Free The Star of the Sea by Joseph O'Connor Page B

for the last seven months the lady’s husband had come to her quarters at midnight to sit on her bed and watch her undress. That might soften her cough for her.
    Usually all he wanted was to watch her undress. It was odd, she supposed, but men often were. Most men were queer as a five-legged dog. When they took off their masks that was all they were. The howling of a drunkard in the filth-strewn street was not so crude as what some of them wanted.
    The dishonesty of how it had begun was below him, she thought, an insult to her intelligence, as much as to his own. Late one April night he had knocked on her door and slunk in with his sketchpad, saying he would like to draw her. A sour odour of whiskey was colouring his breath. He wondered if she might possibly ‘permit him that privilege’. His choice of language had been unexpected, for they were unusual words to be spoken by a master to his servant. She had sat by the window and permitted him that privilege. A loosening of the hair was all he required that night. And the next night he had come up the stairs again. It was not his house but the house of his friends. ‘A temporary shelter’, was how he had put it. His friends were in Switzerland, walking in the snow. He moved like a man in another man’s house. After ten minutes of drawing, another privilege was requested.
    I wonder, Mary, if it might be possible. If you’re uncomfortableat all I would absolutely. Friends since the days of childhood and so on. Brotherly sisterly. No suggestion of any sort of sordid. Just the bare arm perhaps. The light on your shoulder. If you could possibly unbutton unhook untie. Contrast of tones. Nothing more. Overall composition so important to get right. Not a matter of the material itself, do you see, but of the way the material is composed.
    Without replying, she had removed her robe and nightgown. She could not bear to listen to any more lies.
    It was the first time he had seen her naked body but he had said nothing and the silence had not surprised her. He wanted it to be regarded as a normal situation; a stripped woman, a clothed man watching her; his clothes and his art a kind of disguise, as much, perhaps, as her nudity. He had held a stub of charcoal up into his eyeline, squinting solemnly as he gauged her measure, closing one eye and then the other. As though she were an arrangement of bottles on a windowsill. The fact of her exposure was not to be mentioned: nor the careful manner in which it had been commanded. There was no sound at all, just the faintness of his breathing and the scuff of the charcoal moving across the paper. Grey the charcoal; grey his face. And after a while he had quietly moved his sketchbook from the ends of his knees and into his lap. She had looked away, then; down through the window. Down into the filth-strewn Dublin street. And he had kept drawing. And kept on looking. And the subject kept looking away.
    The next night he returned, and most nights afterwards. At midnight she would hear his faltering footsteps on the bare stairs which led to the servants’ attic. The timorous knock. The rancid reek of liquor. Ah. Mary. I hope I’m not. I thought we might. If you’re not too tired. Perhaps the divan. Or with the pillow under. You’re sure now, are you? And once again if it isn’t asking. Natural beauty of the unclothed womanly. Nothing of which any of us should ever feel the slightest. Greatest of artists down through the ages. Maybe with your back turned. The sheet around. A little degree lower if you feel quite comfortable. Perhaps if I moved just a tiny bit closer. You don’t object? Better light.
    There was a time when she had thought to go to her mistress about it. (‘Mistress’ was such an interesting word.) But she knew what would happen if she dared to do that. It would not be LordMerridith who would be flung from the house to walk the streets or beg for a bed. In these everyday situations of privilege granted it was never the master