I did not want to disagree with him, and my tongue was too dried up to speak anyway.
‘Would you like some water?’ said Randall, watching my attempts to quench my palate. The nurse filled up a beaker for me. She left it on the table, just within reach.
It tasted like metal, but I glugged it all down.
Randall stood there, fiddling with his tie. ‘Do you understand what’s happened to you, Miss Conroy?’ he said. When I did not answer, he cornered his eyes at the nurse.
‘Do you know where you are, dear?’ she said.
‘I think so.’
‘Where?’ The little watch on her uniform was hanging upside down, confusing me.
‘On the QE,’ I said. ‘The hospital.’
This seemed to come as a relief to them. ‘Good,’ said Randall. ‘That’s good.’ He was fidgeting so much with his tie that the knot was getting smaller, tighter. ‘I don’t think you’ll require surgery. You’ve passed a lot of blood and tissue on your own. But we’ll keep you in overnight just to be sure. It should be fine to disembark tomorrow with the rest of the passengers—but I won’t rush you out of here, if your fluids are still down.’
‘Where’s Dulcie?’ I said.
‘I don’t know who that is, I’m sorry.’
‘Mrs Fenton,’ said the nurse.
‘Ah, yes. I believe she went up to her room to change. I can have somebody reach her, if you like.’
I nodded. ‘We’re supposed to have meetings in New York tomorrow night.’
‘Well, I’m sure you can postpone. It’s no small thing you’ve been through here.’ He gave me a kindly look, tapping my feet. ‘Bed rest for a few days, I should think.’ Then he backed out through the curtain.
The nurse refilled my beaker. She checked the steady drip of fluid in my tube. ‘Don’t you worry, my love,’ she said, rocking my shoulder. ‘My sister lost hers at seven months. It’s just about the worst thing that can happen, it really is, but she’s had two since then, and never had no trouble. So don’t you worry about anything like that. You’re going to be fine. Here you are—drink this—let’s get keep those liquids up. We can’t have you stuck on this old boat forever now, can we?’
Dulcie felt so guilty about her part in things that she withdrew from the final of her squash tournament and came visiting me in the hospital bay twice that evening, and once more the day after. I would have preferred to be left alone. I did not blame her, or anyone else, for what had happened, but she was insistent on claiming responsibility (‘I should never have made you go for that drink with him . . . We should probably have flown . . . I should never have forced you to come down to the baths. What was I thinking?’). Honestly, I could not abide this type of self-involvement, as though the entire balance of the world hinged on the probity of one person’s actions. I was grateful for her sympathy, of course, and for the way she had looked after me in the caldarium. But the longer I spent in Dulcie’s company, the harder it became to ignore the blankness of her personality, and I wanted—more than anything—to stay friends.
So I let her sit at my bedside, chuntering on about the gall of Wilfred Searle, and how she was going to personally see to it that he never set foot in the Roxborough again: ‘I don’t care who his uncle is—it’s about time someone taught him how a real man should behave.’ That evening, she brought in copies of Life magazine and read aloud the captions from the photo essays for me, speaking in superior tones about the people in them. She made no mention of the blood and tissue that had spilled out of me just a few hours before, the human thing that I had lost and could not reconcile my feelings for. It was not her fault, of course. Even if she had tried to broach the matter, I would not have wanted to listen. Because I was not yet sure what I needed to be consoled for—the life I had evacuated, or the one I was forced to continue. And so, to prompt her into leaving, I pretended to fall asleep on each of the occasions that she visited. I could not bring myself to answer any of her questions, and spent long moments gazing into space.
‘You really mustn’t worry,’ Dulcie said. ‘I know we all keep telling you that—and it probably sounds like a lot of molly-coddling—but, really, you will get over this. Things will get back to normal. Elspeth, darling, are you listening? Please. I can’t bear to see you in this state.’
Evacuated. That was the word the physician had used. A horribly clinical term—compassionless—and yet it captured how I felt about myself for so long afterwards: as though I were a danger that required escaping. I wondered if it was truly possible to feel bereft of something I had never wanted. Part of me had hoped to be rid of Wilfred’s burden, and I had speculated, once or twice, if I possessed the wherewithal to throw myself down a flight of stairs to make it happen. Of course, these instincts had been overruled by that other part of me, the one that had pathetic notions of bringing the child to term, of loving it, raising it to be a fine member of society just to spite its father. But there was no denying the fact that I had chosen to lie down in the heat of that caldarium—it was no accident or oversight—and perhaps that is why I was overcome by such torpor that I could barely lift my head from the pillow. I could not blame Wilfred Searle any more for my misfortunes. I had chosen to put myself where I was, and there was no forgiving it.
Dulcie must have said something to Amanda Yail about my being in the hospital bay, or else the news must have found its way to Victor by some other means. Because, not long after breakfast on the last day of the voyage, he appeared at the fringes of my cubicle with his briefcase. ‘Present for you,’ he said, setting an envelope on my table. The flap was not stuck down and I could already tell what was inside. ‘You don’t have to open it now,’ he said, but I did.
It was a home-made card with get well soon! scribbled in dark blue crayon. There was a muddy picture of what looked like Kull-Ex flying over a New York skyscraper. And, on the reverse, in adult writing, it said: Your super friend, Jonathan.
‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘That’s very sweet of you.’
‘Not my idea,’ said Victor. ‘Actually, I thought you might find it a little insensitive. I wasn’t sure if I should bring it or not.’
‘I’m glad you did.’
‘Well, the lad wouldn’t take no for an answer. Mandy’s taken him down to the pool to keep him occupied—he was begging to come with me, but I thought I’d spare you that, at least.’
In fact, the thought of talking to the boy again about his comics was as close as I had felt to happiness in days. ‘I really wouldn’t have minded,’ I said.
‘He’ll be very glad you liked the card. Took him ages to draw. May I—?’ He gestured at the empty chair beside the bed and did not wait for my approval, sitting with his briefcase on his lap. ‘I hope you don’t mind me visiting you like this, but I heard you weren’t in the best of spirits, and I just—well, I wanted to make sure you were OK. Only natural to get depressed, considering.’
‘I appreciate the thought,’ I said, and looked away—anywhere but into those sympathetic eyes. I did not deserve them.
‘Look,’ Victor said cagily, ‘you can tell me if I’m overstepping the mark here, but something’s been nagging me all afternoon.’
I did not respond, just rolled my head in his direction.
‘You were taking pennyroyal,’ he said, with a querying tone. ‘For the seasickness.’
‘Yes,’ I said.
‘Hmm.’ He drummed his briefcase. ‘And how much of that were you taking?’
‘God, I don’t know, Victor. What does it matter?’ I hoped to sound just the right amount offended.
‘It’s been known to have certain side effects, that’s all, in large doses.’ His fingers pushed at the leather, rippling it. ‘I wondered if Dulcie was aware of that when she recommended it.’
‘I’m sure she wasn’t.’
‘No, of course not. I wasn’t suggesting—never mind.’ He looked around the hospital bay, studying the decor. ‘This place seems very well equipped.’
‘It’s a h
ospital. They’re all the same.’
‘Oh, not true. You should see some of the wards I had to train in.’ We were completely alone in the room. Victor was the only person I had seen besides Dulcie, the physician, and the nurse for the past twelve hours or so, and I suspected he knew it.
‘Look, if you don’t mind, Victor, I’m getting rather tired.’
But he would not be hurried or distracted. ‘It’s an abortifacient, that’s my point. Well, supposedly it is. No medical proof for it, as such, but, anyway—there you are.’ Pushing up his glasses with his little finger, he stood, and lingered by my bedside for so long I thought he was about to kiss my forehead. ‘Like I said, it’s been nagging me all day. Why would you be taking penny royal? I should have spotted it sooner.’ And he gave a disbelieving chuckle. ‘That number I gave you,’ he said. ‘Throw it out. The chap I recommended won’t be right for you. Too Freudian.’
‘What?’
‘I’m serious.’ He set down his briefcase on the foot of my bed, unclipped it, and began rummaging underneath the files. ‘I want you to come and see me once you get back to London. It might take a bit of time, but I think I can help you.’
‘With what?’
‘Your anxiety depression.’ He glanced up from his case. ‘I don’t mean what happened yesterday—I mean what came before. Those are the issues you need to confront, or you’ll never come to terms with what you’ve lost. And I won’t just stand aside and watch that happen to you.’ He went back to rooting for whatever he was searching for. It was as though I was still on the grubby banquette in Henry Holden’s office.
‘I told you, I don’t need a psychiatrist,’ I said. ‘I have painting.’
‘Is that so?’
‘I’m sorry if that puts you out of a job, but it’s how I’ve always dealt with things.’
‘And how would you say that’s been working for you so far?’
‘Don’t patronise me, Victor.’
He gave a surrendering nod. ‘It’s just, I heard you didn’t really do much painting these days, or finish anything, at least. Isn’t that what you told me?’ At last, he gave up rummaging in his briefcase and shut the lid. ‘Look, I’m afraid I’ve run out of cards. So this’ll have to do—’ He tore off the top page of a white prescription pad and handed it to me. ‘I really hope you’ll take me seriously.’
DR VICTOR YAIL, M.D., F.R.C.P, D.P.M.
‘Can’t trust a man with letters after his name,’ I said. ‘That’s what my father used to say.’
‘I tell you what—’ Victor clipped his case shut. ‘If you can make it through the next few days without leaping off any skyscrapers, I’ll let you know what they all stand for. Now, can I bank on you to make an appointment?’
At the factory, my mother punched her timecard every morning, then counted down the hours before she got to punch it out again. From the year she left school into her middle fifties, she kept exactly the same job, and if the amount a person complains about her work is an adequate barometer of her satisfaction, then she must have found great joy in it.
At the John Brown & Company yard, my father scorched the skin right off his knuckles daily, caulking ships with men he looked upon as brothers, some of whom he brought back home to share our dinner, some of whom he lent our rainy-day money. He wore down every rung of cartilage in his spine, broke several ribs, developed shin splints, and laboured through the agony, one shift at a time, for measly pay and no assurance of a future.
I admired the doggedness of my parents more than I was ever able to express to them. They grafted to accomplish things for other people, knowing all their hard work would go unseen. My father never felt what it was like to cross the ocean on a vessel he constructed with his friends, nor did he really care to—in his mind, every ship died when it left the yard. My mother never walked the aisles of the department stores that stocked her sewing machines, though she brought home boxes of the reject needles to stitch our curtains and communion dresses for the neighbours’ children.
I cannot say how much of their resolve I managed to inherit. Some days, it felt as though I had been gifted with my father’s vim, and I could stand up at my easel for long periods, forgetting where I was. Other times, I was steeled by my mother’s uncomplaining attitude, and would not let a good idea escape my grasp, even if it took me several weeks to tame it.
But doggedness in art is no substitute for inspiration. The thrill of painting turns so quickly to bewilderment if you let it, and nobody can help you to regain your bearings afterwards. Talent sinks into the lightless depths like so much rope unless you keep firm hold on it, but squeeze too tight and it will just as surely drag you under.
By the summer of 1960, I was unable to determine a clear reason to continue making pictures, aside from the dim hopefulness that kept lifting me from bed at 6 a.m. to try again. The only way to shake off failure, I thought, was by perseverance and hard work, and if I did not rise to paint each morning at my usual hour then I was denying myself another chance to succeed. And so I carried on through the soreness, as my father would have done, without protest, even though my hands no longer had the skill to translate what I asked of them. I approached each canvas as I always did—with no preconceived ideas, just a willingness to paint—and proceeded to get nowhere.
It is a painter’s job to give shape to things unseeable, to convey emotion in the accumulation of gestures, the instinctive, the considered, the unplanned. There is both randomness and predestination to the act of painting, a measurement and a chaos, and the moment you allow the mind to implicate itself too much in the business of the heart, the work will falter. It is not something you can control. You might toil long and hard, bullying the paint until it agrees to do your bidding, but you will only beat the life right out of it. And when you reach the stage where you are not expressing feeling in your work but engineering it, you might as well become a forger, or present yourself at a museum and donate your skills to the conservation of its masterpieces. Otherwise, you will be tempted to hang your feeble efforts on the wall and say, ‘Good enough,’ seeing pound signs where there should be meaning. You must resist this temptation with every fibre of your being. I tried everything I could to remain true to such convictions during the New York trip and afterwards. I stayed each day in my hotel room on Sixth Avenue, staring out at the gridded puzzle of the city from my thirty-fifth-floor window, drawing the patterns of its dense, dissembling streets and the polished deadness of its architecture. I filled both of the sketchbooks I had brought with me, then used up the hotel notepaper, until all I had left to draw on were a few blank pages at the end of Below the Salt. Of course, I had some yearning to go out into the city and experience it on foot, to understand it the same way that I had learned to appreciate the mysteries of London, but something kept me cooped up in the hotel all week—an anxiety that tensed my throat when I stood at the bathroom mirror putting on my make-up, a shame that wetted my eyes. The first morning, I got up and dressed but could not get beyond the threshold. The next, I reached the midpoint of the hallway and panicked; I heard the voices of other guests approaching in the corridor, got very shallow-breathed and wobbly, then paced back to my room, groping the walls. It did not feel right to be amongst people yet, and the city was teeming with strangers.
During the cab ride from the harbour with Dulcie, I had felt the kerbside energy of the place so intensely it had stunned me into silence. It was as though we had arrived at the very terminus of possibility, the patch of land where everything I cherished most about the world—art, imagination, freedom of expression—existed in the shade of everything I feared: corporations, brinkmanship, the preying of dogs on dogs. It was obvious to me that Jim could never have endured a town so hustling and kinetic, so pitiless and upward-facing, and this robbed me of the only scrap of purpose I had left. I had no interest in a New York City without Jim Culvers in it. So, when the hotel porter showed me to my room, I tipped him a dollar, sent him on his way, and locked the door. I was supposed t
o join Dulcie and Leonard Hines that night for dinner at Delmonico’s, but I cried off, and twice more in the days that followed. Eventually, a breakfast meeting was arranged for us in the hotel restaurant, and we sat clumsily discussing things, not mentioning my sweats or the trembling of my hands upon the teapot. Leonard Hines introduced himself by saying, ‘Dee-Dee tells me you’re her girl most likely. Hope that’s true. I’ve seen a little of your work, it’s—well, it’s interesting. I wonder, though, where are you taking things right now? I mean, in what direction are you headed?’
I just dabbed at the table with my napkin and told him, ‘I’m not sure yet. Somewhere good, I hope.’ And I turned to Dulcie, saying, ‘I’ve been thinking: would you mind if I flew back tomorrow instead?’
‘If that’s what you want. She didn’t have the best time on the ship with me,’ Dulcie said, by way of explanation to Leonard, who was squinting at her for assurance. Nothing was said about my brief stint in the hospital bay or what had put me there, bloody evacuations on the high seas not being the anecdote one prefers to tell during business hours.
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, I’m sure my secretary can look into that for you. We have a very good arrangement with Pan Am.’
‘I suppose I’ll be sailing home alone then,’ Dulcie said. ‘Terrific.’
I thanked them both and went back to picking at my pancakes. We exchanged the lightest talk about Leonard’s youngest daughter—she had just been admitted into the art history programme at Radcliffe, a feat that made him ‘just incredibly proud’. Had I realised that this was a prestigious women’s college at the time, I might have feigned some admiration for her achievements, and not mistaken Leonard’s constant use of the phrase ‘Seven Sisters’ for the area of North London where I once went to buy a second-hand gramophone from a woman with no teeth. He was obviously unimpressed by me, and this exasperated Dulcie, who sat across the table making reproachful faces at my lack of discourse. ‘Don’t ever embarrass me like that again,’ she said, as we went back up in the lift. ‘You could’ve at least tried to look interested.’ It was a painful and disastrous meeting, but I had no regrets about it.
The Ecliptic Page 20
