by Kate Hewitt
Ellen sank into the chair by the window, mentally rolling her eyes at Louisa’s barbed comments and blatant self-absorption. She knew Louisa was pretty and she could be charming when she chose, but not for the first time Ellen wondered what Jed had seen in the woman he’d chosen to be his wife, and why she had deigned to be Louisa’s friend in the first place.
Breathing in deeply, Ellen continued reading.
In any case, life here on Amherst Island continues on the same. I always did envy you your precious island, but it’s more mine now than yours, I should think! Especially now, with my exciting news, and I’m sure you can guess what it is. Jed and I have been married for nearly six months, after all!
Ellen stilled, her gaze resting blindly on those chimney stacks Louisa had disdained. She was not so naïve or innocent that she couldn’t guess what news Louisa had to share. Resolutely she turned back to the letter.
As I’m sure you’ve guessed, I’m expecting! The baby is due in mid-summer, I think. I feel dreadfully tired but Jed says I’m blooming, and so I must be. You know how sparse he can be with compliments, although of course when it matters he says quite the right thing…
Ellen could read no more. She tossed the letter aside, dropping her head into her hands as her stomach roiled. Louisa was expecting Jed’s child, and while Ellen knew she should hardly be surprised, she was all the same. Yet even more hurtful than that news was the casual, easy intimacy Louisa obviously shared with Jed. Ellen had seen it at the wedding too, and yet still she’d resisted believing it. Jed and Louisa genuinely loved one another. How? Her heart cried out, even as her mind insisted, let it be.
“Ellen?” Norah called, tapping once on her door. “Supper is ready.”
Taking another deep breath, Ellen lifted her head from her hands. “Coming, Norah,” she called, and she rose from her chair. She poured some ice-cold water from the pitcher into the basin on her bureau, and quickly washed her face and hands. When she looked in the mirror, her eyes still seemed dazed but otherwise she presented the image she needed: a quiet, composed Lady Artist.
Downstairs Norah was dishing out a warming beef stew in the small dining room at the back of the house. Besides the cook and a boy to do some of the hard work, Norah did not hire any servants. She sent the washing out and managed the rest for herself, and Ellen helped.
Now Ellen hurried to set the table, setting glasses and fetching water. Norah raised her eyebrows as Ellen took her seat.
“You’ve had news from home, I take it?”
“Yes, of some neighbors, old childhood friends. They’re expecting a baby, which is of course tremendously exciting.” Ellen smoothed her napkin on her lap and then took a plate of stew with murmured thanks.
“I suppose such things make you wonder about what you may have missed,” Norah said as she sat down opposite Ellen. Ellen looked up sharply, but her landlady’s face was bland. She had no idea how much the older woman might have guessed of the heartbreak she’d left behind.
“I wish them well,” she said firmly, more firmly than she actually felt. “I am perfectly content here, I assure you, and I have no aspirations towards marriage or babies at the moment.” Why did she feel as if she had to keep telling everyone that?
“I am glad to hear it,” Norah answered. “There was a matter I wished to discuss with you,” she continued as she poured them both water. “Regarding the Society’s winter exhibition.”
Ellen’s heart skipped a beat as she composed her expression into one of polite, professional interest. ”Oh, yes?”
“You most certainly possess the talent to take part in it,” Norah said and Ellen felt the beginnings of a smile curve her mouth. She was going to be included in the exhibition! It felt like a validation of all her choices to come here, to pursue art, to leave her beloved Amherst Island behind.
“Thank you, Norah.”
“But while you have the ability,” Norah continued, “you still lack the focus and passion. Everything you’ve done for the school has been executed well, even flawlessly at times. You are a most competent artist.”
Ellen stared at her, the meaning of her words penetrating slowly. Competent. This time it was not the praise she’d thought it had been coming from Grieffenhagen.
“Thank you,” she finally said when she had found her voice. “I think.” Norah’s features had softened with compassion, and perhaps even pity, that Ellen could not bear to see. After all her effort, was she still not good enough? Not passionate enough?
“Ellen, you have not yet found your way,” she said gently. “Or perhaps I should say your calling.” Ellen opened her mouth to reply, although she wasn’t even sure what she was going to say, but Norah held up a hand to forestall her. “Art is so much more than putting a brush to paint or a needle to thread, or whatever medium you choose. It’s about communicating something real, something true, that you feel deep inside you. It needs to be important.”
Norah’s eyes were alight, her expression earnest and yet still compassionate. Ellen could not quite keep the hurt from her voice as she stated flatly, “You mean it’s not just about painting pretty pictures.”
Norah smiled faintly. “That sounds like something you heard in a lesson.”
“Professor Grieffenhagen,” Ellen acknowledged. “He also said I was competent. At the time I thought he was complimenting me, but now I see he was not.” Her voice trembled and she looked down at her hands, mortified that she was betraying so much childish emotion to Norah, and yet unable to keep herself from it. She thought she’d come so far in both confidence and ability since arriving in Glasgow, but she could see now that the Lady Artist she’d been trying to be was no more than a façade, a part she’d played in the hopes that she’d inhabit, or at least fool those around her that she had. Clearly she’d fooled no one. Competent. Now it sounded like the worst insult.
“Ellen, I am not trying to insult or hurt you,” Norah said, her voice had sharpening slightly. “You must not take it so. I want you to improve, to grow. That is why I am saying what I am. Any artist must learn to accept criticism, to take it and learn from it.”
Ellen looked up, blinking rapidly. She took a sip of water to clear the lump that had formed in her throat. “And how I am to improve in this way, Norah? How can I gain a calling?” She couldn’t keep the very slightest sneer from her voice, for in truth she despaired of ever finding such a thing. She’d learned how to mix paints, how to solder metal, how to grind her own colors, even. But a calling? It wasn’t something that was taught. It couldn’t be learned.
“It is something you will have to discover for yourself,” Norah said. “You need to ask yourself why you like to create art. Look deep inside for the answer. What are you trying to accomplish—“
“I don’t know,” Ellen said, her voice rising in frustration. “It’s just something I always did, ever since I was a child. I never questioned it—“
“But now perhaps you should,” Norah returned. “If that is something you have never done. Every artist needs to understand her purpose, and then live for it.”
Which sounded rather high-minded, Ellen thought a bit sourly, too high-minded for her, perhaps. For much of her life she’d been trying only to survive, and drawing had offered her a little happiness amidst the uncertainty and lack. There had been no higher calling, no purpose, other than that, but that obviously wasn’t enough for the likes of Norah.
Ellen tried to suppress the sudden surge of bitterness welling up inside her. Did Norah know what it was like to be hungry, to be orphaned and alone, to feel so hopeless? With all this talk of calling and purpose, could she imagine being a child like that?
“But enough of this talk for now,” Norah said quietly. “Our meal is becoming cold. Think on what I said, Ellen. That is all I ask.”
For the next few weeks Ellen thought of little else. As much as Norah’s well-meaning and high-minded advice had rubbed her raw, she would rather think about art and her apparent lack of focus or calling than wonder
how Jed and Louisa fared back on Amherst Island. She couldn’t bear to acknowledge how envious she felt of Louisa, preparing to welcome a child into this world, moving on with her life, her marriage.
“You’ve seemed preoccupied lately,” Amy said one morning as they cleaned their paintbrushes in the large stone sink in the studio. “Could it be because of the dashing Mr. McCallister?”
“Oh, Amy.” Ellen shook her head. “He preoccupies you far more than he does me. No, I haven’t thought of him at all. It’s something Norah said.”
“Norah Neilson Gray?” Amy’s eyes widened; she was not on the familiar terms Ellen was with one of the school’s professors.
“Yes, she spoke to me a few weeks ago, about the winter exhibition.” Ellen glanced down at the brushes, the water turning cloudy from the paint. “Norah has said she won’t include me in it, because I lack a calling.”
“A calling?” Amy wrinkled her pert nose. “I certainly don’t have one of those.”
“And I don’t either,” Ellen said glumly. “Even though I’m hoping to obtain my certificate. I doubt I will, if I don’t have this great sense of purpose.”
“Goodness, I thought we were just painting pictures.” Amy raised her eyebrows comically. “What do you think she meant, exactly?”
“It seems I need to communicate something true and real with my art. Something important, from deep down inside.”
Amy let out a most inelegant guffaw. “And what’s important about a couple of moldy oranges and an old felt hat?” She nodded towards the still life display they’d been working on that morning.
Ellen gave a small smile. “Nothing, perhaps, but I think I do understand what she means, at least a bit.” Amy cocked an eyebrow, waiting for more, and Ellen continued slowly, “Since coming to the school I haven’t done any art that’s just for me. It’s all been about form and style and being competent, which is a word I now loathe, but sometimes I wonder why I’m here. I feel like the passion I had for art has been sucked out of me by learning all the methods and forms.”
“But you’re doing so well,” Amy protested. “And surely anyone becomes tired of lessons, especially when someone like old Griffy is teaching them—“
“Really, Amy, you shouldn’t call him that,” Ellen admonished in a whispered his. “But yes, I suppose that’s true. And I do enjoy many things about being here.” She liked being independent, and her time spent at the Society’s building on Blythewood Square, and her conversations with Norah. She’d been doing all she could to make the most of her life in Glasgow, and yet something was still missing at its center. “I need to remember why I started drawing in the first place,” she said, feeling the words deep inside her as she said them, and Amy looked at her in open-mouthed curiousity.
“And how are you going to do that?”
The answer, when it came to her, was blindingly simple. She was in Glasgow already; she needed to return to her roots. She needed to go to Springburn.
The following Saturday Ellen dressed in a plain skirt and shirtwaist, buttoned up her wool coat, and put on her sturdiest boots. Then she took the number four tram to the north of Glasgow, past the railway works she remembered from long ago, down Atlas Road and then Vulkan Street, to her old stomping ground on Keppochill Road.
It was strange to see the soot-stained buildings again, the grocer’s cart leaning against a runty tree, the lines of washing waving in the chilly winter wind, sheets that would be grimed with soot before they dried.
Ellen felt as if she’d catapulted back in time; she almost felt as if she were twelve years old again, a wicker basket over one arm, as she spent her Da’s meager earnings haggling over moldy potatoes leftover at the end of the day.
She spent several hours wandering the streets, feeling like a ghost, invisible to this world of hard work and endless graft, the twins of despair and sorrow blunted by sudden, surprising joys. She drifted along the streets, listening to the familiar sounds of women gossiping and bartering with shopkeepers, children playing with hoops and balls in the street, dodging in and out of the steady stream of humanity, all of it conducted to the distant clatter of the railway works, busy even on a Saturday afternoon, the metallic orchestra of her childhood.
Finally, when her feet were aching and she felt blisters on both heels, she bought a tin mug of tea and a paper-wrapped sandwich from a peddler with a pushcart and retreated to a low brick wall where she could watch the world go by.
Memories assaulted her at every turn, bittersweet and poignant, and then as she watched all the activity, her gaze was caught by a young woman selecting apples from another peddler. She was about the same age as Ellen, her clothes worn and carefully darned several times over, and she examined each apple carefully, inspecting it for dents or bruises, before she put it in her basket. The peddler watched her with folded arms, a mingling look of exasperation and pity on his face.
Ellen remembered being in exactly the same place. Like this woman, she had taken her time to examine the wares of every peddler, and to make sure she got the most for her hard-won pennies.
The memory made her fingers twitch with sudden longing, a need to capture that moment on paper, because she knew how it felt, deep down, just where Norah had said she needed to feel. It felt urgent, the desire to capture the moment and commit it to pencil and paper.
She had a lovely sketchbook of her own now, with a calfskin cover, but she had not thought to bring it to Springburn. So just as in the days of her childhood, she reached for what was on hand: the paper her sandwich had been wrapped in and a stub of pencil gathering lint in the bottom of her coat pocket.
As soon as she began sketching she felt as if everything inside her had both settled into place and caught on fire. She’d missed this so much, the simplicity of lines drawn on paper, the stark elegance and truth of it, communicating honestly with the world as she knew it.
She had no use for fancy oil paints and canvases stretched on wooden frames, or embroidery hoops or looms or potters’ wheels and kilns for clay. She just wanted this: a scrap of paper and a bit of lead. That was all she’d ever wanted.
Her pencil seemed to fly over the paper, and with just a few bold strokes she had sketched the scene, or at least the beginning of it: the woman’s sorrowful wistfulness, the peddler’s exasperation, the hint of a deeper story within the simple, everyday transaction. She was gazing down at the creased paper with a glow of satisfaction when a hand reddened and callused by work suddenly grabbed the sheet.
“Excuse me, but is that me your drawing?”
Ellen’s head jerked up and with shock she found herself staring straight into the face of the young woman she’d been sketching; she had crossed the street and was now looking at her with both anger and suspicion, her brown drawn together as she scowled.
“Wh—why, yes,” Ellen stammered. “It is.”
“And what gave you the right to go putting me to paper?” The young woman demanded. “Coming here with your fancy clothes, gawping at all of us—“
“Fancy clothes!” Ellen almost laughed, but then quickly reined it in. “My clothes aren’t fancy—“
“They are to me.”
“But…” Ellen looked down at herself, the plain skirt and shirtwaist she’d chosen, and realized that eight years ago, when she’d been a Springburn lass, she would have thought these clothes fancy as well. “I didn’t come here to stare or make fun,” she said quietly. “I came because I used to live here, right on Keppochill Road.” She pointed to the shabby building across the street, washing strung from its windows, the once-red brick now black with decades of soot. “Right there.” The woman looked disbelieving, her lip curling scornfully, and Ellen hurried to continue, “Please, you must believe me. I would never come here to gawp. I came to remember who I used to be, who I really am. I’m at the School of Art now and I realized I’d forgotten who I am, why I started to draw in the first place.” She was speaking faster and faster, the words tripping over each other as she hastened to explai
n. “I saw you buying apples and you reminded me so much of myself. My mother was ill when I was young, and I used to buy her fruit to help her feel better, and I always made sure she didn’t get a bruised apple. Sometimes it felt like the only thing I could control.”
Finally the woman’s face softened, and she glanced down at her basket of apples. “I bought these for my brother. He’s got a terrible cough. I wanted to buy oranges, but they’re too dear.”
Ellen nodded, sympathy rushing through her. “I’m sorry. I know how hard it can be, truly I do.”
“May I…” Shyly, the woman gestured to the scrap of paper clenched in Ellen’s hand. “May I see it? If you don’t mind?”
“Of course,” Ellen said, and showed her the sketch. “I’ve only just started…”
“No one’s ever drawn me before,” the woman said wonderingly. “Do I really look like that?”
“I think so, but of course you should be the judge.”
“Dougie would like to look at that,” the woman said, and Ellen surmised Dougie was her brother. “He’s always drawing things, he is.”
“Why don’t you keep it?” she said, and held the paper out.
“Oh, I couldn’t…”
“Please, I want you to have it.” She realized she meant it, even though part of her longed to keep working on the sketch. “I can make another, if I need to. It’s in my head now, anyway.”
“You just keep it in your head?” The woman laughed and shook her head. “Well, I never.” But she took the drawing with a murmur of thanks.
“What’s your name?” Ellen asked. “I’m Ellen Copley.”
The woman smiled shyly, all animosity gone from her expression. “Rose,” she said. “Rose McAvoy.”
CHAPTER NINE
As winter began its melt into spring, Ellen travelled to Springburn as often as she could and made sketches of various scenes she saw enacted on the busy streets: two boys scuffling over a tin can they were kicking; a skinny cat glaring suspiciously from a window ledge; several men coming from the railway works, their faces soot-stained, their arms around each other’s shoulders, their teeth startlingly white in their faces as they shared a laugh.