The Ecliptic

by Benjamin Wood

  Quickman laughed. ‘Here—toss this paper on the pile.’

  ‘You should twist it first. Burns better.’

  The two of them were still lighting the fire when Ender shuffled in. The boy loomed behind him, shivering on the threshold. He was wrapped up in a blanket, standard issue: scratchy orange wool with a hand-embroidered P.

  Ender coughed and said, ‘Excuse me, our guest is very cold and tired, so maybe not much of talking for today. Hello, hello, and then we go—OK?’ The old man took a step to one side, presenting the boy with an extended arm, as though he were the conclusion of a magic trick. Then he said, ‘Fullerton, this is some people who take care of you now, for today, and soon the provoss hisself will be here.’ In the old man’s unaccustomed tongue, it sounded more like Foolertinn. ‘They are old but not so bad for talking. You can like them.’

  ‘Crikey.’ Pettifer rose, wiping soot on his trousers. ‘Impossible to live up to that sort of introduction.’

  The boy lifted his chin and forced out a whisper: ‘Hey.’ He was trembling so much the blanket quivered about his body like a storm sail. Now that his hood was down and he was close enough, we could see the wholeness of his face. His small brown eyes were close together, sunken, drawing attention to the slim pillar of his nose and its bell of soft cartilage. He had a slack lower jaw—what my father used to call a ‘lazy mouth’—the tongue nesting behind the bottom row of teeth, giving wetness to his lips. His dark hair parted easily in the middle, like the pages of a Bible, and it was fashioned in that lank teenage style, curtaining his brow, obscuring what appeared to be a birthmark on the left of his forehead. He was probably shorter than most boys his age, though his broad, hod-carrier’s shoulders held an arching shape beneath the blanket that made him seem older.

  I was the first of us to speak to him. The others hung back, unsure. We had almost forgotten how to talk to anyone but ourselves. ‘Hell of a trek, isn’t it?’ I said. ‘Your feet must be aching. Sit down.’ For some reason, I did not offer him my hand to shake but gave an odd sort of Sitting Bull wave, palm flat and raised. ‘I’m Knell. With a K. Good to meet you.’

  He nodded back, shuddering.

  ‘Come on in by the fire. It’s going a treat now. Get yourself warm.’

  He moved in closer to the hearth. Then, casting off the blanket, he leaned with both arms spread across the mantelpiece, imbibing the heat. From behind, it seemed as though he was holding up the wall itself.

  ‘The two gents to your right are Pettifer and Quickman.’ They both waved, but the boy’s back was turned to them, and he did not seem to be listening. ‘And that’s MacKinney there by the window. She and I have been here since, oh, I’m not sure it’s polite to say.’

  ‘Not so long as me,’ said Ender, still in the doorway. ‘I am getting the white hairs.’ He combed his moustache with his fingers and crowed.

  The boy did not move. ‘Please,’ he said, so quietly it was almost lost amid the crackle of the flames, ‘if I could just have a minute to—’ He clutched his stomach. We took a few paces back as a precaution, but nothing came up. The boy sighed and continued: ‘Just to thaw out, that’s all. I still can’t feel my toes.’ He turned now, his back to the fire, a radiant outline about his middle. His eyes were shut and he was inhaling through the nose, exhaling through his puckered mouth. ‘You can talk . . . I just need to . . . to be quiet for a sec . . .’

  ‘Of course,’ I said, sitting down on the couch, making eyes at MacKinney. We shrugged at each other. ‘The provost asked us to be your welcoming party. He thought, with the four of us being so used to the place, and speaking the same language, it might help you bed in quicker. A little familiarity goes a long way here. He wanted to give the induction himself, but—’

  Fullerton kept on trying to regulate his breathing. I was not sure that he was receiving me.

  ‘He’s had to go off-island,’ I continued. ‘Organising your paperwork, I should think, just in case you decide to stay longer. So we’re only substitutes, I’m afraid. But I promise you’re getting the same treatment as everyone else.’

  Pettifer spoke up then: ‘Actually, we’ve never rolled out the red carpet like this before. For anyone.’ He cleared his throat, as though the implication of this noise would prompt the boy into a response. But it did not, and Pettifer folded his arms, affronted. ‘Well, I’m really feeling the glow of philanthropy right now, I must say.’

  ‘Leave him be,’ said MacKinney. ‘He’s just got here and we’re crowding him.’

  ‘It’s OK,’ the boy said at last. ‘I told you . . . I’m just cold.’ He opened his eyes then, and stared back at us. ‘And I do appreciate you all being so friendly. But I didn’t come here to make friends. I just want to get out of these clothes and rest, and maybe we can all have dinner sometime later. That’s how it works, right? I was told I’d be left alone.’

  Quickman bit down on his pipe, smirking. ‘That’s the long and the short of it. Dinner is any time after the bell goes. There’s a rule about taking it in the mess hall, so I suppose we’ll save a place for you.’ He narrowed his eyes at the boy, checking he was being heard. ‘There are other rules, too, of course—but I expect you’ve been told most of them by now. The rest you can figure out as you go. Or ask the provost when he gets back. When does he get back, by the way?’

  ‘Three days,’ Ender informed him.

  ‘Well then.’

  Fullerton blinked. He tucked the strands of his hair behind his ears.

  ‘Perhaps we should let Ender take him out to his lodging,’ I said. And then, flicking my eyes to the boy: ‘We were asked to show you how things worked, that’s all, answer your questions and such. But I suppose we can leave you alone, if that’s what you’d prefer. We’ll be around, in case you need anything.’

  ‘You can’t miss us,’ said MacKinney. ‘We’re always somewhere.’

  ‘All right, thanks,’ the boy said. He bent to retrieve the blanket from the floor and then began to study the shelves above the mantel. ‘Are we allowed to take these books?’

  ‘Some of them,’ Pettifer said. ‘You’re not old enough for Lady Chatterley, are you?’ He tried to engage the rest of us in his amusement but we kept quiet.

  ‘Funny, I don’t see that here.’ The boy browsed the spines serenely. ‘Maybe you could bring it back when the pages are dry.’

  Pettifer flushed. ‘That’s disgusting.’

  ‘OK, OK,’ Quickman said, ‘let’s get back to work.’ He made for the door, patting Pettifer on the shoulder as he went past. ‘We’ll adjourn this for later.’

  I stood up, smiling at the boy. ‘It’s nice to have a young face around.’

  He nodded back.

  Pettifer waved at the fire. ‘You can let that burn out. Or you can get more wood from downstairs. Up to you.’

  ‘Yeah, all right. Thanks.’

  We were reluctant to leave him. Not just because we felt guilty for reneging on our promise to the provost, but because we found the boy such a confusing presence. We were not used to having gloomy teenagers about the place. He had a very modern manner that we did not know how to decode. There was something discomfiting about him in the most thrilling sense, the way a familiar room can be changed by a new arrangement of furniture. He enlivened us, shook us out of our habituations without even trying to. Of course, we could not anticipate how much he would affect the next period of our lives. It was as though, on that first afternoon with us, he loosened our connecting bolts quite accidentally, and the slow turn of the days saw to the rest.

  On our way out, Quickman stopped, gripping the doorframe. ‘Say, Fullerton,’ he called. ‘You don’t happen to have any pipe tobacco, by any chance? I’ll strip down a cigarette, if that’s all you have.’

  The boy, for the first time, showed a glimmer of warmth towards us. His jaw hung open and he ran his tongue over his teeth. Then he reached into the pocket of his jeans and drew out a packet of cigarettes, a Turkish brand. He threw the whole crumpled box to Quic
kman. ‘I recognise you,’ he said. ‘I think I do, anyway.’

  Quickman remained polite. ‘Ah well, don’t hold it against me.’ He clutched the cigarettes to his heart. ‘Thanks for these.’ But the box made no sound when he shook it. He pulled out the foil lining and scrunched it in his fist. ‘I won’t lie: that’s a blow to morale.’

  And the boy smiled at last.

  We were told that Heybeliada lay twelve miles off the coast of Istanbul, the second largest in a constellation of islands the locals knew as Adalar. It was crowned by two steep forested hills to the north and south, and its middle section bowed into a plain of settlements where the natives lived and plied their trades. Much of the work there was seasonal. In the winter, the squat apartment blocks and rangy wooden houses stood vacant and unlit, but when the bright weather came again they filled up with summering Istanbullus, who sat out on their fretwork balconies, sunbathed on the rocky beaches, flocked upon the shining Marmara like gulls, and drank merrily on their roof-decks until dark. The Turkish meaning of its name—Saddlebag Island—evoked its shape at sea level, but, looking down from a higher vantage as we did, the place bore a closer resemblance to a hipbone. It was far up on the south-eastern peak, amidst the dense umbrella pines on the tubercle of the island, that Portmantle was positioned. The only part of it that could be seen from the ferry as you approached was the upper limit of its gabled rooftop, and even this had been seized by so much moss and grime that it was lightly camouflaged.

  Every guest who came to Portmantle took the same route from the dock. It required specific information just to find your way. You could not step off the boat and expect to pick up signs. You could not stop into any of the cafés or lokantas on the waterfront to ask for directions. The horse-drawn faytons would not take you there. It was too removed from the populated strip for any of the locals to be concerned with, and those few natives who knew of the place believed it was a private residence, owned by a reclusive academic who took violently to trespassers. And so the refuge was afforded the same courtesy of disregard as any other private mansion or holiday villa on the island, which made it a perfect spot to disappear.

  The only way into the refuge was from the east, via Çam Limani Yolu, a dirt road that led up to a spear-top fence, cordoning off the property. MacKinney always said it might be possible to circumvent the gates by swimming across the bay from the south-western point of the island and climbing up the promontory on the blind side, but we had never seen her theory put to the test. The phoney warning posters stapled to the fence along the slope were a good enough deterrent: DIKKAT KÖPEK VAR/BEWARE OF THE DOG.

  It was not known how long Portmantle had existed, but we understood that many others had sought refuge there before we ever claimed it: to rescue the depleted minds of artists like us was the reason it was founded. In the seclusion of the grounds, artists could work outside the straitjacket of the world and its pressures. We could tune out those voices that nagged and pecked, forget the doubts that stifled us, dispense with all the mundane tasks, distractions, and responsibilities, detach from the infernal noises of industry—the endless ringing of the telephone, the urging letters that came in logoed envelopes from galleries, publishers, studios, patrons—and work, finally work, without intrusion or the steering influence of another living soul. ‘Creative freedom’, ‘originality’, ‘true expression’—these terms were spoken like commandments at Portmantle, even if they were scarcely realised, or just phantom ideals to begin with. It was no more than a place for recuperation. A sanatorium of sorts—not for the defeat of any physical affliction, but for the relocation of a lost desire, a mislaid trust in art itself. Clarity, we called it: the one thing we could not live without.

  It was a custom at Portmantle to forgo the mention of time except in the barest measurements: the passing of days, the turning of seasons, the position of the sun above the trees. Both Ender and the provost kept pocket watches to ensure the smooth running of things, but there were no clocks in our lodgings, and we were not encouraged to have timepieces or calendars of any kind. It would be wrong to say that we were not allowed them, because we were free to do as we pleased, within certain limits. Any of us could have smuggled in a wristwatch or made a sundial with our bodies and a line of chalk, but the idea was acknowledged by everybody as self-defeating. Why should we let our thoughts run clockwise? Why should we live by the laws of a world we were no longer governed by? Art could not be made to fit a timetable. Instead, we used vague descriptors—‘tomorrow morning’, ‘last Wednesday’, ‘three or four seasons ago’, et cetera—and they served us well enough, liberated us from the notion we had that our pulses were countdowns to zero.

  That is why I cannot say with complete accuracy how long I had been at Portmantle by the time of Fullerton’s admission. The year I arrived was 1962, but since then I had watched so many winters frost the surrounding pines that they had begun to blur into one grey season, as vast and misted as the sea. Early on, I ran out of things to write in my journal, so I could not extrapolate a definite figure from the tally of entries. According to my best calculation, though, I had spent at least ten years at Portmantle along with MacKinney, while Quickman and Pettifer were closing in on eight.

  We were given false names because our real ones were too much baggage; some reputations were greater than others, and Portmantle was intended to be a place of parity. It was also believed that our real names fostered complacency and restricted us to established methods, familiar modes of thought. So the provost chose new surnames for us from telephone directories and old ship’s manifests (he collected these on his travels and archived them in folders in his study). Our given names took no account of race or ethnicity, which is why MacKinney—the daughter of Russian émigrés—bore the handle of a Celt, and why the place had been home to numerous other oddities: a Lebanese painter called Dubois, an Italian novelist called Howells, a Slav illustrator called Singh, a Norwegian architect who answered only to O’Malley. In a funny way, we became more attached to our false names than the true ones. After a while, they began to suit us better.

  I was born Elspeth Conroy in Clydebank, Scotland, on 17th March 1937. I had always thought my family name quite unremarkable, and my Christian name so formal and girl-pretty. Elspeth Conroy, I felt, was the name of a debutante or a local politician’s wife, not a serious painter with vital things to say about the world, but it was my fate and I had to accept it. My parents believed a refined Scottish name like Elspeth would enable me to marry a man of higher class (that is to say, a rich man) and, eventually, I managed to prove their theory wrong in every aspect. Still, I always suspected my work was undermined by that label, Elspeth Conroy. Did people exact their judgements upon me in galleries when they noticed my name? Did they see my gender on the wall, my nationality, my class, my type, and fail to connect with the truth of my paintings? It is impossible to know. I made my reputation as an artist with this label attached and it became the thing by which people defined and categorised me. I was a Scottish female painter, and thus I was recorded in the glossary of history. One day, when I felt secure enough to leave Portmantle, I would return to being Elspeth Conroy, take her off the peg like a stiff old coat and see if she still fitted. Until then, I was allowed to be someone different. Knell. Good old Knell. Separate and yet the same. Without her, I was nobody.

  Of the four of us, it was surely Quickman who valued his detachment most. In the early days, we could not look at him without thinking of the famous photograph on the back cover of his novels—the sunflower lean of him towards the lens, arms crossed defiantly, the brooding London skyline on his shoulders. We had grown up with him on our shelves, that stylish young face squinting at us over bookends, from underneath coffee mugs on our bedside tables. His real name was known in many households, even if it was not part of daily conversation; in literary circles, it was a synonym for greatness, a word that critics added esque to in reviews of lesser writers. Every resident at Portmantle—even the provost—had owned, or at
least seen, a copy of Quickman’s first book, In Advent of Rain, published when he was only twenty-one. It was a required text on school curricula in Britain, considered a classic of its time. But the good-natured soul we knew as Quickman was not quite the same person—he was prickly at times, though self-effacing, and stood opposed to all the fuss and fanfare of the literary scene. Now he hungered only for a quiet room to be alone, a basic legal pad, and enough Staedtler HB pencils to fill an old cigar box. His given name suited him perfectly. His speed of thought was exceptional. And he was so unbothered with grooming that his beard spread all across his cheekbones like gorse; it hid the handsome symmetry of his features and gave him the look of a man long shipwrecked.

  Pettifer’s real name also held some weight out in the world. As an architect, he was rarely in the public eye and, in truth, his stubby face did not register with me at all when I first saw it. If he ever spoke of buildings he was responsible for (it happened, on occasion, when he got maudlin), their shapes could be summoned to mind, but only in the nostalgic way you might recall a favourite chair or a special bottle of wine. His real name was the type brought up at dinner parties and society gatherings, after which people nodded and said, ‘Ah yes, I always liked that building. That’s one of his, is it?’ Now he was so used to being called Pettifer, and its various abbreviations, that he had vowed to adopt it when he left the island. He would establish a whole new practice one day, so he claimed, under the banner of Pettifer & Associates. We did not know if this was a serious promise, but it would not have surprised us to find such a plan eventuated.

  Of course, we assumed that Fullerton’s real name must have held some equal notoriety on the mainland—everyone at Portmantle had earned a reputation in their field, which is why great measures were taken to safeguard its location. The fact is, we were too removed from the world to understand the scale of the boy’s renown. He was a frequent surprise to us.