“So now what?”
“Come to bed.”
“I’ll be up in a minute.”
Kat stood by the window looking out at the bare trees. Frail and brittle, they seemed powerless to hold the darkness back and it came closer, whispering at the glass. She waited there long enough to be sure that he would be asleep before climbing the stairs. Their bedroom faced over the garden at the back of the house, so there was no light from streetlamps. She was grateful for this as she lay unseen in the darkness.
She had never seen him like this. So bowed. Almost broken. Was it really possible that the board would take the company from him? It seemed unthinkable. Jonathan had always been his own harshest critic. Perhaps he was overstating it. But he was likely right that if they were going to do it, they would do it soon. She knew that he couldn’t bear anything else now. She owed him time. She owed him more than that.
The next few days passed slowly. True to his word, Jonathan was home more than usual. Will was delighted to have Daddy along for the school run some mornings, insisting that he come through to his classroom so that he could be shown around and shown off. He was even home for dinner in the evenings. Kat cooked elaborate meals, planning the menu and visiting specialty providers for each ingredient in turn, just as she would do for dinner parties. Cheese and bread from Clarke’s on Kensington Church Street, fruit and vegetables from Michanicou Brothers on Clarendon Road, lamb from Lidgate. She did so compulsively. Anxiously filling the hours until she could collect Will from school. In the evenings, they sat together in the dining room at one end of the long table. Framed inside the window, they must have made a pretty picture to anyone looking in from the road outside. More than once she caught herself looking out into the darkness, wondering if someone was.
She stopped counting the number of times she thought she glimpsed him on the road outside the house or on the High Street, or heard his car driving by at night. Was he even in London anymore or had he gone to New York for his next show? The last thought haunted her. The possibility that he could already be gone.
Kat slowed down unconsciously as she approached the school gates with Will. The weather was warmer. She hung back from the crowd, listening to the hum of the conversations and laughter. She wondered about the seductive power of the single perspective and the way it made mysteries of others. She wondered what more there was to each of these women than what she saw.
The large double door at the top of the steps had opened and children were beginning to file up the steps in their navy-blue-and-red uniforms. She edged closer to the school, wading waist-deep into the crowd of children until Will squeezed her hand. She leaned down and kissed him, her lips catching a loop of curl and pressing it to his forehead before he disappeared. After a moment he appeared in the open doorway at the top of the steps, pausing briefly under the pediment before making his way inside.
She made her way home slowly through narrow streets lined with red brick Victorian mansion blocks and tidy stucco-fronted cottages. Past blue plaques commemorating that John Stuart Mill, philosopher, had lived here, and that T. S. Eliot, poet, had lived and died there. History, all that had come before, reduced to spots of color. Glazed blue ceramic disks on a wall.
She had run through the parks that morning, altering her usual route only slightly, so she came and went through the gate on the mews, rather than having to cross in front of the embassy. She ran sluggishly, aware that her times were off. Gravity seemed to lean more heavily on her.
Jonathan was still upstairs when she returned home. She could not remember the last time he had slept so late. He was clearly still exhausted from the travel and stress of the past few weeks. The package lay on the front hall table on top of yesterday’s post. She glanced nervously at the return address. Eliasson Architecture. She carried it through to the kitchen and opened it on the table. Inside was a small thick compliments card in Smythson’s Nile Blue and a set of architectural drawings. She read the card.
Dear Mrs. Bowen,
Please find enclosed revised plans for your home at 31 Holland Park. What we have endeavoured to do is to strip it back to its basic elements and then build from that. Everything we are proposing serves only two purposes—to highlight the essential elements and beauty of the house, and to create a space that suits your life. We have attempted to be true to the history of the house and to the way in which you wish to live your life.
To this end, the mouldings remain, as does the original flooring on the ground and first floor levels, along with the staircase and the windows. We do not recommend refurbishing the floors or the woodwork. We have left the signs of age, of wear, the markings of its history, its scars.
As you reminded me when we met, the quality that is required most with a house like this is restraint. Sometimes it is that which remains unfinished that remains most beautiful.
Of course, only you can decide what is essential.
Kindest regards,
Charles Eliasson
She removed Will’s breakfast dishes from the table and spread the plans out before her.
This time she recognized the now-familiar bones of the house. The large entryway and the sweeping staircase at its heart, the thick exterior walls. Examining the drawings, she saw that the layout was more open. The wall between the dining room and kitchen had been replaced with a segmented arch, creating a single spacious, light-filled room, with direct sight lines into the garden. The bricked-up side windows on the upper floors had been opened. She noted with surprise that the canopy over the front walkway had been retained. While it was not original, she saw that it served a purpose. The excessive decoration that had characterized the previous plans had been replaced by a pared-down, functional approach that allowed the original beauty of the architecture to come through. The house seemed to have returned to being a vessel. Something that served them rather than something they served. A marriage of life and history. A compromise. It wasn’t what it had been before. It wasn’t all that she wanted it to be. She wondered if it could ever be enough.
She almost missed the stiff envelope clinging to the package. It had already been opened and the exposed glue had adhered it to the underside. She pulled out the card and read it. “Sir Richard Hawthorne and the Cavendish Restaurant Group invite you to the opening of the Tate Restaurant, 21 February.” Her eyes scanned to the bottom. “Featuring original artwork by Daniel Blake.” The card trembled in her hands. She saw that Jonathan had already filled in the response card indicating that they would attend.
She tried to think rationally. Just because it was Daniel did not necessarily mean that the paintings were of her. But the car keys were already in her hand. She told herself that there was only one way to be certain. The now-familiar route to the studio elicited a kind of Pavlovian anticipation that mingled with her growing fear, so that she arrived at the studio in a profound state of disquiet.
The main door to the building was propped open with a thin wedge of raw wood. She thought about removing it after she entered. It didn’t seem safe. But she replaced it, trapping it between the door and the frame. Her knocks on the studio door produced a series of sharp echoes that traveled the length of the long hallway. After a few moments, she rapped again on the metal, harder, the noise reverberating and then dying in the space. She knew he was here. She had seen his car outside.
When he finally opened the door he wavered briefly before pulling it open wide without a word. She slipped past him under his outstretched arm. He was unshaven and his hands were streaked with color. The fans were switched off and there was a ripe, sweet smell in the still air. Turpentine.
“I just…” She took a quick breath. Her mouth was dry. “I just got this.” She pulled the folded invitation out of her coat pocket and held it out to him. “An invitation to the Tate opening. It has your name on it. Original artwork by Daniel Blake.”
He said nothing. He was smiling at her. She lowered the invitation. It had seemed important that she bring it with her, but it ju
st felt ridiculous now. The metal radiator along the far wall began to hiss.
“Daniel.”
“I knew you would come back.”
He was still smiling at her, although he seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes on her, he kept looking past her. She turned around. A large unfinished canvas sat on a low easel behind her. She recognized the shape. He had transferred her outline from the wall to the canvas. But this was no mere outline. Although it was far from finished, the color had been blocked in and the detail had begun to emerge. Unlike the pure, almost sculptural form on the wall, this figure had weight and warmth and substance. She cringed, taking in the bared flesh, the thickening middle, and the start of faint silvery markings spreading across her white belly. The downturned breasts, bordered by the outlines of an arrangement of soft limbs. Her face, with its sad mouth, was half turned away. A thin sheet, an afterthought, lay next to her. Used. Discarded. Was this the way he saw her?
She turned back to him. He was gazing at the portrait, his head tilted to one side.
“This for the Tate?”
He didn’t answer, eyes still on the painting before them.
“Daniel. You can’t do this. You can’t put this on the wall of the Tate.”
“I signed the contract.” He turned to look at her. “With the money we can get away. Then it won’t matter what’s hanging on the walls of some restaurant in London.”
He looked back at the portrait. He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t hearing her.
She followed his gaze to the painting and all its immediate, irrefutable detail, desperation and dread rising in her chest. Here were her sins. Reduced to what fit within this rectangle of stiff cloth. A single image, a single perspective. Without explanation or palliation. And while people might not have recognized her nineteen-year-old face on the walls of Penfields, this was certainly a more familiar face. The canvas seemed to expand before her. Here was what Jonathan would see. What Will would see. It would become the truth. That, she knew, was what art did.
Her heart was racing. No. No. No. She would not allow this to happen. Not now. Not like this. Daniel was saying something now, but she couldn’t hear the words. The sound from the radiator had evolved into a thin, high-pitched scream.
The flat blade was cold against her wrist. Her fingers closed around the wooden handle. He hadn’t seen her pick it up. She moved toward the portrait. Close-up, the detail overwhelmed her. Her thighs, her stomach, the hollow of her hip, the weight of her breasts, her shoulders, her neck. Her face. The ruins of her. She crossed in front of the portrait and stepped behind it.
And then she was gone. The painting was between them now. The blank back of it stiff and tightly drawn between its wooden bracers. A different possibility. Just as real as what was on the other side. She relaxed her fingers and felt the knife slide down the inside of her wrist.
She heard him moving on the other side of the portrait. It had to be now. She lifted the blade over her head. Feeling its lightness, she brought her other hand up and, grasping it desperately in both hands, drove it down with all the force she had inside of her. She felt the canvas give way gratefully under the sudden pressure and heard the ragged sound as she pulled the blade through the thick cloth. The portrait wobbled dangerously and there was a sharp, short cry. She stepped back, pulling the knife out as the painting listed to one side and then clattered to the floor, bringing the easel down with it, and revealing Daniel hunched over, clutching one hand in front of him, eyes wide with pain and confusion. Blood trickled from a small angry gash at the base of his palm.
Seeing the wound triggered an automatic response in her and she reached for him. He recoiled, stepping backward, knocking into a low table and sending various jars and metal containers crashing to the floor. She looked down to see the knife still in her hands, and pushed it from her, sending it spinning across the floor to the far wall, where it lay inert.
Once she was disarmed, Daniel reversed direction, veering past her to the painting. His knees sagged and he fell beside it, leaning across it to inspect the wound, a long vertical tear bisecting her forehead and left cheek. His fingers traced the scar, gently feeling along its edges.
She inched closer, peering at the rip from above. It gaped back at her in mute surprise, a fine down of severed weft softening its hard edges. As her shadow moved across the canvas, she saw that there were several bloodstains just underneath the tear. The largest, a bright red dime-size ellipse, with a short tail pointing downward. He must have been trying to move the portrait, maybe tilt it forward on the easel to see her behind it, when the knife had found him.
He turned to look up at her, his face a mask of confusion. “What did you do?”
She didn’t answer. Looking down, she saw that there was more blood on the canvas now. Small florid drops of it had collected above her shoulder. She watched, transfixed, as more traced a diagonal slanting path down the underside of Daniel’s forearm, falling from his elbow. He saw it, too. “Shit!” He scrambled to the side of the fallen portrait, landing sitting on the floor beside it. She stood frozen, her eyes on the vivid trail of blood migrating down his arm.
As she watched, he drew his hand absently across his shirt, leaving a bloody smear in its wake. The lurid stain woke her from her shock. “Daniel!” She cast about, looking for something to help stanch the flow of blood. There was a collection of paint-covered rags mounded under the legs of the upturned easel. She knelt and reached for them. The floor around the easel had acquired fresh spatter; she could feel it sticking to her. There were several discarded brushes strewn about on the concrete floor, their bristled heads crusted with newly dried pigment.
Kat grabbed a fistful of the rags, but they were too small. Kneeling beside him, she pulled the scarf from her neck and wrapped it around his hand, the blood immediately soaking into the soft material. Up close, she could smell it. A heavy, primal odor. She pulled hard on the ends of the scarf, straining until the flow of blood stopped, and knotted it. Her hands were shaking.
He reached up and touched his fingers to her mouth, the slight pressure parting her lips. She could taste him. It was almost more than she could bear.
“Do you really want to save me?”
“Of course.” She spoke the words softly without moving her lips. After a moment he sagged back against the wall and his fingers fell away. The charcoal outline was above him, already smudged and fading. His eyes fixed somewhere behind her, an expression of despair etched on his face.
“I’ll give you up. If that’s what you need. I’ll do that for you, but you can’t ask me to stop painting you. You can’t take that from me.”
“Why me, Daniel? What about all those other women?”
He turned to face her, his head still resting against the wall behind him. “What other women?”
“The girl from the gallery.” Kat turned to where the sketches had been taped to the wall, but they were no longer there.
Daniel leaned forward, following her gaze to the vacant wall. “Annabel? Her father is paying me to paint her portrait. It’s just for money, Kat. That’s all.”
“But, she was at the gallery with you. And the other women. In New York.”
He shook his head. “None of that is real. It’s all just … Martin thinks it’s good for me to be seen with them.”
She said nothing.
He lifted his head and faced her. “There’s no one else. After you left, I lost myself for a while. I did some things I’m not proud of. But, all these years, it’s only ever been you.” He looked down at the painting and then back up at her, his eyes the color of water. “Don’t you see that?”
She looked down at the portrait beside them. She saw now that the surface had been heavily reworked, wiped down and started again, the layers of paint imbuing the figure with an almost corporeal presence so that it seemed to float above the raw canvas that surrounded it. There was a confidence, a sublimity to the rendering, that made it seem whole even in its unfinished state. She lea
ned in closer, brushing her fingers against the bright white weave of the still-unpainted spaces.
She lies across the bed. A vertical streak, a willful smudge. All her colors pressed and pulled into the sheets. They bleed together so that in some places it is impossible to say where one ends and the other begins. Her face, turned to the side, seems to consist entirely of darkness and light, in all their infinite combinations. Softened by shadows, she is neither old nor young. Her eyes are closed. The tips of her front teeth visible where her lips part.
The sheet is bunched loosely beside her hip. A vestigial modesty. There is a heaviness, a weariness to her. A stillness, which she has paused within and seems reluctant to leave. It is an image not only of the moment itself, but of all that came before it. That which has already passed.
Buried somewhere among the overlaid paint, Kat recognized the shadow of the girl she used to be. In her eyes maybe and the bones of her face. In the delicate flush of her cheeks and gentle softening of her aspect. It was the kind of insight that came from pure understanding, independent of context. Daniel’s unwavering gaze, undeterred by time or even by absence. And she understood at last that this was what love looked like.
Just as she turned back to Daniel, she heard the rusty rasp of the door swinging open. She hadn’t heard a key in the lock, but she hadn’t seen Daniel close it either. Martin. He stood in the doorway, looking as disheveled as she could remember seeing him, the narrow point of one of his collars poking up indignantly from his shirt. His expression of mild surprise when he saw her quickly escalated into shock as his eyes fell first on the lacerated portrait, then on Daniel’s bloodied shirt and arm.
“What the devil?” He stepped inside and shut the door abruptly behind him, looking from Daniel to Kat and then to the damaged portrait that lay beside them.
“It was an accident,” Kat said. “I … I didn’t see him. I didn’t know he was there.”
Martin’s eyes left the wounded canvas and moved to where Daniel was, still sitting beside the portrait, one hand cradling the other close to his chest. The radiator had run out of breath and was now emitting a frantic metallic clanking.
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