Chapter 9 #2
Micha cast him an indifferent glance. “You want me to use your dead brother’s stuff?”
“Well.” Thomas smiled faintly. “He is in no position to use it.”
There was a long silence. Micha’s hand twitched with what was surely an idle reflex, the tip of his little finger inadvertently brushing the edge of Thomas’s, where it still rested close by.
The gentle, careless pressure of his nail sent a silver-cold shiver running all the way to Thomas’s wrist. And suddenly he felt every breath he took as it moved between his lips.
“Your brother was . . .” said Micha, eventually, “. . . quite talented. His pictures give me nightmares.”
“Do they really? I can have them moved.”
“No, don’t.” Micha shook his head. “I like them.”
Thomas tried to laugh, but it came out thin and shaky. A tiny patch of skin, never before heeded, had become a pinhead upon which hosts of angels danced. “That seems a rather peculiar sentiment.”
Micha’s eyes slid away from Thomas’s and, a second after, his hand did as well, leaving Thomas wildly, impossibly bereft. “I feel like they’re saying something I understand, even if it isn’t something I like hearing.”
Thomas was quietly in pieces. He grasped for words, like a miser after banknotes scattering upon a breeze.
“Edward was the only one of us with any great talent.” He knew he was babbling and yet was utterly unable to control himself.
“Though George did rather well in the army, we are told. Since he rarely speaks of it, however, I do not think it is a talent he is happy to own. And I’m afraid I know nothing of art at all.
I always thought Edward’s paintings were rather beautiful.
The colours, perhaps? But even if they weren’t, I would want to have them anyway.
Death is very . . . devouring. It takes so much.
And all you have left to show for a life is a small pile of things. ”
“Your funeral sermons,” drawled Micha, “must bring the house down, Father.”
Micha’s words spun Thomas from one state of agitation to quite another.
He remembered the lion and tried to compose himself, but this wound was not glancing, and he flinched visibly, pulling away from Micha as though he had, indeed, been struck.
Once again, with heedless thoughts and a lack of faith, Thomas had betrayed himself—revealed all the messy doubts and fears that should have had no place in the heart of a priest and yet grief had planted there, a bloody-fanged harvest. “I . . . I speak of those who are left, not those who have departed.”
“Look, I’m sorry,” Micha blurted out. “I didn’t mean to say that. It was cruel.”
“No, it was fair.” Thomas rose, feeling older than his years and unspeakably weary. His hand was ordinary again, flesh and blood and bone, without grace or magic. “Let me see if I can find those things for you.”
As he opened the door, Micha called out his name. Thomas stopped, half-turning back. “What is it?”
Micha just looked at him.
“Is something troubling you?”
Micha shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. Nothing.”
And Thomas had no wish, that night, to press him.
He owned few enough of Edward’s possessions.
Just some paintings and whatever his brother had left at the rectory on his occasional visits.
Most of that had been bundled away and disposed of, but, eventually, after some diligent searching through cupboards and desks and dressers, Thomas managed to unearth an untouched sketchbook, some pencils, brushes, and a few slightly sorry-looking tubes of watercolour paints.
The oils, however, were quite beyond rescue.
They had all congealed into muddy brown paste and flaking rust.
Thomas left his offerings out for Micha, but he did not expect he would use them. Miracles, after all, belonged in the Bible.
However, when he came home the next day, he found Micha tucked into the window seat with the sketchbook open on his knees, a paintbrush moving rapidly over the paper. He looked better, too, less dreamy and distracted.
“I’m terrible,” Micha said, by way of greeting. “Truly terrible.”
“I’m sure that’s not true.” Thomas stepped quietly across the room. “May I see?”
“Why not?” Micha shrugged and turned the page to face Thomas.
“It’s . . . um . . . it’s . . . what is it?”
“It’s the gardens, what the fuck do you think?”
“Oh, yes, I . . . um . . . see that now. I think the apocalyptic vortex in the sky rather confused me.”
“That’s the sunset.”
“And the . . . camel?”
“That’s a duck.”
“Of course it’s a duck. I’m so sorry. I did warn you I had no understanding of art.”
Micha sighed. “No, no, it’s me. I said I was terrible.”
He seemed resigned, rather than bitter, but nevertheless Thomas rushed to reassure him. “Please don’t think that. I’m sure there’s a great deal of merit to be found here.” He quickly scanned the image, looking for something. “This firepit, for example, is beautifully detailed.”
“That’s the flower bed. Fucking hell.” Micha snatched the book back, ripped off the top page, and scrumpled it into a ball. “I told you.” He glared accusingly at Thomas. “No skills, no talents, no nothing.”
Thomas went to pull over a chair, hesitated, and then perched instead on the other side of the window seat.
Micha shifted slightly to accommodate him, tucking his feet out of the way, the movement so casually and instinctively intimate that it flustered Thomas.
The window framed them like a mirror, but they could not have looked less like reflections: Micha, sprawled but graceful, Thomas, prim and neat, each of them close enough to touch the other, though neither did.
“I thought you were painting because you enjoyed it, not because you wanted to be Botticelli.”
“Well, I’d like the option” came the sulky reply.
Thomas reached out, his hand closing around Micha’s clenched fist until it relaxed beneath his fingers, and he was able to tug the paper free. “Perhaps, we are simply looking at it wrongly. It is, after all, a startlingly challenging and original piece of work.”
Micha’s lips twisted reluctantly in something like a smile. “Startlingly bad, you mean.”
“As a depiction of the rectory gardens, I will agree, it leaves something to be desired. But as a picture of a camel emerging from a wound in the sky, it’s quite magnificent.”
“Oh fuck off.” But now there was no concealing the amused glitter of Micha’s eyes. “I suppose I should name it something terribly queer that has nothing to do with the picture, like . . . Glass Carrot & Moonlight.”
“It’s perfect. You may inspire a movement. Now, let me preserve this masterpiece.”
“As you will.” Indifferent as ever, Micha flung the sketchbook between them.
Thomas caught for it clumsily, and the pages fanned open to reveal the pencil lines of an earlier sketch. “You drew something else?”
“It’s nothing,” said Micha sharply. “It’s not finished. Leave it alone. I said—oh fuck.”
“Oh my. Micha.”
Micha was scarlet. “Seriously, give it back.”
“Is this—”
“You were the only model I had. Now give it back.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
“You don’t say anything, and you give it back.”
Thomas looked up with a shy smile. “I don’t really look like this, do I?”
“Not remotely. We’ve already established I’m very bad at drawing.”
“You’re bad at watercolour painting. You’re not bad at drawing. But we must get you a proper subject.”
“You’ll do for now.” Micha gestured dismissively. “As it happens, you spend most of your time with your chin in your hand, staring at nothing, so you’re easy to do.”
Thomas glanced again at Micha’s drawing.
It was faintly sketched and obviously incomplete, but, sure enough, there was the outline of a man sitting with his chin in his hand, his expression at once intense and abstracted.
He was not handsome, for his features were too angular for beauty, but the artist had been generous, catching the intelligence of his eyes and the paradox of a mouth at once whimsical and stern.
“I’ll have you know that I am not staring at nothing, I am thinking deep thoughts about life and God and faith. And things.”
And so Micha was laughing, truly laughing, as he reached over to reclaim his sketchbook.