Page 34

Venice

Katherine turns up at five, very intoxicated.

Her eyes are glassy and her breath stinks of garlic and booze.

While she’s been out, I have set up an easel in her bedroom and the housekeeper has found more sheets to protect the floor.

On the canvas I’ve blocked in the shapes of the room, the window and the chaise.

Her bright blue dress doesn’t work with the colours of the drapery.

‘Paint me in black,’ she slurs. ‘Like a widow.’

She goes to her closet and pulls out a black silk dress cut on the bias with a cowl neckline at both front and back.

‘Help me out of this.’ She looks over her shoulder at me like I’m her maid at her beck and call, but I do as she asks.

As we lift the three-quarter-length dress over her head, I stare at her birthmark.

It is easier to focus on that and not on the fact that she is standing in only a garter belt and stockings less than six inches from me.

The seam heading up the back of her legs directs my eyes to the curves of her behind.

With both of us tugging, the black dress falls into place skimming her shape yet highlighting it. Only two small joins on her shoulders hold the fabric to her body. Every move makes it slip across her skin.

‘You don’t look like a widow in that,’ I manage to say.

‘Ha, who says what a widow should look like? Call me a black widow like the poisonous spider.’ She takes uneven steps to the chaise. Afternoon sun falls through the window, instantly turning the black into blues and purples. It is electric, and I have to stop myself from immediately painting.

‘How do you want me?’

‘Sober,’ I whisper.

Her eyes open wide. ‘No, you definitely don’t want that.’ ‘What are you hiding from? He isn’t here.’

She looks directly into my eyes. ‘You.’

I take a step back.

‘You see me, and I don’t want to be seen.’

I watch her lean back on the chaise and turn her shoulders towards the bed without taking her eyes from mine.

‘I don’t want to see the woman that you see.’

‘How do you know what I see?’ I ask.

She laughs bitterly. ‘I saw those sketches on the train and I have seen your nuns. I also see your hunger.’

My mouth dries.

‘I’ve surprised you.’ She continues to look at me, unblinking. ‘I see your desire. I feel it. That’s what you’re afraid of. Your desire for me, a woman.’

I want to look away, but I can’t. That is my secret. Once out, the world will change, it will change how I’m viewed and I’ll have no control over it. I won’t be the artist, the daughter of Francis Kernow. I will be one of those women, a lesbian, and excluded like the artists in Lamorna.

‘I’ve surprised you. You think people don’t see you. But they do.’

I shake my head. She sees me, but I am as invisible as a tall, red-haired woman can be.

I’m not beautiful, therefore they look and move on.

Only recently, here in Venice, have I felt noticed.

It could be that nothing about me looks Italian.

The men here think they are born to make you feel beautiful, which in me has had the opposite response.

‘I see you.’ She lifts her arm, pushing her hair back. The silk of her dress slips across her nipples and they rise to a nub.

‘So you want me sober.’ She laughs. ‘I can try, but only if you paint me not as Simon wants me seen.’ She draws a breath. ‘I challenge you to paint me as you feel me. If you promise to do that, I will be as sober as I can be.’

Our gazes lock. It is a battle. Do I agree? But then I will be visible.

‘I can’t paint you as I see you and complete the commission.’

‘Why not?’

‘The painting your husband saw when he asked for a portrait was traditional.’ I close my eyes for a moment. ‘As I see you, you are colours and shapes, not arms and legs as he would have it.’

‘You paint as Picasso.’

‘No, different. To him his subjects are more objects, and you are not an object to me. More a feeling.’

‘A desire.’ She places that word between us and it hangs in the golden light. She is drunk, so speaking plainly, not poetically. Nothing stops her thoughts.

‘A desire, an emotion, a movement.’

‘A movement of two people pulled together.’ She lights a cigarette. Her red lipstick stains the white paper.

‘Don’t tease me.’ It’s almost painful to say that.

‘I’m not teasing you.’

‘Aren’t you?’

‘God, you are so na?ve. Your desire is not one-sided.’

I gasp.

‘Now, paint me as you see me, not in blocks of colour and strange shapes but as a woman you want.’

I can’t breathe.

‘Do you dare?’ She tilts her head.

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s time to stop hiding and let yourself shine, be who you are.’

I laugh drily. ‘That’s easy for you to say when you don’t do it yourself.’

‘I know I don’t, and I drink to forget I don’t.’

‘If you want me to paint you as I see you, I need you sober.’

Katherine stands. ‘I’ll cut down to start and let’s see how we go.’

I look from her to the canvas. Can I do this? Inside me a voice says, All you can do is try . ‘If I agree to this, will you write me a poem that you don’t give to him?’

A slow smile spreads across her mouth. ‘Yes, I will write you a poem that he will not touch.’

* * *

The week has raced by despite me wanting to slow it down.

I cling to each moment, trying to make it last. We swim at the Lido, eat gelato every day, are serenaded in gondolas.

My world is Katherine’s laughter watching a child chasing pigeons, her glance when we spot the same thing, the communication without words and the slightest of touches.

I hold them all close and record them each night in my notebook so that I will not lose them.

As I furiously paint the portrait, Katherine is true to her word.

In the evenings she will have one cocktail and one glass of wine.

When she is not sitting for me, she is writing, or we are looking at art together.

We say no more of what I feel, and I begin to wonder if that whole conversation was imagined, until the times when she poses and she drops her guard.

There is the woman I love, sober and fully present in the moment.

At times I can barely breathe as I work.

With every stroke of the brush, I caress her.

I know she feels it too, but we do not speak of it.

Although I’ve seen her writing, she has not given me a poem.

I don’t push. Each day after I pour my heart into painting her for Forster, but truly for Katherine herself, I take an hour and paint her in colours and shapes.

Even in these I haven’t quite captured the variable essence of her, someone who can be at ease with a duke and flirt with a priest.

In the distance, the bells chime. She rises from the chaise. ‘May I look?’

‘No.’

‘Simon is back tomorrow.’

‘What day is it?’ I have lost track of time.

She flips the pages on a diary by her bed. ‘It is the thirteenth of June.’

‘I have a ticket for the Biennale on the fifteenth.’ My world has been so caught up in painting and in Katherine, anything outside of that has ceased to exist.

‘Shall I go with you?’ she asks.

‘If you’d like.’ I smile.

She takes my hand in hers. ‘I can’t imagine anyone I’d want to go with more.’

I look into her eyes, searching. ‘Really?’

‘Yes.’ She leans forward and kisses me.

I can’t move. I can’t breathe. Just this, this moment that I’ve dreamed about since our first meeting.

Her mouth moves on mine. I kiss her, tasting her.

The church bells strike the last chime. It is nine. Dinner will soon be ready. Drinks are already on the roof terrace, but time stands still in this moment. I want to remember everything, from the scent of her perfume to the taste of tobacco on her lips.

She pulls back. ‘I’ve so wanted to do that.’

‘I . . .’

She places a finger on my mouth. ‘Let’s go and have our cocktail, or else we will be late for the delicious dinner that has been made for us.’

Lacing her fingers through mine, she leads me out of her bedroom and up the flight of stairs to the roof.

The sun is still high, and no breeze lifts the heat of the day.

She drops my hand to pour the cocktails.

Together we walk to the edge of the roof and look out towards the canal.

It is busier now than it was at midday. The stunted shape of the unfinished palazzo jars me less.

My mind has become used to it, the shape of it, and the void of what isn’t there.

She lifts her glass and locks her gaze to mine. ‘To us.’

‘To us,’ I repeat, not believing it as I’m saying it. But here she is looking at me with such hunger. I don’t need the gin; my head is swimming.

She studies me over the rim of her glass. ‘Your poem is almost done.’

‘Is it?’

‘It’s the best thing I have written, or it feels that way to me.’

‘Why?’ I hold my breath, waiting for her answer.

‘Because it’s honest. It’s not written through the haze of drink or drugs.’ She laughs. ‘Thank you.’ She kisses me quickly and moves away before I can respond.

‘Dinner is ready.’ The man stands by the door to the stairs, and from his expression I think he may have witnessed the kiss.

In the dining room, the air is cooler, being on the north side of the house. Katherine opens the shutters and turns off the chandelier so that the mosquitoes don’t come in. They don’t seem to reach the roof, but here, if the lights are on, they find their way in once the sun has begun to set.

The first course is a cold tomato soup that is both sweet and spicy.

Each flavour sings on my tongue. I look down the length of the table and hate the formality that keeps us apart.

Even though the food and wine has never tasted so good, I want none of it.

My body is alight with anticipation. She kissed me with intent.

I hunger for her with such longing I can barely think.

When the last plate is cleared, I can’t sit still. My skin has become so sensitive, it is as if ants are crawling across it. Have I read her actions incorrectly? The looks she sends from the far end of the table are not those of a friend. I may be inexperienced, but my body knows the signs.

Once the servants have gone, Katherine rises to her feet. ‘Coffee?’

‘No thank you.’ I need no more stimulation.

She takes time to select a record for the gramophone. Soon the dulcet tones of Al Bowlly singing ‘Guilty’ fill the room. Katherine holds her hand out. ‘Dance?’

‘I don’t know how to.’ My limbs are heavy.

‘I’ll teach you.’ She smiles with her eyes and I shiver in anticipation. ‘Just follow my lead.’

I take her hand and we move together. She whispers, ‘I’m guilty.’

I pull back to see her face.

‘Of loving you,’ she mouths silently.

The song ends.

‘Shall we call it a night?’ she asks, still holding me in her arms.

‘Yes.’ I am breathless as she leans in and kisses my lips first, then down my neck.

‘Come,’ she says, taking my hand. And I do as she asks.