Ivory (14 page)

There had been
pain with the confusion, and there was pain with clarity. Their
relationship had been in a slow decay since they had met fourteen
years ago. She had so admired his talent, his ability to find
beauty in the world, and his passion for creation and aesthetic,
yet somehow she had overlooked his detachment to the world and to
people.

Aside from his
mother of course, his saintly Mother. For many years his mother had
been the only woman in his life, and he had been fiercely loving
and protective of her, probably ever since his father had the
affair and left them both. His mother had idolised him in return,
and although she had been desperate for Martin to get married, no
woman was good enough. Jenny had survived his mother’s sly
disapproving looks and the covert criticism of everything Jenny did
and didn’t do. When she had died two years after they had met it
had cemented Jenny and Martin’s relationship and accelerated them
into marriage.

They had met through art and their mutual passion for art had
sustained them, and at times she now wondered if they had mistaken
that for a love of each other. No. She hadn’t mistaken it, but she
was almost sure Martin had done. Back when they had first met she
had been at the peak of her career, writing articles for
Art Monthly, Art on Paper, London Aesthetic,
Time-out, Art Review
and a few magazines
she couldn’t even recall or find in the biggest WH Smith’s stores
now. Since she had bumbed into Gloria Denza in Tesco the other day
she had really been taking stock of her life and couldn’t believe
how much she had let her personal life slide away after getting
married and having Oscar and Finn. She didn’t regret marriage or
children, but regretted not pushing herself to keep up with the
latest artists and collections, or even maintaining her magazine
subscriptions. She may have only existed in the art realm from an
academic standpoint, an observer, but she had been pure bohemian in
her passion for self-expression and love. She missed it.

Chatting with Gloria, Jenny had learnt that she now had three
children. She had scaled her career back to start with but had kept
a firm grip on what she could do around raising her children. Then
the editor’s position had come up at
Fringe,
a new and hip showcase
magazine for fresh talent in the capital, and she had grabbed at it
with both hands and refused to let go. It sounded tough but Gloria
seemed happy. She was doing the things that Jenny had once wanted
for herself.

It had been so
good to see Gloria again, their paths had crossed so many times
back when Jenny had been on the scene, sharing many slightly
sozzled drunken trawls around galleries, and in the light of day
they had swapped opinions and copy to help each other out. They had
even teamed up on a few articles and their ideas and talents had
complemented each other well. Gloria had suggested Jenny getting
back onto the circuit and writing from the perspective of someone
with commitments, highlighting the not-to-be-missed new talent
exhibitions and shows for the reader with limited time. Jenny had
gone out on a limb and come back with the idea of writing from a
family perspective, finding art that would be family friendly and
encourage the young into art, possibly including Oscar and Finn’s
opinions. Gloria had loved the idea. The invite along to Gloria’s
office had seemed casual, but Jenny’s excitement at the prospect of
returning to writing and critiquing made it now seem daunting,
frightening even, as it was the opportunity to get more out of
life. Something just for her.

Jenny felt a great distance from her old self, but she took
some responsibility in that, for although Martin had neglected her
she had neglected herself in response. She hadn’t bothered to keep
up with the latest dress trends, and had only dressed for
practicality. It was going to Donnie and Bea’s at the weekend that
she had realised it had been some time since she had treated
herself to a makeover and styled her hair. She had withered in the
shadow. The only time she felt truly alive was when she joined her
father at the Ham and Petersham shooting range, or they fired off
his illegal handguns on the farm, and pumped a target full of
holes. The slam of the striker, the split second pressure of
expanding cordite and the kick of a weapon.
It
shook her back into life. Reset
her soul.

Something much
more powerful than the recoil of a gun had awakened her to this
clarity. Ivory. Martin had been quieter since the accident.
Absorbed. Scared at times. He had settled into distraction. He was
working again though. Slaving over a painting in the loft studio.
She had slipped up into the studio to see it. The pale face and
black eyes of the goth student still haunted her. There was an
unnaturalness about the construction of that face, something she
had criticised in his first painting of her. However she had seen
Ivory as she had gone up to Martin’s studio, and found her
appearance breathtaking. As if the vision of her had somehow
permeated her eyes and mind with a lingering presence.

She wondered
if Martin could be having an affair. He hated his father for
cheating on his mother. Martin had had very few relationships
before he had met Jenny since his interest was too focussed on art.
She had an idea that for Martin marriage was an expectation to be
met. She guessed it was his mother’s expectation, and he would do
anything to please his mother after his father’s betrayal. It was
an achievement but not one he seemed to cherish. With the planned
arrival of their first son, Oscar, a spark flared in Martin and he
became a loving partner again. Having a child was possibly another
expectation his mother had for him even though she had died by the
time she had gotten pregnant. Everything had changed with their
second, and unexpected, son. Maybe it tipped the balance of their
lives too much towards being family orientated. Creativity and art
had to be reprioritised. For a moment she felt sympathy for him,
she understood what it was like to lose something of yourself, but
these thoughts were just conjecture, and she had to guess because
Martin didn’t talk about these things. He ignored them and covered
them with statements on how nothing was wrong, and with weekly and
predictable love making and occasional romancing with flowers
takeaways and cakes.

Ivory’s
strange features haunted her. Jenny was sure the girl couldn’t be
seen as attractive in the conventional sense, yet she couldn’t
shake the ghostly face from her mind, and even as she drifted into
sleep the image of Ivory remained as a phantom companion waiting to
share her journey into dreams. The presence of her worrying
thoughts subsided. Half-sleeping, the edge of her concern dulled.
The sorrow dispersed into an intoxicating fog that seemed to
dissolve her body around a warmth deep in her abdomen. The heat was
welcome and caused her heart to quiver, her breathing to slow, and
her ghostly feeling limbs to ache for sensations. She was being
touched. Martin had reached for her.

Martin
floated, suspended in a cloying murky void that pressed against
every part of his body and held him weightless. His outstretched
arm disappeared into the gloom, creating sounds of muffled pleasure
in someone beyond his depth of vision. Understanding the physics of
his surreal environment he wriggled in the warm viscous fluid
atmosphere that surrounded him and propelled himself forward. The
pollution that clouded his surroundings broke into swirls around
his motions but refused to dissolve or disperse, and he didn’t get
any closer to the soft warmth he could feel around his fingers.

He could just
discern a pale shape in the murk as an undefined female form. The
clarity disturbed by ripples that drifted away from the movement of
his arm. She was suspended above the surface of the bottomless
depths where he swam, and his arm reached out and into her. His
face came close to the surface of the thick fluid and her skin
caught the light like polished marble in moonlight. The thought of
her awakened every cell in his body with desire. He knew who she
was and he wanted her.

He brought his
knees to his chest, knowing that it would cause him to rise
upwards. The surface broke over his face and the air hit him in a
cold icy blast that numbed his flesh and shocked the breath from
him. The thick fluid of the surface clung to his face and plugged
his eye sockets, blotting his vision into a distorted mess. He
frantically swiped at his eyes to see her.

Two black eyes stared down at him like pools of thick crude
oil as deep and captivating as the slime that held him. Below the
eyes the face was warmed by
that
smile. A hand broke the surface on either side of
him in a spray of slimy muck. They gripped his shoulders and the
surface rushed over his head as he was dragged down. He thrashed
and struggled in the depths. He didn’t recall needing to breathe
when he had been under the surface before, but now his lungs clung
to the single retained breath and ached with a desperation to draw
in more. With all his strength he kicked his legs around, twisting
himself on the spot and wrenching free of his attacker’s
grip.

A vicious face twisted into a snarl stared through murk
stained red. A face with another face carved into it by cuts and
scratches, blood drifting from them in threads that dissolved into
the surroundings. A gargoyle of a face shrouded in red cobwebs. It
opened its mouth and laughed with throaty demonic satisfaction
before biting its yellow teeth together and growling in agony and
knowledge “
We are the same, you and
I!”

Martin’s
scream destroyed the dream and he awoke above Jenny. He snatched
his fingers from inside her, oblivious to her yelp from the rough
action, and scrambled off her and onto his side of the bed. Sweat,
cold on his back, her slickness cooling on his fingers. Jenny
stumbled out from beneath the covers, clutched her groin through
her nightdress and swore at him for hurting her. All Martin could
do in his shocked state was stare at his hand as if it was stained
with the sin of his lust while Jenny sobbed. “It wasn’t me, was it?
It wasn’t me you were touching? It was her!”

Chapter
Twelve

Martin was
startled from sleep by the drone of the radio alarm clock sounding
mid-song. He fumbled with the buttons and silenced it before
rolling back. The quiet of the house filled the air with white
noise. The world was holding its breath with him as he waited for
Jenny to storm in and engulf him in one of her tempers.

She didn’t
come.

Martin lay
motionless for some time until he was convinced Jenny was not going
to come and confront him about the night before. He got out of bed
and quietly tucked himself into his oversized towelling dressing
gown. He crept to the top of the stairs and waited. The gentle hiss
of silence in his ears was not disturbed by any sounds from
downstairs. This was out of character for Jenny as she liked to
deal with incidents between them at the earliest convenience. He
had to find her and explain as much as he could and apologise for
his actions, and lie about everything else. He shook his head
ashamed at himself.

He reluctantly
trudged from room to room and reset his slow mental countdown to
confrontation with every door that he passed through and found that
she was not there. First downstairs, then upstairs and finally into
his studio. The house was empty. The black RAV4 they had bought to
replace the written off Volvo was gone from across the road. There
wasn’t even a note in the kitchen. She always left him notes. Even
after an argument the status quo would be maintained by a couple of
sentences scribbled down somewhere as ‘hellos’, messages,
reminders, instructions for chores. This time there was
nothing.

It didn’t feel
the same as the usual aftermath of an argument. There was emptiness
and a presence of finality in the atmosphere of the house. Jenny
hadn’t been her usual self since she had bumped into her old critic
friend. She was taking pride in herself, making an effort with her
appearance, wearing make-up. She had reverted back to the Jenny he
had met when she had been working the art scene. He suddenly
thought that he might never see Jenny come through the front door
again, that in some way she had recently been preparing for this. A
chilling relief washed through him. After struggling for so long
with knowing that he was killing their relationship and being
unable to know how or why, or being able to understand how he could
maintain and save what they had, the end offered release from all
the confusion. Yet he knew that the end of his family had somehow
been due to him. The problems had been there all along, Ivory had
just been a catalyst for the end. His father and King had been
right about him after all.

Martin
distracted himself from this conclusion by showering and dressing.
He couldn’t face breakfast though, and with his morning routine
finished he dropped himself onto the sofa in the family room with
nothing to do. His portrait of their family life stood before him
above the mantelpiece. A view of the family room from the
portrait’s perspective, looking out on children playing together on
the floor, Jenny sitting in her chair with her legs tucked under
her, a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other,
half-reading and half-observing the children. Martin on the sofa
where he sat now, a glass of wine before him on the glass coffee
table, a sketch pad propped up on his lap with some cushions, his
face angled away from the scene in concentration on his work. It
was a snap-shot of family life and a reminder of life before the
black dog was at his back. It was a family scene that, despite the
perfect likeness he had captured in every figure, was almost
unrecognisable to him. He felt far removed from that life.