Where Love Lies

by Julie Cohen

  As I head back through the gallery, looking for the stairs, I wonder what my mother would think of all this. The paintings are on loan from various collectors, mostly wealthy ones, although some have been lent to the gallery by Esther’s friends. Those are ones she would have given away. She never treated her work as if it were of any value. She wrote notes to my teachers on the back of old sketches; she sometimes used drawings as kindling in the fire.

  Of course it’s that cavalier attitude to her own work that means that her paintings now, after her death, are worth so much money and are so in demand. I’ve lost count of how many phone calls and emails I’ve ignored, how many letters I’ve binned, asking if I have any more work of hers for sale.

  It was the same way with all of her belongings. If someone complimented her on a hat, say, she would pluck it off her head and press it on the person who’d spoken. People came and went in her life in a similar fashion. Some lovers she stayed friends with, some – like my father – she let go. She never went backwards and she never held on to anything or anyone, except for me.

  ‘Walk lightly,’ she always told me. ‘Take nothing you can’t leave behind.’

  I have tried to walk lightly but I can’t. Not as thoroughly as Esther could. I hold on to things and re-use them. I have favourite books which I have carried with me from country to country, house to house. I’ve kept my favourite jacket for nearly fifteen years. I have a plastic box of photographs. I collect pretty items, postcards and dried flowers and rhinestone hair clips and shoes.

  I have a husband. I have a cottage and a mortgage. I’ve accumulated a whole life, much of it since my mother died.

  I stop. I dig in my handbag and take out a handful of leaflets and maps about New York. There’s a comb and an extra lipstick and an unused tissue and a mirror and some acorns that I found in Central Park yesterday. I squat down and put it all on the polished floor in an untidy pile, an offering to my mother. For a moment I’m tempted to pick up the spare lipstick, because I quite like the colour, but I stand and walk away, a little lighter.

  Against the odds, I’m smiling, and when I turn the corner I’m completely unprepared for what I see.

  Chapter Eleven

  FRANGIPANI.

  It surrounds him in clouds of white and yellow, brighter because he stands half in shadow. He’s naked from the waist up, and the flowers give a glow to his skin, or perhaps his skin lends it to the flowers. It’s golden, his skin, golden and perfect. His hair is dishevelled, too long, glinting with warmth; one hand holds a flower, about to drop it.

  I stand, mouth agape, eyes wide, staring at him. He’s nine feet tall and rendered in strokes of oil paint.

  ‘Hello, Ewan,’ I whisper.

  His eyes are bright blue. They gaze out of the painting as if they’re alive, as if the frame and the blank walls around it don’t exist. As if years have been erased and he’s standing here in front of me again.

  The first time I saw him, he looked like this. Except he was naked.

  I was late, of course. It was July and I had a sunburn from spending all morning reading on one of the carved benches in St Pancras Gardens. The strap of my shoulder bag rubbed against my skin and I had to keep on stopping to switch sides. It was completely my own fault that I was late; I’d left the garden late, reading an extra chapter, because I was procrastinating. I hated life drawing. I wasn’t particularly good at it, even though I’d watched my mother effortlessly drawing people for all of my life. Maybe because I’d watched her, I knew how rubbish I was. My own drawings of human beings were awkward and half-imaginary; I could never quite translate what I saw in real life to what I put down on the page, so they ended up looking cartoonish. Freakish. And of course in a life-drawing class, there was always someone looking over your shoulder and you couldn’t take your drawing away to fix before you showed it to anyone else.

  But I wanted to go to art school, because drawing was the only thing I was halfway good at. Drawing owls, mostly. And if you wanted to go to art school, you needed a portfolio. And if you scraped by doing the minimum of work in your art A-levels and then spent the next eighteen months faffing around the world having fun, you needed to take summer classes at Central Saint Martins to bump up your portfolio.

  When I got to the correct room I was dripping with sweat and it felt as if I had a blister on either side of my neck. I pushed open the door with both hands and burst in.

  ‘Sorry,’ I gasped. A dozen heads swivelled away from their drawings and towards me. From this vantage point, I couldn’t see the model, but I could see the beginnings of drawings in charcoal and pencil. It was a man, a young man from the looks of it.

  ‘There’s a space over here,’ the instructor said quietly to me and I gave all my attention to weaving between the other students and not knocking over their easels with my bag. I didn’t like drawing young people, especially. Older people were more interesting. I preferred drawing wrinkles. If a life model had a perfect body, if they were beautiful, it only highlighted how faithless and ugly my drawing was. The first week, we’d had a stunning, slim young woman who was probably a catwalk model in her other life, and I’d made her look pretty much like a nude Cruella DeVil.

  I set up my pad on the easel and I selected my charcoal and I wiped sweat away from my forehead with the back of my hand. Then, steeling myself for failure, I looked at the model.

  He was looking directly at me.

  It was like sticking my finger into a plug socket. My burned skin tingled. The hairs on my arms and on the back of my neck rose. I stepped backwards and exhaled an audible squeak.

  His eyes were this incredible blue, ridiculously blue, as if they’d been coloured in with a swimming-pool-coloured crayon in a brighter hue than the rest of the room. Eyes should not be that blue. He should not be looking at me. He should be staring fixedly into the distance because he was a life model.

  There was half a smile on his face. He’d heard me squeaking. He was looking at me because I’d just made a spectacle of myself crashing in late and then I’d been squeaking instead of calmly drawing, like a woman of the world who had seen countless naked men before.

  I had in fact seen a lot of naked men. There were always naked men and women going in and out of my mother’s studio; I frequently brought them cups of tea and sometimes had to lend them my dressing gown. Also, I was twenty years old and I had been around the world. I’d had boyfriends. I’d had sex. I was staring at this life model as if he were Adam and I were a gobsmacked Eve.

  He was beautiful, all lean muscle, smooth chest, flawless skin. The ripple of his ribs was visible, and the scattering of hair on his chest and belly. He sat on a wooden stool and, probably fortunately for me, his genitals were hidden by his thigh. He was, of course, looking in my direction because that was the pose he had chosen. He just happened to have his head turned to this side of the room, where he could see the woman whose brains had temporarily deserted her.

  ‘Are you all right?’ whispered the instructor. She knew my mother and was inclined to be kind to me because of it. Though that made it worse for me, because my work could never live up to my genetic inheritance.

  ‘I’m fine,’ I said, with lips that had gone numb. ‘Just … observing.’ I raised my charcoal to my page. My palm was slick with sweat. My fingers were trembling. I made a mark – tentative, random.

  ‘Interesting,’ murmured the instructor and then, mercifully, she walked away.

  I tried to draw. I tried to look at the page. I made other marks, supposedly the line of his arm, the tilt of his head. They were wrong, and besides, he kept on looking at me. His face had gone serious now. He looked as if he were thinking. Thinking about me.

  I tore off the top sheet and tried again. But it was so hard to keep my eyes on the paper. And I should be observing his body, but his gaze kept catching mine. All this eye-contact. In a normal situation you would never stare at someone like this, right into their eyes, without speaking. It would never feel as if their gaze h
ad taken hold of you, captured you with all that blueness, stolen all your thoughts, erased everyone else from the room.

  ‘Shall we take a break?’ The instructor’s voice broke the silence and the people around me started to move, to stretch, to speak to each other. The model turned his head to something said to him and I was able, at last, to see what I’d done on my paper. It was a mess. It was random lines and smudges, the drawing of a four-year-old. My skin hot, I hurriedly ripped the page off and crumpled it into a ball.

  ‘Hi,’ said someone, and I knew without looking that it was him. Sometimes, quite often, the models moved around the room to see what people had drawn. I shoved the crumpled paper into my bag and tried a nonchalant smile.

  He’d wrapped a cloth around his waist. But it was his eyes that I saw. ‘Hi,’ I said. I felt breathless. ‘I’m sorry, my drawing was crap.’

  ‘Fancy a coffee, after?’

  That half a smile he’d had when I came in, had widened to a full one. Oh no. He’d seen me staring at him. He thought I was an easy conquest. He thought I was a silly little girl with clumsy feet and shaking hands. I should say no.

  ‘Okay,’ I heard myself say.

  ‘I’ll meet you at the front of the building,’ he said. ‘Once I’m dressed.’

  ‘Are we ready for the next pose?’ called the instructor.

  I stand, now, in front of this painting of Ewan done by my mother. Two shadows of people who have left my life, in this one piece of art and memory. I check the white plaque by the painting, which says it is on loan from the owner, Mrs T. Kilgore from Florida. It’s been in her house, sheltered from the tropical sun, for ten years. Mrs T. Kilgore of Florida has gazed at Ewan every day without knowing the story of the painting: what happened before, what happened next, what has happened since. She has only known the title: Portrait of a Young Man in Love.

  And Ewan stands there unchanged. He’s so fresh. So tender. Of a piece with the petals before they fall.

  My arms are gooseflesh. If I took a step forward I could step into the painting – a shadow myself – and touch him again for the first time, palm to palm, across a table.

  Live it all again.

  I stood on the pavement with sweat collecting in the small of my back, running the strap of my bag through my hands. It had got hotter while we were inside, as the asphalt and buildings collected the heat and radiated it back out again. All of the rest of the people in the life-drawing class had already filed past me, several of them giving me curious looks. He wasn’t coming. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’d nipped out of the back door as soon as he was dressed. He’d been looking the other way during the other poses, but I still hadn’t been able to draw anything. Tracing the line of his back or the curve of his buttocks with my charcoal was too similar to touching him. And I wanted to touch him so much that I couldn’t bear any substitute.

  He was probably a wanker. He was probably full of himself. You had to be pretty full of yourself to stand in front of a whole load of people in a room and let them draw you naked, right?

  Well, actually you didn’t. I knew several artists’ models and they were generally nice, normal individuals. But this one probably targeted the women in the room, the ones who seemed flustered by his nakedness, attracted to him. He probably asked them all for dates and kept a score sheet, and then went to the pub with his mates and laughed about the silly art students. Even if he didn’t, I didn’t know anything about him. I’d just spent an hour and a half staring at him and failing to draw him. I might not even like him when I spoke to him.

  I was going home. I turned on my heel and had started to walk towards the bus stop when I heard him behind me shouting, ‘Hey!’

  I whirled around, my heart leaping into my throat with irresistible joy. ‘Hey,’ I said, trying to sound calm and failing. He was wearing jeans and a leather jacket, in total disregard for the weather, but I didn’t really notice that because he was looking in my eyes again.

  I felt drunk. ‘Do you … are you still up for that coffee?’ I asked.

  ‘There’s a café on the Caledonian Road.’

  He was almost unbearably close. He was smiling at me with more than a little bit of triumph. As we passed the side of King’s Cross station, I decided I’d forgive him that smile because I fancied him so much.

  It was an Italian café, and it was even hotter inside. He took off his jacket and hung it on the back of his chair and I could see damp patches on his T-shirt. He was as comfortable as he had been naked. ‘What’ll you have?’ he asked me.

  ‘An espresso, please.’

  He ordered two, then held his hand out to me over the table. ‘I’m Ewan.’

  ‘Felicity.’ I was too eager to touch him, so I took his hand casually, as if I couldn’t care less. His palm was hot, and he held on to my hand for a beat too long. When he released it, I involuntarily put my fingers to my lips, then realized what I’d done and blushed.

  ‘So, Flick. You’re an art student.’ He leaned back in his chair, resting his arm along the back of the one beside him. He had a soft Scottish accent, burrs in his r’s.

  ‘Not really. I’m trying to be one, but I’ve spent most of the past couple of years travelling so I need to build up my portfolio.’

  The espresso and the travelling were to impress him. He raised his eyebrows slightly in acknowledgement, and then the coffees came and he began ripping open sugar packets and pouring their contents into his cup. I expected him to start talking about himself, but instead he asked, ‘Where have you been?’

  My mouth seemed clumsy, prone to stammering; I took a sip of the blistering coffee and told him anyway. As I spoke the words, named the countries, it became easier, because I could see that he was listening. Actually listening, not nodding and waiting for his turn to speak. He asked me which had been my favourites, what had been the most amazing thing I’d seen.

  ‘I’d love to do that,’ he said when I’d finished. ‘I will, one day. I’ll travel the world.’

  ‘Why aren’t you doing it now?’

  He laughed, a sharp laugh that was almost a bark. ‘Haven’t got the dosh, have I? When I travel, I’m going to get paid to do it.’

  ‘As an artists’ model?’

  He shook his head. His longish hair brushed his neck. ‘I sing and play guitar. I’m in a band up in Glasgow. “Magic Fingers Ewan”, that’s what they call me.’ He held up his hands and twiddled his fingers.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘No, not really. But I am in a band. We’re down here in London trying to get signed. On the verge of it, too. I sit for artists for a bit of extra cash.’

  ‘Does it pay well?’

  ‘Not much, considering half the time I’ve got a cold breeze blowing up my crack.’

  The laughter that exploded from me had less to do with how funny his joke was, than my needing to do something to release tension. ‘Do you like it?’

  ‘I don’t mind it.’ He shrugged, and traced patterns in the sugar he’d spilled on the table. He had a tattoo on his arm, a complicated woven Celtic symbol; I hadn’t even noticed it when he was naked. ‘It’s something to do with my days, anyway. This artist mate of mine set me up with it. I’m doing it for this sort of semi-famous artist next week. So I might be immortalized for ever.’ He said it with just enough self-mocking irony for me not to mind. ‘Do you want to be a famous artist?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘I want to be famous,’ he told me. ‘Properly famous. Not for the money; I want to have people all over the world listening to my music.’

  ‘I just want to find something I’m good at,’ I said. Inside I was marvelling. We’d known each other less than a couple of hours, had only been speaking for twenty minutes, and we were already sharing our deepest ambitions.

  ‘You will,’ he said. ‘I bet you’re good at lots of things.’

  ‘Even if I don’t find anything, I don’t want to be normal.’ My hands were shaking. I’d never said this to anyone before. ‘I want to be extra
ordinary.’

  ‘You’re a beautiful girl. Really beautiful.’

  He said it with emphasis. I knew I wasn’t beautiful. He was beautiful. I was the mediocre artist who couldn’t draw him. But that moment, I didn’t just desire him; I loved him for seeing me as beautiful. As extraordinary.

  Ewan reached over the table and he put his hand on my wrist. ‘You should come to our gig at the Barfly in Camden tonight,’ he said. ‘It’ll be a laugh.’

  The room heaved and steamed, reeking of beer and sweat. I clutched half a pint of lager, was jostled on all sides. The floor was sticky underfoot.

  There were four of them in the band, but I only registered them as variations of skinny and scruffy. My eyes were fixed on Ewan.

  He was the lead guitarist and singer and he stood on stage like a young god. Cocky, sure of himself in tight jeans and a shirt unbuttoned to mid-chest, his guitar the same colour as his gleaming hair.

  The music was loud and although I would learn all of it, eventually, by heart, that night I felt it rather than heard it, as a pulse through my body, a promise in his rough voice.

  I shouldn’t be so obvious, I thought, through the pounding and jostle and heat. I should be cool, play the game. Go outside and scrounge a fag. Speak to someone else. Maybe flirt a little with the barman.

  I couldn’t. I didn’t. I watched him, enthralled. His hands moved over his guitar, alternatively caressing and demanding. Every time his eyes met mine I burned.

  When their set was over he picked up a bottle of beer from the floor near his mic stand and drank from it. I watched his lips purse, his throat move. He drank and drank while the other band members left the stage, until the applause stopped and conversation swelled again, and then he put the bottle down, handed his guitar to someone, and jumped lightly off the stage near me.

  ‘Flick! Did you like it?’ He was breathless and his hair was damp with sweat.