Eva
The expert would approve of that conclusion.
She looks at Iso’s original archive of drawings one last time and tries to understand what else the artist might have been doing.
Then she remembers something she thought might be important.
Something she read about the camp at étaples.
She picks up her carryall from the floor and roots around among the debris of papers and books, odd bits of stationery.
She flicks through one notepad and then another. In the third, she finds it.
And then she realises what is missing from Iso’s drawings. The beasts, the paddock, the shambles. But how could the artist have seen it so differently? Was it because she was a woman and could not perceive the horror that Wilfred Owen could so plainly see?
Eva is hot now, sweating with middle age and frustration. She looks again at the drawings of the camp, their order and calm, their detailed descriptions. What do they anticipate? She asks herself.
The hot flush passes. We are not so different, Eva thinks, and she drafts her thoughts before the fog takes them.
Iso Rae has hidden her argument beneath something more palatable.
She has drawn what she thought would be valued and hidden the truth of her understanding beneath it.
The beasts, the paddock, the shambles are just off the page.
She saw that place from the perspective of a woman; there is no doubt about that.
She could not follow the men up the line as Wilfred Owen did, but she knew where they were going and would have seen them on their return.
For four long years she would have seen men corralled and prepared and sent to slaughter and she chose to draw the moments before they left.
She didn’t draw what she wanted to see, she drew the calm before the storm.
The long wait, the final letter home, the sad goodbye, the last hoorah.
She drew the men marching to their death, right to the edge of the page.
She did not draw the shambles and yet we think of it.
It is the same with her sketch of two hands, back to back, almost touching. All we can think of is the moment they touch and what will come next.