Page 77 of A Thousand Painted Hours

I thought of her looking at the cards, nearly in tears. “Is there going to be a war?”

“It seems there may be. But let’s not think of that tonight, shall we? I just want to be here with you.”

“It appears we are together,” I said laughing. “Tonight, I thought of all the layers of you, the yous I have known. I should like to paint all of them.” I drew my finger along the top of his nose. “Your nose, and your eyebrows, they’ve stayed the same.” I brushed his eyelashes, so thick and dark, and drew a line around his eye socket, the lid, as if to create a spell to remember the depth of his iris. So close, it was not unbroken darkness, but layers of earth and sparks of amber. It made me dizzy, looking so closely.

“I would paint your mouth before the beard arrived, when you were small,” I said, tracing the dip in the upper, the curve of the lower, and then the line of the beard that was new to me. “And I would paint your beard now, before it’s as full as your father’s. One day, it will have white streaks in it.”

He listened, watching me as I moved my fingers down his throat, to his chest where sprouts of hair had begun to show. It moved me so that I bent in and kissed the place.

“Elsie,” he whispered, and nudged my face up to look at him. “If it were mine to paint, I would draw your face full of light, as it is now.” He kissed me softly, his fingers on my chin. “I would draw fire in yourpupils, and burning in your heart, and I would show those fires the same as my own.”

How can I ever let him go now?I thought, but I didn’t say it. I only closed my eyes and let him touch me slowly, looking, and whispering about the wonders of the terrain. And so we began again, and it was holy and it was ours and I vowed I would remember it always.

A River of Ghosts

Autumn 1940

London

—39—

After the dinner party at Nina’s, Peter and I took our chance to hurry home. He was not drunk, and protectively took my elbow more than once when gunfire rattled overhead. When we entered the foyer, our neighbor Mrs. Cotton, who’d come in to sit with Mother, was waiting. “Your mother is quite unwell, my dear. You need to go right up.”

I handed her my bag and coat, dropped my hat on the tree, and hurried upstairs. “Mother, I’m here. Are you all right?” I sat at her side and took her cold hand. The palm was red, and I stroked it lightly.

She did not answer, only shifted restlessly. Her belly beneath the blanket was larger than ever, as if she were growing a new baby instead of her death. The thought made me blink hard. “Mother, would you like me to read to you?”

The doctor had been in two days ago, and would no doubt be in the hospital with newly injured people tonight. Outside, I could hear the raid continuing, distant, then closer, and my heart fluttered. How could I help her?

As if she heard my unspoken plea, she turned and tightened her fingers around mine. “I can’t find the letter. I had it just now, and I can’t find it.”

“What letter, Mother? Perhaps I can look for it.”

“From William, of course. He promised to write when he arrived in Africa.”

My brother. “I shall look for it.” On her desk was a basin of cool water Mrs. Cotton had left. I squeezed out the cloth within and folded it to press on her forehead. Quietly, I began to sing a soft lullaby, and for a moment, it gave her no peace. Her legs moved restlessly, and she scratched at her forearms, which were already marked by her nails. I washed the length of them, hoping to give her some relief, and smoothed lotion over the dry skin.

Finally, she began to settle. Bastet jumped up on the bed and curled up at her side, purring as if it were her duty. “Good girl,” I said, stroking her head. A ball of kitten tumbled out of the basket on the floor, yelping loudly, and I picked it up to cuddle. Another waddled over, and I picked it up, too, taking comfort in their motor-like purrs. I held them against the chasm of pain in my heart.

I rested my gaze on my mother’s face. I could barely even imagine a world without her.

In the morning, I had a phone call from Betty’s niece, alerting me at last to her whereabouts. She’d been taken to hospital the day she’d gone missing, but it had taken her sisters many days to discover which one. The number of injuries had been so substantial that day that medics had taken her across the river to St. Mary’s Hospital in Paddington, one of the last places her sisters stopped.

Mrs. Cotton from next door was more than happy to come in again and sit with Mother while I made the journey to visit Betty.

The weather was dreadful, pouring down rain from low clouds. My feet were wet within minutes, but I was grateful for the respite from bombers, who wouldn’t be able to fly in such weather. As I made my way to the Tube, I pondered the absurdity of that—once the clear, dry weather we prized during autumn was anathema, while the rain and dark were valued.

It took two diversions to make my way to the hospital as trains were looped around the damaged stations. Eventually, I emerged above ground to find a landscape I didn’t recognize. The bombs had done their work here, often with every other building in ruins or half ruins. Some shops still offered tea and cakes on signs painted on cardboard taped over the shattered windows. In some places, the pavement had been swept, debris and rocks shoveled to one side to offer a clear walkway; in others, the building had fallen so entirely that a path was impossible.

I wondered where the residents had gone. Did they all go to the country? Pile into rooms with relatives?

A pencil of light caught my eye in the debris, and I bent to pick it up. A silver haircomb with inlaid coral, hardly scratched. I held it for a moment, wondering who it belonged to, and if she missed it, amid missing all the other things lost under the rubble. A particular cup, a jumper, a book carried from another country.

I thought of the paintings I’d done after the last war, the memories of domestic life I’d painted after all the losses. It was the only thing I could bear for a time—painting the remains of breakfast, or a homey vase of flowers on a windowsill, a length of fabric over the back of a chair.

Tucking the comb into my pocket, I kept moving, mulling the idea that we all thought about death and injury and staying safe during war, but equally terrible was this enormous loss of homes. I looked at the gaping windows overhead, the revealed privacy of a bathroom, the tiles still on the wall, the tub shattered. I imagined a young woman washing her hair before a man came to take her to the pictures. A kitchen with stove still neatly pressed against the wall yawned nearby, and I thought of a mother making soup, now disappeared.

How could I paint this feeling?