Chapter Text
“Relax your face.”
“My face is relaxed. You never saw a face this relaxed. Look at this thing,” Ed let his mouth fall slightly open. Hurt his jaw a little bit.
“I am looking at it,” Evelyn gestured to her own face, copying his allegedly screwed-up expression with an intensity he thought was pretty rude actually. “It’s scowling at me. You’re gonna crack a tooth.”
“Fuck off. I’m serene.”
She regarded him over the top of her teeny tiny coffee cup. “You’ll give yourself a migraine again. Relax your damn face.”
Ed made a noise like a slow puncture and slouched lower in his chair, boots scuffing against the table leg. Evelyn remained the picture of elegance, Veronica Lake hair falling perfectly to one side, poised and put-together as ever. A lovely shell around the swirling vortex of chaos that lay within. A satisfying secret to keep, that one. You’d never know to look at her that she’d spent the nineties careening around the world at Ed’s side, lurching between the stars and the gutter, crashing off sticky tabletops because they were dancing to Lil’ Kim and got carried away. She’d calmed down a lot. He had too, in some ways. She was a reassuring presence, even when she was telling him off.
Setting her cup neatly back on its saucer, she pulled her handbag onto her lap and began rifling through it with efficient little flicking movements. Nestled in the folds of soft black leather was a metal triangle with the designer’s name on it; it glinted at Ed, caught his eye and pinged off something inside his brain. Shiny, shiny sang the song in his head. Shiny boots of- nah. He tapped his palm to make it stop. Kept the triangle in his head though. Rotated it. He thought about knapped flint arrowheads and shark’s teeth instead; about Pythagoras, little Samos boy showered in gemstones. The wharenui at home. A silverleaf ocean rolling under the finest slice of moon. He filed the images away for later, back at the studio. Interesting. Might be a thing.
Maybe he’d go down Old Bond Street on his way home too, call in at Prada and see if they had something cool that he could wear around town for a bit and then get paint on. Heh.
“Here,” Evelyn produced a business card from the depths of her bag and handed it over, nail polish the colour of old blood. “This is your contact at MoMA.”
“I don’t need this,” he said, trying to give it back. “It’s in my phone.”
“This is for you to put in your pocket and forget about, then when you lose your phone: ta-dah!”
“I’m not gonna lose my phone,” he scoffed.
“Ed. Every time you go to New York you lose your phone. Humour me.”
“Fine.” He shrugged and put the card in his pocket. No skin off his nose. Lose his phone, pfft. He never lost his phone. Sometimes he turned his phone off and told people he’d lost it, but that was a completely different thing.
“I don’t know what it is about that city that makes you… god, your shoulders are worse than your face. Go get a massage or something. Jesus.”
“Nah.”
“I can give you the number for my healer if you like. You’re probably tense because you’re misaligned,” she leaned back in her seat, scrutinising. “You’re blocking your own energy. It’s gross, frankly.”
“If I was tense, which I’m not, it’d be because I haven’t had a decent sleep in six nights. If. Stop telling me I’m tense. It’s making me tense.” Not sleeping much at night was fine, he was used to that. Usually he managed the odd nap in the daytime to make up for it but lately that hadn’t been working as well as it used to. His body felt the difference. Each night he fell into bed aching.
“Why the bad sleep?”
Ed shrugged and stroked a hand over his beard, just long enough to feel nice and scratchy against his fingertips. “Don’t know, love. Just the uzhe. Brain won’t shut up.”
She looked sympathetic for a second, but binned it sharply. “Still don’t love being called ‘love’, thanks Ed.”
“Alright, sweetheart.” He grinned like a prick. “Ow! Don’t kick me in the shin! Pointy shoes, man.” I could sleep for a thousand years sang the song in his head. Palm tap: stop. “Stop harassing me in the workplace.” Bit too loud maybe. A waiter glanced over at them, looking concerned.
“So we’re calling The Wolseley our workplace now, huh?” she said.
“Hmm, maybe. I mean, I’ve had worse.” He looked around at the soft, sheeny marble gleaming like graphite, everything clean glass and dark wood beeswax shined. Literally every single place he’d ever worked in his life was significantly worse than this. Including his current studio, which he lived in. He stretched his legs out long under the table until his knee creaked, hooked a finger in the sugar bowl and dragged it closer across the clean white cloth. A sucrose molecule looks like two spiders holding hands. Legs? Hands. There were twos in everything at the moment, it was weird.
“Sure, I could live with that,” Evelyn said, taking another sip of coffee. “And well done you for avoiding the question.”
Ed avoided the avoidance. “We’d never have to go to Tesco’s again. Just click our fingers,” he demonstrated with a flourish, “and pow! Battenburg.”
“Love that you think I shop at Tesco. God bless.”
She looked up, startled. A waiter had appeared beside them.
“Sir?”
“Shit, man, that’s impressive,” Ed gazed up at him from his slump. “How’d you get here so fast? Incredible skills, this guy.”
“Thank you, sir.” The young man looked between them, evidently thrown by the admiration. He did look pleased though, slightly bashful even. Cute. He had that look in his eye that people got when they knew who Ed was. “What can I get for you?”
“Oh, nothing mate, sorry. Misunderstanding. My fault.” The waiter nodded and turned, maybe a bit reluctantly, to leave. “Although, hold on… have you got any Battenburg?”
They did, as it turned out. Ed got a perfect slab of it and another café crème. Evelyn got an espresso and a fond look in her eye when Ed’s face lit up in the presence of cake. He gave her one pink quadrant of his Battenburg, which she politely pretended not to want and then wolfed down in one go. They discussed the stellar reviews his Courtauld show had got, and the gallery opening he was going to in Islington that evening, and Ed discovered that if you did it carefully enough you could get the little silver coffee spoon to stand bolt upright in the sugar bowl, like a lightning strike on a beach.
“Ed. Focus,” Evelyn said.
Apparently he wasn’t just going to the gallery opening, he was opening the gallery. Maybe he’d get to cut a ribbon with some massive scissors. That’d be cool. Everything went downhill after that because she started telling him about the financial implications of one of his old paintings coming up for auction at Christie’s, so he amused himself by adding up the atoms in a sugar molecule and then whittling down the number. It came to nine, which was annoying. Eight would be fucking beautiful. Eight would turn a sugar molecule looking like a spider into an incredible cosmic joke; a punchline to make sense of everything. Might explode the universe though: too perfect.
Evelyn had gone quiet. He stopped playing with the sugar. She’d stopped trying to explain droit de suite for the eleven millionth time and was looking at him the soft way people looked at him when they were a bit worried. He’d told her before: it wasn’t that he didn’t understand droit de suite, it was just that his brain refused to retain it because it was so boring. He pushed the sugar bowl back into its place in the middle of the table, dusted off his hands and folded them demurely across his belly, not touching anything whatsoever. His jaw had tensed itself up again.
“Oh, Ed.” She propped her elbow on the table and her face on her hand. Her earrings were bright green, peridot maybe, and they looked incredible, glimmering like spring. Ed never had a sister. “What are we going to do with you?”
“Put me in a bag and shake me up? That’s what my mum used to say.” She’d never actually done it though. Maybe she should’ve, might’ve shook something loose. Done them both some good.
“How are you feeling about the Greenwich project?”
Ed shrugged. “Okay. It’s not a big deal.”
Evelyn was a good agent. She didn’t need to bother about him half as much as she did; he would’ve made her a ton of money anyway. It was nice of her, and she hated being thought of as nice, so he appreciated the concern coming from her even more than he would’ve done coming from a person who was normal. He was tired now though, and he didn’t really want to talk any more.
“I think most people would say that a collaboration with a museum of that size and prestige is kind of a big deal. And we’ve got a big meeting about it coming up. It’s okay if you’re feeling it.”
“Meh.”
Truth was that was the truth. It really didn’t feel like a big deal. It would be nice, actually, if he could up the size of the deal a bit. Make it more of a challenge, something to kick against. Maybe he was just going through the motions now. He hoped not. It was hard to tell.
Everything was underway, everything under control. Some of the work was out of his reach now, the bigger metal stuff for instance. Making things with his own hands was best, but for the really massive stuff he needed the guys at the sculpture foundry. They’d have those pieces ready in a few weeks. Back at the studio he was working on a monster of a seascape, really huge, something to hang in the big glass heart of the Museum. It was going alright. Oils, so it’d take fucking ages to dry. It was so big, it was going to be a nightmare getting it out of the studio when it was finished. Iz could deal with all that. He almost wished he’d made it bigger, just to annoy him.
He let the silence hang and Evelyn accepted defeat. “Alright, I can take a hint. You’re done.” Gathering up her things she stood, looping her bag over her shoulder. “I have to get going anyway, I’ll pay on my way out, you take your time.”
He nodded and stood, gave her a big, silent hug. A good one. Evelyn was fantastic to hug. Because she was tall you could really go for it without feeling like you were going to squish her, plus she smelled of jasmine. Incredible.
“I’ll come by the studio soon, okay? We’ll go over everything coming up in the next couple months.” She patted the side of his face in farewell. “Take care of yourself, Ed.”
There wasn’t much coffee left to linger over, but he managed. He went to the gents, came back, lingered a bit longer, then slowly shrugged his leather jacket on and wound his scarf around his neck, not really looking forward to going outside. Cold today. And he was feeling, maybe, like he didn’t know quite what to do with himself. All of London spread out before him and he pretty much just wanted to go home. Although he couldn’t say he was sure what he’d do when he got there. Wish he was somewhere else, probably.
Annoying Iz for a bit might be fun, he could go and do that. Or see if he wanted to come with him to get some food. Not massively sustaining, Battenberg. Iz wasn’t much into food though. Ed took him to this fantastic Singaporean place once, amazing chicken curry. Just a tiny cafe it was, with a primrose yellow frontage and a few metal tables on the pavement. Iz just scarfed his food down and went back to talking about post-Brexit canvas supply issues. Fucking boring, again. Was he forgetting what it was like not to be bored?
Heaps of tables and punters and cake stands and waitstaff stood between him and the Piccadilly crush outside. He wove his way through as best he could and was nearly at the door when he heard a polite cough behind him.
“Um, excuse me, Mr Teach?”
It was the waiter from earlier, the cute one with the teleportation skills. He was smiling shyly. Oh, hello.
“Yes mate?” Ed cocked his head ever so slightly to the side and looked at the young man intensely. If he did it just right people usually got a bit… yeah, there we go. Flustered. Bingo.
“Oh! Um, sorry,” the waiter pushed a strand of dark hair out of his face, “we’re not supposed to really, um, do this, but, I’m such an admirer. Of your work.”
Uh-huh, thought Ed. Uh-huh, uh-huh, uh-huh. He smiled down at the guy and felt, unbelievably, some of the tension in his shoulders begin to unwind
“I was just wondering,” the guy was fishing around in the pocket of his apron, “if it wouldn’t be too much of a bother, if I could possibly get your autograph? Please?”
Alright. Ed could work with that. Not what he was expecting, but nice. There was something sweetly old-fashioned about it: not a selfie, an autograph.
“Sure,” Ed inched a fraction closer, just giving the guy a friendly loom, making him tilt his head back and bare his throat the tiniest bit. “What have you got for me?” The guy’s lips parted ever so slightly. Soft. “To sign.”
Ed’s new friend seemed to be having a bit of trouble swallowing, and took a moment to reply. “Oh, um, well, I’ve actually, I know it’s weird, sorry, but I’ve actually got, um, this…” he pulled from his apron pocket a slightly battered postcard. It was a copy of his own painting, Storm IV. Ed took it gently from his hand, turned it over. Souvenir from his Courtauld exhibition, the one that had just closed. There was a trace of Blu-Tac in each corner; he ran his finger over one of the marks.
“I keep it stuck on the door of my locker, usually,” the guy said, slightly apologetically. “It’s my absolute favourite painting in the world.”
Ed blinked, trying to clear away the feeling of unreality that still, even after all these years, came over him when stuff like this happened. The guy offered him a fancy biro with ‘The Wolseley, Piccadilly’ printed on it in gold. “Thank you so, so much Mr Teach.”
“Aw c’mon man, call me Ed, please.” He smiled slowly, deliberately.
“Oh, wow! Ed. Thank you.” He was beaming up at Ed, eyes sparkling.
Ed wondered what time his shift finished. A cab home would take ages but they were what, maybe two minutes walk from The Ritz? That’d be fun. Put the dazzle on this lad. Get a suite. Been a long time since he’d done that, hiding away for a couple of days with someone enthusiastic. Could release some tension in better ways than anything Evelyn’s healer could conjure up. Yeah. Fuck opening a gallery in Islington. In fact, fuck Islington and everyone in it. He was doing this now instead. He made sure his fingers softly brushed the waiter’s as he took the pen from his hand, pitched his voice extra low.
“Who’s it to?”
The guy was absolutely glowing. “To Ryan, please. Amazing. Thank you so much Mr Teach. Sorry, I mean, Ed.”
“No worries, no bother at all.” As luck would have it there was nothing nearby to lean on. “Can you just turn around for me a minute mate? Thanks, Ryan.” Ryan turned, then giggled sweetly over his shoulder as Ed used his back for a writing slope.
“Oh, I’m not Ryan, sorry! My name’s Oliver. Ryan’s my husband.”
Ed’s pen slipped.
Not-Ryan, whateverthefuck, Oliver, didn’t seem to notice the glitch. “He actually proposed to me in front of that painting, right at the start of your exhibition,” he went on, shy and oblivious. “So it’s sort of ‘our painting’ now, you know? Like you have ‘our song’? It’s ‘our painting’. I mean obviously it’s not really, it’s very much your painting of course. But, you know what I mean? Sorry, I’m babbling.”
The fuck? Not-Ryan was twenty-five, if that. Married? Ed tried to hide his shock, but it had all concentrated itself into the fucking mess he’d made of the ’R’.
“Mmm-hm,” he said. He was so tempted to draw a cock and balls. He was so tempted to write ‘fondest regards’. But he wasn’t quite that much of a prick.
“It’s so lovely isn’t it, to think of it going round the world you know, accruing all this significance? All the people who’ll see it. And it’ll be doing that forever, long after we’ve all gone. Incredible when you think about it.” Not-Ryan was all starry-eyed and breathless. Ed could feel his skin radiating warmth even through the card, through his shirt. There was a lump of rock in Ed’s chest. He was one billion years old. He was ossifying. He finished writing, tapped Not-Ryan to turn around and handed him his fucking postcard back. Say something, say something. He’s been so nice. Don’t be a bellend.
“Romantic guy, your husband,” he managed to crack his face into about thirty percent of a smile.
“Oh, yes! He really is,” Not-Ryan clutched the postcard to his chest. “Thank you so, so much, um, Ed.”
Ed nodded and, with as much dignity as he could muster, turned on his heel and fled.
*****
Ed stood in front of Hatchard’s window display looking at all the cool books. Dusk was falling, and the light spilling from the window made the shop inside look warm and enticing. He drummed his fingers lightly against his leg one-two-three, two-two-three and wondered idly if his back would ever stop hurting. The phone in his pocket buzzed with a text.
Where the fuck are you? it said. The icon next to it was the picture Ed had drawn of Izzy oh, must be twenty years ago maybe. Sort of an angry little scribble.
You’re supposed to be opening a gallery in half an hour you twat
Ed knew that. The giant scissors, yes. He still had heaps of time to get there, and it wasn’t like they wouldn’t wait. He was a living legend, for fuck’s sake.
He slowly tapped out a reply: Have you read Normal People?. Send.
That sparked a whole swarm of messages, buzz, buzz, buzz.
Where are you? What condition are you in?
Do you need me to come and pick you up?
No I fucking haven’t
Too busy dealing with your bullshit
Ed turned his phone off and walked into the bookshop. People said it was good, he might get it. Hmm.
*****
Oliver carried the postcard around in his pocket for the rest of his shift. Later he stole a piece of clean A4 paper from the printer in the restaurant’s little back office and folded it carefully around the card to protect it on the journey home to Lewisham. When Ryan got back at quarter to eight Oliver presented it to him, barely able to contain his excitement. Ryan was so overcome he pushed him tight up against their bookshelves and kissed him senseless. The painting was was going to be exhibited again in Paris next spring and they decided they’d get the Eurostar over to visit it.
At the exact moment that Oliver was carefully putting the postcard on display with the help of a Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas fridge magnet Ed, four miles north, was standing on a wobbly chair in his kitchen, reaching for the emergency packet of Golden Virginia that he kept hidden from himself on top of the wall cabinets. He had to fish it out with a fork in the end, he’d stashed it so well.
He grabbed the patchwork quilt from his bed, the half-empty bottle of merlot from his kitchen table and clambered out onto the flat roof of his building. Getting up there was a tricky business: you had to move the stuff off the bathroom windowsill, then climb out and shin up the last bit of fire escape, which always made some not-massively-reassuring clanking noises the minute you put any weight on it. Worth it though. Tonight was a roof night.
When Ed had got home earlier the whole place had been in darkness. The heating had come on and gone off again, so the outside chill was already creeping back in. Bad insulation in these old conversions. The gallery had been very warm and very full of people, so the difference was pretty stark. He turned the clicky little wheel on the thermostat to force the radiators back on and warm the place up, then wandered around flicking lamps on. That was better already, more cheery. But still he had that achy feeling of not knowing quite what to do with himself. The big unfinished painting glimmered at him through the low light, slick and inviting, but he couldn’t work any more tonight. Tired. A bath? Maybe later.
He cooked some pasta, stirred in a bit of pesto and sat alone at the long refectory table watching It Takes Two on his laptop while he ate it. This was a very private thing. No one, absolutely no one in the world, knew he had a soft spot for a certain BBC1 primetime celebrity dancing competition. Not that he was ashamed of it; Ed wasn’t ashamed of anything, he’d do what he fucking liked, obviously. If someone had accused him of watching Strictly Come Dancing he’d’ve said “yes, I fucking love Strictly, so what?” And he did love it, in a way that was painfully tenderhearted and completely lacking in irony.
Not that anyone ever had asked him about it. He kind of wished they would, it’d be nice to share. Johannes was his favourite of the professionals, and Ed was was glad to see that he had a good partner this year. Heart of fucking gold that guy. He considered texting Evelyn to see if she agreed with the judges that the footballer’s samba had lacked rotation, but he thought better of it. She wouldn’t know what the fuck he was talking about.
When the programme had finished he gently closed the laptop and looked around his home, the undercurrent of helplessness pouring back in. Not this, but not that either. It was so difficult sometimes to find a resting place for his cumbersome self. The solitary effort of it welled up inside him, salty and hot. That was when he’d realised it was a roof night.
Outside was properly cold. Icy wind whipped through his hair and whispered in his ears; he pulled up his hood and silenced it. Rolling a cigarette was difficult with fingers that were already going numb, but he was practised enough to manage. The quilt made a good cocoon and he settled down on his back all wrapped up in it, smoking quietly as he watched the lights of the planes pass overhead, ashing into the wind.
From the street far below swishes of traffic and odd swoops of human voices drifted up to him. A runner’s footsteps slapped the frosty pavement, receding into the distance. A fox screeched and scared the living shit out of him; all these years in London and he still thought someone was being murdered, every bloody time. The hard surface was doing wonders for his back, each vertebrae sighing and slipping back into its notch, clickety-click like a thermostat wheel. There wasn’t a song in his head, it was all frozen quiet now. He tapped his palm anyway, in case there was anything else that needed to stop.
There were so many places in the world where you could actually see the stars and not just sense them. Places where the sky was black and not pink-violet-grey. At this moment, in this hemisphere, on this island, in this city, the Great Bear was up there looking down at him. Looking for him. But there was too much spare light in between for them to find each other. In the meantime, the concrete and girders and the bricks and the mortar of the building under his aching back cradled the same body his mother had and pushed him up into the sky. He lay quite still and did his best to look the Bear in the eye for a long, long time until he realised he was starting to nod off, and ought to go inside and put himself to bed.