The Colour of Mermaids

by Catherine Curzon

  “That’s the best present I’ve ever had!” Eva hugged him. “It’s not too bad being a muse!”

  “Oh, you’re my muse now?” He laughed and held her tight. “Before we start, do you need anything?”

  “I wouldn’t mind a glass of water. By the way, I brought you a present.” Eva glanced back at the antique. “It’s not quite a chaise longue, though.”

  “Something for me?” He stepped back a little, his arms still around her middle. “Go on.”

  “In a way, it’s not really from me, because my mum made it. She made too much, in fact, so…if Mrs Catesby’s Boozy Damson Jam is your thing, then—” Eva pulled the jar out of her bag. It was homemade down to the handwritten label and the ribbon tied around its lid. “It’s delicious. A hug in a jar.”

  He took it from her and she saw the smile on his face grow, knew from the sparkle in his eyes that it was genuine. Where the sunglasses were at the moment Eva couldn’t guess, but she was glad of their absence.

  “Proper homemade food, thank you!” Daniel beamed. “I hope you brought some of your work too. We can have a glass of something later and look through it. And eat jam out of the jar, like kids.”

  Eva nodded. “I come complete with sketch pad today!”

  “Water and work first,” Daniel instructed. He took his arm from her waist and padded on his bare feet towards a small fridge against the far wall, above which hung a poster for his retrospective at MOCA. Atop it was a coffee machine and kettle and an assortment of mismatched cups and glasses. He took out a bottle of water and filled one of the glasses. “Then fun, jam and a chance to finally see what Eva Catesby can do.”

  What must it be like to have a retrospective and be so casual about it that it’s just there in your studio, hanging above the fridge?

  Lonely at times, Eva was sure. But not today. Her gaze alighted on an intricate spiral staircase of filigreed metal that wound its way up and out of the studio, holding all the promise of a fairy-tale beanstalk.

  Eva dropped her bag in a corner and, with her back to him, took off her leather jacket, which she hung carefully over the back of a chair. To avoid leaving elastic marks on her skin, and for other reasons to benefit Daniel, Eva hadn’t bothered with underwear. She unfastened the row of buttons that marched down the front of her dark blue dress and turned back to face him as her dress fell open.

  “Thanks.” She took the glass of water from him and drank deeply, aware of his gaze on her. “Are you ready for me?”

  “I’ve been ready since you climbed into that taxi.” He stroked his fingertips from her cheekbone to her jaw. “I found my muse.”

  Never breaking from his gaze, Eva caught Daniel’s hand and brought it to her lips. She kissed the palm, then told him, “We’d better get on, hadn’t we?”

  “Get comfortable.” He nodded, then sniffed and gave that telltale rub of his nose. “Today is for finding the pose, getting the look and a few sketches. It’s for capturing Eva.”

  “I rather like the idea of you capturing me, Daniel!” But not so much painting under the influence. Eva winked as she put aside the glass and threw her dress after the jacket. After slipping out of her sandals, she was left only with bangles on her arm and a delicate silver chain around her ankle. “Do you want the jewellery off too?”

  “Yes.” Less than a second passed before he said, “No. No, keep it on. I like the way the sun’s hitting it. Do you mind the music? I usually work with it, but I can try without if you like.”

  “The music’s good. Very smooth. I’m surprised you weren’t listening to punk, seeing as you’re a bad boy!” Eva plumped the cushions on the chaise longue and sat down, her legs stretched across its length, one arm draped over its end. “Do direct me, darling, won’t you?”

  “We tried that in the hotel and I lost you.” He was busy at one of several easels, turning it to face her. “I want to see Eva, not Daniel Scott’s version of her.”

  Eva tapped her fingers on her thigh in thought, then bent her lower leg at the knee, shifting against the cushions to angle her hips towards him. With a clank of bangles, she flung one arm above her head in her favoured bosom-flattering pose, and let her other arm drape loosely over her stomach. The position wasn’t too uncomfortable to maintain and she let her head fall back a little against the velvet upholstery.

  “And are my eyes saying come over here and ravish me, you handsome creature?”

  “They’re practically shouting it,” Daniel assured her. He put a large sketch pad on the easel and said, “Let’s see if I can get Eva this time?”

  Behind him she could see the biroed portrait from the hotel, sketched out in blue ink on a folded sheet from a hotel information folder. From this distance she couldn’t understand what it was that had left him so despairing. Though it lacked detail, she could see the shape of her body, could recognise the features that she saw in the mirror every day. It was clearly Eva, but something about it wasn’t.

  “Thank you for posing for me the other day, Daniel,” Eva said, trying to move as little as possible as she spoke. He was dressed the same now as he had been in the photo he’d sent. How those loose pyjama trousers stayed up, she couldn’t tell. “Much appreciated!”

  “I was just showing you your portrait, bad though it was,” he replied, his gaze flicking between her and the easel. “If I stumbled into the shot, it was entirely by accident.”

  “I’m sure it was. How awkward that your impressive torso and lovely eyes should get into shot.” Eva giggled. “You looked so smouldery! I was in the cafe with Lyndsey when the photo arrived and it made me blush, you naughty man.”

  “Did you show her?” He lifted his head and looked at her, his expression unreadable. Then he smiled. “I hope not, or I would’ve put my Wayfarers on.”

  “I didn’t show her. She wanted to see, but it’s private, isn’t it?” An itch was developing on Eva’s leg and she did all she could to ignore it. “Anyway, I don’t think she would have been able to cope with that raunchy look you had in your eyes. Do you know, she’s got a boyfriend and they haven’t had sex yet? Kissed sweetly on the prom and that’s it! Unless they did it last night after the ballet… Sorry, I’m thinking aloud. Do tell me to shut up!”

  “What?” Daniel looked up again and blinked, but she saw the same darkness in his expression that had plagued him at the hotel when he’d tried to sketch her. “You went to a ballet?”

  “No, Lyndsey did, with Miles.” Eva barely moved, barely opened her mouth. She needed to be the best model she could for Daniel, not an annoying chatterbox who kept gassing away as he tried to work. He nodded an acknowledgement then went back to work. In his face she saw the same intensity that she had glimpsed in the gallery, the fiery indignation with which they had exchanged words before and after their tryst on Rupert’s desk. This time, though, it was tempered with annoyance, punctuated by occasional silent oaths that he spat at the paper.

  The way he worked fascinated Eva. All that pent-up energy. It explained a lot about his paintings, and something about him too. But was he getting his rage, or whatever it was, out or was he winding himself up even more? She wondered what a calm Daniel Scott painting would look like, but her mind couldn’t conjure it.

  Perhaps the anger she could see in him now was what stopped him from capturing the sense of humanity that he seemed to be striving for and missing in his sketches. The gentle man who had held her and washed her hair had disappeared into the fierce tension of his muscles, the blazing depths of his eyes. If he let that man out a little more, that Mr Carswell from The Mallard, if he lit up the darkness around him, he might see the woman he couldn’t capture on paper.

  Eva’s lower leg had gone to sleep. She tried to wake it up by subtly curling her toes, but it didn’t work. “Daniel, could I have a quick break?”

  “Now?” He sighed and scrubbed his hand through his hair. “Yeah, okay.”

  “Sorry.” Eva got up from the chaise and put her dress on, fastening a few of the buttons s
o she could stretch out her limbs without losing too much dignity. With her arms above her head to loosen her shoulders, she picked her way across the room to Daniel. She shone him an encouraging smile. “Do you mind if I have a look?”

  “Help yourself. I need more coffee.” He stepped back from the easel. “Do you want a drink?”

  “Another glass of water will be fine, thanks.” Eva grinned at him, then turned her attention to the sketch. Without thinking, her fingers sought the pencil and she twirled it like a lazy majorette as she looked at his work. Daniel stroked his hand over her shoulder then padded away, leaving her to study his efforts.

  He should’ve used a lighter pencil, that was for sure. But aside from the heavy layers of graphite on the paper, he had made her very angular. Her bent knee and her shoulder were too pointed, and Eva realised those shapes had come from his anger. All his rage was getting in the way. While he was busy making his coffee, Eva swiftly sketched in around the angles, softening the parts of her body that he had made too sharp. He’d see it, but she’d let him think he’d done it.

  Satisfied, she laid the pencil down and perched on a wooden stool near the easel. “Do you feel the sketch is going better today than at the hotel?”

  “You can see it isn’t.” Daniel’s voice was clipped, tight, and even with his back turned to her Eva could see the same tightness in his body. He looked tense, like a coiled spring. When he turned and made his back to her with the water and coffee, the tension showed in his face too. He held out the glass of water. “I don’t want you to think that I see you like—”

  Daniel fell silent as his gaze settled on the page. As Eva took the water, he cocked his head a little, staring at the drawing she had added her own lines to.

  “You’ve edited my work,” he murmured, then looked at her. “Have you—you’ve changed this?”

  Eva shook her head. “No, not at all. It’s all your work.” She sipped her water and put the glass aside. “Would you like a shoulder rub?”

  “Don’t lie to me!” His voice rose in volume with every angry word. “You scribble on my work and tell me I’m imagining it? I know it’s fucking terrible, Eva, I drew it! I don’t need you to make me a charity case!”

  Eva recoiled from his angry words, at a loss to know what to do or say. Any retort would only make it worse. But she had to say something. “I’m trying to help you, that’s all! And your sketch isn’t terrible, but you’re so full of anger when you work. Look, all I did was try to soften the sketch, see? I’m not pointy, I’m rounded, and you should know that because you know how my body feels!” She picked up the pencil again, rounding off another sharp limb. “You said to me you’d never drawn from life before. Well, you can’t expect it to be perfect straight away. You’ve got to practice, for heaven’s sake. And no one has to see it, do they?”

  “You’re seeing it!” His anger seemed more pitched than ever. “You’re seeing how fucking crap I’ve made you look! Of course I’m angry. Everything I do in here is anger—”

  His hand was clutched around the coffee mug, his knuckles white as marble. She saw the rise and fall of his chest increase and he spat, “There’s so much of it in me, Eva, it’s— How the hell can I make you look like this? It doesn’t even look human!”

  “Stop beating yourself up, Daniel! It’s not crap. Bearing in mind you haven’t done this before, it’s pretty good. But can’t you channel something else, besides anger? What about desire? You’re sketching a woman you’ve gone to bed with!” Eva couldn’t avoid the elephant in the room any longer, and God only knew it had nothing to do with her, even though she knew it might not end well if she broached it. “Or is it the crap you shove up your nose? Is that getting in the way as well?”

  “I’m not one of your kids, for Christ’s sake! Look!” Daniel wheeled round, gesturing to the walls. “Do you see any desire here? It’s pure fucking fury! I don’t know how to channel desire unless—”

  He was silent suddenly, the sentence unfinished.

  Eva threw down the pencil and it rattled away across the wooden floor. She began to open the buttons on her dress. “Fuck me, then. Here. In the studio, where everything is fury, according to you. Experience desire. I don’t know. On the floor, among the bits of paper, or over the sofa, or in that chair. Pin me up against the easel or have me cling onto the mantelpiece, but just fuck me, Daniel!”

  “Not in here.” He shook his head and put the mug down. “How can I? I need the anger in here, or I’ve got nothing!”

  Eva’s dress fell to the floor and she put her arms around him. “Well, let’s go somewhere else, then. But you’re feeling desire now, aren’t you?”

  He put his hands in her hair and kissed her with a fierce strength in reply, pressing their bodies together. The desire and anger were both there now, the air almost crackling with it.

  “Bedroom?” Eva whispered. He repeated the word in agreement, then kissed her again with that same fevered intensity. His fingers were tangled in her hair, the tension she saw in him making it fiercer than ever. He was so hard, and Eva was so aroused, even though she wondered if she should be attracted to his dark energy. But it exerted an invisible pull that excited her too much to ignore.

  “I need you,” he murmured, his voice hoarse with desire. He took her face in his hands, nuzzling her jaw. “Don’t think that picture— That’s not how I see you—”

  Eva stroked his tense shoulders and swept her way down to his waist, circling her fingertips against the small of his back. “I know you don’t. It’s okay. Just take me to your bed, won’t you?”

  Daniel caught her hand in his own and led her across the studio to the spiral staircase. Here he paused again for another kiss before they ascended, leaving the chaotic studio behind.

  Eva was so caught up in Daniel that she barely registered the cool decor of his house, as impersonal as a hospital. It must have cost a lot of money to have a designer rub away traces of Daniel’s personality.

  At the top of the stairs, a huge white room awaited them, with a wall of windows overlooking the sea. The sun was hot through the glass.

  Eva tugged down Daniel’s trousers and pressed her body close to his, the warmth of his skin against hers. He kicked them aside and took her in his arms, their bodies tight together, every muscle in him taut with that unreachable anger.

  His bed was large and untidy, the bedclothes flung haphazardly across it. Eva guided him towards it and dropped down onto the bed with Daniel on top of her. She sank her hands into his hair, kissing him deeply, feeling the strength of him. She wasn’t afraid, because his anger wasn’t directed at her, but at some distant point in his background that time could not blot out.

  He reached his arm around Eva and held her to him. The man in her arms was the man who made those hellscapes, who blotted out his pain with coke, who couldn’t let go of the rage that he wouldn’t explain. Maybe he didn’t want to be helped, but how could anyone go through life like this?

  “I need you.” It was a glimmer of light in the darkness, and so were these kisses, this embrace. He wasn’t lost.

  Between his kisses, Eva whispered, “We need each other, Daniel.” She kissed him deeply, aware of his scent and the weight of his body, of his desire for her, and her own for him. She had a vague sense of his arm reaching out to the side of the bed moments before she heard the telltale sound of the tearing wrapper, and all the time he was returning her kisses, possessing and possessed.

  Eva ran her hand from Daniel’s shoulder to his hand and slipped the condom from his fingers to put it on him. Her hand trembled as desire coursed thickly in her veins, but something else was there too. Tenderness, even at this moment of lust.

  Eva looped her legs around his waist and stroked her fingertips down his cheek. “Show me how you see me, Daniel.”

  Daniel pushed himself up on his hands and met her gaze. Then, without the protection of the sunglasses, he closed his eyes instead as he thrust into her with a gasp of Eva’s name. The word sounded despe
rate, like a drowning man.

  Eva moaned as he was inside her once more, but the stakes were higher now. This wasn’t a stolen one-off over a desk, or a playful romp in the cocoon of a luxury hotel room. This wasn’t only for pleasure, and as Eva thrust against him she realised she was trying to find a dropped connection or a way in. Something that would draw them back together.

  “I’m sorry,” he gasped, burying his face against her hair. Still his hips moved, hard and fast, every muscle defined beneath her touch. “To draw you like that—I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be, oh, don’t be, darling…” Eva nuzzled his neck, feeling his pulse there, and every fibre of her body trembled for him. She was losing him, all because of a stupid sketch. She was losing him before she really knew him.

  Eva ran desperate caresses over his body, stroking, tweaking, tilting her hips to draw him deeper inside her. “You have nothing to apologise for,” she whispered, but she wasn’t sure if he heard her, or if he did, whether he believed her.

  Every thrust drew a cry of exertion from his lips and he stifled them with kisses, clinging to her as though he might be swept away. She had never known anyone be so close and so distant, even as their limbs were wrapped around each other.

  Yet Eva’s pleasure built, the intensity and sheer visceral power of their bodies’ union stoking the most primal of her lusts. She panted his name, and words fell from her lips in gasps when they weren’t pressed hungrily to Daniel’s. “Deeper… Hold me… I forgive… My handsome…”

  His arms were strong around her, his hands on her bottom to lift her hips even higher. They moved as one in the sunlight, fevered and desperate in their embraces. Eva shifted her legs from Daniel’s waist and brought them over his shoulders, knowing it would bring him as deeply as possible inside her. She cried out in ecstasy, Daniel’s thrusts sending shudders through her. “Together,” she said, even though he seemed so far away. “Together!”

  “Together,” he told her through his groans of pleasure, reaching to seize her hand. He opened his eyes and looked down at her. His eyes were blazing, filled with intensity, darker than any of his paintings at their core.