Days of utter dread, p.13
Days of Utter Dread, page 13
It was a nude girl, sitting in the same armchair that Henry was sitting in now. Her face was not yet recognisable, although the outline that was painted so far suggested that she had wide, distinctive cheekbones. However, it was her wild blondish mane that gave away her identity. He had underpainted it already and used the scratching technique called sgraffito to give it a fine hairy texture.
‘Wouldn’t mind taking a sneaky look in here, the next time that she’s sitting for you!’ Henry chortled.
Leonard stared at the painting, speechless. It was Kasia. It had to be Kasia. But when had he started painting this picture of her, and how? He had plenty of photographs of her, but she had never sent him any nudes, and he had never asked her for any or expected them.
Five months ago, she had sent him a friend request on his Facebook page – Leonard Slater, Illustrator and Fine Artist. She had told him that she was a librarian and had admired his book illustrations for years, especially the pictures he had painted for the Polish-language edition of Alice Through the Looking-Glass. He had checked her Facebook page before accepting her as a friend, as he did with every request, but when he had seen her profile picture he had been struck by how attractive she was – that tangly hair, and those impish eyes.
He had written back to her, and she had written back to him, and over the weeks and months that had followed, their correspondence had grown warmer and closer, until they were writing to each other every day. She was married, apparently, to an accountant called Bartek, but she told Leonard that since their marriage three years ago he had become increasingly cold and uncaring. In her own words, she felt ‘broken’. She needed someone to make her feel whole again, and valued.
He had dreamed about meeting her, but the travel restrictions imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic had so far made it impossible for him to fly to Poland.
He was still staring at the nude painting when Henry said, ‘Come on, then, old boy! Are you going to crack on painting? I’m sorry I’m late but I don’t have all day!’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Leonard. He went over to Henry’s portrait and squeezed some phthalo blue onto his palette so that he could finish painting his golf club tie.
He started to paint, but then he paused to stare again at the picture of Kasia, his brush poised an inch from the canvas. Henry noisily cleared his throat, to show that he was becoming impatient.
Leonard put down his palette and his brush. ‘You’ll have to accept my apologies, Mr Walters. I’m afraid that I’m not feeling very creative this morning. Do you mind if we call it a day? I’m sure I’ll be firing on all cylinders by Monday, if you can come back then.’
‘“Not feeling very creative?”’ Henry blustered. ‘What’s creative about painting my portrait? You’ve almost finished it, haven’t you? And for God’s sake, it’s not as though you’re painting The Fighting Temeraire or The Rape of the Sabine Women!’
‘I’m sorry, but I’m just not with it today. There must be days when you’re off your game of golf.’
‘Well, of course. But painting a fellow who’s sitting right in front you, not moving a muscle, that’s not exactly like knocking a ball into the rough.’
Leonard didn’t argue. He went over to the door and came back with Henry’s overcoat.
‘I can’t do Monday,’ Henry told him, pushing his arm aggressively into his right sleeve. ‘I have to go to Leicester to see my sister. In fact I don’t think I’ll be back until Thursday at the earliest.’
‘Just let me know. The paint will be nicely dry by then, anyway. Good for adding detail.’
‘Bloody waste of time, coming here today. And with the Devil’s own hangover, too.’
Once Henry had left, still grumbling under his breath, Leonard went back to the picture of Kasia.
I must be losing it. When did I start painting this? Don’t tell me I’ve been painting in my sleep.
He left the studio and went into his living room. His laptop was lying open on the coffee table, so he picked it up and tapped out a Hotmail message to Kasia.
‘Good morning, my darling. Did you have any dreams last night? For instance, did you dream that I painted your picture?’
After a few minutes she sent him a message in reply. ‘Dear Leonard. I had no dreams last night. I took two pills to help me sleep. I will tell you why later.’
Leonard sat back. He felt unreal. Was he asleep or was he awake? Yet there was another message in his inbox. It was from Helen, his ex-wife, so he must be awake. She wanted to know if she could come round and collect the Villeroy & Boch dinner set that she had forgotten to take the last time she had raided their joint belongings.
‘Take whatever you like,’ he wrote back, and signed it ‘L’.
*
That night, about a quarter to midnight, it started to rain. Leonard was sitting in his studio, wondering if he ought to continue painting the picture of Kasia or whether to abandon it. He had found a picture of her face on his laptop that closely matched the position and the lighting of the model in the painting. He had printed it out and pinned it to the top of the canvas, so that he could copy it.
But to finish this painting seemed like a kind of madness. He had grown to love Kasia, but so far it was only a distant relationship, like penfriends. To paint a nude of her seemed obsessive, almost creepy, the kind of thing that a stalker would do.
Thunder rumbled in the distance, over the Downs, and then the rain began to lash down even more heavily, rattling on the glass roof of his studio and gushing from the gutters. He stood up. He would leave the painting for now and think about it again tomorrow. What he needed was a good night’s sleep.
He was just about to climb the stairs to his bedroom when there was a knock at his front door. Who the hell was knocking at this time of night?
He called out, ‘Who is it?’ and a faint voice answered, ‘It’s me, of course.’
He slid off the chain and opened the door. To his astonishment, Kasia was standing in the porch, wearing a wet pink raincoat, her tangled hair dripping over her shoulders.
‘Kasia? Come in, come in, you’re soaking. How did you get here? You didn’t tell me you were coming.’
He looked up and down the street to see if there was a taxi disappearing, but the street was deserted.
‘You said midnight,’ Kasia told him, shaking her hair. It was then that Leonard was disturbed to see that her right eye was swollen and purple and almost completely closed up.
He closed the door and took off her raincoat. ‘Kasia, sweetheart – what happened to your eye? You haven’t been in a fight, have you?’
‘I left one of the kitchen cupboard doors open. I turned around and hit myself on it.’
‘No, you didn’t. Was it Bartek?’
‘All right, yes. But it was my fault. I spilled eggs on his trousers.’
‘And he hit you? For spilling eggs? You should have called the police.’
‘The police would not have helped. They would have said, “Look what you have done to your husband’s trousers, no wonder he lost his temper.” They probably would have arrested me, for assaulting him.’
‘I can’t believe it. I feel like getting on a plane right now and beating him up.’
‘Forget it. The bruise will fade away. But you and me, we will always stay together.’
‘When did I say midnight? I didn’t even know you were coming. Where did you land? Heathrow, or Gatwick?’
She took hold of his hands, stood up on tiptoe and kissed him. ‘You said midnight, my dearest Leonard, so here I am. All ready to pose for you. You don’t have to paint my bruise, do you? I think I should dry my hair, though, don’t you? You don’t want me looking like a drowned mongoose.’
‘Come through. The gas fire’s on – you can warm yourself up. Would you like a hot drink? Coffee, or tea? Or a glass of wine, maybe?’
‘A small glass of wine would be welcome. Do you have red?’
‘Malbec, yes. Come through.’
He ushered her into the living room and she sat down close to the fire. He poured glasses of wine for both of them, and then he went upstairs to bring down the hairdryer that Helen had left behind. He sat watching her while she fluffed up her hair, but he didn’t ask her again when he had invited her here, or how she had flown to England, or when. The hairdryer was too noisy for conversation like that.
When her hair was dry, she stood up, smiling, and said, ‘Are you ready to carry on painting?’
‘I’m not sure. I mean, are you ready to sit for me, what with that black eye and everything?’
‘You were so keen last night. You haven’t changed your mind?’
She was wearing a bottle-green, rollneck sweater and a sandy-coloured skirt, and dark-brown leather boots. She pulled off her sweater and dropped it onto her chair, and then she unzipped her skirt and stepped out of that. Underneath she was wearing only black tights.
‘Would you unfasten my bra for me?’ she asked, turning her back to him.
Leonard hesitated. Is this a dream? No, it can’t be a dream. The painting is real, so she must have come last night and I must have started to paint her then. If it’s a dream, though, it doesn’t matter if she’s asking me to undress her, because it’s only a dream. And if it’s real, she’s asking me to undress her, she wants me to, so how can that be wrong?
He slid open the catch of her bra and she dropped that on the chair, too. Then she sat down and levered off her boots. Finally she rolled down her tights, and kicked them off her feet, so that she was completely naked.
When she stood up again, she faced up to Leonard and opened up her arms. He took hold of her, and held her close, and kissed her – first her forehead, and then her lips, and then they were kissing like hungry wolves, clinging on to each other as if they were trying to tear each other apart.
Leonard gasped, ‘I need you, Kasia! You don’t know how much!’
He steered her gently backwards towards his large Victorian sofa, which was upholstered in soft purple velvet. He laid her head down on one of the pink toile cushions with her wild blonde hair spread out, and kissed her again. She reached up and started to unbutton his shirt, and tug it out of his waistband. He pulled his shirt off and dropped it onto the floor, while she was already unbuckling his belt.
‘What is that?’ she said. ‘On your shoulder? Is that a tattoo?’
‘No. It’s a birthmark.’
‘It looks like a bird, with its wings spread out. And it has a pointed beak, like a hummingbird.’
Leonard glanced at it. The birthmark was dark brown, a little over four inches wide, which was the wingspan of a real hummingbird.
‘It’s hereditary, which is quite unusual. It gets passed down from one generation to the next.’
Kasia stroked it with her fingertips, as if it were a real bird.
‘Really?’
‘My mother has one, and my grandfather has one, too. And, yes, it does look like a hummingbird. We always thought that, too. My grandfather said that God probably gave us that mark because the hummingbird is the only bird that can fly backwards, and we were the most backward family God had ever created.’
Kasia laughed. Even though her right eye was puffed up, her left eye was shining with delight. She tugged down the zip of his trousers and slid her hand inside his briefs. He was already hard and she gripped him tight as if she were holding a baton in a relay race, or had won an Oscar.
He stood up. He peeled his socks off first, because his father had always told him that there are few sights that women find less sexy and more comical than a man wearing nothing but his socks. Then he dropped his trousers and pulled down his navy blue briefs.
When he climbed onto the sofa, Kasia took hold of him again, and rubbed him up and down. ‘You’re the same as me,’ she said, feeling with her other hand between his legs. ‘You have no hair. I’ve never seen that on a man before. It’s beautiful. You look like one of those Greek sculptures.’
He kissed her again and again. ‘It’s a long story.’ He smiled. ‘The very first girlfriend I ever slept with was Anglo-Indian, and she insisted that I shave off all my pubic hair. I don’t know why – it was for some religious reason I think. But after that it became a habit. My ex-wife liked it, although she didn’t like it enough to stay faithful.’
‘Well, you have enough gorgeous, dark-brown hair on your head, my dearest Leonard. And such luxuriant eyebrows. Is that the right word, “luxuriant”? And dark-brown eyes like my favourite chocolates.’
Leonard kissed her breasts until her nipples crinkled, and ran his hands lightly down her sides so that she shivered. Then he parted her thighs and peeled apart the lips of her vulva, as gently as if he were opening up two damp rose petals on a drizzly day. She was glistening with juice, and he dipped two fingers inside her so that he could use it to make himself even more slippery. Then, very slowly, he slid himself into her, as deep as he could, until their bare skin was pressed together, and they could hardly tell where one of them ended and the other one began.
Kasia shivered again as Leonard touched the neck of her womb.
‘Oh my God,’ she breathed. ‘Oh my dearest darling. Why didn’t I meet you years ago?’
‘Kasia,’ whispered Leonard, close to her ear. ‘You’re an angel.’
Their lovemaking went on and on. The sofa creaked rhythmically and the clock on the wall behind them ticked in time with every stroke of their bodies. Now it chimed one. Leonard had never felt so close to a woman before, the way he felt now with Kasia. He imagined that he could see right inside the star-sparkling darkness of her mind, like the sea at night, and that he could share with her the rising waves that were bringing her closer and closer to a climax.
It took all of his self-control to hold himself back as she started to shudder, and then pant, and grip his shoulder so hard that her nails dug into his hummingbird. Then she quaked, and he couldn’t stop himself any longer, and they held on to each other as if they were falling hundreds of feet from the top of a burning building, and would die together when they hit the ground.
At last they lay together on the sofa, side by side, panting.
‘You,’ said Leonard. ‘You are amazing.’
Kasia gave him an impudent smile. ‘Do you have enough strength left to paint me?’
He stood up and retrieved his trousers from the floor. ‘How about another glass of wine first? And then maybe an action replay?’
‘Oh, so you’re not exhausted?’
Leonard went into the kitchen to fetch the bottle of Malbec.
‘Are you hungry at all?’ he called out. ‘I could knock up a plate of cheese biscuits and olives if you like.’
Kasia didn’t answer, so when he went back into the living room, he said, ‘Would you like something to eat?’
Kasia was no longer there. Not lying on the sofa, not sitting by the fire. Her clothes had gone, too. Her sweater and her skirt and her boots.
Leonard felt a chilly crawling sensation down his backbone. Still holding the bottle of Malbec, he opened the door to his studio. The rain continued to rattle on the roof, but there was no sign of Kasia, neither naked nor dressed.
He went through to the hallway, where he had hung up her wet pink raincoat. The hook was empty. The front door was locked, with the chain on.
Please don’t say that this was all a dream. Please don’t say that Kasia didn’t come here at all, and that I only imagined that we made love. But she had that black eye. Why would I have dreamed that she had a black eye?
He returned to the living room and stood there for over a minute, frowning at the sofa.
‘Kasia,’ he said. ‘Where in the name of God are you?’
Then he woke up. He was lying on the sofa, fully dressed. The lamps were still on, and the gas fire was still alight. The bottle of Malbec was standing on the coffee table next to him, three-quarters empty. As he sat up, the clock on the wall struck five.
He stood up and went over to the fireplace, staring at himself in the large gilt-framed mirror over the mantelpiece. Perhaps she had climbed into looking-glass world, like the illustrations he had painted for Alice.
Perhaps he had been dreaming of somebody he could never have.
*
Bartek returned from the office at a quarter past seven. Kasia was standing in front of the stove, stirring a saucepan of spaghetti Bolognese. Before he took off his black Puffa jacket, Bartek came into the kitchen and dropped a bunch of white roses onto the counter.
‘These – well, these are to say that I’m sorry I hit you. But I think you can understand why I did it. I was late for work as it was, and I can’t afford to lose this job, Kaska. They’ve already given me two warnings.’
Kasia looked at the roses. He had obviously bought them on his way home at the Biedronka supermarket, only two minutes away on Kozańowska Street. They all looked sad and limp, and several of their petals were already turning brown at the edges. Bartek hadn’t even had the wit to peel off the sticker that said przecena – reduced in price.
‘Aren’t you going to put them in a vase?’ he asked her. He was still standing in the kitchen doorway, and his tension was obvious. Until she had accepted them, he wouldn’t feel that she had forgiven him.
Kasia opened up one of the kitchen cupboards and took out a cheap cut-glass vase that the previous tenant had left behind. She filled it with water, and then tore the cellophane off the roses and stuck them into it, without bothering to cut the stems or arrange them.
‘If you ever hit me again, Bartek, I will walk out of here and I will never come back.’
He took off his jacket and hung it up in the dark, cramped hallway. ‘Don’t be stupid, Kaska. Every couple has their arguments. And anyway, where would you go? And what other man would have you?
He came into the kitchen again and stood close behind her, playing with the fronds of her hair.
‘How long is that supper going to take? I’m dying of hunger.’
