Early Riser

Room 901

I pushed the door open against a small pile of mail. Most were cartes de bon hiber from people who did not yet know Suzy Watson was dead, and the rest were bills and fliers. I placed them on a chair, then looked around. The room was of the standard ‘pizza slice’ layout, and while the fittings and fixtures, carpets and wallpaper were not exactly ancient, they were certainly past their best. I went into the kitchen area. The fridge was empty except for some milk that had gone beyond yoghurt and was now entering a state unknown to science, and a few shrivelled somethings that defied easy identification. There was a picture of Don Hector on the wall and next to the television was a phonograph with a large collection of cylinders. I looked through them. They were a mixture of old favourites – Dark Side of the Moon, Rumours, Ziggy Stardust – mixed with jazz and a little Puccini.

The apartment would have been utterly unremarkable, in fact, but for one thing: dominating the bedroom wall was a painting of Clytemnestra, depicting her just after she had murdered her husband. The portrait was spectacular not only by virtue of subject, but also for its size, occupying the wall from floor to ceiling and in a large ornate gilt frame that had been trimmed at the bottom to allow it to fit. Clytemnestra was topless and wore a curious half-smile upon her features, her chin raised with a sense of good-natured sociopathy.

History does not relate exactly when during the Winter Clytemnestra had murdered Agamemnon, and it was a subject of much conjecture. If committed at Springrise it might have been an impulsive act; dismissed as mal à le dormir, the fog of sleep. The more generous artistic renditions had her looking skinny and confused. In contrast, this painting had her depicted with the easy confidence of life-affirming weightiness. The artist was here suggesting it was an act of premeditation; that she had stayed up, murdered Agamemnon soon after he’d slipped under, then descended into the Hib with her slowly decaying husband by her side. It changed the interpretation of her character, and her motivations – little wonder there was much academic debate.

‘Who’s the topless bunny with the blade?’

I jumped with fright and spun round.

Standing in the middle of the room was a woman wearing paint-streaked dungarees and a large and very baggy man’s shirt. Her raven-black hair was knotted high in an untidy bun that was secured with a pencil, and she was drying some paintbrushes with a rag. She was looking, not at me, but at the painting of Clytemnestra.

‘I’ve got a better question,’ I said. ‘What are you doing in my apartment?’

She turned to look at me and I was suddenly struck by her dark and brooding good looks. She had piercing violet eyes, a faintly Ottoman appearance and high, expressive eyebrows. She was about ten years older than me, and was, without any question, an extraordinary-looking woman. But her appeal was more than simple beauty; there was a bearing, a spirit, a strength.

‘The door was open and I was intrigued,’ she said, ‘and anyway, it’s not your apartment,’ she said. ‘It’s Suzy’s.’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said somewhat awkwardly, ‘right.’

It was not a winning response, but I was transfixed not just by her looks, but by her manner, a heady mix of allure and confidence. I knew then that I would never see a more striking individual as long as I lived.

‘Still awake?’ I asked.

‘I like to stay up,’ she said. ‘I live four doors down. Never came in here, though. So: who’s the bunny?’

‘It’s Clytemnestra,’ I said, walking closer.

‘Ah,’ she said, suddenly understanding, ‘the premeditated viewpoint.’

We both stared at the painting for a moment.

‘And,’ I added, trying to sound intelligent, ‘a cautionary lesson in co-hibernating.’

‘We never hibernated together, my husband and I,’ she replied absently, ‘not after watching Zeffirelli’s Winter Crossed Lovers.’

She was referring to the scene where Romeo wakes to find Juliet next to him, expecting his bride but instead finding little but taut skin stretched across her bones, and the dark stain of putrefaction upon the bedsheets. I saw the film when I was nine, and that image never leaves you. Years later, Baz Luhrmann played the scene entirely on DiCaprio’s face. He didn’t need to show us Juliet’s remains; Zeffirelli had already planted the horror in our minds.

‘Did it work out for her?’ asked the dark-haired woman. ‘Clytemnestra murdering her husband, I mean?’

‘She and her lover got to rule Mycenae for seven years.’

She nodded approvingly, still staring at the painting, but I was more interested in her. The nape of her neck, her unpierced ears, and her jet-black hair that seemed to have a soft luxuriance about it. She turned and caught me looking at her, so I looked away, then realised that was too obvious so looked back – and felt myself fall into her gaze, as one might fall into the charms of an exceptional painting.

‘You’re a Winter Consul,’ she announced.

‘Does it show?’

‘You wear it heavily, like a cloak. Are you sure it’s what you want to be?’

‘I’m… not sure.’

‘I always think it’s best to be sure of at least one thing in life.’

‘And what are you sure of?’ I asked, trying to maintain a credible conversation.

‘That I’m no longer sure of anything,’ she replied, with a sudden air of melancholy. She tipped her head on one side, paused for thought, then offered to paint my portrait for five hundred euros, unframed. I had neither the time nor the funds to be painted, but very much liked the idea of more time in her company, especially if it involved her staring at me intently, for whatever reason.

‘You could find a better subject,’ I murmured, indicating my face. I’d come to terms with my looks soon after biting off Gary Findlay’s ear. All the frustration I’d ever had was discharged in that one violent event. Gary lost an ear, but I gained clarity and became the curator of my own appearance.

‘Are you Pool or kinborne?’ she asked.

‘Pool.’

‘My husband was Pool.’

And then, quite unexpectedly, she placed a soft hand on the twisted side of my head. The only person to have touched me there was Sister Zygotia and Lucy, once, when she was drunk. My eye twitched and I felt a shiver of fear run up the side of my body. She had no right to be so forward, but the intimacy, even without affection, was curiously thrilling in a way that was difficult to explain. But I was deluding myself: she was older, Alpha, and completely outside and above the profile of a potential partner. I was being unutterably foolish, and put the thoughts to the back of my head.

‘I might find a better subject, yes,’ she said, gently pushing my head into profile with an index finger on the tip of my nose, ‘but not one of such… inspiring intrigue.’

It was the finest compliment my appearance had ever received,[47] and I blinked rapidly to hide the dampness that had risen to my eyes.

‘Then I accept.’

‘Come on, then.’

I caught a whiff of her scent as she turned on a heel and walked past me, a delicate mix of oil paints, fresh laundry and musk. We walked around the circular inner corridor to the room on the opposite side of the building and she beckoned me inside. Every inch of wall space was covered with canvases and anything not hung was stacked against the walls.

There was one painting that dominated: an impressionistic rendering of Rhosilli beach on the Gower Peninsula, fully six foot wide and three foot high. In the background was the beached wreck of the liner the Argentinian Queen, rusting away to inevitable collapse, the blue paint just visible beneath the encroaching rust. There were wispy mare’s tails in the sky, the headland merely a jagged profile in the distant haze. In the foreground, on the large and otherwise empty beach, was an orange-and-red parasol of spectacular size and splendour. Hidden beneath it were two bathers, partially obscured and sitting on a blue-and-white striped towel.

It was a remarkable painting, and I told her so.

‘It’s tolerable,’ she said with little emotion. ‘I call it: There will always be the Gower.’

‘I visited many times,’ I said, mesmerised by the painting, ‘when the wreck was about this intact.’

‘Collapsed into the sea now,’ she said, ‘the inevitable action of wind and tide. Did you ever stop off at Mumbles Pier for cockles, bacon and laver bread on toast?’

‘How could one not?’

There was a paint-spattered easel set up in the middle of the room, on which sat an unfinished portrait of a male nude facing the viewer. There was something special about the picture – a certain raw and very seasonal energy in a taut, well-filled physique. It wasn’t a coy rendering of a nude, either – every detail of his body had been meticulously represented. Every hair, every muscle. There was no part of him she hadn’t found worthy of meticulous attention – except his face. There were no features at all. The painting was all physicality, and no identity, except the shape of the jaw. It looked somehow familiar, as though I’d seen it before, and recently.

‘Friend of yours?’ I asked.

‘He was my husband.’

‘You’ll paint his face in last?’

‘The portrait’s finished,’ she replied. ‘He vanished one evening just before beginning an overwinter.’

‘What happened to him?’ I asked, and she flashed me an angry look.

I was, I admit, surprised by her reaction. People vanish all the time so it’s not considered an inappropriate subject. They found Billy DeFroid’s remains scattered across a car park come the thaw, and Sister Placentia was happy to tell anyone who asked – even down to which bits they never found.

‘I have my suspicions,’ she said, suddenly calming down, ‘and although I don’t know he’s dead, it’s been too long to assume anything other than the worst.’

She paused for thought and stared at the painting again.

‘Although his features begin to fade in my memory, his body I’ll remember always. The way it felt under my fingertips, the weight of it upon mine. He vanished the Spring before we were planning for a family. I’d bulked up especially for the confinement.’

‘O-kay,’ I said, embarrassed by her candour, ‘I’m sorry for your losses.’

She stared at the painting thoughtfully.

‘He liked the snow but not the Winter,’ she said in a quiet voice, ‘valued the climb greater than the view from the summit. He didn’t smile much, but when he did, the world smiled with him, and we bundled as though it were the first time, and would be the last.’

‘I’ve never known someone like that,’ I said. ‘All my friends are just, well, ordinary.’

‘Don’t underestimate mediocrity,’ she said. ‘Lasting happiness, I’ve found, only really favours the unadventurous. Take a seat.’

She directed me towards a high-back chair and picked up a Polaroid camera. She pulled it open, put a new flashbulb in the holder, cocked the shutter and pointed it at me, then focused.

‘Look down,’ she said, half hidden behind the camera, ‘just your eyes.’

I did as she asked.

‘Have you ever bundled?’

‘Yes.’

‘On your own doesn’t count.’

‘Then no.’

‘Imagine it now,’ she said, ‘with that special one. Not the one in your mind, but the one in your heart. The one to whom your physical thoughts turn when you can feel the heat rising in your body, the yearning for intimacy. And when those thoughts have filled your mind, look up.’

I thought about pretty much everyone I’d ever fancied over the years but rejected them all, then found myself thinking about the painter, there in front of me with her dark hair, dark manner and dark strangeness. I thought of her and me closely entwined in a tight knot of passion, and looked up.

The flash went off, then there was a crinkly noise as the spent flashbulb cooled. She flicked the release, pulled out the paper tab, tore it off and discarded it, then looked at her watch.

‘I’ll be gone from the Sector in a couple of days,’ I said, handing her my card. ‘You can reach me here.’

She took the card, waited another ten seconds then opened the door on the back of the Polaroid and peeled the print from the negative. She looked at it, nodded approval then set the picture upon her work desk to dry.

‘Have you rights to Morphenox?’ she asked.

‘Yes.’

‘But you won’t need it, what with staying up?’

‘No, I guess not.’

‘I’ve been neglecting my bulking up this season,’ she confessed, ‘and need something to see me through the Hib. Give me your dose and I’ll knock two hundred euros off the painting.’

Now I came to think of it, she was looking a little light. Transferring my Morphenox to her was illegal, of course, but I did have a dosage on me and, wanting to do what I could to maximise her chances of survival, I agreed.

‘Only on condition you don’t pay me. No money off the painting – nothing. I’ll be in enough trouble as it is if I’m rumbled.’

She understood the reasoning, thanked me, then moved to one of her larger canvases, which depicted Gwendolyn IX on horseback, leading the troops. She never did such a thing in reality, but overdramatic portraits of the great woman were bread-and-butter for the jobbing artist – that, memento mori, still-lifes of flowers in a jar[48] and prize cow-mammoths. She picked up a palette, dabbed her brush in some paint and then moved it absently around on the canvas. It was like I suddenly wasn’t there.

‘Well, okay,’ I said, ‘I’ll be off, then.’

She said nothing and I moved away, but she spoke again when I reached the door.

‘The wise money says not to leave the rocks.’

‘What rocks?’

‘The ones under the oak,’ she said without looking up, ‘near the blue Buick.’

‘You’ve had the dream?’

‘I’ve had scraps.’

‘I’ll be fine,’ I said, ‘I don’t have dreams.’

‘Everyone needs dreams,’ she said simply. ‘If you don’t have them, they can’t come true.’

I wanted to ask her more but she’d returned to her painting and begun to hum. The conversation was over, and I returned to my room.

With the fatigue now almost overpowering, I elected to turn in. I fully wound the phonograph, selected an ultra-long play of the Preludio Sinfonica, slipped it on the player and pressed Start & Repeat. This done, I placed my Bambi under the pillow, undressed, climbed into bed and pulled up the blankets to stare at the ceiling, hands behind my head, the calming strains of music wafting in from the next room.

The situation was not what I had intended. I was in a strange town in a fringe sector, about to hit the sack in the apartment of a woman who had suffered a fatal attack of Hibernational Narcosis mixed with night terrors. I’d lost my mentor and a much-respected Consul to boot, partly as a result of my own intransigence. Mind you, if Logan hadn’t paused when the lift doors had opened, then Aurora would be dead instead of him – but then probably me as well.

Conscious that I should only be night-napping and not tumbling down the slope to deep hibernation, I set my Taser-clock[49] for an early rise the following morning and attached the electrode to my earlobe, then switched off the light. In the faint gloom I could just make out the shape of Clytemnestra: happy that she’d just murdered her husband. I thought of the artist, and what she asked me to think of when she took the picture, then my thoughts jumbled as grateful slumber bore down upon me. Thoughts of Aurora, the dead woman with the bouzouki, the Hugo Foulnap-who-wasn’t, Porter Lloyd, Jack Logan and finally Moody telling me that I would visit the blue Buick, and to not leave the rocks.

But I knew it would all be okay. I wasn’t going to dream.

But I did, of course.