Sheer Blue Bliss (9 page)

‘It's a lovely party,' she says.

‘I very much admire your work.'

‘Such a long time ago, dear.' Someone fills her glass, offers her something from a tray – asparagus on little bits of biscuit. She puts it in her mouth, it's her least favourite of the circulating tit-bits, can't understand all the song and dance about asparagus – soggy, wee-wee smelling stuff. Wine good though, tough, puts a fur on the tongue. The young man has three studs in one ear and many rings in the other, otherwise he's smartly dressed with a thin tie that looks like leather. Wonderful. Patrick would surely have had rings in his ears, piercings. She saw in a magazine in Deborah's office that some of them have all sorts pierced, nipples, eyebrows, navels, even their what-nots. She likes it, sort of tribal, though she'd draw the line at the foreskin if she was a man. One woman here has at least thirty studs and rings in her ears and nose and a Celtic design tattooed on her neck. Makes you wonder about the rest of her. She, like most of them, is dressed from head to toe in black. Connie stands out all right in her green.

‘And do you still paint?' The man persists.

‘You've asked me that,' Connie says. ‘I do like your earrings, do you call them ear-rings or is that sissy?'

He shrugs, sulky and theatrical. ‘Call them what you like.'

He reminds her of whatsisname, the photographer chap. ‘Are you a homo, dear?' she says and the poor man chokes on his wine. Oh it's lovely to be old, you can be quite outrageous.

Photographs are taken and she's glad she's made the effort with her dress. True she
is
the only woman not decked out in black, a sore thumb at a funeral springs to mind, but then it distinguishes her, too, the rest of them like a foil. She smiles brazenly at the camera, sod the teeth, and raises her glass, poses beside Patrick, feeling his eyes warm on the green of her dress, the purple of her hat which she kept on in the end because she never did get round to getting her hair dyed.

‘You've been offered a huge sum for the rights on a new edition of Mount's Memoir,' a voice says and Connie squints to connect it to an aubergine mouth.

‘Is that so?'

‘I wonder, Miss Benson, how does such a renewal of interest in Mount affect your personal memories?'

‘Not a blinking jot.'

‘And I believe negotiations are underway for the film rights?'

‘I never could allow it.'

‘Not in favour?'

‘It would be pure porno, you see.' Connie pauses. ‘I could do with the spondulicks … been shopping today … the cost of things! Like my shoes?' She kicks up a foot and catches the owner of the aubergine mouth smartly on the shin. ‘I do beg your pardon,' she says, but the mouth and the shin have gone.

The voices are like a cloud above her head. She wanders below it breathing in perfume, alcohol, breath. She is on a level with bosoms and armpits, sees the red mottled top of an arm squeezed into a too-tight sleeve, sees a man with a smear of something white – horse-radish? – on his lapel. Once, shortly after Patrick's going, she tried to drown but she couldn't stay under. Her head
would
come to the surface, her mouth would not open to the sea and as she gave up, came up, gasped the air into her burning lungs, a seagull swooping down close to her head gave a derisive laugh. Why does that come to her now, submerged by voices, fogged by drink? Deborah comes across to her, long flat body explicit in her tight little dress. How does her lipstick stay so exact? ‘How are you doing?'

‘Very well.'

‘Good.'

‘Except for my feet, killing me.'

‘Mine, too … just say when you're through. Shall I introduce you to …' and more questions, more photographs and something much more agreeable to eat, little toasts that taste of prawn with seeds all over that get stuck under her denture. Connie forces her tongue up underneath and champs it back in place.

‘After the death of Mount you never painted again …' a voice breathless with romance and yet borne on breath that reeks of garlic. Someone almost as short as Connie though three times the breadth at least with most improbably coloured hair.

‘Did I not?' Connie tilts her head playfully to one side and her hat slides. She clamps it back.

‘Your inspiration died with him.'

The face is innocent and sincere, the eyes soft. This is a person who has yet to be hurt. The last mouthful of wine tastes sour, her mouth sore. Only choice now to flee or to carry on drinking. A bottle floats past and she holds out her glass. ‘Sorry, dear?'

The voice more hesitant, curling up at the end. ‘Your inspiration? Died with him?'

‘If indeed he died.' This wine white and acidic. She swills it round her mouth. At least it might bleach her teeth.

‘You think he might still be …'

‘He would be ninety-nine, but then I'd put nothing past Patrick.' Connie laughs, looking at the credulous face. ‘No, dear. I'm certain that he's dead. I didn't feel like painting for a long time, I wouldn't put it no grander than that. More grandly, rather. Would you … if your what have you … boyfriend or so on snuffed it? Would you feel like painting?'

‘Well, no, I suppose not.'

‘Do you paint?'

‘Well, no …'

‘Well, then.'

People are thinning out and Deborah finds her. ‘Had enough?' she says. ‘A great success, I think. Let's get a cab.' They make their way out between hands and smiles and continental-style kisses from people she's scarcely met for God's sake! Gusts of alcoholic breath, promises of all sorts, articles, dinners, even a TV documentary. And someone wanting to write her biography. Now, there's a thought.

‘I'm pooped,' Connie says. ‘I want my bed.'

‘Nothing to eat then, not a quiet little supper? I know the sweetest Italian …'

Connie can barely shake her head. Quite suddenly she has had it. She longs to ease off the pinching twinkling shoes and the hot velvet hat, to unfasten her bra and remove the irritating lace knickers that have crawled up between her buttocks, to find an interesting little bottle in the refrigerator, to fill her pipe and climb into bed. Maybe a few peanuts. Maybe room-service, try one of those BLTs. Maybe even the adult channel again, a few minutes of young pounding flesh might be just the job to send her off to sleep. Maybe, maybe not. But what is utterly crucial is to be alone. In the rainy flash and roar of the London streets, Connie has a clear sharp stab of longing for the sea and for the peace of her own place beside it.

EIGHTEEN

Patrick is everywhere. People are stopping in front of him, leaning forward to read the titles, dates and notes mounted beside each portrait. Patrick like a prophet, bearded and wise; Patrick close-up and in the distance; Patrick in profile and Patrick head-on. Here he leans over a spade in a green, green garden. Here in similar pose he seems the dark centre of a brilliant flower. Here he bends over his desk, reading glasses slipping down his nose. Here he holds a purple orchid in his hand. And here is the new portrait in which, suddenly, strangely, he is young.

Tony stares at the face, the look in the eyes that is … a
blaze
almost of outrageous, knowing, bliss. Tony grins, understands. That is the bliss that will be his. Feels proud and jealous at once. Jealous that other people are staring at his Patrick. Liked it best when nobody knew, when Patrick was obscure, was his alone. But there has to be a price for this,
this
, what is meant to be, what he has been waiting for.

Patrick. The Seven Steps to Bliss.
Only stay open
, says Patrick from somewhere in his gut and Tony is,
is
open, more than he has ever been before, open to what comes next. A woman moves in front of him, gets in his way. She's looking at the portrait of Patrick in the garden with the hills behind, in the foreground are huge leaves – rhubarb? Patrick dwarfed and yet magnificent. It's a clumsy painting, early, he sees from the dates, yet it has caught Patrick's movement, his foot on a spade, hands brown on the handle, a moment of concentration. The woman is wearing black, a thin black dress, short sleeves. Her arms are very white. He stands close behind her, very white, and there are tiny moles above the elbow. Below the elbow the arms are downy, long light-brown hairs. Maybe she feels his scrutiny. She turns and frowns at him but he smiles.

‘Like it?' he says.

She looks back at the painting. ‘Yes … it's charming … kind of naive … but really it's the later stuff I love … more substantial, I guess.' She moves away. The scent she leaves behind her is like almonds, very faint. Tony feels the leak of saliva inside his cheeks. Follows her to a portrait of a woman.

‘Sachavarelle Mount RA,' he reads. ‘Substantial enough for you?' She laughs but looks at him oddly. She can't weigh him up and that's how he likes it. Keep 'em guessing, Tony. Leans forward as if to look more closely at the picture and breathes in the almond smell that seems to be coming from her hair, fair, flyaway hair. The material of the dress clings and he can see the shape of her shoulder blades, a ridge that must be the back fastening of her bra. Her back must be so very white. With little moles like on her arms? Would the bra be black like the dress, or white like the skin, or …

Sachavarelle Mount RA sits on a wicker chair, in a conservatory perhaps. Plants everywhere, a cup and saucer balanced on her knees. Her face is solid and pink, many pinks, when you look close you can see how many shades of pink and grey and even blue go to make up that colour, clever stuff. She's big, hair heavy grey, eyes warm and wet looking like a kind dog's eyes and there is a dog, a black-and-white one sleeping by her feet.

‘Now this is what I call great,' the woman says.

‘His first wife.'

‘Only
wife – he never married Constance Benson. And not just a
wife
either. Brilliant in her own right. Seen her stuff in the Tate? Landscapes, still lifes? And some great pictures of her son.'

Tony shakes his head. He knows the paintings exist, of course, but they haven't seemed important, oblique to his purpose. Now he feels irritated that he has to say no. ‘And
her
portrait of Benson, here in the twentieth-century room. That famous nude by a window …'

Tony shakes his head again.

‘You
must
know it, it's on a book cover, a book about women's art that went with a Channel 4 series …'

He likes her dress, the smell of her hair, the sprinkle of pinpoint moles on the white of her arms. There's a mole beside her mouth that disappears into a fold of dimple when she smiles. He forces his eyes away from her and meets Patrick's. Patrick was a goat all right, but Tony must concentrate, stay open, must not fall into this trap of attraction which in any case he could never follow through, must never. That is where the danger lies. He cannot have happiness in that way. That is why the elixirs are vital – another route to bliss. All the same something inside him stirs at the scent of her. If he could only touch her skin, smooth down that flyaway hair, that would be enough. As his gaze lingers on the skin of her upper arm, the texture changes. Goose-pimples?

‘What do you think of this?' She stops by a portrait of a bloke with blue eyes, very rough hair.

‘OK.'

‘This
is Red, you know, Sachavarelle's son. I read somewhere that she had some sort of affair with him.'

‘What, Benson?' He snorts. Load of bollocks.

She shrugs. ‘I was going to have a quick coffee,' she says. ‘Fancy one? Then I could show you the Mount.'

He pauses.

‘Only if you've time …' She looks down, folds her arms across her chest, her cheeks gone very red.

‘OK. A quick coffee.' Approval on Patrick's face? ‘Just quick, I'm …'

‘I haven't long either,' she says.

Somewhere, Tony read Patrick described as a sexual adventurer. Odd way to put it, makes Tony think of jungles, mountains, torrential rivers. Sex is far more dangerous than that. Awful memories, the shocking looseness of a big breast, reek of fingers more clinging than onions that you have to scrub and scrub. No. No more. And the way a head will loll suddenly even when you didn't mean –

No, oh Christ no, not here in the bright and pictures. Look at the tiles on the floor and how square they are and what colours. And look at her neat legs in thick tights, the short dress and Doc Martens. She is the sort of woman he would like, if. Nothing wrong in thinking that. Nothing wrong in a cup of coffee. Slim and trim, small breasts, smell of almonds almost a baby smell. Intelligent, too. She walks ahead of him bulging bag over one shoulder. Feels good to be walking with a pretty woman in a public place. In her smile a promise? You don't want the promises but you like the promise anyway.

She pours three little tubs of milk into her coffee and tells him about her job. She's a journalist, well,
reporter
, she wrinkles up her nose, tells him about the shit jobs she usually gets.

‘How old are you?' he asks.

‘Blunt, aren't you?' He waits. ‘Twenty-five.' There's a long pause, her cheeks are very red now, from the coffee, or from his eyes on her so close.

‘You?'

‘Thirty.'

‘No!'

Where is this leading?

She giggles. ‘Well, I'm glad we've got that straight.'

He drinks his coffee black. When she picked up three milks he assumed they were to share, now he doesn't want to show his error by getting up to fetch some more. It's bitter coffee.

‘And you do?' she says.

‘Write,' he says.

‘Oh?' She looks pleased. ‘Write what? I mean would I have heard of you?'

He shrugs, swallows coffee, looks off into the distance.

She laughs and the tip of her tongue touches her teeth which are a little crooked in the front, one crossed slightly over the other. His finger itches to touch the mole on her cheek, to feel her flesh dimple round it when she smiles.