Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

He stayed in Giverny for a full year, in fact, trying to make sense of the sketches in his book, painting with gouache on board. ‘The French have a wonderful word: ‘ vaurien’ . It means ‘good-for-nothing’. That’s what all of those paintings were like. I couldn’t seem to get the tone right, no matter what I tried.’ Because the poet and his sister drank so little, and with Jim living off their charity and provisions, he was forced to become reacquainted with sobriety. ‘For a while, I was living off whatever was in the cupboards — I had a lot of stale cognac, and some disgusting old Dutch advocaat. But that ran out soon enough, and I had no money, so it was either I went and stole it, or — well, I didn’t want to come back to France after all that time just to start looting the place like a bloody Nazi. It took me until the spring to really get my act together.’

The spring was when the Judas trees in the village came into bloom. He had gone walking one day with the poet’s sister and, suddenly, the winding avenues of Giverny had blushed with so many shades of pink. ‘To begin with, I thought they were just like the cherry trees and magnolias back home, but she told me they were Judas trees. When she was a little girl, her mother used to collect all the petals to make pot-pourri. There was so much of the stuff.’

As the weeks passed, Jim had noticed how the Judas blossoms separated from the branches so quickly, how they dusted the ground in endless configurations, every one of them unique. ‘The wind gathered them all up and scattered them however it wanted — like it was painting the scenery all by itself. Some of them would just sit there on the ground, stuck on the gravel, on the soil, or they’d get caught between long blades of grass. They’d just sit there for weeks, fading, shrivelling, turning brown. Then the wind would finally brush them away. They reminded me of the war. The transience of it all. On patrols, it always used to get to me, thinking about the future. Your life always felt so inconsequential, you know, but at the same time you’d try and savour every last moment of it, while you still had it. Anyway, the thought occurred to me, What am I just looking at all these petals for? I need to paint them.’ He set up a board in his room at the house and started work. ‘And right away I got that glorious feeling in my chest again — you know the one I mean. That swell in your heart when a painting takes over you. I knew I had something to say. There was nothing else that mattered — I had to paint that and nothing else. Just Judas blossoms on the ground, in as many shapes and patterns as I could think of, forever, until I die.’

By the end of the summer, he had filled the farmhouse with boards. Most of them he gave to the poet and his sister as presents, and they lined the walls of every room. Some of them he kept and carried back with him. He came to understand that he did not need to stay in Giverny any longer. The Judas blossoms did not have to be on his own doorstep for him to paint them. He needed no clear view of them from his window, no sketches, no photographs, just his own memories and speculations. That was the only way he could express their real meaning. And so he begged one last favour from the poet and his sister — just a few more francs to get him back to Calais and to England. ‘They were sad to see me go, I think, and I was sad to say goodbye to them. But you know how it is: the work is always more important. Art and happiness won’t stand each other’s company for long. It’s hard to explain that to people who aren’t artists. I mean, the lad wrote poetry, but it wasn’t his life — I got the impression it was just a hobby for him until he found a job in a bank some day, you know?’

Once Jim had landed back in Dover, he had thought about coming to find me. ‘I knew that if anyone would understand, it’d be you. But I can’t remember why I didn’t — the timing just felt wrong. And, honestly, I couldn’t face you yet. Not until the work was done. I had visions of putting on a show again in London and you seeing it by chance.’ (It would have been the autumn, when I was still working on my mural. If he had only knocked on my door then, just once. .) Instead, he took a room for a few weeks above a Chinese restaurant in Soho, and worked there, scrubbing vats, until he had earned enough to take a night coach up to Glasgow. ‘The only other person who believed in me was Henry. I thought he might be able to find me an attic somewhere, like I used to have as a student, or let me sleep for a while in his office. I didn’t really have a plan. But that’s what made Henry Henry, wasn’t it? If he believed in your work, he’d go out of his way to help you, even if it cost him. That’s how I heard about this place. He said he wasn’t using it any more, but some bloke had been renting it and left it in a state. Bailey or something, his name was — Henry didn’t speak well of him.’ The agreement was that Jim could have the cottage, rent free, in exchange for light repairs. ‘He only wanted me to do a little gardening and sprucing up — no big overhaul. I admit, I haven’t got round to it yet. But I’ve only been here since September.’

The twenty minutes were almost up and Jim was still standing at his work table, grinding away at the flowers in the mortar. Each turn of his pestle gave a biting sound — he had been using these noises to punctuate and dislocate his sentences, as though he assumed we had been apart so long that I could not read the language of his movements any more. He was disguising something, but I was not going to risk the consequences of making him admit it. And, really, there was only one question I cared for him to answer.

He looked at me, then at the clock. ‘You haven’t said much. I can’t tell what you’re thinking about any of this.’ His pestle kept on circling. ‘It’s the God’s honest truth, I promise you. Look at me—’ He stood tall. ‘I’m a year sober. Not touched a drop since I got back, and I don’t bother with the races any more. I’ve just been doing this .’ And, gesturing with his bowl of ruined flowers, he said, ‘This is what’s important to me now. Nothing else. I thought you’d understand that.’

‘I do,’ I said, and stopped the rocking motion of the chair with my heels. ‘I do.’

‘Then why are you so quiet all of a sudden?’ His eyes shifted, left and right. ‘I thought you wanted to talk about it. You don’t believe me, is that it?’

‘You’re very defensive, Jim,’ I said, ‘for a man telling the truth.’

‘Well, I need you to believe me.’

‘Why?’

‘So I can get on with my work.’ He sniffed. ‘I can’t have all this guilt hanging over me.’

‘What’s there to feel guilty about? You just explained yourself.’

‘You know what,’ he said, and gave a shake of his head. ‘Don’t make me say it.’

‘Apologise, you mean?’

He stayed quiet.

‘Are you actually sorry?’ I said.

‘No.’ The pestle was working harder now. ‘Not for leaving. Not for doing what I had to do. But I feel guilty for not getting in touch.’

‘I was out of my mind with worry about you,’ I said. ‘You could’ve phoned, or sent a letter. A telegram would’ve done. Just something to let me know you were safe.’

‘Yes. I wanted to. I really wanted to.’ And he put the mortar down on the table weightily. ‘This lot has to get onto the slab right now or it won’t give out much colour.’ He turned his back to me, a shield from my voice.

‘You couldn’t have spared a thought for me just once in all that time?’

‘I didn’t know that I was supposed to,’ he said. The pulped flowers dropped down onto the slab — a lumpy pink cement. ‘I didn’t know that you wanted me to think about you. Not in that way.’