The Ecliptic (37 page)

‘In
what
way, Jim?’

‘Christ. This is ridiculous. This is why I prefer painting to talking.’ He went and dumped himself into the rocking chair. ‘I suppose I’m trying to say you’re the
only woman I’ve ever really cared for. Not because of how you look, which God knows is fine enough to stun any idiot with two working eyes in his head, but because of what you are, how you
think. Actually, it’s how you paint. That’s what makes you who you are.’

‘Then you might as well go back to France,’ I said, ‘because I don’t paint the way you think I do. Not any more.’

He squinted at me, arms folded. ‘Two solo shows at the Roxborough—that’s what I heard. Can’t be bad.’

‘Now you’re sounding like Max.’ I looked away. ‘Who told you that, anyway? About the shows?’

‘Henry. He showed me the press clippings.’

‘Did you see any pictures?’

‘A few. But they were only from the newspaper. Black-and-white.’

I pushed my thumb into the scabbing wounds of my knuckles. ‘And what did you think?’ The pain was sharp but not unbearable.

‘Like I said, the images weren’t the best . . .’ Jim gave the slightest cough.

‘First impressions will do.’

‘All right.’ He inhaled deeply, casting his eyes to the floor. It seemed that he was reluctant to voice the thought, but then he just let it escape: ‘
Vaurien,
’
he said. ‘A long way from your best.’

And my heart lost its rhythm for the tiniest moment. I felt tears brimming. ‘Don’t you ever disappear on me again, Jim Culvers,’ I said. ‘You’re the only one
who’s ever seen the difference.’

He did not take my head against his chest to try and console me. He did not even tell me he was sorry. Instead, he rose from the chair and started unscrewing the lid on an empty jar. And he
said, ‘I think the problem is I agitated them a bit too much. They need to bruise in the brine but not bleed out. Have you ever made pigments this way? It’s fussy work but the paint
really sings if you do it right. I could use some help perfecting it. You were always better at this kind of stuff than I was.’

‘Show me,’ I said, and I stood beside him.

It was later day, as the sun was dropping into the loch, that I walked down to the phone box in the village and telephoned my mother. She made me swear that I would travel up again to be with
her at Easter, and I promised I would write to her and call on Christmas morning.

At first, we slept in separate rooms. It was almost like things used to be. Jim hauled in his single mattress and made a bed for me in the lounge beside the fireplace, saying he
was happy on the floor. There were not enough pillows or blankets to share, so he relinquished the ones he had and told me, ‘I’ll make do.’ He took down the heavy curtains from
the bedroom and sewed them together with twine to make a sleeping bag, used a rolled-up jumper to cushion his head, and woke up trying to hide the cricks in his neck. In the days, we painted. In
the evenings, we bathed and washed our clothes. I finished the novel I had brought and read it time and again by candlelight: the story of an unnamed girl whose thoughts only became more comforting
by familiarity. Before I went to sleep, I leafed through
National Geographic
and savoured the pictures and articles.

Jim had no doubts as to the virtue of his work. He had a very set regimen. Each morning, he went out with his tattered picnic basket to forage plants—sometimes venturing no further than
the beanstalk weeds in the back garden or the fringes of the surrounding trees, other times going much further, beyond the scree of the hills to their summits, or right across to the other side of
the loch. He could be gone for an hour; he could be gone for five. It depended on his needs and what was out there to be found. No matter what, he always came back with a full basket of pickings:
local flora he did not know the botanical terms for, and gave what I assumed were pet-names of his own. Skullcap. Redshank. Horsemint. Muck-button. The only plants that ever caught his eye were
those with pinkish flowers or stems. Because I could not bear for him to go anywhere without me in those first few weeks, I accompanied him on all of his ‘scouting missions’, as he
liked to call them. But I soon grew tired of hunting around in ditches and thickets, and began to suspect that Jim would prefer to do his scouting alone. One morning, as we were heading back to the
cottage through the neighbouring firs, he said to me, ‘You really don’t have to come with me any more—I can tell you hate it.’

‘It’s nature,’ I said. ‘I don’t hate it.’

‘But you could do without the pissing rain and cold.’

I shrugged. ‘You might run off on me again.’

‘I’ve got a shilling to my name. It’d get me into Balloch, but then I reckon I’d be stuck. I’m too old to be scrubbing pots again for bus fare.’

Every second day, he started a new painting. His process was fixed but unusual: first, he coated all of his boards with a black primer then underpainted thickly with Cremnitz White, a very stiff
material that he could spread across the board like stucco. ‘My only extravagance,’ he told me. ‘You can use it if you want, but sparingly—I find it helps to think of it as
diamond paste.’ He would then add definition to the background in regular tube-oils. Next, he would dip a fat round brush into a batch of his homemade pigment (it was thin like syrup) and,
holding it firmly in his left hand, he would thump his right fist hard against the base of the brush, spiking beads of paint against the board to form the Judas blossoms. They would hold there
fuzzily on the surface, pink and dazzling, and he would spend the next few hours fine-detailing them with a very slim sable.

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.