Invisible River

by Helena McEwen

  ‘That’s ’cos of the bump,’ he says, pointing to his black eyes. ‘I haven’t been in a fight or anything,’ he says.

  ‘No,’ says Cecile, shaking her head, then nodding so he knows she wouldn’t have thought it.

  We get out the lift and walk along a violet corridor past collages made with real flowers, and through double doors with oval windows, and ask another nurse at another desk, who tells us to wash our hands, please, and go along the corridor and turn left. No one has told us yet if Rob is all right, but when we walk along the corridor and turn left, the lilac curtains of the end cubicle are drawn back and there is Rob sitting up in bed, with Mick leaning close to her, both looking at a bundle with a furry black head.

  ‘Oh my God, she’s had it!’ squeals Bianca, running along the corridor. ‘Oh, we should have brought you flowers!’ she says.

  Rob looks up, and down again as if she can’t bear to look away.

  ‘Hello, you lot!’ she murmurs, her eyes glued to her baby.

  We gather round him and admire his little pink fingers and tiny ears. Rob looks down on him with a gentleness I’ve never seen before, and I lean over to look into his blinking mystified eyes, and smell his sweet baby fragrance. His presence has a stillness that fills the room and the corridor, so we fall into a quietness and just watch his ancient newborn face move slowly through emotions and then fall asleep. We look at each other. ‘He’s fallen asleep,’ we whisper, while Rob and Mick continue to gaze.

  ‘I hope you’ll be well in time for my birthday,’ says Bianca, breaking the spell.

  ‘Well?’ says Rob. ‘I’m not ill!’

  ‘Up and about, I mean,’ says Bianca. ‘We could have been twins,’ she says into the baby’s ear.

  ‘Of course I will,’ says Rob, looking up for a brief second.

  ‘Good! I want to go to tea at the Ritz!’

  ‘Trust you!’ says Rob.

  ‘You can bring Mick,’ says Bianca.

  ‘Thanks,’ says Mick, smiling. ‘I’ll carry the baby.’

  ‘No, you won’t,’ says Rob.

  ‘Zeb’ll be back then,’ says Mick.

  ‘I will invite him too,’ says Bianca.

  ‘Don’t you want to be alone with a horde of women?’ says Rob, looking up at Mick.

  The rhythm of my heart has changed pace.

  ‘Is he back soon?’ I ask.

  ‘He’ll probably be in college next week,’ says Mick, gently rubbing the fluffy head of his son.

  I look at the floor, then the lilac curtain. I want to find a place to look so I can repeat the words and still breathe. Next week! Zeb will be back next week!

  Chapter 13

  Every day I come in, and look through the window in the door of the mezzanine studio, expecting to see Zeb, but he isn’t there.

  Today is Friday and I rush up the stairs and look through the window in the door. But the studio is empty and dusty and I walk up the stairs, disappointed.

  If Zeb isn’t back by the degree show I won’t see him till the autumn. By the time I’ve reached my floor, he might not come back at all.

  The studio has become spacious without Rob and the canvases I have stretched and sized for the new pictures are lined up round the wall. I have mixed the primer from titanium pigment and rabbit-skin glue, and as I kneel down and begin to prime the surface in layers, I look into the white with Zebedee on my mind.

  But when I tape the prints to the wall, and draw them out in charcoal on the canvas, and flick off the dust with a rag so only the line remains faintly visible, when I begin to imagine them in colour, and which colour, and what tone, his dark eyes begin to fade, and the white surface shows me other pictures.

  At break time Cecile comes through the door.

  ‘Oh, I like these new pictures, Evie!’ she says.

  ‘Well, they’re only ideas so far.’

  ‘I can see them as paintings. They’re like London and dreams mixed together.’

  ‘I don’t know what they are, but I’m enjoying it, Ces!’

  ‘About time!’ she says.

  I laugh. ‘I know.’

  ‘Shame I have to pack them up so soon, before they’ve even been painted,’ I say as we walk up the stairs.

  ‘You know we can paint in the annexe over the summer?’

  ‘Can we?’

  ‘Yes, as soon as the degree show goes up; in the studios above the ballet school.’

  ‘Are you going to?’ I say.

  ‘Definitely. I used to go to that ballet school,’ says Cecile, looking wistful, as we reach the abstract floor, and I imagine Cecile as a little girl in a tutu doing a plié, with her red hair tied in a bun.

  The abstract studios are hot in the sunlight, and Bianca is sitting in the corner, wearing a hat she has made out of newspaper.

  ‘Bianca, you can make a paper hat look elegant!’ says Cecile.

  The windows are open and the day is still.

  Cecile takes the coffee pot out the door to fill it with water.

  ‘Still no sign of him?’ says Bianca.

  ‘No,’ I say, collapsing on to the chaise longue. ‘He’s probably decided to stay.’

  And I think of Zeb all brown with a Spanish girlfriend.

  ‘Oh, he’ll be back,’ says Bianca.

  ‘Who you talking about, Zeb?’ says Cecile, coming through the door.

  Bianca nods.

  ‘He’s back! But they’ve put him in the sculpture yard because of the explosions!’

  ‘He’s back?’ I say, standing up suddenly.

  ‘What explosions?’ says Bianca.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know, stuff like fireworks, coloured smoke, you know him. It’s a new dimension to his work. I only spoke to him for a minute when he came through our studio with all his stuff.’

  ‘A new dimension?’

  ‘He’ll have all eleven soon,’ I say, aware of the blood rushing in my veins.

  ‘Well, we can take him some coffee,’ says Bianca.

  I swallow and look out the window and suddenly don’t know what to do with my hands.

  ‘Yes, let’s,’ I say.

  So after we have brewed our own pot we brew another for Zeb and take it down in the lift along with the sugar while I struggle with my heart rate, trying to calm myself, because he didn’t write back to my postcard and he made the matchbox of birds ages ago, and anyway that was because he knew about dad. He didn’t come and find me, but then I was in late. Anyway, he’s bound to have found someone else by now.

  Bianca keeps glancing at me, while Cecile scrapes the paint off her fingers, unawares.

  Why do I feel like this? It’s just stupid, I mean what good does it do? I think to myself as we walk through the big studios on the ground floor and through the sculpture studios.

  On the other side of the sculpture yard, under the corrugated roof, I see his figure in the dark shed.

  He is kneeling on one knee, the other leg square, his arm on his thigh, leaning over something he is lighting. His body makes a beautiful shape. The sleeves of his dark blue shirt are rolled up and his black hair falls down his back, tied in a plait like an Apache. I don’t want him to look up.

  There is a smell of gunpowder.

  He kneels on both knees and sits back on his heels.

  POW! A blue flame explodes with pink sparks, and momentarily lights up the interior of the dark shed, followed by a plume of smoke.

  Bianca puts down the coffee pot and claps.

  He looks up.

  ‘Zebedee!’ she cries.

  ‘Hello, Bianca!’ he says, getting to his feet and putting out his arms to greet her.

  ‘Here! We have brought you coffee!’ she says and hugs him, and I suddenly feel absurd, holding the sugar.

  He looks at me. ‘Evie, how are you?’ He puts his arms round me and hugs and I feel the warmth of him on my skin. We pull apart quickly.

  ‘Have you seen the baby?’ says Bianca, pouring the coffee for him.

  ‘Not yet,’ he says. ‘I g
ot back yesterday.’

  His face is brown. He smiles and nods at Bianca as she hands him the coffee and I see his asymmetrical dimples.

  ‘His dad is happy, that’s for sure,’ he says, sipping the coffee.

  ‘Mick is over the moon!’ says Cecile.

  We sit down on the dirt floor of the shed and talk about Barcelona and Miró and the Gaudí mosaics.

  Bianca talks about the gold mosaics in Ravenna and I look at his face and his hawk nose and his black eyebrows and for a moment he looks round and catches my eye and I look down. When I look up he is still looking at me. It makes my heart turn over.

  Bianca asks him about the fireworks, and he tells us it’s just an experiment, and he wants to make sculptures out of sunlight that disappear when the sun goes in.

  We stand up and brush the wood chips and plaster dust off our clothes.

  ‘See you later,’ says Bianca. ‘Come to my birthday tea!’

  ‘I’m coming,’ says Zeb. ‘Mick already said.’

  We are standing in the shed and I can’t speak, I feel as if there is a force that pushes me away from him like a repelling magnet.

  Then just as I turn to leave, he catches me by the arm.

  ‘Evie,’ he says.

  ‘Yes,’ I say, suddenly breathless.

  ‘I’m so sorry about your dad.’

  I shake my head then nod. ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Thanks, Zeb, it’s OK now, and thanks, you know, for the beautiful tree,’ and again I pull away too quickly.

  ‘He likes you!’ says Bianca as we leave Cecile in her studio on the ground floor and take the lift up together.

  ‘But maybe it’s because he feels sorry about dad,’ I say.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Evie.’

  ‘He might just feel . . . I mean, I know he’s a good friend.’

  ‘Bollocks!’ says Bianca in a high-pitched voice. ‘I could ask him for you!’

  ‘Oh, don’t do that, Bianca, please don’t do that,’ I say as the doors open to my floor and I step out.

  But Bianca’s expression doesn’t convince me that she won’t, so I step back in before they close.

  ‘Don’t! Will you, Bianca, please?’

  ‘All right, don’t panic!’ she says, ‘but don’t be such a wimp.’ The doors open and she steps out.

  ‘Just grab him, Evie! What do you really want?’ she says as the doors close, and the lifts moves down again.

  I want to look into his eyes, I want to break through this awkwardness, I want to hug him and kiss him and feel his heart beating, I think to myself, and find I’ve missed my floor.

  Chapter 14

  ‘No, it’s because your baby is wrapped in a tablecloth, and they thought you were a gypsy!’ says Bianca as we walk up Piccadilly.

  ‘It’s not a tablecloth! It’s from Morocco,’ says Rob.

  ‘Well, it might have been because of my gym shoes,’ says Cecile.

  ‘Or the paint on your trousers! It doesn’t really help that you’re wearing them under a dress!’ says Rob.

  ‘They would have let the boys in,’ I say. Mick and Zeb are walking on ahead.

  ‘That’s because the doorman fancied Zeb,’ says Bianca.

  ‘Well, he certainly didn’t fancy us!’

  ‘He couldn’t keep his eyes off him!’

  He’s not the only one, I think to myself, as I look down at the pavement, or up at the tall buildings of Piccadilly, trying not to look at Zeb all the time; but I can always see where he is, like a blue light in the corner of my eye.

  ‘We’ve all got paint on our clothes somewhere!’ says Cecile, and Bianca looks round at herself to see if it’s true.

  ‘You could have managed it, Bianca, you look like you’ve stepped out of some bohemian version of Vogue,’ says Rob.

  Cecile comes up beside me and says in a low voice, ‘I do actually think it was Rob’s Doc Martens with socks and a skirt.’

  I start laughing. But whatever the reason they wouldn’t let us in to have Bianca’s birthday tea at the Ritz.

  ‘Oh poor Bianca!’ I say, walking up beside her and putting my arm in hers. ‘We’ll get dressed up and come back another day.’

  ‘There would be no point,’ she shrugs. ‘Anyway, the cakes are better at Patisserie Valerie.’

  Zeb and Mick have stopped on the pavement and are pointing at the RA.

  ‘What?’ Bianca calls out.

  Mick is looking at his watch.

  ‘D’you want tea at teatime, Bianca, or shall we treat you to Picasso on the way?’

  She lifts her hands up. ‘I am in the hands of the gods!’

  ‘Good!’ says Mick, lifting up his hands and Zeb’s too. ‘They’re good hands!’

  When we walk through the archway some of the RA students are outside, painting. Mick knows two of them and we talk to them in the sunlight.

  ‘Why don’t you take our passes,’ says the girl with a long plait, who is painting a tree. ‘If you’re going to see the Picasso, you might as well.’

  ‘But don’t they know you?’ says Bianca.

  ‘They don’t know us at the ticket desk. As long as you look like painting students.’

  ‘Sometimes it helps to have paint on your clothes,’ says Cecile as we walk into the exhibition for free. ‘We’re like the band of raggle taggle gypsies-oh,’ she says, as we walk behind Rob with the baby in a bundle, Zeb and Mick, and Bianca talking to everyone in a loud voice.

  In the first room Picasso looks at us through close-together eyes from a gentle boyish face, wearing a white shirt, and painting his own portrait with black and white and Indian red on his palette.

  ‘I’d quite like to try that,’ says Cecile, ‘paint with those three colours.’

  We walk around and stand in front of the pictures.

  The picture of his studio is filled with shapes, turning the painting into a room with far-away places in it.

  ‘He’s brave, isn’t he? Black and white and all the colours,’ says Rob, pointing to the picture.

  ‘Then all the shapes and stripes,’ says Cecile. ‘Sometimes it’s all curves.’

  ‘I think he’s curvy, really,’ says Rob, moving along to look at a woman whose blue profile kisses her own face with gentle violet lips. ‘He’s just playing with the squares.’

  ‘He’s playing with everything!’ says Zeb.

  A blue woman reclines with her legs stretched vertically on a red and white cloth. It looks like Cecile in the steam room.

  ‘Wish I’d seen this before we went to the Turkish baths,’ I say. ‘I’d’ve painted you blue, Ces.’

  Cecile is busy in her sketchbook, copying a figure in a red coat who has a pattern for a face and holds a blue feather in a feathery hand.

  ‘God, everyone starts looking like a Picasso painting!’ whispers Cecile, glancing at a man near us, with big eyes and long stubble and black eyebrows that meet in the middle.

  ‘Here’s someone who knows how to copy the “old masters”,’ says Bianca, collecting Cecile and me by the elbow, one on each side, and steering us into the next room to look at his copy of Velazquez’s Infanta in her square dress. In the foreground the outline of a figure steps out of the sunlight.

  ‘What would Karl say if we had a go at copying them like that? Bet he doesn’t measure!’

  Cecile laughs. ‘You should try it, Bianca!’

  ‘He’s called Lump, you know,’ says Bianca.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Picasso’s dog!’ says Bianca, pointing at the long white dog in the picture, ‘called Lump!’

  Suddenly Bianca draws her breath in. ‘Oh my God, no!’

  ‘What?’ we say together, looking round.

  ‘Not in the gallery!’ says Bianca, closing her eyes.

  Rob has sat down on the black square bench, and opened her shirt and begun feeding the baby, who sucks loudly and makes little squeaking sounds.

  ‘She could at least have chosen the room with the naked women in it!’

  Cecile and I laugh. ‘Come
on, Bianca!’ says Cecile.

  ‘Next thing it will be puking!’ says Bianca, walking away into the other room, saying, ‘No! I really can’t bear it!’

  The guard looks confused, and pretends not to notice, and eventually moves into the other room, too.

  Cecile shrugs and we follow them.

  Zeb and Mick are standing together, looking at a painting.

  Between them I see a skull and a black lamp, and sea urchins on a white plate in diagonals of light, but I can’t help looking at the figure in blue who stands with his weight on one leg, and his hands in his pockets, with a long black plait falling between his shoulder blades.

  Rob comes in, doing up her shirt. Mick turns round. ‘I’ll take him now, love,’ and Rob hands him the bundle tied in the red and white shawl, and he holds him easily against his shoulder with one big hand.

  ‘Come on,’ says Cecile, putting her hand in mine and drawing me through the doors. ‘Look! It’s the picnic!’

  Bianca is standing in front of the picture of a blue lake in a green forest. Clothed and naked people sit among the trees having a picnic.

  ‘He’s copied Manet!’ says Cecile.

  ‘And did you know Manet copied Raphael?’ says Bianca.

  ‘Oh well, that’s the way to do it!’ says Cecile, taking out her sketchbook to copy Picasso.

  ‘Let’s go on a picnic!’ says Zeb, coming behind us, and looking at the picture between me and Bianca.

  ‘Yes, with Evie and me!’ says Bianca, pointing to the naked woman and the other bathing.

  Zeb smiles and blushes slightly, and we look at each other for a second and the light from his eyes seems to jump into mine, and dances there when I look back at the painting.

  ‘Come here!’ says Cecile, holding my arm. ‘I want to show you The Rape of the Sabines.’

  ‘Do you have to?’

  Bianca is laughing at the funny little man who is lying with his feet in the air.

  ‘Isn’t it wild?’ Cecile says, taking out her sketchbook and frantically drawing the women and their mounted captors.

  Bianca turns to the picture of a woman who falls backwards off a horse.

  ‘Look! You can see its arsehole and its bollocks!’ she says, pointing at the horse.