The Ecliptic (7 page)

Holden was the finest teacher I ever had. To ‘avoid any earache’ from the external assessor, he steered us away from the influence of Picasso (‘talent like his can neither be
taught nor replicated’), but he allowed us to eschew the mannered ways of easel painting that were sacrosanct to other tutors: the single-viewpoint rule, the vanishing point, chiaroscuro. A
great mural, he used to say, was perpetually in conversation with its environment: it should not retreat into the background or vie for attention, but ought to span ‘that invisible line
between’. When Holden talked, his words stayed with you. He would twist the tip of his ear while he admired a work-in-progress, as though turning off a valve, and he walked along the
building’s topmost corridors racketing his cane against the radiators, or whistling Irving Berlin tunes. Sometimes, he came to drink with us at The State Bar, and would cradle the same small
measure of whisky in a glass until closing time.

Holden’s least prescriptive brief came in the fourth year, prior to our diploma show.
Complete a mural for a platform at Central Station.
There were no limits on theme or
materials, he told us. ‘It needn’t convey anything of the railway per se. But, of course, you should think about how the work will be slanted by its location, and vice versa. I want to
see your imaginations taking you places. I also want you focusing them where they ought to be. Understand?’

For weeks, I failed to summon a single idea. I spent full days in the studio, numb and depleted, searching for a hint of something true, but any bright intentions I had soon floundered on the
pages of my sketchbook. Anxieties began to overrule my normal instincts: what if the backcourt spirit was not enough to sustain me? What if I was never meant to listen to it in the first place?
Then Holden came to rescue me. He edged into my workspace, saw the blankness of the canvas I had stretched upon the frame, and said, ‘What’s the matter, Ellie? Have you let the fight go
out of you?’

That was exactly how I felt, and I told him so.

‘Then pick a different battle,’ he said. ‘Disturb the peace a bit.’

‘I don’t know how.’

Holden pondered my face, as though seeing it for the first time. ‘Remind me again: are you Catholic?’

‘My mother is.’

‘That wasn’t my question.’

‘Well, I suppose I still believe in God, but not in what the Bible says.’

‘There you are then. Paint what you believe.’

In the moment, his advice seemed so woolly and impractical that I felt even more adrift.
Paint what you believe
. He might as well have said,
Paint the air.
But when I got back
to my little room-and-kitchen flat and tried to sleep, his words kept pinching at me, until I relented to their meaning. Holden was not telling me to reach inside myself for some pious motivation;
he was inviting me to paint the world as I understood it, to convey my own perspective with conviction. The mural should be the picture I would hope to see if I were standing on that platform with
my suitcase, waiting for a train to sidle in and carry me away. It should resonate with its location but also transcend it. It should be both personal and public.

I sketched until the light of early morning, making sense of my initial ideas in ink, and finishing with gouache on paper. The next day, Holden found me in the studio, adding a grid of
construction lines to the completed image. ‘Ah,’ he said, ‘you’ve finally picked a battle,’ and I did not see him again until the entire twelve-by-three-foot canvas
was completed. At the diploma show, modest crowds formed around it. There was head-scratching and consternation. There was excitement. I felt the shift of my trajectory.

What the crowd saw that night was a depiction of an ordinary station platform. The grey-rendered steam of a locomotive swelled from the lower aspect of the canvas. In parts, I had thinned the
whorls of paint to near translucence; in others, it cloyed like molasses, in level spots of oil and glaze that almost shone. Amidst the curls of smoke was a rolling horde of men in rags and
bedraggled women holding babies. They were clambering from the west side of the platform, stumbling over each other in a tumult, falling headlong. And in the calm space to the east, where the grey
mist was dispersing, a figure stood in a baggy pinstriped suit, his body turned, his face unseen, but slightly peering backwards. His right hand was stigmatised and held a crown of thorns. He was
barefoot and his tawny hair was greased and combed. A trail of oats was spilling from the briefcase in his other hand. A Bible rested in his top pocket. Beyond him were sunlit pastures fenced off
with barbed wire; ships already leaving port; the distant flatline of the sea. I called it
Deputation.

The external assessor was so insulted by the picture that he did not deem it worthy of a passing grade. I had sensed that the mural would provoke strong opinions, but I did not expect that it
would rouse such ill feeling that the School would deny my graduation. Whilst I was painting
Deputation
, I daydreamed of installing it at Central Station, imagining the railway manager
being invited to the show, falling in love with it. I had taken the trouble of designing it so the canvas could be detached from its stretcher frames and affixed to the brickwork with lead paste,
as many of the great muralists in America had been known to do. I had thought—vainly hoped—that it would help me acquire more commissions. Instead, the School gave me two options:
repeat the fourth year, or leave without a diploma. I preferred the idea of packing sewing-machine needles with my mother.

At the end of term, as the show was being pulled down, I went in to the studio to collect my things. Henry Holden called me to his office. I sat on his paint-smattered banquette while he
rummaged the papers on his desk. There was a reek of whisky about him. ‘I’ve spoken again with the School governors,’ he said. ‘I wish I could say they’d changed their
minds.’

‘I’m starting to think it’s for the best.’

He shook his head. ‘Rubbish. You submitted a wonderful painting, and I’m embarrassed those cowards aren’t supporting it. When you go off and make your fortune as a painter,
they’re all going to look rather silly.
Now
—’ He lifted up a folder and gave it a cursory glance before tossing it aside. ‘You might not have seen this in the
newspapers, or heard about it on the wireless,
but
—ah, here we are.’ He unfolded what looked like a grocer’s receipt, skim-reading it. ‘There’s a new
travelling fellowship you can apply for.’

‘I really don’t think I’ll be—’

‘Shssh. Listen. This is
good
news.’ He paused, swallowing drily, and I realised that he was very drunk indeed. ‘Now, I should warn you, the endowment is not much, but
it’s been decided, and the committee chairman—namely
me
—will be most upset if you don’t accept. In fact, he insists that you do. Here.’ He offered me the
grocer’s receipt. A name was scrawled on the back in pencil—Jim Culvers—with a number and an address. ‘An old student of mine in London is looking for an assistant. If he
doesn’t pay you well enough, give me a ring and I’ll lean on him. It’s not the same as a diploma, or even a proper fellowship, I know—but, anyway, those are his
details.’

I felt as though I should kiss him. ‘You don’t have to do this for me, Henry.’

‘I’m aware.’

‘I don’t think I really deserve it.’

‘Then give it back, I’ll tear it up for you.’ He creaked forward on his chair, turning out his palm. I would always remember this moment with Holden, how he looked at me with
certainty, knowing I would not release the paper to him. ‘Thought not,’ he said, and withdrew his hand. ‘It’ll take Jim a while to notice you’re a better painter than
he is. When that happens, move on. Until then, I suspect the two of you will get on famously. He’s already expecting you.’

If I had chosen differently, and carried out my plan to take a factory job alongside my mother, I might never have painted again. But how much worse off would I have been to live without art
than to have it consume me and spit out my bones? There are still days when I count up all the sewing-machine needles I could have packed instead.

There is no doubt that Fullerton’s arrival at Portmantle had some influence on my painting, but I cannot credit him for the discovery that mattered most. It was in the
springtime—two whole seasons before he was admitted—that I took myself into the deepest woods in search of herons to draw, and found one perching on a rotten tree trunk swathed in
mushrooms. I sat and sketched that splendid bird until it suddenly took off. I tried to keep track of it, gazing up through the branches, but it glided out of sight, and by then I was halfway out
of the forest and the dinner bell was clanging at the mansion. It was only when I got back to my studio, after dusk, that I realised I had left my sketchbook somewhere in the trees—most of
the drawings it contained were not worth saving, but I felt the heron sketches had potential and I did not want to lose them. So I got a torch and went back into the woods. That night, the dark was
full and thick; the firmament of stars was at its clearest. There was a waxing crescent moon and the yellow-white shimmer of the neighbouring islands seemed closer than ever. I hurried through the
pines by torchlight, hunting for the spot where I had found the heron, but everything looked different in the dark. My foot caught in the scrub and I tripped over. The torch spat out its batteries
as it hit the ground. For a moment, there was terrifying blackness and I thought I had passed out. But then I saw the most unusual thing ahead of me: a spread of pale blue light, like the haze of a
gas flame.

I lifted myself up and moved towards the glow. It was coming from a clutch of fallen trees not far away. As I got closer, the blue intensified: a curious shade, vivid yet lucent, like the
antiseptic liquid barbers keep their combs in, or the glaucous sheen on a plum. It did not emanate from the trees themselves, but rather from a substance they were covered in: luminescent mushrooms
the size of oyster shells. Their caps had pale blue halos that, when packed into dense clusters as they were, gave off a gleam so bright I could make out all the textures of the forest floor,
insects crawling in the mulch, my sketchbook lying on the ground—I no longer cared to pick it up. There was a slow, electric crackle in my blood, a feeling I had not known in years. Not quite
clarity, just the tingle of it surfacing. An idea. A glimpse of home. The rest, I knew, was up to me.

By the winter of the boy’s appearance, I was still learning the nuances of the pigment, sampling its versatility. Some inconsistencies had to be corrected in the mixture
before I could commit to painting with it; the production methods needed more refinement, and I had lingering concerns about permanence and lightfastness. But my excitement for the material could
not be dampened. Quickman always said the best ideas ‘invade your heart’. This one had become a romance.

It was not a difficult pigment to make, though it required considerable patience and commitment. I established a simple routine: working through the darkness until breakfast, sleeping until
lunch, resting until dinner, resuming after dusk. I lived this way throughout the summer, finding respite in the cool of nightfall, hiding from the glare of daylight. I persisted through the muggy
autumn evenings, the early rains, the frost, the sudden snow. But when the boy arrived, it knocked me off my rhythm. I allowed his presence to divert me from my purpose much too readily. His
sparring with Quickman at the backgammon board was just the first instance of this distraction—their game dragged on much longer than expected and I did not even think to put a stop to it,
just let the two of them battle it out, paying no mind to the delay it caused my work. It may have only set me back a fraction, but a fraction was too much.

As soon as they were gone, I went about the drudgery of organising my studio. There was a long night of sampling ahead of me and I had not rested much since lunchtime. I closed my shutters,
rolled down my blinds and stapled them to the frame. I brought out the mortar and pestle, the stone muller and the mixing slab, wiping down my workbench and dragging it into position. I prepared
another fifty canvas squares. I cleaned my sable brushes. Then I put on my coat and satchel, laced up my boots, and waited for the last few lights to blink off at the mansion. Lanterns glared for a
while in the portico until Ender came to snuff them out, and then a perfect darkness settled all about the refuge.