Ivory

by Steve Merrifield

  “I have asked you before, but I have the need to ask you again about whether you are okay after what happened at King’s flat.” He spoke to the picture rather than Ivory, then looked at her when he had needed to rest for a moment.

  Her gaze wouldn’t meet his. It seemed unsure of how to express her answer. It was beyond a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Martin walked over to the desk set into one of the dormers and handed a sheet of paper and a pencil to her. She looked at them and frowned. She held the items in her hand and looked at them and Martin questioningly. She didn’t know how to communicate at all, yet she could understand those around her.

  He took the paper and pencil away and returned to his easel. “It doesn’t matter.” He lied. She had appeared disassociated from the scene. Perhaps she was. He tried to imagine how someone so devoid of communication, a skill taken for granted by those who had it, would feel after witnessing such a horrific scene like King’s death. Trapped with it, with no way of expressing what she had seen and how it affected her. Imagination wasn’t enough he wanted to share the experience.

  He wanted to disclose the terror he had experienced at being cornered. His fear of King. The agonising regret at going to that area. The thrusting shattered bottle. The vicious white-hot pain in his arm. The chaos of the struggle. King’s sudden shift from angry lunatic to whimpering victim. The blood. The coffee table. The slicing glass. The blood. The gurgling. The death. Each element battered him in overpowering attacks as his memory raped his consciousness.

  Martin gripped the edge of the canvass against the impact of the flashbacks, scattering his brush to the floor. His stomach muscles went into aching spasm around a withheld sob. Every muscle pulled against his control, dragging him into fits of sorrow stretching him across the chasm between sanity and unbridled despair. He sucked in a deep sobering breath and palmed the tears from his face and rubbed them from his beard.

  Ivory moved close to him and rested on her haunches before him. Her sudden proximity was discomforting. Her cold deep eyes fixed upon him. Her eyes seemed to have taken in all that Martin could remember of that night and all the emotions he had experienced and there was pain and sympathy in her face.

  “I’m sorry,” Martin croaked, feeling pathetic. His emotional vulnerability created a possibility for intimacy that frightened him. A heat rushed through him at the realisation and he looked away to the unfinished portrait guiltily. “Now, we should get back to work, or I will never get this finished.” His voice was strong and emotionless despite the fear of the moment he now did his best to distance himself from.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jenny awoke to the mattress depress from Martin’s weight as he attempted to angle himself under the covers. She could tell by the deliberation of his movements that he was trying his best not to disturb her. She allowed him to think he hadn’t and rolled herself to the edge of the bed. A brooding resentment caused her heart to flutter with the growing tension in her chest. It only began to subside when he settled into a playing dead rest.

  When had they both started hiding from each other?

  Things hadn’t been right between them since he had lost his inspiration for art. Being an art critic and working weekends in an art gallery she understood how important art was to an artist, and imagined that for someone with the creative fire, losing inspiration and living with only the cooling embers of a talent would be like being trapped in purgatory. Yet as much as she empathised, she had hoped that she and the children would have balanced out that loss in some way, that although part of his life had deteriorated he would take solace in his family, in Jenny. However, the domestic routine and Martin’s time consuming art itself had already fostered a distance between them. It left Jenny with an unspoken dissatisfaction that she had tried to overcome by being the perfect wife, the perfect lover, the perfect friend. Yet the effort only worked when the object of that enthusiasm actually wanted those things. The effort was not reciprocated except on birthdays or anniversaries. Not enough to satisfy and sustain her and their relationship. Jenny understood that they both needed very different things from life: Martin’s needs had taken him away from her, and her needs therefore remained unfulfilled.

  There had been pain with the confusion, and there was pain with clarity. Their relationship had been in a slow decay since they had met fourteen years ago. She had so admired his talent, his ability to find beauty in the world, and his passion for creation and aesthetic, yet somehow she had overlooked his detachment to the world and to people.

  Aside from his mother of course, his saintly Mother. For many years his mother had been the only woman in his life, and he had been fiercely loving and protective of her, probably ever since his father had the affair and left them both. His mother had idolised him in return, and although she had been desperate for Martin to get married, no woman was good enough. Jenny had survived his mother’s sly disapproving looks and the covert criticism of everything Jenny did and didn’t do. When she had died two years after they had met it had cemented Jenny and Martin’s relationship and accelerated them into marriage.

  They had met through art and their mutual passion for art had sustained them, and at times she now wondered if they had mistaken that for a love of each other. No. She hadn’t mistaken it, but she was almost sure Martin had done. Back when they had first met she had been at the peak of her career, writing articles for Art Monthly, Art on Paper, London Aesthetic, Time-out, Art Review and a few magazines she couldn’t even recall or find in the biggest WH Smith’s stores now. Since she had bumbed into Gloria Denza in Tesco the other day she had really been taking stock of her life and couldn’t believe how much she had let her personal life slide away after getting married and having Oscar and Finn. She didn’t regret marriage or children, but regretted not pushing herself to keep up with the latest artists and collections, or even maintaining her magazine subscriptions. She may have only existed in the art realm from an academic standpoint, an observer, but she had been pure bohemian in her passion for self-expression and love. She missed it.

  Chatting with Gloria, Jenny had learnt that she now had three children. She had scaled her career back to start with but had kept a firm grip on what she could do around raising her children. Then the editor’s position had come up at Fringe, a new and hip showcase magazine for fresh talent in the capital, and she had grabbed at it with both hands and refused to let go. It sounded tough but Gloria seemed happy. She was doing the things that Jenny had once wanted for herself.

  It had been so good to see Gloria again, their paths had crossed so many times back when Jenny had been on the scene, sharing many slightly sozzled drunken trawls around galleries, and in the light of day they had swapped opinions and copy to help each other out. They had even teamed up on a few articles and their ideas and talents had complemented each other well. Gloria had suggested Jenny getting back onto the circuit and writing from the perspective of someone with commitments, highlighting the not-to-be-missed new talent exhibitions and shows for the reader with limited time. Jenny had gone out on a limb and come back with the idea of writing from a family perspective, finding art that would be family friendly and encourage the young into art, possibly including Oscar and Finn’s opinions. Gloria had loved the idea. The invite along to Gloria’s office had seemed casual, but Jenny’s excitement at the prospect of returning to writing and critiquing made it now seem daunting, frightening even, as it was the opportunity to get more out of life. Something just for her.

  Jenny felt a great distance from her old self, but she took some responsibility in that, for although Martin had neglected her she had neglected herself in response. She hadn’t bothered to keep up with the latest dress trends, and had only dressed for practicality. It was going to Donnie and Bea’s at the weekend that she had realised it had been some time since she had treated herself to a makeover and styled her hair. She had withered in the shadow. The only time she felt truly alive was when she joined her father at the Ham and Petersham shooting range, or they fir
ed off his illegal handguns on the farm, and pumped a target full of holes. The slam of the striker, the split second pressure of expanding cordite and the kick of a weapon. It shook her back into life. Reset her soul.

  Something much more powerful than the recoil of a gun had awakened her to this clarity. Ivory. Martin had been quieter since the accident. Absorbed. Scared at times. He had settled into distraction. He was working again though. Slaving over a painting in the loft studio. She had slipped up into the studio to see it. The pale face and black eyes of the goth student still haunted her. There was an unnaturalness about the construction of that face, something she had criticised in his first painting of her. However she had seen Ivory as she had gone up to Martin’s studio, and found her appearance breathtaking. As if the vision of her had somehow permeated her eyes and mind with a lingering presence.

  She wondered if Martin could be having an affair. He hated his father for cheating on his mother. Martin had had very few relationships before he had met Jenny since his interest was too focussed on art. She had an idea that for Martin marriage was an expectation to be met. She guessed it was his mother’s expectation, and he would do anything to please his mother after his father’s betrayal. It was an achievement but not one he seemed to cherish. With the planned arrival of their first son, Oscar, a spark flared in Martin and he became a loving partner again. Having a child was possibly another expectation his mother had for him even though she had died by the time she had gotten pregnant. Everything had changed with their second, and unexpected, son. Maybe it tipped the balance of their lives too much towards being family orientated. Creativity and art had to be reprioritised. For a moment she felt sympathy for him, she understood what it was like to lose something of yourself, but these thoughts were just conjecture, and she had to guess because Martin didn’t talk about these things. He ignored them and covered them with statements on how nothing was wrong, and with weekly and predictable love making and occasional romancing with flowers takeaways and cakes.

  Ivory’s strange features haunted her. Jenny was sure the girl couldn’t be seen as attractive in the conventional sense, yet she couldn’t shake the ghostly face from her mind, and even as she drifted into sleep the image of Ivory remained as a phantom companion waiting to share her journey into dreams. The presence of her worrying thoughts subsided. Half-sleeping, the edge of her concern dulled. The sorrow dispersed into an intoxicating fog that seemed to dissolve her body around a warmth deep in her abdomen. The heat was welcome and caused her heart to quiver, her breathing to slow, and her ghostly feeling limbs to ache for sensations. She was being touched. Martin had reached for her.

  Martin floated, suspended in a cloying murky void that pressed against every part of his body and held him weightless. His outstretched arm disappeared into the gloom, creating sounds of muffled pleasure in someone beyond his depth of vision. Understanding the physics of his surreal environment he wriggled in the warm viscous fluid atmosphere that surrounded him and propelled himself forward. The pollution that clouded his surroundings broke into swirls around his motions but refused to dissolve or disperse, and he didn’t get any closer to the soft warmth he could feel around his fingers.

  He could just discern a pale shape in the murk as an undefined female form. The clarity disturbed by ripples that drifted away from the movement of his arm. She was suspended above the surface of the bottomless depths where he swam, and his arm reached out and into her. His face came close to the surface of the thick fluid and her skin caught the light like polished marble in moonlight. The thought of her awakened every cell in his body with desire. He knew who she was and he wanted her.

  He brought his knees to his chest, knowing that it would cause him to rise upwards. The surface broke over his face and the air hit him in a cold icy blast that numbed his flesh and shocked the breath from him. The thick fluid of the surface clung to his face and plugged his eye sockets, blotting his vision into a distorted mess. He frantically swiped at his eyes to see her.

  Two black eyes stared down at him like pools of thick crude oil as deep and captivating as the slime that held him. Below the eyes the face was warmed by that smile. A hand broke the surface on either side of him in a spray of slimy muck. They gripped his shoulders and the surface rushed over his head as he was dragged down. He thrashed and struggled in the depths. He didn’t recall needing to breathe when he had been under the surface before, but now his lungs clung to the single retained breath and ached with a desperation to draw in more. With all his strength he kicked his legs around, twisting himself on the spot and wrenching free of his attacker’s grip.

  A vicious face twisted into a snarl stared through murk stained red. A face with another face carved into it by cuts and scratches, blood drifting from them in threads that dissolved into the surroundings. A gargoyle of a face shrouded in red cobwebs. It opened its mouth and laughed with throaty demonic satisfaction before biting its yellow teeth together and growling in agony and knowledge “We are the same, you and I!”

  Martin’s scream destroyed the dream and he awoke above Jenny. He snatched his fingers from inside her, oblivious to her yelp from the rough action, and scrambled off her and onto his side of the bed. Sweat, cold on his back, her slickness cooling on his fingers. Jenny stumbled out from beneath the covers, clutched her groin through her nightdress and swore at him for hurting her. All Martin could do in his shocked state was stare at his hand as if it was stained with the sin of his lust while Jenny sobbed. “It wasn’t me, was it? It wasn’t me you were touching? It was her!”

  Chapter Twelve

  Martin was startled from sleep by the drone of the radio alarm clock sounding mid-song. He fumbled with the buttons and silenced it before rolling back. The quiet of the house filled the air with white noise. The world was holding its breath with him as he waited for Jenny to storm in and engulf him in one of her tempers.

  She didn’t come.

  Martin lay motionless for some time until he was convinced Jenny was not going to come and confront him about the night before. He got out of bed and quietly tucked himself into his oversized towelling dressing gown. He crept to the top of the stairs and waited. The gentle hiss of silence in his ears was not disturbed by any sounds from downstairs. This was out of character for Jenny as she liked to deal with incidents between them at the earliest convenience. He had to find her and explain as much as he could and apologise for his actions, and lie about everything else. He shook his head ashamed at himself.

  He reluctantly trudged from room to room and reset his slow mental countdown to confrontation with every door that he passed through and found that she was not there. First downstairs, then upstairs and finally into his studio. The house was empty. The black RAV4 they had bought to replace the written off Volvo was gone from across the road. There wasn’t even a note in the kitchen. She always left him notes. Even after an argument the status quo would be maintained by a couple of sentences scribbled down somewhere as ‘hellos’, messages, reminders, instructions for chores. This time there was nothing.

  It didn’t feel the same as the usual aftermath of an argument. There was emptiness and a presence of finality in the atmosphere of the house. Jenny hadn’t been her usual self since she had bumped into her old critic friend. She was taking pride in herself, making an effort with her appearance, wearing make-up. She had reverted back to the Jenny he had met when she had been working the art scene. He suddenly thought that he might never see Jenny come through the front door again, that in some way she had recently been preparing for this. A chilling relief washed through him. After struggling for so long with knowing that he was killing their relationship and being unable to know how or why, or being able to understand how he could maintain and save what they had, the end offered release from all the confusion. Yet he knew that the end of his family had somehow been due to him. The problems had been there all along, Ivory had just been a catalyst for the end. His father and King had been right about him after all.

  Mar
tin distracted himself from this conclusion by showering and dressing. He couldn’t face breakfast though, and with his morning routine finished he dropped himself onto the sofa in the family room with nothing to do. His portrait of their family life stood before him above the mantelpiece. A view of the family room from the portrait’s perspective, looking out on children playing together on the floor, Jenny sitting in her chair with her legs tucked under her, a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other, half-reading and half-observing the children. Martin on the sofa where he sat now, a glass of wine before him on the glass coffee table, a sketch pad propped up on his lap with some cushions, his face angled away from the scene in concentration on his work. It was a snap-shot of family life and a reminder of life before the black dog was at his back. It was a family scene that, despite the perfect likeness he had captured in every figure, was almost unrecognisable to him. He felt far removed from that life.

  He couldn’t find the motivation to move so he sat. Lost in numbness he passed the time watching the sunlight migrate down the wine coloured wall and onto the cream carpet. He considered watching it travel to the other wall and to wait for it to follow the same path the next day.

  The doorbell rang a single blast that startled him into life. Electricity danced in his stomach and his breathing quickened. He swallowed and rushed to unlock and open the door. Ivory offered him a fleeting smile as a greeting and then stood expectantly in the rain, sheltering under a broad black umbrella slick with wet and running with the fall. Her appearance, although arranged on their previous appointment, took him by surprise. He broke free of his hesitation and hastened her in from the elements.

  She shook the diamond drops from her umbrella onto the path then abruptly she looked up into his face with her deep vortex eyes, eyes that were all seeing. Feeling suddenly naked before her he rejected any consideration of his motives towards her and any ideas that he had lost Jenny and the kids. He was unsure if Ivory could sense his angst but he couldn’t look into her eyes, not after the dream he had had. Eyes that trusted him. Eyes, that he hoped, saw him as someone different to her other punters. He couldn’t bare the thought of her knowing about his dream and what he had been doing to her in it. He justified that it was just a dream. He couldn’t think of such things in the conscious world, his mind was defiant of the temptation and had maintained the innocence of his motives and intentions, yet in his dream world his desires ruled. He couldn’t be held accountable for dreams, their existence unexplained, and their inspiration, foundations and construction mysterious and anonymous. No one could judge him. She held him in the same intense stare that she had bored into him the night before when he had poured out his guilt over King.