The sight of these neat little houses set out like a model village in narrow, cobbled streets roused the long-dormant American tourist in me, and before I could crush her down again I was gushing, “Ooh, they’re so cute!”
The big black cab had to stop on the corner to let us out, as it clearly would not be able to turn around if it went any further.
“They’re just adorable!” I became more excited as I noticed the window boxes and trim green lawns. In its day, this had been inexpensive housing, but that hadn’t translated into an ugly utilitarianism. The houses were small – I couldn’t imagine how they’d ever been thought suitable for the large families people had in the old days – but their proportions were appealing to the eye, and they didn’t look cramped. “What a great place to live – so quiet and pretty, like a village, but right in the middle of the city. You could walk everywhere from here, or bike, you wouldn’t even need a car.”
Selwyn was looking amused. “I’ll get Alistair to let you know as soon as one comes on the market. They’re very much in demand, but with advance notice maybe you could put in a pre-emptive bid.”
“I didn’t mean I wanted to live here—” but as I spoke, I thought again. Why shouldn’t it be me living the life I’d suddenly glimpsed, in a small, neat, pretty house or a flat within an ancient city? I still loved the country, but after all, there were trains and buses for whenever I wanted a day out, and these days I was feeling distinctly more starved of culture than I was of fresh air and wide open spaces.
“Well,” I said, changing tack, “If you can re-launch my career, I will definitely think about re-launching my life.”
He draped an arm loosely about my shoulders and led me gently down the street. “We – the operative word is we – are going to relaunch your career, big-time. Turn in at the green gate.”
The house where Selwyn’s friend lived was divided into two residences, top and bottom. His was upstairs, the front door reached by a rather elegant sweeping curve of stairs.
A thin, neat, very clean-looking old man opened the door to us. This was Alistair Reid. He had a long nose and slightly protuberant bright blue eyes in a reddish, taut-skinned face. His cheeks were as shiny as apples – I imagined him buffing them every morning – and his sleeked back hair was cream-coloured.
“I’ve just put the kettle on,” he said, leading us into his sitting room. “Indian, or China?”
He was looking at me. I looked at Selwyn.
“China, if you’ve got it.”
“I should hardly make the offer if I hadn’t got it,” the old man said reprovingly. But despite his tone there was a twinkle in his eye, so I guessed it was meant to be a joke. “Please, make yourselves at home. I’ll not be long,” he said as he left us.
I looked around the room, which was light and airy and beautifully furnished. It was clear even to my untutored eye that the delicate writing table beside the window, the glass-fronted bookcase in the corner, and the dark chest beside the door were all very old, finely made, unique pieces that were undoubtedly very expensive. Even the couch where Selwyn and I perched had a solidity and individuality about it that suggested it had not been mass-produced.
The pale walls were hung with paintings. I got up and went to look at them. One wall displayed a series of watercolour landscapes, the usual Scottish scenes of mountains, water, cloud-streaked skies and island-dotted seas. They were attractive enough, yet rather bland; more accomplished than my own attempts, but nothing special.
Beside the bookcase were two still-lifes in oils: one, very realistic and very dark, looked old; I guessed it could be two or three hundred years old. It depicted a large dead fish lying on a marble slab with a bundle of herbs and, incongruously, a single yellow flower. The other painting was much more modern in style, an arrangement of a blue bowl, dull silver spoon, and bright yellow lemon on a surface in front of a window, partly visible behind a blue and white striped curtain.
The largest painting in the room had a whole wall to itself. It was the portrait of a young woman. She had smartly bobbed hair and wore a long single strand of pearls against a dark green tunic. I stared at this picture for some time before noticing that it was signed in the lower left-hand corner with the initials W. E. L.
Alistair Reid came in with a tray, which he set down on a small table near the couch. I went back to take a seat and saw, with some dismay, that besides the tea he’d brought a plate of thinly sliced, liberally buttered white bread and another plate piled high with small, iced cakes.
“Store-bought, I’m afraid,” he said in his soft, lilting voice. “But I can recommend them. They’re really rather nice. Or would you rather have sandwiches? I wasn’t sure. It won’t take me a moment to make them if you’d like. Ham, or cheese, or anchovy paste, or tomato.”
“Thank you, Alistair, you’re more than kind, but we’ve just had lunch,” Selwyn said. He turned to me. “You know the old joke, that in Glasgow unexpected afternoon visitors are greeted with the cry of ‘You’ll be wanting your tea, then,’ whereas in Edinburgh, no matter the time, it’s always, ‘You’ll have had your tea, then.’” He shot a grin in the old man’s direction. “Well, I should have warned you, but Alistair has devoted his life to disproving that calumny on the hospitable souls of native Edinburghers.”
“Oh, go on, I know you’ve a sweet tooth,” Alistair said, not quite smiling.
“Well, I think I might just manage a fancy or two,” said Selwyn.
I took a slice of bread and butter and eventually allowed a cake to be pressed upon me, glad that we’d skipped dessert. The tea was light and delicate, flavoured with jasmine blossoms.
Alistair leaned towards me. “I believe when I came in I saw you admiring the portrait of my mother?”
“That was your mother? Painted by W. E. Logan?”
He nodded, eyelids drooping a little. “Long before I was born, of course. Her father commissioned it in 1926. It was quite possibly the last portrait W. E. Logan ever painted, apart from some studies of Helen Ralston, of course.” He gestured towards the watercolour landscapes. “And those are my mother’s.”
“Your mother was an artist, too?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. My mother painted purely for her own enjoyment. I have them on display because they remind me of her and because of where they were painted. It’s where we always took our summer holidays, on the west-coast, in Argyll.”
“That’s where I’m from!”
“Really? I’d have guessed you’re from much further west.” A teasing smile flickered about his thin lips.
I felt a little weary and tried not to show it. No matter how long I lived in Britain – and it was now nearly a quarter of a century – I could never pass for native. As soon as I opened my mouth I was a foreigner, always required to account for my past. Yet I didn’t want to be unkind or rude, and it wasn’t fair to take offence where none was intended. Scots, unlike some other Europeans, were generally fond of Americans.
“I was born in Texas,” I said. “Later I lived in New York, and then London. I’ve been living in Argyll for just over ten years. It’s a tiny little place called Mealdarroch, not far from—”
“But that’s exactly where we stayed!” he exclaimed. “It was always Mealdarroch, or Ardfern.” Looking delighted, he turned to Selwyn. “My dear, how marvellous! You never said you were bringing someone from Mealdarroch! My favourite spot in the universe!” He turned back to me. “You sail, of course.”
“We – I – have a boat. My husband loved to sail. Since he died, I haven’t felt like taking her out on my own.”
“Oh, my dear, I am so sorry.” His sharp blue eyes were suddenly gentle.
I looked down at my teacup, into the light gold liquid, and thought of how one might recreate that colour in a watercolour wash. After a moment I could face him again, quite calm.
“I was looking at your pictures trying to guess which one was by Helen Ralston. But if the watercolours are your mother’s, and the portrait b
y Logan—”
His eyes widened. “Oh, that’s not hanging in here! I could hardly have it on display to all and sundry – far too risky!”
I thought at first he was speaking of risk before I realized he meant the painting itself was risqué – did he mean it was a nude figure? But nudes had been common currency in fine art for a long time and surely were acceptable even in buttoned-down Calvinist Scotland?
Alistair turned to Selwyn. “Didn’t you explain?”
“I thought she’d better see for herself.”
I tried to imagine it. Had Helen Ralston turned the tables on the male-dominated art world and depicted her lover in the altogether? Willy Logan and his little willy? And if it wasn’t so little, or dangling . . .? The erect penis was taboo even today.
“May I see it?”
“But of course. Drink up your tea. Sure you won’t have another fancy cake? No? Selwyn? Oh, go on, dear boy, no one cares about your figure now!”
We went out by the door we had come in, back into the tiny entrance-way, where a steep, narrow staircase rose to the left.
“Go halfway up the stair,” Alistair instructed. “It’s too narrow for more than one person at a time. You’ll see it hanging on the wall just at the turn of the stair.”
It certainly was narrow and steep. Maybe that was the reason for the inclusion of the little half-landing, to give the intrepid climber a space to pause and make a ninety-degree turn before mounting to the floor above.
The picture hung on the wall that faced the second flight of stairs. It was about eight inches by ten inches, or the size of a standard sheet of paper torn from an artist’s pad. I saw a watercolour landscape, not so very different from the pictures hanging in the room downstairs.
Then there was a click from the hall below, and the shaded bulb above my head blazed, illuminating the picture.
I gazed at the painted image of an island, a rocky island rendered loosely in shades of brown and green and grey and greyish pink. I remained unimpressed, and baffled by Alistair’s attitude towards this uninspired daub. Risky?
And then, all at once, as if another light had been switched on, I saw the hidden picture. Within the contours of the island was a woman. A woman, naked, on her back, her knees up and legs splayed open, her face hidden by a forearm flung across it and by the long hair – greenish, greyish – that flowed around her like the sea.
The centre of the painting, what drew the eye and commanded the attention, was the woman’s vulva: all the life of the painting was concentrated there. A slash of pink, startling against the mossy greens and browns, seemed to touch a nerve in my own groin.
One immediate, furious thought rose in my mind: How could she expose herself like that?
Somehow I knew this was a self-portrait, that the artist would not have exploited another woman in this way. Yet she had not flinched from depicting herself as naked, passive, open, sexually receptive – no, sexually voracious, demanding to be looked at, to be taken, explored, used, filled . . .
Well, why not? I was all in favour of female autonomy, in the freedom of women to act out of their own desires, whatever they were. After all, I still called myself a feminist, and I had come of age during the 1960s, a member of the post-Pill, pre-AIDS, sexually liberated generation who believed in letting it all hang out, and a woman’s right to choose.
And yet – and yet—
Whatever theory I held, the sight of this picture made me cringe away in revulsion, even fear. As if this was something I should not have seen, something that should not have been revealed. It was deeper than reason; I simply felt there was something wrong and dangerous in this painting.
Then, like a cloud passing across the sun, the atmosphere changed again. Outlines blurred, colours became drab, and abruptly the painting was only the depiction of an island in the sea.
But I knew now what was hidden in those rocky outlines, and I didn’t trust it to stay hidden. I turned away immediately and saw the two men standing at the bottom of the stairs, looking up at me.
There was a sudden rush of blood to my head: my cheeks burned. They knew what I’d been looking at; they’d seen it, too. And then, far worse than the embarrassment, came a clutch of fear, because I was a woman, and my only way out was blocked by two men.
The moment passed. The old man went back into the other room, and I was looking down at Selwyn, whom I’d known for twenty years.
I hated the fact that I was blushing, but I’d look even more of a fool if I hovered there on the landing waiting for the red to fade, so I went down. Unostentatiously polite as ever, he turned away, allowing me to follow him into the sitting room where Alistair waited for us.
Selwyn cleared his throat. “Well—”
“Sit down,” said the old man. “You’ll want to hear the story. First, let me fetch down the picture. There’s something written on the back that you should see.”
In uneasy silence, we sat down. The silence was uneasy on my part, anyway, as I struggled to understand my own reaction. I was not a prude, and although hardcore porn made me uncomfortable, mere nudity didn’t. I had no problem, usually, with images of healthy female bodies and I’d seen beaver shots before, far more graphic than Helen Ralston’s trompe-l’œil depiction.
In the nineteenth century Gustave Courbet had painted a detailed, close-up, highly realistic view of a woman’s pubic area, calling it “The Origin of the World”. At the time, this was a deeply shocking thing to have done, and although Courbet was a well-respected artist, the painting could not be shown. Now, of course, it could be seen by anyone who cared to call up a reproduction on the internet, purchased in museum shops all over the world as a post card or poster, and for all I knew it was available on T-shirts and mouse-mats, too.
Courbet’s realistic depiction was far more graphic than Ralston’s impressionistic watercolour, and it might be argued that, as a male artist, he was objectifying women, serving her sexual parts up on canvas for the viewing pleasure of his fellow men, whereas Ralston had been exploring her own feelings about herself with, possibly, no intention of ever having it on public display. The question I should be asking myself was why, when Courbet’s picture did not disturb me, hers did.
Alistair returned, carrying the picture. He handed it to me, face down, and I took it, gingerly, awkwardly, into my lap.
“I had it mounted with a bit cut away at the back so you can still see what she wrote,” he explained.
I looked down and had my first sight of Helen Ralston’s bold, clear handwriting:
My Death
April 14, 1929
This, like all I own or produce, is for
My Beloved Willy
HER
I shivered and made to pass it to Selwyn, but he demurred: he’d seen it before. So I went on holding it in my lap, feeling it slowly burning a hole in me, and looked at Alistair.
“Why ‘My Death’? Did she mean . . . sexuality equates with death?”
He spread his hands. “Much more than that, I’m sure. The two of them used certain words almost as if they were a special code, and capital-D Death was one of them. And consider the painting: the woman is also an island. A particular island, from your part of the world,” he added with a nod at me. “In fact, I must have sailed past it many times myself on our family holidays, although I don’t think we ever landed there. According to Willy Logan in his memoirs, the moment she set eyes upon the island she declared, ‘I’ve seen my death.’ Whether ‘my death’ meant the same as capital-D Death to them, I couldn’t say, but clearly it wasn’t perceived as a threat or I’m sure they would have sailed away, rather than dropping anchor and going ashore, full of excitement, to explore.”
I knew that in the Tarot the Death card did not signify physical demise, but rather meant a sudden, dramatic change of fortune. And sometimes people had to dare death in order to regain their lives. I wondered if Helen Ralston had been a precursor of Sylvia Plath, if she was another Lady Lazarus, making death her life’s art.
First, out of a window into the air; the second time, on a rocky island . . .
“What happened? Did something happen there?”
“Logan went blind,” Selwyn told me.
I had known, of course, that Logan had lost his sight – the transformation of a rather dull, society painter into the blind poetic visionary was the most famous thing about him. But I didn’t know how it had happened. “On the island? Some sort of accident?”
“No accident,” said Alistair crisply. “Haven’t you read Touched by the Goddess? You must read Logan’s memoirs. His explanation . . . well, it’s hardly satisfactory, but it’s all we have. No one will ever know what really happened.”
Had Logan intervened somehow, I wondered. Had the Death waiting for Helen been made to give her up, but taken Logan’s sight in exchange? It was clear that Alistair wasn’t going to tell – if he knew.
“How did you come to have the painting?” Selwyn asked.
“You know I was an art and antiques dealer back in the 1970s and ’80s. Torquil Logan – Willy’s youngest son – was on the fringe of the trade himself, and that was how we knew each other. When the old man died, although his literary agent was the executor of his estate, it was the sons and daughters who did all the donkey work of clearing out his things and deciding what should be sold, or given away, shipped to the library that was to have the official collection, or whatever. Torquil got in touch with me when he came across ‘My Death’ – it was in an envelope at the back of a file of old letters and probably had not been seen in fifty years.
“He knew what it was, straight away. Well, of course: it was described in Touched by the Goddess right down to the inscription on the back, and invested with huge significance as the last work of art he ever looked at, the final gift from his mistress/muse, and even as a sort of premonition of what was about to happen to him, his blinding by the goddess.
The Mammoth Book of the Best of Best New Horror Page 71
