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Strona główna Life Class
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elinor237
lewis123
teresa69
tonks56
tarrant44
slade41
cab40
halliday31
sister byrd23
ruthie19
burton15
lamps14
dr brooke12
elinor to paul12
goujet12
paul to elinor12
paintings11
madame11
ambulances11
stretcher11
Life Everlasting
Whitlow Robert
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
For David
Blow Your House Down
Liza's England (formerly The Century's Daughter)
(The Regeneration Trilogy)
They'd been drawing for over half an hour. There was no sound except for the slurring of pencils on Michelet paper or the barely perceptible squeak of charcoal. At the centre of the circle of students, close to the dais, a stove cast a barred red light on to the floor. The smell of burning coke mingled with other smells: sweat, hot cloth, cigar and tobacco smoke. Now and again you could hear the soft pop of lips inhaling and another plume of blue smoke would rise to join the pall that hung over the whole room.
Nobody spoke. You were not allowed to talk in the life class. In the Antiques Room, where they spent the mornings copying from casts of Classical and Renaissance sculpture, talking was permitted, and the students – a few of the women, in particular – chattered non-stop. Here, apart from the naked woman on the dais, the atmosphere was not unlike a men's club. The women students had their own separate life class somewhere on the lower floor. Even the Slade, scandalously modern in most respects, segregated the sexes when the naked human body was on display.
Paul Tarrant, sitting on the back row, as far away from the stove as he could get, coughed discreetly into his handkerchief. He was still struggling to throw off the bronchitis that had plagued him all winter and the fumes irritated his lungs. He'd finished his drawing, or at least he'd reached the point where he knew that further work would only make matters worse. He leaned back and contemplated the page. Not one of his better efforts.
He knew, without turning to look, that Professor Tonks had entered the room. It was always like this with Tonks, the quiet entry. He seemed to insinuate himself into the room. You knew he'd arrived only when you saw the students sitting opposite straighten their shoulders or bend more anxiously over their drawings. Tonks was a dark planet whose presence could be deduced only by a deviation in the orbit of other bodies.
Paul risked a sidelong glance. Tonks, bent at the shoulders like a butcher's hook, was scrutinizing a student's drawing. He said something, too low to be heard. The student mumbled a reply and Tonks moved on. Another student, then another. He was working his way along the back row, passing quickly from drawing to drawing. Sugden brought him to a halt. Sugden was hopeless, among the worst in the class. Tonks always spent more time on the weaker students, which indicated a kindly disposition, perhaps, or would have done had he not left so many of them in tatters.
So far his progress had been quiet, but now suddenly he raised his voice.
'For God's sake, man, look at that arm. It's got no more bones in it than a sausage. Your pencil's blunt, your easel's wobbly, you're working in your own light and you seem to have no grasp of human anatomy at all. What is the point?'
Many of Tonks's strictures related to the students' ignorance of anatomy. 'Is it a blancmange?' had been one of his comments on Paul's early efforts. Tonks had trained as a surgeon and taught anatomy to medical students before Professor Browne invited him to join the staff at the Slade. His eye, honed in the dissecting room and the theatre, detected every failure to convey what lay beneath the skin. 'Look for the line,' he would say again and again. 'Drawing is an explication of the form.' It was one of the catchphrases Slade students sometimes chanted to each other. Along with: 'I thy God am a jealous God. Thou shalt have none other Tonks but me.'
There was no getting round Tonks's opinion of your work. Tonks was the Slade.
Paul looked at his drawing. If he'd been dissatisfied before he was dismayed now. As Tonks drew closer, his drawing became mysteriously weaker. Not only had he failed to 'explicate the form', but he'd also tried to cover up the failure with all the techniques he'd learned before coming to the Slade: shading, cross-hatching, variations in tone, even, now and then, a little discreet smudging of the line. In the process, he'd produced the kind of drawing that at school – and even, later, in night classes – had evoked oohs and ahs of admiration. Once, not so long ago, he'd have been pleased with this work; now, he saw its deficiencies only too clearly. Not only was the drawing bad, it was bad in exactly the way Tonks most despised. More than just a failure, it was a dishonest failure.
He took a deep breath. A second later Tonks's shadow fell across the page, though he immediately moved a little to one side so that the full awfulness could be revealed. A long pause. Then he said, conversationally, as if he were really interested in the answer, 'Is that really the best you can do?'
'Then why do it?'
Why indeed? Paul made no reply and after a moment Tonks moved on. At last, from somewhere, a rush of anger. 'If I knew how to draw I wouldn't need to be here at all, would I?'
He'd shouted, though he hadn't meant to. All around people were turning to stare at him. Without giving Tonks a chance to reply, he threw down his pencil and walked out.
The corridor, empty between classes, stretched ahead of him. Its walls seemed to throb with his anger. The heat of it kept him going all the way to the main entrance and out into the quad. There he stopped and looked around him. What was he doing, storming out like that in the middle of a session? It was asking for trouble. And yet he knew he couldn't go back. Students were sitting in small circles on the grass, laughing and talking, but they were mainly medical students enjoying a break between lectures and there was nobody he knew. He threaded his way between the groups and out through the iron gates into Gower Street. At first he started to walk towards Russell Square, the nearest green space, but that wasn't far enough. He needed to get right away, to think about his future in unfamiliar surroundings, because although, in one sense, his spat with Tonks had been relatively trivial, he felt that it marked a crisis in his career.
If you could call it a career.
He'd been walking round and round the lake for over an hour. His shadow, hardly visible when he first entered the park, now trotted at his heels like a stunted child. Round and round the problem went: no talent, wasting my time, better leave now and get a job. Or would it be more sensible to wait till the end of the year? He'd always intended to spend two years at the Slade and it seemed a bit feeble to leave before the first year was over, but then what was the point of continuing when his work not only failed to improve, but actually seemed to deteriorate from week to week? It wasn't as if he had unlimited money. He had a legacy from his grandmother, a slum landlord of quite astonishing rapacity who, by skimping on repairs and bringing up her large family on bread and scrape, had salted away a great deal of money in the box under her bed. What would her advice have been?
– Have nowt to do with Nancy-boy stuff like art, there's no money in that, and if you've got tangled up in it, lad, get out as fast as you can.
She'd been horrified when he went to work as an orderly in a hospital; real men earned their living by their own sweat and blood.
This was getting him nowhere. He found a bench and sat down, feeling the heat heavy on his shoulder blades. Craning his neck, he looked up at the tops of the trees, dark against the pulsing sun. Everything was flooded in lemony light. After a while he straightened up and looked about him, and it was then that he became aware of the girl on the other side of the lake.
A young girl, still with the childish blondeness that rarely survives into adult life, was wandering along the waterside. She was about fifteen, dressed in the shabby, respectable clothes of a maid, her only ornament a bunch of purple velvet violets pinned to the crown of her black straw hat. Sent into service, he guessed, away from her own overcrowded home. Girls that age are not easily accommodated in two-bedroomed houses, parents needing privacy, adolescent brothers curious, younger children sleeping four to a bed. This would be her afternoon off.
He tracked her with his eyes. A few paces further on she stopped, standing at the water's edge looking down into the depths. Thinking they were going to be fed, swans, geese and ducks set off towards her from all parts of the lake, so that the slim, grey figure quickly became the focal point of thirty or more converging lines. There was something odd about her and at first he couldn't think what it was, but then he noticed that the buttons on her blouse had been done up in the wrong sequence. There was a glimpse of what might have been bare flesh between the edge of her blouse and her skirt. He kept expecting her to pull her shawl more closely round her or turn away and put herself to rights. But she did neither. Instead she stumbled a few feet further along, then stopped again, the shadows of rippling water playing over her face and neck.
She was swaying on her feet. At first he thought nothing of it, but then it happened again, and again. It came to him in a flash. Incredibly, this fresh-faced, innocent-looking girl was drunk. He looked up and down the path to see if she was alone and there, about twenty yards behind, stood a portly, middle-aged man watching her. Ah, authority. Probably the man was her employer – he was too well-dressed to be her father – but then, if he had a legitimate reason to be interested in her, why did he not approach and take control of the situation? Instead of strolling along at that loitering, predatory pace, his eyes fixed on her back. No, he was nothing to do with her – unless of course he was the man responsible for her condition. That, or he'd noticed the state she was in and recognized easy pickings when he saw them.
Bastard. All Paul's long frustration in the life class – a frustration which could never be vented on Professor Tonks because he respected the man too much – boiled over into hatred of this man with his florid cheeks and his expensive suit and his silver-topped cane. He jumped up and began striding along the path, meaning to cut them off before they reached the gate.
The sun, past its height, had begun to throw long bluish shadows across the grass. Paul's heels rang out on the pavement as he half-walked, half-ran round the head of the lake. He felt vigorous, clear. All the disappointments and complexities of the past few months had dropped away. He drew level with the girl, who had once more paused and was gazing out over the lake. A few yards away from her the geese were beginning to come ashore. Big, webbed yellow feet made puddles of wet on the dusty path as they lurched towards her, open beaks hissing. Startled, she took off her shawl and flapped it at them until at last, honking and hissing, they flopped, one by one, into the water again.
Now that Paul was closer he could see that her hair had slipped loose from the pins at the nape of her neck and straggled down her back. The blouse was badly torn, it must have been ripped off her back. Looking down, he saw that only one foot had a stocking on; the other was thrust bare into a down-at-heel shoe. He looked at the slim, naked ankle, and felt a tweak of lust that hardly broke the surface of his consciousness before it was transmuted into anger. Who had doen this to her? She was such a child. He was afraid to startle her by speaking to her and, anyway, she might well misconstrue his intentions.
The middle-aged man had stopped a few yards away and was gazing at him with obvious resentment. Paul turned to stare at him. Medium height, heavily built, bulky about the shoulders and chest, but a lot of that was flab. His trouser buttons strained to accommodate his postprandial belly. His eyes kept sliding away from Paul to the girl and back again. At last he stepped to one side, ostentatiously allowing Paul plenty of room to pass. Paul held his ground.
Meanwhile, the girl tried to move on, but staggered and almost fell. She seemed disorientated now and after standing for a moment simply flopped down on the path. With a glance at Paul the man moved towards her. Paul stepped forward to cut him off.
'What do you want?' the man said.
A Yorkshire accent? 'Are you responsible for this?'
'This.'
'I never saw her before in my life.' Greyish-green eyes, the colour of infected phlegm. 'I was going to put her in a cab and send her back to her family.'
''Course you were.'
'Do you have a better idea?'
'We could take her to the police station.'
'Oh, I doubt if she'd thank you for that.'
'Let's ask her, shall we?'
The man leaned forward in a fug of port-wine breath. 'Look, piss off, will you? I saw her first.'
'I'm not going anywhere.'
'It's not your business.' A hiss the geese would have been proud of. 'For God's sake, look at her. Don't you think you're closing the stable door after the horse's bolted?'
'And a slice off a cut cake won't be missed. What a fund of homely northern wisdom you are.'
Gooseberry-green eyes swelled to bursting. A purpling of pendulous cheeks, then Paul caught a flash of silver from the upraised cane. He raised his arm to break the blow and pain jolted from his forearm into his shoulder. Now he had his excuse, his legitimate reason. He twisted the cane out of the other's hand and brought it crashing down on to his shoulders, once, twice, three times and then he lost count. There was no reason ever to stop, he'd never felt such joy, strength seemed to flow into him from the sky. But a minute later, as the man turned away, presenting only his bowed shoulders to the blows, Paul started to recover himself. In a final burst of exhilaration, he sent the cane whirling in a broad arc over the lake, its silver knob flashing in the sun.
'Fetch!' he shouted, feeling his spit fly. 'Go on, boy, fetch!'
The cane plopped and sank. Concentric rings of ripples, laced with foam, spread out over the surface of the water. Its owner turned to face Paul, goosegog eyes red-veined with rage. 'Do you know how much that cost?'
'More than the girl, I'll bet.'
The man's neck seemed to swell over the rim of his starched collar. He's going to have a stroke, Paul thought with interest, but the moment passed. At that point the girl, whom they'd both forgotten, staggered off again, stumbling from side to side of the path. Paul followed her, glancing over his shoulder to make sure he wasn't being accompanied. No, the man merely stood and stared. Paul turned and went on walking. A second later, a blow between his shoulder blades sent him sprawling headlong. He was up and on his feet again in a second, fists raised, but the other man backed off, collected his bowler hat from the ground where it had fallen and, with several looks behind him to make sure he wasn't being followed, walked away. At first it was a brisk trot rather than a walk, but when Paul showed no sign of wanting to pursue him, his step became more nonchalant. A hundred yards further on, he might have been any prosperous businessman out for an afternoon stroll.
Paul was still shaking, as much with glee as anything else. Again and again he relived that moment when the cane had wheeled through the air and disappeared into the waters of the lake. The return of Excalibur. Except that made him Sir Bedivere and beer-gut back there King Arthur.
By now, the damsel in distress was several hundred yards away, walking quickly in the direction of Lancaster Gate. He hurried to catch up, aware of a curious doubling, for now he was doing exactly what beer-gut had been doing a few minutes before. With different motives, he reminded himself sharply. Nevertheless there was something disturbing about it and, half consciously, he slackened his pace. No, but this was stupid, he had to see it through. He'd call a cab, select the most respectable-looking driver he could find and pay for the girl to be transported back to her own people. If she'd go. Suddenly the simple plan bristled with problems. She wouldn't be keen for her parents or her employer to see her in this state. And could he trust the driver not to take the money and tip her out of the cab as soon as they turned the corner? He'd have to go with her, that's all, but then, would she get into a cab with a strange man? He'd face that problem later.
Decided now, he quickened his pace, but just then a group of nursemaids pushing perambulators came bowling along towards him, taking up the full width of the path. By the time he'd made up the lost ground the girl had turned through the gate. Panting as he reached the spot, he looked up and down the road, but the pavements were crowded and, among the hundreds of hurrying people, her unsteady gait was no longer so conspicuous. And then he saw her, far away now, on the other side of the road, but there was no pause in the traffic to let him cross. He stood on tiptoe, seeing the black straw hat with its little bunch of cloth violets bobbing along, until eventually it was lost to sight in the milling crowds.
He'd left all his things at the Slade so he had to go back there. Jumping on a bus, he found a seat on the top deck and gazed out over the heads of the crowds. For the first few minutes he kept on searching for the girl, though he knew he wouldn't see her.
The exhilaration had gone now. He was back with his own problems. Should he admit defeat and leave the Slade? Was he wasting Nan's legacy?
– 'Course you bloody are. Art! It's not for people like us, such as that.
What 'people like us' did – or, more frequently, didn't do – had been a favourite topic of hers, the pincers used to nip off any green shoot of hope and ambition one or other of her children might have been cherishing. They'd learned not to, fast enough. She hadn't applied it to herself though, at least not towards the end of her long life. At eighty, she'd bought herself a motor car. The only motor car previously seen in their streets belonged to the local doctor. Every Friday afternoon and all day Saturday she'd been driven round to collect her rents, sitting up on the back seat, ramrod straight (though she was a martyr to her back), dismounting now and then to bang on the doors of one ramshackle house after another, wresting coppers from reluctant hands. She must have been the most hated woman in the city.
– Aye, mebbe. But it put the clothes on your back, didn't it? And paid for you to go to that posh school.
He got off near Russell Square and walked the rest of the way. Students were streaming away from the Slade as he approached, but he kept his head down, not wanting to speak to anybody. He hadn't reached a decision, though if anything all that pacing round the park had strengthened his feeling that he ought to leave as soon as possible.
The Antiques Room did nothing to change his mind. Plaster casts of Classical and Renaissance sculpture stood in a line along one wall.
– Cartload of fellers showing their whatsits.
He'd spent whole mornings copying them, whole days when he first started, except for an hour at the end of the afternoon session when they were allowed to troop down the corridor to join the life class. On benches at the far end were smaller pieces: decapitated heads, limbless torsos, amputated arms and legs. Like an abattoir without the blood.
Had all his time in this room been wasted?
No time to be asking that question now. He picked up his bag and was about to leave when he heard a noise and turned to find Elinor Brooke standing by the open door.
'I thought I heard somebody,' she said.
She came towards him until she was close enough to touch. A stir of desire, almost indistinguishable from irritation. He wasn't in the mood for 'the treatment' – by which he meant the air of intimacy Elinor created between herself and any man she spoke to, though to be fair it wasn't only men, he'd seen her adopt exactly the same approach to women. No, he wasn't in the mood for Miss Brooke, but then she raised her gigantic blue eyes to his … 'Gig lamps,' his father used to say. 'Eyes like gig lamps.' It had been one of the magic phrases of his childhood.
'Are you all right?' she asked.
'Why shouldn't I be?'
'Only I heard you'd walked out of the life class.'
He wondered which of the men had told her. 'I needed a bit of fresh air.'
'Was it something Tonks said?'
'You know Tonks. He more or less said I was wasting my time.'
'Ouch.'
'Ye-es, ouch. Anyway, after that I thought I'd better go away and do some thinking. I couldn't just go on drawing.'
'Where did you go?'
'Hyde Park.' He smiled. 'I didn't exactly run away to sea, did I? Do you mind if I smoke?'
'No, go ahead. I might even join you.'
Her pupils shrank as the match flared between them. 'What are you going to do?'
No advice, he noticed. She often asked for advice from men, but never gave it. 'I don't know. I don't know if there's any point staying till the end of term. I mean, you could say, if I'm wasting my time the sooner I'm out of here the better.' A dragging pause. 'He likes your work.'
'Yes,' she said, simply. 'I know.'
They smoked in silence for a while. Then she said, 'Life drawing isn't the be-all and end-all, you know.'
'It is here.'
'So perhaps here isn't the right place?'
He shook his head. It had taken so much determination to cut loose from his background and come to the Slade that he could hardly grapple with the idea that he'd made the wrong choice.
'Anyway,' Elinor said, standing up. 'I'd better be getting on.' She turned toward the door, then looked back. 'A few of us are going to the Café Royal tonight. Would you like to come?'
He hesitated, but only for a second. What else was he going to do except sit inhis lodgings and brood about his non-existent future? 'Yes, I'd like that. What time?'
'About eight.'
'Good. I'll see you there. Are you going home now?'
'Soon.'
He opened the door for her and watched her walk away down the corridor. With her cropped hair and straight shoulders she looked like a young soldier striding along, and for a moment he saw something in her, something of the person she might be when she was alone, not adapting in that sinuous way of hers to other people, not turning herself into a mirror to magnify whatever qualities he – it was generally he – fancied himself to possess. He'd have liked to know her, that secret person, but the mirror was also a shield and she'd be in no hurry to put it down.
Three hours later Paul was pushing open the door of the Café Royal. Lying in the bath at his lodgings, he'd almost changed his mind about going, but the moment he walked into the Domino Room his mood lifted. The tall mirrors in which the heads of smokers, drinkers and talkers were endlessly and elaborately reflected, the laughter, the bare shoulders of the women, the pall of blue smoke above the clustered heads, the sense of witty, significant things being said by interesting people – it was a world away from his poky little rooms in St Pancras. A world away from home, too.
People glanced up at him as he passed, their faces illuminated by the small candles that flickered on every table. Everywhere, moist lips, glimpses of red, wet tongues, gleaming white teeth. How sleek and glossy they all were compared to the creatures who lived in the streets around his lodgings, scurrying about in their soot-laden drizzle, the women so tightly wrapped they seemed to be bundles of clothes walking. This was another England and, passing between the two, he was aware of a moment's dislocation, not unlike vertigo.
At last he saw Elinor, sitting at a table directly underneath one of the mirrors. She had her back to him, but then caught sight of his reflection in the glass and raised her hand. It was a moment out of time, their two reflections gazing at one another. Then noise, laughter, movement rushed back, as he threaded his way between the last few tables to greet her. 'Elinor.'
'Paul.'
She raised her face to his and for one mad moment he thought he was expected to kiss her, but then she turned away. 'Teresa, this is Paul Tarrant. Do you remember I said he might be coming? Paul, Teresa Halliday.'
The girl held out her hand. She was dark, with short, shining hair, high cheekbones and red, painted, pouting lips. That mouth still had the power to shock, though he'd noticed that many of the women here wore make-up. She was wearing a high-necked brocade jacket that made her look … Russian, Chinese? Anything but English. He was instantly attracted to her and thought she was aware of him, though once the introduction was over she said nothing further, merely leaned back against the plush seat waiting to have Elinor's full attention again.
'And this is Kit Neville.'
He'd seen Neville once or twice at the Slade. He was starting to be famous, a circumstance that some people attributed to a talent for painting and others to a talent for self-promotion.
'Kit was at the Slade.'
Neville looked uncomfortable. 'I left two years ago.'
'But you're always coming back.'
'Oh, we all come back.' It was said easily, but he was obviously nettled by the observation.
'Not everybody.'
Paul was trying to recall the stories he'd heard about Neville at the Slade. Hadn't he been expelled?
'What'll you have?' Neville asked, raising his hand to summon the waiter.
'Whisky please.'
'I think the ones who keep coming back are the ones it didn't work for,' said Elinor. 'It's like turning a key in a lock. If it turns you forget about it. If it doesn't you go on rattling away.'
'Or move on to something else.' Neville was flushed and miserable-looking. 'So,' he said, turning to Paul, 'Elinor tells me you walked out on Tonks today.'
'He said he thinks I'm wasting my time. I didn't see the point of sitting there after that.'
'He can be wrong, you know.'
'How long were you at the Slade?'
'Two years. And I didn't walk out.' Neville's eyes were alight with a blue, dancing truculence. 'Probably should have done, mind you, but I didn't, I stuck it out, and in the end he more or less said, Go.' He grinned, adding in a mock Oirish accent, 'Never resign, mister. Get yourself fired.'
'Why what?'
'Why did he throw you out?'
'He didn't like my work. I didn't like it much either so I can't hold that against him. And …' With a sidelong glance at the girls he lowered his voice. 'He disapproved of my relationship with one of the models. She got pregnant and I refused to be fathered.'
Paul was startled and a little repelled by so much intimacy so early in their acquaintance. 'Oh.'
'I said, Why the hell should I pay? There's at least a dozen others who could be the father and if you believe everything you hear Tonks was one of them. But of course he got on his high horse. What was it? For a long time he'd believed that nothing could exceed his contempt for my work, but in the light of recent events he now realized his contempt for my moral character was infinitely greater.'
What an extraordinary story to tell against yourself. It argued either unlimited egotism or a talent for self-destruction, or both perhaps. It was difficult to know what to say. Trying to lighten the tone, Paul said, 'Are all the models like that?'
'Like what? Oh, loose, you mean? Yes, a lot of them are, thank God. But …' Nodding towards Teresa, he raised a finger to his lips.
'She's a model?'
She was so unlike the generally rather battered ladies who modelled for the life class he could scarcely believe it. At that moment she glanced across and met his eyes, smiled a slow, incommunicative smile, and immediately turned again to Elinor. The two girls were focused on each other in a way he found provocative.
'What are you two getting so intense about?' Neville asked.
That was clumsy, and he wasn't a clumsy man. Too sure of himself for that.
'Teresa's husband's been snooping round again.'
Husband. Paul's eyes went to her left hand, but she wasn't wearing a ring.
'Caught him out the back last night trying to see through the window. Least, I thought it was him. You know, I pulled the curtain back and there was this face squashed against the glass, didn't look like anything on earth, but then he stepped back a bit and of course I could see it was him. Anyroad, there's me screaming blue murder and the chap upstairs ran down to see what was going on – only by that time he'd gone.'
'He's left you alone quite a long time, hasn't he?' Neville said.
'Going on a year. But that's what he does.' She flicked a glance at Paul. 'He starts getting on with his own life but then the minute things start to go wrong he decides it's all my fault and comes looking for me again. And it always does go wrong. He can't hold a job down. I don't think it's ever going to end.'
'It will,' said Elinor. 'He'll drink himself to death.'
'That's a slow process,' Neville said, gazing down at his empty glass.
Paul took the hint and summoned the waiter. Elinor shook her head – she'd scarcely touched her glass – but Teresa nodded. With a stab of excitement, Paul realized she was tipsy.
As he gave the order, he heard Neville ask, in his blunt, authoritative way, 'What are you going to do?'
'Move, I suppose.'
'Oh, you can't,' Elinor said. 'Not again.'
'Well, I can't stop there. Even if he's not outside spying on me I always think he is. And if he finds out I'm modelling …'
'How could he find out?' Neville said.
'He's only got to follow me. I thought I saw him the other day just as I was leaving Tonks.'
So she modelled for Tonks. Paul saw her slipping off her robe, mounting the dais, Tonks's hand on her arm adjusting the pose. The image produced such a rush of desire and envy he missed part of the conversation.
'Look,' Elinor was saying, when he was able to concentrate again, 'he's got to eat, he's got to sleep, he can't be following you round all the time.'
'What else has he got to do? Except drink.'
'Doesn't he have a home to go to?' Paul said.
'Well, you know you're always welcome to stay with me,' Elinor said. 'There's a sofa in the living room.'
'I know, and it's kind of you, but you wouldn't have anywhere to paint. I've got to get it sorted out.'
Neville's gaze on Elinor's face had become even more intent. 'You should go to the police,' he said to Teresa, roughly, not looking at her. 'That'd frighten him off.'
'I'm his wife. I could go in with a couple of black eyes and a broken nose wouldn't worry them.'
'Has he hit you?' Paul said.
''Course he has.' Incredibly, she laughed. 'Blames me for that too, he was never a violent man till he met me.'
'Then Neville's right. You should go to the police.'
'They're not interested.'
'You have finished with him, I suppose?' said Neville. 'Really finished? There isn't a small part of you still feels sorry for him?'
She looked away, resenting the question or made uncomfortable by it. 'You can't be indifferent to somebody you've –' She shook her head. 'No, it's over. I couldn't go back to him now.'
The conversation lapsed, though after a while the two girls started whispering to each other again. Paul sensed they were getting ready to part.
A few minutes later Elinor stood up. 'I've got to go, I'm afraid.'
Instantly, Neville was on his feet. He was going past her lodgings on his way home, perhaps he could drop her off? She seemed about to refuse, but then nodded.
'Teresa, are you sure you don't want to come back with me?'
'No, I'm all right, really. Don't worry about me.'
They kissed goodbye. Paul watched as Elinor and Neville left together. At the door Neville put his hand between her shoulder blades, guiding her. They'd said nothing all evening to suggest they were more than acquaintances, and yet now, suddenly, he saw they had a close, perhaps even intimate, relationship.
Teresa had gone quiet. There were purple shadows under her eyes and he found himself wanting to touch them. He moved closer. They chatted about this and that, the conversation sputtering like a cold engine – on, off – until a shadow fell across their table and Paul looked up to find no less a person than the great Augustus John towering over them.
'Teresa,' he said. 'Why don't you join us? And your friend too, of course.'
She looked across him to a noisy table at the far end of the room. 'Thanks, Gus, but I was just leaving. I've got a bit of a headache coming on.' She was reaching for her bag as she spoke.
Another few words and, with a nod to Paul, the great man moved on.
She'd chosen to stay with him. Perhaps. More likely the headache was genuine and she was longing to get home. But that didn't seem probable either with a potentially violent husband prowling round her backyard. He looked at her and saw how the purple shadows had changed the colour of her eyes from pale to smoky grey. The blood was thickening in his neck. 'Shall we go, then?'
She nodded at once and stood up.
A light rain had fallen. The street was busy, people hurrying to restaurant and bars. Women's scents, as they walked past on the arms of husbands and lovers, mingled with the smell of leather and dung from the cab horses that stamped and jingled in a long row by the kerb. For no better reason than the freshness of moist air on his skin, Paul felt suddenly full of hope.
Teresa was pulling on her gloves, pale grey cotton, pressing each finger into place. She barely reached his shoulder but was so slim and held herself so erect that she struck him as a tall woman, and how beautiful that dark, warm colouring, those cheekbones that caught and held the light.
'I suppose you've already had dinner?'
'No, I came straight from modelling.' Her voice had an unexpected rasp to it, like fingernails dragged across the skin. 'I'll have something when I get back.'
As she spoke her pale grey eyes darkened, and he realized two things: she was hungry – that must be why the wine had affected her so much – and she was afraid.
'Perhaps we could eat together?'
She looked up at him. A cleft in her chin, he noticed, rare in women. He struggled not to touch it, the side of his thumb would rest there so sweetly.
'That would be nice.'
'There's a place over there. Shall we try that?'
They ran across the street and pushed open the heavy door of the restaurant. Steamy heat, a smell of onions frying. The waiter showed them to a table by the window where they could look out at people walking past. Paul was delighted, particularly since the couple at the next table were engrossed in each other. They were virtually alone.
'Would you like some wine?'
'More wine?' She blushed. 'Yes, go on, why not?'
Her accent was very strong when she said that. He'd kissed and cuddled girls like her, standing with his back to the factory gates, pausing and pulling them deeper into the shadows whenever anybody walked past. But then he looked at her again and thought, Who are you kidding? You've never had a girl remotely like this.
They ordered soup and roast beef and talked about their mutual acquaintances. Had she known Elinor long?
'Two years. She was only seventeen, you know, when she came to London. She's always saying what an old stick-in-the-mud her mother is, but when you think of it … letting a seventeen-year-old girl come to London, unchaperoned. Most mothers wouldn't do it.'
'Would your mother?'
Her face hardened. 'I was married at seventeen. No danger of that with Elinor. Though it's not as if she hasn't had offers. You must have seen how men react to her?'
'I saw how Neville did.'
'She keeps trying to get him interested in other girls.' She looked at him mischievously. 'Do you think she's attractive?'
'In a boyish sort of way …'
'Isn't that what men go for?'
'Not all of us.'
'Neville does.'
Perhaps she felt she'd said too much, because she immediately raised her glass, using it as a shield against her mouth as she gazed round the room.
'Do you like Tonks?'
Her eyes widened. 'Yes, I think I do. He's a very kind man. Underneath.'
'Tell that to Neville.'
'Henry didn't like his work. But I think he always thought he had talent.'
'Not the way Neville tells it. Tonks told him he despised his work – and despised him even more.'
'Oh? I didn't know that.'
'Henry', he noticed, and she'd called Augustus John 'Gus'. She was no more than a girl from the back streets of some northern town, and yet she assumed equality with these men. A fragile sort of equality, based, ultimately, on sex.
– Whore.
– Now, now, Nan. Rest in peace.
'It's not done him much harm, has it?' she was saying. 'He's doing rather well.'
'Painting trains.'
'Not just trains.'
'He'd like the view from my window.'
'Oh, where do you live?'
'St Pancras.'
'I live there. Victoria Street.'
They looked at each other, registering that when they left the restaurant they would be going in the same direction.
Over coffee he asked about her husband. He was afraid she might think the question intrusive, but once she started the words streamed out.
'I was seventeen. I can't even say it was a mistake, I had to get away from home. Dad left when I was eleven and three years later Mam took up with somebody else.'
'You didn't like him?'
'That wasn't the problem.'
'He didn't like you?'
'Not that either. I couldn't tell Mam, I dropped one or two hints and she just –' Teresa hunched her shoulders and crossed her arms over her chest. 'She wasn't well. That was half the trouble – she was always in bed with poultices on her chest – her skin was raw, you used to have to put mustard on them. I couldn't see they were doing her any good, I used to hate putting them on, she used to scream, but the doctor would have it. He was costing that much you couldn't disagree with him. So anyway I was downstairs making these bloody poultices and he used to come up behind me. What could I do? I couldn't shout. And he wouldn't take no for an answer. Oh, and I wasn't allowed out, he was always saying he didn't want me running round with any of the local lads, getting into trouble. It's laughable really, all the trouble I had was at home. So in the end I ran away.' She pulled a face. 'Not very far – I went to me auntie's in Redcar. She's a dressmaker, so I used to help her with that and then I got on with Jack. He was a mate of Dave's – that's Auntie Nancy's lad. He was in the army and, oh, he was smart. I couldn't see the drink was a problem, but even if I had seen it I'd probably still have married him.'
'Were you in love with him?'
'God knows.'
For a while she sat in silence, looking down at her glass.
'You don't have to talk about it, you know.'
'No, I want to. It lasted about six months. I mean, before things started to go wrong. I fell pregnant and he was over the moon. Came out of the army – big mistake, but it didn't seem like that at the time – and he got a job in the ironworks. Labourer, but he was making good money. And then I lost the baby. The horrible thing is I was quite relieved.'
'Because you knew it was a mistake? The marriage?'
'Yes, I knew. Soon as he come out of the army. He was like a bloody sergeant major. Least little thing, his shirts weren't ironed right, I used to get belted.'
'You could have left him.'
'You get cowed, you can't do anything. Always being told what an ugly, useless slut you are. And then I fell pregnant again and he totally changed. He even stopped drinking. Only I lost that one too, and he got it into his head I'd done summat to get rid of it. Me auntie used to help women out, you know, and I think he thought she'd told me what to do. I told him I never did anything, but he didn't believe me and that's when it got really bad. I ended up in casualty twice. The second time me auntie says, "Don't be such a bloody fool, our Teresa, he's gunna kill you." So I ran away again, this time to London. She lent me the money for the fare – every little bit she had put by, it cleaned her out – but it didn't last five minutes here. I hadn't anybody I could turn to. Then I got on with this artist and he says why don't you try modelling? The lasses at home, you know, they'd laugh their heads off, me being a model. I used to get called Chinkyeyes and Flatface at school.'
'But he followed you?'
'Yes, I don't know how he found me but he did. He needs me. Always did, that was the problem. You know, he'd be effing and blinding one minute and the next he'd be sat on the floor with his head in me lap.'
'My heart bleeds.'
'That's what me auntie said.'
'And now he's back?'
'Yes, but he'll drift off again.' She nodded towards the far end of the room. 'I think the waiters are wanting to be off.'
Paul looked over his shoulder, realized they were indeed the only two people left in the restaurant, and raised his hand for the bill.
Pushing open the door of the restaurant, he was surprised to see the world going on as usual. 'Shall I get a cab?'
'No, let's walk, shall we? It's not raining.'
That was a relief. He had just about enough money left to pay for a cab, but it would have been a worry.
She took his arm and they set off. It was exciting just to be walking down a street with her, to match his strides to hers, to feel her hand nestling in the crook of his elbow. He asked who she was modelling for at the moment.
'Saracen. I'm supposed to sit for him tomorrow, but I don't know if I can.'
'Why not?'
'Jack. He might follow me.'
'Won't he just get fed up and go away? You say he drifts off again after a while.'
'Yes, but there's generally a pretty big explosion first, and I can't afford to lose work.'
'Has he hit you? I mean, since you left him?'
She lifted her face to his and he saw the light of the street lamps in her eyes. 'Yes. Once. I'd been out and he was waiting for me when I got back.'
If Paul had been settled in life, if he'd even been successful as a student, she couldn't have moved him as deeply as she did at that moment, but he had nothing to dilute this, no busy humming core of purposeful activity to protect him. He was mesmerized by her. That flat northern accent, so familiar to him, coming out of that scandalous painted mouth. But it wasn't just her looks. In spite of her bitterness, her evident cynicism about men and their motives, he sensed a capacity for passion in her greater than anything he'd so far experienced.
The swish of her skirt both soothed and disturbed him. He hardly knew what they talked about. As the streets became greyer and meaner and the air began to smell of smoke and oil, she fell silent, looking down at her feet swishing in and out under the hem of her skirt. He touched her arm to get her attention. 'Whereabouts do you live?'
'Just along here.'
Twenty yards further on she stopped outside a tall, narrow house with cracked and blistered paint on the front door and skimpy, no-colour curtains drawn across the ground-floor windows.
'I'm in the basement.'
He unlatched the gate and looked down the steps. In the small yard at the bottom were five dustbins overflowing with rubbish. Behind them, a low door led into some kind of storage space, perhaps intended to hold the bins. As far as he could tell it was empty, but the light from the street lamp didn't reach all the way to the back.
He sensed Teresa was frightened. 'Would you like me to open the door for you? Check everything's all right?'
'Please. If you wouldn't mind.'
She gave him her keys and he went down the steps ahead of her, his nostrils assailed by a smell of rotting cabbage. A few leaves, thick-veined and gross, their stalks yellow and flabby with decay, littered the ground. He turned the key in the lock, but the door, swollen with damp, resisted him. All the time he was aware of the dark cavity behind him. Anybody could hide in there after dark. No wonder she was frightened.
The door gave before a more determined shove.
'There we are.'
She'd stopped halfway down the steps. Now only her head and shoulders were lit by the street lamp. Gradually, as she edged further down the steps, her face fell into shadow. Then she was standing beside him. He caught her scent, sweet and dark, above the stench of rotting vegetables.
'He got inside once.'
'I'll have a look around.'
He went first, walking ahead of her down a long passage, which bent sharply to the right in the middle. The lino was black with grey blotches, perhaps intended to suggest pebbles, but looking rather as if somebody had spattered paint across it. She had two main rooms – big, but dark. A tiny kitchen opened off the living room. The bathroom was squeezed in next door to the bedroom. He looked in the airing cupboard, inside the wardrobe, under the bed – feeling, as he pressed his cheek into the musty-smelling rug, like a ridiculous old maid – then returned to the hall. All clear.'
'Good.' She laughed on a sharply exhaled breath. 'Would you like a cup of coffee? After all that.'
'I'd love one.'
He had no idea what the offer implied and daren't think. He told himself there was no hurry. Most of his sexual experience so far had been kisses and cuddles and worming his way into the drawers of girls whose sights were firmly set on marriage, always feeling a bit of a bastard since he had no intention of marrying anybody. That, and a series of rather unsatisfactory commercial encounters. They should have been easier, since both sides knew where they stood, but they hadn't been. In fact, the memory of the first time could still make him cringe. The woman, beside whom any one of his aunties would have looked like a mere slip of a girl, pointed him towards a bowl of water and a bar of carbolic soap and towel on the dresser by the bed. Obediently he started to get washed. Hands. Face. Neck. Ears. Even now he felt a hot blush of shame prickle his chest, as he remembered her laughter.
'Are you all right in there?'
He roused himself. 'Yes.'
'You've gone very quiet.'
'Just thinking.'
While she finished making the coffee he looked around the room. Her taste was good. She'd used deep shades of red and blue and positioned small lamps to cast golden arcs of light over the walls, so the effect was of being in a dark, rich cave. The dustbins and squalor outside were easily forgotten.
She came back into the room carrying a tray.
'The trouble with this place is everybody comes down here to empty the rubbish, so if I hear somebody moving about I don't know if it's him or just somebody from upstairs.' She put the tray down on a table. 'Or a peeping Tom. You get plenty of them.'
'You shouldn't really be living in a basement.'
'I know, but it's got a garden. And it's cheap.'
Taking the cup from her, he sat down on one of the sofas, feeling the sharpness of worn springs under the velvet cover. 'Are you getting a divorce?'
'I'm not sure I could. It's a lot harder for a woman. A man only has to prove adultery. A woman has to prove adultery and cruelty.'
'Do you think he'd divorce you?'
'Never in a million years.' She forced a smile. Anyway that's enough about me. I seem to have been talking about meself all evening. What about you?'
'Oh, what about me? I think we come from the same part of the world. Middlesbrough.'
She shook her head. 'Grangetown.'
'It's only a few miles. Just think, we might have walked past each other in the street.'
'So how did you get to the Slade? Scholarship?'
'No, my grandmother died and left me a small legacy. I was working as an orderly in the hospital at the time, but I decided to use the money doing this.'
'Is that what she'd have wanted?'
'Good God, no. She wanted me to be a teacher, I think, or a solicitor's clerk, something like that. Good, steady money and a pension at the end of it.'
'But you didn't fancy that?'
'I thought I had talent.'
'Thought?'
'There's not been much sign of it recently.'
'Do you think you might be trying too hard?'
'I've got to try. I'm not like Neville. If I make a mess of this there's no feather-bed for me to fall back on.'
They talked for a while longer, but she was obviously tired and after a few minutes he drained his cup and stood up.
As she was opening the door he said, 'Would you like to go to a music hall?' When she hesitated he said quickly, 'But I don't suppose you feel much like going out at the moment?'
'No, I think it would do me a power of good.'
'Friday at seven? I'll pick you up.'
As the door closed behind him, he was amazed by the boneaching pain of the separation. He'd known her only a few hours, it oughtn't to be possible to feel like this. He lingered, hoping she'd part the curtains and look out, but they remained closed, with only a strip of light to show she was still inside. How totally his life had changed in the space of a few hours. Fizzing with excitement, he set off to walk home. As he turned the corner of the street, a man walking fast, head down, hands thrust into his pockets, slammed into him. No apology. No acknowledgement even. Paul turned to stare after him as he strode away, the street lamps passing his shadow like a baton along the pavement. He half expected him to disappear down Teresa's basement stairs, but no, he went straight past, his hunched figure dwindling rapidly into the dark. Relieved, Paul turned and walked on.
The following day, Paul went to see Professor Tonks to apologize for walking out of the life class. The incident loomed so large in his mind it was salutary to discover how little importance Tonks attached to it. As for leaving the Slade …
'What's the point of going now? You may as well wait till the end of term at least.'
'But if I'm wasting my time?'
'Are you?'
'You seemed to be implying that.'
'I told you your drawing was bad. I don't remember saying you were wasting your time.'
'I don't seem to be getting any better.'
'Technically you are. Only …'
'Only?'
'Most people who come here are bursting with something they want to say, and the trouble I have with some of them is that they can't be bothered to learn the language to say it in. Whereas with you it's almost the opposite.'
Paul would have liked to defend himself, but didn't know how. This wasn't the criticism he'd been expecting.
'I do have a problem with life drawing, I know that. But I thought my landscapes were … Well. A bit better.'
'There's no feeling.'
'Perhaps I'm not managing to express it, but –'
'I don't get any feeling that they're yours. You seem to have nothing to say.'
'I see. No, yes, I do see.'
'Well, then.' Tonks spread both hands on his desk, preparatory to rising. 'I wish I could tell you what to do about it, but I'm afraid you're going to have to thrash this one out on your own.'
'I don't know what to do.'
'Why don't you start by asking yourself: Do I want to paint? Or do I want "to be an artist"? Because they're two very different things. And try to be honest with yourself. It's not an easy question.'
Tonks had been kind, if not tactful, and Paul backed out of his room feeling that one day, when the sting had worn off, he'd be grateful. At the moment he felt he hadn't been given much to go on. If Tonks had told him to go and learn anatomy, he'd have done it, no question. Ground and sweated away till he could name every bone and nerve and muscle in the body. He'd never been afraid of work. But 'nothing to say'? What was he supposed to do about that? And as for wanting 'to be an artist' … Well, of course he wanted to be an artist. It was the opposite of the life he'd lived in the shadow of the ironworks that gobbled men up at the start of a shift and regurgitated them twelve hours later fit for nothing but booze and sleep. Too bloody right he wanted to be an artist. And that meant? God knows. He knew what it used to mean. Getting on a bike on Sunday morning and peddling like hell as far away from Middlesbrough as his legs would carry him to set up his easel in a field somewhere to paint trees and hawthorn blossom. Behind him, columns of black smoke, steam, spurts of flame, flakes of soot on sheets hung out to dry, the acrid smell of coke, sparks struck from boots as workers coming off the afternoon shift slurred over the cobbles.
Perhaps that was the trouble. Art had always been Somewhere Else. There flashed into his mind a memory of the back room in the Vane Arms, blue smoke, the rumble of dominoes being shuffled, knobbly hands, liver-spotted, necks like tortoises, blank, incommunicative faces, terse greetings: 'Now then', 'All right?' and the cold northern light coming in through frosted-glass windows. If he closed his eyes he could hear the scraping of dominoes on the tables. Which was also, come to think of it, the sound of the Café Royal. He'd never painted those men or even thought of doing so till now.
Leave it. Too complicated to sort out now and, besides, he had other things on his mind. Teresa. He thought about her all the time. She came between him and the page.
As soon as the morning session was over, he ran downstairs to the women's Life Room. Most of the students had gone, but Elinor was still there, putting the finishing touches to her drawing. Seeing her like this through the open door, he was attracted to her all over again, as he had been the first time he saw her in the Antiques Room. He'd come very close to falling in love with her that day. Everything about her had attracted him, from the crown of her shockingly cropped head to the slightly pigeon toes peeping out beneath the hem of her paint-daubed overall. What can you do to resist a girl whose defects are perfections? She was so much more alive than anybody else.
Today she'd been working in charcoal and had black smudges round her mouth where she'd absent-mindedly sucked the stick. Ruthie Wilson, a small dun-coloured girl, like a wren, quick and secretive in every movement, was tapping the corner of her own mouth to point them out. At last, losing patience, she got out her handkerchief, gave it a lick and rubbed the marks away. Elinor stood motionless, like a small child, letting herself be cleaned up. There was so much intimacy in that action, Paul caught his breath.
How they dawdled, the two of them. Shifting from foot to foot, he waited while they got their things together and drifted towards the door.
'Paul,' Elinor said.
She looked delighted to see him.
'Oh, hello,' said Ruthie.
'Elinor, can I talk to you for a minute?'
'Yes, all right. We're on our way to Lockhart's.'
The café was crowded by the time they got there, the queue stretching from the counter to the door. As soon as he entered, Paul felt his face grow slick with steam and grease. Lockhart's was cheap. Everything about it said cheap, from the smears of grease on the badly wiped tables to the brown crusts in the sugar where people had dipped wet spoons. Standing directly behind Elinor, he noticed how the hairs at the nape of her neck, fairer than the rest, crept into the centre, half covering the tender runnel of white flesh. When they first met, the nape of Elinor's neck had kept him awake at nights.
Ruthie went off to join some friends, while Paul and Elinor found a table near the kitchen door. Paul had to squeeze himself close to the table to avoid being jolted by waitresses going in and out, but at least they were alone.
'So,' said Elinor, 'what did Tonks have to say?'
'I should stay to the end of term.'
'Was that all?'
'More or less.' He didn't want to tell her about having nothing to say, it hurt too much. 'Common sense, really. I've paid the fees.'
'Do you want to stay?'
'Now, yes.'
'Hmm.' Her face was alight with curiosity. 'How did you get on?'
'With Teresa? Very well.' He hesitated. 'In fact I saw her home. She lives in a basement, did you know?'
'No, I've never been. She always comes to see me.'
'Mad, really. Anybody could get in.'
Elinor took a sip of her coffee and emerged with a line of foam on her upper lip.
'Elinor.' He patted his upper lip, aching to be allowed to do what Ruthie had done a few minutes earlier. Instead, he passed a white, folded handkerchief across the table. Elinor wiped the foam off on the side of her hand and handed his handkerchief back to him, still virgin.
'Have you known Teresa long?'
He tried to keep the question casual, though just saying her name excited him.
'Two years? She modelled for me when I was up for the scholarship. Free. It was very good of her and well, you know, it makes all the difference.' Her eyes darkened. 'She's had a rotten life.'
'The husband seems to be an absolute brute.'
'He put her in hospital twice.'
'Didn't anybody do anything?'
'No, of course not. He got off scot-free. Surprise, surprise.'
She sat back, withdrawing her warmth from him as if he too were tarnished by the universal male stain.
'I'm surprised she doesn't go home.'
'He'd still find her.'
'Yes, but at least she'd have family.'
'An auntie. What's the point of that? She needs six hulking big brothers. Besides, the work's here.'
'Modelling.'
'Well, there's not much call for it up north. I know it's not much of a living, but –'
'How much does it pay?'
'You really do like her, don't you?'
'Ye-es. Yes, I do – only I'm not sure she's actually finished with her husband. Finished finished.'
''Course she has, the man's an absolute nightmare. No wonder she's suspicious of men. And being a model doesn't help.' She stared at him. A lot of men think models are fair game.'
'Neville.'
'For one.'
He was remembering Neville's story about the baby with a dozen possible fathers, though it had suited Neville to say that. 'He seems to be an interesting chap.'
'Oh, he's that all right. Have you seen his latest paintings? They're on in the Grafton Gallery.'
'No, I haven't. I'll have a look.'
'I don't like the new stuff particularly, but there's no denying it's powerful.' She was making patterns with the coffee dregs in her cup. 'He knows exactly what he wants to do.'
'I wish I did.'
'So do I. Wish I did.'
'You're doing all right. Everybody seems to think you'll get the scholarship.'
'Yes, but it's all schoolgirl stuff, isn't it? There's nothing there.'
So perhaps they were all dissatisfied with their work? Perhaps that was an artist's normal state?
Elinor pushed her cup away. 'Shall we get back, then?'
He said goodbye to her at the top of the basement stairs. She was a good friend. If he'd learned nothing else at the Slade he'd learned that men and women could be friends, even intimate friends, without sex intruding. But then, halfway down the stairs, she turned and looked back, and there he was again, a rabbit caught in the light of the gig lamps, unable to move or look away.
No, it was impossible. He couldn't still be attracted to Elinor, not now, when all his thoughts were focused on Teresa. What on earth had possessed him to say Friday? He could equally well have said today or tomorrow, at least asked if she was free. As it was, he'd condemned himself to three whole days without her. Fool.
He didn't have to look at the leaflet to know which paintings were Neville's. They leapt off the wall. He'd done three studies of the Underground: streaks of light, advertisements, perpendicular lines that suggested strap-hangers, blurred heads and faces of people, everything fragmented, explosions of noise and speed. The sensation of noise surprised him, but it was the right word. These were very noisy paintings. Did he like them? He didn't know, but he saw at once that this was fully mature work, streets ahead of anything he could produce. So far ahead and so different in its subject from anything he would ever want to paint that he was protected from envy. He got Neville's address from Elinor and wrote a warm note of appreciation.
After posting the letter, he tramped up and down the streets around his lodgings, so absent that a scrap of paper blowing across the road startled him. Every time he thought of Teresa little flickering flames ran along his veins. In the end, because he couldn't help himself, he went to her street. All around him, in the long mean terraces, was a sense of furtive, scurrying lives, of people living in one room, alone, cooking their suppers on a single gas ring. Walking down the street, he touched each railing as he passed, as a small child might have done, until he stood gazing down the basement steps at her front door. There was the familiar reek of rotting vegetables, but no red glow from behind the curtains. She was out. He was shocked by that. But then, why shouldn't she be out? She had a whole life that he knew nothing about. He ought to go, but still he lingered, hoping she might somehow, miraculously, come round the corner. He was behaving like one of the peeping Toms she complained about and saw, abruptly, that the chasm dividing him from those pathetic, little men was no bigger than a crack in the pavement.
Back home, he wandered between the two rooms of his small flat, pausing to gaze out on to the railway lines through net curtains stiff with dirt. He sat on the edge of his bed, staring down at his clasped hands, and wondered where she was, and who she was with. This obsession grew like a tumour. One of those spongy excrescences that grow on the throat or the side of the neck and choke the life out of you. He was living his whole life, minute by minute, breath by breath, solely in the hope of seeing her again.
By the time Friday evening came he was exhausted, but kept going by the energy of his desire for her. They went to the Coliseum and sat in the front row of the balcony. He sat as close to her as he dared, aware of the curve of her shoulder and arm, of the vibration of laughter in her chest, far more conscious of her than of anything happening on stage, where a couple of grotesquely made-up men teetered about on high heels warbling like prima donnas. Normally he loved the music hall. What he liked best were the 'turns' – comedians, acrobats and jugglers – but most of all he was fascinated by the men in wigs and make-up and outlandish female costumes and by the young girls swaggering up and down, immaculately clad in white tie and tails. They seemed to turn the whole world upside down, to suggest anything was possible. In the music hall it was Twelfth Night every day of the year.
After the interval there was a one-act play with a complicated plot about spies. One-act plays always struck him as being rather pointless – you'd no sooner worked out who the characters were than the curtain came down – and tonight he was even less inclined to pay attention than usual. But Teresa seemed to enjoy it. As they were leaving, she chattered about the play, and he smiled and assented and expressed opinions, but really he had no clear idea of what it had been about. In his inside pocket, burning a hole, as they say, was a packet of sixpennies. As he stood on the kerb trying to hail a cab he was remembering the first packet he'd bought. Three visits to three different barbers before he plucked up the courage to ask for what he'd wanted. By the time he'd managed to get some he looked like an ex-convict. A cab pulled up at last and he gave Teresa's address.
They sat in silence most of the way. They might have been a middle-aged married couple returning from their weekly night out, though he was so intently aware of her he could have counted the blonde hairs on her forearm where they caught the light. He paid the driver, and exactly like last time went down the steps first to check that it was safe. Nothing felt safe. His heart throbbed in his throat. Turning the key, he heard a rustle in the cavity behind him and spun round, fists clenched, only to see a naked tail trailing through rubbish before the creature whisked away into the dark.
'We get a lot of cats,' Teresa said.
'Cats? That wasn't a cat.'
Once inside the dingy hallway, he stood and stared at her. All his carefully prepared speeches deserted him. And then they were kissing, a long hard kiss that seemed to drain him. He pulled away, holding her at arm's length, searching her face. In the dim light her eyes were more violet then grey. They went into the bedroom hand in hand, like children. With other women, he'd always felt rushed, even as he'd checked and held himself back. This was different. A slow, peaceful progression. He helped her undress and she stood in the lamplight, rubbing the pink stripes the corset had left around her waist.
'I'm only allowed corsets on my days off. Saracen'd have a fit if I showed up looking like this.'
She was a tall, pale lily rising from the dark foliage of her dress. He knelt before her, his lips moving over the gentle curve of her belly where a few silver stretch marks rose from the bush of hair. The imperfection reassured him because it seemed to bring her beauty within reach.
'Are you cold?'
His voice creaked as if he hadn't used it for a long time.
'A bit.'
She got into bed and lay on her side, facing him, her eyes full of candlelight. He freed his cock from the cling and torment of his underpants and heard her laugh, but it was a triumphant, friendly, sensual chuckle that brought them closer together. He walked towards the bed, hoping she'd touch him, not wanting to ask for it. She cradled his balls in her hand, he felt them lift and tighten, and then she leaned forward and kissed him there, licking and mouthing the purple, glistening knob. He saw the creases in her neck. Oh, my God, careful. He eased her lips away. A lot of this was being done in an almost jokey way. Only when he climbed into bed and leaned over her did her smile fade. She stared up at him, her pupils flaring as his body cut off the light. She seemed wary, as he was himself. He lay half beside her, half on top, nuzzling her neck, shoulders, breasts, smelling the bitter almond smell of her nipples, brushing his face from side to side on her belly. A hot, briny tang was perceptible under the sweetness. He lowered himself on to her; her back arched as she rose to meet him. As they twisted and writhed, a knot of white limbs on the jangling bed, he was aware of the darkness outside, the wet, the cold, the gritty streets. A goods train rumbled past. He thrust deeper, trying to shut the noise out, but the roar of trains was part of their lovemaking, and when at last he let her go, they lay listening as a whistle shrieked and faded into silence and the rattling at the window frame ceased.
'Do they wake you?'
'Only if they're late.'
'Yes, that's right.' He felt a moment's delighted recognition, out of proportion to the small, shared experience. 'You get restless, don't you, and then you realize what's missing. The sleeper's late.'
'When I first moved in here, I thought, I can't put up with this, but then after a bit you can't imagine living without it.'
In the brief interval between trains, he heard the wind rising and a few small drops of rain hit the glass. He started to kiss and caress her again and this time they reached a sharper peak. There was bewilderment, even pain, in her final cry. He bit into the pillow, tossing his head, trying to tear the cloth, then with a final roar fell forward and lay still.
After a minute he rolled over, smiled, laughed, wiped sweat from his face, laughed again, and then they were hauling themselves out of the stormy sea and on to the safety of the rocks. He pulled her out of bed and they ran, naked, into the kitchen where they cut themselves big, thick slices of bread and butter – doorsteps, she called them – and washed them down with strong, sweet tea. They kept looking sideways at each other, grinning. She put a match to the fire and they sat on the sofa side by side, stretching out their bare toes to the heat.
'Like bairns waiting for Christmas,' she said.
'I just had my present.'
She was rubbing the pink corset marks again. 'I hope they're gone by morning.'
'Why? Are you modelling?'
'Yes.' Her tone hardened. 'It's what I do.'
He pressed his thumb against her cheekbone. 'You should try head modelling, you know. No, really. You'd be amazed how few models have good heads.'
She smiled, but looked away. What did it matter if other men saw her naked. It wasn't worth arguing about and, anyway, what right did he have to interfere in her life. Only he wanted her to himself. He lay back and held out his arms for her to join him. Immediately she came and snuggled into his side. Soon her warmth and the heat of the fire began to make him drowsy. He'd drifted off to sleep when, jarringly, she jerked upright.
'What's the matter?'
'Ssh.' She raised a hand. 'Can you hear it?'
He listened. 'No.'
Perhaps he had heard something, but only the fire collapsing in on itself where it had burnt hollow. His mother had always said a hollow fire was a sure sign of disaster and would snatch up the poker and smash the coals into a more acceptable shape. Didn't help her much, poor woman. He sat up and shook himself awake.
'I'm sure I heard something,' Teresa said.
'Could be somebody emptying the rubbish.'
'No, out the back.'
It was obvious what he had to do. Barefoot, wearing only his trousers, he let himself be led along the dog-leg passage to the back door. There were two bolts fixed to the wall with rusty screws. For God's sake, you could kick it open. She pulled the bolts back and he stepped out into a small, dark basement courtyard. It smelled of damp and leaf mould. Steps led up to the main garden, where buddleia bushes with detumescent spikes loomed as tall as trees. Reluctantly, he stepped out into the yard, the raw, wet air on his skin shocking him into full wakefulness. The flags were slippery with rain and moss; snail shells crunched between his toes. As he went up the steps, he saw a stretch of wet lawn silvery in the moonlight and through the tangle of bushes a wire fence separating the garden from the railway line beyond. An intruder would have had to come in through one of the neighbouring gardens, that, or risk crossing the main line. But nobody with any sense would do that. At the top of the steps he looked around: no sign of anybody, no sign that anybody had been there. Anybody crossing the lawn would have left footprints in the wet grass. Probably she'd imagined it, but he walked round long enough to convince her he was taking it seriously, then went to stand by the wire fence. Beyond the slope of blond grass, the railway line had started to hum. He was aware of Teresa, at the top of the steps now, watching him. In a minute, a dozen or so rocking, swaying carriages hurtled past. A child with her face pressed against the glass waved to him, but the small human gesture was lost in the grind of pistons. He felt a ripple across his naked skin as the displaced air rushed back.
'Can you see anything?'
'No. If he was here he's gone.'
'It'd be him all right.'
'I didn't see anybody.'
She gazed around her, the moonlight glittering in the whites of her eyes. 'Perhaps it's me. Perhaps I'm imagining things.'
But she didn't sound convinced.
Shivering, she pulled the edges of her wrap together and went down the steps into the house, and with a last look at the wet grass and the shining rails, he turned to follow her.
Neville replied to Paul's note of congratulation with an invitation to lunch. Just family, he'd scribbled underneath his signature. I thought we might go for a swim afterwards? Weather permitting, of course.
'I wonder what he wants,' Teresa said.
'Does he have to want something?'
'No-o.'
'Well, I'll know soon enough, won't I?'
Sunday found him in the Nevilles' dining room overlooking a balding lawn. The weather, after a few fitful weeks of mixed sunshine and rain, was now definitely getting warmer. The rhododendron leaves were limp in the midday glare.
Paul was sitting next to Mrs Neville, a thin, energetic woman who was an enthusiastic suffragist.
'Suffragist,' she insisted. 'Not gette.'
'No,' Neville said. 'But gette's on the way, isn't it?'
'Well, if the moderates don't make progress, what do you expect? Obviously people are going to be attracted to more extreme tactics.'
'Don't start throwing bricks, my dear,' Colonel Neville said. 'You're a terrible shot.'
Mrs Neville seemed to be fond of her family, in an abstracted kind of way, though Neville, jokingly but with an edge to his voice, claimed she never listened to a word he said.
'Poof! What nonsense.' She dropped a kiss on her husband's forehead, acknowledged her son and his guest with a vague, bright smile, and swept out of the room.
'It's true,' Neville said, caught between amusement and self-pity. 'Half the time she doesn't know I'm here.'
Paul thought he detected a lot of tension beneath the surface in this family. Neville was in awe of his father, a war correspondent who'd faced danger in every corner of the world. Throughout his life the father had gravitated towards violent conflict, and the son was desperate to measure up. No easy matter if the worst danger you face is a collapsing easel. But it made sense of Neville's preoccupation with virility in art. Paul had read a couple of Neville's articles now and both of them were full of the need to stamp out the effeminacy of the Oscar Wilde years. You'd think, the way Neville wrote about it, that the Wilde trials had taken place last year, not a generation ago. What a shadow it cast.
After coffee Colonel Neville retired to his study and the two young men went upstairs to Neville's quarters: a large studio right at the top of the house. The treetops were level with his windows.
There were several completed paintings to admire, one of them very fine indeed. Many were urban, industrial landscapes. Paul was generous with his praise, though inwardly discouraged. In comparison with this his own work was immature, and he couldn't understand why. He wasn't particularly young for his age. His mother's long illness and early death had forced him to grow up and take on responsibility. So this maturity of vision in a man whom he found distinctly childish in many respects bewildered him. Living at home, spoiled, self-pitying, moaning on because his mother didn't pay him enough attention – for God's sake! The work and the man seemed to bear no relation to each other. And the contrast was all the more painful because Neville was painting the landscape of Paul's childhood. These paintings were the fruit of a trip up north to seek out the same smoking terraces and looming ironworks that Paul had turned his back on every Sunday, cycling off into the countryside in search of Art. He glanced sideways at Neville. One of them was mad.
'They're very powerful.'
'I managed to get inside one of the works and see a furnace being tapped. God, it's an amazing sight.'
'You haven't tried to paint it yet?'
'No, I'm gearing myself up.' He was pulling a bathing costume out of a drawer as he spoke. 'Shall we go for a swim, then? It's too nice to stay inside.'
Pausing on the landing to collect towels from the airing cupboard, he led the way downstairs. In the hall dust motes seethed in a shaft of sunlight. No sound anywhere, no voices, no traffic noise. Only the steady ticking of a clock.
'It's quiet, isn't it?'
Paul was referring to the absence of traffic noise, but Neville chose to take it more personally.
'Oh, it's always like this. Do you know, sometimes I don't talk to a living soul from one day's end to the next? Mother's got her blasted meetings, Father's never here …'
'I suppose there's always the Café Royal.'
'Can't stand the place.'
He was there every night. 'I thought you liked it.'
'Like it? Of course I don't like it. It's vile.'
They had turned out of Keats Grove now and were walking up the hill towards the Heath, the sun heavy on the backs of their necks.
'I've been meaning to ask,' Neville said. 'How did you get on with Tonks?'
'All right, I think. He doesn't seem to want to throw me out, and the fact is, I don't want to leave. There's too much going on.'
Neville was too short of breath to reply and they climbed the rest of the hill in silence. When they reached the bathing area, he pushed the gate open to reveal an area of sparse grass covered in lobster-pink flesh. Paul stepped inside and took a deep breath. Smells of pond water, sopping towels, damp hair. The path ahead had wet footprints dabbled all over it.
'Reminds me of school, this,' Neville said.
'I'm surprised you can stand it.' Neville looked a question.
'Well, you don't seem to have liked school much.'
'Doesn't mean I don't remember it. Let's face it, Tarrant, it never really leaves you, does it?'
'Mine has.'
'Grammar school.'
'Oh, well.' He was tugging at his tie as he spoke. 'I say, Tarrant, you're not chippy, are you?'
'Chippy. A bit, you know –'
'Not at all. I think it had a lot of advantages.'
'Such as?'
'Not having to shower with your back to the wall.'
'Oh.'
Neville looked around him uneasily, but the men stretched out on the grass might have been asleep for all the interest they showed.
'Or perhaps you think that's an exaggeration?'
'Not where I was. The dormitory was a sewer.'
My God. Paul hadn't expected either the frankness or the bitterness of Neville's response.
'Where do we leave our clothes?'
'C'mon, I'll show you.'
Neville was obviously well-known here. Several of the men lying on the grass looked up and greeted him as he walked past. Paul followed him reluctantly into a low brick building that housed the lockers. It was too soon after lunch to go swimming and he disliked padding about on other people's wet footprints. At one point he was holding on to the wall and shaking one foot like a disgruntled cat.
A few minutes later, walking along to the end of the jetty with his locker key on a string round his neck, he began to change his mind. The pond was a sheet of silver with concentric rings of turbulence around the dark sleek heads of the swimmers. He gazed out beyond the fringe of willows and hawthorn bushes to the sunlit hills beyond, then turned and started to climb down the steps, the icy water inching up his mottled things.
Neville came running along the jetty. 'Jump, man. S'torture doing it like that.'
A second later, he dived into the choppy water. Paul watched him resurface: eyes blind, slack mouth sucking air. Then he dived again. A gleaming back showed above the water and he was gone.
Challenged, Paul let himself fall backwards, through the warm skin of water into the murky depths. All around him now were white, struggling legs. Neville swam towards him, arms sheathed in silver bubbles, hair floating from side to side as he twisted and turned. They stared at each other. Absurdly, out of nowhere it became a contest. Who could stay down longest. Lungs bursting, Paul gave in and broke the surface on a screech of indrawn breath. He pushed the hair out of his eyes to see Neville, a few feet away, laughing into his face.
'It's bloody freezing,' Paul said.
'You need to keep moving.'
They swam off in opposite directions. Paul circled the boundary ropes twice, sometimes clinging to the rope to watch the other swimmers. The shock of the water on his skin had cleared his mind, that, or seeing Neville's work. The strength of it. In some mysterious way Neville had become his marker. It wasn't friendship, though a friendship might develop; it wasn't rivalry either. Neville was too far ahead of him for that. He didn't know what it was. Only that he'd had close friendships that were less important than this wary, sniffing-about-each-other acquaintanceship.
The banks were covered with the starfish shapes of men spread out to expose the maximum amount of skin. Deciding he'd had enough of the cold, Paul hauled himself out of the water, found a space and lay down, shrugging away the scratching of coarse grass between his shoulder blades. Closing his eyes, he concentrated on the orange glare behind his lids. Purple blotches drifted across, fading to nothing. All his doubts about his painting, his envy of Neville's talent, his constant anxiety over Teresa's husband dissolved into the warm air. He was drifting off to sleep when the orange light behind his lids darkened to black and a shadow fell across his skin.
Paul opened his eyes, squinting between his spread fingers. Of course. Neville. Eyes gleaming bright and malicious beneath wet hanks of hair.
'You didn't last long.'
'Bloody freezing, man.'
'You should try it in winter.'
Paul smiled. 'You don't mean to tell me you come here in winter?'
'It's been known.'
Extraordinary – when he seemed so fond of his comfort in every other respect. The man lying next to Paul stood up, scratched the grass marks on the backs of his thighs and wandered off. Neville took the vacant place.
Disliking the proximity of so much chilly wet flesh, Paul closed his eyes again. He could hear Neville's breathing, feel him wanting to talk.
'I've known Elinor a long time.'
'Yes,' Paul said, 'I suppose you must have done.'
'The thing is, I'm in love with her.' He waited for a response. 'And I think you are too.'
Reluctantly Paul turned to face him. There was such an intensity of suffering on Neville's chubby features that Paul could hardly bear to meet his eyes. 'No. We see a lot of each other, obviously, because we're in the same year, and I do like her. But I'm going out with Teresa.'
'Teresa Halliday?'
'Ah.' He took a moment to think about it. 'That's all right, then.'
What an inept, bumbling approach. He was a strange man. Talented, yes, but malicious, too tormented himself to feel much kindness for other people, and bitter. What did he have to be bitter about? Choking on his golden spoon. But since he was here, he might as well get some information out of him. 'Have you know Teresa long?'
'Oh, yes,' Neville said. 'Way back. She used to model at the Slade when I was a student.'
'Have you ever met her husband?'
'No – and neither has anybody else. Why?'
Paul could feel Neville's gaze on the side of his face. 'I just wondered.'
'You mean, you wonder if he really exists?'
Paul sat up. 'You think she's making it all up?'
Neville shrugged. 'I don't know. She likes drama. She likes to be at the centre of the stage with everybody else revolving round her. You saw her, the first night we met. She wouldn't let Elinor talk to anybody else.' He waited for Paul to say something. 'You've got to admit it's a bit odd he never actually shows up. Look, all I'm saying is, if he's real, why has nobody ever seen him?' He rolled on to his back. 'In two years.'
'She does seem to be genuinely frightened.'
'She's an actress. They all are.'
They? Who were 'they', for God's sake? Women? Models? None of it made any sense. And why should other people have seen Halliday? He was hardly likely to stroll into the Café Royal and drag her out into the street.
Abruptly, Paul got to his feet.
'It's getting a bit chilly.'
He wanted to get away from Neville.
'If you don't mind, I think I'll get dressed.'
He needed to be with Teresa, to reassure himself that none of this was true.
That conversation with Neville changed everything. He tried not to let it and, for a time, seemed to be succeeding, but the next time Teresa announced that she'd heard a noise and asked him to go outside and check, he refused. 'I didn't hear anything.'
They were lying in the bed after making love. For a moment there was silence. He felt the tension in the arm that lay alongside his.
'I'll go,' she said, reaching for her wrap.
'No –'
Too late. He heard her bare feet slapping on the lino and then the creak of the front door opening. A current of colder air rippled across his skin. He waited. When she didn't return immediately he got up and followed her.
She was standing halfway up the basement stairs, peering out between the railings. 'Look, do you see?'
He followed her pointing finger across the road to a house with a large porch. In the deep shadow he thought he could see a figure, but even as he watched, it split into two. A courting couple.
'It's nothing,' he said, struggling to keep the impatience he felt out of his voice.
Teresa turned to look at him.
'Come back inside.'
She followed him down the steps and back along the passage into the bedroom. 'You don't believe me.'
'I do. But there's never anybody there when I look.'
'You think I'm making it up.'
'No, I don't think that. But I do think you might be getting it out of proportion.'
'I had another letter.'
It was the first he'd heard of any letters.
'Saying what?'
'The usual.'
'Can I see it?'
'I burnt it.'
She turned away from him. 'Because I couldn't bear to have it in the house.'
'What did it say?'
'That he's going to kill me.' She managed a smile. 'They don't vary much.'
'And you don't keep them?'
'Would you want something like that in your flat?'
'No, but I'd keep it. It's evidence, for God's sake.' She shook her head.
'If you took those letters to the police they'd have to take it seriously. Promise me you'll keep the next one.'
'All right.'
He sat down on the bed, his thoughts seething. He watched her carefully all evening. She didn't seem particularly worried … Later, after they'd eaten, she got her dressmaking dummy out of the spare room, and went on with a jacket she was making. She was actually humming under her breath as she draped cloth along its curved side. He lay on the sofa pretending to read, but then got his sketch-book out and started drawing her, because this gave him the excuse to do what he was compelled to do anyway: search her face. Her eyes. Her mouth, thinned suddenly to a hard line, bristling with pins. He didn't know what to think.
That was Sunday. On the Friday following, they got back to Teresa's flat from an evening at the music hall, and found a letter on the doormat. No postage. Obviously delivered by hand. While Paul locked and bolted the door, Teresa carried the letter through into the living room.
He found her standing by the mantelpiece with a sheet of flimsy blue paper in her hand. Wordlessly, she handed it to him.
He read: I'LL KILL THE PAIR OF YOU – JACK
The capital letters exactly filled the space between the lines so the impression was of a child's handwriting exercise. 'Are they all like this?'
'Pretty much.'
She was waiting to see how he'd react. He'd have given anything, at that moment, to have believed her, but even as he took her in his arms his mind whirred with suspicion. Capital letters. Why go to the trouble of disguising your handwriting and then add your name? It seemed stupid, but then, for all he knew, Halliday was stupid. He knew nothing about him. No, this was madness. He had to believe her. If she was lying now she was … What? Manipulative? Insane?
She was smiling in triumph. 'There, you see? I told you he was hanging round.'
'Why do you think he sends them?'
'I don't know.'
'Do you think he's drunk when he writes them?'
'I don't know. Probably.'
'Did he always drink? I mean, when you first met him?'
'You mean, did I drive him to it?'
'No, of course not.'
'Yes, he drank. Only it didn't seem to have the same effect on him then. He just got a bit …' A faint, unconscious smile. 'Cuddly. But then after we married he started drinking more and … Well, if he was bad-tempered when he started it made him fifty times worse. Whatever he was feeling it made it worse. I've seen him sometimes, on a Saturday night, he'd have offered his own Granny out to fight.'
'Where did he get the money?'
'He worked for it. He was a furnace man. They work bloody hard. And they do need the drink. You see them come off shift, it's straight across the road into the pub. They'll sink five, six pints, think nothing of it, and they're not drunk on it either. And if he was ever short of a few bob he only had to go bare-knuckle fighting. Take anybody on. The other lads used to lay bets on him.'
The warmth faded from her face.
'Have you got a photograph of him?'
She looked puzzled. 'Why?'
'If he's going to kill me I'd like to be able to recognize him. If you don't mind?'
She went to the sideboard, reached under a tablecloth in the top drawer, and brought out a photograph. It was a wedding portrait, the two of them together, standing outside a church. Teresa was plump, smiling, full of hope, pretty, but not beautiful as she was now. Halliday was tall, dark-haired, not bad-looking, though his head and neck were unusually long so that his shoulders seemed to be surmounted by a tower.
Teresa stared at the photograph and her expression softened. Oh, she'd loved him once. How on earth had they got from the moment outside the church to where they were now?
'I suppose he still loves you.'
She waved the letter. 'You call that love?'
Her face was white and shrivelled. Coarse. For the first time she repelled him. Knowing it was the wrong thing to do, he began interrogating her. When had she left Halliday? How often did he turn up? When was the last time? She became restless under the questioning, and no wonder. He was being tedious, bad-mannered. No, worse than that, he was behaving like a bully, but he kept on. It was a relief when she finally lost her temper and told him to get out. He went without argument. He'd got as far as the door when she came after him, holding on to his arm, begging him to stay.
He let himself be persuaded. As she led him along the corridor to the bedroom, he felt the same urgency of desire as he'd felt the first time. He knew he ought to break off the relationship now, but he couldn't. Beside these moments: the salty taste of oysters on her tongue, the fumbling with her dress, the smell of her skin, the rumbling of a train that shook the bed, besides these moments the threat from Halliday meant nothing.
After their lovemaking, he lay in the candlelight absent-mindedly stroking her hand. She didn't wear a wedding ring, but worse – because it seemed to symbolize the power of the past more trenchantly – the flesh on her ring finger was permanently indented. Unconsciously, he began picking at the groove in her skin until she snatched her hand away.
Paul lay for a moment in silence. Then: 'Was he a good lover?'
'Who?'
Who indeed. 'Jack.'
'No, not really. He only cared about himself.'
He wondered what she'd say about him. After a while she turned away from him and he heard from her breathing that she was asleep, but it was a long time before he was able to follow her and even then he had long confused dreams that were always threatening to turn into nightmares. In one of them he sat by his mother's grave drinking a cup of tea, with a plate of sandwiches and fancy cakes balanced on his knee. When he looked up everybody he knew was there, eating and drinking, talking, laughing, their chairs turned in to face the headstone. And then, looking down, he saw the grave was open.
He came awake with a jump, staring around him, but gradually his breathing quietened. Nothing to be afraid of, he told himself, knowing all the time that he had every reason to be afraid. She'll never rest, his grandmother had said. And she never had. Night after night she walked the corridors of his dreams.
But he was used to her presence. He didn't mind. Pressing his cheek against Teresa's back, he breathed in the smell of her hair, and, after a while, drifted back to sleep.
Normally Paul left before breakfast, going back to his own flat to shave and change his clothes, but this morning he lingered. They ate toast and drank coffee lying in bed and then she went off to the bathroom to get ready for her day.
As soon as he heard the bathroom door close he was out of bed. He began searching through her drawers, the bottom of the wardrobe, the sideboard, anywhere, not even trying to justify his behaviour. He needed to know – that was all. He didn't even admit to himself what he was looking for, until the last second, when he held it in his hand.
A cheap blue notepad. Going across to the window, pressing his shoulder against the glass to get as much light as the grey morning allowed, he saw that the paper was the same weight and colour as the letter she'd received last night. He put the pad and the letter side by side, rubbed the bottom edge of the pages between his thumb and forefinger, held them up to the light to check the watermark. Identical. That, by itself, didn't mean much – notepads like this were sold in every corner shop and every branch of Woolworths in England. But on the first page of the pad he could see the indentation of letters where the writer had pressed hard. The K in KILL was particularly sharp and deep, but if you looked closely you could make out the whole sentence.
I'LL KILL THE PAIR OF YOU – JACK
There could be no doubt. He saw no way round it. She'd written the letter herself.
He was out of his depth: too intelligent not to know it, too proud to admit it. He needed to talk to Elinor, who knew Teresa better than anybody else, but it was difficult to get hold of her. At last though he managed to corner her in the Antiques Room and she invited him to tea at her lodgings after college.
Prompt at six o'clock, he knocked on her door. He heard his name called and stepped back to see Elinor leaning out of a window on the third floor, her heavy dark gold hair swinging forward in two sharp points on her cheeks. 'Hang on a sec, I'll come down.'
Footsteps, quick and light, and then the door was thrown open and she looked out at him, smiling.
'Doesn't your landlady mind men calling?'
'Men?' She peered round him. 'Oops, he's brought the regiment. No, she's down in the basement. As long as there's not too much noise, she lets us get on with it. She's even letting us redecorate.'
Elinor led the way up a broad staircase whose dark green carpet had a beige strip in the centre where the pile had worn through to the backing. She was clearly in the thick of decorating – he smelled distemper the moment she opened her door. Lolling tongues of rose-trellised wallpaper lay on the floor where she'd simply seized it and pulled it off the wall. A bucket of grey, glutinous sludge, a table and a stepladder occupied the centre of the room, but a sofa and two chairs had been pushed together at the far end so that some kind of normal life could continue.
'What colour are you doing it?'
'Stone. I thought grey might be a bit too depressing.'
'And you're doing it all yourself?'
'No, Ruthie comes round to help. She's on the floor above. We're doing mine first and then we'll do hers.'
'It's a big job.'
'Oh, I don't mind, I like it. Anyway, there's no choice. I can't work with that stuff on the wall. There's another room, if you'd like to see?'
The bedroom. Elinor's bed under a patchwork quilt, a chair, a wardrobe. Nothing else. Sunlight came in through the smeared window and crept in parallelograms of light across the faded carpet. From below came the hum and rumble of traffic.
'I'm leaving this till last.'
He scarcely heard her. He was staring at a painting she'd propped against the wall: a female nude, facing away, rubbing a bath towel down her left arm. The ends of her glossy black hair stuck in wet coils to her white shoulders. 'Teresa.'
'She modelled for me. I said. Don't you remember?'
He did, now she mentioned it, but still it came as a shock. They gazed at the painting together. He felt a surge of desire, not for Teresa, but for Elinor. He imagined kissing her, and the image was so vivid that for one crazy second he thought he'd done it, and was groping about in his mind for some way of repairing the damage.
'That's the one I won the scholarship for.'
He realized she'd brought him here into her bedroom to show him this, but he didn't know why. A natural pride in a good piece of work? Or something more fundamental: a demand that he should recognize her as an equal? Well, if that was her motive she needn't have bothered. There could be no question of equality. If he stayed at the Slade another ten years he'd never be able to paint sunlight on wet flesh like that.
'It's wonderful. I'm so glad I've seen it.'
She smiled. 'Come on, I'll put the kettle on.'
'Can I do anything to help?'
'No, I don't think so. There's only room for one.'
He stood in the kitchen doorway while she boiled water and made salmon-and-cucumber sandwiches. He wanted to say more about the painting, but he'd always found it difficult to praise an artist to his face, her face, or even to accept praise gracefully himself. Though that hadn't been much of a disability so far.
'Right, I think that's it,' Elinor said, wiping her hands on her sides. 'Here, you can carry the tray.'
He set it down on a small table, which she cleared by sweeping piles of books on to the floor. They sat facing each other, the sofa and chairs so squashed together their knees were almost touching. She offered him a plate and a sandwich, but didn't immediately pour the tea. He noticed there were three cups.
'I got a note from Teresa saying her husband was prowling round.'
'Ye-es.'
'Poor Teresa. She must be terrified.'
Her eyes had gone black with anger. Her sympathy reminded him how very much he liked her, and he was reaching out to touch her hand, when –
'Elinor.'
Neville, gasping for breath after the long walk upstairs. He stopped in the doorway, registering the scene, and his face changed colour – not a flush, but the most extraordinary darkening, like a male fish that finds itself unexpectedly confronted by a rival. 'Oh, hello, Tarrant.'
Why does she do it? Paul wondered. Obviously she'd invited them both to tea, at slightly staggered times, implying, though not promising – for when did Elinor ever promise anything? – that each was to enjoy a tête-à-tête. Now she avoided looking at either of them.
After an awkward pause, Neville produced a bottle of wine from the green bag he was carrying. 'I thought you might like to celebrate the scholarship.' He glanced at Paul. 'You know about this?'
'I've just been admiring the painting.'
'Oh, you've got it back?'
'Yes, this morning. Come through, I'll show you.' Paul listened to the murmur of voices from the bedroom. Neville loved her. It was unmistakable. He always spoke to her with a kind of clumsy, affable superiority, making the most of his extra years and his fame, but increasingly the mask of confidence slipped to reveal lust and pain and fear.
'I couldn't have done it without Teresa,' Elinor was saying, as they came back into the room. 'A model makes all the difference.'
'Yes, and she's a good model too, isn't she?' Neville sat down next to Paul. Are you painting her?'
'No.'
'I'll get some glasses,' Elinor said.
The two men were left alone. After a pause, Neville asked, 'How's the life class going?'
'Oh, you know. I've more or less given up.'
Elinor came back with three glasses and a bottle opener. Neville uncorked the bottle and poured. After they'd toasted Elinor's success, there was silence. Then Neville said, 'Oh. I've got something to celebrate too. I've bought a motorbike.'
He looked so pink and glowing, so insufferably pleased with himself, that of course they had to troop downstairs and admire the gleaming monster. Another craze, Paul thought, dismissively, another fad. That was the kind of reaction Neville provoked. Not contempt, exactly, but something close to it. The vanity of the man. The wealth. And yet you had to share his delight in his new toy. He was such a child.
'I don't suppose I can tempt either of you to have a ride?'
'No,' Elinor said.
Paul raised his glass. 'Not at the moment.'
Back upstairs, flushed with wine and triumph, Neville became more expansive, reverting to the subject of Teresa's husband. He seemed to have forgotten Elinor was there. 'Why does she live in that wretched little basement? There's no need. She's not that poor. And even if she was, some man or other would always fork out. If she was half as frightened as she says she is, she'd be only too glad to move. Look at it. No proper locks on the windows. Anybody could hide in that coal-hole, the bolt on the back door doesn't work … One screw –'
Too late, he stopped, stared into his glass and emptied it in one gulp.
'She seems very happy there,' Elinor said.
Nobody replied. Paul smiled and stood up. 'I think I ought to be going.'
Elinor was looking up at him with some concern. He shrugged, then bent and kissed her, rather enjoying the expression of pain that flickered across Neville's face. 'Shall I see you in Lockhart's tomorrow?'
'One o'clock?'
'Right, then.'
'No, wait, I'll see you out.'
They walked downstairs together. 'Are you and Teresa coming to the Café Royale tonight?' she asked, as he opened the front door.
'Yes, I'm meeting her there. Are you coming?'
'Don't know.' She jerked her head towards the stairs. 'I'll see how things are.'
She was hugging her upper arms, though it wasn't cold. For the first time since he'd known her she seemed vulnerable, not dashing at all, a little half-starved cat. He put his arm round her. 'I'm really pleased about the scholarship.' He hesitated. 'Elinor …'
'I know what you're going to ask and the answer is I don't know.' She looked uncomfortable. 'Yes, probably. But it was ages ago. Nev's a troublemaker, you know that.'
He nodded. 'Yes, I know. I'll see you later.'
It was nothing to be miserable about, he told himself, walking off down the street, merely the confirmation of something he'd suspected since their first evening. What happened before they met didn't matter. It was far less important than the threat – if there was a threat – from Halliday.
That Saturday there was a fair on Hampstead Heath. He asked Teresa to go with him but he wasn't surprised when she refused. Instead, he arranged to go with Elinor and Ruthie, and with Ruthie's friend Michael Abbott, a cheerful, sociable, self-confid