The third portrait Jasper Gwyn did was for a woman who was about to be fifty and had asked her husband for a gift that could amaze her. She hadn’t seen the advertisement, she hadn’t dealt with Rebecca, she hadn’t chosen to do what she was doing. When she arrived, the first day, she appeared skeptical, and didn’t want to undress completely. She kept her slip on, of purple silk. As a young woman she had been a stewardess, because she needed to support herself and to put as many miles as possible between herself and her family. She had met her husband on the London–Dublin route. He was sitting in seat 19D and was then eleven years older than she was. Now, as often happens, they were the same age. Starting on the third day she took off her slip, and a few days later Jasper Gwyn became, without knowing it, the sixth man who had seen her completely naked. One afternoon Jasper Gwyn had all the shutters open when she arrived, and she had a moment of hesitation. But then she seemed to get used to it, and in time she came to like lingering at the windows, without covering herself, touching the glass with her breasts, which were white and beautiful. One day a boy crossed the courtyard to get a bicycle: she smiled at him. A few days later Jasper Gwyn closed the shutters again, and in some way, from that moment, she surrendered to the portrait—a different face, and another body. When the time came to talk she spoke in a girl’s voice, and asked Jasper Gwyn to sit beside her. Every question seemed to catch her unprepared, but every answer was unusually acute. They talked about storms, about revenge, and about expectations. She said, at one point, that she would have liked a world without numbers, and a life without repetitions.
When the last light bulb went out, she was walking, slowly, singing in an undertone. In the darkness Jasper Gwyn watched her continue slowly, grazing the walls. He waited until she was near him and said, Thank you, Mrs. Harper, it was all perfect. She stopped and in her girlish voice asked if she could make a request. Try, Jasper Gwyn answered. I would like you to help me get dressed, she said. With tenderness, she added. Jasper Gwyn did it. It’s the first time someone has done this for me, she said.
Mrs. Harper got her portrait in exchange for eighteen thousand pounds and a declaration in which she pledged the most absolute discretion, on the pain of heavy pecuniary sanctions. Her husband gave it to her on the evening of her birthday, the table set for just the two of them, by candlelight. He had wrapped the folder in gold paper and a blue ribbon. She opened the present and, sitting at the table, without saying anything, read straight through the four pages that Jasper Gwyn had written for her. When she finished, she looked up at her husband and for a moment thought that nothing could keep them from dying together, after living together forever. The next day Rebecca received an e-mail in which Mr. and Mrs. Harper thanked her for the splendid opportunity and begged her to tell Mr. Gwyn that they would jealously guard the portrait, and would never show it to anyone, because it had become the most precious thing it had been granted them to possess. Sincerely, Ann and Godfried Harper.