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“I would rather be dead.” I groaned dramatically, throwing my drained body against the wall and allowing myself to slide to the floor. “Can’t we stop for a while?”
Perhaps forever?
A distracted grunt became the only answer for a time before Geo tore himself away from his canvas.
“A short break only. I could be finished in a few days.”
A few days of pure, hear-retching, muscle-wasting hell.
Nonetheless, Rebecca’s absence created a variable comfort. She could not critique my existence, just as I tried to pry into hers. There was no wall of security between us; no safety zone within which our privacy was secured. We were forced by the nature of circumstances to trust each other explicitly, while remaining constantly repulsed with burning mistrust. How was I to balance my life with that of a woman who lived a thousand different realities within the shell of one human being?
Then again, how was she to trust a woman mentioned only a handful of times by a man who had subsequently vanished?
It was the ultimate cooperation, and the epitome of a stalemate. We could neither move or stay. Leave or remain. Advance or retreat.
There was only to exist.
Something neither of us did particularly well.
She was an actress. If that fact could not be drawn by her theatrical portraits, let it be known her appearance at Keane’s cottage only cemented the fact.
One must never trust an actor in their environment, Lawrence. It is then their lies remain safe and hidden.
And yet, there was a grain of truth to what she said; as though her knowledge of Alessandro did exist, though perhaps not by her own acquaintance. Or had they known each other a while? An aunt and nephew? The son of a friend? Anything was possible, and nothing more probable than another. Even so...
“A penny.”
“Pardon?” I ripped my head from where it rested in my palms to discover some time had passed. Not a great amount of time. A few seconds. A minute at most.
Enough for Geo to approach with two glasses brimming with champagne and an oddly shaped pipe pinched between his teeth.
“A penny.” He repeated. “For your thoughts. Surely you’ve heard the phrase.” I accepted my half of the bubbling alcohol with the ungrateful yet silent wish for something considerably stronger.
“’As it often happenth that the very face sheweth the mind walking a pilgrimage, in such wise that, not without some note and reproach of such vagrant mind, other folk suddenly say to them ‘a penny for you thought.’ By Thomas Moore. Yes, I am familiar.”
Only familiar?
Surely my knowledge of Moore’s works stretched a great distance further than that.
“In fact,” I continued gradually. “He was famously painted by Thomas Lawrence, who was, I believe, some distant cousin of mine several times removed. It was jested he remained the only romantic out of my family.” The flimsy joke did not move Geo in the slightest, as his eyes remained wide and startlingly unfocused.
“You are related to a great artist?”
“Distantly.” I corrected. “Barely a drop of blood.”
“Still, the man was a legend! A great!”
“He also held a troubling affair between the two Siddons sisters. Hardly an accomplishment.” My disinterest with the infamous painter and poet only dragged Geo nearer to a maddening obsession.
“But he painted royalty! Surely you can’t hold that against him!”
“Hundreds of unknown artists also sketched portraits of various kings and queens from the comfort of their rotting studio, but we don’t remain impressed with them.” I sighed and quaffed the remainder of my champagne before continuing. “So little of life is about talent or creativity. In the end, it all revolves around one’s financial and social standing.” The young man cautiously observing me from across the room no longer seemed highly strung on the possibility of my relations, but instead did one of the rarest, most complex things one can do toward another member of the human race.
He saw me.
Me.
“Jo, were you always this cynical, or did the war make you into that?”
That what?
Cynical young woman with a headful of muddled ideas?
Or a hopeless monster?
Both were, I thought, apt descriptions of my character, as loathful as I was to admit it. However, I only shrugged.
“Neither really. I don’t think I always saw the worst in people, but life has also taught me you cannot pretend to see only the best.”
“That’s depressing.” He moaned, pouring himself another generous glass of champagne as he continued to gnaw at the end of his pipe. “People our age shouldn’t be so...so...”
“Realistic?”
“Exactly.”
Was I wrong? I wouldn’t doubt it. I had been wrong hundreds of thousands of times in my life.
But no.
Not now.
“’Being realistic is the best hope there is. You narrow down what you should expect then wish for the opposite. Those wishes become dreams and, if you work hard enough, those dreams become the best reality.’”
“Who said that? Another of The Professor’s little phrases?”
“No.”
“Another friend? What was their name?”
What is in a name? What exists beyond death? Beyond life? Beyond the human forms of outreach?
Beyond time?
A name.
That is it.
A single, seemingly insignificant combination of letters scratched out of war records and mailed home in a telegram; hidden amongst the bookshelves by the only person who would whisper his name in the darkest of nights. Through the greatest of storms.
I stood from the wall; tearing away memories from present realities.
Reality.
“It doesn’t matter. Now, should we get back to work, or are you planning to sit around and drink the rest of the day?” Admittedly, the idea did not seem an unpleasant one, least of all to the young man able to down half a bottle of champagne within our short conversation. And, might I add, without traces of impending intoxication.
Geo strode eagerly to his awaiting canvas while I repositioned myself on the platform. No sooner had I regained my stolid composure than he came barreling forward once more with a brown package beneath his arm; depositing it almost ceremoniously at my feet.
“Open it.”
“Now?” At his wild nodding, I gradually began picked away the knotted twine. Geo barns may be many things, but a sailor could never be one of them. The string fell away with hardly a tug, carrying the paper to the floor with it. In my hands balanced a single canvas both entirely foreign and exceedingly familiar.
“They were packing it up for the shipment,” Geo explained rapidly. “But I was able to bribe a friend of mine to sneak it out instead. I thought you would rather have it. If I was wrong—”
“No. No, you were right.” The dried strokes of paint felt both rigid and smooth beneath my fingers. A canvas covered in contradictions. “Thank you.”
“Look at the back.” I turned the frame over in my hands, but not before swiping my thumb over the dark swirls of a muted signature. Against the corner of the polished wood was the painting's title in wild penmanship.
Captured.
I swallowed the thick bile edging upwards along my throat.
“What do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Not a penny.” Geo paused suddenly out of either dramatic effect or genuine thought. “But it would be nice if you could at least admit Thomas Lawrence was a genius. Just once.”
––––––––
DARKNESS IN THE DAY. Stars fuzzy and blurred against a figurative night. Or colours, poured and splattered against a field. Faces melting in pots of flowers and acid. Life dying and living within the same breath.
My brain could neither forget nor comprehend the painting leaning against the wall.
Captured.
It was a cruel joke if ever there was one; most especially from a man whose idea of hilarity echoed about the mutterings of poets and philosophers. Yet, I could almost hear Keane’s boisterous guffaws of laughter taunting me somewhere just beyond my memory. Either my companion had decided to state the obvious when the situation became especially dire, or he had suddenly become overconfident in his skill.
Unlikely, perhaps, but not impossible.
I leaned forward and turned the painting onto its side.
Or was the name simply what Geo said: a title? An expression to categorise the work? Could it all be a coincidence? Surely it was possible. There were millions—billions—of words in the English language alone. Keane could have applied any number of them to his art. Captured could very well pertain to a moment in time; the exact flash of light as the multiple paints exploded across the canvas and forever stilled against—
I grabbed the canvas from the floor; the artwork was unexpectedly heavy in my mind. In an instant it was laying on the bed. Paint down. Penknife out. The sharpened tool sliced effortlessly through the canvas edges. Often there was only one piece of the rough fabric stretched over a frame; yet, it was of no great surprise when I was able to cut away a bottom layer without tearing through the painting on the other side.
And it was there.
Captured between the two swathes of canvas just as it had permanently stilled a single moment in time through the combination of colourless grains.
Captured.