Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

‘Who’s this with you?’ said the landlord.

‘Mind your own.’

‘A bit too nice for this place, ain’t she? You want to take her somewhere proper.’

‘Oh, she won’t be here for long, don’t worry.’

He took me to a quiet table in the corner: a bench-seat upholstered in tartan. ‘This is where I do my best thinking,’ he said. ‘Grab a pew.’

I pulled out a stool and sat down. He took the bench opposite and looked at me, amused at some private thought. ‘Other way,’ he said.

‘Huh?’

‘Swivel round. You need to face the other way.’

I did as I was told.

There was a picture on the wall I realised was Jim’s — a portrait, done in oils, of a soldier in a beret, the fumes of a cigarette coiling up around his face. It was a small, uncomplicated painting. The soldier’s grinning features were remarkably well made. Jim had captured an attitude in the brushstrokes: helpless but defiant. ‘You’ve got to hold on to the best ones,’ he said. ‘Keep something for yourself, that’s all I mean. I could’ve sold that for a fortune once, but I chose not to. Best decision of my life.’

I stood up to get a closer view. ‘Why not hang it in your flat, or at the studio?’

‘I like it here where folks can see it. And, you know me, I tend to stop in for a drink occasionally.’

‘What if it gets stolen?’

‘Ron keeps a lookout. And someone had to elevate the decor in this place. They had some stupid cartoon of a horse up there before I got to it.’ He came to stand beside me. I could smell the linseed on him. When I moved to glance up at his face, I found that he was staring only at the portrait. His eyes were glossed and bright. ‘Honestly, I wish I could’ve sent it to the lad after I painted it, but I did it from a sketch. He died before we left Dunkirk. Wouldn’t know it from that grin, though, would you? Poor sod didn’t know what he was in for.’ Jim coughed abruptly. ‘Anyway, that’s all I wanted to show you.’ He nudged his shoulder into mine. ‘Don’t tell anyone you nearly saw me cry. I have a reputation to uphold.’

We stayed at the Prince Alfred long enough to have one drink, and then he walked me home. Coming through the frosted avenues of Little Venice, we were both trembling and tired, and I thought that he might put his arm around me then, in solidarity if nothing else. But he kept his hands inside his pockets all the way to St John’s Wood. We talked only of domestic matters: which place on the high street should he take his shirts to now for laundering? Which bakery was it that made the loaf he liked? He was readying himself for life without me. As we headed down the mews, he kicked at the cobbles and said, ‘I’ll probably just kip on the studio floor tonight then.’ I could not tell if he was being candid or suggestive, and we reached the front door before I could respond. ‘Well, it’s no bother,’ he said. ‘I’m used to it by now.’ He let us inside and unlocked the studio. Turning on the lights, he loitered in the threshold, thumbing the latch. He seemed to have something else to say to me besides ‘Goodnight’, but that was all he offered. I was left to carry his blazer up the dingy stairs, alone.

Perhaps the deflation of this moment was what made me take my consolations elsewhere. I felt so heartened by the sight of every title crossed out on the gallery’s price list at the end of my show’s run: all ten of the canvases were sold within a week. I allowed myself to absorb the compliments that Max passed on from collectors, strangers whose attentions would otherwise have meant nothing. More than this, I saw my name up in gilt letters outside the Eversholt, like the sign of a department store, and mistook it for accomplishment.

After that entrance hall show, I did not need to worry about stealing time to sketch, though I still got up at six every morning to go out with my pencils. Max arranged a studio for me in Kilburn, with an adjoining flat, and I was promised the same monthly stipend that Jim received for materials and subsistence. I felt glad of these developments, but sorry to vacate my tiny attic room, whose limitations had somehow influenced the paintings themselves, compacting each landscape, hunching every figure, cropping off so many heads and bodies, distorting all the viewpoints. Above all, I did not want to leave Jim. I had grown so reliant on our closeness, so used to the sound of his downtrodden voice, and even to the scent of him. But I could not be the kind of woman who allowed her aspirations to be stalled by sentiments like these, especially when they were yet to be requited. Jim Culvers would go on surviving, whether I was there to set up his easel every morning or not, and I expected him to stay exactly where he was forever, so I might call on him each week and he might miss me between visits.

On the day I moved out of the mews house, he stood in the doorway of his studio, watching me drag my suitcase down the stairs. He did not offer to help, just waited there, saying nothing, while I heaved the case from step to step. When I reached the bottom, he said, ‘You’ll have to get used to this, won’t you? Lugging your gold bars around.’

I leaned on the balustrade, catching my breath. ‘It’s just a few library books.’

‘I think you’re meant to give those back.’

‘Ah, but then I’d have to pay the fines.’

The suitcase burst open and a few of the hardbacks tumbled down the stairs. Finally, Jim came to assist me, collecting them. ‘ The Sea-Wolf. The Reef. Billy Budd. . Never had you pegged as a mariner.’

‘Well, they happen to be classics.’

‘I’ll take your word for it. Here.’ He gave them back, and I stuffed them in the case.

I had made an effort to read widely during my time at art school, in the hope that engaging with the right books might stimulate ideas for paintings (and if they broadened my vocabulary along the way, I thought, so much the better). Our exuberant headmistress back at Clydebank High had encouraged all the girls to read Jane Austen and the Brontës—‘And, for heaven’s sake, read Middlemarch, ’ she had announced one day, while teaching our domestic science class; ‘ if you never do another sensible thing for the rest of your lives, read Middlemarch !’ I found these books worthwhile and interesting, but perhaps not quite as formative as I expected, like visiting important landmarks I had spent too long imagining. The painter in me was drawn to other voices: to Melville’s artfulness and detail, to Conrad’s gloomy landscapes, to Stevenson’s thrill and adventure. These were the writers whose works I kept returning to. In fact, I reread Moby-Dick and Nostromo so often in those early days with Jim that I found their language mirrored in my journal entries; sometimes, in ordinary letters to my parents, I would copy lines from An Inland Voyage (‘To equip so short a letter with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion!’) and felt a slight displeasure when they failed to comment on it.

‘How will you get all this on the bus?’ Jim asked.

‘I won’t. Max organised a van. Should be here any minute.’

‘Good old Max, eh? Where would we be without Max?’

‘Don’t start that again.’

He carried the case to the kerb. The sky was cement-grey and the air was sharpening for hailstones.

‘We’ll not be far from each other,’ I said. ‘I’ll come and visit.’

‘No, you’ll have work to do.’

‘I’ll still have my evenings and weekends.’

‘Ha, right,’ Jim said. He glanced back to the house. ‘Is there more to come down?’

‘Just a box or two.’

‘I’m sure you can manage those on your own.’ He would not look at me. ‘Let’s just shake hands and say cheerio, shall we? No point turning this into a ceremony.’ The skin of his palm was as dry as a dog’s paw, his fingers ridged and calloused.