Yet she thought, I could have done it I could I could I could. There was no way to deny it. She was still laughing as he came over to her. She looked at him, but it was the shadow-man’s blue, dying eyes that she saw. She knew that she would be seeing those eyes forever. And she laughed.
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* * * *
ANDREW KLAVAN
THE LOOK ON HER FACE
1.
S
he was a beauty, all right, but that’s not what started it. It was the resemblance -wildly exact - to his long-imagined creature. He stopped cold the first time he saw her. She was fiddling with gew-gaws in a costume jewelry shop on Fulham Road. He stopped and gasped and stared through the window like some clown doing a pantomime of Cupid’s Target. Then he began to follow her. All the way home through the autumn evening. Through mist, past mansions, under haloed street lamps: the whole South Kensington shebang.
* * * *
He’d done this maybe a dozen times over the past five years. More and more often during his dreamy, Luciferian tumble from station to station. At first, there had been no need for it. That first year in London, he had been someone, a recognizable member of the human race: Benjamin Westlake, an American art student finishing up his Grand Tour before returning to the States. He had had promise, and a certain frantic intensity that made his scrawny frame thrum. He could sit in pubs and cafes and talk to other students with a mesmerizing energy: about the Pre-Raphaelites in relation to the New Realism, about injecting realism with the Vital Romance of the Past. He could find models; he could find lovers too sometimes. At first - but somehow, he had stayed on, he had not gone home. And he had begun to paint less, hardly at all finally. Nothing he did was good enough for him, He had begun to theorize when he should have been working, and his cafe philosophies became charged with unappealing panic as he watched, in secret, the slow paralysis of his talent through fear. For a while, he managed to hold onto his few admirers. He lived off his sensitive appearance, his nervous charm and money from home. But they had all dried up eventually.
And so he began to do this more and more. As he became more and more unkempt, more and more frantic and bizarre and unpresentable, as he festered in his Marylebone basement, scrounged for odd jobs, lived without friends, without a work permit, with even his police papers obsolete -more and more often, as he metamorphosed into this hollow-eyed wanderer through the higher-toned city streets, he began to pick out women. Women who reminded him of something; of someone. Of his dream model, that is. The fantasy girl who would become his inspiration, the muse of his resurgence - and his lover, of course; or so the tired fantasy went. He would pick them out, and he would follow them. For a day, for a few days. Until the resemblance inexplicably faded.
But this one - oh, he told himself, she was the best of them, no question. Yes, yes, he did believe she was his Lizzie Siddal to the life.
* * * *
He tailed her for four days. Trailed her to her home. Lurked outside by the iron gates of the overgrown garden at Thurloe Square. He watched her figure through the privacy curtains on the ground floor. He yearned with raw eyes. He scratched at his ragged beard as if there were lice in it - maybe there were. Or he stood as if breathless, his hands in the pockets of his stained trench coat or tugging now and then at the shiny slacks that had become too large for his spindly frame. And she - she passed in and out beneath the white columns of the house’s portico. She kissed her husband in the doorway when the limousine came to collect him. She walked her little boy to school. Had tea with friends. She visited the shops on Walton Street and Beauchamp Place. It thrilled him to watch her through the shop windows, cosseted and sedate, serious in her consideration of fine clothes and bangles. He thought of Lizzie Siddal, indeed, in her modest bonnet shop, where Deverell had discovered her, and whence he brought her to his studio to model for him. And how she’d modeled then for Hunt, and for Millais, who painted her as the drowned Ophelia, making her pose clothed in an ill-warmed bath until she came down with a fever. That picture was in the Tate now, among the other Pre-Raphaelites. He visited it often and stood before it, staring, bouncing on his toes. He considered her to have been - Siddal - the very image of Men’s Longing for the Lost Thing. And in the end, he thought, in the end, she belonged to Rossetti only. She was his model alone. His Beatrice, his Delia, his muse, his wife at last. ‘One face looks out from all his canvases, one selfsame figure sits or walks or leans . . .’
He learned the woman’s name one morning when her husband’s Financial Times jammed the letter slot. Jane Abbot: he read it off the letters stuck half-way.
What pictures he could make of her, he thought grandly, breathing hoarsely, as he stood so close to her, just outside her front door. What a world he too could make of myth and of remembrance.
* * * *
Of course, he’d thought all this before, about other women, while following other women. That’s what he did these days, after all, hang around shadowing girls and thinking such things. It was easier than actually painting, wasn’t it? - a fact which sat heavily even on him now, even as he tagged after this latest.
But then, on the Thursday - on Thursday night - there came the added element. He recognized the moment as if he had been waiting for it. And the whole hankering, romantic operation was transformed into this other business.
* * * *
It was late. It was drizzling, chilly. He pushed his hands together in his pockets to draw the trench coat closed: its belt was lost and two of its three buttons had fallen off long ago. He was at his post by the iron fence, gazing at her windows still though she’d drawn the curtains at darkfall as the English do. He was shivering. He was ready to go home.
It surprised him when she came out - it was nearly ten. But she stepped across the threshold briskly, in all innocence it seemed. She smiled back over her shoulder, waved goodbye as she shut the door. He expected her to head for the brown Mercedes she’d left parked down the street, or to walk over to Brompton and hail a cab. He figured he was going to lose her right away like that. But the moment the door was closed, she paused where she was, her face alert. Standing under the portico, she scanned the area. He had to turn away before she spotted him. He pretended to walk off toward the end of the road where the V and A loomed against the broken clouds. By the time he turned back, she was going in the opposite direction, had passed the Mercedes. Was hurrying round the corner, her heels clicking on the pavement, to Pelham Street, which led to the South Kensignton tube station. He turned back and went after her, taking long strides. His decaying tennis shoes made no noise at all.
* * * *
He still couldn’t believe she would take the underground until he trailed her into the station and saw her start down the stairs. He’d never seen her use the tube before. The first thought that occurred to him - naturally enough - was that she didn’t want to leave a record of her movements; she didn’t want anyone to find out where she’d gone, or to follow her. It was a thrilling thought, almost too thrilling to believe: that she was thinking about someone following her. It added a sudden value to his position, a telepathic intimacy.
She wore a long, brown raincoat, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low. The way she waited at the far end of the platform, the way she kept her face turned away, toward the tracks - yes, he was convinced she was trying to go unnoticed.
On the train, seated in a corner, she read a paperback novel, her head down. He watched her cautiously from the other end of the car. Already, he couldn’t believe his luck.
* * * *
It rained harder, grew colder, he warmed himself by a bonfire of the mind. They had built one - a bonfire - by the Siddal grave in Highgate. He thought of that, shivering, standing inside the phone booth, watching through the rain-streaked glass, watching the cafe across the street, waiting for her.
The cafe was off Piccadilly Circus, in that tangle of lanes that’s not quite Soho; a no-man’s land. At this hour, the place went clubby, and it drew freaks. Ev
en now, a line of them was forming at the door, shaved head after dyed hair after ringed nose after tattooed cheek; leather bodies hunkered under black umbrellas. It was a hell of a crowd for her to mix with. He could hear the bass of the music in there thumping. He could see film-light and video-glow flickering on the windows. She had been inside about twenty minutes now.
His teeth began to chatter. He imagined the bonfire against the night sky, above the cemetery. When Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal died - a laudanum overdose - February, 1862 - Rossetti, her painter, her husband, had laid his unpublished poems in her coffin. A calf-bound packet of them; they were buried with her; placed between her consumptive cheek and her rich hair. Her red-gold hair. They say it keeps growing after you die, your hair. They say that Lizzie Siddal’s hair spilled out of her coffin and was still luxurious, still red-gold some seven years later, when they dug her up. Rossetti needed money by then. He needed to publish the poems he’d buried with her. Two of his friends were on hand to watch the exhumation by bonfirelight, and to pry the packet of poems from what had been her face, to draw inspiration one more time from that singular face . . .
The image did seem to warm him there in his phone booth.
Jane Abbot had red hair too.
* * * *
She came out with a man. Well, he’d already guessed that would happen - her in a dive like this - that had to be the explanation. He was a young slime, sizeable and slick. Black hair casually damp on his forehead. Trench coat by Armani with that slanting cut you saw on the cover of magazines. He had no umbrella, no hat. He walked through the rain quickly. He gripped Jane Abbot’s elbow, as if to drag her with him, but she kept pace, she seemed to walk beside him willingly enough.
Benjamin left his phone booth and his imagined bonfires and trailed after them at a distance. He was excited now - so excited his throat felt tight - but he was vaguely angry too. He was disappointed to have his guess confirmed, to see her with a slick punk like that. It made him think less of this model of his, and he considered her quite sternly.
The couple reached the slick man’s car near the next corner. It was a low sporty model, hard to tell which in the shadows there, away from the street lamps. Benjamin stopped and watched them. He stood on the sidewalk openly, didn’t try to hide himself. The two weren’t paying any attention to him, that was for sure.
The slick man opened the passenger door. Only then, did the woman shy - suddenly. Like a dumb animal she was, like a dog who suddenly realizes she’s heading for the vet’s: she pulled back against his grip as if terrified all at once. She braced her heels against the pavement.
‘What the hell’s this then? the slick man said.
He let her elbow go, and she stumbled backwards. She cowered - actually cowered - against the wall of the building behind her. In a spasm, she shook her head: no.
Benjamin’s heart sped up, his breathing went shallow. The slick man was on top of the woman at once. He had something in his hand. Something white: an envelope, it looked like. He waved it in her face fiercely.
‘Don’t you play the fancy cat with me,’ he said.
Benjamin was wide-eyed. He wished he were a hero. He could see himself rushing forward into the fray, rescuing her. He could imagine it even as he watched what actually happened. The slick man kept waving the envelope in Jane Abbot’s face. He was big, and he looked tough.
He grinned at her, all teeth. Jane Abbot’s features contorted in pain. With a convulsive gesture and a muted cry, she snatched the paper from him. She tore it into small pieces, dashed the shreds to the ground, crying out again as she did. The slick man just stood there, just grinned at her. She hung her head, finally, under the weight of his self-assurance.
The slick man made an expansive gesture toward his car. ‘If her majesty pleases,’ he said.
Jane Abbot hesitated. She made a motion, as if to retrieve the torn envelope. But now, the slick man took her by the arm more roughly. He pulled her to the car, shoved her down into the passenger seat. Shaking his head, he walked around to the driver’s side.
When the car had moved off, Benjamin came forward through the rain. He was trembling as he crouched down over the torn envelope. He had to use his fingernails to peel the bits of paper off the wet sidewalk. But at last, he managed to get them all.
* * * *
2.
She came through the door, past the white columns, down the white stairs - and suddenly, he stepped up to her and grabbed her wrist. It was Monday now. The weekend - the fever, the fever of obsession, the fevered drawings that he began in fits and threw away - all this had left its scars on his sallow cheeks and brow; and his eyes were blazing.
So, of course, she was terrified. She tried to pull free. ‘What is this? Let go of me!’
‘No, no, it’s all right,’ he whispered.
‘I said let go,’ said Jane Abbot quickly. ‘I haven’t got any money with me. What do you want?’
Benjamin licked his dry lips. He forced them into something like a smile, but it only seemed to frighten her more. He released her wrist.
‘I know,’ he told her. ‘I know everything.’
That made her hesitate a moment, but only a moment. Then she spun away from him, she hurried away. He went after her, the tails of his trench coat flying in the cool wind.
‘I saw the photograph,’ he said to her back. That stopped her. She pulled up short. She looked over her shoulder at him. Even full of fear, her eyes seemed other-worldly to him. He nodded at her slowly. ‘The one you tore up. I taped it together,’ he said. ‘I saw. I know everything.’
She took this hard, her lips compressing, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Who are you?’
‘I want to help you,’ he said. ‘I can help you. I will.’
She gave that little spasm, that little shake of the head: No. He stepped toward her.
‘Really,’ he said.
Jane Abbot stared at him. She swallowed hard. ‘What do you want?’
He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, to touch her tenderly. But she recoiled. His hand hung in the air, trembling.
He whispered: ‘I want to paint your picture.’
* * * *
He wasn’t sure she would come. He couldn’t believe she would. Still, he did his best with the place. It was a basement bed-sitter off Baker Street. There were two other rooms just like it crammed together down there, each with its own toilet and a common bath in the hall. The shit in each room stank in the others, and the slobs in the others ignored the landlord’s notices and stacked their garbage outside their doors. It was pretty awful. Benjamin did what he could. He dragged the smelly hefty bags from the hallway and tossed them into the bins outside. He opened his one window, hoping to cover the room’s stench with the smell of exhaust. He made his narrow bed, and picked the clothes and discarded sketches off the floor. When he was done, he sat on the bed’s edge and waited, wringing his hands, staring at nothing. His head felt thick and feverish.
At noon, she rang at the outside door. He jumped up, wiped the sweat from his face. He rubbed his cold palms together as he stepped out into the hall. He brushed his hair back with his fingers.
But she hardly looked at him when he let her in. She walked past him slowly, with a stately tread: a queen going to her execution. Well, he tried not to be too offended by that. Even he, who was thinking none too clearly now, had an inkling of how desperate she must’ve been to come.
She stood in his room, stood like a fortress, looking neither left nor right. Oh, oh, oh, he was thinking as he scrabbled around her like a roach; oh, she’s the exact reflection of the Thing . . . Tall and substantial, with her long straight hair tied back with a black ribbon. Her features were not so blunt as Siddal’s. They were more delicate, her face narrower, but the effect, to him at least, was just as mournful and ethereal. She barely moved to help him as he took her coat from her shoulders. She wore a navy dress belted with a chain. She had a figure full at breast and hip. Oh, oh: the breath caught in his throat, tr
emulous.
‘Do you want anything? A glass of water?’
She shook her head once. ‘No, thank you.’
He folded her coat carefully. He draped it over the back of his only chair. ‘I . . . I’ll need you to lie down. On the bed.’ She turned her head and looked down at him. He said quickly: ‘It’s the pose. It’s all I need. Really.’
After a few seconds, taking a deep breath, she did it. She arranged her dress close to her calves and lay stiffly, her legs together, her hands clasped on her middle.
He sat on the chair, on the edge of the chair. ‘I’m . . . I’m going to make a drawing first ... a few drawings. It won’t take too long.’
She didn’t answer. He pulled his pad from the small table under the window. He crossed his legs and braced the pad against his knee. When he lifted his pencil, he laughed nervously at his hand. It was shaking violently. When she didn’t notice, all the same, he began.
London Noir - [Anthology] Page 25