Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

Max was good enough to keep on covering the rent for Jim’s flat in Maida Vale. The landlady was thrilled to tell me all about the dirty pots that had been left to moulder in Jim’s sink, how his bins had not been put out for collection, and how she needed to let herself in with the master key when the smell became insufferable. She had promised to put Jim’s things in a storage locker for me if I paid her twelve shillings a month — I was sure that she would only dump everything and pocket the money, so instead I arranged for someone to pack up Jim’s possessions and kept the boxes in his studio, guessing he would thank me for it some day. But fortnights passed and still no hospital could account for Jim’s admittance when I called around, no duty officer could identify him in the drunk tank, no long-lost friends emerged to claim him as their lodger. I waited months for a letter to arrive, a postcard from America, anything. My heart flinched every time the phone rang, tempering when all I heard was the voice of Max (‘Darling, I’m headed your way. Any chance I might swing by with some friends? They’re itching to see what you’re working on’), or another gentle enquiry from Dulcie Fenton, the director of the Roxborough Gallery, who checked on my progress more frequently than I believed was necessary: ‘Anything you need from this end, just say the word.’ It took me a full year to accumulate the pieces for the show. Through that long, intensive period of work, I attuned myself to the idea that Jim would not be there to see the paintings when they were finished. In fact, I began to wonder if he would ever see another work of mine again. I accepted my aloneness, embraced it as my fate.

‘Paris is a decent bet, I reckon,’ Bernie Cale said, pushing out his lip. He picked off a handful of canapés from the server’s tray as it went by. ‘He used to go on about Giacometti and that crowd all the time.’

‘It’s possible,’ I said, doubting it.

‘Wasn’t he there for a bit, after the war?’

‘I don’t know. He didn’t talk about it much.’

‘He’d like the lifestyle, I reckon. And the racing’s not bad either. You might want to put the feelers out, just in case.’

‘Paris is a mystery to me. I don’t have any feelers. I don’t even know if I’m pronouncing it correctly. Par-iss. Pa- ree ? Which is it?’

‘Not a clue.’ He looked for somewhere to put his used cocktail sticks, settling for the floor under his boot. ‘I’ll start asking round, if you want. I know a few people.’

‘Sweet of you, Bernie. Thanks.’ I smiled at him, truly meaning it. ‘I was thinking St Ives might be worth looking into — Dulcie says a lot of painters have been moving down to Cornwall lately. I know Jim always loved the city, but he grew up on that part of the coast.’

‘Why’d I always think he was a northerner?’

‘I’m not sure. You must’ve been punched in the head too often.’

‘That’d explain it.’ He stuffed a finger in his ear and waggled it, studying the damp, waxy deposit under his nail. Another server went by with a tray, but this time he let her pass. ‘Well, wherever he’s gone and buggered off to, I’m sure he’s doing all right. Always thought Jim could handle himself, if he needed to.’

Coming from a boxer, this was oddly reassuring. ‘I hope you’re right.’

‘Course I am.’ Bernie stared at me. There was a slothful quality about his features that made him seem permanently on the edge of passing out. But he seemed to take a particular interest in my face that night, appraising it in long, heavy gazes that I tried to ignore. ‘So,’ he said, ‘I hear this lot are taking you to Wheeler’s after.’ He nodded in the general direction of the crowd, but it was clear to whom he was referring: Dulcie Fenton and her two fawning assistants.

‘I’d rather go straight home to bed, to be honest with you.’

Bernie hung a stare on me. ‘If the gallery’s paying, you should have the number two oysters.’

‘I might just do that.’

‘You won’t find better in London. It’s a proper old place is Wheeler’s. They do a cracking dressed crab to start with — make sure you get that. And the turbot, if you’ve room.’ He must have noticed my attention was wandering. ‘Or I could drive you back to Kilburn, if you like. I’m going that way anyway.’

‘I can’t just leave. It’s rude.’

‘Go on, duck out with me. Who’s going to notice?’

‘It’s my show, Bernie. I can’t.’

He scanned the room, deflated. ‘All right. But no one’s here to look at your paintings, you know. They’re here to be seen looking at your paintings. I thought you were clever enough to know that already.’

‘I’m trying to stay open-minded.’

‘Waste of time. Jim’d back me up on that, if he was here.’

I did not take kindly to this summoning of Jim’s name just to unsettle me. ‘So that’s why you came tonight, is it, Bernie? To make the society page?’

He shrugged. ‘I won’t lie. When Max tells me to be somewhere, I show up nice and punctual. It’s a lucky bonus if I like the paintings.’

‘And how do you feel about these ones?’

‘Still making my mind up on that.’

‘Well, no rush. Send me a telegram when you decide.’

This seemed to injure him more than I expected. ‘Actually, I like your other pieces better. Nothing’s really moved me tonight,’ he said.

‘Did you see the diptych yet?’

‘Yeah, that was my favourite. But it didn’t frighten me like the older stuff.’

I could not pretend to Bernie Cale or anyone else that I was satisfied with the work that had been chosen for the show. Only three days before, I had been installing the pieces with Dulcie and had been overcome with such a sense of anti-climax that it took a great deal of resolve not to run out onto Bond Street and hail a taxi home. We had themed and organised the paintings on the walls, rearranged them in every possible configuration before agreeing on the final hanging. The technician had tacked the title cards into place, and Dulcie had said, ‘Wonderful. I think we’ve finally cracked it.’ I had expected this moment to be joyous — the culmination of so much dreaming and endeavour — but I did not feel that way at all. Of the nine canvases that appeared in the show, seven had been worked on steadily, over months, and the labour that underpinned them was much too obvious. I had wanted to include six different pieces: older paintings I had made in a bloodrush late one night in Jim’s attic. These works, I knew, were not as technically refined, but there was an exciting tension in their rawness. Dulcie made me second-guess them: ‘I’m just not sure I understand what you see in them. I mean, they’re certainly striking, and I think they’d be fine in a retrospective further down the line, but we’re looking to establish a genuine presence for you here — you understand that’s the point of this whole exercise, don’t you? It’s a staggered process. It’s fine for the men to go straight for the jugular with their first big show. We have to tantalise a little. Play hard to get. You know what I’m saying. Show the bolder stuff next time, once you have a captive audience.’

Dulcie had a way of turning every dialogue into a soliloquy. She had risen up the echelons at the Roxborough, starting as a secretary to the gallery’s owners, proving her acuity by managing the diaries of artists on the books. Soon, they asked her to stand in as assistant to the director, and, when his tenure ended due to illness, she was made director in her own right. There was no more respected woman on the London art scene at that time. She had established a reputation for intuiting trends in the market and had helped to launch the careers of many artists I admired. Max Eversholt deferred to her instincts on most matters, and I was swayed by her opinions because I thought they were born of an experience greater than my own. When she said that my newest paintings were the most sophisticated, I had to listen. Every time the word ‘collectable’ escaped her lips, it stung my heart and then recoiled into the ether like a wasp to die. Perhaps I would have felt that sting much harder if Jim had been there. Perhaps. Too many perhapses.