Half Light

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘Enjoy this? Yes, or I wouldn’t do it, I suppose. I trained as a chemist, but chemistry seems far too good for chemists, if you see what I mean. Although that’s what I was supposed to be. Professional with a capital P. Well. Nothing too serious here. Only a surface bloom, I think. Just varnish.’

  ‘Oh.’ Francis felt stupid and he treasured his dignity. ‘Why does varnish “bloom”, as you call it? Looks more like a fading to me. I thought all the paint might have perished underneath. I was worried. Why “bloom”?’

  ‘Because it grows. All clear surfaces bloom, even glass. Sometimes prettily in an odd kind of way, a sort of delicate cloudiness. Trapped moisture, or something. The reasons don’t matter. Some varnishes are better than others.’

  ‘So the patient is curable?’

  ‘Oh yes.’ She smiled at him, which was enough for the moment to distract his fading anxiety, although there was a hint of impatience in her. ‘You could deal with this yourself, probably. As long as the varnish isn’t cracked, easy.’

  ‘Thank you, I’d rather pay you.’

  ‘As you like. All I have to do is rub it all over carefully with light oil, then take that off, every last bit, and revar-nish. The time will be in the drying, as usual. Like that one,’ she added nonchalantly, nodding her head towards an easel which stood in the corner of her living room. He started towards it in pleasure. ‘Oh I do love this.’

  ‘Well, you can’t have it. I wish it was mine but it isn’t.’

  ‘Oh.’

  She was so abrupt, so complete, so short in her explanations, it took away his sang-froid. This was only a painting, he told himself: only an object, paid for with money, but such an object, in common with every painting he bought, invested with energy and part of himself, more powerful than a credit card.

  ‘Would you like some tea? A drink, perhaps?’

  He had sat back into the armchair in her living room, the only room to which anyone on similar errands was ever given access. Later, he extended the range, but never saw where she worked. The armchair groaned ominously as if in despair for the automatic way he looked at his watch and nodded, yes, tea, please, already thinking of his next appointment, not saying what he thought in failing to announce a distinct, and he thought, presumptuous, preference for alcohol. Elisabeth Young was so modest in her requests for payment, so businesslike even in her eccentricity, drinking her wine would be less than generous. A very private person, Elisabeth Young. Friendly and, come to think of it, beautiful but as closed as a country shop on Sundays. All her remarks were gruff.

  ‘I bet I know where you got this blooming thing. That place in Marylebone. I thought I’d seen it before and I’m glad you ignored the bloom. I hope you’re one of those people who’d buy a painting straight from a leper colony, if you liked it enough, and never mind the name. Oh dear, what a disease.’

  ‘Leprosy?’

  ‘No. Being led along by the eye.’

  In a few, very short words, he had been approved as a fellow enthusiast and felt absurdly flattered; he did not ask for a more specific endorsement, but looked down into the tea instead and noticed the rich rusty colour. Burnt sienna or raw umber, she would have said: no such thing as a simple colour. Only a girl from outside the south of England would make tea like this, so strong he imagined that if he let go of the spoon, the shaft would stand up by itself. She drank hers with the thirst of a workman.

  ‘What on earth do you do when you have to spend hours on a canvas you loathe?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t mind. As long as someone loves it. I just get on. I don’t judge. That’s not what I’m paid for.’

  Elisabeth had risen as she spoke, not as a gesture of dismissal, but because of the restless twitch of her limbs which always accompanied some kind of lie. The tea tasted of the past and for this man, at least, the most seductive in her own array of perfumes was linseed oil. She pulled down the long sleeves of her smock, smiled, her arms crossed.

  ‘I know where you can get more of this artist,’ she said casually, knowing the merest suggestion of the hunt would make him salivate with the old collector’s excitement which was tantamount to the pursuit of love. ‘He was a portrait painter, not well known, died about 1950 … I know someone who has some.’

  The looking and the seeing were enough for her, she had said; let him buy. He simply believed her, followed her directions to out-of-the-way places and purchased avidly what she could not afford. He did not see any oddity in this: they both had a fatal attraction to pictures which were flawed, as if the damage made them more irresistible; they had evolved a system of mutual benefit. She mended and restored what he had acquired, and after that he had the final ownership. Perfectly fine. Another servant, another master and for both of them, after a short probation, another lover.

  He had left abruptly, that first time. Back to his complete life. Look at me, she said to herself; will one of you, preferably you, just look at me. With my accent and my shovellike hands and my strong tea, will one of you look at me. I know I am bad-mannered: I know I am your servant, you the master class, but will you please look at me. She observed him into the street, permitted herself no more than that, imprinted on her mind the colour of his coat, his hair and his car, wiped her hands on the end of her smock and did not see him looking back.

  Look at me.

  Francis sat in his flat, comforted by all those glowing canvases on the wall. Thirty-five paintings he had now, ten found by Elisabeth. The numbers were important, gave solidity to his life. Look at me, Elisabeth. You never look at anything but paintings: you are mesmerized by colours. Look at me. I know you need nothing and no one, but look at me. She had run away at the station, but then she always ran from a crowd, her distaste for life as obvious as her hatred for mediocrity. He would go and see her, not tonight, tomorrow. But, for a likeable, popular young man, there was too much in her of the objective perfectionist, too much self-control, too little of the ebullient affection he craved with embarrassing hunger. He did not want an affair which was complicated and he felt he deserved rather more adoration, the kind he had always had from everyone else. That was his birthright.

  Elisabeth Young shifted her position and, in doing so, felt the beginning of a draught creeping down her back. The radiator was cold and the window, with a limited view over a scrubby front garden, fitted badly, one of the endless tasks jostling for the price of repair. She stretched her legs, which were long, curved and pale in the light from the street outside. The arms which reached from her sleeves were equally pale; she noticed the slenderness of her own wrist in an absent fashion, sipped her drink and then quickly replaced her hands over her head. The door bell was still ringing.

  It had rung, on and off, for a long time, more often on than off. Possibly Francis, with his recent persistency, possibly Annie, possibly another man, but probably Francis. It did not matter who it was: there was nothing on offer. She had an entryphone: she could have picked up the receiver and said, Why don’t you just go away? Don’t you know the time? But somehow she did not quite have the energy. Even at one remove, such an exchange had all the makings of a confrontation. He would say, Let me in; where have you been? and she would simply let him in, all flushed from the cold and as angry as a bite. She knew she would, which was why she was sitting under the kitchen table with her back against the radiator, her long legs stretched all over the floor, refusing evacuation but waiting for a bomb.

  It might not be Francis: it could be the man with the stick. Slumped on the cusp of drunkenness, she took a stock of her surroundings. This is my home and the floor is sticky. That cooker is a disgrace because I do not care for cookers. Why did I buy this table? Shaped like a half moon, unable to resist heat and always wanting a polish. It was pretty and cheap, for why, and I can never afford anything which is not the latter. Nothing changes: my empire is junk. This room, my kitchen, is always so dark.

  The door to her flat was carelessly ajar. The door shut did not increase safety, since it was not an immediate invas
ion from close neighbours in the building she feared: no one came down the stairs to her basement without invitation, except Enid; they would not dare since she had so emphatically shut them out. There were several other apartments, all mercifully private apart from the plumbing, otherwise sound-proofed by age, nothing in common but a series of stairs to each of three floors, lit by pressing the time switch on each landing and everyone dead again as soon as the light went out on their own closed doors. The bell rang once more, a sound as imperative as screaming. The cat from another of the dwellings, locked out from the garden and used to taking refuge here, suddenly appeared, tail waving, a mix of cupboard love and suspicion, ready for welcome.

  ‘Shhhh,’ Elisabeth said. ‘Shhhh. He might hear you.’ Who? Alarmed to find a voice at eye level, the cat raised its tail to ninety degrees. The whiskers tickled one of the large human feet, noted a discarded shoe on the floor and stiffened in indignation. You never really liked me, Elisabeth thought: nobody does and I don’t give a shit. What a cat you are. She wondered what the cat, a handsome animal named Brutus, would do in the absence of food or fuss normally provided on demand. The cat turned, tail resembling a flagpole, picked a route for the open door with rear end contemptuously exposed. Et tu, Brute. The door bell rang again. Elisabeth, still immobile beneath the kitchen table with the glass of indifferent white wine in hand, knew she was ludicrous. Began to laugh, a small sound which became uproarious. He might not be able to get a taxi home; he might be drunk and about to drive. He might be someone ringing the wrong door bell: he might be the footsteps incarnate. She laughed in desperation because the floor needed cleaning and she was afraid and because he would not leave, if it was a he, incapable of taking the hint. Unlike the cat. So helpless in a man to lean on a door bell in the otherwise silent state of being on heat, attracted to some sort of spoor.

  Elisabeth Young was opulent as well as tall; equipped with wide hips unfashionably at odds with a small waist and a generous bosom. She found it difficult to acquire clothes which fitted at any points on her whole, well-endowed anatomy, which curved before and swung behind in curious flexibility. It was a body which the life class of several art schools had loved to draw for those gracious but definite lines, but she saw herself as unbearably heavy instead of light, fluid as a dancer, if ample; unaware of the way she proceeded across the room in a series of exquisitely moving parts, only unenviable to the female eye for never resembling a boy, while to the male combining titillation and ferocity. She had a sharp tongue and a sharper intelligence, far-seeing eyes of troubled brown, which did not, for all their size, look as if they forgave much, especially intruders. Which was where the contrast lay. They forgave everything in the end. Her mouth was both full and severe: malice was rarely spoken although the ears had heard plenty of filth. She had no apparent vices except unremitting reserve, impatience, abruptness and intolerance, but responded as well to the cry of a cat or a baby in the street. In the event, sitting there in the half dark to avoid detection, she had no cats, no babies, no authority, no money, the doubtful benefit of thirty eventful years, considerable skills, dirt beneath her fingernails and madness in her heart. She could summon neither the indignation nor the majesty of the neighbour’s cat and she could never ever sustain an argument. She had never acquired the arts of confrontation. Sitting still, she knew she was a failure, which she did not mind, but she resented being bothered, disliked being poor and was made miserable by the lack of light.

  ‘Excuse me, and what do you think you’re doing, then?’

  There was one apartment on the ground floor between Elisabeth and the street door, two above that in a twilight zone of largely rented property. The bells of each apartment could not disturb anyone for whom the signal was not intended unless they happened to be paying close attention. Enid Daley, who had risen from her bed to wipe an irritating smear of something from her dressing-table mirror, a souvenir from the assassination of insects which had occupied most of her afternoon, gave close attention constantly. Although the sounds which invaded one flat from another were minimal, she could identify them all. Her head was in the grip of two dozen small clamps, constructions of wire and rubber around which strands of her thin salt-and-pepper hair were twisted into place, the whole kept firm by a red scarf. Tomorrow, curls would explode after vigorous brushing, a vision well worth the nightly torture to which years had inured her. Vanity would normally forbid Enid to parade in this state of preparation, but vanity was weaker than curiosity. ‘Excuse me!’ she muttered, repeating the lines to stoke the anger. ‘What exactly do you think you’re doing?’ She opened the door of her apartment with the silence of long practice and tiptoed down the passage to the front door. Progress was slowed by the high-heeled mules she wore, one of which always caught in the fringed rug in the hall. The rug was old, worn, gracefully faded by sunlight, and had been supplied by that girl downstairs to catch the mess she made when she came and went. Enid tripped on this rug every single time she made the identical journey, pursed her lips but did not swear. Everyone else liked this covering: she planned the accidental spilling of acid or the introduction of an incontinent horse into the hall and allowed the rug to drive malice into her soul. It was dirty. So was the girl who owned it.

  Enid flung open the front door without putting on the light, a deliberate movement to give herself the advantage of surprise over whoever it was standing there with his hand hovering over the array of bells. Listening indoors to the sound of him, she had imagined more than one scenario: she might yell at him, this last of Miss Young’s broken hearts, then invite him in for the comfort of her company. Equally, she could imagine her own shrill indignation making him cower and yelp like a kicked dog. Either episode would carry enormous satisfaction, but when the door was open there was no one in sight. On the other side of the road, a car’s headlights illuminated the car in front and as her eyes detected this, Enid felt a great wash of fury like a hot flush. Unable to contemplate the vision of any one of Elisabeth’s men without this kind of sensation, she crooked her finger towards the car, beckoning imperiously, but the occupant was reversing into a space, stared back with puzzled insolence. Not the man who had been chewing the door bell, then, another. Enid knew she had been fooled into looking the lunatic and the shame made her hotter. She had beckoned the wrong person to her light.

  Turning on her heel, she forgot the rug and stumbled. In the unlit hall her hand flailed for support on the walls, her mouth sealed over her teeth but still she fell, one knee hitting the skirting board with a sharp crack, the other thudding into the burning fabric of the wine-coloured rug. She broke the fall by her hand on the table which was for letters delivered daily, rarely for her, and she knew as she rose that all this, the falling, the rising, it being midnight, the misplaced curler which dug into her scalp, was Elisabeth’s fault. She had heard them, down in the lobby, another time, Elisabeth and a man, talking about her. Dislike and envy had percolated into a poisonous mixture. Elisabeth had all the options, including the right to intolerance: Enid had none.

  Inside her own kitchen, still trembling, she wrote a note she would never send.

  ‘Dear Liz’ – the handwriting sloped backwards, more so at this hour – ‘I hope you don’t mind, but someone called for you quite late!!! Do you think you could tell them to stop ringing the bell and then going away!!! Thought you would like to know. Love, Enid.’

  People were always calling for Elisabeth, who never knew her luck. Spoiled, she was. Enid never told lies, only ever told the truth, but truth was a large canvas from which she selected and discarded. Such as admissions about Liz downstairs being a nice girl who responded so well to a thoughtful neighbour. Such a lovely calm girl: generous, kind, considerate, even-tempered and popular with the opposite sex. Who made an apparently effortless living and did not have to get up in the morning. Listening to the faint sound of bath water running out in the drain below her window, Enid had never known quite such a degree of hatred in her life.

  Outside, the
man whose face Enid had seen none too clearly, walked back to his car, satisfied. He opened the door and put inside what he had carried. There was a sharp click of metal against metal, a glint of silver quickly hidden as he hauled himself clumsily inside, following his umbrella to sit at the wheel, tranquil. No hurry, Thomas, boy, no hurry, now. Almost one a.m., that dead hour of night, and a number of things more clearly established. He had known very well where she lived (a shabby house with a shabbier interior, he imagined), and he knew equally well her habit of not answering the door. Perhaps there was a cat who could see in the dark, and there was certainly a contemptible piranha of a neighbour who could not. Also a willingness, quite deplorable in a woman of her age, he thought, to travel alone and ignore whatever followed her: she would dismiss some fears as puerile fantasies while exaggerating the rest. He suspected, simply from the way in which she tended to walk, often hunched, that she found herself ugly. The habits of self-abnegation always made a person less aware of what others thought, rendered them vulnerable. Thomas knew all about that, he and his sister Maria, who, like himself, walked hunched even when she did not need to. But Elisabeth was so beautiful, so completely unaware of it, like the women in his portraits.

  Thomas’s encyclopaedia was almost complete, the trap almost ready to spring, although he did not begin to think of it as a trap, more as a privilege. He had compiled his references laboriously, from the first to the last; knew her skills, hard-honed if eccentric, impeccable. He knew it from the best of sources. A little more isolation first, a little more reminding of poverty’s impotence … a little more fear, and then she would come to him. Violence towards objects was detestable, but necessary. She was too wary to come willingly, but look at how she lived in the comparative darkness of a basement, hurting her eyes.