All the Perverse Angels

by Sarah K. Marr

  I replayed their argument as I picked up the shards of broken lamp from the bedroom carpet. Penny’s version of it was brief, anodyne and impersonal, as though she were setting out an inevitability as a lesson to others. It was her written interpretation of all those Victorian paintings conceived from a longing to pass on some moral message. The fallen woman loses all and condemns herself and her children to destitution, or she turns away from her corrupt life in an epiphany of divine clarity. In either case, the invitation to the viewer does not offer an empathy with the players, but only a reflection on their inherent nature, their failings and moral inadequacies, their ability—or inability—to save themselves. There but for the grace of God, they say, and only then if grace falls upon a vessel of unquestioning acceptance. Penny, eclipsing her role as Olivia, had become a character in a painting of her own, a portrait of her own fallibility. In that, there were echoes of what I wanted her to be: not some living person into whose life I intruded, but the idea of a person, an outline that I could sketch and adorn and make my own.

  My thoughts wandered as I sat by the window, reading, looking for Diana, second-guessing Penny. I stopped whenever the words on the page started to blur and cast off their meaning: I would mark my progress, close the book and make a hot drink, or watch the to-and-fro of city dwellers on a London side-street. Once, I took down the painting and held it against the morning sun. The raking light added texture and depth to the surface of paint and varnish, showing me its alterations and corrections. I made brief notes. I read on with a drifting lassitude that might have suggested enjoyment.

  It was Alison’s idea that we go out for an afternoon. She tried to express her concern for me in words which papered over it, in proposals for activities which would do me good, rather than exhortations to avoid those which were hurting me. She wanted fresh air, I wanted warmth. She wanted to talk, I wanted peace. We compromised on an afternoon at the National Gallery.

  Inside the Gallery, away from the cold of Trafalgar Square, Alison and I hardly spoke. We had made the trip before, many times, and there was little left to say. Then we found ourselves in front of one particular painting and I became lost in the horror of the thing.

  I recognized the piece. I had been there too often not to have seen it, not to have appreciated its visceral presence, but it had never breached my academic armour as it did on that day. The little white card beside the frame read, “Two Followers of Cadmus Devoured by a Dragon, 1588”, and beneath that, “Cornelis van Haarlem”. There were a few lines of text explaining the scene, painted from another of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The followers of Cadmus go to fetch water from a well and are killed by a dragon which guards it. In the background of the painting stands Cadmus, driving his lance into the mouth of the dragon. It passes through the base of the skull, forcing the beast up onto its back legs as its front claws reach up, hopelessly, to slash at the weapon. But that is a vision of the future, time passing in the movement from front to back of the image in the frame. Come forward and one is amongst the followers’ slaughter. I fell into the butchery and with it a tangible reality. Penny had her Michelangelo study in red chalk—the demon gnawing the leg of a man—but it was nothing compared to the painting before me. The lips of the dragon turn back on themselves to expose rows of white fangs. It holds itself in place with its front claws, tearing at the flesh of one of the two naked men on the ground. That man’s upper body is hidden beneath the monster but his head is visible, torn off at the neck and dropped in the dirt, front and centre, eyes closed, mouth open, trachea gaping, a dark hole beneath rings of cartilage. And under that headless body the second man supports himself on his crooked right arm whilst he reaches up with his left, trying to pull the monster from him, trying to save himself, but failing, failing in the darkness which envelops him, failing because the dragon is biting his face off. The razored teeth pierce him and slice deep through the skin of his cheek. Rivulets of blood run down to his neck from each agonizing wound and the eyes of the dragon—the black, red-rimmed eyes of the dragon—stare out, beyond his prey, beyond the canvas, out at the next victim. I was the next victim. There was no way to move quickly enough, away from snaking tail, grasping claws, the long, red tongue that must be caressing the palate of the man before me. All I could do was cry, not quietly as at Saint Cecilia’s but loudly, obviously, becoming the focal point of the gallery, bringing people to my side.

  Alison put her arm around me and led me away. I had staunched the flow of tears and started to mumble a few words to her but she grasped my shoulder tightly and told me there was no need for apologies. We rested on a hard bench, facing Velázquez’s Rokeby Venus as the goddess looked back at us from her impossible mirror. Old scars. Alison told me it was normal to feel as I did, normal after everything. She suggested we leave, but it seemed too early to me, and there was nowhere to go apart from home, which was not really home, just a place to store purples and yellows, blues and paintings. Home could wait. I sat up straight and gave the necessary smile, the one which would mean I could stay out a little longer.

  “I’d like to see the Friedrich,” I said.

  “Which Friedrich?”

  “There’s only one. Come on.”

  We walked through the rooms of the gallery until we came to it: “Winter Landscape, 1811, Caspar David Friedrich”.

  “What do you see?” I asked Alison.

  “How do you mean?”

  “The painting. What do you see? What is it about? If you had to write a paper on it, what would you write?”

  “Okay,” she began. “So, it’s a snowy landscape. The foreground’s all white. A few tufts of grass poking through the snow.” She pointed at several small patches of green. “There’s a group of fir trees in the middle of the painting, five or six of them, and one or two more a little farther away. In front of the firs are grey rocks, boulders really. A man, maybe a boy, is sitting in the snow, with his back propped against one of the rocks. His hands are in front of his face, palms together. I’d say he’s praying. He’s facing a tall, thin cross, about half as high as the tallest tree, with a Christ figure on it which is maybe a third of its overall height. So, yes, he’s praying. And he’s disabled in some way because on a line from the bottom right of the canvas, across the snow to the man, two crutches have been left behind.”

  She waited for my approval, or some comment. I nodded.

  “And?” I asked.

  “And? Well, the obvious thing is the cathedral towards the back of the scene, where the snow fades into a misty skyline. The cathedral rises from the mist like it’s not real. Like a metaphor for heaven, maybe. It’s behind a wall with an open archway. The wall is just as spectral. I suppose Saint Peter could be waiting there. Do you want more? The placement of objects on the plane, the ratios and sizes? The paint and varnish? I’m sure there’s a technical bulletin somewhere.”

  Alison realized what she had said before I had decided if I wanted to respond or just walk away.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I think I’m hungry.” She paused, then faced the painting again and continued, “It’s about redemption through Christ. The man has found his Saviour, has made it through the snow to this point of closeness to God, and the gates of heaven are open to him. Don’t you think?”

  “I’m not as sure as I used to be,” I said.

  “No?”

  “No. Looked at another way, the man has given up. He’s stopped in the middle of nowhere, too tired to continue, too tired even to carry his crutches those last few yards. He’s going to die there, alone in the snow. And knowing that he’s going to die he prays to Christ in hope of heaven. So maybe you’re right, and the cathedral is Friedrich’s way of showing that his prayers have been answered. But part of me thinks that the mist and the fir trees hide the cathedral, block it from his view. It’s really there, real warmth and sanctuary, but the poor traveller doesn’t know it. He’s like a man in the desert, giving up and dying of thirst when there’s an oasis over the next dune. Maybe t
he cross shows he has someone to turn to, even then. The cynic in me sees it as the distraction which killed him.”

  Alison opened her mouth to speak, then closed it without a word. She shrugged.

  “Still,” she said, “at least he isn’t getting his face bitten off by a dragon.”

  She waited until I reacted and then allowed herself to match my grin with one of her own, part relief, part gratitude.

  “Yes. At least he’s not getting his face bitten off,” I said. “I’m sorry about all that fuss. I might have missed a pill or two somewhere. She’s not reminding me.”

  “No,” said Alison, taking my hand. “No, she’s not reminding you.”

  “I don’t want to sit and eat, Al, not right now. Can we walk a little? We could get you some chocolate or something, just for the time being. All right?”

  “All right. Where do you want to go?”

  “Nowhere in particular. I don’t have a destination, really. Maybe Charing Cross Road, that direction?”

  Alison agreed. We walked slowly along the northern side of Trafalgar Square, keeping our distance from the lions and Nelson, although they never even bothered to glance at us. The newsagent’s on Charing Cross Road was thoroughly run-down and rendered utterly dismal by the gloom of the London winter. It sold chocolate and snacks, though, which satisfied Alison’s immediate needs. I needed to walk, away from the dragon, away from landscapes and crucifixes, from a home that was not home, from friends that never were. It was a journey that existed merely to leave the point of departure.

  We peered into the windows of the second-hand bookshops, at strange contrasts of cheap paperbacks and leather-bound casualties of a decayed aristocracy. Up towards Tottenham Court Road station, on the left, stood Foyles, the grandfather of all these booksellers. It moved there in the early years of the twentieth century. Diana never saw it. And then we were in Bloomsbury, where the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was founded, about forty years before Penny went up to Oxford: Millais, Rossetti, William Holman Hunt, and more members to follow, coming together to express genuine ideas through the reflection of nature, to sympathize with the heartfelt, to eschew the conventional. We could have walked anywhere but we would still have been somewhere haunted by Penny and Diana. So much of London was involved in their lives, if not by location then by association, by the idea of the metropolis as the centre of Victorian society.

  “You’ve hardly spoken,” said Alison, as we headed back towards Oxford Street. “Do you want to talk about it? Would that help?”

  “It? Which it? All the its?”

  “Yes. All. Any. Emily. The cottage. The painting.”

  “Penny and Diana?”

  “Penny and Diana. Art. Anything, Anna. Just a starting point. Something gentle.”

  She squeezed my hand and stopped walking. I had no option but to stop beside her. She moved round until she was facing me and took my other hand.

  “You have to talk,” she said. “I know it’s hard, and I know it takes time, but you have to say something, if you can, if you’re not too afraid. I shan’t force you. But if you can.”

  Everything was blue again, draining the colours. I remembered when I was a child and my mother had explained how the sodium street-lamps gave out such a pure, yellow light that no other colours would appear, everything became shades of yellow. It was a terrifying thought to me, that something could steal the colours from the world and leave only one behind. But she explained it, it was science, and through the explanation it lost its ability to scare me. I wanted explanations. I wanted to listen, not talk. I wanted the woman—the woman who held my hand and told me everything would be all right—I wanted her to say the words to make it right, there and then. Nothing magical, nothing Eleusinian, swathed in ceremony and mystery. The electrons jumped from one place to another and when they did they gave out a bit of energy and that energy was light and the size of their jump made the light yellow. The blue was there because, because why? Because things happen? Because decisions were made? Because I did not hold an ice cream tightly enough, and because Emily went out in the snow? I was not ready to talk. How could I be ready to talk with all the yellows and purples missing?

  “Not yet,” I said.

  We walked on, down through Soho, heading towards Piccadilly Circus. There were models working behind the red-lit curtains, according to signs by the doors, black marker running where the drizzle soaked the paper. We did not linger. The dwindling daylight and intensifying rain drove me forward with thoughts of a warm bus and a return to Penny and Diana, whom I could not escape, and from whom I should not have tried to run. They were the easy part of life because they were immutable. All that they were, all they had done, was fixed, reduced to archæology. Or I was wrong. The rest, the complex blue, continued through me, so all answers were contingent, just stepping stones to something else, echoes of an irredeemably unsettled past. I could definitely have been wrong.

  Alison was keeping pace, although I had no reason to think that my troubles were shared with her: darkness and rain were enough. But Soho had dragons that day, and I would not let them tear my head from my neck, or rip the flesh from my skull. I was strong and fast, and the fear was leaving me. I slipped my hand from Alison’s and began to run, through the worsening rain, Alison calling after me, increasingly breathless. I slowed and turned, walking backwards along the pavement as the water dripped from the tip of my nose.

  “It’s all right, Al,” I said. “If you keep up with me everything will be all right.”

  I ran on. The water in my eyes smeared the neon lights of Soho, the reds and yellows. I wanted lemon drops. I had lemon drops as a child. But no time for lemon drops when dragons were abroad.

  We sat on the upper deck of the bus. Alison told me she was going to come home with me and cook dinner. I wiped my arm across the condensation and looked out at the world, just as I had done when returning from Barbroke. We were passing Marble Arch, where Samuel Warber was hanged by the neck until dead. The only remembrance was a circular, stone plaque set into the pavement of Edgware Road, with an “X” in its centre and “The Site of Tyburn Tree” carved around its circumference. The Tree was long gone: no sign of the three-legged gallows, each leg joined to the next by an overhead beam, a triangle which dispatched the condemned in a macabre, kicking chorus line.

  “The great thing about buses,” I said, “is that they don’t stop at the firs. They’ll take you all the way to the gates of the cathedral.”

  I rested my head on Alison’s shoulder and slept.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Tuesday, 21st February, 1888

  Matthew is tiring of me. He greets me with a familiarity that has ground to dust the excitement he must once have felt. Despite my having arrived early, this last sitting was precisely that: a sitting, involving nothing but my posing for him. It seems ridiculous that such a change should have come upon him so quickly. I have been led to understand that this is the way of the adulterer: passion born of the illicit, the new and forbidden, which fades as the affair—for it deserves to be named in accordance with its nature—passion which fades as the affair becomes quotidian. Yet I did not wish to believe it was true of him.

  I miss Diana more with the passing of each day, and with a keenness which I thought I had reserved for Matthew alone. Apart from my one glimpse of her she has become a phantom, flitting through Oxford only at night, if at all. I have no idea how she might be continuing her academic work, which must suffer greatly from her lack of attendance at lectures and from the absence of fellow students with whom to converse. As regards companionship, no doubt she has an eager coterie here in Oxford and another in London, even outside the season. I have implored her to meet with me, to no avail. I have asked her to write, asked her forgiveness, apologized until the ashes ran over my penitent’s head. I have received nothing in return. Now, as if losing her friendship were not enough, I fear for the continuance of my sittings, which are no longer clothed in the propriety conferred by her attendance.
Voices are whispering and the whispers grow louder.

  This morning I left another note for her on the table in the hall. It is no longer there so I can only suppose that she, or some servant of hers, has collected it. I sent to her a line of Swinburne, in hopes that the source will play to her romantic sensibilities, that the meaning will show my drifting from Matthew and the loss I feel in her distance, and that the dual evocation therein might outweigh thoughts currently dominated by my infidelity.

  “I have lived long enough, having seen one thing, that love hath an end.”

  I must leave for afternoon lectures.

  It is late, later than I ought to be awake and writing. I have a towel curled along the bottom of the door so that the light cannot escape to tell tales on me. She came, this evening, as dinner drew to a close. She came and found me in the dining room, as I sat by Elizabeth, sharing the meaningless events of the empty day. She came and she was angry. She held my note in one hand and placed the other on my shoulder and asked, in a measured, formal voice which I have never before heard from her, that I excuse myself so we might talk for a few minutes. She did not look at any other woman at the table. She did not wait for my reply before leaving—with the briefest of nods in the direction of Miss Callow—to wait in the hall. I made my excuses, telling my friends that I had heard Lady Diana had not taken well to the memorial service for her brother and that I should hasten to her side. I should say that not one of them believed me, but yet each one nodded as though she did.