There was also the letter confirming Rowland Cartwright’s offer of a scholarship to Goldsmiths College. 

Marion was sure Rowland would destroy them but I had convinced her I wouldn’t let them out of my sight. I was desperate to get him to realise his work was worthy, not ‘money for nothing’. I’d also asked her for proof that she wasn’t his secret benefactor but it was a discerning public that couldn’t get enough of his work. 

Laid out before him, Rowland picked up each piece as the tears fell down his cheeks. I said nothing as he wandered down to the stream and sat there with his head in his hands. I hung around thinking a muse is simply that belief in what you are doing, or someone who holds that belief, believes in you, and inspires you to do more.

I’m puzzled who Rowland might be, if he ever sobered up. It’s unlikely, once an alcoholic, always an alcoholic, when one drink is too many, and a thousand not enough.

A week before the deadline Marion returned the money, thank goodness, and said that Rowland was drinking less, but only because he was painting more. To my relief, she had arrived, the muse, just fashionably late.

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Written and read by Barkley Johnson.