Looking Down Page 18

  It was no good. The whole picture slid in and out of focus, although, with the help of her imagination, it was complete. She could not give that girl in the basement any clue as to her sister’s whereabouts until she knew more. Could not say, I believe she is dead. If Minty had followed Richard to the cliffs where he painted, then she was the one who was dead. She was the broken, pecked-at body of Richard’s painting.

  Sarah had to see. Once she saw, she would know. The image that obscured all others was that of a girl so homesick that she would walk along alien clifftops, searching in vain for the boat which would take her home. Not wanting to get in, wanting to get out. Wanting to go home. Sick with it.

  She roused herself from her doze. This was home, and it was time to leave it. Get out of the rut, feel as that girl felt: take another path. Remind herself of what she would feel if Steven disappeared for ever and no one ever told her. Incomplete, bereft, robbed. Better to know. Identifying and punishing. That was the small service she could offer the dead and the living.

  Dr Armstrong, please answer your phone. I need to look at those cliffs. Need to see the pathways between here and there. Need air.

  She would have to find trousers and boots and then find the doctor. Between them, they had the story. With the omission of whatever it was that could be supplied by Richard.

  Who either led Minty away, or she merely followed. One version was wicked; the other merely cruel.

  The thing about zing was that it overcame everything else. Such as fatigue, rope burns on hands, muscle ache, hangovers and disappointments. It replaced all the energy that living took away. It made him happy. Standing beside Lilian, Steven knew he had never been happier. True, there was a gnawing going on his gut, as if he had eaten a live rat, but anxiety about his own deficiencies, as teacher, lover, mixed-up human being with bad hair, were subsumed in a thrill of happiness. He had everything. Her profile was outstanding.

  ‘It doesn’t matter about you not being able to get back that painting yet,’ Lilian was saying as they sat in the National Portrait Gallery. ‘I don’t think that’s the problem. Not any more. The problem’s him. Gone all quiet. Comes home, gives me a hard time about it. Goes out all day with his new friend. Comes back in time to be life and soul of the party, as long as his kids are there, like last night. Then he falls asleep, without taking his clothes off. Talks in his sleep. Minty, he says; Minty, go away. So much for not having another woman. Mind you, we were back late.’

  ‘Oh dear,’ Steven said, gazing at the curve of her nose. She wore her hair differently today. It looked as if all the mad, honey-blonde curls had thrown themselves upwards into a clasp, exposing the back of her neck, decorated with sweet tendrils. She frowned, deliciously, sighed in a way that made her chest heave. She crossed her legs and the short skirt rode halfway up her thigh. She generated, to his mind, exotic smells, but the favourite part of her was the exotic and vulnerable back of her neck.

  ‘And today he says to me, sorry, Lilian. Can’t talk. Got to get out. Never mind the painting. I’ll do it again. Only he doesn’t go out, he goes in his room and locks the door. In his studio, with nothing but a stuffed buzzard for company. Doesn’t care what I do. So I thought, fuck you.’

  Her eyes filled with tears and she blinked rapidly. The tears made her eyes as bright as crystals.

  ‘I think he can’t stand the sight of me,’ she was saying, with artificial brightness of voice. ‘So there may not be much point in this. Anyway, shall we look at another one? I’m not wild about this woman. Is it someone famous?’

  A painting to Lilian was always an it.

  ‘It’s Vanessa Bell, painted by Duncan Grant,’ Steven said. ‘She was famous, in 1918.’

  ‘She’s a bit of a slob, isn’t she? Well, she could have done with going on a diet and getting herself a proper bra. Nice colours though.’

  Sitting in the pub yesterday evening, all other thoughts suspended, Steven had planned this. The art tour for the uninitiated. He was perfectly capable of leaving in limbo everything which had happened between then and now, since that also made him happy. Better begin in here, he had thought yesterday, with all the portraits. Better to start with faces and costumes, lots and lots and lots of faces and fully clothed bodies. Begin the art course with historical figures, heroes and heroines revealed and illuminated by some of the most fantastic painters of the western world. And above all, fabric and faces. Pretty clothes and lipstick, truth and artifice, something, surely, to entice her with wonder.

  ‘Who’s she?’

  ‘Virginia Woolf, painted by the same Vanessa Bell you saw just now. They were all artists, in their way.’

  ‘I like that,’ Lilian said. ‘She looks like she’s fallen asleep in her chair with her knitting. I like that orange chair.’

  That was promising, but so far she was more attracted by the inanimate objects which featured in the paintings than she was by the main subject. Inspired by a chair, or a colour – promising. They walked on. They had walked a long way. Steven was waiting for her, letting her set the pace, hoping she would stop only when she wanted to stop, when some distant cousin of zing got to her. So far, she had only experienced the palest of imitations of zing, but then, so had he, unless he was looking at the curve of her nose or the back of her neck, both of which gave him electric shocks. It occurred to him, treacherously, that he had never shared the painting zing with anyone else except his sister Sarah, and that Lilian might prefer abstracts.

  They walked on.

  ‘And who’s this?’

  ‘I don’t know. It says Doris Clare Zinkeisen, painting herself in 1929. I love this, because of the shawl, but then I love fabrics.’

  The portrait was of a pale woman, with ivory shoulders and half-exposed breast, holding against it the shawl which missed her shoulders and cascaded down her back. Half turned to the viewer, her hair was coiled, her eyes knowing, her cheeks powdered to pinkness and her mouth painted crimson to echo the vibrant red of the flowers woven into the dramatic black, red, blue and orange of the exotic oriental shawl which filled the rest of the canvas. Flowers bloomed on that silken cloth, leaves burgeoned; there were peacocks and humming birds crowding for space amongst the folds.

  ‘Yes,’ Lilian said. ‘I like the shawl. I’d like to pinch it off her, as a matter of fact. But why did she bother with the rest? Why not just paint the shawl? Because that’s what it is, a painting of a shawl, and she’s hiding behind it. Turning herself into a coat hanger, with a face made like a doll and a mouth to match the shawl.’

  Steven wanted to cheer. She was right, she was bloody well right, she was clever. He patted her shoulder and grinned. She shrugged.

  ‘Well, that’s what we all do, isn’t it? Hide inside our clothes, even when we aren’t wearing very many. And no woman’s going to paint a picture of herself to show anything nasty, is she? She wouldn’t paint herself as she really was, would she?’

  ‘She might have done.’

  ‘I wouldn’t. She’s saying, look, I’m better off inside this shawl than I am naked. And she’s painting herself as a bloke would like her to be, as well as herself. Slightly dressed in something a woman would envy and he could rip off. I tell you what, Steven, I’m sick of all these women. Let’s go somewhere else. Where are the paintings of men with their clothes off?’

  They were walking round the corner to the National Gallery, when she surprised him again.

  ‘You know what I always associated with the kind of art galleries we got dragged to from school? Big and cold. And once you’re in, you’ve first got big pictures of men, fighting, battles, ships, hunting and stuff. Then you’ve got men with dogs. Then you’ve got miles and miles of tits. Big women with bits of net over their pubes, and always these tits, standing up like pears, even while they’re doing something like washing up or eating. It’s all about men, art. Men painting what they want to see. Men painting what they’ve got. Nobody does it for women.’

  ‘I think your art appreciation stopped lon
g before the twentieth century and left out landscape entirely.’

  ‘Probably did. Might explain why I prefer paintings of flowers.’

  ‘There’s a selection here you might like better.’

  He led her to the series. It began with an almost life-sized painting, Une Académie, artist unknown. Followed by more, in a sequence of male bodies, students painted by a master perhaps. Four perfect young men, in less than innocently naked poses. One reclining on his side, back towards the room; one bent forward, as if to retrieve something from the floor. One with hands on hips, and one presenting a slender, muscled torso and glorious, tensed buttocks as he stretched upwards with one arm, accentuating the span of his shoulders. Naked men at work. No distracting genitalia, all viewed from behind. Touchable, vulnerable hair: men painted for men. The first one mesmerised her most. The spine flowed curved into the shoulders, curved down into the hollow of his back, oil paint turned into utterly tactile flesh.

  ‘That’s more like it,’ Lilian whispered, clutching his arm. ‘How did he do that? Oh yes. I love that bit where his back curves in. I could put my fist into that curve. God, he’s beautiful. Look at that arse! How could anyone paint like that? Look, he moves.’

  Steven smiled. He knew zing when he saw it, but then he found he did not quite like this response. It was making him faintly jealous. It was a very physical zing, not quite what he might have intended. It was not an intellectual experience for sure. She was almost swooning.

  ‘He’s got legs as good as yours,’ she said. ‘But you’ve got better shoulders. Get me out of here, will you?’

  The day was bright and freakishly warm for April. Back in the open air, temporarily blinded by the light, Steven felt the return of happiness, mixed with anxiety. What was he to do with her, now he had found her? Run away from her might be best, but he could no more have prised himself from her side than he could have leapt over the moon. It was a perfect day, in which something had been achieved, i.e. an element of zing. It did not matter what she liked, as long as she was here, and liked him. He sat opposite her outside a café, both of them shaded by a canvas awning pulled down to shield them from the sun, bathing them in a blue light. Zing. Lilian was toying with a glass of wine. There was a slight sheen of sweat on her forehead.

  ‘I think I get it now,’ she said. ‘It wouldn’t help at all if I was crazy about art like Richard. He wouldn’t like it if I knew too much. Then I might criticise. Then I might fill the house with stuff he hated. And if I had real paintings like those on the walls, I’d never get anything done.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I’d just sit and fantasise.’

  ‘What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘Because I’d rather be doing something. Looking at stuff would make me restless. Would stir up emotions I didn’t know I’d got. I think I mean horny. Looking at those bottoms would make me horny as hell.’

  She took a hefty swig of the wine, and pushed it to one side.

  ‘No, I don’t think it’s painting does it for me. It’s real flesh does it for me. I don’t like thinking. What am I good for? What am I good at? Looking nice and doing sex, that’s what I’m good at. Not much cop for making a living if he leaves me, is it? Oh God, this heat makes me horny, too. Look what you’ve done. I can only think of bottoms. You shouldn’t have showed me. Don’t worry, I’ll calm down in a minute.’

  She sat back and looked at him shrewdly, and then gave that gorgeous, dirty chuckle of hers. There was either the chuckle or tears, he thought. She laughed so she would not cry.

  ‘Sex and looking good is what I’m good at. Not like you. Am I right or am I right? You’d rather just look at stuff than touch it or do anything else. You’d like to go right inside a painting and never come out. You want to get lost in it. It’s a sex substitute. Maybe a substitute for touching or being touched.’

  He was silent, trying to work out an honest reply. There was no point being otherwise, and questions like this had vexed his mind ever since he had seen her and lost the ability for getting zing from a painting. As if he had changed his allegiance from canvas to flesh, but he could not remember a time before this when the canvas and the paint had not seemed more real.

  ‘I suppose looking at thing . . . looking at paintings is . . . a substitute . . . might be called a substitute. Not a substitute: an alternative love affair. I’ve never loved anyone, you see. Any woman, I mean, and it would have to be a woman. It might be different if I did. If I could. If I could love a she as much as an it.’

  ‘You mean you’d rather moon over a painted face than a real one? And what do you mean, never loved anyone?’

  He felt himself go hot with shame.

  ‘I mean I’ve never loved any woman, except my sister, and that doesn’t count, does it? Perhaps painting’s my substitute for lust, love, whatever you call it. It’s a theory, anyway.’

  He was still smiling at her, but his hand clenched the stem of his wineglass so hard he risked breaking it. She was looking at him, horrified.

  ‘How old are you, Steven? Are you telling me you’re a virgin?’

  He blushed to the roots of his hair, stuttered.

  ‘No, not quite. Made a fool of myself once or twice. Pretty humiliating. Not exactly skilled. Must have decided to devote myself otherwise. Climb, steal . . .’

  The look of horror intensified into curiosity, then back to horror, then to determination. Her eyes seemed to be enlarged in the blue light. Green eyes, red mouth. She was breathing deeply.

  ‘It’s because of that silly hand, isn’t it? You think it puts girls off, but it doesn’t. That’s absolutely terrible, Steven. With a body like yours. Such a waste. You’re absolutely gorgeous.’

  They were both breathing deeply. Then, that chuckle again. Her foot was stroking his ankle; their eyes were locked. Oh zing, zing, zing.

  ‘There’s a hotel round the corner,’ she murmured. ‘Tell you what. I teach you about love and you teach me how to be a thief. Much more useful than bloody art.’

  She had become it.

  Richard Beaumont had forgotten the time. The morning had arrived after the restless night. He had spoken to his wife without remembering what he said. He had eaten something, hours since, and then he had painted. Time in the daylight room, like time within earshot of the sea, became immaterial and he only knew hours had passed when hunger reminded him. He could stand for hours doing what anyone else would call nothing, growing numb, brush in hand, knife poised over paint, postponing the moment when the brush would connect with the canvas, afraid to commit. It was not an activity he could describe to anyone else since he did not understand it himself and it therefore seemed pointless to try. Self-taught painter, attempting techniques described in books and ending, most of the time, in this stagnation, followed by frenetic application, random, hit and miss – hours doing nothing. Except when he painted her. She had arrived on the canvas complete, and then she had been lost and he wanted to create her again. Woman at one with Nature. The best, and only complete thing he had ever done.

  The sketch was taped to the window, to the left of the easel. The canvas was best quality, but it did not help. There were the outlines of a figure on it, sketched in paint so diluted it scarcely made marks. He moved over to the sketch and tore it down. Memory, even the defective memory he struggled to control, would serve him better, but the canvas was the wrong size, he could not do it, the colours were too bright. The daylight bulbs in the room only mimicked daylight, it was still the darkest, most enclosed room in the flat, even now in the middle of the day. Slowly, he painted the black bird with the red beak and claws at the bottom left of the canvas. In the last painting, it had been on the right. Perhaps if he reversed it, it would all come back, as if appearing in a mirror. The bird, the chough, came first, because it was an omen of hope, the rarest of crows, a noble creature, and although he doubted everything else, he was still absolutely sure he had seen it. Of all the other details, he was not so sure.

  H
e wanted to paint the body again, because she had worked, the painting itself had worked. Painting it was the last time memory had worked. He wanted to create the black outlines of the underwear, or had that been a kind of prurient imagining, because he preferred the female body minimally clad, just like that? Always black. The body, with the bright thing at the neck, or the wrist, which reminded him of something else, a golden thread, a trick of the light. Instead, there was the thick black paint of the chough, and in the centre of the canvas he had sketched the upright outline of a tall man with a scarf round his neck. He could see it was a man; no one else would, and he was trying to remember where the man had come from. He put his hands over his eyes in despair; now he knew his mind was not his own.

  It was impossible to paint the same thing twice. He could not imagine how anyone ever did so, even if a fortune and a reputation hung in the balance. No good: the best thing he had ever painted had faded and gone, and only the outline of the man and the red-beaked bird remained. He was losing his mind, and mourned it. He wanted his wife. He wanted to apologise. He wanted people and yet he wanted silence.

  There was that constant, wearing vacillation that went with painting and watching, that push and pull, between the craving for isolation, to be immersed in a scene, to be watching, to be doing nothing, so that he could see, then the entirely opposite desire. The awful contrast between the lovely, hopeful loneliness of waiting for an image to form, juxtaposed with the intense longing for the sound of a human voice to drag him away from the frustration of it all. The real tension of his life, that he was either running away, or running towards, a voice or a face. Friendly as a puppy, loving the company of others, preferably one at a time, but then behaving like a savage if they got in the way and did not leave him alone. Sometimes he thought he wanted to be alone so much he would have killed for it. Pushed someone out of the way, as if he had been afraid of them. When he wanted to be alone, seeking the image, people made him afraid.