Banquet for the Damned

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Sipping coffee, Arthur reclines into plump cushions, and stretches his legs to a footstool. He feels regal, lounging on the crushed velvet seat, propped up with his drink, spoiled by a good dinner and open fire. Beneath his clothes, his skin is pink and freshly scrubbed after the hot bath Marcia ran for him before preparing the food. A faint scent of pine needles escapes from the collar of his shirt. Again his eyes grow heavy as the mulch that is chicken, steamed broccoli and roast potato is digested by his stomach. He ate quickly, having neglected lunch and eaten only a small breakfast before leaving for work that morning. And what with all the shocks the day heaped upon him, and the bitter turn in the weather, and all that lies so weighty on his mind, hasn't he the right to such an appetite and the attentions his secretary has lavished on him out of hours? It is a foolish notion, but the small deceit of him idling at the house of a handsome woman, who assists him in his professional life, pleases him. At least this is a secret, in a town full of secrets, that endangers no one. He will rest here while Marcia assembles her collection for him to see — her secret, her mystery — and then he will go home, replenished and strengthened, with a mind ready to cope with Eliot the following day.

Arthur puts the coffee mug down on a silver star-shaped coaster and looks at the patio doors his seat is angled toward. Perhaps the sofa has been arranged this way to offer Marcia a view of the garden and the hills beyond. Does she look out there for inspiration? He'd rather be closer to the fire, with the rain lashing against the panes of glass and nothing to see out there of the garden now, save for a few branches and fronds that hang wet and limp from the bushes and trees that grow close to the house, occasionally tapping the glass.

And it is an unusual room in which he sits. Not at all what he expected to find in Marcia's home. He's pulled up outside in his car often enough, but never ventured inside. It would have surprised him if he had done so. Dark walls and an indistinct ceiling watch him from all sides. Although the lighting has been intentionally dimmed, traces of ochre and sweeping crimson peek like an ecclesiastic backdrop from among the plethora of plants and waxy creepers she grows from large ceramic and brass pots. There is little in the way of ornamentation, and not a single painting has been hung. What he's seen of the hall and the coppery kitchen is much the same. When he questioned Marcia about the gloom in her home, she confessed to preferring it that way. The change was recent, she said. Something she was trying. 'But what about Jeff?' he asked. 'Does he like it this dark inside? Is it possible to read in this light?'

'Oh, I don't worry about Jeff,' she said, and laughed gaily. 'Jeff left me,' she added, nonchalantly.

'Oh, Marcia, my dear. I'm so sorry.' He tried to think of something to say; it was a shock. Was he the last to know? But she stopped him there, before he could go any further with his stumbling. 'It's been over for a long time, really,' she said. 'I'm not sorry, though he might be.'

'But why?' he asked. He must have been mad to leave you, he wanted to say.

'Someone came between us,' she said, smiling. 'Or rather, I should say, someone found him. Woke him up. Woke us both up, really. And it's for the best.'

And after that revelation, where no tears were shed, he sat, curious about her new life alone in this dark house. She has this entire private life he's often tried to visualise, imagining a farmhouse interior, with her prints displayed on white walls, strung between beams, and a garden dramatic with colour. Everything orderly and charming, a house as elegant and gentle as its mistress. Now he's seen her real home, he feels naïve, and wishes he'd not demonstrated so many of his moments of weakness and insecurity and indecisiveness before her. She is a stranger in her other life.

If he is honest, the house is not quite to his taste. It would have been preferable if Marcia had fulfilled his expectations instead of filling him with the mild unease that comes to those who realise they have underestimated someone close, and have done so for a very long time.

And there is that painting in her room. If he could change anything, it would be the oil he glimpsed on the wall behind the elaborate bed, on his way to the bathroom. He only saw it in part, and briefly at that, but it is hardly the kind of thing you would want on a bedroom wall, especially when you now sleep in the bed alone.

Arthur smiles, shaking his head gently; she is a dark horse. He'll ask her when she comes back downstairs with her collection. He'll ask her what it was. That thing, stooped over, against the smudged background that changes from a pitch black at the top of the canvas to a deep brown in the middle, and then a dirty yellow at the bottom. Is this some phase her art is going through? A way of exorcising the end of her marriage? Or is it a print from an artist she admires? He hopes so, because the figure in the picture looks like a beggar, loping along and hunched over from the weight of what it carries — a reddish coloured sack of its meagre belongings. Quite an appalling thing really.

In the past, Marcia often made presents of her own seascapes, and brought at least one in to the office, but he's never seen anything like that before. While he thinks on it, he realises he's not seen one of her pictures for some time. But if that is one of hers, then she really is quite good in the way she's taken to Impressionism. The more he thinks about it, he realises she's become very secretive about her work of late. At dinner, he made a quick enquiry about her painting, as he expected the house to be festooned with pictures of St Andrews Bay and to reek of turpentine, but she smiled and told him she'd moved on, to bigger things. That she'd taken on a model. A woman? he asked. No, no, she answered, defiant. He felt almost jealous at that, the thought of her sketching and painting a naked man with Jeff gone. What would Jeff have made of all this? Arthur makes a whistling sound, and as he shakes his head from side to side, he stares some more about the dark room.

'You'll see soon enough,' she said. 'I think you'll be surprised, dear. Very surprised.'

Closing his eyes, he begins to drift in and out of a doze. The whisky is wearing off, but it has left him soporific. And with the room so still — so silent, dark and warm like sleep — it is hard to resist resting the eyes. Just a doze and he'll go home. Go home. Elaine will have gone to bed, and by then she won't be able to smell the drink on him. It doesn't go well with his medication and, after the problems he suffered with his heart two winters before, she's become manic about everything that passes his lips. It is better he recovers with Marcia; there will only be another tiff if Elaine suspects he's been drinking.

Behind him, Marcia enters the lounge. She is smiling. He sits up with a start. 'Can't keep my eyes open.'

She smiles. 'Good. It'll be best.'

'But I want to see the pictures. And it's getting late. I really should be off.'

'Nonsense. Just relax. You need to, dear.'

Arthur beams. 'You're an angel. But I mean it, about the pictures.

I've grown rather curious, sitting down here in the dark. What have you got hidden away upstairs? You know, I've always suspected you were a genius masquerading as my secretary. And I want to see if it's true.'

'You will,' she says, and winks at him, which she has never done before. 'I have a call to make, and then you'll see the results, dear. I promise you. In the meantime feel free to doze. Won't be long now.'

'Sure you don't mind? I feel terrible imposing like this. I really should be getting home.'

But she goes from the lounge with a swishing sound, and he hears her run up the stairs. Against the patio doors, the wind rushes in.

With the lights turned off, she likes to stand in her room and watch the sky, and the distant lumps of the hills beneath the stars. Sometimes the moon is bright. That is the best time to paint. It is cloudy tonight, but that doesn't matter; she's not up here to paint. Not yet anyway. Not with the rain and wind so pleasingly close, outside, where he is. For now she just wants to wait, exhilarated in the dark. Tingling in every finger and toe; her skin ready to shiver; the expectation of sound, of the doors flung open downstairs, like the last time she saw Jeff alive — it was wonderful. Just to wait in silence, to sense it building up, the power around her home, rushing forward so close to the ground, rearing up at the prospect of her gift to him: her love, her king. And then the crash and the whirl of motion, dulled through the ceiling, but frantic enough for her to picture every last step and movement and blow, until it is quiet again, and safe for her to creep down.

Tonight the elements know he is coming. They whip the heather and flay the grasses on the common land, blurring the definition of field and tree. They make shadows longer and thicker than ever, a fanfare for the king that approaches her house. Her house. It is almost like fear, what she feels now, but more than fear. There is pleasure in it. Ecstasy, able to tighten her way down in belly and womb, while her mind fills with the living darkness that swoops and seethes and rushes forward to hunt. She can't wait to paint him, again, at his work.

Once, in her life, there had been shopping on Saturdays, visits to an elderly mother on Sundays, and books on steam trains in her house, belonging to her husband and the life he imposed. But no longer. Now she has all the time and space to paint. To paint a god. The god the girl brought to her. A god that touched her and made her shiver against the suddenly cold sheets; someone who came across the floor, and up the walls, and across the ceiling and then down to her bed. He doesn't ask her for much, but she gives what she has, what she can, for his touch, and for his favours. He's taught her to stretch beyond her dull life and to come running back clutching things that have always been forbidden to her. Things she can secretly sketch and then colour in burgundy, royal purple, ox-blood and rust. No more tepid watercolours. Like the food she shares from his table, her new oils are rich and thick.

Late at night, with her hair all wild and her skin naked and her spirit free, she works, and recreates that which so few have seen and felt and tasted and smelled and devoted themselves to. Now Jeff is gone for good, she can be free like that, all the time. A promise her new love has kept.

Before the window, Marcia removes her white blouse and cream camisole top, her fingers clumsy, like they are before the dances on the dark stones at his court. Next, she steps out of her formal black skirt and frees herself of underwear. Sitting on the bed, naked and gleaming in the dark, she picks up the phone and taps in a number on the keypad. It rings five times at the other end before the receiver is picked up. Marcia closes her eyes and shivers at the thought of who stands at the other end of the line. Between the crackles and little clicks, she senses them. 'He's here,' she says, in a soft and grateful and loving voice. There is no answer but she knows they are listening. 'Downstairs. He's ready.'

Marcia is adding a little water to the crusting red paste when she hears the scream downstairs. She smiles and, using a fingertip, dabs the crimson across the thin white streaks on her canvas. The colour draws the eyes out, but it will need to be darker inside the wide mouth. She's already used strands of Jeff's hair for the raiment, mixed with dark browns and then a sackcloth yellow for highlights.

The portrait is taking shape nicely. It is the best thing she's ever done. The melancholy colours sweep like clouds across the sun on the light canvas; angles and lines have been smudged away by swoops of black. She has used real bone for the limbs too, and fashioned the ruined thing in the king's hands with a collage of real skin and chicken fat. She's never even considered using such materials with oil paint before — but this is her own private renascence, a time in her life when everything is conceivable, terrible, and free. Marcia peers down at her palette for a dark, river-weed green — the colour of Jeff's eyes. She has to get that part just right — the astonishment, almost childlike, mixed with the bewilderment of a hare before an eager ferret. Just like she did with the boy in the sea.

There is a lot of thumping downstairs now, and someone is making a sound like a baby in distress. Marcia stops painting for a moment and closes her eyes to relish the honour of having it happen, right beneath her feet, in her own home. She places both smeared hands on the easel, and gently allows her head to fall right back between her narrow shoulders, where the bruises still hurt her. She sighs and shivers as the cold air of his arrival clothes her body.

Not long now before he leaves her, as swiftly as he came from out of the air and hills. Stronger than ever, stronger and pleased with her after the gift, the offering she provided. And when he is gone, she will go downstairs, turn the lights on, and see what has been left for her.