Mr. Flood's Last Resort(35)

The air is different up here at the top of the stairs. Neutral, unused, as if no one has ever breathed it. I have the strongest feeling that if I go any farther I will be trespassing somewhere secret, somewhere private.

The light changes; the sun shines through the stained glass window. Dappled colors, sudden and dazzling, fall on the wall opposite.

A woman in black is watching me.

*

THE PORTRAIT is life-sized and painted in astoundingly beautiful hues. Skin the color of chalk and copper hair so vivid it looks lit from the inside. Her chin is tilted up, defiantly, so that she stares down the bridge of her nose. Her eyes are large, green, alarmed. Dots of bright paint capture their liquid brilliance.

Despite her stern grandeur she is an untamed hare: long in limb, her gaze crazed with panic. She is frozen, captured in mid-flight—one naked heel lifting. Nerve alone holds her; she wants to turn and run.

In one hand she grasps a posy of red and white roses, the other plucks at them. The petals are scattered behind her, a trail of blood and snowflakes.

I suddenly realize: I am now in the domain of Mary Flood.

*

I SIT on the top step stroking Samuel Beckett. I have never seen him before but naming him is the work of a moment. He is a Siamese beauty with a forthright expression in his powder-blue eyes. I wonder if he’s a neighbor’s cat, attracted by the herds of mice that run along the skirting boards.

Beckett looks up at me and yawns.

“You’re an intelligent feline, should I go any farther?”

He blinks at me disdainfully and, as if sensing my cowardice, flounces across the hallway. Mary Flood’s portrait shows no reaction. The sun has gone in and the colors are muted now. She is still scattering rose petals but no longer looks alarmed, just vaguely bored.

Beckett flicks a succession of question marks with his tail, then walks over to a door on the right. If he were a dog he would paw at it and whimper, but being a cat, he nonchalantly runs his flank along it.

I take this as a sign and get up and walk over to the door. I touch it carefully, pressing my palm against it, like a firefighter feeling for heat, trying to guess what’s behind it—perhaps the ghost of a blazing-haired woman, perhaps a long-lost girl?

I try the handle. The door isn’t locked but there’s resistance. The stickiness of a door unopened for years, then the sigh of something pent-up undone as a whisper of air rushes past me.

A genie let out of the bottle.

Beckett pushes in front of me and weaves inside.

*

THE ROOM is large and dark; the air is cold. Heavy curtains are drawn over the windows, shadowy shapes of furniture huddle. The light switch doesn’t work, so I cross the carpet, thick underfoot, to open the curtains.

Daylight and dust motes set in dizzying motion.

The room is lovely, with a faded opulence that still dazzles.

On the wallpapered walls snowy doves coo in cages against an oyster background. In the spaces between, repeated at intervals, twist love knots and delicate nooses. The carpet is deep and soft and aged to off-white.

In the center of the room is a bed fit for a princess. Stacked with feather mattresses, cushions, and bolsters. Dressed in velvet and brocade, in shades of vanilla and magnolia, seashell and bone. Beckett jumps up on the bed and spirals around, blissfully kneading the counterpane with his paws. Above the bed is a silver-framed picture. I draw nearer and see that it is exquisite and horrible in equal measure: a dozen pale moths, splayed and pinned. At the center, a beast the size of a teacup with black-spotted wings as plush as an ermine cape. She is flanked, either side, by smaller beauties with wings of creamy gauze or crenulated lace.

Opposite the bed, in front of the window, is a dressing table with a stool. Along the wall, on a striped gray-and-white chaise longue, legions of china dolls look on in watchful stiffness. Some are the size of toddlers, bonneted in blanched straw with dusty curls falling onto pale sprigged cotton. Others are smaller and dressed in white coats with pearly buttons and fur-trimmed hats. Without exception they are sinister: their expressions ranging from blank spite to thin-lipped malice.

One of the line-up catches my attention. She is hatless and bootless with a high-necked lace dress and pale hair. Her face has a look of thwarted evil. Her lips reveal sharp porcelain teeth. Frayed bandages hang from her tiny wrists, like an escapee from an asylum. I have no doubt she’s the ringleader.

I ignore her and her friends and sit down in front of the dressing table and its ancient liver-spotted mirror, a triptych thick with dust. I see three hazy Mauds, loitering and blinking, peering and nosing, in their polyester tabards with their dark hair scraped back. Their expressions are uneasy but there’s a resolute set to their jaws, fair play to them.

I open the drawer and see a long velvet box. I lift it out carefully; inside, there is a delicate pearl necklace nestled in satin. The clasp, a crescent moon set with opals. I close the box and put it back. Next to it there is a mother-of-pearl-backed brush-and-comb set and some silver-topped bottles, their contents solidified.

I get up and walk over to the door to the right of the room and try the handle. It is not an en suite as I expected but a dressing room, painted white with fitted wardrobes along one side. There’s a mirror and a silver bentwood chair.

I glance back into the bedroom. Beckett is cleaning his backside with one leg sticking vertically in the air.

I open the wardrobe door.

*

FOR MARY Flood I envisaged tweed skirts and raincoats, low-heeled shoes and headscarves. Here are dresses of vermillion and emerald, indigo and magenta, in satin, silk, and lace. And here is the scent—not of mothballs or stale old clothes—but of summer air.