The Woman in the Painting. Kerry Postle

eyes shot open.

      ‘Shut up!’ I wanted to scream in his face. ‘Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!’ Instead I begged my father not to cast me out. ‘P-p-p-please. Please d-d-d-don’t! I’m sorry, Father. Forgive me. Please. Father!’ But his clay-stained hand was already grasped tight around my arm, ready to throw me away and see me smash to the floor like a misshapen pot.

      I’d told him how Sebastiano had treated me. His vice-like grip as his fingers pressed themselves into my flesh confirmed this had been a mistake. But if I told him about my good fortune in encountering Raphael from Urbino, I reasoned with myself, I could prevent the worst from happening. A threat to throw me out was, after all, just a threat.

      ‘But something g-g-g …’ I stumbled over my words again. I had a habit of doing so at times like this. It irritated me. But not as much as it irritated my father.

      I dared not try to explain again. My only hope was to submit to his tirade and pray that he wouldn’t follow through and banish me from home completely.

      ‘Useless!’

      My arm still in his grip, he shook me before releasing me with a savage push. Searing pain ran through my upper arm, across my shoulder and up my neck. I staggered forward. My instinct was to cry out but I knew I shouldn’t. I bit my tongue. Reined myself back in. I could hide my feelings, conceal how and who I was. I’d had to do so ever since I was small. And on the rare occasion when I’d failed to dissemble, silence had come to my aid. I prayed it would do so now.

      This will pass, I told myself. This will be over soon.

      I had no choice but to watch and wait. My father wiped at his palms repeatedly. It seemed as if, by touching me, he believed he’d sullied himself. He studied his hands with horror. I was unclean, a contagion. He went over to the water butt, thrust his arms in as deep as they would go, then tried to wash the imagined taint away. Water sloshed around, cascaded over the sides, formed pools on the floor.

      I hurried to mop it up. I shouldn’t have.

      ‘Should have weighed you down with stones when you were a baby and thrown you in the Tiber!’

      My father got hold of my hair. He plunged my head into the butt. It was no Tiber but he was going to have a good go at weighing me down in the next best thing.

      My nostrils stung. My eyes screamed. My lungs burst. My arms were splashing, thrashing, now crashing against the sides. Heavy hands pinned me down, under the water. Every muscle in my body fought for survival as I bucked and bolted against the blackness. Heavy hands gave way. My head reeled backwards. I spluttered and gulped at the air greedily. Dirty-tasting water gushed out of my nostrils, got pushed up at the back of my throat. I collapsed on the newly sodden floor, gasping.

      My father was wiping his hands on his dirty overalls by the time I looked up. His nose wrinkled as if at a bad smell. He picked up a jug full of wine and slugged it back before pointing a finger at me in condemnation. Hope, rekindled in my soul by the meeting with Raphael, was all but extinguished as I sat in the pool of clay water on the floor. My hair dripped. My nose ran. And my father hadn’t finished with me yet. He put the jug to his lips once more. Red wine trickled down his chin until it could trickle no more. He slammed the jug down, angry it was empty.

      He turned to face me and snarled.

      ‘I cast you out upon the Burning Plain.’ This thinly veiled reference to Sodom made me shiver. I’d been with my father when we’d heard street preachers speak out against sodomy enough times to know what his opinions were on the matter. And also to know what he’d do if he ever found one of his own sons was a sodomite. But who could have told him? Giacomo. My brother Giacomo must have told him. My encounter with an older boy last summer came back to me, bringing with it feelings both happy and sad. It had seemed so right until Giacomo caught me and tarnished what I’d done with ugly words. I dragged myself up, opened my mouth to speak but no sound came out.

      It wasn’t Giacomo.

      Father put a hand in the pocket of his leather apron and pulled out … no. It couldn’t be. It was. ‘I’ll have none of Sodom under my roof.’ Father had my precious book in his hands, the one where I wrote down all my hopes … and secrets. He waved it around, nodding, his features ugly with disgust. It was my words Father had read. I had given myself away. I froze. He spat on the book before tearing it apart, scrunching page after page, then stamping each one into the filthy floor.

      Outward silence belied my inner turmoil. Anguish raged and roared within my head, along with the watery memory of a story I’d heard (could it only have been that morning?) of a young, pretty boy and his gruesome demise. He’d been of Sodom too. Mutilated faces swam towards me. I pushed them away. But I could do nothing to stem the flow of tears that scorched my cheeks with searing rivulets of shame-coated anger. My father knew, knew what I was. I saw it in his eyes that burned into my flesh like hot needles. And I was the one who had told him by writing about it in my diary.

      ‘And now you can’t pay for your keep. When I found this last year …’

      My heart missed a beat. He’d known about this last year and had said nothing. Until now. Why now? It was the money. It had to be. He didn’t care what I was as long as I could carry on putting coins into the family coffers. I should have told him about Raphael first. I still wanted to tell him. There was still a way back for me.

      ‘I-I-I … Pl-pl-pl … Y-y-y …’ But try as I might the words wouldn’t come. My senses had been flushed away, deaf to his cruel words though they continued to flow out of him like vitriol, blind to his hateful looks though he still tried to stab me with wild eyes. And though bony fingers seized me once more I could feel no pain.

      I came back to myself some time later. I was sitting in the filthy street. Cast out, again. My head waterlogged, my soul crushed. My jacket had been flung out after me. The clouds had moved in and were lying heavy over Rome. And I had nowhere to go.

       Chapter 6

      I stumbled through the narrow streets, holding my jacket with its four metal buttons close to my chest. Traders hawked their wares, donkeys dragged their fat carts through narrow alleyways and street boys chased round stray goats and chickens, throwing the occasional stone at me. Men loitered. Prostitutes laughed. And dogs barked at people slumped in the shadows. I had nowhere to go. After walking round and round I slumped in the shadows too. I had arrived at my destination: this was nowhere.

      I sat against a wall, my legs under me. I stared blankly into space for some time. Discordant thoughts ricocheted violently off the walls of my mind. Though seated, they made me dizzy. I closed my eyes.

      I must have fallen asleep. I don’t know for how long but it must have been for a good few hours because by the time I woke up night had started to paint the street a darker shade of evening. It had also lured out a different sort of Roman. When my eyes had adapted to the lack of light I recoiled. Men still loitered, though more numerous than before, and several of them eyed me with interest. And now more desperate prostitutes laughed, forced and raucous, hoping to catch one of the many bawdy soldiers as they thundered past looking for another tavern to frequent. Everything seemed louder and more lurid than before. I’d woken up to a nightmare.

      It was also starting to get cold. I put my jacket on.

      A torch was lit a little further down the street. It drew my eye. And it was then I noticed a boy, propped up diagonally opposite. He hadn’t seen me yet. He was probably not much older than me though he looked as if he’d been suffering for all eternity. Even in the dull light he looked drawn. Sunken eyes, hollow cheeks, his entire body sucked in, his skin shrunken cloth on a skeleton, stick-thin legs splayed out before him like the roots of a tree. He was filthy – the torchlight could not disguise it – and his clothes were all rags.

      I rubbed my face as if to clean it, dropped my hand to cover the bloodstained rip of my shirt so as to hide it. Knots of wealthy men and women threaded their way through and around, the strange, the louche, the destitute, and the