Sarah Hall - How to Paint a Dead Man

‘What is your accent precisely, darling?’ agents would ask him at parties, straightening his collar for him. ‘Ah. The North Country. Well, there seems to be ample talent up there these days. Here’s my card. We’re not, if I may be blunt, interested in landscapes at the moment. But if you’ve anything hard-edge, keep us in mind.’ Across the room, Dyas and Raymie would be mooning, and blowing into each other mouths. Once or twice they had shared a room in the motorway lodges and he had pretended to sleep while they whispered and giggled. Her eyes had flashed in the dimness, looking towards him as she moved. He must have been jealous. She was watchable, flirtatious, she dressed like an aristocratic homosexual with cravats and velvet coats, she told a good joke. Her eyes hunted for him in the darkness while she sucked her lip and rode. She knew what she was doing. There was nothing to do but let his lust impact, while he got angry at other things. ‘That stuff in there says nothing to me,’ he would inform Dyas when his tutor came out and joined him for a smoke on some West End balcony. ‘It’s mindless.’ And Dyas would agree, naturally, then tell him to knock off the sinister act and get back inside pronto. He reckoned Hockney was about to have a brawl. ‘If you want to see two boys clinging, Petie, best you get a shift on. Come on, relax. Stop taking everything so personally. Let’s get you laid.’

Then, one night, after spending an hour looking at a window covered in smudged faeces, with the creator standing alongside saying it was the best medium with which to describe human anguish, the tension finally broke. ‘It’s shit,’ Peter heard himself say, unnecessarily, and out he stormed. Raymie followed, intrigued by the sudden loss of temper, and they found a club nearby. They drank. They danced. Her body was against his, then apart from his, against and then apart. It drove him crazy. By the end of the night he had lost his mind. Ivan was unconscious on the floor of the place they were staying, and Peter was holding a hand over his girlfriend’s mouth, forcing her against the wall, trying not to slip out of her.

On the hotel bed he raises your legs on to his shoulders. He moves your hips back towards his and holds your thighs. You feel your tendons pulling tight, the depth increasing. He is straining not to come. He is saying are you, are you but the question cannot be completed. There is enough unity, enough collaboration between you, for the timing to work. Your abdomen fills with heat. Your stomach pulls inwards and the spasm takes over. The quiet screaming in the room is the sound of something coming into the world, or leaving it.

He moves the damp hair off your forehead. His hand is shaking; he is a little clumsy. You have twenty minutes, and then you will both have to leave. He is collecting his daughter from nursery. You have to continue preparing the exhibition space. The hotel is close to the station where an overland train can be taken to the heath. You share a glass of water. How is it, with Danny? he asks. You shrug. You rest your head on his arm. After a moment he says, Susan, I have something to show you. It’s really exciting. He lifts his bag on to the bed and unbuckles the straps. I shouldn’t take it out of the gallery, we’re not insured, but if I get mugged I’m sure they’ll go for my wallet first. He takes out the diary and flicks through the pages. There are paper markers tucked between the leaves. The handwriting is exquisite. Here, he says. Listen to this. His eyes are bright with tears.

The meetings between you are more regular now, and the exchanges at the gallery are more daring and insistent. The building is shut for a few days while the new exhibition goes up; there are no milling strangers to hide behind, no distractions. He leans close to you when he passes by. He strokes your spine if he sees you have taken off your jacket, touches your breasts through the thin material of your blouse. All the while his wife is close by. You wonder why she cannot see it, why she does not notice the atmosphere, and the heightened musk of her husband, for it is as if a rich substance has been released into his cells. You can smell it under his skin, this tropic nectar, which passes through his ducts and arteries, condensing into sap near his groin. His body exudes invitation, reeks with it, and his eyes seem to confess infatuation, even while he is talking about his work on the journal, even when he is speaking professionally to you in front of Angela.

You treat the presence of his wife like foreplay. Her being there at the gallery simply increases the anticipation. The affair is shot through with risk and would be called pitiful, abject, and vile, by anyone who knew about it. When Angela goes out to collect their daughter from playgroup, he moves you on to the desk, sits in front of you. He lifts your skirt and moves his mouth along the seam of your underwear, then pulls the material aside. Your dress rides up against your hipbones, the stitching tears. The sound of the front door opening and closing is thrilling. You go to him. You press your thumb along the stem of his prick, feel the hum of blood in the thick vein. You move him towards the back of your mouth. In the bathroom he washes his face, checks the material of your dress for damp marks. You both act with the swift confidence of the damned, brazen with obsession. But it is he who recovers slowest, remains unlaced and casual in his furtiveness, he perhaps who wants to be caught, or would confess.

You lean forward, reach behind and pull him between your legs. He raises you against the wall, the tight friction tearing your fragile skin. Then you take his full weight on the bed. You are late for the train now and will have to catch the next one. He will have to take a cab to collect his daughter in time, or call and say he has been held up. But in these moments you can forget about everything else. You are not bereaved. You do not feel disconnected from yourself, or uninhabited, as if you’ve slipped accidentally from your cage of bones. When you are with him you are here, inside yourself, behind the calcium plates in your chest and pelvis, which rise and move against him. He marks your frame. The delicate meat of you contains him. You clear away his milky substance from your skin.

You wonder how it will be possible to continue working at Borwood House. You are, no doubt, a monster of some kind, bloodless and reptilian. You watch Angela and Tom together to see if there are any distances opening up between them. You watch to see how much of an effect you might be having — you, the mistress, the adulteress, his new love. At the gallery they are professional with each other, the relationship is workable; arguments are never carried out in front of you or visitors; there is conviviality, discreet affection. You wonder how they connect at home, whether they function smoothly, whether there are accusations, resentments, frigidities. You wonder whether Tom still tries to fuck her, or she him. This is not something you and he have discussed, but you think about it. Do the fumes of his body still arouse her, or is she now immune to him? Does she know what excites him most, and have they tried it? Has she pulled the bed sheet tight across his face so that he cannot see or breathe? Has she been gently inside him, has she let him taste everything? You wonder whether he can hold their daughter now without imagining she will shatter in his hands.

When you arrive at midday the two of them are engaged in their separate tasks. Between them they mind the baby, or the baby is left with a sitter, or deposited at the nursery. Like most of London’s working families, their choreography is tight and slick. How does he manage to slip into the city to meet you, or linger long after she has gone home in the evening? How has there not yet been any substantial damage to the stability of their home and business environments? Perhaps he tells her he has meetings with publishers or agents. Perhaps his lies are adequate, delivered convincingly.