The Mistressclass

by Michèle Roberts

  Charlie arrived late. He plunged in, out of the rainy blue dusk, as though he were swimming. His black hair was plastered with wet. His turquoise eyes were brilliant and luminous, like sun on seawater. He was sleek as a seal, with a wide, curved smile.

  —Catherine. How are you? You look great.

  His arms reached out to hug her then flinched back. Don’t get the wrong idea, he was saying: Adam’s my good friend, my loyalty goes to him. But Catherine wanted him to play the game, admire her. She shouted in her head: why not flirt with me? She was still young enough to appreciate men’s glances in the street, to want love and sex. Adam might have gone off sex but she hadn’t. Charlie might not scowl like Mr Rochester but he would do. She wondered what he looked like with his clothes off.

  Charlie leaned down and kissed her cheek. He was wearing black jeans and a black leather jacket over a black T-shirt. The neck of a bottle of wine, swathed in damp blue tissue paper, stuck out of one deep jacket pocket.

  —Sorry I’m late. Phone calls. I’ve got the first few shows organised but there’s still some loose ends to tie up.

  —The work’s on schedule, though, isn’t it? Catherine asked: Adam said you’re opening in six months’ time?

  —Sure. Just need to book a few more shows for next year and we’re well away.

  Charlie was having an unashamed good look round. His gaze swept over the paintings lining the walls.

  —These are nice. Whose are they?

  —They’re all Robert’s. Adam’s father, Catherine said: this was his house. We moved in to look after him when he became very ill.

  —Adam’s father was a painter? He certainly kept that quiet when we were at school.

  —You know what Adam’s like, Catherine said: he doesn’t talk much about himself.

  —Shy bugger, isn’t he? Charlie said: he’s never mentioned it recently, either.

  —The house is chock-a-block with Robert’s paintings, Catherine said: we haven’t got round to sorting them all out yet. I want to, but Adam’s always telling me not to be in such a rush.

  Charlie had his hands in his jeans pockets. He was leaning forward, his eyes narrowed with concentration. Getting as close to the paint as he could. Now he turned and looked at Catherine.

  —Do you like it here? Where did you live before?

  —We had a housing-association flat in Bethnal Green, Catherine said.

  Adam’s old flat, that he’d had since he was twenty-five. She had been a local in the shops. A regular in the pub. She had enjoyed knowing all the shopkeepers’ names, chatting to them as she went in and out. People complained about the impersonality of cities, but that was only because they didn’t bother shopping in small shops, spending two minutes talking to the assistants who served them. When she and Adam decided to move to Fleet Halt and give up the flat, she had gone round and said goodbye to everyone. Uprooting yourself, you didn’t just leave a district, an urban landscape: you left local friends. She missed them. Mr and Mrs Patel in the paper shop. Mr Hassan in the dry-cleaner’s. Jack and Alice Ritchie in the Mayflower. Now she was having to start that process of getting to know people all over again, and it felt as though she were being faithless to the ones she had known before.

  —I don’t know whether we’ll stay here or not, she said: it all depends on whether Adam decides to sell this place. He’ll have to fix it up a bit if he does.

  She stretched out her hands to take the bottle Charlie was extracting from his pocket. Its coldness came through its dark blue wrapping onto her palms.

  —Did you see that crack in the façade when you arrived? All the houses in this row need underpinning. The river Fleet runs bang underneath and they’re all gradually sinking into it.

  Charlie moved away from the front door, past the hatstand. He surveyed the pair of paintings hung on the left-hand wall. French landscapes in oils. One showed a clump of red-roofed farmhouses in a green valley. The other depicted an orchard in blossom. The colours were bright, hot, non-naturalistic, the brushwork gestural.

  —Safe, aren’t they? Catherine said: nice, though.

  —Mmm, Charlie said: competent, certainly.

  Catherine came to stand next to him. She stared at the pictures.

  —He trained at the Slade. He knew how to make work that would sell, all right. He made quite a bit of money. He ended up owning a house in France as well as this one.

  —Where did he show? Charlie asked: what gallery was he with?

  —He was with the Bretton for a long time, Catherine said: but he left them a couple of years ago, after a row over their percentage. He started having studio shows. Then he got ill, so that was that.

  Charlie’s face, intent, professional, gave nothing away. In that respect he was just like Adam. Mask held up whenever necessary.

  —These seem a bit pot-boilerish to me, Catherine said.

  —Maybe, Charlie agreed: I’d certainly like to see the others, though.

  —Have a look round upstairs, Catherine said: in our bedroom, the room on the right. The best one’s in there. So I think, anyway. I’ll take you up there later, if you like.

  She caught his gaze and smiled at him. She felt the smile wash across her face, a tide of warmth.

  The doorbell pealed.

  Charlie lifted a hand. He headed for the open door at the back of the hall, the hubbub of voices and music. Catherine let in more guests. She went into the kitchen to find the corkscrew, put a bottle of wine under each arm, then crossed the hall again and plunged back into the party. She worked her way across the room, greeting people, shouting above the din, towards Adam. He was talking to Vinny. She was standing close to him, twirling a wine glass by its stem.

  —Charlotte Brontë? Adam was saying: you don’t still like her, do you?

  —You ought to give her a second chance, Vinny said: I suppose you think she’s merely a woman novelist and so that’s that. But you should read her. You might be pleasantly surprised.

  She waved her glass. Wine leaped out and slopped onto the floor. Catherine grimaced, then quickly tried to look pleasant. Adam caught her eye and twitched the side of his mouth.

  —And then, Vinny went on: we haven’t only got the novels. We’ve got a record of her learning to write with Monsieur Heger. All her juvenilia’s mad Gothic stuff, really wild and all over the place, but he taught her to write more plainly. More realistically.

  Catherine swallowed a yawn. Adam shrugged very slightly.

  —Go on, Vinny, Catherine said: you’re dying to tell Adam. Who was Monsieur Heger? I know, but I bet he doesn’t.

  Vinny’s words spilled out almost incoherently. She must be drunk.

  —Her professor. Charlotte attended his school in Brussels with her sister Emily, and then the next year she went back on her own, as a teacher. She fell in love with Monsieur Heger without really realising what was happening. Once she’d left, Charlotte wrote these pleading letters to him, asking him to continue corresponding with her. Much too passionate. He stopped writing back, and forbade her to write to him anymore. He tore up her letters and threw them in the bin and thought that was that. But his wife went through his wastepaper basket and found the letters and stitched them back together and secretly kept them. That’s how we know how desperately Charlotte was in love. She broke her heart over Monsieur Heger and as a result was inspired to write her masterpiece.

  Vinny eyed the bottles Catherine bore in her arms. Catherine took the hint and tipped out more drink. She felt as though she were a garage attendant, filling up long-haul lorries.

  Vinny clutched her glass in one hand and a cigarette in the other. She wreathed herself in blue smoke and took quick, nervous sips of wine. The smell of fresh nicotine mingled with that of booze, perfume, and perspiration. Music thumped from the speaker in the corner behind them, and Vinny moved her hips to the beat, seemingly unconsciously, as Adam glanced back at her. She was twitching her hips in a bed dance; bump and grind. She was much too old to do that, Catherine thought. She ought
to behave.

  —I do sometimes wonder, Vinny continued: what would have happened if Charlotte hadn’t died in early pregnancy. If Monsieur Heger had somehow come back into her life. Perhaps they would have had an affair after all.

  —Charlie’s here, Catherine said to Adam: he was over there, in the corner, a minute ago, but now I can’t see him. Have you spoken to him yet?

  Adam removed the wine bottles from Catherine.

  —I’ll circulate with these, and then I’ll come and talk to Charlie.

  * * *

  Vinny slid between tightly wedged groups of chattering people towards the door. The other guests were rocks, whom she could flow past, easy as water, sinuous as a sea-serpent winding in and out behind people’s backs, bending away from the tilting glasses clutched in their hands that waved like fronds of seaweed and splashed gold drops onto the glistening floor. Adam lolled in the far window-seat. She turned her back on him, glided out of the door, and into the hall.

  The hubbub behind was sealed away. Cooler out here. From a hatstand hung a blue raincoat she hadn’t noticed earlier. It must be Adam’s. Those must be his boots. She shook hands with a raincoat sleeve, nudged the boots with her foot. Then made for the stairs. The raincoat kept guard over the empty hall.

  The stairs were carpeted pale green. Spotless, with that brushed-up, recently hoovered look. Who on earth had time to hoover stairs? The elegant wooden banister gleamed, its struts immaculate, dust-free. Such cleanliness shouted loud as a trumpet. How much time did Catherine have to put in to achieve it? Vinny, by contrast, was a slut. A slattern. Sloppy and slovenly and slipshod. She rolled the consonants over her tongue and sang them under her breath.

  On the tiny landing she hesitated. Three doors confronted her, all shut. Sturdy and panelled, painted glistening cream. Two on the right and one on the left. In the dividing space between them was a mahogany chest of drawers with curly edges and legs. The wood was polished to such a deep shine it hardly seemed wood anymore. Just brown silk made solid. On top were some antique china dishes in blue and green with gilded scrolls for handles, a three-armed candlestick wreathed with gold leaves and roses. Three paintings of poppy-strewn cornfields hung on the walls.

  The three doors bristled at her and shouted, Keep out. One of gold and one of silver and one of brass. A dragon or an aged hag or the handsome prince. You choose.

  Vinny chose all three. First she opened the door in the middle. A rose-carpeted bathroom with a large window filmed in muslin, green plants on the low window-sill, a chintz-covered armchair. Next she tried the door on the left. A study with books all over the floor, a wooden Noah’s Ark on a side table, a computer on a desk, a sofa. The door on the right opened into a bedroom. The casement window, its curtains drawn back, was framed by sturdy stems of clematis starred with white flowers, and beyond it a blur of treetops, moving silently in the night wind. As a child she’d found that frightening: trees that waved to and fro outside shut glass and made no sound. She had been unable to stay alone in a room with that view. Too menacing. She’d had to shout for Catherine to come and rescue her. Her hands longed to close the curtains, blot out the dancing trees.

  As she hovered, something else crashed into her consciousness. The scent of the flowers? A nosegay of blue anemones and hyacinths in a tall glass stood on the table beside the bed. The bed. She was standing next to it. She had crossed the room without noticing. No choice. The painting hung in here summoned your eyes urgently. You were pulled close to it. A big painting. A six-by-four canvas that dominated the room, seemed to take up all the space. A female nude. Seen from the side, arching back on a salmon-pink bedcover, knees up and parted, one arm flung wide; the other arm crossing the belly, hand reaching between the bent legs; head tipped back, half-turned to one side. You couldn’t see the young model’s features. Her hair was hidden inside a turban and her face was deliberately blurred, screwed up in ecstasy. Her intensity leaped out at you like a shout or a punch. The brushwork was urgent and flowing as waves of body heat. The thickly stroked-on paint did not mimic the sensuality of flesh but was it. Solid. Rippling. Worked with such ferocity it made Vinny exclaim out loud.

  What was it like to lie in bed and look at that picture? Presumably it was Robert’s work. Was it a turn-on? Perhaps Adam and Catherine just looked at it dispassionately. Well-manipulated paint. Vinny needed some distance from it. She backed away and turned to inspect the rest of the room.

  The walls were the same pale pink as downstairs. The carpet was white; tight lamby curls of wool. The bed was an ornate French confection with whorled ends. A white cover traced with an embroidery of blue and yellow flowers in twists of silk. Antique. A heap of ancient cushions, the satin cracked, in faded rose. Vinny sank down into plump softness billowing up around her, and looked at the picture again. There was something familiar about it. Like a back glimpsed across the concourse of a railway station. Gesture. Attitude. Now she knew exactly where she had seen that composition before.

  Click. She swivelled her head and started. Adam was standing in the doorway.

  —Sorry, he said: didn’t mean to make you jump.

  They glanced at each other, then quickly looked away. He walked across to where she sat on the bed. To Vinny, still slightly stoned, he seemed to do it in slow motion. He took twenty-seven years to reach her. He pushed away a separating block of air. A skyscraper of words never spoken. Now he was close enough to touch. There was an exquisite pleasure, corkscrewing inside her like pain, in not lifting her hand, not reaching out towards him. In behaving herself just as she ought. An electric current discharged itself across her shoulder-blades. She stared straight ahead in order not to look up at his face. His jeans were Levi’s 501s. The blue corner of one front pocket was torn.

  —It’s quite something, isn’t it? Adam said.

  Vinny made her mouth work. Her lips felt lazy and huge. She lived behind them, mumbling and clumsy. Speaking was like stumbling out of a soft cave.

  —I shouldn’t have come up here without asking first, she said: I suddenly got overtaken with curiosity.

  Adam sat down next to her on the bed. Her insides turned over. He smelt faintly of soap and cigarettes. A good smell. He smelt exactly as he always did, exactly the same as he used to, twenty-seven years ago.

  —I’d never seen that picture before we came here, Adam said: Robert must have kept it under wraps all this time.

  Pleasure pushed along Vinny’s arms and legs. Flesh melted to liquid gold. She wanted to go out of control, take him in her arms, draw him down to lie with her on this soft bed. Hold each other and kiss for a long time, feel her bones start to tingle and ache, her cunt fatten and swell.

  —Do you know when it was painted? she asked.

  —Nineteen seventy-four, said Catherine’s voice: it’s signed and dated on the back.

  She was standing in the doorway, a plump, black-haired man in a black leather jacket just behind her.

  Adam and Vinny got up. The four of them stood in a row and looked at the painting.

  PART 5

  Oh my dear master,

  I ache for you. You don’t know and you don’t care.

  I dream of you touching me.

  I first learned what I liked in childhood. All those years of sharing beds; of course we all learned. Evening classes: our secret congresses in the middle of the night, huddled under quilts; playing and telling stories; tickling and caressing each other. Sometimes we pushed the beds together, end to end, so that we could tunnel through the bedclothes towards each other. In winter it grew dark at four o’clock and we were sent upstairs at seven. Too early for sleep and so we romped, careful not to make a din and rouse Aunt or Tabby. Like a nestful of kittens clambering over each other, biting and licking and nuzzling. I dream about playing with you like that, Monsieur. The lovely smell of you and me coming. Because I’ve cried out I wake up, and it’s dawn in the parsonage, Arthur fast asleep next to me, a bleak grey sulking at the window-sill below the curtain edge. I kneel
there and write this letter by that glimmer of arriving day.

  Shall I tell you one of the differences between us? You know how to satisfy your appetite but I cannot satisfy mine.

  You eat dinner in the early evening with Madame Heger. Pupils tidied away into silent rows in the refectory, children packed off upstairs. Only on Sundays were your little ones allowed to disturb the sacred peace of your dining-room. A bowl of vegetable soup with a crusty white roll, a dish of stewed onions, perhaps a slice of cheese, a piece of fruit. You see I remember your taste for simplicity; I ate supper with you both often enough at the beginning. You eat as much as you want and no more. Later on you go up to bed with Madame Heger and you make love. Proof of that: your tribe of little children. How many have you got now: eight? nine?

  All this is possible because you believe in yourself; you believe in your life, that your wife adores you, that you have a future. You believe in a succession of days like this one unrolling in front of you, and that makes you happy and contented. You are master of your own life. You believe that the future will bring you more of this fulfilment.

  If I had confidence in tomorrow, that it will come; that food for my soul will come; a letter from you; if I were able to believe in a future; a future of desire gratified; then I would be able to be calm. Emily had her God, dear master; she lived on the life of the spirit and the pursuit of poetry; but I cannot. I go into the kitchen where Martha is doing the week’s baking and break off pieces of pastry crust, lick the wooden spoon pushed round the bowl of cake mixture, wet my finger and press it to the tabletop to collect crumbs.