PAINTED

by Kirsten McKenzie

  Yvonne rolled her eyes and took a mighty bite out of her bagel, mumbling through the doughy mouthful as Anita appeared in the doorway.

  The standard morning pleasantries done, Callaghan poured Anita a coffee and ladled a serving of the still warm eggs and tomatoes onto her plate. She sat next to Yvonne and sipped her coffee.

  Callaghan lifted the ruined portrait off the other chair and onto the kitchen bench to make room for himself, just as Anita cut into a tomato and forked it into her mouth. The sight of the man in the portrait and the acidic flesh on her tongue nudged a memory to the surface so vivid, so recent, she started choking on the tomato.

  Anita tried to cough and tried again, the tomato wedged in her throat. She clawed at her throat and made frantic gestures towards the others.

  Yvonne leapt into action and a hearty slap on Anita’s back dislodged the fruit and Anita spat the masticated pulp onto her plate. Eyes watering, the taste of tomato replaced by bile and a previously buried memory of her attacker.

  He’d eaten a tomato like an apple, after her rape. His first bite of the fruit had left a trail of watery red juice running down his chin as he’d stood there in the kitchen doorway. Oil stained hands holding the half-eaten tomato. Such an innocuous fruit. At the time she thought her insides had turned to pulp there was so much blood, yet he’d watched her bleed out while he calmly ate a tomato. A tomato from her kitchen, from her grandfather’s glasshouse. Rich red skin, tart juice, larger than the insipid tomatoes at the store, more flavoursome. He’d stood in the doorway eating the whole thing, even the centre, and when he finished he’d wiped his juice-stained hands on his jeans before smiling and tipping an imaginary hat towards her. How could she have forgotten that?

  “You’re meant to chew it,” Yvonne said, returning to her chair. She’d moved on from the cigar cutter and was stacking a set of sterling silver coffee spoons she’d rescued from the cutlery drawer, while tearing into another roll with her other hand.

  The foul taste of tomato in her mouth, Anita took a gulp of the coffee Callaghan served her. Her stomach roiled at the bitter brew but not as much as it had with the tomato. She tried to recall if she’d eaten a tomato since the rape, she must have, so why the issue now? She couldn’t even recall telling the police about him eating a tomato. Would that have made a difference? She doubted it.

  “I think I’ll carry on with my work. I’ll be in the dining room if you need me,” Anita said, pushing back her chair. The others didn’t bother answering. Yvonne, absorbed with her spoons, had pulled out the entire drawer, and Callaghan had moved to the back door, staring out the window, coffee mug held between both hands, warming them. What he was looking at, or thinking, was unreadable.

  The portrait on the kitchen bench, the portrait of Alan - his eyes smeared permanently shut, screamed blindly at Anita as she left the kitchen.

  Back in the dining room Anita struggled to concentrate. She peered out the windows, checking their locks and then went through to the drawing room, where she double checked those doors and windows. Shut. Locked. Outside a cliche of beauty; snow-covered branches and brittle blue skies, a picture of innocence. She leaned against the glass, there was no sign of a dog or Alan. The kerfuffle the night before obliterated by the winds which had dropped to a whimper. Snowdrops bobbed their slender necks in the ghostly breeze which remained.

  The silence was shattered by a plume of black which rose scowling and squawking from behind the trees. From the crypt, an unkindness of ravens filled the sky with feathery black wings, their cries both haunting and disturbing. They wheeled in tight formation and disappeared from sight, their cries becoming fainter until their sound faded. Had the dog disturbed their slumber? The dog or something else?

  The portrait of Alan worried her, it needled her as she sat at her computer rubbing her fingers. It was only now she realised the pins and needles had abated despite being her constant companion the day before and yet she hadn’t noticed their absence until now. She put the pains down to too much typing. One more day and she’d have finished. One more day of typing and photographing, then the packers would arrive and she’d help them load up the art, label each crate and wave them off.

  She couldn’t imagine this house empty. The rooms would be too big, the echoes too old. The act of removing the portraits from the walls as if she was stripping the house of its identity. That somehow she was removing decades of memories and destroying the house’s narrative. She knew it was unavoidable but to what end? To line the pockets of the lawyer? To enrich the obese auction house? She was complicit in the rape of the house; she was part of the machinery stripping it bare and she didn’t like how that made her feel.

  A shadow flew across the pale sun, the ravens returning to their roost. So many that their outstretched wings blocked the sunlight. For a moment the light in the drawing room dimmed, the colours turning to every shade of ash, and then the birds passed. Dropping out of sight, their cries cut off, as if they’d found something else to focus their beaks on.

  Chapter 31

  Callaghan prowled the house. Scott hadn’t shown his face and it was out of character for him to dwell on embarrassment. In the past he’d even laughed off the fallout from his drunken debauchery at a work Christmas party. Photographs of his exploits were posted anonymously on the intranet, leading to a complete overhaul of the IT security system. Scott only just kept his job, but still joked about it. His co-conspirator lost her job and husband — another manager who hadn’t thought much of Scott taking up with his wife in such a public forum.

  There was no sign of him in the upstairs bathroom. His bedroom was empty. Only Anita was in the drawing room. Callaghan poked his head in and watched her fidgeting at the window, checking the locks and trying the door handle. Leaving her to it, he wandered the panelled hallways.

  Callaghan noted the luxurious foliage of the indoor plants. He’d noticed but hadn’t given them any thought until he came across the mess of the plant stand knocked over by Alan. The razor-sharp shards of broken pottery now brushed against the wide skirting boards but dirt and the desiccated roots of the fern still littered the floor. The wooden stand leaned drunkenly against the wall, one leg twisted at an angle, its shaft split lengthways. Only good for the fire now. Walking past the mess Callaghan tried the next door. It opened onto a nursery decorated with teddy bears and prancing horses galloping around the walls.

  White curtains adorned the windows, tied back with velvet cords threaded through creamy pearlescent shells. Old ash still lay in the hearth and in the corner a brave spider spun a lazy web, nothing intricate, mere lines - a way of getting from A to B, no convoluted patterns. An unfortunate moth was caught by its wing and fluttered against the iron-like thread the spider had spun.

  Callaghan walked around the room, hands in his pockets, not wanting to disturb the layer of dust which clung to the furniture and toys. How this one room had escaped the ministrations of the cleaner was a mystery.

  A set of half built Meccano lay scattered across the floor, the green and red strips as distinctive today as they had been when they were new. Someone had been building a complicated bridge, a replica perhaps of Tower Bridge or the Brooklyn Bridge. In its half finished state it was impossible to tell. His eyes travelled to the desk, a large adult sized desk with four chairs around it, two of which sported badly moth-eaten bulbous cushions, probably caused by long dead ancestors of the moth still struggling in the clutches of the web. Callaghan watched the slow onslaught of the spider as it appeared from nowhere and minced its way towards its prey. He shuddered. It was just a moth but the death of any creature at the hands of another was disturbing.

  Callaghan returned his attention to the desk. The papers strewn across the top were covered in childish script and the joins and curvature of the cursive letters became messier the further he read. Someone who’d become bored with their classwork? Curious, he turned the pages, rousing decades of dust. He sneezed and the sheaf of papers flew off the desk and onto the floor.
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  “Damn it,” he muttered. Scrambling around to gather the paper he couldn’t help but notice the different handwriting on the rest of the pages, which struck him as off. The handwriting, and the repetition of one word. Sorry. Written over and over, the words becoming larger on each subsequent line, until at the bottom of every page was the sentence ‘I’m sorry Daddy. I’m sorry.’

  The door to the nursery swung shut. Callaghan shot up, banging his head on the underside of the desk. Grimacing, he dumped the papers into the overflowing waste basket, causing the whole thing to tip. Callaghan swore. Childish watercolours spilled from the bin and page after page of blonde children stared up at him. Half finished, missing limbs, smeared with dissatisfaction, they showed promise but not yet mastery. The artist had attempted to capture different emotions but their talent lay more with misery than with joy. There were no complete faces showing happiness and the few portraits where the artist had almost captured a smile were slashed though with broad pencil strokes.

  The door slamming did not concern him, the draughts running through this house were enough to ventilate the most noxious of environments. He focused on his work and shoved the watercolours into the bin and righted it. He rubbed his head and took one last look around the room before opening the door. It didn’t open. He twisted the handle. The mechanism moved but the door remained shut. Callaghan kicked it with his boot, pulling firmly on the handle, and it swung free. Old houses and cold weather. Every time.

  Further along the corridor there was no sign anyone had been in these rooms other than a cleaning service. The remaining rooms were as devoid of dust and opportunistic spiders as they were of Scott. The daylight delivered an appreciation of how nothing of value was left in this part of the house. All that remained were redundant pieces of furniture, more portraits and empty hearths. It wouldn’t take him long to finish this end of the house after he’d located Scott.

  He strode back to the foyer and noticed that the stacks of portraits had increased. Anita had been excessively productive over the last few minutes. He checked his watch. It hadn’t been a few minutes, it had been two hours. He tapped at his watch; the second hand swooped unheeded in a continuous march. The minutes ticked by and Callaghan stood transfixed. It wasn’t until he heard Yvonne call to him as she walked down the stairs that he snapped out of his reverie.

  “Find him?” she said.

  “Not down here. Was he upstairs?” he asked.

  Yvonne shook her head, fully focused on the piece of art she held in her hands. “Look at this,” she said, waving the frame towards Callaghan and hollering for Anita.

  Anita emerged from the dining room. Callaghan took in her bleary-eyed appearance, how after only two days she appeared haggard, as if she hadn’t slept for a week. Last night’s mascara sagged around her cheeks and her hair had passed the electrification stage, edging towards the unkept homeless style more commonly seen on the streets of the city.

  Callaghan reached out to pat Anita on the shoulder, “Are you okay?”

  Anita shrank back, her eyes widening.

  “I was just asking if you were okay.” He withdrew his hand, shoving it into his pocket, casting around for the jade head he’d found himself caressing during the day. The smooth planes of the dog’s broken head soothing. Stepping back, he checked his watch again. Time had settled into its expected pattern, sixty-seconds to a minute, sixty minutes to an hour, twenty-four hours in a day. There was no explanation for the time he’d lost in the playroom, none at all.

  Yvonne was oblivious to the carryings-on of the others and thrust the frame into Callaghan’s hands and waited.

  Chapter 32

  “Well?” Yvonne asked Callaghan.

  There wasn’t much he could say, he was at a complete loss about what she was expecting from him.

  “Look at the picture, see what she’s wearing. We have to find it,” Yvonne said, gesturing at the portrait, frothing with excitement, eyes gleaming as she hopped like a marionette from one foot to the other.

  She watched him examine the small portrait, its gilt frame gleaming under the foyer’s electric lights. The cleaner had been overzealous here. Not a speck of dust marred the hand-applied gold leaf flecked gilt frame which surrounded a blonde-haired woman, perched on the edge of a day bed. Her formal outfit in stark contrast to her surrounds. A hound at her feet and a book by her side, yet she was in an evening gown, hair swept up, a touch of red on her lips and rouge on her cheeks. Pinned to her chest was a magnificent star-shaped brooch. The artist had captured the rainbow refractions shining through the gems with such clarity, it could have been a photograph.

  “They’re diamonds, that’s a diamond brooch. Look at the size of them!” Yvonne gushed, grabbing the frame from Callaghan before he’d commented. She thrust it at Anita, who stumbled at the suddenness of the movement. “Anita, look at it.”

  “Where’d you find this?” Anita asked.

  “What does it matter? It’s the brooch I want. It’s marvellous. The colour, the lustre, imagine if it’s still here. Have you found any jewellery boxes yet? Or a safe? Was there one in the study?”

  Anita shook her head.

  “Damn,” Yvonne said, ripping the painting from Anita, oblivious to the glance between Anita and Callaghan. Yvonne stalked around the foyer peering through doorways, nudging Anita’s stacked frames with her feet.

  “Hey,” Anita shouted, before shutting her mouth.

  Yvonne turned and frowned, “What?”

  “The frames…” Anita replied, straightening a stack Yvonne moved.

  “I was looking for other pictures with the same brooch in them, calm down.”

  Anita looked back towards Callaghan, who was standing with his head cocked to one side, looking up the curved staircase, hands in his pockets. She turned back to Yvonne, who was stroking the brooch in the painting.

  “You can’t touch the painting Yvonne,” Anita said, her training overriding her normal deference. “The oils from your skin could damage it. Come on, bring it into the dining room, the light’s better there.”

  Yvonne broke from her trancelike state and nodded. Shaking the confusion from her head, she followed Anita and laid the frame on the padded table, before slipping into a chair.

  “God my arms hurt,” she said, stretching them up and out, before cradling them in her lap.

  Anita ignored her, instead peering through her loupe at the brooch in the centre of the picture. The woman looked familiar, as if she’d seen another portrait featuring her, or at least a relative. Casting her mind back she couldn’t think of any of the portraits she’d already catalogued which matched, except for… maybe the children. The woman in the portrait had the same blonde hair and blue eyes as the children, but she was sad. Beautiful and sad. The way she’d placed her feet, clasping her hands as if she wanted this ordeal to be over as soon as possible, the sitting done under sufferance.

  “Did she live here? Was that painted here?” Yvonne asked, flexing her decorated fingers. Fingers adorned with an array of rings, both modern and antique. One, a band of silver with a pyramid-shaped dome awkwardly attached. Another, a cluster of pearls — meant more for decorative wear than day-to-day use, but Yvonne wore it every day, rain or shine. The third, a belt shaped gold band — popular in Victorian times as mourning jewellery, plain and embellishment free, far more practical than the pearl monstrosity. And an ugly opal ring — designed in the Seventies, with heavy gold shoulders and a huge oval. The stone needed a good buff by a jeweller to remove the scuffing, but the ring itself had the ability to inflict real damage should she ever need to wield it as a weapon. Each ring had its own story and she couldn’t bear being parted from any of them. For the moment though their inconsequential weight was exacerbating the pins and needles in her fingers and hands. She slipped them off, lining them up on the table. “So, any clues, oh resident art expert?”

  Anita sighed and folded away her loupe, rubbing her eyes before replying.

  “From what I can t
ell, yes, it was painted in this house. I don’t think the furniture she’s on is here anymore though, but I recognise the windows and the view. See here?” She pointed out the hills behind the house where an exceptionally tall tree stood sentinel in the middle. Even in the depths of winter, decades later, the same tree stood guard over the gap between the hills. “I’ve not seen any other portraits of her. There’s no signature and I don’t recognise the subject. She could be related to the four children in a series of paintings I’ve catalogued, but I’d be guessing if I suggested that.”

  Yvonne hung off every word, her eyes boring into Anita’s. Anita fidgeted in her chair.

  “The brooch though—”

  “What?” Yvonne interrupted.

  “I didn’t recognise the brooch straight away, but I think I’ve seen it, upstairs. I’m sure it’s just paste.”

  “It’s not your place to decide what is or what isn’t paste,” Yvonne grabbed the frame and leapt up. She stumbled backwards before regaining her balance. “Where’s the brooch?”

  “In my room, on the dressing table.”

  “Let’s go then,” Yvonne said, already in the doorway.

  Anita pushed herself up from the table, hobbling over to Yvonne.

  “Why are you limping?”

  “I hurt my heel yesterday before you arrived. Stood on some broken pottery. I thought I’d got it all out, but I guess I didn’t,” Anita replied.

  Yvonne sniffed, she’d offer to help the other woman up the stairs but didn’t want to relinquish the frame. Besides, her arms were feeling worse.

  The women made their way upstairs. They reached the bedroom and Anita sank to the bed, struggling to pull off the sock she’d been wearing since before the others had arrived.

  Placing the gilt frame on the mantel over the fireplace, Yvonne poked around at the bits and bobs strewn across the polished wood.