Looking Down

by Fyfield, Frances

  Richard Beaumont had turned the matrimonial bed into a scene of carnage, which Sarah guessed Lilian would long to clear into the order that prevailed everywhere else. A satin coverlet had been thrown to the floor, a dismembered newspaper had been discarded sheet by sheet to the four corners of the room, looking as if he had chewed it first. The bedclothes erupted around him, the table by the bed was littered with small bottles of pills and three different unfinished glasses of fruit juice. His own presence was untidy and large among the delicacy of the lace-edged pillows, hair sticking up on end, his pyjama jacket wrongly buttoned, giving him a sleepy but belligerent appearance. In Sarah’s view, pyjamas were an abomination on a man. A vase of tulips drooped and twisted on the dressing table he faced. He looked like the proverbial bull in a china shop, with a large, swaying head, wondering what to smash next. He saw her out of the corner of his eye as his head was turned to the open window, as if seeking a route of escape. Then he smiled, faintly.

  ‘Have you come to tick me off? Hello, Sarah.’

  She sat on the crumpled duvet at the foot of the bed, regarding him from a distance.

  ‘What I’d like is strong amber drink, like the sort the doctor keeps in his car. I want sea and cliffs and a view.’

  He was aggressive and defensive in one.

  ‘There’s one thing I wanted to ask you,’ she said, ‘before I talk to you at all. Did you seduce Minty? What I mean is, did you lead her on? Only if you did, if you made her follow you and then ran away from her, I shall despise you for ever. If you made her follow you, and then abandoned her, that’s despicable, to put it mildly. You don’t have to answer but I do need to know.’

  He had surprisingly stubby hands, toying with the duvet, clawing at it without desperation, the fingers agile, as if dying to do something else, expressing the energy that wanted to be somewhere else. He groaned.

  ‘Do you think I haven’t asked myself that? Again and again, since I manage to forget almost everything? No, sweet Sarah, I didn’t. I looked at her, that’s all. I watched her move, stared at her. Like I look at all women. I stared at her when she sat downstairs. That’s all. She was rather graceful. She was a body and a face.’

  ‘And you might have encouraged her, by the looking.’

  ‘Not as far as I knew. I looked at limbs and features, without desiring, or promising, I promise you. She had my limited sympathy, that’s all. Oh no, I didn’t encourage her. Believe me, Sarah, please, I didn’t. What would she want from an old man?’

  ‘An old, rich man.’

  ‘An old man, with a mind going south, but the same old habits of fidelity. We do exist, you know. I look, never touch, unless very specifically invited by one woman at any time. Lord, you know that. I’m losing my marbles, but not my habits. Not my scene. Never done it. But I looked, I always look, I record it in my mind. Live models are hard to find. I love shapes and faces.’ He paused.

  ‘I’ve been working it out. Fritz told her where I went. I always told Fritz exactly where I was going, even described the places, in case I forgot. He might have thought I would help her more, at the right price. He might have encouraged her to follow. Fritz would never understand that a man goes off, really wanting to be alone. Not a man my age, anyway.’

  Fritz had never quite been what he seemed. Sarah knew the man she faced fairly well. As well as you ever knew any man.

  She made herself more comfortable. Difficult with hands crossed across bosom, perched on the very end of a vast bed.

  ‘What’s the matter with you?’

  ‘They don’t know. Could be the ghastly breathlessness which precedes heart attack. Shock, blow to the head, more of a cuff, actually. Seeing Lilian come through the door with the light of everything behind her.’

  He coughed, painfully.

  ‘Maybe a cold. And because I’d been remembering earlier what I’d done and I was already ill with shame. I’d run away and hidden from that girl, because I knew she wanted something I couldn’t give and it was a sunny day, when the light was perfect and there was so much else to see and do. And then I drew her. I didn’t know who she was any more than I cared. She was a form. A model. She was there.’

  ‘An it.’

  ‘That’s what’s wrong with me. The ice chip.’

  She counted her fingers, yet again. ‘I found your painting of her. It’s a good painting.’

  ‘I’ll never do a good painting. Never.’

  ‘The difference between an amateur and a professional,’ Sarah said in her official voice, ‘is that either can produce a masterpiece, although one does it more consistently than the other. The learner can do it as well as the master, but not often. You did it.’

  ‘Something with zing,’ he murmured.

  ‘And you do it at a cost,’ she continued. ‘To yourself and other people. You have to push people aside, I suppose. Why should they understand what you want to do? Perhaps all artists have to be shits, one way or another. By which I mean, full of selfish determination, not to miss the light, or the chance of a live model, even if she’s dead.’

  ‘Are you criticising, Sarah?’

  ‘No, simply observing. In case you didn’t realise the cost. And what will really break your heart.’

  His stubby hands had grown quiet. He reached for one of the fruit juice glasses.

  ‘I do,’ he said. ‘And I shall have to go on paying and coping with my losses. And my mistakes. And living with my shame.’

  She knew there was no worse punishment than that.

  Lilian whistled down the hall.

  ‘John sends his regards,’ Sarah said, formally. ‘He thought you might need male company, and says you’re welcome. He wants to paint his house, and bury a body, with style.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Guard against all risk of fire

  Spring had reached its zenith and faded out to make way for the less exotic pleasures of summer before the girl known as Minty was buried in accordance with her sister’s wishes in a shady English churchyard, chosen for its similarity to something that was home.

  A West End dentist named William found that he had hired an attractive young woman as a part-time receptionist, although he had not been aware that he needed one. She was a student the rest of the time, and although her command of English was not good, it was better than most of his patients’ and improved rapidly with her studies. It was when she began to smile more, he noticed how useful she was. She kept the patients at bay. She would go far, he thought, and the bit of weight she had acquired since she began suited her.

  Dr John Armstrong promised himself he would tend this grave and knew he would keep his promise. Look at you, he said to Minty: look at the lives you touched and changed. For the better, child: all for the better. Look at the hole you made.

  He had asked his daughter if she would visit him and go to the funeral with him, and to his delight she readily agreed. You only needed to ask, she said. You shut me out: I thought you would never need me.

  A Chinese woman was arrested departing the country with a suitcase containing a valuable painting, ownership of which she could not explain, nor the cash in which it was wrapped. She was arrested as the result of anonymous information. Following that, forty Romanies, each with a yellow necklace, sought asylum in return for evidence. The deal was being considered. The process would take some time.

  Lilian Beaumont was busy, decorating the penthouse in an entirely different style to the flat below. She had plans for a lofty gallery, or something else, and had permission for either. She sang as she worked and complained about nothing.

  After a day too hot for the time of year, the cliffs were covered in a dense, kindly mist.

  Some might suggest,’ John Armstrong said to Richard, ‘that it is a waste of time sitting on a clifftop when there is absolutely nothing to see. It might clear in a minute.’

  The early-morning, late-spring mist quarrelled with the threat of heat, swirled around them, ee
rie and thick, making them feel as if they hovered above ground themselves, weightless and invisible.

  ‘I thought that was the whole purpose. To be content to see nothing. To have a new experience. I’ve never been out here when it’s been as mysterious as this. Exhilarating in a way.’

  ‘Now why would that be?’ John asked, gently.

  ‘You and your whys . . . is the word never off your tongue? All right, here goes. The mist saves me, because it blots everything out. I have to listen instead, and concentrate on what I can hear. That’s good for me. It defines what I have to do: listen, concentrate, instead of trying to capture. I always hate that, when someone looks at a painting and says, he’s really caught something, hasn’t he? As if it was there to be tamed and reined in and put in a cage. Although that is what I was trying to do. Trying to capture what I could no longer remember. Train my memory; beat it into submission. It’s easier just to listen.’

  ‘Then you might get haunted by sound.’

  ‘Yes, but I know I can’t reproduce it. Whoever heard of a sound artist?’

  ‘What else is a musician, or a composer? They might be similarly tormented.’

  The hovercraft hummm filled the sky, throbbing into a climax of echoing sound, then dying away. A requiem sound. A reminder of life in the mist. They sat peacefully, two no longer young men, happier on the bench than on the ground.

  ‘Your memory is better than it was,’ John said.

  ‘Like the curate’s egg, good in parts. Good when I’m with you, and I know not to be frightened by the blank patches. Better today, with this mist, because I know it’s a real mist, not the one that seeps into my head so often. And I know it will clear. Sometimes I wish my brain was clear, although at other times, I wish it would remain as foggy as this.’

  ‘You know you can stay as long as you like. And I know what you mean. Often better not to remember.’

  ‘That’s kind of you, John. You mean, perhaps, it’s better not to remember the things which shame you.’

  They stared into the mist from the new spot they had found by mutual consent, further away from the car park by the first overhang, still a long way from Cable Bay, a good spot, carefully chosen for the placement of the bench, donated by someone who had walked the cliffs and sat where they sat, countless times. It gave a sense of continuity. John was right. The mist was beginning to clear, form itself into mysterious threads, so that peering down and across they could begin to see the water. As the mist cleared, the sound of the sea rose from out of the blanket of fog, louder than before. The day promised well. Richard was good today, John thought, although he was still a man in mourning for a former self, the man he had been before the first stroke, and the second, equally mild one that followed the month before.

  ‘I’ve been thief and charlatan, honest broker and faithful husband,’ Richard said. ‘Done nothing I’ve been ashamed of, much. Not the sort of shame which burns, anyhow. Until I hid beneath that cliff.’

  ‘You didn’t kill her, Richard. Edwin did that.’

  In John’s humble opinion, Richard did not suffer from Alzheimer’s, or anything as inevitable. He suffered the physical effects of something else, as well as understated, formless grief, and if only Richard could believe it was capable of improvement it would improve. He needed faith in the vigour he still retained. He needed to know that he was not going mad. That he was not blind and could still see. Long enough to get out a sketchbook again.

  ‘For which Edwin will suffer such punishment it beggars belief, and does not bring her back. Imagine, never to come here again. Bad enough for you or I, with our quieter needs, but for someone like him? That really is the wrath of God. Hell in life, worse than death. What would you wish if you were he? To be dead, I think.’

  ‘What he did was wicked,’ John said, rather primly to his own mind. He did not wish to dwell on it, because he felt a dark responsibility for Edwin. Friendship had been offered by Edwin: he knew that, now. He could have changed the course of Edwin’s life, perhaps, if he had noticed or been curious. That was his burden. He could not share it. He handed Richard the hip flask, which was entirely contradictory to some other doctor’s orders.

  ‘Wicked? So is the punishment,’ Richard said. Then he added with unexpected vehemence, ‘She was only a woman.’

  John choked on his drink. ‘Only a . . . ?’

  ‘Only a woman who was in the bloody way. That’s what Edwin would think, isn’t it? Just another animal, of the lesser, female variety, a nuisance, a threat to something he held dearer. Moral values are movable feasts, John. He didn’t like women much, did he?’

  ‘He didn’t have many good role models, poor sod. He didn’t like anyone, much. He confessed to Sarah. Probably the only woman who ever hugged him.’

  There was a note of bitterness in his voice. Since he was having a good day and all his senses were keen, Richard noticed.

  ‘Sarah touches the untouchable, as well as the wholesome,’ he said gently. ‘There’s nothing Sarah would not forgive. She will use what she has. Every bloke needs a Sarah, once in their lives. But she’s Everyman’s. Woman’s, too.’

  ‘Every man who pays.’

  ‘Did you? Did Edwin? I did, in my time with Sarah, but then I had money to give, and preferred that kind of exchange. Don’t misjudge her, John, it doesn’t become you. She got your girl buried, and mourned. She finds the pathways, like a good witch. Like my wife will find hers. You can’t stop a woman. You can’t own one. Especially a tart.’

  The mist continued to clear and the sun’s reflection, ultravisible on the water, struck with a wondrous light. It looked as if the light came from beneath in a series of secretive spotlights, pointed up from beneath the quiet waves, sending signals to the unseen, watching birds. And other animals.

  ‘I’d hate to be a woman,’ John murmured, watching the sky.

  ‘So would I,’ Richard agreed, looking down at the sea. ‘And we rely on them too much to prop us up. Which is why they have to let us down.’

  He did not quite want the mist to clear. It was better it did not, so that he could listen, and accept the man he no longer was. After an interval of peaceful silence, he spoke again.

  ‘I’ll probably lose my wife, but most of all I hate losing my mind. And getting things wrong. Not only getting them wrong, but being sure I got them right. I got everything right in that bloody painting, didn’t I? But you tell me, time and time again, that I didn’t see a chough. I saw a raven, red in beak and claw. That was the end for me really. Having to doubt what I knew I saw. I could not bear what else I saw that day, although it became bearable. But I was so sure I’d seen that glorious creature, too. I saw it, I know I did. And like everything else, I was wrong. So sure I heard him, too. That voice, clatter clatter clatter. I’d known it once, though never well. That’s despair, John, I tell you. That’s when I knew I was going insane, and no further use for man or beast, or woman. No use to them, either. That made me cruel. The fact that I have to doubt not only about what I see, but what I hear. I knew then it was the last painting. The very last. That I was going blind as well as deaf, as well as unfeeling . . . ’

  ‘Listen.’

  A chisel against chalk, tap, tap tap, clatter, clatter, clatter, sounding cross, like an old scold, oh, bugger, bugger, bugger, sod you. Quork, quork. The mist drifted, and the bird rose into sight. The wingspan black and vast, the body small, and the bird yelled, carrying its red feet like the half-suspended claws of an aircraft, ready to land and still poised to claw. Emitting from the red beak a yak yak yak of protest and gossipy discontent. They stood in unison, mouths open, as the chough hovered over their heads, seemed to examine them as they examined it in return, wheeled and turned, before flying seaward, moving them from the bench to the very edge, so they could watch. The bird circled and dived, a silhouette of wings and fantail and curved, red beak, curious, first, pausing as if to look back, then plunging towards water and away. The Fire Raven, the Red-legged Crow, the Hermit Crow, Pyrrhoc
orax pyrrhocorax . . . Richard could remember all the names for it, and then it was gone, gone gone. They were practically dancing with excitement.

  ‘Oh, glory, glory be,’ John whispered.

  The mist cleared and the air was full of their shouted laughter. Louder than the sea.

  Define spring, Steven asked himself. He liked defining things.

  Spring is an interval in the equinox which falls between winter and summer, a period of growth and instability. It seemed inadequate to refer to a season of profound change as a mere interlude in which change occurred, whether one liked it or not. All that thrusting and thriving. The season developed, he could feel it in the pavements beneath his feet, and he had changed with it, significantly, in the last few weeks, had he not, although he had to admit to a useful consistency in most things. Such as making a mess and clearing it up. There were three criteria for a home, he had insisted throughout his brief, intense and ultimately productive quest. It must be light, must be high, must be secure; bugger the cost. Of course he should have done it months ago, but then there had never been the present imperative. He would never have been able to invite Lilian to any of his previous, cramped studios, however clean he had made them and whatever the quality of the fabrics, and he certainly could not invite her round to his sister’s. Ah, Lilian, dressed in white, dressed in red, undressed in particular. She liked it here. Said it felt safe.

  At the top of the house, small but sweet and not yet particularly comfortable, since it consisted of walls, chair, bed and a slightly irrelevant kitchen. From time to time he could hear trains from the station near by, giving him a sense of handy escape routes to other places and removing any feeling of claustrophobia. At a push, he could climb out, and in, although that was not an activity he wished to encourage in himself, or anyone else, now that he had responsibilities. He had checked the rear of the building assiduously. Oh, Lilian, so sweetly and only occasionally available, cleverly teasing him, her presence already celebrated by a photograph of her lovely self, sitting on the chair. Was she the catalyst to the new peace and the new home? Passion was fine but tiring. Energy was finite and far from inexhaustible. Passion also robbed him of something and he was not quite sure what. The ability to dream, for instance, and the desire to climb anything other than the glorious mountain of Lilian’s thigh, for instance. She liked the roughness of his callused palms. It could not last. He felt immensely rich, but wary of his own contentment.