by Lily Greene
“Morning,” she croaked, her throat dry from last night’s wine.
“It’s your big day today,” he said, brushing a strand of her hair from off her face. “I’m excited to finally see some of your paintings.”
“Oh yes. I’m a little bit nervous,” she admitted. “I hope enough people come.” Ella yawned and stretched across the bed.
“Hey, where are you going?” he said, playfully pulling her back towards him. “It’s going to be a huge success. Now, would you like some breakfast?”
“I’d love some coffee please.” They kissed lightly on the lips and Fergus moved to open the curtains while Ella straightened out the duvet on her side of the bed.
Light flooded the room and they were temporarily blinded by the brightness. All they saw was white.
“Snow!” Fergus exclaimed.
It took Ella a few seconds to adjust and realize that the white before her wasn’t just the daylight appearing stronger because of the prior darkness of the room, it was snow laid thickly as far as the eyes could see.
“Ah! Snow! Ohh it’s so beautiful!” she said happily. She observed the street in all its snowy glory; the Victorian town houses doused in a sprinkling of snow, the pavement covered in a layer a few inches deep and the children on their school run with snowballs in hand.
Fergus held Ella from behind as they looked joyfully over the snowy scene in front of them.
“Our wish might have worked Ell.”
“It seems it has. I hope it stays until Christmas Day. Oh, but I hope everybody can still make it to the gallery tonight.”
“I’m sure they will.”
Ella got dressed while Fergus made a pot of coffee. When she came into the kitchen wearing her silky black dress from the night before, Fergus couldn’t help but smile.
“Hello sexy,” he said, looking up from the coffee he was pouring into two small orange espresso cups.
“Hi,” Ella replied with a smirk. The rich aroma of freshly ground Columbian coffee woke Ella up a little but it wasn’t strong enough to mask the lingering spices and stale acidic smell of the mulled wine.
“I can still smell the mulled wine,” she said.
“Mmm. Pungent! It’s a shame we didn’t drink any. Well not that much of a shame …”
Ella blushed a little.
“Want some?” he joked.
“I musn’t. I’m on a wine-free breakfast diet at the moment,” she teased in reply. “But I must leave after this.” She gestured to the coffee. “I have a lot to sort at the gallery before this evening.”
“Of course.” They sipped their coffee in the living room while Ella looked at Fergus’ photographs. The wall behind his sofa was lined with black and white prints she hadn’t had the opportunity to look at the night before. Most of his photos were filled with dust, dirt, destruction and despair. They were beautiful in their simplicity but harrowing at the same time. Ella noticed that his photos were taken from unique angles but they weren’t artificial in any way. He used a film camera and as such didn’t edit his photographs in an attempt to turn them into something they were not. No photoshop, no lies.
Fergus watched Ella look at his walled collection and wondered what she thought of them. She had observed them in silence for a few minutes, which was beginning to unsettle him.
“These are magnificent Fergus. You are so so talented. I love this one especially.”
She pointed to a portrait of an old Iraqi man. He was slouching asleep on a chair at his post. His right hand was clasping the body of a large machine gun against his chest and his other arm had gone limp in his sleepy state. It had fallen away from his body sloping down to the dusty ground and his palm was facing upwards. Next to his open hand was a small bird pecking at the barren earth. It almost looked like the man was feeding this little creature while he was asleep.
“I’m glad you like them,” Fergus said.
“I do. I think they are all phenomenal. I’d love to see more of them when I have more time.”
“Any time,” he said as they sipped the last of their coffee. Fergus returned the mugs to the kitchen while Ella fetched her coat from the hangers by the front door.
“Good luck with all the preparations today. I’ll see you later.” Fergus leant in to kiss Ella and held her fast in his arms. Ella did not want this kiss to end, she wanted to relive last night and crawl back into bed with him but she knew today was not the day. She had to get back to her apartment to change and head straight to the gallery.
She finally tore herself from his arms and said goodbye. She walked down the stairs leading to the ground floor and opened the main building door to the snow-covered street. She skipped down the steps to the pavement and floated to Highbury and Islington tube station with an absurdly wide grin on face and a spring in her step.
*
Ella arrived at the Beat Gallery at eleven o’clock. She walked through the spacious venue that had once been an old Victorian railway station. It was the perfect space for a contemporary art exhibition; it’s enormous arched ceilings provided enough space for the larger paintings in her collection. Her pieces were leant against the walls where Ella presumed they were to be hung. Ella saw the gallery staff, Sophie, Guy and Daisy discussing something, pointing and gesturing passionately towards different corners of the gallery.
“Ella, hi!” a tanned voluptuous figure called from the opposite end of the gallery. This was Celia, the gallery manager. She was holding an armful of small brown parcels that she put on the table closest to her. She glided over to Ella.
“Hello Celia! How are we all?” Ella asked, waving at the others in the gallery.
“Fantastic! The others were just discussing where each painting should go. We thought we’d wait for you to arrive before we hung any.” Celia smiled, flashing a perfect set of white teeth. Her uniform teeth shone brightly against her molasses-coloured skin and her amethyst eyes burned vibrantly.
“Great. Thank you Celia. You’ve all done a great job. The gallery looks magnificent and so Christmassy!”
The gallery staff had found some unique fairy lights that could be hung vertically from the ceiling. They bought and installed three hundred of these individual lights that now dangled down to just above everyone’s heads. The function was threefold; to illuminate the paintings, to make the gallery look festive and to fill up some of the space in the venue. They looked marvelous even in the daylight and Ella could tell that when it was dark outside and the main gallery lights were switched off, the place was going to look magical with these glowing orbs.
“So do you like the positions of the paintings? Can we put them up?” Celia asked. Ella walked over to Daisy, Guy and Sophie who were huddling around ‘Toasted Sunset’. The brush strokes of burnt orange were bursting into life, flaming wildly in the well-lit gallery.
Ella walked through the gallery several times; she moved from the front door, down the winding corridor-shaped room and back again. The room was tall and narrow with brilliant white walls and one sea-blue feature wall. Makeshift walls had been erected in the middle of the room where more of her paintings were to be shown. The structure created two channels so guests would have to walk through one corridor and back up the other or they could snake through the middle where was a slight gap in the middle, semi-permanent wall. This layout had been cleverly designed. It meant that most paintings could be seen from all angles of the room so viewers could either focus on the painting in front of them or turn to see the whole collection at once.
Seeing the paintings in their places was making Ella excited. Her very first exhibition! She had waited so long for this moment. She had worked so hard for the last few years behind the scenes at the Triangle gallery and now it was all coming to fruition. If it went well she might be able to work fewer days in the gallery and devote more time to being an artist in her own right. Taking the leap to professional artist was risky. It wasn’t a stable job and it wouldn’t be lucrative unless she was very lucky and in the right place at the right time. She fel
t tremendous appreciation for her colleagues at the Triangle Gallery. They had helped her to secure this exhibition as they had praised her artwork to the Beat Gallery’s owner and told him to check out her art.
Luckily, the owner took to Ella’s paintings and now she was standing in London’s coolest, newest, most talked about gallery with her paintings on the wall!
Ella was staring at the ceiling that was ablaze with fairy lights. She had her hand over her mouth trying to contain the sheer joy she was feeling. She was awestruck. Things were starting to go her way again. Her career, her love life …
“Erm, Ella? What do you think to the arrangement then? Do you not like it?” Daisy inquired nervously.
“Oh no, I love it!” Ella gasped, returning to reality. “Sorry I was just … I was just thinking about this evening.”
“So are you happy with how it is? Shall we start fixing them?” Guy asked gruffly. The red rings around his eyes warned Ella that he was not in a good mood. He looked tired and in dire need of a coffee. Had he been out last night or was he being over-worked by the gallery? Ella hoped it wasn’t because of her exhibition. Things were already awkward enough between them; ever since Guy had asked her on a date that had led nowhere, they felt uncomfortable in each other’s presence. After Ella had broken up with Robbie, Guy asked her out repeatedly until she finally said yes. Ella knew she only saw Guy as a friend and that going on a date wouldn’t change that, but she couldn’t bring herself to refuse him a fourth time and she had thought it might be a good distraction from her heartbreak. They had had a lovely time at a concert on Primrose Hill, but Ella had made it clear at the end of the evening that she didn’t see Guy in a romantic way.
“Yes, I am happy. They all look wonderful,” she replied in as cheery voice as she could manage. “Thank you Guy,” she added tenderly.
“Great, come with me Ella.” Celia beckoned her to come into the gallery office and she followed without pause.
They stood in the doorway of the office, talking business. Celia was sifting through guest lists and reminding Ella who were the most important guests of the evening. As she spoke, Ella was overlooking the painting hanging. While Celia was twiddling with her hair and chatting on about saddling up to the right contacts, Ella noticed that something wasn’t quite right. She had just seen one of her paintings from a new angle.
“Sorry guys,” she called out to the team. “I’ve just noticed we have a bit of a colour block over there. The background of that feature wall is very blue and just in front of it is ‘Midnight Water’. I think it looks a bit lost there – it’s swamped by its surroundings.”
The others took a step back towards the office where Ella and Celia were standing and squinted at the painting.
“You’re right!” said the high-pitched Sophie. “All those lovely blues are swamped by the blue feature wall.”
“Would you mind swapping that one with ‘Dawn II’ please? I think the pinks in that will really stand out against the blue and then we can put ‘Midnight Water’ where ‘Dawn II’ was on the white wall. They are roughly the same size so it should fit,” Ella replied thoughtfully.
“Of course,” Daisy remarked as the other two followed her to swap the paintings. Ella thought she could hear Guy mumble something under his breath but she didn’t catch it, whatever it was.
*
It took several hours to hang all of the paintings and clean up the gallery. The gallery staff tested the lighting and hung a few more Christmas decorations. Sophie tied bunches of mistletoe amongst the fairy lights hung from the ceiling. Exhausted, the team slumped on the sofas in the office and looked proudly on what they had created. Through the door of the office, they could see the whole room was glowing. The fairy lights bounced off the paintings and added a wonderful festive atmosphere.
“I’ve just got off the phone with Hugh, he’s going to bring some takeaway to the office so we can eat before the opening,” Celia said.
“Great. I’m starving,” Guy replied, perking up a bit.
Ella excused herself and went to the bathroom to change and touch up her make-up. She put on an asymmetrical, Japanese-style, black wrap-around dress. It was made of rough satin and had a silvery shine in some lights.
She took out her YSL mascara but she couldn’t apply it. Her hands were shaking. She was nervous. Would enough people show up? Were they going to like her paintings? Ella steadied her nerves and breathed slowly in and out. She waited until she was slightly calmer before she applied some NARS smoky eye shadow. She curled her eyelashes, coated them lightly in mascara and put on a red-orange MAC lipstick called Lady Danger. It complimented her skin tone and brought out the brown in her eyes. Once she had finished applying her make-up she rejoined the others in the office to be greeted by cries of “Wow”, “You look stunning!” and in Guy’s case, stunned silence with his lower jaw hanging so far open, Daisy actually had to shut it. Clearly, he was still in to her. Ella smiled embarrassingly and thanked everyone.
She felt her nerves jittering again, a lump in her stomach rising up, trying to escape up through her throat. Feeling light-headed, she placed a hand on the back of the sofa to steady herself.
“What’s wrong Ella?” Daisy asked with concern.
“Oh, I’m just nervous. Being centre of attention, people showing up etc. I’ll be fine in a minute.”
“Oh don’t worry about numbers! On the facebook event alone it says over two hundred people are coming and there are lots of people from the art world that we invited that aren’t on facebook. So they’ll be more than two hundred people here tonight! Don’t worry!” Daisy reassured her.
“Daisy’s right. Look at the page,” Sophie said, while getting up the event page on her phone.
“Ella Moore Exhibition at the Beat: Opening Night. 243 attending, 67 maybe, 59 invited. See!” Sophie squeaked.
A look of relief flooded Ella’s face. She was starting to feel more confident about the opening now and the sense of excitement she felt earlier was coming back to her. Just as Ella sighed and sat back in the sofa, Hugh bounced through the gallery front door. He strode through the main room, his eyes feasting on the room as his portly stomach wobbled and his grey ponytail swung from side to side. Hugh was the owner of the Beat Gallery who had come across her paintings at the Triangle. Once he saw them, he set about organizing her first exhibition immediately.
“Right, who’s hungry for Chinese?” he bellowed as he lifted the bags of steaming food up in the air. “This place looks great by the way! You’ve transformed it in the last few hours!”
The whole team settled in to their takeaway and Ella was careful not to drop any food on her dress or smudge her lipstick. When they finished eating, it was almost seven o’clock so Daisy, Guy and Sophie double-checked all the paintings were straight, arranged the glasses for drinks and briefed the waiters who had just arrived. Celia, as manager and Hugh, as owner, stayed with Ella in the office and toasted to the hopeful success of the exhibition. After being given the all-clear from the staff, Celia asked if Ella was ready to open the doors. It was seven thirty and people were already congregating outside.
“Absolutely. Open the doors,” Ella replied cheerily. She topped up her glass of champagne and walked into the gallery to greet people. She felt better now. All of her anxieties had disappeared and were replaced with immense joy.
Steadily the room started to fill with a mixture of friends, family and artists. Her colleagues from the Triangle gallery were the first to arrive, ever eager to support one of their own. Next came her friends; Libby, Charlie, Lara, Harry, Toby, Emily and even Marcus and Jessica were there. Then Mr and Mrs Crosley arrived with some of their older friends who she hoped might be interested in buying some of her pictures. Ella was rushed off her feet. She had to greet all the guests and was being pulled to and fro by Hugh and Celia who were eager to introduce her to as many influential people as possible.
Before she knew it, it was nine thirty already and Ella had to stop to catch her
breath. She had spent a solid two hours recycling the same spiel. She stole away to the bathroom, and when she returned, she found Fergus had arrived. He was wearing an aviator jacket lined with thick sheepskin over a plain black t-shirt, a pair of black jeans and tan desert boots. He looked gorgeous and Ella blushed thinking about last night. He walked straight up to her and kissed her on the cheek.
“Ella it looks beautiful. You are so bloody talented!” he shouted in excitement.
“Thank you. Do you really like them?” Ella asked, speaking louder now to be heard over the growing chatter in the room.
“Yes! Incredible!” he said. “I’ve just done a lap and seen all of them. I can’t wait to learn more about them from you, the artist.”
She smiled and squeezed his hand, drawing closer to him. They stood facing one of her paintings and she explained what it was inspired by, where she had painted it and what it meant to her. He couldn’t keep his eyes off her as they stood holding hands, her face glowing with happiness and the lights hanging above her.
“I’m so glad you’re here,” she said to him. “It’s been so busy. I’ve barely seen Libby and the gang. I haven’t even been able to get a drink. Every time a waiter comes near me all his or her glasses are pinched by someone else before me!”
“Well, can I fix that for you. What would you like to drink, champagne?”
“Oh yes please,” she replied thankfully.
Ella turned back to face the painting she and Fergus had been looking at. It was her favourite one and she pondered it silently.
She had been looking at it for a few moments when she heard a gasp from the other end of the room. Through the gaps in the crowd, Ella could see Libby looking bewildered, scarred even. She wondered what was happening, but someone walked in front of her and blocked her view. She stood by the painting and looked to the bar area for Fergus; when he returned they would check everything was okay with her friends. She spotted him talking to the waiter who was manning the temporary bar. It looked like they were discussing her paintings, as they were both gesturing energetically to different corners of the room. Ella forgot about Libby’s pained expression. She felt a small pang of pride as she watched Fergus and the young woman praise her paintings. She turned happily to look at her favourite painting once again, when she felt a hand on her hip and heard a familiar voice.