The Ecliptic (38 page)

Jim put a hand on the small of my back and held it there. ‘I just never imagined you needing that kind of help. You always seemed to pour everything into your work. It was like you had
another life up there in that attic—your own little sanctuary.’ His thumb was rubbing now at the cotton of my blouse. It made my pulse accelerate. ‘What’s he like, this
shrink of yours, anyway? You trust him?’

I nodded. ‘He’s been good to me.’

‘I suppose all those qualifications have to count for something.’ Jim paused. I could almost feel his roving eyes upon me. ‘You should probably do what he says, then.
Don’t take medical advice from me. I never even got my Leaving Certificate.’

‘Me neither,’ I said.

‘See. We’re the same, you and me.’

‘
Jim
.’

‘What? What did I say?’ But I was not dissenting from his words, only his fingers: they had loosened the blouse from my skirt and were walking up my bare spine. His eyes were
tightened, searching. He turned me slowly, brushed my clavicle with his knuckle.

I had to arch up on my tiptoes just to kiss him. His face was coarse with stubble, but his lips had a pleasing gentleness.

‘There,’ he said. ‘Now we can both stop imagining it.’

For the very first time, we slept in the same bed. Beside the fire on the single mattress. Huddled together like stowaways. His hands seemed to know where to go. They knew me in the way that
Wilfred Searle’s had not even tried to. I wanted to be kept inside Jim’s skinny arms forever, wanted to hold my lips against the scuffed skin of his neck and breathe it every morning as
I woke up, wanted to feel him lift and hook the trailing hair behind my ear and stroke it, nimbly and repeatedly, just as he would approach the painting of a Judas blossom. But there was no pattern
or rhyme to our being together. There were nights when he lay restless and went off to be alone, and nights when he tempted me from sleep with kisses on the cheek and climbed in, undressing me,
only to steal away again before the daylight broke.

We lived this way for months, as intermittent partners, lovers, individuals. We were bonded in our isolation and invested in each other’s purpose. Occasionally, we quarrelled. We spent
hours—full days sometimes—apart, in protest. And neither one of us could work without listening for the noises of the other, so came to recognise the creaks and thuds and hums of one
another’s practice the way that a piano-tuner can discern a slackened string from corridors away. But we shared the few rooms of that tumbledown cottage as happily as any two people could.
Our connection felt immutable.

Jim even helped me clear the junk from the back room, and we found a trove of objects that we could sell: Henry’s old fishing gear and tackle, a roll of boat upholstery fabric, a box of
earthenware crockery, and five reels of soldering wire. It was agreed that Jim should take them to the weekend market in Balloch. ‘Henry would be telling us to flog the bleedin’ lot if
it keeps us fed and watered,’ Jim said. ‘You should hang on to that cloth for painting, though. It’s proper marine canvas.’ He left that Saturday with everything loaded on
his body like a pack-mule and came back with a crate of groceries, including flour and cooking chocolate. ‘For the celebration cake,’ he said, pecking my forehead.

I started thinking again about my mural, and tentatively trialled a new white pigment made from thistles Jim discarded; but these experiments came to nothing. Mostly, I worked on sketches of
myself: the grimy cottage windows reflected my face strangely, ruffled and distorted it. I found this spectacle curious enough to occupy me. The drawings came out less like studies of myself than
Pathé newsreel stills of strangers. And, through all of this, Jim remained committed to his Judas blossom paintings. They grew steadily more arresting. It was difficult to glean the meaning
of them when each piece was seen in isolation, but soon the lounge grew cluttered with his boards—each scattering of pink blossoms different from the last, the colours in them shifting,
layers deepening—and I could feel the strength of the work as a collection. I was proud to have made a contribution to it, however incidental.

But then, one morning, I got up to find Jim already gone. The coals were pallid in the hearth. A pot of tea was stewing on the kitchen table, still warm. Outside, a gauzy rain was teeming. I lit
the fire and made a pan of porridge, knowing he would come home cold and hungry, and sat by the fireplace eating most of it until he returned. When he stepped in through the back door, he was
drenched and broody. His basket was very short of pickings. He went straight into the bathroom to towel off, saying nothing. His quietness seemed very determined, so I asked him what was wrong.
‘Just counting all the things I’ve got to do today,’ he said. Then, later, when he went to light the stove under the kettle after lunch, he found the matchbox empty and it left
him quietly incensed. For most of the day, I could hear him huffing and sighing from the back room, where I had begun inking some of my sketches (a mere gesture to convince him I was working).
Around three, he called me into the lounge. ‘Ellie, get in here.’ His voice grew increasingly desperate. ‘Ellie—I need you!’ I expected to find him mullering another
batch of pigment. In fact, he was over by the window with several of his paintings laid across the floor on bedsheets. His easel and his workbenches were pushed against the walls. He was stooping
over the paintings with a camera, twisting at the aperture. ‘How the heck do you work the light gauge on this thing?’ he said. ‘I’ve got two rolls of film and I don’t
want to waste them.’

‘Where’d you get that from?’ I asked.

He handed me the camera—shoved it at me. ‘It’s the same one I’ve always had. I’m not sure the light is good enough. Might have to wait until the morning.’

I peered through the viewfinder, focused the shot. The gauge was unresponsive. ‘I think it needs a new battery,’ I told him. ‘What’s your film speed?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘You’ve got it on 400.’

‘Sounds about right.’

‘Well, I can try to set the f-stop where I think it should be, but I’m no good without a light meter. I can’t promise it’ll be perfect.’

‘You might as well just do it,’ he said. ‘Set it up however you think’s best. I don’t know where I’d get a battery from round here, and I don’t want to
waste time.’

‘What are the photos for, anyway?’ I asked.

‘Portability,’ he said.

In the viewfinder, his paintings were much less vivid. ‘I don’t get it.’

‘You don’t have to. Here—give it back. I can manage the rest.’

I had not even clicked the shutter yet. ‘It’s difficult to get the whole thing in the frame. You’ll need to stand up on a table.’ And then his meaning finally landed.
‘Are you taking these to show someone?’

His cheek stayed pressed to the camera. ‘You’re right—I need to get up much higher.’ He slid one of the workbenches closer to the paintings and leapt onto it, the legs
buckling slightly under his weight. ‘Better,’ he said, focusing. ‘A tripod would be nice, but you can’t have it all.’ He clicked, and loaded the next frame, his thumb
jabbing hard at the lever.

Jim had deflected so much attention onto
my
plans and
my
lack of purpose in the past few months that I had not paused to consider where his own ambitions were steering him. The
daily accretion of Judas blossom paintings had been his priority for so long that I assumed he would go on forever.
Until I die—
they were his words.
Until I die.
The thought
that he might suddenly stop making them had not once entered my mind. ‘What are you planning to do with these, Jim? I don’t see what the rush is.’

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.