The Ephemera (11 page)

The apartment was not what he had anticipated of Alison Grace. He had been expecting dim rooms crowded with old things, an undisturbed sense of dowdiness and antique clutter. Instead he found the rooms spacious and decorated in an ultra-modern fashion. There was a sparseness which accentuated the expense at which the place had been furnished; each piece of furniture precisely chosen to complement the whole.

Alison Grace ushered him quickly through the apartment to the studio at the back. This too took Hugo by surprise. Rather than an empty bare-boarded attic room bathed in natural light, he discovered that this studio was more akin to a living room. A comfortable looking armchair upholstered in black material sat in the centre of the room, a low-wattage lamp on the floor providing illumination. She motioned for him to sit, which he did. The wall facing the chair was dominated by a large blank television screen. The screen was linked to a digital video camera mounted on a tripod, which Alison was now adjusting. As Hugo twisted round to see what she was doing the low glass table directly in front of the chair appeared on the screen. Beside the camera stood another tripod, this one holding a curious metal frame.

Hugo was becoming nervous. The artist had said nothing since he had arrived. As if sensing this, she looked up from her preparations with a sudden smile which threw him with its warmth.

"Nearly ready," she said, again with an inflection so that he was not sure if she was trying to put him at ease or asking if
he
was ready. The words spoken in her strangely hollow little voice did little to relax him.

She brought over a square bundle wrapped in waxed paper and set it on the table in front of him. Hugo could see that she had donned a pocketed apron and was wearing thin gloves like a surgeon's. She deftly unwrapped the package to reveal what looked like a solid block of green tinted glass. Then she produced a long bladed scalpel from one of the apron's pockets and proceeded to slice the block into three unequal pieces as easily as if it were cheese. She carried the smallest portion, barely a slice, over to the camera where she wrapped it like paper over the lens. The picture on the screen dissolved into a swimming blue static. The second portion, she took to the framework. Here she teased and worked the stuff into a thin sheet which she stretched over the metal like a translucent canvas.

All this she did silently and with the tiniest of motions, which served to increase Hugo's discomfort further. At last, from the floor she picked up two items; a wooden paint brush and a jar of water, and said, "I am ready to begin, Mister de Villiers. If you'd just like to relax and take it in your hands."

Hugo was unsure what she meant. This whole arrangement was so far removed from his expectations that he did not know what to think any more. Alison indicated the remaining block of glass with her brush. Understanding, Hugo reached out and picked it up.

The glass was cool and hard to the touch. It was weighty and the sharp edges cut into his fingers a little until he found a way to hold it comfortably. The artist dipped her brush into the water, flicking off the excess drips on the edge of the jar. Hugo looked up expectantly, his lips forming the words,
What now
?, but Alison cut him off,

"You are a man who likes to surround himself with fine things, Mister de Villiers." Question or statement? Hugo managed to answer, "Yes."

"Fine clothes, fine home, fine car, fine people and of course, the finest art in your gallery." She was staring intently at him now, her brush poised over the transparent sheet. As she continued Hugo noticed that her voice had taken on a thin whispering edge.

"Because only the very finest things can complement your own refined person. Is that not so?"

As he was about to reply, he noticed that the glass in his hands was getting warm, softer, malleable. Before he knew it his hands had sunk into the surface and been enveloped. A sound, 'Ah', came from the artist. He looked back in her direction in alarm. Her eyes were closed and she had begun to paint; clear water in delicate, purposeful strokes on clear canvas.

Hugo tried to pull his hands free but they were held tightly. He stood up trying to shake the glass off but with no success. In fact the glass was flowing quickly up his arms, freezing them, and was beginning to encase his torso and neck.

"It can be really quite pleasant if you relax," said the artist, "but you'll end up hurting yourself if you move around."

He was robbed of that option by the time his hips and then knees were smoothly covered by the liquid glass. As the substance rippled up his face, the wall screen began to flicker and images started to ghost in and out of the static. It was impossible to tell what they were because they were gone and replaced by new ones within seconds. To the side he could see that the sheet Alison was painting on had gained a measure of opacity and was taking on the appearance of parchment with each additional brush stroke.

Then his attention was dragged away and captured by the figure which materialised before him. He recognised it immediately. It was him. An exact replica of himself, dressed exactly the same way and looking into a hand held mirror. It was looking very pleased with itself, beaming his famous smug smile. The reason for this soon became apparent as he became aware of the presence of a crowd of people. From his frozen situation he could not see any of them as they all seemed to be keeping just beyond the limits of his vision, but this simulacrum Hugo was well aware of them, well aware of their attention of which it was obviously the centre. Inside the glass, Hugo could almost hear the whispered comments of admiration and watched as the replica's smile broadened still further. Suddenly the figures came into view and formed a kneeling semicircle around his double. They were elegant people, expensively dressed, an air of importance about them; and their faces were featureless curved silver. His image let the hand holding the mirror hang by his side, choosing to gaze instead into the faces of his admirers and seeing himself from a dozen angles. The video wall held a picture of a vase of cheap plastic flowers reflected as if between two mirrors so that the image multiplied and receded infinitely. A constant flurry of movement in the corner of his vision was the artist painting away feverishly. The sheet was now nearly fully opaque but Hugo could just make out dark outlines through it.

Hugo's eyes widened in their prison as the colour began to fade from the replica, although not from the reflections. It carried on admiring itself even as its beautiful clothes unravelled thread by thread and fell away from its pale body. Hugo, unable to look away, began to mutter to himself that he was imagining this, that it was some sort of hallucination; but something was tugging at his memory, something he recognised. The scene became increasingly familiar as the grey skin began to bubble and melt around the obliviously smiling face. Hugo moaned loudly as he recognised his nightmare. The skin was now flowing like wax, smoothing over the features, falling in heavy droplets onto the floor. The details of the entire head were slowly erased. All that was left was a featureless outline of a man bearing the most superficial of smiles.

As the mirror-faced people turned slowly away, Hugo began to scream, his body shaking violently inside its transparent skin until the glass cracked, frosted and burst away from his body in a crystal shower, lacerating his clothes, leaving traceries of blood on his hands and face. His scream died into heaving sobs as the tableau before him faded quickly and the wall screen image was swamped once more by static.

He cast wildly around the room. He was alone; the artist was gone, her easel empty.

~

The artist passed among her admirers, handing out champagne and receiving complements in exchange. Some of her guests were still seated in front of the viewing window, looking through into the empty studio, apparently in contemplation of the piece, some were reviewing the video footage of the crucial moments, others were standing around engaged in earnest debate. In the course of her journey she overheard comments,

"...this one was much more invigorating, don't you think? The girl last time was far too passive..."

"...I don't agree. I found her acceptance much more satisfying than his denial..."

"...it's the frisson created by the confrontation between the subject and their subconscious that is so exciting..."

Maria approached and took a glass from Alison's tray. She held it aloft and tipped it towards the artist.

"One of your best, I think."

Alison looked abashed. "Well, I don't know. I was quite pleased with the way it turned out."

"Nonsense. It was genius. A very powerful piece." Maria squeezed her protégée's arm lightly in encouragement. "Really."

"He was a good subject. You found him for me."

"Yes I did, didn't I. Poor Hugo. I wonder what he'd say if he knew he was a work of art."

~

This was another of those early pieces that grew out of the central image. In this case, it was the amazing paintings. If I were writing the story now, I think I'd make their contents less blatant, but I still love the imagery.

Well Tempered

"January," Rosemary shouted, glancing at the kitchen clock. "I want you sitting at that piano when the instructor arrives."

Of course, the last place she looked was the music room. January was perched on the padded stool with her hands folded in her lap.

"Isn't he here yet?" she asked, sweetly.

Rosemary eyed her daughter with suspicion. She had
that
look on her face.

"He'll be here any minute," Rosemary said. "Sweetie, you will do as he asks, won't you?"

January was not a
bad
child. She could be naughty, of course—but what child wasn't mischievous occasionally? She was manipulative too when there was something she wanted. And if pressed, Rosemary would admit that whatever January wanted, she usually got. After all, keeping January happy was the important thing.

The current fad was MTV. January had decided that nine years old was the ideal age to become a pop star. She wanted a piano, because Pixie Harmon played piano on MTV, so her parents bought her a baby grand. It cost nearly two thousand pounds, and had to be winched in through the window.

At first things had looked promising. January had donned the little black leather-look top and shorts favoured by Pixie, struck a pose and brought her hands experimentally to the keys. Within an hour Rosemary recognised a stumbling rendition of
Ooh Baby, It's Good
. It was a very simple tune, but it
was
a tune.

January practised for a week, and each day the tune became a little more fluent, but then her progress halted. She didn't know any other tunes.

To forestall the piano's relegation into the ranks of mere furniture, they had hired a tutor. Having had a series of stern letters from the bank, they'd discovered an obdurate streak in themselves almost as big as their daughter's.

So far there had been five different tutors. For most of them one visit had been enough. Frustrated that natural talent was apparently insufficient, the child refused to be taught. January hid. She screamed and stamped. She played badly on purpose, and stuffed cushions inside the piano lid and pretended it was broken. She even clunked one lady on the head with the metronome.

Now she sat patiently, waiting for tutor number six. She was up to something, but before Rosemary could question her, the doorbell chimed. With one last warning glance, Rosemary went to answer it.

The man standing on her doorstep did not resemble a piano teacher. He was too well dressed. His suit was dark as night and immaculately tailored. His shirt, white as egrets' feathers and stiff as sailcloth under the wind, was bisected by a silk tie that had the exact subtle colouring of the tails of magpies. Rosemary was quite captivated for a moment, until she realised how these wonderful clothes disguised the odd proportions of his body. He had an elongated look, as if stretched like pale toffee. His head flopped on a goosy neck. His beard and moustache were clipped too neatly for his sagging features, as if he'd bought a set of facial hair one size too small for his face. Eyes like dull pennies regarded her blankly. His arms hung down like ropes.

"I'm Linke," he said, in an odd European accent. "I am instructor."

"Thank you for coming," she said, stunned by this apparition on her doorstep. "Please come in." Linke ducked into the hallway behind her.

Outside the music room, a familiar smell assaulted Rosemary's nostrils. A smell that, strangely, reminded her of October. Entering the room she recognised it. It was the smell of the log fire they set when autumn chilled the house.

January was holding the little kitchen blowtorch to the piano. The burnished wood was blackened and blistered, but thus far nothing had actually caught alight. "It won't burn properly," she huffed.

Rosemary was lost for words. But, as she stared at the flames licking the wood, the instructor intervened. Gently, he relieved January of the torch with one skinny hand, and closed her gaping mouth with the other. The child shrank out of the way as he reached over her and rippled an arpeggio on the keyboard.

"Something is wrong," Mr Linke said, and reached into his inside pocket, retrieving a long velvet bag. Inside was a foot-long tuning fork. He struck the fork on the piano to make it hum, a note so low Rosemary could barely hear it, then he handed it to January. The girl immediately dropped it with a squeal.

"The instrument is not well tempered," Linke said. "I shall tune it."

"We've only had the piano a few months," Rosemary protested.

Linke interrupted. "You must leave the room." He laid a fishwhite hand on January's head. "This will stay."

Rosemary disliked Linke's presumption, but she obeyed nevertheless. Reluctantly, she went into the kitchen and put the kettle on for tea, but as soon as that activity was performed she returned to the music room door. There was no sound from inside: no clinking tools, no twanging strings, no repeated striking of notes. No complaining of child.

Curious, Rosemary peeked through the crack between the door and the jamb. The view was frustratingly limited. January was out of sight, but she caught glimpses of Linke. She couldn't see what he was doing, but he never seemed to linger at the piano. Strangest of all, January remained totally silent.

Consumed by a curiosity that now bordered on concern, Rosemary tried to edge the door open an inch or so to gain a better view. The door was unceremoniously shut in her face. Her level of concern rocketed, and she placed her hand firmly on the handle, determined to interrupt whatever the instructor was doing with her daughter. It was her own door, in her own house, and she had every right to witness the goings on behind that concerned her own child. What stopped her was the first notes of a plodding major scale. Rosemary let a breath out. She had over-reacted, like Richard was always telling her. Plainly, Linke was all right after all.

In the kitchen, the kettle rattled and spat to the boil. As she filled a tray with china, Rosemary heard a melancholy run of notes. Then an entire tune. It was a moody, oddly-intervalled piece. It didn't sound like one of Pixie's songs.

After Linke left, January stayed at the piano, hunched over the keys in concentration. She didn't stop for tea, not even for a chocolate biscuit. Sipping her calming camomile, Rosemary found herself disquieted by the threnodic music, but pleased that her daughter was at least playing the thing, she resisted the growing compulsion to ask January to stop.

Linke did not call again, but in the weeks and months that followed January applied herself to the piano like she never had to anything in her life before. Rosemary and her husband boasted to their friends about their daughter's growing proficiency at the instrument—they even talked about entering her in a regional competition—but privately both winced when their obedient, silent child came home from school and began to play.

It was some time before Rosemary looked up 'well tempered.' The dictionary didn't tell her much, only that it was a method of tuning keyboard instruments that involved unbalancing the tuning in the common keys by tiny amounts so that they can be tuned in every key.

Rosemary placed the book back into its slot on the shelf, and turned to watch her daughter, hands dancing lightly over the keys of the piano. There was something in that strange music, and in January's cold smile as she concentrated, that brought Rosemary close to weeping.

~

Another story that stemmed from a potential double meaning in a common phrase. I've always loved the notion that, to work in all keys, a piano cannot be perfectly tuned in any one key. And it was pretty obvious that if the same concept were applied to a child the results would be...unpleasant.