Justine

by Alice Thompson

  forty-eight

  As I grow older, the fragility of life becomes real for the first time. The gap between life and death narrows to a slit. The effort of my life no longer concentrates on living but on preventing my life from being arbitrarily snatched away. Life is curled up in bed like a newborn baby. At any moment a strange woman can come in and seize it, choosing that baby simply because of the way the hair curls on its forehead. But there is a way in which I can gain control over life: by controlling death. I can choose when death will visit, instead of waiting for death to choose me.

  When I phoned up Jack and asked him round to Kensington Gardens, I was choosing when Death would pay a visit. Soon I would be able to hold Jack’s life, as Juliette had held the starling, encircle his life with my thumb and forefinger, and be able to feel the pulsating of his heart beat against my palm.

  Jack was no longer a man but a symbol. A symbol made flesh incarnate, the skin wrapped over his bones, the flesh that held his blood, the pulsing blood, all contributing to the bloodline that separated me from Justine. A symbol of the obstacle to winning her love. The superficiality of his nature, his promiscuous sensibility, were undeserving of Justine’s love. Her love, which by all the rights of Destiny, belonged to me. He was nothing but a common thief. I would not be killing him because of the abductor’s threat that if I didn’t I would never see Justine alive again. (I did not believe in this). I would kill Jack because, like the abductor, I could not bear to see him remain alive.

  forty-nine

  When Jack entered the drawing-room at noon, he made no comment on the portrait of Justine hanging on the wall. Under his arm he carried a painting wrapped up in brown paper so that I could not see what it represented. He handed the parcel to me. I was struck yet again by the aura of his physical well-being. He was a painter, a creator, not like me, a collector. He had not been paralysed by the definition of what was art. I carefully unwrapped the painting and leant it against the sofa.

  The painting was a grotesque meaningless jumble of different lines in clashing colours. The colours were in slurry dark shades of muted browns and greys. These were muddy, earthy colours, dirty and entrenched. Gashes of vulgar orange and lime peeped through the monstrous murkiness. The painting gave off an odour of sickly intimacy, a green stench.

  ‘You don’t like it?’ Jack asked. I could tell by his amused, patronizing tone, that his sense of confidence in his own talent was set as hard as concrete.

  ‘I don’t understand what it is about,’ I said. I was also surprised. Hadn’t Juliette told me that Jack was a literalist, a believer in the truth? How many more versions of the truth could I stand?

  ‘So you don’t think it’s a good likeness?’ Now I really felt that he was laughing at me.

  ‘That’s a portrait?’ I asked, flabbergasted.

  ‘Don’t you recognize her? I was painting from a photograph.’

  He handed me a photograph which he had taken from his pocket. It was a Polaroid of Justine, naked, sitting in an obscene position. She had moles, in the star shape of the plough across her torso.

  ‘Did she know that photograph was being taken?’

  ‘Justine loves to have dirty photographs taken of her. Look at her – she’s posing.’

  I thought of the photos I had found in Juliette’s flat. Was Justine somehow involved in the taking of them, rather than an innocent victim of Juliette’s jealous voyeurism? But this photographic image of Justine was not of the Justine I knew. This was a different vulgar Justine, a woman who exhibited her sexuality like a whore, a Justine that I would not believe in.

  Looking more closely at the painting I could begin to make out the shape of Justine’s face, surfacing from the incoherence of the contradictory colours and the vehement brushwork. But her face had been deformed. Cut into blocks. And the delicacy of her drawn-back face had been smashed, turned into flabby slabs of thick oil paint. Her lucid eyes had been slit into grimaces of malicious intent. The soft wide mouth prised open into a twisted scream. All traces of her aloof serenity had been eradicated, instead this monstrous defamation of feminine beauty was all there intrusive, demanding and repulsive.

  ‘There are different versions of Justine,’ Jack said. ‘That is mine. Who’s to say which one is right? Justine’s sister, Juliette, looks just like her. But whereas Justine demands nothing from me, Juliette pulled, like a child, at my soul. But who’s to say that Juliette isn’t just another version of Justine? The version that I hurt.’

  ‘But what about Justine? She must know which version is right?’

  ‘I care what Justine thinks as little as you do.’

  fifty

  Jack brought out a hammer from one of his jacket pockets.

  ‘What’s this for?’ I asked.

  ‘For hammering a nail into the wall. I thought I’d help you hang the painting.’ He placed the hammer on the window sill. He then sat down cross-legged on the carpet beneath the painting and I sat down beside him. He poured me a glass of malt whisky from the bottle that he had brought. His nails had puce red paint beneath them, the exact same shade of red that Juliette had had on her cheek, the day I first met her at the National Gallery. But she had told me she had not seen Jack again since he had left her for Justine. So how could it be the same red? It had to be a different red.

  ‘You remind me of myself,’ Jack said, ‘when I first met Justine – besotted. She was like a blank canvas on which I could paint my desires. I ended up with that.’ He pointed to his painting of her.

  I looked at the painting again. The picture was confirmation that he had to die. I had to kill him to save her image from his superficial vision. This man had turned her beauty into a misshapen monster. He, in that representation of her, had systematically mutilated, murdered her beauty. He was indifferent to the single truth of Justine. That was why his hands were bloody with red paint. He did not need, as I did, the image of her beauty to breathe.

  A smile had crept over Jack’s mischievous face – he had the charm of the devil. The stench of the painting was starting to emanate from its creator. I watched aghast, as his hands began to grow long and thin, the skin of his body translucent. His features started to concave before my unwilling eyes. The sides of his eyes ran down his face, dipping into the upward sardonic curve of his mouth which was rising impossibly high up the side of his face. The shadows of his features hardened into black lines as the skin grew paler. He now looked like a two-dimensional sketch of a pattern of black ink on a white page, unreadable but with its own internal logic.

  At that point it became clear what I had to do. I had to return the incoherence of his face to a pattern that made sense. But just by looking, I couldn’t restore the symmetry back to Jack’s face. The lines shifted around, became even more unintelligible, the harder I stared. I turned round to look at the portrait of Justine for help.

  Someone somewhere said my name.

  From where I was sitting on the carpet I looked up at the window sill. The hammer was lying on it. The hammer was of standard design: an oak handle, dark metal. It only took a second to reach up and take it down. It seemed unnaturally light. I had the sensation that the hammer might float out of my hands unless I held onto it tightly. I clutched at the handle tightly, trying to feel it. The tool now seemed like a phantom limb. A necessary part of me that I had lost and now didn’t really exist: an instrument of let’s-pretend.

  It was heavy enough. Jack watched me, silently, taking a sip of his whisky. He looked at me in amusement as I stood up, raising the hammer above my head. He looked as if he were about to ask me a question.

  fifty-one

  The first blow only knocked him unconscious. I looked down at his face as he lay on the floor. He looked vulnerable, fair, his outstretched arms flung up behind his head where he had tried to fend me off. A tenderness overcame me. My anger dissipated, seeped away, like the trickle of blood that was now seeping from th
e side of his head. Seeing Jack’s body lying there, abandoned, I was overcome by a kind of desire – not for him but to be him, to be that sexual, that prone, that oblivious to life.

  I brought the hammer down over his face again. I brought the hammer straight down on his face, splintering the nose and feeling the iron head sink into the cheekbones as if they were made of paper. It was only when the iron met bone did the weapon finally judder into existence. And I felt a surge of power, a sure sense of rightness. The handle seemed to course into my bone. Instead of it being a phantom extension of me, I became the phantom extension of it. I became as strong as its iron head, as ungiving and virulent. Blood splashed over the room, over my face and clothes and over Jack’s painting of Justine, just adding another colour to the colours that were already there.

  From above the mantelpiece, Justine watched the scene that was taking place in front of her, with equanimity. Her presence now promised moments of pleasure as soft as melting snow.

  fifty-two

  But Jack’s face: instead of mending the asymmetry, I had smashed it even further, shattered his identity into pieces of bone. I had done what he, in his painting, had already done to Justine. But at least it was an asymmetry that I had created. Its design was mine. And my identity remained intact while Jack’s lay in pieces on the floor.

  The blood sprouted from him in spirals and pretty curls like ivy growing across the floor, where there is no sun for it to grow upwards. His flowing blood was the only sign of life or movement. The blood was spiralling across my carpet. Watching it decorate the floor in scarlet lines it suddenly occurred to me that if I wanted I could bend down and dip my finger into its stream. Before I was conscious of what I was doing the tip of my finger was hovering over the surface tension of the blood, then breaking down through it to the soft hot liquid beneath. I lifted the red-stained fingertip to my lips. The blood tasted salty, warm and meaty, the blood tasted of life.

  I went into the kitchen and fetched a knife. Kneeling down beside the body, I carefully carved out the skin around the area above his heart. I wanted to find out if the heart, the temple of love, went on beating just a little while after death, if the heart, like the blood, carried on the momentum of life. I lifted up, like a heart-shaped hinged lid, the serrated flesh of Jack’s chest. But there was no heart beneath. In the place where the heart should have been there was just an empty space.

  fifty-three

  Once I had completed my task, the physical attributes of Jack were unrecognizable. I had had to use a saw to dismember the limbs and sever the head. It was unlikely that anyone would connect me with Jack, but I had spoken to one of the wardens at Kew Gardens, and Juliette also might prove unreliable. I didn’t want the body identified. I put the pieces of Jack’s body in a black bin liner, together with the hammer, the knife, my bloodied clothes and the saw. Having bathed and dressed again, I slipped the photograph of Justine into my pocket, tied the bag up and with difficulty hoisted it over my shoulders like a bag of swag.

  In case I was recognized, I thought it safer to go by underground, rather than taxi or bus. I took the tube train to Tower Hill. Overground it was a dull wan day. The Tower of London, with its newly scrubbed beige stone, looked like a child’s cardboard toy. The Thames, beyond the deserted building sites, was opaque and grey. The sky moved at an identical slow heavy pace above it. I walked down the Highway, where there were no shadows.

  I crossed under a subway which was lit by a neon light, my feet echoing down the tunnel. It was like walking through a tomb. I was half-way through it, when a figure appeared at the other end. At first I thought it was a dwarf, he was walking so hunched and keeping so close to the side of the wall. However, he straightened up as he came towards me. He was about my height.

  It was only as he passed me, that I heard a click. I thought it was the snap of someone’s fingers: I felt the cold touch of metal pressed intimately against my neck. I put down the bag.

  In spite of the apparent directness of his lavender blue eyes, I felt as if he were staring right through me, that he wasn’t looking at me at all. Those eyes didn’t see straight, they saw the world in disconnected shapes. They told me I was going to die. I thought of Justine. He put his other bony hand out and traced a pattern round my face with his fingers, a pattern that only he could understand.

  However, as he drew the design on my face, a dull glimmer of recognition appeared in his gaze. Still with his flick-knife against my throat, he said,

  ‘Haven’t we met before?’

  I almost wanted to laugh. I had never seen him before in my life. But he had smelt the connection, seen my affinity with death engraved in my face like initials carved in stone. He lowered the knife. Shrugging his shoulders, he continued his journey down the subway and round the corner, the sound of his footsteps receding into the distance. I put my finger to my throat and came away with a single drop of blood. I felt exhilarated, as if I had passed some kind of test.

  Picking up the bag again, I walked back under the subway and took a detour out onto the barren wasteland that separated the Highway from the river. The glass and steel of the Docklands glimmered in the distance. The bag became increasingly heavy and I had to keep stopping to regain my breath. It was now 5 p.m.

  fifty-four

  The area was desert, the ground consisting of dry earth and the odd piece of discarded machinery. There were no birds here, no insects, no sound, except for the ever present hum of London’s traffic, like a Greek chorus. The only movement was pieces of litter and old newspapers that fluttered in the wind. The sky above was white and unforgiving. From inside the bag on my back, I could hear the dead man’s thoughts whispering to me, to the hesitant rhythm of my walk.

  What I thought was flat land to the river turned out to have a slight dip in it which was invisible until I was upon it. In the small ash-white valley two youths and a woman were boiling a saucepan of water on a wood fire. They had set up home here: makeshift tents and boxes and empty cans were strewn about them. Through the flickering flames of heat the river shimmered like a mirage.

  The group stood up as I approached.

  ‘What have you got there?’ the young woman asked.

  Her voice managed to sound intimate and insolent at the same time. She had too much space in the centre of her forehead – enough room for her cunning and stupidity.

  ‘A dead body,’ I replied.

  They laughed, and, suddenly disinterested, returned to watching their fire.

  Ten minutes later I had reached the edge of the river. The group of teenagers had disappeared out of sight again into the dip behind me. The water was black and glittering as if scattered with diamonds. With a last surge of energy, I hurled the bag far into its depths, and watched it gulped down. The simplicity, the order to the deed struck me.

  I returned to Kensington Gardens, ecstatic but tired, and quickly bathed and changed again. I could not bear to be dirty or feel unclean: the blood-spattered flat strangely did not bother me.

  Lethe lay curled in the corner, thin and neglected. I was conscious, since the murder, of moving with more grace. I put the photograph of Justine up on the mantelpiece, next to the doll and underneath the portrait. The blood on the photograph was proof that I had done what had been requested. Jack’s blood represented Justine’s life. I picked up the doll and turned her upside down: she made a mewing sound.

  fifty-five

  During the next few days I went about my daily business, but with the uncanny feeling that I was in some way sorting out my affairs before beginning a long journey. I sorted through papers, sifted through art catalogues and went to the occasional auction at Christie’s. However, all the time I was waiting for a sign.

  The final night that I spent in my flat I dreamt I was driving up the avenue to the house again. The maze is still to the right as I approach the house. Someone is looking at me from the window above. I get out of the car and this t
ime, as I approach, the door mysteriously opens. I then seem to split into two people as I watch, from a position high up in the sky, myself walk inside the house and disappear, the door shutting behind me. The Gothic house stands completely still in the sunlight. The person standing watching at the window has also gone. The scene now is devoid of humanity. I can see no one in the house and the car stands empty on the driveway. Except that I know that I am now inside the house, and another person is in there, waiting.

  fifty-six

  I was woken up from my dream by the sound of the phone ringing. The luminous dial of my alarm clock read 3 a.m. Immediately alert, I picked up the receiver.

  ‘It’s Justine. Have you done it?’

  For a moment I couldn’t think what she was talking about.

  ‘Yes . . . Yes.’

  ‘Have you got any proof? To show him?’

  ‘Yes, a photograph. Of you. It’s covered in his blood.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Justine said. ‘I will never be able to thank you enough.’ Her lack of anguish over Jack’s death only seemed to point to the seriousness of her position. It made me take the abductor’s threat to her life more seriously. The abductor’s identity and my own separated out again.

  ‘Does the person who’s kidnapped you know that you are talking to me?’

  ‘He’s standing beside me. I’m just repeating what he says. Like a ventriloquist’s doll. He wants you to come out here. As soon as possible. He wants to meet you. He thinks that you are both one of a kind.’