Art & Lies by Jeanette Winterson Read Free Book Online Page A

afternoon to point out their ghostly homes. Nobody knows why. Psychologists suggest a medical parallel; those who lose a limb, either through accident or amputation, continue to feel pain in the non-existent part. Some claim that their vanished arm is still hanging by their side.
    People have found it hard to live without the personal landmarks they recognise. They can’t say, ‘Look, this is where it happened.’ Now, they have no means to the past except through memory. Increasingly unable to remember, they have begun to invent.
    Picasso climbed the stairs. There was nothing solid under her now. She was balanced on the girders of her imagination.
    I was on the roof. My hair was lank. My skin dull from ill-use. Only my eyes were bright. I thought I was standing on a cliff top waiting for a ship to pass under the white clouds. I had feared all the ships were gone, everyone travels by aeroplane these days, I had feared all the ships were gone, this high dizzy place the last standing room of my heart. Then I saw a mast and gay sails. Your firm sides, your hold stashed with cargo. You were a deck of colour in a pale world. Red lipstick, green eyes, hair swarming bees. You were a spice ship and I could smell you on the wind.
    Your scarf fluttered out like a pennant. You were wearing a canvas jacket and I wondered if I could paint you, but already you were the colours of the rainbow, your purple hat cocked. You told me your name was Nelson, but that was much later, long after I knew mine was Hamilton. I knew that night that I wanted to be your mistress and sail the seven seas in your little coil of rope. I put my eye to the telescope and regarded you. A minute can still alter a lifetime.
    ‘Victory’ I said that night.
    ‘Victory’ as I climbed the long climb back to my studio.
    ‘Victory.’ The word undressed me. The word took off the neat blazer and low shoes I wore to family parties. I looked at my body in the mirror. It was not pukka-proud the way you strutted yours. It was a body unused to light.
    My shoulder blades were sharp rebukes. My belly was an unploughed field. Weeds had grown over my pubic hair. I was a nun among nettles.
    ‘Victory.’ I picked up my paint brush and began.
    I painted my uncertain breasts with strong black arrows and ran a silver quiver down my spine. I took out my lipstick and drew my lips into a red bow bent. You were my target.
    I painted my legs with dangerous yellow chevrons and bathed my heels in mercury. I would need to move fast. I circled my buttocks with gold rings and gave my navel its own blue diamond. Thinking of your Victory hat I dyed my hair purple.
    As I painted, intent on umber and verdigris, cinnabar and chrome, the colours, let out from their tight tubes, escaped under the studio door and up and down the public staircase to the black and white family rooms. My mother broke from her flannelette sleep to cry out the name of a man she hadn’t seen for twenty years. She reared up from her matrimonial sheets, infidelity colouring her cheeks. My father slept in purple.
    Matthew, slug-fat, snail-slow, worm-pink, had a nightmare. He was walking down a busy street looking for a pick-up. He saw a woman he liked, chocolate nipples and race-track thighs. He crossed towards her, his wallet sticking out, she touched his face and said, ‘Hello dear, you’re Picasso’s sister aren’t you?’ He looked down at himself, and saw that he was wearing nothing but a tutu, dyed envy-green. He reached frantically for his wallet but it had gone.
    Uncles, aunts, cousins, in-laws, all the weights and ephemera of family life, were dreaming in colour that night. Fawn carpets turned to blood and all the beige bedding there was couldn’t suppress a single sheet of crimson. Even my younger brother Tommy, who had medals to protect him, woke in a blue funk.
    In the morning, it was raining, and the rain fell in orange points on their cream flesh. They were spotted with guilt, each could see in the