Altered Perspective

Chapter Six

The magic of the preceding months is spoilt that morning, dreary as the rain lashed streets. Paris, Lucrezia sniffs, a perfect place for this false love to die. She is angry with Paris, as if the stones of the city can hold blame. She is angry with it all, for leading her here, for getting what she deserved, for feeling hollow after. If only she felt disgust then maybe she would be able to sniffle with self pity. Instead she feels as if someone has zipped her up tight so nothing can get in or out.

They wander around the Louvre. She omits to tell him she hates art galleries with their hushed expectation, with the prophetic words of visitors passing judgement, as if they know the inner desire, the urge that welded a brush three hundred years ago. The sheer sanctity of art makes her retch. The mill past numerous portraits, shuffling along, Reuben imparts knowledge and she merely nods. Lucrezia gawks at the Mona Lisa without a fissure of emotion. She wonders what on earth is wrong with her, what is dead and shrivelled inside. She is kept away from that knowing smile by guards and glass. She would prefer to press her face to it, to snuggle close to that enigmatic mirth. Instead she counts the colours of the Veronese opposite, the bright reds and yellows forsaken for a murky portrait of that infamous Lady.

They lunch around the Gare de Nord, she eats little and says even less. She is annoyed that he doesn't seem to care. Another newspaper is produced, wafted through. He is becomming transparent to her like a film of ink on the fingers, a smudge. She cannot even call him by his name for he is no longer a man she knows. She does not dare enter into his mind, to speculate on his state of being. She could not care for his feelings of pity, of shame, he is a man, old enough to know the workings of life, he shouldn't shy away like a boy now the irredeemable has taken place.

What would happen if she took his palm and kissed his fingers, if she pretended she desired him. Did she offend him with the barely disguised surprised the previous night? And yet he still had his way. She shudders, closes off her mind, tries to tally up the contents of her fridge, the London life she is returning to as dismal as here.

The homebound journey is without incident. They sit side by side on the eurostar as France zips past in the dying afternoon. Goodbye, she thinks nostalgically. When they disembark at St Pancras she is torn between lingering out of politeness or leaving out of her own desire. He stops her with an hand on her arm and she turns towards the unexpected tenderness.

'I'll drop you back' his voice is soft with unspoken apology and despite the fact she suspects he is trying to make everything all right, she merely shrugs her bag onto her shoulder.

'It's fine, its only a short walk and I need to get some stuff on the way.' The lamest of excuses, she thinks. Lucrezia glances up and catches the eye of this handsome, rugged stranger, who gave her thrills and promises and Paris and kisses. He is like a paper cut out. She doesn't know how to say sorry, to amend things.

'I'll be in touch,' he tells her. Lucrezia nods in response.

Go, she urges silently, you be the first to turn your back. But it is her who has to spin around and walk with determined nonchalance as he watches her go. She sucks on her teeth, bites her lip. She will not cry, how stupid to even want to. His gaze is still on her retreating back, heavy with all the words he had all day to speak to get her back.

The bus is musty, her skin prickles under her collar, Lucrezia stands, gazing at her fellow passengers, all as closed off and duped as she. Lucrezia wonders what secrets are flashing through their minds, who they go home to, what they will have for dinner. The mystery of humanity weighs heavily on her, all strangers pressed tightly together, moving slowly along with their allotted time. She is young but there is a lot of time to fill and her mind and heart are blank. Sometimes it all seems to pointless, not in a depressing sense but in a factual way. There is no meaning, she thinks, as she snakes around the passengers to get off the bus, just all this zipping around trying to fill our time.

Lucrezia is pleased to leave the stark nakedness of Paris and return to her room, where the window opens onto a tree that scrapes the glass in high wind, like witches fingers. There is a brightness to the edge of the sky, a busy, warm familiarity. The city is crowded, unpretentious, unlike Paris, set out with a surgeons knife, inexplicable cruel beauty, a daily living place of art. To Lucrezia Paris will be eternally grey and white and black, but not in the nostalgic way of the postcards sold in Montmartre, but with a washed out grubbiness, a side of the world she would rather not have glimpsed.

She drops her bag in her room, breathes in the small of her life, all paint and citrus perfume and leather shoes. She heads straight to the kitchen where she heats up a can of chicken soup, flicks through the accumulated post, pulling out anything addressed to her. The hum of the neon light overhead is a strange comfort.

Back in her room, Lucrezia falls on her bed, wrapping her face, her body up in the sheets that smell of her life. She snuggles beneath them, burrowing into the warmth . Her arms snake around the stuffed dog Harrison gave her, one she always hated but quickly discovered it was the perfect shape to cuddle. She lies there wishing she could be sick, confined to her bed, knowing her interest in art is a lie she can no longer stomach. Three years to realise it, too late to back out. The future stretches before her, out into the wider world, as bleak as the boulevards of Paris. Yet she finds she is strangely at peace with the idea, too tired to be upset or fight it, life, it seems, is defeating her.

She is perturbed to find she misses him. What perverted part of her heart snags upon him? It disgusts her, it goes against the grain of everything she should feel. But she misses the way he would fill an evening or two during the week, his absence high lighting just how far she has removed herself from her peers. She considers calling him, but always terminates the call on the second ring. Her anger is fed by the fact that if the call registers, he never replies. Probably off preening another unsuspecting art student in his special lessons.

            With a sigh she lies back on her bed and begins to pick the lilac nail varnish off her fingernails. If only she had the sense and maturity to use him for her own gain, rather than turning all childish and scared the second his hand crept across the table to her. But something in her had fallen, broken. She had not wanted to be desired for her appearance, her skinny boy hips, her dark curls, she had wanted to be appreciated for what she had to offer the world. But now, laying those offerings out like the contents of a vagabonds sack, Lucrezia sees how paltry they are. Meaningless trinkets, her life scavenged.

            Lucrezia returns to college, merely putting in an appearance. Deep down she is lead, heavy, sinking, dark and impenetrable. Her friends still speak to her, they still venture out, return home sizzled on vodka and rum at four in the morning, but her lecturers, the ones who are meant to care, meant to light a fire and get her working, mostly ignore her. It i as if she has broken some unspoken rule. If she didn’t have only five months to get through, she would leave, she knows it, but she stays because maybe it is better but mostly because she doesn’t know what else to do.