Bird Inside

by Wendy Perriam

  ‘Come on, Rose.’

  She started, tiptoed to the door, where Christopher was waiting; shut it carefully behind her.

  ‘Are you in a dream or something?’

  ‘No,’ she said, running to catch up with him, as he strode along the passage.

  ‘Look, you’d better have the day off, and catch up on your sleep. You don’t seem quite yourself. I’ll drive you back to the studio, then I’ll push off home. I haven’t had a chance to unpack my suitcase yet.’

  ‘Okay,’ she said disconsolately, dodging two male students who looked like terrorists in dark glasses and rough beards, and were hurtling up the stairs as she and Christopher walked down. ‘What about your model?’ she dared to ask, at last, once they’d reached the ground floor and were emerging through the main swing-doors.

  ‘I’m going to phone the dancer. It’s a bloody shame I missed her. Ben was expecting her today, but she had to cry off very suddenly, because a TV job came up. He says she’s usually reliable, and really quite a stunner – tall and slim and fair.‘

  Jane said nothing, trudged in silence to the car; relieved to climb inside, escape the bitter wind which was groping her tense body beneath the skimpy sweatshirt. She turned towards the window, to distract herself by looking out, watch the townscape change to winter fields, observe the clouds smudging the grey sky as they drove towards the studio. She looked at things quite differently since she’d been working for the artist, as if he had given her his eyes, deepened her perception, so that she was aware of depths and subtleties she had previously ignored; aware of shapes and textures, of how light affected colour, or heightened mood and atmosphere; aware of his strange power to infuse a common image with solemnity, significance. Even now, she could appreciate the impact of a bloated cloud breaking up the clean line of the hill; one tiny twisted hawthorn bush prickling the vastness of the sky. He had made the world more interesting, imbued quite humble objects with a richness and distinction.

  The car lumbered down the bumpy track which led on to the barn. The artist pulled up with a jolt, kept the engine running. ‘Jump out,’ he said, reaching for his cigarettes. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

  She clambered out, but didn’t close the door. ‘Could you come in for a second? I want to show you something.’

  ‘Well, make it snappy. I’ve a lot to do at home.’

  She dived ahead, unlocked the heavy door. The studio was chilly, but she didn’t stop to switch the heaters on – just removed her sweatshirt, tossed it on the floor behind her; couldn’t waste vital minutes folding clothes or putting them away. She kicked her shoes off, started tugging at her belt, had it half-unbuckled, when the artist’s head appeared round the door.

  ‘What in God’s name are you doing, Rose?’

  She didn’t answer, simply dragged her jeans down, and then her lacy pants. She shivered in his scrutiny, but refused to meet his eyes; just arranged the chair exactly as they’d had it in the life room, took up the same pose – left hand on her hip, right hand on the chair-back, palm upturned, fingers reaching out. She even made her face the same: eyes impassive, guarded; strange enigmatic smile. She didn’t have the flip-flops or the cheap blue plastic beads, but the fine gold chain she always wore would help relieve her nakedness.

  She could hardly feel the cold now. Her flesh was burning in his gaze, the blood flowing from her flaming cheeks like a scarlet muffler wrapped around her limbs. She had never been so nervously aware of the sheer solidity and impact of her body, which felt totally exposed, as if somebody had prised it from its shell. She longed to use her hands to hide her breasts, or turn the other way, so he couldn’t see her flaunt of pubic hair. Had he noticed it was darker than her head hair, and how untidily it curled, as if in need of a strict brushing? Or was he looking at her thighs, noting that deep scar where she’d fallen off her bike?

  ‘Rose, put your clothes back on.’

  She pretended not to hear, didn’t move a muscle, even held her breath; eyes fixed on a stretch of wall, smile unwavering.

  ‘Get dressed, I said. And hurry up. You told me quite specifically you didn’t want to model for me; implied I was a lecher for having even brought the subject up.’

  She’d implied no such thing at all, simply thought it privately. Uncanny the way he seemed to read her mind. She had deliberately said nothing, concealed her true reactions.

  ‘Anyway, I’ve found my model now. I was about to phone her, as soon as I got home.’

  Still she didn’t answer, tried to move her mind into another gear entirely, become a Muse, a goddess – young and fresh and beautiful – innocent, unspoiled. She must forget the individual details of her body, its scars or blemishes. Nobody was judging her. She was no longer Jane at all – no longer even Rose, but Woman, subject, model.

  ‘Besides the fact you’ll catch your death. It’s freezing cold in here.’

  She could feel herself not cold, but warm and live and growing, reaching twelve feet tall, until she could look down on a city, grace its art and culture.

  ‘Rose, are you deaf, for heaven’s sake?’

  Not deaf, but stiff already. Posing wasn’t easy. Her neck felt tense and cramped, and there was an annoying sort of itch in the middle of her back, which she had to stop herself from scratching. No – Muses didn’t itch. She must transcend such petty twinges, concentrate her energies on being what he wanted, prove herself superior to that hateful dancer with her yard of yellow hair. She wished she dared to look at him, judge what he was thinking. She knew he had his coat on still, muffled up in layers, while she was stripped down to the skin – or further than the skin, since it felt as if his gaze had pierced straight through her now, so that he was peering at her bones and blood.

  The silence was so total she could hear the judder of the fridge through the open kitchen door, hear the artist’s breathing, which sounded heavy, even angry; the nervous way he inhaled his cigarette. She realised they were locked in some fierce battle, and that he wasn’t used to losing. But why should she lose, either? He always got his own way. First, he’d wanted her to model, now he was rejecting her. Her eyes were smarting from the smoke, which increased her own annoyance. She was forced to breathe in that foul nicotine every hour of every working day; also breathe in his bad moods – his touchiness, impatience, his snappish gruff disdain. But what about her own moods? She was touchy, too; rebellious sometimes, sullen. They were alike in certain ways: both felt things far too deeply, bore grudges, cared too much.

  She heard him bang an ashtray down, tensed immediately; aware she’d lost her smile, changed her whole expression, which no good professional model would surely ever do. She must hold on to that smile, keep it mystic and ecstatic, like the woman in the life room; imagine she was standing not in a cold studio, with lowering clouds outside, but on shining Mount Parnassus. Her fingers ached, but she mustn’t shift or rest them. That uncomfortable right hand was deliberately reaching out to him, the only tiny part of her which could speak to him, implore him, beg him to give in.

  Suddenly, he moved himself, darted to the corner and switched both heaters on, then grabbed a piece of charcoal and his sketchbook.

  ‘Damn you, Rose!’ he muttered, as he flung his coat and scarf off, pulled up a stool a yard or two in front of her, and started swiftly drawing.

  Chapter Fourteen

  ‘The strawberries for Madame?’

  ‘No, thank you,’ Jane said shyly, so shyly that the artist didn’t hear.

  ‘Yes, please,’ he said. ‘For both of us.’

  The waiter inclined his balding head, glided to the kitchen. Jane felt nervous of him, disliked the snooty way he’d appraised them when he’d shown them to their table, as if calculating the difference in their ages, clearly disapproving.

  He was back in minutes, with two floral-patterned bowls. The strawberries looked unreal – strawberries from a still-life, arranged on glossy fig leaves. She daren’t imagine what they cost. Strawberries in December weren’t quite t
he same as the glut her parents picked themselves from their local farm, in June – plebeian squashy berries, not these hothouse aristocrats. She was surprised that Christopher had ordered them at all, when neither he nor she had done justice to their second course, and had left most of their first. Was he nervous, like herself, she wondered, too churned up to eat, or worrying about his weight, even when away?

  Away! She put her spoon down, her stomach churning once again, queasy from the crème Chantilly, brandy-flavoured, rich. She still felt it wasn’t happening to her, or only in a dream. Had they really set off in the car a mere four hours ago, driven up to Lincolnshire with a suitcase in the back, she wearing her green dress – the one she‘d planned to wear for Hadley’s play? She took a gulp of wine, kicked Hadley from the restaurant. No good fretting any more about his injured feelings. Christopher came first.

  ‘Good?’ he asked her, scraping cream off a large berry, then forking it fastidiously in half.

  ‘Yes, wonderful,’ she said, picking up her spoon again, but wishing she could take the strawberries back with her – take all the luscious food they hadn’t eaten – store it in the studio to be relished for a week or more, instead of mousetrap cheese and cold baked beans. She had never been to such a sumptuous restaurant in her life, hardly knew such haughty places existed. It looked more like a private house, with old clocks and antique furniture, a real live harpsichordist playing Handel and Scarlatti. When her parents took her out to eat, it was usually to a Berni Inn – steak and chips and musak; chirpy teenage waitresses with name-tags on their chests: Tina, Sandy, Val. Their waiter was just hovering, filling both their glasses. She imagined him with ‘Sandy’ on his chest, tried to hide a laugh. His face looked like the fish they’d eaten – disdainful and deep pink. What had it been called? The fish names were all new to her – monkfish and John Dory, and a whole shoal beginning with B: brill and bass and bouillabaisse; baked bream in Béarnaise sauce. The Berni Inn offered only breadcrumbed plaice. There’d been no breadcrumbs on their fish at all, but it had been swimming on a choppy sea of scallops, truffles, grapes, and served with something called a coulis, which tasted of liqueur. The vegetables came separately – not peas and greasy chips, but tiny tiny carrots, one centimetre long, still with their green frills on; corn cobs barely larger, as frail as baby’s fingers; alternating discs of courgette and aubergine, and everything arranged in an overlapping pattern, as if they’d hired an artist, as well as just a chef.

  ‘D’you know this piece?’ asked Christopher, pausing with his wine glass poised, as he listened to a flurry from the harpsichord.

  She shook her head, wished her answer wasn’t always ‘No’, when he asked her if she knew things.

  ‘It’s Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, and the chappie’s playing ‘‘Winter’’ now, which seems appropriate.’

  Instinctively, their eyes turned to the window, where a sleety snow was harassing the panes, not totally concealed by heavy velvet curtains in a sunburnt shade of brown. Inside, all was warmth – a log fire spitting in the grate, a pink blush from the lamps, steam curling from the silver soup tureen. Even the other diners appeared to give off heat – their blaze of conversation, the colours of their clothes, the afterglow of wine flaring in their cheeks and claret breath. The smells were warm and comforting: hot bread and sizzling butter, flamed brandy, rich game soup.

  ‘I hope we’re not snowed up,’ the artist laughed.

  She forced a smile. More complications, if they were; more lies to Isobel. She could hardly believe that one weekend away could entail so many lies. He must have lied himself, to Anne, except he already had a pretty good excuse. Officially, he’d been summoned to inspect a glass-appliqué window, which he’d made almost twenty years ago for a small modern church in Lincolnshire, and which was beginning to deteriorate – pieces of the coloured glass working loose, or even falling off. The vicar and the architect were hoping he’d remake it, or at least restore and save it, and had arranged to meet him in the church at ten o’ clock next morning. She had heard about the problem a good two weeks ago, when Christopher had shrugged it off, said he simply hadn’t time at present to go haring up to the back of beyond for the sake of one small window in a pretty soulless church. But things had changed since then.

  ‘I’ve never known snow quite so early.’ The artist gave a theatrical shiver, as if the flakes were actually falling on his head. ‘Especially after such a mild November. I mean, just last week, we were exclaiming at the sun.’

  Jane smoothed the damask napkin on her lap, wondered why they were talking about the weather. It was the sort of conversation her parents’ friends might have. ‘Chilly for this time of year …’ ‘The mildest autumn since …’ Christopher seemed tense, his fingers clenched too tight around his glass. Was he genuinely concerned about the weather, or needled by the glances they had received since they’d come in, not just from their waiter, but from several other couples who were doubtless speculating. Father and daughter? Dirty old man with his bimbo? The couple right next door to them were both white-haired, stern-eyed, and were eating their poached turbot in almost total silence, their chief preoccupation watching Christopher’s bold hand edge across the table to her own. She cursed the fact she looked so young, though she had made a special effort for this evening; larded on more make-up, coiled her hair on top, tried to add a decade.

  ‘Coffee?’ asked the waiter, who seemed to be taking a cruel pleasure in prowling within earshot, so inhibiting them both.

  ‘No thanks. It stops me sleeping.’ She flushed right to her ears; had said it without thinking. They had hardly come away to sleep. Or had they? Even now, she wasn’t sure if he’d booked them separate rooms, or whether the purpose of the trip was genuinely to view the ailing window, or more to jettison her original plan of going down to Southampton. She tried to turf out Hadley once again, but already his resentful voice was cutting through the babble of the restaurant.

  ‘But you said you’d come – you promised, Rose. And I’ve already arranged a bed for you in Alexandra’s flat. And invited half a dozen friends for lunch on Saturday, so we could have a second party in your honour. And I’ve even …’

  ‘A brandy for M’sieur? Madame?’

  ‘No, thanks. Just the bill.’ She watched Christopher pass his credit card across, heard him tell the waiter to add twenty per cent for service. He must have spent a fortune on the meal. Would he expect it to be paid back – and in half an hour, or less? They were only a dozen miles now from the Swan, an unpretentious country inn, owned by an old friend of his, which she presumed he’d chosen to avoid more curious stares, at least from the proprietor.

  Snow slammed into their faces as they walked the few dark yards towards the car. He kissed her once they’d got inside, as if released at last from all the prohibitions he had felt throughout the meal. She was pressed against his coat, tensing in surprise as snowflakes melted from his hair, trickled down her neck. His lips were warm against her cold ones, smoky-flavoured, fierce. She was half-relieved when he let her go, switched on the ignition. If only they could drive and drive through deep black shadowland, never quite arrive; hurtle through the night with the dots of whirling blurring snow spinning in the darkness, making everything unreal. The road stretched on and on – no buildings, landmarks, houses, trees; just the hypnotic frantic dance of white on black.

  She must have closed her eyes a moment, because suddenly they’d stopped, and the normal world was back – a solid red-brick inn, standing on a river, the brass carriage-lamps outside mirrored in a stretch of shimmering water; darkly clotted ivy shadowing the coloured squares of bright-lit curtained windows.

  ‘That’s it,’ Christopher announced, nosing through the car park to a sheltered private courtyard at the back. ‘You stay put a moment, and I’ll go and tell Jonathan we’re here.’

  She slumped back, disappointed, wanted to sweep in on his arm, not be left behind like a parcel on the seat, while he checked the coast was clear. But she understood
he had to be discreet. He was married, and well-known; couldn’t risk being recognised by some art aficionado, or mischief-making gossip – which was probably why he’d chosen the wilds of Lincolnshire. She stroked her naked wedding finger. Perhaps she should have brought a ring to wear in the hotel, or would they hide away – take their meals upstairs, or sneak out to other restaurants? ‘Strawberries for Madame?’ ‘Coffee for Madame?’ Had she just imagined it, or had that waiter been deliberately provocative, increasing her shy awkwardness by stressing the ‘Madame‘? She peered down at her watch. It was too dark to see the time, though it felt as if the artist had been gone for hours and hours. Was he having a private pow-wow with his friend, catching up on months of news, or indulging in a secret little snigger about his teenage conquest? How often did he come here, she wondered suddenly? He seemed to know his way around, had dived straight in the back way, through a door marked ‘STRICTLY PRIVATE’. Had there been other girls before her, young and fresh and beautiful – innocent, unspoiled?

  She could taste fish again, nudging in her throat – fish and cream and brandy, all mixed up. Now she almost longed for mousetrap cheese, two slices on cream crackers, in the small safe tidy kitchen in the studio – no one there but her; nothing to do afterwards but watch the Friday play. Snow was fretting at the windows, dribbling down in dirty lazy rivulets. She could hardly see at all, felt imprisoned in some limbo; abandoned far from home. She was tempted to jump out and run away, pelt south again to Hadley; turn up soaking and dishevelled for the last act of the play. Or strike north and make for Shrepton; join her parents for Ovaltine and shortbread before they went to bed. Lincolnshire was more than halfway there. She could even hitch a lift, flag down some kindly lorry-driver, who’d …