Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

Then, one night — so late the wireless in my room had reached the end of programming — Dulcie called to say that she was coming to the flat. She was concerned that she had not heard from me since getting back to London, and wondered if I had given any further thought to her proposal. I could not recall any proposal being put to me, so I stalled on my answer, and told her she could visit me on Saturday. In truth, I had no clue what day it was, and she said, ‘Darling, it is Saturday.’

I was greatly dissatisfied with the work and felt ashamed to show it, even to Dulcie. But I could not let her think that I had locked myself away for the past few weeks without creating anything. So when she buzzed, I let her in, and heard her feet come clipping up the stairs. I glimpsed her through the spyhole: she was wearing a fur shawl, though it was springtime and the weather had been mild, according to the radio. As I opened the door, she took a backward stride, as though moving with the draught. But it must have been the sight of me that rocked her on her heels. ‘Crikey,’ she said. ‘This is a situation, isn’t it?’

‘Kettle’s on,’ I said, standing aside to let her through.

‘Nothing for me, thanks. On my way to a party and the cab’s still on the meter.’ She had already removed her evening gloves outside the door, but, seeing the condition of my flat, she slipped them on again. ‘Is everything all right with you?’ she asked, rolling her eyes over me. ‘You’re looking skinny. I presume you’ve been hard at it.’

‘That’s one way of putting it,’ I said. The kettle began to wheeze and I went off to tend to it.

‘Would’ve been good if you’d picked up the phone once or twice,’ Dulcie called, ‘just to clue me in on what you’re up to. You know I like to let you have your space, but it’s been a few months now. . God, this is an awful lot of soup for one person. Is this all you’ve been eating? A girl can’t live on Heinz alone, you know.’

I busied myself in the kitchen. ‘It’s hardly been that long.’ The tea had not been strained properly and leaves floated in the mug. I put three spoons of powdered milk in anyway.

‘No, darling. It’s the end of June. I’ve not heard from you since March.’ There was a pause. ‘I won’t bother asking about your hair. But you might want to think about opening a window. It’s like a reptile house in here.’

I was so tired of the timbre of Dulcie’s voice, and wearier still of the way she spoke to me.

‘So,’ she announced, as I came back in to face her, ‘where is it all?’

I sipped at my tea. It was gritty and foul, more punishment than comfort. ‘All of what?’

‘Don’t play dumb. The work .’ She waved towards the jumble of the studio, the speckled walls, the debris. ‘I see plenty of wood over there but no paintings. Where are you hiding them?’

‘I’ve been keeping them at Jim’s,’ I said. ‘For extra room.’

‘Uh-huh.’ She pinched her nostrils for a second, blinking. ‘Thought Max would’ve rented that place out by now.’ Her attention caught on something else behind me. ‘Well, you must’ve been churning them out at a fair old rate. Is there anything here I could look at? What about the sketches you’ve got taped up over there?’

‘They’re nothing,’ I said. ‘Not yet, anyway.’

‘All right. I get the message.’ She stared at me. ‘And what about January, do we still think that’s feasible? I’ve got from the 14th blocked out for you, but I can let someone else take the slot if it’s going to be a problem.’

‘Whatever you decide.’ I had forgotten about the date we had set.

‘You’re being strange,’ she said.

‘Am I?’

‘Yes. You’re never this accommodating.’

‘Well, perhaps you’d like to go outside again and I’ll leave you on the doorstep.’

She smiled. ‘That’s much more like it.’ Stepping over a row of huddled soup cans, she went to inspect the empty stretcher frames on the far side of the room. I knew that she would be too sharp-eyed not to notice the ragged strips of canvas that remained along the borders of each frame, the verges of the images I had carved out. ‘You cut them off the stretchers?’ she said. ‘Why?’

‘Had to get them on the bus,’ I told her.

She was an astute woman, old Dulcie, and she was not easily persuaded to take your word on things, even if you had not given her much cause to doubt it. That is what made her such a fine director of galleries and such a capricious friend. ‘Elspeth darling, I want you to listen to me very carefully,’ she said, turning to me with a mothering expression. ‘Don’t let all this get out of hand, OK?’ She made a little circle in the air. ‘I know an awful thing happened to you on that ship — and I will personally feel guilty about that for as long as I live — but you can’t afford to lose the plot here, do you understand me? I don’t want to see you throw away your talent over the first good-looking idiot that comes along.’

‘I’m not following you, Dee-Dee,’ I said. It was the only time I ever called her by that name and she clearly did not welcome it.

‘Then I’ll be blunt.’ She steepled her fingers. ‘I don’t mind you locking yourself away like this to work. In fact, I applaud it. But if you’re not happy with the stuff you’re making, put it aside. We’ll archive it. Don’t dig yourself into a hole you can’t get out of — understand? If you just want to take a break from painting, be my guest — I’ll even sort you out with a little per diem while you’re off on your tour of Van Gogh’s house, or wherever it is you choose to go. But, for God’s sake, don’t start cutting things off frames and acting stupid about it, thinking I’m some sort of moron by association. Because it might seem as though you’re protecting yourself doing that, upholding the integrity of your art or however you want to put it, but — trust me on this, darling — you’re only letting it go to waste. It’s for your own sake that I’m saying this.’ And she smiled again, as though to soothe me. ‘You’re young. There’s so much ahead of you. Don’t start worrying about being the greatest painter in the world for the time being, eh? It’s a long career, and not everyone is bound for greatness. Just be you, and you’ll do fine.’

It is the unsolicited advice that stays with you, the things that people say under the pretence of kindness. I listened to Dulcie that night when I should have plugged my ears, because I was still too fragile and naïve to argue with her. In London at that time, a word from Dulcie Fenton could just as surely leave an artist snubbed and penniless as it could get them noticed, and I knew I was not strong enough to keep on painting without the cushion of the Roxborough’s money. My studio was all I had, and I was too afraid of losing it. I could not stand to fret again about how I would pay for materials, food, gas, water, rent, all the banal concerns that populate the head and stifle the imagination.

‘And why do you believe it was such bad advice she gave you?’ said Victor Yail. ‘Sounds like she was trying to take the pressure off.’ He was posed in a suede chair with his legs crossed, readying his pen to jot my answer down. Whenever I trailed off in conversation, he always followed up with pointed questions such as this, inviting me to qualify what should already have been obvious through inference. That was the difference between his world and mine: in art, it was better to remain oblique and let the viewer decide your meaning; in rational therapy, things had to be spelled out in the plainest terms. It took me the first few sessions with Victor to get used to that incongruity.