There had been a time when Jason would spend an hour and sometimes longer in the shower, washing his hair, soaping himself and scrubbing every inch of his skin, before rinsing off and repeating the procedure over and over. Once, at the height of his OCD, he had spent an entire morning – four hours – in the shower. That was the trigger moment when Emily had insisted on him seeking help.
Their GP had referred him to a clinical psychologist, Dr Dixon, who worked with him on his obsessive rituals, and had connected his behaviour to his very deep fear, as he neared forty, of never succeeding as an artist. The real signs of change in his behaviour had come after his successful one-man show at the Northcote Gallery. Now he was down to an average of only ten minutes in the shower, and on some days even less than that.
While Emily slept on, he set a personal best of just two minutes, dressed and hastily ate a breakfast of porridge, and downed a double espresso while glancing through some of the Sunday papers. When he had finished, he hurried into the hall, pausing to scoop up the Cold Hill Village Parish Magazine, which had landed on the doormat, and put it on the hall table before climbing the two flights to his studio, as he now called the loft.
Entering the room, he closed the door behind him. On his left, stacked against the couch, were the paintings and pencil and charcoal drawings he had unpacked from his discarded collection. Much to Emily’s dismay, he had a habit of removing from view any pictures he had not sold after six months on display in either the local gallery, the Bluefern, which took his pictures, or the Northcote in London.
As was his ritual before starting to work, he first opened his laptop and scanned down his emails – always looking with an especially keen eye for enquiries about commissions, either from existing clients or from potential new ones. He would follow that by reading through new messages on Facebook and Twitter and checking the number of followers, before lastly checking Instagram on his phone. His most recent post, a painting he was very pleased with, depicting a local landscape looking fiery in a red sunset, had 210 likes when he had last checked – his record so far – and he hoped there had been more likes for it overnight.
But instead of the laptop screen coming to life in its usual way, with a request for his password, it remained dark all over except for a single row of numbers, in white, which appeared in the centre.
Before he could even read them they disappeared and were replaced an instant later by the familiar password request.
He frowned, wondering what on earth the numbers meant. On Friday, both he and Emily had experienced problems connecting their computers to the new router in the house, and their Mac guru, Matt, had talked them through it over the phone. Since then, there had been further glitches with the high-speed fibre on the estate, and it had taken several more calls with their techie before everything was working. ‘It’s a Mac thing, they don’t always like new routers until they get used to them,’ the techie had said, as if he was talking about a family pet.
He entered his password and his blue desktop screen, littered with his familiar icons, appeared.
Five minutes later, having checked everything, he walked over to the window and peered out at the Sunday-silent building site, which started just a hundred yards or so away. Phase two, the agent had called it. It was an ocean of mud, trenches, holes, metal fences, wheelbarrows, bendy poles and warning signs. On one side were two Portakabins, and there were several diggers and bulldozers seemingly parked randomly, some yellow, some orange. He saw a pile of rubble, another of bricks under blue sheeting, and a vast stack of steel beams.
He must take some photos for future reference, he thought, so that they could remember what it was like when they first moved in. Also, perhaps tomorrow he’d take some pictures of the workers. He had in his mind some Lowry-inspired images of the men in their hard hats in this vast wasteland. He might make a group of paintings for his exhibition – they would be something different, he thought, inspired.
He turned away and looked towards the lake at the end of the lawn, studying the ducks. There was a group of a dozen or so mallards, and another similar-sized group of Indian runners, each sticking to their own tribe. The two groups were some distance apart, moving around the water, staying close to the island in the centre on which there was a large, bare weeping willow.
When the Bedfords had popped over yesterday afternoon, Tom’s wife, Marianne, had said the way to make sure the ducks all stayed was to feed them daily. She recommended buying something like an old milk churn to keep the feed in, to avoid attracting rats.
One mallard suddenly rushed across the water, almost standing up on it, and jumped on the back of another. Doubtless a female, he thought. The female flew off a short distance, landing with a splash. The male hurried after her, caught up and pounced, landing more firmly on her back this time, and pushing her head under water as he shook vigorously.
Jason smiled at the antics; male mallards clearly weren’t much into foreplay. And within moments it was over. The female scurried off, shaking herself, and the male, looking like a braggart, returned to his group.
He’d never painted ducks before, but entranced by the view and their behaviour, he decided to go down there later today and do some rough sketches and take some photos. Meanwhile, he had the two urgent last-minute commissions to get on with. One was a portrait of two dogs, a grey labradoodle and a golden one, for a client who wanted it as a surprise Christmas present for his wife, and the other was a pencil sketch of a King Charles spaniel. He had photographs of all of them to work from – the one of the two labradoodles showing them looking cute as hell curled up on a sofa together.
This was just the kind of painting he loved doing. It would be fun, and if he worked hard today and into the night, and all tomorrow, using the quick-drying oils he favoured, with luck he should have it ready to take to the framer tomorrow, and ready for his client, as he had promised, by Thursday.
Some artists who worked in oils used canvas, others painted straight onto hardboard, but a few, like himself, liked to paint on gesso. This was a compound made for him by David Graham, his framer, comprising white glue, calcium carbonate and zinc with white pigment, heated then applied to hardboard; it was a modern version of the moist lime plaster, fresco, that many of the great Italian Renaissance painters, including Michelangelo, used for their murals. Jason liked to work with it because, in addition to brushes, he used a scalpel to get certain effects, one of which was animal hairs, which he achieved by scraping away the paint, very finely, down to the base.
He selected a board from the three different-sized ones stacked against a wall, checked it for imperfections – rare, as David Graham was a total perfectionist, to the point of being a pain in the arse at times – and lovingly placed it on the easel. Beneath it, he pinned the photograph of the dogs and his composition sketches. He worked in three sizes, with prices accordingly. This commission was for a medium-size: 40 x 40 cm.
Walking back over to his laptop, he opened iTunes and went to his playlists, feeling in a London Grammar mood today, and clicked on one of their albums.
As the lead began singing deeply and softly in the background, he tied on his black, paint-spattered apron, pulled a fresh pair of surgical gloves out of the box, and snapped them on.
Next, he went over to his trestle table, on which he had laid out everything he needed – the sheets of paper for mixing his paints, the jar of white spirit in which he kept his brushes, the scalpel and spare blades, the tubes of Winsor & Newton paints, and his pencils and charcoal for sketching.
He selected a pencil then stood in front of the blank gesso board, focusing, getting himself into the zone. Behind him, he heard the sound of the door opening, then felt Emily’s presence, coming up behind him. He felt a flash of irritation. She knew how much he needed solitude to work and never interrupted him, unless it was an absolute emergency. And she was well aware how tight he was on time, and just how important this commission was – his client was the CEO of a digital advertising company and had talked about commissioning him to do paintings for the lobby of their London Docklands office. He absolutely had to deliver a good piece, and on time.
For some moments he ignored her, leaning forward and making the first mark on the board, outlining where he felt the sofa should be positioned.
But she was distracting him too much.
He turned around, irritated. ‘What, darling?’
It wasn’t Emily.