London Noir

1.

She was a beauty, all right, but that’s not what started it. It was the resemblance -wildly exact – to his long-imagined creature. He stopped cold the first time he saw her. She was fiddling with gew-gaws in a costume jewelry shop on Fulham Road. He stopped and gasped and stared through the window like some clown doing a pantomime of Cupid’s Target. Then he began to follow her. All the way home through the autumn evening. Through mist, past mansions, under haloed street lamps: the whole South Kensington shebang.

He’d done this maybe a dozen times over the past five years. More and more often during his dreamy, Luciferian tumble from station to station. At first, there had been no need for it. That first year in London, he had been someone, a recognizable member of the human race: Benjamin Westlake, an American art student finishing up his Grand Tour before returning to the States. He had had promise, and a certain frantic intensity that made his scrawny frame thrum. He could sit in pubs and cafes and talk to other students with a mesmerizing energy: about the Pre-Raphaelites in relation to the New Realism, about injecting realism with the Vital Romance of the Past. He could find models; he could find lovers too sometimes. At first – but somehow, he had stayed on, he had not gone home. And he had begun to paint less, hardly at all finally. Nothing he did was good enough for him, He had begun to theorize when he should have been working, and his cafe philosophies became charged with unappealing panic as he watched, in secret, the slow paralysis of his talent through fear. For a while, he managed to hold onto his few admirers. He lived off his sensitive appearance, his nervous charm and money from home. But they had all dried up eventually.

And so he began to do this more and more. As he became more and more unkempt, more and more frantic and bizarre and unpresentable, as he festered in his Marylebone basement, scrounged for odd jobs, lived without friends, without a work permit, with even his police papers obsolete -more and more often, as he metamorphosed into this hollow-eyed wanderer through the higher-toned city streets, he began to pick out women. Women who reminded him of something; of someone. Of his dream model, that is. The fantasy girl who would become his inspiration, the muse of his resurgence – and his lover, of course; or so the tired fantasy went. He would pick them out, and he would follow them. For a day, for a few days. Until the resemblance inexplicably faded.

But this one – oh, he told himself, she was the best of them, no question. Yes, yes, he did believe she was his Lizzie Siddal to the life.

He tailed her for four days. Trailed her to her home. Lurked outside by the iron gates of the overgrown garden at Thurloe Square. He watched her figure through the privacy curtains on the ground floor. He yearned with raw eyes. He scratched at his ragged beard as if there were lice in it – maybe there were. Or he stood as if breathless, his hands in the pockets of his stained trench coat or tugging now and then at the shiny slacks that had become too large for his spindly frame. And she – she passed in and out beneath the white columns of the house’s portico. She kissed her husband in the doorway when the limousine came to collect him. She walked her little boy to school. Had tea with friends. She visited the shops on Walton Street and Beauchamp Place. It thrilled him to watch her through the shop windows, cosseted and sedate, serious in her consideration of fine clothes and bangles. He thought of Lizzie Siddal, indeed, in her modest bonnet shop, where Deverell had discovered her, and whence he brought her to his studio to model for him. And how she’d modeled then for Hunt, and for Millais, who painted her as the drowned Ophelia, making her pose clothed in an ill-warmed bath until she came down with a fever. That picture was in the Tate now, among the other Pre-Raphaelites. He visited it often and stood before it, staring, bouncing on his toes. He considered her to have been – Siddal – the very image of Men’s Longing for the Lost Thing. And in the end, he thought, in the end, she belonged to Rossetti only. She was his model alone. His Beatrice, his Delia, his muse, his wife at last. ‘One face looks out from all his canvases, one selfsame figure sits or walks or leans…’

He learned the woman’s name one morning when her husband’s Financial Times jammed the letter slot. Jane Abbot: he read it off the letters stuck half-way.

What pictures he could make of her, he thought grandly, breathing hoarsely, as he stood so close to her, just outside her front door. What a world he too could make of myth and of remembrance.

Of course, he’d thought all this before, about other women, while following other women. That’s what he did these days, after all, hang around shadowing girls and thinking such things. It was easier than actually painting, wasn’t it? – a fact which sat heavily even on him now, even as he tagged after this latest.

But then, on the Thursday – on Thursday night – there came the added element. He recognized the moment as if he had been waiting for it. And the whole hankering, romantic operation was transformed into this other business.

It was late. It was drizzling, chilly. He pushed his hands together in his pockets to draw the trench coat closed: its belt was lost and two of its three buttons had fallen off long ago. He was at his post by the iron fence, gazing at her windows still though she’d drawn the curtains at darkfall as the English do. He was shivering. He was ready to go home.

It surprised him when she came out – it was nearly ten. But she stepped across the threshold briskly, in all innocence it seemed. She smiled back over her shoulder, waved goodbye as she shut the door. He expected her to head for the brown Mercedes she’d left parked down the street, or to walk over to Brompton and hail a cab. He figured he was going to lose her right away like that. But the moment the door was closed, she paused where she was, her face alert. Standing under the portico, she scanned the area. He had to turn away before she spotted him. He pretended to walk off toward the end of the road where the V and A loomed against the broken clouds. By the time he turned back, she was going in the opposite direction, had passed the Mercedes. Was hurrying round the corner, her heels clicking on the pavement, to Pelham Street, which led to the South Kensignton tube station. He turned back and went after her, taking long strides. His decaying tennis shoes made no noise at all.

He still couldn’t believe she would take the underground until he trailed her into the station and saw her start down the stairs. He’d never seen her use the tube before. The first thought that occurred to him – naturally enough – was that she didn’t want to leave a record of her movements; she didn’t want anyone to find out where she’d gone, or to follow her. It was a thrilling thought, almost too thrilling to believe: that she was thinking about someone following her. It added a sudden value to his position, a telepathic intimacy.

She wore a long, brown raincoat, and a wide-brimmed hat pulled low. The way she waited at the far end of the platform, the way she kept her face turned away, toward the tracks – yes, he was convinced she was trying to go unnoticed.

On the train, seated in a corner, she read a paperback novel, her head down. He watched her cautiously from the other end of the car. Already, he couldn’t believe his luck.

It rained harder, grew colder, he warmed himself by a bonfire of the mind. They had built one – a bonfire – by the Siddal grave in Highgate. He thought of that, shivering, standing inside the phone booth, watching through the rain-streaked glass, watching the cafe across the street, waiting for her.

The cafe was off Piccadilly Circus, in that tangle of lanes that’s not quite Soho; a no-man’s land. At this hour, the place went clubby, and it drew freaks. Even now, a line of them was forming at the door, shaved head after dyed hair after ringed nose after tattooed cheek; leather bodies hunkered under black umbrellas. It was a hell of a crowd for her to mix with. He could hear the bass of the music in there thumping. He could see film-light and video-glow flickering on the windows. She had been inside about twenty minutes now.

His teeth began to chatter. He imagined the bonfire against the night sky, above the cemetery. When Elizabeth Eleanor Siddal died – a laudanum overdose – February, 1862 – Rossetti, her painter, her husband, had laid his unpublished poems in her coffin. A calf-bound packet of them; they were buried with her; placed between her consumptive cheek and her rich hair. Her red-gold hair. They say it keeps growing after you die, your hair. They say that Lizzie Siddal’s hair spilled out of her coffin and was still luxurious, still red-gold some seven years later, when they dug her up. Rossetti needed money by then. He needed to publish the poems he’d buried with her. Two of his friends were on hand to watch the exhumation by bonfirelight, and to pry the packet of poems from what had been her face, to draw inspiration one more time from that singular face…

The image did seem to warm him there in his phone booth.

Jane Abbot had red hair too.

She came out with a man. Well, he’d already guessed that would happen – her in a dive like this – that had to be the explanation. He was a young slime, sizeable and slick. Black hair casually damp on his forehead. Trench coat by Armani with that slanting cut you saw on the cover of magazines. He had no umbrella, no hat. He walked through the rain quickly. He gripped Jane Abbot’s elbow, as if to drag her with him, but she kept pace, she seemed to walk beside him willingly enough.

Benjamin left his phone booth and his imagined bonfires and trailed after them at a distance. He was excited now – so excited his throat felt tight – but he was vaguely angry too. He was disappointed to have his guess confirmed, to see her with a slick punk like that. It made him think less of this model of his, and he considered her quite sternly.

The couple reached the slick man’s car near the next corner. It was a low sporty model, hard to tell which in the shadows there, away from the street lamps. Benjamin stopped and watched them. He stood on the sidewalk openly, didn’t try to hide himself. The two weren’t paying any attention to him, that was for sure.

The slick man opened the passenger door. Only then, did the woman shy – suddenly. Like a dumb animal she was, like a dog who suddenly realizes she’s heading for the vet’s: she pulled back against his grip as if terrified all at once. She braced her heels against the pavement.

‘What the hell’s this then? the slick man said.

He let her elbow go, and she stumbled backwards. She cowered – actually cowered – against the wall of the building behind her. In a spasm, she shook her head: no.

Benjamin’s heart sped up, his breathing went shallow. The slick man was on top of the woman at once. He had something in his hand. Something white: an envelope, it looked like. He waved it in her face fiercely.

‘Don’t you play the fancy cat with me,’ he said.

Benjamin was wide-eyed. He wished he were a hero. He could see himself rushing forward into the fray, rescuing her. He could imagine it even as he watched what actually happened. The slick man kept waving the envelope in Jane Abbot’s face. He was big, and he looked tough.

He grinned at her, all teeth. Jane Abbot’s features contorted in pain. With a convulsive gesture and a muted cry, she snatched the paper from him. She tore it into small pieces, dashed the shreds to the ground, crying out again as she did. The slick man just stood there, just grinned at her. She hung her head, finally, under the weight of his self-assurance.

The slick man made an expansive gesture toward his car. ‘If her majesty pleases,’ he said.

Jane Abbot hesitated. She made a motion, as if to retrieve the torn envelope. But now, the slick man took her by the arm more roughly. He pulled her to the car, shoved her down into the passenger seat. Shaking his head, he walked around to the driver’s side.

When the car had moved off, Benjamin came forward through the rain. He was trembling as he crouched down over the torn envelope. He had to use his fingernails to peel the bits of paper off the wet sidewalk. But at last, he managed to get them all.

2.

She came through the door, past the white columns, down the white stairs – and suddenly, he stepped up to her and grabbed her wrist. It was Monday now. The weekend – the fever, the fever of obsession, the fevered drawings that he began in fits and threw away – all this had left its scars on his sallow cheeks and brow; and his eyes were blazing.

So, of course, she was terrified. She tried to pull free. ‘What is this? Let go of me!’

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ he whispered.

‘I said let go,’ said Jane Abbot quickly. ‘I haven’t got any money with me. What do you want?’

Benjamin licked his dry lips. He forced them into something like a smile, but it only seemed to frighten her more. He released her wrist.

‘I know,’ he told her. ‘I know everything.’

That made her hesitate a moment, but only a moment. Then she spun away from him, she hurried away. He went after her, the tails of his trench coat flying in the cool wind.

‘I saw the photograph,’ he said to her back. That stopped her. She pulled up short. She looked over her shoulder at him. Even full of fear, her eyes seemed other-worldly to him. He nodded at her slowly. ‘The one you tore up. I taped it together,’ he said. ‘I saw. I know everything.’

She took this hard, her lips compressing, her eyes filling with tears. ‘Who are you?’

‘I want to help you,’ he said. ‘I can help you. I will.’

She gave that little spasm, that little shake of the head: No. He stepped toward her.

‘Really,’ he said.

Jane Abbot stared at him. She swallowed hard. ‘What do you want?’

He lifted his hand to touch her cheek, to touch her tenderly. But she recoiled. His hand hung in the air, trembling.

He whispered: ‘I want to paint your picture.’

He wasn’t sure she would come. He couldn’t believe she would. Still, he did his best with the place. It was a basement bed-sitter off Baker Street. There were two other rooms just like it crammed together down there, each with its own toilet and a common bath in the hall. The shit in each room stank in the others, and the slobs in the others ignored the landlord’s notices and stacked their garbage outside their doors. It was pretty awful. Benjamin did what he could. He dragged the smelly hefty bags from the hallway and tossed them into the bins outside. He opened his one window, hoping to cover the room’s stench with the smell of exhaust. He made his narrow bed, and picked the clothes and discarded sketches off the floor. When he was done, he sat on the bed’s edge and waited, wringing his hands, staring at nothing. His head felt thick and feverish.

At noon, she rang at the outside door. He jumped up, wiped the sweat from his face. He rubbed his cold palms together as he stepped out into the hall. He brushed his hair back with his fingers.

But she hardly looked at him when he let her in. She walked past him slowly, with a stately tread: a queen going to her execution. Well, he tried not to be too offended by that. Even he, who was thinking none too clearly now, had an inkling of how desperate she must’ve been to come.

She stood in his room, stood like a fortress, looking neither left nor right. Oh, oh, oh, he was thinking as he scrabbled around her like a roach; oh, she’s the exact reflection of the Thing… Tall and substantial, with her long straight hair tied back with a black ribbon. Her features were not so blunt as Siddal’s. They were more delicate, her face narrower, but the effect, to him at least, was just as mournful and ethereal. She barely moved to help him as he took her coat from her shoulders. She wore a navy dress belted with a chain. She had a figure full at breast and hip. Oh, oh: the breath caught in his throat, tremulous.

‘Do you want anything? A glass of water?’

She shook her head once. ‘No, thank you.’

He folded her coat carefully. He draped it over the back of his only chair. ‘I… I’ll need you to lie down. On the bed.’ She turned her head and looked down at him. He said quickly: ‘It’s the pose. It’s all I need. Really.’

After a few seconds, taking a deep breath, she did it. She arranged her dress close to her calves and lay stiffly, her legs together, her hands clasped on her middle.

He sat on the chair, on the edge of the chair. ‘I’m… I’m going to make a drawing first… a few drawings. It won’t take too long.’

She didn’t answer. He pulled his pad from the small table under the window. He crossed his legs and braced the pad against his knee. When he lifted his pencil, he laughed nervously at his hand. It was shaking violently. When she didn’t notice, all the same, he began.

It had been years since there’d been genius in his fingers, if there ever was. But now it came. He felt it anyway. And he was amazed by it. He sketched her quickly, with the photographic realism he had practiced in school, with more assurance than he’d had since then, than he’d ever had. Yes, he was going to make a Lizzie Siddal of her: Siddal in her coffin, in the bonfire light. But he would make her like Ophelia too, lying in the Highgate tomb, a sort of rudely resurrected Ophelia, because he felt as if he and the old painters were wrestling in the open grave for the right to portray her. He wove the lines of Rossetti’s poems into the background, into the flames, the trees, the shadow-streaked stones.

’Beautiful!’ he breathed aloud. ‘You have such a special look… you have this haunting… reminiscent look…’

But when he glanced up at her, her expression was convulsed in disgust. She turned to him angrily.

’Don’t move,’ he said.

Her expression did not change, but she shifted her head back into position. There was a moment’s silence while he drew. And then she burst out, quietly, bitterly: ‘Believe me, I didn’t ask to look like this.’

At once, his hand started to shake again. He grimaced. What did she have to talk for? But he heard himself say: ‘So why don’t you… you know. Why don’t you tell me how it happened.’

’I thought you already knew everything.’

He didn’t answer. If he had he would have told her to shut the hell up before she ruined everything. He steadied his hand and brought the pencil point back to the paper. Yes, it was still there. He drew.

Jane Abbot sighed. ‘I was an idiot. That’s how it happened.’

The flame-painted face, more alive than in life, the living muse overpowering the decaying flesh… He drew rapidly, nauseous with the fever now and with excitement.

‘I wanted to get away,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to put it. From my world, from my husband’s world. I wanted to escape a little. I felt like a stopped kettle. I thought I would explode.’

‘So you mean you went to that club,’ he said hoarsely, drawing.

‘Yes. That’s what I mean. I started going to that club sometimes. When my husband was away. He has to travel – to the continent – two or three times a month.’ She lay still on the bed, hands clasped. She spoke up at the ceiling. ‘And then he… this other man… Simon… Well, I suppose he was very… different and charming. It was all part of getting away. Of letting off steam. And I was an idiot – God!’

‘Don’t move, don’t move.’

‘I suppose what he thought was… I suppose he thought I was using him. I suppose I was. But, you see, no one uses Simon Taylor. Not an important man like him. No one must be allowed to get the better of him in any way.’ She sneered at the cracked ceiling plaster. ‘So he took photographs. He had a friend in the other room taking photographs. And when I tried to break it off… Well, he wasn’t going to let anyone play the fancy cat with him, walk out on him. No.’

He had to stop drawing. He was just too excited now. Reluctantly, he pulled the quaking pencil from the page. He looked up at her, his eyes were all over her where she lay. ‘Can’t you buy them from him?’

’He doesn’t want money.’

He tried to keep his voice from shaking. ‘How much can he do though?’

‘Oh! Believe me. It’s different in America: the newspapers would actually print those pictures here. My husband is an important man. The damage would be unimaginable. And my son,’ she said more softly.

He wanted to go on, to ask her other things. The details. The things Taylor made her do. And did he make her do them with other men as well? Did he still take pictures? Did his friend watch? He didn’t have the nerve to ask any of it, though. He sat staring at her, glad the pad covered his lap so she couldn’t see just how excited he was.

She did notice he wasn’t drawing any more, however. She sat up, carefully, keeping her legs together, smoothing her dress down. Her gaze wandered around the room for a moment, as if she’d just awakened in a strange place. Then their eyes met. Hers were sullen, and he could only just hold himself steady.

’All right,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve made your picture. What will you do for me?’

Benjamin’s mouth opened in surprise. ‘Oh,’ he said at once. ‘Anything. I’ll do anything you want.’

She was supposed to see Taylor again on Friday, so on Thursday Benjamin murdered him. That wasn’t the original plan, of course. He’d been supposed to steal the photographs, that’s all. She’d given him the address of Taylor’s rather suave Notting Hill garden flat. She’d told him what she knew of Taylor’s schedule, prompted him on where to climb the garden fence and even told him which window – the kitchen window – was the likeliest to be unlocked. He did take his matte cutter with him, but only because it made him feel safer somehow. Maybe he’d be able to use it to turn a latch or something too, he thought. Good God, he never expected to actually do battle with the man.

Taylor went out around nine p.m., as Jane Abbot had said he might. Benjamin, huddled in shadow across the street, huddled in the blustery October darkness, watched him drive off and out of sight. Then he acted quickly.

The garden fence was low. He hopped it nimbly. He crossed the garden with a wary eye on the facing buildings, but it was all right. Most of the curtains were drawn, and no one was watching. Once he had lowered himself into the well under the windows, he was calmer, even oddly serene. He felt that no one could see him now. Well, he always felt a little like a phantom anyway.

She was right about the kitchen window too: it was unlocked. He slid it open. He climbed in over a counter, edging a crockery utensil jar to one side as he came. He drew the window shut behind him and dropped down on to the floor.

He’d brought a flashlight, but when he came into the living room, he pressed the wall switch all the same. Again, he felt invisible. He was sure he would not be seen.

The job seemed daunting to him at first. The flat was large, two vast rooms, and it was messy. Clothes and newspapers lay scattered on the floor. There were shelves and shelves of CDs and their jewel boxes were strewn on tables all around the stereo. He stood frozen. He did not know where to begin his search.

He began with a writing desk pushed against the far wall, and he found the photographs at once. The desk drawer was locked but he pulled out his matte cutter, pushed out the blade and worked it between the latch and the slot. The drawer popped open. There were papers in it. He rifled through them and saw a manila envelope underneath: the photographs and negatives were inside.

Just at this point, his calm, his armor of calm, began to disintegrate. He only glanced at the pictures briefly, but even that glimpse – of her candid nudity, of their vivid sex made pornographic by the camera – unnerved him. Waves of confused sensation washed over him, swallowed him. The reality of the photos, their easy hiding-place filled him with powerful intuitions of Taylor’s arrogance and Jane Abbot’s despair. At the same time, an aura of grandeur seemed to surround this enterprise of his – seemed to surround himself as well. After all, he was the engineer of her salvation, wasn’t he? She would be grateful to him. And he himself might well be reclaimed. The possibilities – the fair future, any future, Christ, at all – rocked him where he stood. He was desperate, all of a sudden. Desperate not to fail.

Panting, he shut the drawer quickly. He rushed to the living room doorway, slipping the cutter into his pocket unretracted, clutching the envelope in his hand. He killed the lights. He stepped into the kitchen. Almost gasping now, he moved to the counter in the dark, and to the window.

The front door opened and slammed shut. The living room lights went on. All his heroism died on the instant, a match blown out. There was no trace of calm at all, and there was sure as hell no grandeur. He felt as if he’d been transfigured suddenly into a bug, and he was almost mewling with terror as he hoisted himself onto the counter top.

Simon Taylor stepped into the kitchen and turned on the light. Just the look of him, his insolent masculinity, the sleek trench coat opened jauntily, the Italian shirt open at the throat, the black hair fallen on his brow – Benjamin was unmanned completely. He cowered on the counter top, drawing his feet in under him as if to shrink away. Simon Taylor looked at the envelope in his hand, gave a little shrug of his broad shoulders and laughed.

‘Don’t tell me you’re the best she could do,’ he said.

With a high whine of panic, Benjamin reached for the utensil jar. His fingers seemed to go off in all directions but somehow he managed to wrap them around a knife handle. He drew it out, and was heartened by the size of the blade. He gave something like a shout, and jumped down to the floor.

’Fuck you, you bastard!’ he said shrilly.

Taylor laughed again and shook his head. ’Christ!’

Benjamin advanced on him, wild. ‘Get the fuck out of my way.’

Annoyed, Taylor seemed to spit some lint off his tongue. Then, with a bored, whiffling noise, he stepped forward. Benjamin brandished the knife. Taylor slapped him, backhanded, hard, across the face. Benjamin felt the inside of his head balloon. He lost his balance and toppled over, the knife falling from one hand, the envelope flying from the other.

’Bloody ponce,’ Taylor said. He reached down and grabbed Benjamin by his coat front. He dragged him to his feet. By then, Benjamin had his hand in his pocket. Taylor yanked him forward. Benjamin pulled out his matte cutter and drove the blade into Taylor’s eye.

There was a soft pop and a blast of jelly and blood. Benjamin felt the liquid hit his cheek. Taylor’s mouth opened wide but he didn’t scream. He just crumpled to the floor, falling on to his back, one arm flung to the side. The matte cutter stuck up out of his eye socket, the handle wobbling. Benjamin gaped down at him. He wished he was a baby again on his mother’s knee. He wished he were atoms, blown into nothingness.

On the other hand, he had to get that cutter back. Choking down his gorge, he looked frantically this way and that. He saw the knife lying on the floor and swooped down, seized it. He crept up on Taylor’s body slowly, step by step, holding the knife protectively before him. He bent down, reaching for the handle gingerly.

Taylor grabbed him. His hand came up and clutched Benjamin’s wrist.

With a shriek, Benjamin fell on top of him and drove the knife into his body again and again and again.

3.

After only ten days, Jane Abbot began to have her moments: seconds, minutes at a time, when she could put it from her mind, when the black thoughts and suicidal daydreams dissipated. It was almost then as if nothing had happened, nothing ever. There were no more stories in the paper about Simon. The police had shrugged him off as a pimp and a drug dealer, and the press had stopped covering the murder after the second or third day. Everything else went on as usual. Her husband was distracted but quietly affectionate. Her son was full of comforting babble about his childish concerns. Only once was there a phone call, after about a week. She heard a shivery silence on the line, and then the one word: ‘… Jane?’ But she hung up so quickly it was as if the phone had never rung at all.

Sometimes, recalling some novel she had read, or some interview in a newspaper, she thought to herself: It really is like waking from a nightmare. Like coming out of a terrible dream.

In retrospect, of course, that was not the right comparison at all. Those ten days: they were just like moments, actually, moments of falling to earth. The mind does that sometimes to protect itself against inevitability. It protracts the falling time until it seems you are floating in air.

On the eleventh day, the Monday, as she returned from her son’s school, almost – really for minutes at a time – almost enjoying the clear, wintry air, she saw him again. That horrible little American. Lurking like a gargoyle by the garden fence. Gazing and gazing at her with that disgusting white glaze of lust in his eyes.

She felt herself collapsing inside. But she put her head down and crossed the street, tried to walk past him. He rushed after her – rushed after her! – calling out: ‘Jane!’

He caught the sleeve of her coat. She whipped round on him desperately, pulled free. ‘For God’s sake,’ she said. ‘For God’s sake.’

‘Please,’ he whispered. ‘You have to understand.’

She looked up and down the street. There were people - other people! – walking to work, walking right toward them.

She let out her breath. Her shoulders sagged. ‘Not here, for God’s sake,’ she said sadly.

She used her key to let them into the garden. It was artfully overgrown. Even now, with the trees almost bare, there was no seeing into the heart of it through the thick tangle of branches. At the center of the garden, there was a swing set, surrounded by hedges and with a wooden bench nearby. She took him there. The place was almost always empty during school hours.

She thought it best to speak to him with pity, but she felt no pity for him. ‘All right. What do you want?’ she said. Her breath made plumes of frost in the air.

The man’s big eyes fairly boiled at her. ‘I told you. You know,’ he whined. ‘I just want to paint you. I need to paint you, Jane. I need… to bring you back… To bring you back.’ He apparently couldn’t explain it better than that.

She stared at him – with wonder more than anything, but maybe even with some pity now too. ‘But you can’t, she said. ‘You must know you can’t. You can’t come near me any more. I can’t be anywhere near you. It would be… fatal. To both of us.’

He gestured helplessly. ‘But you wanted…’

‘No. Not that. Absolutely. Never that. Don’t put that on me.’

He ran his hand up through his greasy hair. He pleaded with her rapidly. ‘But no one knows. No one knows anything. You have to… Listen to me. Jane. You have a… a special face. It brings things to mind. Things people want…’

‘Damn it!’ It broke from her in a harsh whisper. She could even feel herself snap. ‘I told you. This…’ She moved her hand up to her cheek, but she didn’t dare touch herself. She was so frustrated she feared she would tear the skin away. ‘I’m not responsible for this! I can’t…’

‘You bitch! You will!’ he cried out suddenly. He grabbed her violently by her coat. He clutched roughly at her hair. His face, contorted, was pressed to hers. ’I have the goddamned photographs!’

He let her go, and they both stood a moment, shocked. But she was the first one to comprehend it, to understand what it was he’d said. The despair settled down on top of her with easy familiarity, the old blanket, the old shroud. She sank helplessly under its weight and sat down on the bench behind her. She stared blankly into the grass at her feet with a dazed and ironic smile.

There really must be an end to this, she thought. Some kind of end; a little peace; my God. If she could close her eyes; if she could sleep – sleep and sleep, enveloped in an element like water… She had thought of that often in this last year. Lying in her bath sometimes. It seemed it would be easy. With pills or with a razor. She had imagined herself: floating; floating away. It was within her power, at least, she thought. That peace, at least, she could achieve.

When, finally, slowly, she lifted her face, he was standing over her, his mouth open, as if still amazed. She thought he might be wrestling with some better remnant of himself, some instinct more humane. But she had no faith in that, she had nothing but the same old heavy irony for that as well.

And she was still smiling faintly when his features set themselves at last, when he thumped his chest with his fist in a token of ferocity and resolution.

‘I have the photographs,’ he said again. And he glared down at her, triumphant.