Fatal
Flaws
Jenny
Palmer
Tea;
gone cold
When the face appeared
on her Facebook page, Ann was taken aback. She had recently, and regrettably,
extended her privacy settings. Now she was receiving posts from all and sundry.
Why did people feel the need to tell you the minutiae of their daily lives?
What earthly interest could it be to anyone but themselves unless they wanted
to prove something? One day when a friend had posted ‘Isn’t life great?’ Ann
hadn’t been able to resist responding and had written ‘Bully for you!’
underneath. The friend had promptly unfriended her from her page.
Ann
was used to unusual images being flashed up but this was something else. The
face was haggard and world-weary, with eyes that looked as if the soul had gone
out of them. It was like something out of a horror movie only this was a real
person. That made it worse. It was the face of someone who had been languishing
in jail for years. He had committed some horrendous crime or other. She
couldn’t recall what. Murder, possibly.
Ann only used the site for
professional purposes like when she wanted to let people know about a great new
art show or to advertise her work. It was a pity not to make use of any media
outlet you could lay your hands on. God knows it was hard enough getting
yourself noticed in the competitive world of art. She had chosen the career
much against her parents’ wishes, who considered the pursuit a foolhardy
occupation, likely to lead nowhere but poverty and destitution and were
constantly nagging her to get a proper job. She had been determined to prove
them wrong and had embarked on a career as a portrait artist. At least it paid
the bills.
Ann painted in the
classical tradition and had built up a reasonably successful career for
herself, largely through word of mouth. She would ask people to send in photos
of themselves rather than ask them to sit for her. It was less time-consuming.
Over the years she had learnt that people could only take so much truth about
themselves and was wont to embellish, always veering on the side of flattery.
She would gloss over any irregular features such a bump in the nose, a spot on
the chin, a frown or an unfortunate hairstyle. Consequently she never got
complaints and people recommended her to friends.
The caption under the
face mentioned that he was a public figure. She seemed to recall that he had
been successful in the music business once. The person who had got hold of that
photo, whether policeman, prison officer or simply member of the public must
have thought they were performing a public service. It would serve as a
salutary warning to anyone thinking of entering into a life of crime. The man
was a shadow of his former self. He was barely recognisable.
Ann couldn’t help studying the
face. It was rare that you got the opportunity to observe the consequences of
crime on a person, or the effects of a jail sentence. Most people managed to
keep a low profile in such circumstances. So that was what jail did to a person.
He didn’t look like a murderer but then who does? She seemed to recall that he
had murdered his wife. She was sure she could see shame in his face.
The face became imprinted on her
mind. There was only one thing to do. In order to exorcise it, she would have
to paint it. She had never painted a murderer before, at least not to her
knowledge. When you thought about it, there must be loads of them just walking
around, judging by the number of cases of domestic violence you read about in
the papers. Two a day, she remembered. Not all of them got caught and many had
their sentences halved for good conduct.
Ann had been looking for
a new subject for some time. This would be a new departure. It was someone she
would portray just as he was. It wouldn’t need embellishments. It would be a
challenge, worth spending time on. If the painting was good enough, she might
even enter it for the Summer Exhibition at the Royal Academy. That was
something she had always aspired to.
Ann spent the rest of the week
working on the face. As she painted away, she couldn’t help thinking about the
crime. The man was artistic. He would have had a sensitive nature. He must have
loved his wife. Otherwise he wouldn’t have married her. So why had he killed
her?
Maybe his wife was young and
beautiful and he had come home one day to find her in a compromising position
with another man. In a fit of rage and jealousy he had grabbed a knife and
driven it into her, thereby sealing his fate. We all had fatal flaws and
jealousy was his. His problem was he hadn’t been able to control himself. The
man had committed an evil act. There was no getting away from that. But the
woman had also played her part. She had betrayed him and thereby killed his
feelings for her.
The painting was taking
longer than she had anticipated. It was hard getting a true likeness. She
wanted to portray it all – the anger and the jealousy but also the sadness, the
loss and the shame. Weeks turned to months. There was always something not
quite right. It needed an extra touch here, a brushstroke there. And every time
she looked at the photo, she saw something else. The face was taking over her
life. It haunted her during her waking hours and was there in her dreams. If
only she could get the thing done, she could be free of it. She needed to get
the face out of her mind and onto the canvas.
Finally Ann could do no
more. She carefully wrapped up the painting and sent it off by express post to
the Summer Exhibition. She had only just managed to get it done before the
deadline. She had plenty to keep her occupied. The daily chores had been piling
up and there was a backlog of bills to be paid. She decided to give Facebook a
wide berth for a while.
Eventually
when she was ready to face the barrage of daily details, she logged on again.
To her horror the first thing that loomed out at her was the face, or rather
her portrait of it. Her painting had been accepted for the Summer Exhibition. One
of her friends had kindly taken a photo of it and posted it on their page and
it had gone viral.
About the Author
Jenny Palmer returned to her native Lancashire in 2008.
In 2012 she published her childhood memoir called Nowhere Better than Home about growing up in rural Lancashire in
the 1950s and 60s. She continues to write short stories, poems and articles on
local history.