Mortal Love (27 page)

He stepped forward, leaves crunching underfoot, and eased up alongside Cobus's stool. The old painter leaned back to accommodate him.

“Ah,” said Radborne.

It was another lapidary oval, less than two feet in height and half that in width, its colors shining as though lacquered. At first it was impossible to determine its subject. Candell had begun painting from the outermost edges in, but in a peculiar spiraling fashion, so that one's eyes tracked around and around, seeking the center.

But there was no center yet—the painting was incomplete, the space in the middle a crosshatch of swirling lines and faintly penciled forms. As in
Delectation,
those figures that already had been painted were maddeningly small. And their sizes varied: there was no relative scale among them whatsoever.

Radborne bent until his nose was an inch from the canvas. From a distance it looked as though a finger hovered at the top—the artist's finger? a giant's?—but from another angle the finger looked more like a tree trunk. Or could it be an arched stone bridge? It was quite extraordinary, the bizarre trompe l'oeil effects this madman cozened from oil and clay; and what in God's name was that? A sort of spiky fungus, thrusting from beneath a pair of legs … ?

“Remarkable,” he said.

The subject of the painting was a procession, a long skein of figures that began at the bottom of the oval and wound inward, between trees and rocks and hills and streams all luxuriantly overgrown with plants. He recognized harebells and bluebells and foxgloves and various species of fern, but there were others he could not name. Figures peered from the undergrowth; some of these were almost invisible. A few people on horseback wore richly colored clothing, Elizabethan or medieval in style, embroidered robes or stiff farthingales, sky-blue capes, leather boots.

But there was a London policeman in there, too, and several women who were obviously of the street, and two men in deerstalker hats. There was also someone who looked like Jacobus Candell, only much younger, and a man who resembled Dr. Learmont brandishing a pair of shears. And toward the incomplete center of the canvas, there were people dressed unlike anyone Radborne had ever seen—a woman in trousers, men in tight, shining black-and-yellow clothes, another woman in a very short red shift.

“Oh, no,” he whispered, frowning. “Oh, look here. …”

He blinked, trying to get a clearer view, and began to see that, despite their strange and varied clothing, the figures possessed the same features. At once delicate and sensual, with long slanted eyes and full mouths, high cheekbones, sharp chins; the men feminine and faintly threatening, the women eerily self-composed, eyes half shuttered and lips parted as though about to speak.

All, all were Evienne Upstone.

“They've just come from the wedding night,” said Candell. “We are at the very center here—the omphalos, if you will—and all radiates from us. Or will, when the time comes. When Time comes.”

Candell stabbed at the canvas. When he withdrew his finger, Radborne saw a slit or crevice in the middle of the painting. A tiny slash of paint, made with a brush tip as fine as a pin, yet its color was the most virent emerald Radborne had ever seen, so vivid it seemed as though a lick of green flame burned through the canvas. Surrounding it was the faintest outline of a door or tunnel, from which all the figures proceeded.

Although he wasn't certain if they
were
proceeding—perhaps they were all going back into the passage? Radborne rubbed his forehead. “I don't know how you don't go blind,” he said. “It's all I can do to take it all in.”

“But you can't,” said Candell. “That's the trick, see? You must try not to see it all at once, or you will go mad.”

Radborne forced a smile. “Yes. Of course.”

“But you do recognize her? My model …”

“Yes,” said Radborne, his throat tight. “Yes, I do.”

She was seated upon a white horse just outside the tunnel's opening, her hair coiling about her and her piquant face no bigger than a fingerprint. Unfinished as the image was, she was unmistakably the source of all the wild swirl of activity that surrounded her. Like the frozen heart of a waterfall, unmoving yet locked into a simulacrum of Motion itself, beauty and stillness and a sense of numinous release, something about to be revealed, something that would drown them when the torrent was finally freed.

“Yes,” said Radborne again. “It is a very fine likeness.” There was something else, perched upon her saddle's pommel. “What's that?'

“Her dog.” Cobus's hand fell heavily upon his knee; Radborne's gaze followed and saw the inscription in the painting's lower curve.

Radborne shook his head. “‘The dog has not jumped down yet?'”

“It can never begin, it can never end; not till then.”

“I don't understand,” began Radborne, and stopped. Jacobus Candell was staring at him, his pale eyes huge and mouth parted in delight—not just joy, but expectation and complicity.

“Of course you don't,” said Candell. “Of course you don't.”

Radborne froze. He knew that look, as surely as he knew what happened next. When Candell lifted his hand, Radborne lunged. But before he could touch him the madman seized him by the wrist, twisting it so that Radborne fell, writhing, to his knees.

“You must learn her name!” shouted Candell. “You must learn her name! Swear it! Swear it!”

Radborne struggled, but the madman was too strong. How could an old man be so strong? The tendons in Radborne's wrist strained and popped—his right hand, his painting hand—and he cried out, then gasped. “I swear, oh, Christ,
yes!
—”

“Swear it! You must swear it! You must!”

Radborne shouted wordlessly. He thrashed and flailed, trying to kick at the man standing above him.

“Swear it. You must swear it
—
”

There was a crack as of wood against rock. With a groan Candell toppled backward.

Dr. Learmont's voice rang out. “Mr. Comstock! The restraint!”

Radborne rolled onto his side, moaning as Learmont yanked him to his feet.

“Take this!” cried the doctor as a tentacled mass of canvas and whalebone slid through Radborne's fingers: a restraining waistcoat. “Get behind!”

Radborne stumbled to where the old man had fallen, Learmont darting behind him. Candell grunted and struck at the doctor, lurching to his feet, but Learmont was already grasping his arm and stabbing at the sleeve with a hypodermic syringe. Radborne thrust the loops of restraint over Candell's head. The old man swiped at it feebly, as though it were a cloud of flies; the mere sight of Learmont seemed to have subdued him.

“Cobus,” said Learmont in a loud, even voice. “Cobus, sit down in your chair, please.”

The old man stood, dazed and swaying slightly; he stared at Radborne with horror.

“Cobus. Sit down.”

With a heavy thump, the old man fell into a chair. Radborne began to pull the restraints around him, but Learmont said, “Stop, Comstock.”

Radborne ignored him. “I said stop,” Learmont commanded, and put a hand on his shoulder.

“Are you mad, too, then?” Radborne shouted. “He tried to kill me!”

“He's sedated now. I shouldn't have left you alone with him.”

“No, you damn well shouldn't!” Radborne pushed at the doctor's hand, grimacing as pain lanced through him. “Christ, he's broken my arm!”

“Help me get him over to his bed. Then I'll see to you.”

Radborne swore furiously but obeyed. The old painter was a dead weight, sitting with eyes half closed and mouth slack; when they sought to lift him, he growled, then whimpered softly, then let himself be dragged to the iron bedstead in the corner. Radborne stepped back from him, rubbing his arm as he glanced at Learmont.

“Morphine?”

“And acetic anhydride—tetraethyl morphine. His tolerance for the substance is extraordinary. But let's see to you now.”

They left Candell lying on his back in the narrow bed, pale eyes gazing fixedly at the ceiling. Dr. Learmont locked the door behind him, then carefully took Radborne's arm and rolled up his sleeve.

“It's not broken,” he said after a moment. “A mild sprain, maybe. I can splint it.”

“No.” Radborne shook his head angrily. “I can't paint like that.”

“Or do much else to assist me.”

“To hell with you! You said nothing, you gave me no warning of his temper!”

“You told me you had worked with lunatics before, Mr. Comstock.” Learmont slipped his keys back into his pocket. “But no, I shouldn't have left you alone with him. I was distracted, Miss Upstone was so agitated. …”

He pressed a hand to his forehead, wincing. “You can see how desperately I need assistance here.”

Radborne said nothing. He turned to stare out the grilled window overlooking a barren sweep of hillside that led to the cliff's edge. A whitewashed cottage stood there, bright and toylike in a sudden glint of sun. He thought of Evienne Upstone, her mist of pale reddish hair and luminous green eyes, and felt a sense of loss more terrible than any physical pain. He shut his eyes.

“I'll take the position.”

He offered no more, neither speaking nor moving nor opening his eyes. After a minute he heard the doctor say, “Very well,” and then Learmont's departing footsteps.

CHAPTER TEN

Contradiction

H
e remembered everything. That there had
been a green world within a woman's eyes; that he had lain with her and heard her cry out at the touch of his mouth; that an owl had called in the night. That order and meaning could be tasted; that desire had a color and the void a sound. That his skin bore the marks of claws; that there were hazelnuts everywhere about him. That they contained each of them a world. That the world beneath him was not earth but water. That everything he knew was wrong. That this world, his world, bounded by steel and grass and poured concrete and bread, a buzzing mobile phone, dried blood, semen, sugar—
that
world was a lie, a scrim, a veil. That he knew nothing, everything. That it was not his world. That he was not he. That she was not a woman.

That she was gone. She was gone. She was gone.

“Larkin?”

He had searched inside the narrow boat. Grinning to himself at first—where could she hide? There was not a door in the place save a thin vinyl folding panel that hid the head; he checked in there, then proceeded to yank open every drawer and cabinet he could find, all the cunning hand-carved built-ins that seemed to multiply as he went from one end of the boat to the other, searching. There seemed to be hundreds of them, drawers within drawers, panels hiding alcoves and engines. How could there be so many? It seemed impossible, yet there they were, holding jugs of water, plastic bags of beans, dried apricots and figs, raisins, shelled almonds, tools. One long, narrow dovetailed drawer held nothing but sea glass still gritty with sand, lavender and green and brown. Another contained a printed edition of a journal by someone named Lady Lewis. A page was marked with a pressed frond, once green, now feathery yellowy.

Daniel replaced this and pulled open the next drawer. It was full of photographs, edges crumbling, sepia-toned. A young man on a cliff, his arms around a woman in middy blouse and skirt, her dark hair blown across her face. Two woman standing side by side, wearing identical 1920s-style Japonaise dresses. One had bobbed blond hair; the other wore her dark tresses unbound save for a headband set with a peacock feather. There were scraps of paper scrawled with words:

A ticket stub from a 13th Floor Elevators concert in Austin in 1969. A videotape of
Chelsea Girls.
A color photo of a beautiful young man with a blond pageboy, wearing a crimson Victorian jacket that was too big for his boyish frame. He sat in a ladder-back chair, staring at a woman who towered above him, her face caught as she turned from the camera so that one had only a misty impression of large eyes and mouth and hair like smoke.

“Jesus.” Daniel squinted in disbelief.
Brian Jones?
He started to pocket the photograph, thought better of it, and put it back, then tugged the next drawer open.

It contained seven dolls the size of Daniel's hand, their bodies formed of the bones of animals bound in place with thick red thread. He thought their faces were made of dried fruit—apples, maybe.

But the sweetish smell that pervaded the drawer grew stronger and more disturbing as he removed the dolls. Their faces were identical—eyeless, their mouths indented slits sewn up with green thread. One had a tiny thatch of reddish hair coarse as dried flax.

“Fuck,” he whispered, and crammed them back inside the drawer. “Jesus Christ.”

He found other things. A model of a castle made entirely of acorn caps. A notebook in which dozens of photographs were pasted, pictures torn from pornographic magazines: pictures of young men, all dark-haired, their eyes rubbed out with an eraser, then drawn in again, crudely, with ballpoint ink. Inside a Ziploc bag, the mummified body of a mouse; at least he thought it was a mouse. There was an unopened prescription bottle of Exultan, a brightly colored box of Exultan samples, also untouched, a large sealed bottle of lithium.

No clothes, though. All her clothes were in Sira's garret.

He shut his eyes.

“Larkin.” His voice sounded childlike. He coughed, feeling that he might throw up.

“Larkin,” he repeated, louder. “Larkin, where are you?”

He was kneeling on the floor. The boat rocked gently from side to side and made a grating sound when it bumped against the shore. He could hear the sprouting hazelnuts and acorns as they rolled, stirred by the boat's wake. When he looked up, the small windows seemed opaque, a harsh, glittery white. He saw no sign of trees or the brick wall that bordered the towpath, nor of buildings. He saw no trace of color anywhere, no shadows.

“Larkin?”

Horror seized him. The world was gone, the city was gone; he was abandoned, marooned in a rocking shell upon a shadowless sea. He forced himself to stand, went to the door and opened it.

Sunlight blinded him. He shaded his eyes and staggered onto the aft deck. His clothes hung loosely; he felt cold, as though he were still naked. His lips stung. When he drew a hand to his mouth, he felt tiny scabbed blisters, as though he'd been scalded.

“Larkin?”

The world was still there. On the lower limbs of the willow, wasted cellophane wrappers hung like spiderwebs where they had been fetched up by the wind. Behind the embankment early-morning traffic moved slowly in the High Street. A cheerful
brrring brrrring
rang out as a woman on a bicycle sped past, her blond hair rippling behind her. She glanced at Daniel curiously. He looked down and saw that his fly was open, and his shirt protruded from the gap.

“Shit.”

He zipped himself up, then drew a hand to his face. The stubble felt greasy, and there seemed to be more of it than warranted by a single day without shaving. He winced, combed his hair with his fingers, and coughed again, covering his mouth. When he glanced at his hand, he saw speckles of blood. He ran his tongue along the roof of his mouth and felt ridges of broken skin. He spit into the canal, ducked back inside, and made his way to the compact galley.

There, amid the detritus he had pulled from the shelves, he found a jar of instant coffee. On the wooden counter was a bottle of still water. He couldn't figure out how to work the tiny gas cooker, so he ended up pouring tepid water over coffee crystals in a dusty glass and drinking the resulting muddy liquor.

This, at last, was suitably disgusting to motivate him to leave. He cleaned up, putting away the stuff he'd left on the counter, then quickly replaced whatever he'd left on the floor, shutting cupboards and bulk-heads, making sure the drawer with the horrible handmade dolls was tightly closed. His shoes were on the floor beside the gas cooker. He found his jacket carefully hung on a hook above the fold-down dining table. Had he put it there? He had no memory of doing so. He pulled it on and, without looking back, left the narrow boat.

The gravel-strewn surface of the canal path felt unnervingly solid underfoot. He looked up and down the trail; he was suddenly anxious not to be seen.

There was no one.

But on the other side of the canal, a black-and-white dog raced along the path, so low to the ground it looked patently unreal, like one of those fast-moving painted targets in a shooting range. Even from the far bank, Daniel knew it was the Border collie Fancy.

She has boundary issues.

He spun and began walking hurriedly in the direction opposite that taken by the dog, back to Camden Town.

* * *

It was just
past 6:00
A.M.
The maze of paths and stalls around Camden Market had an unfinished look, as though they'd been blocked in by an artist who'd then lost interest, rows of barrows covered with tarpaulin, lines of empty pint cans along a brick wall, stray items of clothing—boot, jockstrap, sequined scarf, a turquoise sock. The handlebars of an abandoned bicycle rose from the canal. Daniel leaned against a wall and stared at the black water, trying to fathom what he was feeling. Rejection? sexual obsession? a psychotic episode triggered by leaving his day job?

He shoved his hands into his jacket pocket and felt the smooth nub of the acorn, snatched his hand back, and searched his other pocket for his cell phone.

That at least had not changed; maybe what he felt was just hunger and a very bad hangover. He checked the phone for messages—none—then wandered up to Camden High Street and into the little bakery beside the newsagent, where he bought a loaf of fresh-baked bread. He ate it on the street outside. Crumbs hailed around his feet; a barrage of pigeons immediately appeared, surrounding him in a cloud of gray and rose pink. He kicked at the birds, shouting as they burst back into the air.

“Mum, 'e's a bad man,” a small boy said as his mother hustled him along the sidewalk, the two of them glaring at Daniel. He smiled sheepishly, turned to walk toward the corner Starbucks. That was when he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror-lined window of a lingerie shop: a tall, thin man, dark-blond hair a ragged aureole around a hollow-eyed face, his mouth bruised, and the dusky violet imprint of three fingers clearly visible upon his neck.

“Oh, my God.” He stared at his reflection, shocked, then hastily began brushing crumbs from the front of his jacket, buttoned his Henley shirt, and tugged his jacket collar protectively around his neck. He hurried to buy a large coffee, dousing it with milk so that he could gulp it without scalding his tongue, and went back out onto the street.

Psychotic break, then. Somehow, despite the coffee and the bread, this didn't seem as ludicrous a notion as it might once have. He gazed at the crowds dispersing from the Underground, waiting in line for the bus, filing through the glass doors of Holland and Barnett for vitamins and organic tea. Every woman's face was hers. None of them was Larkin. He felt as though he were being poisoned: horror seeped into him as the realization dawned that he would not find her here, or anywhere.

“Don't,” he whispered. “Don't. Go.”

He blinked, staring at the sidewalk until the tears receded, then looked across the road to where Nick's building reared above Inverness. A blazing lime-green billboard facing the High Street bore the words
MORE THAN ONE PERSON HAS FOUND IT.
Above this, the windows of Nick's maisonette glinted as sunlight sifted down through high pale-blue clouds. He couldn't bring himself to return to Nick's flat, couldn't bear the thought of hearing Nick's voice, of hearing him—anyone—speak her name.

“Sorry,” a man said as he elbowed past. Daniel saw the man's wrist-watch shining above a strip of white skin.

“Ten-thirty,” Daniel said aloud. The man glanced back at him, and Daniel shook his head. “Sorry. Sorry.”

He began to walk up the street. The day had grown warmer; girls strode into Camden Kitchen wearing tank tops and bicycle shorts. Still Daniel felt chilled and feverish. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket, felt something that was not his cell phone. He drew it out: a business card, which read,
“JUDA TRENT …
[email protected]
.”

He ducked into the doorway of a shop selling cheap electronics and called her.

“Juda Trent.” Her Cockney voice was brisk. “Who's this?”

“Uh … Daniel Rowlands. We … we met yesterday, do you remember?”

Silence. Then, “God, of course. Where are you?”

“Camden Town. Not Nick's—I'm outside on the High Street. Look, this … uh, this, this will sound weird, but—”

“I think you better come over here. I'm in Islington, the very edge of Tufnell Park. Middleton Grove. Caledonia Road's the closest tube, it's about fifteen minutes' walk. Number thirty-seven. I'll be waiting.”

It took him nearly an hour. Standing on the Northern Line train, he felt like an escapee from a David Lynch film, his clothes rumpled, his eyes red and aching as though he'd stared into the sun. Whenever he moved, his shirt gaped open and he could smell himself, cunt and burned sugar, an overpowering odor of green apple that made him feel faint and close to tears. He was conscious of people moving away from him; when he got off at Caledonia Road, he saw the couple behind him exchange a look, then start to laugh.

It took him several minutes to orient himself, coming out behind a newsagent and a homeless man selling
The Big Issue.
Daniel walked quickly, his eyes averted, forcing himself not to look at any of the people he passed, rehearsing what he would say to Juda Trent. She was gone: like that. I turned over in bed and—

He began to cry and stopped to lean against a plane tree by the sidewalk. His breath came in gasps; he grabbed the tree trunk and pressed his face against it, the rough bark scoring his forehead. He didn't know how long he stood there, didn't care, just stood and wept, heedless of the looks of disgust or pity thrown by passersby.

“Hey.” A voice came at his shoulder. For an instant he thought it was Larkin, and the world flared white and green; then he saw a hand with blue-painted fingernails. “Hey, Daniel. Come on, then. Come with me, lad, it's not far.”