This isn’t the first time she’s sat for him. She has a particularly vivid recollection of that time a few years back, when they’d been sitting in bed talking about memories and how they sometimes got lost. He’d started running his fingers over her scalp again. ‘Just think,’ he’d said. ‘It’s all in there somewhere. It may be submerged, but it’s there, even if you can’t remember.’ She’d felt the warmth of his smooth hands, gentle and deliberate at the same time. She liked him touching her head; maybe he was the only one apart from herself who did touch it.
‘Have I ever mentioned that you have the most beautiful head I’ve ever seen?’
She’d laughed. ‘Once or twice, yes.’
He trailed his fingertips down the back of her skull and stroked the hollow at the nape of her neck. ‘It blows my mind to think that everything you’ve ever known, every colour or shape you’ve seen, the conversations you’ve had, the music you’ve heard; it’s all there beneath the surface like a secret under the skin. The whole essence of you.’
‘You don’t half talk a load of crap sometimes.’
‘Hang on.’ He threw the covers back and sprang out of bed. ‘Don’t move. I want to draw you, the you that’s there underneath.’
Eleanor groaned. ‘Oh, no, come on, you don’t really.’ She’d never forgotten the year he was first here, when he’d got all excited about painting her head and she’d looked in the mirror and thought she looked like some freaky hippy weirdo.
‘No, don’t worry, I’m not going to splash paint all over you again.’ He grinned. He snatched up his sketch pad and was standing by the window, flicking over the pages to get to a fresh one. ‘I was obsessed with colour back then, but I’m more into monochrome these days. Light and shade; sheen and shadow.’
He grabbed a pencil and began making sweeping strokes across the page, glancing up at her every few seconds, his eyes now shining with a different light, an artist’s appreciation rather than a lover’s.
‘Dylan—’
‘Hold still a sec.’ His brow furrowed in concentration, and she could hear the pencil scraping and swishing across the page.
‘I think—’
‘Shush. Tilt your head to the left a little. That’s it; perfect.’ Scrape, scrape.
She stifled a laugh. ‘Dylan, listen, if you’re going to stand right in front of the window, put some bloody clothes on!’
‘Oh, shit. Right.’ He looked around the room.
Eleanor reached under the covers. ‘Here.’ She tossed his boxers across to him.
‘Cheers.’ He grinned and waggled his bottom at the window – but not before surreptitiously checking there was no one nearby, she noticed – then pulled them on. He grabbed the wooden chair from the corner and settled himself a few feet away from her. ‘Okay, now can you turn the other way, right round so you’re facing away from me, and lean up on your elbow. Yes! Perfect.’ Scrape, scrape. ‘Now turn over and rest your head down on the pillow, face upward . . . and close your eyes. That’s it, great.’
She’d lain there, eyes closed, enjoying the warmth of the bed, the golden autumn sunlight on her face, the rasp of his pencil.
That first sitting only took about half an hour, because he was concentrating on getting the basic shape. When he’d finished, he’d taken out his tobacco tin and set about rolling a spliff – he smoked a lot in those days. He always passed it to her, but she always refused because it messed with her memory, which was fragile enough already.
He understood, he said. It was one thing to choose to wipe out unhappy memories, but it was another thing altogether not to be able to recover them even if you wanted to.
He was thoughtful for a moment. ‘Eleanor, how would you feel about . . . You see, I’ve got this idea for the piece.’ He nodded towards the sketch pad. ‘The head.’ He turned to her. ‘Sorry, that sounds a bit cold. I mean, your head. I was thinking, I’d like to try and, I don’t know, show your life by sort of . . .’ He reached up to her head again and ran his hand over it. His palm felt smooth and dry. It would lose its smoothness again after a few weeks’ work here, she reflected, but his artist’s skin would soon recover once he returned to his usual life. Unlike her own hands, which were now as tough and calloused at those of any seasoned farm labourer.
‘What I was thinking was, I could put in some of your memories, show them in your head, the contrast between the rich texture of what’s inside and the smooth clearness of what shows on the surface.’
Eleanor laughed. ‘What, the cool exterior and the turmoil within?’
‘Yeah, that’s the sort of thing. Glimpses of your life, you know? The precious moments, the flashes of childhood . . .’ He gestured with his free hand, and he appeared to be focused on a point in the middle distance, as though he could see his idea taking shape in the air. ‘Maybe even the sadder moments?’ The question was in his eyes.
‘Whatever,’ she shrugged. ‘I don’t mind revisiting sadness once in a while. And anyway, it may be my head but it’s your art.’
*
She’d sat for him a couple more times that summer, on this same bentwood chair, first with her head slightly tilted down and her eyes closed, then with her head turned to the side and her eyes open. He’d stood at the makeshift easel he’d knocked up out of spare wood, hands sweeping down the page with his pencils, shading and smudging, swearing when it went wrong. He was working on a much larger pad by that time, having ditched his original outline. He disappeared into his cabin most evenings to work on the picture. He was taking this one quite seriously, she’d realised; and he’d been quieter than usual while working on it, unusually reflective.
She’d stopped asking to see it eventually, and until today, had forgotten all about it.
The sky is growing darker now, and a smoky raincloud hovers above, blotting out what is left of the sunshine. There is a spatter of rain on the window. She looks at Dylan but he doesn’t appear to notice. His eyes are sharp with concentration, his brows drawn together. ‘Dylan, do you remember that drawing of me you started a few years ago? You did the outline quite quickly, then I sat for you a couple of times, but you said you wanted to try and draw—’
‘Your memories. Yes, I remember.’
‘Only, to be honest, it had completely slipped my mind until just now. Did you ever finish it?’
He doesn’t answer immediately, just carries on moving his pencil. Then he glances up at her. ‘I did, as a matter of fact.’
She waits, but he is leaning in to his drawing, making tiny movements with the pencil. ‘So . . . ?’ When he still doesn’t answer, she says, ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Dylan! Don’t be so mysterious. Was it any good? Were you pleased with it?’
At last he puts his pencil down, leans back and sighs. ‘I was pleased with it, but I didn’t show it to you because in the end, after I’d finished, I wasn’t sure if . . . Well, the thing is, I thought it might upset you. You know, some of the things . . . the stuff that happened when you were younger, before you came here.’
‘What about after I came here? Did you put any of—’
‘Oh, yeah, it’s not only about the bad stuff.’ He is looking at her properly now. ‘Would you like to see it?’
‘You still have it? I thought for a minute you’d . . . But where is it?’
‘It’s at a mate’s place. In Shepherd’s Bush. I usually crash there if I’m in London. My old schoolmate, Lloyd. I must have told you about him.’
She shakes her head. She knows very little about Dylan’s life outside of the summers he spends here. Every now and again he’ll tell her something, mention a name, somewhere he’s stayed, and she feels like he’s feeding her titbits as rewards for not asking.
‘He’s a good friend. Totally fucked up, mind, but a lovely bloke – do anything for you. Anyway, he lets me store stuff in his back room, so it’ll be there somewhere. If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll bring it next year.’
‘I don’t mind waiting, but you won’t be here next year, remember? You
’ll be in Italy, finally making some money.’
He laughs and shakes his head. ‘I forgot. I suppose it still hasn’t sunk in yet that I’m going to be doing a proper job.’
She smiled. ‘Quite something, isn’t it? And anyway, I don’t even know where I’ll be next summer, what with my mum and everything.’
‘Shit, yeah.’ He shakes his head again. ‘I hope it’s not too traumatic.’
‘Thanks.’
‘When do you have to go?’
‘I don’t have to.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to snap. I’ll probably go again quite soon. The redecorating’s more or less done, and Peggy says my mum’s quite lucid at the moment.’ She sighs. ‘I don’t know what I’m even hoping for, really. Just . . . something.’
He picks up his pencil again.
‘So, the memory drawing; I could post it, I guess?’ He smiles. ‘I’m glad you want to see it.’
Eleanor: the present, Scalby
Eleanor stands on the clifftop, watching a fragile light pushing through the clouds as dawn breaks over the North Sea. This is it: her last day here for who knows how long. The gale that’s coming in off the sea moves her hair and flattens her jeans and t-shirt against her skin. There’s something about the Scalby wind that she finds both comforting and invigorating. She loves the clean, sharp saltiness it brings with it, and the gentle sounds it makes as it ripples through the late crop of rapeseed that stretches from the clifftop right back to the farm. When she first arrived here all those years ago, she immediately became aware of the sound it made as it buffeted the cabins: an almost constant moaning in the background like some poor spirit trapped within the earthly walls of the farm buildings. Jill said it put some people off. They found it creepy, as though the place was haunted. But Eleanor has always liked it; it keeps her company without demanding anything in return.
There’s a movement in the darkening sky above her, and she looks up just in time to see a bird of prey, a red kite by the look of its enormous wingspan, pass overhead. Maybe it’s hurrying back to its nest before the rain comes. When she and Dylan walked along the cliff path to Scarborough yesterday, she thought it felt distinctly summery; there wasn’t so much as a hint of a breeze, and the sea and sky were as blue as a Mediterranean postcard, diamonds of sunlight twinkling off the tiny waves. Today, though, the sea is dark and moody, a deep granite colour; only a flash of red from a single sailing boat breaks up the grey. She stands there for several minutes, mesmerised as always by the undulating, muscular waters below. How quickly and dramatically things can change.
As she walks back to the farm, she is aware of a heaviness settling about her, as though her body is waterlogged, saturated in melancholy. When she leaves here tomorrow morning, it’s likely to be for quite a while; several months at least, possibly longer. She’s driven up and down a couple of times since the flood, but it’s proving to be impractical and expensive, so she suggested to her mum that she move back down properly ‘for a while’. They both know what that means. Or at least, she does – there’s every chance her mum will have forgotten they’ve even had a conversation, never mind what they’ve discussed.
She trudges up the track that runs alongside the fields and directly to the farm. She’s lived here longer than she’s lived anywhere else. Can she really walk away from this place that has become her world? She could change her mind . . . But, no, how could she even consider it? Her mother is her mother, and now she is fading, disappearing. Just as the sea is gradually eating away the cliffs at Aldbrough, changing the coastline beyond recognition, the Alzheimer’s is claiming more of her mother every day, eroding her brain and washing away her memory until there will be nothing left but a smooth, barren surface to which nothing will adhere.
The rain comes suddenly, blowing in great drenching gusts towards her and making frothy, coffee-coloured puddles on the ground. She hurries back to her cabin, wrenches the door open and slams it quickly behind her before too much water can follow her in. It’s gloomy in here. She flicks on the light, grabs a towel, rubs it over her face and then gingerly blots at her hair. Her jeans and t-shirt are soaked through at the front but oddly dry at the back. She pulls the t-shirt off over her head and peels off her clammy jeans. The shock of cool air on her damp skin makes her shiver and break out in goosebumps. She switches on the oil-filled radiator and hangs her sodden clothes over it. Even her bra is wet through.
As she walks into the bathroom, she can hear the rain battering the ground outside and pummelling the roof, but by the time she’s showered and dressed in dry clothes, the sun is coming out, making the raindrops that drip down outside her window sparkle prettily in the silvery light.
She’s just made coffee when there is a familiar musical rap on the door. ‘Come in, Dylan. That was good timing.’ She takes another mug from the hook on the wall, spoons coffee into it and adds hot water and milk. He bounces in, smiling and holding a cardboard tube about three feet long.
‘Got something for you. I didn’t say anything because I wasn’t sure it would get here in time. I could have got Lloyd to post it to your mum’s, but . . . but I wanted to give it to you myself.’ His smile starts to fade. ‘I hope you like it.’
‘Is this . . . ?’ She hands him a mug of coffee.
‘Sorry I didn’t manage to get it framed, but, well, I suppose you might not even want it framed.’ He drops his gaze. ‘I just hope you like it,’ he says again.
As she takes it from him, her hand trembles slightly. She isn’t sure what to expect, but after what he’d said when they talked about it a couple of weeks ago . . .
‘Here, let me.’ Dylan takes the plastic lid from one end of the tube and carefully slides the picture out.
‘I hadn’t realised it would be so big,’ she said.
‘I wanted to do it properly. Do it justice, I suppose. I used those sketches as a guide. He looks around for somewhere to unroll the drawing.
‘Hang on.’ She begins moving things off the desk. She’d been sorting out some admin work to take with her. She shifts the box files, ring binders and cardboard folders onto the bed, moves the tea-making tray onto the floor and wipes the desk with the towel she used when she came in from the rain.
Dylan lays the drawing on the desk and begins to unroll it. The paper is thick and heavy.
She feels a ripple of apprehension. What if it’s awful? She’s seen quite a lot of his work now, but she’s never really known him to draw people. Well, only if they’re in the distance, part of the landscape – a walker on a hill, maybe, or children playing on a beach. She’s never known him do portraits, actual faces. And if he’s made a good job of it, how will she feel about seeing herself as she was – how many years ago was it? Four? Possibly five. And she remembers him being worried it might upset her; what if it does? She steels herself. No matter what she feels when she sees it, she’ll find something nice to say. Dylan is so much more than a lover now; he is a friend and she trusts him.
‘Well?’ He is smiling, but he sounds nervous.
Her gaze travels over the page. There are actually two drawings of her head on the paper. At the top the view is of her face and head from the front, and the one underneath is from the side. She looks at the front view, and although she can see the tiny sketches he told her about, all she can take in at first is the overall effect. Somehow, despite her horrible baldness, he has made her look serene and mysterious, almost beautiful. ‘It’s very flattering,’ she says. ‘You’ve given me cheekbones.’
‘You have cheekbones,’ he replies. ‘I just draw what I see.’
Is this really how Dylan sees her? The face is tilted downwards, presumably to allow more room to show the head above as slightly oversized. He’s drawn her with her eyes closed, lashes resting in such a way that you know she isn’t sleeping. Even with the eyes closed, there is so much expression in the face, something to do with the set of the jawline and the way he’s shaded the slight creases in
the forehead. ‘You’ve got those earrings exactly right!’ She points to the dangly spirals of stainless steel with chips of polished glass positioned to catch the light as she moves. One of the helpers made them for her when they first started running the jewellery-making classes.
She looks more closely now at the area above her face. He’s used soft pencil lines to divide it into six compartments, each of which contains a detailed miniature drawing. She smiles as she recognises the home-made red pottery lamp that even now stands on the bedside table. And there are herself and Dylan, entwined, deep in a nest of rumpled covers, his long hair spilling over their naked shoulders and her own smooth, bald head. She lets out a breath and, still smiling, shakes her head in admiration. ‘I don’t know how you can make such a small drawing so accurate; it’s brilliant.’
‘Thanks,’ he mutters.
The other five compartments all contain scenes from life on the farm. She recognises the view from the clifftop of the scalloped coastline with the ruins of Scarborough Castle in the distance; beneath that is herself feeding the chickens in front of a polytunnel bursting with heavy-fruiting tomato plants; the picture next to it is of a group of helpers, some playing guitars or bongos, all sitting around the wood burner in the main house. When she looks closely at the final two pictures, both featuring herself and Dylan, she laughs out loud. In one, she is looking in a mirror and grimacing at the weird patterns Dylan has painted on her head, and in the other she is brandishing a sledgehammer as she chases a caricature of Dylan around the farm.
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