Looking Down Page 14

  John even quite liked the sight of his own house, a nice contrast to the grandeur of the Beaumont abode. He could not live in that size flat, with that great, long corridor, even with the Beaumont wife he had met so briefly and found sulky. In fact, it would not do to live in any flat, or even a city, or at least not all the time. And Sarah, oh Sarah: he was tingling.

  The thirty hours away added perspective to the view of his small and over-cosy dwelling, with neutral walls and excessive tidiness. Plain colours, hardly a pattern in sight, as neutral as a surgery. Now whose idea had that been? He had never really thought about his own house before. The decisions had always been someone else’s, wherever and however he had lived since memory began. There were no paintings on the walls. The place was only distinguished by its garden. A bland house, the symptom of the marriage he had mourned because he could not make her happy. He felt as if he had entered a decompression chamber in the last few days and now he was free. He had even learned deceit.

  The only tricky bit of the day had been not mentioning painting to Richard, either as subject or object, but that, in retrospect, had been avoided because Richard had avoided it, too. He had been anxious to shuffle him out of the place where his pictures were. Then, in a way that reminded John of two boys let out of school, they had gone down to the river as sightseers, hopped on the London Eye, with Richard pointing out the sights, yelling Isn’t it bloody marvellous? and John agreeing. Yes, he tingled, but he was glad to be home. The second tricky bit was saying goodbye to Richard, who was going on somewhere else, and then, guiltily, going back himself to the block where Richard and Sarah lived in their disparate styles, picking up the brown-paper parcel which contained the painting from the gloomy man at the desk, who handed it to him as if it was contagion. Which it was, in its way. John postponed thinking about it, having carried it back as precious cargo. Then he thought of Sarah Fortune with downright affection and looked forward to seeing her again. For the moment he strolled around his own house as if he had been away for weeks, noticing how blasted ordinary it was, preserved as his wife had made it. Whisky in hand (this was getting to be an excellent habit), he looked at beige walls and imagined them in reds and blues with hot paintings, emerald-green blinds and useless ornaments. A dour but faultless leather three-piece suite glared at him sullenly. He wanted clutter and colour. He was already starting to imagine it that way. He would make it something uncompromising, vivid, make a virtue of living alone and throw open the doors.

  There were a few telephone messages. He was on call to the police station tomorrow, might learn something. Reality was seeping back. Devotion to his own life did not mean he could abnegate all other duties. He still had an obligation to the dead.

  Drawn to it like a magnet, John looked at the painting again. He was right. There was something round the neck, and birds pecking at the body. He remembered Edwin’s ravens, and the whole of the other, city world slipped away.

  He counted the black splodges. Six. Four young, two adults, perhaps. About right. Ravens had between one and seven chicks. They would nest once, early in the year, sooner than the other birds. Put it away.

  He looked at the local newspaper, which had hung, crookedly, through his letterbox. No report of another body; no further reports on the first. The absence of that, the way other news had overtaken the murder of a stranger, brought back the old, guilty fury.

  Tomorrow, he would go back to the cliffs, only slowly, carefully, calmly. It was too late today.

  Steven Fortune considered his name to be a distinct disadvantage and had often thought of changing it. Fortune meant fortune cookies, good fortune, a knack for making a fortune; it meant jokes in school. It had not meant good fortune for his deserting father, whose name it was, or his mother, whose name it became, or his other sister, who had died in a crash. Normal family life. No wonder there had been no time for him. Girls, in the Fortune family, always took precedence over boys. Their lives were far more dramatic. A boy had to introduce drama into his own.

  ‘Fortune’ also suggested a sunny, sweet-natured, easy-to-get-along-with fortunate disposition, a boyish charm, which he could summon with ease, thus belying his more customary self-effacement, or scowl and a reputation for cleverness. Those with whom he worked assumed the swings of mood between cynicism, laughter, silence and occasional sheer unpleasantness coincided with either his apparent need for exercise, since climbing was his avowed passion, or an ache in his missing finger, which everyone noticed without comment or question, until they forgot. A driven man was a man admired and the ability to make people laugh, at least once in a while, was an effective disguise. He was one of those who went round with a chip on his shoulder bigger than a parrot carried by a pirate, and since the parrot rarely spoke, he was most of the time an easily forgotten individual, who might well have been gay, since he was also crazy about art and timid with women. He engendered no more than a faint uneasiness, paid his way at the bank, he was brilliant –there was nothing else anyone needed to know, including his erratic hours. He also dressed well in those over-loose suits, bless him. And a passion for art, even more than one for climbing, was a tame distraction. He could have been looking at potential investments by looking at paintings and sculpture, whatever he did, and he could always be got on his mobile, although one reply to a query about where he was one morning had brought a sharp, obscenely phrased response. No matter: he would work until midnight, if required.

  They simply did not get it, and he was long past supposing they would, or caring if anyone did. He knew he lived for zing. The gorgeous feeling of not wanting to be anywhere else other than where he was, the end of all restlessness as he stood and gazed at a painting he might have seen a dozen times before, the sense of being lost in the force field created by it. When he tried to define zing, all that came to mind was the electric charge that shot out at him, then flowed back, just as quick and vibrant. A current exchanged, flowing back and forth like a supercharged dialogue, escalating until either his hair stood on end or, as in front of the Tiepolo, his jaw dropped in astonishment. Zing was when eye contact was fired, and a vision imprinted itself on his retina and wormed its way into his brain. Zing gave a greater degree of delight than he ever felt in the so-called real universe he occupied. Odd, then, that the paintings that soothed him most were the genre depictions of everyday life, executed to a level of perfection, an interior by Vermeer, for instance. That Tiepolo drawing was different, oh that drawing, all form, all purity, but with the same effect. He would always remember that Tiepolo: it was gone and he would never, ever forget it.

  Here and now, he wanted to step inside the canvas, or melt himself into the paper, and he wanted to bow before them. It was, he told himself, his own way of seeing the world, through the prism of far superior eyes. Paintings and drawings never grew old or changed; they were timeless and generous and never let him down, they simply went on revealing more. But today, as he stood in the Courtauld Gallery, it was different. You’re a bloody great failure, mate, he told himself. And you are in deep dark shit. Because the zing factor simply did not work today: it was agonising in its absence. Other images got in the way. He simply could not feel. He was lost.

  There was a picture on the top floor, by Manet, entitled A Bar at the Folies-Bergère. It was of a girl standing behind a bar, with the mirrored glass behind her showing what she was seeing herself as she stared out over a crowd. She was idle for a moment, indifferent to the spectacle and to the wonderful lace and velvet fabric of her own tight bodice. With her corsage, and her sad and beautiful face, looking at the lives immediately in front of her, and the life ahead, either completely distracted or realising just how bad it was going to be. Reflected in the saloon mirror behind was an excited audience of spectators, men and women, drunk on entertainment, the globe lights on the pillars of the vast room glowing softly, and in the far left corner of the painting the tiny, dangling feet of a trapeze artist. The girl was watching a circus, indifferently, mirrored from all sides and defe
nceless, vulnerable, lovely, hopeless, her corset probably uncomfortable, realising in that moment that the world was not kind. She would lose her job for not smiling: existence would go on, close around her, until she was extinguished and too tired to fight. On other days, Steven could imagine her life unfolding otherwise – she was caught in a moment, that was all – but more often her ennui moved him to tears. Today nothing moved him at all. She created no flicker of response and he felt he betrayed her. Her face became another face, her clothes became other clothes, and all he could see was oyster-white and purple and feathers and a creamier complexion. Another, far less vulnerable-looking beauty, but all beauty was vulnerable.

  He sat on the thoughtfully provided bench, and began to panic. He had revisited the smaller Rubens, strolled past his favourite Modigliani nude, and this was the third time it had happened. No zing on seeing, as if there had been something else superimposed on the canvas, or as if it was lit by a series of wrongly angled lights, which stopped him seeing it at all. Yes, that was it, as if someone had turned out all the lights, or turned them all on, creating a harsh reflection on the surface of the image which stopped him seeing anything at all. All the faces turned out to be Lilian’s.

  The bench he occupied was hard on the bum. He was in the long, tall gallery, sitting in lonely splendour, with his head in his hands, unable to see. Anything. Wondering what the hell had happened, and where he could go next. It felt as if life had ended. There was nothing to love, nothing to do, nothing. He was utterly lost and dazed in the memory of Lilian Beaumont. He had even forgotten the Tiepolo. Lilian had taken everything, she had taken his eyes. It was love at first sight, continued for all the hours in between when it had grown like a tumour. Dear God, if this was love, no wonder men went mad and blind.

  Then, from the bench further down the deserted gallery, he sensed, rather than heard, the quiet sound of sobbing.

  It was a dream, surely a dream. Twenty yards away sat a woman in a severe trouser suit with silly high heels, tapping against the wood. What kind of wood made these benches, he wondered, beech, mahogany? They always looked as if they had been there as long as the floors, a long time. The woman raised her face, not to look at the painting in front of her but for the single purpose of blowing her nose. It was Lilian, clothed. The confusing vision of Lilian. He put his head back in his hands, quickly. His heart began to thump. There was an overpowering desire to go and sit next to her and somehow end those gulping tears, tell her that whatever was wrong would be right, do anything that would make it right. And then reality struck. His head remained in his hands while he thought about it. He struggled not to go on looking and tried to stop his heart making all that noise.

  This was a woman he had burgled, who had taken a knife to him and tried to push him out of a window. She would not recognise him, but he could not approach her, even as a stranger. The second thought was Christ, get outta here. And then the third thought was, go across to where she sits, a soul in misery, and put your arm round her. She is absolutely gorgeous. She Zings.

  Steven chose to leave, although not immediately. The racket of his heart forbade it. Sneaked a glance at her, watched her retrieve another handkerchief from her small handbag and blow her nose, again, with an ungainly sound. There was a terrible privacy in public galleries. The viewers of paintings invariably treated one another with great politeness, murmuring sorry, sorry, sorry if they got in each other’s way or trod on each other’s toes, and in the same way signs of emotion were treated with distant respect and ignored, unless the sufferer actually foamed at the mouth. These were places for understated feelings and personal revelations best left unexposed, perhaps like cathedrals. While moved by Lilian in distress, Steven found he was far more moved by her inelegant blowing of her nose. Each of them had made infinitesimal movements, glanced at each other, which was all viewers ever did. A posse of Japanese with a tour guide came in from the entrance nearest to where she sat. They cackled like a subdued crowd of hens with the sound turned down. Steven got up and left by the far door, making himself not hurry.

  This fantastic gallery led from one room to another, with the same wooden floors. They creaked, comfortably. He moved to the next room, stood in contemplation of something else he did not see, then moved on, going faster. Fear of discovery itched uncomfortably; he wanted out. She would never recognise him, never, better to be sure. He stuck his hands in his pockets and comforted himself with the thought of his soundless shoes. He moved to the next room and the steep set of stairs that led out to the ground floor and the street, faster still, and then realised that behind him there were the staccato footsteps of a woman in heels, first walking after him, then as he went faster she did too, until she was running noisily, the sound of her like the arrival of the fire brigade, the noise of her steps like a series of orders, tap, tap tap, close behind him, though she was confused about the way out and where to go and he could hear when she faltered at the top of the stairs and looked down the spiral, lost.

  He was running now, touching the banister for balance as his feet moved faster, keeping his head down until he made the mistake of looking back and seeing her, framed up there, the golden hair catching the light from the chandelier, her hands gripping the banister rail, leaning over it dangerously but elegantly. There was a brief and glorious moment of sheer zing, followed by more reality. What on earth did he think he was doing, running away from the creature who had haunted his every waking and sleeping thought for more than forty-eight endless hours, dreaming of seeing her again? He was running away, running from everything that mattered.

  So he stopped and went back two steps at a time, as fast as he had descended, in case she should disappear, slowing down only as he approached, to a stroll, remembering he was a stranger she would not recognise. She remained standing where she was, looking down the spiral, without losing hold of the rail, seeing nothing and only turning when he was close.

  ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, softly. ‘Can I help?’

  She squinted at him, smudged mascara giving her eyes a panda-like effect that was enormously appealing. Quite unexpectedly, she smiled and let out a deep, juddering sigh.

  ‘Oh, thank heavens it’s you. I thought I’d lost you.’

  ‘Do I know you? Do you know me? I was simply asking . . .’

  She was looking at him impatiently, her voice high with relief.

  ‘Of course you know me. Anyway, I know you. I’d know you anywhere.’

  He felt a momentary, irrational sort of pride in hearing her say that, as well as a desire to tell her to lower her voice. These were not gallery tones. The feeling of pride in being so memorable was shattered when she pointed to his damaged hand, which gripped the railing alongside hers.

  ‘Your hand,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t forget that, could I? Especially when I thought I’d done it.’

  And then she smiled again. There was no calculation or falsity in the smile: it simply went on being a smile, as if she was delighted to see him and it acted like a blessing. His heart lurched: fear and zing; he could smell her perfume. The buttons on her severe jacket were done up wrong, she had probably fastened it as she ran. He was lost for words. Lilian was not.

  ‘This is really sort of lucky,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t ever have imagined I’d see you here. Are you casing the joint? Only I’ve been thinking about you for the last two days – is it that long? Yes, it is. The thing is, you’ve got to help me.’

  ‘Anything,’ he said, faint and fervent.

  ‘And it wasn’t just the hand I recognised,’ she went on. ‘It was definitely the body. There wasn’t much to remember about your face, but you’ve got a great body.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he said, even more faintly. He was horrified to feel the beginnings of a blush.

  ‘Do you think we could go for a cup of coffee?’

  Strong drink would have suited him better. His mobile phone went as they descended the stairs and she waited while he answered. ‘Not now,’ he said, ‘I’m with a
client.’ They went towards the exit without another word and out into the street. Perhaps she would disappoint him when he saw her in daylight, but she didn’t: sunlight and traffic noise improved her. Inside Caffé Nero she told him to get a seat and asked what he wanted to drink. He wanted to get it, he was like a puppet; she insisted, a tussle easily lost, so he chose a seat by the window where he could see her better and watch her move back from the counter, carrying clumsy mugs on saucers with ease. She had nearly as much aplomb as his sister Sarah, and Steven wondered, irrelevantly, how often he made comparisons between other women and his sister, decided it was often. The heart rattle was down to a steadier beat.

  ‘Well,’ Lilian said. ‘Here we are. Like I said, you’ve got to help me. I’ve got to get it back. That painting I gave you to take away, I’ve just got to get it back.’

  ‘Ah. That might be a bit tricky.’

  ‘You haven’t sold it, have you? Who on earth would want to buy it?’

  He was calmer now. May as well behave as she did, but his hands shook.

  ‘Why do you want it back? I thought you wanted it stolen, as well as everything else.’

  ‘I want it back, because it wasn’t mine to give away.’

  She paused, stroking the side of the mug with a long finger, struck by another thought. ‘Mind you, if I’m honest, nothing is mine to give away, not really. Or to keep. And I’m going to lose everything at this rate.’

  ‘Such as?’ he murmured, taken aback by the rush of words and the complete confidence she seemed to be reposing in him. It made the blush rush to his head, but that could have been the mere sound of her voice. He ached to hear her laugh.

  ‘Oh, just my life, my husband, just everything I’ve got. Well, borrowed, really. I’ve had to do a lot of thinking in the last day or so, especially since he’s gone off again. He doesn’t like me much at the moment. And he won’t, until I get that painting back. He painted it, you see. Or if I can’t get it back, I’ve got to learn to understand stuff, so I can talk to him on the level he functions at, if you see what I mean. Only I can’t. I just don’t get all this art stuff. That’s why I was crying.’