Benjamin Wood - The Ecliptic

Only then could you put one dull jeton in the turnstile slot, like your sponsor had advised, keeping another to remind you of your homeward trip every time your fingers met it in the folds of your pocket. Only then could you walk through the barrier and wait in the muggy departures terminal with your hat on, your eyes concealed by wayfarers, fanning yourself with the newspaper until the doors were opened to let you step onto the hulking white ship. Only then could you find a seat on the upper deck amongst the gathering hordes, right up close to the railing, to watch the ferry push away and feel the sudden breeze upon your cheek, taste the brackish cool upon your lips, the thrill of it. Only then could you know the full splendour of the Marmara as it ebbed around you, fathomless, agleam.

And this would be your final chance to lean back and exhale, to listen to the outcry of the seagulls following the stern, the dizzy flocks that clamoured near the deck as though escorting you. Soon, the Turkish men would lean over the railing with simits held aloft; the birds would swoop to steal the bread right from their fingers, screeching; and you would come to realise the gulls were not escorts at all, but hustlers and hangers-on, like everyone else you were sailing away from.

Only as you arrived at the first stop in Kadiköy could you undo your watchstrap and remove it, let it slide between the slats of the bench, as though you had forgotten it. Only as you sailed by the first strange island with all its tombstone houses could you glean how far you were from the world you knew, the people you loved, the people you did not. Only when you passed the next of them — one broad and inhabited, another just a sliver of green where nothing seemed to live but herons — could you understand how close you were to what you needed. Only then could you see the khaki hump of Heybeliada rising in the sun-stirred haze and know that you had made it.

Only then could you stand with the giddy tourists on the lower decks as the ferryman threw a withered rope onto the dock, waiting to step off onto a foreign land but somehow feeling you were almost home. Only then could you skirt by the Naval Academy where the uniformed cadets did their parade drills, and head south-east on Çam Limani Yolu, as you had been instructed, until the streets became narrower, emptier, and the space between houses grew so wide that you could see the spreading forest up ahead. Only then could you lose yourself in those dry, slanting pines and sense that you were now released from everything that had weighed on you before. Only then could you see the shoulders of a tarnished mansion surface above the treetops. Only at its gate could you throw down your backpack, push the buzzer, watch a squinting Turk with a grey moustache and a shotgun come up to the bars, asking your name. Only then could you say you were a different person. Only then would the old man enquire about the passphrase, so you could finally release it to the air, the meaning of the words becoming clearer as you spoke them. Only then would the gate unlock and slide back for you in the old man’s grip. Only then would you hear him say, ‘ Portmantle’ye hoşgeldiniz.’

When the boy demolished Pettifer in the first game of backgammon we all cried beginner’s luck, but then they played twice more — each bout a little faster than the one before — and it soon became clear that young Fullerton possessed a startling tactical acuity. He came away with a haul of Pettifer’s belongings: a çay glass, a wind-up turtle made from camphor-wood, and a woven leather belt; and, because I had backed Tif to sweep the best of five, I was forced to surrender my last remaining pack of cinnamon gum. We assumed that Quickman, a shrewder, more experienced and aggressive player, would prove too wily an opponent for the boy, but it did not transpire that way. Fullerton outmanoeuvred him to the tune of seven points per game. In truth, it was barely a contest. By the time the boy was done, he had won a fountain pen, a Roman coin, and a silver lighter that once belonged to Quickman’s father, inscribed with two faded initials. (Tif won back a pair of loafers he had previously lost to Q, and I earned a scoopful of French coffee beans from Mac, though it seemed unfair to claim my winnings in her absence.)

‘We’ve been hustled,’ Quickman said, staring at the chequers that were left on the board. ‘That last bump-and-run was tournament stuff. What are you, regional champ? National?’

The boy beamed back at him. ‘I swear, I’ve hardly played before.’

‘You don’t fool me.’

‘I’m just lucky, that’s all. The dice fell kindly.’

‘Rubbish. I’ve never seen so much blockading. That was all strategy.’

‘It’s a blocking game all right,’ Pettifer added, ‘but it’s deadly effective.’

The boy gave nothing away. ‘If you say so.’

‘I’d better sharpen up my end-game before we play again,’ Quickman said.

‘I’m not sure that’ll help you much.’

I could not tell if the boy was being earnest or smug. He got up, took his cagoule from the chair-back, and walked across the studio, pausing before my wall of samples. The room was so bright with the overhead fluorescents that there was nothing but an arrangement of white patches for him to see, a grid of small canvas squares that I had pasted to the wall, in a pattern only I could interpret. There were at least a hundred of them, each square containing a smear of white paint, hardly discernible from the canvas itself. Fullerton took another forward step, trying to read my pencilled notes in the margins. ‘What is it you’re working on here, Knell?’ he said quite innocently. ‘I’m going to take a wild guess and say it’s something white.’

Pettifer tutted. ‘You’re overstepping.’

‘It’s all right,’ I said.

‘No, come on — he needs to be told.’

Quickman called to the boy in a chiding tone: ‘We don’t intrude on other people’s work round here.’

Fullerton held up his hands in surrender. ‘Jesus. Sorry. I take it back.’

‘They’re studies for a mural,’ I told him. ‘That’s as much as I care to explain right now.’

‘Anything else would be an imposition,’ Quickman said.

The boy was still facing the wall. ‘But don’t you ever want to run ideas by each other? Just to see the response?’

I was getting used to holding conversations with his back. ‘Sometimes,’ I said. ‘But then I wouldn’t really be painting for myself. And that’s the only way to paint.’

Quickman was now gathering the backgammon chequers into one hand, stamping down at every piece. It was evident that he was still stinging from defeat, because he said sharply to the boy, ‘This isn’t a conservatoire. If you’ve come here for other people’s input, you might want to try a different crowd.’

Fullerton turned and pushed up his sleeves. ‘It’s OK. I’m not the sharing type.’ There was still a pale disc of skin on his left wrist where a watch used to be. ‘I’ve got something I need to finish, yes, but I won’t bore you with the details.’

‘I saw a guitar in your studio,’ I said. ‘It’s been a while since we had a musician here.’

‘Oh, I wouldn’t call myself a musician.’

‘What are you then?’

He backed away from my samples now, eyes slatted. ‘Jacqueline du Pré—she’s a proper musician; Glenn Gould, Miles Davis. I can bash out a folk song when I’m in the mood. But I haven’t felt much like it recently.’

Pettifer stood up. ‘All sounds rather simple when you put it like that.’

‘I’m sure it’s more complicated than he’s making out,’ Quickman said, ‘or he wouldn’t be here, would he?’