‘Aha. At the moment I do it on the sitting-room floor in my little flat in Mile End.’
‘On the floor?’
‘’Fraid so. I’m just a poverty-stricken artist, Patrick. You have to realise that. I don’t have great assets.’
‘You’ve got that house by the sea, why don’t you go down there and use it?’
I shrugged.
‘Maybe, one day. But I have friends and work here. Anyway. It’s OK. I manage in the flat, on the floor for now,’ I said.
‘You need a studio, baby. I’ve got just the place for you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I told you I’m taking care of a load of studios over on Trinity Buoy Wharf. I’ll take you down there and you can choose one. You can’t work on the floor if you’re going to be big in the art world. I want to see you selling your work for serious money. But first you need a proper place to work.’
Trinity Buoy Wharf, Patrick told me, was on the stretch of the Thames known as Bugsby’s Reach.
I looked up into his lovely smiling handsome face and stepped towards him. I put my arms around him and my lips against his.
He really was too good to be true.
CHAPTER TWENTY
We made our first visit to Trinity Buoy Wharf the following week.
Patrick used his crutches as much as possible, rather than depending on the wheelchair. Sometimes, he didn’t need the crutches at all, determined to manage on his prosthetic.
‘You’re doing really well, Patrick.’
‘With what?’
‘Your walking, of course!’
‘Ah, yes! Well, I guess being in tip-top physical condition helps,’ he said, grinning at my amazement. ‘And a one hundred per cent positive attitude.’
‘You can hardly tell you’re using the prosthetic. I’m sure you’ll soon be running, cycling again!’
‘I hope,’ he said, pulling me towards him, kissing the top of my head.
I drove, Patrick beside me, navigating. It was a warm May day, and the city was throbbing with music, and traffic and the promise of hot nights out after work.
Trinity Buoy Wharf wasn’t far from Wapping, east past the Isle of Dogs then further along the river, over a busy junction.
‘You must know it, you being an artist and a Londoner,’ Patrick said as we waited for the lights to change.
‘No. I don’t know it. I never knew about it.’
‘Hang a right here, then,’ he said. ‘It’s just before you get to the ExCeL and the cable cars.’
We turned right at the next roundabout and drove between the tall walls of dilapidated brick warehouses, host to buddleia blooming madly through their walls. Then we were there. It was a very different view of the river to the one from Patrick’s apartment. Here was an industrial landscape, warehouses, containers, the spikes of The O2 on the other side and the pillars of the cable cars pointing up to the hazy blue sky. Behind us, to the west, the towering blocks of Canary Wharf glinted in the sunlight.
The water looked browner, murkier here than upriver.
‘There are whole swathes of the riverside that can’t be developed,’ Patrick was saying. ‘They have protected status. So while you have areas that have been built on that are worth millions, other riverside locations are left to rack and ruin. These warehouses are gradually deteriorating. They are beside what are known as deep-water ports which have to be kept for ships to pick stuff up, ballast and sand and so on. And no one can do a thing about it. What a waste of space, don’t you think, when property in London is at such a premium?’
‘I’m amazed. I’d thought every spare square inch of the city had been bought up and developed.’
‘I know. It’s good for struggling artists though, isn’t it? It means there’s space available for containers. Now, we need to show you the studio. Turn left here.’
We parked in the wide yard flanked on one side by a block made of steel containers painted in vibrant primary colours. On the other sides were older brick buildings and warehouses. ‘Those are all dance studios and prop workshops and stuff,’ Patrick explained. ‘The former Chain and Buoy Store where they made and tested buoys. And see that?’ He waved over to the right. ‘That’s the only lighthouse in London.’
The river smell hit us as we got out of the car – silty mud, city grime and, faintly, frying from the nearby diner.
‘The whole area makes you want to look up, doesn’t it?’ he said, taking my hand.
My heart leapt at the feel of his fingers, the way they curled around mine and squeezed them tightly.
He was right. In London I usually hurried along looking at my feet, deep in thought, hemmed in by buildings. I rarely thought to look at the sky. Here though, everything pointed upwards. The spikes on the dome of The O2 opposite. The columns that held the cable cars moving in a continuous stream like spiders crawling busily along a high-slung thread of silk up in the sky. Pylons marching across to the east in what might have been a perfect example of perspective, each apparently smaller than the one in front. The overcrowded city had, here, taken to the skies.
Things were in perpetual motion; the stream of traffic on the A13, the red Docklands trains hurrying up and over the old wharves, the boats nosing their way through the surface of the Thames, planes droning overhead from City Airport. Beneath us the Thames water was a deep toffee brown, patchy in places with lighter cloud where the mud had been churned up.
‘This is an old lightship,’ Patrick said, showing me the vast hull of a red container ship with a construction like a lighthouse on top. Moored with ropes thicker than I’d thought existed, over a foot in diameter.
‘And over there’ – he lifted my hand and pointed to the other side of the river – ‘is the marina where I keep a speedboat and one of my yachts. You can paint in situ here. Follow me.’
He pulled me by the hand inside the lighthouse and up the stairs.
When we got to the top we could hear the gentle sound of the circles of Tibetan Singing Bells.
‘This piece of music is supposed to play for a thousand years with no repetition,’ Patrick said. ‘Composed for the turn of the millennium by Jem Finer – remember him? He was in The Pogues. He was commissioned to write this piece that would play forever. Lie down.’
We lay on the floor and listened.
‘It gives you a sense of belonging to something bigger, more vital than our own little lives, don’t you think?’ Patrick said. ‘You didn’t know there was this side to London, did you? Bet you didn’t know it had a lighthouse. Michael Faraday, the famous scientist, carried out experiments here. Funny, isn’t it, there’s a kind of symmetry between this little nook and your aunt’s house in Southwold. They’ve both got a lighthouse, they both face east, they both border a body of water.’
I looked at him, trying to remember how much I’d told him about May’s house and its position in Southwold.
‘Only her house is a lot more salubrious than the tin box I’m going to show you in a minute.’
What had I told him? I didn’t remember anything, other than mentioning that he could stay down there when he got better, that night in the hospital. And that was before he was conscious. I must have talked about it some other time. And May’s house was after all quite distinctive, on its own as he said, facing the sea, to the east.
‘That there is the old Chain and Buoy Store,’ he said. ‘You should see the size of the chains it used to store in there. Phenomenal!’
‘It’s certainly the perfect place for me to paint,’ I said, hurrying after him back across the wharf. ‘No more forays down to the river to take photos. I can sketch right here and collect debris washed up on the shore.’
He led me to a line of steel containers at the edge of the river, past an authentic American diner wagon selling burgers, arty-looking students standing about outside.
‘They’ve been bloody clever recognising the potential of these metal boxes,’ Patrick said. ‘All they had to do was replace one end with
glass doors to let in light, put a bit of cheap carpet on the floors and bingo – it’s an office. But they’re cheap enough for poverty-stricken artists like you to rent. I’m afraid my units are a little tucked away, over here beside the River Lea – the tributary once known as Bow Creek. It’s funny how once you’ve seen these containers they appear everywhere – on the backs of lorries, on ships down on the Thames, stacked up here into a whole micro-city tucked away in this enclave by the river.’
People were using the containers as studios and as offices and as recording studios. Some of the units were piled up into blocks with balconies, and had been decorated with pot plants and wind chimes. They had huge bolts that ran the length and breadth of the doors so they could be securely locked. Several had had porthole windows cut into their sides.
Patrick was going to help me take myself so much more seriously as an artist.
‘How much?’
‘I don’t want to charge you,’ he said. He held my shoulders, looked down into my eyes, the little lines at the side of his mouth twitching. ‘It doesn’t feel right.’
‘But . . . surely . . . you have to . . .’
‘I told you, I want to give you something in return for what you’ve done for me since the accident. You’re going to produce your best work here, and I’ll gain from that, once I get you new clients. I can charge you a little commission if it makes you feel better. But it’s mainly because I owe you, Ellie, for being here for me. Come. Here we are. Your very own studio.’
He held his fob up and the door clicked open and I followed him into the space. A steel rectangle, lit at one end by a glass panel.
‘What do you reckon?’
‘It’s perfect, Patrick.’
He came over to me.
‘It’s all yours,’ he said, gesturing around the unit.
‘I can’t accept. Not unless I pay you the proper rent.’
‘You have to accept.’
‘Why?’
‘Because if you don’t you won’t get your New York commission done.’
I wondered what twist of fate had allowed me to bump into him, literally – I felt a tiny shudder as I remembered again the odd way we’d met – just when I needed him most in my life. My secret sat coiled up in my heart, like one of the massive chains he’d pointed out to me, but I would leave it there. He didn’t need to know. No one needed to know.
‘Why are you doing this for me, Patrick?’
‘Why are you asking?’
I couldn’t reply. Then he pulled me towards him, pressed his mouth to my ear and whispered, ‘It’s because we’re falling in love.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Pepper and I spent most of the time when I wasn’t working at Patrick’s flat now.
I fetched Patrick his breakfast and prepared him his baths. I redid the dressing on his better leg, leaving the amputation for the nurses who visited while I was painting. I helped him to and from his wheelchair. I convinced myself I was doing more than enough to make up for the damage I’d caused. And anyway we were in love.
We sat on his small balcony and he pointed out things on the river while we sipped champagne cocktails.
We had the river in common. I painted it, he was a treasure trove of knowledge about it.
‘Those things there, those wooden structures that look like rafts that appear at low tide, they are called passive driftwood collectors. Only sometimes they trap dead bodies instead,’ he told me one night.
‘Ick! Creepy!’
‘Yes. You’d be amazed at how often they wash up. Suicides, horrible murders, drowned babies, foetuses.’
‘Patrick, stop, I don’t want to hear.’
‘Sorry. Though I have to tell you, you always know if a corpse is a man or a woman, however decomposed, by which way up it floats.’
‘Don’t, Patrick.’
‘A woman floats face up while a man turns over and gazes down into the deep after he dies. Funny, that.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s a known fact among river folk. Stef – my wife – for example, after she’d drowned, even though it was at sea, and in salt water, she floated . . .’
‘Patrick! Please!’ How on earth could he talk so flippantly about his wife’s death like this? It must be his macho way of pretending he could cope with it.
‘Tell me something nice instead.’
‘I’ll tell you something historical then. See over there,’ he said, waving downriver, ‘that’s called Cuckold’s Point. And for good reason – when the men were at sea their wives slept around. That’s something I would never stand for. I hope you are listening, Ellie.’
And I laughed, relieved he was being light-hearted.
But when I looked up he was staring at me, frowning. ‘I mean it,’ he said, quietly.
Now on my painting days, I took Pepper to the studio, and spent the day working on my painting.
My container was more secluded than some of the others, at the end of the wharf, facing the tributary, the River Lea, rather than the Thames itself, which meant it was comparatively quiet. I could work without being disturbed. If I left the door open I could look straight out onto the water when the tide was in, at other times, its walls and ladders exposed, right down to the muddy shore.
I liked my quiet corner away from the rest of the wharf. If I wanted company there was a hive of artistic activity around the corner, dancers coming and going to the big studio, people filming in the diner. Prop makers, artists, writers and musicans all bustled about, popping out of their containers to get a coffee from the café, or to chat beside the lighthouse.
It was the perfect place to work.
And one of the massive advantages of having a studio with steel walls was that I could fix my canvas up using the massive super-force magnets I’d sourced from an online provider. I had a superstitious abhorrence for using anything with a point, such as a nail, to fasten my pictures to walls. I also believed frames restricted or trapped my work and I had stopped using them.
If I felt any residual anxiety about being given this perfect workspace, it was due to guilt at the strange way it had fallen into my hands.
But I countered this by reminding myself that Patrick was benefiting from me too – I was caring for him, doing his shopping, looking after him. Making sure he did the exercises the physio had recommended (she had left a sheet with little diagrams).
And of course, at night, I gave him everything he liked.
‘He wanted me to have it,’ I told Chiara one evening when I’d gone back to the Mile End flat for clean clothes.
We sat in the sitting room while Pepper rolled about on the sofa tangling himself in the throw we’d put over it to disguise the grotty grey cover.
‘He’s given you a studio for nothing?!’
‘Yup. He sees my painting as something to invest in, I guess.’
‘Look at him!’ Chiara laughed, as Pepper dropped onto the floor in the throw, making a funny wriggling sausage shape on the floor.
I went over to disentangle him.
‘Mad little dog. By the way, Frank’s nurse phoned and says he’s being transferred to another hospital for a few more weeks. She asked if you were OK to keep Pepper longer. He’s been worrying about him.’
‘Of course I am. I’m very attached,’ I said, fondling Pepper, who licked me on the cheek. ‘Actually, Chiara, Patrick wants me and Pepper to move in with him. He wants us to do everything together.’
‘He wants you to move in? Ellie!’
‘What?’
‘It just seems, I don’t know . . . A little over the top. You haven’t known him that long.’
‘It’s not to do with how long we’ve known each other. You’re moving in with Liam, and I’d either have to move out of here or find someone to share with. This just feels right.’
What Patrick had told me about his wife, about his life before he met me, and the tiny snippets I was learning about his childhood, made me love him all the more. He had been t
hrough so much, but was determined not to let any of it hold him back.
‘Doesn’t it put you a bit in his debt? Accepting a studio from him? Living in his flat?’
‘He doesn’t think so. He’s got plenty of money, and he wants to share. He’s got contacts in the art world as well. He’s not stupid, he’s in business, he’s probably seen an opportunity in me, and knows we’re going to be of mutual benefit.’
‘That doesn’t sound very romantic.’
‘Oh it’s romantic alright!’ I said, thinking of our nights together, nights of exhausting passion, exploring every millimetre of each other’s bodies as if we simply couldn’t get enough, staying awake until dawn and even then starting all over again.
I looked at her and she must have seen in my eyes how heartfelt my words were.
‘Well, I must say you’re looking well. You’ve got that lover’s glow! I’d like to meet him one day,’ she said.
‘Of course, you will,’ I said, and we left it at that.
I got to the studio early on my painting days, while the river was still waking, the sounds only just beginning. I drove, taking Pepper with me. Sometimes a mist, rather like whipped egg whites, lay upon the river’s surface, softening all the outlines, the hard things only looming into focus as the sun began to disperse it. I learnt to love this time in the morning when I could feel alone in the big city. I’d stand, Pepper at my feet on his lead, before anyone else arrived, and breathe the acrid smells of the city, listen to the rattle of the trains on the Docklands Light Railway. Or the slapping of the river against the walls as a boat went past, invisible in the mist.
I couldn’t believe how brilliantly meeting Patrick had turned out. It must have been meant, because now I had a studio to work in.
As well as a perfect lover.
It only occurred to me fleetingly as I let myself into my studio what an odd space it was – that you could feel like a commodity in these metal boxes when they were shut from the outside.
My painting was beginning to take shape too. I reckoned I needed another eight weeks or so and then it would be ready to ship to New York. The opening was in August. School would have finished for summer. I’d already booked my flight. If this thing with Patrick had never happened it would have been all I’d have been able to think about, a bright spot in front of me, not giving much consideration to what might come before or after, as it was such a massive achievement for me, a commission for a painting to be hung in a large trendy restaurant in the Meatpacking District.
A Trick of the Mind Page 14