How You See Me (2 page)

Maggie was, for a time, my father’s favourite model. She was certainly the one we loved best. Sturdy and oversized child that I was, it was my great ambition to be able to hug Maggie all the way round. Until then I had to love her portion by portion, hanging off whatever giant limb or bulge came my way. She mothered me, I suppose. Poor motherless mite. She fed me and loved me and did her best.

She caught me at an awkward moment today. Dad was down for his mid-morning nap and I was missing you. There’s no internet here so – oh, I hope you’ll understand this! – I went to Dad’s studio and sorted through canvases searching for artistic pornography. You know my dad’s style. It’s always the model looking down at herself. I was looking for a body I could mistake for you. There was a girl I remembered, but I couldn’t find the sketch. It’s probably hanging in a gallery somewhere.

Maggie never knocks; she walks in. I don’t think she guessed what I was up to. Models forget that nudes have anything to do with sex, and, as I said, Maggie is one of the best. She’s shrunk. All those beautiful swells of flesh have ebbed away. She’s an old balloon. An old lady.

‘You’re up here, then, with the girls. Should have known it.’

I left the paintings and moved over to kiss her and throw an arm over her shoulders. Even standing straight I could have fitted her under my chin. We’ve become perfect dancing partners. It wasn’t long before she shook me off.
‘Enough of that.’ I don’t know when we stopped touching each other, but it was years before I left. They’re odd here, with their rules for children, their rules for young men.

She squinted up at me. ‘Your dad’s sleeping. I got him a blanket from the box. Better get ourselves back downstairs and give him some company. You can show me whether you can make a decent cup of tea after all these years.’

I was glad of the smile.

We had a nice visit, all in all. She bossed me about the kitchen and rearranged the cleaning products I bought the other day in town, sniffing at labels that didn’t meet her standards. It was only as she was leaving that she came out with it. About ‘that business’.

‘I never believed your dad when he told me. I mean about that girl. I told him you must have got yourself confused. Well, it happens, doesn’t it? And a boy like you, after what your mum did to herself. I know, I know, I’m not going over all that now. But it was bound to affect you, wasn’t it? That’s why you got confused.

‘But you’re grown now and back with your dad. It’s a good thing you’re doing, Danny. And there’ll be no more confusion now, will there? No more of that business.’

I want to come home to you, Alice. I’ve had enough of this. I’ll write to Mab; I don’t care how much work she’s got on. I have a job too, after all. And I have you. I need to get out of here.

Running towards you,
Dxx

24th September

The Studio

Dear Aubrey –

I told you I’d be in contact when I knew more and I was going to phone this week. However, after your letter, I thought it would be better to write.

I appreciate my absence is difficult for you and the last couple of weeks must have been trying, but the fact that I was called away was not my fault. You were generous enough to give me leave and I thought that was because you understood. My father is very ill. I’m afraid there have been a series of strokes. He can’t speak or take care of himself. So I have to take care of him. There’s no one else to do it. This is hardly a holiday.

All of my notes and final drafts are filed in the computer in the usual way. You can access them using your password. If hard copies are missing then I can only presume they have been misfiled or mislaid. And, if that has happened, it was certainly not my oversight. The implication that I would steal from you is frankly offensive. Why would I have any use for any client’s files? I would have hoped, after the years we have spent working together, that I would have earned a certain degree of trust.

Yours,
Daniel Laird

25th September

Still here

Dear Mab –

I’ve been rewriting this letter for days. It’s strange having so much time to think. Too much time. I’m not neglecting Dad, but he’s still too ill to be considered company.

The point of this letter – now I’m finally writing it – is that I need to go home. I can’t stay here any longer. Dad’s getting better every day and you may have forgotten what he thinks of me, but I don’t think he has. Not really. The doctors said the brain heals quickly. It’s strange thinking of all those neurons linking up in there. Couple more connections and he’ll remember he hates me. I’m scared every morning when I wake him that this will be the morning he finally recognises me. Then it will all happen like before.

(Later)

OK, I’ll be honest. I have met a girl. She’s a patient of Aubrey’s – which of course means there’s nothing wrong with her (apart from trusting Aubrey, and we’ve all been guilty of that). Her name is Alice.

I met her first through words on a page. Alice Williams. Case Number: 3478. You know the work I do for Aubrey – I see dozens of case files and transcribe hundreds of notes – but this collection of papers was different. It was as if I could smell her perfume on the pages. It was a love letter addressed to me.

Sure, she has her problems. She cries too easily and quakes with a general fear of life, but it’s not incapacitating.
It’s nothing Aubrey couldn’t sort out with a handful of his magic white pills and a quick daddy chat. Still, he signed her up for the full twelve-week course of one-to-one therapy – something it is obvious she can ill afford. And, Mab, I found I was grateful. As soon as I read her words, I wanted to read more. There is a tenderness, a sweetness in her speech that even Aubrey’s callous shorthand cannot obscure. Alice was simply luminous on the page.

After I saw her outside Aubrey’s office – I waited after her regular twelve o’clock appointment – I realised I’d seen her before, at the Art Gallery a few months ago. She was standing between Nude #62 and Nude #68, looking up at
Hylas and the Nymphs
. You remember how Dad insisted the Waterhouse remain
in situ
during his exhibition? I don’t even know why I was there; I usually avoid Dad’s shows. But the Laird exhibition had caused such a stir in Manchester and maybe I just wanted a wander down Memory Lane.

It was Alice’s hair that made the impression. She’s a blonde, and if you met her you’d say she wore it short, but actually it’s this mass of tight spirals. God knows how long that hair would be if you brushed it straight. But it was that cloud of yellow I remembered. She thrusts her fingers into it as she speaks. It’s like some kind of power source: her speech speeds up after that gesture. It’s remarkable hair – electric hair. More impressive than tears or trembling. More a symbol of her true self.

(Later)

It’s impossible to write any of this without hearing your reply. Your voice interrupts every sentence. There is no need to remind me of my own mistakes. They are
mine
after
all; I’m hardly likely to forget them. Alice is not a mistake. This doesn’t mean you needn’t reply – just try to make it unpredictable: tell me I can go home.

D.

28th September

A sweet dream

Dear Alice –

I am between your legs, my elbow pressed against the floor of your thigh. Parting the silk of your hair to find the beauty of your cunt. Your body rolls away from me like a landscape. I drink in the scent of you. Your smell is my discovery. It blossoms alongside the perfume of the hyacinths on your bedroom sill. I know when you planted those bulbs: you explained the dirt on your fingers when you came to your session. And now I find them breaking the soil, blooms drawn out by the heat. Between your legs and in your room, discovering you inch by inch.

Your smell is freshly turned earth, a freshly cut vein. I paint it on my fingertips. I want to daub it on my pulses, the way expensive women wear expensive perfume. The taste of you is the change of texture under my tongue, the secret warmth and flavour that makes you moan and twist. I know everything about you and still there is more to explore.

Crawling up your body, over your mounds and through your dells, letting my tongue run behind my gaze. Already nostalgic for where I have travelled, yet eager for what’s to come. There are so few adventures in my life. Your face is
turned aside, and I’m in your hair. I tease free a strand and lay it in my palm, watching it curl and move. It reminds me of those cellophane fortune fish you get in Christmas crackers, coiling and recoiling in the heat from my hand. You remind me of the first woman I ever loved. A girl with masking tape in her hair and charcoal dust blackening the soles of her feet. But her story is not ours. We will have a happy ending.

You are the diary of my desires and you are too far away. But I am with you, Alice, even if they will not let me leave here.

Yours, always yours,
Daniel xx

1st October

The Studio

Dear Mab –

The tiniest incidents make a day.

This morning Dad sat obediently in the bath and waited for me to wash him. I was surprised. I had to help him in, of course, and help him undress the best I could. He insisted on folding each piece of clothing and laying it carefully across the toilet seat. Socks balled into each shoe, as if he were going swimming.

I lathered a sponge with soap and eased it over his shoulders. He did nothing to help or hinder me, just accepted it. I wasn’t too sure what to do about the bandages on his left leg, so I propped his ankle on a shampoo bottle
and worked around them, just dampening the edges of the dressing. There are marks of old breaks in his skin: the bloom of bruises where needles have pressed into him, where they have been taped into place. His body is a chart of scars I can’t wash away.

I rinsed him off, dipping and squeezing the sponge. I should get a shower head to fix on the taps. Then he stood up suddenly, without assistance, and I grasped his outstretched arms. There was this little old man in a bathtub, his white hair sleek and steaming, a tube linking his prick to the bag of urine resting on the neatly folded clothes. I held his hands and watched the bathwater drip down into the dressing on his leg. The adhesive gave out, and sodden gauze slid into the soapy water.

I bandaged him back up and got him settled in his chair in front of the TV with a cup of tea and a plate of toast. He insists on having the bloody thing at full volume whatever the programme or time of the day. I can’t even say he watches it particularly, but he seems content with his eyes on the screen, and it allows me to leave off the mindless chatter I keep up until it’s turned on. I think I’m trying to convince him – or should I say remind – that I am an actual person and not some automaton that appears in the morning and disappears at night.

I made myself busy in the kitchen. You would never believe how domestic I’ve become: I examine every plate and knife and rinse carefully before it leaves the sink; I relish scrubbing the tannin from teaspoons; I polish glasses and hold them to the light. I’m like some underworked barman in the movies.
What can I get you, sir? Scotch straight up and an ear for your troubles?

I whistle in an attempt to drown out the noise from the TV and follow a routine: fold clean laundry from Maggie; sort rubbish; look over Dad’s medication; write tiny shopping lists. It’s mindless work, but I like it. Thoughtless hours can fill up a day. There’s a peace in it.

By eleven am, I’m on my knees with a plastic bucket getting on with the business of taps and tubes on Dad’s ankle. This job goes best if I just get on with it; Dad’s usually pretty absorbed in the TV and, if I can empty the catheter bag without disturbing or upsetting him, then I count it a success. Then I can tip the lot down the toilet, wash my hands and go out for a smoke. My reward.

This morning, the bag was emptying, and I was already congratulating myself, when Dad reached out and took hold of my head. It shocked me a bit, but I turned my face up to him and smiled. Think I even said a few words, you know: ‘Morning, Dad. Not hurting you, am I?’ Something like that. He just sat there and stared at me, right
at
me. He hasn’t done that for days, maybe not since we got back here. And, before I could get started with the usual platitudes, he grinned. A proper loving happy smile, holding my head between his hands and looking into my face.

I just knelt there and stared back at him. Eventually some noise or light-flash from the TV caught his attention, his eyes flicked back up to the screen and the smile dimmed, but he kept hold of my head. When my legs started to ache, I twisted round so I was sitting at his feet. He stroked my hair. My head was his pet. I didn’t want to leave. We might have sat there like that for an hour or more.

When his hands finally slipped away, I felt cold. I checked the catheter, gathered everything up and got rather
awkwardly to my feet. Halfway up, he made a grab for me again, this time squashing my face between his palms. He frowned at me, tilting his head, that way he does at a cigarette that has gone out on him. Then he shoved me over towards the arm rest. The bucket of piss nearly fell out of my hands. I laughed. My head was a cabbage. And it was blocking the TV.

Rewarded myself with two smokes and a bacon sandwich.

Everyone’s servant,
Daniel

10th October

The Studio

Dear Mab –

Did you know there was a dog?

Maggie turned up with it yesterday and left without it. She seemed shocked that I didn’t remember.

‘It’s Tatiana, Danny. Princess fucking Tatiana – how could you forget a name like that?’

‘We never had a dog,’ I replied, folding the animal’s ears between my fingers. She seemed friendly enough, but that didn’t mean I wanted her in the house.

‘Of course you didn’t.’ Maggie sighed. ‘It was that girl’s dog, remember? She brought it back with her, anyways. Third-hand by that time, though, I shouldn’t wonder. Your dad’s had her since.’