Because of the bath and the thick white towels, the ivory cakes of soap in their fluted paper wrappings, Connie decides to have a bath. Sleep is not going to come, not if she waits for it, and who needs sleep? At home she hardly sleeps, she never baths. It is not necessary to bath. You can wash the places that need to be washed with a flannel, a kettle-full of water, splash the face, rub the flannel under the clothes for a freshen up. You can maintain an adequate level of personal hygiene like that, washing the hair monthly or so with Squeezy if it’s not too chilly. Not to wash the hair at all, after all, wouldn’t harm or kill. But in the hotel bathroom with hours to go before breakfast, Connie decides, just for the novelty of it, she will bathe. She turns on the taps, tips in a bottle of bath-gel so that suds and steam glitter white. While the bath fills she takes off her night-clothes, removes, last, the yellowing vest and pants and with her mind still full of the luxuriant bodies on the adult channel sees in the cruelly lit mirror the thin puckering of her own skin, the sallowness, the low flat pockets of her breasts.
But it is not bad, she thinks, chin set, not so bad considering the years. She’s trim at least, Paddy always liked to say that she was trim – though there was more of her then. Even trimmer then, she tells herself, and though her chin is lifted the mirror weeps and smears her downwards, her nipples looking away from each other as if ashamed. She cups her breasts in her hands, forces them together. It has been so long since anyone has touched my skin.
The water is too hot, she gets in and out quickly, turns on the cold tap, her legs stung pink to the knee. The bubbles grow and heap under the taps. She walks about her room naked, cold, the air odd on her skin. It brings to mind some memory, she can’t reach it, some sensation like this, air touching her everywhere, no shield or filter, the same air that touches the skin of others, enters others, their noses, mouths, throats, touching, entering her. The unaccustomed feeling of air on naked skin.
When the bath is cool enough she climbs back in, sinks down. The bubbles crackle in the quiet. She lifts her hands to see her fingers webbed with sparkling froth. The smell is something between artificial flowers and sweets, something sherbety, a wet finger stuck in a paper twist of lemonade crystals and sucked.
Air on naked skin. A memory starts to rise. Oh no, not that now. Enjoy this luxury for now. This warmth, this sweet sweet smell. Keep here for now or else remember something sweet. Patrick and his fingers, the way they conjured joy from her. Sometimes like a magician pulling miles of coloured ribbon from nowhere, the way he pulled sexual ecstasy from inside her even when she didn’t think she was in the mood, miles of gaudy silken ribbons and flags and of course she would have shouted like the girl on the film. They did it just like that, porno-style all right, yes indeed they did.
She puts her hands on her belly and presses just where she used to feel that first fizz, small throb and ache of desire. Then catches her own eye in the clouded mirror tiles. Why so many bloody mirrors? Who wants to see themselves in the bath? But there she is: old woman floating in a cloud of froth. She struggles up, sobered by the sight. Bath too long for her, she can’t relax or she’d sink, has to brace herself against the sides, foam making her itch as it dries on her chest, making her sneeze, feel suddenly chilled. She climbs out, wraps herself in a giant of a towel and with the corner of it wipes her eyes.
NINE
The dream again must be. Tony flounders in deep pink. Knows where he is and that he’s dreaming, must be a dream can feel the soft beneath him and the warm and even see pink through his eyelids that try to peel open, but still he can hear the breath in his ear, still feel the flesh and hear the last thread of frightened voice. Didn’t mean didn’t mean didn’t mean. Hair against him, sticking, strands of it in spit. Shouting with real voice or only a voice made of dream, throat clogged with horror. Real feeling of soft or is the soft the dream, the dragging and splitting of his mind into horror and comfort and no comfort because it happened. It happened. He did it. A sob close, real, where? Who. No. Donna back. No? You are here in the deep pink bed. Dreaming only dreaming. Cretin.
He pushes himself up out of the deep dream, head up out of the pillows, wet with his drool, with his tears. Reaches for the light. The room falls into order, the walls that surely were crowding in retreat, the ceiling rises high and white and blank.
He gets out of bed which is soiled now with nothing evident, only the scum of his dream brought on by – what? Something soft under his foot, horribly soft, jerks his foot away as if it burns. Reaches to pick it because this is not a dream now, this is only Donna’s room, and it’s a slipper. A white fur slipper like a bunny with ears and pink glass eyes. Horrid, sweet. Christ al-fucking-mighty.
Brought on by what, Tony?
To be a person who could wear such slippers.
Tension, because it’s started. It’s happening. The signs are there. Constance Benson in a hotel somewhere in this city. Patrick’s portrait hanging where soon he will be able to see and even maybe touch. Signs will follow. Patrick is with and in him, leading, shoving, showing the way. There is no need for nightmares. But Christ they get you when your guard is down, slip like eels into the spaces, the worst things, because only they know the worst things the eels that thread in when you let go and sleep.
When he gets the elixirs there will be no more. Nightmares no more. That’s a good thought. Think that one. It is all right and true.
He pulls on his clothes, denim cold and stiff against his skin. Shower later and clean clothes. Mouth tastes foul. In Donna’s dressing-table mirror the face is gaunt, new lines running down each side of the mouth to the chin, deep and sharp as if cut into butter with a blade. It’s just the electric white that does it, pouring down from a frilly lampshade. All these fucking frills and pink and bunny-rabbit soft. Why does that hurt? Leans close to see the eyes. Maybe Patrick had such lines. Can’t think. In all the pictures there is the beard hiding half the face. Why no beard in the new one? Was going to grow a beard to be like Patrick. What now? Why, why the awful dreams?
He notices a vase of artificial flowers on Donna’s dressing-table, pinches the stiffened crinkly edge of one. It is all paid for. The dream is not fair. It’s a deal. You kill, no, no, not kill but cause to die. Not murder though they tried to make that out, it wasn’t murder, it wasn’t meant. The dreams are not, no way, fair. You’ve done time. Served time. Time has wiped the slate, should have. Look, you’ve been through this a hundred times. Get a grip.
But if your conscience thrusts up in your dreams like that – think of it as a shark’s fin rising from the water – if your conscience thrusts up a reminder well, that just shows how good you are, Tony, deep inside, really deep. You could forget it all, but no, the dream, your conscience will not let you. So you are good. Really, really, good.
Tony makes a smile, watches it stretch his face. A beard would hide his face and his face is good. Good angles, jawline, cheek-bones. They’ve all said it, the women he’s had. It’s that Red-Indian look that turns them on, what with his long black hair.
TEN
In the evening, after her family had gone and Connie had eaten her first meal alone with Sacha and Patrick, Sacha took her up to what she called the studio – even that word thrilled Connie. When the door was opened, the first thing she noticed was a white peaked heap like a miniature mountain range on the floorboards under the window. ‘Swallows,’ Sacha said, following Connie’s eyes. ‘It’s lucky, you know, said to be if swallows choose your eaves.’ As she spoke there was a flurry, squeal and swoop and a tiny dark feather spiralled down. ‘Paddy likes the window open, likes to hear them, likes them to feel welcome.’
‘Welcome!’ Connie smothered a laugh. ‘Sorry.’
‘What?’
‘It’s just … I was just imagining Mother letting there be bird droppings in our house.’
Sacha glanced sideways at her, nodded.
Connie looked round the room, a long rectangle with tall sash windows to two sides. There were no curtains or ca
rpets and it seemed a naked room, exciting for being so. The smell was not the smell of swallows at all but of oil paint and linseed oil. But a little connection was made in Connie’s brain at that moment and ever after these painting smells would make her think of swallows and of freedom.
It was growing dark and the long room seemed almost endless, a clutter of stuff on the floor at one end, indistinct. The evening light through the windows was like pink metal.
‘I’ll put the light on,’ Sacha said.
‘Wait …’ Connie held up her hand. ‘Sorry … it’s just that it’s such a lovely …’
Sacha looked at her approvingly. ‘It certainly is,’ she said, ‘it’s very special, the light at this time, the dusk light of summer. It brings out the flush.’ She studied Connie’s face. ‘Not a bloom,’ she said, ‘not like in daylight, that rose-petal look, deeper than that … a glow from within.’ Connie felt the glow that came from such approval, her hand went to her cheek. She looked into Sacha’s face but could see no glow. The skin was dull and papery, a little crumpled. She was a solid woman, Sacha, solid and unglamorous in her tweed suit, speckled hair cut mannishly short. But there was a shine in her brown eyes, a kind and intelligent shine.
‘You and Patrick have a son?’
‘Red. Not Patrick’s.’
‘Oh.’ Connie paused, thinking, Whose then? but it seemed impertinent to ask. ‘Red?’
‘Actually it’s Martin. Martin Redmartin. So you see …’
‘Yes. It’s nice. Red. Where is he?’
‘He’s a stonemason, but he’s in Africa now.’
‘Fighting?’ Connie could nave kicked herself. Sacha pressed her lips together until they were white. Frightened, Connie thought, she is frightened. Change the subject, quick. ‘Will you tell me about what you do,’ she said. ‘Your painting and Patrick? Mother says something esoteric’
A long pause then Sacha shook her head as if snapping out of something, softened her lips, smiled. ‘Esoteric, yes. That’s a good one.’ Connie smiled too, relieved that Sacha was not angry. The light was so pink and the smells so glorious. Everything glorious. She must not spoil it. They must like her, both of them, as she liked them. She was trying hard to feel her feet on the ground, to feel the floorboards through the soles of her shoes because it was so odd, everything, the surroundings, everything, it was so different, almost dreamlike – particularly in this strange sheeny light – that she felt she would take off and float if she didn’t concentrate. She was longing to be alone. She needed to be alone in order to go over everything in her mind before it faded away. She needed to think it all in order, in images, or else she would forget.
‘You know anything about Paddy’s … system of thought?’
Connie shook her head.
‘I’ll show you something.’ Sacha went to the far end of the room where the dusk was thick and velvety and came back with some small canvases. She handed them to Connie who studied them one by one, holding them close to the window.
‘They are flowers?’
‘What would you say?’
Connie frowned over the strange images. They looked like flowers or something from a medical book, like the book at home in the drawing room that she used to pore over for hours. It had the figures of a naked man and woman, seen from the front in the front of the book, seen from behind in the back. Their skin was made of flaps. If you lifted the flaps you could see the muscles, printed with tiny figures so you could look up the names of the muscles: pronator, supinator, trapezius. If you lifted the muscle flaps you could reveal the ribs, lift the ribs to reveal the organs, pink and red and bluish brown nestled together. With her eyes on the diagrams, Connie would press her hands against herself to try and feel her own liver, spleen, womb, all secret tight and slick. You could lift the skin of the face, too, to show the muscles of the face, the eyeballs and finally the skull. Only that scared her, it seemed such a draughty box.
Patrick’s flower paintings were like something from a dream, half flowers half innards. She thought them ugly but didn’t like to say, wondered if they had a kind of beauty that she couldn’t understand.
‘I would say they are flowers … transformed.’
‘You would say right. Patrick has this idea, well, principle, a principle he published in a monograph to, don’t repeat this in front of him, universal scorn, I’m afraid, his Phytosophical Principle.’
‘What does that mean?’
‘Ha … well, best you read it. Though doubtless he’ll enlighten you himself before long. But broadly it’s about the connection between mankind and plants. These paintings came from dreams he had while formulating his ideas. You can see he’s no artist!’ She laughed and Connie looked at her, wondering is she being nasty or only honest? Certainly the paintings didn’t seem much good to her.
‘I thought they were like dreams. What connection does he mean?’
‘That man could do worse than look to plants for a model of behaviour.’
‘What? Oh …’ Connie could hardly suppress a startled giggle. ‘But surely …’
‘Let’s go down now, it really is getting dark.’ Sacha held out her hand for the last painting. ‘Surely?’
‘Surely plants don’t do anything, they don’t behave at all.’
Sacha snorted. ‘Come on, let’s go and find some supper.’
ELEVEN
The Sunday paper has five main sections. Tony reads the News on Sunday, Travel on Tuesday, Life on Wednesday, and he lasts the Review section for three days. Learns things he really doesn’t need to know. The Business section he reads only if desperate. The paper has to last the week. You can’t read an evening paper at breakfast time and you can’t go out before breakfast, except on Sunday when you have to go out to fetch it. He always reads while he eats his breakfast, Weetabix with milk, a pot of tea, a fag.
Breakfast is one of the reasons he finds it hard to contemplate sharing his life, his space, his peace. If someone spoke to him, say, while he ate his Weetabix which you have to do fast while it’s still vaguely crisp or else throw it away and start again, if someone spoke to him then … who knows. If someone else crunched or gulped or said a single stupid thing. Because morning is the time when it is hard to hang on, keep on course, and the right bit of the paper, the right consistency in his cereal, these small things … well …
Wednesday is the day. He showers in Donna’s bathroom using her pink grapefruit gel to rinse the dirty dreams away. He smooths and tidies Donna’s bed, the sheets all limp and twisted. Should wash them but there isn’t the time. She won’t mind. Back in his own flat he gazes at his own bed. Good to see it tucked in tight, the cold, starched sheets unspoiled.
The milk is cold from the fridge and he pours it on only after his tea is poured and his fag is rolled. The paper is to the right of his cereal bowl, the lighter to the left. The Review is good to read because it’s in the form of a large stapled magazine, not a difficult shape to unfold and keep under control. Tony opens the first page and takes his first bite of cereal. It is right. The biscuits keeping their shape and soft wet bite, the demerara sugar is still crystalline, the milk has not yet made the whole thing to mush. Tea hot, cereal cold. He reads the Contents. Stops. A name jumps out. Constance Benson. He starts, chokes, pauses. It’s at the end, the crap chatty bit, At Home With … Shakes his head. It’s her. It’s Constance fucking Benson. It is a sign another sign as if he needs one. He fumbles to the right page, nearly knocks his fag on the floor, picks it up and lights it and looks.
There’s a small picture of a tumbledown house under an enormous sky, sand-dunes rolling down towards its gate like waves. There’s a red kitchen table with a bunch of wild flowers, there are sea-shells stuck round the frame of a scuzzy window. But the main picture taking up a whole page is golden. The room a dazzle of yellow, chair, floor, light, the old woman isn’t much more than a darkness in front of the source of light that is Patrick. Patrick in that portrait, young and beardless with a chin that is so like Tony’s you w
ouldn’t believe it. The eyes meet his and his heart tumbles.
He takes a breath of clean hot smoke, a swig of tea and reads:
Portrait artist Constance Benson certainly prefers a life far from the madding crowd.
She lives in a prefab, the only remnant of a settlement built to ease the housing shortage after the war. Long ago the other inhabitants left and there is little sign now of the other houses – temporary dwellings never designed for permanent habitation.
But incredibly the house in which Miss Benson lived with Patrick Mount for several years and has continued to live in for the thirty years since is still standing: a cosy, stylishly dilapidated home.
Mount disappeared in mysterious circumstances over thirty years ago but his memory is still fresh with Benson who has not left her home on the gusty North Norfolk coast since that day.
Although the cosy kitchen with its brightly painted furniture and sea-shell-encrusted walls is the heart of the house, Benson’s favourite room is the small loft space which Mount ingeniously converted to a studio for her. It is designed so as to catch all available light and is a triumph of architectural daring. Barely five foot at its tallest point, it has walls that slope down to floor-level on either side.
The studio is kept admirably uncluttered. The only furniture in the room is a miniature armchair, charmingly covered in a faded yellow chintz, which is well suited to Miss Benson’s petite frame.
The chair is positioned so that Miss Benson can sit and gaze upon the last portrait she painted – that of her beloved Mount. It is this much discussed portrait which will be the centrepiece of the retrospective of her portraiture which opens at the National Portrait Gallery later this week.
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