The Blue Bath (26 page)

She turned back to him. He was gazing at the portrait, his head tilted to one side.

“This for the Tate?”

He didn’t answer, eyes still on the painting before them.

“Daniel. You can’t do this. You can’t put this on the wall of the Tate.”

“I signed the contract.” He turned to look at her. “With the money we can get away. Then it won’t matter what’s hanging on the walls of some restaurant in London.”

He looked back at the portrait. He wasn’t listening. He wasn’t hearing her.

She followed his gaze to the painting and all its immediate, irrefutable detail, desperation and dread rising in her chest. Here were her sins. Reduced to what fit within this rectangle of stiff cloth. A single image, a single perspective. Without explanation or palliation. And while people might not have recognized her nineteen-year-old face on the walls of Penfields, this was certainly a more familiar face. The canvas seemed to expand before her. Here was what Jonathan would see. What Will would see. It would become the truth. That, she knew, was what art did.

Her heart was racing. No. No. No. She would not allow this to happen. Not now. Not like this. Daniel was saying something now, but she couldn’t hear the words. The sound from the radiator had evolved into a thin, high-pitched scream.

The flat blade was cold against her wrist. Her fingers closed around the wooden handle. He hadn’t seen her pick it up. She moved toward the portrait. Close-up, the detail overwhelmed her. Her thighs, her stomach, the hollow of her hip, the weight of her breasts, her shoulders, her neck. Her face. The ruins of her. She crossed in front of the portrait and stepped behind it.

And then she was gone. The painting was between them now. The blank back of it stiff and tightly drawn between its wooden bracers. A different possibility. Just as real as what was on the other side. She relaxed her fingers and felt the knife slide down the inside of her wrist.

She heard him moving on the other side of the portrait. It had to be now. She lifted the blade over her head. Feeling its lightness, she brought her other hand up and, grasping it desperately in both hands, drove it down with all the force she had inside of her. She felt the canvas give way gratefully under the sudden pressure and heard the ragged sound as she pulled the blade through the thick cloth. The portrait wobbled dangerously and there was a sharp, short cry. She stepped back, pulling the knife out as the painting listed to one side and then clattered to the floor, bringing the easel down with it, and revealing Daniel hunched over, clutching one hand in front of him, eyes wide with pain and confusion. Blood trickled from a small angry gash at the base of his palm.

Seeing the wound triggered an automatic response in her and she reached for him. He recoiled, stepping backward, knocking into a low table and sending various jars and metal containers crashing to the floor. She looked down to see the knife still in her hands, and pushed it from her, sending it spinning across the floor to the far wall, where it lay inert.

Once she was disarmed, Daniel reversed direction, veering past her to the painting. His knees sagged and he fell beside it, leaning across it to inspect the wound, a long vertical tear bisecting her forehead and left cheek. His fingers traced the scar, gently feeling along its edges.

She inched closer, peering at the rip from above. It gaped back at her in mute surprise, a fine down of severed weft softening its hard edges. As her shadow moved across the canvas, she saw that there were several bloodstains just underneath the tear. The largest, a bright red dime-size ellipse, with a short tail pointing downward. He must have been trying to move the portrait, maybe tilt it forward on the easel to see her behind it, when the knife had found him.

He turned to look up at her, his face a mask of confusion. “What did you do?”

She didn’t answer. Looking down, she saw that there was more blood on the canvas now. Small florid drops of it had collected above her shoulder. She watched, transfixed, as more traced a diagonal slanting path down the underside of Daniel’s forearm, falling from his elbow. He saw it, too. “Shit!” He scrambled to the side of the fallen portrait, landing sitting on the floor beside it. She stood frozen, her eyes on the vivid trail of blood migrating down his arm.

As she watched, he drew his hand absently across his shirt, leaving a bloody smear in its wake. The lurid stain woke her from her shock. “Daniel!” She cast about, looking for something to help stanch the flow of blood. There was a collection of paint-covered rags mounded under the legs of the upturned easel. She knelt and reached for them. The floor around the easel had acquired fresh spatter; she could feel it sticking to her. There were several discarded brushes strewn about on the concrete floor, their bristled heads crusted with newly dried pigment.

Kat grabbed a fistful of the rags, but they were too small. Kneeling beside him, she pulled the scarf from her neck and wrapped it around his hand, the blood immediately soaking into the soft material. Up close, she could smell it. A heavy, primal odor. She pulled hard on the ends of the scarf, straining until the flow of blood stopped, and knotted it. Her hands were shaking.

He reached up and touched his fingers to her mouth, the slight pressure parting her lips. She could taste him. It was almost more than she could bear.

“Do you really want to save me?”

“Of course.” She spoke the words softly without moving her lips. After a moment he sagged back against the wall and his fingers fell away. The charcoal outline was above him, already smudged and fading. His eyes fixed somewhere behind her, an expression of despair etched on his face.

“I’ll give you up. If that’s what you need. I’ll do that for you, but you can’t ask me to stop painting you. You can’t take that from me.”

“Why me, Daniel? What about all those other women?”

He turned to face her, his head still resting against the wall behind him. “What other women?”

“The girl from the gallery.” Kat turned to where the sketches had been taped to the wall, but they were no longer there.

Daniel leaned forward, following her gaze to the vacant wall. “Annabel? Her father is paying me to paint her portrait. It’s just for money, Kat. That’s all.”

“But, she was at the gallery with you. And the other women. In New York.”

He shook his head. “None of that is real. It’s all just … Martin thinks it’s good for me to be seen with them.”

She said nothing.

He lifted his head and faced her. “There’s no one else. After you left, I lost myself for a while. I did some things I’m not proud of. But, all these years, it’s only ever been you.” He looked down at the painting and then back up at her, his eyes the color of water. “Don’t you see that?”

She looked down at the portrait beside them. She saw now that the surface had been heavily reworked, wiped down and started again, the layers of paint imbuing the figure with an almost corporeal presence so that it seemed to float above the raw canvas that surrounded it. There was a confidence, a sublimity to the rendering, that made it seem whole even in its unfinished state. She leaned in closer, brushing her fingers against the bright white weave of the still-unpainted spaces.

She lies across the bed. A vertical streak, a willful smudge. All her colors pressed and pulled into the sheets. They bleed together so that in some places it is impossible to say where one ends and the other begins. Her face, turned to the side, seems to consist entirely of darkness and light, in all their infinite combinations. Softened by shadows, she is neither old nor young. Her eyes are closed. The tips of her front teeth visible where her lips part.

The sheet is bunched loosely beside her hip. A vestigial modesty. There is a heaviness, a weariness to her. A stillness, which she has paused within and seems reluctant to leave. It is an image not only of the moment itself, but of all that came before it. That which has already passed.

Buried somewhere among the overlaid paint, Kat recognized the shadow of the girl she used to be. In her eyes maybe and the bones of her face. In the delicate flush of her cheeks and gentle softening of her aspect. It was the kind of insight that came from pure understanding, independent of context. Daniel’s unwavering gaze, undeterred by time or even by absence. And she understood at last that this was what love looked like.

Just as she turned back to Daniel, she heard the rusty rasp of the door swinging open. She hadn’t heard a key in the lock, but she hadn’t seen Daniel close it either. Martin. He stood in the doorway, looking as disheveled as she could remember seeing him, the narrow point of one of his collars poking up indignantly from his shirt. His expression of mild surprise when he saw her quickly escalated into shock as his eyes fell first on the lacerated portrait, then on Daniel’s bloodied shirt and arm.

“What the devil?” He stepped inside and shut the door abruptly behind him, looking from Daniel to Kat and then to the damaged portrait that lay beside them.

“It was an accident,” Kat said. “I … I didn’t see him. I didn’t know he was there.”

Martin’s eyes left the wounded canvas and moved to where Daniel was, still sitting beside the portrait, one hand cradling the other close to his chest. The radiator had run out of breath and was now emitting a frantic metallic clanking.

Kat stood up and took several tentative steps toward Martin. “It was an accident,” she repeated.

Martin’s eyes traveled around the room, cataloguing the damage. “You should go.” His eyes were dull and dark in his face. He didn’t look at her, but moved farther into the studio, stepping over the upturned easel, squinting down at Daniel against the wall.

He was still talking. “Go now. I’ll take care of this.” She started to protest, but he interrupted. “He needs a doctor. Maybe an ambulance. I know you want to be here, but how would it look?” His words were conciliatory, but his voice was impatient and agitated.

Daniel was trying to hold his hand to his chest, but it kept falling toward his side, leaving rust-colored arcs on his shirt. It was not an unfamiliar sight. She could almost believe it was cast-off paint. The knot must have loosened. “You need to tighten it. He’s bleeding.” Kat took a step toward Daniel, but her foot slipped in a puddle of something on the floor. She caught herself on the edge of a table and regained her footing.

“Katherine!” Martin’s voice was harsh and close. She looked up to see he was beside her, between her and Daniel. There was rage in his eyes now. She moved to go around him. With a quickness that surprised her, his hand shot out and he grabbed her by the wrist, holding her firmly. Her heart was beating very quickly and she could feel her pulse compressed under his fingers. She could smell his breath, musty and unfamiliar, and pulled back from him, but he grabbed her other arm, shaking her roughly. She opened her mouth, but no words came. All the breath had gone out of her.

“Take your hands off her!” Daniel’s voice like thunder from behind them.

Martin froze, his hands unyielding, digging into her skin. Daniel was moving toward them. He stopped just before he reached them, his gaze fixed on Martin. After a moment, she saw something pass between them. Martin lifted his hands from her, nodded briefly, and stepped back. She started toward Daniel, but he held out a hand to stop her.

Around them everything was still. Even the shadows on the wall behind him were fixed in place. The only movement was Daniel’s gaze following Martin as he retreated behind her. He waited a beat before shifting his eyes back to her. There was something in his expression. Something that got her attention.

“It was never any less real, you know. It was never any less real because only we could see it.”

“I know.”

She met his eyes and for a brief moment there was nothing but the slender thread of their gazes. There was a lightness in his face, a peace that she had not seen there before. He smiled at her, a small one, but real.

“Go.” He said it softly, to her alone.

Behind her Martin opened the door. She kept her distance, stepping sideways around him into the hallway. Both men watched her leave, but her eyes remained on Daniel, arms now braced against a table. His face was ashen.

Just before the door swung closed she caught sight of the damaged painting where it had fallen. It wasn’t a large cut. Maybe six inches. But it was irrevocable. Terminal. The door closed in front of her.

She stood in the deserted hallway, waiting for her breathing to return to normal. As she turned to walk toward the lift, she thought she heard the chink of the dead bolt being slid into place.

She thought she might see the ambulance before she left, or hear it at least, but she didn’t. She drove aimlessly, following the flow of traffic through gray and indifferent midmorning streets and roundabouts. Daniel would be fine. Martin would see to that. She repeated it to herself. Gradually, her hands stopped shaking. The lingering odor of paint surrounded her. It was on her clothes. Small spots and streaks on the knees of her pants. Her wrists ached. When she looked down at them she saw there were red stains on the edge of her sleeve as well. These were not paint.

It was afternoon when she arrived home. She had a vague sense that she had forgotten something. The tall crystal vase stood empty on the side table. She hadn’t bought her lilies this week. Perhaps that was it. Jonathan must have noticed it, too. The doorbell rang later with a large bouquet of the blooms from him. Kat laid the flowers on the counter and untied the coarse brown cord wrapped tightly around their damp stems. As she separated them, their insistent perfume was already filling the air, reaching for the edges of the large room. She could hear the housekeeper moving about across the hall. The radio was on to the BBC and she listened to the news while filling the vase with water. Using a small pointed scissors, she cut the ends off each of the thick stems before arranging them one by one inside the tall, angular container.

She heard his name first. Suspended, without before or after. And immediately she was alert—listening to what followed it while desperately trying to claw back the words that had preceded it. For the first few moments, these fragments, conveyed in the crisp home-counties accent of the BBC newsreader, were vague enough for her to doubt.