The Art of Dying by Douglas Lindsay

Author:Douglas Lindsay [Lindsay, Douglas]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
Published: 2019-08-21T23:00:00+00:00

On my way out, I stop by the sitting room, which waits for me in half-light. Dinnertime. The residents have all relocated to the dining room, or back to their rooms. The chessboard has been vacated, but the game remains in play. The chairs around the fireplace are empty. The seats by the window lie empty. Mrs Worrell has gone for the day, and now the Brueghel looks bleakly down from the wall, no one to impress or depress.

The windows are streaked with rainwater, and in the far distance the light of Tarbat Ness blinks methodically, dim through the mist and rain.

I walk over to look at the painting, although the details are not clear in this low light. I stand with my back to the room, casting a shadow on the edge of the Brueghel, thrown by the small table lamp in the far corner.

Death and art.

I think of sitting in the church, looking up at the vision of Saint Sebastian, and the Reverend Marcus sitting next to me, talking about the art of dying.

My thoughts do not dwell on the saint. Leia Marcus does not leave me so easily, however. Perhaps I can find a place for her, somewhere in among the limping depression and the nightmares and the long-deserted beach where I am stalked by guilt. A corner, where she can wait for my attention. Standing here, I struggle to even remember why it was I went to speak to her the other evening.

Peterson, of course. Peterson. The first death, quickly being consumed by all the others.

I try to focus on the painting. The drama of sixteenth-century infanticide that plays out on the wall, as it does in here every day. Blood in the snow, the anguish of the parents, the horror of so many dead children.

‘You know for whom she tends the weeping fig.’

Blood freeze. I can feel it. Warm liquid turned to ice.

I compose myself. The woman in the far corner was here this afternoon, the words spoken over and over, and she is still here now. I must have missed her when I came in.

I turn.

The room stares emptily back at me. The seats by the window are empty. The room in half-light, starved of life.

She’s not there.

I search the room for the memory of the sound, but there’s nothing. There are no words to be plucked from the past, and now I don’t know if I really heard it at all.

I don’t turn back to the picture. The infanticide behind me, I walk from the room, along the corridor and back out into the dark, dank night.

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