I didn’t want to bring up the issue of Timothy again, when she had so kindly overlooked it, so I said nothing, but thanked her and told her I’d keep in touch and let her know how I got on in New York.
I painted at the studio on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday and did my last day’s teaching on Friday. It was the end of term, the children restless and excited, and the parents sent in presents: endless boxes of chocolates, soaps, biscuits from the corner shop. I donated all of them to the rest of the staff. I left the school for the last time with a heavy heart. Timothy was back at school, and speaking again. It was all I could do to stop myself from crying as I waved goodbye to him and he went off with his child minder.
The following week I worked at the studio without stopping, every day. I didn’t eat anything. I worked like a maniac, only thinking of my commission. Convinced that once I got it done, if I got to New York, everything else would sort itself out somehow.
If I kept working, kept Patrick sweet, I believed somehow all the things I had done that had caused harm – to Timothy, to Patrick – would be atoned for.
As I worked I thought about the little child Daisy who had drowned and wondered again how Patrick knew so much about it. A horrible thought came to me about his possible part in her death. Hers, then Stef’s. But then I remembered that I was the guilty one where he was concerned and I crushed the bad thoughts about him back down again and gave up trying to make everything fit together – it was pointless.
Patrick would come to see me when things were quiet in his work. He always came unannounced, arriving in a taxi, between jobs.
‘I like to see how my artist is developing her work,’ he would say and he’d sit and watch. He was a sentinel watching over me. His eyes wouldn’t leave me. I wanted to tell him to go, but was afraid of how he would react, and so I worked on, and let him sit.
‘Haven’t you work to do, Patrick?’ I asked him once, gently, so as not to anger him.
He shrugged. ‘It’s all gone a bit quiet on the fish front lately,’ he said. ‘I’m taking some down time, well earned, I’d say. And it’s good to watch you work, to see what an artist actually does with her day. They do say, you know, that you should be able to churn out a picture in the morning, if you know what you’re doing, and buy a Ferrari in the afternoon. But I guess you’re not that sort of artist.’
‘That’s what commercial painters do,’ I said. ‘I like to think my work has more integrity.’
I told him how Matisse had once destroyed one of his works when he knew how much it was worth, to show this wasn’t what his art was about.
‘He was a bloody fool then, wasn’t he?’ Patrick said. ‘You wouldn’t be so daft, would you, Ellie? I told you, I’ve got people interested in taking a look at your work. That doesn’t mean you’re going to chop it up, does it?’
‘No. I’m not quite in Matisse’s position.’
‘Yet.’
My painting was developing. It would be finished by the deadline. I was putting into it all the layers I felt lay beneath our surfaces, both mine and Patrick’s. What else could I do with him there, watching, penetrating my creative thoughts? The painting might appear to be about the river, but it was about so much more. The darkness beneath, the depths, the unseen currents, the bodies it carried in the deep and deposited later on the shores, on the driftwood collectors.
I thought of Patrick saying, ‘It might appear to be benign but it can be a monster when it wants to be.’
And my saying, ‘It’s what my painting’s about.’
I was finding out just how true this was.
It isn’t the people who are easy to be with who are the most sustaining to one’s soul, I told myself as I worked. I could never have built such a painting about Finn. It is people who are complex, who stretch you to your very limits. The people who treat every obstacle as a challenge, who ask you to give 150 per cent to everything, as Patrick did.
Patrick hurt like a child when he felt he was going to be abandoned, and yet he gave so much – most of the time – when he was confident of my love. All I had to do was to stand by him. And be careful not to upset him. I had my antennae up all the time, trying to predict what might set him off, careful to avoid it. I reminded myself that I did owe him so much, that this was a situation of my own making. And I convinced myself that if I played it right, I might eventually change Patrick so that I no longer felt he was an explosive I was being careful not to ignite.
And in a way, everything he had given me, everything that had happened since his accident was what I had wanted, wasn’t it? The high living, the meals, the beautiful riverside apartment. The sex.
At six o’clock each night I locked up the studio and drove us in my little Micra back to Patrick’s apartment to spend the evening with him, either cooking there or going out to eat at yet another Michelin-starred restaurant. To care for him.
I avoided Chiara, and everyone else, and told myself it was because they didn’t understand me any more or the new life I was leading. So I didn’t ever suggest going to their gatherings in the pub. My old world, of friends, of chats about art, about our plans for the future, slid away and seemed unreal now.
‘I don’t want to share you,’ Patrick said into my ear. ‘I want you all to myself.’
And I went along with him. I couldn’t see another way out. Only New York lay gleaming in front of me, a shining light, a chance of escape.
I moved between Patrick’s apartment and the studio, painting, then spent the increasingly hot summer nights with him. I didn’t tell Patrick, could barely admit to myself, that I was beginning to find eating in posh restaurants a little nauseating by now. I was tired of the minimalist food and, anyway, all food had lost its appeal, its taste. I was yearning to do things that were a bit more stimulating – visit some galleries perhaps, or go to the theatre, or the cinema, as I had used to do with Finn. But the only detour I dared to make now was to my father’s to take his shopping, to check he was eating and looking after himself. I was walking on eggshells, afraid that if I took a step out of line, Patrick would lose his temper, set a trap for me.
One lunch time as I arrived back at my studio, I was surprised to see a familiar figure sitting on the wall staring out at the river.
It was Finn. I flinched. What would Patrick say if he found him here?
‘Hi,’ Finn said. ‘I’ve wanted to see your studio for some time. And your painting. So I thought I’d pop in, since I was in the area. I’ve brought lunch.’
I looked around.
‘You can’t stay long, Finn. I’ve got to get on.’
‘I don’t intend to stay long. I know you’ve got to work.’
‘It’s just . . . OK, you’d better come inside.
It was one of those summer days when the dust hits you in the back of the throat. The bolts of my studio door had scalded my hands earlier as I pushed them back.
I’d flung open the doors and had been working with a pool of sunshine falling across the steel floor, the sounds of the river and its work tumbling in, a crane clanking, a lorry dumping its load somewhere, boats chugging upriver and cars and traffic on the roads a constant background drone.
‘I prefer to work in silence,’ I said to Finn, ‘or as near to silence as it’s possible to get round here. I often keep the doors closed. But today the sunshine’s more important to me. I need light.’
I needed warmth to cascade in and fill up my aching mind with sustenance and goodness. I was happy to pay the price of peace to accommodate this.
Finn had brought bagels, and a pot of cream cheese, a knife, some posh crisps and a jar of Peppadews – something he knew I was partial to but which he used to consider an unnecessary indulgence. ‘Three quid a jar, bloody daylight robbery,’ he used to say. ‘At least Dick Turpin wore a mask.’ His tired old jokes had once been comfortingly familiar.
‘You’ve pushed the boat out a bit, Finn,’ I teased. He’d also bought tins of Stella – not a good idea at midday but irresistible
on a hot day like this.
He stared at the painting.
‘Blimey. It’s quite something.’
‘You like it?’
I realised how important to me it was to have Finn’s approval. I probably valued his more than anyone else’s opinion when it came to art.
‘It’s – well, it’s beginning to take shape, and it’s got depth, certainly,’ he said. ‘I love these marks, here. And the textures. Wow! Yes, I can see what you’re trying to do. They’re going to love it. They’re bloody lucky to have you.’
We sat on the wall by the River Lea, our legs dangling over the edge, and he tugged at the ring pull and there was the satisfying hiss of the fizz from the lager. He handed me the tin and we passed it to and fro in the sun. The tide, which had been high when I first arrived, had been sucked away, leaving green algae up to the tideline on the walls. Ladders that had been hidden under water were exposed, running from the mud up to the top of the walls. Beneath us on the shore were unidentifiable objects, made uniform brown by their coating of mud, but revealing that the river was cluttered with stuff that only became apparent when it withdrew.
After a while I lay back and closed my eyes, letting the sun blaze down upon my eyelids, feeling it ease away the anxiety that Patrick might appear.
‘You gonna tell me what’s been happening?’ Finn said at last.
‘About what?’
‘About you and this new bloke and why you won’t see your old mates any more. What’s going on, Ellie?’
‘I can’t say.’
He was quiet for a bit.
‘Can’t, won’t, or are afraid to?’
I opened one eye.
‘Ellie, all I know is when someone is being – controlled – by another person, they are often afraid to tell anyone in case that manipulation increases. They’re afraid of being punished. They are afraid that person may attack them or’ – he paused – ‘something or someone else that is meaningful to them.’
Pepper yelped and pushed his nose into Finn’s palm and Finn rubbed his back and fondled his ears.
I put out my hand and touched Finn on the arm, folding my fingers around his wrist. I’d forgotten how painfully thin he was. My thumb and forefinger met, where they didn’t get anywhere near round Patrick’s wrist. He didn’t move, perhaps afraid to break the tension of the moment.
‘OK. You don’t have to tell me anything if you don’t want to,’ he said. ‘I haven’t come to pester you, just to let you know I’m around if you need me.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Here.’
He handed me a cream cheese bagel with Peppadews squashed into it. I sat up, took a bite. They managed to encapsulate in one mouthful sweetness and fieriness in almost equal measure, the perfect balance of bite and succulence. I washed the mouthful down with a swig of lager. I realised I hadn’t eaten properly for days.
‘It isn’t as simple as you think,’ I said.
‘I didn’t think it was simple, it never occurred to me it would be simple,’ he said. ‘I guessed for you to be so changed it must be pretty complicated.’
‘Am I changed?’
‘Christ, Ellie! Look at yourself. You’re a different woman. You’re so thin and pale and drawn-looking. Chiara says you left your teaching job, but without any good reason. And you’ve lost your sparkle. Anyway, if you can’t see it then . . . but I guess that’s all part of it. An inability to see what’s really going on.’
‘Have you been doing research?’ I asked, teasing him, wanting to lighten the atmosphere.
He shrugged.
‘I’ve been observing you.’
‘That sounds a bit weird. I could get you arrested for stalking.’
‘Observing what’s been happening to you, listening to what others have been saying about you. Worrying about you. And as you know, my mother had to leave my dad . . . I have some unsolicited experience of abusive relationships. I spent my teenage years witnessing them.’
He was looking my face up and down as if trying to understand, to work out what was really going on inside my mind.
‘It’s nice actually, sitting here with you, drinking beer, eating crisps,’ I said.
It was nice. I felt relaxed. As if I was getting back in touch with who I was. As if I’d lost myself over the last few weeks, had had no idea where I was heading. As if I’d been driving down a bendy road in the dark, unable to see round the corners, or to work out exactly what the shapes were in my rear-view mirror.
‘Yes, well, champagne and la-di-da restaurants have their shelf life, I think you’ll find,’ he said.
‘It isn’t that, Finn. You don’t understand.’
As I said the words I felt a kind of draining of my blood, as if someone had pulled the plug on me.
My energy sapped to my boots.
I took another glug of lager – it was beginning to make my thoughts feel all wrapped in a soft cloth. Padded thoughts. A relief. I knew it would go, that the harsher light would hit me later on, as the pleasant effects faded leaving only a raw-nerve feeling. But I needed this relief, I realised. I needed escape for a while.
I looked at Finn’s sweet eager innocent face, and wished I could really tell him everything. But I couldn’t. So instead I said, ‘I’ve been there for him, Finn. I’ve been there for him ever since he was first in hospital, since he first lost his leg. He’s come to rely on me. I can’t just walk away.’
I considered for a moment my choice of words here – can’t just walk away. Ironic, given it was actually Patrick, not me, who couldn’t walk away. I could walk away, physically, but I felt chained to him by invisible links thicker and stronger than the enormous ones coiled before us on the riverside. I had run Patrick over that night, he was irreparably damaged and I was irreversibly involved. I was responsible for healing him emotionally and physically. I was stuck.
‘Anyway,’ I lied, ‘I don’t want to walk away from him.’
‘I don’t get it. I don’t get what you see in him. Apart from the money. But you’ve never been materialistic, Ellie, so it doesn’t seem . . . you.’
I needed Finn to go. Patrick might turn up at any moment, and I dreaded his reaction to finding Finn here.
‘The thing is, Finn, Patrick is introducing me to things I would never have done if I’d not met him. He makes me push myself, extend myself, he expands my world.’ I was trying to sound convincing.
‘Expands?! But you gave up your teaching because of him.’
‘Yes. Because he wants me to succeed as an artist.’
‘You’ve abandoned your friends.’
‘Because you don’t understand my new world, you seem to want to hold me back all the time.’
I would have loved to have been able to pour out all my real anxieties. Anxieties that had become terror. But I couldn’t. I looked at Finn, hoping he would see the layers I wasn’t telling him. Hoping he would see the fear in my eyes. But then we were interrupted.
‘Oi! What’s the crack, you two?’
I looked up.
It was Louise. What was she doing here?
‘Came to say there’s a sale on at the art suppliers up in Brick Lane. You asked me to let you know, Finn.’
‘Yes,’ he said, ‘thanks, Louise. I got your text. So d’you wanna come, Ellie?’
‘No. I’ve got to work.’
Finn stood up.
‘I thought perhaps I could make you see some sense,’ he said. ‘But Chiara was right. You’ve been brainwashed or something. Hypnotised. I give up.’
‘Take the beer then, Finn.’
‘No, keep it.’
‘I won’t drink it.’
‘Whoa, Ellie,’ Louise said, and I looked up at her.
‘What have you been doing to yourself? You look really awful.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
When Finn and Louise had gone I sat and watched the tide begin to rise again, lap against the walls of the creek, thinking about the layers of deception that lay beneath the surface I
’d presented to Finn. I would have loved to confess everything to him. Having him here had reminded me of the closeness we’d lost and I found myself stupidly yearning for it again. It was my own fault that I had gone too far down this new road with Patrick to turn back.
After a while, I packed up my things and got into my car. I left Trinity Buoy Wharf, unable to concentrate on my painting. I repressed the thoughts Finn had tried to make me confront.
I’d told Patrick I had to take some shopping to my dad. It was the one detour he allowed me. He would check up on me, I was sure of it, if I went elsewhere. He’d begun to appear at odd times to make sure I was only doing what I’d told him I was doing. I checked the car before I got in. I looked underneath it, unsure what I was looking for, but wary all the time now, afraid that something would catch me out when I was least prepared. The way the speedboat had caught out Stephanie.
I parked in a side road near the south side of the river, walked across to my dad’s block and made my way up the graffitied stairwell.
I felt a pang of pity when he opened the door. He had put on weight, had no doubt been hitting the beer, his face traced with fine thread veins that gave it a harsh reddish hue, his greying hair long and brushed back in a way that seemed a little louche for a man in his late fifties. I wanted him to get it cut, and to shave. I wanted him to lose weight and treat himself with respect. I thought of Mum at the Apple Store, seeking solace from young computer nerds.
When did people ever reach a point of contentment? Of self-acceptance?
Was it ever possible to be a hundred per cent satisfied with oneself and fulfilled with one’s life? You would have thought that by their age my parents might have reached some kind of equilibrium but they both seemed as lost as ever.
‘Come on in, Ellie. How’s my girl getting on these days? You still going up in the art world?’
‘Sort of, I’m hoping so,’ I said. His flat smelt slightly sour, of beer, and of washing that hadn’t dried properly.
‘Go on! How’s the commission for New York going? Mum’s thrilled about it. Can’t talk about anything else!’
A Trick of the Mind Page 22