Summary
Hurtle sets out to find sheep’s heart for one of Rhoda’s sick cats and runs into Lena, one of his biological siblings whom he has not seen since he was adopted by the Courtneys as a boy. She and her husband are on a trip; they have seen his paintings in a museum. Hurtle ignores them and keeps going.
Not long after, Hurtle suffers a stroke. After spending a few days unconscious in the hospital, Rhoda brings him home and looks after him. He is partially paralyzed and has lost a lot of his speech, but he still wants to work on his final painting; he calls on his protégé Don Lethbridge to come assist him with dressing and washing, and eventually buying and assembling materials for his final project, which is to be painted on vast headboards.
A retrospective of Duffield’s work is announced, and his agents set out shipping all of his paintings back to Australia. Though still in enormous pain, Duffield works unceasingly on his final project. The night before the retrospective, it is decided that Duffield himself should be there. Though he is wary of bringing Rhoda, still worried at his age about how he will be perceived with her, Mrs. Cutbush has already had a new dress made for her so Hurtle brings his sister along.
Upon arrival at the gallery, Duffield is given letters from Boo Hollingrake, whom Rhoda hopes will not be in attendance, claiming she always felt like one of her dolls, and one signed “Volkov,” which bothers Duffield, as he assumes Mrs. Volkov is going to be there in person. He realizes it was Kathy who sent it, and is surprised by the kindness.
Throughout the event various guests talk about whether his work is as good as it is said to be and speculate about which elderly man floating around is him. Boo Hollingrake arrives and tells Hurtle she has been cultivating a new vocabulary to speak to him about his paintings. She asks to be brought to Rhoda, to congratulates her for all she has done to assist his work. Boo also says that Rhoda has always known everything, and mentions that she used to keep a robust diary when she was young. Duffield doubts this, having never heard about it; when he asks Rhoda about it, she plays it off.
People at the retrospective ask about Duffield’s “God paintings.” Don Lethbridge receives a thorough line of questioning about the work he did and he responds that he merely helped wash and dress Duffield. The prime minister attends and gives a glowing review, but Duffield has left before the speech, too exhausted to continue talking about his work.
In the final, short chapter, Hurtle and Rhoda have breakfast after the retrospective. He tells her that he is sorry for how much she must have suffered, and she says no, that she has learned not to suffer. Despite the overwhelmingly positive reviews from his retrospective, Duffield continues to work on his final painting. When Don comes over, Duffield tells him it is finished – as finished as he can get it, though he knows he did not quite get there, still did not go far enough. But then the impulse returns and he keeps at it, missing meals for a week, telling Rhoda he cannot leave the painting, not until he has gone as far as he can. In his final moments he is struck with an idea: indigo, the “vertiginous blue” (616) he has been forever reaching for. Duffield dies with his paintbrush in hand.
Analysis
Rhoda having made her triumphant return, now fully enmeshed in Hurtle’s life, there is no one else to pull from the past that will have the same effects on the narrative. White could have stopped there, but instead he plays one final trick, reaching even further back: we see Lena, one of Hurtle’s biological siblings, whom he has not seen since he was a small child. His refusal to acknowledge Lena showcases how he has no interest in thinking about his past at all, and anyway it is Rhoda – whose sick cat he is out trying to find medicine for – whom he considers his real sister.
Unlike most of the other characters who fall away as the novel goes on, or who remain in the plot but do not change in significant ways, Rhoda’s characterization continues to complicate and develop right until the very end. She reveals that she never liked Boo, when it was thought all along that she had adored her as a child, and we learn that she kept rigorous notes of everything that happened in her adolescence, thus developing a keen social and emotional knowledge of the people around her. Duffield’s ego is too big to have ever noticed this, but Boo, and likewise Kathy Volkov, wrestle these developments into the narrative. She has a self awareness that exceeds that of anyone else in the novel, and she does not pity herself, despite being pitied all her life. That she is still allowed to change, to have secrets, and to become an even more articulated character in the final chapters of this novel seems to speak to White’s interest and ultimate compassion for her as a character.
By the end of the novel, it is clear that Kathy Volkov is the most important figure in the line of women with whom Duffield has had sexual/artistic relationships. She continues to think well of him, congratulating him on his work, bringing her new husband to meet him, and even going so far as to write a letter saying that it was seeing his paintings as an adolescent that opened her mind to beauty, therefore forming her into the pianist she is today. That this is her arc, always remaining sweet, having gratitude for him, aligns with the idea that Duffield has always had some magic about him – that he is not only promising himself, but that he can bestow promise on others. Though White does not seem to suggest it, modern readers may recognize this plot line as a depiction of grooming, wherein the powerful, older male figure selects a much younger woman – a girl, in this case – to anoint as special. In any case, Kathy Volkov’s trajectory is different from the other women in an even more important way: while the others all died, she got her freedom.
Throughout his career Duffield has used painting to try to find logic in the illogical. People dying, people deformed, repulsion, misplaced eroticism: all of his subject matter has dealt with this theme of using formal aesthetics to find reason in chaos and uncertainty. His final painting, “The Whole of Life,” is his attempt at reaching as high into creation as he can, essentially trying to paint God. That he dies while working on this piece is symbolic enough of the limits of formal reason, but that symbolism is further compounded by his final vision of indigo, a color that evokes the heavens, and which, Duffield discovers, contains the anagram “God In I.” He dies for his art, a paintbrush in hand.
While Duffield has always been preoccupied with his mortality, not in an especially emotional or spiritual way, but more in terms of his need to paint enough before he dies, the stroke gives him an even greater sense of urgency. In the entire novel, one could argue that this is Duffield at his best: having faced the possibility of death, and suffering from immense physical pain, his desperation to create the thing he has been trying to make all his life becomes even more acute. The retrospective happens, giving formal assessment to his life’s work, and yet he still feels he is not finished. If the novel has been asking the question of what makes an artist an artist, then it is perhaps this continued longing for truth at the end of his life which gives us the answer.
