And So The Story Ends - by James Finlay
Short Story (3,777 words) - February 2013
I knew very little about Miss Olivia Lawrence when I met her back in that very last summer of the nineteenth century. Although having now met her, I cannot say I know anything more of her than I did before; but I can say that I now know her better.
I had been commissioned to paint her portrait by her mother, and as I had only recently completed my studies in the arts, I was certainly eager to accept any paid work. Her mother, Mrs. Meredith Lawrence had seen my student work and had evidently seen that my work was at a satisfactory standard that I should be fit for the task. I had, at the time, taken this to my own credit, until I began to suspect unflatteringly that it was not, perhaps, my talents that had been sought after, but rather my poor sense of self-worth. If I were able to negotiate the commission again now, I would have certainly doubled my fee without fear of losing the job. Nevertheless, I had taken the offer, and to this day I am glad that I did.
The day I was to meet and paint Miss Lawrence, I rode my bicycle out from the small fishing village in which I was staying for the few days I had allowed to paint this portrait. It was the height of summer, so the journey from the village inn out to Miss Lawrence’s sea cottage was very much an unpleasant one. The entire journey was long, and uphill. The sea air seemed to sweat on my behalf as stormy grey clouds rolled in over the ocean, replacing their lighter grey counterparts as they did so. ‘What I wouldn’t give for a seat on the back of a hay cart!’ I remember thinking to myself, but alas I was left to make the journey myself. I had all manner of things strapped to my back or my bicycle. A thick canvas bag containing a box of paints and brushes hung lazily from my bicycle’s cross-frame and only served to make my load more unbearable. The only things worse were my easel and canvas. My easel had proven too long and too thick to strap to the cross-frame without it interfering with my ability to steer, or having it rub against my tyres. The only solution had been to tie it carefully across my shoulders with some rope, but this only served as an added grievance as my shoulder blades were pulled back rigidly by my yoke. My canvas, meanwhile, was tucked under my arm, and by the time I arrived at Miss Lawrence’s driveway, my muscles burned like acid.
But sure enough I finally came to stand there, straddled over my bicycle with my feet in dust that would soon be turned to mud. Before me, about a hundred and fifty yards away, stood the small, white cottage standing its sentry atop the bluff, turning a bluish hue in the light of the oncoming storm. This sight alone had made the whole ordeal of my ride up there instantly worthwhile. I had half a mind to set up my easel and painted the scene then and there had I not let my professionalism get the better of me. I had said I would be there that morning, and it would be dreadfully embarrassing should Miss Lawrence emerge from the cottage only to find me painting a scene in stead of her. If I had done that, I’d have had to have bought another canvas, which, of course, I could not afford. Though, with what I know now, I’m sure she would not have minded.
So, I dismounted and wheeled my bicycle with one hand – carrying my canvas with the other – down the seemingly ever-lengthening path that ran through the many salt bushes towards the weatherboard house, leaning it up against the wall when I reached the front door. It was only as I arrived at a place so close to the house that I saw that it was not the light that gave the house its bluish tinge, but rather its paint. Nonetheless, I could feel the beginnings of rain, so with my bicycle under cover, I made my way through the already open front door.
I must admit that I was more than a little nervous, and not only about it being my first paid commission, but also about meeting Miss Lawrence herself. As I have already mentioned, I knew very little about her. I did know that she was a poet who had had numerous anthologies published, a few of which had received much critical acclaim. While I had not read any of her poetry myself, I had heard her name separately from her mother commissioning me, though I confess I could not remember from whom or where. All else about her was left to the purest of speculation, not even tainted by stories or hearsay. Had I not asked after her specifically whilst I was in the village and jogged a memory or two, I suspect she would have never crossed any of the minds of those in the town that day. She was practically a ghost; not as present as the living, but more present than the dead.
As I entered the house, I found the room immediately within dark and mostly empty, apart from a large sofa covered in heavy Persian rugs and a small bookshelf. A few books and teacups were littered around the place, and I could only just make them out in the light seeping through the gaps in the two doors open in opposite corners of the room.
Through the door, she sat at a desk in the back room of the cottage which was quite long and narrow, stretching out along the length of the back end of the house. The far end of the room was a kitchen with a waist-high bench-top running around the walled edges. The near end, as the desk suggested, was being used as a study. The three exterior walls were mostly made up by three-foot-square windows, each separated by perhaps half an inch of framing. This allowed for as much of a view as possible out over the ocean, and the storm still rolling in over it, and the first raindrops still marking themselves on the glass. The nearer, study end of the room was quite bare apart from stacks of papers, the beautiful old writing desk, the small leather seat in front of it, and of course its occupant.
All of these details around the room I noticed much later, because in that moment, my attention was demanded by the gold bangle sitting just above the elbow on the right arm of Miss Olivia Lawrence.
She was writing furiously as she sat at the desk. Her short, brown hair was still damp from what I could only presume to have been her morning shower. It sat messily on her head, thick and in tight waves. All those locks together made roughly the shape of a hooped ball gown as they came together to make a reversed bob. This particular hairstyle exposed a slender and delicate neck, which hosted a few remaining drops of water.
Curiously, it was this detail that caused me to finally notice that she was, in fact, still entirely nude. Her towel, which at one point must have been wrapped around her, now draped itself quite loosely around her hips, and almost threatened to drop off onto the floor at any moment. She was both very curious to me, and very beautiful. Two dimples sitting either side of her spine and just above her pelvis chattered away as she wrote on. The nib of her pen against the paper scratching and scrawling away, making the muscles on her back ripple and dance faintly in a thousand minute efforts…
But I had forgotten myself. All at once I realised that I had not yet made myself known, and yet even then I could not bring myself to do so. Silently I berated myself for forgetting to speak up sooner. I remember my favourite of lecturers from art college had told me to be always observing, and I certainly remember taking that advice to heart, so perhaps that was the cause of my in indiscretion. However, I cannot remember the particulars of my thoughts at the time though, and so I am left only to speculate.
Suddenly, and to my partial horror, Miss Lawrence stoped writing, and put her pen away. I was cornered. I had half a mind to creep back into the main room and try my entry again as though I had never come inside. But she was no longer writing and would surely hear my footsteps and see me through the mostly-opened door. The waves rumbling away would not provide enough cover. There was nothing else for it.
As softly as I could manage, I ventured an “Excuse me, uh, Miss Lawrence…”
Still sitting, she turned her head around slowly and calmly, as though she had known I was there all along. Bashfully, I entered the room.
“Yes?” she said, “I was wondering how long before you spoke up.” Evidently, she had known. As she looked at me, I was astounded. Her eyes were a deep, oceanic blue, and her voice poured out like honey. “You must be the painter.”
The sight of a naked beauty even when expected can render a man a wretched heap. When unexpected, it is almost certain to. My palms were sweating, and I was more nervous since meeting her than when I had been in anticipation of it.
Unable to quite manage words, I nodded in reply.
She stood up, picking up the towel from around her waist and resumed the incomplete task of drying herself. A cool and somehow dry breeze wafted through the front door, and the pattering of the rain on the iron roof became a little louder.
“You must excuse me,” she said, “I had the beginnings of a short story come to me in the shower and I had to get it down on paper before it blew away. Do you drink tea?”
Without a word, she stood up and walked gently past me into the kitchen to put the kettle on the small electric stove. She showed absolutely no intention of dressing as though the notion simply hadn’t and wouldn’t occur to her. She didn’t seem at all bothered by her being nude in my presence, and I didn’t seem at all bothered about it either. But that was just it, I felt as though it should have bothered me, and the fact that it didn’t bother me bothered me. I couldn’t bring myself to feel worthy of her presence, certainly not in such a sacred place as that small house at the top of that bluff, far from all things uninspiring. This was a place of beauty, and I was not born of such a place; a place of storms in summer, and strange intimacies with strangers.
“Do you like oranges?” she asked softly and perfectly after a pause of indeterminable length, preparing the kettle with an improbably elegance.
“I do,” I answered, managing words this time, though my voice struggled a little, “I don’t think I’ve had them since I was… perhaps sixteen.”
“I see. How old are you now?” she asked kindly, leaving the stove and leaning on the counter.
“I turn twenty-two in three weeks time.” I felt immediately like a child giving their age. I may as well have said I was seven.
“A shame,” she said, “Six years without the heavenly pleasure of oranges. I say that today we end your famine.” And with that, she produced two oranges and a knife. She cut both oranges into four segments then and there on the bench top. Her movements were slow and delicate in reverence of the beautiful, ripe fruit.
“If you were to go the same period of time again before you next eat an orange,” she said as she continued cutting, “Though I don’t see why you should – you should be my age before you next taste anything so wonderful.”
She finished cutting and brought a segment to her lips. I hastily followed suit. I found myself pondering the significance of what she had just said. Perhaps there was something cyclical to it, as though I would one day become her and experience this meeting again in the future from her perspective. The thought only lasted a moment, and I quickly realised that she was saying nothing of the sort, but I must confess it left me feeling that, although I had only just met Olivia, she was the type of person as whom I could happily spend a lifetime living. She was also the type of person who made me believe, though for a brief second, that such a thing was not only possible, but likely to happen. I have only met a few others since meeting Olivia who have made me feel a similar way. But none, by any stretch, were her.
With nothing to say, neither of us spoke for a while. The taste of the oranges, all sweet and stinging, seeming to fill the silence in place of our voices. The rain spoke for us; as did a soft rumble of thunder at one point. I thought it wonderful that someone who evidently had such a way with words should have an equally eloquent way with silence. And in that silence I wanted to observe her again as I had only just before; to indulge in her a little while longer. I am sure she would not have minded – at the very least, she would have understood – but my manners got the better of me and in stead, I resigned myself to watching the storm roll in through the rainy glass. The storm, too, was beautiful as she was. To me, she was the storm, she was the sound of the rain, she was the sound of the thunder and the waves. I found her in all such things because I couldn’t bring myself to gaze on anything more than her reflections.
I was so lost, in fact, that I had not until then realised that I still had my easel, my canvas, my paints, and my brushes all still on my person. With this, I put them all down, clumsily and crudely, where there was space, feeling more wretched, and intrusive, and out-of-place than ever. The clutter was jarring and disruptive, and I almost expected to meet an accusing gaze that would drive me from her sacred place, but I met no such thing. In stead, I saw her gazing out over the ocean, the same colour as her eyes.
But, alas, the silence had been materially damaged; not broken, but in some way injured, perhaps bruised. I was sure that Olivia could sense it too. I felt as though I had just knocked a vase of hers atop a mantel as we watched it smash upon the floor before us both. So, ineloquently, I spoke up.
“These oranges are very nice,” I said, useless and wiping the juice dribbling down my chin. It stang the corners of my mouth, and this absorbed my full attention as I still couldn’t bring my gaze up to hold her. If she responded to my comment at all, it was with nothing more than something to the effect of “Quite.” I was entirely unable to pay attention to she who was before me, only what she left burned in my mind as I looked away. I was a painter too shy to look at his subject. I was a painter too shy to look at his subject. This notion, exactly as it occurred to me, seemed ridiculous.
She was my subject, and I had every right to study her every detail. It was my job to, and so I therefore should. But that approach was all wrong. She was not a city to be sieged and taken; that is no way to go about a beauty. No, she was a distant moon there to be wondered at as she floated in her mysterious and secretive way. I could never even hope to approach her. And so I was left to listen to the rolling waves below, and watch the storm roll in through the trickles and streams down the glass.
The sudden and rude whistle of the boiling kettle reminded me how long it had been since a word had been said. I pondered the quality of the silence that had elapsed, and I thought of the theoretical eternity that had passed in it, just as there are an infinite number of points between zero and one. She poured the water into a teapot.
“This is green tea,” she said, speaking slowly and softly as though to try and cause as little disturbance in the remaining silence as possible. “Another simple pleasure of mine. I spent some time in the Orient and I loved this particular type of green tea. I don’t know of any English name for it, and I wouldn’t dare attempt the Mandarin for fear of butchering its wonderful name even if I could remember it. A friend of mine sends some over to me every month. It’s simply divine.” Her voice faded from the air and restored the silence to its former fullness as it hung over the sound of the rain, and the waves, and the thunder.
In that wholesome silence I was allowed to glance at her. She leaned against the bench and the sea in her eyes longed for the sea outside. Her face spoke of contentment, and there was a smile and a sadness written in her.
“You know,” she spoke, softly and reverently as always, “Not far from here, just tucked away on the other side of the bluff from the village, there is a narrow path that leads down the steep slope to the little river.” Her eyes never left the ocean, and her voice was soft with secrecy, as though I was listening in confidence. “At the bottom of the path there is a little wooden platform. It is the only structure of any kind along that river for miles inland. At this platform, there is a tiny wooden boat with oars sitting in it. It sits down there, in the water, this little boat, tied up at a little dock, in a little river. Some days I like to go down there, just to visit that lonely little boat. It has weathered many storms, and it has filled with water many times, but it has never sunk. Every time I go to visit it, I look to see if the knots used to tie it up have been done up differently. The knot tying it up today is the same as what it was two years ago when I first found it. I would love to take it out but…” she turned to me, her eyes turning to liquid glass and spilling a little. “The weather has softened and hardened that rope so it is not even a knot anymore.”
The moment held. I did not understand why she would tell me such a thing, but I could feel the part of her that was breaking for this little wooden boat. I watched into her eyes, and I could not tell for certain whether or not she was even speaking literally. I supposed if the boat was a metaphor, it could mean herself – belonging to no-one, alone and sadly beautiful. Or perhaps the boat referred to someone else whom I did not, and may never know – a sister, a brother, and old lover, or a friend perhaps? But none of those notions seemed to fit.
These thoughts dazzled me for a moment. It was only when she looked away again that I realised that in all likelihood she had spoken literally. The boat was no metaphor, but rather something beautiful she wanted to share. And yet, it was her. Her affection for that boat was something kept in her most venerable place, and she had shared such a thing with me, a stranger.
It was then that I could really see her.
Compared to the venerability of her tears, her nudity was as comfortable as being fully-clothed. She had let me into her secret place, and I could not dare to be so profane as to shy away. She poured the tea and we drank it together. I had never had green tea before, and from then on after, I was only ever able to drink it alone. The taste was too private, too intimate to be shared with anyone but her. To me, it was the taste of simple and beautiful secrets; of beauty itself.
And so, as strange as it may seem, it was there the story ended. Towards the end of our second cups of tea, one of us, I can’t remember, suggested that we get to the business of the portrait. From then, I was just a painter, and she was just my subject. Though even by this stage, she was not just any subject. I had been commissioned to paint a portrait, and by that measure, I failed. I’m not entirely sure how it happened – I suspect the wonderment I felt towards her left me a little out of sorts – but as we moved to the lounge room, she set up on the sofa and began reviewing the draft of her new short story, still in the nude. And that was how I painted her. It did occur to me later that perhaps a nude portrait might not have been the best decision when her mother had made the commission, but I did not know for whom the portrait was designed. In any case, the check came through, and I received my first paid commission.
I think about my meeting with Miss Olivia Lawrence every so often, and on occasion wish that perhaps I had fallen in love with her and designed to win her affections. But I could never bring myself to risk tainting such a beauty with hands so dirty with oil paint. It was our meeting I loved, and how it had faded like moonlight shadows at dawn. After all, we had not met as lovers, but as artist and muse.
And so the story ends. But her image lives on. It’s always the image that remains.
