The Blue Bath (21 page)

She looked at his face, his lower lip still held between his teeth. They had talked about this. About how Nana was in heaven now.

“I have an idea.”

Kat handed the drawing back to him and kneeled down. Will looked perplexed for a moment before his face brightened and he climbed up her back, hoisting his legs over her shoulders one after the other. She steadied herself, her fingers pushing into the damp ground, and then stood up. His hands were on her forehead. He was heavier than she expected, something she had come to expect. As she straightened up, her hands around his bare feet, he let go. She felt his legs go taut against the sides of her neck as he stretched up, raising his drawing closer to the sky. They stood together like that for a while in the fading light, her feet sinking into the soft ground as he pressed her into the earth, a delicious ache forming in her shoulders.

In the early-evening silence after Will was asleep, she wandered through the house. Light from the streetlamp shone through the drawing-room window, illuminating the four paint samples on the wall. She could not conceive of what any of them would look like spread across the whole of the room. How was she meant to choose from something so small?

The newspaper lay where she had left it on the table, open to the review of Daniel’s show. As she reached down for it, her eyes fell on the image of the painting of the jade-green comb in her hair and she remembered where she had seen it.

They had been walking through the Marais late one afternoon when the comb had caught her eye in a shopwindow and she stopped to admire it. Looking at it through the thin glass, she could see it in her hair, could see what Daniel would see. Moving on from the shop, she realized suddenly that she was alone. Turning back, she had seen Daniel, still at the shopwindow. His face close to the glass, eyes concentrating intently on the comb. Now it was there. In her hair. She folded the paper carefully and carried it to the kitchen, pushing it down the side of the bin under the rubbish.

Kat climbed the stairs to Will’s room. It was by far the most densely furnished room in the entire house. In the soft glow of the night-light, she saw his plush animals arranged along the floor beside his bed, their positions reflecting their standing in his heart. A surprisingly gaunt gray elephant occupied pride of place at the center of the arrangement, his large limp ears, the recipients of countless secrets, draped loosely over his companions.

She leaned down to watch his face in sleep, knowing that there was nothing that she wouldn’t sacrifice for him. A truth that at once sustained and haunted her. Exhausted, she sank into the overstuffed chair in the corner.

chapter fourteen

It was, perhaps, the smallest measure of time. The moment between sleeping and waking when everything was as it had been before. It was gone before she took her first conscious breath. Replaced in a rush of memory. In the near darkness of the early morning, she kept her eyes shut and willed herself to remain still as it broke over her. But her body betrayed her, calling up sensations, playing them out on her motionless limbs like a movie flickering on a screen. For a while she was unsure if it was memory or desire. And then she wanted to sleep again. Just to have him once more. Just to feel him leave her. Just to lose him again.

And then Will’s voice. “Mummy, did you sleep in my room for all of the night?”

She opened her eyes.

That morning, she made Will egg and soldiers for breakfast and then walked him to school, one hand in his, her other hand empty. Returning home, she climbed the steps outside the house, stopping before the front door, toes balanced on the top step, heels hanging off the edge, the polished lion staring back at her, brass ring clenched tightly between bared teeth. Not a hundred yards away on the opposite side of the road, she had spied the distinctive low haunch of the silver sports car. Surprise was not what she felt. She couldn’t see him, but she felt him watching her.

After a moment, she turned and walked back down the steps. As she reached her car she heard the hollow growl of an engine revving to life. She didn’t have to look in her mirror to know he was behind her as she drove into Shoreditch. She concentrated instead on the roads, gripping the wheel tightly as a black cab stopped short in front of her and lorries edged dangerously close to her lane. A bicyclist ran a stoplight just in front of King’s Cross and she caught her breath as a car missed him by inches. All around her the city was suddenly crowded and dangerous.

She parked her car within sight of the entrance and watched him enter the building. She sat in the car, hands still on the wheel. There didn’t seem to be anyone about, but she let five minutes pass before following him inside.

“You shouldn’t have done that. Someone might have seen you.”

He pulled her to him. She pushed back, but his arms were already around her waist. She gasped as his hands slipped under her sweater and up her back.

“No one saw me.”

“Someone might have.”

“No one did.”

“It’s reckless.”

He leaned his forehead against hers. He knew that her words were not intended for him.

“I know.”

His head slipped lower, his mouth moving on her neck. She tilted her head back, her body rising to meet his. And then he was pulling the sweater up over her head.

Later, resting under his hands, she looked down at the layered composition of their convergence. In the foreground the span of his arm across her waist. Below that, the long gentle camber of her thigh flung over his hip. Listening to his heart beating against her chest, she knew that it was worth the risk.

She scanned the room, taking in the well-organized space with its industrial furniture and fans and neatly labeled shallow drawers. The sleek metal tubes of paint, dangerously sharp pencils in their clean glass jars, unopened boxes of charcoal, pads of sketching paper, and different-size brushes and knives, laid out like in a surgery. The bright, neat space was far away from the rue Garancière. This building had originally been a factory. An efficient space designed to produce things. A place of expediency and of quotas, not of passion and creativity. It all seemed cold and contrived. Borrowed and temporary, like the car. Separate and distinct from Daniel. Above her, clouds swirled in the milky sky. Daniel shifted beside her. He was awake.

“Did they sell? The paintings in the show.” Her voice seemed insubstantial and small in the large space.

“Yes.” She felt him breathe the word into her hair.

“All of them?”

“Nearly. Martin wanted to save some for New York.” She tensed at the name, but Daniel didn’t seem to notice. His hands moved slowly, deliberately, over her skin.

She thought of the paintings and of what they represented. Arranged on the walls of the gallery, tracing the arc of their story. Now where would they go? Scattered in various strangers’ homes and offices and galleries. Separate. Out of context. She imagined the painting of her in the blue bath hanging over Malcolm Jeffries’s desk. What would their new owners see in them? They would never know their entire story, but maybe they would see pieces of the passion—both bright and dark.

She wondered if anyone would really know the entire story. Or if they would simply be drawn to the parts of it that appealed to them. And once they had found what they needed, they would stop looking for more. Had Daniel stopped looking after finding her? By leaving him had she given him back something to search for?

She closed her eyes and concentrated on his hands on her skin. She thought about how the paintings had become something other than what she had known them to be.

“It doesn’t bother you to give them up?” she asked, her eyes still closed. His fingertips did not leave her skin, tracing her shoulders, her neck, her jaw, mapping the constellations of freckles.

“No. They brought you back. What more could they owe me?”

Watching as the whole sky drifted past piece by piece framed within the windows above them, she moved the flat of her hand over the scarred topography of his body, reading it like Braille. She was sure that she remembered every last scar, but there were new ones now. She lingered on the thick, raised lines that ran along his wrist above his veins. And then slowly, deliberately, she drew her hand across the line of his shoulder into the hollow of his throat and then down his chest and felt him turn in to her, his hands seeking her instinctively.

He lingered just inside the door as she was preparing to leave that afternoon. As she came toward him he hesitated, his eyes on her face.

“Look. I’ve got some money coming. Enough for us. Enough for a long time. So you don’t need to worry about that. We can get a place. Maybe in Hoxton. Or in the country. Wherever you want.”

Kat wondered briefly where the money was coming from. If the bulk of the paintings had sold before the show had gained momentum, then the real money would be made in the aftermarket. The early buyers would be the true beneficiaries of Daniel’s success.

In the days that followed, she moved between them, the two halves of her heart. Each one perfectly formed, each whole within its own world, overlapping only on her body. The faint heat of breath on her skin. The feel of a hand in hers. A half-heard whisper. She was overcome by each, forsaking all others, but faithful to neither.

They didn’t have long. Only a few hours. She learned to tell time by the spreading shadows on the studio walls. She would go to Daniel after dropping Will at school, leaving in time to make it back down to Kensington to park the car on the street outside the house and then dash to collect Will from school. The two of them would walk home through the park, stopping to feed the ducks at Round Pond—shunning the swans that hissed at them. The darkness came so early that sometimes the side gates would be closed and they would have to walk up to Lancaster Gate to exit. As they made their way along the top of the park in the gathering dark, Will gripped her hand a little tighter and Kat wondered where all the lights she had seen from the rooftop had gone.

It was far from routine, but every time she made the journey, retracing the circle from one to the other and then back again, she felt the momentum behind her movements. She was aware that the lines between them were being built up. It was within these lines that Kat began to think about a house in the country. Somewhere with a good school for Will. Maybe somewhere by the sea. The images flashed across her consciousness, leaving trails of light in their wake. She knew that it wasn’t that simple, but maybe it wasn’t that complicated either.

It was only at night that she was alone. She slept soundly, a fact that surprised her, and if she had dreams, she didn’t remember them. She wondered at how quickly it became familiar. How easily he had returned to her. So that she was not entirely sure what she remembered from the day before and what she remembered from twenty years ago. She wondered where he slept. If he stayed at the studio or spent his nights at the Dorchester.

*   *   *

D
ANIEL WAS BENT
over his phone when Kat arrived the next morning, checking his messages, she guessed. She walked around the edges of the studio surveying the canvases leaning against the walls in various stages of completion. She noted that there were no figures, only abstractions. The sketches of the girl that had been on the wall were gone. She picked an apple out of the bowl on the table and rubbed it absently on the fabric of her sleeve. A white paper coffee cup that hadn’t been there yesterday sat next to the bowl, a stack of unopened post beside it. She ran her finger along the top envelope as she passed by. The return address was the Tate.

“What’s the story with this?”

Across the room, Daniel lifted his head as she indicated the winter landscape. Its accretions of pigment pulled flat into thick, overlapping strips on the canvas.

He told her that he had found nature in New York City. That he had become captivated by certain trees in Central Park. Looking closer at the canvas, she noticed the long vaulted canopy of branches receding into the background of the painting and recognized the twin stands of elms lining the Promenade. The only straight path in Central Park. Seeing such a familiar place through his eyes delighted her.

“Do you like it?”

“I do.”

“It’s yours,” he said without hesitation.

For an instant she pictured it on the wide wall above the hearth in the drawing room. She caught herself almost immediately, but not before noting how the stark branches and bold shades would have provided an elegant counterpoint to the scene outside the window. As she turned away from it, her eyes came to rest on her parietal silhouette, suspended above the ground. He must have seen her looking at it.

“You’ll like that one better once I finish it.”

“What will you do with it?”

“Haven’t decided yet.”

“Maybe you should leave it the way it is.”

“On the wall?” He raised an eyebrow. “It won’t last long there.”

“I like it there. I like that only we can see it.”

He stood and came toward her. His hands found hers, lifting them above her head and pressing them lightly against the wall.

“Of course, if I were to do something with it, the next step would be color.”

His fingertips stroked her open palm, moving down the inside of her forearm, flattening it against the wall. His other hand moving down the side of her neck, his fingers on her warm skin. She knew what he was doing. Seeking out all her colors. Arranging the progression of shades on his palette from light to dark. From the palm of her hand to all her shadowed places.

*   *   *

T
HE NEXT DAY
Kat pulled the door shut behind her and hurried down the steps. Under her arm was a paper bag containing bread and cheese. They couldn’t live on apples alone. It was the same food she used to bring home for them in Paris. Tourist food, he had called it. Smiling at the memory, she was only partially aware of the sound of a car door being opened and her name being spoken.

“Where to, Mrs. Bowen?”

She stopped short, coming face-to-face with Jonathan’s driver, who stood on the pavement beside the black car. Farther down the road behind him a gate creaked open and a lithe figure emerged trailing several sleek brown dachshunds.