Iain Pears - The Portrait

And I saw the result. The face contorted and discoloured, the tongue sticking out, the odd angle of the neck, the looseness of the limbs. The chandelier pushed out of true by her body hanging at an angle, its cheap glass decorations tinkling slightly as the wind came through the door. A still life, all femininity eradicated and, like the boy on the beach, the image has stayed with me ever since.

A carefully arranged tableau. On the desk was the newspaper, open at the page with your review, and at the bottom she had written in a small, neat hand, “written by William Nasmyth.” She knew, you see. Does it comfort you, William, that even a woman in such distress could recognise your style? That your personality is so distinctive it proclaims itself even in such circumstances? I hope it makes you swell with pride; it is quite an achievement, after all.

But you had a still greater triumph, for beside the newspaper with your review was another, with the notice of Jacky’s death inside it. And underneath that, the same hand had written, “ruined by Henry MacAlpine.”

She thought I was the father of that child, William! She thought I had driven Jacky to her death, that I had shamed one and betrayed the other, taken her friend away from her. She held me responsible for it all, and never knew about you! Doesn’t that make you laugh, at last? You must see the funny side, surely, the thought of that woman hanging there, dying by her own hand, cursing me with her last breath! I didn’t take it in; I didn’t want to take it in, and so I allowed myself to be distracted. I turned away from her body, and saw the last part of her careful mise en scène.

Around the walls, turned to face the room for the first time, were all those paintings she hadn’t put into her show, which she had been so frightened of me seeing.

Pictures of Jacky, painted in a way I could never have managed, and which made me realise all my failings. She had painted a person, not merely a model striking a pose to challenge the artist’s skill. Her Jacky had character, personality. She was a real woman, suffused with emotions, tenderly and gently depicted, not some mannequin hiding behind the blank face of compliant stupidity. She had seen through the coarseness, the silliness, and found something beautiful; not merely a voluptuous body which I saw while I spent my time showing what a clever technician I was. Jacky sitting, lying on the sofa, curled up in front of the fire; in each one she saw something special and touching, and painted it with a loving hand. And her self-portraits shone with warmth as she sat close to Jacky and looked into her eyes, or with loneliness when the room was empty. This was what she had wanted, what no man could provide, why she rejected me out of hand. I could never have brought out those expressions in her; didn’t know it was possible.

But there were others as well, pictures of both of them entwined, stretched out together, passionate and unrestrained, intimate and pornographic, doing things that even now make me shudder. Shocking pictures, with faces distorted by depravity, bodies twisted out of shape in their striving for each other. And she had used the light, not hidden herself away in darkness. By God, she had used it as no one had ever tried before. Each picture was suffused with brilliant dazzling colours, the flesh tones green and purple and red, the sun shining off sensuous limbs that splayed out in ways no life model could ever emulate. The complex bundle of angles and curves on their bodies. Celebrating even as they abused the majesty of the human form, God’s image, and reduced it to the obscene and the grotesque. The sun shining through the windows even gave them haloes as they mauled each other, as though their depravity was the stuff of saints. The eyes, too, I remember, staring out so calmly, shining brightly as they gazed out of the frames, daring me to disapprove, amused at my shock. No gallery could ever put such things on its walls. No man could ever have painted them. I never imagined a woman would ever dare.

Even now those pictures haunt me; I dream of them, they come to me unbidden as I lie in bed at night; I try to put them out of my mind but even now, after four years, I cannot. I’ve tried everything—long walks, sleeping draughts of every sort prepared by the pharmacists of Quiberon, prayer, confession. Nothing works. These were not subtle paintings; not Manet’s Olympia, where all is left to the imagination, the pose so careful and decorous, the viewer drawn into the picture so that the obscenity is in your mind and the painter can plead innocence. There was no coyness about these. Anyone who looked at them was an intruder who had no right to be there. I remember one most of all; Jacky was on her knees in front of Evelyn who was naked on the sofa. There was no joy on her face: this was not a portrait of the lover touched by the divine. This was devilish and violent, her face twisted, her body tense, an exultant scream coming from her mouth. What could that have to do with love or tenderness? This could not be that frail, dainty woman I knew? But like your moment with the shattered glass, I knew this was the truth. This was what she truly was, degraded and foul.

Those pictures made me tremble; I thought it was the shock of seeing Evelyn hanging there, but it wasn’t. It was knowing her for the first time, and being revolted by the way she let loose what was within her and revelled in it. To do such things, think such thoughts and paint it as love. Not to see it for what it was, what it must be, but to turn it into art such as no-one has attempted before.

It was the scream of her landlady, coming up the stairs to bring her a pint of milk, stopping behind me as she saw inside the room, dropping the bottle on the floor so it smashed and the milk ran into the room, that brought me back to reality. Or rather knocked me out of it entirely, for I scarcely remember a single thing after that. Not of what happened, in any case. I suppose someone called the police, the doctors, somebody must have cut her down, taken her off to the morgue. Presumably some member of her family arrived, at some stage. I must have given statements to the police, talked to her father. I do not remember any of it. All I know is that eventually I was on a cross-channel ferry, feeling I could breathe again for the first time in weeks. Between opening the door to her room and hearing the hooter of the ferry leaving the harbour, there was nothing at all except the memory of those pictures.

As the days and weeks passed I became ever more angry at her for daring to have a life unseen and unsuspected until you destroyed the only two things she truly valued and brought it all into the light. You cast down a terrible, perverted animal; even the wildest of bohemian London would have recoiled at those images, been overwhelmed and revolted by their passion and power. The work that was truly close to her heart, which came from what she was, could never be shown in public to anyone. Should I have been grateful to you, William? You exposed Evelyn for what she truly was, made me see the error of my ways in even being friends with her. Should I not thank you, old friend, for rendering yet another service to me?

But you destroyed much of me, as well. You took away my belief that I could see people in their faces and know them. You took away someone I loved and replaced her with something monstrous and twisted. The Evelyn I knew I can now scarcely recall; all there is left is that picture leaning against the wall, and the corpse which swung there, hating me as she died. Had your ruthlessness not intervened, nothing would have changed; I would never have known. Life could have gone on, and I would have my wife and house in Holland Park, my students and my riches.

For much of my exile I have hated her, but of late that has become weaker; even that terrible picture can no longer excite my disgust in the way it once did. I wish you had seen it; she was a good painter, you know, something extraordinary, and this was proof that would have convinced even you. She had taught herself to experience the extremes of passion and had learnt how to turn it all into painting. No-one I know has ever come close. Can I hate forever someone who managed such a thing? Who succeeded when I always turned away and flinched, compromised and sought the good opinion of people like yourself instead? Who was prepared to risk all and lose everything? Of course I hate her for where it all came from. I have abused her and scorned her memory for being what she was. I have tried to learn how to wish her soul happiness, and to mean it. But I cannot; not even the church can accomplish such miracles, it seems. My forgiveness lies only in the memory of her achievement, awful though it was.