475

VIII

A feeling of dread in my heart: it has been a long time since I was involved in any sort of business meeting. My tongue was always more lead than silver, even then. I used to get by on charm and youth, both of which are now entirely lacking. In her study, I pack up her paintings, whispering, ‘What should I say to him? It would help if you stopped sulking, Rachel …’

As I stand upright, rubbing my peevish knees, my heart flurries at the sight of the curtains lifting – only to realise that Ginny is in the doorway and has created a breeze. I show her the one I completed and she says, ‘Why, sir, you can hardly tell the difference.’ I wait for a ‘but’, but none follows. During the night, I woke several times and said her name out loud, into the darkness, but the darkness did not reply. My bed felt very large without her.

I have no money for a hackney carriage, but, with insouciant verve, I inform the driver that I will pay him at the end for a journey there and back, plus a fee for waiting outside the gallery. If there is no deal done today, I will surely end up in debtors’ jail.

The gallery sits on the edge of Turl Street, between the Mitre and the student dwellings, a little yellow-brick place. The owner, Mr. Truman, has a foxy face and eyebrows so thick and expressive that they look as though they belong 476on a music score. In a back room, I lay the series out for him, unwrapping the most impressive pieces first, and passing him a list of titles.

I say nothing, knowing that her genius will speak far more than my improvised poppycock. He stares at each for minutes at a time, as though analysing every brushstroke, his eyebrows rising several octaves. His voice, however, is strangely lacking in any sort of emotion or tone.

‘Extraordinary. And can you be sure that Rachel Turridge is the true artist of these works?’

‘I have witnessed my wife working on these this past year, day in, day out.’ I try to keep my voice level. ‘She may have been in her seventies, but she had the energy of a sprightly mare.’

He turns to me briefly, with the throwaway line: ‘My condolences on her passing.’

‘Thank you.’

‘These are exquisite …’ he goes on in his monotone. ‘Indeed, people have speculated that you have aided her throughout her career, her paintings are so far beyond the usual quality for the female sex.’

‘These are entirely by her hand, I can assure you of that,’ I cry.

His eyebrows hit top note. ‘The oils are still drying on this one. They might, you know, fetch more if you claimed them as yours and we exhibited your debut show.’

I clench my fists in my pockets, before explaining that this is simply not viable and furthermore, since Roger Fry praised her piece in the ‘Post-Impressionists’ exhibition, she has become rather a rising star. He sighs and offers me seven thousand for the lot. I am sure that his initial 477offer was ten thousand, but as I do not wish to reveal the weaknesses of my maggot-mind I follow his lead.

‘It is no longer enough,’ I assert.

I work hard to hide my hunger and desperation and eventually haggle him up to £10,000. He gives me an immediate advance of £1,000 in cash and the rest is set down in his queer, slanting hand on a cheque which I fold with care into the inside pocket of my frock coat. Euphoria beats in my chest as I climb back into the hackney carriage, ordering the driver to take me to the city centre. As we weave through the Covered Market and down Ship Street, I feel the sadness of having nobody to share my victory with. The streets, bustling with crowds and horses, seem an echo chamber of loneliness.

When I arrive home several hours later, armed with culinary delights, I refill the drinks cabinet with absinthe, whisky and vodka, and sink down by the fire, the smell of chicken oozing from the kitchen as Ginny cooks our dinner. I can hear her humming, glad of the wages sitting fat in her pocket, but I feel the melancholy of mourning that is long overdue. What if Rachel’s voice was never anything other than the product of a grieving mind? If I have attained a fresh sanity, then I despise it; I appeal for the return of derangement. Tears prickle my eyes and I reach for The Times. I am old enough now not to mourn the loss of the illusion that any government will act for the good of the people. They serve the rich and keep the rest surviving just sufficiently to avoid a riot. The stories speak of technology, 478the pace of life quickening, of telephones, railways, electricity’s expansion – why, it is enough to make a man suffer neurasthenia simply from reading it.

I set the paper down. The tick of the clock is very loud. I might play some Beethoven, I suppose, but I cannot summon the energy to lift the arm on the gramophone. The only energy I feel like expelling is to stand and storm into the kitchen and throw the chicken into the night. I will not eat without her voice. I will get drunk on whisky, unless she stops me. I picture my liver pickled; I consider the glint of the razor blade upstairs. Let her come to my damn funeral and sing for me …

In the fire, I see a flickering in the flames.

‘Rachel?’ I squint, wondering if it is the effect of opium, before catching myself: I have not taken any.

Her face finds form in the fire’s colours; her smile is one of apology. Then she dances into the newspaper; on the front page, her face appears in faintest ink, a watermark in the pages. I am so enraptured that I kiss the paper, but as my lips wet the page, blankness unfurls. A little smoke blows in from the chimney and she curls into it, creating a feminine shape in its tendrils.

THAT IS THE MOST I CAN DO, she croaks, as though the effort has exhausted her. I embrace the air; the smoke shivers over me in a caress, curling into my collar, wisping over my shoulders.

I begin to weep. ‘I thought you had left me. I bought you a present, on my way back from the gallery … It is silly, I know,’ I say, unveiling the sketching book. ‘I am an old fool.’

I LOVE IT. IF I HAD LIPS, I WOULD KISS YOU AGAIN AND AGAIN. 479

‘Don’t ever leave me like that. I cannot live without you.’

FORGIVE ME. I OVERREACTED.

‘I mean it. I cannot live without you.’

Later, after dinner, we sit by the fire together. I am anxious that I ought to be honest about what a prejudiced monster Truman was. I dread that she might request that I return the money.

NO CHANGE THERE, THEN, she says breezily. AND WE HAVE HIS MONEY – LET US DAMN WELL ENJOY IT.

I laugh and raise a glass of whisky to her, though underneath my joy there is still a wound of pain, terror at the ease with which she can depart, without care for money or food or a home or the life we have plaited together.

‘I think it will be a most splendid exhibition. And remarkable too that you will live on after death in yet another way,’ I remark wistfully. ‘You’ll be hanging in someone’s house.’

OR A DUSTY ATTIC.

‘Their toilet,’ I laugh as she breath-tickles me. ‘But the point is … life will just close over the space I’ve left behind.’

BUT THIS IS NONSENSE. YOU HAVE BEEN A CRITIC, A COMPOSER, A LOVER OF MUSIC, A MOST GLORIOUS HUSBAND AND THE BEST OF FATHERS.

Now I am smiling.

AND MOST OF THE THINGS THAT COUNT IN LIFE CANNOT BE MEASURED AS ACHIEVEMENTS, THEY ARE ABSTRACT, FOR LOVE IS INVISIBLE.

‘That is a little strong, I feel.’ 480

NO, I BELIEVE IT IS APT.

A pause.

CAN WE PLAY ‘CLAIR DE LUNE’?

‘Of course …’

I sit and she drifts, but in our minds we dance in the moonlight of piano notes.