by D. P. Watt
Then, one crisp spring morning, Mme Duclois arrived. He had not met her before, and had not been expecting anyone that morning, not from his usual contacts anyway. He opened the door to a curiously delicate knock and she strode in with the confidence of one who knows she should be eagerly awaited and the indifference of one who does not want to be there. On her way in she handed him a letter and flounced to the battered settee where she began to remove her coat and gloves.
He stood there rather puzzled, but read the letter.
Dear Mr Purnell,
I do hope you will forgive the direct approach but I have admired your work for some time and wish to commission you for a little project. Allow me to introduce Mme Duclois. She will show you what needs to be done and supply you with the necessary funds to accomplish it. I do hope this will be interesting work for you over the coming weeks and look forward to enjoying your labours in due course.
A Benefactor
He turned to Mme Duclois and saw that she stood there with her hand limply extended towards him.
He was uncertain what to do, or say.
He went over to shake her hand.
She tutted and flicked his hand away, resuming her pose.
Again, unsure what he should do, he bent to kiss her hand.
Again, she tutted, this time flicking her fingers sharply across his lips.
He stood there awkwardly looking at her, rubbing his mouth. She looked at him impatiently and then to her hand, expectantly.
He looked at it.
He began to study it.
Her fingers were slender, if not a little overlong. The veins on the back of the hand had begun to betray the beginnings of middle age, and also the slightness of the rest of her which seemed, if anything, malnourished; but where—in those of the lower classes—this often resulted in a more awkward, clumsy comportment, with Mme Duclois it only added to her sense of beautiful, haughty estrangement, as though she might, with a simple force of will, evaporate before his eyes. The nails were cut short but again this did not diminish their elegance, instead it emphasised the perfect arc of her fingertips.
He understood what he must do.
He had not worked at such proximity before and was concerned to calculate the correct time required of the exposure, and whether she could hold her hand so still for the time required. He need have no such fear. She stood for what seemed like the whole afternoon, unmoving, without a word—without a sound of any kind. It was almost as though she did not breathe.
When finally he had finished it was dark outside.
She swirled her coat back over herself and gathered her gloves in a single gesture of enticing elegance. From a pocket she took a small package and pressed it firmly into Mr Purnell’s hand.
It was only that that remained to confirm her spectral presence had ever been there at all; that and a faint hint of sweat and lavender.
Mr Purnell unfurled his fingers and unwrapped the package. It was four crisp five pound notes folded over upon themselves into a small cube. He smiled and slept late the following morning.
He spent many hours over the following days, developing and printing the images. He realised he had not arranged another meeting with her and was unsure when he generous “benefactor” might want his pictures. He could not afford to lose this strange client.
Mme Duclois was back the following week, with more thick folds of money. She absorbed his day with recording the perfection of her wrists and when she departed (too soon, he thought, although it was nearly midnight) she took with her the prints from the previous week and left with him an address at which she would be staying, should he need to send for her.
It seemed, as the weeks went by, that he needed her more regularly (as he considered further records of her body). She always came a few days after his letter and always brought ample payment to cover the increasing commitment Mr Purnell was making to this commission. He tried not to let his other clients dwindle, knowing that this work may soon be over, but he was becoming as enthralled with her as his mysterious benefactor. Over the previous months he had become quite immune to the lure of naked flesh, almost to the point of impotence. Now he was reinvigorated by the simple form of an elbow, the bend of a knee, the delicate brown down upon a forearm.
As the year went on the brighter days allowed him to work earlier, and later than he had been able during the winter months. Little prepared him though for the focus and passion that this project had unearthed in him.
It was in the warmth of a glorious summer that he began the head. The first part of which would be the ears; no, an earlobe!
Funny, he thought, that the camera should be a means by which to bring the ear to life. A sound machine refracted through a sight machine. Something in him was stirring—an alien, creative impulse. It was not an unwelcome feeling just one that was so strange to him.
Ah! What joys, he thought. July had been kind to him, its relentless heat had made it all feel rather unreal, as though he moved through a pool of dark water, but, for the first time in many years, he felt genuinely happy.
*
A hard rapping on the door woke Mr Purnell. He found littered about him a mess of sketches; notes of dates and times, and some faded images of Mme Duclois—ghostly things, barely developed.
He stank and was so thirsty; so desperately, unbearably thirsty. He gasped and choked as he wearily sat up from the uncomfortable settee.
The rapping came harder and louder.
“I must warn you, Mr Purnell,” his landlady yelled through the door. “I am about to open the door with my keys if you do not answer immediately.”
He struggled over to the door and turned his key and swung to door open.
“Mrs Abbott…” he began, but all that came out was a breathy noise and he began another fit of choking and coughing.
Mrs Abbott looked him up and down, quite appalled. She was hardly the cleanliest of people herself, standing there in a smock that must have seen at least two winters without washing; her hair an uncertain brown, whether from the smog and grime or from her natural pigment. But she looked at him as though he were a beggar.
“Well, Mr Purnell,” she exclaimed. “Are you ill, now?”
“No, no…” he gasped. “What is it?”
“Well, it is hardly the thing I should like to discuss out here in the hallway now, and that’s for certain,” she said. Her tone was difficult to discern—somewhere between a mock contempt and false outrage. She had always been inclined to melodrama, Purnell thought, this would be some similar nonsense to do with other tenants in the building.
“Come in,” he said with his dusky voice. “But I must get a drink before you tell me what it is that brings you here.”
He welcomed her into the studio area which she surveyed with a hawkish eye, frowning and tutting.
He searched the cupboard for a mug and a bottle of wine. There was little left therein, and the cheese he had bought only a few days before was now a heap of mould and rancid, fatty oil. A bottle at the back of the cupboard appeared to have about a third left—it would do, anything to soothe his hoarse throat.
The wine was as good as vinegar but he gulped it down between gasps of relief. He could feel Mrs Abbott’s judgemental eyes upon him through the wall.
“So, Mrs Abbott,” he said in the most charming manner he could muster, sauntering back into the studio reinvigorated. “How can I help you on this fine day?” He cast a glance to the window—rain.
“It is about your rent, sadly, Mr Purnell,” she said, as though discussing a recent bereavement—and for Mrs Abbott a back rent was worse than any loved one’s death (although “loved ones” and “Mrs Abbott” were words that rarely encountered each other).
“My rent?” he said, genuinely surprised. “But I pay you a month in advance and we are not nearly at the end of the month yet now are we?”
She paused a moment and gave him a peculiar look.
“Mr Purnell,” she said, leaning in to enable a more hushed and private discu
ssion—as though the walls were listening. “It is no business of mine what you get up to. I am a woman of the world… goodness knows I’ve had my share of grief and misery, what with losing two of my young ’uns and my ’arry being taken by the tuberculosis before he could see to us having an ’alf-decent future. No, it ain’t for me to judge! You do what you ’av to do to make ends meet. But there are limits and my limit is one week over on the rent. That’s my house rule, and it’s final, I’m afraid!”
She stood there, arms folded—quite the angry landlady.
“I’m sorry,” Purnell said, confused and panicked. “I’m not well at the moment. Could you… er… could you remind me of the date today?”
“The date, Mr Purnell?” she said. “Are you quite serious?”
“Yes, yes, indeed I am, Mrs Purnell,” he said, rubbing his eyes and forehead. He felt as though he were in some kind of hazy dream from which he must force himself back into reality.
“Why, it’s the eighth day of September,” she said, and appearing to begin to prepare herself for an argument her tone became sterner. “If you recall, your last payment to me was in July, to take you up to the end of August. Now, don’t get me wrong, you’ve always been a good tenant and your rent has always been paid in a timely fashion. But you’ll understand that I have my own commitments and I must insist that you bring yourself up to date with a payment immediately.”
“The eighth of September you say?” Purnell said, as much to himself as to Mrs Abbott.
“Yes, indeed,” she said, folding her arms even tighter and standing as though to prevent an escape attempt.
“Hmm… the eighth of September…” he mused. “Wait here a moment, Mrs Abbott, I will fetch your money immediately.”
“Oh, that would be most welcome, Mr Purnell,” she said, money being as much a delight to her as cream to a cat.
He went back through to the other room and sat down at his desk with its papers and receipts.
It felt as though time had passed. It looked as though time had passed—a thin layer of dust had even settled on the desk. There was no correspondence there beyond late July. Had he really done nothing in August at all?
He recalled Mme Duclois sitting for him the day before. They had attended to her left earlobe. He needed to develop the plates. And today was the eighth of September; so Mrs Abbott said.
Mrs Abbott cleared her throat loudly in the other room.
Firstly he needed to be rid of her, then he could find out what on earth had happened. He had plenty of money in his drawer, in fact he had rather too much. He would need to get some prints sent off to his “benefactor” soon though, so as not to lose his lucrative backing.
He came back through with some notes and coins and stuffed them into Mrs Abbott’s eager hands.
“There you go, Mrs Abbott,” he said. “That should take me cleanly through to the end of November. I do apologise for the error. It is entirely my fault. My recent commissions have been rather absorbing and the weeks rather ran away with me.”
“Oh, think nothing of it, Mr Purnell,” she said, assuming her usual irritatingly obsequious role. “But it does bring me to my next issue.”
“Your next issue?” Purnell said, desperate now to get the woman out from under his feet so that he could clear his head and make sense of things.
“Yes, Mr Purnell, it’s about your little photographic business,” she said, with a sinister, conspiratorial tone. “As I said, I’m a woman of the world and you’ll understand that when I couldn’t raise you for a few days—knocking on your door and hoping to catch you in the hallway—I thought something may have happened to you. So, concerned for your welfare… and only for that reason, you understand…” He nodded, nervous as to what she might say next. “…I thought I might go and look for you in the roof conservatory.”
It began to dawn on him what had happened.
“Well, Mr Purnell, what can I say!” she said, feigning puritanical shock, but still maintaining a vaguely salacious little grin. “I had to let myself in, of course. I had called for you—I did so for a number of days. It then occurred to me that you might have had a little fall, or something…”
“Yes, yes, Mrs Abbott, let’s cut to the chase shall we?” he said.
“Well, Mr Purnell, let’s do just that then,” she said, entering the endgame with glee. “What a lovely little racket you have going on up there now with all those pictures of yours dryin’ in the sunshine. I’m sure your customers pay ’andsomely for all of that load of filth now don’t they…”
She paused to let it all sink in fully.
“Do go on,” Purnell said. All he could do now was hope to secure the best deal possible.
“Well, as I sees it, Mr Purnell,” she said, with a grin that exposed the few tea-stained teeth she had left. “If I’m ’aving my premises, what I ’ope to keep decent and out of any suspicion from the old Bill, used in such a manner I think I need to share in a bit of that profit; danger money they call it don’t they, danger money!”
“I’ve heard it called other things, Mrs Abbott,” he said, bitterly.
“Oh, there’s no need to be like that now, Mr Purnell,” she sniggered. “After all, it’s you what was takin’ me for a ride wasn’t it now. Anyway, what shall we say… I think the rent on that little conservatory of mine just went up quite a good way, seeing as it needs to be kept so private now an’ all. Shall we say it’s gone up triple in value in just this short time!”
He turned, without saying a word, and made his way back to the desk where he quickly counted out further notes and coins.
“There you are,” he said. “Two pounds and twelve shillings. That covers the rent for these rooms and that dilapidated shack on the roof, up until the end of December.”
“Oh, that’s very sensible of you, Mr Purnell,” she said, tucking the money into the front of her smock, “very sensible indeed. It’s lovely to be doin’ business with you. I hope your work thrives.”
Once she was gone he gulped down the rest of the foul wine and stared out at the rainy street below, unable to recall what had happened during that vanished August.
*
The following day was spent eating and drinking. He had been to the grocers, the butchers and the wine merchants and had carried his supplies back in three thick sacks. He cooked and ate, cooked and ate. He felt he could have eaten half the livestock in the surrounding fields, so deep was his hunger. His thirst could have emptied half of Europe’s vineyards. He never felt full though; his thirst was never slaked. He did not feel bloated. He did not feel drunk. As he was more replete and closer to normality his thoughts turned to Mme Duclois and the last sitting; to the left earlobe. The next thing he must arrange was the right. He could already picture it; a delicate echo of the left, but with its own hidden beauty—a subtle difference of curvature, a different thickness of lobe, and slightly more flushed than the other; differences only a professional of his calibre would be able to detect, and bring out during the sitting.
As he began penning a letter to her, wishing there might be a swifter means by which to arrange a sitting, there was a faint knock upon the door—her tell-tale three knocks, pause and another two.
He almost tripped over on his way to answer her.
She came in and glided to the settee where she assumed her regal pose, thumbing through a periodical.
He did not speak either, as usual. He worked with plates and lights, ducking back and forth behind the camera cape, moving the tripod, resetting the cushions around her, angling her face with slight, gentle touches of his fingers; as though she were a delicate, ceramic thing.
Hours went by. Then, sometime in the middle of the night, she yawned. She stood and put her coat back on and was gone. Not a word, as ever.
He looked at the clock. It had stopped. It read a quarter to three. Whether that was the morning, and it had only just stopped, or the afternoon, he was not sure. Or perhaps it had stopped days ago. He could not remember when he had las
t wound it.
He could barely sleep the few hours of night that remained. His mind was lively with the images of that right earlobe. All he could think of was developing them. And then, as dawn began to break he became suddenly jealous of his benefactor. Why should he share those photographs with someone else! How could someone sitting idly in their library, or study, fully appreciate the incredible finesse of Mme Duclois. Only he had been selected to catalogue and record the miraculous perfection of her form.
But then there was the money.
Pah! Money indeed! Only the vulgar—the Mrs Abbotts of the wretched world—needed money. The world was built on beauty, and he must finally heed his proper vocation.
The following morning he checked the calendar: 33rd Octobruary, that gave him a good month or two to make an enduring record of the left foot, maybe even most of the detail of those toes, if he worked hard.
Time passed. Mme Duclois did not call.
The days corroded in a frustrating conflict of feverish desperation and lightless languor. He watched the unmoving clock and waited for her knock upon the door. He sustained his frail body as best he could. As the notes and chunks of metal dwindled in his desk drawer he used more of it to procure the precious chemicals he needed to complete his work. All was ready to document the perfect architecture of Mme Duclois’ form.
Throughout the six weeks of Januly Mme Duclois never came.
He had set aside all sixty three days of Febrember for the upper lip; Mme Duclois never came.
March came and went in a moment, it had barely been worth waking up for, for Mme Duclois never came.
Apriluary was a long month, and one during which he had decided he should begin to catalogue the face. He recalled that there might be flowers breaking through the cold ground outside and hoped that with them Mme Duclois too might appear like a bright bud, but Mme Duclois never came.
On the last day of that snowy, cruel month Mr Oscar Purcell passed away, his dry lips muttering the word “lip”.