After some time, Martin spoke from a sensation of feeling good about himself. “Did you enjoy it.”
“Are you asking me to rate your performance?”
Martin laughed, as he reached up for another cupcake. “Kind of, but not about that. Today, the evening?” He bit into it and Jenny smiled wistfully without answering. The mouthful of cupcake lost some of its taste. He swallowed. “Does that mean you didn’t?”
Jenny shook her head and the smile broadened but was tinged with sadness. She took the cupcake out of his hand for herself. “It’s been a great day. You have been fantastic with the kids, we actually left the house to go and do something other than run down to my parents or go shopping. We had fun.” She broke a piece of the cake off and chewed it thoughtfully, as if stalling for time. “I guess I worry just how long this will last.”
Part Two
“Art is a revolt against fate”
Andre Malraux
Chapter Nine
Martin only wanted to paint her. He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel of the Focus parked in a Victorian street, lined with leafless trees in Islington. He sat hunched down in his seat and watched the house that he was parked opposite. Like many of the houses in the surrounding area it was a house of blackened yellow bricks with sash cord windows. Unlike the surrounding streets of three-story terraced houses with basement rooms, this street held two story detached properties with front gardens. This house was one of the only detached houses he had seen in the street and was larger than any of the other houses, it stood out from its neighbours by appearing as if it had been lifted out of the street, turned 45 degrees and then replaced, being the only house with its main door at the side of the property. It struck Martin that the house had been alone at one point and the rest of the street had grown up around it as the city had expanded. Its design becoming a prototype for the cloned houses that now ran uniformly down both sides of the street. It was somewhat neglected with its windows clouded with dust, their deep green paint bubbled, cracked and flaking away.
Martin’s vantage point was obscured from being hunched down in his seat and the screen of a box hedge that ran the length of the garden wall. Martin had kept his vigil for two hours. What had started as a Saturday morning drive had led him to the address Richard had reluctantly given him the day before. Richard had followed Ivory here several times. It was Ivory’s home.
Martin ducked further down in his seat as a woman turned down the path and closed the gate behind her. His heart throbbed into his mouth at the sight of her. Ivory was wearing a close fitting black dress. Her pale hair was down and strands of it sailed in her wake as she walked. He leaned forward against the steering wheel to follow her route down the alley at the side of the house to the main door.
He froze as she stared in his direction. To move whilst caught in a casual stare would reveal himself to her. She stared through him and he wondered if he was obscured by a reflection in the glass of his window. She made several more furtive glances, and although her face gave no flicker of emotion, her actions seemed suspicious.
Ivory leant forward, almost doubling over. She snaked a white arm through the letterbox and pushed herself up against the door, her arm working in right up to the shoulder as if she planned on squeezing herself through that entry instead of using the door itself. After several jerks of her body that suggested her arm moving, Ivory pulled swiftly out of the letter box, not stopping to manoeuvre her elbow or wrist from its sharp metal jaw. A swift action that produced a key. She opened the door and disappeared within the house.
Martin relaxed in his seat now that she was gone, but his heart wallowed in a dirty pit of self-disgust at his voyeurism. He wondered if that was how Richard had felt. Martin checked himself in the mirror. He looked nervous, pasty and grey. The result of more nightmares. King’s bloodied corpse came to life every time he fell asleep. As if King hid in the darkness behind his eyelids. A Lovecraft demon possessing him, ready to prey on his sanity the moment he tried to rest.
King’s death had made the Independent so at least one worry had been settled. It hadn’t splashed the front page but was buried deep within. The title of the two inch article read ‘Pimp killed.’ The rest of the story was almost as short and informative. It explained how ‘Terrence King’ had been found dead in the lounge of his first floor flat in Arven Road. His death seemed to be the result of a struggle. The article said that any further information had been hard to come by as a ‘veil of silence’ had fallen on the occupants of Arven Road. The article claimed that the police had declared that the list of people with possible motives for killing King grew longer as their investigation proceeded. The article claimed he was a disliked man, who was a pimp and an amateur hard core pornographer as well as being involved in dealing drugs. However much Martin had managed to relax since reading the article the guilt had still remained.
Martin stepped from the car and locked it behind him. He crossed the street and dodged the odd puddle that dotted the drying streets. Martin tried to walk as casually as he could down the path. Careful not to look at the windows should Ivory appear at them. It would be all he needed for him to lose his nerve.
Martin stood at the large green door. The door’s brass coloured letter box, knocker and numbers were mottled with reddish brown corrosion and spotted with drops of rain. Martin rapped the knocker with fingers that tingled with electricity but felt weighted with lead rings. He cleared his dry throat and swallowed hard at the feeling of ash in his mouth.
He waited. He stepped off the step and then back on it. He stepped back on the path again and looked around anxiously. He wondered if Ivory had seen him and wasn’t going to answer. She gets knocked down by a car, and then the driver won’t leave her alone, creating a scene with her pimp that ends in a horrific death, and then turns up at her home. He swore at himself under his breath, finding it incredible and ridiculous that he was there.
With a sense of pressure, should his knock be answered, he turned for the path to make his escape. He glanced casually to the door and was startled to find that where the door had been, a large man stood in its place. Ebony stood before him, without the large smothering coat he had seen him in last, in well pressed black trousers and a leather waistcoat zipped up over a cream Nehru shirt buttoned to the neck. He still seemed a giant immovable man. His white eyes spread wide as if they had forgotten they couldn’t see.
Ebony’s ears caught Martin as his feet scuffed the gravel. “Who is it?”
“H-Hello, I wondered if I may speak to Ivory.” His voice emerged in fluctuating tone like a radio being tuned in. Martin surprised himself that all his words had managed to fall out in the right order. He coughed to clear his throat and then repeated himself with a more even tone.
“I know you,” the man muttered. His eyes narrowed as his concentration sharpened. “I never forget a face.” He smirked broadly. “I know your voice.” He explained dryly and impatiently.
Although the comment was playful enough there was something in the gravitas of his words that suggested his blindness might be a ruse. Martin recalled how easily Ebony had navigated himself through the presumably foreign environment of the hospital. Martin introduced himself again.
“I know why you are here,” he growled. “But I am sure that you do not understand why.” There was pity in his face. Ebony stepped away from the door and retreated to the end of the hallway cluttered with stacks of books and papers and called out Ivory’s name in his curious German dialect.
Martin was stunned as Ivory trotted down the wooden stairs, her smooth pale legs picking their way through steps crammed with similar stacks of books. She wore a full-towelling bathrobe and her hair was wet and plastered to her head like the night of the accident. Ivory stared at him with her curious eyes. He wondered if they were capable of anything but staring. Her head cocked to one side as he had seen it do before when it appeared she was trying to understand something. Maybe as she was mute it was her way of gesturing to know what
he wanted.
“Hello. Are you okay?
“After what happened the other night.
“With King.
“After…” Martin struggled to find words to describe the events. “… the accident.”
Martin stood for some time waiting for an answer. “Are you okay?” She might be mute but she could at least nod and put him out of his misery. Elated relief surged within him as she nodded in reply. “I was worried. I – I didn’t know what to do. It was awful. A dreadful thing that happened. I – I am sorry I came to King’s flat. I’m sorry if my presence set off what happened. None of us should have had to experience that. I thought the car accident was the most terrifying moment of my life – then that happened.”
A smile flickered through her face. Was it to reassure him? He dared not allow himself to dwell on his consideration that it was relief at seeing him again. He was certainly relieved to see her, to be with someone that had shared that horrific moment. “Have the police talked to you?” He prayed she wouldn’t take too much time to respond. She didn’t. She shook her head once to each side. A weight lifted from him. Every answer he received relieved his worry. It was euphoric and strangely ethereal, as though asking a spirit for insight and receiving knocks for a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’. He couldn’t resist asking her if she was okay again and received another affirmative. He was sure the broad smile he wore could have folded in on itself it felt so stretched.
“My request… about asking you to model for a portrait….” It seemed wrong to bring it up, but that was why he was there after all. “Please remember it’s not like the modelling King asked you to do. You will be clothed. Not… not nude.” Although Ebony was out of sight he experienced the need to justify his motives and intentions. “I just want you to sit for a portrait.”
She stood where she did. Unmoving. Unblinking. Suddenly she smiled that half-smile and gave a single emphasised nod.
Martin’s excitement felt as though it were lifting him on wings and his cheeks ached against his smile. However his lips faltered as Ebony stepped back into the hall and folded strong arms across a broad chest, with his face set and stern in a carving of seriousness and grim distaste, as though he saw something in this moment that escaped Martin. The light caught his blank eyes and flickered like far away lightning suggesting the promise of a storm.
Chapter Ten
Martin stared at the painting. His brush poised but hesitant: lacking the direction of inspired creativity. The sweeps and strokes within the paint filled his field of vision as he poured his attention over the details. He had been painting Ivory for two days and her face and his painting of it saturated his mind. Beyond the sittings she was with him whenever he closed his eyes, as if his concentration had left a physical impression of her upon the lens of his eyes.
He had composed the portrait using Fibonacci’s golden ratio of balance between asymmetry and symmetry within the angle of Ivory’s face and in her relation to her surroundings. She sat before him in his loft studio, melting into the light from the muslin shrouded window of his loft studio: an angel descended.
He liked the ethereal imagery that had come from her wearing the simple white robe he had sourced from Donnie and Bea in the drama department stores. It was a fine sheer material that hung from her shoulders and clung to her curves on its way to the floor. It was thin enough to melt in the light and show the ghost of her shape and form, but its weave was sufficiently dense to obscure the crudeness of nudity beneath.
When Ivory had arrived on that first day, her facial expression was inscrutable of any emotion. Climbing the stairs to the studio they had passed through the first floor where the bedrooms were, and it was Martin that had experienced a discomforting need to remind her that their destination was the studio in the loft. In the studio they were greeted by the open sofa bed. Oscar had been up here and opened it so he could lay and watch Martin paint. Martin had hastily folded the bed away and stumbled over explaining that he wanted her seated in the chair by the window. It had struck him that even if he had an ulterior motive in asking her to pose for him she would not have complained, she was as available to him sexually as she would be to any man who was willing to pay.
At least the functional appearance of the room, with its unpainted plaster walls dotted with unfinished projects, bare floorboards, mishmash of tired furniture, and shelves and cupboards cluttered with art materials, suggested that this was a place where the focus was art. He had directed her to a bi-fold changing screen that she could use to preserve her dignity, and in a further gesture of respect he had left her to change while he prepared a tray of tea and biscuits. Despite trying to reinforce his intentions there was a sordidness about the act of having her at his home. He wanted her to trust him, needed her to see him differently to her customers. It was crucial for Martin’s conscience that this act was genuine and innocent. Yet he hadn’t told Jenny about tracking Ivory down, and that it was Ivory that was sitting for him.
He hadn’t had to ask Ivory to pose. Just invited her to take a seat and get comfortable. Martin had been so startled by the speed of which she settled that he had to ask her if she was ready, she had answered with a nod. There had not been any shifting in preparation of long hours of stillness, no search for a comfortable pose or a need to place her limbs in positions that might attribute attractiveness, innocence, confidence, sultriness, peace or any other kind of quality that other sitters might try and communicate in a pose. She simply sat and was still.
It had been odd having a sitter who could not communicate. Usually such sessions started with small talk that eased both the painter and subject away from the unnatural situation of being virtual strangers engaged in intense scrutiny. It rarely sustained itself but when conversation subsided the silence that followed was bearable. Without it the awkwardness had lingered and distracted his hand and pencil into false starts. Martin had found the need to speak, to say anything to detract from the awkwardness. When he did it only made things worse as he had to remember to say things that only needed nods or shakes of the head in answer. Martin cringed at the stupid pointless things he had said to fill the void. Constantly circling around the haunting memory of the night in King’s flat.
Gradually the gentle lines that had escaped his putty eraser had begun to take form, and it had aroused his creative inspiration and drive, which in turn distracted him from the discomfort. His creation went from skeletal sketches of form to being fleshed with opaque base colours like some Frankenstein’s creation taking shape.
Ordinarily when he was paying a sitter he would focus on the face, head and bust, anything else could be filled in from the imagination afterwards to save on money. He took some photographs as reference for the same reasons, but each time he depressed the shutter button he recalled the photographs King had taken, he was glad he had been finishing a film and had only had six exposures left.
He had applied the base layers of paint for the head hair and bust and they awaited the overlay of fine detail that would finish them, yet although he had all the colours mixed and ready for the different grades of light and shadow he delayed their application. Instead he found himself working on the details of her clothes, her hands and the divine light behind and around her. He had already failed to create one likeness and he wanted to ensure he did her justice this time. That’s what he told himself, but he couldn’t escape the fact that the longer he held off the detail of her face the more time he would have to spend in her company.
He looked up from the painting and her face ignited the spark he needed to start. He leaned over the painting and cast his eyes back and forth between Ivory and the canvas and applied the brush with the concentration of a surgeon and the passion of an orchestra conductor. Ivory was in exactly the same position she had adopted for the previous two sessions.
“How are you, today?”
She looked over and smiled a nod.
He took it that she would ask him the same if she could. “I’ve been busy today. One of the
students has decided that he wants to mix his art forms. He usually does sculpture, but now he wants to sculpt and then photograph it in a way that will accentuate the sculpture but still keep it in a two dimensional world. Quite clever. However, I think modern art is overtaking me. I remember when I was in class myself, painting bowls of fruit for my exams. If you paint a bowl of fruit now, the idea seems to be to make it look like anything but a bowl of fruit.”
She smiled. He considered how ironic it was that he had just spoken of Richard. She had no way of knowing that Richard knew where she lived and that he had followed her, photographed her, painted and drawn her, obsessed about ( loved?) her from afar.
The silence reasserted itself. He knew he could turn to questions he had used on the previous sittings, but the subject he avoided, the subject that seemed taboo frustrated him with its continuing pressure of presence. The flame of inspiration guttered and his brush hesitated again. He steadied his hand against the edge of the canvass like a drunk hiding delirium tremens. “Your inability to talk. That must be frustrating.”
The corners of her mouth turned down for a few moments and she shrugged.
“I imagine you have grown used to it then, because it’s damn frustrating for me.”
She cocked her head in her gesture of curiosity.
“I want to ask you things that I know you can’t answer with a simple ‘yes’ or ‘no’.”
She nodded. He was unsure whether she agreed with his recognition of the limits of her communication, or whether she was encouraging him to elaborate. She never seemed concerned with his moments of soliloquy, but then they had previously been about art.
Ivory Page 9
