As Katherine returns to her tent on a red, rattling train, the likes of which once took young soldiers from the training camp just north of her land to strange-sounding places such as Gallipoli and El Alamein (and Katherine remembers those trains — two wars, same trains), and as Rita contemplates the distracting blessings of History blowing in unexpectedly through the front door, Sam has been at work on a large board for hours. But if you were to ask him how long he’s been at it, he wouldn’t know. Sam has long lost track of time. Four hours, five? Who knows? But a painting has appeared. At least, that’s the way it seems. Of course, he knows he has painted it. There is nobody else in the room, and there has been no invisible guiding hand. It is his work. It wasn’t there when he stepped off his bicycle and walked into his studio, but it is now. And it is almost finished. It has appeared, and very quickly, for that is the way Sam works. Sam is not one of those painters who slowly layers brushstroke upon brushstroke, building a picture up over days, weeks or even months. For better or worse, Sam works with the kind of speed that characterises the century into which he was born. Sometimes he has produced two or three paintings in a single day. It is his way. But, at the same time, it is cause for wonder whenever he steps back and sees that a painting has appeared. It is a cause of reflection too, for there is a part of him that wonders, each time, how long this can go on. How long before, one morning, a painting doesn’t appear. Then doesn’t appear again. But now he casts the thought aside as he brushes in the sky.
It is nearly done. And all, seemingly, without conscious thought. If he has thought of anything at all throughout the whole afternoon in which brush and hand moved across the board, it is of the cows in Skinner’s paddock. A cow stands in a paddock under a blue, winter sky munching grass, thinking nothing. That is the process. Sam paints like a cow munching grass in one of Skinner’s paddocks. The munching does not require thought on the part of the cow. The munching almost takes place independently of the cow. Almost, Sam muses, staring at the painting, as if the cow is not a cow but a vehicle, a catalyst even, through which the munching conducts itself. The munching requires the cow, but the cow doesn’t know that. And Sam thinks of a catalyst because, like all of them, he reads Eliot. It is Eliot who wrote of the catalyst when talking about the process that has just produced this painting. And it is a process. Something that wasn’t there before (be it a poem or a painting) is suddenly there, in the world, but the thing through which the process conducted itself remains the same. Unchanged. Inert. Cows. Artists. It doesn’t matter. It’s all the same. Something happens that leaves Sam a spectator to the process, even though it is Sam who owns the hand that holds the brush that applies the paint (in this case a house paint called Ripolin) that takes on the shape, the colour, the form of a scene.
After staring at the painting, Sam notices that the light outside is fading, that it will soon be dark, and he switches on the light. And in the fading light of the day and under the glare of the electric globe, he completes the bold patch of blue sky in the right-hand corner (quickly applied) as well as the trunks of three spindly trees. With that the painting is finished (for Sam is also one of those painters who knows exactly when to stop), and the hand that held the brush now drops it onto his work bench.
The job is done. The scene is complete. A painting has appeared. An old white tent sits on a bare, scrubby square of land, brown and green and muddy. Shrubs and bushes hang on for dear life. A pile of firewood to the left, a small fire to the right. And in the foreground a white-haired old woman strides towards you, her right hand at her side, her left raised in angry protest, shooing you away. As he stands staring at the scene, Sam hears Miss Carroll’s voice again, fresh and sharp as it was earlier in the day when she told him to leave and pointed in the direction of his leaving. And, as well as this, Sam remembers the mud of the road you can’t see, the inland wind with the snow still on it and the faint smell of burning wood. He can visualise the scene beyond the frame or, more correctly, beyond the edges of the board, for this painting will be exhibited the next evening without a frame. He brings all of this to the painting because he knows the place the painting comes from. And so even though he chose to work from the newspaper photograph in the end, he has been to the source, brought his knowledge of the place to the work itself, and because of this his painting of the photograph, he reasons, has changed the photograph. The two are not the same and his painting is not a copy. The photograph is now not alone. It exists alongside the painting and the one has changed the other, just as new works inspired by old works change them. Sam frames his thinking like this because, once again, he is drawing on the words of Eliot — and Sam, at once, believes it all and believes none of it. Such theory is useful. He takes none of it seriously and takes it all seriously. He will, in fact, paste the newspaper photograph and the article to the wall beside the painting when it is exhibited, so that people can decide for themselves and choose to believe all of it or none of it, to take none of it seriously or all of it seriously — to call it a copy or an original, art or a fake. The only change they will notice is the patch of blue sky in the top right-hand corner, which he added possibly to hint at a world beyond the scene (a hint of those other worlds to which he will go as soon as he can, but to which Miss Carroll will no longer go, her roving days now over), or perhaps because the painting just needed blue. He can’t remember. If he ever knew. He smiles. Just out of view he sees, once again, Skinner’s cows, munching grass under a blue mid-winter sky.
Then it is dark. He puts on his coat, picks up his keys and takes the board, the paint still not dry, from the easel, leaves his studio and begins the short walk to the gallery (the space waiting on the wall to be filled) where the painting, which he shall simply call ‘Woman and Tent’, will be exhibited the next evening.