The Man in the Picture (3 page)

I went back to bed.

And that, for a very long time, was that. Nothing more happened. The picture stayed propped up on the bookcase for months until eventually I found a space for it there, where you see it now.

I did not dream about it again. But it never lessened its hold on me, its presence was never anything but powerful, as if the ghosts of all those people in that weirdly lit, artificial scene were present with me, forever in the room.

Some years passed. The painting did not lose any of its strange force but of course everyday life goes on and I became used to it. I often spent time looking at it though, staring at the faces, the shadows, the buildings, the dark rippling waters of the Grand Canal, and I also vowed that one day I would go to Venice. I have never been a great traveller, as you know; I love the English countryside too much and never wanted to venture far from it during vacations. Besides, in those days I was busy teaching here, performing more and more duties within the college, researching and publishing a number of books and continuing to buy and sell some pictures, though my time for that was limited.

Only one odd thing happened concerning the picture during that period. An old friend, Brammer, came to visit me here. I had not seen him for some years and we had a great deal to talk about but at one point, soon after his arrival and while I was out of the room, he started to look round at the pictures. When I returned, he was standing in front of the Venetian scene and peering closely at it.

‘Where did you come by this, Theo?’

‘Oh, in a saleroom some years ago. Why?’

‘It is quite extraordinary. If I hadn’t ...’ He shook his head. ‘No.’

I went to stand beside him. ‘What?’

‘You know about all this sort of thing. When do you suppose it was painted?’

‘It’s late eighteenth century.’

He shook his head. ‘Then I can’t make it out. You see, that man there ...’ He pointed to one of the figures in the nearest gondola. ‘I ... I know – knew him. That’s to say it is the absolute likeness of someone I knew well. We were young men together. Of course it cannot be him ... but everything – the way he holds his head, the expression ... it is quite uncanny.’

‘With so many billions of people born and all of us only having two eyes, one nose, one mouth, I suppose it is even more remarkable that there are not more identical.’

But Brammer was not paying me any attention. He was too absorbed in studying the painting, and in scrutinizing that one face. It took me a while to draw him away from it and to divert him back to the topics of our earlier conversation, and several times over the next twenty-four hours he went back to the picture and would stand there, an expression of concern and disbelief on his face, shaking his head from time to time.

There was no further incident and, after a while, I put Brammer’s strange discovery if not out of, then well to the back of my mind.

Perhaps, if I had not been the subject of an article in a magazine more general than academic, some years later, there would have been nothing else and so the story, such as it was until then, would have petered out.

I had completed a long work on Chaucer and it happened that there was a major anniversary which included an exhibition at the British Museum. There had also been an important manuscript discovery relating to his life, about which we have always known so little. The general press took an interest and there was a gratifying amount of attention given to my beloved poet. I was delighted of course. I had long wanted to share the delights his work afforded with a wider public and my publisher was pleased when I agreed to be interviewed here and there.

One of the interviewers who came to see me brought a photographer and he took several pictures in these rooms. If you would care to go to the bureau and open the second drawer, you will find the magazine article filed there.

THREE

HEO WAS A meticulous man – everything was filed and ordered. I had always been impressed, coming in here to tutorials, and seeing the exemplary tidiness of his desk by comparison with that of most other fellows – not to mention with my own. It was a clue to the man. He had an ordered mind. In another life, he ought to have been a lawyer.

The cutting was exactly where he had indicated. It was a large spread about Theo, Chaucer, the exhibition and the new discovery, highly informed and informative, and the photograph of him, which took up a full page, was not only an excellent likeness of him as he had been some thirty years previously, but a fine composition in its own right. He was sitting in an armchair, with a pile of books on a small table beside him, his spectacles on top. The sun was slanting through the high window onto him and lighting the whole scene quite dramatically.

‘This is a fine photograph, Theo.’

‘Look though – look at where the sun falls.’

It fell onto the Venetian picture, which hung behind him, illuminating it vividly and in a strange harmony of light and dark. It seemed to be far more than a mere background.

‘Extraordinary.’

‘Yes. I confess I was quite taken aback when I saw it. I suppose by then I had grown used to the picture and I had no idea it had such presence in the room.’

I looked round. Now, the painting was half hidden, half in shade, and seemed a small thing, not attracting any attention. The figures were a little stiff and distant, the light rippling on the water dulled. It was like someone in a group who is so retiring and plain that he or she merges into the background unnoticed. What I saw in the magazine photograph was almost a different canvas, not in its content, which was of course the same, but in – I might almost say, in its attitude.

‘Odd, is it not?’ Theo was watching me intently.

‘Did the photographer remark on the picture? Did he deliberately arrange it behind you and light it in some particular way?’

‘No. It was never mentioned. He fussed a little with the table of books, I remember ... making the pile regular, then irregular ... and he had me shift about in the chair. That was all. I recall that when I saw the results – and there were quite a number of shots of course – I was very surprised. I had not even realized the painting was there. Indeed ...’ He paused.

‘Yes?’

He shook his head. ‘It is something, to be frank, that has played on my mind ever since, especially in the light of ... subsequent events.’

‘What is that?’

But he did not answer. I waited. His eyes were closed and he was quite motionless. I realized that the evening had exhausted him, and after waiting a little longer in the silence of those rooms, I got up and left, trying to make my exit soundless, and went away down the dark stone staircase and out into the court.

FOUR

T WAS A STILL, clear and bitter night with a frost and a sky thick and brilliant with stars and I went quickly across to my own staircase to fetch my coat. It was late but I felt like fresh air and a brisk walk. The court was deserted and there were only one or two lights shining out from sets of rooms here and there.

The night porter was already installed in his lodge with a fire in the grate and a great brown pot of tea.

‘You mind your step, sir, the pavements have a rime on them even now.’

I thanked him and went out through the great gate. King’s Parade was deserted, the shops shuttered. A solitary policeman on the beat nodded to me as I passed him. I was intent on both keeping warm and staying upright as the porter had been right that the pavements were slippery here and there.

But quite without warning, I stopped because a sense of fear and oppression came over me like a wave of fever, so that a shudder ran through my body. I glanced round but the lane was empty and still. The fear I felt was not of anyone or anything, it was just an anonymous, unattached fear and I was in its grip. It was combined with a sense of impending doom, a dread, and also with a terrible sadness, as if someone close to me was suffering and I was feeling that suffering with them.

I am not given to premonitions and, so far as I was aware, no one close to me, no friend or family member, was in trouble. I felt quite well. The only thing that was in my mind was Theo Parmitter’s strange story, but why should that have me, who had merely sat by the fire listening to it, so seized by fear? I felt weak and unwell so that I no longer wanted to be out tramping the streets alone and I turned sharply. There must have been a patch of frost exactly there for I felt my feet slither away from under me and fell heavily on the pavement. I lay winded and shaken but not in pain and it was at that moment that I heard, from a little distance away to my left, the cry and a couple of low voices. After that came the sound of a scuffle and then another desperate cry. It seemed to be coming from the direction of the Backs and yet, in some strange sense which is hard to explain, to be not
away
from me at all but here, at my hand, next to me. It is very difficult to convey a clear impression because nothing was clear, and I was also lying on a frozen pavement and anxious in case I had injured myself.

If what I had heard was someone being set upon in the dark and robbed – and that was as near to what it all sounded like as I could describe – then I should get up and either find the victim and go to his aid, or warn the policeman I had seen a few minutes before. Yet no one had been about. It was just after midnight, not a night for strollers, other than fools like me. It then came to me that I was in danger of being attacked myself. I had my wallet in my inner pocket, and a gold watch on my chain. I was worth a villain’s attack. I pulled myself to my feet hastily. I was unhurt apart from a bash to the knee – I would be stiff the next day – and looked quickly round but there was no one about and no sound of footsteps. Had I imagined the noises? No, I had not. In a quiet street on a still and frosty night, when every sound carries, I could not have mistaken what I heard for wind in the trees, or in my own ears. I had heard a cry, and voices, and even a splash of water, yet although the sounds had come from the riverside, that was some distance away and hidden by the walls and gardens of the colleges.

I went back to the main thoroughfare and caught sight of the policeman again, trying the doorhandles of shops to check that they were secure. Should I go up to him and alert him that I had almost certainly heard a street robbery? But if I had heard the robbers, he, only a few yards away in a nearby street, must surely have heard them too, yet he was not rushing away but merely continuing down King’s Parade with his steady, measured tread.

A car turned down from the direction of Trinity Street and glided past me. A cat streaked away into a dark slit between two buildings. My breath smoked on the frosty air. There was nothing untoward about and the town was settled for the night.

The oppression and dread that had enshrouded me a few minutes earlier had lifted, almost as a consequence of what I had heard and of my fall but I was puzzled and I did not feel comfortable in my own skin, and by now I was also thoroughly chilled so I made my way back to the college gate as briskly as I could, my coat collar turned up against the freezing night air.

The porter, still ensconced by his glowing fire, wished me goodnight. I replied, and turned into the court.

All was dark and quiet but light shone from one of the same two windows I had noticed when I went out, and now from another on the far left-hand row. Someone must just have returned. In a couple of weeks term would have begun and then lights would be on all round – undergraduates do not turn in early. I stood for a moment looking round, remembering the good years I had spent within these walls, the conversations late into the night, the japes, the hours spent sweating over an essay and boning up for Part One. I would never want to be like Theo, spending all my years here, however comfortable the college life might be, but I had a pang of longing for the freedoms and the friendships. It was then that my eye was caught by one light, the original one, going out, so that now there was only one room with a light on, on the far side, and it was automatic for me to glance up there.

What I saw made my blood freeze. Whereas before there had been a blank, now a figure was in the room and close to the window. The lamp was to one side of him and its beam was thrown onto his face, and the effect was startlingly like that of the Venetian picture. Well, there was nothing strange about that – lamplight and torchlight will always highlight and provide sharply contrasting shadows in this way. No, it was the face at the window by which I was transfixed. The man was looking directly at me and I could have sworn I recognized him, not from life but from the picture, because he bore such an uncanny resemblance to one of the faces that I would have sworn in any court that they were one and the same. But how could this possibly be? It could not, and besides, I had merely glanced at the one and it was at a window some distance from me, whereas the other was in a picture and I had studied it closely for some time. There are only so many combinations of features, as Theo himself had said.

But it was not the mere resemblance which struck so, it was the expression on the face at the window that had the impact upon me and produced such a violent reaction. The face was one I had particularly noticed in the picture because it was a fine depiction of decadence, of greed and depravity, of malice and loathing, of every sort of inhuman feeling and intent. The eyes were piercing and intense, the mouth full and sardonic, the whole face set into a sneer of arrogance and concupiscence. It was a mesmerizingly unpleasant face and it had repelled me in the picture as much as it horrified me now. I had glanced away, shocked, from the window, but now I looked up again. The face had gone and after another couple of seconds the light went out and the room was black. The whole court was now in darkness, save for the lamps at each corner, which cast a comforting pool of tallow light onto the gravel path.

I came to, feeling numb with cold and chilled with fear. I was shivering and the sense of dread and imminent doom had returned and seemed to wrap me round in place of my coat. But at the same time I was determined not to let these feelings get the better of me and I went across the court and up the staircase of the rooms from which the light had been shining. I remembered them as being the set a friend of mine had occupied in our time and found them without trouble. I stood outside the door and listened closely. There was a silence so absolute that it was uncanny. Old buildings generally make some sound, creaking and settling back, but here it was as still and quiet as the grave. After a moment, I knocked on the outer door, though without expecting any reply, as the occupant would now be in the bedroom and might well not have heard me. I knocked again more loudly, and when again there was no answer, I turned the door handle and stepped inside the small outer lobby. The air was bitterly cold here, which was strange as no one would be occupying rooms on such a night without having heated them. I hesitated, then went into the study.

‘Hello,’ I said in a low voice.

There was no response and after I had repeated my ‘Hello’ I felt along the wall for the light switch. The room was empty, and not only empty of any person, but empty of any thing, apart from a desk and chair, one armchair beside the cold and empty grate, and a bookcase without any books in it. There was an overhead light but no lamp of any kind. I went through to the bedroom. There was a bed, stripped of all linen. Nothing else.

Obviously, I had mistaken the rooms and I left, and made my way to the second set adjacent to them, the only others on the upper level of this staircase – each one had two sets up and a single, much larger set, on the ground floor and the pattern was the same on three sides of this, the Great Court. (The Inner Court was smaller and arranged quite differently.)

I knocked and, hearing only silence in response again, went into this set of rooms too. They were as empty as the first – emptier indeed since here there was no furniture other than the bookcases which were built into the wall. There was also a smell of plaster and paint.

I thought that I would go across to the night porter and ask who normally occupied this staircase. But what purpose would that serve? There were no undergraduates in residence, these sets had not been used by fellows for many years and clearly, decoration and maintenance were underway.

I cannot possibly have seen a lamp lit and a figure in any of these windows.

But I knew that I had.

I went, thoroughly shaken now, down the staircase, and across the court to the guest set in which I was staying. There, I had a bottle of whisky and a soda siphon. Ignoring the latter, I poured myself a large slug of the scotch and downed it in one, followed by another, which I took more slowly. I then went to bed and, in spite of the whisky, lay shivering for some time before falling into a heavy sleep. It was filled with the most appalling nightmares, through which I tossed and turned and sweated in horror, nightmares filled with strange flaring lights and fires and the shouts of people drowning.

I woke hearing myself cry out, and as I gathered my senses, I heard something else, a tremendous crash, as of something heavy falling. It was followed by a distant and muffled cry, as if someone had been hit and injured.

My heart was pounding so loudly in my ears and my brain still so swirling with the dreadful pictures that it took me a moment to separate nightmare from reality, but when I had been sitting upright with the lamp switched on for a few moments, I knew that what I had seen and the voices of the people drowning had been unreal and parts of a disturbing nightmare, but that the crashing sound and the subsequent cry most certainly had not. Everything was quiet now but I got out of bed and went into the sitting room. All was in order. I returned for my dressing gown, and then went out onto the staircase but here, too, all was still and silent. No one was occupying the adjacent set but I did not know if a fellow was in residence below. Theo Parmitter’s rooms were on a different staircase.

I went down in the dark and icy cold and listened at the doors below but there was absolutely no sound.

‘Is anyone there? Is everything all right?’ I called but my voice echoed oddly up the stone stairwell and there was no answering call.

I went back to bed, and slept fitfully until morning, mainly because I was half frozen and found it difficult to get warm and comfortable again.

When I looked out of the windows a little after eight, I saw that a light snow had fallen and that the fountain in the centre of the court had frozen solid.