Art Pact 179 - Venus Ascending

I suppose it was the time that I saw her at the river that sold me. I - look, I have a thing I do. Or rather, that I don't do. I don't talk about a woman's appearance if I can help it. I mean, I'll answer direct questions - although I answer them diplomatically, so that if someone asks me something value-laden (Am I Pretty?) they'll get the answer they want, not necessarily the objective answer, if there can possibly be such a thing in the arena of human attractiveness. But I don't flat-out tell women that they're good-looking without being directly queried about it. And I try not to get involved in conversations about the attractiveness of women unless I think I can usefully turn it to a more interesting and enlightening subject.

That's not to say I'm immune to physical attractiveness. I have to say, I'm a man of my years, and in the heart of me I'm just as straightforward a soul as the next guy. It's not because I'm special in some way that I act the way I do, but because I'm not. I take extraordinary measures to overcome the natural tendency in me to focus on surface and forget about the actualities of a person. That's why I'm not that great at it, and why I sometimes make the sort of stupid mistakes that let people see through the careful shell I've built around my old personality. I know, there are people who don't like me because of the way I act now, but there are also people who don't like me despite the way I act, because they can tell that there's something more going on inside, and that perhaps it isn't as great as I might make out.

I can't blame them for that - I mean, isn't that what my whole schtick here is all about? Not judging the surface, but holding out and remembering that there's something going on underneath that bears investigation?

Even so, the river. The river park in late winter is pretty deserted at dawn. Most days a fog rolls off the surface of the water, and all you can see as you walk through it are the fuzzy grey outlines of the other dog walkers, or the even fuzzier outlines of the secret smokers who come out into the damp to give their lungs a double-dose of punishment. I'd never know this normally, because I'm the sort of lazy sod who likes to lie in a warm bed until noon, but the sad fact is that at the time I was in both of those other camps. I had Merlin tugging me out of the house by the leg of my trousers, and Silk Cut dragging me out by my twitchy mouth, by the crawling of my scalp, by the pricking of my thumbs. So I was out regularly every day of that winter of 2013, sucking down as much nicotine as I could get before I went to my job in the health store, feeling my shoulder get gently yanked out of its socket over and over again as Merlin (perhaps hopeful that if he ran away he might be able to find some way of getting his muzzle off) made lunge after lunge at the other passing dogs.

The wind kept gusting gently, blowing the smoke off the end of my cigarette into my eyes - which I hate, and have never got used to - but also clearing out strange random patches of fog so that one moment I was walking through the sort of thick, clinging stuff that gets into your clothes and makes Britain so cold compared to other countries where the air is just as frigid, the next I was in a little clearing of dry air about twenty meters across, and Merlin was dragging me into the centre of it to where Henny was crouched, holding a trout firmly so that despite its desperate flapping it was obviously going nowhere.

So here, I break my rule: In that instant, all I could see was the surface of her. Her long black hair, loosely bunched in at the neck by a fuzzy band, then descending around the arch of her back. Her slender limbs, ill-proportioned when she was standing but somehow perfectly-formed when folded up into the crouch. Her skin, white but banded with red across her cold-raw cheeks and nose. Her hands were like the talons of an eagle, clutched so hard onto the fish that I though for a second she was about to rip it into shreds.

There, there it is. That's all you'll get from me about what Henny looked like. You'll have to meet her yourself someday if you want to know more, or just make up your own idea of her face. I won't even tell you what colour her eyes are, although I'll be honest with you - that's more because I can't remember.

Anyhow, the moment passed. Merlin, the little sod, leapt forward like he was coming out of the gates at a greyhound race and he'd bet his life savings with Nick the Leg-Breaker. I guess he'd forgotten about his muzzle again and wanted a piece of that fish. Henny was too quick for him, though - she unfolded like a flick-knife the minute she saw him, and suddenly the fish was towering over me, flapping crazily in the air like it might escape off into the void.

"Not for you, Merlin," she said. Her voice was husky, the tail-end of the cold she'd had the last time I saw her. To me: "Hello."

"Why have - no, forget that for a moment. How do you have a live trout?"

She looked up, as if she'd temporarily forgotten about the fish.

"Oh this? I just caught it."

"With your hands?"

"With my hands," she said, nodding. "My mother taught me, when I was young. You tickle them."

"I thought that was just made-up," I said, eyeing the fish nervously. I expected it at any moment to leap out of her hands and hit me in the face.

"No no," she said, "quite real."

She walked to the water and tossed the fish gently back into the river. It lay there for a few seconds, stunned, then wriggled violent for a second and shot away.

"Will it be OK?" I asked.

"Not really," she said, staring back at me. Her eyes were - no, I still don't remember.

"But it won't be dead," she added.