The Muse of Hope Falls

ONE

I first met the wild and impenetrable gaze of Christie McGraw when I saw her one evening, half-naked, at a gallery on Cork Street. It was sixteen years ago, and I'd been sent to cover the opening of an Erik von Holunder retrospective at the Redfern.

'Wow! Who the hell is that, I wonder?' I'd asked rhetorically, while standing in front of 1978's Bikini-Girl Gunslinger.

'Judy McGraw,' Suzy said. 'But Von Holunder insisted on calling her Christie. Said she looked more like a Christie than a Judy.'

'I guess I can see that,' I said. The only Judy I could think of was Judy Garland and Christie certainly didn't look like her. There was something about Christie's stare that made demands of you, rather than suggesting that you might make demands of her. It was unnerving but undoubtedly energised the paintings in which she appeared.

'Anyway, that's the name that made her famous, so that's what she got stuck with.' Suzy turned to look at me. 'Did you not know that?'

I sensed the first trace of disappointment in her voice. This was a sensation with which I was to become wearyingly familiar over the next thirteen years, and perhaps I should've taken it as a warning of what was to come, but that night it was sickeningly new. Suzy's final-year dissertation was something to do with the representation of women as objects of desire in twentieth-century art. Her tutor had suggested that Erik's portrayal of Christie represented an interesting counterpoint to the portrayal of Walburga Neuzil in the paintings of Egon Schiele, so she considered herself a bit of an authority. But back then I knew almost nothing about Von Holunder. After that fateful press night though, in a desperate attempt to win back Suzy's respect, I resolved to become an expert in the life and works of Erik von Holunder, and I like to think I did. Yet as I walked up and knocked on the door of Christie's residential trailer in a long-forgotten corner of New York fifteen years (and one divorce) later, I still felt like I knew nothing definite about his thrilling and captivating muse.

'I was expecting a girl,' she said, eyeing me with suspicion. She was in her late sixties by then, and I had anticipated being welcomed by a white-haired retiree, her face creased with regrets. But to my surprise she retained the statuesque beauty that had first transfixed viewers when she'd stared out defiantly at them from the frame of 1975's If All the World Was Like Your Smile.

'I get that a lot, but that would be Gabrielle. I'm Gabriel.' I offered her my hand. 'Gabe Viejo.'

She declined to shake it.

'Have you got some ID?'

I still had an NUJ card, courtesy of my reviews for The Art Newspaper, so I offered her that. She took it from me and examined it sceptically at arm's length while I waited outside.

'If you need to get your glasses, that's fine,' I said in an attempt to be helpful. Big mistake.

'I will have you know, young man, there's nothing wrong with my eyes,' she snapped. 'I just need longer arms.'

Despite this, she disappeared back inside her trailer, taking my ID with her.

I turned my head and looked around the rest of the trailer park while I waited. It was called, without apparent irony, Hope Falls.

It was just a few days from the end of September and the weather had begun to turn. A dull drizzle fell wearily from a slate-grey sky, low cloud blanketing the whole of Hope Falls in a gloomy shroud. What could still be seen seemed to have been slowly falling apart for years until now it resembled a Cubist parody of a low-income trailer park. The trailers themselves were patched up like wounded soldiers, their awnings concertinaed like the ruffles on an ugly ante bellum ballgown. Any sense that this place might really be the low-cost housing choice for the discerning professional, as the hoarding at the entrance had, rather optimistically, sought to proclaim, had long since disappeared. Now the name felt like a sick joke. Hope had not just fallen; it had died a slow and lingering death here.

'Well, I guess you might as well come in,' Christie said, returning to the doorway and handing me back my card, a pair of half-lune glasses perched on the end of her nose. 'The neighbours'll be talking about me already anyway.' And the way she flicked a wary glance up and down the avenue of trailers gave me the distinct impression that the name of Christie McGraw came up a lot whenever couples in Hope Falls argued.

I took a seat in her living area and a few moments later she placed a pot of lemon tea I hadn't asked for in front of me. It was accompanied by a china cup which may once have been beautiful, but which was now scarred by glazing which had become tessellated over many years of use.

'I didn't run off with the money, if that's what you've come to ask me,' she said in an acerbic Bette Davis drawl, but to be honest, that much was obvious just from looking around me. The foiling on the particleboard worktops was slowly peeling off; the throw on the sofa couldn't quite cover the worn fabric on the seat and arms, and the pattern on the linoleum in the kitchen had faded through wear in two spots. The air freshener that had clearly been liberally applied in anticipation of my arrival could not fully mask the musky aroma of long-term water penetration.

She obviously noticed the look on my face. 'What? You're surprised to see me living like this?'

Her voice sounded like the movies of my childhood: rich and deep, with the smokiness of a good scotch. She dripped it over you teasingly, and I loved it.

'Well, it's just that. Erik was a wealthy man. And you were together for so long.'

She let go a dismissive snort. 'Yeah, well, every love story becomes a tragedy if you wait long enough. Welcome to mine.'

I'd managed to get a commission to write a biography of Von Holunder to mark the centenary of his birth, and, after months of getting nowhere, I'd finally got Christie to agree to meet with me on condition that I flew out to New York. She hadn't spoken to anyone in the media or the art world for nearly thirty years, not since a brief period of detention for selling a controlled substance. This fact helped me to convince my reluctant publisher to pay for a brief trip on the grounds that the cost could probably be recouped by syndicating the interview. At the same time, he had left me in no doubt as to the consequences for the company - and therefore me - if I failed to deliver a syndicate-able interview. Given the parlous state of my own post-divorce finances, this was not the start that I'd hoped for and I took to fawning over her in a desperate attempt to turn things around.

'Well, I guess I'm interested in the love story, Ms McGraw. In the incredible relationship you clearly had with Erik,' I said, 'and how that inspired him.'

This was meant to be an acknowledgement of her status in the creative process, but Christie looked unconvinced. In all honesty, she appeared unconvinced by most things. Her face seemed to adopt a pose of wry scepticism by default. It was one of the things that had given the paintings such life.

'In my experience he was absolutely the best lover a woman could ever have. Although, obviously, I can't talk for Mimi,' she added, raising her perfectly plucked eyebrow into a sardonic arch.

I blushed at her forthrightness. Christie still wore her sexuality like a ribbon. In the seventies and eighties Erik had portrayed her as symbolising the kind of sexual charisma that men found difficult to resist, but also impossible to control. And the row of Jane Fonda exercise videos bore testimony to the fact that she clearly still took great efforts over her appearance. If she had to fight, then this was her weapon of choice. Mimi had never stood a chance.

I didn't know how to respond, and felt the pause between us lengthening. Eventually she decided to put me out of my misery.

'So, you're from London, Mr Viejo?'

'Gabriel, please. Or Gabe. And yes, I'm from London.'

Her brow furrowed as she examined me. 'You don't sound like you're from London.'

'Well, I lived in Buenos Aires until I was twelve. They teach American English at the international school, and I guess my vowels are still stranded somewhere in the mid-Atlantic.'

'Buenos Aires? I wondered about that. So I guess you're related to Joaquín Viejo?'

I got asked this a lot when I met with people from the art world and I wasn't embarrassed to answer. I was proud of my heritage. 'Yes, he was my grandad.'

'I thought so. I knew old Jo - I knew all the dealers back then. He had a big house just by the Parque Las Heras, didn't he? And that beautiful place on Lake Morenito. We spent a weekend there once, me and Erik, on our way back from the Biennale.'

This didn't surprise me. Most people in the art world of the seventies and eighties at least knew of Grandpa Jo. He was a big dealer back then - one of the biggest outside of London, Paris and New York - and he loved to entertain.

'He was quite a.character, wasn't he?' she said.

I couldn't tell what she meant by this, but the look in her eye suggested that it was not a straightforward compliment.

We carried on talking for a while; about how she'd met Erik, and how she'd ended up posing for him. I was trying to get a...