We only part to meet again

The artist has still sold all her work. I am still going to the war zone. Tomorrow. Fresh razors are bought. First Aid is checked. The artist is delighted with her news but sleepy. My passport is felt. Shirts are selected. Money, currency, is sorted; kit inspected. Lenses. Tapes. Leads. Microphones. The artist is smiling but dozing. Flight times are double-checked. The latest news is viewed. The eight-year-old girl is, especially, hugged before going to sleep. The five-year-old boy is, especially, hugged before going to sleep. The artist cannot believe her good fortune. Bags are readied. Shoes are polished. Lists are crossed out, rewritten. The artist has almost fallen asleep on the sofa. Emails are sent. Arrival times verified. The artist wants to do a large piece after some time off. Expense claims must be sorted. Toothpaste. Aide memoire. Cash. The artist must be coached about her emails. The artist is an artist. I am the artist's husband. 

Expect victory and you make victory

There is a pearl in the oyster. There is a genie in the lamp. Hats off to the tireless artist and her shining knight of a visitor. The visitor, the artist of all artists, who came today, bought everything, which is to say everything the artist showed him, eight pieces in all. He also wants to do a book on the artist, perhaps two different types of publication. He has also commissioned her to do another piece, and has said he wants photographed and framed all the unframed work, even work he does not own. His gallantry delights me, reassures me. In other words, the sun came out this morning on a small part of the capital. It lit up dark corners of the soul and showed them to be luxurious, generous, clean, and progressive. The artist, like a rising sun, is over the moon. All the doubt, all the pain, all the self-punishment, has faded away, broken apart like bread. The whites of the eyes are matched with the blue. Truth has won, over cynicism. Wildlife has popped its ears up and listens again. Leaves have delayed falling from trees. Poems sit parked on pages, finally convinced they will one day be read. Terrorists have paused over their bombs. Squirrels have passed, on the offer of nuts. Cars have decided not to crash. The sea has cleaned itself. Fruit feels rightfully boastful. Water has never tasted so good. I will leave for the war zone in two days time so impressed with the artist and delighted for her too. Her integrity, in short, has been rewarded. And the artist of all artists deserves some credit too. Hats off to him, I say. I could not agree with him more. Why, even the laptop feels tactile today.

The Artist's Code

The artist worked until four o'clock in the morning and is still working now. She is what a friend of mine calls a grafter. Furthermore her visitor tomorrow is being treated like a king, by virtue of the amount of work the artist is putting in, and so he should be, and in a few days time I will be gone, my passport stamped, me flying across both mountains and desert, and some kind of verdict from the visitor in place. Still, I like all this intensity, enjoy both its calibre and drama, and the importance of this man's visit, certainly in terms of what it can do for the artist, cannot, should not, be underestimated, even if it does mean I am presently unable to share with the artist any feelings of apprehension I may have about returning to the war zone. I cannot for example discuss with her the prospects of dry mountains, epic space, mines, manners, weapons, vigilance and nerves. But this does not matter as ours is not a selfish relationship and I think both of us 'expect' the other to pursue expression with a kind of creative, if not purist, relentlessness. What has been interesting for me about these past few days has been the scrupulous manner in which the artist has harnessed herself so completely to the idea of 'collecting' the different works, 'binding' them with a kind of equality of detail, and 'shedding' any notion of disparity. In short, the work has been made conceptually more sound, which I suspect will not be lost on the visitor. Looking at the artist now, she bears what look like the scars of labour across her face, as pastel marks, like war paint, stripe each cheek with a kind of primitive authority, and black stains disrupt the self-drawn image on her t-shirt. I tried - with the promise of some Madeira cake - to tempt the artist to take a break, but already she is back to work, the opposite in fact of the eternal tea-breaking worker. We have a code for a tea break in the war zone. We call it Tango Bravo. We have a code at home, too. It is an artist's code. It is called work.

Chalkhill Blue

The Chalkhill Blue butterfly ascended from the sunny slope in the garden. Like a leaf, it floated towards a pair of open glass doors, its tiny shadow stroking the freshly mown and occasionally threadbare lawn. As if by magic, it slipped between the gap presented by the two doors and our Chalkhill Blue was suddenly inside the building. Stunned to find itself in a children's room, it sat for a while, spellbound, on the bookshelf, next to Jacqueline Wilson's 'Cliffhanger' and Francesca Simon's 'Horrid Henry's Wicked Ways'. Just then, a five-year-old boy wandered in and our butterfly remained perfectly still, quietly watching as the boy rolled out a small plastic drawer from beneath his bunk-bed and unearthed a small brown rubber band. The butterfly watched further as the boy, unaware of the small creature's presence in his bedroom, pulled the rubber band back, dangerously so, then let go: laughing as it sped through the air and smacked against the patchily grubby white wall. Upset by this, aesthetically disappointed, the butterfly took its leave, took flight, flying into the sitting room instead. There, suddenly alive to the fresh reality, it parked itself on a small wooden table. The table was crowded with drawing instruments of various sizes and colours, and the butterfly watched as an eight-year-old girl drifted through, contemplating another cartwheel, and an artist to the butterfly's immediate right knelt before a picture as if in prayer. That is strange, thought the butterfly to itself, the two figures in the picture, though small, are familiar. And then it dawned on our butterfly that these were indeed the two little people in the flat. Anyway, there were many such pieces visible in the room - art work, mirroring itself, everywhere - and each piece looked braced as if for the elements, as well as an important visitor. Meanwhile by a nearby round red table studiously sat a man by a laptop. At this very moment, the butterfly took to the air - the Chalkhill Blue, that is - and landed bravely by the man's laptop. It looked at the screen, which was glowing and looking faintly nuclear. 'Chalkhill Blue', it read on the screen, the light blue of its wings already itching to take flight again: 'Males congregate on animal dung.'  

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

I feel bad for missing the second wedding party of two friends yesterday but as the artist said to them in an email I had no choice. My next trip grows ever closer and preparations intensify. This morning for example I received four fresh boosters in both arms and as a result feel like Popeye at the moment without the spinach-fed strength. In fact I am walking like a cowboy with motionless arms held either side a few inches from the hips. I have had almost twenty such injections in the past few weeks. This morning, as the needles entered my arms, I glanced at the front page of my accompanying newspaper. Where I am headed was the subject of the front page. My eyes then travelled across the room to the window. The tops of some branches blasted a kind of gorgeous green as the sunlight licked the leaves. It reminded me of one of the pieces the artist has been working on. But my eyes travelled back to the front page again. A journalist also died yesterday. He was found with a bullet in his head. He worked with someone I know. With one of the papers today came the counterpoint of a fold-out guide to the nation's butterflies. What beautiful colours, let alone names. The artist's colours are butterfly colours, which is to say matte-like, accurate, pastel colours. Presently, I am looking at illustrations of a Purple Hairstreak, a Painted Lady, a Small Pearl-bordered Fritillary (Fritillary: what a name), and a Green-veined White. Perhaps, instead of armies, all sides should unleash legions of butterflies on each other instead. Where's the White Admiral (adults often nectar on bramble flowers in clearings with dappled sunlight)?

Instant Vintage

The artist's parents kindly sent us some money from the foothills for an anniversary meal. This we had last night with the children. We sat round a friendly table in a pleasant restaurant, a table of twelve loud women to our left, a serious couple to our right, and were enthralled and gripped unashamedly by our own narrative, as if this was one of the first times in a while in which we were able to let other people do the work for us, and I guess we wanted to celebrate this too. The children were - in a napkin kind of way - dribblingly incisive, as indeed was the artist fetchingly strident: a hint of cleavage, warm red lips, affection for her grateful husband. No, it was an all-inclusive experience, whose backdrop had been a day of helping the artist - as if help was needed - fine-tune the pieces to be shown Wednesday's important visitor. Now, presently, right now, as some 'electronica' plays on the laptop, and the children do hand-stands by the bright red sofa, I look over at the artist with a third - previous - piece on the go, and watch her hand tweaking, comfortingly, the already rich, and impossibly detailed, content, and I feel a mixture of pride and hope. Actually, I have just noticed a sculpture freshly created by our five-year-old son. Where did that come from? When did he do that? On a pink plastic plate in a bed of clay are three small toy ladders, one slipped slightly into the other, and the three of them, tall and aspirational, now leaning like a skeletal version of the Tower of Pisa. ('It's called "Nothing",' he says when asked.) Also, in just under an hour our eight-year-old daughter has a friend over and I will take them all to the old-fashioned fun fair erected for a few days on the open expanse of land serving as a kind of buffer zone between us and the rest of the city. Seabirds will glide in the vast blue-grey sky. Kites will compete. Buses will move grumpily. The sign outside the local drinking establishment will sway in the light wind. And I will look upon these children and feel the opposite of despair. All the while knowing the artist will still be working with a smile on her face. 

A Dab Hand

The artist is on a roll. There is no stopping her now. Her hand moves furiously across the paper on board. It goes dab, dab, dab, like soft fingers on soft glass. A piano sonata plays in the background - more fingers, more dab, dab, dabs - and it is a joy both to see and to hear. This is all in preparation for the visit on Wednesday from the most expensive living artist in the world. He has emailed the artist several times now, as has his assistant. No pomp. No self-importance. His last message reaffirmed that he was indeed looking forward to seeing what he called the 'pictures'.  It will be interesting for them to see each other again. Both are as committed as the other: it just so happens that one of them was rewarded with extraordinary success. But he, I suspect, knows Oscar Wilde's dictum that a cynic is someone who knows the price of everything and the value of nothing, even if my earlier mention of him as the most expensive artist in the world today suggests I do not. Today is our tenth wedding anniversary. I sprang into the back garden, like a cat, not a particularly agile one, at seven o'clock this morning, and plucked a bright red thorny rose from the rose-bushes by our bedroom window and presented this to the artist while she lay in bed.

Strange Dream

Of his love for his city, he was sure. 

Maybe he was never quite meant for this world. Maybe he was like an islander on a mainland ward - comfortable, at times, with his own soul, but seldom with anyone else’s. But on the subject of the city, his now, he knew he was quite sure. 

So why did he feel so nauseous? Or did he always feel this way, before and after, which is to say sick, sick as truth sometimes, sick like some political virus working its way into the body martial? 

He needed wisdom, advice. Before going back, to the mountains, before returning, to the fight, he needed wisdom fast. His city, his now remember, was under threat. This was why he spent longer than usual pulling himself out of bed, if indeed it was bed, entering and exiting the other room, the so-called room for ablutions, kneeling by the bowl like some half-believer, whom he had almost forgotten, in his attempt the night before to body-surf across the up-raised hands of the city, was this city's man through and through. 

He entered the populous streets and walked alone in a long straight line. Romans. Anglo-Saxons. Danes. (Runestones?) He needed some advice and needed it quick. The air by the river was fresh but no match for the mountains. Even with everyone in both places armed, at least over there you felt nature’s triumph. Here, these days, he found only a kind of former magnitude. And even with the mines over there like seas of jellyfish once the rains had stripped away the upper surfaces of the soil, nature did nothing wrong. Here, within the conurbation, within that which he had up until this very moment thought he knew well, cars continued to target the money, with their businessmen and businesswomen and service-based minds. Credit crunch? A mountain stream, he thought. Fifty million tonnes of cargo on the river each year? How about a place where the angels sing?

Anyway, he felt a swelling in his throat again and began concentrating on the enemies, for this was one of his bents. He thought about deliberately unimposing houses in the suburbs, dissociative glances, here as well as in the mountains, and he thought about stealth. And, he remembered, the quiet, increasing gatherings: the beards, darting eyes, and closing minds. The giant, epic, other bowls, of granite, made of granite, in mountains far away. 

And he wondered why they wanted to kill him so? 

He crossed the floodplain, by this hill and that. He crossed the busiest and oldest road, at least of his world, and saw some of the lights were on in the building. This was his, for now, his building of advice. These lights, he knew, these bulbs, like bulbs, like beacons of enlightened but depressed courage, belonged to this city, too. Even though it is day and the clouds have parted and the sun is sending wave upon wave of ancient heat and light to stoke the city’s heart and stroke the city’s skin, these lights will always remain on. 

He didn’t bother with the lift and kept on walking. He could feel the sweat on his collar and still he kept on walking. One bead ran the length of his back and did a kind of detour passed his scar. Vertigo, he was thinking. He never used to get vertigo and yet two weeks before in the mountains he got vertigo, started trembling - right there, on the mountain. And this was exactly when he saw the city’s enemies. 

It wasn’t like the old days. Not like with the others. Not like when with blazing ants coming at you and screaming like undertakers, you popped behind a rock. Not like when with the this and that and more rocks, you fed their children. Not like when they hit above your heads and you had to lean right back and watch what you thought was the mountains fall. 

He had a pet theory about vertigo and it was this. As you eat your city sandwiches by the river and dream of falling in love again, please remember. They don’t give you vertigo when you are young because you are expendable then. Vertigo is there to save your life when you have children.

The carpet was soft, thick, violety. It was also, in patches, a quiet, almost shy, salmon pink. (Like a salmon, bouncing its bloody belly upon the tooth-like jagged rocks, he was also thinking, I shall reach my goal, I shall make a shoal of my affection... ) Anyway, a woman in the room to his left took her feet off the desk. He couldn’t see who she was, not to talk to, but felt a kind of respect, like they were two sides of the same river. 

He proceeded towards the end of the corridor. This was when everything fanned out like a beautiful idea, like he had always hoped the city would again, and this beautiful idea was like a kind of half-nightclub and half-sitting room in which you might find God. 

He moved cautiously, careful not to crunch the candles underfoot. On the wall to his immediate right - as he checked the cameras in each corner - was a large glass cabinet. Inside were these small sculpted heads, urban voodoo bracelets, handwriting on parchment, and very small pieces of amethyst. 

Amethyst. The Ancient Greeks and Romans wore amethyst because they believed it prevented intoxication. Some of the pieces were also violet and some the colour of purple grapes. 

‘Ah, there you go,’ came a voice. 

He looked around, staring at the cameras first, but could not trace the source of this voice. He looked behind but didn’t see anyone there, either, only a chair, a lime-green, or possibly turquoise, chair. 

‘Is that you?’ he asked the strange voice.

‘Is that who?’

‘Are you ... you know ... the one?’

‘You know the difference between your mountains and your city?’ The city man stepped back a few feet and listened. ‘The city, your city, is built on clay, and the energy, get it, the energy is absorbed, gets absorbed, right into the ground. Your mountains, however. The mountains from where you returned. The place where you say you saw this city’s enemies. They are all rock, the mountains ... all rock. There, there, in the mountains, everything pings straight right back at you, and doesn’t get absorbed at all.’ 

‘Is that it?’

‘You tell me.’

‘No reason for them to want to kill me, though,’ he said. Siren sounds passed through the street outside. ‘More prisoners?’ he asked, hearing them. ‘More people about to be absorbed into the ground.’ 

‘Somebody said to me that you wanted to know why these people wanted to kill you, is that right?’

‘That’s right.’

‘Well they don’t.’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘They don’t.’

‘Don’t what?’

‘Want to kill you.’

‘Is that it?’

‘No. There’s one more thing.’ 

‘What?’

‘They love your city.’

The Artist Makes Sense

A better day. The artist worked on her two latest pieces and I finished a short story I was commissioned to write. The artist kept busy while I also researched the events I may encounter in the war zone when I leave. The artist paced herself, though. She stepped back, then moved forward again. Concentration. Pastel dust fell like snow, like dirty snow. The tall skinny legs of the stool scraped the floor and sliced the papers. Hopes were whispered again. Why should I expect every day to be good? The artist moves fast enough and it is not about me. Her gestures were scratchy but her thoughts were fleet. Even turning to ask a question is like a shot. Dedication. The tea is drunk fast. And made, again and again. Last night there was a documentary on a female artist not dissimilar in age. She made no sense. 

Eight Days

The impossibly famous artist has been in touch with the artist here, twice in the past few days, and now his assistant is in touch with her too, arranging a visit for him to see the artist's work. This has been ever since the artist wrote to him after he gave his email address. (And made my day by replying immediately.) This comes as some relief to all of us here, and for a variety of reasons too, including the fact I don't think the artist quite believed it when I said he would be in touch. I think she has been working so hard she has become creatively self-contained. She may have forgotten sometimes how to interact, and like many brilliant but retiring artists she can also mistake an art world that communes with itself, even celebrates, with a conspiracy against seriousness. Anyway, she now has eight days before he comes to see the work. This means eight in which to get her work in order. There are one or two things she must do with the two latest pieces, but she is almost there. I will be off to the war zone myself a few days later - I just received my new dates - so I hope it will be at least with some fresh hope for the artist that I take my deep breath and go under the metaphorical wire again. Since my sister died less than an hour after I landed a few weeks ago from my last trip, relations with the artist have been unusually strained. This has been partly my fault but it has also been as if the artist just wants the dam to break now and for her work to be allowed through, and it doesn't really matter too much about anything else apart from of course the children. This I suspect has contributed towards a kind of inner and outer rebelliousness on my part, which has not really been helpful of me, and has not been the case for almost a year now. At least when I saw the children's shining faces today before they were whisked off again, I saw something of a light within.