Ivory (13 page)

A smile
flickered through her face. Was it to reassure him? He dared not
allow himself to dwell on his consideration that it was relief at
seeing him again. He was certainly relieved to see her, to be with
someone that had shared that horrific moment. “Have the police
talked to you?” He prayed she wouldn’t take too much time to
respond. She didn’t. She shook her head once to each side. A weight
lifted from him. Every answer he received relieved his worry. It
was euphoric and strangely ethereal, as though asking a spirit for
insight and receiving knocks for a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. He couldn’t
resist asking her if she was okay again and received another
affirmative. He was sure the broad smile he wore could have folded
in on itself it felt so stretched.

“
My request… about asking you to model for a portrait....” It
seemed wrong to bring it up, but that was why he was there after
all. “Please remember it’s not like the modelling King asked you to
do. You will be clothed. Not… not nude.” Although Ebony was out of
sight he experienced the need to justify his motives and
intentions. “I just want you to sit for a portrait.”

She stood
where she did. Unmoving. Unblinking. Suddenly she smiled that
half-smile and gave a single emphasised nod.

Martin’s
excitement felt as though it were lifting him on wings and his
cheeks ached against his smile. However his lips faltered as Ebony
stepped back into the hall and folded strong arms across a broad
chest, with his face set and stern in a carving of seriousness and
grim distaste, as though he saw something in this moment that
escaped Martin. The light caught his blank eyes and flickered like
far away lightning suggesting the promise of a storm.

Chapter
Ten

Martin stared
at the painting. His brush poised but hesitant: lacking the
direction of inspired creativity. The sweeps and strokes within the
paint filled his field of vision as he poured his attention over
the details. He had been painting Ivory for two days and her face
and his painting of it saturated his mind. Beyond the sittings she
was with him whenever he closed his eyes, as if his concentration
had left a physical impression of her upon the lens of his
eyes.

He had
composed the portrait using Fibonacci’s golden ratio of balance
between asymmetry and symmetry within the angle of Ivory’s face and
in her relation to her surroundings. She sat before him in his loft
studio, melting into the light from the muslin shrouded window of
his loft studio: an angel descended.

He liked the
ethereal imagery that had come from her wearing the simple white
robe he had sourced from Donnie and Bea in the drama department
stores. It was a fine sheer material that hung from her shoulders
and clung to her curves on its way to the floor. It was thin enough
to melt in the light and show the ghost of her shape and form, but
its weave was sufficiently dense to obscure the crudeness of nudity
beneath.

When Ivory had
arrived on that first day, her facial expression was inscrutable of
any emotion. Climbing the stairs to the studio they had passed
through the first floor where the bedrooms were, and it was Martin
that had experienced a discomforting need to remind her that their
destination was the studio in the loft. In the studio they were
greeted by the open sofa bed. Oscar had been up here and opened it
so he could lay and watch Martin paint. Martin had hastily folded
the bed away and stumbled over explaining that he wanted her seated
in the chair by the window. It had struck him that even if he had
an ulterior motive in asking her to pose for him she would not have
complained, she was as available to him sexually as she would be to
any man who was willing to pay.

At least the
functional appearance of the room, with its unpainted plaster walls
dotted with unfinished projects, bare floorboards, mishmash of
tired furniture, and shelves and cupboards cluttered with art
materials, suggested that this was a place where the focus was art.
He had directed her to a bi-fold changing screen that she could use
to preserve her dignity, and in a further gesture of respect he had
left her to change while he prepared a tray of tea and biscuits.
Despite trying to reinforce his intentions there was a sordidness
about the act of having her at his home. He wanted her to trust
him, needed her to see him differently to her customers. It was
crucial for Martin’s conscience that this act was genuine and
innocent. Yet he hadn’t told Jenny about tracking Ivory down, and
that it was Ivory that was sitting for him.

He hadn’t had
to ask Ivory to pose. Just invited her to take a seat and get
comfortable. Martin had been so startled by the speed of which she
settled that he had to ask her if she was ready, she had answered
with a nod. There had not been any shifting in preparation of long
hours of stillness, no search for a comfortable pose or a need to
place her limbs in positions that might attribute attractiveness,
innocence, confidence, sultriness, peace or any other kind of
quality that other sitters might try and communicate in a pose. She
simply sat and was still.

It had been
odd having a sitter who could not communicate. Usually such
sessions started with small talk that eased both the painter and
subject away from the unnatural situation of being virtual
strangers engaged in intense scrutiny. It rarely sustained itself
but when conversation subsided the silence that followed was
bearable. Without it the awkwardness had lingered and distracted
his hand and pencil into false starts. Martin had found the need to
speak, to say anything to detract from the awkwardness. When he did
it only made things worse as he had to remember to say things that
only needed nods or shakes of the head in answer. Martin cringed at
the stupid pointless things he had said to fill the void.
Constantly circling around the haunting memory of the night in
King’s flat.

Gradually the
gentle lines that had escaped his putty eraser had begun to take
form, and it had aroused his creative inspiration and drive, which
in turn distracted him from the discomfort. His creation went from
skeletal sketches of form to being fleshed with opaque base colours
like some Frankenstein’s creation taking shape.

Ordinarily
when he was paying a sitter he would focus on the face, head and
bust, anything else could be filled in from the imagination
afterwards to save on money. He took some photographs as reference
for the same reasons, but each time he depressed the shutter button
he recalled the photographs King had taken, he was glad he had been
finishing a film and had only had six exposures left.

He had applied
the base layers of paint for the head hair and bust and they
awaited the overlay of fine detail that would finish them, yet
although he had all the colours mixed and ready for the different
grades of light and shadow he delayed their application. Instead he
found himself working on the details of her clothes, her hands and
the divine light behind and around her. He had already failed to
create one likeness and he wanted to ensure he did her justice this
time. That’s what he told himself, but he couldn’t escape the fact
that the longer he held off the detail of her face the more time he
would have to spend in her company.

He looked up
from the painting and her face ignited the spark he needed to
start. He leaned over the painting and cast his eyes back and forth
between Ivory and the canvas and applied the brush with the
concentration of a surgeon and the passion of an orchestra
conductor. Ivory was in exactly the same position she had adopted
for the previous two sessions.

“
How are you, today?”

She looked
over and smiled a nod.

He took it
that she would ask him the same if she could. “I’ve been busy
today. One of the students has decided that he wants to mix his art
forms. He usually does sculpture, but now he wants to sculpt and
then photograph it in a way that will accentuate the sculpture but
still keep it in a two dimensional world. Quite clever. However, I
think modern art is overtaking me. I remember when I was in class
myself, painting bowls of fruit for my exams. If you paint a bowl
of fruit now, the idea seems to be to make it look like anything
but a bowl of fruit.”

She smiled. He considered how ironic it was that he had just
spoken of Richard. She had no way of knowing that Richard knew
where she lived and that he had followed her, photographed her,
painted and drawn her, obsessed about
(
loved?)
her from afar.

The silence
reasserted itself. He knew he could turn to questions he had used
on the previous sittings, but the subject he avoided, the subject
that seemed taboo frustrated him with its continuing pressure of
presence. The flame of inspiration guttered and his brush hesitated
again. He steadied his hand against the edge of the canvass like a
drunk hiding delirium tremens. “Your inability to talk. That must
be frustrating.”

The corners of
her mouth turned down for a few moments and she shrugged.

“
I imagine you have grown used to it then, because it’s damn
frustrating for me.”

She cocked her
head in her gesture of curiosity.

“
I want to ask you things that I know you can’t answer with a
simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”

She nodded. He
was unsure whether she agreed with his recognition of the limits of
her communication, or whether she was encouraging him to elaborate.
She never seemed concerned with his moments of soliloquy, but then
they had previously been about art.

“
I have asked you before, but I have the need to ask you again
about whether you are okay after what happened at King’s flat.” He
spoke to the picture rather than Ivory, then looked at her when he
had needed to rest for a moment.

Her gaze wouldn’t meet his. It seemed unsure of how to
express her answer. It was beyond a ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Martin walked
over to the desk set into one of the dormers and handed a sheet of
paper and a pencil to her. She looked at them and frowned. She held
the items in her hand and looked at them and Martin questioningly.
She didn’t know how to communicate at all, yet she could understand
those around her
.

He took the
paper and pencil away and returned to his easel. “It doesn’t
matter.” He lied. She had appeared disassociated from the scene.
Perhaps she was. He tried to imagine how someone so devoid of
communication, a skill taken for granted by those who had it, would
feel after witnessing such a horrific scene like King’s death.
Trapped with it, with no way of expressing what she had seen and
how it affected her. Imagination wasn’t enough he wanted to share
the experience.

He wanted to
disclose the terror he had experienced at being cornered. His fear
of King. The agonising regret at going to that area. The thrusting
shattered bottle. The vicious white-hot pain in his arm. The chaos
of the struggle. King’s sudden shift from angry lunatic to
whimpering victim. The blood. The coffee table. The slicing glass.
The blood. The gurgling. The death. Each element battered him in
overpowering attacks as his memory raped his consciousness.

Martin gripped
the edge of the canvass against the impact of the flashbacks,
scattering his brush to the floor. His stomach muscles went into
aching spasm around a withheld sob. Every muscle pulled against his
control, dragging him into fits of sorrow stretching him across the
chasm between sanity and unbridled despair. He sucked in a deep
sobering breath and palmed the tears from his face and rubbed them
from his beard.

Ivory moved
close to him and rested on her haunches before him. Her sudden
proximity was discomforting. Her cold deep eyes fixed upon him. Her
eyes seemed to have taken in all that Martin could remember of that
night and all the emotions he had experienced and there was pain
and sympathy in her face.

“
I’m sorry,” Martin croaked, feeling pathetic. His emotional
vulnerability created a possibility for intimacy that frightened
him. A heat rushed through him at the realisation and he looked
away to the unfinished portrait guiltily. “Now, we should get back
to work, or I will never get this finished.” His voice was strong
and emotionless despite the fear of the moment he now did his best
to distance himself from.

Chapter
Eleven

Jenny awoke to
the mattress depress from Martin’s weight as he attempted to angle
himself under the covers. She could tell by the deliberation of his
movements that he was trying his best not to disturb her. She
allowed him to think he hadn’t and rolled herself to the edge of
the bed. A brooding resentment caused her heart to flutter with the
growing tension in her chest. It only began to subside when he
settled into a playing dead rest.

When had they
both
started hiding from each other?

Things hadn’t
been right between them since he had lost his inspiration for art.
Being an art critic and working weekends in an art gallery she
understood how important art was to an artist, and imagined that
for someone with the creative fire, losing inspiration and living
with only the cooling embers of a talent would be like being
trapped in purgatory. Yet as much as she empathised, she had hoped
that she and the children would have balanced out that loss in some
way, that although part of his life had deteriorated he would take
solace in his family, in Jenny. However, the domestic routine and
Martin’s time consuming art itself had already fostered a distance
between them. It left Jenny with an unspoken dissatisfaction that
she had tried to overcome by being the perfect wife, the perfect
lover, the perfect friend. Yet the effort only worked when the
object of that enthusiasm actually wanted those things. The effort
was not reciprocated except on birthdays or anniversaries. Not
enough to satisfy and sustain her and their relationship. Jenny
understood that they both needed very different things from life:
Martin’s needs had taken him away from her, and her needs therefore
remained unfulfilled.