Unmasked (8 page)

‘These are amazing, Marco. You could exhibit them. Do any of these people know you have painted them?’

‘No,’ he said.

‘You have their names. It wouldn’t be that difficult to track some of them down.’

He made no comment. He was preparing to start painting though Emma could not see what needed to be done to the elderly woman on the easel. It looked as complete as the other portraits.

‘Are these finished?’

‘No,’ he said, and switched on a small CD player. The volume was low, some jazz was playing.

‘Are those?’ she asked, pointing at the copies of Renaissance paintings.

‘No.’

‘And those?’ She nodded at the hundreds of canvases she had not been shown.

Marco turned and looked at them, thinking.

‘I no paint,’ he said, putting down the brush he was holding.

Emma went over to the divan and sat on the edge. The mattress was harder than she expected.

‘What will you do?’

‘
No lo so
.’

‘May I take off my boots?’

Marco nodded and then watched her intently as she unzipped them, pulled them off and placed them neatly side by side at the edge of the divan. She wore pink and white striped socks.

‘Will you sketch me?’ she asked, suddenly. And having mouthed the words she blushed. Being alone with him in his studio, sitting on his divan, she felt like she had just asked him something else. They had only just met. And yet …

‘No.’

‘Why no?’

Marco was obviously disconcerted by her presence. He was agitated. He wouldn’t look at her. He gave her no answer.

‘Do you sleep here?’ she then asked, arranging the pillows. She could smell his scent. She could imagine stripping naked for him. She wouldn’t hesitate. She’d never been sketched before, not nude. The situation was drenched in possibilities which left her tingling all over. She lifted her feet up and folded them under her.

‘
Si
,’ he said, and then added, as if the right word had suddenly come to mind, ‘sometimes.’

‘Alone?’

‘
Si, sempre
.’

His reserve was exciting. He
was
restraining himself, she felt certain.

‘May I have a glass of wine?’

He looked at her with dark, serious eyes. He could not say no. He could not say yes.

‘Do you want me to go?’ she asked, sure of his reply, though. She was watching him. His eyes could not hide his feelings. They were expressive. Open. Honest.

He walked over and poured her a glass of wine and stood over her for a second or two, just looking at her frankly. She noticed his lips. They were full lips. She wanted to kiss those lips. He handed her the glass and then retreated to the safety of the canvas.

‘You stay. I paint.
Si
?’

She took a sip and stared at him without saying a word.

And then he did what he said he would do. He painted. He barely said a word. She sat back on the pillows, watching him. An hour passed. Emma asked him a few questions for which she received monosyllabic replies. She opened an art book and flicked through its pages without really
looking. She kept glancing up to stare at his eyes as he worked. Intense concentration. But when she reached for a sketchbook from the table he forbade her from opening it. Another hour. She poured herself a second glass. The wine on an empty stomach caused her to get light-headed. She took up another art book and stretched out on the divan.

And while the painter painted, Emma fell asleep.

TEN

Emma lay in that delicious moment between sleep and wakefulness. She had not been dreaming, she had not been anything. Now she was back and she was undecided as to what it meant. She opened her eyes and stared up at the bare beams of the barn without recognising them. Then slowly the pieces tumbled back into place. The smell of turpentine. The soft jazz. The book on her breast. The empty glass of wine. All was as it was. She must only have dozed off for a second. The light had not dimmed, but Marco was no longer by the easel.

‘Marco?’

There was no answer. Emma raised herself onto her elbow and the book fell to the ground, pages splayed. Emma swore and picked it up, bending back the damaged pages. She closed the book properly and placed it on the chest. The sketchbook he had forbidden her to look at was still there.

He’d have removed it if he really didn’t want her to open it. She pretended she wasn’t interested in it and she lay back. She’d wait for him. She loved the atmosphere in Marco’s studio. She would stay there forever. Be his assistant. His muse. His lover. She didn’t mind as long as she could stay.

The sketchbook could not be ignored. She rolled onto her stomach and buried her face in the pillow. She was smiling into the fabric as her left arm reached blindly for the forbidden fruit. She dragged the large book along the chest and onto the floor. She turned and turned it until it was ready to be opened and then she paused. Without lifting her face from the pillow she slid open the sketchbook. Now she was absolved of guilt. She could claim the book was like that when she found it.

Emma dragged her face across the pillow
until her left eye could look over the edge of the divan. She was disappointed. The page was covered with small detailed studies of woodwork. Chair legs, balustrades, table legs. She flicked the page. Another disappointment. Stonework. She turned pages, more and more studies. Emma’s heightened senses calmed. She had been expecting him to return and catch her, but now it didn’t matter. He had forbidden her because it was a book filled with his exercises.

Emma found a page of small studies of hands. Women’s hands. One page over. Ankles and feet. Women again. Charcoal and pencil. Flick. Necks. Ears. Heads turned away. Then pages of women’s backs. Beautiful images. She thumbed more pages. They were blank. She slammed the large book shut. A page was dislodged in the back and Emma slid it out. It was a nude. A woman. Exuberant charcoal. Full page.

She flicked through the blanks and found pages of nudes. She studied them one by one. These drawings made Emma smile. There was something about Marco’s sketches, something new that she hadn’t seen before in figurative drawing. They were not detached, they were not about beauty. She had never studied art and had none of the
technical language needed to be clear about what she felt was so different. They were erotic. They were captured passion.

She flicked the page again and came across a sheet of small erotic scenes. It wasn’t about technique. The difference was somewhere there in what he was feeling or sharing with the sitter. It was obvious to any observer that the women in the larger portraits were involved in the act of creation somehow and were not just models. There was some relationship between artist and subject. And viewer. That relationship made the sketches intimate, they included her in them, they invited her into the scene, to participate.

She brought the page of small erotic scenes closer to her eyes. One little sketch was absorbing all her attention. It was of a woman lying on her back with her eyes closed, knees up and her legs spread wide. A man, she assumed it was Marco, had his face buried between them. His muscled arms came around and his hands seized her breasts while her right hand clutched his head by the hair, holding it to her. Her left hand was stretched out towards Emma and was gripping the bed sheet tightly. There was so much tension in her hands. Even her feet, which
rested lightly on his back, were arched. And the expression on her face, though her eyes were closed, gave the impression that she was reaching out, searching, for release. She seemed just on the knife edge.

Emma remembered that feeling.

Never in her adult life had Emma gone so long without sex. Paul was the last man she had been with. That was back in November. She had stopped wanting. She had stopped playing with herself. She had had no desires. But now the sum total of all of Marco’s sketches was too much for Emma. His scent was all over the divan, the scent which had awakened her as she climbed onto his bike and wrapped her arms around him. She remembered him diving into the water. She saw again his broad chest, his muscled arms, his lean waist. She turned page after page of the sketchbook. So many women. She didn’t doubt what she was seeing. She lifted her hips and opened her jeans. She wriggled them down slightly and began to play with herself.

If Marco returned now he couldn’t deny her. She wouldn’t let him. She knew his truth. These sketches were moments in the life of an attractive artist. His sister was wrong about him. Marco
had lived many years away from home and had had many women. Maybe he was living as a monk now, but he was once a debauchee. Each face was unique, each body beautiful and flawed in its own way. There was nothing left to the imagination. Where some men took photos, Marco sketched. And how much more erotic were these sketches! She turned pages and found more and more. There was a sketch of an orgy. This was too much for Emma. As her eyes darted from scene to scene, from entwined flesh, to ecstatic faces, to a woman with a man’s face between her legs, from a huge cock being sucked, to deep passionate kisses, from a man being fucked in the arse, to a woman being fucked by two men, there was no stopping it, her orgasm came and overwhelmed her.

Marco returned to find Emma on the divan fast asleep. She lay on her stomach, her cheek pressed into a cushion, her hair covering much of her face. She was lying on her hand, and her jeans were slung low, halfway down her bottom. His sketchbook was open on the floor beside her. Miles Davis was oozing out of the stereo; the volume was still turned down low.

Marco, noting the page, closed the sketchbook and picked it up, flinging it onto the chest. Taking the bottle of wine in his hand he walked back beyond the easels and stood there. He was staring at the woman on his divan. He popped the cork out of the bottle with his thumb and downed the little Emma had left him. He was shaking his head and muttering to himself, his eyes fixed on the flesh of her bottom. He reached out and traced a line or two on the covered canvas closest to him. He felt himself go hard. No, no, no, no, no, he repeated softly. He took a few steps towards Emma.
Bellissima
, he whispered. He shook his head more energetically and went back to the door, his hand on the latch.

Near the door there was a low bench with cupboard space below. With his hand still on the latch Marco knocked one of the cupboards doors with his foot. The door swung open revealing a bright red metal toolbox. He glanced back at Emma. A canvas hid her from view. He rested his forehead on the door and slowly and softly tapped his head against the wood. He reached down and lifted the box onto the bench. Flipping open the lid he lifted the tray out and carried it to where Emma lay. It contained ink pens, pencils and charcoal pieces.

He sat on the edge of the chest, on the corner furthest from Emma’s head, and lifted the sketchbook onto his knees. From the tray he selected a stub of charcoal and began to sketch.

ELEVEN

‘Marco?’ murmured Emma softly as she woke to find him sketching away in his book. He had come closer and was resting on the end of the chest nearest her.

He leapt up, dropping the sketchbook onto the chest, and moved rapidly back beyond the easels.

Emma noticed the commotion but hadn’t opened her eyes again. She had fallen into a deep sleep and now felt groggy. She was confused, the arm under her was numb. She couldn’t move it. Then she remembered what she had been doing before she fell asleep. Blood flushed her face. She
was still exposed. The shame burnt but not as it should. It inflamed her. She knew what he had done to the other girls.

‘Were you sketching me?’ she mumbled, rolling her body and releasing her arm. The blood returned to it and caused it to ache.

‘No.’

‘You
were
sketching me, you liar,’ she said, her voice soft, gravelly and full of warmth.

Marco was watching her from behind an easel. He had sketched five or six pages worth of charcoal drawings of her while she slept. By sketching her he had been forced to examine her closely. It had been silent, it had been close, and it had been unauthorised. He had had time to become familiar with her scent. He had sketched her neck, her ear, the wild dark hair, the flesh she had left exposed and the darker regions within. He could see what she had been doing. Touching herself. On his divan. A woman he didn’t know. She was bold, brazen. She was an incitement to rebellion.

‘I’ve seen your other sketches,’ said Emma. ‘The other girls. Lots of girls.’

Marco went back to the low bench by the door and opened another of the cupboard doors. There were bottles of red wine stacked inside.

‘You fuck all the girls,’ continued Emma from the divan. The husky tone of her voice was sorely attractive to him.

‘No,’ he said.

He lifted a bottle out. A barman’s friend hung on the door by a piece of string. He uncorked it deftly.

‘You fuck them all. And you will fuck me.’

He walked back to the easel and looked down at her again, shaking.

He took a swig of the wine. ‘No.’

‘Yes, you do. You fuck all the girls.’