Sheer Blue Bliss (23 page)

She comes back in, gives him a look. ‘If I was to paint you,' she says, ‘just as a matter of interest, if I was to paint you, then what?'

He removes his foot from the sink, hops back to the chair, holds it in front of the gas fire to dry. ‘Then we'd all be happy,' he says.

‘If you do have murderous tendencies, dear,' she says, ‘then who's to say you wouldn't let me paint you and then …'

‘I'm to say,' Tony says. ‘I wouldn't.'

‘Your word of honour?' Sarcasm or not? Can't tell so doesn't answer. He lifts his foot into his lap to examine it. Very pink and clean, the flap over the cut pale, still a few grains of sand in there, but still. He smears on some ointment. It stings.

‘How long would it take?'

‘Hard to say.'

‘A week?'

‘I could do it in less than a week. And then?'

‘And then you sign the picture, give it to me and I go.'

‘If not? I say no?'

‘Then I stay. You stay.'

‘A hostage, would you say?'

‘What?'

‘Just like to get these things straight. Am I to think of myself as a hostage?'

Tony considers. ‘If you like. What's the difference?'

She eats another handful of peanuts. Then she goes to the kettle. ‘I'm making another cup to take upstairs and have with my pipe,' she says. ‘It's what I do of a morning. Now, if I
did
paint you it wouldn't be out of compulsion. No, no, I don't feel myself compelled. Your execrable manners could only have the opposite effect on
me
. If I paint you it's because I am tickled by the idea, intrigued. If I paint you … the colour of your hair.'

To his own surprise, Tony smiles. ‘If that's how you want to look at it,' he says. ‘I'll have a shave.'

He sits staring past her at Patrick as she sketches. The skylight is open. It's cool but not cold and the sun is pale on the dusty floor. One patch, that he brushed before he lay down in his sleeping bag, is cleaner but there are so many cobwebs and dead things, dried-out little wings everywhere. She sketches rapidly. Patrick gives Tony a strange look and Tony tries to mimic his expression. Such a weird light in those eyes today. He sets his jaw in the same way. An immortal expression. He likes this, being studied, being sketched. Feels better now he's shaved, skin smooth, the nice scent of his shaving soap clinging to his hands. Horrible shaving in the kitchen sink but better than not and he knows he looks good. He watches the way she draws, appraising him quite impersonally, holding up her pencil, working her jaw so he can see all the stringy old sinews in her throat. Sucking and sucking on those disgusting Fisherman's Friends.

Patrick shouldn't look younger in this last portrait. He was an old man. Yet in it he looks younger than in any other. Unbelievable that he loved this old woman,
old
woman with thin hair, humpy-shouldered in an old brown cardigan stretched down at the front, up at the back. And the stupid party shoes with sparkly bits on.
He
thought this was the sexiest woman alive. Had hundreds, thousands possibly, yet he preferred
her
. She must have been … something.

‘You must have been gutted when he …' Tony nods towards Patrick and Benson jumps. Her face goes all loose then tight again, composing itself. Tony's never seen a face do that before, like a mask going off and on. Knows the feeling though.

‘Sorry, dear, miles away,' she says. ‘Just turn your head a bit, no, other way. God, I'm rusty. Just a mo … there. Let's stop for a smoke, shall we?' She puts down her sketch pad and picks up her pipe. ‘Wouldn't fetch me a cup of tea, would you?'

He goes down the ladder to make tea. While he waits for the kettle he gets Patrick's Memoir from his bag, pages coming loose with so much reading. Opens it at the end where it finishes quite suddenly mid-sentence.

So we experienced once more the cellular unanimity of all creation. I could hear the blood flowing in Con's veins, the sap flowing in the cabbage leaves, we could hear the vibrations of those squat green creatures so healthful to be near. In love with creation this day, expressing that love of all creation through our bodies. Moment of climax a fusion of all there was and is and ever can be. Con spoke wisely of

On the 18th July 1965, the day after conducting this experiment, Patrick Mount left the home he shared with Constance Benson. He left no explanation of his disappearance, and made only a casual farewell. Benson assumed he had gone for a walk. Because of his irregular habits and refusal to be accountable for his whereabouts, Benson was not unduly concerned when he failed to return that night. On the third day she became anxious and contacted friends to try and ascertain his whereabouts. Several weeks after his disappearance he was listed as a missing person. Patrick Mount has never been seen or heard of since.

Editor

Tony carries the tea up the ladder. Benson still sits on the little chair, puffing smoke from her pipe, some ratty old cushion clutched on her lap. So fucking
tiny
. Despite the open window the room is thick with pipe smoke. ‘What were your words of wisdom?' Tony asks. She looks at him blankly. ‘At the end of the Memoir …'

‘Oh! That!' She smiles. ‘The times I've been asked that! The things I've been tempted to say.' She breathes out a plume of grey and the smile fades. ‘The truth is I can't quite remember. It was something about it being more than the human frame could bear. I was afraid of the experiments – the effects getting stronger, more intense.'

‘You took many of the elixirs?'

‘Like it says in the book, I helped.' She sucks on her pipe till it gurgles. It has tiny white hands carved into the clay, small as mouse paws. She plucks at the material of the cushion. ‘You want me to tell you what it was like.'

Tony sits down, puts his cup on the floor and rolls a fag as she speaks. ‘I didn't like it. To tell you the truth I didn't … I do like to stay in control. Those elixirs made me feel like … well, I wasn't quite me. Oh it felt glorious sometimes, soaring and light and this sense of … of a kind of stunning peace … unity. Like God, dear. Or sex.' She gives an oddly throaty laugh, then coughs. ‘But I … I prefer to be me, feel what I really feel.'

‘But you really felt
that.'

‘But … well, each to his own. Patrick certainly liked it.'

‘You have none of them left?' He watches for a flicker, hopes to find her out. She might have a little stash here or there.

‘Shall we get on?'

‘How far had he got … the final elixir. Bliss, did he make that one?'

‘It's all in the Memoir,' she says. ‘I don't know no more than that. Any more, rather. I never did know the details. His thing, it was, not mine. Crazy idea that you can solve anything with drugs.'

‘Course you can. Antibiotics, they cure …'

‘No, I don't mean, he didn't mean. More universal things, he meant, abstract things. Like war. By making the need for war … well, unnecessary. Irrelevant.'

‘But …'

‘You don't understand, dear?' She laughs again. ‘You aren't the only one, believe me. Now if you want this thing done we better get on.' She knocks out her pipe and picks up her pencil.

To solve
war?
That isn't in the Memoir, it's more individual what Patrick says, more for individual … improvement. He wants to argue with her but she is shut in with concentration. Her head bobs over her pad, her hand makes scuffing sound on the paper. There's a bit of drool at the corner of her mouth which she wipes away with a finger, then wipes her finger on her dress. Old. Patrick looking over her shoulder does look so young.

‘How old is he?' Tony nods at the portrait.

She starts. ‘I was just thinking of that … the last portrait I did, apart from …' She waves her hand over the sketches that are scattered round her chair. ‘I did it after he'd gone.'

‘Can you call it a portrait if he wasn't there?'

‘He was there.'

‘You said …'

‘Don't take any notice of me. And call it what you like.'

‘He looks so young.'

‘It's just how he looked when, when I last saw him.' Her voice has gone small like a lost little girl's. She clutches at the cushion like a baby at a blanket. Makes him feel … something. Christ, he's getting soft, must not. It's just the smoke in her throat making her voice go like that. It's nothing.

Tony takes a scalding swallow of tea. ‘He looks so different. From how he does in all the others.' Getting used to drinking it without milk. Maybe he'll stick with it black from now on, tastes cleaner, thin and hot.

‘Yes, well … a portrait is as much a portrait of the painter as the sitter. Now.'
But it doesn't look like you
, he wants to say.
What do you mean?
She waits for him to resume his pose. ‘You don't need to be here all the time, just get the composition sorted. You going to tell me what your interest in Paddy is?'

‘Just … interest.'

‘The drawings are not considered good.'

‘Not the drawing, the ideas.'

‘Oh he would have liked
you
– and the elixirs, yes. Lots of hippy types liked the thought of them. Not Patrick's idea at all. Not for fun, not recreational, not that. His intention was serious. Very high-minded, Patrick, though he did laugh, too, he had a sense of humour.'

‘I don't understand what you said about war. But if someone had … I don't know, kind of a mental problem, if someone came to him with a mental problem would he think the elixirs could help?'

‘Aaah.' She peers at him and nods. ‘Aaah.'

She makes him feel naked, naked and stupid looking at him like that with that kind of
understanding
.

‘He wasn't a doctor,' she says, then grins at the idea.

‘I'm not saying … I'm just saying
if
. Like I said I'm interested in his ideas. And in what happened to him.'

‘Nobody knows,' she says, sharply. ‘And nobody ever will.' She pinches her lips together in a thin line and starts sketching, gestures to him to arrange himself.
Mental problems. Christ, how could he have said that?
He looks down at his knees, at his hands on his knees, the black hairs on their backs. Patrick is supposed to help him, that's why he's here. Must wait, must be patient, don't blow it now. He really wants this portrait, wants it. He sits for a while, questions building up in him. Christ, he feels so
near
. But he wants this. Wants to be concentrated on like this by Patrick's woman. If she was young maybe he'd … No. For a minute there he caught a bit of … something about her, something that made him feel … what? Pity? Liking? NO. Stop. And she's probably lying to him, even now, probably thinking,
Mental problems, eh?
She better not fucking laugh. Stop. Look at Patrick, keep your eyes on Patrick's eyes. On that wild shine.

‘Or cares,' she says, making him jump.

‘What?'

‘Nobody knows or cares.'

‘I do.'

‘Care? You mean you want something.' Stares her out. Something strange, must be the light, or staring too hard at Patrick or something but for a moment there he thought he saw … not saw but
sensed
something like a girl, something that might make him want … no. Not to want to touch. Not to feel it, not tender, no. The feel of Lisa's body in the toy fur coat. No. Those open eyes. No. No. Something behind the lines, face screwed up like some old brown-paper bag, see behind all that to something soft. Something Patrick loved and he can almost see it. NO.

A seagull flies low over the skylight casting a shadow. The room suddenly goes cold. Patrick's eyes cold now. Oh please! This is a painting we're on about here. A painting of a dead man. Flat canvas you could put your fist through.

Benson sketches on, both profiles, different angles, the light falling on him this way and that.

‘You could tell me your shady past,' she suggests, looking up at him, eyes all bright. ‘Assuming it is shady. Say if I'm wrong.'

He could say anything. Could say everything – or nothing. He's the one in control here whatever little games she wants to play. She's doing what she was told, isn't she?
Isn't she?
Think what she likes.

‘Not telling? Let me ask you something then. Whatever possessed you to read Patrick's book? I mean, you're young, it's considered nothing but a curiosity piece nowadays – always was for that matter. Wherever did you find it? Out of print for donkey's years.'

OK. Right that she knows who she's dealing with. What. Mental case. Yeah. Take that kind of monkey twinkle out of her eyes. ‘Inside.' He watches for her reaction.

‘Inside what, dear?'

‘Prison.'

‘Ha!' She drops the paper and stands up. ‘You found it in prison. Oh glorious! Patrick, did you hear that? Priceless!'

Who's insane?
Laughing
. She walks about the room cackling, those green shoes crushing the dead bees and wasps. Isn't she going to ask? She goes back to her chair in the end, sits down, though still flicking stupid smiles at the portrait. ‘I'm getting tired,' she announces suddenly. ‘Can't work when I'm tired. Usually have a nap round now, after lunch. Do you think it might be lunchtime?'

‘Don't know.' Tony looks at his useless watch. Taking the piss, that's what she's doing. Still thinks she's one up on him. She knows he wants her to ask, why, why he was inside, what he did, and she won't. As if she's in control. See how she kept Patrick on a leash, wiles, that's what they're called, female wiles.

‘Tell me if you like,' she says. ‘It's your business. I won't ask.' See there she goes, putting the ball into his court. Making it be up to him. Making as if she doesn't care what he might have done.