466

VII

The next day I awake to her voice in my ear, plaintive: IT’S BEEN A LONELY NIGHT.

I brush sleep from my eyes, frowning; sunbeams slant through the gaps in the curtains, highlighting dust motes. I attempt to embrace the air and then lower my arms, feeling foolish.

‘Didn’t you sleep?’

I DON’T SEEM TO SLEEP.

A knock. Ginny comes in, looking distressed. She has no doubt heard me talking to an empty room. Rachel falls into a fit of giggles and I bite my lip as Ginny gets the fire going using newspaper and another chair leg. My laughter refuses to be caged and erupts in a wild shrill. Ginny turns in alarm, crosses herself and makes a swift departure. The fire, carelessly constructed, fades to embers.

BE CAREFUL. YOU MIGHT END UP IN AN ASYLUM.

Her tone is ambiguous. How disconcerting it is, conversing without being able to see the sparkle in her eye, the turn of her lips. I feel self-conscious as I stand before the toilet, peeing in fits and spurts, remembering the speedy, confident jets of my youth; I think of our last lovemaking and a redness fills my cheeks and I yank the chain quickly. I keep hoping to see her essence; I search for a distortion of form in the wall, the flooring. She chatters as I shave; I 467complain softly that I might accidentally slash my throat, I am so delightfully distracted. Rachel is usually a woman of choice words. She is evidently pent up after a night’s solitude. She tells me that she saw into my dreams:

YOU WERE A BOY, GAZING AT AN EMPTY BEDROOM, FEELING SO SAD. YOUR FATHER HAD LEFT THE HOUSE AND THE SHEETS ON HIS BED WERE STILL RUMPLED. YOU WORRIED THAT HIS LEAVING WAS YOUR FAULT.

I had nearly forgotten it; the pale dregs of my dream become colourful with her recounting.

‘Can you hear my thoughts?’ I ask, pausing with the blade against my throat.

NO, she promises, and I give her a dubious glance in the mirror.

I make a pact with her that she will not speak to me during my breakfast, so that Ginny will not be too afeared. Rachel is a little sulky, I perceive; then I feel a gentle breeze against my lips, like a sweet kiss.

I walk downstairs, smiling – until Ginny informs me that there is nothing for breakfast: Jon, the butcher’s son, stopped by just half an hour ago with an unpaid bill, asking when it will be settled. Furthermore, as much as Ginny would like to stay, she has not been paid wages for the last three weeks …

‘Ginny,’ I pat her arm, ‘I apologise, you have been a good and loyal maid. I will sell Rachel’s paintings tomorrow – we have a buyer waiting.’

I’LL PROBABLY GET MY BEST REVIEWS EVER, NOW THAT I AM DEAD. 468

I jump, fearing that Ginny’s face will pinch in shock. But no –

SHE CANNOT HEAR ME, Rachel confirms, I DID TRY TO CHAT WITH HER THIS MORNING BUT SHE WAS DEAF TO ME.

In my study, I sit with a hollow stomach behind my father’s desk, feeling very sheepish as I lay out all of the bills. Rachel’s silence is a chastisement.

WHY DID YOU NOT TELL ME THAT THINGS WERE THIS BAD?

‘I wanted to let you focus on your painting and not worry.’

She sighs. THAT WAS THOUGHTFUL OF YOU, BUT …

‘We will fix it. Only, I cannot face your gallery man, Mr. Truman, without having had breakfast. I know where I can get some for free.’

BEFORE WE GO, CAN I ASK ONE THING.

‘Yes, my love?’

I MISS HAVING HANDS. PLEASE MOVE YOUR FINGER FOR ME. NO, THIS ONE. I feel her touch on my joints. I MISS THE TACTILITY OF PAINTING. I MISS BEING ABLE TO HOLD A BRUSH.

To the local orchard we go, scrumping apples, paying no heed to the warning sign that poachers will be prosecuted. Dazed and dizzy, I bite into a green globe. I chew slowly, 469feeling the sweet mush slide down my throat and quiet my wailing stomach.

WATCH OUT!

A maid is hurrying towards us, crying, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ I burst into laughter; she is armed with a tea towel, which she flaps ineffectually. Then I see a familiar figure, a red-faced man who is bellowing curses. Why, it is the man from the pub, who berated his wife.

RUN!

I shove a few more apples into my pockets and beat a hasty retreat towards the trees. My legs are creaky but his are worse; he seems to be grappling with an injury, and one of his legs drags behind the other; he cannot catch me, and the maid is out of breath. On the rim of the woods, I turn and give him a playful wave and call a cheery ‘Thank you!’, before I disappear into its green density.

Though I am afeared of maggots in my mind, there is no harm in a little forgetfulness, a little blurring of the mind’s sharp edges. After all, that is why we imbibe opium and Grand Kuding tea, is it not, in order to enjoy moments of early senility? It is one of the few rewards of old age, the antithesis of those harsh moments in youth when we discover that there is no God, that good won’t triumph over evil, when the sweet illusions of the world are smashed by the cruel realities of adulthood. We let go of the world’s details a little, it all becomes a little more vague: a friend who slights you one moment is forgotten the next; the sum of debts that assail you becomes a blurred figure. To sit by 470the fire, with a cat on your lap, drinking Grand Kuding tea, with sleep seeping into your mind, is …

THE MEETING IS SET FOR TOMORROW, IS IT NOT? SHOULD WE NOT BE GETTING ON WITH FINISHING THE FINAL PAINTING?

‘Very shortly, my love,’ I say. The thought of going into her sacred study, of picking up her brush and completing that final work – it feels like blasphemy. ‘We have plenty of apples to keep us going and many hours ahead to complete it …’

I feel my head tipping forwards and her words tangle with dreams.

I wake with a sudden jerk to find myself sitting in my chair, the fire still blazing strong, a sense of foreboding in my chest, and I shuffle into the hallway and stand at the bottom of the stairs. They look so tiring, a hundred steps towering up before me, but climb them I must – wheezing, gripping the bannisters – and every time I have managed ten steps, it seems as though ten more have been added. But the delay is a consolation, because I know at the top of the stairs is a door that I do not want to open. And when I finally reach it and gently tap it with the tip of my fingers, it swings forth and I find her lying on the bed. Finn is miaowing, walking over her body, and I hiss at him to jump down and press my fingers to her neck, but there is no pulse, no pulse—

I wake in shock: ‘Rachel? Rachel?’

I AM HERE.

‘Oh God …’ I am still in the past, on the day of her death; everything is raw and sharp-edged.

YOU WERE ASLEEP. YOU CRIED OUT. 471

‘We should get on with the painting,’ I say eagerly.

Her voice is small and tight: PERHAPS I OUGHT TO BECOME A VASE.

‘A vase?’ I blink, sitting upright. I know that when Rachel speaks nonsense, it is a sign that melancholy is descending, that she needs cheering up.

YES. JUST GIVE UP ON ALL THIS WASTE-OF-SPACE FLOATING ABOUT. JUST SIT AND BE A VASE. SIT IN THE BOTTOM, IN THE WATER, WITH THE STALKS ALL GREEN IN ME AND THE SMELL OF FLOWERS.

‘If someone should forget to change the water, you would be sitting in a rotting bath all day,’ I tell her. ‘Now, we must work. If you must be anything, why not be a paintbrush?’

TSK.

I smile, for that is such a Rachel sound.

I enter her study smiling fondly, but the moment I sit before her canvas, I feel as though I have fifteen fingers, fat and blundering. In the days since she has died, a faint layer of dust has settled on her brushes; I blow it off gently. I follow her instructions, squeezing some white on to the palette and then a little ochre, thinning with turpentine.

FIRST YOU NEED TO FEEL THE PICTURE. DRINK IT IN, LET IT ENTER YOUR BLOODSTREAM. TAKE A GOOD LOOK AT IT. WHAT DO YOU SEE?

‘A naked woman,’ I say.

WHAT IS HER MOOD?

‘She’s feeling lascivious …’

I AM BEING SERIOUS.

‘I am not teasing you! She looks to me as though she has a glint in her eye!’ My voice has risen and there is a gentle knock on the door. It opens and there is Ginny, looking in. 472

‘Is everything all right, sir? Would you like some tea?’ she asks.

‘I’m fine, Ginny,’ I say cheerfully. The cat winds through her legs. I wait for her to close the door before I continue.

‘We could just leave this picture and simply take the rest,’ I say. ‘What will one missing picture matter?’

NO. TRUMAN ASKED FOR TWENTY PIECES. HE IS A HARD BASTARD, A STICKLER; AND MIGHT CHANGE HIS MIND IF THERE ARE NOT TWENTY.

The naked woman – for which Ginny posed – lies on the bed; a pile of books adorn her bedside cabinet, while a stool at the bottom has a marmalade cat sprawled across it. All I need to do is fill in the feline’s colours. Rachel’s pencil strokes are there in the right-hand corner of the painting. Yet the more I examine the nude, the more I am intimidated by the skilful way in which Rachel has captured her lily skin, the sheen of light, the texture of her muscles, the fine tracery of veins, and the more I fear it would take two decades of practice before I would be worthy of this task.

Rachel is talking all the while, reminding me that I must build up the paint in layers. She compares the act to a piece of music: a solo instrument sounding softly, and then perhaps an oboe coming in, and then the rest of the orchestra filling the air with their colours.

AND NOT TOO MANY BRUSHSTROKES, she adds, NOT TOO MANY NOTES.

I succeed in applying an underlayer of beige with the flat brush. A surge of confidence rears inside me – but then she tells me to mix in some blue.

‘Blue?’ 473

THE SHEEN OF THE CAT IS BLUE, IN THOSE PARTS WHERE SHE IS DAPPLED BLACK.

‘My darling, cats are not blue,’ I say, very gently.

I KNOW THAT CATS ARE NOT BLUE. IT IS FOR THE HIGHLIGHTING. WE WILL APPLY BLACK ON TO THE BLUE AFTERWARDS.

I swirl and mix the blue, but still I cannot bear to do it. Is she teasing me? Is this some awful trickery?

‘It – it won’t look real,’ I whisper.

PAINTING IS NOT ABOUT CAPTURING REALITY. I AM NOT REMBRANDT! I AM AN IMPRESSIONIST. AND WHEN BLACK IS HIT BY LIGHT, IT LOOKS BLUE. YOU ARE SIMPLY NOT PAYING ATTENTION.

‘I just don’t think it will work …’

FINE. YOU KNOW BETTER. YOU ARE THE MALE AUTHORITY. I WILL LEAVE YOU TO IT.

‘Rachel …’ I sigh. But she is gone.

For about five or ten minutes, I sit staring at the painting, my doubt quietening into desperation, and then – to my surprise – I see my hand swinging up, dipping my brush in the oils, and dabbing colour on to the canvas. A little too dark; I mix more white into the sienna. I tell myself that it is probably dreadful, but as I paint away I slip into a trance, the sort I used to sometimes enjoy when I was composing; it is as though I am serving the painting, which has already decided how it wants to look. It is a powerful sensation, the loss of one’s individuality, and I muse that the transcendence inherent in any creative act must account in part for the belief in God, for the men who wrote the Bible, scribbling away, feeling divine as words appeared on the page. But now I am being too intellectual; the innocence 474is lost and my brush is heavy and clumsy again. I relax my shoulders, allow myself to sink back down, and some half an hour later, it is all done and looks – well, it is not perfect, but it will suffice. My cat does not let the picture down, that is the main thing.

I feel peaceful.

‘Rachel?’ I call out softly. Our argument feels far away, an absurdity.

Nothing but the wind coming down the chimney. I heat water above the fire in our bedroom and fill a bath. I climb into it. I think of the model dinosaurs in Crystal Palace that Rachel and I once visited, those huge hollows; I feel like a model of a Homo sapiens, floating in warm water.

I go out into the garden and call her name over and over. Beneath the moonshine, I listen to the wind and the distant noises of hooves and carts rucking over the cobbles. I watch as lights in distant houses go out, one by one, and there is just darkness.