They stayed there for a while watching the city pulse and spark below them, spread out in diminishing detail and increasing familiarity. From decorative cornices atop adjacent warehouses, to the newer steel-and-glass towers in the middle distance, to the immediately recognizable shapes in the city skyline—reduced to the size of tourist souvenirs amid the masts and jibs of tower cranes.
When they grew tired of standing, they sat against the wall of the adjacent taller building, its ancient brickwork blooming with salty efflorescence. She nestled between his legs, his hands resting lightly on her knees, while the sleepless streets coiled around them in incandescent rings.
He talked about the way the light moved differently in London than it did in New York. About the way the August heat there made the buildings shimmer. She listened, feeling the vibrations his words made against her back. The rest of the time they watched the thin edge of young moon that sat low on the horizon. She told him that she thought she would like to live by the ocean for a while. There were other things she wanted to tell him, but not yet. There would be time.
The word that kept running through her mind was “redemption.”
They returned to the studio and slept for a while. When Kat opened her eyes again the rectangles of window above her were brighter than the ceiling. Daylight had returned. Daniel sat at one of the tables. He had a sketchpad before him, but he wasn’t drawing. His hand rested in his lap while his eyes moved restlessly around the room. Keeping vigil.
The smooth green dress lay where it had fallen by the side of the bed, bold and garish against the rough, used floor. Clutching the sheet around herself, she bent down and grabbed a handful of the slippery fabric, the movement drawing his eye. She managed to find the bottom hem of the dress and work her arms through to the top. In one fluid motion, she stood up and let go of the sheet, feeling it slip from her as she pulled the dress over her head.
Smoothing the dress over her body, she found that it looked just as garish against her pale skin as it had against the floor. She bent down again and retrieved her purse and necklace from the floor. Somewhere in the studio were her earrings and her ring. She did not see them. So small and delicate, they could be anywhere. She imagined the ring, a perfect circle, rolling across the floor the night before.
She finally spoke, her voice low.
“I have to go.”
“You don’t.”
“He’s coming home today.”
Daniel’s expression changed instantly, his face clouding dangerously. Jonathan. He thought she meant Jonathan.
“My son.” She said it quickly, her eyes remaining on him.
He allowed his head to drop into his palms before lifting it to look at her.
“Tell me that you’re coming back.”
“I’m coming back.”
As she slipped her feet into her shoes, Daniel came toward her. She watched him reduce the space between them until he could reach out and touch her. Taking her face in his hands, he studied her intently. His gaze shifting downward to the dress, frowning, as if he did not recognize it. The extra height of her shoes put her close to eye level with him and she met his eyes, milky blue in the white room.
“Say it again.”
“I’m coming back.”
She could feel his warmth through the thin silk. And so, for the second time, the dress glided silently to the rough floor, pooling around her feet like so much paint squeezed from the end of a tube.
* * *
SHE DROVE QUICKLY, heading too far north before managing to find her way back down to the Ring Road, which took her back into Kensington. She parked and crossed the wide pavement across the road from her house, passing in front of the Greek embassy. As she did, the guard emerged from the side of the building and started up the driveway toward her. He stopped halfway up the drive. She saw him see her. Alone. In the green dress. In the pallid early-morning glow. This time he did not ask her why. This time he looked away.
She moved through the house like a thief. Turning on no lights. Gliding through the silent rooms. Taking inventory of the strange and ordinary things. Entering the bathroom, she caught sight of her face in the large mirror. The unfamiliar image arrested her. The downward curve of her mouth, with its thin, pale lips. The shadows under her eyes and the thin vein tracing a faint blue line along her left browbone.
She showered quickly, stepping into the stream of water without waiting for it to warm up, gasping at the shock of the cold on her skin. Only the tears were warm on her cheeks. The salt stung her skin. She had been right about the stubble on his face. She was sore everywhere. Rubbed raw. Turned inside out. She felt everything like it was the first time. The cold water, the raw skin on her face, the weakness in her legs, the pain in her heart. His hands on her skin, his mouth, his breath, his heat.
After the shower, Kat dressed and made her way downstairs. Her whole body ached. She leaned back into the couch cushions. She would close her eyes for just a minute. And then she heard the door being pushed hard against the jamb, as if it might be unlocked, followed shortly by the clatter of the seldom-used knocker being deployed against its brass plate. It was shaped like the head of a lion, and Will used it at every opportunity. She ran to the door, pulling it open with both hands.
And then he is here. Spilling into the front hall. And she is on her knees, his skinny arms encircling her neck. His cheek against her chest, the pulse of life humming under his skin. And they built a dam! With sticks! And Fen helped. And Ollie. And he fell in the stream! Well, his foot. And it was so cold! And there was a thunderstorm—so very loud. He pulls back to demonstrate, pressing his palms flat against his head, his eyes wide. And she is Mummy again.
But now Will is squirming away from her embrace and Jonathan’s mother is leaning down to kiss her cheeks and taking the measure of her with concerned eyes. And Jonathan’s father is in the doorway with Will’s bag. And would you believe the traffic on the M3? This time of day? And Will is kicking off his trainers and heading toward the stairs. And the cousins, Ollie and Fen, have come along and they fill her arms—Is this really your house, Auntie Kat? Do you love it?—before dashing upstairs after Will. And will they stay for tea? They will. And the house seems bigger each time they see it. And it does seem bigger suddenly. Full of noise and motion and people with dark curly hair and eyes like Jonathan’s. And she sits back on her heels in the middle of it all until Jonathan’s father reaches down with both hands to pull her up. And she wonders how it is that they don’t see it on her face.
Kat tidied up the dishes from tea so Will could set out all his crayons and markers on the table. He talked while he drew, lost in the task.
“… the storm was so big and Grandpa said that’ll be the ruin of it then. But Ollie said maybe not. But when we went to look before breakfast the dam was gone.”
She sat beside him, examining the rushing stream he had drawn, complete with sharply formed cresting waves threatening to overflow its banks. “The water is brown,” he informed her, his eyes serious. “It is pulling the earth into it in great clumps. In this one the dam,” he indicated a large, elaborate structure stretching itself across the stream, “is still intact.”
She smiled. A new word. From Grandpa, she guessed. Or Ollie, so clever for his age.
She watched him in silence for a while, the tip of his tongue edging out of the side of his mouth in concentration.
“A little fox was here. While you were away.”
He glanced at her, but made no reply, reluctant to relinquish his story for hers just yet.
“I think he came to see you, but you weren’t home.”
“No.” His hand passed briefly across his brow to brush aside a wayward lock of hair that had fallen over his eyes. “He came to see you.”
“You think?”
“He knows that you’re sad.”
“You think?”
“I know.”
She leaned closer to him so that her head was next to his. He reached up and grabb
ed a handful of her hair, pulling his fingers through it absently the way he sometimes did. She closed her eyes, feeling the gentle tugs on her scalp. When she opened them, he was looking at her. His face with its wide forehead and dark eyes. So much like Jonathan’s face. The similarities becoming even more evident as the roundness in his cheeks waned.
“When is Daddy coming home?”
She swallowed the rising lump in her throat. “Soon.”
She sat with him in the quiet, watching him filling in the empty spaces.
Later, after she had sent him upstairs to brush his teeth and get washed up, she heard the sound of a door banging open. Her pulse quickened. Was it Jonathan? She entered the kitchen and saw that the door to the garden was open. Looking out into the gathering dark, she saw Will standing in the center of the garden, arms extended, holding a piece of paper over his head. No coat, bare feet, white shins visible below his short pajamas. Head tilted back, face to the sky. She shook her head in bewilderment. Careful to keep her stocking feet inside, she leaned out into the darkness and called to him.
“Time to come in.”
He dropped his arms and turned to her, chewing his bottom lip, his face small and sad.
“What is it, Pie?”
She stepped out into the garden, the wet grass soaking through her socks with each step. He held out the paper to her as she approached. It was one of the drawings he had done earlier. “I made it for Nana. But I don’t think she can see it. She’s so far away.” He raised his arms over his head again to illustrate the inadequacy of their reach.
She looked at his face, his lower lip still held between his teeth. They had talked about this. About how Nana was in heaven now.
“I have an idea.”
Kat handed the drawing back to him and kneeled down. Will looked perplexed for a moment before his face brightened and he climbed up her back, hoisting his legs over her shoulders one after the other. She steadied herself, her fingers pushing into the damp ground, and then stood up. His hands were on her forehead. He was heavier than she expected, something she had come to expect. As she straightened up, her hands around his bare feet, he let go. She felt his legs go taut against the sides of her neck as he stretched up, raising his drawing closer to the sky. They stood together like that for a while in the fading light, her feet sinking into the soft ground as he pressed her into the earth, a delicious ache forming in her shoulders.
In the early-evening silence after Will was asleep, she wandered through the house. Light from the streetlamp shone through the drawing-room window, illuminating the four paint samples on the wall. She could not conceive of what any of them would look like spread across the whole of the room. How was she meant to choose from something so small?
The newspaper lay where she had left it on the table, open to the review of Daniel’s show. As she reached down for it, her eyes fell on the image of the painting of the jade-green comb in her hair and she remembered where she had seen it.
They had been walking through the Marais late one afternoon when the comb had caught her eye in a shopwindow and she stopped to admire it. Looking at it through the thin glass, she could see it in her hair, could see what Daniel would see. Moving on from the shop, she realized suddenly that she was alone. Turning back, she had seen Daniel, still at the shopwindow. His face close to the glass, eyes concentrating intently on the comb. Now it was there. In her hair. She folded the paper carefully and carried it to the kitchen, pushing it down the side of the bin under the rubbish.
Kat climbed the stairs to Will’s room. It was by far the most densely furnished room in the entire house. In the soft glow of the night-light, she saw his plush animals arranged along the floor beside his bed, their positions reflecting their standing in his heart. A surprisingly gaunt gray elephant occupied pride of place at the center of the arrangement, his large limp ears, the recipients of countless secrets, draped loosely over his companions.
She leaned down to watch his face in sleep, knowing that there was nothing that she wouldn’t sacrifice for him. A truth that at once sustained and haunted her. Exhausted, she sank into the overstuffed chair in the corner.
chapter fourteen
It was, perhaps, the smallest measure of time. The moment between sleeping and waking when everything was as it had been before. It was gone before she took her first conscious breath. Replaced in a rush of memory. In the near darkness of the early morning, she kept her eyes shut and willed herself to remain still as it broke over her. But her body betrayed her, calling up sensations, playing them out on her motionless limbs like a movie flickering on a screen. For a while she was unsure if it was memory or desire. And then she wanted to sleep again. Just to have him once more. Just to feel him leave her. Just to lose him again.
And then Will’s voice. “Mummy, did you sleep in my room for all of the night?”
She opened her eyes.
That morning, she made Will egg and soldiers for breakfast and then walked him to school, one hand in his, her other hand empty. Returning home, she climbed the steps outside the house, stopping before the front door, toes balanced on the top step, heels hanging off the edge, the polished lion staring back at her, brass ring clenched tightly between bared teeth. Not a hundred yards away on the opposite side of the road, she had spied the distinctive low haunch of the silver sports car. Surprise was not what she felt. She couldn’t see him, but she felt him watching her.
After a moment, she turned and walked back down the steps. As she reached her car she heard the hollow growl of an engine revving to life. She didn’t have to look in her mirror to know he was behind her as she drove into Shoreditch. She concentrated instead on the roads, gripping the wheel tightly as a black cab stopped short in front of her and lorries edged dangerously close to her lane. A bicyclist ran a stoplight just in front of King’s Cross and she caught her breath as a car missed him by inches. All around her the city was suddenly crowded and dangerous.
She parked her car within sight of the entrance and watched him enter the building. She sat in the car, hands still on the wheel. There didn’t seem to be anyone about, but she let five minutes pass before following him inside.
“You shouldn’t have done that. Someone might have seen you.”
He pulled her to him. She pushed back, but his arms were already around her waist. She gasped as his hands slipped under her sweater and up her back.
“No one saw me.”
“Someone might have.”
“No one did.”
“It’s reckless.”
He leaned his forehead against hers. He knew that her words were not intended for him.
“I know.”
His head slipped lower, his mouth moving on her neck. She tilted her head back, her body rising to meet his. And then he was pulling the sweater up over her head.
Later, resting under his hands, she looked down at the layered composition of their convergence. In the foreground the span of his arm across her waist. Below that, the long gentle camber of her thigh flung over his hip. Listening to his heart beating against her chest, she knew that it was worth the risk.
She scanned the room, taking in the well-organized space with its industrial furniture and fans and neatly labeled shallow drawers. The sleek metal tubes of paint, dangerously sharp pencils in their clean glass jars, unopened boxes of charcoal, pads of sketching paper, and different-size brushes and knives, laid out like in a surgery. The bright, neat space was far away from the rue Garancière. This building had originally been a factory. An efficient space designed to produce things. A place of expediency and of quotas, not of passion and creativity. It all seemed cold and contrived. Borrowed and temporary, like the car. Separate and distinct from Daniel. Above her, clouds swirled in the milky sky. Daniel shifted beside her. He was awake.
“Did they sell? The paintings in the show.” Her voice seemed insubstantial and small in the large space.
“Yes.” She felt him breathe the word into her hair.
“All of
them?”
“Nearly. Martin wanted to save some for New York.” She tensed at the name, but Daniel didn’t seem to notice. His hands moved slowly, deliberately, over her skin.
She thought of the paintings and of what they represented. Arranged on the walls of the gallery, tracing the arc of their story. Now where would they go? Scattered in various strangers’ homes and offices and galleries. Separate. Out of context. She imagined the painting of her in the blue bath hanging over Malcolm Jeffries’s desk. What would their new owners see in them? They would never know their entire story, but maybe they would see pieces of the passion—both bright and dark.
She wondered if anyone would really know the entire story. Or if they would simply be drawn to the parts of it that appealed to them. And once they had found what they needed, they would stop looking for more. Had Daniel stopped looking after finding her? By leaving him had she given him back something to search for?
She closed her eyes and concentrated on his hands on her skin. She thought about how the paintings had become something other than what she had known them to be.
“It doesn’t bother you to give them up?” she asked, her eyes still closed. His fingertips did not leave her skin, tracing her shoulders, her neck, her jaw, mapping the constellations of freckles.
“No. They brought you back. What more could they owe me?”
Watching as the whole sky drifted past piece by piece framed within the windows above them, she moved the flat of her hand over the scarred topography of his body, reading it like Braille. She was sure that she remembered every last scar, but there were new ones now. She lingered on the thick, raised lines that ran along his wrist above his veins. And then slowly, deliberately, she drew her hand across the line of his shoulder into the hollow of his throat and then down his chest and felt him turn in to her, his hands seeking her instinctively.
He lingered just inside the door as she was preparing to leave that afternoon. As she came toward him he hesitated, his eyes on her face.
The Blue Bath Page 16