Looking Down Read online

  It wasn’t even as if he was usually drawn to this kind of thing; not his favourite century, but that made no difference. He loved it. He wanted it. If he never had anything else, he wanted that. Lusted after it. Measured it with his eye. Sizeable, but out of that frame it would roll up safely and insignificantly small. He would carry it away with the greatest of ease.

  And yet what would he do with it? He would have to do as all those others did: hide it away and take what would be by then a definitely unholy pleasure in it. Like wanking in secret over a porn picture. But there would be a difference between himself and most of the others. He would love it. He would care for it, and he would know what it was. Quite different from them.

  Steven lived for zing. That was what he had always called it.

  Taking steps towards the Tiepolo, style characterised by playful effects, there was a repetition of the same joy of discovery, slightly diluted because it was not the first but intense all the same, and not disappointing for the dilution because he knew he could look at it for a lifetime of days and still see something else. Another angle, triangle, another fucking elbow, a gossip in the corner, a breathtakingly casual flick of ink. And then, as he walked towards it for the third time, still smiling, his view was blocked. Someone else was standing in front of it, nose to the glass, dusting it, fussily, hiding it. The urbane-looking gallery owner probably, fed up with Steven’s visits and deliberately getting in the way. It was enough to remind Steven that the drawing was not his, would never be his and he might never be able to see it again. He retreated before he did something he might regret.

  Outside in the street, smoking a cigarette, he thought he was going mad, shaking himself to death with his own fury. No one should be prevented from seeing fine art, even if it was for sale. No one should allow a rich buyer to buy for investment and put a Tiepolo behind bulletproof glass to rot in private. Steven wanted to scream. Instead he sat down in a café nearby, and then, after two cups of coffee, he took off his tie and stuffed it in his pocket, ruffled his hair and went back with his suit jacket over his arm, nonchalantly.

  ‘Could you tell me if this is still for sale?’

  The Tiepolo was still as it was, on the stand, the sight of it making his voice quiver convincingly for all the wrong reasons.

  ‘No, ’fraid not.’

  She lied. The girl who had replaced the man who had gone to lunch looked at him with a cool appraising eye, and for all his ordinariness, found him lacking. It was the hand, he decided, which made her so hesitant, rather than the rest of him, which, with a hasty rearrangement of his creased jacket over his arm, simply looked down on his luck. Not for sale to him. He liked to tease them.

  ‘It should be in a museum. Going far, is it?’

  She maintained her icy composure, eyes fixed on her computer screen.

  ‘Something like this could end up anywhere. Probably the Emirates. Can I help you with anything?’

  Oh God, that awful sing-song, eat-your-balls voice. The tone of voice that defied him to ask, and how they infuriated him, those gallery girls with their casual superiority and get-lost voices. At least, long since, when his sister Sarah had part-timed as one of those, she smiled at people like the tart she was and gave them the benefit of her enormous enthusiasm. Not this brainless cold fish with the professionally tousled hair. He passed behind her seat and read the addresses on her screen, annoying her. Then, before she could ask him to stop, he went back to the Tiepolo, close to it this time, trying to memorise the detail he already knew. It felt horribly like saying goodbye. Next time he came in here, they would probably call the police.

  ‘Nice meeting you,’ he said. ‘I’m sure we’ll meet again.’

  The girl turned in her chair and gave him her two-watt smile. The sort of smile to which he had become accustomed, the non-reactive, forced acknowledgement of his insignificant presence. Good, he wasn’t losing his touch then.

  His fingers tingled. Steven went back out into the street where the sun hit his eyes and made him stop. At least he had seen It, felt that zing, and that was all that mattered, wasn’t it? No, it wasn’t. You didn’t fall in love with a thing (or a person, for that matter, although he confessed to ignorance of the latter experience) without wanting it. Or if not wanting it (her), since possessiveness was a terrible and destructive vice, at least wanting the best possible chance for it (her). A good life, no less. And he was sure that the single fact of appreciation applied equally to woman and painting, since without it they both seemed to wither and die. It was vital to the health. Shutting it (her) away made it crumple and fade, as well as being an insult to the creator. But did the amount of the appreciation matter? Was it quality or quantity? Was the love of one person enough?

  On the Underground, with his hands stuffed in his pockets, he began to think that such analogies could be as overstretched as canvas, and anyway comparisons of all kinds were odious. He was angry, in that non-obvious, understated way his sister would have denigrated by saying you’re cross, and he knew his mind was as screwed as ever as soon as he started making comparisons between women and works of art, getting confused between the its and the shes, which was a really stupid kind of comparison to make, except for the fact that they were both alive and infinitely capable of zing. Although not that woman over there, on the other side of the train, a girl with a placid, made-up face, chewing to the hum of wheels over tracks in a half-empty carriage, which he disliked because it made it so much more obvious when you stared at people. She was just nothing, no hint of spirit or spirited artifice. When you looked at a woman like that, and he looked at them all the time, it was impossible to understand how anyone could feel possessive of her (it), and yet undoubtedly someone was. And when the train sped on past his destination and he remembered he had failed to get off, without caring either, and the anger was fading, it occurred to him that the shes and the its could be in terrible conflict anyway. You couldn’t have zing for both. Whatever happened to lovers if they did not love the same things? Or one of them developed a competing passion for an It?

  He alighted at the next stop and walked back to the bank where he worked. It was a small, private bank, exclusively for the use of clients who had abandoned the high-street equivalent. The criterion for banking at Joseph’s was the possession of a certain amount of money. The clients who banked here were not, in the main, the big high-rollers beloved of better-known private banks. There were no millionaires and only one faded pop star, but they did not have mundane things like mortgages and they did have money to invest. In the early days of burglary, when he was still perfecting the art of free climbing and taking exams, he had used the bank’s client list for starters. It was a safe assumption that anyone who banked with Joseph’s would have something worth stealing, although not the sort of conspicuous wealth which necessitated elaborate security systems, but a few forays into their empty houses were disappointing. If there was any art, it was not the kind bought for investment and not usually worth liberating. These people preferred bricks and mortar as an investment. Besides, the client list was of limited usefulness: if he confined himself to that, someone, somewhere would make the obvious connection that a series of not-so-fine-art burglary victims had a bank account in common. And some of them had taste. Steven thought it better to sell to them. He did not wish to disgrace the bank. There were nice people in there. They had given him a career and let him climb walls, literally and metaphorically, and they seemed to accept him as human, despite his churlish resistance and mocking of their culture. Remaining an outsider was entirely his choice. This was a grudging admission he made to himself as he went through the doors.

  There was not a single thing in this building which moved him, not a colour, an artifact, a water cooler, a door, a window or the flicker of a skirt which created a single impulse that was even a distant relative of zing. It was a deliberately faceless, featureless place, designed to provide no distraction from the task in hand. He nodded hello to others in the room and sat down as if
weary from a tiresome lunch with a sober client distressed about market performance.

  Tiepolo came up on the screen. Triangle upon triangle, zing, zing, zing, as if it were really there instead of imprinted on his mind. Then it faded, giving way to the usual jumble of figures. He thought of the journey home to the dark flat he disliked but was too lazy to leave. He thought of the Tiepolo again, sadly this time, and then, at one remove, he smarted with anger that his sister would no longer let him stay with her, for the sake of her rich neighbours, and his fingers began to itch with the desire to climb.

  He tapped at the keys of his computer. He had always tried to say it was the hand that set him apart, but it was not. Scarred, ugly thing, minus the smallest finger. Never mind; the next finger did the work of two. That hand, crushed beneath the wardrobe he had tried to climb in a four-year-old’s dare against himself, only to drag it down. And no one heard the screaming, because Mummy was too busy with ever-naughty Sarah. Oh God, that soulless little house of childhood, full of girls. No wonder he preferred zing. No wonder Sarah owed him something. Then he smiled, nodded to himself and smiled again.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Always use stiles and gates

  The sea always excited him, lifted his spirits, gave him a surge of energy. Richard Beaumont puffed up the path from the car park. There it was again, the seductive hum of the hovercraft with its effect of blotting the brain and then, in that odd moment of silence, unclogging it again. He felt odder by the second and did not care. Maybe coming back to the cliffs would encourage someone to hit him again and shock him into real life; maybe he was a masochist. Maybe he was simply drawn back to a place which had become familiar, with all the ingredients he needed. A bit of grandeur, a distinct lack of romance, ugliness mixed with beauty and sometimes hellish noisy, what with the wind and shipping and the crashing and bashing of the sea. There was also the allure of the human traffic, as long as it did not come too close. He had never wanted isolation for long, either in life or in art; he needed the human form as well as the landscape, and he felt ashamed for coming back. But he knew the way, and that counted for a lot. He knew the hotel, he knew the railway station and he knew the route, with or without his car. And he liked it. He felt like a determined child insisting on his own way in doing something unwise, but still, he was here, and he knew the way back.

  Familiarity with routes was important because his memory had become so poor. His conscience was unaccountably heavy. There was something he had to remember, such as why, the other day when he had sat and sketched that girl, had he ever dared go down that path beneath the overhang. Whatever was it had provoked him to do that? He returned to the same spot, passing en route the place where he had sat behind bushes earlier in the spring, reaching the place where the path led beneath the overhang, near the Do not walk sign, which puzzled him, because half of it was missing and he had a vague curiosity about what the rest of it might say. What else could you do here than walk? He was feeling a little shaky, realising that he could not go down that path again, still puzzled as to why he had ever had the courage. And he would have to go there again, some time, and he was postponing everything by staring at the broken sign. He should have brought a hat. In the distance on this clear afternoon he could see France and it looked alluring. A voice spoke, unexpectedly close to his ear.

  ‘It says “Do not walk closer than twenty metres from the edge”. Or it used to say that once. None of these signposts last long in the wind.’

  Richard turned to see the doctor. The name evaded him and the face swam into focus, slowly but surely. His own solid, almost ugly face split into a smile. The doctor had a narrow, canny face, not smiling yet but open to suggestion. He and this man, What was his name? had had a real conversation, all about bruises and vertigo but authentic communication nevertheless. The doctor and he had spent quality time together. Richard liked the doctor, knew it had been mutual.

  ‘If I were you,’ the doctor said, ‘I would come away from here. If Edwin sees you, you might not like it. You’re still under suspicion, you know. And you’re too close to the edge.’

  Richard nodded. There was no point in arguing or asking who Edwin was, and feeling shaky meant he was also biddable. He followed the doctor back to the doctor’s car, feeling generally but controllably unwell.

  ‘Does your wife know you’re here?’ the doctor asked.

  John, that was his name. John Armstrong.

  It did not seem an odd question. Richard was trying to remember if he had told Lilian exactly where he was going, or if he had only mentioned for how long, or if he had told Fritz.

  ‘I expect so. I hope so.’

  They stood together in the car park, both with hands in pockets, curiously reluctant to part.

  ‘They still don’t know who the girl was, you know. The one you sketched. I wouldn’t hang around here until they do, if I were you. You can’t expect to be popular. Why did you come back? You’re the first witness and therefore suspect . . . why did you think I took swabs of your hands and scrapes from your fingernails?’

  ‘Did you? What a relief. That would prove I couldn’t have touched her.’

  ‘No, it wouldn’t. Would you like a drink?’

  ‘I think so.’

  The feature of the old Vauxhall of which John was most proud was the miniature cocktail cabinet in the left-hand glove compartment. You still called it that if you walked on the cliffs because that was where you stuck gloves and hats, except in John’s case they littered the back seat and the glove compartment contained a selection of miniature bottles of whisky, gin, etc., and two small glasses held stable in a homespun construction of wire. Richard registered the age and scruffiness of the car, sank into the passenger seat which looked as if it had been chewed to death by a dog, and let out a deep breath. Yes, a whisky, with the thought running through his head, Why is this man being so nice to me?

  ‘I am kind and curious by nature,’ John said, by way of explanation of the unarticulated question. ‘And I dislike seeing suffering. I would rather try and head it off at the pass than witness the consequences. And you almost went over the edge of the cliff back there. I thought you were testing your vertigo. So why did you come back?’

  Richard sipped, missing the hovercraft sound. The nausea passed, and the drink was heaven.

  ‘Because the other day was one of the best days in my life,’ he said slowly. ‘I had a model. Models are hard to find, I tell you. She was beautiful. And I saw the chough. I’ve tried to paint it all and I think I’ve failed. So I had to come back.’

  ‘You can’t have seen the chough. The chough hasn’t been here for decades.’

  ‘Well, I saw it.’ He swallowed. There were times when alcohol, in which he had never overindulged, tasted far more divine than any advertisement could describe. ‘It was there. And now I’ve painted it. So it must have been there.’

  ‘Ah. Imagination has its own reality.’

  ‘It had red feet and a curved red beak. And there was a plan to reintroduce the chough to this coastline.’

  A plan which had come to nothing yet. The doctor was silent for a moment. They both looked ahead at the vast expanse of sky through the windscreen. He noticed that Richard’s colour had improved and thought how good the interior of a car was for encouraging conversation. Cars had an anonymous intimacy.

  ‘So did you come back in the hope of seeing the chough again? Or to look for another body? They aren’t that regular.’

  ‘Neither, really. I’ve been here many times in the last few weeks, watching it change. Strange, isn’t it, how a place you’ve chosen at random should become addictive. Perhaps because you’ve chosen it yourself and no one else has done it for you.’

  ‘But why choose this? There are stretches of coast far more beautiful than this. Think of Wales or Cornwall . . . You might actually see your red-beaked chough.’

  ‘Too far away, and I was born there and I can’t go back, but you’ve got the point about this.’ He gestured towards
the rising cliff path, visible to the left and marked by a litter bin. ‘The point is that so much of it is bleak and ugly. And the town you can see isn’t so lovely either. The cliffs have bald patches like an old head with alopecia. The wind stops it being lush. I couldn’t do with it being completely beautiful. It would be too much for me.’

  ‘I thought an artist might seek perfection?’

  ‘No, and I don’t much care for flowers. I don’t know what I like until I see it. Bodies and shapes and something I can paint later.’ He had balanced the whisky glass on the sketchbook on his knees. ‘Do you think I’m odd for sketching her? There was nothing else I could do.’

  ‘I’ve often found a certain beauty in a dead body,’ John said. ‘They sometimes look marvellous, especially the old. Streamlined and serene in a moment of perfection before the rot sets in. But not when the death is violent and untimely, and at her age it was definitely that. She was about twenty, that girl. I wish I could give her a name. Is this drawing and painting lark a recent hobby of yours?’

  ‘The sketches are the ideas. The framework. I take them home and paint from them, and memory. I wish it was a hobby, but it isn’t.’

  John waited out the pause. Lord, they were sipping their whisky like little old ladies.

  ‘It’s an addiction. It simply has to be done. It’s . . . like being blind and struggling to find sight. It must have grown on me over the years because suddenly it was there, a fully fledged disease.’

  He held the whisky in his left hand, tapped the sketch pad with the fingers of his right.

  ‘An overpowering desire to paint or die in the attempt. I’ve had an incredibly dull and boring life, making money, raising children. Second marriage, early retirement, and now all I want to do is learn how to paint.’

  ‘Hmm. What does second wife think?’