The Blue Bath (25 page)

Afterward, if she pushed her hands together—palm hard against palm—she could still feel it, just under her skin—the urgent, staccato beat of a heart. But she knew it was just the pulse of blood in her own veins.

chapter seventeen

It could not have been more than an hour after Daniel left. Sitting in the darkness, her back to the window, Kat felt the understanding of what she had done grow inside of her, with a force that felt more like revelation than it had a right to, until she found her arms clasped tightly across her chest. As if to contain it. As if she could. It was then that she heard the sound of keys in the lock and the door being pushed open. She listened as Jonathan entered the hall and dropped his keys on the table. The sharp sound of metal hitting polished wood bounced off the walls.

She held her breath, as his heavy, solid footfalls approached the drawing room, only to pause at the threshold and then withdraw. She listened to the sound of his steps receding as he made his way upstairs. The floors were so thick that she could not hear him once he was past the landing. He would be in Will’s room. Treading lightly, slowing down as he entered, eyes adjusting to the darkness. Leaning down to his sleeping face. Moving closer to breathe him in. She thought about what it must be like to be away from Will so much. To regularly go days without seeing him. Without touching him. Without hearing his voice.

Kat turned toward the doorway, straining to hear his footfalls as he moved through the house. She could see the edge of his bag by the door. An indication of arrival or departure. As she watched, his familiar shape appeared in the doorway. Seeing her, he stopped.

“You’re here. I didn’t see you.”

“I’m here.”

She stood and went to him, almost stumbling into his embrace. She took a deep breath. The stiff, creased cotton of his shirt smelled of airplane. She heard the steady beat of his steady heart. After a moment he pulled away, holding her at arm’s length. He looked exhausted. Spent. But there was something else.

He moved farther into the room, stopping briefly by the windows to peer out into the world from which he had just come. Twisting the ends of each shirtsleeve around his wrist, he carefully extracted his cuff links and deposited them on the low table before the couch. Solid silver with a single initial that was not his own. Her mother had given them to him last Christmas. Her last Christmas. It was the first time Kat had ever known her to give away anything of her father’s. For a good man, the card had said.

“You saw the papers, then?”

She cringed and shrank from him. He had seen the tabloid. How? In the airport? And papers—he had said papers. There was more than the one?

“I am so sorry.” Her voice broke.

“I suppose I should have known. Should have seen it coming.” His brown eyes were rimmed in red and underlined by darkness. “I think I just wanted to believe it. That they were serious. That it was really going to happen this time.”

It took a moment for his words to penetrate. The deal had fallen through. She relaxed so suddenly that she felt her knees begin to give way under her.

He was still talking. She willed herself to focus on his words. “I’ll tell you, though. I’ve had just about enough of this bile from the press. It’s all so very British. Success is fine, but not too much. Grow, but not too big … not too quickly … and God forbid you outgrow the boundaries of this island.

“I’ll tell you something else.” He looked at her gravely, his fingers moving swiftly down the front of his shirt, pinching the buttons free from their holes. She saw that his hands were shaking. “That whole ‘poster boy for the new British economy’ moniker. I never asked for that. They see you the way they want to see you. But, if it’s true? If I am single-handedly responsible for rekindling the Internet economy in Britain, well, then I think it might be fair to say that I’ve done my part. If they want to hang me for high treason after all of that, then let them.”

He was silent for a moment, gazing out the window.

“There is something else. It’s possible that I’ve lost the board’s confidence and that they’re considering ousting me. I know I have Angus’s support, but I’m not sure about any of the others. For better or worse, at least we should know soon. I suspect I am the subject of serious debate even as we speak.”

She pressed herself against his chest, against the hard buttons on his shirt. And then she broke. Silently. Suddenly. Because she could. Because the occasion allowed it. After a moment, feeling the damp cloth against her face, she drew herself away from him, pulling her sleeves down over her hands and pressing them to her cheeks. His dark eyes brimmed with concern and contrition.

It was a look she knew well. He wore it to varying degrees on his return after long trips away or after coming home late or forgetting something—an important appointment, an anniversary. Although meant to be remorse, it sometimes looked more like nostalgia.

“Listen, Kat. I meant what I said. I’m sorry too. I had a lot of time to think on the flight. I left you alone. I thought that was what you needed. Maybe I wanted that to be what you needed.” He ran his fingers through his dark curly hair, separating it momentarily into sections. The movement arrested her. It was the same gesture Will had made earlier that evening. “What I am trying to say is that I know that my attention has been elsewhere.” He met her eyes. “You have it now.”

She swallowed, trying to quell her nerves.

“So now what?”

“Come to bed.”

“I’ll be up in a minute.”

Kat stood by the window looking out at the bare trees. Frail and brittle, they seemed powerless to hold the darkness back and it came closer, whispering at the glass. She waited there long enough to be sure that he would be asleep before climbing the stairs. Their bedroom faced over the garden at the back of the house, so there was no light from streetlamps. She was grateful for this as she lay unseen in the darkness.

She had never seen him like this. So bowed. Almost broken. Was it really possible that the board would take the company from him? It seemed unthinkable. Jonathan had always been his own harshest critic. Perhaps he was overstating it. But he was likely right that if they were going to do it, they would do it soon. She knew that he couldn’t bear anything else now. She owed him time. She owed him more than that.

The next few days passed slowly. True to his word, Jonathan was home more than usual. Will was delighted to have Daddy along for the school run some mornings, insisting that he come through to his classroom so that he could be shown around and shown off. He was even home for dinner in the evenings. Kat cooked elaborate meals, planning the menu and visiting specialty providers for each ingredient in turn, just as she would do for dinner parties. Cheese and bread from Clarke’s on Kensington Church Street, fruit and vegetables from Michanicou Brothers on Clarendon Road, lamb from Lidgate. She did so compulsively. Anxiously filling the hours until she could collect Will from school. In the evenings, they sat together in the dining room at one end of the long table. Framed inside the window, they must have made a pretty picture to anyone looking in from the road outside. More than once she caught herself looking out into the darkness, wondering if someone was.

She stopped counting the number of times she thought she glimpsed him on the road outside the house or on the High Street, or heard his car driving by at night. Was he even in London anymore or had he gone to New York for his next show? The last thought haunted her. The possibility that he could already be gone.

Kat slowed down unconsciously as she approached the school gates with Will. The weather was warmer. She hung back from the crowd, listening to the hum of the conversations and laughter. She wondered about the seductive power of the single perspective and the way it made mysteries of others. She wondered what more there was to each of these women than what she saw.

The large double door at the top of the steps had opened and children were beginning to file up the steps in their navy-blue-and-red uniforms. She edged closer to the school, wading waist-deep into the crowd of children until Will squeezed her hand. She leaned down and kissed him, her lips catching a loop of curl and pressing it to his forehead before he disappeared. After a moment he appeared in the open doorway at the top of the steps, pausing briefly under the pediment before making his way inside.

She made her way home slowly through narrow streets lined with red brick Victorian mansion blocks and tidy stucco-fronted cottages. Past blue plaques commemorating that John Stuart Mill, philosopher, had lived here, and that T. S. Eliot, poet, had lived and died there. History, all that had come before, reduced to spots of color. Glazed blue ceramic disks on a wall.

She had run through the parks that morning, altering her usual route only slightly, so she came and went through the gate on the mews, rather than having to cross in front of the embassy. She ran sluggishly, aware that her times were off. Gravity seemed to lean more heavily on her.

Jonathan was still upstairs when she returned home. She could not remember the last time he had slept so late. He was clearly still exhausted from the travel and stress of the past few weeks. The package lay on the front hall table on top of yesterday’s post. She glanced nervously at the return address. Eliasson Architecture. She carried it through to the kitchen and opened it on the table. Inside was a small thick compliments card in Smythson’s Nile Blue and a set of architectural drawings. She read the card.

Dear Mrs. Bowen,

Please find enclosed revised plans for your home at 31 Holland Park. What we have endeavoured to do is to strip it back to its basic elements and then build from that. Everything we are proposing serves only two purposes—to highlight the essential elements and beauty of the house, and to create a space that suits your life. We have attempted to be true to the history of the house and to the way in which you wish to live your life.

To this end, the mouldings remain, as does the original flooring on the ground and first floor levels, along with the staircase and the windows. We do not recommend refurbishing the floors or the woodwork. We have left the signs of age, of wear, the markings of its history, its scars.

As you reminded me when we met, the quality that is required most with a house like this is restraint. Sometimes it is that which remains unfinished that remains most beautiful.

Of course, only you can decide what is essential.

Kindest regards,
Charles Eliasson

She removed Will’s breakfast dishes from the table and spread the plans out before her.

This time she recognized the now-familiar bones of the house. The large entryway and the sweeping staircase at its heart, the thick exterior walls. Examining the drawings, she saw that the layout was more open. The wall between the dining room and kitchen had been replaced with a segmented arch, creating a single spacious, light-filled room, with direct sight lines into the garden. The bricked-up side windows on the upper floors had been opened. She noted with surprise that the canopy over the front walkway had been retained. While it was not original, she saw that it served a purpose. The excessive decoration that had characterized the previous plans had been replaced by a pared-down, functional approach that allowed the original beauty of the architecture to come through. The house seemed to have returned to being a vessel. Something that served them rather than something they served. A marriage of life and history. A compromise. It wasn’t what it had been before. It wasn’t all that she wanted it to be. She wondered if it could ever be enough.

She almost missed the stiff envelope clinging to the package. It had already been opened and the exposed glue had adhered it to the underside. She pulled out the card and read it. “Sir Richard Hawthorne and the Cavendish Restaurant Group invite you to the opening of the Tate Restaurant, 21 February.” Her eyes scanned to the bottom. “Featuring original artwork by Daniel Blake.” The card trembled in her hands. She saw that Jonathan had already filled in the response card indicating that they would attend.

She tried to think rationally. Just because it was Daniel did not necessarily mean that the paintings were of her. But the car keys were already in her hand. She told herself that there was only one way to be certain. The now-familiar route to the studio elicited a kind of Pavlovian anticipation that mingled with her growing fear, so that she arrived at the studio in a profound state of disquiet.

The main door to the building was propped open with a thin wedge of raw wood. She thought about removing it after she entered. It didn’t seem safe. But she replaced it, trapping it between the door and the frame. Her knocks on the studio door produced a series of sharp echoes that traveled the length of the long hallway. After a few moments, she rapped again on the metal, harder, the noise reverberating and then dying in the space. She knew he was here. She had seen his car outside.

When he finally opened the door he wavered briefly before pulling it open wide without a word. She slipped past him under his outstretched arm. He was unshaven and his hands were streaked with color. The fans were switched off and there was a ripe, sweet smell in the still air. Turpentine.

“I just…” She took a quick breath. Her mouth was dry. “I just got this.” She pulled the folded invitation out of her coat pocket and held it out to him. “An invitation to the Tate opening. It has your name on it. Original artwork by Daniel Blake.”

He said nothing. He was smiling at her. She lowered the invitation. It had seemed important that she bring it with her, but it just felt ridiculous now. The metal radiator along the far wall began to hiss.

“Daniel.”

“I knew you would come back.”

He was still smiling at her, although he seemed to be having trouble keeping his eyes on her, he kept looking past her. She turned around. A large unfinished canvas sat on a low easel behind her. She recognized the shape. He had transferred her outline from the wall to the canvas. But this was no mere outline. Although it was far from finished, the color had been blocked in and the detail had begun to emerge. Unlike the pure, almost sculptural form on the wall, this figure had weight and warmth and substance. She cringed, taking in the bared flesh, the thickening middle, and the start of faint silvery markings spreading across her white belly. The downturned breasts, bordered by the outlines of an arrangement of soft limbs. Her face, with its sad mouth, was half turned away. A thin sheet, an afterthought, lay next to her. Used. Discarded. Was this the way he saw her?