The Fatal Englishman by Sebastian Faulks Page B

smoking opium; his clear complexion seldom betrayed the excesses of his life. He spoke briskly and simply, and had a streak of gallantry which often made him choose to dance all evening with the plainest-looking woman at a party. Younger women, such as his friend Gerald Reitlinger’s sister Winifred, thus felt flattered by his attention. He courteously warned her that his and Gerald’s parties became wild after midnight and she should make arrangements to go home.
    His charm was qualified by his unreliability. He often failed to turn up at dinner parties if he thought someone who bored him might be there. His opium smoking also made him moody, though he warned friends not to worry if they called on him and found him distracted. He was quite punctilious about his louche habit.
    A Parisian friend, Jacques Porel, claimed that ‘He never uttered a cruel word. His presence alone was enough to save any gathering from vulgarity. At the same time he made you feel at ease in the order of things his delicacy had imposed.’ Porel also noticed a certain boyish playfulness: ‘His eyes looked down to the ground, his schoolboy pout was fixed, then would turn into a shy smile as he suddenly took out of his pocket – with exactly the same air of surprise – a thousand franc note or a pair of twenty-five centime coins, and said, “Look how rich I am. Georges, Jacques, listen, my dear chap. I’m asking you to dinner.” ‘ According to Porel, ‘one half expected him to clap his hands and jump up and down with glee.’
    Wood’s unreliability could be hurtful and alarming. LucyWertheim, a friend and supporter, waited for two hours at her flat for Wood to come to dinner as arranged. At ten o’clock a friend rang to say Wood was unwell. The next day he arrived unexpectedly at her birthday lunch in a restaurant in Piccadilly, thrust a picture into her arms and borrowed half a crown for the taxi. He had a black eye, spoke as though in a trance, and hardly ate. Lucy Wertheim believed that, ‘a restless energy seemed to impel him to keep moving whilst the knee that troubled him obliged him to take frequent rests.’ Yet she, like Winifred Nicholson, was powerfully affected by his presence from the first meeting onwards. She sensed something in him that was almost frighteningly dynamic.
    Wood sat on the train to Penzance in August 1926. He was ready to make the big push forwards. His private life had reached a fragile equipoise, his technique was sufficiently developed. In Ben Nicholson he had an ideal painting partner: quiet, dedicated and appreciative. Although Nicholson’s own painting would shortly embrace abstraction, never to return, he was at this time painting in a figurative style so similar to Wood’s that some people found their paintings hard to distinguish. Despite Wood’s social life and nervous character, Nicholson found him the most generous and inspiring companion he ever had. In analysing how Wood tried to emulate the Nicholsons it is easy to overlook how his painting inspired them at a difficult time in their lives.
    Wood’s only obstacle to high achievement was his increased reliance on opium. He told Frosca that he would try to do something about it for her sake as he did not wish his appreciation of her to have any narcotic element. At the same time he invited her to come and stay with him at Porthmeor Beach, in St Ives, and preferably to bring some high quality drugs with her. The trouble was that Tony Gandarillas was now seeing so much of Maria de Gramont that Wood could not get access to his supply.
    Frosca duly arrived at Wood’s little cottage, and to begin with all went well. His painting reached a new level and he felt happy with Frosca. He painted the sea, the boats and the local people with what Winifred Nicholson called ‘imaginative reality’. Shebelieved his painting was now back on track after the frustrations caused to it by city life and the upheavals over Meraud. ‘I too,’ Winifred Nicholson