Art as exorcism.
That's how the Army psychologist who worked with Lucien following his release from the camp explained it.
If there's something you want to get out of your head, put it on the page. I've seen the way you hold a pencil; you like to draw, don't you? Draw it, Lucien. Trap your nightmares on the page, and then you can rest.
Much as Lucien had resisted at the time, his insomnia had eventually become so severe that one night something deep inside his chest snapped. In the absence of charcoal and a decent canvas he had settled for a pencil and a few precious sheets of loose paper the psychologist snuck onto the ward. He'd spent hours hunched over on the floor, scattered images of horror and devastation flowing from his mind through his hand and out onto the page. When it was done he wept like a child, and slept for the first time in days.
It had been fifteen years since that terrible night, and in many ways, Lucien Blake was a different man. Against all his wishes he had returned to Ballarat, had moved into his father's home, taken over his father's practice, assumed his father's role as police surgeon, drove his father's car, had been cowed by his father's housekeeper. He wore a fresh, clean suit every day, had hot meals and clean water aplenty, was treated with respect everywhere he went - well, most everywhere. If that man he'd been - broken and bloody and scarred and quite literally starving to death, half mad from grief and too weak to stand for more than five minutes at a time - could see him now, Lucien was certain he wouldn't recognize himself. And he wasn't entirely sure that was a good thing.
Old memories lurked beneath his skin, thrumming through his mind late at night. Memories were like malaria, he'd found; they could be treated, and their symptoms would fade, but sometimes they would resurge with a vengeance, quite out of the blue. They never truly healed. Even here, in tranquil Ballarat, far away from his old life and the reminders that had assaulted him at every turn during his Army days, the memories lurked in the darkness, waiting. Always waiting. He dreaded sundown; during the daylight hours he could keep himself busy, with a case, with a patient, sparring with Jean or teasing Mattie, the house full of the laughter of women. When night fell, though, the house grew still, and the demons walked. He purged them as he had always done; whiskey, or the piano, or charcoal. Whatever it took. And they would recede, and he would rest, and wake ready to face a new day, though somewhere in the darkest corner of his heart he knew they would be back again.
So he drew, and he drank, and banged on the piano until Jean came to rescue him from himself, pouring him into bed with all the tenderness of a mother fretting over a wayward child. She never mentioned it in the mornings, never mentioned how she gently removed his shoes, covered him with a blanket, smoothed his hair and whispered to him that everything would be all right. She knew, somehow, that he would not welcome the discussion, and he was grateful for her silence and her solicitousness.
The drawings had begun to change, though he could not pinpoint the exact moment when he ceased tracing out images of maimed bodies and devastation, and focused instead upon his latest obsession. He hadn't even realized he was doing it until he discovered he'd filled an entire sketchbook with it.
On this particular night, his head still buzzing from his latest case with the police department and his whiskey bottle nearly empty, he stumbled into his room and shuffled through his trunk, pulling out his artist's paraphernalia and preparing himself to draw again, hoping it would coax him into sleep without need of waking Jean. His mother had been an artist, and while she had filled him full of love and wonder for beautiful things, she had not lived long enough to truly teach him. He had studied art at university, dabbling in a few courses he really didn't have time for between his medical studies, as a way to draw closer to her, to honor her memory, and in the process he had discovered quite an affinity for it. It was not his mother's lessons, then, that had taught him which type of charcoal was best, which paper, how to shade and bring life to an image, but he still felt closer to her because of their shared passion, and he treasured that connection, however tenuous.
He opened his sketchbook, flipping through his work in search of a blank page on which to purge himself that evening, but to his chagrin he reached the end of the book, and found it full. How did that happen? He asked himself. When?
He thumbed through the pages a second time, trying to recall what had possessed him so, and as he did a common theme emerged. The last twenty or so pages were all the same image, in varying stages of completion and refinement. It was a woman, naked, glorious, faceless. He had not gone so far as to give the image context, to cast her upon a chaise or a bed or leaning against a wall; he had only succeeded in capturing the barest outline of her essence, but there could be no doubt that it was the same woman on every page.
I must have been drunk as a lord, he thought in bemusement, to draw her so many times and not remember.
He sighed, shaking his head at his own folly. It had been quite some time since last he'd enjoyed the company of a naked woman, but somehow he didn't think this woman was a recollection of a previous conquest. Not that it mattered, really; it wasn't a woman who had preoccupied him when he resolved himself to draw tonight, and he was sure that if she were that important to him, he'd revisit her some other time. He set the sketchbook aside and retrieved a fresh one, carrying it back to the kitchen.
The kitchen was often the best place for him to work; it was deserted, this late at night, and the table presented a clean, flat work surface, whereas the desk in the surgery was too cluttered with paperwork and office detritus to really be suitable. Lucien laid out his supplies, taking care not to leave any black marks upon the table; somehow he didn't think Jean would approve. With a trembling hand he smoothed the first fresh page in the new sketchbook, and lifted his charcoal, ready to work.
Nothing happened.
Usually when he set to work like this he was already roaring drunk, and the lowered inhibitions - coupled with a complete disregard for form and perfection - resulted in the images flowing straight out of him, almost without direction. Tonight he'd only had two glasses of whiskey - so far - and he found himself almost paralyzed with indecision. Keeping his right hand raised above the page he reached for the whiskey with his left, downing the last of it in one great gulp before settling the glass upon the table.
All right old son, he told himself firmly. Get to it.
He waited, but still, his hand did not seem to want to move. Grumbling to himself about the foolishness of the undertaking he pressed the little black stick to the paper, and drew a curve. And then another. And then a few more lines, and before he knew it his hand was flying across the page. It was not the long dirt road that had haunted him throughout the day, was not the memory of stumbling along on bare feet, exhausted, his back bleeding from the lashes delivered by the whip-wielding Japanese officer who hurried along the steps of the Allied POWs marching toward the camp that would become their own personal hell. It was the woman.
Tall and slender and graceful as a dancer, she came to life beneath his fingertips. The outline of her first; long legs, smooth arms, neat waist and flared hips. And then came the details; he had to stop to refill his glass of whiskey before he set about that next step, a bit of fortification before he faced the longing of his own heart. Shading, to highlight the curve of her chin, the artful tumble of her hair, the swell of her breasts, the thatch of curls between her legs. A little definition around her stomach, a pinprick for her bellybutton, an inordinate amount of care to get the size and shape of her nipples just right. I should have used paint, he thought as he set to work on her hands, defining each of her delicate fingers, a bit heavy on the tips to simulate the paint on her nails, which most certainly should have been red, he decided as he worked. He paused briefly, shuffling off to his room to retrieve the old sketchbook and bringing it back to the table. He flipped through the images he'd already drawn, compared them to the vision on the page before him, making adjustments as he went, seeking to refine her in every possible way.
Three long hours later the sun was beginning to rise, and Lucien's mystery woman was nearly complete. She was beautiful, he decided as he looked at her, not overdone or tawdry despite her nakedness and the care he had taken over each intimate piece of her. She simply was, standing, alone and stark against the pale white paper, not a challenge or a titillation but a piece of truth in his world of swirling doubt. He had labored so long at his task that the sight of her did not fill him with arousal but with fondness, with hope; she brought a smile to his lips, eased the pain in his heart. The memories had faded beneath her gentle touch.
But she still had no face. The basic shape of it was there, her jaw and her hairline and the curve of her cheek, but between those lines was only blank space. It seemed invasive, somehow, to give her one, lest she be confused for someone else, lest she be reduced to no more than salacious imitation. She was so much more than that to his mind; she was an angel, his saving grace.
"Lucien?" a quiet voice murmured from the doorway.
He slammed his sketchbook closed with a resounding thud, breaking his charcoal and very nearly his finger in the process, his head swinging up to stare at Jean incredulously. She was blinking at him owlishly in the feeble light of dawn, wrapped up in her fluffy pink atrocity of a dressing gown, her hair and makeup somehow already in perfect order despite the fact that she had clearly only just risen from her bed.
"Have you been here all night?" There was no judgement in her voice, no recrimination, only genuine concern for his well being.
For his part Lucien found himself struck dumb by the sight of her. Perhaps if he'd been drunk, or if he had not spent the last three hours pouring over his mysterious woman, he might not have noticed it at all. Perhaps if the first pale light of dawn had not struck Jean just so, had not set her grey eyes to sparkling or drawn his attention to the shine of her hair, he would never have put it together. As it was, however, he was paralyzed in the moment, utterly shocked by the realization that the angel who had haunted his dreams for more nights than he could count was in fact Jean herself.
All the details were there; her delicate wrists, the slope of her neck, the enticing curve of her hip, the line of her jaw. He had been studying the form of his angel for hours, and had apparently been drunkenly ruminating on her for months, and now that Jean stood before him stripped of her usual bravado he was forced to admit the truth. She was beautiful, was Jean, and he longed for her.
Until that moment he had been trying, with all his might, to put aside the yearning that tugged at him each time she passed by; though she had been warm and kind to him following his return from China, though she had comforted him in the aftermath of Joy's death, he was keenly aware that whatever affection he might harbor for her was not - could not be - returned in kind. Jean was strong and determined and good, far better than he could ever hope to be, and she would never stoop so low as to have a man like him. Somehow he could not imagine that she would welcome any sort of advance from him, and he did not dare risk the blissful harmony of his home by infringing upon her honor. Propriety demanded that he keep his distance, though he longed for her proximity. And somehow, it would seem, his desire for her had invaded his subconscious, and having been denied the opportunity to run his fingertips across her smooth skin he had been forced to turn to the page, tracing that outline of her, the barest imitation of her glory.
"Jean," he croaked out at last, as her brow furrowed and she slowly approached him, watching him warily, as if she were afraid that he might lash out at any moment like a wild beast.
"What are you doing, Lucien?" she asked him softly, coming to a stop beside him.
Terror struck him; he could not show what her what he had done, could not confess to having so invaded her privacy with his imaginings of her naked body. She would be mortified, he knew, and his hands trembled at the thought of her pain, her wrath. He stared at those trembling hands, his fingertips smudged black with charcoal from the time he'd spent so carefully recreating her beauty on the page. No words came to him, and he hardly dared breathe, so frightened of his own desires, of the potential for calamity that hung in the air. Perhaps if he had not been so exhausted, so befuddled by his own tempestuous heart, he could have charmed her, could have pulled some excuse out of thin air to appease her, but weariness and want stayed his tongue. No words came to him, and Jean, growing more visibly concerned by the moment, reached for his book.
"No!" he snapped, catching her by the wrist, spurred into action by the sight of her red-painted nails against the tanned leather of his sketchbook. "No," he repeated, trying to modulate his tone at the look of righteous indignation upon her face.
"What on earth has gotten into you, Lucien?" she asked, snatching her hand out of his grip. And though she was cross, though his heart was aching, the memory of her soft skin brushing against his own flooded him with heat, with longing.
"It's nothing, Jean," he said, reaching up to smooth a hand over his hair. That moment's lapse in vigilance cost him dearly, for Jean seized the opportunity to reach not for the new sketchbook, close to hand, but for the older one, the one much worn by time and use, the one that contained myriad drawings of her, rather than just the one image. Like a child with a forbidden sweet she held it close and spun away from him, and before he could stop her she had opened the book. He had half-risen in horror, thinking to take the book back from her by any means necessary, but he realized that the battle was lost, and sank back into his chair, hanging his head in defeat.
For several long moments Jean was painfully, perfectly silent. Of course she had not opened the book to the first page, had not confronted the images of his captivity spilled out in stark black and white. She had turned to the back of the book, and was now carefully, slowly leafing through its pages, her eyebrows incredulously rising higher and higher with each image she saw. Though it had taken Lucien long enough to discover the truth he did not hold out hope that Jean would not recognize herself among those pages. After all, she was more intimately acquainted with her own body than he was, and she remained the cleverest woman he'd ever known.
"Lucien," she said his name a dangerously low sort of voice, closing the book to stare at him in wild-eyed horror.
"Jean, I can explain," he began haltingly, rising from his chair, but she simply took a step back from him, closing the sketchbook and holding it tight to her chest.
"How could you?" she asked, the sudden shrillness of her tone grating on his ears after the gentle words she'd bestowed on him earlier, a mark of her rising chagrin.
"I didn't...it's not…" his protests were feeble to his own ears, and faded out before he found the words to explain himself.
"You can't...Lucien, I...please. You have to stop this. Promise me you'll stop," she begged him. For the very first time, Jean Beazley was all but speechless, her cheeks flaming red and her eyes wide as saucers as she stared at him in disbelief from across the room.
Dimly Lucien recalled Jean's visceral reaction to the pornographic film Edward Tyneman had made, recalled the way she had gone so far as to wash the bedsheet they'd used for a screen. Jean was a good Catholic woman, a woman of principle, prudent and above reproach, and he knew that seeing the way he had imagined her upon the page, knowing how much time he must have dedicated to the thought of her naked body, would strike her as an unacceptable invasion. Though he had no notion of how, he knew he had to make things right.
"I'm so sorry, Jean," he told her earnestly. "I never meant-"
"I don't see how you could do something like this unintentionally, Lucien," she cut him off sharply. Taking a deep breath she drew herself up to her full height, and carried on. "I'm keeping this, Lucien. What you do in your free time is your business but I would thank you to leave me out of it."
And with that she spun on her heel and fled, clutching his sketchbook as if it were a liferaft. Lucien had no choice but to let her go, shaking his head at his own foolishness. After a moment he roused himself, and poured the last of his whiskey into his empty glass, throwing it back in one go.