Evelyn

Diyar Akar

It’s a hot day. I’m in Martha’s old nursery, which I’ve appropriated into my ‘studio’. I come here all the time now, even when I’m not drawing. The curtains aren’t drawn, and the room is bright and hot with the afternoon sunlight. I throw open the windows, but there is no hint of breeze. Katie’s laughter rings in the room. She is walking about the garden with Mr. Collins.

I look for my packet of cigarettes, hidden among the junk gathered on Martha’s old school desk. The box has a picture of a black cat, whose expression strikes me as judgmental. I light up and stare at the cat defiantly. The room fills with smoke as I exhale, and it lingers in the air, adding to the general stuffiness. I move closer to the window for a whiff of fresh air and glance down. They have disappeared from view. I take a sip from my lemonade; I don’t like the taste of the cigarette leaves in my mouth. The ice is melting, but the glass is still cold. I press it against my forehead. The hair about my temples is damp with sweat, and my dress is clinging to me. Still, I don’t leave the room. I feel like a child who has stormed out after a tantrum and is now listening to all the other children play, longing to go back but too stubborn to do so. I haven’t seen him in so long. And now I’m wasting this opportunity by sulking here.

My sketchbook is on the table where I left it last time. Too conspicuous. I had meant to rip out certain pages but haven’t been able to bring myself to do it. However, it must be done. It’s too dangerous to just leave it lying around like this. Anyone could pick it up, and then they would know…

I put out my cigarette and pick up the sketchbook. Sitting by the window, I prepare to indulge myself one last time. I flick through the pages deliberately, not rushing. There are so many drawings of twisted old trees; they’ve utterly lost their charm now. The pencil work has become smudged so that the lines look faded. This annoys me, and I flick through the pages faster.

Finally, a face. Several faces, in fact, fill a whole page. I glance around the room, feeling exposed, as if someone is looking over my shoulder. I look back at the page before me. The first face could be anyone. It has no hair, and the proportions are all off. Drawing a face is not like drawing a tree. There is less room for error, and I need a model. I turn to the next page and the next. They are all full of faces. My hand had become freer as I went on and bolder. It was better to draw a male face, I had found. It was more distinct and angular than the soft and vague lines of a female face. I hadn’t meant to draw him. But he had such distinctive features; his curly hair, his prominent nose. Really, he was so easy to draw from memory…I remember the old promise I had made, but I reason that I had drawn from my imagination. It doesn’t count.

There is a knock on the door, and I snap the sketchbook shut.

‘There you are,’ Mr Collins says, as he enters the room, as if he materialised from one page.

‘How did you -’

‘I saw you in the window,’ he says simply, ‘although you moved away before I could make out the exact room.’

Without waiting for an invitation, he sits down opposite me and sighs deeply, as if catching his breath, and wipes his forehead gleaming with sweat.

‘I first went up the wrong stairs and had to go back. I thought I was on the wrong floor…Anyway, here I am now. I hope I’m not intruding.’ Mr Collins says.

‘Not at all,’ I say, my eyes darting around the room, looking for a hiding place. I must get the sketchbook out of Mr Collins’ sight. My hand lingers protectively over it; my palms are sweaty. But his eyes are not on me. He’s looking around the room curiously, taking in the old toys, children’s books, and the random objects I’ve collected over the weeks to draw. The blackboard still has faint marks of chalk on it. Martha’s childish drawings flash before my eyes: houses and flowers, a smiling sun in the sky…

‘So, this is where you come to hide,’ he says, breaking the silence, and sniffing the air, adds, ‘and smoke?’

‘Don’t tell Henry,’ I blurt out.

‘Another secret. I’m honoured.’

Once again, I have revealed too much, spoken without thinking. What about him seems to strip me of the protective layer of reserve? What must he think of me, keeping so many secrets from my husband? Smoking has been an indulgence, one I mean to stop. Henry wouldn’t like it if he found out. But that would be nothing compared to Mr Collins getting his hands on those pages. Why didn’t I burn them when I had the chance? I may as well have scribbled Mrs JP Collins on the pages like some love-struck schoolgirl. If he saw the drawings, there could be no doubt that they were of him.

‘Has it ever been long?’ he asks, bringing me out of my reverie.

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Your hair. I’m trying to picture it long,’ Mr Collins says again, looking intently at me.

‘It was when I was a girl. A long time ago,’ I say, and realising that I’m touching my hair, I bring my hand away. It curls into itself, almost forming a fist suspended in mid-air before I slowly bring it down.

‘Can I offer you some lemonade?’ I ask.

‘Yes, please. I’m parched,’ Mr Collins says.

‘I’ll bring you a glass,’ I say, standing up.

‘Oh, don’t go. I’ll just have a sip of yours.’

I sit back down and slowly slide the glass to him, noticing a lipstick stain on its rim as I do so. He takes a long swig and puts it down. It strikes me how much we resemble children having a pretend tea party in the nursery, acting the part of grown ups.

‘So, is there a particular reason you’ve been looking for me?’ I ask, staring at the lipstick stain.

‘I’m under strict orders to find you and bring you back,’ Mr. Collins says, leaning back in his chair in the most languid manner.

‘Whose orders?’

‘Katie’s,’ he says simply. My heart sinks.

‘Then we must hurry away,’ I say, standing up again, knocking against the table in my haste, and the sketchbook falls on the floor.

‘What’s that?’ he asks, reaching to the floor for it. I snatch it away before he gets to it.

‘Is that your sketchbook?’

‘Yes,’ I say, clutching it against my chest.

‘No need to hide it from me,’ he laughs; he’s enjoying my embarrassment. ‘What have you been drawing? Show me.’

‘I’d really rather not,’ I say, more sharply than I meant. Mr Collins looks at me, his expression a mixture of surprise and disappointment.

‘I’m sorry,’ he says, in a dignified voice, ‘I’ve been awfully rude.’

He looks away from me and out of the window with a frown. Time is running out when it’s just me and him. Soon, one of us will have to suggest going back downstairs. The unsaid words hang between us, waiting to be conjured by our lips. But I’m not ready for the moment to end. Not like this.

I light up another cigarette, but he still doesn’t look at me. I’m such a fool! He will think I’m absurd. I’m longing to apologise, but can’t find my voice. He is silent, playing with the glass of lemonade, rotating it on the table as he looks out the window. I look at his hands, his long, shapely fingers, and notice the two veins protruding along his forearm for the first time. His hair is unruly, and his face is still damp with sweat. His eyes are almost black, like mine, but they look hazel with the sun shining on his face. The subject of my drawings, more alive than they could ever be, sitting right in front of me.

‘Will you let me draw you?’ I say. He looks at me, more surprised than before but hardly more than I can be at what I have just uttered.

‘Draw me?’

‘Yes, why not? I can’t be drawing trees forever.’ My words don’t lessen the astonishment in his face, and I can hear the agitation in my voice as I make my case. ‘I want to draw people. ‘It’s been so long – I promised myself I wouldn’t.’

‘Why is that?’

Because every time I draw someone, they die.

‘Because I’m not very good,’ I say. ‘You promised you would help, remember?’

Mr Collins smiles broadly. ‘Yes, yes, of course. I don’t see why not,’ he says, shaking his head in apparent wonder and looking at me again. ‘Do you know, no one has ever drawn me before. Not since my school days when we sat for each other occasionally. But never since then, and never by a woman.’

‘But why should that be any different?’ I ask; I want to prolong the discussion, to buy time.  

‘It’s hard to say. I suppose you’re right; why should it be any different? But you must tell me what to do. I am at your command.’

*

I have him stand at the fireplace, elbow resting on the mantelpiece as I had seen him during our first meeting. He watches me intently as I sit on the sofa, the sketchbook resting against my knees, fumbling with my pencil case.

‘You know, I’ve never been good at drawing the face from the front. Would you mind looking out of the window? I think I would prefer to draw your profile,’ I say.

‘You shouldn’t make such decisions based on whether it will be easy or not; you should make them based on artistic merit alone,’ he says playfully.

‘Oh, is that right?’

‘Yes, at least you should never admit to it.’

‘Why? I’m merely being honest. I have no pretensions; I’m not trying to impress anyone.’

Mr Collins raises his eyebrows and doesn’t say anything.

‘Right, I’m going to start. Hold your pose; I’ll try not to be long, just a little sketch.’

‘Take your time.’

I rush; my lines are scraggly, and my proportions are off. Several times, I rub out the sketch and start again, hoping he doesn’t notice, but of course he does.

‘You are rushing. Pause for a moment, take a breath, and just look at me,’ he says, kindly not turning to me, holding his pose. I do.

I slacken my grip on the pencil. I look at him, his white shirt, its soft pointed collar. The way he has turned his head accentuates his neck muscles; they look so exposed, making him seem vulnerable. I could spend hours just tracing their lineaments. It’s different, I think again, to draw men. His pose is interesting, too. I’m sure he’s aware of it. The way he’s bent one leg, the position of his hip, and the way his feet are pointing. He’s not tall, but he’s naturally broad and muscly; his suspenders highlight his wide shoulders. He has parted his hair on one side so that a wave of hair falls over his forehead. I realise for the first time that he has taken some care in his appearance. It is an amusing thought; it makes me smile. It’s good to be the one looking and judging. It makes me feel powerful. However, I must not merely look but record what I’m seeing. I try to remember the principles of making a quick sketch, and I stop focusing my eyes so that Mr Collins becomes a blur, and I make out the general shapes. He no longer looks like a man but an assortment of geometric shapes and curved lines. I begin to draw.

I have added just enough detail and shading, I want to keep the drawing simple. I know I must show it to Mr Collins, involving him taking the sketchbook. What if he flips back to the other pages? I hesitate, and heart pounding, find the other drawings of him and quietly rip the pages out. He turns his head at the sound. I fold the pages and smile at him. ‘I’m done,’ I say, and he walks to me. He doesn’t ask about the pages but instead holds his hand out for the sketchbook. This time I hand it to him without argument. His face lights up as he sees his likeness, and for a moment, he studies it without saying anything. I let him look, and walk about the room under the pretence of stretching my legs, pick up a book, and stick the pages inside it.

‘You have made me a much better-looking man than I am; that was kind of you,’ he says.

‘That was not my intention, I assure you,’ I say, laughing.

‘Well, it’s good. Very good. You have a lot of raw talent – you should apply yourself. Talent such as yours should not be wasted,’ he says.

‘Now you’re just being too kind.’

‘May I keep it?’

I’m gratified; it would have been a precious relic, but the glow of pride that I feel that he should want to keep it overrides any reluctance to part with it. ‘Of course,’ I say and tear out the page for him. His best likeness and all the others are now gone from the sketchbook, leaving only tattered strips of paper.

‘One day I will ask you what you just ripped out of your sketchbook, what you took such pains to hide,’

I turn away to hide my confusion and busy myself with tidying up. ‘You needn’t be so curious. It’s not such a great mystery – they were merely bad drawings that I didn’t want anyone else to see,’ I say.

‘It’s a bad habit – you should never tear out the pages of a sketchbook,’ Mr Collins says.

‘I tore one out for you,’ I say.