He sat on the chair, on the edge of the chair. ‘I’m… I’m going to make a drawing first… a few drawings. It won’t take too long.’
She didn’t answer. He pulled his pad from the small table under the window. He crossed his legs and braced the pad against his knee. When he lifted his pencil, he laughed nervously at his hand. It was shaking violently. When she didn’t notice, all the same, he began.
It had been years since there’d been genius in his fingers, if there ever was. But now it came. He felt it anyway. And he was amazed by it. He sketched her quickly, with the photographic realism he had practiced in school, with more assurance than he’d had since then, than he’d ever had. Yes, he was going to make a Lizzie Siddal of her: Siddal in her coffin, in the bonfire light. But he would make her like Ophelia too, lying in the Highgate tomb, a sort of rudely resurrected Ophelia, because he felt as if he and the old painters were wrestling in the open grave for the right to portray her. He wove the lines of Rossetti’s poems into the background, into the flames, the trees, the shadow-streaked stones.
’Beautiful!’ he breathed aloud. ‘You have such a special look… you have this haunting… reminiscent look…’
But when he glanced up at her, her expression was convulsed in disgust. She turned to him angrily.
’Don’t move,’ he said.
Her expression did not change, but she shifted her head back into position. There was a moment’s silence while he drew. And then she burst out, quietly, bitterly: ‘Believe me, I didn’t ask to look like this.’
At once, his hand started to shake again. He grimaced. What did she have to talk for? But he heard himself say: ‘So why don’t you… you know. Why don’t you tell me how it happened.’
’I thought you already knew everything.’
He didn’t answer. If he had he would have told her to shut the hell up before she ruined everything. He steadied his hand and brought the pencil point back to the paper. Yes, it was still there. He drew.
Jane Abbot sighed. ‘I was an idiot. That’s how it happened.’
The flame-painted face, more alive than in life, the living muse overpowering the decaying flesh… He drew rapidly, nauseous with the fever now and with excitement.
‘I wanted to get away,’ she said. ‘I don’t know how to put it. From my world, from my husband’s world. I wanted to escape a little. I felt like a stopped kettle. I thought I would explode.’
‘So you mean you went to that club,’ he said hoarsely, drawing.
‘Yes. That’s what I mean. I started going to that club sometimes. When my husband was away. He has to travel – to the continent – two or three times a month.’ She lay still on the bed, hands clasped. She spoke up at the ceiling. ‘And then he… this other man… Simon… Well, I suppose he was very… different and charming. It was all part of getting away. Of letting off steam. And I was an idiot – God!’
‘Don’t move, don’t move.’
‘I suppose what he thought was… I suppose he thought I was using him. I suppose I was. But, you see, no one uses Simon Taylor. Not an important man like him. No one must be allowed to get the better of him in any way.’ She sneered at the cracked ceiling plaster. ‘So he took photographs. He had a friend in the other room taking photographs. And when I tried to break it off… Well, he wasn’t going to let anyone play the fancy cat with him, walk out on him. No.’
He had to stop drawing. He was just too excited now. Reluctantly, he pulled the quaking pencil from the page. He looked up at her, his eyes were all over her where she lay. ‘Can’t you buy them from him?’
’He doesn’t want money.’
He tried to keep his voice from shaking. ‘How much can he do though?’
‘Oh! Believe me. It’s different in America: the newspapers would actually print those pictures here. My husband is an important man. The damage would be unimaginable. And my son,’ she said more softly.
He wanted to go on, to ask her other things. The details. The things Taylor made her do. And did he make her do them with other men as well? Did he still take pictures? Did his friend watch? He didn’t have the nerve to ask any of it, though. He sat staring at her, glad the pad covered his lap so she couldn’t see just how excited he was.
She did notice he wasn’t drawing any more, however. She sat up, carefully, keeping her legs together, smoothing her dress down. Her gaze wandered around the room for a moment, as if she’d just awakened in a strange place. Then their eyes met. Hers were sullen, and he could only just hold himself steady.
’All right,’ she said. ‘Now you’ve made your picture. What will you do for me?’
Benjamin’s mouth opened in surprise. ‘Oh,’ he said at once. ‘Anything. I’ll do anything you want.’
She was supposed to see Taylor again on Friday, so on Thursday Benjamin murdered him. That wasn’t the original plan, of course. He’d been supposed to steal the photographs, that’s all. She’d given him the address of Taylor’s rather suave Notting Hill garden flat. She’d told him what she knew of Taylor’s schedule, prompted him on where to climb the garden fence and even told him which window – the kitchen window – was the likeliest to be unlocked. He did take his matte cutter with him, but only because it made him feel safer somehow. Maybe he’d be able to use it to turn a latch or something too, he thought. Good God, he never expected to actually do battle with the man.
Taylor went out around nine p.m., as Jane Abbot had said he might. Benjamin, huddled in shadow across the street, huddled in the blustery October darkness, watched him drive off and out of sight. Then he acted quickly.
The garden fence was low. He hopped it nimbly. He crossed the garden with a wary eye on the facing buildings, but it was all right. Most of the curtains were drawn, and no one was watching. Once he had lowered himself into the well under the windows, he was calmer, even oddly serene. He felt that no one could see him now. Well, he always felt a little like a phantom anyway.
She was right about the kitchen window too: it was unlocked. He slid it open. He climbed in over a counter, edging a crockery utensil jar to one side as he came. He drew the window shut behind him and dropped down on to the floor.
He’d brought a flashlight, but when he came into the living room, he pressed the wall switch all the same. Again, he felt invisible. He was sure he would not be seen.
The job seemed daunting to him at first. The flat was large, two vast rooms, and it was messy. Clothes and newspapers lay scattered on the floor. There were shelves and shelves of CDs and their jewel boxes were strewn on tables all around the stereo. He stood frozen. He did not know where to begin his search.
He began with a writing desk pushed against the far wall, and he found the photographs at once. The desk drawer was locked but he pulled out his matte cutter, pushed out the blade and worked it between the latch and the slot. The drawer popped open. There were papers in it. He rifled through them and saw a manila envelope underneath: the photographs and negatives were inside.
Just at this point, his calm, his armor of calm, began to disintegrate. He only glanced at the pictures briefly, but even that glimpse – of her candid nudity, of their vivid sex made pornographic by the camera – unnerved him. Waves of confused sensation washed over him, swallowed him. The reality of the photos, their easy hiding-place filled him with powerful intuitions of Taylor’s arrogance and Jane Abbot’s despair. At the same time, an aura of grandeur seemed to surround this enterprise of his – seemed to surround himself as well. After all, he was the engineer of her salvation, wasn’t he? She would be grateful to him. And he himself might well be reclaimed. The possibilities – the fair future, any future, Christ, at all – rocked him where he stood. He was desperate, all of a sudden. Desperate not to fail.