That night I sat up in bed, browsing fitfully through some of the art books I had taken out on more or less permanent loan from the college library. Somewhere at the back of my brain was something I knew I had to try and remember, but I couldn't think clearly enough to keep it in focus. I turned the pages of Symbolist Painters, making faces at the sphinxes and shady women. I'd always liked those pictures before, but now they reminded me of her.
My subconscious must have been working overtime, because suddenly what I'd been trying to remember was right in front of me. The picture of an abandoned city, water gently lapping against its closed doors. The artist's name was Khnopff. I scanned the text until I found what I hadn't known I was looking for. 'The great painter of the Sphinx-Woman was the Belgian artist Khnopff (1858–1921).'
Perhaps I'd remembered it incorrectly, or perhaps Duncan had got the name confused. I leafed through some of the other pages. Perhaps it had been Kubin (1877–1959) or Kupka (1871–1957). But no — he had definitely said Khnopff. 1858–1921. I had to read it several times before the significance of the dates sank in.
Khnopff had died in 1921. If she had been telling the truth, if he really had painted her portrait — even if she'd been a child at the time — it would mean she was a lot older than she looked.
I reckoned she was at least sixty.
In the weeks that followed, I would occasionally spot Duncan wandering around with a somnolent expression on his face. Sometimes he noticed me and said hello. More often he seemed lost in his own little world, hardly speaking to anyone. Once or twice I heard him humming — that drinking song from La Traviata again, and something or other from La Boheme, and one or two other things I didn't recognize. Duncan had never much cared for opera, but now he was obviously getting an education in it.
At the end of the day, I would hang around long after everyone else had gone home, hoping against hope that he would come by and invite me out for a drink, just for old times' sake — but he never did. As far as he was concerned, I'd ceased to exist. Entire days would go by when I didn't see him at all. People noticed his absence, and made comments. Ruth, one of the few people aware we'd been seeing each other, asked me if he was all right. Then she saw something in my expression and asked me if I was all right. 'I'm fine,' I snapped, and she knew better than to ask again.
I went for long walks, trying to fill the empty hours. I revisited places where Duncan and I had been together. I couldn't understand why being there without him should make me feel so unhappy. On the face of it, nothing had changed — I was still walking, on the same two legs, across the same stretch of the park, stopping at the same pond to watch the same ducks. I was still sitting in the same pubs, drinking the same drinks and munching the same brand of crisps. But it wasn't the same. I tried to pretend it was, but it wasn't. There was something missing, and it wasn't just Duncan.
I was still going to the same cinemas, too, though for obvious reasons I couldn't watch the same movies, not all the time. I pored over film textbooks, searching in vain for mention of lost German masterpieces. I sat through all the German films I could find, just in case, but never once did I see those eyes up on the screen. The films, being German, did nothing to lighten my mood.
The good news was that I lost my appetite. Cakes and croissants no longer gave me pleasure. The weight fell off until, for the first time in my life, I discovered I had cheekbones — they'd been buried there all along. I stared at them in the mirror. The face that stared back was pale and interesting. It was some consolation, but not much. What was the point of cheekbones? What was the point of anything, when I couldn't have what I really wanted?
I couldn't sleep. I would lie there, fretting and perspiring in a shallow fever of helplessness. I wrote long, rambling letters to Duncan, and tore them up. I wrote long, rambling letters to myself, and to this Violet person, and I tore them up too. My room was strewn with stream-of-consciousness confetti.
One night, the fever got so bad I felt like banging my head against the wall. The only way I could stop myself was by getting up and getting dressed. I went for a walk, with no idea where I was heading. My feet took me all the way up the High Street to the Grand Union Canal. I clambered over the locked gate and walked alongside the water, thinking how easy it would be to step into the dark reflection. I heard the night-time noises of the zoo, and walked and walked. Sometimes the path tried to lead me away from the water, but each time I found my way back. I walked for hours, until I found myself at the north end of Ladbroke Grove. I had never meant to go there, but my feet had developed a mind of their own. Now they took me south, overland. They took me straight to Duncan.
I stood beneath the trees on the opposite side of the road and stared up at the light in his second-floor window. It was the only light in the block, the only light in the street. I wondered what he was doing, up at such an unsociable hour. I debated whether to call in and demand a cup of tea. It was four in the morning, but that wasn't what stopped me from ringing the doorbell. He wouldn't care what time it was — he didn't care about things like that any more. I didn't ring because I knew what his reaction would be; polite, as always, but thinking, all the time, about someone else. It would have been unbearable.
One or two cars went past. I walked round the block three or four times, doing a brisk pin-step, then stopping again in the shadow of the trees. I didn't know what I was waiting for, but after half an hour or so, the front door opened. He stepped out, and of course she was with him, wrapped in her furs. I couldn't see so well from where I was standing, but her movements were not those of a sixty-year-old woman. She was petite and childlike, not wizened and old. I'd made a mistake, or Duncan had, or perhaps she'd told him a downright lie.
He stooped and she kissed him. At least, I think that's what she did. Her hair fell across both their faces so that I couldn't see properly. I think he started to say something, but I couldn't be sure. She left him there, staring at her back as she walked away, pulling her hat down over her face and folding herself tightly into the fur. He drank in one last look, as though she was all the sustenance he had, and turned round and went back inside the house and shut the door.
I wondered why she was leaving so early, why she was walking, why hadn't she phoned for a cab. I had nothing better to do, so I followed her. It was the first time I'd ever followed anyone, and in those days I wasn't too good at it. I did all the things I'd seen them do in movies — stopping to tie my shoelace, ducking into doorways, turning to gaze into shop windows. It was ridiculous; we were virtually the only two people on the streets, and still she gave no indication of having seen me.
She walked surprisingly fast, all the way down Ladbroke Grove and along the Harrow Road. She looked neither to left nor right as she went, and I stuck with her all the way.
And that's how I found out what she really was.
Chapter 3
I thought at first the gates had been left unlocked, because she slipped between them. When I got there I found they'd been padlocked after all, but the chain was slack and left enough of a gap for a skinny person to squeeze through. Thanks to my recent weight loss, I made it.