Goya'S Dog (12 page)

Janusz found the word. “Four. As big as—elephants. I ran away,” he added.

“Sometimes it's the best thing.”

“No.”

“But sometimes.”

Janusz looked away. “I have to work,” he said, reaching for his cloth cap. “Early tomorrow.”

Dacres examined him.

“You know what you need, Janusz?”

“What?”

“What you need is a girl.”

The boy looked back at him and shook his head. And then his shy smile came.

“When you hate,” Janusz said, “you hate yourself.”

Gorren Stop wheres the bloody money Dacres Stop

November: he looked again at the list of names Stanley Burner had given him and picked one to call upon because she was a woman and
he liked the sound of her name. He telephoned, and three days later he was walking up wide Jarvis Street, after a bit of north-south confusion about the right way, to meet Mrs. Adelaide Blackthorn. Mansions to the left of him and mansions to the right of him, with gusty blowing snow billowing around his thighs and eyes at each step. It was a late-November afternoon and he had yet to have any commercial success. Progress on his Real Work was of course out of the question until his precarious finances stabilized. Over the weeks he had borrowed money from Janusz, Leo, and various other working men in the grill, setting up an elaborate secret chain: he could pay his rent when he borrowed money from Janusz, having used the loan from Edelweiss to pay off some of his tab with Leo. He kept away from the grill when he could and inspected drab sporting goods stores (the strange gloves and bats reminded him of props in a theatrical warehouse); he sat in hotel lobbies where you were rarely asked what your business was. Today he had summoned up what little remained of his reserve of will, squeezed it like putty into a ball, screwed back and threw it up Jarvis Street. He walked north in order to save on the transit fare.

He was fraying and he knew it. This series of humiliations was pulling him apart, stitch by stitch. All the things that had made his life remotely bearable—two spoonfuls in the teapot every morning, the voices in the street, the barmaid's generous décolleté at the Gardeners' Arms, the pint of bitter each night alone—had been ripped away from him. And yet, walking along, he had to acknowledge:
You chose this, you fool
. Some part of him had sought it out.

The enormous houses, unpleasant and unnecessary Victorian piles, were unimpressed by him; and, he wanted to say, he was unimpressed by them. He scowled into the wind to let them know. He thought the little towers were absurd but the bricks in a decorative circle, that pleased him. It was hard to see much more in the blizzard. The groping wind curled over his turned-up collar and reached down his neck. In a large envelope, Dacres carried a few illustrations he'd cut out of magazines that he planned to present as his own work: his
portfolio, as it were. No one here would know the difference, would they. He wished he had gloves though: his left hand carrying the envelope was freezing cold.

When he'd found the house he rang the bell and settled his face. A lanky butler took his hat and coat and looked down at his wet scuffed shoes, then led him down woody dark corridors over blue carpet. These people hate light, thought Dacres.

He was led into a parlour and asked to wait. He fussed, and when his hostess didn't appear after a few minutes, he got up from his emerald wing chair and studied the framed photographs above the fireplace. The flames made his shins crackle nicely. They were family pictures, stiffly posed men, and oval portraits of vacant babies who could as easily be boys as girls. Hanging above them was a curved sword within a scabbard and a surprisingly delicate red silhouette of a girl in profile. The heavy floral curtains were closed, and the bookshelves seemed to stretch off into the darkness. A bureau waited against the wall. Dacres felt he was in an illustration between paragraphs in a detective story, the etching that spotlights one corner of the room: the carpet bleeds away into the white space above the text. He scratched at his thigh and fiddled with the ornate embroidered lock of the drinks cabinet and got nowhere with it. With his handkerchief he delicately wiped away his fingerprints, and considered the trolley with soda water and crystal tumblers. Were minutes passing or decades?

He went back to the mantelpiece and dropped a tiny glass ashtray, only the size of the moon in the night sky, into his pocket. He felt that if he took a few steps in any other direction, the house would envelop him entirely, and he might never be heard from again.

An image of an evening in Paris came into his head, golden sun draining into cakey rooftops. But I am in a place where nothing gleams, he thought.

A man cleared his throat. The gangly butler, Jessop (so Dacres christened him), had reappeared. He said that Mrs. Blackthorn was too unwell to rise today. But she invited him to wait on her in her
sickroom, if he wished. Dacres closed his mouth with a pop and picked up his envelope from the chair.

“Lead on, then,” he said.

The butler took him down the hall, past the front door, then up a flight of stairs and down another, thinner corridor. Dacres tried to memorize the route. Jessop knocked and opened the door, but he didn't say a word or come in himself.

Mrs. Blackthorn seemed a little young to be bedridden, Dacres thought. She couldn't be more than fifty-five and her hair, though fading, was still principally chestnut. She wore a white silk blouse under a woollen cardigan the colour of Ireland, and her only jewellery was a simple silver chain. No makeup. She smiled toothily. Lying in her enormous bed, she looked a little like a puppet, with her tiny upper body propped up above withered, useless legs. But she gaily signalled Dacres to come closer, and her thin moving arms like tweezers made him imagine her forty years younger, gadding about sportily, a girl full of energy. He wondered what her disease was. A brown-black terrier lay on her lap and stared viciously at him.

There was a cushioned chair next to the bed. From it, he could smell mothballs. Though as downstairs the curtains were closed, there was a two-inch gap where there was just the under-curtain: very white light shone in as best it could. Dacres cast a shadow on the pink blanket and Mrs. Blackthorn inspected it strangely, her jaw at work.

They spoke of little things for a few minutes. They talked about the snow. She feigned a shiver.

“Now tell me,” Adelaide Blackthorn said with charm. “How is the Countess of Peresthorne?”

Dacres said he didn't know.

“You are not a friend of Beatrice?”

“I'm afraid not.”

Dacres scratched his forehead.

“Strange …” she mused. “And Trevelyan Cazenove? Is he still dashing about Belgravia?”

“Trevelyan Cazenove.”

She looked so expectant that he hated to disappoint her.

“I believe so. I'm not sure. We've, er, we're not really in touch.”

She sighed: “Lovely chap. Mad as a budgerigar of course.”

“Oh yes. Mad old Trevelyan.” Confused, he tried a chortle.

“Any message for me from Cordelia Rhodes-Holbein?”

He paused, looking at his hands and the green carpet.

A long moment passed. She added: “Marchioness Flanham?”

“Sorry?”

He aimed his right ear at her to hear better and the terrier growled. Two small white teeth showed. Triangles.

“Oh, don't worry about Boodle.”

She said the name she was interested in again, syllable by syllable, too loud.

“Sorry. No.”

“I see,” said Adelaide Blackthorn. “Some of my old friends. One does so long for news, especially today. There are occasional letters … Perhaps we move in different circles.”

“Quite.”

“I lived for twenty years in Europe. Until ten years ago, you see.”

Dacres said nothing, wondering where she was leading him.

“Oh yes, London Paris Deauville Venice Vence, all those lovely places. Until, until. You see me now. My husband insisted we come back for me to rest—but he had a cancer burrowing in him and he passed within the year.”

Dacres mumbled vaguely that he was sorry for her loss.

“Didn't he, Boodle?”

She lifted the terrier's little angry face to hers.

He could see that she had been beautiful; in fact, she was still beautiful, though much reduced. He was all at sea with her conversation, however. He felt she wasn't entirely present; he resisted getting closer.

Roughly she turned Boodle around to face her. The dog looked over its shoulder at Dacres as if it thought they might have been at school together and was trying to place him.

“So you're a painter? How nice. You've come for some money, I suppose?” When in his surprise Dacres didn't answer, she said, “Oh don't be silly, I'm always being petitioned.”

He was still taken aback but he spoke: “Stanley Burner suggested you might have some interest—I don't know—in having a portrait painted?”

She snorted.

“Me? Me now? Pah. Stanley's a lovely man, I've known him since we were children, but he is what you might call an enthusiast. Always sending people barking up the wrong tree. Naturally I'll do everything in my power to help you my dear but I've as much use for a portrait as I have for an emu. Were you offered tea? No? But this is shocking. I apologize.”

She had a small bell on her bedside table and picked it up with her ragged hand and rang it and smiled serenely at Dacres. She looked at the dog and her head lolled, but she snapped back up.

“If you could paint me as I was,” she said wistfully. “Or if you could restore me to what I was. Now that would be something.”

He was thinking, Another wasted visit. But he did not feel rancour this time, as if he were becoming inured. If anything, a weight was lifted: there was nothing to ask for, nothing to expect, the predictable had already taken place, and he could stay here and let a few more minutes of the day pass, drinking some no doubt too-milky tea. If she was palpably batty then at least Mrs. Blackthorn was not malicious. She reminded him of one of his aunts, a woman who'd darted left and right, sparrow-like in her chatter, who had always known what was happening in the court circular and the gazette though she had seen as much of that world as she had of Neptune. Dacres settled into comfortable spite.

“Tell me, how are things in London?”

Unconsciously he put on a radio announcer's voice. “The mood when I left was grim but resolute. I can't bear to think about how things are now. I read the newspapers and listen to the radio but all I hear is good news, which I find hard to believe. The state of the
Expeditionary Force … I can't know more than you, from here. The Japanese are digging farther into China. None of it can come to any good.”

“So here you are.”

“Indeed.”

“This used to be a top neighbourhood, years ago. Tip-top. Did you know that?”

“No.” She said nothing then so after a moment he added, “I did not.”

Adelaide Blackthorn yawned. Dacres felt she must not have many visitors.

“Well what my boy do you plan to do with yourself? Canadian artists have enough trouble, I am told. How do you think you will survive, not knowing anyone?”

Dacres shrugged hopelessly, but still he couldn't help grinning at her, at his situation. Now he felt an odd solidarity with her; briefly it was as if the two of them were castaways together.

The maid appeared and Mrs. Blackthorn told her to bring two large glasses of Scotch. The maid hesitated so she repeated the order.

“Ice or neat?” she asked Dacres, who beamed. “Soda? Water?”

She let herself drop deeper into her pillow and as if they were connected by a string wound tight Dacres was pulled forward.

“Smithson Renforth?”

“What?”

“I said, do you know Smithson Renforth?”

“Oh, that again. No.”

“Lavinia and Bosie Rutledge?” she said.

Thinking of the drinks Dacres said, “No.” Then: “What?”

“Lavinia and Bosie Rutledge?”

“Oh God,” he said silently.

“Bosie Rutledge? House in Sussex though one might often find them in London for the season. Or one used to. What do I know of today. He was in the City.”

There was something alive in his spine.

“Lovely family. Lovely daughter. Lovely son. Malcolm.”

“I knew an Evelyn Rutledge,” he said with his chin in his chest.

“Evelyn?”

“Their daughter. So I knew Lavinia and the father, too.”

“You did? Oh. That's wonderful. Wonderful.”

But her voice tailed off.

“How are they?” she asked, almost glum.

“I don't know,” he said uncertainly.

“You don't?”

“Haven't seen the Rutledges in a while, to be frank.”

“Oh. Well. No. Nor have I.”

“No.”

She'd been happier when in sole possession of her names, Dacres thought.

“You must tell them about me. When you return. Tell them I am alive.”

He nodded as Mrs. Blackthorn lapsed into some concern. Dacres was hesitant, hesitant about talking, but he wanted to talk.

“You knew their daughter?” he asked, wary of what he was doing.

“Yes, they did have a daughter,” she said, lilting up again. “She was up at Girton, if I remember. Very poetic and excited.”

Dacres said nothing, wanting and not wanting her to go on. Mrs. Blackthorn spoke pensively, almost to herself: “She was a gorgeous creature, luminous. She took such delight in things, it was a pleasure just to see her, as they say. She lit up the room—so unlike young people today. I said to her when she was still a girl that she could be anything she wanted, anything. Of course, we lost touch. Over the years we lost touch. And now that I am like this …”

“Scandalous marriage,” said Dacres sadly. “Later.”

“Really?”

That excited her. But then the dour maid came with the drinks, which were too small. Mrs. Blackthorn promised to put him in touch with some of her art-loving friends and they said they'd drink to that, Dacres sourly smiling, and she took one sip of Scotch and placed the
crystal tumbler on the night table. Then her eyes rolled up backwards into her forehead.