“Nowadays, it’s superchic to be a young British artist, you can make loads of money and get incredibly famous, but when I was growing up, it wasn’t altogether obvious,” he continues, now hunting for the teapot. “There isn’t much of a visual tradition in this country—historically, the only halfway decent painters in England were German or Dutch. There isn’t one great artist in the entire history of the British Isles until Francis Bacon, and he had the sense to ignore the entire Protestant tradition and look to Spain, instead.”

Rat doesn’t know where to get a foothold in this cliff of names and judgments. “Why aren’t they good painters, the English?”

“Well, I suppose because Protestants are fundamentalists, basically; they’re not really comfortable with graven images. So being an English artist means—well, starting from scratch. You have no Caravaggio or Tintoretto or El Greco to touch on for luck. You’re your own godfather.” Gillem balances a teapot and two cups on top of a stool already piled with old newspapers. “I’m out of milk, I’m afraid. You’ll have to get some from the kitchen, if you want it.”

“So you started working for this painter friend of your mother’s, and then you went out on your own …”

“Yes. I can’t say I’ve had wild success, but it keeps me out of trouble. And I like the life. Sometimes I think art is just an excuse to be alone all day.”

“You like to be alone?” asks Rat.

“I like it too much,” Gillem admits. “It’s my oxygen.”

“Because,” she says, hesitant to mention this side of him, this thing she knows, “when you were growing up, you weren’t alone much, were you? There were always parties and famous people, and photographers taking pictures of you and your mother …”

“Yes, that’s the worst kind of alone,” Gillem interrupts, with unexpected vigor. “Goldfish bowl. Always being conscious of how you look to other people, till you’re left with nothing real inside. Deadly for an artist—or for someone who hopes to be one, later on.”

He halts abruptly, midthought. Rat is about to follow with another question, when he goes on. “It was certainly very hard on my mother, that fame. Even if she loved it, too. Because oddly enough, she was actually quite a private person. I think she found it a terrible strain, feeling she had to perform, be this strange beautiful object everybody was looking at. Even worse as she got older and people weren’t looking anymore.”

Rat waits until she’s sure he’s not going to say anything more, and then she speaks. “What was she like, your mother?” she asks, still more hesitant, not wanting to scare him away, now that they’ve finally broached the subject she’s been waiting for all these weeks.

“Unusual,” says Gillem.

They both laugh.