Last Christmas (6 page)

Chapter Five

Ella and Fergus were sat in the dark, metres apart from each other. The mad hatter was sitting in between them and the Queen of Hearts was cackling wildly in a corner. For their first date, Fergus had taken Ella to Alice’s Adventures Underground, an interactive theatre evening. Far down the rabbit hole now, Ella and Fergus were being asked to choose whether they wanted to shrink or grow, drink or eat, and were on a quest to find Alice, who was missing.

Ella heard somebody move next to her and then suddenly the lights were flashing neon green and she could see the outline of Fergus’ stubble and in the background a tunnel lined with pages from old books. She felt as if she was sinking into a parallel world, one full of magic and kaleidoscopic rivers of sounds and patterns.

Fergus’ face was flickering in and out of focus as the strobe lights persisted. This was the most surreal tea party Ella had ever been to, the only tea party she had ever been to, come to think of it.

Fergus squeezed her hand and through the sporadic lighting, she could see a purple Cheshire cat grin projected onto the wall behind her. Ella had heard all the hype surrounding this night and had been meaning to get tickets. They had sold out too quickly for her to get her hands on any but luckily Fergus’ friend was the manager for the venue and gave him a heads up when some tickets were returned.

The whole night had been filled with topsy-turvy colours, walls replaced with ceilings and ceilings swapped for floors. At one point, Ella had been taken off into a tiny room lined with a mosaic of mirrors by a gigantic lime-coloured caterpillar and been made to write a poem about her suit of cards, diamonds. It was all incredibly exciting in that half confused sort of way and Ella was having a blast, even if she didn’t understand all the gimmicks of the evening.

After escaping their tunnel, Ella and Fergus were led into a grand courtroom where the ‘hearts’ were found guilty and where Tweedledum and Tweedledee performed a mesmerizing circus act. The pièce de résistance was a cascading waterfall of teacups and cocktails which all the guests could drink from and dance around as the theatrical experience morphed into a party with a live band that arose from the depths of a backdrop made to look like a pile of rubbish, a wasteland.

Ella and Fergus were lost in Wonderland and it was perfect.

As the experience drew to a close, the couple exited the venue that was dug deep down under Waterloo station and walked over the Jubilee bridge to embankment.

“It’s
so
nice when the hype is justified,” said Ella. “So often, something like this is bigged up to enormous proportions and then it almost always falls short. It’s so disappointing when that happens. But I thought that was great; tremendously fun and truly imaginative.”

“I agree, it was so organic, not too overdone or micromanaged. I get the feeling that the experience is different every night because a different crowd comes in and participates and that’s just as it should be. I honestly felt like I was a kid ambling through a magical land for most part of it. The set was magnificent!”

“It was wonderful, thank you.” Ella smiled thinking about the sensational evening they had spent together.

“It was. I’ve really had a great time tonight,” Fergus said, taking her hand in his. Holding hands, becoming one unit, the pair could take on the panicked robotic Christmas shoppers with more ease. These shoppers, each on their own sacred mission, scanning the urban landscape for their targets, straining to complete their hunt for the ‘perfect’ present, looked like automated players in a video game. They were human-sized Pac-Men, changing their programmed paths only when another shopper threatened to swallow them whole. Ella looked past the stress of the street and saw the tinkling Christmas lights arching above them over Villiers Street. The minute orbs sparkled against the dark blue sky and acted as understudies for the true stars that were hidden by the London smog.

Fergus followed Ella’s gaze up to the sky, leant in to her and whispered: “I would love to see you again this week.” They had stopped outside embankment station and were facing each other now. “If you have time with your exhibition that is,” he continued while adjusting his scarf, with a touch of nervousness.

“I would like that,” she replied. “I’ve actually taken this week off work so I can prepare for the exhibition on Friday. I’ll use the days to add finishing touches to the paintings and help dress up the Beat Gallery. Then hopefully I’ll have the evenings to relax a bit.”

“Oh cool. Well, are you free tomorrow night? If you’re too busy, please just say but I think I’ve just thought of something really fun we could do.”

“Okayy,” she said suspiciously. “But only if you tell me what it is.”

“Where would be the fun in that? It will be much better as a surprise, I promise you.”

Fergus leant into Ella’s face and pressed his nose against hers. He brushed her lips with his and began to kiss her again. She could feel warmth radiating between every part of their bodies that touched.

“I’ll take that as a yes then,” he whispered smugly.

Ella smirked, kissed him again and said, “Text me a time and a place.”

*

Ella woke up the next morning with the sun on her eyes. Dappled sunlight lay lightly over her bed and on her floorboards, the pattern created by the sun peeping through slits in the heavy white blinds that covered her window. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes and sat up. She switched on her blue Roberts radio and let the tinkering of Classic FM bring her calmly into the realm of the living. She yawned, stretched her arms high above her head and began to relive last night’s kiss. When Fergus had swooped in and pressed his lips against hers she thought her legs were going to topple beneath her. As soon as she kissed him, everything, the street, the Christmas lights, the noise of the bustling shoppers, the heckles of the tramps and the tinkering of glasses from punters outside Gordon’s Wine Bar had been totally obliterated. The kiss had swept her into a vacuum where only she and Fergus existed and it was only on opening her eyes again that she remembered where she had been, on Villiers Street, in London.

Ella crept out of bed and opened the blinds to let in the full force of the light. It was a crisp day with clear blue sky and frost on the ground. She walked over to the breakfast bar and put her coffee machine on.

Ella lived in an open plan studio in North London. Two years ago, an innovative architect had come across a large warehouse with roomy storerooms he thought could be converted into trendy urban studios; one year later, the building acted as a sort of artists’ commune, one which Ella had fallen in love with straight away and moved into when Robbie left her. The warehouse was situated in a part of London which had previously been a hellhole of crime, littered with monstrous 1970s grey concrete blocks, but fortunately for Ella, was now being hailed as the new sanctuary and hang out for artists. It was up and coming and the price of the studio reflected that; the value of the flats in the block had raised astronomically and she was glad to be sitting on what would one day be a tidy investment.

But regardless of price or location, Ella loved the openness of the room and that she had been able to buy it and furnish it entirely by herself. It had been a blank canvas for her to play with and although it looked like a dump from the outside, when you slid the green metallic warehouse door open you entered into a cave of treasures. A tall grey wall divided the room into two sections; her living space on the left and her work space on the right. The wall acted as a bedhead for her double bed that was covered in cream and charcoal coloured soft cushions. In the living area a window which ran from floor to ceiling was positioned on the back wall. On the left of the window stood Ella’s bookshelf, on which a collection of globes sat. To the left of that, was her bathroom, the only part of the flat which was sectioned off with a nifty sliding glass door that Ella had painted herself in light blues and turquoises, like a stained glass window. Then opposite her bed was the kitchen area, which had an island that functioned as a breakfast bar with two tall steel stools.

Ella brushed her teeth and returned to the kitchen where her coffee was now ready. It was just past nine o’clock and she had a busy day ahead of her. Yesterday she had decided which of her last pieces should go into the exhibition. She was showcasing twenty paintings in her first exhibition called “Elementary Natures”. The collection was a series of perspectives on the most basic elements; fire, water, earth and wind and looked to explore stock times of day; sunrise, sunset, dusk, dawn and twilight. Ella hoped that the collection captured her interpretations of the mood and atmosphere of these times of day through different landscapes.

The paintings were going transported to the gallery on Thursday so if she wanted to make any final changes to her paintings it had to be today or tomorrow to allow ample drying him before the paintings were moved.

Ella took her coffee through to her working studio behind the dividing wall at the head of her bed. She put on all her side lamps to illuminate the paintings and wondered around thinking over any changes that needed to be made. Her artist’s studio was the same size as her living area. Luckily, Ella had bought a ground floor flat that had incredibly high ceilings; the sliding metallic door of her studio was large enough to fit even her biggest canvas that was some 15ft tall and 10ft wide.

As Ella looked at her paintings, she couldn’t shake the images of Alice’s Wonderland from her head. The colours of the caterpillar that had led her to a mirrored cupboard to write a poem for the Queen of Hearts had inspired her greatly. She felt now that her green oil painting entitled ‘Noon Grass’ needed more green. It needed some of the brilliant flicks of luminescent lime she had experienced last night – they would make it brighter and bolder so that the curves of the canvas were highlighted and the painting looked more 3D. Ella put her coffee down on the large oak desk she used to mix colours and started to sift through her brushes. She found the right one, a coarse, thick one and reached for a new colour she had mixed up only a few days ago.

Ella hand made all her own paints, mixing coloured pigments with oil to create the exact shade she desired. This florescent green she had made recently was left over paint she had made for a friend who bought her colours from Ella. But now, inspired by her trip with Alice, Ella was going to use it herself. She dipped her brush into the slimy looking green that she called
Lime
Light
and started to blend it in with the darker green arcs already existing on the canvas.

Over the course of the day, Ella went on to alter three different paintings; to ‘Toasted Sunset’ she added an extra blood-orange paint to some of the lines of light rebounding off the horizon. She called this paint
Moroccan
Fire
and used her fingertips to add texture to the oils. She also added tiny strips of gauze to the edge of the sun that she had painted with her favourite colour
Burnt
Sienna
.

Ella moved on to ‘Midnight Water’ and used the opposite end of her paintbrush so it acted like a pencil and she began to lightly etch the words “flow” and “drip” into a deep purple section of the canvas. As the previous paint was dried, bits of the hardened paint crumbled away and added another dimension to ‘Midnight Water’. The tunnel last night that had been plastered in book pages had inspired her to add these words to the painting. When her and Fergus had been in the tunnel, Ella had felt like they had gone underwater as the sound of their voices was muted and a bubbling sound of pipes and steam had been produced. Ella wanted to recreate that sense of fluidity she had experienced so she added
dripflowdripflowdrip
to one of the main arcs of the sea in ‘Midnight Water’.

To her largest canvas, ‘Sunrise Sun’ she added gelatinous flicks of fiery yellow to the far right hand quarter of the canvas. She wanted to add the flicks vertically so she stood at the opposite end of her studio and launched
Scorched
Mustard
in the air, her arms swinging in an arched motion as if she was ringing church bells. Because of techniques like this Ella’s studio floor, ceiling and walls were covered in specs of multi-coloured paint. It looked like a bag of skittles had exploded into the room.

Ella stood back to observe the changes she had made to her paintings when she heard her phone bleep in her room.

Oh shit, what time is it?
Ella rushed to the sink in the corner of her art studio, scrubbed her hands and used a bit of white spirit to get off the more stubborn paint. She dried her hands and she rushed to her phone. It was six forty-five and she had completely lost track of time being so absorbed in her painting.

The message had been from Libby:
Tell me about your hot date last night! Still on for lunch tomorrow? X

And she had another from Fergus from this morning at 11.13am which she hadn’t heard:
Greenwich
station
,
8
.
00pm
.

Ella had to move fast if she was going to be ready in time; she was still in her pyjamas, she hadn’t thought about what she was going to wear and she had to cross the whole of London to get to Greenwich. Greenwich. What was he taking her to do? After last night, she knew it was going to be something interesting and off the wall. But all she knew about Greenwich was that the Royal Observatory and the National Maritime museum were there. Were they going to have some sort of nighttime tea trip on the Cutty Sark?