Before the Poison (17 page)

‘How did you meet?’ I asked, as we approached the tenement building.

Sam flashed me a smile. ‘At a local artists’ exhibition in the indoor market in summer. It was 19 July, I remember, the day the Olympics started in Helsinki. There’d been all that fuss about the Russians coming back in.’

‘And Grace?’

‘She was just browsing around the exhibits. I thought she looked stunning. If you’d only seen her . . .’ He shook his head. ‘“Age cannot wither her, nor custom stale her infinite variety”. Age just didn’t come into it. It was a warm day, and she was wearing a yellow summer frock and a wide-brimmed hat with a matching band and a feather in it. You might think it odd, but one of the first things I noticed was her feet. She was wearing light, high-heeled Italian sandals, and you didn’t see them very often in Richmond. Very elegant ankles, she had, and a fine arch.’

‘The artist’s eye?’ I remarked.

He shot me a wicked grin. ‘Exactly.’ The twinkle was still in his eye, all these years later. ‘She also carried a fan with an oriental design, which she used to swish the humid air about now and then. A bit affected, but attractive, nonetheless. Anyway, we got talking about one of the paintings she was thinking of buying for her sewing room, a rather anaemic watercolour of Easby Abbey, I thought, and I was trying to steer her towards buying one of mine. I needed the money. In the end, she realised what I was up to and laughed.’

‘Did she buy it?’

‘Yes. We went for a cup of tea in the market square, all perfectly innocent, you understand. Like I said before, I used to fiddle about with cars and mechanical stuff a lot back then, too, made a bit of money at it. She said she had a Vincent she was having a bit of a problem with, and I said I’d have a look at it. I asked if I could sketch her portrait in return. She knew quite a lot about art, music and poetry. She was a fan of the Pre-Raphaelites, whom I thought represented a sort of overblown eroticism. We disagreed, argued, but it didn’t matter. That’s how it all started. I was smitten from the beginning.’

‘And Grace?’

‘I rather like to believe I amused her. You have to remember, we were both very shy. This sort of thing was new to both of us.’

‘She told you that?’

‘That she hadn’t had any other lovers since her marriage? Yes. I was very jealous. I’m sure I questioned her relentlessly. She did tell me that an officer kissed her once, during the war, but that was all.’

‘So why then? Why you?’

Sam paused and stared into space. ‘God only knows. She was bored, unhappy. She’d been living a lie for too long.’ He shrugged.

‘The painting she bought?’ I asked. ‘Do you remember what it was?’

‘Do I remember? How could I forget? It was an oil painting of the lime kiln opposite Kilnsgate House. She hung it over the fireplace in one of the upstairs rooms, at the back. That was
her
room. She used it for sewing and reading and getting away from her husband for a bit of peace and quiet, and she had a lovely antique roll-top walnut escritoire where she used to sit and write her letters. She recognised the view immediately, of course, and we both thought it odd that I’d been out there several times making preparatory sketches and she hadn’t seen me. You usually do notice strangers out Kilnsgarthdale way.’

‘It’s still there,’ I said. ‘The painting. I like it.’ What Sam had just said excited me in a way I couldn’t explain. It was
my
study now, Grace’s old sewing room. In a way, it had chosen me. Sam’s painting of the lime kiln still hung on the wall, the chair where she had sat reading or sewing into the small hours still stood near by, the roll-top escritoire where she had written her letters and dealt with household matters was now my work desk.

‘Thank you,’ said Sam.

‘Did you ever see the family portrait at Kilnsgate, in the vestibule?’

Sam made a face. ‘Oh, my God, yes. Vivian Mountjoy, an old pal of Ernest Fox’s from the golf club. Perfectly dreadful, isn’t it?’

‘I think the artist caught Grace’s inner turmoil quite well.’

Sam gave me a stern look.

‘What about the boy, Randolph?’ I asked, sensing that it was probably a good idea to change the subject. ‘Didn’t he get in the way?’

‘He was away with some relatives in Devon for the summer holidays. Seaside. Then, in the autumn, he went back to boarding school.’

We arrived at the flat, and I must confess that the stairs gave me more trouble than they did Sam, though his knees seemed to be giving him a bit of gyp. He grinned at me through his pain and said, ‘I’ve been thinking of moving for years, but I probably never will. It’s too much trouble. I’ve acquired far too many possessions. Besides, I’d never be able to afford anywhere as grand as this now. They’ll probably have to carry me out in a box.’

He led me through to the living room and poured us both a generous measure of Armagnac, before flopping down in a well-worn armchair. I noticed a slight sheen of sweat on his brow. He lit a small cigar, the first I had seen him smoke. ‘Another little indulgence,’ he said. ‘But only after dinner, and only the one.’

‘It was an excellent meal,’ I said, raising my glass. ‘Thank you.’

‘My pleasure. As I said, I don’t get many English visitors these days. How are things in old Blighty?’

‘Same as ever. The taxes are too high and the standard of living is miserable. Cutbacks all over the place. I understand you still travel there quite often?’

‘For sales and exhibitions sometimes. But I tend to live a life of luxury when I’m there. Nice hotels, gentlemen’s clubs, high-priced escorts, expensive restaurants. It’s not the same as actually being part of the fabric of life, the way I used to be, paying taxes and worrying about bills and all that. Not exactly grass roots.’

‘Well, you still wouldn’t find too much fancy stuff in Richmond,’ I said. ‘For that, they tell me, you have to go to Northallerton or Harrogate.’

‘Some things never change. Grace used to love going shopping in Harrogate.’

‘What did you do after the trial?’

Sam paused before answering. ‘Nothing. Not for a while. I stayed on at the flat in town at first, but people threw stones at the windows and scrawled obscenities on the door, so the landlord chucked me out. I couldn’t get any work. I went back to live with my parents for a while, up at the farm. They didn’t approve of what I’d done, of course, but they were good to me. I suppose it’s true that home is the place they always have to take you in. I still hoped there’d be a reprieve or something, that it would all turn out to be just a bad dream.’

‘Did all the townspeople turn against you?’

‘No. Not all. Some offered sympathy, some pitied me, and some pretended nothing had ever happened. Wilf always stuck by me, I’ll give him that.’

‘Did you go to Armley?’

‘Once. Just to see it. I knew where it was, of course. My uncle lived in Wortley. I just stood outside, next to the school, and stared up. It was a forbidding building, like some dank medieval fortress.’

‘It still is,’ I said, ‘though there are modern additions now.’

‘I didn’t want to be anywhere near there, when they . . . you understand? Call me a coward if you like, but I simply couldn’t face it. I moved to London, then travelled around the Continent for a couple of years, then I came here in the summer of 1956. Grace wrote me a very nice letter just before she died. A bit stiff, perhaps, a bit formal, but considering the circumstances, she was hardly going to pour out her soul. Still, she remained affectionate and tender to the end.’

‘What did she say?’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘Now,
that
I’m not going to tell you!’

‘Fair enough.’

He gazed at me for a moment as if considering something, then got slowly to his feet. ‘Come with me,’ he said.

I followed Sam down the hall, then he turned left along another corridor. Just how large was this apartment? I wondered. After another turn, we arrived at a door, which he opened, turning on the light and standing aside to let me enter. ‘Sorry it’s so untidy,’ he said.

It wasn’t really untidy, just cluttered, and there wasn’t a great deal of space to move around. We were standing in a small room, not much more than a storage area, really. Several shelves were piled high with sketchbooks, and stacks of canvases leaned against the walls. He searched through a heap on one of the shelves and pulled out a large, nicely bound sketchbook and handed it to me. I opened the pages. Inside, I found sketch after sketch of the same beautiful woman I had seen on the wall at Kilnsgate. I felt my breath catch in my throat. For one absurd moment, the image of the reflection in the wardrobe mirror also flashed across my mind. It was foolish, I told myself. I hadn’t seen the figure clearly enough to recognise her. My imagination was playing tricks on me again.

‘Grace,’ I said.

Sam nodded.

Some were nudes. I could see the firmness of her breasts, the little mole just over her heart and another beside her navel, the triangle of hair between her legs rendered like a mysterious dark mist. Her tummy was slightly rounded, her thighs slim, tapering down to shapely calves, exquisite ankles and small, delicate feet. Though her skin was pale, it wasn’t without blemishes, discoloured patches and perhaps rather more moles than you would expect.

Some of the sketches were close-ups of various parts of her anatomy, a hand, an arm, a torso, and some were portraits, head and shoulders. There was a challenge in her gaze, her wide mouth, lips slightly parted, her big dark eyes narrowed as if she were squinting to see something beyond the artist, the tumbling black waves of her hair falling over her straight shoulders. Some of the sketches showed her lying on her back, hands behind her head with her eyes closed, a serene expression on her face, dozing in a field of grass and wild flowers, some close up, others with cliffs and sea in the background.

I must have been holding my breath as I looked at them, for I felt a sudden need for air. I turned to the door.

‘There’s more,’ Sam said.

He reached into a stack of canvases and handed over the first one. It was an oil painting of a pose from one of the sketches, in which Grace reclined not unlike Goya’s Nude Maja on a chaise longue. It was a good painting, I thought, trying to be objective, the lines flowed well, curves and loops, the swell of her hips, the draped fabric, the light and shade were all evocative, mysterious, hinting at pleasure enjoyed, or yet to come.

Another canvas showed her head and shoulders from behind against a neutral background, emphasising the contrast of her dark tresses against the pale skin of her long neck and symmetrical shoulders. It reminded me of a Dali painting I had seen in St Petersburg, Florida, once.

Another showed her full face, head slightly inclined. She was in profile, almost pouting, sad or distracted, absorbed elsewhere. One of the dark moods, perhaps, that Sam had spoken of.

There were more: Grace in a meadow kneeling to pick a flower, Grace naked on a bed looking playful and mischievous, Grace dipping her hand in the sea water, its impressionist surface sparkling like diamonds into the distance. Grace against a dark window, the moon outside casting a pale ghostly light on one side of her face.

One thing they all had in common was that when you looked at her, you never thought of age. Later, I calculated that she must have been close to forty when they were painted, but it didn’t show. There was no doubt that Sam had idealised her image and projected his own desire into his creations, but they gave me a definite, palpable sense of Grace, something I had been unable to grasp before, when I was chasing after whispers, searching for the motif, the theme, or the telling detail that would bring her to life. And here it was, in Sam Porter’s storeroom. A cascade of images of Grace, with nothing hidden but her soul, though I even fancied I could glimpse that in certain expressions, certain poses, certain turns of the head and angles of the neck. I felt intoxicated by her, dizzy, entranced, under her spell.

Sam studied my reaction. ‘Still rate Vivian Mountjoy?’ he asked.

I could only shake my head in wonder. ‘Did the police see these?’ I asked, my mouth dry.

‘Good Lord, no! Can you imagine their reaction? Philistines. That would certainly have added fuel to the fire.’

‘But surely they searched your flat?’

‘My flat was the size of a water closet. I did most of my painting in Staithes, in a studio a local group of artists let me share. They were all older than me, but they sort of took me under their wing. They had connections with the Staithes Group, quite collectible these days, and I picked up a bit of the Impressionist influence from them. Have you heard of Laura Knight?’

‘I’m afraid not. My modern art isn’t quite up to scratch.’

‘She was one of the few surviving members at the time. Formidable woman. Must have been about seventy-five around then, but you wouldn’t have known it. And the things she’d seen. She was the official war painter at the Nuremberg trials, you know. That’s when she did “The Dock, Nuremberg”, one of her most famous works. She wasn’t up at Staithes often, but the times we met she and Grace got along like a house on fire, spent hours together gabbing away, God knows what about. I’ve never seen Grace so animated as those times.’

‘Did you know any of her other female friends?’

‘I don’t think she really had any. Acquaintances, yes, from the various societies she belonged to, and from other social activities, but not close friends.’

‘Didn’t she keep in touch with anyone from the war?’

‘She mentioned a woman called Dorothy once or twice. They might have seen one another now and then. But other than that . . . no, I don’t think she did.’

‘I thought I recognised the east coast in some of the backgrounds.’

‘Very perceptive of you, when the foreground’s so absorbing.’

‘So you kept them at your studio?’

‘One of the older artists, Len, let me use his lock-up, and I kept all my nudes of Grace there. The police didn’t search the Staithes studio, but even if they had, they wouldn’t have found them. They would have had no reason to search Len’s property.’

‘When did you paint them?’ I asked, as Sam turned out the light and we made our way back to the living room.