Looking Down Read online

  ‘I tell you something, Lilian. You aren’t so bad at art appreciation, at that.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked, bending into the freezer, letting him see the fluid lines of her behind beneath the black satin slip of nightdress.

  ‘Because at least you could see the vital thing about that painting of mine. You may not have much brain, but you do have eyes. It was obscene.’

  ‘That wasn’t so difficult, was it?’

  ‘No. You made it easy.’

  ‘I have a theory,’ Sarah said to John, ‘that if men knew more about women, it would be a very bad idea.’

  ‘It’s the basic conflict,’ John said. ‘The basic dilemma of human relations. One sex cannot possibly know what it is like to be the opposite sex. To think like the opposite sex. Therefore, complete understanding is always impossible. I could deliver a dozen babies, and still not know what it’s like to have one. I don’t know what your orgasm is like. I never knew what my wife was like. It’s like living parallel lines you can never cross.’

  ‘Does that matter? Why do men always concentrate on the differences, instead of what’s the same? Same pain, same lust, same needs, same old bruises.’

  ‘Only different.’

  ‘No. Just different levels of intensity at different times. What you bloody men tend to suffer from is this dreadful need to know. I think it might have something to do with power. Needing to know what the hell is going on at any given time. And you can’t.’

  ‘You seem to.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I just respond.’

  ‘I noticed.’ He felt incredibly, ludicrously comfortable, lying on Sarah Fortune’s bed with Sarah, so comfortable he wanted to pinch himself. This was not him, it was someone else, aeons younger, cheerfully irresponsible, lying on a bed with a woman fifteen years his junior and twice as wise, talking his head off and not giving a shit. This was not Dr Armstrong. It was a man talking to a woman about everything and feeling entirely natural. It could not last, but then it was not supposed to do so. That gave it the freedom. He felt very grateful to Richard Beaumont, and that reminded him.

  ‘We never did get around to Richard Beaumont last night, did we?’

  ‘We touched upon the subject, among other things. You said you were worried about him. So am I. I stopped when I realised you scarcely knew him. I was wrong, I think. You do know him. We talked about other things.’

  ‘And drank too much.’

  ‘Not too much. Just enough.’

  John felt a faint stab of envy that Richard knew Sarah better. That Richard might have used Sarah, just as he was doing, but no, that was all wrong. Sarah was not used by anyone. She gave; she was not taken from. The envy was also about Sarah knowing Richard better than he did. It came and went like a frivolous storm cloud, and he knew she could feel it.

  ‘Am I taking up too much of your day?’ he asked.

  ‘The day’s young yet, and it’s yours as far as you want it. But I expect Richard will come along at some point and scoop you up.’

  ‘What am I going to do about my life?’

  ‘You’ll know what to do about your life when the time comes. I expect you already know. But for what it’s worth, I think you’re too young to compromise and hide away, the way you are. Now, about Richard, your friend.’

  ‘My new friend. Your old friend.’

  Envy again.

  ‘Old friend, old lover, same thing in my book, whatever. He’s a husband now. I think he needs help, but I don’t know what kind. You never even told me how you met him.’

  John’s sense of responsibility came back. Responsibility to that other world, to other people; the innate sense of responsibility for that girl at the foot of the cliff, the odd responsibility he felt for Richard ever since he had met him. He closed his eyes, but no, it was all right. He could share this one, too.

  ‘I met our mutual friend because I was called to see him. He was sketching on the cliff near me, you must see it some time. A girl either fell or was pushed from above him, literally fell past him, or so he recalls, although he cannot remember how he got where he was. She was killed, of course, although perhaps not quite as instantly as one could wish. Instead of raising the alarm, he sat where he was and sketched her. Probably for hours. He was, understandably, suspect. I was called to assess him.’

  ‘And what did you assess?’

  ‘A humble, likeable, honest man. With that ice chip in the heart that doctors and artists might share, perhaps. The ability to be objective, opportunistic, even, in the face of death. My professional kind carve up the cadaver after death and sometimes find it beautiful. We know when there is nothing else we can do, and so did he. He sat and sketched it. We understood one another, I imagined, at a rather profound level. And he was sure he had seen a chough. It’s a rare bird, black with a red beak, by the way, and he couldn’t possibly have seen it. And he suffers from vertigo. I can’t imagine how he ever made himself go down that path to where he sat, unless he was desperate to hide. Avoiding someone? And he isn’t as well as he looks, or what he seems.’

  He was going on too long. She was not prompting him, which was reassuring, so he resumed.

  ‘As I grow even older, I find I trust my own instincts more. Am able to fall prey to sudden likings and believe what I find. Perhaps it’s a feature of being alone. It’s liberating, or this has been. Richard could have pushed that lass, and then gone down to his overhang to examine the result. Deliberately stayed hidden. In my dreams, I thought she might have been some awkward mistress who’d followed him up there, and he simply dispensed with her and forgot. His memory lapses are worrying. But that’s wild conjecture and I don’t believe it. I believe he could be violent, but not that way.’

  He loved the way nothing surprised her. It was infectious.

  ‘Hmm. Pretty wild. I don’t see the mistress angle. He’s monogamous by nature, a one-woman man with newish, gorgeous wife. And Lilian might not know much, but she’d know about that, I bet. And if Richard had a mistress, he’d acknowledge it, I think. That’s the type.’

  ‘On less intimate knowledge of them, I agree. But there’s an absence of any other theories. And this peculiar lack of identification – no shoes, no bag, as if everything had been removed from her. Maybe a fight before she went over; maybe a deliberate depersonalising, as if it was important that no one should ever know who she was.’

  He paused again, feeling her rapt attention spurring him on.

  ‘It’s that which haunts me, you see. Everyone has something that says who they are. I can’t bear her to be buried without a name. She sort of brought me to life, poor girl. And I know there must have been something. And I have this feeling that Richard knows, or he saw something he may have forgotten.’

  She was silent, horribly moved, against her will. So much for the peaceful life.

  ‘Was she injured before she fell?’

  ‘Difficult to say. She was, how shall I put it?, rather broken up, but there might have been a pre-mortem wound to the abdomen. Not enough to kill her. I’ve seen mortuary photos. They couldn’t do them at the scene.’

  He rubbed his hands over his eyes.

  ‘That’s the puzzle and pity of it; nothing to identify her. Thus no one to avenge her, no one to mourn her or tell her father. I found myself carrying a copy of Richard’s sketch of the body, and I found him again, haunting the same spot, because I wanted to ask him what more he had seen. And, of course, I wondered why he came back. And I wanted to protect him, because the ice chip melts, you know, and he was shocked and someone had hit him. He had told me he was going to make a painting of the sketch, that’s the way he works. He was the one who studied her. Maybe there was a necklace, maybe there was something. Something he saw. She moved me because she was like my daughter with her bleach-blonde hair.’

  Their arms were touching. Sarah had become very still.

  ‘Stay where you are. I want to show you something. No, come with me. We need the right kind of light.’

  She li
t the painting as she had before, in the east-facing, always shaded living room of her flat. There was a shortage of natural light in all the apartments except for the one at the top. She had noticed how the painting faded into garish insignificance in such ordinary light, and then transformed itself into something entirely different and horribly decipherable when strong light was played upon it from above.

  ‘Is this familiar?’ Sarah asked. ‘Is he looking down at her?’

  ‘Yes, obviously. I wish he didn’t use so much paint,’ John said.

  ‘Do you? I like all that paint, I’ve decided. Although I want to pick it off, and see what’s underneath. See what he intended, supposing he knew.’

  John walked backwards away from the thing, then towards it, suddenly excited.

  ‘That’s her, all right. I can see the sketch, but it’s not like the sketch. Look, he’s looking down, but out of it. And the body’s not in proportion, like he’s magnifying what mesmerises. The head’s too big; she has no eyes. Tiny feet and huge, ripped-up torso. And there’s something round her neck . . . yes!’

  ‘So there is. Yellow, or is it white? And did he imagine the black bra and knickers? A slight, pornographic touch?’

  ‘Oh no, they were there, and why is there always something suggestive about black underwear? Because men like it best?’

  ‘What’s this?’

  She was pointing to the right of the bloody corpse, to where almost backing out of the painting bottom right there was a large, roughly elongated, circular blob of sheer black with a spume of red emerging from it.

  ‘That’s his chough,’ John said. ‘He swore blind he’d seen a chough.’

  ‘The black bird with the red beak?’

  ‘Yes. Spelt C.H.O.U.G.H.’

  ‘Could he have seen such a thing?’

  ‘No, but he was sure he did.’

  ‘And the other black bits?’

  There was so much black and red, the more she looked the more they were submerged. Into a ghastly, eyeless turmoil. She leant forward, still holding the light. In what she took to be sky above the corpse there were black, winged creatures, obscured by the bits of lint from the towel that stuck to the raised surface. The paint was pointed here, even thicker than elsewhere, blunted by mistreatment.

  ‘The texture’s like cake icing,’ she said.

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that. I’m surprised you do.’

  They were making light of it.

  ‘I don’t, but my mother did. What are the black things?’

  He did his backward, forward routine, almost dancing. Nimble on his feet, she noticed. A fine man, hardly in touch with his own intelligence. Discovering spontaneity. The phone rang. She left him holding the spotlight to go out into the hallway to answer it.

  ‘We can ask Richard,’ John was saying. ‘All we have to do is ask Richard. Where did that thing round her neck go?’

  Then he stopped, hand on mouth, moving closer, looking again.

  Distorted abdomen, slashed. Black blobs of paint, oh no.

  ‘We must ask Richard,’ he repeated as she came back.

  ‘He wants to speak to you. I said you’d phone back, in a minute.’

  She sat, very firmly, on her sofa, looking small in it, and lost. His eyes were dizzied with the savage colours of the painting. She was another mix of colours altogether, passionately calm.

  ‘You cannot ask Richard. You absolutely must not ask Richard. And I’ll tell you why.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, Sarah. I must.’

  ‘Yes, you must, but not yet. You cannot ask Richard, because my brother stole this painting from him the night before last, with the connivance of Richard’s wife. And he can’t be told that, can he?’

  She told him not why, but how, and odd though it sounded, he believed every word of it. After all, there was no other logical explanation for this painting to be in this flat. It all made sense, once he got to grips with the fact that everything in this alternative world was screwed. Nothing was going to shock him ever again. It made sense to him, because nothing made sense; it made sense because loyalty to a brother was second nature, and it made most sense of all because he could entirely see why a wife would do anything at all to get this painting out of her house. The story ended.

  ‘That’s it, as far as I know,’ Sarah finished.

  ‘Hmmm. See what you mean. Better put it away then. Until we find some way of getting it back. Put it out of sight. What does Richard want, anyway?’

  ‘He wants to know if his cunning plan to get us together and sort your head out worked. Which I think it did, if you don’t mind my saying so, do you agree?’

  He nodded. She grinned. He grinned back. ‘It’s been great,’ he said. ‘It’s great to be trusted, you know.’

  ‘Don’t worry, it’s free. And a pleasure. You could call it an unrest cure. You’ve entered the world of amoral eccentrics. Oh, and by the way, Richard says he’s sick of female company already and wants the male kind. He’s anxious to spirit you off somewhere. I think you’d better go.’

  ‘Can I come back?’

  ‘Oh yes. We’ve unfinished business. As long as you don’t tell Richard you know where his painting is.’

  ‘Yes, I can see why I can’t do that. But I think I need it, this painting.’

  ‘Take it, then. Not now, later. I’ll wrap it and leave it behind the porter’s desk. You can collect it. Better with you than with me. I’ve got your number and you’ve got mine, so come back soon, friend, I like you. Richard’s flat is one flight up, number fourteen. Keep your face straight when you see the wife.’

  The flat was empty and still clean. Sarah showered and went back to look at the painting. She chose her clothes carefully, and went back to look at the painting. Retreated, brushed her teeth again, and went back to look at the painting, falling prey to an old habit of counting on her fingers. Then she made the third cup of coffee and sat with it in front of the painting. Finally, she found it moved her to tears, so she got up, fetched a handkerchief, told herself to be sensible and then sat, staring at it again. Then picked it up and carefully removed the traces of lint that still adhered to the surface. It was not zing; it was pity. Admiration for the sheer effort of it, which moved her. The hours it had taken, the use of all that paint. The uncertainty of it: the artist not sure what to include or omit, altering and maybe ruining it as he went along, risking the advantages and disadvantages of rich oil paint. The things he had included out of his imagination, because they could not possibly have been there. The red beak of the bird in the corner, as if it had risen beyond what else he could see, level with his eye. The disproportion of the body, as if he had tried to bring parts of that dreadful anatomy closer. Did he remember details he could only have seen through binoculars? Details he could never have seen from this distance? The necklace, a line of yellowish white . . . could that hold the clue to identity? And finally, the corpse itself and the overwhelming pity of its isolation. The reminder of dying in terror and misery, never to be acknowledged or mourned, no time to think of someone, somewhere, waiting for this child to come home.

  Who would look for me? Sarah asked herself. All the lovers? I don’t think so. I sidle in and out of other lives. I don’t belong. Nor did she. I owe her something. I have a trivial, lucky, feckless life. John cannot be the only one who owes her something.

  She looked one more time at the blacks and reds and wondered who the girl was. A younger alter ego, dying in terror. An awful memory of the twice in her own life when she had known that terror, and lived. Then she wrapped the painting in brown paper, attached a label with the doctor’s name.

  Don’t want to get involved. Don’t want anyone else’s pain. Want a quiet life.

  It was too late. She had seen what she had seen, heard what she had heard, and it was too late to back away, although she tried. Brush hair. Go out. Find noise, find people, get these images into proportion. Down in the foyer, Fritz sat at his desk. She had the impression he was waiting for something and
she hoped it was not her, since she was not in the mood for mournful Fritz, who looked as if he, too, might have been crying. But he waved, and once she was reluctantly within earshot of his whisper, she could see that the guess was right.

  ‘Hi, Fritz, how are you?’

  ‘Oh, Sarah, what are we to do? What are we to do?’ She immediately thought he was going to say he knew all about Steven, braced herself.

  ‘What are we to do, Sarah? Minty’s back.’

  ‘Minty?’

  ‘Either Minty’s back, Sarah, or they’ve got another one locked in there.’ Shit, shit, shit. She handed to Fritz the picture of a dead girl, which could have been her, could have been Minty. And knew that a long and happy spell of not quite getting involved in other people’s lives had finally gone down the pan.

  ‘So tell me about it,’ she said, ‘before I remember I don’t want to know.’

  She felt profound relief. If Minty was back, then Minty could not be the girl in the painting, led to her death by a lecherous artist.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Do not uproot any wild plants

  When Dr John Armstrong got back to his house late in the evening, he was tired in the pleasant way of being tired, which meant pleased to feel that way. Still buzzing with images, novel interiors and beautiful women, and still full of food from the afternoon meal with Richard. John had eaten ravenously, perhaps, he thought wryly, because the evening before with Sarah had not featured much by way of food. The late luncheon had been fish and chips and John took it as a return to the health of optimism that he should suddenly think about food at all; he had got out of the way of that. Depression suppressed appetite; uncertainty suppressed everything else. For God’s sake, eat, man, and all else follows was a mantra he often repeated to patients. He was humming to himself a ditty he had repeated to Richard who, ready to laugh, had done so.

  Always eat when you are hungry/Always drink when you are dry/Always scratch when you are itchy/Don’t stop breathing or you’ll die.

  An adequate philosophy. What a day, what a two-day wonder. Alive, all over again. He had made friends and made love.