The Painting

The painting was a picture of purity, of placidity, a paean to the God that created it, but it was alone. Alone in a sordid room of old books, dust-ridden, the walls around it crumbling slowly deep beneath the rotten plaster, the tack- and hole-ridden walls discoloured and faded. The painting hung there on the wall like a portal to a better world.

            When the old woman died and her family came round to greet her housekeeper, heads respectfully bowed, attitudes the typical pseudo-morose attitudes of those merely countenancing a pose, young Elizabeth strayed away from the coat-tails of her mother and came upon the room, its large, forbidding oak-panelled door like a guardian.

            She entered, looking around the room, and saw the low grey and brown tones, the cobwebs strung up in the corners like faded decorations, the books like disabled relics of knowledge, crippled now in their cracked and mysterious jackets. Then she noticed a small colourful object, up there pinned to the wall, obscured by dust like the skin of her grandmother’s face, bent in sneer and wrinkled in obscurity, masking whatever beauty once lay beneath.

            She went up to it, but it was positioned too high, so she searched for something to stand on. She found a low chest of drawers, and, bending her knees, almost squatting, she pulled it over to the wall, straightening out the lace covering and swiping the dust off it before climbing atop it. She reached up to the painting and gently wiped the dust from it. Her fingers were slightly damp, and they merely rubbed the dust to a condensed paste, so she wiped her hands on the back of her dress and then cleaned the frame.

            The picture was beautiful. It was of a woman lying on a sun lounger, wearing a bathing suit, a small golden stretch of sand sweeping out in front of her, and she was looking out to sea, as if she were looking at something out there afar, perhaps something she’d lost, a memory, or maybe she longed for something, something that the blue clarity of the water hinted at and yet hid, somewhere beneath the hush of its gentle wash and spray.

            There was a cycad to her right, and a small cottage to her left. It had hanging baskets of small beautiful flowers, buttresses impressed with carnations and potted herbs and spider plants of various sizes, and there were two rose plots running down the sea-facing side of the cottage, brimming over with tangles of red and brilliant sunburst orange flowers.

            She could only make out the back of the woman’s head and the violet sun hat she wore, but she could see her auburn hair, its tight little ringlets seeming to swish and sway in the calm breeze. And then the strangest thing happened: the door to the room slammed shut, a low wind blew through the room, dovetailing her dress and licking the backs of her hands like a small dog’s wet tongue. The picture in the girl’s periphery caught her eye: the woman’s hair seemed to move; the little white tufts of cloud seemed to blow gently across the picture, and then waves seemed to wash upon the shore in quiet succession: whoosh, silence, gulls distantly screeching, the faint cries of coronets, whoosh, whoosh, silence, whoosh, whoosh….

            The girl closed her eyes in fright, willing this vision away, and when she opened them again, the sounds now louder, closer, clearer, she was standing barefoot on a small beach, tranquil, golden, with seabirds wheeling overhead and in the distance. A woman sat in a sun lounger a few yards away from her, her head capped with a delicate violet hat. She approached her quietly, her small feet tiptoeing through the warm sand. Once she stood beside her, she gently tapped the woman's shoulder, but her hand seemed to pass straight through her. She walked out in front of her, looking at the woman’s face.

            She was beautiful, the woman: her face pale; her milky flesh seemed to perfectly contrast her black bathing suit, and her figure was supple and firm. A small beauty spot dotted one corner of her mouth, and the woman wore upon her face a contented smile.

            The girl was overjoyed: ‘Hello! My name’s Elizabeth!’ The girl considered this, and then said, ‘No it’s not! It’s Maisy!’ She gave herself the name of her favourite china doll, entertaining this fantasy in the proper fashion. ‘What’s your name?’ she said.

            The woman’s gaze was still fixed out there on the sea, and Elizabeth thought it strange that she hadn’t yet blinked. ‘Excuse me?’ she said. ‘Excuse me? Miss, do you know where I am? Miss?’

            But the woman was unresponsive. Just then Elizabeth thought a cloud had passed over the sun, as everything momentarily went dark, as if some terrible and mysterious force had briefly cloaked her world. She looked down the beach and saw something strange written in the sand. She approached it, walking a few yards down the beach, and when she got there, tiptoeing between the ruts in the sand, she couldn’t make out what it was. She stood below the symbols, legs wide apart looking down, investigating the sand like an amateur sleuth. It was an artist’s signature, but she could not make it out. She decided to walk back up the beach to the woman.

            She waited a few more moments, looking at the woman's blank face. ‘Miss? Miss, are you all right?’ She looked at the woman’s face more closely, and beneath the bright smile there seemed to lurk an immense tide of sorrow, pulling at it, showing through like the sun teasing cold-coloured vapour in the early twilight of morning.

            Elizabeth looked out to sea, and she could see something strange out there. There was a little grey square floating above the water, suspended in the air like a niche in a wall, and it seemed to be swelling in size. As she strained her eyes she began to make out what it was: it was a painting of her grandmother’s room, the browns and greys deep and immeasurably sorrowful, washed in pain and twisted beneath the waves of a leaden ocean. It was a picture of sadness, and she could no longer bear not to reach out and touch it.

            As she did so, she closed her eyes, a bright light filling the cracks between her eyelids, and when she opened them she was back in her grandmother’s room. ‘There you are, Elizabeth!' her mother said. ‘What are you doing in here?’

            ‘I – I was lost,’ she replied.

            ‘Lost?’ her mother repeated in disbelief.

            ‘Yes, for a little while,’ she said.

            ‘Don’t give me that!’ she said, tugging her daughter out of the room. 'And look at your dress!' she said, patting her down. 'Now come, this is not our house to wander around.'

As they stepped over the threshold, turning into the hall, Elizabeth looked back at the painting and caught a glimpse of the woman sitting on the beach staring out to sea. There she would sit for ever, she thought, blown by the breeze like a desert, never giving up her secrets to the wind.