Goya'S Dog (36 page)

When Burner came to them, he asked where Darly was too, and made a prepared joke about her difficulty in choosing a dress. That cued the predictable response from the Colbrands, during which Burner looked at Dacres expectantly, eyebrows raised, and then he alluded to the great unveiling.

“You couldn't reach quorum how many times?” Dacres asked Badger.

Burner watched him and watched him, and finally Dacres understood he could stall no longer. He excused himself and walked at a measured pace towards the spiral staircase, observing shoulders and dandruff on his way.

Burner's patience was at an end, Darly's had already been exhausted, and now the mob would chase him from the building throwing pitchforks and diamond earrings. And yet he felt no panic: he was thinking valedictory thoughts without unhappiness, thinking simply that everything perishes, as it must. Foot followed foot up the carpeted stairs that were like slices of cheese arranged in a circle. The carpet was dark blue, with golden jewels, or were they keys. How had he never noticed? How had he never taken note? Next to him his hand slid up the banister.

As usual, Dacres averted his eyes to avoid seeing the one-time Mrs. Burner. He had never asked Burner why he hadn't remarried. Why not? Now he never would ask. But this time he stopped to look: he recognized Darly's sharp nose on the mother's face. There was the same skeptical intelligence, he supposed, although none of Darly's readiness to grin. It was hopeless, though, especially the childish effort to make the folds in the dress echo the view from the window. Amateurish, the kind of man who paints an ox cart in the distance to suggest rustic plainness, as if nothing had happened in the countryside since Constable. As if nothing could be seen any differently from what it was. From below, he heard forks rap on champagne glasses and the quartet elegantly die away and the chatter subside. Better get a move on, he thought.

He walked slowly down the soft corridor past the guest rooms thinking of none of the things that had happened here. There was something dark hanging off the doorknob: a velvet cape. In purple, the colour of the emperor, to cover his painting with. It was humid, his skin was sticky, and he savoured the cool of the Burner Brass door handle in his grip. Something rubbed against his shin.

“Pico?” he said. He rubbed the cat's back roughly. “What are you doing up here? Scared of the crowds?”

It skittered away, tabby stripes and a flash of hanging white belly fur. Dacres waved goodbye. Then he was in the studio. He'd left one light on, a low table lamp. It wasn't bright. He felt exhausted. From downstairs he heard laughter, then applause, then nothing.

He was a little drunk. His feet clomped across the floorboards and then he sat on Darly's chaise longue. The mirror reflected the bureau and the windows showed the black garden. Dacres put his face in his hands for just a moment and then stood up, resolved. The plan was bright in its clarity and it was a sign painted with the word
ESCAPE
.

When the noise from beneath rose again, he went over to the easel and kicked at its legs. It hung for a moment and then fell against the wall and collapsed to the floor with a clatter. He walked over, humming Beethoven, and took the brushes from their military file on the table and snapped them in half, two by two, against his thigh, and dropped them in the centre of the room too. A virgin roll of newsprint he picked up and ripped, calmly, crunching each piece into a ball until he began to feel bored, and dropped long squares of it into the bonfire shape on the floor, and then tossed the whole roll onto the pile. He got his full jars of turps and poured them onto the paper, preparing a stinking papier mâché onto which he squeezed out paints, tube after unused tube of cadmium, madder lake, Payne's grey, until they made a brown drab diarrheic compost. Darly's final gift, weeks ago, had been a lovely little travel palette, a small pine briefcase with golden buckles. He hurled it against the wall and then took a running jump, landing on it with both feet, and falling over backwards painfully on his backside. Up again, he threw the broken case onto the wet pile and rubbed his rear, and set about pulling the drawers out of the chest, pulling out the knives and jam jars and varnishes also. He tried to knock the base out of each drawer using knee and elbow, but only dented them. Clatters and crashes. He ground in pages from sketchbooks and then whole sketchbooks and a cardboard box of pastels. Splinters flew off into the air as he whacked the pile with wooden boards and stomped, and he decided gleefully he would not stop until he'd reduced it to primordial Substance. He wrenched the
mirror off the wall and threw that down; the glass did not break, nor did the gold frame. He pulled the cupboard over
crash
and what was left in it spattered out. And then he saw that he was done.

He was out of breath. There was a gooey mess on the floor, on his shoes, on the hem of his black trousers, on his knees, on his hands. The thick smell he hadn't smelled in centuries: the smell of work. He wiped his brow and felt it dirty. He hoped he hadn't woken the birdies. Finally Dacres took off the monkey suit. He threw the soft jacket down into the mess to crown it, and the trousers with their shiny piping at the sides. The room looked like it had been burgled by amputees. All that was left was the one thing he'd produced in his months with Darly: a blank canvas, ready for work, stretched and nailed into the backing. He grabbed that, covering it roughly with the purple velvet cover that Burner's man had left for him.

In underpants and undershirt, carrying the covered canvas, he went to the next room, his bedroom. There was a pair of trousers on the floor, and he fished his good old tweed jacket out of the bottom of the cupboard. Twice Mildred had tried to throw it away, twice he had rescued it. That was one loyal comrade, in spite of all. The sleeves were too short, but you can't have everything, he thought. Beneath it he saw his one surviving suitcase, thou good and faithful servant. It was empty, so he stuffed into it certain items that were in the wardrobe, things that he felt in a sense had devolved to him: a shirt, one of Burner's ties, an old school blazer with crest, those trousers Darly had bought him. He added a little turquoise bowl from the mantelpiece: a souvenir. He closed the door quietly behind him.

He felt taller as he circled back down the stairs. He felt ready for whatever hell was coming next. By halfway down he could see Burner, speaking in the distance, raising a glass—perhaps he'd had to talk longer than he'd expected. Dacres carried the canvas down casually in his left hand, and saw Goucher waiting for him at the bottom, ugly. He looked at Dacres's suitcase momentarily but without a word he took the painting and made his way along the border of the room towards the front. Dacres sighed.

He felt a very firm grip on his forearm: Darly's face was an inch from his.

“Where have you been?” she said, sharp.

“Where have
you
been?”

She was pale; her eyes were red-rimmed, and because of tears they had no fine border. There were tiny flowers in her braided hair. She was in silver and was shining.

“I'm sorry, Darly,” he said, though she wasn't listening. “I have to go. I have to.”

She whispered jaggedly into his ear.

“I told him I can't marry him.”

“What?”

She gripped him even harder and he thought she was going to cry.

“We have to go away now, like you said. Now!”

Everything that had been dulled in him came back roaring.

She led him away, thin and hurriedly, towards the front door. Some friends of her father's, at the back of the crowd listening to the speech, turned and looked on in surprise. And then with coltish violence she pulled him out of the house, into the gravelly courtyard where Goucher had arrayed the cars like legionnaires.

They hurried through crunchy gravel in the dark and he thought of the Sussex coast. Dacres had his suitcase clasped to his belly.

“You're driving,” she called from ahead.

“I haven't in years.”

She threw something that rattled in the air, and he caught it onehanded, acrobat.

“Whose?”

“Lorne's,” she said. “It's a Packard. I don't trust myself, not this minute.”

He awkwardly tried to get between vehicles.

Behind them the front door opened and yellow light spilled out. Someone called her name: from between two cars Dacres looked quickly back, but he saw only silhouettes. The man, it must be Lorne, called again.

“Here it is!” she called.

“Are you sure you want to take his car …” Dacres began.

But he was at the driver's side. She told him to get in.

“He owes me,” Darly said.

He threw his case over the seat into the back.

Dacres found himself at the wheel. His fingers were red and brown and sticky. He froze; he knew instantly that he couldn't do it, no matter how badly he wanted to. Impossible and mad. Just getting into the driver's seat terrified him: he'd kill her, he knew.

“The clutch—the clutch,” Darly said.

He was breathing heavily. Something in his chest was grievously unhappy, and wanted to stop, and lie down, and never move again. But at the same time his blood was rushing about, insane.

Trying to keep his voice calm he began, “You're going to have to drive.”

“We have to go!”

“I can't do it.”

She looked at once drawn and livid, and the little light catching her cheek and her earring and her neckline gave these details a gleam in the dark.

She locked her door.

“Do you know how to drive?” he asked her.

She looked at him, furious, and out of the window he saw running shadows. He examined the wheel and the knobs. Impossible.

“Everything's on the wrong side,” he noticed.

He laughed.

“I'd forgotten I was in bloody Canada.”

He laughed. He put the car into gear and it growled like a dog taken from its master—but then settled into life. Dacres stretched his arm grandly over her as he turned to reverse. Lorne's giant face was in the window; he was pulling at the door.

“Shall we?” asked Dacres toothily, as if suggesting tea with the vicar. They laughed, giddy.

The monstrous hand pounded against the glass and he waited to be pulled out, neck first, his head bitten off. But now they were sliding forward, the tires shushing, past the backs of cars over on their right beyond Darly. She smiled happily, as Lorne banged with terrific force at Dacres's door.

“Cheapskate: he just wants you to fill the tank up before you give it back,” she smirked. She gave him a little wave. “Oh, but I didn't get to see it. I didn't get to see the painting. Edward!”

He told her not to fret and accelerated. As they drove past they saw guests gathering outside the front door, huddling under the lamp, as if waiting for sight of a comet or a hero's return. Darly waved like royalty, and Dacres bounced them towards the drive, with Lorne running alongside the car, bellowing her name out, and his, and swearing until eventually he fell away.

Battered and bewildered, Dacres squeezed Darly's thigh. She sprang towards him.

“Let's get married,” she said.

“Yes,” said Dacres. “But tomorrow. First thing.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Her bare shoulders, the red sheet. She was sleeping soundly. He wanted to smooth the hair back from her face, but he didn't want to wake her. He sat on a soft chair, watching; he'd moved newspapers to the floor and folded her clothes. His right hand kneaded his temple. The first light crept in under heavy drapes, finding dust and a dead white moth. He could still taste her skin on his tongue. Asleep, Darly's face was a different person's: it revealed nothing of who she was during the day. Then she grumbled and swallowed, and he knew her again.

Dacres was fully dressed, sitting with one leg crossed over the other like a banker. He was smoking one of her thin cigarettes, exhaling at a low angle so she wouldn't smell the smoke. Her mouth was slightly open black, and watching the bundled sheets rise and fall he thought: the body works like a machine, it's an engine. The scratchy yellow blankets she'd pushed away onto the floor. He could hear the first traffic noises as the city slowly came to, and then a van rumbled by up on the main street, and shook the house and shook the two of them. Thinking about what was coming next he had the bright red brick of the Barcelona train station in his head: he was thinking of Spanish railroad red, he was thinking of nudes and sheets and moods. He had been asleep for a long time, but now he felt he was waking.

They'd careened down the hill into town. Then Dacres had made Darly wait in the car, parked all splayed out like a broken bone, while he went in to the King Edward Hotel to see what was what. He'd seen a face he didn't recognize behind the desk and marched through the lobby, trying to look calm, away from the rotunda, straight to the elevators, following a hunch. He was amazed that he'd driven. He was going to get the biggest suite in the hotel.