Chapter Fourteen #2
I see Pixie’s eyes go impossibly wider, and she begins tapping on a computer, before writing something on a scrap of paper and handing it to Emmett.
I swear, if it’s a phone number I’ll… I’ll do what exactly?
Nothing, I’d do nothing. But I’d be fine with Emmett hooking up with the French pixie while I trudge around Paris in disguise and try not to die. That would be fine.
‘So, good news and bad news,’ Emmett cuts in as I’m mid-spiral. Wow, I can’t wait to get home. In Paris there’s just so much spiralling. It’s dizzying.
‘Hit me with the bad.’
‘Dark – I like it.’
I roll my eyes.
‘Chloe was just telling me that Mari isn’t here today.’
Okay. That isn’t even in the same ballpark as Emmett running off with Chloe to have wild, passionate sex by a set of open windows while tulle curtains flutter in an autumn breeze – and wow, that image came to me way too easily.
‘Does Chloe know where the painting came from?’ I ask, hopeful.
‘No.’ He shakes his head. ‘But when she saw you, she said that Mari had mentioned the girl who was in the painting. She said you fled yesterday.’
Now would be a good time for it all to end.
‘Fled is a strong word. More like I made a regular exit from the exhibition space. I don’t like being around lots of people.’
‘I thought you ran a blog with loads of followers?’
I don’t think I told Emmett how many followers I have.
‘It’s just a regular amount. But it’s different when the people aren’t like, right there.’
I cannot tell Emmett that things got so bad that I developed an unhealthy obsession with death art or that I got so lonely that I started looking online for friends.
‘Okay, well, Chloe said that Mari mentioned you yesterday and said that she’d love to talk to you again.’
‘Right.’
I draw the word out.
‘Apparently they all have access to each other’s diaries here and so Chloe has booked you in for eight tomorrow morning. If that’s okay?’
‘That’s fine,’ I say, only slightly disappointed that I won’t get to ask about it today.
‘I’ll come with you, if you like, in the morning.’
It’s a reminder that we have three whole days together after this one. Time with Emmett has always been like this, snatched and short, but never feeling like that at the outset.
‘Okay, that would be nice, thank you.’
The space around us is full, and I’m starting to feel claustrophobic in the entrance.
Emmett smiles. ‘I’ll go tell Chloe.’
Chloe is waiting by the counter, looking over at us both. As Emmett walks towards her again, her face lights up, and I have to turn around and stare at the floor – you know, a totally normal reaction.
There’s a hand on my shoulder. Emmett.
‘Would you still like to go in today? We could see the exhibit properly? And plot out a route of all the places Earl painted in Paris?’
Emmett has his list already and I dare say we could both recall all of the paintings in our sleep. But seeing Earl’s art was always guaranteed to cheer me up, so I readily agree.
Chloe has apparently given us a free pass, a perk of being the subject of their star painting in their star exhibit. It’s not much, but I’m a woman living a wholly perk-free existence, so it brings me momentarily out of my funk.
We walk past some of the main exhibits, catching La Danse by Matisse, and I spot a collection of Gromaire’s. He’d be a good one to feature on the blog, another artist whose life and work were shaped by the First World War.
Earl’s exhibition space is quieter today, but small clusters of people are still milling around.
Unlike yesterday (how was it only yesterday?), I don’t make a beeline for The Edge of Always.
Instead, I walk to the closest painting to the entrance.
I realise that they’ve ordered them chronologically, covering the last five years of his life, from the first painting he sold, down to his last. Earl didn’t always work as an artist, though none of us know exactly what he did the whole time.
There were rumours that he’d been everything from a circus performer to an undertaker.
He always painted, of course he did, but so much of Earl’s truly early work has gone, disappeared forever.
I recognise everything here; all of it was painted in the garage in Northumberland, a county he was apparently drawn to because he heard it had good mint cake. A part of me just wonders if he wanted to escape after years of looking for Sebastian.
‘His paintings were so bright, weren’t they?
’ Emmett asks, standing next to me. It’s true, we’re looking at The Weight of Light, the river one as Mae called it, since it’s the Seine.
It’s more expressionist, bright colours and heavy strokes; we wouldn’t even know that it was a painting of the Seine if Earl hadn’t talked about it.
He’d told me that though he didn’t like boats particularly, the views from the Seine were some of the most beautiful he’d ever seen.
And this is a beautiful painting. It’s reds and oranges and pinks, which give way to blues and purples.
It’s romantic and lovely, and it’s impossible not to smile when you look at it.
‘I always wanted to paint things like this,’ I say to Emmett. ‘Pretty colours, you know.’
‘But you rarely did,’ he answers.
I shrug. ‘It wasn’t what I noticed.’
The little card at the side says, The Weight of Light, to reflect the fact that the river looks to be holding up the sky. ‘2005.’
‘Are you going to record, for the blog?’
Emmett had suggested this yesterday, but I hadn’t taken it seriously. I’d never normally record somewhere like this, with so little preparation.
‘Do you think I should?’ I ask.
‘Definitely. The Deathers demand it.’ Emmett laughs.
It would be a nice touch, to record next to Earl’s first painting. ‘Could you, maybe, record me?’ I ask Emmett.
‘My pleasure,’ he says, taking my phone and pointing it at me. I take a deep breath, I’ll only get one shot at this, since I’d rather die than ask him to film me over and over.
‘Okay, I’m ready. Go.’
Emmett holds up a thumb.
‘Hi Deathers, and welcome back to the Art of Dying, the blog where we connect you, the slightly morbid public, with works of art related to death and dying. That is, until today. As you all know, this week I’m in Paris at the new exhibition of Earl Josef Spencer, since Spencer, very mysteriously, painted yours truly into his last piece.
I didn’t know about The Edge of Always, but I did know Spencer, or Earl, as I think about him.
So here I am in MAM, standing in front of the first painting that Earl ever sold. The Weight of Light.
‘I was there while Earl painted this. I watched him use an old kitchen towel on the waves. He told me once that water was hard to paint, but I think we can all agree that he did a brilliant job of it. When I asked him why he painted this particular river, he said that it was just a really beautiful place. He was good at that. At seeing the beauty all around us. It’s something I’ve struggled with, over the years. ’
I keep talking, whispering since we’re in the exhibition space still.
Although I didn’t plan to film in here, it feels right.
It feels so right to talk about Earl, too.
I thought it would be hard, talking about things from The Time Before but that’s not the case.
It’s easy. Emmett had said that this mini-break was for Earl, and I don’t think I realised what that meant, but perhaps he’s right: perhaps neither of us got the closure that we needed… after.
So it comes easy, talking about this painting, about why it’s so full of love and life, because that’s what Earl was.
It doesn’t even feel strange talking about a painting like this on a channel devoted to death and dying.
The Deathers know about me. Mae thinks that they’re all just there to watch my slow decline like a load of weird grief tourists.
But there are others in my followers, too, and I like that it feels like I’m not alone in this.
Honestly, it often feels like they’re the only people who get it.
I finish what has only been a couple of minutes by saying how proud I am that Earl’s work is getting the recognition it deserves, and Emmett turns to pan my camera down the length of the exhibition so that the Deathers can see the scope of it.
He comes back to me.
‘And that’s everything. Have a great day, Deathers.’
I’ve already decided that I won’t tell them about Earl and Sebastian, that’s private, but for an off-the-cuff video, it couldn’t have gone much better. I don’t even edit it.
Emmett is still pointing the camera at me.
‘It’s fine now, you can stop filming.’ I tell him.
He’s still staring at me.
‘That was brilliant, Luna.’
I laugh. ‘Hardly, it was a three-minute video blog.’
‘It was brilliant. Earl would love that you’re doing this.’
I can only hope that Emmett is right. I’m self-conscious now, though. Speaking into a void is so much easier than speaking to people.
‘I don’t know.’
Emmett is on his phone. ‘How do I sign up, to the blog?’
‘No, don’t.’ I’m louder than I plan to be. I even reach for Emmett’s phone before I quickly drop my hands. ‘I have a no friends or family policy,’ I tell him. ‘It’s private, that’s all.’
He frowns, and I silently urge him to drop it. To not push me on this.
‘Am I a friend again?’ he asks.
Of course, the answer is that I don’t know if I could ever be just friends with Emmett; we’re playing with fire even spending this time in Paris together.
‘I’ve recently amended the policy to include ex-boyfriends.’
He laughs at that, and the tension passes.
‘So will we take a trip on the Seine, since Earl painted it?’ I ask.
‘I think we should.’
Emmett slides his phone away and instead pulls out a notebook and pencil out of the back pocket of his jeans. The whole carrying-a-notebook thing is seriously hot. He checks his list of paintings as we walk.
The Weight of Light – The Seine
Longing for Human Connection LG.