Maxim Jakubowski - London Noir

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.

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.