“In many ways, the process is an investigation,” Eve said, as she teased out the delicate spurs of the petals with her finest rigger brush. “If I want to learn about something, I paint it.”
She noticed Josette was carefully excluding Luka from the film, sweeping past the dissection table, filming every corner of the room except his. It was so childish. She was almost a decade older than Luka yet he had the edge on maturity. Josette may have given up making her own art, but she retained the cliché diva temperament. For almost ten years, Eve had lived with the tidal surges of her assistant’s moods but this pettiness was exasperating; if it weren’t for her competence and loyalty, Josette would have been banished from the studio long ago.
“What’s this one again?” Luka called out.
Josette sighed, a little exhalation of contempt.
Luka ignored her, and so did Eve.
“Aquilegia,” Eve said. “From the Latin for eagle—the petals are said to look like an eagle’s claw. It’s also called columbine.”
“Like the massacre?”
She hadn’t thought of that connection.
“From Columbus—the dove,” she said.
“So, two birds? One predatory and one peaceful?”
“If you like. The folk name is grandmother’s bonnet.”
“Bonnets?” He held up a flower and squinted at it. “Oh, yeah! I see it now.”
“A pretty wicked grandmother,” she said.
He laughed and she caught a narrow-eyed look of contempt pass between Glynn and Josette.
“How poisonous is it?” Luka asked.
“Well, not as lethal as some.” Determined not to be oppressed by Josette’s mood, Eve picked up the herbal and read out: “ ‘Gastroenteritis, palpitations…used to induce miscarriages…’ Not pleasant, but that manganese-blue pigment we’re about to mix is actually more toxic.”
The pellucid powder used by generations of artists to render a summer sky was now deemed so harmful to the environment, and so toxic to humans, that its manufacture had been banned. Glynn and Josette, displaying the resourcefulness that made them indispensable, managed to track down rare illicit stocks. It was helpful to be reminded that those two still had their uses.
“This is getting really interesting,” said Luka, looking over at the tin of powdered pigment with a new respect.
Josette picked up the camera again and brushed past him, blocking Eve’s view of him. The lens swept the studio, taking in everything except the boy.
14
It’s started to rain again. She ducks into a doorway in Frith Street—a boutique hotel which two hundred years ago, in its former life as a Soho boarding house, accommodated itinerant painter and maverick writer William Hazlitt, one of Florian’s heroes. Roused to a fury by some slight, or imagined slight, Florian used to quote Hazlitt on the pleasures of hating: “we throw aside the flimsy veil of humanity…the greatest possible good of each individual consists in doing all the mischief he can to his neighbour.”
In hatred, as in love and portraiture, Florian was a master, and his most potent store of contempt was reserved for those who had been closest to him: erstwhile friends like Lucian Freud (too successful for Florian’s liking); Florian’s former dealer (who committed the crime of insisting on his full commission); and Eve herself, the lover who got away.
She searches in her bag for her umbrella as two tourists—Americans, husband and wife, presumably—emerge from the hotel in waterproofs to hail a cab.
“London rain, eh?” says the man to Eve, jovially.
“Yes!” Eve replies with a smile strained by a sense of her own bad faith.
If she had the energy she would have pointed out that no, actually, London has lower precipitation than Paris or New York or even Rome. But reputation is a tricky commodity, another flimsy veil, one that conceals the wearer then consumes her. Let them indulge their comforting cliché of rainy London.
Keen to avoid the crowds, she finds herself in Manette Street, behind the site of the old Foyles bookshop, where some of her more radical art college contemporaries used to go on book-stealing expeditions. This was shoplifting as a political act, they would say. Eve would smile and nod—more bad faith—and make her excuses. As a young student, she was intent on shaking off her suburban roots but couldn’t make the leap into larceny and, once more, she hated herself for her bourgeois timidity.
Where were they now, the dashing champions of the revolution? Mara kept in touch with some of them—the most high-profile survivors were gearing up for retirement from senior posts in television, journalism, local government and the law, and, no doubt, they’d ceased to view shoplifting as a brave blow against the iniquities of monopoly capitalism.
Eve always had difficulty reading people and was bewildered by the gulf between expressed intention and action. Kristof was more clear-sighted. Even virtuous Mara could sniff out cant from a hundred paces. And Luka? He’d scanned and parsed Eve in an instant. For her, though, plants have always been a better bet. Plants and paints.
* * *
—
She had been working so intensely that she failed to see the warning signs. In bed, after a half-hearted attempt at lovemaking, which she put down to the heat and exhaustion, Luka rolled over and confessed.
“No, no. It’s not the work. It’s not you. It’s Josette. She’s been trying to sabotage me. Right from the start.”
“Don’t worry about her,” Eve said, stroking his face. “She can be tricky.”
“Tricky? She’s a sociopath.”
“Don’t exaggerate. She’s a good worker. Loyal, too.”
“Loyal to herself.”
He brushed Eve’s hand away.
“What exactly has she done to you?” she asked. His petulance was beginning to grate. “Come on, Luka. Tell me.”
He rolled away from her.
“What’s going on?” she asked.
“It’s nothing I can’t handle.”
“Come on,” she coaxed. “Out with it.”
He turned onto his back and stared up at the ceiling, hands behind his head.
“She’s so up herself. Mixed race and gay—she’s got everything going for her, hasn’t she?”
His sudden fierceness threw Eve. She was unsure how to respond.
“Well,” she said finally, “you don’t have to like her to work with her. I don’t come to the studio to make friends. I could have plenty of those at home, if I wanted.”
“Isn’t this your home?” He looked so vulnerable.
“Yes, of course it is. Here, with you, feels like home,” she said gently. “But outside, in the studio—it’s a place of work. Egos shouldn’t come into it.”
He frowned again.
“Are you saying I’m egotistical?”
“No! We’re talking about Josette. She’s a big personality. She’s been with me a long time. She’s fiercely loyal and she’s jealous of you. Don’t let it get to you. You’re working so well.”
“You really think so?”
That touching insecurity.
“You’re a marvellous addition,” Eve said.
He pulled her towards him and they kissed. The moment for passion had passed but there was sensual pleasure in companionship, too.
As they drifted towards sleep, her head resting on his chest, he started up again.
“But Josette. She’s all ego. Her filming’s useless too. So boring. Yet she won’t let me near the camera. It’s all about her. I don’t trust her and you shouldn’t either.”
“Shh…Let’s get some sleep now?” There was more impatience in her voice than she intended.
He didn’t let up. “I see it. You don’t.” He threw off the duvet and sat up. “I’ve heard her whispering with Glynn, mocking you, slagging off your work, I’ve seen her rolling her eyes at you,
nudging Glynn, behind your back. You should hear what she says about you. She likes her status in the studio but doesn’t value you or your art. She resents what we have, you and me, and she’s got it in for me.”
They were both fully awake now. Eve sat staring into the shadows of the darkened room. News of this betrayal was humiliating, and what made it more wounding—the poison on the arrow tip—was that her lover should have witnessed it.
Yet she felt weary at the thought of having it out with Josette. They were in the middle of a complex project. It would be disastrous for the work. Eve had to think this through. Be strategic.
“Look. I’ll take her aside,” she said. “Tell her to go easy on you. To calm down.”
“And if she doesn’t?”
“She will.”
“Well,” he said, clenching his fists, “if she doesn’t, I’m not sure I can continue to work here.”
Eve reached over and stroked his arm. “Trust me. We’ll sort it out. Everything will be fine. Sleep now.”
* * *
—
She leaves Charing Cross Road and turns into quieter Denmark Street, the Tin Pan Alley of the sixties and seventies where boyfriends with musical pretensions would hang out in guitar shops housed in eighteenth-century buildings and where the Sex Pistols, who might have been improved by a few pretensions, would rehearse their shambolic sets under the guidance of Malcolm, their wily Svengali. The street has preserved its rackety charm despite the wide-scale demolition and construction going on around it to make way for the new rail service. Kristof talked approvingly of the plans for “mixed-use development” at St. Giles junction and praised the buildings’ “innovative retractable facades.” She concedes it has to be an improvement on the St. Giles of the eighteenth century, notorious as inspiration for Hogarth’s Gin Lane engravings, his extended study of the evils of poverty and addiction. But as far as Eve is concerned these new luridly coloured blocks—clad in mustard yellow, phlegm green and brick-red grids—are so hideous that they make nearby Centrepoint look like Sanssouci.
She can hear Kristof’s chiding: “The trouble with you, Eve, is you’re a traditionalist masquerading as a rebel.”
Ah, if that were her only trouble…
* * *
—
Luka had seen Josette’s treachery first and Eve reproached herself for being so narrow in her focus that she’d missed it completely. This omission prompted a serious reckoning; for an artist, whose most important sense was sight, she was guilty of a fatal myopia. Her eye had been fixed to microscope and magnifying glass for too long and she failed to look up. Engrossed in cellular detail of petal and stamen she didn’t notice that the flower was withering and beyond it the entire garden had become a wasteland. So it was with the studio. Her marriage too. With most of her relationships, in fact.
Early that morning, two hours before the others were due to arrive, she and Luka began work. She climbed the ladder to start on the blue canvas while he walked towards the dissection tray.
“Eve!”
His urgent shout startled her.
“What is it?” She was already descending the ladder and hurrying towards him.
“Look!”
He was pointing at the nightshade cabinet—the herbarium that he’d finished and sealed so efficiently yesterday. The floor beneath it was glistening with a viscous fluid which was visibly dripping from the tank. Yesterday’s translucent box of floating berries, flowers and leaves was a wrecked stew of shrivelled vegetation.
She was furious with Luka. But most of all she was furious with herself. Another failure of perception. Her vision was so foolishly skewed by desire that she trusted this inexperienced, overconfident boy. He looked as if he knew what he was doing. Blinded by intimacy, she encouraged him.
But now, he was pointing again, at the far corner of the display case, the site of the leak. This wasn’t an inexpertly sealed seam. It was gaping, damaged: prised open by the screwdriver that lay on the display case where Josette dropped it yesterday, after making such a performance of inspecting Luka’s work.
When Josette finally arrived, bursting through the door, a patchouli-scented blur of pink hair and bright drapery, carrying a box of pastries for morning coffee, laughing at some shared joke with Glynn, she made a show of shock and concern over the damaged case—“God, no! How did that happen?”—and feigned outrage at the suggestion that she was responsible.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“You tell me,” said Eve coldly.
Then Josette turned to Luka. “It must have been him.”
“That’s pathetic,” he said, shaking his head. “You fuck up my work, then try to pin the blame on me. We all know you’ve had it in for me right from the start.”
Glynn stepped forward to intervene.
“Look. This isn’t necessary. It must have been an accident. We can start again. If we work on this together, we’ll have it finished in a couple of hours.”
“Nice try,” said Luka. “Sticking up for your friend again?”
Eve knew she had to take control before the argument got out of hand.
“Glynn, this is wilful, criminal damage. We can’t just ‘start again.’ ”
Josette glared at Luka. “Too right.”
“That’s enough, Josette,” Eve said.
“Whatever happened,” Glynn continued, addressing Eve directly, “whatever’s been said or done in the heat of the moment, we can all agree one thing—we need to get back to work here. This is such an amazing project, the culmination of years of work together. We’re so lucky to be involved, Josette and me, and we want to be part of it and help you realise your vision.”
Eve was almost persuaded. It would be far easier to forget this, put it down to a fleeting display of temper, start again and move on. They’d been her team for so long, Glynn and Josette. But then Luka broke the silence.
“Oh yeah?” he said to Glynn. “That’s not what you said last week. I heard you—the two of you, sniggering over the canvas. What was it you called Eve? The Princess of Chintzes?”
Eve’s faced blazed and her loyal, long-standing assistants stood there, exposed and stricken, their silence an admission of guilt.
“We’d better go,” said Josette quietly. “Yes,” Eve said. “I think you’d better.”
Josette bustled out of the studio, a huffing caricature of indignation, as if she hadn’t been sacked, as if she’d quit. And Glynn, Josette’s faithful lapdog, walked out with her, throwing Luka a final look of frank hostility.
15
Eve and Luka adapted quickly to the new reality. She went back to work on the blue canvas, losing herself gratefully among the frilled sepals of aquilegia while Luka calmly restored the nightshade herbarium, filling it with fluid and fresh specimens and sealing it once more. He printed the aquilegia photographs and set them out on the table before moving on to continue Glynn’s work on the green ground for the next sequence. Green on green. Aromatic Artemisia absinthium—a neurotoxin, said to cause convulsions, renal failure and epilepsy. Also, in small quantities, an ingredient of the eponymous drink favoured by demi-mondaines and hipsters. She would use chromium oxide green with the cooler green of copper azomethine.
Luka ground and mixed the pigments, set up the cabinet for the next herbarium and filmed Eve at her work. Soon he had quietly and competently taken over all the roles once performed by a battalion of assistants. It made perfect sense. How had she put up with their chattering and bickering for so long? In those moments when she wasn’t fixed on her work, Eve looked up and marvelled at her young lover, his face grave with concentration, pretty and potent as an annunciating Gabriel, bringing nothing but good news. All she’d ever needed was Luka. They worked so well together and when he turned on the camera to film her at work, it seemed they were mining a deeper level of intimacy as he moved on from J
osette’s formulaic questions about process to a serious investigation of Eve’s wider vision and reflections on her life.
“In the end,” she told him, “it’s about the impulse to see, to really see, and to make others really see—beauty and atrophy, the dawn of life and its decay.”
Kristof, phoning from Singapore, was so puffed up by his own project, full of news about office politics, budgetary restraints and the latest from Wanda Wilson’s “people” on the Art Ranch project, that he expressed no curiosity about Eve’s work or her life. She had a mad urge to break into his monologue, tell him about Luka. Tell him everything.
“I’ve had a personnel change in the studio,” she started to say.
“Great! Must go. Sorry.”
He would be back next week. Her vertiginous confessional urge was replaced by cold unease. She looked over at Luka. He was assembling another herbarium cabinet, his strong arms, bare in rolled sleeves, beautiful as those of Caillebotte’s Paris workmen, the raboteurs, whom she and Theo had admired in the Musée d’Orsay so long ago. How could she replace this with that? It would be like stepping from a sun-dappled glade into a coffin, lying down and sealing the lid.
“Love you, darling,” Kristof said, before ending the call.
He might, more convincingly, have signed off: “Thank you for listening.”
As Eve began the green sequence, the pace increased. She and Luka would regularly work straight through until the early hours. This level of industry required stamina. She was less than halfway through the project and knew she mustn’t overextend herself.
Luka shadowed her faithfully, filming her at every step, and no task was too demanding or demeaning. Each day at noon he left the studio to buy their lunch and get essential supplies and there was none of the low-level grumbling or dragging feet she’d become used to from the other assistants. He took pleasure in the work. In her work.
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