Director's Cut (38 page)

The first guest to arrive at the party had stayed to the end.
Wanna Party?

Wanna come?

He remembered the invitation and drew in a final breath of piss-filled
air and smiled as the joke sank in.

With a finebrush and a mix of raw umber,
terre verte
, Indian red and Chinese
yellow – he did like Chinese yellow – he concentrated on her face.
“I think, perhaps, that the pregnancies are of greater significance.”
“You mean the women ran off with the real fathers?”

“Probably. It’s the obvious conclusion. How do you feel about that?
At the end of our last session you said that you might be pregnant. I
got the feeling that you weren’t too happy about it. It’s very personal. I
shouldn’t have asked.”

“It’s OK. I hadn’t realized my misgivings were so transparent.
You’re very intuitive.”

He smiled.

She shivered.

“So, you find yourself in the same position as the missing women.
It’s ironical, isn’t it? It must have something to do with my shop,
perhaps the air in here, or the paint. Maybe I should open a fertility
clinic. That’s a thought.”

“It could only have something to do with your shop if all the
women had been here.”

“Yes, I see that. But who’s to say they weren’t? A lot of people
come and go and my memory isn’t what it was and it was never very
good. At school I could never remember all those dates of the battles
we had with the French and the names of rivers in Mauritania.”
“So your memory needs a little jog?”

“Ah, the reconstruction.”

“Since I’m pregnant it would be even closer to the truth.”

“I suppose it would. But you have to remember that Mrs Harrison
knew exactly what she wanted. She could be very direct and she came
prepared. There was no dithering. She simply arrived and we got on
with it. If there was ever a problem it was all mine.”

“Did you have a problem?”

“Well, there was a sudden retreat, certainly. The easel became my
Maginot Line.”

“I believe that was breached.”

“The Germans used the back door or, rather, a side door known as
Belgium.”

“What then?”

“We retreated from Dunkirk.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Well, then, I got on with the painting, what else?”

“So Helen was lying here, where I am, and you finished the
painting. Was that the last time you saw her?”

“My goodness no. A week or so later she came back to collect the
finished product. It takes that long for the paint to dry. But she’d
brought one of her minders with her to carry it so she didn’t stop and
we didn’t really talk.”

“And that was the last time you saw her?”

tantly
and said, “But Mrs Harrison…she did come back again and this time
she was alone.” His eyes were drawn once more to the flimsy
covering, the yellow peril. He went on, “She’d had an argument with
her husband and she was angry but I never found out what it was
about. There was a bruise on her chin but I didn’t like to ask. You
don’t, do you? Not about things that go on between husbands and
wives. Not unless you’re working for Relate. Even though she’d
already had a few tipples, I’d say, I fed her some wine and she talked
freely but that never came up. So how she got the bruise and exactly
what led her back here remains a mystery.”

Her look was wide-eyed and quizzical. She asked, “How long did
she stay?”

Without looking up and quite matter-of-factly he said, “A long,
long time.”

“Did she tell you where she was going?”

“Going, my dear? She wasn’t going anywhere.”

Her pulse raced. He couldn’t fail to notice her sudden glow. The
revelation had been so careless she wondered whether he was aware of
making it. She snatched a deep steadying breath and said, “So what
now, Mr Lawrence? Where do we go from here?”

His eyes flicked from her groin and once again focused on the
painting. She should have felt some relief but didn’t. A pause might
draw him back and give him time to reflect on his indiscretion.
Still studying the canvas he said, “If you would let me see you in all
your splendour then you can see Mrs Harrison in all of hers.”
She had been waiting for the suggestion, certain that it would come,
yet she could barely believe he had made it. It had to be a ploy. He was
playing games again.

“You know where she is?”

“Of course.”

“Where?”

“Not far.”

“How far?”

“A short walk. I’ll take you.”

“But first you want me to take off my clothes.”

Now he looked up and met her gaze. He said, “Yes.”

“I thought your thing was landscapes.”

“I’m thinking of a career change.”

“What then?”

“Then a few finishing touches to the painting and then I’ll take you
to see Mrs Harrison.”

“Helen first.”

“I think not. I know what you women are like. An old friend of
mine – an old soldier – told me. A few final touches and then I’ll take
you to see your friend. I’ll leave you with her and then I can get on. So,
what do you think? It’s what you came for, after all.”

“How do I know you’ll keep your word?”

“You don’t, but apart from the loss of a little dignity which I’m sure
you’ll manage, what else have you got to lose? Up to you, my dear.
How much do you want to see Mrs Harrison again?”

In their intensity her eyes became very dark, almost hooded, and
her thoughtful nod, when it came, was barely discernible. Had he not
been waiting for it, he would have missed it altogether.

“I imagine you will require a little fortification. I know I do. I’ll
fetch us some more drinks then, shall I? I have this strange feeling that
you have been right all along. My memory just needed a little jog.”
Without looking back he shuffled into the kitchen. It took him
longer than usual, as she guessed it might. He paused at the door. He
looked odd, different, his eyes cast with that slow, esoteric quality
she’d seen before on a smackhead. The wine made tiny waves against
the sparkling crystal. It looked rich and potent.

“Chianti, in particular, must be taken at cellar temperature.” His
voice was strangely different too, slightly husky, his speech more
measured and delayed. “It comes originally from Gaiole, Castellina
and Radda. Don’t be fobbed off with the re-drawn area that takes in
just about the entire region of Tuscany.”

Those sleeping eyes caught the crystal and flashed awake.
He came on with deliberate steps. “As with all wine, my dear, you
must go with the most expensive that you can afford. You might
remember the
fiasco
with its straw jacket. They’re often used as
candleholders. The wine itself is irresistibly feminine, and mysterious

– I mentioned that before.”

She stood beside the sofa, her long hair cutting black trails over her
breasts, her dress clinging to her thighs, her back reflected in a painting
that leant against the wall behind her, birds flying from a pond.
Ducks, he thought. How wonderful.

He nodded, hugely satisfied, for he had begun to wonder whether
events would turn out as he had planned. Where women were
concerned, as the late colonel had often stated, nothing could be taken
for granted. Logic, that key to the door – the dawn – of man, had been
lost in the unfolding of woman and replaced by that curiosity, female
intuition, that damned and satanic second sight that had led her to him.
He handed her the wine. She returned his gaze with a steadiness he
found endearing.

“We might as well finish it today.”

“That sounds very final.”

“All things come to an end and the painting is, save for a few final
touches, all but finished.”

“But we’re not, are we?”

He retreated quickly to his Maginot.

She drank her wine in one. Her lips were left with the touch of
sangiovese grape –
sanguis Jovis
– the blood of Jove. She reached
down and placed the glass on the small table where her handbag lay,
just out of reach from the sofa. Her breasts sagged slightly then firmed
up again as she stood upright.

“So this is what it has come to.”

He smiled sweetly.

She reached beneath her dress and bent again and her breasts
sagged again and she stepped out, one foot then the other, and left the
flimsy yellow underwear on the oak floor. She watched his eyes but
they didn’t flicker. But his lips moved and she was drawn to them.
“Everything is coming back,” he said. “It is all so clear now.”
She reached down to the hem of her dress and drew it over her
thighs, over that tricky uncomplicated place, the Devil’s Triangle,
over her navel and jutting hips.

Navel and jutting? Naval and Jutland came to mind, the largest
naval battle in history, the battle that no one won. Life’s like that, he
thought, with both sides, life and death, claiming victory.
He smiled. He couldn’t help it. Everything, suddenly, was so
maddeningly clear. The Devil’s Triangle, also known as the Bermuda
Triangle, seemed so delightfully befitting.

He shook away the thought and concentrated again on that glossy
overgrown thatch, black as coal and burning bright, the burning bush,
hayah
on Mount Horeb, the downfall of so many men – a blue would
do it, with burnt sienna or raw umber and in that way, the sheen, the
rainbow of split coal, would have the heart leaping with spring lambs
in the silence of a dewy meadow. What was it about the common
crack, he wondered, that could send men wild, to murder, to suicide, to
go head-to-head with antlers or knives and guns? What was it about
the crazy slit, marked indelibly and incomprehensibly in the head and
no longer requiring the stink of readiness or the animal clock, that slow
turn to spring, that could send the blood – Chinese blood in particular –
rushing to the rut.

It was beyond him and he shook away the questions but another
came at him, out of nowhere, and he smiled again.

Was he a religious man?

What simpletons to ask such a question? And what a silly girl to
think that the dance of veils – in her case just two – would be the
answer.

And from the pond and through the dark bracken the ducks took off
across her sleek behind.

And Mr Lawrence shook his head in wonder.

“On or off?” she said, tugging apprehensively at her dress.
He remembered their first meeting when she’d asked that very same
question about her spectacles.

“Off, for now,” he said, repeating his line too. It could all have been
a rehearsal, he smiled, and now it was for real.

She dropped the dress and stepped out of it, all arms and legs. Her
breasts were nothing more than small swells, no more than force two
or three, with dark nipples that stuck out and reminded him of the pink
rubbers on the end of school pencils that you could nibble and suck
until your lips turned pink. He thought about his school in Nicosia and
the first girl he’d ever played with. She was a Cypriot so didn’t count
and a couple of years younger, about five, maybe. While the sun
blistered his bony shoulders he’d explored every inch of her limp body
before covering it with huge rocks he carried from the dried-up
riverbed.

Even then he knew that rigor would not begin to set in for three
hours or so. He’d learned that much from the lizards.

For a few moments she stood motionless then, without taking her
eyes from him, she took three long strides to the sofa and keeping her
knees firmly clamped together, she sat down.

He selected a brush and nodded. “The finishing touches,” he said.
An unexpected feeling of panic tightened her chest. Her risky
position became all too apparent and even the knowledge of Sam
Butler stationed outside did little to stem her sudden reluctance to
continue. She said too quickly, “You can’t blank out the dress so
easily. I don’t want my picture ruined.”

He tut-tutted. “I’m only concerned with your face. I want that
uncertainty that your nakedness has brought about. I have seen
defiance and provocation, even a challenge, but never before this hint
of fear.”

“I’m not frightened of you, Mr Lawrence.”

“Not that. Not that at all. It’s more to do with modesty and
propriety.”

He filled a fine brush with the colours of blush.

“I want to bring out that vulnerability a little more. I’ll tell you what
we’ll do for, after all, at the core of your splendour is your pudenda.”
“I don’t think so. That’s a little too far.”

“Mrs Harrison went that far.”

“I saw the painting. I don’t need reminding. And I’m not Helen
Harrison.”

“But you do want to see her.”

His suggestion brought a sudden rush of thoughts, jumbled and
confused, and she felt quite disorientated. For an instant she considered
the whole situation ludicrous and she laughed out loud.

Mr Lawrence shared the joke and smiled back.

Colours deepened in waves and she felt light-headed. She put it
down to anxiety and the adrenalin she’d used up. She gulped a few
deep breaths, trying to control her racing pulse.

She thought of Butler listening to it all and imagined his expression
should he burst in. She laughed out loud again. The DS might have
dreamt of her in such a position. For a moment she wanted him to walk
in just so she could see the look on his face.

“Sam, you better get in here,” she called out and Mr Lawrence’s
smile widened.

She felt the heat radiating from her body and the colour rising in
her face, just as Mr Lawrence wanted, but she laughed again in the
knowledge that it was out of elation rather than embarrassment. Mr
Lawrence had got it wrong. She was leading him on, too far gone,
invincible, and nothing else mattered. What was it he wanted? Giddy
with euphoria and with the room starting to slant this way and that, she
tried to bring back the notion of what she was doing and why she was
there at all. Even as she frowned in concentration she knew there were
things she had to do and defiance returned with a steely look.
Mr Lawrence smiled knowingly.