He’d been able to put his overhead lights on to make up for the lack of light coming in through the ivy covered windows. There seemed to be some sort of growth over the bulb, ensuring that the light it emitted was also weak and anaemic, tinged green.
He had enough to see by, yet was unsure if he had enough to work by. Nonetheless, he was now at his table, drawing board up at an angle in front of him. Squirrel seated on the tractor discarded on to the floor. He had watched it drift lazily down and under the table, caring not one bit for it. It was what he had become. What he had been reduced to, since the accident. No wonder he had lost all passion for it. No wonder he had told Jane that he was no longer interested in producing her anonymous and bland work, no matter who it was. Tom Manillo’s work would have been no better, and he was still sore about previous entries in his renowned detective series that Adam had illustrated the hardcover jackets for. Each one had barely been perceivable under the large square Futurist type. It was the same thing. Bland fiction for the masses. Adam had read a couple of Tom’s early thrillers and couldn’t have been less thrilled with them. Not that he considered himself a literature snob by any means, but thumbing through the large fourteen point type and rote signposted plot strands, he genuinely found his willingness to have his art associated with such a thing to be demeaning on a good day.
Yet you would have money to pay your rent and buy some food in, unless you enjoyed those crackers and spying the contents of your fridge that much?
Yet he would. That was true. At what cost to his soul? What had Mamoulean said? That he had promise? Something along those lines. Potential, perhaps. He had let it slip past him, through his fingers, because - ironically - of Mamoulean himself, and others like him. How ready they had been to tear him down, whilst elevating the likes of Trent fucking d’Marcan up to the rafters. Yet Adam had seen nothing in Trent’s exhibition of work that was beyond someone such as him. Particularly the one at the end. The
blank
one that he for some reason couldn’t recall. It had been instantly familiar, as though he had seen it before. He recalled a little of what Raschold had been espousing before it’s unveiling, before whatever had happened to him had happened.
Had I not fallen? Had I not fallen earlier this day as well?
About the greatest piece from the greatest living artist.
That was it. Adam had found that a little odd at the time. For all intent and purposes, Trent was missing, and had in fact been legally declared dead. Yet as far as Adam could remember there had been no discovery of a body.
So now, here he sat, unrolling the last great thing he had worked on. Ironically, another illustration. Another children’s illustration. This one was different. This one had come from her. Or at least, had lead him to her. He wondered if Jane had her details. So much time had passed. Was he unearthing this for his own benefit or hers? Was he actually going to continue or even begin it again? Because of two words on a card that he wasn’t even sure she had written, or his daughter had written, or anyone had written…
FINISH IT.
He had taken it to be this, because - god himself only knew why - this is what had surged through his mind when he read the message. Memory of this came flooding back. A morning working on it, interrupted by Violet because of Father’s Day, he had been particularly pleased with it, particularly annoyed at the interruption, even though he was pretty sure that wasn’t the correct version of him. Another memory overlapped that one, of the same morning, but without this piece. Had it been truly him that had been creating it or -
“One way to find out,” he sighed. He was getting used to voicing his thoughts. His voice sounded less and less strange in this otherwise quiet environment. He almost started to like the sound of his own voice in fact. Plus there was the advantage of nobody interrupting him whilst he was talking, unless he decided to himself. Of course. Or one of the other hims did. He couldn’t be sure if they would ever bring themselves into his company or whether they always just stated where they belonged and endlessly fragmented. The past. Behind him.
He rolled out the first tube of heavy paper. The kind that he had always used. The sides were deeply stained a drrk brownish green, but the contents was unsurprisingly good condition and was relatively unspoiled. It was a detail. Part of a page. Perhaps this part of the story focused on this one particular thing, or perhaps it was just him focusing on it, bringing himself into the story. He had to credit himself. It was rendered beautifully. Just the right amount of detail. Each leaf with it’s pale veins, like grasping hands on tendril like arms, enraptured around the iron ballustrade.
He thought part of it made sense now, and looked to the windows, to where the sun beat relentlessly beyond yet was denied access to him. He found he didn’t need it. There was life enough in here with him. It required the heat, but not necessarily the light, as did he. Looking back to his piece again, placing it aside. He had drawn and coloured it from memory. He had used no cuttings or images for reference, and yet it was exactly as he had seen it before, as he saw it now.
The iron and ivy.
The manuscript. It was still there. It was unfinished and had been supplied to him for a taster, so he could understand the gist of the story. Yet it wasn’t finished, and barely even begun. It was a third, and not from the start. It didn’t even have a title, let alone proper narrative structure. She had apologised, during that first meeting. During the threeway conference call where Jane had made the introductions.
“I hope what I can provide is enough to go on Mr Campion.” She had said.
Adam found himself immediately intrigued by her voice, and already had conjured an image in his head that a married man possibly shouldn’t be entertaining. He knew from what Jane had said that she was of similar age to him, and was single, having dedicated so much of her life to her writing. This was, however, to be her first published novel, for pre-teen into young adult readers. Something that he was told on first glance could almost be passed off as a whimsical fairytale, before becoming clear that there was a darker machine driving the narrative from down within the text.
They had arranged to meet in person, and she had borough a section of manuscript for him. It had been typewritten as opposed to word processed, and he had asked at the time if this was her only copy of it. She had nodded, saying that she was finished with that section and no longer required it. If it went so far as to strike him as odd at the time then it didn’t register, but sitting there now, in that hot green light, with it in his hands, looking across at the first piece he had produced for it, he wondered exactly what she had meant by that.
She had sent him the card. The fact it bore an image similar to what his daughter had produced was irrelevant, and something he didn’t see the point in fixating on. It was the contents that intrigued him. That message. It was meant for him, now and -
Yes. Her name. God how he had forgotten her name.
Daphne.
He knew so much more than her name of a time. Had he really forgotten? Why else at the gallery? He had abandoned her that evening.
Or she abandoned you.
That was more likely. She had left him. She had sent him this note before he attended. She knew he would be there. Had Iris told her? He shook his head. Those two had never met.
Unless they have.
No. She had simply known he would go. He could allow himself to believe that Iris Fleet had cajoled him into going all he wanted, but she knew he would go all the same.
Had she meant to discuss it with him? That night? For him to pick off where he had left it?
Had she intended for both of them to pick up where they had left it?
It had ended, had it not?
Christ, he thought, my fuckiong head I can’t think.
WHUMP
Plaster fell from the ceiling, on to the damp carpet. A large crack had appeared in the upper part of the wall that connected his apartment with next door. If she wasn’t careful, Yana was going o break through the damn wall.
It was simple. He could see it now. Clarity. At last. Or so he thought.
She had never gone anywhere else to get it published. She had waited for him. She had sent him the invitation to Trent’s retrospective, had pushed the card in his door of reasons only known to her as opposed to giving it him directly. Perhaps for the mystique, the intrigue. That was very much her.
And her was the next part of the jigsaw. He hadn’t been himself recently. The right version of himself. He knew that now. He could see that. The alcohol had numbed him, blinded him. It had been a crutch yet it hadn’t helped him walk, in the physical or metaphorical sense. He had turned to it after the accident
YOU FUCKING LIAR
yet all it had done was cloud his vision. She hadn’t been in touch for so long. Had she assumed him convalescing? Taking things at her own pace? Was she working on the next part of the story? Was there a next part?
All this he would find out if he could just contact her.
Jane.
He would phone Jane at Hounsett. To hell with her if she had a problem with him. He was her client, or ex-client. He had done good work for her and damn it if she would not hear him out. He had to reach her and find out if she wanted him to continue.
That wasn’t right.
Of course she wanted him to continue, that wasn’t why he needed to contact her.
He just needed to.
He needed.
Yet first, why not reacquaint himself? He could give himself that at least. Then he could contact Jane. She would put him in touch with her again. She would ask him to continue, on promise of payment. Payment which he desperately could do with. This was the convergence perhaps. The Adam from here would be different. A purpose renewed. Why not? He had paid his dues, with flesh and blood.
He took hold of the manuscript and slid it over to him, pushing the illustration and the drawing desk away to make room. It was as he had remembered it, the crips white pages succumbed to their storage conditions. Yellowed and cold beneath his touch, yet the text was still legible.
He began to read.
Ivy placed one hand on the railing, one foot upon the first riser, and began to ascend.
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