Judi James - Naked Angels

But Evangeline did not use the charcoal because she had found it made the paper messy. She picked a pencil out instead and spent a long time sharpening it. Then she made a few small marks on the paper but proceeded to rub them out. Miss Clayburg smiled but her eyes went narrow.

‘I thought I told you not to use the eraser, Evangeline,’ she said. ‘What is that you are drawing?’

Evangeline turned the page round. It was a tiny detail of a piece of bark.

‘What about the shape of the whole thing?’ Miss Clayburg asked.

‘I’ll get to it,’ Evangeline told her, leaning over the paper again before she caught the look of exasperation in the tutor’s eye. It was no good. They both knew it was no good. Only Grandma Klippel wouldn’t be told, and so Miss Clayburg stayed on – for her sake as much as anybody else’s. Evangeline looked down. Her sleeve had dipped into some paint and the paint had made a crimson smear across her clean white paper. The smear would never clean off. She began to cry silent tears.

Mikhail stood self-consciously on the backdrop, staring at his fingernails. The nails were dirty. The rest of him, on the other hand, was scrupulously clean. Claude had suggested he go for a scrub before the session and he’d spent an hour in the tub, wasting time, trying to delay things.

Claude was whistling again, busying himself behind the camera and pottering excitedly. He’d put Mikhail in a black kimono. Then he’d covered some wooden crates with a sheet and told him to drape himself over them. Draping yourself was more difficult than Mikhail had thought. He felt awkward and stupid, like an upturned insect that can’t right itself again.

‘What is that song?’ he asked Claude. Claude stopped pottering and looked up, surprised.

‘What song?’ he asked.

‘The one you are whistling.’ It was getting on Mikhail’s nerves. He felt anxious and he hated himself for it. Claude had insisted on having a three-bar electric fire in the small room and Mikhail could feel the sweat running down his back. The lead from the fire was plugged into a lamp socket in the hall and he kept wishing Claude would forget and trip over it.

Suddenly Claude seemed ready. He pushed his glasses to the top of his head and beamed at Mikhail.

‘Is everything all right?’ he asked. Mikhail nodded. Twenty-five forint. It was all he allowed himself to think of. Living in the apartment meant he could save some of the money, too. How long would it be before he had enough to get away from Budapest? A flash went off and he jumped, squinting.

‘Try to relax,’ Claude crooned. He waited until Mikhail was still again and then took another picture.

‘Why are you nervous?’ Claude asked.

‘I feel stupid,’ Mikhail replied.

Claude smiled. Mikhail had never seen him smile so much. ‘You look terrific,’ he told him. ‘I wish you could see how good you look. If you did you wouldn’t worry. Here – this is what you look like.’ He held a book out to Mikhail. The book was an old one, the pages yellow at the edges. Mikhail supposed the pictures were works of art. Most of them were etchings of young boys in togas. Their faces were beautiful. Mikhail closed the book and put it down carefully.

Claude took some more shots before suggesting Mikhail have a break. The cooler air in the passage felt good. Claude went into the kitchen to make them some tea. Mikhail followed him.

‘What happens next?’ he asked.

Claude looked alarmed. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Is this when you fuck me?’ Mikhail had never used the word before but Tincan used it all the time.

Claude dropped a teacup onto the floor. As he bent to pick it up Mikhail noticed that the seam of his trousers had split. Claude reached out for the cup but his hand missed and he stayed there where he was, as though frozen to the spot. Mikhail could not see his face but, when his shoulders started heaving, he assumed the older man was crying.

‘Shit!’ Mikhail whispered. It was another Tincan word.

Claude moved across the floor on his knees, his glasses misted with his tears. When he reached Mikhail’s feet he bent double and kissed them. His mouth felt wet. Mikhail kicked him away and he rolled like a dog.

‘Don’t hate me!’ Claude said. He was sobbing properly now, his belly rising and falling like a child’s. He would wake his father. Mikhail put his hand out to stop him and Claude grabbed it.

‘Please don’t hate me,’ he whispered, pressing his lips against the centre of the palm.

‘I can’t afford to hate you,’ Mikhail said quietly. ‘If I don’t live here I’ll die.’ He knew that. He had no option. That was the way things were in his life. If you wanted to stay alive there were certain things you had to do: steal; sell drugs; pose for pictures; get fucked by old men. That was how it was, he understood that. Nothing was for nothing – it was a fact of his life.

Claude was groaning at his feet, soft little whelps, like an animal in pain. Mikhail undid his robe and the moans grew more intense. Mikhail blocked out what was happening and thought about the money.

Twenty-five forint. It seemed like a fortune. He would save it all for a plane ticket and then he would fly off somewhere where there was no snow. America was a good place, Andreas had told him that. You could get everything there; everything you wanted. Andreas had planned to go to America to get a record deal for his group. Maybe Mikhail could go there in his place. How much and how long would it take, though?

Claude was kissing his feet again and he kicked him harder, this time in the belly. Claude let out a cry of pleasure. ‘Again!’ he called. Mikhail watched him squirm on the floor.

Too long, was the answer that came into his head, much, much too long.

It was a whole year after Miss Clayburg had left the house at Cape Cod, and nothing much more had happened other than Evangeline growing another inch and her grandmother having her heart broken for the second time.

The old lady never said a word, but Evangeline knew she had pinned great hopes on her being artistically gifted. She still went up to the studio to try long after her tutor was gone, but one day the door was just locked and that was obviously an end to it. Evangeline would have been relieved, but her disappointment stung like salt on a scratch.

She wanted to do well so badly that it hurt. If Grandma Klippel was searching for another Darius, then she was looking, too, for some special talent to make her worthy of her parents’ love, even though she knew they were dead now. Sometimes she got angry rather than sad and wished she had a flair so that they might have realized too late what they’d missed and regret not taking her with them. She even wrote small scripts in her workbook:

DARIUS: Did you reelize Evangeline had flair as an artist too, dear?

THEA: No i never new that. she was always such a plain child that i never held out much hope for her. Perhaps we made a misstake, Darius. Perhaps she shuld be here with us now, after all.

When she had finished writing she would always tear the pages out and screw them up into small balls, just in case. She didn’t think Grandma Klippel ever came snooping but if she did Evangeline didn’t want her finding out her son and his family were all dead. Sometimes she wished Cecil was still there so she could discuss things with someone. She even asked her grandmother if she had his address, but was told he was back in Britain and wouldn’t want to be bothered by letters from little girls he hardly knew.

Then something strange happened.

Evangeline was called out of class one wet September day and sent home early. All the way back in the car she worked over what might have occurred but nothing came to mind – apart from the extreme long shot that Patrick might have found his way back.