Elijah’s Mermaid (24 page)

Was I naive or the victim of pride when so freely offering my name, my employment being an artist’s assistant, and also a photographer – to which boast he said I would be amazed at the sort of prices being paid for portraiture of ‘the intimate kind’. Next thing, he asked for whom I worked, and when I mentioned Osborne Black the queer fellow became all ears, his eyes widened, positively gleaming, when sitting back in his seat to pronounce, ‘What a serendipitous event! So the prodigal has returned at last
.’

And that was the point when Freddie broke in, sternly insisting that my sort of work would be of no interest to his friend, standing abruptly and looking flushed when he told me that it was time to leave, that the evening was late and he found himself bored with
the entertainment then on show. But before I could gather my wits to rise and follow on in Freddie’s wake that other fellow grabbed my arm, long nails digging down through the cloth of my jacket, and surprisingly strong for one so slight when he drew me near and murmured low, a smirk stretched over weasel cheeks, ‘Won’t you see to changing the old cove’s mind? There’s special perks for special art, particularly where Pearl Black is concerned. I should very much like a picture of her . . . for nostalgia’s sake, if nothing else
.’

The whole incident could not have lasted for more than five minutes or so, and yet it unnerved me greatly. And when I found Freddie out in the street he remained in a very dour mood. Neither one of us mentioned that fellow again. And yet, I do wonder at Freddie’s connection – and how odd that the man claimed to know Pearl Black
.

The enigma has been in my mind all week, only forgotten in Kew today, after which Freddie pressed me to go back to London, to dine at Bertolini’s again. I laughed – ‘so that you can do your best to persuade me to live in Burlington Row?
’

I must say his persistence is admirable. He asks me every time we meet, and although he makes no specific claims, I suspect he has no liking at all for the character of Osborne Black. And yet, it was at his suggestion that the artist came to seek me out
.

Not that I needed persuading to come. For years I have felt London’s calling, but stronger now is the other thing, the siren song of Dolphin House, the fact that Osborne is married to Pearl, and most men would accept any offer he made if only to look at her each day. When I saw her in Kingsland I knew her at once – the girl I had seen in the freak-show tent.
She
is the reason for me to be here. It is nothing to do with Osborne Black
.

Does Freddie see through me? I think he does, just as Lily did before. Today he was teasing that I must be either homesick or lovesick, for what else had caused me to grow so thin?

I suppose it is true. I have lost some flesh. I blame the regime here in Dolphin House, where every servant is gone by six and none back again before nine in the morning. The former is when
Osborne likes to eat dinner, and no food permitted between that and breakfast when the maids creep around us like frightened mice, their master resenting each squeak and bump. There is no familiarity, and when not engaged in assisting his work I find myself rarely ever disturbed. On occasions, when Osborne works alone, he and Pearl confined in his studio, I have taken to walking the river paths, more at home there than ever in Dolphin House. Most rooms here are cold and unwelcoming, full of relics as if a museum, such an air of concealment and mystery. I stay in my room on the attic floor and only use the service stairs, though whenever the maids come up to clean, rattling buckets, changing sheets, I overhear their hushed complaints, that ‘his’ and ‘her’ bedrooms are rarely cleaned, because Osborne hates anyone going near
.

He is a private, closed-up man; a man of plain words and plain habits who shows little interest in anyone else; a man who likes to be in control, who sits at his table in glowering silence, admonishing his wife if she should dare to ask for more than the meagre portions that he, personally, dishes up on to her plates, as if she is somehow incapable. As if she is a child
.

I don’t want to eat when she may not, all hunger lost when witnessing hers, forced to observe Osborne’s bullying ways, how he stuffs his own mouth while berating his wife for being too greedy, for growing too fat – when there is not one ounce of spare flesh on her bones. I see her humiliation, the way she lowers her eyes while he gloats, growing more and more flushed from the whisky or wine which renders him drunk and insensible
.

Often, when she has gone on to bed, he wakes from his stupors and claims to have witnessed the visions which will then inspire whatever new painting he has in mind – and every painting is of his wife – his wife and water. Nothing else. At such times he will rouse her from her sleep and have her pose throughout the night. A few times I have woken at dawn and come downstairs to find her still sitting, in his studio. She looks in wretched spirits; drawn and exhausted, strangely old, her lovely brow puckered and wincing at the sound of her husband’s snores – with him sprawled at her side
on a tattered old chaise, his brushes dropped to the ground at his feet, and there, on his easel, some half-formed creation, the latest depiction of his wife – a thing so unlike her reality. Or is she half human after all, this vision who floats in a liquid world, in realms as far removed from the truth as that automaton in the hall?

Osborne boasts of commissioning Phalibois, a famed Parisian artisan. The doll is a thing of genius. Its resemblance to Pearl is uncanny to see – Pearl’s eyes, Pearl’s mouth, Pearl’s arms, Pearl’s breasts. And yet, as in most of the paintings here, that oh so exquisitely modelled doll has a mermaid’s tail in place of legs – and it may be illogical of me, but when Osborne winds the mechanism, when all of that clicking and humming begins, when the mermaid lifts a shell to its ear, I feel myself chilled to the very bone. For some reason I always think of Cremorne, the freak-show tent, the fainting girl. Does that girl remember me?

Pearl and Osborne must have gone out tonight. The house was still when I came back in. I stood with my back against the door and listened a while as it rattled shut, staring through the dusky gloom to look at the landscapes hung over hall walls – the paintings he made ‘before Pearl’, which are empty of any human soul, all desolate beaches, expanses of oceans, rivers, lakes, streams in woods. He uses pure colour, squeezed straight from the tube. It is striking, this impression he makes. It is something vibrant, raw and exciting. When you stand close by those pictures are blurred, as if being viewed through a misty lens, but if you take a few steps back all of the fractured brushstrokes merge, thus creating a magical ‘whole’ where light and shadows are flickering, every leaf and flower glistening. Does it sound too foolish of me to say that they exude some ‘energy’? Or does that vitality only come from Osborne’s automaton as she watches me through her cold green eyes. Eyes like Pearl’s. Eyes nothing like Pearl’s. Or is it the lingering odour of drains? Or is it something animal?

I notice it more and more in the house. The very first night I slept here I had the strangest dream, unsure if I was awake or asleep but all too aware of that noxious smell, an invisible, physical entity
that crept beneath my attic door, a black stain that melted over the boards. Like a serpent it slithered beneath the sheets. Its tongue was an oily bristled brush which painted its excrement over my belly, smearing my chest, my neck, with slime, trickling in between my lips, gradually filling up my lungs, causing me to gasp for breath when I stumbled from the bed to the window, where I lifted the sash to breathe fresh air, and then drank a whole jug of water down, trying to wash away the filth that I was convinced still clung within
.

I know it is ridiculous, but was that dream a warning – a warning that will not go away? Even now I can smell it still, that rancid cloying fishy stench infused with the pineapple’s ripening, a smell too thick and sweet and moist, almost a thrumming sound it has, like the droning of flies round rotting meat
.

September 27th

A day spent in the Eden of Chiswick House gardens – until our peace was disturbed by those troubled souls imprisoned there
.

It was late in the afternoon. Osborne was still immersed in his painting. I was at work with the camera, directed by him to make pictures of Pearl, who lay on the grass by a circular lake while acting the part of a sleeping nymph. Her feet – her feet, which are strangely webbed – were dipped beneath the water’s skin. Her legs were uncovered, the flesh quite bare, the same with her shoulders and her breasts – her arms slipped free from the narrow straps affixed to the top of her cotton shift. She kept the same pose for hours on end and never once voicing any complaint. But her eyelids closed only when Osborne demanded, for she passed the time with reading a book which she’d propped against a stone near by, only lifting up one languid arm whenever a page needing turning, during which moment she raised her eyes, she smiled at me, and I smiled back – and wished she might read all the faster
.

When Osborne allowed her to rest and stand, her feet were wrinkled, white as wax. She walked stiffly, as if her legs were wood, and I thought of the automaton again. Does he ever see
Pearl as she really is, a woman made of flesh and blood, not another mechanical toy to be wound so that he can dictate every movement? I try, but I cannot work it out, how this couple ever came to be married, for no signs of affection do they show. And if they met in Italy – if she really did live there so many years – then how did she come to be in Cremorne? It
was
her. I know it was
.

I was pondering such a question while staring again through the camera’s eye, when something unexpected appeared in that world turned upside down upon its head. A group of women, all dressed in grey, were walking across the grass-green sky
.

At first, being so absorbed in his work, Osborne did not notice them. When he did, he showed no surprise – anger perhaps, but not surprise. But then, it transpired he had known all along that the house was leased as an asylum, being run by a man called Cruikshank, who soon appeared in pursuit of his patients while taking great pains to apologise for any disturbance they had caused
.

Why had Osborne not mentioned this before? I am taunted by the nagging thought that he is playing some sort of game – and yet this is a sport from which he appears to derive very little pleasure. His mood is increasingly surly. Or do I malign the man too much, my judgement warped by jealousy, the fact that he has Pearl, not me
.

Every day I am tormented. Every time I look through the viewing lens. Osborne wants more and more photographs. The production is like a small factory, with hundreds of prints pegged up on the ropes now strung above the washing trays. And so many plates do I have to prepare that even with windows opened up I find myself coughing and breathless from the constant inhalation of fumes. Sometimes I have to go outside, hardly able to draw any air in my lungs. But such a discomfort is far outweighed by that precious moment of alchemy, when the printing frame is retrieved from the sun, in that singular moment of perfect exposure when the picture that has materialised is judged to be exactly right – before the paper grows too dark, before the whites all blur and melt. At times I must try again and again, and even then I cannot relax
until the image is fixed and washed. And those are the moments I feel like a god, in control of my life, in control of my art, to see what bobs up through the water towards me – to see Pearl silverlustred, a shimmering ghost. Pearl’s torso wrapped in bindings of silk. Pearl with both arms lifted over her head, or lying in grasses, curled into herself, or sitting and reading a book by a window, the light permeating her muslin gown. When she reads she tilts her head to one side. She bites down hard on her bottom lip – and what can justify that charm when the best that these monochrome pictures can show of the bloom in her cheeks is grey, the same with her eyes and the gold of her hair?

I gaze on these reflections of Pearl without fearing the heat of Osborne’s stare. I have even brought some prints to my room. At night, when sleep evades me, twisting and turning for hours on end, I stroke my fingers over the paper, touching her eyelids, as fragile as shells, and her skin which glows alabaster white when caught in the candle’s muted flame. I look and I ache to touch real flesh. I touch myself and pretend it is her. And I wonder what Osborne might think to do if he knew of my obsession for Pearl, of the wanting that rushes through my veins, clawing and writhing until it is free, my groaning desire at last released. I wake every day exhausted with longing. My eyes are burning, blurred and sore. And how can I ever confess such thoughts? One wrong step, one false move, and Osborne Black would surely dismiss me from his house
.

I feared he was going to send me away when I photographed the pineapple and then, on a sudden whim, thought to offer the reproduction to Pearl. She was fully dressed that morning, though her hair hung loose as usual. She was posing on the dais that stands at one end of the studio. On either side of that platform were two enormous potted palms, their colour echoed in the cloth upon which the artist’s model lay; the yards of velvet and green damask upon which were scattered shells and weed; the smell of the sea still lingering. I waited for Osborne to lay down his brushes and then approached to show the print, only to find it snatched from my hands, screwed into a ball and thrown to the floor. All the while he
was shouting – a maniac. ‘Do you know what that fruit represents . . . do you? Fecundity and lust! I forbid such an image in my house!
’

I was speechless. I had no idea what to do in the face of such a reaction as that. It was Pearl who sought to calm his mood, standing up and rushing to his side, taking his hands in both of hers, imploring, ‘Osborne! Osborne, please . . . I was always told that a pineapple is the symbol of hospitality . . . hospitality and friendship. Nothing more than that
.’