How You See Me (10 page)

‘Daniel, is that you? Late back, aren’t you?’

‘I was with my girlfriend.’

‘Yes, well. Before you head up, could we have a quick word?’

‘I have the notes from today typed up. I’ll give you the memory stick tomorrow.’

‘No. I mean, it’s not a work chat I had in mind. Come and sit a moment. That’s it. Now how are things with you?’

‘Listen, I’m not really in the mood for another session, Aubrey.’

‘Good. That’s good. It’s just I was speaking to your sister today. She’s been having some trouble getting hold of you. And she mentioned your dad isn’t doing too well. Something about an infection. Seems he’s had to go back into the hospital.’

Is that right, Mab? Is it his leg? Well, you can’t go asking me to care. It’s nothing to do with me any more.

And then he told me, ‘Mab suggested you were needed back. “Now more than ever”, I think her words were. All rather dramatic. And, before you start on your usual
tirade, I have to say I agree with her. This situation, you living here and working for me, I don’t think you’ve ever really understood… or maybe you have. The point is, Dan, I don’t think we can continue. I think the time has come for a move. Your job is always here, of course, but living here in my house now… well, I’m not sure that’s the best plan for you at the moment. Not when you’re needed elsewhere.’

‘You’re kicking me out?’

‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that. It’s just, the arrangement between your sister and me requires a certain amount of co-operation, and this is one of those occasions when…’

Arrangement? Mab? You don’t even like him.

‘I have a great deal of respect for your sister,’ he went on. ‘For her work and her person. And of course for your whole family. You must admit, you are resistant to all my methods of helping you. You won’t talk. You refuse to even contemplate re-establishing a medical regime. Therefore, when Mabel asks me to do something, I must do my best for her.’

‘What about doing your best for me? What about your respect for me?’

What on earth do you have on him, Mab? What on earth could have changed so that he’s willing to push me out on to the street?

I hope you know what it is you’re destroying here. And I hope you know I will kick and fight all the way back to the Studio. I was finding happiness here; why must you ruin that?

Daniel

23rd January

The Studio

Dear Alice –

The only warm room in the house is downstairs with the wood-burner. Dad was never much of a believer in the comforts of central heating. So downstairs we sweat, and upstairs, where I’m hiding, the air is so cold you can watch your breath dissolve into it. I’m under my covers; the sheets are chilled and feel damp against my skin. It must have been like this before I left, but it seems so much colder now I have the memory of your warmth only hours behind me.

Maggie is not talking to me. Dad is, as usual, not talking. Tatty was the only one who seemed delighted at my return. In fact, she is the only one who reacted when I came through the door, unless a grunt from Maggie counts for anything. So much for Mab’s promises.

I miss you, my darling. I miss the weight of your shoulder against mine as we lay together with the coloured paper lanterns ticking on their strings as the heat rose from your warm bed. I miss the smell and taste of you. I miss the sweet shudder of your body as I entered you and the soundless gasp of your lips waiting to be smothered by my mouth. I miss my fingers dragging through your electric hair, down the smooth curve of the sea-sucked shell of your pale back. I miss the heft of your thigh. I miss the crooked quality of your smile. There is too much for me to miss all at once, I have to miss you piecemeal. It’s the only way I can bear it.

I’m so glad I found you again. And I am so sorry, Alice. I’m sorry I’ve ever had to leave you, but to do it twice… I
still can’t quite believe I’m back here. Curled up in bed, in this ill-lit room, wearing all the clothes I left Manchester in, including my coat, with a hard-on. I am ridiculous without you.

At least this time it is finite. Mab promises it won’t be long, my darling, and I’ll be back with you. That is the one promise Mab must keep. I’m sure she can even talk Aubrey round to our way of thinking. She’ll make sure he’ll take me back again. She owes me.

Forgive me and don’t forget to miss me.

Your Daniel xx

25th January

The Studio

Dear Mab –

Things continue to be frosty – in all senses of the word. The routine has slipped back into place with terrifying ease and I have taken my role in it: dog-walker; bed-changer; arse-washer; waiter; chef; collector of piss and shit and blood and any other fluid that dog or man wishes to throw at me.

Maggie has progressed the silent treatment into a series of barked orders, which she tosses my way at the most unexpected moments; last time was through the toilet door, just as I’d settled down with the paper. I am expected to carry out these orders immediately and without complaint. This is the only way to win back her approval and assistance. This I learnt by dawdling on the toilet – she
left the bag of dirty washing behind and only made Dad a cup of tea before she left.

Talk to her for me, could you?

Daniel

28th January

The Studio

Dear Aubrey –

I may not be speaking to you after you kicked me unceremoniously into the gutter, but that doesn’t mean I can’t write to you about a conversation I had with someone else.

I was pottering around the living room, searching for the emergency tobacco. Dad was watching TV and Maggie was in the kitchen redoing the washing-up I’d finished before she arrived.

‘Maggie? Are these yours?’

‘You’ll have to come through. I can’t clean and see through walls.’

I carried the bottles of nail varnish to the kitchen. ‘I found them on the bookshelves. You been dolling yourself up?’

‘Hardly my colour, are they? That one there looks no better than this dishwater.’ Maggie snapped a tea-towel from the rail and wiped the suds from her forearms. She nodded at the bottles in my hand. ‘They’ll be Sarah’s. Give them here, lad. I’ll get them back to her.’

‘When was Sarah here?’

‘What did you expect? Someone had to look after Michael while you were off gallivanting. What did you
think, that I was doing it all on my lonesome? That girl was a godsend. She’d give up anything for Michael. Do anything to keep him happy.’ She swiped the inside of a coffee cup with the tea-towel. ‘Did no one ever teach you how to wash dishes? You use too much liquid and not enough elbow grease. This lot were a right state.’

‘Is she coming back?’

‘That’s what we were wondering about you. Disappearing in the middle of the night and then phoning me up whimpering like a child. Leaving your father high and dry in that god-awful place. Who did you think it was that fetched the doctor and got your dad to the hospital when he was raving? Half out of his mind, he was, poor man. And where were you when you were needed?’

‘I know, I know. But Maggie, what about Sarah?’

‘What about her?’ Maggie laid a final saucer into the stack and twisted her hip to settle against the draining board. ‘Don’t start all that business again, Danny. It’s not right and you know it. Forcing a poor girl out of the only home she’d ever known. Now hand over that nail polish.’

I didn’t. I pocketed them. I took the chair next to the bookshelf and sat there imagining her painting her nails Nose Bleed, Corpse Pallor and Yellow Snow. I wondered what the colours said about her mood. She must have stayed here. Maybe she slept in my bed again.

I used to paint her nails for her, back when she first arrived and we were making friends. I was quite the accomplished manicurist: one stroke to the centre; one stroke either side. Apparently it helps to lengthen the nail.
Don’t colour over the lines, Danny
. She never wore makeup in the time I knew her and she bit those nails of hers
down to the quick, but she liked to have the ragged ends painted over in bright glossy colours.

Her favourite colour back then was gold. I used to watch, magpie-like, her nails’ glittering dance in the light of the kitchen as she talked and flirted with Dad in the evenings. I liked to repair the cracks and chips in the paint after a hard day’s work in the pond, her finger-pads still crinkled from the water. The polish would slide over the gaps, but it was impossible to make them smooth again. The wounds still showed, scarred dips puckering the smooth surface.

Maggie was foolish to worry about my heart. That is safely stowed with Alice. There is nothing to fear in that regard. The main thing is, Sarah came back, and I must find a way of making her come again.

There are the paintings, of course. They are still gathering dust up in the studio. I don’t even know if Sarah has seen them yet. Still, something about them makes me want her never to see them. After all, this time, I only have to put things right. Not make things worse.

Daniel

30th January

The Studio

Dear Mab –

I wonder, sometimes, how much of my life is scripted by you, Mab.

Since your letter, I’ve been considering Dad’s portraits more seriously. I have followed instructions, you needn’t
worry: I contacted Dad’s agency in London and told them about the new work. They were predictably thrilled, even though I made clear the state of the canvases. Portraits are big business, it seems. Even bigger business than naked girls. I suppose there is a certain type of rich person who prefers to have a stranger’s face on their wall, rather than a stranger’s arse. And that type of rich person likes to buy. I may have shared this choice wisdom with the agency; all I got in response was some drivel about the lurking sexual drives in all the Laird work. They haven’t even sniffed the oil paint and already they’re harking on about hidden depths!

It was quite fun talking to the agency. I’d forgotten – as you never do – just how much we can trade on the Laird name to behave however we want. As if the eccentricity of artists is hereditary. I insisted on talking to a man in the end – all the well-meaning, earnest girls with degrees were getting on my nerves – and I have to say he was charming. Peter assured me of their full co-operation and discretion and insisted on detailing the long history of services they had provided to Dad and his eminent peers. I could tell he was excited.

Then I found this piece in the paper this morning.

I’ve been fielding calls all day. One idiot, who has managed to purchase one of the Submerged Nude series, requested a portrait of the model in question. ‘To match’. He burbled on about ‘completing the picture at last’. Money was no object, apparently. It took me an hour to get rid of him.

I’ve spoken to everyone from serious collectors to tabloid journalists about the ‘exciting new discovery at Laird’s country home’. They make it sound as if the butler has to call me from the west wing to the telephone, rather than Maggie giving a shout out of the kitchen window to the woodshed. I’ve been bundled up in Dad’s big winter coat all morning, trying to gather kindling. I must call charming Peter and complain about the professed discretion of the agency. I’ll be sure to lay the blame firmly at the feet of the graduate girls. It’s best to keep at least one of them on side.

This sudden publicity is rather unsettling. I have been careful to avoid any real mention of the subject of the portraits. Well, I’ve been careful not to mention my own name. Peter was practically drooling at the mention of self-portraits, and that was before I told him Sarah was in evidence. Maybe it’s not the publicity, maybe it’s the portraits themselves that are getting to me. Peter had me up there straight away, taking as many photographs as possible from different angles and in different lights. I’ve been spending too much time staring into the faces of my past.

It continues to be ferociously cold. The fire has become the focus of all of our days. Even Dad has been moved back towards it and away from the TV without complaint. I can’t seem to keep him warm. I suppose it’s that he’s so inactive sitting in his chair all day, with only the short stagger to bed in the evening getting him moving at all. But I don’t dare take him out. The ice is thin, but deadly slippery. Our neighbour kindly shovelled some building sand along our section of pavement. Maggie took him out a mug of tea and a slice of her special fruit cake, left over from Christmas. I
steered clear of it. I think there may be romance in the air, and, besides, I didn’t fancy being forced to lend a hand.