Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

For a week or so, I slipped back into a role as Jim’s assistant. I believed in the work he was doing and felt it worthier than my own. Together, we refined the pigmentation of the plants he brought home. I made some adjustments to his timings and suggested a change from brine to icy water; I showed him a different mullering technique and altered his mix ratios, all of which helped to yield much brighter hues and more stable paints. He was grateful, I knew, but also reluctant to accept too much of my help. ‘This is starting to feel like a collaboration,’ he said, at the end of one particularly long day’s painting. We were both exhausted. Our meal of boiled rice and tinned carrots had not satisfied us and we had finished the last of the coffee that morning. We were living off what little cash I had brought with me and the few pennies Jim had left. There had been some dreamy talk about me blowing the whole lot on ingredients for a chocolate cake tomorrow, and we had tiredly reviewed the day’s progress as I cleared the table. He was pleased with how the work was developing, but twitchy about my involvement. ‘You know I’ve loved having you here,’ he went on, ‘but you’ve got a life to get back to. They’ll all be wondering where you are.’

‘Who will?’

‘Dulcie and Max.’ He gave a weak smile. ‘You need to get home.’

‘I’ll write and say I’m on a research trip somewhere. They won’t care. I’m not in any rush.’

‘I can see that,’ he said, a scratch of irritation in his voice.

‘Are you saying you don’t want me around? Is that it?’

‘Well, it’d be nice to know what your plan is, that’s all. While I’m here alone, I can make the rations last. Gas meter times out quicker with you here. Hot water runs out faster. This kind of thing should not be weighing on my mind.’

I folded my arms.

‘Look, don’t be offended,’ he said. ‘All this piddling domestic stuff just slows me down. I resent having to think about it.’

‘Fine,’ I said. ‘I’ll call Dulcie today and see if she’ll send me some money.’

‘No, no, no — you aren’t listening. I’m not asking for that. That’s the last thing I want.’

‘You’re the one talking about gas meters, Jim. I don’t know what you want me to say.’

He pleated his hands on the table. ‘I’m telling you, if you’re going to be here, then you’re here to bloody well paint . Not to be my assistant. Not to clear up after me. I’m happy to go hungry for the sake of your art, but not so you can be my housekeeper.’

‘It’s not that easy.’

‘It’s as easy as you want it to be, Ellie.’

‘I don’t have anything to paint. A subject, I mean. I’m just—’ And I breathed, realising I was about to say adrift .

‘Find one,’ he said. ‘You’ve done it before. I did it myself.’

‘Of course. You’re right. I should just punch someone and see where it leads me.’

He smirked. ‘Might not be such a bad idea, you know. You’re only ever ten yards from a bar fight in Scotland.’

I said, ‘Actually, it’s what Henry used to tell me — pick a fight, disturb the peace.’

‘Yeah, he gave the same advice to everyone.’

‘Really?’

‘Course he did. Only difference is, you listened to it.’

‘Oh, thanks.’

He waved away my soreness. ‘ Paint what you believe . That was Henry’s way of telling you to stop moping and get on with it. If he were here now, he’d be telling you again.’

Over the past few weeks, there had been plenty of time for me to explain the plight of my recent work to Jim. He had, of course, been understanding of my difficulties in finishing paintings (‘You saw my On High pile before it was a mountain,’ he said. ‘Christ, what a mess I made of things!’) and was glad to hear that I had withdrawn from the mural project to retain ‘a little integrity’. I expected he would be much less accepting of my capitulation to the Roxborough’s chequebook. ‘Look, it’s certainly a pity to show work you aren’t proud of,’ was all he said, ‘but I suppose you must’ve had your reasons. And it doesn’t seem to have dinted your reputation any. Pressure does funny things to people — I know that better than anyone.’ His muted disapproval was almost disappointing. I wanted him to lecture me, put me straight.

It was hard to find an appropriate moment to confess to him that I was taking medication. How was I supposed to broach it? Over rice and carrots at the dinner table? While we were climbing up a hummock in search of weeds? Perhaps I should have introduced the topic one night while the two of us were in the bathroom, twisting the dingy water from our laundry? I was afraid that he would think less of me. I feared that telling him about my sessions with Victor Yail would make me seem weak and incapable: just another foolish girl sent reeling by a man. And I could not rake back over my mistakes again like that: Wilfred Searle, the pennyroyal, the caldarium and what came after. I just wanted to be close to Jim, to be around the music of his footsteps in the house each day, to touch and smell the fabric of him.

Until that evening in the kitchen, he had afforded me the courtesy of not asking about my plans. I had carried on without a purpose, hidden my lack of inspiration just by helping him with his. But it seemed he had finally noticed my aimlessness. ‘Don’t think I was joking, by the way,’ he said. ‘The more you help me, the better these paintings are getting — that’s not a problem for me yet, but it’s going to be soon. I don’t want to look at them one day and see your handiwork. They’re all I’ve got. So I’ve got to draw a line under all this. If you want to stay, you have to stop helping me and help yourself instead. Clear that back room out and paint something.’

But I had nothing in me — not the remotest, flittering trace of an idea. All my thoughts were vaurien . When I told him I could not paint because I felt no thrill in it any longer, Jim stared me down. ‘Rubbish. You’re just in a slump.’ When I told him I had issues with anxiety that required weekly therapy, he gave an indignant shake of the head. When I told him I could only finish work on 100mg a day and showed him the bottles of Tofranil from my overnight bag to prove it, he grew angry — not with me, but at the world that had allowed it. ‘What kind of idiotic — I mean, who the hell put you on these?’ He pushed through the kitchen beads to view the label under brighter light. ‘They tried to fob me off with these things after the war. Anti-whatevers. I told them, listen, if I’m going to kill myself, I’ll be doing it nice and slow with a cask of single malt, thank you very much.’ Opening a bottle, sniffing its innards, he emptied out a handful of tablets and moved them around on his palm. Then he tipped them back in. Coming in to place them on the kitchen table, he said, ‘It’s no wonder you can’t paint, Ellie. You won’t feel a thing while you’re dosed up on those.’

‘How do you know I feel anything when I’m off them?’ I said. ‘They’ve been helping me a lot.’

‘Helping you?’

‘Yes.’

‘With what?’

‘With keeping my head above water.’

‘Well, you’d be better off with a snorkel.’ He had already stacked the three short bottles into a pyramid, and now he was standing over them, hands on hips, like some broken-down motorist examining his engine. ‘I know one thing: the girl who used to live up in my attic was the most natural painter I ever saw — you’d never have found her avoiding work, or moaning about having no ideas. She went out and found them. She didn’t care about pleasing anyone but herself. That was the real you, Ellie. Not this. Not those. You need to take it from someone who’s been there.’ He looked at me now, brow raised. ‘How many times did you watch me painting, pissed as a rat, and how much good ever came of it? None. It’s taken me this long to get sober, and this long to start making work I’m proud of again.’ Turning away, he went to fill a glass under the tap, and came back, slugging it. I was stuck under the dim yellow bulb light, staring at the pills. What a chore it had been in the past few weeks, sneaking off to take them while Jim was occupied elsewhere, keeping half an eye on the mantel clock all day in case I missed a dose. I did not think I was resilient enough to function without medication. But I was not alone any more, and the prospect did not frighten me the way it did when Victor used to suggest it.