Keeping the World Away (35 page)

In the morning, the paleness of the square where it had hung stood out. She looked around for something else to put there, but could find nothing the right size. The nail hung empty, accusing her.

*

Paul Mortimer was an observant man. When he was a child, his father had made a game of training him to be what he was himself, a detective, and he had never lost the habit of memorising the contents of a room, the colour of a person’s eyes and hair, the names of shops on the bus route to school. He’d enjoyed it. His father would wait until they had left a restaurant and then cross-examine him: how many people had been there, how many tables, who had been sitting to the right and left of them? He was brilliant at it, and had never failed to delight his father even though he had not gone on to join his profession – and his talent had served him well, both in the army and in his later career.

So it was not so remarkable that he should notice, on his last visit to Lucasta Jenkinson’s flat, that a painting had been removed. To get to her studio he had to walk through her living room and he knew exactly what it contained right down to the magazines
and
books (poetry, he noted) on the low glass table in front of the fireplace and the colour of the tall candles in the glass candlesticks above it. He knew, from the height of these candles, that she had lit them the night before – in a week, he reckoned she burned three-quarters of each candle. Everything in this room was always immaculately tidy and clean, not rigidly so but with a pleasant, artistic feel for colour and arrangement, unlike her studio which was stark and bleak and not at all how he had imagined an artist’s studio would be.

He had deduced – deduction was another part of his father’s training – from the contrast in the two rooms that Lucasta Jenkinson was two people, as, he had discovered, a great many people were. All he ever saw was the artist, the portrait painter, the worker – someone austere, conscientious, demanding, exact, who required no communication with anyone else. He’d seen her withdraw into her own world, where he was simply an object. But he sensed that there was this other woman who was romantic and interested in others and had tastes far outside her working life. She might also – but this was guesswork, and his father had discouraged guesswork based on nothing but hope – have a sensual side so carefully hidden that it was in danger of being forgotten. When his wife Ailsa had asked him how he was getting on with Miss Jenkinson during the sittings he told her there was no ‘getting on’, there was no rapport at all between them. Ailsa had frowned, unconvinced, but he felt he was telling the truth.

She was ahead of him, leading him into her studio and his place on the hated chair. To her back, as they passed the fireplace, he said, ‘I see you’ve removed a painting.’ He saw her hesitate a fraction before continuing to lead him to his position, and then she said that yes, she had. ‘Why?’ he asked. ‘I thought it pretty, though it was hard to see it properly, hung there.’ By now she was at her easel, and he was at the chair, and they were facing each other. She could hardly not reply.

‘I’m surprised you noticed it,’ she said, and there was a level of sarcasm in her voice which he did not like.

‘Oh, I noticed it,’ he said quite sharply. ‘Twelve inches by ten, I would say, an interior of an attic room, contains a wickerwork chair, with a white cushion on it and a parasol leaning against it, and a small wooden table, in front of a curtained window, with a little bunch of flowers in a jar in the middle of it, the floor …’ He could tell she was astonished as he paused. ‘… The floor is, I think, tiled?’

‘Yes, tiled.’

‘But you didn’t paint it, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Who did?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’

‘Why did you remove it?’ Would she say it was none of his business? Would she say he should be quiet, she must start work?

‘It became too sad,’ she said. ‘Are you settled? Shall we begin?’

He crossed his arms as usual and stared straight ahead, as he always did, thinking about the possible significance of what she had, so surprisingly, told him. After a few minutes, she put down her paintbrush, and frowned.

‘Something’s changed,’ she said, ‘you look different.’

‘I’m the same as ever,’ he said. ‘Same position, same clothes.’

‘No, you’re not the same. You must be thinking differently.’

‘And that can change what you see?’

‘Of course, in this case.’

‘Well, then, it’s your fault.’

‘My fault? How?’

‘Telling me that the little painting had become too sad to you. It makes me wonder in what way it became sad. Whether you are sad yourself, and if so, why? It’s intriguing, worrying even.’

She flushed and turned away from him. ‘We must get on, Mr Mortimer. This is the last sitting.’

‘I know that. I want to get on. It’s up to you. There’s nothing I can do about my expression, I’m afraid. Shall we try again?’

He felt he’d taken charge of the situation and it pleased him – she, after all, had been in control up to now, throughout all the sittings. But when, instead of returning to her easel, she walked over
to
the window and stood with her back to him, her hands flat against the window panes, he began to wonder if he had spoken too abruptly, too harshly. He could see from how taut her body was that she was struggling to compose herself but not all his father’s training could help him decide what precisely was wrong. When she returned to work, he saw she was now very pale and unless he was mistaken her hand, the hand holding the paintbrush, was shaking slightly. No more was said, by either of them. Whatever had been wrong with his expression must have righted itself or else she had decided that it did not matter. Gradually, the colour returned to her cheeks, and she seemed absorbed in what she was doing.

It was a little after the usual time when she stopped. ‘Finished?’ he asked, still holding his position. She nodded. He got up from the chair and stretched his back. ‘My fault, I know, for saying the chair was fine. It was torture. That’s probably what you saw in my expression.’ He was trying to joke, but failed. ‘Well,’ he said, ‘so that’s it.’

‘I’ll deliver it next week.’

‘Come to my birthday party, bring it then.’

‘Thank you, no.’

‘You don’t go to parties, is that it? Or you just don’t want to come to mine?’

‘I don’t go to parties.’

‘How sad, a pretty woman like you. You might enjoy yourself.’

‘I don’t think so. You’ve left your newspaper.’ She bent down and picked up his
Times
, and held it out. As he took it, he felt like pulling her towards him with it but instead simply held on to it. So did she. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, almost whispering.

He didn’t ask for what. ‘Don’t be,’ he said, and let his hand creep along the rolled-up newspaper until it touched her own. She snatched her hand away immediately. The action told him everything.

*

It was not as easy as that. The portrait was delivered and everyone seemed to admire it, though Paul himself thought it alarming and ugly. If what he saw constituted the ‘essence’ of him, then people must think him cruel, heartless – that was what he saw in it. No,
his
wife said, not cruel or heartless but ‘utterly determined to get what you want, and you always have done’.

What he now wanted, he realised to his own surprise, was Lucasta Jenkinson, whom he was supposed never to see again. That was what he said to her, when he turned up unannounced at her door.

‘I am supposed never to see you again,’ he told her, ‘but I want to. I want to get to know you, to find out why you are sad.’

‘I didn’t say I was sad, Mr Mortimer.’

‘You did,
Miss
Jenkinson. During our last sitting, you were upset about that painting, you said …’

‘I said the painting had become sad, not that I was sad.’

‘But you are, aren’t you? You are sad.’

‘This is embarrassing …’

‘Yes, it is. I am embarrassed, but embarrassment won’t make me give up. Please, can I at least take you out for lunch, to say thank you for the portrait?’

It took weeks. She refused lunch, but after several phone calls, and great persuasion on his part, she agreed to walk on the Heath with him for half an hour. She looked at her wristwatch constantly but he was determined not to be offended. He did all the talking, managing to catch her interest (he hoped) by telling her about the sort of art he collected. He liked bold, colourful paintings – Matisse, Van Gogh, Derain – and had tried to buy the work of young artists who painted in the style of the great Fauves. She was not impressed. She shrugged, and said she thought Fauvism had serious limitations – it was too crude, too vehement for her taste. Colour was not everything. Nor did she approve of his collecting the work of artists who were essentially imitators. Originality was of more value. He assumed she thought he had been boasting, and so was quiet for the rest of the walk; but at the end, he asked if they could walk again, and perhaps because she felt she had been too harsh (or so he judged), she agreed.

Soon, their weekly walk was established as a regular event. She never asked him a single question about himself, and when once he mentioned his wife and sons she made a gesture indicating
that
she did not wish to hear more. But gradually he learned a great deal about her background through his own polite but persistent enquiries, carefully made in as oblique and subtle a manner as he could. Sometimes, replying, she smiled slightly, as though to let him know she knew he thought he was being clever. Quite quickly, he was absolutely sure that his instinct on that last day of sitting had been correct: she was attracted to him. They walked side by side, never touching, but her body was alert, sensitive to his own movement – it felt like a dance and increasingly he dictated the rhythm and felt she was responding whether she knew it or not. His confidence, always strong anyway, grew.

He had a flat, which Ailsa his wife knew nothing about, though it sometimes occurred to him that her ignorance was deliberate. The flat was in a mews, behind Devonshire Street, and even when he had no mistress, he liked to go there occasionally, liked the secrecy of it, the feeling that he could hide, become someone else. He took Lucasta there one Thursday, two months after they’d begun their regular walks. He suggested that instead of walking on the Heath they should venture further, to Regent’s Park. They took a taxi and began their walk near the Zoo then wandered right round the whole park, coming out at Clarence Gate. She stopped, expecting him to hail a taxi again, to take her home, but he said maybe she would like to see his flat where he sometimes stayed, he could give her a glass of wine there before she went home and afterwards, if she cared to, they could perhaps share a meal. She hesitated a long time, the traffic thundering by, but he did not dare try to persuade her. At last, she nodded, and they crossed the busy road and went to his flat. She was, he thought, wary, but not nervous. He poured her some wine, and they sat together sipping it, both silent. One wrong move and he knew he would never have another chance. But she took the lead. ‘Well?’ she said, putting down her not quite empty glass, and standing up.

It was a strange sexual experience, like none he had ever experienced before. It bewildered him. He had looked forward to the foreplay, the caressing and stroking, but she did not seem to
want
this and made it plain that she had an urgent need to progress at once to consummation. Afterwards he felt as though he had in some way been humiliated. He lay beside her feeling confused, even dismayed. Had he not just had what he wanted? What he had planned? But this was not what he had wanted, or not
only
what he wanted. It appeared to be what she wanted, what she was prepared to grant him, and it was nothing like enough. He wanted to know her completely. Lucasta’s body was the least of what he wanted. He might have been allowed to invade her body but the rest of her was tight shut.

That first time, neither of them spoke after they had dressed, till she was leaving, when she smiled and said, ‘Thank you,’ and gave a little nod of approval which he hated. He felt he was being treated as he himself had treated others but before he could overcome his rage, and object, she had gone.

*

They never made love in her flat. The idea, she said, made her shiver. She would not, she said, be able to work there if he had invaded her territory. It made him feel like an animal.

Sometimes, they went away, to Paris, to Florence, to Rome, exploring art galleries. Those were good weekends, when she seemed freer and yet closer to him, and he could begin to believe that the fusing of their hearts and minds which he so desired was going to happen. He’d been with her longer than he had been with any woman except his wife and, far from becoming tired of her, his longing for her intensified. He began to think of what had always been unthinkable: leaving his wife, Ailsa. Once, he hinted at this to Lucasta and was so sharply reprimanded that he was offended. Then he began to notice that Lucasta would make small remarks about how they were spending too much time together. She said her work was suffering, she wasn’t single-minded any more and it showed. Twice in one month she failed to turn up at the flat when they had arranged to meet and he was left disconsolate, brooding. An awful fear was growing in him that she was going to fade out of his life as he had faded out of the lives of several women he had known. She was doing what
he
had prided himself on doing, letting him down lightly, preparing him for desertion. He couldn’t stand it.

For a while, several weeks at least, Lucasta wondered if what she felt for Paul was turning into love. It was a word she shied away from, a word she’d always been impatient with, suspicious of its meaning. She had loved her mother, but that had been a love so natural she had never had to question what it meant. It was not so easy to define what she felt for Paul. The physical attraction had been, and remained, powerful, but then came the warmth, the great affection, which surprised her. It was a little like the feeling she had for her absent brother Sam. Not love, but a tenderness towards him, a sense of some connection existing which could not be broken. But there was, she discovered as time went on, another element in what she felt for Paul that was not there with Sam. It was an intimacy which had nothing to do with bodies. She felt increasingly
free
with him. She did not guard her words or shield him from her thoughts. Was this love, then?