The Ecliptic (34 page)

‘I’m sure he would’ve thrown himself a party.’

‘But you didn’t tell him.’

‘No.’

‘Was that fair, do you think?’

‘I couldn’t care less.’

Victor gave a little hum. ‘And how about you? Were
you
relieved?’

‘I don’t know.’ There was a very long silence. I picked the paint from the creases of my knuckles. ‘I can’t say I wasn’t at the time. But I don’t feel
that way about it now.’

‘Where did you get the pennyroyal?’

‘From Dulcie.’

‘Yes, but where did she get it?’

‘She said from a Chinese woman somewhere. Portobello, I think.’

‘I see.’ Victor inched forward, setting down his notepad. ‘Do you think you’d like to have children in the future?’

I shrugged. ‘I can live without them. I’ve lived without other things.’

‘Such as?’

‘Love, I suppose. Intimacy. Affection.’

‘It’s not too late for that. You’re young.’

‘Yes, but I’ve chosen this instead.’

‘Therapy?’

‘
No
,’ I said. ‘Art.’

Session after session, we talked this way. Every Tuesday afternoon, I would put down my paintbrush, throw on my coat, and hail a cab to Harley Street. I would traipse up the stairs to
Victor’s office, nod hello to his secretary, and wait for him to come and wave me in. And he would sit me down in my regular chair with my regular blue cushion to pick up our discussion from
the session before. We talked a great deal about my apathy towards the new paintings. He wanted to know about every stage of their creation. For a time, it almost seemed that we were painting them
together.

Then, one day, I arrived at Victor’s practice to find it adorned in Christmas tinsel. He was standing at the apex of a ladder in the waiting area, hanging a white paper snowflake from the
light fixture. ‘Afternoon,’ he said. ‘What do you think of the decorations?’

‘They’ll do.’

‘Jonathan made this one at school.’ The snowflake swung and hit his cheek. ‘Good to know they aren’t wasting any class time on algebra and elocution.’

‘It might help his geometry a bit,’ I said.

Victor laughed. He stepped down from the ladder and passed his secretary the roll of tape he had been using. Looking up at the snowflake, he said, ‘That should just about hold, I
think.’ And he turned to me, patting his sides. ‘All right, Miss Conroy. Shall we?’

As soon as we got settled in the consulting room, I began to tell him all about the painting I had started working on that morning—how I knew that Dulcie was going to think it was the best
piece in the show. ‘It’s just three old women sitting on a bench with a few pigeons streaking past them in a blur,’ I said. ‘It’s about the most boring thing
I’ve ever done, but obviously that means Dulcie’s going to love it.’

‘I wonder sometimes if you’re being a little hard on her.’

This surprised me. ‘Hmm.’ I pretended to scribble a note on the armrest. ‘Would you care to qualify that for me, Victor?’

His face twitched in acknowledgement of my clever-cleverness, but he did not smile. ‘You know I’m not Dulcie’s biggest supporter, but she’s really come through for you in
the last few years. Don’t forget that.’

I stayed quiet, heeding his sermon.

Victor got up and went to his bookshelves. ‘What are your plans for Christmas?’ he asked, his back to me. ‘Will you be visiting your parents?’

‘They want me to,’ I said. ‘But I’m not sure I can face the journey.’

‘How long is it on the train?’

‘About six hours.’

‘Well, if you can’t put yourself out for your parents, then who can you do it for? I’d like to think Jonathan will make the effort for me when I’m in my
dotage.’

‘I take it you’ll be visiting your folks this year, then?’

‘I’ll put some flowers on their graves, no doubt.’

‘Oh, I’m—sorry about that.’

He did not give this any further credence. Instead, he came and stood beside my chair with a set of magazines. As he dropped them on the coffee table, the pieces on his fancy chessboard rattled.
‘We’re going to start you on an exercise today,’ he said, peering down at me. ‘It’s something I’d like you to keep working on over the holidays, until I get
back.’

The thought of him leaving brought me a jolt of panic. ‘You’re going somewhere?’

‘Just for a couple of weeks. Seeing relatives in Kent, then back to the States again. I’m delivering a paper.’

‘So I won’t see you until the new year?’

He shook his head. ‘Let’s not worry about that for now. This exercise will help. You’ll hardly miss me.’ On the coffee table, he fanned out the magazines. The covers were
marigold-yellow with decorated borders:
National Geographic.
‘Every time I’m in the States, they have these in my hotel room. I must have a full set by now. Take a
look.’

I picked up a copy.
June 1957.
The inside pages were mostly colour photographs of strange foreign landscapes: the Grand Canal in Venice; tourists camping in the Black Forest;
rhododendron pastures in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. The November 1958 issue featured illustrated articles—
The Booming Sport of Water Skiing, The Emperor’s Private Garden:
Kashmir
—and maps with accompanying images:
The Arab World: A Story in Pictures
. I had seen a magazine just like it in the first-class lounge when I was sailing to New York.

‘The pictures are wonderful, aren’t they?’ Victor said.

I nodded.

‘My favourite is January ’57—an expedition through the fjords in Norway. The stillness is incredible. I find myself going back to that one now and again, when things get
hectic. Helps me relax.’

‘You should go and see it for yourself,’ I said. ‘Take a trip.’

‘I almost went with Mandy a few years ago. But, quite honestly, I prefer to look at the pictures. If I actually went there, I think I would spoil it.’ He moved back to his armchair,
leaving me to browse the covers of other editions. There were so many articles, so many places I had never seen before:

‘Choosing one is really the challenge,’ he said. ‘I want you to take a few away with you and really have a proper look. Study the photographs. Find a place that does for you
what the fjords do for me.’

I was not sure that a photograph could ever calm me. ‘I don’t know, Victor. That seems a bit pointless.’

There was an expression he always brought out when I was not taking him seriously—lips pulled in, eyes rounded—and he was showing it to me now. ‘We’ve been at this for
quite a while, haven’t we?’ he said. ‘I’ve sat here listening to you for months and, honestly, I’m not sure that we’re any further forward than we were the day I
met you. Aside from you being on a lot of tricyclics and getting more paintings done—most of which you seem to detest. We’ve reached a point where we have to find a strategy for you to
cope with your anxieties or they’re going to seriously affect your future. Eventually, you’re going to work yourself into a depression I can’t help you with. That’s why you
need to try your best with this exercise. It’s just a visualisation technique—not a cure—but I think it will benefit you.’

At once, the spread of magazines on the table began to seem further away. ‘I will,’ I said. ‘I’ll try.’

‘Good.’ He took off his glasses and breathed on the lenses. ‘We all need a place that’s ours and ours alone. The fjords are mine—you have to choose somewhere
else.’

I flicked through the pages of the topmost issue.

Skiers in Alta, Utah.

Oxen in Schneeburg, Austria
.

‘It can’t be anywhere you’ve been before—nowhere with memories,’ Victor went on. ‘How you imagine the place is what’s important. That’s the only
way it can belong to you.’

Boulder Peak, Idaho.

Mount Lafayette, New Hampshire.

Diamond Rock, Martinique.

‘Do you understand the exercise?’

‘I think so. But—’

‘No buts. No evasions. Just do your best.’

Perhaps it would be like the first time I left Clydebank as a child after the Blitz. My mother took me on a coach to see my great aunt in Coldstream. I was not told what to expect, apart from a
lot of countryside, so I imagined it as any five-year-old would have: a small town of grey-bricked cottages beside a river that was permanently frozen, happy people skating on the ice in special
wooden clogs and drinking hot chocolate. We arrived into something greener and less magical. The Coldstream I had pictured dropped away, no longer mine.

‘I don’t need to know which place you’ve chosen,’ Victor said, ‘but when I come back in January, I want you to be ready to start calling it to mind. If you can
visualise this place when you start feeling anxious, centre yourself there when you need to, then we might be able to bring your dosage down, over time.’ And he reclined, scraping the dull
leather caps of his shoes together. ‘I’ll bet that journey up to Scotland isn’t so bad if you can go first-class, you know. Six hours on a train won’t kill you.’

The news came in an envelope from my mother. She had written to me with her usual gossip about the happenings in her building and reports of my father’s foul mood, with
one last paragraph pleading for my company at Christmas time. And, clipped to the last page, was a cutting from the newspaper
,
on which she had written in the margin:
Saw this in the
Herald yesterday. Sorry, love xx

The funeral was three days away. I called my mother to tell her I would be coming home for a spell. Her delight was tempered by the fact that I would not arrive until after I had paid my
respects to Henry. She managed to hide the disappointment in her voice. ‘All right, love. You do what you feel’s best,’ she said. ‘We’ll have the place ready for
you.’

It was a very long journey to Luss. I booked myself onto the earliest train to Glasgow, first-class, reasoning that I would need the comfort and the quiet of the roomier carriages. On the way, I
read most of a novel and looked through the images in the
National Geographic
issues I had packed for the trip. It had been a few days since I had seen Victor, and I had still not decided
on a photograph to call my own—in truth, they had barely left more than a fleeting impression on me, the sort of wonderment you glean from browsing a jeweller’s window. But I vowed to
keep trying.

From Glasgow, I took a connecting train to Balloch, at the foot of Loch Lomond. My suitcase was so heavy that, after a few minutes lugging it, the joints of my elbows crackled with pain. The
train was crowded with families and I had to walk through several carriages just to find a seat. The stolid darkness of the Clyde and its surrounds went by the windows, familiar and yet not. It was
so late when I arrived at the station that I missed the last bus out of Balloch. I stayed the night at a nearby inn, and, waking early, traipsed along the road with my suitcase to catch the rusting
single-decker that would carry me into Luss.

Still, I managed to be late. The service had already started when I got to the church. I stowed my case in the antechamber behind a stack of hassocks and crept down the aisle as quietly as I
could. Two young girls were playing ‘Nearer My God To Thee’ on recorders by the altar. Half the pews were empty. A shining casket rested on a plinth with a single wreath of heather. I
found a space beside an old man in a faded suit adorned with medals. He nodded at me soberly, and I shared my hymnal with him when it came time to sing. After Henry’s widow read out a poem by
Yeats, the old man offered me his handkerchief, but we both sat through the prayers unmoved.

Four strong lads carried the coffin down the aisle to the graveyard, where a fresh cleft in the ground was waiting to receive it, just beyond the hedgerows. People arced around it with the
breeze whipping their hair. I clustered with the mourners, hanging back. And when the Reverend gave his words of committal and the formalities were done, I threw a fist of soil into the grave and
whispered thank you to a box of wood, wondering what Henry might have thought about it all.

Walking back, I saw his widow linking arms with a man I recognised from art school: a thickset fellow named Kerr whom Henry used to tease for painting cats in every mural, regardless of its
subject matter (‘Did you never think to ask yourself, Kerr,’ he once said in our weekly crit, ‘whether those wee calicos have any business at a crucifixion?’). Kerr escorted
Mrs Holden to one of the black cars near the church gates before I got a chance to introduce myself. Later, in the vestibule, he came to speak with me as I was waiting to sign the condolence book.
We smiled at the remembrance of the calicos, and chatted for a while about my new life in London. He seemed only half-interested in my career as a painter but was extremely curious to know how word
of the funeral had reached me. ‘Big news, is it, down there?’ he said, smirking. This led us into reminiscing about Henry and his feelings about London—he used to say that it was
a city ‘without compassion for the individual’ but encouraged us to experience it if we were serious about becoming artists. ‘Aye, you don’t forget a fella like him,’
Kerr said, with an air of finality. ‘He gave us a job at the School after. Life-modelling. Ha! I was skint at the time, so I couldn’t say no. Haven’t really painted much since
those days.’ Kerr had inherited his father’s hardware shop in Bishopbriggs and now ran it with his sister. I told him that sounded like a very nice life, and he said, ‘Pssh.
It’s about ten different kinds of hell rolled into one. But it’s a living.’ He offered me a lift to the pub for the wake, and I accepted. ‘Did you sign that yet?’ he
asked, pointing to the condolence book. ‘I never know what to write. Maybe you can think of something for us.’