The Painter

by Will Davenport

  Amy found them all at her second attempt. Every eye swivelled in her direction as she pushed the pub door open and there was a chorus of greetings.

  'Hello gorgeous,' said Jo-Jo, 'what are you drinking?'

  'Thank you,' she said. Pint of Guinness please, and the next one's on me.'

  The tattooed builder looked at her, surprised. 'Guinness?' he queried.

  'That's it. Strong black stuff, with a head on it. Like him.' She nodded at Gengko, sitting at the table, and they all roared with laughter. 'Is there a problem?'

  'No,' said Jo-Jo, 'I just didn't think a hairy chest would suit you.'

  'Well, I suppose you could order a Babycham with a cherry in it and a little umbrella if it makes you happier, but you'd have to drink it yourself because I hate the stuff.' She smiled to take any sting out of her words and Jo-Jo found he couldn't help smiling back.

  Dennis was chalking the end of a cue by the pool table. 'Who's next for ignominious defeat?' he asked. 'Step right up. Five quid says I beat you. Doubles if you like.'

  'Micky and me,' said Gengko. 'We'll take you on.'

  'That's a tenner then. Tel? Coming to give me a hand?'

  Tel shook his head.

  'I'll play,' said Amy, taking her pint and lifting it in a thankful toast to Jo-Jo. 'Here's my five.' She tossed a banknote on the table.

  There was a moment of silence while complicated emotions crossed Dennis's face. The bar was quiet as everybody looked at him. 'Oh, fine,' he said in the end. 'Um, let's go then, shall we?'

  Micky giggled as Amy picked up a cue and looked at the chalk as if she had no idea what it was for.

  'Make it twenty if you like,' he said casually.

  'Yes, okay.' Amy was equally casual. 'I mean, it's mostly luck, this game, isn't it?'

  Gengko broke, delicately bringing the cue ball all the way back down to the cushion and cutting one red out of the triangle, hardly disturbing the rest at all.

  'I'll go next, shall I?' offered Dennis hopefully and Amy shrugged.

  'Is it our turn?' she asked, and heard another giggle from Micky.

  Dennis crashed a hopeful shot into the triangle of balls and only succeeded in leaving a yellow ball poised over the middle pocket. Micky knocked it in, coming back perfectly lined up for another one and finished his turn by leaving the cue ball snookered by another yellow.

  'Oh gawd,' said Dennis. 'Look, love. You can't hit that ball, you see. It's got to be a red. I think we've had it. What you could do is …'

  'It's all right, Dennis,' said Amy. 'I have played before.'

  'How many times?'

  Amy got down to the table, squinting at the cushions. 'Once,' she said. She hit the ball. With massive side spin, it cannoned off the cushion, skewed across the table, knocked a red ball into the far comer pocket and came back to break up a cluster of balls, lined up perfectly for another red.

  'Or twice,' she added, pocketing that one too and following it with two more. She straightened up and looked round at a sea of astonished faces and was delighted to see that Micky was the most astonished of them all. Only Gengko was grinning. He didn't seem to mind the imminent prospect of losing his money.

  'Why are you so cheerful?' demanded Micky. 'It might have escaped your notice but we're losing.'

  'Goddam,' Gengko replied, shaking his head, 'there's nothing I like more than a sporty woman.' He put another two yellows down, then missed a tricky cushion shot.

  Dennis potted only one more ball on his next turn and Micky, playing flashily, put his side into the lead with two more.

  'Down to you, darling,' he said, as he made way for Amy, 'Used up your beginner's luck yet?'

  She smiled at him sweetly and cleared the table, ending with a stylish trick shot which sent the black ball round four cushions before it trickled into the bottom corner pocket. Everyone cheered except Micky.

  'Rock on,' yelled Dennis. 'Paul Newman, eat your heart out.'

  'Paul Newman?' said Amy.

  'Before your time, love. The Hustler. Brilliant movie. He goes round kidding everyone he can't play pool.'

  'What's pool?' Amy asked. 'I thought we were playing snooker.'

  'No,' said Dennis in surprise. 'We …' But she couldn't keep a straight face.

  Seated in amongst them at the table, Amy knew she was part of it all now. Gengko was next to her and she could feel the heat of the Jamaican's proud grin just as if he'd been with her on the winning side. Someone bought Jo-Jo a Babycham and they made him drink it.

  'This is all of you, is it?' she asked, looking round the table. 'Except for the Hawk?' She knew it wasn't.

  'And Don,' said Sandy, from the far end of the table, 'Don ain't here.'

  'Well, there's a surprise,' Eric said sourly.

  'Leave it out,' Tel muttered.

  'Don,' said Amy. 'He must be the guy in the black overalls, right? What's his story?'

  No one offered a reply but there were lots of sideways looks. In the end Sandy said, 'He's had a tough time.' And Tel, nodding support, added, 'There's not many who'd handle it like he did.'

  'Did he have some sort of accident?'

  Dennis snorted. 'Accident?' he said. 'No bloody accident. I should –'

  'Shut it, Dennis,' Tel cut in. 'We know what you think.'

  'Dennis has a point.' This from Eric the electrician. The temperature round the table was rising but Gengko suddenly got to his feet and slammed a fist on the table.

  'Stop,' he said. 'We don't do this. Not after last time. We agreed not to, right? Next one says anything about it has to buy a whole round, right?'

  Silence fell.

  'Now,' he said, turning to Amy, 'let's hear how you came to be world-class with a pool cue.'

  She spent the rest of the evening in their midst but if the big Jamaican was leading the race for her attention, her mind would keep drifting off to the shadow of the absent man in black.

  EIGHT

  Dawn made up for Amy's disturbed night down on the floor on her air bed. The small creatures who lived in the crannies of that dusty tower room scuttled over her on their accustomed paths. She had no particular fear of spiders but they startled her from sleep when they ran over her face and once in the night something that was much heavier than a spider hurdled over her feet. When the first light reached her window, she got up to look out. Amy never felt she knew a place until she had seen it all by herself, alone in the early morning, without any other humans to diven attention and break into the natural gradients of diminishing sound that give the sense of scale to a landscape. Forcing the window open on rusty hinges, she looked out across the fields. The Humber was an orange flood pouring into the sun's open mouth, gulping at the horizon. Rabbits were running and stopping and running again on the grass below the tower and pigeons clattered in and out of the trees. She soaked it up, filling her lungs with the freshest air until she heard movement in the next room and sensed that the man next door was also looking out of his tower window. Not wanting to share the scene, she got dressed, then took her sketch pad and went quietly downstairs.

  She crossed the dew-soaked field to her tree, rabbits scattering at her appearance, and this time she leant against it facing the house, drawing intently, stripping away the scaffolding and the huts and sketching in lawns, flowerbeds and pathways to give it back the status it had lost. The morning light gave it definition and detail to satisfy her pencil where the evening before there had only been indistinct shadows. Along the edge of the roof, the row of dormer windows showed the rooms where the other builders lived and from these, slowly, the sounds of awakening began to come – coughs, creaks, a burst of song, complaints. She went on drawing and was just sketching in the imagined grandeur of the front steps, flanked by stone urns, when the front door opened and a figure in black overalls, holding a bowl, came out and sat down on them, right in the centre of her picture, looking across at her.

  She finished her drawing, closed the pad and walked back towards the front door, as eager to see him more clo
sely as she was nervous at approaching him. Who was this man, Don, who seemed to inspire such strong and contradictory opinions among his fellows? She'd have to wait until she was by herself with someone, Gengko maybe, before she could ask. Don stared at her as she came nearer until she was almost close enough to see his face clearly, then he looked down at his bowl and stirred its contents around with his spoon. He's hiding the scar, she thought.

  She intended to pass him without a word but he spoke to her as she came close.

  'May I look?' His voice, stripped of the anger of the previous night, was deeper than she expected. The walls of some cavity inside her resonated with it.

  'At what?'

  'Your drawing.'

  She opened the pad and passed it to him.

  'You can see through time,' he said as he looked at it, then he turned the page back to where she'd drawn him the day before. The action felt like a violation, intimate and frightening in equal quantities. Something huge hung in the balance between them as he looked. The blood in her ears deafened her, but he looked at it without comment and turned another page or two.

  'Who's this?' He showed her the sketch.

  'Me,' said Amy, 'can't you tell?'

  'You? This is an old woman.'

  'That's how I'll look when I'm seventy,' she said.

  'Why do you draw yourself like that?'

  'I do self-portraits when I don't have anyone else to draw.'

  'This isn't a self-portrait. It's not what you see when you look in the mirror.'

  'I'm too young to be interesting.'

  'I might not agree with that,' he said. 'Tell me what you mean.'

  'I mean the marks time leaves make a face more interesting. I like to imagine futures for myself and try to draw the results. This one's sad, see? I met the love of my life at thirty and I was widowed at thirty-five. Never met anyone else after that. Moved to the Pembroke coast. Not much money, trying to make ends meet but I kept working, sold just enough paintings to get by.'

  'Is there another one in here?'

  She took it from him, riffled through the pages and showed him a full-face portrait. 'Everything went right. Museums bought my pictures. Four kids, and Richard built me the studio of my dreams on our own island. Then I forgot I had to paint. I had too much.'

  'Who's Richard?'

  'There is no Richard.' She opened the pad at the sketch she'd drawn of him. 'What do you think?'

  'You draw well,' he said. 'That's me.'

  'It's half of you.'

  'Oh yeah? Well double up that half, then you'll know what I used to look like.' He sounded so bitter.

  'Nobody's symmetrical,' she said. 'That's the whole point of faces.'

  'I wouldn't mind being symmetrical,' he said.

  'What happened to you?'

  'An accident. Okay? With a saw.'

  The words came wrapped in a vivid bubble of violent noise. He kept his head down. She could have said something obvious like, 'You poor thing,' but being Amy, she said, 'Can I draw you properly?'

  'Why would you want to do that?'

  'You've got a great face.'

  'I forgot, you like the marks of time. These are just marks.'

  'No. You've got a great face,' she insisted.

  He made a derisive noise.

  'You have,' she said, 'Maybe you just can't see it at the moment.'

  'I'd rather not see it,' he said.

  'But you were looking in a mirror in your room.'

  'Is that your business?' he demanded, then he softened. 'That's therapy. For my hand. I only look at my hand.'

  There was a silence while she wondered if she could ask what he meant but then he looked half up at her and said, 'Was that Parrish's book you were reading last night? The journal? Amelia's journal?'

  'You know it?'

  'He lent it to you already? That's a privilege.'

  Normal conversation felt good. If only he would look at her. She felt something starting to build in the space between them, as if a spark might soon jump.

  'It's because of Amelia,' she explained. 'I'm one of her family. My name's Amy Dale, you see. I think that amused him. Who are you?'

  'Amelia's descendant?' Amelia meant enough to him for a sudden gleam of interest to show in his eyes. 'You don't want to read that version,' he said. 'It misses out all the good bits. My name's Don.'

  She knew that but she didn't say. 'Don what?'

  'Don what does it matter? Gilby if it makes a difference.'

  It did. Don Gilby. 'Have you seen it?' she asked. 'The real book?'

  'No, they keep it safe in the archives. It's all on microfilm in the library. I've looked at that. It's difficult trying to figure it out but at least you can see it the way it really was, the handwriting. You've read the first bit in there?'

  'Yes. I want to read the full version,' There was a painter here. She calls him a "limner". The one she gets cross with.'

  'I remember.'

  'He's not a house painter, not a decorator. He's like you. I looked it up. It's the old name for a portrait painter.'

  'That's a sign, then. Can I paint you?'

  'What sort of pictures do you paint, Amy Dale?'

  'Not like photographs,' she said, 'I know I can't get inside someone else's skin, I'm here and you're over there and whatever happens when I look at you and start to paint is happening inside my head.' Encouraged by his silence, she went on. 'If I know someone well enough, I close one eye so that I lose the depth. Then I feel their face very gently with my fingers all over and my fingers tell me what I can't see. Sometimes I close my eyes completely and go on feeling, I like painting myself because I know how my face feels inside as well as outside. I can feel where the bone's pushing on the skin. Do you know what I mean?'

  'Degas's model said he scratched her skin because he kept measuring her with dividers.'

  'How do you know that?' she said.

  'Get stuffed.'

  'I meant …'

  'I know what you meant. You meant how does a builder know about art?'

  'All right. Yes, that's what I meant.'

  He sat down again. 'I was educated,' he said. 'My mother saw to that. Her and Mr Parrish.'

  'Parrish? The Parrish who works here?'

  'Long story.'

  'I don't use dividers, I promise.'

  He almost smiled. 'When you paint yourself, you're looking in a mirror, right?'

  'Right.'

  'So what you paint is the wrong way round. A self-portrait is a lie.'

  'Not to the painter.'

  'A photograph isn't a lie, but then you say you don't paint photographs.'

  'A photograph is a lie. When do you ever see someone completely still? Only when they're dead. Look at you. Look at the way you move. If I painted you, people would look at it and know how you move.'

  'You like the way I move?'

  She couldn't shift him from her head all the way into Hull, didn't even want to. At Peter Parrish's office there was a note for her, clipped to a street map. It said: 'Amelia, Called away. Back eleven-ish. Take a look at the old town. I've marked it. PP.' Amused by the old name he'd absently attached to her, she walked slowly down between the shops to a wide circus of grand civic buildings where a shopping mall had been built alongside the remains of docks, which were now full of plastic yachts rocking and jangling. The map took her east into the old town. She arrived at what was called the High Street, but the city's centre of gravity had shuffled west and left it to its ghosts. Only in name was this vacant, poignant road still a High Street, A side alley between decaying warehouses took her to the old merchants' wharves but all she saw was a handful of steel boats, barges, tugs and trawlers tied up on the other side of the Hull River.

  If she had been a well-briefed persistent searcher she would have found that old Hull had not been entirely obliterated by wartime bombs and post-war slum clearance. In Amelia's day, William Catlyn, the builder of choice for those rich enough to afford him, had built the Wilberforce house,
but now it looked too museum-clean, too well touched up to shout its age at Amy. The same Catlyn had also built a masterpiece of decorated brick and stone in the Dutch style for the merchant George Crowle, but now Crowle's house hid itself from Amy behind a charmless later facade. She walked straight past the side alley that still led to its old entrance, where she would have seen it almost exactly as Catlyn had left it.

  Once, Crowle and his fellows of the merchants' guild had their warehouses lining the river, treasure-houses served by their private quays, the staithes. As she looked at the last derelict survivors of those warehouses, Amy had only a fleeting sense of that busy past when everyday cargos came and went. Buildings were mostly inert and unenticing objects to her. She was a people person. The library was not far away. The library held the original copy of Amelia's journal, the spider traces of Amelia's voice. She asked directions.

  The local studies section was at the top of stairs separating the lending library from its community café. The building, from the outside, was Victorian Municipal in style but inside, its builders had known that a proper place of study needed polished oak, gothic glasswork and high ceilings to do its job and focus the attention properly. She went in thinking reference libraries were simple places where you found your book and sat down to read it but she was quite wrong. At the desk, they told her politely but firmly that special advance arrangements needed to be made before anyone could inspect Amelia Dahl's Journal. As her heart sank, they lifted it for her again by explaining that the general public could have access to the microfilm copy of the Journal and then immediately depressed her again by telling her that all the microfilm reading machines were booked for the rest of the day. As she turned away, the woman added that if any of the readers finished early, she was welcome to use the rest of their slot.

  She decided to wait and they got her the roll of film in its cardboard box just in case, so she sat anxiously watching the clock tick away the minutes towards her appointment with Peter Parrish at eleven o'clock. The microfilm roll in her hand was useless without the machine. For want of anything else to do, she even tried unrolling it and holding it up to the light but all she could see in each frame was the rough outline of a page with writing that was far too small to decipher. Blessedly, at quarter to eleven, the man on the end machine switched off its light, got up closing his notebook with an air of finality and stalked out of the room. It took three frustrating minutes for Amy to lace the roll of film through the unfamiliar cogs and wheels, only to have to do it all over again when she turned the knob to 'rewind' instead of 'forward' and saw her work unravel before her eyes. The machine was a combination of microscope and magic lantern and the dusty screen came to life with a blurred image which proved to be turned at ninety degrees to her when she eventually found the focus knob and pulled it into some measure of sharpness. A harassed woman at the next machine, tutting faintly, showed her how to swivel the whole mechanism around to make it readable.