by Andy Conway
“What models do you use?”
“They’re from my imagination.”
“You never paint from your imagination. Always from life. Who are they?”
“I promise you. They are not real women.”
She writhed free from him and batted away his hands, punching him in the chest.
“Are they prostitutes, Daniel? Like your French painters use?”
“I swear, Arabella, no.”
She wrenched the white sheet from the easel again and stared at the painting with fresh horror.
“Oh my God,” she said. “That’s me.”
He looked at the painting with surprise, as if it might have changed since a moment ago. And then he saw it clearly, as if he’d been blind before. It was quite clearly Arabella — but Arabella in a way he’d never seen: shamelessly naked, lying across a bed, one foot curled under her, the other hanging off the side of the bed, her arms behind her head. Through the swirl of brush strokes, even with the form so indistinct, it was clearly her.
He’d painted his wife to be as a common whore.
“It’s not you, Arabella. I have committed no intention to paint you.” He grasped her hand. “And you say that’s you in that painting. Did I paint you? Like that? Ever?”
She shook her head. “Of course not. How dare you!”
“Then you must know it’s from my imagination. That they all are. That there were no models.”
She softened, thinking it over, biting her lip.
“Did I ever paint you, Arabella?”
“Well, no, but—”
“Then there you have it. None of them are painted from life.”
She pulled her hand from his fist and he noticed he’d left a red welt on her wrist, he’d gripped her so fiercely.
“Then why do you look so ashamed?” she said.
“Because they are my dreams! My imaginings! My nightmares! I hate them. I hate that I see them!”
She stepped back, surprised at his sudden vehemence, her shock turning to pity. She shook her head, tears springing to her eyes, then she turned and ran.
He didn’t chase her, only stood frozen, listening to her sobs fade as she ran through the house.
The painting mocked him, and his red stained hands. He wailed and punched at the canvas and sent it flying across the room, a crooked smear swiping right across the canvas and seeming to cut the nude’s torso in two.
He stared appalled at the sight of it, and then hated himself for the brief flicker of a thought that liked the effect.
11
WHEN HE TRUDGED INTO the house, he found Tom looking embarrassed, sitting in the front parlour. Arthur was upstairs, having a wash in the basin. He wondered for a moment why Tom had opened the door to Arabella and pointed her through to the summer house. If only he’d made her stay here in the parlour, the catastrophe might have been averted.
“Daniel, I hope my being here didn’t cause—”
“It’s all right, Tom. It’s me she’s angry with. There were paintings in my studio that...” He tried to find the words. Made her think her future husband was a monster? “That caused her to feel shock.”
“Ah. Nudes?”
Daniel nodded.
Tom placed the pamphlet he was reading on the side table. It wasn’t one of Tom’s own chapbooks but a pamphlet Daniel had bought. The Scientific Romances series by Charles Hinton. It was a series Daniel had collected avidly, with the strange impression of déjà vu, that he’d read them before. He’d even had a disturbing vision, as he read them, of gazing at a square of light, glowing in his hand — some strange invention — through which he was reading Hinton’s words.
Tom nodded towards the pamphlet — What is the Fourth Dimension? — and searched Daniel’s eyes for recognition.
“Interesting literature.”
Daniel nodded. “Possibly apt, for a man with no past.”
Tom Conway pursed his lips and leaned forward a fraction, as if he might be on the verge of revealing some secret. But the sound of Arthur tramping down the stairs silenced him. The doctor bustled through the door.
“Good morning, chaps. You do look the worse for wear, I have to say. But you, Tom, look all the better for taking the wiser course.”
Daniel forced a smile and so did Tom. Arthur clearly took the sullen mood that hung in the air like cigar smoke for a mere hangover.
Daniel patted his pockets, affecting sudden haste. “Gentlemen, I’m afraid I do have to run out now. A day at work. But please, stay here and make yourselves at home.” He pulled a key from his pocket and handed it to Arthur. “I hope to meet with you both later?”
“For lunch, in Birmingham?” Arthur suggested.
“Excellent. I’ll see you outside Christ Church at noon.”
Tom saluted and winked.
“I have bread and cheese in the larder,” Daniel added. “Please help yourself. I fear I am a terrible host, but I almost always dine out.”
Arthur laughed, “Your future wife will see to that particular problem, have no fear!”
Daniel didn’t smile. Neither did Tom.
“Well, I must rush. I hope you are content to provide your own distraction for the day.”
“Think nothing of it,” said Arthur. “I rather fancy a day looking around the old place and seeing what changes have been made.”
Daniel snatched his derby and walked out, blinking in the morning sun, and thinking of Arabella walking the same way, crying every step.
All the way to Birmingham on the horse-drawn tram his head hurt and he thought he might be sick at any moment. It wasn’t merely the drink. It was the awful thought that his marriage was sundered. Arabella, the pretty girl who might save him, had seen inside him and had recoiled in horror at the monster he was.
He took his red handkerchief from his breast pocket several times and held it to his mouth, expecting to vomit, but he made it all the way to the steps of the College of Art without doing so.
He scratched his face. Unshaven. Would they notice? No wash too. Could he sneak to a public baths some time during the morning? No, he would see it through. If he was lucky, the Head wouldn’t even see him.
As he strode into his class room, the boys all ceased their whispering. Sidney had a sly grin and he could see that news of Louisa’s kiss had been duly disseminated. His eyes scanned the room but Louisa was absent.
Before he could begin the lesson, the Head appeared at the door.
“Mr Pearce. A word, if I may.”
He turned on his heels. Daniel followed and heard Sidney whispering to the others even as he walked down the corridor, his shoes clattering on the parquet.
The Head’s study was too warm and the smell of leather and mahogany was overwhelming. He felt his throat tighten. He had never been called to the Head’s study before. He knew it was serious.
The Head took a seat but did not indicate that Daniel should, so he stayed standing and clasped his hands behind his back, like a prisoner, handcuffed.
“Yesterday we had words about a certain Miss Gill,” he said.
“Yes, sir, about that,” Daniel stammered. “I feel I might have been a little too enthusiastic regarding—”
“I would agree. In fact, your enthusiasm for the girl is what I wish to discuss.”
“Sir, I do think—”
“It has come to my attention that a very serious and quite scandalous breach in decorum has taken place, between you and Miss Gill.”
So Sidney had told the Head.
“I would refute that entirely, sir.”
“Refute what, exactly?”
“That anything untoward happened.”
“And yet I haven’t said what it is. But you seem to know anyway.”
“She did kiss me, sir, on the cheek, but I had no idea she was going to do it and I was as shocked as you are.”
“I very much doubt it, Mr Pearce.” The Head’s voice had narrowed to a mean slither of cold steel. “So you fully admit that you were seen kissing
a student in broad daylight—”
“I did not kiss her, sir!”
“And you think this is appropriate behaviour for a teacher of this college?”
“No, sir, I do not think it appropriate.”
“We are agreed at last.”
“Sir, as I said, it took me by surprise and I was deeply shocked. It shall not happen again.”
“No it shall not. I intend to pursue the matter with Miss Gill, and with her father, and while that consultation takes place, you are suspended from all activity in this college.”
He stepped back, as if shot, and momentarily unaware that he had been so.
“But sir—”
“Please leave and do not return until further notice.”
The Head opened a folder on his desk and dipped his fountain pen in the inkwell and proceeded to scratch a thread of blue filigree across a pristine page.
Daniel wanted to shout out his innocence but the dead weight of hopelessness pulled at him, like a mermaid’s cold hands dragging him down into the depths. He turned and drifted back to his class room and ignored the surprised stares of his students, simply took his hat and walked out.
He staggered out into the sun that mocked him, reeling, his head swimming, and he barely took a breath until he was skirting the wall of Christ Church as it curved around and he came to the open gates that faced the Town Hall. He stopped and grabbed hold of an iron railing, enjoying the coolness on his wrist, trying to raise his eyes, seeing the flight of steps leading up to the church doors.
The great stone pillars leading up to the Doric portico, and the spire piercing the sky, not a spire at all but a disguised obelisk. A pagan symbol crowning a Christian church.
It mocked him and everything he had considered good in his life; every beautiful thing he had hoped to build for himself. He rammed the red handkerchief to his mouth, retching bile. In the space of not more than an hour, he’d lost his wife and his career.
12
HE THOUGHT OF STAYING there, to wait for Arthur at noon, but after pulling his pocket watch from his waistcoat he saw that it was only 9.35.
A despairing cry, little more than a whimper, escaped unbidden from his mouth and a man puffing on a cheroot under his trilby glanced askance as he passed, turning into New Street. A blonde woman with a red bonnet, her skirts flowing around her ankles, walking up from New Street gave him a wide berth.
He must look like a crazy person, he thought. This was not a town where people might stop to ask after your health. The busy industrial machine rattled on no matter who might be caught in the blades.
Home, he thought. Escape from this hell to the peace of Moseley. He rushed across town to High Street and caught the next horse-drawn tram out of Birmingham, stepping off at Moseley village wiping his forehead with his red handkerchief.
By the time he was walking down the mews, greeted by the sweet scent of honeysuckle, he was breathing normally again.
He turned his key in the latch and opened the door, expecting silence and sanctuary but immediately stilled by the sound of voices in the parlour. Were Arthur and Tom still here? No, a woman’s voice.
He tramped down the narrow hall, deliberately making his footsteps loud and clunky. The voices fell silent as he opened the door.
Tom rose to greet him, panic in his eyes. Caught out. Embarrassed. A woman and a man stayed seated.
“Daniel, I didn’t expect you back,” Tom stammered.
There was panic in his voice and shame that masked anger. Daniel’s eyes fell on the woman, who viewed the double concerto of embarrassment between them with a silent grin.
She was short, he could tell, even though she was seated. Dark auburn hair fell from below her bonnet, and her clear hazel eyes viewed him with a glint of mockery.
It was the piece of red gauze silk around her neck that caught his attention and made him think of his own red handkerchief. Everything else she wore seemed to be black: the straw bonnet trimmed in green and black velvet with black beads, the cloth jacket trimmed around the collar and cuffs with imitation fur.
The pair of men’s lace-up boots with mohair laces were what gave away her social standing. They were old and worn and the right boot repaired with red thread.
Daniel wasn’t sure why he paid her such close attention. There was something about her that drew his eye, as if the stain of infamy were upon her.
He knew, before Tom announced it, that this was his friend’s estranged wife.
“I had no intention to be here. I was leaving, but then...’ Tom indicated the visitors with a despairing wave of his arm. “This is Catherine. Catherine Eddowes.”
“Kate Conway, if you please. I’m his wife.”
The Midlands accent, just like Tom’s.
“You’re no wife of mine,” Tom snapped. “And you bear no name of mine.”
“Neither do you, Mr Thomas Quinn,” she said, grinning. “Pleased to meet you, Mister Pearce. Such a pleasant place you live. Moseley is so much more peaceful than Whitechapel.”
Tom took Daniel’s arm and pushed him towards the door. As they left, Daniel took in the other visitor, a man who looked vaguely familiar. Fair haired, with a moustache, well-dressed. Strange eyes.
Tom led Daniel into the back room, wheedling, “I’m so sorry, Daniel. Please forgive me. I had no idea she would turn up here. I left your address with my daughter. I don’t know why she gave it to her. She knows I’ve been avoiding her.”
Daniel’s head was swimming. He was still in shock from the events of the morning. He didn’t want to think about this. He wanted them all gone.
“I’ll get rid of her,” said Tom. “Please, just give me a minute alone with her. Will you, my friend?”
“Who’s the man with her?”
“I have no idea. She says she met him as she got off the train at Snow Hill.”
“He’s a stranger?”
“This is the sort of thing she does. Perhaps she wants to make me jealous. Just a minute alone with her and they’ll both be gone. Please?”
Daniel found himself nodding. He walked off through the kitchen, out into the garden and pushed into the summer house.
The painting, still on the floor, the smear running right through the nude’s body. Now that he was here, with nothing, he could not hide from the enigma that he’d tried to forget for fourteen years. What was this inside him? What was the mystery of Daniel Pearce? Who was he? Where had he come from?
He slumped on the sofa and cupped his face in his hands.
After a minute or so, the door pushed open and Daniel looked up with surprise. The other man stood in the doorway staring.
“Hello, old man,” he said.
Tom must have sent him out. He’d wanted to talk to his wife alone. This was what he’d meant.
Daniel sighed and indicated the wooden chair that sat against the wall of the summer house. The man shuffled in and took it, sitting with his legs apart, an incongruous deerstalker hat on his head.
“Bury,” the man said.
“I’m sorry?” said Daniel.
“William Bury.”
Daniel nodded. “Daniel Pearce.”
A name that meant nothing. It was the name of a person he didn’t even know himself.
He recognized the man now. The hawker of pencils on Colmore Row. Catherine had emerged from Snow Hill station and met the man and brought him here.
Bury stared at the floor, his eyed bulging. Daniel followed his gaze. The painting he’d thrown to the floor. The other paintings in a jumbled stack. Obscene coiled naked limbs that had destroyed his marriage.
Bury rose and peered closer.
“You paint,” he said.
Daniel wanted to stab himself. He let out a long sigh and nodded.
Bury’s attention was caught by the stack of sketches splayed across the table: Daniel’s idle doodlings, dream sketches, visions. Scribbled fantasies drawn from his darkest thoughts, not from life. Images of death and destiny. He turned his back to Daniel an
d scrabbled about on the dresser.
“Don’t touch those.”
Bury’s dirty fingers held up a sketch of a red-haired avenging angel swooping from a black sky.
“You paint the future,” said Bury.
And this struck Daniel as an astonishingly perceptive comment. Yes, perhaps that was what it was. Perhaps his visions were about the future rather than the past.
Bury held up another, showing a great wind that laid waste a city. A biblical cataclysm.
“He causes the vapours to ascend from the ends of the earth,” said Bury. “Who maketh lightnings for the rain, Who bringeth forth the wind from His treasuries.”
The sketches he’d made for the idea of a Symbolist painting that haunted his mind: an angel who was some sort of Wind God, unleashing a tornado on a village. He had never progressed to painting it, never sure what it was, what it might be symbolic of.
“For they sow the wind,” said Bury. “And they reap the whirlwind.”
Daniel pulled out his red silk handkerchief and mopped his brow. He felt hot, too hot, faint with sickness.
Bury turned from the sketches and stared with those bugged out eyes, as if the red handkerchief bore just as much symbolism as the drawings. Then he turned to the dresser again and scrambled about some more, opening one of the drawers.
Daniel stood suddenly and said, “Come. Out you go.”
Bury closed the drawer, shrugged and filed out meekly, walking ahead of him up the garden and through the kitchen and the back room and into the narrow hallway.
He pointed at the door and Bury walked out to stand in the sunlight outside. Daniel opened the door to the parlour. Tom sitting with arms folded, red-faced, holding in his anger.
“Out,” said Daniel. “Get out.”
Catherine Eddowes’ grin fell from her face, replaced by the immediate flush of anger. “Here, you can’t talk to me like that!”
Daniel took her arm and yanked her up and was pushing her down the hallway before she could respond.
“Get out of my bloody house!” he yelled, murderous rage boiling in him.
He flung her out of the open door and slammed it behind her. She yelled some obscenities, but her voice had faded up the mews by the time he returned to the parlour.