Man with a Seagull on His Head

by Harriet Paige

  *

  Look at him—he really hadn’t changed at all. How strange that some people could not stop creating things, whereas others couldn’t ever seem to start—always, always Grace felt she was just about to. One only had to put canvas under Ray for him to fill it up, and one had to, really, for otherwise it would come out anyway, all over the floor or the walls and make an awful mess. It was terribly infantile. Terribly … pure. Like a spring upon some secret mountaintop, out it came, crystal and cold. What happened to it further down the valley—how it was received and by whom—was of no concern; that little spring just kept on. What was driving it? Why the same scene over and over? Grace had never asked him who the woman was. Because in some strange and mysterious way she believed it was herself.

  “Dearest!” she said, advancing from the threshold.

  She put her bags down on the glass coffee table and went to him at the window, touching a hand to the back of his head. “I’ve bought you fruit tarts and a new tie—just wait till you see it, it’s the most beautiful thing you ever saw, and Christopher Earnest, he … the poor man was completely broken from tiredness and emotion. I was quite moved by it. I think I might … I don’t know—write something!” And immediately as she said it she knew she never would.

  A sudden emptiness arrived, something incredibly sad. No victory after all.

  But things came and then they went and one simply had to move on.

  “What was that, dearest? Did you say something? Were you asking about the painting? Gregoire’s painting, you mean? How sweet of you. Well, to tell the truth, I haven’t seen it but I expect it shall be wonderful as usual. He’s surely sleeping with that young woman—that always sets up a bit of tension. You see, dearest, what Gregoire has discovered is that if you sit four people close up next to each other and ask them to sit still and keep silent for hours at a time, they all start falling in love with each other. It’s all too obvious: the old woman is in love with the old man; the old man is in love with the young woman; the young woman is in love with the young man; the young man is in love with Gregoire. Ah-ha! But Gregoire chooses the young woman—Gregoire can choose who he likes. And that’s where it starts hotting up. Jealousy happens.” She raised her hands on either side of her head and wiggled her fingers, which was the jealousy, happening. “Oh it all shows beautifully in their faces, all that love and jealousy fizzing around. The tension—so subtle. The critics don’t know how he does it. Easy: he shags his subjects and paints what he sees.”

  Ray turned to face her. Dear one, had he actually been listening?

  “What about Mira?”

  “Oh, Mira!” Grace laughed. “Don’t you worry about Mira, dearest, Mira’s just there to balance out the composition, make it less neat. A little question mark lying at the foot of the bench. Who is she? Whose is she? A little tutu-ed angel, they’ll say, cupid in galoshes. The beloved irony.”

  His face was baffled, a little wounded, as it always was by such talk. Grace could talk about art, that was one thing she could do. What else was there to do when its burning centre eluded one?

  But she didn’t like to see him wounded. She loved him. What a strange and wonderful thing: she really did love the little rabbit. She opened the box containing the strawberry tarts and held it under his face. “You want one?” she said, and he smiled and nodded. She kissed him on the mouth and stroked a hand over his cheek, soft and soapy-smooth. “Come on then.”

  They went through to the kitchen and she placed two tarts on two white plates, setting them down on the table and herself on the chair alongside. Ray sat opposite with his hands on his lap, waiting. The strawberries sat fat and pompous in their bed of custard, indecently red, the glaze like molten glass over the top. They seemed to defy her to eat them, such haughty little things. And yet she would, whether they liked it or not. That was the pleasure in it, to dig one’s teeth in and show them who was boss. And how softly they yielded. Such a crush of sweetness and softness in her mouth.

  “You wait till you see the tie I bought you, dearest,” said Grace, a little afraid that the mackerel-belly sheen of the silk had dulled in the bag. But when they’d finished eating she unwrapped it from its tissue paper and laid it out upon the table, and if anything it was even more beautiful here on its own, spread out between them as pointless and pleasing as a length of ribbon. Ray ran his finger down over it, right down to its pointed end.

  “It’s like—”

  “A fish?” she said, eagerly

  “Yes.”

  They’d had the same thought. And with it another new thought swam into her mind. It was the thing she’d been waiting for all morning, all her life maybe. The thing that would save her. But she waited a little longer, watching it grow and take shape as she slipped the tie around Ray’s neck. She fixed the knot, smoothed the silk down over his chest and then looked up and said:

  “I’ve had a marvellous idea!”

  She got to her feet. “I want you to paint me. I want you to paint me for the new exhibition.” Her body felt suddenly alive and supple again. She walked quickly round to the other side of the table and leaned over it, her palms flat upon the surface. She considered the elegance of her arms, imagined the shallow swoop of her back. “Let’s give them something different this time.” She moved back over to Ray, kneeling down on the floor in front of him. “Let’s start soon,” she said, trying to find his gaze. “Let’s start tomorrow. You will do it, won’t you dearest?” She kissed him. “Oh I knew that you would! You do know I love you, don’t you?” She laughed. “I can hardly wait to tell George.” And she laughed again, throwing her head back now, enjoying the long stretch of her neck. “Not that he’ll give a shit! Have you seen him this morning? Oh dearest, I just know it’s going to be marvellous. Dear George, I should go in and see him. See if there’s been any progress.”

  Grace called it the ninety degrees of depression. George’s bouts always started here, at the lowest point, which was flat on his back, and then he would rise up a little at a time: a few pillows under the head to begin with, and then he’d be sitting up in bed and then in the armchair downstairs and eventually he’d be standing and walking and laughing again and they’d all of them go up to Norfolk for a holiday.

  She ran a glass of water from the tap and laid out four water biscuits on a clean plate, spreading each thinly with butter. She carried both out into the hall and down to George’s room at the back of the apartment, tapping gently with her knuckle on the closed door. She opened it slowly, balancing the glass on the plate, entering George’s dark and stagnant den.

  “Oh.” His voice quivered weakly across the space between them. “Is that you, dearest?”

  “No, it’s me,” Grace whispered, shutting the door behind her. “I came to see you.”

  The curtains were closed and she stood still for a moment while her eyes adjusted to the low light. There was never much in here anyway, or in any of the back rooms overlooking St. James’ Place, a tall and narrow back street into which the light trickled thinly if at all. The wide views over the park from the front were startling by comparison and George complained it was not good for his health to be always having to adjust between the two, coming out of these dim, intimate back-spaces to be hit anew by the giddying expanse of green, and a fresh and reckless desire to throw himself out the window.

  She walked over to the bed and looked down at the pale, bearded face that lay there.

  “Poor Georgie in his hole and no one knows how to get him out of it,” he said, his voice slow and deep as if rising through a more viscous medium.

  She put a hand to his face and felt a small surge of pleasure and relief to be near a thing so resolutely human as George. Ray was always so far away. George, at least, was down here with her, with his thick, dark hair and rich mushroom smell. She loved to bury herself in his chest, like burrowing into wet earth; the first time they’d made love she’d known that at l
ast she’d found somewhere to plant herself.

  George said it was a hole, a hollow, empty, lifeless thing. But to Grace, depression was just another lover that he took to his bed. There was no need for it, in her opinion. One simply had to make the decision to get up and get on with the day, if that was what one wanted to do—she sometimes wondered, though, at her own ability to do so, as if she might have missed something, some terrible truth that had passed her by.

  She often felt these small deficiencies. She blamed George and the conditions he’d imposed upon their union. That they should be free. Free to explore other people, other possibilities. It was such a bind, forever trying to find someone to explore. It presented such endless opportunities for failure. Wasn’t it the point of getting married that one could forget about all that? Just settle back and relax for a minute? When she’d become pregnant … well, there at last was a chance. Why let George assume things? Maybe it was Ray’s.

  “Ray’s?” George had laughed and laughed and laughed. “Well, good old Ray.” Couldn’t he have been just a little bit jealous?

  She bent to kiss him, entering his warm, yeasty microclimate.

  “I’ve brought you some water biscuits,” she said, making room for them and the glass of water on the bedside table.

  “Ah, yes, water biscuits! Water biscuits cure all ills. You used to give me love, Gracie, and now you give me water biscuits. Horrible, dry, barren things that clog up my throat.” He turned his head in the direction of the plate and made a sour face. “Oh, you’ve buttered them today, have you? You must be softening a little.”

  “Poor George,” she said, stroking her hand over his damp, clammy forehead. She’d learnt that to wait, and to say such things, was the only way.

  “Poor George,” said George in reply, closing his eyes and letting himself be stroked. “Poor George.”

  They were quiet for a while and then George rolled over, turned away from her. “Grace?” he said.

  “Yes, George?”

  “Will you give me a cuddle?”

  She walked round the other side of the bed, slowly took off her shoes, and slipped in under the covers. The stale heat and mulchy smell was an obscene pleasure to her washed and clothed body that had recently walked out across Berkeley Square in the cold morning air. Mira—she suddenly thought of Mira, lying there in her tutu and red galoshes at the foot of a wooden bench. She turned, giving her back to George so that she was the one to be held. The single bed forced them close together as if they were sheltering from some danger. He pulled her to him, pinning her arm against her side, and she felt his breath on the back of her neck. Strange, it did feel awfully lonely to be held sometimes—because you were never entirely held. There was always some part of you that was left untouched.

  Eight

  “Come in, dearest.”

  Ray was standing timidly in the doorway. George had asked to see him, as he sometimes did, and Grace must have sent him up. He walked slowly across the large kelim rug that filled the space between the door and George’s bed.

  “Here,” said George, patting the edge of the bed.

  Ray sat down cautiously, knees and feet held tight together, hands clasped upon his lap. He was dressed in a thin white T-shirt, a vest maybe, with a silk tie around his neck. It had flecks of silver, blue, green, and gold in it, quite beautiful. George reached out a hand to touch it but, unable to muster the energy to reach that far, ended up stroking the air just in front of it. Sometimes he felt that seeing Ray might make him feel better.

  “Tell me something, Ray. Tell me … tell me about the sky.”

  Ray closed his eyes.

  “What colour is it?”

  A slight frown appeared upon his brow as if he was straining to see behind his closed lids. “White,” he said, without opening them. “Pink. Blue. Grey. Green—” He stopped, and was silent for a moment. “White.”

  “Like … smoke? Milk?”

  “Milk,” he said uncertainly. “But sort of … fizzing.”

  “Quivering? Like a pan of hot milk on the cusp of coming to boil?” George took Ray’s hand, felt maybe they were getting somewhere, starting to see the same thing.

  “No. It’s more like sky,” said Ray, withdrawing his hand.

  “What about her? What’s her face like?”

  “Like an angel.”

  “Her eyes? What colour are they?”

  “Gold. And blue. And green, and—”

  “Like your tie.” George touched it this time, and smiled. “And her skin?”

  “Smooth. Dusty. Speckled.”

  “A pebble?” He liked that, he could feel its dusty smoothness, see the mineral salty specks.

  “Maybe.”

  “Her lips?”

  “They’re open. She’s talking to me.”

  “The barriers thrown aside, the promise of intimacy … ” George closed his eyes for a moment. “Is she lovely?”

  “Yes.”

  “Very lovely?” said George, who could not imagine a face so lovely and yet wanted to, desperately—oh, how he longed to see it. “Tell me.”

  But it was no good. Ray couldn’t describe her; George should know that by now. And even if he could, George would never truly be able to see what was in his head, or even to imagine it. But if only that were possible, if only he could escape himself for a moment. See something new. Something beautiful. It was so wearisome being himself all these years. His flesh hung so heavy on his bones, like great lumps of clay crudely slapped on. One shouldn’t have to suffer it for a whole lifetime. Being oneself, and then just … not being oneself. Not being at all. It seemed so limiting, so unfair somehow. It didn’t make any sense.

  “Have you ever thought about painting something else, dearest?”

  “Something else?” Ray opened his eyes. “Like what?”

  “Oh, I don’t know—” George looked about him vaguely, and then gave up, for what else was there, really? “I just don’t know how you keep going.” This was the thing that really puzzled him. How to keep going?

  Ray looked at him, uncomprehending. “I can’t stop.” His hands were fidgeting now, the fingers twisting and turning about each other on his lap. His shoulders twitched, his feet moved in shuffling little circles on the rug. George knew he wanted to be gone, to get back to his work. Oh, to feel such urgency, such compulsion.

  Then he felt Ray’s finger touch lightly to the back of his hand, which rested palm down near the edge of the bed. He knew at once what he was doing: he was drawing on it. George closed his eyes and tried to see the line in his mind’s eye, to follow it, make sense of it. But he soon lost it and it became simply a path, one that led with reassuring purpose over the veins on the back of his hand, then over his wrist and up his forearm. He felt, under Ray’s touch, the dryness of his bones, the sickness of his soul, and longed to be healed, to be made beautiful again. For a time he felt it really might be happening. The tingle of his skin waking up, the attention of that roving finger fixed so intently, so lovingly, upon his limb. But then he opened his eyes and looked at Ray. He’d slipped to the floor and was kneeling beside the bed, bent close over George’s arm. He really was beautiful. The frown was gone, his face intent and peaceful, like a Botticelli angel. And yet that loving attention which George had felt focused upon himself was a lie: Ray was clearly elsewhere. If there was a movement of love then George was irrelevant to it. He was simply a canvas.

  With more strength than he thought he had in him, he jerked up from his pillows and seized Ray’s head in his hands, pulling it upwards to meet his own face and pressing his lips to Ray’s as if it might be possible to insert himself forcibly into the flow. Ray stood up immediately, removing himself from the kiss, and stumbled towards the bedside table, bumping into it with enough force to dislodge an untouched bowl of lentil soup that Grace had brought up earlier. It fell to the floor and the sou
p splashed over the rug like vomit.

  Nine

  Vito’s brother, Paolo, was bringing La Mamma from Stilo. He and his wife, Giulietta, had been there all week helping her pack up, which was their end of the bargain. “We do our bit, don’t you worry,” Paolo had said, a hand on Jennifer’s shoulder. He had a notion that having La Mamma here in England would be no trouble, great fun, just like the old days when he and Giulietta had first opened the restaurant.

  Vito had spent his first months in England at the sink in The Amalfi. And even by the time Jennifer met him, when he’d finally found a job at a cobbler’s on Southchurch Road, he was still elbow-deep in soapsuds at the weekends. Jennifer liked the feel of his hands, waxy and plump. She liked his small, well-polished shoes too. And the way words stumbled out of his mouth in surprising combinations. She wasn’t sure about love but she thought she could do a good enough job of looking after him—until he spat out her macaroni cheese and sent her to his sister-in-law at The Amalfi for cooking lessons. Jennifer disliked Giulietta back then. She was small, silly, and always pregnant. But it didn’t take Jennifer long to see she didn’t have such a great time being married to Paolo.

  They were good times, really. Paolo and Giulietta were still living above the restaurant and the four of them would sit around and sip Amaro after closing, the little ones asleep upstairs or on Giulietta’s lap. Often her companions would slip into Italian, but Jennifer didn’t mind. She was glad not to have to think up things to say. She’d rather sit in silence and lose herself in the picture of Positano on the wall behind the bar—one of five paintings that Paolo had picked up cheaply on the London Road. It was these scenes of the Amalfi coast that had given the restaurant its name, rather than any personal connection to the area. Neither Paolo nor Giulietta had ever been there.