Invisible River

by Helena McEwen

  ‘How lovely!’ says Cecile.

  ‘Porca Madonna!’ says Bianca.

  ‘What are you going to do?’

  Rob shrugs. ‘I’m going to have a baby!’

  ‘Wow!’ says Cecile.

  ‘Oh well,’ says Bianca.

  ‘It’s not coming till the summer, I’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘How exciting!’ says Cecile.

  ‘Plenty of time!’ says Bianca, shaking her head.

  ‘What’s the vote for this afternoon, then?’ I say, before another argument starts.

  ‘Giacometti,’ says Roberta.

  Bianca is walking about, pouring the coffee into our cups.

  ‘See!’ says Rob, holding out her cup. ‘I like him and he’s Italian!’

  ‘Wow, a baby!’ murmurs Cecile.

  ‘Where’s it on?’

  ‘The Serpentine.’

  ‘Let’s walk,’ says Cecile, looking out the window. ‘It’s a beautiful day.’

  Chapter 12

  We walk down to the Fulham Road, Bianca and Rob behind. We have to persuade Bianca out of the second-hand clothes shop in South Kensington and drag her past the V and A up Exhibition Road, but none of us can walk past the Royal Academy Shop and we walk under the ornate stone gate and up the stairs. Bianca and I buy sketchbooks. Rob is wearing a big coat with holes in the pockets. The paint stand is hidden behind the palette knives. She buys a tube of titanium white, but when we come out into the street she produces handfuls of stolen tubes from the coat lining.

  ‘You are a criminal!’ shouts Bianca.

  ‘Shut up, Bianca!’ says Rob.

  ‘O wow, Rob, carmine! £25 a tube.’

  ‘You’re terrible, you’re terrible,’ I say as I look with joy at the colours.

  ‘Wait, look!’ She hands me another tube.

  ‘Oh, far out! Cobalt violet!’ A colour as expensive as a jewel.

  Rob and I have a locker where we keep our materials. Although we have our own, we also share. It gives us a chance to try new colours.

  These tubes are for both of us.

  ‘We’ve got umber, ultramarine, and here, look! Cadmium green.’

  ‘Everyone does it!’ says Rob.

  ‘That is not a good rationale!’ says Bianca.

  ‘Yeah, like you’re so squeaky clean!’

  We walk into Kensington Gardens and the sunlight shines on the grass, the air is clear and the shadows are long because the sun is low.

  We walk along under the tall plane trees, past the big dark Albert Memorial, to the Serpentine Gallery.

  The tall thin sculptures make us quiet. We walk around them in silence. There is a room where the monumental figures are tiny.

  ‘He spent ten years making small maquettes before he made them big!’ Rob whispers, reading from the board. ‘Ten years!’

  ‘That’s some gestation!’ I say, smiling at her.

  She laughs, and rubs her belly. ‘Blimey, imagine having to carry it around for ten years!’

  We walk out into the sunlight. The air is cold, but there is warmth in the light.

  We walk under the trees and Rob takes her big coat off and we sit on it under a chestnut tree. She sits with her back to the huge trunk with her legs jutting out among the roots. I lean sideways and get out my sketchbook.

  Bianca is doing qigong exercises. Cecile is copying her poses.

  They both make an arc over their head with their arms, and stretch one leg out to the side, and bend the other. They move the arc from side to side, bending first one leg, then the other.

  Their long shadows look like Giacometti figures slowly dancing. I am drawing them with pink chalk.

  ‘This is called the rainbow!’ Bianca calls out. I nod, looking up at them and down at my page. Kensington Gardens stretches behind them all the way to the Round Pond. People are walking along the paths in the grass from the Albert Memorial down to the Serpentine.

  I close my book, now they are doing ‘moving hands like clouds’.

  They come over and lay themselves down on their coats. Cecile looks at my drawings.

  ‘So why d’you think he wanted them so long and thin?’ says Bianca, twirling a piece of grass.

  ‘Maybe it’s a pared-down thing, pared down to the core,’ says Rob.

  ‘It’s the inner self, isn’t it?’ says Cecile in her cracked naked voice. ‘The one everyone tries to hide.’

  A dog leaps through the grass and sends a murder of crows flying up into the air, cawing. The dog is a poodle with ears that bounce, it is young and puppy-like. It bounces towards us and leaps on to Bianca and begins to lick her face.

  ‘Get off, you horrible animal! Get off me, I loathe you! You are revolting!’ She pushes it away and then kicks it. It yelps and its owner comes running after, calling, ‘Fidelio, Fidelio.’

  ‘Fucking Fidelio!’ says Bianca, wiping her face with her sleeve.

  We are laughing.

  A large black crow swoops down and walks up and down before us. I open my sketchbook and paint with black ink, filling the whole page with the crow’s head and shining beak.

  It is hard to draw him as beautiful as he is. I follow the line of his head and his wings.

  The crow caws. I paint his black eye. He walks slowly round in circles on the grass. His wings shine white in the sunlight.

  Chapter 13

  When I walk my bike back home from college the sun has gone but the sky is still light; everything retains its colour, the grass is green, the pillar boxes still red, but the street lights have come on and glow in the gloaming. There is a tweet tweet beginning for the twilight chorus and the tall trees are black against the sky. The horizon is pale yellow, and shining pale blue, and the houses light up their coloured windows, and it is neither day nor night, and the dusk is alive with the colours of both.

  Then Zeb is walking beside me. We are both surprised.

  ‘Hey, how’s the washing machine going?’ he says.

  ‘Singing a duet with the fridge,’ I say, laughing. ‘The sculpture going OK?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes, fine. How’s the painting? You getting into it?’

  ‘Sort of, bits and pieces.’

  ‘That’s good, bits and pieces is good.’

  We pass by a garden behind railings. There is a gap in the railings covered by red and white striped tape. We walk past in silence. I’ve always wanted to sneak into one of those gardens in London squares. The kind that are locked, and look green and enticing.

  ‘I’ve always wanted to sneak into one of those gardens,’ he says. ‘They look so enticing.’

  ‘That’s just what I was thinking!’ I say, astonished. ‘You spoke my thought!’

  ‘Come on, let’s!’ he says.

  ‘Oh, shall we? Someone might see!’

  I chain up my bike and we look up and down the street.

  ‘Go on,’ he says, ‘no one’s coming, now!’ and I dive under the tape into the rhododendrons. He follows. We are both giggling like naughty children.

  ‘This is ridiculous!’ I say in a loud whisper.

  We climb through the rhododendrons and into a garden full of trees and low bushes and, in the centre, a lawn of grass, gently sloping to a fountain that is silent.

  The trees have a presence that fill the garden.

  By the fountain are three yew trees, and surrounding them are tall beech trees, and it is quiet, except for a crow calling from the corner of the square in a tree whose naked branches are reaching into the sky.

  We make out a face in the foliage of the yew tree.

  ‘Can you see it? Look there, see?’

  ‘Oh, that’s the nose, yes, I can.’

  And we lie under the yew tree and look at the face in the dark branches and it looks and looks at us with intense eyes.

  The crow caws again from a corner of the garden, we can see its black shape against the darkening sky, and Zeb says that crows see in two dimensions, and that’s why they walk along like that, looking from one eye then the other,
clocking two realities at once.

  And I say it must be the great-great-grandson of the crows that have always lived in London, and imagine all the things they have seen if you could go back in time.

  I begin to feel cold.

  ‘I better go,’ I say, standing up.

  ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘me too.’

  We sneak back through the rhododendrons under the striped tape.

  He smiles and I notice he has asymmetrical dimples.

  We go in different directions then, and as I bicycle through the night streets, the lit-up shops flashing past, I remember that he has one eye that looks at you with laughing in it, and the other one looks right into you.

  Two-dimensional eyes.

  I put my key in the lock and go through the green door; there are chips in the paint. Underneath, you can see it was once a mustard door, and before that it was pale blue. The stairs are narrow and the carpet is worn where the feet have walked. I walk up three flights, and let myself into my little flat.

  I take my coat off and leave it on the bed, and go through into the kitchen.

  The kitchen is very small, with enough room for a fold-out table and one chair.

  I sit down in the dark and listen to the fridge. It has a language of its own, a repertoire of sounds that it chugs and hums and trembles through with dramatic pauses night and day. There are strips of plastic between the kitchen and the bedsittingroom which I have tied together and fastened to one side, so the doorway looks as if it has a hairstyle. I get up and put the kettle on. I make myself a cup of tea, put the light on, and take out my sketchbook. I look at the crow. I take out the drawings and put them next to each other.

  I look through the window, up at the sky. There are pigeons flying in a flock over the buildings. The roofs are lit up by the moon’s blue light. The street is in shadow or lit by yellow street lights. The pigeons are flying in a circle through the blue and yellow light.

  The pigeons descend in a cascade and land on a roof.

  And I look at the blue-black crow with a black eye and through the eye I see twin hills, I see the stillness and a wide river reflecting the sky. I see marshes and small islands and fires being lit and glowing in the dusk. I hear the sound of marsh birds and the zither-zing of swans in flight. I’ll go down to the river and walk by the pale pink globes that light up the evening, and tomorrow I’ll bike through the city to Cannon Street, and visit the London stone.

  Chapter 14

  I cycle along the street, feeling wide open, colours splashing over me like waves in the sea. Clashing colours, honking noises, people with their different feelings trailing behind as they rush up the street. The air is cold but clear. The wind has blown the last of the leaves off the trees and turned autumn into winter. I ride along Knightsbridge and set out recklessly round Hyde Park Corner, sticking my hand out in front of buses and taxis, but I get pulled into the wrong stream and find myself sailing past Piccadilly and round the corner into Grosvenor Place. Sometimes you have to go with the flow on a bike in London or you might get squashed under the wheels. I dismount and take my bike down the steps into a tunnel that has colourful graffiti and someone playing the guitar.

  Far away in my mind I think of dad and wonder if he’s out walking along the cliffs in the wind.

  I push my bike along the echoing corridor and into Green Park. I walk under the naked trees. I bike across the park to St James’s Park, until I am told ‘you’re not allowed to bicycle in here’, by a man in a maroon jacket, and I walk slowly round the lake and stop on the bridge to look at the water.

  Has he built a fire in the study? Or is he wearing his thick blue jersey under his tweed jacket so his arms bulge?

  I get out my sketchbook to draw the trees and the water and the tiny buildings in the distance that are just dashes and dots on the page. There is a stillness here after the traffic frenzy. It is a blue cold winter feeling.

  Is he all right, d’you think?

  I put my sketchbook away and then I remember the stone that has stood in the centre of the city for more than two thousand years.

  It must have stood in stillness once. It has seen the cars pass, and before that the carriages, and before that the litters and the chariots. It has watched the people come and go, the Saxons, the Danes and before that the Romans and before that the Celts.

  I walk over the bridge, and out a gateway down Horse Guards Parade to King Charles Street.

  The stone was here before Charles walked under the ceiling painted with cherubs on his way to the block, before Elizabeth’s dancing courtiers and dresses sewn with pearls, before Henry’s madness and Eleanor’s gentle hand.

  I find myself in Whitehall and think I’d better look at the map.

  I like wandering about the streets, it’s like slipping in and out of different periods in history.

  At last I come out on to Victoria Embankment and the Thames, bringing its blue river light, breathing its fresh river breath into the clogged city air. I ride on the pavement alongside the water, under Hungerford Bridge and past Cleopatra’s Needle.

  After Blackfriars I get tangled in a web of alleys and lanes; White Lion Hill and Knightrider Court. The air is dirty and sweat is pouring down my skin.

  The stone was here before Alfred, the king with the wisdom of an elf, before Canute told the waves to go back, before Arthur and Uther and Merlin’s chilling prophecy, before Caesar and Boudicca, before Hengist and Horsa, before Estrildis and Brutus Greenshield.

  I come to Walbrook where the buried river runs and at last, the Bank of China.

  But when I squat down on the pavement opposite Cannon Street Underground station, and peer behind the bars and into the alcove, I see a small piece of whitish stone. It is shabby and the glass is covered with a layer of grime from the wind of passing traffic, and maybe there is nothing remarkable in this sorry piece of limestone, that has stood the test of time but that is all, and I walk away disappointed.

  But when I navigate my bike through the jam on Ludgate Hill, and ride on the pavement along the Embankment so I can look at the river, when I chain my bike and walk across the footbridge to the Hayward Gallery on the South Bank so I can watch the water slipping under my feet, something in me stirs.

  And as I reach the other side I know I can’t walk up the steps to the gallery because something is rising through me like water bubbling up from an underground spring, and I see gold light behind my eyes.

  And when I walk under the bridge and along the river, watching it glint and ripple, I feel a wide-open hope spread through me, that makes me stand still just to breathe the feeling of it.

  And when I go back to college I draw pictures of the paintings I will paint; the forest and the beautiful river, the swans as big as horses and red wolves who roamed Cheapside when the Thames was a deity.

  And I don’t know if it is the spirit with his dark beauty trapped in the un-reverenced stone, or Zeb, who touches the edges of my dreams, and makes me wake up with a longing that is so intense, so deep, it feeds me with its mystery even while the emptiness of it could swallow me whole.

  Chapter 15

  ‘Those bastard tutors!’ says Bianca. ‘It makes me bloody furious!’

  ‘Pretentious! What about his stupid pictures!’

  ‘Listen, he hasn’t had a show for twenty years!’ says Rob.

  ‘Well, that tells you something!’ I say.

  Cecile had a crit this morning, and came up for coffee with red eyes. She doesn’t tell you much but her eyes filled with tears when Rob asked her about it. She shook her head and swallowed and gave a little laugh, but the tears fell out anyway.

  The tutors didn’t think much of her big flowers.

  ‘He just likes sticking the boot into other people’s work.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter now,’ says Cecile.

  We are sitting outside in the quadrangle under the big tree. The day is mild and clear.

  ‘Well, it does!’ Rob says. ‘They should allow us to take a friend in, to
speak up for us,’

  ‘That’s a good idea.’

  ‘So what exactly happens?’ I ask.

  ‘You have to take all your pictures into the assessment room along with all the sketchbooks’, says Bianca, ‘and the tutors . . .’

  ‘. . . who are all men!’ interrupts Rob, ‘put the work all over the floor, line it up on tables, and against the walls, riffle through your sketchbooks, and then proceed to take the work apart, ask you the point of it, and tell you you’re doing it wrong!’

  ‘And when you’re thoroughly devastated,’ says Cecile, ‘they pack you off with a set of instructions about how it should be done, how it ought to look, and what you’re really trying to achieve.’

  ‘Is it their habit to tear everyone apart?’ I ask nervously.

  Cecile shrugs.

  ‘Did they devastate you?’ I ask Rob.

  ‘I just told them I’m painting the “inner visions of my pregnancy”,’ she says in a wafty voice that makes us laugh, ‘and they couldn’t get me out the room quick enough!’

  ‘Yes, tell them it’s something menstrual,’ says Bianca, ‘that’ll terrify them!’

  ‘What do you do?’ I ask Bianca.

  ‘Oh, my English is really not very good, could you repeat the question?’ she says, mimicking herself.

  ‘What if you don’t know what you’re doing?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘If only some of them didn’t know what they were doing they’d be more sympathetic.’

  The door to Sculpture opens across the quadrangle and Zeb and Suzanne come out arguing.

  They both stop talking and she sits down with her arms folded. He squats down by her, then unfolds himself, his long legs make an upside-down W. I cannot hear what they are saying to each other but I can see that she is raising her eyes to heaven and hitting the air with the back of her hand. He is leaning sideways, reasoning with her. He holds her forearm. She blinks her eyes, her lips press together and she looks away.

  Zeb raises both his hands in a question.

  ‘Those two are always arguing,’ says Roberta.

  ‘What do they argue about?’ says Cecile.