The Other Side of the World

by Stephanie Bishop

  “Watching you at work makes me think I ought to write a book about painting, about the use of museums and galleries in novels, perhaps. Something like that,” says Henry. “Characters in galleries.”

  “Oh?” replies Charlotte, distracted.

  “Yes, James and George Eliot. Rome.” It is nice, this time together. There’s something new and quiet about it that he likes, that helps him think, the feeling of her concentration in the air. It seems infectious.

  Charlotte peers at him, makes a few sweeping gestures with her brush, then steps out from behind the canvas. “Yes, I suppose so. That could be interesting,” she says. He finds it hard to tell when she is listening and when she isn’t, whether she is open to conversation or not. “And now?” she asks. “Have you finished the chapter on Hardy?”

  Henry lets out a small groan. “I’m tired of it. I don’t know how to finish it. People walked out today, you know.”

  Charlotte is standing with her back against the wall, watching him talk. Watching, always watching. She looks down to her palette and mixes a shade of beige. She wants the texture of flesh, the illusion of candor. “What do you mean?”

  “The students. Some walked out of the lecture this morning. They slip out when they think I’m not looking, but I hear the door. Everyone hears the door.” It had been a horrid day. Out of nowhere he has started suffering memory lapses in the middle of his lectures, the last four ruined by this forgetfulness. Today he was determined to get it right; he memorized and repeated and memorized. He carried handwritten pages, and notes on little rectangles of ruled paper.

  When he stepped onto the stage he knew the lecture off by heart, all the twists and turns of argument, the unfolding of ideas like a shining, rising marble staircase. He took the first step up, reached the landing, moved higher. The faces were below him, bright-eyed, listening. He talked. They listened. He took another step, talked on, and when he looked up he could see the top; he could see where he was going, where he was to end up, the sun streaming down. For a moment he was distracted by the beauty, light overwhelmed him, and before he realized what was happening the steps had fallen away and he was left floating in the light of huge, confused, crazy ideas. Dust motes coasted on the air. He saw them rise slowly towards the closed window and thought of Lucie watching them float up and up on a sunbeam and trying to catch them in her dimpled little hands. “Mummy smells of strawberry,” she said as she banged her palms together, causing a spray of gold dust to fan out. “What is it?” Lucie asked. “What is the floating?”

  He didn’t know where he was supposed to go next. He stared at the fluorescent light, at the little black dots of dead flies caught in the white tube. He looked out into the rows of seats, at the young, wide-open faces, watching him, waiting. He opened his mouth, sucked in the cold air, then started again. Anywhere. Somewhere. He didn’t know. He kept going, head down, eyes on the brown linoleum, his shiny shoes pacing the floor, trying to find the small turn he had missed.

  Charlotte sighs. “Don’t say it,” Henry warns. “Don’t make excuses for them. It’s me. I forgot where I was up to and bungled the lot, not just a bit, the whole of it. It’s not coincidence. That’s how my thoughts are now, I don’t know why. It’s how the book is. Or whatever you want to call it. A complete mess.” He wants her to console him but she works away in silence, the brushstrokes scratching and wobbling the canvas. Charlotte mutters something to herself, then comes towards Henry, peers hard, and leaps back, ducking behind the painting. She glances at him, then back at the canvas, then glances away again.

  “Do you remember when we took Lucie to the National Gallery,” Henry asks, “and people stopped to stare at her like she was part of the exhibition?”

  “Yes,” says Charlotte, pausing and holding the brush in midair. “I remember just being so happy to be out of the house and looking at colors. You know, I haven’t done that since we’ve been here.”

  “What?” asks Henry.

  “Craved the sight of color. Like I used to, in winter, when it was all gray and just the little dots of primroses could send me into giddy bouts of joy.”

  “I remember the Constable room,” says Henry. “I keep thinking of Henry James sending his characters wandering off around the Constables. Of course that’s not where they were, not where he put them, but I can’t change the image in my mind. For some reason that’s where Isabel always is when she meets Osmond again, in London, looking at Constable’s clouds.”

  “We finally got to those rooms and then had to rush out because Lucie started screaming. We went there for those paintings. Then we never saw them. Maybe that’s why,” says Charlotte.

  She wipes her brush on her apron, the same one that she made scones in just that afternoon. Then she fusses about, looking for a tube of sienna. She is beginning work on his eyes. “Could you lift your chin half an inch or so? And left?” she asks.

  Henry fixes his vision on her. He thinks if he stares hard with wide, lifted eyes, he might channel some intensity into the painting. Over the past weeks he has begun to care about the future of this image. He wants it to succeed. He wants it to succeed while knowing the risks—that he might appear ugly or old or mean. But she seems happier now. She seems better than before. She is always happier when she works.

  “She told me she wanted to go home today,” Charlotte says.

  “Who?” replies Henry.

  “Lucie. She said, ‘I want to go home now.’ ”

  “What did you say?”

  “What do you think? I told her we were home, that this is home.”

  “And?”

  “She gave me this dreadful look—so fierce, so confused—then turned and ran out into the garden. It was horrible. She knew I’d lied.”

  “But you didn’t,” says Henry.

  “I feel like I did.”

  “I thought she would have forgotten.”

  “Me too. I was afraid she would, and now I almost wish she had.” Charlotte’s hair has come loose and long wisps fall across her eyes. She lifts the back of her hand to her forehead and pushes the hair away.

  “She’ll get used to it,” Henry reasons, looking to the floor. Paint is spattered across the floorboards and there are small tracks between the kitchen and easel from a blob of pigment stuck to the sole of Charlotte’s shoe.

  “Will she?” asks Charlotte.

  She works on in silence for another half hour or so, until she looks up and sees that Henry has nodded off in the chair. She puts down her brush and touches him gently on the face. He startles. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to.”

  “Never mind. You go to bed,” she says. “I’ll clean up and come in later.”

  She puts the paints away, washes the brushes, pushes the easel to one side, and then takes the kitchen scraps out to the compost. She shakes the plastic container, dislodging the wet globs of tea leaves and potato peel. The garden is lit up by the upstairs lights of the neighbors’ house. Charlotte has still not said hello, although she has heard them calling each other’s names: Delilah, Doris. Doris is the younger one. She can see her now, the shadowy outline of her body visible behind the lace curtains and thin blind. The woman sits on the edge of the bed in her nightie, the slope of fabric loose across her large breasts. She sits there very still, all alone, and after a few minutes reaches over and ­switches off the light. In the morning the blind will go up—although the lace curtain is always drawn—and she’ll be heard, downstairs, calling to the cat, the door open, her voice drifting through the trees, up and down the street. The sound of dry cat biscuits rattling on a tin plate, a fork tapping on the edge of a can.

  * * *

  A few days later there is a knock at the door. Henry is at work and the children are finally asleep after lunch. Charlotte has just set up the canvas and taken out her brushes when she hears the knock and opens the door to find Nicholas standing there, holding a box of apples. Charl
otte apologizes—she hasn’t visited as she promised, and realizes this just now. There had been the car trip home, the argument, and then the work on the painting.

  He waves her apology away. “Never you mind,” he says, holding out the box. “I just came by to bring you these. They’re from the garden, and one can only eat so many. You’d do me a favor taking them. The whole place stinks of rotting fruit.”

  Charlotte lifts the box from his hands. Thanks him. “Won’t you come in?” she asks.

  “No, no, I couldn’t.”

  “Please,” she says.

  He follows her inside. All about is the mess of paints and jars. “I am interrupting,” he says. Charlotte shakes her head and tells him she was just packing up, that she needs some tea. He slips his hands into his pockets and swings round from the hips, looking about. The photographs on the wall. The vase of wilting flowers on the dresser. The fallen petals. Piles of papers and books pressed open, facedown. He swivels and sees the painting. “Yours?” he asks. Charlotte holds out her hands, palms up, showing the paint stains on her fingers. He steps forwards, peering at the canvas. She comes to stand behind him.

  “How incredibly wonderful,” he says softly.

  “You think so?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “I’m not sure if I’ve got the eyes quite right, that left one especially,” she says, walking forwards and standing next to him.

  “Does anyone really care about getting it right?”

  “I don’t mean identical so much as—”

  “Yes. Yes, of course.”

  “—the life of it.” They stand for a moment, looking. She can hear Nicholas breathing, the air coming fast in and out of his nose.

  “But there is the likeness,” he says, “of an unexpected kind—what you were just saying. The atmosphere of a man, so to speak.” He is quiet then. She wants to believe him.

  “Will you stay for tea?” she asks.

  They sit on the veranda and watch pigeons peck at the crumbs left over from the children’s sandwiches. Charlotte likes his chattiness, the gentle banter that is meant only to put her at ease: how he struggles with a coastal garden, his admiration of Henry’s vegetable beds, how he loves to swim far out to sea and float there on his back.

  “Have you ever?” he asks.

  “No, no, nothing like.”

  “The sky here. That is the thing.”

  He is wearing corduroy trousers and a white shirt with sweat marks growing at the pits and back. He tips his head to get at the dregs of his sweet tea. From deep in the house comes the sound of a child’s cry. Lucie waking. They both hear it. He puts the cup carefully back on the saucer and stands. “I’ll leave you—” he says.

  “No, please stay.”

  Autumn slips quickly into winter; the change is faster than any they’ve known before and it seems that there are only two seasons here instead of four: just hot and dry or cold and wet. There are no gradations, no signs of slow change. One afternoon a biting wind blows in from the south and by nightfall they have the fire burning in the living room. Lucie sits on the hearthrug and brushes her doll’s hair. May chews on the leg of her crocheted monkey. The wind pesters; the old walls creak, the windows rattle, the air whistles in and out of the chimney. Cold gusts blow up through the gaps between the floorboards. Come midnight the wind drops and the house fills with a strange quiet. Charlotte is still up working on the painting, Henry seated before her, wishing he could have gone to bed hours ago or got on with his own work—marking, an essay to finish, the next round of lectures.

  Charlotte knows she is making slow progress; she is struggling with the movement of the thing, how best to give a sense of the muscles working, how to animate a still face. The nose has appeared, and the shadow above the top lip, but she is thinking too much, losing the connection between eye and hand. She thinks of how Nicholas stared at the painting, how he admired it. She wonders if he was telling the truth or if he just wanted to please her, and if so, why. At this rate it could still be many months until the painting is finished. Rain starts to fall—she hears it on the tin roof. They are both tired. Charlotte has a cold. The girls have been unwell. Henry is busy and keeps to himself more and more these days. He is distracted when he walks in the door of an evening, surprised by the sight of the children. It is as if he forgets about them during the day.

  Tonight she has painted and repainted the blue of his shirt. There is something wrong with the color but she can’t determine what. The color she put down previously no longer ­matches the shade she sees on his body. It must be her eyes. Or the light. The fatigue perhaps. The brush feels heavy in her hand, her feet ache, and she is distracted by the knowledge of all the chores left undone. Carol came over in the afternoon with the boys. She brought cake, and while she and Charlotte sat talking in the ­kitchen the boys ran amuck—books were pulled from the shelves, the linen press was used as a hiding place, the taps at the bathroom sink were left running and the water overflowed onto the floor. Charlotte was late with dinner, trying to clean up. Now she has washed the plates and cutlery but left the saucepans until morning. There have been days during the past week when so many dirty dishes accumulated that she resorted to ­piling them on the kitchen floor or stacking them, filthy, in the unused oven, out of sight. Tonight she burned the sago pudding while ­changing May’s nappy, and the pot, full of black sticky mess, soaks in the sink. The washing has been done only to be abandoned in a basket by the back door. By morning it will smell musty and have to be rinsed again. The dustbin is overflowing and toys lie scattered over the floor.

  “How much longer, do you think?” Henry asks.

  “Until we take a rest?” He isn’t wearing his watch.

  “No, until it’s finished.” He knows, as soon as the words slip out, that it isn’t a question he is meant to ask.

  “Do you want to stop?” asks Charlotte, coming out from behind the canvas.

  “I was just wondering.”

  “And if it is too much longer?”

  “I didn’t mean that.”

  “You mean you think I’m working too slowly.”

  “No, I know that you—”

  “That I’m going as fast as I can?”

  “Look, you’re unwell, we’re both tired, I didn’t mean—”

  “It will take its own time,” Charlotte says, interrupting him. “I’ve told you.” She turns away and fishes in the jar for a smaller brush. The smoke from the burnt pudding has drifted through the house, and everything smells of it. Henry is right. She is taking too long. She is taking up his time.

  “What I meant—” Henry begins, but Charlotte cuts him off.

  “I know what you mean,” she says. “It’s over. Don’t trouble yourself. I understand.” She drops the palette on the table, marches into the bathroom, and closes the door. Henry gets up to follow her but Charlotte clicks the lock. She sits on the toilet seat and cries.

  “Now there, it’s not so bad,” Henry says, his voice muffled through the wood. “I didn’t mean anything. Come out and we can talk.”

  But there is nothing to say, she hasn’t the energy to say anything, and she knows now that their coming here was due to the simple fact that she didn’t have the strength to refuse him. Fine. Fine I’ll go. But she hadn’t really meant yes. She was exhausted, and preoccupied with Lucie and the coming child. She was, quite literally, not herself then, but a woman dispersed among her children. The thought is there now, at the edge of her mind; the truth scurries from attention, from the swinging arc of the mind, the hunting light looking for it now. The thought is fleeting, only half-understood, so simple it can’t quite be believed. She was too tired, that’s all. She hadn’t the energy to say No, I am not going. No, I am staying. To say Fine, you go. And now she knows this. It makes the portrait seem paltry, a minor act of compensation, and in this moment she knows that she must make plans. Secret
plans. Fantastical plans, even. She will paint and sell the paintings and keep the money in an old cake tin. She will keep the cake tin in the bottom of her wardrobe, beneath the jumpers, and she will save every cent until she has enough to send them all home. Henry can’t argue, surely, if she has the money. He can’t stop her. How long will it take to save so much? Years, years upon years. But it will happen eventually: she and her children at home amid the foxgloves and hollyhocks. Then she’ll keep her apples wrapped in paper in a box in the cool of the cellar. She’ll wake to hear ­cuckoos in the summer morning. She’ll make jam from rose hips and hedge plums. She’ll not mind the cold, she thinks, remembering the pleasure of gathering sticks and logs from the woodland in the autumn dusk. How she and Henry used to go fossicking in the evenings, creeping through the darkening patch of wood, moving over the damp earth, through the birch and oaks, dragging whole fallen branches back along the path to the house, great thick ­pieces of lichen-covered trees, her belly huge with Lucie then, the evening air shading to mauve, the smell of other people’s fires burning, and above them the rooks coming in to roost.

  “Come on, Charlotte,” he says, still talking to her through the door. “Don’t be like this.” She is tired, he thinks to himself. She is unwell. She will come out soon and they will carry on. But does he want to? The effort of sitting still, in the same position, night after night, was more than he’d imagined. He sat there on the hard wooden chair and dreamed of lying on a featherbed. Of lying on a beach. Of lying down and being fed cherries and grapes, fruits dangling into his mouth from a stalk. If only he could sit there and read. Portrait of a Reader, she could call it.

  “No,” she’d said. “I need your eyes.”

  “Couldn’t I read until you get to my eyes? Or once you’ve finished them?”

  “Henry,” she’d said, as though he were a small, silly child.