Sun in Splendour

by JH Fletcher

  The conditions moved her yet, unlike Katie and Brett, her primary concern was not injustice, but portraying as wide a spectrum of life as she could.

  Katie reproached her for it. ‘You see how these people live and feel nothing for them?’

  ‘I do feel. But I’m an artist, not a politician. Changing the world is not my job.’

  ‘It is everybody’s job.’ She studied the painting of the women in the laundry: one yawning, another leaning backwards, hands on hips, trying to ease her cramped muscles. ‘This painting says everything there is to say about exhaustion, exploitation, yet you refuse to try to change things?’

  ‘I have no time. I’m too busy trying to capture the light.’

  ‘At least, let us make use of your paintings. For political purposes?’

  Even for Katie, Marie would not do it. She remembered Brett talking about propaganda. What had that to do with truth?

  ‘I’m under contract to Stanford Harris. All my paintings have to go to him.’

  Donna, predictably, was acid. ‘Making money’s more important to you than helping the poor.’

  Marie was furious. ‘I’m an artist. I paint what’s in front of my nose: only that. You want to worry about the political side, go ahead. Leave me to get on with my pictures. They give me enough problems. Get tangled up in politics, I’ll never achieve anything.’

  ‘How convenient!’ Donna was as jagged as a broken tooth; Marie wondered whether Katie had made a mistake in claiming that Donna wouldn’t mind Marie spending so much time with her husband. Not that she intended to waste time thinking about it; she had other problems, one in particular.

  She had first noticed it after she had finished the painting of the laundry women. She had commented to Katie how the wet air had made them cough.

  Katie had shaken her head. ‘Not air. That is consumption.’

  Marie stared. ‘Consumption? But that’s — that’s terrible.’

  She had been about to say fatal, but did not; she was unwilling even to name the disease that killed so many.

  Katie understood what she had not said. ‘They are all dead. Or will be.’ A grim smile. ‘As you would be, too, if you spent much time there.’

  ‘You told me once that you started work in a laundry.’

  ‘I wasn’t there long. I soon found out that people were willing to pay to paint me.’

  But Marie noticed that Katie had still not got rid of the cough she’d had — how long? — for weeks, now. She asked her about it.

  Katie dismissed her concern. ‘I can’t afford consumption. First I have to get rid of the Tsar.’

  Marie said no more, but her anxiety, now aroused, remained. A week later, she was wakened during the night by Katie sneaking out of the room. She thought nothing of it, had almost drifted off to sleep again when she came to suddenly, alerted by the harsh sound of coughing.

  It was a long time before Katie came back to bed again. Marie said nothing, but lay still, eyes wide in the darkness, ears monitoring the sound of Katie’s breathing. Was it her imagination, or did it really sound harsher than it had?

  She told herself it did; told herself not to be stupid; told herself she was making nightmares out of nothing.

  ‘It’s not possible.’ Again and again she repeated the words, mocked by their futility. ‘I shall not permit it. I shall not permit it.’

  4

  ‘Why don’t we go on holiday together?’ Brett said. ‘Just the four of us?’

  Marie was concentrating on the scene in front of her. The waterfront was thronged with men loading bales of wool into a British three-master. It was all light, movement, noise: the clatter of boots, the harsh voices of the overseers, the shuffling movement of men carrying loads that seemed too great for human backs to bear. It was late afternoon; the light was changing with every minute; if she did not capture the tonal values now, they would be lost.

  ‘Yes,’ she said. She could as easily have said no to a question she had not heard.

  Already the shadows were covering the roadway; even the appearance of the rigging was changing with the light. Marie ran frustrated fingers through her hair. ‘It’s hopeless.’

  Brett smiled. ‘I love watching you work. You put so much into it.’

  ‘The light shifts all the time.’

  ‘The sun has no business to move,’ he agreed. ‘But think how boring it would be if we had daylight twenty-four hours a day.’

  ‘The sun does not move,’ Marie informed him pedantically. ‘We move.’ But smiled as she said it, mocking herself and the light, that would not be disciplined, for all her scowls. ‘I’ll have to come back in the morning,’ she decided. She, too, started to pack up. ‘What were you saying?’

  ‘Donna’s taken a house up the coast. For two months, through the hot weather. I was asking if the pair of you would like to join us. It’s plenty big enough.’

  ‘What would Donna have to say about that?’

  He looked surprised. ‘Why should she say anything?’

  ‘Might not be a bad idea to ask her.’

  ‘If you like …’

  It was obvious that Brett couldn’t see the point; he was as careless of his wife’s feelings as he was of most things in life. Politics was all he really cared about, Marie thought, and that would obsess him until he died.

  The next day, back at the wharf amid the rush and clatter of traffic, he told her that Donna had liked the idea.

  Marie had her doubts, but decided she had done all that could be expected of her. ‘That’ll be great, then. Thanks.’

  ‘And you, naturally, have discussed it with Katie, too?’

  She suspected mockery and glared at him, but Brett was the picture of innocence.

  ‘Why should she complain about a free holiday?’

  Yet, when she mentioned it to her that evening, Katie was uncertain. ‘Do you really want to go?’

  ‘Why not? It’ll be fun. It’ll do you good, too.’

  Because Katie was no better. Her face was flushed and she was coughing a lot. She got up most nights. Marie had asked her about it; Katie had said it was because she couldn’t breathe. ‘My nose is all blocked up.’

  ‘You should see the doctor.’

  ‘We have no money to waste on doctors.’

  ‘But if you’re sick —’

  ‘I’m fine.’

  She was not. Her denial worried Marie more than ever. Hopefully, the holiday would help.

  The house was a sprawling wooden construction at one end of a sickle beach of yellow sand. It was the only house there, so they had the area to themselves. Marie had been afraid that Donna might be annoyed at having to share her holiday with them but, for a change, she was on her best behaviour. Perhaps Brett had cleared it with her, after all: as soon as they arrived, she told them how pleased she was that they had been able to make it.

  The days were hot, the skies cloud-free. They quickly fell into a routine. Very early each morning, Marie went off along the cliffs to paint. Occasionally Brett came with her, but he had never been interested in landscapes and, for the most part, she went alone.

  After two or three hours, it was too hot to work and she went back to join the others, either in the water or lounging in the shade. Most days Brett had used the time to go fishing, so they usually had fish for lunch, washed down by wine that they bought in flagons from a shop further down the coast.

  Katie loved the water and spent hours far out, so that all they could see of her was the blonde dot of her head against the brilliant blue of the sea. Marie tried to talk her out of it, afraid she might overtire herself, but Katie took no notice. Even ashore, she was twice as active as the rest of them. She ate and drank with gusto, spent hours marching back and forth along the beach. In the past she had always been careful to protect her milk-white skin from the sun; now she did not seem to care. She ran, even in the heat of the day, pounding over the sand as though her energy were inexhaustible.

  At night, while the air trembled with the noi
se of the waves along the shore, she made love to Marie endlessly, tirelessly, seemingly determined to extract from her life every last ounce of joy and delight. And each night, also, Marie lay awake with dread in her heart, listening to Katie coughing, coughing, in the outhouse at the back of the building. Sometimes she would not come back to bed at all, but went out to walk again by the edge of the sea, while Marie at the bedroom window watched her dark shape pacing along the beach that glowed silver in the moonlight.

  Marie understood only too well what was happening; Katie was running and running, determined to defy the shadows that, for all her efforts, were beginning to close about her. As for Brett and Donna … Their eyes showed that they, too, understood, yet no-one spoke of it, as though they had all joined in a conspiracy of silence that might, even now, make things whole again.

  ‘Come swimming with me,’ Katie said one day.

  Side by side, they swam a long way out. It was pleasant to be together in the sea’s vastness, their limbs moving in unison as they left the beach far behind. The water was cool; Marie felt that she could swim forever. It was an attractive prospect: the two of them swimming on until fatigue overcame them and they sank into the cool green depths … No more problems of changing light, of husband and child and responsibilities … No more coughing fits in the dark and menacing night.

  With the coolness of her body, there came suddenly a coolness of mind; for the first time, Marie acknowledged what she realised she had known for months: that Katie was seriously ill, was in fact dying, that this holiday would almost certainly be their last. She could not bear it, yet knew that she must, and the prospect was cruel beyond belief.

  Overwhelmed by pain, she stopped swimming. Katie stopped, too, their bodies brushing beneath the water as the waves swung them to and fro. Impulsively Marie wrapped her arms around Katie’s neck.

  ‘I can’t bear it!’ And wept, letting tears say what words could not.

  Katie hugged her back. ‘Don’t. Don’t —’

  ‘You are everything to me.’ She clutched her with all her might, as though she might turn back the steady advance of sickness and death. ‘After I left Neil and Alice, if you hadn’t helped me —’

  It was the first time she had spoken of the madness that had come, and gone, and might return.

  Katie dashed water playfully in her face. ‘We are a couple of crocks,’ she said. She laughed and Marie laughed with her, hysterically, as though that might turn back the steady advance of sickness and death. Both of them laughing, spluttering in the water so far from land, and Katie choked in a paroxysm of coughing, and the water around her was suddenly red with blood.

  Somehow they got back to shore. Katie was bleached white under the tan that now looked more grey than brown.

  ‘Don’t say anything,’ she said.

  She lay for a while at the water’s edge, Marie beside her.

  Brett strolled down to join them. ‘Lunch will be ready in a few minutes.’ He eyed Katie’s prostrate form. ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Just getting our breath back,’ Marie said.

  ‘We thought for a moment you’d decided to swim to America.’

  And left them to it.

  Eventually Katie struggled to her feet, brushing aside Marie’s offers of support.

  ‘I shall lie down, I think.’

  And did so.

  Donna was putting the food on the table and frowned as Katie disappeared into the bedroom. ‘Doesn’t she want to eat?’

  ‘I think she overtired herself.’

  It was a quieter lunch than usual, with little wine.

  Over the next few days, Katie recovered a little, but never again ran along the beach or challenged the sea’s immensity. Barely more substantial than the shade in which she sat, she watched the sea and said little.

  Fear drove its talons into Marie’s back. Now she was painting to distract herself, focussing with increasing desperation on what had always been the most important thing in her life, but that now seemed as inconsequential as the summer air.

  What was it Eugénie had said? This woman you live with. Is she also irrelevant?

  She had not answered her mother directly. She has never forced me to choose. It said something, perhaps, but was far from the whole truth, which was that Katie epitomised all the love of spirit and flesh, of life itself, that Marie sought to portray in her work. So strongly did Marie believe it that she wondered, very seriously, whether she would be able to paint at all if anything happened to her love.

  It will not happen, she told herself resolutely. It must not happen. Yet happening it was, before her eyes. The increasing pallor, heightened by the flush like flame along Katie’s cheekbones; the listlessness; the dissolution of energy, so that even to get out of her chair became an ordeal; the cough that she could no longer hide and that tore her so mercilessly. That tore them all so mercilessly.

  A week later she said, ‘I want to go home.’

  It was not a time for argument. Marie packed their bags. They said goodbye to the Samochins, took a cab to the station, went back to the apartment in the hot city. There Katie remained. Once, a precious day of low humidity and sunshine, Marie coaxed her into taking a walk. They visited the gardens; they walked slowly past beds bright with flowers; they went home. Nothing was said, but Marie knew that, too, had been for the last time. Later, out of her memory and pain, Marie painted Katie as she had seen her that afternoon, a ghost-like presence amid the brilliance of blossom and sunlight.

  Katie would no longer let her love her in the flesh. She said she was too weak; probably she was, but the real reason was her fear of passing on the disease to Marie.

  ‘If I haven’t done it already,’ she gasped, coughing in saw-blade spasms.

  Katie started to revisit her life. She dug out papers, old photographs. One day Marie found her staring, stony-eyed, at pictures of herself, clad and naked, taken in her days of glory. Had she wept, it would have been more bearable.

  Marie took them from her, tried to jolly her, foolishly, out of the depression that had engulfed her.

  ‘I believe you’re getting vain in your old age.’ And laughed, while beneath the laughter lay the acid of unshed tears.

  ‘Better than looking at how I am now.’

  Katie’s flesh had melted away. She was no more than bones and yellow skin; when Marie bathed her, it was like washing a corpse. Marie wondered how she could continue to bear her own helplessness, the axe blade of impending loss that loomed ever more threateningly above her. There came a day when she found herself resenting Katie, who was abandoning her to battle on alone. It made her more frightened than ever of what might be happening inside her head. If her own illness returned, who would look after Katie?

  A couple of crocks … Katie herself had said it, not so long ago. They had both laughed. No-one was laughing now.

  Katie could no longer get out of bed. Again and again Marie had tried, unsuccessfully, to get her to see a doctor. Now she did not bother. It was too late; no doctor could help her now. Marie took root beside the bed. Katie dozed, restlessly, erupting from time to time in feeble spasms of coughing that drained from her the little strength that remained. Marie was helpless to do anything other than mop the blood from her lips.

  ‘Nicholas,’ Katie said one morning.

  Marie knew no-one called Nicholas. ‘Who?’

  A ghost-like smile lightened the ghost-like face. ‘Nicholas Romanov. The Tsar.’

  ‘What about him?’

  ‘I thought I’d see the last of him. I was wrong. I know you’re not interested in politics, but promise you’ll help Brett. Please? We have to do what we can for the world.’

  And was silent.

  Another day, and night.

  In the darkness, Katie said, ‘I want … Forgive …’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Neil. I’m sorry.’

  ‘It’s not important.’ Nor was it; it was hard to think of anything that mattered less.

  ‘All of t
hem. Neil and the others. I wanted so much to live.’ She coughed: no more than a husk of sound in the darkness. ‘Your child. Alice.’

  ‘What about her?’

  ‘You must not abandon her.’ The bony fingers clutched. ‘She is … your future.’

  And again was still. In the darkness her breath came and went. Came and went. And went.

  Silence. Into which jetted Marie’s cries, her dammed-up tears.

  The new day. The insult of bright sunshine. Katya Vannovskaya was dead, and the sun condemned the world. Distraught, her face swollen with weeping, the artist in Marie overcame the lover. She dragged her easel to the bed. Painted, for the last time, her dead love. She frightened herself by what she was doing. The painting itself, the fact that she was doing it, meant nothing. What mattered was the way that her eye, her brain, recorded the changing aspects of the dead face. She concentrated everything — her feelings, the planes and texture of the sunken flesh — into a single focus, a tunnel of diminishing light down which she directed all her attention. She was appalled by the dichotomy between artist and lover that required her scalding sense of loss and despair to subordinate itself to the technical demands of the art that forced her to concentrate, not on her sorrow and sense of loss, but on pigment and brush and light. She felt that she was indeed a monster to do such a thing, yet was unable to help herself; she would have done it a thousand times to record her final impressions of the woman whom she had loved and who was gone. But who always, in her heart and mind, would remain.

  When the painting was finished, she held the dead hands for the last time. No feeling of Katie; she was gone from that place. Only decaying flesh and bone: rubbish to be abandoned to perpetual darkness. Yet that, too, she had loved. For the last time she kissed the dead hands, as she had kissed them so often in life.

  Breaking the physical contact was like inviting death itself into her heart. She remembered reading of a lunatic Queen who had accompanied her lover’s corpse on a macabre and plague-haunted pilgrimage around medieval Europe; for the first time, she had an inkling of how that woman had felt.