Half Light

by Frances Fyfield

  ‘There, there,’ he said. ‘Not to worry. All better soon, all better soon. Say a prayer.’

  Maria let him touch her. She seemed to be comforted, seemed to like it. You would do anything out of fear: you would embrace the devil himself. Most moving, living things, Elisabeth thought, can become trained in savagery. Dogs, cats, rats, anything with a sharper instinct for survival than a sheep. They can be forced out of character by events or a ringmaster: their savagery is infectious, father to son, man to dog, woman to man. Thomas had been gentle once, but that was a long time ago; part of the man had died. Elisabeth could feel the infection of cruelty.

  In his absence, she had raced round each room of the flat, including the bare, spare rooms she had examined before, followed by Butler who was snapping but not biting. So many windows, so many locks without keys. Suicide-proof, he said, and the only windows wide enough for exit were those in her studio, too high to reach up sheer, smooth walls. Then she flung open kitchen and cupboard drawers, looking for knives, screwdrivers, hammers, anything heavy and sharp enough to attack the solid door to decimate that lock, at least make sounds Nothing but plastic, innocuous implements. Dear God, no one ever even used knives in this house: they never even ate what could not be eaten with fork or fingers. She went inside the hall cupboard to look for his umbrella with the blade, his swordstick, anything he might have, but found only sticks, one tipped with all too malleable silver. Beat on the door with one of these, a thumping hollow, futile sound while the dog behind her ripped her blue smock with his teeth. While she screamed, beat back at the yellow jaws, more out of resentment for the interruption than out of fear, the door opened. The light flashed in the hall, like the cue for a patient to see the doctor or an applicant an official, and there was Thomas back, still smiling. He pushed her back before him into the kitchen with ridiculous ease, still smiling.

  ‘You can’t let her go like that.’ Elisabeth shouted. ‘What will she do?’

  ‘Oh, she’s not so bad,’ said Thomas. ‘I’ve seen worse. She shouldn’t have shut him in, she ought to know better. And this is Maria’s home. She’ll come back in the morning like she always does, though I may give her a day off tomorrow. It’s your home, too, you know.’

  ‘No it isn’t. Let me go with her. She should go to a doctor.’

  ‘She wouldn’t go to a doctor, I promise you. She’d refuse. There’s nothing for you to do but finish the painting. You have to do that. You can’t go, either.’

  ‘Why? Why? Why?’

  ‘I must have something perfect in this place!’ The voice had risen to a shout. ‘Perfect!’

  ‘Why?’ she shouted back, tired of that interrogative sounding in her sore throat. ‘Why? You aren’t perfect. Nothing is …’

  She looked at him, bemused. Thomas sat down heavily. EIisabeth could only stare at him, solid herself with guilt and fury.

  ‘Nothing is perfect, I am so far from perfect and that is why. I am surrounded by imperfection. That is why I seek the opposite. I am …. I am an ugly, ineffectual man, as I have been since I was young. Since you made me so.’

  ‘I did not, I did not –’

  ‘Oh, I don’t blame you, but you must surely have told them something, something to suggest I’d seduced you, or something filthy of the kind, to make them be so savage, you must have done that. You must have done, it was only natural, you wanted the attention.’

  ‘I didn’t,’ she whispered. ‘I didn’t, I didn’t, I can’t have done. It wasn’t true. I was a little girl who bothered you. That was all. You know that was all. You know I was incapable of telling lies.’

  ‘Oh never mind. I said I don’t blame you. But I’m entitled to something aren’t I? Something perfect, like – oh I don’t know what like – you, for instance. I have no entitlements. I’m surprised that being so ugly doesn’t disenfranchise me from the vote. No entitlements at all.’

  She found the desire in herself to jeer at him, wanted to hurt, as she was hurt, a sudden rallying force.

  ‘No entitlements? To what? Only to riches, pictures, rest, recreation, a place like this. And light, never-ending light. No entitlements?’

  ‘No. You don’t understand. Between those who can attract, those who are physically acceptable, and those who are not, there is a chasm a mile wide. No entitlements. Not to respect, not to anything. I have to acquire perfection. I have not got it in me. First an eye then an arm … So I want a piece of beauty. You, perhaps. One perfect picture perhaps, without all the singing and dancing.’

  She was calmer now, found words.

  ‘Thomas, you want perfection, you want beauty, but what do you do with it? You can’t stand it, can you? All those paintings, restored, made as good as they could be and then you carve them up, don’t you?’ She tried to subdue her voice, but it emerged as sharp as an untuned violin. She sounded like her father and winced at the memory.

  ‘Only it isn’t that easy, you know,’ she went on tunelessly, recklessly. ‘I mean, it’s no good sticking these perfectly restored portraits of yours with a dagger to destroy their eyes. Takes more than that to kill a painting, you know. You’d have to burn them. Smother them with acid. Something more final than a knife. You can’t kill a painting as easily as you can a human being.’ Even now she could not resist communicating this little fact. He must have known where she had been in his absence, she and Maria, poking about in the murk of his privacy, but he was looking at her as if he had no idea of the implications of what she knew.

  ‘What paintings?’ He stood up again. Such a small man, lower to the ground than she, but twice as powerful. She wondered how money could be converted into muscle.

  ‘Your paintings, of course. The ones in the dressing room. The ones without eyes. Those.’

  Thomas was walking across the kitchen to look through a window which was identical to his bedroom porthole, small, partly open to allow a breeze, but unmovable.

  ‘Those paintings? I suppose you think … I suppose, they were, well, fairly perfect.’ He began to laugh, an ugly, raucous, unstoppable laugh, different from the crooning laugh he had used to comfort Maria, louder and louder there were forced tears at the corners of his eyes, little drops of mirth.

  ‘Look at me. Don’t laugh at me.’

  She walked towards him, the savagery rising, ready to attack. Thought of the paint beneath her nails which would leave traces in a scratch on his plump cheek, but the shame curdled the rage, the impotence of the way she had stood there minutes before, preventing nothing, merely looking at the blood. A little on the floor, a little ignored round the muzzle of the recumbent dog, as if poor Maria’s blood were scanty, thin and smeared, like her smile. Maria had been escorted to the front door, her sobbing muffled, her head against his, her back to Elisabeth. There had been a mute accusation in that, a contempt for her failure to rescue a friend, which mirrored Elisabeth’s own sentiments about herself. She was never swift enough to intervene: she was cowardice incarnate.

  ‘I’ll go to Maria now,’ she said, moving to the door. ‘Let me out, tell me where she is. I shan’t ask twice.’ There was a hesitation in the air, more palpable than the breeze from the window.

  ‘You promised you’d stay with me, if ever I asked.’

  ‘No I never promised that. A different person …’

  She was moving, aimed in absolute resolution. All she had to do in those seconds was to reverse the nightmare by an act of will, but she hesitated, let her arms fall and her fear show. Felt in the crook of her elbow the coldness of metal, shook her arm free and then felt her elbow pinioned. Easy. A second’s indecision and the arm was hooked by the cold metal handle of his stick. His face at her shoulder and a shower of spittle on her neck, leaving her rigid with revulsion.

  ‘Don’t be silly, Lizzie, don’t. Paintings matter more than anything. You know that. You have to stay, you have to finish. Where’s your pride? No one else answers when you need them, only me.’ He laughed again. She would have done anything to stop that laugh. ‘Give m
e a chance,’ he said. ‘Give me a chance. Listen, I bought you something nice … Look at it, please. You never gave me a chance.’

  She moved her hand slowly to wipe her neck. Her hand was heavy. Pity, guilt, shame. All of them the same weight, the creators of inertia.

  So the door was locked and Thomas was back in his room while the light had gone from hers. The light had gone from everything: the madonna did not smile even when Elisabeth looked at her, put her back on the easel, knowing now what she had to do, what there was to do. Before that, she prowled round the windows in the room, those she could reach. She had so delighted in the obedience of the high windows to their silk ropes, for the blessed light they let into the room so late in the day. Now she loathed their inaccessibility. They reminded her of the high windows in the rooms of her old school, and the classroom duties to open or shut them with a pole, although never with tassels like these, shiny, red, soft, golden, a texture so fine and cool she held it against her hot face. The lower sash windows on the right of the room were locked to open no more than a foot, wide enough for her head and all her hair as she gazed down. Opposite were the blank windows of an identical block of flats, windows she had never seen lit or opened shielding the empty rooms beyond. Down below she could hear the hum of city dwellers cutting through this otherwise silent street at the end of the working day, accustomed by now to the early dark, rejoicing in it. She could see the textures of their dull coats, which contrasted with the cars that juggled for position, flat rectangles of colour pausing and revving with controlled power, waiting for one another to make space. She wanted to be part of the crowds she had always despised as she had barged rudely through, repeating the mantra words of a child. Don’t look at me, just don’t look at me. I am a strange animal who knows no herd but has to hug the flank of one, needing but despising. Look at me now. She could dream from this height that one of them, only one, might look up and see her at the window and know she was trapped. Come upstairs, demand entrance, and prevent all those tentacles of fear from taking hold. Come home with me, they would say, come out of here.

  Francis, coming up those stairs, saying, I wondered where you had got to, darling. Come home. Francis, who could not answer a letter, even one on headed paper which he might have understood. Careless Annie: no word, either.

  If she smashed the window, she could scramble out and fall. There was always that option for oblivion, but she suddenly treasured her life and all the little it was. And there was Maria to consider, Maria and the madonna. Elisabeth looked at her room. Look in, not out: there is no point in looking out. She had placed half her materials on the floor: tidily now she added to the stock the extras of Thomas’s shopping. The heat probe for the asphaltum, but he had forgotten the gauze. Forgotten the gauze, as if he intended that neither his prisoners nor his paintings should have bandages for the wounds they might acquire, but he had bought a gift. In a minute, that other bag. She could fire this place, stain this wood, ruin these floors and desecrate these handsome chairs: she could examine the garment in the bag, Thomas’s gift, which she had briefly touched, withdrawing her fingers as if they had been stung. She looked at the madonna again, shuddered and knew what she would do. She would find calamine lotion to soothe her hands: she would finish the painting. Then he would scar it.

  Drawn to the window again, she made herself look down, suffer the vertigo of longing.

  No one was looking for her. They were all busy. She turned away. Francis, look at me.

  ‘All right, all right. Supposing this man …’

  ‘Is the artist who caused so much trouble.’

  ‘And got half blinded, came off worse …’

  ‘Well that’s an arguable point, isn’t it? About which of them came off worse. He only lost an eye …’

  ‘Well why the stick, then? Was it worse, what they did to him, or did something else happen to him after? Could he blame Elisabeth for that?’

  ‘We seem to be assuming he blames Elisabeth for something. No evidence, no evidence at all. If it is the same man, that is. Might not be at all.’

  Annie pushed her hand through her hair, feeling the dry texture. Too many changes of colour, and she had singed the fringe with the extravagant arcs described by her cigarette. There was the slightest scent of burning.

  ‘Why shouldn’t it be the same man? Listen, the descriptions seem to tally and how many one-eyed men do you count amongst your acquaintances? Oh no, sorry, I forgot, your acquaintances are all middle-class, middle-weight, middle-brain sportsmen …’

  ‘Don’t get at me, Annie. All right, so what if he is? Why wait all this time and then go round terrorizing her life? Orchestrates, or at least knows about, the destruction of her car …

  ‘And scares the living daylights out of her neighbour …’

  ‘You didn’t tell me about that.’

  ‘Yes I did, Francis, baby: you weren’t listening. You were so damn full of your own martyrdom.’ He ignored that.

  ‘Yes I was listening. I was. I’m a paid listener.’

  Annie got up, cramped. ‘Not to me you’re not. And you’d better go home. Late, work tomorrow, all that.’

  ‘We haven’t decided what to do,’ he ventured, delaying.

  ‘We don’t really know what the fuck to do. Sleep on it. She can’t be in danger. She’d have written. She’s a great letter writer.’

  And you don’t really want to go home. Annie did not say so, simply thought so, the conclusion forming itself in her mind with a quiet amusement and some satisfaction. No, he did not want to go: she was not making him particularly comfortable, there had been nothing flirtatious in her attitude, but he had just discovered loneliness and he did not want to leave for the limited company of the pictures in his flat. He was harassed, worried, guilt-ridden, all of these sensations new to him. Not a graduate in the school of hard knocks, this one, Annie thought, oh no. For a moment she despised him sitting on her floor, drinking her wine, his back against her furniture, but then the moment passed as she ruffled his thick, fair hair. It was a gentle reminder for him to move. She was suddenly resentful of the dominion of good looks. Those of Elisabeth which she had never envied at all, and had learned to appreciate now, but those of Francis in particular.

  ‘You could get away with murder with a head of hair like that,’ she said, the remarks in the making as thoughtful as venomous. ‘Your alibi would be the way you look, that rueful, vulnerable smile which isn’t even calculated, which you’ve probably worn to good effect since you were three months old, you legitimate bastard.’

  ‘Don’t be silly,’ said Francis, surprised and not flattered.

  ‘A good-looking man has the world to eat before he even begins on his oysters,’ Annie went on, suddenly remembering the little man with the limp and the stick, seeing in one terrible gulp of realization the comparative impotence of such a man. Men who looked like Francis had the power: men who looked like the creep had to create their own. Somewhere in there some clue was lurking, the germ of an explanation for all the fictions and wild analyses which had employed their evening.

  ‘I shall go back through all my damn books and look for his address. If I can’t find it, some other dealer must have it. If he’s bought from me, he buys from others. I’ll get it. I know what kind of pictures he likes, I can tell from the one he brought in to me. You can always tell. You’re so predictable, you collectors.’ Her eyes widened with her yawn, another realization smothered in the gasp.

  ‘I bet he likes what Elisabeth likes …’

  Francis closed his eyes. The reluctance to go was not feigned, but he did go. Work and all that. He went armed with the sorrows he had unearthed and the reflection, not quite enough to dispel the thought of Elisabeth from his mind, that Annie was the kind of girl who knew how to look after a man, who answered back and that might be what he needed Also the shameful thought that he was a man who had no idea of how to look after anyone, a boy who had nurtured nothing but good luck. Not even, he thought, a dog.

&
nbsp; When St Sebastian died (he was, of course, martyred, like all her real favourites, they made the best pictures), the death had not been quick. Maria looked at his depiction, thirteenth from the left, three down from the top on the wall against her bed. Sebastian was tied to a tree and shot with arrows, none of them fatal. He did not die from one wound, because he saved himself to be beaten to death afterwards. All in all, it cannot have been a pleasant way to go. In the pictures of him with his arrows, his face was contorted with agony, his eyes turned to heaven in a silent supplication, and he could not slump because of his bonds. But he must have moved each time another shaft pierced muscle, thudded into his side to create those rivulets of blood as red as the feathers on the arrows themselves, and he had been brave because he was a saint and saints were, perforce, brave people. Did he remember his God? Did he really suffer in silence, as she should have done? Maria thought of other saints, remembering the lesson that there was no salvation without suffering, no heaven for those who were beautiful, no reward in the other life for vanity. So Sebastian may not have minded much this mutilation of his beautiful body, because it was only an initiation for the bliss of the afterlife, a necessary atonement. She would not mind, either: suffering and mutilation were only preliminaries to heaven.