A Muse to Live For

by Katherine Wyvern

  “I am not. Oh, you know I am not. He’s nobody, nobody. It was just for a week, just for fun. I have done nothing.”

  “Oh, but you have, my dove, you have.” He speaks as sweet as a lover. And there is this about his face. He’s big boned, even there. He’s got a face like the bows of a three-decker, but his mouth is small, small, and pink, and soft, and pretty, like a little girl’s. That mouth, in that face, is terrifying, like the ghost of a murdered child in a house of dark flint.

  It comes as suddenly as a horse going wild, his hand at my throat, holding, choking, forcing. Before I know I am bent double, my face against his thigh, and his fingers digging into the sides of my neck. His other hand has lifted all my heavy skirts like a bit of illusion, like no more than a spider-web.

  “Ah,” he breathes, heavily, as his hand crawls up the inside of my thigh, rough and callused like a dog’s paw. “Ah,” he repeats. “Still smooth, smooth and white. So white. I always liked to watch you. He let me watch you, you know? From time to time. I’ve seen all your goods.”

  He’s pawing the crack of my ass now, and I am still, still like a stone, braced, braced, braced for what I know will come. He holds my neck like a vise, like I’m caught in the gears of some monstrous machine.

  “Oh, look here, look what I found,” he purrs. “Oh, this is not like a lady at all.” He grabs my cock and balls, in one huge palm, and squeezes and twists, and it’s all I can do not to scream, not to kick. A stifled howl, inhuman, is buried alive in my throat and scrapes the back of my mouth, like claws, to burst out, out… Then I’m gasping and gasping, biting back sobs and tears. The air is like a heavy curtain, like a pall, but made of glass-shards. I cannot breathe it. It’s going to choke me, smother me, and then cut me to pieces.

  “It’s not like a lady at all,” he repeats, musing, and twists again. This time I do scream, and my knees fold under me, and I am down on the muddy ground, weeping.

  “You know, himself is not happy, about your new friend, and your new job,” he says, cool as snow, as if we were just making polite conversation, holding tea cups and biscuits. He still has me by the neck, but lazy, now, lazy. He knows I can’t run. I could not even stand if I tried. I am on my knees in the mud with my bare butt in the air, the skirt turned over my back, bustle and all, and he’s stroking my stockinged legs as if he loved me.

  “H-he’s not my friend,” I stammer. “He’s just a p-painter. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

  He’s undoing my garters, very slowly, very methodical. Will nobody walk down in this accursed backyard? Will nobody come, and make him stop? He peels my stockings, down to my knees.

  “You undress for him? Hmm?”

  “No! No. I don’t. It’s not like that. He’s not … that sort of p-painter...”

  The cane hits the back of my legs like a stripe of fire.

  “I—don’t!” I scream.

  “He looks at you, doesn’t he?”

  The cane hits again, and I have no breath to answer.

  “He admires you, hmm?” More blows, and more and more, they run into one another, like the pain is a great beating heart, a heart that pumps acid into my veins, flame into my skin, and a blinding white darkness in my mind.

  “Well, H.E. does not like you to be admired, you know that, and he doesn’t like you to sit comfortably and be pretty,” he says, stopping. He’s panting, just a little. I am crying, with my face in the mud. “A whore is what you are, and a whore is what you will stay. None of these fancy jobs for you, my dove.”

  Another stripe of fire, and another, as if to brand the words in my burning flesh.

  “So on Monday, at the appointed time, you will go to your friend, as usual, and you will tell him, politely, that you are done with him. You will go and tell him. Hmm?”

  “I don’t need to. I will j-just stop. It was just for a week. I don’t need to tell him.”

  “Oh, but you will.”

  “Why? Why?” The thought of going to see Nathaniel, after this, to tell him, to tell him… I can’t. I just can’t.

  “Because it pleases me to see you doing it. I will see that you do it. You won’t see me, but I’ll be watching you. Hmm? And I don’t want him to come snuffling after you again. I don’t want him to think you had some accident.”

  He gives my buttocks another sharp rap with the cane. “So you will tell him that you don’t fancy the job anymore. Hmm? Or he might have an accident, too, what do you know? If he should come looking for you?”

  “I don’t know what to tell him,” I whimper, my wits all astray.

  “Oh, I’m sure you’ll make something up,” he whispers, lifting me up somewhat, hugging me from behind like a monstrous lover, his rough chin in my neck. “Use your feminine wiles, hmm? You have plenty of those, you little bitch, don’t you?”

  I am panting. I have bitten hard into my lip at some point—I can’t remember when—and my mouth is full of mud and blood. I nod. “I will, I w—will. Let me go. Just let me go. Please.”

  “As you wish.” He lets go and pushes, and I fall forward again. He grabs me where he has hit me hard, and I whine with pain. And then I hear buttons, and a swish of fabric, and I cry harder, pressing my face in the mud, hoping I can drown in it, hoping it will swallow me whole and put an end to this, to me. He never did this. He’s never been allowed to do this. Why now? What changed? Why, why, why? His hands hold my hips, his thumbs part my buttocks, and his dry cock splits me open.

  I should be used to this, but, as it turns out, I am not.

  Not like this.

  ****

  Later, it must be a minute or two, but it feels like it lasted an hour, he wipes himself and his hands on my skirt, with a disgusted grunt. “You shat on me. I don’t believe it. You shat on my dick, you little swine.”

  I say nothing, too mortified to even breathe, almost. It is the most awful thing of all, that I am ashamed, ashamed of myself, of the weak, terrified, soiled thing I am, and most of all, of the mess I made.

  “That will cost you. What do we have here, hmm?”

  He grabs my purse and rummages in it, whistling softly.

  “Two pounds, three crowns, and change… What would you want with this kind of money, I wonder?” He pockets the most of it and returns the small coins to the purse. “There. That should be enough for a rat like you. For your rent and things. You are paying your rent, regular? Good. I don’t want you to be thrown out. He likes to know where you are. And me too. Me too, my dove. You owe me a blowjob or two after this mess.”

  He tosses the bag at me and picks up his cane where he left it, standing neatly by the wall.

  “Pick yourself up. What sort of lady are you, hmm? And remember. You’ll do as I say. Or it will be your face next time. That pretty face. He will not want to paint you any more after I’m done with it, I promise.”

  The last savage kick, in my belly, makes me cry out again, and when he’s finally gone, when I finally manage to pick myself up, and tidy my muddy skirts the best I can, and pick up my muddy shawl, and Alice’s trampled hat, it is all I can do to hobble home. My stockings have sagged down to my boots and my legs are wet and slimy, and I am made of pain.

  Mrs. Gride is in her parlor. The door is ajar—she likes to keep an eye on our comings and goings—and I pass it as fast and quiet as I can, but something must have given me away because she comes to the landing and lifts a lamp to me as I creep up the stairs.

  “Well, what in the name of God did happen to you?” she asks, gaping.

  “Nothing,” I whisper, “Slipped in the mud, is all.”

  She says nothing, but I’m hardly inside my room groping in the dark for matches and a candle, when she knocks on the door.

  What now? Oh, for the love of God, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone.

  I open the door a crack.

  She hands in a lit lamp, a kettle of steaming water, and a couple of towels, frayed and torn, but spotlessly clean.

  “Use the water while it’s hot. D
on’t stand there weeping like a bleeding willow, catching your death of cold grief. Leave those clothes on the landing, Bessie will give them a wash. And I’ll have her bring up some soup. Just this once. This ain’t a chop house, you understand?”

  “I understand. I don’t need soup,” I whisper.

  “Oh, I’d say you do,” she says, turning to walk down the creaking stairs. “Stubborn. Willful. Youngsters, all the same, can’t be helped … will die on me without something hot in his belly… Jesus, what a life…” I hear her grumbling as she goes. I am not sure if she grumbles about her life, or mine, or both.

  So I wash myself as best I can, blood and sperm and shit, all plastered on my battered thighs, soiling my buttocks and stockings and skirts. The ignominy of it makes me cry again, and then I give an unhinged, bitter bark of a laugh that comes out half in Gabriel’s voice and half in mine and is frightening in the silence.

  Look at me.

  I always prided myself so much on my grace and my taste, the only things I own, and as it turns out, I can’t even be raped with any style. What a wretched whore I am, after all.

  Then I sit gingerly on the edge of my bed, hoping I won’t bleed on it, eating some glutinous soup that the scullery girl has left outside the door, from a shaking spoon, weeping in silence all the time, as I think of next Monday, that I must go to Nathaniel’s studio, and break his kind, crazy heart, with my feminine wiles.

  That is the thing that hurts most.

  Of what just happened, now that I am washed, and dressed in something clean and dry, I don’t think at all. I close it all away, in a place that I can’t see. There’s already so much stuff in there, the grim gloryhole of my past—I might even forget it ever happened.

  Chapter Three

  “Howl, howl, howl, howl! Oh, you are men of stones.

  Had I your tongues and eyes, I’d use them so

  That heaven’s vault should crack. She’s gone forever.”

  W. Shakespeare, King Lear

  Nathaniel

  When it’s time for Gabrielle to arrive, I tug my clothes straight the best I can and splash a bit of cold water in my face. How ugly is the vessel from which beauty springs, I think, scraping my hair to one side, then the other, then backwards, and then finally, because there’s no hope, mussing it up in the wild mess it always ends up being anyway. I am almost too tired to stand, or I would be, if I were not infused by this flow of supernatural energy that has come over me since I began to draw her. As things are, I am, as it were, light, weightless, ready to fly.

  I have spent most of the Sunday and my nights working on that damn Shadow, wearing my eyes out in the light of every lamp and candle I could lay my hands on. I will manage to pay her next week. Barely, but I will. I long—long—to dive into her eyes again—it’s her eyes that bring it all to life, that bring me to life, and I can’t wait to have her long supple hands again in front of me, playing with the light from the window, plucking all the strings of my heart.

  I am also fussing about the room, now that she’s almost here, trying to make it tidy, piling the books that don’t fit into the shelves in odd corners, which is ridiculous, I know. She’s been here so many times now—she knows what a confusion I live in. And because I am so busy, despite how hard I am longing for her to be here, it takes me a while to notice she’s late.

  She’s in fact appallingly late by the time she arrives.

  There’s the bell, and her steps tapping up the stairs, and I rush to my door. She comes up slowly today, as if she’s tired, or unwell, and my heart gives a twinge, first selfishly as I wonder if she can sit at all, and then, in actual tenderness. I worry if she’s not overtaxing herself, if I am asking too much of her. She has after all, also her other profession. I am not the only one working day and night.

  When she turns her face up at me—she’s still only halfway up the last ramp of stairs—I am sure she’s ill.

  Her face is white, utterly white; her eyes are red, ringed with a darkness that is not just makeup. She has a scarf tucked high around her throat. Her green skirt is rumpled and dull, like something that has been washed and wrung and dried hastily by the fire without being brushed or pressed.

  She’s gone and done it, I think¸ She’s gone and caught her death of cold in the rain under that lamppost. It’s all my fault. I should have paid her better, so she didn’t need to spend her nights on the street.

  “Gabrielle,” I whisper, stricken. “Come in. Goodness, do come in, sit. You are unwell. Here’s a chair. Sit, I beg you. I’ll get some tea done.”

  But she doesn’t sit. Instead she goes to the window, and looks down in the street outside and shudders. Her hair has been tied back in a knot, but a few strands are flying loose around her face, as if she had come here through a gale of wind. Her eyes are like shards of glass, lifeless and hard.

  “Gabrielle, what is it? I’ll have some tea made. Please, please do sit down.”

  “I can’t sit down, Nathaniel,” she says, in a loud, harsh, deep voice, the first words she’s said today, and I have never, ever heard her voice do that. I stare, and she looks even sicker, and shakes her head. “Shit,” she mutters. She clears her throat, and in a voice a little more like her own she repeats, “I cannot sit down. I cannot sit at all, for you, not now, not ever.”

  “What?”

  “I can’t do this anymore, Nathaniel.”

  “What? Why? Why?”

  “Because I can’t, I can’t, I just can’t!”

  “But why?” I am stunned, like I’ve been hit in the face. I take her arm—she’s already walking away towards the door, like she’s running from something, from me.

  “Why are you like this? What happened? Why must you go away? Why can’t you sit for me?”

  “Because I am going to ruin you. And myself.”

  “Wh—what? Oh, the money? That is not a problem. I will sell some paintings—they’ll be good, I promise you, I’ll do perfectly well, don’t concern yourself—with you, I can do anything.”

  She shakes her head, obstinate. “I must go, Nathaniel. Let me go. Please, let go.”

  “Gabrielle, I can’t, I can’t. I can’t do it alone, please. Stay, please, oh please!”

  “Why, why can’t you do it? You have a thousand drawings of me! That should be enough for your bloody painting!”

  “It’s not! It’s not the same. I need—I need you!” I realize while I say it, that it is the absolute truth. That I won’t be able to touch a brush to the canvas or a pencil to paper ever again if she walks out of my life. It will break me. I might as well hang myself the moment she closes the door behind her.

  But she laughs a bitter laugh, still shaking her head. “Let go of me, Nathaniel.”

  “Please, please, stay … just let me draw you once more, just once more!”

  I am frantic with distress, but somehow, I have this wild notion that if I can hold her for a minute, if I can get her to sit down, and drink a cup of tea, and talk to me, this hideous, inexplicable calamity will go away, will not have happened.

  “I can’t. I can’t live for your damn paintings and dreams, Nathaniel. That’s your job. I have my own life, and I can’t spend it sitting for you. Let me go.”

  It should hurt, but it doesn’t, at least nowhere near as much as the thought that she might really go away, and never come back.

  “If not for my paintings, stay for me then,” I whisper, to the dusty rug. I dare not look at her. “Stay for me.”

  I have never been good with words, never, but these words have a bite to them. The truth of them makes me sway. I have not allowed myself to see it before. I have locked those words away, always, where I could not see them, too scared of the pain they could give. I never wanted to mix my art and my heart. I saw what it did to Rossetti, and those around him. But perhaps, they are the only words that can save me now, the only words that can move her.

  And they take a life of their own, these words. They rear up like flames, like a great cloud of thrown sparks
, in the black void between us, they flare up and make me bold. I let go of her arm, but I look at her finally, right in her eyes and I repeat, louder, “Stay for me. Because I love you.”

  And she smiles. She does. It is dreadful to see, a smile that writhes like a coiled adder. She smiles and cries, and shakes her head, and takes a step back, like she’s seen a ghost. Across the distance, she puts a hand to my cheek. She never touched me before. Her fingers are icy cold and yet they burn my face like fire. I know I’ll carry the mark of them forever.

  “Oh, but you don’t,” she says, and her voice breaks again to that absurdly deep tone. She smiles again that dreadful smile, tears running. In her reddened eyes the iris is shockingly pale, and icy blue. “You don’t know what love is, and you don’t know what I am. To you I am just a pretty face you can use, a face you can put to the pictures in your head.” She touches my forehead with one fingertip. “You’ll do quite well without me. Much better, in fact. Believe me. Please, stay away from me. Forget you ever met me.”

  And she turns, and she is gone.

  ****

  There are days after that, that run into one another, a few, or many, I don’t know. I sit in my room, running our last encounter again and again and again in my mind, as if I could change it, just by reliving it in my imagination.

  I should have run after her. I should have gone and held her, and coaxed the truth out of her. Why? Why? Why did you go away from me? But how could I do that, without it being an unforgivable imposition, almost a sort of violence, which I abhor? She told me to stay away. What right do I have to pursue her?

  I was never very good at confrontations, of any kind. Tom Wilson made me the butt of all his pranks, and I all but thanked him for his trouble.

  I haven’t changed a bit since then. You are just a spineless quitter, Grimsby, the eternal butt. You’ll never learn to stand up for yourself.

  Perhaps it is only just three days, in fact, when I hurt so much that I cannot think, I can only sit here, wishing I could weep, but not even tears will come, only shivers. I sit here shaking, in silence.