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IV

I go into Rachel’s studio, normally forbidden territory. The atmosphere of the room reminds me of entering a church: that same sense of intimidation and awe. Rachel’s new exhibition is entirely comprised of female nudes. She has, in secret, broken the rule that female artists may only paint nudes from mannequins, hiring Ginny and others to pose for her at home. The portraits are crammed on to the walls, a concentrate of colour and brushstroke. For her self-portrait, Rachel asked me to supply semen, which she mixed into the skin colouring for her face. An angry joy blazes from each picture; the women of these paintings have neither the doe eyes of Titian’s Venus nor the voluptuous sensuality of Ingres’s Grande Odalisque. Instead, they gaze out with fierce intelligence; they mock the viewer for playing voyeur. How proud I am of her.

I take a shopping list, fold it into my pocket and adorn myself with a frock coat, top hat and gloves – for I cannot afford to catch her cold, not when the Oxford Book of Malaises has diagnosed me somewhere between pleurisy and cholera. As I proceed, waving my cane with faint threat at those irritating boys on the street corner who wish to sell me their sensationalist magazines, my heart plumes with joy. Rachel has said that these last few years have been the happiest of her life. Now I have seen her 449paintings, I believe it. She always said that being freed from her monthly bleed two decades ago was the greatest liberation, allowing her to shift from ‘woman’ to ‘individual’. I find myself composing a letter to Finn in my mind, a reply I will pen when his first missive comes: This may sound sentimental, my dear boy, but it is perfectly true, what they say, that home is where the heart is. When you reach a ripe old age, you will be pleased with your achievements but a little dismissive of them, knowing that love is all that matters. Enjoy your youthful years, for they are the time to be selfish and one-pointed, to pursue your goals, but take care that you do not neglect your family, ever. You will not regret a lost promotion, later on, but you will regret a ruined heart … If only my father had written me such advice when I was a young man.

‘Rachel, I have good news!’ I cry on my return home.

I find her in our bedroom. She is fully dressed and seated in front of the dressing table. She has applied a heavy layer of make-up, which makes her seem simultaneously clownish and beautiful. Her lips look like a delicious, wrinkled strawberry; her eyelids are painted the shades of a fading sky. That she is clearly in good health once more thrills me, and I cry, ‘My dearest, you need only finish the final painting and Truman will give us ten thousand pounds as an advance.’

‘It is not bad, I suppose,’ she says.

‘We will be able to pay our bills, and eat. You can paint; you can begin your Metamorphoses project,’ I gush. 450

Rachel gazes at her reflection; I can see that she has not listened to a word I have said.

‘Do you remember,’ she says suddenly, ‘when we reunited after you came down from Cambridge?’

I remember it well, but I enjoy hearing her recount the details. She was no longer an eccentric governess, but had begun to enjoy prestige as an artist. I was a man of twenty-one, she a spinster of twenty-seven.

‘We arranged to meet at the Oxford gallery. My mother came as chaperone and you came in holding a bird. She thought you quite mad, but then I saw the broken wing and realised that you were being so very kind. All of the ladies’ eyes were on you, but you told me that evening that none looked as beautiful as me.’ She turns back to the mirror. ‘I thought I should make myself beautiful.’

I put my hands on her shoulders. ‘But my dear, you are beautiful. Now, what is the matter?’

‘The fortune teller. I lied. I said that she had spoken well, but the cards that came up were the Tower, the Ten of Swords and the Hanged Man.’

I lean in to silence her with a kiss, and it’s then that I feel it: her skin is radiating heat like a fire; there are beads of sweat shiny on her forehead, and her eyewhites are laced with red. I chide her, help her to undress and encourage her back into bed.

At noon the next day, she seems to revive. ‘Paint,’ she whispers, struggling to sit up in bed as if her covers are woven from heavy metals. I hail Ginny, who brings us an 451easel, oils, turpentine and an array of brushes, as well as a fresh canvas, for I do not feel she is well enough to finish her final piece for the exhibition.

I fluff some pillows behind her back, prop the easel on her knees and squeeze out a rainbow on her palette. She keeps fussing, giving me instructions, and I deliberately place a shade of blue in the wrong spot, which provokes a fierce tut at my incompetence. Oh, it is a wonderful sound, that tut, reverberating with anger, with the promise of life. When she mixes her colours, many of them slur on to the bed sheets, but I do not dare intervene. I hold the palette and canvas for her until my arms ache. Her brush dips and swirls and there is a long period where she simply stares at the canvas – stares and squints with rheumy eyes. Finally, her masterpiece is ready: a slop of colours, much like something that a child might have produced.

She tells me that it is a portrait of me; I declare that the Royal Academy will be battling to show it. She gives me a sharp look and I laugh, glad that she has not lost her capacity for detecting poppycock. As I take the canvas away, she says, ‘Oh,’ in such a piteous voice that my heart does a queer little turn.

I call Dr. Adams again and have a heated discussion with him, flicking through the pages of the Oxford Book of Malaises, pausing at folded-down corners, reading symptoms in a shrill voice. If we can only classify it, hold it wriggling between tweezers, then we might understand how best to destroy it. Dr. Adams becomes irritable, and his breath reeks of brandy as he takes Rachel’s temperature. He leaves some leeches for me to apply; I let them wriggle across the lawn. I stay awake with her throughout 452the night, as the sun sets and shades of darkness morph across the walls. Her breathing is shallow; her moans tell of ill-fated dreams. I feel my head droop and fall into a nightmare. I seek a hidden cave where Rachel is locked away, her cries echoing through hills, mountain and sky, impossible to find. I wake up with a start, my neck aching, and turn to her. There is no breath. There is no breath. I check her pulse. I blow into her mouth and pump her heart with my shaking hands. But there is no breath, no breath at all.