‘Are you sure?’
‘Definitely. Because I remember being surprised given what happened. She was the one who told me you were an artist.’
‘Well, that’s odd because I can promise you I haven’t seen her since the day she left. We didn’t exactly part on great terms.’
Marnie Latham. Should I derive some tiny pleasure from the fact she still thought of me or feel weirded out by her false claim? I hadn’t spoken to her for twenty years.
Lucy pushed her hand up through her hair. It spiked like a punk.
‘That’s really weird then, but somehow …’
‘Somehow?’
‘Well, I guess somehow it fits. I mean, that’s how I remember her from school. She always was a little liar.’
By 11.17 I had slid out of Lucy’s enthusiastic offer of coffee – ‘I’m afraid I have to pick up Arthur, but if you’re ever in Bristol again …’ – and was sitting in Coffee #1 squeezing a lemon and ginger teabag against the rim of my cup with a teaspoon and counting down the minutes. At the table next to me a man with straggly hair and hippy-beads was on his mobile asking a succession of people if they wanted to join him for Chai Latte and telling them about his new life split between Bristol and Glastonbury. ‘I have my Glastonbury reality and my Bristol reality,’ he repeated to each of them. There were no takers. I was beginning to tire of his Bristol reality when my mobile rang. I looked at the screen and had to stop myself shouting out loud.
I put the phone to my ear. There was a silence. Wherever in the world he is calling from, I know by the soft, velvety nothing-sound that always precedes Ed’s first word that it is him. It’s a silence that contains multitudes – expectation, recognition, arrival – like the gaps between the tracks on old LPs, each scratched moment instantly recognizable, almost as if it was part of the chord to come.
‘Darling! Where are you? Is everything all right?’
‘Yes.’ He sounded exhausted.
‘But where are you?’
‘On my way home.’
‘From where? Work?’
I wanted to ask a million questions, but none mattered any more. He was safe.
‘Yes and no. From Stokes Croft.’
‘Stokes Croft? How did you end up there?’
Stokes Croft is the gateway to St Pauls, a neighbourhood where they let off fireworks all year, horizontally, usually towards the police. It is home to artists’ studios and vegan cafés, squatter collectives that sprout in disused buildings, all-night clubs, wraith-like dealers, protest groups. Stokes Croft is as far from Ed’s natural habitat or the broad terraces of Clifton as it’s possible to be, geographically or culturally.
‘Well, I made a bit of a mess of Pete’s. I don’t really know what happened. I guess I was just completely exhausted and it was all so … so unexpected. I mean, I didn’t know anyone at all.’
‘No one?’
‘Not one person. They were all arty types down from London. Miranda, Pete’s girlfriend, is a stage designer. I guess Pete knew them through her.’
‘So how come you stayed so late?’
‘I guess I was sort of wrong-footed by the whole thing. I’d always assumed Pete lived in the usual scuzzy digs—’
‘Last cleaned by Hippocrates!’ I was happy again. Ready for humour.
‘Exactly. But it wasn’t even a shared house. It was an enormous apartment in one of those warehouses overlooking the river. There must have been a hundred and fifty people there.’ I imagined Ed surrounded by the arty-glitterati, men and women who disappeared to the loos and reappeared, conversation faster and more inconsequential. I imagined flutes of champagne, abstract art, jet-black cocktail dresses. Soho transported to BS1. Ed would have been like a child entering a forest in a fairy tale. ‘Anyway, I was about to slip away when Pete cornered me and started introducing me to everyone as his “mentor” and “the best obstetrician in the world” and—’
‘It went to your head?’
Beside me, Bristol–Glastonbury was taking his own pulse. His lips were counting, his eyes closed.
‘No, well OK, maybe a little bit.’ He could hear the teasing in my voice. ‘Everyone was really nice, early thirties, and they all wanted to know what Pete was like at work and some had heard of you and when I said I was leaving they said not to be such a bore and I don’t know … I guess I suddenly had my second wind, and because it was all so different and I’d had a drink to keep me awake I … I just sort of lost track of time.’
Surprise mingled with embarrassment in his voice. I knew from personal experience how his shy, serious demeanour could prove seductive, exotic in its difference. Ed had welcoming eyes, stanzas of grey, a wide kind mouth with soft lips, a clockmaker’s fingers and a hank of unruly blond hair he was forever pushing back from his forehead. He was five ten, well-built, and exuded a quiet but unshakeable confidence. Ed was a man women trusted with the most precious thing in their lives. I couldn’t be annoyed.
‘Don’t worry, my darling, it’s called drinking. Most people do it most of the time.’ I came over all casual. I could afford to. ‘So: Stokes Croft.’
Ed grunted, as if appreciating for the first time the calamitous weight of a hangover.
‘God knows. Five or six of us went back to this girl’s flat. I can’t remember her name. Annabel someone. The moment I got there I knew it was a bad idea.’
‘So why didn’t you just get a cab home?’
‘I tried, but the driver drove off while I was saying goodbye and there weren’t any others around. I’d left my mobile at work, which meant I had to go up to her flat to call one, and of course they persuaded me to stay for a drink, which I wouldn’t have if I hadn’t already been completely plastered. Next thing I knew I was waking up in a chair with a head full of pig-iron. That was about half an hour ago. I cabbed to work, picked up my mobile and now I’m walking home. I’ll be back in twenty minutes – and I think I’ll have to go to bed!’
He signed off with a kiss and a groan. I pictured him walking past the Highbury Vaults, his head protesting, trying to work out what had happened.
I felt good. Nothing had happened. He would soon be home. Outside, the man selling the Big Issue crossed the road from his pitch beside the Lloyds ATM to his pitch outside the Co-op. He worked long hours and wore the same clothes every day, summer and winter. As I watched him chat to a passer-by whose thick eyebrows and full-sheen dark hair reminded me of Peter Spurling, I suddenly realized I had never asked Ed why he had gone back to Stokes Croft.
I was climbing up to my studio after dropping Nell and Arthur at school on Monday morning when the phone rang in the study. I paused, wondering if I could leave it, but I was alone in the house. I have avoided answering the phone if possible since I was a child. I don’t like having to pick it up and say ‘hello’ all bright and breezy without knowing who is on the other end or what they want. For that second, or as long as it takes for whoever it is to introduce themselves, it’s as if I’m hanging from a tall building with a crowd below. I feel too exposed. I would never sit for a portrait for the same reason, which may seem hypocritical, but there you go. I hate being looked at. I hate feeling vulnerable. Certainly I would never sit for myself. Being painted is like standing in front of a firing squad. You are in the light. The guns, the witnesses, the artist, they are sheltered by the darkness. There’s nowhere to hide.
‘Hello?’
Silence. I dangled like a marionette. Finally a woman’s voice, youngish, cut-glass.
‘Is Dr Sheahan there?’
‘No, he isn’t at the moment. Can I take a message?’
‘Um, no, no thank you.’
The voice was haughty, as if I was hired help.
‘Can I tell him who called?’
‘Um, no, no worries. Do you know where I might find him?’
We occasionally get these calls, pregnant women ringing Ed at home. They are not supposed to. Most obstetricians don’t give out their number, but Ed is not most obstetricians. I tried to k
eep the sarcasm out of my voice.
‘At work?’
‘Oh, of course, I’ll try him there. I’m sorry to have bothered you.’
‘Are you one of his patients?’
Pause. ‘No.’ Longer pause. ‘I work for a charity. A medical charity. I’ve been given his name specifically as someone who might be able to help.’
‘Which charity do you work for?’
‘Oh, it’s only a small one, nothing you would have heard of.’
Normally I wouldn’t have pursued it but there was a cadence in the woman’s high-handedness and well-bred vowels and evasiveness that made me curious.
‘Try me.’
‘No, it’s nothing, don’t worry but thank you anyway, that’s great, I’m sorry for disturbing you at home. I’ll call Dr Sheahan at the hospital. Goodbye.’
I was about to say ‘goodbye’ but she had already put the phone down, leaving me with nothing to say or think other than it was unusual for someone working for a medical charity not to know that doctors revert to ‘Mr’ when they become surgeons. It was even more unusual for someone who was asking for a favour to be so brusque.
That afternoon, when I got back from picking up the children, someone had left a bouquet of lilies propped up by the front door. An empty-handed Arthur thoughtfully walked past them while I was hauling heavy groceries out of the car. The card only said they were for Ed, from ‘ML xxx’. I took them into the kitchen to put into a vase.
Our house was always full of flowers because they bring such colour and life. I often bought them in the village to draw or paint when I wasn’t preparing for a commission, or just to remind me of Highlands, the remote house on the edge of Dartmoor where I grew up. Or a new mum or proud dad might send flowers if they knew us or there had been complications. It was unusual, though, for the sender not to add dewy-eyed and humbling messages of appreciation and joy. It was also unusual for people to hand-deliver flowers and then to leave them outside. After all, if someone bothers to buy and hand-deliver flowers it is generally because they want to thank Ed, The-Man-Who-Gave-Life, in person.
ML xxx
They couldn’t be from Marnie Latham, surely? That would be too much of a coincidence. Nevertheless, so soon after meeting Lucy the initials catapulted her back into my mind. It was unsettling to know she had been thinking about me but not getting in touch. For a time at school she had been my absolute best friend. Marnie heightened my experience of the world with her fierce intuition and refusal to kow-tow. Her energy lifted me like a dancer at the peak of her powers.
For years afterwards I would see a flash of black hair in the street, glimpse snake-hips or Roy Lichtenstein-lips, or hear a Manchester accent and I’d have to check it wasn’t her. It never was. The moment I saw the eyes, I knew. Marnie could change anything except her eyes.
I poured a splash of Côte de Beaune we had been given by a brand-new father into a bubbling Thai curry that didn’t deserve wine of such quality, turned round and said,
‘I had an epiphany today.’
Ed was sitting in the orange-check armchair in the corner of the kitchen, a mug of tea with four Warhol silkscreens of Marilyn balanced on its arm. He raised a laconic eyebrow. I didn’t have epiphanies about clinical science. I wasn’t about to announce I’d found God.
‘About Jackson Pollock.’
Ed’s eyelids flickered as if I was a wayward child.
‘Well, I suddenly realized Pollock was the man who embodied a particular moment when everything changed. For a thousand years artists had put their canvases on easels and looked past them to paint the world that they saw. Even Picasso and the moderns, they were all looking for different ways of depicting the visible world. But Pollock wasn’t. He wasn’t interested in painting physical reality. He was only interested in painting his psychological reality. So he took his canvas off the easel and put it on the ground – after all, he didn’t need to look at anything – and dribbled and flicked the paint on to it. He literally poured his soul on to the canvas. It was as if he was saying: “Don’t paint what you see, paint how you feel; don’t look out, look in.” Anyway, what I realized was that was the moment art became about the self rather than society. And so, this is my point, you can draw – or drip! – a line from that moment down through Salinger, Kerouac and the hippies all the way to Tracey Emin’s bed and the selfie and the me-me X-Factor culture of today. It captures the atomization of society, the breakdown of the family and so on.’
There was a pause, Ed waiting to see if there was anything else. When he realized I was done he knitted his eyebrows as if testing the thesis from every angle. Ed cheerfully tolerated what he considered my random theories and enthusiasms but he was far too practical to engage. Had art theory ever done anything useful?
‘Does it explain the breakdown of your family?’
‘Stop it! I’m being serious.’
Arthur appeared in the doorway.
‘Mummy?’
‘Not now, darling, I’m just talking with Daddy. Be with you in a minute.’
‘But—’
‘In a minute.’
Arthur disappeared.
‘No, it’s interesting, I like it.’ His mouth creased into a laconic smile. ‘Good to know you haven’t wasted your day.’
There were times when it could be incredibly frustrating being married to Ed. Those were the times when it would have been nice to be married to someone who would have grabbed an idea with both hands and stayed up all night smoking untipped Gauloises and drinking cheap Rioja. But how many of those types would also have had the generosity to help me fly? There were times when Ed’s unflappability made me want to yelp like a coyote, but it was precisely those qualities that enabled him to do his job, to cope with the things he saw. I accepted the ending implicit in his drollery.
‘By the way, did someone from some charity call you at work today?’
‘Someone from some charity?’ His tone was light and ironic. ‘No. Not that I know of.’
‘That’s odd. She sounded very keen to get hold of you.’
‘Maybe she spoke to someone else at St Anthony’s?’
‘I suppose so. Though she seemed very keen to speak to you.’
‘What did she sound like?’
‘Youngish. Well-spoken.’
Ed shrugged.
‘How long till supper? I’ve got a call I need to make.’
I glanced at the curry. ‘Ten?’
‘The perfect ten.’
He kissed me on the temple. I felt a smudge of warm air from the open window and watched the fat cushion he’d been sitting on slowly inhale. Ed plucked the phone from its stand by the fruit bowl and headed down to the basement to make his call.
‘Can’t sleep?’
I looked up from my easel. Ed stood in the doorway of my top-floor studio leaning against the jamb. He was wearing pyjamas striped red and white like toothpaste and holding a glass of water. I knew those slate-grey eyes better than anyone. When we started going out he sat for me whenever he could, which wasn’t often. It was through painting Ed I learnt you paint the light in the eye rather than the eye itself. I could see he was exhausted but unable to sleep and didn’t know how to cope because he wasn’t used to it. I smiled sympathetically. I often worked in the middle of the night when I had ideas I couldn’t get out of my head, but from the day I met him Ed had slept like a baby.
‘Uh-uh.’
‘Me neither.’
He looked around the room. Ed rarely came up to my studio. He considered it some sort of magician’s cave and felt any intrusion might disturb the delicate ecosystems or unfathomable alchemy that occurred within. This was where, as someone once put it, my mind was made physical. My studio was always untidy, if not a Bacon-level slum. Ed’s eyes roved around the room in one long panning shot from where I stood at the easel, taking in the paint-splattered sink, the metal trolley holding my palette and brushes in jam jars, oil paint, tubes of acrylics, the bookcase piled with monographs and catalo
gues raisonnés, fiction, short stories, Salter and Fitzgerald, Carson McCullers, sentence-makers and picture-poets, the ‘resting’ (never abandoned) canvases leaning against the wall, the wood-framed Artist with a Coiled Rope, the first selfie I ever painted, postcards of heroes – Rembrandt, Goya, Velázquez, Motherwell, masters of black – a Van Gogh-style wood-and-wicker chair minus his pipe and tobacco, and back to the easel, where I was picking out the early contours of a still life in pencil, a decorator’s swab of experimental colour behind.
‘Nice flowers.’
‘They were left by the front door. By someone called ML.’
‘Emel? Emily?’
‘M-dot, L-dot, no message, that’s all it said. And three kisses. Any ideas?’
Ed frowned.
‘Pass.’
‘Well, who’s had a baby recently who begins with L?’
‘Um … let me see … the Langtons, maybe?’ He gave a confirmatory nod, as if shoring up his own conviction. ‘Must be the Langtons. Jeremy and Jemima. They’ve just had a baby boy. Jules. That’s who it’ll be. You wouldn’t have thought they needed another “J” in the family.’
Jemima Langton. She had been on our table at a school charity quiz night we’d been roped into. She had been the designated driver, her husband in chalk pinstripes and commercial property, drunk. She introduced herself as a patient of Ed.
‘Why ML?’
‘Mima. She calls herself Mima.’
He picked out a brush and stropped the bristles against his palm.
‘And why hasn’t she signed it from both of them? Or all of them? She could have just done one big “J”.’
Ed shrugged. ‘How should I know? Maybe she forgot. New mothers often do. Or have you forgotten that?’
What Alice Knew Page 3