The Blue Hour

Chapter 36

36

Eris, 2009

‘You’re painting again?’

When Grace arrived at the house that evening, Vanessa was in the kitchen, standing at the Aga, dressed in jeans and a man’s shirt, spattered with paint. The shirt, one of five or six Vanessa worked in, had always been oversized but now it drowned her. Grace’s heart twitched in her chest: Vanessa looked like a child playing dress-up.

‘Yes!’ Vanessa said, turning to her with a smile. ‘I am.’ She looked ghastly, her eyes sunken, lips drawing back from her teeth, her skin pallid, green-tinged. She was only back on Eris a few days after six weeks in Glasgow for her latest course of chemotherapy.

‘I hope you’re not tiring yourself out,’ Grace said.

Vanessa shrugged. ‘I feel fine, Gracie,’ she said, opening her arms. Grace accepted the lie and the embrace, though she winced as she felt the sharp wings of Vanessa’s scapulae protruding through her shirt. Vanessa placed her head gently on Grace’s shoulder. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she murmured. Then she pulled away. ‘I don’t have the strength to work with clay, but I can draw, and I can paint. I want to paint.’

‘Just so long as you’re allowing yourself enough rest.’

Vanessa nodded vigorously. ‘It’s good for me – you know how uncivilized I become if I don’t work.’ She winked. ‘I’ve actually made a start on something big, something quite ambitious.’ She gave a sly little grin and Grace raised her eyebrows. ‘No, you can’t see it,’ she said. She stepped forward, brushing her chapped lips quickly against Grace’s cheek. ‘It’ll be a while yet, at least a few weeks.’

Eighteen months later, she took Grace up to the studio to see it. Painting had been delayed by a bout of flu which became pneumonia, by a sprained ankle which prevented her from getting up to the studio, and mostly by her mood, which swung wildly between reckless optimism and abject despair.

It was morning. They walked up the hill from the house together, taking their time, Grace enjoying Vanessa’s mood, the excitement that vibrated off her at times like this, when something was completed and ready to show.

As they arrived at the crest of the hill, Vanessa reached for Grace’s hand. She was breathing heavily, a faint whistle in her chest.

‘Are you all right, Vee?’ Grace asked. Vanessa nodded, and smiled, and as one they walked into the studio.

When Grace saw the canvas on the easel, she inhaled sharply, dropping Vanessa’s hand as though scalded; she saw at once what it was. In the archway in the centre, she saw herself, kneeling on the ground, the cutter between her hands, intent on the task at hand. And she saw him, fighting her, his arm reaching up as he tried to fend her off. And she saw the figure behind her, standing in the doorway, watching.

‘It’s you,’ Vanessa said. Grace looked at her, aghast, shame burning through her, but Vanessa was smiling. ‘It’s us . You and me and him. Don’t you like it?’ Her voice was light and thin, like the mewling of a kitten. She was nervous.

Grace took a step closer to the canvas, tears stinging her eyes, the image blurring in front of her. She realized in that moment that Vanessa had seen her that day, she had seen her for what she was, and more than that, she had understood. She loved her still. All this time, she’d been so afraid that Vanessa might see the scales beneath her skin and reject her as a monster, but instead, Vanessa saw the scales and loved her more.

‘We could have killed him,’ Vanessa said languorously, ‘couldn’t we? I think about that now, I think about it often. We could have killed him, we could have cut him into pieces and put him into the kiln, we could have fired him, and no one would have known.’

She reached for Grace’s hand again, and Grace understood now that not only did Vanessa love her, but that as different as they were, as essentially opposed in so many ways, in this they were kindred. ‘Sometimes,’ Vanessa said, ‘I dream about raking through ashes, raking through ashes and finding bones.’

At last, Grace spoke. ‘If you’re having nightmares,’ she said, her voice husky with tears, ‘we can get you something for that. To help you sleep.’

Vanessa laughed softly. ‘Always so practical,’ she said, ‘my Grace. My Grace.’ She lifted Grace’s hand to her lips and kissed the tips of her fingers, one by one. ‘Do you want to know what I called it?’ she asked, pulling Grace towards her. Together they walked around to the back of the canvas so that Grace could see, written on the back of the frame, Love .