How to Paint a Dead Man

by Sarah Hall

  He moves the damp hair off your forehead. His hand is shaking; he is a little clumsy. You have twenty minutes, and then you will both have to leave. He is collecting his daughter from nursery. You have to continue preparing the exhibition space. The hotel is close to the station where an overland train can be taken to the heath. You share a glass of water. How is it, with Danny? he asks. You shrug. You rest your head on his arm. After a moment he says, Susan, I have something to show you. It’s really exciting. He lifts his bag on to the bed and unbuckles the straps. I shouldn’t take it out of the gallery, we’re not insured, but if I get mugged I’m sure they’ll go for my wallet first. He takes out the diary and flicks through the pages. There are paper markers tucked between the leaves. The handwriting is exquisite. Here, he says. Listen to this. His eyes are bright with tears.

  The meetings between you are more regular now, and the exchanges at the gallery are more daring and insistent. The building is shut for a few days while the new exhibition goes up; there are no milling strangers to hide behind, no distractions. He leans close to you when he passes by. He strokes your spine if he sees you have taken off your jacket, touches your breasts through the thin material of your blouse. All the while his wife is close by. You wonder why she cannot see it, why she does not notice the atmosphere, and the heightened musk of her husband, for it is as if a rich substance has been released into his cells. You can smell it under his skin, this tropic nectar, which passes through his ducts and arteries, condensing into sap near his groin. His body exudes invitation, reeks with it, and his eyes seem to confess infatuation, even while he is talking about his work on the journal, even when he is speaking professionally to you in front of Angela.

  You treat the presence of his wife like foreplay. Her being there at the gallery simply increases the anticipation. The affair is shot through with risk and would be called pitiful, abject, and vile, by anyone who knew about it. When Angela goes out to collect their daughter from playgroup, he moves you on to the desk, sits in front of you. He lifts your skirt and moves his mouth along the seam of your underwear, then pulls the material aside. Your dress rides up against your hipbones, the stitching tears. The sound of the front door opening and closing is thrilling. You go to him. You press your thumb along the stem of his prick, feel the hum of blood in the thick vein. You move him towards the back of your mouth. In the bathroom he washes his face, checks the material of your dress for damp marks. You both act with the swift confidence of the damned, brazen with obsession. But it is he who recovers slowest, remains unlaced and casual in his furtiveness, he perhaps who wants to be caught, or would confess.

  You lean forward, reach behind and pull him between your legs. He raises you against the wall, the tight friction tearing your fragile skin. Then you take his full weight on the bed. You are late for the train now and will have to catch the next one. He will have to take a cab to collect his daughter in time, or call and say he has been held up. But in these moments you can forget about everything else. You are not bereaved. You do not feel disconnected from yourself, or uninhabited, as if you’ve slipped accidentally from your cage of bones. When you are with him you are here, inside yourself, behind the calcium plates in your chest and pelvis, which rise and move against him. He marks your frame. The delicate meat of you contains him. You clear away his milky substance from your skin.

  You wonder how it will be possible to continue working at Borwood House. You are, no doubt, a monster of some kind, bloodless and reptilian. You watch Angela and Tom together to see if there are any distances opening up between them. You watch to see how much of an effect you might be having–you, the mistress, the adulteress, his new love. At the gallery they are professional with each other, the relationship is workable; arguments are never carried out in front of you or visitors; there is conviviality, discreet affection. You wonder how they connect at home, whether they function smoothly, whether there are accusations, resentments, frigidities. You wonder whether Tom still tries to fuck her, or she him. This is not something you and he have discussed, but you think about it. Do the fumes of his body still arouse her, or is she now immune to him? Does she know what excites him most, and have they tried it? Has she pulled the bed sheet tight across his face so that he cannot see or breathe? Has she been gently inside him, has she let him taste everything? You wonder whether he can hold their daughter now without imagining she will shatter in his hands.

  When you arrive at midday the two of them are engaged in their separate tasks. Between them they mind the baby, or the baby is left with a sitter, or deposited at the nursery. Like most of London’s working families, their choreography is tight and slick. How does he manage to slip into the city to meet you, or linger long after she has gone home in the evening? How has there not yet been any substantial damage to the stability of their home and business environments? Perhaps he tells her he has meetings with publishers or agents. Perhaps his lies are adequate, delivered convincingly.

  Each day you walk into the gallery alert to the possibility of discovery, sure a reckoning of some kind awaits you. You will have left a mark on him, unmistakably congressional, or she will find something incriminating in his pocket, a book of matches from the hotel, a phone bill, your earring. She will smell the sex on his clothing, the salt and ammonia. You hold your breath, hang up your coat, turn on the computer, slide open a window. When you leave one room and enter another the hairs on your arms and neck rise. You know discovery could happen at any moment.

  And you know there will be no forgiveness for this atrocity. Life does not work that way, in love, in betrayal. There is always hurt, directed exactly into the central chamber of the heart. This is the worst possible scenario. You imagine her walking in on you as you press against him. You picture the disbelief on her face. No, it isn’t true, it couldn’t possibly be. Say you haven’t. You picture her striking you, leaving a gash under your eye from the tall stone of her engagement ring. You think of her distraught, hunched over with the baby in her arms, her hand covering the fontanelle, the skin there delicately beating. And her phone calls to Nathan–torrid discussions where they become bitter comrades. How could she do it? Because of her brother. No. The bitch has no excuse.

  You will have no defence. You imagine Nathan’s torment. Nathan, who does not deserve such treatment, who knew straight away he wanted to marry you, and hung in when you said no. Nathan, who is kind and considerate, whose proximity has transposed, inexplicably, into something not precious enough for you to cherish.

  The grisly cinema plays through your head. You catch Angela watching you, and you hold your breath. Are you OK, Susan? she asks. You look a little queasy. Are you feeling sick? Oh darling, I do wish I could help you feel better through all this. It’s perverse, but you wonder, just for a second, whether she knows everything and it does not matter, whether she has, during this time of catastrophic loss and descent, generously loaned you her husband.

  You try to concentrate on preparing the exhibition space. The maple floors have been polished to a gleam, the walls whitened. The artefacts have at last begun to arrive, delivered by courier, and accompanied by their verification certificates. Carefully, you’ve investigated the containers, delving down through polystyrene chips for the frail, bandaged lumps. You gently lifted them out, each one, and unbound the strips of cotton wool and tape. And there, in your hands, were the relics of the great artists who have always been in your life, in your father’s books, in his stories and boasts, in the lecture halls and essays, and in your own early compositions. A crippled man’s bed slippers. A Russian violin. Eyeglasses. There was an almost electric charge to each item, a faint pulse, perhaps your own, or perhaps just the poignancy of knowing to whom they had belonged, and by whom they had been used.

  There you were, holding the damaged leather case that had held those corrective spectacles. There you were, unzipping the pouch and removing the hinged frame with its one chipped lens, its wire ear hooks. And, quite unexpectedly, you were moved. You phoned y
our dad. The phone rang in the house and the answering machine clicked on. Then you remembered he had a doctor’s appointment. You set the glasses on the white column, the wire arms folded, the frame leaning against the case. Next to it you put your father’s bottle.

  It’s now apparent that In the Artist’s Shoes is going to be a success. Already there are media requests, the culture shows have booked airtime, the guest list for the preview is full, and, looking about at these curious little artefacts, you know people will come to see them, and they will be intrigued. They will connect the historical dots; give each item importance. They will recognise these familiar items not just as precursors to their modern-day cousins–smaller, denser, bolted and pinned, sprung and stitched, unmistakably crafted–but as vital salvage, things that have been touched by genius, preserved by families and servants, and saved by museums. In them they will recognise their own humanity, just as you have. And it will astound them that a human being, such as they are-short-sighted, overweight, weak-boned, an addict-could produce those definitive works of art. You were wrong to ever doubt the idea.

  The chattels suit the domestic interior of Borwood House. It is the best exhibition yet, and will be personal, and intimate. Nothing will be encased under glass. You are affixing signs to the walls. Many of these items are delicate. Please do not touch. You think about Danny and his metal angel, the sound of her ringing through the V&A, and you know that human nature is an innately contrary thing. People will always touch that which is forbidden.

  You went to their wedding, however many years ago it was. About the same time you were hooking up with Nathan actually. The ceremony was in a little blond church in Suffolk, in a well-kempt village with nodding rose bushes and thatched roofs: Angela’s old territory. You were too busy with Nathan to care much about what was happening. You remember drifting about the village the day before the ceremony, having a drink in the pub early, feeling tipsy and a little sore from the prolonged, exploratory sex at the bed-and-breakfast. You barely knew Tom. He was handsome, dark, almost forty. Angela seemed smitten with her Italian writer. The next day, in the church, he showed you to your seat. He shook hands with Nathan and held up a palm to you. He was wearing a three-piece graphite suit, a pink cravat, a pink flower in his lapel. His hair was cut in military style. The groom’s side of the church was thinly occupied. There were some friends from the publishing world, including a well-known author, and one ancient, weeping aunt who spoke no English, and looked far too frail to have travelled from the continent. She remained in the church while everyone else went to the reception.

  He was, more or less, a stranger. You had talked pleasantly a few times in smoky moments of privacy at events and parties, and from end-table chairs at restaurants. There was no obvious attraction, though he was good-looking and quietly sociable. He talked interestingly about translation, the marvel of the apostrophe. Later, when you were renovating the gallery, he told you some stories about his mother, about how she would go to the local bookshop and black out any swear words she could find in the texts. He laughed and said she was mad, that she used to write letters to women in prison asking them to repent. Then he sighed and said she was probably just depressed, but he had had to get out of there. He said the family was unlucky. And you felt as if this was an intimate conversation to be having.

  You were stripping the old wallpaper together with a steamer, peeling it away in great damp bolts from skirting board to ceiling. His T-shirt and jeans were flecked with paint. When you got to the small snug room at the back of the building, he said, We should leave this paper in here, the condition is excellent.

  While you were decorating the two of you accidentally disturbed a wasps’ nest that had been built behind one of the old window shutters. It was a hot summer. The windows were open and one or two wasps had been drilling about the place. Then Tom found the grey, cindery pocket in a wall cavity, and, thinking it was disused, he began to chip between its seal and the plaster. Suddenly the air was swarming. For a moment he was paralysed as the insects rushed and scribbled above the nest. Gesù Cristo! He picked up a decorating sheet, threw it over the two of you, and you stumbled from the room, slamming the door closed. Are you stung? No. Nor am I. Underneath the sheet he smelled of sweat and dust. You could hear the wasps as they flew against the other side of the door, rapping softly like fingertips.

  He does not speak ill of his wife. There are no complaints, no unkind sentiments. At your neck, against your thigh, he speaks only of wanting you. He makes breathless erotic pleas. Can I take this off? Please. Tell me what to do. Tell me to stay still. Only once, when you were dressing yourself afterwards, preparing to leave the hotel, and you could not find your other shoe under the bed covers, he said, She is not you. You understand it, don’t you? You know what it does to you? You know nothing of his love for Angela and their daughter, or his habits at home. You have not yet read anything he has written. But you know the events of his childhood, what he has seen. You know the haunted space he is looking into when he moves against you. You know that he comes using his full body, his ecstasy straining to get out, the seizure seeming to break apart his every atom.

  Angela puts her hand on your shoulder. Really, you don’t look well. I’m going out to get you something to pick you up a bit, OK. Maybe some peppermint tea? She shrugs on her cardigan, collects her purse. The place looks great, Suze. Really great. You’ve worked so hard. I know it’s been difficult. On her way to the door she pauses. Hey, you don’t think you’re pregnant do you? I felt like shit when I was pregnant with Anna. I wanted to collapse all the time. You smile, and shake your head, but something inside you splits, and you feel half of you subside along a fault line running from the base of your skull down your backbone. Angela shuts the front door and is gone. The building ticks, listening. For a moment you sit still, waiting for something. Something. Then you go to the cloakroom and look in your bag for your organiser. You can only see your phone and your wallet.

  When you open the door the snug is almost in darkness, but for the glow of the screen, and a weak table lamp. The curtains are drawn. Tom is wearing headphones. He cannot hear the traffic on the main road, the birds in the trees next to the heath, or the hustle of the city beyond. He doesn’t hear you come in, and it is like that first time, when you found each other and it all began. Behind him, the erogenous red paper left on the walls three years ago, as if you had both dressed the stage for the exchanges that would follow. His back is turned. You walk towards him, a shadow in the room. On the desk next to the computer is a pad of paper on which he has written columns of words. His diary is open to this week’s page. You stand behind him, calculating.

  In a moment you know he will turn round. He will glance past you to the door, which is open. Then he will look at you and his eyes will flicker with excitement. You will take his fingers into your mouth and put his hands under your skirt. You’ll feel him stroke your legs, and move you on to his lap. He will pull your buttocks apart as if separating pieces of a fruit. He will rub you wet with his thumb, open the fastening, and move the tip of himself into place. You will hurt yourself slowly, your legs either side of the chair, and he will continue to open you outwards as you move.

  In a moment he will turn round and his eyes will flicker.

  The Divine Vision of Annette Tambroni

  The following week brings high temperatures again. The earth cracks open. Taps wheeze and trickle. It is the season of floating pollen, sticky arms and abandoned arguments. It is the season of wilting peonies and calendulas. Beekeepers have brought their produce to the market, jars bright and slow with their gorgeous orange contents, and then returned to their fields with swollen wallets. The professional cyclists have passed through the town, pushing stiffly up into the hills through the cheering crowds, gathering speed around the chicanes of the downhill slopes, and flashing away down colonnades of aspen and barley. Young birds have become confident about leaving their nests. The pavements ripple with heat.

  A week
after the purchase of the television, Annette is no clearer about its governances and possibilities, but the rest of the family are fully committed to its charms. Uncle Marcello believes absolutely that he could win Lascia o Raddoppia. He has dispatched a letter of application to the competition. He will write one a week for the rest of the year until they accept, he insists. If he wins, the business will be sold to another family and they can all retire to Argentina. Her mother is uncertain about this proposal. Argentina is the Land of Forgetting, in case he has forgotten, and there they could lose their heritage and their patriotism. It will be too hot in summer, too cold in winter. And besides, Vincenzo will not want them; he writes so infrequently it is as if all thoughts of reunion with his family have vanished. ‘Then a world cruise,’ Uncle Marcello says optimistically, ‘if it pleases you more, Rosaria.’ There has been a miracle reported on the news.’ Near Naples, a girl has levitated. Witnesses say she was surrounded by heavenly rays and cleared three feet at least. The Vatican is investigating. Maurizio complains that his favourite advertisement for nylon stockings has been discontinued. If the skirt was too short and broke the decency codes, then why was it made in the first place? he asks. He shakes his hand when Mina Mazzini steps past the piano to the microphone, and Annette can hear his fingers slapping against each other like fresh-caught fish in a bucket. Their mother re-tunes the channel.