Elijah’s Mermaid (26 page)

He had her recline upon the chaise and no need for her clothes to be removed while he worked through the whole of the afternoon. I think she slept. Her eyes were closed. And, while watching, with every hour that passed, I despaired of us ever being alone, of touching her with my hands again, until the gods must have heard my plea, when the doorbell rang, then a hammering knock, which caused Pearl to start in some alarm
.

Miss Preece, the oldest of the maids, came shuffling in to make the announcement that Osborne was needed to sign for a letter – after which, while cursing to be interrupted, he stormed his way out to the entrance hall
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When alone, I enquired if Pearl was well. She said nothing at first, still looking to be disoriented, and her eyes darting swiftly around the room before she glanced up and whispered, ‘He came to my room. He saw the blood. I said it was my monthly curse
.’

There was no chance for more. Osborne returned, his presence like a brooding cloud passing over the light of the midday sun. He thumped a letter down on his desk, afterwards staring hard at Pearl and pressing a hand against his brow as if in actual physical pain. And locked in such a posture he announced that his inspiration was gone. He told Pearl to go upstairs again
.

She did not come back down to dine and, finding I had no appetite, I excused myself and also retired. I have spent the evening drawing Pearl, her image burned into my memory
.

October 7th

When I asked if Pearl was still unwell, Osborne simply shrugged and smiled. All day he has been in the best of moods, examining sketchbooks and making notes for whatever new work he has in mind. While he muttered on in that way he has, I worked in silence, cleaning the brushes and palettes, checking the stocks of all the paints, after which he requested I go to the darkroom and bring back every photograph. Some, those of Chiswick House gardens, he told me to copy out in ink – illustrations he’d promised to supply for some advertising brochure. While I did that he tore many others to shreds, carelessly flinging the scraps to the floor. It grieved me to see my work so abused, to see Pearl’s image being destroyed. But those prints with which he was satisfied were carefully dated and stored away in large manila envelopes, every one being marked with notes on the front, listing details of place, and posture, and light – every reference that he could possibly need to select his chosen ‘part’ of Pearl
.

Only now, when I sit here alone in my room, have I dared to admit to the flicker of hope that he may be preparing to let her go. Is this why he had me come to his house, to take so many photographs, so that he can continue with his work should his muse ever happen to disappear?

October 8th

I could not sleep. I waited ’til dawn, then dressed and went down to the studio. Osborne lay unconscious on one of the day beds, an easel knocked to the floor at his side, paint spilled and congealed round a bottle of chloral – a substance of which he is too fond. He disguises its taste in whisky. He says it aids a state of hypnosis, his visions more vivid, more lucid
.

I left him to his dreaming. I left the house through the passage door and went to the wall at the side of the house where Pearl’s wisteria ladder grew, and only the briefest moment of doubt before I began to ascend myself, flinching at every rustle and creak – in
case I fell. In case he woke. But thankfully, those branches held. I finally scaled the parapet gulley and crawled beneath her window
.

The moon proved itself my friend that night, its radiance spilling into a room which seemed to be filmed in a coating of snow, a powdery dust on the mirrored armoire, on a chest of drawers, all the trinkets above, all the pebbles and shells that lay around. There was a large mahogany bed, its posts carved with mermaids and dolphins and within them Pearl looked like a princess, lost in a pale enchantment. When I tapped on the glass she did not stir, nor when I pushed to raise the sash, to allow me the space to squeeze beneath before slowly creeping towards the bed, where I knelt, where I gazed at her dreaming face and then lowered my lips against her ear, to whisper my lover’s name
.

That was foolish of me. She woke in blind panic, rearing up like a creature possessed, her eyes open but not really seeing, her breaths very fast when lashing out, trying to push me away with her arms, crying the same word again and again. It was something like ‘tip’. It made no sense, though my only concern at that point in time was that Osborne might hear and discover me there. I may have been too rough, pressing a hand against her mouth, repeating her name until she woke – when the arms that had tried to strike me were now reaching out with affection. She drew me down to lie at her side and how sweet, how slow that silent love – until the dawn came slanting in, when Pearl began to weep again, when she said she saw malice in Osborne’s eyes. She begged me to go away again – and was it my guilt, my imagination, or was there a creak outside the door, the slightest groan, the hush of cloth?

October 9th

At breakfast today, Osborne only smiled when he said Pearl was still indisposed and would spend the rest of the day in her room. He seems intent on locking her up and now, more than ever, I must make plans. But Osborne must not suspect my intentions, so when he asked me to pose again I agreed without hesitation. He said we
would work ‘below’, proceeding to open a hidden door in one of the studio’s panelled walls – one I had not previously known to exist. He struck a match and lit a jet to illuminate a narrow hall, a run of stone steps at its farthest end. He beckoned for me to follow. He smiled – an expression sinister, with his beard grown so knotted and wild of late, taking on a strangely bluish hue from the cast of the flame upon the wall. My nose prickled and itched with the mushroomy dampness, beneath which a familiar noxious stench, even stronger that odour of sewage and fish. Could Osborne smell it too? He said nothing. He seemed only excited when, looking back over his shoulder again, he said I was his honoured guest, that apart from Pearl and the cleaning staff, and the builders who’d followed his plans for construction, I was the only visitor to see where his favourite paintings were hung, the ones that he would never sell
.

The lamp threw its juddering rays on mossed walls. I heard sounds of running water, a pleasanter fragrance in the air – of linseed oil and turpentine, the ingredients of any artist’s trade. But nothing could have prepared me for that moment the passageway opened out into a subterranean room, in the centre of which was a raised round pool, and around that a circle of hissing jets. Osborne told me those burners were never turned off. ‘The flames warm the water for the fish. I observe them for my paintings. But the wretched things keep dying on me
.’

Stepping nearer, past marble sculptures of porpoise and turtles, mermaids and nymphs, I saw gliding shapes in the brackish black water. Each one was at least a foot in length, scales glinting metallic when caught by the light which drew out the sheen of white, orange and black. But most of those colours were crusted grey, the spread of some spotting fungus. Two or three of the fish floated dead on the surface, though Osborne did not seem the least concerned, only proud of the engineering feat. ‘Ingenious, don’t you think! Fresh water is drawn from the house supplies, circulated through grated vents then dispersed along pipes that run down to the Thames
.’

I said nothing in reply. My eyes had moved on, seeing a mound
of sand in one corner. Perhaps it was white when dry. Down here, damp and clogged, the colour was dark, and it was littered with pebbles and weeds as if naturally deposited there by the tide of some invisible sea. All over the walls were shell mosaics, intricate swirling shapes they made – of stars and moons and flowers and hearts – except for the niches, where paintings were hung, one or two of them being concealed by cloths, but the rest were clearly visible, and every single one of Pearl, her face a pale star shining out through the darkness
.

I found myself turning around in slow circles to view the entire collection there, being stunned by their ambiguity. An alluring sexuality suffused with the modesty of a child. A child goddess, a child nymph, a child mermaid, her hair wreathed in flowers and sea snakes and shells, and the luminous glimmer of aquamarine from the water in which she floated or swam, all studded with glistening bubbles of air, with fish like those in the pool near by, all manner of bird and insect life, lilies and ferns and anemones. Every image was something fantastical, yet stunningly honest in tone. A long while before I could find my tongue, to say how wonderful they were, how it was nothing short of a crime to keep such treasures hidden away where surely the moisture would cause them to rot
.

‘
It’s dry enough. I light the fire. The work is protected with varnish. I do not paint for other eyes. I paint for myself, and this is my world, modelled on a grotto . . .’ He paused, almost wistful when he said, ‘The grotto in which my muse first posed.’ And then, looking up, with his arms spread wide, he asked, ‘Don’t you find it enchanting . . . my secret realm, my darkness?
’

I said I found it cold
.

He laughed and crouched down by a large stone hearth, where a metal basket overflowed with the debris of some half-burned logs. There Osborne lit some kindling. Yellow flames threw dramatic shadows around, flashing over the candlesticks on either side, two tarnished silver dolphins from which wax must have dripped for hours before, thick dribbles of white on the stone-flagged floor creating organic, intricate shapes
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‘
What do you think of our angel?’ With a sudden flourish, he drew back a cloth to show the painting that lay beneath – one in which Pearl was not alone. The mermaid reclined in lace frothings of surf that ebbed at the edge of a sandy shore. There were towering cliffs in the distance behind and on the pebbled beach at her side a small boy was kneeling, bowing his head, as if in adoration or prayer. He might be some raven-haired cupid, but whereas all the putti I’d seen before were adorned with wings of downy white, those on his back might belong to a bat, being rubbery, black and sharply tipped. And the link, or large candle, that Cupid held seemed the crudest of phallic symbols to me, with its base pressed low against the boy’s belly, its pillar clutched tightly in one of his hands, and the fizzing of smoke rising up from its wick – what might be a smouldering firework – too suggestive of something carnal
.

Osborne did not wait for my response, going on to explain how that boy was modelled on a child who had once shared his home in Italy. ‘His name was Angelo,’ he said. ‘I looked on that boy as if a son. But he grew too precocious and daring in all of his shows of affection for Pearl. It was a shame, but he had to go, though his beauty will always be preserved . . . if only for my eyes, down here
.’

I knew – how could I not know – the implication behind his words, that Osborne had guessed my feelings for Pearl – that perhaps he had spied on us last night. And that cloth he drew down from the painting, was it the shawl that Pearl had worn, that night when I found her beside the Thames? Had she left it there? Had he found it?

And yet, still not wanting to draw his suspicion, despite all the turmoil in my mind, I simply did as Osborne asked when he sat behind his easel and directed me to kneel on the sand, in much the same stance as he’d sketched me before – though this time he asked me to take off my clothes, my jacket, my waistcoat, my shirt as well, my naked upper body and arms stretched to the domed rock ceiling. Despite the fire that Osborne made I shivered. I felt claustrophobic, as if I’d been buried inside a tomb. But still, by my
show of obedience, by the means of my silent compliance, I hoped to conceal any trace of guilt that Osborne might seek to find in me, even if it was mirrored wherever I looked, my eyes reflecting those pictures of Pearl
.

For hours he worked – feverish brushstrokes, swiftly applied, tutting with impatience when, every ten minutes or so, I had to lower my arms to rest. My knees were aching, burning, numb, and when he finally said we could stop it took some considerable effort to stand and work the stiffness out. And Pearl has endured this for years and years
.

When he led me back up the steep stone steps, he looked over his shoulder and grunted, ‘Only two or three more days of this should be sufficient to see you done
.’

I suspected that when this next work is complete, when I am – as he charmingly puts it – ‘done’, his intention will be to send me away. But I was not prepared for what came next, when he threw back his head and laughed out loud. ‘I must say, it’s a sight for sore eyes, seeing you shuffling behind. Do you know . . . you resemble your grandfather?
’

At that moment I hated Osborne Black – to hear such sneering cruelty for which there was no cause or justification, even less when his taunts persisted, as he reached back with one of his hands and chucked it lightly under my chin, the strangest sorry look on his face when he leaned in towards me, his face very close, when he held my gaze and murmured low, ‘An old man with the face of a beautiful boy
.’

Tomorrow is a Saturday. I shall spend the day posing as Osborne suggests. In the evening I shall travel to London and visit Freddie in Burlington Row. I have decided to end this charade – this taunting game that Osborne plays – the rules I cannot comprehend. When I tell my uncle all that goes on, surely he will be able to offer advice with regard to this quandary in which I am placed. Freddie will know what to do for the best. Freddie is a man of the world. He holds no affection for Osborne Black. I shall feel no remorse when I steal his wife
.

PART THREE