How to Paint a Dead Man

by Sarah Hall

  After she was taken, I understood how it felt to reject what is known to be true. I understood Dina’s desperation on those nights when she had heard our baby crying in the alleys. I understood sorrow, sorrow that is inestimable and unfinished. I should have walked with her when she scoured the streets looking for Elizabeta. I should have picked up a rifle.

  In the last few years the money offered to Antonio for my self-portraits has tripled. They are rare, and they are felt to be the best clues to the enigma of identity. I have outlived tragedy; that is all. Much has been made of the descriptive accuracy in the paintings, the facial expressions, and how unlike the still-lifes they are. The last self-portrait was completed over twenty years ago, the year the war ended. It is not heroic.

  As if to cheer me from my sad memories this afternoon, a postcard from Peter has arrived. He is in America, and has a wife! Here is such joyful symmetry. We should not look for signs, and yet how often they present themselves. Peter describes the Pacific as ‘terrifying’. It is so vast. The policemen ride horses as large as the Elgin marbles, he writes. He has spent five nights in a terrible hotel with torn sheets and bodies sprawled in the corridors. He has seen the Pan-American Unity mural. It is all a great adventure. It is ‘mind-opening’.

  I am fortunate to receive correspondence from friends in all the countries of the globe. Though my life is one of reclusion, I have received many exotic gifts over the years. A tsuba from Japan, black pumice from the Antipodes. Antonio once sent me some antique woodcuts from Bavaria. In truth, I had hoped Peter might choose to come to Italy, to tour Florence and make notes on Fra Angelico, and perhaps even visit me in these humble hills. With what great enthusiasm we would have shaken hands! I would have enjoyed making him some coffee and showing him the objects in the studio. Here is also a lesson in today, in now, such as that found in the Odes of the Augustan poet. Last year, I was sent a gift of coffee from Louisiana. There are still a few black grains, enough spoonfuls left in the tin to filter. It is blended with chicory leaf; the taste is sour and interesting, and I have been saving it for no reason. We will have the last of it today when Antonio returns from the town.

  The Fool on the Hill

  The last few hours have been restless and uncomfortable, but the dawn is here. Early morning mist lies in austere banks along the valley floor and the boulders drift. Peter can see a weak, low sun through the white reefs at the head of the gorge. It must be almost seven. The hour of rise-and-shine, when civilisation restores itself. There is hope to be had. There’s the small road up above on which his distinctive old banger is parked and which will soon be carrying locals and a few late tourists. His car is a give-away, if anyone is looking for it. Some walkers might come this way, having strayed down from the Roman wall-the day looks as if it will set fine. He’ll hear their voices up above. He’ll hear the squeaking of the wire frets on the fence near the mouth of the ravine when they step down on the dividers, the pulse and rattle as they lift over, and he’ll know they are within earshot. No one has answered his shouting yet, but he does not feel so alone.

  There’s a chilly relish to the air, and the aroma of the new season: damp notes of wood-rot, mushroom, mud. He can hear a bull blaring away in its pen nearby, objecting to its enclosure. The bugger could probably trample straight through the dry-stone walling if it chose, its beady eye staring off into the distant past as it heads for the cows in the pasture. But it keeps on calling, noo-oo, noo-oo, mired in its own behaviour, as if it’s the protest that matters. ‘Right on, fellow. Right on.’ Sometimes too, the bells of St Andrews can be heard, conducted by the mist, iron-clad, out of key. He is not so far away from everyone.

  In the cottage his wife will be up. His side of the bed will not have been slept in. Nor will she find him passed out on the couch below, gin bottle gripped in his hand, drooling on the cushions. Out in the garth, his car is gone; only her Beetle will be there. She will register the void from the landing window as she goes to the bathroom. ‘Oh, Peter, what are you up to?’ she’ll whisper. The usual routines will apply. She will notice the new cold and so light a fire, and the crows will step down off the chimney as the smoke begins to ascend.

  The kids will get up–Suze first. There will be a conversation over cups of tea and wholemeal toast. ‘Still not home?’ ‘No. Not like him to say nothing at all.’ ‘On a bender, you think?’ ‘Could be.’ Then they might rouse Danny. ‘Did Peter tell you where he was off to yesterday?’ And the three of them might troop out to the gate to see if he has driven home pissed from the pub and stalled somewhere in the lane. There’ll be no sign. Just an oily patch on the cobbles of the garth where the Daf is usually parked. They will consider ringing round. ‘Hello. The wanderer is on the loose again.’ But Donald won’t have seen him. The Jerry will say that last night he wasn’t in. And perhaps they will begin to worry then. Things will seem too quiet. Instinct will prickle. They will smell something out of sorts in the misty autumn air. They will see a buzzard with carrion in its beak, and the entrails will be readable.

  What he wouldn’t give to be there in the fray, toasting some coffee beans in the range, boiling an egg and buttering a scone. He’d give his right arm. His left foot. Ha-ha.

  It was a much livelier habitation before the kids grew up and (partly) left home. Something was always going on–chatter, band-practice, odd little art projects. Friends of Susan and Danny’s were always staying over, camping in the garden with their sleeping bags and bottles of cheap cider. ‘Mr C, have a glass of Bucky. Mr C, fancy a bit of hot knifing?’ It was fun. It made Peter feel young. At one stage the cottage was like an animal refuge centre. There was inevitably some furry or feathered creature parading around the gardens, a ruckus of squawks or grunts or whinnies. There were at one time or other goats and geese, rabbits and guinea pigs, a pig, a chinchilla, and even tame sparrows in eggbox nests, which had clocked their heads on the windows and stayed stunned long enough for the kids to bond with. Christ Almighty! The earnest dissection of worms on the chopping board!

  Dan went through a spell of keeping weasels in a chicken-wire shelter. They used to dig their way out or gnaw through the barbs. He had a harness for walking them and he would sometimes try to sneak them into school in his gym bag, slipping them into his shirt between the buttons, like an old farmhand, so they bulged in a ring around his waist, scratching him with their claws and getting him sent to the nurse for flea bites. Once the school phoned up apologising for not noticing Danny’s ‘condition’ before, saying he could be excused from showering after cross country. The pet-shop rabbits always escaped, too, and had orgies with the local population, leaving a legacy of sorrel and red eyes in the burrows.

  They all needed to be fed, successively, on a diet of vetch, potato peelings, slugs and snails. The goat had an industrial appetite; he remembers it eating car parts, wing mirrors, upholstery (not quite enough to fully dispose of the abandoned vehicles, which would have solved the scrapyard problem). Once it took the door trims of a Maxi. It was a bugger to wrestle away when it started chewing anything; it fought the rope and grunted in protest, glass tinkling crisply in its beard. The place was surrounded by sprout buckets and jars of pellets and compost bins. They were always on the hunt for dandelion leaves. It was great. It was a happy time.

  Peter liked the geese best. He liked their orange webbed feet flopping on the ground and their matching orange beaks. He liked the way they reared up and flapped their wings, nodding and honking when he arrived with a pail of vegetable scraps, as if saying yes, yes, we’re hungry, hurry up, Peter. Their proud white breasts. When they were mad about something they hissed like snakes.

  The scruffy fell ponies still come up to the wall when they’re passing through. Lydia still feeds them.

  The mist thins. A modest warmth glows from the bare sun. His clothes are only damp now, not wringing wet. He needs to unstiffen though, and move out of this awkward twisted position. He needs to run some life back into his arms and thighs and think about looking
for that stick again, now he can see the ground. He has taken off the tourniquet. It was far too tight. It was this that probably cut off the feeling in his leg for a while, before the rain slackened it and the ache returned. Florence Nightingale he isn’t. There’s no red stain below-not that he can see. If he’s bleeding it probably isn’t too serious. He’s a little dizzy, yes, but it’s likely just tiredness and hunger.

  There has been no sound of traffic on the road above. He thought he heard a dog barking, but when he yelled only his voice in the gorge echoed back. He will have to try moving again. He will have to confront the pain. He will have to run headlong into it, like the proverbial buffalo into the storm. He’ll have to face down the ripping febrile sensation, take anguish square on the chin, stand up to it like a man. The damage is already done-he will simply be acknowledging it fully, the way you have to acknowledge such things before you can ever move on and recover. Recovery. Is it possible?

  He doesn’t often agree to think about her. When his mind goes there, it isn’t with his consent or because it is something he ever wants to air. He keeps hoping she will vanish, that, one day, he will have a blank in his memory where she has been, and she will be gone. Sometimes it seems to be finished. There are long periods of no disturbance. Then, all of a sudden, the comfortable absence is broken, and without warning she is there, as she was in the bathtub yesterday. She is there singing ‘It’s Me My Love’, and asking: ‘Why don’t you ever help me, Petie?’ She is there lying provocatively on the floor, or untying the belt of her orange silk dressing gown. She is there slumped over the table, blue-mouthed, and violated, exactly how they found her.

  And this now-this trial being held by a higher power with a shitty sense of humour, this meaningful little opportunity to reflect on past crimes, and wonder which it is he is being charged for-this is when treachery and blame can really rain down on him. If it is punishment, if it is divine penalty, then it’s not for the minor offences and the negligible sins, his flaws and foibles: booze, pinch, grouching, thievery, filthy language. It’s not his escaping of class, putting too much salt on his spuds, inflating his business expenses, or even screwing over Ivan. It’s her. She is the reason, isn’t she?

  Raymie could last a month on a packet of beef jerky. She ate almost nothing else, but she had a thing about protein, thought it would keep her ovaries healthy. And that was her solution-dehydrated saddle meat. He never understood it. The stuff was awful, as chewy as desert leather. It was days after eating it before he could go to the toilet. But it was cheap and she was convinced it would option her health later in life. He never understood the renouncement either, but it was popular for those trust-fund kids to go rough, to slum it. He’d always been skint, as a boy, as a student, even with his scholarship and the supplementary wages. But she was from money, she had access to accounts, she could have bought a loaf occasionally.

  There was seldom food in their apartment kitchen in San Francisco–a little fresh tomatilla salsa in the summer, packets of cereal now and then. The indigestible, desiccated jerky. Sometimes, Raymie would make a show of making butternut soup from scratch. Seeds all over the joint. God, it was manna; it felt like liberation! He missed pastry, dripping, battered haddock. He used to dream of banquets and fairytale feasts. They lived like French fucking symbolists, meanly and fashionably. But, there was a narcotic accessory for every occasion, for every gathering of friends, every gig attended, and their wild assisted sex. Some such thing was always produced from her little case, and if not by her then by other struggling, landed artists. There was even a little green ampoule for the enhancement of their marriage. Love made bright, so they could taste its colours, so they could kiss every poor surprised Chinese on the street as they walked back to their apartment. He liked to drink and he liked to ride, but she was bloody fearless. The first Mrs Caldicutt. Raymelia Coombs. Her nerve was awesome. She terrified him. It was the power she held.

  ‘Those were the times,’ he’s said in interviews, to students, and even to his own kids when they got interested in his herb pouch. But what times were they really, when he was sour with liquor and developing ulcers? What times were they, when her body at intervals was barely human, her breastplate corrugated like a prisoner of war’s, the flesh inverting off her pelvis, when she was emaciated enough to stop menstruating? Protein to keep her ovaries ticking for a baby, eaten strictly like medicine through the week, even while she smoked her gums up off her teeth and blew angel dust through her receptors until her vision went blue and she couldn’t feel him moving inside her.

  The truly messed-up thing was that though she was skeletal, she looked so heavy, like iron or pewter, like a piece of classical sculpture that wouldn’t be lifted. ‘Hey, nothing is wrong with my body, sweetheart,’ she would say, stepping a heel on to the chair like a screen vixen. She was breathtaking. For all the passing out, the skipping of meals and vomiting past five mouthfuls; for all the hair growing thick on her arms and legs, she still had him convinced she was A-OK, in charge, beating the odds. ‘Chill out, Goldy,’ she would say, when he commented she’d only had one bite of her homemade soup. ‘All I need is Larry to fill my prescription.’ A blind spot-is that what he could call the relationship? A disaster, out of his range of vision?

  And Dyas loved her too-that much was certain. There would be no recompense for winning her away from him. Though Dyas had had other feisty madams in the college, though he was the great Mersey seducer, it was Raymie he wanted, Raymie he left his wife of twelve years for. He and Peter had been so close for that first term, and it was like getting another father. He had found Ivan Dyas behind one of many sports papers in the Roscoe Head, where the carpet was sticky, the tiles chipped and the ceiling fag-stained, but the ale was good. ‘Ah, now then, Petie, this your watering hole too, eh? Sit down, and we’ll have a jaw about the RCA. Which of the lovely ladies have you got with you? None, oh, that’s a shame. I tell you what, why don’t you make a little venture to the bar first and ask Blanche for my usual? You can save me from my wife’s casserole. Spot on.’ Six months later, the man’s bags were packed and he was hooked on the beautiful American who had come to Liverpool because of Stuart Sutcliffe and hoping to meet Lennon.

  They had travelled about, the three of them, to Glasgow, Leeds, and to the capital, in Dyas’s Sunbeam Talbot-now that was a car to drive, that was a classy motor! The trips were supposed to be educational, extra-curricular. They would debate loudly for the first hour, Raymie challenging them on all things repressively British, and Ivan swerving across the corners as he gesticulated. Then they’d switch driver, and Ivan would snore in the passenger seat with the road atlas open on his lap. She had no licence and insisted on using the outside lane. Dyas knew people everywhere it seemed, and all of them were moderately famous. The Hungarian glass sculptor. The cockney actor. The poet laureate’s beautiful cousin, who had been one of his regulars before true love reformed him, who was put out to be hosting the new girlfriend and not at all interested in Peter as a replacement. There was always a camp bed or a futon, a mattress or a pallet, in some hip city flat, and a gathering last thing at night where gay patrons, musos, and teenage prostitutes mingled. There was always an invitation to an exhibition opening. Peter was out and about. He was circulating, being current. He was going to be a painter and he didn’t mind saying so. It was the decade of having an attitude.

  ‘What is your accent precisely, darling?’ agents would ask him at parties, straightening his collar for him. ‘Ah. The North Country. Well, there seems to be ample talent up there these days. Here’s my card. We’re not, if I may be blunt, interested in landscapes at the moment. But if you’ve anything hard-edge, keep us in mind.’ Across the room, Dyas and Raymie would be mooning, and blowing into each other mouths. Once or twice they had shared a room in the motorway lodges and he had pretended to sleep while they whispered and giggled. Her eyes had flashed in the dimness, looking towards him as she moved. He must have been jealous. She was watchable, flirtatious, she dre
ssed like an aristocratic homosexual with cravats and velvet coats, she told a good joke. Her eyes hunted for him in the darkness while she sucked her lip and rode. She knew what she was doing. There was nothing to do but let his lust impact, while he got angry at other things. ‘That stuff in there says nothing to me,’ he would inform Dyas when his tutor came out and joined him for a smoke on some West End balcony. ‘It’s mindless.’ And Dyas would agree, naturally, then tell him to knock off the sinister act and get back inside pronto. He reckoned Hockney was about to have a brawl. ‘If you want to see two boys clinging, Petie, best you get a shift on. Come on, relax. Stop taking everything so personally. Let’s get you laid.’

  Then, one night, after spending an hour looking at a window covered in smudged faeces, with the creator standing alongside saying it was the best medium with which to describe human anguish, the tension finally broke. ‘It’s shit,’ Peter heard himself say, unnecessarily, and out he stormed. Raymie followed, intrigued by the sudden loss of temper, and they found a club nearby. They drank. They danced. Her body was against his, then apart from his, against and then apart. It drove him crazy. By the end of the night he had lost his mind. Ivan was unconscious on the floor of the place they were staying, and Peter was holding a hand over his girlfriend’s mouth, forcing her against the wall, trying not to slip out of her.

  The Mirror Crisis

  On the hotel bed he raises your legs on to his shoulders. He moves your hips back towards his and holds your thighs. You feel your tendons pulling tight, the depth increasing. He is straining not to come. He is saying are you, are you but the question cannot be completed. There is enough unity, enough collaboration between you, for the timing to work. Your abdomen fills with heat. Your stomach pulls inwards and the spasm takes over. The quiet screaming in the room is the sound of something coming into the world, or leaving it.