The Blue Bath

by Mary Waters-Sayer

  A thought gripped her. Just how close was the resemblance between her and the girl in the paintings? How easy would it be to link her face to the face in the portraits?

  Hearing a heavy sigh, she turned to find a tall brunette woman standing beside her. Kat recognized her as one-third of the trio she had overheard in the other room. The woman smiled at Kat and scanned the crowd distractedly as it moved past them. Turning her gaze back to the painting in front of her, she sighed again. Kat froze. Was it too late? Had she been recognized?

  “Does great art inspire you or just depress you? I mean, there is no way I could ever create anything like this. Frankly, it would be embarrassing for me to even try. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate the aspirational aspect of it, but I think that if we’re honest, part of it’s also about teaching us our limitations. After all, if everyone could create something like that, would we value it the way we do?”

  “Maybe not,” Kat managed, but doubted that she had been heard over the noise. The woman’s gaze remained on the painting in front of them. She frowned, addressing her words directly to it.

  “Although, I don’t suppose the alternative is any better. Even if you have the talent, by turning what you love into something that pays the rent, you destroy it in a thousand daily cuts. Familiarity, complacency, compromise … Although, at least you have your arms around it as you do it. At least it dies by your own hand. I don’t know—maybe there’s some solace in that.”

  The brunette cocked her head at Kat, smiling widely. “I just think having something like that in my drawing room would suck the life right out of me.”

  Kat felt a tidal swell in the crowd. The woman nodded toward the far side of the gallery. “Here comes the talent now.”

  Kat turned in the direction she indicated. And there he was. A head above the crowd, looking too big and too volatile for the spare, white room. The same craggy face—more lived-in and more weathered than she remembered. Hair slicked back from his forehead. Clean-shaven. More solid. Older. She had anticipated these possibilities. What surprised her was not all that had changed, but all that had not changed. Somehow she hadn’t expected him to still be Daniel.

  Staying very still as the crowd moved around her, she studied him in the brief glimpses through the changing kaleidoscope of bobbing heads, watching as, outnumbered, he met his admirers, greeting and kissing and shaking hands.

  In that one moment, watching him across the room, she saw the arc of his potential condensed, realized. She saw him as he had been and she saw him as he appeared now through the eyes of the crowd. The artist. As if in that moment he became all that he could have been so many years ago. It was like witnessing a birth.

  It took her a minute to see the girl. She was beautiful. Delicate and small against him, she seemed more at home in this place than he was, although she was clearly here for him. He clutched her tightly, his arm wrapped around her waist, hand resting on her hip.

  Her reflection was all too brief. Interrupted, as she clung to the wall on the far side of the room, when his eyes met hers. There was no double take. No lag between him seeing her and recognizing her. Apart from a brief flicker, his expression did not change. Excusing himself from his conversation and unwrapping himself from the girl, he began to make his way toward her through the crowd—eyes locked on her—pinning her to her spot like a moth. She could not read his expression, but she felt a familiar intensity in it.

  But the gallery was too crowded with pilgrims, paying homage, seeking his attention in return for theirs. As he momentarily lost eye contact with her, she pulled away from his gaze and made for the door. Reaching it, she turned back, but he was gone, obscured by his admirers. Sliding between the bodies entering the gallery, she felt the rough pavement beneath her shoes and the cold wind on her face.

  Kat made her way quickly down the street, her breath escaping back toward the gallery. When she was a safe distance away, she moved to the edge of the pavement and waited for the traffic to clear so she could cross the street. Hearing voices behind her, she turned. Was she being followed? Had someone in the gallery noticed the resemblance between her and the girl in the paintings? Holding her breath, she turned to find two men standing beside a black cab idling at the curb.

  “And the schedule? He can complete it on time?” It was the older gentleman whom Jorie had pointed out at Daniel’s show. Kat tried to remember his name, but she had not glanced down at it after it had been dropped.

  “Of course.” The answer came even before the question had been completed. The voice sounded immediately familiar and she recognized the short man in the green suit from the gallery. Martin. “I’ve been looking after Daniel for years. I know what he is going to do even before he does.”

  The other man considered him gravely for a long moment, allowing him to squirm like a fat worm on a hook.

  “Because, you know, we hear things. Addictions, perhaps…” He shook his head sadly. “There are, after all, visible scars.”

  “We all have our addictions, Richard.” It was spoken in a low tone, with real menace in it. “Some are more productive than others. Without them, I doubt we would be having this conversation today.”

  Crossing the street, Kat did not hear the reply, if there was one.

  After a few blocks she slowed down and walked for a while through Mayfair, drinking in the cold air. Above the constellations of Christmas lights on Oxford Street, the sky was leaden and still. The streets were slick. It must have rained earlier. The reflected light off the pavement seemed somehow brighter than the streetlamps themselves. She was flooded with an overwhelming sense of nostalgia and regret for a delicate and vanished time. For the brief, fragile peace of simply being seen.

  She recalled her astonishment standing in front of the first completed painting of herself in Paris. It was evening and the studio was wrapped in blue darkness. After a moment, she had turned to Daniel.

  “Is that who you see when you look at me?”

  He had looked around the room briefly, searching for something. Then, laying his hands on her shoulders, he had steered her to the window and indicated her reflection in the glass pane.

  “That is not what you look like. At least not to others. We are not what we see in the mirror—our images are, in fact, reversed. We are not what we appear to be, even to ourselves.”

  It was true. While immediately familiar, the face in the painting was not quite the same face she saw in the mirror or in photographs. Nor somehow did she believe that it was the face that others saw. Yet the feeling of recognition was overwhelming. The only way she could think to describe it was that girl he captured on canvas looked the way that she felt. And that sense of shared truth was more seductive than being admired or even being loved. And unlike love, which often engendered a broader affinity for others, its sharp edge severed all other connections, leaving only the two of them.

  He had painted her whenever the urge struck him. She would suddenly hear the pages on the sketch pad being flipped over or the crisp sighs of the charcoal on paper. Sometimes she wouldn’t notice at all, discovering it only when she moved and heard his urgent whisper for her to stay where she was. Half prayer, half command. He often drew her while she was sleeping.

  And slowly, she had begun to become more aware of herself. Of the pleasing shape her neck made as she bent forward over a book. Of the way the shadows fell beside her as she sat or reclined on the bed, and the varying effects of sunlight in her hair at different times of the day. She became conscious of the way different textures of clothing or blankets looked against her bare skin and she began to pay more attention when buying books at the markets, selecting the ones with the most interesting covers, soft, mottled linens and rich, distressed leathers.

  Daniel would sometimes begin to sketch her in the early morning, drawing her outline swiftly, without taking his eyes off her. Often turned away, she could not see him, but she could feel his eyes just beyond her view, moving over her, holding her to her spot. And when he h
ad enough, when she was free to go, she would feel him release her. Daniel hardly acknowledged her departure when she left. When she returned to the studio in the early evening she would find herself taking form on the canvas. It was as if time obeyed different rules in the little room under the eaves of the ancient building on the rue Garancière. He didn’t need her to be physically present to paint her. When he was painting her, she remained with him.

  As she made her way past the shuttered shops, Kat thought about Daniel at the gallery in his immaculate dark gray suit, its carefully cut lines betraying it as bespoke, a perfect complement to the confident smiles and brief greetings, the earnest eye contact, the seemingly effortless charm. Playing the artist. And he was good at it.

  She supposed it wasn’t really surprising. After all, she had gotten better at it, too. She could sit through the endless dinners and cocktail parties. She could make conversation with the nervous first wives and the defensive trophies. She could smile and nod and not have to excuse herself from the table too often to sneak out the back door to the dark garden and fill herself full of night air, enough to get her through the rest of the evening.

  It might all have seemed real if she weren’t watching so closely and if she hadn’t known what had come before. She noticed the telltale way he shifted his weight and how stillness seemed to elude him. He was acting. Pretending. And although he was better at it now than he used to be, there remained a lingering suggestion of volatility about him. He seemed to be actively restraining himself.

  She was embarrassed for leaving the gallery the way that she had. Seeing him in a crowd like that had been so unfamiliar. In all her memories of him, it was always just the two of them. As if there hadn’t been anyone else in Paris.

  And the paintings. She remembered living with them while they were drying. How they had surrounded them. And she realized at once just how rare that intimacy was. How it was almost impossible to achieve, in a museum or even in the smallest of galleries. How even the most hallowed of spaces were haunted by the footsteps and whispered incantations of others.

  She caught a cab on Park Lane. As it cut through Hyde Park, her mobile rang. Jonathan.

  “Darling—where are you?” His voice was muffled.

  “Hello. Just in Mayfair.”

  “Right—the Cancer Foundation ball, it’s tonight?”

  “No—not yet. Just a gallery opening. With Jorie.”

  “Ah, Ms. Thibaud-Paxton-Bowles…” Jonathan always included all of Jorie’s surnames. “Any eligible bachelors there then?”

  Kat winced. “Not for long.… How are you? How’s everything?”

  “Moving forward. Omega starts diligence tomorrow.”

  Her confusion lasted for just a beat. “Oh. Are we at the code-name stage?”

  “We are. Especially on phones.”

  “I hadn’t realized.”

  “You haven’t said anything to Jorie, have you?” His voice rose suddenly in panic.

  “Jonathan. Of course not.”

  She knew better and he knew that she did. She knew how information moved in their circles, functioning as currency, as entertainment, as proof of status. Even more literally in this case, as any information about the impending sale was insider information. There could be no confidences.

  “Sorry. It’s just that the press is all over this. I’m pretty sure that someone has been following me since I got here.”

  “Really?” She could not help the incredulous tone in her voice and immediately regretted it.

  “Yes. Really.”

  She heard the thin thread of his voice pull taut across the miles and she spoke quickly. “Don’t be cross with me. I know this is serious. It just seems so absurd.”

  “Do you remember that bastard, Warre, the one who wrote that hatchet piece in the Mail? Apparently, he has started calling our analysts and some major shareholders, inquiring as to their opinions on the impending sale of the company to a foreign firm.”

  The article, which had appeared more than a year ago, prompted by a photograph of Jonathan having dinner with executives from the Chinese company, had been a vitriolic nationalistic tirade. Citing the usual long list of venerable British institutions that had been recently sold off to foreign interests—the Savoy Hotel, Fortnum & Mason, Harrods, Cadbury—the reporter had cast Jonathan as the latest in a long line of money-hungry CEOs, cashing out after bleeding Britain dry of talent and resources. The piece had served as a nasty surprise to Jonathan, who was accustomed to a rather different sort of coverage.

  A photo of the columnist, Alistair Warre, had appeared beside the article. A small black-and-white rendering of a hirsute, slack-jawed man peering through large horn-rimmed glasses. Since then, Kat had seen him at events occasionally and even on the street once or twice. He had a distinctive, scurrying gait that suited a person much younger. A kind of eager, halting pace that gave the impression he was about to break into a run. Come to think of it, she might have seen him just a few days ago on Holland Park Avenue.

  There was silence on the line.

  “So, I met with Sir Charles…” she began brightly.

  “I don’t know why. If this deal goes through, we may never even live in the house.”

  She stopped short, holding the phone to her ear in the darkness of the cab. “What? Why?”

  “Turns out they want me to stay on as CEO.”

  “Right. In London. The company is in London.”

  “But management would be in Hong Kong.”

  She was silent.

  “I assumed you knew this was a possibility…”

  “You never said anything about moving to China.”

  “Look, this gives me a chance to take care of our people. Make sure they’re integrated into the new organization. They’ve been loyal to us. They helped build the company. It’s the right thing to do.”

  * * *

  AFTER THE CALL, she sat stunned in the back of the cab. Hong Kong? Had that possibility been lost in the shuffle that had been their lives over the past several months? Mistakenly packed away? Mislabeled? Or had she simply not been paying attention? What other possibilities had been misplaced or overlooked?

  For years, they had lived an unsettled life. And she had learned to enjoy it. She had come to find that uncertainty had a certain charm. But since buying the house, she had believed that had changed. The size of the house, the financial commitment, the scope of the renovation—all of these things had led her to allow herself to believe that they were putting down roots. After all, wasn’t this what they had worked toward? Wasn’t this the dream?

  She became aware of the regular thump of the speed bumps as they moved onto the residential streets off the High Street. She switched on the overhead light to find her house keys in her bag. In the dim glare she caught sight of her reflection in the smooth black window of the cab. The deepening wrinkles around the edges of her eyes and mouth, the softening jawline. A far different face from the one that had looked back at her from the walls of the gallery. Kat let out a sudden laugh, startling the cabdriver, who turned round to look at her. Perhaps she needn’t have worried that anyone would recognize her.

  chapter six

  What the Artist Kept to Himself

  Thomas Lowry

  A bright new light in figurative painting is shining from a wholly unexpected place. In an unprecedented move, Mayfair’s stalwartly modern Penfield Gallery has thrown the full weight of its considerable influence behind a fairly unknown realist and his series of portraits.

  Although this show is the first major exhibition for the artist, his work already hangs in the homes of many of New York’s finest collectors, disguised in that most easily dismissed of forms—portraiture. Daniel Blake has long been the portraitist of choice amongst New York’s elite. And I must admit that while I have been exposed to his work in this capacity on several occasions, this is the first time I have been aware of his talent.

  Over a span of twenty years, unbeknownst to his many patrons and pu
rportedly even to his own agent, Blake has created a series of works that serve as an intensive study of one unidentified model. This series, in addition to representing a notable augmentation of his catalogue raisonné—both in terms of breadth and depth—provides a rare view of the stylistic and emotional evolution of the artist.

  The works in this show are, first and foremost, compelling portraits of a young woman, gracefully realized and technically adroit. Indeed, one could devote an entire article solely to the artist’s renditions of red hair. Not since Titian has there been an artist more enamoured of the redhead.

  But, there is more to his story. The obvious mystery here is that the young woman herself neither ages nor changes during the course of the series. This anomaly has captured the imagination of the art world, sparking a debate over whether his model is real or is simply a product of the artist’s imagination.

  The exhibition is divided in two distinct parts. In the initial stage Blake’s talent is on full display in his mastery of the subtle textures of flesh and plaster and cloth. It is these early works that belie the depth of the artist’s connection to the subject and it is this emotional intensity that distinguishes his work. The delicate, varied brushstrokes, the intimate scale—these are moments stolen out of time. In the later works, the paintings themselves are the moments—attempts to recall time past.

  The early works have a voyeuristic quality. In “September Morning” the subject, seen in profile before an open window, is both observed and observer. While the artist’s vision extends only as far as the borders of the canvas, the girl’s vision knows no such boundaries. It is her expression much more than the artist’s smudged, ruddy brushstrokes that convinces us of the world beyond the confines of the small room. And yet, there is a sense of timelessness in these portraits. It seems his subject could have just as easily existed a century ago as today.