The Ecliptic

by Benjamin Wood

  Within a few months, Max had organised a show at the Eversholt Gallery, in which a small selection of my canvases was presented in a hallway before the main exhibition. The headline attraction was Bernard Cale, a welterweight boxer turned artist, who had forged a good career making ink-and-gouache drawings of the fights. He was popular with male collectors at the time, as his pictures were brutal and unflinching, and there was a certain macho prestige to be gained from hanging a Bernie Cale in your study, all those exploding lips and broken noses to discuss over brandy and cigars. I respected the earnest themes of Cale’s pictures and admired the skill of their construction, so I was pleased to see my work displayed as an accompaniment to his. No one who attended the show arrived with the intention of seeing my gloomy bombsite paintings, but plenty stopped to look at them.

  Jim turned up at the private viewing, mercifully sober. He stood smoking in the hallway with Bernie Cale himself, examining my favourite piece in the collection: Stage Ghost Rehearsal, 1958. It showed the shell of an old theatre in Kennington, upon which I had overlaid a new façade in thinned-out tones of grey; behind the pale windows, I had delicately painted the wraith of a man holding a straight-blade razor, his cheeks lathered in foam, and scratched the reflection of a young girl into his shaving mirror. ‘Bernie likes this one best,’ Jim said. ‘He thinks it’s menacing. I think it’s sad. Come and settle the argument.’

  Cale nodded. ‘I want to know what that bloke is thinking. Can’t help but worry for the little ’un, I must say.’ He moved closer to the painting, blinking at it. ‘They all sort of do that, in their way—I was just telling Jim: they all make you feel some-thing—but this one puts me on edge. It’s hard to do that with a picture.’

  ‘Thank you, Bernie. That’s kind of you.’

  ‘What’re you thanking me for? I didn’t paint the bloody thing.’

  ‘Don’t leave us hanging,’ Jim said to me, stubbing out his cigarette. ‘Are we supposed to feel sad, frightened—what?’

  I said, ‘It depends on who’s looking.’

  ‘Hear that, Bernie? It’s a draw.’

  ‘I want a refund,’ said Cale, smirking.

  At the end of the evening, I found Jim waiting on the pavement outside. ‘Thought someone should walk you home,’ he said. ‘Unless you’ve got a limo coming.’

  I was still living rent-free in the attic room in St John’s Wood, and I had given no thought to the prospect of finding my own studio. At Max’s urging, I was no longer ‘cheapening myself’ by working as an assistant, so I did not have the modest wages to sustain me. Instead, I withdrew funds daily from Max’s ‘down-payment’, half of which I had sent to my parents in Clydebank the moment his cheque cleared in my account. I felt, in that strange period, as though I was caught like a feather on a draught. It was clear that the course of my life depended on the outcome of the entrance hall show, but I could not tell in which direction it was going to propel me. ‘I was going to take the bus,’ I said.

  We walked down Cork Street together. It was a windless night but the cold still pinched and I had not brought a coat. Jim saw that I was shivering and said, ‘A gentleman would probably offer you his blazer.’

  ‘He would.’

  ‘But then you’d know he’d burned his shirt twice with the iron. What the heck—’ He removed his jacket and I stopped so he could cast it round my shoulders. And, turning, he showed me the singe-marks on his back: two light brown impressions at the spine.

  ‘You had the heat too high.’

  ‘Well, I know that now.’

  ‘I appreciate the effort. You look very smart.’

  He shrugged. ‘Warmer yet?’

  ‘A bit.’

  We were at Baker Street before he said a word about the show. It was expressed almost in resignation. ‘That painting Bernie liked—the one with the bloke shaving—you’ve got something there. If I tried to paint a scene like that, I’d get the composition wrong. But you know exactly how much of the little girl’s face to show in the mirror. It’s got emotions in it most of us would shy away from.’

  I found it hard to walk and feel such gladness all at once. ‘Thank you. It really means a lot to hear that, Jim.’

  ‘Look, I’m not saying they were all great. Don’t start leaping in the air.’ He swiped at his nose a few times with the crook of his wrist. ‘If the whole show was that good, I wouldn’t have stuck it out all night.’ He walked me halfway across the road, his hand on the small of my back. ‘Now you’d better hope nobody buys it, eh?’ A car slowed down for us and blinked its headlights. ‘At last, a decent citizen.’ He gave a thumbs-up to the driver as we passed by the bonnet.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ I said.

  He was a few strides ahead of me now and had to stop. ‘Don’t stand about, I’m freezing,’ he said.

  ‘What did you mean by that?’

  Traffic shone against his back. He blew into his fists. ‘Come to the pub with me,’ he said. ‘I’ll show you.’

  ‘No, I’ve already had too much to drink.’

  ‘I know. Two glasses is your limit. Just—wait a mo.’ And hanging an arm out into the road, he was able to flag an approaching cab. It pulled over with its window down. ‘Maida Vale, mate,’ Jim told the driver. ‘The Prince Alfred.’ He opened the door for me. ‘Come on then, or you won’t get your answer.’

  When we reached the pub, he did not go straight up to the bar to get a whisky, as I expected him to. He steered me to the far end of the room instead, and called out to the landlord on his way: ‘I’ll start with a double, Ron. Leave it there for me.’

  ‘Who’s this with you?’ said the landlord.

  ‘Mind your own.’

  ‘A bit too nice for this place, ain’t she? You want to take her somewhere proper.’

  ‘Oh, she won’t be here for long, don’t worry.’

  He took me to a quiet table in the corner: a bench-seat upholstered in tartan. ‘This is where I do my best thinking,’ he said. ‘Grab a pew.’

  I pulled out a stool and sat down. He took the bench opposite and looked at me, amused at some private thought. ‘Other way,’ he said.

  ‘Huh?’

  ‘Swivel round. You need to face the other way.’

  I did as I was told.

  There was a picture on the wall I realised was Jim’s—a portrait, done in oils, of a soldier in a beret, the fumes of a cigarette coiling up around his face. It was a small, uncomplicated painting. The soldier’s grinning features were remarkably well made. Jim had captured an attitude in the brushstrokes: helpless but defiant. ‘You’ve got to hold on to the best ones,’ he said. ‘Keep something for yourself, that’s all I mean. I could’ve sold that for a fortune once, but I chose not to. Best decision of my life.’

  I stood up to get a closer view. ‘Why not hang it in your flat, or at the studio?’

  ‘I like it here where folks can see it. And, you know me, I tend to stop in for a drink occasionally.’

  ‘What if it gets stolen?’

  ‘Ron keeps a lookout. And someone had to elevate the decor in this place. They had some stupid cartoon of a horse up there before I got to it.’ He came to stand beside me. I could smell the linseed on him. When I moved to glance up at his face, I found that he was staring only at the portrait. His eyes were glossed and bright. ‘Honestly, I wish I could’ve sent it to the lad after I painted it, but I did it from a sketch. He died before we left Dunkirk. Wouldn’t know it from that grin, though, would you? Poor sod didn’t know what he was in for.’ Jim coughed abruptly. ‘Anyway, that’s all I wanted to show you.’ He nudged his shoulder into mine. ‘Don’t tell anyone you nearly saw me cry. I have a reputation to uphold.’

  We stayed at the Prince Alfred long enough to have one drink, and then he walked me home. Coming through the frosted avenues of Little Venice, we were both trembling and tired, and I thought that he might put his arm around me then, in solidarity if nothing else. But he kept his hands inside his pockets all the way to St
John’s Wood. We talked only of domestic matters: which place on the high street should he take his shirts to now for laundering? Which bakery was it that made the loaf he liked? He was readying himself for life without me. As we headed down the mews, he kicked at the cobbles and said, ‘I’ll probably just kip on the studio floor tonight then.’ I could not tell if he was being candid or suggestive, and we reached the front door before I could respond. ‘Well, it’s no bother,’ he said. ‘I’m used to it by now.’ He let us inside and unlocked the studio. Turning on the lights, he loitered in the threshold, thumbing the latch. He seemed to have something else to say to me besides ‘Goodnight’, but that was all he offered. I was left to carry his blazer up the dingy stairs, alone.

  Perhaps the deflation of this moment was what made me take my consolations elsewhere. I felt so heartened by the sight of every title crossed out on the gallery’s price list at the end of my show’s run: all ten of the canvases were sold within a week. I allowed myself to absorb the compliments that Max passed on from collectors, strangers whose attentions would otherwise have meant nothing. More than this, I saw my name up in gilt letters outside the Eversholt, like the sign of a department store, and mistook it for accomplishment.

  After that entrance hall show, I did not need to worry about stealing time to sketch, though I still got up at six every morning to go out with my pencils. Max arranged a studio for me in Kilburn, with an adjoining flat, and I was promised the same monthly stipend that Jim received for materials and subsistence. I felt glad of these developments, but sorry to vacate my tiny attic room, whose limitations had somehow influenced the paintings themselves, compacting each landscape, hunching every figure, cropping off so many heads and bodies, distorting all the viewpoints. Above all, I did not want to leave Jim. I had grown so reliant on our closeness, so used to the sound of his downtrodden voice, and even to the scent of him. But I could not be the kind of woman who allowed her aspirations to be stalled by sentiments like these, especially when they were yet to be requited. Jim Culvers would go on surviving, whether I was there to set up his easel every morning or not, and I expected him to stay exactly where he was forever, so I might call on him each week and he might miss me between visits.

  On the day I moved out of the mews house, he stood in the doorway of his studio, watching me drag my suitcase down the stairs. He did not offer to help, just waited there, saying nothing, while I heaved the case from step to step. When I reached the bottom, he said, ‘You’ll have to get used to this, won’t you? Lugging your gold bars around.’

  I leaned on the balustrade, catching my breath. ‘It’s just a few library books.’

  ‘I think you’re meant to give those back.’

  ‘Ah, but then I’d have to pay the fines.’

  The suitcase burst open and a few of the hardbacks tumbled down the stairs. Finally, Jim came to assist me, collecting them. ‘The Sea-Wolf. The Reef. Billy Budd . . . Never had you pegged as a mariner.’

  ‘Well, they happen to be classics.’

  ‘I’ll take your word for it. Here.’ He gave them back, and I stuffed them in the case.

  I had made an effort to read widely during my time at art school, in the hope that engaging with the right books might stimulate ideas for paintings (and if they broadened my vocabulary along the way, I thought, so much the better). Our exuberant headmistress back at Clydebank High had encouraged all the girls to read Jane Austen and the Brontës—‘And, for heaven’s sake, read Middlemarch,’ she had announced one day, while teaching our domestic science class; ‘ if you never do another sensible thing for the rest of your lives, read Middlemarch!’ I found these books worthwhile and interesting, but perhaps not quite as formative as I expected, like visiting important landmarks I had spent too long imagining. The painter in me was drawn to other voices: to Melville’s artfulness and detail, to Conrad’s gloomy landscapes, to Stevenson’s thrill and adventure. These were the writers whose works I kept returning to. In fact, I reread Moby-Dick and Nostromo so often in those early days with Jim that I found their language mirrored in my journal entries; sometimes, in ordinary letters to my parents, I would copy lines from An Inland Voyage (‘To equip so short a letter with a preface is, I am half afraid, to sin against proportion!’) and felt a slight displeasure when they failed to comment on it.

  ‘How will you get all this on the bus?’ Jim asked.

  ‘I won’t. Max organised a van. Should be here any minute.’

  ‘Good old Max, eh? Where would we be without Max?’

  ‘Don’t start that again.’

  He carried the case to the kerb. The sky was cement-grey and the air was sharpening for hailstones.

  ‘We’ll not be far from each other,’ I said. ‘I’ll come and visit.’

  ‘No, you’ll have work to do.’

  ‘I’ll still have my evenings and weekends.’

  ‘Ha, right,’ Jim said. He glanced back to the house. ‘Is there more to come down?’

  ‘Just a box or two.’

  ‘I’m sure you can manage those on your own.’ He would not look at me. ‘Let’s just shake hands and say cheerio, shall we? No point turning this into a ceremony.’ The skin of his palm was as dry as a dog’s paw, his fingers ridged and calloused.

  ‘What about this Saturday? I’ll bring you some bagels from the good Jewish bakery. We can have a cup of tea and—’

  ‘What? Catch up? Talk about the Arsenal?’

  ‘I was going to say we could look through the racing pages. I don’t mind putting your bets on, still. At the weekend, anyway.’

  Jim nodded. His whole face tightened. ‘I think you’re forgetting how Max does things. He’ll have an agenda worked out for you—mark my words. He’ll be getting you in with the Roxborough crowd straight away, and God knows who else. You’re going to be divvied up: a stake in you here, a stake in you there. It’s going to mean deadlines, long hours in the studio. Real work. Why d’you think I needed an assistant in the first place? It wasn’t to keep my attic warm.’ He squinted at the sky. ‘No, you’re not going to be sitting here, eating bagels, reading me the form guide, that’s for sure. And, quite frankly, if that’s how you choose to spend your time from now on, I’ll bloody murder you.’ He sniffed. A white van was approaching now from the high street. ‘I’d do it quickly, mind—quick snap of the neck—you wouldn’t even feel it. That’s how much I respect you.’ Patting my arm, he said, ‘All right then, Miss Conroy. Work hard, keep your nose clean. Forget anything I might’ve accidentally taught you and you’ll be right as rain. Come and say hello to me at your next soirée and make me look important. Off you go.’ He trudged back to his studio, peering at the ground. And that was the last conversation I would have with Jim Culvers for a very long time.

  Though all artists strive for recognition, they cannot foresee how it will come to them or how much they will compromise to maintain success. All they can do is cling to the reins and try to weather the changes of their circumstance without altering their course. But no woman can improve her station in life without sacrificing a little of her identity. I was an ordinary girl from Clydebank who had somehow established herself as a prospect on the London art scene: was I really expected to remain unchanged by these experiences? Even my father, who had returned from the frontlines of war apparently untouched by its horrors, was not averse to smoothing out his accent when speaking to the council on the telephone. So how was I to supposed to sign away my life to Roxborough Fine Art and still be that same girl who once painted in her parents’ yard? I tried so hard to preserve the Clydebank in me that I soon realised I was forcing it. Perhaps if there had been some grounding presence in my life at that time—a good man like Jim Culvers who could have given me a shake when I needed it—I might have been able to retain a semblance of my old self. But on the preview night for my first solo exhibition at the Roxborough in 1960, I did not have a genuine friend in the room.

  Instead, I was surrounded by interested parties and loathsome hangers-on. Peopl
e like Max Eversholt, who paraded around the gallery as though he had painted every canvas himself, tour-guiding young women in cocktail dresses from landscape to landscape with a delicate grip on their elbows. He brought other artists over to speak with me, one fashionable face at a time, and presumed we were already acquainted (‘You know Frank, of course . . . You know Michael . . . You know Timothy . . .’) because surely all the painters in London were the best of friends? I stood, awkwardly pattering with them, as I might have talked to distant relations at a wake.

  Occasions such as these were geared for Max Eversholt and his type. For him, the gallery floor on a preview night was the one place he felt alive. He dialled up his enthusiasm to the point of theatre, revelling in the glory of his involvement in my work, kissing cheeks, patting backs, savouring the thrum of conversations that ensued. I never understood why all this glitz and pageantry was required to sell a picture—it certainly had nothing to do with art. Every painter I respected worked alone in a quiet room, and the images they made were intended for solemn reflection, not to provide the scenery for obnoxious gatherings of nabobs and batty collectors wearing too much perfume. After a while, the company of such people became the norm, and I was expected not only to enchant them with my work, but also to fascinate them with my personality. If I baulked at placating these strangers, it merely served to enthral them even more.

  I hovered in the corner with Bernie Cale for much of that private viewing, and we talked for a while about Jim, wondering aloud where he had gone to, if we had seen the last of him. Bernie had heard all the rumours and was not convinced by any of them. ‘I just don’t see a bloke like Jim lasting ten minutes in New York,’ he said. ‘Too many windbags and clever Dicks. Too much competition. And you know how he feels about American whisky. Single malt’s so dear over there, he’d never make it.’