Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

He jumped down from the table and squared his eyes at me. ‘Look, first things first, I need to get them onto film. Can’t do much until that’s sorted.’ Nudging the table further along, he climbed back onto it. ‘Then I’ve got to sell the camera. I reckon I could get fifteen, twenty quid for it, if I can take it to a proper shop in Glasgow — that’ll be enough to get the prints done and pay for the train down.’

‘Down where?’

‘London.’ He said it so nonchalantly. ‘I want these paintings to be seen .’

I went very quiet.

Jim clicked the shutter, reloaded, clicked again. ‘Don’t get all upset. I’ll be back in a few days.’

‘You’ve told me that before.’

‘Well, you’re just going to have to trust me this time, aren’t you?’

I was not sure that I could, and he read this in my attitude before I could voice it.

He widened his stance on the tabletop. ‘Look, you could come with me. I mean, if I can get a decent price for the camera, we’ll have enough for two returns. But then I’d have to leave all my paintings here, and I don’t want to risk it. You can think of them as a deposit — if I don’t come back inside a week, flog them, burn them, do what you like with them.’

This was all the encouragement I needed. In London, there was Dulcie and the Roxborough and a tranche of worthless canvases to finish. In London, there was Victor Yail and the endless recitation of my problems and mistakes. In London, there was nothing. ‘Can’t you just stay a few more days — at least until you can find a battery?’

He shook his head, wincing.

‘You’re not doing the paintings any justice like that. All the exposures will be off.’

‘We’ll see how they come out,’ he replied. ‘People only need to get the gist of what I’m up to. And I can carry a few boards down with me. I was thinking of getting a suitcase to put them in. The others I’ll come back for.’

‘Are you showing them to Max?’

‘No, I’ve had my fill of him for one lifetime, thanks very much.’ He let the camera hang from his neck like an old gas mask in a box. ‘Thought I’d start with Bernie, actually. He can get my foot in a door or two. Everyone likes Bernie, and everyone who doesn’t like him owes him a favour.’

‘Bernie Cale?’

‘Yup.’ He hopped down. And, placing the cap back on the lens, he said, ‘Come on, don’t be getting yourself so worked up. I’ve known Bernie for ages. I knew him before I knew you . We used to go the track together.’

‘I don’t care about that . I don’t care about Bernie, for God’s sake.’

He tried to embrace me but I turned away. ‘Then what’s the matter? You’ve got a terrible frown on you.’

‘I just—’ I said. ‘I can’t believe that you’re abandoning me all over again.’

‘Woah, steady on. I’m coming straight back. I told you that.’ He gathered the lapels of my blouse and drew me in close. ‘Four or five days, that’s all it’ll be. You won’t even have time to miss me.’ And he kissed the tip of my nose. ‘Nobody’s getting abandoned. Come on, don’t chew on your lip like that — you’ll make it sore.’

I was biting it to keep from crying.

‘In any case,’ he went on, ‘I don’t think Bernie would let me bunk with him longer than a week.’

I should have waited for a moment to let the bright idea that came to me cloud over and extinguish itself. But I did not. I said, ‘Why don’t you just use the flat?’

‘Whose flat?’

‘Mine.’

Jim’s eyelids quivered. ‘Oh, I wouldn’t want to — I mean, that wouldn’t be — no, I’d feel terrible. I couldn’t do it.’

‘Well, I’m not having you sleeping on Bernie’s floor. He takes all-comers in that place of his. Pays for most of them, from what I’ve heard.’ I had no real evidence for this, of course, just bits of gossip. But Bernie was the sort of man it was easy to envision staggering from a Soho doorway in the small hours with his shirt-tails untucked. So I did not feel too sore about accusing him.

‘Only if you’re sure,’ Jim said. ‘Only if you’re certain .’ He kissed me in that way he favoured most: dead centre of my forehead, the first spot I had been taught to reach for when I blessed myself in church. But as he moved his lips away, he did not look at me.

The heavy heartbeat of the mantel clock, the noiseless turning of its hands; another second lost to waiting, another hour without Jim. And where was I? Alone again, sleepless, the summer running down, new ochre leaves fringing the loch and so much rain. Steam lifting on the hills. Rare sprays of traffic. A flavour to the air: bonfires, boat fuel, cold wet pasture. I slammed the clock against the kitchen wall repeatedly — the glass smashed but the mechanism purred, continued, no complaints. With my bare hands, I dug a shallow grave out in the garden. I buried it alive. Now I did not have to worry about the hours ticking by. There were no hours. Just the slow spread of aloneness and a quickly fading hope. But at least I had the work to occupy me. At least I had the work.

Except the work itself was hopeless. I had tried so very hard with it. At first, I did not bother. I lay in bed, reading that same novel and my magazines, and wondered what Jim was doing in London. Not just silly speculations: good day, bad day, which? I mapped his whereabouts precisely in my head. He was at the barber’s shop on Allitsen Road getting a shave; he was in a meeting with the Leicester Gallery; he was eating chips and saveloy with Bernie Cale by the canal; he was standing with me at the bathroom mirror; then he was gone. And I was standing at the bathroom mirror alone, looking sinewy and shucked. My hair was like pulled thistles. My face had dark abrasions. I was decaying. Whose skin was this? I could not remember bathing yesterday or the day before. And I grew very anxious about Jim coming back — he would be coming back any day now — to find me stewing in my idleness — not sure exactly when — and he would spin right on his heels and run. Leave me for a third time. The last. So I ran a hot bath — I had done this before — and lowered myself in.

Next morning, the day was drier, brighter. I took a sketchbook, took a satchel, took Jim’s coat. I found some pickings of my own. Lavender, petunias, geraniums. Brought them back to the cottage and mulched them. I did the same thing Jim used to do, or what I used to do for Jim. I worked the muller, smoothed it, left the paint so nice and thick. A dash of Cremnitz in it— sparingly . Such a pleasant paint to load onto the brush, upon the knife-edge. But it was much too sunny in that room to concentrate. Shrieking crows and gulls outside, cats stalking the tall grass. Things flashing: glints of chrome on distant boats, wobbling on the loch. Strange how metal sharpened beams of sunlight into needles. The hulls rocked gently, side to side. One moment, there they were — those bright white shards — the next thing, gone. But what if I could capture them somehow? What if I could paint them all in Cremnitz? Everything except those tiny spikes of light. Render the scene so thickly that from ten feet away you would see a formless blur— pure abstraction— and from an arm’s length you would see the definition. Detail. Clarity. It was possible to achieve a feat like that. But who had tried before? Someone, definitely someone. Men of soaring talent .

I made the stretcher frame myself from planks — from leftovers in the outhouse, paintings of Henry’s, never started, never finished — and I hammered every brass tack through the fabric with the blunt end of a pestle. Good strong boat upholstery, tightly fibred. Quick to prime. And I hung a swathe of it over the window, tacked that too, holding the light at bay. It stopped me trying for a glimpse of Jim out there. Removed all distractions. Focused.