Page 54 of The Blue Hour

Vanessa shrugged. ‘I feel fine, Gracie,’ she said, opening her arms. Grace accepted the lie and the embrace, though she winced as she felt the sharp wings of Vanessa’s scapulae protruding through her shirt. Vanessa placed her head gently on Grace’s shoulder. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she murmured. Then she pulled away. ‘I don’t have the strength to work with clay, but I can draw, and I can paint. I want to paint.’

‘Just so long as you’re allowing yourself enough rest.’

Vanessa nodded vigorously. ‘It’s good for me – you knowhow uncivilized I become if I don’t work.’ She winked. ‘I’ve actually made a start on something big, something quite ambitious.’ She gave a sly little grin and Grace raised her eyebrows. ‘No, you can’t see it,’ she said. She stepped forward, brushing her chapped lips quickly against Grace’s cheek. ‘It’ll be a while yet, at least a few weeks.’

Eighteen months later, she took Grace up to the studio to see it. Painting had been delayed by a bout of flu which became pneumonia, by a sprained ankle which prevented her from getting up to the studio, and mostly by her mood, which swung wildly between reckless optimism and abject despair.

It was morning. They walked up the hill from the house together, taking their time, Grace enjoying Vanessa’s mood, the excitement that vibrated off her at times like this, when something was completed and ready to show.

As they arrived at the crest of the hill, Vanessa reached for Grace’s hand. She was breathing heavily, a faint whistle in her chest.

‘Are you all right, Vee?’ Grace asked. Vanessa nodded, and smiled, and as one they walked into the studio.

When Grace saw the canvas on the easel, she inhaled sharply, dropping Vanessa’s hand as though scalded; she saw at once what it was. In the archway in the centre, she saw herself, kneeling on the ground, the cutter between her hands, intent on the task at hand. And she saw him, fighting her, his arm reaching up as he tried to fend her off. And she saw the figure behind her, standing in the doorway, watching.

‘It’s you,’ Vanessa said. Grace looked at her, aghast, shame burning through her, but Vanessa was smiling. ‘It’sus. You and me and him. Don’t you like it?’ Her voice was light and thin, like the mewling of a kitten. She was nervous.

Grace took a step closer to the canvas, tears stinging her eyes, the image blurring in front of her. She realized in that momentthat Vanessahadseen her that day, she had seen her for what she was, and more than that, she had understood. She loved her still. All this time, she’d been so afraid that Vanessa might see the scales beneath her skin and reject her as a monster, but instead, Vanessa saw the scales and loved her more.

‘We could have killed him,’ Vanessa said languorously, ‘couldn’t we? I think about that now, I think about it often. We could have killed him, we could have cut him into pieces and put him into the kiln, we could have fired him, and no one would have known.’

She reached for Grace’s hand again, and Grace understood now that not only did Vanessa love her, but that as different as they were, as essentially opposed in so many ways, in this they were kindred. ‘Sometimes,’ Vanessa said, ‘I dream about raking through ashes, raking through ashes and finding bones.’

At last, Grace spoke. ‘If you’re having nightmares,’ she said, her voice husky with tears, ‘we can get you something for that. To help you sleep.’

Vanessa laughed softly. ‘Always so practical,’ she said, ‘my Grace. My Grace.’ She lifted Grace’s hand to her lips and kissed the tips of her fingers, one by one. ‘Do you want to know what I called it?’ she asked, pulling Grace towards her. Together they walked around to the back of the canvas so that Grace could see, written on the back of the frame,Love.

37

When he looks at the black painting, atLove, a second time, Becker seesJudith Slaying Holofernes. The reds are those of Holofernes’s cloak, of his arterial blood. The gold is Judith’s dress. One woman working, the other watching on, the brute dying. Onlythisbrute didn’t die. Did he?

‘I won’t give it up,’ Grace says. Her face, usually so soft, has in this dusky light taken on an obdurate cast. ‘I won’t give any of them up. These are all that remains to me of our life together.’

Becker turns away from her, hands on hips, and sighs in frustration. He looks at the painting, at the figures on the floor, locked in mortal combat and swathed in darkness, and he feels exhausted, exhausted and sad. The past couple of weeks have been draining: Helena in hospital, that horrible scene with Emmeline, the long drive, Helena’s mis-sent message, the walk on the beach against the wind, the screaming gull and this – Grace’s lies, her obfuscation, her desperation – all of it has worn his nerves gossamer thin.

‘It wasn’t perfect,’ Grace says quietly, looking at the picture, ‘but itwasa life. What Vanessa and I shared was as rich and textured as any love affair, and you can try all you like to reduce it to nothing—’

‘I have been trying to help you!’ Becker shouts. Grace starts, but only slightly. She holds her ground. ‘If you had told me about thesegiftswhen I first came here, we might have been able to avoid a serious conflict, I might have been able to talk Sebastian out of getting the lawyers involved, butnow?’ He shakes his head. ‘You’ve made your bed, Grace. He will come after you for these, and for all of Vanessa’s papers, even the private ones, and there will be nothing I can do to stop him.’

Grace juts out her chin. ‘Fine,’ she says. ‘But you can tell him from me, I’ll do what I can to make it unpleasant for him, for his mother, too. I could make life difficult for that family if I put my mind to it.’

Becker shakes his head again; he starts to walk away from her, into the hallway, towards the living room. ‘Is there anything else I need to know about,’ he asks wearily, ‘before I go back to Fairburn? Any othergifts?’

‘Are you accusing me of lying?’ Grace snarls and Becker laughs. He starts to move away again but has barely taken a step when he feels her hand on his forearm, gripping it painfully. ‘Don’t you dare!’ she exclaims, tightening her grip further still, quivering with rage. ‘Don’t you dare mock me!’

‘Grace.’ Sometimes talking to her is like dealing with a child. ‘I’m not mocking you. But you admitted lying to me just a moment ago, so you can’t be angry when I don’t take you at your word.’

Reluctantly, she releases her grasp. ‘Iwasher totem,’ she says, her voice faltering, filling with tears. ‘Without me, everything went wrong. That man, Stuart Cummins, he would have killed her. Julian would have wrecked her life, he would have dragged her into his mire of debts and debauchery. He did his best! And when he went missing, who was here for her? Frances? Douglas? Not a chance! It wasme. I saved her, protected her, cared for her,risked everything for her – my licence, myfreedom! You can try to write me out of her story, but you won’t succeed. I will always be a part of it. There are things I know about Vanessa that you will never understand. You have no claim over her! She was mine.’

38

The storm has hit early; Grace said it wasn’t due until Sunday night or the early hours of Monday morning, and yet here he is on Saturday evening and rain is stinging the windowpanes like pebbles flung against glass. The wind is savage; it screams in the trees. All the way across the bay Becker can hear the waves smashing against the harbour wall; it sounds like a bombardment.

Grace has locked herself in Vanessa’s bedroom with the paintings. Becker tries, briefly, to reason with her, but she refuses to engage and after a few minutes he can hear her talking to someone else on the phone. A lawyer, perhaps?

He slinks off, back to the kitchen, where he fills a glass with water and checks the tide timetable on the wall. He should be able to cross by around 10.30, although if the weather gets any worse, who knows? Could he be trapped here all night? The idea fills him with dread.

He sips his water; it tastes faintly brackish. Perhaps it is just the salt on his lips, but he suddenly craves something sweet. He makes tea, spooning a generous mound of crumbly brown sugar into the cup. He finds biscuits in a jar on the counter and helps himself to one of those, too, and walks over to the window. The darkness is complete – he cannot make out any light across thebay – but the sea sounds wild; even at this distance he can hear the ferocious boom of waves hitting the harbour wall.

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