Stone Virgin by Barry Unsworth Read Free Book Online Page A

enduring grain of the stone. It was then, at the moment he had relaxed attention, was on the point of looking away, perhaps had already begun to do so, that a sudden sense of being quite in the open, without protection, descended on him, accompanied by a strong sensation of space and silence, and a feeling of threatened balance which made him clutch for the rail. He had a fleeting impression of light but he was not in it, or not quite in it, a long straight shadow across the light, two human bodies, naked and gleaming wet, part in light and part in shadow, standing together, but not very close, and some sort of echo or resonance, perhaps of voices, but no words. The impression was a strangely piercing one, perhaps because of the hush that seemed to surround it, but it was over at once, before his own body had achieved a stiffening of surprise. He found himself holding tightly to the scaffold rail. The wet Madonna was again before him. With conscious care he leaned forward to place the spray against the wall.
    It was surprise he felt chiefly, mixed already with a sort of doubt, as he slipped out of his overalls, changed out of his wellingtons for gym shoes – the cubicle formed by the plastic sheets had become changing room and frequently eating place as well as workshop to him – and began to climb down the ladder. His first steps on firm ground were attended by a sense of insecurity, even a remote sort of panic. Then he became aware of people around him, saw pigeons fly up. Steadman was sitting alone at one of the outside tables and Raikes moved across the square towards him, remembering to smile only when he was almost there. ‘Sorry I’m late,’ he said. ‘Forgot the time.’
    ‘You’re a dedicated fellow,’ Steadman said, in his flat laconic tone. ‘What are you having?’
    ‘Beer, I think.’ Raikes looked across the square. The impulse he had felt to tell Steadman about his experience died quietly. He had sensed something derisive in the other man’s brief words, not unkindly so but sufficiently to put him on the defensive. He had no gift for irony himself, and was highly vulnerable to it, his own nature tending always to enthusiasm. His usual defence was to assume a more distant air, and this sometimes made him seem cold or priggish. He knew Steadman regarded it as odd and excessive that he should have elected to do all the work himself from beginning to end, even these messy and laborious preliminaries, which he could easily have got an assistant to do. Steadman had no sympathy for more extreme natures, which was why sarcasm came so easily to him and why the two had never become very close.
    The beer came, and Raikes busied himself pouring out a glass. Of course, he thought, she was wet, running with water. Some association of memory had perhaps been responsible. Common enough, wet bodies, perhaps archetypal. Tired eyes, and some involuntary association. Perhaps he had straightened up too suddenly, just before. That would explain the feeling of vertigo … ‘Well,’ he said, ‘what have you been up to?’
    ‘Just pottering about,’ Steadman said. ‘I’ve been trying to get some good pictures for my book. It’s bloody amazing how few good photographs there are of Venetian sculptures. I’d like one of her, when she’s all cleaned up.’ He nodded in the direction of the church. ‘Odd creature, she is,’ he added after a moment. ‘Quite untypical.’
    ‘Typical, untypical,’ Raikes said. ‘That is all art historians seem to think about these days. No one makes value judgements any more.’
    ‘Safer not to. Preferable anyway.’
    ‘But why?’ Raikes felt the slight fluttering in his stomach which always preceded direct conflicts of opinion with others. ‘Why?’ he said again. ‘It is a human duty to make distinctions of value, it is one of the things that make us fully human.’
    ‘I should have thought’, Steadman said, ‘that we had all had enough of being fully human, for the time