cover. I said nothing. When I supervised the printing, I put Aliceâs picture back on the front where I had first placed it, then I told them to print the lot.
The principal shook his head when I laid it out before him.
âBut I was quite explicit. I told you I wanted Edward Holtâs abstract, not this picture by Alice Ashe.â
âI pasted up new instructions,â I said, âbut I suppose they must have been torn off. The old ones were still underneath. Thatâs probably what happened. Itâs unfortunate. I can pulp the lot if you insist, but Iâm afraid at the prices Iâm holding I just canât afford to run it out again for you. Itâs your choice.â
And as I had suspected, he shrugged and sighed, and said he supposed heâd have to take them as they were. That night I went back to Battersea with a whole batch of the brochures in my car boot for Alice. I had assumed she would be delighted. She stared at them for a moment, apparently without interest, and then turned back to her canvas.
She had started painting the park. Or rather, she had started turning the park into Chimera #7, which was, perhaps, not the same thing at all. Later that night, two joints later to be precise, I told her how I had smuggled her on to the front cover. I was laughing as I told the tale.
âYou shouldnât have done that,â she said, and through the haze of my well-being I felt the sudden sting of her rebuke. It seemed as though her face was focused steadily on mine for the first time, though she didnât appear to be looking at me so much as straight through me.
Months went by and I almost grew used to Alice, even when I had to pick up her underclothes from the floor where she had let them drop, noting out of the corner of my eye as I flung them into the washing machine the small, mysterious, often indeterminate stains that would occasionally appear upon them. I was always cleaning up after Alice, for Alice left items in her wake wherever she went. I could never entirely understand how someone who possessed almost nothing could so consistently strew floors and chairs and beds with such an abundance of debris. Every day I laid fresh newspapers underneath her easel in the hope that the paint that she dripped in her abstraction would land there, not on my immaculate fitted carpet.
After the first week I gave up waiting for her to volunteer to do the washing up and simply got on with it. Once I suggested she might prepare a meal and we had half a banana and half a mango each, both sprinkled with sliced grapes. At least it meant fewer utensils to clean afterwards. Alice didnât seem interested in food. When I wasnât there I donât think she ate at all. If in doubt, Alice would roll another joint and sit there spliffing away by the window, midway between her vision of the park and the canvas before her. The same canvas. I began to wonder how Alice had ever managed to finish any of her paintings. This chimera kept disappearing back into whatever it had arisen out of. No sooner was some part of the park coloured in than it was coloured out again. It became part of the routine of our life together. I didnât resent it. Or at least I resented other things a lot more.
Then it was summer again, Austin Healey weather. Each Saturday I checked the oil level and the tyre pressures, gave her a quick clean and then took the hood down. I drove Alice to Hastings, Glastonbury, Kingâs Lynn, Clacton, up through the Cotswolds, down across the Weald. She would sit silently in the passenger seat as we burned rubber, her head immobile as the world blurred by. If the sun came out, she covered her face with a scarf. Something about her skin, she said. I think those drives might have been the happiest moments in my life. Our last trip was to the Black Mountains. I enjoyed picking the small hotels and buying her meals. I made sure we were always within range of a museum or gallery of
The principal shook his head when I laid it out before him.
âBut I was quite explicit. I told you I wanted Edward Holtâs abstract, not this picture by Alice Ashe.â
âI pasted up new instructions,â I said, âbut I suppose they must have been torn off. The old ones were still underneath. Thatâs probably what happened. Itâs unfortunate. I can pulp the lot if you insist, but Iâm afraid at the prices Iâm holding I just canât afford to run it out again for you. Itâs your choice.â
And as I had suspected, he shrugged and sighed, and said he supposed heâd have to take them as they were. That night I went back to Battersea with a whole batch of the brochures in my car boot for Alice. I had assumed she would be delighted. She stared at them for a moment, apparently without interest, and then turned back to her canvas.
She had started painting the park. Or rather, she had started turning the park into Chimera #7, which was, perhaps, not the same thing at all. Later that night, two joints later to be precise, I told her how I had smuggled her on to the front cover. I was laughing as I told the tale.
âYou shouldnât have done that,â she said, and through the haze of my well-being I felt the sudden sting of her rebuke. It seemed as though her face was focused steadily on mine for the first time, though she didnât appear to be looking at me so much as straight through me.
Months went by and I almost grew used to Alice, even when I had to pick up her underclothes from the floor where she had let them drop, noting out of the corner of my eye as I flung them into the washing machine the small, mysterious, often indeterminate stains that would occasionally appear upon them. I was always cleaning up after Alice, for Alice left items in her wake wherever she went. I could never entirely understand how someone who possessed almost nothing could so consistently strew floors and chairs and beds with such an abundance of debris. Every day I laid fresh newspapers underneath her easel in the hope that the paint that she dripped in her abstraction would land there, not on my immaculate fitted carpet.
After the first week I gave up waiting for her to volunteer to do the washing up and simply got on with it. Once I suggested she might prepare a meal and we had half a banana and half a mango each, both sprinkled with sliced grapes. At least it meant fewer utensils to clean afterwards. Alice didnât seem interested in food. When I wasnât there I donât think she ate at all. If in doubt, Alice would roll another joint and sit there spliffing away by the window, midway between her vision of the park and the canvas before her. The same canvas. I began to wonder how Alice had ever managed to finish any of her paintings. This chimera kept disappearing back into whatever it had arisen out of. No sooner was some part of the park coloured in than it was coloured out again. It became part of the routine of our life together. I didnât resent it. Or at least I resented other things a lot more.
Then it was summer again, Austin Healey weather. Each Saturday I checked the oil level and the tyre pressures, gave her a quick clean and then took the hood down. I drove Alice to Hastings, Glastonbury, Kingâs Lynn, Clacton, up through the Cotswolds, down across the Weald. She would sit silently in the passenger seat as we burned rubber, her head immobile as the world blurred by. If the sun came out, she covered her face with a scarf. Something about her skin, she said. I think those drives might have been the happiest moments in my life. Our last trip was to the Black Mountains. I enjoyed picking the small hotels and buying her meals. I made sure we were always within range of a museum or gallery of
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